Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

RoyG · Post by **RoyG** » 08 Jun 2012 05:23

Yeah i noticed...why do you think that is?

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 12 Jun 2012 03:09

No risking publicity now. A kind of media blackout called on by the faithfool in the financing houses behind. It might be reopened though, if concessions are agreed on Siachen.

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 12 Jun 2012 06:44

brihaspati ji,

sent you a mail. requesting your input on the issue.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 13 Jun 2012 23:11

^^sorry. Was very busy. Will reply. The dynamics of Andhra region is crucial now for the eastern sector of the rising anti-centre sentiments. Do keep on posting on that. Orissa is rather quiet, but it is deceptive.

vishvak · Post by **vishvak** » 13 Jun 2012 23:44

OT, is it true that Odisha coast is not as secure perhaps as Andhra coast, considering all kind from neighboring countries can infiltrate?

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 14 Jun 2012 00:23

generally speaking, both the eastern and western coasts have a heavy presence of the Abrahamic networks. on the west coast, the Islamist influence goes back several centuries. and the Brits used some of these networks and buttressed them with their own implants. that sector hasn't been cleaned up since the fall of Marathas. two centuries of solid penetration by Brits and later by the continuing elements post-1947.

the east coast has accumulated purely mercantilist elements since 1565. literally, this sector has collaborated and aided every element that supported continued profit-making. the Marathas never focused enough on the fertile east coast. and later on, after Brits entered, and the politics of this region in that phase is very interesting. they kicked out every clan of families which resisted their advance. and the local ambitious second-rung elites collaborated with the Brits to kick out the resisting elements. this is what I was talking about in the Elections thread. often times, those that got kicked out from the Coast by the Brits and their supporting Indians, they migrated "inland" to Telangana, away from the Coast. these migrations continued till the late 19th century.

in Tamil Nadu sector of East coast, we see that the bottom tip of the subcontinent is extremely fertile, washed and nourished by the Kaveri and its tributaries. This sector is highly fertile from Kerala coast to TN coast, continuously. in Maha, KT, and AP, the middle section is the dry and arid Deccan, while down below it's fertile from coast to coast. this might be the reason why Brit-induced penetrations like the Dravidian victim-complex, made a much deeper presence on the psyche in that area. in Maha, KT, and AP, the dry Deccan was like a buffer of protection, giving shelter b/c of the unattractive geography and climate. so Marathi, Kannada, and Telugu speakers had the option of resisting Brit schemes, by migrating to areas which the looters and foreigners found less attractive. I have said this before, and it angered many people, but I'll say it again. the TN and AP Coastal sectors are highly interconnected. the Dravidian victim-complex would have made a deeper impact on AP too (just like in TN), if not for the fact that the linguistic basis of AP is such that the state is composed of 2 geographic regions (the fertile East, and the dry West).

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 14 Jun 2012 00:41

brihaspati ji,

take your time. I don't mind spending time on a long and detailed reply.

looking forward to some hand-wringing brainstorming.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 20 Jun 2012 04:09

http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2012/06/c ... ian-power/

The architect of China’s authoritarian power structure realized that it had “one glaring weak point” that is now raising fundamental questions about the system’s stability and direction, says a leading analyst.

Deng Xiaoping knew that the problem of how to ‘institutionalize succession” was the Achilles Heel of Communist rule, writes Perry Link – “Who appoints the person at the very top — where by definition there is no superior to do the appointing?”

Now, the current leadership transition is raising “deeper questions about luxian, the ‘general direction’ in which China should be headed,” he argues in Foreign Policy:

The distinguished Chinese novelist and blogger Wang Lixiong, noting that Hu’s apparent successor Xi Jinping is allied with the Jiang camp, has written a shrewd analysis of Deng’s long-term plan: Two elite groups, one originating with Jiang and the other with Hu, will exchange 10-year periods of center stage while the other waits in the wings. Each group — knowing that the other will get a turn later — will have an incentive to be civil. With luck, long-term stability will result.

The normally smooth succession process has been rocked by the elite’s removal of rising neo-Maoist Bo Xilai, a dispute that brings the ruling party to a fork in the road or at least “two main possibilities” for China’s political trajectory, writes Link, professor emeritus of East Asian studies at Princeton University, who teaches at the University of California, Riverside:

One is the emergence of a new core of authoritarian power. Many who have this possibility in mind look to China’s military, but the question is deeper than that, and the pattern could emerge from a number of sources. There is a centuries-old tradition in Chinese political culture of the following combination as a formula for gaining and holding political power: a charismatic leader, a millenarian (and often egalitarian) ideology, and an authoritarian bureaucratic hierarchy that guards secrets. …..

The other “general direction” would be a move toward modern democratic rule, including elections of officials, civil rights for citizens, and rule of law. The greatest challenge for China’s democratization is how to bring together two levels: an elite of pro-democracy intellectuals, people like the writers and supporters of Charter 08 (a group that includes imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo), and hundreds of millions of ordinary people who have been angered by corruption, inequality, injustice, and environmental destruction. China’s rulers’ huge expenditure on “stability maintenance,” which includes hired thugs and Internet monitors in addition to conventional police and prisons, have brought them considerable success in keeping these two levels separate.

This is an important pointer as to where we may need to play.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 25 Jun 2012 01:57

MB has come to formal power in Egypt. But this is the start of a phase of civil war in the political domain of Egypt, which is going to be very interesting. My projected next cycle of mullahcracy versus anti-mullahcracy struggle in the Arab world should start now between the minority leftist youth and the overwhelming mass of islamists who were carefully nurtured during the ousted last dictator's rule.

Euroland will increasingly fall silent on Hamas bolstering and Gaza. Further Erdogan will avoid going all out against Syria and try to turn the current shooting down incidence into an internal witchhunt. Turkish military is intended to be purged from the top and slowly replaced by the Islamist indoctrinated youth from the lower ranks - who have been allowed to flourish all along from the end of Kemal's period.

Erdogan cannot risk serious war engagement until he or his party is able to Islamize the army. Kurdistan bashing is a different issue of course.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 25 Jun 2012 02:25

Hi Brihaspati,

Broadly agree regarding Erdogan's preferred route. If he's forced to commit to war, he'll try to make the rest of NATO do as much of the heavy lifting as possible. Not much appetite for that at the moment with all of the budget cuts.

As for Egypt the MB's strength isnt just the Islam stuff, its the popular perception that is led by educated (doctors, lawyers, engineeers, teachers, etc) and honest figures who care about the ordinary Egyptian.

Most Egyptians support for MB is highly conditional on their performance in government and whether they live up to that image by extending services, growing the economy, etc.

If that improvement takes place they'll be willing to look the other way while the MB consolidates power at the expense of both the military (deep state) and opposition parties.

That was Erdogan and the AKP's deal with the Turkish public. The key to economic performance was maintaining good relations with both Gulf as well as the West in order to tap investment and markets while avoiding conflict with neighbours.

Nasser's development agenda, one of the key pillars of his public support was derailed by his Arab nationalist rhetoric about Israel and Palestine which painted him into a corner. A lot of Egyptians, including the MB have not forgot those lessons which is why strategically Egypt has been pretty conservative since Sadat. So far the MB has made it clear that symbolic gestures aside, business comes first.

If growth, reform, and the expansion of services fail to improve the lives of Egyptians, or harassment of ordinary people by petty officials resumes, then things will get very interesting. Public support will drop, and then thats the sort of conditions that would bring out the MB's ugly side. Thats when distractions will be needed like Sharia, Israel, the Copts, etc.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 25 Jun 2012 02:35

Johann,
very interesting dynamics in Egypt - until the constituent assembly is to start. The presidency is actually short lived (time bound). To tackle the military, the MB will have to come to some form of show of military hands of its own. This is where the lower ranks matter.

For all the parties involved, including Syria and Iran - the best solution is both war and non-war. Something they are simply having to play on under immense pressure. Whichever side blinks first, loses. The problem for India is that until this roulette is settled, a lot of so-called investment issues are tied up. With Pranav Mukherjee being shuttled off to Presidency, his semi-populist economic rhetoric will give way to so-called pragamtist foreign flow proponents.

This in turn may create greater opportunities for pressurizing towards bargaining about India's support for the programme for ME reordering.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 25 Jun 2012 02:48

Hi B,

The footsoldiers of the Egyptian Army are conscripts, not professionals. The high command is aware that it can not push them too far - i.e. shooting unarmed civilians. That is the trump card of the civilian parties, including the MB when facing SCAF.

Egyptian Military intelligence is on the other hand very vigilant about junior and field grade officer loyalty to the chain of command - Islamists have been consistently weeded out since the Sadat assassination back in 1981.

But there are other potential allies for the MB as well.

For one thing the AKP first worked on gaining control of the Interior Ministry police forces and intelligence agencies and putting loyalists in key positions to increase the movement's security and entrench it in government.

Erdogan and the AKP also used EU membership requirements to subdue the Turkish military. The democratisation processes gave the AKP the budgetary and legal controls to take the generals on, while winning favour with the secular Turks who wanted integration with Europe.

In the case of Egypt, the US has changed from traditionally supporting the military, to supporting elected figures. They do have leverage on the army, and so far they seem to be willing to use it on the side of the civilian politicians.

To make an analogy in the Pakistani case, its the way they've used aid to the PA to first allow Benazir back into Pakistan, and have been using it to protect Zardari from a coup.

Like the Pakistan Army I expect the Egyptian military to react badly, spurning sections of aid to show independence, attempting to whip up nationalism, but refusing to cut the cord. They're very aware what happened to the Turkish military and will try to avoid that fate. They actually have a lot more financial goodies at stake than the Turkish officers did.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 26 Jun 2012 21:16

One of the things that are happening now in Turkey, is a realignment of sections of the army with the "secular" and socialist portions. The rural side, which has more mullahcracy influence, is however slightly larger in numerical strength.

EU is going to have substantial changes in its previous policy of pushing for "democratization" in the Arab world. With Turkey, the first experiment is going to start. We will see a gradual slow and subtle withdrawal of the aggressive tone of "democratization" from EU sources.

They have not managed to push Erdogan around to the direction they wanted, and realize that Erdogan consolidating his party's power, will mean in a certain sense a re-emergence of the Ottoman empire, and Turkey going out of European influence. I have observed more and more younger girls, 6-8 years old in the streets of Germany wearing hijab over the last 5 years. In Turkey, itself, a similar transformation is taking place according to my Turkish academic contacts. Looking at womens' public behaviour - is a good indication of the ultimate status of influence of theology in totalitarian ideology dominated societies.

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 27 Jun 2012 09:13

http://thediplomat.com/2012/06/26/sri-l ... der-siege/

Colombo’s suburb of Dehiwala is probably best known for housing the Colombo Zoo. But late last month, it became the site of a wild protest at a small mosque, a protest that has many Muslim leaders in Sri Lanka worried.

On the morning of May 30, police officials reportedly informed the leader of the Dehiwala branch of the Association of Muslim Youth of Seylan that an illegal demonstration was likely to take place at the group’s mosque. Sheikh Ramsy was instructed to cancel madrassa lessons.

True to the warning, by midday, some 200 demonstrators led by several dozen Buddhist monks allegedly converged on the small Islamic center and began throwing stones and rotten meat over the gate at the mosque. Fortunately, most projectiles landed harmlessly in front of the mosque. Protestors shouted slogans demanding the closure of the mosque, claiming it was performing daily animal sacrifices, a charge the mosque denies.

“This charge is really unbelievable and shows how little they know about the religion of Islam. We only conduct sacrifices associated with the Eid ul-Adha and often the meat is distributed to poor families,” Sheikh Rasmy explains.

The incident is the latest in a string of serious incidents involving extremist Buddhist provocations against Muslims in Sri Lanka. In April, for example, a number of Buddhist monks disrupted Muslim prayer services in the village of Dambulla. The attackers claimed that the mosque, built in 1962, was illegal. Weeks later, monks are said to have drafted a threatening letter aimed at Muslims in the nearby town of Kurunegala, demanding Islamic prayer services there be halted.

Reza, a clerk at the Darul Iman Islamic Book House in Colombo, says he is confused by the outbreak of intolerance. “We in the Muslim community aren’t used to anything like this. But the last few months have seen new tensions across the country. We aren’t sure why this is happening now. Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus we have all lived together for a long-time.”

During, the 30-year civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam and the central government, the island’s Muslims, though Tamil-speaking, sided with the government against the LTTE. This was in part a result of thousands of Muslims being ejected from Jaffna in the early 1990s. During the conflict, the Sinhalese Buddhist majority courted the island’s Muslims, and many Muslims rose to prominent bureaucratic positions, while a handful even served in the Sri Lankan armed forces

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Jun 2012 10:50

x post from Indian contributions in sci tech

Anyway since we are on the topic of India's historical contributions,

I don't know if many of you are aware that a massive campaign to distort pages on India's scientific contributions is underway in wikipedia. There is clearly an attempt to suggest that such and such came to India from xyz.

Let's take the page on the pythagorean theorem itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem

Baudahyana is mentioned only in passing. And the "reference" link given is one that claims that the Sulba Sutras have borrowed from Mesopotamia. This is but a small example. Look at any page on ancient science or maths and you will find the Indian contributions are being underrated.

And since now Wikipedia is trying to " improve " itself you will find numerous negative references to India backed up by links to books written by motivated western indologists. IN fact there seems to be a concerted effort by the dying indologist schools in america to edit wikipedia pages on India.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 27 Jun 2012 11:33

D Roy wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem

Baudahyana is mentioned only in passing. And the "reference" link given is one that claims that the Sulba Sutras have borrowed from Mesopotamia. This is but a small example. Look at any page on ancient science or maths and you will find the Indian contributions are being underrated.

And since now Wikipedia is trying to " improve " itself you will find numerous negative references to India backed up by links to books written by motivated western indologists. IN fact there seems to be a concerted effort by the dying indologist schools in america to edit wikipedia pages on India.

This is clear case of being defensive.

The link of indology to complete control on the history of mathematics and to the catholic groups/EJ is amazing. This need deeper analysis

D Roy · Post by **D Roy** » 27 Jun 2012 13:04

and also needs direct countering. All those here who are editors on wikipedia should keep an eye out for this. other members could also flag such instances to them. In fact is there any thread here that deals with this?

Doctoring wikipedia is actually a rather cheap way to carry out ideological warfare since most people in the world first go to wikipedia for an overview before deeper enquiry.

and now the practice is to make debatable/and or wrong assertions and give those a veneer of credibility on the talk page with some obscure book reference. You would note that most anti-india references are books( written by western academics) and generally not freely available online. Now given the relative obscurity of these books and the very specific entries/references ( page numbers, paragraphs et al are specified) only academics from these areas will be able to "mine" them to distort wikipedia. And the sheer magnitude in which this is happening shows that a whole host of academics of a particular dispensation in the west have been mobilized to pay "attention" to India's projection on wikipedia. this is no flash in the pan. it is a deliberate and organized effort.

Typical propaganda involves citing links that talk about alleged greek transmission of knowledge to India even in areas that are widely accepted as being prime time Indian domain.

Conversely, when it comes to something that India has given to greece or the world, a number of links will be cited that say that there is no "direct evidence".

the list goes on. It is an extremely insidious attempt to mould public opinion on India's past.

(Added later: Here we go.
1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics - The section on India mentions both Mesopotamian and hellenistic influences. Note the emphasis and tone of this section which makes these references standout and also compare it to the sections on mathematics from other civilizations.

2. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess-

the first line :The history of chess spans some 1500 years. The earliest predecessors of the game originated in India, before the 6th century AD. From India, the game spread to Persia.

but the first line in the section- "origin" -Chess is invented by Persians [2] or originated in India during the Gupta Empire

egregious

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 01 Jul 2012 07:27

X-Posting from West-Asia thread

brihaspati wrote: ...
This is a process that should be allowed to go through. In societies which were also culturally strong in a material and non-violent way, and had distinct long entrenched identities of their own non-Muslim civilizations - Islamism should be allowed to come to power it dominates so that power struggles and the real nature of the theologians are exposed. The next generations will start the long walk out of this horrendous system only when they go through this experience. [Its not Afghanistan which was subverted already culturally by organized Buddhism so that Islamism could take roots with its most ferocious barbarity].

kit · Post by **kit** » 06 Jul 2012 10:10

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/busi ... 697220.cms

Mauritius offers India 2 islands in effort to preserve tax treaty

This could become a mini 'Diego Garcia' for India , since it is sufficiently away from main mauritius .

But .. these islands may not last long .. maybe 20 years .. global warming .

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 08 Jul 2012 19:49

^^^Should be promptly taken up. Even if water rises, there are ways and means of still maintaining a base. Submarines could have a haven there.

svenkat · Post by **svenkat** » 08 Jul 2012 20:12

Regarding DRoyjis reference to the venality of wikepedia,this forum is full of techies/scientists/engineers with no mean knowledge of history,history of sciences etc.Can't they make a difference?

Shouldnt our academics/GOI be paying serious attention to this issue?

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 08 Jul 2012 20:17

There was discussoin to create a Hinduism/Bharat wiki pedia.

Hindu world view and Indian world view needs a space for itself

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 08 Jul 2012 20:46

svenkat wrote:Regarding DRoyjis reference to the venality of wikepedia,this forum is full of techies/scientists/engineers with no mean knowledge of history,history of sciences etc.Can't they make a difference?

Shouldnt our academics/GOI be paying serious attention to this issue?

There are two levels to the problem.

First, there is the issue of legitimization of a paradigm. To demolish an old one, and replace it with a new one, is relatively easy in science proper. Because the very procedure of establishment of a new theory or a criticism of the old one, is much more directly dependent on as well as conscious of logic. However in most of social sciences, it remains covered by the fog of so-called "peer reviewed interpretation" and "consensus". You will see that "consensus" is not much mentioned in science proper - because consensus is not important to establish the veracity of something in science. Things stand on their own based on a logical chain of argument, and cannot be interpreted differently by different people.

Not so for social sciences. Because a lot of social sciences are not verifiable independent of human interpretations - either because the records are absent, or we onlee know about what some human claimed he knew about what some other human claimed and so on.

Thus most science trained people you are hoping for, would soon find themselves at a loss faced by the well-organized cliques of "opinions", which claim peer-reviewed "consensus", and who never use logic in the same way a scientist is trained to do.

The task is first to reveal the logical inconsistencies and clearly bring out the axiomatic, and presumptive nature of many of the foundations of social sciences. Even the ongoing empirical work that goes on in many branches of sociology in the name of "field studies" should be explored to show that they need not be applicable to extrapolate to past societies of whom we do not have similar field-studies opportunities.

Now if you try to do this at the wiki level, it would be pounced upon by the various sociology-nazis defending their turf. But I myself have been involved in setting up some relevant wiki pages, and if we approach it in a certain academic way [using refs cleverly] a lot can be done to counter the virtual propaganda and politics that most sociologist-camp followers of established dogmas indulge in on wiki.

The second problem, is that in order to counter sociology-nazis, one has to have people within the fort. It means that we need to encourage younger people to take up social-sciences careers, who grow into the system, gain official stamps, while keeping their thinking abilities and waiting for the proper time to subtly bring in studies and questions that gradually problematize established claims.

Problematize established claims - by showing counterexamples, even innocent questions that aim at the illogical bits "seeking to understand" ["I am curious : and onlee trying to understand from you guru as to why this apparent contradiction appears"], pretending sympathy and showing intent to strengthen the dogma but "what about this nagging small problem" that needs to be countered as otherwise "fringe lunatics" will pounce on it - etc. This needs to be done from inside, so that even the "school" itself is forced to legitimize the emerging alternative voices.

svenkat · Post by **svenkat** » 08 Jul 2012 21:17

Bji,
I understand the issues involved,but countering propoganda is not rocket science.I would like to believe the real issue would be availability of first rate minds and their time for 'third rate' work.

BRF was first founded a decade back not only to share defence related knowledge but also to correct 'equal-equal' descriptions in internet/mainstream western media.Atleast,Wikepedia is not controlled like NYT,BBC,WP,Time or Economist.

I would like to believe,its the sort of work students in humanities,journalism(with the right inclination) can take up as projects with some academic credits or the work can be taken up by enthusiastic amateurs of all age groups,particularly those whose children have grown up, to produce counter propoganda to atleast neuter the negative content.

My 2 cents.

nakul · Post by **nakul** » 08 Jul 2012 21:38

My 2 cents

There is a lot of info out there. With the advent of the Internet, the job of acquiring information is very easy. The difficulty lies in making them the preferred source of information. Currently, English is recognised as the global language of communication. This makes information sources in English the preferred source of knowledge (eg. the various english translations of scriptures which would be better translated into Indian languages).

Secondly, the need for an official stamp. A JNU pass out will command more respect because of his degree than a sadhu since he is deemed to be lesser due to the lack of patronage. This attitude ensures that people follow the official line rather than think for themselves. Like giving control of your thought process to another person.

Context of information. A lot of information available is not rendered in the appropriate context to be absorbed. Words like rational, scientific, logical & acceptable are used to set the context. The absence of these contextual references make any kind of argument weak & counterproductive. Since these contexts are defined by the west, there are more western sources that comply with these filters, they are allowed to flow while others get automatically labelled as less universal & therefore not applicable.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 09 Jul 2012 21:19

India should try to effect Korean unification as a peace and stability measure in East Asia.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 10 Jul 2012 00:16

^^But that might also make unified Korea much more independent of Japan, and hence more in the ball-court of China. There are anti-Japanese sentiments in SoKo. At the moment sandwiched and weaker, especially under constant threat of NoKo - SoKo refuses to kowtow entirely to China.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 10 Jul 2012 10:06

The 10 most common strategic blunders?

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 17 Jul 2012 23:56

Something to ponder about,

Computer analysis predicted rises, ebbs in Afghanistan violence
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la- ... 9336.story

By Jon Bardin, Los Angeles Times

July 17, 2012
In August 2010, shortly after WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of classified documents that cataloged the harsh realities of the war in Afghanistan, a group of friends — all computer experts — gathered at the New York City headquarters of the Internet company Bitly Inc. to try and make sense of the data.

The programmers used simple code to extract dates and locations from about 77,000 incident reports that detailed everything from simple stop-and-search operations to full-fledged battles. The resulting map revealed the outlines of the country's ongoing violence: hot spots near the Pakistani border but not near the Iranian border, and extensive bloodshed along the country's main highway. They did it all in just one night.

Now one member of that group has teamed up with mathematicians and computer scientists and taken the project one major step further: They have used the WikiLeaks data to predict the future.

Based solely on written reports of violence from 2004 to 2009, the researchers built a model that was able to foresee which provinces would experience more violence in 2010 and which would have less. They could also anticipate how much the level of violence went up or down.

The project, whose results were published online Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is part of a growing movement to understand and predict episodes of political and military conflict using automated computational techniques.

The availability of huge amounts of data combined with steady increases in computing power has prompted experts to bring the rigor of objective quantitative analysis to realms that were once considered fundamentally subjective, including literature and the study of social groups.

"For the first time, we have large data sets from places like Facebook and Twitter that we can analyze with high-powered computers and get meaningful results," said Paulo Shakarian, a computer scientist at the United States Military Academy at West Point, who is working on an algorithm to predict the location of insurgent weapons caches. "Iraq and Afghanistan are the very first conflicts where we have been collecting as much data as we possibly can."

In the case of the WikiLeaks data, the researchers sought to find a general pattern to the violence in Afghanistan and use it to predict how violence would change in each province in 2010 — the year President Obama increased the number of U.S. troops in the country.

"The model we employed is both complex and simple," said Guido Sanguinetti, an expert in computational sciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the study's senior author. "It doesn't take in any knowledge of military operations or political events, and it treats all types of violence exactly the same, whether it's a stop-and-search or a big battle."

Even with these ostensibly key details missing, the researchers found that they could predict 2010's events with striking accuracy. And the model wasn't tripped up by Obama's decision to send 30,000 additional troops, which introduced a new dimension to the Afghanistan conflict.

"Our findings seem to prove that the insurgency is self-sustaining," Sanguinetti said. "You may throw a large military offensive, but this doesn't seem to disturb the system."

The study authors said they were most surprised that the model could predict activity even in Afghanistan's relatively quiet northern provinces, where there were fewer data points available to analyze.

"This shows that the escalation we see isn't just attributed to the noise in the data," said study leader Andrew Zammit Mangion, a computational sciences researcher at the University of Edinburgh. Instead, he said, patterns existed nearly everywhere. Michael Ward, a political scientist at Duke University who has shown that location data can improve predictions of conflicts, said the study pointed the way to future research.

"Suppose you could say, 'This is the effect on violence if you build different types of infrastructure,' " he said. "They don't do that, but they've set up the framework to do it." The study also shows why it's important to make as much data public as possible, Ward said. Without WikiLeaks, he said, a study like this would have been far more difficult to carry out.

Clionadh Raleigh of Trinity College Dublin, who uses data to predict violence in Africa based on factors such as the outcomes of local elections, said the Afghanistan model could be made even better by including variables such as the political party in power.

"Violence, in general, is a really good predictor of future violence," she said. But even better would be "to figure out what stops the cycle of conflict."

Quantitative rigor is making its way into some surprising fields of study. In 2010, just a few months after the WikiLeaks data dump, Google released a database of every single word contained in thousands of books published between 1800 and 2000 — about 4% of all books ever printed. That has enabled some intrepid researchers to close in on the final frontier: Studying literature with advanced math.

In a study published last year in Science, experts from Harvard University and Google were able to detect evidence of censorship regarding controversial historical figures and events, such as early Soviet official and Stalin foe Leon Trotsky and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 18 Jul 2012 00:47

abhishek_sharma wrote:The 10 most common strategic blunders?

1. Failure to recognize or take seriously the scarcity of resources.

2. Mistaking strategic goals for strategy.

3. Failure to recognize or state the strategic problem.

4. Choosing poor or unattainable strategic goals.

5. Not defining the strategic challenge competitively.

6. Making false presumptions about one's own competence or the likely causal linkages between one's strategy and one's goals.

7. Insufficient focus on strategy due to such things as trying to satisfy too many different stakeholders or bureaucratic processes.

8. Inaccurately determining one's areas of comparative advantage relative to the opposition.

9. Failure to realize that few individuals possess the cognitive skills and mindset to be competent strategists.

10. Failure to understand the adversary.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 19 Jul 2012 02:57

An interesting thing to note about the current round of western clamour about democracy and popular uprisings.

Does the "west" realize that it is actually setting a precedence that it does not fully realize the significance of? Henceforth, mere formal legitimization will no longer do for a regime. It can be challenged on the street, anytime, and will have to be settled by arms in the end - one way or the other.

I would thank the "west" for this great service. It throws open an entire way of political change that had effectively been banned by the "westphalian" solution and mythology of the modern state. By setting this into the popular framework of acceptance, the media and perhaps the western handlers of the Islamic world, are making it available for the non-Muslim world too.

The west is undoing its own mythology by which it legitimized its colony derived power and post-colonial market division of the global economy. This is one of the most significant changes to have come in almost two centuries in how politics will be done in the future. No "democracy" can be reassured that it is open enough, democratic enough, and legitimate enough. By legitimizing the "urban street", politics has been now changed to the point that even the fringe allies of the west, like India to an extent, opens up to similar changes. Maybe it seems impossible now. But that is mere illusion from not having seen the regime really face "uprisings" in the face of army hesitation.

The current incumbents in Indian power cannot be very happy with this show. They should see the writing on the wall. Long term. Maybe its still not discernible, but its there no doubt.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 19 Jul 2012 10:10

brihaspati wrote:An interesting thing to note about the current round of western clamour about democracy and popular uprisings.

Does the "west" realize that it is actually setting a precedence that it does not fully realize the significance of? Henceforth, mere formal legitimization will no longer do for a regime. It can be challenged on the street, anytime, and will have to be settled by arms in the end - one way or the other.

The decision to turn civil protests into an armed conflict usually lies with the state. Governments will have to think long and hard about the use of force -even non-lethal force- to contain dissent. The pepper spraying incident at UC Davis during the Occupy protests, or Simon Harwood's unintended death during the G20 protests have haunted authorities in powerful ways.

The west is undoing its own mythology by which it legitimized its colony derived power and post-colonial market division of the global economy. This is one of the most significant changes to have come in almost two centuries in how politics will be done in the future. No "democracy" can be reassured that it is open enough, democratic enough, and legitimate enough. By legitimizing the "urban street", politics has been now changed to the point that even the fringe allies of the west, like India to an extent, opens up to similar changes. Maybe it seems impossible now. But that is mere illusion from not having seen the regime really face "uprisings" in the face of army hesitation.

The current incumbents in Indian power cannot be very happy with this show. They should see the writing on the wall. Long term. Maybe its still not discernible, but its there no doubt.

I'm not sure why you're looking so far into the future. Ana Hazare's Lokpal movement were popular movements that were a response to middle class grievances, and it both used and was driven by exactly the same technologies of dissent.

Honestly though I don't think that this a fundamentally new moment. There was something like this that emerged in the 1919 to 1960 period when new technologies expanded the public sphere and made new kinds of mass-mobilisation possible.

Its exactly this sort of thing that enabled anti-colonial movements outside the West, and liberal reform movements within the West (sufragettes, anti-segregation, student movements, etc), and in the cases of countries that fell to Fascism, hyper-nationalism.

Will state power catch up eventually? Possibly. It did before. Or perhaps not. It is not easy to predict.

Certainly states all over the world will be peering closely at the Chinese model which involves both broad and deep technological modernisation at the popular level and elaborate high-tech controls at the state level. Whether the Chinese model is sustainable remains to be seen. The Chinese Communist Party seems far from confident that it has the situation under control.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 19 Jul 2012 21:00

Johann,

its not the use by initially minority dissent of emerging networking tech to expand and use fractures within the political-military space - that surprises me. Accounting for the level of the civilizational tech, it has remained a constant drive.

What I am trying to point out is the conditional initial allowance of this - as part of what may appear to them as tactics - by the west, to manipulate changes of regimes in what they think is in their interest. This is an acknowledgment that the myth of "democratic" systems, self-regulating dissent through safe and parliamentary agitation onlee - thereby creating a layer of separation from the masses of the activists within the various interst group manipulations that emerge in all parliamentary systems - is being subverted.

This myth about democratic systems, especially modeled under the Brit/Pseudo-Brit construction, was used to its fullest extent in the mature phase of colonialism and the post-war readjustments of distribution of power globally - mainly as a legitimizing tool for authority aligned to the west.

That myth is being dropped.

Anna's movement was not an uprising of dissent in the full regime-changing sense. There are fundamental differences in movements that seek "reform within a system", from that which seek "replacement of the system". They do sometimes overlap - starting with the former and accelerating to the latter. Crucial factors can stop this acceleration or slow it down - hence my surmise that in the long run, the latter may come up for India too.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 19 Jul 2012 21:23

Brihaspati,

Most middle class reform movements start out within the system - its usually excessive state violence that radicalises them to the point that they abandon reform and switch to revolutionary goals.

The Indian state has dealt so many times with the full gamut of movements that it is not going to be extraordinarily stupid and radicalise the movement with excessive violence.

Think about Gandhi and the INC before and after Jallianwala Bagh. Or the ANC before and after the Sharpeville Massacre. Its a long list.

Most of the Arab Spring revolts were no different. They started as civil movements asking for change. Unfortunately regimes that do not tolerate any sort of dissent - whether run by locals or foreigners can not accept such challenges.

Again, the common thread here is that militaries with ruling family members in the command structure do not hesitate to open fire. Regimes without family members inside at the top turn to militias, 'party workers', Interior Ministry forces, etc.

The latter is radicalising, but never as radicalising as the lethal use of force by the official armed forces on unarmed civilians.

Most Syrians were shocked when the regime decided to use maximum force on the reform movement. They wouldn't have been surprised by the old man Hafez al-Asad doing it, but Bashar was genuinely popular on account of his image as a closet liberal.

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 19 Jul 2012 22:10

what about the perception by the local population that they have "broad support from outside"? does it matter that people in a small country like Syria felt emboldened to revolt against an oppressive regime because they perceived that they have military and "moral" support from outside? IMHO, this matters a lot. the Syrians who started fighting in the initial phase would have been crushed if they did not have supplies from the Saudis and Turks(?). This is not to say that the Syrians don't have a right to dissent, or that Assad wasn't a tyrant. both of those are true. but the "broad" revolt we see now, is perhaps because, in the first phase, the initial fighters weren't totally crushed b/c of external support. this survival of initial fighters emboldened a much larger population base to come out and revolt.

does that thesis make sense?

RajeshA · Post by **RajeshA** » 19 Jul 2012 22:32

Johann ji,

the population could rise up but usually half of the fighters are parachuted in by the powers, and usually they are the ones who take the command and control of the violent revolution. Also all the weaponry, munitions, intelligence is provided from outside.

Often these outsiders provoke the government to retaliate violently thus hurting the locals. This just helps local recruitment.

India has seen such wars in Punjab, Kashmir, among Maoists also!

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 20 Jul 2012 07:43

Johann,
all the factors you mention :
(a) popular dissent against ruling regime
(b) dissent coalescing into street demo/uprisings
(c) apparent commitment even to die for the cause of the dissent
(d) ruling regime forming an extended kinship in the coercive wings
(e) ruthlessness shown by the extended kinship in the military against the dissenting masses

were there before also. Think of it, this was how the Baathists of the Syrian/Jordanian-Egyptian sector came to power. But f you go deeper, you can see that their coming to power coincided with a certain political viewpoint from the west, especially the "realpolitik" section of US establishment.

The Baathist dominance in ME - from Iraq to Syria, and for a time, Egypt [to an extent the Baathist undertone underlay the foundations of Nasser, Sadat, and therefore Mubaraks] came about in the backdrop of US/British perceived need to stop the "Marxist" leanings growing in the so-called Arab-socialist movement.

Remember how the Iraqi "Marxist" leader of the coup was dispatched under the "Baathist" correction of course? Its not so easily available publicly, but the subsequent analysis of events and connecting the dots have revealed the foreign policy initiatives from the west that facilitated the Baathist transition.

what people do not compare and study is the track record of the failed "uprisings" besides the success stories. If you see, and I have posted on the west asia thread long ago - there has been a consistent trend of agrarian discontent based dissent against ruling regimes in ME. From time to time it has been used by various dissenting factions of the urban elite, for their own power games, but they never succeeded if the commoner uprising was not aligned with western interests and transnational big biz interests [including of course oil and drugs] in changing regimes.

I think I was one of the earliest among forumites to predict that the ME, Islamic world would not last forever in Islamism, and that our calculatiosn based on a very long surviving Islamist ME would be wrong. I however expected that transition earliest in Iran, and I still believe so.

For me, there are two antagonistic trends within ME, and it has always been there since the invention of agriculture. Its that fight over control over means of production, in more agrarian times - land and water, and now, more over energy and minerals - again land based resources, that drives the political dynamic of conflict within ME societies.

Islamist clergy - like other theologies in the past - have survived by using that popular hunger against previously existing ruling powers, and then selling off the popular discontent as part of a new compromise ruling setup. It is for thsi reason, my projection was that more the theologians directly came into power- their real role in suppressing or repressing that popular hunger would be exposed and come in conflict with their formal theological pretensions.

I am very hopeful about ME, but that stage has to be gone through in steps not yet taken in most of ME: a popular discontent that is also seen by the west as a good smokescreen to change rulers living beyond their shelf life or becoming too costly to maintain. What is crucial is to get the Islamists into power. Only direct use of state power by Islamists, and theologians - ultimately exposes the whol theological establishment.

The west does not want this to happen, becuase then it loses the only remaining handle it has on ME societies - the theologiacal establishment of Islamism itself. The western states within states, the secret sections, have always been in cahoots with the theologians and their institutions as the springboards of control and trigger mechanisms as and when needed.

Do not assume, that just because there are official loud protests against Islamists or "extremism" that the west is really against them. It might be worthwhile to consider that Indian theological institutions, play practically the same role.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 21 Jul 2012 02:20

Brihaspati,

The West did not want to see the Egyptian, Iraqi, Yemeni or Libyan monarchies overthrown. Those were all strategic disasters.

But America, true to form gamely tried to adapt. As soon as the Free Officers Movement came to power the Truman administration put out feelers.

From 1952 to 1954 the US worked *very* closely with them. The CIA helped establish the Egyptian General Intelligence Service. One of my favorite authors Cordwainer Smith (real name Paul Linebarger) even stayed in Cairo awhile to help Nasser write some of his speeches and overall communication strategy.

The problem was that Egypt wanted the weapons and the freedom to confront Israel, and that was an issue. Nasser turned to the Soviet bloc for weapons in 1955 when America wouldn't provide the good stuff, and that was the beginning of the end.

That was more or less the story with all of the other later Nasserist and Baathist regimes in the region as well. Israel was always the sticking point.

The relationship with Egypt at least was not restored until Sadat came to power and cut the Soviet cord 1972-74.

Johann · Post by **Johann** » 21 Jul 2012 03:10

devesh wrote:what about the perception by the local population that they have "broad support from outside"? does it matter that people in a small country like Syria felt emboldened to revolt against an oppressive regime because they perceived that they have military and "moral" support from outside? IMHO, this matters a lot. the Syrians who started fighting in the initial phase would have been crushed if they did not have supplies from the Saudis and Turks(?). This is not to say that the Syrians don't have a right to dissent, or that Assad wasn't a tyrant. both of those are true. but the "broad" revolt we see now, is perhaps because, in the first phase, the initial fighters weren't totally crushed b/c of external support. this survival of initial fighters emboldened a much larger population base to come out and revolt.

does that thesis make sense?

Hi Devesh,

I would agree that a sense of solidarity emboldened protestors, but it is not the support or promises of governments that did it.

The thing to remember is that Syria followed on the heels of uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, etc.

More than anything else it was the feeling that the *entire* Arab world would be on their side - not just governments, but the populations.

Arab politics is a key emotional issue, and governments have to be careful on the subject. Massive Pan-Arab support constrains even governments like Sudan and Algeria that are not keen on the Arab Spring.

In that sense Arab satellite television, especially Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiyya were the most important sources of encouragement to participants in the Arab Spring from Tunis to Cairo to Benghazi to Sanaa to Homs.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 21 Jul 2012 03:51

Johann,
it was not just opportunism or mere reacting to a new movement - a la Truman admin. The roots of this goes before - from even before the war. The whole initiative, even using media, journalists and papers, sending people into the hot zones, started as part of US policy from the turn of the century. They accurately picked up on the political potentials - including people like MKG, and planned on whom they wanted to back up. The Baathist transition was planned well in advance. Perhaps later in some appropriate thread.