Musings of a modern guy

The world over, different countries have different concepts revolving around homosexuality. There are states in the United States that have made marriage between homosexuals as having the same legal sanctity as that between a man and a woman, there are other states where this is a matter of huge debate and controversy (with the Catholic and Protestant churches being against it), countries in parts of Europe are liberal while those where the Church has a stronger influence are less likely, and there are the Islamic countries where the concept is abhorrent - forget marriage between homosexuals, even the concept of a relationship was unacceptable (for example, in Iraq, insurgents would target homosexuals for murder).
What about the thought of homosexuality in a country such as India, which has a long history, and where there is a lot of debate even among historians about whether homosexuality was prevalent in the past. India, till today, had a law called Section 377, that made homosexuality a crime (even among consenting adults). This law meant that even among groups with a higher risk pattern for AIDS (such as gays), it was difficult to really follow anti-AIDS programs since a number of people would hide their homosexuality, or not be open about it.

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Most people now recognize the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to be a mistake, given that it had negative consequences in a variety of different areas (we’ll talk about that later). The invasion led to Iraq becoming a magnet for Islamic fighters from all over, unleashed the sectarian divisions that had been brutally suppressed by Saddam Hussein, led to horrific casualties among the population in the fighting that followed, and scared the neighboring countries (other than Iran), since it led to a Sunni ruled state becoming a Shia ruled state. It also put the United States in a position which was deemed comparable to Vietnam in the sense that mere military might did not lead to a winning position, and dealt huge blows to the armed forces of the US (to both the regular army and to the National Guard).
The issue about getting the army back from Iraq played a major role in the last Presidential campaign, and there is a lot of pressure on Obama to bring back the military; with majority public support being to bring back the army. For many years, it was unclear as to what the timeline for this would be ! However, in the last year or so, the US finally managed to get the right alliances (including with the Sunni minority, elements of which would have been fighting the American forces just a few months back). It was only this reduction of violence, along with fledging steps taken by the Iraqi army and police force (another self-created problem - the initial US head of the Provisional Authority had dissolved the Iraqi army as a contaminated Baathist organization without making any contingency plans). The situation in Iraq now, although not as secure as the US would have liked to see in an ideal world, is enough that the US is able to do the major symbolic action of withdrawing its forces from 6 major Iraqi cities (link to article):

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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been fighting a battle against people indulging in music-sharing across the internet. For the past many years, the music industry has seen a reduction in the number of music sales through the physical medium (CD’s, DVD’s, etc.) and this reduction is being blamed on the amount of file swapping that happens (file swapping gained prominence with Napster, and when the RIAA shut down Napster through a court case, other, more difficult to control file sharing methods such as P2P and torrents have gained prominence).
The music industry and the RIAA have been fighting against these, although fighting against a much widely dispersed enemy in the form of torrent sites and servers is more difficult. The music industry also started attacking the actual users, getting their details from ISP’s, and then serving them notices with huge amounts of damages. The RIAA also had some hugely embarrassing mistakes, suffering from targeting people such as single mothers, children, and so on, all of which were huge Public Relations disasters. In some cases, they have successes, with people settling with the RIAA out of court. However, in another case, they have won huge damages (link to articles):

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Scientists know that fishing stocks the world over are at risk, both from changes due to global warming, and due to over-fishing (and there have been many reports and articles predicting dire forecasts for the health of the fishing stock in the world’s oceans). However, in a more detailed and back-looking approach, researchers are studying historical records to see what fish stocks were like just hundreds of years ago, and try to use that data to correlate into estimates of what the future will hold. They are getting hold of historical tax records and logs maintained by sailors, and studying them to determine the long-term impact.
The research was carried out by Members of the History of Marine Animals Project (HMAP), and they came out with results detailing the change in fish species over the past few hundred years that shocked them, and about which they believe that the level of public awareness is low (link to article):

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So, the bitterly contested election results of the Indian Lok Sabha (Parliamentary elections) are out, and it is the incumbent party, the Congress Party that is the decisive winner. During the course of the campaign and even during the month long multi-stage voting process, it seemed that there was a tight fight between the Congress and the BJP led camps. It was also projected that there would be an incredible fight for support from the smaller parties all over the country. This prospect saw these parties salivating over the prospect, and over the demands they would make from the major parties for this support.
So there was a constant tussle about whether existing partners are viable or not, and some parties made gambles. The Biju Janta Dal gambled that it would come back to power without the support of the BJP, the Congress gambled that it would need to build long-term in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (and in Bihar, it did not have much of a choice, since Lalu gave the party only 3 seats). The Congress gambled about going with the DMK even though Jayalalitha seemed to be the one riding the victory wagon. However, as the election result day came closer, nervousness gripped the Congress and it talked about changing partners, soliciting the support of the Left, looking to Nitish and Jayalalitha for support, and even trying to get closer to the Samajwadi Party.

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Climate change, and the efforts needed to counter it, are among some of the hottest topics in the last 1-2 decades; it is also easy to see that the effort to discuss the needs for combating climate change is more than actual work being done to reduce emissions (climate change needs quick action and some aggressive goals of reducing emissions, and they are nowhere near happening). Nations get into political arguments when discussions start; the main major polluter (the United States) refuses to take action because of the feared effect on its economy, Europe looks to somebody for taking the lead on this, and the fast developing nations such as China, India, Brazil, etc who are still current low contributors but will have a much higher impact on emissions going forward want to get funding from the rich before taking action.
And in the middle of all this, the world keeps getting hotter, and the changes that are being made due to the global warming phenomenon keeps on working to its own cycle. Global warming is supposed to affect poor nations much more than it will affect the richer nations (and it will affect nations that are more sea based much more than nations that are bigger land masses) since some of the changes being caused due to global warming are higher sea levels and changes in weather patterns that affect crop cycles. Another way in which global warming directly affects the world food economy is due to the impact on fishing, and a study points out that the rich fishing waters near Southeast Asia will get severely impacted (link to article):

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