Category Archives: International

The Foxification of Planet Earth

Posted on by
Reply

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5tOVY1bzQVpeqtDfivpXIw

Podcast summary…

breaking-news-7613046_1280Most of the media of the world is Left leaning or Marxist in nature. It supports Leftist ideologies, causes, people and parties. All diverse and differing non-Marxist is clubbed together and called the Right and in intellectual opinion is an exception and is usually lost in the crowd. Or it just carves out a niche in some corner and is happy.

In America, like many other countries, most of the national newspapers, news channels, newspapers, radio stations have traditionally been Leftists. It was in such a setting that Fox News was launched in 1996. How would Fox News get itself heard in a crowd and with all the odds against it? Well, it would shout the loudest. It would take an extreme stand. It would never accept that it was wrong and double-down. And it would tell non-Fox News audiences to go to hell. Well maybe they didn’t exactly say that in the launch strategy, but that’s what they ended up doing anyway.

At that time such a thing was difficult to imagine because no matter how high the bias of a media organisation and what their target audience was, they in those days would at least pay lip service to their opponents and pretend that they heard them as well.

I guess a lot of analysts would have said Fox would sink without a trace. But it didn’t and started gaining great traction and became a brand name. A “shouting” Bill O’Reilly on prime time became a staple. Now it may have ended here and Fox would become just another successful media house.

Fox ended up becoming the most demonised media house and was presented as an outcast and an anathema. But a curious thing started happening. Despite calling it the devil and shunning it, all the media houses started aping Fox News. I first started watching TV news with BBC and ITV in London in 1978 as a child and I have witnessed the Foxification of the entire media industry in the last couple of decades.

Today almost every media house shouts the loudest, takes an extreme stand, never accepts that it is wrong and double-downs. And it also tells their opponents to go to hell. Think over it. Every media channel is like that. In fact come to India and every host aspires to be a Bill O’Reilly and shouts and insults all the guests that he calls on his own show. Right wing media has also risen.

If it ended with the media, then itself would be something. It spread to other forms of media. Look at the way Disney and the spectacularly successful MCU has turned out. They have curiously decided to cater to a minority of audiences. They take an extreme stand and if they fail, then they double down and abuse those who don’t like their movies as being racists and misogynistic.

The bug even got to corporations. Now even these have decided that they will only cater to their target audiences in an aggressive way and the rest of humanity can go to hell. On failure they too double down and blame those who don’t buy their products.

The entire political discourse has become like that. You carve out a niche political world for yourself, shout, never admit you are wrong, double down and call your opponents the choicest abusive words. That’s how political parties have become. In the past they used to find common ground. Not anymore. They have all been Foxified.

Think of political discourse in the last century. Then came Bill O’Reilly thundering on his media pulpit. Now think of a few decades back Trump doing the same on the political pulpit. You could say it has been a natural evolution. Everyone hates Fox, Bill O’Reilly and Trump. But the truth is that everyone wants to be like them. You can argue that there may be many reasons for the current state of affairs, but at least I personally saw the change right after Fox News was launched.

Fox News was Fox News. Media became Fox Media. Corporations became Fox Corporations. Political parties became Fox parties. Global discourse went the Fox way. The Social Media era only made this more potent and polarised.

Hate it or love it, Fox has become the most influential brand in the world.

Fun facts abut the Climate Change agenda #COP26

Posted on by
Reply

earth-hour-4776711_1280(What they generally don’t tell you)

  • COP26 or the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference at Glasgow has been called our “Last best hope” or last chance or some such term by many. If you remember, COP1 (1995) was also called something like that too and come to think of it, also COP2 and COP3 and COP4 and COP5 and…

  • The largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world is China while Russia is the No. 2 gas producer. Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are not attending COP26 at Glasgow.

  • Coal plants are being replaced by natural gas plants to placate the climate lobby. Both are fossil fuels.

  • Electric cars rely on electricity for their energy. Two-thirds of global electricity is powered by fossil fuels.

  • Rising CO2 levels are actually great news for plants and they have powered the recent agricultural revolution.

  • Fossil fuels power the transportation industry, road making, the agricultural industry, the chemical industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the plastics industry which in turn powers every industry on Earth. There is no such thing as the fossil fuel industry. We are a Fossil Fuel Civilization.

  • One of the interpretations of Chaos Theory is: The flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas. It is impossible to predict both the weather and the climate with great accuracy.

  • Global Cooling caught the fancy of the world towards the end of the 1970s before Global Warming was decided upon. Since then the terms Climate Change, Climate Extinction, Climate Emergency are being experimented with.

How many self-made women country heads have been there?

Posted on by
Reply

womens-march-2001566_1280I am not counting Dynasties. If first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had a son, that person would have become PM too. I am also counting the executive head and not the ceremonial one. Like the President of India is a ceremonial head. So how many “self-made” and non-dynastic women have been elected as heads of states of the world’s largest populations?

1. China = NONE (Empress Dowager Cixi who died in 1908, was the closest to controlling China)

2. India = NONE (Indira Gandhi was a dynast)

3. America = NONE (Kamla Harris could become President if Joe Biden retires on health grounds, but that would be an elevation and not a proper election)

4. Indonesia = NONE (Megawati Sukarnoputri was a dynast)

5. Pakistan = NONE (Benazir Bhutto was a dynast)

6. Brazil = Dilma Rousseff (Highest debut on this list, but interestingly she was impeached)

7. Nigeria = NONE

8. Bangladesh = NONE (Both Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina were dynasts)

9. Russia = NONE

10. Mexico = NONE

11.Japan = NONE

12. Ethiopia = NONE

13. Philippines = Corazon Aquino (Her husband was a Senator-Governor, so she did not inherit the post of President from him. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was a dynast.)

14. Egypt = NONE

15. Vietnam = NONE

16. DR Congo = NONE

17. Iran = NONE

18. Turkey = NONE

19. Germany = Angela Merkel (Probably the most powerful in this list considering she ruled for 15+ years)

20. France = NONE (Strange, considering the fact that Europe has had so many women leaders)

If you look at the largest economies, then UK is the best performing with Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.

But overall we really have a very long way to go.

A for, B for, C for…

in the Covid Era…

Posted on by
Reply

virus-5209059_1280A for Asymptomatic

B for Blursday

C for Covid

D for Distancing

E for Epidemic

F for Flattening the curve

G for Generation Covid

H for Herd immunity

I for Isolation

J for Jumping the vaccine line

K for Key workers

L for Lockdown

M for Mask

N for New Normal

O for Oxygen

P for Pandemic

Q for Quarantine

R for Remote learning

S for Sanitizer

T for Transmission

U for Unprecedented

V for Variant

W for WFH

X for Xi Jinping

Y for Year 1, 2, 3…

Z for Zoom

When Jeff Bezos became a Neelpati!

Posted on by
Reply

diamond-1186139_960_720Growing up in India in the 1980s, Lakhpati was such a big thing (Rs 100,000).

After the Liberalization of 1991, that became common and Crorepati became a thing (Rs 100 lakhs).

Today so many flats (forget bungalows) in every major city are worth a crore each. The Indian middle class is swarming with Crorepatis.

One term that never caught on was Arabpati (Rs 100 crores).

There are so many Arabpatis in India too.

How about Kharabpati? (Rs 100 Arabs or Rs 10,000 crores).

In the current rate of exchange, that’s roughly US$1.33 billion.

So now the terms US$ Billionaire and INR Kharabpati are almost comparable and we could well start using the latter.

India has roughly 100+ Kharabpatis.

Did you know that 100 Kharabs = 1 Neel?

So if someone is worth Rs 10 lakh crore, then he would be a Neelpati.

Is there anyone who is a Neelpati and worth that much?

Going by the above calculations, US$133 billion is enough to be a Neelpati. India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani is heading towards half a Neel.

If it’s anyone who’s already there then it has to be Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world who is worth (depending on the day you are looking) in excess of US$180 billion.

So a Neelpati is worth a 100 Kharabpatis or 10,000 crorepatis, or 1 million Lakhpatis!

How times have changed!

Covid-19: India must be doing something right, even if most don’t acknowledge it!

Posted on by
Reply

covid-19-5254302_960_720While there has either been less or inconsistent testing and some fudging of data here and there, one thing you simply cannot hide is Covid-19 deaths. They may even have been jacked up due to co-morbidities. Billionaire Elon Musk joked on the Joe Rogan Show that if a man got eaten by a shark and they recovered his hand and it tested positive, it would be put down as a Covid death. A recent US motorcycle accident death was indeed put down as a Covid death.

That way India has a population of 1.35 billion is still not a fully developed country with an inadequate healthcare system with problems of general indiscipline among the general population and also problems of awareness, especially in the rural areas. Then there’s the fact that everyone in the world in their lifetime will either catch the flu or cold or some sort of Coronavirus. No matter what you do, billions will eventually catch Covid-19. What exactly is flattening the curve? The Smallpox and Polio viruses have been around for thousands of years before they came under fully control. Every curve eventually goes flat. What is the correct time frame to know you’ve done well and beaten the worst-case scenario?

There’s no point really focusing on number of cases, number of tests and the like. China is the largest population in the world but we will never get the exact statistics beyond the Bamboo Curtain. So no matter what we do, no matter how well we manage, India may still emerge as the country with the most official Covid-19 cases.

There’s one statistic that is probably the most important and the least discussed.

Deaths… Per… Million…

That is the true nature of how we are doing because Covid deaths may be boosted up but very difficult to hide and the “per million” part equalizes all countries. How does India fare with regard to that? As of the time of writing this article San Marino has the highest rate but let’s discount that due to the fact that it is so small. At No. 2 is Belgium at 845 deaths per million. Strange that there is so little talk in the media about that!

Where does India feature? At 100th position with 19 deaths per million! So in that case, 99 countries are worse off than us. It was reported that the first Covid-19 case was in November 2019, even though it was confirmed in December. There was talk of some people flying into India January 2020 end and it really became a talking point in February. Now it’s mid-July and we are still doing better than 90+ other countries.

Who knows what will happen next month, but it seems under control as of now. Plus all of India is not affected equally but there are a few dozen hotspots all over India only and the rest of the country is doing much better than most parts of the world. So what’s the reason? Did we conduct the first lockdown at exactly the right time? Is it genetics? Is it climate? Is it geography? Is it a weaker strain? Is it luck?

Either way India seems to have escaped the full wrath of Covid in the first half of 2020. Let’s see what happens in the second half.