Israel has a right to defend itself--the real meaning

 

Israel has a right to defend itself= Israel has a right to indiscriminately kill the Palestinians

 

How can a criticism of Israel be called "antisemitism" when in the current conflict both warring parties are Semitic?

Gaza November 2023: Gaza Holocaust

 

Killing innocent civilians of Gaza and making life hard for everyone living there appears to be a deliberate Israeli decision to force the Palestinians out of Gaza.  It is no longer a massacre; it is a holocaust.  And all this is being done with the US's complicity.

Photo: courtesy of BBC (Getty Images).

October 7

October 7 was a terrible day. A large group of armed men suddenly appeared from nowhere and started killing people. By the time the carnage was over, scores of people including women and little children lay dead. These innocent people did not even get a chance to ask why they were being beaten up and killed.
I told you the date but forgot to mention the year.  The year was 1849. The site of the massacre was New Mexico, USA.
But those were different times. Colonizers had a free hand to push politically unorganized, technologically backward indigenous people to a side and call them savages.  Any act of resistance from the lesser human beings was an act of terrorism and was met with full force.

October 7, 2023 was an equally grisly day.  Media reports suggest around fourteen hundred people were killed in a few hours; around two hundred were taken hostage. No civilized person can condone such acts of savagery. But people are not stopping at the condemnation of the October 7 attacks.  They are questioning the morality of pushing millions of indigenous people to Bantustans.  They are questioning the rectitude of demographic engineering of a land.  And they are questioning the legitimacy of controlling a large group of people without giving them any representation in the affairs of the government trying to control them.

How to avoid getting the IRS error code 3000 when filing a Form 990-N for your non-profit organization

 

Is the IRS error code 3000 bothering you? 

 

After talking to the IRS on the phone I have figured out how to avoid the IRS error code 3000 when filing a Form 990-N  for our non-profit organization.

To file a Form 990-N  for your non-profit organization you go to the following website

 

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/annual-electronic-filing-requirement-for-small-exempt-organizations-form-990-n-e-postcard

 

 Press the button that says submit Form 990-N. You will reach the following page.

 

Sign in with login.gov information 

 

 Sign in 

 
 Once you get the code on your phone enter the code. Then you reach here.

 

 Pressing either of the two available options on the page above you reach the problem page.
 

 

You must edit where it says edit to change to “exempt organization” as shown above.

If you don't make that change you will get the error notice.

"An ever has occurred. See below for more information. If the problem continues, please contact the IRS at 877- 829- 5500

IRS error code 3000

Error Category General error

Description The system had a general error, Please try again later. "

 

In short, the key is to change to exempt organization before you can go any further in filing a Form 990-N  for your non-profit organization. 

Rim Jhim Hall, Kabul, California

 

Look at this photo. You can clearly see the faces of these Afghan men and women leaving Kabul on a US Air Force plane after the city fell to the Taliban in 2021. You wonder about their stories and ask what happened to them and where they went. I met one of them in San Jose two days ago.

This young Afghan could speak Urdu. How come? I have met older Afghans living in Europe and the USA who are fluent in Urdu. They moved south after the Russian invasion in 1979. While staying in Pakistan for a couple of years, waiting for their asylum papers to be processed for migration to western countries, they picked up Urdu. But Masud was too young to be one of them. How did he speak Urdu so well? He told me he was born in Karachi! He explained to me where he and his family lived in Karachi: the landmarks he described--Disco Bakery, Rim Jhim Hall--made sense. He was only seven when the US forced the Taliban out of Kabul and Hamid Karzai came into power. One day, Masud's father said to the family, "Let's go back to our home country." And just like that, the family moved back to Kabul. After completing his studies, Masud found work with the US Embassy. Several years later, when Kabul fell back to the Taliban, his employment earned him a seat in the C-17 cargo plane that left Afghanistan with over 600 people.

 

Photo, courtesy of USA Today.

How long does it take to clone a Samsung SSD?

 How long does it take to clone a Samsung SSD?

Using Samsung's migration tool, it took 8 hours to clone a Samsung 4 TB SSD onto a Samsung 8 TB SSD.

Buying a stock and then regretting the decision

Buying a stock and then regretting the decision

This is a five year time capsule post.  Thursday, October 13, 2016: UN, Unilever, after being at a high of $45-$46 for several weeks came down to $43 something.  I looked at the options.  If I buy at the market price and then sell options for November 2016 I will have my cost covered till the stock drops to $37.  So Thursday night I set up the automatic purchase: if UN is at $43.40 I’ll buy 100 shares. Friday, November 14: Coming back home after walking children to school, found out that Capital 360 had made the purchase of 100 UN stocks at $43.31 each.  I quickly looked at the options and set up to sell UN at $40 on November 18, if I get $6 per stock today.  By the end of Friday, the option sale was not done.  Now I am worried.  Did I buy at the wrong time?  Is the market going down and I should have been patient?  What if I am stuck with Unilever with this high price for a long time to come?  Only time will tell.

Upper Lake Fall Festival 2022

Upper Lake Fall Festival 2022

"Music, food, beer, booth, arts and crafts vendors, raffle items"

For some reason this festival was not as well attended as the Kelseyville Pear Festival 2022 or the Lakeport Festival 2022

 

Bring me your mother’s heart

English translation of an Urdu short story about a mother’s love for her son


Bring me your mother’s heart

“I love you and you don’t even know how much I love you,” he told his lover.
“How much do you really love me?” The woman asked.
“I can do anything to see you happy,” he assured her.
“Anything?” She asked.
“Yes, anything.  Go ahead and make a wish,” he said with confidence.
“OK, then bring me your mother’s heart,” she said, articulating each word clearly.
This strange wish of his lover stunned him.

When he reached home, his mother was waiting at the door.
Mother greeted him but quickly figured out her son was not happy.
“What’s wrong, my dear?  What’s bothering you?” She asked
He did not respond, went straight to his room, and locked himself in.
Later, he ate the dinner with his mother but finished the food without uttering a single word.

Next morning when the mother found her son still lost, she held his hand and said crying, “Please tell me what’s going on?  What’s hurting you?  You are my everything.  I cannot see you unhappy. I beg you, please don’t hide anything from me.”
And he told his mother what happened.
Surprisingly, listening to his lover’s strange request, the mother did not look upset at all, On the contrary she said, “What is there to be worried about, my son?  My happiness lies in your happiness. Go ahead, Get the biggest knife you can find.  Kill me, get my heart out of my body, and present it to her.”
He shuddered, turned around, and quickly went to his room.

For the next two days he walked around like a zombie.  He would only come out of his room for the meals.  He would eat quietly, go back to his room, and lock the door from inside.  When he was awake, he would just lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling.

The third day started a little differently.  The late morning sun shining on his face woke him up.  
‘What happened?’ he asked himself. ‘Why did mother not wake me up today?’  

He got up and went to his mother’s room.  What he saw there shocked him.  His mother’s dead body was hanging from the ceiling fan. There was a note on a table by her body. The note read:

“My dearest son, you are the whole world to me and for the last three days seeing you sad has made me heartbroken beyond belief.  I am making it easy for you.  I am killing myself.  You can now take my heart out of my chest and present it to your lover.  When she will find her wish fulfilled, she will be pleased, and she will embrace you and that hug will make you joyful. I am already happy thinking about that moment.”

So, with tears rolling down his cheeks he did exactly that. He took his mother’s heart out of her dead body, put it on a plate, and ran towards his lover.  On his way to the love of his life he tripped over a rock and fell. The plate slipped out of his hand and the heart rolled out of the plate.

Then his mother’s voice came from the heart, “Are you OK, my son?”

Kelseyville Pear Festival 2022

September 24, 2022

Kelseyville Pear Festival  2022

Small towns like big festivals.  A good time for people to get together and catch up with the latest news.