Comments for Gurumurthy Kalyanaram: A Reported Blog

Comment on Michael Jackson: An artist who transcended all boundaries by The death of Michael Jackson, 1958-2009 « Gurumurthy Kalyanaram on U.S. and Global Politics and Policy

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:09:23 +0000

[...] Michael Jackson’s music transcended geographic boundaries, race, ethnicity, age and cultures. He was the first post-racial public persona in the United States, and in this he preceded Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods and Barack Obama. (See: Michael Jackson transcended all boundaries) [...]

Comment on Indian Parliamentary Elections: Forecasts as on April 27th by sam101103

sam101103 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:34:37 +0000

Is India headed for another elections in 2 years?

Comment on Is India a stable and peaceful country? Or Is it stricken with violence? by In 1947 two muslim countries should have been created! - Page 10 - Pakistan Defence Forum

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:54:00 +0000

[...] Originally Posted by MBI Munshi Is India a stable and peaceful country? Or Is it stricken with violence? Read Pankaj Mishra�s opinion in The Guardian on this matter � �In the past five years bomb attacks claimed by Islamist groups have killed hundreds across the Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. An Indian Muslim was even involved in the failed assault on Glasgow airport in July last year. Yet George Bush reportedly introduced Manmohan Singh to his wife, Laura, as �the prime minister of India, a democracy which does not have a single al-Qaida member in a population of 150 million Muslims�. To be fair to Bush, he was only repeating a cliche deployed by Indian politicians and American pundits such as Thomas Friedman to promote India as a squeaky-clean ally of the United States. However, Fareed Zakaria, the Indian-born Muslim editor of Newsweek International, ought to know better. In his new book, The Post-American World, he describes India as a �powerful package� and claims it has been �peaceful, stable, and prosperous� since 1997 – a decade in which India and Pakistan came close to nuclear war, tens of thousands of Indian farmers took their own lives, Maoist insurgencies erupted across large parts of the country, and Hindu nationalists in Gujarat murdered more than 2,000 Muslims. Apparently, no inconvenient truths are allowed to mar what Foreign Affairs, the foreign policy journal of America�s elite, has declared a �roaring capitalist success story�. Add Bollywood�s singing and dancing stars, beauty queens and Booker prize-winning writers to the Tatas, the Mittals and the IT tycoons, and the picture of Indian confidence, vigour and felicity is complete. The passive consumer of this image, already puzzled by recurring reports of explosions in Indian cities, may be startled to learn from the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC) in Washington that the death toll from terrorist attacks in India between January 2004 and March 2007 was 3,674, second only to that in Iraq. (In the same period, 1,000 died as a result of such attacks in Pakistan, the �most dangerous place on earth� according to the Economist, Newsweek and other vendors of geopolitical insight.) To put it in plain language – which the NCTC is unlikely to use – India is host to some of the fiercest conflicts in the world. Since 1989 more than 80,000 have died in insurgencies in Kashmir and the northeastern states. Manmohan Singh himself has called the Maoist insurgency centred on the state of Chhattisgarh the biggest internal security threat to India since independence. The Maoists, however, are confined to rural areas; their bold tactics haven�t rattled Indian middle-class confidence in recent years as much as the bomb attacks in major cities have. Politicians and the media routinely blame Pakistan for terrorist violence in India. It is likely that the ISI, Pakistan�s intelligence agency, was involved in the bombings two weeks ago in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, which killed 46 people. But their scale and audacity also hints that the perpetrators have support networks within India. The Indian elite�s obsession with the �foreign hand� obscures the fact that the roots of some of the violence lie in the previous two decades of traumatic political and economic change, particularly the rise of Hindu nationalism, and the related growth of ruthlessness towards those left behind by India�s expanding economy. In 2006 a commission appointed by the government revealed that Muslims in India are worse educated and less likely to find employment than low-caste Hindus. Muslim isolation and despair is compounded by what B Raman, a hawkish security analyst, was moved after the most recent attacks to describe as the �inherent unfairness of the Indian criminal justice system�. To take one example, the names of the politicians, businessmen, officials and policemen who colluded in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002 are widely known. Some of them were caught on video, in a sting carried out last year by the weekly magazine Tehelka, proudly recalling how they murdered and raped Muslims. But, as Amnesty International pointed out in a recent report, justice continues to evade most victims and survivors of the violence. Tens of thousands still languish in refugee camps, too afraid to return to their homes. In an article I wrote for the New York Times in 2003 I underlined the likely perils if the depressed and alienated minority of Muslims were to abandon their much-tested faith in the Indian political and legal system. Predictably Hindu nationalists, most of them resident in the UK and US, inundated my email inbox, accusing me of showing India in a bad light. It is now clear that a tiny but militantly disaffected minority of Indian Muslims has begun to heed the international pied pipers of jihad. Furthermore, there is no effective defence against their malevolence. Conventional counter-terrorism strategies – increased police presence or greater surveillance – don�t work in India�s large, densely populated cities. Nor do draconian laws such as the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act, which allowed police to hold suspects without charge for six months and was repealed in 2004. Gung-ho members of the middle class clamour for Israeli-style retaliation against jihadi training camps in Pakistan. But India can �do a Lebanon� only by risking nuclear war with its neighbour; and Indian intelligence agencies are too inept to imitate Mossad�s policy of targeted killings, which have reaped for Israel an endless supply of dedicated and resourceful enemies. As we now know, the promoters of pre-emptive strikes and rendition have proved to be the most effective recruiting agents for jihad. In that sense the Indian government�s inability to raise the ante, to pursue an endless war on terror or to order 150 million of its poorest citizens to reform their religion is a good thing. For it helps to maintain a necessary focus on terrorism as another symptom of a wider crisis that will be alleviated not so much by better policing, intelligence gathering or consultation with mullahs as by confronting socioeconomic frustrations and political grievances. The absence of �tough� retaliation also leaves the jihadi terrorists incapable of dealing more than a few glancing blows to the Indian state. Certainly, a hysterical response of the kind that followed the 7/7 attacks in London – a crackdown on civil liberties and demonisation of Islam – would in India only have accelerated the radicalisation of the Muslim minority. It is true that nihilist terrorism has no greater adversary than people who refuse to be terrorised or provoked. There have been remarkably few instances of retaliation against Muslims in the wake of terror attacks. In Mumbai, where nearly 200 people were killed by bomb explosions on commuter trains in 2006, normal life resumed even more quickly than in London in July 2005. But the resilience of India�s poor, who have no option but to get on with their lives, should not be taken for granted, or used to peddle India as a stable, business-friendly country. For their stoicism in the face of terror also expresses the bitter wisdom of the weak: that violence is far from being an aberration in the inequitable world our political and business elites have made.� Pankaj Mishra (kannauj@gmail.com) is the author of Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan and Beyond Is India a stable and peaceful country? Or Is it stricken with violence? � Gurumurthy Kalyanaram: A … [...]

Comment on Case Dunn and Tree of Life by Recent Links Tagged With "roundworms" - JabberTags

Recent Links Tagged With "roundworms" - JabberTags — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:04:15 +0000

[...] public links >> roundworms Case Dunn and Tree of Life Saved by searchmeister on Sun 28-9-2008 Here Are Some Parasite Treatments Saved by ethicalbypass [...]

Comment on Introduction to Soundarya Lahari by hgdey

hgdey — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:08:44 +0000

I would be really obliged if you could suggest a book in english / devnagari explaining the slokawise methods of worshipping the soundarya lahari yantras.

Comment on Can we solve our energy problems with existing technologies today? Join The Economist in its debate by mjolsen

mjolsen — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:50:53 +0000

We hear from the media that alternative renewables can only provide a small portion of the energy we need, and it’s not reliable. Solar power can only be generated when the sun shines, wind only when the wind blows, and so on. And that’s true, as far as it goes. It is true that renewables would have to be a mix.

But I just read an article on http://www.metaefficient.com (which they got from the Wall Street Journal) about the problems the Danish utility company is having with wind power. Because they have a lot of windy coastline, Denmark built enough windmills along it to generate 20 percent of their electricity.

But often, it gets really windy. When that happens, the percentage of electricity generated by the windmills can climb to 40 percent. If that happens, the price of electricity can drop to zero “leaving utilities scrambling to offload excess power or take a financial hit”.

So far, they have been selling the extra electricity cheap to Sweden and Norway. This is neither a desirable nor a long-term solution. So the Danish utility company is planning to build a country-wide system for charging electric cars with the excess power. (Israel is doing the same.)

So the problem in Denmark is that renewables are just so darn — well — renewable. The wind just keeps blowing. Blowing down the price of electricity. Thus the task of the utility company becomes finding ways to use excess electricity. In other words, to find ways to limit the supply of electricity enough to keep the price up. (Are you wondering why they need to keep the price up?)

And all this bother because they have built enough windmills to provide 20 percent of their electricity on ‘normal’ wind days. Kind of makes me wonder what would happen if they built enough for 50 percent wind power and 50 percent solar power — or 50 percent tidal power. Would electricity be virtually free except for small maintenance and labor costs? So abundant we couldn’t find ways to use it all?

Profit demands scarcity. Faced with abundance, our economy would be in ruins. It seems the name of the “man behind the curtain” in our energy woes is Profit.

MJ Olsen
http://butisitpc.wordpress.com

Comment on The impact of new tools and technologies on freedom of expression in China by Den Relojo

Den Relojo — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:34:33 +0000

I strongly believe that freedom of expression should always be respected. It is an innate right to express one’s beliefs and opnions thus everyone should be given the right to exchange his thoughts.

Comment on Is there a Bradley-Widler Effect in the Barack Obama’s presidential race? Per Nate Silver, “No” is the answer by myspace polls

myspace polls — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:02:31 +0000

Obama should win. Plain and simple. Not sure about the effect though, anything is really possible.

Comment on Slower growth in China? May be. We are talking of 9 percent growth rate instead of 11 percent by Skeptic

Skeptic — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:57:03 +0000

Predicting Chinese economy by following patterns of others is as good as reading tea leaves. That’s something only barefoot doctors do. Chinese economy doesn’t depend on the Olympic. It depends on the tar and mortar, the cheap and abundant labor, in China, and it will remain cheap even 10 years after the 2008 Olympic. According to the China Daily, “China’s per capita GDP had grown by about 200 US dollars annually in the last two years to $2,200 US dollars in 2007.” If an average Chinese person works 2000 hours a year, he makes just $1.10 per hour. That still makes Chinese labor relatively cheap in the world, and Wal-Mart will keep getting its goods from China.

Comment on Why Mitt Romney makes electoral sense as John McCain’s vice-presidential choice? by Romney..an Electoral Must Have for McCain | HangRight.Org

Romney..an Electoral Must Have for McCain | HangRight.Org — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 01:01:59 +0000

[...] on Gurumurthy Kalyanaram: A POlitical Blog: (HERE): Robert Novak explains why Mitt Romney is such an attractive electoral and political choice for John [...]