Bharat Rakshak

devesh wrote:and please save us the quantification of Kashmiri Islamism with a cute statistic about 40 "protesters" at some random rally. the atrocities perpetrated there, and that continue to be perpetrated, in the name of Islamic demographic consolidation, are very well known. don't insult the intelligence of others by peddling your cute one-liner statistics. It doesn't become you. perhaps, I can open your eyes by telling you that there has been an ongoing genocide in Kashmir for the past 2 decades, and maybe that will make you sensitive enough to not peddle psec nonsense statistics.

Theo_Fidel wrote:

devesh wrote:and please save us the quantification of Kashmiri Islamism with a cute statistic about 40 "protesters" at some random rally. the atrocities perpetrated there, and that continue to be perpetrated, in the name of Islamic demographic consolidation, are very well known. don't insult the intelligence of others by peddling your cute one-liner statistics. It doesn't become you. perhaps, I can open your eyes by telling you that there has been an ongoing genocide in Kashmir for the past 2 decades, and maybe that will make you sensitive enough to not peddle psec nonsense statistics.

This is the exact rhona dhona I pointed out earlier. You have no answer to my question of they are 200 million, we are 1.2 Billion yet no one in the Middle east cries 'bajrang bali'. Your cries of genocide and violence and oppression are noted for being inhumane. But it doesn't answer the question.

I would suggest you go and look at the place of ALL people within your ideology. All ideologies that have failed this test or have failed at reform in this regard find themselves weak and vulnerable. Your wish to deny Muslims a place within India very much calls for the destruction of India itself. I don't think it is far fetched to say that you wish the destruction of your nation.

My loyalties are very different. I defend my nation and its constitution to the death, as my ancestors and one great grandfather most definitely did quite literally. Every Indian Muslim has expressed the same to me. I fail to see what attraction your ideology has for Indians.

Theo_Fidel wrote: This is the exact rhona dhona I pointed out earlier. You have no answer to my question of they are 200 million, we are 1.2 Billion yet no one in the Middle east cries 'bajrang bali'. Your cries of genocide and violence and oppression are noted for being inhumane. But it doesn't answer the question.

I would suggest you go and look at the place of ALL people within your ideology. All ideologies that have failed this test or have failed at reform in this regard find themselves weak and vulnerable. Your wish to deny Muslims a place within India very much calls for the destruction of India itself. I don't think it is far fetched to say that you wish the destruction of your nation.

My loyalties are very different. I defend my nation and its constitution to the death, as my ancestors and one great grandfather most definitely did quite literally. Every Indian Muslim has expressed the same to me. I fail to see what attraction your ideology has for Indians.

shyamd wrote:US is there for their interests. End of story. Do those individuals really think US regime was helpful to the Bahraini regime when protests took place last year?

As for assad - blatant lies are being propagated that Indians are saying that Asads fall is somehow "positive" - UN statements are enough to disprove those lies.

Everybody knows KSA interests doesn't align with ALL our interests (key difference here) and we cooperate where there is alignment and where there isn't we are competitors (as has been explained before - Afghanistan/Iran being one of them) - just like any other nation which I am sure those individuals are aware about.

KSA will do what is in its interest as will Pak (which was to give Iranians nuclear support which incidentally KSA hasnt forgotten).

As for India - every deal India does means money in political pockets - who knows that better than the US - who recently failed to get the MRCA (or get the movement on Iran that they wanted) contract despite everything that was listed - money, political pressure, NGO's paying protestors etc etc. India will do everything in its interests and despite all those things listed - which is not a new phenomenon (as those who have an agenda would love to propagate).

Its funny how certain interests have no faith in Indians - yes all indians are weak, money hungry, poor SDREs.

Anyway, 6 years, billions of dollars, extraditions etc later - still no green KSA mosque and the only known offer by K Abdullah to renovate Jama masjid rejected? Lol!

shyamd wrote:Americans are stupid. They think Indians are going to cower down and by playing dirty they think we will give them big contracts. They used SS and others to attack Sonia personally openly in the media. but I think they are finally getting the message that this intimidation and dirty tactics won't work. Treat us like real partners and offer us the best.

...

Theo_Fidel wrote:Bji,

Agree onleee.

...

WRT KSA they are fools if they think the Syrians are going to love them unconditionally. As I pointed out earlier, the Syrians tend to believe in a more cosmopolitan origin rather than a pure Arab one. Will KSA try to undermine Syrian democracy, absolutely. But in the age of twitter it will be hard to make it stick.

...

I still think the vast majority of ME does not subscribe to the Islamist wet dreams. KSA sheikhs may dream these things but the folks on the ground do not.

In just seven minutes, Michel Samaha got my book un-banned after seven years on Lebanon's blacklist. Even Rafiq Hariri, when he was Prime Minister couldn't get Pity The Nation into Beirut's book shops. "There is a sentence about a Syrian tank guarding a hashish field in the Bekaa Valley," he told me. "This is not the time for me to take this up."

But the moment that Samaha was appointed Hariri's Information Minister in the 1990s, he called up his chum Brigadier Jamil Sayyed, the immensely pro-Syrian head of the Lebanese General Security, and Sayyed unbanned my history of the Lebanese civil war with a flick of his signature. Sayyed, I should add, is a rather sinister figure who looks like the sort of chap who ties ladies to railway lines in silent movies. The academic and journalist Samir Kassir, no friend of the Assad regime, claimed Sayyed threatened him. Shortly thereafter, Kassir was murdered by car bomb. The UN also believed Sayyed was involved in Hariri's murder – President Bashar al-Assad was said to be very, very angry with Hariri for wanting to free Lebanon from Syria's loving embrace – but then, after four years' imprisonment without trial, the UN released Sayyed because the "witness" upon whom it based its evidence turned out to have given false testimony. And the old UN donkey admitted, privately of course, that Assad may not have been involved.

Michel Samaha is a Greek Orthodox Christian, originally a supporter of the right-wing Christian Ketaeb but experienced a "road to Damascus" conversion and ended up a friend and adviser of Assad. He was also – conspiracy theorists, take careful note of this – a holder of the Legion d'Honneur, awarded, so they say, for helping the French secret service. So all the greater was the thunderclap last week when 10 heavily armed members of the Lebanese General Security intelligence section bust into Samaha's summer villa in the Metn hills, handcuffed the ex-minister and former MP, and took him off for interrogation in Beirut. Very quickly, a tale unfolded in the Lebanese press; Samaha had been tasked by Syria's Brigadier-General Ali Mamlouk to set off bombs in northern Lebanon to provoke a civil war between Sunni and Shia, creating the now famous "spillover" of Syria's bloodbath which the world has long been predicting – and paid £120,000 to arrange the whole shooting match. A video allegedly shows Samaha transporting explosives from a car in an underground car park. Another supposedly depicts him announcing that Assad approved of the whole affair. Samaha, said the press, had admitted the lot.

Lebanese editorials adopted a western journalistic perspective, pompously telling readers Samaha's innocence must be assumed unless he is proven guilty, while piling on the accusations. One of the few journalists to object was Scarlett Haddad of L'Orient Le Jour. When Lebanon is awash with explosives, guns and missiles, she asked, why would Syria need to import bombs into Lebanon? And why would a figure like Samaha, who has warned against any sectarian conflict in northern Lebanon, lend himself to such a plot? Indeed, why should a well-connected man get mixed up in the dirty business of handling bombs, a task normally assigned to voyous, or "street kids"? A report that Assad personally phoned the Lebanese President, Michel Suleiman, to intervene was denied by Suleiman.

Among those who dwell in the deep politics of Lebanon, however, there are other thoughts. New sanctions have been levelled against a Syrian oil firm. Sanctions were taken against Lebanese Hezbollah two days ago. Madame Clinton is raging against Assad but doing nothing. Leon Panetta, the cliché-laden US Defence Secretary, said the battle for Aleppo was "the nail in the coffin" of the Assad regime. But right now the armed revolutionaries are retreating. In the end, it's all about Iran, the target of Qatar's and Saudi Arabia's and America's and Israel's suspicion and hatred. Break Iran – via Syria.

So how does the arrest of an Assad intimate, Michel Samaha, fit into all this? Just another rusty nail in the coffin? I've been calling him for six months to ask for his assessment of the Syrian crisis. Once he was in Damascus, and said he'd call back next day. When in Beirut, he said he'd call back. He didn't. Then his wife told me he was in Paris. I remembered the Legion d'Honneur. Now we're all waiting for the videos.

devesh wrote:I don't see why I should oblige in making this mythical group called "muslims". AFAIC, it doesn't exist. there exists a vast population under the grip of a foreign ideology which has consistently proven itself capable of producing genocidal rapine tendencies. that is what I know, and that is what I'll stick to. ... I call for the destruction of the ideology, not the people.

KLNMurthy wrote:

shyamd wrote:Americans are stupid. They think Indians are going to cower down and by playing dirty they think we will give them big contracts. They used SS and others to attack Sonia personally openly in the media. but I think they are finally getting the message that this intimidation and dirty tactics won't work. Treat us like real partners and offer us the best.

...

They found a way to kick SS out of Harvard. Is that consistent with SS being an American tool to attack Sonia?

It began with a few of the rebel units pulling out, sleepless and disoriented after two nights of relentless shelling, fearful that they were being surrounded by regime forces. By mid-morning the departures had turned into a major retreat, with hundreds of fighters pouring out of Salaheddine, many of them then straight out of Aleppo.

The revolutionaries had abandoned the frontline - a crucial strategic point - they had held with such resilience against massive battering for the last 12 days. They have also left much of an adjoining district, Saifaldallah. The pounding they had received for hour after hour from the air and the ground had been worse than anything before; The Independent was there very much towards the end of the onslaught, but it was still daunting and, yet again, indiscriminate.

Despite repeated attempts the rebels had failed on Wednesday night to dislodge around half-dozen tanks which had made their way to Salaheddine Square, setting up a bridgehead for troops and armoured carriers positioning themselves at the flank of the rebel fighters on 9 and 10Street who had borne the brunt of the attacks. At just after 3am the artillery rounds reached a new intensity and these fighters saw tanks rolling towards them through the streets of Salaheddine.

The breakthrough means that regime forces are now in the ascendancy, having broken the opposition’s staunchest line of defence in the narrow, twisting streets of Salaheddine. They are now in a position to bring in additional forces through Hamdaniyah, which they hold, and aim to link up with other troops at Aleppo Castle and the city’s airport. In addition, rebel fighters, un-nerved by rumours, have disappeared from some of the inner-city districts they had taken in the last two weeks.

In the afternoon the opposition Free Syria Army officially acknowledged that Salaheddine has been lost. Commander Wassel Ayub, said: “The FSA’s brigades have staged a tactical withdrawal from Salaheddine. We had full control of the district last night, but then regime forces bombarded in an unprecedented way.”

The pull-out gained momentum when the city was relatively quiet, with just a few rounds of shellfire in the distance and the odd helicopter-gunship firing overhead. We found the men of the Dar al-Sabah Khatiba (battalion) frantically evacuating their headquarters, a school at Bustan al-Qasar, well outside Salaheddine. “The soldiers are on two sides of us, it is too dangerous to stay here, too dangerous,” said an officer, Abdullah al-Fawzi. “We are just taking what we can carry.” Later, at a nearby town, Captain Abu Khalid was adamant: “We shall go back in there, definitely, but first we must take some rest.”

He had been in Salaheddine for the whole night. “The worst thing was when the tanks came in. We had destroyed them in the past, but this time there were so many of them and we were very tired. We fought along some streets, but then we had to leave, otherwise we would have all been killed.”

Ominously for the opposition, some of their best fighters from outside Aleppo, who had been at Salaheddine and the city’s second frontline, the Iron Gate, were leaving, anxious that their home towns and villages were unprotected if the regime did capture the city quickly and push on. The arrival of reinforcements from other places - the opposition claimed 20,000, although the real figure may be half that - had helped to balance, to an extent, the massive build up by the regime.

Among those going were men of the Abu-Bakr brigade from the eastern town of Al-Bab, their commander Zahar Sherqat, widely respected in the revolutionary ranks, was driving through the deserted streets by himself in a white Toyota Corolla ensuring that those in his charge was withdrawing in an orderly way. He also stopped in several neighbourhoods to assure the people that he and the rebels will be back.

Commander Sherqat, a slim, soft-spoken man, was at pains to explain: “There is absolutely no point in wasting lives, at the end we did not have enough heavy weapons. These will come. We can’t stop them at the moment, but we shall regroup and get back in here, not Salaheddine maybe but the rest of the city. Aleppo will break the regime, but it will take time, in the meantime we must protect our homes and families. ”

By late afternoon the rebels were talking about launching a counter-offensive and even claimed to have taken back some of the ground. But streets in most areas under their control were redolent of checkpoints, with fighters without transport desperately trying to get out. We gave some of them a lift to the Sahar district, in the outskirts, where minibuses were lined up to take people out of Aleppo.

An Islamist battalion which had become noted for its unfriendliness to outsiders including fellow rebels, and had claimed Assad’s army would be defeated quickly if only they had more fellow jihadists, were the first to run from Salaheddine. One of their getaway vehicles, a red pick- up truck, had been hit from the air, just as it had come out of the district. Remains of three bodies lay at the back. A passing fighter, Hussein Ali Motassim, gestured: “They were full of talk about their experience in Iraq and Afghanistan; bombmaking and IDs [IEDs] but at the end, nothing.”

Regime troops had initially made little effort to move forward as the rebels withdrew from their positions. By early evening tanks and armoured cars had begun to venture into these areas. But they did not stay for long, leaving after lobbing shells, although there was little by way of return fire. Later helicopter-gunships strafed an area from which the rebels had already withdrawn.

The attacks resulted in civilian casualties, a rising number in the last few days, carried by neighbours and family members to a field hospital. The medics, unlike the fighters, had not left, although the punitive action they face from the regime can be brutal, three young doctors arrested were found dead, another was killed by a sniper on Salaheddine Square yesterday despite wearing a white coat.

Hadil Ami, a female doctor in her early 20s, treating an elderly man with deep cuts to his chest and arm from broken glass, said simply: “This is the time when our patients need us the most, we have got those who are injured and traumatised but also very afraid. We can’t send many of the injured to the Government hospital, especially now, because they would be looking for Shabaab [rebel fighters] who are injured. I am not doing anything wrong here at all, I am doing my job, but that is not something which will interest the Mukhabarat [secret police] - they think we are all suspects.”

Regime forces, accompanied by the Mukhabarat and the Shabiha, the loyalist militia, were last night going through the houses in Salaheddine, searching for rebels. “What they mean are civilians they can capture and torture and then show some dead bodies saying they are terrorists,” said a fighter, Abu Karim, with cigarette burns and deep bruises from his time in custody. “They will be disappointed, everyone has either run away, or they are dead. But they will have plenty of opportunities to kill if they take back Aleppo.”

The storming of the station at al-Marju in Salhein was carried out by over 700 fighters; the 45 strong security detachment inside resisted before a bomb made out of a water storage container and TNT was bodily flung over the sandbags by two volunteers. Fifteen of the regime officials were killed, the rest arrested, except four who got away. “They were snipers, three of them were Iranians, the other was a Russian,” maintained Abdel Rahman Moussa, one of the rebels. “The Russian must have been valuable, right at the end they sent 200 soldiers to get him out. We keep on hearing about Russians and Iranians, also we think come Hezballah people are here as well.”

Rumours of foreign mercenaries in the pay of Assad, as well as the imminent launch of chemical weapons, were rife in the city, with no detectable for either. Also absent were the hundreds of foreign Islamists who, according to some Western media reports, have descended to raise the flag of al-Qa’ida and jihad in Aleppo.

“Where are they? The Chechens, the Africans and the Pakistanis, all with so many weapons?” Asked Abu Suleiman, a rebel officer, crouching down in an alley as an attack on a fourth security post, near Sher Osman, predominantly manned by the Shabiha, was faltering due to ammunition running out and what appeared to be a Mig-23 dropping ordnance. “We can do with them. No, not them, their weapons. That is going to be a problem very soon unless we start getting fresh supplies coming through. That may happen, the routes in the east have opened up.”

The rebels spent some of their last Kalashnikov ammunition providing covering fire as families fled from the street, a little girl crying until she was reunited with her pet Myna bird in a cage. As they made their way out an elderly man hobbled over to the fighters to offer his thanks. Or so they thought: “You people are destroying this country, have you no shame? I am 83 years old and I have seen nothing like it, even when we were fighting the French. Basher al-Assad is a great man, he is the President”, with that Mohammed Ibadullah Seif, leaning on his stick, rejoined his family.

KLNMurthy wrote:
It doesn't have to be seen as a trading of accusations: one side suggesting that the rulers are naive greedy near-traitors, while the other side insists that it is a chanakian balancing act that is being unfairly maligned. On BRF, it seems necessary to remind ourselves from time to time that we are on the same side--that of India.

Here's how I see it: yes, it is a balancing act, but with the following problems:

1. Not enough evidence that there is a well-thought out pro-Indian policy in action, other than, short-term balancing of multiple interests and making money. Some instances can be pointed out (resistance to US pressures on Iran, assertions about pushbck on Saudi aggression etc.) but there is a mass of evidence that suggests that the so-called balanced policy consists of simply setting the controls on "equal-equal" and going on autopilot, with no long-term vision or plan.

2. If the ultimate goal is to play off adharmic interests against each other, even promoting specific adharmic forces (like Saudi) in the short term, with the plan to do away with the last adharmic standing (similar to how chankiya exploited the adharmic lecherous nature of his ally Parvata Raja to put an end to him) well, there is no evidence of this again. We don't see any awareness of the dharmic mission and goals, in fact we are only seeing glani or decline / rollback of dharma.

To me, these are valid concerns that need to be addressed without defensiveness.

KLNMurthy wrote: They found a way to kick SS out of Harvard. Is that consistent with SS being an American tool to attack Sonia?

Virupaksha wrote: Shyamd garu,
You are becoming too difficult for me to differentiate you and your sources. Lets just say you are becoming too native to your sources for me to distinguish.

shyamd wrote:

Virupaksha wrote: Shyamd garu,
You are becoming too difficult for me to differentiate you and your sources. Lets just say you are becoming too native to your sources for me to distinguish.

Sir, I didn't say that was from my sources. If it was, I would have said it.

Just think about it yourself and look back at his allegations and the details he went into. He was blatantly getting info from someone who couldn't be touched.

But I have nothing personal against him and I said before his idea is what the country needs.

Virupaksha wrote: knowing all its "colorfull" history and the accidenteds, SS would have been one of the stupidest to take on the the ruling regime of India frontally and publicly without some kinds of backers. Do you think he doesnt know that all these "internet hindus" would not be even an iota of support when the regime decides to do "something" about him. He is taking a HUGE risk and he knows it too.

and my statement to you is not in respect to this particular issue alone. In this particular case however, lets just say that more than SS, I am more intrigued by your hostility towards him as this is not the first time you raised it and also because you brought it with very very scant connection to the thread itself.

shyamd wrote:

KLNMurthy wrote: They found a way to kick SS out of Harvard. Is that consistent with SS being an American tool to attack Sonia?

and by that 1 event you think that he doesn't work for the US interests? He still meets om baba.

I have said before he is a smart guy and his ideology of all Indians identifying themselves under the Indian identity is the right way to go about things. But I am just pointing out the facts.

Have you noticed that he is loudest when US- India relations are bad? Things are relatively normal now.

shyamd wrote:

KLNMurthy wrote:
It doesn't have to be seen as a trading of accusations: one side suggesting that the rulers are naive greedy near-traitors, while the other side insists that it is a chanakian balancing act that is being unfairly maligned. On BRF, it seems necessary to remind ourselves from time to time that we are on the same side--that of India.

Here's how I see it: yes, it is a balancing act, but with the following problems:

1. Not enough evidence that there is a well-thought out pro-Indian policy in action, other than, short-term balancing of multiple interests and making money. Some instances can be pointed out (resistance to US pressures on Iran, assertions about pushbck on Saudi aggression etc.) but there is a mass of evidence that suggests that the so-called balanced policy consists of simply setting the controls on "equal-equal" and going on autopilot, with no long-term vision or plan.

2. If the ultimate goal is to play off adharmic interests against each other, even promoting specific adharmic forces (like Saudi) in the short term, with the plan to do away with the last adharmic standing (similar to how chankiya exploited the adharmic lecherous nature of his ally Parvata Raja to put an end to him) well, there is no evidence of this again. We don't see any awareness of the dharmic mission and goals, in fact we are only seeing glani or decline / rollback of dharma.

To me, these are valid concerns that need to be addressed without defensiveness.

Firstly what do you define as pro Indian policy?

2nd- of course we all want the same thing but have different was to achieve, it's obvious that for some people it's personal.

Syria: The only significant news is the opposition claims to control a secure zone north of Aleppo that links to Turkey. The opposition says, however, that it needs air defense weapons, implying it is not as secure as it claims.

The opposition claim coincides with a US report that CIA is carefully controlling the weapons it dispenses through Turkey because it does not want Islamists to overthrow the al Asad government, but does not want them to lose.

Comment: Control of a secure base is part of the definition of civil war and distinguishes it from an uprising. The opposition claim is probably premature, as long as the Syrian government has an air force.

The US administration reportedly and belatedly does not want the opposition to win because it fears that the US may have abetted genocide, if the al Asad regime collapses in violence. The Syrian opposition fighters from all over the Middle East have committed so many atrocities against Syrian minorities and prisoners that international organizations have denounced the opposition.

The US wants, apparently, some kind of negotiated arrangement, but cannot control the violence it has released, encouraged and supported.

Egypt: By now most Readers know that Field Marshal Tantawi and Army Chief of Staff General Sami Enan have retired and been replaced as of 12 August. The June 2012 constitutional declaration by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, limiting presidential powers, has been rescinded, repealed or made null and void, by a resurgent President Mursi. Both military men remain as advisors to President Mursi.

Tanta WI's replacement is General Abdellatif Sisi. Enan's replacement is General Sidki Sobhi.

Comment: Western press coverage of the event ranges from the absurd to the curious. The absurd versions are that Mursi stood up and ordered them to retire, essentially firing them on his own authority.. That is clearly not consistent with reports that he consulted with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces before taking any action.

The details of that consultation are critical to any judgments of the significance of what happened and are what makes it most curious. There are no reports about the substance of the consultation.

One thing that is certain is that the US has been viscerally opposed to an elected president of Egypt whose powers were limited by an armed forces veto. That view appears to have deterred investors and potential aid donors as well because the political power arrangement was not stable enough to encourage investment or aid.

Thus, without warning and no power, Mursi has transformed Egypt into a respectable presidential democracy, waiting for a parliament. This is almost risible and not to be taken seriously based on weekend reports. For example it is not clear whether the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces still exists. It is not clear whether Tantawi was ousted by his subordinates in the same way that he ousted his President, Mubarak. How does this affect multiple law suits against nearly everyone in public office?

On the evidence adduced to date, this looks like a face-lift for Egyptian democracy to satisfy American sensibilities and to attract investors, but without really changing the underlying power-sharing arrangement. Nothing indicates the Egyptian armed forces surrendered to Mursi their exclusive control of defense interests, internal security problems and military economic enterprises.

It is all cosmetics with no substance.

Morocco: Hundreds of protesters demonstrated against corruption, high costs of living and the jailing of activists in Morocco's main cities on 11 August. The demonstrations were called for by rights groups, trade unionists and the 20 February Movement amid public frustration at the perceived failure of the government to uphold its electoral promises.

Comment: It is premature to make judgments about political stability at this time, except that the Monarchy looks stable and progressive. Nevertheless, low level protests of this kind have been the precursors of the Arab spring.

The King has been ahead of the curve in liberalizing the political system, but such measures in other countries have only encouraged the activists, rather than satisfied them. At this point, the activists have small numbers and are weekend agitators.

The NightWatch hypothesis is that the Arab monarchies are determined to save themselves against onslaughts of democracy, but are in as much danger as the civilian governments.

Saudi Arabia's interest in Syria, thus, is clearly anti-democracy as well as anti-Iran, as is Qatar's. Over the weekend several Imams issued fatwas that democracy is not consistent with Islam. This is a long standing view of all conservative Muslim clerics, by the way, but it will not save the Arab monarchies.

Morocco is in danger of becoming the next victim of the so-called Arab spring. Morocco poses significant challenges to the Arab monarchs because of the geographic distances involved in lending aid to the King and the vast cultural differences between Moroccans and, say, Saudi Arabians.

The Kingdom is not in danger at this time, however. The process of undermining a monarchy is just beginning.

Virupaksha wrote:
Shyamd garu,
You are becoming too difficult for me to differentiate you and your sources.

The coming weeks will be more interesting as you will see helicopters and airplanes fall out the sky.

Big escalation next week. SAMs will now be deployed as of next week. More later.

Lebanon and the Gaza Strip would be a serious danger to Israel in case of a war against Iran, former director of the Mossad secret intelligence service Danny Yatom said in his interview with the Israeli radio.

He said that Israel’s biggest concern was caused by thousands of missiles that the Shiite Hezbollah movement and Palestinian Hamas store in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

We would have to destroy part of Lebanon and Gaza to protect Israeli people from missile attacks, Yatom concluded.

Israel has repeatedly declared that it will deliver a blow on Iran if the latter makes an atom bomb.

#1. Our past: We are a fertile, organic society that has gone through several stages of influence, assimilation and changes for several thousands of years, both through inner direct experience of practical living with people of different ideas, and through outer acquired experience of ideas from across the world through books and internet. There is no point in denying this evolution. It is especially dangerous to discard all the evolution, and set some arbitrarily chosen reference point in our imagined utopian past as our bench mark. Every such push to return to a mythical pure state has been proven to be false factually and ineffective practically - think sundry efforts to establish societies based on purity of language, race, religion etc etc ....

#2. Our present: The pulls and pushes that we experience today, especially the ones that donot show us in good light, are a natural outcome of living in this age. There is no point in shutting ourselves to outside world. Instead of adopting the incestuous paki rho-dho tactic, we must the assume the sdre posture of openness to life and expericence, especially if we claim to be sdre.

So, what we have today is really what we have. More importantly, what we have is the best thing we have. Even otherwise, Theo is right. Today, we have a scale of hunger for material, spiritual , and ideas that none of us in has experienced in our own living past, forget ancient past. For eg., Our women have possibly never had it this good since their tribal/forest days, 2500 years ago. Anybody who has paid attention to their grandma's stories, knows that what happened in the long gone past is very difficult to know, even if the story teller is an expert historian.

Think pak, think india. What is the key differentiator? We chose to prioritize, even if we have to be sometimes lead by our ears, the experiences of the contemporary over the claims of the ancestor. We SDRE's have always done this - we were always inwards looking. For eg., most of our science is inward looking. But what is different from yesterday is that in the past, as individuals, we were less exposed to universal ideas, we relied on gurus, today everyone of us is directly experiencing the ideas and lives of people from world over. Any non-idealogical indian i meet is basically asking, Why not make the best use of it? Changes are thus happening more rapidly. The key sdre characteristics are shame, jugaad, chivalry, honour, knowledge, self-doubt and broad-mindedness on fundamentals. Armed with these and ideas of the modern mankind, we will go farther than even yagnavalkya and his ilk ever went.

#1. Our past: We are a fertile, organic society that has gone through several stages of influence, assimilation and changes for several thousands of years, both through inner direct experience of practical living with people of different ideas, and through outer acquired experience of ideas from across the world through books and internet. There is no point in denying this evolution. It is especially dangerous to discard all the evolution, and set some arbitrarily chosen reference point in our imagined utopian past as our bench mark. Every such push to return to a mythical pure state has been proven to be false factually and ineffective practically - think sundry efforts to establish societies based on purity of language, race, religion etc etc ....

#2. Our present: The pulls and pushes that we experience today, especially the ones that donot show us in good light, are a natural outcome of living in this age. There is no point in shutting ourselves to outside world. Instead of adopting the incestuous paki rho-dho tactic, we must the assume the sdre posture of openness to life and expericence, especially if we claim to be sdre.

So, what we have today is really what we have. More importantly, what we have is the best thing we have. Even otherwise, Theo is right. Today, we have a scale of hunger for material, spiritual , and ideas that none of us in has experienced in our own living past, forget ancient past. For eg., Our women have possibly never had it this good since their tribal/forest days, 2500 years ago. Anybody who has paid attention to their grandma's stories, knows that what happened in the long gone past is very difficult to know, even if the story teller is an expert historian.

RamaY wrote:Is (social) evolution really progressive, especially the variety that influenced Bharat? Does it mean the religious colonizations, holocausts, genocides too are part of this evolution?

Lets take this to OT thread.

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the inherited characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.

Variation exists within all populations of organisms. This occurs partly because random mutations cause changes in the genome of an individual organism, and these mutations can be passed to offspring. Throughout the individuals’ lives, their genomes interact with their environments to cause variations in traits. (The environment of a genome includes the molecular biology in the cell, other cells, other individuals, populations, species, as well as the abiotic environment.) Individuals with certain variants of the trait may survive and reproduce more than individuals with other variants. Therefore the population evolves. Factors that affect reproductive success are also important, an issue that Charles Darwin developed in his ideas on sexual selection, for example.

devesh wrote:johneeG saar: I think "evolution", in this case, meant the non-stationary aspect of social and cultural dynamics of a society. not necessarily biological, or perhaps, not only biological.