The Hypocritical Globalization Contradiction

Every time I hear, “They stole our jobs!” from people in Western countries I cant help but feel bitter from the irony. Even worse is when people sympathize by saying things like,”Well this is America (or England or Australia, insert your pick there), these jobs belong to Americans.

This, from the countries that spearheaded the Globalization phenomenon? Who stole who’s jobs first? Who took over markets that the local population could not compete with? (I’m sure we’ll never see an Indian chain that can compete with McDonalds. Pepsi, Coke anyone?) Since the time India had decided that Globalization was the right path (which it was) countless cottage industries were destroyed in the process. The West planted the seeds of globalization, created a beast they couldn’t control and when it comes to bite them back they blame the rest of the world?

But that’s not the point. I’m not blaming the West, just revealing the hypocrisy. Globalization is synonymous with progress and competition. The moment you accept globalization, you also have to accept that that precious job you’re talking about belongs to anyone who deserves it. If you truly think that jobs belong to countrymen alone, then go move to North Korea, or live in a forest somewhere if you cant handle progress. Progress and competition go hand in hand. You cant have your cake and eat it at the same time.

Obama’s recent words encouraging kids to work harder as their competition are people from India and China is something I appreciate. He could have easily acted as the usual political demagogue, but he understands that competition is something that is never going to go away. Although I’m sure there will be even more people that take his words in the wrong way and will continue to blame the East for all their problems, hopefully a handful of people will understand that the West cannot rest on its laurels and is required to work like the rest of us.

E3 is over… hype now official!

Well E3 has finally redeemed itself. After the last few years of disappointment at what’s supposed to be the biggest game convention in the world, we finally get a very satisfying E3.

Although I hate to admit it, it looked like Microsoft had the best showing this time around, all though that’s not to say that Sony and Nintendo had poor showings. Microsoft basically covered all possible grounds for improvement and left even a Sony fanboy like me impressed.

So, the games, first I’ll start with the 360 games. The game that impressed me the most is Splinter Cell: Conviction. Now I’ve never been a big fan of the Splinter Cell games, but this latest one just looks amazing.

The game looks great and it has a very unique presentation style.

Even though the game still has stealth, Sam Fisher is now a predator, and uses his stealth to effectively take out his enemies, rather than avoid them.

After that are 2 halo games, Halo 3: ODST, and an all new Halo: Reach. Not much was shown about Halo: Reach, but well… its Halo so it should be good I guess.

Next up is Project Natal, Microsoft’s answer to the Wii.

The thing is almost as big as the Wii!

Project Natal is a camera that detects you as the controller. Meaning your actions can be mapped almost 1:1 and be translated and processed on screen. This is something the casual market is gonna die for, I’m sure, and looking at how far it’s come along, I’m sure Nintendo is quaking in their boots.

Microsoft also announced a slew of integration possibilities that will be realized by next year, including Facebook, Twitter and increased support for Netflix. Now this may not seem like a big deal, but the Facebook-Xbox Live Friends combination, makes it incredibly easy to find new people to play against online. Its an incredible idea and Sony should try its best to integrate it as well.

So on to Sony. Now the only reason why I feel Sony’s show was lacking was the lack of a price drop announcement. Almost everyone was anticipating this and yet Sony stood firm as wanting to be the expensive console. I suppose financial matters are going very badly for Sony, but if they want to catch up with Microsoft, they really cut the price.

But Sony’s games on the other hand were nothing short of amazing.

I want those

God of War 3 made a showing for all to play, and it looks spectacular as always.

FFXIV is an MMO???

The announcement of Final Fantasy XIV surprised everyone as FFXIII has yet to release, and FFXIII versus has yet to even release a proper trailer. Its confirmed that it is an all new MMORPG (separate world from FFXI) and will be released on the PS3 and PC. As of now there is no plan for an Xbox 360 release. My one hope for this game is that Square does not charge their monthly rate to play. I think it will seriously hold them back. But still, this game is still deep in development and I don’t expect a release till 2011.

Kojima dropped a bomb with 2 Metal Gear games: Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising is expected to star Raiden and will release on PS3, Xbox 360 (noooo!) and the PC. Judging by the tagline “Lightning Bolt Action” it doesn’t seem like its going to be a stealth game. This makes sense as Kojima has announced that he will be concentrating on MGS: Peace Walker for the PSP. This has been confirmed as a direct sequel to MGS3: Snake Eater. On the other hand, people are speculating that MGS:Rising will take place in between MGS2 and MGS4.

Finally, Sony announced the PSP Go, which unfortunately everyone knew about already.

Probably looks better in real life

Although the design is a tad disappointing, its form factor makes sense. It’s a lot more portable this time around. The biggest change is the removal of the UMD slot and adding 16 GB internal Flash Memory. A decision that is likely to make retailers around the globe livid, Sony is moving all its PSP games as downloadables from the Playstation Store. They are currently working out a strategy to enable existing PSP users to transfer the UMD games to their PSP Go.

And I almost forgot, Final Fantasy Dissidia, was in playable form at E3. Can’t wait for this one, a Super Smash Brothers of Final Fantasy is every RPG player’s dream.

3d Fighter with FF characters. Epic Win.

Well, those were the big announcements for me at E3. It doesn’t look like this generation of consoles is anywhere near close to dying. In fact, Microsoft has boasted that with Project Natal, they can continue the 360 till 2015. A tall order, but definitely not impossible. Although Nintendo had a decent showing with 2 new Mario games, Metroid: Other M, the only thing that interested me is this one concept art Shigeru Miyamoto released of the new Zelda:

Link has no sword…. Hmmm…

Lets see how it goes….

Politically Racist Creativity Killer

Well, the big topic of the hour is racism. The big protests in Australia and the general undercurrent feeling of all minorities abroad is that they aren’t feeling the love they used to get.

Kumar quite correctly explained in his blog The Monster Within that racism is a lot closer to home than we Indians tend to admit. In fact, this is just not about Indians. Everybody, and I mean everybody, is a little racist. To say that you are not racist implies that you have no unfounded bias (positive or negative) against or for anyone on the planet. This simply is not true (well maybe except in the case of babies before any biases can be formed at all).

I’d like to justify this with a little thought, and that is, any opinion that you do not form out of your own experience is somebody else’s opinion.

What I mean to say is that unless you have experienced something firsthand, your thoughts on a subject are somebody else’s. You might have seen it on the news, read about it in a magazine (all incredibly biased sources of information, I might add). Your views on the Iraq war? Guess what, they are most likely somebody else’s. I am not saying we are not capable of forming our own opinions. You might argue that after reading an article, you found that you did not agree with it, thus making it your own thought. But why did you disagree? You found another viewpoint more accurate and most likely, you didn’t come up with it on your own.

So racism. To be completely unbiased, means that you would have to travel the entire world, see each and every race and ethnicity for yourself and form your opinion. Any other kind of thought is simply a bias. Now this is obviously not very practical, and thus my conclusion that everybody is racist.

Am I justifying racism? Of course not, but people have taken things way out of hand and have forgotten what not being racist really means. The latest movie from Disney called The Princess and the Frog is about a princess who kisses a frog, but turns into a amphibian as well.

I’m a frog. Does it look like I care whether you’re black or white?

And that should have been the end of it. Disney would have created your average family cartoon movie that would make the children happy and blah blah. But the princess is black. So that means that a lot of people are going to start a HUGE race row. Suddenly Disney has to check its bases a million times over to make sure that they are politically correct at every frame in the movie. A cognitive psychologist Michael Baran said, “Because of Disney’s history of stereotyping, people are really excited to see how Disney will handle her language, her culture, her physical attributes”. So people are gearing up for the kill.

This is where the contradiction lies. If you are truly not racist, then it shouldn’t matter whether the princess is black or white. A person who is not racist, is not biased either way, and would just watch the movie for the sake of the movie. So these supposedly anti-racist people that are waiting to pounce upon the movie are the most racist of all. They are trying to expose the differences at a time when we are supposed to be overlooking them.

Sebastian was Jamaican?I didn’t even know what Jamaican was back then…

As a result of this pressure, I’m sure Disney will cave and produce a thoroughly boring movie. The sad part is that this movie is intended for kids. Most kids don’t really care about race and that’s how it should stay. When I saw The Jungle Book as a kid I didn’t even realize that the apes were voiced by African Americans. I just thought it was funny, not noticing any differences, which is the key to not being racist. These so-called politically correct people are trying to deepen the divide and we shouldn’t let them do it.