I have some questions to ask of Anti-War Indians, the ones who were really strident in their opposition to war. A good sample of them can be found on Kiruba’s blog – the ones who held candle-light vigils on Marina Beach.

Did you honestly believe that the war would be bad for the Iraqis?
I am asking this because nothing else would even justify the “Bush=Hitler” posters and the statements that Bush is morally no different from Saddam.

Now that you’ve watched Iraqis dancing on the street, kissing Bush’s posters welcoming American troops and giving the chappal treatment to Saddam’s portraits and statues, did you expect things to turn out differently? (If so, will you acknowledge that before changing the subject? Or will the only acknowledgement will be to put “liberation” in scare quotes? )
Now that you’ve seen all this… I don’t expect you to change your views really, but anything that you say will start sounding like spin.

You can claim that your opponents are being deluded by the western media, but you too got your stories from the same media, while the Iraqis were there. Anything you say can be countered with “So do you think you know more about Iraq than those Iraqis who danced on the street?”
Remember you held up photographs of the badly injured Iraqi child and expected it to end all arguments? Now your opponents will point to the collapse of Saddam’s statue and expect all arguments to end.

A lot of things can go wrong from now on and many things will probably will. Your worst nightmares might still come true. The US may install a puppet regime. It might transpire that the war indeed was all for oil. The situation in the Middle East might really worsen.
But as stories of Saddam’s atrocities (Link requires free registration) come out, any claim by you that the invasion was a mistake will be turned back at you and your opponents will react with horror at the suggestion that a monster like Saddam should have been left in power.

This is why it is a bad idea to indulge in hyperbole.

This turned out to be longer than expected. More questions later.

And oh.. swami, this is how Victory Changes Everything.

Mandira Bedi has a dog named “Ruginder Singh Bedi”. An outrag?d Sardar has sued her, claiming that naming a dog like that demeans Sardars. I don’t see the problem. I mean, has any dog objected when Sardars nickname their kids Tony, Bunty or Bobby?

The Economist has two good articles, one on how the war will affect Arab public opinion and another on what the US needs to do to mend fences with the rest of the world. Read it before tomorrow, for tomorrow you’ll have to pay for it.

Swami Aiyar followed up his article Hypocrisy, Everybody? with an even more thought-provoking one, in which he actually defends hypocrisy. I read it in the paper version last sunday (to my shame, I subscribe to two Benett Coleman publications everyday) but I find that there is no trace of it online, neither here nor here.

Wonder what happened.

May be he should start a blog…

The basis for existing classical computers is the binary digit, or bit, which can have a value of either 0 or 1. In a quantum computer, bits are replaced by qubits which are in a superposition of states partially 0 and partially 1. It is this superposition that allows calculations to be performed in parallel. Measuring the value of a qubit causes it to collapse into one of the two classical bits, 0 or 1. In a well-organised quantum computation, that should not happen until it becomes necessary to find out what one of the values actually is.(Economist.com | Quantum computers)

I still don’t understand, but it sounds interesting

Skill for irony runs in Britons’ blood.

So it turns out that all the slogans of the anti-war movement were right after all. And their demands were just. “No War on Iraq,” they said-and there wasn’t a war on Iraq. Indeed, there was barely a “war” at all. “No Blood for Oil,” they cried, and the oil wealth of Iraq has been duly rescued from attempted sabotage with scarcely a drop spilled. Of the nine oil wells set ablaze by the few desperadoes who obeyed the order, only one is still burning and the rest have been capped and doused without casualties. “Stop the War” was the call. And the “war” is indeed stopping. That’s not such a bad record. An earlier anti-war demand-“Give the Inspectors More Time”-was also very prescient and is also about to be fulfilled in exquisite detail.
(Giving Peace a Chance Christopher?Hitchens )

Whether you agree with him or not, it is wonderful as a piece of writing. You can savour it all the more if you agree, of course.

This week’s Blog Mela is up at Sameer’s site. Do visit

Jubilant Iraqis have greeted arriving marines in the Shia stronghold of Saddam City, the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan in Baghdad reports.

United Nations offices have been ransacked and the Olympic Committee building – headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s elder son Uday – set on fire.
…
The BBC’s Paul Wood says people would not be behaving in this way unless they were sure Saddam Hussein’s grip on the city had been broken.
(BBC NEWS | Middle East | Saddam regime crumbles in Baghdad)

There were similar scenes in East Pakistan, 1971

In a remarkable achievement, JK actually finds some verifiable statements to disprove in the latest globalisation of dissent.
Godess of Small Brains

ANIMATION: Four images of V838 Mon. The different colors in the nebula reflect changes in the color of the star during its outburst. CREDIT: NASA, ESA and H.E. Bond (STScI)
(Hubble Chronicles Mysterious Outburst with ‘Eye-Popping’ Pictures

)

Praja, an NGO working on civic issues (headed by Yazad) has come out with an Online Complaint Management System Way to go Praja!

I hope that a lot more such initiatives are taken. I also wish to see BMC hive out a lot more activities to the private sector.
(When I was in Chennai, the garbage collection there was privatised. Anyone knows how it is going? In Hyderabad it is a visible success)

Doctors testified that Ice was at risk of heart failure or seizures because she was fed only ground nuts, fruit juice, herbal tea, cod liver oil and a liquid mixture of potatoes, sweet potatoes, plantains and fresh vegetables(Vegan Couple Guilty Of Neglect)

I hold no brief for the couple, who seem like nitwits to me. I have no opinion on whether the diet was adequate. I don’t even know why I clicked on the story located on the news page that google generated for me. But now I have two questions.
1) I presume cod liver oil comes from a cod’s liver? How is cod liver oil vegan?
2) Does a vegan diet mean that an infant can’t be breastfed?