Old Theatre, 1830

The man's arm reaches out over her frail shoulders and pulls her closer towards him. In a moment of warmth that sweeps over her, she cuddles in closer and whispers into his ear. Her long fingers draw patterns on his face, all the while staring into his eyes, the man she so dearly loves. He reciprocates by planting a gentle kiss on her face.
Imbeciles! How does nature produce such retards!!!! Now before you get me wrong, I wouldn't be complaining if the couple carried out their expressions of love in a park, in the tube or over the dining table. But they were engaging in their expressions of love(for over more than an hour), while Joseph Stiglitz , the renowned economist, was delivering a public speech on stage. And unluckily for me the knuckleheaded couple happened to be in my immediate line of sight.

As for the talk, it marked the launch of a book by Stiglitz, The $3 Trillion war in Iraq. In trying to make sense of the figure he said, among many other observations, 1/6th of the amount was all that was needed to secure the social security system in the USA for the next 40-50 years or $200 billion was a rough amount to make the entire human population literate. He continued to talk about the privatization of the war and how contractors were paid 10 times the salary of a soldier to accomplish similar tasks($400,000 vis-a-vis $40,000). Prof. Mary Kaldor(LSE) went on to make a comment on how the troop upsurge in Iraq had reduced the violence, which is where I was forced to intervene. I made a point on how the upsurge was only one of the factors which contributed to the reduction in violence. The other factors include:

• Moqtada's Mahdi army laying down it's arms while Moqtada heads to the seminary to become an ayatollah.
• Strategies employed to use Sunni tribal militias against Al-Qaeda
• And more disturbingly that the ethno-sectarian cleansing in Baghdad and Central Iraq is more or less complete.

Viewed in this light, the upsurge by itself could not contribute to the reduction in violence in Iraq. And more dangerously, the Bush administration is already selling this very viewpoint to the American public.

Now you tell me, when I was engaging in some intellectual questioning of the comment that Prof. Mary made and then you have this couple coochicooing right in front of you oblivious to the world. Wouldn't that drive you mad? Imbeciles!