{"id":142,"date":"2011-02-09T17:54:48","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T17:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kranjani.wordpress.com\/?p=142"},"modified":"2011-02-09T17:54:48","modified_gmt":"2011-02-09T17:54:48","slug":"is-china-the-new-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/2011\/02\/09\/is-china-the-new-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"Is China the new Russia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This thought occurred to me while watching \u2018Castle\u2019<\/a> last evening. It\u2019s the 6th or the 7th episode in the 3rd season which I don\u2019t think is aired in India yet. If you have watched Castle before, you\u2019d know it\u2019s about a female detective and a male fiction writer solving cases (mostly murders) together. There is of course high likelihood you haven\u2019t because I watched it one day when there was a marathon on FoxCrime and never heard of it ever since. My boyfriend got hooked and so I got to watch the next seasons from off the Internet.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Image Courtesy: www.castle-tv.info<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Anyway, the point is that the suspect in this episode is a \u201cChinese spy\u201d. There is this astrophysicist who gets killed mysteriously. Castle and Detective Beckett are investigating the case. In the process, they learn that \u2018high power Federal organisations\u2019 are also after the killer (who might have some \u201cimportant\u201d \u201cconfidential\u201d data that the victim downloaded). When the high power Federal Official explains the situation to Detective Beckett, he mentions the \u201cChinese spy\u201d. It is not inconsequential that they sent him to prison for life when they finally catch him (and he is portrayed as someone who could kill ruthlessly even after he gets work done).<\/p>\n

It was appalling (considering my views of America, it shouldn\u2019t have been. But that\u2019s another debate altogether!) that the only way in which they would address him is \u201cChinese\u201d. It brought back gory memories of how the Russians were treated by American Cinema, through \u2018beautiful mind\u2019<\/a> and so many others (that I am glad I don\u2019t remember the other painfully rhetorical films I\u2019d watched about Russia)! Just to make sure I wasn\u2019t over reacting, I tried Googling! And look what I found!<\/p>\n

China Vs America: fight of the century! <\/a><\/p>\n

Chinese \u201cspace-wars\u201d with America: A Wikileaks report! <\/a><\/p>\n

Noam Chomsky says this<\/a> and this.<\/a><\/p>\n

Congressional Research Service found this <\/a>out! <\/p>\n

Going through these documents, I\u2019m convinced it is not a coincidence that it\u2019s reflecting in American media. It wouldn\u2019t be too long before China becomes the next Russia (considering all the things they have in common!) India isn\u2019t very friendly with China either, is it? When is Vijaykanth<\/a> going to start defeating Tamil speaking Chinese \u2018terrorists\u2019, I say?<\/p>\n

Jokes apart, this reminds me of the shortest conversation about American Foreign Policy that I ever had. After talking a wee bit about 9\/11, I said \u201cAt any rate, war is bad!\u201d The person in front of me quickly replied, \u201cwell dear, the world is not flat either!\u201d<\/p>\n

Stumped, that I was!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This thought occurred to me while watching \u2018Castle\u2019 last evening. It\u2019s the 6th or the 7th episode in the 3rd season which I don\u2019t think is aired in India yet. If you have watched Castle before, you\u2019d know it\u2019s about a female detective and a male fiction writer solving cases (mostly murders) together. There is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,84,90,94,147,231,269,321,395,412],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-american-media","tag-castle-tv-series","tag-china","tag-cinema","tag-foreign-policy","tag-media-criticism","tag-noam-chomsky","tag-russia","tag-tv","tag-vijayakanth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tharkuri.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}