I am a news addict, both mainstream and online outlets. I try to balance my views by reading news from all outlets and mostly from outlets I disagree. However, after years of letting my mind get corroded, I realised a moment of realisation on the present state of craziness in the media. I have got down to three key points. I feel it is important as I have to use these filters to understand if I have to separate facts from opinions.

1. Free speech is a big issue for everyone. However, each person/outlet has defined groups based on a set of individuals who will fit their message.
2. Honesty is no more a common trait in individuals. It has a become a percentage game. There are some outlets/people who are almost always dishonest. There are outlets who are only honest when it favours them. Then, there are some outlets who try to be honest only when it doesn’t affect their message.
3. Social Media is an experiment for which civilisation wasn’t prepared well. We went from professional reporters giving us news to every person with a twitter/facebook account becoming a reporter in less than 5 years. People do not have time to manage their digital self effectively. They don’t have time to fit in all their digital emotions in a day and that effect has spread back to the mainstream outlets. Now, the mainstream reporting is based on social media craziness.

I want to expand on the first two points alone as the third point is quite self-explanatory.

Free Speech – Left vs Right

Calling oneself a Free Speech Crusader has become a fashion statement. However, everyone seems to be attacking other in this area. There is definitely an element on ingenuity on all parts. I have listed all the key people in media who talk about this. Everyone in this list is for free speech. However, they do not equally condemn the social justice warriors, who play victim cards, who indulge in identity politics and treat any non-white straight male as a delicate individual needing protection. The key media personalities I can identify in this discussion are given below.

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Bill Maher
• Brendan O’Neill
• Cenk Uygur
• Dave Rubin
• Douglas Murray
• Glenn Greenwald
• Jordon Peterson
• Maajid Nawaz
• Sam Harris

There is a lot of personal animosity between people but all these people are for free speech. I want to break each of the group down into individual segments.

Left/Progressive Media (Cenk Uygur, Glenn Greenwald etc)
I want to list some examples of the left media and left leaders defending free speech. These get safely ignored by the voices who want to accuse the left or the progressives.

TYT on Charlie Hebdo Video 1
TYT on Charlie Hebdo Video 2
TYT defending Ben Shapiro
CNN defending Ann Coulter on free speech
Bernie Sanders for Ann Coulter
Bernie Sanders against UC Berkeley
Bernie Sanders for free speech on campus
Bernie Sanders on suppressing free speech

However, there are a few points where they miss out on some specifics.

1. They err on the side of the minority and sometimes to the extent of falling prey to the gimmicks like victim mentality and identity politics.
2. They are quick to brand someone as a neo-con if they do not agree with their agenda. Cenk once called Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a neo-con in foreign policy. It is laughable to call her one. People are complex and branding someone like this is extremely dangerous. Also, one has to put Ayaan view in context. She escaped child marriage, underwent female genital mutilation before taking refuge in Denmark. Her friend Theo van Gogh was murdered for making a film and the murderers wrote Ayaan’s name as the next using his blood. She is constantly under threat. Her words have to be heard in this context. They also do not support the progressive/liberal voices in the minority communities. For example, Maajid Nawaz in spite of all his political views is a liberal. I have hardly seen the progressive media support him. He is always portrayed as a sellout.
3. They tend to focus on geopolitics more than the influence of religion on the global violence and terrorism.

New Atheists (Bill Maher, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris)

There is definitely no question about these people being on the side of free speech. They are also pro-democracy and in most instances look for the welfare of most instead of the few. They are for minority rights across the board. However, they have a fall for friends syndrome. For Bill Maher, Isreal is right irrespective of what they do. I haven’t seen him complain about anything they have done. I would appreciate if he takes a cue from Christopher Hitchens on this front. Ayaan has to understand the impact of the US foreign policy on places which are not Islamic. You cannot defend the blunders of the CIA in South America. Sam Harris has to see that he cannot be liked by all or respected the same way by everyone. All three of them generalise Islam and can learn a bit from the way Maajid Nawaz talks about this topic.

Rest (Douglas Murray, Dave Rubin, Maajid Nawaz, Brendan O’Neill, Jordon Peterson)

The rest team wants to look at individuals from just their vantage point. Donald Trump is a good man if he is good to me is a non-sequitur. I find all of them fall into that trap. Dave Rubin changed his stance of Bernie Sanders without disagreeing on any policy just after he partnered with Learn Liberty. Brendon O’Neill doesn’t like people talking ill of religion or chauvinism by taking the example of his family. Maajid Nawaz has an issue with the  Southern Poverty Law Center, so he coined the word Regressive Left. Douglas Murray doesn’t appreciate the word white privilege, hence goes on a reverse rampage against communities which didn’t have anyone who said that. Jordon Peterson has an issue with the university he taught but fails to understand that people come to his show from different universities.

Honesty

As I mentioned at the start of this blog, I do not find honest a uniform trait in journalism or media anymore. Depending on the situation, I even find Fox News more honest than some of the progressive channels. Someone like Alex Jones is full of outright lies and dishonesty. There is no way Alex Jones can be classified as a reporter or InfoWars a news channel. I have a suspicion Alex Jones doesn’t consider himself a reporter. Hilariously,  Alex Jones’s company is Free Speech Systems LLC. The rest of the media seems to be a smear show of people they dislike. For example, Sam Harris who doesn’t like when he is quoted out of context and wants to call out the dishonesty of left doesn’t understand that Ben Shapiro who worked in Breitbart did the same with Chuck Hagel. Same is the case with Dave Rubin. Dave Rubin, who says he is for universal health care, prison reforms then wants to reduce government role in it. In the US, both prisons and health care are in the hands of the private players. Cenk, who doesn’t like when he is called regressive left, ends up calling most people who don’t fall into his bucket as neocons. Fox News is the only outlet which spoke about the grooming gangs in the UK, totally ignores any police brutality in the US.

• I have almost always stopped listening to the Rubin Report as it ceases to be about the big ideas. I look at people who come, what they stand for from their speeches. Dave Rubin says the right things about tolerance & free speech, till it reaches crossroads with his Learn Liberty buddies
• I listen to Sam Harris’s views on individual topics until he starts accusing or defending anyone.
• Jordon Peterson is good on psychology. His views on truth, politics and lot of social behaviours feel deluded.
• Bernie Sanders is good till he starts to defend Isreal in a very weird way.
• Bill Maher is still good, except when he defends his buddies in the democratic party.
• Cenk Uygur is good till he has to put everything in the bucket of foreign policy.
• Maajid Nawaz is good till he starts smearing Jeremy Corbyn based on partisan principles.
• Brendan O’Neill is good for views he concurs and is abject when he has to disagree or gets a personal example.

In conclusion, the media irrespective of the channel is biased and partisan. Even the best of them have, agreement with people I like, bickering about things I don’t and smearing on people I hate. It is increasingly important to look at facts and who is partnering the reporter. My strategy professor in my B-School once said it is important to know who is sleeping with whom in your organisation. I think it is just as important to know it in the news outlets.

Ever since there was a mention of President Donald Trump getting a Nobel Peace Prize, the meme creators have been in overdrive. What is more disheartening to see is that people have started hurling personal abuses at each other on this. Donald Trump has personally taken it for granted that he will get it soon. I personally find this a bit funny and also find it hypocritical of people to question why President Trump shouldn’t get it.

Here is why I feel Donald Trump getting a Nobel Peace Prize is not a big deal.

1. Nobel Peace Prize has nothing to do with the beliefs, actions and impact of the winner on the Global Peace. It is a very subjective process. It should not be an epitome of achievement, especially in the field of peacekeeping. The process can be found on their website. (https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/)
2. As I look at the history of people who have won Nobel Peace Prize, few names stand out for their notoriety.
   • Barack Obama – for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.
   • Aung San Suu Kyi – for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights
   • Mikhail Gorbachev – for his leading role in the peace process which today characterizes important parts of the international community
   • Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin – for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East
   • Mother Teresa – Founder of Missionaries of Charity
   • Henry Kissinger – For the 1973 Paris agreement intended to bring about a cease-fire in the Vietnam war and a withdrawal of the American forces
3. When Barack Obama won the peace prize, the US troops were intervening in 6 sovereign nations. I didn’t see many liberals/liberal media cry out against his award. Any meme on Obama winning the peace prize would have been considered racist.

In conclusion, my support for the Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump doesn’t come from the position of him achieving something but from a position of irreverence towards the award itself. It is a meaningless award given to boost the ego of different people or in some instances boost the image of the award itself. While Trump doesn’t need either an ego boost and the award will not get an image boost by honouring him, it certainly will help the world by designating the right place for this frivolous award.

A few weeks back I went to a place called Putty beach in Bouddi National Park with my family and very close friends. The beautifully coloured sandstone rocks fascinated me and I started doing some research on it. I had a whole bunch of questions.

What are these?
What is the origin?
When were they formed?
What gives it the colour?

These rocks are part of the Sydney Sandstone Basin, commonly referred to as the Hawkesbury Sandstone. Sydney sandstone was deposited in the Triassic Period in a fluvial delta. So, these rock formations date back to 200 – 250 million years, a time before our commonly known dinosaurs like T-Rex even existed. The mere thought of how the world would have been during that time is quite fascinating to think about. A water body which existed over 500 million years ago, created these rocks which subsequently went through so much transformation to result in what we saw there, a beautiful red-brown feast.

These rocks are forms of grains of sand which are quite amazing to look. The stone is porous and is supposed to act as a filter. It is made of very pure silica grains and a tiny amount of iron all held together by clay. The concentric bands of red and brown is a result of oxidation of the iron caused by rainfall. It cuts all the way through the rocks. So, it is not the colour of the deposit or the age which causes the bands, which was what I originally thought. I cannot fail to appreciate the impact of natural forces and time involved to create the beautiful sight.

The Sydney basin comprises of the igneous rocks from the Permian period(250 – 300 million years ago) and the different types of sedimentary rocks from the Triassic period (200 – 250 million years ago).

Here is an article which shares some context of what happened during the Triassic Period in general.

http://www.livescience.com/43295-triassic-period.html

In the course of understanding these, I found a lot of interesting literature available in public domain. I have given the links below for anyone interested.

http://www.blandfordia.org.au/wtdownloads/Topic%2010%20Geology%202011.pdf

Click to access G7_2.pdf

Click to access engineeringGeologyOfTheTriassicRocksOfTheSydneyArea.pdf

http://dbforms.ga.gov.au/pls/www/geodx.strat_units.sch_full?wher=stratno=8165
https://australianmuseum.net.au/the-sydney-basin

Julian Assange is arguably the most famous and even the most impactful journalist of my generation. There have been some famous ones including people like Christopher Hitchens but none has been as popular globally as Mr.Assange. He has got politicians after his life, bureaucrats running for cover and progressive activists waiting for his next revelation. However, his behaviour recently has been clouded with mystery. There is a suspicious tie up between him and Trump campaign. It is fine for him to support anyone but he is too well respected amongst progressive circles to support a candidate like Trump. Then, Nigel Farage visited Assange and had a brain fade on why he did so. It was a pretty weird case. I want to break down my feel of why people feel differently about Julian Assange and why I feel his recent behaviours have been suspicious.

Timing of the DNC email leaks

This is arguably the first item which shook the US Primaries. While most of the progressive media were supporting Bernie Sanders, there was massive corruption in the primaries to ensure Hillary Clinton wins. It was kind of an open secret to people who were following it closely. However, there was no concrete weapon to fight. Wikileaks, on the other hand, was silently collecting these weapons. They could have released them any day. That could have ensured that the progressives rally to ensure Hillary did not get selected.

Wikileaks decided to release the documents on the day of the convention. It exposed the inherent bias of DNC and its chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I was happy that they released it but I wanted it to be released sooner. When asked Julian’s response wasn’t convincing. There seems to be a clear plan here against Bernie Sanders and ensuring that he doesn’t get elected. This is not free, fair and unbiased media. This feels like fair but controlled media.

Subsequent interviews on the US election

After the primaries and right through the General Election process, there was a youtube channel which hosted all the Julian Assange interviews. He continuously kept mentioning points on the establishments plotting against Trump. I could get hold of a couple for now. I agree to all the accusations on Hillary Clinton and the CIA. The surprising thread to the story was him denying knowing anything about Donald Trump. It feels like there is a deeper connection here. Did Assange decide Trump was the lesser of the two evils? If it is, does that account for unbiased journalism?

Meeting with Nigel Farage

There is something really crazy about the secret meeting between Julian Assange and Nigel Farage. I can’t think of anything common between the two. Nigel is a poster child of horrible ideas. Julian wants to carry the mantle of the free press and progressive ideas. What is the connection? What makes it worse is Nigel cannot remember the conversation right outside Ecuador’s embassy where he met Julian.

For people who don’t know Nigel Farage, please go through his Wikipedia link here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Farage

Trump talks about Obama wiretapping a day before Wikileaks releases the documents

This is another surprising coincidence. Donald Trump sends tweets about Obama wiretapping him exactly a days before Wikileaks released documents on wiretapping. There was no evidence of Obama wiretapping Trump in that and I definitely want WikiLeaks to release those documents. However, there is a strange connection in terms of timing. I am not sure how it is playing out.

In conclusion, I was and still am in favour of the free press movement of Julian Assange. They have instilled fear in the hearts of the political establishments by exposing corruption. However, it is becoming increasingly unclear to me if it is still a free press. There are a lot of questions in my head on what is brooding under the surface.

Few give me more satisfaction than seeing deeply corrupt organisations like Pepsi and Coke suffer. The traders from Tamil Nadu decided to ban sales of soft drinks from Pepsi and Coke. The reason given is that these companies kill local competition and also take water from agriculture. I want to pause my joy and critically analyse the players involved.

The easiest party to shed light is the government of TamilNadu. TamilNadu is a state under serious water crisis. In response to a PIL, the government has filed an affidavit in support of these two companies. Their rationale is they are only diverting excess water to the bottling plant. It is difficult to find a case of more blatant corruption, where authorities have sold themselves to the lobbyists.

The second party is also quite easy, the soft drink manufacturers and their association. Nothing bad can be said about them which is untrue. Firstly, they don’t care about either the environment or their consumers. Secondly, the fact that they are using the age old excuse of providing employment to people suggests that they have run out of ideas. Drug cartels and human traffickers employ people. That cannot be used as a justification. Thirdly, nothing that people are saying is actually false. They have done all that.

The last and the most important party is the traders’ association. How come after all these years they have realised the impact of these multinational soft drinks manufacturers. They were supportive of these companies when they were distributing fridges. They didn’t support the local producers when Pepsi and Coke bought stock from Indian companies and broke them. They did that just to make people forget these products. Let’s just accept the premise that they have finally come to understand these companies. Even then they aren’t replacing it with something good. They are going to replace it with other carbonated sugary drinks. This just reeks of disguise. It just looks like a deal gone wrong or some other financial issue.

Overall, it is just fun to watch three despicable parties contest it. I just hope this continues for long. It can only be good when multinational companies are held to ransom.

Shobhaa De, an Indian columnist and author recently stirred up a storm by mocking an obese cop and posting his picture on Twitter. The social media trollers along with the cops reacted to that in a very strong way. Then the cop who was actually mocked came out and shared his side of the story. Here is my take on the entire episode.

1. Body shaming someone is not great irrespective of their gender. I am sure the entire reaction of Shobhaa De would have been different had someone posted picture of her. As an advocate of feminism and equal rights, she has to behave in way more dignified manner.
2. It is not freedom of expression when you take picture of someone else and post it on social media without their knowledge. You don’t even know this person. It is the kind of mindless behaviour that is causing psychological trauma to millions of people all over the world.
3. Her second tweet saying ‘No offence intended’ is actually worse than the first. It is a blatant lie. She did mean to offend. She should at least stand up to what she did. It was neither an apology nor ownership. It is not even humour.
4. People are obese for various reasons. I am sure she didn’t think of posting a picture of one of Mukesh Ambani’s sons when he was obese. Not everyone can afford a Bollywood style dietician.
5. Finally, she took credit for her despicable act resulting in some decent result. Formation of Isreal doesn’t mean you can justify Holocaust. She then continued with the pun stating that the police need to take fitness seriously.  I am sure that is not a great insight. It doesn’t make her look smart either. It is like someone saying, people should eat healthy food and expect everyone to admire at the insight.

Finally, she is expecting media to leave people like Gurmehar Kaur alone. I agree with that but is interesting coming from her mouth. I am sure she will hate it when people troll her. If you break fundamental disciplines then expect people to give you a taste of your own medicine. You are a troller and you will get trolled. I don’t think you deserve sympathies. Feminism and free speech need better advocates than people like you.

I have for long wanted to write about my views on the Geo-political environment, faiths ,corruption and life. However, before I start writing my views on these, there are couple of people I would like to pay tribute. One is my father, the man who exposed me to critical thinking, rationale, socialism, politics and criticism. I have always admired his knowledge and ability to disambiguate a problem, something that I have to expect considering his mathematical knowledge. The second one is Christopher Hitchens,a man I consider my mentor in many ways. I disagree a lot with both these people, however I have learnt from them that there is no harm in disagreement. Disagreements, debates, introspection and free speech are some of the main drivers for civilisation.

I am product manager by profession and a cynic through out. I have never trusted what people have asked me to trust. There is nothing more disheartening to me than acknowledging any supremacy without a fight. This blog is where I am going to vent my thoughts, frustrations and anger.

I am an anti-theist, philosophically a communist and politically a social-democratic. I am a voracious supporter of free speech and liberty. I believe in seeking truth and my views will definitely be offensive. I will be glad to hear contradictory views and abuses.