Bill's posts with tag: morons
 | Klinton | Feb 29, '08 10:52 AM
for everyone |
 Jug Suraiya is a member of the editorial staff of what is arguably India’s worst newspaper, The Times of India. Normally, I enjoy reading his columns, because he has some smidgen of a sense of humour – something rare in Indian columnists of any hue.
Anyway, to get to the point – in one of his recent columns, after tipping his metaphorical hat in the direction of Barack Obama, he went on to write at some length as to why he wanted, craved, ached for Hillary Clinton to become President of the United States: to wit, that she was a woman, and he, Suraiya, had once talked to some redneck in the US who scoffed at the idea of a woman ever being US president. In other words, it’s the same old tired argument as was trotted out by the likes of Gloria Steinem: support Clinton (the erstwhile Rodham Clinton, let’s not forget, ladies of a feminist persuasion who back her because of her double X chromosomes) because she’s a woman – nothing else matters, not her politics or lack thereof, not her blatant waffling on key issues like Iraq, nothing but the fact that she’s a woman. Hell, as I said before, on that basis, if I were American, I’d vote for Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin before I’d vote for Clinton. At least those two are upfront about being evil vindictive right wing bitches – they aren’t trying to hide it. What you see, where they are concerned, is what you get. As for Suraiya: I wonder if he has something against a black man becoming president of the US, then?
 So you want to be famous for a while, the easy way?
If you live in India, there's nothing simpler.
For example, take a look at this photo. It shows the Indian tennis player Sania Mirza, and was taken during the Hopman Cup in Perth, Australia, on New Year's Day. It shows Mirza with her bare feet propped up next to an Indian flag.
Some moron of a lawyer or other found this outrageous. He went to court with a petition against Mirza for "insulting the national flag", and the court admitted the petition.
I'm no fan of Sania Mirza; I think she's 10% ability and 90% hype, and I'm more than sick and tired of listening to her talk on TV (in the faux American accent she acquired overnight) on how she is going to be a top ten player in the near future. But this petition against her is worse than ridiculous; it's a travesty of any sort of sense or rationality.
It's not as though the Indian courts are exactly underworked, with a backlog of cases which will take decades, literally, to clear. That they should admit this sort of idiot petition is moronic enough; what's worse is that this is far from an isolated incident. There seems to be a brigade of these people with nothing better to do but sit watching TV and scanning the newspapers to try and find something to launch litigation over. They get their fifteen minutes of fame, and also, most certainly, get some other morons to support them.
Of course the courts will, after months to years of wrangling and appeals and summons, throw out the case. Meanwhile serious legal matters will stay filed away and forgotten.
Mirza says she thought of quitting over this "row". With her own relentless self-promotion, I kind of doubt that; but I have no doubt at all that this sort of thing is a major disincentive for any Indian who wants any sort of public life.
It's just too damned easy in this country to get people to say you've insulted them in some way or other.
 In one of the newspapers I read, I came today across an article on the "urgent need" to defeat the "worst threat" to the country - the Maoist insurgency in the forest areas of several states.
Since the conventional attempts by the state have failed and are failing, the "correspondent" writes, the government - its counter-Maoist forces outnumbered and outgunned - will have to defeat the Maoists using the techniques General Thapar (then, I must point out, the figurehead chief of the Indian Army; the real power was in the hands of his whilom deputy, the vainglorious and incompetent Lt General Brij Mohan Kaul) used against the Chinese People's Liberation Army in 1962. Phew.
While I am, and have always been, pro-Maoist, and my sympathies are entirely with those who seek to save their lands and forests from rapacious government-backed corporations and feudal landlords, let me just step back a little and look at that statement dispassionately.
In 1962, the Chinese had whipped India's ass so thoroughly that even Indian history books don't pretend it was not a defeat. Trust me, that's a real whipping. And this guy suggests the government use the same tactics against the Maoist insurgency...
If they do, I suggest they simply surrender to the Maoists right away and spare us a messy civil war.
 Recently the latest bug to bite India’s politicians – and by extension the media - is what’s going on in Malaysia.
According to the news reports, ethnic Indians, whose forefathers were brought over by the British as slave labour to work in the plantations, and who comprise some 8% of Malaysia’s population, are systematically discriminated against. Incidentally, the Indians taken over to Malaya, as it then was, by the British are almost all Tamils. Recently a section of the ethnic Indians (I shall continue to call them ethnic Indians because they are Malaysian citizens, not India’s), carried out a “massive” street protest – of ten thousand people – under the banner of a Hindu rights group. It was broken up by the police with a fair amount of violence and the leaders arrested before being released on bail. The Chief Minister of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Muthuvel Karunanidhi (who has often been accused of favouring Tamils over anything else, including foreign Tamils like those of Sri Lanka, including Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam terrorists) promptly went ballistic against the Malaysians. The Malaysians promptly told him to mind his own business – in so many words. Good for them, too. I’m not saying that there is no discrimination in Malaysia or that one should be ignoring it. I’m sure there is discrimination, but there is nothing any Indian government (Union or state) should be screaming about. The first question is of the importance of national sovereignty vis-a-vis human rights (even if we presume this "concern" isdn't going to be made an excuse for regime change). No country in the world has its hands clean on this point. India discriminates compulsively at home. Suppose Nepal now began condemning India for the status of Indian citizens of Nepalese ethnicity in Delhi and so on, who are always looked down on as menials and addressed collectively as "Bahadur", a term akin to calling Mongoloid people “Chinkies”. What then? People from the North East are discriminated against in the "mainland" and counter-discrimination against "mainlanders" (even when settled in the North East for generations) is rife. We can't talk on this from the moral high ground. In 2001, India blocked discussing caste discrimination in an international debate on racism, claiming that it was India's internal matter…
In 1962, Indian citizens who happened to be ethnic Chinese were stripped of citizenship and property, interned, and deported. Many of them were refugees from Communism and prisoners of war in Korea who preferred India to China or the US. Wasn't this a crime?
When peaceful protestors, or even innocent bystanders, can be shot dead in India's North East - perfectly legally - by the army in areas where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act are in force, what moral right have we to say what goes on in Malaysia? Indian workers (Indian citizens) are routinely mistreated in the Persian Gulf states. Where is the political outrage over this? Is it because most of them are Muslims and Christians (some Arab states expressly ask for Muslim or Christian applicants for jobs) and so are negligible for election purposes? When masses of Indians still manually scavenge for a living, shouldn't we first ameliorate their lot before nosing in on Malaysia's affairs? Besides which, it's not as if India's "concern" can actually do anything except provoke Malaysia to crack down even harder on the protests - whether they are justified or not. In any case, the proper thing to have done was to express the government's concern (if this concern was legitimate) through diplomatic channels and exert covert economic pressure (by, for instance, discouraging Indian tourists and blocking exports) than this kind of counter-productive hullabaloo, which is absolutely guaranteed to make things tougher for Malaysian citizens of Indian origin - who are not Indians anyway. That's common sense. Common sense won't get the politicians any votes, though.
Back during my trip to Russia in 2005 I was surprised by the existence of Neo-Nazi Hitler-worshippers in Russia. Some were even in St Petersburg, the city Hitler, in 1941, had ordered wiped off the face of the earth even if it offered to surrender. They said Hitler ought to have won the Second World War. I wonder if they have any idea that if Hitler had won, they wouldn't have been around to worship him now.
Nazism = ignorance. It may also be that Nazism = idiocy, but it equals ignorance for sure.
But even so I was amazed by what I read today.
You all know, I guess, that I hate and detest the pseudo-state of "Israel". But some things are too much for anyone to digest. I think I can appreciate what the average "Israeli" will feel about this.
Of course, if you build a state on the basis of systematic discrimination against a section of your own population, you shouldn't be too surprised if the demon of racism comes round and finally bites you in the ass, but still...
Haven't these bastards ever heard of the concentration camps, for dog's sake?
Sit in on almost any gathering of India’s middle class, and, sooner or later, the talk will turn in one direction: Muslim bashing. Yes, someone will begin by saying how the Left is pandering to Muslims, and then someone else will chip in to say that Muslims are all terrorists, and someone will then say that all Muslims should be deported to Pakistan. The logic behind this? Pakistan was “created for the Muslims” – so they have no place here. These are the very lot who cheered on the invasion of Iraq, for instance, because - as one of their heroes, the Hindu fascist Praveen Togadia said - Muslims would get killed.
There is absolutely no point arguing with these people. You’d have a better chance persuading a Rapture Righter of the reality of evolution. So, what with institutional unwritten anti-Muslim apartheid in this fair land, backed up by the occasional pogrom, and I am not surprised to read that Muslims are being forced to pass as Hindus to survive. No wonder Muslims are so alienated that they turn to terrorism.
| Wannabe | Jul 1, '07 10:49 AM
for everyone |
I think we’ve all seen this for ourselves… Our friendly neighbourhood Babloo or Bunty or Balakrishnan, who went to the US to study, has decided to try and stay on there by any and all means possible. How to recognise when this happens? Babloo, Bunty or Balakrishnan is going to do a few predictable things. He’s going to develop a weird faux American accent which no genuine American will find easy to decipher, let alone an Indian. Hell, he probably began practising on it on the same day as he applied for a position in an American university. He’s going to start insisting on using obsolete British units for all units of measurement, babbling of ounces and gallons and miles even though he himself has no idea what he’s talking about. Ask him his weight and you’ll think he’s suddenly developed into a Sumo wrestler before you realise that the 180 he mentioned was pounds and not kilograms. Ask him the temperature and you’d better remember there’s something called the Fahrenheit scale before you conclude that he lives inside a sauna. Ask him the date and you’ll find he’s suddenly taken to writing it the wrong way around, month/day/year rather than day/month/year like everyone else. He’ll suddenly forget the correct spelling of words like colour, defence and centre or the meanings of words like flyover. That thing in the bathroom you turn on to get water is for him all of a sudden a faucet and not a tap. When he says football, you can be sure he means the so-called game of American “football” rather than what the world calls football. The same goes with hockey, which according to him is played with a puck on ice and not on Astroturf with a ball. Draw his attention to the fact and he’ll say with as much lofty disdain as he can pack into his nasal twang, “Oh, in the States we call that soccer (or field hockey).” We? He’ll begin talking airily of Atlanta, Georgia, and suddenly forget all he ever knew of Allahabad, India. If you mention the price of something in rupees, he will begin loudly and ostentatiously calculating the equivalent in US dollars. At least privately, he is going to spend a lot of time agonising over whether converting to Christianity (if he’s not a Christian) or being born again (if he is a Christian) will help get him a green card. He is going to take a fanatically pro-Bush attitude on any topic that you care to mention, being even more neocon than the most ardent neocon on subjects like the rightness of invading and occupying Iraq and the desirability of invading and occupying Iran. He’ll insist the Bush regime has made the world safe from terrorism. He will dismiss the views of any sane genuine American by calling that person an un-American bleeding heart liberal Islamofascist pinko terrorist lover. He’ll adopt an equally fanatically pro-capitalist economic view, frothing at the mouth with support for the extreme capitalist right and for big business, deliberately misstating and lying when the facts counter his view. He will be full of flaming anti-Muslim rhetoric and will always vent it on the interactive forums on websites like www.outlookindia.com If you disagree on him on any topic whatever involving America, he’ll say that it’s because your application for a green card was turned down and you’re bitter about it, concluding with “Better luck next time”. Once he gets to America, he will try his best to find an American girl to lay (to assuage his ego) and then, if at all possible, marry, so that he can claim American citizenship by virtue of marriage. In order to become more acceptable to Americans, he’ll change his name, from Chaitanya to Chet or Jagmohan to Jim, and insist on his Indian acquaintances using it as well. If racist American goons beat him up, he will try and hide the fact at all costs from his family and other Indians, passing it off as an accident or a fall, or anything, anything, except what it really was. And when his application for a green card is turned down, he’ll be shocked and stunned and try and get to America again by hook or by crook, buying a passage with traffickers this time. And this jackass of a caricature is our friendly neighbourhood Bunty or Babloo or Balakrishnan. In other words, he lives within us all.
Dear Paris As someone who wishes you no good at all, I have no stake in camouflaging what I am going to say in false bonhomie. So listen. You blew it, baby. You had it made, you know. What with your sex video and your commando exploits with your ex-friend Spitney Brears and being famous for being famous, you had it made. With your "reality show" exploits and your penchant for chihuahuas as accessories, with your wide-eyed stupidity (who could believe you really could possibly be that idiotic?) you had it made. With your romances with Paris Landis (what is it with your parents? Couldn't they think of another name but that of the capital of France for either of you?) and your alleged self imposed one year sex ban, you had it made. You had it made so much that you could get away with saying that you did not read your mail because you had people who did that for you, and you got believed. Not that many people wondered why on earth you did not have people to drive you around either. And nobody significant thought it (well, we Multipliers did, but of what importance are we?) So, Paris, all you had to do was make a fashion statement out of your orange jumpsuit and turn your prison term into the ultimate reality show. Trust me, you'd have come out smelling of more than roses. People are stupid enough to believe anything. And that is where you blew it. Weaseling out of your prison term was career suicide. And saying it was because of a "medical condition" was ridiculous. You don't party before going to prison if you have a medical condition serious enough to get you released. You go to hospital, and stay there. If you develop the condition in prison, well, you go to the prison hospital. Savvy? What a woman so ill that she cannot stay in prison does not do is get allowed to stay in her house with an electronic monitor strapped to her ankle. That was stupid, Paris. Even by your standards, that was stupid. What was it that got to you? The gave you a nice comfy cell of your own, without even a cellmate who might have proved unreceptive of your advances; and they kept you far apart from those who might have - as they threatened - stolen your shoes. Wasn't it enough? And then, and then, Paris baby, when the judge quite justifiably lost his cool and slung your skinny ass back in jail, you blew whatever there was left to blow. Celebutantes with a desire to be taken seriously should not yell "Mommy!" and get seen with dishevelled hair, gaping mouth and tear streaked face under those circumstances. And get seen all over the globe that way. OK, I realise you're feeling sorry for yourself, but stunts like incessant praying won't get you too far, not unless you're angling for the Republican nomination for the succession to George W Bush. And as for not eating, well, we know you don't exactly acquire a figure like yours with a normal dietary intake. After all, Paris baby, look at it from our viewpoint. This time you get away with repeated drunken driving without a licence. Next time, you get away with killing people like Edith Delgado did, and serve maybe three hours or less. Only Bush and his cronies can get away with killing people, Paris. Remember that. In the meantime, Paris, you come across as a snivelling, spoiled, ludicrous brat who can't even spend a few days away from home and parties. You blew it. You blew it. You blew it. Sincerely yours Bill
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