Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Bit of this and bit of that, not much different from India.

"Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has named Kamala Harris as his running mate -- the first black woman and South Asian American in the role." Harris is a lawyer and was "the San Francisco district attorney from 2004-2011, and the California attorney general from 2011-1017". Why did Biden pick Harris out of all contenders? Because she is 55 years old, and because her father was economics professor Donald Harris from Jamaica and mother was cancer researcher Shyamala Gopalan from India. Thus, she was chosen because she is a woman, because she is part black and part Indian and so will attract voters from both communities, because she provides youth to Biden's age at 77 years and because she is a Christian whose mother was a Hindu and is herself married to a Jew. Her choice was not about any ideology or policy but because she ticks almost all boxes, except being Muslim or transgender. "Harris also has another secret weapon: her connection to the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, which she joined as an undergraduate at Howard University and whose roughly 300,000 members and multi-million dollar budget could help provide fundraising and organizational might across the country." Biden was vice-president to Barack Hussein Obama, whose father was a black Muslim economist from Kenya and whose mother was a white "unreconstructed liberal", and who converted to Christianity while working as a community organizer in Chicago when he was in his twenties. India is derided because, "Caste identities and religious conflicts shape political cleavages or division of votes in India while inequality in education, income or occupation seems to play little role in determining choices the electorate makes, says a working paper by economists Abhijit Banerjee of MIT and Amory Gethin & Thomas Piketty of Paris School of Economics." "In 2014 Lok Sabha polls, more than 60% of Brahmin and nearly 50% of other forward caste voters supported BJP/other right wing parties compared to 30% of SC/ST and only 10% of Muslim voters." The other view is that Narendra Modi won the election by promising to fix the economy, creating jobs and getting rid of corruption. Similarly Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 promising to "drain the swamp". Technology companies based in Silicon Valley are pouring money into Joe Biden's campaign funds, because they have taken money from the Chinese government through front companies and are against Trump's restrictions on Huawei, TikTok and WeChat. They do not mind Chinese companies stealing US research data as long as they continue to make money. The FBI made false allegations against Trump and "The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence." Trump won despite all the skullduggery so the Democrats tried to impeach him on false allegations so that his administration would be paralysed. White, black, Indian, Christian, Hindu, Jew, not much different from religions and castes in India. Is it?

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