Jason Jones files his final report on the Indian elections with a look at the controversy over the new prime minister Narendra Modi’s record while he was chief minister of Gujarat state when riots resulted in the deaths of 1000 people, mostly Muslims. In the manner of Michael Moore in his Roger and Me documentary, Jones tries repeatedly to interview Modi to get answers about his role in those events.
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Some people in the media, especially activists and pundits, feel a compulsion to stay visible in the public eye either because of ego or because that is how they make their living by giving talks and selling books and the like. The way they do that whenever they sense that they are being forgotten is to troll for attention. In an earlier post, I said that it was easy to be a conservative troll. All you had to do was say something outrageous or extreme that would anger or at least annoy and exasperate liberals who would then rise up and condemn you.
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The Daily Show correspondent doggedly continues in his effort to try and teach Indians how to run their elections better. In this hilarious episode, he looks at their media coverage.
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One of the worst aspects of most religions is that it lays down major guilt trips on people. It does this by making people believe that that a whole range of things (thoughts as well as actions) that we would consider normal are actually sinful, then it postulates an omniscient being who knows everything including those thoughts, and then promises a lifetime in hell for those who transgress. True, it allows for absolution for those who grovel appropriately but it surely must be keeping people in doubt as to whether they have groveled enough to avoid eternal damnation.
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I finished the book (its full title is No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State) in two sittings. It is not too long (about 250 pages) and Greenwald has a direct style where he says what he means without weasel words that makes it easy to follow. It describes how Edward Snowden came to gain access to all the materials he chose to reveal, what made him decide to reveal it, the main contents of the revelations, why it is important, and the reactions to his disclosures. (Notes on each chapter, the index to the contents, and many of the source documents from the NSA that are not in the book or are hard to read because of the size of the font can be found here.)
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The Daily Show has been paying attention to the Indian elections and sent Jason Jones to India to give the people of that nation advice on how to run a proper election, since we do such a great job here. He finds that things are not quite what he expected.
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One advantage of being older is that you are likely to have encountered many situations where your stereotypes of people have been confounded. But try as I might to not judge people by their appearance, it is hard, and it is good to be periodically reminded of the trap.
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The war on the poor goes on apace in the US but it seems like not all poor are equal and recent action in Congress reveals a difference. For many poor children, the free meals that schools provide are their main source of food. This is one reason why school closings due to bad weather are harder on poor families than richer ones. But when schools close for the summer, these children face an extended period without those meals. In order to alleviate the problem, Congress has in the past allocated funds to provide some free meals during the summer as well.
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