I am forced to put this one on my blog because Kapil Sibal would like to censor this kind of stuff. He wants to control what we see, hear, and read on the internet. Mr Sibal, up yours.

Courtesy of Kapil Sibal

Who is Antonia Maino a.k.a. Sonia Gandhi? An average Italian woman who married some guy who ended up becoming the prime minister of India. She acquired the last name “Gandhi” that she currently uses through marriage. Many women traditionally take on the last name of their husbands. That is unexceptionable. What’s remarkable is how she — aided by her minions such as Manmohan Singh, Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram — is wrecking the country. One can argue that she is responsible for India’s current decline (as if India was not already awfully impoverished) but I believe she is only the proximate cause. The ultimate cause lies elsewhere.
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Kapil Sibal’s uncivilized behavior has to have the backing and protection of the Queen Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi. As @vinod_sharma pointed out, “Sibal can’t be head of Gestapo unless there is a Hitler who wants him to do whatever it takes promote & protect him. Why silence about that?” Kanchan Gupta writing in Mid-Day, “A brazen attempt at political censorship” notes that censorship is nothing new: the Congress party and the Nehru-Gandhi family have a history of trying to dictate to the press and muzzle free expression.
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Dr Swamy is a national asset. I sometimes wonder why the Congress goons don’t bump him off. May his tribe increase. To increase awareness among Indians of the corruption charges against the Nehru-Gandhi-Maino clan, please circulate this widely.
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I tell you, the things that you find on them interwebs. Well, not diapered goats but a report about them. I am taking a huge risk here but let me put that off till the end. Here’s what I am talking about: violence in the Islamic state of Iraq and some Iraqis’ killing desire to turn it into a fully sharia-compliant state.
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Kapil Sibal is an idiot. You may say that the title of this post is brimming with redundancy since asinine means ‘extremely foolish’ and fatuity means ‘foolishness’. But I like the phrase ‘asinine fatuity’ because it describes Kapil Sibal’s idiocy accurately and comprehensively. Hence the title. Now here’s the why.
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Today afternoon, I am leaving Chicago for the SF Bay area. My travels, which began on 11th October, are almost over. Saturday I will drive to Los Angeles and return on Monday Dec 5th. That is when I will finally be home. It’s been a very very long journey and I am aching to be back in Santa Clara. Happy travels to me!

When one is talking about anything that has to do with economics, I think it is best to use a bit of common sense and to stick to the basics. Recently, the government has moved to allow up to 51 percent foreign direct investment in “multi-brand” retail in India (and single brand retail is allowed 100 percent FDI.) Some people (and some parties such as the BJP) oppose FDI in retail. The question whether FDI in retail is good or not is being hotly debated. The debate is pointless because it takes only a few minutes to get to the heart of the matter. Here’s my take on the matter.
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I am leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again. Could be the words of a song When I reach Chicago tomorrow, I will write again. Until then, bye.

In India’s case, being ruled by foreigners has perhaps become something of a habit. What else can it be if something is so persistent that it lasts centuries. The most recent foreign rule was by the British, nominally ending around mid-20th century. I say “nominally” because what replaced it was really a continuation of the British raj under the brown sahibs (and now under a gora memsahib.)
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Allow me to explain the context of my rhetorical question in my previous post in which I asked, “Is Advani merely senile is he really intent on destroying the only chance India has of getting rid of UPA/Congress raj?”
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. . . is he really intent on destroying the only chance India has of getting rid of UPA/Congress raj? Inquiring minds would like to know.

If you like thinking about thinking, then Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” will delight you. Here’s a bit from the introduction:
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Allow me to share something personal with you: I cannot go to bed without brushing my teeth. I may be sick as a dog, or bone tired, or totally sozzled, or massively sleepy. It does not matter. I feel all yucky if I lie down without brushing. I am glad that I have that habit. I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to struggle, I don’t have to force myself in any way. Almost as if on auto-pilot I end up brushing my teeth before bed. It would be good to grow into the habit of being honest.
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Stated in the abstract, the case simple and outrageous. Let’s call them parties A, B, and C. Parties B and C own land which person A wants to grab. Person A somehow induces person B to disappear from view, and then accuses party C of murdering person B. Then a court convicts three people of party C for the murder of person B and throws them in jail. Fast forward 11 years.
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My friend Keith Hudson gave me permission to quote a recent piece of his in full. He presents an historical perspective to the present global financial conditions, thus helping our comprehension of what’s going on and what is needed to fix the broken bits. Read, enjoy, and pass it on.
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Narendrabhai is in China leading a business delegation which includes my colleague Rajesh Jain.
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Yesterday evening I was at the National Law School in Bangalore. I was invited to have a conversation with the students on the subjects covered in my book, Transforming India. It was a lively conversation and in fact quite heated at points. I enjoy a good argument — sometimes I think I should have been a trial lawyer. In any event, I argued my case and to my pleasant surprise there was push-back from some of the students.
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Greeting from Thiruvananthapuram, aka Trivandrum. I arrived here yesterday evening from Mumbai. This is the city of the famous Mahavishnu temple in South India, the Sri Anantha Padmanabhaswamy Temple. Thiruvananthapuram means “The land of Sree Anantha Padmanabhaswamy”. A few months ago, that temple’s treasures were valued at Rs 90K crores (around US $20 billion.)
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The world is reaching a milestone – nominally today – 7 billion people are alive in the world. I suppose there must be some uncertainty about that number; perhaps we have to give or take 100 million or so. It has been estimated that the total number of people who have ever lived is around 100 billion. Thus around 7 percent of people who have ever lived are alive today. That’s an incomprehensively large number.
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