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Massive layoffs as gloom deepens (http://news.bbc.co.uk/)

2009-01-27T00:04:13Z

Date: -27 -1-09

Many firms expect 2009 to be very tough.

Workers around the world face losing their jobs as several big corporations announced more than 70,000 layoffs in one single day.

The biggest cuts came in the US where construction equipment maker Caterpillar said it would cut around 20,000 jobs.

In Europe, electronics group Philips, financial firm ING and UK steelmaker Corus announced cuts.

The announcements underscore the depth of the global downturn.

"Without a doubt, 2009 will be a very tough year," said Caterpillar chief executive Jim Owens.

Many of the companies making layoffs unveiled poor financial results and issued gloomy outlooks for 2009.

Caterpillar said its fourth-quarter net profit fell 32% from a year ago to $661m (Â£482m).

Stimulus plan urged

US President Barack Obama cited the layoff announcements as he urged Congress to approve an $825bn economic stimulus package of tax cuts, emergency benefits and public spending projects.

"Those are not just numbers," he said, but more working men and women "whose families have been disrupted and whose dreams have been put on hold".

GLOBAL JOB CUTS
Caterpillar - 20,000
ING - 7,000
Philips - 6,000
Corus - 3,500
Home Depot - 7,000
Pfizer/Wyeth - 20,000
Texas Instruments - 3,400
Sprint Nextel - 8,000
General Motors - 2,000

The companies making the biggest job cuts include:

US technology firm Texas Instruments, which makes chips for mobile phones and other gadgets, said it would cut 3,400 jobs, or 12% of its workforce, because demand for electronic devices had fallen.
Dutch banking giant ING, which said it was to cut 7,000 jobs as it seeks to save 1bn euros ($1.29bn; Â£949m).
Steelmaker Corus confirmed that it was cutting 3,500 jobs worldwide, including about 2,500 in the UK. The firm is a subsidiary of India's Tata Steel.
Consumer electronics giant Philips has reported a fourth quarter loss of 1.47bn euros and said it would cut 6,000 jobs.
US retailer Home Depot, the world's largest home improvement chain, said it would eliminate 7,000 jobs, or 2% of its work force, as it closes its Expo home design unit.
US mobile phone service provider Sprint Nextel says it plan sto reduce its workforce by 8,000 as it seeks to cut costs.
US drugmaker Pfizer said it planned to cut up to 20,000 jobs after it announced a $68bn (Â£50bn) deal to buy rival Wyeth.
General Motors said it would shed 2,000 jobs at plants in Michigan and Ohio and cut production at several plants over the next six months.
Last week Microsoft said it would cut 5,000 jobs, while Intel said it would eliminate 6,000.

{UnitedHinduFront} Terrorism not an option for hindus (Unitedhindufront@googlegroups.com)

2008-11-12T00:31:21Z

From: guruprasanth.ranipet@gmail.com Date: Tuesday, November 11, 2008

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Terrorism is certainly not an option for hindus in India.Muslims and Hindus can not be compared at all.

1) Hindus however rich or poor send their children to school in the hope of better life.In case of muslims
it's not the case.Muslims however rich or poor do not believe that education can give them better life.

2) Hindus THROUGHOUT THE WORLD have adapted well in the country they live.They not only contribute
to the economy but also became outstanding and most important citizens in their country.They do not
create any problem for local people.The less said of muslims in this respect better it's.

3) In global scenario hindus are slowly and steadily becoming big in business.

4) In Space research too hindus are becoming influential.

So the only area where hindus are not doing good is politics in India.Even there Hindu politicians are doing good at the
cost of their religion.This trend has to be changed.

At this point of time Hindus should not take weapons and fight against the enemies.Instead they should goto
election boot and vote.Hindus taking weapon at this stage would affect Hindus world wide.The psedo-secular
hindus will start drifting away further.Fence sitting Hindus who sympathise with hindutva but do not publicly
support will not support hindutva cause.Fence sitting hindus are in large numbers.
Take over the government and then punish the terrorist.Hindus should use chanakya brain to defeat terrorist,missionaries,
etc.

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Gospel of Jesus; can you believe this?i) Holy Bible - New Testament, Luke 12; 51-53: Jesus said:"Do you suppose that I came to bring peace to the World? No, not peace, but division. From now on a family of five will be divided, three against two and two against three. Fathers will be against their sons, and sons against their fathers; mothers will be against their daughters and daughters against their mothers; mothers-in-law will be against their daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law." ii)Holy Bible, New Testament, Luke 20; 27 : Jesus said: for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and kill them in my presence.

2008-11-12T00:24:10Z

Gospel of Jesus; can you believe this?
i) Holy Bible - New Testament, Luke 12; 51-53: Jesus said:
"Do you suppose that I came to bring peace to the World? No, not peace, but division. From now on a family of five will be divided, three against two and two against three. Fathers will be against their sons, and sons against their fathers; mothers will be against their daughters and daughters against their mothers; mothers-in-law will be against their daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law."
ii)Holy Bible, New Testament, Luke 20; 27 : Jesus said: “for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and kill them in my presence.”

Tirukural - Chapter 62: Perseverance; Never say in weakness, "This task is too difficult." Perseverance will confer the ability to accomplish it. (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-12T00:09:05Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com

Tirukural
A daily chapter from South Indian saint Tiruvalluvar's Tirukural, "Holy Couplets."

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

Chapter 62: Perseverance

Kural 611
Never say in weakness, "This task is too difficult."
Perseverance will confer the ability to accomplish it.
Kural 612
Beware of leaving any work undone, remembering that the world
abandons those who abandon their work unfinished.
Kural 613
The pride of profuse giving dwells only
with the dignity of diligent effort.
Kural 614
Like the swordsmanship of an effeminate man, the philanthropy
of those who avoid hard work will end in failure.
Kural 615
Standing like a pillar, he who prefers work to pleasure
supports his family and sweeps away their every sad sorrow.
Kural 616
Perseverance generates prosperity,
and the lack of it engenders poverty.
Kural 617
They say the black ogress called Misfortune lurks in laziness,
while Goddess Fortune lingers in the laboring toils of active men.
Kural 618
To be destitute of good fortune is no one's disgrace, but shame
belongs to those devoid of wisdom and tenacity.
Kural 619
Though destiny decrees that one's deeds will fail,
the wages for determined work are always paid.
Kural 620
Those who strive with tireless exertion and remain undaunted
will live to behold the backside of retreating Fate.

Vedic Verses for 11/11/08 : If anything ails him during that third period, he should recite the following mantra: O ye pranas, ye Adityas, extend this my third libation to the full age. May I, who am a sacrifice, not disappear in the midst of the pranas, who are the Adityas. Thus he rises from his illness and becomes free of it. (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-12T00:07:07Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Vedic Verses
A daily collection of verses from the Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scripture

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

Vedic Verses for 11/11/08

His next forty-eight years constitute the third oblation. The Jagati metre has forty-eight syllables and the third oblation is offered with Jagati hymns. The Adityas are connected with that part of the sacrifice. The pranas are the Adityas; for, verily,they take up (adadate) every-thing.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVI - Man as a Sacrifice (I), 5

If anything ails him during that third period, he should recite the following mantra: O ye pranas, ye Adityas, extend this my third libation to the full age. May I, who am a sacrifice, not disappear in the midst of the pranas, who are the Adityas. Thus he rises from his illness and becomes free of it.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVI - Man as a Sacrifice (I), 6

Mahidasa, the son of Itara, knew this and said addressing a disease: O you disease! Why do you afflict me? I shall not die of this pain He lived a hundred and sixteen years. He, too, who knows this lives on to a hundred and sixteen years.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVI - Man as a Sacrifice (I), 7

When a man hungers, thirsts and abstains from pleasures-these are his initiatory rites.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVII - Man as a Sacrifice (II), 1

When he eats, drinks and enjoys pleasures, he then participates in Upasadas.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVII - Man as a Sacrifice (II), 2

Vedic Verses for 11/11/08 : If anything ails him during that third period, he should recite the following mantra: O ye pranas, ye Adityas, extend this my third libation to the full age. May I, who am a sacrifice, not disappear in the midst of the pranas, who are the Adityas. Thus he rises from his illness and becomes free of it. (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-12T00:05:54Z

Gospel of Jesus; can you believe this?) Holy Bible - New Testament, Luke 12; 51-53: Jesus said:"Do you suppose that I came to bring peace to the World? No, not peace, but division. From now on a family of five will be divided, three against two and two against three. Fathers will be against their sons, and sons against their fathers; mothers will be against their daughters and daughters against their mothers; mothers-in-law will be against their daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law."ii)Holy Bible, New Testament, Luke 20; 27 : Jesus said: for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and kill them in my presence.

2008-11-11T00:46:53Z

India to release 30 Pak prisoners on Nov 14 (pioneer)

2008-11-11T00:45:43Z

PTI | Islamabad

India will release 30 Pakistani nationals, who have completed their prison terms in the country, and will hand them over at the Wagah land border on November 14.

The Pakistan-India Judicial Committee on Prisoners recently recommended that prisoners who had completed their prison terms and whose nationality had been confirmed should be released from jail speedily.

Official sources here said PTI that the Indian Government would hand over the 30 Pakistani nationals to authorities at the Wagah land border. The Pakistani nationals had been arrested and jailed for various crimes.

The Judicial Committee on Prisoners visited jails in both countries and met Indian and Pakistani prisoners. The two countries have also exchanged lists of prisoners.

India has informed Pakistan that about 370 Pakistanis are currently detained in its jails. However, Pakistani officials claim over 600 Pakistanis are in Indian jails and over 150 have completed their terms.

PM of India wraps up maiden Gulf visit with security, investment deal. The highlight of the November 8-10, two-nation visit was the signing of defence and security cooperation agreement with Qatar that lays the framework for collaboration on maritime security, sharing intelligence and information on extremist threats, money laundering and smuggling of narcotics. New Delhi and Muscat also put together a $100-million fund for financing multi-sector projects in the two countries.

2008-11-11T00:45:09Z

From: dailypioneer date: 11.11.08

PTI | Doha

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday wrapped up his maiden visit to the Gulf on a successful note that saw him inking agreements for defence cooperation with Qatar and investments with Oman, and more crucially making a pitch for stepping up energy imports.

The highlight of the November 8-10, two-nation visit was the signing of defence and security cooperation agreement with Qatar that lays the framework for collaboration on maritime security, sharing intelligence and information on extremist threats, money laundering and smuggling of narcotics.

"The agreement is just short of stationing troops (in the region)," a top Indian official said.

India also sought an additional 5 million tons of liquefied natural gas from Qatar to meet its growing energy needs and has proposed to set up a gas-fired fertiliser plant in the Gulf nation to meets its urea needs.

"We had an excellent one-hour meeting. (Qatar's Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al) Attiyah is a great friend of India and promised to look into our LNG needs," Petroleum Minister Murli Deora said.

At Qatar and earlier in Oman, Singh sought to leverage surplus funds in the region for investment in infrastructure sector to boost economic growth that is slowing due to the global financial crisis.

New Delhi and Muscat also put together a $100-million fund for financing multi-sector projects in the two countries.

The two sides also signed an agreement for protection of rights of about five lakh Indians working in Oman.

No cut in fuel prices till companies stop making losses: PM of India (Times of India)

2008-11-11T00:44:32Z

From: Times of India date: 11 Nov 2008

ON BOARD PM'S SPECIAL AIRCRAFT: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appeared to rule out cutting prices of petrol and diesel till oil companies stop
making losses on fuel sales.

Contending that there were "limits to which government can go on subsidising", Singh said it will wait till oil companies stop making losses before considering cutting petrol and diesel prices.

"When we see that the Indian oil companies are able to sustain a reduction, that will be the right (time for such a) decision," Singh told reporters late Monday night on way back to New Delhi from his three-day maiden visit to energy rich Gulf countries.
Oil companies have started making profit on sale of petrol but they continue to incur losses on diesel sales.

"Oil companies have to bear a very heavy burden (and) there are limits to which government can go on subsidising," he said.

Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum currently make a profit of Rs 4.12 a litre on petrol but lose Rs 0.96 per litre on diesel.

Together with domestic LPG and kerosene they are expected to lose Rs 128,135 crore in revenues this fiscal.

Defining Jew-hatred down at the UN (jihadwatch.org)

2008-11-11T00:43:39Z

From: jihadwatch.org date: 11.11.08

In "Defining Jew-Hatred Down: The curious response to Ahmadinejad at the U.N." in The Weekly Standard of November 17, Matthias Küntzel wonders at the spectacle of the Thug-In-Chief's genocidal and jihadist Jew-hatred having become so...fashionable. (Thanks to Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi.)

It is a topsy-turvy world: At the United Nations--an organization born out of the struggle against Nazi Germany and intended to embody the lessons of the Holocaust--a head of state openly spouts anti-Semitic propaganda in an address before the General Assembly. Granted, he takes the trouble to denounce "Zionists" and avoid the word "Jew," but this dodge is transparent to any student of the Nazis. His speech is greeted with acclaim, and neither the U.N. secretary general nor any Western head of government bothers to object. The media are mostly silent.
It happened on September 23, and the speaker was Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A familiar figure at the U.N., Ahmadinejad has a history of using his turn at the rostrum to sermonize about his yearning for the return of the Shia messiah. This time, he went further, drawing inspiration also from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Zionists, he told the assembly, are the eternal enemy of "the dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people" (this is the English translation of his remarks on the U.N. website). Although they are few in number, the Zionists "have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the United States in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."

Indeed, so influential are the Zionists around the world that even "some presidential or premier nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support." In particular, even "the great people of America and various nations of Europe" are caught in the clutches of Jewish power: They "need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will."

Yet liberation is near. "Today," according to Ahmadinejad, "the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse. There is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters." [...]

Ahmadinejad's performance elicited applause from his audience and a warm embrace from the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a 75-year-old Catholic priest and holder of the Lenin Prize of the former Soviet Union. D'Escoto is a close friend of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, in whose government he served as foreign minister from 1979 to 1990. This is the same Ortega who, four weeks after the Tehran Holocaust deniers' conference, joined President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in welcoming Ahmadinejad to Latin America as a "a president willing to join with the Nicaraguan people in the great battle against poverty."

Equally noteworthy was the lack of reaction to Ahmadinejad's U.N. performance in Western capitals--with three exceptions. The German and French foreign ministers criticized Ahmadinejad's "blatant anti-Semitism," and Barack Obama expressed disappointment that the Iranian president had been given "a platform to air his hateful and anti-Semitic views." Otherwise Ahmadinejad's misuse of the U.N. to spread anti-Semitic propaganda didn't even register as a provocation.

On September 23, the very day of his speech, Ahmadinejad was Larry King's guest on CNN. King offered the Iranian president an hour-long opportunity to hold forth as he pleased.

The next day, in an article for Salon, the Iran specialist Juan Cole of the University of Michigan took Obama to task for his comments on Ahmadinejad. Cole quoted a single sentence from the U.N. speech--one in which Ahmadinejad criticized the United States--while ignoring the anti-Semitic passages. "Larry King got at the true Ahmadinejad," Cole insisted, whereas Obama "fell into the trap of declining to make a distinction between anti-Zionist views and anti-Semitic ones."

Then on September 25, Ahmadinejad visited the New York Times. In the interview published the next day, he rehearsed his anti-Semitic notions without protest from interviewer Neil MacFarquhar. "Zionism," Ahmadinejad explained, "is the root cause of insecurity and wars. . . . What commitment forces the U.S. government to victimize itself in support of a regime that is basically a criminal one?"

This was in striking contrast to the Times's outrage in 2003 when Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia delivered an anti-Semitic speech. Back then the Times wrote:

It is hard to know what is more alarming--a toxic statement of hatred of Jews by the Malaysian prime minister at an Islamic summit meeting this week or the unanimous applause it engendered from the kings, presidents and emirs in the audience.
Not only that, but the Times concluded its editorial with a sharp rebuke to the European Union:

The European Union was asked to include a condemnation of Mr. Mahathir's speech in its statement yesterday ending its own summit meeting. It chose not to, adding a worry that anti-Semitism displays are being met with inexcusable nonchalance.
The Times is doing now what it so recently held to be "inexcusable."

Sixty-three years after Auschwitz, then, has anti-Semitism entered "acceptable" discourse? Or is the New York Times actually fooled by a rhetorical trick? Where Mahathir was crude enough to denounce the machinations of "the Jews," Ahmadinejad attacks only "the Zionists." He says, "Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world." He says "the Zionists" have for 60 years blackmailed "all Western governments." He says, "The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors." Perhaps this is why he is hailed as an anti-imperialist star.

But the Iranian president uses the term "Zionist" in precisely the way Hitler used the term "Jew": as the embodiment of evil. Even if the Iranian regime tolerates the presence of a Jewish community in Tehran, whoever holds Jews responsible for all the ills of the world--whether calling them "Judases" or "Zionists"--is propagating a potentially genocidal creed....

U.K.: Abu Qatada was planning on fleeing country in plot hatched by Omar Bakri

2008-11-11T00:43:04Z

From: jihadwatch.org date: 11.11.08

Urgent questions for British authorities: Who are Bakri's followers in Britain? How many are there?

More on this story. "Bakri bid for pal’s breakout," by Tom Wells for The Sun, November 11:

Hate preacher Omar Bakri masterminded the plot to help extremist pal Abu Qatada flee Britain, The Sun can reveal.
Bakri, 50, gave the order to followers to hatch an escape plan just days after Qatada was freed from jail and placed under house arrest.
In an audio recording obtained by The Sun, the evil cleric instructed: “There are two ways to help (Qatada). One is maybe try to help him against the kuffar (non-believer) to remove all these restrictions. Or by smuggling him outside the country if you can find a way.”
He then adds: “Try to help him financially or socially – whatever way you can.”
Qatada, 47, was re-arrested in a dawn swoop on Friday after authorities received a tip-off about his escape plot.
Government sources believe Lebanon was his likely destination – where Bakri has lived since 2005. Qatada, once described by a judge as Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe, won his fight against deportation to Jordan five months ago.
Since then, he has spent 22 hours a day under virtual house arrest at his home in West London. The pair have been linked for a decade

More on the Muslim Claim to Jerusalem

2008-11-11T00:41:47Z

From: danielpipes.org date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001
updated Sat, 16 Aug 2008

This entry updates the central argument in "The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem," that Jerusalem's religious standing in Islam, depends on political needs.

An aerial view of the Temple Mount.

An article by Danny Rubinstein notes how Israeli Arabs have taken up the cause of Jerusalem because Muslims generally

cannot usually come to Al Aqsa, and the closure prevents even the 3 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank from coming to Jerusalem. Those remaining, aside from the Arabs of Jerusalem, are the Israeli Muslims, and they have taken upon themselves the historic role of defending the Islamic holy places in the city. The Al Aqsa Association of Sheikh Raid Salah from Umm al-Fahm, the principal Muslim leader in Israel, has for years been carrying out the restoration and renovation in the mosques of the Temple Mount. Hundreds of Muslims from Israel come on the weekends to work as volunteers at the mosques. The Islamic Movement also funds some of the transportation of Israeli Arab worshipers to Al Aqsa.

Rubinstein also paraphrases three important observations by Yitzhak Reiter, editor of a recent book in Hebrew, The Sovereignty of God and Man - Sanctity and Political Centrality on the Temple Mount (Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies):

since the beginning of Islam, the Temple Mount (al-Haram al-Sharif) has flourished during three periods, all of them times when control of Jerusalem passed into non-Muslim hands: the Crusader period, the British Mandate period, and the Israeli period after June 1967. …

although the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem are only in third place in terms of religious importance (after Mecca and Medina, located in Saudi Arabia), politically, they are in first place. This fact has received particular emphasis during the past year, since the failure of the Camp David summit in July 2000.

During those talks, when the final status of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount was discussed between then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and PA Chairman Yasser Arafat and their associates, Israeli demands for sovereignty or some hold on the Temple Mount came up for the first time. Since then, Muslim spokesmen in general, and Palestinians in particular, have tried to deny any Jewish connection to the holy place.

(November 18, 2001)

May 15, 2002 update: In "Constructing a Counterfeit History of Jerusalem," I note burgeoning Palestinian attempts to deny any Jewish connection to Jerusalem.

June 21, 2002 update: The Scotsman informs us that the Al-Maktoun Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies officially opened last month at the University of Abertay in Dundee. The institute has three research centres, one of which is "The Centre for Islamic Jerusalem Studies," said (unsurprisingly) to be the only institution in the world offering an M. Litt course in Islamic Jerusalem Studies.

Aug. 5, 2003 update: An Egyptian government weekly, Al-Qahira, issued by the Ministry of Culture, published an article by one of its columnists, Ahmad Muhammad ‘Arafa, "Was the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey to Palestine or Medina?" in which ‘Arafa doubts that the Isra' was to Jerusalem.

Aug. 19, 2003 update: Two weeks later, the intrepid Ahmad Muhammad ‘Arafa questions the sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam. I discuss this at greater length in "The Prophet's Night Journey to Jerusalem."

Aug. 24, 2003 update: An Egyptian government website endorses the denial of a Jewish connection to Jerusalem, via the Jebusite thesis.

Nov. 26, 2003 update: Ghazi Y. Khankan, executive director of CAIR's New York office, writes a public letter to George W. Bush today listing ten reasons "why Jerusalem and Palestine are of the utmost importance to 1.2 billion Muslims in the world." One of them, for example, is a hadith that "Jerusalem's area of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah will be connected together at the end of time."

May 18, 2004 update: In "Why Jerusalem is Not Holy to Muslims," Leah Bat-Chaim makes arguments similar to mine.

Apr. 19, 2004 update: In an article about a game show on Al-Manar, the Hizbullah television station, Neil MacFarquhar explains how "The Mission" differs from others of its genre:

Contestants from around the Arab world compete each Saturday night for cash and the chance to win a virtual trip to Jerusalem. To heighten the drama, points won by the finalists translate directly into steps toward the holy city that are flashed onto a map of the region. The show is a novel way for Hezbollah to promote its theme - that all Arab efforts should be concentrated on reconquering land lost to Israel, especially Jerusalem. "Any program at this television station must present the idea that the occupation of Palestine must end," said Ihab Abi Nassif, a 28-year-old high school physics teacher who is the show's host. "That is the core issue, which is why we work day and night to keep it vivid in people's minds." …

"The Mission" follows a standard game show format, with contestants quizzed about history, literature, geography, science and the arts. But at least half the questions revolve around Palestinian or Islamic history, and at least one contestant is usually Palestinian. … Some questions do focus on the men who carried out suicide operations. "The martyr Amar Hamoud was nicknamed ‘The Sword of All Martyrs?' - true or false?" was one recent question. True. Mr. Abi Nassif, who never fails to address the subject of recapturing Jerusalem in his patter, went on to describe the man's exploits.

The prizes are not huge. Players who reach five million Lebanese pounds, or something over $3,000, earn the chance to double their winnings with one "golden question" worth the same amount. When the winner gains the 60 points necessary to reach Jerusalem, the song that is a staple of Hezbollah parades booms out. "Jerusalem is ours and we are coming to it," the chorus says in part.

Jun. 25, 2004 update: In The Qur'an, trans. by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 175, the translator identifies "the furthest place of worship" in footnote b as "In Jerusalem."

Aug. 4, 2005 update: Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces by Kimberly Katz arrived today and it has plenty of material confirming my points above about the 1948-67 era. In particular, see these passages:

"Jerusalem was a source of contention for many Palestinians, who claimed that the Holy City was being discriminated against, while Amman, the capital city, received a disproportionate share of political, economic, and infrastructure attention." (p. 81)

Yusuf Hanna wrote in 1954 that while Israel had made Jerusalem its state capital, in Jordan "we reduced Jerusalem from a position of preeminence to its current place that does not rise above the rank of a village." (p. 85)

"Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the government decided to relocate central ministries left from the mandate period to Amman at Jerusalem's expense. In a memo to the prime minister, Anwar Nusayba, member of parliament for the Jerusalem region, complained of discrimination toward the city." (p. 87).

Jan. 4, 2006 update: I dramatize today one of the implications of this article at "Offer: $1 million for Finding "Jerusalem" in the Koran."

June 6, 2006 update: "The Muslim use of Zion represents a more powerful force today than the Jewish love of Zion" concludes my article today, "Muslim Zionism," an edited verion of an award speech given in Jerusalem a week earlier.

Hassan Khader, founder of the "Al-Quds Encyclopedia."

Sep. 16, 2006 update: Ra'ad Salah, Israel's most radical Islamist leader, told 50,000 demonstrators at a rally yesterday in Umm al-Fahm that Israel's occupation of the Temple Mount will end soon and Jerusalem will becomne the capital of an Islamic state. For good measure, he added that former prime minister Ariel Sharon and current president Moshe Katsav (currently under investigation for alleged sexual misbehavior) are "paying the price" for the damage they did to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Oct. 19, 2006 update: It's Ramadan and a good time for Palestinians to make new claims to Jerusalem. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook document in "PA TV educational program: Jews have no historical connection to Western Wall – It's an Islamic site named for Muhammad's horse" what Hassan Khader, founder of the Al-Quds Encyclopedia, has to say on Palestinian Authority Television, in a program that has recently run three times in the course of a single week:

The first connection of the Jews to this site began in the 16th century.... The Jewish connection to this site is a recent connection, not ancient … like the roots of the Islamic connection.… Who would have believed that the Israelis would arrive 1400 years [after the Muslims], conquer Jerusalem and would make this wall into their special place of worship, where they worship and pray?

Ali Ünal, The Qur'an: with Annotated Interpretation in Modern English.

Jan. 1, 2007 update: In The Qur'an: with Annotated Interpretation in Modern English, by Ali Ünal (Somerset, N.J.: The Light, 2007), p. 565, the translation of 17:1 reads "from the Sacred Mosque in Makkah to the Masjid al-Aqsa in Quds (Jerusalem)." Footnote 2 compounds the error by stating that "This surah was revealed in Makkah at a time when the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah had not yet been built and the Ka`bah was full of idols; therefore the Muslims turned to that Masjid in Jerusalem for their prayers." The Prophet's Mosque had not yet been built but Al-Aqsa had been? How interesting.

Mar. 15, 2007 update: Re-reading J.J.G. Jansen's 1997 book, The Dual Nature of Islamic Fundamentalism, I note this passage on p. 133:

in early 1990, a Muslim Brotherhood veteran, Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali, declared that once the Jerusalem Aqsa mosque was lost it would be the turn of the Ka`ba [in Mecca].

May 21, 2007 update: New Saudi currency shows Al-Aqsa Mosque on one side of a note and the Dome of the Rock on the other.

May 29, 2007 update: Shmuel Katz today quotes a nice contrast by the British historian Christopher Sykes:

To the Muslims it is not Jerusalem, but a certain site in Jerusalem which is venerated ... the majestic Dome of the Rock. To a Muslim there is a profound difference between Jerusalem and Mecca and Medina. The latter are holy places containing holy sites. Apart from the hallowed rock, Jerusalem has no major Islamic significance.

Aug. 13, 2007 update: Quran: A Reformist Translation, translated and annotated by Edip Yuksel, Layth Saleh al-Shaiban, and Martha Schulte-Nafeh, offers a stunningly different translation of 17.1:

Glory be to the One who took His servant by night from the Restricted Temple to the most distant temple.

Quran: A Reformist Translation, translated and annotated by Edip Yuksel, Layth Saleh al-Shaiban, and Martha Schulte-Nafeh..

What's so interesting here is that the translators understand masjid not in its technical Islamic meaning of mosque but in its generic pre-Islamic sense of temple. That conceptual breakthrough makes good sense to me.

Comment: I am quoted in this Qur'an endorsing it as follows:

I am not a Qur'an scholar and therefore am not in a position to judge the accuracy of your translation, and especially not the revisionist understandings of some controversial ayats. But I can say that the effort you and your colleagues have undertaken is very much in keeping with my sense of the process of modernization that the Qur'an itself and the Islamic religion more broadly must undergo. As such, I salute your work and hope it will be published and extensively discussed both in the United States and abroad.

Oct. 12, 2007 update: Comes news that, in anticipation of the U.S.-sponsored Annapolis meeting, the "Palestinians Want Western Wall as Part of Any Settlement." Adnan al-Husseini, adviser to Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on religious affairs, says the PA wants "full control" over Jerusalem. "The Wailing Wall is a Muslim waqf , and therefore cannot be abandoned."

Oct. 25, 2007 update: Ikrema Sabri, mufti of Jerusalem in the Arafat days, has a history of outrageous statements and is at them again.

There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa and there is no proof that there was ever a temple. Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand. … The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque. There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews.

May Jews ever pray on the Temple Mount?

It is not the Temple Mount, you must say Al-Aksa. And no Jews have the right to pray at the mosque. It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area. No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aksa. Everyone knows that. Zionism tries to trick the Jews claiming that this was part of a Jewish temple, but they dug there and they found nothing.

Dec. 11, 2007 update: It's not clear when Harun Yahya (a pen name used by the Turkish writer, Adnan Oktar) wrote "Muslim Palestine," but it appears to date from late 2001. It offers the original argument that Jerusalem ought to be under Muslim control because, "In contrast to Jews and Christians, Muslims have made their regard for the sacredness of Palestine an opportunity to bring peace" to the city. Indeed, "peace and harmony lasted as long as Muslims ruled."

June 1, 2008 update: Rafiq Al Husseini, chief of staff to Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, has declared that "Jerusalem is Muslim. The blessed Aqsa mosque and Haram ash-Sharif [Temple Mount] is 100 percent Muslim."

June 4, 2008 update: In a stunning exception to the usual hackneyed Palestinian/Islamist claims to Jerusalem, Al-Jazeera invited Bar Ilan University political scientist Mordechai Kedar to discuss the city. He pulled no punches, telling the show's host, Jimal Rian, that "This was our capital 3,000 years ago, and we were here when your forefathers were drinking wine, burying girls alive and worshipping pre-Muslim idols. This is our city and it will be our city forever." Arutz-7 recounts:

His reference to Muslims drinking wine, which is forbidden in Islam, infuriated the host. Rian wagged his finger in the air and said excitedly, "If you want to talk about history, you cannot erase Jerusalem from the Koran, and don't attack the Muslim religion if we want to continue talking." Dr. Kedar replied, "Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran. Jerusalem is a Jewish city." The Al Jazeera host responded by quoting a verse from the Koran in which he thought Jerusalem was mentioned by name, but stopped in the middle upon realizing that it only refers to "the farthest place." Dr. Kedar: "Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Koran even once. You can't rewrite the Koran on air on Al Jazeera."

The exchange can be seen on YouTube.

Aug. 14, 2008 update: Lela Gilbert of the Hudson Institute quotes Gabriel Barkay, a professor at Bar-Ilan University, on the origins of the exclusive Muslim claim to the Temple Mount, what she calls "Temple denial":

This denial of the historical, spiritual and archeological connections of the Jews to the Temple Mount is something new. There was always talk about the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem - called the "praise of Jerusalem" – in Arabic literature, in Islamic literature. This new idea of Temple denial is due to the Arabic fear of Jewish aspirations connected to the Temple Mount. It is part of something I call the "cultural intifada."

Barkay traces the change back to the 1990s:

In the Washington, DC think tanks surrounding President Bill Clinton, it was understood that the Temple Mount was the crux of the problem of the Middle East conflict. These think tanks decided that if there could be "split sovereignty" on the Temple Mount, then split sovereignty could also be achieved over the entire land of Palestine.

So they suggested that in a future agreement, the Temple Mount would be split horizontally. That is to say that whatever is above ground, the part that includes the shrines of the Muslims, would be under Palestinian sovereignty. Whatever is underground, which would include the remnants of the Temple of the Jews, would be under Israeli sovereignty.

It's a brilliant idea, an excellent idea, but totally idiotic from a practical point of view. You cannot have a building standing with its foundations in another country. You cannot have a building with the infrastructure and the plumbing in another country. And you cannot have sovereignty on the subground without having accessibility to the subground, because the accessibility is from above ground. The whole thing was stupid.

Sep. 15, 2008 update: Following his Al-Jazeera appearance (see the June 4, 2008 update, above), Bar Ilan University's Mordechai Kedar has written an article, "The myth of al-Aqsa: Holiness of Jerusalem to Islam has always been politically motivated," in Yedi`ot Aharonot. His argument closely follows the once I have been making since 1997.

He begins by noting the small importance of Jerusalem to Muhammad after the qibla was changed to Mecca. Only in 682, when Ibn az-Zubayr rebelled against the Umayyad rulers in Damascus and conquered Mecca, did the Umayyad caliph, who needed an alternative site for the pilgrimage, settle on Jerusalem which was under his control. To justify this change, Koran 17.1 was reinterpreted to refer to Jerusalem.

Kedar then considers the difficulties with placing "al-masjid al-aqsa" in Jerusalem.

For one, the people of Mecca, who knew Muhammad well, did not believe this story. Only Abu Bakr, (later the first Calif,) believed him and thus was called al-Siddiq ("the believer".)

The second difficulty is that Islamic tradition tells us that al-Aqsa mosque is near Mecca on the Arabian Peninsula. This was unequivocally stated in "Kitab al-Maghazi," a book by the Muslim historian and geographer al-Waqidi. According to al-Waqidi, there were two "masjeds" (places of prayer) in al-Gi'irranah, a village between Mecca and Ta'if - one was "the closer mosque" (al-masjid al-adna) and the other was "the further mosque" (al-masjid al-aqsa,) and Muhammad would pray there when he went out of town.

This description by al-Waqidi which is supported by a chain of authorities (isnad) was not "convenient" for the Islamic propaganda of the 7th Century. In order to establish a basis for the awareness of the "holiness" of Jerusalem in Islam, the Califs of the Umayyad dynasty invented many "traditions" upholding the value of Jerusalem, which would justify pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the faithful Muslims. Thus was al-Masjid al-Aqsa "transported" to Jerusalem. It should be noted that Saladin also adopted the myth of al-Aqsa and those "traditions" in order to recruit and inflame the Muslim warriors against the Crusaders in the 12th Century.

Kedar then interprets current events in this light, seeing that Yasir Arafat "did exactly what the Califs of the Umayyad dynasty did 1300 years ago: He marshaled the holiness of Jerusalem to serve his political ends." Kedar argues that because "the holiness of Jerusalem to Islam has always been, and still is, no more than a politically motivated holiness," Muslim leaders are limited in what they can do. Indeed, one who showed flexibility on this issue "would be putting his political head on the block should he give it up."

The essay ends with two questions:

Must Judaism and Christianity defer to myths related in Islamic texts or envisioned in Mohammad's dreams, long after Jerusalem was established as the ancient, true center of these two religions, which preceded Islam? Should Israel give up on its capital just because some Muslims decided to recycle the political problems of the Umayyads 1250 years after the curtain came down on their role in history?

Nov. 2, 2008 update: For some real background on the historic Jewish connection to Jerusalem , see Rivkah Fishman-Duker's survey of ancient Greek and Roman pagan authors dating from the third century BCE to the third century CE, for all of whom "Jerusalem definitely was a Jewish city." The article is at "‘Jerusalem: Capital of the Jews': The Jewish Identity of Jerusalem in Greek and Roman Sources," Jewish Political Studies Review 20:1-2 (Fall 2008): 119-40. The quotes in turn can be found at Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980).

Related Topics: Arab-Israel conflict & diplomacy, Jerusalem

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Jerusalem mayoral race offers alternate visions of future (jpost.com)

2008-11-11T00:40:20Z

From: jpost.com date: 11.11.08

In a race being hailed as a turning point in determining the city's character, Jerusalem elects a new mayor Tuesday amid increasing concerns over the capital's demographic makeup and economic future.

JERUSALEM MAYORAL candidates Nir Barkat, Meir Porush and Arkadi Gaydamak (seated, from left) are seen at the Jerusalem Great Synagogue, which hosted a debate among them moderated by 'Jerusalem Post' editor-in-chief David Horovitz (seen at rear).
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski

Slideshow: Pictures of the week Voters will get to select both their choice for mayor and their preferred list for the city council, where 13 parties are vying for 31-seats.

The mayoral election is expected to be determined by the level of non-haredi turnout and the critical vote of the national-religious sector.

A candidate must garner at least 40 percent of the vote to win outright; otherwise, the two top vote-getters face a run-off election in two weeks.

Gaydamak entered unchartered territory in the campaign by avidly courting the city's Arab voters.

An eleventh-hour candidate, Dan Biron of the Green Leaf Party - which favors legalizing marijuana - rounds out the list, but he is expected to garner only a symbolic show of support.

More than 700 city polling stations open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. with nearly 530,000 people eligible to vote.

The number of actual voters is expected to be much smaller - five years ago only 180,000 people cast their ballot - since Arab residents of the city traditionally boycott the election so as not to "recognize" Israeli sovereignty over the city.

The Interior Ministry is operating a toll-free voter information center at 1-800-300-059, which offers both automated information and live operators speaking five languages, including English, for residents uncertain where their polling station is located or who have other election-related questions.

The official election results are expected early Wednesday morning.

The Jerusalem mayoral race comes at a time of growing concern among many secular residents over the increasingly haredi makeup of the city, the outward migration of young people, who leave in search of better jobs and more affordable housing, and the sharply contrasting level of services provided to Jewish and Arab neighborhoods of the city.

The race, according to polls, has split largely along sectoral lines: the haredi residents will vote nearly unanimously for Porush, while most of the secular and modern Orthodox residents are supporting Barkat.

Meanwhile, a still-unknown number of Arab residents who may defy warnings by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to boycott the vote are said to be backing Gaydamak.

To win, Barkat, who has presented detailed economic and educational working plans for the city, needs a strong turnout - and support - among secular and national-religious voters.

Only a third of non-haredi voters turned out to vote in the last elections, compared to 85% of the haredi public.

This year the turnout is expected to be significantly higher among the non-haredi public. Still, the fact that three secular candidates are running against one haredi candidate in a city where one in three voters is haredi could hurt Barkat's chances of victory, even though polls have consistently shown him to be the front-runner.

In the 2003 mayoral election, Lupolianski defeated Barkat by just over 15,000 votes, while nearly 10,000 votes went to four other secular candidates.

"Barkat is still leading, but it is not so certain," said political scientist Avraham Diskin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Porush is facing his own problems within the usually rock-solid haredi sector this year, with some Gerrer hassidim actively campaigning against him because they believe Porush offended their rebbe during his campaign, with a "secret plan" that would oust them from their central position in the haredi education system.

With a whopping 11% of the public still undecided in the last poll, both Barkat and Porush's campaigns believe that the national-religious vote could swing the election in either one's favor.

For the last two years, Barkat has been avidly courting the vote of the city's national-religious residents, breaking his former ties with the ruling Kadima Party to launch a public campaign with the likes of former minister Natan Sharansky against the division of Jerusalem.

The move, and his increasingly hawkish stance over the last year, seemingly endeared Barkat to the Right. But the far-Right and the Porush camp have played on his past association with Kadima, plastering placards on city billboards showing Barkat dividing the Western Wall, wearing a Kadima T-shirt.

To Barkat's dismay, the National Union-National Religious Party has remained decidedly neutral, despite the private murmuring of support for Barkat by various leading Zionist rabbis, who believe that the non-Zionist Porush could not effectively represent their community's interests.

In addition, Barkat's political views have lost him some of his erstwhile allies on the Left, with some Meretz supporters, who would generally oppose a haredi candidate, openly supporting for Porush rather than Barkat.

For his part, Porush has stumbled twice in the campaign during his effort to get out the non-haredi vote.

First, he suggested that the Temple Mount should be under Arab control, with Jews only retaining control of the Western Wall, only to backtrack shortly thereafter.

Then, in what was considered his biggest misstep of the campaign, he was taped telling a haredi audience that within 10 years there will be no more secular mayors in Israel, rekindling the fears among many non-haredi voters that Porush, as mayor, would implement policies that strongly favor the haredi sector.

Porush is expected to remain in the Knesset if he loses the race, while Barkat will likely return to the business world in the event of an election upset.

Militants raid Nato supplies, hijack 13 military trucks carrying supplies for NATO, near Pakistan-Afghanistan Border. (Dawn)

2008-11-11T00:39:25Z

From: Dawn date: 11.11.08

LANDI KOTAL, Nov 10: Militants hijacked 13 containers carrying supplies for Nato forces from the highway linking Pakistan with Afghanistan after a brazen attack on Monday, as paramilitary personnel watched from the nearby Jamrud Fort.

The containers were ambushed by dozens of heavily armed men from Wazir Dhand, Teddi Bazaar and Sur Qamar on the Peshawar-Torkham highway. Several Khasadar checkpoints are located nearby.

“It happened on the international highway and you can imagine the implications this can have for us,” an official told Dawn.

He said Taliban seized the containers on the road and emptied them “in clear view of paramilitary personnel” deployed at Jamrud Fort, but they did not take any action.

The militants were later seen driving around in Jamrud area of Khyber Agency, near Peshawar, in military vehicles taken away from the containers. They had hoisted flags and banners of the banned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and its leader Baitullah Mehsud on the vehicles.

Local people said most of the militants in the group, including its leader, appeared to be from Afghanistan’s Nangrahar province and others from Mohmand and Waziristan.

The official said the local administration had been warning the government that Taliban were gaining strength in Jamrud and the issue had also been discussed during last week’s visit to Peshawar by the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Interior Affairs, Rehman Malik.

After desperate calls by the administration, helicopter gunships were sent to retrieve the goods, but by then the militants had managed to shift the merchandise, including wheat.

A 12-year-old schoolboy, Rahim Khan, was killed and six other people, among them two militants, were injured in a 15-minute attack by three helicopters in Ghundi Shaga area. The injured were taken to a hospital in Peshawar.

Officials said since paramilitary forces were deployed in strength to Bajaur and other areas, they did not have enough troops to combat the growing militancy in Jamrud.

Jamrud Political Tehsildar Bakhtiar Mohmand insisted that Khasadar personnel had fired at the militants to prevent the hijacking.

He alleged that Khyber Rifles did not help the Khasadars in preventing such attacks. Mr Mohmand said supporters of Baitullah Mehsud were involved in the incident. Local Taliban leader Mustafa Kamal threatened to retaliate if security forces did not stop shelling civilians in Khyber Agency.

Transporters of fuel and other supplies to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation forces in Afghanistan expressed concern over increasing incidents of hijacking of their vehicles and sale of the stolen goods. They said the government had not compensated them for the losses suffered in such incidents.

Fuel shortages close Gaza plant (http://news.bbc.co.uk)

2008-11-11T00:38:46Z

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk date: 11.11.08

Gaza City plunged into darkness

The main power plant in the Gaza Strip has been forced to shut down because of a fuel shortage, plant officials say.

Residents said Gaza City was plunged into darkness as the plant's last two turbines were shut down late on Monday, a day after the other one was stopped.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak later agreed to allow minimal fuel shipments to Gaza to resume on Tuesday.

Supplies of industrial fuel mainly donated by the EU were halted by Israel last week after fierce border clashes.

The Israeli military staged an incursion into Gaza and sent air strikes, killing at least seven Palestinian militants, while militants fired a barrage of rockets into southern Israel.

We were told we would not be allowed in today

BBC reporter Aleem Maqbool

Gaza shut to fuel and journalists

Israel ordered border crossings closed after Palestinian militants fired a rocket on Sunday, which landed without causing casualties.

The Israeli defence minister decided on Monday night to allow a limited amount of fuel to be transferred into Gaza, after a request by Middle East Quartet peace envoy Tony Blair, Israeli officials said.

For all other purposes, the crossing would remain closed, they added.

Hospital fears

The Gaza City plant provides about a quarter of Gaza's electricity, and more than half the electricity used by the city itself.

Most of the rest of the supply to the territory of 1.5 million people comes directly via power lines from Israel.

Palestinian engineers had been implementing a system of rolling blackouts to different areas of Gaza City to prevent the lines from Israel becoming overloaded and cutting out.

Without a grid system, they have no way to divert power to essential utilities such as hospitals or sewage treatment works. Aid agencies had warned of a serious threat to public health if the plant went offline.

Oxfam said Gaza's seven largest hospitals had stocks of diesel to supply generators for about a week, although one of the smaller ones - al-Quds hospital - had only 36 hours' supply.

The aid agency said that the water utility had no stocks of fuel for generators, which meant the sewage disposal system would break down as soon as mains electricity was cut.

Nasa Mars mission declared dead (http://news.bbc.co.uk

2008-11-11T00:38:08Z

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk date: 11.11.08

The probe had surpassed its expected lifetime by more than two months
Nasa says its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead.

Engineers have not heard from the craft since Sunday 2 November when it made a brief communication with Earth.

Phoenix, which landed on the planet's northern plains in May, had been struggling in the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter.

The US space agency says it will continue to try to contact the craft but does not expect to hear from it.

"We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to operations at this point," Phoenix mission project manager Barry Goldstein said at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"However, since we've been surprised by the robustness of this vehicle, we're going to keep listening. As the orbiters fly overhead every two hours, we'll constantly turn on the radio and try to hail Phoenix to see if it is alive."

Fiery plunge

Launched from Earth in August 2007, the robot arrived on Mars on 25 May, landing further north than any previous mission to the Martian surface.

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Nasa's Lesley Tamppari on the mission’s success
To make it down, the probe had to survive a fiery plunge through the Red Planet's thin atmosphere, releasing a parachute and using thrusters to control its descent.

The mission was scheduled to last just three months on the surface, but continued to work for more than five months.

During its ground operations, the robot dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Martian soil to test whether it has ever been capable of supporting life.

Phoenix's major achievement was in becoming the first mission to Mars to "touch water" in the form of the water-ice it found just centimetres below the topsoil. Chunks of ice were seen to vaporise before the lander's cameras.

"This was quite a thrill for everybody and it has been the study of that ice that has kept us busy for the last five months," said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

"We've excavated ice, we know its depth, we know how it changes over the surface; we've seen different types of ice."

The spacecraft found the Martian soil to be mildly alkaline, quite different from the acidic soils seen by previous missions to other parts of the planet.

Other key results included the identification in the soil of calcium carbonate, which on Earth is a chief component of limestone rock.

Phoenix also detected sheet-like particles, which were probably clays of some kind.

The significance of both minerals is that they form only in the presence of liquid water - which could have supported life.

The lander also detected perchlorate (an ion containing chlorine and oxygen) which is an oxidising chemical and, on Earth, can sustain some microbes.

Phoenix even recorded snowfall; and took more than 25,000 pictures, from the panoramas of its Arctic landing site to the atomic scale images of dust grains delivered to its microscope.

"Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come," said Peter Smith.
Perhaps the key achievement has been to touch the water-ice in the soil

Phoenix was never expected to be a long mission. At its high latitude (68 degrees North), it was always destined to be starved of light as the Arctic winter deepened.

In the end, though, the demise of Phoenix was hastened by a dust storm which obscured the Sun's precious rays still further.

With so little energy getting into its solar panels, the batteries on Phoenix would have gone flat, preventing the robot from heating any of its systems in temperatures that were heading down to minus 100C.

Nevertheless, Nasa says its Mars Reconnaissance and Odyssey satellites will continue to listen for Phoenix for a further three weeks, until Solar Conjunction, when the Sun moves between Mars and Earth.

Phoenix had risen from the ashes of two previous failures.

In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet following a navigation error caused when technicians mixed up "English" (imperial) and metric units.
The probe has sent back more than 25,000 pictures

A few months later, another Nasa spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), was lost near the planet's South Pole.

Phoenix used hardware from an identical twin of MPL, the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander, which was cancelled following the two consecutive failures.

Nasa's robot rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, continue to work at their equatorial landing sites five years after arriving at the planet.

The next mission to the surface of Mars is due to leave Earth next year. The Mars Science Laboratory is a "smart" rover that will be dropped on to the surface of the Red Planet by a rocket-powered "skycrane".

At almost three metres in length and weighing 850kg, MSL is considerably bigger than the current rovers.

Mandelson: banks meltdown could save post office networkMinister says 'trusted brand' could become major player in financial servicesAllegra Stratton, political correspondent. The move is likely to surprise Labour backbenchers and opposition politicians alike. They were convinced the government was resigned to managing the decline of the network, which has been making losses of £4m a week. The Guardian, Tuesday November 11 2008

2008-11-11T00:37:23Z

From: guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 11 2008

The Guardian, Tuesday November 11 2008

A post box outside a post office in London. Photograph: Nicholas Bailey/Rex Features

Lord Mandelson is urging the prime minister to save the Post Office network by allowing it to provide government services and financial products, according to a leaked letter seen by the Guardian.

Mandelson suggests that the current economic downturn and "recent events in the financial services" present an opportunity for the Post Office to take on a new range of tasks.

In the letter to Gordon Brown dated October 30 - sent less than a month after he rejoined the government - the business secretary says: "We should examine the prospects for POL [Post Office Ltd] becoming a much more significant player in financial services - offering a wider range of attractive products within easy reach of the whole population, available from an institution they can trust."

The move is likely to surprise Labour backbenchers and opposition politicians alike. They were convinced the government was resigned to managing the decline of the network, which has been making losses of £4m a week.

John McFall, chair of the Treasury select committee, welcomed the development. He said: "Previously we had a superficial look at the case for the Post Office. That it was a drain on resources. But they should look at the Post Office as a viable service provider with 95% reach.

"I'm glad to see that the government is considering the Post Office playing a part in providing financial services which will eventually allow the Post Office to stand on its own two feet."

Last year the government faced down massive opposition to scale back the network, enabling it to cut government subsidy from £150m to £110m. The decision was so unpopular that members of the government who had been in the cabinet when it backed the plans - including Jack Straw and Tessa Jowell - openly campaigned against closures in their own constituencies. More recently it was an issue in the Glenrothes byelection: Conservatives and Liberal Democrats campaigned against closures in Scotland.

At present, 2,500 post offices are due to close, and some have already shut.

The letter shows Mandelson to be mindful of how the remaining 11,500 will be funded after 2011 when the current funding package comes to an end, saying "we will need to explore our options".

The business secretary also talks up the "reassuring" nature of the Post Office, apparently suggesting that the government may defy expectations and return to it the £1bn contract for the post office card account (Poca).

The decision on Poca, delayed since earlier this year, is now due and speculation is mounting that the contract may go to the private company PayPoint. The postmasters' union has said such a move would lead to a further 3,000 office closures.

In his letter, Mandelson says: "POL has two real strengths. The first is the trusted 'post office' brand. The second is the fact that it offers direct physical contact across its widely accessible network with the 24 million people who visit a post office each week.

"As recent figures show, many savers have demonstrated their trust in the Post Office by moving their savings into accounts it offers. Similarly, the face-to-face contact which a post office offers is becoming an increasingly important and reassuring factor for many people - especially when many private companies, as well as many government agencies, are seeking to reduce their own face-to-face contact points."

The business secretary says there is a case for building up the Post Office's role as the primary contact point many people have with the government, raising the prospect of POL taking on new business. The Post Office is in discussion with a number of departments, local authorities and devolved administrations about new services that it can offer, including becoming involved in identity verification for driving licences and passports rather than just initial paperwork.

"Taken together I think all of these developments offer POL, with our support, a genuine opportunity to rebuild itself into a widely accessible, trusted provider of a broader range of financial services," Mandelson writes.

Essex county council has recently reopened 15 post offices by guaranteeing £1.5m for them to operate until 2011.

The proposed review by Mandelson would be separate from one about to report by Richard Hooper, the former chairman of the communications regulator Ofcom, who is conducting a review into the Royal Mail postal service.

Obama meets Bush at White House (http://news.bbc.co.uk)

2008-11-11T00:36:35Z

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk date: 11.11.08

President Bush welcomes Barack Obama to the White House

US President-elect Barack Obama has held his first meeting with incumbent George W Bush since his last week's decisive election victory.

Both sides described the White House talks, which lasted just under two hours, as friendly and productive.

Few details were revealed as to their content but Iraq, the financial crisis and the issue of a smooth transition had all been expected to come up.

Meanwhile, reports suggest Mr Obama is set to tackle the Guantanamo Bay issue.

The talks were the first time Mr Obama had stepped inside the Oval Office
The incoming president has already indicated he could reverse controversial Bush administration policies soon after he takes office on 20 January.

On Thursday his transition chief suggested executive orders on issues such as stem cell research and oil drilling could be repealed.

The latest reports suggest his team is putting together a plan under which detainees in the widely-condemned detention camp in Cuba would be released or transferred to the US.

'Broad discussion'

Mr Obama and his wife, Michelle, both visited the building that will be their home for the next four years.

The incoming and outgoing presidents shook hands before heading to the Oval Office - Mr Obama's first visit to the famous seat of power.

First Lady Laura Bush, meanwhile, gave Mrs Obama a tour of the personal quarters of the White House.

In pictures: White House meeting

Both men had taken care to speak respectfully about each other ahead of the talks - arranged, analysts say, with unusual haste because the US is at war and because the transition is taking place in the midst of an economic crisis.

Afterwards a statement from the president-elect said the discussions had been wide-ranging.

Mr Bush and Mr Obama "had a broad discussion about the importance of working together throughout the transition of government in light of the nation's many critical economic and security challenges", the statement said.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, meanwhile, said Mr Bush had called the talks relaxed and constructive, but declined to comment on specifics.

Stem cell move

BUSH DECISIONS UNDER FIRE
Limited federal funding for medical research using human embryo stem cells
Aid groups receiving US aid barred from counselling women about abortion availability
California barred from imposing minimum standards of vehicle fuel efficiency
Utah land being opened up for oil and gas drilling

Reports from Washington suggest Mr Obama's transition team has been working hard to identify issues where early changes could be made.

Mr Obama's advisers are said to be putting together a plan to release a group of detainees from the Guanatanamo Bay detention centre and to transfer most of the rest to the American prison and courts system.

A third group who cannot be tried in public because of national security concerns could, reports the BBC's Justin Webb, be brought before a new court designed specifically for the purpose of dealing with them.

The Washington Post newspaper, meanwhile, reported that transition officials had compiled a list of some 200 executive orders to be considered.

Laura Bush showed Michelle Obama around her new home

Mr Podesta has said executive orders on stem cell research or oil drilling in Utah can easily be repealed, as no congressional action is needed.

The Washington Post said other orders affecting environmental legislation and abortion issues were also under consideration.

"There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that," Mr Podesta said.

Potential plans for a last-minute rush of executive decisions by the White House were also being watched carefully, he added.

Assam: 10 feared killed in ultras' attack, on the night of Monday, 10th November 2008. (Rediff News) K Anurag in Guwahati

2008-11-11T00:35:52Z

From: Rediff News date:11.11.08

November 11, 2008 00:43 IST

At least 10 persons were feared killed when tribal militants raided a Nepali slum near Umrangshu in interior North Cachar Hill district on Monday night.

Police informed that militants belonging to Dima Halam Daogah (Jewel Garlosa) or Black Widow stormed Kamalabagan basti inhabited by Nepali people and opened indiscriminate fire from sophisticated weapons. About ten people were feared killed in the attack.

A team of police personnel from Umrangshu rushed to the area following the incident. So far two bodies were recovered from the incident site.

Assam: 10 feared killed in ultras' attack, on the night of Monday, 10th November 2008. (Rediff News) K Anurag in Guwahati

2008-11-11T00:35:47Z

Gulf of Mannar for World Heritage Site (webmaster@hinducounciluk.org )

2008-11-11T00:35:05Z

From: webmaster@hinducounciluk.org Date: Monday, November 10, 2008

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Gulf of Mannar for World Heritage Site

We would like to invite everybody to the first meeting calling for the Governments of India and Sri Lanka to take steps to have the Gulf of Mannar designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.. The meeting will be held at the historic Linnean Society of London, UK, from 25 – 26 November 2008. The theme for the meeting is "The Gulf of Mannar as a World Heritage Site and its Spiritual and Scientific Relevance to the Earth's Changing Climate".

Our goals for this two-day meeting are simple but bold - to raise awareness of the diverse global importance of the Gulf of Mannar, and work towards the designation of the Gulf of Mannar as a UNESCO World Heritage mixed Natural and Cultural site - an aim vital in the global campaign to preserve biodiversity. We also hope to promote an unprecedented international campaign calling for cancellation of the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project (SSCP). As you may know, this project threatens one of the world's most pristine marine regions, the many marine species living there that already face extinction and the culturally and spiritually significant Adam's Bridge, also known as Ram Sethu.

World-leading conservationists, ecologists and religious scholars will present the case for designating the Gulf of Mannar as a World Heritage Site and explain why the SSCP should be abandoned. The area's spiritual and scientific relevance to the Earth's changing climate will also be explored.

We also believe the London meeting will provide an effective and ongoing forum for the growing number of scientific and cultural organizations from across the globe that share a vision of sustainable development. It is our hope that this forum will send a powerful message to the world's leaders challenging them to engage with and support scientific and cultural debate in any developmental project that impacts upon the Earth's changing climate or our sacred sites.

A distinguished International Advisory Board headed by Dr. Peter Bunyard is supporting organisation of the meeting. Renowned scientists and religious scholars such as Dr. Anantanand Rambachan will make presentations in the areas, which will be affected by the SSCP, including: -

Among the participants will be Dr. Wangari Maathai, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. She will send a message by video link from Kenya.

To help us plan better, I would request you and members of your organisation to confirm your attendance by November 20th. Please call Anna Karlsson at 0207 229 2093 or send her an e-mail at
info@rainforestconcern.org to confirm your attendance.

I attach additional details about the two-day meeting. More information is also available at our website www.livingplanetfoundation.org.

I do hope I will see you at The Linnean Society.

Yours faithfully,

Kusum Vyas
Gulf of Mannar World Heritage Site Campaign

Linnean Society of London
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London W1J 0BF, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7434 4479
(Visit www.linnean.org for more details)

Note : Hindu Council UK (HCUK) is the foremost and largest national network of the Hindu temple bodies and cultural organisations co-ordinating all different schools of Hindu theology within the UK. HCUK is the representative umbrella body for the British Hindu issues for which a UK wide mandate was received during a two year consultation with the British Hindu public culminating in its launch in November 1994.

'Sonstrokes' not new to Indian politics, Congress. Whatever might be the grievances of AICC General Secretary Margaret Alva, tickets in elections for the kith and kin of leaders has virtually been the rule rather than exception in the grand old party.

2008-11-11T00:34:29Z

From: madhukar_ambekar@mac.com Date: Monday, November 10, 2008

'Sonstrokes' not new to Indian politics, Congress

http://www.dailypioneer.com/DisplayContent.aspx?ContentID=133279&URLName=Sonstrokes-not-new-to-Indian-politics-Congress

Sons and daughters are no longer an issue in Indian politics, much less in Congress.
Whatever might be the grievances of AICC General Secretary Margaret Alva, tickets in elections for the kith and kin of leaders has virtually been the rule rather than exception in the grand old party.
The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has often accused the Congress of practising 'dynastic' politics is itself slowly seeing the phenomenon.
However, regional parties take the cake when it comes to 'sonstrokes', but the Mayawati-led BSP only appears to be a bit different.
Left parties, known to be cadre based, are the "odd men out" as their leaders generally are of a different mould and the organisations too have a different structure.
"Why you are pointing fingers towards us and not others?", a visibly annoyed Congress President Sonia Gandhi had shot back to reporters when asked whether she was not promoting the family by giving her son Rahul a ticket in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.
It was over four years ago and Gandhi's reference was to the several kith and kin of leaders of all parties who were already in politics.
They included Rabri Devi, wife of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, MK Stalin, son of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, Chandrababu Naidu, son-in-law of NT Rama Rao, A Ramdoss, son of PMK chief Dr Ramadoss, Ajit Pawar, nephew of NCP chief Sharad Pawar and HD Kumaraswamy and HD Revanna, sons of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda.
Incidentally, Raj Thackeray who is currently being targetted for 'stray' attacks on North Indians in Maharashtra, is the nephew of Shiv Sena Chief Bal Thackeray, who first took up cudgels for the Marathi cause four decades ago.Raj parted ways with the Sena sometime back after his uncle started promoting his son Uddhav and made him the Executive President of the party.
It was the same reason that prompted former Maharashtra Chief Minister Narayan Rane to leave Shiv Sena for Congress after a four decade old association. His son Nitesh is now in politics and expected to be the Congress candidate for the Lok Sabha polls from the Konkan seat.
Congress leaders recall that Margaret herself is a product of 'family' politics as she got the right push being the daughter-in-law of Joachim and Violet Alva, the first couple in Parliament. The leaders claim that Nivedith, son of Margaret, could not make it to the Karnataka list of party candidates on the issue of merit.
AICC General Secretary Prithviraj Chavan, who is primarily being targetted by Alva, too belongs to a Congress 'family'.
His mother Premalatai Chavan was a lawmaker for long and also Maharashtra PCC Chief and his father DR alias Anandrao Chavan was a Union Minister.

My Personal View
Dear Editor. It is not a new culture to Indian Democracy. Our system of "Kingdoms" is based on this principles so we are used to it. Look at the Caste system, the profession was passed on from one generation to other ( Until it lost it's glamor ). Now a different kind of caste system is emerging. Actors son Actor, Doctors son Doctor, Solicitors son Solicitor, Why not Politician's son be the Politician? Soon we will have this culture become water tight compartments to protect our son's and daughter's. We have convenient meaning for ourselves of the terms "Democracy and Secularism". There is nothing new in it. Whether one likes it or not. Nehru did it so did rest in your article's references. The only exceptions to the rule have been, Mahatma Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Gulzarilala Nanda, Morarji Desai, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajaji, and there are quite a few examples in History. Why should Margaret Alva throw stones at others when she herself lives in the "Glass House" Dr. Ambeka
r.

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The Master Course - Lesson 212 : What Is Signified by Universal Dharma? Universal law, known in the Vedas as rita, is cosmic order, God's rule at work throughout the physical province. It is the infinite intelligence or consciousness in nature, the sustaining cosmic design and organizing force. (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com )

2008-11-11T00:33:51Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Monday, November 10, 2008

The Master Course
The lesson of the day from Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's trilogy: Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva

Lesson 212

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Lesson 212

Sloka 57 from Dancing with Siva
What Is Signified by Universal Dharma?
Universal law, known in the Vedas as rita, is cosmic order, God's rule at work throughout the physical province. It is the infinite intelligence or consciousness in nature, the sustaining cosmic design and organizing force. Aum.

Bhashya
Rita is the underlying divine principle and universal law regulating nature, from the voyage of stars in vast galactic orbits to the flux of infinitesimal subatomic energies. Rita is the Tao. It is destiny and the road to destiny. When we are in tune with universal dharma, and realize that man is an integral part of nature and not above it or dominating it, then we are in tune with God. All Hindus feel they are guests on the planet with responsibilities to nature, which when fulfilled balance its responsibilities to them. The physical body was gathered from nature and returns to it. Nature is exquisitely complex and orderly. The coconut always yields a coconut tree, a lotus a lotus, a rose a rose, not another species. How constant nature is, and yet how diverse, for in mass producing its creations, no two ever look exactly alike. Yes, the Hindu knows himself to be a part of nature and seeks to bring his life into harmony with the universal path, the sustaining cosmic force. T
he Vedas proclaim, "Earth is upheld by Truth. Heaven is upheld by the sun. The solar regions are supported by eternal laws, rita. The elixir of divine love is supreme in heaven." Aum Namah Sivaya.

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Lesson 212 from Living with Siva
Robotic Learning
A human teacher would know the student's state of mind and special gifts or needs, and society would guide him. While teaching English, French, German or any of the fourteen major languages of India, all the teacher's good qualities go into the student, enriching and blessing him, along with the experience the teacher has gained through the years. When the magic happens, a certain amount "rubs off," and a life is transformed. This is real education. This is training through sampradaya--people to people, heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. This is how it used to be and how it still can be.

In a student-teacher relationship, the novice must deal directly with a human, talk to a human, be with a human, and love or hate this human, as the case may be, depending on the student's evolution or spiritual development, not to mention that teacher's own personal qualities. But school classes, from the lower grades to the highest are tending to dispense with human contact by replacing humans with machines. These are not just machines to write letters on, design buildings with or do the many other things this remarkable technology can do, but machines of learning that do not have a heart, machines which the child has total control over, machines which parents and teachers sometimes use to subdue or occupy a child for hours, and thus simplify their own duties.

That's the big problem--the complete isolation. He can turn it on. He can turn it off. He can disagree with what is being taught or totally misunderstand, and no one ever knows. These children are deprived of life's most precious gift, the passing down of knowledge, with respect and love for the knowledge imparted, at certain psychological moments in a child's life. These children are deprived of the fulfillment gained by learning from a person with a heart, a person yearning to fulfill dharma and pass on his knowledge and, most importantly, his knowing earned through experience and his passion about the ?subject he ardently wishes to convey to youthful minds. This can never, ever be programmed into any software on the Internet or burned into a CD-ROM.

The Information Highway is an uncensored, unsupervised world. In all previous methods of conveying knowledge to children, there was a responsible adult involved, be it a teacher or librarian or parent. But the Internet's vast spectrum of information is equally available to every individual with access--at last count hundreds of millions. Sadly, we are developing a generation--or two generations, for one is already established--of heartless children, deprived of love: an unhugging, cool, calculating, computer generation exposed to worldly sights that even most adults did not encounter ten years ago. Where will it all lead? That is a question Hindu families around the world are beginning to ask.

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Sutra 212 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Forgiving And Seeking Forgiveness
Siva's devotees facing death perform vasana daha tantra, reconcile with and seek forgiveness from anyone they have offended, lest they leave unresolved kukarmas to go to seed and bear bitter fruit in future births. Aum.

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Lesson 212 from Merging with Siva
Expressions of Actinic Force

Did you know that the physical body reflects the higher states of your consciousness and actually registers the flow of actinic force? There are advanced yogis who can look at the physical body of a beginning seeker and observe how evolved he may be on the spiritual path. He would also be able to intuit from his observation the remaining subconscious seed experiences that yet must be worked out either physically or mentally.

Your physical body will express the highest that is within you when the actinic forces are flowing freely through it. Often the physical body reflects the lower nature when the odic forces are turbulent and in or out of control. The best way to keep the actinic force flowing through the physical body is practicing the art of giving, doing little things for others that you have not been asked to do. This keeps you creative, and being creative is actinic, superconscious and religious. Giving, doing without thought of return, affectionate detachment, creates an odic vacuum which your actinic, spiritual forces flow into and fill. As you practice this bhakti and karma yoga art, your relatives and friends, even strangers, will recognize your unfoldment, for the actinic forces, the real you, will permeate your physical body, making each of your features alive.

You can only detach yourself from your odic physical body when you know that a higher you exists, when you have gained stability by identifying yourself as actinic force. Don't mistake your personality or ego for your actinic individuality.

Often the two terms individuality and personality are taken to be synonymous, but this is far from true. In classical yoga teachings we look at individuality as being the actinic energy, or the clear white light, the pure energy substance of the mind, which is constant, ever unfolding itself, peaceful and controlled. The personality we consider as the various masks or personae which cover the individuality. The personae which are heavy, dark and glued on to one's face, so to speak, are those of an intense ego, congested odic force. They are most difficult and rather painful to drop off, or even to pull off. The personae which are transparent allow the clear white light from the actinic being to shine through. One can have many of these personalities and have fun using them constructively in the world, doing things of the world, always recognizing that the clearness of actinic vision shines through the mind-constructed personality of the individual's race, occupation, social b
ackground and various accomplishments.

Vedic Verses for 11/10/08 : Spring up, become fair, be distended, O barley, with your own increase! Burst all vessels designed to contain you! ( Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-11T00:33:06Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Monday, November 10, 2008

Vedic Verses
A daily collection of verses from the Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scripture

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

Vedic Verses for 11/10/08

Spring up, become fair, be distended, O barley, with your own increase! Burst all vessels designed to contain you! May lightning not smite you in that place where we make our appeal to you.

Atharva Veda VI, 142, 1

In response, divine barley, to our invocation, rise up there tall as the sky, inexhaustible as the boundless sea!

Atharva Veda VI, 142, 2

May those who tend you prove inexhaustible, inexhaustible their barns, inexhaustible those who offer you in sacrifice and those who consume you!

Atharva Veda VI, 142, 3

May the Lord of the clouds protect our stores, piled high in our homes!

Atharva Veda VI, 79, 1

May the Lord of the clouds give us vitality in our homes, granting goods and riches!

Atharva Veda VI, 79, 2

• Email to a friend • •

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These daily verses are drawn from the Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scriptures, which are 6,000 to 8,000 years old. Many of the verses are from the book The Vedic Experience, by Raimundo Panikkar, available at our Minimela online store.

Tirukural - Chapter 61: Avoidance of Idleness. The eternal flame of a family vanishes when eclipsed by that dark cloud called idleness. (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-11T00:32:21Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Monday, November 10, 2008

Tirukural
A daily chapter from South Indian saint Tiruvalluvar's Tirukural, "Holy Couplets."

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Chapter 61: Avoidance of Idleness

Kural 601
The eternal flame of a family vanishes
when eclipsed by that dark cloud called idleness.
Kural 602
Let those who wish their family to be a noble family
call laziness "laziness" and live without it.
Kural 603
The simpleton whose actions are stifled by ruinous indolence
will see his family perish before he dies.
Kural 604
Their families decrease and their vices increase when men,
ensnared in sloth, do not put forth earnest effort.
Kural 605
Procrastination, forgetfulness, sloth and sleep--
these four shape the ship bearing those destined for ruin.
Kural 606
Seldom do languid men achieve anything special,
even when supported by the world's wealthy proprietors.
Kural 607
Idle men, incapable of honorable exertion,
invite scorn and suffer the shame of scolding words.
Kural 608
If languor is allowed to linger in aristocrats,
they will be forced into servitude under foes.
Kural 609
Disgrace that has come upon a man and his family
will disappear the moment he casts out laziness.
Kural 610
A king devoid of indolence will thereby procure all that
cosmic expanse measured by God's immeasurable strides.

{UnitedHinduFront} Re: Atlanta's BEST Hilarious Hindi Comedy Drama involving Shah Jahan - 4shows: Nov. 9, 15, 16, 23 - Book your seats today. (jaykumar.r@gmail.com)

2008-11-11T00:31:19Z

From: jaykumar.r@gmail.com Date: Sunday, November 9, 2008

Ji,
We have to think how to utilize each and every opportunity and make it hilarious comedy!!! ( unlike our stupid Hindu holymen xSwamijis who say 'love is aim of all religions' and getting rattled and helpless at anything like this).

Right at the venue of this stage Drama, We have to print posters or flyers to mass informing clearly

1) What kind of incest is Shajahan and how many women he had in his harem
2) How he repeatedly raped Mumtaz's daughter and mistery behind their death
3) How concealed these info. by fraudulently creating scene by claiming Tajmahal to impress people
4) How that caused Aurangazeb a boy then to become furious
5) How Aurranaazeb once grown put him in same jail to let him die

regards,
jay

On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 11:06 AM, savarkar vinayak <savarkar_vinayak@yahoo.co.uk>; wrote:

Why does this poster has illustration of Moghuls, the invaders in Maa Bharati's Nation? It is NO hilarious!

--- On Sat, 8/11/08, Amitabh Sharma <aaam@bellsouth.net>; wrote:

From: Amitabh Sharma <aaam@bellsouth.net>;
Subject: {UnitedHinduFront} Atlanta's BEST Hilarious Hindi Comedy Drama - 4 shows: Nov. 9, 15, 16, 23 - Book your seats today.
To: aaam@bellsouth.net
Date: Saturday, 8 November, 2008, 6:43 AM

most memorable funny comedy starts this weekend

see any of the 4 shows......but do not miss out

this a must see hilarious hindi play you will remember forever

so get ready to laugh non-stop...........coz this is as good as it gets

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Malegaon blasts: Lt Col to undergo narco test (ibn Live) (G. C. Asnani: If Army man has confessed his role in plotting Malegaon blasts, then why numerous prolonged tests of truth serum, narco-analysis test, brain-mapping, psychological profiling, etc? Things do not look quite consistent to lay persons who are being fed with so much material every day.)

2008-11-11T00:30:37Z

From: IBN Live date: 11.11.08

Published on Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 16:07 in Nation section

New Delhi: The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has taken one of the main accused in the Malegaon blasts case, Lieutanant Colonel Prasad Purohit to the Air Force Command hospital in Bangalore for a narco-analysis test.

Purohit will be put through 17 tests before being made to undergo the narco test under the influence of truth serum.

ATS sources have told CNN-IBN that he will also undergo brain-mapping, polygraph and psychological profiling.

A forensic laboratory team from Mumbai is in Bangalore and sources in the laboratory inform that military intelligence representatives will be also be present.

Purohit was arrested last week by the Maharashtra ATS. Investigations reveal that he played the role of fund-raiser for Abhinav Bharat, the Hindu organisation suspected to be behind the Malegaon motorcycle blasts.

It is unclear if he siphoned off money from the funds sanctioned for secret activities of the Military Intelligence, his previous posting. He is a close associate of arrested Major (Retd) Ramesh Upadhyay.

Gospel of Jesus; can you believe this? i) Holy Bible - New Testament, Luke 12; 51-53: Jesus said: "Do you suppose that I came to bring peace to the World? No, not peace, but division. From now on a family of five will be divided, three against two and two against three. Fathers will be against their sons, and sons against their fathers; mothers will be against their daughters and daughters against their mothers; mothers-in-law will be against their daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law." ii)Holy Bible, New Testament, Luke 20; 27 : Jesus said: for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and kill them in my presence.

2008-11-10T00:41:09Z

Militants kill two spies, Militants killed two Afghan men here on Saturday after accusing them of spying for US-led forces deployed across the border, local officials said. (Dawn)

2008-11-10T00:39:04Z

From: Dawn date: 10.11.08

Saturday, 08 Nov, 2008 | 11:49 AM PST |

Militants have killed dozens of local tribesmen and Afghan nationals on alleged charges of spying. —AP

MIRAMSHAH: Militants killed two Afghan men here on Saturday after accusing them of spying for US-led forces deployed across the border, local officials said.
The bullet-riddled bodies of the victims were thrown on a road which connects the North Waziristan district to the Afghan province of Khost, both strongholds of al Qaeda and Taliban militants.
A note left on their bodies in Pashto said the victims were kidnapped from Khost earlier in the week and had confessed to being spies, said a local administration official.

Vedic Verses for 11/8/08 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-10T00:29:56Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Saturday, November 8, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Vedic Verses
A daily collection of verses from the Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scripture
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vedic Verses for 11/8/08 : You are of all Men the brother and dear companion, O Lord, the Friend whose name we may invoke for our friends!

Who among men is your brother? Who offers you holy worship? Who are you, Lord? On whom dependent?

Rig Veda I, 75, 3

You are of all Men the brother and dear companion, O Lord, the Friend whose name we may invoke for our friends!

Rig Veda I, 75, 4

Sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna in our name. Honor the Gods according to Holy Law upon your own hearth!

Rig Veda I, 75, 5

Even as a charioteer in the race acclaims his own chariot, so now acclaim the harnessing of Agni the glorious, the bountiful, [to the chariot of sacrifice]--

Rig Veda II, 8, 1

The one who leads his worshiper aright, who, himself undiminished, diminishes the wicked, the God of cheerful countenance, the recipient of worship--

Rig Veda II, 8, 2

Tirukural - Chapter 59: Espionage (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-10T00:29:24Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Saturday, November 8, 2008

Tirukural
A daily chapter from South Indian saint Tiruvalluvar's Tirukural, "Holy Couplets."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 59: Espionage : Competent spies and the respected codes of law--
consider these two the eyes of a king.

Kural 581
Competent spies and the respected codes of law--
consider these two the eyes of a king.
Kural 582
Duty requires the monarch to swiftly acquire
knowledge of all happenings among all men each day.
Kural 583
Without assessing the intelligence reports of informants,
a king can never achieve victory.
Kural 584
The working staff, close kindred and known enemies--
all such people are the legitimate study of spies.
Kural 585
An able spy is one who can assume an unsuspicious disguise,
is fearless when caught and never betrays his secrets.
Kural 586
Disguised as a monk or a mendicant, the master spy
moves about investigating all, never careless, come what may.
Kural 587
A spy must ferret out hidden facts,
assuring himself that knowledge found is beyond doubt.
Kural 588
Before believing one spy's espionage,
have another spy espy the information.
Kural 589
See that informants do not know one another,
and accept their findings only when three reports agree.
Kural 590
One must not openly honor operatives.
To do so is to divulge one's deepest secrets.

The Master Course - Lesson 211 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-10T00:28:35Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Sunday, November 9, 2008

The Master Course
The lesson of the day from Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's trilogy: Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva
Lesson 211
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lesson 211 : What Is Dharma? What Are Its Forms?
Dharma is the law of being, the orderly fulfillment of an inherent nature and destiny. Dharma is of four main divisions, which are God's law at work on four levels of our existence: universal, human, social and personal. Aum.

Sloka 56 from Dancing with Siva
What Is Dharma? What Are Its Forms?
Dharma is the law of being, the orderly fulfillment of an inherent nature and destiny. Dharma is of four main divisions, which are God's law at work on four levels of our existence: universal, human, social and personal. Aum.

Bhashya
When God created the universe, He endowed it with order, with the laws to govern creation. Dharma is God's divine law prevailing on every level of existence, from the sustaining cosmic order to religious and moral laws which bind us in harmony with that order. We are maintained by dharma, held in our most perfect relationship within a complex universe. Every form of life, every group of men, has its dharma, the law of its being. When we follow dharma, we are in conformity with the Truth that inheres and instructs the universe, and we naturally abide in closeness to God. Adharma is opposition to divine law. Dharma prevails in the laws of nature and is expressed in our culture and heritage. It is piety and ethical practice, duty and obligation. It is the path which leads us to liberation. Universal dharma is known as rita. Social dharma is varna dharma. Human dharma is known as ashrama dharma. Our personal dharma is svadharma. Hinduism, the purest expression of these four timel
ess dharmas, is called Sanatana Dharma. The Vedas proclaim, "There is nothing higher than dharma. Verily, that which is dharma is Truth." Aum Namah Sivaya.

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Lesson 211 from Living with Siva
The Computer Generation
You have all met the new, cool, calculating computer generation, about which I have an observation. And it is truly the human right of every soul on the planet, at this time in the Kali Yuga, to make observations and comment on them. Furthermore, it is the duty of concerned men and women to speak out on what they observe, to thus reaffirm the dharma. My observation is that learning from computers is taking youth in the opposite direction from sampradaya, the imparting of wisdom person to person, heart to heart, mind to mind, teacher to student, satguru to shishya. The teacher passes on not only information, but the mature refinements of attitude and behavior through personal guidance and healthy association.

Young people used to love and respect, honor and extol their teachers. They would work to qualify to get into prestigious schools and vie with one another for the privilege of sitting before an Einstein or a Bose. Now they can buy advanced teachings on a CD or order them up freely on the World Wide Web. Maybe soon they will be able to download their diploma, to sign, frame and hang on the wall!

In 1993, Prodigy, one of the largest producers of computer educational material, said that 300,000 of its two million online users are children. There they find encyclopedias, games, chat forums and interactive books and magazines, such as NOVA, National Geographic and more. There are several "homework helpers" that can access volumes of data at the click of a mouse. The Software Publisher's Association, a research group based in Washington, D.C., says the market for CD-ROM educational software is skyrocketing. For example, entranced before the computer, a child can explore every inch of an eighteenth century warship, displayed in cross-sectional views, meet the crew, study navigational tools and search for the young stowaway hidden somewhere in the hull.

"What's wrong with that?" you might ask. In itself, nothing. I am not against computers. We have dozens of them in our monasteries. My concern is that the student who learns predominantly from the computer receives too little person-to-person nourishment, and is not even obliged to express human feelings anymore. The feelings of love and appreciation, respect and adulation, of thankfulness, acceptance and responsibility can all be suppressed or, worse, never developed during the formative years of life.

Since the computer craze began, when Apple produced the Macintosh and Microsoft began marketing software, I have observed the impact on youths of learning mainly from computers rather than people. The outcome is a cool, calculating, almost robotic individual with a blank look in his eyes. He can just turn the computer off anytime and be the smartest one in the family. Does anyone really yet know what registers in the objective and subjective mind of a youth being educated by the computer, who spends nearly all of his waking hours glued to a computer screen? Does anyone care?
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Sutra 211 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Facing The Past To Prepare For Death
Siva's devotees give spiritual counseling to the terminally ill who are blessed with the knowledge of death's approach, showing ways to resolve the past so that Siva consciousness is their bridge during transition. Aum.
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Lesson 211 from Merging with Siva
Meet Your Physical Body

Introduce yourself to your physical body by looking into a mirror today, a full-length one if possible. Say to yourself aloud, "I am not my physical body. I am much greater than my physical body." You will immediately see this to be true if you approach the mirror and stand before it with these two thoughts in mind. Then listen to yourself saying, "I am not my physical body. I am much greater than my physical body." The physical body is only one of the vehicles through which your highest being functions. To gain a concept of how much greater you really are, you must first begin bringing those several vehicles under your conscious control. This is done first by using the power of understanding, which is about fifty percent of the application of control when it comes to the world of the mind.

Quite often new aspirants coming to me to enter the classical yoga path will say, "I am sick of this body and its desires. I want to renounce it and live entirely spiritually." There is nothing wrong with such a resolve, except that usually the aspirant really means, "I have no control over my body. I don't understand it, nor any of my emotional drives. They control me, and somehow I can't get away from the consciousness of them."

As long as you react to your physical body, despising or cherishing it too much, you cannot progress well in sadhana or religious life. However, through the practice of concentration of the flow of thought forces, and through the deliberate use of your willpower, the power of cognition, deep understanding will unfold within you, acting as a controlling agent of the odic forces that sometimes can be so turbulent.

As an exercise in concentration, locate the different parts of your physical body through feeling while sitting still. Feel all of your muscles. Feel each bone. Locate them with your mind's eye. Feel every organ, your heart, your liver, etc. Feel your circulatory system, the warmth, the flow. You are using the feeling faculties of the subconscious mind, the part of the subconscious that governs the involuntary processes of the body. The other part governs the involuntary processes of the mind, such as habits. In feeling the various parts of the body you are actually becoming consciously conscious of odic force, using the aggressive vibration of this force to become conscious of the physical body.

Vedic Verses for 11/9/08 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-10T00:27:52Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Sunday, November 9, 2008

Vedic Verses
A daily collection of verses from the Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scripture
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Vedic Verses for 11/9/08 : Let there be no neglect of the duties to the Gods and the fathers. Be one to whom the mother is a God. Be one to whom the father is a God. Be one to whom the teacher is a God. Be one to whom the guest is a God.

Let there be no neglect of the duties to the Gods and the fathers. Be one to whom the mother is a God. Be one to whom the father is a God. Be one to whom the teacher is a God. Be one to whom the guest is a God.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Taittiraya Upanishad 1.11.1-2. upr, 537-8

Find a quiet retreat for the practice of yoga, sheltered from the wind, level and clean, free from rubbish, smoldering fires and ugliness, and where the sound of waters and the beauty of the place help thought and contemplation.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Svetasvatara Upanishad 2.10. upm, 88

Lightness, healthiness, steadiness, clearness of complexion, pleasantness of voice, sweetness of odor, and slight excretions-these, they say, are the first results of the progress of yoga.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Svetasvatara Upanishad 2.13. upr, 723

Of lords the Lord Supreme, of kings the King, of Gods the God, Him let us worship-transcendent, Lord of all worlds and wholly worthy of worship.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Svetasvatara Upanishad 6.7. ve, 156

A man comes to Thee in fearful wonder and says: Thou art God who never was born. Let thy face, Rudra, shine upon me, and let thy love be my eternal protection.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Svetasvatara Upanishad 4.21. upm, 93

Tirukural - Chapter 60: Possession of Industriousness (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com )

2008-11-10T00:27:18Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Sunday, November 9, 2008

Tirukural
A daily chapter from South Indian saint Tiruvalluvar's Tirukural, "Holy Couplets."

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Chapter 60: Possession of Industriousness

Kural 591
Possessing belongs only to the industrious. Do those
who lack such energy really possess their possessions?
Kural 592
Those who own a mental energy possess a thing of worth.
Material wealth is an unenduring possession that goes away.
Kural 593
Those who possess persevering industry
will never say in despair, "We have lost our wealth."
Kural 594
Good fortune of its own accord ferrets out and
finds the man of unflagging energy.
Kural 595
The length of the lotus stalk depends on the water's depth.
Even so, a man's greatness is proportionate to his mind's energy.
Kural 596
Let all thoughts be thoughts of noble progress,
for then even failing cannot be called a failure.
Kural 597
Elephants stand firm even when wounded by a barrage of arrows.
Strong-willed men are not discouraged when they meet disaster.
Kural 598
Without a zealous spirit, one will never enjoy
the proud exhilaration of the world's generosity.
Kural 599
The towering elephant, with his tapering tusks,
still shrinks in fear when a fierce tiger attacks.
Kural 600
An industrious mind is a man's real wealth.
Lacking it, he is immobile--more tree-like than human.

Gulf of Mannar for World Heritage Site (webmaster@hinducounciluk.org)

2008-11-10T00:26:42Z

From: webmaster@hinducounciluk.org Date: Monday, November 10, 2008

Gulf of Mannar for World Heritage Site

We would like to invite everybody to the first meeting calling for the Governments of India and Sri Lanka to take steps to have the Gulf of Mannar designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.. The meeting will be held at the historic Linnean Society of London, UK, from 25 – 26 November 2008. The theme for the meeting is "The Gulf of Mannar as a World Heritage Site and its Spiritual and Scientific Relevance to the Earth's Changing Climate".

Our goals for this two-day meeting are simple but bold - to raise awareness of the diverse global importance of the Gulf of Mannar, and work towards the designation of the Gulf of Mannar as a UNESCO World Heritage mixed Natural and Cultural site - an aim vital in the global campaign to preserve biodiversity. We also hope to promote an unprecedented international campaign calling for cancellation of the Sethusamudram Ship Channel Project (SSCP). As you may know, this project threatens one of the world's most pristine marine regions, the many marine species living there that already face extinction and the culturally and spiritually significant Adam's Bridge, also known as Ram Sethu.

World-leading conservationists, ecologists and religious scholars will present the case for designating the Gulf of Mannar as a World Heritage Site and explain why the SSCP should be abandoned. The area's spiritual and scientific relevance to the Earth's changing climate will also be explored.

We also believe the London meeting will provide an effective and ongoing forum for the growing number of scientific and cultural organizations from across the globe that share a vision of sustainable development. It is our hope that this forum will send a powerful message to the world's leaders challenging them to engage with and support scientific and cultural debate in any developmental project that impacts upon the Earth's changing climate or our sacred sites.

A distinguished International Advisory Board headed by Dr. Peter Bunyard is supporting organisation of the meeting. Renowned scientists and religious scholars such as Dr. Anantanand Rambachan will make presentations in the areas, which will be affected by the SSCP, including: -

Environmental/Ecological/Marine Life/Migratory Birds
Ram Sethu/Adam's Bridge as a breakwater
Threat to human livelihood
Affects on agriculture
Project economics
Damage due to marine accidents/cyclones/general pollution
Environmental disasters
Cultural and religious perspectives
Defiance of global conventions/local laws
Security concerns
Among the participants will be Dr. Wangari Maathai, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. She will send a message by video link from Kenya.

To help us plan better, I would request you and members of your organisation to confirm your attendance by November 20th. Please call Anna Karlsson at 0207 229 2093 or send her an e-mail at
info@rainforestconcern.org to confirm your attendance.

I attach additional details about the two-day meeting. More information is also available at our website www.livingplanetfoundation.org.

I do hope I will see you at The Linnean Society.

Yours faithfully,

Kusum Vyas
Gulf of Mannar World Heritage Site Campaign

Linnean Society of London
Burlington House
Piccadilly
London W1J 0BF, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7434 4479
(Visit www.linnean.org for more details)

Note : Hindu Council UK (HCUK) is the foremost and largest national network of the Hindu temple bodies and cultural organisations co-ordinating all different schools of Hindu theology within the UK. HCUK is the representative umbrella body for the British Hindu issues for which a UK wide mandate was received during a two year consultation with the British Hindu public culminating in its launch in November 1994.

HCUK Admin Office:Boardman House, 64 The Broadway, London E15 1NG. T: 020 8432 0400 W: www.hinducounciluk.org F: 020 8432 0393

Gospel of Jesus; can you believe this?) Holy Bible - New Testament, Luke 12; 51-53: Jesus said: i) Holy Bible - New Testament, Luke 12; 51-53: Jesus said: ii)Holy Bible, New Testament, Luke 20; 27 : Jesus said: for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and kill them in my presence.

2008-11-08T01:03:16Z

Moon images beamed by Chandrayaan-1 (Indian Express)

2008-11-08T00:48:44Z

From: Indian Express date: 8.11.08

Express News Service First Published : 06 Nov 2008 03:58:00 AM ISTLast Updated : 06 Nov 2008 10:04:04 AM ISTBANGALORE: India’s rendezvous with the moon is heading in the right direction.

Following the final orbit raising manoeuvre which has put the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft closer to the moon, the first black and white images of the moon have been beamed by the spacecraft.

The images which can be seen only on the television screens have been transmitted to the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN) at Byalalu.

ISRO officials said that the beaming of the images was satisfactory and that it was sent when the spacecraft was propelled for the fifth and final orbit raising manoeuvre.

The Chandrayaan-1 has entered the Lunar Transfer Trajectory with an apogee (farthest point to Earth) of about 380,000 km. Chandrayaan- 1 will approach the moon on November 8 and the spacecraft’s liquid engine will be fired again to insert the spacecraft into lunar orbit.

Earlier this month, the Chandrayaan-1’s camera was tested as the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) onboard Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft beamed two images capturing the Australia’s Northern and Southern coast.

The Chandrayaan-1 which was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on October 22 has 11 payloads. Apart from the TMC, the other four Indian payloads of Chandrayaan-1 are the Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI

Tirukural - Chapter 58: The Kindly Look (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-08T00:37:01Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Friday, November 7, 2008

Tirukural
A daily chapter from South Indian saint Tiruvalluvar's Tirukural, "Holy Couplets."

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Chapter 58: The Kindly Look : The fairest graciousness, they say, is a kindly look. Wherever it thrives, the whole world flourishes.

Kural 571
The fairest graciousness, they say, is a kindly look.
Wherever it thrives, the whole world flourishes.
Kural 572
It is compassion that sustains the world's existence.
The existence of those bereft of it is a burden to the Earth.
Kural 573
What use is melody in an unmusical song?
What use are eyes that express no sympathy?
Kural 574
Other than being facial ornaments, what do eyes
with no quality of kindness really do?
Kural 575
A compassionate glance is the eyes' true ornament.
Without such kindness, eyes become unsightly sores.
Kural 576
Eyes that remain unmoved by pity might as well
be unmovable tree stumps bound in earth.
Kural 577
Those who lack a kindly look are indeed without eyes,
and those who truly have eyes never lack a gracious look.
Kural 578
This world belongs to those who, while neglecting no duty,
never neglect to behold others benevolently.
Kural 579
To grant forbearing kindness even to those
who aggrieve us is the foremost of virtues.
Kural 580
Desiring to be gracious above all else, guests may politely accept
even poison they watched their host prepare and serve.

• Email to a friend • •

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These daily couplets are drawn from Saint Tiruvalluvar's Tirukural, an ethical masterpiece written over 2,200 years ago in South India. This American English translation, known as Weaver's Wisdom, is available at our Minimela online store.

Vedic Verses for 11/7/08 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-08T00:36:14Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Friday, November 7, 2008

Vedic Verses
A daily collection of verses from the Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scripture

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Vedic Verses for 11/7/08 : When I said: I take refuge in Svah, what I said was: I take refuge in the Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda and Sama-Veda.

When I said: I take refuge in Svah, what I said was: I take refuge in the Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda and Sama-Veda. That is what I said, yea, that is what I said.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XV - Meditation on the Universe as a Chest, 7

A person, indeed, is a sacrifice. His first twenty-four years constitute the morning libation. The Gayatri metre has twenty-four syllables and the morning libation is offered with Gayatri hymns. The Vasus are connected with that part of the sacrifice.The pranas are the Vasus; for, verily, they make everything abide (visayanti) in this body.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVI - Man as a Sacrifice (I), 1

If anything ails him during that period, he should recite the following mantra: O ye pranas, ye Vasus, unite this morning libation with the midday libation. May I, who am a sacrifice, not disappear in the midst of the pranas, who are the Vasus. Thus he rises from his illness and becomes free of it.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVI - Man as a Sacrifice (I), 2

His next forty-four years constitute the midday libation. The Tristubh metre has forty-four syllables and the midday libation is offered with Tristubh hymns. The Rudras are connected with that part of the sacrifice. The pranas are the Rudras; for, verily, they make everything weep (rodayanti).

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVI - Man as a Sacrifice (I), 3

If anything ails him during that second period, he should recite the following mantra: O ye pranas, ye Rudras, unite this midday libation with the third libation. May I, who am a sacrifice, not disappear in the midst of the pranas, who are the Rudras.Thus he rises from his illness and becomes free of it.

Sama Veda, Chandogya Upanishad III, XVI - Man as a Sacrifice (I), 4

• Email to a friend • •

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These daily verses are drawn from the Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scriptures, which are 6,000 to 8,000 years old. Many of the verses are from the book The Vedic Experience, by Raimundo Panikkar, available at our Minimela online store.

Were Obama and McCain Campaigns Hacked? (rakesh@sysman.in)

2008-11-08T00:34:49Z

From: rakesh@sysman.in Date: Friday, November 7, 2008

HACK : Were Obama and McCain Campaigns Hacked?

India's internal security is at stake due to cyber terrorism which is the result of misuse of data entry and information, observed Dr B A Mahesh, Superintendent of Police, Bangalore Rural district.

He was speaking at a seminar on ‘Information and Communication Technology and National Security with Special Focus on ‘Cyber Security’ at ‘Bangalore IT.Biz 2008’ here on Thursday. “It is high time cyber terrorism is stopped for which, the government has taken initiatives like strengthening of cyber security policy, setting up of digital forensic centres and imparting of security training and capacity building skills to netizens and police to prevent cyber crimes,” Dr Mahesh added. The cyber crime rate in the IT capital City, Bangalore, has been on the rise.

Twenty cases were registered in 2006, 31 in 2007 and 46 in 2008, however, good number of such cases have gone unnoticed. If the same trend continues, IT field and general public will be the worst hit victims of cyber crime. Hence, the government and IT companies should evolve a system to end the menace, Mahesh stressed.

The Cyber Crime Cell of Bangalore is in a pathetic state. The Cell has only four DySPs, four police inspectors, 10 head constables and five constables who o lack knowledge and skills to tackle cyber crimes. The government should appoint more staff besides training them with latest skills to handle the situation. Cyber centres should be instructed to follow norms strictly before allowing any customer to operate.

Dr Gulshan Rai, Director, Indian Computer Emergency, Response Team, also stressed the need for taking steps to prevent cyber crimes.

Dr. Kamalesh Bajaj, CEO, Data Security Council of India said, India is leading in the world in data entry and processing as well as misuse of the same.

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LAW : Pakistan sets death penalty for "cyber terrorism"

Nov 6, 2008

http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-36364220081106

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Causing death through "cyber terrorism" will be punishable by death in Pakistan, according to a decree issued by President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday.

The Prevention of Electronic Crimes law will be applicable to anyone who commits a crime detrimental to national security through the use of a computer or any other electronic device, the government said in the ordinance.

"Whoever commits the offence of cyber terrorism and causes death of any person shall be punishable with death or imprisonment for life," according to a copy of the ordinance, published by the state-run APP news agency.

The law will apply to Pakistanis and foreigners whether living in Pakistan or abroad.

The ordinance described cyber terrorism as accessing of a computer network or electronic system by someone who then "knowingly engages in or attempts to engage in a terroristic act".

The ordinance listed several definitions of a "terroristic act" including stealing or copying, or attempting to steal or copy, classified information necessary to manufacture any form of chemical, biological or nuclear weapon.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is a front-line state in the U.S.-led campaign against militancy and security forces are fighting al Qaeda and Taliban militants, most of whom are based in the northwest, near the Afghan border.

The ordinance also set out punishments for other offences including illegal electronic entry into systems of any sensitive installations, electronic fraud, electronic forgery, system damage, unauthorised access to codes and misuse of encryption.

Punishments for those crimes ranged from three to 10 years in prison.

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LAW REVERSED : German court curbs data collection law

34,000 class action suit pays off

By Jan Libbenga

6th November 2008

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/06/german_curbs_data_law/

Germany's Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe today has curbed Germany's wide-reaching data collection law even further, by stating that the data can only be collected and saved in case of real danger to citizens. The Court decided in response to a class action suit filed by 34,000 Germans.

The data collection law, which politicians said would help prevent terrorist attacks, went into effect in January 2008. It gave federal government broad access to stored telephone and internet data, including email addresses, for at least six months.

The bill, part of an EU directive formulated in response to bomb attacks in Madrid and London, immediately sparked controversy among free-market liberals, privacy advocates and civil rights groups, which criticised its scope. In Hamburg, demonstaters staged a mock funeral marking The Death of Privacy.

In December 2007, 34,000 opponents filed the class action suit, the biggest of its kind in Germany.

March saw the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe issue an injunction against the law, saying it needed further review. Authorities would only be allowed to access it under extreme circumstances, and with a warrant. Also, the law could only be used for serious crime investigations such as murder, theft, child pornography, money laundering, corruption, tax evasion and fraud.

Using the saved data for prosecuting individuals who illegally downloaded music and movies was ruled out completely.

The ruling was seen as a serious blow to tighter security measures by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.

The ruling today finally puts an end to crossing the limits of constitutionality on citizen rights, critics say. Data can only be collected when the stability or security of Germany or another country need to be defended and "life, limb, and freedom of German citizens" need to be protected.

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HACK : Were Obama and McCain Campaigns Hacked?

Hackers and Spending Sprees

Highlights from NEWSWEEK's special election project.

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Nov 5, 2008

http://www.newsweek.com/id/167581

The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown "foreign entity," prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.

At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus—a case of "phishing," a form of hacking often employed to steal passwords or credit-card numbers. But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: "You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team. "You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system." The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: "You have a real problem ... and you have to deal with it." The Feds told Obama's aides in late August that the McCain campaign's computer system had been similarly compromised. A top McCain official confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the campaign's computer system had been hacked and that the FBI had become involved.

Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions—information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration. The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week.

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband.
Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

A Palin aide said: "Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin."

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

The disclosures are among many revealed in "How He Did It, 2008," the latest installment in NEWSWEEK's Special Election Project, which was first published in 1984. As in the previous editions, "How He Did It, 2008" is an inside, behind-the-scenes account of the presidential election produced by a special team of reporters working for more than a year on an embargoed basis and detached from the weekly magazine and Newsweek.com. Everything the project team learns is kept confidential until the day after the polls close.

Among the other revelations from the special project:

v The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. "Why would they try to make people hate us?" Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

v On the Sunday night before the last debate, McCain's core group of advisers—Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis, adman Fred Davis, strategist Greg Strimple, pollster Bill McInturff and strategy director Sarah Simmons—met to decide whether to tell McCain that the race was effectively over, that he no longer had a chance to win. The consensus in the room was no, not yet, not while he still had "a pulse."

v The Obama campaign's New Media experts created a computer program that would allow a "flusher"—the term for a volunteer who rounds up nonvoters on Election Day—to know exactly who had, and had not, voted in real time. They dubbed it Project Houdini, because of the way names disappear off the list instantly once people are identified as they wait in line at their local polling station.

v Palin launched her attack on Obama's association with William Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber, before the campaign had finalized a plan to raise the issue. McCain's advisers were working on a strategy that they hoped to unveil the following week, but McCain had not signed off on it, and top adviser Mark Salter was resisting.

v McCain also was reluctant to use Obama's incendiary pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as a campaign issue. The Republican had set firm boundaries: no Jeremiah Wright; no attacking Michelle Obama; no attacking Obama for not serving in the military. McCain balked at an ad using images of children that suggested that Obama might not protect them from terrorism. Schmidt vetoed ads suggesting thatObama was soft on crime (no Willie Hortons). And before word even got to McCain, Schmidt and Salter scuttled a "celebrity" ad of Obama dancing with talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres (the sight of a black man dancing with a lesbian was deemed too provocative).

v Obama was never inclined to choose Sen. Hillary Clinton as his running mate, not so much because she had been his sometime bitter rival on the campaign trail, but because of her husband. Still, as Hillary's name came up in veep discussions, and Obama's advisers gave all the reasons why she should be kept off the ticket, Obama would stop and ask, "Are we sure?" He needed to be convinced one more time that the Clintons would do more harm than good. McCain, on the other hand, was relieved to face Sen. Joe Biden as the veep choice, and not Hillary Clinton, whom the McCain camp had truly feared.

v McCain was dumbfounded when Congressman John Lewis, a civil-rights hero, issued a press release comparing the GOP nominee with former Alabama governor George Wallace, a segregationist infamous for stirring racial fears. McCain had devoted a chapter to Lewis in one of his books, "Why Courage Matters," and had so admired Lewis that he had once taken his children to meet him.

v On the night she officially lost the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton enjoyed a long and friendly phone conversation with McCain. Clinton was actually on better terms with McCain than she was with Obama. Clinton and McCain had downed shots together on Senate junkets; they regarded each other as grizzled veterans of the political wars and shared a certain disdain for Obama as flashy and callow.

v At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

v The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

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New IT Term of the day

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snake oil

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Refers to a cryptography or security product that makes exaggerated claims of what the product is capable of, giving the user a false sense of security. The term snake oil, which is credited to Matt Curtin for using in reference to computer security products, comes from the 19th-century American practice of selling cure-all elixirs in traveling medicine shows. Snake oil salesmen would falsely claim that the potions would cure any ailments. The term has been appropriated to mean security and encryption products that make impossible claims, such as unbreakable codes.

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Quote of the day

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There is only one difference between dream and aim -

Dream requires Soundless sleep to see

Where as Aim Requires Sleepless Efforts to Achieve

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Note -

As a member of this group, you get useful information to protect yourself and your IT assets and processes from various Computer and Related Crimes.
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Gospel of Jesus; can you believe this? i) Holy Bible - New Testament, Luke 12; 51-53: Jesus said: "Do you suppose that I came to bring peace to the World? No, not peace, but division. From now on a family of five will be divided, three against two and two against three. Fathers will be against their sons, and sons against their fathers; mothers will be against their daughters and daughters against their mothers; mothers-in-law will be against their daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law." ii)Holy Bible, New Testament, Luke 20; 27 : Jesus said: for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and kill them in my presence.

2008-11-07T01:31:00Z

Was America Attacked by Iraqi Muslims on 9/11? (hinduforum@live.com )

2008-11-07T01:13:58Z

From: hinduforum@live.com Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008

MUCH of America's foreign policy since 9/11 has been based on the assumption that it was attacked by Muslims on that day. This assumption was used, most prominently, to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is now widely agreed that the use of 9/11 as a basis for attacking Iraq was illegitimate: none of the hijackers were Iraqis, there was no working relation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and Iraq was not behind the anthrax attacks. But it is still widely believed that the US attack on Afghanistan was justified. For example, the New York Times, while referring to the US attack on Iraq as a "war of choice," calls the battle in Afghanistan a "war of necessity." Time magazine has dubbed it "the right war." And Barack Obama says that one reason to wind down our involvement in Iraq is to have the troops and resources to "go after the people in Afghanistan who actually attacked us on 9/11."

The assumption that America was attacked by Muslims on 9/11 also lies behind the widespread perception of Islam as an inherently violent religion and therefore of Muslims as guilty until proven innocent. This perception surely contributed to attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim, which was lampooned by a controversial cartoon on the July 21, 2008, cover of The New Yorker.

As could be illustrated by reference to many other post-9/11 developments, including as spying, torture, extraordinary rendition, military tribunals, America's new doctrine of preemptive war, and its enormous increase in military spending, the assumption that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by Muslim hijackers has had enormous negative consequences for both international and domestic issues.1

Is it conceivable that this assumption might be false? Insofar as Americans and Canadians would say "No," they would express their belief that this assumption is not merely an "assumption" but is instead based on strong evidence. When actually examined, however, the proffered evidence turns out to be remarkably weak. I will illustrate this point by means of 16 questions. . . .

FULL TEXT at

http://www.twf.org/News/Y2008/0909-911.html

David Ray Griffin is professor emeritus at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, where he taught philosophy of religion and theology, with special emphases on the problem of evil and the relations between science and religion, theology and ecology, religion and politics, and modernity and postmodernity. He has published 34 books, including seven about 9/11, most recently The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, The Cover-Up, and the Expose (Olive Branch, 2008). Dr. Griffin's previous books about 9/11 include The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004), The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (2005), The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God (2005, co-authored with John B. Cobb, Jr., Richard Falk, and Catherine Keller), Christian Faith and the Truth about 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action (2006), 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (2006, co-edited with Peter Dale Scott),
Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (2007), and 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (2008).

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A Cry from an Iraqi Christian woman! Where are you our beloved SaddamHussein? (sridharswami@aol.com)

2008-11-07T01:12:42Z

From: sridharswami@aol.com Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008

I AM an Iraqi Christian woman from Mosul. We the Christians are the sons and daughters of this very soil of Iraq. In our beloved Iraq, were born our children, our fathers and our forefathers.. We are a part of this sacred land of Iraq.. We participated into building and defending Iraq.. I couldn't help but to write to you, dear fellow Iraqis

The bloodthirsty Kurdish Peshmergas are persecuting us..we the Iraqi Christians: They are burning our millennia churches..They are the ones who murdered the Archbishop of Mosul the martyr Paulos Faraj Rahho..for he was a real patriot. He loathed the US occupation, didn't want to leave Mosul and defied the bloodthirsty Kurdish Peshmergas.. The Zionist Media in the West represent the peshmergas as the angels and the wonderful.. I heard that even in France these Kurdish murderers have a mother called la Madame Danielle Mitterrand.. Let Danielle Mitterrand the peshmergas' mother and Kouchner, their father, come and see what their wonderful bloodthirsty

To day the Peshmergas murdered my son accusing him of terrorism.. I know pretty well that the murderers are the Peshmergas.. for they speak bad Arabic and they are backwards and savages in their behavior. Indeed the two Kurdish Parties of Talabani and Barazani, helped and advised by the Zionist Mossad, are the most debased terrorists. Now we understand that they were behind the burning and the destruction of more than forty of our millennia Christians churches in Mosul and in Baghdad. They ere behind the murder of father Ragheed and three of the Al Noor's neighborhood' Church deacons.. just after finishing the Sunday mass.. Danielle Mitterrand' wonderful children, the debased Peshmergas, want to empty Mosul from any body who is against their Zionist p

Listen! The US propaganda and the Media liars say things are improving in Iraq! Let the world come and see: thousands of Iraqi Christians are forced to leave their homes by the US allies, the Peshmergas.. I am a living proof! I have been forced to leave my home! so were my son and my daughter. We were thrown into the streets.. homeless. Nowhere to go and with no help and we endure a great suffering. We lost every thing, all our savings.. and our children can no longer go to schools.. and the US occupation since the last six years has brought us en

Mujahedeen! I beseech you, by the Prophet Mohammed and by our Lord Jesus Christ and shout for your help as did the daughter of Amurya, I shout : our beloved Saddam Hussein where are you ? I beg the heroes men of Saddam Hussein..to come and help their Christian brothers.. for our beloved Saddam Hussein loved so much Christians and every minority in Iraq, Saddam Hussein never was sectarian.. and today the enemies of human kind the backward Kurdish Peshmergas want to wipe us from the face of Iraq we the sons and daughters of Iraq..undertaking a real genocide against Christians burning our churches and murdering our clerics... We pre

Our Muslim brothers! I beseech you by God and His prophet to protect what is remaining of your Christian families, your brothers and sisters in Mosul. Resisters! Don't let the bloodthirsty peshmergas harm your Iraqi Christians brothers and sisters.. We entrust you our churches and our homes.. You must defend them so we shall stay, as always we did: one same family and one same people.

Under our beloved Saddam Hussein patriotic government we lived a normal life.. Now thanks to the bloodthirsty US occupation, we the Iraqis have all, become beggars. spreading our hands to the so called humanitarian organizations.. In any case whatever help we get from the puppet government and these so called humanitarian organizations is meaningless compared with us leaving our city Mosul..

Dear brothers Mujahideen! Forget not what the Great Prophet Mohammed once said : "The one who harms a Christian, harms me and the one who harms me harms God.. and I will never intercede for him in the day of judgment!" This phrase was repeated now and again by my murdered martyred son..

God have mercy on your Prophet Mohammed and on His servant the beloved of the Iraqis, martyr Saddam Hussein, and my son and all the innocent martyrs of the great Iraq. May the virgin Mary safeguard and protect all the Mujahideen who are fighting the bloodthirsty US beast.

Signed the daughter of Iraq..who from today on has no home.. until the expelling of the loathed bloodthirsty US' thugs thanks to the strength of your capable wrists.. All Iraqis are with you Mujahideen! We sacrifice our souls for you, our beloved Iraq.

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California, Florida ban same-sex marriages (youngindianpeople@gmail.com)

2008-11-07T01:11:03Z

From: youngindianpeople@gmail.com Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008

NEW YORK: Voters in California, Florida, and Arizona voted to ban same-sex marriages, much to the disappointment of homosexual groups.

The decision was celebrated by social conservatives, who had worked hard to overturn court rulings allowing such unions. But much to their chagrin, voters rejected provisions to restrict abortions in California, South Dakota, and Colorado.

Analysts said the measure to ban same-sex marriages was passed because black and Hispanic voters who helped to elect Barack Obama as president supported it. Obama also opposes such marriages.

Also approved by Arkansas voters was a measure intended to bar homosexual men and women from adopting children.

In California, supporters of same-sex marriages still held out a slim hope that the postal ballot might affect the outcome, but figures officially released showed that more than 52 per cent had voted for the ban. Analysts projected that the measure would win.

But homosexuals are reportedly planning to mount a legal challenge to the ban on the grounds that the vote against same-sex marriages violated the constitution.

With this, the only two states where homosexual marriages are legal are Massachusetts and Connecticut with New York and Rhode Island recognising such marriages performed in other states. Now some 30 states ban homosexual marriages.

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Sensex below 10,000 (: hinduforum@live.com)

2008-11-07T01:10:14Z

From: hinduforum@live.com Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008

MUMBAI: Banking stocks today tumbled by over five per cent in morning trade on the Bombay Stock Exchange amid weak investor sentiment which pulled the benchmark Sensex below the 10k level. ( Watch )

The index of banking stocks, bankex, opened at 5,399.89 points, and dipped by 5.17 per cent to a low of 5,342.40. It was later quoted at 5,484.65 points.

Among the heavy-weight stocks, ICICI Bank plunged 7.65 per cent to a low of Rs 417.10. It was later quoting at Rs 435.25, down 3.63 per cent on the BSE.

Country's largest lender State Bank of India also plunged five per cent to a low of Rs 1,212. It was trading at Rs 1,231, down 3.35 per cent on the BSE.

HDFC Bank also slipped 5.44 per cent to Rs 1,035, while Yes Bank also plunged 9.36 per cent to Rs 74.10.

Marketmen said overnight fall in the US markets and negative Asian markets dampened investor sentiments here leading to a fall in the stock prices.

Other PSU lenders which bore the brunt of the weak global sentiments include Bank of India, which dipped 3.84 per cent, Canara Bank (2.17 per cent) and Federal Bank (3.96 per cent).

Bucking the trend, Punjab National Bank gained 0.89 per cent at Rs 496.20 on the BSE. Besides, Kotak Bank gained 1.91 per cent and Oriental Bank gained 0.59 per cent in the morning trade.

The benchmark Sensex tumbled by over 430 points and dipped below the 10,000 level in early trade today on heavy selling by foreign funds as well as retail investors.

US stocks plummeted on Wednesday, a day after Barack Obama's historic victory in the US presidential election, as a fresh batch of dismal economic data underscored the massive challenges awaiting his administration.

Grim economic news included a report that showed deep cuts in employment by private employers in October and data that showed the vast service sector contracted sharply last month as the worst financial crisis in 80 years roiled the world's largest economy.

The drop marked Wall Street's biggest loss ever on the day after a presidential election, coming immediately on the heels of its biggest Election Day rally on record in the previous session.

The Dow Jones industrial average slid 486.01 points, or 5.05 per cent, to 9,139.27. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunged 52.98 points, or 5.27 per cent, to close at 952.77. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 98.48 points, or 5.53 percent, to 1,681.64.

Asian stocks also led losses sending the Nikkei down 5.25 per cent. The broader Topix sank 5.28 per cent, Hang Send dropped 6.72 per cent Straits fell 4.22 per cent.

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Armyman in blast net (uniqueindian@yahoo.in)

2008-11-07T01:09:19Z

From: uniqueindian@yahoo.in Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Mumbai, Nov. 5: A serving officer of the rank of lieutenant colonel was today arrested on the charge of being part of the conspiracy behind September’s Malegaon blast, sending shockwaves through the defence establishment.

Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, who was once part of the military intelligence set-up, was produced before chief judicial magistrate K.D. Boche in Nashik this afternoon. Boche remanded him in police custody till November 15.

The total number of arrests in the case has risen to nine, including Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Major (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay.

Public prosecutor Ajay Misar told the court the officer had allegedly sent five text messages to Upadhyay, founder of the Pune-based radical outfit Abhinav Bharat, after the probe zoomed in on the sadhvi and right-wing Hindu groups.

Sources said the anti-terrorist squad had traced text messages — like “The cat is out of the bag”, “Singh has sung” (referring to Shivnarain Singh Kalsangram, who was arrested along with the sadhvi), “We are on the radar of the ATS”, and “Change the Sim card”— to Purohit’s phone.

Arguing for police custody, Misar said a high-ranking army officer could have access to explosives stored in military depots, and hence the ATS wished to interrogate him for more information.

The prosecution also alleged that Purohit had carried out money transfers in six to seven cities, and is suspected to have used the hawala route.

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Excellence of Loving Human Beings for God (youngindianpeople@gmail.com)

2008-11-07T01:08:23Z

From: youngindianpeople@gmail.com Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008

MANY Ahadith describe the status of the two people who love one another for the sake of Allah, and describe the high position in Paradise, which He has promised them, and the great honor which He will bestow upon them on the day when mankind is resurrected to meet the Creator of the worlds: Among them is the Hadith which describes the seven whom Allah will shade on the Day when there is no shade but His: "...a just leader; a youth who grows up worshiping Allah; a man who is deeply attached to the mosque; two men who love one another for the sake of Allah, meeting for His sake and parting for His sake; a man who is called by a beautiful woman (for intercourse) and (he) says, I fear Allah'; a man who gives charity in secret such that his left hand does not know what his right hand is doing; and a man who remembers Allah when he is alone and his eyes fill with tears." (Bukhari and Muslim)

The two who love one another for the sake of Allah are clearly shown to be among those whom Allah will shelter with His shade and upon whom He will shower His mercy and kindness.

What a great honour! It is enough honour for those who love one another for the sake of Allah that their Almighty Creator will greet them on the Day of Resurrection and say to them: "Where are those who loved one another for My glory? Today, I will shade them in My shade on the day when there is no shade but Mine." (Muslim)

Such is the magnificent honour and tremendous reward that will be bestowed upon those who truly loved one another for the sake of Allah, on that awesome Day.

Love for the sake of Allah and not for the sake of anything else in this life, which is filled with greed, desires and interests, is very difficult, and none can attain it except the one who is pure of heart, for whom this world is as nothing compared to the pleasure of Allah.

It is not surprising that Allah should give them a status and blessing, which is commensurate with their position in this world, above whose concerns they have risen. We find proof of this in the Hadith of Hadhrat Mu'az (Radhi Allaho anho), who said that the Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) said:

"Allah said: 'Those who love one another for My glory, will have Minbars of light, and the holy prophets and martyrs will wish that they had the same." (Tirmizi)

Allah gives to those who love one another for His sake a gift which is even greater than this status and blessing: that is His precious love which is very difficult to attain. This is proven by the Hadith of Hadhrat Abu Hurairah (Radhi Allaho anho), in which the Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) said:

"A man went to visit a brother of his in another village. Allah sent an angel to wait for him on the road. When the man came along, the angel asked him, 'Where do you intend to go?' He said, 'I am going to visit a brother of mine who lives in this village.' The angel asked, 'Have you done him any favour (for which you are now seeking repayment)?' He said, 'No. I just love him for the sake of Allah.' The angel told him, I am a messenger to you from Allah, sent to tell you that He loves you as you love your brother for His sake.'" (Muslim)

What a great love, that raises a man to a position where Allah loves him and is pleased with him! The teaching of the Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) goes even further and states that the better of two brothers who love one another for the sake of Allah is the one who loves his brother more.

The Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) said: "No two men love one another, but the better of them is the one whose love for his brother is greater." (Bukhari)

Islam goes even further in spreading love in the rightly guided Muslim society by telling the Muslim that if he loves his brother, he should tell him. The Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) said: "If a man loves his brother, let him tell him that he loves him." (Abu Dawood and Tirmizi)

The Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) understood the impact of this strong, pure love in building societies and nations, so he never let any occasion pass without advocating this love and commanding the Muslims to announce their love for one another, in order to open hearts and spread love and purity among the ranks of the Ummah.

Hadhrat Anas (Radhi Allaho anho) said that a man was with the Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam), when another man passed by. The first man said, "O Messenger of Allah, indeed, I truly love this man." The Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) asked him, "Have you let him know that?" He said, "No." The Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) said, "Tell him."

He caught up with him and told him, "Truly I love you for the sake of Allah," and the man said, "May Allah love you who loves me for His sake." (Abu Dawood)

Hadhrat Mu'adh (Radhi Allaho anho) began to spread this pure love among the Muslims throughout the Muslim lands, telling them what he had heard from the Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) about the great reward that Allah had prepared for those who loved one another for His sake, and about His great love for them.

In Muwatta, Imaam Malik gives a report from Abu Idris Khulani, who said:

"I entered the mosque of Damascus, where I saw a young man who had a bright smile, and I saw the people gathered around him. When they disagreed on some matter, they referred it to him, and accepted his opinion. I asked who he was, and they told me, 'This is Mu'adh bin Jabal (Radhi Allaho anho)."

Early the next day, I went to the mosque but I found that he had arrived even earlier than me. He was praying, so I waited until he had finished, then I approached him from in front, greeted him and said, 'By Allah I love you.'

He said, 'For the sake of Allah?' I said, 'For the sake of Allah'. He repeated his question, 'For the sake of Allah?' and I said, 'For the sake of Allah.'

So he took hold of my collar and pulled me towards him and said, 'I have good news for you. I heard the Holy Prophet (Sall Allaho alaihe wasallam) saying: "Allah Almighty says: 'My love is granted to those who love one another for My sake, who visit one another for My sake, and who spend on one another for My sake.'"' (IQRA)

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Vedic Verses for 11/6/08 : (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-07T01:07:26Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com (Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008)

Vedic Verses
A daily collection of verses from the Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scripture
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Vedic Verses for 11/6/08

Let the five directions and races of men bring to our doors prosperity, as after the rains (in a swollen flood) a river carries down driftwood.

Atharva Veda III, 24, 3

As a spring gushes forth in a hundred, a thousand, streams, and yet stays inexhaustible, so in a thousand streams may our corn flow inexhaustibly!

Atharva Veda III, 24, 4

Reap, you workers, one hundred hands, garner, you workers, one thousand hands! Gather in the bounteous corn that is cut or still waits on the stalk.

Atharva Veda III, 24, 5

Three measures I apportion to the Spirits, four measures to the mistress of the house, while you I touch with the amplest measure (of all that the field has yielded).

Atharva Veda III, 24, 6

Reaper and Garnerer are your two distributors, O Lord of creation. May they convey hither an ample store of riches never decreasing!

Atharva Veda III, 24, 7

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These daily verses are drawn from the Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scriptures, which are 6,000 to 8,000 years old. Many of the verses are from the book The Vedic Experience, by Raimundo Panikkar, available at our Minimela online store.

Tirukural - Chapter 57: Avoidance of Tyranny (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-07T01:05:57Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008

Tirukural
A daily chapter from South Indian saint Tiruvalluvar's Tirukural, "Holy Couplets."

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Chapter 57: Avoidance of Tyranny

Kural 561
He is a true king who impartially investigates
and then duly punishes so that the offense will not recur.
Kural 562
He who wishes his prosperity to long remain
will raise the rod severely, but let it fall softly.
Kural 563
The tyrant who causes dread in his people
will perish quickly and inevitably.
Kural 564
"Our king is cruel." When these bitter words are spoken,
the monarch's life is shortened, and he soon succumbs.
Kural 565
If a man's countenance is harsh and access to him is hard,
his wealth, however vast, might as well belong to a demon.
Kural 566
If a man is unkind and speaks cruelly,
his vast wealth will not last long before perishing.
Kural 567
Harsh language and overly severe punishment,
like a keen file, grind down a king's conquering powers.
Kural 568
A king's wealth wanes when, without thoughtful involvement,
he lets ministers work, then furiously faults their efforts.
Kural 569
The sovereign who does not secure defenses will be seized
by fear when wartime comes and promptly perish.
Kural 570
Earth bears no greater burden than crude counselors
that a cruel-sceptered king binds to his court.

The Master Course - Lesson 208 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-07T01:05:02Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008

The Master Course
The lesson of the day from Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's trilogy: Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva

Lesson 208

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Lesson 208

Sloka 53 from Dancing with Siva
Does Hell Really Exist? Is There a Satan?
There is no eternal hell, nor is there a Satan. However, there are hellish states of mind and woeful births for those who think and act wrongfully--temporary tormenting conditions that lift the fiery forces within. Aum.

Bhashya
Hell, termed Naraka, is the lower astral realm of the seven chakras below the muladhara. It is a place of fire and heat, anguish and dismay, of confusion, despair and depression. Here anger, jealousy, argument, mental conflict and tormenting moods plague the mind. Access to hell is brought about by our own thoughts, words, deeds and emotions--suppressed, antagonistic feelings that court demons and their aggressive forces. Hell is not eternal. Nor is there a Satan who tempts man and opposes God's power, though there are devilish beings called asuras, immature souls caught in the abyss of deception and hurtfulness. We do not have to die to suffer the Naraka regions, for hellish states of mind are also experienced in the physical world. If we do die in a hellish state of consciousness--burdened by unresolved hatred, remorse, resentment, fear and distorted patterns of thought--we arrive in Naraka fully equipped to join others in this temporary astral purgatory. The Vedas say, "Su
nless and demonic, verily, are those worlds, and enveloped in blinding darkness, to which all those people who are enemies of their own souls go after death." Aum Namah Sivaya.

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Lesson 208 from Living with Siva
Steps Against Bribery
Bribery breeds an educated criminal generation. It blocks the free flow of business. Bribery disrupts positive projects. Bribery diverts creative energies to worries about who, if not paid, will disrupt the progress, cut the phone lines, turn off the electric power or otherwise cause delay after delay after delay. Bribery is devastating to a nation's economy. No one knows how much anything really costs; and since it is illegal money, black money, the recipients don't pay taxes on it. Two sets of books have to be kept. Honest companies are put out of business by dishonest competitors who give and accept bribes.

What can be done about bribery? On the governmental level, there are instructive examples from recent history. Twenty years ago in America, undercover FBI agents approached various politicians and offered them bribes to help a fictitious Arab company gain American business. A few politicians accepted the bribes and quickly found themselves jailed. Every politician got the message. A few years ago, New Orleans hired a new police chief to reform its notoriously corrupt police force. First he demanded and got the officers' pay doubled. Then he arrested, prosecuted and fired the next sixty-five officers caught taking bribes. The rest, it's said, no longer risk their now well-paying careers for bribe money.

Internationally, only the United States has a law preventing its companies from bribing foreign officials. As far as we know, other countries--including all of Europe--have refused to pass similar statutes on the excuse that it would put their business communities at a disadvantage. In fact, the bribes so paid are even tax-deductible. Yet, the same companies' paying a bribe in their own country can result in prosecution. One organization, Transparency International in Berlin, is attempting to end this global double standard which makes it so difficult for individual countries to root out the scourge of bribery.

From a psychological point of view, bribery is a criminal consciousness of deceit, cheating, on the darker side of life. Guilt is always involved, secrecy, fear of being caught for extorting funds, fear of what might happen if bribes are not paid and worry over obligations incurred by accepting bribes. Such surreptitious dealings create an erosion of trust in society.

Bribery is basically stealing through intimidation. The able-bodied beggar demanding alms on the street is no different from the able-bodied businessman who withholds his services. The beggar shirks his legitimate work, and the businessman uses his position to exact payments not due. Both reap bad karma that will reflect on every generation in the future and a few in the past.

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Sutra 208 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Aging With Dignity
Siva's ardent souls grow old gracefully, without fear, knowing that the soul is immortal and the mental body does not age, but becomes stronger and more mature, as do the emotions, if regulated stage by stage. Aum.

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Lesson 208 from Merging with Siva
Being the Watcher

We can see that from the mystic's point of view, he is the watcher. And as the mirror is in no way discolored by what it reflects, so is the mystic in his perfected state. Your perfected state, too, as the watcher is right there, deep within you. The next time you sit for meditation, follow my guru's advice to us all and witness your thoughts. Be that stationary awareness, holding form in its own perfection. All you have to do is to watch your mind think. Then and only then are you experiencing your perfect state of inner being. The only difference between the jnani and the novice is that the jnani stays in there longer as the watcher, whereas the novice experiences this only momentarily from time to time.

This is the result of a great abundance of your sadhana, and as the watcher, once stabilized within a new platform, a new beginning is commenced. There is much preparation that you can perform to attain this prolonged state more rapidly. There are some do's and don'ts to be heeded and explicitly obeyed. Do regulate your in-breath to equal the same number of counts as your out-breath, and feel the bliss of your body as it becomes relaxed and harmonized. Don't allow indulgence in sexual fantasy for even one moment. Do correct your diet to that of sattvic foods that grow above the ground. Don't indulge in mental argument with yourself or anyone else.

These four suggestions are the basic formula for cleansing the dross from the mind as well as from the subconscious by not putting more into it. Assuredly, results are dimmed if an aspirant meditates in the morning, engages in mental argument in the afternoon and sexual fantasies before sleep, or at any other time. His yogic discipline then would simply strengthen his fantasies and their repercussions, as well as the excitement of mental argument. Therefore, having these two greatest barriers out of the way, the path is clear, the sadhana easier to handle and the results cumulative.

At the beginning of your practice of trying to decipher the nature of awareness as opposed to the nature of thought--which must be satisfactorily done before awareness can truly be detached--refrain from criticizing yourself or others as you begin to observe the many things you have been thinking about all these many years. For, it is a fact that once you are able to observe your own thoughts even a little--though you may be unhappy with many of those thoughts, as they do not ascribe to the new philosophy and outlook which you have become interested in and appreciate and even though you may abhor some thoughts and attitudes--you are already detached from them somewhat. So, don't make matters worse by criticizing yourself for the thinking and mental habit patterns you are observing. This can cause tension in the nerve system and work directly against the pranayama that you may be practicing, and nullify the results. Rather, claim yourself to be the watcher at this early stage,
and obey the two don'ts that I have just mentioned. Beautiful philosophical thoughts and refined feelings will fill in and take the place of minutes or hours previously used in mental argument and instinctive fantasy.

Gospel of Jesus; can you believe this?i) Holy Bible - New Testament, Luke 12; 51-53: Jesus said: "Do you suppose that I came to bring peace to the World? No, not peace, but division. From now on a family of five will be divided, three against two and two against three. Fathers will be against their sons, and sons against their fathers; mothers will be against their daughters and daughters against their mothers; mothers-in-law will be against their daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law." ii)Holy Bible, New Testament, Luke 20; 27 : Jesus said: for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be their king, bring them here and kill them in my presence.

2008-11-06T02:09:19Z

Chandrayaan: Indias Moon Mission makes history (organizer )

2008-11-06T02:07:47Z

From: organizer date: 6.11.08

India’s lunar odyssey has begun with Chandrayaan–1 taking off from Satish Dhawan Space Centre,

SHAR, Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh at 6:22 am IST on October 22. Chandrayaan–1 is an unmanned orbiter, a lunar satellite. Its sojourn will last for a tentative two years. Why embark on this exorbitant mission? The present chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) quips in – ‘to expand scientific knowledge about the origin and evolution of the moon, upgrade India’s technological capabilities and provide challenging opportunities to young scientists working in planetary sciences’.

Mission’s scientific objectives
Chandrayaan–1 is vouched to carry out high-resolution remote sensing of the moon in its visible, near infrared (NIR), low energy X-rays and high energy X-ray regions. An extensive chemical and mineralogical mapping of the entire lunar surface for distribution of mineral and chemical elements including high atomic number elements such as uranium, radon and thorium will be conducted with high spatial resolution. The concomitant transmission will ennoble identification of different geological units to infer the primeval evolutionary history of the moon and to fathom out the stratigraphy and nature of the moon’s crust and thereupon ascertain certain aspects of magma ocean hypothesis. This may further unravel the compositions of impactors that bombarded the moon during its early evolution that is inexorably linked with the formation of the earth as well. Another intriguing phenomenon is the radiation environment of the moon produced by solar radiation and galactic cosmic rays. An
isotope of radon, that is a product of uranium decay chain forms a thin crust on the lunar crust. Also, the permanent sunlit and night side of the moon with its permanently shadowed cold polar regions crop up several pertinent posers. The tentative expenses for the entire project is pegged at around Rs 400 crore.

The Chandrayaan–1 sojourn
Chandrayaan–1 will reach a highly elliptical Initial Orbit (IO) having its perigee (nearest point from the earth) 250 km while the apogee (farthest point from the earth) will be 23,000 km. Subsequently Chandrayaan–1 anticipates two more elliptical orbits whose apogees lie still higher at 37000 km and 73,000 km respectively before attempting third one attaining a whopping apogee at about 387,000 km. This would happen at an opportune moment by firing the spacecraft’s Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) when the spacecraft is near perigee. The third ellipse will land the spacecraft within a few hundred kilometer vicinity of moon. Thereafter the spacecraft will be sufficiently slowed down by firing LAM so as to enable the gravity of the moon to capture it into an elliptical orbit going within 100 km circular polar orbit. Finally at some conducive time, the lunar probe will be ejected from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft to hit the lunar surface in a chosen area and glean upon the lunar surface wi
th its array of instruments including cameras, spectrometers and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).

Structure and functioning
Chandrayaan–1 is cuboid in shape with sides of approx 1.5 each weighing 1380 kg at launch and 675 kg at lunar orbit. It has a solar panel projecting from one of its sides. The spacecraft structure has been mainly built using composites and aluminum honeycomb material. The thermal subsystem consisting of paints, tapes, multiplayer insulation blanket, optical solar reflectors, heat pipes, heaters and temperature controllers ensure the proper functioning of the spacecraft by keeping its temperature within acceptable limits. The moon probe will be put in the lunar orbit at 100 km from the moon surface by India’s indigenously made launch vehicle, Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C11 (PSLV-C11), a 44.4–metre, 316-tonne workhorse. PSLV-C11 uses large strap-on motors (PSOM-XL) with a large amount of propellant to achieve higher payload capability. PSLV-C11 has four stages using solid and liquid propulsion systems alternatively. PSLV-C11 has sophisticated telemetry to guide it through t
he predetermined trajectory and maintain continual tracking.

Chandrayaan-1 has in total 11 science payloads of which five payloads are indigenously developed by Indian scientists. The rest six payloads come from European Space Agency, Bulgarian Academy of Science and also NASA.

The ground station network to enable a smooth passage to Chandrayaan-1 requires the triumvirate–India Deep Space Network (ISDN). Mission Operations Complex (MOX) and Indian Space Science Data Centre (ISSDC), all three nodal agencies constituted by ISRO in Bangalore to provide to and fro conduit of communication. The Payload Operation Centres (POC) is an integral part of the Ground Segment that avail science data to payload scientists.

Chandrayaan-1 has been assiduously built at ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore in conjunction with ISRO’s Department of Space (DOS) establishments –Vikram Sarahai Space Centre (VSSC), Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) and ISRO Inertial systems unit (IISU) of Thiruvanthapuram, Space Applications Centre (SAC) and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) of Ahmedabad and Laboratory for Electro-optic Systems (LEOS) of Bangalore.

India is hogging the limelight of a rare achievement to exult over. Its high time to heap kudos on those eggheads, the scientific camaraderie who were gung ho about the mission and triumphed in surmounting all the vicissitudes of science and cynicism.

Bon Voyage!

(The writer is a freelance journalist with varied

MALDIVES: Challenges for Anni, the new President. (southasisanalysis.com)

2008-11-06T02:06:56Z

From: southasisanalysis.com date: 6.11.08

It has been indeed a tumultuous journey for Mohammed Nasheed from the days of being a “prisoner of conscience” to a person granted political asylum by Britain, to now the President of Maldives, essentially a group of over 1190 atolls in the Indian Ocean. This has brought an end to over three decades of presidential rule by Gayoom in Maldives. Though Mr. Gayoom was elected six times earlier, the process of elections was accused to be unfair. The struggle for democracy and transparency saw sustained struggle through the years by MDP and other opposition parties to bring about a change. The ruling party determined to browbeat the opposition had resorted to abuse of human rights and imprisoning of political opponents. This had forced the members of the main opposition party the MDP to flee the country and operate mainly from Sri Lanka and Britain.

Even the run up to these elections in October this year and the very process of electing a president had not been a smooth one. There were doubts about whether the Majlis (Parliament) would clear the constitutional amendments prior to the elections in time. The Supreme Court had cleared the contesting of Mr. Gayoom. The first voting on 04 October did not give clear majority to any of the six participants as required by the rules prompting a two way contest between Mr. Gayoom a veteran with over thirty years of presidentship and a young turk Mr. Noshed who is just forty one years but with considerable time both in prisons fighting the regime, promoting democracy while being in exile in Sri Lanka and Britain. The final results after the counting on 28th October gave Mr. Nasheed (53.65%) a lead of 8.33 percent in terms of votes and 15,101 in terms of numbers over his arch rival Mr. Gayoom(45.32%).

With the elections behind Maldives, the new president has many challenges that would need to be taken head on. This paper makes an attempt to identify some of those challenges though not necessarily in the order of priority

Firstly Anni has to ensure that the process of transfer of power is a smooth one. The assurance by the outgoing president that he would ensure such transition augurs well for the democratic process. On the part of Anni, he has already indicated that nothing would be held against Mr. Gayoom and has promised that the pensionery and other needs of the President would be looked after.

Secondly, there is a need to assure those who voted for Gayoom that he would address their concerns related to governance, religious practices and such like. This would not be an easy task for the President to be. There are many issues of concern related to whether the President would lean towards the west which has been sympathetic to him and has supported him through the thick and thin of the entire process.

Thirdly, there is a need to consolidate and enlarge the support base for him which is not just based on an anti incumbency factor. Mr. Anni has in all interactions has come through as an honest, candid person with leadership qualities to take the country forward. His years in the prison have hardened him and have made him fully aware of the expectations of the large majority that has supported him. He would like to identify issues of immediate concern and address them by carrying the large Sunni Muslim population with him. There are sensitive issues related to possibility of growing extremism which require adept handling.

Fourthly, there are issues of relations with the littorals in the IOR as well as the western countries who hold IOR as their back yard due to the energy nodes and the choke points in the region. Maldives by its geographic location, sitting astride the SLOCs (Sea Lines of Communication) has strategic significance for many countries around the world including India. China has been making forays in to the economic activities of Maldives and is more than willing to set up some kind of maritime activity including port that would extend its foot print in the IOR in general and the Arabian Sea in particular. The British who have supported Mr. Anni would be expecting favourable responses from some one who enjoyed their backing and support in promoting democracy in Maldives. Gan Island comes to mind immediately and it is of interest to see if there would be any renewal of demand for setting up of a strategic base in southern Maldives.

Last but not the least, there are serious environmental concerns both due to the increase in tourism related industry as well as the fears of Tsunami that stuck the Island on 26th December 2004. With the low lying atolls, it would be a challenging task to have contingencies in place to secure the safety of the population including that of the tourists who would be in the 81 Islands earmarked for tourism. There are plans to more than double the number of tourism specific Islands. During the run up to the elections, some time in July 2008, the MDP stalwarts along with the presidential candidate and leader Md Nasheed were in Chennai and Delhi interacting with some think tanks and officials. During a free and frank discussion at Chennai on 08 July, Anne came through as a person with strong convictions and a clear head seasoned by his persistent fight against the regime to usher democracy. During the discussion on the fragile environmental issues in Maldives when I intervened to
say that there is no need for any foreign presence in the Archipelago for many known reasons, he readily said that it was one of his primary concerns to ensure that there is no external presence including that of China.

Having identified some of the immediate challenges for the new president, one needs to look at the Indo Maldivian relations in the changed context and see if there are any pointers that forbade change. The relations between the two countries have been very good and even on a personal level; Mr. Gayoom had excellent relations with those in powers at New Delhi. The relations were propelled to greater heights post the failed coup attempt in 1988 when India was able to send its forces in record time on call and prevent the take over of the Island by mercenaries. It is hoped that the new regime will do likewise and take the relations to greater heights.

In conclusion, it is clear that the election of MDP leader as the President in a highly credible, praiseworthy electoral process has paved the way for democracy and change of tidings. It is now left to MDP and its leader to take the country forward to help achieve its rightful place in the Indian Ocean.

(The author is presently the Head, Strategy and Security Studies at the Center for Asia Studies at Chennai and can be contacted at rsvasan2010@gmail.com)

A case of discrimination against the Hindus

2008-11-06T02:06:17Z

From: organizer date: 6.11.08

A case of discrimination against the Hindus
By Himanshu Shekhar Jha

Quite early in their life the students in India learn that the whole world is a family—Vasudhaivakutumbakam. Can the same thing be said about the students studying in madrasas or schools run by the so-called Christian missionaries?

The Hindu Dharma has never preached or practiced forcible conversion, nor has it ever prescribed one particular book for the purpose of enlightening one particular community. The word Hindu is more geographical than communal in its connotation.

When the Constitution of India was adopted, enacted and given to the people in the constituent Assembly on the twenty-sixth day of November, 1949 there was a great expectation that the alien laws and the educational system imposed on us by the British Government through its spokesperson Thomas Babbit Macaulay, would be completely altered and replaced by India’s own laws and modes of learning with suitable changes wherever necessary, but contrary to people’s hopes, not only Macaulay’s pernicious Penal Code was retained, but the educational policy framed by him with the evil motive of corrupting the minds of Indian Youths with materialistic western culture in order to perpetuate British rule here, was kept intact.

In our country not only law, both civil and criminal but also education has always been based on Dharma, a term which independent India’s policy-makers particularly those entrusted with the task of framing a new Constitution, could not properly understand and apply. They confused ‘Dharma’ with ‘Mazhab’ and mistook the latter for the former. They wrongly thought that if Dharma was taught in educational institutions it would create communal disharmony in the country and disturb public peace. Contrary to their false fears religious teaching based on the Holy Vedas and other sacred scriptures in educational institutions would have been of immense benefit for all students studying there. Had religious instruction in schools not been banned, the moral atmosphere in the country would have been far different from what we witness today.

In our country children were always taught noble things which are absolutely non-controversial and universally applicable, as for example, “Speak truth, honour mother, father and guest with utmost reverence” etc. They were never taught to hate or kill those who did not accept their religion. On the contrary the temples of learning in India had always inspired the pupils not only to love the people of the whole world, but also to be kind towards all creatures both big and small.

Quite early in their life the students in India learnt that the whole world is a family—Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Can the same thing be said about the students studying in madrasas or schools run by the so-called Christian missionaries?

With a distorted vision of Dharma or religion the framers of the Constitution of India, put a complete ban on the teaching of religious precepts in schools and colleges and other centres of learning run by the Government. Article 28 of the said Constitution laid down:

“No religious instruction shall be provided in any educational institution wholly maintained out of state funds.”

It should not be forgotten that the above constitutional provision was an assault on the Hindus’ right to freely give and receive religious instruction in educational institutions.

The above ban was totally unjustified. It was an attempt at whittling down Hindus’ faith in their own culture and traditional values. Confusing Dharma which has its roots in the Holy Vedas, recollection of Vedic aphorisms handed down from time to time, upright moral conduct and one’s own conscience, with Faith which is individual - centric, Ambedkar made a very unjust remark by saying that “… The religions which prevail in this country are not merely non-social so far as their mutual relations are concerned, they are anti-social, one religion claiming that its teaching constitutes the only right path for salvation, that all other religions are wrong.”

While mazhab or faith being individual-centric can be non-social by being antagonistic to others’ religious beliefs, Dharma has never taught separatism. According to Mahabharat which is universally acclaimed as a great scripture and is regarded as the fifth Veda, a Dharma which opposes another Dharma is not a Dharma, but ‘Kudharma’ i.e. bad Dharma.

Wrongly justifying the giving of religious instruction in educational institutions Ambedkar as Chairman of the Drafting Committee put forward three reasons one of which was that public funds raised by taxes could not be utilized for the benefit of any particular community. He made the above statement with a frame of reference to erstwhile Article 21 whose provisions have now been incorporated in Article 27.

The words “for the benefit of a particular community” used in the original Article 21 are peculiar! Is any Dharma or true religion for the benefit of a particular community only?

Without addressing this question in earnest Ambedkar jumped to the conclusion that the teaching of Hindu Dharma in an educational institution would benefit Hindu students only! Can anything be farther from the truth? If Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parasee and students belonging to other religious denominations studying in the same class of a school or college are taught to abstain from intoxicating drinks as it is one of the five deadly sins, will it benefit only Hindu students?

No true religion can ever be for the benefit of a particular community only. Dharma teaches love and tolerance not only for the whole of mankind, but also for non-humans like birds and animals. It teaches us not to be cruel even to those who humiliate us and are stubbornly opposed to our views about God and religion or in any matter.

The Veda which has several branches including the science of longevity called Ayurveda is the mother of all religions. The teaching of its noblest ideals would have benefitted and will benefit all irrespective of caste and community. Depriving students of religious instruction based on the Holy Vedas by putting a blanket ban on it through Article 28 of the Constitution has caused a great harm to education in our country.

The majority - minority syndrome in India is politically motivated and has nothing to do with religious instruction in educational institutions. It has its roots in the old British Policy of “Divide and Rule” which resulted not only in the thoughtless division of the country, but also brought no good either to the Hindus or to the Muslims.

The Hindu Dharma has never preached or practiced forcible conversion, nor has it ever prescribed one particular book for the purpose of enlightening one particular community. The word “HINDU” is more geographical than communal in its connotation. Anyone who believes in universal brotherhood casting down the barbarous barriers of caste, community, colour, creed or faith based on the personal views of a particular individual and has compassion for all creatures come under this denomination. How can the teaching of such a great and spotless Dharma be for the benefit of one particular community only as Ambedkar apprehended? The constitutional ban on the instruction of Hindu Dharma in educational institutions as contemplated by Article 27 and mandated by Article 28 is therefore, not only a spiritual but also a legal aberration.

What is most objectionable is the fact that while on the one hand the Constitution of India puts a ban on religious instruction i.e. instructions based on Hindu Dharma in educational institutions through Article 28, it grants fundamental right to minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice which obviously includes madrasas which in the majority of cases, have transpired to be factories of fundamentalism.

Article 30(1) of the Constitution states—“All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice”. Clause (2) of the same Article brazenly lays down—“The state shall not in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language.”

Article 30 read with Article 27 makes it abundantly clear that the framers of the Constitution wanted the Government to grant aid to educational institutions established and administered by minorities even if their object was to promote their own faith miscalled religion.

Article 30(2) does not prohibit giving of religious institution in the educational institutions under the management of a minority, neither does it restrain the state from granting aid to such institutions on that count. This being the position there is no justification in putting a ban on the imparting of religious instruction in any other educational institution wholly maintained out of the state funds. If, according to Article 27 no person can be compelled to pay any taxes the proceeds of which are specifically appropriated in payment of expenses for the promotion or maintenance of any particular religion or religious denomination, why should Hindus or others be compelled to make payment to the state exchequer for the promotion or maintenance of a particular faith or religion through any educational institution managed and maintained by a minority within the meaning of clause (2) of Article 30 of the Constitution?

Article 29 was specially designed to protect the interests of minorities. Was there anything on record to prove when the Constitution was being framed, that there has ever been any danger to the distinct language, script or culture of minorities from the majority community in India? If not, why were such specific fundamental rights granted to minorities through Article 29 which, inter alia, mandates that “any section, of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.” Why was not the same fundamental right granted to the Hindus?

Do the above anomalies not speak to the truth that “equality of status and opportunity” enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution and “equality before the law” or “the equal protection of the laws” guaranteed thereunder are mere flowery phrases?

(The writer can be contacted at 207A, Kalyani Apartments, Sector-6, Vasundhara, Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh).)

Secularism has been distorted, wrongly defined; even the conventional law-enforcement mechanisms are not being allowed to be used under political pressure if the members of the Muslim community are suspect.

2008-11-06T02:05:12Z

From: organizer date: 6.11.08

Since almost all our parties are strong votaries of the caste-based reservations, and many of them now want these reservations getting extended to the private sector, what will happen to the India-Inc? Will foreign investments come? Will the Indian entrepreneurs shift their operations to outside the country (say China, Africa, West Asia as the available trends suggest)?

The Muslim factor is also hampering our efforts to fight terrorism, notwithstanding that India is one of the worst victims of terror. In order to protect our so-called secularism, we cannot frame special laws, something which most countries the world-over have done, to fight terror. Why? Simply, because any such law will be branded as anti-Muslim. Worse, even the conventional law-enforcement mechanisms are not being allowed to be used under political pressure if the members of the Muslim community are suspect.

Identity politics, which is being nurtured to garner votes by our politicians, is now the biggest hurdle to combat the heinous acts of terrorism and secessionism. Let us begin with secessionism. While the nation’s focus is on the troubles in Jammu and Kashmir, it is also a fact that unrest is pervading the state of Assam.

Where have we Indians reached after 60 years of Independence? There are no doubts that we have achieved many distinctions in many spheres. But then another related, rather more vital, question arises. Can we consolidate all our achievements? And here, I cannot give a confident answer. I find India much more fragmented and divisive than it was at the time of Independence, thanks to our vote-bank politics, particularly in the name of caste and religion. One is really apprehensive over India’s future if the present state of affairs in our polity continues or allowed to continue. Let me give the following examples to explain the gravity of the situation India faces today.

In the late sixties and seventies, a significant trend was gaining momentum in Indian universities. Many students were dropping their caste-based surnames. They were nationalists to the core and thought that the best way to make India strong and a great power was to strive for one identity—the identity of being an Indian—by ignoring myriad other identities based on ethnicity, religion, state and region, etc. In fact, one was proud to have friends like them. It is against this background that I was really surprised the other day to discover the son of such a friend using now the family surname. “My dream of India as a casteless society has been shattered. All our political parties and governments are competing with each other to consolidate the caste-system in the name of reservation. In fact, my son’s future, be it admissions in educational institutions or the job opportunities, is dependent on our caste factor”, my friend explained, adding, “see how none other than our Presi
dent Pratibha Patil now writes her name as Pratibha Singh Patil”.

Since almost all our parties are strong votaries of the caste-based reservations, and many of them now want these reservations getting extended to the private sector, what will happen to the India-Inc? Will foreign investments come? Will the Indian entrepreneurs shift their operations to outside the country (say China, Africa, West Asia as the available trends suggest)? There are all dangerous thoughts. And it will be intellectually dishonest to rationalise (positively) this dangerous phenomenon in terms of “politicisation (hence democratisation) of caste or for that matter religion. Real democracy is the one that unites; it does not promote divisiveness and elements of fragmentation. But unfortunately, the identity-politics in India has become so pervasive that corruption is no longer the issue if the leader concerned markets successfully his or her caste or religion factor. That explains why many of our top-most leaders today simply do not bother about their ill-gotten mone
y.

Similarly, this type of identity politics, which is being nurtured to garner votes by our politicians, is now the biggest hurdle to combat the heinous acts of terrorism and secessionism. Let us begin with secessionism. While the nation’s focus is on the troubles in Jammu and Kashmir, it is also a fact that unrest is pervading the state of Assam. In a sense, the problems in the two states are compounded by one factor—the factor of religion. In Kashmir, when the Ghulam Nabi Azad government transferred a piece of land to facilitate the safety of the devotees’ yatra to the Amarnath Shrine for just two months every year, it was interpreted as an act against Muslims. The criticism against Azad’s decision by the agitationists and politicians in the Valley was based on the spurious argument that the land transfer (the land owned by the government was transferred to a body run by the government) would change the demographic composition in Kashmir and reduce the Muslims into a minority
! In other words, the message that the agitationists, including top Kashmir politicians, whom our Delhi-based intelligentsia and media project as great secularists, convey is that they are Muslims first and Kashmir is essentially for Muslims.

In Assam, the Muslim factor is aggravating the problem the other way round. The state is literally invaded demographically by illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. And, this is something both the state judiciary and the Supreme Court have concluded repeatedly in recent years. In fact, recently the Guwahati High Court rued that “it can happen only in Assam”, while castigating the authorities over a Pakistani national entering Assam through Bangladesh, roaming around the Indian soil, but also contested an election. Sadly, majority of our political parties and intelligentsia are least bothered. The ruling Congress doesn’t dare take any action because doing so would hurt the Muslims and their votes. In the name of secularism, it pretends as if the problem doesn’t exist, despite growing intense popular anger all over Assam against the illegal immigrants.

This apart, the Muslim factor is also hampering our efforts to fight terrorism, notwithstanding that India is one of the worst victims of terror. In order to protect our so-called secularism, we cannot frame special laws, something which most countries the world-over have done, to fight terror. Why? Simply, because any such law will be branded as anti-Muslim. Worse, even the conventional law-enforcement mechanisms are not being allowed to be used under political pressure if the members of the Muslim community are suspect. The police force in various states, the counter-terror veterans in the intelligence agencies and even the Army have given enough hints that their hands are tied in apprehending the Islamic terrorists these days. The ongoing spectacles of politicians and parties, with a clear aim at wooing Muslim votes, exploiting the Jamia Nagar shootout and literally demoralising and insulting our security forces vindicate this like nothing else.

It is true that overwhelming majority of the Muslims in the world are not terrorists. But it is equally true that overwhelming majority of the terrorists in the world happen to be Muslims. Of course, terrorists are found in all religions. There are Christian terrorists in many parts of Africa and Latin America. And, there have been Sikh terrorists in India and Canada. However, there is a fundamental difference. Unlike terrorists of other religions, Islamic terrorists, invariably, justify their actions in the name of their religion. And unlike terrorists of other religions, whose goals are political and country-specific, Islamic terrorists have an international dimension. They all believe in Wahabism that talks of the absolute supremacy of Islam over all other religions. They fight to strengthen their ultimate goal of establishing the Islamic domination all over the world. If they die in the process, they are “confident” of going to “paradise” of their God.

Wahabism is totally opposed to Sufism, the main guiding force of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent for ages that talked of peaceful and harmonious co-existence with other religions. But the vote-bank politics in recent years has become so pervasive that our politicians and intelligentsia are totally defensive and often apologetic to the champions of the xenophobic Wahabism that is dividing not only the Indians but also other “world citizens”. See the way some of our leading politicians defended the SIMI recently until the Supreme Court stayed the verdict of a lower court removing the ban on the extremist outfit.

The Muslim factor in Indian politics has become so entrenched that foreign policy issues are now being seen in pro-Muslim or anti-Muslim terms. The much-debated India-US nuclear agreement is a case in point. Some political parties have openly described the nuclear agreement as anti-Muslim. What has a nuclear agreement between India and the US got to do with the Muslims and their religious convictions? And why those opposed to the deal are doing so in the name of Muslims? If the deal is really bad, then let us point out how this is against India’s long-term interests and how this is not really going to help the country meet its growing energy needs, as some enthusiastic supporters of the arrangement claim.

It is high time we all saw ourselves as Indians, not in terms of our caste, community and ethnicity. That is the true meaning of secularism. But then, unfortunately the fact remains that our politicians and intelligentsia have reduced secularism just to a slogan. They find in it a panacea to explain and justify all their deeds (or misdeeds). For years, you may be in the ranks of the “communal” BJP, Shiv Sena and Akalis, but if you change sides then the best way of explaining this is your discovering virtues of “secularism”. You or your party may have been in the alliance with the “communal parties” in the past, but if you or your party is now in the other side, it is because of your concerns for minorities and convictions to “secular politics”!

Ironically, “secularism” has been never defined by its champions in India. Though the 42nd Amendment in 1975 by Indira Gandhi’s Congress government did incorporate the word “secularism” in our Constitution, it did not define what secularism was. Ironically, her Congress party, which dominated the then Rajya Sabha in 1978, foiled an attempt to actually define secularism as “equal respect to all religions” by defeating an amendment bill that had already been cleared in the Lok Sabha during the Janata regime of Morarji Desai.

Thus, in the absence of a clear definition of secularism in our political parlance, we will continue to witness “communal politicians” becoming “secular” overnight and vice versa, with everything depending on the political convenience of the parties and their supporters. It is high time we defined secularism and liberated politics and religion from each other’s hegemony.

(The author can be contacted at A-35 Bathla Apartments, 43 - I.P. Extension, Delhi - 110092, e-mail: prakashnanda@rediffmail.com)

BLEEDING ASSAM CRIES OUT FOR ATTENTION -INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR (southasiaanalysis)

2008-11-06T02:03:24Z

From: southasiaanalysis date: 6.11.08

Available police statistics of incidents involving explosions and civilian casualties caused by the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) since 2002 are given below:

YEAR NUMBER OF EXPLOSIONS CIVILIANS KILLED

2002 18 218
2003 19 260
2004 103 202
2005 121 65
2006 86 59
2007 70 124
2008 6 (till end January) NIL

The figures of civilians killed in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 include civilians killed by explosions as well as in attacks not involving IEDs.The figures for 2006 and 2007 refer to only civilians killed by IEDs. While there was a large number of incidents involving IEDs, the number of civilians killed per incident was low as compared to incidents involving IEDs caused by jihadi terrorists in other parts of India. This could be attributed to the fact that the explosive material used by the ULFA----much of it procured from Bangladesh--- was of low quality as compared to the material available to the jihadi terrorists --- whether procured from Pakistan or Bangladesh--- and the expertise in the use of IEDs imparted to the ULFA in the training camps in Bangladesh was also of inferior quality as compared to the expertise imparted to the jihadi terrorists---whether in Pakistan or Bangladesh.

A defining characteristic of the incidents involving the use of IEDs targeting civilians in Assam was that many of the incidents specifically targeted non-Assamese civilians while taking care not to target Assamese-speaking civilians and illegal Bangladeshi migrants. Jihadi terrorists in other parts of India make no distinction. They kill civilians indiscriminately---- without worrying about their religion, ethnic or linguistic origin.

Jihadi terrorism, as distinguished from the ethnic terrorism of the ULFA kind, has also started making inroads in Assam. According to the Assam Police, the following jihadi organisations are now active in Assam: The Muslim Liberation Tigers of Assam (MULTA); the Independent Liberation Army of Assam (ILAA); the People United Liberation Front (PULF); the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), whose Pakistani counterpart is a founding member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front (IIF); and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), whose Pakistani counterpart is also a member of the IIF. According to them, the activities of all these organisations are co-ordinated by the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen (JUM) of Bangladesh, which organised hundreds of simultaneous explosions of crude devices all over Bangladesh on August 17, 2005.

Some HUM cadres, along with two Pakistani nationals, were arrested in August, 1999. Forty-two HUM cadres, including some trained in the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), surrendered till 2006-end. Four HUJI cadres trained in Bangladesh surrendered in August, 2004. One HUJI cadre was arrested in February, 2004. Till 2006-end, 370 jihadi terrorists belonging to different organisations had been arrested and 128 had surrendered.

The Security Forces in Assam have been putting up a determined fight against the ULFA killing 1,128 cadres since 1991 and till 2006-end and arresting 11,173 during the same period. 8,465 others surrendered. The result: decrease in cadre strength; erosion of its support base in the population; decrease in recruitment and fund collection; and shortage of arms and ammunition. In view of these developments, the ULFA started following a new modus operandi with the following features: decrease in specific targeted violence; increase in
indiscriminate violence directed at soft targets; targeting of vital installations in remote areas; attacks on security forces when and where possible; and use of unconscious third persons not suspected by the Police for having the IEDs planted in public places. The use of such unconscious third persons has been increasing.

However, the ULFA still has an estimated hardcore of 800 trained cadres and another 1,500 untrained cadres. There are no signs of any weakening of its morale and motivation. Its command and control orchestrated from Bangladesh is intact.

Any effective counter-terrorism strategy in Assam has to have the conventional components such as improving intelligence collection, analysis and assessment and co-ordinated follow-up action; improving the capability and resources of the police; strengthened physical security; and a well-tested crisis management drill. In addition, it must have a strong anti-illegal immigration component---to prevent any further illegal immigration from Bangladesh and the identification, arrests and deportation of those, who have already illegally entered India. Obviously for electoral reasons, there is a reluctance on the part of the Government to deal effectively with illegal immigration. This is likely to prove suicidal. Muslims constitute about 32 per cent of the population of Assam today. If the problem of illegal immigration from Bangladesh is not tackled, there is a real danger that in another 50 years, Assam might turn into a Muslim majority State.

Pakistan, Bangladesh and China have an interest in keeping Assam destabilised---each for its own reason. The interest of Pakistan and Bangladesh is in facilitating the emergence of a Muslim majority State and its ultimate secession from India. The interest of China is in weakening the Indian capability to protect Arunachal Pradesh in the likelihood of the unresolved border dispute over Arunachal Pradesh one day leading to a confrontation between India and China.

The previous Government headed by Shri A. B. Vajpayee was strong in rhetoric relating to terrorism, but weak in action. Its successor Govt. is weak in rhetoric as well as action. It seems to believe that confidence-building measures with neighbours who are sponsoring terrorism against India and the peace process would pay dividends in improving the terrorism situation on the ground. This is unlikely to happen. Lack of determination to act strongly and in time is already costing us heavily and will cost even more heavily in future.

---Extract from the Chapter titled ASSAM: TERRORISM & “SILENT UNARMED INVASION” in my book titled "Terrorism: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow" published by the Lancer Publishers (www.lancerpublishers.com) of Delhi in June, 2008

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

More than 50 persons are feared to have died and more than a hundred injured in over 10 blasts that were simultaneously orchestrated in Guwahati, the capital of Assam, and in the Districts of Barpeta and Kokrajhar on October 30, 2008. The picture regarding the exact number of explosions and the places where they took place is still confusing. Some reports put the number of explosions as high as 18. At least four of the blasts took place in Guwahati.

2. The people of Assam are not strangers to serial blasts carried out from time to time by the ULFA and jihadi organisations of Pakistani and Bangladeshi vintage, which have made inroads into the State by taking advantage of the uncontrolled illegal immigration of Muslims into the State from Bangladesh They have been operating separately of each other when possible and in co-ordination with each other, when necessary.

3. Assam has been the nerve-centre of a cocktail of terrorist organisations----ethnic and jihadi--- who have been systematically eating at the vitals of this State, which is key for protecting the integrity of India from the designs of Pakistan, Bangladesh and China. But nobody has had the time to pay attention to the alarming ground situation in this key State----neither the Congress (I) nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nor any other party. Taking advantage of the lack of serious attention from the Government of India and the mainstream political parties, this cocktail of terrorists has been spreading havoc in the State.

4. "My heart goes out to the people of Assam," said Jawaharlal Nehru in a broadcast to the people of Assam as the Chinese troops were marching in in 1962. He did nothing to protect them before the Chinese invaded. His Government and its successors did precious little to protect this right arm of India and its people either from the Chinese in the event of another war or from the terrorist organisations of various hues which have come up in the State since the 1980s. Who is whose surrogate? Who is the surrogate of Pakistan? Who is the surrogate of Bangladesh? Who is the surrogate of China? Is there a joint co-ordination by Pakistan, Bangladesh and China to undermine the control of the Indian State? Nobody knows the answer.

5. Everyone is clueless---- the intelligence agencies, the police, the security forces, the political class. There is hardly any realisation of the seriousness of the situation in Assam. One can even understand inadequacies and even incompetence, but one is alarmed by the total disinterest in Delhi in what is going on in Assam.

6. It is too early to say who was involved in the explosions of October 30---- the ULFA only or ULFA plus? One has to wait for the results of the investigation, but from the large number of casualties and the widespread nature of the attacks, one thing is already clear----there has been a worrisome increase in the lethality of the explosives available to the terrorists and their ability to use them effectively.

7. Public opinion has to force the Governments at the Centre and in the State and the political class as a whole to act before it is too late.

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. He is also associated with the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)

NEPAL: PLA Integration Continues to be a Contentious Issue: (southasiaanalysis.org) By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan.

2008-11-06T02:02:33Z

From: southasiaanalysis.org date: 6.11.08

The most critical factor confronting Prachanda’s government is the issue of integration/rehabilitation of PLA personnel. On this there are not only differences within the coalition partners, but also within the Maoist party itself. The opinion varies from total mass integration with the Nepalese Army, to selective integration and absorption in other para military units already existing or to be created for the specific purpose or total rehabilitation of all the personnel outside the army.

The mandate of UNMIN will also be over by the end of the year and before it leaves some decision has to be taken on the disposal of arms deposited by the PLA in the camps under the joint supervision of the UN and the PLA. The UN Secretary General who visited Kathmandu last week indicated that he would have no objection in extending the term if need be.

There are 32,250 Maoist cadres registered in 28 cantonments. Of these only 19,692 are eligible to be treated as combatants. The rest continue to be in the camps without any payment being made to them. In the final analysis, the government will also have to take the responsibility of these people also.

It is also known that quite a number of deserters of the Nepalese Army (estimated to be over 12,000) are also in the cantonments. The Army leadership has not talked about this and no body knows as to how many deserters are in the camps, but some decision will have to be taken on these people too.

With the increase in allowances by Rs 2000 to all the eligible personnel in the camps the economic condition of the PLA personnel has improved. Living conditions in the camps are also better now.

But the personnel in the camps with no work to do and with their future uncertain, cannot be allowed to languish indefinitely. Some quick decision will have to be taken on their rehabilitation and integration. The cantonments will also have to be dismantled sooner than later.

After much delay and internal wrangling, Prachanda’s government established a high powered five member special committee to work on the integration and rehabilitation of the PLA. Bam Dev Gautam, the Home Minister belonging to UML has been made the chairman, with one member each from the MJF and the Nepali Congress as members. The CPN (M) is being represented by two of its stalwarts- the Defence Minister Badal and Janardhan Sharma, the latter as the coordinator. Prachanda was said to be very keen to get Sharma alias Prabakar as the coordinator in the committee.

The Nepali Congress has declined so far to nominate a member from the party for the committee on the ground that the party was not consulted in the formation of the committee or in the terms of reference given to the committee. It is learnt that even Madhav Nepal is upset over the formation of the committee which he feels has been unilaterally done by the Maoists.

The MJF has nominated Prof. Mohammed Habibullah as its representative.

The terms of reference given to the committee are that it should prepare a report for "rehabilitation and integration of all Maoist PLA personnel in the Nepalese Army and suggesting alternative solutions."

It means that the committee can choose alternative avenues for the PLA personnel and not necessarily the PLA. This is not only a realistic approach but a doable one. Prachanda in one of his statements more or less agreed with this approach, but he is being vehemently opposed by his other colleagues including the Defence Minister Badal.

Badal’s statement should be cause for concern. At one point he said that new ‘standards’ should be applied in the matter of integration of PLA into the National Army. On 31st August he declared that a new national army will be formed after army integration. He connected this to the peace process itself and said that the integration will be done on the basis of a new national policy.

Other senior Maoist leaders whose opinions matter have opposed selective integration.

Kiran alias Mohan Baidya perhaps the senior most member of the party after Prachanda ( we ignore for the present the internal differences within the party over the rise of Baburam Bhattarai) is opposed to individual integration. In an interview he said that PLA integration is a critical issue and that the party is in no mood to budge "even an inch" from its insistence of bulk integration though it does not mind smaller sections being adjusted.

Similar views were expressed by another senior member C.P. Gajural. He said that all verified combatants should be integrated with the Nepalese Army. He also added that the seniors in the PLA who have proved their worth in the battles with the Nepalese army and who hold high positions in the PLA should be given similar positions in the Nepalese Army. If there is reluctance of the Nepal Army to take them in higher position for their lack of skills and training, they seem to be planning to seek help from China. The Government is said to be sending Pasang the present PLA Commander to China for training at the National Defence Institute- the institution meant for training of PLA ( Chinese) officers of the Brigadier General level.

The Chinese interest in Badal is also noticed elsewhere. Badal during his visit to Beijing on 26th September was offered military assistance of Rs 100 million to Nepal by their Defence Minister Liang Guanglie. The Chinese offer to Badal by the Defence Minister is very intriguing. The amount is small and is perhaps symbolic. But then why should the offer be made to the Defence Minister directly? To me it looks that the Chinese have a mischievous intent.

More intriguing is his overnight visit to Khasa along with another minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara and two other central committee members during puja holidays. The military attache of the Chinese embassy is also said to have accompanied the party to TAR.

The opposition particularly the Nepali Congress claims that the nation cannot afford to have ideologically brain washed people in the regular army. They further allege that the aim of the Maoists is to have political and ideological control over the military and a decisive say in the command structure.

Major opposition on bulk integration has come from the Nepalese Army. Surprisingly they have not been consulted on this issue or represented in the high-power Special Committee. They contend that any solution to the integration should be within the 12 point agreement, Interim Constitution and Comprehensive Peace Accord of November 26, 2006. The last one talks generally of setting up of a special cabinet committee for oversight, integration and rehabilitation.

The Nepalese Army is not willing to accept that it is a defeated Army. This is true also and the major problem is that the PLA of the Maoists thinks that it is a victorious army! The Army contends that induction of politically indoctrinated combatants into an apolitical national army will weaken it and is not in the interest of Nepali democracy.

Gen. Katuwal, the Army Chief has suggested four options for the combatants- 1. Send them for foreign employment 2. Send them to school or college 3. Engage them in national building tasks and 4. Employ them in Nepal Police, Armed Police Force and in the Nepalese Army.

He is not against taking some in the Army so long as the combatants have the requisite skills and come up to the criteria laid down for various ranks.

Prachanda is in a difficult situation as the opposition for "dispersed induction" comes both from other coalition partners like the MJF and UML as also from Nepali Congress, but also from his own seniors who wield considerable clout within the party!

It is still possible to work out a mutually acceptable solution so long as those opposed to his plan are not too rigid.

Israeli Air Force kills Islamic Jihad terrorist in northern Gaza airstrike (jpost.com)

2008-11-06T02:00:59Z

From: jpost.com date: 6.11.08

A Palestinian gunman was killed Wednesday night in an IAF airstrike in northern Gaza.

Muhammad Deif.
Photo: Channel 2

Slideshow: Pictures of the week The army said it identified a rocket launcher and fired in his direction. Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, a Palestinian Health Ministry official, confirmed that one person was killed and the Islamic Jihad identified that man as a member of the group.

It came after Hamas fired approximately 45 rockets and dozens of mortar shells at the South on Wednesday, striking a residential area in Ashkelon and outlying areas around Sderot, in retaliation for an IDF special forces raid launched against an underground arms tunnel on the Gaza border Tuesday night.

No casualties or damages were reported throughout the day, as residents of the Western Negev fled for cover after hearing the Color Red rocket alert activated by the heavy shelling.

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A military source described how the IDF had received intelligence leading to the tunnel's discovery. He said that uncovering the "ticking tunnel" led to a consensus view among decision-makers that action had to be taken straight away, in light of the tunnel's imminent intended use to kidnap IDF soldiers.

The IDF said six of its soldiers were wounded in Tuesday's operation, two of them moderately, requiring hospital care, while the remainder were lightly wounded. Six to seven Hamas gunmen were killed, the Defense Ministry said.

On Wednesday night, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered all border crossings between Gaza and Israel closed until further notice.

Kassam attacks continued in the Sderot area during the evening hours on Wednesday, when a distant thud was heard from the town center around 30 seconds after the Color Red system was activated. Locals sitting outside a cafe quickly filed into the back of the establishment for cover. The rocket landed in open territory, and no injuries or damages were reported.

Despite the ongoing barrages, the IDF Home Front opted to keep schools in the area open and advised residents to go to work throughout the day. Instructions on how to act during the attacks were issued anew.

The source said the decision to launch the raid after sundown on Tuesday was approved and that subsequently the Home Front was briefed over the possibility of the biggest escalation in violence since the June 2007 truce between Israel and Hamas went into effect.

After crossing into Gaza, soldiers encountered several Hamas gunmen standing around a structure in which the tunnel surfaced. A firefight ensued in which a number of gunmen were killed, before terrorists detonated the large quantity of explosives in the building, blowing it to smithereens.

"We don't know if the explosives were intended to be used in the tunnel, or if the building was booby-trapped," an IDF source said.

Addressing Hamas's ongoing retaliation, the source said: "We hope things will calm down. But if they don't, we'll be ready."

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, former National Security Adviser to the prime minister's office, and the former head of the IDF's Planning and Operation Branches, said the IDF operation demonstrated how lessons from the kidnapping of soldier Gilad Schalit in June 2006 were being applied.

"It's very clear this tunnel is similar to the one used to kidnap Schalit," he said. "This is one of the lessons a committee which examined the Schalit kidnapping called for. What was done yesterday should have been done two-and-a-half years ago," Eiland added.

On the other hand, Eiland conceded that civilians were once again fleeing Hamas rockets as a result.

"This is the situation, unfortunately. We don't have a direct answer for rockets. We don't control the Philadelphi Route and we don't control what goes in and out of Gaza. Hence we have a very serious and threatening military situation [in Gaza]. The only way of avoiding these rocket capabilities being turned on us is to create deterrence, which is not going to happen," Eiland said, adding that Israeli deterrence had been lost during the cease-fire with Hamas.

During a visit to the IDF's Gaza Division, Defense Minister Ehud Barak described the operation as a success, saying an attack tunnel found 250 meters from the Kissufim border crossing was destroyed. He praised the understanding of local civilians who have had to face the subsequent rocket attacks after months of peaceful daily routine.

"Behind me stand children from the Nahal Oz school, and we must stress that the residents responded very well after a prolonged period of calm. We have no intention of violating the calm, we would like to continue it, but in any situation in which an operation against IDF soldiers or civilians in the Gaza Strip needs to be neutralized, we will act," he said. Barak added that the "IDF is preparing for all scenarios, including the possibility that we will need to initiate in order to block a operation. In the meantime, we are exploiting the calm in order to prepare and to bring Gilad Schalit home."

The Defense Ministry's diplomatic-military bureau chief Amos Gilad said on Wednesday that the threat posed by the tunnel amounted to a "totally unreasonable risk," and added that "it was worth making every effort to thwart it."

Speaking to Israel Radio, Gilad said that the special forces raid followed a decision to eliminate any immediate threats to IDF soldiers. "I don't believe this marks the end of the truce," he said, adding that Hamas still had an interest in maintaining the cease-fire.

Locals supported militants in attack on US post (Dawn)

2008-11-06T01:59:39Z

From: Dawn date: 6.11.08

WASHINGTON, Nov 5: A deadly attack on a US outpost in eastern Afghanistan in July was executed with the support of local police and government leaders as well as villagers there, according to an internal US military report.

The report, released on Tuesday, recommended that the district’s Afghan police chief and governor be replaced, if not arrested and tried for committing crimes against the government. It also said the incident was an example of repeated problems in the volatile mountain region where the local population was offering “passive and active support” to the insurgents, which also had infiltrated the country’s security forces.

Nine US troops were killed in the attack, launched just before midnight on July 12 by about 200 insurgents. Another 27 US troops were wounded, and of those, 11 were treated and returned to duty.

At least 21 and perhaps as many as 52 of the attackers were killed and another 45 wounded, the report said.

The report was completed on August 13, but an unclassified version was not released until this week. It confirmed many details previously released to the public about the incident, including suspicions that villagers were complicit in the attack.

The assault did not come without warning. Coalition forces had received numerous intelligence reports that an attack on the base was planned, but such threats are not unusual in that volatile region along the Pakistan border.

What was not expected, however, “was the collusion that took place” between the Afghan National Police chief and the insurgents, the report said. Troops also did not see that citizens from nearby Wanat began leaving the village that evening.

“Post-attack intelligence indicates that the district police chief and district governor were complicit in supporting the ... attack,” said the report, which was compiled by leaders in the US Army unit that came under assault.

The report also noted that enemy forces fired on troops from within the homes of villagers and from the local mosque, adding that “they could not have achieved surprise without at least the passive support of the villagers”.—AP

Saudi response positive to Pakistans requests: Tarin (dawn)

2008-11-06T01:58:59Z

From: Dawn date: 6.11.08

ISLAMABAD, Nov 5: Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance Shaukat Tarin has said that Saudi Arabia has assured to provide all possible financial assistance to Pakistan.

However, he gave no specific details.

Talking to PTV from Riyadh on Wednesday, he said the assurance was given during a one-to-one meeting between King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and President Asif Ali Zardari.

Mr Tarin said that the matter would be finalised at a meeting with the Saudi finance minister upon his return from abroad.

Answering a question, he said that a number of issues had been discussed with the Saudi government and its response on each and every issue was ‘positive’.

Mr Tarin said that efforts would be made to export more manpower to Saudi Arabia.

He said Pakistan would decide in the next few days if it would go to the IMF for a loan. “We’ll analyse all the options in the next few days and whatever is in our best interests we’ll adopt,” he said.

Pakistan is hoping to avoid an IMF programme, which entails painful conditions, by securing help from allies and other multilateral lenders.

Before his departure, Mr Zardari said he would seek the relief of deferred payment for oil imported from Saudi Arabia. Pakistan’s annual oil bill had risen to $12 billion from $3 billion in five years, he said.

Mr Tarin said King Abdullah had responded “positively” to the request on deferred oil payment.

“Everything was put on the table by Mr President and their attitude was positive towards everything,” he said.

“Now details have to be finalised but this should be taken as they have an intention to help Pakistan economically.”

The kingdom has given the facility of deferred payment to Pakistani in the past, but diplomats say that donors, including Saudi Arabia, want to see the government reach an agreement with the IMF before deciding to offer support.

Pakistan imports about 82 per cent of its crude oil from Saudi Arabia.

Analysts say deferred payment on a third of that, as requested, would provide Pakistan with a relief of up to $1.8 billion a year on its balance of payment, at current oil prices.

Pakistan’s foreign reserves dwindled to $6.92 billion on Oct 25, out of which the central bank accounted for $3.71 billion, not enough to cover September’s imports of $3.807 billion.

Analysts say Saudi Arabia has no interest in seeing Pakistan descend into chaos, because that would strengthen Al Qaeda.

Mr Zardari performed Umrah on Wednesday morning and also visited Masjid-i-Nabvi where he offered Maghrib prayers.

—Agencies

London Al-Qaeda bomb plotters cost taxpayers 5 million dollars (jihadwatch.org)

2008-11-06T01:58:20Z

From: jihadwatch.org date: 6.11.08

I owe you one, infidels.

Man who planned "black day" of terror, and who had "direct links" with Bin Laden, far from getting "justice," gets mega-jizya bucks for protection.

"Lawyers for London Al Qaeda bomb plot gang cost taxpayer £5 million," by Shekhar Bhatia for the Daily Mail, November 4:

Lawyers defending a terror gang cost the taxpayer £5 million in legal aid, it was revealed today.

Ringleader Dhiren Barot intended to murder thousands by detonating bombs on the Heathrow Express, under the Thames and in US buildings including the New York Stock Exchange.

He admitted conspiracy to murder and was jailed at Woolwich crown court with seven members of his gang in November 2006.

But he and his gang's case cost millions after Barot waited almost two years before he finally entered a guilty plea - knowing he faced an 80-year sentence if he denied his role and was found guilty.

The Court of Appeal later decided to reduce his minimum tariff from 40 to 30 years.

That process alone is likely to have added tens of thousands of pounds to the cost to the taxpayer.

Among those who profited from the case was Barot's solicitor, Mudassar Arani, who has already earned thousands of pounds more in legal aid from other terror cases including that of the jailed extremist cleric Abu Hamza.

Other lawyers who would have received legal aid payments were Ian Macdonald QC and barrister Ali Bajwa, who represented Barot when he appealed against his sentence.[...]

Barot, from Kingsbury, planned a 'black day' of terror in a series of co-ordinated bombings with the help of a gang of seven men each recruited for their expertise in various aspects of the plot.

He wrote: 'Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion was to rip through London and actually rupture the river itself.'

Barot was described as the most high-profile terror leader ever captured in Britain, with direct links to Osama bin Laden.

Somalis abduct Action Against Hunger aid workers Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the abductions and demanded the immediate release of those captured. (jihadwatch.org)

2008-11-06T01:57:36Z

From: jihadwatch.org date: 6.11.08

Who were there "to promote health and access to clean water." More gratitude. "6 linked to French aid group kidnapped in Somalia ," from the Associated Press, November 5 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

PARIS: Armed men ambushed a convoy in Somalia on Wednesday, taking four European aid workers and two Kenyans hostage, officials said.

French aid group Action Against Hunger said the attack took place in the town of Dhusamareb, about 360 miles (580 kilometers) north of the capital, Mogadishu, when the six were going to an airport to board a chartered plane bound for Nairobi, Kenya.

The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry said two Kenyan pilots and four aid workers — two French citizens, one Belgian and a Bulgarian — were kidnapped. It said no one was hurt and there had been no contact with the kidnappers so far.

Action Against Hunger said the two Kenyans were drivers, not pilots.

The group has 14 foreign staffers and 220 local employees in Somalia working on projects to promote health and access to clean water, according to its Web site.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the abductions and demanded the immediate release of those captured.

"He is deeply concerned about the worsening trend of killings and abductions of aid workers in Somalia," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Foreigners, journalists and aid workers are frequently abducted for ransom in Somalia. The country has not had an effective central government since 1991, and has been left in the grip of violence and anarchy.

Taiwan leader meets China envoy (http://news.bbc.co.uk)

2008-11-06T01:54:37Z

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk date: 6.11.08

Protests trapped Mr Chen in the hotel for hours on Wednesday
Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou has met China's senior envoy to the island in the highest level contact since 1949.

The meeting was brought forward five hours to avoid continuing protests by Taiwanese pro-independence groups.

Mr Ma defended his agreements with Beijing, saying they did not damage Taiwan's sovereignty.

The Chinese envoy, Chen Yunlin, has signed economic agreements with Taiwan but has also been trapped in a hotel by Taiwan pro-independence protesters.

Mr Chen's meeting with Mr Ma at a government guest house lasted just five minutes and involved the exchange of gifts - a vase from Mr Ma and a large scroll painting of a horse from Mr Chen.

Mr Ma said the meeting "symbolises a major step forward for cross-strait ties," and will "contribute to cross-strait stability and prosperity".

"But we cannot deny that differences and challenges still exist, such as Taiwan's security and Taiwan's position in the international community.

"In the future both sides should see the reality and should not deny each other's existence in order to promote the welfare of the people and cross-strait peace and to resolve our differences," he said in comments broadcast live.

He is the first leader of Taiwan to meet with a senior Chinese official since the end of a civil war in 1949 which saw the communists take power in Beijing, and the Kuomintang retreat to Taiwan to create a self-governing entity which China still claims as its own.

Late-night protest

Days of vociferous protest by Taiwanese who claim Mr Ma is selling out their independent identity led to a change of schedule for the high-level meeting.

Mr Chen's visit has already resulted in the signing of trade deals

Rowdy protesters still gathered outside the venue, one day after hundreds of protesters confined Mr Chen to a hotel where he was having dinner until well after midnight.

Taiwanese pro-independence groups accuse Mr Ma of selling out sovereignty in return for lucrative business deals.

Mr Ma's overtures, aimed at ending decades of political rivalry with Beijing, have sparked fierce protests in Taiwan since August.

Thousands of police have been deployed to ensure Mr Chen's safety during his visit, after his deputy Zhang Mingqing was knocked to the ground by protesters during a visit last month.

No compromise?

Before meeting Mr Chen, Mr Ma addressed Taiwan through a press conference, saying the negotiations were "mutually beneficial to create a win-win situation for both sides, which will benefit Taiwan.

"I did not concede an inch of Taiwan's sovereignty so as president I have not made any mistakes.

"The Republic of China is a sovereign, independent country," he said, using the formal name for Taiwan and the island's way of differentiating itself from the People's Republic of China.

Deals were signed to introduce direct cargo shipping and postal services, increase passenger flights, shorten existing routes across the Taiwan Strait, and allow more mainland tourists to visit Taiwan.

Closer cooperation was promised on food safety.

The two sides also agreed a wildlife swap, with China receiving a deer and a Formosa serow, a goat-like animal native to Taiwan, in exchange for two pandas.

Previously, sovereignty issues involving vessels and crews forced costly detours through third countries, while China-Taiwan flights were forced to stop in Hong Kong or Macau.

Obama builds up White House team (http://news.bbc.co.uk)

2008-11-06T01:53:55Z

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk date: 6.11.08

Illinois congressman Rahm Emanuel (L) was an adviser to President Clinton
Barack Obama has started forming his administration by asking Rahm Emanuel, a former adviser to President Clinton, to be his chief-of-staff.

US President-elect Obama is expected to appoint a new treasury secretary soon.

He has until his inauguration on 20 January to select his senior officials. President Bush has pledged his complete co-operation during the transition.

Mr Obama was elected the first black US president on Tuesday with a resounding win over Republican rival John McCain.

There has been speculation Mr Obama will ask Defence Secretary Robert Gates to remain in his post.

Mr Gates is broadly respected by both parties and would reflect a more bipartisan administration, says the BBC's Jane O'Brien in Washington.

Mr Obama's victory was widely welcomed around the world.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called Tuesday's poll historic and said he and Mr Obama "share many values".

Chinese President Hu Jintao said he looked forward to strengthening dialogue. France's Nicolas Sarkozy said the poll had raised "enormous hope".

CIA briefings

Rahm Emanuel is an Illinois congressman and tough Washington insider who has been strongly criticised by some Republicans for being too partisan, our correspondent says.

Cannot play media.You do not have the correct version of the flash player. Download the correct version

Barack Obama speaks to jubilant crowds at his victory rally in Chicago
If he accepts the position of chief-of-staff, he would be responsible for much of the internal management of the new administration.

But critics say his appointment could accentuate party divides, rather than heal them, as Mr Obama has pledged.

With the country in the throes of an economic slowdown and part of the global financial crisis, the post of treasury secretary will be another key post, our correspondent adds.

Likely contenders for the post reportedly include former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, the current head of the New York Federal Reserve.

With the business of preparing for government underway, Mr Obama will from Thursday start receiving the president's daily CIA briefings, which will include updates on covert operations.

'Unprecedented'

Projected results from Tuesday's election have yet to be announced for the states of North Carolina and Missouri, which are believed to be too close to call.

OBAMA GAINS
Ohio
New Mexico
Iowa
Virginia
Florida
Colorado
Nevada
Indiana

But with most precincts tallied, Mr Obama's share of the popular vote stands at 52.3%, compared with Mr McCain's 46.4%.

Turnout was reported to be extremely high - in some places "unprecedented" in what many Americans said they felt was a historic election.

It was predicted that 130 million Americans had voted - the highest turn-out since 1960.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington said that by selecting Mr Obama, Americans had made two fundamental statements about themselves: that they were profoundly unhappy with the status quo; and that they were slamming the door on the country's racial past.

The entire US House of Representatives and a third of US Senate seats were also contested in Tuesday's elections.

The Democrats increased their Senate majority by five seats, but fell short of the 60 needed to stop blocking tactics by Republicans.

They also increased their majority in the House of Representatives, gaining 20 seats to give a total 252, leaving the Republicans with 173.

RSS leader shot dead by suspected Maoists in Kandhamal

2008-11-06T01:53:02Z

From: Rediff News date: 6.11.08

November 05, 2008 16:44 IST
After a month's lull in violence ravaged Kandhamal, suspected Maoists on Wednesday gunned down a local Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader sparking fresh tension in the area.

RSS leader Dhanu Pradhan, who was said to be on the Maoists' hitlist, was gunned down by three suspected extremists at Kumarigaon village under Brahmanigaon police station area in Kandhamal at around 1300 hrs, sources said.

The Maoists had earlier claimed that they killed Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Swami Laxamananda Saraswati on August 23 which sparked communal violence in the state.

"We have information that a person has shot dead, but we are yet to confirm on the identity of the victim and the killers," deputy inspector general (Southern Range) R S Koche told PTI

© Copyright 2008 PTI. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of PTI content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent.

Indian Americans set for key roles under Obama (Rediff News)

2008-11-06T01:52:23Z

From: Rediff News date: 6.11.08

November 06, 2008 00:58 IST

Sonal Shah, currently director for Global Development at google.org in promoting the firm's philanthropy will serve on President-elect Barack Obama's official 15-member transition board to be announced on Wednesday.

The board will be chaired by John Podesta, former President Clinton's chief of staff, who founded the progressive think tank, Centre for American Progress, where Shah worked after her stint with the Clinton Administration 1995-2000.

Meanwhile, Preeta Bansal, partner at the international law firm of Skadden Arps and a senior adviser on the Obama campaign, and former Solicitor General of New York, is also expected to play a significant role in terms of staffing of the new Obama administration on the personnel side and will be one of five key advisers "who will be doing the personnel operations for the new administration in terms of getting people placed," one insider told rediff.com.

An ad-hoc transition team had been in operation since August after Obama clinched the Democratic primary and his party's presidential nomination beating out Senator Hillary Clinton , but now it will be formalised in the wake of Obama's blow-out of the GOP nominee Senator John McCain in the presidential election.

Shah, although not as visible an Obama activist as Bansal, had been brought into the transition team in the summer by her old boss Podesta, and told rediff.com that she will be taking a leave of absence from google.org for the next two-and-a-half months at least till Obama is sworn in January 20 as the 44th president of the United States.

While Bansal will be working on personnel operations beyond January 20, her name is also been thrown up for a senior level position in the Department of Justice, and speculation is rife that she could be the new Solicitor General.

However, Bansal has been keeping a low profile and told rediff.com that she didn't want to comment on the speculation or her duties as part of the personnel selection team, but insiders said, "She will be very heavily involved on the personnel side."

There was also speculation that Neera Tanden, who served as senior domestic policy adviser on the Obama campaign, after the Clinton campaign -- for which she worked in the same capacity -- wound up, was also likely to be offered a senior position in an Obama administration.

Another name that could figure, although not in Washington, but in Ohio was that of another long-time supporter of Obama and contributor to his campaign, Subodh Chandra, former Cleveland Law Director, who could be tapped as US Attorney for Ohio.

If Chandra gets this position, it could set him up for a subsequent political run if he wishes to remain in Ohio, one insider said, recalling Chandra's unsuccessful bid for Attorney General of Ohio.

There could be also junior positions for the likes of the founders of South Asians for Obama -- Hrishi Karthikeyan, Nick Rathod, and Dave Kumar -- these insiders acknowledged, although these appointments would likely be made only once the Obama administration is up and running and into March or April.

"There have been hundreds and hundreds of resumes that have been pouring in," one source said, and said another name being thrown around is New Jersey's Secretary of Transportation, Kris Kolluri for a senior position in the US Department of Transportation in an Obama administration.

But the source asserted that while "ultimately, we want the most qualified people in positions, but all of the other things being equal, we are going to give precedence to people who believes in Barack's vision of transformation from the beginning."

Shah said as a member of the transition board, her responsibilities and that of the others would involve "planning through the transition," till January 20," and "getting the things ready for the team that will take over in the government and giving them the option and handing them what they can go do, so that they can do it."

"Our job is to get everything ready in the next 76 days for them to do their job better," she added.

Shah said that she would be on the policy side while there were teams looking at personnel, and another team looking at the various government agencies and reviewing them.

"Mine will involve the technology innovation side of this -- what are the policies that people are going to look at, what's been done in the states, what are the things that we might take from there," she said, and added, "We talk about a 21st century government but how do we create it?"

Podesta would continue to chair the board but once Obama's chief of staff comes in, "he will be getting ready for the White House," she said.

Rahm Emmanuel, chairman of the Democratic Caucus and long-time Obama friend and confidant from Chicago, who was elected to the US Congress in 2004, has been tapped by Obama for the Chief of Staff position, but is said to be agonizing over it since he could also rise fast in the hierarchy of the Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill, with the Speaker's slot a possibility in a few years.

Shah acknowledged that once the chief of staff comes in, he would be directing the personnel operations and deciding on what happens after January 20 while Podesta "will be managing the transition."

After her stint in the Clinton Administration from 1995 to 2000, first in the Department of Treasury and then in the National Security Council, doing international economics, Shah left to join the newly formed Center for American Progress under Podesta.

After nine months, she joined Goldman Sachs in New York, before moving out to California for her present job with google.org.

Vedic Verses for 11/5/08 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-06T01:51:21Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Vedic Verses
A daily collection of verses from the Vedas, Hinduism's revealed scripture

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

Vedic Verses for 11/5/08 : Words cannot describe the joy of the soul whose impurities are cleansed in deep contemplation-who is one with his atman, his own Spirit. Only those who feel this joy know what it is.

Words cannot describe the joy of the soul whose impurities are cleansed in deep contemplation-who is one with his atman, his own Spirit. Only those who feel this joy know what it is.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Maitra Upanishad 6.34. upm, 103

You are in truth the visible Brahman. I will proclaim you as the visible Brahman. I will speak the right. I will speak the truth. May this protect me. May it protect my teacher! May this protect me. May it protect my teacher! Aum, peace, peace, peace!

Krishna Yajur Veda, Taittiraya Upanishad 1.1.1. ve, 757

The one who has not turned away from wickedness, who has no peace, who is not concentrated, whose mind is restless-he cannot realize the atman, who is known by wisdom.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Katha Upanishad 2.24. ve, 710

May He protect us both. May He be pleased with us both. May we work together with vigor; may our study make us illumined. May there be no dislike between us. Aum, peace, peace.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Taittiraya Upanishad 2.1. Invocation. upr, 541

Nonviolence is all the offerings. Renunciation is the priestly honorarium. The final purification is death. Thus all the Divinities are established in this body.

Krishna Yajur Veda, Pranagnihotra Upanishad 46-8. ve, 413-14

Tirukural - Chapter 56: Unjust Reign (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

2008-11-06T01:50:00Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Tirukural
A daily chapter from South Indian saint Tiruvalluvar's Tirukural, "Holy Couplets."

Chapter 56: Unjust Reign : More malicious than a professional murderer is the monarch who rules his people with injustice and oppression.

Kural 551
More malicious than a professional murderer is the monarch
who rules his people with injustice and oppression.
Kural 552
A scepter-wielding king requesting a gift is like
a lance-bearing robber demanding, "Give me all you have."
Kural 553
Day to day the king must seek out and punish unlawfulness,
or day by day his country will plummet toward ruin.
Kural 554
Without thinking, a king rules crookedly, and thus
forfeits his subjects' loyalty, together with his own fortune.
Kural 555
Are not the tears of a people who cannot bear their monarch's
oppressive reign the force that erodes his prosperity?
Kural 556
Ruling rightly, a monarch may long endure.
Without that, his majesty is rightfully unenduring.
Kural 557
As the Earth fares under a rainless sky,
so do a people languish under an unkind king.
Kural 558
Possessions hold less pleasure than poverty
for oppressed subjects living under an unjust king.
Kural 559
If the king acts contrary to justice, contrary seasons will befall
the land and rain-laden clouds will fail to come forth.
Kural 560
If the people's protector fails to protect
brahmins will forget the Vedas and cows' milk will dry up.

The Master Course - Lesson 207 : What Is Sin? How Can We Atone for It?

2008-11-06T01:44:08Z

From: Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com Date: Wednesday, November 5, 2008

The Master Course
The lesson of the day from Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's trilogy: Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva

Lesson 207

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

Lesson 207

Sloka 52 from Dancing with Siva
What Is Sin? How Can We Atone for It?
Sin is the intentional transgression of divine law. There is no inherent or "original" sin. Neither is there mortal sin by which the soul is forever lost. Through sadhana, worship and austerities, sins can be atoned for. Aum.

Bhashya
What men term sin, the wise call ignorance. Man's true nature is not sullied by sin. Sin is related only to the lower, instinctive-intellectual nature as a transgression of dharma. Still, sin is real and to be avoided, for our wrongful actions return to us as sorrow through the law of karma. Sin is terminable, and its effects may be compensated for by penance, or prayashchitta, and good deeds which settle the karmic debt. The young soul, less in tune with his soul nature, is inclined toward sin; the old soul seldom transgresses divine law. Sins are the crippling distortions of intellect bound in emotion. When we sin, we take the energy and distort it to our instinctive favor. When we are unjust and mean, hateful and holding resentments year after year and no one but ourselves knows of our intrigue and corruption, we suffer. As the soul evolves, it eventually feels the great burden of faults and misdeeds and wishes to atone. Penance is performed, and the soul seeks absolution
from society and beseeches God's exonerating grace. The Vedas say, "Loose me from my sin as from a bond that binds me. May my life swell the stream of your river of Right." Aum Namah Sivaya.

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

Lesson 207 from Living with Siva
Bribery Is Corruption
Spiritual people and institutions sometimes feel compelled to accept or pay bribes because the alternative is so frustrating or because their sense of mission is so strong, and they want it to go forward at all costs. Still, it must be remembered that it is not only what you do that is important, but how you do it. Bad money cannot be purified by spending it on good projects. Rather, bad money sours and fails them.

In our spiritual fellowship, we have a rule that we do not engage in bribery, even when it means great sacrifice. In our efforts to carve a granite temple in Bangalore to be shipped to Hawaii--for which we established a village of a hundred workers and their families--we have been called upon time and time again to hand over a bribe. Yes, even a giant project can be hampered by a small bribe. We had to ask ourselves, shall we pay the petty pittance to keep the electricity on and the phones working? It was hard sometimes not to submit, but now it is well known that we don't pay, and the bribe takers no longer ask. One previous bribe seeker actually apologized for his earlier demands.

By neither accepting nor paying bribes, my devotees are telling the community that bribery is unacceptable and ultimately unnecessary. If enough people follow this principle in any society, then bribery will go away. If enough people do not, then bribery becomes the accepted way of doing business, and everyone will accept bribes as a source of additional income, and pay bribes as a means of getting things done. The acceptance of a bribe is an affirmation of the practice. Every time a family, an individual, a community, a nation disavows or rejects the practice of bribery, then bribery is diminished. To walk away from a bribe, to reject a bribe or to refuse to pay is to fulfill Hindu Dharma.

Where does bribery begin? The same place as everything else--at home, often at a young age. Mothers bribe their children to behave and earn good grades. Fathers bribe youths to marry according to their race and financial position. Dowry, we could say, is another form of bribery. If it's not given, the marriage does not take place. If it were really a gift, that would not be the case. Those who take bribes and pay bribes raise a corrupt family.

Mercy, through personal prayashchitta, sincere penance, can help relieve the bad karma, but that, too, is all for naught unless one stops the practice. The power of decision rests on the character of each person in the family. If that power is used rightly, the kukarmas clear. If not, the family and all members go down and down and down, for bribery is stealing and being stolen from. It is similar to walking into someone's house late at night, opening their cash box and taking money. Bribery has the same emotional and psychological impact. He who pays a bribe is an accomplice to the person who demands it. He who accepts a bribe proffered to buy his favors is likewise bound to his crafty benefactor. There are two criminals in each case, he who accepts and he who pays. Inwardly, karmically, astrally, they are bound together as one. Those who pay bribes for the sake of efficiency or accept gifts without examining the intent may deem themselves innocent, but they are not. Karmic
law spares no one.

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

Sutra 207 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Two Psychological Junctures
Siva's ardent souls recognize that the natural human life span is 120 years. They confidently plan ahead at each 40-year juncture. Elders counsel, as needed, persons in life transitions, around 40 and 80 years of age. Aum.

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

Lesson 207 from Merging with Siva
The Sources Of Thoughts

Sometimes the thoughts you think are not your own. Your individual awareness may have inadvertently been pulled into an area of the mind that someone else is aware in. So, unintentionally you may be reading someone else's thoughts as your own, and if they are of a nature that you do not approve, it is possible that you may be disappointed in yourself. Keen discernment must always be employed by the aspirant on the path in order to decipher which is which. This is difficult, but you should always question thoughts that just pop into your head to find out whether they are, in fact, your own or those of another.

A general outline that you can follow in deciphering your personal thoughts from those of another is this. As soon as you begin to question your thinking with this in mind, if the thoughts are yours, you will continue thinking in the same way after the questioning has subsided. However, if they are those of another, through the simple act of questioning whether they are or not, you have removed awareness from the area of mind they are vibrating in. Then when the questioning has subsided, you will forget that trend of thought and go on with one of your own. Their thoughts will fade from your memory in a similar way dreams do when you awaken in the morning.

This is by no means an inference that you should every minute of the day question your thinking as I have just described. For, more than often, with people whom we love as well as with other friends and acquaintances, you would want to be always drifting into the areas of mind they are in, and they with you. It is only on rare occasions that thoughts of an uncomely nature, of an instinctive nature, especially sexual, may militate against your sadhana. My advice is rather than blame yourself, first question to see if such fantasies are actually your own. Mass hysteria and fear of a national or global disaster can also be picked up by the sensitive individual, sometimes unknowingly. Along the same lines, we should be alert to this.

There is a Saivite hermit, the venerable Markanduswami, living in a humble mud hut in Sri Lanka. He is very old, and was for many years a disciple of Jnanaguru Yogaswami. In fact, his every utterance is a quote from his guru. One afternoon at his hut he described Yogaswami's approach to dealing with thought during meditation. He said, "Yogaswami said, 'Realize Self by self. You want to read this book, that book and all these books. The Book of Infinite Knowledge is here (pointing to his chest). You'd better open your own book.' The prescription he gave me to open that book is this: 'When you are in meditation, you watch the mind. Here and there the mind is hopping. One, two, three,ƒa hundred. In a few seconds the mind goes to a hundred places. Let him be. You also watch very carefully. Here and there this mind is running. Don't forget Self for a second. Let him go anywhere, but if he goes to a hundred places, you must follow him to a hundred places. You must not miss even a s
ingle one. Follow him and note, He is going here. Now he is going there.' You must not miss even a single one. That is the prescription Satguru Yogaswami gave me to open this inner book. He said, 'Watch very attentively and learn to pick up things coming from within. Those messages are very valuable. You can't value them. Realize Self by self and open this inner book. Why don't you open your own book? Why don't you make use of it? Why don't you open your own book? What an easy path I am prescribing for you!' "

Nokia to cut almost 600 sales and marketing jobs: company

2008-11-05T00:35:20Z

From: uniqueindian@yahoo.in Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2008

The world's leading maker of mobile phones, Nokia of Finland, said on Tuesday that it would cut almost 600 jobs, mainly in its sales and marketing division.

"As a follow-up to Nokia's reorganisation in the beginning of 2008, Nokia plans further changes in its sales and marketing activities in the markets unit," it said in a statement.

"Nokia estimates that approximately 450 employees, maximum 100 in Finland, in the markets unit will be affected by the planned changes," the company said, adding that another 130 employees at the Nokia Research Centre (NRC) would also be affected.

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Microsoft India announces Rs 1.61 cr for skills prog (youngindianpeople@gmail.com)

2008-11-05T00:34:38Z

From: youngindianpeople@gmail.com Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2008

NEW DELHI: Microsoft India on Tuesday announced an additional amount of Rs 1.61 crore for its ongoing Community Technology Skills Programme to promote IT access and training for communities vulnerable to unsafe migration and human trafficking across the country.

Making the announcement at a function here, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Microsoft Corporation Nancy Anderson said through this programme 44,800 youth from economically disadvantaged communities especially vulnerable to trafficking will receive IT training over next three years.

She said Microsoft has been working with CAP Foundation to implement the project and under the grants, the non-profit organisation will get Rs 1.18 crore in cash, software and curriculum to provide training to youths.

Anderson said the second grant of over Rs 42 lakh is aimed at enabling safe migration and professional advancement for low skilled workers who want to migrate overseas for employment.

Around 6,000 such workers registered with Overseas Migration Corporations or similar agencies in India will receive pre-migration IT and employability skills training, certification and placement assistance over a period of three years.

"We trust both these grants will contribute to strengthening the role of IT in enabling jobs and employment for underserved individuals and bridging the skills gap," she said addressing the valedictory function for graduates of CAP foundation's training courses.

Microsoft has so far partnered with 13 NGOs for the Community Technology Skills Programme in India, supported close to 900 Community Technology Learning Centres across the country and trained more than 1,20,000 people in 20 states and Union Territories, a company official said.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is also extending cooperation to Microsoft and CAP foundation for implementation of the project.

On the occasion, Mission Director of USAID in India George Deikun said the USAID was privileged to be part of this very exciting initiative which linked learning with livelihood.

"It is revolutionising the way vulnerable youth, who have little prospect of employment, are mainstreamed into society," he said.

Thanking Microsoft for its financial support, Chairperson of CAP Foundation Nalini Gangadharan said the project was changing lives of underprivileged youths.

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Hindu help restore 700-year-old Dargah in Gujarat village

2008-11-05T00:33:58Z

From: sridharswami@aol.com Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Residents of a Hindu-dominated village in Gujarat's Mehsana district have presented a rare example of communal harmony by contributing Rs 17 lakh for the renovation of a 700-year-old Dargah there.

Over 5,000 people, both Hindus and Muslims, gathered at the Aloda village in Mehsana district yesterday for the inaugural function of the Fakir Bava's Dargah, restored by funds entirely donated by the villagers.

"Our village has no Muslim population but all of us were unanimous in our decision to rebuild the 700-year-old Dargah which was badly damaged during the 2001 earthquake," said Nutan Desai from Aloda village, 60 km from Banaskantha.

"Our joy knew no bounds on Labh Pancham (fifth day from Diwali) when the renovation work of Fakir Bava's Dargah was dedicated to the people," he added.

Maulana Mustakh Ahmed Patel hailing from nearby Chhathiyarda village, who had performed the inaugural rituals of the Dargah said, "Aloda has set a rare example of communal harmony. We pray to God that others will also follow the example provided by this small village."

Maulana Khalil Ahmed from a near by village who was specially invited for the inaugural ceremony said, "Saiyed Badru Rehmat-ulla-Alai had come from Mecca and settled in the village more than 700 years ago. He was well known as a Sufi saint in the region."

"We have been specially invited by the villagers.. We cannot express our happiness in words," Maulana Khalil added.

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Will Obama revive faith in democracy? (youngindianpeople@gmail.com)

2008-11-05T00:32:46Z

From: youngidianpeople@gmail.com Date: Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. With secular democracy in its last throws, liberals, on the left and right, are hoping that Barak Obama is the man to extend its 'sell by date'.

Liberal freedom as embodied in democracy has undoubtedly caused a huge mess for humanity.

Economic liberalism - freedom of ownership and laissez faire markets - has brought near collapse in Western economies. Hundreds of billions are spent in an instant to safeguard the interests of a few thousand wealthy bankers while a protracted political debate lasting years holds up vital and necessary minimum healthcare services for tens of million in poverty in rich America.

Social liberalism – the exhortation of individualism - above all else has created a selfish, egotistical and cruel society. Resulting social breakdown and family meltdown is widespread with the massive harmful effects on women, families and the young conveniently disregarded. The wellbeing of the old and treatment of the weak and vulnerable is shameful being conditional on economic growth or maximising the returns of the rich.

The exportation of democratic liberalism to the Middle East and the Muslim world has brought a brutal foreign policy with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, tens of millions displaced and made refugees and the military resistance to American occupation continues 5 years on in Iraq and 7 years on in Afghanistan. Enough said on the so-called desire for democracy in the Muslim world.

After hurricane Katrina vividly exposed the acute racial and income divide in today's America, the rise of Obama is being hailed as victory for liberal democracy – a young black man, leader of the free world – the American dream personified.

Yet the issue of colour is a diversion. America already has powerful black political leaders – Colin Powell, former Chief of Staff and Condoleezza Rice, current Secretary of State. African-American politicians in the US Congress date back to 1870. Today there are numerous black city mayors – most notably one for New Orleans. Black sportsmen and women are everyday household names.

European states share America's economic ills, as evidenced by the current financial crisis, and also America's political and social malaise. This shows the underlying problems are the values underpinning western societies – i.e. liberalism - and not the slight variation in their respective democratic models. Politicians on the left and right vigorously fight over subtle policy differences to divert attention from the failing liberal values which go unaddressed. This will not change were Obama to be elected as president.

Two hundred years after the abolishment of slavery western liberal societies continue to debate whether a black man can lead the most powerful nation in the world. Yet for Muslims this issue was resolved over 1400 years ago.

Narrated Anas bin Malik:

Allah's Apostle (saw) said, "You should listen to and obey, your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin." (Sahih Bukhari Volume 9, Book 89, Number 256)

Racism and prejudice has no place in Islam even when it comes to leadership and ruling.

The sublime values of Islam as preserved in the Sharia provide real practical solutions for today's problems from racism to family breakdown and financial turmoil. Only the Khilafah state will put these into practice and be a beacon of light for the entire world.

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New List

Massive layoffs as gloom deepens (http://news.bbc.co.uk/)

{UnitedHinduFront} Terrorism not an option for hindus (Unitedhindufront@googlegroups.com)

Tirukural - Chapter 62: Perseverance; Never say in weakness, "This task is too difficult." Perseverance will confer the ability to accomplish it. (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

India to release 30 Pak prisoners on Nov 14 (pioneer)

No cut in fuel prices till companies stop making losses: PM of India (Times of India)

Defining Jew-hatred down at the UN (jihadwatch.org)

U.K.: Abu Qatada was planning on fleeing country in plot hatched by Omar Bakri

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Jerusalem mayoral race offers alternate visions of future (jpost.com)

Militants raid Nato supplies, hijack 13 military trucks carrying supplies for NATO, near Pakistan-Afghanistan Border. (Dawn)

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Nasa Mars mission declared dead (http://news.bbc.co.uk

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Assam: 10 feared killed in ultras' attack, on the night of Monday, 10th November 2008. (Rediff News) K Anurag in Guwahati

Assam: 10 feared killed in ultras' attack, on the night of Monday, 10th November 2008. (Rediff News) K Anurag in Guwahati

Gulf of Mannar for World Heritage Site (webmaster@hinducounciluk.org )

'Sonstrokes' not new to Indian politics, Congress. Whatever might be the grievances of AICC General Secretary Margaret Alva, tickets in elections for the kith and kin of leaders has virtually been the rule rather than exception in the grand old party.

Vedic Verses for 11/10/08 : Spring up, become fair, be distended, O barley, with your own increase! Burst all vessels designed to contain you! ( Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Tirukural - Chapter 61: Avoidance of Idleness. The eternal flame of a family vanishes when eclipsed by that dark cloud called idleness. (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

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Vedic Verses for 11/8/08 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Tirukural - Chapter 59: Espionage (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

The Master Course - Lesson 211 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Vedic Verses for 11/9/08 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Tirukural - Chapter 60: Possession of Industriousness (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com )

Gulf of Mannar for World Heritage Site (webmaster@hinducounciluk.org)

Moon images beamed by Chandrayaan-1 (Indian Express)

Tirukural - Chapter 58: The Kindly Look (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Vedic Verses for 11/7/08 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Were Obama and McCain Campaigns Hacked? (rakesh@sysman.in)

Was America Attacked by Iraqi Muslims on 9/11? (hinduforum@live.com )

A Cry from an Iraqi Christian woman! Where are you our beloved SaddamHussein? (sridharswami@aol.com)

California, Florida ban same-sex marriages (youngindianpeople@gmail.com)

Sensex below 10,000 (: hinduforum@live.com)

Armyman in blast net (uniqueindian@yahoo.in)

Excellence of Loving Human Beings for God (youngindianpeople@gmail.com)

Vedic Verses for 11/6/08 : (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Tirukural - Chapter 57: Avoidance of Tyranny (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

The Master Course - Lesson 208 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Chandrayaan: Indias Moon Mission makes history (organizer )

MALDIVES: Challenges for Anni, the new President. (southasisanalysis.com)

A case of discrimination against the Hindus

Secularism has been distorted, wrongly defined; even the conventional law-enforcement mechanisms are not being allowed to be used under political pressure if the members of the Muslim community are suspect.

BLEEDING ASSAM CRIES OUT FOR ATTENTION -INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR (southasiaanalysis)

NEPAL: PLA Integration Continues to be a Contentious Issue: (southasiaanalysis.org) By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan.

Israeli Air Force kills Islamic Jihad terrorist in northern Gaza airstrike (jpost.com)

Locals supported militants in attack on US post (Dawn)

Saudi response positive to Pakistans requests: Tarin (dawn)

London Al-Qaeda bomb plotters cost taxpayers 5 million dollars (jihadwatch.org)

Somalis abduct Action Against Hunger aid workers Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the abductions and demanded the immediate release of those captured. (jihadwatch.org)

Taiwan leader meets China envoy (http://news.bbc.co.uk)

Obama builds up White House team (http://news.bbc.co.uk)

RSS leader shot dead by suspected Maoists in Kandhamal

Indian Americans set for key roles under Obama (Rediff News)

Vedic Verses for 11/5/08 (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

Tirukural - Chapter 56: Unjust Reign (Kauai_Hindu_Monastery@jnanadana.com)

The Master Course - Lesson 207 : What Is Sin? How Can We Atone for It?

Nokia to cut almost 600 sales and marketing jobs: company

Microsoft India announces Rs 1.61 cr for skills prog (youngindianpeople@gmail.com)

Hindu help restore 700-year-old Dargah in Gujarat village

Will Obama revive faith in democracy? (youngindianpeople@gmail.com)

Militants kill two spies, Militants killed two Afghan men here on Saturday after accusing them of spying for US-led forces deployed across the border, local officials said. (Dawn)

Chandrayaan: Indias Moon Mission makes history (organizer )

Locals supported militants in attack on US post (Dawn)

Saudi response positive to Pakistans requests: Tarin (dawn)

Somalis abduct Action Against Hunger aid workers Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the abductions and demanded the immediate release of those captured. (jihadwatch.org)