Because ancient India was extremely bad at record keeping and maintaining written works (and the destruction of Nalanda university didn't help), and relied mostly on oral traditions to record history.
Compare that to the innumerable number of Chinese texts on nearly every topic from politics and history and governance to science and engineering (fun fact, the current Indian civil service was a product of the English civil service, which in turn was inspired by the Chinese one).
Compare that to the English, where you might even be able to find the exact amount of tax owed by some Yorkshire peasant in the 16th century.
Even the Indian and South East Asian monastic orders stuck to the oral tradition, in spite of writing material being significantly more abundant over the past millennia.
If you read the Baburnama, you'll even find him lamenting about India's poor record at tax keeping records and historical records relying on oral traditions, where the narrators are prone to exaggerations and embellishments.
Thankfully India's ancient temples are much more resilient than its books, which is why rock carvings themselves are also a rich source of Indian history. The Ashoka pillar in Mehrauli being a fine example (and in effect being a historical record in itself, which is how we know a lot about the Mauryas than some later kingdoms).
Times of Israel is mostly Israeli propaganda, although it's good to get an idea of where the conservative majority Israeli pulse is.
Haaretz is often objective by global standards, but is a minority in Israeli media unfortunately. I prefer them to know what's really happening on the ground.
Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye are both Qatari funded, and both tend to be biased to the Islamic viewpoint. That being said, Al Jazeera does invite a lot of experts with opposing viewpoints to their channel regularly, in both their English and Arabic versions, which is how they eked out their name as the most trusted and most viewed media source in the Arab world.
Other news media like Arab News (Saudi), The National (UAE) and Al Arabiya (Saudi) are largely propaganda machines. You won't even get reliable news on what's happening inside their own countries, forget elsewhere.
Sometimes TRT World (Turkey) puts out spicy bits of news that is usually underreported elsewhere, but they're basically the RT of Turkey.
Russia Today, in normal times, often presents a very neutral perspective of Middle Eastern news, especially when most of Western news media is biased towards or silent on Israeli actions. In fact, for most of the attacks reported on GCC countries, RT was and is likely still the most accurate of them all. But of course, these aren't normal times, and their service practically acts like Tasnim English version when it comes to news on Iran.
Good to keep in mind that all Israeli media, Haaretz included, are under military censorship. So, yeah, good to get the propaganda pulse, but not much else.
Also good to remember the English versions of Israeli sites have the propaganda for the US and diaspora. The Hebrew versions give a clearer picture of the internal messaging.
> Also good to remember the English versions of Israeli sites have the propaganda for the US and diaspora. The Hebrew versions give a clearer picture of the internal messaging
Yes, this is very important when approaching the region. If you want to get the actual pulse, you have to read from the regional language website. For example, Al Jazeera Arabic is actually very extremist by Western standards, just as Israel Hayom in Hebrew is.
During the recent events I've occasionally looked at PressTV, https://www.presstv.ir/, to get the other side's view straight from the horse's mouth. Still better than White House press releases, where it's coming from the other end of the horse.
Ryan Grim of Drop Site is a pundit not reporter getting his start as a legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project. Drop Site's publisher is Nika Soon-Shiong daughter of the billionaire owner of the LA Times. She made headlines for claiming her family blocked the LA Times from endorsing Kamala Harris in 2024 to protest the war in Gaza.
You still don't expect people to go hungry in a first world developed country. Nor did people go hungry or homeless at this scale before in recent American, British or even broadly Western history. Yet here we are, and the UK is no exception either.
At least you can be guaranteed for certain you won't be going hungry in Istanbul, Warsaw or Amman.
I disagree with the claim that a greater proportion of people go hungry, and more are homeless, today than at any point in recent western history. These have broadly been on a downwards trend over the last century.
Of course many do struggle, and that should not be dismissed by pointing to the past. But it nonetheless strikes me as naive to believe that people today are hungrier than at any point in recent history - the obesity crisis, and its lack of discrimination between social classes, should at least in part demonstrate this.
In my opinion, such exaggerations mostly serve to discredit and distract from legitimate complaints about the cost of living today.
Recent Western history, 70s to early 00s. I doubt many people were going hungry in the US and UK back then, as much as they are now.
The obesity crisis is in part because of the unavailability of nutritious food and the proliferation of cheap junk masquerading as food. But even that is getting expensive these days. Actual food prices have been going on an uptick since the 00s.
I will make my stand on the fact that more people lived better during the 90s in the West than now.
It's worth adding that Israel has been on a rampage conducting targeted strikes against several journalists, Lebanese and foreign, and against ambulances in south Lebanon.
Bye bye Bitbucket, Jira, Confluence, etc. Seriously, if you're using any Atlassian product other than Statuspage, you deserve to get your data hoovered up for AI.
Incorrect, banks in other countries require this data solely because the US is the only country that taxes its citizens even outside its borders. Compliance with FATCA is the only reason why most banks literally have a checkbox in their application forms specifically to state that you do not hold US citizenship in any form. Some Swiss banks even outright forbid US clients. Dealing with FATCA is just another logistical nightmare for most banks.
Not just because of either - many countries tax and treat citizen/permanent resident accounts wildly differently than non-citizen and non permanent resident accounts.
India has a whole swath of different account types based on this criteria, with wildly different rules.
NRI accounts are different in that they're localized. You don't have UBS in Switzerland asking me if I'm an Indian citizen or resident, like they do for the US.
Sure, as it is in their purview within India. But does UBS or Santander ask their clients in Europe if they're specifically an Indian citizen or resident? Does RBS send a form to a prospective client asking them to explicitly check off if they're a citizen/resident of India or China or wherever?
My point is that the US gov’t asking US banks to verify citizenship/residency of account holders in the US is not that unusual, if looking at the norm internationally. What is your point?
My point is and always was about US government rules forcing foreign banks in third countries to check for US citizenship and residency specifically. Otherwise citizenship checks have always been a thing everywhere. But in order to comply with the US rules, banks have to maintain a separate documented US FATCA section altogether in their enrollment process, even if they are in some unrelated third country.
my bank specifically asked me a bunch of questions that they claimed they needed to send to the US. it wasn't just a checkbox that i am not a citizen. it's more complicated than that. non-citizens could have tax obligations to the US if they work there or work for a US company.
They don't need to send your data if you're not working for a US company, or if you're not a US resident/citizen. That is, sending data to the US is not the default. Also yes, the checkbox wasn't just a single box but an entire page just dedicated to FATCA issues i.e. the banks are doing as much as possible to absolve themselves of any FATCA obligations and document it.
Anything remotely connecting a client to the US is kryptonite to banks.
reply