Ravi S. Iyer: Worldly

Recently a mail correspondent passed me this article link, Seeds of Doubt - An activist’s controversial crusade against genetically modified crops, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/seeds-of-doubt . The article is a longish one and is about Vandana Shiva's, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva , crusade against GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms)/GM crops/food. I had not really looked at this topic, though I used to browse through some mainstream media articles on it. I had not known about Vandana Shiva and how famous she is as an anti-GMO activist throughout the world. The mail from the correspondent acted as a trigger for me to do some reading/viewing up on the topic. I thought of sharing my views after this small study. My initial view prior to the small study was as follows: In the wake of India's recent WTO issues, I have been doing some very limited reading/viewing on how global/regional trade agreements impact small farmers worldwide. There is a ...

Richard Attenborough, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Attenborough , recently passed away. His greatest impact on my life was his movie, Gandhi, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi_(film) . If I recall correclty, I saw it in the early 1980s when I was studying B.Sc. in Ruia College, Mumbai, in the famous Mumbai theater, Regal, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regal_Cinema . I think I had already read Gandhi's My experiments with Truth, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_My_Experiments_with_Truth , and so I had some exposure to his life till the 1920s besides what the school history books taught us. My knowledge of India's freedom struggle with the British was primarily based on what was taught in the formal education system along with whatever impressions I had gathered from my readings of a couple of books somewhat related to it, including Nehru's Discovery of India, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_of_India . But I had not seen such a visual depiction...

After the social unrest that followed the recent Ferguson police shooting incident (for info. on it see my post: Ferguson, USA: Trial by Social Media & Regular Media in this Information Age ), the nearby St. Louis city police demonstrated how they had learned social media savvy in their handling of another unfortunate police shooting incident. Here is a report of the St. Louis, USA incident: "Police release video of fatal Kajieme Powell shooting in St. Louis", http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/21/police-release-video-of-kajieme-powell-shooting-in-st-louis . I saw the video and it was very clear to me and, I think to most people who have seen/will see the video, that Mr. Powell did not co-operate with police officers even when they had their guns drawn on him. Instead he asked them to shoot him!!! Mr. Powell seems to have lost it and perhaps had a death wish. Now, some, including me, may wonder whether so many shots (12 according to the article) were needed to...

Last updated on 19th August 2014 As I have been in the Information Technology field from the mid-80s I have heard the term, "Information Age", being bandied about many times over the past decades. However, I think the term has become a really valid term in recent years. The events unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, USA show the power of social media with regular TV and print media (including their websites) playing catch-up but also doing the vital function of verification prior to airing/printing, to influence people and events. The government/police sources are simply not trusted by people at large, unless they are backed with solid evidence like video clips which the public can easily see and verify! Social media especially when backed with video clips has become an awesome force to reckon with. Wikipedia already has five accounts of what happened in the altercation between the police officer and Michael Brown!!! Here's the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...

Yesterday I came across this Dec. 2012 youtube video, PHILLY FANS SHOOTING AT CHICAGO BULLS FANS ON TRAIN !!!, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6GUpB5Izjw , 2 min. 25 secs. This is a video which seems to have been put up by Philadelphia, USA police. At around 1 min. 10 secs in the video you see two men get down from the subway train onto the platform. One of them then turns around takes out a small hand-gun/pistol and fires two shots into the open subway train compartment, turns around and walks away! The video description states the following: "On December 12, 2012, at 10:39pm, the complainants, a 36 year-old male and a 30 year-old male entered the westbound Septa El train at 15th and Market Streets. While on the train, an argument erupted amongst several passengers. When the train stopped at the 46th and Market Street, the suspects exited the train onto the platform. Suspect #1 then pointed a handgun in the direction of one of the complainants and fired one shot into the train ...

Ferguson, Missouri, USA, is in the news nowadays. I did some reading up and viewing up on it. Here is one article from an Indian American that I could relate to, "Ferguson shooting: An Indian American mother worries for her son", http://www.firstpost.com/world/ferguson-shooting-an-indian-american-mother-worries-for-her-son-1664071.html . And then I viewed most of a talk by the USA black rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton in Ferguson, LIVE: Al Sharpton joins parents of Michael Brown in rousing memorial service, 1 hr, 5 min. [Rev. Sharpton starts his talk around 35 min into the video.]. Here is an interesting text article about Sharpton's efforts, http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/sharpton-seeks-justice-missouri-shooting-article-1.1901597 I had read a little about the Eric Garner incident but the above article mentioned a video capturing the incident. And so I browsed youtube for it and viewed this one, Eric Garner Chokehold Police Brutality VIDEO : Black Man Killed By...

I saw the entire Independence day 2014 PM speech (in Hindi) on youtube here: PM Narendra Modi's Independence Day Speech at Red Fort, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUgECHx898M , 1hr 08 min. It is quite an inspiring speech and so, if you can spare the time and understand Hindi, you may want to view it. Here's the full text (Hindi translated to English) on PM Narendra Modi's website, http://www.narendramodi.in/text-of-pms-speech-at-red-fort/ Some extracts and comments (I have skipped parts that I recalled that he had mentioned in his first Parliamentary speech; Here's my post on some parts of that speech: https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2014/06/it-and-education-related-excerpts-from.html ): I am present amidst you not as the Prime Minister, but as the Prime Servant. [Ravi: In Hindi, he said Pradhaan Sevak.] The freedom struggle was fought for so many years, so many generations laid down their lives, innumerable people sacrificed their lives and youth, spent the...

A century has passed since the first of the two most horrible "industrial-scale" world wars started, which also sowed the seeds for World War II starting just over two decades after World War I ended. The article, Origins of World War I: Why Europe went to war, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-06-28/origins-of-world-war-i/5554108 , shows how the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was only the trigger which lit the combustible colonialist power struggle in Europe. The article states that the key issue was that Germany wanted a market for its export and the colonial powers then who ruled over most of the colonies in the world then - Britain, France and Russia - blocked Germany from access to its colonies! So the only way out for Germany was war! Not an ordinary war but an "industrial scale" war that devastated Europe and many other parts of the world in prolonged savagery that perhaps is unmatched in the history of the world. I think the article is worth studying...

A few days ago I read an intriguing article in The Hindu, The battle of the regimes, http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-battle-of-the-regimes/article6285330.ece . While the article touches various points what I would like to focus on is the reference to world regime changes in the article. Here's a small relevant extract from the article: On July 26, for example, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary gave a morbidly fascinating speech in which he argued that liberal capitalism’s day is done. The 2008 financial crisis revealed that decentralised liberal democracy leads to inequality, oligarchy, corruption and moral decline. When individuals are given maximum freedom, the strong end up stepping on the weak. --- end extract --- I could not recall hearing about Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary earlier (this reflects my limited reading rather than the Hungarian PM's fame). I did some browsing and got a youtube video of this speech with subtitles in Eng...

Last updated on August 10th 2014 A few days ago I finished reading Stress Test, http://www.amazon.com/Stress-Test-Reflections-Financial-Crises/dp/0804121184 , by Timothy Geithner, former US Treasury Secretary, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Geithner . It is a very detailed book and as there are many reviews of it, including one from a Nobel Prize winning economist, I will not spend time on writing a (casual book reader) review of it. Instead I will just say that it comes across as a seemingly very honest book about his views and role, as well as that of some other key players, in combating the 2007-08 financial crisis, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%9308 , and putting in measures aimed at preventing/controlling some of the problems of that financial crisis from recurring. I found it to be a very educative book on the global financial crisis and how the topmost guys in the US financial and government world battled to control it. A few days ago th...