tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89525062024-03-12T19:15:59.052-04:00MusingsPartly collected thoughts.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3150125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-41074602485787318092024-03-12T19:14:00.004-04:002024-03-12T19:15:09.047-04:00The Way the Media Game is Played
There was a recent headline (I won't link it here), somethng like "Hedge Funds threaten to leave India over new regulations".
Well, they may have threatened or not. That is not the point I'm raising here.<div><br /></div><div>India recently issued new regulations adding certain reporting requirements on short-selling in market. A little deeper look shows that the European Union had such rules since 2012, and the US just added such rules in October 2023.</div><div><br /></div><div>A more fair and informative headline would be something like "India follows the US in regulations on short selling". </div><div><br /></div><div>But that is not the way the media game is played.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-50288814771132645372024-02-02T20:44:00.010-05:002024-02-02T20:57:49.282-05:00The Story of Lubdaka<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZNn160SP1UL2Ma_fB2OB4nvHU0DLLv4ZvQbTXxNB_YObvAc3rWAmi0fs6WjGwhqljHAFvAa5qXfSIEKDFtRE7AkgayZqF6FLPbQtBG7dFzp0Q4limNgOgFznwN-9Z4btBrYpCH6_BEFL8WvJRfFML4XotJikvlSYhIYOfEyvpt0Jo2rz6cQ/s830/tiger-tree-3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="830" data-original-width="800" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZNn160SP1UL2Ma_fB2OB4nvHU0DLLv4ZvQbTXxNB_YObvAc3rWAmi0fs6WjGwhqljHAFvAa5qXfSIEKDFtRE7AkgayZqF6FLPbQtBG7dFzp0Q4limNgOgFznwN-9Z4btBrYpCH6_BEFL8WvJRfFML4XotJikvlSYhIYOfEyvpt0Jo2rz6cQ/w385-h400/tiger-tree-3.jpg" width="385" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Tahoma, Verdana, "dejavu sans", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(109, 109, 109); color: #6d6d6d; font-size: 16px; text-align: start;">A seal from Mohenjo-daro (Mackay 1937-38, Pl. XCVI.522)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Via <a href="https://www.mahashivratri.org/the-legend-of-lubdhaka.html#google_vignette">https://www.mahashivratri.org/the-legend-of-lubdhaka.html</a><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div> Story of Lubdhaka </div><div><br /></div><div>The story goes that Lubdhaka - a poor tribal man and a devout worshipper of Lord Shiva once went into the deep forests to collect firewood. As the darkness engulfed the jungle, Lubdhaka lost his way and could not find his way home. He became extremely terrified as deep growls of animals began to fill the jungle. Seeking protection till daybreak, Lubdhaka climbed the nearest bel tree and sought safety and shelter in its branches. Since Lubdhaka was perched on the branch of a tree he was afraid that if he dozed he might fall off from the tree. To keep himself awake all night, Lubdhaka decided to pluck one leaf from the bheel tree and drop it while chanting the name of Shiva. By sunrise, the devout tribal realized that he had dropped thousands of leaves on to a Shiva Lingam, which he had not seen in the darkness. Lubdhaka’s all night worship pleased Lord Shiva and by his divine grace tigers and other wild animals went away. Thus, Lubdhaka not only survived but was also rewarded with divine bliss.
According to Puranas, ever since that day, the story of the tribal Lubdhaka has been recited every year on the night of Mahashivaratri. This popular legend also from the basis of the popular custom of offering bhel (Aegle marmelos) leaves to Lord Shiva on Shivaratri.</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The story had eluded me for a long time.</div><div><br /></div><div>How far back can we attest to the story of Lubdhaka? That remains to be seen. For the first part, we have to check that it is not some modern invention.</div><div><br /></div><div>From Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asia, Religions, Religionen, edited by Jan Gonda<div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 8.9557px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhRPqJHz2pBgttfrfJ375h-C4Srwlf6y3ogTNRXJiAZ_z4vqnkYzPJuAq-SeHdNkLB1RQsGbk8306gje6U7n_CSrWw872EYIhVrccTqVJFNfeqYogmFkyz_H7UldY89gWohGOT1Oa5ss3jXgtJv7Enfb0oYe6H_3yfsZ8RdugMTsRdyXjbOQ/s1046/Screenshot%202024-02-02%20at%208.48.46%20PM.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="1046" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhRPqJHz2pBgttfrfJ375h-C4Srwlf6y3ogTNRXJiAZ_z4vqnkYzPJuAq-SeHdNkLB1RQsGbk8306gje6U7n_CSrWw872EYIhVrccTqVJFNfeqYogmFkyz_H7UldY89gWohGOT1Oa5ss3jXgtJv7Enfb0oYe6H_3yfsZ8RdugMTsRdyXjbOQ/w640-h428/Screenshot%202024-02-02%20at%208.48.46%20PM.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 3 Southeast Asia, Religions, Religionen, edited by Jan Gonda, 1975</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 8.9557px;"><br /></span></span><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
Thanks to:<div><br /></div><div>
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XUEYjOi01Hs?si=6n8e6yCKQI5SgtrB" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div>and</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.harappa.com/content/indus-folklore-unknown-story-some-harappan-objects">https://www.harappa.com/content/indus-folklore-unknown-story-some-harappan-objects</a></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-40738448030652341792023-12-13T18:39:00.002-05:002023-12-13T18:40:24.756-05:00A spin on history: Gujarat 2002
<div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Abhijit Iyer-Mitra on PGurus:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>{lightly edited transcript}</span><span style="font-family: Roboto;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Sri Iyer: Next question, please! Thank you! Rajesh {asks} "Can you explain what exactly happened in the Gujarat riots?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Abhijit Iyer-Mitra: Yes, it was very simple. Modi anticipated. What happened was the Godhra train got burnt by people from the outside. It wasn't from the inside as some nonsense investigators told you. They expected things to blow up.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Modi realized things were going to blow up. He desperately asked for Central troops, he asked for police reinforcements from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The center said no because, remember at that point of time, there was a massive mobilization, Parliament attack had happened and Operation Parakram was on, where the entire Army had been mobilized across the border. So, they could not spare troops to come to Gujarat. What else happened was that the three neighboring states said no and within about 24 hours as expected the riots broke out. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Modi did the best he could with the small number of police he had with bolt action 303 rifles which you have to keep loading, one extracting, one loading, one extracting one bullet; you can't really do crowd control with that, and he tried his best as much as he could. You have to make some very tough choices--you can protect these neighborhoods, you can't protect these neighborhoods. You decide to sacrifice some neighborhoods. This is one of the ugly things about law-and-order maintenance which you have to do.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> He did, given what few troops he had and police he had, and that's exactly what happened and remember it was controlled within about 48 to 72 hours. Also, it wasn't a one-sided program, never forget that. Yeah, both sides died and the other side, the so-called victim side also died in very significant numbers, never forget that, many of them shot by police during rioting caught on camera. So it wasn't one-sided at all.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></p><div><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Sri Iyer:</span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">One thing that BJP needs to do is to go on the front foot on this. The Congress knew Modi, that he was going to be a threat to the center,</span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">to the Sonia Gandhi family even though they were not in power yet they understood. This is like a snake knowing another snake's legs.</span></div><div><br /></div><div>
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/3di-r9iDlok?si=D25n1TZx-EWmdwOr" width="480"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-81147693673770772242023-12-09T10:57:00.001-05:002023-12-09T10:57:35.427-05:00The Poison Ivy League The Jerusalem Post headline says it all:
Ivy League heads: Calls for genocide on Jews are context-dependent
When New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik asked if “calling for the genocide of Jews” is against the universities’ respective codes of conduct, all three presidents said the answer depends.
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The above is about the most degraded that I have seen the American Left. As is almost always the case, ideology seems to paralyze the rational faculty. Perhaps if they had said that calling for the genocide of Jews or anyone is always against the universities' codes of conduct; but the severity of the sanctions against the offender(s) depend on context, it would be far less offensive.
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FYI, I am currently in the 10-15% of the population that does not react to urushiol (I understand that a rash response can develop with repeated exposure to poison ivy).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-29684417444969635662023-10-25T21:45:00.007-04:002023-10-25T21:45:42.895-04:00I do not subscribe to Anglosphere solidarity<p> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">I do not subscribe to Anglosphere solidarity.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> ---</o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p><br /></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The idea that since the US government has supported Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's allegations against India in murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the allegations must be credible is not logical.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Among the allegations that Trudeau has raised against India, there is one that can be readily checked. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">In stripping 41 diplomats of their diplomatic immunity, Trudeau claims that India is in violation of international law and in violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations. [1]<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;">"Trudeau made the remarks in Brampton Ont. a day after his government confirmed that 41 Canadian diplomats had left India after New Delhi threatened to revoke their diplomatic immunity."<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;">"This is a violation of the Vienna Convention governing diplomacy," Trudeau said. "This is them choosing to contravene a very fundamental principle of international law and diplomacy. It is something that all countries in the world should be very worried about.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The US government supports Canada on this [2]:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;">"Resolving differences requires diplomats on the ground. We have urged the Indian government not to insist upon a reduction in Canada’s diplomatic presence and to cooperate in the ongoing Canadian investigation," the U.S. State Department said, adding that it expects "India to uphold its obligations under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations."<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Fact of the matter is that the Canadian mission in India is much larger than the Indian mission in Canada. Around September 20th, India asked Canada to reduce its mission to parity and gave Canada up to October 10th to do so. [3]<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">This is perfectly fine per the Vienna Convention [4], Article 11, specifically Article 11.1.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; text-align: center;">Article 11<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;">1.In the absence of specific agreement as to the size of the mission, the receiving State may require that the size of a mission be kept within limits considered by it to be reasonable and normal, having regard to circumstances and conditions in the receiving State and to the needs of the particular mission.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;">2.The receiving State may equally, within similar bounds and on a non-discriminatory basis, refuse to accept officials of a particular category.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Canada did not comply by October 20th and so India withdrew their diplomatic immunity. That is perfectly fine per Article 9 of the Vienna Convention.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; text-align: center;">Article 9<o:p></o:p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in; text-align: center;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;">1. The receiving State may at any time and without having to explain its decision, notify the sending State that the head of the mission or any member of the diplomatic staff of the mission is persona non grata or that any other member of the staff of the mission is not acceptable. In any such case, the sending State shall, as appropriate, either recall the person concerned or terminate his functions with the mission. A person may be declared non grata or not acceptable before arriving in the territory of the receiving State.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0in 0.5in;">2. If the sending State refuses or fails within a reasonable period to carry out its obligations under paragraph 1 of this article, the receiving State may refuse to recognize the person concerned as a member of the mission.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The above thus establishes:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">1. The Canadian Prime Minister made a patently absurd allegation against India.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">2. The US, UK and the Anglosphere nevertheless supported the Canadian Prime Minister on this patently absurd allegation.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The only plausible reason for the US Department of State to do such a thing is Anglosphere solidarity. But if they would do so an easily demonstrated absurdity, then it places in doubt the "credible allegations of a potential link" of Indian agents to the murder of Nijjar, for which no information has been provided at all. It could simply be Anglosphere solidarity.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The Indian Minister of External Affairs, Dr S. Jaishankar has said, while in the US and elsewhere , that such foreign operations are not India's policy. [6]<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The Canadian Prime Minister's unsupported allegations are credible only to those who share an Anglosphere solidarity. I am not among those, and in addition, I have shown you how threadbare is the Anglosphere's charge of "violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations" by India.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">[1] India making life 'unbelievably difficult' for millions by ordering diplomats out, says Trudeau, CBC News, Peter Zimonjic, Posted: Oct 20, 2023 12:56 PM EDT<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-india-making-life-difficult-1.7002961" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-india-making-life-difficult-1.7002961</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">[2] US and UK back Canada in dispute with India over diplomats, Reuters, By Kanishka Singh and Costas Pitas, October 20, 20239:13 PM EDT <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-backs-canada-dispute-with-india-over-diplomats-2023-10-20/" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.reuters.com/world/us-backs-canada-dispute-with-india-over-diplomats-2023-10-20/</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">[3] Diplomatic row escalates, India asks Canada to downsize missions, pauses issuing visas, The Deccan Herald, Anirban Bhaumik DHNS, Last Updated 21 September 2023, 11:18 IST <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"> <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/world/canada-asked-to-downsize-diplomatic-presence-in-india-2695819#:~:text=The%20diplomatic%20row%20between%20New,and%20consular%20mission%20in%20India." style="color: #954f72;">https://www.deccanherald.com/world/canada-asked-to-downsize-diplomatic-presence-in-india-2695819</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">[4] Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961, United Nations, <a href="https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf" style="color: #954f72;">https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">[5] India withdraws immunity from 41 Canadian diplomats, EFE, 20 October 2023,<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><a href="https://efe.com/en/other-news/2023-10-20/india-withdraws-immunity-from-41-canadian-diplomats/" style="color: #954f72;">https://efe.com/en/other-news/2023-10-20/india-withdraws-immunity-from-41-canadian-diplomats/</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">[6] ‘Foreign ops not part of govt policy’: Jaishankar in US, Hindustan Times, By<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Prashant Jha Sep 28, 2023 04:26 AM IST<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/foreign-ops-not-part-of-govt-policy-eam-in-us-101695839606336.html" style="color: #954f72;">https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/foreign-ops-not-part-of-govt-policy-eam-in-us-101695839606336.html</a><o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-51745011223898484722023-10-10T23:26:00.007-04:002023-10-10T23:33:57.846-04:00Snakes in the backyard<p>“You can't keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. You know, eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.” ― Hillary Rodham Clinton, addressing the media in a joint press conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, October 21, 2011.</p><p>If Hamas was permitted to flourish by Netanyahu and the right-wing in Israel, as a prophylactic against a two-state solution, it is time someone had the same joint press conference with them.</p><p>There is no choice but to kill the snakes. This is going to involve enormous losses of people.</p><p>The question is whether there is going to be a change in course, or will the cultivation of snakes continue after this particular battle is over.</p><p>-----</p><p> Hamas’s attack shows Benjamin Netanyahu failed Israel - Vox</p><p><a href="https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history">https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history</a></p><p></p><blockquote>Second, a columnist at Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper (<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/another-concept-implodes-israel-cant-be-managed-by-a-criminal-defendant/0000018b-1382-d2fc-a59f-d39b5dbf0000">https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/another-concept-implodes-israel-cant-be-managed-by-a-criminal-defendant/0000018b-1382-d2fc-a59f-d39b5dbf0000</a>) unearthed evidence that Netanyahu has intentionally propped up Hamas rule in Gaza — seeing Palestinian extremism as a bulwark against a two-state solution to the conflict.</blockquote><p></p><blockquote><p>Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>These exact comments have not yet been confirmed by other sources. But the Times of Israel’s Tal Schneider wrote on Sunday that (<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/">https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/</a>) Netanyahu’s reported words “are in line with the policy that he implemented,” which did little to challenge and in some ways bolstered Hamas’s control over the Gaza Strip. Moreover, Schneider notes, “the same messaging was repeated by right-wing commentators, who may have received briefings on the matter or talked to Likud higher-ups and understood the message.” Some Netanyahu confidants have [said the same thing ( <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielSeidemann/status/1711338210679304483">https://twitter.com/DanielSeidemann/status/1711338210679304483</a> ), as have outside experts.</p></blockquote><p>The first link above in Ha'aretz is to Gidi Weitz, who precedes the Hamas quote with: [Another Concept Implodes: Israel Can’t Be Managed by a Criminal Defendant - Israel News - Haaretz.com](<a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/another-concept-implodes-israel-cant-be-managed-by-a-criminal-defendant/0000018b-1382-d2fc-a59f-d39b5dbf0000">https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-09/ty-article/.premium/another-concept-implodes-israel-cant-be-managed-by-a-criminal-defendant/0000018b-1382-d2fc-a59f-d39b5dbf0000</a>)</p><blockquote><p>His {*Netanyahu's*} life’s work was to turn the ship of state from the course steered by his predecessors, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Olmert, and make the two-state solution impossible. En route to this goal, he found a partner in Hamas.</p></blockquote><p>The second link, to Tal Scheider, includes: [For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it's blown up in our faces | The Times of Israel](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/)</p><blockquote><p>Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2018, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>While Netanyahu does not make these kind of statements publicly or officially, his words are in line with the policy that he implemented.</p></blockquote><p>The third link is to a tweet: <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielSeidemann/status/1711338210679304483">https://twitter.com/DanielSeidemann/status/1711338210679304483</a></p><blockquote><p>Gen.Gershon Hacohen, emphatically rightwing and confidante of [Netanyahu], said the following: "Truth be told, Netanyahu's objective is to prevent the two-state option and therefore turned Hamas into his closest ally. Openly, Hamas is an enemy, beneath the surface, an ally".</p></blockquote><p>Gen. Gershon Hacohen refers to Hamas: [After evacuating Gaza, a lonely general of faith struggles for Israel's salvation | The Times of Israel]<a href="(https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-evacuating-gaza-a-lonely-general-of-faith-struggles-for-israels-salvation">(https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-evacuating-gaza-a-lonely-general-of-faith-struggles-for-israels-salvation</a>/)</p><blockquote><p>This is also why, he added, “I prefer Hamas to Abu Mazen.” Because Hamas “helps me prevent a two-state solution” and is, covertly “an ally, because neither it nor I want a final solution and neither in my terms nor in its is there something that is everlasting.</p></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-75421937736600737242023-09-30T00:28:00.000-04:002023-09-30T00:28:52.522-04:00Four talksExternal Affairs Minister of India at the Hudson Institute:
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External Affairs Minister of India at the Council of Foreign Relations:
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External Affairs Minister of India at a Press Conference:
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The National Security Advisor:
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-64812037723910476642023-06-21T20:04:00.001-04:002023-06-21T20:04:00.135-04:00The Future of The University in India<iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/20nx7GvrD00" width="480"></iframe>
<iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/zcTr0Sx0_yQ" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-33044097356955743382023-06-19T19:17:00.001-04:002023-06-19T19:17:10.133-04:00On Audrey Truschke<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibqPSoPWI_vD_lL3PKJBNyKnwE8Sf7vZVES3c1oSkGRhmJ3AA8-GgHCVuYjrXefYemgMCGiIEAXAnW-aJ1UBW6a_lYLNqF6bAQNQoSg4ZmWZv-8yYvtGDSRzTKNn6n9XzrjS-LNmsIV5kVqncDhs3ApKwR6IVCDFd8uXudG_7LtdK4XAPSlQ/s2496/Screenshot%202023-06-19%20at%202.15.47%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1392" data-original-width="2496" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibqPSoPWI_vD_lL3PKJBNyKnwE8Sf7vZVES3c1oSkGRhmJ3AA8-GgHCVuYjrXefYemgMCGiIEAXAnW-aJ1UBW6a_lYLNqF6bAQNQoSg4ZmWZv-8yYvtGDSRzTKNn6n9XzrjS-LNmsIV5kVqncDhs3ApKwR6IVCDFd8uXudG_7LtdK4XAPSlQ/w640-h356/Screenshot%202023-06-19%20at%202.15.47%20PM.png" width="640" /></a></div> <div>The best short takedown of Audrey Truschke's lies that I have come across so far.</div><div><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/BxUSNMfdLlk" width="480"></iframe></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-60572425433094132582023-05-08T18:48:00.002-04:002023-05-08T18:51:55.279-04:00About Free Speech in India<p><span style="font-family: Roboto;">J. Sai Deepak is a lawyer, self-described 85% commercial litigation, 15% Constitutional Law. He is also an author and public speaker; his detractors call him an Ultra-Nationalist and so on.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">The first eleven minutes of this Youtube </span><span style="font-family: Roboto;">has some remarks of J. Sai Deepak from a public debate.</span><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="273" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2q-UIVvWHyg" width="477" youtube-src-id="2q-UIVvWHyg"></iframe></div><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-UIVvWHyg">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q-UIVvWHyg</a> <o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">{lightly edited and annotated Youtube transcript}<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">J. Sai Deepak: <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">This is the Shri Ram College right, Jai Shree Ram! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">So first of all, thanks to the organizers for putting together such a fantastic event and the audience for turning up in such brilliant numbers as usual.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">I think the aisles have been converted into pathshalas {traditional India school where students sit on the floor}<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Thank you so very much! You know, I was wondering - I was just going through the e-mail that was sent to us on the topic. The topic was "Can western narratives and Indian narratives or western media and Indian media co-exist?"<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">If I were on the other side, I would have stuck to the topic. This is a textbook instance of<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Aa Bail Mujhe Maar </span></i><span style="font-family: Roboto;">{literally, "'Come bull, do hit me!", figuratively , "invite trouble upon oneself"}. You've opened the Pandora's box by speaking about freedom of speech when instead the topic was slightly different. A good can of worms has been opened, so, let the flood gates open.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Now we are being told that free speech in this country is almost on the verge of extinction so Anand {<a href="https://www.anandranganathan.com/about/" style="color: #954f72;">Anand Ranganathan</a>} rightly pointed out the First Amendment to the {Indian} Constitution, so I'll explain the backdrop to it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">So Mr Nehru {first Prime Minister of independent India} seriously was interested in pushing his land reforms agenda {pre-independence promise to break up large "feudal" land holdings and distribute it to the actual cultivators}. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">I am not on the question of whether it was right or wrong, I'm just saying that he had a certain policy initiative which he wanted pushed. You know who was actually raising the red flag to his initiative? The ones who raised the red flag always the Communists.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Okay, so people like Romesh Thapar started writing against it {<a href="https://theprint.in/past-forward/how-nehru-added-conditions-apply-to-article-191a-india-lost-way-to-gates-of-freedom/1043270/" style="color: #954f72;">well, even more on other matters</a>} and there was active opposition to everything that he was doing. Courts were overturning his judgments {I think primarily because land reforms involve the taking of property} , rather his initiatives through judgments so two consequences happened simultaneously around that particular period which till date affect the Constitution. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">The first is the introduction of severe limitations on free speech, the second is the introduction of the 9th Schedule to the Constitution which effectively protects all those land reform legislations from any kind of constitutional challenge.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Imagine an elected government in a democracy taking a policy decision and ensuring that that policy decision is immune from judicial review, through a constitutional amendment, for all time to come, and we are being taught democracy by the scions and descendants of this legacy {the opposition party, the Indian National Congress, is run by the Nehru's great grandchildren and allies}.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Second today we are suddenly being told, oh, social media explosion is the reason for survival of free speech in this country, otherwise you see, free speech has been bought by mercantile interests and so on and so forth.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Who introduced Section 66-A to gag free speech on social media? Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act was introduced by the UPA government {i.e., the Indian National Congress} with the broadest of possible restrictions on free speech where even any kind of offense or hurt that is caused to sentiments immediately attracts the application of that particular section<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">This is what ultimately resulted in <i>Shreya Singhal versus Union of India </i>{the Supreme Court ruled Section 66-A to be unconstitutional} , the sad part of the unfortunate part or perhaps the cynical part of the reality is the BJP defended that particular provision in court when the matter was being heard because by then the BJP had taken over.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">So what does this tell you? Ultimately that the nature of power regardless of which party is in power is to appropriate as much space to it as possible and limit the scope for free speech.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">There is really no one in this hammam {Turkish steam bath/sauna} , I'll leave it at that, who's capable of saying I'm clothed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Okay so therefore let's not take a moral high ground here, let's be realistic about what is it that we want and what is it that is good in the interest of the public, let's speak of that. Now let's talk about what's happening in the West and so on and so forth {returning to the topic of the debate}.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">I think the binary division between western media and Indian media no longer exists for a good reason because it's not a question of who's from the west and who's from India, it's a question for who's batting for Indian interests, that is what ultimately matters, because there are several people several journalists in the west who are willing to speak the truth about Bharat {ancient name for India} and who do not share the colonial cynicism of the rest of their western compatriots. Similarly there are several people from Bharat who are more than happy to be lackeys of anti-Indian mouthpieces from the west. That's a fact so therefore I'm not interested in this binary argument anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">During COVID there were several fantastic Twitter handles from the west which were actually reporting on the kind of measures that countries such as Bharat with the scale of its population were undertaking to provide resources to its people; while people within were constantly pulling us down. {FYI, Indians were highly offended by Reuters' coverage of COVID in India, especially by the Pulitzer Prize given them.}<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Now here is the interesting part Mr. Kulkarni {<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudheendra_Kulkarni" style="color: #954f72;">Sudheendra Kulkarni</a>} rightly points out and I would say significantly that holds good that western media. including Hollywood, so to speak has managed to push the western agenda as much as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">It's unfortunate that we are aping everything wrong from the west aspect but we are not doing it as far as this issue is concerned and then when we say that there are certain portions of the media there are certain segments of the media who seem to be comfortable constantly pulling India down, we are then accused of being anti-free speech. Okay so we are being told that free speech is effectively under challenge because look at our interest at holding them to ransom.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Why don't we speak of political parties owning channels? In the south business interests and media interests merge and they're controlled by {political} parties. You want a standing example - the Sun Group owned by the DMK {one of the major political parties in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu} which has been a partner, not just to the Congress but also to the BJP, because after all the Commerce Minister during Mr Vajpayee's {Prime Minister of India from the BJP, 1998-2004} , tenure who was leading India at the Doha negotiations with respect to World Trade Organization was Murasoli Maran from the DMK.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Neither party deemed it fit to crack down on the holding of media interests by political interests or political organizations, that has never happened.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Why just the DMK? Jayalalitha {deceased; one-time dominant politician in Tamil Nadu} also owned Jaya TV, which continues to be run by the ADMK {the other major political party in Tamil Nadu}. I would say it's much better for a mercantile interest to own let's say a media organization as opposed to a political interest because there's a serious conflict of interest on both sides.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">That's a discussion that we don't seem to be having here. Now the matter has come down and has become about only the Congress and the BJP. I would say at this point members who are listening to this should actually say we are sick and tired of this nonsense, we'd like to actually have a discussion which goes beyond the BJP and the Congress and we'd like to talk, because until the cows come home this battle will go on;<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">but nevertheless given the fact the cows, of course pun intended, given the fact that the<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Congress has been in power for a longer period of time, ask any student of constitutional law almost every decision on free speech, involves a clamp down on free speech by Congress ruled governments either at the state or the center, so at the very least the Congress must take a look at its own history before it starts pontificating to the rest, and you're certainly in no position to pontificate today when all the information is out in the public domain through the social media. People have access to judgments, people have access to decisions, files noting so on and so forth, you're in no position to pontificate - 30 seconds? - <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">yes so I would only request you to ask yourself only one thing - self regulation in Indi is a non-existing word, it's a non-existing concept, there's not a single body that can be trusted to regulate itself. I say this as much of the judiciary when it comes to its collegium system and I say this as much of the media.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Now on the point that Mr. Kulkarni raised, that the government is thinking of setting up a center which can crack down on fake news, the Press Guild does nothing, the Press Council of India does nothing, no action has been taken against any organization or any portal, or let's say individual journalist for their direct role in spreading or manufacturing fake news.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">What are we supposed to do? You can't go to a court asking for directions against a private party in a writ petition, so what do you do then? The government has the task, you know why, because if fake news starts on WhatsApp, particularly in the context of riots or any kind of communal violence so to speak and let's assume that the trigger is a lie, it falls upon the government to have a mechanism to actually trace that lie back and also perhaps nip it at the bud. So if the government were to actually go against all kinds of news, that's a different issue, but to say that the government doesn't even have the right to go after fake news when self-regulation as a concept is completely failed in this country, I'm sorry to say, what are we really batting for?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">This is exactly what happens when you choose to go after every policy initiative, merely because it's the BJP at the helm or the Congress at the helm without asking what is right and what is wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">I can pander to the gallery here by reducing this to a television debate, but this is SRCC {SRCC Business Conclave is Asia's largest undergraduate management fest} I think you're better, right, and therefore and therefore I would urge you to put pressure on debaters and panelists to stick to the issue at least in their own interest<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">Thank you, panelists, I'm sorry I've been told there's a shortage of time so I'm just going to leave you with one idea which is that we've spoken about the two parties, the governments, the historical perspectives, present day, all of that we're looking at times of artificial intelligence, right, where technology can make news gathering more efficient but it can also allow fake news to get more creative. I would have liked people to respond to that but unfortunately we're out of time so we'll have to wrap it up here and thank you for being a great audience.</span></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-13849741893360583812023-03-26T17:21:00.011-04:002023-03-26T17:48:53.716-04:00Democracy in Crisis<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Once upon a time, to board a domestic flight was almost as easy as getting onto a bus at a bus terminal. Global terrorism put an end to that. Is this a reduction in freedom? Absolutely. The requirement of the right kind of government-issued ID to board a flight is an intrusion into individual liberty. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Is it a reduction in democracy? Absolutely not. The people remain free to make the government change the regulations, repeal them altogether, or as is more likely, to make obtaining the required ID and the security checks less onerous. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Professor Salvatore Babones, an American sociologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, uses this kind of distinction, and argues that India remains a democracy, though less free than Australia or the United States, for instance in freedom of speech. Watch this debate between <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vq-lySWpXE" style="color: #954f72;">Salvatore Babones and Anand Rangarajan</a>. (Trigger-alert: Anand Rangarajan is boorish; and Salvatore Babones loses the audience because he acknowledges learning about India from a trio of journalists whom the audience happens to despise.) But Babones' arguments are sound. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Let's examine this further. In one of the many <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZPLM_EyFw0" style="color: #954f72;">"India's Democracy in Crisis" panel discussions</a>, there is the criticism of the Modi government that it does not do enough to curb hate speech. On the other hand, district authorities have been given the power to simply shut down the internet, and in 2022, of 187 shutdowns of the internet world-wide, 84 occurred in India, and the Modi government is criticized for this, too.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">It does happen in India that social media is used to spread "hate-speech" and start a riot or lynching. It may be rare on a per capita basis (1.4 billion people in the denominator!), but it does happen. The district authorities can nip this in the bud by simply turning off the internet for a period. "Hate speech" is poorly defined, there are no standards, and asking the district authorities to selectively censor social media will bring in their bias. Turning off the internet makes sense. Whether this is a good strategy requires research into its effectiveness in keeping the peace, and not some theoretical notions about freedom.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Regarding the disruption to life by an internet shutdown, India is prone to "rasta roko"/"rail roko" -- people block roads or railway lines - and city-wide or state-wide bandhs, where the entire area is coerced into shutting down business. This kind of protest is part of India's political culture and has a history. Lack of internet is yet another disruption to add to this. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">But it is up to the Indian people to decide whether all this is acceptable or not. Right now, perhaps the safety of life and property, and the avoidance of disruption of life by violence outweighs the loss of the internet. Maybe some time the balance will change and then the voters will make a political issue of it and force a change.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Which leads to another observation - the Indian Constitution is relatively easy to change, with the Supreme Court on guard to preserve the basis structure of the Constitution. From January 1950 to October 2021, there have been 105 amendments. America's Constitution has had 27 since 1789. It is much more difficult to amend, and popular causes such as regulating money in politics, or making the Presidency be determined by the popular vote rather than the Electoral College which overweighs states with tiny populations are stuck. That is, the American people remain free to change their Constitution, but in practice, it is very hard. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Freedom of speech is virtually absolute in the United States; the restrictions that can be placed by law are very limited. We thus get the situation where e.g., Fox News can knowingly, even maliciously, propagate a democracy-damaging falsehood, and the only recourse is for a private party who suffered economic damage by the lies to take them to court. If the situation gets unbearable, Americans will no doubt try to change this, but the barriers to change are enormous. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Does comparing among countries the ease of amending the Constitution make any sense? I don't think it does, any more than the freedom indices and such. India's Constitution and America's Constitution were written to meet the needs of their respective people with their histories and circumstances. The ease or difficulty of amendment was also decided because of history and circumstances.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">With any democracy, what one can meaningfully ask is, are the people free to change their laws and regulations and do the laws and regulations that get made diminish that freedom in any way? Only in the latter case need an alarm be raised (e.g, Hungary or maybe even Israel). </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">When in the debate mentioned above, Anand Rangarajan feels patronized when Babones says India is less free in some respects than Australia or America and asks why he can't be as free as an American, he is asking for India to be America; but India's history and circumstances can't be so readily erased. Nor is less freedom necessarily bad - in aviation, it keeps terrorists at bay. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">It is up to Indians collectively whether they want a perfect Jeffersonian Republic, or whether the trade-offs to preserve their way of life are acceptable to them; and Anand Rangarajan has the freedom to try to persuade them as to which would lead to their greater flourishing.<o:p></o:p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-80711581877717742112023-03-22T13:44:00.003-04:002023-03-22T13:44:45.805-04:00Man-made and hence a fairy-tale?!Does the substance of what is called Pythagoras' Theorem remain true whether or not humans are aware of it? If yes, this is something not-found-in-Nature but not-a-fairy-tale; man-made but transcending man.
There is thus no real problem with religious compositions having been created by man, apart from the claim that they were god-given, which by itself is not a problem (e.g., Ramanujan thought that his results in mathemetics came from Namagiri Devi). The real question is do they embody knowledge? The claim of knowledge cannot be simply because "it is god-given"; our usual methods of validating knowledge must be applied. Exactly like Ramanujan's results in mathematics have to be validated by the methods of mathematics even if the results originated with the Devi.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-66360273759492024282023-02-15T20:22:00.001-05:002023-02-16T21:54:15.074-05:00Supersymmetry vs QCD<p>Inspiring discussion - Dr. Peter Woit finds a declining trend in the number of articles on Supersymmetry (SUSY) since about 2015. <a href="https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=13325" target="_blank">See here. </a></p><p>But what meaning can we draw from the absolute number? I find it meaningful to compare with some other subject in particle physics. I think "QCD" (quantum chromodynamics, the strong force) is a relatively stable subject of study, and it is about something real, unlike SUSY, which has proven to be quite speculative.</p><p>So here it is. The data had to be collected by hand, so there might be transcription errors.</p><p>But the downward trend in SUSY relative to QCD begins around 1999. Maybe particle physics is a bit healthier than expected.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipYBI9ZYIq_cslG6uhUEF4up9OGr2rZIUIQ8CzbA2xJ_RwwUBsIRZ1oc52mXdnUG4o5yQM70yRRCpYQONZtuYty4LY6QEUl5YnOJosodV-TJgjsrcYFW6Jshw-56Xm9mgyhz4Gswef7ip6Ijmnq_VMb_lz5206h4mgHnHJOxi65jXVses/s5078/SUSY-QCD.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3336" data-original-width="5078" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipYBI9ZYIq_cslG6uhUEF4up9OGr2rZIUIQ8CzbA2xJ_RwwUBsIRZ1oc52mXdnUG4o5yQM70yRRCpYQONZtuYty4LY6QEUl5YnOJosodV-TJgjsrcYFW6Jshw-56Xm9mgyhz4Gswef7ip6Ijmnq_VMb_lz5206h4mgHnHJOxi65jXVses/w640-h422/SUSY-QCD.png" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-31990659262381942842022-12-17T13:31:00.003-05:002022-12-17T13:34:20.174-05:00The American Madness Journal<p> The author of the American Madness Journal is taking a break, but, I hope will continue writing in 2023 his delightful, on-the-mark observations of what <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/12/the-childish-drama-of-elon-musk/672496/" target="_blank">Tom Nichols</a> described as the "infantilization of American life, in which we must accommodate and work around the behavior of grown men and women who not so long ago would have been pushed out of public life either by our collective political disgust or by responsible shareholders who would insist that their corporate leaders get back to work instead of making a spectacle of themselves". </p><p> Yes, I mean <a href="https://showercapblog.com" target="_blank">Shower Cap's Blog</a>! Enjoy!</p><p>PS: it is too much to hope for that the American descent into madness would cease and deprive Shower Cap of material. So accept in good humor any good that comes out of this.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-45218965303380597872022-12-04T17:49:00.005-05:002022-12-04T17:49:26.556-05:00Sri Ganesh<div style="text-align: center;">मुदाकरात्तमोदकं सदा विमुक्तिसाधकं </div><div><div style="text-align: center;">कलाधरावतंसकं विलासिलोकरक्षकम् । </div><div style="text-align: center;">अनायकैकनायकं विनाशितेभदैत्यकं </div><div style="text-align: center;">नताशुभाशुनाशकं नमामि तं विनायकम् ॥१॥</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJPQuh-N8wyUDo4iBpFC6dqrbNXYavZ2CToGz7NtUABFjP-fzDc9k43A1uZVk-TK9-UdoiZAGXpdMgbGPRvj4U1a-VNhOn9-5j74N_3aHdLTv6PFPE_R8euMuywBJfbWzcaiUpToVa9Ff3z2h2tey5WSP7MLTxmb96_ZyOftrOGvVpSA/s1000/SriGanesh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="1000" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGJPQuh-N8wyUDo4iBpFC6dqrbNXYavZ2CToGz7NtUABFjP-fzDc9k43A1uZVk-TK9-UdoiZAGXpdMgbGPRvj4U1a-VNhOn9-5j74N_3aHdLTv6PFPE_R8euMuywBJfbWzcaiUpToVa9Ff3z2h2tey5WSP7MLTxmb96_ZyOftrOGvVpSA/s320/SriGanesh.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-75612570538743729942022-10-27T00:11:00.004-04:002022-10-27T00:23:02.184-04:00The politics of health policyA paper published in PLOS ONE, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275466" target="_blank">U.S. state policy contexts and mortality of working-age adults</a>, results in this USA Today article: "<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2022/10/26/working-age-american-mortality-rate-state-policies/10594782002/?utm_source=usatoday-NewsAlert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news_alerts&utm_term=news_alert&utm_content=USAT-8872UT-E-NLETTER01">More Americans die younger in states with conservative policies, study finds</a>".
<div><br /></div><div>What is the factual situation that the PLOS ONE paper sets out?
<blockquote>Americans die younger than people in most other high-income countries. With a life expectancy of 78.8 years in 2019, Americans died 5.7 years earlier than people in Japan, the global leader; 3.3 years earlier than their northern neighbors in Canada; and 2.5 years before their closest geopolitical allies in the United Kingdom. Shockingly, U.S. life expectancy falls between two middle-income countries—Cuba and Albania. </blockquote><blockquote>Within the United States, life expectancy differs markedly across geographic areas such as states and counties. In 2019, it ranged from 74.4 years in Mississippi to 80.9 years in Hawaii.
U.S. life expectancy has stagnated, largely because of higher mortality among adults 25–64 years of age. According to a comparison of U.S. life expectancy to the average of 16 other high-income countries in 2006–2008, deaths before age 50 accounted for 67% of the shortfall among U.S. men and 41% among women. </blockquote><blockquote>Mortality rates provide another sobering picture of the early deaths among so many individuals in the United States. Based on rates from 2019, for every 100 babies born in the United States, two will not survive to their 30th birthday, six will not reach age 50, and 16 will die before they can enjoy retirement at age 65. Like life expectancy at birth, differences across states in mortality rates among adults ages 25–64 are striking.</blockquote>
In the PLOS ONE paper but not mentioned in the USA Today article are things like this:
<blockquote>Fig 4 demonstrates that, for women and men and across all lag times, lower working-age mortality from alcohol-induced causes was associated with more liberal labor policies and more conservative marijuana policies.</blockquote>
and
<blockquote>We examined four counterfactual scenarios in which all policy domains in all states were set to the maximum liberal score of 1 (Scenario 1) or the maximum conservative score of 0 (Scenario 2); the maximum liberal score of 1 applied to all domains except marijuana and health and welfare, which were set to 0 and 0.5, respectively, because conservative marijuana policies were associated with lower all-cause mortality, and no association was observed for the health and welfare score (Scenario 3, “Hybrid”); and domains trending in conservative or liberal direction were set respectively to their 0 and 1 extremes (Scenario 4,”Status Quo”).</blockquote>
Scenario 1 is "all liberal" and Scenario 3 includes conservative marijuana policy "because conservative marijuana policies were associated with lower all-cause mortality".
These are the results:
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiInoYcF-Qw9cerHFGprYOvCiVGDLG-EimYmRCjGoT3vMfQVweqpKGAtFgMrWjjD0D9czH3Y5GJMML0LSkRdU6JTAtJceGxvIajMAxoL9jnyRhad87YXa_hwBdhsuFolv_4zEPSFN2LS-I2F5ILZaWp6WXKZENtxU3w0iaM-T6n5Cp14qk/s2014/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-27%20at%209.22.02%20AM.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="672" data-original-width="2014" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiInoYcF-Qw9cerHFGprYOvCiVGDLG-EimYmRCjGoT3vMfQVweqpKGAtFgMrWjjD0D9czH3Y5GJMML0LSkRdU6JTAtJceGxvIajMAxoL9jnyRhad87YXa_hwBdhsuFolv_4zEPSFN2LS-I2F5ILZaWp6WXKZENtxU3w0iaM-T6n5Cp14qk/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-27%20at%209.22.02%20AM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
In their simulation for 2019, Scenario 1 results in 86,181 fewer age-adjusted deaths among women and 84,949 fewer deaths among men, for a total of 171,030 lives saved. Scenario 3 results in 92,057 fewer deaths among women and 109,393 fewer deaths among men, for a total of 201,450 lives saved.
So adopting liberal policies for essentially everything but marijuana results in 201,450 - 171,030 lives saved = 30,420. </div><div><br /></div><div>That is, the cost of liberal marijuana policy is 30K lives per annum.</div><div> --- </div><div><br /></div><div>Now, suppose this above was well-settled science, with widespread validation of the results. How would this inform policy advocacy of the two political parties? </div><div><br /></div><div>Among the Republicans of today, there is no regard for science, and driven purely by partisan concerns, they would ignore all of this. </div><div><br /></div><div>More interesting are the Democrats, who are much more reality-driven, but who also have a strong faction in favor of liberalizing marijuana. Will they give up their pot dreams in favor of lives? Or will they argue that those 30K lives per annum is an acceptable cost to pay for whatever benefits marijuana liberalization provides (e.g., maybe less incarceration, or some measure of social justice)?
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-3811567506620796752022-10-24T22:50:00.002-04:002022-10-24T22:50:45.698-04:00On Dark Matter<p>Some quotes from "New Directions in the Search for Dark Matter",(<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.03085" target="_blank">https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.03085</a> by Surjeet Rajendran, John Hopkins University. </p><p>The paper is a good backgrounder on how we might find out what dark matter is comprised of; but there is also a philosophy of physics that has largely been forgotten in all the stringy revolutions.</p><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="section"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: CMR10;"></span></p><blockquote>The existence of dark matter proves that there is physics beyond the standard model. But, other than its existence, observational limits on its properties are extremely weak.</blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: CMR10;">....</span></p><div class="page" title="Page 2"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: CMR10;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: CMR10;">Given the vastness of this parameter space, how can we hope to make progress? When confronted with this vastness, there is a human tendency to artificially restrict it by focusing on “theoretically well motivated” dark matter - in this context, “theoretically well motivated” means particles that theorists have already written down for some other reason. While it is certainly possible that the existence of dark matter may be tied to the solution to some other problem in particle physics, such a connection is not a logical requirement. It is a fantasy to think that the particle spectrum of the world can be figured out entirely from first principles. I have not come across a physicist who has convinced me that their refined sense of theoretical insight would have allowed them to figure out (without experimental input) that the Standard Model is a </span><span style="font-family: CMMI10;">SU </span><span style="font-family: CMR10;">(3) </span><span style="font-family: CMSY10;">× </span><span style="font-family: CMMI10;">SU </span><span style="font-family: CMR10;">(2) </span><span style="font-family: CMSY10;">× </span><span style="font-family: CMMI10;">U </span><span style="font-family: CMR10;">(1) gauge theory with the </span><span style="font-family: CMMI10;">SU </span><span style="font-family: CMR10;">(3) confined at low energies, the </span><span style="font-family: CMMI10;">SU </span><span style="font-family: CMR10;">(2) </span><span style="font-family: CMSY10;">× </span><span style="font-family: CMMI10;">U </span><span style="font-family: CMR10;">(1) broken in a weird way leaving an unbroken </span><span style="font-family: CMMI10;">U </span><span style="font-family: CMR10;">(1), with three generations of quarks and leptons that have hierarchial yukawa couplings with only the top quark possessing a naturally large yukawa coupling while also containing nearly massless neutrinos and a highly fine tuned Higgs boson. Our job as physicists is to discover what nature actually is rather than attempt to constrain it from the armchair.</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: CMR10;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: CMR10;">...</span></p><div class="page" title="Page 5"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: CMR10;"></span></p><blockquote>A skeptical reader may ask if we should actually care about technical naturalness. After all, we now have very solid evidence of at least two fine tuned quantities in our universe - the cosmological constant and the higgs boson itself. Neither of these terms are protected by symmetry and the absence of symmetry did not prevent their existence, creating confounding theoretical problems. Our job as physicists is to figure out what is out there in the world instead of imposing philosophies on it - especially philosophies that are already empirically known to be violated.</blockquote><p></p><div class="page" title="Page 19"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: CMR10;"></span></p><p>.... </p><blockquote>The identification of the nature of dark matter is pretty clearly one of the major problems confronting particle physics. It is exceedingly unlikely that humanity will solve this problem from the armchair by guessing a sufficiently pretty theory. Physics is an experimental field - the belief that we can figure out what is out there in the world without experimental input has always just been a silly fantasy. Given the vastness of the parameter space of dark matter, there is a tremendous need to dramatically widen the experimental program that has been pursued to detect its properties. Now, it could have been the case that this dramatic widening could only come at great cost - if every probe of a part of dark matter parameter space required billions of dollars and thousands of working hours, we will not be able to appreciably probe the dark matter parameter space in our lifetimes. Luckily, this is not the case - the methods and experiments described in these lectures are experiments that can be pursued by a small number of investigators at the cost of several million dollars per experiment. It is thus possible to sustain a robust ecosystem of dark matter experiments which will cover a significant range of parameter space. While the creation of such a program is not up to me, I certainly hope that this broad ranged program will come to be realized.</blockquote><p></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><p><span style="font-family: CMR10; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></p></div></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-83686438336435423782022-09-04T22:20:00.002-04:002022-09-04T22:21:20.620-04:00Goldfinch on zinnia<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiICDaDI4l2eeW4JaN5gG9DoE3bYFWrDX8YFUhKeYXnc_3WNM8NUKz6kOUBDX5VuR0Q9oPQx8MGdcqZh9D9pT20nL8AOLyDxDy301mFdiByh_Tm9uybNEFxOzYZbg1HkcgHZNeMiM8jHM3CNoy-YEhs_LjyO-oyEPYLpN1Gkl9iuf0iI1k/s1274/PHOTO-2022-08-17-19-32-00.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1274" data-original-width="849" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiICDaDI4l2eeW4JaN5gG9DoE3bYFWrDX8YFUhKeYXnc_3WNM8NUKz6kOUBDX5VuR0Q9oPQx8MGdcqZh9D9pT20nL8AOLyDxDy301mFdiByh_Tm9uybNEFxOzYZbg1HkcgHZNeMiM8jHM3CNoy-YEhs_LjyO-oyEPYLpN1Gkl9iuf0iI1k/w267-h400/PHOTO-2022-08-17-19-32-00.jpg" title="Goldfinch on zinnia" width="267" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-11121363980420838092022-03-28T19:17:00.002-04:002022-03-29T22:04:57.799-04:00Who will be held responsible for the mess in Ukraine?<p> The recent headline is (<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60901024" target="_blank">via the BBC</a>):</p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">"Ukraine’s Zelensky to offer neutrality declaration to Russia for peace ‘without delay’"</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"></p>
This could have happened years ago, without a war. <a href="https://arunsmusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/ukraine-fyi.html" target="_blank">I am recycling some previously posted material on this blog</a> (some of the links in my article from 2014 are now defunct).
The draft Association Agreement with the European Union that Ukraine wanted to sign back in 2013 had a military component, including
<blockquote>Article 7: The Parties shall intensify their dialogue and cooperation and promote gradual convergence in the area of foreign and security policy, including the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)...</blockquote>
and
<blockquote>Article 10: The Parties shall enhance practical cooperation in conflict prevention and crisis management, in particular with a view to increasing the participation of Ukraine in EU-led civilian and military crisis management operations as well as relevant exercises and training activities, including those carried out in the framework of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).....The Parties shall explore the potential of military - technological cooperation. Ukraine and the European Defence Agency (EDA) shall establish close contacts to discuss military capability improvement, including technological issues.</blockquote>
Russia objected back then. <div><br /></div><div> November 21, 2013, <a href="https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/eastern-europe/putin-russia-willing-to-hold-tripartite-talks-with-ukraine-eu-but-before-kyiv-brussels-sign-association-deal-332228.html" target="_blank">The Kyiv Post</a> reported that "Russia is willing to take part in tripartite negotiations with Ukraine and the EU, but only if they are held before Ukraine signs an association agreement with the EU, Russian President Vladimir Putin said." </div><div><br /></div><div> November 29, 2013, <a href="https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/177665.html" target="_blank">another Ukrainian source reported</a> that "The EU-Ukraine association agreement cannot be elaborated in the EU-Ukraine-Russia tripartite format, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said at a press conference after the Eastern Partnership Vilnius summit.
He rejected as unacceptable the tripartite negotiations and the interference of a third country in the bilateral agreement and said there could not be a tripartite format in the elaboration of the bilateral agreement between the EU and Ukraine." </div><div><br /></div><div> What Russia wanted back then is that Ukraine remain neutral. The way to ensure that would have been a Russian veto over the military clauses in the association agreement, in effect, a Russian seat at the negotiations. This was and remains into current times, a no-no to the European Union, the USA and NATO, because of Ukraine's sovereign rights and all. </div><div><br /></div><div> As I wrote back in my old post, and I write now, nothing justifies the actions Putin subsequently took.
But the Zelensky offer for Ukraine to be neutral is a concession after hugely damaging events the very thing that could have been conceded without wars, invasions, huge loss of life, and untold civilian suffering, not to mention global economic disruption, years and years ago. </div><div><br /></div><div> Who is going to be held accountable for this?
Obviously, nobody.
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-53874713766166913282022-03-08T19:23:00.005-05:002022-03-08T19:23:25.801-05:00India in Medieval Jewish Literature<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: medium;">The search for the sources of Judah Halevi's opinion led me to a publication by The Jewish People Policy Institute, titled</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: medium;"> </span><i style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/en/article/india/#.Yifwfy-B3aU">India, Israel and the Jewish People</a></i><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: medium;">, (2017), by Shalom Salomon Wald and Arielle Kandel.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;">They write as follows (the relevant end-notes are copied at the end of the excerpts):<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;">From the 9th or 10th century on, India appears in the books of several of the most important Jewish writers – rabbis, philosophers, historians, and travel writers. India is not a central issue but it is a part of the intellectual inventory of the Jews of the Middle Ages, as it had been in Hellenistic times. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The historian of religion R. G. Marks counted at least 19 Jewish texts written between the 10th and 14th centuries that speak of India.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">65</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>His collection is heterogeneous. It includes the most important works of the period as well as some long-forgotten books. During this period many Arab travelers visited India and some wrote travelogues that mention the presence of Jews in the country. In contrast, only one of the Jewish authors writing about India, the Karaite scholar Jacob al-Qirqisani (10th century), is believed to have visited the country himself. His Book of Lights and Watchtowers describes Hindu customs and compares them to Jewish religious practices and those of other nations.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p></blockquote><p style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span class="apple-converted-space"></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span></span><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><br /></span><p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"></span></strong></p><blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Saadia Gaon (892-942):</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Saadia Gaon is regarded as the dominant Jewish philosopher and religious scholar of the early 10th century. A life-long struggle pitted him against the Karaite school of Judaism, which rejected the oral law as transmitted in the Talmud. Jacob al-Qirqisani was one of his main opponents. Saadia Gaon lived in Bagdad, on the way to India, and knew a lot about the country. His main philosophical work, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, mocks “the masses of this country (Babylon) who labor under the impression that whoever goes to India becomes rich.”<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">66</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Another phrase of the book gives examples of people who fight against reality, such as “Hindus who have hardened themselves against fire, although it burns them.”<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">67</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>This is a neutral ethnographic observation, presented without animosity. A third reference mentions the Indian Brahmins as a model to emulate as they maintain and transmit their traditions.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">68</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Saadia also wrote an important commentary on the early Kabbalistic book, Sefer Yetzirah, in which he correctly credits India with inventing the decimal system and commends India as having separated the numbering system from the letters of the alphabet.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">69</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Saadia apparently believed in an Indian influence on Sefer Yetzirah.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">70</a></sup><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1164):</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Abraham Ibn Ezra was one of the foremost Bible commentators of Spanish Jewry. He was a philosopher, poet, mathematician, and astronomer. His competence in mathematics and science largely explains his respect for the “wise men of India” and, perhaps, a certain affinity for Indian civilization. He helped to bring Indian mathematical symbols and ideas to Europe’s attention. Similar to Saadia Gaon, his attitude to India was positive although he knew there were major differences between Jewish and Indian beliefs.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141):</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Yehuda Halevi was the iconic poet and philosopher of Spanish Judaism’s “Golden Age,” and the first consequential “Zionist” in a modern sense.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">71</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>His longing for the Holy Land drove him to abandon everything and emigrate to Israel where he perished under unknown circumstances. Yehuda Halevi was a close friend, and perhaps son-in-law, of Abraham Ibn Ezra, but did not entirely share the latter’s respect for India. His famous philosophical treatise, Sefer Kuzari, is ambivalent about India and even employs insulting language. The Kuzari is a fictional tale in which the king of the Central Asian Khazar people questions a philosopher, a Christian priest, a Muslim imam, and a rabbi in order to identify the only true religion. As the rabbi’s arguments surpass those of his competitors, the king decides to convert to Judaism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Sefer Kuzari refers to India five times. Halevi twice uses the “King of India” as a metaphor for God himself, which for a pious Jew is very significant. The rabbi asks the Khazari (king of the Khazars), if he were told that the King of India (that is God) was an “excellent man” who established justice in his country, would he revere him?<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">72</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>No, says the Khazari, maybe the Indian people love justice, independently of the king. But, he asks the rabbi again, if the king’s messengers would bring him extraordinary presents only procurable in India, would he then believe in him? This time the Khazari answers yes. The “presents” in this allegory are the miracles God had performed in the past. Another of the book’s argument recalls King Solomon who received visitors from all over the world, from “even as far as India,” who came to spread his wisdom.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">73</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>But then the narrative turns hostile. The Khazari challenges the rabbi: does it not weaken your belief when you hear that the Indians have antiquities that are “millions of years old” – much older than anything the Jews can show for themselves? The rabbi replies that it would indeed weaken his belief if the Indians had a “fixed form of religion, or a book … in which no historical discrepancy could be found … apart from this, they are a dissolute, unreliable people, and arouse the indignation of the followers of religions through their talk, while they anger them with their idols, talismans and witchcraft.”<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">74</a></sup><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">It is uncertain how Yehuda Halevi got his ideas about India. He lacked Saadia Gaon’s actual contact with the country. For him, India was a land of hearsay. But he knew Indian traders while he was in Egypt waiting to set out for the land of Israel. A particularly prominent Jewish merchant and scholar of the time, the Egyptian Halfon ha-Levi ben Nethanel, possessed a trading network that stretched from Spain to India. Halfon and Yehuda Halevi maintained a long-lasting friendship, immortalized by the poems Halevi dedicated to Halfon. Halfon’s Judeo-Arabic archive, parts of which were first published in 2013, is an important source of information on Yehuda Halevi during the period he wrote his Kuzari.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">75</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>A review of this material might show whether Halfon had strong opinions about India, which he communicated to his friend. But the Kuzari’s outburst does not have to be linked to any conjectural personal experience of Jewish traders. Perhaps the conditions of the Jewish people when Halevi completed his book explain his sweeping condemnation. At the end of his life, Judaism was a despised faith. The threat of persecution hung over the Jews in both Muslim and Christian lands and was growing. The Kuzari is a testimony of national distress and revolt. Perhaps Halevi’s message was that Jews were not inferior to their tormentors and religious competitors, they were superior to all of them, Christians and Muslims, and even the far-away Indians who, according to an earlier comment in the Kuzari had long before recognized King Solomon’s wisdom. The reference to the Indian visits to Solomon could then be read as a possible key to Halevi’s negative comment.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Moses Maimonides (1135-1204):</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Maimonides was aware that there were Jews in India. He was pleased to report that they knew his<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Mishneh Torah</em>, his famous codex of Jewish law. Maimonides’ younger brother, David, was a trader in precious stones who visited India regularly. He perished on his last voyage to India when his ship sank. After David’s death, Maimonides continued to invest in the India trade through other merchants.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">76</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>In spite of these personal links, Maimonides’ knowledge of India’s culture was as fragmentary as Halevi’s. He shared Yehuda Halevi’s ambivalence about India. As he respected science, he described Indian sages as true scientists, who, among other things, helped to develop the science of astronomy.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">77</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>On this, his position was similar to that of Abraham Ibn Ezra. On the other hand, his main philosophical work, the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Guide for the Perplexed</em>, contains four references to India, two of which criticize Indian idolatry. Maimonides speaks of the Patriarch Abraham who, he asserts was educated in the religion of the mythical Sabeans in Mesopotamia. They worshipped the stars as gods, but Abraham eradicated their idolatry, as Maimonides knew from Midrashic tales. Most people praise Abraham for this “except some ignoble remnants of the nations left in the remote corners of the earth, like the savage Turks in the extreme North and the Indians in the extreme South. These are remnants of the Sabeans who once filled the earth.”<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">78</a></sup><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Maybe Maimonides knew of the well-known Indian (and not only Indian) adherence to astrology and regarded it as the essence of Hindu worship. But there is no basis for the assertion that Sumerian and Babylonian religions, which worshipped the sun, moon, and stars as divinities, migrated to India and became dominant there. Apparently, either Maimonides’ brother David had scant or no knowledge of Hinduism, or did not share his knowledge with his famous sibling. Still, a second comment by Maimonides does show some familiarity with the Indian reality: “Most idolaters objected to killing cattle, holding this species of animals in great estimation. Therefore the people of India up to this day do not slaughter cattle.”<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">79</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>This was another reprimand of Indian religion. God had ordered the Jews to sacrifice animals in order to abolish animal worship, explained Maimonides. However, the prohibition of Avodah Zarah, idolatry, did not seem to impede the India trade of the Maimonides brothers, just as the Talmud had not raised obstacles to the India trade of the Babylonian Jews.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Sefer Yosifon (10th century):</span></strong><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">For hundreds of years, the most popular and widespread Jewish history book of early medieval origin was the Sefer Yosifon. Written in simple Hebrew, it was accessible to a large Jewish public and was often quoted, even by Biblical and Talmudic commentators.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">80</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Written by an unknown author of the late 10th century, it became one of the first printed Hebrew books (1476). It went through dozens of Hebrew editions and appeared in many translations. The Yosifon presented a Hebrew version of the “Alexander Romance,” a collection of tales about Alexander the Greats’ fictitive visit to India where he interacted with philosophers and Brahmins who lived a life of abstinence and preached stoic attitudes.<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">81</a></sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>Alexander had to admit the moral superiority of the Indian sages over their Greek counterparts. “As the inhabitants heard of him, they sent him wise men with books to say: ‘if you come to fight us, it will be completely useless because we have nothing that merits your anger – but if you yearn to enjoy what we do have, don’t come in strength and with force, come with mild words and pleasant language. You like war – but we like wisdom.’”<sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">82</a></sup><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Some of the Yosifon manuscripts and other, independent Hebrew Alexander stories have the Brahmins – called bargamnim – using Biblical and Talmudic expressions and allusions. Moreover they claim to be monotheists. This was an obvious Jewish attempt to “Judaize” the Indian Brahmins and claim common wisdom, morality, and other similarities between Indian and Jewish cultures</span><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">.</span><sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank">83</a></span></sup></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; caret-color: rgb(13, 33, 66); font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.25in; margin-top: 0in; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: justify;"><sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><a href="http://jppi.org.il/new/en/article/english-india-israel-and-the-jewish-people/english-table-of-contents/english-part-3-chapters/english-chapter-5-excursion-into-history-ancient-and-medieval-traces/english-endnotes/%22" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit;" target="_blank"></a></span></sup><span style="color: #0d2142; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;">The end-notes from 65 to 83 are:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">65.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Richard G. Marks, “Hindus and Hinduism in Medieval Jewish Literature”, Indo-Judaic Studies, op.cit., 58..<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">66.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Saadia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. S.Rosenblatt, New Haven and London, Yale Judaica Series, 1948, 26.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">67.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Ibid, 16.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">68.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Ibid, 172.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">69.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Brian Weinstein, “Traders and Ideas: Indians and Jews”, Indo-Judaic Studies, op.cit.,50.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">70.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">This hypothesis is discussed, but not endorsed by David Shulman, “Is There an Indian Connection to the Sefer Yesirah?” in Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism, Number 2: 2002, edited by Gad Freudenthal, Indiana University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">71.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Hillel Halkin, Yehuda Halevi, New York, Schocken, 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">72.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Judah Halevi, The Kuzari, revised Engl. Translation, Jerusalem, Sefer ve-Sefel Publishing, 2003, I;19-22, pp. 32 f. Later on one of the “friends” of the King travels to India where great honours are bestowed on him. He is advised to”continue in obedience to the King of India”.Op.cit. I:109, 61f. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">73.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Judah Halevi, op.cit., II :66,106.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">74.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Judah Halevi, op.cit., I:60-61, 38f. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">75.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">India Book IV/A. Halfon and Judah Ha-Levi, The Lives of a Merchant Scholar and a Poet Laureate according to the Cairo Geniza Documents (Hebrew), by Mordechai A. Friedman, and India Book IV/B. Halfon the travelling Merchant Scholar – Cairo Genizah Documents (Hebrew) by S.D.Goitein, Mordechai A.Friedman and Amir Ashur, Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute and the Rosen Foundation, 2013.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">76.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”), edited by S.D.Goitein and Mordechai A. Friedman, Leiden and Boston, Brill Academic Publishers, 2008, 90. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">77.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Abraham Melamed, op.cit., 307 ff. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">78.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans, M.Friedlaender, 1st ed. 1904, New York, Dover, 1956, III:29, 315.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">79.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Ibid, III:46, 359.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">80.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Richard G. Marks, op.cit., 62f.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">81.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Sefer Yosifon (Hebrew), ed. David Flusser, Jerusalem, Mosad Bialik,1979, Vol. I 474 ff., Vol.II 26 ff.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">82.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Sefer Yosifon I, 474, para.5. Translation by the author.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #0d2142; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-language: HI; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">83.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #0d2142;">Richard G. Marks, op.cit., 63, 65, 71.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p> </o:p></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></p><style class="WebKit-mso-list-quirks-style">
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</style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-3253049344097149292022-03-06T00:48:00.002-05:002022-03-07T08:34:22.506-05:00 Judah Halevi: The Kuzari<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Halevi" style="background-color: white; color: #954f72; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Wiki</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b></b></span></p><blockquote><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Judah Halevi</b></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> (also </span><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Yehuda Halevi</span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> or </span><b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">ha-Levi</span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">; </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="Hebrew language"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Hebrew</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">: </span><span dir="RTL" face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="HE" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">יהודה הלוי</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span> and Judah ben Shmuel Halevi </span><span dir="RTL" lang="HE" style="color: #202122; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">יהודה בן שמואל הלוי</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span lang="HI" style="color: #202122; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">; </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_language" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="Arabic language"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Arabic</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">: </span><span dir="RTL" face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="AR" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">يهوذا اللاوي</span><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span dir="LTR"></span><span dir="LTR"></span> </span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Yahuḏa al-Lāwī</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">; </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">c.</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> 1075 – 1141) was a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sephardic" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="Sephardic"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Spanish Jewish</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> physician, poet and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="Philosopher"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">philosopher</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">. He was born in Spain, either in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Spain" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="Toledo, Spain"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Toledo</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> or </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudela,_Navarre" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="Tudela, Navarre"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Tudela</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">,</span><sup><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 8pt;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Halevi#cite_note-2" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #337ab7;">[2]</span></a></span></sup><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> in 1075</span><sup><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 8pt;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judah_Halevi#cite_note-3" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #337ab7;">[3]</span></a></span></sup><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> or 1086, and died shortly after arriving in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Land" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="The Holy Land"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">the Holy Land</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> in 1141, at that point the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusader_states" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="Crusader states"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Crusader</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Jerusalem" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank" title="Kingdom of Jerusalem"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Kingdom of Jerusalem</span></a></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">.</span></blockquote><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /><br />From his work "In Defense of the Despised Faith", know as "The Kuzari", in the form of a dialog between a Khazar king and a rabbi, Hartwig Hirschfeld's translation from 1905:<o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/khz/khz01.htm" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">https://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/khz/khz01.htm</span></a></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /><br /></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202122; font-size: 10.5pt;">Excerpts:<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">44. Al Khazari: It is strange that you should possess authentic chronology of the creation of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">45. The Rabbi: Surely we reckon according to it, and there is no difference between the Jews of Khazar and Ethiopia in this respect.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">46. Al Khazari: What date do you consider it at present?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">47. The Rabbi: Four thousand and nine hundred years<br />.......<br />.......<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">60. Al Khazari: Does it not weaken thy belief if thou art told that the Indians have antiquities and buildings which they consider to be millions of years old?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">61. The Rabbi: It would, indeed, weaken my belief had they a fixed form of religion, or a book concerning which a multitude of people held the same opinion, and in which no historical discrepancy could be found. Such a book, however, does not exist. Apart from this, they are a dissolute, unreliable people, and arouse the indignation of the followers of religions through their talk, whilst they anger them with their idols, talismans, and witchcraft. To such things they pin their faith, and deride those who boast of the possession of a divine book. Yet they only possess a few books, and these were written to mislead the weak-minded. To this class belong astrological writings, in which they speak of ten thousands of years, as the book on the Nabataean Agriculture, in which are mentioned the names of Janbūshār, Sagrīt and Roanai. It is believed that they lived before Adam, who was the disciple of Janbūshār, and such like.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">62. Al Khazari: If I had supported my arguments by reference to a negro people, i.e. a people not united upon a common law, thy answer would have been correct. Now what is thy opinion of the philosophers who, as the result of their careful researches, agree that the world is without beginning, and here it does not concern tens of thousands, and not millions, but unlimited numbers of years.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;">More recently, about the translations of the Kuzari:</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="color: #337ab7;"><a href="https://seforimblog.com/2017/06/translations-of-rabbi-judah-halevis/" style="color: #954f72;" target="_blank">https://seforimblog.com/2017/06/translations-of-rabbi-judah-halevis/</a></span></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Less than thirty years after R. Judah ben Samuel Halevi completed his Book of Kuzari in approximately 1140, it became one of the first Judaeo-Arabic compositions to be translated into Hebrew. This pioneering translation marked part of the cultural transfer of Andalusian Jewish culture, written in Judaeo-Arabic, into Hebrew, and was accomplished in 1167 by R. Judah ben Saul Ibn Tibbon, “the father of the translators.” As the centers of Jewish intellectual life moved to Christian areas where Hebrew was the predominant Jewish literary language, it was only through this translation that the Kuzari was known to generations upon generations of Jews. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">...<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">With the birth of Jewish studies in the nineteenth century, scholars began publishing original texts in academic editions. Thus, Hartwig Hirschfeld (1854-1934), working with Oxford-Bodleian Ms. Pococke, the only complete, or almost complete, version of the work, produced a first edition of the original Judaeo-Arabic text of the Kuzari. He published with it a version of the Ibn Tibbon translation which was partially corrected to correspond to the Judaeo-Arabic version, but not in a consistent manner. Thus, Hirschfeld changed some passages in the Hebrew despite their being attested in all the Ibn Tibbon manuscripts and editions, but left other problematic passages untouched.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">...<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">In addition to editing the Judaeo-Arabic text of the Kuzari, and producing an edition of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation, Hartwig Hirschfeld also translated the book into English.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Menlo; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">There is a recent translation by Rabbi Chanan Morrison, based on a Hebrew translation of a new critical edition by Rabbit Yitzhak Shilat (2010) "utilizing several Arabic manuscripts, including texts from Russian collections inaccessible to earlier researchers" : <i>Sefer Ha-Kuzari: Precise Hebrew Translation in the Style of the Period of Its Composition</i>. Morrison also writes: "In preparing the text, I found Prof. Hartwig Hirschfeld's classic (but antiquated) 1905 English translation to be of great assistance.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">60. The Kuzari: Does it not weaken your belief that the people of India are reported to have ancient relics and buildings that they are certain are millions of years old?<br /><br />61. The Rabbi: It would weaken my belief were it based on accurate knowledge or a written historical record that is universally accepted. But that is not the case.<br /><br />They are an unreliable people, lacking clear historical account. They anger the followers of religions with these claims, just as they anger them with their statues, talismans and practices. They say these things are effective, and they ridicule those claiming to possess a book from God.<br /><br />This conjecture is only found in a few books written by a few individuals -- books that only mislead the feeble minded. To this category belong some of their astrological writings, which speak of tens of thousands of years, and <i>The Book of Nabataean Agriculture</i>, which mentions the names of Janbushad, Sagrit and Duani. They say that they lived before Adam, that Janbushad was Adam's teacher, and other such claims.<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">---<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Note: <i>The Book of Nabataean Agriculture </i>is, per what I can find, about the people termed as the last pagans of Iraq. I haven't been able to find out whether there is any mention of India/Indians in that book.<br /><br />----<br /><br /></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Just to contrast the Morrison vs Hirschfeld translations, Morrison has:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">62. The Kuzari: Granted, had I based my argument only on the traditions of a fractious people who cannot agree about anything, your answer would be excellent. But what will you say about the philosophers, who as the result of careful research on their erudite level, have concluded that the world is eternal, without beginning? And here it is not a question of tens of thousands or even millions of years, but an infinite number of years!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Hirschfeld has:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /> </span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10.5pt;">62. Al Khazari: If I had supported my arguments by reference to a negro people, i.e. a people not united upon a common law, thy answer would have been correct. Now what is thy opinion of the philosophers who, as the result of their careful researches, agree that the world is without beginning, and here it does not concern tens of thousands, and not millions, but unlimited numbers of years.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">-----<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Eliding over the modern phenomena of a fractious negro people, it would be interesting to trace from where Judah Halevi obtained his opinion of India.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-64458103592932250402022-02-27T09:24:00.000-05:002022-02-27T09:24:20.351-05:00Mahabharata Treasure House<p> <a href="https://arshabodha.org/teachings/mahabharata/" target="_blank">The Arsha Bodha Center's website</a> hosts five years of Swami Tadatmananda's lectures on the Mahabharata. Each recording is about an hour long. Swamiji brings in his trademark humor and American idioms.8</p><p>Some knowledge of the story and the characters would enhance the listener's experience, but are not pre-requisite. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-45948529929144181202022-02-07T11:43:00.006-05:002022-02-07T11:43:28.210-05:00Shower Cap's Blog<p> Some of the best political commentary/rants about the crazy politics in these United States of America can be found on Shower Cap's <a href="https://showercapblog.com" target="_blank">American Madness Journal</a>. There's a new entry each Friday.</p><p>Excerpt from the latest:</p><p style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: black; font-kerning: none;"></span></p><blockquote><p style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: black; font-kerning: none;">Y’know, the way I sorta judge how things’re going in this country boils down to, “is there more Nazi shit going on than last week, or less?” and I tell you, folks, since that fateful <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/14/donald-trump-campaign-announcement-tower-escalator-oral-history-227148/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #da000d; font-kerning: none;">escalator ride</span></a> what seems like a fucking century ago, the answer hasn’t been “less” once. Not once. Well, shucks, may as well grab a drink and join me for a few nervous chuckles at all the zany, zany ways 21st century America refuses to learn history’s clearest lessons…wheeeeeeee. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: black; font-kerning: none;">BUT FIRST…move over, Omicron, it’s time for the other plague menacing humanity to run wild, and though this particular variant was 100% made in the USA, I’m sure Rand Paul will still figure out some way to blame China. I’m speaking, of course, of Tantrum-Throwing Manchildren Demanding the Right to Spread a Disease That’s Killed Millions. </span></p></blockquote><blockquote><p style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">(This is all coming on the heels of a new study showing the unvaccinated are <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/covid-hospitalization-rates-omicron-wave-23-times-higher/story?id=82601041"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #da000d; font-kerning: none;">23 times more likely</span></a> to be hospitalized with Covid than those of us who don’t have skulls full of hornets and rat turds, and how fun is it to live in a society where absolutely no one expects data that clear to change anyone’s behavior, because a certain political party decided it would be a good idea to brainwash their base into <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/07/16/republican-confidence-in-science-drops-nearly-30-points-since-1975-poll-finds/?sh=4f239c5416da"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #da000d; font-kerning: none;">despising science?</span></a>)</span></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-13825056456614598412022-01-30T12:32:00.002-05:002022-01-30T12:32:32.469-05:00Rangapura Vihara | Sooryagayathri | Carnatic Krithi<iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/CABcibpobDE" style="background-image: url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CABcibpobDE/hqdefault.jpg);" width="480"></iframe><div><br /></div><div>While I am an Uthara Unnikrishnan fan, my favorite by far is Sooryagayathri. For reasons I am not aware of, this song keeps ringing in my head. </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952506.post-64840322155438211202022-01-29T09:05:00.003-05:002022-01-29T09:05:43.874-05:00Endaro MahanubhavuluFYI, regarding my previous post: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uthara_Unnikrishnan" target="_blank">from Wiki</a><div><br /></div><div><b style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></b><blockquote><b style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Uthara Unnikrishnan</b><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> (born 2004) is an </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_people" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none;" title="Indian people">Indian</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playback_singer" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none;" title="Playback singer">playback singer</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. In 2015, she won the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Film_Award_for_Best_Female_Playback_Singer" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none;" title="National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer">National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> at the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/62nd_National_Film_Awards" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none;" title="62nd National Film Awards">62nd National Film Awards</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> for her rendition of the song "Azhage" (Beautiful) from the 2014 </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_cinema" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none;" title="Tamil cinema">Tamil film</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saivam" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; text-decoration: none;" title="Saivam">Saivam</a></i><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, a family drama directed by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._L._Vijay" style="background-image: none; color: #0b0080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none;" title="A. L. Vijay">A. L. Vijay</a><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">.She received the award at the age of 10, becoming its youngest recipient.</span></blockquote><p><br /></p><p>Here daughter and father sing:</p><p> </p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"></span></div>
<iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://youtube.com/embed/9bcBbRQ7VDQ" style="background-image: url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9bcBbRQ7VDQ/hqdefault.jpg);" width="480"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0