Kyrgyzstan's Roza Revolution : F. William Engdahl

http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/print/Kyrgyzstan%20Part%20I.pdf
This author is astonishingly good. One of the first five or six names on any blogroll I compile.

Get to know ;)

why you should know who Monsanto is

Why the world should know who Monsanto is
and what it does.  The short answer is: everyone eats.
I'm bringing this issue here because, although Monsanto is a US company, they are attempting to "take root" in every country in the world that grows anything edible or useful.  They get patents on seeds that grow crops, sometimes not even based on their own work, but always with the goal of controlling an ever-increasing percentage of the world's food supply.
In addition to Monsanto, there is also DuPont. and a French company called Aventis, but Monsanto is the biggest and worst.

Everyone should look closely at the agricultural and food safety laws and policies where ever you live.  Politicians get bribed or influenced with promises of increased production and may overlook the "catch" that comes from allowing any Monsanto or other genetically modified food to worm its way in.
The Future Of Food

A Donkey With Holy Books

"A donkey with a load of holy books
is still a donkey."

 what does that Sufi quote mean to you ?

 

 

To me this means a number of things. Firstly  even if a man reads or believe a certain book - if he is unable to interpret the information & may not be capable of understanding it - not to mention practice.

It tells me to chose my teachers / spiritual leaders wisely.

It tells me some people will never grow and develop.

It tells me if an illiterate person with no other experience is given a Holy book it will be of no advantage to him without a good teacher .

Examples of Donkeys would be Westboro Church & Mullahs of Iran :) there are many,  many more .    keeping people uninformed and ignorant makes them easier to manipulate.         

How does one avoid being a donkey  following other donkeys ?

 

 

Little Brother » News

http://craphound.com/littlebrother/
Cory Doctorow is the author of several novels, two short story collections, and a forthcoming book of essays. He is the co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing, and the former European Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group that works to keep cyberspace free.

Little Brother is his first novel for young adults, and he hopes it'll inspire you to use technology to make yourself more free.


What's Little Brother about?
Marcus, a.k.a “w1n5t0n,” is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school’s intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.

But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they’re mercilessly interrogated for days.

When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.


The book can be downloaded for free and it can be bought as a printed book.

interaction"/>

Middle East / Israel / Palestine Resources

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres5/wujshasbara.pdf
This is a collection of useful links I've found recently (and previously), in my efforts to gain an objective understanding of modern political 'Zionism', the relevant history and religious belief, and Israel's relationship with Palestine. This list is by no means exhaustive, and you are welcome to add to it in the replies. I've focused mostly on Israel here, and I'm sure there are plenty of websites explaining the Islamic side?

The key problem with this topic, for someone like me, is that whoever you ask, whoever you read, everyone has some kind of bias. I gather there are twelve tribes of Israel (not all Jewish) who were exiled, became the diaspora and basically returned there in about 1948. And that's where it gets more tricky to study without opinions getting in the way.

Lead link is a pdf of the 'Hasbara Handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus'. Thanks to the guy who gave me that yesterday... see you around here soon I hope.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917#Text_of_the_declaration

http://www.eretzyisroel.org/

http://www.mideastweb.org/mewgroups.htm

http://www.mossad.gov.il/Eng/About/History.aspx

http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/

http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/zionism/history.cfm

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hizballah.htm

http://www.nkusa.org/

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/nk.html

Media Matters: America

http://mediamatters.org/
Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation — news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda — every day, in real time.


... (RP) This reminds me of the old 'Fox Attacks'. So sad that it's necessary... but I guess this is a large part of what we're here for! A little partisan of me, but I'm very glad to know such a service exists. If the news and history are being tampered with, and we're being fed a load of propaganda, it's wonderful to know that anyone with internet access and a brain to think, has tools ready at their fingertips to instantly combat that misinformation. Thanks Jan ;)

An Australian's Take on Election 2010 (Part One)

http://vin495.multiply.com/journal/item/281
Did you know Australia were going to the polls? No, neither did I until I read this about a week ago.

I've been saying for a while I'd like to see more Asia/Australasia/Pacific posts in here...

Here's part two:

http://vin495.multiply.com/journal/item/282/Election_2010_The_Campaign_Part_2


Thanks Vinnie. Hope you don't mind the plug.

This is a Racism Test

This is a Racism Test ...... 
  
  
Do you like him any better now?



    No?



   Me neither.........


    Then you're not a racist.  

Reminder: Donate Here to Pakistan Flood Crisis

http://www.insaf.pk/Welfare/PakistanFloodVictims/tabid/237/Default.aspx
You will also find a more complete blog on this in the Journal section, but donations can be made at either link - they are the same. I didn't think it would hurt to post it again.

WHERE IS PARK 51 (photo blog)

Yes folks - I said Park 51 not Area 51

A few photos of stuff the same distance from the World Trade Center 

as the “Ground Zero Mosque”:

"at Ground Zero" – Sarah Palin

“steps away from where radical Islamists killed 3000 people” – Sarah Palin

“just a stone’s throw away from 9/11’s sacred ground”- Sarah Palin

“at the doorstep of a site where terrorists invoking the name of Islam killed 3,000 Americans” –Wall Street Journal editorial

“on that particular site” – Michael Goodwin

“so close to Ground Zero” – Claudia Rosett

“over Ground Zero” – Andrea Peyser

“at a place where Islamic terrorists killed more than 2,700 innocent people” – William McGurn

“overlooking the site where radical Islamists killed almost 3,000 people in a shocking act of hatred” – Newt Gingrich

 “right at ground zero” – Rudy Giuliani

“In the shadow of the World Trade Center” – Abe Foxman

“in what would have been the shadows of the Twin Towers” – Rod Dreher

 

[click the thumbs to ENLARGE in a new window]
To refudiate or not to refudiate?
"Sarah Palin raised linguists` eyebrows this weekend when she urged Muslims to "refudiate" a controversial mosque -- then defended her garbled English as Shakespearean.
The darling of the Republican right coined the word Sunday in a Tweet criticizing plans for a mosque at Ground Zero in New York.
At first Palin appeared embarrassed, deleting the message on her Twitter page and replacing it with a call for Muslims to `refute` the plan, this time using a real word.

The Rise of The Far Right in Europe: Hungary's Jobbik and the Roma

As most here no doubt know, far-right political parties including the British National Party did quite well at the last Euro elections, winning more seats than anticipated, enough to give them a more audible voice in Europe.  At the time, many here in Britain voted that way as a protest against the recession and the growing number of jobs going to foreign workers, and against immigration in general under a centre-left Labour government which had by now all but breathed its' dying breath.  I suspect many of those voters would not do so again, seeing now where it could lead - and although almost all of us are too young to remember the last time such a party gained power in Europe, we all know something of the history.  And nobody but the most die-hard Nationalists really want that.

Two things inspired this post.  Monday this week, I was in the group 'British Politics', where one such BNP-voter had posted an explanation, not perfect I thought, but fairly well presented, of his views on his own racial heritage, the background that informs his political views.  Fair enough, to my mind.  I will hear anyone's point of view whether I agree with them or not, provided they can come up with rational arguments and give evidence as to why they think this or that.  To summarise what he said, and he was clear it was a broad overview - he sees three significant 'racial groups' in Europe, which he splits into north and south.  Himself an 'Odinist', he identifies as 'Germanic'.  The other two he named were 'Gaul', or Gallic, and 'Latini', the latter including of course the Romans (the focus was the racial make-up of Britain) having mixed with the Islamic Moorish invasion to the south.  I was content that at least he had thought about it and reached an opinion - but I was left wondering about Slavs and Basques and Celts and so on.  He's in here, welcome to elaborate if there are any questions - but this isn't a partisan blog with the intent of calling him out for a duel.

Yesterday, another member of this group posted elsewhere, on France's immigration policy, specifically the deportation of 'gypsies', otherwise known as the Roma people, from Romania and other countries to the east.  Western Ukraine and Hungary have Roma minorities, I know.  Here, I was left questioning how France can do this, when an EU member-state's residents are free to travel and work anywhere else within the EU, with no visa.  Again, I am not challenging the author, just writing it all down really, in hope that some discussion will be generated and I can learn further.

The latter of these two posts reminded me of Jobbik - Hungary's far-right political party, closely allied with the BNP.  I had read back in about April that the Roma, as well as Jews, were being persecuted there.  I understand that Jobbik are not actually in power (I forget the name of the party that is - I don't read Hungarian so well), but still, their uniformed militia, the Magyar Garda, march through Roma villages 'creating an atmosphere of hatred', with their chosen scapegoats as the focal point. 

Jobbik claim their name has been slandered, that they stand against 'gypsy crime', not the people themselves, and that they are not anti-Semitic but against 'Israeli colonizers'.

Here follow some links, including Jobbik's own site, for you to digest. 

I've reproduced The Times' article in full.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7094767.ece

http://www.politics.hu/20100322/hungarian-guard-block-roma-from-jobbik-rally

http://www.jobbik.com/index.php?news=3162

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_G%C3%A1rda

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/28071-jobbiks-anti-roma-crusade

Far-right party Jobbik makes breakthrough in Hungarian elections

A far-right party, with candidates that have voiced anti-Semitic and anti-Gypsy rhetoric, achieved a breakthrough last night in Hungarian elections, entering Parliament for the first time and finishing a strong third just behind the governing Socialists.

Jobbik, which has a uniformed wing that marches in military formation, made its gains at a time of a deep economic downturn and sour resentment that the former wunderkind of Central Europe is now the regional laggard.

The opposition centre-right Fidesz party won a landslide victory with more than 52 per cent of the vote, well ahead of the 19.3 per cent cast for the Socialists — who have presided over rising unemployment and harsh aust-erity measures under the terms of an IMF loan.

Fidesz, which last ruled between 1998 and 2002, has promised to create a million jobs over the next decade by tackling corruption, reforming a Byzantine tax system and reducing the black economy. It will be a gargantuan task.

Viktor Orban, Fidesz’s charismatic leader and the country’s next Prime Minister, last night declared that Hungarians had voted to "defeat hopelessness".

"I feel it with all my nerves, and know it deep in my heart, that I face the biggest task of my life," he told supporters.

However, there are fears that the strong showing by Jobbik, which has seen gains mirroring other far-right groups in Europe, could weaken investor confidence and deepen the country’s crisis.

Which may account for a stream of recent stories attacking Jobbik. The party’s spokesman Andras Kiraly resigned after pictures of him at the Toronto Gay Pride parade appeared on the internet, and a female member of the Magyar Garda, the party’s uniformed organisation, was revealed to have starred in a lesbian pornographic film.

"This is a battle for the undecided voters but we are getting stronger and stronger," said spokesman Zsolt Varkonyi. Mr Varkonyi said Jobbik is being slandered. It is not against Roma, only Roma criminals, and is not anti-Semitic but opposes "Israeli colonisers".

The rise of Jobbik, which is allied to the British National Party (BNP) in the European Parliament, also coincides with a surge in racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

The Roma Gypsy minority are being targeted as scapegoats across Europe, said George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier and philanthropist. "There is no question that the crisis that hits people unexpectedly ... gets them angry and they want to take it out on someone," he said.

Despite being elected on a platform of social justice, the Socialists have allowed large parts of eastern Hungary to become an economic wasteland, while the situation of the Roma has further deteriorated, inflaming social tensions, say analysts.

"This is a supposedly leftist Government but over the past eight years the gap between rich and poor has drastically widened," said Gergely Böszörményi NagyGergely Borszomeny-Nagy, of the Perspective Institute, a think-tank.

"The Socialist Party has no serious vision for the country and has failed in its responsibilities. It is primarily a collection of different economic interest groups, based on their networks of contacts from the communist era."

The country’s new government faces a daunting task.

With unemployment standing at 11 per cent, inflation is almost 6 per cent. The economy shrank by 6.3 per cent in 2009 and harsh austerity measures have been implemented under the terms of an IMF standby loan of €20 billion in 2008.

Corruption has flourished under a governing class of both left and right, that like their Communist predecessors, regards public funds as their personal piggy- bank.

The current sour mood is far cry from the halcyon days of the 1990s.

Hungary’s reputation for skilled and talented workers has attracted more than €60 billion in foreign investment, the highest rate per capita in the region.

Many were lured by Hungary’s dazzling scientific and cultural heritage which has helped shape the modern world. Its scientists have won more than a dozen Nobel prizes, and its inventors have brought the world nuclear weapons and Vitamin C, the helicopter and carburettor. But a once dazzling education system now churns out graduates who are poorly equipped to compete in the global economic marketplace, say critics. Managers at western multi- national companies frequently complain that it is extremely difficult to recruit graduates with an adequate command of English, especially in comparison with neighbouring countries.

Jobbik draws much of its support from the young and is especially strong in many universities. The party has a slick, multi-national internet presence and has successfully sidestepped both the traditional political establishments and the mass media.

Unable to find work, many young people find refuge in an angry patriotism. But that is a meagre defence against the global economic recession.

The legacy of Communism still shapes many Hungarians' mental attitudes, says Miklos Feher, a business executive and life coach.

"Those values are still widespread, that there has to be big, godlike state to take care of everybody and solve everyone's problems. There is a sense that people have not grown up, and some of my clients think I will tell them what to with their father, or whether or not to get divorced, instead of deciding themselves. But at the same time young people distrust anything to do with power. So there is that contradiction."

   

Blair's Donation of Book Proceeds to RBL

Blair's donation of his book's royalties to the RBL is...?

The right thing to do, an honest gesture

 

 1

A cynical ploy for forgiveness

 

 2

As good as an admission of guilt

 

 0

Great PR, should sell even more books

 

 2

Other... please specify

 

 1

I think I'm a day late with this.  Oh well, such is life, working nights.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10995042

Jan posted here about a week ago, suggesting Tony Blair could be prosecuted under laws governing the making of profit from crime.  Now, a twist in the tale.  Have his spin doctors come to the same conclusion?



The former PM, in which capacity he sent British troops into no fewer than six war zones, has already pledged in the region, I believe, of £5m to the Royal British Legion and promises proceeds from his new autobiography also, to benefit the wounded upon returning home.  Some papers, such as Wigan Today, have gone as far as to call for a boycott of the book, and families of those killed and injured in conflict have expressed anger.

Let us know what you make of this, on the poll.

ABCs Test of Radical Islam and Challenge to Ground Zero Mosque Leaders: Answer 3 Questions

The time has come to define Radical Islam. Please ask your local mosque, Islamic Shool, and Islamic organization to clearly, unambiguously and publically denounce the following concepts: 

Apostates killing

Beating women and stoning women to death for adultery

Calling Jews pigs and monkeys.

Declaring war on Non Muslims to spread Islam after offering Non Muslims three options – subjugate to Islam, pay Jizia (a humiliating tax), or be killed.

Enslavement of Other Human Beings.

Fighting and killing Jews before the “End of Days”.

Gay killing.

A true moderate person or organization must be able to immediately denounce the above concepts and stand publicly and unambiguously against them.

The Muslim world must not expect the world to call Islam peaceful as long as they teach and promote the above teaching.

A clear stand is needed from leading Islamic Scholars all iover the world against the above ABCs.

Source By: Tawfik Hamid

 

Also from the same author as above:

Challenge to Ground Zero Mosque Leaders: Answer 3 Questions

One test would be to ask mosque leaders to request that Saudi Arabian leaders reciprocally allow churches and synagogues to be built in their country.

A second test would be to ask questions that would clarify if the mosque's proponents are truly moderates or in fact jihadist radicals disguised as moderates. Americans who defend the building of this mosque could ask the mosque's Islamic proponents to publicly post to the media and on their websites answers to the following questions:

1. Islamic law (Shariah) states that Muslims who convert to Christianity must be killed (Redda Law), women in adulterous relationships must be stoned to death, men can beat their wives to discipline them, and homosexuals should be killed.

Are you willing to recommend that these traditional Muslim practices be banned and to condemn countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran which accept such practices as religiously mandated?

2. Several Muslim texts declare that Jews are pigs and monkeys and that killing Jews before "end days" is a religious duty for Muslims.

Are you willing to declare that these texts must be changed and/or reinterpreted and that Islamic teaching of such anti-Semitic values must stop?

3. Muslim texts that are approved by all the schools of jurisprudence in Islam (Shafeii, Hanbali, Maleki, and Hanafi) state that Muslims must declare wars against non-Muslims to spread Islam and those they conquer must either convert to Islam, pay Jizya (a humiliating tax), or be killed.

Are you willing to declare that this belief, used in "Foutohhat Islameia," the early wars to spread Islam, and praised currently in much of the Muslim world, is un-Islamic and unacceptable?

Mosque leaders issue statements such as, "Islam is the religion of peace," "Islam respects freedom of religion," "Islam is the religion that gave them their rights," or "Islam is not anti-Semitic." Their answers to the questions above about Shariah teachings would clarify if it would be unfair to call these leaders jihadist Islamic radicals, or if in fact their statements about Islam are misleading propaganda.

Knowledge is power !! - Testing times again and again !!

http://jmk2b.multiply.com/journal/item/125/Testing_times_again_and_again_
Our friend and member from Pakistan Arsalan (jm2kb) is raising funds to help the victims of the disastrous flood in Pakistan. It is a very direct way to give them support here.

How The $$$ is Controlled From London

http://whale.to/b/mullins1.html#CHAPTER_SIX_The_London_Connection_
This is chapter six of Eustace Mullins' 'Secrets of the Federal Reserve', entitled 'The London Connection'. A contemporary group on Multiply which runs parallel to this one and shares many of the same members, has it that this is the very text which the term 'conspiracy theory' was invented to counter. I've been asking many, yet simple questions on this topic lately - when we refer to 'the bankers' and the architects of this financial mess the world is in, who do we mean? Few seem to know exactly. So I went and found out.
I also intend to apply the same technique to the world's mainstream media. I've seen the Youtube videos and heard the cries that 'Zionists' control the press... but do they? Is Rupert Murdoch one? I will not start out with a premise and attempt to prove it correct, I am only interested in plain facts.
As for the bankers... all roads nowadays seem to lead back to Rothschild, but it has become clear to me that the history of how the Rothschild banking family came to be in this position is long, and it was not always so. Even Jesus of Nazareth reportedly clashed with 'The Money Changers' in Solomon's Temple. The history of money, and who controlled it, is modern human history. Of Kings and Queens, The Church and governments, of wars and revolutions.

I am left wanting to read more deeply into European history; The Rennaisance, The Jacobins, French Revolution, Tudors and Stuarts, Oliver Cromwell, The Roman Empire and so on...

I may be some time!



Pic: Timothy Geithner, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, now President Obama's Secretary of The Treasury.

Converting the Kaffir: Islam at swordpoint

It’s a very, very common thing expressed by the Great Indian Muddle Class, which, as I’ve mentioned before, is reflexively anti-Muslim; the idea that Muslims want the non-Muslim world, specifically the Hindus, to be converted to Islam at the point of a sword (or at the point of a nuclear warhead, or whatever the weapon of choice may be).

The idea is that the Muslims cannot live alongside Hindus (for the Great Indian Muddle Class, Hindus are always victims) in peace because their religion compels them to convert any and all non-Muslims to Islam by any and all means possible.

By that “any and all means possible”, incidentally, I mean the hilarious notion that personable Muslim guys are going on a “love jihad” (yes, you got that right, “love jihad”; I did not make it up) to seduce innocent Hindu maidens and convert them to Islam. So we’d better add penis-point to the list. But still, sword/equivalent point is the preferred method, and has always been so. The Muslim wants the kaffir to cease to exist, don’t you know.

Is that the truth?

Now, I’m not going to go into what the Koran says on the subject, for two excellent reasons:

First, what a religious book says is open to just about any interpretation anyone cares to put on it, and in a millennium and a half of translation and interpretation and re-interpretation, most of the original meaning is inevitably distorted to the point where you can’t begin to recognise it.

And, secondly, because what a religious book says has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the adherents of that religion, whether those actions are justified by said religious book or not.

No, I’ll go for much more direct evidence.

As the Hindu Muddle Class itself says (in fact, as the Hindu Right makes a great song and dance about), most of the Indian Subcontinent – and all of its most populous northern, western and central parts – were under Muslim rule for getting on for seven hundred years.

The first Muslims arrived within years of the Prophet Muhammad’s starting of the religion, in the shape of Arab traders, but the real Muslim presence in the subcontinent came in the form of the incursions by Afghan warlords in the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially Mahmud of Ghazni, who made repeated raids into Northern India. Did this rapacious warrior and plunderer stay to convert the heathen? No, he took his loot and went back home...again and again and again.

Later on, the Afghans (and Turks) returned in more permanent fashion, setting up a kingdom in North India centred on Delhi, known as the Delhi Sultanate. This kingdom was ruled over by a succession of Afghan and Turkic Muslim dynasties, and eventually fragmented as provincial bosses declared independence when they had the opportunity, and formed their own Muslim kingdoms. Finally, the Islamicised Mongols under a young khan named Babur came down from Afghanistan in 1526, whipped (with the aid of that hitherto unknown military innovation, artillery) the (Muslim) Lodhi king of Delhi, Ibrahim, at Panipat and, but for a brief (Afghan) Suri Dynasty interregnum from 1540-55, ended the Sultanate once and for all.

That was the beginning of the Mughal (a corruption of Mongol) Empire, which ruled over most of North, West and Central India until its power began to wane in the first half of the eighteenth century, and hung on in titular fashion until the British dissolved it permanently in 1857 by imprisoning the last Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, and murdering his sons after they had surrendered.

Therefore, for a period of seven hundred years, that part of India which mattered most, population wise, was under Muslim rule. Some of these Muslim rulers were highly tolerant and enlightened; one, the Mughal Emperor Akbar, created his own synthetic religion, called Din-e-Elahi, but found few takers except for his ministers including the (Hindu) court jester, Birbal. Most were rather indifferent to religion, leaving well enough alone. A few were anti-Hindu to the point of psychosis; the Turkish Khilji Sultan Ala-ud-din promulgated a decree ordering Hindus to open their mouths so Muslims could spit into them. Good or bad or indifferent, they ruled over most of the subcontinent for centuries.

Now, don’t you think that if there was any truth to the idea of forceful Muslim conversion, the territories these men (and a couple of women), Afghans, Mongols, or others ruled over would have been thoroughly cleansed of Hinduism in all these years? Even if some of them protected the rights of their Hindu subjects, others who were frankly haters of the idolatrous infidels of the land would surely have done their utmost to erase their religion from the face of the earth?

So what happened when the British took over from the Mughals? Did they rule over an overwhelmingly Muslim land? Did they hell. Only a third of the population they controlled was Muslim – the rest was overwhelmingly Hindu.

Those Muslims, by the way, were everywhere: even those parts of the subcontinent which were never under Muslim rule, at any time, whether the far south (the Tamils) or the extreme east (the Manipuris) had many of their people convert to Islam.

Conversion at the point of a sword, was it, now?

The facts speak for themselves: conversion from Hinduism was entirely a voluntary affair, mostly occurring among the vast oppressed masses at the bottom end of the Hindu caste system. They thought of Islam as they had thought, in earlier centuries, of Buddhism, and as they would think later of Christianity: as a means of escape from the terrible inequities of the Hindu caste system. Of course, there were those who converted because they thought that a change of religion to that of the ruling dynasty would bring them closer to the source of patronage, but that’s true of any feudal system, and India has always been feudal to its roots. But the overwhelming mass of the converts away from Hinduism have always been from the lowest castes; right from the time of Siddhartha Gautama and his Buddhism to the Baptist missionaries in the forest villages of Central India today; and it has virtually always been entirely voluntary.

In fact, I’d say that if the Muslim rulers had really been so hell-bent on converting Hindus at sword-point, there wouldn’t have been many Great Indian Hindu Muddle Class members left to castigate Muslims today, and none of them would have been from the home of Indian Hindu fascism: the north and west of the country.

Put that in your hookah and smoke it.


Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Jihad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_of_Ghazni

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Panipat_%281526%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Din-i-Ilahi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alauddin_Khilji

Nobody Messes With London Traffic Wardens

...not even Qatari Royals, visiting their new acquisition, Harrods, sold to them by Mohamed Le Fayed, who can now concentrate on his football club, and calling the Queen a crocodile.

Not even a sky-blue Lamborghini Murcielago and a Koenigsegg CCXR, or something, apparently worth £1.2m, can phase the clamp-happy, baby-eating, uniform-fetishists.

Any given day, I think most of us who have had any experience of them would rather they didn't exist, and congestion charges, speed cameras, the whole package where the motorist is victimised to make the government a few quid and keep a few more overpaid, undereducated civil servants in their desk jobs.

But this did make me smile.

Now, could you imagine them doing this to Prince Andrew...?

Do they do this where you live?

Why Church and State Should Remain Seperate: Exhibit A

Oldie but a goodie... saw this around while I was away from Multiply earlier this year.  Sorry if its a re-post.  Yeah, of course it's edited so the producers used the best bits, and they're not ALL like that... are they? 




We have a few of our own like these in Britain unfortunately, just fundamentalist religion hasn't infiltrated our political system to quite such an extent, at least not overtly.  'England's' relationship with the Roman Church is another thread... you could fill this group ten times over with that.

Citizens should be required to pass an exam before being allowed to vote? 
Just an idea.

This is not America-bashing, religion-bashing, nor even an attempt to remind everyone Stateside why it might not be a great idea to vote for Glenn Beck should the opportunity arise; my sole purpose is to postulate that Church and State remain seperate. 

I wish the parrots who think in terms of 'Lib' and 'Rep' would think laterally a little more and realise that the main options presented are both controlled by the same Machine.  The identity of the President - and I'm only posting on US Politics at all because I'm that exasperated with how repetitive and narrow it all is, and I've only been back since mid-June - yes, the identity of the President, or which party, hardly matters anymore.  The same private agenda continues regardless.

Calling any on the centre or 'right' of American politics who have a few more braincells than some of the people in this video?  A little more intelligent dissent around here, often on issues that actually originate from beyond your great nation's shores... now that would be great!

I do hope such people exist.  I'm told we are 'biased'.  Not that we operate according to a dogma given to us by a supreme being we've never met, or anything, but I do try... can only counteract that criticism with YOUR help.

If you believe Church and State should not be seperate, pray tell? 

America's Nuclear History - National Catholic Reporter, 2007

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_29_43/ai_n19360865/


"...in my research on American military history since the end of World War II, I have repeatedly encountered instances where the U.S. military contemplated the use of nuclear weapons in situations where the "enemy" not only lacked these weapons, but even lacked major air power... on 19 occasions after the U.S. bombing of Japan in 1945 and not counting the recent threat to Iran, the United States contemplated the use of nuclear weapons..."

"In December 1950, as Gen. Douglas MacArthur rolled toward the border between North Korea and China, he submitted a list of "retaliation targets" for which he desired 34 atomic weapons. In an interview published posthumously, MacArthur declared, "I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs ... strung along the neck of Manchuria." This would have created "a belt of radioactive cobalt" from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea. "For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the North."


With thanks to Bill...

Rmx

$5,000 Dollars - The Price of a Life (£3,150 or 3800 Euros)

 

is it an insult ?

Is it better than nothing ?

Is it more than all the other victims received in the almost daily killings of innocents ?

Is it an admission of guilt ?

 

 

Germany to Pay $5,000 Each for Civilians Killed in Kunduz Attack

Jason Ditz

August 6, 2010

Military Won't Admit Guilt and Insists Payment Is Voluntary

After several months of negotiations, the German government has finally come to terms with a compensation deal that most of the families of the 102 civilians killed in a September 2009 Kunduz air strike appear to be satisfied with.

Under the deal the German military will pay $5,000 each, or a total of about half a million dollars, to he families of the victims. They emphasize, however, that the payment is not an acknowledgment of guilt for the killings, but was purely voluntary.

In early September, a German colonel ordered a US air strike against a pair of hijacked and immobilized fuel tankers, claiming they were a "threat." They also assured the US war plane that no civilians were anywhere near the site. The US attack led to a fireball that killed a massive number of civilians, who were said to be siphoning fuel out of the tanks at the time.

The attack and the failed cover-up of Bundeswehr culpability was something of an eye opener for Germany, as the government had heretofore denied that there was even a war going on in Afghanistan, let alone one where German forces were getting large numbers of civilians killed. The resulting politcal turmoil led to the resignation of a number of key German military and governmental officials.

While some of the victims’ families were pleased to see at least something happen nearly a year after the killings, a number of lawyers expressed annoyance that the Bundeswehr declared the situation outside of the negotiations and reportedly went behind their back in testing the waters for the deal. Since no culpability was admitted, some say they expect clients will want to continue with legal action over the killings

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10891695

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100805-28981.html

Afghan politician calls German air strike payouts 'laughable'

The former Afghan Commerce Minister on Friday called Germany’s compensation for families of victims who died in last year’s deadly Kunduz air strike “laughable,” saying that the $5,000 was insignificant.

Former Commerce Minister Amin Farhang said that $5,000 - equivalent to about 20,000 Afghanis, the local currency - was not very much money in Afghanistan.

Farhang said he’d discussed the payments with other Afghan officials, “and many were disappointed here in Kabul.”

On September 4, 2009, German Col. Georg Klein ordered US aircraft to fire on two petrol tankers hijacked by the Taliban. Although the trucks were stuck in a dry river bed, Klein deemed them to be a threat to the nearby German camp.

After initially claiming only Taliban fighters were killed, the German government later admitted scores of civilians were also killed. After an investigation in which the Bundeswehr co-operated with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, it was concluded that 91 civilians were killed and 11 seriously injured.

On Friday the Defence Ministry insisted the payments to be made this month were not Germany’s legal obligation but a “support payment” to help relatives of those killed or injured.

Farhang said he was also disappointed that Germany had refused to refer to the money as reparations.

“I’m not talking here about guilt or innocence here. But people were killed. And the Afghan blood should not be traded so cheaply,” he said.

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100806-28991.html