varnam

• Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle If you have been watching documentaries week after week, this is what you need : A feeble story, heavy metal music, lot of skin, and unbelievable stunts. Terrible, but watchable.
• The Incredibles The idea of a dysfunctional American family has been beaten to death in movies and sitcoms (Simpsons, Malcom in the Middle, American Beauty). So the idea of dysfunctional American family with ex-super heroes does not have any novelty. After watching so many Pixar movies, I had great expectations of this movie. But throughout the whole movie I laughed only once (towards the last scene when the little baby morphs into fire). Everyone in the theatre were laughing like crazy, but this movie did not do it for me.
• Vasool Raja MBBS (Tamil) This is a remake of the Hindi film Munna Bhai MBBS where Kamal Haasan plays the role played by Sanjay Dutt and Prabhu the role of Arshad Warsi. I hate to say this, but Sanjay Dutt was better in that role. Since I had seen Munna Bhai first, there was this constants comparison thread running in the background and I found the Hindi version better than this one.
• Thitthikuthe (Tamil) This movie had a melodious song (Thaayarum Ariyaamal...) sung by Unnikrishnan which I liked. After watching 30 mins of the movie, I was looking for a wall to bang my head.
• Nandanam (Malayalam) A servant girl's faith in Guruvayoorappan translates into her wishes coming true. She sees the hand of the Lord in everything, which others around her do not see. MT Vasudevan Nair had a movie called 'Ente Swantham Janakikutty' which revolved around a similar theme of personal faith and seeing what you want to see. This movie has excellent songs too and was a nice Malayalam movie after a long time.
• Swapnakoodu (Malayalam) The film has three heroes and two heroines and could have been the world's first pentagonal love story. But they make one hero tie the rakhee on a heroine. Then they kill one of the heroines. So the problem was reduced to the most often solved mathematical puzzle in Indian films - the triangular love story. Everything ends predictably. Good songs and excellent characters make this a good movie to watch.

PILLI POST (Indo-Pak border): Pakistani troops recently encroached upon a 40-metre stretch along the International Border in Samba sub-sector in Jammu. BSF DIG, Jammu Sector, P K Mishra said that Pakistan had removed one of the three pillars and constructed a post at Ballard area on IB. There were reports of high tension between the border guards of Pakistan and India after the Pakistani encroachment.

Talking to reporters after a sector commander-level meeting of the two countries, where the BSF took up the issue, Mishra said the land had been reclaimed. He said the issue would be further discussed between BSF commandant and Wing Commander of Pakistani Rangers on Friday. "We have refixed the border pillar and taken control of our land," Mishra stated. "There is no question of leaving an inch of our territory," he added. [India push back Pakistan incursion in Jammu]

The Bactrian Gold which is speculated to be burried by Bactrian nomads in the first century CE was discovered in 1978. It survived the Soviet invasion, the warring mujahadeen factions and the Taliban rule and was found again in 2003. Recently an inventory was conducted and everything was found to be intact.

In ancient times, Bactrian civilization rivaled that of Mesopotamia. It was a fertile agricultural oasis and a thoroughfare on the Silk Road. Iranian, Indian, Central Asian, Chinese, Greek, Roman, and nomadic cultures encountered one another on the plains and in the capital of Balkh, which the Arabs called "the Mother of Towns." Artistic and cultural styles fused. Zoroaster first preached monotheism there and King Kanishka commissioned the first human representations of the Buddha there. The poet known as Rumi wrote verses there, and Marco Polo traversed the city on his path to China.

The region was colonized repeatedly. Alexander the Great came to conquer this easternmost outpost of his empire, the last Persian province to fall, and made it his base; his inheritor later traded it to the Indian Mauryan dynasty for five hundred elephants and a princess. Genghis Khan destroyed it with his horde of ten thousand men in the early thirteenth century. "With one stroke a world which billowed with fertility was laid desolate," the chronicler Juvaini wrote three decades later. And Babur, the founder of the Moguls and a descendent of Genghis Khan, seized the region before he moved on to conquer India.

The treasure may eventually reveal new information about the mysterious span of time between the decline of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom and the rise of the great Kushan Empire. The trove contains many unusual objects. One gold coin resembles no numismatic collection in the world: it depicts a man resting on the Wheel of Dharma, and on the reverse, a lion with a raised paw. Sarianidi hypothesizes that it was minted by the Greco-Bactrian King Agathocles during the interval between Greek and Kushan control.

Another gold coin is stamped with the profile of the Roman emperor Tiberius, minted in Lugdunum in Gaul between 16 and 21 C.E.--the first coin of its kind found in all of Central Asia. Other provocative objects prompt questions about the mingling and syncretism of artistic styles: brooches and figurines depicting Aphrodite show a Kushan interpretation of the goddess's features--small-breasted, round-bellied, and more serious than her Greek counterpart--but she stands with one arm resting on a column, as was the Hellenistic fashion. [ An Ancient Afghan Treasure is Recovered]

Here is a question for you. Communist Party secretary Anil Biswas called "X" as people who were opposed to development. Who can "X" be ?

If yor brain has gone into an infinite loop wondering who can be more against development than the Communists, then here is clue. The same "X" beat up some Communists recently.

And the answer is:

In another daring strike in the Naxalite hotbed of West Midnapore, CPM leaders were thrashed, forest bungalows blasted and vehicles used for building roads set on fire last night.

“The rebels shouted slogans, distributed leaflets and pasted posters. Then they ordered those inside Banamali’s house to come out. A driver was asked to park the vehicles close to each other. They sprinkled diesel and set them on fire,” said the district police chief.

The labourers were then asked to leave. The CPM leaders and their supporters were identified. Some of them had to be dragged out from their hiding inside the house. Eight people, including Banamali and Kailash, were lined up and hit with rifle-butts, lathis and rods. The guerrillas also kicked them with their boots.

The attackers, identified as members of the CPI(Maoist) — formed by the merger of the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre — by their posters and leaflets, then visited two forest bungalows at the foot of a hill and one on top and burst bombs. The police said all the bungalows were heavily damaged. [Naxalites thrash CPM men on home turf]

Somehow I thought Naxalites and Communists were on the same side, but it looks like there are some nuances.

Sandeep has an excellent review of Arun Shourie's book The Only Fatherland, which brings into light the anti-national activities of the Indian Communists.

When the Quit India Movement was called by Gandhi, the Communists initially supported it. Why? Stalin had then made a deal with Hitler to share certain European territories including parts of Poland. To achieve this, he sent out through the Comintern, pamphlets that the War was a war between the oppressive forces of capitalism and that the Commies should remain neutral and/or that wherever the forces of capitalism were active (read: European colonies), they needed to be opposed. Thus, Britain=Capitalist, India=British colony, therefore, oppose the British in India. The Indian Commies faithfully compiled. Not just that. In their obsession with The Marxist Gospel, they began to paint patriots--including but not limited to Gandhi--as "vultures, decadent, traitors." Their struggle was the only true struggle, their way the only way to expel the British, and so on. As evidence, Shourie presents an array of extracts from their party letters, cartoons, and articles. One cartoon shows Subash Bose as a midget being led by Japanese imperialists, another shows him as a cur held up Goebbels. Gandhi is depicted as a kangaroo in whose pouch a frightened JP (frightened by the Commies, of course) jumps right back. And a typical passage that tarnishes the freedom fighters' reputations:[The Only Fatherland]

Arun Shourie has been taking on the Communists for a long time. In his book Eminent Historians he gave us examples of how Communist historians are attempting to rewrite history to appease Muslims. I have not "The Only Fatherland" yet, but it is moving to the top of my list.

Today is Communist day here at varnam. In some news which warmed the cockles of my heart (located between the left and right ventricle), the Communists in Kerala have been asked to pay for all the hartals they have called for.

Kerala High Court had banned bandhs. So the geniuses there (100% literacy at work) now call for hartals which has the same end result. (This is similar to terrorist groups in Pakistan changing names when they are banned by the US State Dept). It was then that the Bombay High Court came up with this pay as you go Bandh idea. Now the Marx-putras have been asked to shell out Rs. 3 lakh in compensation for 13 bandhs.

Compensation notices were slapped on three stalwarts of the Kerala CPM and 100 others for destruction of public property during shutdowns called by the party or its affiliates.

The Kerala government order was issued on Friday, the day Opposition Trinamul Congress supporters organised a bandh in Bengal.

CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, former Speaker M. Vijaya Kumar and Left Front convener Paloly Mohammed Kutty and the others have been asked to pay Rs 3 lakh for destruction of public property during the 13 strikes called after the Congress-led government came to power in 2001.

The collective compensation demand of Rs 3 lakh is but a drop in an ocean of Rs 10.52 crore Kerala has lost over the last three years in bandhs. But this is the first time anywhere in the country that a government has moved on its own to claim damages and pin responsibility on individuals.

The order also imposes vicarious responsibility on the sponsors of hartals, after forced shutdowns were declared illegal by the Supreme Court. This closes the escape hatch for political leaders who deploy ranks in the streets and disclaim any personal role in the resultant violence. [CPM gets a bill for bandhs]

Small men thrown into big chairs - that's how Manmohan Singh decribed the Hurriyat leaders. They claim to be the representatives of the Kashmiris, though they do not believe in elections. When the Pakistan Prime Minister visits India, he meets the Hurriyat and do not even meet the actual elected representatives of Jammu and Kashmir.

All the same, no impartial traveller to the Valley in recent years even during the drift could have missed the sheer disregard in which the Hurriyat and its leaders are held by the people, angry and disgusted though they are with the high-handed and often unacceptable behaviour of our security forces. Even in its high noon in the turmoil years, the Hurriyat did not represent, in terms of popular support, a relation to the gun-toting outfits akin to, say, the Sinn Fein and the IRA. The British government's talks with the Sinn Fein do not, therefore, come as a surprise.

The Hurriyat had no grassroots life, and it did not care to develop one. In any case, this would have been near-impossible, given the mutually antagonistic and disparate orientation of Hurriyat constituents. Its constituents were removed from the culture of traditional mass politics which presumes linkages to the people. The exception among today's big boys' is Ali Shah Geelani, a na-turally gifted, strongly pro-Pakistan leader who is influential among orthodox Jamaat-e-Islami sections dispersed across the Valley. Though the Hurriyat does not have many takers within the Valley, its usefulness to Islamabad can not be overemphasised. Its strawmen, the handsomely rewarded naysayers, provide Pakistan the proverbial fig-leaf that no foreign meddler can do without. [Hurriyat Doesn't Represent Kashmiri Aspirations]

2000 years back India projected its soft power to Afghanistan and the result was the Bamiyan Buddhas and the Gandhara culture. Now again India is projecting its soft power and what may result are - some Salman Khan clones.

Among the most popular and controversial features on cable are films produced by India's prolific movie industry. Bollywood has long been a mainstay here thanks to the similarities between the cultures and the fact that many people in Afghanistan understand Hindi and Urdu. But in recent years, Bollywood has abandoned many old taboos, allowing far more erotic scenes and songs than ever before - though the films rarely push beyond PG-13 Hollywood fare.

Prasant Satapathy, an Indian TV producer working in Kabul, says Bollywood's influence has been a catalyst for change in the Afghan society. Movies such as "Tera Naam" (Your Name), the 2003 Bollywood hit, for example, flopped in India but was a success in Kabul. The movie became so popular here that it inspired everything from hairstyles to fashion trends, sharpening cultural differences among generations.

However, Supreme Court officials say a murder at Kabul University earlier this month is proof that gang violence portrayed in some Bollywood movies has permeated the youth culture here. A third-year medical student fatally stabbed a freshmen allegedly because he was angry that the freshman had grown his hair out like him.

"What happened was imitating Bollywood movies," says Mr. Mozhdah. "The boy said you shouldn't have hair like me. After the incident at the university, we said that what happened was because of the cable. Now we have ... proof of that corruption."

University professors say student gangs are cropping up. And Health officials lay partial blame on Bollywood films for a spike in teen delinquency during the last year, as more young girls are fleeing their families with boyfriends to avoid arranged marriages. [Racy foreign films prompt cable ban in Afghanistan]

After passing resolutions condeming the invasion of Iraq by the Coalition forces, India is now cozying up to the Interim Govt. Iraq's foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari is to visit India this month.

As a first step, India has offered to train 30 Iraqi electoral officials in India, but the government is clearly ready to go beyond making contributions in procedures and arrangements. The elections, the government feels, are a useful instrument for India tossing its hat into the Iraq ring yet again.

With a declared "hands-off" policy on Iraq surviving the NDA government, India has found itself increasingly marginalised in the global stakes in Iraq and clearly missing out on the action. The bedrock of India's shift comes from the realisation that Iraq's stability is in India's interest which is reaching out to West Asia in a new way. From energy to strategic stability in the Islamic world, India wants a more hands-on role. [India to 'unshackle' Iraq policy]

This weekend the San Jose Mercury news had a feature on the top fiction and non-fiction books and then today Forum on KQED had a call in show with book recommendations from the listeners.

While we only have seen pictures of the two Bamiyan Buddhas, archaeologists have been looking for a missing third reclining Buddha. Now they seem to have uncovered the long-missing statue's foot.

Two years ago, a French team led by the Afghan-born archeologist Zemaryali Tarzi of Strasbourg University began excavations for the 985-foot-long reclining statue representing the Buddha in a state of "Mahapari nirvana," or ultimate enlightenment.The dig finally may have yielded something promising. "Professor Tarzi has found a structure which has still to be properly identified but which could be part of the foot of the Sleeping Buddha, maybe the toe," said Masanori Nagaoka, UNESCO's Kabul-based culture consultant. "Alternatively, the structure could be the platform on which the giant statue reclined," he added. [Find stirs Sleeping Buddha talk]

And at the same time the Kiwis are helping to piece back the two statues that were destroyed.

Dan Gillmor is making absurd comments on Google News' creator Krishna Bharat's statement that Google News has no view point. He points to an article in the Register which calls Krishna as BharatBot and claims that this is like saying the cat ate my homework.

The register article just complains about the fact that Google News indexes Press Releases (but still tags them). It then goes on to complain that Krishna gives the same reply about the working of Google News. I don't understand this. If a certain program works a certain way, what are you supposed to do ? Change you answer each time ?

For all the technology news Dan has been covering I don't think he understands programming and seems to have really liked the Register's arguments. A program is written using an algorithm. So as Dan says, it could have its programming mistakes sometimes resulting in pictures from some other story appearing in an unrelated news section. But how news gets ranked would depend on the incoming data and not on manual intervention.

If there are more stories on John Kerry, it would get priority than say George Bush. Sometimes when there is a cricket match in India and all English newspapers there report it, that becomes front page news on Google News even though rest of the world has nothing to do with it.

It all depends on the data. That's what Bharat was trying to say.

There are nearly 840 million Hindus in India, and 40 million more in neighboring countries of South Asia. Faithful Hindus long to worship. God desires faithful worshipers. Can they be united to Him in spirit and truth? Yes, if they see that Jesus Christ offers true liberation, that He is the true Incarnation of God -- unique and absolute.

"May the Ganges River become known as the place where Indians go to be baptized in the name of Jesus," a follower of Christ in India prays. "From the Himalaya Mountains to the tropical islands of the Maldives, may the glory of the Lord cover South Asia as the waters cover the sea. Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you, pray, pray, pray!" [Hindus -- like everyone else -- search for God]

Dear Southern Baptist,

Hindus don't need Jesus Christ to offer true liberation. Try Saudi Arabia.

Thank You.

Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code generated lot of controversies regarding the marital status of Jesus. To find more about this ABC News sent a reporter to various places mentioned in the book and interviewed people like Dan Brown, priests, art and historical scholars for the documentary ABC News Presents: Jesus, Mary and DaVinci

The first issue was if Mary Magdalene was a prostitute as popularly known. In this case everyone unanimously agreed that nowhere in the Bible it is mentioned so. There is one tale about a prostitute and immediately following that Mary is mentioned. So it could be be association that Mary was turned into a prostitute. Also to speed things up Pope Gregory gave a sermon in 591 AD in which he said that Mary was a prostitute. The Vatican corrected it later in 1969, 1378 years later.

In the novel it is mentioned that Jesus was married. But in the Bible it is not mentioned that he is married. It is not mentioned that he is unmarried too. The opinion of various people was that his marital status could have been either.

Dan Brown then mentions that he was taking some classes and his teacher showed him Da Vinci's Last Supper. The teacher then asked them to find the cup from which all of them drank and it was then that he noticed that there was no cup. Then it was mentioned that the holy grail was in the painting and it was the person sitting next to Jesus.

But there were some art historians who disagreed with this and said that it was actually male and not Mary. Dan Brown adds that during the time of Da Vinci it was not wise to disagree with the Church and he used his art to convey his belief.

Another point in the novel was that Jesus and Mary had a child who grew up in France. In this documentary they could not find any evidence of this.

While the church accepted certain gospels, some of them were rejected as well. But one of them survived in Egypt and is called the gnostic gospels. In the gnostic gospels, it is mentioned that Jesus kissed Mary and they were very close. Even after resurrection, it was Mary who saw Jesus signifying that she was the favourite.

Finally the documentary concludes that they could not find evidence that Jesus was married and had children. But they found that Mary was much closer to Jesus that is known.

The Communist Party of India on Thursday sought the Centre’s intervention to resolve the feud between the Ambani brothers which, it said, was affecting FDI inflows and the stock markets.

The corporate rivalry of the two brothers of one of India’s topmost industrial houses, becoming public is affecting India’s image. It is not just a family affair but is also vitiating corporate atmosphere, CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta said at a press briefing.[CPI worried over Ambani tussle]

What is happening ? The Communists are worried about the stock markets and FDI inflows and all evils of capitalism ? As Sandeep noted, the Communists need rich men to milk for their socialist programs.

The Govt. whatever its composition is - the Sangh Parivar or Congress ruling in alliance with Marx and Mullah - should stay away from interfering with the activities of private companies. There are market forces to correct such behavior.

If the Marx-putras are really worried about the economy, all they need is ask their comrades to stop calling bandh and hartal which brings the economy to a standstill.

Cultural officials have recently found a linga (phallic symbol) of the Cham ethnic minority people at Van Tuong village, Nghia Dung commune in central Quang Ngai province.

The 35-cm-high linga made from sandstone weighs around 100 kg. It is the second found in Quang Ngai province, providing a link to a cluster of towers of the Cham ethnic minority people in the locality. Archaeologist Dr. Doan Ngoc Khoi said the discovery of linga in Quang Ngai reflects the diversity of the Cham Pa culture of the Cham ethnic minority people in Quang Ngai.

Quang Ngai is home to two ancient citadels, namely Chau Sa at Tinh Chau commune in Son Tinh district and Ban Co at Nghia Phu commune in Tu Nghia district, and around 40 towers of the Cham ethnic minority people scattered around the area that have so far been ruined by the climate. Around 80 years ago in 1924, the French found a linga and a yoni during an excavation in Chanh Lo, Quang Ngai township, and these are now exhibited at the Cham museum in the central city of Da Nang. [New linga found in Quang Ngai province]

There is no picture of the linga and hence we don't know if it was influenced by the Siva Linga worshipped by the Hindus.

The Three Wise Men who came to worship the Christ child hailed from India and named him Isa, or "Lord," in Sanskrit — a name that became Jesus in the Bible.

The star they followed to find the infant Jesus was not a physical celestial body. It was the omniscient "wisdom star of infinite perception" in the spiritual eye, located between the eyebrows, which the wise men accessed through deep meditation.

Later, Jesus traveled to India, where he practiced yoga meditation with the great sages there some time during his "lost years" from age 13 to 30, a time of his life scarcely mentioned in the New Testament.

Chidananda says such Christian mystics as Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart and John of the Cross have described experiences of divine union that uncannily resemble the yoga experience. In many accounts, Chidananda says, deep meditators report hearing a "cosmic hum," then perceiving a light in their brains' frontal lobe and experiencing a blissful, expanded sense of self. [A Hindu's Perspective on Christ and Christianity]

There have been many theories regarding Christ and India. One of them as mentioned in the article is that Christ was in India during his teens. The other one is that Christ did not die in Jesusalem, but in India. But so far there have not been any archaeological evidence of these stories but you search on Amazon.com for "Jesus India" you will find a number of books on this topic.

Yesterday there was a news on the discovery of a linga in Vietnam in the Cham community. The first religion of Cham was Shaivite Hinduism.

In the midst of modern day Vietnam, some distinct touches of India remain. These are artefacts of the Cham civilisation that flourished in central Vietnam from the 2nd to 15th century AD. Indian influence in Vietnam spread through its linkages with this dynasty.

The Chams became Indianised through commercial links with India - they adopted Hinduism, employed Sanskrit as a sacred language and borrowed heavily from Indian art. The effects of these are evident in the Cham monuments in the Quang Nam province, 700 km from capital Hanoi.

The Chams battled constantly with the Vietnamese in the north of their kingdom and the Khmers (in modern Cambodia) in the west. The Chams threw off Khmer rule in the 12th century but were entirely absorbed by Vietnam in the 17th century. One of the greatest Cham sites, My Son, is considered the equivalent of Angkor Vat, Cambodia, in terms of archaeological importance. It became a religious centre under King Bhadravarman in the late fourth century. Most of the temples were dedicated to Lord Shiva.

The Vietnam war destroyed My Son - the temples and ruins bombed to bits. Today they require extensive restoration work. A proposal for cooperation between India and Vietnam for restoration and conservation of Cham monuments is being considered by the Archaeological Survey of India. The Cham monuments of My Son have been declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco. The greatest collection of the Cham ruins is at the Cham Museum in Danang. [India lives on in ancient Vietnamese ruins]

What they teach in history books in Pakistan is very insightful.

A famous Pakistani historian says that the distorted facts and the fictitious history that is being taught in Pakistani schools is responsible for breeding hatred among the young.

Dr Mubarak Ali, a historian and editor of the magazine, Tareekh, told the audience at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday that the language used history and textbooks was provocative. He referred to the words conspiracies, intrigues, treachery, prejudices, enmity with Muslims, collusion, Hindu mentality and political tactics being frequently used that gave an impression that Hindus could not be friends with Muslims.

He said that the Hindu enmity was frequently mentioned in the history books.

Delivering a lecture on What should be the Pakistan studies, Dr Ali noted that history had no connection with religion and culture and that secularism was indispensable for democracy.

He said the Pakistani history had been distorted and that it was the need of hour that students be enlightened regarding the history of culture, archaeology and popular movements of different regions of Pakistan. He said folk stories and literature were an important part of history and these should be brought into the limelight.

He said the authors of the history books had not been professional with the result that the students were unaware of the true history of Pakistan.

Dr Ali refuted the frequent claim that the Muslims of the sub-continent blamed the British and Hindus for their backwardness. If we go through the real history, we find that Muslims were not as oppressed as they have been painted in the history books, he said. [Distorted history is breeding hatred]

We are in Vancouver & Victoria, Canada for vacation for a week. Blogging will resume on Monday.

Ancient coins belonging to the era of Hindu kings Harsha and Kalsha have been unearthed by some labourers during construction work at Watnar near Kokernag in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir.

An earthen urn containing the copper coins weighing 16.3 kgs and dating back to at least 10 centuries were found by the labourers a few days back when they were working on the plinth for construction of a religious school, the Department of Archaeology, Archives and Museums (AAM) said here today.

Describing them as "priceless", an AAM spokesman told reporters, "the coins are of Hindu period and were in vogue during the reign of Harsha and Kalsha." The urn was handed over by the labourers to Deputy Commissioner Ananantag who handed them over to the department. The department did not give the actual number of coins in the urn but said research would be conducted to decipher the language inscribed on them as also to find out the exact age. [Ancient coins unearthed in J-K]

Harsha who ruled from 1089-1111 AD started as a noble king, but later as he ran into financial troubles, he started destroying temples for gold. He even had an office for the destruction of gods.

Richard Boucher, the State Dept spokesman will even put Baghdad Bob to shame. He is known to make insensitive statements. Now that Pakistani all-in-one CEO Musharraf has decided to stay on as the Army Chief, the State Dept had no official condemntation of it. Isn't it the policy of the current administration to promote democracy in Islamic countries ? Isn't that why we invaded Iraq ?

But Richard Boucher, the Washington Bob said that United States will continue to promote democracy in Pakistan, by rewarding the dictator with money and arms.

Just days before the RJD-sponsored rally in Patna on December 23, CPI-Maoist naxalites on Sunday night blew up a small railway bridge between Karmandiha and Sasaram, 96 km from Gaya, in Mughalsarai division of ECR.

Maoists, who were prevented from holding a rally in Patna, have threatened to disturb RJD rally by targeting railways, among other things. The RJD has booked 18 special trains to ferry party supporters to Patna from different parts of the state.

Sources said that over two dozen armed naxalites reached the spot around 1 am and blew up the bridge. "It could have been fatal had they blasted the bridge half-an-hour earlier when the Howrah-New Delhi Rajdhani Express crossed the bridge," a railway official said. [Maoists blast rail bridge to disrupt rally]

The Communist contribution to the development of India.

Throughout the world, we see that wherever socialists took power, genocide followed. In the USSR, up to 30 million people were murdered by Communists. Tens of millions were slaughtered in China. Two million in Vietnam. A million and a half in Cambodia. Up to three and a half million people in North Korea. In Afghanistan upon Communist take-over, at least 12,000 people were killed in Kabul alone in the first few months.

The reason why genocides occur under a socialist form of economics is very simple. For one, politicians have total power over the masses. They can tell you where to live, what to buy – and most importantly, you depend on them for your subsistence because you can only work for the government. In a market economy, if a worker is mistreated or underpaid, he can leave and work for someone else – or start his own business. Not so in a communist economy. You are totally dependent on politicians.

Two, any time a person’s property is taken away from him, he will resist. Some will complain passively, others will resist in an active manner, refusing the politicians’ dictates. To impose their will, politicians must use force – which is exactly what happened in the USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, Afghanistan and all the other countries where politicians were given total economic power over the people. [Asian Experiment: Contrast Between Capitalist and Communist Nations]

According to R.J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science and Nobel Peace Prize finalist, Marxist regimes have murdered nearly 110 million people from 1917 to 1987. Even in democracies the Communists have to blow up railway lines, murder political opponents and subvert development at any cost.

The Information Minister of the Congress government in Andhara Pradesh state, Mohammad Ali Shabber, Monday said that 150 million Indian Muslims feel that Pakistan is following a wrong policy on Kashmir as Islam does not allow any kind of violence.

The Muslim minister said: "You Pakistanis need to understand that despite certain instances of communal violence here, we the Muslims are otherwise quite safe in our own worship places in a Hindu-dominated society. On the other hand, Pakistani Muslims are killing each other in their mosques in the name of Islam, Shiaism and Sunniism."

Talking to a group of visiting Pakistani journalists, the minister said the Indian Muslims were enjoying fruits of secularism and democracy. Without mincing any words, he said Pakistanis need to realise that the Indian Muslims strongly support New Delhi over Kashmir and want the Pakistani government and public to stop interfering in Indian held Kashmir. This, he said, was in the best interest of everybody. [Indian Muslims back Delhi on Kashmir, claims minister]

Yesterday was a productive day as we found solutions to the world's most pressing problems. By we I mean me and Ravikiran. Though he had made fun of Mallus many times I decided to meet him here in the Bay Area where he was visiting. But instead of giving me his phone number at the motel, he gave his fax number. I let it slide as well, afterall he gave me the GMail invite.

Though I was scared that he would knock me out with his PJs he turned out to be quite a affable person. We talked about blogs, A Roy, Nehru, and MadMan (I don't remember exactly how Madhu came into this discussion). We also discussed the dangers of Communism, solutions on eradicating poverty and bringing world peace. Furthur discussions on this matter will be conducted at a Foregin Secretary level.

Ravikiran is now on his way back to India, where the challenging task of deleting spam comments on his blog awaits him.

The death toll is just climbing. If you would like to help financially, the Acorn has all the links.

While Pakistan wants India to withdraw troops from Jammu and Kashmir and work according to the wishes of the people, it is not doing those things in its Balochistan province. The Army is building cantonments in the province much against the wishes of the people there. As usual every disturbance in Balochistan is blamed on RAW, India's external Intelligence Agency. But actual Balochis are calling the media and owning responsibility for the murders happening there.

Gunmen attacked a military vehicle in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province on Saturday, killing four paramilitary troops, a security official said.

"The vehicle was attacked in the early hours. They used rockets and also ambushed the vehicle," Malik said. "Four soldiers were killed and four were wounded."

The vehicle was returning from a routine security patrol.

A spokesman for the Baluch National Army (BNA), who identified himself as Doda Khan, telephoned several media offices in Quetta, claiming that the attack was in response to the government plans to build three military cantonments in the province. [Gunmen Kill Four Soldiers in Southwestern Pakistan]

If there were warning systems in place, many lives could have been saved. But then it takes a disaster of this magnitutde to realize how far we are behind in terms of technology or even common sense. But now the cog wheels of the bureaucracy are moving

The government on Monday decided to install seafloor pressure-recording system in the Indian Ocean to be forewarned about tsunamis and to prevent the recurrence of the catastrophe witnessed on Sunday.

The pressure-recording system, which will be imported from the US, will also strengthen the country's cyclone warning system, considering the fact that 25 per cent of the world's cyclones are recorded in the Bay of Bengal, Minister of State for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal told reporters in New Delhi.

The new system will be linked to existing devices called data buoys, which record sea surface parametres, he said after a meeting with the officials of his ministry.

"If the country had had such an alert system in place, then we could have warned the coastal areas of the imminent danger and prevented the loss of life," he said.

The government has also decided to join a network of 26 countries that warn each other about changes in sea pressure and the possibility of the onset of high tidal waves caused by earthquakes under sea, Sibal said. [India to import system that detects tsunamis]

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Did the Romans ever reach China ? This is a new theory which has approval by the communist party as well.

The earliest recorded official contact between China and Rome did not occur until 166AD, when, according to a Chinese account, a Roman envoy arrived in China, possibly sent by Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Remarkably, that was the only contact between the two great powers of which a record survives. The Romans referred to the people of the remote east as the Seres—the silk people. But that term could have referred to the Central Asian tribes whose trade with the Chinese no doubt included silk—which the Romans long thought grew on trees. The secret of silk production reached the West only in the sixth century, from the Byzantines.

It may well irritate some of the proud custodians of China's cultural heritage that it was foreigners who first promoted the theory of the Roman settlement. Homer Dubs, a professor of Chinese at Oxford University, raised it in a lecture delivered to the China Society in London in 1955. According to Dubs, the journey to Gansu began in 53BC when Crassus, who together with Julius Caesar and Pompey formed Rome's First Triumvirate, decided to make up for his lack of military glory by going to war with the dreaded Parthians.

Dubs says the Chinese kept the ex-legionaries as frontier guards, installing them in a specially created town called Liqian in what is now Gansu

Crassus's legions were no match for the Parthian archers, nimble horsemen who could loose their arrows off even as they turned. Of the 42,000 Romans who set out, 20,000 were killed and 10,000 were captured in the battle of Carrhae, in modern Turkey; it was one of the most spectacular losses of Roman military history. According to Pliny the Elder, the Roman prisoners were used by the Parthians as guards on their eastern frontier in what is today Turkmenistan. From there, Dubs conjectured, some escaped and joined the Huns as mercenaries. In 36BC, Chinese troops on a punitive venture defeated the Hun ruler Zhizhi in today's Uzbekistan. Among their captives they found 145 Romans. Dubs says the Chinese kept the ex-legionaries as frontier guards, installing them in a specially created town called Liqian in what is now Gansu. [The Romans in China]

While violence in Iraq shows no signs of abatement, you would think that civilians would be scared to go there. Today I had gone to notarize a document, when I met this American who wanted someone to sign as witness to his will. He said he was off to Iraq as a civilian contractor and wanted to give the power of attorney to his wife.

He said he was going to give counter-terrorism training to Iraqis. On asked what motivated him to go to such a dangerous place, pat came the reply: Money.

I have found Rajeev Srinivasan's articles usually interesting. Writing about the tsunamis that devastated South East Asia he writes

I pooh-poohed one T John when he claimed that the Gujarat quake was a sign from above, but now I am beginning to wonder.

The devastation by the tsunami in Tamil Nadu, could it be a caveat from Up There about the atrocities being visited on the Kanchi Acharya? About adharma gaining ground?

There are mysterious forces out there that are not fully understood by our oh-so-rational selves. I am reminded of the strange signs and omens that historians recorded before calamities: for instance the rain of frogs in Vietnam preceding the cataclysmic war. Or the odd celestial signs that preceded the death of Julius Caesar.

It is said that the very elements can be affected by the mystical powers of sages who have acquired superhuman powers through meditation and sadhana. I think we should all tread carefully, for now we are treading on things we do not know. [Give so others may live again!]

There are not many right-wing columnists in India and if the existing ones start producing wierd theories like this no one will take them seriously.

There was a program on NPR few weeks back saying that some British are moving out of the country and living as immigrants in other countries as they are fed up with many things. One of the problems cited by them was the influx of immigrants.

Now a recent Economist poll in which 74% of the people said that too many immigrants are coming to Britain. The most important problem cited was that immigrants put too much pressure on public services.

Most damaging for Britain's enlightened self-image, the nation has risen to the top of the European xenophobes' league. A Eurobarometer poll earlier this year found that 41% saw immigration as one of the two biggest problems faced by the nation—16 points more than in any other European country. Forget unemployment, terrorism or crime: the real threat comes from the man with the battered suitcase.

Hostility to those who do not come openly to work is not new. Even in 2000, before the asylum panic, just 12% believed that genuine refugees should be accepted unreservedly—the lowest number in Europe. But Britons are more blasé than other Europeans about the effect of immigration on national harmony. Of those who reckon there are too many, only a quarter worry about racial balance. “Britain has become a multicultural society; it just doesn't want any more people to come in,” says John Solomos, who follows the subject at City University in London.

What seems to have happened over the past few years is that immigration has become associated with refugees and illegal entrants rather than with migrant workers. That is not surprising, given the rise in asylum claimants that began in the late 1990s. Numbers are down, but it does not matter: perceptions have shifted. [Out with the new (subscription reqd)]

Accompanying the article was a graph depicting the most despised immigrants. Iraqis lead the list followed by Pakistanis. This was followed by Romanians, Black Africans, West Indians, Poles and to my surprise Australians whereas Indians do not feature at all.

Recently many burrial urns were discovered in various parts of Tamil Nadu. While the ones discovered in Palani were about 2000 years old, the ones in Adichanallur date to 800 BC.

The most recent issue of Archaeology Magazine has an article on the Warriors of Paros, a Greek Island in the Aegean Sea. Here too archaeologists found the remains of soldiers in urns.

Soldiers' bones in urns--evidence of a forgotten battle fought around 730 B.C. Did these men perish on their island home of Paros, at the center of the Aegean Sea, or in some distant land? The loss of so many, at least 120 men, was certainly a catastrophe for the community, but their families and compatriots honored them, putting their cremated remains into large vases, two of which were decorated with scenes of mourning and war. Grief-stricken relatives then carried the urns to the cemetery in Paroikia, the island's chief city, and placed them in two monumental tombs. [Warriors of Paros]

While the urns in Adichanallur had beautiful decorations of garlands and necklaces, the ones in Greece depicts war scenes. One vase showed a warrior fighting from a chariot with dead combatants lying next to him. It also shows foot soldiers and cavalry in action. A second vase shows war and mourning with women standing with their hands raised and men giving a salute to the dead.

Gen. Musharraf who lies consistently to his own people and the international community has now reneged on his promise to remove the uniform. Washington Bob had already made his comment. But now his boss, Colin Powell has said that it is an internal issue of Pakistan. If so Colin, why are you spreading democracy in Iraq ?

Colin Powell's boss, the President has made spreading democracy a major action item in his agenda. But even his own Secretary of State does not seem to believe it. Due to the War on Terror, Musharraf is being held to very loose standards. So long as he delivers one Jihadi/month, the United States is closing its eyes to many other atrocities he is committing.

The devil-you-know argument is fine as far as it goes. Its defect is the one that applies to all dictatorships: a policy built on one man is a policy built on sand. Although Mr Musharraf is plainly a man the West can do business with, it is equally plain that he will not be around for ever$(Oev(Ben if he continues to dodge the Islamic extremists' persistent attempts to assassinate him. Meanwhile, the hope that he would use his presidency to restore and strengthen democratic institutions in Pakistan is waning. Apart from failing to doff his uniform, he has not made his peace with the secular opposition. He has not acted seriously against the madrassas. It is not clear whether he has purged the army and intelligence services of their own religious extremists. Though he has hunted down foreign terrorists who threaten his own life, he has done less to root out Pakistan's home-grown terrorists, who are increasingly active. And when Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's bomb, was found to have been selling nuclear secrets far and wide, Mr Musharraf let him off for an apology.[Another promise broken (subscription reqd)]

For Wanzhou, a Yangtze River port city, the script was incendiary. Onlookers spread word that a senior official had abused a helpless porter. By nightfall, tens of thousands of people had swarmed Wanzhou's central square, where they tipped over government vehicles, pummeled policemen and set fire to city hall.

Minor street quarrel provokes mass riot. The Communist Party, obsessed with enforcing social stability, has few worse fears. Yet the Wanzhou uprising, which occurred on Oct. 18, is one of nearly a dozen such incidents in the past three months, many touched off by government corruption, police abuse and the inequality of the riches accruing to the powerful and well connected.

"People can see how corrupt the government is while they barely have enough to eat," said Mr. Yu, reflecting on the uprising that made him an instant proletarian hero - and later forced him into seclusion. "Our society has a short fuse, just waiting for a spark."

Though it is experiencing one of the most spectacular economic expansions in history, China is having more trouble maintaining social order than at any time since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. [China's 'Haves' Stir the 'Have Nots' to Violence]

Isn't Communism supposed to produce a classless society where everyone works for the common good ?

As we have noted before, the lofty ideals of Marx are not digested easily by common people and hence violence has to be used.