Mumbai has seen the wrath of God .....

it rained, it poured so much
mumbai was back to basics

your HONDA city lies stranded
your fridge is empty

watever food u stocked had gone spoilt
u were stocking food for 7 days
when your neighbour was hungry

mumbai depends on the farmlands for its food
which cud not be transported as the trucks had no diesel
the Pumps need power too

plastic money didnt count as ATM's depend on electric power,
which had to be switched off to prevent fires due to short circuits

ultimately, u had to depend upon yr neighbour who had a lower caste, a diferent creed

u had to eat humble pie
and ask for help

all along u had looked down on him for being lower caste, creed etc.,

dis old man had to use his legs, he trekked 6 km, when the taxi cud go no further, becoz of the flood waters

as i trekked i saw the hand of God, i saw a rich man's father being carted to the crematorium on the 4 wheeeled carriage of a vegetable vendor

i was befriended by an auto rickshaw driver, who went out of his way to take me home, when he was running short of gas, and what is more

he didnt overcharge, while we consultants charge on the basis of the client's capacity to pay

http://specials.rediff.com/news/2005/jul/27sld.htm

and now heavy rains lash Gujarat
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1184597.cms



Guys lets move on, and
HEAL THE WORLD
http://imnutsincapsheal.blogspot.com/2005/07/bloggers-of-world-unite.html

calling all writers and Neva Darbe
http://writers-blogs.blogspot.com/2005/07/gardening-day.html#comments


Mumbai happenings
http://indianwriting.blogspot.com/2005/07/mumbai-under-siege.html

intimate blog spawns book, TV deal ....

Front page of Times International of TOI Mumbai edition dated July 25

i 'll be damned!
planning on taking blogging seriously
didnt no there was maney in it


CONGRATULATIONS Steff
http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/greek_tragedy/2004/04/your_theme_song.html

a guide to safe chatting and blogging and flirting and watch out!, creeps abound in my india .....

Never use yr real name
Never ever post yr pic

Create a new mail ID for chatting and blogging friendz
to be real safe, use cyber cafe for chatting and blogging

u mite forget to switch of yr messenger
besides yr computer can be tracked very easily

dont give yr fone no.
here again use public fone, if u want to talk

but talking is a bad idea
then he has yr voice

if ur a married man/wooman dont cheat on him/her
He/she will come to no some day
and dat cud reck yr marriage

dont ever ever fall in love wid a net guy
the guy posting may have a ghost riter for him

and u will find when u meet the guy in person
is totally diff from wat u tot him to be

and if u have guys on the net, who hate u
u cud get hott acid thrown on yr face

it also happens wid jilted lovers
if i cant have her
nobody else will

it happens all the time in india
read TOI Mumbai edition


dis is scary, but true
girls have to be real careful


http://imnutsincapstoo.blogspot.com/2005/07/my-last-confession.html

as father of a lovely daughter who has just crossed her teens, i am anxious and worried

a young girl was sitting wid her lover on the rocks at Marine Drive, a regular lover's spot for young lovers

she was hauled up by More, a cop and raped in broad daylight in his poice chowky at a busy intersection on Marine Drive

her cries for help were finally heard but it was too late

Balasaheb Thakeray ' she was dressed sexy, she was immoral' she asked for it

Cardinal Ivan Diaz, 'dont dress sexy when u come to church'

Goans, mangys, anglos and foreigners,

to the sex starved Indians and Padres
if u dont wear a Burkha
ur dressed sexy

'son if u want to have funn
(get yr rocks off)

the above categories are OK, but when u marry,
marry a Bharatiya nari'

- advice from a dad

enuff of the sad, scary stuff
here is Kerry being positive
http://imnutsincapsquotes.blogspot.com/2005/07/moment-of-clarity-as-seen-by-kerry.html

a fellow blogger from the riter's world, her religion
http://www.us.bahai.org/

for music on your blogg
http://www.cdtv.net/cdtv_js.html

when ur depressed ..
http://imnutsincapsbob.blogspot.com/2005/07/death-is-not-end.html

'i am proud to be an american',

says OPIE http://sometimes-i-do.blogspot.com/

but Uncle Sam hates the guy, he is weird

but dis is good http://www.animatedatlas.com/movie2.html

its the history of USA, an animated movie

my great beyond, by Diffy ....

imnutsincaps: The Real Scoop on Sex ....



dis guy rote dis a while back
and i was too sozzled to read let alone understand
now, making another attempt
my great beyond.... by Diffy , when i first read it i tot he had ritten behind



As the ketchup bottle stops spinning the head points to this chum of mine...someone randomly asks ....so y do u stay around this guy?...pat comes the reply...all giggle ...and the truth or dare continues...

Few days later n a few probes later....i realise...i have been looked up at for the most intriguing reason...sumthin pretty bizzare...'I Can't Be Understood'...nope it aint that i was misunderstood...from wot i have gathered...its not a word...not a sentence...not my funny accent...not my choices...it was a generic entirety...week after week...month after month....

I can now picture..the observer of my life...my dreams..waking up every friday n saturday..eating cereals...doing chores ..going to werk...and then saying to herself...ok now enuff of all this time pass...its beer time ....now lets do some serious business.."lemme not understand this shorty again".......on recapitulation this has been going on fer a while...a part of thisones time was setaside year in year out to - not understand me!!

Now i feel humbled by such dedication.Wot cud have motivated such single minded devotion to incomprehension? Through out my life i have been a lil afraid /nervous...n excited to be explored.Ummm....its like hide n seek...like when an urchin is hiding ...wanting to be found...yet hoping he wont be...i wud love to be understood...i wud love to be an alternative...an acceptable company ...a sponge to soak...yet look lost...lonely ...hurt!!
But a black hole...noway...Now i think to meself...for all that my freind knew..i was collapsing inside....and she was getting her share of high fives from me...i was enjoying the music and she was feeling listened to....i was dancing for meself and she was tangoing by my side...
And then it struck to me how supreme my buddy is...I now believe dat...when we know something...and we understand ...we jus stand under em'...bound by their specific limitations...stick within the boundaries...and jus try to push an elephant up the stairs.

On the other hand when we dont know sumthing ...when we 'dont understand'..
we over-stand em'...we make a vantage point...of dat thingy..which helps us to make what we want of the person of our scrutiny.....ummm...like a white cloth...on which we may project according to our fantasies sumthin wid any or no meaning at all!!!

This is somethin' i jus cant help sharing..thanks for reading...and understanding :) !!


DAMN!
i will have to read it again

heyyyy FIRA !

do u love me still ?

dis is wat our Sardar PM is gonna get when he meets the Bush in USA today ....

A recap on India-US relations ....

George Fernandes threw out IBM and Coke out of India
... Janata regime

Sorry pal, we (BJP/RSS/Shiv Sena)
the right guys want to send our boys to Iraq,
but the damn Leftists in the coalition say 'NO',

so i gotta tell u like it is 'Piss Off!'

Condeleeza Reis in INDIA,
'dont buy gas from Iran, we give u Nuclear Power and a permanent seat in the UNSC'

'Dont buy Air-Bus, buy Boeing '
Vajpayee cudnt find a reson to say No, though he prefers french wine and food and Air-France girls

Wat happened then is ...
Our Jawans didnt go to Iran, but they are dying in Kashmir
- tanks to Bush's close ally- Gen Mush in Pakistan

Now Manmohan Sign nos wat to expect in the US of A

PS: the media all over the world is biased
they need ADVT from american corporations
hear the other side about IRAQ from
http://www.aljazeera.com/

Breaking News:
G4 resolution will be put to vote; decision after meeting AU

The resolution by India and three other countries seeking permanent seats in UN Security Council will be put to vote inspite of US opposition, but a final decision will be taken after tomorrow's meeting of their foreign ministers with counterparts from Africa, diplomats have said.

"Absolutely," Indian UN Ambassador Nirupam Sen told reporters when asked if the G4 comprising India, Japan, Germany and Brazil would seek a vote despite strong opposition from the US on their proposals.

http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=310905

Fire and Rain ...

Fire And Rain
(James Taylor)
- dis song is dedicated to a very dear friend, who is in pain right now ....

Just yesterday mornin' they let me know you were gone
Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this mornin' and I wrote down this song
I just can't remember who to send it to

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

Won't you look down upon me Jesus
You've gotta help me make a stand
You just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
I won't make it any other way

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again

I've been walking my mind to an easy time
My back turned toward the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows
It'll turn your head around
Well there's hours of time on the telephone line
To talk about things to come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I'd see you again
Thought I'd see you one more time again ....

from Sweet Baby James (1970)

'an eye for an eye will only make the whole fucking world go blind' - Mahatma Gandhi .... ....

the voice of sanity in a world gone mad


In an extraordinarily hard-eyed attempt to face facts,
Tony Blair has told his bloodied and grieving people that security measures alone cannot protect them from attacks

because “all the surveillance in the world’’ cannot stop someone from going on a bus to blow up innocent people.

Barely 48 hours after bomb blasts ripped through London, Blair offered a measured but emphatic restatement of officially multi-cultural Britain’s tenet of political and social faith.


“We are a tolerant people and I believe we will continue our way of life as a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-religious society.’’

In the strongest post-terror defence of multi-culturalism yet from a western European leader,
Blair vowed his country would not allow the terrorists to win by turning the UK into an illiberal society.

“One is the way of the fanatic and the other is the way of the democrat,’’
Blair declared in a statement expected to soothe anxious Muslims and other British Asians fearing a backlash.

But he said with some urgency that it was increasingly important to tackle the “dreadful perversion of the true faith of Islam’’.

Blair controversially reminded the Western world that there were parallels between fanatical Muslims and fanatical Christians.

In what sections of the British Muslim community immediately called a “welcome’’ attempt to officially distance the UK from a vigilante backlash against visually distinct ethnic minorities,

Blair praised the way in which people within the community had been standing up since the London blasts and saying they abhorred violence which was “wholly inconsistent’’ with their faith.

He rejected knee-jerk attempts to tar all Muslims with the same brush.


And he argued that he had “never really doubted’’ that “probably with this type of terrorism the solution cannot only be the security measures’’.


Blair, whose interview with the BBC was broadcast to a stunned nation early on Saturday morning, said the underlying causes of terrorism must be “pulled up by the roots’’.

And in a controversial but clearly deeply-felt rejection of criticism that his decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq had brought bombs to London,

Blair argued that the world’s “worst terrorist atrocity’’, 9/11, came well before the Iraq war.

Blame Polly tics, not ISLAM ....

Fundamentalism is often a form of nationalism in religious disguise. - Karen Armstrong

LAST YEAR I attended a conference in the United States about security and intelligence in the so-called war on terror and was astonished to hear one of the more belligerent participants, who as far as I could tell had nothing but contempt for religion, strongly argue that as a purely practical expedient, politicians and the media must stop referring to "Muslim terrorism." It was obvious, he said, that the atrocities had nothing to do with Islam, and to suggest otherwise was not merely inaccurate but dangerously counterproductive. Rhetoric is a powerful weapon in any conflict. We cannot hope to convert Osama bin Laden from his vicious ideology; our priority must be to stem the flow of young people into organisations such as the Al-Qaeda, instead of alienating them by routinely coupling their religion with immoral violence. Incorrect statements about Islam have convinced too many in the Muslim world that the West is an implacable enemy. Yet as we found at the conference, it is not easy to find an alternative for referring to this terrorism; however, the attempt can be a salutary exercise that reveals the complexity of what we are up against. We need a phrase that is more exact than "Islamic terror." These acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles. The Quran prohibits aggressive warfare, permits war only in self-defence and insists that the true Islamic values are peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. It also states firmly that there must be no coercion in religious matters, and for centuries Islam had a much better record of religious tolerance than Christianity.

Like the Bible, the Quran has its share of aggressive texts, but like all the great religions, its main thrust is towards kindliness and compassion. Islamic law outlaws war against any country in which Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely, and forbids the use of fire, the destruction of buildings and the killing of innocent civilians in a military campaign. So although Muslims, like Christians or Jews, have all too often failed to live up to their ideals, it is not because of the religion per se.

We rarely, if ever, called the Irish Republican Army bombings "Catholic" terrorism because we knew enough to realise that this was not essentially a religious campaign. Indeed, like the Irish republican movement, many fundamentalist movements worldwide are simply new forms of nationalism in a highly unorthodox religious guise. This is obviously the case with Zionist fundamentalism in Israel and the fervently patriotic Christian right in the U.S. In the Muslim world, too, where the European nationalist ideology has always seemed an alien import, fundamentalisms are often more about a search for social identity and national self-definition than religion. They represent a widespread desire to return to the roots of the culture, before it was invaded and weakened by the colonial powers. Because it is increasingly recognised that the terrorists in no way represent mainstream Islam, some prefer to call them jihadists, but this is not very satisfactory. Extremists and unscrupulous politicians have purloined the word for their own purposes, but the real meaning of jihad is not "holy war" but "struggle" or "effort." Muslims are commanded to make a massive attempt on all fronts — social, economic, intellectual, ethical and spiritual — to put the will of God into practice. Sometimes a military effort may be a regrettable necessity in order to defend decent values, but an oft-quoted tradition has the Prophet Muhammad saying after a military victory: "We are coming back from the Lesser Jihad [that is, the battle] and returning to the Greater Jihad" — the far more important, difficult and momentous struggle to reform our own society and our own hearts. Jihad is thus a cherished spiritual value that, for most Muslims, has no connection with violence. Last year, at the University of Kentucky, I met a delightful young man called Jihad; his parents had given him that name in the hope that he would become not a holy warrior, but a truly spiritual man who would make the world a better place. The term jihadi terrorism is likely to be offensive, therefore, and will win no hearts or minds. At our conference in Washington, many people favoured "Wahhabi terrorism." They pointed out that most of the hijackers on September 11 came from Saudi Arabia, where a peculiarly intolerant form of Islam known as Wahhabism was the state religion. They argued that this description would be popular with those Muslims who tended to be hostile to the Saudis. I was not happy, however, because even though the narrow, sometimes bigoted vision of Wahhabism makes it a fruitful ground for extremism, the vast majority of Wahhabis do not commit acts of terror. Osama bin Laden was not inspired by Wahhabism but by the writings of Egyptian ideologue Sayyid Qutb, who was executed by President Nasser in 1966. Almost every fundamentalist movement in Sunni Islam has been strongly influenced by Qutb, so there is a good case for calling the violence that some of his followers commit "Qutbian terrorism." Qutb urged his followers to withdraw from the moral and spiritual barbarism of modern society and fight it to the death. Western people should learn more about such thinkers as Qutb, and become aware of the many dramatically different shades of opinion in the Muslim world. There are too many lazy, unexamined assumptions about Islam, which tends to be regarded as an amorphous, monolithic entity. Remarks such as "they hate our freedom" may give some a righteous glow, but they are not useful, because they are rarely accompanied by a rigorous analysis of who exactly "they" are. Instructive tale The story of Qutb is also instructive as a reminder that militant religiosity is often the product of social, economic and political factors. Qutb was imprisoned for 15 years in one of Nasser's concentration camps, where he and thousands of other members of the Muslim Brotherhood were subjected to physical and mental torture. He entered the camp as a moderate, but the prison made him a fundamentalist. Modern secularism, as he had experienced it under Nasser, seemed a great evil and a lethal assault on faith. Precise intelligence is essential in any conflict. It is important to know who our enemies are, but equally crucial to know who they are not. It is even more vital to avoid turning potential friends into foes. By making the disciplined effort to name our enemies correctly, we will learn more about them, and come one step nearer, perhaps, to solving the seemingly intractable and increasingly perilous problems of our divided world.


(Karen Armstrong is the author of Islam: a Short History.) — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004 © Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu
http://www.thehindu.com/2005/07/12/stories/2005071206991100.htm

DUBYA is MAD, MAD like Alfred E Neumann ....

Hillary Clinton dubs Dubya ‘MAD’ character
By Chidanand Rajghatta\TNN



He was born in the 1950s,
has graced magazine covers,
and run for US President with the slogan
“You could do worse,
and always have.’’

No, this isn’t George Bush you are reading about,
but MAD magazine’s fictional mascot
Alfred E Neuman, the freckle-faced,
jugeared, teen with a missing front tooth
and wonky eyebrows.

But according to Clinton, there isn’t much difference between the two.
Attacking Bush and his policies, the former First Lady, New York Senator and putative presidential candidate in 2008 spoke of what has long been a joke in the campus circuit—the likeness between the US President and the Mad mascot.

“I sometimes feel that Alfred E Neuman is in charge in Washington,’’ Clinton said at a meeting in Aspen, Colorado. She then drew a laugh from the crowd when she described Bush’s attitude toward tough issues with Neuman’s catch phrase:

“What, me worry?’’

It is not the first time Bush has been compared to Mad’s gap-toothed mascot. The liberal magazine The Nation put “Bush-Neuman’’ on its cover when Bush was first elected five years ago and was then found on T-shirts. While the image has faded from public consciousness, Hillary’s comparison might again renew interest.

As news of Hillary’s attack spread on Monday,
bloggers were already wondering about the fallout in the American political circuit where name-calling is frowned upon.

But the less inhibited campus circuit was already scouting for comparable quotes between the two.

Among Neuman’s classics is:
“America; first we fight for our freedom,
then we make laws to take it away.’’