Although the majority of articles that appear on Accidental Blogger are posted by me (Ruchira Paul), the principle author, A.B. does have five guest bloggers who post from time to time. Since guest posts are infrequent here and though the authors’ names do show up at the bottom of every post, readers often do not take note of the authorship. To avoid this oversight, from now on a guest author’s first name will appear in parenthesis after the post’s title on top. Articles posted by me will carry my name only at the bottom.
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Did John Bolton say aloud what many think privately? And doesn’t this mindset lie at the root of most human conflicts, oppression and exploitation?
Lebanon civilian deaths morally not same as terror victims — Bolton
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".
Asked to comment on the deaths in an Israeli air strike of eight Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon Sunday, he said: "it is a matter of great concern to us …that these civilian deaths are occurring. It’s a tragedy."
"I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he added, while defending as "self-defense" Israel’s military action, which has had "the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths".
The eight dead Canadians were a Lebanese-Canadian couple, their four children, his mother and an uncle, said relatives in Montreal.
The Montreal pharmacist and his family had arrived in Lebanon 10 days earlier for a vacation in his parents’ home village and to introduce his children to relatives, they said. Three of his Lebanese relatives died too, a family member told AFP.
"It’s simply not the same thing to say that it’s the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense," Bolton noted.
The overall civilian death toll from the Israeli onslaught in Lebanon since last Wednesday reached 195, in addition to 12 soldiers, officials said. Twenty-four Israelis have also been killed since fighting began last Wednesday, including 12 civilians in a barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire across the border."
Note: Since this report, the death toll has risen on both sides of the border.
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The last few days’ events involving senseless civilian deaths in the Mumbai train bombings, Israel’s escalating war in Lebanon in search of Hizbollah militants and the usual bad news from Iraq, have me despairing once again, about the state of the world. I feel anger, fear and hopelessness. I can point fingers at those who qualify as guilty in my mind and the various tangled "root causes" of terrorism, aggression and religious intolerance that are involved in this horrendous mess of geopolitics. In the past few days I have written my own commentary here, exhorted other bloggers to write and commented copiously on this matter at different forums. What I was unable to do, was to put forward any cogent thought about what might lead to a solution to the problems facing the world today.
Wanting to address this issue once again, I found myself hitting a brick wall for ideas. I wanted to make a post where I offered up a solution rather than just complain. But I have no idea – only confusion and backing and forthing from one unsatisfactory conclusion to another. Then I heard world leaders, political pundits and commentators all day long and realized that they too are just as clueless as I am.
So I have decided to post a private email I had sent to my son and daughter more than three years ago, during a particularly turbulent period of terrorism and warfare. Sad to say, things are no better today. The letter to my children was written half in jest. It is sure to ruffle many feathers because I slaughter more than one sacred cow here. But honestly, those who are annoyed at my frivolity, can you please tell me what solution you might have in mind? I invite readers to read this with an open mind.
"As the world goes up in flames, my brain is roiling with ideas – some rational and some truly fantastic. I thought I would put some of my "original" thinking into writing in order to get them off my chest. But hey, as the politicos are offering nothing better than drivel, my ideas are as good as any. If put into practice, they may actually be better.
Let me say why I am well qualified to put forward suggestions in a relatively dispassionate way for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict resolution. (The solution I have in mind will also simultaneously clear the India/Pakistan quagmire). I am not religious and whatever tenuous religious roots I have, they are not of the "Abrahamic" variety. I am also not a Biblical scholar which in this case is a necessary qualification. The current problems need a person outside the "Book" (all three volumes) to be a mediator. That is why I said the other day that in the absence of wise Martians, we need countries like China, Japan, Korea and Myanmar to be the arbiters in the mideast. USA, Europe, the non Palestinian Muslims and non Israeli Jews should have very little say in this matter. The mediators need to be those who give no credence to the "holy" nature of the conflict and treat this purely as a real estate dispute resulting in war or peace. But that may not work either. I therefore have a whole new idea.
Let us examine the issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the simplest Biblical terms as I understand them and you will see why it will never be solved as long as the parties look to their religious histories. Both groups feel besieged by real and perceived threats and disrespect directed towards them for centuries (Jews more than the Arabs). Both have lived in relative peace with each other at different times and have had their most humiliating experiences at the hands of Christians. Each group traces its historical root to the same patriarch but the fates of the two branches of the family are dramatically different. Ishmail, the ancestor of the Arabs was Abraham’s first born from his concubine Hagar. According to the ancient laws of primogeniture, he should have been his father’s rightful heir. However, when Sara, Abraham’s legal wife gave birth at an advanced age to Isaac (the forefather of the Jews), what did Abraham do? He banished Ishmail and his mother to the desert to die. Right there you have the first wrong against the Arabs in favor of the Jews.
The plight of the Jews on the other hand was the result of God’s wrath who exiled them (I am vague on the details) to many years of wandering, away from the homeland. Therefore, the Arabs blame a man for the unfair treatment meted out to them and the Jews ascribe their suffering to God. This distinction explains how the two groups came to view themselves. The Arab culture is infused with a sense of "shame" about what other men think of them and whether they were treated with respect or contempt. The Jewish psyche on the other hand is largely concerned with "guilt" – an examination of their own failings and how they are perceived by God. And the Christians hated them both and proceeded to mistreat them equally. Now these two tribes of cousins have been pitted against each other in the Biblical land because the Christian Europeans needed to ease their conscience for their inability to endure a Jewish presence in their own midst.
But it is not going to work. Much as I support the existence and sustenance of a Jewish state, it won’t happen at the present location. There is no denying that the creation of Israel is rooted in an unjust act (like that of the US) – that of uprooting an existing population to make room for a new one. You can never make the usurper and the usurped live in peace and harmony and neither the Palestinian notion of "violent coexistence" nor the Israeli fantasy of a "peaceful occupation" is a viable one. And how far will Israel drive the Palestinians? Its next door neighbor will always be an Arab and one with a renewed sense of "shame" to boot. So the carnage will go on with no preponderance of guilt or virtue ascribable to either side.
It is interesting to see the reaction of the Christian west to the mideast crisis both in Europe and the USA. Europe is perceived to be pro- Palestinian but it is not because of their love for the Arabs and nor is it due to some indelible anti-Semitism. Israel’s actions have made the Europeans uncomfortable by reminding them of their own not so distant "glorious" colonial days. The Americans are pro Israel for more complicated reasons. Some see themselves as truly supporting the only democracy in the mid-east. Some are worried that being critical of Zionism may be (as it often is) interpreted as being anti-Semitic. Some just hate the Muslims. The most interesting are the right wing conservative Christians who at present constitute the most monolithic pro-Israeli bloc. Privately, they cannot brook either Jews or Muslims. Yet they believe that the state of Israel must remain in its current location for the Armageddon to occur, therefore ensuring the second coming of Jesus Christ. Do the Jewish people again want to be a pawn in the games of the Christian world? But where should Israel go? This time it should be by invitation and not by occupation. Here is my wishful thinking.
India should step forward and offer Kashmir to the Israelis. This solution has many advantages, not the least of which is that it will eliminate the Biblical angle for ever and that in itself will be a major step forward. And there are others. I will list them numerically but not necessarily in the order of importance.
1. India and Israel are both aspiring democracies and should therefore get along for the most part. I say "aspiring" because Israel is in reality a theocracy and India has been a functioning anarchy for a very long time. But they both have free elections and free press. The citizenry elects inept and/or corrupt leaders in both countries based on hope, fear and narrow allegiances and then proceeds to criticize them viciously when they fail to deliver peace (in the case of Israel) and prosperity (in the case of India).
2. Judaism and Hinduism (the religion of the majority in India) are both "original" religions of their time with no culture of proselytizing. Since both groups hold that they thought of everything first, they share a snobbery of ancient wisdom and derision for their latter day offshoots like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. This smugness alone will make them good neighbors!
3. Israel and India are hated by the Islamic world and that makes them natural allies. The stereotypes – both good and bad of the Jews perpetuated by the Christians (and now the Muslims) are almost identical to those of the Hindus (ask the East Africans and the Muslims in India and Pakistan). And if Israel needs any historic connection to Kashmir, they can take one not so well known myth to heart – that the Kashmiris are the lost thirteenth tribe of Israel! (I didn’t make that up – it really is believed to be true by some).
4. By establishing Israel in Kashmir, three of the four warring factions in the world’s two hottest hot spots will be concentrated in one region. (The Palestinians, having got back their home, will no longer be a headache for the rest of the world but will quibble only with their Arab brethren, resulting in no "new" shame since Muslims dissing other Muslims never counts towards the shame quota). The problem of Pakistan will remain of course. But with the Indian as well as the Israeli army at its doorstep, Pakistan’s enthusiasm for warfare will be much dampened if not totally extinguished. Even if an occasional skirmish does occur and a UN mediation is needed, the peacekeepers from Canada and Japan or the peace observers from Burundi and the Netherlands will have to patrol a much smaller area.
5. Israel will have to give up its beaches on the Mediterranean but will in the bargain gain some of the most spectacular Himalayan landscape and top notch ski slopes. And with no restriction on entering India, the beaches surrounding the three sides of the subcontinent will be just a short trip away.
6. And last but not least, how can Israel say no to relocating to a region where there is always a New Deli (!) close by?
All jokes aside, I really think that the above may be the right solution to the intractable Israeli/Palestinian and India/Pakistan problems. While I was putting into words my two rupees/shekels’ worth of ideas, Sharon was promising more incursions into the West Bank and a suicide bomber blew herself up in Jerusalem. My idea looks better by the minute.
Love,
Mum " -
I feel the need way to work my way through this one, because it just seems so incredibly outlandish to me.
You see, The New York Times is apparently guilty of treason. Or if not the Times, then at least its editor. Precision, clarity of thought, is not necessary if you are a conservative, after all.
Of what, precisely, is the Times guilty? Or executive editor Bill Keller? Well, the newspaper ran a story revealing that the US Administration kept tabs on suspected terrorists by tapping into bank records which track global transactions.
This reminds me of the "scandal" where the NY Times earlier revealed the illegal NSA program. Of course, President Bush is quick to draw a distinction: "What we did was fully authorized under the law." He’s still maintaining that as King he has the constitutional authority to violate the constitution, mind you, but this is at least a tacit concession that there’s a real difference between this program and the nominally not-fellonious NSA program. But the reason I see a similarity here is stunningly obvious: it’s not a secret. NOT. A. SECRET. Seriously, "the terrorists" think that they’re not being spied upon? Just because we’re led by stunningly incompetent buffoons doesn’t mean that they are.
But back to the Times and treason. I’m hearing a backlash against the New York Times. The liberal, purportedly anti-Chimperor paper. You know who else ran stories about the bank monitoring program on the same day as the NY Times? The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. Funny, I haven’t heard any calls for the execution of the WSJ–or at least, of its editor.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t treason a capital offence?
So that means, if we take seriously the hyperbole of Republican congressmen and screaming pundits, that they would actually EXECUTE the New York Times. For publishing a story which effectively says, "Hey, we’re watching you and monitoring your activity."
Fascinating.
The scary thing is, I’m actually somewhat frightened for Bill Keller (editor). Why? Because the outlandish, the absurd, the nonsensically insane has a way of happening these days, especially in this country.
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Type Pad experienced some serious downtime yesterday. Due to resultant glitches, some data from the published posts and comments were lost. Also, if anyone tried to post a comment yesterday during that period, you probably were unable to do so. I also noticed this morning that a couple of the recently published comments have disappeared. I do not know how to recover them. I want to assure readers that those comments were NOT deleted by the author – Type Pad lost them. Any difficulty in subsequent posting was entirely due to technical problems at the TypePad site, not on Accidental Blogger.
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India’s encounters with Islamic terrorism perpetrated by home grown militants supported by Al Qaida and its subsidiaries, has a long history. Long before Osama Bin Laden was a glint in the evil eyes of Bush-Cheney, India had been targeted for civilian deaths by Kashmiri militants, Al Qaida, Taliban and assorted Pakistan sponsored terrorists. Ironically, these holy warriors (then known as the freedom loving Mujahedins) had been armed to a large extent by the US government during the ’80s and the ’90s to fight the godless Russian commies in Afghanistan. Predicatably enough, once the Russians had packed up and left, those weapons were pointed towards India (at that time, enemy # 2 on the Islamic radicals’ list of "things to do", after Israel . India was subsequently relegated to third place once the US went to the top of the list as Satan #1). Having rid the region of Russian influence and scored cold war points, the US cared little if the natives slaughtered each other and shrugged off the Indian-Pakistan problem as a historic and intractable cultural war.
Although there never was anything as spectacular as the one day event of 9/11, India’s brush with terrorism has been more like Chinese water torture. Numerous incidents, including an Indian Airlines plane hijacking, spread over many years, at many different geographic locations. It was always clear to India that its neighbor and long time adversary, Pakistan has played a major role in this matter. Pakistan too was armed to its teeth by the US for decades in order to keep democratic India from becoming too big for its boots – until the twin towers in New York were hit and American politicians could no longer turn a blind eye to Pakistan’s sponsoring role in global terror. The Indian government so far, unlike Israel, has shown remarkable restraint in retaliating against the menace of cross border terrorism.
The bone of contention between India and Pakistan is the disputed territory of Kashmir which both nations claim as theirs and from where Kashmiri Hindus have been methodically cleansed in order to make the Kashmir valley into a virtually all Muslim region. Kashmir is a long and complicated story whose roots go back to India’s partition in 1947 into secular India and Islamic Pakistan. This blog post does not lend itself to recounting the historic aspects of the problem. But after yesterday’s bomb blast in Mumbai where more civilians died than did in the London subway blast, many in India and the US are asking how long can India be asked to keep calm, faced with such provocation. Today’s Washington Post asks this pertinent question : "How Much Will India Endure? Pakistan Needs to Respond to Militants"
"Yesterday’s awful rush-hour bombings of trains in Bombay raise an important and ominous question: How far can India be pushed?
In December 2001 India and Pakistan almost went to war when a group of militants, based on Pakistani-controlled territory, attacked the Indian Parliament, killing nine people. India’s response was to mobilize forces along its border with Pakistan. Predictably and understandably, Pakistan followed suit. The U.S. State Department ordered all non-vital personnel out of both countries, and the world prepared for what could well have been the first war ever between two nuclear powers.
But due largely to extensive, active and exhaustive mediation by central figures from the West, tensions were ratcheted down, and in time forces were demobilized.
This time, it is not the West that needs to show leadership but the two countries themselves. They need to back up their words with actions. The leaders of India and Pakistan stated in April 2005 that "the peace process was now irreversible"; unless they both take action, this is now in question.
Three years ago, at first very quietly and with great sensitivity, India and Pakistan launched what was called the "composite dialogue." The subjects ranged from economics to land to water to drugs to security. While many have suggested that these talks are going nowhere, they have led to some small but tangible progress.
This is all good. What hasn’t happened is arguably even more impressive. Despite an attack on a religious complex in Ayodhya last July, again by militants based in Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that the dialogue would continue.
But — and here’s the crux of the matter — how long can India, Indians and the Singh government withstand the constant pressure from militant groups before they have to react? By any measure of international diplomacy, they’ve already been extraordinarily patient; compare their restraint with Israel’s response to the kidnapping of its soldier or to the U.S. and Japanese responses to North Korea’s missile tests… "
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CNN is calling it India’s 7/11. There is no need for designating numerical symmetry to terror and horror for the sake of catchy news headlines. This is despicable any where, any day, against anyone. Some pictures of the Mumbai devastation here.
An Update: Here is an interesting aside on the American right wing’s naive and self serving take on the Mumbai blast with commentary from Curious Gawker.
"Many right wing bloggers in the US are somehow trying to link these bomb blasts with their own selfish pro-Bush agenda… The rest are engaging in highly clueless analysis of the events. For example Captain Ed of the prominent right wing "Captain’s Quarters" blog. Here is his erudite commentary :
It looks like al-Qaeda or an Islamofascist offshoot has decided to add another nation to its blood enemies.
What motivated AQ to go after India? It’s hardly the first country one associates with the West, and many Muslims live within the majority-Hindu nation.
It’s almost as if Captain Ed woke up today, discovered the existence of a country called India through CNN and decided it was time he graced us with his expert opinion on Indian politics. Dear Captain Ed, India has been afflicted by Pakistan and Al Qaida sponsored terrorism long before the US stopped supplying Al Qaida (and Pakistan) with arms and weaponry. Then, the learned Captain opines :
But mostly AQ and other Islamist terrorists have targeted tourists, and India is in the middle of its tourist season.
Uh what? Tourist season in mid-monsoon? Can’t get any more clueless than that. Furthermore,
AQ wants to destroy India’s economy, fragile enough as it is, by keeping tourists away from the country.
It looks like India will have a 7/11 to match Madrid’s 3/11 and our 9/11.
No more special dates for us, thank you. We’ve already had too many of those."
The right wing jumping on the Indian band wagon is pretty infuriating and sadly ironic. India is an "ally now with an economy fueled by western tourism?" Should I laugh or cry? Hasn’t the idiot read the great Indologist, Sir Thomas Friedman?
Is there any use in reminding these numbskulls how misdirected and corrupt their war on global terrorism has been? If in 2001, the US had indeed allied with India in putting a two pronged pressure on Al Qaida (and its alphabet soup of satellite terrorist outfits) in Pakistan (yes, the granddaddy of all terrorist sponsors), Afghanistan and Kashmir, we may not have had Madrid, London and Mumbai. Heck, had they gone after the true miscreants, we wouldn’t have had Iraq!
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The news from Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea has been uniformly disconcerting over the past few weeks and months. Reports of gross criminal conduct by US troops in Iraq are the most disturbing of all. There is a lot of speculation about what prompted these young men to rape and murder Iraqi civilians. Reasons ranging from revenge, stress and mental disorder have been cited. The explanation may be simpler than that. Garden variety criminal mentality may have been responsible for the cold and calculated brutality.
Motivations to enlist in the armed forces vary from soldier to soldier. Some do it for sincere patriotic reasons, some are adventurers and others do it for pride and tradition. But the overwhelming number of soldier recruits join sign up it for economic reasons. The armed forces offer many young men and women opportunities for education, job security, benefits and a structured life that they could not have otherwise afforded. However, there is a little known fact not advertized widely. The armed forces also attract their fair share of sociopaths with criminal tendencies. Men with anger and a penchant for breaking the law often enlist as cops and soldiers in order to find a socially sanctioned cover for their cruel and anti-social behavior. Even more worrisome than individual sadists and miscreants wearing lawful uniforms is when organized groups with violent philosophies do so for collective ulterior motives. When the government’s own motives for warfare are corrupt, recruiting honest citizens to fight that war becomes increasingly more difficult. The ranks of the armed forces are then filled by individuals with corrupt motives of their own. Here is a truly scary story based on a report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks and fights domestic extremists groups in the US. SPLC reports that white suprmacist extremist groups have found a convenient way to train their own soldiers in combat at the expense of Uncle Sam. It is possible that Bush’s dishonest claims of fighting terrorists there is proving to be a boon for terrorists here.
Racist extremists active in U.S. military
July 7, 2006 — Under pressure to meet wartime manpower goals, the U.S. military has relaxed standards designed to weed out racist extremists. Large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the armed forces. Department of Defense investigators estimate thousands of soldiers in the Army alone are involved in extremist or gang activity. "We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," said one investigator. "That’s a problem."
Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding racist extremism among members of the U.S. military.
"Because hate group membership and extremist activity are antithetical to the values and mission of our armed forces, we urge you to adopt a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to white supremacy in the military and to take all necessary steps to ensure that the policy is rigorously enforced," Cohen wrote in a letter to Rumsfeld.
Military extremists present an elevated threat both to their fellow soldiers and the general public. Today’s white supremacists become tomorrow’s domestic terrorists.
"Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists are joining the military in large numbers so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project.
"We should consider this a major security threat, because these people are motivated by an ideology that calls for race war and revolution. Any one of them could turn out to be the next Timothy McVeigh."
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So, I was wrong in my prediction – all of them. None of the five teams that I thought might become the 2006 World Cup Soccer champions, did. Italy won the cup for the fourth time, trailing only Brazil in the number of championships won. I must add though that when Italy (the Azzurri) and France (Les Bleus), two teams who wear blue jerseys reached the finals, I hazarded a guess that the team that gets to wear blue on game day will win. Italy wore blue today. So I was right on my sixth attempt.
The match was not pretty or terribly exciting but it was not dull. The championship was decided on penalty kicks after a 1-1 score during regulation time and OT. The operatic Italian side did not indulge in as much drama as many expected and feared. And their defense played unbelievably well as expected and feared. The main drama of the game centered on the French star Zinedine Zidane – the beloved Zizou. This was Zidane’s last World Cup appearance and after France made it to the finals (rather unexpectedly), many fans all over the world wanted to see him go out on a high note – with his second World Cup (France won in 1998 when Zidane was a key player). Instead, France lost and this is how Zizou exited the world stage of soccer. Unfortunately, instead of a spectacular header into the goal, this non soccer head butt will go into the history books as the defining moment of the 2006 World Cup Soccer. (To those readers, who have not paid attention to WCS, DO take a look).
Now I’ll wait for 2010 when WCS goes to South Africa.
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My friend and former roomate, Justin, recently started a blog ("More Cowbell"). It reminds me of Accidental Blogger on the days when we are not all ranting about George W. Bush, in that a number of interesting topics are discussed.
What I like about it is that Justin has completed one year of medical school at (The) Ohio State University–much like with Ruchira and her science background, he brings a different perspective than my own as an English/philosophy major and to-be law student at the University of Minnesota. Justin self-identifies as a conservative, but not of the crazy "I’m Dick Cheney and I will shoot a 78-year-old man in the face because he looks like a small, wingless, pen-raised quail-tard" variety. What does this mean? That he’s on the right side of important issues, such as global human rights–or more recently, the nonprotection of gay rights in the New York courts:
On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the State of New York rejected claims
stating that a domestic relations law interpreted to allow only
opposite-sex couples to marry violated the New York constitution and
the federal right to due process and guarantee of equality. The court’s
leading opinion was that children should be reared with a mother and a
father and nothing requires the state to give marriage licenses to
same-sex couples. This is a strong blow to the pursuit of gay rights in
America.While I have several grievances with this decision, I
want to concentrate on the argument that same-sex couples are not as
capable of rearing children as are opposite-sex couples. The American
Academy of Pediatrics recently released research results indicating
that this is not the case;
sexual orientation alone does not determine if someone is capable of
being a good parent, and sexual orientation does not determine the
success of a couple in raising children.I am especially
distraught that New York of all places would reject gay marriages. Gov.
Pataki further supported the decision of the New York Supreme Court.
Legislation is coming up in Washington and California. Originally, the
campaign for legalization of gay marriage was supposed to be an updraft
in raising awareness for improving gay rights among the public; the
push has certainly raised awareness of gay rights, but also has
hindered the push for improvement of gay rights.It is a popular
notion in public policy that, oftentimes, the side of a debate with the
simplest argument is the one that wins out. Unfortunately, the LGBT
community has the more complex argument going. It has research
statistics and logical discourse explaining the importance of granting
gay rights and equality, whereas the conservative community has Bible
thumpers, who are loud and simple and shout their claims from the
hilltop. Hopefully, as the push distills itself further, the LBGT
community will be able to have its argument heard more clearly by a
public that does not want to listen, and will have more victories soon.(Ruchira, I hope you don’t mind that I’ve done a bit of other-blog-promotion in this post. I’d have just linked to and quoted from his post on why gay people are also capable of being good "family people," but this way seemed better!)
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(Click for larger image: courtesy National Geographic )
The Indian monsoon is an object of much love and sometimes fear and awe. Indian poets through the ages have sung its praises as ardently and enthusiastically as do western poets about spring. The monsoon brings much awaited relief from the unrelenting Indian summer heat which desiccates the body and demoralizes the soul. The first fat drops which fall on the parched ground are greeted with unrestrained joy by farmers and city folks alike. In fact, references to the monsoon season in Indian poetry and music far exceed those made in honor of spring, which is a short lived season in India before summer’s onslaught begins in early April. But when the rains continue unabated, that can give rise to difficult water logged situations requiring some unusual animal and human ingenuity.
"—It could be the most spirited interspecies escape since The Rescuers. But unlike the 1977 Disney movie, this situation is anything but fun.
Photographed Friday in the northern Indian city of Lucknow (India map), a mouse perches on a frog in waist-deep (for a frog, anyway) floodwaters—a small sign of the early arrival of annual summer monsoon rains.
So far, more than 30 people have died in India as a result of this year’s monsoon-driven landslides and floods. Last year’s deluge killed some 1,000 people in the financial center of Mumbai (Bombay) alone. Today polluted, knee-deep waters are raising fears of a repeat disaster among the city’s roughly 17 million inhabitants.
In drought-stricken areas, too, frogs were playing the role of rescuer.
According to the Indo-Asian News Service, some rural Indians are holding frog weddings in the hopes that the amphibians’ bliss will inspire farm-saving storms. After marking the bride and groom with vermillion and turmeric—traditional adornments in human Hindu nuptials—villagers take the supposedly happy couple to a nearby pond to honeymoon.
"If we get the frogs wedded, the Varuna, the god of the oceans, will bless us with rains," Beni Prasad, a farmer in the village of Khapa, told the news service on Sunday."
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The NSA may have approached AT&T to set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before September 11, 2001. Very interesting. Whenever challenged about its illegal snooping activities, the Bush administration has repeatedly insisted that such surveillance is an essential tool in the fight against global terrorism. Now let me get this straight. As I understand this report and Bush’s assertions about NSA snooping, Bush knew beforehand that we were going to be attacked on 9/11/2001? And like a good psychic boy scout, he was preparing for domestic surveillance against terrorists well before catastrophe struck? Boggles the mind! What else don’t we know about this scoff-law administration?
" The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.
The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation’s largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.
“The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,” plaintiff’s lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. “This undermines that assertion.”
Accidental Blogger 
