From the Globe And Mail : Ontario Moves To Ease Property Tax Furor.

The Ontario Finance minister Greg Sorbara said that the Ontario government is freezing property tax assessment for the next two years all but guaranteeing that the controversy surrounding homeowner’s skyrocketing tax bills will not become an issue during next year’s election.

Even though this move was a long time coming, I agree with John Tory (of the Progressive Conservatives) and Howard Hampton (of the New Democratic Party) that the timing is purely political. The complaints of high tax bills started early 2004 and the issue will not be revisited until 2009 well after the 2007 election. Brilliant political move. I just hope they come up with a better system of assessing property than just go for computer modelling that is the currently in place.

This proves that politics in the US is totally under the right wing machine.

The House on Thursday approved a Republican-crafted resolution condemning news organizations for revealing a covert government program to track terrorist financing, saying the disclosure had “placed the lives of Americans in danger.”

The resolution, passed 227-183 on a largely party-line vote, did not specifically name the news organizations, but it was aimed at The New York Times and other news media that last week reported on a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorists.

Most Democrats opposed the measure, protesting language in it that asserts that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was “rooted in sound legal authority” and that members of Congress had been appropriately briefed on the program.

While the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal also carried stories on the program, Republicans singled out The New York Times.

How does “non-disclosure” of a source become a national security matter? US used to be a country that other countries, esp. the third world countries, used to look up to. Now they only laugh at it.

From India Uncut.

How does progress occurs in India? You get married and everything follows!!

Villagers in Jharkhand will soon be enjoying electricity and a swanky new road courtesy of Sudesh Mahato, Home Minister of Jharkhand who is improving his bride’s village ahead of their wedding

Sudesh Mahato has ordered the construction of power lines in his fiance’s village of Dimbudih, 70 km south of Ranchi, officials and residents said.

Thirty-two-year-old Mahato, considered to be one of the most eligible bachelor in the state, is also building a 35-km concrete road linking the home of his bride, a final year law student in Mumbai, with his own.

Excited residents have welcomed the official attention in what has largely been a forgotten rural area.

You have to see this animation of the end of the world to believe it. It’s an animated video (about 8 minutes long) about impact of a giant meteor with Earth. Quite a scary prospect!!

Link.

This is the “breaking news” message I received from CNN a minutes ago :

– Israeli warplanes flew over the home of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Israeli officials said. The move apparently is aimed at pressuring the Syrian leader to help get a captured Israeli soldier released.

The prospect of a war is now several notches high. What the hell is going on there?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,no, no, no, no, no…………..this cannot be true.

Author J.K. Rowling said two characters will die in the last installment of her boy wizard series, and she hinted Harry Potter might not survive either.

“I have never been tempted to kill him off before the final because I’ve always planned seven books, and I want to finish on seven books,” Rowling said Monday on TV in London.

“I can completely understand, however, the mentality of an author who thinks, `Well, I’m gonna kill them off because that means there can be no non-author-written sequels. So it will end with me, and after I’m dead and gone they won’t be able to bring back the character’.”

Rowling declined to commit herself about Harry, saying she doesn’t want to receive hate mail.

USA, where your privacy is decided by the decider and no one else.

U.S. President George W. Bush has joined the chairman of the House homeland security committee in denouncing the New York Times for publishing a story last week about a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace alleged terrorists.

“For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America,” Bush said.

Bush added that the disclosure of the program “makes it harder to win this war on terror.”

Fuck!

A four-year-old girl was allegedly raped and abandoned in Krishna Nagar locality of East Delhi, police said on Saturday.

She was admitted to Swami Dayanand hospital in a critical condition, they said.

The child has been missing since Wednesday night from her house in Geeta Colony in Old Seelampur locality.

A pair of trousers, a toy mobile phone and slippers were recovered from the scene, police added.

For those with the perception that India produces only world class engineers and doctors, here’s the truth :-

Unable to score the marks she expected, a 17-year-old SSC student allegedly committed suicide on Monday evening by immolating herself at her suburban Mulund house, police said.

Rajlaxmi Muthu, a resident of Vaani High School, Mulund, immolated herself at her house at Shivshakti Chawl in Indira Nagar of Mulund, police said.

She was rushed to a private hospital, where doctors pronounced her dead on arrival.

The intense competition in Indian schools breeds an expectation which is sometimes very difficult to achieve. Instead of trying again, kids commit suicide. Pathetic.

After An Inconvinient Truth, this is a movie that I will definitly see :

The Road to Guantánamo

THE release of “The Road to Guantánamo” comes shortly after the suicides of three prisoners held in American custody in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in the midst of renewed concern, in the United States and abroad, about the mistreatment of detainees and the policy of holding suspected terrorists at the detention camp. In a sense, then, the film, which is based on the testimony of three British Muslims captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and held at Guantánamo for more than two years, does not tell us anything new. It is nonetheless a wrenching and dismaying account of cruelty and bureaucratic indifference, a graphic tour of a place many citizens of Western democracies would prefer not to think about.

Stories like this convince you that there is hope in this world.

A 24-year-old Pakistani national is locked up in a Lucknow jail for ten years through a tragic set of circumstances.

A team of NDTV tracked down Mohd Sharif’s family in Pakistan and informed them that their son was alive and now there is hope that he may return where he belongs.

he journey of Karachi born Sharif has been one of deprivation and abuse. He was kidnapped at the age of twelve by his stepbrother and taken to Saudi Arabia.

Sharif was forced into menial labour and beaten up at the smallest mistake.

Following an altercation, Sharif’s brother got him arrested on a rape charge but he was released after he was proved innocent.

He was arrested again for carrying a fake Indian passport. Since he was a minor, he was deported to India.

“When I wanted to go back to Pakistan, I was told I had a fake Indian passport and I was sent off to India,” he said.

He remained in a juvenile prison till he turned 18. Since he was not a criminal the judge handed him over to the SHO of Kakori police station.

Treated badly by the first officer, Sharif’s luck changed when Pramod Kumar Pande took charge. A strange policeman in an allegedly hostile nation became his family.

“If I want a CD, he gives it to me. I have a colour TV he bought for me,” said Sharif.

“When we have to buy something we just go ahead and get it. We have never had the feeling that we would have to spend a lot of money on him. He is like a family member to us,” said Pande.

Ray of hope

By a stroke of luck, one day Idris, a tailor, came to the police station to stitch some uniforms. When he heard Sharif was from Karachi, where his in laws lived, he offered to meet Sharif’s family.

Idris travelled to Karachi early this year where he met Sharif’s old parents who believed Sharif had died 12 years ago when he disappeared from a local madarsa.

After the initial disbelief, Sharif’s family began to fight for his return. Armed with documents proving his Pakistani nationality, they sought the help of the police.

In normal times, the police is often indifferent, but in Sharif’s case, with cross border ramifications, the process moved quickly.

It has been an agonising wait for Sharif’s family. “All I want is to get my son back,” said his mother.

Sharif’s father, a fisherman, chose to come to Karachi in 1972 after the birth of Bangladesh.

Still dirt poor with a large family and speaking the Chittagong dialect, he still considers himself a Pakistani - an identity his son is now fighting to reclaim.

With politicians like this no wonder India is such a political dynamic country.

Legislator Sunil Pandey of Bihar was drunk and went on a rampage at the Maurya Palace hotel in Patna.

On Saturday he misbehaved with staff, broke some furniture and forcibly occupied an executive suite and claimed the hotel owned him lakhs of rupees.

However, Pandey has denied that he had too much to drink.

“When I came out of the hotel, I was surrounded by media persons who kept on asking me irksome questions. But, I only said that my party’s image should not be tarnished. I was not drunk,” said Pandey.

Hotel staff said that in the past too Pandey had stayed at the hotel without paying the bills.

Last year the legislator was linked to the abduction of neuro-surgeon AK Chandra.

Why are we not going full steam ahead in Stem Cell research? Especially after this news?

Scientists have used stem cells and a soup of nerve-friendly chemicals to not just bridge a damaged spinal cord but actually regrow the circuitry needed to move a muscle, helping partially paralyzed rats walk.

Years of additional research is needed before such an experiment could be attempted in people.

Come on!!! News like this should be treated as gold among the big newspapers.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Supermileage Competition took place June 9 in Marshall, Michigan. Forty teams from Canada, the U.S. and India competed in designing and building the most fuel-efficient vehicle.

UBC’s student team has taken first place four out of the six years it has competed, with 2006 marking the fourth straight victory. Last year the UBC team beat out 27 teams by reaching 1,600 miles per gallon (mpg).

I am all for offshoring of jobs but this is just cruel :

Bank of America has been steadily moving thousands of tech jobs to India. The latest to go are about 100 positions that handle BofA’s internal tech support.

While many of the bank’s Bay Area techies accept the inevitability of their jobs heading abroad, what rankles them is the fact that, in many cases, they’re being told they have to first train the Indians who are getting their gigs.

“If people want their severance packages, they have to train their replacements,” a senior engineer at one of BofA’s Bay Area facilities told me. “There’s nothing in writing that says this — the bank’s been careful about that. But it’s made clear at meetings what we’re supposed to do.”

I was quite sure that it would be this year :

Andre Agassi will retire after this year’s U.S. Open, leaving tennis after two decades during which he collected a career Grand Slam and morphed from “Image Is Everything” brashness to elder statesman.

The 36-year-old American announced his plans Saturday during a news conference at the All England Club, where Wimbledon starts Monday and he is seeded 25th.

Wow!! What a movie. Actually that’s not true. It’s not a movie at all. You can’t even call it a documentary. It’s a presentation that was captured on camera with the interludes filled up with a documentary. The presentation is an amalgamation of a number of presentations that Al Gore has been giving around the world on the dangers of global warming. It’s as simple as that. So why is it doing so well in North America?

The first and foremost reason : Al Gore.

No one would have expected a prominent politician to take on the role of the bearer of bad news on global warming especially when the country he represents is at the forefront of global warming. When campaigning for “presidentship” he must have been in touch with a lot of corporations and now he is saying that those very corporations are primarily to blame for global warming. Moreover, this is not the role that anyone saw Al Gore taking up. Yes, he was one of the politicians who always espoused the dangers of global warming (he is considered one of the key persons to have made Kyoto Treaty a reality) and was always mouthing the right words during his tenure as an active politician. But to see him take such a direct role on warning everyone of the dangers of global warming was definitely a surprise.

The second reason : The piece is a concise, direct, simple to understand and the tone very, very foreboding.

The situation now prevalent in the political circles and the MSM is that the issue of global warming is POSSIBLY because of human activity. That is such a load of crap that I don’t know whether to bring the shovel or live with the stink. Global warming we see today is because of human’s activity. Period. There are no ifs and buts about it. For some “experts” to paint such a picture is false and they are probably in bed with organisations and corporations that want to continue ra-ping mother earth. That’s the reality. And that is what Al Gore says in the piece. He gave all the facts and all the data without boring the hell out of his audience and told them why
global warming in the current human era has such a devastating effect on earth. He also should some real consequences of global warming in the piece. The visual melting of Antarctica, the visual melting on Artic, the visual melting on glaciers. These are hard facts and they cannot be thrown out of the window by saying “oh, it’s probably because of an irregularity”. We are in the midst of a climate change perpetuated by humans and only we have the power to stop this change. Unfortunately, the politicians still have not been able to decide if we are the cause of global warming or not and that’s just dumb. This is the reason why I will vote for only those politicians who have environmental friendly policies.

I just read in the Metro entertainment section that Al Gore’s piece grossed more than MI III. Even though MI III was released 3 weeks before An Inconvenient Truth, MI III had a huge marketing budget compared to Truth’s word of mouth marketing and I don’t think the movie moguls thought that their mega blockbuster would be surpassed by an independent piece in the 3rd week of it’s release!!. Truth is going to be more profitable than MI III all thanks to people who want to know more about global warming.

Haven’t been blogging as the rush of work keeps blowing me away from the more important things in my life including this blog. Anyway, here are some quick random thoughts on even more random news of the day :-

• Ann Coulter : She has the art of marketing down to a pat. She chose to say the most disgusting things she would think of about the most sensitive issue of US (9/11) so that her books may sell. For those few who have no idea what I am talking about, Ann Coulter said on national TV about the widows of 9/11. Specifically she said "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzies, I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much." and on and on and on. I am sure her new book is a slew of insults aimed at those who dared oppose the republicans. And what was the net result of this diatribe? Her book is now at number 1 spot on Amazon. Wasn’t that the whole point to begin with….sell books? And all this chitter chatter on the blogsphere is doing exactly what Coulter and her publishers hoped for….selling books. The good thing that happened was that this comment by Coulter exposed a whole slew of republicans who came out in defence of Coulter and showed their true hate-filled colours.
• Saw X-MEN 3 : Man, what a movie!! I think it’s a much better movie that I & II. Although some of my favourite podcast have trashed the movie (they are self professed connoisseurs of X-Men comic books) I still think the movie really played out well. There were no character development of any kind because there were essentially 50 characters to think of but the story played out quite well. And for those wondering if there will be an X 4, stay until the end of credits to see the scene that sets up X-4.
• Should children out of control be shown compassion? That’s the new discussion on the talk shows of 640 AM in Toronto. The gist of it is that most of the callers and the show hosts say it’s the parents’ fault and they should be targeted by the police as well; And the children should be thrown to the lions. I agree with a part of it. The parents should definitely share the burden of the crime. You as a parent are the guardian and if the 14 year old that you are "guarding" brings a gun to the school, you should be reprimanded as much as the 14 year old. No questions about it. The other question that everyone ignored was, why did the kid feel the need to bring the gun to school? Because she was teased for having a brown skin. No one in the talk shows saw the need to address that point. No one said, "we should maybe look at the cause of the problem." In fact one of the host of the show said "She was teased for having a brown skin. So what? She still should not have bought the gun to school." Wow. Great way to tackle a problem that might induce more kids to bring a gun to school. 
• French Open Men’s Final : Was bitterly disappointed that Federrar lost to Nadal in the French Open final. The way Rodger started, I was sure that this is going to be Federrar’s year but, damnit, he just became too strung up. That’s the thing I have noticed about him. When he plays a player who might have a decent opposition to his game (like Nadal & Nalbanddian), he kind of self destructs. This has happened many times before and if it continues then he will have a hard time living up to the label of "the best tennis player"
• Gooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllll : World cup Football (or soccer) is on!!! So far no Cameroon (in ‘98) like teams but the games have been fantastic. My money is on Brazil, Germany, Mexico and England to be in the semi final. 
• Citizenship test. I and my wife gave our citizenship test last week!! Which means we are one step away (which means another four months) from becoming bonafied Canadians. I will be pursuing my representatives in the political arena a little more rigorously once I get my citizenship. I still feel a little funny "abandoning" my country of birth (India). But I tell myself that I am one of the lucky few to proudly call two countries my homes. India was my past and Canada is my future.

More updates to follow soon.

Gotta love this post :

MEXICO V IRAN TOMORROW:

An American conservative’s nightmare: Who to support? “State- sponsored” illegal immigrants or state-sponsored terrorists?

I am the music child of the 80s. There was a time when I followed Wham and Elton John (of the 80s) fervently thinking that this is it, this is the music I live for (I would not start listening to the music of 60s and 70s until late 90s!!). And then I found Bon jovi and thought this is so much better and cleaner than the crap I had been listening to. And then someone gave me a cassette of Judas Priest. I have never looked back since.

The year that I really fell in love with music was when I first heard Nirvana. They took me to another level altogether. And soon I started to hear a lot about Pearl Jam. I didn’t really give them much of a listen until I heard the song Jeremy on MTV. Of course, I couldn’t get enough of Pearl Jam after that. Ever since, I have been following their music off and on ever since that first album.

By the time they released “Yield” in 1998, they we getting to be a little tiring.

Keep in mind that I loved all their albums but something was missing. The music critics tell me it’s their lack of PR activities for each album that they release. I acknowledge that it’s true up to a point i.e. that they didn’t actively pursue new audience and that always hurts sales since the younger audiences always buy more than any other demography. Moreover, if you don’t release your material in the more traditional sense (A video, singles, larger concert instead of the small ones that Pearl Jam was pursuing), you wouldn’t have known that the album was pretty good enough to spend USD 20 on. But for the “more experienced” fan like me, the problem was their inability to connect like they did on their first big three (TEN, VS and VITALOGY). “No Code” and “Yield” were really good but I never really wanted to play them again and again. I will leave it to the more musically tuned as to why I would feel this way and still love the two albums.

And then came Binaural. The first time I heard it, it really blew my mind. Each song was so different yet quite like the songs in “Vs”. More importantly, that was one album that I was going back to again and again. The only thing that had changed was that Jack Irons quit the band and Matt Cameron (from Soundgarden). Did he provide an impetus to move back to hard rock or was it something that the band had mulling, we’ll never know. All I know is that the songs were really fresh and the band sounded like the old Pearl Jam we have come to love.

I completely missed the next album and I fault Pearl Jam for it. Since they never advertise their albums I never really got hold of “Riot Act” and to this day I have not listened to it.

But when I started to hear rumours about their latest album, I put all sort of reminders of the day of release on my home and office computer. And boy am I glad I did. Their latest is called “Pearl Jam (2006)”. And it is their best since “Ten”. This albums truly rocks. I have, so far, listened to the album numerous times and each song is a gem. Eddie is back to his vocals of choice, sincere and gutsy. The music in the first half is hard and all the songs “Life Wasted”, “World Wide Suicide”, “Comatose”, “Severed Hand” and “Marker In The Sand” out do each other. In the second half, the band brings their music down several notches and that’s where the true gems lie. The last two songs “Come Back” and “Inside Job” are not their usual angry songs. They are mellow and sound full of hope especially the closer. There are hard rocking numbers in the second half but mixed with the mellow songs they feel like breath of fresh air.

All in all I would say that the album has bought the band to prominence just as “Don’t Believe The Truth” bought Oasis back from the cold.