Dilip Simeon's blog

Dec 29:  Delhi Gangrape: Victim dies in Singapore hospital This is one of the worst tragedies in recent memory. There are attacks on Indian women every day, somehow this one concentrated the sense of injustice and helplessness that we all feel. Let us remember that the bus in which she was raped was running illegally, without a permit and had been impounded six times in 2 years. We may only guess how and why it was allowed to be on the roads. We may also wonder whether senior IAS & IPS officials, not to mention elected representatives across the political spectrum are aware of the regular intake of 'hafta' - something all private operators of transport vehicles, and all street vendors know about. The Chief Minister asks us to think and reflect. Yes, Madam, so we will. But can greater and lesser state officials ever think of a world without 'hafta'? Can we ever think of a woman entering a public transport vehicle or a police station without anxiety? May we dare to...

By Satya Sagar I t is mid-day on a warm weekend and the inmates of this transit detention center in the Ecuadorian capital Quito are milling around friends and relatives come to see them. A salsa dance number blares loudly topping up the roar of a football match on several TV screens in the background.  The place is packed, with little room to stand.Over 1200 prisoners live in a space meant for just 300, and now each of them has a visitor or more to boot. It is exactly as you would imagine a Latin American/Third World prison to be, crowded, loud, filthy, menacing. Suddenly a hand appears from within the crowd, and a voice ‘Hello, I am Victor Hugo’. A face follows, of a man in his mid-forties, with gentle, earnest eyes. According to the Ecuadorian government this Professor of Sociology at the Central University of Quitois the leader of a ‘terrorist’ gang, carrying out acts of ‘sabotage’ against the state. I have no hesitation shaking hands with him, just over 200 years ago h...

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me. Friday’s horrific national tragedy -- the murder of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut -- has ignited a new discussion on violence in America. In kitchens and coffee shops across the country, we tearfully debate the many faces of violence in America: gun culture, media violence, lack of mental health services, overt and covert wars abroad, religion, politics and the way we raise our children. Liza Long, a writer based in Boise, says it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness. Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants. “I can wear these pants,” he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue iri...

WASHINGTON -- In the wake of the mass killing that claimed 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school Friday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) made the case Sunday that the answer to preventing massacres in the U.S. is for more Americans to carry guns.  "There has been great investigation and study into this," Gohmert told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, arguing that mass killings happen where citizens tend to be unarmed. "They choose this place [because] they know no one will be armed."  Gohmert argued that the mass slaughter would have gone differently if Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung had been armed.  "Chris, I wish to god she had had an m-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out ... and takes him out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids," Gohmert said. The mass murder in Connecticut has renewed the national discussion about gun control, with Democrats in particular calling for...

  Having a Coffee...    Get together in a restaurant... Enjoying the beauty in a Museum...    Pleasantly Chatting in a cafe' ...       Enjoying a day at the Beach...       At the Stadium supporting the team...       Having fun with the girlfriend...    Appreciating the Town in a convertible ..      Albert Einstein:   "I fear the day when technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots."   PS - who knows when and whether he said it? But as for the mind-numbing impact of certain machines.. this sounds about right!

Ekta Parishad evolved as a people’s organization in 1991. Prior to that, it had been a loose grouping of NGO training institutes that had created a large base of community development work. It first articulated the agenda of “people’s control over livelihood resources” in 1996 in the process of consolidating its vision around the key issues of land, forests and water rights. The majority of the people in Ekta Parishad at the time of its inception, were tribals or adivasis, who had been increasingly alienated from their lands because of constant displacement. They were also suffering due to being barred from entering adjacent forest areas, because of the 1980 Forest Conservation Act. This problem was aggravated with hijacking of water resources for the use of industries and large-scale agriculture. Without land, forest and water, people (and especially forest-dependent communities such as the adivasi groups) could not hope to survive on the land. This was the impetus that brought the gr...

Hubble astronomers have observed deeper into space than ever before.  In doing so, they have identified six new galaxies of stars that formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang itself.  The study also updates a distance estimate for a seventh galaxy, placing it further back in time than any object previously identified.  Called UDFj-39546284, this is seen when the cosmos was less than 3% of its current age. The new Hubble telescope investigation was led by Richard Ellis from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and colleagues at Edinburgh University, Jim Dunlop and Ross McLure.  Its significance is that it gives us the clearest insight into how some of the earliest years of cosmic history unfolded. "These images are giving us the tantalizing view of what happened in the very earliest stages of the Universe. This is the time when the Universe was filled with hydrogen and starts to make stars and galaxies that make the chemical elements...