The secret biological weapon

You are looking at a biological weapon which was used in war about 3300 years ago. The story starts when the Hittites,people who lived in north-central Anatolia from the 18th century BCE, were weakened by plague around 1335 BCE. The Hittites were then attacked by the Arzawans from Western Anatolia triggering then Anatolian war which lasted between 1320 and 1318 BCE. Even though the Hittites were weak, they managed to defeat their enemy in two years and one theory is that their secret weapon was disease ridden rams and donkeys.

To support the bioweapon theory, tablets dating to the 14-13th century B.C., describe how a ram and a woman attending the animal were sent on the road, spreading the disease along the way. “The country that finds them shall take over this evil pestilence,” the tablet said. The practice was soon understood by the Arzawans who also reacted by sending their own infected rams on the road in the direction of the enemy troops.

“Even older evidence for ancient understanding of contagion comes from Sumer (modern Syria). Archaeologists have found several royal letters on cuneiform tablets from the archives of Mari, a town on the Euphrates River. The letters, dating to 1770 B.C., forbid people from plague-ridden towns to travel to healthy towns, and warn people not to touch or use the personal belongings of infected victims,” Mayor said.[Sick Rams Used as Ancient Bioweapons]

Mindfulness for Stress Reduction

Historian Garry Wills was on stage with Dalai Lama one day and he asked the Buddhist monk what he would do if he ever got Tibet back. The Dalai Lama replied that he would enforce the separation of the Church and State, the American way. Gary Wills replied that a pre-requisite would be Enlightenment (not the Buddhist one, but the 18th century movement which includes Deism). The Dalai Lama smiled and went and wrote a book, The Universe in a Single Atom which is about the need for a dialog between scientists and those interested in spirituality.

Partly due to the efforts of the Dalai Lama and partly due to the adoption of Buddhist spiritual techniques by Americans there has been a scientific enquiry into what happens to us during meditation. These studies are being conducted in reputed universities and also at the National Institute of Health. Also there has been an adoption of mindfulness as a practice for stress reduction and this program is now offered in hospitals around the country.

In this video, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn who developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction talks about the program and the results.

Prakash Karat's history lesson

Recently CPI (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat called President George Bush a fool andsaid that he had a poor understanding of history. Mr. Karat was attending a function commemorating the 90th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution was angry that President Bush had compared Lenin to Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler. But guess who has a poor understanding of history?

Following an assassination attempt on Lenin, Stalin wanted a policy of “open and systematic mass terror” to be enforced and Lenin agreed. Red Terror was announced as a policy on September 1, 1918.

“To dispose of our enemies, we will have to create our own socialist terror. For this we will have to train 90 million of the 100 million of Russians and have them all on our side. We have nothing to say to the other 10 million; we will have to get rid of them.”

Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.[Purpose of the Soviet Red Terror]

According to some historians between 1917 and 1922 about 280,000 people were killed through summary executions and supression of rebellions. The repression was against peasants, industrial workers and any one who did not agree with the revolutionaries. Still such brutality is not called holocaust by historians because that credit goes to Hitler alone.

The Sunday edition of New York Times had two stories related to that era and the first one is about the last Russian czar Nicholas II, and his family whom Lenin ordered to be killed in July 1918. Eleven people (czar,the czar’s wife, five children, doctor and three servants), were killed, but the remains of only nine were found. A bunch of amateur detectives have now found some bones and pieces of jars that held the acid used to disfigure the bodies and DNA tests will decide if they belong to Aleksei, 13 and his sister.

The second story is about the time of Stalin. In his book The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, Orlando Figes writes about what happened to millions of ordinary people during the time of the great communist revolution.

Each story had its own disheartening logic. Stalin’s campaign to intimidate the population had no moral limits. Figes tells of Pavlik Morozov, a teenager said to have been killed by older family members because he had denounced his father for selling false papers to kulaks living in nearby “special settlements.” (The kulaks were a category of so-called richer peasants who were regarded as the principal obstacle to collectivization.) The father was sentenced to a labor camp and later shot. After the boy’s death, the Soviet press created “a propaganda cult” around his case. Maxim Gorky called for a monument to be erected because the boy had “understood that a relative by blood may also be an enemy of the spirit, and that such a person is not to be spared.”[Stalin’s Children]

Similar to how Jihadis around the world worship Osama bin Laden people like Prakash Karat worship mass murderers like Lenin and Stalin and they get offended when the truth about them is told. Mr. Karat may hate George Bush, but at least the latter has his history right.

The Benevolent Empire

Walter Russell Mead has a new book God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World in which he argues that United States has become the logical successor of British Empire. According to Mead, these empires are benevolent and people are happy to belong to them. This outrageous statement has been taken to task by the New York Times book reviewer.

Really? Is that how it looked in, say, India? When Clive of India came to Bengal, he described it — in a way all visitors of the time did — as “extensive, populous and as rich as the city of London.” It was a place of such “richness and abundance” that “neither war, pestilence nor oppression could destroy” it. But within a century of British occupation, the population of its largest city, Calcutta, fell from 150,000 to 30,000 as its industries were wrecked in the interests of the mother country. By the time the British left, Calcutta was one of the poorest places in the world. Is this really the baton the United States should pick up?

Tamilians in Ancient Egypt

paanai oRi. Those words mean pot (suspended) in a rope net and that was inscribed in Tamil Brahmi script on both sides of a storage jar. The jar was found in Quseir-al-Qadim, an ancient Egyptian port and was dated to the 1st century BCE when Egypt was under Roman control.

According to Mr. Mahadevan, the inscription is quite legible and reads: paanai oRi, that is, ‘pot (suspended in) a rope net.’ The Tamil word uRi, which means rope network to suspend pots has the cognate oRi in Parji, a central Dravidian language, Mr. Mahadevan said. Still nearer, Kannada has oTTi, probably from an earlier oRRi with the same meaning.

The word occurring in the pottery inscription found at Quseir-al-Qadim can also be read as o(R)Ri as Tamil Brahmi inscriptions generally avoid doubling of consonants. Earlier excavations at this site about 30 years ago yielded two
pottery inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi belonging to the first century
A.D.

Another Tamil Brahmi pottery inscription of the same period was
found in 1995 at Berenike, also a Roman settlement, on the Red Sea
coast of Egypt, Mr. Mahadevan said. These discoveries provided material evidence to corroborate the
literary accounts by classical Western authors and the Tamil Sangam
poets about the flourishing trade between the Tamil country and Rome
(via the Red Sea ports) in the early centuries A.D.[Tamil Brahmi script in Egypt ]

Origins of bourgeoisie

Karl
Marx, the father of communism, argued that contradictions within
capitalism would bring about its own end and it would be replaced by
communism. He also believed that capitalism would end through the
organized actions of the working class. We don’t know if Indian
Naxalites have read or believe in these fairy tales, but they have
taken it on themselves to murder people in the name of this ideology
and they believe that murdering feudal landlords is the way to
salvation. People of the Early
Middle Ages (500 – 1050 CE) would have disagreed
with this point of view.

During
the Early Middle Ages, the society was mostly agrarian and
feudalism was built on an economic foundation known as manorialism.
A lord controlled a manorial village and some lords controlled many.
In the village, there were peasants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and
priests and at the bottom of the food chain was the serf who
lived in a hut along with chickens and pigs. The hut was smoke filled
and when it rained the earth floor would turn into mud. The serfs
earned no respect and they were depicted as ugly, dirty and cowardly
creatures.

Manorialism and Feudalism expected a social order that was stable
and organic. People were expected to accept their social status and
perform the role as per their ranking in the social order. This
social order was not to be upset and people were not expected to
change their position in this social order. The clergy helped in this
aspect by maintaining that, “God himself willed that among men
some must be lords and some serfs.”

As Europe moved into
the High Middle Ages, there was a revival of urban economy and the
re-emergence of central authority. With the invention of the heavy
plough, the use of windmills for grinding cereals, and three-field system of managing land, there was an agricultural
revolution. The rebirth of towns led to a commercial revolution and
the rise of an enterprising and dynamic middle class. The development
of towns gave new opportunities to the serfs and they escaped from
the manor seeking fortune and freedom. Some of them made a living
selling food and the others through trade.

The lords despised
people who made a living through trade because they thought trade and
manual labor were degrading. The clergy cursed them because they
thought that the pursuit of riches was shameful and was an obstacle
for salvation. They finally came up with a name for these dynamic
progressive people — bourgeoisie which means citizens of the
burg,
the walled town.

The feudal and manorial establishments were
not destroyed by revolts but by a change of the economic system. The
change of economic system was not from feudalism to classless
stateless clueless concepts of mass ownership, but into capitalism.
It was not violence but economic opportunities and financial freedom
that changed the lives of the serfs.

Reference: Western Civilization Volume 1, Medieval Civilization In Western Europe

Coming soon to Gujarat

When the California based Global Heritage Fund wanted to set up a 100,000 museum to show case the treasures of Indus Valley they asked Jonathan Mark Kenoyer to suggest a good location for it. Dr. Kenoyer told it had to be in Gujarat. This is because Gujarat has the largest number of Indus sites and Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda has the second largest collection of Indus artifacts in India.

The Indus Heritage Center will be established as a museum and research center and will take people back in time to experience the cities of Dholavira, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Their goal is to build a Smithsonian style museum which will educate people about India’s cultural heritage and teach them more about Indus valley which was contemporaneous with the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and early China.

Much
of this initial knowledge-exchange has been made possible by seed
funding given by Silicon Valley Indian Americans, Desai said. “There is
exciting, groundbreaking research going on, except, in the case of the
Indus Civilization, there hasn’t been enough attention to the subject
nationally or even in the subcontinent. Unlike Ancient Egypt, there is
a paucity of material on Indus for the common man. This idea aroused
the passion and sparked the interest of our founding sponsors.”

The
time is ripe, Desai believes, for a museum such as the one planned.
“The Indus Civilization had an innovative, entrepreneurial,
international character,” she pointed out. “There are many unique
features to marvel at in the culture, and with the help of today’s
technology, it will be brought into the limelight.” Extensive media
coverage of India in recent years has also heightened public interest
in the subcontinent and its history, she added. “There’s a lot of
curiosity right now — it’s time to capture that momentum.” [Indian Americans Spearhead $15M Indus Valley Museum]

The Clueless Economist – Part 2

The Economist thinks that India is being threatened by religious violence and by reading the article it seems like the editors of the clueless Economist seem to have forgotten what religious violence is.

Saint Paul (CE. c 5 – c. 67) started out by persecuting the followers of Jesus, but later underwent a spiritual transformation and became a zealous missionary of Jewish Christianity. As the number of Christians increased, Romans thought of them as subversives who did not preach allegiance to Rome. To stamp out Christianity, the Roman emperors resorted to persecution and Christians were imprisoned, beaten, starved, burned alive and torn apart by wild beasts for amusement. By 392 C.E., Christianity became the state religion of Rome and the worship of pagan gods was made illegal.

With Christians in power, the target of persecution became Jews and unorthodox Christians as well. Christianity, since it claimed to posses an exclusive right to salvation, felt the need to cleanse the society of false gods and beliefs. Thus mobs driven by fanatic clergy threw non-Christian writings into fire, destroyed pagan altars and passed decrees calling for the imprisoning, torturing and executing followers of pagan cults. Jews, pagans and heretics were identified with Satan and Christians showed considerable hostility towards them.

The anti-Judaism came from the refusal of Jews to accept Jesus and the polemics of the Jewish establishment against the followers of Jesus. Origen (c. 185 – c. 251), and John Chrysostom with their writing helped in maintaining the hatred. Oh, then there were the Crusades where people of one book fought people of another book. During the First Crusade zealous crusaders argued that they had to get rid of the enemies in the midst as well and slaughtered Jews in French and German towns. In 1290 Jews were expelled from England, in 1306 from France and between 1290 and 1293 from southern Italy. Between 1348 – 49, during the time of Black Death, Jews were accused of poisoning the well water and were killed in many towns. With the arrival of Islam, Christians and Jews living in Islamic lands had to accept subordinate status and were required to wear special clothing as a sign of humiliation, but Jews were much safer in Muslim lands than Christian ones.

The violence was not just against other religions, but also against members of sects within the same religion. In the Council of Nicea an important controversy was the relation between God and Christ. Followers of Arius (250 – 336 CE) denied complete divinity to Christ and claimed that Father alone was eternal and truly God. The council condemned Arius and ruled that God and Christ were of the same substance, coequal and co-eternal. Arianism eventually died out, helped by persecution. In the Middle Ages one of the most radical heresy to confront the church was the Cathari. The Cathari did not believe that Jesus took human form, died on the cross or resurrected. Pope Innocent III asked the kings and lords to exterminate Catharism with the sword and the Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors completed that task.

While these are historical tales, there are examples of religious wars among various sects in Ireland and Pakistan even in the 21st century. Religious violence in Western civilization resulted in wiping out certain communities from the face of the earth, like pagans, Arians, and Cathari. There is communal violence in India, but it is no where near the religious violence that Western Civilization has unleashed in this world. Hence these words should be used cautiously and not carelessly like the way Manmohan Singh uses the word Holocaust; unless of course the intent is mischief.

Faith and American Presidency

The first contested election in United States was the one of 1796 when the main contestants were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Jefferson lost the election as Adams portrayed him as secularist while painting himself as a man of faith. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers, who was behind the separation of Church and State learned quickly and for the election of 1800 he changed his tactic.

Both political parties reached out to Christian voters. Federalists praised Adams’ public support for religious institutions; their opponents trumpeted Jefferson’s passion for religious liberty. Each side claimed its candidate was a Christian–or at least as good a Christian as the other guy. By all accounts, Evangelicals still voted overwhelmingly for Adams but not in sufficient numbers to overcome the popular surge for Jefferson’s party, which captured the presidency and both houses of Congress. Adams later blamed his defeat on fears that he was too tied to Evangelicals.[Declarations of Faith]

Faith, thus is an important part of American elections and every candidate makes sure that they assert their religious credentials — even the liberals.

Hilary Clinton’s devout Christianity has shaped her liberalism. She told New York Times that her Methodist faith has been “a huge part of who I am, and how I have seen the world and what I believe in, and what I have tried to do in my life.” She carries a Bible on her campaign travels and confidently quotes from St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley, the father of Methodism.

Another liberal, Barak Obama, proudly projects his Christianity and delivers many of his key campaign speeches before church congregations. It comes as a surprise to many secular Indians that the very liberal President Jimmy Carter describes himself as a Bible evangelist, and asserts that his Christian faith provided the moral compass to guide his presidency. [Was the US Senate Attack on Hinduism an isolated Instance?]

Misrepresenting the Founding Fathers

In United States the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was written by two Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, in 1779 and was passed by the Virginia General Assembly into law. The statute declared that the imposition of religion by government officials is impious. In the statue Jefferson also argued that the imposition of anything on a human mind is wrong and what a person thinks is no business of the government.

Jefferson was able to pass this statute at the Federal level, but various states had religious tests and established churches for a long time, but eventually they too saw the light and fell in line with the point of view of Madison and Jefferson. According to Garry Wills, historian and Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University, the Founding Fathers were deists who believed in creation, providence and after life. They did not believe that Jesus was divine and you could get things by praying for them

United States was not created as a Christian nation and when it was launched did not have an official cult or official religion. In fact that was the only new thing in the American Constitution since federalism, independent judiciary, bicameral legislature, and tripartite administration existed either in theory or practice. In England the King was the head of Church as well as the State, but United States had the separation of Church and State from the beginning and that was unprecedented for those times. Recently when the Dalai Lama was asked what he would do if he got control over Tibet he replied that he would enforce the separation of Church and State the American way.

Pandering to the Christian Right, Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain recently stated that United States was a Christian Nation. Looks like Sen. McCain needs to enroll for basic American history courses or read Head and Heart: American Christianities.