Monthly Archives: January 2005

CIA has India surpassing Europe in 15 years

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A new CIA report titled ‘Mapping the Global Future’ projects that India will overtake major European countries by GDP within 15 years:

By 2020, China’s gross domestic product, the total value of goods and services, will be greater than that of any Western country except the United States, and India’s GDP will have overtaken or will be about to overtake European economies.

The National Intelligence Council, a division of the CIA, makes some very interesting comparisons:

… the NIC said China and India, probably along with Brazil and Indonesia, should emerge as “new major global players,” comparing their expected impact to that of a united Germany in the 19th century and the United States in the early 20th century. “In the same way that commentators refer to the 1900s as the ‘American Century,’ the 21st century may be seen as the time when Asia, led by China and India, comes into its own…”

The NIC is confident in its projections:

“Barring an abrupt reversal of the process of globalization or any major upheavals in these countries, the rise of these new powers (China and India) is a virtual certainty,” it predicted.

There will be a geopolitical realignment…

As India’s economy grows, governments in Southeast Asia — Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and other countries — may move closer to India to help build a potential geopolitical counterweight to China, it said… Dubbing China, India, and perhaps others such as Brazil and Indonesia, as ‘arriviste’ powers, the report said they “have the potential to render obsolete the old categories of East and West, North and South, aligned and nonaligned, developed and developing.”

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Salt ’n peppa yo’ mango, live

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M.I.A. is playing NYC on Feb. 5, along with partner in crime Diplo (via SAS). Tickets are just $12. She’s also rockin’ L.A. on Feb. 3. I think I’m having an Arulpragasam.

From the last time she performed in NYC:

… her super-limited debut UK single featured fuzzy, electro-tinged dancehall beats, vaguely political raps, and one of the most unexpectedly catchy hooks in recent memory. Completely modern urban music that didn’t sound the slightest bit forced or space cadet about itself (sorry Dizzee); I was captivated on the first listen…

Check out the ‘Sunshowers’ video and the remix MP3s. Here’s a previous post on M.I.A./Maya.

Boing Boing discovers paan

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The normally reliable cypherpunk cool-hunters at Boing Boing discover a strange new delicacy called ‘paan.’ They’ve linked to bloggers who, in typical geek fashion (I mean that as the highest compliment), have catalogued its production with step-by-step photos and reference objects for scale. Spitting contests with laser ranging can’t be far behind.

In related news, I’ve spotted an obscure Western dessert called ‘canoli.’ A mass spectrographic analysis will follow.

Here’s what I say: leave the paan, take the canoli.

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Checking in with my favorite authors

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Zadie Smith, she of the Bangla-Jamaica mashup White Teeth, got married last September; they met at Cambridge. I ran into her at a small London birthday party at an age when she was considered precocious, well before I’d read her. She was all biting wit, creeper hair and privacy. Authors never look like their jacket photos, nor friendsters like theirs.

She’s due out with a third novel, On Beauty, in September. Autograph Man was studiedly trivial, seemingly an entire chapter devoted to Alex-Li’s body fluids. You’ve gagged on the wealth and hype jalebi, now toss me some more of that fine, fine namkeen.

Rushdie dogged my steps all through this India trip via the gossip columns. He returned to his eternal muse, Bombay; worked the press in that quintessential writer’s city, Calcutta; and held court at a fashion designer’s nightclub in that most elegant of settings… a Noida mall. Avoid-a the New Okhla Industrial, y’all.

Kitabkhana drolled on about Rushdie’s Delhi reading:

“That story, man, that story, it has the touch of genius, pure, jaano, calibre aachey. Each line has the stamp of a Master.” (Displaced Bong intellectual wannabe who spent most of the reading with eyes closed in ecstacy that would have been more convincing if he hadn’t snored once or twice in between.) … Sleepy photographer… wanted to go home but had been told by his editor to stay till the bitter end. “In case,” the editor apparently said, “Rushdie gets shot or something.”

… my last glimpse of the Rushdies was of them using upturned plastic chairs to hold at bay hordes of… squeaky-voiced journalists asking original questions (“Mr Rushdie! Are you writing a new novel?” “Padma, what’s your favourite food?”)

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First 60 Minutes, and Now Nightline?

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This Friday, ABC’s Nightline, one of the better known newsmagazines, will be doing a show highlighting, surprise, surprise, Bollywood. The episode, senior produced by Madhulika Sikka is dubbed as “an introduction to Bollywood for the novice,” and will feature Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta, and of course, Bollywood crossover Hottie-to-be, and oh yeah, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Aishwarya Rai.

I wonder if SM can patent that phrase, or if soon Ash will be like Michael Jackson, and be announced T as TMBWITW, Aishwarya Rai. Maybe we should patent both.

Life under the shadow of raisins

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Prunes get no respect I tell you. The Pacific News Service reports on the woes of Sikh prune farmers in central California. Yeah, I had no idea either.

Prune growers in California’s Central Valley, which stretches from Fresno north to the Yuba City-Marysville area, are facing their worst harvest on record, following an extremely hot spring, which left little time for pollination.

Jaswant Bains, one of the area’s largest growers, said this year’s harvest has been “just about the worst crop ever.” Hot and dry weather during pollination resulted in a lack of fruit setting, he explained to India-West. Additionally, he said, high winds during the summer contributed to a heavy fruit drop during the picking season.

The Yuba City-Marysville area produces 99 percent of the nation’s prune orchards and about 70 percent of the world’s supply of prunes. Sikhs – many farming the land of ancestors who migrated here in the late 19th century – account for roughly 30 percent of prune farmers in the United States. Overall, the “dried plum” industry, as it is now known, could lose more than $100 million this year, as farmers said they harvested from 25 percent to 45 percent of a normal year’s crop.

I wish I had known all these years that so many Indian farmers harvested prunes. I would have totally drank more prune juice in solidarity. Prune juice has many benefits. Anyways, is there any relief in sight for these farmers? Continue reading →

I will not allow you to make us hypocrites.

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I think I speak for all Mutineers and rational humans when I ask for your civility here. We are ALL outraged, but we’re trying to act constructively. Hate speech is NOT constructive, nor is it welcome on this site. That doesn’t mean that we’re censoring you, telling you to take it like a bitch or turn the other cheek.

We do appreciate irreverent, funny commentary…

But RACISM and BIGOTRY are neither of those things. If you have something to say, please feel FREE to say it. If, however, it’s homophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, anti-Black, anti-Amreekan, …please start your own blog and spew venom there.

You don’t fight hate with hate; you fight it with righteous indignation, moral superiority and passionate activism.

We will delete hate speech.

This project was created for many noble reasons; the content of certain comments does not honour those beginnings at all, indeed, it makes us sound like hypocrites who don’t deserve the victories we are struggling for.

If we want respect, not only must we demand it, we must conduct ourselves with it as well.

Be the change you wish to see.

Thank you. Continue reading →

And now for some good desi news out of Philadelphia

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The Philadelphia Daily News is reporting that Lee Daniels, director of the highly acclaimed film “The Woodsman,” (starring Kevin Bacon) has cast an SM Favorite, Aishwarya Rai to star in his next film, a musical Ladies Night. Daniel’s describes the film

“like ‘Waiting to Exhale’ meets ‘Chicago’ meets animation.”

In addition to Rai, Daniels indicated that he has cast, Mo’Nique, Macy Gray, Missy Elliot, Alicia Keys,Mariah Carey, and Patti LaBelle and hopes to cast Beyonce as well.

Save the Children.

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Right now, there are only a few things that outrage me more than hate-spewing sucka MCs. However, the thought of criminal acts being perpetrated against children just obliterates my livid reaction to mocking shock jocks.

Just what kind of monsters walk this planet? What manner of despicable @$$^0)# could inflict more pain on innocents who have already lost everything they’ve ever known in an epic tidal wave and quake?

This sickens me:

SRI LANKA:…A 60-year-old man tried to sell children, ages 12 and 13, in Balapitiya, near the hard-hit southern city of Galle, said police officer W.D.T. Wijesena. Police were tipped off of the sale and arrested the man on Tuesday, he said.
…The fate of the children was not immediately clear. The children are among scores who lost their parents in the Dec. 26 tsunami that killed about 31,000 people in this island country.
The United Nations and international aid agencies have expressed concerned that child traffickers could take advantage of the situation and try to sell orphans into forced labor or the sex trade.

I pray that Sri Lanka’s stringent rules regarding adoption are enforced during this tragic moment of vulnerability.

I’ve heard some infertile couples decry the “maze of red tape” they have encountered in their bid to create a family; I’m sure those legitimate, deserving, would-be parents welcome such red tape now, as it attempts to serve as an imperfect wall between fragile young survivors and the horrid exploitation some sub-human deviants wish to inflict on them.

Follow the Benjamins

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I’m putting out a call to desi college students in the Philly area: come up with a list of companies that advertise on Power 99’s Star and Buc Wild show.

Why? Well, let’s take a little tour through social science, an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.

First stop: Anthropology

Anthropology directs our attention to the use of discourse in the construction of meaning. Huh? In simpler language, Anthropology teaches us to listen closely, not just to what somebody is saying but to how they say it.

Everybody? Get out your Turbanhead.coms, we’re going to do a close reading:

Community-affairs director Loraine Ballard Morrill, is quoted as saying “Essentially [we’re] apologizing for things on our Web site that were racially inflammatory and insensitive, saying, ‘We took it off our Web site and it won’t happen again.’ ” She said the more serious matter was posting the clip on the Web site. “That probably made it a much more – just a worse situation. Then people could click on it and hear it. That was not cool… . He made a big ol’ mistake in judgment.” [snip] Secondly, the Inquirer story tries to diminish the scope of the problem by taking Morrill’s word that “Most of the e-mails came from people who do not listen to Power 99, whose audience is mainly African American. What does the demographics or geographic location of the offended have to do with this offending clip?

Let’s try to answer Turbanhead here. Why is Power99 apologizing for putting the clip on the web rather than for having recorded it in the first place? Why do they keep mentionining that the people complaining are not their listeners?

I think their language reveals their notion of “fairness.” In their world, a company’s job is to make its audience laugh. In their minds, there would have been nothing wrong if the skit had simply aired as planned, heard mainly by their on air listeners. The mistake was putting the clip on the web, and exposing it to a broader audience who might be offended by it. That is, they’re not sorry they did it, they’re sorry we’re offended. They’re trying to be gracious.

You see something similar when they protest that we aren’t their regular listeners. They don’t think it’s fair that we, who are not their core audience, are getting upset. They’ve done their job, namely entertaining their audience. We shouldn’t be butting in. The fact that they butted into our realm by calling India, using lewd language and threats is not really of importance to them. They can call India, but we can’t call Philly, home of M.Knight himself. Continue reading →