Circle of Life?

Just came across this news of the 3 condemned assassins of the late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi again moving the Madras High Court for commuting their death sentence. A death sentence which was originally handed over by the special court, upheld by the Madras High Court and then upheld by the Supreme Court. And again the clemency petition was rejected by the President of India in August 2011.

TNN | Aug 29, 2011, 04.40PM IST, CHENNAI: The three convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case have moved the Madras high court challenging the rejection of their clemency pleas by President Pratibha Patil.

Now I figure they are moving the HC against the rejection of the clemency petition. I am no judicial expert and I don't need to be one to understand that it's some utter sham that is going on in here. So, what would they do if the HC again rejects the plea, move the Supreme Court again? And then a new President against the judgement of the earlier President. And I am sure they'd hope another 20 years to pass in this loop. That's one heel of a Circle of Life - a vicious Circle.

From the day of the assassination in 1991 till this day, 20 years have passed. Are we waiting for the killers to die a natural death instead of being punished for what they deserved? They were being punished for what the law of the nation deemed as rarest of the rare case and awarded them the death sentence. And there are some of these political scumbags who cannot rise above their regional interests, who are aiding and abetting this case to drag on forever.


My main peeve is against this setting up a precedence where every convict on death row keeps on utilising the loopholes in the system and drags on their cases for years. Tomorrow Afzal Guru might do the same if and when the honorable President rejects the clemency petition. I am sure there are well wishers for him too in our political class. And then I shudder to think about when Ajmal Kasab takes the cue.


The honorable Madras HC should once and for all end this here. Or some other authority should end this. This is all the more necessary for the people of India to have faith in their judiciary.


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Edit: The execution of the 3 convicts has been put on hold for a couple of months by the Madras High Court. There was a discussion about the topic in one of the Social Networking sites that I frequent. Please follow the link below if you'd like to listen in. It's a Google Plus link to my Public post on the matter.


https://plus.google.com/108587007911875191407/posts/A81spCbipyC

The Lokpal Bill discourse today

And note that I say only the Lokpal Bill instead of prefixing it with Jan or Government or Aruna Roy's or for that matter any other name by which it is called. For, in the end it's just a matter of semantics. Eventually, the end result would/should be the creation of an Institution of Lokpal and Lokayukta in the Center and in the States to properly handle allegations of graft against public servants.


I was resigning for the day and just sat down to pen a few thoughts on the ongoing impasse created by Anna Hazare's fast for a strong anti-corruption law and it's continuance into the 12th day with both parties (Team Anna and the Govt. of India) staying put on their stands. Well, it'd be more apt to state that the current situation was not Anna's creation but the creation of the powers that be who over the decades surely and conveniently chose to look the other way when it came to addressing people's grievances vis-à-vis corruption.


Anyway, much have been said about this movement led by Anna and his 2nd fast for the same issue since April 2011. I just finished listening to a couple of hours of discourse in the two Houses of the Parliament today - the Members of Parliament keen to reach a meaningful resolution so that Anna could be requested to end his fast. And I feel good about some of the opinions being expressed on the contentious issues. Isn't this what was needed - a discussion to start with, on the key points of contention? And I am hoping that by the time I wake up tomorrow, Anna Hazare should have enough reasons to call off his fast, on the 12th day. Hats off to his resolve.


And then I think about those occasional voices of discord that I have been hearing these few days on the agitation - about ends not justifying the means, about a new draconian law, about rise of another Hitler (seriously?), about corruption in the very body that is meant to check it, about blind followers, to name a few.


Agree there about people's right to have opinions and then I hope people would also respect my right to have strong opinions too.


My very own thoughts about the means is that the Government has been too thick-skinned to act on it's own people in power who have looted the State exchequer off the taxpayers' money. If not for this stubbornness being shown by Team Anna and his Supporters, expect the government to still be sitting on any future reports that it gets from the CAG or the CVC. I'll have to check the newspapers again, but I heard that, if not for the honorable Supreme Court, Raja and Kalmadi would still have been screwing the nation even after being named in the CAG reports.


Rise of another Hitler? Scary! Corruption in the proposed institution. Well, some give valid arguments, while some probably just had dreams about the law becoming draconian. And that is a discussion has to be done on the provisions of the Lokpal Bill by our representatives. Team Anna does not say that the Parliamentary process should be bypassed to pass the JLB; it demands a sane discourse on the Bill. And then it's not any Tom, Dick and Harry that has come up with the JLB overnight - people who are respected by one and all for their integrity have given serious thoughts on relevant clauses in the Bill. For this very argument that I kept hearing, I went through the relevant section of the Bill and found that necessary checks and balances have been kept to ensure fair election of the ombudsman as well as transparency in the process of removal, should any allegation arise against the ombudsman.


Oh, and the quintessential argument that everybody likes to throw out there - the crowd is subverting Democracy, the crowd is that of blind followers. The crowd, they say is not aware of what are the provisions of the Bill. Fair enough. There are well read persons who do know to a large extent what the fight is all about. And quite a large number of the followers do not know about the nitty-gritty of the Bill. But, they do know that they are supporting the fight against corruption. Isn't that enough? Some are meant to lead and some to follow. And in Anna they have found a leader. And the leaders of the Movement, slowly but surely, are putting their best foot forward in teaching people about their rights and about what rights they are fighting for. Who says that a billion plus Indians should all be aware of the Constitution of India. For that matter, as well read as I may be, I just know that the Constitution of India guarantees me 6 Fundamental Rights. And another new addition (fundamental or otherwise) is the Right to Information. And I know that the Preamble to the Constitution of India starts with "We, the People of India".


In anticipation for a better tomorrow.


-M

Installing Firefox on RPM based Linux distributions

So, I have been using Firefox for quite some time now. In fact from Nov 2004 when v 1.0 was released. There is much written about its awesomeness in many places on the web. And then I have been using Mandriva Linux from about the same time now, usually in a dual boot env with Windows.

Now whenever an update for Firefox is released, I get my Windows FF updated in a jiffy. But with Mandriva it's a different story. Both being different products with different Development and QA cycles, it takes quite some time for the official FF update to be available in Mandriva.

Of course I can always download the latest version straight from the Firefox site and use it. Installation, I thought was tricky, but now it seems easy-peasy, knowing where to put the stuffs.

Currently I am running Mageia, a forked out distro of Mandriva, while I am waiting for the 2011 Mandriva to be released. Mageia, like Mandriva uses urpmi for installing and updating RPM packages.

So, once we have the latest FF downloaded for our distro usually from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/fx/, just this is what needs to be done once we browse to the path where the firefox*.tar.bz2 file was downloaded -

[mrigs@pragjyotish Downloads]$ su
Password:
[root@pragjyotish Downloads]# tar -xvjf firefox-6.0.tar.bz2 -C /usr/lib

tar as we know is the Tape ARchiver command in Linux

And the options:
x - extract
v - verbose output (lists all files as they are extracted)
j - deals with bzipped file
f - read from a file, rather than a tape device
C - extracts to a directory path

So, these sequence of commands would extract the contents of the firefox-6.0.tar.bz2 archive and place it in the /usr/lib path in the firefox directory. The contents are usually overwritten and the folder usually retains it's permissions (755 / drwxr-xr-x). The related symlink (/usr/bin/firefox) to which all shortcuts point to, does not need any modifications.

I am using this in Mageia but the same can also be used in Mandriva and I'd assume other RPM based distros will also have the same directory structure making the aforementioned sequence of commands effective.

Happy browsing.