Ten Issues - 6

1- Transparency and Poverty in India:  It is interview of Aruna Roy a prominent leader of the Right to Information movement and and Nikhil Dey.

2- Indian Culture: How does one define “Indian Culture”? And more importantly, why is “Indian Culture” always defined in terms of what women should and should not do?

3-A World Split Apart by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University published June 1978. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a writer and Through his writings he helped to make the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, two of his best-known works.

4- Food security - of APL, BPL and IPL : The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about, writes P Sainath.

5- The Longest Take of Their Lives: This is related to much talked movie Peepli Live making news due to Amir Khan marketing skill. This article is about director Anusha Rizvi and her casting and co-director husband Mahmood Farooqui. Their families wounded each other from opposite sides of the literary wars. Now with their debut film Peepli Live, Anusha Rizvi and Mahmood Farooqui are ready to take the fight to low culture.

6- Central Bureau of Investigation : It is Central Bureau of Investigation in JK, Elsewhere, Congress Bureau of Investigation. Hard question asked by Reporter on the credibility of CBI.

7-For the Children : For a parent, there is a lot to learn too – understanding the underpinnings of Hindu mythology and more importantly how to introduce children to it. Dr. Pattanaik gives a elegant answers to all.

8- India Today: Cultural Intolerance among Fundamentalist Hindus.

9- Why Adding Followers Alone Won’t Build Your Community : Understanding about social media following where the evidence is clear: the quality of the communities you build is much more important than the size of your following.

10- Knowledge is not a shovel: The primary aim of education, however one understands it, must be to nurture the ability to reflect, to develop new ideas, and to implement these collectively, writes Gesine Schwan. Cognitive multilingualism is the only way to prevent the specialization of knowledge narrowing our horizons to an extent that results in structural irresponsibility.

Quote of the Day: Bush's foreign policy was very simple: fuck the world. Obama's is very simple, too: talk pretty and do nothing. -by Evert Cilliers (aka Adam Ash)

Why the world needs WikiLeaks !

I often blog about culture but partially global politics. I do care about injustice, but the global scale and systematic nature of it has left me stunned. There is so much attempt to curb our freedom, liberty and public information in the name of secrecy and security. This blog post is compiled in the span of 30 minutes as soon as I became aware of about Wikileak.

Wikileaks is an international organization, based in Sweden. It publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. It has set a new standard in free information flow across the world. Afghanistan War Logs, Baghdad airstrike video, Guantánamo Bay procedures, 2008 Peru oil scandal and Toxic dumping in Africa: The Minton report are few important leaks of the secret government documents. You can read more about them in encyclopedia.

It is more productive to engage with, rather than censor. There is an intimate and indissoluble link between intellectual and political freedom. There will be no security for dissidents and their families as long as freedom of thought and freedom of political action are guaranteed by the law of the land. Now I will rest my case and will not write anything. Just watch this TED interview of Julian Assange, Editor in chief and spokesperson for Wikileaks.

Why the world needs WikiLeaks ! (MUST WATCH)


Afghanistan War Logs : More than 90,000 secret military records of the US war in Afghanistan were published online Sunday providing new evidence that Americans have been misled for years about the war in Afghanistan. And, The White House and its international partners today sharply condemned the action like all authorities do while undermining the new facts raised by the document. Check 'The Afghan War Diary'  for full details.

Baghdad airstrike video: A secret video showing US air crew falsely claiming to have encountered a firefight in Baghdad and then fired blindly. This footage of July 2007 attack made public as Pentagon identifies website as threat to national security. See yourself full version of this disturbing video.


An article in Guardian describes the video. To quote a few lines: "The lead helicopter, using the moniker Crazyhorse, opens fire. `Hahaha. I hit 'em," shouts one of the American crew. Another responds a little later: "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards." The article goes on to say "The behaviour of the pilots is like a computer game." and that's absolutely true, as you'll see.

But, I am here for something more than that. I am here for Bradley Manning, the person who chooses his consciousness to  reveal these secrets to common public. Manning allegedly told journalist and former hacker Adrian Lamo via instant messenging that he had leaked the "Collateral Murder" video (of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike), in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. He is the whistle blower that we should be proud of and take inspiration in fight against injustice. Kudos to Wikileaks also for their endeavours !

In May 2010, a 22-year-old American Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning was arrested after telling Adrian Lamo he had leaked the airstrike video, along with a video of another airstrike and around 260 000 diplomatic cables, to Wikileaks. As of June 7, Manning had not yet been formally charged. Manning said that the diplomatic documents expose "almost criminal political back dealings" and that they explain "how the first world exploits the third, in detail".  Wikileaks said "allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect". Wikileaks have said that they are unable as yet to confirm whether or not Manning was actually the source of the video, stating "we never collect personal information on our sources", but saying also that "if Brad Manning [is the] whistleblower then, without doubt, he's a national hero" and "we have taken steps to arrange for his protection and legal defence". (citing from wiki)

Julian Assange says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined:  That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are - rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful. [Source]

Nothing to Write !

Mental idleness leads to aimlessness and eventually despondency. To be a contented and creatively-active person, one has to keep doing something that keeps your zest for life alive and inspires you. For me it is blogging, it makes me feel alive. Today, Nothing to write but a zeal to express is there in the heart.

I am observing that there has been shift towards how much you own, how much you can get paid for some skill that you have, and bargain hard to get the most you can. We've been culturally brainwashed to believe that the average products for average people, compliance, focus on speed and cost (the factory approach) is the one and only way. It's not the ideal situation. People deserve more and have more potential within. I feel that capability rather than domain knowledge is more important;

Today, I find a beautiful paragraph on creativity by a famous poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz. In 1951 Faiz and a number of army officers were implicated in the so-called Rawalpindi Conspiracy case and arrested under Safety Act. The government authorities alleged that Faiz and others were planning a coup d'etat. He spent four years in prison under a sentence of death and was released in 1955. That is where he wrote about his experience on solidarity. Faiz on himself  --- 

Prison life, like love, is itself a fundamental experience which opens up a new vista of thoughts and insight. The first thing is that, like the dawn of love, all the sensations are again aroused and the mistiness of the early morning and evening, the blue of the sky, the gentleness of the breeze return with the same sense of wonder. And the second thing that happens is that the time and distances of the outside world are negated; the sense of distance and nearness is obliterated in such a way that a single moment weighs on the mind like the day of judgement and sometime the occurrences of a century seem to be like the happenings of yesterday. The third thing is that in the vastness of separation, one gets more time for reading and thinking and for decorating the bride of creativity.