Rumi Nations

Let's take a 'pulse' on the many news items of today. Why today? No reason really. The heroic Edward Snowden continues to look for a 'safe' place and a safe country to live in as the U.S. government — I don't know whether to describe the Obama administration as Fascist or Soviet-style — continues to try and arrest him and put him in jail for life. Mr. Snowden left Hong Kong and we know now that the U.S. government got a 'secret' arrest warrant from a court in Virginia and tried to get the Hong Kong government to arrest him. He has landed in Moscow and his future destination remains unknown although the speculation is that he will leave Moscow and go to Cuba en route to Ecuador which is considering giving him asylum. The Snowden saga is of course one-of-a-kind. Here are the other events that the news media is tracking.

No well-known person or personality would perhaps say what I’m going to say here. It’s merely stating the obvious to say that the world of Kabir Bedi does not exemplify the life of the average Indian. I am all for live-in relationships. Some talked about ‘blowing the brains off’ of the perpetrators. It’s worrying to see such over-the-top reactions. Is it too much to expect that people react calmly and in a measured way? What gave the incident prominence was clearly the fact that it was caught on video. We do not have video footage of those incidents of rape in moving cars and elsewhere. Imagine what the reaction would be if there was. Much killing of various sorts happened in Punjab in the 1980s and in Kashmir in the 1990s. But none of that was captured on video. Unmarked graves and skeletons are all that still give mute testimony to some of the chilling reality of Kashmir. The lack of video footage from inside the death chambers of Auschwitz and elsewhere do not...