http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1999416,00.html

Obnoxious article denigrating Indian Living in a township in Edison , NJ in USA. Whats more suprising is that Time carried this article as part of its Humor Section. As I gathered myself to focus on this article anticipating a healthy and funny ending but it turned out to be a cynical attempt to stamp his own shallow thoughts apparently incited by school-boy type of nostalgia.

The immigration twist suggesting America is allowing more South Asians than it should, reflects  the disconnection that the writer is with American policies.

A reputation is tough to build , Time earned that since decades through its writers, however Stein-like-writers mostly hungry for attention who likes to live dangerously by walking on a rope of racism could hurt reputation and brand of time magazine.

What is amusing was his defense to the protests seemed like he truly believed what he wrote and was by no means a Humor.

Never Heard of this writer , Who is he anyway?

Suing Him would help Journalism , The article could incite Racism related incidents and the way American economy is behaving , there could be a lot of lunatics who are jobless and just would like to step out and express their displeasure on the Indian community blaming immigrants for their own misery.

“zhahzad” as he was called, the person responsible for that failed bomb attempt on timesquare signalling
that homegrown terrorism has landed and is real.

As the world reacted rather passively to the crude attempt to instil fear among americans and particularly the new yorkers, the american agencies geared up quickly to analyze psychological causes, the build up and the sponsorers of trans-atlantic terrorism and to find an answer to a simple question ..why did he do that ?

Lets go back to pak-taliban world for a moment and imagine the thriving lawlessness, the non-progressiveness and refusal to join the mainstream ideologies which only will help them being in the right side of life. Right education was supposed to be the biggest missing part of extremists. The lawlessness in the af-pak region gives rise to numerous factions and groups fighting for that power by playing with religion. A handful of war-ridden factional groups who have never seen the progressive world and yet be able to judge the outside world.

These extremist groups grown into such uncontrollable pace leading to believe that there is a govt high-handedness in dealing with such notorious elements to target foreign soil.

International responsibility comes with every nation to build an environment to preach peace, love & respect culturally and embed the same into religion based teachings.

Pakistanis, migrating to west and europe since decades in search of better living, prospects and growth is not uncommon.South asians are known to be moderately religious but progressive minded however thats changing.This guy despite having better education and living and equipped with an “american citizen” tag has probably never been secure with himself.

Pakistanis have been heavily influenced by the arab world in terms of religious practices but at the same are in awe and adapt to the western culture fairly quickly. The radical beliefs and the handful of pretentious global guardians of the faith is generally noticed in the older generation, who struggle to re-connect to world by imposing the “hatred” and infiltrate the minds of the young who usually tend to look and act western, and the biggest weapon brain-washers have is the religion.

I must believe the cultural bashing is a favorite topic of discussion within the circles of the timid extremists.

Unless the handful of taliban leaders of af-pak region are shown that terrorism never succeeded and is only a futile attempt and is by no means must be connected to any faith and is indeed tough to get through this problem of epic proportion.

Whats in it for India ? India will benefit from the developments that will follow after this incident.
India has been meticulously collected data through its resources to validate the training camps
but until this attack India’s claim was merely seen as a political blame-game by USA.

USA will now step up their campaigns against terror training camps vigorously and will help out flush out the weeds or shutdown their shop/services and eventually their dry out their operations.

I couldnt help deduce a pattern in violence in Mexico/Columbia with drug cartels and those of af-pak
region since Afghans are the producers, their neighbours are the agents and smooth drug operator to
connect with the world.

So its the money after all ? Well its a mix of politics, drug money, notoriously hideous military elements
and religion. This combination makes Pakistan the world’s most dangerous place.
Imagine what it could do for the next generation from that area.

How would educated Pakistanis react ? It was interesting to view from Pakistani that it is a big political
game and the common man has a gun held on his head to decide whether to participate or perish.
Then again the epicenter of evil blames it on the western world of using aerial attacks on innocent people.

Military might of pakistan thrives on limitless funding.The military agents have known to pile up “mind boggling wealth” compared with other professions.Leadership in Pakistan is probably the easiest to get into since it has had some form of democracy unlike other muslim countries. This leadership usually gets ugly and get uglier when someone else comes to power.Once again the military backing is of paramount importance to the head of the state.

Enough said , the homegrown radicals turning/stepping into full blown terrorism in a foreign land is stark example of the penetrating and brainwashing capabilities of the terrorists.

Avatar was the strongest contender to win the best picture award , however the giant-of-a-movie was humbled by an unknown movie called “hurt locker”. Though it took the best Art Direction , the acadamy did the worse to Avatar and lost the chance of a life time opportunity to give Avatar its due.

Been wondering if it is the sheer size of commercial success that was the reason, or was it Anti-Military or Anti-US tone, or was it fear of having digitized actors that makes human actors feel unimportant who woul d just be simulating behind the scenes. The characters of Avatar are bigger than the actors themselves, unlike the characters of superheros like superman,batman movies that gave a right balance of character and human factor to the movies and the audience.The commercial success of a movie may not win the Oscar due to the fact that Academy voters tend to think differently & unconventional in order to set them apart from the usual commonness.

Nevertheless, Avatar has made a huge technical contribution to elevate the movie making to a next level.The sudden perceived 3D interest of audience perhaps wont live longer simply because its the movie that makes it worth to watch on 3D, its not the 3D that makes movies watchable.

A prequel to the movie which is in the making could become as huge or surpass the Star Wars series.

If China can claim large part of arunachal pradesh , then Tibet has a lot of common ideologies that match with India that can call it its own. Nepalese premier seems be friendly and welcoming Chinese investments and China is leaving nothing to assumptions that will eventually will capture the bordering emerging markets of these small countries.

India should wake up and get the acts together to build up neighbors infrastructure and have a greater influence politically. Though Afghanistan is India’s focus at this time however India must maintain its political clout over these small neighboring countries.

I found it amusing about the diplomatic protests by Indian counterparts over Obama’s cuddling up with China.

When it is obvious that Americans need Chinese and China needs USA. China is very much the key country for USA and cannot be be substituted as long as China does not dwell into massive human rights violations and fights wars over borders and indulge into terrorist activities.

India on the other hand is right by the stronger protests but could have been a bit subtle.

Obama has his own pressure of performing as a president and the idea of making them a custodians of peace does not go well with Indian interests.

While China has a poor record of human rights, shuts down the freedom of speech of every form and is and extremely sensitive to religious leaders like Dalai Lama, it has been jittery on the border
with India.

While China has its own domestic issues to deal with and additionally has border issues with India and furthermore supporting Pakistan’s hideous ideology, thereby making China uncapable of assisting in any geo-political issues with as diverse as India.

Theres an old saying ” You cannot make a deal with the devil itself”.

Without a doubt China and India are competitors at various levels. but I would not worry too much about Americans cozying up with China since Americans always have had hidden agendas.

I am impressed with Shashi Tharoor on his Colbert’s appearance and his eloquence of responses to Colbert’s sarcastic queries. Back here in India , Shashi may have some trouble balancing his new avatar of being a politician and freedom of expression that almost had him chased by old school politicians for his class comment. The austerity measures must have driven the politicians crazy , it surely was refreshingly unique to have them travel the cattle class
however will turn out to be an security risk to the common man. I would still think a politician being a govt servant already knows he/she has a lot to sacrifice on his personal front therefore the family life sacrifices are obvious. Politics and politicians in India in general though has a lot to mature in terms responses to general public , “actual” productive work  in favor of the needy ones.

The new cadre of smarter ministers and member of parliaments is a welcome change compared with laloos of yester-years. The scary part would be to have Maya back in power in the next elections and imagine the money flowing to complete statues of Maya.

BJP agonizingly in pain with national politics has its roots tied to its old ways of politics and may have issues connecting to the younger voters. Unless BJP revamps its national leaders and ideologies they were representing , BJP may well be going down the hill. The regional parties projected to have a lot of muscle failed to impress upon the voters.

Its uphill for Cong-I to keep upto peoples expectations and deliver.

It is interesting to know the perspectives on how important Race is to the western world and how disinterested is India in dealing with caste-ism.

Is race and caste two sides of the same coin ? I cannot think of any reason why they should be the same.

As caste is entwined in religion and religion is the most important criteria in India and reflects in every form
of living inspite of modern and urban individuals who think casteism is dying and is no longer the means to discriminate but it is indeed very much alive in relationships and every layer of Indian living.
It is not uncommon in India to discuss caste in a normal conversation and still be comfortable and
this is in extreme contrast to how sensitivity is defined in western countries such as USA where discussing race, having racial overtones over culture or background is a sacrilege.
Race becomes extremely important for countries as diverse as USA, equipped with strong diversity programs and proper controls to protect discrimination against particular race or cultural backgrounds.

What can India do to promote the equality of humans ?

Though reservations play the heavy role in encouraging deprived castes and uplift them better living standards but it could just be helpful in improving in living conditions and does not resolve the general psychological perspective in larger communities.

What this means is that “reservations” in education and government jobs are not enough to tackle the caste based discrimination, there has to be smarter policies in-place for people to accept and live harmoniously regardless of any individual religion/caste or beliefs.

Mandatory caste education in schools, work place initiatives, lesser and elimination of caste based politics , greater enforcement of laws are key factors towards curbing discrimination and caste-based favours to particular caste or religion.

The court ruling Supreme Court halts all religious construction in public places is absolutely a historic and landmark judgement that will only help India to progress.

It was about time this judgement has become into a law since real estate thugs,rickshaw stands etct had created illegal structures on the public property. The religious structures along the road were the source of money for these rickshaw wallahs.

Gujrat govt initiated the tasks of forbidding any illegal religious construction not long ago.