VOICES FROM THE INTERNET Babri Mosque In its 1000-page report, former Madras High Court Chief Justice M.S. Liberhan, who conducted the inquiry into the demolition of the Babri Masjid (built in 16th century) on December 6, 1992 – has indicted AB Vajpayee, LK Advani along with other 68 leaders of Sangh Parivaar and the BJP. Dr. SQR Ilyas has claimed that the former prime minister of India, PV Narasimha Rao is equally responsible for the demolition of Babri Masjid along with the Hindu extremists indicted by the Liberhan Commission. Maulana Abdul Rahim Quraishi, speaking on behalf of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, demanded that criminal cases must be brought against all the conspirators of the tragedy. Ram Puniyani in his article, titled Ram And Rahim As Good Neighbors wrote: “We recall that the mosque built by Mir Baqui around five centuries ago, has been deliberately dragged into the controversy. At the time of independence (August 15, 1947) it was a mosque, no political party had claimed anything to the contrary. As per the understanding in the Constitution, the status of 1947 was to be maintained in cases of places of worship. The installation of Ram Lalla idols by deceit in midnight of January 22, 1949, sowed the seeds of controversy. Later in 1975 the dispute between two local groups was taken up by Vishwa Hindu Parishad and in 1989, the BJP decided to make a political issue out of it. The tragic demolition and making of makeshift Ram temple there have added new dimensions to the issue.” – rehmat1.wordpress.com Blackwater During an interview with Riz Khan on December 21st Jeremy Scahill reported that the Obama administration has surpassed the Bush era's privatization of war, having nearly doubled the number of security contractors in Afghanistan over the past several months. Amongst the contracting firms who remain in Afghanistan is Blackwater (now operating under the name XE) – a firm that Scahill describes as “one of the most powerful private actors in the so called War on Terror.” In a series of reports for The Nation in November and December of 2009, Scahill revealed that “members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives” both inside and outside of Pakistan. Despite public indictments, Blackwater continues to work for the State Department without oversight. In yesterday's interview with Riz Khan, Scahill refers to the group of private contracting firms working for the administration as a “parallel CIA.” – pulsemedia.org Tech support Whenever I go home to visit my parents, I always assume a handful of new roles — I become the after-dinner dishwasher, the family chauffeur, and appropriately, my parents' personal tech support. As I go home for the holidays this week, I'll likely be asked to help fix the webcam that “used to be there” or make the font size “so I can see it again.” I'll also perform a few regular maintenance tasks that my parents don't even know to ask about, such as running a virus scan, uninstalling unused applications and upgrading their software to the latest versions. I know this phenomenon isn't unique to just my family. If you're unofficial tech support for family this holiday season like I am, one of the things you'll want to consider is checking that your family is using the latest version of their browser. Why? For me, an up-to-date browser makes a huge difference: not only so that my parents can get to what they need when they're on the web, quickly and easily — whether they're writing email, viewing photo albums online, reading cross-stitching blogs or checking the weather in Chicago — but also so that I can rest assured that they'll be browsing the web more safely and securely with the latest version of the browser with security updates.
