One NFL quarterback has pleaded guilty to dog fighting charges and killing dogs cruelly. He will probably go to jail and pay a fine but there seems to be an outcry to ban him from the NFL for life. It is disgusting to cause pain to any living creature and rightly he is being punished but I fail to understand why he should not be allowed to play foorball again. Hunting deer and wild boar is allowed in the US as is shooting birds. An animal shot and wounded may suffer from untold agony while trying to escape from the hunter. Shotguns are used for shooting birds which spray pellets over a wide area. Wounded birds fall to the ground and flop around desperately trying to fly while in pain and panic. Vice President Dick Cheney accidently shot his friend while out shooting birds and is now a butt of jokes. However, no one is asking him to resign for cruelty to birds. Cattle and sheep are stunned and then butchered to reduce suffering but fish are hauled out of water and allowed to slowly suffocate to death. Lobsters scream when they are thrown live into boiling water before being dressed and served in posh restaurants. Is there any evidence that dogs suffer more pain than birds, fish or lobsters? I am not advocating that everyone should turn vegetarian but it is one thing to kill a living organism for food and quite another to kill for sport. Deep sea fishing is only for rich people. Hire a boat on a summer's day, take food and beer, hook a marlin and play it for a couple of hours before hauling it out of water to suffocate to death. Great fun to let the fish run a little before jerking it back time and again. Unbelievable cruelty and great enjoyment, worth spending thousands of dollars for. What is nauseating is the hypocrisy and selective blindness. No wonder the gun lobby is unbeatable. Killing innocent students by a crazy fellow brings a shrug of shoulders but killing dogs causes a national outcry. Nuts.

There is a lot of silly talk coming out of Washington about American withdrawal from Iraq. The south of Iraq constitutes 60% of the population and is Shia. This area also has most of the Iraqi oil. The south of Iraq shares its borders with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan thus Iran will be sitting on the borders of these countries through its proxy militias. Kuwait, Saudi and Jordan are Arabs and thus ancient enemies of Persian Iran. More pertinent they are Sunnis and bitterly hate the Shias of Iran. These three countries must be terrified of any American withdrawal because they will be at the complete mercy of Iran which has a huge and very committed army. More importantly Iran will be able to control most of the Gulf oil if it should so choose to do. That is surely intolerable for the US and its friends in Europe and Asia. The only credible way the Americans can leave Iraq without creating a gigantic geopolitical mess is to take out Iran and hope to bring about regime change by engineering some revolt after destroying its defence capabilities by massive bombing. We hear that millions of dollars of arms have gone missing in Iraq and no one knows how. Surely it would not be easy to move tons of arms through American checkpoints without anyone noticing. Can we assume that these have gone to Iranian dissidents for future use? After all the Americans are supplying arms to Sunnis who were their previous enemies. Is it possible that Arabs will join the US in bombing Iran with Israel grinning in the background. ? Delicious thought. Go for it George.

Gentleman I know in London had a urine infection about two months back. He is about 65 years old and would be a candidate for prostate problems. He was given a course of antibiotics by his GP but had another infection after two weeks at which time the GP referred him to a hospital consultant for further investigations. Urinary infections are uncommon in men and two episodes within a short time demands further investigations. He was seen by a consultant who advised a urine exam and a PSA, presumably to see if cancer was a possiblity. However they have not carried out an ultrasound examination which is non invasive, completely safe and could give a load of information such as size of prostate, degree of obstruction, if any, and if anything like a stone is responsible for the symptoms. Seems that there are huge waiting lists for ultrasounds and this can only be done if absolutely necessary. In India an ultrasound costs about $12, CT scan of the brain about $35 and an MRI about $120. Medicines are about one tenth what they would cost in other countries. Unfortunately healthcare is still poor in India. The wretched poor cannot afford even these paltry amounts and the middle classes, especially here in the northwest, are reluctant to spend money on health. They seem to believe that health is God given and should be free. Also the people in this part of India are compusive liars and do not believe doctors. Thus blood pressure and diabetes remain uncontrolled because they do not cause pain. Sadly health will remain less important than the latest gizmo wherever we go.

Not many people in India understand the minutiae of the nuclear with the US but the general consensus seems to be that it suits our needs. In any negotiation there is some give and take and in this case the balance seems to be about right. The nuclear scientists, who were dead against the deal originally, have now been won over and most journalists seem to be supportive. Unfortunately the BJP and the Communists are dead against it and there is talk of a snap general election. The criminal politicians are so focused on self gain that they have no consideration for the welfare of the country and the aam aadmi for whom they profess such devotion at every opportunity. The opposition is not there to oppose everything the government does but to keep a check on unfair legislation and any attempt at reducing the fundamental rights of the people. Unfortunately politicians hate to see their opponents gain any popularity for any good that they do and so will oppose what is good for the country for fear of losing the next election. This is cynicism and selfishness at its worst. If the BJP wants to be considered as a serious contender for the main party in government then it has to show that its priority is the welfare of India and not merely be a party of plunder as others have been. As for the Communists the suggestion is that they are taking orders from China which is an avowed enemy of India. Surely it is treason to take orders from India's enemy to cause grave harm to the country. Every country in the world including those which have got rid of the death penalty for murder still retain it for treason. There is uniform consensus that treason is a much worse crime than even serial killing. It is a shame for me that it is Bengal that has been electing these filthy traitors to power for over twentyfive years.

One of the things I find extremely irritating is when I am told that I should be talking proper Hindi because it is my mother tongue. Firstly I am a Bengali and I think Bengali is much superior in its literature, poetry and music than Hindi. Secondly Hindi was imposed suddenly on the country by Nehru to give Hindiwallahs an unfair advantage in government jobs and because the Nehru-Gandhi family is elected from some part of Uttar Pradesh. It would have been much more fair to make Sanskrit the national language. Sanskrit is, after all, the mother of all Indian languages and every child would learn English, Sanskrit and mother tongue ( Tamil, Oriya or Hindi ) in school. That would have integrated the country instead of dividing it as Hindi has done. Also if everyone knows Sanskrit then there would be no need for pundits. The reason why Brahmins were able to maintain their superiority in caste through the centuries is because of their knowledge of Sanskrit and hence their control of the scriptures. We cannot buy a house, get married or even die without the services of a Brahmin at considerable cost. Knowledge of Sanskrit would enable everyone to perform their own puja or ritual and make all castes equal. Why would anyone call himself a Dalit when he has equal knowledge of scriptures as Brahmins do at present? After all God does not belong to anyone and did not sanction castes. But without castes politicians would be unable to divide society and exploit the weak so the class war will continue. What would we have achieved if such divisions did not exist.

Stock markets fell heavily yesterday although the Dow made a late recovery and ended only 15 points down but the Asian markets are falling heavily again today and governments are injecting more money in a bid to increase liquidity and stop the falls. Pundits appearing on news channels are usually analysts working for banks and finance companies and their bonuses are linked to profits made from bull markets. They, not unsurprisingly, claim that the market is heavily oversold and will rebound strongly. Politicians are habitual liars anyway and only interested in the short term with eyes firmly fixed on the next election date. No one seems to have any idea as to the size of the sub prime defaults and which banks are likely to be hit next. I am not an economist but as a small time investor would like to know what will happen if the falls continue. If investors in the US start redeeming money from funds will they sell in emerging markets to pay American investors? In which case how far will the Sensex fall and will it drag down the housing market with it? If the Fed reduces interest rates will there be a run on the dollar? If oil prices go up for whatever reason how will the central banks tackle inflation as well as reduce interest rates? If the US goes into recession will China also catch cold and result in world wide recession? Seems to me noone can control events any more. Globalisation is a genie which can send markets or currencies up or down without control and without anyone being able to predict which way it will go. All they keep saying is that fundamentals are strong and Goldilocks will be here shortly. Instead of going for the spectacular if Al Qaeda were to attack a few oil tankers on the open seas the entire house of cards could come tumbling down. Terrifying. Thank God I do not know economics.

Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of our independence and a lot of hot air and lies will flow from politicians but I do not feel independent at all. First there is the hierarchy. On top are Very Very Important People or VVIPs followed by VIPs. Then there are twopenny, thieving civil servants who have official cars with siren and flashing lights. They drive at double the speed limit and scare me off the road. They must be plain IPs. Then there are Scheduled Castes and Tribes followed by Hindiwallahs whose language we are forced to learn. You think that makes a very grateful 7th class taxpaying citizen but not so fast. If any of the above VVIPs or VIPs were to shoot and kill a cow, any ordinary dry cow, there will be massive riots for the murder of sacred 'Gau Mata' but if any criminal politician or thieving civil servant or his drug crazed, criminal son were to shoot me in broad day light inside a police station the police will do their utmost to destroy evidence and the fellow will go free. Politicians do what they like. Pass stupid laws which insult our intelligence, increase taxes at will and plunder the exchequer to go on foreign shopping trips where their fat, ugly, greedy wives shop with our hard earned money. No, I do not feel independent. Instead I am in a permanent state of appehension that I might be harmed in some way by a filthy sarkari fellow just for sport. British boots may not be trampling Mother India but criminal chappals surely are.

Bush refunds taxes and runs up huge fiscal deficits. The Fed prints more dollars to finance Bush's folly. The dollar should fall against other currencies but this is prevented by Central Banks buying up dollars to protect exports. This increased liquidity along with low interest rates leads to a huge asset price bubble, in turn leading to a lending frenzy. Excess leads to hangover, so inflation followed leading to rising interest rates, leading to tightening of liquidity, leading to collapse of the sub prime market. Now the share markets are getting jitters. Of course the pundits are saying the usual things such as ' the fundamentals are very strong ' and ' corrections are good for the market ' but we have heard all this when the dot com bubble collapsed. If this is only a ' good correction ' why did the European bank dole out 130 billion dollars into the system while the Fed injected 24 billion? Sounds like panic to me. What if the dollar keeps dropping in value? China is sitting on 1.3 trillion dollars, Japan on one trillion and India has 250 billion dollars. All Asian countries are sitting on huge dollar deposits and securities. How will they square their losses? What if China decides to diversify into Euros? Since the Yuan is tied to the dollar it will go down equally and will not affect Chinese exports. I hope and pray that the global economy is not so huge that it has developed its own momentum and is impossible to control or direct. I hope that our lot has some idea about what is going on.

This woman had a boy last year. Husband works as a driver and still has not cleared last year's bill. She is pregnant again, severely anaemic and her blood group is O negative which means it is very difficult to find donors for her. The obstetrician refers her to other hospitals but is refused by everyone so she is brought back to the clinic. In desperation the doctor phones the local army base and two jawans with the same blood group are found to donate blood. As per law each unit has to be tested for HIV, Hep B and C, malaria and so on and this costs around Rs. 900 per unit of blood even though the donation is free. The doctor pays for the tests out of her own pocket and a healthy baby girl is delivered normally. After delivery and transfusion of two units of blood her haemoglobin is 5 Gm. What of the husband in all this drama? He made her pregnant, did not take her for any antenatal care and dumped her in the clinic when she was about to deliver. The woman could have died, the doctor actually lost money to treat this serious patient and two jawans lost blood in peace time. The husband takes no responsiblity for anything and who is to say that the same drama will not be repeated again next year or may be the woman will die the next time. Should he not be punished? Fines are of no use as he has no money anyway and putting him in jail is also useless. He will just enjoy free food and medical care at the taxpayers expense while the family will starve. The only punishment he will understand is caning. This is already done in some countries like Singapore and we should adopt it. Let the bleeding hearts bleat.

One Ashok Malhotra got the permission for selling tea and snacks in the Assembly building in Delhi. Over the years he got to know politicians and civil servants and was able get more than 5000 plots allotted to him with multiple false identities. These were small plots meant for resettlement of slum dwellers and presumably one for each family. This was so lucrative that he runs a dozen luxury cars with customized number plates. When the story broke officials at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi ( MCD ) tried to burn more than 2500 files to get rid of evidence. Will anybody be punished for this scam? Unlikely. With so many employees it will prove well nigh impossible to pin any blame and after some time the story will disappear. The best course of action will be to sack all employees of MCD and New Delhi Municipal Corporation ( NDMC ) and privatise services with strict penalties for any deficiency. Of course, it will be heartless to allow so many crooks and their families to starve so I suggest that all employees should be paid their full salaries not to come to work and when each retires he or she be paid pension as per service rules. This can be done easily through local banks. This may sound daft but I am betting that by getting rid of all the crooks in one fell swoop we, the taxpayers can get excellent service and actually save money. At the same time the bleeding hearts will have no cause to rent their hair. Will this happen? Will politicians give up such fantastic sources of plunder? Hilarious.

One day of heavy rain and our capital city Delhi came to a halt. Waterlogging and broken roads led to massive traffic jams leading to extreme discomfort for the peaple. This is the same story every year because the municipality does not clean the drains after promising to do so. Unlike other cities Delhi has no shortage of agencies. There is the NDMC which is the municipal corporation for central Delhi where all the ' VVIPs ' ( sic ) live. The MCD looks after us, the aam aadmi, of outer Delhi. Then there is the State Government complete with an Assembly and a Chief Minister and, of course, the Central Government. So many agencies, so many people to feed. Where is the time or money to give any service to the citizens. Delhi is one of the most hostile places on earth. Upto 46 celsius in summer and down to 5 celsius in winter. In winter constant fog and a biting wind make it unbearable. March and November are nice but then out come legions of mosquitoes with malaria, dengue, chikangunia and other unknown viruses. But even worse than all the microbes are the people of Delhi. Liars, cheats, with teeth bared like rabid dogs they are the worst I have seen anywhere. They will stoop to any gutter for profit and then will show off their black money. No wonder every invader from Tuglak, Moguls to the British have found this the best place to establish their capitals. The present politicians are no different from the marauders of the past. Wonderful it is not.