Month: August 2018

Trump imitates Modi, Modi imitates Trump

Narendra Modi campaigned heavily on India being a Hindu nation and that India needs to defend itself against Pakistan sternly. He accused the previous govt Congress of being too soft against the aggression of Pakistan on the Kashmir issue. He even campaigned that the top leaders of Congress as the Western establishment ruling India associating the Gandhi family as Italians, although Sonia vehemently opposed that saying she had left Italy to be with her now deceased Indian husband Rajiv Gandhi. It did not sit well with the Gandhi family as their budding heir Rahul Gandhi expressed no such Indian values other than wearing an Indian kurta for campaigning, while most of the time he was found in Bangkok detoxing himself to gear up against Modi attacks – the strongest one being the Shahazadha; the son of royal family. This was 2014 and Modi won with thumping majority as the next Prime minister. The Congress was decimated, Rahul who had half heatedly canvassed on the persuasion of his mother went back to Bangkok for further detoxing. Since then Modi has been the first Indian PM to visit Pakistan with surprise visit found hugging the then PM of Pakistan, Nawaz Sheriff. Since then Kashmir issue has escalated and India claims it has now given the befitting reply to Pakistan cross border terrorism, understandably now detoxed and formally appointed as President of the Congress party Rahul claims otherwise.

Then came 2016 and America went for election and Donald J. Trump took the Modi playbook and accused all the politicians of big swamp and especially Barack Obama as too soft to the world, hence undermining the might of Mighty America. The reality was George W. Bush had projected America as a bully nation after 9/11 for going to war without the UN consensuses. It is then that obese Americans who love French Fries had renamed them as Freedom Fries in retaliation to France, it is these Americans that would eventually vote for the now Republican candidate DJT who had little knowledge that French fries had nothing to do with France. Trump crushed 11 political presidential hopefuls to nominate himself as next Republican candidate in Primaries.

Against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, he pitched that under her administration it would be the same 8 eight years as her predecessor Obama. Frankly she was running on that agenda as Obama had brought the respect for America it deserved from the rest of the nations and had made an effort to diffuse the nuclear tension from Iran by holding a bilateral talks. He had also steered America from the worst recession created by out going GWB since Great Depression. But what Trump used against her was Modi’s strategy, America’s superpower status had diminished under Obama and he was too soft to speak with Iran and bent backwards to appease them. He vehemently opposed the stand immigration policy against the illegal immigrants, where in the past both Republicans and Democrats had avoided the issue. Trump came along and said he would deport all illegals back to Mexico, 11 millions of them and build a beautiful WALL across the Mexico border. Although majority of the illegals are from Mexico sizable illegals are from other nations too, including India, so will he send them to Mexico too? but this was a good catch phrase for election and he ran with that.

It worked and Trump was elected as the first non political failed businessman (not according to him, on the contrary Trump race is the most powerful gene, to which he feels that every women needs to be impregnated with his sperms, to further the dominance of America against the rest of the world) as the President of America.

Now it is Modi’s turn to run for a second term and he is using all the gimmickry that of Trump. Although it’s almost two years since Trump took office he has not gone any further with his biggest policy of building the wall on Mexico border. He had promised his supporters that Mexico would pay for the wall, the supporters had cheered him in every rallies “BUILD. THAT. WALL.”, now as  a elected president he went to Mexican president to pay for the wall, that did not go well but he got a big middle finger from former Mexican president Vicente Fox. So now he has retorted to build the wall using American tax payers, although the congress is not approving it, even though republicans are in majority. So trump has planned to shut down of the government, twice by now.

Here Modi has called for deporting some 4 million illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, apparently the illegals that have entered India since 1971 are at the risk of getting deported back to Bangladesh, only problem is they are all born in India. To make it more complicated he had declared in 2014 that all the Hindu, Sikh and Christians refugees from Bangladesh are welcome anytime, so who else is left, that’s the Muslims. Muslims mostly poor daily wage workers are claiming that they are born and lived in India, if they are deported they have no place to go, Bangladesh would not accept them. Indian constitution is built on secularism and cannot ban the immigrants based of religion. But Modi supporters are backing the move. The opposition is warning bloodshed if such a move was executed. Thus some 4 million people are stranded as to not knowing when they would be deported to Bangladesh.

Trump announces ‘SPACE FORCE’ and Modi pulled of Space Mission on Aug 15 2018.

 

BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Image credits imdb.com

The movie opens with a rant about racism, denigrating the existence of blacks as equals in the society among whites. It is none other than Donald J Trump! err sorry, I meant his SNL alter ego Alec Baldwin. This sets the mood of the film, so if you are a Trump-ster, you have wasted your money. But you sit and enjoy the intelligent comedy played by the characters.
Then enters our protagonist, Ron Stallworth(John David Washington) prepping his nostalgic Afro hairdo, he becomes the first black police officer to join the force of Colorado Springs. Based of the true story, Spike Lee weaves the story from the past to present racism in America.
Ron starts of his duty in records room, who gets bored very soon, requests his chief to assign him a detective work. Due to his persistence Chief assigns him to infiltrate a Black Panther Activist movement headed by Kwame Ture. Ron accepts it as to socialize with his own community, which in turn finds his love interest; the head of the student union Patrice Dumes(Laura Harrier).

While he is rationalizing with his own kind that police are not pigs, who have tortured the blacks at every juncture concealing his identity. He stumbles upon an advertisement in local newspaper seeking members for a new chapter of KKK in Colorado Springs. He picks the phone and dials the number, the man on the other side asks why would he want to join? Ron goes, “I am WHITE man and hate all those N-word who are sleeping with our white girls and raping them”. I dare not spell that n word, Omarosa might be taping. He pronounces the word WHITE with southern accent, VOIIGHT as it can be. The jaws drop in the office as the rant continues from Ron over the phone, hating blacks. Spike Lee shows that how the rest of the white crew in the office are supportive of Ron except to one bad apple. There is always one that spoils the entire basket. Needless to say the KKK clansman is impressed by Rons views and gets accepted and intends to meet face to face.


Ron’s partner, Filip Zimmerman(Adam Driver) reluctantly agrees to be the face of Ron Stallworth, with Ron as voice, Filip as face the duo infiltrate the KKK, they learn the plans to bomb the Black Panther to eliminate the uprising and end up meeting the master himself, David Duke!

Lee has juxtaposed the KKK and Black panther meeting both being intense in their own right although I would say that the presence of Henry Belafonte is real moving. Lee brings in a full circle and gets that one bad apple on the tape and has him removed from the police force, thus saving the basket from contamination.

In the end Spike Lee ends the movie as a documentary highlighting the events of Charlottesville and President Trump delivering the speech ‘There were fine people on both sides‘ at the cost of an innocent life
Heather Heyer.

It’s worth mentioning here that throughout the movie audience is laughing at the jokes played by Ron and his colleagues over the phone with KKK, but when the commentary from Henry Belafonte is delivered there is a pin drop silence and tears roll down as Heather Heyer is commemorated.

Selfie by Shweta Bachchan

 

selfie_RussianDaredevil_KirillOreshkin
Russian daredevil Kirill Oreshkin taking a selfie atop a hi rise building

I have conveniently dropped the Nanda at the end to make it more appealing. Yes it is Sr Bachchan’s daughter writing about Selfie. Not surprisingly very eloquent article; she hails from writers family, her father and grand father. Found it very interesting to note that she is totally against the selfies while she is surrounded by huge personalities.

Selfie was immortalized by Ellen DeGeneres of course promoting the phone she held at Oscars. The picture itself was beautiful with all the Hollywood stars posing  triumphantly for the shot, then it went viral on Twitter.

I am not so much against the selfies, but I tend to agree with Shweta on the self indulgence of we humans. Although selfie can be used as medium to capture everybody in the group, but like she says, why do it, if there several other tourists around you who would be glad to help you out. Builds human interaction and social acquaintance.

She also vents about the children taking selfies with duck face. Sure she being a mother herself would be annoyed by that, but it is still cute as long they are limited to children. Unfortunately lots of adults have never grown out of their childhood and progress into belfies.

Selfies has taken a sinister turn, which she is not addressing, the deaths related to Selfies is overwhelming. The picture posted above is that of a Russian daredevil Kirill Oreshkin has earned a name as Russian Spiderman for his selfies atop a hi-rise buildings. Call it daredevil or dumb move, one mis-step could cause his death. Other daredevils have not been so lucky who have succumbed to death, pricenomics lists such deaths in this article.

Mumbai police has posted a sign for Selfie daredevils,

Don’t make ‘taking a selfie‘ mean ‘taking your own life‘.

scores of people are dead taking a selfie near Marine Drive or Bandra seaface. Statistics have shown that India had almost 60 percent of deaths of all selfies.

Finally Shweta ends her blog with a satirical note, where she contacted her doctor for sunburns over the phone, to which her doctor responded, “Send a Selfie”, you can read her entire article here.