Happy new year

Wish you all a wonderful new year!

(Sai B'Krishnan is an author in this Blog, so I am at a loss to understand why he sent this post to Guestblogger. However, I feel happy he decided to make a post at last. Looking forward for more from him...)

I want to share this with you, because I am happy for my friend Krishna Raj. He has helped me a lot, and is fun to be with. Today I found news about him in Times of India.

He studied diploma, then progressed in his career and ended up in TCS. He left his job and started out on his own. Today, I read that he and his friends have rolled out their first research product, N-Gateway, an automated school management software. 

This is what Times of India tells about him:

 "We are not into service. Our main focus is only research,” said A Krishna Raj (25), who heads the software development wing of the new company. His last job was as a storage consultant with a technology giant in Chennai with a salary of Rs 6 lakh per annum. In a family of five, whose main breadwinner is an electrician father, it was a tough call but Krishna Raj seemed the most determined of the bunch to go ahead with the business. “When I tendered my resignation at TCS, the company offered me a bigger package, but I was firm to become my own master and thus quit the job to start iScence," he said.

I feel proud to have been friends with him. I wish him great success this year, and for you all too, happy new year.

Past Mistakes- Dare We Hope?

(Though the posts in this blog could be mistaken for being anti-American, they reveal an Americo-phile mindset. We are anguished with their activities, because in our minds, America is an idealised world of freedom and justice. And we are dismayed when they don't practice what they profess. We  unwittingly subscribe to the American Dream.

However, I believe though democracies do go wrong,  they are our only hope. I copy these two pages from the book, "You Are Here"  by Rory Bremner, John Bird and John Fortune, published by Weidenfeld and Nicholson in 2004. It is a damning indictment of the Western World, but the fact that criticism such as this can be written without fear and can get widespread publicity, is the promise of democracy, and in time, collective memory would come to govern against past mistakes is the hope of democracy.)

Iraq was created by the British during the break-up of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s. Formerly part of Mesopotamia, it had never previously been a country. Rather, it was a collection of tribes: Kurds, Marsh Arabs, Shiites, Sunnis, Turcomans, Jews, Assyrians. Mostly they detested each other, so you would think it would be a tough job for Britain to unite them.

But we did it. Less than three years after we took over in 1924 they all got together and threw us out.  That revolt was put down by British troops, but the Arab tribesmen and the Kurds kept on causing trouble. How did we deal with that? The same way Saddam Hussein dealt with the same problem sixty years later: we bombed them.

The RAF had a big airbase at Habbaniya, outside Baghdad, from where they sent Handley Page biplanes to blitz the tribesmen at the first sign of trouble. In fact, there didn't need to be any trouble at all before a place was bombed. Perfectly peaceful villages got the treatment if the tribesmen were thought to be slow paying their taxes. This was the first systematic bombing of civilians in history. And who was the man behind this policy? The Colonial Secretary, Winston  Churchill. He said,

I look forward to the country being in the condition of an independent native state, friendly to Great Britain, favourable to her commercial interests, and costing hardly any burden on her Exchequer.

That last bit was certainly true, as the Iraqis not only endured the effects of the RAF's bombing raids but were forced to pay for the privilege. But as for the policy itself, the Secretary of State for War, Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, had his doubts, stating,

If the Arab population realized that the peaceful control of Mesopotamia ultimately depends on our intention of bombing women and children. I'm very doubtful if we shall gain that acquiescence of the fathers and husbands of Mesopotamia to which the Secretary of State for the Colonies looks forward.

Shame he never met Donald Rumsfield.

Churchill didn't agree. On 29 March 1919 he ordered:

Gas bombs are required by the 31st Wing for use against recalcitrant Arabs.

At the Air Ministry, Lieutenant Colonel Gossage worried about the effects of gas on the innocent. But those qualms were not shared by Churchill, then Secretary of State for war and Air, the future Colonial Secretary, Prime Minister, and Greatest Briton of All Time.

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilized  tribes. So far, although considerable time and trouble was expense on research during the war, we have not yet evolved suitable and practical gas bombs for use from aircraft.

So there we are, another good idea goes down the tube. Not because we didn't have the heart, but because we didn't have the technology.

The intention throughout the 1920s was to create an independent country and leave with honour. Where have we heart that before?

In the end, the British didn't leave Iraq, with or without honour, until 1958, when we were finally kicked out by Arab nationalists, and the king, the crown prince and the prime minister were ll slaughtered. so much for constitutional monarchy.

Having thus seized power, the new ruler, Abd al-Karim Qasim, began a bloody and repressive regime. But that was OK because Iraq was still a buffer against the Soviet Union, so we tolerated the killings and turned a blind eye to the bloodshed. It was only when Qasim changed his allegiances the following year and started to deal with the Russians that the CIA finally sat up and declared Iraq 'the most dangerous spot in the world'.

With enlightened self-interest in mind, it was time to step in again and engineer a little regime change, and a CIA plot was hatched to assassinate the prime minister.The man at the centre of the  lot being twenty-two-year-old thug, described as having no class. After a series of bungled opportunities, the attempt ended in farce. The young assassin killed the wrong man, winged the prime  minister, and was accidentally shot in the leg by a fellow gunman. He then had to be bundled out of Iraq and shunted around Beirut and Cairo under CIA protection. so who was the CIA's bungling henchman and would-be assassin? Saddam Hussein. Whatever happened to him?

It's a recurring characteristic of American foreign policy that ,having installed or shored up a foreign dictator, the relationship then goes sour and they have an awful lot of trouble getting him out. It happened in Somalia with Said Barre, in Haiti with Baby Doc and in Panama with Noriega. And so it was with Saddam.

Arrogant and Ugly (We Play Hard)

Australia have lost a series at home after sixteen years, and their reign looks like it has come to an end for good. They did lose the Ashes earlier, but came back after that. But now they do not seem to have any great player in their team, with the exception of Ponting, and even he looked suspect this year. Their bowling looks very ordinary, and that, to me is the core of their problem.

Their fall won't be mourned by many, and in fact, I think a large number of people outside Australia would feel happy about that. This has mostly to do with their success, and even those who were not jealous of it, were alienated by their arrogance. Anyone who is successful, if he does not put on an air of humility bordering on servility, runs the risk of being labelled arrogant, especially here in India.

I am reading the book "Hitting Out- The Ian Chappell Story" and from what I read there, I think if the Australian fairy tale comes to a gory end, all credit for that should go to Ian Chappell, for he seems to have seeded the hubris that has bolstered and then supplanted their performance.

Chappell's early days were not like ours, friendly games with bickering, but deadly wars with intent to win at all costs: here is a tale of his boyhood days, in Greg's words-

"We never used pads or gloves in those days and whenever Mum gave me the benefit of the doubt and I batted on, I'd pay with whacks to the lags and the hands. I remember that when the track got too slow we wet the wicket a bit to liven it up. One particular day Ian gave it a bit too much water and the ball leapt all over the place. Inevitably he hit me on the fingers and I went down in a heap. Ian stood over me: 'Don't worry about the fingers, mate,' he said. "Next time it'll be your head."

The strand of blame the umpire and take glee in punishing your opponent seems to have continued to the end of his career.

Here is how Chappell's men got dubbed as "Ugly Australians":

Australia were losing a test to New Zealand, in 1973-74 at Christchurch, mainly due to centuries in both the innings by Glenn Turner. Ian considers Turner had profited from indulgent umpiring, and is miffed with him for constantly padding away Max Walker. So, when Turner hit an one bounce four, and the umpire signalled a six, Chappell finds this: "Turner leant on his bat at the non-striker's end with the hint of a smug smile on his face"

So Ian argues with the umpire,  Turner wants to take part in the conversation, which Ian does not like, so Ian advices Turner to "Fucken well shut up". This is Chappell's version, but Turner claims that Chappell deliberatedly made the comments to unsettle and needle him.

Anyway, in the next day's papers his team gets tagged "Ugly Australians"

And at the end of his career, Ian  is captaining South Australia against Tasmania. Young David Boon plays, gets rapped on the pad, and the keeper claims a catch. The umpire says not out, but still Boon turns to the slip cordon where Ian is, and touches his pad and says something to the effect that the ball nicked the pad only.

"Listen, pal, you get on with your batting. We'll do the appealing. You leave the umpiring to the umpire," says Ian and repeats his advice to Boon at the end of the over. The umpire tries to get into the conversation, but Ian is on a knife's edge and on fire, so he tells the umpire, "Why don't you fuck off, you officious Pommie bastard", says Ian Chappell. 

I don't know to what extent Ian Chappell influenced Australian Cricket, it seems he believes it to be considerable, but this tag of ugly and arrogant cricket could be his legacy, for in 2005, he writes thus of Mendis, hit between the eyes, felled by an express from Thomson:

"I thought we'd killed the guy! Our public image hadn't been that good and Thomson had copped a lot of criticism over his "Wanting-to-see-blood-on-the-pitch" comment. Bad image or not, our concern was for the little fellow lying on the wicket.

"Are you all right, pal?" I said, glad to see that his eyes were open and he was still alive.

He looked up at me and a big tear started rolling down his cheek, and he said, "I going now."

Cricket is no longer a gentleman's game- Australia's contenders, India and South Africa don't shirk from gamesmanship either, so, may be this is Ian's legacy to cricket.

Blog Recommend

This is a blog recommend.

When it comes to meditation, there are any number of ideas about how to sit, what to eat, how to breathe, how to control the mind and so on. But I found a very simple pointer, simple but not superficial- it gets more profound as you get profound. I found it in one the blogs I follow- Greg Perry's "Dropping a Paradigm".

This is what I found:

Dr. Evans-Wentz once (had) asked Sri Ramana Maharshi, the famous sage of India.

“Is it helpful to sit on a tiger’s skin?” he asked. “Should one sit in the lotus position, or may the legs be kept straight? What posture is best?”

“All of this is unnecessary,” the Maharshi answered. “Let the mind assume the right posture. That is all.”

Brilliant, right? Exceptional.

Another blog I follow is Thomas Meehan's "The Words of a Mystic" . It is a blog of diverse quotations at quite a good length from which Thomas Meehan is almost absent. There is not a wasteful word from him. I mail a 'spiritual' message to three people everyday, and almost seven times out of ten, my mails have his content.

Here is a sample:


"Tawazu in Sufi terms means something more than hospitality. It is
laying before one's friend willingly what one has, in other words
sharing with one's friend all the good one has in life, and with it,
enjoying life better. When this tendency to tawazu is developed,
things that give one joy and pleasure become more enjoyable by
sharing with another. This tendency comes from the aristocracy of the
heart. It is generosity and even more than generosity. For the limit
of generosity is to see another pleased in his pleasure, but to share
one's own pleasure with another is greater than generosity. It is a
quality which is foreign to a selfish person, and the one who shows
this quality is on the path of saintliness."
-"True pleasure lies in the sharing of joy with another."- Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan, Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:



When you follow someone's writing for some time, you develop an image of what kind of person he is: I imagine Greg Perry is youngish, with interest in meditative religion but with busy schedule and multiple activities. I don't know how I came to think this way. And I imagine Meehan as a reticient, courteous and comtemplative gentleman, quiet and unassuming but forthright with his opinions.

And if you who read my posts think of me as a confused person with a restless mind, who does not know what to do with his time and himself, you are not far off from the truth.

He Should Be Here

"I'm on the wrong planet and I'm living in the wrong place"- Rod Blagojevich.

Blagojevich, discusses funding for a children's hospital whose executives were a little behind on their campaign contributions:
ROD BLAGOJEVICH: The pediatric doctors – the reimbursement. Has that gone out yet, or is that still on hold?" [...]
ROD BLAGOJEVICH: And we have total discretion over it?
DEPUTY GOVERNOR A: Yep.
ROD BLAGOJEVICH: We could pull it back if we needed to – budgetary concerns – right?
DEPUTY GOVERNOR A: We sure could. Yep.
ROD BLAGOJEVICH: Ok. That’s good to know.
- wiretap recording.

More of this at Daily Kos

On Acting

"When asked if he (Harrison Ford) at one point told Steven Spielberg and George Lucas that he was no longer going to do this or that stunt in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” Harrison asked back with a furrowed brow, “Why?” Then, breaking into his famous lopsided smirking smile (part of his charm, really, especially when he does it onscreen), he said, “That is my exercise—that’s what I do for fun. Are you kidding? I love it! I love running, jumping, falling down and rolling around on the floor with sweaty men. That’s what I like.” With a comedian’s dry wit, he quipped: “Otherwise, I’d have to act or something.”
- Ruben V. Nepales, " 2008’s most amusing anecdotes", Inquirer

Harrison Ford is not the worst of actors, he banks more on his body language than overt histrionics is my impression, some of his films are fantastic, so it feels great to read this.

A mighty heart is what we may need

I was watching 'A mighty heart' during the luncheon interval and was subsequently searching on the net to check how the movie fared and also the fate of Omar Sheikh. As usual I was led by links and ended at one of the most chilling articles. It's chilling not so much for its contents but for what it implies. It's a very very lengthy article and this post itself is a lengthy one giving excerpts from the article. These excerpts are not even 10% of the article contents. This is for those who do not want to take the link. But read the article, as it raises lot of questions about terrorism and the role Pak and ISI and the complicity of CIA and USA.

Excerpts from the article 'Sept.11's Smoking Gun: The Many faces of Saeed Sheikh'

Link to the article

If you read just one thing at this website, please read this essay. Don’t mind the length and complexity. Saeed Sheikh’s story is not just mildly interesting. Understanding the history of this young man may not only explain many mysteries of 9/11, including solid evidence of foreign government involvement in the attacks, but may also reveal if nuclear war in the near future is likely. No kidding. Please read! Note that this was first written in September 2002 but has been thoroughly overhauled based on exposure to additional evidence. Also, click to find more details about Saeed Sheikh and his boss Mahmood Ahmed.

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A Curious Visit

The relationship between the US and the ISI is hard to fathom. On September 4, 2001, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed arrived in Washington, D.C. On September 10, a Pakistani newspaper reported on the visit, saying that it had “triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council” as well as meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon, and his “most important meeting” with Marc Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The article suggested that “of course, Osama bin Laden” was the focus of some discussions. Prophetically, the article added, “What added interest to his visit is the history of such visits. Last time [his] predecessor was here, the domestic [Pakistani] politics turned topsy-turvy within days. That this is not the first visit by Mahmood in the last three months shows the urgency of the ongoing parleys.” [Karachi News, 9/10/01] In May 2001, both CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had visited South Asia. It’s not known if they met with Mahmood or anyone else in the ISI, but according to credible news reports, Tenet had “unusually long” consultations with President Musharraf. It is also worth noting that Armitage is known for his “large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and ISI” [SAPRA, 5/22/01] as well as his connections to the Iran-Contra affair.

Of course everyone knows that politics did turn very “topsy-turvy” one day after the Karachi News article on September 10. But what many don’t know is that on the morning of September 11, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R). The meeting was said to have lasted at least until the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Goss is a self-admitted 10-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine operations wing. [Washington Post, 5/18/02] Goss and Graham were later the heads of the joint House-Senate investigation into the September 11 attacks, and Goss in particular made headlines for saying there was no “smoking gun” indicating that the government had sufficient foreknowledge to prevent the September 11 attacks. [Washington Post, 7/11/02] Also present at the meeting were Senator John Kyl (R) and the Pakistani ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi (note that all or virtually all of the people in this meeting also met Lt. Gen. Mahmood in Pakistan a few weeks earlier [Salon, 9/14/01]). Senator Graham later said of the meeting: “We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan,” and the New York Times mentioned that bin Laden was specifically being discussed. [Vero Beach Press Journal, 9/12/01, Salon, 9/14/01, New York Times, 6/3/02] The fact that these people were meeting at the time of the attacks is a strange coincidence at the very least, not to mention the topic of their conversation!

On September 12 and 13, Lt. Gen. Mahmood met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Senator Joseph Biden, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. An agreement on Pakistan’s collaboration in the new “war on terror” was negotiated between Mahmood and Armitage. [Miami Herald, 9/16/01] All these meetings coordinated Pakistan’s response to September 11. [New York Times, 9/13/01, Reuters, 9/13/01, Associated Press, 9/13/01] Isn’t it strange that the terms of Pakistan’s commitment to fight al-Qaeda were negotiated with the man who may have given orders to send $100,000 to the September 11 hijackers?

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So many other countries—Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Russia, even a Taliban cabinet minister—warned the US about an impending attack (see the They Tried to Warn Us essay). How it is possible that Pakistan, in the best position to know, gave no warning? If Musharraf is in control of the ISI, then how could he not have known of the 9/11 attack, and if he isn’t in control and didn’t know, then what good is he as a leader?

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A UPI editorial stated, “Al-Qaeda terrorists have long since scattered deep inside Pakistan and in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir where they enjoy the protection of the [ISI]… The unspeakable is that Pakistan is the new Afghanistan, a privileged sanctuary for hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters and Taliban operatives. Some estimates go as high as 5,000… The Pakistani—al-Qaeda connection is visible to all but the geopolitically challenged.” [UPI, 8/28/02] Prominent Taliban leaders wanted by the US have been living openly in Pakistani cities and yet the US does nothing about them. [Guardian, 12/24/01, Time, 5/6/02] It is now widely reported that Osama bin Laden, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and most other prominent al-Qaeda leaders are believed to be living in Pakistan, some of them living in the open and in luxury, with the protection of the ISI. It is frequently pointed out that Pakistan’s efforts to find them are mostly a charade. [Los Angeles Times, 4/6/02, Christian Science Monitor, 7/2/02, Los Angeles Times, 6/16/02, Time 7/29/02, Washington Post, 8/4/02, New York Times, 9/15/02, AP, 11/12/02, Los Angeles Times, 11/17/02] But still, the situation doesn’t change. As an example of Bush’s seemingly inexplicable response to terrorism in Pakistan, Azhar’s group Jaish-e-Mohammed had its assets frozen shortly after 9/11, but the group simply changed its name and over a year later the US has not frozen the assets of this “new” group. [Financial Times, 2/8/03, Washington Post, 2/8/03]

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Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Since 1997, Pakistan has been secretly supplying North Korea with nuclear technology, in return for long-range missile technology. Seymour Hersh has suggested that it is likely Pakistan is giving nuclear technology to other countries as well. [NOW with Bill Moyers, 2/21/03] Even at the end of the Clinton administration this link between Pakistan and North Korea was known, but neither Clinton nor Bush stopped it. [San Jose Mercury News, 10/24/02] As the Guardian put it, “If George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ were remotely rational, or even roughly reasoned, then its next target might be Pakistan, not Iraq. It should be said that the US is not justified in pre-emptively and unilaterally attacking either country—or any other sovereign state for that matter. But on the basis of Mr. Bush’s own ‘axis of evil’ criteria at least, Pakistan sits squarely in the theoretical firing line.” [Guardian, 10/8/02]

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There is no evidence that the US has questioned Saeed about 9/11. Indian newspapers have pointed out that if the US were to pressure its close ally Pakistan so Saeed could to be interrogated in his Pakistani prison, they could not only learn more about the financing of the 9/11 attacks, but also gain valuable information about the structure of al-Qaeda cells in Pakistan. [Indian Express, 7/19/02] Needless to say, there’s no evidence Lt. Gen. Mahmood has been questioned, either.

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Disturbing questions

One doesn’t have to wait 20 or 30 years to deduce that the ISI assisted al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. The question is, why is the US government seemingly ignoring the evidence and actively discouraging the media from pursuing these ideas? Shortly after 9/11, Bush said, “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” [Los Angeles Times, 10/13/01] What about Pakistan’s support of terrorism, if not 9/11, then the other terrorist attacks on India since? Is the US afraid of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons? If so, what’s to prevent the ISI from planning similar future attacks with impunity, against any country?

Perhaps the US has plans to deal with Pakistan eventually. In January 2003, Musharraf warned of an “impending danger” that Pakistan will become a target of war for “Western forces” after the Iraq crisis. “We will have to work on our own to stave off the danger. Nobody will come to our rescue, not even the Islamic world. We will have to depend on our muscle.” [Press Trust of India, 1/19/03, Financial Times, 2/8/03] Pointing to “a number of recent ‘background briefings’ and ‘leaks’” from the US government, “Pakistani officials fear the Bush administration is planning to change its tune dramatically once the war against Iraq is out of the way.” [Financial Times, 2/8/03] If so, could this lead to nuclear war?

Does the US ignore Pakistani complicity in 9/11 because it might be a thread that could unravel in other disturbing directions? For instance, there have been reports of secret deals between rich Saudis, the ISI, and bin Laden. [Sunday Times, 8/25/02] Saudi Arabia has supported the Taliban by paying the ISI. [UPI, 6/14/01] Before 9/11 the Asia Times reported that Crown Prince Abdullah, the defacto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is secretly a supporter of bin Laden. Furthermore, he made a secret visit in the summer of 2001 to Afghanistan with Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed to confer with the Taliban on how best to prevent bin Laden from being harmed by the US. [Asia Times, 8/22/01] Another secret meeting between Mahmood and Crown Prince Abdullah may have taken place shortly after 9/11. [Intelligence Online, 10/4/01] While such reports are very fragmentary and speculative, it is interesting to note that Senator Graham said “foreign governments”—plural, not singular—were behind 9/11. Newsweek has reported a possible connection between the Saudi government and some of the hijackers [Newsweek, 11/22/02], and has since reported that “The possibility of a Saudi link to 9-11 is growing.” [Newsweek, 12/9/02]

Could the thread unravel in other directions as well? For instance, what about the suggestion that Saeed was a CIA agent? A long time regional expert with extensive CIA ties stated publicly in March 2001 that “the CIA still has close links with the ISI,” and repeated the claim to CNN in February 2002. [Times of India, 3/7/01, CNN, 2/27/02] An anonymous former senior ISI official has stated, “The biggest problem we have [in Pakistan] are the rogue elements in the intelligence agencies, especially those who at some time became involved with the CIA.” [Christian Science Monitor, 2/22/02] At the very least, the ISI may know very embarrassing facts about the US. For instance, they may know a thing or two about CIA involvement in drug smuggling and/or support of bin Laden in the 1980s. [Star Tribune, 9/30/01, Atlantic Monthly, 5/96, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/23/01, UPI, 6/14/01] Unfortunately, Daniel Pearl was killed before he could investigate the connections between the US and the ISI, and no journalist seems willing to explore such dangerous subjects since his death.

What would the American public think of the motives for war in Iraq if they knew a country with much deeper ties to al-Qaeda that was also proliferating weapons of mass destruction was being so ignored?

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The Spiritual ME

The greatest thing about the times that we are living in, is that there are great developments in science, especially in research into the structure of the brain, that help us to understand and put into context our beliefs on what spirituality is.

For, I found this article in LiveScience which validates the insight that the less me there is, the greater the transcendental experience.

Brick Johnstone and colleague Bret Glass of Missouri University studied brain-injured patients, looking for correlations between brain region performance and the subjects' self-reported spirituality. Among the more spiritual of the 26 subjects, the researchers pinpointed a less functional right parietal lobe, a physical state which may translate psychologically as decreased self-awareness and self-focus.

The right parietal lobe is responsible for defining "Me. It generates self-criticism and guides us through physical and social terrains by constantly updating our self-knowledge: my hand, my cocktail, my witty conversation skills, my new love interest.

The greatest silencing of the Me-centre of the brain is likely to happen in the deepest states of meditation or prayer, says Johnstone, it is then that the practitioners describe feeling seamless with the entire universe. The highest point of spiritual experience occurs when "Me" completely loses its definition.

Johnstone sums up, "If you look in the Torah, the Old Testament, the New Testament, in the Koran, a lot of Sufi writings, Buddhist writings, and Hindu writings, they all talk about selflessness".

Man and Manners

I read in The Week that Oldie Publications Ltd have put out a book, "I Once Met... Chance Encounters with the Famous and Infamous", edited by Richard Ingrams. It is a collection of memories from  writers and readers of the magazine. I could not find any link to it, so, but read this:

"It must have been around the early 1930s that the gentleman char came into my mother's life. I helped her in the house after school, as had my older sisters, but they were now out at work. How she coped, in that old, cold, inconvenient, no-amenities house was truly amazing. We were a family of ten, with huge appetites, and we frequently brought hungry friends home for meals. My mother could stretch a meal quite miraculously.

"We lived in Limehouse, close to the Docks. One day a friend who lived near Whitechapel's Rowton House, a hostel for the homeless, brought "Laurel" to our house. His real name was not known; "Laurel" was the label attached to him by the East Enders with whom he came into contact. He was prepared to clean our house for the going rate of half a crown (twelve and a half pence) a day, plus a midday meal. The money just about covered the cost of a bed at Rowson House, and possibly some cigarettes.

"I came home early one afternoon and there he was. The tall, slim, narrow-faced "charman" bore a resemblance to the Laurel of the comedy partnership Laurel and Hardy. The man spoke to me. It was not what he said that startled me, it was the way he said it. His speech was what we at that time called Oxford English- cultured, correct, plum-in-the-mouth BBC English. I was too young then to hide my surprise at his posh accent. He smiled gently, bowed slightly, and then further astonished me by kissing my mother's hand and saying: "goodbye, queen of the kitchen." Turning to me he added: "Your mother is a fine lady and a splendid cook."

"My mother was consumed with pity for the poor man. She told me that he had scrubbed all the floors, cleaned the twin outside lavatories and polished that blacklead cooker to a mirror finish. "That well-bred gentleman worked so hard I had to make him stop for a rest." Then, quite suddenly, Laurel vanished. He was seen no more in our part of the East End. He was just another of the anonymous men who overnighted at the doss house.

"After the last War, I came upon a book written by George Orwell. In it was a photograph of the author, taken when younger. The man was Eric Blair, and I recognised him. He was my mother's Laurel; it must have been during his period of tramping around London, doing any work that came his way, that he did this East End charring. George Orwell was reputed to have said that the women he admired most were the hardworking, uncomplaining mothers of at least eight children. I like to think that he included my mother in this. She certainly fitted the description."

-Stella Judt

George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" is one of the books where the compassionate voice of this champion of the underdog rings loud. I feel happy to see that Orwell no mere word spinner, but a man with manners to match his convictions.

Inequality of income and the US economic crisis

I came across an article titled 'Spread the wealth' in the recent edition of Outlook Business by Aseem Srivashtava. The author discusses the raising inequality of income and how it caused the financial crisis. I find it brilliant, especially the early parts of the article. He proposes a theory for the current state of affairs in the US economy. I am presenting my understanding of his argument, rather theory, below

In the US, despite productivity gains achieved by businesses, employees haven't gained much. Businesses grew, CEOs and their ilk grew richer, shareholders gained but not the employee who worked for their riches. From 1970 onwards real wages have stagnated however compensation packages of CEOs and managers have grown exponentially. If this is the case how come the economy grew? Where did the money come from for consumers (a big chunk of which are non-managerial employees) to spend if their real wages did not grow? Zero growth in real wages mean the consumer could not have afforded more than what he did 1970. But the US economy witnessed a prolonged boom from 1990s till the sub-prime crisis hit them. What explains this?

Businesses produced and serviced the market (consumers) and earned their profit. Employees were paid less but their working hours increased. Shareholders and the government got their due. Promoters and the management got lot more than what was due to them. This elite group of owners and managerial people channeled their surpluses in the form of lending to common people, who borrowed and spent in order to boost the business and the economy. It was mentioned in the article that 2/3 of dollars spent in US came from consumers and a major chunk of which was funded by credit card companies and banks.

The owners and the lot gained twice, first by exploiting workers by paying sub-optimal wages and secondly by earning return on the money lent to the same men they exploited. The author of the article terms it as a scam that compares with none of the ealier ones that the US economy had witnessed for the sheer ingenuity.

This theory may not completely explain the current crisis faced by the US economy. But then if you are a left leaning person then you will be in the boat with Aseem Shrivastava. The Government was complicit (as is everywhere) through policies that completely shifted the responsibility for distribution of wealth and income into the private domain. They also did not discipline the spending and infact encouraged heavy borrowing through cheap loans, for both the corporate and the individual. After all it is the corporate that funds the campaigns and not the comman man.

It is prudent to tighten the interest rate a bit at the sign of indiscriminate spending. But then that means going against the wind, which not very popular even with the comman man. It is always better to bear bit of toughness when you are on a high than when you are down. Alas, this widom only finds deaf ears. US fed kept the rates low all along the boom period to encourage growth and consumerism. But when the economy needs a real kick on the back, there is not much leeway to reduce rates. After all interest rates cannot go below zero.

Kenning

" Eyes mark the shape of the city.

"Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair. In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature- or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of this pulsing, all parts ofthe body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises or falls but is pregnant with foreboding."

- Haruki Murakami, 'After Dark', translated by Jay Rubin.

I came across an interesting term, "Kenning". My dictionary says it is a "periphrastic expression in Old English and Old Norse poetry". The given example makes this more clear- A ship may be said to be 'oar-steed'. Elsewhere, I find words such as, Banhus: 'Bone-house' for body, Fripnebba: 'Peace-weaver' for wife (a bit optimistic, that), and a German word in current use, Gluhbirne: a glowing pear for light bulb.

Kenning has its roots in Ken, 'to know', and in Middle English it meant 'teaching'.

In the Haruki Murakami quote, which is the start of his novel, 'After Dark', we find high-flying night bird, which could be a plane. And further on, Murakami associates the city with a living organism.

This is excellent writing, of course, but when you look beyond the obvious kenning of 'high-flying night bird', a story itself is a sort of kenning- what you find in life, you turn into words, and make it interesting, give the familiar a picture of the novel.

And I like the association of knowledge and teaching with the word 'ken', stories can be some kind of teaching- even when they don't carry an explicit moral or message, but by merely portraying human lives they can teach us what it is to be human, and bring to our knowledge the amazing depth and variety of the human condition.

(In case you are interested to know more about kenning, there is a fascinating page by Ron Hale-Evans at "the Kenning Game- an Introduction", and there is also an engine by Kevin that helps you generate Kennings)

The Challenge of Imagination

Quirkiness reveals more of the man and the times than the normalcy of everyday life, I think. It is as if the screen of conformity is moved and what lies underneath is revealed.

There are two instances of this that I came across recently, both while reading:

It seems that W.B. Yeats, who was then the director of The Abbey Theatre in Dublin, rejected Sean O'Casey's play, The Silver Tassle stating that the war-play had not the authenticity of experience. "You are not interested in the great war", Yeats told O'Casey, "you never stood on its battlefields or walked its hospitals, and so write out of your opinions." Yeats' objection was that dramatic power is paramount in a creative work, and there is no place for "messages" in literature. Yeats declared, "Among the things that dramatic action must burn up are the author's opinions; while he is writing he has no business to know anything that is not a portion of that action" (Keith Jeffery, "The last battle")

This is wonderfully liberating in that drama is all that is important in a story, popular novels and cinemas testify to the power of this observation- action is what counts in a work.

But it is a bit stifling that we shouldn't write about what we don't know: don't the tales of imagination, the fantasies and the fairy tales have no authenticity?

I don't think Yeats meant quite that. He himself wrote some great imaginative poems. I think if you are given to imaginative explorations- a daydreamer! a man inhabiting a world of fantasies!, Yeats would have approved your excursions into the world of make-believe.

I think it is the striking of a pose that comes so easily to us, which Yeats found distasteful.

(Dedicating the reopened Taj to the victims of terrorism- easy sloganeering, but what does it do to them? A great crowd of people stood on vigil watching it burn, may be a free take-home lunch? It would have been something useful and gratifying to those who irrespective of class and creed felt anxiety for Taj and the people in there).

What I meant to say is that this quirky act of Yeats reveals more of his personality, than what we would have come to know from his usual, habitual activities.

And here is something that reveals the spirit of the times:

During the 1960s San Francisco, Ramon Sender composed The Tropical Fish Opera. An aquarium had five lines painted on it and "the musicians seated around it played the notes made by the fish as they swam by. At one performance some of the fish refused to move, and the violinist Nathan Rubin dutifully played one unvarying tone, while the clarinettist Larry London, bored, began improvising, at which Rubin swung around and barked, "What's the matter, London? Can't you read fish?"" (Stephen Brown, "Rejoyce, Rejoyce")

Of Morons and Oxymorons

We know what a moron is, he is just a fool. But do we need to know about Oxymorons?

It seems there is some use in it, there is even a website of Oxymorons,, and a book called "Oxymoronica", by Dr. Mardy Grothe. Perhaps Oxymorons could help us?

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary says Oxymoron is, a "figure of speech with pointed conjunction of seemingly contradictory expressions", which does not help us at all- it is what you could call a 'meaningless definition', and those two words are what is called Oxymoron. The word comes from 'oxumoros', which means, 'pointedly foolish'. Definitions cannot be meaningless, and sometimes they are, especially when you are thick.

Consider these Oxymorons:

"The good oxymoron, to define it by a self-illustration, must be a planned inadvertency." - Wilson Follett

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people"- Thomas Mann

"I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on"- Josephine Baker

"I never eat before breakfast." - W.C. Fields

"We pay him too much, but he's worth it"- Samuel Goldwyn

"I don't think I am any good. If I thought I was any good, I wouldn't be"- John Betjeman

"We are all failures- at least the best of us are" - J.M. Barrie

"No one goes to that place anymore - it's always too crowded." - Yogi Berra

I think if you use it sparingly, it could be a surprise weapon that could help people smile, for the right Oxymoron at the right time is the hallmark of intelligent morons (silly, this is getting to be a habit).

Power and Compassion

You always suspected it- but now this is confirmed: Power and Compassion are mutually exclusive. It is not because people with power have a heart of stone, it is just that they are able to turn a blind eye more successfully than others.

In a brilliant research, a team of scientists led by Gerben A. van Kleef of the University of Amsterdam, have conclusively proved this in a report cited by Association of Psychological Science.

In the experiment, a group of students completed a questionnaire that identified them as high power or low power individuals. Then they were randomly paired, and one of them narrated to the other about an event that had made them suffer emotionally.

The research students were wired up to a ECG to measure the RSA activity. RSA is a defense mechanism which the lowers heart rate, and provides us with a calm, relaxed feeling.

As could be expected, high-power individuals exhibited high RSA, which means they buffered themselves succesfully against the distress of the narrator, and showed less empathy than the low powered individuals.

The more power you have, the less compassionate you get. Or as someone said, "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I wonder whether you get to be a high power individual through being uncaring, or whether power blinds you to pain. I am inclined to take the Dilbert line.

Pointers for Better Blogging

I found this at the Slate magazine, and this is about making your blogs a better experience, both for you and your reader. The article brings to us the best practices of bloggers such as Jeff Atwood, Jeffrey Goldberg, Felix Salmon, Om Malik and many others.

It is important to blog consistently. There should be at least three or four posts every week. You don't have to be perfect, but you have to be here blogging. Because otherwise you won't keep your readers (sound advice, but here, I have just three, four people in mind, and they won't go away, I think. and I also think, it is just those three, four people that read this blog constantly. so there is nothing to worry).

Blogging is not literature. So don't work so hard at it that it shows. Don't come across all heavy and ponderous like a mammoth, make sure that you sound casual and clear. People who read blogs are not going to sit back and think about the meaning of words, or bother to read between the lines.

So be direct, don't be long-winded, get to the point as early as possible. Assume that your reader won't get past the first para (I know they you won't).

When you read, you like to see something useful or interesting, right, you don't want to see me grind the same axe again and again. So take some effort to makes your posts relevant, or at least interesting.

One of the best ways to do this is to go on adding something new in your posts, but it is not good to range far and wide, like I do here. People visit a blog with certain expectations, and it does not do to shock with irrelevancies. The best thing is to concentrate on a particular area, a narrow topic, and limit your posts to it. The next best thing is to have some general posts to go along with it, they add value to each other. But whatever you post, there has to be something in it that they won't find elsewhere- it may be the real face of your manager, or the mole in your wrist, but it should be something unique to your posts.

I don't do this, but if you want your blog to be popular, join the blogging conversations. Go to other blogs, make your comments, respond to them, build a dialogue, a community feeling. Be generous with links and praise, and when you credit someone with something, be loud about it.

Having done all that, don't worry about traffic, about who comes or who does not. Write about what you are interested in, what you want to share with others, and make writing a happy experience for you.

It is highly improbable that you will become the superstar of Blogosphere, or make your living by it. Even if you are good, you will get a few hundred people reading by the end of a year of blogging- but even if it is just a handful, it is alright. Go on with your blogging, because you will learn to communicate better.

And another point I read and kept for the end is this- According to the Huffington Post,800 words are the maximum you can put in the post. Beyond that, it gets too long.

Hope you found this useful, or interesting, or both.

Or whatever.

But do come back.

This is a story you must read (There is a movie in it)...

An affair to remember- she was 82. He was 95. They had dementia. They fell in love. And then they started having sex.

Take that!

This article was written by Melinda Henneberger on June 10, 2008, in The Slate, and has been adjusted as one of the top ten articles in Slate.

I found it a moving story, and would like you to read this.

Bob, 92, and Dorothy, 85, live in an assisted-living facility. They both suffer dementia. They fall in love, and have some sex (to see how they made out, please click the link). Bob's son catches them at the act, and gets them separated.

Dorothy stops eating, is treated for depression and dehydration. Because she has Alzheimer's, she comes out of it.

I know I have given you plenty of foolish links, but this time, for once, try to read this.

I am sure this will inspire you to see what love is, how enduring it could be.

Iraqi shoe thrower - American reaction

I was exploring WordPress when I came across this blog by Jack Cafferty, a CNN anchor. In this particular post he is asking people (mainly Americans), what should happen to Iraqi shoe thrower? There are variety of responses from law toeing to crazy ones. Sample few and for all take the link
What should happen to Iraqi shoe thrower?

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Barbara - NC

December 17th, 2008 2:41 pm ET He should receive a medal and be given throwing practice. Many people want to do the same thing.

forbes Phoenix, AZ

December 17th, 2008 2:42 pm ET Hi Jack, I can certainly understand the Iraqi journalist’s frustration as he may have lost some of his family; and much of the world is tired of this war and Bush’s policies. But threats and assaults should never be allowed to be advanced on any foreign dignitary and leader of a country from a hosting country. It shows great disrespect and barbarism. I think that journalist should pay a stiff fine and possibly jailed.

Ken in NC

December 17th, 2008 2:45 pm ET Give him more shoes. It is a new life in Iraq now. Under the government of Saddam, the “Shoe Thrower” and probably his family would have been executed before sunset. Let them enjoy their new found freedom. Maybe we can open a shoe factory here and sell them “Throwing shoes” like “Running Shoes”. That would result in a boost to our economy.

Al in IA

December 17th, 2008 2:48 pm ET He should receive a presidential pardon from George who laughed off the incident in his insolent manner.

Tom, Jacksonville, FL

December 17th, 2008 2:51 pm ET At the very least, the local authorities should return his shoes. Tom, Jacksonville, Florida

Edward Nelson, Mount Vernon, NY

December 17th, 2008 2:53 pm ET Hey Jack, He should be pardoned for proving that a lame duck is best at ducking. This is a President who called dropping bombs on Iraq, “Operation Iraqi Peace.” When the reporter lodged the shoe at President Bush he was engaged in “Operation Iraqi Thanks.” It was a warm gesture for bringing peace and he got arrested. What a shame! A shoe is as close as we get to a weapon of mass destruction. Hey Jack, I wonder how many friends and family members the reporter lost for the sake of peace. A pardon should be in order.

Jeff from Sturgis, MI

December 17th, 2008 2:53 pm ET Punishment? This man shouldn’t be punished. How many of us watched that video and wished we were the one throwing our shoes at President Bush? I say it sums up our feelings about the outgoing Commander-in-Chief quite admirably.

John, Fort Collins, CO

December 17th, 2008 2:54 pm ET He should be encouraged to sign an endorsement contract for Crocs, “the only shoes that are safe to throw”. Since he is already a poster child there, they could make a fortune in the Middle East and help improve the U.S. balance of payments.

CJ in Atlanta, GA

December 17th, 2008 2:55 pm ET They guy should serve a few weeks in jail and be fined, but otherwise what he did really isn’t that big of a deal.

Jeffrey Cohen from LA, California

December 17th, 2008 2:55 pm ET A couple days of jail time and then let the man go back to living his life. He is not a bad man for doing what he did. He has every right to be angry at President Bush for the turmoil he has witnessed in his country.

dennis north carolina

December 17th, 2008 2:57 pm ET It was a protest so he should be set free unharmed. No one was hurt except the pride of Bush so let the man go.Bush has done a lot more harm to his country and people than just throwing a pair of shoes but will he pay for it except in a history book. the answer is no.

Dennis, Columbus, Ohio

December 17th, 2008 2:58 pm ET 30 days in jail for missing.

Jackie in Dallas

December 17th, 2008 3:03 pm ET Just another example of Bush being entirely unaware of what actually happened. What the reporter did is the most extreme form of insult possible in the Islamic world. While I think it is correct to say that if he had done so under Hussein, he would have been executed, if we had not invaded their country, he wouldn’t have had the motivation to do such an extreme act. Typical of Bush, he just doesn’t get it that he is despised all over the world, has eroded the respect and reputation of this country, and heartily hated by a good number of people IN this country. I’m counting the hours now…

Frann Altman in Los Angeles, CA

December 17th, 2008 3:06 pm ET What would happen in the US if a citizen threw a shoe at the Iraqi President while he was visiting here? Clearly he’d have been taken away, jailed and many citizens here might also be cheering so the country’s response is not that unusual, is it? I’m more concerned as to where the secret service was, or was not, that allowed the second shoe to be thrown.

Ryan, Galesburg, IL

December 17th, 2008 3:21 pm ET This man, a journalist, has lost family, been captured by the U.S. military, tortured by militias and watched as his were countrymen torn to shreds because of Bush’s penchant for lying. Now his arms and ribs are broken while he waits in an Iraqi cell. Time Served, and then some.

Winston in Berrien Springs, MI

December 17th, 2008 3:21 pm ET How come Nike is squandering such an potentially monsterous marketing campaign? They should give that guy a huge shoe contract and make him their advertising spokesman in the Middle East. Can you imagine the killing Nike would make selling ballistic footware to angry Muslims? Those shoes would literally fly off the shelf…SWOOSH!

---------------------------------

I laughed out loud reading some and some did made me think. I, like many. can understand his anger but then Zaidi should be given a punishment. Two wrongs doesn't make one right. I only wish he is not given a harsh punishment.

Make a movie out of your dreams

I think YouTube will get better in about five or ten years, being inundated with psycho thrillers produced straight from the dreaming brain.

There is a software that looks at an image of the brain activity taken in a f-MRI scanner and recreates a black and white image from that. This software has been developed by Yukiyasu Kamitani at ATR Computational Neuroscience Lab in Kyoto, Japan.

The implication is that you don’t have to know who is thinking what- you could just plug into his brain and see what picture is running on in his head.

They are hoping to improve the technology so much that they can make a videotape of a dream.

John-Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. has some concerns about this:

He imagines a scenario where marketing people will sit out in public spaces like railway stations and shopping malls and read our thoughts, and fine tune their advertisements.

More about this in New Scientist

I used to think there is something unique about the human brain, now it looks like it is no better than a DVD player or something, and is totally mechanical, nothing spiritual about it.

Snips

Snips move to someplace called webelongnowhere@blogspot...

Posts here will revert to the earlier kind, or some other kind, whatever.

Keep in good health and happiness.

Snips

I think thirty five more days to go...
"I speak plainly sometimes, but you've got to be mindful of the consequences of the words. So put that down. I don't know if you'd call that a confession, a regret, something." --George W. Bush, speaking to reporters, Washington, D.C.,14,1.2005

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Sometimes, life is strange, you can't guess why people do what they do. Sometimes it is the case with ourselves, but we don't laugh about it the way we laugh at others.

For I find that according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa, two burglers entered a man’s home early Sunday and demanded his eggbeater. One suspect held a pistol while the other brandished a knife to the resident’s neck.

Police arrested the two and found the eggbeater in one of the the men’s left pocket.

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"We're pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication. The ruling is also an interesting indication of the increasing role that Facebook is playing in people's lives,"- Facebook statement

It seems that a court in Australia has approved the use of Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, to notify a couple that they have lost possession of their home after defaulting on a loan.

Australian courts have given permission in the past for people to be served via e-mail and text messages when it was not possible to serve them in person. Now they are moving our to social networking sites.

The documents were sent last Friday after weeks of failed attempts to contact borrowers Gordon Poyser and Carmel Corbo at their Canberra home and by e-mail to notify a couple that they lost their home after defaulting on a loan.

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It is not often that you get to hear strange lottery stories the same day, but here we have

A man in Hampton, Virginia win $1.1 million after playing the same numbers on 11 tickets for the same drawing. Each winning ticket gave the man $100,000, making a total of $1.1 million dollars in winning.

and then, there comes the news that

Two winning Hoosier Lottery tickets worth $1 million each were sold within a couple days of each other at the same central Indiana convenience store!

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Not all strange stories make for humour, some might be terrible, but in this case it is a prehistoric marine animal that could have shocked the living daylights out of the contemporaries of dinosaurs:

A prehistoric creature called Gerrothorax pulcherrimus, which lived alongside some of the early dinosaurs, opened its mouth not by dropping its lower jaw, as other vertebrate animals do, but, instead, it lifted back the top of its head in a way that looked a lot like lifting the lid of a toilet seat.

It was clad in bony armor and prowled the warm lakes 210 million years ago

"It's weird. It's the ugliest animal in the world," Harvard University's Farish Jenkins

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You might remember a post here on Alan Scherr, the 58-year-old Virginia-based meditation teacher who was killed in Mumbai along with his 13-year-old daughter Naomi. This hard-hitting, straight-talking article is by his childhood friend Edward Olshaker

It warns against the tendency to excuse violence on the grounds of poverty and injustice, failed aspirations and frustrations.

and lists cases where violence and its justification are not merely murderous, but brutal and mindless- "...even if the US and Israel were to disappear, there would be no shortage of Islamic extremist rage -- at Buddhist schoolgirls they behead in Thailand; at Christians persecuted for being the wrong religion; at schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia; at blacks they enslave, rape, and kill in genocidal numbers in Sudan; at the Dalai Lama, who is under a death fatwa; at the five fishermen the Mumbai terrorists killed at the start of their mission; at fellow terrorists summarily executed in Palestinian infighting; at their own women who they dispose of in "honor" killings; at their own children who are hanged to death in Iran on suspicion of being gay. It takes no more than a mere cartoon to trigger deadly rage."

( Writing on the recent honors bestowed on Samir Kuntar, a prisoner released by Israel), "Kuntar killed an Israeli father in front of his 4-year-old daughter, then bashed the girl's skull repeatedly with a rifle butt until she was dead. On November 24, Syrian television reported that President Bashar Al-Assad awarded Kuntar "the Syrian decoration of the highest degree" for his achievement. The Al Jazeera "news network" threw a birthday party for Kuntar.

"Kuntar, dressed in fatigues and sporting a Hitlerian mustache and haircut, walked down a red carpet arrayed for him in Beirut. The government closed all offices and declared a national day of celebration. Tens of thousands of Lebanese cheered, waved flags, threw confetti, and set off fireworks as Hezbollah staged a rally to celebrate their "victory" over Israel. Mahmoud Abbas, the "moderate" leader of the Palestinian Authority, sent "blessings to Samir Kuntar's family.""


"Be alert and vigilant. Avoid self-delusion regarding the nature and gravity of the threat. Do not be faint of heart. Fulfill your solemn oath to defend and protect. Do not let them harm one more child."
_Edward Olshaker in American Thinker.

It seems you can justify everything by the force of your grievances, and people who have a strong sense of hurt and are filled with an indignant anger have their moral senses blunted

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I am not going out of my way to cite instances of extremist positions in the Arab world, but the times are such that they are everywhere in the news.

Remember the shoes hurled at George Bush? Well, here is a positive spin.
"With the hurling of shoes at Bush, the relationship between the people and their government has moved in the span of five years from a murderous tyranny, through armed resistance to a temporary occupation, to symbolic acts not any more threatening than you’d find in an unhappy marriage.

It ain’t pretty, but it’s progress."
_Mark Hemingway

And here, something that would make your head spin- Sock and Awe!

More about that in Times of India.

At least people can mock and laugh with impunity, that liberty is one of the most valuable prizes of democracy, I think.

Attitude matters most

Thought of sharing with you guys.....its from todays economic times article...
Attitude may matter more than talent
MUSIC composer Elliot Carter celebrated his 100th birthday last week with a concert at Carnegie Hall. It featured a 17-minute piece for piano and orchestra that Carter wrote when he was 98. Talk about thumbing your nose at mortality! Carter has already lived three times as long as Schubert and 65 years more than Mozart. Yet his first opera premiered in 1999 and he produced seven works in 2007 and six more this year.
Since he turned 90, the composer who many critics rank among the greatest ever, has churned out more than 40 pieces and he shows no signs of slowing down. Aficionados say he’s still writing at the top of his form and every piece has new ideas that he’s trying out along with subtle refinements of those presented earlier.
However, not everybody in the audience takes easily to his works which are sometimes described as ‘complicated’. Carter, who has a penchant for contemporary compositions rather than old music, remains unruffled. While he attributes his success to "just a matter of luck", he also adds impishly: "Once society gets more complicated, people will have to become much cleverer and much sharper. Then they will like my music."
Carter is, of course, alluding to the so-called Flynn Effect (named after psychologist James R Flynn) and the social multiplier phenomenon, which has documented a spectacular rise in IQ measurement over the generations (which simply means environmental factors can influence the average IQ of a population).
At an individual level, Carter’s life offers a heroic example of unwavering faith married to unstinting effort. This can be particularly inspiring to younger contenders who fear loss of heart and burn-out. If he can be that productive at 100, just imagine how much you could do even if you make a fresh start at half or quarter of his age. Their effort, however needs to be backed by what creativity wonks like Colin Martindale called ‘cognitive disinhibition’, which refers to the ability to focus or defocus attention as per task demands. So one "first learns the rules and then breaks ‘em!"
It also shows that for genius to thrive, at any age, attitude may be even more important than talent. This entails what the investment guru Warren Buffet called "the art of not getting in your own way". "It’s not about your potential horse power," Mr Buffet told a PBS programme. "Whatever you have, learn to utilise it fully"; till the very end.

Snips

"My attitude is, if they're still writing about (number) one, 43 doesn't need to worry about it." --George W. Bush, on his legacy, Tipp City, Ohio,19,4.2007

I should know more about Bjorn Lomborg, who according to his website,  is "One of the world's 75 most influential people of the 21st century - Esquire, 2008", "One of the 50 people who could save the planet - UK Guardian, 2008", "One of the top 100 public intellectuals, Foreign Policy & Prospect Magazine, 2008", and "One of the world's 100 most influential people - Time Magazine, 2004".

And I should know more about Global Warming because much of what Lomborg says makes sense to me.

His point is basically that we should use the money we have to maximise its effects, take the money that you are putting into Kyoto Protocol and use it to give sanitation and clean drinking water to the third world. Quite refreshingly, he says, "Just because there is a problem doesn't mean that we have to solve it, if the cure is going to be more expensive than the original ailment."



And today, in The Economic Times Guest Column, I found this:

"By implementing the Kyoto Protocol at a cost of $180 billion annually would keep two million people from going hungry only by the end of the century. Yet by spending just $10 billion annually, the United Nations estimates that we could help 229 million hungry people today. Every time spending on climate policies saves one person from hunger in a hundred years, the same amount could have saved 5000 people now."

The language is somewhat confusing, but you get the general idea.

And I suppose Arundhati Roy, in her article in Guardian- if you look past all the bombast- meant something similar: Why do you address the problem of terrorism at the cost of equitable development?

"Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?"

Her language has some hysteria in it,  and I find it repugnantly full of venom, but the issue she raises, has to be addressed, not with rhetoric, but cold facts.

For I find online in The Times of India:

"According to the data (catalogued by the Zilla Parishad health department).as many as 337 children died of malnutrition between April and November in the tribal belt of Melghat. Out of these 337 malnutrition deaths, 230 kids were from 0-1 age group while 80 from 1-3 years and 27 from 3-6 years age group. Currently, Melghat has a child population of 34,888. Out of these, 13,540 children enjoy good health, 14,131 kids are in stage one of malnutrition, 6,750 children stage two, 417 stage three while 50 kids are suffering from extreme malnutrition. This despite the fact that there are 11 primary health centres (PHCs) in Melghat, various schemes like Child Development Centres, Day Care Unit, Matrutva Anudan scheme, Pada volunteers scheme focusing on the overall health of the tribals."

No one will be holding a candlelight vigil for these children; I will be surprised if any of our news channels report this unfortunate systematic failure.

We could save so many lives by putting a system into place, and keep it in a working condition- but we are not aghast that we have failed to do this. Deaths like this, do not move us.

This is like a man falling into a well and another man dying in a car crash. Spectacular, sensational events grab our attention. Probably we are worried only when something threatens our way of life, our peace of mind or challenges our machismo.

I think once our passions have cooled, we will face the question of the cost of internal security, and we will have to make hard choices. I can guess what it will be.



And speaking of choices, the Arab world is making them everyday, and getting it wrong.

Remember Muntader al-Zaidi, a reporter with the al-Baghdadia television network who shouted, "This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog!" as he threw his first shoe, and followed it with another shout, "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!"- and another shoe?

Seems he is a hero there.

A charity headed by Moamer Kadhafi's daughter Aisha has announced that it would award Zaidi an "order of courage" for his actions. It seems almost everyone there is acclaiming his action. And without irony and with unconscionable hypocrisy, the board of Baghdadiyah, the news channel that employs Zaidi, issues this statement: "Any action taken against Muntathar will remind us of the actions and behaviors taken by the reign of the dictator and the violence, the random arrests, the mass graves and confiscations of freedom from the people."

May be they need a reminder? Just to get an idea of those good old times?

Finally three whys of cricket:

"I don't think any century like this one, will be able to compensate the loss people have suffered in the Mumbai attack. Nothing can match their grief, but as cricketers this is what we can do to help. I dedicate this century to the people of India. Personally, it is a very special, very emotional century for me and I would like to give it to the people" - Sachin Tendulkar Why, Sachin why? Why use that cliche- 'dedicate'? How does your century reach people? 'Dedicate" is a word debased by overuse- no one speaks of dedicating his life, time, money, energy... Next thing is, we will have some hero releasing his film, and saying, "I dedicate this film to the nation!" As if that makes it bigger than what it is. "Dedicate" in the sense in which it is used, has become one of those opaque words that you skip over without asking yourself what it means. "Even when he walked out to bat in a World Cup match in 1999 with Australia wobbling at 3-48 chasing 271 (they later secured a famous win), Waugh marched past Cronje at the bowling crease and declared "if you bowl anything on my legs I will bash the shit out of it"." -Robert Craddock (not Peter Roebuck) in Courier Mail Why Steve? How could you dream of 'bashing the shit out'? You probably hit a four every thousand balls! "I have got a fractured rib... There are no dramas. I will deal with it. I don't like injections. I will just take painkillers." - Kevin Pieterson. Why KP., why? Why brave a broken rib with such gay abandon? Seems about two years back, he headed home with a broken rib and got some lip from Border...