I’ll be going on Abhinav Prakash’s podcast to talk genetics next week.
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Milan Todorovic
3 years ago
A lot went down this week. A lot. Maybe, the most significant was the explanation what has happened in Europe between Palaeolithic and Metal Ages what defined historical streams in Europe and South Asia. In a word, the panacea and the ruling paradigm that some Yamnaya nomads from Russian steppes (‘future westerners’) in their blitzkrieg spread their “Indo-European” language throughout all Europe and Asia was debunked. In a summary:
Independent geneticists working on DNA have recently ascertained that that 80% of the genetic stock of Europeans goes back to Palaeolithic (e.g. Sykes 2001, 2006).
The totally absurd thesis of the so called ‘late arrival’ of the Slavs in Europe must be replaced by the scenario of Slavic continuity from Palaeolithic, and the demographic growth and geographic expansion of the Slavs can be explained, much more realistically, by the extraordinary success, continuity and stability of the Neolithic cultures of South-Eastern Europe (the only ones in Europe that caused the formation of tells) (Alinei 2000a, 2003b).
For the question of European origin, the easiest working hypothesis is the continuity model, and no other alternative. Consequently, the burden of proof now lies on the (Chalcolithic or Neolithic) invasionist’s shoulders, and not on the anti-invasionist’s. As long as no alternative theory provides irrefutable counter-evidence, the Palaeolithic Continuity can be considered as the winning theory.
There is absolutely no trace of a gigantic warlike invasion, such as to have caused a linguistic substitution on continental scale, as envisaged by the traditional IE theory. All Neolithic cultures of Europe either are a direct continuation of Mesolithic ones or have been created by Mesolithic groups after their Neolithization by intrusive farmers from the Middle East. There is every possible evidence for demic and cultural continuity, from Palaeolithic to the Metal Ages. Continuity is now universally considered the basic pattern of European prehistory.
This post makes no sense. Slavs as an ethnolinguistic entity came much after the proto-Indo European Yamnaya culture, as did Germanics and Celts. Your timeline is off.
Secondly, comparing neolithic genomes from Europe to the ones that exist today, it is very blatantly obvious that there was an influx of “invader” steppe DNA. That steppe ancestry ranges from around 50% in Northern Europeans to around 25% in southern Europeans(excluding the extremes like Sardinians).
You are not regular BP reader or you may missed few key points. The above summary is from the full paper which link I posted in previous OT. Let see if the post makes sense.
The term Slavs a fairly recent and widely used only few hundreds of years. What do you know about their ethnolinguistics? Do you know who ‘Slavs’ are, where they came from and which language they spoke? ‘Slavs’ are mostly R1a+I2 plus other minor haplogroups. ‘I’ haplogroup is the only European haplogroup, about 30-34000 years old. I1 subgroup separated about 27000 years ago. There is continuity of I1 and I2 presence in Europe up to today (this paper reiterates this). For example, on British Isles, I2 was only haplogroup btw 5500-2500 BC when Yamnaya R1b nomads came. Today’s Serbs, for example, are 40% – I2 and a bit less R1a. Eastern ‘Slavs’, e.g. Russians (their name first appeared in the 8th cAC) have more R1a. The truth is that Yamnaya invaders came from Russian steppes to Europe and conducted genocides against I2 which almost disappeared, others escaped as far as Sardinia. The amalgamation of I2 and R1a produced ‘Slavs’. What is ‘proto-Indo-European’ culture?
Re: language. It is logical that I2 had enough time to develop its pra-language and language. During several 000 of years during the Ice Age which finished about 12000BC, the most of European people (an estimate is 95%) lived in Lepenski Vir (Iron Gates, Old Europe, Danube civilisation, Vincha). This people created first urban settlements, the oldest alphabet in the world, first metallurgy and many other civilizational things including mini-skirts. This language organically evolved for 9000 years (after Ice Age) before Yamnaya nomads came to Europe. This language became Serbian language which the youngest, localised version in SA, brought by Aryans, was Sanskrit.
Even Wiki defines the term ‘Indo-European’ as a fictional construct and the language with the same name is a political construct with meaningless substance. The Serbian language influenced almost all European and some Asian languages. That is ‘my’ timeline, you can present ‘your’, uncensored. Considering that ‘Slavs’ (their I2 component) have 30000 years of continuity in Europe, the paper says, that those who propose discontinuity (as you do with PIE Yamnaya nomads culture) should prove this, convince us that they had enough time to spread their IE language in every corner of Europe plus, explain us where Sanskrit came from. Pretty challenging task for you, good luck.
principia
3 years ago
Much hot air has been wasted, but I ultimately think the US elite isn’t really phased in any meaningful way. In fact, I would not be surprised if the feds knew the mob was coming to descend on Capitol Hill but allowed it to happen for cynical reasons. Chief among these would be their long-yearning wish to massively increase control over free speech and curtail access to the public megaphone for officially designated enemies.
Glenn Greenwald has great takes on his Twitter account where he makes a clear connection to the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Anyone who opposed these draconian new powers usurped by the National Security State was branded an ally of the terrorists. We’re seeing the same thing play out now.
I think it ultimately comes down to the system being threatened from two long-term trends. The first is external (China) and the second in internal (exploding inequality). The solution thus has been spend huge amounts of cash and allow the Federal Reserve to go crazy in QE mania, but that has exacerbated inequality (asset prices have zoomed to the heavens). The second option has been to crack down on any dissent or discontent, using “terrorism” is a cover.
I don’t think either approach is any sensible long-term solution, but I’ve long stopped believing that the neoliberal oligarchy that rules the West has any intelligent plan. It’s just about looting as much as you can for as long as you can.
i must say, even after living in america for years now, i havent really understood this country. i have never seen a country so deeply divided right in the middle. i mean, political divisions of britain or india or other democracies look ridiculously pale in comparison. and yet, obviously america works. it still is an economic and military juggernaut.
and despite myself, i am getting interested in american politics after the capitol riots.
Just lmfao. Modi isn’t backing down. These zamindars will go home. They can’t run even their Punjab like the one on the other side of the border anymore. Getting rich of the backs of low caste laborers with guaranteed government welfare, while destroying the land with inefficient practices.
What great framing attempt with “20 millions sikhs standing up to RSS” my ass lmfao. This is some, mostly Jat Sikh farmers, against oro market farm laws. Fallacy after fallacy.
> Modi and his RSS cabal know that if they step back, the Sikh farmers will become a beacon of light for other oppressed communities like the Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Nagas and Naxals as well as *lower caste Shudras*.
Dalits … as well as *lower caste Shudras* – They are the same people!!
Nagas – let the Nagas even try, the will be blood.
My guess is that most would agree at this point that the American empire is finished, and China’s rise is inevitable?
What are the implications for the Brown world, particularly India? India will eventually submit, but what does that mean? Will China be the Imperial power the west was, or will it be a more benign hegemon?
isn’t this funny that people from a rising superpower are queuing up to immigrate to a “finished” power?
there is a whole literature of impending american decline going back to decades, and it has repeatedly fallen flat. sometimes the feel from the streets is better than the overly intellectual analysis.
Are we really trusting the USA’s state capacity for pretty much anything that doesn’t involve bombing people overseas anymore?
Why would Chinese (or anyone, really) want to come here anymore? We’ve totally failed to contain the virus, half the population is totally insane, our infrastructure is crumbling, and our government is in a perpetual state of deadlock, not to mention the economic hit we’ve taken. Meanwhile the Chinese are rapidly surpassing us in just about everything there is. More Chinese students return to China than stay overseas now.
Let’s also not forget that with RCEP and the new trade deal with the EU, China has essentially won the trade war. The world knows where the new power center is, and increasingly is acting accordingly. Will India wake up, and both realize that A) India isn’t as important geopolitically as it believes itself to be, and quite frankly never will be, and B) India is backing the wrong horse with the US?
“Why would Chinese (or anyone, really) want to come here anymore?”
right. it is a rational question. but dont facts from the ground fly in the face of this question? millions waiting in legal immigration queues. tens of million already in the country illegally. hundreds of thousands more thronging the borders every year, desperately trying to squeeze in. there must be some lure to this country.
that’s why i said, dont over-analyze. get the feel from the ground.
For someone who eats scorpions you are pretty naïve. Also, there is no basic knowledge about Russia and their Armenian Orthodox brothers whose political leadership was recently installed by Soros, turned back to Russians but US did nothing to protect them from Azeries. However, Russians saved them from total defeat and now both presidents go to Moscow for consultations with Putin. All these happenings are much more complex and Razib should find someone who knows well these things to give us an intro text for a discussion.
“Let’s also not forget that with RCEP and the new trade deal with the EU, China has essentially won the trade war.”
I’ve gone through the trade agreements in question. RCEP is effectively an FTA between China and Japan since China already had an FTA with ASEAN, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australasia save for Papua New Guinea. And it’s fairly obvious Japan signing an FTA with China doesn’t automatically make them their ally.
As for the agreements Europeans, it’s more or less about reciprocal market access, eventually, China will figure out ways to subvert it to benefit its own interests, but for now, they’ve made some concessions probably to get the deal in before the Biden administration settles down (although not without making a push for 11th-hour amendments that Chinese diplomats are infamous for using as a pressure tactic).
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America needs to get its act together but it’s not the worst place in the world to be. Many of the Americans I’ve met who are more satisfied with their country are those who’ve lived in the real third-world as volunteers and know what real poverty is.
Even taking recent history into account, America’s GDP doubled from what it was in the year 2000 ($10 trillion then vs $20 trillion now), and until the virus was among the fastest-growing developed countries. Even the HDIs of many of the poorer southern states are higher than some west European countries, much to the chagrin of the Italians and the Spaniards.
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“Will India wake up, and both realize that A) India isn’t as important geopolitically as it believes itself to be, and quite frankly never will be, and B) India is backing the wrong horse with the US?”
A) Outside of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s books (of superpower 2020 fame) and some retired military officers, administrators, and excited journos, who needed hype to sell their memoirs, India didn’t act in any such way. Indian foreign policy is rather bland and careful and has been able to pull off feats other nations would find hard to do, like balancing between the US and Russia, and juggling relations between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Ideally, there would have been more trade lawyers and economists and translators in the foreign service, but you work with what you’ve got.
Indian leaders are risk-averse w.r.t. outside affairs and every leader attempted a detente with Pakistan from Rajiv Gandhi until Modi. Every time it got thrown under the bus, I.K. Gujral ended RAWs offensive capabilities leading to a decade of a soft underbelly against terrorists, Vajpayee’s bus trip was repaid with the Parliament attacks, Manmohan Singh’s attempted bonhomie ended with the Mumbai attacks in 2008, Modi’s personal turban diplomacy with Nawaz ended with the Uri attacks, it turns out the Deep State didn’t want peace.
B) India was quite happy to stay out of foreign strategic treaties until China decided to unilaterally throw 30 years of working agreements under the bus for tactical advantages in the Himalayas. What choice exists but to back the US horse? Russia didn’t even help their fellow Orthodox nation Armenia against Azerbaijan, quite rich to think they’d fully back India in a confrontation. As for China, their version of a fair agreement is one where they get 100% of what they want, and the other side gets to save face by saying it was a ‘good deal’. Anyway, the question you’re asking was talked about endlessly for the last 3 decades or so in Indian policy circles, until the events of 2020 settled the dust.
India was quite happy to stay out of foreign strategic treaties until China decided to unilaterally throw 30 years of working agreements under the bus for tactical advantages in the Himalayas. What choice exists but to back the US horse?
This is why I scoff when I see people calling the Chinese geopolitical geniuses. They idiotically antagonised India for basically a few worthless rocks high in the mountains. And pushed India into the arms of the US. Modi met Xi 18 times over his first term and genuinely wanted to get along. China threw all that under bus for no real gains and adversely worsened their geopolitical position.
What are the implications for the Brown world, particularly India? India will eventually submit, but what does that mean? Will China be the Imperial power the west was, or will it be a more benign hegemon?
not the same level of hyperpower. so won’t be as assertive
I’m assuming that we’re also in agreement that India will never really develop. Since the US is in free-fall, where will Indians emigrate to? Will former US vassals like Canada remain viable options, or will Brown people look to China? Will China be open to immigration? Obviously not at the level the west was, but to a more limited degree.
I’m assuming that we’re also in agreement that India will never really develop.
No, we’re not in agreement. India is a lumbering elephant. It routinely disappoints its optimists just as often as it confounds its pessimists. It will take longer for India, and in roundabout ways, but India will become a decent 2nd world country within a few decades. The march to 1st world will be completed by the end of the century.
Since the US is in free-fall, where will Indians emigrate to? Will former US vassals like Canada remain viable options, or will Brown people look to China? Will China be open to immigration? Obviously not at the level the west was, but to a more limited degree.
I never understood people who view emigration as a national security imperative for India. They carelessly mix their personal foibles with the interests of an entire nation. The two are not the same.
//New Delhi:
A former Pakistani diplomat admitted on a news television show that 300 terrorists had died in the Balakot airstrike by India on February 26, 2019. The admission by the former Pakistani diplomat Agha Hilaly who regularly takes the Pakistan Army side in TV debates, goes against the zero casualties claim made by Islamabad at that time.//
Did it NOT ONCE occur to you to actually Google the news and read reports (not even read, just the preview on Google search would’ve been enough) from various other media outlets, instead of just reading that one NDTV article?
It takes ten seconds tops to google and find out that his middle-name is “Zafar” (exactly how I discovered).
I literally said NOTHING about Balakot whatsoever, zero interest. Stop arguing over wrong implications you made yourself.
I only commented because it was lowkey funny (always kinda funny when people are super confident while being wrong) to see you confidently declare him dead without even realizing who the media was actually referring to.
No his name is not ”Agha Zafar Hilaly”, it’s ”Zafar Ali Hilaly”. If you get your news from ”google news” that lists 10 different websites that uses the same source, then you will be really suprised when you constantly fall victim to fake news.
The whole think was fake and based on an edited clip and they couldn’t even get the name right the first time so they are now forcing the Agha in there to save face. Perhaps you should have opened the twitter link you pasted here and read the tweets and watched the unedited clip.
This however isn’t as bad as Indian Media’s fake news about shooting down a Pakistani pilot after Balakot named ‘Shahzaz-ud-din’ which is not even a name. In some links the picture of ex Pak PM Shahid Khaqan Abbassi was used. The whole thing would be hilarious if it weren’t for gullible Indians trusting their media and believing it by the billion.
That’s a leftist rag trying to play up the supposed fecundity of an ex-commie model state vs a capitalist state. Gujarat has a better HDI than West Bengal. That is the real composite index to be compared and not stats in bits and pieces.
The reason Gujarat pans lower in specific statistics is the nature of its geography – a vast area is semi-arid and a significant population is nomadic either perennially or in phases. Ensuring that medical and childcare services reaches everyone is a logistical difficulty. WB has no such difficulty and has settled population centres in rural areas.
Great, two of gujjus greatest enemies came up with this. Surely this is a conspiracy
Brown
3 years ago
should indians complain about the ‘racist’ jabs from the australian crowds? are we too sensitive abroad? is this incident being used by india to push back australians?
a lot of us have been called ‘ madrasis’ in north india and no body minds. calling some body ‘kaala’ is not a very big thing.
With your racist divisions of India – which are false anyway- you are handing over ideological victory to enemies of India, who could not even dream of doing it on their own. You are joining the ranks of Trutscke, E.V.R. type extreme dravidian ideologues or khalistanis or christian missionary fantacists
Have you even been to North India? He is being honest about what Hindi Belt believes, he wasn’t created in a vaccum, he inherited those views from his parents. Race isn’t defined by science, it is defined by people. If enough people treat dravidians like a different race then it becomes true.
you are handing over ideological victory to enemies of India
Maybe it’s time to admit defeat instead of being a sore loser? Hindutva is an ideology tailor made for North India. Dravidian languages do not have a place in Hindutva, the very existence of a linguistic group that isn’t derived from Sanskrit is an ideological threat to Hindutva.
One can’t make the claim that Dravidians were “always” Hindus, if we Define “Hindus” as the religion of the ppl who spoke Sanskrit. Most Hindutva ideologues deny Aryan Migration and any possibility of syncretism that could’ve took place between Aryans,Dravidians,Munda and other ancient tribes of India, Hindutva ideologues claim that Sanskrit is native to India and thus Dravidians are just some hunter-gatherers down there in deep south who adopted the superior civilization&culture of Sanskrit speakers.
There are not many Aryans in Australia and they do not play ‘steppe’ games. Rather, they play soccer and basketball and some of them Aussie Rules (something between soccer and handball, similar to rugby but much faster and more physical, played on cricket ground with goals).
Rock
3 years ago
Fuck the supreme court.
Brown
3 years ago
this is tricky situation the supreme court has walked into. the government will put in front of the committee all the concessions it has made, including allowing stubble burning, withdrawing electricity act, retention of msp etc. the farmers have not conceded any thing. now, they will be forced to concede.
further, supreme court will be accused of supporting stubble burning etc, which will be strange.
thewarlock
3 years ago
Lmfao I am becoming like HM now with my view of India. It will never progress. The Khalistanis must be rejoicing. What a failure. The socialist babu state will never progress. Just an absolute disaster. I thank the universe everyday that I am an American. Today, I especially give thanks.
Wait for some time. The Indian Supreme Court won’t do anything that goes against the wishes of the Central Govt. They talk a good talk but when the rubber meets the road they will side with the executive political power, especially on such an issue as this.
The farm unions never wanted this to go to the Supreme Court because they know they would not get the maximalist demands they are seeking from the Court. They will probably end up with even less than the Central govt. was directly offering them.
I won’t be too sure. Modi political capital is not limit-less. Down the road he will need it to invest for something else. He might just cut his loses and leave our economic lol-bertarians high and dry
I see a positive from all this though. The end of reforms in india. And with it the chattering class of no skin in the game and the janus faced “economists”.
The idea of “political capital” doesn’t apply here. Modi is wildly popular, far more than his party, and he has a comfortable parliamentarian majority.
Sadly I’m coming to this conclusion too. I think they’ll eventually make it to US$5000 or US$8000 for GDP per capita maybe in 15 years. Somewhere on the spectrum between Indonesia and Thailand in terms of how it will feel on the ground. But breaking past $15,000 and becoming a true global superpower isn’t likely at least in our lifetimes. Presumably even at say US$8000 per capita gdp it would be a monster economy but the internal divisions are just too large for them to have a cohesive foreign policy.
As once famously said, India is the country of the future and will always be.
But breaking past $15,000 and becoming a true global superpower isn’t likely at least in our lifetimes.
I lolled at this specifically. You seem to think becoming a superpower is a Baniya game that is played by elite economists. Its all too common – I have seen this maladjusted opinion in several places – too much obsession with excels and reading economics literature excessively can cause this.
The current and the previous superpower ages – Pax Brittanica and Pax Americana – were not the result of economic springboards
From 1689 to 1783 – due to a host of reasons – starting from efficient ransoming techniques to prisoner exchange stratagems and fleet signals standardisation – the British established naval supremacy. This whole process achieved its zenith in another half a century – where they bested the Dutch and French – and thereafter their skill at sea remained untrammeled until WW2. This was the basis of their era – if you want to know something, then it should be that the British were economic laggards in relation to the continent during this period.
Pax Americana is the result of the apotheosis of defense industrial manufacturing. There is scale at work and then there is American defense scale at work. Starting with cargo ships like the Liberty (WW2) – 2710 of which were produced between 1941 and 1945 (almost 3 ships every two days) to F16s (almost 32 planes per month or one a day) at its peak. Almost all the way until WW2, the US was hobbled by the effects of the Great Depression. The devastation caused by WW2 to European economies and the competence of the American Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC) birthed the age of Pax Americana.
None of the high income economies of Asia (Japan, SK, Indonesia, Singapore) have ever gone into a pitched battle with China in the last decade or will ever go into one in the next decade. Their chances of becoming some kind of even Asian Power is infinitesimal than that of India, which is the only country to have bloodied the Chinese in open battle.
There is a hard path ahead for India – but it does not involve income levels to the linear extent you assume. It never was the case – not today, not in the last century or in any age. You don’t bring a wallet full of money to a gunfight! Becoming a superpower is an alpha sparring session – in fact you must be willing to sacrifice economic potential to retain pole dog position (US assistance to China in the 80s).
Of course economics is central to power. You’re just talking gibberish trying to claim otherwise. In order to have a big and competitive manufacturing sector, you first need a very big econonmy. But economic strength isn’t enough. You also need people. Lots and lots of people.
Power can essentially be broken down into two discrete parts: population and economic sophistication. Most countries have one or the other. Very few have both. Only one has them both in huge amounts, the USA. That’s why it is the superpower.
China is so heavily overloaded on the population side that it never needs to match the US in economic sophistication (GDP per capita). It just needs to get fairly high (say, 1/3rd of the US level) and then stay there. The same applies to India. But India and China are both shooting at a moving target. The US will reach $80K per capita within 10-15 years.
The British Empire did not even have a middling population level when they began their ascent nor did they have any kind of economic superiority. Their brilliance lay in colonizing the largest population center and economic power in Asia. They were almost like the Second Foundation when they started out – no resources, small population, enmity with larger entities across the Channel. But they had great vessels and even greater seafarers in their side.
So you are both right and wrong at the same time.
Economics plays a very low level in playing a qualifying role. Other things are more important and more crucial. I can tell you straight off the bat – all the highest income countries today in Asia (Gulf, SK, Singapore, Japan) will continue to be “butlers with white gloved hands”, willing to serve the next master that comes along. As they do currently.
IsThisReal
3 years ago
No his name is not ”Agha Zafar Hilaly”, it’s ”Zafar Ali Hilaly”
Official name seems to be Zafar Ali Hilaly, yeah, but I see a lot of Pakistani sources use Agha too (his dad’s a big deal? idk). Point was that you were very confident that it was the dad and not the son.
Perhaps you should have opened the twitter link you pasted here and read the tweets and watched the unedited clip.
I knew well what he posted, but once again, I know it’s hard for you to understand- but I don’t actually care about what he said or what the media is making out of it.
This however isn’t as bad as Indian Media’s fake news about shooting down a Pakistani pilot after Balakot named ‘Shahzaz-ud-din’ which is not even a name.
Since we’re talking about fake news, coincidentally, I think this very diplomat had claimed that Pak also captured an Israeli pilot along with Abhinandan.
Prats
3 years ago
While India is belatedly trying to kickstart the smartphone manufacturing eco-system in India, China has already moved on to the next thing – electric cars and batteries.
For all of Tesla’s brilliance, China is way ahead of the rest of the world in EV manufacturing. 80% of the world’s lithium is recylced in China and Korea.
This is becoming all the more important as the world moves to renewable energy.
If the Indian government has any sense, it should focus on building the full energy storage stack domestically. There have been baby steps with investments from Mahindra, Tata, Reliance and a hand full of startups but not enough.
As an example, India’s solar energy output has been growing at a rapid rate but 80% of all solar cells used in India are imported from China.
China’s dominance will be determined by how much control it can exert over the rare earth elements supply chain.
We all wanted the oil age to end so that Wahabbi influence declined. It’ll probably be replaced by a China-led Lithium age.
Rare earth elements aren’t as rare as they’re made out to be. They just happen to be horrendously damaging to the environment wherever they’re extracted and have high capital costs and low margins of return. So effectively it’s just China that can make a business out of it. If anything like that is tried in India or for that matter parts of Africa, it won’t be long before environmentalists make a big hullabaloo about it and the Chinese undercut the prices to put those mines out of business.
India’s macro-goal isn’t to be at the forefront of innovation (which it frankly doesn’t have the human resources or the capital to pull off) but to prioritize what’s available in labour-intensive industries to enable an outlet for rural folks to move out of farming and attempt to create a larger middle-class of consumers. Spending much central funding into high-tech (except required stuff like nuclear and space) areas won’t help generate large-scale employment that’s the need of the hour.
” If anything like that is tried in India or for that matter parts of Africa, it won’t be long before environmentalists make a big hullabaloo about it and the Chinese undercut the prices to put those mines out of business.”
In India we have become Copper importer from Copper exporter in a year and here we are talking about extracting rare earth metals. LOL
1. China isn’t digging for REE so much in its own land as it is controlling mines in places like Ecuador.
2. Domestically, it has strategically focused on developing second use and recycling capabilities, which are less environmentally damaging and higher value compared to direct mining. They also create jobs.
3. Two-wheelers and auto-parts are important chunks of India’s exports. They are also major sources of employment. Both these industries are going to go through disruption. It’s in our self-interest to be able to adapt to the change.
4. Focus on REE is not so much about innovation as it is about energy security, which is strategically important. We have seen how India has been hamstrung due to the dependence on crude oil imports for the last half a century. This is an opportunity to change that.
5. It is also important from a climate change PoV and to meet Paris targets.
6. So if we do want to allocate our limited high tech budget somewhere, this will be a high leverage area.
7. This is supposing that we do not plan to go all in on nuclear, which is not something I foresee happening anytime soon.
Don’t worry. Serbia is one of countries with largest reserves of Lithium. Rio Tinto has been drilling and researching for years and soon it should start with commercial extraction. It will be enough Lithium for our Aryan, non-Aryan and OIT brothers in India.
For all of Tesla’s brilliance, China is way ahead of the rest of the world in EV manufacturing.
China is doing well, but Europe is fast catching up. The main problem for the US is that outside of Tesla and Proterra (in buses), there’s not much from the others.
Ali Choudhury
3 years ago
Indian upper castes could form a genuine superpower but they are way outnumbered. They will forever be stuck in a bureaucratic socialist state as most want government jobs and free stuff. Only way they will get to live in a superpower is by moving to the US or China. Then like warlock they can spend their free time watching atrocity porn.
I doubt that Indian UCs are averse to the “bureaucratic socialist state “. Indian UC success (which we see abroad) is also built on the back of the same socialist model subsidized higher tech education in IITs, IIMs etc. So its not like they don’t want the free stuff.
The issue in India is lot of ” free stuff ” is spent on less economic or employment generation activity. So its mostly free stuff down the drain, so to speak.
“They will forever be stuck in a bureaucratic socialist state as most want government jobs and free stuff.”
I have said this before. India will never industrialise like the west or China because Indians do not have the appetite for the kind of effort and sacrifice it requires. It is cultural.
The aspiration, even for UCs, is to have a sinecure for a job and live like a ‘laath sahib’. This is also true for a lot of folks who move abroad, getting a masters and working safe tech jobs.
There’s a reason female workforce participation in India is actually decreasing and is lower among the top 5%ile.
The problem is there’s a large number of highly ambitious people in the country as well. Some are clever and move to the west early on. Others bang their heads trying to build something here and then eventually pack up as well. These are mostly the folks who you hear about in the news.
Only the highly optimistic survive here or those with financial/family constraints. Folks like Harsh Madhusudan.
I am not sure if it’s possible to change this culture and how long it will take. West Bengal vs Bangladesh could probably give us some pointers.
“However, Russians saved them from total defeat and now both presidents go to Moscow for consultations with Putin.”
LoL. and what a “saving” it was. armenia probably lost half the territory it controlled before the war. it was even forced to surrender land that it had not even lost on the battleground yet. and you still think russians are armenians’ friends? with friends like these…
seriously, russia’s inaction during the azerbaijan-armenian war was one of the most mysterious act. for the first time in 200 years turkish boots trampled on the ground which was in moscow’s sphere of influence since the days of czars, and yet russia remained silent. no clue what putin’s thought process is.
If you already talk about some things, you must look at them much deeper.
“Armenia: there is no doubt that Armenia is the biggest loser in this war. Pashinian and his gang of russophobic Sorosites has brought a real calamity upon his people. Since he came to power his anti-Russian actions included almost totally eliminating any Armenian participation on the CSTO, he completely ceased any collaboration with Russia (including in the intelligence and security domains), he purged the Armenian military and security forces from all the supposed “pro-Russian” elements, he banned Russian language schools. In contrast, Armenia has an absolutely huge US embassy with about 2000 personnel (as much as the entire Russian peacekeeping force!) and when the Azeris attacked, Pashinin refused to ask Russia for help for a full month. He did ask Trump, Merkel and Macron for help instead. Needless to say, they did exactly nothing once the crisis erupted.
The Armenians had absolutely no other option but to accept the Azeri terms. The Armenians have suffered huge losses while the Azeris have taken Shushi, the key strategic city which controls both the capital of NK Stepanakert and the corridor between NK and Armenia. Had Pashinian not signed, the surrounded Armenians would have been slaughtered by the Azeris. Russian analysts also say that Armenia was simply running out of supplies very fast.
Simply: Aliev’s plan worked, the blind arrogance of the Armenian leaders, along with their suicidal polices have almost cost Armenia the complete loss of NK and, possibly, even the existence of their own country. With all the best Armenian officers removed (including heroes from the first Karabakh war, which Armenia won), what was left were delusional clowns who promised that Armenia, without any help including without Russian help, could win the war and drive its forces to Baku.
Turkey: the next big loser in this war is Turkey whose objectives of bringing all Turkic nations under one neo-Ottoman empire have, predictably, crashed. Again. Erdogan is a world class megalomaniac and trouble maker, and he has involved Turkey in wars (or quasi wars) with Syria, Israel, Iraq, Greece, Libya, Iran, Russia and even (to some degree) NATO. And let’s not forget the bloody operations against the Kurds everywhere. He is a bona fide megalomaniac and that makes him very, very dangerous. Russia has intervened militarily in Syria, Libya and now Azerbaijan to deny Turkey its wannabe empire status and each time we saw that Turkey, as a country, simply does not have the resources to try to build an empire, especially since Erdogan simply does not understand that simultaneously opening conflicts on several fronts in a recipe for disaster.
Russia: Russia is the only true winner of this war. There is a powerful Armenian lobby in the USA, in Europe and in Russia, and they are trying to present their defeat as a defeat for Russia. Their bitterness is understandable, but they are absolutely wrong. Here is why:
First, Russia has now established herself as the sole power in the Caucasus which can bring about peace. 2000 US personnel in Erevan did absolutely nothing for years to really help Armenia, all they did is force suicidal russophobic policies on Armenia, that’s about it. The same number of Russian soldiers literally brought peace overnight.”
Reading this comment section, I never realised how many self-hating Indians there were lurking here. And this place has a reputation for being a far-right hindutva hive? LOL
I think it has a lot to do with people having emigrated need to continually ensure to themselves that they made the right decision in life. India must always be doomed because otherwise was it really worth it?
this place has a reputation for being a far-right hindutva hive
Really? Where?
(And I don’t agree with your assertion anyway; not sure what comments it’s based on. I’m the one who often writes quite critically about India whereas the people commenting on this thread are more sanguine about the country from what I have seen. But I live in India, unlike most of them. I believe Prats does too.)
principia
3 years ago
As for the Supreme Court staying the farm laws. It’s an elaborate political trap. The entire committee appointed are all pro-farm laws. It’s a clever move by the government.
Ideologically, Hindutva sure is on its last legs. I don’t think you can call “Muslim Man Bad” a full proof ideology with a bright future ahead, can you? Even the Mughal Worshiping Marxists in India with a pathetic Nationalist Identity managed to suppress it for most of India’s pre&post independence History, if those clowns can do it, anyone can.
“while most regional party do no have any views outside their region”
And BJP doesn’t have any views outside of Muslims,Pakistan, Kashmir and 2 Nation Theory. Having SOME pragmatic&realpolitik views about your region is better than chasing the dragon like BJP.
Dude, i don’t care about this partision nonsense. Both Congress&BJP are opposing sides of the same 2 Nation Theory Discourse. Bjp’s success is an indirect result of Congress’s Pro-Islam Stance, both parties belong in the dustbin of history.
Do you remember Assam(BJP State) protesting against CAA? Assamese didn’t want Hindu Bangladeshis refugees pouring into “their” state. This is merely a sign of things to come, ignore it at your own ideological peril.
@IsThisReal thanks for sharing. This is a very significant finding which makes me more optimistic about the country’s future direction. Lack of tribal nepotism is a fundamental ingredient in any functioning judicial system. It still remains underfunded, though.
Commie Mehta sees the Supreme court dashing his hopes for the ‘Indian spring’.
IsThisReal
3 years ago
I am pretty sure our Dravidians bros will fight for Hindu festival.
Well they did already slam him in the reply section.
Just amazing that the dude has Krishna in his dp and still tries to stir shit up.
Brown
3 years ago
emergence of middle class dalits like abhinav prakash, guru prasad paswan in bjp + spheres is interesting. on the other hand congress attracts sons and daughters of ex ministers, mlas etc.
in the mandal parties we do not see this group at all.
What? Wasn’t Hindutva on its last legs, while the future pertains to regionalization of India and regional parties?
At least that;s what i was let to believe.
Brown
3 years ago
bjp first evolves as a regional party of the state and once in power becomes ‘national’. this is what happened in karnataka, now in h’bad, telengana and tamilnadu. only in bengal, this tag of a hindi party is being struck.
BJP never did evolve as a regional party. Even when they had 2 seats or 200 they always fashioned themselves as a national party. Thats y the Jan Sangh had a view on Kashmir despite having 0 seats in India, while most regional party do no have any views outside their region.
@thewarlock Incidents like that is why I support the death penality. I’ve changed my mind on this question in recent years (I axiomatically rejected it out due to social conditioning growing up).
IsThisReal
3 years ago
Ideologically, Hindutva sure is on its last legs. I don’t think you can call “Muslim Man Bad” a full proof ideology with a bright future ahead, can you?
There are other components, but you seem to care too much about H-M friction. If not Hindutva, people would’ve rallied under some other banner, it’s unavoidable.
And I’m saying this as someone who’s not really big on Hindutva or BJP (@Roy called me a BJP supporter a few days back, lol). I just don’t agree with those “fascist/nazi” statements people like to casually throw around though, the same way I don’t agree with “all muslims are terrorists” statements.
you seem to care too much about H-M friction
That’s what i said:- “BJP doesn’t have any views outside of Muslims,Pakistan, Kashmir and 2 Nation Theory.” This is what BJP online groups&media talks about.
, people would’ve rallied under some other banner,
Rally for what reasons? Hindutva isn’t an organic people’s movement, its an ideology with severe logical inconsistencies. If it wasn’t for a combination of 26/11, 2012-2013 Economic Slump and Congress being Pro-Islam&Anti-Hindu to a fault, Modi wouldn’t have become so popular. That’s the real story behind BJP’s sucess, not it’s ideology.
Caste, trying to manage linguistic and ethnic diversity among Hindus (something for which you rip on them a lot), policies (establishing temple autonomy, UCC etc.). It’s not all just H-M. Don’t just listen to what the media mouthpieces say, listen to the avg. supporter to.
Rally for what reasons?
Against Islamists. It was inevitable, Hindutva or not.
Before you started your latest venture, CRED, you spent time at Sequoia, Y Combinator, and sat on the board of the largest newspaper in India. What did you learn about the Indian market during that period?
A lot of people think that India is a country of the masses. I looked at the data, and 70 to 80% of discretionary spending was by 25 million families. That’s all! When I was involved in Times of India, I noticed that the English newspaper ads reached a million customers. Hindi or other languages were close to 10 or 15 times that. It’s the same ad. I realized English was the biggest marker of affluence.
Global startups came to India for DAU [daily active users] and MAU [monthly active users], not for ARPU [average revenue per user]. I realized that YouTube, Google, and all of these companies had hundreds and hundreds of millions of customers, but their ARPU was literally nothing. YouTube is used by almost every Indian, but the ARPU of YouTube in India is probably less than $2 per annum, which can barely cover the streaming cost.
But these big companies don’t mind it. Because when you’re a global company, you can show 4 billion active users to the public market, and they’ll give you a better market cap for it. Your ARPU comes from America, but you get your DAU from India. When you join the numbers, they look nice.
“Thus a good way to see India is as a combination of Mexico (for affluent India1), Philippines (for aspiring India2) and Sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa (for destitute India3)”
Keeping this aside, there are a few things happening because of the low purchasing power in India:
1. Indian consumer companies expanding to the west – Ola, Zomato, Oyo etc
2. VC money going into B2B SaaS companies that can service customers anywhere in the world – Freshdesk, Zoho, lots of others. Some are bootstrapped.
3. Indian entrepreneurs building companies for South East Asia – Zilingo, Indian offices of GoJek, Grab etc
Most large western companies like Google have taken a long term bet on India in the hopes that the middle class will expand over the next decade or so.
Yup Kunal is bang on about this difference between DAU and ARPU in India today. But its more important to capture the market now before the ARPU catches up. Better to get customers used to a way of doing things now. Even at current growth rates India will get to $6000-8000 per capita GDP in the next 10 or 15 years and that is a monster market. If you’re long term planning at one of these big corps you have to focus on this market especially given that China is off the table.
Milan Todorovic
3 years ago
PV ” America no longer even resembles first-class Hollywood blockbusters, but is taking big steps into the genres of cheap, naive, low-budget B production.
Instead of a spectacle with hundreds of thousands of extras, apocalyptic smoke and epic energy, we saw a dull and for many transparent lemonade on Wednesday in Washington with stupid costumes, somnambular dramaturgy and a five-penny plot.
According to the mainstream version, the scenario is simple: the evil and insane Trump sent his masked savage soldiers to stop the final confirmation of Joe Biden for president in the US Congress.
Dozens of grotesque physiognomies, reminiscent of angry losers from the movie “Joker”, enter the completely abandoned and unguarded Congress, occupy the presidential chair, the office of the head of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, primitively distracted, go straight to the cameras, all with fascist and communist tattoos and inscriptions on tattered clothes.
So, everything looks like a naive and amateurishly directed political thriller during which half of the hall would leave the cinema in the first minutes, shocked and disappointed.
Protesters in front of the Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington
The breaking news wakes up the planet, the spotlights of the world media light up, the mad Trump, betrayed by everyone, takes justice into his own hands and with several dozen bizarre characters, mostly torn beards, sets out to “overthrow America” and carry out a “coup d’etat”.
Of course, justice wins, barbarians are thrown from the hill of American freedom – the Capitol, and the nation is addressed with a confident smile, with sand in its voice and a glimmer of optimism in its eye, while the viewers shed a tear and the abandoned and defeated Trump fails to hang no tweet or photo on Instagram…
Cut!
And for those who grew up in the cinema, along with John Ford, Sam Penkipo or John Milius, this work is reminiscent only of some student thrash film of an untalented filmmaker in an attempt.
Not even as a directed “coloured revolution” but more as a farce in some forgotten banana republic.”
Wow just wow. Khalistani propagandists have brilliantly infiltrated socialist spaces in left wing predominant Western media. Jiggy must be so proud.
This is an ethnosupremacist, largely Jatt Sikh attempt to protect their financial interests, interests that depend on lower caste+gangetic plains labor and sucking the Indian taxpayer dry for an inefficient and environmentally destructive form of agricultural production.
This might have been discussed before in Brown Pundits but I don’t remember. What are generally the reasons given for why wokism being an American phenomenon though Europe is more leftist? Civil rights legacy? US retaining aspects of “anglo”-ness that UK grew out of? Hegemony making US easier to hate and bigger target of asset cultivation by USSR and China? Or the US people are simply more accepting and nice and hence more gullible? Lack of perceived cultural invasion letting their guard down?
Wokism isn’t just in the US. It’s in all Anglo countries: Canada, UK, Australia, too. I remember how Jordan Peterson achieved his initial fame (or infamy, depending on your perspective): he challenged some Canadian government policy on being forced to use the newfangled gender pronouns. This was a few years ago.
What’s common to these countries that inspires wokism? I’d say it’s guilt about past domination over other people. Imperialism, coloniasm, racial caste systems, slavery in the US’s case. Also, no recent history of grievance, of being conquered, of being in a minority that is either despised or in a precarious position owing to demographics (this is why the Afrikaners in S. Africa aren’t woke, I believe).
Only the Anglo countries seem to fit the bill in all respects. Eastern Europeans, even though they are white, were dominated by regional powers in living memory, so they have their grievances. Both France and Germany have recent history of being conquered or dominated by each other, so that may tamp down the guilt. Etc. The part of the US where wokism faces most challenge is the White South, which was defeated in the Civil War.
@Numinous, Yes you are right, by referring to it as an American phenomenon I should have been clear that I meant US having the biggest concentration of wokism. I agree it exists in other countries and seems more pronounced in the Anglosphere than elsewhere. Yes, imperialist and racist past is a factor too, which adds to the list. Here is another guess, no idea if it is a factor and if so how much: what about funding for certain types of humanities departments, coming partly out of imperialist and racist past, but also partly from hubris about its moral and educational greatness?
In that vein: how much of Canadian wokism is homemade and how much is comically imbibed to maintain a moral superiority complex over Americans while being an American satellite? Does Quebec differ from the “Anglo” parts of Canada?
You may be right about the humanities departments. Especially the Ivy League, which sees itself as the trendsetter for all other educational institutions (at least in America).
I know very little about Canada, but from the little I have read, they have a guilt complex about how their own aborigines (called “First Nations”, I believe) were treated. So I think wokeness there is homegrown, but of course there must be some cross-pollination between Canadian universities’ humanities departments and American ones.
It is a mechanism for descendants of the English Puritans to asset cultural superiority\hegemony over the Scots-Irish, white ethnic groups like the Irish and Italians whom they tussle with for position. Strongest in eastern seaboard academia and northwest which were settled by Puritans and their American descendants.
It is a mechanism for descendants of the English Puritans to asset cultural superiority\hegemony over the Scots-Irish, white ethnic groups like the Irish and Italians whom they tussle with for position.
Very interesting; these rivalries did not develop so much in the UK but they did in the US? Did pretty much the same apply with the descendants of the cavalier royalists instead of the Scots-Irish and the like (and what happened to them in the UK)?
Regional differences are also in place in the UK but have been subsumed into broader geographical and class differences e.g. northerners, southerners, Welsh, Scots, middle class, working class, aristocracy.
A lot went down this week. A lot. Maybe, the most significant was the explanation what has happened in Europe between Palaeolithic and Metal Ages what defined historical streams in Europe and South Asia. In a word, the panacea and the ruling paradigm that some Yamnaya nomads from Russian steppes (‘future westerners’) in their blitzkrieg spread their “Indo-European” language throughout all Europe and Asia was debunked. In a summary:
Independent geneticists working on DNA have recently ascertained that that 80% of the genetic stock of Europeans goes back to Palaeolithic (e.g. Sykes 2001, 2006).
The totally absurd thesis of the so called ‘late arrival’ of the Slavs in Europe must be replaced by the scenario of Slavic continuity from Palaeolithic, and the demographic growth and geographic expansion of the Slavs can be explained, much more realistically, by the extraordinary success, continuity and stability of the Neolithic cultures of South-Eastern Europe (the only ones in Europe that caused the formation of tells) (Alinei 2000a, 2003b).
For the question of European origin, the easiest working hypothesis is the continuity model, and no other alternative. Consequently, the burden of proof now lies on the (Chalcolithic or Neolithic) invasionist’s shoulders, and not on the anti-invasionist’s. As long as no alternative theory provides irrefutable counter-evidence, the Palaeolithic Continuity can be considered as the winning theory.
There is absolutely no trace of a gigantic warlike invasion, such as to have caused a linguistic substitution on continental scale, as envisaged by the traditional IE theory. All Neolithic cultures of Europe either are a direct continuation of Mesolithic ones or have been created by Mesolithic groups after their Neolithization by intrusive farmers from the Middle East. There is every possible evidence for demic and cultural continuity, from Palaeolithic to the Metal Ages. Continuity is now universally considered the basic pattern of European prehistory.
#1 PCP
#2 AMT/OIT => IT
#3 Aryans – city sleekers
#4 RrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrG – (tba)
This post makes no sense. Slavs as an ethnolinguistic entity came much after the proto-Indo European Yamnaya culture, as did Germanics and Celts. Your timeline is off.
Secondly, comparing neolithic genomes from Europe to the ones that exist today, it is very blatantly obvious that there was an influx of “invader” steppe DNA. That steppe ancestry ranges from around 50% in Northern Europeans to around 25% in southern Europeans(excluding the extremes like Sardinians).
You are not regular BP reader or you may missed few key points. The above summary is from the full paper which link I posted in previous OT. Let see if the post makes sense.
The term Slavs a fairly recent and widely used only few hundreds of years. What do you know about their ethnolinguistics? Do you know who ‘Slavs’ are, where they came from and which language they spoke? ‘Slavs’ are mostly R1a+I2 plus other minor haplogroups. ‘I’ haplogroup is the only European haplogroup, about 30-34000 years old. I1 subgroup separated about 27000 years ago. There is continuity of I1 and I2 presence in Europe up to today (this paper reiterates this). For example, on British Isles, I2 was only haplogroup btw 5500-2500 BC when Yamnaya R1b nomads came. Today’s Serbs, for example, are 40% – I2 and a bit less R1a. Eastern ‘Slavs’, e.g. Russians (their name first appeared in the 8th cAC) have more R1a. The truth is that Yamnaya invaders came from Russian steppes to Europe and conducted genocides against I2 which almost disappeared, others escaped as far as Sardinia. The amalgamation of I2 and R1a produced ‘Slavs’. What is ‘proto-Indo-European’ culture?
Re: language. It is logical that I2 had enough time to develop its pra-language and language. During several 000 of years during the Ice Age which finished about 12000BC, the most of European people (an estimate is 95%) lived in Lepenski Vir (Iron Gates, Old Europe, Danube civilisation, Vincha). This people created first urban settlements, the oldest alphabet in the world, first metallurgy and many other civilizational things including mini-skirts. This language organically evolved for 9000 years (after Ice Age) before Yamnaya nomads came to Europe. This language became Serbian language which the youngest, localised version in SA, brought by Aryans, was Sanskrit.
Even Wiki defines the term ‘Indo-European’ as a fictional construct and the language with the same name is a political construct with meaningless substance. The Serbian language influenced almost all European and some Asian languages. That is ‘my’ timeline, you can present ‘your’, uncensored. Considering that ‘Slavs’ (their I2 component) have 30000 years of continuity in Europe, the paper says, that those who propose discontinuity (as you do with PIE Yamnaya nomads culture) should prove this, convince us that they had enough time to spread their IE language in every corner of Europe plus, explain us where Sanskrit came from. Pretty challenging task for you, good luck.
Much hot air has been wasted, but I ultimately think the US elite isn’t really phased in any meaningful way. In fact, I would not be surprised if the feds knew the mob was coming to descend on Capitol Hill but allowed it to happen for cynical reasons. Chief among these would be their long-yearning wish to massively increase control over free speech and curtail access to the public megaphone for officially designated enemies.
Glenn Greenwald has great takes on his Twitter account where he makes a clear connection to the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Anyone who opposed these draconian new powers usurped by the National Security State was branded an ally of the terrorists. We’re seeing the same thing play out now.
I think it ultimately comes down to the system being threatened from two long-term trends. The first is external (China) and the second in internal (exploding inequality). The solution thus has been spend huge amounts of cash and allow the Federal Reserve to go crazy in QE mania, but that has exacerbated inequality (asset prices have zoomed to the heavens). The second option has been to crack down on any dissent or discontent, using “terrorism” is a cover.
I don’t think either approach is any sensible long-term solution, but I’ve long stopped believing that the neoliberal oligarchy that rules the West has any intelligent plan. It’s just about looting as much as you can for as long as you can.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/france-offers-to-shift-panther-chopper-assembly-line-to-india-rafale-too-101610181121676-amp.html
France offers to shift Panther chopper assembly line to India; Rafale too
GRAPHIC FOOTAGE: Police fatally shoot a Trump supporter inside the Capitol building.
https://www.amren.com/news/2021/01/woman-fatally-shot-as-pro-trump-mob-stormed-the-capitol-identified-as-air-force-veteran/
one should read the comment section to believe it! they are openly calling for secession and separation post-election.
https://www.amren.com/videos/2020/12/how-to-separate/
i must say, even after living in america for years now, i havent really understood this country. i have never seen a country so deeply divided right in the middle. i mean, political divisions of britain or india or other democracies look ridiculously pale in comparison. and yet, obviously america works. it still is an economic and military juggernaut.
and despite myself, i am getting interested in american politics after the capitol riots.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/new-species-of-fruit-fly-from-india-named-after-siruvani-in-western-ghats/article33536294.ece/amp/
New species of fruit fly from India named after Siruvani in Western Ghats
https://youtube.com/channel/UCLY-NCXA2dQKyEVKDZ7quHw
Found this YouTube channel on Chinese history
https://www.google.com/amp/s/tribune.com.pk/story/2279096/punjabi-folklore-and-farmers-protests-in-delhi%3famp=1
Just lmfao. Modi isn’t backing down. These zamindars will go home. They can’t run even their Punjab like the one on the other side of the border anymore. Getting rich of the backs of low caste laborers with guaranteed government welfare, while destroying the land with inefficient practices.
What great framing attempt with “20 millions sikhs standing up to RSS” my ass lmfao. This is some, mostly Jat Sikh farmers, against oro market farm laws. Fallacy after fallacy.
> Modi and his RSS cabal know that if they step back, the Sikh farmers will become a beacon of light for other oppressed communities like the Muslims, Christians, Dalits, Nagas and Naxals as well as *lower caste Shudras*.
Dalits … as well as *lower caste Shudras* – They are the same people!!
Nagas – let the Nagas even try, the will be blood.
Dalits and shudras are different.
My guess is that most would agree at this point that the American empire is finished, and China’s rise is inevitable?
What are the implications for the Brown world, particularly India? India will eventually submit, but what does that mean? Will China be the Imperial power the west was, or will it be a more benign hegemon?
“My guess is that most would agree at this point that the American empire is finished, and China’s rise is inevitable?”
as per this government document, chinese citizen wanting to immigrate to US face wait time of years if not decades.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin/2021/visa-bulletin-for-january-2021.html
isn’t this funny that people from a rising superpower are queuing up to immigrate to a “finished” power?
there is a whole literature of impending american decline going back to decades, and it has repeatedly fallen flat. sometimes the feel from the streets is better than the overly intellectual analysis.
Are we really trusting the USA’s state capacity for pretty much anything that doesn’t involve bombing people overseas anymore?
Why would Chinese (or anyone, really) want to come here anymore? We’ve totally failed to contain the virus, half the population is totally insane, our infrastructure is crumbling, and our government is in a perpetual state of deadlock, not to mention the economic hit we’ve taken. Meanwhile the Chinese are rapidly surpassing us in just about everything there is. More Chinese students return to China than stay overseas now.
Let’s also not forget that with RCEP and the new trade deal with the EU, China has essentially won the trade war. The world knows where the new power center is, and increasingly is acting accordingly. Will India wake up, and both realize that A) India isn’t as important geopolitically as it believes itself to be, and quite frankly never will be, and B) India is backing the wrong horse with the US?
“Why would Chinese (or anyone, really) want to come here anymore?”
right. it is a rational question. but dont facts from the ground fly in the face of this question? millions waiting in legal immigration queues. tens of million already in the country illegally. hundreds of thousands more thronging the borders every year, desperately trying to squeeze in. there must be some lure to this country.
that’s why i said, dont over-analyze. get the feel from the ground.
For someone who eats scorpions you are pretty naïve. Also, there is no basic knowledge about Russia and their Armenian Orthodox brothers whose political leadership was recently installed by Soros, turned back to Russians but US did nothing to protect them from Azeries. However, Russians saved them from total defeat and now both presidents go to Moscow for consultations with Putin. All these happenings are much more complex and Razib should find someone who knows well these things to give us an intro text for a discussion.
“Let’s also not forget that with RCEP and the new trade deal with the EU, China has essentially won the trade war.”
I’ve gone through the trade agreements in question. RCEP is effectively an FTA between China and Japan since China already had an FTA with ASEAN, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australasia save for Papua New Guinea. And it’s fairly obvious Japan signing an FTA with China doesn’t automatically make them their ally.
As for the agreements Europeans, it’s more or less about reciprocal market access, eventually, China will figure out ways to subvert it to benefit its own interests, but for now, they’ve made some concessions probably to get the deal in before the Biden administration settles down (although not without making a push for 11th-hour amendments that Chinese diplomats are infamous for using as a pressure tactic).
——————————
America needs to get its act together but it’s not the worst place in the world to be. Many of the Americans I’ve met who are more satisfied with their country are those who’ve lived in the real third-world as volunteers and know what real poverty is.
Even taking recent history into account, America’s GDP doubled from what it was in the year 2000 ($10 trillion then vs $20 trillion now), and until the virus was among the fastest-growing developed countries. Even the HDIs of many of the poorer southern states are higher than some west European countries, much to the chagrin of the Italians and the Spaniards.
——————————
“Will India wake up, and both realize that A) India isn’t as important geopolitically as it believes itself to be, and quite frankly never will be, and B) India is backing the wrong horse with the US?”
A) Outside of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s books (of superpower 2020 fame) and some retired military officers, administrators, and excited journos, who needed hype to sell their memoirs, India didn’t act in any such way. Indian foreign policy is rather bland and careful and has been able to pull off feats other nations would find hard to do, like balancing between the US and Russia, and juggling relations between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. Ideally, there would have been more trade lawyers and economists and translators in the foreign service, but you work with what you’ve got.
Indian leaders are risk-averse w.r.t. outside affairs and every leader attempted a detente with Pakistan from Rajiv Gandhi until Modi. Every time it got thrown under the bus, I.K. Gujral ended RAWs offensive capabilities leading to a decade of a soft underbelly against terrorists, Vajpayee’s bus trip was repaid with the Parliament attacks, Manmohan Singh’s attempted bonhomie ended with the Mumbai attacks in 2008, Modi’s personal turban diplomacy with Nawaz ended with the Uri attacks, it turns out the Deep State didn’t want peace.
B) India was quite happy to stay out of foreign strategic treaties until China decided to unilaterally throw 30 years of working agreements under the bus for tactical advantages in the Himalayas. What choice exists but to back the US horse? Russia didn’t even help their fellow Orthodox nation Armenia against Azerbaijan, quite rich to think they’d fully back India in a confrontation. As for China, their version of a fair agreement is one where they get 100% of what they want, and the other side gets to save face by saying it was a ‘good deal’. Anyway, the question you’re asking was talked about endlessly for the last 3 decades or so in Indian policy circles, until the events of 2020 settled the dust.
India was quite happy to stay out of foreign strategic treaties until China decided to unilaterally throw 30 years of working agreements under the bus for tactical advantages in the Himalayas. What choice exists but to back the US horse?
This is why I scoff when I see people calling the Chinese geopolitical geniuses. They idiotically antagonised India for basically a few worthless rocks high in the mountains. And pushed India into the arms of the US. Modi met Xi 18 times over his first term and genuinely wanted to get along. China threw all that under bus for no real gains and adversely worsened their geopolitical position.
What are the implications for the Brown world, particularly India? India will eventually submit, but what does that mean? Will China be the Imperial power the west was, or will it be a more benign hegemon?
not the same level of hyperpower. so won’t be as assertive
I’m assuming that we’re also in agreement that India will never really develop. Since the US is in free-fall, where will Indians emigrate to? Will former US vassals like Canada remain viable options, or will Brown people look to China? Will China be open to immigration? Obviously not at the level the west was, but to a more limited degree.
I’m assuming that we’re also in agreement that India will never really develop.
No, we’re not in agreement. India is a lumbering elephant. It routinely disappoints its optimists just as often as it confounds its pessimists. It will take longer for India, and in roundabout ways, but India will become a decent 2nd world country within a few decades. The march to 1st world will be completed by the end of the century.
Since the US is in free-fall, where will Indians emigrate to? Will former US vassals like Canada remain viable options, or will Brown people look to China? Will China be open to immigration? Obviously not at the level the west was, but to a more limited degree.
I never understood people who view emigration as a national security imperative for India. They carelessly mix their personal foibles with the interests of an entire nation. The two are not the same.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ndtv.com/india-news/300-casualties-in-balakot-airstrike-by-india-says-former-pak-diplomat-2350125%3famp=1&akamai-rum=off
300 Casualties In Balakot Airstrike By India, Says Former Pak Diplomat
//New Delhi:
A former Pakistani diplomat admitted on a news television show that 300 terrorists had died in the Balakot airstrike by India on February 26, 2019. The admission by the former Pakistani diplomat Agha Hilaly who regularly takes the Pakistan Army side in TV debates, goes against the zero casualties claim made by Islamabad at that time.//
—-
Agha Hilaly died in 2001:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agha_Hilaly
Just quit it guys. There were no Balakot casualties. End this chapter now.
Lol
Didn’t know dead people use Twitter
https://twitter.com/ZafarHilaly
His full name is Agha Zafar Hilaly, FYI
That’s his son you idiot.
At least get the name right if you wish to publish fake news.
And look at his twitter handle, he himself claims Indian media is peddling fake news
It is a waste of time to educate BJP supporters.
Peak intelligence.
Did it NOT ONCE occur to you to actually Google the news and read reports (not even read, just the preview on Google search would’ve been enough) from various other media outlets, instead of just reading that one NDTV article?
It takes ten seconds tops to google and find out that his middle-name is “Zafar” (exactly how I discovered).
I literally said NOTHING about Balakot whatsoever, zero interest. Stop arguing over wrong implications you made yourself.
I only commented because it was lowkey funny (always kinda funny when people are super confident while being wrong) to see you confidently declare him dead without even realizing who the media was actually referring to.
No his name is not ”Agha Zafar Hilaly”, it’s ”Zafar Ali Hilaly”. If you get your news from ”google news” that lists 10 different websites that uses the same source, then you will be really suprised when you constantly fall victim to fake news.
The whole think was fake and based on an edited clip and they couldn’t even get the name right the first time so they are now forcing the Agha in there to save face. Perhaps you should have opened the twitter link you pasted here and read the tweets and watched the unedited clip.
This however isn’t as bad as Indian Media’s fake news about shooting down a Pakistani pilot after Balakot named ‘Shahzaz-ud-din’ which is not even a name. In some links the picture of ex Pak PM Shahid Khaqan Abbassi was used. The whole thing would be hilarious if it weren’t for gullible Indians trusting their media and believing it by the billion.
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/pakistan-f-16-pilot-downed-by-indian-jet-lynched-over-mistaken-identity-reports-1469316-2019-03-03
Indian media taking about his son zafar who comes in some tv debate. But yeah I think they edited out and made a mountain out of mole hill
https://scroll.in/article/983334/why-does-poor-west-bengal-have-healthier-children-than-rich-gujarat
That’s a leftist rag trying to play up the supposed fecundity of an ex-commie model state vs a capitalist state. Gujarat has a better HDI than West Bengal. That is the real composite index to be compared and not stats in bits and pieces.
The reason Gujarat pans lower in specific statistics is the nature of its geography – a vast area is semi-arid and a significant population is nomadic either perennially or in phases. Ensuring that medical and childcare services reaches everyone is a logistical difficulty. WB has no such difficulty and has settled population centres in rural areas.
Indian Gareeb Pravda and its readers!
Would be interesting to see a district-wise breakdown of these stats.
I find Shoaib’s Twitter takes entertaining but he has a habit of obfuscating and strawman-ing. Hard to trust him on any data related article.
“Gujarat has a better HDI than West Bengal. ”
And who came up with the HDI? A Bengali. OK
Bengal 1 , Gujarat 0
So now let our Bengalis rest on this win for the next 50 years. 😛
BTW Warlock or some one else was debating the other day that Bongs dont have a chip on their shoulder wrt Gujjus. LOL
A Bengali and a Punjabi-Pakistani guy (Mahbub al Haq) collaboratively came with the HDI i think.
Great, two of gujjus greatest enemies came up with this. Surely this is a conspiracy
should indians complain about the ‘racist’ jabs from the australian crowds? are we too sensitive abroad? is this incident being used by india to push back australians?
a lot of us have been called ‘ madrasis’ in north india and no body minds. calling some body ‘kaala’ is not a very big thing.
Halal haleem owaisi
https://www.hindupost.in/dharma-religion/hindus-under-attack-weekly-roundup-10/
This love jihad stuff is amazing, more please.
No such thing. Proper term is “grooming jihad”
2 Dravidians today kept the Aryans ( the Australia Invader ones) at bay, in Cricket.
With your racist divisions of India – which are false anyway- you are handing over ideological victory to enemies of India, who could not even dream of doing it on their own. You are joining the ranks of Trutscke, E.V.R. type extreme dravidian ideologues or khalistanis or christian missionary fantacists
Have you even been to North India? He is being honest about what Hindi Belt believes, he wasn’t created in a vaccum, he inherited those views from his parents. Race isn’t defined by science, it is defined by people. If enough people treat dravidians like a different race then it becomes true.
you are handing over ideological victory to enemies of India
Maybe it’s time to admit defeat instead of being a sore loser? Hindutva is an ideology tailor made for North India. Dravidian languages do not have a place in Hindutva, the very existence of a linguistic group that isn’t derived from Sanskrit is an ideological threat to Hindutva.
One can’t make the claim that Dravidians were “always” Hindus, if we Define “Hindus” as the religion of the ppl who spoke Sanskrit. Most Hindutva ideologues deny Aryan Migration and any possibility of syncretism that could’ve took place between Aryans,Dravidians,Munda and other ancient tribes of India, Hindutva ideologues claim that Sanskrit is native to India and thus Dravidians are just some hunter-gatherers down there in deep south who adopted the superior civilization&culture of Sanskrit speakers.
Why are u folks so on the edge. It was a joke.
There are not many Aryans in Australia and they do not play ‘steppe’ games. Rather, they play soccer and basketball and some of them Aussie Rules (something between soccer and handball, similar to rugby but much faster and more physical, played on cricket ground with goals).
Fuck the supreme court.
this is tricky situation the supreme court has walked into. the government will put in front of the committee all the concessions it has made, including allowing stubble burning, withdrawing electricity act, retention of msp etc. the farmers have not conceded any thing. now, they will be forced to concede.
further, supreme court will be accused of supporting stubble burning etc, which will be strange.
Lmfao I am becoming like HM now with my view of India. It will never progress. The Khalistanis must be rejoicing. What a failure. The socialist babu state will never progress. Just an absolute disaster. I thank the universe everyday that I am an American. Today, I especially give thanks.
@warlock
Wait for some time. The Indian Supreme Court won’t do anything that goes against the wishes of the Central Govt. They talk a good talk but when the rubber meets the road they will side with the executive political power, especially on such an issue as this.
The farm unions never wanted this to go to the Supreme Court because they know they would not get the maximalist demands they are seeking from the Court. They will probably end up with even less than the Central govt. was directly offering them.
I won’t be too sure. Modi political capital is not limit-less. Down the road he will need it to invest for something else. He might just cut his loses and leave our economic lol-bertarians high and dry
I see a positive from all this though. The end of reforms in india. And with it the chattering class of no skin in the game and the janus faced “economists”.
The idea of “political capital” doesn’t apply here. Modi is wildly popular, far more than his party, and he has a comfortable parliamentarian majority.
“Modi is wildly popular, far more than his party,”
… in more-Hindu regions. The protests and the opposition is from the less-Hindu region.
Sadly I’m coming to this conclusion too. I think they’ll eventually make it to US$5000 or US$8000 for GDP per capita maybe in 15 years. Somewhere on the spectrum between Indonesia and Thailand in terms of how it will feel on the ground. But breaking past $15,000 and becoming a true global superpower isn’t likely at least in our lifetimes. Presumably even at say US$8000 per capita gdp it would be a monster economy but the internal divisions are just too large for them to have a cohesive foreign policy.
As once famously said, India is the country of the future and will always be.
Everyone comes around to my view, eventually 😛
But breaking past $15,000 and becoming a true global superpower isn’t likely at least in our lifetimes.
I lolled at this specifically. You seem to think becoming a superpower is a Baniya game that is played by elite economists. Its all too common – I have seen this maladjusted opinion in several places – too much obsession with excels and reading economics literature excessively can cause this.
The current and the previous superpower ages – Pax Brittanica and Pax Americana – were not the result of economic springboards
From 1689 to 1783 – due to a host of reasons – starting from efficient ransoming techniques to prisoner exchange stratagems and fleet signals standardisation – the British established naval supremacy. This whole process achieved its zenith in another half a century – where they bested the Dutch and French – and thereafter their skill at sea remained untrammeled until WW2. This was the basis of their era – if you want to know something, then it should be that the British were economic laggards in relation to the continent during this period.
Pax Americana is the result of the apotheosis of defense industrial manufacturing. There is scale at work and then there is American defense scale at work. Starting with cargo ships like the Liberty (WW2) – 2710 of which were produced between 1941 and 1945 (almost 3 ships every two days) to F16s (almost 32 planes per month or one a day) at its peak. Almost all the way until WW2, the US was hobbled by the effects of the Great Depression. The devastation caused by WW2 to European economies and the competence of the American Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC) birthed the age of Pax Americana.
None of the high income economies of Asia (Japan, SK, Indonesia, Singapore) have ever gone into a pitched battle with China in the last decade or will ever go into one in the next decade. Their chances of becoming some kind of even Asian Power is infinitesimal than that of India, which is the only country to have bloodied the Chinese in open battle.
There is a hard path ahead for India – but it does not involve income levels to the linear extent you assume. It never was the case – not today, not in the last century or in any age. You don’t bring a wallet full of money to a gunfight! Becoming a superpower is an alpha sparring session – in fact you must be willing to sacrifice economic potential to retain pole dog position (US assistance to China in the 80s).
Of course economics is central to power. You’re just talking gibberish trying to claim otherwise. In order to have a big and competitive manufacturing sector, you first need a very big econonmy. But economic strength isn’t enough. You also need people. Lots and lots of people.
Power can essentially be broken down into two discrete parts: population and economic sophistication. Most countries have one or the other. Very few have both. Only one has them both in huge amounts, the USA. That’s why it is the superpower.
China is so heavily overloaded on the population side that it never needs to match the US in economic sophistication (GDP per capita). It just needs to get fairly high (say, 1/3rd of the US level) and then stay there. The same applies to India. But India and China are both shooting at a moving target. The US will reach $80K per capita within 10-15 years.
@principia
The British Empire did not even have a middling population level when they began their ascent nor did they have any kind of economic superiority. Their brilliance lay in colonizing the largest population center and economic power in Asia. They were almost like the Second Foundation when they started out – no resources, small population, enmity with larger entities across the Channel. But they had great vessels and even greater seafarers in their side.
So you are both right and wrong at the same time.
Economics plays a very low level in playing a qualifying role. Other things are more important and more crucial. I can tell you straight off the bat – all the highest income countries today in Asia (Gulf, SK, Singapore, Japan) will continue to be “butlers with white gloved hands”, willing to serve the next master that comes along. As they do currently.
No his name is not ”Agha Zafar Hilaly”, it’s ”Zafar Ali Hilaly”
Official name seems to be Zafar Ali Hilaly, yeah, but I see a lot of Pakistani sources use Agha too (his dad’s a big deal? idk). Point was that you were very confident that it was the dad and not the son.
Perhaps you should have opened the twitter link you pasted here and read the tweets and watched the unedited clip.
I knew well what he posted, but once again, I know it’s hard for you to understand- but I don’t actually care about what he said or what the media is making out of it.
This however isn’t as bad as Indian Media’s fake news about shooting down a Pakistani pilot after Balakot named ‘Shahzaz-ud-din’ which is not even a name.
Since we’re talking about fake news, coincidentally, I think this very diplomat had claimed that Pak also captured an Israeli pilot along with Abhinandan.
While India is belatedly trying to kickstart the smartphone manufacturing eco-system in India, China has already moved on to the next thing – electric cars and batteries.
For all of Tesla’s brilliance, China is way ahead of the rest of the world in EV manufacturing. 80% of the world’s lithium is recylced in China and Korea.
This is becoming all the more important as the world moves to renewable energy.
If the Indian government has any sense, it should focus on building the full energy storage stack domestically. There have been baby steps with investments from Mahindra, Tata, Reliance and a hand full of startups but not enough.
As an example, India’s solar energy output has been growing at a rapid rate but 80% of all solar cells used in India are imported from China.
China’s dominance will be determined by how much control it can exert over the rare earth elements supply chain.
We all wanted the oil age to end so that Wahabbi influence declined. It’ll probably be replaced by a China-led Lithium age.
Rare earth elements aren’t as rare as they’re made out to be. They just happen to be horrendously damaging to the environment wherever they’re extracted and have high capital costs and low margins of return. So effectively it’s just China that can make a business out of it. If anything like that is tried in India or for that matter parts of Africa, it won’t be long before environmentalists make a big hullabaloo about it and the Chinese undercut the prices to put those mines out of business.
India’s macro-goal isn’t to be at the forefront of innovation (which it frankly doesn’t have the human resources or the capital to pull off) but to prioritize what’s available in labour-intensive industries to enable an outlet for rural folks to move out of farming and attempt to create a larger middle-class of consumers. Spending much central funding into high-tech (except required stuff like nuclear and space) areas won’t help generate large-scale employment that’s the need of the hour.
” If anything like that is tried in India or for that matter parts of Africa, it won’t be long before environmentalists make a big hullabaloo about it and the Chinese undercut the prices to put those mines out of business.”
In India we have become Copper importer from Copper exporter in a year and here we are talking about extracting rare earth metals. LOL
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/india-has-turned-in-an-importer-of-copper-first-time-in-18-years/articleshow/71587596.cms
1. China isn’t digging for REE so much in its own land as it is controlling mines in places like Ecuador.
2. Domestically, it has strategically focused on developing second use and recycling capabilities, which are less environmentally damaging and higher value compared to direct mining. They also create jobs.
3. Two-wheelers and auto-parts are important chunks of India’s exports. They are also major sources of employment. Both these industries are going to go through disruption. It’s in our self-interest to be able to adapt to the change.
4. Focus on REE is not so much about innovation as it is about energy security, which is strategically important. We have seen how India has been hamstrung due to the dependence on crude oil imports for the last half a century. This is an opportunity to change that.
5. It is also important from a climate change PoV and to meet Paris targets.
6. So if we do want to allocate our limited high tech budget somewhere, this will be a high leverage area.
7. This is supposing that we do not plan to go all in on nuclear, which is not something I foresee happening anytime soon.
Don’t worry. Serbia is one of countries with largest reserves of Lithium. Rio Tinto has been drilling and researching for years and soon it should start with commercial extraction. It will be enough Lithium for our Aryan, non-Aryan and OIT brothers in India.
For all of Tesla’s brilliance, China is way ahead of the rest of the world in EV manufacturing.
China is doing well, but Europe is fast catching up. The main problem for the US is that outside of Tesla and Proterra (in buses), there’s not much from the others.
Indian upper castes could form a genuine superpower but they are way outnumbered. They will forever be stuck in a bureaucratic socialist state as most want government jobs and free stuff. Only way they will get to live in a superpower is by moving to the US or China. Then like warlock they can spend their free time watching atrocity porn.
I doubt that Indian UCs are averse to the “bureaucratic socialist state “. Indian UC success (which we see abroad) is also built on the back of the same socialist model subsidized higher tech education in IITs, IIMs etc. So its not like they don’t want the free stuff.
The issue in India is lot of ” free stuff ” is spent on less economic or employment generation activity. So its mostly free stuff down the drain, so to speak.
“They will forever be stuck in a bureaucratic socialist state as most want government jobs and free stuff.”
I have said this before. India will never industrialise like the west or China because Indians do not have the appetite for the kind of effort and sacrifice it requires. It is cultural.
The aspiration, even for UCs, is to have a sinecure for a job and live like a ‘laath sahib’. This is also true for a lot of folks who move abroad, getting a masters and working safe tech jobs.
There’s a reason female workforce participation in India is actually decreasing and is lower among the top 5%ile.
The problem is there’s a large number of highly ambitious people in the country as well. Some are clever and move to the west early on. Others bang their heads trying to build something here and then eventually pack up as well. These are mostly the folks who you hear about in the news.
Only the highly optimistic survive here or those with financial/family constraints. Folks like Harsh Madhusudan.
I am not sure if it’s possible to change this culture and how long it will take. West Bengal vs Bangladesh could probably give us some pointers.
” West Bengal vs Bangladesh could probably give us some pointers.”
What do u mean? 50 years (and counting ) of our glorious commie rule hasn’t made West Bengal , Sonar Bangla?
Why u so jealous of our lower IMR , saar?
#triggered
“However, Russians saved them from total defeat and now both presidents go to Moscow for consultations with Putin.”
LoL. and what a “saving” it was. armenia probably lost half the territory it controlled before the war. it was even forced to surrender land that it had not even lost on the battleground yet. and you still think russians are armenians’ friends? with friends like these…
seriously, russia’s inaction during the azerbaijan-armenian war was one of the most mysterious act. for the first time in 200 years turkish boots trampled on the ground which was in moscow’s sphere of influence since the days of czars, and yet russia remained silent. no clue what putin’s thought process is.
If you already talk about some things, you must look at them much deeper.
“Armenia: there is no doubt that Armenia is the biggest loser in this war. Pashinian and his gang of russophobic Sorosites has brought a real calamity upon his people. Since he came to power his anti-Russian actions included almost totally eliminating any Armenian participation on the CSTO, he completely ceased any collaboration with Russia (including in the intelligence and security domains), he purged the Armenian military and security forces from all the supposed “pro-Russian” elements, he banned Russian language schools. In contrast, Armenia has an absolutely huge US embassy with about 2000 personnel (as much as the entire Russian peacekeeping force!) and when the Azeris attacked, Pashinin refused to ask Russia for help for a full month. He did ask Trump, Merkel and Macron for help instead. Needless to say, they did exactly nothing once the crisis erupted.
The Armenians had absolutely no other option but to accept the Azeri terms. The Armenians have suffered huge losses while the Azeris have taken Shushi, the key strategic city which controls both the capital of NK Stepanakert and the corridor between NK and Armenia. Had Pashinian not signed, the surrounded Armenians would have been slaughtered by the Azeris. Russian analysts also say that Armenia was simply running out of supplies very fast.
Simply: Aliev’s plan worked, the blind arrogance of the Armenian leaders, along with their suicidal polices have almost cost Armenia the complete loss of NK and, possibly, even the existence of their own country. With all the best Armenian officers removed (including heroes from the first Karabakh war, which Armenia won), what was left were delusional clowns who promised that Armenia, without any help including without Russian help, could win the war and drive its forces to Baku.
Turkey: the next big loser in this war is Turkey whose objectives of bringing all Turkic nations under one neo-Ottoman empire have, predictably, crashed. Again. Erdogan is a world class megalomaniac and trouble maker, and he has involved Turkey in wars (or quasi wars) with Syria, Israel, Iraq, Greece, Libya, Iran, Russia and even (to some degree) NATO. And let’s not forget the bloody operations against the Kurds everywhere. He is a bona fide megalomaniac and that makes him very, very dangerous. Russia has intervened militarily in Syria, Libya and now Azerbaijan to deny Turkey its wannabe empire status and each time we saw that Turkey, as a country, simply does not have the resources to try to build an empire, especially since Erdogan simply does not understand that simultaneously opening conflicts on several fronts in a recipe for disaster.
Russia: Russia is the only true winner of this war. There is a powerful Armenian lobby in the USA, in Europe and in Russia, and they are trying to present their defeat as a defeat for Russia. Their bitterness is understandable, but they are absolutely wrong. Here is why:
First, Russia has now established herself as the sole power in the Caucasus which can bring about peace. 2000 US personnel in Erevan did absolutely nothing for years to really help Armenia, all they did is force suicidal russophobic policies on Armenia, that’s about it. The same number of Russian soldiers literally brought peace overnight.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/in-india-s-lower-judiciary-the-absence-of-in-group-bias-101610378365396-amp.html
In India’s lower judiciary, the absence of in-group bias
i talk to abhinav https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOUV3VtNhKY&feature=youtu.be
https://www.aajtak.in/crime/news/story/delhi-girl-who-married-after-changing-religion-accuses-husband-and-father-in-law-for-rape-1190905-2021-01-12?utm_source=atweb_story_share
Reading this comment section, I never realised how many self-hating Indians there were lurking here. And this place has a reputation for being a far-right hindutva hive? LOL
I think it has a lot to do with people having emigrated need to continually ensure to themselves that they made the right decision in life. India must always be doomed because otherwise was it really worth it?
This is a good insight. I especially get this feeling when I talk with Indian proto-americans who are running on the greencard-hamster-wheel.
There is difference b/w realism and mindless optimism.
this place has a reputation for being a far-right hindutva hive
Really? Where?
(And I don’t agree with your assertion anyway; not sure what comments it’s based on. I’m the one who often writes quite critically about India whereas the people commenting on this thread are more sanguine about the country from what I have seen. But I live in India, unlike most of them. I believe Prats does too.)
As for the Supreme Court staying the farm laws. It’s an elaborate political trap. The entire committee appointed are all pro-farm laws. It’s a clever move by the government.
https://old.reddit.com/r/india/comments/kvo8i3/all_four_members_of_the_committee_appointed_by/
It reminds me of how they used the SC to get Ram Temple approved to be built.
Onam 2.0 in the making?
https://twitter.com/PillaiRajavel/status/1348973669217783809
Well y u do u say so?
Aren’t Dravidians the best-est Hindu-iest people alive? I am pretty sure our Dravidians bros will fight for Hindu festival.
Ideologically, Hindutva sure is on its last legs. I don’t think you can call “Muslim Man Bad” a full proof ideology with a bright future ahead, can you? Even the Mughal Worshiping Marxists in India with a pathetic Nationalist Identity managed to suppress it for most of India’s pre&post independence History, if those clowns can do it, anyone can.
“while most regional party do no have any views outside their region”
And BJP doesn’t have any views outside of Muslims,Pakistan, Kashmir and 2 Nation Theory. Having SOME pragmatic&realpolitik views about your region is better than chasing the dragon like BJP.
“Ideologically, Hindutva sure is on its last legs”
Yeah man, even this gives Congress party comfort. Whatever rocks ur boat.
Dude, i don’t care about this partision nonsense. Both Congress&BJP are opposing sides of the same 2 Nation Theory Discourse. Bjp’s success is an indirect result of Congress’s Pro-Islam Stance, both parties belong in the dustbin of history.
Do you remember Assam(BJP State) protesting against CAA? Assamese didn’t want Hindu Bangladeshis refugees pouring into “their” state. This is merely a sign of things to come, ignore it at your own ideological peril.
It’s pretty hard to argue it’s not Hindu since coincides its celebrated man places in India (as Makar Sankranti / Uttrayan)
https://twitter.com/paulnovosad/status/1348674012491218945
Our new paper on judicial bias in India’s lower courts, using new data from 6 million criminal court cases.
Do Muslims or women get better outcomes when their cases are heard by Muslim / female judges?
Surprise: No evidence on bias! Thread 1/11
@IsThisReal thanks for sharing. This is a very significant finding which makes me more optimistic about the country’s future direction. Lack of tribal nepotism is a fundamental ingredient in any functioning judicial system. It still remains underfunded, though.
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/supreme-court-stay-on-farm-laws-protests-7143857/
Commie Mehta sees the Supreme court dashing his hopes for the ‘Indian spring’.
I am pretty sure our Dravidians bros will fight for Hindu festival.
Well they did already slam him in the reply section.
Just amazing that the dude has Krishna in his dp and still tries to stir shit up.
emergence of middle class dalits like abhinav prakash, guru prasad paswan in bjp + spheres is interesting. on the other hand congress attracts sons and daughters of ex ministers, mlas etc.
in the mandal parties we do not see this group at all.
What? Wasn’t Hindutva on its last legs, while the future pertains to regionalization of India and regional parties?
At least that;s what i was let to believe.
bjp first evolves as a regional party of the state and once in power becomes ‘national’. this is what happened in karnataka, now in h’bad, telengana and tamilnadu. only in bengal, this tag of a hindi party is being struck.
BJP never did evolve as a regional party. Even when they had 2 seats or 200 they always fashioned themselves as a national party. Thats y the Jan Sangh had a view on Kashmir despite having 0 seats in India, while most regional party do no have any views outside their region.
https://theprint.in/opinion/india-needs-senior-female-cops-for-safer-cities-90-women-retire-as-police-constables/584221/
India needs senior female cops for safer cities, 90% women retire as police constables
Darren J. Beattie, an American political scientist of Jewish descent, a former White House official, wrote on Twitter:
“70 + million Americans now effectively Serbs in the 90s”
Throw the kaffir
https://m.timesofindia.com/city/mumbai/man-drops-wife-off-moving-train-nailed-by-witness/articleshow/80240847.cms
@thewarlock Incidents like that is why I support the death penality. I’ve changed my mind on this question in recent years (I axiomatically rejected it out due to social conditioning growing up).
Ideologically, Hindutva sure is on its last legs. I don’t think you can call “Muslim Man Bad” a full proof ideology with a bright future ahead, can you?
There are other components, but you seem to care too much about H-M friction. If not Hindutva, people would’ve rallied under some other banner, it’s unavoidable.
And I’m saying this as someone who’s not really big on Hindutva or BJP (@Roy called me a BJP supporter a few days back, lol). I just don’t agree with those “fascist/nazi” statements people like to casually throw around though, the same way I don’t agree with “all muslims are terrorists” statements.
“There are other components”
Like, what?
you seem to care too much about H-M friction
That’s what i said:-
“BJP doesn’t have any views outside of Muslims,Pakistan, Kashmir and 2 Nation Theory.” This is what BJP online groups&media talks about.
, people would’ve rallied under some other banner,
Rally for what reasons? Hindutva isn’t an organic people’s movement, its an ideology with severe logical inconsistencies. If it wasn’t for a combination of 26/11, 2012-2013 Economic Slump and Congress being Pro-Islam&Anti-Hindu to a fault, Modi wouldn’t have become so popular. That’s the real story behind BJP’s sucess, not it’s ideology.
Like, what?
Caste, trying to manage linguistic and ethnic diversity among Hindus (something for which you rip on them a lot), policies (establishing temple autonomy, UCC etc.). It’s not all just H-M. Don’t just listen to what the media mouthpieces say, listen to the avg. supporter to.
Rally for what reasons?
Against Islamists. It was inevitable, Hindutva or not.
https://yourstory.com/2021/01/spacetech-startup-agnikul-cosmos-made-in-india-rocket-engine/amp
Spacetech startup Agnikul Cosmos builds Made-in-India 3D printed rocket engine, Agnilet
https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/ncert-does-not-have-source-for-claim-that-mughals-had-rebuilt-temples/amp/
NCERT says it has no information on source of claim made in textbook that Mughals had rebuilt temples after destroying them
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/make-in-india-mega-deal-83-tejas-fighters-cleared-for-air-force-7145472/
biggest make-in-india defence deal in history
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/girls-can-reproduce-at-15-why-raise-age-for-marriage-congress-leader-2352140?amp=1&akamai-rum=off
“Girls Can Reproduce At 15, Why Raise Age For Marriage”: Congress Leader
https://swarajyamag.com/culture/how-anti-hindu-forces-in-tamil-nadu-are-destroying-pongal-one-step-at-a-time
https://restofworld.org/2021/india-according-to-kunal-shah/
Before you started your latest venture, CRED, you spent time at Sequoia, Y Combinator, and sat on the board of the largest newspaper in India. What did you learn about the Indian market during that period?
A lot of people think that India is a country of the masses. I looked at the data, and 70 to 80% of discretionary spending was by 25 million families. That’s all! When I was involved in Times of India, I noticed that the English newspaper ads reached a million customers. Hindi or other languages were close to 10 or 15 times that. It’s the same ad. I realized English was the biggest marker of affluence.
Global startups came to India for DAU [daily active users] and MAU [monthly active users], not for ARPU [average revenue per user]. I realized that YouTube, Google, and all of these companies had hundreds and hundreds of millions of customers, but their ARPU was literally nothing. YouTube is used by almost every Indian, but the ARPU of YouTube in India is probably less than $2 per annum, which can barely cover the streaming cost.
But these big companies don’t mind it. Because when you’re a global company, you can show 4 billion active users to the public market, and they’ll give you a better market cap for it. Your ARPU comes from America, but you get your DAU from India. When you join the numbers, they look nice.
You might like this article.
https://blog.usejournal.com/india2-english-tax-and-building-for-the-next-billion-users-198701f0a7a6
“Thus a good way to see India is as a combination of Mexico (for affluent India1), Philippines (for aspiring India2) and Sub-Saharan Africa excluding South Africa (for destitute India3)”
Keeping this aside, there are a few things happening because of the low purchasing power in India:
1. Indian consumer companies expanding to the west – Ola, Zomato, Oyo etc
2. VC money going into B2B SaaS companies that can service customers anywhere in the world – Freshdesk, Zoho, lots of others. Some are bootstrapped.
3. Indian entrepreneurs building companies for South East Asia – Zilingo, Indian offices of GoJek, Grab etc
Most large western companies like Google have taken a long term bet on India in the hopes that the middle class will expand over the next decade or so.
Yup Kunal is bang on about this difference between DAU and ARPU in India today. But its more important to capture the market now before the ARPU catches up. Better to get customers used to a way of doing things now. Even at current growth rates India will get to $6000-8000 per capita GDP in the next 10 or 15 years and that is a monster market. If you’re long term planning at one of these big corps you have to focus on this market especially given that China is off the table.
PV ” America no longer even resembles first-class Hollywood blockbusters, but is taking big steps into the genres of cheap, naive, low-budget B production.
Instead of a spectacle with hundreds of thousands of extras, apocalyptic smoke and epic energy, we saw a dull and for many transparent lemonade on Wednesday in Washington with stupid costumes, somnambular dramaturgy and a five-penny plot.
According to the mainstream version, the scenario is simple: the evil and insane Trump sent his masked savage soldiers to stop the final confirmation of Joe Biden for president in the US Congress.
Dozens of grotesque physiognomies, reminiscent of angry losers from the movie “Joker”, enter the completely abandoned and unguarded Congress, occupy the presidential chair, the office of the head of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, primitively distracted, go straight to the cameras, all with fascist and communist tattoos and inscriptions on tattered clothes.
So, everything looks like a naive and amateurishly directed political thriller during which half of the hall would leave the cinema in the first minutes, shocked and disappointed.
Protesters in front of the Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington
The breaking news wakes up the planet, the spotlights of the world media light up, the mad Trump, betrayed by everyone, takes justice into his own hands and with several dozen bizarre characters, mostly torn beards, sets out to “overthrow America” and carry out a “coup d’etat”.
Of course, justice wins, barbarians are thrown from the hill of American freedom – the Capitol, and the nation is addressed with a confident smile, with sand in its voice and a glimmer of optimism in its eye, while the viewers shed a tear and the abandoned and defeated Trump fails to hang no tweet or photo on Instagram…
Cut!
And for those who grew up in the cinema, along with John Ford, Sam Penkipo or John Milius, this work is reminiscent only of some student thrash film of an untalented filmmaker in an attempt.
Not even as a directed “coloured revolution” but more as a farce in some forgotten banana republic.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/bengaluru-worlds-fastest-growing-tech-hub-london-second-report/article33573646.ece/amp/
Bengaluru world’s fastest-growing tech hub, London second: Report
LMFAOOOO
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/13/india-supreme-court-suspend-farm-law-farmer-protest-modi/
“250 million… largest protest in history”
Wow just wow. Khalistani propagandists have brilliantly infiltrated socialist spaces in left wing predominant Western media. Jiggy must be so proud.
This is an ethnosupremacist, largely Jatt Sikh attempt to protect their financial interests, interests that depend on lower caste+gangetic plains labor and sucking the Indian taxpayer dry for an inefficient and environmentally destructive form of agricultural production.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/kx6gwk/if_there_were_even_traces_of_something_like_love/
Good post
Weather Forecast for California and Texas (2 min):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH2iSdd_tXQ&feature=emb_logo
https://www.opindia.com/2021/01/is-collapse-of-congress-making-the-left-ecosystem-more-openly-hinduphobic/
This might have been discussed before in Brown Pundits but I don’t remember. What are generally the reasons given for why wokism being an American phenomenon though Europe is more leftist? Civil rights legacy? US retaining aspects of “anglo”-ness that UK grew out of? Hegemony making US easier to hate and bigger target of asset cultivation by USSR and China? Or the US people are simply more accepting and nice and hence more gullible? Lack of perceived cultural invasion letting their guard down?
Wokism isn’t just in the US. It’s in all Anglo countries: Canada, UK, Australia, too. I remember how Jordan Peterson achieved his initial fame (or infamy, depending on your perspective): he challenged some Canadian government policy on being forced to use the newfangled gender pronouns. This was a few years ago.
What’s common to these countries that inspires wokism? I’d say it’s guilt about past domination over other people. Imperialism, coloniasm, racial caste systems, slavery in the US’s case. Also, no recent history of grievance, of being conquered, of being in a minority that is either despised or in a precarious position owing to demographics (this is why the Afrikaners in S. Africa aren’t woke, I believe).
Only the Anglo countries seem to fit the bill in all respects. Eastern Europeans, even though they are white, were dominated by regional powers in living memory, so they have their grievances. Both France and Germany have recent history of being conquered or dominated by each other, so that may tamp down the guilt. Etc. The part of the US where wokism faces most challenge is the White South, which was defeated in the Civil War.
@Numinous, Yes you are right, by referring to it as an American phenomenon I should have been clear that I meant US having the biggest concentration of wokism. I agree it exists in other countries and seems more pronounced in the Anglosphere than elsewhere. Yes, imperialist and racist past is a factor too, which adds to the list. Here is another guess, no idea if it is a factor and if so how much: what about funding for certain types of humanities departments, coming partly out of imperialist and racist past, but also partly from hubris about its moral and educational greatness?
In that vein: how much of Canadian wokism is homemade and how much is comically imbibed to maintain a moral superiority complex over Americans while being an American satellite? Does Quebec differ from the “Anglo” parts of Canada?
You may be right about the humanities departments. Especially the Ivy League, which sees itself as the trendsetter for all other educational institutions (at least in America).
I know very little about Canada, but from the little I have read, they have a guilt complex about how their own aborigines (called “First Nations”, I believe) were treated. So I think wokeness there is homegrown, but of course there must be some cross-pollination between Canadian universities’ humanities departments and American ones.
It is a mechanism for descendants of the English Puritans to asset cultural superiority\hegemony over the Scots-Irish, white ethnic groups like the Irish and Italians whom they tussle with for position. Strongest in eastern seaboard academia and northwest which were settled by Puritans and their American descendants.
It is a mechanism for descendants of the English Puritans to asset cultural superiority\hegemony over the Scots-Irish, white ethnic groups like the Irish and Italians whom they tussle with for position.
Very interesting; these rivalries did not develop so much in the UK but they did in the US? Did pretty much the same apply with the descendants of the cavalier royalists instead of the Scots-Irish and the like (and what happened to them in the UK)?
Regional differences are also in place in the UK but have been subsumed into broader geographical and class differences e.g. northerners, southerners, Welsh, Scots, middle class, working class, aristocracy.