Indian politics

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Rajiv
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Re: Indian politics

Post by Rajiv »

jai_in_canada wrote: Fri May 07, 2021 4:04 pm I think this belongs here, so here goes...

Rahul Gandhi was working from home, you know, as always, because he likes to socialist distance from the pro-illiterate. 😁 Anyway, there he was "working" from home, when he received a call from the front gate security. It was the Nepali guard. The conversation happened in Hindi, but I provide the translation here for the Hindi-illiterate. 😋

Guard: Sir, there is someone here to see you.
Rahul: Who is it?
Guard: It is Sharapova.
Rahul: Oh, wow! Ok! Wasn't expecting that. Send them in.

RG runs in to powder his nose and freshen up... he is the Fresh Prince, after all. Then eagerly runs to the front room looking forward to seeing the tall, blonde tennis goddess.... and in walks .... Sharad Pawar!

😂😳🤡👹
:rofl: :rofl:
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Re: Indian politics

Post by usaindia »

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Re: Indian politics

Post by jai_in_canada »

usaindia wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 3:04 pm Things getting real dirty
https://in.news.yahoo.com/phrase-indian ... 16308.html
I wouldn't put it past either one of these scoundrels to do what the other is accusing them of doing. I don't know why, but my first reaction when I read this was laughter. I wasn't angry. Instead I found it funny. It's a parody, satire and farce all rolled into one. I rate this R for Rotten. :p
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

What is "real dirty" is up to people. This may be but it is insignificant to me. What is real dirty (sic) is so many people bating in the Ganga and throwing corpses in it and then people drinking from the same. I grew up living beside the Ganga (30 feet) with direct access from when I was 8-18. Every month or two or sometimes may be six, we would see a human body floating by as well as animal carcasses, etc., which were more common. It was sad. I wondered what their stories were.

Any stories to stir up fake outrage, etc. is just trying to distract us from the main issue. A colossal failure by all government entities as well as a large section of the population to abide by basic public health rules, and a colossal failure by our governments to set up public health initiatives, infrastructures and advise people to be on the vigil, etc. I fully expect the bhakts to come out here and try the what could Modi do, etc. I could give you a long list of things he could have done and did not do. But, this too is not new. George W. Bush sat with a report on his desk that was delivered a week ago or so saying that Al Qaeda could attack the Twin Towers and then came out saying, "who could have known?". There were many who had warned about things that have happened although they could perhaps not pinpoint when it would have happened. All our governments were asleep at the wheel. That is what is rotten and contrary to what Marcellus says, it is not in Denmark but in India. :-(

I could not have predicted this but I was genuinely alarmed by seeing all the spectators huddling with each other in the Modi Stadium without masks for large parts of the test match. We need to do better. "Chalta hai" has its issues.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

usaindia wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 3:04 pm Things getting real dirty
https://in.news.yahoo.com/phrase-indian ... 16308.html
I just do not think Congress would do this. Mostly because it is extremely stupid to do, as things like this would invariably leak. This looks very much like somebody in BJP became overzealous and created it. And just like they all seem to believe anything that comes from the BJP social-media propaganda wing, many in BJP fell prey to it. But this is pretty damn serious, and BJP stands to lose a lot if proper proof comes out on who actually did this forgery, if it is a forgery. Now, if Congress actually did this, oh boy...
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

And, if the Congress did his knowing that this would leak and somehow would be believed to be fraud ... and people would blame he BJP ... and then, oh well ...

Who cares?

I do not care what the rest of the world thinks or calls something as. I care about the deaths that are happening.
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Re: Indian politics

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A former Union minister and a former Chief minister(He was CM till last year). Funnily he was alleged as one of key persons in 1984 riots where people were literally burned alive.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by SaniaFan »

All this is propaganda. I think what he means is not literally touching something. But the usual political fire which a parties do. I don't like Kamal nath and there are allegation of his involvement in 84 roits.
But these things are side tracking the main thing that we should be fighting against.
BTW priti gandhi is BJP Manila merchandise head and also some social media head of bjp which itself is ironic!
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

Yeah. I give only 20% chance that this was done by Congress. 50% chance that this was done by BJP guys and all the gullible whatsapp-forwarders in BJP ran with it. There is a 30% chance that it was done by somebody in Congress as a prank, trying to trap the gullible BJP guys and it worked better than they thought - as even some BJP bigwigs fell for it.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jai_in_canada »

One positive outcome from this drama might be that Twitter and FB are banned in India in a couple of days. Hope they are banned worldwide, the scourge that they are.😁
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

^^^ But they are much less problematic than whatsapp. Ban that damn thing first!
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

The Chinese politburo is reading the last few comments and laughing their &(**s off :-)
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

prasen9 wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 8:02 pm The Chinese politburo is reading the last few comments and laughing their &(**s off :-)
As they should. Democracy lost a lot by allowing right-wing nut-cases and left-wing ideologues to flourish around the world. Freedom is all great, but when we fail to set up laws and control the deleterious effects from freedom, it will lead to people wanting themselves to be controlled. We don't let people do a lot of things that they were once free to do (like pee on the roadside, walk around naked, or kill a cat and eat it). Why should we, in the name of freedom, let people spread biased and twisted (if not outright wrong) information on social media with the sole intention of influencing people's thoughts?

The only solution in my opinion is an Artificially Intellgent agent being there to control it. If we don't set it up, we will lose democracy for ever. I am that serious about it. Democracy will not survive social media.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by prasen9 »

The solution is minimally required, well-thought-out regulation with checks and balances. For example, we should not shield Twitter and FaceBook and WhatsApp from all liability. Let us make them liable for any misinformation on their sites. Democracy will survive social networks as it survived other disruptive technologies like the printing press. At one point, all sorts of misinformation was printed in fake newspapers. We evolved to a manageable system of checks and balances. A well-regulated social media with guarantees for free speech that is not absolute is what is needed and will happen.
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Re: Indian politics

Post by jayakris »

prasen9 wrote: Tue May 25, 2021 11:34 pmDemocracy will survive social networks as it survived other disruptive technologies like the printing press. At one point, all sorts of misinformation was printed in fake newspapers. We evolved to a manageable system of checks and balances. A well-regulated social media with guarantees for free speech that is not absolute is what is needed and will happen.
Good point on the printing press. But I don't know if it was any regulation that caused the press to remain generally informative and largely not biased (at least not to the point of killing democracy). I actually don't know the root reasons why the press remained as an enabler of democracy for the last 100+ years and did not fully fall into the control of the "rulers" (except in famous examples like in Nazi Germany; and in communist countries). But the CNNs, FOXs, and big money control from Murdochs, Kochs etc have shaken that to the core too.

"A well-regulated social media with guarantees for free speech that is not absolute," as you say, is precisely what we need. But why is there no move from any quarters for this to happen? It is already around a decade too late. What started in the first year of Obama's presidency in 2009 with the Tea Party was the indication of serious trouble for the first time. How fast that got coalesced (mostly on the basis of racism, though couched as economics) was something to see. US democracy has been on a downhill since then. In fact traditional press itself started being VERY polarized some 15 years ago and social media has taken it all to another level in the last 8 to 10 years.

A world-wide movement is needed urgently. Or is there something happening in some quarters that you're aware of? I haven't researched. If there is something that needs a climate-change "Paris accord" style movement, it is about social media. The world needs to agree on a way forward, and maybe UN or somebody needs to get moving.
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