Bollywood mud-flaps spotted on the streets of Ahmedabad, India by Flickr user Backview Bollywood. India gets to have cool Bollywood mud-flaps, America has Truck Nutz.
More after the jump…
Glenn Beck continues to amaze with his hypocritical rants about Obama. He claims concern for the President’s safety while creating an imaginary scenario in which Obama is beheaded in India. “It’s the classic double-negative: God forbid anything bad happen to the people I so love to hate.”
The audio clip below which was broadcast by The Glenn Beck Show on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010 is further evidence that Beck is more toxic than the BP oil spill and just as slimy.
Why is the president putting himself in danger? Why is anyone allowing him to put himself in danger, and if it’s not a danger, why do we have 34 warships? I don’t care if you spend $10 billion to protect the President. Nothing can happen to the president, period. I don’t like the man. He’s the President of the United States nothing can happen to him, so I don’t care how much money you spend, but why is he going there? Why are we spending $2 billion to put him there?”
The 34 warships and $2 billion dollar claim is based on bullshit rumors emanating from an anonymous source in India. Its taken on a life of its own thanks to the right wing press. It simply is not true. Beck insinuates that Obama’s life may be in jeopardy because he has turned his back on his Muslim brothers and sisters. Why else would India hold such danger? Once again, the Obama is Muslim lurks as subtext. Is nutjob Beck suggesting that an American President adopt a bunker mentality when it comes to interacting with one of the most important nations on the planet? Xenophobia as public policy. And what’s with Beck invoking Gandhi in the midst of his twisted tirade? It’s a pious smokescreen disguising hate.
Why do I waste my breath? Because millions and millions of people listen to douchebag Beck and take his word as gospel.
“If fantasizing on the radio about the assassination of the President of the United States sounds sick to you, that’s because it is.”
God help us all indeed.
Via The Raw Story
Meher Baba at Paramount Film Studio, London, April 1932
Funny thing about silence. Humorist Josh Billings called it “one of the hardest arguments to refute” and the Slits called it a rhythm, while Francis Bacon called it “the virtue of fools” and six gay activists in New York in 1987 equated it with death. John Cage wrote a famous composition about it to show how much noise can be made at a concert with nobody playing their instruments.
Followers of Meher Baba have made a holiday out of it. On this day 85 years ago, the Indian-born mystic Baba went voluntarily silent at the age of 31. He would stay that way for 42 years, until he died in 1969. Funnily enough, no-one saw it coming. Born in the cosmopolitan Indian city of Pune to part-Zoroastrian-part-Sufi Persian parents, Baba seemed to have had it going on before his transformation to mysticism, according to Wiki:
His schoolmates nicknamed him “Electricity”. As a boy he formed The Cosmopolitan Club dedicated to remaining informed in world affairs and giving money to charity — money often raised by the boys betting at the horse races. He had an excellent singing voice and was a multi-instrumentalist and poet. Fluent in several languages, he was especially fond of Hafez’s Persian poetry, but also of Shakespeare and Shelley.
Baba’s persona, work and metaphysics enrapture lots of folks in the West, many of whom celebrities ranging from Gary Cooper to Pete Townshend. As you can see below, though a silent man for most of his life, Baba was a chatty bastard.
Dangerous Minds pal, novelist Jonathan Lyons sent us this photo of the perplexing set of instructions stuck to the toilet in the guest house where he is staying in New Delhi. For the most part, I can’t understand any of this, can you?
This video demonstrates:
1. India is badass;
2. India was badass hundreds of thousands of years before you can even count years back to;
3. India will be badass hundreds of thousands of years from now;
4. You can’t kill Ram, don’t even try;
5. Holy shit India is badass.
Score 1008 points for the Sanatana Dharma.
Reality Sandwich excerpts “Autobiography of a Sadhu” by Rampuri. Balls-to-the-wall crazy like only India can offer.
As he repeated a mantra, Amar Puri Baba slipped the rudraksha bead on the janeu string, over my head.
“My brother, your guru, has given you the gift of rudraksha. This bead, which as you can see, is a seed from a tree, contains the power of discipleship. It is the manifestation of the covenant between humans and the Great God Shiva that the Path of Knowledge would be passed down through the tradition of discipleship. Shiva’s most uncompassionate manifestation, Rudra, shed a tear of compassion for mankind, and this became the Rudraksha tree. It pulls the pranas upward, and can be worn anywhere on the upper body to focus energy, but the one the guru gives you is worn over the heart, where your connection with the guru is established.”
Mangal Bharti concluded the giving of the five gifts by wrapping me in the ochre dhoti, creating little sleeves for my arms as he folded and tied the cloth in the traditional sannyasi way. “This final gift of the five is your protection and sheltering of Mother Earth. You see, it is the color of her soil, ochre, her life-blood. You see how long this fine cloth is when unfolded? It is a flag marking that you are in her hands, and that you are on the Path.”
Arundhati Roy talks with Democracy Now about spending time with Maoist rebels in India. As somebody who’s spent time getting chased and almost killed by Maoist rebels, I’m not exactly sure she’s on point here. While they are fighting for the rights of the poor, they are also, to a large extent, providing a back door for China—and now that they have essentially sold Nepal to China, the buffer zone between India and China—two gigantic nuclear powers—is getting erased. Not good for anybody. In the slightest.
Earlier this month, when Forbes published its annual list of the world’s billionaires, the Indian press reported with some delight that two of their countrymen had made it to the coveted list of the ten richest individuals in the world.
Meanwhile, thousands of Indian paramilitary troops and police are fighting a war against some of its poorest inhabitants living deep in the country’s so-called tribal belt. Indian officials say more than a third of the country, mostly mineral-rich forest land, is partially or completely under the control of Maoist rebels, also known as Naxalites. India’s prime minister has called the Maoists the country’s “gravest internal security threat.” According to official figures, nearly 6,000 people have died in the past seven years of fighting, more than half of them civilians. The government’s new paramilitary offensive against the Maoists has been dubbed Operation Green Hunt.
Well, earlier this month, the leader of the Maoist insurgency, Koteswar Rao, or Kishenji, invited the Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy to mediate in peace talks with the government. Soon after, India’s Home Secretary, G.K. Pillai, criticized Roy and others who have publicly called state violence against Maoists, quote, “genocidal.”
(AlterNet: Arundhati Roy on the Occupation of Kashmir)
(Arundhati Roy: Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers)
Amazing Bibliodyssey post on folk art from India. Loads of folk art depicting trees of various psychological proportions. My favorite is “The Tree of Intoxication,” shown above.
Tara Books from Chennai (Tamil Nadu, India) very kindly sent me a few of their books, not for review, but as thanks following their contacting for some advice. After I saw the books, I asked - would have begged - if it was ok to scan some samples. Illustrations from three books appear below.
I’m afraid these images hardly do proper justice to the textural wonder of the handmade paper and crisp, silkscreened illustrations. The scans themselves could only have been improved by breaking the books which wasn’t even a consideration: these glorious books are treasured works of art that I’ll not be destroying or parting with in this lifetime.
This is my official Thanksgiving message. Drop $20 and Give a Goat to Somebody Who Needs It. You’ll feel great all December.
This hilarious video is made by Debbie Glasband who recently volunteered in eastern India for 6 months, working with the tribal people you see in this video. They are indigenous to Koraput, the second poorest district in India. Due to their poverty, illiteracy and status as the bottom of the caste system, they are often taken advantage of by landowners and local officials who deny them their rights, steal what little money they do have and treat them with disdain.
The video stars people from Puki and Nua Kerenga villages, two of many villages that were displaced by hydroelectric dams and mining projects. Forced onto land that is difficult to cultivate, they have resorted to migrant work and borrowing money from landlords in order to survive.
For tribal people who are landless, raising goats is a great alternative source of income. Families who breed goats can earn a good profit selling the kids in the local market. The extra income provides a safety net for families that can be used for things like medicine, food during lean periods and farm equipment.
Some men aspire to be gods, while others just want to shack up with them. The latter is the case for V K Saxena, a 72 retired railway man from India, who has donned bangles, skirt and makeup in imitation of Radha, the goddess lover of Krishna.
Saxena claimed that he felt more spiritual awakening in this form.
He also added, ?
Newsweek reports that “We Are All Hindus Now”:
America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that’s the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu?
From Dr. Schluss’ Garage of Psychedelic Obscurities:
I’m willing to say this obscure sitar-infused psychedelic jazz album is one of the absolute best I’ve heard from the legendary Impulse! jazz imprint. Why they haven’t reissued it yet is beyond me. Bill Plummer’s primary trade is in the string bass, which does provide the awesome backbone for all of these songs. But someone must have tossed Mr. Plummer in a vat of acid (almost like Jack Nicholson in the 1989 “Batman”) before the making of this album. With it’s layers of Eastern gauze, occasional blasts of spoken word and free jazz, and oddball covers, this is the most ear pleasingly far-out legitimate jazz album I’ve come across (the wild fury of John Coltrane’s Om, also on Impuse!, is probably the most far out, but it’s not easy to listen to).
The first track, “Journey to the East,” is far beyond awesome and deserves a place on every psych compilation. It’s got a rock-solid groove, crazy chanting, a wall of sitar, and a totally entertaining spoken word rambling. Practically every 60’s cliche is packed into the spoken word, but it’s all convincingly sold by the dispassionate reading and the phenomenal music backing it up. I think I’ve listened to it about 600 times in the past week; I can’t think of a better complement than that. For your own mind journey to the East, you need go no farther than “Arc 294,” which plays as Indo-psychedelic free jazz for about ten minutes. The covers here are of note as well. Seeing “The Look of Love” on a track listing typically makes me groan, but with sitar drones and a groovy beat accompanying the tune, it works out just fine. Even better is the similar treatment to the Byrds great, yet-neglected “Lady Friend.” I didn’t know that that song required a transcendental Indo-jazz reading, but apparently it did. To hear Mr. Plummer score at making more conventional jazz, head for “Pars Fortuna” and “Song Plum”
This album manages to fuse jazz, Indian music, and wacky psychedelia, while still ending up as more than the sum of its parts. You need to become part of the Cosmic Brotherhood as soon as possible.
