Sunday Posts

The feeling at the news of Huffington Post being sold to AOL is - sadness. I have subscribed to Huffington Post for last couple of years. Every day, reading the daily update was my touching base with my left-liberal self. But, there was more: This was my commitment to the alternate news. In a way, I don't trust big media for all its worth. After Al Jazeera , it is plain to see what they are up to. For example, the BBC and the CNN completely omitted the news of the protests in Kuwait, which was in a way the first among the Arab democratic movements, may be just slightly ahead of its time. My daily media consumption is Huffington Post and Al Jazeera , the left wing editorials coupled with irreverent reporting. So, the sale of Huffington Post to AOL, which is only slightly better than its sale to Rupert Murdoch, feels like one relationship severed. There is no reason to feel that way, indeed: The Press Release says that it will remain business as usual, with full editorial indepen...

Four separate incidents in the last few weeks, and suddenly, Samuel Huntingdon's Clash of Civilization thesis looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy: First, a pastor in an obscure church in Florida decides to burn Koran on the 11 th September, apparently in retaliation of the perfectly legal plan to open an Islamic community centre at a site near Ground Zero. The event ended in a farce, the Pastor finally agreeing to cancel the event after worldwide condemnation, though not before making a face-saving claim that the community centre in New York will be moved, which the Imam in New York flatly denied. Next, France's legislators outlaw wearing Burkha in public places. This comes after their completely illegal and racially motivated expulsion of Roma gypsies from the country, another desperately xenophobic stance by the deeply unpopular President, the neo -Napoleon Sarkozy . If the French Muslims took a leaf out of Gandhi and turned this into a non-violent civil disobedience, ...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh upheld the death sentences of the five ex-soldiers in the murder case of Sheikh Mujib, the first President of the country. Mujib was assassinated , along with most of the rest of his family, in a coup on 15 Th August 1975. The coup plotters accused Mujib of various misdeeds, including nepotism, corruption, dictatorship and selling out to India. Mujib, the enormously popular leader who played a part in starting the liberation struggle of East Pakistan, which eventually become Bangladesh, clearly lost control of his country by then: The coup plotters simply marched out of the Dhaka Cantonment, surrounded his house with tanks and armoured cars and shot him, along with his wife, sons, daughters-in-laws and nephew, dead. To start with, it was a grizzly murder and needed to be punished. It was long viewed as a political act. The subsequent governments of Bangladesh actually granted amnesty to the coup leaders, including those directly involved in ...

Cousins sometimes fight, but it gets too personal if the beloved NHS looks 'evil and Orwellian ' to politicians in America. Have the Americans not had enough of this myth about socialised medicine and still believe the stories that boards decide which medicine one can get? That's utter nonsense; for all the little disappointments I had with NHS in Britain - and I am an immigrant - I can't ever say it is evil, because it was mostly better than I expected. Agreed, I come from India. But then I am not benchmarking against the state hospitals in India, but against the better run private ones, where one can get world class treatment if they can afford it. More like America, I would say. Or the ones in Thailand and in Dubai, which is no less expensive than anywhere else in the world and no less luxurious. True, our local Mayday hospital may not stand in comparison in terms of luxury, but I have met some of the best professional doctors there, who were really committed to pa...

Yesterday, as the Works and Pensions Secretary James Purnell sent his resignation to the media first, and Downing Street next, and in the carefully crafted four page letter asked Gordon Brown to go as well, he was gambling on a rather obvious bet: That Gordon Brown will surely go soon. Mr. Purnell's intent may have been to play greater role in the incoming administration, or may be switch over to Tories at some point, as some have alleged, but he was just following his political instincts. Luck is fast running out for Gordon Brown, as several Ministers stepped down recently and the Labour Party's poll ratings have become abysmal since he took over. It is indeed ironical how fast good things turn to bad. In the harsh light of reality, how a thorough and professional Chancellor turn into an incompetent, radar less Prime Minister. There is also a sense of tragedy in observing the flighty nature of public attention - the man was seen as one of the finest Chancellors in history w...

Oracle has made the announcement to acquire Sun, for $7.4 billion dollars in Cash. This is a bit of news. Obviously what dominated the tech circles for last few weeks is the possibility of a Sun-IBM merger, which made sense technology-wise. Till Sun turned IBM down, it looked like a done deal, and it is now emerging why Sun was so confident in the first place. Hopefully, this deal will go through. After the two failed headline mergers, that of Microsoft and Yahoo and of Sun and IBM, one would wait to see this through before making any noises. But, the two companies seem better fit than the other pairs here. Sun and Oracle worked side by side in many projects, and I am sure they are defined the common enemy above everything else. Besides, Oracle and Larry Ellison seem particularly adept at pulling through successful mergers. Oracle has managed to pull through a particularly bitter acquisition battle with Peoplesoft , and followed this up with a successful acquisition of Siebel , both of...