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At least they won't be able to hound you now . . .

Zombie Parties

Jonathan Rauch makes a very valid point about zombie Parties:

We know what happens when movements or parties continue to stagger forward after running out of ideas: They become zombies. Zombie parties are a recurrent feature of electoral democracies. Unable to articulate any coherent or workable governing philosophy, they mindlessly jab at cultural hot buttons, mechanically repeat hardwired tropes ("cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes"), nurse tribal resentments, ostracize independent thinkers. Above all, they feel positively proud of their doggedness. You can’t talk them out of it. Think of the Republicans in the FDR years, the Democrats in the Reagan years, the British Labour Party in the Thatcher period, and the British Conservative Party in the Blair period. Think of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party for most of the past half-century, or France’s Socialists today. To get a new brain, zombie parties usually need to spend years out of power or wait until a new generation rises to leadership.

Add to the list the Congress in the late 90's and the BJP after 2004.

The "civil war" currently going on in the BJP is merely a battle for turf. It's not a serious discussion about it's failed rhetoric. The BJP needs to realize that the culture war that they and their affiliates represent are now over. The people don't want the regressive politics that the BJP represents. This does not mean that they don't have a base. There are a large number of people out there who agree with the sentiment that the BJP represents. But there numbers have decreased and people have generally moved on from that train of thought. The BJP now needs to literally "find" itself. I suggest going to the himalayas for a few months. It seemed to work out very well for the guy in The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.

Which does not mean that the Congress doesn't need to work on it's image. The Congress was handed a victory by the people mostly because they saw through the naked opportunism represented by the so called Third and Fourth fronts. The Congress was really meek in the lead up to the results and was desperately trying to hold on to power no matter how much they would have to compromise. The whole shtick of the Congress is that people think of it as a  "lesser evil". In which world is that a prudent long-term PR strategy?

As for the regional parties, they just exist so as to provide their leaders and his/her extended family with enough money so that they can live like a king and talk like a pauper.

The cost of wanting your freedom

From The Guardian:

According to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka'abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been "retired" from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday's match against South Korea in Seoul.

They were among six players who took to the field wearing wristbands in the colour of the defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, which has been adopted by demonstrators who believe the 12 June election was stolen.

The fate of the other two players who wore the wristbands is unknown. None of the team members were given back their passports upon returning to Tehran after the match, which ended in a 1-1 draw.

How many people can they stop?

The cost of being at the wrong place at the wrong time

From WSJ's Farnaz Fassi in Tehran, Iran:

The family, clad in black, stood at the curb of the road sobbing. A middle-aged mother slapped her cheeks, letting out piercing wails. The father, a frail man who worked as a doorman at a clinic in central Tehran, wept quietly with his head bowed.

Minutes before, an ambulance had arrived from Tehran's morgue carrying the body of their only son, 19-year-old Kaveh Alipour.

On Saturday, amid the most violent clashes between security forces and protesters, Mr. Alipour was shot in the head as he stood at an intersection in downtown Tehran. He was returning from acting class and a week shy of becoming a groom, his family said.

The details of his death remain unclear. He had been alone. Neighbors and relatives think that he got trapped in the crossfire. He wasn't politically active and hadn't taken part in the turmoil that has rocked Iran for over a week, they said.

Upon learning of his son's death, the elder Mr. Alipour was told the family had to pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a "bullet fee"—a fee for the bullet used by security forces—before taking the body back, relatives said.

How much more despicable can they get?

Delhi's grandmother wants to spend the next five years writing thank you notes

So last year, the people of Delhi lost their mind and out of respect and deference to the elderly, gave Shiela Dikshit a third term so that she may complete her task of ruining Delhi.

While her finance minister presented his budget in the annual laughing club meet of the Delhi assembly, her government billed it as a "thanksgiving budget". Why did they do so? because they wanted to thank the people of Delhi for voting for the Congress twice in less than a year. I'm sure most Delhities will never forgive themselves. Although, it's not like they had a choice. It was either Grandma Dikshit or that guy who puts anyone he speaks to into a deep slumber for a hundred years.

So what great gifts did the government reward it's people with? Ten bucks and an e-card? More electricity? Better roads? Mandating that tofu be served along with the snake-infested mid-day meals in government schools?

No, actually.

They went about this in another direction.

Long, long ago, in 2005, when the earth wasn't dying so fast and Maddona had only one stolen kid from Africa, our diligent lawmakers gave themselves a gift of top of the line laptops and inkjet printers. Now, many of them were from the previous assembly and already had been allotted printers and laptops. But, somehow, most of them seemed to have "lost" or "misplaced" their computers and thus required a new one. Just like when you lose your car keys, you havta buy a new car! This whole exercise cost the taxpayer a measly sum of Rs. 51 Lakhs. Turns out, most of the MLA's didn't even know how to use their fancy computers. So let's fast forward to this year, when, to help all our MLA's find free porn sites which don't install too many spyware programs, the government of Delhi has given them an allowance of Rs. 7,500 to be paid monthly to a "data operator".

It's like Christmas in June for the citizens of Delhi.

Meanwhile, the government also promises to one day complete the Delhi State Cancer Institute which was supposed to be actually operational by 2006. Hey, at least they almost got it's website to work. The real thing will follow soon. Progress takes time, ya know.

Oh, and the government also wanted to open a super-hospital for liver treatment sometime in this decade. They even interviewed people for it last year. So what, eh? Cheer up. Most people with liver problems are alcoholics anyway. And they can follow former prime minister VP Singh's example and get treated on taxpayer's expense in London. You can make a vacation out of it. In the mornings they can dilate your liver and in the evenings you can have tea and scones with the Queen in the Buckingham Palace Gardens while the Duke and Prince Harry shout racist abuses at you.

Oh, and don't forget grandmother CM's crowning achievement. A BRT corridor which has actually caused more problems then it has attempted to fix. In fact, some say that it outlived it's usefulness even before it was built. However, as per grandma, that's just media generated talk. The Chief Minister even drove through the corridor during non-peak hours when there was mild traffic to prove that it works. Even if in reality it doesn't work anywhere in the world. If Sheila Dikshit says it does, than it does. She's very Chuck Norris about these things.

Even though this might seem like the government's flipping you the bird and pointing at you & laughing while simultaneously chanting "Gotcha for a third time, you stupid suckers!" over and over again, it's a show of appreciation.

As the great decider of democracy once said, ". . . fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again".

It's not the swine flu which is going to kill us, it's irony-deficiency

Congratulations, everyone. Remember Poverty? Well, thanks to the new government, it's over now. 

There are no poor people in India anymore.

In fact, we did such a good job of removing poverty in our country that now we're exporting our knowledge of poverty-alleviation to China.

That's right.

For the first time, India has extended a helping hand to China by participating in its poverty-alleviation project by setting up a state-of-the-art training-cum-information centre for thousands of farmers in a relatively backward and mountainous northwestern region.

For all those people who doubted that this government will be all about reforms for rich people who eat out of plates made of gold, I bet you're eating your own words right now.

This government is all about the common man. So what if that common man is in China?

It's the thought that counts.

Our governments concern for the poor is priceless.

For everything else, there is Mastercard.

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In other good news, the Indian National Congress (Indira) has decided to do away with all feudal titles.

Yay! Get your parent's bell-bottom trousers out of mothballs, people, the 50's are here again.

More than six decades after Independence and over three decades after the government abolished privy purses and privileges, the Congress has decided to turn royalty into aam aadmi.

“The party has decided to strike off all feudal titles (against the name of Congressmen and women) from its records at all levels,” party leader Janardhan Dwivedi said.

Excuse me for a minute, sir. Shouldn't you have done this, uuuumm, I don't know, a few DECADES earlier? Wasn't it your party which did away with the privy purse and titles and other ancient shit all the while stressing that everyone's equal now?

So does this finally mean that you won't nominate your leaders and the seats won't directly pass on from parent to child as if a birthright? Does this mean that you would do away with actual feudalism?

Janardhan Dwivedi, however, admitted it was an “indirect suggestion” made to the leaders not to use such prefixes and suffixes, such as Rajkumar, Nizam, Nawab, Sadr-e-riyasaat or Mahant.

Oh cognitive dissonance, you can be such a motherfucker!

___________

Our national airline, the Maharaja of the skies, the kohinoor of our aviation industry . . .  Actually, it can't be the kohinoor because that would mean that the British would steal it from us again. Anyways, the non-kohinoor of our aviation sector is going bust. It asked it's workforce to keep doing the work but to wait a few weeks before cashing the salary cheque. Or, in some cases, not even getting the cheque at all.

So, the employees decided that since no one wants to pay them, they'll go on a strike. Hey, the best way to stop someone from bleeding is to take his heart out so that no blood is manufactured in the body in the first place.

Sounds like a great idea to me.

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Speaking of people with great ideas, last week I had lost my mind and was channel surfing the news channels. I happen to land on a ongoing debate about how having the IPL a few days before the world cup was against our national interest.

Huh?

What national interest?

Do we need our cricket players to defend us against an invasion of spin ballers? Have the Taliban suddenly started training it's henchmen on throwing grenades like a yorker? Is the police going to suddenly promote people on the basis of how many catches they take? Is our missile defence system going to be based on how many missiles Sachin Tendulkar can deflect while piloting around a bat-shaped plane?

Okay. Admittedly, the last one would be a cool thing to witness.

However, if anyone believes that people play professional cricket because they want to serve the country then (a) What are you smoking? and (b) If it is that good, please give me the number of your drug dealer because mine was just deported to Nigeria.

Thanks.

___________

So according to research done by someone who was supposed to write an advert to sell artificial sweetener, (a copywriter with a conscience. A rather rare breed these days.) it appears that artificial sweeteners kind of kill your brain and turn you psychotic.

I always thought how an artificial sweetener could describe itself as "natural".

And this does explain a a lot of things about me.

I know it's harmful, but I always tend to use an artificial sweetener for my coffee whenever I have it along with a vanilla-brownie combo which is extravagantly dipped in chocolate syrup.

It's all about achieving a balance.

Elections have consequences . . .

. . . or that's what they keep telling us.

Unless of course you're in India. Then there are only two types of consequences. Either the country is royally fucked or painfully screwed.

Anyways, Iran had elections last week. Now, usually Iran doesn't really feature in conversations which aren't about the upcoming global apocalypse. And having President Nutjob running his mouth at every opportunity has made matters worse. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has all the bigotry of Ann Coulter combined with the wit and charm of Dick Cheney. So the people of Iran agreed with the rest of the world and wanted to see this guy go back where he came from so that he could spend the rest of his days hurling abuses at the Jews and homosexuals in obscurity. So he decided to rig the vote, pull out a number from his ass and declare himself President-elect.

But the cable news channels in India seems to have abandoned the story. Hey, some people from Bombay handing out home-made trophies at a big do in Macau and manufacturing news about how everybody hates Dhoni again is more important. Meanwhile Willow Palin (only someone who hates their child would name them Willow) secretly prays that she is taken away by Social Services so that she may be able to escape the pathological woman people say is her mother.

CNN's butt was kicked by twitter. CNN even had to ask it's resident twat to defend itself.

However, there are still some journalists in Iran who are doing excellent work in brining this story to the rest of the world.

No one really knows what is going to happen in Iran. But one thing is clear that this revolution will be live blogged. For more information and up to the minute coverage, check here, here, here and here.

Holy Bearded Ballsack, Batman

Yes Honey, I AM standing up.

Will you stop saying that?