The Gandhi Clan
January 31st, 2009
Archive
Posts Tagged ‘douchebag’
Five potential vehicular homicide victims.
January 24th, 2009
1. Auto Rickshaws or three-wheeled tempos at their top speed of 40 kmph, spewing fumes in the right lane.
2. Person/Persons honking incessantly while in gridlocked traffic.
3. Person/Persons with car that is obviously faster than mine, driving at 40 kmph in front of me. The pedal on the right makes you go faster douchebag. Fucking use it!
4. Call centre cabs weaving through traffic. Actually any white MPV with yellow plates.
5. Person riding a two-wheeler, cutting me off in traffic while reading a fucking SMS on his cellular phone.
Satyam: My 0.02 US $
January 18th, 2009
So. The shit-storm of revelations about Satyam is easing up a bit and the papers have moved on to the next Big Story.
To be honest I don’ t really give a fuck about the company going tits-up, the creative accounting practices, the investors taking a bath etc. etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
All of this has happened before, many, many times and will happen again for sure. What is really intriguing to someone like me (who’s understanding of all the ramifications of the scandal is weak, to say the least) is how the same damn names crop up every time the crap hits the rotary cooling device.
How come the good people at PriceWaterhouseCoopers aren’t getting their arses nailed to the wall for the Satyam debacle? Why didn’t they get nailed when Global Trust Bank tanked and all its share-holders lost their shirts. Why do these bastards get away time after time?
Lets just take it as a given that all big business is corrupt okay? Then why not at least put the onus for accountability on the firms doing the accounting and auditing for big business? I may be totally wrong about this but aren’t these companies supposed to make sure book-cooking doesn’t happen? Geez. Read more…
America, I love you. Seriously.
January 8th, 2009
On the front page of ‘The Times Of India’ today were many articles about India’s ongoing war of words with Pakistan about the terror attacks in Mumbai but one little sub-article made me laugh until coffee came outta my nose.
Here’s the text:
Indian dossier credible: Mulford
A day after authorities in Pakistan rubbished India’s dossier linking Pakistani nationals with the Mumbai attacks, US ambassador to India David C Mulford said the evidence provided to Islamabad by New Delhi was ‘‘credible’’. Mulford told TOI on Wednesday that the dossier had been prepared with help from the FBI. “The US is not in the business of compiling evidence that is not credible,” he said when asked about Pakistan dismissing it.
The US isn’t in the business of compiling evidence that is not credible? Are you fucking kidding me? Does anyone remember the ongoing War in Iraq? Does anyone remember that they never found any WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction,nukes) in the country? None. Not a single one. Zilch. Zip. Nada. (Proof of nukes was the US’s reason for invading Iraq.)
And the US now admits it fucked up. I still remember watching the press conference a few years back where then CIA chief George Tenet said that the US had ‘SLAM DUNK EVIDENCE’ that Iraq had WMDs.
SLAM. DUNK. EVIDENCE. Repeat those three words aloud to yourself. This is the Chief of the most important, most powerful intelligence agency of the most powerful country in the world. An agency that has shaped world events either openly or behind the scenes like no other. Read more…
Fuel Prices: You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.
January 8th, 2009
A quick post about the roller-coaster of fuel prices and the rate of crude oil. My ‘favourite’ paper, ‘The Times Of India’ (and I’m sure pretty much every other media outlet in this country) is now running articles about the Indian government cutting fuel prices at the pump to make them reflect international crude prices more accurately and is quoting Goldman Sachs as saying that crude prices will stay at around 50 US $ a barrel.
Last year, while fuel prices were rocketing skywards and crude was near 180 US $ a barrel, every media outlet was quoting international investment banking and securities company Goldman Sachs’ repeated statements that crude would hit 150 US $, then later 180 US $ and at the height of the madness, 200 US $.
Admittedly, my grasp of the futures markets is extremely weak, to say the least but it seems that Goldman Sachs was actually shorting crude prices i.e. betting that crude prices would go down and they made some huge profits on this speculation. Are any of the journalists at any these media organisations even doing a little bit of digging? A little bit of checking to see if there may be, any conflict of interest? Hell no!
Does anyone even give a fuck about the fact the price of such an essential commodity is fluctuating so wildly? One that influences the prices of the food we eat, the gas we use to cook that food and almost every other commodity we use and that these changes in price are not based on demand and supply but on the basis of international banking and investment firms making a profit on speculation and using the fourth estate as their shills?
The media on one hand quotes the predictions of ‘experts’ from the very same companies reaming us with price manipulations like Chase, Goldman Sux and JP Morgan to mislead us and then to distract people from the stuff that matters it feeds us with images of Amy Winehouse’s visits to rehab and the fact that Obama (who’s election everyone is treating like Jesus’ second coming) may appoint an Indian as the Surgeon General.
Geez.
Tin-foil Hat Mode: Engaged.
January 5th, 2009
So. I’ve been watching nothing but these conspiracy-nut type films for the past week. One of them (on Google Video) is a French film, ‘The World According to Monsanto’. Monsanto, for those who don’t know off it, is a company that is essentially trying to patent food and the company responsible for the world-wide rush towards growing Genetically Modified (GM) crops.
They are also the geniuses that came up with rBGH or the Bovine Growth Hormone that I’m pretty sure is in all our milk and is giving men moobs (man-boobs) and Lord knows what else. But my personal favourite bit of history about Monsanto is that they are the company that developed and produced Agent Orange, the carcinogenic herbicide the Americans dumped literally tons of all over Vietnam during the war. This led to both American soldiers getting violently ill and the Vietnamese people dealing with birth defects in generation after generation, to this day. Read more…
From Clinton to Bush to Obama: The BS goes on.
December 30th, 2008
So after having about 7 drinks more than I should have, on the weekend, I fell ill and skulked at home watching some very interesting films, two of which you can watch on Google Video. The first of which is this one.
‘His Life’ is a chilling look at the life of former US president, Bill Clinton. But not the Clinton most people are familiar with, the dude who played the saxophone, found interesting uses for cigars, and had a very narrow definition of the word sex. This film originally came out in 2004 and it’s name is a play on the name of his book ‘My Life’.
It shows how easily the media kept people distracted from the Clintons’ dirty dealings, abetment of organized crime and communist spying while focusing on Clinton’s sexual escapades. The second half of the film is particularly eye-opening as it goes into great detail about the staggering amount of people with knowledge of the Clintons’ nefarious activities that have disappeared, allegedly committed suicide or been killed in shootings or plane crashes. This also includes a number of women who claimed to have had relations with the former president or were about to go public with such allegations. Read more…
Religion:1 ‘The Gays’:0
December 25th, 2008
The new Pope (Pope Benedict XVI) says, in his end of year year speech, that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction! Haaaa Haaaa!!!
Why doesn’t he just cut the BS and say that all ‘the gays’ are gonna burn in hell? That’ll scare those Godless Butt-pirates!
Just the kind of mindless, intolerant crap you want to be teaching your kids.
P.S. I’ve said this before. The previous pope wasn’t so bad. Where did they find this lout? The 16th Century?
This is all gonna end in tears: The story of NewsX.
December 21st, 2008
About this time last year I already wanted to quit NewsX, barely three months after joining the place. What went wrong so soon? I had such high hopes for NewsX.
A network started by Peter Mukerjea for chrissakes! He headed STAR TV! The news channel would be headed by Vir Sanghvi! One of the few Indian journalists I knew off, he wrote and spoke extremely well and I respected him immensely. These were excellent credentials to me and despite it being a news channel I signed up because I thought I would get to make some great programming and I would learn a whole lot from the Brits that Peter brought in to get the channel off the ground. The same Brits who hired me as a Producer for the channel.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve made a boat-load of mistakes in my life but NewsX has to be among the biggest. Where do I even begin?
The Brits.
Irrelevance personified: The Indian elite, the media and the politicians.
December 11th, 2008
A couple of weeks have gone by since the terror attacks in Mumbai and I thought I’d just write about the reactions of various groups of people to what happened.
This is a follow-up to my previous post. Bombay. How I loved you.
Lets start with the ‘media industry’. A lot of people raised a huge stink about Barkha Dutt’s grating coverage of the events and the huge cock-up about whether the hostage situation at Nariman House was over or not. There is even a group on Facebook called ‘Get Barkha off air’ or some such crap.
Please. Get Barkha off air? She may look like a dog, sound like nails on a chalkboard and ask the most inane questions but people who say that she used to be great but has sold out, ought to get a clue. Also, part of essential reading for all students of journalism and mass communication, especially all the wannabe Barkha Dutts doing piece-to-cameras for news channels ought to be this book.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media – Noam Chomsky