Mr. Zimmerman - The times they are indeed chnagin!

A long hiatus – guess over a month now. And a lot seems to have changed in this while.
MJ is gone. So is Robert McNamara. Both equally controversial in life - yet one allowed instant RIP while the other still stays locked in the damp confines of an expensive coffin.

Iran boiled over the re-election of Ahmedinijad and for a while it looked like we were back in the cold war days of funding unrest in the Middle East. The Iron hand of the supreme council and overt support of Para-legal militia seemed to have clinched the deal this time for the president but I guess it won’t be long before this resurfaces its ugly head again. Public opinion can be suppressed for a while, moulded for a little longer but can’t be ignored forever. In this fast paced world of everything-over-internet- protocol you can’t hold a gun on someone’s head or pay him a pittance to do something as difficult as to keep quiet. Illustrations abound – China’s still battling unrest, Greece boils now and then over minor issues & Russia tries to curtail the international influence of Chechens (and Georgia of course). And it’s a tough battle for them all. Little over month ago – on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen – I witnessed the utter farce of two umbrella wielding Chinese plainclothes policemen attempted to block the view of the BBC camera – in a desperate bid to downplay the commemoration of the sacrifice of human life to win a right of free speech.

When you’re walking on thin and dangerous ice; you can knock and walk-in for citizen’s advice – so said MK from a world at the other end of the ideological spectrum.

Britain stunned the world by releasing an ailing Abdel Megrahi - suffering from terminal cancer - and letting him go home in Libya to die an honorable death. Megrahi was (controversially) convicted by a Scottish court of the bombing of the PanAm aircraft Clipper Maid that crashed over Lockerbie in southern Scotland in Dec 1988.

Here in India the ghost of partition came haunting and a senior right wing leader was a casualty. The leading party in opposition reprimands one of its senior leaders for having spoken his version of the truth - This in the land of free speech and the largest democracy in the world. In the other land of the free an iconic singer, songwriter, poet, philosopher and a noble nominee was required to make a hotel manager vouch for him – all for not carrying his ID card. A scared United States has started disbelieving its own faculties and senses as it hurtles into an era of dwindling dominance as a global superpower. And to top this all, while all KYC & AML norms were introduced to ensure funds don’t reach terrorist organizations a bunch of Wall street executives rode on re-financing risky mortgages to inflate the credit book of the country to such an absurd level that the realty bubble burst on the face of a failing American economy.

Money - get back! Am all right jack keep your hands of my stack. And so said Roger Waters.