We have been listening to predictions over the last six years. In my research there was around 81 predictions before July 2008. 81 didn’t work out, and I don’t believe the 82nd or 83rd will come true. I think Analysts are shooting off the hip; they are not really studying the market. The fundamentals are still very very strong for Dubai.

Stunning!

Update: Feb 2010; our champion has managed to hold on to his job – even though his belief and research were proved wrong – fundamentally.

Chayakada’s lesson to youngsters: Stay away from B-Schools.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.

Google and their love for freedom of speech. Do they really think we are idiots?

Google’s track record is such, which makes them one of the biggest threats (present and clear) to freedom of speech.

‘The director took my book as the base but he has changed it according to his requirements. He took permission from me before taking my story, but has not involved me in making it into the final script. But, he has shown me the final script and I have liked it too,’ Chetan told IANS.

On Dec 31st 2009, on Chetan’s website:

As per the agreement between the author Chetan Bhagat and the movie producers, the credit roll is to have:

Based On The Novel
FIVE POINT SOMEONE
By
Chetan Bhagat

Chetan says he was informed by the movie producers that they have written a completely new story, ‘influenced’ by his book. According to Chetan, the movie Three Idiots has “a big front Story credit for Mr Hirani and Mr Joshi.”

I agree with Chetan that the movie cannot have Story Credit for anyone else, if the story is based on his novel.

That said, did Chetan accept the two payments, (10 Lakh Rs) One Million Rupees from the movie producers? Only Chetan can answer this question. I will put the question to him through twitter. . If Chetan accepted the money, how come he didn’t ask at that point (November 2009) why he is being paid for a story which is supposedly an original written by Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi (the scriptwriter)?

Watch this clip: http://tr.im/JjQX

I am yet to watch the movie. And I must admit I haven’t read any of his books. My friends tell me that the movie is very much an adaptation of the book. As a journalist and lover of words I must back the writer in this controversy. By having made the payment to Chetan, the producers are very much admitting that the movie is an adaptation – no matter what the percentage of content/storyline has been taken. That is why it is called an adaptation.

The real controversy here is the Story Credit given to Rajkumar Hirani and Abhijat Joshi.

How come Chetan is not taking the producers to court? He says, he believes in God and that the movie makers will get their judgment in due course of time, if not in this life – in any of their future births. This is what makes me angry. He calls himself the ‘small person’ in this battle of truth. And now he is leaving it to the Gods. If every crime was left to God for final judgment, why do we even have courts and legal systems?

Chetan, as a renowned author, has a moral responsibility to fight the good fight for all the other small authors who get fleeced by the big corporations. Wouldn’t God judge him for his reluctance to fight the Dharm Yudh? It is at this point even I get a bit cynical about the whole “Credit Drama”.

I checked the Reliance Big Entertainment website – it says, “Inspired from Chetan Bhagat’s novel, “Five Point Someone” the film chronicles the tale of three friends together in an engineering college. What seems to have touched the right chord in people’s heart is the witty writing and terrific acting and the incisive look which the film takes at the education system in India.”

In an interview published here http://tr.im/Jksb “On the eve of 3 Idiots release, Chetan Bhagat speaks to Bollywood Hungama and talks about why 3 Idiots is a special film, his next big project and lots more.”

The screenplay has been written by Raju Hirani and Abhijat Joshi…Would you have liked to be a part of the screenplay writing process?

Initially I did sit down with Raju and Abhijat while they were deciding to make a film based on ’5 Point Someone’. I even went to IIT with Abhijat a couple of times. But it was just not possible for me to be involved at every stage of the screenplay writing process since I was in Hong Kong at that time, working full time and busy writing other books. Moreover, Abhijat is based in USA, Raju was in the US for quite a while working on the screenplay but it was not practical for me to do that.

The question on everyone’s mind is how similar the film is to the book? Raju Hirani says that the film is just 10% of the book….your comments.

I don’t think Raju must have said something like that. In fact I just met him a few days ago and we spoke at length about the film etc. See…’5 Point Someone’ has over the years achieved cult status and has its own loyal fans. I am sure they would like to see each and every moment of the book on the big screen but that is not how the process works. Adapting a book and making it into a film is a relatively new thing in India. The film retains the soul of the book. 3 Idiots is different from the book but at the same time it does borrow many things from the book. The core theme and message of the film is coming from the book itself. And that’s why the makers have officially credited the film as ‘Based on a novel by Chetan Bhagat’

And then Chetan says this:

“I am really inspired by Aamir’s marketing. In fact there is a lesson for a lot of Indian marketing companies on the way Aamir does the marketing of his films.”

Perhaps it is this statement which has made many in India believe the entire controversy is a ‘promotional stunt’ – an extension of ‘Advertising and Marketing’ of the movie.

When a company wants to promote its product through any media, most editors avoid ‘advertorials’ (advertisements masqueraded as editorial content). Even if Advertorials are published – it is clearly mentioned that the content is advertorial. Advertorial is a terrible attempt to fool the readers/audience. You won’t be wrong, if you want to call it cheating.

If Chetan is involved in this publicity stunt to make the movie a box office hit, and also push sales of his current and to be published books… there is a great deal of insincerity in the whole exercise. Chetan has a lot to lose in the public domain, even if the public has a very short memory. I hope Chetan is not involved in this dirty publicity games.

If Television and Print media has been used – by creating an artificial crisis – media  people must feel cheated for denying them advertisement revenue. Like in the case of the missing Balloon Boy in the US… people have to be sent to jail for misleading the public for personal gains. The line has to be drawn. Has the fourth estate been made into the fourth fool? If so the media has to fight everyone involved in this particular publicity circus.

Chetan is a free man to decide not to fight the good fight. By not  fighting the good fight for the sake of every aspiring artist in India, he clearly is letting  a lot of people down. There is more honour in returning the Million Rupees back to the producers and taking them to court… If you need money to fight the case, many Indian citizens like me will donate for a good cause.

The people in India refuse to be the fourth idiot.

Last week, Washington Post carried an article: Obama backs non-censorship; Beijing, apparently, does not.

President Obama, taking questions Monday from government-selected students at a town hall-style meeting in Shanghai, called himself “a big supporter of non-censorship.” But the Beijing government, apparently, is not, and most Chinese never got to hear or read what Obama said.

Telegraph in the UK wrote: Barack Obama has strongly criticised censorship in an unusual live “town hall” meeting with Chinese students in Shanghai, veering directly into one of the most sensitive areas of Communist party policy.

The Hope evangelist put up a big show in China; after all those Red Commis in China are all about censorship, stealing American jobs, etc etc….

Back in his own country, land of the free, land of undying hope… Obama is no different from the Chinese regime. Obama enforces censorship in the USA!

If Orwell was around, he would definitely change the names of a few characters in Animal Farm. Napoleon is a sure candidate to be replaced by Obama.

On the website of Festival Of Thinkers, organised by Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE, you will find this.

The Nobel Peace Prize site makes it very clear who won the prize.

Did N Ram the Editor of The Hindu write these words:
“He (India’s environment minister) should ignore the huge pressure from organisations that have no time for the scientific evidence while claiming to speak for the environment and the public.”

The editor is saying Greenpeace has no time for scientific evidence!

Did the editor at least try to get in touch with Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini of the Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) – who called Bt Brinjal: Bt Brinjal Unfit for Human Consumption.

In such a society, this news shouldn’t be big: Guardian gagged from reporting parliament

If the citizens have no right to know what’s happening in the Parliament… it represents the biggest challenge to democracy – a big one.

For the sake of democracy, Chayakada is reproducing the entire Guardian report.

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

The Guardian has vowed urgently to go to court to overturn the gag on its reporting. The editor, Alan Rusbridger, said: “The media laws in this country increasingly place newspapers in a Kafkaesque world in which we cannot tell the public anything about information which is being suppressed, nor the proceedings which suppress it. It is doubly menacing when those restraints include the reporting of parliament itself.”

The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that “whatever comments are made in parliament” can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.

He said: “Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of ‘Colonel B’, granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of ‘national security’. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published.”

The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes’s battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, “it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to”.

Looks like the GAG is based on what BBC and Guardian exposed on Trafigura’s toxic dumping in Ivory Coast. Wikileaks has the full Minton Report.

Rape is a crime. If you do crime, you do time – that’s how it works in civilized societies. Paedophiles are sick in their head, really sick people. Raping a child is a crime that no society should tolerate.

There is nothing consensual sex in the case of the thirteen-year-old girl, Samantha Geimer, who was drugged and raped by noted movie-maker Roman Polanski. Whoopie Goldberg and many others in the US believe that the long arms of justice shouldn’t reach Polanski.

Back in 1977, the day after the crime, Roman Polanski was arrested – and he pleaded guilty. Before the court could sentence him – Polanski fled the US – making France his permanent abode.

In 2002, Hollywood even gave Polanski an Oscar for The Pianist. Whoopie Goldberg thinks what Polanski did to the 13-year-old girl wasn’t a ‘rape-rape’. How convenient it is to come up with different degrees of rape! Roman Polanski drugged and raped a young girl, and then ran away before justice could be served to him. Polanski is a criminal – and he must serve time.

It is also important to ask the question: Given the judicial record it has, can America really treat Polanski as a criminal? He even agreed to pay (or have paid) half a million dollars to the victim; some sort of western bloody money!

It seems to me that Polanski’s crime in the US is that he is the wrong kind of Roman. Though his first name is Roman, he is not a Roman Catholic priest for the law to not chase him for 32 years!

So many Roman Catholic priests have escaped the long arm of justice and escaped prison – because the Roman Catholic Church ‘settled those criminal cases’ outside the court. When it comes to Roman Catholic priests, the American justice system thinks raping a child/minor is a civil offence; let’s say an inconvenience to the American society. The church is only happy to open their ‘war chest of billions’ – collected from the believers – and pay the victims. It seems, in the US, if you are rich and powerful – you can dodge the ‘justice bullet’ – and not spend time in Jail.

How is Roman Polanski’s case any different from a rapist priest? How many rapist priests are in the US prison these days? How many of them roam around free in the US today, because the Catholic Church bought their ‘freedom’ – saved them from spending the rest of their life in a prison cell? Settling such criminal cases out of court – abusing money power is perversion of law, justice and even criminalisation of the state itself.

That said, the law has to be applied evenly to all. Just because Roman Polanski was born to Jewish parents doesn’t make the American legal system to hunt him down in Switzerland. Polanski is not a priest who has access to small children – especially the ones who so innocently believe that this old man is a messenger/agent of God.

I am all for Polanski to be thrown into jail. He is a criminal, no doubt.

Ben Johnson, the 100-m sprinter – was denied his chance of continuing with his profession of running – cause he took drugs to enhance his performance. Ben Johnson was a drug cheat in sport; once he was caught and punished – Johnson lost his career as an athlete. How did Polanski suffer in the three decades after the crime/rape? He continued with his career as a movie-maker and even won many awards!

The American hypocrisy is amazing: they want to condemn and punish Polanski – and yet turn a blind eye towards the child-raping priests!

If they want to crucify Roman the Jew, then they will have to put hundreds or even thousands of Roman Catholic priests in jail.

This is the biggest real Test for the American Justice System. Soon we’ll know how the cancer of crime has spread and is killing the STATE!

REF:
ABC NEWS [Video]

Statutory Rape