By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
British news is quite influential in the United States, especially with respect to international affairs. British news about international affairs also quite naturally sometimes deals with India, which is a very important country internationally.
Something quite peculiar sometimes happens when the British press deals with India, however.
More below.
By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
I recently had the pleasure of listening to a fascinating presentation in my Introduction to International Relations class. The professor showed the class pictures what one family in a variety of different countries ate during the duration of a week. The pictures came from the book Hungry Planet, by Peter Menzel. Time Magazine published a series of excerpts (part one and part two) of these pictures.
It was quite interesting to see the typical weekly meal of one family in several countries, ranging from Japan to Germany. The American photo, unfortunately, was the picture-perfect stereotype of over-consuming pre-prepared food (rather than real food).
There was something else that caught my eye, however, as the presentation went on.
More below.
By: inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
I recently had the pleasure of watching my first Bollywood movie, a title called Lagaan: Once upon a time in India. The movie’s plot was fairly conventional yet unconventional at the same time. India is straining under the rule of the evil British Empire. A rebellious young man with striking green eyes attempts to defy the British. How? By beating them in a cricket match! The local village quickly forms a cricket team, the British team is defeated, and the local village’s crushing tax burden is reduced for the next several years.
There were some fairly interesting things about this movie (with respect to politics).
More below.
(Note: BRIC refers to Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Created by a Goldman Sachs economist, the BRIC countries supposedly are rapidly growing developing countries.)
China is a place with massive regional inequality. A recent feature by The Economist magazine, titled Comparing Chinese Provinces With Countries, found a stark divide between the rich coast and the poor hinderland. Some of my previous obervations about that feature can be found here. In Shanghai and Beijing GDP per person is over $20,000 (as of 2010) – roughly equivalent to a high middle-income country.
In rural Guizhou GDP per person is almost seven times lower. Guizhou is the poorest province in China. It is the part of China the media does not visit and that China tries its best to hide. There are no skyscrapers in the rural parts of Guizhou, just decrepit stone houses dating back to the Maoist era (or earlier).
But there is something else very interesting about Guizhou: as of 2010 its GDP per person was almost exactly equal to GDP per person in India. That is, a person living in the poorest part of China is about as well off as the typical Indian.
More below.
This diary will be cross-posted at the GOS, also.
(add link when posted).
We are melting, yes. Finally.
I ended up writing the OND at the gos again tonight – so here it is:
I think I hit seven continents (counting the Shackleton voyage re-creation) and several states (whose legislatures are up to NO good in general).
Welcome all, please comment on stories, or share your own news, and consider this a late-night open thread . . .
A brief but potentially vital heads up…..
It’s been several weeks since I predicted the dynastic succession was over at Newscorp, mainly because of the independent shareholder rebellion last month, and although James did a worthy stonewalling job at the DCMS select committee this Thursday, that does nothing to stop the three ongoing police investigations here (plus suggestions of a secret ‘Operation Millipede’ in SOCA – our equivalent of the FBI).
But this morning, a very reliable reporter on the Daily Mail suggested that James’ testimony could be blown out of the water thanks to find among the millions of supposed deleted News International emails found on a server in India:
On an icy day in January, a new President in the United States took the oath of office with soaring words of hope, idealism and courage. At a time of the worst global recession in living memory and a multitude of challenges, he did not shrink from reality but embraced the capacity to change it. Those who heard him were lifted.
Speaking to the millions in America, but heard by billions around the world, President Barack Obama said:
“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them – that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”
Obama spoke of America, but he could have been speaking of the world. We are everywhere in need of renewal and hope. None more so than on the climate challenge where we need fresh vision and a politics that looks forwards not backwards. The stakes are so high that anything less than an audacious, global effort to reconcile our differences and make peace with the planet will fail humanity. We will not regret it in our parochial nationalisms as Indians or Americans, but as humans – as a species that failed itself, and condemned the rest.
This is why 2009 matters and why this year’s UN Conference on Climate Change (COP15) in Copenhagen in December must not fail.