What's wrong with Colin Powell ?

Colin Powell is on a roll. First he pissed off Taiwan. Then he said that he worked as a telephone operator and setup a phone call between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan. Jaswant Singh replied immediately.

“The way he has gone about claiming credit is a total concoction and a matter of imagination, the way he conjured up biological weapons in Iraq,” Singh said. “I don’t know whether the State Department of U.S.A., in addition to attempting to run U.S. foreign policy as best as it can, is also a telephone exchange and now is acting as a kind of elocution instructor to South Asia.”

As a minister, Singh was believed to have had good relations with his U.S. counterparts. But at the news conference, he said: “The U.S. bureaucracy are world champions in . . . inaction, in finding reason not to do things.” He added that the U.S. bureaucracy is three times ahead of its Indian counterpart in “obfuscating, obstructing and ensuring that nothing is done.” [India’s Ex-Foreign Minister Assails Powell]

The way he is changing policy at whim, one day he might even say Kashmir valley is a part of Pakistan.

Infantry Day

Oct 27 is celebrated as Infantry Day to mark the accomplishment of the Indian Army in its first ever engagement just two months after independence. On Oct 21/22, Pakistanis invaded the independent state of Jammu and Kashmir with the aim of annexing it, even though the Maharajah had signed a standstill agreement with them.

From New Delhi the Dakotas flew 30 more sorties carrying further reinforcements of 1 SIKH. The 161 brigade was constituted at the Srinagar airfield on October 29, 1947. The brigade fought in the most adverse of conditions against the raiders pushing them back inch-by-inch without any outside help since the only land route_ the Banihal pass_ was closed with heavy snow. During the campaign, the army lost 76 officers, 31 JCOs and 996 other ranks. The wounded totaled 3152 ranks including 81 officers and 107 JCOs. The J&K states

Mehrgarh

Balochistan in Pakistan is the home of Mehrgarh, one of the earliest known farming settlements in the subcontinent. The earliest settlement is as old as 7000 BC, the time when humans had changed from hunter gatherers to farmers.

During the excavations, the archaeologists discovered clay female figurines associated with fertility rites, and believed to have been worshipped by the natives. Similar figurines have surfaced in other archaeological sites in the province. Several of these statues are carved with necklaces, and have their hands on their breast or waist. Some have children on their laps.

The people of that era used to wear woollen or cotton clothes. Some of the deities had their braid on their back and shoulders. Most of the male statues wore turbans, which is still in vogue in Balochistan. While the opinion of several archaeologists that several of the statuettes discovered at the site might have been children

Yet another lie

“We are not hankering for Kashmiri territory. It is not simply a question of territorial gains” but matter of ensuring justice for Kashmiris, Kasuri said. Kasuri’s statement is in line with a series of encouraging remarks by Pakistani and Indian officials on the sensitive issue, all of which express hope but steadfastly skate around details that could prove sensitive. [1947, 1965 and 1999?. This is yet another propaganda statement which will get wide publicity like Musharraf’s new proposal for solving the Kashmir problem.
Such full toss balls should be hit for a sixer immediately by the Indian Govt.

Short Movie Reviews

  • Farenheit 9/11 A real hardhitting look at the Bush Administration and the Iraq War. Moore brings out all the unpleasant questions which the mainstream media have overlooked. He is as fair and balanced as Fox News and hence does not cover the autrocities of Saddam or his sons, but still this is one documentary that is a must see.
  • Bush’s Brain A documentary on Karl Rove, President Bush’s Political advisor. It is based on a book by the same name and has many anecdotes on the man behind the President some of them really horrible. Worth watching.
  • The Life of BuddhaThere are a million movies on Jesus Christ, there are even a few on the Dalai Lama. But this is the first documentary I have seen on the life of the Buddha. This film combines archaeology, mythology, and folklore to reconstruct his life. A must watch.
  • Barbershop (Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer) A mediocre movie about a days events in a Chicago Barbershop. Lot of politically incorrect statements and lots of humor.
  • Asambhav (Hindi) (Arjun Rampal, Priyaka Chopra) – The Indian President gets kidnapped in Switzerland by Pakistanis and Arjun Rampal from Special Group Force in the Indian Amry is sent to rescue him. Priyanka Chopra plays a completely “different” role, and you won’t believe it – as a club dancer. Can you retain your sanity after watching this movie ? Asambhav!
  • The Bulletproof MonkChow Yun-Fat is a tibetan monk who is protecting a sacred scroll and he ends up in United States. There he pairs up with Seann William Scott (Stiffler of American Pie) and fights the bad guys. This movie has it all – bad dialogues, bad acting and bad script.
  • Alexander the Great (Richard Burton) – This sweeping epic was so sweeping boring that I am now eagerly waiting to see Colin Farrell as Alexander.

Dave Barry taking timeout

Starting next year, Dave Barry will not be writing his weekly columns. He is taking an indefinite leave of absence from Miami Herald.

”I’ve never not had a column in a week in all of 30 years, even when I went on vacation,” Barry said. ‘At some point I said, ‘Well, maybe it’ll be OK to not do it for a while.’ And I didn’t want to wait until I hated it and I didn’t want to wait until I thought, ‘Oh, I’ve got no more columns to write.’ ”[Dave Barry will take a timeout]

His columns will definitely be missed.
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Shankar, Gingger, Zakir and Sivamani

Last night I attended a concert by Shankar, Gingger, Zakir Hussain and Shivamani and it was one of the best music performances I attended (The others being, Amjad Ali Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, A R Rahman and Yanni).

  • The program which was to start at 5 PM started at 6 PM. At 5 PM the gates were not even open, which means the artistes probably woke up at that time and said “Ghosh! we have a show to do”
  • Even though the show started late, they did not have time to adjust the audio system, and so Shankar and Zakir Hussain were giving instructions to the audio control guys while performing. At one point I thought Shankar would fling his double violin at guy at the controls.
  • The first part was about 45 mins followed by a 1 hr intermission when the artistes probably went to sleep again. But the last 90 mins was just awesome.
  • I had seen Sivamani in two A R Rahman stage programs, but here there was a solo performance by him in which he produced sounds from almost anything he would lay his hands on. But then there was no connection between the various sounds he was producing. It would jump from one rhythm to another without any smooth transision.
  • This was followed by a solo performance by Zakir Hussain and then you know why he is called Ustad. I never knew such varied sounds could come from a tabala. He knows to work the crowd and is an entertainer.
  • Finally, the number of standing ovations: Zakir Hussain: 2, Sivamani: 1, Shankar and Gingger: 0.

The Tibetan Prison

Somehow my idea of a Buddhist prison was a place where prisoners would be taught Vipassana and would come out as a reformed people. But in fact a Tibetan prison is not even close and also they had instruments of torture.

Tibet’s largest ancient prison, Langzisha in Lhasa, vandalised during the “Cultural Revolution” era is under repair and is expected to be opened to the public in May, 2005, a report said Monday. The project, which cost $ 60,241, aims to restore the original look of the ancient prison and help people learn about Tibet’s history, local officials said.
Losang Jigme, who is in charge of the project, said the reconstruction team will repair all walls, the roof of the three-story building, all nine cells of the prison, a court room and the prison control room. Situated in Bargor Street of Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Langzisha is a typical example of Tibetan architecture covering an area of 720 square metres. Built by the fifth Dalai Lama in the middle of the 17th century, it was originally meant to be the government headquarters of Lhasa, but was later turned into a prison. [Ancient Tibet prison to open]

Now the same news was reported by both Xinhuanet and PTI, the PTI news being a word by word copy of the Xinhuanet article. But in the PTI article, the following line disappeared

Even in the first half of the 20th century, Tibet remained a society of theocractic feudal serfdom, one even darker and more backward than medieval Europe.

The Leaning Taj Mahal

Even though the Taj Mahal was 350 years old many years back, the Govt celebrated it’s 350th anniversary recently. Right now the controversy is, Is the Taj Mahal leaning, like the tower in Pisa.? But there is one report which says it is not.

Talking to The Pioneer on Tuesday, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI Agra, Dr D Dayalan, said that though it is a fact that one of the front minarets of the Taj mahal was indeed ’tilting’ by 8.5 inch outwards, this was either a deliberate structural feature introduced by the architect of the monument or it may have occurred sometime back in history due to a natural calamity like an earthquake.
Dayalan said that this issue was not new, in fact it had been raised by the media a few decades ago as well. Following this, the department had fixed glass strips in the base of the minarets to ensure that if there indeed was a movement in the minarets even by 1mm, the strips would crack, but they haven’t cracked till date.
This indicated that the minarets were not tilting any further and the controversy being raised over the ‘Leaning tower of Taj Mahal’, is completely hypothetical, created by a section of the media bent upon sensationalising the issue. [Baseless babble over ‘leaning’ Taj Mahal]