Dilip Simeon's blog

As of this writing, the two Voyager probes are between 15 and 20 billion kilometers from earth; transmissions, traveling over the Deep Space Network at the speed of light, take more than 15 hours to bridge the gap. And yet despite the distance they’ve traveled, the probes are still in the solar neighbourhood, mind-bogglingly far from other systems; Voyager 1 won’t pass within two light years of another star system for some 40 thousand years, and Voyager 2 will come within five light-years of Sirius in about 300,000 years. The probes are now moving through the heliosheath, the outer layer of the sun’s atmospheric influence, on the verge of interstellar space. Regardless of their speed relative to the Earth, in galactic terms they’re very nearly stationary, joining the vast dance of stellar and dark matter in its stately, 250-million-year orbit of the Milky Way. When the two Voyager missions launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977, embarking on a grand tour of the outer planets that ulti...

Police custody, violence, trials and imprisonment have been all to common features on the Russian protest landscape since December 2011. A grassroots monitoring  project called OVD-info has kept realtime data on the arrests Right from the birth of Russia’s protest movement in December 2011, our organisation, OVD-Info [‘Police-Info’] has collected realtime data on the nature and number of political arrests in Moscow. During the period 4 December 2011 to 31 December 2012 we recorded 5169 such cases. But our data are not just dry statistics; they are, more importantly, the stories of the people detained who have told us how arrests are made and what subsequently happens at the police and in the court.  Political arrest Readers who are not perhaps completely up to date with political life in Russia might well be surprised to learn that protests in Moscow take rather a different form than in other European countries, the US or the Middle East. All the demonstrations we have...

An Intellectual's Suicide  In 1940, Walter Benjanim, the renowned literary critic of Germany, known all over the western world as one of 20th century greatest, liberal-left intellectual, was hounded to death by Hitler's cohorts. Finding Germany's illiberal atmosphere under Hitler arraigned against free speech and liberal arts, Benjamin wanted to emigrate; Nazi-fascist German authorities would not let him; finding all doors closed-even an attempted escape foiled-Benjamin committed suicide ( Walter Benjanim ). Walter Benjamin was a Jew; it was impossible for him to fit into the `superiority of the pure Aryan race', anti-Semitic, fascist-totalitarian ideology, peddled, by Hitler and his cohorts. Benjamin represented the quality driven strand of excellence, tolerance and pluralism in classical German culture; he stood proud and singular in the tradition of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe,  Heinrich Heine   and other famous German artistes and intellectuals, several of whom were...

“An amazing occurrence happened in South Africa when 31 elephants made a “Journey To Pay their Respect. Lawrence Anthony (1950–2012), a legend in South Africa and author of 3 books including the bestseller “The Elephant Whisperer,” bravely rescued wildlife and rehabilitated elephants all over the globe from human atrocities, including the courageous rescue of Baghdad Zoo animals during the US invasion in 2003.  On March 7, 2012 Lawrence Anthony died. Two days after his passing, the wild elephants showed up at his home led by two large matriarchs. Separate wild herds arrived in droves to say goodbye to their beloved man-friend’. A total of 31 elephants had patiently walked over 12 miles to reach his South African House.   How did they know? Something that is greater and deep er than human intelligence informed them that their hero– he man who had saved their lives and many other animals–had made his transition from this earthly world. Lawrence Anthony (1950–2012), a legen...

The Duke asked a British student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?" To Australian Aborigines during a visit to Australia with the Queen he asked: "Do you still throw spears at each other?" During the recession he mused: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." A selection of notable quotes as he offers his own unique advice to people all over the world 1963 Speaking about the rate of British tax, he said: "All money nowadays seems to be produced with a natural homing instinct for the Treasury." 1965 On seeing an exhibition of "primitive" Ethiopian art, he muttered: "It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from her school art lessons." 1966 The Duke famously proclaimed: "British women can't cook". 1967 When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union: "I would...

Corruption is deeply embedded in the architecture of defence transactions and anything short of a complete transformation of structures, systems and processes will not make any difference. There is no deal in which middlemen do not play a role and hefty commissions are not paid.. The focus should shift to looking at the money trails, who paid whom and when, the specific role of big-time deal-fixers and their political connections. Yet, in all the major investigations so far, the role of these brokers has never been properly investigated... the focus on nailing the corrupt ends up paralysing the honest and ensures that the corrupt find more ingenious ways of making money. Only systemic reform can change things. Naturally, that has few takers. Who would like to shut off such an important source of revenue? The writer is a former secretary to the GoI and handled army procurement in the 1990s I have been quietly amused by the pother over the AgustaWestland helicopter scam, as tho...

It is not only because of the lack of economic packages and employment schemes that the situation has turned volatile and so grim in Kashmir. In the people’s perception, the deep-rooted political uncertainty should be the focal point which must be addressed in order to alleviate their alienation. There is a sense of denial of justice , which should be the concern for all shades of political opinion in the country. No economic package or employment schemes can do wonders in the absence of a serious, meaningful political initiative in Kashmir. Excerpts from an interview with Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, the CPI(M) MLA in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly Does the anger in Jammu and Kashmir following the hanging of Afzal Guru have to do with that incident alone or does it point to larger issues as well, considering that life was returning to normal in the State? I think the execution of Afzal Guru has considerably added to the anger and sense of alienation already existing in the mi...