Comments by "M Shastri" (@libshastra) on "DW News" channel.

  1. Indian History textbooks excludes a LOT of regional cultures and leaders (like Vijayanagara empire, Maratha confederacy, Cholas etc.) to simply highlight the greatness of Mughals and Nehru-Gandhi. It is a systematic assault on regional history and this is the legacy the previous dispensation and their entrenched intellectuals left us. Many of us learnt very little history from our textbooks but learned a lot through field visits and local folk lore. It creates a lot of cognitive dissonance when you see ruins of a culture but there's no mention of that culture or the events that happened in your history textbooks. These rewrites are in a positive direction, corrects a lot of wrong and as much as it reduces the significance of the Mughal, it also downplays a lot of Mughal atrocities and massacres. But DW thinks these changes are bad because some posh de-rascinated Cambridge educated Delhite thinks otherwise. Yogendra Yadav and his cotorie erased a lot of local regional history.
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  2. The Wire, Newslaundry journalists are now moving to DW. Expect the coverage to be permanently biased and skewed.
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  3. DW conveniently leaves out the policies and programs in place to help India grow. Infra boom - skipped New education Policy - not mentioned Labor law reforms - not mentioned Farm laws - they didn't even mention protests or support from western activists/govts to repeal it Women specific Corporate Schemes (Govt policy) - not mentioned. This is what balanced coverage looks like.
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  4. The current Health Minister was appointed during the 2nd wave. He is awesome, he fixed the vaccine procurement and distribution, testing and genome sequencing. He beat the Govt timelines to get India vaccinated. That's the thing about Modi Govt, they have erred but they have also rapidly course corrected.
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  5. The proposed Electricity Bill is supposed to mandate states to buy renewable energy. The issue in India is that it run it's coal power plants really poorly (wastes about close to 50% of it's generated power away) - Most of them are run by State Govts (Private players don't waste as much). Solar is getting a lot of traction in rural India. Some farmers have used it as an alternative revenue stream (some engage in fishery below the panels). So ya, improvements are happening. Just hope it picks up pace.
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  6. The money taken away from UNRWA can be better utilized in UN anti Malaria program. Saves more lives and far less corrupt.
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  7. I thank EU for providing India with more business opportunities. Russian diamonds will be bought from the Diamind Bourse at Western India just like Russian Diesel 🥲
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  8. There's been a lot of diplomatic shuttles going on in Delhi in the past two weeks. Austria, China, EU foreign Secretary, UK Foreign Secretary, Japanese PM and now Russian FM. Most of them avoided to fumble except Liz Truss, the UK Foreign Secretary. Man she's a walking disaster. During a joint press conference (summit) with External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, she mentioned UK has "historical" responsibilities with Ukraine since 1994. The crowd in Delhi was not pleased at all. Talking about "historical" responsibilities with Ukraine in a former colony whose wealth was raided for 2 centuries was pretty tone deaf and left a bad taste. That did not win any Indian hearts. Edit: I wrote ties but the phrase Truss used was historical responsibilities. That's even more tone deaf.
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  9. Of course there’s Ashok Swain. That guy just can’t leave us alone.
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  10. Indian history textbook is very Mughal centric. Imagine living in Maharashtra, learning about Mughals but nothing about Maratha confederacy - (who participated in Napoleonic wars, fought with the French against the Brits). 100 years and 4 wars of history simply wiped.
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  11.  @kishinchhabria  CBSE had one para at best. One year of Shivaji from State.
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  12. Europeans need to understand Asia better. When Jaishankar said, China and India predates Ukraine, he was talking about China's claim and aggression. China is willing to break the rules based order and they did when they broke their own agreements and killed Indian troops.
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  13. More power to you. May you gain glory through victory
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  14.  @PresidentEvil  Nukes did not come at the expense of the Indian Economy. Indian economy grew significantly despite sanctions that followed nuclear tests.
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  15. And India is spending on buses. The number of new buses and new and renovated bus terminals is insane.
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  16. Western countries should compensate Asian countries for the stigma it gave when they forced Drug regulations down its throat. Thanks Reagan, we are still living with your stigma
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  17. Rahul Gandhi still hasn’t apologized for his remarks. Calling an entire caste as a bunch of thieves is akin to racism. Besides his return is a great boon to Modi. RaGa’s speeches turns long time supporters of his party into BJP supporters.
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  18.  @SeeLasSee  For India nukes were a necessity and not a domination strategy. For Pakistani establishment, nukes are a battefield domination strategy. India did not sacrifice it's economy to pursue nukes and worked on reducing it's foreign aid inflows.
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  19. This entire hearing for same sex marriage, rubs me the wrong way. I am for same sex marriage but not in the manner it is being conducted. India's court system has collapsed, it is dysfunction and the scale of dysfunction is huge. For eg: there are 73,000 criminal cases waiting for a trial date for more than 30 years (lots with death penalty, life imprisonment terms). The court has essentially ignored pending cases and made a choose to pursue legacy instead. It is not expanding rights rather it is engaging in monkey balancing and compensating for it's sheer incompetence.
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  20. It starts with cleaning your mind.
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  21. Aaah yes, we are back to 'human rights' since Russia oil media campaign against India backfired badly against European.
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  22. Soft loans, good consulting and machinery can help the Global South greatly and stem the proliferation of Chinese BRI projects. For eg in India: German loans and machinery (TBMs) have helped build Transit projects in India in cities like Pune and Nagpur. Alstom manufactures Metro coaches in India and exports them thanks to a French loan. Italian tech helped build signalling systems have helped throughput on many clogged railway lines. Austrian consultants have helped navigate tunnelling issues. Dutch expertise on coastal development has helped Mumbai decongest its roads and build new parks. That’s the example of what Europe can do and it can do a lot more. $300 billion can be pretty well spent.
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  23. You don’t need content moderation when DW can provide you with all the liberal biases of the world directly to you. Just look at their selection of guests - every one of them is aligned with extreme liberal (ultra progressive) positions. They could try and bring someone less ideological.
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  24. And you assume they don’t use beyond visual range missiles
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  25.  @dibqip  IMO, she could have used commitments rather than "historical" ties. So the atrocities of the British Raj are still living memory for a lot of Indians. Indians perceive that the UK (by extension the West because UK is seen as part of it) lectures India about it's foreign policy (and domestic issues) and still treats India as a colony rather than an independent country. UK's history and lack of acknowledgment doesn't help remove that perception. A lot of atrocities committed during the Raj are still living memories - survivors of the Bengal famine are living grandparents of the aspirationa generation of young Indians. The horrors of the Partition of India are still talked about in the homes of Indians. On the other hand UK keeps boasting that it gifted railways and democracy - it is a disingenuous statement. Her statement about "historical" responsibilities just cements that perception. Her comment was pretty tone deaf given the current environment where more Indians (also citizens of former colonies) are asking for recognition, reconciliation and symbolic reparations for the colonial era.
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  26.  @dynamitebsb4520  UK has a very long way to go. It's not just about GDPs. It's the lack of acknowledgment. And it's not just about India, it's about UK's relationship with it's former colonies. Like I said, the perception of being treated as a colony still exists.
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  27. They are called ASHA workers. They have basic medical training and are the Frontline public health workers of India. They are extremely hard working people and some of them face enormous stigma from their own community. Sadly, India's decades of neglect of healthcare means they are paid pittance for the amount of work they do.
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  28. Of course there’s Ashok Swain. That guy just can’t leave us alone.
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  29. Germany's role in Indo Pacific is similar to it's role in Ukraine where Germany was fattening Russian coffers. In other words, Germany will feed China, make it rich and when a war comes Germany will blame the rest of the world for the war. Der Spiegel will publish a racist cartoon potraying Asians as barbaric tribes, DW will run media blitz dehumanizing the rest of world, EU FM will talk about the "the West" is a garden and look at the "Asian Jungle".
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  30. TBH, Concerts are just a den of sexual encounters. So none of this is surprising.
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  31. Nothing is wrong with Same sex marriage. Everything is wrong with the way the court is going about it. It has sped up SSM petition while it has ignored 70,000+ criminal cases that are waiting for a date with the court for 30+ years.
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  32.  @2Uahoj  which means her pov holds more credibility.
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  33. We welcome it. Regional history was erased from our textbooks and now it's back. It's not just about Mughals anymore.
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  34.  @231rosslyn it is still very anti democratic. And Germany has the gall to lecture others about democracy.
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  35. Let's not forget the Industrial Revolution was funded by Colonialism and extensive resource extraction.
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  36. Selection process of a "Democratic" leader just started in Pk
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  37. Where are you going to get the Lithium mined and refined from? China.
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  38. It's not even for domestic consumption. It's for our strategic oil reserves.
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  39.  @krto7663  misplaced priorities. The pace at which the court is pursuing Same Sex Marriage is offputting. 2 years for a petition regarding civil union takes precedent over a criminal case that's been waiting for 30 years for a trial date. CJI is pursuing legacy rather than improving the court's competence.
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  40. @Peter Lang criminal cases. Like I said 70,000 cases lie pending for more than 30 years. I'm not including all pending cases but FYI in total there's about 45 million pending cases with about 15% pending for less than 2 years. Same sex marriage can genuinely wait, they are least impacted by a dysfunctional judiciary
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  41. @Peter Lang criminal cases are way more important than same sex marriage. A functional judiciary works to the benefit of everyone than the current dysfunctional judiciary that chooses to serve a few.
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  42. This entire hearing for same sex marriage, rubs me the wrong way. I am for same sex marriage but not in the manner it is being conducted. India's court system has collapsed, it is dysfunction and the scale of dysfunction is huge. For eg: there are 73,000 criminal cases waiting for a trial date for more than 30 years (lots with death penalty, life imprisonment terms). The court has essentially ignored pending cases and made a choose to pursue legacy instead. It is not expanding rights rather it is engaging in monkey balancing and compensating for it's sheer incompetence.
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  43. So the Lady wants India to accept Trudeau's "trust me bro" because he is from a G7 country. Ya, good luck with that. I think India gains more with bashing Canada because it is acting smug with it's G7 badge. It will make India pretty popular with G-20 (minus Canada) countries. Man, Canada seriously needs to reevaluate it's diplomatic strategy.
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  44. You know what Erdogen is promising that Kemal can't seem to promise? Agency/Independence. Most folks (outside Europe) intrinsically understand "agency" once given away is near impossible to get back but an economy can recovery in a couple of years.
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  45. Also Indian school teachers are notoriously abusive. Thrashing students is very common, physical punishment is very intense. CCTV cameras records all the abuses. You can watch some of them on YouTube, just search for “school pitai”. The privacy and surveillance concerns are boutique issues. Only Rich people care about it, most folks don’t care and cctv doesn’t really change their behaviour or impact their actions (to an extent). A large gathering of people can really bring down the entire Govt system, so most of the time, The govt is more scared of people than the other way around.
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  46. European Union needs better politicians. These guys are constantly delegitimizing their own positions. Why would anyone treat EU seriously?
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  47.  @tyronevaldez-kruger5313  the perception of being treated as a colony only pertains to Indo UK relations. However UK drags the rest of the West along with it. I've summarized Indo US relations but that's more to do with decades of shakey relations coupled with deep disappointments with recent events in the region.
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  48. And Europe expects the rest of the world to toe the line.
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  49.  @AnimeAmvStar  they will fence sit like they did in '62 or supply more arms like they did in 2020. Russia will do what's beneficial to them.
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  50. That's what GIZ is helping with in the Indian State of Sikkim. GIZ also recommends using part of your farm land for organics, not all of it. This helps build resilience limits damage from monocropping. Sri Lanka's ban is for all fertilizer. This will have terrible consequences.
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  51. Decades of economic crisis, a military rule disguised as a democracy and a deeply hardline extremist society with access to nukes. We should advocate for denuclearization of that country. I don't think they have the capacity or responsibility to maintain them and prevent it's proliferation or misuse.
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  52. Indian National Congress party hired social media influencers to help them win election in the desert state mentioned in this report. They lost that election pretty badly.
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  53.  @legostud  she called herself Bahujan or Dalit. Maybe she’s saying what she’s experienced.
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  54.  @veerthawkar3808  indeed. But it needs to be sped up. The new health minister is quite competent.
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  55. The person from CoHNA is a Lower caste person. Bahujan in Hindi means Dalits.
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  56. Far right is only able to shape national identity only because mainstream parties have cede political space to them. Also it is disingenuous thing to say French society did not include people of color - Alexander Dumas is widely celebrated in France along with other people of color.
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  57.  @phantomapprentice6749  well it means you perspective is not the same as the broader voting population. There’s nothing undemocratic about it. Maybe moderate your position and get more than 3%.
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  58. Initial reports says it is a point failure.
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  59. But Germany has a left wing govt and they have been managing the economy and immigration. Sloppy reporting. Blaming it on populism is fait accompli. It will ruin and polarize politics further. It might end up empowering populists.
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  60. Europe should start with returning stolen and fraudulently acquired artifacts. That's the beginning of atonement.
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  61. Shahranpur, one of India’s worst districts. That district administration is so terrible that their district alone cost the state 20 billion rupees.
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  62.  @abelwarringer  free press != free speech. What did free press get in the western world? It did not prevent antivaxxers from dominating the headlines and streets. Some openly allied with them and amplified their messaging. Blindly apeing “values” for the sake of those values is meaningless. Indian media is not perfect on the other hand every news agency was grossly underestimating the Govt’s ability to deliver. They beat all those expectations and over delivered.
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  63.  @runajain5773  Maratha empire stopped at Sambhaji according to NCERT textbooks. There's no mention of Peshwa rules or the dynasties.
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  64.  @vloplob  I don't think Germany has any influence. But they do have money and investments and they use that freely to fund the Chinese regime just like how they did fund Putin after 2014.
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  65.  @tempo5366  India isn't giving China the latest machining tools or tech unlike Germany.
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  66.  @vloplob  I am afraid you don't understand you geopolitics. You don't feed a bear and expect loyalty from it.
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  67.  @tempo5366  How did the trade relationship work with Russia? They gave zero f to Germany.
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  68.  @uhwake  clearly you haven't been to the backstage of the concerts. It starts there and ends next at the location of the Afterparty
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  69. Tiktokers are unwittingly helping the Chinese govt improve its facial recognition algorithms and models. TikTok doesn’t need to share data across countries but there’s nothing disallowing them from sharing facial models with its entity in China. To give you a simple analogy, Tiktokers are crude oil, Tiktok is the refinery and Tiktok China is the consumer in buying Refined crude.
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  70.  @johanbee8757  they rely on Delhi based English speaking elites for journalism. Those elites can’t read local language newspapers and writes articles based on whatever conjecture they encounter in their neighbourhood. Obviously DW’s coverage regarding India is going to be subpar and suffer.
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  71. The Farmer's lobby is really strong and change averse. There are credit incentives for machinery but the reception has been poor in these Northern states (BTW, Countrywide Tractor sales are going very strong thanks to the incentive, so it seems to be a regional issue). There are somethings the Govt can do and that is provide better incentives for non paddy winter cropping. This should give them enough time to use something like a decomposer between farming seasons.
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  72.  @thifmaster1466  they don't because it's not part of American military doctrine and not because of US military loves human rights. US Military doctrine considers civilian targets as low tactical value.
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  73. Germans Climate activists are the worst. First they killed Nuclear, then superglued their mouths when Coal plants got restarted, now they are ruining arts and roads demanding actions. Talk about stupidity in activism. I hope this is the Last Generation of this stupidity. The rest of the World is paying for European stupidity.
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  74. Erdogan's Neo Ottoman dreams are crumbling thanks to his own manufactured inflation crisis
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  75. European need to wake up. The pioneers tackling climate change is not coming from Europe neither is any European country (except Denmark) leading. The real innovations are happening in developing countries with material help from China and using financing models developed in India, Bangladesh etc The only thing European are offering is empty rhetoric. They don’t even have the dignity to finance projects in the developing world.
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  76.  @crazydrifter13  ya because you don't look at power generation and consumption data. Coal power in India trails consumption and then runs at a generation surplus for months until a State bureaucrats says so. Indian power plants wastes away 50% of the coal it consumes this way.
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  77.  @abhilash9918  🤦‍♂ Mumbai mein bolte hai, kaunsa gutter se tu aaya re?
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  78.  @disorganizedorg  Aaah you're right! I had 1988 convention in mind.
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  79. Basically the world markets has factored in Ukraine war and Hamas pogrom.
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  80.  @nenasiek  India bought Russian oil defying West's sanction of Russia. Since then Western Media apparatus has been relentless in it's media campaign against India. They initially thought "feeding the Russian war machine" campaign would coerce India but Indian Govt gave them a middle finger, then the Global South started giving them the middle finger.
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  81. They came freely, they conquered freely, they left freely; and left a mess behind to be cleaned up. With Ukraine, the West only bothered harassing the rest of the world that Europe's problems are World's problems but it conveniently forgot about the tragedies it left behind in the name of "freedom" and "human rights"
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  82.  @joexavier2287  it’s paid back with interest. Your pensions are made in India
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  83. For context, Indian Judiciary and Police enforces an internet blackout for every riot and incidents of violence. It's part of their SOP.
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  84. Cold War is here
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  85. Well then Germany should recognize the Bengal Famine as a genocide then. Most famines worsened by colonial powers should classify as genocide. European have essentially politicized genocide. They have cheapened it’s significance with this implied two tier definition of genocide. One that applies to white people and that one implicates non white people.
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  86.  @MikeLiteraus  Bengal famine was a copy paste of Holodomor. Happened right after it. It too was a result of forced colonial collectivization and export of farm products. British administration in London disallowed ships to offload grain in Calcutta. It definitely meets the German definition of genocide. So what’s preventing Germany from declaring it as one genocide?
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  87. Mainly, they will buy Russian oil to keep global oil prices down. It is a win win for everyone, cheap oil for the developing world and decoupling of Russian O&G for the West.
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  88. Best way to stay happy is to stop believing Mainstream media provides news. Reporting and Journalism has gone down the gutter. Reporting has become nothing like monkey balancing between viewpoints rather than real on the ground reporting.
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  89.  @The_Great_Game_Begins  he's what we Indians call a Brown Sepoy. He probably thinks British colonialism is the best thing to happen to India
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  90. @Peter Lang no. It's fixing deep backlogs. It's not just about ajudicating those cases, it's about the Chief Justices sitting down and rewriting court procedures and enforcing them. It requires the Chief Justices to fill up 49% vacancies in lower courts. It requires Chief Justices to approve budgets to expand and rebuild courts physical infrastructure. You need a CJIs that understands the basics of a judiciary, not a bunch that's there too chase legacy and lecture the population about merit. Unfortunately since Judiciary essentially split these functions away from the executive, the Govt of the day can't do these things for them.
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  91. On the bright side unlike last year, they haven't dismantled the large field hospitals.
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