Tag: politicians

Now You Fool Me

Now You Fool Me

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

Whoever said that, must’ve really known conmen.

Political parties disagree with the opposition, and vice versa. They even react to current events, whether domestic or foreign. But ever noticed a politician publicly disagree with another voice on the same team?

The only other place you’d probably see that, is in the army, where you’re trained never to question authority. But that isn’t the case, nor should it be so in politics. Politics is where stupid ideas must be refined in a fire of counterarguments, before anyone dares make them anything more.

But that isn’t the case in reality, the world over. And that should tell you all you need to know about the herd and the lack of individual reasoning. Something that should be of great concern to progressive countries.

In the Godfather, Michael Corleone advises his brother, ‘don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family.’

But, should it apply to people who are part of the machinery that directly or indirectly runs a country? The interest of the masses, at least in theory, should be first priority. And yet we almost never hear an independent thinker strongly and publicly disagree with a brash party strategy or decision.

Even when a politician is found guilty of a wrongdoing, the almost uniform, cinematic, tailored reactions of fellow-party members, dialogues included, reflects suspicion far more than it does unity.

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The Farmer Murders

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The Farmer Murders

A farmer committed suicide at an AAP rally, and the hypocritical Mr. ‘Aam Aadmi’ Kejriwal didn’t let that stop his rally.

Policemen on scene laughed, as an AAP volunteer tried to save the farmer.

In the last year, the PM has been building foreign relations like there’s no tomorrow, while thousands of farmers back home stare blankly into what seems like a ‘no tomorrow’.

Remember that joke about a signboard at a hotel that went, ‘In case of a fire, leave the building before tweeting about it.’
That goes for Narendra Modi too. Save the farmers instead of simply tweeting your condolences and sadness.

This murder too shall pass, as the parties get busy pointing fingers at each other; while farmers will reconcile to the fact that it isn’t mother earth that failed them, but their very own countrymen.

http://www.ndtv.com/people/farmer-who-committed-suicide-at-aap-rally-had-once-contested-an-election-757355

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I WITNESS – The good people of DELHI

I usually do not reproduce or re-post any existing content on my blog. But here is one exception. Here’s a post written by Sangeeta Das, one of thousands of brave citizens who were part of the peaceful movement in Delhi, protesting against  a brutal gang-rape (on Dec. 16) and the unsafe India that politicians have created for women. It simply shows the depths that some soulless politicians and some brainless police can fall to.

Sangeeta Das’s post: I WITNESS – The good people of Delhi

I WITNESS – The good people of DELHI

by Sangeeta Das on Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 11:43pm ·

I am appalled at the lop-sided relay of events and incomplete images being telecast by some of the NEWS channels on TV, regarding the incident that happened at India Gate yesterday at around 5:30 PM.

I was there. We were all on the other side of India Gate towards the Dhyan Chand Stadium.

I think I need to paint the correct picture for the nation. Except for CNN IBN and NEWS X, most other channels are not showing the peaceful gathering. Thus it gives out the wrong message to the nation, to the politicians, to other women that there was violence.

Please pass on this note to as many people as you can and post it at as many places.

THERE WAS NO VIOLENCE NO PROVOCATION…THE POLICE ATTACKED WITHOUT ANY WARNING. I have been through section 144 earlier. At least there should have been one warning issued to us to get up and leave, peacefully, before they started hitting us.

Ms.Naina Kapur, of VISHKHA GUIDELINES fame, was there with me. Ms.Smita Bharti of SAAKSHI, an NGO working on SEXUAL HARASSMENT on women, was there. Ms.Nafisa Ali was standing behind us, Mr.Arvind Kejriwal was sitting just two rows in front of me, Mr.Arvind Gaur of ASMITA THEATER GROUP was there asking all the people to sit down and listen to the talks.

There were about 200-250 girls and equal or more number of men of all ages. There were young girls, some children, families and some elderly people along with hoards of photographers, journalists and reporters.

WE WERE ALL SITTING ON THE ROAD PEACEFULLY and listening to the painful account, of the mother of ‘KIRAN NEGI’, a 3 yr old who has been brutally raped and disfigured and killed, by her attackers. Even the sloganeering had stopped.

Many young and old men of Delhi were standing around us in a 3-4 layer human chain to protect us from any hooligans or nasty elements. It was like a CHAKRAVYUH.

Members of the ASMITA THEATER GROUP, including Mr.Gaur, were constantly walking around the circle. Young boys and girls of his team were repeatedly requesting and talking to people to not resort to violence, not to panic or run or throw stones, not to damage public property, AND not to hurt or abuse the female protestors.

There were many volunteers distributing biscuits and water to every protestor.

We were talking to the ‘AAM JANATA’ of Delhi on how to tackle the violence on women and children starting from ourselves, our homes and communities.

WE WERE SIMPLY TALKING.

I had just finished my packet of biscuit when the police, hundreds of them from DELHI POLICE and RAF, charged at us from behind, WITHOUT ANY WARNING.

They first attacked the men from behind, breaking their CHAKRAVYUH. I stood up to see what the commotion was about, and immediately fell as most girls didn’t get enough time to stand up. I hugged Smitaji as we fell on each other and there was a stampede over us.

Some of the men from the circle ran for their lives, but most of them ran towards us and hugged us and fell on us and took the initial blows of the LATHI CHARGE.

I couldn’t see anything; I just heard the two cracks of a SPLIT BAMBOO STICK on my back, butt and thighs. Then I heard the police screaming, HARAMZADIYON, RANDIYON, and then I saw a boot kicking my knees and shin.

They hit Smitaji on her lower-back and spine. The boys of ASMITA, and some more men pulled us all up and all of them formed protection girdles around the girls to push us out of the range of the water cannons and charging men in KHAKI AND BLUE.

Visibility was poor due to fog and tear gas; many girls were hit; even when we were running away and saying, “Ham jaa rahen hain, hame mat mariye”,…. they were hitting the boys rampantly, constantly spitting abuses on the girls. Many women reporters were also hit and chased, their vans attacked, equipments broken. Some girls still managed to pull a few lathis and gave it back to the men. I don’t know what happened to the children in the group and how the aunties in saris managed to run. I just hope they are all well.

There was not a single ambulance in sight; the entire C- Hexagon of India Gate was empty, barring the police. We walked for almost 45 min, as there was no way out from the outer circle. Finally we managed to duck behind press vans and escaped via Shahjahan Road.

Do I look like a hooligan? Was I armed? Was I provoking the police or creating a nuisance? Was I resorting to violence, by sitting there and listening to, or sharing our personal grievances of Sexual harassment and assault? You judge for yourself.

Agreed, that in such gatherings, some nasty elements do infiltrate and create a raucous, but the police didn’t seem to have the basic sensibility to differentiate between hooligans and some young girls, children, and elderly people.

If the Delhi Police and RAF lack the basic cognizance to recognize the good from bad, what protection can we expect from them? Instead I thank the men of Delhi, the boys of Delhi, who helped all the girls to escape from the wrath of THE POLICE. 

I request the people who were present there, to paint the correct picture, so that Mr.Manmohan Singh, Mr.Shinde and others would get the correct picture of what happened on the ground.

I request the PM and the Home Minister to believe that “I, the woman of India,” am not violent or the ‘Shame of the nation’… that we have to be ashamed that the world is watching. I was not offensive. But I will definitely stand up again to defend myself, my mother, my daughter and my kind. Let the world watch.

India – The State of Affairs…

India – The State of Affairs

Just when we Indians thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse…

We got an opportunity to host the Commonwealth games. But instead, Kalmadi and his cronies stretched their luck way beyond the Milky Way with corruption. And the Prime Minister’s office magically stretched a sanction to several multiples of the same. Wish someone would do that with my pay too. How Rs. 70000 crore of hard-earned money vanished over a span of a few years. And into how many Swiss accounts of how many politicians, we’ll probably never know.

Yet somehow, the poor are still poor, people still pay taxes in the hope of betterment of the country, and politicians still spend it thinking its part of an inheritance their grandparents left them.

And while the CWG scam unfolds, next month it’ll be 2 years since the Mumbai attack.! Two years.! That’s seven hundred and thirty days. And with our judiciary system sitting with their thumbs up their ass, we’re still trying the terrorist responsible.

Perhaps that’s why most crazies (terrorists n many politicians) have the impression that everything they shouldn’t be doing, can perhaps still be pulled off with ease and gotten away with, if it’s in India.

Left to the citizens, we’d have tried and sentenced the terrorist in less than a week after the attack. Who the hell cares about the defense. He is a culprit. He killed nearly 200 innocent Indians, and the legal system gives a f@(& about what he has to say about anything? News channels still manage to keep debating. Courts will have hearing after hearing. And before we know it, we might even be talking about it at the third anniversary.

More than anything else, it’s an indirect way of humiliating those brave Indians who faced the terrorists in that fateful attack.

At the bottom of it all, guess more than anything else, we Indians lack self-respect.

Take any small attack on Israel or on Israelis in the past. It would tell you what or how a nation should be towards its citizens. They’d hit back so hard, not only would it not instill fear in the enemy, but also cultivate a sense of belonging among their citizens.

Reminds me of a hilarious dialog from the movie ‘Bad Company‘ which describes the incompetence, if I may, of the concerned authorities. In the movie, the hero, Chris Rock tells the head of an FBI team, “Man, you guys can’t even find Saddam Hussein! If you told a woman at 8 in the morning, that her husband was sleeping with Saddam Hussein, she’d find Saddam by 8 that night!”

Look at it from the point of view of the brave Indian cops who nabbed the terrorist in hope of a trial and execution. To witness or read about the inane tantrums of the damn terrorist, two years after the crime.

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