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Socialism is immoralProtest the quota systemEnd entitlement benefits for freeloaders Support the death penalty for terrorists and anti-nationals Resist "Global Governance" |
| FAKE STINGS AND SECULAR GAMES: | |
| The deep rooted conspiracy to subvert the political process [link] |
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Saturday, February 19, 2011 |
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Tunisia, Egypt ... etc. | |
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Perhaps counter-cyclical political events provides for the largest servings of irony and the Middle-Eastern 'revolution' falls firmly in this category - so far as the Indian political scene is concerned. Just imagine how the secular journos, intellectuals, human rights and other assorted Left-Lib types would cover this thing had it happened during the NDA regime. But we have what we have and ironically (a double dose, if you like), the regime, with its ~$100B scams looks every bit like the despotic regimes the Middle-Eastern folks are trying to depose. In any case, Indian journalists went to Cairo in hordes. Short of a story and short on analysis and certainly deprived of a suitable political narrative to spin, they decided to make it about personal valor. The social media scene was abuzz with (mostly) brave journos patting each other etc. Funny thing is, they did not actually come in harms way to the extent some Western/Middle-Eastern journalists did. Some spent a few nights in the cooler. Most spent the time holed up in the Indian embassy, only to come out during times of relative calm and that too avoiding the rough areas. The Barkha Dutt docu-drama called The Women of Egypt is a perfect example of this. It was at least in part an attempt to redeem herself from #barkhagate using the Kargil flashback. Already being hailed as a masterpiece, award-worthy etc. the documentary shows Barkha walking around about town, microphone in hand. She also interviews a few what appeared to be a few elite Egyptian women at their homes. * * * This is not to suggest the Egyptian scene was not dangerous, quite the contrary. Unfortunately, the attack came from unexpected quarters. An American journalist was brutally assaulted at the Tahrir Sqaure in Cairo. She suffered a sustained attack and beatings by a mob of about 200, who yelled "Jew ... Jew ... Jew ..." while setting upon her. This wasn't the only such incident. It took several days for the Mecca Cola drinking Left-Lib media to deliberate and finally release the information (after censoring the chants). Why? Because it largely cut through the narrative of 'revolution', or rather the Western conception of it. Secondly, the revolution is being worked into a storyboard of achievements for Dear Leader, in prep for 2012. Baaaaad Boooosh attacked Saddam, but The Great One liberated Egypt by delivering just one speech in Cairo! Shortly afterwards, instead of a proper root cause analysis, they were able to steer the conversation towards a few fringe comments. Business as usual. But that did not prevent a particularly loony Left-Lib to actually connect this attack to 'Hindu Nationalists'! This and various other factors, history etc. does not make us feel particularly warm and fuzzy about the whole deal. We just have to wait and watch. * * * We were particularly anxious to see the effects of this revolution upon our domestic faithful. Historically, the heart of the faithful has always throbbed for the global movement, for instance Khilafat. But so far there is not much evidence of any ripple effect. Actually, we are not too sure - is it possible the disturbance is manifesting itself in different ways? As we discussed earlier, there was a dangerous riot in New Delhi, involving the demolition of an illegal Mosque. This was largely censored by the media. Well, there was another one, also censored by media, this time involving the expansion of a burial ground, in New Delhi. Then there was major rioting in a village in Rajasthan. Would they actually rise up and depose a secular Government? It would be rather interesting.
posted by barbarindian at 9:00 PM Permalink
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Sachar Envy ... | |
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In a previous post, we discussed how the community was finding it problematic to push its victim status:The biggest obstacle to pushing through special privileges for the community proved to be raw data. There was no way to massage this to manufacture a "deprived" victim status for the community. Call it Sachar envy. Soon this was largely mitigated - large number of poor people, like cattle was head counted and factored into stats. Even this proved inadequate. This is why the Kandhamal incident was engineered. Now we have a new victim category with refugees and dead people to show for! Take that, Kashmiri Pandits! Well, lo and behold, we already have a demand for a Sachar Report for the community!
Now, everyone knows the community is far from deprived, as a matter of fact they enjoy massive advantages in almost every field, and more so in 'liberal arts' type fields. They dominate journalism, human rights, book publishing, advertising and most other soft sectors. They lead in awards too. However, we have an interesting problem here. Of course there are those in the community that are not doing well, after all not everyone is John Abraham. So, unless everyone in the community gets up to that level, we will always have grievances, right? This is the unique problem with this type of identity politics. There is never enough. Poor Hindu? Stand in line, we are now uplifting Community 1, Community 2 .... Then of course we have the numbers game. Suddenly tribals become part of the narrative. This explains why this increased level of missionary activities in Maoist areas, why we suddenly have a Hindu seer killed in a remote district in Orissa, why we have another rotting in jail (the latter's 'confession' being all over media with nary a regard for rights of the under trial, no peep from Human Rights), why we have indignation over (mostly) self-inflicted attacks on religious places in Karnataka, why we have EU delegations interfering with our domestic matters, why the Supreme Court is forced to change certain remarks in its verdicts in an unprecedented manner, why after years we suddenly begin to accept UK aid, which invariably flows through certain organizations. When the Sachar Report II finally comes through, rest assured to find apples to oranges comparison just like in Sachar Report I. Recently acquired members (who is gonna check?) will drag down the average and it is all the way to the bank for community leaders. Funny thing is, we already have a parallel Government running with Sonia Gandhi (anyone knows her faith?) as its tenured President, it is called the NAC. This organization is planning to control every drop of milk squirted from the mammaries of our welfare state and no one could claim they are being misdirected. But we still have grievances. Call it the burden of secularism.
posted by barbarindian at 3:52 PM Permalink
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Wednesday, February 09, 2011 |
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Free, Fearless Journalism ... | |
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 So, after furious backpedaling for over two years by the Government (which according to rumors may be headed by the Congress party), finally some moves are being made to bring back black money home. Lo and behold, now everybody and their chachaji wants to bring back black money home! Funny thing is, when the black money issue came up just before last elections, everybody and their auntyji said - well, various things.Anyway, we digress. As a trailer for supposedly bigger things to come, a number of individuals with accounts in the LGT bank of Liechtenstein, Germany, are being pursued. Tehelka claims it has "accessed" the list. Now, the original list had 18 names on it, Tehelka published only 15 with much fanfare and over the top triumphalism: TEHELKA has accessed 16 of the 18 names, of which we are putting out 15 right now. These names include individuals as well as trusts. At this point, we are putting out 15 names without disclosing details like their addresses, the businesses they are involved in and the total money they have stored away in Liechtenstein. Abiding by the basic journalistic principle of proving the accused an opportunity to present their side of story, TEHELKA has approached each of these individuals involved and is awaiting their response. [link] Now the intriguing question is, why 16? Why not all the 18? As such none of these individuals have been found guilty of any crime yet. So, like the Spectrum scam losses, their guilt is presumptuous. There are three possibilities as to why 16 and not 18:
These are situations which stretch your imagination and push their credibility or perhaps the other way around. Anyway. Having gotten over that bit about 16/18, we are suddenly faced with a strange situation. If all 16 names had been accessed, why publish only 15? The question perhaps intrigued other individuals as well, Tehelka faced a barrage of queries.
This is far more suspenseful than the Oscars and arguably about as entertaining. These messages indicate the tremendous amount of emotional turmoil Tehelka folks must have been going through. In any case, Tehelka did indeed publish the 16th name on the list, more than 2 days after publishing the first 15. The 16th name rated a full story of its own for some inexplicable reason, with loads of explanations. The 16th name happens to be a member of a large family run industrial house. Now, Tehelka can not claim they were waiting for the individual to offer his side of the story, since the other 15 had not been given this opportunity. So, why was this name held up? The guy was too big? The fearless folks of Tehelka, supposedly crusaders for the small guys holds back the one big name on the list? Or is it perhaps religion? Or secularism? Or some other reason? Perhaps we will never know. 
posted by barbarindian at 12:20 AM Permalink
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Saturday, February 05, 2011 |
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Religious Banking is here! | |
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 In a previous post, we had pointed out how India has progressively moved towards compliance of religious laws. As it stands now, India is nearly as compliant as Pakistan, certainly more compliant than Malaysia or Qatar.By its ruling to allow religious banking/finance institutions, the Kerala High Court has opened up a whole new paradigm. But are we ready? Sure enough, the current entity expects to operate wholly within the framework of Indian laws. But what does Indian law exactly mean? Who creates laws? The track record of our lawmakers starting from institutionalizing medieval religious practices through constitutional sanction to Shah Bano to more recent cases does not inspire any amount of confidence. The most alarming aspect of the case is that this is not a private company trying to offer just another product with a largely superficial label, with not much consequence to anyone else. The entity in question is Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC), a state owned entity. The rationale being provided is absolutely bunkum - this is a real estate investment Public-private-partnership deal with a mutual fund type arrangement. Religious issues most certainly are not in the way of getting Gulf based Kerala diaspora into infrastructure - and this appears to be the primary pitch! Secular blowhards have been trying to legalize religious banking for several years now, with The RBI steadfastly opposing such moves. For instance this report shows what a minefield this can quickly become in terms of regulations and bureaucratic overload. Even under the current arrangement, there will be regulatory costs. Someone has to pay for it. What if investments come a cropper? It would be too tempting to do a social justice bailout. The reasons for this enthusiasm is quite clear. This type of moves are cheap popularity stunts performed for the M-Street. Additionally, the religious label will make sure law enforcement and financial regulatory bodies keep their hands off. Like most other religion tinged concepts, it will likely morph into a money laundering operation with other attendant ill effects. We have let the camel's nose in the tent, the beast will come in.
posted by barbarindian at 11:56 AM Permalink
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