Do they have an actress with a similar history to Barbara Streisand in Bollywood? If not it might be good to explain something :)
BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
111–120 of 425 posts
Re: BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
#112Is it just me, or are authoritarian regimes on the rise world-wide?
Yes, I think it's related to the waining political and economic power of the West and buoyed by Putin, Xi Jinping etc getting away with whatever they want
Interesting choices. How about we talk about other countries that get away with various bits of blatant authoritarianism, sexism and racism each with their own unique take: Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Germany, etc.
Re: BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apparently it struck too close to home. Unleashing tax officials on an organization painting a negative picture (well, not, Modi and accoplice paint it, the BBC only presents it) is a failed attempt of masquerading an authoritarian government overstepping their limits of governance. If they were honest and not coward they would simply tell: 'Shouldn't uncover our dirty laundry, get out of here or will get hurt!' They…
> Unleashing tax officials on an organization painting a negative picture (well, not, Modi i and accoplice paint it, the BBC only presents it) is a failed attempt of masquerading an authoritarian government overstepping their limits of governance. Isn't that what every government do? Remember that Al Capone went to jail because of tax issues, the government couldn't prove anything he was accused to. If you look at Ge…
Capone was guilty of tax fraud because the money laundering part of his criminal enterprise was the part that was the least well organised. Nothing wrong with that. Somehow I doubt the BBC is laundering billions in bootlegging money.
I don't know anything about the German guy.
Re: BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
#114Is it just me, or are authoritarian regimes on the rise world-wide?
Yes, extreme ideologies (left and right wing) and authoritarian views are on the rise because of three factors playing out at the same time: 1. Globalisation showing its cracks and becoming increasingly clear to be the reason for the skyrocketing of inequality and the widening of the wealth gap between the rich and the poor 2. People waking up to the fact that the West and the East are equally bad with a constant str…
> People waking up to the fact that the West and the East are equally bad
You probably want to define what "East" is in this context. If East is Russia + China, it's trivially easy to prove that the West is better for its own citizens.
1. Economic levels in the West.
2. Respect for citizens' lives in the West.
I'm from a country that used to be in the Eastern Bloc, and let me tell you, nobody respects its citizens' lives like the collective West. Yes, the West is still horrible for many groups for human dignity, and yes, they don't always respect their citizens' lives, but boy, are they an improvement over most of the rest of the world.
And we have the numbers, check out military casualties for each side in various wars. The West has by far fewer military casualties than China or Russia have.
And that mentality permeates everywhere. Because if you don't care if your troops die in a war, you won't care if they die in a mine or an office building.
Before you reply, keep in mind I'm talking about statistics.
Re: BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. We technologists have made it far easier for them to crack down on dissent than ever before.
You'd be surprised by just how many Modi (and right-wing) supporters exist among influential Indians in the Silicon Valley. They're not even subtle about it on Twitter.
I was actually wondering about that yesterday.
It seems like the West, and the US more specifically, isn't capable anymore of physically reproducing/replacing its technocratic elites, which in this day and age mostly means its tech elites. Which made me wonder what would happen in case of a direct US vs China war when in some companies 20% to 30% to even 50% of the engineers have some close family connections on the Mainland. Will those engineers and tech people be ok with seeing China losing and their close family back home physically hurting?
What would happen if the US starts playing it rough with India? When you've got the CEOs of some of the biggest US tech companies being of Indian descent themselves, not to mention the large percentage of Indian engineers active in the Valley and not only.
It was way easier to set up the Manhattan project when many of the people involved had escaped physical annihilation here in Europe (against them and against their close family), but will the US be able to reproduce a future Manhattan project (let's say in AI) using and employing people whose families back home (in China, most probably, in India, as a possibility) would be directly and life-threatening affected by their work? I have my doubts.
Re: BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I think it's related to the waining political and economic power of the West and buoyed by Putin, Xi Jinping etc getting away with whatever they want
Interesting choices. How about we talk about other countries that get away with various bits of blatant authoritarianism, sexism and racism each with their own unique take: Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Germany, etc.
[flagged]
Re: BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
#117Honestly, a lot of the documentary is a mixture of interviews and CCTV camera footage with a fairly even handed narrative on the top – it, by itself, isn't that shocking and certainly isn't presented in a particularly sensationalist way. I'm amazed by the reaction it has generated. Yes, there's some post-colonial history there and it doesn't look great that it's the BBC that has made it, as opposed to, say, a US or c…
> If you're interested, you can get it (legally) in the UK here And if you happen to be belong to the rest of the ~99.13% world population, you can grab it here: Episode 1 - magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3C378A82CF67A1107523CA6C647077403A1EF74D&dn=India+The+Modi+Question+S01E01+1080p+HDTV+H264-DARKFLiX&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A…
Ha there is no way that 99% of the world population know what to do with those links / hashes / whatever they are.
Re: BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
#118Do India has the issue of "strict laws which are enforced selectively"? Because this reminds me of the traffic light in Grozny, Chechnya that is always red, the people from the regime just ignore it but if someone undesirable doesn't obey the red light(they have no choice, the light is always red) they will face the wrath of the strict traffic code of Chechnya: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/15954560406775562…
> Do India has the issue of "strict laws which are enforced selectively"?
Yes, we do.
Re: BBC offices in India raided by tax officials amid Modi documentary fallout
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
The West will have some deteriorating relations with India as well if India decides to start ethnic cleansing or stripping citizenship from 100 million Muslims. Consider how much business we do with Burma (approximately $0), even though the labor is quite cheap there. The BBC documentary is a warning shot. To be clear, this is not about the West taking sides in religious or ethnic issues; there are limits on what kin…
Nope. Even Modi himself was a target of sanction (prevented to visit US). After he became PM, all of sudden western world became his buddy again.
Between India and China you're looking at roughly a 1/4 of the world population. This makes it hard to use sanctions in ways that work better against smaller, less critical countries (like Iran, Myanmar). Even Russia, which doesn't hold quite the same level has been painful for Europe to sanction.
It's also problematic having to fight battles on all fronts at once (and at home for the US, which isn't exactly at the height of democracy itself)[0].
It's also worth being aware that much of the world sees the other side of the US, meddling and not really doing so in the best interests of the local population (not to mention UK colonial history).
We're in this funny place where the US often dictates globally but the protections that are in place with it's own laws only extend as far as citizens. Which is where you end up with all the 5-eyes spying on each other and sharing intel, thereby avoiding the protections put in place to prevent the domestic use of those capabilities[1].
[0]: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/02/01/the-worl...
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-d...