Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Lesa parakudhu manasu manasu
Lyrics of song from vennila kabadi kuzhu!!! Sweet song!
kaadhal pirakkindra paruvam paruvam
mounam purigindra tharunam tharunam
kangal kalakkindra nimidam nimidam
kaalgal thodargindra nadanam nadanam
Laesaa parakkudhu manasu manasu
eadho nadakkudhu vayasu
laesaa nazhuvudhu kolusu kolusu
engey vizhundhadhu theriyala!!!
Sundeli valaiyila nellappoal
nel payarukkooda saerkkura
allippoo kulaththula kallaippol unthan
kanvizhi thaakkiyae suththi suththi ninnaen
Rojappoovukku mayakkam mayakkam
kanavula thenamum medhakkum medhakkum
kaadhal vanthadhum gudhikkum gudhikkum
siragaai vaazhvadhey inikkum inikkum (Laesaa)
Thaththiththaththip poagum pachchaippullappoala
poththi vachchuthaaney manasu irunthadhu
thiruviazhaa koottaththil kalaintha sanamaa
Thondaikkuzhi thaandi kaadhal varavillaienn
ennavo paesa odhadu nenaichadhu
paarvaiya paarththadhum edhamaa padharudhu
raaththirip pagalaathaan nenjula
raattinam parakkudhadi
Poottina veettulathaan pudhusaa
pattaamboochi parakkudhadaa (Rojappoo)
Laesaapparakkudhu manasu manasu
eadho nadakkudhu vayasula
Poovaa virigira ulagam ulagam
tharisaa kedandhadhu idhuvarai
Seththamaram pola seththkkedantheney
onnappaatha pinneyusuru molaichadhu
sonthamaa kidaippiyaasaamiya kaetpaen!!
Rattai jadai pottu thulli thirinseney
onnappaatha pinney vetkam purinjeney
onakkuthaan onakkuthaan boomiyil poranthen
kaavadi sumappadhu pol manasu
kaadhalum sumakkudhadaa!!!
Kanavula nee varuva adhanaal
kannu thoonguthadi!!
Monday, January 26, 2009
HE SHE - Ponnu pakra padalam
Happens when He goes to India to meet the girl chosen by his parents.
He:"Hi!!"
She: "hello!!"
Surrounded by their parents and cousins they feel embarassed.Finally someone says why dont you two speak alone for few minutes and they all leave them alone.
She: "U know this is all new to me."
He Grins.
She: "This is my first time so feeling embarassed"
He: "Actually its my first time too. But we do need to talk it out"
She: " I agree."
He: "Amma told me that u thought that I was a book worm."
She: "Actually that is how ur parents potrayed you to be, with so many books around u all the time"
He: "Reading books is just a hobby.I like music a lot too and also love to travel"
She: "Me too I love to travel.I have been to Mumbai,Darjeeling, Agra and many more places.I really want to go and see Taj mahal one more time"
He starts dreaming only to be brought back by she's words.
She: "Whats your favourite color by the way?"
He: " Red."
She: "I knew I knew!!! you know its my favourite too!!"
He: "So what else do u want to know about me?"
She:" No No! if you tell me everything rite away it wont be thrilling later on. "
He: "yeah thats true to an extent"
She:"But u know i dont know much about you so feeling little nervous and anxious"
He: says "Hey!! how come you are so lost and confused already!!" and smiles at she.
She: "I have always been like this and I dont make my decisions this quick."
He: Keeps Smiling due to loss of words and continues to admire her eyes.
She: "So u love pets right! You have a pet dog at home na?"
He: "Yes.R u comfortable with pets?"
She: "I always wanted to have one but dad doesnt like pets."
He: "I can get one pup on the day of our marriage as a gift! What do u say?"
She: Smiles and says "Do you like me?"
He: Decides to pull her legs and says " Actually I dont decide this quick either!!" and gives a quizzical look at her.
She: !!!!!!!!!
He:"Hi!!"
She: "hello!!"
Surrounded by their parents and cousins they feel embarassed.Finally someone says why dont you two speak alone for few minutes and they all leave them alone.
She: "U know this is all new to me."
He Grins.
She: "This is my first time so feeling embarassed"
He: "Actually its my first time too. But we do need to talk it out"
She: " I agree."
He: "Amma told me that u thought that I was a book worm."
She: "Actually that is how ur parents potrayed you to be, with so many books around u all the time"
He: "Reading books is just a hobby.I like music a lot too and also love to travel"
She: "Me too I love to travel.I have been to Mumbai,Darjeeling, Agra and many more places.I really want to go and see Taj mahal one more time"
He starts dreaming only to be brought back by she's words.
She: "Whats your favourite color by the way?"
He: " Red."
She: "I knew I knew!!! you know its my favourite too!!"
He: "So what else do u want to know about me?"
She:" No No! if you tell me everything rite away it wont be thrilling later on. "
He: "yeah thats true to an extent"
She:"But u know i dont know much about you so feeling little nervous and anxious"
He: says "Hey!! how come you are so lost and confused already!!" and smiles at she.
She: "I have always been like this and I dont make my decisions this quick."
He: Keeps Smiling due to loss of words and continues to admire her eyes.
She: "So u love pets right! You have a pet dog at home na?"
He: "Yes.R u comfortable with pets?"
She: "I always wanted to have one but dad doesnt like pets."
He: "I can get one pup on the day of our marriage as a gift! What do u say?"
She: Smiles and says "Do you like me?"
He: Decides to pull her legs and says " Actually I dont decide this quick either!!" and gives a quizzical look at her.
She: !!!!!!!!!
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Virunga and Charcoal trade
For all its biotic diversity, Virunga also happens to lie at the epicenter of the greatest diversity of man's inhumanity toward man in recent memory: the 1994 genocide in nearby
Rwanda—the killing of more than 800,000 Tutsi people—and two wars in Congo, in 1996-97 and 1998-2003, which left over five million people dead, more than any conflict since
World War II. Given the scale of devastation, it's a wonder Virunga National Park still exists at all. Credit goes to the ineffable determination of the park's 650 ICCN rangers.
In the past decade more than 110 park rangers have been killed in the line of duty—the majority shot not by poachers, but by militias.
After the Rwanda genocide, the perpetrators, largely Hutu fighters and Rwandan soldiers, fled west into the Congo and made alliances with the distempered Congolese army. Over
the years, these exiles reorganized themselves into the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, better known as the FDLR. By seizing and exploiting the region's rich
resources—mining gold, tin, and other minerals with forced labor and cutting old-growth forests to produce charcoal—the Hutu militias were able to rearm, indoctrinate a new
generation into their ideology of ethnic hatred, and continue to prey on Tutsi, this time in eastern Congo.
In response to the collusion between the Hutu and the Congolese army, a Congolese Tutsi general, Laurent Nkunda, formed his own rebel force, called the National Congress for the
People's Defense, or CNDP. Nkunda's soldiers, with tacit support from Rwanda, have been fighting the Hutu forces for years, transmogrifying the southern half of Virunga National
Park into a blood-pooled battlefield. The Congolese army, depending on which way the political wind is blowing and which way the money is flowing, sometimes fights with Nkunda's
forces, and at other times joins ranks with the FDLR.
All three forces have committed unspeakable atrocities upon the civilian population in the province of North Kivu.
One thing seemed certain from the moment the bodies of the gorillas were found last July: Poachers had not killed them.
What about the all these soldiers and rebel forces swarming in Virunga National Park?
Illegal Charcoal trade:
Charcoal, was discovered as the main source of energy, and evil, in North Kivu. Charcoal is used by 98 percent of the households for cooking, boiling water to make it potable,
and also for heat. In the city of Goma, a constant pall of charcoal smoke smudges out the sun and makes the rough streets, rumpled with hardened lava from the 2002 eruption of
Nyiragongo, appear to be pathways to hell.
Because of the fertile, volcanic soil, the area around the park is one of the most densely populated regions in Africa, with more than a thousand people per square mile. Neatly
hand-hoed fields of potatoes, cassavas, bananas, and beans run right up to the park boundaries. There is no buffer zone between human activity and the verdant hysteria of the
forest, just a rock wall buried beneath foliage. Charcoal, made from trees cut and reduced to carbon in makeshift mud ovens, comes from inside the park.
One 150-pound sack of hardwood charcoal lasts the average family about a month. With more than 100,000 families living within 20 miles of the southern end of Virunga National
Park, the demand amounts to 3,500 to 4,000 sacks of charcoal a day, and this does not include the needs of Rwanda, which has outlawed the production of charcoal to protect its
forests.
This much charcoal cannot be transported without a fleet of trucks. The Congolese army has the trucks, and it has suppliers in the forest: the Hutu militias. A sack of charcoal
sells for $25 on average. In 2006, when gorilla tourism brought in less than $300,000, the Virunga charcoal trade was worth more than $30 million.
It was the battle over charcoal that provoked the gorilla killings last year. It was all about one incorruptible ranger, Paulin Ngobobo. He's the real hero. He's the man that
risked his life to try and save this park.
Paulin Ngobobo is in Kinshasa; last July the wildlife agency removed him from the park for his own protection. Robert Muir, project manager for the Frankfurt Zoological
Society's Virunga National Park conservation effort arranges for him to be flown quietly into town. Several days later, in the deep of the night at an undisclosed location, I
meet Ngobobo. We sit in plastic chairs beside stygian Lake Kivu. A candle on the table flickers light on him. His visage is a chiaroscuro portrait of anguish, his eyes so
creased he appears much older than his 45 years.
When he became the sector warden in May 2006, he launched internal investigations into the illegal charcoal trade and quickly discovered that practically everyone, top to
bottom, was on the take. The Hutu militia, the Congolese army, the village chiefs, even his rangers. Upper level ICCN officials were
skimming income from gorilla tourism. In
extreme cases, they would report having 20 gorilla tourists—at $300 a person—when the real number was 200, pocketing a cool $54,000.
By rotating out a few embezzlers, Ngobobo says, he was able to restore the rangers' salaries, which were also being skimmed by their bosses, making it easier for them to resist
the paltry five dollars a month the charcoal mafia would pay them to look the other way. This gradually restored their sense of duty and pride, and he began personally leading
charcoal busts.
By the fall of 2006, Ngobobo's campaign against the charcoal poachers was beginning to gain traction. Then, out on patrol, he and seven rangers were attacked by Congolese and
FDLR soldiers. Ngobobo and his rangers hid in the forest until late into the night, then escaped.
Paulin, one man, was now going up against a system of corruption that has existed in the Congo for 50 years. Naturally, he was immediately arrested. It is very dangerous to be a
principled man in the Congo.
In the course of trying to stop the charcoal poaching, Ngobobo had come to believe that his own boss, the chief warden of Virunga National Park and the ICCN provincial director
for North Kivu, was the kingpin of the charcoal trade. He had uncovered cooked books, faked records, protection schemes, payoffs, and charcoal "taxes." Goma-based attorney
Matthieu Cingoro says the evidence showed that Mashagiro had been earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the trade.After the gorilla killings, unesco and the World
Conservation Union (IUCN) started an investigation, which, though never made public, created pressure on the ICCN to instigate its own investigation. The wildlife agency hired
Cingoro and his firm to pursue the case, and he has been working it ever since.
For the commitment Paulin had showed he had been whipped on the orders of his superior, Paulin Ngobobo says.He had immediately began an investigation into the killing and had
identified one of the six rangers he had arrested as the likely suspect. However, his investigations were prematurely terminated.
Mashagiro canceled Ngobobo's investigations. According to Ngobobo and sources within the conservation community, he also accused Ngobobo himself of killing the gorillas and
prevailed upon the North Kivu governor to have him arrested.
Ngobobo says that three attempts have been made on his life, but—with the help of four bodyguards and the support of local police and military officers—he has escaped injury so
far.
Matthieu Cingoro laid out the charges against Mashagiro in a complaint filed March 10 on behalf of the ICCN to the prosecutor general of the Court of Appeals of North Kivu
Province, in Goma. The complaint specifically alleges that Mashagiro ran an illegal charcoal network, intimidated Ngobobo and other rangers, and met with six rangers to plan the
gorilla murders in order to undermine Ngobobo's standing in the community and ultimately remove him from the park service.
Within a week of the July killings Brent's pictures of the murdered gorillas were splashed across the globe. Mashagiro was removed as provincial director of North Kivu. Ngobobo
was transferred to Kinshasa and exonerated of any wrongdoing. Two villagers were found guilty for their involvement in the gorilla murders and given eight-month sentences.
"It is difficult to know who pulled the trigger," told attorney Cingoro , "but Mashagiro orchestrated the killing of the gorillas. That is a fact."
In the past two months, Robert Muir has received a promise from General Mayala, the commander of the Congolese army in Virunga Park, that charcoal carried on military trucks
will be seized and anyone in the military caught trafficking in charcoal will be imprisoned for 15 days. Muir also persuaded UN commanders to step up joint charcoal patrols with
rangers to two to three a week.
Laurent Nkunda and his forces still control the gorilla sector of Virunga National Park. Paulin Ngobobo is waiting for a position as a park warden somewhere in the Congo. And
Honore Mashagiro—suspended by ICCN—has been arrested in Goma and is awaiting trial for the killing of Virunga's gorillas.
Excerpts taken from Wikipedia and the article by Mark Jenkins on National Geographic
Photography by Brent Stirton
Rwanda—the killing of more than 800,000 Tutsi people—and two wars in Congo, in 1996-97 and 1998-2003, which left over five million people dead, more than any conflict since
World War II. Given the scale of devastation, it's a wonder Virunga National Park still exists at all. Credit goes to the ineffable determination of the park's 650 ICCN rangers.
In the past decade more than 110 park rangers have been killed in the line of duty—the majority shot not by poachers, but by militias.
After the Rwanda genocide, the perpetrators, largely Hutu fighters and Rwandan soldiers, fled west into the Congo and made alliances with the distempered Congolese army. Over
the years, these exiles reorganized themselves into the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, better known as the FDLR. By seizing and exploiting the region's rich
resources—mining gold, tin, and other minerals with forced labor and cutting old-growth forests to produce charcoal—the Hutu militias were able to rearm, indoctrinate a new
generation into their ideology of ethnic hatred, and continue to prey on Tutsi, this time in eastern Congo.
In response to the collusion between the Hutu and the Congolese army, a Congolese Tutsi general, Laurent Nkunda, formed his own rebel force, called the National Congress for the
People's Defense, or CNDP. Nkunda's soldiers, with tacit support from Rwanda, have been fighting the Hutu forces for years, transmogrifying the southern half of Virunga National
Park into a blood-pooled battlefield. The Congolese army, depending on which way the political wind is blowing and which way the money is flowing, sometimes fights with Nkunda's
forces, and at other times joins ranks with the FDLR.
All three forces have committed unspeakable atrocities upon the civilian population in the province of North Kivu.
One thing seemed certain from the moment the bodies of the gorillas were found last July: Poachers had not killed them.
What about the all these soldiers and rebel forces swarming in Virunga National Park?
Illegal Charcoal trade:
Charcoal, was discovered as the main source of energy, and evil, in North Kivu. Charcoal is used by 98 percent of the households for cooking, boiling water to make it potable,
and also for heat. In the city of Goma, a constant pall of charcoal smoke smudges out the sun and makes the rough streets, rumpled with hardened lava from the 2002 eruption of
Nyiragongo, appear to be pathways to hell.
Because of the fertile, volcanic soil, the area around the park is one of the most densely populated regions in Africa, with more than a thousand people per square mile. Neatly
hand-hoed fields of potatoes, cassavas, bananas, and beans run right up to the park boundaries. There is no buffer zone between human activity and the verdant hysteria of the
forest, just a rock wall buried beneath foliage. Charcoal, made from trees cut and reduced to carbon in makeshift mud ovens, comes from inside the park.
One 150-pound sack of hardwood charcoal lasts the average family about a month. With more than 100,000 families living within 20 miles of the southern end of Virunga National
Park, the demand amounts to 3,500 to 4,000 sacks of charcoal a day, and this does not include the needs of Rwanda, which has outlawed the production of charcoal to protect its
forests.
This much charcoal cannot be transported without a fleet of trucks. The Congolese army has the trucks, and it has suppliers in the forest: the Hutu militias. A sack of charcoal
sells for $25 on average. In 2006, when gorilla tourism brought in less than $300,000, the Virunga charcoal trade was worth more than $30 million.
It was the battle over charcoal that provoked the gorilla killings last year. It was all about one incorruptible ranger, Paulin Ngobobo. He's the real hero. He's the man that
risked his life to try and save this park.
Paulin Ngobobo is in Kinshasa; last July the wildlife agency removed him from the park for his own protection. Robert Muir, project manager for the Frankfurt Zoological
Society's Virunga National Park conservation effort arranges for him to be flown quietly into town. Several days later, in the deep of the night at an undisclosed location, I
meet Ngobobo. We sit in plastic chairs beside stygian Lake Kivu. A candle on the table flickers light on him. His visage is a chiaroscuro portrait of anguish, his eyes so
creased he appears much older than his 45 years.
When he became the sector warden in May 2006, he launched internal investigations into the illegal charcoal trade and quickly discovered that practically everyone, top to
bottom, was on the take. The Hutu militia, the Congolese army, the village chiefs, even his rangers. Upper level ICCN officials were
skimming income from gorilla tourism. Inextreme cases, they would report having 20 gorilla tourists—at $300 a person—when the real number was 200, pocketing a cool $54,000.
By rotating out a few embezzlers, Ngobobo says, he was able to restore the rangers' salaries, which were also being skimmed by their bosses, making it easier for them to resist
the paltry five dollars a month the charcoal mafia would pay them to look the other way. This gradually restored their sense of duty and pride, and he began personally leading
charcoal busts.
By the fall of 2006, Ngobobo's campaign against the charcoal poachers was beginning to gain traction. Then, out on patrol, he and seven rangers were attacked by Congolese and
FDLR soldiers. Ngobobo and his rangers hid in the forest until late into the night, then escaped.
Paulin, one man, was now going up against a system of corruption that has existed in the Congo for 50 years. Naturally, he was immediately arrested. It is very dangerous to be a
principled man in the Congo.
In the course of trying to stop the charcoal poaching, Ngobobo had come to believe that his own boss, the chief warden of Virunga National Park and the ICCN provincial director
for North Kivu, was the kingpin of the charcoal trade. He had uncovered cooked books, faked records, protection schemes, payoffs, and charcoal "taxes." Goma-based attorney
Matthieu Cingoro says the evidence showed that Mashagiro had been earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the trade.After the gorilla killings, unesco and the World
Conservation Union (IUCN) started an investigation, which, though never made public, created pressure on the ICCN to instigate its own investigation. The wildlife agency hired
Cingoro and his firm to pursue the case, and he has been working it ever since.
For the commitment Paulin had showed he had been whipped on the orders of his superior, Paulin Ngobobo says.He had immediately began an investigation into the killing and had
identified one of the six rangers he had arrested as the likely suspect. However, his investigations were prematurely terminated.
Mashagiro canceled Ngobobo's investigations. According to Ngobobo and sources within the conservation community, he also accused Ngobobo himself of killing the gorillas and
prevailed upon the North Kivu governor to have him arrested.
Ngobobo says that three attempts have been made on his life, but—with the help of four bodyguards and the support of local police and military officers—he has escaped injury so
far.
Matthieu Cingoro laid out the charges against Mashagiro in a complaint filed March 10 on behalf of the ICCN to the prosecutor general of the Court of Appeals of North Kivu
Province, in Goma. The complaint specifically alleges that Mashagiro ran an illegal charcoal network, intimidated Ngobobo and other rangers, and met with six rangers to plan the
gorilla murders in order to undermine Ngobobo's standing in the community and ultimately remove him from the park service.
Within a week of the July killings Brent's pictures of the murdered gorillas were splashed across the globe. Mashagiro was removed as provincial director of North Kivu. Ngobobo
was transferred to Kinshasa and exonerated of any wrongdoing. Two villagers were found guilty for their involvement in the gorilla murders and given eight-month sentences.
"It is difficult to know who pulled the trigger," told attorney Cingoro , "but Mashagiro orchestrated the killing of the gorillas. That is a fact."
In the past two months, Robert Muir has received a promise from General Mayala, the commander of the Congolese army in Virunga Park, that charcoal carried on military trucks
will be seized and anyone in the military caught trafficking in charcoal will be imprisoned for 15 days. Muir also persuaded UN commanders to step up joint charcoal patrols with
rangers to two to three a week.
Laurent Nkunda and his forces still control the gorilla sector of Virunga National Park. Paulin Ngobobo is waiting for a position as a park warden somewhere in the Congo. And
Honore Mashagiro—suspended by ICCN—has been arrested in Goma and is awaiting trial for the killing of Virunga's gorillas.
Excerpts taken from Wikipedia and the article by Mark Jenkins on National Geographic
Photography by Brent Stirton
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