varnam

Few days back, I had watched Outfoxed, a documentary about the absolutely pathetic Fox News Channel, which still maintains the slogan "Fair and Balanced". Joshua Micah Marshall caught Fox fabricating John Kerry quotes. Later Fox apologized for its mistake.

�??Carl [Cameron] made a stupid mistake which he regrets. And he has been reprimanded for his lapse in judgment. It was a poor attempt at humor.�?�

So the Fox reporter covering the Kerry campaign puts together this Kerry-bashing parody right out of the RNC playbook with phony quotes intended to peg him as girlish fool and somehow it found its way on the Fox website as a news item.

Imagine that.[Caught Red Handed]

Apparently the US had plans to invade the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan to capture the al-Qaeda network.

"The United States will threaten Iran with war if it aids the al-Qaeda. The United States will have to invade northwest Pakistan. There are plans for this already. In addition, if Pakistan collapses due to an invasion, the United States and India will have to jointly occupy Pakistan. The end game is Pakistan," the Daily Times quotes Friedman as saying.[US had plans to invade Pakistan via JihadWatch]

In the case of Pakistan, the Senate hopeful added, �??I think there are elements within Pakistan right now�??if Musharraf is overthrown and they took over�??I think we would have to consider going in and taking those bombs out, because I don�??t think we can make the same assumptions about how they calculate risks.�?�[Barack Obama calls for missile strikes on Iran]

The Jamaat-e-Islami finished their world conference in Pakistan and as usual blamed everything on United States, which is the stand taken by communists, verbal terrorists, and mullahs. But this time there were some gems from Senator Prof Khursheed Ahmad who is the deputy amir of the party. He blamed that United States and its allies had crippled Muslim countries by taking over their resources. But you only need to look at the Pakistani province of Balochistan to see how false this is. According to Dr Abdul Hayee Baloch, a veteran politician from Balochistan:

Since the creation of this country, the people of Balochistan have been denied their political, economic and cultural rights; the right of self-governance; and the right to control our area�??s natural resources. We have no representation at the state level and no say in how the state apparatus operates. In short, we are treated as third-class citizens and have been forced to live as if we were back in the Stone Age. Nowhere in the country will you find this type of backwardness.[HARDTalk]

Yes, the Indian Prime Minister talked to the Pakistani Dictator. There are journalists visiting India from Pakistan. Pakistan has volunteered not to take over Siachen. Does all this mean that life is going to be great from now ? Unlikely, if according to this Times of India report.

Pakistan wants to bring a bit of Gaza to Srinagar. While publicly waving an olive leaf, Pakistani foreign minister Khursheed Kasuri and foreign secretary Riaz Khokhar privately met Kashmiri separatist leaders during their New Delhi visit and suggested that an Intifada was Islamabad's new strategy to keep Kashmir on the boil.

Recognising that cross-border terrorism no longer delivers, Islamabad believes generating an Intifada is the new means to both bleed Indian security forces and keep alive the claim that India is suppressing people's aspirations. As Islamabad sees it, an Intifada has multiple plus points. The phrase will evoke global sympathy because of its association with Palestinian children throwing stones at Israeli tanks, an effective imagery of Davids pitted against a Goliath. [Pak plots Intifada to keep J&K on the boil]

President Bush in the first debate mentioned that United States would have an all volunteer army. Then I was watching an interview of Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont with Tim Russert where he told candidly that a draft is unavoidable given the current circumstances. Now the NY Times has an article about it.

More than one-third of nearly 3,900 former soldiers mobilized under a special wartime program have resisted their call-ups. The Army National Guard fell nearly 10 percent short of its 2004 recruiting goal of 56,000 enlistees. The Army, concerned about recruiting, has eased some standards. And there have been bipartisan calls in Congress to expand the Army by more than 20,000 soldiers.

Just months ago, Pentagon officials suggested that a new draft could be avoided if recruitment and retention numbers stayed high. But as fighting in Iraq escalates, signs are growing that those numbers may not be adequate in the coming years. Thus, the new talk about a draft. [The Option Nobody's Pushing. Yet]

Last night I attended a talk by Rajeev Srinivasan, Rediff Columnist, at Stanford University on India's competitive advantage.

First he talked about what a great past India had, when there were great accomplishments in Mathematics, Medicine, education etc. Even as near as 1750, before colonialism set in, India had 25% of world trade. There was a school in each village and India was enjoying the fruits of globalization.

But then after Independence, Rajeev says that India fell into the Nehruvian Growth Rate of less than 5% due to the policies of the Governments which did not make infrastructure investments and popularized the licence-raj. The bureaucrats were spending more time telling people what they could not do.

To make India prosperous, we have to promote the advantages India has and for that we have to promote what he calls "Brand India". As a case study he said, it is good to study how the Japanese entered the US Markets. Also there is a need to improve infrastructure and the legal framework.

There is lot of fear in India regarding multinations assuming that Indian companies would not be able to compete with them. But then he said that Indian companies can definitely adapt to the circumstances. He told the cases of Aravind Eye Clinic and the Japur Foot, both of whom are providing world class services at low rates. He also mentioned about the my home state of Kerala, where they have packaged Ayurveda and Tourism and created a industry which is providing employment to many people.

He then compared India against United States and China offering the pluses and minuses. One of the biggest problem with Indians is inferiority complex. But as the IT industry has shown, India can survive in a globalized world. In the past India has survived in a globalized world and it can again.

I have been reading Rajeev's columns for long time and this is the first time I saw him and heard him talk and I have to say, I like his columns better. But I appreciate the fact that he has taken time to put a comprehensive view of India from cultural, economic and historical angle. But to spread Brand India he will have to reach to a wider audience, especially non-Indians.

For those of you who wonder, how he looks like, here is a picture. For people in Bay Area, there is another talk on Oct 7th at the University of California, Berkeley.

Korea and India had relations from the middle of the first century AD when a princess of Ayodhya travelled to Korea and married there. Here is some more information on the relations between the two countries due to Buddhism.

Many Buddhist monks worked to shape the religion, a major early figure being Marananta, who came to Paekje in the 4th century A.D. However, it is the Samguksagi is not clear on how an Indian monk came to receive a warm welcome from the king. In A.D. 574 three Indian monks came to the peninsula with a Korean monk, Anhong, and initiated the construction of many monasteries and temples.

According to one story, King Ayuk (Muwa), identified with Ashoka Maurya of India, sent iron and gold to Korea to cast the image of the Buddha. Koreans used the metals to construct the monastery. However, the historical records show the Ashokan period was much earlier than the construction of the Hwangnyong Monastery.

After the introduction of Buddhism to Korea, many scholars and monks exhibited great enthusiasm for visiting India to learn more about Buddhism or for pilgrimages to places important to the memory of the Buddha. Some Korean monks set out for India in the early 6th century A.D.

The monk Kyomic was the first to visit India. He studied the Vinaya text, first going to the Samghana Temple of central India where he collected the Sanskrit text of the Mahisasaka Vinaya. Later an Indian monk, Devadatta (Pei-da-duo) ,came to Korea with Kyomic where he translated 72 books of the Vinaya under the patronage of the King Song of Paekje.

From the early 8th century onwards, Korean Buddhists showed a keen interest in India and Indian culture. The cultural bridge between the two countries grew from then onwards, Buddhist monks being credited for nurturing the relationship. Biographies of eminent monks of the Tang Dynasty in China recorded the brief histories of some 56 pilgrims who went to India. Among these was a Korean monk, A�??nan-ya-bal-ma, who stayed at the Nalanda Monastery, possibly, even dying there. Another monk, Hye-op, also stayed in the Nalanda Monastery. One famous monk, Hyon-t'ae, (Sarvajnadeva) went to India via China, Tibet and Nepal. He went to Bodhgaya in Bihar and stayed near the Bodhi tree where the Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment. In addition, Hyon-gaki (Parampujya) and Hsuan-chao also visited the Mahabodhi Monastery of Bihar.[Buddhism: The Bridge Between Korea and India]

Robi Sen and Nitin Pai have put the subcontinent briefing at windsofchange.net. This week they cover the killing of amjad farooqi, India's bid for the UN Security Council Seat, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the shifting alliances, and AQ Khan.

For the first time Indian troops travelled to a Chinese outpost in the border of Arunachal Pradesh and celebrated China's national day. Immediately statements were issued like "I can say the winds of change are blowing across the Himalayas and we want to be friends.", and "China and India will be friends forever."

It is too early to pop champagne as the communists across the border were never lovers of India and will never be. You don't have to go too far in history to find evidence of this hostility and it is well known among the countries around the world. When India conducted the nuclear tests in May 1998, the Americans were cordinating a worldwide condemnation of that. In June, there was the meeting of the P-5 Nations (nations who have nuclear weapons), and Madeline Albright was sent to Geneva for it. The statement issued by the P-5 nations was crafted by Bob Einhorn, a state department employee, after talking for hours with the Chinese because of their preference for India-bashing.

Few days later the United Nations Security Council passed the resolution 1172 which condemned the tests and the US Delegation let the Chinese insert some of their harsh wordings and impossible demands. Even Madeline Albright, who was no friend of India tried to get the Chinese to back off, but it was too late. Here is a sample:

"5. Urges India and Pakistan to resume the dialogue between them on all outstanding issues, particularly on all matters pertaining to peace and security, in order to remove the tensions between them, and encourages them to find mutually acceptable solutions that address the root causes of those tensions, including Kashmir; "7. Calls upon India and Pakistan immediately to stop their nuclear weapon development programmes, to refrain from weaponisation or from the deployment of nuclear weapons, to cease development of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons and any further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, to confirm their policies not to export equipment, materials or technology that could contribute to weapons of mass destruction or missiles capable of delivering them and to undertake appropriate commitments in that regard;[UNSC Resolution 1172]

Claude Arpi has an article asking if China is encircling India.

We could continue the list with the supply of arms to Bangladesh; or the Beijing orchestrated saga of Dr A Q Khan in Pakistan, the enhanced Han presence in Central Asia, particularly in Kyrgyzstan where President Akaev has leased 125,000 hectares of the most valuable Kyrgyz land to China 'with glaciers full of fresh water and with a uniquely designed border outpost.' Though Kyrgyzstan has not direct borders with India, the encirclement is getting tighter by the day.[Is China encircling India?]

China is building the Gwadar portin Pakistan, Bangladesh is offering its Chittagong port to China and Myanmar is developing facilities on Great Coco Island with Chinese help.

This is one friend we be careful about.

[Reference: Engaging India]

At the federal government level, there are so many restrictions against stem cell research in United States as it is against the religious beliefs of the President. But fortunately for us, the democracy in US is much more powerful and the states have lot of autonomy to formulate laws. Proposition 71 on the ballot in California is for providing $3 billion worth research using embryonic stem cells.

Stem-cell research uses embryos left over from treatments at fertility clinics. They are microscopic dots of a few dozen cells. Ordinarily, these embryos are destroyed or frozen indefinitely. No "new" embryos are created or destroyed because of stem-cell research. Stem-cell cures, when they come, will use cells reproduced in the laboratory and will not involve embryos at all. More immediately, passing up a shot at curing Alzheimer's would at most allow some microscopic embryos already in deep freeze the right to be frozen for good. Stem-cell research is not a sure thing, but bold initiatives in which California is uniquely qualified to succeed are worth the initial gamble.[Yes to Stem-Cell Research]

As the commentators noted in my post on The Draft coming back ?, that it is mostly democrats who are harping on it. A bill sponsored by Democrats which was lying dormant for 18 months was bought to vote and both Democrats and Republicans voted against it.

The vote put an end to HR 163, but Democrats and Republicans signaled they will continue to accuse each other of contemplating a revival of conscription, at least through the presidential campaign's final month, and probably as long as U.S. troops are in Iraq.

For 18 months House Republican leaders ignored the bill, sponsored by liberal Democrats who complained that minorities and low-income Americans are doing a disproportionate share of the fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent days, however, Republicans grew increasingly alarmed by sometimes vague, sometimes direct suggestions that President Bush has a secret plan to reinstate the draft if reelected.[House GOP Brings Up Draft in Order to Knock It Down]

Like all other Dan Brown novels this one also starts with a murder. The murdered person, Ensei Tankado was an employee of the National Security Agency, who wrote an unbreakable code which the NSA's powerful codebreaking machine could not crack. Enter Susan Fletcher, a brilliant and beautiful cryptographer.

At the same time the deputy director of NSA has sent Susan's boyfriend to retrieve a ring from the dead body in Spain where he is followed by a mysterious assasin. As Susan Fletcher discovers more secrets, you start turning pages more rapidly and as the cover of the book says

The NSA is being held hostage... not by guns or bombs, but by a code so ingeniously complex that if released it will cripple U.S. intelligence. Caught in an accelerating tempest of secrecy and lies, Susan Fletcher battles to save the agency she believes in. Betrayed on all sides she finds herself fighting not only for her country, but for her life, and in the end, for the life of the man she loves.

With this book I have finished all of Dan Brown's books and my favourite is Da Vinci Code, followed by Angels and Demons. Deception Point and Digital Fortress did not impress me as much.

First the writing of the constitution was considered an impossible task and that was done. After postponing the elections once, Afghans had their chance to vote for their President. But there has been one problem with the indelible ink which was donated by India.

Three years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghans voted in massive numbers Saturday to elect their president for the first time. But the historic and largely peaceful poll quickly fell under a cloud of uncertainty as 15 candidates alleged irregularities and fraud and said they would deem any result "illegitimate."

The dispute centered on the supposedly indelible ink applied to voters' thumbs to prevent them from casting ballots more than once. In many precincts, voters said, washable ink was used or indelible ink was applied improperly, allowing the marking to rub off easily and opening the door to repeat voting.[Afghan Votes in Security, but Fraud Allegations Arise]

The decision to make the ancestral home of Swami Vivekananda a public memorial was taken in 1962. After almost 40 years it has happened.

During Swamiji�??s time, the house was surrounded by a garden and beyond that there was a large open space. But in later years, owing to the city�??s growth and its ever increasing buildings, the approach road to the house got narrowed into a lane, now known as Gour Mohan Mukherjee Street.

Earlier a massive doorway opened to the street outside. The spacious courtyard was bordered on two sides by the main building, which had two parts. To the right was a single-storey structure having rooms for men-folk. Facing the doorway and across the courtyard, was the two-storey ladies�?? apartment. The ground floor of this was used as a kitchen and dining hall. Above this were dwelling chambers. The roof of this building served as the place where the ladies met, talked and moved freely. It was a small temporary shade on this roof that Swami Vivekananda was born. This is now being turned to a beautiful shrine, where a rosewood simhasan carrying the photograph of Swamiji has been placed. [SWAMI VIVEKANANDA�??S HOME - A HERITAGE SITE via India Archaeology]

While looking up for information about Nairs in Microsoft Encarta 2003 I found the following

Polyandry, form of marriage in which a woman has more than one husband or mate at the same time. Polyandry has been practiced by many peoples in all parts of the world since ancient times. At present, however, polyandry is prohibited by law in most countries.

Two principal forms of polyandry exist today. Among the Nair people, who inhabit the Malabar Coast of India, a woman may marry several men of equal or superior rank. Known by anthropologists as the �??Nair Family,�?� this system also includes a matrilineal social structure in which children are included in the mother's clan and property is inherited in the female line.

This is the season of proposing solutions to the Kashmir Problem. There was a solution to adjust the LoC so that India would give some land to Pakistan. Then there was the Andorra proposal. Now a Congress leader Salman Khurshid has suggested looking at the Northern Ireland model for solving this problem.

Pointing out to the emergence of the European Union, which obliterated the issue of territorial boundary in Northern Ireland, Khurshid said: "If that (emergence of a Union) happens here, then the intensity of the conflict will also go away," he said. Referring to the resolution of the diplomatic and sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland through a referendum that led to the formation of a Northern Irish parliament, Khurshid suggested a serious study of the Irish peace model in South Asia. "The Irish model is very complicated and deep rooted like (the problem) that we share with Pakistan," he said.[Khurshid suggests Irish peace model for India, Pak]

Sumantra Bose has a discussion of the North Ireland type solution for Kashmir in his book Kashmir : Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace. But that requires a giant leap of faith and trust between the two nations which is currently lacking.

ABC news has an article on Pakistan's test of its nuclear capable Ghauri V missile from an undisclosed location. The undisclosed location news was carried by all major newspapers in India too, like Times of India. The ABC news was from AP while PTI reported the Times of India news.

Only if these newspapers had used Google, they could have found this information

ISN SECURITY WATCH (12/10/04) - Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf marked the fifth anniversary of the military coup that put him in power by test-firing an upgraded version of the Ghauri (previously known as the Hatf V) medium-range ballistic missile. The missile, in its fourth test-firing from Malot in Jhelum District, about 121 kilometers south of the capital Islamabad, is capable of carrying both nuclear and conventional 700-kilogram warheads to a maximum range of 1�??500km.[Pakistan tests latest medium-range Ghauri missile]

John Howard won by a narrow margin in Australia with a swing of less than 2% and James Taranto immediately branded it as a defeat for al Qaeda as if the whole election was fought on that issue. Australia has only 800 odd troops in Iraq and they have not suffered any casualities.

The election was not a referendum on the Iraq war because the issue was buried by the Labor Party and the mass media. Despite the mountain of evidence showing that the war was based on lies, Howard was never challenged by opposition leader Mark Latham, who maintained that the issue of �??trust�?� centred on whether Howard was going to continue as prime minister for a full three-year term. The Labor Party dropped all reference even to Latham�??s previous comments that he would withdraw Australian troops by Christmas, and said nothing during the entire six-week campaign about the ongoing repression of the Iraqi population by US and other occupation forces. According to the Labor leader, Howard�??s Iraq commitment was simply a �??mistake.�?� Latham�??s position was echoed by the Greens, who by and large dropped criticism of the war as well. While the Greens�?? vote went up by around 2.2 percent, attracting those seeking a �??left�?� alternative to Labor, it turned out to be substantially less than they expected.[Australia: Howard government returned, courtesy of Labor]

On a side note, in Australia it is mandatory for all citizens to vote. Defaulters face a jail term.

There has been a study in Britain on the brain structure of bilingual people and

They found learning other languages altered grey matter - the area of the brain which processes information - in the same way exercise builds muscles. People who learned a second language at a younger age were also more likely to have more advanced grey matter than those who learned later, the team said. Scientists already know the brain has the ability to change its structure as a result of stimulation - an effect known as plasticity - but this research demonstrates how learning languages develops it.

The scans revealed the density of the grey matter in the left inferior parietal cortex of the brain was greater in bilinguals than in those without a second language. The effect was particularly noticeable in the "early" bilinguals, the findings published in the journal Nature revealed. Learning languages 'boosts brain'

Theodore Bhaskaran discovered some panels in the Great temple at Tanjavur showing the Buddha.

There are at least two panels featuring the Sakyamuni: one at the base of the second gopuram and the other in the main temple. Here, events are depicted in comic-strip style, using small sequential sculptural panels. This was an artistic convention that can be observed in the temples of the medieval period in Tamil Nadu. You can see similar story-telling miniature sculptures in other temples also. It could be an episode from mythology or depicting a historical event. At the Vaikuntha Perumal temple in Kanchipuram, certain events from Pallava history are told in the manner, while at the Gangaikondacholapuram temple, the story of Bhagiratha is depicted similarly.

The second set of Buddha figures is in the body of the main temple, on the right balustrade of the step leading into the sanctum and on the southern side. There are three sculpture pieces here. The first one shows Buddha seated under a tree, flanked by royalty. The gandharvas are depicted on the upper part of the frieze. The next one shows Buddha standing under a tree, and royalty worshipping him. Behind them are the gandharvas, also in a posture of supplication.The Buddha at Thanjavur

It was few days back that Salman Khurshid suggested a serious study of the Irish peace process to see if that can be applied to solve the Kashmir problem. Now the moderates in Hurriyat have suggested the same too.

Talking to the Daily Times, the former chairman of a moderate faction of the APHC said there was no harm in seeing the Irish model as a viable option, claiming also that it was an idea once supported by former US President Bill Clinton and it was now being backed by a couple of Indian leaders.

"We feel that among other options it can become the basis for talks aimed at resolving the Kashmir dispute," the paper quoted him as saying.

"Kashmiris are the main party to the dispute," he added. But Ansari said any model for the resolution of the dispute must be adopted after considering the pros and cons of that idea. No idea can work if we pick the plus points and ignore the minus," he said. He said the Irish model must be adopted as a whole and that Pakistan-occupied Kahsmir should not be excluded from the solution to the dispute.[Hurriyat favours Irish model for Kashmir]

During the late 17th century China and India were economic giants in manufacturing. This article by Philip S Golub has many interesting facts

Before 1800, trade flows between Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Javanese and Arabs were much greater than those within Europe. The level of scientific and technical knowledge was high - more so in many fields than that of Europe. Joseph Needham, an authority on Chinese science and technology, emphasised that in terms of technology China was in a dominant position both before and after the European Renaissance (7). Its lead was apparent in fields such as iron and steel, mechanical clocks, engineering (suspension bridges), firearms and deep drilling equipment.

It is not surprising that Asia had a preponderant place in world manufacturing at the time. According to estimates by economic historian Paul Bairoch (8), in 1750 China�??s share of world manufacturing output was 32.8%, compared with 23.2% for Europe, with populations of 207 and 130 million respectively. India and China together accounted for 57.3% of world manufacturing output. If the contributions of the southeast Asian countries, Persia and the Ottoman empire are included, the share of Asia in the wider sense (excluding Japan) was almost 70%. Asia was particularly dominant in finished textile products (Indian and Chinese cotton and silk goods) - a sector later to become the globalised flagship industry of the European industrial revolution.[All the riches of the east restored]

Madhu Menon is hosting this week's blog mela. You will find many Indian blogs worth adding to your blogroll. The complete schedule of the blog mela is available at Shanti's place

While on the topic of Blog Mela, Yazad has some musings on the issue of awarding $10 to the winner and the role of the host of the mela.

Sirpur was the happening place about 1300 years ago. It had a Shaivite king Mahashivagupta who entertained Huen Tsang and philosopher Nagarjuna. Mahashivagupta's mother Vasata built a Laxman temple which is the first temple in India to be built using bricks. This temple was completed in 650 AD and is located on the banks of the river Mahanadi.

Now Archaeologists have unearthed a floor below the the ancient floor pushing the age of the temple back by 150 years, making its time of completion around 500 AD. (Same time as Aryabhata)

Also see our new Indian History Timeline

Tom Friedman brings up one point which none of the anti-outsourcing people talk about

The second group of boomers barreling down the highway are the young people in India, China and Eastern Europe, who in this increasingly flat world will be able to compete with your kids and mine more directly than ever for high-value-added jobs. Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they'll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work.

When was the last time you met a 12-year-old who told you he or she wanted to grow up to be an engineer? When Bill Gates goes to China, students hang from the rafters and scalp tickets to hear him speak. In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears. We need a Bill Cosby-like president to tell all parents the truth: throw out your kid's idiotic video game, shut off the TV and get Johnny and Suzy to work, because there is a storm coming their way. [The New York Times > Opinion >'Oops. I Told the Truth.']

The US is the top destination for foreign students looking for higher education and now even there the number is reducing. The bright minds + VC money created employment for many, but may not be in the future.

Afghanistan, the land of confluence of Greek, Persian, Buddhist and Islamic cultures is a goldmine for Archaeologists. Years of war have destroyed many of the symbols of its cultural heritage, but now efforts are on to discover things which are underground.

Afghanistan was a crossroads for the major powers of the ancient and modern world. Cyrus the Great of Persia founded Bagram. Alexander the Great founded a town in his own honor near the edge of the Registan Desert, now called Kandahar. Alexander lived in Bagram (Cyrus' Kapissa) for two years and married Roxanne, a young woman from the area west of modern Mazar-I Sharif. Ghengis Khan would later ravage the country, purposefully destroying the elaborate waterworks which lined the Helmand River. Those waterworks have still not been rebuilt more than a millennium later, but their remains are extant.

Afghanistan's past is part of the world's cultural treasure. This land was the limit of Alexander's Hellenistic empire. These mountains and valleys are where London and Moscow played "the great game" for control of central and south Asia. Here Babur built lavish gardens, splendid shrines and magnificent Islamic schools and mosques, some of which still sparkle in the brilliant sunshine.[Afghan Archaeology on Road to Recovery]

Looks like Tajikistan is becoming the outsourcing capital for military bases. They have now granted a base for Russia, which will be Russia's largest base on foreign soil.

India too has a military base in Tajikistan and will be operational by the end of this year.

Although Indian officials are not willing to discuss the importance of the Farkhor military base, foreign analysts have noted that the acquisition of the military base in Tajikistan would certainly give the Indian armed forces a longer strategic reach.

Defence sources describe it as a "modern" military base where 95 per cent of the infrastructure is in place. The runway, the blast pans and the control tower are ready. The Army is also into this exercise, having operated a military hospital there, basically to nurse the Northern Alliance soldiers who fought the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan between 1997 and 2001.

It was to this hospital that Ahmed Shah Massoud, the last of the anti-Taliban resistance leader, was brought dead after Al-Qaida's emissaries, posing as TV journalists, killed him in an explosion three years ago.

The base is the outcome of considerable behind-the-scene work by the MEA, clinched after the US, which marked a big military presence in Central Asia in the wake of 9/11, preferred not to establish a base.

After Nancy Reagan, one more Republican has broken ranks. The Governor of my home state of Kaa-Lee-Fawn-Ya is endorsing Proposition 71, a $3 billion dollar bond measure to fund human embryonic stem cell research.

The endorsement will also put him at odds with the state Republican Party, which officially opposes Proposition 71, and perhaps even the Bush administration - which has limited funding of the research. On the other hand, Schwarzenegger has said he supports the technology. His father-in-law, Sargent Shriver, is in the early grips of Alzheimer's disease, which Proposition 71 supporters say could someday be treated by stem cells.

Stem cells are created in the first days after conception and are the building blocks of life. Some researchers hope to turn stem cells into replacement tissue to treat a variety of disease and injury. But many social conservatives oppose the research because it involves destroying microscopic embryos.[Governor endorses controversial stem cell proposition]

With such interest in stem cell research, it's a matter of time before the European Union or even the Koreans become leaders in this field. Earlier this year, in a major breakthrough, a team of Korean scientists was able to create a line of human embryonic stem cells in a lab. Traditionally, Koreans are not seen to be at the cutting edge of research in science and technology. The US government's involvement is not crucial to stem cell research. There are plenty of other countries which are more than willing to take the lead in this area[VIEW
Stem cell research and the American elections]

Manish at Sepia Mutiny has an interesting entry on Fibonacci numbers which in fact should be called Hemecandra numbers.

The Fibonacci series is the set of numbers beginning with 1, 1 where every number is the sum of the previous two numbers. The series begins with 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. They were known in India before Fibonacci as the Hemachandra numbers. And the ratio of any two successive Fibonacci numbers approximates a ratio, ~1.618, called the golden section or golden mean.

It's long been known that the Fibonacci series turns up freqently in nature. The numbers of petals on a daisy and the dimensions of a section of a spiral nautilus shell are usually Fibonacci numbers. For plants, this is because the fractional part of the golden mean, a constant called phi (0.618), is the rotation fraction (222.5 degrees) which yields the most efficient and scalable packing of circular objects such as seeds, petals and leaves.

But Bhargava points out that the series also shows up in the arts. Sanksrit poetry, tabla compositions and tango, to name a few examples, use the series to find the number of possible combinations of single and double-length beats within a stanza.[Sepia Mutiny: Hemachandra numbers everywhere]

Before Fibonacci wrote his work, the sequence Fn had already been discussed by Indian scholars, who had long been interested in rhythmic patterns that are formed from one-beat and two-beat notes. The number of such rhythms having n beats altogether is Fn+1; therefore both Gospala (before 1135) and Hemachandra (c. 1150) mentioned the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ... explicitly.[Who was Fibonacci?]

The Discovery Times Channel had a program on Al Qaeda and one of the points mentioned was that Bangladesh is becoming the new haven. One of the incidents mentioned in the documentary was that of a ship, MV Mecca pulling into the Chittagong Port in Dec 2001.

That night the Bangladeshi military intelligence had apparently cleared off the place all of the schedule has been changed. No ship was really berthing in. Until dock-workers spotted a mysterious ship: the MV Mecca?pulling into port. Indian intelligence later learned about the secret mission of the MV Mecca, and the people who came ashore.

The few dock workers who were that in that area, who then told us that these were people, big tall people, many of them wearing the traditional Afghan shalwar but some of them were in battle fatigues as well which made them look like any other army. After two hours the group had gone ashore.

They had weapons, they had large number of assault rifles, standard AK series assault rifles, they had ammunition boxes and some of them had bigger weapons they were lugging in. At this point the trail goes cold, but there are accounts of fighters disappearing into the Bangladesh countryside. [Script of Al Qaeda 2.0]

The Germans are so anxious they bluntly told Bangladesh�??s ambassador to consult their top anti-terrorism official during the preparations for Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer�??s visit to Dhaka in July. The Germans were probably unnerved by the April blast in Sylhet, where the visiting British High Commissioner was injured. Five persons died, and he was whisked off back to England. No wonder the British told the Bangladeshi minister of state for home that his country was in danger of becoming a failed state like Colombia, �??but without the drugs�?�.

Bangladesh doesn�??t like to hear about its Islamist problem. When the daily Prathom Alo did a three-part series of articles of the growth of Islamism and militancy in Chittagong, it was threatened with closure. [Is Bangladesh the next Afghanistan? : HindustanTimes.com]

Even though the Taj Mahal was 350 years old many years back, the Govt celebrated it's 350th anniversary recently. Right now the controversy is, Is the Taj Mahal leaning, like the tower in Pisa.? But there is one report which says it is not.

Talking to The Pioneer on Tuesday, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI Agra, Dr D Dayalan, said that though it is a fact that one of the front minarets of the Taj mahal was indeed 'tilting' by 8.5 inch outwards, this was either a deliberate structural feature introduced by the architect of the monument or it may have occurred sometime back in history due to a natural calamity like an earthquake.

Dayalan said that this issue was not new, in fact it had been raised by the media a few decades ago as well. Following this, the department had fixed glass strips in the base of the minarets to ensure that if there indeed was a movement in the minarets even by 1mm, the strips would crack, but they haven't cracked till date.

This indicated that the minarets were not tilting any further and the controversy being raised over the 'Leaning tower of Taj Mahal', is completely hypothetical, created by a section of the media bent upon sensationalising the issue. [Baseless babble over 'leaning' Taj Mahal]

This week's blog mela is hosted by Aadisht Khanna. Some interesting entries, some not so interesting.

Next week's blog mela is hosted by Yazad

Somehow my idea of a Buddhist prison was a place where prisoners would be taught Vipassana and would come out as a reformed people. But in fact a Tibetan prison is not even close and also they had instruments of torture.

Tibet's largest ancient prison, Langzisha in Lhasa, vandalised during the "Cultural Revolution" era is under repair and is expected to be opened to the public in May, 2005, a report said Monday. The project, which cost $ 60,241, aims to restore the original look of the ancient prison and help people learn about Tibet's history, local officials said.

Losang Jigme, who is in charge of the project, said the reconstruction team will repair all walls, the roof of the three-story building, all nine cells of the prison, a court room and the prison control room. Situated in Bargor Street of Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Langzisha is a typical example of Tibetan architecture covering an area of 720 square metres. Built by the fifth Dalai Lama in the middle of the 17th century, it was originally meant to be the government headquarters of Lhasa, but was later turned into a prison. [Ancient Tibet prison to open]

Now the same news was reported by both Xinhuanet and PTI, the PTI news being a word by word copy of the Xinhuanet article. But in the PTI article, the following line disappeared

Even in the first half of the 20th century, Tibet remained a society of theocractic feudal serfdom, one even darker and more backward than medieval Europe.

Last night I attended a concert by Shankar, Gingger, Zakir Hussain and Shivamani and it was one of the best music performances I attended (The others being, Amjad Ali Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, A R Rahman and Yanni).

• The program which was to start at 5 PM started at 6 PM. At 5 PM the gates were not even open, which means the artistes probably woke up at that time and said "Ghosh! we have a show to do"
• Even though the show started late, they did not have time to adjust the audio system, and so Shankar and Zakir Hussain were giving instructions to the audio control guys while performing. At one point I thought Shankar would fling his double violin at guy at the controls.
• The first part was about 45 mins followed by a 1 hr intermission when the artistes probably went to sleep again. But the last 90 mins was just awesome.
• I had seen Sivamani in two A R Rahman stage programs, but here there was a solo performance by him in which he produced sounds from almost anything he would lay his hands on. But then there was no connection between the various sounds he was producing. It would jump from one rhythm to another without any smooth transision.
• This was followed by a solo performance by Zakir Hussain and then you know why he is called Ustad. I never knew such varied sounds could come from a tabala. He knows to work the crowd and is an entertainer.
• Finally, the number of standing ovations: Zakir Hussain: 2, Sivamani: 1, Shankar and Gingger: 0.

Starting next year, Dave Barry will not be writing his weekly columns. He is taking an indefinite leave of absence from Miami Herald.

''I've never not had a column in a week in all of 30 years, even when I went on vacation,'' Barry said. 'At some point I said, 'Well, maybe it'll be OK to not do it for a while.' And I didn't want to wait until I hated it and I didn't want to wait until I thought, 'Oh, I've got no more columns to write.' ''[Dave Barry will take a timeout]

His columns will definitely be missed.

Related Entries: Rock Bottom Reminders, Tricky Business

• Farenheit 9/11 A real hardhitting look at the Bush Administration and the Iraq War. Moore brings out all the unpleasant questions which the mainstream media have overlooked. He is as fair and balanced as Fox News and hence does not cover the autrocities of Saddam or his sons, but still this is one documentary that is a must see.
• Bush's Brain A documentary on Karl Rove, President Bush's Political advisor. It is based on a book by the same name and has many anecdotes on the man behind the President some of them really horrible. Worth watching.
• The Life of BuddhaThere are a million movies on Jesus Christ, there are even a few on the Dalai Lama. But this is the first documentary I have seen on the life of the Buddha. This film combines archaeology, mythology, and folklore to reconstruct his life. A must watch.
• Barbershop (Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer) A mediocre movie about a days events in a Chicago Barbershop. Lot of politically incorrect statements and lots of humor.
• Asambhav (Hindi) (Arjun Rampal, Priyaka Chopra) - The Indian President gets kidnapped in Switzerland by Pakistanis and Arjun Rampal from Special Group Force in the Indian Amry is sent to rescue him. Priyanka Chopra plays a completely "different" role, and you won't believe it - as a club dancer. Can you retain your sanity after watching this movie ? Asambhav!
• The Bulletproof MonkChow Yun-Fat is a tibetan monk who is protecting a sacred scroll and he ends up in United States. There he pairs up with Seann William Scott (Stiffler of American Pie) and fights the bad guys. This movie has it all - bad dialogues, bad acting and bad script.
• Alexander the Great (Richard Burton) - This sweeping epic was so sweeping boring that I am now eagerly waiting to see Colin Farrell as Alexander.

"We are not hankering for Kashmiri territory. It is not simply a question of territorial gains" but matter of ensuring justice for Kashmiris, Kasuri said. Kasuri's statement is in line with a series of encouraging remarks by Pakistani and Indian officials on the sensitive issue, all of which express hope but steadfastly skate around details that could prove sensitive. [Pakistan not hankering after Kashmir: Kasuri]

If Pakistan was not hankering for Indian territory why did they cross the border in 1947, 1965 and 1999?. This is yet another propaganda statement which will get wide publicity like Musharraf's new proposal for solving the Kashmir problem.

Such full toss balls should be hit for a sixer immediately by the Indian Govt.

Balochistan in Pakistan is the home of Mehrgarh, one of the earliest known farming settlements in the subcontinent. The earliest settlement is as old as 7000 BC, the time when humans had changed from hunter gatherers to farmers.

During the excavations, the archaeologists discovered clay female figurines associated with fertility rites, and believed to have been worshipped by the natives. Similar figurines have surfaced in other archaeological sites in the province. Several of these statues are carved with necklaces, and have their hands on their breast or waist. Some have children on their laps.

The people of that era used to wear woollen or cotton clothes. Some of the deities had their braid on their back and shoulders. Most of the male statues wore turbans, which is still in vogue in Balochistan. While the opinion of several archaeologists that several of the statuettes discovered at the site might have been children�?$(Bs (Btoys is plausible, there are many who link these terracotta figures to be religious beliefs and the eon-old concept of the power of nature and female deities. Moreover, terracotta figures of bulls have also been discovered at Mehrgarh pointing to the possible worship of animals or their exalted status as life-givers for the food they yielded.

The figurines reveal the attire the women possibly wore; lace-like material round their waists and adorned their upper bodies with necklaces. Archaeologists are still clueless as to how they wove the material and whether they used cotton or wool to make their garments.

It is interesting to note, however, that the male figurines have turbans �?$(O m(Buch like those worn by the inhabitants of Balochistan today. Reflecting artistic talent and painstaking workmanship, these figurines provide some of the best clues to life in that period. During the diggings, experts say seven layers of habitation were discovered. Each layer was different from the other denoting the levels of progress as the Mehrgarh inhabitants moved from one phase of civilisation to the next.[7,000-year-old civilisation site needs attention]

Oct 27 is celebrated as Infantry Day to mark the accomplishment of the Indian Army in its first ever engagement just two months after independence. On Oct 21/22, Pakistanis invaded the independent state of Jammu and Kashmir with the aim of annexing it, even though the Maharajah had signed a standstill agreement with them.

From New Delhi the Dakotas flew 30 more sorties carrying further reinforcements of 1 SIKH. The 161 brigade was constituted at the Srinagar airfield on October 29, 1947. The brigade fought in the most adverse of conditions against the raiders pushing them back inch-by-inch without any outside help since the only land route_ the Banihal pass_ was closed with heavy snow. During the campaign, the army lost 76 officers, 31 JCOs and 996 other ranks. The wounded totaled 3152 ranks including 81 officers and 107 JCOs. The J&K states�?? forces lost 1990 men. The IAF, which flew then as Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) lost 32 personnel, including nine officers. The army won five Param Vir Chakaras, the highest gallantry award, and 284 Vir Chakras.

This major feat, however, would have been impossible without the help of some intrepid civilians who fought shoulder- to- shoulder with the army and guided them in the hostile terrain. One of them, Maqbool Sherwani, played a pivotal role when he and his supporters misled the raiders about the presence of Indian army and locations of certain key installations and Srinagar airport. That proved decisive as it allowed the Indian army enough time to land at Srinagar and consolidate the defences of Valley. Sherwani, however, was caught and killed brutally. To mark the triumph of October 27, the day is celebrated every year as Infantry Day. The day not only marks the accomplishment of the Indian army in its first ever engagement after independence, it also highlights how history of Kashmir was shaped by those critical moments and perhaps that of India, too. [October 27: When raiders came to annex Kashmir - By Tariq Bhat]

Colin Powell is on a roll. First he pissed off Taiwan. Then he said that he worked as a telephone operator and setup a phone call between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan. Jaswant Singh replied immediately.

"The way he has gone about claiming credit is a total concoction and a matter of imagination, the way he conjured up biological weapons in Iraq," Singh said. "I don't know whether the State Department of U.S.A., in addition to attempting to run U.S. foreign policy as best as it can, is also a telephone exchange and now is acting as a kind of elocution instructor to South Asia."

As a minister, Singh was believed to have had good relations with his U.S. counterparts. But at the news conference, he said: "The U.S. bureaucracy are world champions in . . . inaction, in finding reason not to do things." He added that the U.S. bureaucracy is three times ahead of its Indian counterpart in "obfuscating, obstructing and ensuring that nothing is done." [India's Ex-Foreign Minister Assails Powell]

B Raman thinks that besides the Americans, Osama bin Laden has one more enemy who is out to get him - the Shi'ites of Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are hunting for bin Laden not because of any love or sympathy for the Americans, but for their own need for revenge.

That might be because they haven't forgotten what he did to them in 1988. It was then that hundreds of Shi'ites of the Northern Areas (NA - Gilgit and Baltistan) of Pakistan, known before 1947 as the Northern Areas of Jammu and Kashmir, were massacred after a demand raised by them for the creation of an autonomous Shi'ite state called Karakoram, consisting of the Shi'ite majority areas of the NA, Punjab and the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). Military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq called in bin Laden, then living in Peshawar, and his Sunni tribal hordes to carry out the massacre.

To avenge these deaths, a Shi'ite airman is believed to have caused an explosion on board the aircraft in which Zia was travelling from Bahawalpur to Islamabad in August 1988. This was followed in 1991 by the assassination in Peshawar of Lieutenant-General Fazle Haq, a retired army officer, close to Zia and hated by the Shi'ites because of his suspected role in the assassination of a respected Shi'ite leader. [Osama and his Shi'ite nemesis]

Osama mean time is appearing all over the region. He is in Tibet-Laddakh region, Iran, Balochistan all at the same time.

The Buddha did not want people to worship his image and so early representations of him were symbolic like his feet or a tree. But then as his teachings became Buddhism and spread out of India, many forms of art started appearing in various styles.

China's attraction to the outside world went beyond art. I have shown in several studies that Buddhism spread over much of eastern Iran, as demonstrated by archaeology, place names and the imprint it left on Persian literature - idealized beauty was celebrated by the poets of early Islamic Iran, using explicitly Buddhist images and references to Buddhist shrines.

If the evidence of sculpture is anything to go by, it took three centuries for Buddhism to establish itself. The earliest dated Buddha image cast in bronze, now in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, is dated 338 A.D. Bronzes of the fourth century are scarce. Comparative abundance in the fifth century suggests a change in pace. Extraordinary bronzes were being cast by the end of the century, particularly in the northeastern provinces of Shaanxi and Hebei, at the heart of the territory long controlled by the Xianbei, Leidy remarks.

It may one day be possible to plot the route followed by Buddhist iconography first defined in present-day Afghanistan through Tajikistan into Chinese Turkistan up to Dunhuang, the Buddhist cave complex that retains to this day its Sogdian name "Throang(a)," adapted to Chinese pronunciation. This resulted in the first truly great works of Chinese Buddhist sculpture. A standing gilt bronze of the Buddha Shakyamuni from Mancheng in Hebei, dated 475, and a seated Buddha from Togeton, Hohhot, cq by Souren in Inner Mongolia, have smiles of radiant certainty, each with a nuance �?? laughing tolerance in one, soothing conviction that all is illusion in the other. [China's 'Golden Age,' over five crucial centuries]

Some extraordinary Chinese Buddhist statues were created during the time of the Qi dynasties which were in the same style as the Guptas.

The mythologies are filled with people of superhuman powers. So in Ramayana we have Ravan with 10 heads and Hanuman who could fly from Lanka to the Himalayas. The fact is if such people existed, how come we don't have 10 headed people now ? A Berkeley Professor has got interested in finding the truth behind all these symbols.

Ten-headed demon king Ravana of the Hindu epic Ramayana actually had one head and the other nine were its reflection on the nine large polished gems that he wore around his neck, an American scholar of Sanskrit has reasoned.

In a lecture in New Delhi titled, "How fast do monkeys fly? How long do demons sleep?" where he read commentaries on Sanskrit epic poetry, Goldman said ancient scholars like Nagoji Bhatta, Govindaraja, Maheshwara Teertha, Satyateertha and Madhava Yogendra tried to "track down the narrative" and explain through "scientific reasoning" the seeming exaggerations in the works. [Hanuman flew at 660 km per hour]

How will gems around the neck reflect the head ? And the "scientific" explanation is not on how monkeys could fly, but on how fast he could fly. I wonder what this professor teaches. Maybe the clue is Berkeley Professor.

This week's blog mela is up at Yazad's place. I tried reading some of the Hindi blogs and could not proceed beyond a few lines. For me reading Hindi on paper seems to be easier. As usual I picked some good blogs to add to my bloglines list.

The next one will be hosted by Ashish Hanwadikar. Please send him your nominations.