A long break..

The blogging break was not intentional. AT&T cut our internet by mistake last Thursday.

We have had no phone or internet at home for the last 7 days. We finally got it back tonight.

San went insane as she dealt with AT&T customer service, that too on a no school for kids week. That ruled out any option for us working from home even for a few hours.

Incidentally our phone is a Vonage phone (VoIP phone) and no internet means, no phone.

My cell phone as 0 bars or keeps dropping calls (it is an iPhone with AT&T!!!).

The only working phone was San's cell which is fortunately not on AT&T.

San has spent 240+ minutes of her cell plan to be with AT&T customer service in the last 7 days, most of it listening to elevator music as she was handed over from one incompetent service rep to another.

They asked her to call back after 7PM on one day.. only for us to realize their office closes at 7PM. So much for customer service!

Lessons from this..

a. even though you do not need a land line, if you live in an area where cell signals are flaky, pay that 12 bucks a month and keep that land line alive or move to an area with a good cell signal

b. never take the internet for granted! it affects your life more than you know it....

There are smart folks who work at AT&T who know what is going on.. but getting to them is luck of the draw. 8/10 reps fail you miserably.

That is really sad.

.

Wikileaks

Got a FB comment from a friend who is sad that Wikileaks did not screen its release and put lives at risk..

started responding to that on FB and realized it was longer than a blog post!

so here is my response..

===

politicians lie, we go to war.. there goes our social security, kids education, tax dollars..all to support wars that make these guys rich. the people whose lives are actually lost, who is responsible for it? the same folks whose names are on the wikileaks.

seriously if our press had done this type of research there would have been no Iraq war. only an Afganistan war which had probably a chance of

a. getting osama
b. getting rid of taliban
c. social reform, womens rights in afganistan.

would have had a lot less lives lost, money lost.

the people who are shutting down wikileaks are not trying to do it because it risks lives. they are doing it because it might create a public reaction to stop the wars already there and prevent more wars..

less wars means less money for these folks.

:(

Wikileaks is releasing everything, sensational or not. it looks like there is no screening. if you let the press screen it, nothing will come out because they are all paid by the government.

you really think FOX news is going to release any of this info even if they had their hands on it?

there are people with money and power who abuse the folks without either. the only thing you and I can do is vote. we cannot even avoid paying taxes!

we can write.. we can put our thoughts out..mine seem to be consistent..

/2005/09/peace-in-action.html

/2006/10/time-to-make-difference.html

/2007/05/history.html

/2007/07/freedom-is-relative.html

/2007/08/friendship.html

/2007/10/divide-and-conquer.html

/2008/05/news.html

/2008/11/aaalum-velum-palluku-urudhi.html

/2008/11/caution.html

/2009/03/what-does-one-say.html

/2010/09/where-is-gwb.html

read all those old posts and looks like over 5 years

a. I am definitely for the Iraq war to end
b. don't trust the press to do its job
c. don't trust politicians to put people who elected them above themselves.

=======

damn.. that was a blog post!

It will be truly sad if lives were indeed lost because of the leaks. Still have to thank them for bringing more information to the common folk about the people who make decisions for them and how they make those decisions. Who knows, it might stop the wars?!

.

India, Pakistan, Iraq, USA, gooooo Wikileaks! *

Finally got to a mirror site to read some Wikileaks. For some reason the links would not work on the sites or Firefox would scare me. Tonight the stars aligned and this site let me in..

This was nice reading. Was hoping to have a laugh at what came out of Delhi but found this one from Islamabad and it was interesting..

These two paragraphs really made it interesting..

Pakistan/India
--------------
¶8. (C) Petraeus said the most important threat to Pakistan was on the western border and internally. Terrorists were an existential threat to Pakistan. Kayani agreed. However, Kayani observed that he had postponed a missile test. The Indians, he said, in contrast, had conducted one just a few hours before. Kayani said he had no intention to resume missile testing as long as the current tensions persisted. He promised to be transparent with allies about his plans and had briefed us about his move of 6000 troops to the Indian border. Kayani said he was determined to exercise restraint in his actions with India. He recounted that he had taken no
ISLAMABAD 00000155 003 OF 003
action the evening that Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had supposedly called President Zardari and threatened to declare war. Kayani asked to be alerted if the U.S. had any warning of another attack - he understood that the Indians had been warned about the Mumbai attack. He mentioned that discussion of the consequences of a follow-on attack made both India and Pakistan hostage to extremists and increased the likelihood of an attack. “If there is any clue about another attack,” he said, “please share it with us.”

and

Swat Valley
-----------
¶5. (C) Kayani was clear that the GOP had lost control of the Swat valley. He said the police had no ability to come in after the army to “hold” territory. He recounted that half of the 600 police officers, supposedly from the NWFP’s elite police units, destined for Swat had deserted, largely because there was no command structure. Petraeus replied that the U.S. had confronted this same issue in Iraq, describing it as a “clear and leave” strategy, requiring the retaking of the same ground multiple times. Petraeus observed that the police are the most vulnerable, since they are exposed in communities. Petraeus noted that increased measures to control population movements would probably have to be put in place throughout the country, which would require considerable manpower.

Pakistan has similar issues like Iraq when it comes to controlling extremists.

The military leadership is patient enough to not go for war. That is great. Maybe, maybe there will be a lasting peace when India and Pakistan jointly fight extremists.

The USA for its part is playing both sides. Well, that is to be expected!

India could have hastily gone to war and would be in the same boat as the USA. Thankfully there was no war. Looks like India was warned by the US about the attacks and the Pakistanis could not do anything about it either.

Just go through this stuff.. you might even find out who in India was warned about the attacks and what they did when they were warned!

This is one treasure trove of information which shows you that inspite of all that press and google and facebook being ubiquitous and in our face.. the hows and whys are always wrong!

Educated folks react to information thrown at them by the "in your face" media. We assume so many things, sway to popular opinion or in cases where we think we are better than the person who gets their news from facebook friends because we read and read a lot.. well, we read garbage!

If the press did what Wikileaks exposed on a daily basis, a lot of war, bloodshed would have been averted! A lot of politicians would have been exposed and their true colors come to light. People, countries might be more civil towards each other...

Well, maybe..

Go read it!

*.. this one is equally interesting..