LTTE's increasing support in Tamilnadu

It has been sixteen long years since the youngest person to become the Prime Minister of India was assassinated by a foreign force. In a world that changes every second, that is surely a long time. I was only six during that unfortunate incident. And I don't remember any of the things that happened. What i remember? Regret and Sadness with which my father explained - how one of the most beloved organizations in Tamilnadu became a villain in a single day.

LTTE! You betrayed our trust then! And showed that terrorists can never be trusted! (A lesson Pakistan is learning now!)

Sixteen years is a long enough time to forget our love/lovers... How could anybody wrong a person who has forgotten the incident that happened on May 21, 1991 - a monumental historical tragedy which LTTE deeply regret. Most of us(Indian Tamils) have forgotten and some have forgiven. As seen from the increasing support that LTTE is receiving these days - "JNU Tamil Students term slain Tamil Tigers a martyr". Today LTTE is again becoming a 'Tamil' Movement. M Karunanidhi - the cunning politician is again ready to carry the flag of this great Tamil cause. :(

For those people who wanna support LTTE, please remember

• Once LTTE had the 'guts' to target a former Prime minister - a representative of our Indian nation, thereby targeting India itself. If it serves its cause, it will do it again, again and again.
  
• LTTE is a terrorist organization without any democracy in its ranks
  
• It is an organization that cleansed all the other brother organizations to create a monopoly for itself.(if you are fighting for a cause, you partner... you don't murder)
• An organization if had been given the chance to form its own nation would have started - A Greater Fight for a United Eelam with Tamilnadu(India)

P.S: I am not asking you to stop supporting Srilankan Tamils in their struggle but asking not to support a terrorist organization(LTTE). And I disagree with various activities of Srilankan government too - http://www.hindu.com/2007/11/01/stories/2007110156091500.htm

Related Post:

• LTTE's Air Strike
  

"Don't follow Us" - By An American to Indians

When the famous author of "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" - Thomas L. Friedman asks us(Indians) not to follow the Americans, my interest in his regular weekly column article on New York Times notched up one or two times higher. Read the full article at No, No, No, Don't follow Us. To my surprise, he was using the quote to look at the infrastructure problems that $2500 car by TATA Motors would bring to the limelight. He wants an India that makes itself the leader in both cheap cars and clean mass mobility resulting in an India that will be healthier and wealthier. The article echoes Ms. Sunita Narain who wants the Indian government to tax this cheap car heavily so that a better public transit system could be put in place(Taxing will remove the competitiveness of the whole project in one stroke!!!). He uses the example of Indian mobile industry that innovated to bring one of the world's cheapest telephone system of the world.

But I beg to differ because of the understanding of the mentality of the Indian political system which caters only to the most pressing problem in a efficient manner. Indian Politicians generally choose to innovate or change them self only when they have their backs to the wall [Yeah! Necessity is the mother of the invention] and culturally not known to have a future orientation regarding the present problems.

What I believe?
$2500 car rather than removing the need for a well maintained, efficient, cheap mass transit system would actually become the major turning point that would result in a better mass transit system suited for the Indian people(if the $2500 car became successful as predicted). The impact this car would be having in the rural and semi-urban cities of India like Tirunelveli, Indore, etc.. would be much greater than its impact on the metropolitan cities. And the majority of India lives on this rural and semi-urban cities. $2500 car would make the infrastrucutre shortage in India a comman man's problem from a industry's problem, thus making it a electoral issue, increasing the likelihood of an early solution.

Thomas L Friedman is talking from a narrow perspective of places he has visited like Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, etc. . These cities already have a mass transit system in place(though not a efficient one). And his perspective does not include other places like Indore, Pune, etc.. where mass transit system even if present is negligible and no government can create one in its life time. Expected a better researched article from the author of such calibre. :(

Chennai - The Happening City of India

Only the people who live in Chennai understood the magnificence of the city... But others always complain about auto wallahs, heat, etc. For example even Sajeev keeps on complaining how sad the place is... [If you don't believe in my statement, visit the comments page of Sreeram's recent post 'Of Renaming Places'] While i generally ignore them since i understand the envy of others regarding Chennai. But here is a chance to throw mud at this erstwhile famous "Chennai-bashers" gang. After 3.11 PM of November 11th, you guys wont get the chance to throw foolish remarks like that.

What is happening on 3.11PM on 03/11/07?
A few people are trying to encourage the chennaists to capture that one moment on 3.11PM and upload them to a common pool to freeze the entire city into a frame, in the span of a second.

For more details visit ‘03:11 PM’.

Why 3:11 PM?
No great significance! Just another wonderful day in the life of chenna-ists...

Google OpenSocial [Out "fox"ing Competition]

As I wrote in my earlier post - "Google out'open'ing competition in social media" , Google is expected to come out tomorrow with its announcement on "Open Social". On reading the recent press release from Techcrunch - Open Social by Google, the first thing that strikes you is the simplicity of the idea. Realizing the huge advantages that Facebook has - because of being the first entrant and innovator of allowing third party developers to develop APIs in its social networking website, Google has taken the first step of transferring some power to these third party developers to gain their attention and loyalty. [Remember one of the reasons for the Windows' stronghold on OS market was because of the large number of third party developers who bonded them self with Windows] If Google has not taken this decision, most of the third party developers would have sided with Facebook by creating their application only on the Face book Mark Up language and thereby leaving zero probability for the success of orkut. [And who has the time to rewrite the code for another social networking site???].

[For a better image, click http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/OpenSocial_PressOnePager.pdf]

But now, Google through its framework is trying to avoid that situation by creating a industry standard for others to follow. It is trying to create an industry standard where third party developers use HTML and Javascript to write their social applications(so just one application for all the websites) rather than using a language specific to the website[e.g. Facebook Mark Up language - Facebook]. If a huge number of third party developers joined this framework, Facebook has no other option but joining the industry standard, thereby providing a level-playing field for Google. Also Google would be expecting its drive would garner enough attention for its social networking site - Orkut. Success or Failure of this drive by Google is going to decide the future of Face book.

Update: With Myspace & beebo(largest social networking website in U.K. and Ireland) joining OpenSocial, Facebook is the only one left out. They are having the meeting with Google engineers on friday to decide their stand. [And the only option for them is to join the standard] NY Times article titled - 'Google and Friends to Gang up on Facebook' does not seem too outlandish now...

P.S: After seeing this initiative by Google, it seems as though Microsoft paid too much of money for 1.6% ownership of Facebook.. :(

Related Posts:

• Microsoft Vs. Google
• Google - Aggressive on Indian Market

Blog Action Day - A review

David Vs. Goliath fight of environmentalists against big corporates and bigger Governments has always attracted support from various fronts. Blog Action Day - October 15th was the day for bloggers to show their support to the environmental issues. Me being a laggard in these kind of issues, I decided to wait and watch for the results. To my surprise more than 20,000 bloggers with a cumulative RSS subscrisbership of around 15 million wrote about "How to protect the environment better". Most of them are not writers and even of a lesser number are environmentalists. So there would have been thousands of perspectives and ideas flowing aound.. Hmm.. If you want to crunch more numbers, get all the required data from Blog Action Day - Statistics.

P.S: Came to know about Blog Action Day from Sreeram's Pre-Post on Blog Action Day. But he convenientely forgot to write about this issue on October 15. :D