Whose war is it anyway ?

"It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?"

- From the blog of an Iraqi girl

War on terror , Operation Iraqi Freedom , Operation enduring Freedom .. the list goes on .. the jargons and the phrases .. the deaths , the injuries ... the strife .. goes on ..

Operation Iraqi Freedom reminds me of the Vietnam war .. loosing grip day by day... For the administration its a question of honour, for the financial machinery its a question of raising money to support the troops, for the american public its an unnecessary war .. for the military combatant on the field this is a lost war .. its plain ridiculous when they really donot know whom they are fighting for !

For a statistician, the conclusion would be easy .. they are just numbers .. but as it turns out numbers speak ! Have a look and thou shall know.

This shows the as of today ... To get a more weiry number .. here it goes .. as on June 27,2006

Total Deaths : 2527 ( * +2 deaths pending confirmation, details not released )

Total Injured : 18490 ( unofficial 20,000 - 48,000 )

These are the official figures as posted in the DoD ( Department of Defence ) website . Looking at it would give you an idea how dreadful the numbers are ... Since the date of its inception, the war machinery has been churning out news of death like a weather data .

The business of war reporting and newspapers

How does this sound ? "Reuters: Roadside bomb kills 1 Iraqi soldier, wounds 7" .. pretty much everyday news ! ( this is a June 29 news .. not quite a headline though)

1198 days(as on June 27) from the start .. on an average 2.3 deaths per day !! 2 deaths a day ... and the news sounds so normal .. it doesnt make it to the headlines of the local newspapers anymore .. its not reading material .. casuality death doesnt make sellable news anymore .. people are tired of the same news.. News agencies are in the look out for the next sellable story .. wait for the next bad news !

Links :

The DoD daily casuality list : http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf

Casuality count statistics by period : http://icasualties.org/oif/

For "keeping track" of the count .. I thought I would put a counter on my blog .. sounds inhuman .. but what worth does humanity hold in front of oil ? ... if you are interested in adding an automated script as a reminder on the daily casualities .. you can get the script from here http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/counter.php

More will be added as Operation Iraqi freedom continues ... watch this space for more updates ... and views ... ( lots of sarcasm intended )

Once Bit-ten Twice Shy - The rise and rise of Bit Torrent

I just completed a 3.1 GB download of the complete lectures of Richard P Feynman. It was rather tiring to wait for a little more than a day. But the wait was worth it . I would have paid a fortune to get that from Amazon or BnN or somewhere online .. maybe I would never have got that at all in a voice media format.

Its the ultimate nightmare of a recording company , the headache of the movie distributers and the haven for online file swappers . Enter Bit Torrent.

Introducing Bram Cohen, the inventor of Bit Torrent ... whose passion is solving puzzles .. the harder ..the better.
Did you know that one-third of the internet traffic is accounted for by torrents ?
What started as a harmless way of sharing files is now a movement . ( remember Yahoo started as a small listing project by a Stanford student ? , so did Google ... )

Is p2p Softwares good for the Software Industry and how would it change the dynamics of eCommerce and online trading .. is yet to be seen ..

Meanwhile Cohen claims ... He has never violated any copyright laws by using his own software to download any pirated files ! Sounds like Kalashnikov claiming he has never used AK47 to kill anyone ;-)

What the heck is wrong with the Americans ?

Its yet another Friday afternoon and I can feel the silence and the lifelessness in my office space. The parking lot is as empty as it should-never-be on a working day. No one at the vending machine gossiping about the death of the Al Qaida #1 .. no one at the cafetteria .. no ringing phones .. no high tones of laughter ... no exchanges of 'how are you doing today' .. I wonder whats wrong today ..

Then suddenly something sounding like my inner voice shouted at me in a rather rude tone .. "Dont you know bozo ... Americans donot work after lunch on Fridays ! "
( I should have known !! )
Americans , themselves very well unaware of it , live in a Orwellian world made to their own comfort, where you dont have to bother too much as long as you bother your own business. The business of the Big Brother ofcourse is to bother your business . ( How very ironic !)

Enterpreneurship
The system takes care of your needs .. Thats what the communists once told .. America is the worlds biggest pseudo-capitalist state .. Who says enterpreneurship is welcome in America ?
Consider this .. you want to start a new business in India , how ever 'small' your initial capital needs/gains are .. you can ! ( the only hurdle is the social stigma )

In the US, you just cant imagine starting a grocery shop next to a Walmart .. ( are you carzy ? dont you know Walmart sells everything from baby food to 16-gauge Remington Pump shotguns ? )

Right to work
One of the best things in a free country is the right to work and earn your bread. If you are in India, no matter where you belong to .. what your status is .. you can earn your bread ( and butter ofcourse ) by hook or by crook.
In america, the two deadliest socio-economic problems (as preached and propogated by the state) are terrorism and illegal immigration. The right to work is limited to someone who is in the system .. If you are not in the system .. you are against it . For legal aliens like me, work is permitted, but limited to closed bounds ( iam lucky, but you may not be as lucky as your neighbour)

America Inc
America is not a democrazy. It is a company. It is a conglomeration of corporations run by the corporate board members who send their representation to the Congress whom the people call 'Senators' . Who elects these senetors ? You thought it was the people ? Nah ... If the NRA had a problem with the gun control policy, why cant they spend a little and make some person to represent them in the congress to frame a pro-armament, every-man-has-the-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms bill for the American people ? ( making a safer America for their children ? )
For more biased opinions watch Noam Comskey-Micheal Moore 3 part documentary titled 'The Corporation'

Ever watched wachowski brother's Keanu Reeves starrer 'The Matrix' ?? Living in the American mainland makes you feel like you are in the movie !
How true ... truth is more complicated than idealized fiction ...

... To be continued later some day