Madman's Den

US aid to Pakistan

2009-06-29T16:09:00.001+01:00

All these years, I have wondered why the US keeps giving money to Pakistan. Recently, I have come across several reports which say that Pakistan diverts most of this money into it's nuclear program and building it's forces to counter India. The latest news story in the Indian Express cites a report by security expert Andrew Cockburn which says that more than $5 bn have been diverted by Pakistan into making more nuclear bombs. This money was given to Pakistan by the US to fight the Taliban, but the US never kept tabs, at least not officially, on where this money was going.

Having said that, it is hard to believe that the US did not know where this money was going. They probably do, but choose to ignore it. In fact, they literally encourage it by giving them more money. A shocking claim by Andrew Cockburn is that Q Khan - Pakistan's nuclear scientist who basically ran a nuclear fish market, had a CIA agent as his shipping manager! This means that not only was the US a silent spectator to Pakistani proliferation, but was in fact an accomplice.

Where is Chidanand Rajghatta II?

2009-01-25T23:15:00.001Z

Reader Gauri writes in with news of Chidanand Rajghatta:-

would like to inform you that chidanand rajghatta is suffering from a severe eye infection and is getting treatment in his home town bangalore. he came to bangalore on his annual vacation and his eye got infected. doctors have advised him to completely recover before he heads back to the US. He is still with TOI and will soon be back

Thanks a lot Gauri. I am glad to know that it isn't anything more serious.

Wish a speedy recovery to Chidu and look forward to his return.

Where is Chidanand Rajghatta?

2009-01-05T20:36:00.002Z

Through the Mumbai attacks and subsequent diplomacy, one voice of journalism was conspicuous by its absence - TOI's foreign editor and US correspondent Chidanand Rajghatta's. Where is he? Why hasn't he written any articles about whats going on? Hope he is well. Hopefully, his silence means nothing more than him having resigned his position with TOI or something like that.

How Gay Is This?

2009-01-03T18:37:00.002Z

The Indian Express has the following story on their website today:-

Presentation is everything, isn't it?

'Honour' Mumbai Victims

2008-11-29T14:51:00.002Z

There are platitudes about the 'spirit' of Mumbai. People hold candlelit vigils to honour victims. There is no honour in being killed by terrorists. Hosting a population that doesn't complain about being hit by terror again and again is a lousy 'spirit'. India needs to wake up and feel shame.

ReligionHead

2008-11-09T19:20:00.002Z

The BBC reports that violence broke out between Greek and Armenian monks at The Holy Sepulchre - the site of Jesus' crucifixion. There is video footage too. Apparently, the fight was about who would worship and in what manner. The Greeks were trying to have a man inside the Edicule - an ancient structure which is said to encase the tomb of Jesus, and this interfered with the Armenians' rituals.

Shocked pilgrims looked on as decorations and tapestries were toppled during Sunday's clash. Dressed in the vestments of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations, rival monks threw punches and anything they could lay their hands on. The Greeks blamed the Armenians for not recognising their rights inside the holy site, while the Armenians said the Greeks had violated one of their traditional ceremonies.

Strictly speaking, Christians do not believe in ritual and idolatry, but in today's world this is no longer the case. This is what Christ spoke against when he said the temple of God is within you. The Temple in Jerusalem has only been replaced by numerous churches all through the world.

Religion would be amusing if it weren't dangerous.

Love From South Asia

2008-09-26T11:34:00.008+01:00

While our own Manny Singh got a bear hug from President Bush, new Widower next door - Mr. Zardari met the Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin and called her 'gorgeous'. He couldn't have done more to undermine her nomination. Pakistan's lusty men are notorious for bringing on the 'charm' soon as they see a woman. I recall the cringeing details of another such exploit by erstwhile Pak PM Shaukat Aziz, when he tried to 'scalp', hold your breaths, Condoleezza Rice. Here's the extract:-

.

'Gigolo charm' failed to impress Condi

THE Pakistani Prime Minister's charm failed to work its magic on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to a new biography of her, a newspaper has reported today.The book describes in excruciating detail how Shaukat Aziz allegedly tried to impress Rice when she visited South Asia in March 2005, according to the Dawn newspaper.

Mr Aziz "tried this Savile Row-suited gigolo kind of charm: 'Pakistan is a country of rich traditions,' staring in (Dr Rice's) eyes," the biography's author Marcus Mabry writes, citing participants at the meeting."When Rice sat down with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who fancied himself as a ladies' man, Aziz puffed himself up and held forth in what he obviously thought was his seductive baritone," the book claims.

"He bragged - to Western diplomats, no less - that he could conquer any woman in two minutes," writes Mabry, according to Dawn. Mr Aziz, who is married with three children, was out of luck, according to the book. "There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charms on her as a woman, and she just basically stared him down," the newspaper quoted Mabry, a senior correspondent with Newsweek magazine, as writing.

"By the end of the meeting, he was babbling. The Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably. And his voice visibly changed."

China's Big Space Launch

2008-09-25T16:04:00.003+01:00

Hear about China's big space launch? It went so well that the govt. published stories about the launch before the rocket blasted off. They say the US faked the moon landing. Just wait till the Chinese get there. I can see the headlines - 'Chinese Astronaut finds 3 km long tag on moon crater. Says 'Made in China''.

Here's a sample of what the early bird story had:-

"After this order, signal lights all were switched on, various data show up on rows of screens, hundreds of technicians staring at the screens, without missing any slightest changes ...
'One minute to go!'
'Changjiang No.1 found the target!'...
"The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now, the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time ...
'The air pressure in the cabin is normal!'
"Ten minutes later, the ship disappears below the horizon. Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean."

The Nation's Current Obsession

2008-09-03T20:09:00.002+01:00

Swaminathan S Ankalesaria Aiyar - the author of the Swaminomics column in TOI has his fingers firmly on the pulse of the nation. He says Hinglish will beat Chinglish.

Can you imagine what would happen if I had died without this knowledge?

Sarah Palin: Weapon Of Mass Destruction

2008-09-02T22:56:00.002+01:00

Sarah Palin - John McCain's running mate has been described as a secret weapon. She is. The secret is she is a weapon which Republicans have handed to Obama on a plate.

There is something insipid about a mother and daughter being pregnant at the same time. I mean, jeez, use some birth control. Or self control.

Not only is the former beauty queen a baby making machine, apparently she once wanted independence for her American state of Alaska. Well... If you can't beat'em, join'em.

McCain, you poor old man. Save some money and go home now.

PS: Personally I would've preferred Hillary Clinton to win, followed by McCain. Sighhhh, but he has gone and busted all my plans.

No full stops

2008-08-23T09:46:00.000+01:00

The world is my ashtray.

Poser

2008-08-22T07:33:00.001+01:00

If gmail had a mascot, what would it be?

Doe
A deer
A gmail deer...

:D I came up with that meself.

So where was I

2008-08-18T20:26:00.003+01:00

Thanks to monk, I was shaken awake into writing a blog post again. Meanwhile, the posts just dried up. Hope to post at least once a day...

Barmy Olympics

2008-08-18T20:11:00.002+01:00

The Beijing Olympics have been managed so 'perfectly', that it makes me gag. Everything about the Olympics this time was surgical, sanitary and measured by a demon weilding a ruler. There wasn't any humanity to the whole operation.

See how they chose hostesses to present the medals.

Hostess candidates have to be university educated, aged 18 to 24 and between 1.68 and 1.78 metres in height (5ft 5ins and 5ft 8ins).

Fine, I can understand that bit. But hear this.

Their faces needed to meet standards including the ratio between the “width of the nose and the length of the face” and “width of the mouth and width between the pupils”, with eyes three-tenths the length of the face.

They are required to show just EIGHT teeth. And they hone the perfect smile of eight teeth by spending hours in front of a mirror with a chopstick between their jaws.

“In the standing sessions, we have to stand still and smile for half an hour or more. We also run about 1,000 metres every day for physical conditioning,” one of the hostesses, Ma Sha, 20, said.

So did you hear of the man who worked so hard at trying to have fun that he died of stress?

Sighhhh... Well... Well done China. Now go back to making a gazillion of those cheap toys.

If You Are A Cobbler

2008-07-23T15:54:00.002+01:00

When I was a child, I was told - 'if you are a cobbler, you should make the best shoes'. This was part of a 'moral science' lesson. Even at that young age, I was pathetically literal and worried about all the problems this presented for days. What about the other cobblers? Didn't they get to be 'best'? The only solution seemed to be they shouldn't be taught this moral science lesson at all. Because, obviously, only one cobbler could be the best and all the others were, by definition, born losers. It was a highly sublimated caste system. Not only was there one supreme caste, it consisted of a single person.

Unfortunately, faith was so deeply ingrained into me that I never questioned the statement itself. I only became depressed about the fact that the world is so unfair because there are so many 'imperfect', and therefore sub-human, people in it. In between worrying endlessly about the unfairness of it all, I also spent time going through long lists of things I could be best at - to avoid a fate worse than death.

Thankfully, I grew out of that. What I would like to do now is, find Brother Jose - our moral science teacher, and give him a lesson in orthopedics.

Margins

2008-07-19T23:22:00.002+01:00

I haven't been blogging for a long time. I have no excuses, except lazness. And I have an apology - sorry :-).

What have I been doing? I've tried my hand at margin trading. With a capital of only about 3500 rupees. That is about GBP 40. Not much to gamble with, but thats why its so much fun. Its the pleasure of gambling without the stress. And I made 1700 rupees, after tax and brokerage, in 3 days. Not bad huhn? Thats about 40% of my capital!

A Dog's Tail

2008-07-18T03:17:00.002+01:00

Never straightens. If you get bitten by the same dog again and again, the more fool you.

WTF News Of The Week

2008-07-11T10:04:00.004+01:00

Manu Pubby writes in the Indian Express about the bomb blast at the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 44 people:-

Staff put Embassy back on track, their symbol: a half-burnt pigeon fighting back

A half-burnt pigeon?? What is that even supposed to mean? The Indian embassy is a pigeon? Manu was hungry and wanted to eat roasted pigeon?

Manu 'Pubby' did not want for content for this piece. India's military attache and senior diplomat targeted and killed by a suicide bomber as they drove into the embassy... warnings of just such an attack, which were ignored - again...President Karzai hinting that the Pakistan ISI planned the attack...India's friendship with and stake in Afghanistan...

But no, there is a half burnt pigeon around. What a wonderful story. Lets have an orgy of mindless, pointless chavy symbolism. We'll win the Pulitzer prize for this, surely?

The pinnacle of journalism.

A Central Calendar For MS Outlook, Google And your Nokia N95

2008-07-10T23:15:00.003+01:00

I am a big fan of google, even though they aim for world domination by clicking every single home in the UK and making the photos available on the net.

Well, one of the first things I did was configure my MS Outlook to fetch messages from my gmail account. There were several reasons for this. One, you get used to Outlook's look and feel and features since most of us use it in office. Two, you can setup your own rules which allow you to redirect different kinds of messages to different folders. Google doesn't quite allow this. It has tagging. You can tag messages and search all messages tagged in a certain way, but they still turn up as a 'flat' view, all together, in your inbox. I like folders much better. Three, my N95 syncs very well with the Outlook contacts list. So, if I save someone's phone numbers, fax number, email id's, date of birth, spouse's name, anniversary and mailing address into Outlook, a quick sync will make all of these available on my N95 as well. Also, all my appointments and tasks and reminders can also be synced to and from my phone through a USB cable. This third reason is what prompted me to move to Outlook.

Now, however, I became a bit obsessive. What happened if I didn't have access to my computer? I might have made appointments on my calendar in Outlook, may not have synced them on the phone since it requires linking up with a USB cable, and then where will I be? Then I came to know of this great app called Google Calendar Sync, developed by google itself. This nifty little app automatically syncs your Outlook calendar with your google calendar.

Things were much better now. But wouldn't it be just wonderful if I could sync my phone with the Google calendar rather than having to connect it to my Outlook calendar with a cable, since my Outlook and the Google calendar would always be synced anyway?

And then, the icing on the cake - an application called goosync. This one is free, easy as pie to configure on the N95 (just visit their website and follow the instructions), and syncs your appointments. The free version, though, will not sync your contacts and will sync your appointments only 30 days into the future and 7 days in the past. Which is still pretty good for free! goosync works well for many many phones. See if they support your phone...

Have fun!

Batty Old Bras

2008-07-08T19:00:00.003+01:00

This is the kind of story that would make all the 'girly' girls I know go awwwww...

Abbie Hawkins, 19, left for work at 7:30 am. She felt a vibration somewhere and surmised it must be her cell phone. When she felt them again at work, and didn't find a corresponding cell phone, she thought further investigation was required. This led to the discovery of a baby bat, quite snug and comfortable, in her bra.

"It looked very snug in there and I thought how mean I was for disturbing it."

Hmm. Thats really sporty of her. I wish I'd known her when I was younger.

Jaime Eastham, of the Bat Conservation Trust, said they had never heard of a bat being found in a bra before.

Bless her. I think she can be forgiven for not having heard such a thing. But destiny smiles, and she can be happy in the knowledge that she did hear such a thing in her lifetime.

But she said the animals roost anywhere that appears dark and safe.

Hmm. That explains it. If I were a girl, I'd tuck a torch down my bra before leaving home, just to discourage people looking for dark and safe places.

"I keep thinking how could I have not known it was there?" Miss Hawkins said. "I will certainly be checking my bras every morning from now on."

Thats okay Abbie, I've heard of women having babies without knowing they were pregnant. A baby bat in the bra is neither here nor there.

(Quotes from the Telegraph)

How To Set Up Your Gmail Account On The Nokia N95

2008-07-06T23:09:00.004+01:00

Okay, so after a lot of research, I have been able to do this (ha yah. He Man.). Thing is, its all here, hosted by google...

I tried to set up pop3 emails but, for some reason, this absolutely refuses to work on the N95. IMAP works, though. w00t!

Sharia Law In UK?

2008-07-03T20:27:00.005+01:00

The archbishop of Canterbury - Dr. Rowan Williams, kicked up a storm sometime back when he said there should be no opposition to Muslims following sharia law in the UK. The archbishop's lecture was derisively dismissed out of hand by most people, earning him epithets like 'Dumbledore wannabe'.

Sharia law is based on the Koran, Prophet Mohammed's teachings, and judgments handed down by Muslim clerics over the centuries. Sharia law is quite old and sometimes prescribes very harsh punishments. For example, if a man is caught stealing, his left hand is to be cut off in public. If he is caught stealing again, the remaining hand is cut off as well. A third offense, understandably very rare, earns a death penalty. Stoning to death is prescribed for adulterous women. These offenses are common nowadays and it's an open question whether the average Briton will ever be able to stomach the idea of sharia law being applied to fellow Britons. However, the archbishop proposes allowing a separate law for Muslims only in marital law, financial transactions and arbitration in disputes.

Another objection raised by people opposed to the idea is that women and other disadvantaged sections of Muslim society may not be dealt fwith airly by sharia courts. They argue that women, particularly, have very little say in how households, or even their own affairs, are governed.

The debate has been rekindled with the most senior judge in England - Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips saying that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.

But his remarks - which give the green light from the highest judicial office to the informal sharia courts already operated by numerous mosques - provoked a storm of criticism.

It is an interesting dilemma unfolding in this nation which hasn't had to assimilate really different cultures till a few decades ago. Interesting from a third person perspective, that is...

Iran Rattles The Oil Sabre In Nuclear Row

2008-07-02T23:17:00.005+01:00

Iran has clearly indicated a huge fuel crisis as it's first line of defence in case of any kind of attack against it.

"Iran, if there were any kind of activity of any sort, is not going to be quiet and would react fiercely," Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said asked what Tehran would do in the event of an attack.

He added that oil prices, which have been driven to record levels partly because of fear about the loss of Iran's 4.0-million-barrel-a-day output, would rise radically if Israel or the United States launched a military strike.

(TOI)

I'm rather proud of having anticipated this (posts 1, 2), though any fool could see it, its that obvious. Please stop complaining about my shameless crowing and leave me to my innocent jubilation.

Wounded

2008-07-02T22:58:00.002+01:00

I have done something to my foot. The heal and side of the foot ache when I walk and I can only walk with a snail-paced limp, for about 10 minutes at a time. I feel illogically self-satisfied and quite brave. The word 'martyrdom' comes to mind.

I need to grow up.

Journalist Drowns Himself In A Bucket Of Water

2008-06-30T17:46:00.004+01:00

A journalist - Vlado Tanevski ,of Macedonia, has committed suicide by drowning himself in a bucket of water.

He was a veteran crime reporter who covered the murders of four elderly women aged between 56 - 79 years. He also interviewed family members of the victims. The victims had all been raped and tortured before being strangled with telephone cords. Their bodies were found wrapped in plastic bags. He was the one who first suggested that the murders were related and the work of a serial killer.

His troubles began later, though, when it emerged he had published aspects of the case that only the police and the murderer himself could have known of. On further investigation, Tanevski's DNA was found on the last two victims, confirming him as the murderer.

Detectives initially investigated a theory that a motive for the murders was Mr Tanevski's hatred towards his late mother, who was a cleaner in a hospital. All of the victims also had jobs as cleaners in hospitals.

There is a final twist in the tale. Ivo Kotevski, the Macedonian police spokesman, said: "The only reason he was put with three other people in the cell was to pre-empt any possible suicide attempts." Interestingly, though, 2 of the 3 other inmates were serving life sentences for one of the murders Tanevski himself committed! In fact, he even reported from their trial for the murder.

Experts have been wondering how Mr. Tanevski was able to drown himself in a bucketful of water as this is a very difficult thing to do. Hmm...