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Kalam batted for Thorium Reactors. NaMo, announced thorium-based nuke doctrine for Hindumahasagar parivaar.
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Islamic State recruitment 32 page doc in Urdu: threat to India -- Sara A Carter, American Media Inst
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Bharat has lost its Ratna -- NaMo Oped
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PM Narendra Modi paid a glowing tribute to former President APJ Abdul Kalam in an op-ed article shared with leading dailies including Hindustan Times, Times of India and Dainik Jagran calling him his 'marg darshak' or guide who epitomised the values of self-restraint, sacrifice and compassion. हम मिलकर पूरा करेंगे कलाम का सपना : नरेंद्र मोदीनरेंद्र मोदी: एपीजे अब्दुल कलाम के रूप में भारत ने एक हीरा खो दिया है। लेकिन उस हीरे की चमक और रोशनी हमें उस मंजिल तक पहुंचाएगी, जो उस स्वप्नद्रष्टा ने देखी थी। उन्होंने ख्वाब देखा था कि भारत एक नालेज सुपरपावर (ज्ञान शक्तिपुंज) के रूप में पहली कतार के देशों में शुमार हो। हम उस लक्ष्य की ओर बढ़ेंगे। वैज्ञानिक पृष्ठभूमि से चलकर राष्ट्रपति पद तक पहुंचे कलाम सच्चे मायनों में जनता के राष्ट्रपति थे और यही कारण था कि उन्हें जनता से अथाह प्यार और सम्मान मिला और शायद उनके लिए सफलता का अर्थ भी यही था। उनकी हर कथनी-करनी में इसी की झलक मिली। गरीबी से लड़ने का उनका हथियार था ज्ञान और इसे फैलाने में उन्होंने कभी कोई कसर नहीं छोड़ा। रक्षा कार्यक्रम के वैज्ञानिक के रूप में उन्होंने क्षितिज को पार किया तो एक सच्चे संत के रूप में उन्होंने बताया कि सद्भाव का आकाश सबसे बड़ा है। यथार्थ पर टिका था उनका आदर्शवादहर बड़ी शख्सियत का जीवन एक प्रिज्म की तरह होता है। रोशनी उससे होकर गुजरती है तो हम पर सतरंगी किरणों की वर्षा होती हैै। कलाम का आदर्शवाद यथार्थ के आधार पर टिका था। सही मायनों में हर वंचित बच्चा यथार्थवादी होता है। गरीबी से भ्रम पैदा नहीं होता है। गरीबी एक ऐसी डरावनी विरासत है जिसके बोझ तले बच्चा सपना भी नहीं देख सकता है। वह उससे पहले ही परास्त हो जाता है। लेकिन कलाम जी को परिस्थितियों से हार मानना स्वीकार नहीं था। उनका बचपन भी कठिन था। अपनी पढ़ाई के लिए उन्होंने अखबार भी बेचा। आज सभी अखबार उनकी याद और श्रद्धांजलि से पटे पड़े हैैं। उन्होंने कभी खम ठोककर यह नहीं कहा कि उनका जीवन दूसरों के लिए रोल माडल है, लेकिन यह सच्चाई है कि उनसे प्रेरणा लेकर गरीबी और अंधकार से भ्रमित और ग्रसित किसी असहाय बच्चे को बाहर निकलने में मदद मिल सकती है। कलाम मेरे मार्गदर्शक हैैं। उसी तरह जैसे हर बच्चे के। चापलूसी कभी रास नहीं आईउनका आचरण, समर्पण और उनकी प्रेरणादायी सोच उनके पूरे जीवन से प्रस्फुटित होती है। अहं उन पर कभी हावी नहीं हो सका और चापलूसी कभी रास नहीं आई। हाई प्रोफाइल मंत्री हों या उच्च सामाजिक वर्ग के श्रोता या फिर युवा छात्र, उन पर इसका कभी कोई फर्क नहीं दिखा। वह हर किसी के लिए एक समान थे। उनके व्यक्तित्व में अदभुत बात थी- वह था एक छोटे बच्चे की ईमानदारी, युवा होते एक बच्चे का उत्साह और एक वयस्क की परिपक्वता का मिश्रण। यह हर क्षण उनके व्यक्तित्व में झलकता था। संसार से उन्होंने जो कुछ लिया वह पूरा समाज पर लुटा दिया। गहरी आस्था रखने वाले कलाम हमारी सभ्यता के तीनों गुण - दम(आत्म नियंत्रण), दान और दया से भरपूर थे। व्यक्तित्व में थी प्रयत्नशीलता की आगलेकिन इस व्यक्तित्व में प्रयत्नशीलता की आग थी। राष्ट्र के लिए उनकी दृष्टि का निर्माण स्वतंत्रता, विकास और शक्ति के तीन स्तंभों पर हुआ था। हमारे इतिहास में स्वतंत्रता का मतलब राजनीतिक स्वतंत्रता से है। परंतु इसमें वैचारिक व बौद्धिक स्वतंत्रता भी शामिल है। वह भारत को विकासशील देश से विकसित राष्ट्र के रूप में परिवर्तित होते और समवेत आर्थिक विकास के जरिये गरीबी को समाप्त करना चाहते थे। चाहते थे 70 फीसद समय विकास में लगाएं नेताइसीलिए उन्होंने कहा था कि नेताओं को केवल 30 फीसद समय राजनीति में और 70 फीसद विकास में लगाना चाहिए। वह अक्सर सांसदों को बुलाकर उनके साथ उनके क्षेत्र की सामाजिक-आर्थिक समस्याओं पर चर्चा किया करते रहते थे। उनके मुताबिक, राष्ट्र की शक्ति का तीसरा स्तंभ यानी क्षमता केवल आक्रामकता से नहीं, बल्कि समझ विकसित करने से मजबूत होता है। एक असुरक्षित राष्ट्र शायद ही कभी समृद्धि के रास्ते पर जा सकता है। शक्ति से सम्मान प्राप्त होता है। हमारी नाभिकीय एवं अंतरिक्ष संबंधी उपलब्धियों में उनके योगदान ने ही भारत के अंदर विश्व में उचित स्थान पाने की शक्ति व भरोसा पैदा किया है। पेड़ों में कविता देखते थे कलामहम ऐसी सर्वश्रेष्ठ संस्थाएं खड़ी कर उनकी याद को सम्मान दे सकते हैं जो विज्ञान एवं तकनीक को बढ़ावा देती हों और प्रकृति की आश्चर्यजनक शक्ति के साथ तादात्म्य स्थापित करने में हमारी मदद करें। अक्सर हम लालच के वशीभूत होकर प्रकृति का शोषण करने लगते हैं। लेकिन कलाम जी को पेड़ों में कविता, जबकि पानी, हवा और सूरज में ऊर्जा दिखाई देती थी। हमें अपनी दुनिया को उनकी आंखों और उन्हीं के जैसे उत्साह से देखने का अभ्यास करना होगा। वह हर भारतीय बच्चे के थे पितामनुष्य अपने जीवन को अपनी इच्छा, संकल्प, क्षमता और साहस के अनुसार संचालित कर सकता है। परंतु उसे अपने जन्म का स्थान और मृत्यु का समय तय करने का अधिकार नहीं मिला है। परंतु यदि कलाम जी को यह अधिकार मिलता तो अवश्य ही वह कक्षा में अपने प्रिय छात्रों को पढ़ाते हुए संसार से रुखसत होना पसंद करते। यदि कोई कहता है कि अविवाहित होने के नाते उनके कोई संतान नहीं थी, तो यह सही नहीं होगा। वस्तुत: वह प्रत्येक भारतीय बच्चे के पिता थे। जिन्हें वह न केवल पढ़ाते और मनाते थे, बल्कि उनका जोश बढ़ाते थे और अपनी दृष्टि की आभा और स्नेह से उनके भीतर से अज्ञान के अंधेरे को दूर करते थे। उन्होंने खुद भविष्य को देखा और दूसरों को रास्ता दिखाया। प्रेरणा देगा उनका व्यक्तित्वमैैंने जब उस कमरे में प्रवेश किया, जहां उनका पार्थिव शरीर रखा गया था तो मेरी नजर द्वार के पास लटकी एक पेंटिंग पर पड़ी। उस पर कलाम की किताब इग्नाइटेड माइंड्स की कुछ प्रेरणादायी पंक्तियां लिखी थीं। उनका काम उनके साथ समाप्त नहीं होगा। यह अनंत के लिए है। उनकी प्रेरणा बच्चों के जीवन और काम को दिशा दिखाएगी और फिर आगे उनके बच्चों के लिए भी मार्गदर्शक बनेगी। http://www.jagran.com/news/national-pm-modis-promise-for-apj-abdul-kalam-12663697.html | |
Bharat has lost its Ratna
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Your Honour, send 'em to this school. They will at least learn to feel shame -- GC Shekhar and Tapan Ghosh
| Wednesday , July 29 , 2015 |
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150729/jsp/frontpage/story_34266.jsp#.Vbhf0fOqqko
Your Honour, send 'em to this school. They will at least learn to feel shame | |
| G.C. Shekhar in Rameswaram and Tapas Ghosh in Calcutta | |
 A class in progress on Tuesday at Schwartz School, where APJ Abdul Kalam was a student 65 years ago, in Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu. School officials said Kalam had studied in the same classroom. Pictures by GC Shekhar .jpg) Schwartz School pays tribute to Kalam, its alumnus, by placing his photograph on a table near his classroom All classes were held today in Schwartz School - although its most famous alumnus and a former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, had died yesterday. Calcutta is 2,000km from Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu, where Kalam's school is located. One version of the Agni missile, a project with which Kalam had been associated, can cover the distance in less than 20 minutes. Forget working an extra day. Many lawyers of Calcutta High Court did not work at all today, although it has nothing to do with the passing of the former President. Nearly 8,000 lawyers abstained from work following the death of a former acting chief justice, Samir Kumar Mukherjee, ignoring Chief Justice Manjula Chellur's repeated advice to the contrary. At a general body meeting at 10.30am today, the Bar Association, the largest lawyers' body of the court, decided not to attend court. The association's decision was communicated to the chief justice and other judges around 10.45am, 15 minutes after the judges had taken their seats.  Manjula Chellur But the association members stuck to their decision and proceedings were not conducted. Around an hour after receiving the resolution, the judges left the courtroom and went to their respective chambers and stayed there till the end of working hours. Since assuming the office of chief justice, Justice Chellur has been repeatedly requesting the lawyers to allow her to comply with the Supreme Court's directive to hold court for at least 210 days in a year. Calcutta High Court clocks between 185 and 195 days. On July 13, Justice Chellur had told advocates that she had received calls from some judges of the Supreme Court and Bombay High Court recently, wondering if there was a practice of not attending courts because of the death of a lawyer. Besides adding to the pile-up of cases, such abstentions leave clients high and dry. "I asked my clients from Hooghly to be present in the court as their cases were fixed for hearing today. After reaching here today, they came to know that their cases would not be heard. This is not done," advocate Rabishankar Chatterjee said. The Bar Association secretary, Rana Mukherjee, did not take calls from this newspaper while other association leaders declined to comment. In case the lawyers of Calcutta want to acclimatise themselves with an alternative way of paying tribute to departed souls, they can make a trip to Ramanathapuram, around 60km from Rameswaram (from where Lord Ram is said to have built the bridge to Ravan's Lanka) and 600km from Chennai. At Schwartz, one of the oldest schools in Asia and where Kalam had studied from 1946-50, tributes were paid by placing a black and white photograph on a table with a few candles in front of the classroom where the former President had studied. Since Kalam had dissuaded the school from naming the oldest block after him, officials had put up a small plaque on the corridor that reads: "President Abdul Kalam studied here." The school has changed little from the days when Kalam completed his term - the same old tiled roof and the wooden reapers are still around. "Some pieces of the furniture are also the same from Kalam's days," said vice-principal Raja Suviseshapandian. Won't it be a distraction if hordes of lawyers from Calcutta descend on the school? It will be but the gentle folks of Ramanathapuram have got used to such intrusions. "Every tourist bus that goes to Rameswaram halts at our gates as the driver informs the pilgrims that this is the school where Kalam had studied. Often the occupants would stop the bus, alight and make a tour of the school without any inhibition that they might be disturbing classes. Soon we got used to these intrusions, realising it is difficult to fight the Kalam effect," Suviseshapandian said. Calcutta lawyers need not worry. They will not find themselves entirely out of place in the southern state. Kindred spirits in the Tamil Nadu government have declared a holiday on Thursday, the day Kalam's last rites are scheduled to be held in Rameswaram. So, in spite of Kalam's wish, Schwartz School is unlikely to be able to teach the lawyers any lesson that day. |
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Waiting to honour a great aatman. A picture which tells a thousand words about Bharatiya samskriti. NaMo, announce National Water Grid Authority as a tribute to Kalam.
Last Updated: 29th July 2015 02:05 PM
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http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/Thousands-Swarm-for-Last-Glimpse-of-Missile-Man/2015/07/29/article2946887.ece
RAMESWARAM: A sea of humanity, especially school and college students, have thronged to catch a last glimpse of former President A P J Abdul Kalam before his last rites tomorrow.
The body of the 'missile man' is expected to arrive here this afternoon and his remains will be buried at Pakarambu near Mandapam, about 12 km from here.
Recalling his humble beginnings and his rise to the country's highest office of President, many among the crowd remembered how he had inspired them to dream big and strive to achieve it.
"The positive attitude of former president Kalam and his words of encouragement after a setback in my college studies spurred me to have a positive outlook in life and pursue higher studies," said Deepak, who now works for an IT firm in Chennai.
People also recalled his efforts in bringing broad gauge train services upto Rameswaram, his work for afforestation and for providing solar power to remote areas.
Others remembered how he had advised them to pursue science in school and college and do their bit for the scientific development of the nation.
The former president will be given a state funeral with full military honours.
State Minister O Panneerselvam inspected the funeral arrangements are being made. He is part of a team of seven ministers deputed by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to represent her and the state government at the funeral.
Jayalalithaa had said she would not attend the last rites owing to her health condition.
Kalam had collapsed during a lecture at the IIM, Shillong and died of cardiac arrest on July 27.http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/Thousands-Swarm-for-Last-Glimpse-of-Missile-Man/2015/07/29/article2946887.ece
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Graveyard shift of SC. Now, on a tweet, SC should meet... What fence guarding what field !!!
| Thursday , July 30 , 2015 |
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150730/jsp/frontpage/story_34459.jsp#.VbmA-vOqqko
Death knell sounds- Yakub fate hinges on SC graveyard shift | |
| Our Bureau | |
 Yakub Memon The midnight oil boiled hours after President Pranab Mukherjee, on the advice of the Centre, rejected a last-ditch mercy petition by Yakub. By then, the Supreme Court had dismissed Yakub’s earlier petition against a warrant that fixed his execution at 7am on his 53rd birthday tomorrow in Nagpur. At night, Yakub’s lawyers rushed to Chief Justice H.L. Dattu’s home with a plea to request the President not to take in haste a decision on the mercy petition filed during the day. Yakub’s lawyers then filed a petition with the chief justice, pleading for a 14-day stay on the execution. Around midnight, the chief justice sent the petition — through Supreme Court registry officials who were called to his house — to the residence of Justice Dipak Misra, who headed the three-judge bench that had rejected Yakub’s petition during the day. Justice Misra is expected to consult the two other fellow-judges on the bench, Justices P.C. Pant and Amitava Roy, and take a decision. Sources said the judges would start discussing the matter around 3.00am. Lawyers and the attorney general reached the court around 2.30am. Rajnath, carrying the government recommendation rejecting the plea, was at Rashtrapati Bhavan from 8.20pm to 10.45pm. An official claimed that the long discussion was intended to convey a message that the mercy plea was thoroughly examined before rejecting it. “This (the rejection) was the opinion of the government,” the official said, adding that solicitor-general Ranjit Kumar was privy to the discussions. Soon after the Supreme Court dismissed Yakub’s petition against the death warrant (issued by the court where the case originated to set in motion the process of execution), Maharashtra governor Vidyasagar Rao rejected his mercy plea. The mercy plea filed with the President was the second one related to Yakub but the first directly attributed to the convict. The earlier one, which had already been rejected, had been filed by Yakub’s brother. Today, the President forwarded the new petition to the home ministry. After consultations with law secretary P.K. Malhotra and home secretary L.C. Goyal, Rajnath went to Rashtrapati Bhavan to convey the government’s opinion. As the discussions continued into the night at Rashtrapati Bhavan, small groups of protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar Road, 2km away. The protesters included students, lawyers and activists. Mihira Sood, assistant professor of law at Jindal Global Law School, said: “The circumstances have changed since the President rejected Memon’s plea last year, as B. Raman’s letter shows that Memon had come to cooperate with the investigators.” A website last week released a 2007 article by RAW official Raman, who coordinated Yakub’s arrest in 1994, saying the prosecution had failed to highlight mitigating circumstances in its eagerness to secure the death penalty. Raman has since died. The Bombay blasts had killed 257 people on March 12, 1993. “We welcome the verdict as we were waiting for it for the last 22 years. We feel secure because of the government and we are now hopeful that the main conspirators — Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon — will also be brought to book,” said Tushar Deshmukh, who lost his mother in the blasts. After a five-hour hearing, the three-judge bench headed by Justice Misra dismissed Yakub’s writ petition challenging the death warrant issued by the special Tada court on April 30. Yakub’s lawyers had contended that the death warrant was illegal and unconstitutional as it was issued when his curative petition was pending before the apex court. A new dimension was added yesterday by one of the Supreme Court judges, Justice Kurian Joseph, who felt that the curative bench which had dismissed Yakub’s plea was improperly constituted. Rejecting both contentions, the bench today said Yakub had exhausted all his legal remedies like appeal, two review petitions and mercy petition before the President. As such, he cannot complain that the death warrant was issued in haste by the Tada court, the bench concluded. The bench also overruled the dissenting view of Justice Kurian Joseph that the curative bench was improperly constituted. There was no infirmity in the composition of the curative bench headed by the Chief Justice of India and two senior-most judges, the bench said. The bench said the principles laid down by the apex court in May this year in the Shabnam vs State of UP case that execution can be carried out only after exhausting all remedies had been fully complied with in this case. |
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Balance of power in Middle East just changed -- Peter Van Buren
The Balance of Power in the Middle East Just Changed
| by Peter Van Buren | on 30 Jul 2015 |
US-Iranian Relations Emerge from a 30-Year Cold War: Don’t sweat the details of the July nuclear accord between the United States and Iran. What matters is that the calculus of power in the Middle East just changed in significant ways.
Washington and Tehran announced their nuclear agreement on July 14th and yes, some of the details are still classified. Of course the Obama administration negotiated alongside China, Russia, Great Britain, France, and Germany, which means Iran and five other governments must approve the detailed 159-page “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.” The UN, which also had to sign off on the deal, has already agreed to measures to end its sanctions against Iran.
If we’re not all yet insta-experts on centrifuges and enrichment ratios, the media will ensure that in the next two months - during which Congress will debate and weigh approving the agreement - we’ll become so. Verification strategies will be debated. The Israelis will claim that the apocalypse is nigh. And everyone who is anyone will swear to the skies that the devil is in the details. On Sunday talk shows, war hawks will fuss endlessly about the nightmare to come, as well as the weak-kneedness of the president and his “delusional” secretary of state, John Kerry. (No one of note, however, will ask why the president’s past decisions to launch or continue wars in the Middle East were not greeted with at least the same sort of skepticism as his present efforts to forestall one.)
There are two crucial points to take away from all the angry chatter to come: first, none of this matters and second, the devil is not in the details, though he may indeed appear on those Sunday talk shows.
Here’s what actually matters most: at a crucial moment and without a shot being fired, the United States and Iran have come to a turning point away from an era of outright hostility. The nuclear accord binds the two nations to years of engagement and leaves the door open to a far fuller relationship. Understanding how significant that is requires a look backward.
A very quick history of US-Iranian relations
The short version: relations have been terrible for almost four decades. A slightly longer version would, however, begin in 1953 when the CIA helped orchestrate a coup to oust Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. A secular leader - just the sort of guy US officials have dreamed about ever since the ayatollahs took power in 1979 - Mosaddegh sought to nationalize Iran’s oil industry. That, at the time, was a total no-no for Washington and London. Hence, he had to go.
In his place, Washington installed a puppet leader worthy of the sleaziest of banana republics, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The US assisted him in maintaining a particularly grim secret police force, the Savak, which he aimed directly at his political opponents, democratic and otherwise, including the ones who espoused a brand of Islamic fundamentalism unfamiliar to the West at the time. Washington lapped up the Shah’s oil and, in return, sold him the modern weapons he fetishized. Through the 1970s, the US also supplied nuclear fuel and reactor technology to Iran to build on President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative, which had kicked off Iran’s nuclear program in 1957.
In 1979, following months of demonstrations and seeing his fate in the streets of Tehran, the Shah fled. Religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to take control of the nation in what became known as the Islamic Revolution. Iranian “students” channeled decades of anti-American rage over the Shah and his secret police into a takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran. In an event that few Americans of a certain age are likely to forget, 52 American staffers were held hostage there for some 15 months.
In retaliation, the US would, among other things, assist Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein (remember him?) in his war with Iran in the 1980s, and in 1988, an American guided missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf would shoot down a civilian Iran Air flight, killing all 290 people on board. (Washington claimed it was an accident.) In 2003, when Iran reached out to Washington, following American military successes in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush declared that country part of the “Axis of Evil.”
Iran later funded, trained, and helped lead a Shiite insurgency against the United States in Iraq. In tit-for-tat fashion, US forces raided an Iranian diplomatic office there and arrested several staffers. As Washington slowly withdrew its military from that country, Iran increased its support for pro-Tehran leaders in Baghdad. When Iran’s nuclear program grew, the US attacked its computers with malware, launching what was in effect the first cyber war in history. At the same time, Washington imposed economic sanctions on the country and its crucial energy production sector.
In short, for the last 36 years, the US-Iranian relationship has been hostile, antagonistic, unproductive, and often just plain mean. Neither country seems to have benefited, even as both remained committed to the fight.
Iran Ascendant
Despite the best efforts of the United States, Iran is now the co-dominant power in the Middle East. And rising. (Washington remains the other half of that “co.”)
Another quick plunge into largely forgotten history: the US stumbled into the post-9/11 era with two invasions that neatly eliminated Iran’s key enemies on its eastern and western borders - Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. (The former is, of course, gone for good; the latter is doing better these days, though unlikely to threaten Iran for some time.) As those wars bled on without the promised victories, America’s military weariness sapped the desire in the Bush administration for military strikes against Iran.
Jump almost a decade ahead and Washington now quietly supports at least some of that country’s military efforts in Iraq against the insurgent Islamic State. The Obama administration is seemingly at least half-resigned to looking the other way while Tehran ensures that it will have a puppet regime in Baghdad. In its serially failing strategies in Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria, Washington has all but begged the Iranians to assume a leading role in those places. They have.
And that only scratches the surface of the new Iranian ascendancy in the region. Despite the damage done by US-led economic sanctions, Iran’s real strength lies at home. It is probably the most stable Muslim nation in the Middle East. It has existed more or less within its current borders for thousands of years. It is almost completely ethnically, religiously, culturally, and linguistically homogeneous, with its minorities comparatively under control. While still governed in large part by its clerics, the country has nonetheless experienced a series of increasingly democratic electoral transitions since the 1979 revolution. Most significantly, unlike nearly every other nation in the Middle East, Iran’s leaders do not rule in fear of an Islamic revolution. They already had one.
Why Iran Won’t Have Nuclear Weapons
Now, about those nukes. It would take a blind man in the dark not to notice one obvious fact about the Greater Middle East: regimes the US opposes tend to find themselves blasted into chaos once they lose their nuclear programs. The Israelis destroyed Saddam’s program, as they did Syria’s, from the air. Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya went down the drain thanks to American /NATO-inspired regime change after he voluntarily gave up his nuclear ambitions.
At the same time, no one in Tehran could miss how North Korea’s membership in the regime-change club wasn’t renewed once that country went nuclear. Consider those pretty good reasons for Iran to develop a robust nuclear weapons program - and not give it up entirely.
While, since 2002, Washington hasn’t taken a day off in its saber-rattling toward Iran, it isn’t the only country the clerics fear. They are quite convinced that Israel, with its unacknowledged but all too real nuclear arsenal, is capable and might someday be willing to deliver a strike via missile, aircraft, or submarine.
Now, here’s the added irony: American sabers and Israeli nukes also explain why Iran will always remain a nuclear threshold state - one that holds most or all of the technology and materials needed to make such a weapon, but chooses not to take the final steps. Just exactly how close a country is at any given moment to having a working nuclear weapon is called “breakout time.” If Iran were to get too close, with too short a breakout time, or actually went nuclear, a devastating attack by Israel and/or the United States would be a near inevitability. Iran is not a third world society. Its urban areas and infrastructure are exactly the kinds of things bombing campaigns are designed to blow away. So call Iran’s nuclear program a game of chicken, but one in which all the players involved always knew who would blink first.
The US-Iran Nuclear Accord
So if Iran was never going to be a true nuclear power and if the world has lived with Iran as a threshold state for some time now, does the July accord matter?
There are two answers to that question: it doesn’t and it does.
It doesn’t really matter because the deal changes so little on the ground. If the provisions of the accord are implemented as best we currently understand them, with no cheating, then Iran will slowly move from its current two- to three-month breakout time to a year or more. Iran doesn’t have nukes now, it would not have nukes if there were no accord, and it won’t have nukes with the accord. In other words, the Vienna agreement successfully eliminated weapons of mass destruction that never existed.
It does really matter because, for the first time in decades, the two major powers in the Middle East have opened the door to relations. Without the political cover of the accord, the White House could never envisage taking a second step forward.
It’s a breakthrough because through it the US and Iran acknowledge shared interests for the first time, even as they recognize their ongoing conflicts in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. That’s how adversaries work together: you don’t have to make deals like the July accord with your friends. Indeed, President Obama’s description of how the deal will be implemented - based on verification, not trust - represents a precise choice of words. The reference is to President Ronald Reagan, who used the phrase “trust but verify” in 1987 when signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with the Russians.
The agreement was reached the old-school way, by sitting down at a table over many months and negotiating. Diplomats consulted experts. Men and women in suits, not in uniform, did most of the talking. The process, perhaps unfamiliar to a post-9/11 generation raised on the machismo of “you’re either with us or against us,” is called compromise. It’s an essential part of a skill that is increasingly unfamiliar to Americans: diplomacy. The goal is not to defeat an enemy, find quick fixes, solve every bilateral issue, or even gain the release of the four Americans held in Iran. The goal is to achieve a mutually agreeable resolution to a specific problem. Such deft statecraft demonstrates the sort of foreign policy dexterity American voters have seldom seen exercised since Barack Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize (Cuba being the sole exception).
It’s All About the Money
While diplomacy brought the United States and Iran to this point, cash is what will expand and sustain the relationship.
Iran, with the fourth-largest proven crude oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves on the planet, is ready to start selling on world markets as soon as sanctions lift. Its young people reportedly yearn for greater engagement with the West. The lifting of sanctions will allow Iranian businesses access to global capital and outside businesses access to starved Iranian commercial markets.
Since November 2014, the Chinese, for example, have already doubled their investment in Iran. European companies, including Shell and Peugeot, are now holding talks with Iranian officials. Apple is contacting Iranian distributors. Germany sent a trade delegation to Tehran. Ads for European cars and luxury goods are starting to reappear in the Iranian capital. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of foreign technology and expertise will need to be acquired if the country is to update its frayed oil and natural gas infrastructure. Many of its airliners are decades old and need replacement. Airlines in Dubai are fast adding new Iran routes to meet growing demand. The money will flow. After that, it will be very hard for the war hawks in Washington, Tel Aviv, or Riyadh to put the toothpaste back in the tube, which is why you hear such screaming and grinding of teeth now.
The real fears of the Israelis and the Saudis
Neither Israel nor the Saudis ever really expected to trade missile volleys with a nuclear-armed Iran, nor do their other primary objections to the accord hold much water. Critics have said the deal will only last 10 years. (The key provisions scale in over 10 years, then taper off.) Leaving aside that a decade is a lifetime in politics, this line of thinking also presumes that, as the calendar rolls over to 10 years and a day, Iran will bolt from the deal and go rogue. It’s a curious argument to make.
Similarly, any talk of the accord touching off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is long out of date. Israel has long had the bomb, with no arms race triggered. Latent fears that Iran will create “the Islamic Bomb” ignore the fact that Pakistan, with own hands dirty from abetting terror and plenty of Islamic extremists on hand, has been a nuclear power since at least 1998.
No, what fundamentally worries the Israelis and the Saudis is that Iran will rejoin the community of nations as a diplomatic and trading partner of the United States, Asia, and Europe. Embarking on a diplomatic offensive in the wake of its nuclear deal, Iranian officials assured fellow Muslim countries in the region that they hoped the accord would pave the way for greater cooperation. American policy in the Persian Gulf, once reliably focused only on its own security and energy needs, may (finally) start to line up with an increasingly multifaceted Eurasian reality. A powerful Iran is indeed a threat to the status quo - hence the upset in Tel Aviv and Riyadh - just not a military one. Real power in the twenty-first century, short of total war, rests with money.
The July accord acknowledges the real-world power map of the Middle East. It does not make Iran and the United States friends. It does, however, open the door for the two biggest regional players to talk to each other and develop the kinds of financial and trade ties that will make conflict more impractical. After more than three decades of US-Iranian hostility in the world’s most volatile region, that is no small accomplishment.
Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. ATomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hooper’s War.
Copyright 2015 Peter Van Buren
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Gurdaspur Terror Attack: GPS reveals Pakistani connection. NaMo, Paki should pay a price.
Gurdaspur attack: Terrorists came from Pak via Ravi river, Rajanth says
Three civilians and four security personnel were killed on Monday in a terror attack in Gurdaspur.
NEW DELHI: Union home minister Rajnath Singh said on Thursday that terrorists who attacked Gurdaspur came from Pakistan via Ravi river.
Making a statement on Gurdaspur terror attack in the Rajya Sabha, Rajnath Singh said "any terror activity from across the border will be defeated."
"The government is committed to give a befitting reply to those who try to undermine India's security," the home minister said amid uproar by opposition.
READ ALSO: Gurdaspur terrorists planned to attack more places
Why it took 11 hours to kill three terrorists
Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day because of uproar created by slogan-shouting Congress members.
Three civilians and four security personnel, including a superintendent of police, were killed early Monday when three heavily-armed terrorists, said to be from Pakistan, went on a killing spree here, shattering two decades of calm in Punjab and sparking an 11-hour gun battle that left all three attackers dead. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Gurdaspur-attack-Terrorists-came-from-Pak-via-Ravi-river-Rajanth-says/articleshow/48280415.cms?prtpage=1
Making a statement on Gurdaspur terror attack in the Rajya Sabha, Rajnath Singh said "any terror activity from across the border will be defeated."
"The government is committed to give a befitting reply to those who try to undermine India's security," the home minister said amid uproar by opposition.
READ ALSO: Gurdaspur terrorists planned to attack more places
Why it took 11 hours to kill three terrorists
Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day because of uproar created by slogan-shouting Congress members.
Three civilians and four security personnel, including a superintendent of police, were killed early Monday when three heavily-armed terrorists, said to be from Pakistan, went on a killing spree here, shattering two decades of calm in Punjab and sparking an 11-hour gun battle that left all three attackers dead. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Gurdaspur-attack-Terrorists-came-from-Pak-via-Ravi-river-Rajanth-says/articleshow/48280415.cms?prtpage=1
Surprised at Gurdaspur KPS Gill
[You don’t prepare for terrorism after it has happened. And you don’t just learn from your own experience.]
There is great excitement in the media over two aspects of the Dinanagar terrorist strike: One,that hard evidence in the form of GPS coordinates proves the terrorists came from Pakistan, and that they were in possession of night vision devices with US government markings; two, that the NSA-level talks are going to proceed as scheduled, but “terrorism” is going to be on top of the Indian agenda for discussions.
These are far from the many and urgent issues that are raised by this attack. An investigation is ongoing, and it will certainly uncover significant evidence over time that will point overwhelmingly to Pakistan as the source of this attack. There should be little doubt that this doesn’t matter in the least.
Pakistan has engaged in terrorist proxy war against India for more than 30 years; the cumulative evidence of this is overwhelming and has been shared with Pakistan and the world; none of this has had any impact. India will have to learn to effectively defend itself.
As far as “talks” are concerned, this is an ongoing charade that will lead nowhere. Great hope is being invested in the NSA talks — but what results have the recent discussions between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif produced? There have been talks and the disruption of talks for decades.
There are other issues that are far more important.
The most significant of these is the degree of visible unpreparedness in a sensitive border district like Gurdaspur, in a state that has itself experienced over 13 years of the most virulent terrorism, and that adjoins another state that is still the target of a 26-year-old Pakistan-backed proxy war.
Even the Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) team was not wearing rudimentary protection at Dinanagar.
Unless a crisis is immediately at hand, institutions are simply pushed into degeneration and decay, robbed of resources, deeply politicised, or just allowed to deteriorate through sheer neglect.
It is useful to recall that Punjab Police had been forged, in the late-1980s and early 1990s, into an efficient and fully equipped counter-terrorism (CT) force,with each thana provided adequate capacities — protection, transport, weapons and the limited technological tools then available— to respond to any challenge within its jurisdiction.
Clearly, these systems have crumbled and, were it not for the courage of those who fought terrorism at its peak and who still serve in the police, the state’s capacity for response would now have been virtually non-existent.
Indeed, even in crisis, security forces face an uphill battle in securing the most basic resources and capacities.
The civilian bureaucracy has been one of the most obstructive entities in this regard, and I recall, during the peak of terrorism in Punjab, I was in constant and abrasive confrontation with the secretariat in Chandigarh and New Delhi.
Confronted by continuous ambushes and attacks, we repeatedly asked for bulletproof vehicles, but received no response.
So we went ahead and improvised. Some old and condemned Ambassadors were recovered and bulletproofed, and were found to be extremely successful.
Later, audit objections were raised against our efforts. We were bulletproofing vehicles for less than Rs 2 lakh, but were subsequently forced to buy them for over Rs 6 lakh.
This is the genius of the bureaucracy.
Significantly, at Dinanagar, the police had to borrow bulletproof vehicles from the army to approach the building under siege.
Again, when the Khalistanis got the AK-47 from Pakistan, Punjab Police was stuck with antiquated .303 bolt-action rifles. When we asked for comparable firepower, there was uniform opposition from the bureaucracy.
One joint secretary in the Union home ministry wrote that no such weapon should be given to a “civil force”.
There was a misconception that such weapons could be used to quell protests, without realising that not every policeman was going to be issued an AK rifle.
What is not realised is that you don’t prepare for terrorism after it has happened. You must be prepared at all times. And you don’t just learn from your own experience.
States across India have been attacked by Islamist terrorists. Yet, each state is caught by surprise and pleads that the “Centre had not provided intelligence” or “resources”.
As if state governments have no responsibility. And when the Centre asks for any dilution of the constitutional allocation of “law and order” to the jurisdiction of the states, there are (rightly) shrill protestations from all chief ministers.
The entire Punjab border with Pakistan was fenced during the terrorism years. Heavy patrolling and constant vigilance reduced direct infiltration to an easily manageable trickle.
But today, while the fence still stands, there is increasing laxity in surveillance and oversight.
Deep political patronage has sought to facilitate drug trafficking and smuggling of other contraband, and this has resulted in the regular movement of materials and men across this sensitive frontier, substantially with the collusion of some police and paramilitary personnel.
The Centre must also share at least some of the blame.
Punjab has been downgraded in terms of support for expenditure on security, and the Central scheme for police modernisation has also been scrapped by the Modi regime.
This is despite the fact that the IB is constantly issuing warnings that Punjab is a “sensitive state”.
Dinanagar is just a sign of threats to come.
The regional and global environment is deeply troubling,and Punjab is a frontline state. It is crucial that the CT capacities of Punjab Police be restored. All police stations along the international border, in particular, need to be strengthened.
Crucially, the issue of morale also needs to be addressed. No attention is paid to the fact that dozens of police officers and men who fought terrorism at its peak continue to languish in jails, and many others are still facing interminable and mischievous prosecution.
There are proliferating threats of a global Islamist terrorism today. It is high time that concerned citizens, the media and elements in the political constituency made a concerted effort to bring substantive issues of CT policy, strategy and tactics to the fore,instead of wasting efforts on high-decibel nothings.
The writer, former DGP, Punjab, is president, Institute for Conflict Management, and publisher, ‘South Asia Intelligence Review’
Punjab terror attack: GPS data shows two routes of slain terrorists from Pakistan
The GPS sets recovered from terrorists who attacked Gurdaspur show two routes that they could have taken.
NEW DELHI: Analysis of data from two GPS sets recovered from the Punjab attackers has actually thrown up two routes that the terrorists were supposed to take to reach Dinanagar in Gurdaspur. While both originate from Pakistan, they indicate different points of entry into India through the Punjab border. Both the routes, however, merge a few kilometres before Dinanagar.
Border Security Force (BSF), National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and other intelligence agencies are now saddled with the difficult task of ascertaining which route the terrorists actually took to reach Dinanagar.
Sources said the two GPS sets were fed with two different routes on July 21 at Sargodha near Faisalabad. One of the GPS sets shows a route originating from Mastgarh in Pakistan's Gujrat near Jammu border and then crossing the Jammu-Punjab-Pakistan tri-junction to enter Pathankot after crossing a rivulet merging into Ravi river. It then moves southwards to Dinanagar.
Another route shows Malowal in Pakistan's Gujrat as the starting point and then shows Dorangla, 170 km south of Malowal, in India's Punjab. The next marked place is the same as the first GPS set. Going by this route, agencies believe that entry could have been made through Narowal in Pakistan. Here too the terrorists are suspected to have crossed a tributary of Ravi to enter India.
Curiously, the two entry points mentioned in the two sets are 40 km apart. It is important to ascertain the gap exploited by the terrorists so that a pattern of infiltration is established and the gaps plugged accordingly.
This is the first time that functional GPS sets have been recovered from slain terrorists in recent history and thus confirm breach on the Punjab border. In 2013, a similar GPS set was recovered from terrorists who allegedly crossed the Jammu border and launched an attack in Samba. This set, however, was damaged by a bullet and data could not be retrieved. BSF, which manned the Jammu border, had then denied that infiltration had taken place through the Jammu border.
BSF DG DK Pathak on Wednesday camped in Punjab surveying the Indo-Pak border to assess its vulnerability to infiltration as also to find out where the terrorists may have sneaked in from. BSF sources, however, said even after a thorough inspection of the border based on GPS coordinates, there were no tell-tale signs of infiltration anywhere along Ravi.
Agencies are now scanning call intercepts and satellite imagery to reach a conclusion on the route the three terrorists may have actually taken to reach Dinanagar.
Border Security Force (BSF), National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and other intelligence agencies are now saddled with the difficult task of ascertaining which route the terrorists actually took to reach Dinanagar.
Sources said the two GPS sets were fed with two different routes on July 21 at Sargodha near Faisalabad. One of the GPS sets shows a route originating from Mastgarh in Pakistan's Gujrat near Jammu border and then crossing the Jammu-Punjab-Pakistan tri-junction to enter Pathankot after crossing a rivulet merging into Ravi river. It then moves southwards to Dinanagar.
Another route shows Malowal in Pakistan's Gujrat as the starting point and then shows Dorangla, 170 km south of Malowal, in India's Punjab. The next marked place is the same as the first GPS set. Going by this route, agencies believe that entry could have been made through Narowal in Pakistan. Here too the terrorists are suspected to have crossed a tributary of Ravi to enter India.
Curiously, the two entry points mentioned in the two sets are 40 km apart. It is important to ascertain the gap exploited by the terrorists so that a pattern of infiltration is established and the gaps plugged accordingly.
This is the first time that functional GPS sets have been recovered from slain terrorists in recent history and thus confirm breach on the Punjab border. In 2013, a similar GPS set was recovered from terrorists who allegedly crossed the Jammu border and launched an attack in Samba. This set, however, was damaged by a bullet and data could not be retrieved. BSF, which manned the Jammu border, had then denied that infiltration had taken place through the Jammu border.
BSF DG DK Pathak on Wednesday camped in Punjab surveying the Indo-Pak border to assess its vulnerability to infiltration as also to find out where the terrorists may have sneaked in from. BSF sources, however, said even after a thorough inspection of the border based on GPS coordinates, there were no tell-tale signs of infiltration anywhere along Ravi.
Agencies are now scanning call intercepts and satellite imagery to reach a conclusion on the route the three terrorists may have actually taken to reach Dinanagar.
Gurdaspur attack: GPS reveals terrorists entered from Punjab border
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDEI_n34ic8 Published on Jul 28, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VWzgoeNSU Published on Jul 28, 2015 James Jenkins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1VWzgoeNSU Published on Jul 28, 2015 James Jenkins
The examination of the sets indicated that the terrorists infiltrated into Indian territory from Pakistan at some time during the night of July 21 or the early morning of July 22.
The examination of the sets indicated that the terrorists infiltrated into Indian territory from Pakistan at some time during the night of July 21 or the early morning of July 22.
The examination of the sets indicated that the terrorists infiltrated into Indian territory from Pakistan at some time during the night of July 21 or the early morning of July 22.
Gurdaspur attack: GPS signals traced to Pakistan village
Gurdaspur attack: GPS signals traced to Pakistan village
Gurdaspur attack: GPS signals traced to Pakistan village
The examination of the sets indicated that the terrorists infiltrated into Indian territory from Pakistan at some time during the night of July 21 or the early morning of July 22.
The examination of the sets indicated that the terrorists infiltrated into Indian territory from Pakistan at some time during the night of July 21 or the early morning of July 22.
Gurdaspur attack: GPS signals traced to Pakistan village
Gurdaspur attack: GPS signals traced to Pakistan village
Gurdaspur attack: GPS signals traced to Pakistan village
Latest development in Gurdaspur terror attack inertial investigation reveals that the terrorist are linked to Pakistan as track of the GPS sets revealed that they entered India from Shakargarh area in Pakistan along the India-Pakistan border on Sunday. The terrorists were killed by Punjab Police in 11 hours long gun battle on Monday.
गुरदासपुर, पंजाब में हुए आतंकी हमले में एक बार फिर से पाकिस्तान का हाथ होने के सुबूत मिले हैं। शुरुआती जांच में इस बात का खुलासा हुआ है कि इस हमले के पीछे लश्कर ए तैयबा का हाथ हो सकता है। आतंकियों के जीपीएस से यह बात भी सामने आई है कि आतंकियों ने पठानकोट के रास्ते भारत की सीमा में प्रवेश किया |
गुरदासपुर, पंजाब में हुए आतंकी हमले में एक बार फिर से पाकिस्तान का हाथ होने के सुबूत मिले हैं। शुरुआती जांच में इस बात का खुलासा हुआ है कि इस हमले के पीछे लश्कर ए तैयबा का हाथ हो सकता है। आतंकियों के जीपीएस से यह बात भी सामने आई है कि आतंकियों ने पठानकोट के रास्ते भारत की सीमा में प्रवेश किया |
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An open letter to 'intelligentsia' of Bharat -- From a 'thulla', cop to those opposing death penalty to Yakub
An open letter by a cop to those opposing death penalty to Yakub
Guest Author / July 30, 2015 / Opinions
Dear “Intelligentsia” of India,
I am not a TV panelist. I am not a “human rights” activist. I am not a lawyer. I am not a political commentator. I am not a best-selling author. I am not the son or grandson of a famous man. I am an aam aadmi. More than an aam aadmi, I am an officer in the Indian Police force. And I am writing this letter to all of you, after seeing your robust defence of a terrorist.
Why I mention who I am is important because unlike all of you, I don’t sit in plush AC offices and write editorials seeking clemency for a murderer. Nor do I visit TV studios and shout myself hoarse. Instead I meet such killers every single day. But I don’t meet them for cocktail parties or at press conferences (like some of you do).
I meet them on the road, in the streets, with weapons in their arms and hate in their eyes. I have been in situations with them where they would not hesitate a single moment before pulling the trigger on me, but I have to consider all the ramifications like “human rights”, “due process” and “fake encounter” before I save my life and of the innocent people around me.
Given the above I believe I am in a far better position to comment on a mass murderer like Yakub Memon than any of you are.
To defend this criminal, multitudes of arguments have been put forth by what are now called “Adarsh Liberals” in our society. Luckily, almost no one has pleaded that he is innocent. The situation is such that Indians have to be grateful to our “Intelligentsia” for such small mercies.
But one common hypothesis put forward by many is that Yakub Memon surrendered to the Indian authorities, and then cooperated with the investigations. Plain lies. Late B Raman, one of India’s finest intelligence officers wrote this in his article:
This was yesterday confirmed on some news channels when they interviewed the Nepali police officer. He re-iterated that there was no deal and Yakub was fleeing to Karachi. Then why are our “Intelligentsia” hell bent on stating otherwise?
Let me put it another way: I know there is a rat in my house, and I place a laddoo in a trap. The rat gets caught and then pleads for mercy saying that he had come to “surrender” because I had offered him a “laddoo” (deal). Do I let him live?
The second common argument is “but we are against death penalty. It is barbaric”. My simple question is: Did it take the death sentence of a terrorist to wake up the bleeding heart activists? Couldn’t you demand a change in law for so many years? Why are you crying for this beast?
For the record even I am not decided on this issue. Just because we are from the police force doesn’t mean we do not value human life. But in the case of a terrorist, what choice do we have? Do we preserve him hoping he will reform? Can terrorists who come with guns in their hands and an unshakable belief that what they are doing (killing innocent people) is right, be ever reformed?
Forget reformation, keeping such a dastardly mind alive is a big security risk too. Every time he is shifted from jails we have to be our toes to see if any attempt will be made by his gang members to either kill him, so that he is silenced or rescue him, so that he can continue his activities. And there is always the risk that one fine day his friends will hold some innocent civilians hostage and demand his release, so that we can put our lives at risk all over again to re-capture him.
You want to abolish death penalty? Go ahead, but not for terrorists.
Some of our “intelligentsia” have been crying that “due processes of law” have not been followed in this case. It is a shame that a case which is going for 2 decades, which has been debated at multiple levels of the judiciary, even at the highest level, is still subjected to scrutiny by mis-informed, half-read, cretins sitting in AC cabins and reading op-eds. If you did have a problem with the process, why did you not raise your voice in 2013 when he was sentenced to death? Why now when his death is imminent? Are these delaying tactics? Where do your loyalties lie dear “Intelligentsia”? I sincerely hope all these people are tried for contempt of court.
And finally there are some utter lowlifes who have given this entire thing a political, communal and even casteist colour. How can one party whichever it may be, be held responsible for a Supreme Court verdict, which has taken 2 decades and during which time multiple political parties have fought in courts against Yakub Memon? Do you have even an iota of conscience and rationality left in you when you make such absurdly illogical statements to defend a terrorist?
In the aftermath of the Gurdaspur attacks, it has been reported that now India may be a target of the ISIS. In such situations Indians must unite and fight such a huge demon. But given how our “Intelligentsia” are hell bent in sowing seeds of discord among us, I fear we will be easy targets for such groups. While we keep shouting Hindu-Muslim, Brahmin-Dalit, BJP-Congress, I fear these terrorists will rip my poor country apart.
– A “thulla”
(The author’s identity has been withheld on request of the author)
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NaMo, announce zero tolerance for ceasefire violations and deaths of Jawans. Retaliate with redoubled counter-fire.
Published: July 30, 2015 09:45 IST | Updated: July 30, 2015 09:46 IST Jammu, July 30, 2015
Jawan killed as Pak violates ceasefire in Poonch
- PTI
AP
An Army Jawan was killed in sniper attack by Pakistan troops who targeted forward posts in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir in violation of ceasefire.There were two other incidents of ceasefire violations along LoC in the Valley on Wednesday.
An Army Jawan was killed in sniper attack by Pakistan troops who targeted forward posts in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir in violation of ceasefire.
Sepoy Rachpal Singh was critically injured in sniper fire by Pakistani troops at a forward post in Poonch along the Line of Control on Wednesday night, a police officer said on Thursday.
Singh, who belonged to 22-Sikh unit, later succumbed to his injuries. He was guarding Parvinder post when the incident occurred.
This is the third incident of sniper attack by Pakistani troops along the LoC this month. Two BSF jawans were killed in similar incidents along LoC in Kashmir Valley.
There were two other incidents of ceasefire violations along LoC in the Valley on Wednesday.
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Lest we forget, 93 Mumbai blasts began the cycle of terror -- Dr. Praveen Patil
Dr Praveen Patil Lest we forget, 93 Mumbai blasts began the cycle of terrorism not just in India but across the world..
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MH370 search: Reunion island debris sent to France
MH370 search: Réunion island debris 'almost certainly' from Boeing 777 – live updates
Officials examine aircraft part washed up on island in the French Indian Ocean as possible clue to fate of missing Malaysia Airlines plane
Thursday 30 July 2015 14.55 BST
Officials examine aircraft part washed up on island in the French Indian Ocean as possible clue to fate of missing Malaysia Airlines plane
- Read the latest summary
- What is the flaperon found in Réunion?
- Dr David Ferreira, an oceanographer at the University of Reading, said it is “perfectly possible” that the aircraft debris drifted thousands of miles from the search area off the Australia coast to Réunion.In an email to the Guardian he said:Last year Ferreira produced a simulations of particle trajectories in the Southern Indian Ocean illustrating the possible fate of debris from the missing MH370 flight.https://youtu.be/hInOLnwAbRcJacquita Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes was MH370’s cabin crew supervisor, said she had “been on the roller coaster many times”.Speaking about the discovery of debris she told AFP:
![Jacquita Gonzales, 53, checks her mobile phone at her office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Thursday.]()
Jacquita Gonzales, 53, checks her mobile phone at her office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Photograph: Joshua Paul/AP Photo of serial number on debris?
The Réunion news site Clicanoore has published a photograph purporting to show adetail of the debris showing the serial number 657BB which would link it to the missing Boeing.The image is suspiciously close up and it doesn’t appear to show material that has been floating in the ocean for almost 17 months.— Julien Delarue (@delarue_julien)July 30, 2015
Photo du numéro de série de la pièce Boeing 657-BB #MH370 (via @Clicanoore )#ReunionIsland #LaReunion pic.twitter.com/DDHNpbI2h4UpdatedHere’s the 260-page manual showing the serial numbers to the numerous parts of the Boeing 777. It includes this diagram of a flaperon with the part number 657BB said to have been seen on the debris washed up on Réunion.![Boeing manual]()
Boeing manual Photograph: Boeing UpdatedThis map underlines how far the debris is from the search area. Oceanographers say it could have drifted that far west.![Gwyn Topham]()
The serial number found on the flaperon should, in theory, rapidly allow investigators to confirm whether the part did originate from a Boeing 777, writes the Guardian’s transport correspondent, Gwyn Topham.While there is some confusion over the reported number - BB670, according to the Australian deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, but 657BB according to reports from Reunion - the part number appears to match that of the flaperon on the Boeing 777.The number is normally attached to a larger aeroplane part on a small metallic plate and should register not only the generic part number, but an individual serial number that allows the history of that particular part to be traced. That should tally with the records held by the manufacturer and the airline. Individual parts could have been swapped since original construction, and are labelled to allow aircrafts engineers to track if and when they need maintenance or replacement.That simple record check means investigators, Malaysian Airlines and Boeing should already be confident whether the numbered part could have come from flight MH370 - if they have been provided with a full and accurate serial number. However, with the history of false starts and confusion in the long and emotive search for the missing airliner, few officials would want to confirm the lead before viewing the physical evidence on Reunion directly, experts say.David Gleave, an air accident investigator, said: “The serial number information should be fairly easily accessible - but we should be cautious.“It’s not unknown for very strange things to occur during crash investigations, and you would want to eliminate all possibilities. It’s a big international investigation - and it is possible to buy these parts should you wish to confuse things. You want to be able to track the complete history to establish that exact part came from that plane.”Gleave added: “A lot of aircraft parts look very similar to other aircraft parts, and these things take time to confirm - given the amount of grief we really must make sure.”![In this his image taken from video, police officers examine the plane debris in Saint-Andre, Reunion.]()
In this his image taken from video, police officers examine the plane debris in Saint-Andre, Reunion. Photograph: AP UpdatedDebris to be examined in Toulouse
![Malaysia’s prime minister Najib Razak]()
Malaysia’s prime minister Najib Razak Malaysia’s prime minister Najib Razak, has confirmed that the debris found on Réunion is “very likely” to be from a Boeing 777, but it is still too early to speculate whether it is from MH370.In a statement he said the debris will be taken to the French city of Toulouse for examination by civil aviation investigators.He also promised relatives of passengers that Malaysia will not give up searching for the plane.UpdatedAirLive.net tweets another image from the Boeing manual showing the Boeing 777 flaperon with the 657-BB code reported seen on the washed-up debris.— AirLive.net (@airlivenet)July 30, 2015
UPDATE Boeing 777 maintenance manual can be read on http://t.co/MlhHe6Px4F (look page 235) #MH370 pic.twitter.com/Wd8MmzQhNuNote that it does not include the code 670-BB which was also reported stamped on the debris.UpdatedCode matches Boeing manual
Serial number update ...The aviation website AirLive.net reports that one of the codes reportedly stamped on the debris matches a Boeing 777 flaperon, according to Boeing’s maintenance manual.— AirLive.net (@airlivenet)July 30, 2015
BREAKING 657-BB code found on wreckage is Boeing 777 flaperon according to manual /@Paris7Life http://t.co/MlhHe6Px4F pic.twitter.com/Zx1XAPNbfC— AirLive.net (@airlivenet)July 30, 2015
BREAKING '657BB' code found on wreckage is Boeing 777 flaperon according to manual#MH370 http://t.co/MlhHe777Wd pic.twitter.com/bM9DPNW5gwA mechanic from the Réunion-based airline Air Austral told local journalists the debris was stamped with 657-BB. Other reports said the number was BB670.Updated![Tom Phillips]()
Relatives of the missing Chinese passengers have reacted with suspicion, disbelief and shock, writes Tom Phillips in Beijing.(This is Matthew Weaver taking over live blog hosting duties from Claire). - 13:05
- http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/jul/30/mh370-possible-breakthrough-debris-found-reunion-island
MH370 search: Reunion debris to be tested in France
- 4 minutes ago
- Asia
Police inspect the debris washed up on the island of Reunion Debris found on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion is to be transported to France to find out whether it is from the missing flight MH370, Malaysia's prime minister has said.Initial reports suggest the two-metre long object is very likely to be from a Boeing 777, Najib Razak said.The Malaysia Airlines flight - a Boeing 777 - vanished while travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.The search has focused on part of the southern Indian Ocean east of Reunion.Oceanographer David Griffin, of Australia's national science agency, told the BBC that the location of the find was "consistent with where we think debris might have turned up".There were 239 passengers and crew on board the plane when it went missing.Mr Najib said French authorities were taking the debris to the southern French city of Toulouse - the site of the nearest office of the French body responsible for air accident investigations (the BEA) - to verify it as quickly as possible.A Malaysian team of investigators and representatives from the government and the airline was travelling to Toulouse, and a second team to Reunion, he said.Najib Razak said the location was consistent with drift analysis provided to Malaysian investigators."As soon as we have more information or any verification we will make it public. I promise the families of those lost that whatever happens, we will not give up."![French gendarmes and police inspect a large piece of plane debris which was found on the beach in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion (29 July 2015)]()
The debris was found on Reunion on Wednesday ![French gendarmes and police stand near a large piece of plane debris which was found on the beach in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion (29 July 2015)]()
The object appears to be encrusted with barnacles Aviation experts who have studied photos of the debris found on Reunion - a French overseas department - on Wednesday say it does resemble a flaperon - a moving part of the wing surface - from a Boeing 777.All aircraft parts carry a serial number which should aid identification.On Thursday, a municipal employee found what appeared to be part of a very badly damaged suitcase on the Reunion coast, according to local media (in French).The item was found at Saint-Andre, the same location as the earlier debris, and by the same man.A French police helicopter is now scouring waters around Reunion for other debris.Search efforts for MH370, led by Australia, are focused on an area west of the Australian city of Perth - about 4,000km east of Reunion.The Australian government has described the discovery of the wreckage as "a very significant development".![Johnny Begue with the possible remains of a suitcase in Saint-Andre, Reunion (30 July 2015)]()
This item, possibly the remains of a suitcase, was also found on Reunion The wife of the in-flight supervisor for the missing plane, Jacquita Gonzales, told the BBC that she was "torn" by the news."A part of me hopes that it is [MH370] so that I could have some closure and bury my husband properly but the other part of me says 'No, no, no' because there is still hope," she told the BBC by phone.![line]()
Simulation of where debris in search area could end up
![Debris map]()
![line]()
After MH370 disappeared from radar screens, experts analysed data from faint "pings" the aircraft sent to satellites to narrow down its possible location.More than half of those on board the plane were Chinese citizens.A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry said: "We have noticed the reports and are wasting no time in obtaining and checking the information."A group of relatives of many of the Chinese passengers said in a statement that they wanted "100%" certainty about where the part is from, and that the search for the airliner should continue.![line]()
Analysis: BBC's transport correspondent Richard Westcott
I am told that Boeing's engineers will be able to tell from the shape of the wreckage if it's from a 777 aircraft.Second, it may have a data tag with a serial number. That will be directly traceable to MH370. Even if there isn't a tag, it should have a traceable manufacturer's stamp.A very experienced investigator has told me it could have come off in a controlled ditching, where the pilot would have the flaps down and it would be vulnerable if it hit the sea. Equally it could have disintegrated at altitude.Finally, there is some confusion over the serial number. Originally it was reported as BB670. Now it's suggested the number was BB657. According to the 777 maintenance manual that is the "right wing flaperon".Follow Richard: @BBCwestcott- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33714780
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Kaalaadhan: Why 5,000 crore National Herald case goes straight to the heart of 10Janpath & 12Tughlaq Lane -- Minhaz Merchant
Rahul Gandhi has found his voice. But has he actually found his calling?
The Congress vice president would be right to worry about the fallout over the Rs 5,000 crore National Herald case which goes right to the heart of 10, Janpath and 12, Tughlaq Lane.
POLITICS
| 7-minute read | 31-07-2015
At 45, Rajiv Gandhi had been Prime Minister for five years, tasted victory and defeat and, at 46, was assassinated.
Rahul Gandhi is 45. He has been a member of Parliament for eleven years. (Rajiv served as MP for ten years: 1981-91.) Since returning from his secretive 56-day sabbatical in April 2015, Rahul has enjoyed a political renaissance of sorts. He speaks more, in the Parliament and outside. Shyness has given way to belligerence.
He has vowed to disrupt the monsoon session of Parliament. He mocked the "56-inch prime minister", promising to reduce him to "5.6 inches". He declared that he will not allow "one-inch of land to be grabbed by Modiji". He accused external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj of committing a "criminal act". He slammed agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh for being insensitive to farmers. He joined the protest in Pune against the new FTII chairman Gajendra Chauhan.
So is Rahul's makeover for real? Will he be able to refashion the 44-MP Congress into a fighting force? The key lies in Rahul's speeches since his return to public life over three months ago. The centerpiece of his approach has been the Land Acquisition Bill. He is right that some of the nine amendments introduced by the NDA government on a Bill largely authored by the UPA-2 regime in 2013 need to go. Others need to be modified.
But the Land Bill in its original UPA garb was bad for farmers, bad for industry, bad for government and bad for growth. Its social impact assessment clause and 70/80 per cent urban/rural consent clauses would have led to decades-long litigation and delays. No wonder virtually not an acre of farm land has been acquired for industrial or commercial projects in the last few years. Development in rural India has stalled. Jobs are scarce. Incomes have fallen.
The NDA government has belatedly realised that the Land Bill, now being considered by a joint parliamentary panel - which is scheduled to submit its report in the first week of August - will make no headway in the monsoon session. The Congress has promised as much though other parties have been more circumspect. The Bill will clearly undergo a major overhaul.
Rahul's real challenge, however, lies beyond Parliament. It is organisational. After the 1969 Congress split an insecure Indira Gandhi eroded and then demolished the power of regional Congress leaders established by Jawaharlal Nehru: K Kamraj in Tamil Nadu, Hemvati Bahuguna in Uttar Pradesh, S Nijalingappa in Karnataka.
The Congress became increasingly centralised. Rajiv Gandhi continued his mother's policy: powerful state leaders were seen as a threat to dynastic rule. Sonia Gandhi sharpened the high command culture, cutting down to size or even expelling newer regional leaders like Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh.
To reverse this counter-productive strategy, Rahul has created his own group of Young Turks with regional backgrounds: Sachin Pilot (Rajasthan), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Madhya Pradesh), Jitin Prasada (Uttar Pradesh) and Deepender Hooda (Haryana).
The problem of course lies in their surnames: each is a dynast. Moreover, apart from Pilot, none seems enthused with a regional role. The high command culture and the rich pickings available in Delhi are seductive.
It is likely that at some stage in the near future Rahul will replace his mother Sonia as Congress president. Priyanka will then step into a more proactive role. Rahul's longtime Man Friday, Wharton alumnus Kanishka Singh, now runs Priyanka's office. Her court challenge to block disclosure of her family's land deals in Himachal Pradesh indicates that she is ready for a more combative public role. The cultivated reticence has run its course.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent speech in Jammu on choosing sons-in-law carefully was obviously aimed at Robert Vadra. But Rahul and Sonia face a more immediate danger than investigations into Vadra's land deals. Most of the media has studiously avoided reporting, much less analysing, that danger. On September 2, the Delhi High Court will resume hearing arguments in the two-year-old National Herald case. If the verdict goes against the Gandhis, it will pose serious political and legal problems.
What are the precise facts available in the public domain? The petition filed in the trial court claims that the Congress gave a Rs 90-crore loan in 2011 to extinguish the debt of Associated Journals Pvt Ltd (AJL), publisher of the defunct National Herald newspaper which Jawaharlal Nehru had founded with other Congress leaders in 1938 and which closed down in 2008 during the tenure of the UPA-1 government.
Debt extinguished, AJL instead of restarting the newspaper (for which the Congress loan had specifically been given), retrenched its remaining editorial and other staff. In 2011, AJL was acquired for a consideration of Rs 50 lakh by Young Indian (YI), a not-for-profit (Section 25) company in which Sonia and Rahul have 76 per cent shareholding. A group of Gandhi associates, including Congress treasurer Motilal Vora, hold the balance 24 per cent. The key issue is that AJL's debt of Rs 90 crore was extinguished from its books by a loan from funds the Congress receives as donations from the public. These funds are meant for public purposes as per the party's constitution.
AJL was attractive to YI not because it possessed a defunct newspaper,National Herald, and a few staff. It was attractive because it possessed valuable property. This included a building, Herald House, on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg worth an estimated Rs 2,000 crore.
Other properties owned by AJL around the country have an estimated value of between Rs 1,500 and Rs 3,000 crore. With 76 per cent shareholding, these properties - and the rent they generate - now belong to YI, a company controlled by Sonia and Rahul with their 76 per cent shareholding. Pertinently, Herald House, situated on government land, was given to AJL at a concessional price decades ago for the specific purpose of running a newspaper, not for any other commercial use.
What should be done now - ethically and legally? The answer is straightforward: YI should either restart the National Herald - which is why YI acquired AJL for Rs 50 lakh in the first place. Or AJL, now a shell company owned by YI, should return the Rs 90-crore loan it took from the Congress (which generously wrote off the loan as unrecoverable) while YI surrenders the property, estimated at Rs 5,000 crore, to AJL - property it came to own by acquiring AJL for just Rs 50 lakh. That would restore the status quo ante.
The Delhi High Court will decide whether to stay the trial court's summons issued to Rahul, Sonia and others associated with newly property-rich YI - or let their trial proceed. The fact that a trial court judge has issued summons to "the accused" indicates a prima facie case has been established against them.
But as a not-for-profit (Section 25) company, the Gandhis' counsel Kapil Sibal argues, no one makes a profit from the humongous rent YI is earning every month from its Herald House property. He does not of course mention that expenses incurred by YI's shareholders can be debited against the company's rental income: The "non-profit" status enjoyed by a Section 25 company does not mean expenses can't be set off in its books of accounts. Indeed, YI's audited current balance sheet would make interesting reading.
For Rahul, propriety is an important weapon to beat the Modi government with. The Vyapam scam and allegations of impropriety against Vasundhara Raje and Sushma Swaraj will continue to be used to corner the government as the monsoon session of Parliament unfolds.
While keeping a watchful eye on the ongoing investigations into the 2G, Coalgate, Aircel-Maxis and other scams that marked the UPA decade in office, Rahul would be right to also worry about the fallout over the Rs 5,000-crore National Herald case which goes right to the heart of 10 Janpath and 12, Tughlaq Lane.
Rahul 2.0 must realise that India has moved beyond rhetoric. The politics of opposition, within Parliament and outside, must be constructive not disruptive. Otherwise he will rapidly discover that power, as he once said, can indeed be poison.
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Bhirrana to Mehrgarh and beyond in the civilization contact areas from 8th millennium BCE
Mirror: http://tinyurl.com/peuhkk3
A challenge in archaeology is to trace the movements of people across Eurasia during the Bronze Age. A number of theories are postulated about the roots of civilizations and about the interactions in ancient times, say, 10,000 years before present, across present-day borderlands.
Ute Franke Voigt presents a remarkable chronological chart linking many cultural facets of Sarasvati-Sindhu civilization (called Indus Civilization) with the cultural markers in southeastern Iran, Baluchistan and Sindh indicated by sites such as Mehrgarh, Nausharo, Sohr Damb, Shahr-e Sokhta.
Marielle Santoni who had excavated in Mehrgarh and Sibri. (Marielle Santoni, Sibri and the South cemetery of Mehrgarh: third millennium connections between the northern Kachi plain (Pakistan) and Central Asia, in: Bridget Allchin, ed., Sixth Intl. Conference, South Asian Archaeology, 1981, Cambridge Univ. Press, pp. 52-60) https://www.scribd.com/doc/273226924/Marielle-Santoni-Sibri-and-the-South-cemetery-of-Mehrgarh-third-millennium-connections-between-the-northern-Kachi-plain-Pakistan-and-Central-Asia
Nausharo, Mehrgarh: ceramique c. 2500 BCE, C. Jarrige. Nausharo was inhabited later than Mehrgarh, probably first from about 2800 BCE
When a zebu, bos indicus, appears on pots as an inscribed hieroglyph – as at Nausharo --, the message is clear: the rebus-metonymy signifier points to poLa ‘zebu, bull dedicated to the gods’ Rebus: poLa ‘magnetite’. Hieroglyph: baṭa 'quail'; bhaṭa 'furnace' (G.); baṭa 'a kind of iron' (Gujarati.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/156649844/Indian-civilization-evolved-in-the-8th-millennium-BCE-in-the-plains-of-Lost-River-Saraswati-Dikshit-K-N-and-B-R-Mani-Puratattva-42-pp-265-269Indian civilization evolved in the 8th millennium BCE in the plains of 'Lost' River Saraswati (Dikshit, K.N... by Srini Kalyanaraman
The 8th Millennium BC in the ‘Lost’ River ValleyIndian Civilization Evolved in the 8th Millennium BCE in the ‘Lost’ River Valley – Dr B. R. Mani
Hieroglyph: కారండవము [ kāraṇḍavamu ] n. A sort of duck. కారండవము [ kāraṇḍavamu ] kāraṇḍavamu. [Skt.] n. A sort of duck. कारंडव [kāraṇḍava ] m S A drake or sort of duck. कारंडवी f S The female. karandava [ kârandava ] m. kind of duck. कारण्ड a sort of duck R. vii , 31 , 21 கரண்டம் karaṇṭam, n. Rebus: Rebus: karaḍā ‘hard alloy’ (Marathi)
Hieroglyph: mlekh 'goat' Rebus: milakkhu 'copper'.
Hieroglyph: loa‘ficus religiosa’ Rebud: loh‘copper’.
Hieroglyph: kolmo‘rice plant’ Rebus: kolami‘smithy, forge’
Hieroglyph: miṇḍāl ‘markhor’ (Tōrwālī) meḍho a ram, a sheep (Gujarati)(CDIAL 10120) Rebus: mẽṛhẽt, meḍ ‘iron’ (Mu.Ho.)
Hieroglyph: barad, barat 'ox' Rebus: भरत (p. 603) [ bharata ] n A factitious metal compounded of copper, pewter, tin &c. (Marathi)
Hieroglyph: poLa ‘zebu’ Rebus: poLa ‘magnetite’.
Hieroglyph: rāngo ‘water buffalo bull’ (Ku.N.)(CDIAL 10559) Rebus: rango ‘pewter’. ranga, rang pewter is an alloy of tin, lead, and antimony (anjana) (Santali).
The hypothesis which is validated in historical chronology of peoples’ movements in Eurasia is that Meluhha artisans and merchants of Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization moved to spread the archaeometallurgical initiatives of alloying. They had invented a unique writing system with hieroglyph multiplexes as signifiers to compile metalwork catalogues.
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Center
August 1, 2015
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Yakub's angels -- Ravinar
SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2015
Yakub's Angels
Read these words: “The blast victims are calling it justice. But look at Bada Qabrastan, and tell me if this looks like closure. Or, the start of something”. That comes from one among thousands who attended the funeral of Yakub Memon, convicted and hanged, on July 30, for the Bombay blasts of 1993. A very large crowd of Muslims mourned Memon. A terrorist was turned into some kind of hero by the media and some 5-star activists. Before we move on, let’s refresh. The serial bomb-blasts were made of 13 bombs placed at crowded locations. It was also the first time many Indians learned about RDX, the deadly explosive. For the record, it was also the first serial bomb-blast across the world. If you read about such an attack today or watched the events on TV, I’m sure your blood would boil enough to seek instant death for the perpetrators. But 22 years later Yakub (one of the key perpetrators) has been turned into some kind of hero for the Sickulars. How did things come to such a pass?
The SC handed out a death sentence to Yakub. This was confirmed in a review petition and the President also rejected his mercy petition in April 2014. Everything was peaceful and forgotten till the Maharashtra govt announced around July 15 that Yakub would be hanged on July 30. All hell broke loose. Suddenly, a host of lawyers, media crooks and hacktivists sprang up from nowhere to seek commutation of death sentence, mercy for his crime and so on. Over 250 so-called “eminent” persons petitioned the President for mercy and this is a small list from The Hindu:
And among the many Rudaalis from Politics, media and other assorted hacktivists who glorify terrorists and seek sympathy for them are the following:
First, many of them claimed the evidence was flawed – FALSE. Then they claimed Yakub had surrendered (Based on some unpublished note of the late RAW officer B.Raman cleverly exploited by Sheela Bhatt of Rediff) so deserved sympathy and not death sentence – FALSE. Then when none of that could be backed by reason, they claimed they were against death penalty in principle. In short, save Yakub by hook or crook even when the SC had gone through his case with a fine tooth-comb. Let’s look at some of the hypocrites where death penalty is concerned. Some of the hacktivists are the same ones who frequently scream “Death to the rapists” after every incident of rape.
Hypocrisy on the issue was flowing like a river during floods. There are many other such hypocrites but I will have to save space and not make this anymore lengthy. From July 28 onward petition after petition was filed by Yakub’s lawyers while another mercy petition was submitted to the President. July 29 evening the SC rejected the final appeal and the President too rejected the mercy petition. Wait! It wasn’t over!
Late in the night the lawyers of Yakub filed another petition at the residence of CJI seeking a 14 day gap to the execution. All frivolous attempts to somehow stall the inevitable. It is commendable that the CJI again convened the court early hours on July 30 to hear the final appeal. This too was rejected. That the CJI and SC gave so much latitude is worthy of applause. This wasn’t a routine bail case – it was a case of a man’s life hanging in the balance and the CJI did the right thing and a splendid job. The ones who failed our judiciary were Yakub’s lawyers, our criminal media and activists.
The lead lawyer for Yakub, Anand Grover, after the final appeal was rejected by SC early morning on July 30 claimed he had no motives for defending Yakub and was doing it pro-bono. However, he blurted out unconsciously that he was doing this “because he was against Modi”. That’s the real long and short of it. All this nonsense was rightly described by the AG, Mukul Rohtagi, as “abuse of process”. Yakub’s lawyers were abusing the process of law which provided them such luxurious latitude. The abuse of law and the process was merely because of political persuasions and not because of any quest for justice. This is something law-makers will have to address to prevent such frivolous burning of midnight oil for an unworthy cause. It is the same with all the media crooks. They too crooned for Yakub only because of their political persuasions – Hatred for Modi and portray him as the person under whom another Muslim would be hanged. Simple! Political hatred and money, of course:
People are not fooled. Almost everyone suspects the lawyers, activists and media have a huge amount of cash-flow from some yet “unknown” sources that promote Islamic extremism and domination. Although the noise was much less then, similar voices started agitating against the hanging of Kasab and Afzal Guru (both were hanged secretly by the previous govt unlike Yakub).
Grover, Yakub’s lawyer, even went on to quoteShekhar Gupta’s stupid argument – that the Home Minister was chasing crooks like Teesta and NGOs instead of preventing attacks like Gurdaspur being one of his motives to defend Yakub. Are you serious? This is one of your stupid motives for defending Yakub? This is truly shameful for a highly placed lawyer because there is no context or connection. All those who defended and wanted mercy for Yakub had no real motive for justice other than their political persuasions and possibly cash-flow. Many activists and media morons went to the extreme of even slamming the SC for being unfair. This, when the SC had stretched itself beyond normal to repeatedly hear petitions for Yakub way into the early hours of July 30 and stretching the legal process for a terrorist that would never be done for other ordinary persons. Here’s Indira Jaising, a defender of Teesta (and wife of Anand Grover) mercilessly slamming the SC. Shameful conduct!
And it went on and on and on till the final hammer of SC came down on the appeals around 5am on July 30. “The defence never rests” and it never should is what I consider one my best articles. But stretching it to frivolous levels is not defence but abuse of process motivated by political persuasions and perhaps truckloads of money. Rudaali-in-Chief Barkha Dutt stayed up all night and when the inevitable happened, she rushed to Mumbai to meet victims of Yakub and the 1993 blasts and scavenge on their misery. One way or another feed on the wounds of any kind. That’s our media. And, of course, I have even heard stupid questions like whether hanging Yakub would deter anything. Here’s one sample of such stupidity:
There have been many train bombings in Mumbai since 1993. There have been many terrorist attacks since 1993, thousands have died. Each time the Rudaalis demand sparing the terrorist as it doesn’t deter further such acts. The media glorifies terrorists and some Track-2 media idiots also hobnob with ISI operatives in Pakistan in multiple visits. This is downright illogical stupidity. There are laws and punishment for rapes, thefts and murders – Do such laws or punishments deter such crimes at all? Laws and punishments are no deterrent for “evil” that resides within some men and women. There is no cure for that. Most people would have had no problems had Yakub Memon’s sentence been commuted to life instead of death. But the severe chest-beating by all these crooks only made the public angrier. As against petitions to the President for mercy, some victims also started petitions to the President for death to Yakub. I estimated many in the public wanted death for Yakub not so much because they wanted him dead but because they hold these chest-beaters and terrorist-sympathisers in greater contempt.
There are many more media houses but I have named only a few due to text limits. Life sentence is sometimes worse than death. As Mr Red so philosophically says in “Shawshank” – “They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take away”.
Either way, those sympathising with a criminal like Yakub are no less criminals (I don’t include his defence lawyers in this). There are other reasons for death sentence. India has paid a heavy price in the past. Most people remember the hijacking of IC814 in December 1999 when we succumbed and released three extreme terrorists who have now set up new terror outfits in Pakistan. There’s the case of Maqbool Butt who wasn’t executed and an Indian diplomat in London was kidnapped and murdered – IndiraG later approved the hanging of Butt (read here). And all those hypocrites who claim to be against death penalty in principle remained absolutely silent when India (under UPA)voted in the UN against its abolishment. I don’t suggest India should have gone with the UN proposal but these campaigners remained silent, including the happy-tongue-hypocrite Shashi Tharoor. Terrorists may kill one of a family only once but our media and activists kill the victims’ families over and over again.
Defence lawyers plead for proper process and proper administration of justice for the criminal. If at all the media or activists campaign for anything it should be for justice for the victims. It is the opposite in India and the reason is very simple – POLITICS & MONEY! And just how well do Yakub’s Angels look after him? Here’s the Indian Express (one among many) who grandly splashed his funeral on the front page:
And the headline says “THEY” hanged him? Who the hell is THEY? The Hindus? The BJP? A wretched country called India? Or The President of India and our judiciary? Yakub’s death was merited by the law and not some individual, group or entity. Such extreme filth to honour a criminal and a terrorist! Naturally, more and more terrorists will rejoice the support they find in our media and with criminal activists. The popular president, Dr. Kalam’s funeral is consigned to a column on the margin. And even there IE displays its filthy political pursuit – the PM was there so too other senior ministers, but their grand choice of a pic at the funeral is the worthless juvenile retard that does nothing for India and is mostly abroad. Now you know who the entities IE and other media house bat for! Naturally, it emboldens terrorists to issue more threats as a friend of Yakub did:
A coward sits in a hole in some foreign country. He issues threats to India because he has support from our media and criminal activists. He knows he has great support with these anti-nationals and our fake intellectuals. Parties like CPM and CPI want the death penalty abolished – guys who have murder as their political policy. There are Rudaalis like Kavita Krishnan who hold candle vigils for terrorists while her party too (CPI-ML) and associated Naxals slaughter people as a routine. Yakub Memon acknowledges guilt and seeks forgiveness while these little terror-supporters bat for him. But more than all that GOI must start acting against internal unarmed terrorists who pass as Yakub’s angels in our media and NGOs. They aren’t holed out abroad, these traitors are right here amongst us. These are sleeper cells that are angels for terrorists.
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An Epistemology of Dharma as a Scientific Law -- Come Carpentier de Gourdon
An Epistemology of Dharma as a Scientific Law
| by Come Carpentier de Gourdon | on 01, 02 Aug 2015 |
Abstract: Dharma is a normative empirical concept derived from the observation of nature and the contemplation of the individual and collective self (inner nature) for the regulation of society in accordance with the laws of the universe. Further Dharma is the essential, non-material or “noumenal” character, sign or number (in the pythagorean-platonic sense: onoma-nomos, related to skt nama (rupa) of both the whole and each one of its parts. As such it is the identity of every phenomenon which is a process and not an object, perceptible only in its interaction with other processes, including our own sensorial perception rooted in our own ends (our dharma).
In that way, every dharma is a mathematical theorem and sanatana dharma can be described as an axiomatic meta-theorem, allowing us to describe the unified field of manifestation in its specifics and operating laws. Just as quantum physics describes atomic objects either as particles or as waves, dharmic epistemology regards all things as distinctive and yet as dynamic products of interactions between all other things - like the fractal quasi-crystals of physics and biology - in an indivisible web of being, the brahmajala.
Introduction
Superficially Dharma and Science, at least in its “western” modern understanding, have very different meanings. Even in the Indian context, science in the traditional translation is vidya or jnana, while Dharma, from the root Dhru: to hold together, support or sustain (whose latin version is dur/us( - a), found in the roman maxim: Dura lex: viz. the law is strict or hard, has both a biological and a moral significance, applying to the universe as a whole as to the human being in particular.
Further illustration of the semantic connotations of Dharma is provided by the latin words: firmus (firm), root of firmamentum (heaven or sky which holds all things) and frenus, hence ‘frein’ in French (brake) and ‘rein’ in English (1). In Avestan, the Iranian language akin to Samskrit the equivalent word is daena (whence the Arabic Deen) whereas Asha is the cosmic law (rta in Samskrit).
As Alain Danielou wrote: “For the Hindus, the world... is the realization of a divine plan in which all aspects are interconnected. Hindu society is the result of an attempt to situate man in the plan of creation” (2).
There is a relationship or organic link between Dharma and the Vedic cosmic law of rta (or ruta), a sanskrit cognate of the greek rythmos and the latin Ars and ratio in both arithmetical and moral senses: rate and reason, particularly if we think of the 17th century Classical European understanding of it as a divine regulatory principle as well as the highest human faculty and the Enlightenment notion of reason as the supreme law of society which the French Revolutionaries promoted as a substitute for the Christian Biblical God. The eminent jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to that notion when he spoke of “The path of law… (as) a trace of universal law…an echo of the infinite”.
As an additional illustration of Dharma’s semantic family, we can contemplate the relationship between the sanskrit dhru and the English verb “to draw”, from the common Old Indo European source. The very ambivalence of the term which denotes both the act of producing a graphic and the extraction of water or any other substance or being (as in “drawing out) is manifested in the abstract use, as in “to draw a parallel” which can be interpreted either way.
Likewise Dharma is extracted from the observation of natural laws, as revealed to rishis in a state of samadhiin the form of Sruti but it is also drawn or mapped according to a transcendent archetype, as Plato’s nomos, related to the Sanskrit nama, the name which qualified and defines a thing, i.e; its law and role and also itsnumerus: number (both rational and irrational), the Pythagorean language of God related etymologically tonumen: what is perceptible only to the mind and not directly by the physical senses.
For Pythagoras as for Plato their number is the ultimate being of things as such; their ding an sich. Dharma is thus not promulgated but discovered in nature and in the mind that is a reflection of the former (as when the Buddha “set in motion” - in the minds of his disciples - the wheel of Dharma). As such it is axiomatic and may be called “the Divine Plan” and it is also comparable to the greek Ethos, the law and status of all beings and things decreed by Fate (Ananke) or by the gods.
Pythagoras will be mentioned on various occasions in the following. As the father of greek “scientific” cosmology and mathematics. The son of a Phoenician father and a Greek mother who studied in Egypt, Babylonia, Persia and probably India according to tradition, he practiced and taught many of the tenets of Brahminical wisdom, such as renouncing violence:ahimsa, vegetarianism, ascetism and fasting, reincarnation, meditation, prayer and communion with Nature which he described in a pantheistic manner as a living being filled with intelligent living forms.
He claimed to receive direct inspiration (sruti) from the gods and from the supreme soul of the universe and to keep the memory of everything (smriti) and he evinced supernatural powers similar to those of the yogis and rishis. He professed all creation to be regulated by the harmonics of sound (sabda, mantra) as the expression of numbers and he equated the dyad, the pair (dvandva in Samskrit) as a symbol of illusion as it is merely an effect of the duplication or self-reflection of the primordial One or source.
His teachings are fully consonant with the Vedic-Upanisadic metaphysics and appear to be at least in part derived from it. There is hence a clear connection between his definition of the cosmic law and the Indic notion of Dharma. He is reported to have said that the number 4 represents the principle of justice and in the Veda, the god Indra, the ruler of the skies, is worshipped as he who holds the four-armed vajra, emblem of his protective and destructive power. The centrality of the quaternary is shown in the fourfold division of theVedas, Varnas, Asramas, Purusarthas, Vamsas and other foundations of the Indian traditional social order.
Dharma as Truth and Reality
Because it is the Law, or in other words the framework that makes reality, creation and life possible and durable, Dharma is inherently synonymous with the truth or essence of things (Sat-Satya), the first of the three terms which have been used to define the supreme being, with Cit: consciousness and Ananda: bliss. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.4,14) equates both (Dharma and Satya). Dharma is thus the essential characteristic or nature of things, both elementary and composite - a dimension of the word further developed in Buddhist philosophy - as heat and glow and the ability to burn are in the nature of fire or as expansion and gravitation are an essential property of the universe. As such, in grammar dharmin means bearer (of a property) as in the relation: sound is impermanent (i.e. is the bearer of impermanence).
In the human domain, Manava (human) Dharma however is not entirely innate as at least part of it must be learnt and consciously practiced in the form of duties, obligations and rites which characterise full cultured humaneness. Nature and culture complement each other as and when the latter is a faithful but refined reflection of the former in harmony with it. The Jaina religion divides Dharma into wordly (laukika) and unworldly (paralaukika) – for ascetics and renouncers who follow the yatidharma (pilgrim’s dharma) as opposed to the rules of conduct applying to the householders.
Rather early in the course of Indian civilisation, a correspondence was predicated between Dharma andAhimsa (harmlessness, later interpreted as non violence) which enshrines an evident principle of Indian spirituality as “live and let live”, - rather than the activist and often misapplied notion of “do goodism” highlighted in much of western religiosity - out of the reverent recognition of the innate freedom of all living beings and of respect for the diversity that characterises the created world. Indic wisdom therefore preaches non-interference, unless help is specifically sought in the right circumstances; otherwise, Karma following its course, an intervention, however well meaning, can be a form of violence and a misguided attempt to affect the natural order.
This acknowledgment of a predetermined course of events is no mere blind fatalism although it may be interpreted as such by many. Rather it stems from the awareness of Karma (action) as the manifestation of the Universal Dharma; the immanent activity of all things.
Nature itself (the Cosmos) is the effect of sanchita karma; the sum of all karmas which impact it in its present and previous states and phases. Each being and thing manifests and shapes its kriyamana karma by its behaviour which in turn is largely determined by past formative experiences and circumstances, theprarabdha karma. In this dynamic vision objects are inseparable from the acts that produce them and constitute their existence; being (bhu) and becoming (bhava), life (jiva) and action (kriya) are part and parcel of the whole, being is indeed “interbeing” as late Swami Ranganathananda used to say. The universe is adharma, as all are its component parts, whether fields, beings or particles. As another Greek “Oriental” sage Heraclitus said: “the One is born from all things and from the One all things are born” (Frag. 10).
Beyond the apparent ceaseless activity of nature, the steadfast, constant, stable character of Dharma is evoked by the term dharana, the first of the three highest steps according to Patanjali’s yoga sutras, which defines concentration in a seated position as the foundation of meditation and union with the Whole or Absolute.
Dharma in Buddhist Epistemology
For Buddhism, the doctrine in its abstract normative dimension is Abhidarma which, together with the Buddha’s discourse, sutra; and the rules of conduct, vinaya, cover all aspects of the teachings of Sakya Muni. In his fundamental teaching, the Buddha discloses and expounds on the Four Noble (or Cardinal), Truths, the fourth of which is Dharma: the way of Liberation or second ratna (jewel) and saranam (refuge) of the seekers, described as the Eightfold “Aryan” (arya astanga marga) Path, attained by observing and practicing truthfulness, clear sightedness and righteous action in order to break out of the vicious circle of interdependent origination or pratitya samutpada that keeps all beings in thrall to suffering, illusion and death. Therefore, for many Buddhists, Dharma is inseparable from the Buddha and can be seen as another, formless aspect of his ultimate reality: tathagathagarbha.
As in Hindu doctrines, Dharma has three aspects, morality or ethics (sila), wisdom (prajna) and mental concentration (samadhi) in order to achieve unity with all things through control of the senses, emotions and mind which are all impermanent and ultimately unreal.
Further, especially in Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology of the Great Vehicle or “Broad Way” all objects and events in space and time (phenomena) are called dharmas because they manifest as and are contingent upon their respective inherent laws of being and becoming, so that they are indistinguishable from the essential principle that accounts for their appearance and persistence.
Beyond the apparently material realm, there are momentary mental states or conscious elements which may or may not be real, depending upon which school of Buddhist psychology one follows. Dharmas therefore arise out of the chain of dependent origination and are indeed called pratityasamutpadadharmas so that they are also artha (results)(3). There is hence a substantial nuance in the interpretation of the term although it may be noticed that various currents of Hindu philosophy have undergone similar evolution, probably under the influence of Buddhism.
The natural law is in the mind where it reveals itself: Justice, the motionless axial notion that regulates all things has its symbol in the Dharma chakra which was Vishnu’s emblem and which the Buddha sets in motion. It is the axle and also the spokes and the circumference: chakra = kuklos = the cycle. All its parts are also the wheel and are nothing when seen in isolation. All things derive their identity from their relation to the whole even if they are apparently separated from it. Otherwise they lose their leaning and become unidentified fragments; only their positions and roles give them a name and a meaningful identity:namarupa (name and form). According to the Pali canon, the Dharma is non-speculative, non-arbitrary, testable in practice, immediate in its application, universally valid and accessible only to the spiritual elite (the Aryas) and as such it is defined as scientific if we wish to use this modern notion.
Vishnu, the original Dharmaraja, has among its emblems, the shankha or conch whose shape is based on the logarithmic spiral, expressing the Golden Ratio (so named in the West by Fibonacci who brought to Europe the Indian numeral system from North Africa) and whose sound creates the universe, and as we said earlier, the chakra or wheel whose rotation symbolises the cosmic spheres and perpetuates the created world.
Various schools of Buddhist philosophy and cosmology define in great details a number of concepts and metaphysical domains related to the notion of Dharma. One of them is the Dharmakaya, the body of Dharma which is the supreme or essential being personified as Vairocana, beyond form, matter and senses (respectively Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya). Another is the Dharmadhatu: the domain or realm of Dharma, the highest heaven, the Empyreus of Hellenistic cosmologists, lying beyond both the form and the formless, beyond all created beings, including the gods, and where only dwell the Dhyani Buddhas, or transcendent principles.
Dharma as the Number or Code of Existence and Life: Hence Dharma is both a thing and its law, its number in the pythagorean sense, or logos (a cognate of the samskrt Loka) as alluded to by Heraclitus in his 50th Fragment: “It is wise to heed not me but the Logos and to confess that all things are one”.
The word Muni which applies to the Buddha as well is related to the greek menein (stable in greek) andmonas: unity which in English has given rise to the word monk. Monas is the First Principle, as Pythagoras and Leibnitz defined it. The seed (bindu, dot in Samskrit) of a thing: ekatvam.
This introduction to the notion of Dharma and its virtual synonym Rta reveals that science insofar as it is a quest for truth and for the laws of Nature, has Dharma as both object and subject. Science draws laws from the observation of nature by exploring it in order to learn about it. It draws maps of nature while exploring it and inducts laws from observation; as we see in mathematics as in physics, astronomy and even in biology, representation is what enables us to make sense of what we study.
We don’t see the universe as it is but rather through pictures, charts and diagrams formed with the help of various instruments such as telescopes, radio-telescopes, microscopes, computer programmes, particle accelerators, bio-magnetic imagers, radio-scanners, X-ray machines and so on. As Heisenberg explained: “the smallest elements are not physical objects in the common sense, they are shapes, ideas which only the mathematical language allows to describe unambiguously”.
Indeed reflection leads us to conclude that not just the “smallest” (to us) elements but all things share this feature of essential inscrutability. Galileo stated four centuries ago: “Philosophy is written in this huge book which is always open in front of our eyes – I mean the universe – and we cannot understand it without having first to know the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. Indeed it is written in mathematical language”.
Like all equations, Phi, the Golden Ratio, is written in mathematical terms as a relation between numbers but it must be recalled that mathema in greek meant (mental) awakening and related to (omni)science, so that it is consonant, both in phonetically and semantically with the Sanskrit expression: Mahatma. The members of Pythagoras’s “Hemicycle” (his initiatic fraternity) were called mathematikoi, which means the all-knowing or awakened ones. Numbers are not only integers as we have noted in our reference to irrational numbers which, like the often paradoxical notions of relativity, non-Euclidian geometry, quantum theory and fractal quasi-crystal physics, always extend beyond the frontiers of our knowledge that they reshape in counter-intuitive ways.
The discovery of irrational numbers (which they called mute or ineffable) led post-pythagorean philosophers to separate geometry from arithmetic and the cognitive gap was only bridged by Descartes.
A good example of a counter-intuitive mathematical revelation is the fact that any number divided by zero is not, as the spontaneous guess would be, the number itself but the infinite. The Indians who conceptualized the zero in mathematical terms realized it, thus fully comprehending the character of that hitherto elusive notion. Infinite numbers like Pi etc… are other objects of meditation and computation is a synonym of belief so that mathematical thinking is much closer to “mystical” or metaphysical speculation than rational materialists think.
It is another matter that “western” science set as its goal since the Renaissance to acquire “physical” or mechanical mastery and control over the universe. This peculiar course has led modern scientists away from the traditional or Perennial Philosophy whose ultimate goal is to contemplate or celebrate the glory of creation by unravelling (without disenchanting or desacralising) the miraculous secret of its maker who is not separate from his/her creation (4). But when we examine the evolution of the natural and physical sciences and the insights they have gained in recent decades we will see that the nature (the bhutatathata or suchness of the Buddhists) of all things they investigate exhibit the properties enshrined in the polysemic and multifaceted concept of Dharma.
The latter may be equated, as we noted earlier, with the logos of Heraclitus, which expresses the unity of all things whose “conspiracy” (Vitruvius) between the parts and the whole is perceived as beauty both in natural and human creation. Adharma, the negation or Dharma is anrita; the cessation of rta, which is tantamount to death as a result of the breakdown in the “pre-established harmony”. Anrta has its remote echo in the latin english word inertia, which describes the features of non-living objects.
As the Scriptures say: Dharma when it is destroyed destroys and when it is protected (or upheld) it protects (or upholds):
Dharma anahato hante dharmoraksati raksita (Mahabharata, Vanaparva, 313. 128)
A brief study of the aforementioned Golden Ratio and its arithmetical expression, the Fibonacci’s series which was known to many ancient civilizations, including the Indian, Chinese, Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Pre-Columbian American ones, reveals that it expresses in mathematical and geometric terms the very notion of Rta and Dharma, in all the meanings we have described hitherto.
Dharma, Science and the Golden Ratio
Wittgenstein, who seems to have known only western philosophy, warned in his Tractatus that in order to study science, one should forget about philosophy. However that caveat does not apply to Eastern thinking which sees all aspects of knowledge within a truly unified field of investigation and contemplation. A practical illustration of that convergence which reflects the very notion of Rta as “agreement” or “consonance” and further implying a circular or spiralic motion around a centre may be found in the underlying significance of the equation of the Golden Number (phi) – also the initial for the greek physis or Nature, written
?= (1+ v5)/2
That relation expresses the proportion around which the universe as we know it is organized in its growth and stability laws, at all scales, from the infinitely minute to the infinitely large. The logarithmic or “golden” spiral that reflects this ratio manifests the reconciliation of harmonious though asymmetrical opposites by revolving around the point of origin: the bindu, aksara (primal sound) and stambha (pillar) of Creation. Like Dharma it is ever renewed and permanent in all its variations: eadem mutata resurgo.
The Golden Number illustrates the correspondence between Reason, both as a natural faculty and a rule of justice and ratio as a mathematical proportion. The same property defines Dharma which lays down the equation between all things, including ourselves and the universe that contains and includes them, called by Plato the “Just Mean” intrinsically related to Nagarjuna’s madhyamapratipad. Both Pythagoras and Plato related Law to the harmonic relations regulating the Cosmos and inherent to music.
In her remarkable work entitled “Divine Proportion: Phi in Art, Nature and Science”, Priya Hemenway defines the Golden Section (thus called by Fibonacci and formalized by Martin Ohm) as a “formula that serves as a key to a Great Unifying Principle” and she notes: “when we ponder our place in this equation, we discover that we are at once the whole, the largest part of the whole and also the smallest, in an unvaryingly balanced ratio of the whole to the largest part and of the later to the smallest”.
She further explains: “There is a mathematically demonstrable relation, generating patterns and dynamics diffused all over in nature. The laws of proportion used by artists are derived from it and also in the spiritual field, those principles of harmony are seen as a fundamental truth… They even determine the proportion of our physical bodies” and were defined by Jay Hambidge as a dynamic fundamental symmetry of Nature which lies at the core of traditional art forms worldwide.
The American philosopher, scientist and artist Walter Russell illustrated that cosmic law of harmony in his monumental life work (5). Harmonia in mythology is said to be the daughter of Ares (Arya: aryadharma - as Dharma is presented as father to Hari (Visnu) - or of Hephaistos (Tvstir), the architect and builder of the Cosmos: Visvakarma.
The Mathematics and Geometry of Dharma
It is important to point out that Phi is an irrational number, illustrating the fact that natural law is not reducible to the ratio of an integer and as such has no definite digital representation. It can only be represented by the operation that determines it, because it is a process and not an object. That suggests something very profound by analogy about the character of natural laws. The innumerable dharmas of all beings and things, as well as their common essence or principle the Sanatana or Samanya Dharma may be described as fractal patterns (Mandelbrot sets) in which all parts are similar to the whole (self-similarity principle) though they retain their individuality and symmetry.
Mathematics enunciates its laws through theorems which can be seen as translations of the concept ofdharma. A word like ‘triangle’ for instance describes a geometrical object shaped according to the mathematical laws applying to a flat surface containing three angles; however the specific shape of a triangle reflects its particular properties (i.e. isosceles, equilateral, rectangle). Likewise there is a more general dharma for a species and a more specific one (visesa) for each sub-species, family and individual. Further for the human being who wishes to attain enlightenment and liberation from the trammels of cyclical mortal existence, there is a transcendental (ekantika) dharma.
Indeed, theorems (a word derived from the greek verb “consider, examine, observe”, related to theoros: spectator and theater) are defined as statements proven on the basis of previously established statements (other theorems) or accepted but not necessarily proven statements (axioms). Theorems, at least in mathematical language are necessary consequences of hypotheses and are hence deductive though they almost always involve elements of empirical evidence and speculation. In physics too, theorems or laws inevitably involve assumptions and intuitions.
Theorems can also generally be described as laws or principles and cannot always be formally proven to be true. They are used as building bricks for formal theories or systems which in turn can be defined or characterized by “wider” theorems known as “metatheorems”. Therefore, Dharma, especially in its timelesssanatana form (Pali akaliko dhammo for Theravada Buddhists) is a metatheorem about the universe defined as a formal system such as, for instance, the “Net of Indra” or “Golden Egg of Brahma” (hiranyagarbha).
The cosmos is defined in contemporary physics as a “network of interactive events”, rather like themayasamsara of Hindu and Buddhist metaphysics and we can try to show how the patterns and processes mapped out by contemporary research are quite consistent with the concepts laid out in the cosmologicalsastras of Indic literatures which have influenced the spiritual and scientific heritage of most of East Asia.
The Divine Proportion, The Fractal Universe and the Web of Dharma
Until recently it was thought that chaos and order were two separate realities, the former denoting the amorphous and inanimate world while the latter was characteristic of living organizations. However in recent decades, the discovery of the properties of fractals by Mandelbrot, Penrose and others has led to a gradual unification of chaos and order which was already central to many ancient philosophical systems of Asia such Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism.
For instance, the basic notions derived from the study of crystallography were anticipated by the Indic descriptions of Indra’s jeweled net (indrajala or brahmajala for Buddhists), the Tantric Vajrayantra (tantrameans network, web) in which “diamonds” are packed and ordered periodically and symmetrically like knots or links in a fabric or like the atoms and molecules of a crystal. Alan Watts describes it as “a multidimensional spider’s web in the early morning, covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops… And so on ad infinitum…” (6).
Analogies with contemporary research in this area of geometry and physics are provided in the book Indra’s Pearl, The Vision of Felix Klein (2002) by Mumford, Series and Wright and the image of Indra’s net was used by Douglad Hofstader in his well-known work Godel, Escher and Bach to explain the structure of complex interconnected networks.
As Priya Hemenway explains in her book, the discovery of quasi-crystals, which appear to be the fundamental structures for life (such as biotic cells) and are packed in an orderly, aperiodical but non-amorphous sequence, reveals a hitherto unknown state of matter and, even more significantly, enables us to peer into a wondrous cosmic process: the interaction between neighbouring atomic clusters can lead to the formation of stable and dynamic solid born out of sharing between them.
The creation of such new structures that do not diminish or disrupt their co-creators takes place through a series of “discrete atomic jumps” or phasons, illustrating the property described in Isopanisad as purnasya purnamadaya purnat purnam udacyate and provides a tangible parallel to the Vedic concept of yajna or sacrifice of the One to give birth to the many and of the many to reintegrate Oneness, in a cyclical process of expansion or translation of the One into the plural (Brahman, from brih) and of return of the many dharmas into the Dharma at the source that pervades (Visnu, from Vis) all.
Mathematics, physics and biology can therefore be understood as tools to observe and describe the ceaseless rotation of the wheel of Dharma at all levels of manifestation.
Paper presented at inaugural seminar of Bhopal Dharma-Dhamma University, July-August 2012
Notes:
1) Article dharma in wikipedia, last checked on 12 August 2012, 3 p.m.
2) “Virtue, Success, Pleasure and Liberation –The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India” (1993) by Alain Danielou, quoted in Sadhu Vivekjivandas “Hinduism – An Introduction” Part II, (Swaminarayan Aksarpith, Ahmedabad 2010).
3) “Nagarjuna, The Philosophy of the Middle Way”, David Kalupahana, SUNY Press (1986).
4) Jon Lilly: “The miracle is that the universe has created a part of itself meant to study the other part and that this part, by studying itself, ends up finding the rest of the universe in its natural and internal reality” (quoted in “Divine Proportion” by Priya Hemenway, Stirling Publishing House, 2008).
5) “The Secret of Light” (1947) and “The Message of the Divine Iliad” (1948-49) by Walter Russell.
6) “Following the Middle Way”, Alan Watts, podcast.com 2008.08.31, quoted on Wikipedia article Net of Indra, checked on 12 August 2012, 3,30 pm.
Comment:
I am afraid this essay is both confused and confusing.
As I see it, Satya (Truth), Rta (rule) and Dharma (law/duty) -- are different aspects of Sanatana Dharma.
Satya/Truth is the most abstract expression of it.
Rita/rule is spelled out for human understanding
Dharma/law/duty brings the Sanatana Dharma into our daily lives and governs custom and individual behaviour.
Satya is the substance of Brahman, the ultimate and universal reality.
The Buddha, in a time of great conceptual confusion in India, avoided all definitions of ultimate reality by calling it Sunnyata, the creative Emptiness at the source of all Creation.
Gandhi brought the matter into common usage by saying Truth is God.
As I see it, Satya (Truth), Rta (rule) and Dharma (law/duty) -- are different aspects of Sanatana Dharma.
Satya/Truth is the most abstract expression of it.
Rita/rule is spelled out for human understanding
Dharma/law/duty brings the Sanatana Dharma into our daily lives and governs custom and individual behaviour.
Satya is the substance of Brahman, the ultimate and universal reality.
The Buddha, in a time of great conceptual confusion in India, avoided all definitions of ultimate reality by calling it Sunnyata, the creative Emptiness at the source of all Creation.
Gandhi brought the matter into common usage by saying Truth is God.
bhaskar menon
↧
Abu Dhabi cylinder seal, Konar Sandal white marble cylinder seal: metalwork repertoire catalogues, 3rd millennium BCE
Mirror: http://tinyurl.com/pb2xnhj
Thanks to Holly Pittman, DT Potts, Massimo Vidale and Dennys Frenez, who have described the cylinder seals of 3rd millennium BCE from Abu Dhabi (Arabia) and Konar Sandal (Iran), Indus Script hieroglyph multiplexes deployed are identified as rebus-metonymy layered cipher cataloguing metalwork -- in Prakritam. This is mlecchita vikalpa, meluhha cipher.
See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2015/08/bhirrana-to-mehrgarh-and-beyond-in.html "The hypothesis which is validated in historical chronology of peoples’ movements in Eurasia is that Meluhha artisans and merchants of Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization moved to spread the archaeometallurgical initiatives of alloying. They had invented a unique writing system with hieroglyph multiplexes as signifiers to compile metalwork catalogues."
This is consistent with the evidence of Baudhāyana Śrauta Sūtra 18.44:397.9 sqq which records:
Ayu migrated eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas.
This is the Ayava (migration). Amavasumigrated westwards. His (people) are the Ghandhari, Parsu and Aratta.
This is the Amavasu (migration).
See:
https://www.academia.edu/14548989/Bhirrana_to_Mehrgarh_and_beyond_in_the_civilization_contact_areas_from_8th_millennium_BCE
![]()
Map showing the main sites of Middle Asia in the third millennium BC (whorls indicate the presence of Indus and Indus-likeseals bearing multiple heads of different animals arranged in whirl-like motif).
1. Abu Dhabi cylinder seal: Metalwork catalog, smelter
Pittman and Potts, The earliest cylinder seal in the Arabian Peninsula, Arab. arch. epig. 2009: 20: 109-121 (2009)
"A cylinder seal of Late Uruk (late fourth millennium BC) type from Abu Dhabi is presented and analysed. Comparisons with excavated finds from elsewhere in the Near East are discussed. An inventory of cylinder seals from sites in the UAE and the Sultanate of Oman shows that cylinder seal use,while not unknown in the region, was never very great. The ways in which the seal may have arrived at its eventual place of discovery are described and the significance of the seal is assessed...Because a number of examples (Fig. 7) were found at the single-period site of Jamdat Nasr in southern Iraq where, early in the excavation, E.J.H. Mackay found over a dozen seals associated with tablets and sealings, this type was originally associated with the ‘Jamdat Nasr’ horizon (c.3100–2900 BCE) in Mesopotamia. Roger Matthews has suggested that because there were two unfinished seals within the group discovered by Mackay, the Jamdat Nasr examples may have comefrom a seal workshop (Matthews 2002: 17)...The scene consists of two females with pigtails facing each other. Each of themis seated on a low platform, extending both arms, bent upward at the elbow, towards a spider-like figure. Behind the right-facing female (in the impres-sion) is a headless quadruped oriented vertically with its legs bent inwards, accompanied on the left by a second spider-like figure... It has been speculated by many scholars that Mesopotamian contact withsouth-eastern Arabia at this time was stimulated bya desire to acquire copper, and that objects such asthe Jamdat Nasr style jars found in the U.A.E. andOman may have been exchanged for copper ingots(e.g. Potts 1990b: 89–92). If the Abu Dhabi seal wasnot transported to its final resting place thousands of years after its manufacture, it may well have beenamongst a range of goods brought by traders fromsouthern Mesopotamia desirous of obtaining copperto take back to their homeland. Seasonal migration between the mountainous interior and the coast has been well documented for the earlier fifth-millennium BCE population of BHS 18 at Jabal Buhais in the interior of Sharjah. The excavators ‘consider BHS 18a ‘‘base camp’’ where the nomadic population spentthe spring part of its yearly cycle before moving tothe Hajar Mountains in summer and to coastal sitesin winter’. Despite the forbidding nature of the desert of western Abu Dhabi, this kind of movement could well account forthe deposition of a cylinder seal in such a sandy environment, far from the sites where other evidence of contact between Mesopotamia and the communities of south-eastern Arabia c.3000 BC has been found." https://www.academia.edu/1996505/Pittman_and_Potts_2009_The_earliest_cylinder_seal_in_the_Arabian_Peninsula
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Photograph of a modern impression of the seal from Abu Dhabi. Drawing of the scene on the seal from Abu Dhabi (H. Pittman). Exterior surface of the cylinder seal from Abu Dhabi, showingthe drilled and engraved form of a spider-like creature.
Hieroglyph: kuṛī f. ʻ girl, daughter ʼ: kola 'woman' (Nahali. Assamese) *kuḍa1 ʻ boy, son ʼ, °ḍī ʻ girl, daughter ʼ. [Prob. ← Mu. (Sant. Muṇḍari koṛa ʻ boy ʼ, kuṛi ʻ girl ʼ, Ho koa, kui, Kūrkū kōn, kōnjē); or ← Drav. (Tam. kur̤a ʻ young ʼ, Kan. koḍa ʻ youth ʼ) T. Burrow BSOAS xii 373. Prob. separate from RV. kŕ̊tā -- ʻ girl ʼ H. W. Bailey TPS 1955, 65. -- Cf. kuḍáti ʻ acts like a child ʼ Dhātup.] NiDoc. kuḍ'aǵa ʻ boy ʼ, kuḍ'i ʻ girl ʼ; Ash. kūˊṛə ʻ child, foetus ʼ, istrimalī -- kuṛäˊ ʻ girl ʼ; Kt. kŕū, kuŕuk ʻ young of animals ʼ; Pr. kyúru ʻ young of animals, child ʼ, kyurú ʻ boy ʼ, kurīˊ ʻ colt, calf ʼ; Dm. kúŕa ʻ child ʼ, Shum. kuṛ; Kal. kūŕ*l k ʻ young of animals ʼ; Phal. kuṛĭ̄ ʻ woman, wife ʼ; K. kūrü f. ʻ young girl ʼ, kash. kōṛī, ram. kuṛhī; L. kuṛā m. ʻ bridegroom ʼ, kuṛī f. ʻ girl, virgin, bride ʼ, awāṇ. kuṛī f. ʻ woman ʼ; P. kuṛī f. ʻ girl, daughter ʼ, P. bhaṭ.WPah. khaś. kuṛi, cur. kuḷī, cam. kǒḷā ʻ boy ʼ, kuṛī ʻ girl ʼ; -- B. ã̄ṭ -- kuṛā ʻ childless ʼ (ã̄ṭa ʻ tight ʼ)? -- X pṓta -- 1 : WPah. bhad. kō ʻ son ʼ, kūī ʻ daughter ʼ, bhal. ko m., koi f., pāḍ. kuā, kōī, paṅ. koā, kūī. (CDIAL 3245)
Thanks to Holly Pittman, DT Potts, Massimo Vidale and Dennys Frenez, who have described the cylinder seals of 3rd millennium BCE from Abu Dhabi (Arabia) and Konar Sandal (Iran), Indus Script hieroglyph multiplexes deployed are identified as rebus-metonymy layered cipher cataloguing metalwork -- in Prakritam. This is mlecchita vikalpa, meluhha cipher.
See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2015/08/bhirrana-to-mehrgarh-and-beyond-in.html "The hypothesis which is validated in historical chronology of peoples’ movements in Eurasia is that Meluhha artisans and merchants of Sarasvati-Sindhu Civilization moved to spread the archaeometallurgical initiatives of alloying. They had invented a unique writing system with hieroglyph multiplexes as signifiers to compile metalwork catalogues."
This is consistent with the evidence of Baudhāyana Śrauta Sūtra 18.44:397.9 sqq which records:
Ayu migrated eastwards. His (people) are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas.
This is the Ayava (migration). Amavasumigrated westwards. His (people) are the Ghandhari, Parsu and Aratta.
This is the Amavasu (migration).
See:
https://www.academia.edu/14548989/Bhirrana_to_Mehrgarh_and_beyond_in_the_civilization_contact_areas_from_8th_millennium_BCE
Map showing the main sites of Middle Asia in the third millennium BC (whorls indicate the presence of Indus and Indus-likeseals bearing multiple heads of different animals arranged in whirl-like motif).
1. Abu Dhabi cylinder seal: Metalwork catalog, smelter
Pittman and Potts, The earliest cylinder seal in the Arabian Peninsula, Arab. arch. epig. 2009: 20: 109-121 (2009)
"A cylinder seal of Late Uruk (late fourth millennium BC) type from Abu Dhabi is presented and analysed. Comparisons with excavated finds from elsewhere in the Near East are discussed. An inventory of cylinder seals from sites in the UAE and the Sultanate of Oman shows that cylinder seal use,while not unknown in the region, was never very great. The ways in which the seal may have arrived at its eventual place of discovery are described and the significance of the seal is assessed...Because a number of examples (Fig. 7) were found at the single-period site of Jamdat Nasr in southern Iraq where, early in the excavation, E.J.H. Mackay found over a dozen seals associated with tablets and sealings, this type was originally associated with the ‘Jamdat Nasr’ horizon (c.3100–2900 BCE) in Mesopotamia. Roger Matthews has suggested that because there were two unfinished seals within the group discovered by Mackay, the Jamdat Nasr examples may have comefrom a seal workshop (Matthews 2002: 17)...The scene consists of two females with pigtails facing each other. Each of themis seated on a low platform, extending both arms, bent upward at the elbow, towards a spider-like figure. Behind the right-facing female (in the impres-sion) is a headless quadruped oriented vertically with its legs bent inwards, accompanied on the left by a second spider-like figure... It has been speculated by many scholars that Mesopotamian contact withsouth-eastern Arabia at this time was stimulated bya desire to acquire copper, and that objects such asthe Jamdat Nasr style jars found in the U.A.E. andOman may have been exchanged for copper ingots(e.g. Potts 1990b: 89–92). If the Abu Dhabi seal wasnot transported to its final resting place thousands of years after its manufacture, it may well have beenamongst a range of goods brought by traders fromsouthern Mesopotamia desirous of obtaining copperto take back to their homeland. Seasonal migration between the mountainous interior and the coast has been well documented for the earlier fifth-millennium BCE population of BHS 18 at Jabal Buhais in the interior of Sharjah. The excavators ‘consider BHS 18a ‘‘base camp’’ where the nomadic population spentthe spring part of its yearly cycle before moving tothe Hajar Mountains in summer and to coastal sitesin winter’. Despite the forbidding nature of the desert of western Abu Dhabi, this kind of movement could well account forthe deposition of a cylinder seal in such a sandy environment, far from the sites where other evidence of contact between Mesopotamia and the communities of south-eastern Arabia c.3000 BC has been found." https://www.academia.edu/1996505/Pittman_and_Potts_2009_The_earliest_cylinder_seal_in_the_Arabian_Peninsula
Photograph of a modern impression of the seal from Abu Dhabi. Drawing of the scene on the seal from Abu Dhabi (H. Pittman). Exterior surface of the cylinder seal from Abu Dhabi, showingthe drilled and engraved form of a spider-like creature.
Hieroglyph: kuṛī f. ʻ girl, daughter ʼ: kola 'woman' (Nahali. Assamese) *kuḍa
Hieroglyph: spider: kōlika m. ʻ weaver ʼ Yaśast., kaulika -- Pañcat. [EWA i 273 ← *kōḍika -- (in Tam. kōṭikar ʻ weaver ʼ) ~ Mu. word for ʻ spider ʼ in Pk. mak -- kōḍā -- s.v. markaṭa -- ]
Pk. kōlia -- m. ʻ weaver, spider ʼ; S. korī m. ʻ weaver ʼ, koriaṛo m. ʻ spider ʼ; Ku. koli ʻ weaver ʼ, Or. (Sambhalpur) kuli, H. kolī, kolhī m. ʻ Hindu weaver ʼ; G. koḷī m. ʻ a partic. Śūdra caste ʼ; M. koḷī m. ʻ a caste of watercarriers, a sort of spider ʼ; -- G. karoḷiyɔ, karāliyɔ m. ʻ spider ʼ is in form the same as karoḷiyɔ ʻ potter ʼ < kaulālá -- .WPah.kṭg. koḷi m. ʻ low -- caste man ʼ, koḷəṇ, kc. koḷi ṇ f. ʻ his wife ʼ(CDIAL 3535)
Rebus: kolhe 'smelter'; Ta. kol working in iron, blacksmith; kollaṉ blacksmith. Ma. kollan blacksmith, artificer. Ko. kole·l smithy, temple in Kota village. To. kwala·l Kota smithy. Ka. kolime, kolume, kulame, kulime, kulume, kulme fire-pit, furnace; (Bell.; U.P.U.) konimi blacksmith (Gowda) kolla id. Koḍ. kollë blacksmith. Te. kolimi furnace. Go. (SR.) kollusānā to mend implements; (Ph.) kolstānā, kulsānā to forge; (Tr.) kōlstānā to repair (of ploughshares); (SR.) kolmi smithy (Voc. 948). Kuwi (F.) kolhali to forge. (DEDR 2133) P. kolhār m. ʻ oil factory ʼ; Bi. kolhuār ʻ sugarcane mill and boiling house ʼ.(CDIAL 3537)
2. Konar Sandal white marble cylinder seal: metalwork repertoire catalogue
Massimo Vidale and Dennys Frenez, 2015, Indus components in the iconography of a white marble cylinder seal from Konar Sandal South (Kerman, Iran) in: South Asian Studies Vol. 31, No. 1, pp.144-154
"This paper presents a detailed analysis of the iconography carved on a cylinder seal found in a metallurgical sitewithin the archaeological complex of Konar Sandal South, near Jiroft, in the Halil river valley of the Kerman province, south-eastern Iran. This seal is made of a whitish marble and even if heavily worn by use it retainstraces of different animal figures. These animals represent the translation into local style of a rare but characteristic iconography found in the seal production of the Indus Civilization. The merging into a single seal of different animals, some of which clearly belong to the standard animal series of the Indus seals, might have provided theowner with a special authority that allowed him/her to hold different administrative functions. Moreover, the discovery at Konar Sandal South of a cylinder seal bearing an Indus-related iconography might further testify to the direct interest of Indus merchants and probably craftsmen in trade exchanges with a major early urban site in south-eastern Iran."https://www.academia.edu/11850285/Indus_Components_in_the_Iconography_of_a_White_Marble_Cylinder_Seal_from_Konar_Sandal_South_Kerman_Iran_
Photographs of the cylinder seal in white marble found at Konar Sandal South in the excavation of Trench IX. Courtesy of Halil Rud Archaeological Project
Drawing of the animals carved on the cylinder seal found at Konar Sandal South.
"The cylinder seal published by Pittman is 23.97 mm long and has a maximum diameter at the base of 12.42mm. It is made of whitish marble with pale brown shadows...This seal has a zebu depicted in front of a small round object...The main subject of this seal and its iconographic arrangement are clearly Indus, but the engraving technique based on drill-holes links it to the copper seal from Konar Sandal South and with other stamp seals found in Oman, further stressing the intense cultural interactions that occurred between Eastern Arabia, Iran and the Indus Valley during the second half of the third millennium BCE...The second creature is an Indus unicorn...Image 3.3...probably belong to the head of an Indus buffalo...Image 3.4...may represent the long ears of a large, evidently disproportionate, hare or rabbit...Image 3.5...(maybe) a markhor wild goat (Capra folconeri) or a blackbuck antelope (Antilope cervicapra)...Considered all together, these animals may symbolize something more than a simple list or procession, representing instead the physical disembodiment of a concept represented on two similar Indus whirl-like images on stamp seals...In general, the Halil Rud animal imagery more directly linked to the iconography of the Indus civilization suggests a precise knowledge of very important eastern symbols, but also a strategic will of subverting their original implications, adapting them to the local style and tradition. More likely, the cylinder seal found at Konar Sandal South bears the linear translation of a similar rotatory template...The uncommon iconographies with multiple animal heads present in Indus seals production are still a mystery, but the most reasonable addumption is that animals and fantastic creatures represented different identities, social roles, and/or social segment of the developing universe...The white marble cylinder seal on study was found inthe excavation of Trench IX, a large trench (15 x 20 m)dug in a low mound c. 500 m south-east of Konar Sandal South. In the same area, eight furnaces built onceramic jars operated on massive mud-bricks platforms.As stated by the excavator: Close to the furnaces, clear evidence of craft activitywas found including nearly five kilos of copper slag,fragments of ingots, and open molds. In addition, a number of copper and bronze objects and tools suchas chisels, stone vessels in marble, and steatite/chlorite,microlithic tools, and a large number of clay objects possibly connected with pyrotechnical activities havealso been recovered. It was evidently a neighbourhood occupied by a com-munity specialized in roasting and smelting copper ores and casting various types of artefacts in moulds and thorough lost-wax processes...The presence of a cylinder sealbearing a distinctive even if rare – Indus iconographysupports the hypothesis of a specific interest and actualfrequentation of Indus merchants and craftsmen, or of families maintaining formal ties with the Indus communities, in the copper ore deposits of the Kerman-Halilriver region. (Note: Originally put forward in S. Ashtana, 'Harappans interest in Kirman', Man and Environment, 3 (1979), 55-60. See also S. Ashtana, 'Harappan trade in metals and minerals: a regional approach, in Harappan civilization: a recent perspective, ed. by GL Possehl, 2nd edn, New Delhi, Oxford & IBH, 1993, pp. 271-86)."
Hieroglyph: पोळ (p. 534) [ pōḷa ] m A bull dedicated to the gods, marked with a trident and discus, and set at large (Marathi)
Rebus: pōḷa 'magnetite' (metal)
Hieroglyph: koḍiyum ‘young bull’ (G.) koḍ ’horn’ (Kuwi) koṭiyum ‘rings on neck; a wooden circle put round the neck of an animal’ (Gujarati.) खोंडा [khōṇḍā] m A कांबळा of which one end is formed into a cowl or hood (Marathi). kõdā ‘to turn in a lathe’(B.)खोंड (p. 216) [ khōṇḍa ] m A young bull, a bullcalf. कोंडवाड [ kōṇḍavāḍa ] n f C (कोंडणें & वाडा ) A pen or fold for cattle. Rebus: কুঁদ (p. 0238) [ kun̐da ] n a (turner's) lathe kundAr 'workshop of metals turner (mixer of metals to create alloys) or artisan working in a smithy/forge' -- 'a brass-worker, engraver, turner'. कोंद kōnda ‘engraver, lapidary setting or infixing gems’ (Marathi) kũdār ‘turner, brass-worker’(Bengali) খোদকার [ khōdakāra ] n an engraver; a carver (Oriya).
Hieroglyph: combined animals: सांगड (p. 840) [ sāṅgaḍa f A body formed of two or more (fruits, animals, men) linked or joined together. (Marathi)
Hieroglyph multiplex normally shown in front of the one-horned young bull: sãghāṛɔ 'lathe' (Gujarati. Desi). Rebus: sanghāṭa 'collection, binding together, alloying'.
Rebus: Vajra Sanghāta 'binding together': Mixture of 8 lead, 2 bell-metal, 1 iron rust constitute adamantine glue. Vajra sanghāta 'alloying, binding together': Mixture of 8 lead, 2 bell-metal, 1 iron rust constitute adamantine glue. The context is clearly metallic mixing practised on a fire-altar, a furnace/smelter.
Hieroglyph: पोळ (p. 534) [ pōḷa ] m A bull dedicated to the gods, marked with a trident and discus, and set at large (Marathi)
Rebus: pōḷa 'magnetite' (metal)
Hieroglyph: combined animals: सांगड (p. 840) [ sāṅgaḍa f A body formed of two or more (fruits, animals, men) linked or joined together. (Marathi)
Hieroglyph multiplex normally shown in front of the one-horned young bull: sãghāṛɔ 'lathe' (Gujarati. Desi). Rebus: sanghāṭa 'collection, binding together, alloying'.
Rebus: Vajra Sanghāta 'binding together': Mixture of 8 lead, 2 bell-metal, 1 iron rust constitute adamantine glue. Vajra sanghāta 'alloying, binding together': Mixture of 8 lead, 2 bell-metal, 1 iron rust constitute adamantine glue. The context is clearly metallic mixing practised on a fire-altar, a furnace/smelter.
Hieroglyph: sãghāṛɔ 'lathe' (Gujarati. Desi) sangaḍa ‘lathe’ (Marathi) Rebus: जांगड [jāngaḍ] ‘a tally of products delivered into the warehouse ‘for approval’ (Marathi). Rebus: koḍ ’artisan’s workshop’ (Kuwi) cf. खोट [ khōṭa ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge.(Marathi) sãgaḍ, sãghāṛɔ, sangāṭh (part of turner's apparatus, lathe, collection of materials) in languages (Marathi, Gujarati, Kashmiri)
Hieroglyph: Ku. N. rã̄go ʻ buffalo bull ʼ(CDIAL 10559). Rebus: ranku 'tin' (Santali)
Hieroglyph: miṇḍāl markhor (Tor.wali) meḍho a ram, a sheep (G.)(CDIAL 10120) mēṇḍha2 m. ʻ ram ʼ, °aka -- , mēṇḍa -- 4 , miṇḍha -- 2 , °aka -- , mēṭha -- 2 , mēṇḍhra -- , mēḍhra -- 2 , °aka -- m. lex. 2. *mēṇṭha- (mēṭha -- m. lex.). 3. *mējjha -- . [r -- forms (which are not attested in NIA.) are due to further sanskritization of a loan -- word prob. of Austro -- as. origin (EWA ii 682 with lit.) and perh. related to the group s.v. bhēḍra -- ] 1. Pa. meṇḍa -- m. ʻ ram ʼ, °aka -- ʻ made of a ram's horn (e.g. a bow) ʼ; Pk. meḍḍha -- , meṁḍha -- (°ḍhī -- f.), °ṁḍa -- , miṁḍha -- (°dhiā -- f.), °aga -- m. ʻ ram ʼ, Dm. Gaw. miṇ Kal.rumb. amŕ n/aŕə ʻ sheep ʼ (a -- ?); Bshk. mināˊl ʻ ram ʼ; Tor. miṇḍ ʻ ram ʼ, miṇḍāˊl ʻ markhor ʼ; Chil. mindh*l l ʻ ram ʼ AO xviii 244 (dh!), Sv. yēṛo -- miṇ; Phal. miṇḍ, miṇ ʻ ram ʼ, miṇḍṓl m. ʻ yearling lamb, gimmer ʼ; P. mẽḍhā m.,°ḍhī f., ludh. mīḍḍhā, mī˜ḍhā m.; N. meṛho, meṛo ʻ ram for sacrifice ʼ; A. mersāg ʻ ram ʼ ( -- sāg < *chāgya -- ?), B. meṛā m., °ṛi f., Or. meṇḍhā, °ḍā m., °ḍhi f., H. meṛh, meṛhā, mẽḍhā m., G. mẽḍhɔ, M.mẽḍhā m., Si. mäḍayā. 2. Pk. meṁṭhī -- f. ʻ sheep ʼ; H. meṭhā m. ʻ ram ʼ.3. H. mejhukā m. ʻ ram ʼ. A. also mer (phonet. me r) ʻ ram ʼ (CDIAL 10310)
Rebus: meḍh ‘helper of merchant’ (Gujarati) meḍ iron (Ho.) meṛed-bica = iron stone ore, in contrast to bali-bica, iron sand ore (Munda)
Hieroglyph: goat: Ka. mēke she-goat; mē the bleating of sheep or goats. Te. mē̃ka, mēka goat. Kol. me·ke id. Nk. mēke id. Pa. mēva, (S.) mēya she-goat. Ga. (Oll.) mēge, (S.) mēge goat. Go. (M) mekā, (Ko.) mēkaid. ? Kur. mēxnā (mīxyas) to call, call after loudly, hail. Malt. méqe to bleat. [Te. mr̤ēka (so correct) is of unknown meaning. Br. mēḻẖ is without etymology; see MBE 1980a.] / Cf. Skt. (lex.) meka- goat. (DEDR 5087) Rebus: milakkhu 'copper' (Pali)
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Center
August 2, 2015
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Decipherment of Harappa zebu figurine with oval spots: magnetite ingots
Mirror: http://tinyurl.com/o75bok6
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Decipherment of Harappa zebu figurine with oval spots
Slide 33. Early Harappan zebu figurine with incised spots from Harappa.
Some of the Early Harappan zebu figurines were decorated. One example has incised oval spots. It is also stained a deep red, an extreme example of the types of stains often found on figurines that are usually found in trash and waste deposits. Approximate dimensions (W x H(L) x D): 1.8 x 4.6 x 3.5 cm. (Photograph by Richard H. Meadow) http://www.harappa.com/figurines/33.html
The oval spots are shaped like the copper ingots shown on this photograh of Maysar, c. 2200 BCE:
Maysar c.2200 BCE Packed copper ingots INGOTS
mūhā mẽṛhẽt = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each of four ends (Santali)
Decipherment of the Harappa figurine on Slide 33:
पोळ [pōḷa], 'zebu' Rebus: magnetite, citizen.(See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2015/08/zebu-archaeometallurgy-legacy-of-india.html)
mūhā mẽṛhẽt = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each of four ends (Santali)
खोट (p. 212) [ khōṭa ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge. (Marathi)
mūhā mẽṛhẽt = iron smelted by the Kolhes and formed into an equilateral lump a little pointed at each of four ends (Santali)
खोट (p. 212) [ khōṭa ] f A mass of metal (unwrought or of old metal melted down); an ingot or wedge. (Marathi)
The figurine signifies ingots of पोळ [pōḷa], ‘magnetite’. This is a metalwork catalogue message in Indus Script Corpora.
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Center August 4, 2015
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Taming of TASMAC -- MG Devasahayam. Amma should disband TASMAC in Tamil Nadu and save families.
Taming of TASMAC
M.G.Devasahayam [Former Excise & Taxation Commissioner of Haryana)
August 5, 2015
When one looks at the unresponded public outcry in Tamil Nadu against TASMAC liquor these poignant verses in Bob Dylan’s famous song “Blowin’ in the Wind” rings in one’s mind:
“How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see?
How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?”
Why does TASMAC-an innocuous acronym-symbolise so much pain and anguish to the people? Why is it that the state government is not responding?Therein lay the story of the vice-like grip of TASMAC over successive governments in the statemaking the slow-poisoning intoxicant it supplies an essential commodity for 30% of people like fire, police and milk if one goes by a recent judicial pronouncement by the Madras High Court! That makes over two crore adult/adolescent population of Tamil Nadu as liquor addicts!
First, a recap of TASMAC. In 1983 the then chief minister MG Ramachandran formed two corporations-one for wholesale marketing of liquor and another to manufacture it. The marketing arm was called Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) and the manufacturing arm was named Tamil Nadu Spirit Corporation (TASCO). Rationale was to “provide cheap and good quality liquor for those amongst the poor classes who consume."By 1987, TASCO had been abandoned and private companies took over liquor manufacture.
In November 2003, the then chief minister J Jayalalithaa gave TASMAC the monopoly to buy liquor from manufacturers and sell it to consumers. The stated objective was “to completely eliminate the sale of contraband, spurious liquor by organized groups and cartels that affect the health of the liquor consuming public”. TASMAC took off and prospered with its revenues skyrocketing from Rs. 3800 crores in 2003-04 to nearly 30,000 crores in 2014-15 with around 7000 sales outlets located all over the state.
These outlets sell a liquid-spirit called IMFL, which is hard liquor-whisky, brandy, gin, rum-manufactured in the country. It is alcohol produced during the process of redistribution of rectified spirit after addition of chemicals and treatment by activated carbon. Alcohol for human consumption is called potable spirit that should conform to quality standards laid down under law. The maximum strength permitted is 75 degrees proof (London) equivalent of 42.8% alcohol by volume (ABV). Rectified spirit, produced from sugarcane molasses using conventional distillation process, has an ABV of 95.6% and if consumed in raw form can burn out the intestines.
Of late the quality, particularly the ABV of IMFL being peddled by TASMAC has become suspect. On this TASMAC has been secretive. It took Madras High Court to intervene in a PIL recently and order quality check of liquor sold in its outlets. Earlier the sample of a brandy variety had 46% ABV when tested in a Laboratory as against the prescribed standard of 42.86%. It also had sediments in it which could be injurious to health.
The credibility, quality and ABV standard of hard liquor sold in TASMAC vends raise serious concerns due to certain incriminating factors. First and foremost, over a period of time large pan-Indian manufacturers of IMFL who by necessity has to maintain stringent quality and ABV standards have been edged out by TASMAC replacing them with products from local distilleries owned by bigwigs of Tamil Nadu’s ruling and opposition parties. For the latter money-making and not quality is the main motive.
As of now TASMAC sells a mind-boggling 211 varieties/brands of hard liquor produced in eleven distilleries. The procurement process and methodology adopted by TASMAC officials is ridden with favouritism and corruption as revealed in an Economic Times investigative report (January11, 2015): “There is a Purchasing Committee within TASMAC that places the orders and deals with liquor manufacturers. The liquor goes from manufacturer to 41 depots across the state…From these depots, liquor is sent to retail outlets…If a company tells TASMAC officials that they will pay anything between Rs 25 and Rs 50 per case (48 bottles), a deal is struck…Once orders are placed, the liquor goes from that company to the depots…Because this company has paid bribes, the liquor produced by this firm is forced on retailers." Retail managers admit that some ‘vague brands’ are forced on them thereby killing quality brands and replacing them with sub-standard ones.
In such a situation there is no guarantee that ABV standards are being maintained. Cost of this liquor is dependent on the distilling process and the purity of the final product that comes out. The more impure the liquor, the lesser the cost. Purchase price of the most popular ‘quarter’ bottle (180 ml) brandy ranges from Rs. 100/- to Rs. 200/-. It is almost certain that the cheapest brand of brandy/whisky will have ABV much higher than the prescribed standard of 42.86%. Revenue maximization being its sole objective, TASMAC has no concern for quality. There is hardly any testing facility for the consumers and the lone state-owned Kings Institute accepts only selective samples from the manufacturers.
TASMAC’s criminal lack of concern for public health is revealed from this passage from ET’s investigative report: “Twenty eight-year-old Parthiban stops by the local ‘wine shop’, which despite the moniker sells anything but wine, in his autorickshaw. He is in a hurry and asks for the ‘special’-two ‘cuttings’ of a new brand of alcohol locally called ‘Andhra Packet’, a small pouch of spurious liquor costing Rs 20/- each. It was once sold surreptitiously, but has found its way into alcohol retail outlets run by the state government.” One ‘cutting’ of this spurious stuff is enough to make you ‘fly like a rocket’. And many people take two!Being unprocessed rectified spirit with very high ABV it could ‘inflame’ the stomach and severely impact on the brain. Added to this are deep-rooted corruption and unfair practices leading to TASMAC posting a loss of over Rs 100-crore in 2012-13!
TASMAC ‘quarter’ addicts earning Rs. 200/- to 400/- a day have to shell out half their earnings on arasanga sarayam(government liquor). This has shattered the economy, livelihood and health of the low-earning echelons of Tamil society driving them into mendicancy and dependence on charity and freebies given by the state from the very money drained out of these ‘lesser children of God’. The state government has failed to achieve the core objectives-providing cheap and good quality liquor for those amongst the poor classes who consume, eliminating spurious liquor and protecting the health of the liquor consuming public-of establishing TASMAC and handing over to it the monopoly of entire liquor sales.
In the event there is no justification for this leviathan to continue. To start with, in the interest of public health and welfare of the poor, TASMAC should cease and desist from selling hard liquor in its retail vends. There are many healthy and prudent ways to make up the revenue loss and that should not be a constraint. Indeed as Bob Dylan sings: “the answer is blowing in the wind.”
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Terrorist caught alive after attack on BSF convoy in J&K; 2 jawans dead
Published: August 5, 2015 15:43 IST | Updated: August 5, 2015 16:21 IST New Delhi, August 5, 2015
Terrorist caught alive after attack in Udhampur
![The terrorist (in black shirt), who was arrested after a gunbattle on the Jammu- Srinagar highway at Narsoo Nallah, near Udhampur, on Wednesday. Photo: Mani Gupta]( "The terrorist (in black shirt), who was arrested after a gunbattle on the Jammu- Srinagar highway at Narsoo Nallah, near Udhampur, on Wednesday. Photo: Mani Gupta")
Special ArrangementThe terrorist (in black shirt), who was arrested after a gunbattle on the Jammu- Srinagar highway at Narsoo Nallah, near Udhampur, on Wednesday. Photo: Mani Gupta![Soldiers check the body of that terrorist, who was killed after a gunbattle on the Jammu- Srinagar highway at Narsoo Nallah, near Udhampur, on Wednesday. Photo: AP]( "Soldiers check the body of that terrorist, who was killed after a gunbattle on the Jammu- Srinagar highway at Narsoo Nallah, near Udhampur, on Wednesday. Photo: AP")
Soldiers check the body of that terrorist, who was killed after a gunbattle on the Jammu- Srinagar highway at Narsoo Nallah, near Udhampur, on Wednesday. Photo: AP
One terrorist and two BSF jawans were killed in the gunbattle.
One terrorist was killed and another was caught alive on Wednesday after a convoy of security forces was attacked by a group of terrorists on the Jammu-Srinagar highway. Two BSF personnel were killed and 10 others were injured in the attack.
Two other terrorists managed to flee into the forests on hillocks running along the national highway. Three civilians, who were held hostage by the terrorist caught alive, were rescued by the Army.
The terrorists, wearing Army fatigues, attacked a BSF bus in the convoy at Narsu nullah near Samroli.
One of the terrorists tried to force entry into the bus, but CRPF jawan Suresh Kumar of 137 Batallion, part of the convoy, gunned him down, sources said.
The terror attack, which comes nine days after the deadly strike on the Dinanagar police station in Punjab, is not new to the highway in the Jammu region.
Terrorists had carried out back-to-back attacks on the Rajbagh police station in Kathua and an Army camp in adjoining Samba district in March 2014. But this attack is unusual as it has occured in an otherwise peaceful Udhampur district after four years.
In May 2011, terrorists blasted the vehicle of a top Army officer belonging to the Northern Command near Birma Pul in Udhampur.
Meanwhile, all vehicles, including those of the Amarnath yatra, were stopped on the highway as news about the terror attack came in.
More reinforcements were rushed to the area to flush out the two terrorists, who fled into the forests.
The former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, described the attack as a worrysome development. He said it had come after a “very long time” in an area which was “militant-free.”
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/terrorist-involved-in-udhampur-attack-caught-alive/article7503130.ece?homepage=true
Posted at: Aug 5 2015 4:57PM
Terrorist caught alive after attack on BSF convoy in J&K; 2 jawans dead
Rajnath speaks to BSF DG; Omar, Rahul express concern over attack
Injured BSF jawans being taken to a hospital. Inset: Kasim Khan, alias Usman, the terrorist nabbed in Udhampur on Wednesday. —ANI
The arrested terrorist Kasim Khan in police custody. Picture from Army sourcesUdhampur, Aug 5
Militants today attacked a BSF convoy on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway in Udhampur killing two jawans of the border guarding force and injuring 11 others, while one of the two terrorists involved in the strike was shot dead in retaliatory fire and the other arrested.The militant, who had taken three persons hostage in a school in a village near the area, was arrested after an operation was launched by the Army and the police, Deputy Commissioner, Udhampur, Shahid Iqbal Chaudhary said.
All the hostages have been freed and the operation has ended, he said.
The captured terrorist is believed to be 16 years old.
The militant strike was the first in Udhampur district in over a decade coming days after terrorists attacked Dinanagar Police Station in Gurdaspur in Punjab.
“There was firing on a BSF convoy on the highway near Samroli by militants early this morning,” Chaudhary said.
Two BSF jawans were killed and 11 personnel were injured, IG, BSF (Jammu Frontier), Rakesh Kumar said.
The militants hurled grenades and opened indiscriminate fire on the convoy when it reached Nassu belt on its way from Jammu to Srinagar, IG Jammu, Danish Rana said, adding that the BSF jawans retaliated, killing one of the two militants.
The injured jawans have been taken to a hospital, he said, adding a massive combing operation has been launched by the Army and the police in and around the area which has been cordoned off. Vehicular movement on the highway has been stopped due to the incident.
Reacting to the attack, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said, “Those behind such attacks very well know that their terror designs won’t be running for long in India. That is why they are doing all such kinds of activities.”
The government and the security forces were doing their best to tackle such evil designs and “without a doubt the country’s respect, honour and the people’s security is the government’s topmost priority,” he said in Delhi.
Congress leader Ambika Soni said, “Ever since the new government has come in, there have been attacks happening every day. It is impossible for people to live on the border along Rajouri, Poonch and other areas that touch Pakistan.” Soni, who is Congress in-charge for Jammu and Kashmir, said her party wants to know on what basis the government was having talks with Pakistan.
“Is there accountability on the side of person, party or entity who is violating ceasefire agreements and polluting the atmosphere for talks of peace. Not at all. So we should know,” Soni said.
A convoy carrying Amarnath pilgrims had already crossed the area on the highway when the militants attacked the BSF convoy.
Lt Gen Subrata Saha, GOC, 15 Corps, expressed confidence that the Army will be able to pre-empt attempts by terrorists to infiltrate across the border into India.
So far this year, 17 terrorists have been eliminated while trying to infiltrate, he said. “So I am hopeful that this trend will continue and we will be able to maintain this, and this is important,” he said, adding that “some deft changes” have been carried out to pre-empt infiltration attempts.
Infiltration, Saha said, has been curbed due to efforts to the soldiers on the ground, improved surveillance grid and a good intelligence network.
Giving details about the incident, Chaudhary, DC, Udhampur, said one of the two militants escaped from the encounter site.
He was later arrested from a school building in a nearby hamlet.
“The hostages taken by the militant have been freed,” he said, adding that no student was present in the school in the wake of a call for a strike over the demand for setting up an AIIMS in the region.
Meanwhile, BSF Director-General D K Pathak has rushed to Jammu from Delhi to take stock of the security situation in the wake of the terror attack in Udhampur.
Officials said Pathak is rushing to Udhampur, leaving midway the five-day DG-level talks with their eastern counterparts Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) who are presently here for the annual bilateral meeting between the two sides.
Rajnath Singh speaks to BSF DG
NEW DELHI: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday said he had spoken to Border Security Force (BSF) Director-General D.K. Pathak with regard to the attack on a BSF convoy near Udhampur, and said both the BSF and CRPF have launched a counter-operation against the attackers.
“Spoke to DG BSF Shri DK Pathak regarding the attack on convoy near Udhampur. BSF and CRPF have launched an operation against the attackers,” he tweeted.
“1 terrorist has been killed by our forces and the search is on for others. My condolences to the families of jawans who died in this attack,” he added.
Omar expresses concern over attack
SRINAGAR: Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today said the attack on the BSF convoy was a “worrying development” as the area had remained free from militancy for a long time.
“An attack on this stretch of the NH (National Highway) after a very long time. Worrying development because area was militant free,” Omar wrote on micro-blogging site Twitter.
The attack, which comes days after terror struck Dinanagar of Punjab, is the first in the district in over a decade.
Udhampur was one of the four districts of Jammu and Kashmir from where the Omar Abdullah-led state government wanted the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to be revoked citing considerable improvement in the situation.
The other districts were Srinagar and Budgam in Kashmir Valley and Jammu district in Jammu region.
Attack on BSF extremely worrying: Rahul
NEW DELHI: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi today described as “extremely worrying” the loss of lives in the militant attack.
“Days after the Gurdaspur attack, militant attack on a BSF convoy in Udhampur is extremely worrying,” he tweeted. The incident took place on the Jammu-Srinagar highway.
“My condolences to the families of the brave jawans who were martyred,” he added. — (With inputs from agencies)
http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/jammu-kashmir/terrorist-caught-alive-after-attack-on-bsf-convoy-in-j-k-2-jawans-dead/115833.html
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