Nukkad

[Singha]

IBNLIVE

London: British defence minister Michael Fallon quit on Wednesday saying his conduct had fallen below the high standards demanded of his position, the first resignation in a sexual harassment scandal in parliament.

Prime Minister Theresa May, weakened after losing her parliamentary majority in a June election, loses a loyalist at a time when she is trying to break a deadlock in talks to leave the European Union. Fallon was described by sources in her ruling Conservative Party as a political "Rottweiler".


He was the first high-profile resignation after a growing number of allegations of inappropriate behaviour have been made against ministers and lawmakers, fuelled by sex abuse allegations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein.


Fallon apologised earlier this week for touching a radio presenter's knee in 2002 - something the woman in question described on social media as "mildly amusing".

[Marten]

China is a gigantic market especially given they limit what (foreign) movies get released there. So in order to butter up the Chinese they have chinese characters, actors, locales, take into account sensitivities etc. When was the last time the baddies were chinese?

It has been their grouse for many decades. If you have seen the Bruce Lee movie, you will see this grouse outlined and explained very clearly.

The motivations of HK based movie makers such as Philip Tan as well as the later ones such as Samo Hung etc. are explained quite well. The Chinese as a people are brought up on the grouse of being slaves to the white men. While we got out of a worse situation of being raped and looted for generations, just one such generation managed to create the perfect example for the Commies. They used it to the hilt. Any issues even today are because of others, never due to the pure Chinese (mind/race/culture etc.). This is also why they band together wherever possible to screw over others. Highway bandits pretending to be victims, much like Bakis or Congressiyas.

[Mahakala]

China is a gigantic market especially given they limit what (foreign) movies get released there. So in order to butter up the Chinese they have chinese characters, actors, locales, take into account sensitivities etc. When was the last time the baddies were chinese?

It has been their grouse for many decades. If you have seen the Bruce Lee movie, you will see this grouse outlined and explained very clearly.

The motivations of HK based movie makers such as Philip Tan as well as the later ones such as Samo Hung etc. are explained quite well. The Chinese as a people are brought up on the grouse of being slaves to the white men. While we got out of a worse situation of being raped and looted for generations, just one such generation managed to create the perfect example for the Commies. They used it to the hilt. Any issues even today are because of others, never due to the pure Chinese (mind/race/culture etc.). This is also why they band together wherever possible to screw over others. Highway bandits pretending to be victims, much like Bakis or Congressiyas.

Unlike us, they were in a unified country with a single emperor who was humiliated by the brits and americans & lackeys and their gunboat diplomacy. Big difference imo on national psyche.

[Marten]

Unlike us, they were in a unified country with a single emperor who was humiliated by the brits and americans & lackeys and their gunboat diplomacy. Big difference imo on national psyche.

Makes sense. But since the Commies did overthrow the imperialist forces (including invaders), should they not disclaim any failures as that of their previous oppressors and claim only glorious deeds for their own? They are missing a good thing there. it is amazing that the country that was actually humiliated is fine with it, and the one that was drugged with opium and marijuana is seething (despite being enriched and not looted).

[jamwal]

Hey need some help here:

Our firm is building a customer experience platform, where people availing the service can register complaint, there is workflow on the company side to redirect depending upon the category etc. and at every step customer will be informed of the status. The onus of naming the platform is on me, want to give some dharmic name, have following in mind, please suggest some more. Sorry could not give additional details of teh platform due to obvious reasons.

Saarthak
Samarth
Samwaad
Suvidha
Sreshta
Prabal

To me, given that it is a feedback system you are creating, 'Samwaad' seems most appropriate since it is essentially a 'dialog' between the customer and the service provider. My Hindi is rusty now, but you could also look up translation of or synonyms for 'feedback', 'response', 'opinion', 'solution', 'viewpoint', 'perspective', 'review', 'rating' and similar words.

Samwaad makes sense

[Rvishwakarm]

Thanks jaamwal & Primus.
Samwaad is what I have proposed to the Management and they like it.

[Primus]

Unlike us, they were in a unified country with a single emperor who was humiliated by the brits and americans & lackeys and their gunboat diplomacy. Big difference imo on national psyche.

Makes sense. But since the Commies did overthrow the imperialist forces (including invaders), should they not disclaim any failures as that of their previous oppressors and claim only glorious deeds for their own? They are missing a good thing there. it is amazing that the country that was actually humiliated is fine with it, and the one that was drugged with opium and marijuana is seething (despite being enriched and not looted).

I just spent two weeks in China on the usual tourist circuit. Amazing progress and the power is there to be seen. Many things are better than what I see in the US at least.

However, the influence of the overwhelming communist authority and regime is palpable everywhere. They have managed to create their own narrative and promote that in subtle and not so subtle ways. They also exert a degree of control not possible in nations that are not led by authoritarian regimes.

The two narratives are 1. The nation was in the grip of the bourgeoisie elite and it was Mao's visionary leadership and strength of character that brought them out of it. 2. The Japanese were horrific butchers who were brutal beyond belief and suppressed the Chinese culture, people and way of life.

This is evident in not just the giant poster of Mao at the entrance to the Forbidden City or the long lines at his mausoleum but also in the various paintings and sculptures in the National Museum. The Hall of Fame there is full of depictions of Japanese atrocities paralleled with the greatness of the communist uprising. Nowhere is there any mention of the British occupation and exploitation.

We ate at a 'hot pot' restaurant in Chengdu which is famous for this type of cuisine. The place was called 'Revolution' and all the waiters and management staff including the women were dressed in the army uniforms of the Mao era communist regime, complete with belts, caps, epaulettes and so on. Quite interesting.

China excels in the art of persuasion. Every city we visited, we were required by our tour operator to spend time at the local government factory outlet selling jade/silk/pearls/ or whatever else the area was known for. If we declined, our rates would go up by 20% or so. The company told us that this is official policy of the Chinese government. Then, at each place the local tour guide would push us (sometimes without an option) to attend a local cultural show that highlighted Chinese history, dance forms, music or martial arts. At Chengdu we decided not to go for it and our guide was quite upset. And of course FB, Twitter, google are all unavailable from local networks.

However, the system does work very efficiently. Their airport security screening and boarding process is the smoothest and most sophisticated I have seen anywhere and I do travel a lot. Same for the subway, the bullet trains and major tourist attractions. They really know crowd management well. Not surprising.

Interestingly, the Chinese seem to like us desis - at least the people on the street do. Unlike the Japanese who I believe are complete racists in this regard. Everywhere we went, including Tiananmen Square, the High street in Beijing, the restaurant mentioned above, the local Chinese women would mob us and want to take pictures with us, especially my good friend who sports a Van Dyke. Once we lost our way to a restaurant and a young woman walked all the way with us to the place after recruiting a local Rikshaw fellow to lead us. Turned out to be a policewoman in training. Then she too wanted to take pictures with us.

The biggest problem facing the traveler is a total lack of English anywhere.

[saip]

The new tax plan leaves 401 alone at 18k (actually it is more this year at 18600) and hopefully the catchup. But it leaves only the prop tax deduction but not state tax deduction. I am confused. WHy would anyone use prop tax ($10,000) when they have 24k standard deduction, unless they have huge mortgage (over 350k @ 4% interest) & some charitable contribution? Schedule A is gone for most. AMT is killed which is good as it was not indexed and affected most middle class families.

[Mort Walker]

The new tax plan leaves 401 alone at 18k (actually it is more this year at 18600) and hopefully the catchup. But it leaves only the prop tax deduction but not state tax deduction. I am confused. WHy would anyone use prop tax ($10,000) when they have 24k standard deduction, unless they have huge mortgage (over 350k @ 4% interest) & some charitable contribution? Schedule A is gone for most. AMT is killed which is good as it was not indexed and affected most middle class families.

I’m still absorbing the details. Dropping AMT and not changing the 401k limit helps the upper middle class. The other thing I noticed was that $90K-$260K becomes 25% bracket. More middle class will fall into that without SALT. The State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction is being eliminated as a starting point. I don’t know if this proposal will pass the Senate. Probably pass in the House. I suspect part of SALT deduction will be put back in with some cap.

[Raja]

So old mortgage interest deductions are still kept in place for existing mortgages and the new caps only apply for new mortgages going forward?

[Singha]

lack of english is a passing phase in china. I assume the young are all learning it esp those heading for the manufacturing, white collar and tourism sector.

its not uncommon in india for tourism guides to have picked up euro and east asian languages by self study.

[Mort Walker]

So old mortgage interest deductions are still kept in place for existing mortgages and the new caps only apply for new mortgages going forward?

From CNBC:

The House Republican tax plan halves the cap on the deduction of mortgage debt for newly purchased homes to $500,000. It does, however, maintain the current deduction of up to $1 million in mortgage debt for current homeowners.
...
The Republican plan also allows state and local property tax deductions of up to $10,000.

I believe this will actually control the irrational exuberance of home pricing in many places. The price of construction, not including the land, is around $100/sq ft in the CONUS. A standard residential lot, property taxes should be no more than $2/sq ft. The elimination of SALT is going to hit a lot of red states too. The states with no income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.

[Raja]

I hope it puts a damper on the property prices in the California Bay Area but somehow I doubt it will be my much as the main driver is funny money from abroad. The locals aren't that cash rich.

[Singha]

as long as rich sinics continue to flee the mainland in droves and other ASEAN korrupt elites follow suit, there is no chance of prices declining in any remotely desirable of the limited real estate there - seattle, vancouver, LA, SFO - the gateway cities of the west coast close to the heartlands in the west pacific.

sinics feel really good in bay area both from pov of running some business + strict schools for the kids with a ramp to various desirable groves of academe.

[Primus]

lack of english is a passing phase in china. I assume the young are all learning it esp those heading for the manufacturing, white collar and tourism sector.

its not uncommon in india for tourism guides to have picked up euro and east asian languages by self study.

Probably, but don't hold your breath. Our guide in Xian was a young man who claimed he had just graduated from college where his major was English.We had as much difficulty communicating with him and understanding him as we did with all our other guides everywhere. In fact the young policewoman we met also had very poor knowledge of English. We must have asked a dozen people for directions in downtown Beijing, these were all in their 20s and were returning from work at evening rush hour. Nobody understood us.

In Guilin we were looking for a restaurant that was close to the Sheraton, downtown. We kept asking for directions to the Sheraton Hotel but nobody understood what that meant until we started pronouncing it 'Shellataun' and then of course we could not understand them.

[Mort Walker]

I hope it puts a damper on the property prices in the California Bay Area but somehow I doubt it will be my much as the main driver is funny money from abroad. The locals aren't that cash rich.

This has been the case off and on. It goes in cycles. In the late 1980s, Japanese were buying property on the east and west coast in various locales. The Bay Area has a lot of cash including from abroad, so it won't affect prices immediately.

[Singha]

another encounter with a serpent the usual chequered keelback at my running lake.
started on a planned 8k at 5:10pm .... was cruising past 5k at 5:45pm... the light was fading ... but people still walking or jogging ... then it slithered out of the grass on the berm and stopped cold .. perhaps alerted by my approaching steps...on other side a petite cutie pie was walking on oblivious...I yelled at her to stop..she jerked to a stop and looked around but cut not spot it ..."what am i supposed to be looking for?" she asks... i went nearer and asked her to look down...her eyes widened. told her it was non-poisonous but backed a painful bite and let he move along after it slithered across the red earth into the lake.

[sanju]

Does anyone know about a whatsapp message doing the rounds about a serving officer in the "94 regiment", making a post on Facebook criticising both the PM and the COAS?
There were no links to the purported original post. TIA.

[Singha]

have been having another recurring dream lately , hopefully not another premonition.

place - night at jodhpur. i am having dinner with family in some restaurant atop the fort and looking down at the pleasing lights of the town below.

off in the distance are the lights of the IAF base, the largest in the western front with the occasional low whine of heavy transporters moving in and out.

the sky is clear with the stars over the desert.

suddenly the disturbing wail of air raid sirens stirs alarm and people walk over to the terrace side to check .... WaaaaWaaaaWaaaa ... rising and falling notes

I look up slowly and see white blobs of lights falling as if in slow motion from high high up in the sky .... others look up mystified ... but i know what it is ! incoming ballistic missiles !!

I count 9 blobs inbound before my attention is diverted to a warbling metallic whine by unseen low flying objects speeding out from the desert, over the fringes of town and toward the base ...... I briefly spot the shape of one as it flies close to the fort making a sharp and final way point turn....the unmistakable shape of cruise missiles .....

unable to say or do anything I am merely an observer in the kinetic and worrying chain of events. we all stand on the edge of the terrace and watch events unfold.

two of the cruise missiles score a direct hit on a underground fuel storage sending up a huge orange plume of flame .... the noise reaches us a second later ....

from the dark areas of the edge of the airbase, one by one five streaks of light show SAM launches as they climb fast into the intercept vectors guided by some unseen radar ....Akash, I think or barak8.... a few seconds later, four smaller streaks of light take off vertically and execute steep 90 turns to bear into more cruise missiles now on their final approach .... two resouding hits ensure at low level shattering the peace of the town as burning residue and fuel rain down over the impact point setting fire to some houses and storage godowns.... streaks of tracers from radar guided guns follow up the SRSAMs and score another hit just over the field perimeter .... the last one pushes through and hits some unknown target with a loud flash but no secondary explosion ....

I look up again as the SAMs near their intercept points and note the flashes of 5 closely spaced muffled explosions in the cirrus clouds ... 4 blobs keep on coming, seeming to gain in speed ... again a salvo of 4 SRSAM lance out, followed by 2 more of the larger SAMs this time with barely minimum arming distance left ... 2 more blobs get taken out and crash into the town..again setting off large fires where they fall on populated areas....the rest SAMs miss and the final 2 blobs smash down with huge explosions, one of them igniting some flammable material on the tarmac perhaps a fuel truck or munitions on trolleys waiting to be loaded.

it is all quiet now but the siren keeps on wailing, now interleaved with the wail of ambulances and fire brigade trucks speeding around the town .... lights have been cut without my noticing....

a few minutes later I hear the rumble of large engines and then one by one, six modernized backfire bombers , which represent 30% of our holding emerge from their unscathed hard shelters and take to the sky with long streaming cones of afterburner flame. to keep the field of fire clear for SAMs and AA, they fly at low level 300 feet skimming over the town and past my position, I can see the pilots facemasks in the blue light of the cockpit, tense and their minds focussed on waypoints far ahead as they move out to safer bases in the interior .... people clap and cheer as they clear the fort and start climbing up .... cries of Jai Hind and Bharat mata ki Jai rent the night air! .. taken up from roof to roof as unseen thousands talk and discuss in the colonies below...

minutes later, I note 8 tejas fighters and 2 flankers take off in tight pairs and execute the same low level departure , followed by a lone midas tanker and then a small business type jet probably a elint mission bird....anything that is flyable is clearing out tonight but they will be back to seek vengeance once they rearm and repair in a few hours...I can imagine the SAM reload vehicle crews feverishly working on their machines and the unseen sweeps of the radars trying to see as far as possible .... the phone must be ringing all over vayu bhavan and PMO by now...

The war has began

I hurriedly grab my wards and make my way down the stairs to see about buying a bus ticket or renting a taxi back to delhi since I assume civilian flights will cease now

[arshyam]

^^ Are you sure that was a dream and not a new scenario you are writing? It was gripping, for sure...

[Mort Walker]

Yes, very gripping dream. If it keeps happening, maybe a premonition, but I'd rather have Singhaji make millions writing a novel, screenplay and movie from his dreams.

[Raja]

Even Jernail Singha’s dreams are more vivid and coherent than my conscious thoughts

[jamwal]

Does anyone know about a whatsapp message doing the rounds about a serving officer in the "94 regiment", making a post on Facebook criticising both the PM and the COAS?
There were no links to the purported original post. TIA.

Only ex serviceman doing something like tnat is a Maj Gen Satbir, who first wanted aap ticket , but now is sending feelers to congress. A lowlife hated by most other ex and serving defence personnel.

He is being criticised heavily by a lot of armymen all over.

[sanju]

Thanks Jamwal for the reply.

Ther reason I was asking was because it is a serving officer as per the message.

[jamwal]

Something someone pulled out of ass maybe. There is no 94 regiment in Indian Army.