Blog@GraceJunction

The entire nation (and in fact a few more nations) is still ranting and raving because of the despicable carnage that it was forced to watch helplessly (which need not have been relayed live to this extent in the first place) and breathlessly even as a few (no one knows for sure how many) perverse and fanatic young men held a host of our army and other security men on their toes and positions for about 60 hours needlessly killing hundreds of men, women and children of diverse religion and race in the due course and damaging property worth millions and much worse, denting the image and morale of this allegedly glorious nation (glorious perhaps only by its own definition and that definition too perhaps acceptable only to not the whole of itself)! A mask, the nation, at least at the socio-political level, is inwilling to put off! Let me show you the masks associated with the Mumbai event! (more…)

Like every other civilised person I was horrified by the senseless carnage that occured in Mumbai this week. The slaughter of innocent people can never be justified irrespective of who commits these hideous crimes.One fact is very clear however, the so called “War On Terrorism” can never be won! That may sound like I am prepared to hoist a white flag in our efforts to eliminate this scourge. Far from it, the battle has got to continue but I humbly suggest that the way this “War” is being waged only encourages would be terrorists to join the fight against who they see as their oppressors. (more…)

It’s official! India has added one more dubious distinction to its “shining” cap. In a study conducted by National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) where they compiled data from 22 countries which included Australia, Argentina, Austria, Bulgaria, Japan, Canada, England and Wales, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Srilanka, India has been declared as the ‘murder capital’ of the world!

According to the NCRB report, in 2007 – 08, there were 32,719 incidents of murder recorded in India, which is three times more than its neighbor Pakistan and double the figures in the United States.

Did it catch us by surprise? I don’t think so. The media is peppered with news of gruesome murders every single day. Grover, Aarushi cases are still fresh in our minds. Many other cases go unnoticed. As per the study, India witnessed an average of 90 murders per day! This means that as every hour passes, around four people are murdered in India! A very high number by any standards! (more…)

Friday saw rioting Palestinian Arabs torch the wheat fields of Israel and later on, pelting stones at the local fire brigade personnel – exactly a day after a recorded message purportedly from Osama bin Laden called on Muslims to break the Israeli-led embargo on Gaza. He also declared Iraq to be the perfect base to set up the Jihad to liberate Palestine.

Bin Laden, who was behind the terrorist network’s 09/11 attacks, has been in hiding since the U.S. assault on Afghanistan that followed those strikes. His last public statement was an audio message issued in December, when he urged his followers in Iraq to continue battling U.S. troops there. But he has his eyes trained on Israel too.

Now if you thought that Laden was the only guy who eyed Israel, then you need to know that there is also an ambitious leader in the present Iranian President! His eyes too are trained on Israel! (more…)

This article in one of the leading dailies of the country has touched my heart and before building into the theme I would like to cite some excerpts from the article.

This is about the life of Kenyans after the election trife in December 2007 wherein more than 1000 people where killed and 3,00,000 people where left homeless which basically took an ethnic turn. I would like to highlight some of the real life conditions this people are living in, which we won’t desire to have even in our worst nightmares.

Clinton Masheti, 8 yrs old and all alone, sits on a wooden bunch rolling snakes out of clay. When the men came and started burning down houses in his villages, his parents ran away- without him! (more…)

A gun that sends an electromagnetic pulse which causes seizures like that in epilepsy, a microwave gun that ‘beams’ words directly into people’s ears, another that is used as laser dazzler, still another that produces a sound loud enough to disturb the sense of balance, these are emerging non-lethal weaponry in the hands of the ‘Big Boss’. Some however have chosen to call these less-lethal weaponry!

More interesting is a microwave gun that produces a ‘disabling’ artificial fever by heating a person’s body! Though it would perhaps take about 15 minutes to achieve the desired fever effect, it could be used to incapacitate people for almost ‘any desired period’! (more…)