Mi Bodeguita del Medio

While my blog is named after a restaurant in Havana I hope to someday visit, here you will find musings, rants, political incorrectness, thoughts on Indian Nationalism, and some straight-forward opinions.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Two Faces of Media

Lately, I've been pretty appalled by the two-faced nature of media (print, television, even radio) not just in India, but around the world. You hear the media's version of the story, which is often far, far from the factual sequence of actions. Take the pink chaddi campaign for instance. There are two sides to the coin, but the completely pseudo-secular Indian media took its own 180º take on it.

So, my sources for news used to be (notice the past tense) mainly:
  • Times of India
  • The Hindu
  • The New York Times
  • Wall Street Journal
  • CNN
  • BBC
I'd stopped reading the BBC website a long time ago, because most of the information on there is unreliable. You see, a couple of years ago, I didn't know any better. I assumed, like most people, that the media is credible, and that its the best source of correct information.

I have come to know better. These days, I may click on the above websites a total of a couple of times a month, if at all. There are in fact, several factually correct, reliable and informative sources online, which I am happily discovering. Some of them are blogs (long live blogging!) and others are non-mainstream websites.

When a newspaper can give expensive valuable word count to radicalized elements like Arundhati Roy, who not only do not project a mainstream Indian view, but actually defend terrorist activities on Indian soil and after each incident, find ways to justify terrorism and loose treatment to terrorists/murders, then I lose all respect for that news source, and that newspaper quickly loses my business.

Lately, I've been engrossed in a whole new genre of blogs which I've been discovering one by one (links to the right), with a wealth of information. For example, Indians who are really interested in knowing about the security situation of India should read ex-RAW Chief Vikram Sood's Perspectives or ex-Indian Police Officer KPS Gill's website SATP.org (instead of listening to the lunatic Barkha Dutts on NDTV).

Barkha Dutt deserves a whole post dedicated to her non-existent professionalism, and shoddy journalism, which resulted in the loss of a woman's life in the 26/11 Massacre. But several more knowledgeable bloggers have already ripped her journalistic incapabilities to pieces - so I will leave her alone for now.

I have no doubt that false-news reporting media are close to extinction. But we need to accelerate the process and put them out of their misery sooner rather than later.

Long live the bloggers of the world!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Progression?

Its soon going to be two years since I've been in Barcelona. Strange how time flies, and strange how life progresses. I was reading over this blog, when it was in its early stages. It was a strange feeling. I know I wrote that stuff (early 2007 posts, especially while I was travelling) but it seems as though someone else wrote it. It seems like a little girl speaking. Those writings almost seem childish to me now, similar to a little child opening wrapped gifts and explaining all that she got. Yet, it was me just two years ago.

Now I feel more aware, and possibly less capable to just let go the way I used to. They say that the more you know, the harder life is, or that 'ignorance is bliss.' I'm starting to wonder whether there is any truth to the saying. Because, its true, I do feel more aware. I've also become very sporadic writing here, and when I do, its something or the other that I have to vent about.

The economic crisis is at its peak. Spain has more lay-offs than any other EU country. Those of us still working are being told we're lucky to have our jobs. I'm started to wonder though if I've been sucked into the grind. Why do I feel so insignificant? As though I'm really not contributing one useful thing to the world?

I hope whatever it is, it passes. The winter has already been going on for too long.

Monday, February 16, 2009

The Blame Game

I’ve been caught up in life’s struggles, and haven’t been able to dedicate time to the Bodeguita for a while. Today, I’d like to link to François Gautier’s Cry O My Beloved India (Chapter II), written about five to six years ago, but still holds as true today, as it did then. Here he rightly points out that each time a bomb explodes in India, we are quick to point a finger at Pakistan. Each time a natural calamity occurs, the NGO’s cry about not having adequate prevention mechanisms and blame everyone. Each time a politician ignores, belittles and humiliates the majority masses and creates special laws and quotas for the “minorities,” we blame the politician. Each time we blame someone, who in turn blames someone else, and the chain goes on. That has become our national past-time. But the truth is friends, that we ourselves are to blame. We, the majority of Indian citizens sit back and allow a pocketful of Nehruvian Marxists to hijack and rewrite our ten thousand year long recorded history - Romila Thaper, leading the pack of these fraudulent so-called historians – along with Satish Chandra, K.M. Shrimali, K.M.Pannikar, R.S. Sharma, D. N. Jha, Gyanendra Pandey, and Irfan Habib – who have blatantly lied to the nation, making us mimickers, and chasers of the West, and ashamed of our own greatness. We, who allow the press and the 24/7 news channels to dish out grossly misinformed stories, and we sit at home and watch the manipulated, agenda-ridden lies thrown at us. As François Gautier rightly says below, India’s greatest enemy is the passivity of the 850 million Hindu majority, one billion worldwide, inheritors of the most ancient civilization still alive on this planet, holders of the last true spirituality on this earth. Read the full article here