Thursday, August 29, 2013

Effect on World War II




A war considered to be a biggest crime against humanity and use of chemical warhead is even crueler act. The effect of WMD [Weapon of Mass Destruction] is much more severe and leaves horrific trails. Leave alone a life but a few for generations have to suffer from it. Use of CW shows the dishonorable greed of the ruler or ruling establishment. Currently Syria is in the news for such heinous act and that too on its own citizen.

Rockets with toxic agents were launched at the suburbs of the Ghouta region in Syria early on 21st August, 2013, as part of a major bombardment on rebel forces. The Syrian army says the accusations have been fabricated to cover up rebel losses. The main opposition alliance said that more than 1,700 people were killed by the attacks. Casualties are far worse than any of the previous alleged chemical attacks. The bodies bear no visible wounds from gunshots; instead, many display the classic symptoms of a nerve agent attack, with startled, frozen expressions that experts say are reminiscent of Saddam Hussein's 1988 attack on the Kurds at Halabja.


Some Chemical Weapon used during the wars.

1914: Tear gas

The earliest military uses of chemicals were tear-inducing irritants rather than fatal or disabling poisons. During the first World War, the French army was the first to employ gas, using 26 mm grenades filled with tear gas (ethyl bromoacetate) in August 1914.

1915: Large-scale use and lethal gases

The first instance of large-scale use of gas as a weapon was on 31 January 1915, when Germany fired 18,000 artillery shells containing liquid xylyl bromide tear gas on Russian positions on the Rawka River, west of Warsaw during the Battle of Bolimov. However, instead of vaporizing, the chemical froze and failed to have the desired effect.

British gas attacks

The first use of gas by the British was at the Battle of Loos, 25 September 1915, but the attempt was a disaster. Chlorine, codenamed Red Star, was the agent to be used (140 tons arrayed in 5,100 cylinders), and the attack was dependent on a favorable wind. However, on this occasion the wind proved fickle, and the gas either lingered in no man's land or, in places, blew back on the British trenches. This debacle was compounded when the gas could not be released from all the British canisters because the wrong turning keys were sent with them. Subsequent retaliatory German shelling hit some of those unused full cylinders, releasing more gas among the British troops.

The small quantities of gas delivered, were not even detected by the Germans. The stocks were rapidly consumed and by November a new order was placed by the French military. As bromine was scarce among the Entente allies, the active ingredient was changed to chloroacetone.

1915: Deadly gases

The deficiencies of chlorine were overcome with the introduction of phosgene, which was prepared by a group of French chemists led by Victor Grignard and first used by France in 1915.  Colourless and having an odor likened to "mouldy hay," phosgene was difficult to detect, making it a more effective weapon. Although phosgene was sometimes used on its own, it was more often used mixed with an equal volume of chlorine, with the chlorine helping to spread the denser phosgene.  The Allies called this combination White Star after the marking painted on shells containing the mixture.


1917: Mustard gas

The most widely reported and, perhaps, the most effective gas of the First World War was mustard gas. It was a vesicant that was introduced by Germany in July 1917 prior to the Third Battle of Ypres. The Germans marked their shells yellow for mustard gas and green for chlorine and phosgene; hence they called the new gas Yellow Cross. It was known to the British as HS (Hun Stuff), while the French called it Yperite (named after Ypres)

Although all major combatants stockpiled chemical weapons during the Second World War, the only reports of its use in the conflict were the Japanese use of relatively small amounts of mustard gas and lewisite in China, and very rare occurrences in Europe (for example some sulfur mustard bombs were dropped on Warsaw on 3 September 1939, which Germany acknowledged in 1942 but indicated had been accidental). Mustard gas was the agent of choice, with the British stockpiling 40,719 tons, the Russians 77,400 tons, the Americans over 87,000 tons and the Germans 27,597 tons. The destruction of a cargo ship containing mustard gas led to many casualties in Bari, Italy.

1990s: Persian Gulf War

Shortly after the fighting between Iraq and Coalition Forces in the Persian Gulf War ended in February 1991, reports circulated that Hussein was using chemical agents against rebellious Kurds and Shiite Muslims. The United States intercepted a message ordering the use of chemical weapons against the cities of Najaf and Karbala. U.S. President George H. W. Bush’s response was that such use of chemical weapons would result in air strikes against the Iraqi military organization using the chemicals.

Amid of economic meltdown better prepare yourself for another war.

!!!Destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent. - Elie Wiesel!!!

Thursday, August 22, 2013

World’s obsession with the Royals!




Once, India was known as country of snake charmer and also country of Raja and Maharajas. However, today India is the largest democratic country and no more Rajas and Maharajas around but there is whole lot countries exist which still practices monarchy. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Brunei etc. still ruled by the king. As citizen of the world we hardly bother about the kings and queens but British Royals not fall in these criteria. Even. the British monarchy is known as a constitutional monarchy, means that, while The Sovereign is Head of State, the ability to make and pass legislation resides with an elected Parliament.

Although the British Sovereign no longer has a political or executive role, he or she continues to play an important part in the life of the nation and whole world. In the beginning I was far from it because I found them boring and conservative bunch of people. Queen Elizabeth and her family seem nice enough but have no real accomplishments. However with emergence of princes Diana I too caught in the same web.

Princess Diana was a ray of sunshine, a breath of fresh air. She had a fairytale wedding, married her prince and moved into a castle. While she didn't live happily ever after, she touched people with her unselfishness, support for numerous worthy charities. She had a heart of gold even with her very own human flaws and vulnerabilities. Everyone in the royal family including Queen Elizabeth was amazed at the attention she brought to the royal family.

This royal fascination, or even obsession, is not a new one, and it is part of our thirst for more, more, more. So, what’s the deal with it anyway? Here are some psychological reasons

The Royal family is always in the media, every day, decade after decade. While stars sometimes fade, we follow the royal family from birth to death.

Commonwealth countries weren’t the only ones closely watching the Queen's Diamond Jubilee over the past four days. Americans are renowned for their love affair with the British Royal family. That might seem ironic, given the symbolism of aristocracy, royalty, and colonisation is in stark contrast to the American values of capitalism, democracy, and freedom.

With the wedding of Prince William and Katherine Middleton and now the birth of Prince George Alexander Louis, the monarchy has a new generation of royal watchers. Which hopefully, they will not disappoint us. By the time, Kate Middleton becomes the Queen she will be the most famous woman in the world. An estimated 2.5 billion people watched the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, many more times than the any other events.


!!!The monarchy is a labour intensive industry.- Harold Wilson !!!

Thursday, August 15, 2013

In the Firing Line!



It is no more a secret that in every step we have to pay the bribe to get our work done. Every time we shell out our hard earns money to the worthless public servant we blame the hand but not the head behind it. However, among the scores of arrogant and dishonest bureaucrats who are responsible for the state in which we are in there are a few who are ready to fight against the odds to stay clean. Whenever a brave bureaucrat tried to fight against the injustice and wrongdoing, they found themselves in the firing lines. Bulk of them decided to fall in the line but some may not and finally they shown the door.

I already written about three brave hearts before, Shanmugam Manjunath, Satyendra Dubey and Yeshwant Sonawane laid their life for different purpose. Their fault was that they acted against the mafia those are mostly backed by the politicians. Some of the honest lots are transferred many times and others are suspended. My blog is about two who ends with same fate but never gave up.

Ashok Khemka

Ashok Khemka was born in West Bengal, India. He graduated from the I. I. T, Kharagpur in 1988 and followed it up with a Ph.D in Computer Science from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.  He also holds a MBA in finance and MA in economics.

He is an IAS officer of the 1991 batch. He has been repeatedly transferred by various state governments in his home cadre of Haryana after he exposed corruption in the departments he was posted in. Dr. Khemka transferred nine times in five years during government led by Mr. Om Parkash Chautala. Ashok Khemka was transferred in October last for cancelling an allegedly irregular land deal between Robert Vadra, son-in-law of UPA chairperson  Sonia Gandhi,and DLF, was again shifted on Thursday amid a raging controversy over irregularities in the Haryana Seeds Development Corporation (HSDC) that he unearthed during his short tenure of five months as its head.

Durga Shakti Nagpal

Durga Shakti Nagpal is an IAS officer of the 2010 batch from Uttar Pradesh cadre. She came into public view after taking action against corruption and launching a massive drive against illegal sand mining within her jurisdiction of Gautam Budh Nagar. She was later suspended by the government of Uttar Pradesh for allegedly demolishing an illegal mosque wall. Her suspension resulted in a large backlash against the government's order, which was perceived to be based on flimsy grounds and there is a growing demand by internet social media, opposition political parties and IAS Officers' associations for her suspension to be revoked

Durga Shakti Nagpal belongs to Chattisgarh and has a BTech in computer engineering from Indira Gandhi Delhi Technological University for Women. She secured an All India Rank (AIR) of 20 in the Union Public Service Commission examinations in 2009. She served for over two years in Punjab as an Assistant Commissioner with the Mohali district administration

Ms. Nagpal was initially an officer in the Punjab cadre and later changed to Uttar Pradesh cadre after her marriage to Abhishek Singh, who is an IAS officer of the UP cadre. She was posted in Ghaziabad as a Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) in September 2012, and then got appointed as SDM of Gautam Budh Nagar. She came into public notice after acting against the sand mafia in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh by forming special flying squads to stop the illegal sand-mining in the Yamuna and Hindon river banks. She had ordered the arrest of 15 people and imposed a fine of Rs. 2 crore  on them. UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav suspended IAS officer and SDM Durga Shakti Nagpal on the grounds that her action to demolish a mosque wall would have led to communal tension.

A video posted online apparently showing senior Samajwadi Party leader, Narendra Bhati, boasting to a crowd that he was responsible for Ms. Nagpal’s suspension, added to outrage at what many characterize as arbitrary political action against an honest civil servant.

Mr. Bhati was shown in the video saying that after he found out about the plans to tear down the mosque wall, his phone calls to his party chief, Mulayam Singh Yadav, and Akhilesh Yadav, meant Ms. Nagpal was suspended within 41 minutes. Mr. Bhati could not immediately be reached for comment.


!!!Courage is grace under pressure. - Ernest Hemingway!!!

Friday, August 9, 2013

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - II!!



Amrish Puri 

Amrish Puri  was a leading theatre and film actor from India, who was a key player in the Indian theatre movement that picked up steam in the 1960s. He worked with notable playwrights of the time, such as Satyadev Dubey and Girish Karnad. However, he is primarily remembered for essaying iconic negative roles in Hindi cinema as well as other Indian and international film industries. To Indian audiences he is the most remembered for his role as Mogambo in Shekhar Kapur's Hindi film Mr. India  and to Western audiences he is best known as Mola Ram in Steven Spielberg's Hollywood film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

His siblings include elder brothers Chaman Puri, Madan Puri (both actors) and elder sister Chandrakanta and younger brother Harish Puri. He went on to work in Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Hollywood, Punjabi, Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil films. Though he was successful in all of these industries, he is best known for his work in Bollywood cinema. He has appeared in over four hundred films. His dominating screen presence and baritone voice made him stand out amongst the other villains of the day.

Amjad Khan

Amjad Khan was the son of legendary actor Jayant. He was the brother of fellow actor Imtiaz Khan and Inayat Khan who acted in one film. Khan was educated at St Theresa's High School, in Bandra, Mumbai. He attended R D National College, and was the general secretary – the highest elected student body representative. He worked in over 130 films in a career spanning nearly twenty years. He enjoyed popularity for his villainous roles in Hindi films, the most famous being the iconic Gabbar Singh in the 1975 classic Sholay and of Dilawar in Muqaddar Ka Sikandar.

Pran Krishan Sikand

Pran Krishan Sikand better known as Pran, was a multiple Filmfare award-winning Indian actor, known as a movie villain and character actor in Hindi cinema from the 1940s to the 1990s. He acted as a villain from 1942–1991 and played supporting and character roles from 1948–2007. In a long and prolific career he appeared in over 350 films. Pran has received numerous awards and honours in his career. He won the Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award in 1967, 1969 and 1972 and was awarded the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. He was awarded as the 'Villain of the Millennium' by Stardust in 2000. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan in 2001 and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2013 for his contributions towards Indian cinema. In 2010, he was named on the list of CNN's Top 25 Asian actors of all time.

There are a few others who made their presence felt with negative roles such as Gulshan Grover, Ranjit etc. While we think about woman in negative roles then instantly the name of Lalita Pawar keep crawling into our mind.

Lalita Pawar

Lalita Pawar was born on 18 April 1916. she started her acting career at age nine in the film, Raja Harishchandra (1928), and later went on to play lead roles in silent era and 1940's films, in a career that lasted until the end of her life, spanning seven decades. She was known particularly for playing maternal figures, especially wicked matriarchs or mothers-in-law. She also notably played the role of the strict but kind Mrs. L. D'Sa in Anari (1959) with Raj Kapoor, under Hrishikesh Mukherjee's direction, she gave the performance of a lifetime for which she received Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award and the devious hunchback Manthara in Ramanand Sagar's television series Ramayan. She was honoured by the Government of India as the first lady of Indian cinema, in 1961. She died unnoticed on 24 February 1998 in Aundh, Pune.

Apart from Lalita Pawar, there was a few like, Nadira, Shashikala and Bindu, but now there is not a single actress who can fill the slot like these actress have done.

!!!There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. - William Shakespeare!!!


Thursday, August 1, 2013

Good, Bad and the Ugly!




I am more passionate about Ravana's than the Rama. However, I am completely opposite of category of good basher and evil hugger. I was from a different era where we saw quite a few evil characters in Bollywood. Almost, all movies had a one such. Honestly, those days we were really scared of those fellas. Yet, today we hate to hate them because they were not the villain in their real life as we projected when we were kid. Current phase we hardly see a villains in the long run. They come and they fizzled before noticed. The hero's of bollywod doing overtime be it villain or a comedian, hero’s coming with a complete package. Therefore there are hardly any actors around whom we can term as villain as it was decades before. With the demise of Pran, the golden era of gentleman villains comes to an end. Here are few names who entertained us throughout the generation and made the Hero’s out of nothing.

K. N. Singh

K. N. Singh was a prominent villain of Hindi films. K. N. Singh came to acting by way of law, giving up his first career in 1937 to pursue his newfound interest in performance. More often than not, Singh found himself portraying a "gentleman" type of villain, usually costumed in a fine suit and hat, and smoking a pipe. His career spanned six decades and included over 200 films. In 2000, he died at the age of 91.

Madan Puri

Madan Lal Puri had four siblings, among elder brother Chaman Lal Puri, younger brother Amrish Lal Puri  was known to Indian audience. He was the first cousin of the legendary singer K.L. Saigal, with whose help he started to make a mark in Bollywood. Once Puri was an established star he did the same for his brother the late Amrish Puri by helping him in establishing himself in the movie world. Puri had an acting career which spanned over 40 years from the 1940s through to the mid-1980s. He appeared in more than 300 films. He was one of the greatest villains in Bollywood.

Premnath

Premnath made his film debut in Ajit  and  then he got a major roles in Raj Kapoor's first directorial film Aag and Barsaat which was his first major success. Premnath went on to appear in many films for the next three decades, some of which were the biggest blockbusters in Indian film history. He played the central villain role or supporting role were some of the biggest blockbusters in Indian film history. He died in 1992 of a heart attack at the age of sixty-six.

Ajit

Hamid Ali Khan, better known by his stage name Ajit acted in over two hundred movies in almost four decades. His first movie as a villain was Suraj and with films such as Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat, there was no looking back for him. He died in 1998 at the age of seventy-six.
Kanhaiya Lal

Kanhaiya Lal Chaturvedi staged his own written play Pandrah August in Mumbai, later he tried his luck in films. In 1940 he got a role of moneylender in a Mehboob Khan's film. After that he later acted in many films as a character artist. When Mehboob Khan was directed his immortal film Mother India he again picked Kanhaiya Lal to act as Sukkhi Lala, a character that came alive with his natural acting.


Jeevan

Jeevan, who acted as Narad Muni in mythological films of the 1950s. Later he essayed the role of a villain in many films of the 60s, 70s and 80s.  He died in 1987 at the age of 72.

!!!There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. - William Shakespeare !!!