Category Archives: Politics

Operation Global Media Domination: do me a favour, wouldja?

Posted on by

TIASeriously, I need the help.

Ever since WordPress switched my URL from raincoaster.wordpress.com to raincoaster.com my hits have walked right off a cliff and straight down a deep well (momentary buoyance provided by Brian Atene and Even Stevphens notwithstanding). I don’t know why this is: have I suddenly become dull? Have I stopped posting? Hell to the no!

So I’m going to assume it has something to do with the links. When in doubt, blame the technology.

If those of you who’ve put me in your blogroll could switch it over to raincoaster.com instead, you’d be doing me a favour. And in the future, please use the current raincoaster.com URLs. No sense racing a dead horse, even if it outranks the live one.

While I do get a modest thrill of learning that I’ve gone up 900,000 places on Technorati since the start of this changeover, I still have another 100,000 places to go to regain my ground, and that means another 75 links, minimum. Sigh.

Back to looking for more damn Narnia porn.

an example of cultural dissonance

Posted on by

Dalit rights are human rightsThat title’s not going to rock the Top Blogs list any time soon, I know, but it’s the only title I can think to give this.

As you may or may not know, WordPress’s administration pages (the “backstage” of our blogs) feature many nifty ways to connect with other WordPress bloggers, my favorite being the Most Recently Updated list. You can see who posted it, and what the post is called, and if they have an avatar you can see that too, enabling me to avoid those who use CareBears or Angelina Jolie in her self-cutting phase. I click on these blogs quite a few fair times per day, being as I am both curious and competitive, and they have brought you delights such as our friend Samaha and the bicephalic brunet beauty of Michael J. Fox and George Stephanopoulos earlier today. Sigh. Where was I?

Right.

So tonight I clicked on one of the most recently updated blogs. The words “Social Boycott in Karnataka” don’t mean much to me; I know what a boycott is, but I didn’t know what a social boycott is…perhaps you all party while not-buying the thing you’re not-buying together? Sounded jolly to me.

And I had no idea where Karnataka is, except that it sounds like somewhere Carnacki the Magician would have been from, and we are highly way fond of Carnacki here at the ol’ raincoaster blog.

Well, let me just show you the introductory paragraph and let you connect the dots, if you can, between your doorstep and these ones.

Kadkol is a village in Basavannabagewadi Taluka in Bijapur District.

Basavannabagewadi is the birth place of famous saint Basavanna, who fought against the evil caste system in the medieval period.

It is a centre of pilgrimage for Lingayat caste. In the village of Kadkol, 400 families of Lingayats, 10 Muslim families, 50 Baijentries, 1 family of Dhangars, 3 families of Kauravis, 93 families of Holayas and 50 families of Madigas live. This is the caste configuration of the village Kadkol. In the entire Taluk of Basavannabagewadi, the untouchability is severely practiced in all its forms and colours. Many years the Scheduled caste people have been denied access to all the public places. However in the schools the untouchability is not practiced. Out of 93 families of Holayas, who belong to Scheduled Caste, 8 families have land holding and that is marginal (less than 2 acres). The land is rain fed. Out of this population of scheduled castes, there are 3 graduates. One of them is working as a Police Inspector and another one is working as a Bus conductor. The remaining graduate person is living in the village itself. The rest of the people belonging to the Scheduled Caste are agricultural landless laborers and 15 of them are bonded laborers. Out of these 15 bonded laborers, 7 are child labourers.

Dalit childrenThat’s right, people have leased out their children and in some cases they’ve grown to adulthood still under the yoke of these indentures.

Social boycott, it turns out, is nothing more than a brutal and potentially fatal ostracization of the so-called Untouchables, of the type which was outlawed in India in 1950.

The well these people had used has been lowered by drought to a level where it is unsafe to drink, so they began taking water from the public (goverment-installed) well. Other castes immediately began treating the public water as unclean, washing their livestock in it, using it for ahem, personal cleansing, etc. The Untouchables appealed to the authorities, and in return received a stern reminder of their proper place:

The scheduled caste villagers brought everything in the notice of District administration of Bijapur and also of sitting MLA, Shivaputra Desai of BJP. They could not stop the caste Hindus from committing these atrocities. The caste used to threatened the scheduled castes villagers by reminding them of a incidence of violence that occurred in 1946 in a village called “Sasanur”. In this village Sasanur, 50 scheduled castes belonging to Holayas were burnt alive. Even today there is no single Holaya in Sasanur village. Notably, Sasanur is just 20 kms away from Kadkol.

As seems usual in these cases, the law proceeds apace, the government proclaims, various lawyers and advocates on either side assert their assertions, and in the meantime nothing changes in the village. There’s a showdown of sorts scheduled for the 13th of November; I may check back then. But I’d be very optimistic to do so, I think, and lo, I am never very optimistic.

Prove me wrong, India.

why don’t Americans vote?

Posted on by

bizarre, yes, but I'm supporting the magic eight ball, myself

They really don’t, you know. More Iraqis vote than Americans, as a percentage of the population. Iran has a higher rate of participation in the democratic process. So do 128 other countries. So WTF is up with Americans?

Compare U.S. voting with foreign voting and it’s not a pretty sight. Americans are less apt to vote than are people in other old democracies, in new ones, in dangerous places, dirt poor ones, freezing cold ones, stinking hot ones and highly dysfunctional ones.

Even that theocratic “axis of evil,” Iran, has bragging rights over the United States in this regard. So does chaotic Iraq, where an estimated 70 percent of voters cast ballots in December parliamentary elections.

They invented this process. Have they moved on to something else, discarding representative democracy like an outdated (but still superior to the alternatives) Betamax player? If so, what can it be? Looking at the current model, I’d have to invent a new term; as the British have a Constitutional Monarchy, I’d have to say the Americans have a Constitutional Dictatorship. They also, apparently, have very little faith in the transparency and accuracy of the voting processes, although still more than the facts seem to justify.

vote, or liberty is history

The Pew Research Center says

They vote ­ but not always. Compared with Americans who regularly cast ballots, they are less engaged in politics. They are more likely to be bored with the political process and admit they often do not know enough about candidates to cast ballots. But they are crucial to Republican and Democratic fortunes in the Nov. 7 midterm elections.

They are the intermittent voters: Americans who are registered to vote but do not always make it to the polls. They differ significantly from those who vote regularly. For one thing, they’re less likely to be married than are regular voters. Intermittent voters also are more mistrustful of people compared with those who vote regularly. They also are less angry with government, though no less dissatisfied with President Bush than are regular voters, according to a survey conducted Sept. 21-Oct. 4 among 1,804 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in collaboration with the Associated Press.

The survey also finds large differences between Americans who are not registered to vote or vote only rarely, and intermittent or regular voters. The two groups at the bottom of the voting participation scale are much less likely than regular or intermittent voters to believe that voting will make much of a difference. They also are less likely to agree with the statement: “I feel guilty when I don’t get a chance to vote.”

vote now. decide the dramaAmericans won’t vote if they don’t think it will get counted, and they won’t vote if they don’t like the options, and they won’t vote if the election process itself is typified by negative advertising.

So what will get them out to vote?

Golly gee, that’s a toughie. Probably this rather motivational video from South Park will work. It’s a spiffy initiative to encourage those kiddies to get out, engage proactively with the democratic process and the society in which they thrive, and cast their votes for the candidate they feel best represents their interests in Washington. And it speaks directly to the things that concern kids most nowadays.

It’s called Vote or Die.

SETI for illegal aliens

Posted on by

No illegals, no burritos my frien'!Yes, it’s in Texas. The Lone Star State, often called (behind its back) the Lone Brain Cell State, has a new, cybersavvy, distributed, astroturfy initiative designed to protect ‘Merkins from the dreaded Brown Plague.

Crittercams for Mexicans.

As part of the Virtual Neighborhood Border Watch Program, the State of Texas has been testing video surveillance cameras in different environments along the 1240 miles of Texas/Mexico border using the internet to transmit the images. The last stage of the test is to stress the system by providing public access to numerous surveillance cameras.

Thank you for helping test this important capability.

To be part of the program you will need to have a user account. To get a user account click in the blue box on the right side of the screen.

NOTICE: You must turn off any pop-up blockers for this site. You may be asked to update your computer with software that allows you to view the video.
Microsoft Internet Explorer is required to utilize this web site. Firefox is not supported.

You could sorta see that last bit coming, couldn’t you?

They certainly try to give the site a down-home feel with the lingo: “Frequenty-asked questions” just for one example. Is this the proper place to mention that I’ve been trying for two days to view a video off Webcameron, and that none of my free players (or, for that matter, the Windows Media Player) will play the damn thing? The only options are all commercial ones: iTunes, Quicktime, and Realplayer (no, I’m not joking, godforsaken Realplayer!). No, I don’t know why my computer won’t play Quicktime, but I’ve re-installed it seven times and it simply will not work on this box. None of my four working video players will touch this file with a ten foot pole. So it looks like I was right: while Cameron may wish to hug hoodies, he has no wish to empower them. Unless, that is, he’s working on a Right to iPod platform: that would definitely get him elected!

Cheney’s got a gun 2: election day!

Posted on by

Elmer Cheney's got a gun!We all remember World Stupidity Award Winner Harry Whittington, the man who apologized for getting his face in the way of Dick Cheney’s bullet? Well, Cheney’s back, and this time it’s impersonal, as the AP reports that he will be locking and loading and setting out to bag him some quarry on November 8, 2006.

Dick Cheney will be packing heat on election day.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Vice President Dick Cheney will spend Election Day on his first hunting trip since he accidentally shot a companion last February while aiming at a covey of quail on a private Texas ranch.

Hey, shot happens!