Iraqi police as per Bremer

On October 2, 2003, Lt. General Sanchez gave a congressional delegation headed by Kentucky (R) Senator Mitch McConnell a briefing, where he said that the Coalition had almost 54,000 Iraqi police on duty.

Bremer writes

"After that ... session, I asked Doug Brand, our lanky Yorkshire police officer who was now acting Senior Adviser to the Interior Ministry, to come in with Clay to discuss police training.

"Let's review the situation, Doug. At the end of August, Bernie Kerik said that many of the 35,000 police then on the rolls would have be dropped for incompetence, corruption or previous human rights abuses. Now Sanchez reports that we've got 54,000 police officers on patrol a month later. How the hell could that happen?"

"Apparently General Sanchez is operating under an order from General Abizaid to recruit 30,000 police officers in thirty days," Doug said. "The Army is sweeping up half-educated men off the streets, running them through a three-week training course, arming them, and then calling them 'police'. It's a scandal, pure and simple."

"You know the military, Clay. Can you find me the order they're using to do this hiring?"

"I can get it," Clay said simply.

The military seemed to be proceeding with its plans to replace American combat units with ill-trained Iraqi police. But before I could raise this problem during that afternoon's secure call to Rumsfeld, he asked me to find some positive, newsworthy "interim steps" that we could take to "migrate" political authority to the Iraqis. "We've got to show some forward motion on the political front, Jerry."

That's Feith's Defense policy shop-talking.

.....

"Mr. Secretary, I have to be frank," I said. "You're seeing inflated numbers on police rosters. We shouldn't kid ourselves thinking that the Iraqis are better prepared than they are. We needed a professional police force here, one that's trained to a high standard. That's the whole point of the program in Jordan."

Rumsfeld did not seem convinced. He said that it was better to get the "process started quickly" by having our Army bring in these extra police.

I disagreed. I told him of Doug Brand's description of the Army pulling guys off the street and running them through a short "training" course.

At the end of the call, Rumsfeld seemed to understand, saying he would "push back" on the police in the total-force projection numbers when his office announced them the next week.

-------

We can actually check that:


Department of Defense Briefing, October 16, 2003

Q In the wake of the bombing of the Baghdad Hotel in Iraq, U.S. officials both here and in Baghdad touted the effectiveness of the Iraqi facility's protection force trained by the United States. But subsequent to that our -- CNN's people in Baghdad tell me that, in fact, the people guarding the hotel were contractors from the DynCorp company. Is that the case? And are any of these Iraqi protection forces actually up and protecting anything at this point?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure.

GEN. MYERS: Yes.

SEC. RUMSFELD: There are site protection Iraqi forces. There are border patrol Iraqi forces. There are some starting in the Army. There are any number of Iraqis in police forces. The total number keeps going up. About a week ago it was 56,000 with another 14 (thousand) in training, up to 70,000 -- 16 in training, 17 in training. And now it's something in excess of that. They have a variety of responsibilities. I would guess that in addition there are contractors hiring Iraqis with -- for the -- to work for the contractor, which would be a different -- still different category.

DeBaathification of Iraq

CIP wants to know who was behind Paul Bremer's (America's Proconsul in Iraq) decisions to fire anyone who was a "senior" Baathist, to abolish the Iraqi Army, and to abolish the Iraqi police force. These decisions led to the complete unravelling of Iraqi society, and the current disastrous situation.

CIP doesn't want to purchase the book and put any dollars into Bremer's piggy bank. Nice fellow that I am, I got the book from the public library. I can't post my answer there, 'cause Haloscan is down (Why anyone chooses to use that abomination of a comment system is another question, it is a Bremer-like decision, IMO.)

Here are some quotes from the book obtained by looking at the index for "Baath Party, elimination of".

"On May 9 [2003], my last day of preparation at the Pentagon, Don Rumsfeld had given me my marching orders in a memo. Among all my other instructions, Rumsfeld's memo emphasized: "The Coalition will actively oppose Saddam Hussein's old enforcers - the Baath Party, the Fedayeen Saddam (the irregular fighters that had harassed our forces on the march to Baghdad), etc. We will make clear that the Coalition will eliminate the remnants of Saddam's regime."

That morning, Under Secretary Douglas Feith had shown me a draft order for the "De-Baathification of Iraqi Society." He had underscored the political importance of the decree. "We've got to show all the Iraqis that we're serious about building a New Iraq. And that means that Saddam's instruments of repression have no role in that new nation." Although there was no mention in the draft of the regular army, I know that Walt Slocombe, the Coalition's senior adviser for Defense and Security Affairs, had begun discussing the army's future with Feith now that it was clear the force had broken ranks and disappeared.

I had scanned the decree. General Franks had already outlawed the Baath Party in his "Freedom Message" of April 16. This more sweeping order was to rid the Iraqi government of the small group of true believers at the top of the party and those who had committed crimes in its name, and to wipe the country clean of the Baath Party's ideology.

"We're thinking of having Jay [Garner] issue the order today," Feith had said.

"Hold on a minute," I said. "I agree it's a very important step, so important that I think it should wait 'til I get there."

Feith agreed to hold off but encouraged me to issue the order as soon as possible after my arrival in Baghdad. He underscored another point in Rumsfeld's memo stating that the decree was to be carried out "...even if implementing it causes administrative inconvenience."

....

Our concern was only the top four levels of the party membership, which the order officially excluded from public life. These were the Baathist loyalists who, by virtue of their positions of power in the regime, had been active instruments of Saddam's repression. Our intelligence community estimated that they amounted to only about 1 percent of all party members or approximately 20,000 people, overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs.

But I realized that the "administrative inconvenience" Rumsfeld mentioned could prove a lot more than inconvenient. Senior Baathists had formed the leadership of every Iraqi ministry and military organization. By banning them from public employment, we would certainly make running the government more difficult. On the other hand, I was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that apolitical technocrats were usually the people who made organizations work."

-----------

"On May 9, 2003, the day before our departure, I sent a memo to Secretary Rumsfeld, copied to Wolfowitz, DOD's policy office and the General Counsel, summarizing these discussions [with Walt Slocombe and Paul Wolfowitz and other "top Pentagon officials"on the Iraqi army] and the tentative conclusion that we should formally dissolve Saddam's army as well as the security and intelligence services as a prelude to establishing Iraq's new security services. I attached to the memo a draft order doing that but told the secretary, "I will show the draft order to CENTCOM this weekend and send back any suggested changes."

------------

"To launch this delicate process, we had first formally to abolish the old regime's intelligence and security services. Doing so would not send home a single soldier or disband a single unit. All that had happened weeks before. But it would formally dismantle the old power structure and signal that the fall of Saddam and the Baathists was permanent.

We carefully coordinated this critical process with the Pentagon. On May 19, I sent a memo to Secretary Rumsfeld detailing our recommendations for the dissolution of the Iraqi Defense Ministry and its "related entities", including Saddam's intelligence, security and propaganda services as well as the army, other military units, and paramilitary forces. The action, I said, would be "a critical step in our effort to destroy the underpinnings of the Saddam regime, to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that we have done so and that neither Saddam nor his gang is coming back."

I also advised Rumsfeld that we proposed to offer severance payments to hundreds of thousands of former soldiers, excluding only the most senior Baathists and intelligence and internal security types, many of whom had in any case fled the country. This meant that we would be paying people who had only weeks before been killing young Americans, but that was a cost that had to be borne. Before sending this message to the Pentagon, Slocombe and I discussed the plans with the appropriate Coalition military commanders and civilians, including McKiernan in Baghdad and CENTCOME forward headquarters in Qatar.

At the Pentagon on May 22, Feith carefully reviewed our draft order, which would formally abolish Saddam's security and intelligence services. He asked us to clarify some of the wording, which we did to his full satisfaction. My press spokesman, Dan Senor, stayed up the entire night coordinating the text of the announcement and press plans with Rumsfeld's chief of staff, Larry Di Rita. Later that day, when Rumsfeld authorized me to proceed, I informed the president of the plan in a video teleconference."

-------------

More from the zoo

Re: the performance of the camera - notice the moire effect in the background.

TPM on Rachel Paulose

The case of the US Attorney for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose, becomes more and more interesting. TalkingPointsMemo.com provides the best summary of the news and the issues involved:

1. Link 1
2. Link 2
3. Link 3
4. Link 4

A summary of the summary is that career attorneys find working under Paulose impossible and so are resigning/moving to lesser positions. The Bush Admin. is then attacking these with their usual smear tactics.

Update on Rachel Paulose

Despite US Attorney Rachel Paulose being on the opposite political side from yours truly, I had hoped, as a fellow desi, that she would justify her appointment as the youngest US Attorney ever, etc., by doing a good job.

Unfortunately, apparently not!.

From Father's Garden

Some pics from the zoo

Thiruvananthapuram is going through a hot, dry spell, and the only green grass at the zoo is where it is irrigated. It has rained only once in the two weeks I've been here. The animals and the human visitors were all panting in the heat.

On the positive side, the Sony DSC-HDX (where X=2,5,7,etc.), a point-and-shoot camera with an image stabilized optical zoom varying from 12x to 15x, seems to perform about as well as a p&s can. Here are some pics from the zoo. As you might imagine, in all cases, the animals were quite far away from the camera ( a DSC-H2).

More on the contaminated wheat

This story in dailykos provides further information on the contaminated wheat gluten. The US Food & Drug Administration [FDA] has issued an import alert notice:
Import Alert.

The author of the story says (and I agree):

"I believe they [the FDA] may know more about the wheat gluten's whereabouts than they are currently admitting to publically. And now let me speculate that indeed this gluten MIGHT be in the human food chain, and the FDA does not want to set off a stampede of paniced consumers."

_________________________________________________________________________________

This dailykos story should also be read.

“There was a sizable amount of melamine. You could see crystals in the wheat gluten,” said the FDA’s top vet. Amazingly, no one noticed. Not at Menu Foods, not at Hills, not at Purina, not at Del Monte — all companies who are busy touting their high quality."

and

"Under the President’s proposed 2007 budget for FDA, the funding gap between responsibilities and capacity will grow again, to 56%. This harsh budget reality is a real threat to FDA’s ability to effectively oversee nanotechnology. It means among other things that FDA lacks the resources it needs to build its own expertise, to develop the safety-testing protocols and detection methods needed to evaluate new nanotechnology products, to conduct its own risk research, to gather the necessary premarket data required to get ahead of commercialization and to oversee products after they have entered the market."

Say No to McCain!

Senator and Presidential Candidate John McCain is not worthy of anyone's respect. He forfeited my respect permanently when he embraced George Bush even after the smear campaign in the 2000 Presidential campaign, described below, four years later.

McCain cannot be said to stand for anything except raw ambition. As subsequent events 2000-2007 have shown, McCain's "straight talk" is about as straight as a Sierpinski gasket.

Richard H. Davis, The Boston Globe, March 21, 2004

"Having run Senator John McCain's campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary. We had just swept into the state from New Hampshire, where we had racked up a shocking, 19-point win over the heavily favored George W. Bush. What followed was a primary campaign that would make history for its negativity.

In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.

It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"

____________________________________________________________________________________

The story of this smear was told during the 2000 primary season itself, and yet the nation let G.W. Bush be elected/selected President. All I can say is - serves the nation right!

Not just pets!

In North America, more than 60 million cans of pet food of over 70 brands have been recalled by the manufacturers, because they contain contaminated wheat gluten. The contaminant can cause kidney failure and death in cats and dogs.

Now it turns out it is not just the "feed grade" wheat that is contaminated. "Food grade" wheat is also contaminated.

E.g., read this.

"Del Monte Foods has confirmed that the melamine-tainted wheat gluten used in several of its recalled pet food products was supplied as a "food grade" additive, raising the likelihood that contaminated wheat gluten might have entered the human food supply."
.....
"The FDA announced today that it has traced the contaminated wheat gluten to a single processor, Xuzhou Anying Biological Technology of Peixian, China, but has not released the name of the U.S. distributor who supplied the product to Del Monte, Menu Foods, Nestle Purina, and Hills Nutritional. In all, more than 70 brands and over 60 million cans and pouches of dog and cat food are now part of this massive recall, as well as at least one brand of dry cat food."
.....
"Public statements have indicated that the contaminated gluten was distributed by a single U.S. company, but since the FDA refuses to name the supplier, it is not yet known if this company also supplies human food manufacturers. It is also not yet known if Xuzhou Anying sells direct to food manufacturers in the U.S. or abroad."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Among other mysteries is why is the US buying food-grade wheat from China?

Needless to say, the absence of any security in the quality of the food supply is alarming. I can only hope that all the companies that sold the contaminated product suffer such heavy financial losses that testing of food and detection of problems before the fact becomes the market solution.

Enlightenment!

Via A.M. :

This Aspen Has Turned, by Nancy Greggs

It begins thusly:


This is my farewell post on DU. I have finally seen the light, and have no choice but to throw my lot in with the RepubliCons. And I do mean no choice; it literally just happened on its own.

It started when I heard President Bush’s Saturday radio address, and finally realized what an articulate statesman he is. Suddenly putting food on my family started to make sense, along with the War on Terror, the need for wire-tapping US citizens, and the necessity of doing away with quaint concepts like freedom in the pursuit of spreading democracy.

My transformation into a BushBot escalated quickly – a kind of surge, if you will. Once I started speaking in talking points, I knew there was no turning back. I realized that facts were the enemy, and I had to fight ‘em over there as well as over here. So I bought a gas-guzzler, slapped a W sticker on the bumper, burned my copy of An Inconvenient Truth, and set out to claim my rightful place in the world as an ill-informed idiot. It was time to adapt to win."

_________________________________________________________________________________

Enlightenment is possible in this life itself! By doing away with the necessity of thought, life becomes infinitely simpler, too. Pure bliss!

India's Highway Code

I might have posted this before, but can't find it, so here goes:
American world traveller G.R. Frysinger's humorous take on India's chaotic road traffic.

e.g.,

"Article III: All wheeled vehicles shall be driven in accordance with the maxim: to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail: to stop is defeat. This is the Indian drivers’ mantra."

History - the Congress vs the British

Jinnah's Muslim League made a big deal about the Congress "non-recognition" of it as a major force in the country. Specifically, certain remarks of Nehru were cited, and continue to be cited, as a sign of his arrogance.

I will provide links to demonstrate the above at some later date. In the meantime, it is to be noted: (from The Partition of India, Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947, editors C.H. Philips, M.D. Wainwright; B.R. Nanda - The Indian National Congress and the Partition of India, 1935-47)

"Nehru was aware of the fact that the Congress was anathema to the official world. In September 1936, he came across a copy of a circular letter from the secretary of the court of wards, Allahabad to all district officers advising them that it was 'essential in the interests of the class which the Court of Wards represents, and of agricultural interests generally to inflict as crushing a defeat as possible on the Congress with its avowed socialistic principles. To this end it is of the utmost importance to avoid to the greatest extent practicable a split in the landlord vote, and a consequent dissipation of the voting power of the elements opposed to the Congress'."

"It was after reading this letter that Nehru issued a statement to the press on September 18, 1936: 'The real contest is between two forces - the Congress as representing the will to freedom of the nation, and the British Government of India and its supporters who oppose this urge and try to suppress it....Let this position be clearly understood by our people as it has been understood and acted upon by the Government. For the Government, there is only one principal opponent - the Congress.'"

"This statement was directed not against the Muslim League - which later was to make much play with it - but against the government. It is noteworthy that Nehru had described the contest as between 'two forces', not between 'two parties'. What he was stating was the obvious truth: the Congress represented the main anti-imperialist force in India."

Reflections on the Indian Traditions

Prof. Balagangadhara (Balu) has begun a series on India Forum of reflections on the Indian traditions.

A central question is - what do we find valuable about the Indian traditions? What should we discard and what should we keep - try to propagate to the next generation?

The first obstacle we hit is that we ourselves do not understand the traditions well enough to answer that question. The framework within which we discuss them is flawed.

Balu mentions as flawed the notions of Hinduism as a religion and of Indian social structure as the caste system. This will be controversial, and will require further explanation and elaboration.

Bush fans in Kerala?

President G.W. Bush and his tax-breaks for the rich policies have their fans in the very Leftist state of Kerala in far-away India.

Purchasers of residential real estate used to pay a tax of 3.1% of the value of the property to register the sale. Under new rules effective from April 1, purchasers of stand-alone houses on their own plots of land will continue to pay the 3.1% tax. Purchasers of apartments or flats, however, will pay at a 15.5% rate.

With the land values skyrocketing in the cities, the type of housing the middle class can realistically hope to own there is apartments.

Why do I like this photograph?

Via fredmiranda.com - sorry I cannot link to the photograph directly, I hope you are able to view it without having to register on the forum.

Why does this black-and-white picture of a freighter appeal to me? I haven't been able to figure it out.

Libertarians Against Shampoo

The Libertarians have launched a campaign against shampoo, thereby preserving key libertarian principles that corporations are free to sell us useless junk and we are free to reject that.

1. Matthew Parris in The Times of London.

2. Richard Glover in the Sydney Morning Herald.

3. Norman Swan interviews Dr. Hugh Molloy on Australian radio.

Physics, then and now

I get into a tin can, and make a long flight to my parents' home. While trying to keep awake to get over jetlag, I see an oldie in my father's bookshelf - "Elementary Particles - A Short History of Some Discoveries in Atomic Physics - The Vanuxem Lectures, 1959", by Chen Ning Yang.

It begins thus (emphasis added by me):

"AT THE TURN of the century the world of physics was clearly coming into the dawn of a new era. Not only did the brilliant achievements of classical mechanics and of the Faraday-Maxwell theory of electromagnetism bring to a successful termination the era of classical macroscopic physics, but there were already in the air everywhere new phenomena, new puzzlement, new excitement, and new anticipation. Cathode rays, photoelectriciy, radioactivity, the Zeeman effect, X-rays, and the Rydberg law of spectral lines were all recent discoveries. What the new era would have in store was of course difficult to predict at that time. Among other things, there was much discussion of the possible atomic structure of electricity. But let us recognize that although the concept of the atomic structure of matter had been speculated upon since early times, such speculation could not be entered into the books of scientific knowledge. For without quantitative experimental verification, no philosophical discussions can be accepted as scientific truth. For example, as late as 1897, Lord Kelvin, a giant in the world of physics in the latter part of the nineteenth century, still wrote that the idea that "electricity is a continuous homogenous liquid" (rather than having an atomic structure) deserved careful consideration."

---
Physics, now, via Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong, where Peter does a great job of recording the atrocities:

Physicist Mark Srednicki:

"We see that the big issue for Brian, and for just about all scientists (though with the apparent exceptions of Lee Smolin and Peter Woit), is what is TRUE. Not what corresponds to some philosophy of what science is or is not. Lee writes that the landscape must be rejected because “it would mean the end of our field” (page 165). It should be obvious that this is not the basis that is traditionally used for accepting or rejecting a theory! Peter’s (essentially the same) argument that string theory must be rejected because (at the moment) it does not appear to be sufficiently predictive (for Peter) is also irrelevant to the question of whether or not string theory is TRUE.

If the landscape is right, we may never get anything more than circumstantial evidence that it’s right. But that’s often the case in science. We’ve been spoiled in particle physics by having extremely precise data and highly predictive and quantitative theories for the past few decades. Most of the rest of science has not been so lucky. Perhaps we will not be so lucky going forward. The only way to find out is to do more work and see where it leads."

------

Bears repeating:

"For without quantitative experimental verification, no philosophical discussions can be accepted as scientific truth."

------

I'll also venture to say that particle physics faces the prospect of a new generation of physicists who actually know less than their predecessors. For all the personal knowledge of the interplay of experiment and theory may vanish as one generation retires, and is replaced by a new generation that knows mainly extremely sophisticated mathematics. We have to hope that Nature is more providential.

Focus

Essential for a camera.
Good for a person.

Yet more on 300

http://www.thestar.com/article/190493

A note on the history of the Partition of India

"...before 1947 the "Hindus" were relentlessly and viciously vilified by Jinnah as being power-hungry for not agreeing to partition India into two independent states as he demanded (this appears to have been Jinnah's single-point political platform in this period). And yet, it is mystifying that after 1947, many have refused to acknowledge this patent fact about Jinnah, preferring to vilify "Hindus" and the Congress as power-hungry for agreeing to partition India into two independent states, while declaring Jinnah completely innocent of wanting any such partition.

The deep sense of tragedy, loss and of "failed" nationalism felt by countless millions in India after Partition occured could be a perfectly understandable reason for this "inconsistency" in the general public. Such an inconsistency is however not quite as understandable where informed historians are concerned, and carries the odor of intellectual dishonesty."

From here

Organ Donation

I read in the newspapers that hospitals are increasingly eager to harvest organs, waiting as little as 75 seconds after heart stoppage to begin taking organs. Further, there are proposals that everyone be assumed to be a donor in the absence of explicit instructions to the contrary.

I understand that organ donation does alleviate death and suffering for people. But it seems to me that the chief beneficiary in all this is the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

Cost of a liver transplant

"According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), estimated charges for liver transplantation are:

Estimated First-Year Charge: $314,600
Estimated Annual Follow-up Charge: $21,900".

-----------------------------------------------

Therefore, this is my public statement - in the absence of a signed and witnessed statement from me to donate part or all of my body, I explicitly forbid that any donation of my body parts.

Finally, the only circumstances in which I will execute a statement of organ donation is either for a loved one, or if every step in the organ transplantation is non-profit.

The Privatization of War

One of the neocon products has been the privatization of war.

Most troubling is that the contractors seem to be shielded from Congressional oversight. Even less than with the military do Americans know what is done in their name.

Also, until recently, the mercenaries operated outside both civilian law and military law; i.e., they were not answerable to anyone except company management.

More on 300 the movie

Right-wing bloggers and 300 the movie:
Digby is a must-read.

1984 Grammar

The Bush Administration's common "Mistakes were made" is said to be in the past exonerative tense.


Heard on NPR, then googled

"The nonconfessions inspired William Schneider, a political guru here, to note a few years ago that Washington had contributed a new tense to the language. “This usage,” he said, “should be referred to as the past exonerative.”"

300 - The Movie

300 - The Movie is made for stupid people.

PS: what makes it stupid is the speechifying.


For instance, as per Wikipedia,

"The Spartans sent 45,000 men under the command of Pausanias, 5,000 Spartiates (full citizen soldiers), 5,000 perioeci and 35,000 helots; this was the largest single Spartan fighting force ever to appear in battle. Spartan forces typically included relatively few actual Spartan soldiers, and mostly consisted of perioeci, helots (serfs, servants of the state) and soldiers provided by their allies."

Helots?

And elsewhere:

"Every autumn, according to Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus, 28, 3–7), the Spartan Ephors (Classical Greek Ἔφοροι) would pro forma declare war on the Helot population so that any Spartan citizen could kill a Helot without fear of blood guilt. Unarmed, the Krypteia were sent out into the countryside with the instructions to kill any Helot they encountered at night and to take any food they needed. This could be used to remove any Helots considered troublesome and provide the young men with a manhood test and experience of their first kill. Such brutal oppression of the Helots permitted the Spartans to control the agrarian population and devote themselves to military practice."

------

Rotten at the Top

The Glasshouse explains why the Chief Justice of Pakistan is in trouble. You should read the whole piece, but this stands out:

"Previously relatives of the missing people would file writs of habeas corpus in the courts. The judges would then formally request the Interior Ministry for information. Characteristically, the ministry would reply that the secret agencies had no clue as to the person's whereabouts, and the matter would end there.

The Chief Justice changed all this by diligently following up these cases and compelling the authorities to trace the missing citizens. As a result, many missing people suddenly reappeared in the strangest of circumstances; many of them accusing the secret agencies of incarcerating and torturing them. The CJ then put the cat among the pigeons by ordering these agencies to appear in court in front of him."

_______________

So Pakistan's rulers (its military and security agencies) are intent of getting rid of the Chief Justice. And their actions, like nothing else in the last decade, have enraged and energized what remains of civil society in Pakistan.

_______________

But contrary to any belief you may have formed so far, this post is not about Pakistan.

Reaction from Australia

"Thu Mar 15, 4:42 AM ET

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia on Thursday threw its support behind Pakistan's beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf, calling him an important figure in the global fight against terrorism.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he hoped Musharraf could "hold on" in the face of an outbreak of protests over the suspension of the country's top judge."

___________________


If the leaders of the West had any belief in democracy, civil society, liberty or any of that stuff they keep prating about, they'd all unanimously be calling for Musharraf to step down.

Or at worst, maintaining a discreet silence.

It must be dismaying to them to see a magistrate who honors habeas corpus!

How Gandhian!

In the US's most-valued non-NATO ally, the moderately enlightened Dictator has been trying to push out the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It has provoked some public reaction.

(For those that don't follow the news from that part of the world, we have going on a wrestling match of General Musharraf versus Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.)

Whatever the Chief Justice's faults, by all accounts, he was at least activist regarding human rights. It is not clear however why the General is after him. Charges have been brought against him, to be heard by a Judicial Council. In the meantime the C.J. is subject to various harassment.

Dawn columnist Ayaz Amir :

"When the Chief Justice and his wife, Begum Iftikhar Chaudhry, walked out of their house on Tuesday morning, refusing to sit in any official car and insisting they would rather walk to the Supreme Court – where the Chief Justice had to appear before the Supreme Judicial Council to answer the reference filed by Gen Musharraf – the Chief Justice was roughed up by the Islamabad police and pushed into a waiting car."

"....when the car carrying him finally arrived before the gates of the Supreme Court, the people assembled there, unable to keep their emotions in check, lost all control and stormed the vehicle and pulled him out. Amidst deafening cheers and much jostling (but this was jostling of another kind) they swept him towards the doors of the Supreme Court.

They would have broken the doors and entered the building itself but it was the Chief Justice who bade them go back. And you know what? Even in that melee the crowd obeyed. This is what moral authority is all about. With it you don’t need bayonets to have your way. Without it, not all the bayonets in the world can come to your rescue."

------------------------------

Perhaps at this auspicious hour in their history, I should resist reminding them of the cunning Hindu that the Pakistanis detest.

:)

------------------------------
B Raman at saag.org points out that Musharraf's campaign against al Qaeda is a charade, and that many Pakistanis have been "disappeared" on that pretext.

"7. Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury, who has been suspended by Musharraf as the Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court provoking an embarrassing controversy, suspected that there was a large element of charade in respect of the arrests of Al Qaeda suspects and tried to go into it while enquiring into a large number of petitions regarding missing persons. This is not the first time that Musharraf has tried to intimidate Judges. He has done it at least 20 times since he seized power in October,1999. Whereas in the past he let his subordinates do the intimidation and avoided his personal involvement, this time he personally got involved by calling the Chief Justice to his office and unsuccessfully trying to force him to resign on the ground that he was damaging the reputation of the army and the ISI. His personal involvement this time shows the state of his panic and his anxiety to prevent the truth from coming out. "

______________________

See, being a tinpot dictator is no good! If you want to disappear people without consequences, you have to be the POTUS. Anyway, count Justice Chaudhury among the collateral damage of the "Global War Against Terror".

Bigma and SigMonster

Yesterday's post gave a couple of links to Canon's 1200mm focal length monster super telephoto prime lens.

More practical than that lens are the Bigma and SigMonster - the nicknames supposedly indicate the fondness with which professional photographers regard these lenses.

The Bigma is the Sigma 50-500mm telephoto zoom lens. Some commentary is here.

The SigMonster is the Sigma 300-800mm telephoto zoom lens. Find a paean to this lens here.

You may appreciate better the size of these beasts by going
here, and scrolling down to the picture of the much smaller Canon 500mm prime lens standing alongside a little girl.

One must take up body-building in order to be able to efficiently lug one of these around the countryside for wildlife photography. Or hire a Sherpa.

----

Thanks to Rajan for catching the typo about the SigMonster. Actually, the last link was also from him (pic of the Canon 500mm).

Canon 1200 mm lens

Canon 1200mm monster lens, no longer made. Worth a small house. Or a very nice car.

More about it here.

The Curious Case of Rachel Paulose

The Curious Case of Rachel Paulose.

"Kerala-born Rachel Kunjummen Paulose is the 40th U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota and the first Asian American ever named to that post."

(from an India-West article linked from the link above).


Also from the India-West article:

"Her maternal grandparents, Daniel and Sara Kunjummen, immigrated to the U.S. from Kerala in the 1960s, and raised their family in Minnesota. Her paternal grandparents, both deceased, also lived in Kerala."


From a Powerline Blog article on Rachel Paulose:

"When I spoke with her before she met with Senator Dayton on Wednesday, I told Rachel that if things didn't work out for her in the legal profession, she could always go into modelling. Rachel laughed and recalled her grandparents, who had fled persecution by the Communists in East Asia to come as immigrants to the United States with seven dollars in their pockets. She said she thought it would take a miracle for her confirmation to occur this session, but that her family (devout Christians) believes in miracle."

The FreeP has this:

"Her grandfather, a government official in India, came to the United States to study theology in the 1960s.

"I have a hard time talking about this without becoming emotional," Paulose says, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. Her family, she explains, "came here hoping for the American dream at a time when the Communists were basically sweeping across Southeast Asia."
-----------------

IMO, "fleeing Communist persecution in Kerala in the 1960s" is hogwash. A government official fleeing Communist persecution in Kerala in the 1960s is even more hogwash.

To recall events in Kerala from those days, see, e.g., this
Wikipedia on EMS Namboodiripad:

"India achieved its independence in 1947 and the state of Kerala was formed in 1956 . In 1957 , EMS led the Communists to victory in the first election for the state government, making him the first communist leader anywhere to head a popularly elected government.On5th April 1957 he was appointed as the first chief minister of Kerala.He soon introduced the Land Reform Ordinance and Education Bill . His government was dismissed in 1959 by the Central Government, which invoked the controversial Article 356 of the Indian Constitution . He became the Chief Minister of Kerala for the second time in 1967 . This time his tenure lasted for two years.

EMS was the Leader of Opposition in the Kerala Legislative Assembly from 1960 to 1964 and again from 1970 to 1977 . He influenced Kerala society by his vision on decentralization of power and resources ( People's Plan ) and the Kerala Literacy Movement."

--------

Mid-60s was when my parents moved from the US to Kerala.

Daylight Saving Time

The US Congress extended Daylight Savings Time to begin earlier and end later each year, starting this year. DST used to begin on the first Sunday in April and end on the last Sunday in October. It will now begin on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in April.

DST is supposed to help save energy. This story says that since the energy savings may be negligible, the extended DST may be rolled back, within an year.

PS: corrected typos.

The Death of the Republic - continued

Christopher Manion explains very clearly what has happened to our civil liberties, they now belong to history. He carefully explains the US Court of Appeals (4th circuit) ruling in the El-Masri case, and what it all means.

"Thus, if you are kidnapped, raped, tortured, or even killed by persons "whose identities must remain confidential in the interest of national security," you and your heirs have no recourse under the laws of the Land of the Free.

"But wait," I hear you saying (or, perhaps, screaming), "the judge is able to decide for himself whether the "state secrets" claim is bogus, right?"

Wrong. The Executive Branch, all on its own, has the right to assert that the secrets are so sensitive that even the Federal Judge himself cannot see them."

...

"As always in things governmental, there is a certain irony here. In the Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers condemned the insane and tyrannical King George III for the outrages committed by his foreign mercenaries, including, "For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states."

At least the Colonists were given a "mock trial" that exonerated the Hessian criminals. In modern cases involving "national security,"the criminals need not worry about being subjected to any trial at all."

NYT's Sunday Styles

Some of the most putrid stuff in the New York Times is in the supplementary sections.

A seventeen year-old Australian model, Catherine McNeil is taking the fashion world by storm. She opened the Givenchy show in Paris last week, which is supposedly a sign of great favor for a new model.

Here is how Guy Trebay of the New York Times tells the story in his column Fashion Diary, which appears in the Sunday Styles section.

Supposedly "we" (and "we" is a very particular "we", it would not include me or anyone east of the Danube probably) have a long standing, virtually instinctive, Pythagorean standard of beauty, derived from simple mathematical proportions of features. "A forehead should be as high as the nose is long. The space between the nostrils and the upper lip should be a third of the length of the nose." etc.

Then the big bad corporate world, and the growth of markets in China, Japan, Korea, etc., robbed "us" of this kind of beauty. Asian faces started infesting the fashion show catwalks. Then horror of horrors, Russia, Romania, Slovakia and the Ukraine took over "70 percent" of the castings for runway shows! Designers did not want beautiful faces to draw attention away from their designs, and so were happy to use these non-Pythagorean commodities - "vacant, plain, colorless".

And now Catherine McNeil walks in, and "our" old standard of beauty has been reinstated! "She is beautiful in a way that people used to be".

-------------

The NYT columnist is clearly unhappy with any notion of beauty other than his own. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the rest of us, especially those of us not included in his grand "we", he is a columnist in an increasingly parochial and irrelevant newspaper.

Pruning roses

In principle, pruning roses is simple. One first cuts away all the dead wood. Then one trims away stuff to end up with a neat set of finger-thick straight canes in a neat cone with the apex at the base.

In practice, it is not so simple. I've yet to see a rose bush so obliging as to grow in a fashion that such canes are available. Then, to reach the dead wood, one first has to hack away at other stuff first. And there are thorns. Leather gloves don't help, the thorns break off and work their way through the hide. The thorns cling to the jacket and jeans. It is best to wear eye protection, by the way. The cut branches don't pile neatly into the wheel barrow. As you're carting them off, they cling onto everything on the way, as though actively resisting their fate on the compost heap.

One also worries about cutting off so much living tissue, opening up so many points for pests and infections. Is one cutting too deep and reducing the vitality of the bush? And so on.

And the weather is cold, and the wind blows. And to add insult to injury, the chickadee that frequents the bird feeder hops onto one of the bushes and sings a protest song. That does love to sit in the dense thicket.

Anyway, the job is done, the bushes are down a very naked three feet. Let's see how they do in the spring.

Gardening 2007

A mild first weekend in March marks the beginning of the 2007 gardening season.

Supposedly the rose bushes are dormant now, and this is the time for pruning them - at least according to Roses for Dummies. One is not supposed to prune the roses in the fall, because that supposedly keeps them from going dormant, and makes it likely that they will be injured by the cold.

The pruning can't wait for a week or two, because once the leaf buds awaken, it is too late. Pruning at that point will greatly reduce the vigor the plant.

I note that the fine art of procrastination, which is practiceable by a gardener in the tropics, is simply not possible in the temperate zone. The calender and the seasons are relentless and unforgiving.

Anyway, it takes me about an hour per bush. Two down, five more to go.

Death of the Republic - continued

Prior to the "Patriot" Act, the appointment of US Attorneys required Senate confirmation, otherwise the appointment would lapse after 120 days. After the Patriot Act, the US Attorney General has the authority to make appointments that can serve indefinitely without confirmation.


1. It is not at all clear how this power serves to reduce terrorism.
2. It is another grab of power by the executive.

Since December 2006, eight US Attorneys have been summarily fired, and for no good reason. Only recently, and mainly because of bloggers, has there been focus on this, and a scandal is emerging.

North Korea

Matthew Yglesias summarizes the New York Times on the North Korean nuclear program thusly:

"

The 1994 Agreed Framework froze the DPRK efforts to build a nuclear weapon using plutonium.

In 2002, the Bush administration pulled out of the Agreed Framework, arguing that the DPRK was cheating by running a secret parallel uranium program.

In the intervening years, the DPRK has succeeded in using its now-unfrozen plutonium program to build some bombs.

They have not, however, had any success in building uranium bombs.

This looked like pretty shitty policymaking for the Bush administration.

It looks much worse, however, after we learn today that the uranium program may never have existed.

"

My question is - was the 2002 intelligence also cooked, like that on Iraqi WMD?

The Death of the Republic - continued

The New York Times makes it appear that the Supreme Court Justices are sympathetic to the argument that the citizen can challenge in court only Congressional statutes that seek to establish religion, but cannot challenge actions of the Executive.

To quote the Solicitor General

"taxpayers should not have standing to challenge “an internal government church.”"

And SCOTUS is sympathetic to this.

QOTD

"There simply is no such thing as a fact which is so well-established that it is immune from being denied by Bush followers. They will deny even the most documented realities."

Glenn Greenwald - here.

QOTD

Via dkos, John Dean on the US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"In the history of U.S. Attorney Generals, Alberto Gonzales is constantly reaching for new lows. So dubious is his testimony that he is not afforded the courtesy given most cabinet officers when appearing on Capitol Hill: Congress insists he testify under oath. Even under oath, Gonzales's purported understanding of the Constitution is historically and legally inaccurate, far beyond the bounds of partisan interpretation."

Thank you, Jesselyn Radack!

Jesselyn Radack, Thank you for standing up for our civil liberties!

Her story begins

"In 2001, I was a legal advisor in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office. On December 7, I fielded a call from a criminal division attorney named John DePue. He wanted to know about the ethical propriety of interrogating "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh without a lawyer being present. DePue told me that Lindh's father had retained counsel for his son.

I advised him that Lindh should not be questionsed without his lawyer. That was on a Friday. Over the weekend, the FBI interviewed him anyway. DePue called back on Monday asking what to do now.

I advised that the interview may have to be sealed and used only for intelligence-gathering and national security purposes, not criminal prosecution."

For that, she was hounded out of her job, and worse.
Among the penalties

"Anonymous government officials branded me a "turncoat" in newspapers, placed me under criminal investigation, put me on the "no-fly" list and referred me to the state bars in which I am licensed. I got the "Guantánamo treatment lite": I was never told for what I was being criminally investigated, the bar complaint was based on a secret report to which I did not have access, and the government will neither confirm that I'm on the "no-fly" list, nor tell me how to be removed from it. The criminal case was dropped with no charges ever being brought. One of the bar complaints was dismissed, and the other is still pending after three years."


========

If our Bush administration officials devoted a tenth of the effort they spend on harassing Americans to catching al Qaida then there would not be a single terrorist left in the world.

NPR Puzzle

The Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle for this week is

Challenge for February 18: The object of this challenge is to develop nine different mathematical expressions that equal eight. You must use the digits 2, 7 and one other. And that other digit must be a one in the first expression, two in the next expression and so on, up to nine. You can use a digit once and only once in each expression.

You may use the four arithmetic symbols: plus, minus, times and divided by, as well as exponents and decimal points. You may use parenthesis as you need them. For example: Using the digits 2, 7 and 1 you can make the expressions 2+7-1= 8.

This week's Challenge is from Robert Waynewright in New Rochelle, N.Y.

--

I'm currently stuck on 2,5,7, and 2,7,7.

Nerd Anthem

This following, the Bell Labs song, might appeal only to the technological types among us (that includes me).





Bell Labs has had a glorious history and one of the indictments of this age of business men and politicians will be how they've let this great institution decay. I hope it will somehow continue its illustrious history.

Health Care Costs in America

Paul Krugman cites a McKinsey & Company report on US healthcare costs in his NYT column today.

Amount of money spent in excessive adminstrative costs = $98 billion/year
(more than half accounted for by marketing and underwriting).

Amount of money paid in excess drug costs and medical device costs = $66 billion/year

Cost of providing full medical care to all of America's uninsured = $77 billion/year

----

Further reading:

nyceve, on dailykos.

QOTD

"No democratic process so completely failed a test of substance as America's after 9/11. No ensuing catastrophe was more consensual. "

- Roger Morris
The Rumsfeld Legacy
Part One
Part Two

Repugnant to the core

Via TPMCafe



GOP House Leader John Boehner made the argument today that the Iraq war did not begin in Iraq or on 9/11 but rather in 1979, with the Iran taking hostages in the American embassy.

Why did he make such a asinine statement?

The answer is that the Repugnicans do not want a debate on the war in Iraq.
Also via TPMCafe, here is an excerpt of the strategy letter sent to Repugnican Congress members:

"We are writing to urge you not to debate the Democratic Iraq resolution on their terms, but rather on ours.

Democrats want to force us to focus on defending the surge, making the case that it will work and explaining why the President's new Iraq policy is different from prior efforts and therefore justified.

We urge you to instead broaden the debate to the threat posed to Americans, the world, and all "unbelievers" by radical Islamists. We would further urge you to join us in educating the American people about the views of radical Islamists and the consequences of not defeating radical Islam in Iraq.

The debate should not be about the surge or its details. This debate should not even be about the Iraq war to date, mistakes that have been made, or whether we can, or cannot, win militarily. If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose. "

So, as per the Repugnican leadership, the failure in Iraq cannot be examined, and hundreds more of American soldiers and thousands more of Iraqis must continue to be fed into the meat-grinder, because otherwise the Repugnicans will look bad.

Koide Mystery

That fundamental constituent of matter, the electron, has two elder siblings, the muon and the tau.

The electron mass is 0.510998918(44) MeV.
The muon mass is 105.6583692(94) MeV.
The tau mass is 1776.99(+29-26) MeV.

MeV is a Million electron Volts, a particle physicist's unit. For comparison's sake, the hydrogen atom has a mass of about 938.8 MeV. The numbers in brackets are the uncertainties in measurement of the mass. The numbers are taken from links on Tommaso Dorigo's article on this.

What is remarkable about these numbers is that they satisfy the Koide formula with a remarkable precision - a formula with little theoretical justification.



Given the masses of the electron and the muon, this formula predicts the mass of the tau to be
1776.968921( 158) MeV. (from Carl Brannen, linked from Dorigo's page).

How likely is this to be a numerical coincidence?

If we measure everything in terms of the tau mass, then, in the plot below, the red triangle represents the experimental situation and the green curve represents the masses of the electron and muon that would be allowed per the Koide formula. The tau, by definition, has a mass of 1. There are no theoretical constraints on the masses that I'm aware of, and the "theoretically allowed" region of masses is everything between the x-axis and the diagonal black line (and please extend the line to the point {1,1}).



Of course, I could make things look a little less spectacular by measuring everything in terms of the electron mass.

Is it the blog or is it the network?

The big liberal blogs (Atrios, DailyKos) recently did a blogroll purge. (A blogroll is the list of links to other blogs that e.g., I have to the left of my page). That lead to this beautiful rant which boths serves to draw attention, but also obscure the question - is dailykos important on its own, or is it important as a supernode in a network of progressive blogs?

A blog linked from a supernode often gets more attention than it would otherwise. More subtle is the feedback that strengthens the supernode.

We'll surely find out in some time whether the big blogs have destroyed the ecosystem that made them influential in the first place.

Senator Feingold

Senator Feingold is one of the finest, and most courageous senators we have. For example, he was the lone dissenter against the so-called Patriot Act, that has been so damaging to our civil liberties.

He needs our support for this:
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0202-31.htm
How To End The War

by Russ Feingold



Our founders wisely kept the power to fund a war separate from the power to conduct a war. In their brilliant design of our system of government, Congress got the power of the purse, and the president got the power of the sword. As James Madison wrote, “Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued or concluded.”

Earlier this week, I chaired a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee to remind my colleagues in the Senate that, through the power of the purse, we have the constitutional power to end a war. At the hearing, a wide range of constitutional scholars agreed that Congress can use its power to end a military engagement.

The Constitution gives Congress the explicit power “[to] declare War,” “[t]o raise and support Armies,” “[t]o provide and maintain a Navy” and “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” In addition, under Article I, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” These are direct quotes from the Constitution of the United States. Yet to hear some in the Administration talk, it is as if these powers were written in invisible ink. They were not. These powers are a clear and direct statement from the founders of our republic that Congress has authority to declare, to define and, ultimately, to end a war.

If and when Congress acts on the will of the American people by ending our involvement in the Iraq war, Congress will be performing the role assigned it by the founding fathers—defining the nature of our military commitments and acting as a check on a president whose policies are weakening our nation.

There is plenty of precedent for Congress exercising its constitutional authority to stop U.S. involvement in armed conflict.

In late December 1970, Congress prohibited the use of funds for introducing United States ground combat troops into Cambodia or providing U.S. advisors to Cambodian military forces. In late June 1973, Congress set a date to cut off funds for combat activities in Southeast Asia.

More recently, President Clinton signed into law language that prohibited funding after March 31, 1994, for military operations in Somalia, with certain limited exceptions. And in 1998, Congress passed spending legislation that prevented U.S. troops from serving in Bosnia after June 30, 1998, unless the president made certain assurances.

Congress has the power to end military engagements, and there is little doubt that decisive action from the Congress is needed to end U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq. Despite the results of the election, and two months of study and supposed consultation—during which experts and members of Congress from across the political spectrum argued for a new policy—the president has decided to escalate the war. When asked whether he would persist in this policy despite congressional opposition, he replied: “Frankly, that’s not their responsibility.”

Last week Vice President Cheney was asked whether the non-binding resolution passed by the Foreign Relations Committee that will soon be considered by the full Senate would deter the president from escalating the war. He replied: “It’s not going to stop us.”

In the United States of America, the people are sovereign, not the president. It is Congress’ responsibility to challenge an administration that persists in a war that is misguided and that the nation opposes. We cannot simply wring our hands and complain about the administration’s policy. We cannot just pass resolutions saying “your policy is mistaken.” And we can’t stand idly by and tell ourselves that it’s the president’s job to fix the mess he made. It’s our job to fix the mess, too, and if we don’t do so we are abdicating our responsibilities.

Yesterday, I introduced legislation that will prohibit the use of funds to continue the deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq six months after enactment. By prohibiting funds after a specific deadline, Congress can force the president to bring our forces out of Iraq and out of harm’s way.

This legislation will allow the president adequate time to redeploy our troops safely from Iraq, and it will make specific exceptions for a limited number of U.S. troops who must remain in Iraq to conduct targeted counter-terrorism and training missions and protect U.S. personnel. It will not hurt our troops in any way—they will continue receiving their equipment, training, salaries, etc. It will simply prevent the president from continuing to deploy them to Iraq. By passing this bill, we can finally focus on repairing our military and countering the full range of threats that we face around the world.

As the hearing I chaired in the Senate Judiciary Committee made clear, this legislation is fully consistent with the Constitution of the United States. Since the president is adamant about pursuing his failed policies in Iraq, Congress has the duty to stand up and use its constitutional power to stop him. If Congress doesn’t stop this war, it’s not because it doesn’t have the power. It’s because it doesn’t have the will.

Russ Feingold is a United States senator from Wisconsin.

A question and a answer

This is from TheHeathenInHisBlindness yahoo egroup; since it is open to anyone, I do not feel it wrong to post it here. The following is to be understood. It is part of an effort to understand a culture (and oneself). My apologies in advance to those who do not understand.

----
Prolog:
what does 'hindu does not believe that God's will govern the universe' mean? i cant seem to understand it at all.

-sunil

----

Sunil writes:

Jakob,

I am still not clear what you mean. Let me make some propositions that is based on the shrutis (Madhva school of thought)-

1. Creation is a spontaneous activity of God, just like a blissful person spontaneously breaks into a song without any rhyme or reason.

2. The creation of the world does not serve any purpose of God. He is "AptakAma" - there is nothing he does not have nor is there anything he will ever need.

3. The 'creation' of the universe is just the transformation of the prakriti from its "avyakta" state to "vyakta" state. All the laws of the universe are an expression of prakriti's innate triguna svabhAva.

4. God is at all times impartial and as an antaryami immanent spirit, He is the power behind all the 'being' and 'becoming' (ie, expression of their individual svabhAvas) of souls as well as prakriti.

Hence He governs the universe.

Now what you say in (1) contradicts my understanding as above. Probably you are using certain terms in a very strict sense that i dont grasp.

---
Balu replies:

Dear Sunil,

If we want to grasp the nature of the discussions in the Indian traditions, there is much we need to do beforehand: (a) identify the entity they were talking about; (b) identify the specific questions they were answering; (c) identify the generic questions that defined both the outlines of the acceptable answers and the formulation of the specific questions; etc. (The 'cetera' indicates that I do not know how to enumerate all the things we need to grasp.) In the case of the propositions you have formulated, I assume that 'God' is Vishnu (or even Krishna) and not, say, Shiva or Brahma because you are talking about the Madhvas. However, to keep the discussion faithful to your formulations, I will use the word 'God' to refer to Vishnu.

Your proposition 1: "Creation is a spontaneous activity of God, just like a blissful person spontaneously breaks into a song without any rhyme or reason."

Apparently, this is answering the specific question 'why' (in the sense of 'KaaraNa', mostly translated as 'the reason why') God created (the Universe?). The analogy to a blissful person is a very strict one. That is, in exactly the same way a blissful person does not break into a song for a reason, God does not create for a reason. The underlying thoughts are these: normally, one sings a song to express some emotion or the other or even because he/she is feeling some emotion or another (love, sorrow, devotion, or whatever else), that is, the person "intends" to express something. The blissful person does not need to express anything; he/she is not in need of anything, including the need to express the bliss. That is what bliss (ananda) is all about.

So, the assumption is that 'bliss', something we human beings experience, is what God also feels. The only difference is that God feels this all the time, whereas only some of us can (either occasionally or after some tremendous effort) feel that bliss. (Additional claims that God's Bliss is our bliss raised to "the power of infinity" and such like tell us the same thing: there is no difference in kind but, at best, a difference in degree, between God's emotion and ours.)

In other words, the analogy explicates the nature of spontaneity (and the meaning of that word), whether it is God's spontaneity or human spontaneity: doing something not because one is in need of (or lacks) something. There is no difference in kind between us human beings and God but only one of degree. Your next proposition elaborates on this.

Your proposition 2: "The creation of the world does not serve any purpose of God. He is "AptakAma" - there is nothing he does not have nor is there anything he will ever need." (The 'he' here must also be read strictly: Vishnu is sexed and he is a 'male'.)

This further tells us that creation (of something by human beings) serves some purpose or another. Consequently, one might be inclined to say that God is "in need" of something that he does not have, and hence the creation. This proposition tells us that God has "everything": he is more beautiful than the most beautiful; stronger than the strongest; richer than the richest; the teacher of teachers; braver than the bravest, etc. Again, these are all differences in degree: he has more of everything we "desire", he is "more" than any of us or other 'gods'; and so on. He really does not need anything; he is bliss personified. Therefore, creation should not be seen as making up for some or another lack in God. In this sense, creation does not serve any purpose: one should say that God has "no purpose" in creating. He just creates. In other words, there is no intention behind God's creation. Spontaneity is the absence of intention or purpose of any sort, and the analogy drawn in the first proposition shows that action without intention is typical of a blissful person. Because God is bliss personified, God's creation does not exhibit his purpose or express his intention. (Should it do so, then God needs to express his purpose, which makes God into someone "in need" of such an expression.) Hence the notion of creation as God's "lila". That is to say, creation is completely without purpose. To use a modern terminology, to speak of the universe as an expression of God's intention or God's purpose is to commit a category mistake.

Your proposition 3: "The 'creation' of the universe is just the transformation of the prakriti from its "avyakta" state to "vyakta" state. All the laws of the universe are an expression of prakriti's innate triguna svabhAva."

Therefore, God 'functions' as a catalyst (to use this term from high-school Chemistry) in the process of creation. This function enables the 'potentiality' of Prakriti to become 'actuality'. The laws of the universe, consequently, do not express what God 'desires' or God 'wants' but express the 'nature' of prakriti. That is, the universe retains its character of not being the product of God's intention or God's plans or God's purpose. Universe expresses what universe is like, what it always has been and always will be: namely, "it is in the nature of the universe to be what it is". God has added nothing to the universe that was not already there, nor has he taken away something that was there earlier. "This is the way universe has been, is, and will be, because it belongs to the nature of the universe to be the way it was, is, and will be."

Your proposition 4: "God is at all times impartial and as an antaryami immanent spirit, He is the power behind all the 'being' and 'becoming' (ie, expression of their individual svabhAvas) of souls as well as prakriti".

Because God is bliss personified, he cannot be attached to anything or anybody. Therefore, he is strictly impartial. He is the 'power' behind everything and is everywhere: both in the individuals and in 'the universe' (using 'the universe' for 'prakriti'). He must be an 'antaryami' (present internally in everything and everywhere) because he would not "have everything" if he was not. Were he not to be in a gnat or an ant, he would lack something, namely "what it feels to be like a gnat or an ant". So, he has to be everywhere.

Now, we can begin to sense the generic question behind these propositions: If this is what 'bliss' is, that is, not lacking anything, and if this entity is bliss personified and is present in each one of us (and elsewhere too) are 'we' not, in reality, or in our essence, also identical to this entity? Tat Tvam Asi, 'thou art that': is not this what one of the mahAvAkya tells us? 'Aham Brhmasmi", as another of the mahAvAkya also tells us. Does it really matter what you call this 'blissful entity' as? And so on.

From these propositions, if you draw the inference, which you want to, "hence, he governs the Universe", you need to understand 'governing' as (a) an impartial act; (b) by the 'power' in the 'core' of each one of us and (c) present in the rest of the Universe. One could also identify oneself with one's 'core', and hence with the 'power' present in that 'core', and become an advaitin. Alternately, one could differentiate this 'power' from oneself and postulate 'another' entity: and hence the dvaita traditions.

In other words, the generic question behind these propositions brings us to the Indian debates and Indian traditions, which are far, far removed from the Semitic theological debates. The Biblical God is distinct from, and alien to, the creatures He has created; he has plans and purposes in creation; His intention (or will) expresses itself as the laws of the Universe; we cannot know (or ask) why He created the Universe; even when He tells us (through His revelation) why He did what He did, we do not understand it adequately, and so on and so forth. This is what Jakob was trying to tell you.

Friendly greetings
Balu.

The excitement of discovery

Over on cosmicvariance.com, new member physicist John Conway conveys the excitement of discovery in physics very well in this two part blog post, Bump Hunting, Part 1 and Part 2.

Don't you wish you were a physicist?


PS:
Physicist Tommaso Dorigo with some more insight.

Writing off pharyngula

Pharyngula turned from a great place to learn biology to a rather mediocre anti-religion/atheist site.

Nobel Laureate physicist Abdus Salam

"Abdus Salam is known to be a devout Muslim, whose religion does not occupy a separate compartment of his life; it is inseparable from his work and family life. He once wrote: "The Holy Quran enjoins us to reflect on the verities of Allah's created laws of nature; however, that our generation has been privileged to glimpse a part of His design is a bounty and a grace for which I render thanks with a humble heart."

PZ Myers, on "The unfortunate prerequisites and consequences of partitioning your mind", quotes approvingly a blog post that a person like Abdus Salam has no understanding of science, (I cannot but conclude that this person literally doesn't know why you have to look at things. They may have been taught a certain ritual of experimentation, but they don't understand the reason for it.)

and concludes:

"It's like asking someone if they understand science, and they can recite a string of facts at you … but they haven't absorbed the concept."

-----
The facts are contrary to what PZ Myers believes them to be, and he has great difficulty adjusting his mind to that.

The blog would be far more interesting if, e.g., it was discussed why it was that Abdus Salam could do great science (like many other great scientists) while partitioning their mind.

Equally painful are the almost all equally-dumbed-down-by-ideology commenters on pharyngula.

This is not an occasional phenomenon, but an ever-growing one that has taken over the blog.

So, I will go there no more.
-----

We are eating our planet to death

So claims Kathy Freston.

"The researchers found that, when it's all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius."

-- At this point I expect the science of global warming to become much less acceptable to a large number of people. The last time I brought this up, the comment was "But they are so tasty!"

Mr Straight Talk Express

""Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father.""

Senator John McCain, Republican fundraiser event, 1998.

An interesting exchange

Senator Arlen Specter: "The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales: “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus . It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” (except in cases of rebellion or invasion)."

-- Harvard Law School should revoke his degree.

PS: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/20/191254/626 contains an excellent discussion of the issues involved.

Colbert on AT&T

Colbert's hilarious take on telecom divestitures and mergers:

Ruddy Idiot Guiliani

New York City Police Department

Quote:

"How many police officers are there in NYPD?

The NYPD's current authorized uniformed strength is 37,038, which is scheduled to increase to 37,838 in January 2007."

The New York Times, January 11, 2007

We glean from there that some 15,000 American troops were engaged in "Operation Together Forward II" to secure Baghdad in August 2006. Bush just announced another 5 combat brigades to be deployed - an increase of about 17,500 troops.

Therefore, total American troops engaged in securing Baghdad : about 32,500

Quote:

"Five brigades are to be sent to improve security in the greater Baghdad area — an increase of about 17,500 troops that will double the American force involved in security operations there."


Frank Rich, NYT, January 14, 2007

Quote:

"The one notable new recruit [to President Bush's bunker-world] is Rudy Guiliani, who likened taming Baghdad to "reducing crime in New York" without even noticing that even after the escalation there will be fewer American troops patrolling Baghdad than uniformed officers in insurgency-free New York City."

____________________________
Added a couple of hours later:

Frank Rich informed us a week ago that the Army counterinsurgency manual calls for a minimum of 20 troops per 1000 population. Say Baghdad has a population of 5 million (actually, Baghdad's population is 6 million or greater, at least 20% more). That means 100,000 troops minimum. After Bush's escalation, the US troops will be at 40,000 (actually about 20% less). Thus a minimum of 60,000 reliable Iraqi forces dedicated to Baghdad will be needed. Do they exist?

If it is true as the President says that Iraq is the central front in the decisive ideological struggle of our time, then we have to hope that what the army faces a problem in Baghdad with significantly less manpower requirements.

Otherwise, for success, the President really has only two options:
1. Raise American forces
2. Raise International forces

The US would probably have to pay for troops under the UN flag, but if the international community can be brought on board, there will be immediate availability of manpower. If the US can make no diplomatic headway there or it is unacceptable, then the President must probably call for a draft. In either case, funds will have to be raised via new taxes.

If this war is indeed vital, then the way to win it is to call for a general mobilization.

______________________

PPS:
Atrios on how the calculation above is being fudged.

Whither the Weather?

From the point of view of a crabapple (the very same one in all cases):

2004, April 24:


2006, March 29:


2007, January 10:


PS: the 2004 picture added later.
PPS: in 2003 also, the crabapple flowered in the last week of April.

The Curse of (over) Development

Rajan Parrikar's photo-essay on the slumification of Goa is heartbreaking. The over- and ugly- development in the name of tourism that is going on will kill Goa as a tourist destination. It may become a place with merely some cheap sun 'n' sand.

KOed in Iraq

He told us of turning points: The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government,the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam. - Keith Olbermann

On the iPhone

Three views of Apple's iPhone from the material at apple.com.


Thoughts:

This is a reworking of a familiar interface into something new and more useable.

How many other unnoticed opportunities are out there?


David Pogue, NYT

"Remember the fairy godmother in “Cinderella”? She’d wave her wand and turn some homely and utilitarian object, like a pumpkin or a mouse, into something glamorous and amazing, like a carriage or fully accessorized coachman."

"Evidently, she lives in some back room at Apple."

"Every time Steve Jobs spies some hopelessly ugly, complex machine that cries out for the Apple touch — computers, say, or music players — he lets her out."

Why can't the world compete in reinventing itself in this way? (instead of e.g., like the Taliban?)

The project to put together the iPhone was launched two and a half years ago, when Apple's stock was between 6 and 20. In most places I know of, such dire straits means a severe cut back on innovation.

Why doesn't Detroit have this sense of style?

Pedestrian industrial components can be put together into gorgeous product.

I'm hanging on to my few Apple shares!



Why isn't visioneering like this encouraged at work?

Bob Herbert on class warfare

Bob Herbert in NYT TimesSelect:

"There’s a reason why the power elite get bent out of shape at the merest mention of a class conflict in the U.S. The fear is that the cringing majority that has taken it on the chin for so long will wise up and begin to fight back."

What will rile up the cringing majority?
Perhaps these numbers from Andrew Sum of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

Between 2000 and 2006, labor productivity in the nonfarm sector of the economy rose by 18 percent, real wages rose by 1%.

The (excluding farmworkers) 93 million production and nonsupervisory workers' combined real annual earnings from 2000 to 2006 rose by $15.4 billion, which is less than half of the combined bonuses awarded by the five Wall Street firms for just one year.

"Fairness plays no role in this system."

Flamenco, Tabla, Kathak, Gypsies and India

A few weeks ago, B. gave me a CD titled "Curandero, Flamenco guitar meets Indian tabla". The music is by Miguel Espinoza (guitar) and Ty Burhoe (tabla).

Some days later when I was playing the CD at home, N. heard it, and told me about this:


Here, flamenco guitar and tabla encounter the Indian dance form of Kathak.

From youtube comments I learned that flamenco and tabla have had a wider experimentation, e.g., IndiaLucia.

A comment there reminded me also of a speculation that I'd heard long ago, that the Romani - Gypsies - are the descendants of a 10th century diaspora from India, from somewhere around the Indus. In the comment, it is said that Flamenco and Kathak are related, because of the Romani people.

I've been intrigued by that because the only event I know of in the tenth century to cause such a migration would have been the devastating attacks by Mahmud of Ghazni.

In the words of his courtier, Alberuni (E. Sachau translation):

"Now in the following times no Muslim conqueror passed beyond the frontier of Kabul and the river Sindh until the days of the Turks, when they seized power in Ghazna under the Samani dynasty, and the supreme power fell to the lot of Nasir-addaula Sabuktagin. This prince chose the holy war as his calling, and therefore called himself Al-ghazi (i.e., warring on the road of Allah). In the interest of his successors he constructed in order to weaken the Indian frontier, those roads on which afterwards his son Yamin-addaula Mahmud marched into India during a period of thirty years and more. God be merciful to both father and son! Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people."

What crystallized this post, is that this morning, S. brought to my attention the following:

Kosovian traces 1000 year old lineage.
24-four-year old Miradiya Giozic from Kosovo is in India attempting to trace her roots.

Also see this.

Note to the unwary - take the gypsies out of India as something to be proved; presumably DNA or literary or linguistic evidence will eventually shed light on this hypothesis. There are many indications that it may be true. But there are other plausible routes for cultural and linguistic influence that result in commonalities.

Do enjoy the music and dance!

Third world government comes to the United States

This kind of trouble with the government bureaucracy used to be a trademark of third-world countries only.

Thank you, George Bush!

Punditocracy

Glenn Greenwald describes some of the worst of the media's opinion makers.

I disagree on only one point, namely, that for all the errors that they are not acknowledging and are trying to make us forget this class of people "have suffered no lost credibility, prominence, or influence". These folks might still have the job titles they do, but I think, more and more people are tuning them out.

Class warfare impending

This daily kos diary that contrasts two exit packages, both recently in the news, is just a beginning.

Frank Rich on the Saddam snuff video

"The awful power of the Hussein snuff film derives not just from its illustration of the barbarity of capital punishment, even in a case where the condemned is a mass murderer undeserving of pity. What really makes the video terrifying is its glimpse into the abyss of an irreversible and lethal breakdown in civic order. It sends the same message as those images of helicopters fleeing our embassy in April 1975 : Iraq, like Vietnam before it, is in chaos, beyond the control of our government or the regime we’re desperately trying to prop up. The security apparatus of Iraq’s “unity government” was powerless to prevent the video, let alone the chaos, and can’t even get its story straight about what happened and why.

Actually, it’s even worse than that. Perhaps the video’s most chilling notes are the chants of “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!” They are further confirmation, as if any were needed, that our principal achievement in Iraq over four years has been to empower a jihadist mini-Saddam in place of the secular original. The radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr , an ally of Hezbollah and Hamas, is a thug responsible for the deaths of untold Iraqis and Americans alike. It was his forces, to take just one representative example, that killed Cindy Sheehan’s son, among many others, in one of two Shiite uprisings in 2004 ."

Frank Rich in the New York Times; unfortunately behind the TimesSelect firewall.

My thoughts before reading this included that Moktada al-Sadr deserves the death penalty just as much as Saddam did. Yet who is going to arrest him, let alone try him and punish him? All that Bush has done is replace one set of monsters with another set. Decent people never had a chance in Iraq. The monsters sedulously uproot them.

----

PS : Frank Rich

Take that, Lou Dobbs!

The Financial Express reports that among other things:

"AnnaLee Saxenian, study co-author and dean of the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, estimated immigrants founded about 25 per cent of Silicon Valley tech companies in 1999.

The Duke study found the percentage had more than doubled, to 52 per cent in 2005. The research debunks some recent myths about the notion that immigrants who come to the United States take jobs from Americans."

Read the whole thing.
(via bharat-rakshak.com)

Delivers the mail and reads it too!

From now on, please address all mail to me as "To Arun and the President".

Jihadis freed in Pakistan

The Telegraph, UK reports:

"Senior officers [in Pakistan] say they are "back to square one" in their fight against international terrorist groups after the release of dozens of militants by Pakistani courts. High-ranking police officials say that as many as 80 hard-core militants are on the loose after being cleared by the courts or released on bail.".....

"Last month, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, warned of the growing threat from within Pakistan. She said young British Muslims were being groomed to become suicide bombers and that most of the 1,600 suspects being tracked by her agents were British-born but linked to al-Qaeda in Pakistan."....

"Anti-terrorism officers in Pakistan say they are deeply alarmed by the security situation. "We are back to square one and the situation is more precarious than it was before 9/11," one senior officer told The Sunday Telegraph. "They are planning more attacks. They have got huge backup. There are so many youths who are joining them. The old ones who are released from the prison are guiding and training the new cadres."....

"Among those released recently are Sohail Akhtar (aka Mustafa), the operational commander of the outlawed Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami group. He has been blamed for a campaign that included a suicide attack in Karachi in which 11 French engineers died, the suicide attack on the US consulate, and the failed attempt on the president's life......Other militants released by the courts include Fazal Karim, who is believed to have been present at the killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, and Qari Mohammed Anwar (also known as Abu Darada). Anwar was arrested at an al-Qaeda safe house in Karachi along with Khalid al-Atash — who is wanted by the FBI in connection with the USS Cole bombings off Yemen — and Ammar al-Balochi, who was allegedly involved earlier this year in a plot to attack Heathrow airport".

---
(via bharat-rakshak).

No commentary is needed.

Taking on Hate Radio

This could be subtitled: In which ABC/Walt Disney show themselves to value profit over elementary decency.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/3/202110/2838.

A blogger, Spocko, took umbrage at the hosts at KSFO radio calling for the torture and murder of a citizen in Lincoln, Nebraska, burning someone alive, stomping a antiwar protester to death, calling for the editors of major newspapers to be hanged, and for ""We've got a bulls-eye painted on her big laughing eyes." [her referring to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi] - among other things.

Spocko wrote polite letters to various companies that advertise on the radio station, asking them politely if they wanted their brands associated with this kind of rubbish.

The result is that as advertisers ponder pulling their ads, ABC radio lawyers are after Spocko. For copyright infringement.

2006 Top Ten Astronomy pics

I had failed to provide a link to the top ten astronomy pics. of 2006; here it is:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/12/27/the-top-ten-astronomy-images-of-2006/