varnam

Bactria, located in Northern Afghanistan between the Hindu Kush mountains and Oxus river, was the eastern province of the Persians before it was conquered by the Greeks. Something that has survived even after the Soviet and Taliban rule is their gold. Now for the first time this ancient gold will be available for the whole world to see.

While other important archaeological sites are plundered or have been ruined by war, the Bactrian gold, discovered by a Soviet team near the northern town of Shiberghan just before the Red Army invasion of 1979, has had a number of narrow escapes, adding to its allure and mystery.

An Afghan official who viewed the Bactrian gold recently in an underground vault in the heavily guarded presidential palace in Kabul described the pieces he saw, including an intricately designed belt and a gold broach, as "priceless". Al Jazeera

It was only a few months back that I bought the Sony Clie TH55 after over-analyzing various PDAs. Now Sony has announced that they are no longer going to release PDAs for the American Market. This means there will only be Palm devices running the Palm OS. I always found that Sony Clie's looked much more elegant than Palm Devices while running the same OS.

Mr. Limp told Brighthand that this simply continues the trend toward consolidation of marketshare in the traditional PDA business to two major players, HP in the Pocket PC arena and palmOne in the Palm OS arena. "The market is in transition from a standalone PDA market to a wireless communicator market," said Mr. Limp. When asked whether Sony would be releasing a Palm OS-based communicator in the future, Mr. Limp said "there are no guarantees in this world." Brighthand

PDA Buyers Guide has the following reasons for the annoucement.

• Sony had 20% of the Palm OS market in Q1, down from 25% in 2003, not good.
• Sony as a company is struggling financially. They need to concentrate on game consoles and games, and other bread and butter ventures.
• Sony is trying to buy MGM, which involves a great deal of money.
• The Clie's high end multimedia niche didn't pay off.
• They came out with 30 different models and that made for hard work to differentiate models.
• Innovation slacked, with the UX50 being the last innovative model, and that came out 1 year ago.
• Sony Clie models are expensive to produce.
• Sony didn't keep pace with PalmOne restructing and cost reduction.
• PalmOne products are cutting into Sony territory: T3, Zire 71 and 72.
• Only 160,000 PDAs shipped in Japan last year. Todd wonders how worthwhile PDA sales in Japan are since high end feature phones are king there.

Past two days here in Los Angeles

• Boy, 7, Is Shot in Head as He Plays in Backyard
• 1 Killed, 2 Wounded as Gunmen Fire at Group
• Woman, Toddler Wounded in Drive-By Shooting

In Los Angeles last year, 350 gang-related homicides accounted for 68% of the city's killings, according to police. That was about 19% more than the total of gang-related homicides for 1999. Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton joined Fox in releasing the gang violence study. Bratton said the number of gang-related homicides in Los Angeles rose in the last two years even as killings overall dropped 23%. LA Times

Give everyone a gun and you get a city of angels.

Another of Wendy's Children has come up with a new book KISS OF THE YOGINI: "Tantric sex" in its South Asian context, by David Gordon White. Rajiv Malhotra writes about this new interpretation of Tantra in an e-mail

White's book's core thesis is that tantra was intended as South Asian decadent sexuality, with NO spiritual purpose, and that this decadence was the result of sociological suffering of Indian subaltern (lower castes) in classical times.

However, he offers no textual basis to prove this (and he is the one who should have the burden of proof, not his critics). Since his thesis on tantra claims to demolish centuries of writings by Kashmir Shaivites and other thinkers from within the tradition, he asserts (without proof) that scholars like Abhinavgupta did not know or did not want to know the real tantra which White claims to have uncovered in his book.

So once again, the natives are not to be trusted in their own interpretations, including their eminent thinkers who have been studied by westerners for centuries. Bottom line: tantra has nothing to do with being a spiritual quest at all.

Coming from one of Wendy's Children, this is not a surprise, but it raises other issues. A Kashmir Shaivism and tantra scholar who finds this book disgusting in methodology, conclusion and demeaning tone, tells me privately that he does not believe that the pandits in India under whose feet White did his research since 20 years ago have any clue that this is how their firangi scholar (who once respected them with gifts and namaskars) has twisted their translations.

My main purpose in writing this short piece is to focus on Wendy's use of the book review for political purposes:

Many people here believe that after years of threats, a struggle aimed at wrecking Saudi Arabia's storied oil industry has begun. The nature of the violence has morphed; suicide bombings at housing compounds in Riyadh gave way to two major shooting rampages at oil companies last month. Workers are no longer rattled or nervous ? they are scared. Saudi stability once seemed a relatively safe bet; now analysts are questioning the security of the kingdom's oil facilities and the tight grip of its ruling family. LA Times

This is what the terrorists wanted in the first place. People who keep the Saudi economy moving are the immigrants, about 6 million of them. Recently there was a move to prevent immigrants from taking up certain jobs. But the terrorist activity has accelerated the fleeing of immigrants.

Now foreigners are barricaded in gated communities, terrified to venture outside. Some are abandoning Saudi Arabia altogether. Workers at Aramco estimate that dozens of employees have resigned since last weekend. Nervous workers are urging their spouses and children to leave the country for the summer, or longer. Many are quietly looking for new jobs, hoping to line up a financial escape route. LA Times

The British have warned of more spectacular attacks

"We continue to believe that terrorists remain determined to carry out further attacks in Saudi Arabia, and that these may be in the final stages of preparation," the Foreign Office said Sunday, advising against all but essential travel to the oil-rich kingdom. "The threat includes, but is not limited to, residential compounds and diplomatic and other official premises," it said. Middle East Online

You may not like this place for all the hatred they export, but whatever happens here will affect your daily life.

When an act of terrorism happens in your country, you can use that to your advantage to make a social reform. When 9/11 happened, the US Govt could have used that to formulate a national energy plan to get us out of the dependence from foregin oil. But now, out of all the places, Saudi Arabia is now allowing women to work as a way fighting homegrown terrorism

The Saudi cabinet, chaired by King Fahd, last week took a landmark decision allowing women to obtain commercial licenses. "This decision will certainly reduce social and economic pressures on men, who are no longer capable of meeting family needs due to a drop in personal income," said Nahid Tahir, a senior economist at National Commercial Bank. She told AFP that creating employment had become a way of fighting "homegrown terrorism". "It also has an important security aspect in fighting terrorists in the kingdom, as the solution to this problem is no longer of a purely security nature."

The head of the Jeddah-based Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies, Anwar Eshki, said the steps highlight the role the economy can play in "fighting extremism". "The cost of living has gone up and women must share the burden with their husbands. If this is not done, it will negatively affect the security situation. It will only breed further complications," Eshki said. Unemployment in Saudi Arabia is estimated at more than 20% "We cannot separate terrorism from the economy ... The security solution is essential, but it is not the decisive one. The cabinet's decision is a response to this understanding," he told AFP. Al Jazeera

In the seventh century, Arab armies invaded Persia. Some Zoroastrians were converted to Islam and some preferred to migrate to India, which they did from the early eighth century. They too came to western India where they already had trading contacts, and established large settlements to the north of Mumbai, such as the one at Sanjan. Their descendants founded a community later known as Parsi, reflecting the land of their origin and their language. Some settled in rural areas but close to centres of trade; others were more active in the trading circuits of the time. [from Early India by Romila Thapar]

Now an archaeological dig at Sanjan is providing more information about the first Parsi settlement in India.

The find at Sanjan's Varoli riverside dig includes six whole skeletons and a few partial ones, coins, pieces of pottery, glass and beads. After being analysed by paleo-anthropologist S.R. Walimbe of Pune's Deccan College, the skeletons? which were found lying with their hands crossed and legs tied together?will be sent to Oxford University for carbon dating and DNA testing to find out if they are of Parsis.

Knowledge of Parsi history is only from the quasi-historical document, the 'Kissei-Sanjan' and from oral tradition. "We know of Parsis living in Sanjan from the 7th century (under the patronage of the Hindu ruler Jadi Rana) to the late 14th century when the place was invaded by a general of Mahmud Tughlak," said historian Homi Dhalla, who is the president of the WZCG.

"But there has been little evidence to indicate when and how they had come and the events they lived through. We are excited because these finds may provide the proof we need." Confirming this, Ms Gokhale said that five of the 32 Indian and Persian coins date back to the seventh and eighth centuries. She has also found allusions to a fire altar?the temple where a flame is kept burning as a symbol of the cycle of life and eternal recurrence?on the sole Sassanian coin, which is from the 7th century.

"A one-foot turquoise-blue ceramic vase and a small china celadon dish have been pieced together. Blue pottery was manufactured at Siraf in Iran and at Basra in Iraq in the 7th and 8th centuries and was in use in many Asian countries until the 11th century, when the preference for blue was possibly replaced by the pale green of celadon pottery. But the remains unearthed at Sanjan reveal a continuity in the usage of blue pottery as well as celadon?which probably means that there was a flourishing trade between Iran, Iraq and South Gujarat," he added. Times of India

Thomas Friedman has an article explaining why the anti-globalization movement has lost its steam. To explain this, he uses the example of the recent elections in India.

To everyone's surprise, India's elections ended with the rightist Hindu nationalist B.J.P. alliance being thrown out and replaced by the left-leaning Congress Party alliance. Of course, no sooner did the B.J.P. ? which ran on a platform of taking credit for India's high-tech revolution ? go down than the usual suspects from the antiglobalization movement declared this was a grass-roots rejection of India's globalization strategy. They got it exactly wrong. What Indian voters were saying was not: "Stop the globalization train, we want to get off." It was, "Slow down the globalization train, and build me a better step-stool, because I want to get on." NY Times

When you talk about anything in India, you cannot come up with a simple theory. For example in my home state of Kerala, there was no rapid globalization movement. Kerala is already a globalized state with most of the revenues coming from NRIs. The problem there was the infighting between two groups of Congress, which caused most of the people to vote for the Communists. But in many other states Friedman's theory holds true. The prosperity advertised by the "India Shining" campaign did not reach the people who actually go out and vote.

The advice he has for the anti-globalization crowd is apt.

My own recent travels to India have left me convinced that the most important forces combating poverty there today are those activists who are fighting for better local governance. The world doesn't need the antiglobalization movement to go away now ? it just needs for the movement to grow up. It had a lot of energy and a lot of mobilizing capacity. What it lacked was a real agenda for helping the poor. Here's what its agenda should be: Helping the poor by improving governance ? accountability, transparency, education and the rule of law ? at the local level, by using the Internet and other tools to spotlight corruption, mismanagement and tax avoidance. It may not be as sexy as protesting against world leaders on CNN, but it is a lot more important. Ask any Indian villager.

I did not know about a genre called speculative alternate history till I read Roma Eterna. Books like Da Vinci Code do present alternate history which gets supressed. But Silverberg takes it one step furthur.

The question asked is: What if the Roman empire never died ? What would happen if it had lived for thousands of years. How would that affect the history as we know now. The book is a collection of ten short stories set in different periods of time till about the year 2000 AD.

Some generous assumptions are made. The Exodus under Moses is mentioned as a failed movement. As a result, the Hebrews never make it to Egypt and Christianity is never born.

The first tale "With Caesar in the Underworld" takes us into the underbelly of Rome itself, which is quite different from the polished culture that it presented to the outside world. The Emperor is dying and his eldest son is to take his place after his death. A Greek ambassador who comes with a alliance for the eldest prince is taken on a tour of the underground Roma by the youngest Prince and his friend. There is a sudden twist of events and someone unexpected takes over the throne.

In the second tale, "A Hero of the Empire", a Roman who has fallen from grace with the Emperor is banished to Arabia in 7th century AD. There while roaming in Mecca, he meets a person named Mahmud, who wants to banish all idol worshippers and unite the feuding tribes under the name of his God called "Allah". The Greeks had established a trading post in Mecca and Mahmud asks the Roman to join him in defeating the Greeks. But the Roman thinks that Mahmud is a much bigger danger and gets him killed, thus preventing Islam from taking root.

The final story "To the promised land" is about a Hebew named Moshe, set in near 2000 AD, who is going to lead an Exodus of his people. This story of Exodus is not about crossing the Red Sea, but by traveling out of the Earth using a spaceship.

Between the stories I mentioned, you see how the Western Empire with Rome as the capital and the Eastern Greek empire with Constantinople as the capital collide. At some point the Greeks take over Rome and later the Romans take it back. There are stories of money spent in futile wars in Mexico and massacre of the entire Royal family by Consuls.

Most of the stories are excellent and have been written with brilliant imagination. The characters are well established and you get to know their fears and ambitions very well. The vivid descriptions of the ancient cities really take you back in time. But the book is not a quick read. Each of the stories take their own time to establish the era and people. So you have to be patient. On the whole, a good read.

Thanks to InstaPundit for recommending this book.

Madeline Albright and Robin Cook have a commentary in Los Angeles Times on Nuclear Proliferation.

Third, the G-8 nations must bring to bear all the incentives and sanctions they have at their disposal to stop proliferation. This includes closing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty loophole that enables states like North Korea to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of programs to produce nuclear energy. LA Times

Read through the whole article and there is no mention of the biggest proliferator of all. If only Madeline Albright had read a report by David Albright, a former IAEA Inspector. But then whatever Pakistan does is totally transparent to the entire Western World.

I am on a short vacation till Monday. So there may not be any postings till then.

I am on a short vacation till Monday. So there may not be any postings till then.

When America started project on the nuclear bomb with the aim of making it before the Germans, Richard Feynman was one of the young scientists involved. He moved to Los Alamos in New Mexico where the new lab was just coming up. The administrators had decided that two scientists would share an apartment. Feynman did not want to share his apartment. So he spread out woman's clothes on the other bed daily and went to work. Everyday evening the cleaning lady would fold it neatly and keep it back. The Army which got the report from the cleaning lady was wondering who this mysterious woman was who stayed with Richard Feynman and since they could not find, they asked the cleaning lady to act as if nothing happened.

Another prank he was famous for was cracking safes. He used to open the safes of people in Los Alamos by knowing what project the safe owner was working on, and what physical constant he would use as the safe number. But this is not just about his pranks. There are very serious lectures, and many of them on miniaturization of the computer. These lectures were given in the 50s, much before everyone was talking about nanotechnology. There is also his famous minority report on the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard Feynman, from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science-a life like no other. From Feynman's ruminations on science in our culture to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this book will fascinate anyone interested in the world of ideas. Newcomers to Feynman will be moved by his wit and his deep understanding of the natural world and of the human experience; longtime admirers will discover many treasures available nowhere else.

But the article I liked was where Feynman explains how his father, a uniform salesman, influenced him to be a scientist. His father taught him to identify patterns and always to keep an inquisitive mind. Some of the lectures in the book are very deep, especially the ones on miniaturization. But rest are all very interesting and some are extremely funny. This is my first book by Feynman and I enjoyed it a lot.

Abdelwahed Belkeziz - Secretary General of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) - made the stinging attack at meeting in Turkey. He blamed the rise of Muslim extremism on the feeling of "powerlessness" felt by members of the Islamic world.

Mr Belkeziz told the foreign ministers from the 57-member states that their countries had a poor record on issues ranging from education and health to economic development. "The aggregate gross domestic product of all our member states remains lower than that of one single advanced country such as France or Britain," he said. Mr Belkeziz concentrated on the failures of the Islamic umma or community. There was, he said, a sharp contrast between its present and past. Today, he said, the community was dispersed, divided, diminished and debased, overwhelmed by a debilitating feeling of impotence. "The powerlessness that the Muslim world is experiencing today and the difficulty of finding solutions to our just causes have been the reason behind the rise of extremism," he said BBC

Finally, an analysis without blaming America.

On Jan 1, Pervez Musharraf wrote an Op-Ed piece in NY Times preaching what he called enlightened moderation. Now there is a rebuttal of the same piece by Samina Ahmed and John Norris.

First and foremost, he continues to avoid handing real power back to democratically elected officials. While the Bush administration repeatedly holds up Iraq as a nation that could serve as a shining example of Islamic democracy in action, it continues to offer a blank check to a Pakistani government in which all power resides in the military. Curbs on democratic freedoms in Pakistan remain draconian. To discourage domestic dissent, the government has sentenced Javed Hashmi, leader of Musharraf's main political opposition, to 23 years in prison for daring to offer criticism. And it deported an exiled opposition leader, Shahbaz Sharif, when he had the temerity to attempt to return home after the Supreme Court confirmed the right of all citizens to actually reside in Pakistan.

The Pakistani government has taken a similar approach to jihadist organizations. The growth of jihadist networks continues to threaten both domestic and international security. After declaring that no group would be allowed to engage in terrorist activities in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the government ordered a number of extremist groups to do little more than change their name. One extremist leader was allowed to run for parliament, and won, even though he had been charged with more than 20 violent crimes. The leaders of other banned groups, designated as terrorist organizations by the United States, continue to preach freely their sectarian and anti-Western jihad. Pakistan has also notably failed to adequately address important issues such as terrorist financing, including money laundering, making the country a favorite base of operation for all too many extremist organizations. NY Times

Musharraf is one person who has learned to milk the West for doing absolutely nothing and the entire Bush Administration remains enamored with him hoping that he will deliver Osama very soon. But Ahmed Rashid, the author of Taliban says

Karzai's presence in Washington holds some peril for Bush as well, because it's an occasion to raise the embarrassing question of what happened to the search for Osama bin Laden. In February, 20,000 U.S.-led coalition forces announced, with much fanfare, a major offensive to crush the Taliban, capture its leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and track down Bin Laden. But U.S. military officers in Pakistan and Afghanistan now privately say it is highly unlikely that the Al Qaeda leader will be nabbed or killed before the U.S. election. LA Times

Since GMail is offering 1GB storage, the Folks at Yahoo! have increased my mailbox capacity to 100MB. This was a meagre 6MB before. They have also increased the message size to 10MB. I wonder when Hotmail is going to follow.

Competition is good. Competition is very good.

Sankrant Sanu has an article in BeliefNet on the shoddy scholarship by some eminent scholars, who have discovered that

• In his book on Ganesha, the beloved elephant-headed deity of Hindus, Emory University professor Paul Courtright made claims that Ganesha?s trunk represents a limp phallus and the fondness for sweets of this child deity carries ?overtones? of a desire for oral sex.
• University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger has been quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text, ?a dishonest book? that "justifies war."
• In her article on Hinduism in Encarta, which serves as a mainstream introduction for general audiences, Doniger highlights what she calls ?contradictions? in the Hindu tradition--often using deprecating parenthetical asides, unusual for such an encyclopedia entry.
• In "Kali's Child," Rice University professor Jeffrey Kripal portrays Sri Ramakrishna, a much-revered Hindu spiritual leader, as a sexually abused homosexual child-molester. BeliefNet

People who question the quality of their research are immediately branded as Hindu Militants, BJP Activists etc and thus taking the discussion away from the quality of scholarship. As Sanu writes

Critical articles, including my own, raise the issue of the quality of scholarship of some of these prominent members of the academy. These articles have pointed out errors, inconsistencies, mistranslations, missing references, suspect theories and interpretative techniques and, in some cases, troubling evidence of outright prejudice displayed by the academicians.

Let's look at what happened when the Hindu community tried to address Courtright's work. Serious questions have been raised about the book--such as the non-existence of the references that Coutright cites in some cases, and their clear misconstrual in others.

While Doniger et al make exaggerated claims of violence based on ducking a stray egg, the real issue they have been ducking is that of shoddy scholarship. They charge that their critics do not read books, yet it is these academicians who haven?t bothered to read their critics. Perhaps they don?t need to. It is easier to remain ensconced in an ivory tower and make sure that the airwaves carry only the story of the scholars being ?attacked.? The alternative would be to engage in dialogue with the community who find their traditions unrecognizably mauled at their hands rather than talking past them, as Marty does, by caricaturing all criticism as ?fundamentalist? and ?militant.? This engagement can only help all those that genuinely care to see the academy as a place for the dissemination of knowledge, rather than of one-sided propaganda.BeliefNet

There was considerable excitement when Marine Archeologists discovered proof of Dwaraka in the Gulf of Cambay. But now it seems the exploration has come to standstill. The article in the Organizer has lot of details on the discoveries.

The layout of the excavated city, the spread and the location of fort walls and bastions match the descriptions mentioned in Harivamsha, a prologue to Mahabharata. Harivamsha described the city of Dwarka in minute details. According to it, the area of Dwarka was 12 yojnas. It was connected to the mainland by a strip, which is visible even now, in low tide. The city excavated is of the same size.

Harivamsha, detailing the security arrangements, says that there were seals, without which one could not enter the city. Seals of a particular description were found on the seabed. A stone image of Vishnu, chert blades and pottery are all part of the recovered objects. Organizer

Sri Sri Ravishankar has an article explaining how Lord Krishna is the father of communism.

The basic tenets of communism say that all are equal, and exploiters and oppressors should be severely punished. The goal is to create a society free from selfishness, autocracy, aristocracy and oppression of people of any sort. The life and message of Krishna reveals that he imbibed, taught and fought for these principles 5,230 years ago. In fact, an objective analysis of the Bhagvad Gita too would reveal that Krishna was a better communist than Karl Marx. One could go so far as to describe him as the real founder of communism!

But beyond religion is the quest for truth. Where does a man go further? There Krishna leads Arjuna, leads the people into that spiritual realm of experience, which is seriously lacking in communism today. The confidence that builds up in a person who knows the depth and the secrets of creation is something amazing, so beautiful ? without which life is dry. So make the transition from religion to spirituality. It is what was missing in Karl Marx?s principle and which Krishna has very clearly demonstrated and given to the world in the form of Gita.

Communism cannot reject Krishna at any cost because he stands for all its principles in a much more meaningful manner. If we don?t see the reality, the truth, with an open mind, then we have merely replaced an old religion with a new religion called communism. So we have to be aware and wake up to adapt to changing times. Hindustan Times

The European plan to contain Saddam was to request him not to do anything bad. Now they are trying the same with Iran. The Europeans met with the mullahs and agreed to block any Security Council referrals and in return Iran would stop work on Uranium enrichment. But now

This week, with the world's attention focused on the troubled situation in Iraq, the European version of preemption is yielding its own bitter -- if less bloody -- result. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have reported that Iran never honored its agreement; it has stalled and stonewalled the inspectors while continuing to work on elements of a nuclear program that could soon allow it to produce weapons. The Europeans have responded by drafting for approval by the 35-member IAEA board a stern statement demanding Iranian cooperation; Tehran has replied with threats to restart uranium enrichment and suspend negotiations with the West. Washington Post

Deception Point, by Dan Brown Pocket Books, 576 pages

It is an election year in United States and President's opponent is Senator Sedgewick Sexton. Sen. Sexton has focussed his campaign on attacking NASA and has made a promise that if elected, he would open Space exploration to private corporations. Senator Sexton has a daughter, Rachel, who does not have a good relation with her father and also works as a gister for National Reconnaissance Office.

A NASA Satellite finds a meteor burried deep in the Arctic ice. The meteor contains fossilized samples of some bugs which are the first samples of extra-terrestrial life forms discovered on earth. This discovery has deep implications for NASA as well as the President, who has always backed NASA even though they were wasting taxpayers money in many unsuccessful missions.

To verify the authenticity of this discovery, the President sends a team of civilians to the Arctic. One of them in Rachel Sexton, the daughter of the President's opponent. Soon the civilian teams finds that the meteorite is one giant hoax. They also find that they are being targeted by Special Ops forces who want to just kill them.

This is the crux of the plot of this book. Like his other books, this one too is a page turner. Since I had read The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, this book was very predictable. All these books have a similar plot structure, but with different locales and themes. The other two books were very clever in the way they combined religion with the plot. But this book for me was, yet another thriller.

Plot Excerpt

The main story in today's Los Angeles Times is that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan aided terrorists in return for not attacking their country.

Saudi Arabia provided funds and equipment to the Taliban and probably directly to Bin Laden, and didn't interfere with Al Qaeda's efforts to raise money, recruit and train operatives, and establish cells throughout the kingdom, commission and U.S. officials said. Pakistan provided even more direct assistance, its military and intelligence agencies often coordinating efforts with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, they said.

"There's no question the Taliban was getting money from the Saudis ? and there's no question they got much more than that from the Pakistani government," said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, one of the congressionally appointed commission's 10 members. "Their motive is a secondary issue for us." "Whether there was quid pro quo with the Saudis, we don't know. But certainly the Pakistanis believed that there was. They benefited enormously from their relationship with the Taliban and Al Qaeda."

Pakistanis, meanwhile, were in with the Taliban and Al Qaeda "up to their eyeballs," said the senior commission staff member. He said Bin Laden, for instance, negotiated his 1996 move to Afghanistan with Pakistan's powerful military-intelligence leadership, which held considerable influence over the various warlords struggling for control of Afghanistan at the time. "He wouldn't go back there without Pakistan's approval and support, and had to comply with their rules and regulations," the official said. He said Pakistan opened its airspace to Bin Laden and his flying flotilla of operatives.

Pakistani intelligence officers also allegedly brought Bin Laden to meet Mullah Omar soon after his arrival in Afghanistan, and then helped forge an alliance between the men that enabled the Taliban to trample competing factions and take over much of Afghanistan. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, also was instrumental in helping Al Qaeda set up an infrastructure in its own country and in Afghanistan, and the two outfits jointly operated training camps along the border where militants were taught guerrilla warfare, the official said. "It started day one," the official said of Pakistan's involvement. "They controlled the Taliban; they controlled the border." LA Times

Why did this become news now ? Didn't anyone know about this or is this article a reminder to someone who forgot that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were two of the three nations who recognized the Taliban Government in Afghanistan ? If the 9/11 Commision had read Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban, they would have found most of this information.

Seoul, South Korea, Jun. 20 (UPI) -- Renegade Pakistani scientists may be helping North Korea develop nuclear weapons, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported Sunday. Quoting a report from the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, the agency said the north might have achieved a higher level of technology for enriched uranium with the help of foreign scientists. "Nine Pakistani nuclear scientists have been missing since they left their country six years ago and we cannot rule out the possibility that some of them are in North Korea," institute officials said. Washington Times

A decade after Pakistan created Taliban, a commision investigating the 9/11 disaster discovered the link. Many years down the line, the connection between Pakistan and North Korea will also be admitted by American Officials.

Finally an agreement on the EU Constitution has been reached. One of the contentious issues was, if the new Constitution should include a reference to Christianity. The move had strong support from the Pope, and countries like Poland. But now, the reference to God and Christianity has been dropped.

Over another area, whether or not the text would mention God or Europe?s Christian heritage, Catholic countries (especially Poland) gave way to the secular group (led by France) in leaving out any such reference. Economist

Thanks to Ravikiran, I now have a GMail account. Now I don't have to sell my house or swap my soul to get one. This selfless act of Ravikiran will be remembered by me as comparable to renounciation of the Prime Minister's chair by Sonia Gandhi.

What's great about GMail ? Besides the 1GB storage, here are things done the different way, the GMail way.

• Each message you send is grouped with all the responses you receive. Grouping related messages creates meaningful 'conversations.' When you open a message in a conversation, all of your messages will be stacked neatly on top of each other, like a deck of cards. We call this 'Conversation View.' As new replies arrive, your stack of cards grows. Grouping messages this way allows you to quickly retrieve related messages and view all your messages in context.
• Instead of folders, Gmail uses labels to give you the functionality of folders, but with more flexibility. In Gmail, a single conversation can have several labels, so you're not forced to choose one particular folder for each message you receive. That way, if a conversation covers more than one topic, you can retrieve it with any of the labels that you've applied to it. And, of course, you can always search for it.
• You have a variety of search options that return speedy, accurate results. Gmail features built-in Google search, and as with Google's keyword-based web search, Gmail returns fast, accurate results. As long as you archive instead of delete, you'll be able to find any message you've ever sent or received. Having reliable search also eliminates the need to create elaborate folder structures. Now you can just stick a label (or two or three) on a conversation and search by label, keyword, date range or a host of other options.

It seems the Democrats have stopped harping on "Outsourcing is evil" message because the number of jobs lost was only a very small percentage.

THE FUROR OVER "offshoring" of jobs to countries such as India, so pronounced during the Democratic primaries, seems to have faded. With good reason: Last week the Labor Department published the first government effort to quantify the impact of offshoring, which tentatively suggested that it may be responsible for just 2.5 percent of the job losses in the first quarter of this year. Washington Post

Daniel Drezner has a detailed analysis of the Labor Department Report.

So, to conclude -- the percentage of jobs lost due to mass layoffs -- in turn due to offshore outsourcing -- as a percentage of total jobs lost through mass layoffs was not 3% -- it was a whopping 1.9%. If you drop out seasonal employment, the figure rises to 2.5%. So my back of the envelope calculations from a few months ago are an exaggeration. My apologies.

The caveats -- this data does not cover two other kinds of job loss via outsourcing -- 1) Those let go due to ousourcing when fewer than 50 people were let go; and 2) Those jobs created de novo overeas that may have been created in the U.S. instead were it not for the outsourcing phenomenom.

At the same time, this data also does not cover two kids of job gains via outsourcing -- 1) Those jobs created via insourcing, when a foreign firm hires U.S. workers; and 2) Those jobs created via the budgetary savings reaped from outsourcing.

The bottom line -- offshore outsourcing is responsible for a piddling number of lost jobs. Daniel Drezner

Last month there were reports of a spectacular archaeological discovery in Adichanallur, near Tirunelveli when 2800 years old human skeletons were found in urns. These urns also contained writing resembling early Tamil Brahmi.

Now six more such burrial urns have been found in Tirunelveli, in a farm near Kuvalakarai village

The villagers were taken by surprise as one urn brought to the surface contained, among other things, some smaller earthen pots and ?very fragile skeletal bone pieces?, a source said over telephone.

Kuvalakarai village is close to another archaeologically significant site, Girivalamvandha Nallur, in the same district where a ?treasure trove? of Roman and Chinese coins and medallions was unearthed several years ago, the sources said. Sources in the archaeology department said it was common for ?burial urns? to contain smaller earthen pots of grain and food kept there when the dead were interred. The practice was linked to a strong belief in life after death because ?neolithic man believed in the concept of the spirit surviving a man?s death?, they added.

In his book Archaeology of South India ? Tamil Nadu, Ramachandran has said these monuments displaying the ?mode of disposal of the dead and the furnishings within these burials are known to archaeologists as ?Megaliths?, on account of the use of huge stones involved in the construction of these graves?. ?Megalithic graves? are scattered in peninsular India and there is a ?heavy concentration? of these in Tamil Nadu, ?urn burials? being one category of such monuments, Ramachandran said.

The latest find is noteworthy because it lends credence to archaeologists? view that the main mode of prehistoric burial in Tirunelveli was urn burial. The urn burials were not necessarily ?delimited? by a ring of stones, but their distinguishing feature ?is the interment of a big urn in a pit of size just enough to receive the big urn?, he said. ?These urns are huge, varying in size up to 172 cm in height and 272 cm circumference at the belly,? Ramachandran said. According to the archaeologist, ?urn burial sites? in the district include Courtallam, Valiankottai hills and Korkai. Telegraph

When France banned the hijab and other symbols of religious expression from public schools, there was lot of crying out loud about religious freedom of minorities in secular nations etc. But now in Uzbekistan (88% Muslim Nation), a Government run council has decided to ban headscarves in a school.

The Uzbek constitution already bans the wearing of religious dress for those working in the public sector. Gulnora Salokhiddinova, a 14-year-old girl from the village of Margilan, was sent home from her school for wearing a hijab ? but only after all students were gathered at a general assembly to witness her being publicly criticised. Al-Jazeera

It seems human beings made their first steps in farming 23,000 years ago, as opposed to 13,000 years ago as previously believed. That would make the date approx 21,000 BC.

Stone Age people in Israel collected the seeds of wild grasses some 10,000 years earlier than previously recognised, experts say. These grasses included wild emmer wheat and barley, which were forerunners of the varieties grown today. A US-Israeli team report their findings in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. BBC

But then how do you explain this news from Sri Lanka ?

One of the most priceless relics here is a female body remains in Bulathsinhala, in Kalutara district in the Western province, which testifies to the consumption of rice, maize and salt. This body remains embedded in a rock dates back to 30,500 BC and is considered the world's oldest proof of consumption of rice, maize and salt. The rock cave is named after the famous Chinese Buddhist monk Fa-Hien who travelled in India and Sri Lanka from AD 399 to 414. He stayed in this cave for the major part of his sojourn in Sri Lanka. One World South Asia

This means that the US-Israeli team which came up with the date of 21,000 BC is not aware of the history of Sri Lanka.

Till recently I was using newsmonster as my newsreader. It worked ok on Firefox 0.8. But now that I have upgraded to Firefox 0.9, the newsreader has stopped working.

I tried RSS Reader, but it brings up old articles again and again as if they are new. What newsreader do you use ?

"We don't see any reason - there has been no cause at all for us to have second thoughts about providing any assistance to Pakistan," Christina Rocca, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, told a congressional hearing in Washington. BBC

At the same time in Los Angeles Times

International investigators are examining whether Syria acquired nuclear technology and expertise through the black market network operated by rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, according to a U.S. official and Western diplomats. Intelligence reports found that Khan and some associates visited Syria in the late 1990s and later held clandestine meetings with Syrian nuclear officials in Iran, said Western diplomats from a U.S. ally. Concerns were heightened after an experimental U.S. electronic eavesdropping device recently picked up signals indicating that Syria was operating centrifuges, which enrich uranium for possible use in nuclear weapons. LA Times

The previous NDA administration had started a negotiation process with Pakistan. Now that they are no longer in power and a new Govt. is in place, how do you bring them to the negotiating table ? First some murders, some throat slitting, murder of security forces, and some taking of women as hostages. As Kuldeep Nayar of I-forgot-to-buy-the-candle fame writes

The army on the Indian side of Kashmir says that infiltration from Pakistan has increased. The home ministry reports in a 30-page document that training camps have been reopened on the Pakistani side of Kashmir and some 500 militants are undergoing training. This is nothing unusual. Militants' camps have never been completely wound up and infiltration takes place after the melting of snow at the passes straddling over the mountains.

The quantum of infiltration is still small. One cannot say for certain whether it would reach the proportion which it had in the past decade. Nor can one be sure about how far Pakistan was behind it. There are some jihadis who, even Musharraf admits, cannot be checked since they are like a loose gun beyond anybody's control. But if infiltration is beginning in the same old way, it is an unfortunate development.

It will be a clear message from Islamabad that it is not happy over the content of talks. The Pakistan spokesman in his last week's briefing dropped a hint: "There are some differences. Pakistan has its own position and India its own. We have been talking about it for quite some time without reaching any conclusion."Dawn

September is a big month for Afghanistan when the first elections will take place. The elections are important for women since last time they voted was in 1965. The Communists and the Mullahs had one thing in common when it comes to a woman's rights. 16 men were murdererd after the Taliban learned that they had registered to vote. Even women were not spared. But despite this, the LA Times reports that Afghan women are reponding to voter registration drives.

Badrai was determined that the Taliban loyalists wouldn't stop her from voting. So she stiffened her resolve, walked into the mud-walled room behind the local hospital and asked the woman behind the desk if she could have a registration card. "Yes, I am a little scared, because some people say the Taliban will threaten us," she said. "But God is kind. I think the elections will change our lives." LA Times

While President Bush is meeting with NATO members, all editorial writers are expecting NATO to contribute troops to Iraq so that the pressure on American troops is reduced.

Fifty years after its founding, NATO fought its first war in 1999 against Serbia over its abuse of ethnic Muslims in Kosovo. Since then, it has moved beyond its historic arena - Europe - by sending troops to lead a security force in Afghanistan. Now, Iraq could be a catalyst either for repairing damage and helping to redefine NATO's mission or for eroding its common purpose. In the latter event, the mutual disenchantment that began even before the Iraq war could have far-reaching impact - in Iraq, throughout the Middle East and wherever the post-Cold War international order comes under attack. Sacramento Bee

Having NATO troops in Afghanistan has not made the country very secure. They are providing security to the embassies of western nations, while warlords and militia are still very active in rest of the country. This makes the September elections very risky as people may not come to vote in many parts of the country.

THE NATO SUMMIT President Bush attends Monday in Istanbul cannot focus exclusively on debates about the training of Iraqi security forces. NATO will also be asked to do more to provide security for parliamentary elections scheduled for September in Afghanistan. On this topic there should be no unbridgeable differences, since NATO members, including France and Germany, have already committed themselves to helping Afghanistan achieve stability.

If the NATO allies ignore a request for help from Afghan President Hamid Karzai and warnings from Human Rights Watch and other independent human rights organizations, their shirking of responsibility will cast a dark shadow not only over Afghanistan but also over the Atlantic alliance. Boston Globe

Few days back, Musharraf kicked out the Prime Minister Jamali in what is known as a democratic process in Pakistan. Now B. Raman has a detailed explanation of why the first Prime Minister from Balochistan was sent packing.

An aggravating factor was Jamali's failure (in the eyes of Musharraf) to vigorously explain to the people and to support in public the operations launched by the Army in the South Waziristan area of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in its hunt, under US pressure, for the dregs of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The operations have caused considerable resentment not only among the tribals, but also in the lower and middle ranks of the Army and have been bitterly opposed by the religious parties.

Since the middle of last year, Jamali himself was showing signs of unhappiness over what he perceived as his increasing marginalisation by Musharraf and by the prominence given to Shaukat Aziz. Before Musharraf's visit to Camp David in the US in June last year for talks with President Bush, there were indications of growing US concerns over the rogue proliferation activities of Abdul Qadir Khan, the so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, and his cronies in Pakistan's nucear and missile establishment and the Army.

In order to divert suspicion from himself and the Army, Musharraf ordered Shaukat Aziz to inspect the security and accounting procedures in the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant and took Aziz along with him to the US to reassure the US that everything was in order in the nuclear establishment.

Before this, no civilian political leader of Pakistan had ever been allowed by the Army to visit any of the nuclear and missile establishments. Jamali was put in a highly embarrassing position when questions were raised as to why this task of seeming civilian supervision over the nuclear and missile establishment was given to Aziz and not to him (Jamali) and why Aziz reported his findings directly to Musharraf and not through Jamali. SAAG

Two days of talks between foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan have concluded without any major breakthroughs. According to the Amy Waldman of NYT,

While Kashmir did figure in the talks, there were no specific proposals put on the table regarding a solution, according to spokesmen for both nations. They did commit themselves to a "peaceful, negotiated final settlement" on Kashmir. NYT

According to the Asian Age, India has committed itself to a peaceful negotiated settlement of Jammu and Kashmir in a formal acceptance of its disputed nature while Pakistan has accepted the bilateral nature of the dialogue and dropped the insistence on plebiscite. So what are the possible solutions in the table ?

Analysts from both India and Pakistan have been offering solutions through well-researched articles with the thrust driving towards more autonomy for the two Kashmirs, a soft border and administrative control of their respective sides by India and Pakistan. The extreme positions of plebiscite and accession of Jammu and Kashmir has not been voiced by Pakistan in recent months with senior academics, journalists and retired generals close to the Establishment advocating a solution on the lines of soft border and autonomy. In fact, arguments for independence are now advanced only by the extremist groups in Pakistan and hardline Kashmiri separatists who have not heeded President Pervez Musharraf?s advise to move out of the "status quo." The Pakistan spokesperson admitted that an understanding was "very rapidly emerging" on both sides that "if there is a dispute it cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of one party alone, it has to satisfy all sides." Asian Age

Terrorism against India now comes from Bangladesh sponsored by some pro Al-Qaeda groups.

Confessions made by one Mohammed Yasin Ali, a district commandant of the militant Muslim United Liberation Tigers of Asom (MULTA), have revealed that pro-Qaeda armed groups in Bangladesh have been "talent-scouting" among Muslim settlers in Assam.

According to the MULTA militant, potential hitmen are lured into Bangladesh and provided a six-month crash course in handling weapons and planning operations, besides a monthly stipend of Rs 2,000. "The recruits are straightaway taken to a training camp at Kurikilam in Jaipur area of Bangladesh," Ali's statement said. ?The six-month training is extendable by another six months if recruits fail certain tests. Completion of the course ensures the monthly stipend, which is payable for three years.? Hindustan Times

Islamic militancy has been on a rise in Bangladesh and the militants consider it a safe haven, but as usual the BNP Govt. denies it. Bhutan, a friendly neighbor of India, launched operations against separatist groups based in Bhutan working against India. But you cannot expect any pro-India actions from Bangladesh.

New York Times gave it a bad review. Now the Economist too thinks the same.

Alas, �My Life� is very far from being great, or even particularly good. The book is so long-winded and ill-disciplined that the genuinely good bits get lost in the verbiage. Mr Clinton regales us with tedious lists of conferences, meetings and campaign stops. The editors should be hauled over hot coals for failing to hold their celebrity author to higher standards. If they had devoted a fraction of the energy to editing this text that they did to marketing it, then the turkey might have had a chance to fly; as it is, it is destined to sit on the coffee tables of liberal America, lightly thumbed and quickly discarded. Economist

But that has not prevented thousands of people from camping overnight in front of bookstores to get an autographed book from the former President.

Lori Smith, a 46-year-old advertising copywriter from Encino, was the first person in line, having shown up at 10:45 p.m. Thursday to beat the crowd. She was electric with anticipation as she waited for the doors to open. "I've never met him before. I'm just dying. I think I'm going to fall over backwards when I see him." LA Daily News

The former President still remains a charmer.

In Kashmir, a major plan to carry out a series of assasinations and surprise attacks have been foiled.

The detained people have been accused by the Kashmir police of plotting to mount daring "terrorist attacks" in several Indian cities as well as the Kashmir Valley. Among those held is a woman. "They were planning some high-profile actions in the city of Srinagar as well as in Mumbai, Pune and New Delhi such as assassinating important political leaders and the police brass," Director General of Police (DGP), Gopal Sharma, said on Tuesday. In Srinagar, the suspects were preparing to ram an explosives-laden vehicle into a VIP's motorcade, he said. Other police officers said Kashmir chief minister, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, was a probable target of the planned attack. Al-Jazeera

I don't know if any other country will tolerate this. But in India, tax payers money is being used to protect separatists, people who want to split the country into two.

Meanwhile, EXCELSIOR learned from highly placed authoritative sources that "extra-ordinary" security arrangements were being made for five protected separatist leaders in the wake of "very disturbing disclosures" by the slain militants. According to these sources, Government was also going to offer Police protection to the JKLF chief Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq?s confidante Shahid-ul-Islam, Peoples League supremo Sheikh Abdul Aziz and hijacker-turned-activist Hashim Qureshi. However, it was not immediately clear whether these separatist leaders would accept the Police protection or turn down the same as usual. Daily Excelsior

Thanks to the evil force known as Globalization, many people in Afghanistan are able to earn a living.

Worldstock has been selling products made in Afghanistan since the summer of 2002. This spring, Byrne and Kanishka traveled to Afghanistan where they contracted with 1,450 artisans and placed orders for more than $150,000.00 worth of goods. According to Kanishka, "We ordered an assortment of exquisitely handcrafted Afghan rugs, embroidery, leather goods, and jewelry." The first shipment of goods from Afghanistan will be available on Worldstock starting this week.

Minister of Commerce, Mr. Mustafa Kazimi, said, "Fourteen-hundred more people in Afghanistan -- 90% of whom are women -- are able to earn a living and care for their families thanks to Worldstock. In addition to being the largest source of private employment in Afghanistan, Worldstock is also the largest source of employment for women in Afghanistan and the largest exporter of Afghan handicrafts." Yahoo! News