Back to the future?

…and one was made to believe that the ideology of communism and state ownership of enterprises had (deservedly) ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain!

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Detroit versus Wall Street

It’s bailout time again!

A deadly charge from the bottom to the top!

It’s not easy to be classified as a champion team when you finished dead last in last year’s championship. However, the Deccan Chargers from Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) have done just that – from the zeroes of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2008 to the undisputed champions of IPL 2009, it has been one dream journey for this deadly combination of crack cricketers led by Adam Gilchrist.

Gilly receives the trophy from the South African President, Jacob Zuma…

Image: www.deccanchargers.com

No one doubted the potential of this team – they have a great mix of youth and experience, a cool combination of seasoned international pros and talented young Indian cricketers. But, in last year’s inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket, the team simply failed to click. All that is history now!

Gilchrist took over as the captain from VVS Laxman for this year’s IPL that was shifted to South Africa since the Indian government could not provide security for the tournament, as the dates coincided with the General Elections. It was a blessing in disguise for the League as it helped to increase its popularity beyond Indian shores. Full credit goes to Cricket South Africa for organising a fantastic tournament at a very short notice. We all look forward to the big one – the 2010 FIFA World Cup. South Africans have proved to be great organisers and wonderful hosts!

For the Chargers, it was a superb team effort that took them all the way. Gilchrist and his fellow Aussie, the DC coach Darren Lehmann have managed to bring out the best in all their boys. Young cricketers like Tirumalasetti Suman, Rohit Sharma, Pragyan Ojha and Harmeet Singh have proved themselves on the big stage while seasoned international pros like RP Singh (who won the Purple Cap for taking the most number of wickets in the tournament), Herschelle Gibbs, Ryan Harris and Andrew Symonds made great contributions at crucial stages to keep the charge going. Not to forget Gilly’s sterling contribution – he not only shouldered the burden of keeping wickets while leading the team, but got the Chargers’ off to a flying start with his aggressive batting as an opener. Chasing a big target in a pressure semi-final against the highly rated Delhi Daredevils, Gilchrist played the knock of the tournament, single handedly demolishing the Daredevils’ attack with his incredible hitting. It was champion stuff from a champion cricketer!

The Royal Challengers Bangalore is another team that deserves apprecation. The boys from Bengaluru (Karnataka) finished second last in the IPL 2008 and made an ordinary start in this year’s edition. Anil Kumble lifted the RCB to a new level when he took charge as skipper. The Challengers put together a string of successive victories over top teams and knocked out last year’s runners-up, the Chennai Super Kings, in the second semi-final. They lost the final narrowly to the Chargers in a pressure cooker situation.

There is no doubt about the heroes of this year’s IPL, though. It has to be the Chargers from Hyderabad! A word of praise for T. Venkattram Reddy, the DC team owner. He solidly backed his team and could be seen in the team dugout with his boys when some other team owners chose the comfort of the hospitality box. The team is owned by the Deccan Chronicle, a reputed broadsheet and South India’s largest selling English language newspaper. I guess when you are the undisputed numero uno in one field, it tends to rub off on your other business ventures too!

I look forward to watching the Deccan Chargers in action at the T20 Champions League. As the Chargers’ cheerleaders and fans say: GO, Chargers! GO, Chargers! GO, go, go, go!!!

Thanks to Prakash, my fellow blogger at Kalugu for his contribution in putting this post together!

A boon for poor girls and women

Poverty has a greater effect on women than it does on men. That’s because women’s needs are more complex and they are usually treated as second-class citizens in most poor societies. Basic things that rich and middle-class women take for granted usually remain a distant dream for poor women and girls. Feminine hygiene products fall in this category.

In most Third World societies, women suffer greatly during their menstrual periods. In addition to the physiological issues they face, they also have to face the psychological problem of being treated as untouchables due to the social and cultural backwardness of their societies. As if this were not enough, lack of education about one’s own physiology adversely affects their health by limiting their access to feminine hygiene products. Affordablility of hygiene products is another serious issue. While only rich and middle-class women can afford the exorbitantly priced products marketed by the large companies, poor women are forced to use uncomfortable and unhygienic substitutes like cloth, and this impacts their health, well-being and self-confidence negatively.

An invention that would help school girls in many developing countries to keep attending classes:

Image: www.mrds.org

In a country like India, the lack of affordable hygiene products seriously affects the ability of millions of poor girls (in rural areas and deprived neighbourhoods of large cities) to attend school. Many of them shy away from attending school during their periods since sanitary napkins remain unaffordable and unaccessible to millions of poor girls and women.

A revolutionary invention that democratises sanitary napkins and makes them affordable and accessible to millions of women has been developed by Mr. Arunachalam Muruganandan from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. Muruganandam was forced by the economic circumstances of his family to drop out of school after Class X and work in a factory that produced machines used in the production of textiles. Utilising his ideas and experience, he developed a low cost sanitary napkin manufacturing machine that costs less than one-tenth that of the large automatic machines used to produce sanitary napkins. He set up his own firm to manufacture and market these semi-automatic machines to women’s rural Self Help Groups (SHGs) across the country. He was also ecouraged in his efforts by the government of Tamil Nadu, which set up vending machines for these sanitary napkins along with low-cost incinerators in state-run schools in several villages. The sanitary napkins are made available at a very low cost (2 INR/piece) by the SHGs which produce them using the mini napkin making machine. And now, a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has decided to purchase Muruganandam’s machines and supply them to groups in several African countries, thereby enabling millions of poor girls and women in another continent to benefit from his low cost invention.

Read more about Muruganandam’s efforts in this great post by Malarthamil on www.kalugu.com Thank you, Malar!

To know more about this machine and how it has helped girls and women across India and generated employment for women’s SHGs, click here.

An apology…

After two angry posts where some really harsh words were used at the criminal genocidal maniacs and their vile backers, I’ve decided that it’s time for an apology. Yes, after reading some of my own words again, I do owe an apology to some. I’ve compared the mass murderers in the Rajapaksa regime in SL and their backers in world governments as well as the ones in their pay to sewer rats, vicious vermin, rabid canines and filthy swine.

I certainly owe an apology to all the canines, vermin and swine of planet Earth! In my anger, I committed the mistake of comparing these wonderful creatures of Mother Nature to the lowly sub-human, sub-animal filth beings in the rogue SinHELLa establishment, their backers in the Indian establishment as well as the crooked Commie criminals of the Chinese regime and the bloated, bureaucratic filth that populate the United Nations. By using the words canines, vermin and swine as insults, I’ve inadvertently done a grave injustice to all the dogs, wolves, hyenas, rats and pigs on the blue planet. I should not have compared these noble four-legged creatures with the filthy two-legged ones mentioned above.

Pigs and rats have many noble qualities that certain clothed-apes-with-opposable-thumbs lack:

I also should not have used the word “bitch” as an insult. Though I love cats, I like dogs very much as well. Moreover, once, when as a kid, I was playing alone in the garden, the female pet dog we had at the time courageously fought off a snake that could have harmed me. I don’t know if it was a poisonous snake but it was certainly a nasty looking slithering creature whose presence I was not aware of. I cannot forget the noble qualities of that female dog. It’s not without reason that a dog is considered as man’s best friend.

I love animals and for the ones that I don’t love, like cockroaches, I respect them for what they are. I’ve heard that cockroaches can survive the radiation from a nuclear attack. Maybe they are the only living creatures left unharmed as the rogue SinHELLa forces use chemical weapons on women and children with the full knowledge (and most disgustingly, full support, lip-service notwithstanding) of world governments and the United Nations. The only creatures that I really hate are mosquitoes. Those buzzing bloodsuckers don’t just suck the blood of humans and animals but are a real nuisance as well. But I don’t think even they have the capacity to guzzle human blood like the barbaric, cold-blooded murderers in the SinHELLa state.

No matter how “advanced” or “evolved” apes-with-opposable-thumbs may consider themselves compared to other animals, the scientific fact is that animals are just as “human” as any two-legged ape that wears clothes. If you’ve had a pet at any point of time, you would understand what I mean. Animals have the same emotions as humans do. Just because they cannot communicate their emotions clearly to us, it does not mean that they do not possess them. And I don’t just mean cats or dogs or other pets. It true of even lower mammals.

Consider this: There are many examples of apparent emotional behaviour in other animals. Elephants caring for a crippled herd member seem to show empathy. A funeral ritual performed by magpies suggests grief. Divers who freed a humpback whale caught in a crab line describe its reaction as one of gratitude. Then there’s the excited dance chimps perform when faced with a waterfall – it looks distinctly awe-inspired. These days, few doubt that animals have emotions, but whether they feel these consciously, as we do, is open to debate. Read the full article here.

And if you thought morals and ethics were a “human” trait, think again. Consider this: A classic study in 1964 found that hungry rhesus monkeys would not take food they had been offered if doing so meant that another monkey received an electric shock. The same is true of rats. Does this indicate morality? For decades, we have preferred to find alternative explanations, but recently ethologist Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder has championed the view that humans are not the only moral species. He argues that morality is common in social mammals, and that during play they learn the rights and wrongs of social interaction, the “moral norms that can then be extended to other situations such as sharing food, defending resources, grooming and giving care”.

“Work published this year showed that animals are able to make social evaluations and these assessments are foundational for moral behaviour in animals other than humans. Francys Subiaul of the George Washington University and his colleagues showed that captive chimpanzees are able to make judgments about the reputation of unfamiliar humans by observing their behaviour – whether they were generous or stingy in giving food to other humans. The ability to make character judgments is just what we would expect to find in a species in which fairness and cooperation are important in interactions among group members. Read the full article here.

As I mentioned, it’s not just about higher mammals. Even rats have a sense of empathy. Consider this: Mice appear to empathize with pain in other critters they’re familiar with, a capacity previously thought to exist only in higher primates.

When mice saw others they knew showing pain, they responded with signs of empathy, such as staying close by, according to a new study.

The mice seem hardwired to form a lower type of empathy called “emotional contagion,” said Jeffrey Mogil, a McGill University geneticist, who led the study appearing in an issue of the journal Science.

The mice were given mild noxious stimuli that caused a stomach ache-like pain. Aside from the pain response itself, the researchers also studied how the mice interacted when they could see a cagemate in pain. The behaviour included whether they spent more time together or followed each other.

So, even vermin like mice have a sense of empathy and understanding of the suffering of their fellow creatures! So what prevents creatures from Ban Ki-Moon and the other bureaucratic filth that populate the United Nations from exhibiting the noble qualities of rats? How can they not just turn a blind eye, but actually increase the enormous man-made suffering of civilians in the genocide zone of SinHELLa Lanka, though they are fully aware of it? Is it because of this:

Posters put up by the rogue SinHELLa government declaring Hillary Clinton, Eric Solheim and David Milliband as “wanted terrorists” because they paid some lip-service about civilians trapped in the conflict:

Image: Al Jazeera

It cannot be because of that. SinHELLa Lanka is a tiny bankrupt rogue state that goes with a begging bowl around the world. It does not even have one-hundredth of the power of the Zionist state of Israel. Yet Israel is condemned by the UN for killing around one thousand civilians in a program of state terror on Gaza that ended in one week. SinHELLa Lanka, in contrast, has butchered (and continues to butcher) tens of journalists apart from 10,000 civilians in the last three months alone and has maimed more than twice that number, detained more than ten times that number in Nazi-style concentration camps and is deliberately starving fifteen times that number! Yet, for the filthy scum beings in the UN, the issue is too “sensitive” to even merit a discussion in the Security Council. Sub-rattus sewer creatures! The real reason as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, is that every one of these creatures is directly or indirectly involved in this heinous genocide without witness.

So I did a grave injustice to rats and swine by comparing them to filthy scum creatures like the Rajapaksas and their backers – lowly beings like Chin Jin and Chin Jia (CCP dictatorial gang of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao) from the organ harvesting, toxic baby-food producing Middle Kingdom with the long, crumbling mud Wall in its middle and Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, P.Chidambaram, M.K.Narayanan, Shivshankar Menon, Subramaniam Swamy, N.Ram, Alok Prasad, M.Karunanidhi, Ban Ki-Moon, Vijay Nambiar and John Holmes. These creatures and others involved in the worst genocide of the 21st century shall have to pay for their crimes against humanity some day or the other. There shall be no escape for these shameless Pithecanthropuses!

Inhuman war crimes: rogue army shells makeshift hospital; 64 patients killed!

While the filthy bureaucratic vermin at the United Nations try desperately to cover up a genocide taking place with their full knowledge because of the involvement of several world powers in this genocide by a rogue regime that has killed nearly 8,000 civilians in the last four months alone, more and more unspeakable war crimes are coming to the attention of civilised human beings. In a genocide without witness, where all media, international aid workers and even UN staff are banned from the genocide zone to cover up the worst war crimes of the 21st century, where courageous journalists are butchered by government death squads, heinous war crimes are taking place with every passing moment.

In the latest horrific war crime, a makeshift hospital was shelled by heavy weaponry, killing a doctor, two nurses and 61 patients. This had taken place despite the exact co-ordinates of the hospital being passed to the rogue forces by the ICRC.

Patients waiting to be treated in a makeshift hospital that was deliberately denied medicines and supplies by the rogue SinHELLa regime were butchered in a deliberate artillery attack on two successive days:

The international “mainstream media” which deliberately colluded in the genocide by failing to report civilian casualties, is beginning to be troubled by its conscience. After all, not everyone is a filthy sub-human, sub-animal scum creature who takes great pleasure in watching fellow humans suffer or try to to dismiss heinous crimes that they passively support as “the internal affair” of another country. Internal affair, my foot! The filthy swine at the United Nations have an obligation to ensure that governments have a responsibility to protect (R2P) civilians in a conflict, failing which the United Nations has to do the same. In a genocide being perpetrated by a rogue state, the UN fails to step in because criminal scum in the Chinese and Russian regimes (with the latter ever eager to lick the filthy asses of the swine in the Indian establishment) are actively backing the genocide and the other three of the P5 rogues (USA, UK and France) are passively backing it despite being humiliated by the rabid dogs of the Sinhala regime (Sweden’s humanitarian envoy was flatly refused a visa by this bankrupt country that is totally dependent on foreign aid). News reports about unspeakable war crimes are beginning to get published despite the scavenging editors in news establishments trying to black out reports of war crimes. Read reports here, here, here, here and here.

There are other types of news establishments – the ones that indulge in sewer journalism. The top example of this kind is the toilet paper The Hindu that is paid to publish vile, nauseating lies by its masters in both the rogue SinHELLa regime and the scoundrels in the notorious CCP regime of China. Do you want to know how a sewer journalist looks like? Here is the best example of such a lowlife scum creature:

The creature in the centre (the one in front of the microphones) is the world’s lowliest sewer journalist, the natural result of a passionate one-night stand between a filthy swine and a rabid bitch. This vicious creature is N.Ram, the liar-in-chief of the world’s most disgusting toilet paper called The Hindu:

(To be continued)

World powers plan to murder more than 100,000 people in cold blood!

The world powers have given the go ahead. More than 100,000 men, women and children, born and unborn, already starved, denied medical help and forced to live in unspeakably inhuman conditions in a tiny strip of jungle in the Vanni region of Sri Lanka are going to be butchered in the most inhuman way from the land, sea and air with both conventional weapons, cluster bombs as well as chemical weapons. This is a holocaust that very few people know of, because the world “mainstream media” is actively colluding with the genocidal maniacs in the filthy regime of Sri Lanka by blacking out any news coming out of the genocide zone. In any case, journalists are banned from covering the genocide and the few decent journalists, who being troubled by their conscience, have written against this ongoing genocide have either been ruthlessly murdered or forced to flee the country fearing for their lives. I’ve e-mailed different world media outlets, informing them about the unspeakable human carnage taking place and asked them to find out the truth for themselves and then report it. Not a single one of them has cared to find out about the genocide that’s going on and none of them even had the courtesy to send me a reply or even an acknowledgement. Shame on you, stinking dirty yellow journalists! You have sold your souls to the devil!

21st century Holocaust photos that the world media will not show you: (Warning, very disturbing content)

This pregnant mother’s womb was torn apart in an attack by the SinHELLa state terrorists using artillery…that is the hand of her unborn baby sticking out of her womb…apparently, the blood of the unborn is extremely delicious for the stinking sewer rats…

This child was injured in a chemical weapon attack…chemical weapons are freely and extensively used by the SinHELLa regime with the full knowledge and support of world governments…

No need for performing the Hindu cremation rites on this unfortunate civilian…the sewer rats in the SinHELLa regime have already done it for him…

Another unnamed statistic…for the scum in the United Nations, the blood of children is irresistible…

A very common occurence in the genocide zone…a group of civilians butchered savagely in an aerial attack using an unknown weapon, possibly a napalm bomb…world governments of every kind prop up the genocidal regime and supply it with weapons and money…

This is one ward of a makeshift “hospital” with no medicines or supplies or even food…according to the filthy barbarian Gothabaya Rajapaksa, hospitals are a legitimate target for bombings…yes, he actually said that and hospitals have been deliberately bombed…

It is not as if nobody is aware of this. Concerned souls from different countries, mostly human rights activists, religious leaders and anyone who has an ounce of humanity left in them, knowing about the carnage, have dared to speak out. But this is a genocide that involves most of the world powers and the stinking bunch of bureaucrats in the United Nations. The P5 – that bunch of bullies with the bomb who have a veto on the UN Security Council (China, Russia, US, UK and France) are all involved in this because of different reasons. Iran and Israel, two sworn enemies, have actually got in bed together here, falling over each other in giving money and weapons of murder to the SinHELLa regime. Its the same story with Pakistan and India, another combination of sworn enemies, enjoying each other’s company in bed. Apparently, the taste of human blood seems to be too difficult to resist for the bloodthirsty barbarians in world governments and the UN. They want even more to satisfy their unending thirst for blood. They are fully aware that the scum in the murderous Sinhala fascist regime, using a phoney and bogus excuse of “war on terror” are planning mass murder on a scale never heard before and they fully support it with weapons of every kind, including cluster bombs and chemical weapons. Above all, this is a mass murder that has been approved by the rabid, stinking sewer rats in the Indian establishment and the shameless, power-hungry traitors in Tamil Nadu know this. The filthy, bloated bureaucratic scum in the United Nations, too are fully aware of the heinous crimes against humanity that are taking place against Sri Lanka’s battered and butchered minority Tamil community.

More than one hundred thousand people have already been killed in the genocidal civil war. The swine in the UN themselves admit that more than 4000 have been killed and 10,000 injured in the last three months alone. They are aware of the concentration camps, chillingly reminiscent of the Nazi death camps that have been established by the filthy Rajapaksa goons of the rogue SinHELLa regime. Unlike the Nazi camps, the concentration camps of the filthy SinHELLa regime have the approval of the world powers and the atrocities being perpetrated there are fully known to them. They may even be aware of the mass graves that are being dug for civilians in Mullaitivu as a shocked Sinhala writer has pointed out. The bullies of the stinking P5 regimes that control the Security Council are actively blocking efforts by and even threatening governments of countries that still care about humanitarian principles, like the powerless Mexican diplomats at the United Nations. Gracias, Mexico! Your government, despite Mexico’s own troubled history and violence-ridden present, has shown that it has the courage to stand up for a humanitarian cause against the group-of-five bloodthirsty-bullies-with-the-bomb, other scum regimes and the bloated bureaucratic vermin of the United Nations. Leaders of two other countries with a troubled past, East Timor and South Africa, too deserve appreciation. The role of Norway, the peace negotiator, that was kicked out by the murderous SinHELLa regime for its neutrality in the long defunct “peace process”, is disappointing, to say the least.

As for the filthy, stinking sewer rats in the SinHELLa regime and genocidal, rapist army, the rabid scavenging canines in the Indian establishment and the filthy pond scum in world governments who are playing a role in this heinous 21st century Holocaust, it won’t be long before your sewery souls and your circulatory organs made of filthy faecal matter rot in the disgusting dungeons of hell! That’s where you vicious vermin belong and that’s where you will end up!

(To be continued)

Detroit versus Wall Street