Friday, July 10, 2009
grow up you budget makers
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Great American Bubble Machine
From Matt Taibbi's "The Great American Bubble Machine" in Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83.
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
visit this link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine
Monday, June 15, 2009
Is MSD playing the Indian Micheal Clark
TEAM INDIA OR TEAM IPL
Thursday, June 4, 2009
do jaipurites deserves traffic projects like metro,brts,ring road etc.
a post for the so called saviours of indian tradition,writer is trying to wake u up.please try to do so
There's been a lot in the news lately about traditional Indian values, and the women who are destroying them.
The kick-off event for the current culture war was the attack by a right-wing Hindu group on a group of young women hanging out in a Mangalore pub at the end of January. The thugs claimed they were out to "save our mothers and daughters," who had been corrupted by western culture. The stories continue to trickle in:
"Man assaults jeans-clad wife for dressing up like men" (4 Feb)
"Mangalore goons target noodle straps" (4 Feb)
"Karnataka moral cops threaten Hindu girls for talking to Muslim boy" (26 Feb)
And on and on. In one incident after the other, men have verbally and physically abused women who breached one of the many unwritten rules of proper female conduct.
Then Valentines Day rolled around. I've always found V-day to be commercial, boring and vaguely nauseating. It never occurred to me before I moved to India that it could be offensive, too. I read with some amusement about how last year in Delhi, 100 Shiv Sena men held a protest and shouted slogans like "People who celebrate Valentine's Day should be pelted with shoes" (Is that any catchier in Hindi than it is in English, I hope?).
I don't get it. Why it is "indecent" for a woman to wear a tank top or jeans, yet nobody bats an eyelash when men scratch themselves, spit and urinate, um … everywhere?
If this about rejecting Western influence and materialism, an argument I can understand, why not also target Indian men who wear jeans or imported suits, drink Coke, shop at malls and watch Hollywood movies? Are Western practices only offensive if they are adopted by women?
Shiv Sena and the like argue that they are "custodians of Indian culture" and are defending "traditional" values. Since when is assaulting women a traditional Indian value? Who gave these guys a mandate to decide for the rest of the country how everyone ought to live? Which Indian values, exactly, are they defending? It would seem it's only those that keep women subservient.
Their repressive efforts were effective, sadly, with many women reporting that they were afraid to go out alone or to be seen talking to a boy from a different religious background.
But the Saffron Brigade, as they are affectionately known, did not go unchallenged. One very vocal opponent is a loosely organized - but 54,000 strong - group of women (and plenty of men, too) called the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, Forward Women.
The name alone is a stroke of creative genius, and it proves that the fight against fear mongering and repression doesn't have to be humorless. The women leading the effort could have taken a conventional (read: boring) approach to make their case; instead, they launched a campaign to send thousands of pairs of pink underwear to the heads of the moral police.
The Pink Chaddi campaign has been called immature by some critics, but the thing is that self-righteous moral types don't tend to respond in kind to intelligent dialogue. You might as well have some fun with them. Also, not taking them too seriously strips them of a lot of their power.
Majority opinion seems to be that these guys are a bunch of clowns. Certainly most of our readers seem to disagree with their tactics of brute force and intimidation. I wonder, though, what percentage of the population agrees with their underlying message?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Warne likely to miss rest of IPL
Warne, who is also the team's coach, was injured when he was batting against Deccan Chargers here on Monday night. Rajasthan Royals lost the match by 53 runs. Warne required a runner while batting and will probably need 10 days to recover.
In Warne's absence, Graeme Smith is likely to lead the side.
Rajasthan Royals director of coaching Darren Berry said: "I think it is a balancing act that will be our focus to get it right. We can field just four overseas players and it is a difficult thing to manage. We have now put ourselves under pressure."
Rajasthan Royals have already lost fast bowlers Kamran Khan and Amit Singh because of suspect action.
| Reactions: |



