Telling photos..

Some you might have seen, some not - ALL haunting.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/mumbai_under_attack.html

This is the real face of terror..

NOV 4 2008

Okay - so here it is at last. Nov 4 2008. After almost 2 years of constant election news, views and analysis, we have finally arrived. Think about how many times in the last 2 years have we seen Barack Obama, on your TV, in Magazines, newspapers, on the computer. I have seen and heard him in these last 2 years more than my entire family in my whole life.. now add Hillary and John the Mac and all the other side kicks to the mix and that amounts to some serious time. Wow.
Anyway.. Last few weeks were specially entertaining. The Mac threw in Palin' in the ring (I bet her husband's name is Todd Paling - she just chucked the 'g' out - in her usual folksie fashion - that's why the ') and all of a sudden, Saturday Night Live became a must see. In fact it seems like it's on TV all nights of the week now. It's like having Superbowl every Sunday! Hopefully they will get back to their senses and only have a SNL on S.

So while we are witnessing history being written right before our eyes, let's not forget that when all is said and done, and Mr. Obama will be crowned in Jan, 2009, he will be having a herculean task before him. He will soon realize that getting elected to the highest office in the nation was the easy part. He will have much on his plate - the economy, not just the US economy, but the world economy; two wars that directly affect the US and a flagging health care system, a non existant immigration system, to name only the most important issues.
So good luck to him tonight. If there is anybody in this country who has earned a presidency - it has to be him.
And because everybody is in a predicting mood - Here's my prediction: Obama: 330-340. Subtract any number between 330 and 340 from 538 to get Mac's numbers. The Dems will also get to 59 in the senate and a gain of 28 seats in the house. Wow - I can claim to be a political junkie myself. Don't be surprised to see me on MSNBC in 2012 - bashing Palin' after the Rachel Maddow Show.

Heading towards depression?

A 40 % drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Avg in a year (Oct 09, 2007 to Oct 09, 2008) is not something that happens every 5 years, it doesn't even happen once in 10 years. This has only happened twice before in the last 100 years! The last time the Dow lost more than 40% in a 12 months period was in 1973-1974. Of course, before that the Dow lost almost half its value in the 1932 depression.
So are we heading towards a depression? Here are some reasons I think that the stock markets are a poor indicator of the current state of the economy and that we are in a state of panic and fear rather than depression.
- The world economy is very interlinked now - more than it was in 1974 and definitely more than 1932. Even a slight chance/indication of an economy the size of the US will result in the financial gurus/experts/government officials to do anything and everything in their power to get this behemoth back on track.
- The government now is far more proactive and keen to avert a crisis like that. Far too much is at stake now. They will beg, borrow or steel (from China. UAE, Saudi Arabia and even India) to have some mobility in the financial wheels of this country. The US has knows what it feels to be a super power and to let that power slip from it's hands is unthinkable, unimaginable and frankly, impossible. You might as well say goodbye to the world as you know it if a 1932 like situation is to happen again.

So talks of depression - please.. in fact, there were signs that the stock market was looking to touch the bottom on Friday, Oct 10th. If that were to happen, here is an interesting piece of information/fact/history for you.
Below are the worst and best years of Dow in terms of percentage.

WORST
1 1931 -52.67
2 1907 -37.73
3 1930 -33.77
4 1920 -32.90
5 1937 -32.82
6 1914 -30.72
7 1974 -27.57
8 1903 -23.61
9 1932 -23.07
10 1917 -21.71

BEST
1 1915 81.66
2 1933 66.69
3 1928 48.22
4 1908 46.64
5 1954 43.96
6 1904 41.74
7 1935 38.53
8 1975 38.32
9 1905 38.20
10 1958 33.96

Do you see a pattern?
After dropping 31%in 1914, it gained 82% in 1915. After dropping 23% in 1932, it gained 67% in 1933, went up 38% in 1975 after dropping 27.60% in 1974 etc. As a matter of fact, we haven't seen a big gain like that since 1975. So the big question is - are we due one this/next year? I am willing to bet this will be the top most thought of traders in the coming weeks/months.
So what can you do? It is a common belief that it is very hard to catch a falling knife - and you can never predict when the knife is going to hit the floor (because you don't know where the floor is) so put is a fixed sum of amount in equities regularly, preferably once every week or 2 weeks. This is also known as dollar cost averaging

It aint over till it's over - well it's over.

“If we had same rules as the Republicans, I would be the nominee right now,” she said.

…and if grandma was male, she’d be grandpa.

if Obama had never been born, Hillary would be the nominee right now. It’s a fair point.

If I had been born to a lawyer rather than an Air Force enlisted man, I might have gone to an Ivy League school instead of a state university in my adulthood.

If I hadn’t gotten married and had a child so young, I might be a CEO somewhere…. or not.

Some very funny, insightful and entertaining comments here:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/clinton-this-is-nowhere-near-over/

Photo of the day

Somebody save the poor dog!!

Rudy Giuliani was in New Hampshire yesterday.

Photo of the Day

The demonstrations in Pakistan are not to be ignored. How can you ignore them anyway? There are 5 cameras in this photo. 6 if you count the one taking this shot. One wonders if they would shout as much or even get arrested if there were no cameras. We've all seen those video clips when people are shoving to get in the camera frame - many a times - finding it difficult to wipe off that smirk from their faces, sometimes even when they are getting the lathi on their heads. Even when Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto came back to the country and was offering prayers at a religious place, people were shoving each other, even with their hands raised in prayer. It's not funny at all.
By the way, isn't she loving every moment of this circus?

What's the difference?

Vs



Both places (Burma and Pakistan)
-have NO democracy,
-have military at the helm of political affairs,
-have the military crushing popular uprisings.

Then why do western nations favoring one (U.S. Is Likely to Continue Aid to Pakistan (or click here if link does not work))
and put sanctions and condemn the other?

Bobby (Piyush) Jindal, Governor, Louisiana (2007 - ? )

Yes - that's right, Piyush Jindal was elected governor of one of the most backward/poor/conservative states in the USA (trust me - I have lived in Louisiana). He is merely 36 year old, married to Supriya and has 3 kids. He can trace his ancestry to Punjab, India.

Maybe, the US is ready for an African American or a woman president. I would prefer the former. What do you think?

The War

No not the one in Iraq - the one on PBS, describing the World at War (1941 - 1945). It's an interesting recount of the times from the perspective of 4 regular towns in the USA and their people. It's a history lesson, a reminder of what people are capable of doing - both good and bad - and what price everybody paid - in every corner of the world. The documentary, of course, focused on the war on the ground in Europe and North Africa and Philippines and the other islands in the Pacific ocean, it mentions little about all the British Colonies that were a part of the war in one way or the other - and for obvious reasons.
While I was watching it, I couldn't help but wonder the sentiments of people in India during the war, which side were they really on, being occupied themselves by the British and were they looking forward to the Japanese advances from the east? One person who tried to use the war to India's advantage was Subhash Chandra Bose. I also remember vividly my father talking, somewhat highly about general Rommel and the Kamikaze pilots. Of course, Churchill and his caustic tongue was of no comfort to India ('I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion' and 'India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages' if the British left India).

Our early knowledge about the war as children came from Reader's Digest books, one of them, World at War, in Pictures (or something like that). It had vivid photographs of the Pearl Harbor attacks, the death march, etc. This little knowledge was way more than others of my age.

Communists in India see RED

When Prakash Karat wakes up every morning, his main agenda for the day is simple, focused and straightforward: How to create road blocks and throw spanners in the juggernaut of Indian democracy. It's because of people like him and the politics he represent, India is lamenting the fact that she is a democracy where EVERY ONE has a voice - no matter if it is one that is shouting to cut Mother India's arm and legs and then sell the torso in the fish market.
Communism has a wierd history in India. They are broadly divided in 2 catagories - ones that are mainstream and participate in electoral politics and ones that are involved in armed uprising and are deemed terrorists in India. This writup deals with the ones the citizens of India elect as their leaders and representatives. We will leave the other kind to be dealt with appropriately by the Indian law and order machinery.

As you can see in this figure, the communists are kingmakers in the Indian parliament. The communists have an idealist agenda and are increasingly isolated in a forward looking India. Dare I say, that sometimes they come out as even more communists than the ones found in China and the USSR. Even China has learnt to change their idealogy to adapt to a changing world environment.
A curious fact about this is that India is the only country that ELECTS communists to the parliament in a free and fare elections. So whatever I say here, some would say that we deserve it.

The communists claim that they have the best of India at heart and they lookout for anything that could be detrimental to India's national security and so on and so forth. A deeper look into their dealings give a different picture. A revealing article here details how the fathers of Indian communism movement used to take orders from their masters in China and the earstwhile USSR. In fact, it hasn't been even a few months when the Indian communist leaders could not decide how to respond to China's claim over Arunachal Pradesh. Of course, the communists still don't condemn the 1962 Chinese aggression over India*.

Now to this nuclear deal with the US. Of course, the communists will use whatever they have in their arsenal to shoot this bird down. After all, capitalist US is an anathema to the communists. A joint partnership with the US will mean the death knell for the only elected communists in the world.
As Times (UK) points out "Who would have thought, in a deal that gives India too much while asking for too few safeguards in return, that the greatest opposition would come from within India itself?"

With Friends Like You, Who Needs Enemies?

--
*Want to read more about the various stances the communists of India have taken over the years, read here.

Last 3 months

Ahhh - last 3 months. Lets see what passed by me - and what I passed by in these days. Iraq violence, Virginia Tech shootings, Richard Gere kissing, Sanjaya singing, AKV Skiing, The Cricket World Cup ... monkying.

On a serious note, whatever happened at Virginia Tech was no less than a natural tragedy. It has happened before, it happened on Monday, April 16th, and it will happen again. It is beyond anybody's control to know what will make a person flip and commit horrendous acts. What we CAN TRY TO DO is to make it next to impossible for that person to maximise the damage. There are a number of things that could have been done on that fateful day to prevent a disaster of this magnitude. I am obviously thinking GUN CONTROL laws. Time and space limits me from laying out my mind here - but common sense says ->
less (or better still no) guns on the street + better policing = less crime in the hood.
The tragedy was a shocker to me - I was no less shocked when students went on TV to say that if they were allowed guns on the campus, they would have controlled the lunatic with the guns. That's just the most ludicrous argument I have ever heard. Instead of 32 people dying in 1 day - we would have had 1 or 2 tying every other day.

Peace is not that hard a thing to think about.
Peace is not hard a thing to achieve.