Remembering friends: Miriam

You were the essence of shadows
when we met you were endless within the shadows
the black pearl with a faint glint
a pulsing heart in that unlit dorm room

I came from the sun, irate, imploding
stood senseless in the sudden darkness
you found me, took me into the recess
and wispered, "I will cure you".

I, from a loveless country
you taught me love
you taught me slowness
you took me to sleep

You had grass and I had the fresh lung
you smoked and I dreamed.
I stayed and took in your breath
and we were endless.

Until the rain came
you weaved the black silk around us
and I sprouted wings
and you wispered, "you are cured".

Voltaire quotes

• "War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not colour his crime with the prtext of justice. " It is forbidden to kill therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
• “No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
• “Madness is to think of too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively”

Stendhal Quotes

• The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
• The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.
• One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
• All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

J Krishnamurti

The Story Irom Sharmila:

"Ten years on, her fast is unparalleled in the history of political protest. If this will not make us pause, nothing will"
SHOMA CHAUDHURY in Tehelka.






World People's Blog entry on Irom Sharmila

Ntish Kumar's new Bihar : Article from Tehelka

Some of these new rules of politics for a new Bihar are:

• There will be nothing communal said or done;

• There will be no family;

• There will be no godfathers;

• There will be no criminals;

• There will be no moneybags; and

• There will be thought and action.

Bureaucrat who went into the naxal heartland and came back unscathed: An article from Tehelka

Kanphade and seven volunteers left for Beenagonda, a village located 100 km away from the last police outpost on the Maharashtra border, forbidden because of the perceived threat of Naxals.
Kanphade emerged from his journey to challenge this very notion. He emerged more critical of the State than the enemy. “The quantum of the Naxal threat and terror has been exaggerated by the police,” he says. “The Naxal bogey is being used to get more funds and higher salaries.”

PHOTO: TARUN SHERAWAT

Two articles about India In The Economist

A bumpier but freer road

India's surprising economic miracle

Walking with the Comrades - By Arundhati Roy

"See Ma’am, frankly speaking this problem can’t be solved by us police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss, remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out."

Click the title to read the full article from www.uyirmei.com

Steve Martin's business card

I think it's really his card

Some Woody Allen Quotes..

Luna Schlosser: What do you believe in?
Miles Monroe: Sex and death. Two things that come once in my lifetime. But, at least after death you're not nauseous.

My brain?! That's my second favorite organ!

Luna Schlosser: It's hard to believe that you haven't had sex for 200 years.
Miles Monroe: 204, if you count my marriage.

Death should not be seen as the end, but as a very effective way to cut down expenses.

[Whilst In California.]
Annie: It's so clean out here!
Alvy (Woody): That's because they don't throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows.

[on sex]
It was the most fun I ever had without laughing.

Sun is bad for you. Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat... college.

I think people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics

You can't control life. It doesn't wind up perfectly. Only art you can control. Art and masturbation. Two areas in which I am an absolute expert.

To you, I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the loyal opposition.

I took one course in existential philosophy at, eh.... New York University, and on, uh, on the final ... they gave me 10 questions, and, uh, I couldn't answer a single one of them. You know? I left 'em all blank... got a hundred.

Sometimes to have a little good luck is the most brilliant plan.

I don't know enough to be incompetent.

Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

I think you're the opposite of a paranoid. I think you go around with the insane delusion that people like you.

Nothing's wrong with science. Ya know, between, between air conditioning and the Pope, I'll take air conditioning.

Sex is better than talk. Ask anybody in this bar. Talk is what you suffer through so you can get to sex.

Qwerty

This is testing activity. Just routine. Don't bother.

Religion

I quote from a letter to The Economist's editor:

Religion is a private matter and should be kept that way. Countless millions have died in religion’s ongoing campaign to force its beliefs on its victims. Religion is socially divisive by design and is mostly about the desire of competing religious hierarchies to control people’s minds, just like communism or fascism. Religion seems to have an amazing immunity from normal laws. If anyone advertised that by taking a certain medicine one would live for ever and go to heaven, the product would be banned under the trades description act. Yet religion can publicly make its totally unprovable claims and get away with it.

We owe it to ourselves to push back against this tide of intolerance. The problem lies not with someone obtaining quiet comfort from their belief, but with vehement modern crusaders who would have us live by 10th-century standards or teach our children that Earth was created a ridiculous 6,000 years ago. The same goes for those Jews who think they have a god-given right to grab Palestine and the Catholic church with its policy of indoctrinating children when they’re most young.

From the Bible

The Lord speaks through Samuel to Saul as follows: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (I Samuel, 15)

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