Danny Boyle, the Director of Slumdog Millionaire the Oscar winning dump on India, is reported to be "tired" of dealing with the financial "demands" of the families of the two slum kids whose acting made his movie a hit.
Boyle paid the kids a pittance for their heavyweight roles purely because they lived in a slum. He was shamed by pre-Oscar publicity into announcing that he intended to set up a Trust for their education.
Action on the Trust was slow and it took months of complaints by the kids (who continued to live in the Mumbai slum in which the casting people found them), to get any action. Finally about a year after the movie raked in its multi-millions they were moved to cheap apartments appropriate for the poor.
The kids were also admitted to school, and "over 70 per cent attendance" was made a condition for them to continue receiving the $110 monthly stipend the Trust agreed to pay each. Evidently that condition has not been met, and now there is a publicized threat to stop making the payments.
The kids have also been promised a lump sum when they complete school, but no one knows how much. The amount in the Trust is also a secret. Why exactly no one has bothered to explain.
Meanwhile, the boy has lost his father to tuberculosis, and the girl has been embarrassed by a British reporter's stupid sting operation: he rang up her father posing as a rich Arab Sheikh who wanted to adopt her. The father was reported to have agreed to "sell" her to the Sheikh. It later turned out the reporter had spoken to someone other than the father.
If anyone has a right to be "tired" of the way things have gone it's the kids.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
How to flip the Taliban
Foreign Affairs, the magazine of the influential Council on Foreign Relations in New York, has just circulated an article titled "Know thine enemy: why the Taliban cannot be flipped."
It is by Barbara Elias, who directs the Afghanistan, Pakistan and Taliban Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. She argues that the "main Taliban leaders will never abandon al-Qaeda " because they are too invested in their Islamic identity and that more moderate leaders have no chance of replacing the hard core Islamists because "Pakistani intelligence services will not support governments in the tribal areas or in Afghanistan that do not help it in its campaign against India."
It sounds credible enough until one stops to consider that in the entire article she never once mentions the drug trade out of Afghanistan.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda cannot be taken seriously as Islamic, for they are both up to their necks in the entirely un-Islamic drug trade, Also, they have done more damage to Muslims globally than America could ever do. It is quite clear that the drug trade is what they are about, and profit their only motive; it is the only thing that holds them together.
The real reaaon the Taliban cannot be “flipped” is that the United States cannot hope to bribe them more than what they get from exporting opium and heroin.
The only chance of winning the war against the Taliban-Al Qaeda combination is to cut off their income from drugs – and that means action against the money launderers in developed countries, especially Britain, which provides the nexus of institutional intelligence, money and elite criminality that makes illicit trafficking possible
It is by Barbara Elias, who directs the Afghanistan, Pakistan and Taliban Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. She argues that the "main Taliban leaders will never abandon al-Qaeda " because they are too invested in their Islamic identity and that more moderate leaders have no chance of replacing the hard core Islamists because "Pakistani intelligence services will not support governments in the tribal areas or in Afghanistan that do not help it in its campaign against India."
It sounds credible enough until one stops to consider that in the entire article she never once mentions the drug trade out of Afghanistan.
The Taliban and Al Qaeda cannot be taken seriously as Islamic, for they are both up to their necks in the entirely un-Islamic drug trade, Also, they have done more damage to Muslims globally than America could ever do. It is quite clear that the drug trade is what they are about, and profit their only motive; it is the only thing that holds them together.
The real reaaon the Taliban cannot be “flipped” is that the United States cannot hope to bribe them more than what they get from exporting opium and heroin.
The only chance of winning the war against the Taliban-Al Qaeda combination is to cut off their income from drugs – and that means action against the money launderers in developed countries, especially Britain, which provides the nexus of institutional intelligence, money and elite criminality that makes illicit trafficking possible
Shobaa De - What a "Gal!"
Just finished reading Superstar India (Penguin 2008) by Shobaa De. It was written to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Indian independence, but is an all round dump on the country. Consider this near gibberish:
“We want foreigners (read Westerners) to like us ... admire us. When we are disappointed with our present (oh please, forget all that rah-rah India Shining rubbish. It’s more like India Bullshitting), we fall back on the past.
“A very distant past.
“When all else fails we pull out Gandhi. The Mahatma has saved India’s ass in more ways than one. If he only knew how frequently and arbitrarily we use the Gandhi trick to impress outsiders He is our trump card in any argument. We invoke his name when no other name rings a bell.
“If even that fails to impress, we begin boasting about our amazing ‘culture’ (our civilization is 5000 years old we tell awestruck Americans). We play the Heritage card as well when it suits us. Especially in the presence of ignorant, semi-educated visitors who don’t know better.”
The “culture blanket” she writes, “covers up our ugliest flaws and wounds. Ignorance breeds insouciance as we glibly brag away, not stopping to examine the half-baked theories being trotted out in a sad attempt to ‘explain’ social blights like dowry, casteism, sati...”
After a few more lines of such nonsense she gets to Gandhi again: “If you can cleverly combine a ‘Gandhi’ (to rhyme with ‘randy’) story, that’s India in a nutshell. By the way, Paris has four Indian restaurants with names ranging from Gandhi to Gandhiji”
When a Yemeni taxi driver tells her she is lucky to live in a country that had Gandhi as leader her “heart did a somersault. How bizarre this conversation sounded ... everything was strange. The setting, the context, the man behind the wheel.”
Later in the book she notes that Gandhi has become newly popular and has this to say: “If Gandhi is being positioned as ‘Daddy Cool’ and being transformed into a ‘Youth Icon’ ... there must be a valid reason. In India we are seriously short of heroes. We try and create them artificially in order to fill the empty slot. Gandhi is perfect for that. Besides he is a caricaturist’s delight.”
Surely, I said to myself, she must know Gandhi is as genuine a hero as you can get, but evidently not! She advises Indians not to take umbrage at the commercial use of Gandhi’s image: “What’s the point of achieving an iconic position if it can’t be flogged?”
De dismisses “traditional Indian values” as “bogus;” “what exactly are these mysterious ‘values’?” she asks, and “how different are they from the world’s?”
Indians make too much of sacrifice she writes: “Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!” ... ‘I sacrifice therefore I am an Indian’ could well be our motto. And it impresses nobody.” Indian feelings of “superiority comes from some ancient notion about our great and good civilization.”
Her view of the country is grim indeed. “We believe we are essentially calm, spiritual, evolved, superior, patient and wise. But none of these is true.” She knows of no other country where people “rush to strip dead bodies of whatever there is – ornaments, cash, anything of even the smallest value, sometimes before the body is cold.”
She’s “heard of villagers scampering to mutilate bodies of air crash victims before the arrival of fire brigades, often tearing earrings and rings of a person who may still be alive, or chopping off hands to get to the gold bangles.” (That “often” really got to me; makes it sound as if air crashes are a matter of routine.)
To see “scenes of rioting in any corner of the country,” with people turning into “blood-thirsty animals” she declares that “all you have to do is switch on your television set at prime time any day, every day.”
We can see mobs burning “cars, shops and residences” as they are overcome by an “inexplicable madness” and “rush from locality to locality burning and killing strangers without qualm.”
Watching The Last King of Scotland the Hollywood film about Idi Amin’s murderous tryranny in Uganda, she “felt numb just connecting with the mirror images. It could’ve been a portrait of any politician in India.” At one point in the film “I forced myself to keep watching, telling myself, ‘it’s about Idi Amin and Uganda – don’t take it so personally.”
It is not till page 427 of the 456 page book that she thinks to mention India’s democratic system as a “triumph;” and that, without any effort to square it with her moaning about India being the mirror image of Amin’s Uganda!
What a “gal” as she would say.
It is one of the most preening, egotistical, ignorant books I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.
“We want foreigners (read Westerners) to like us ... admire us. When we are disappointed with our present (oh please, forget all that rah-rah India Shining rubbish. It’s more like India Bullshitting), we fall back on the past.
“A very distant past.
“When all else fails we pull out Gandhi. The Mahatma has saved India’s ass in more ways than one. If he only knew how frequently and arbitrarily we use the Gandhi trick to impress outsiders He is our trump card in any argument. We invoke his name when no other name rings a bell.
“If even that fails to impress, we begin boasting about our amazing ‘culture’ (our civilization is 5000 years old we tell awestruck Americans). We play the Heritage card as well when it suits us. Especially in the presence of ignorant, semi-educated visitors who don’t know better.”
The “culture blanket” she writes, “covers up our ugliest flaws and wounds. Ignorance breeds insouciance as we glibly brag away, not stopping to examine the half-baked theories being trotted out in a sad attempt to ‘explain’ social blights like dowry, casteism, sati...”
After a few more lines of such nonsense she gets to Gandhi again: “If you can cleverly combine a ‘Gandhi’ (to rhyme with ‘randy’) story, that’s India in a nutshell. By the way, Paris has four Indian restaurants with names ranging from Gandhi to Gandhiji”
When a Yemeni taxi driver tells her she is lucky to live in a country that had Gandhi as leader her “heart did a somersault. How bizarre this conversation sounded ... everything was strange. The setting, the context, the man behind the wheel.”
Later in the book she notes that Gandhi has become newly popular and has this to say: “If Gandhi is being positioned as ‘Daddy Cool’ and being transformed into a ‘Youth Icon’ ... there must be a valid reason. In India we are seriously short of heroes. We try and create them artificially in order to fill the empty slot. Gandhi is perfect for that. Besides he is a caricaturist’s delight.”
Surely, I said to myself, she must know Gandhi is as genuine a hero as you can get, but evidently not! She advises Indians not to take umbrage at the commercial use of Gandhi’s image: “What’s the point of achieving an iconic position if it can’t be flogged?”
De dismisses “traditional Indian values” as “bogus;” “what exactly are these mysterious ‘values’?” she asks, and “how different are they from the world’s?”
Indians make too much of sacrifice she writes: “Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!” ... ‘I sacrifice therefore I am an Indian’ could well be our motto. And it impresses nobody.” Indian feelings of “superiority comes from some ancient notion about our great and good civilization.”
Her view of the country is grim indeed. “We believe we are essentially calm, spiritual, evolved, superior, patient and wise. But none of these is true.” She knows of no other country where people “rush to strip dead bodies of whatever there is – ornaments, cash, anything of even the smallest value, sometimes before the body is cold.”
She’s “heard of villagers scampering to mutilate bodies of air crash victims before the arrival of fire brigades, often tearing earrings and rings of a person who may still be alive, or chopping off hands to get to the gold bangles.” (That “often” really got to me; makes it sound as if air crashes are a matter of routine.)
To see “scenes of rioting in any corner of the country,” with people turning into “blood-thirsty animals” she declares that “all you have to do is switch on your television set at prime time any day, every day.”
We can see mobs burning “cars, shops and residences” as they are overcome by an “inexplicable madness” and “rush from locality to locality burning and killing strangers without qualm.”
Watching The Last King of Scotland the Hollywood film about Idi Amin’s murderous tryranny in Uganda, she “felt numb just connecting with the mirror images. It could’ve been a portrait of any politician in India.” At one point in the film “I forced myself to keep watching, telling myself, ‘it’s about Idi Amin and Uganda – don’t take it so personally.”
It is not till page 427 of the 456 page book that she thinks to mention India’s democratic system as a “triumph;” and that, without any effort to square it with her moaning about India being the mirror image of Amin’s Uganda!
What a “gal” as she would say.
It is one of the most preening, egotistical, ignorant books I’ve ever had the misfortune to read.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Catching Two Birds With a Stone
Whoever writes Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s speeches is going to need therapy after his/her assignment is over. The speeches Ban delivers give every indication of – how shall I put this delicately – of being Asianized.
Take the speech Ban delivered to the University Presidents’ Forum on Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Asia and Africa, at Korea University in Seoul, on 17 August. It was titled “We can catch two birds – climate change and economic growth – with one stone.”
The text was interesting too.
“Asia’s scholars should be taking their rightful place under a larger sun” the Secretary-General said, adding: “And to the presidents of Africa’s great universities, I would say the same.”
“Your voices should be heard. Your influence should be felt, far and wide. You are a force for social, economic and political advancement -- a force for change -- at home and within our world community at large.”
“Let me begin by telling you a bit about how I see the world and its challenges.
“Then I would like to invite your support and ask for your help in dealing with them, first as individuals, as opinion-makers and influencers, and second as Asians and Africans.
“Because I see this as your moment.
“We meet at a critical time -- a moment of profound challenge and change.
“I often describe this as the age of multiple crises. Food. Fuel. Flu. Financial.
“Each is something not seen in years, even generations. But now they are hitting all at once.
“These crises are compounded by others of greater human dimension and consequence.”
As someone who drafted statements for Kurt Waldheim I feel the speech-writer’s pain.
Take the speech Ban delivered to the University Presidents’ Forum on Climate Change and Sustainable Development in Asia and Africa, at Korea University in Seoul, on 17 August. It was titled “We can catch two birds – climate change and economic growth – with one stone.”
The text was interesting too.
“Asia’s scholars should be taking their rightful place under a larger sun” the Secretary-General said, adding: “And to the presidents of Africa’s great universities, I would say the same.”
“Your voices should be heard. Your influence should be felt, far and wide. You are a force for social, economic and political advancement -- a force for change -- at home and within our world community at large.”
“Let me begin by telling you a bit about how I see the world and its challenges.
“Then I would like to invite your support and ask for your help in dealing with them, first as individuals, as opinion-makers and influencers, and second as Asians and Africans.
“Because I see this as your moment.
“We meet at a critical time -- a moment of profound challenge and change.
“I often describe this as the age of multiple crises. Food. Fuel. Flu. Financial.
“Each is something not seen in years, even generations. But now they are hitting all at once.
“These crises are compounded by others of greater human dimension and consequence.”
As someone who drafted statements for Kurt Waldheim I feel the speech-writer’s pain.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Coming War
The New York Times has a front page story saying that President Obama is considering expanding the "American covert war in Pakistan" from the "unruly tribal areas" to Baluchistan, "where top Taliban leaders are orchestrating attacks into southern Afghanistan."
I'm sure a diligent researcher can find an exact analogy to that story in the Vietnam era: President Kennedy/Nixon/Johnson considering expanding the war to get at an elusive enemy.
For India, the story is the clearest warning yet that a generalized war is coming. If we want to avoid it, we'd better start paying attention to some ground realities.
The "Taliban" in Pakistan exists only with the help of the faction of the country's power structure that is in cahoots with Afghan drug traffickers. That is to say they have very poweful links to the part of the British Establishment that has traditionally been enaged with drug trafficking (they started the business back in the 19th century and merely took it underground at the beginning of the 20th century).
The British control Helmand province, the main opium producing area of Afghanistan. They laid claim to it as soon as the NATO force was introduced into the country after the 2001 invasion. In that position, they have been key to the amazing capacity of the Taliban to sustain fearsome losses and keep coming back. Unless they are removed from that province, and preferably from Afghanistan altogether, the Taliban cannot be controlled.
Neither India nor the United States can be shy of raising this issue publicly. Britain is angling to humble both countries, as it feels it was itself humbled after the end of Empire. Speaking out on this issue might be the cheapest option to head off the war that that is otherwise certainly coming.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Clinching Evidence of Slumdog Malice
Here's the clincher that Slumdog Millionaire deliberately sets out to be poverty porn. The scene in which the kid dives into a pool of shit is not in the original book by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup. it was invented for the film by the Brits who directed the movie and wrote its script.
In fact, the kid's early childhood is not spent in Mumbai at all but in a Delhi orphanage run by an English Catholic priest.
Some other interesting departures from the Indian story-line that indicates prime facie malice.
The children's "Muslim" mother is not killed by "Hindus" in a "communal riot." Her religion is unknown, and she abandons the newborn at a church.
Torturing Ram Mohammad Thomas (the name of the protagonist in the book), is not the idea of
the Indian talk-show host. The suggestion that the boy cheated comes first from an American representative of the game show, and that mainly because the Russian who owns the franchise does not have the prize money. (In real life the franchise owner is British, and he bankrolled the movie.)
The heart-rending scene of the three abandoned children in the pouring rain is also not in the book. In Swarup's story the hero and heroine do not meet till they are teenagers, and then they're not living in a slum but in a tenement.
The book does not have any of the gratuitous slanders laid on India in the film (eg: "This is the heart of the new India" says the gangster Salim surveying the high-rises that have replaced the slum of his boyhood; "and I am at its heart").
In fact, the kid's early childhood is not spent in Mumbai at all but in a Delhi orphanage run by an English Catholic priest.
Some other interesting departures from the Indian story-line that indicates prime facie malice.
The children's "Muslim" mother is not killed by "Hindus" in a "communal riot." Her religion is unknown, and she abandons the newborn at a church.
Torturing Ram Mohammad Thomas (the name of the protagonist in the book), is not the idea of
the Indian talk-show host. The suggestion that the boy cheated comes first from an American representative of the game show, and that mainly because the Russian who owns the franchise does not have the prize money. (In real life the franchise owner is British, and he bankrolled the movie.)
The heart-rending scene of the three abandoned children in the pouring rain is also not in the book. In Swarup's story the hero and heroine do not meet till they are teenagers, and then they're not living in a slum but in a tenement.
The book does not have any of the gratuitous slanders laid on India in the film (eg: "This is the heart of the new India" says the gangster Salim surveying the high-rises that have replaced the slum of his boyhood; "and I am at its heart").
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
3 Reasons to Boo Slumdog at the Oscars
I hope Slumdog Millionaire gets booed at the Oscar ceremonies on 22 February. Here are three reasons why.
REASON 1
The movie is poverty porn, titillating affluent audiences with a bizarrely unrealistic presentation of the lives of the poor. The so-called "feel-good" element of the young hero winning out at the end is like dabbing on icing on a piece of shit (to use the movie's own idiom) and declaring it cake
REASON 2
The British producers of the movie have been overtly exploitative of the poor children they hired. The girl in the role of the young heroine was paid $500; the boy who takes the memorable dive into a pool of shit got $1500. The explanation for these miserable wages? "It's far more than adults in their neighborhood would make in an entire year." Sounds like something Mr. Krup might have said about slave labor his company used in Nazi concentration camps.
REASON 3
The movie is anti-Indian propaganda of a style the British perfected during a century of colonial rule to convince the world that the country needed civilizing European supervision. During the six+ decades of Indian independence the propaganda has continued unabated. As India surmounted unbelievable odds to maintain an open and free democracy, as it doubled life expectancy and halved the share of the population living in the worst poverty, the British have done everything possible to see that the world's view of the country remained dark.
Just one example of how this has been done: each of the four "Man Booker" prizes for literary excellence given to Indian authors -- an award that raises its recipients to global prominence -- has gone to deracinated individuals whose perspectives have been quintessentially British. Salman Rushdie (now "Sir"Salman), presented India as a huge and dissipated freak-show in Midnight's Children. Arundhati Roy set her affecting love story of characters disempowered by gender and caste in Kerala, the one part of India where advances on both fronts have been revolutionary. Kiran Desai's Remembrance of Loss told of post-colonial angst in the Darjeeling hills; every single character in it comes to a sad and dispiriting end. Arun Adiga's The White Tiger is an open and unmitigated assault on India's hard-earned image as a country undergoing rapid economic and social progress.
Slumdog continues that assault. Boo it.
REASON 1
The movie is poverty porn, titillating affluent audiences with a bizarrely unrealistic presentation of the lives of the poor. The so-called "feel-good" element of the young hero winning out at the end is like dabbing on icing on a piece of shit (to use the movie's own idiom) and declaring it cake
REASON 2
The British producers of the movie have been overtly exploitative of the poor children they hired. The girl in the role of the young heroine was paid $500; the boy who takes the memorable dive into a pool of shit got $1500. The explanation for these miserable wages? "It's far more than adults in their neighborhood would make in an entire year." Sounds like something Mr. Krup might have said about slave labor his company used in Nazi concentration camps.
REASON 3
The movie is anti-Indian propaganda of a style the British perfected during a century of colonial rule to convince the world that the country needed civilizing European supervision. During the six+ decades of Indian independence the propaganda has continued unabated. As India surmounted unbelievable odds to maintain an open and free democracy, as it doubled life expectancy and halved the share of the population living in the worst poverty, the British have done everything possible to see that the world's view of the country remained dark.
Just one example of how this has been done: each of the four "Man Booker" prizes for literary excellence given to Indian authors -- an award that raises its recipients to global prominence -- has gone to deracinated individuals whose perspectives have been quintessentially British. Salman Rushdie (now "Sir"Salman), presented India as a huge and dissipated freak-show in Midnight's Children. Arundhati Roy set her affecting love story of characters disempowered by gender and caste in Kerala, the one part of India where advances on both fronts have been revolutionary. Kiran Desai's Remembrance of Loss told of post-colonial angst in the Darjeeling hills; every single character in it comes to a sad and dispiriting end. Arun Adiga's The White Tiger is an open and unmitigated assault on India's hard-earned image as a country undergoing rapid economic and social progress.
Slumdog continues that assault. Boo it.
