Friday, September 30, 2011

[Mind's Eye] Re: Hello and questions worth pondering

First, welcome AJ!

As to your "… I have so many questions that need affirmation…", I
would advise a more cautious approach. While some people may actually
know more than you, until you, yourself know more, it is difficult to
identify those from whom to accept 'affirmation'.

As to your first question about space being intelligent, I like you
appreciate the current theory of science even though by definition
such notions are open to and actually wishing to be attacked and
'disproven'. I find most entertaining at best. I won't bore you with
much more that isn't in direct response to your query; however, to be
more transparent, I find the study of mind (more accurately how we
know and what the nature of reality is – epistemology and ontology) to
be more interesting…but as I say, that is me.

Your second question about fractals, no…I don't contemplate them much
at all let alone have any associations with them and any sort of deity
at all.

I know precious little about the heating of the universe so will not
go there now.

As to the purpose/meaning of it all being to become Love, in a sense,
yes, knowing love at a deep level is a result of knowing most of the
rest of it. At least, that is what I've found. However, here I don't
go into theology much.


On Sep 30, 4:45 pm, AJ Fogle <ajfoglem...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all. I am new to the group and am interested in talking about
> these deeper topics with anyone who will allow it. I have so many
> questions that need affirmation as well. One for example I thought of
> from reading the God particle post.  In it someone posted that we can
> not measure it, because we are actually in it. I do not disagree, but
> was wondering if there is any evidence to support the idea that space
> is actually intelligent or perhaps more in line with  intelligent
> energy fields both receptive and productive?  I guess what I am most
> in need of would be the current science theory in many areas of
> study.  I would very much  enjoy  these types of study and
> conversation.
>
> Secondly, does anyone want to consider the fractal in the pondering of
> God and spirit?  I was under the impression that most  philosophers
> exclude the idea of  there being a God or spirit, although this is not
> an educated impression and perhaps it is wrong entirely.  I put this
> question out there in order to see if there are enough deep thinkers.
> with the extra time available, to address some of these issues with
> me. Anyone?
>
> Another post  here mentioned something about the "heating condition of
> the universe" and well quite frankly, I must hear more on this topic
> as well. I have had my own ideas on that subject  and I have a feeling
> the information will simply validate those ideas.  However, I do not
> know why this heating is happening, do you?
>
> Ok, I do not want to annoy any of you so I will stop with these vague,
> but meaningful, to me, questions for you all.  With a sincere hope to
> have someone, or many, open in conversation to me. I am honest and
> sincere and turned on by intelligence .. I hope that isn't offensive
> to any of you either.  I have no problems with being told I am wrong
> and will gladly consider the evidence that proves the statement.
> Personally, I find the thought of walking around believing in
> something that is based in error, very upsetting and welcome fact and
> truth, with open arms. Hopefully this will put you at ease and somehow
> give you some insight into me as well.
>
> Finally... Consider this.....The purpose of life, the reason we are
> here ... the meaning of it all... is simply to BECOME LOVE.  Think
> about it and let me know what you think. I am very interested in
> hearing what you have to say.  Thanks for your time. Be blessed.

[Mind's Eye] WELCOME (and request for suggestions as to what to put here)

I've taken down the two fixed messages at the head of discussions.
They had lost relevance and the link wasn't working. We should really
discuss what we want here as a group, so I'll invite suggestions
here. I never got used to new google groups myself, but I guess we
should think on that as well.

1.I take it no one wants spam other than as a capital banning offence.
2. I'm much less concerned than rude words than most, but even I don't
want to see them in personal attack or in torrents (boring).
3. Rules work best when they are tolerant. Manners often aren't.

So what would we want to see at the top of discussions? I hope we
don't have to make a big deal out of it, but let's see.

[Mind's Eye] Re: Hello and questions worth pondering

Hi AJ and welcome. I don't do professional philosophy but the stuff
is sometimes useful in my work. There's a lot of the philosophy of
religion about and no denial of god as far as I'm aware - it's more a
case that belief or otherwise in certainty on the topic is a
rationalist fantasy. As a scientist I don't find god notions very
useful and think much of the myths around them are damaging. This
still leaves me pondering what the universe and our part in it is
about.
The god particle is a metaphor for the quest for more and more effort
in particle physics - I think the name arises from Leon Leyderman
Last time I heard it was supposedly the Higgs' boson - a field that
gives mass.

Your post will have been delayed by moderation - something we use to
keep spam and a few other things out. Please fell free to
contribute. I'll go back and press the right key so your posts will
come directly to the group.
Neil

On Oct 1, 12:45 am, AJ Fogle <ajfoglem...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all. I am new to the group and am interested in talking about
> these deeper topics with anyone who will allow it. I have so many
> questions that need affirmation as well. One for example I thought of
> from reading the God particle post.  In it someone posted that we can
> not measure it, because we are actually in it. I do not disagree, but
> was wondering if there is any evidence to support the idea that space
> is actually intelligent or perhaps more in line with  intelligent
> energy fields both receptive and productive?  I guess what I am most
> in need of would be the current science theory in many areas of
> study.  I would very much  enjoy  these types of study and
> conversation.
>
> Secondly, does anyone want to consider the fractal in the pondering of
> God and spirit?  I was under the impression that most  philosophers
> exclude the idea of  there being a God or spirit, although this is not
> an educated impression and perhaps it is wrong entirely.  I put this
> question out there in order to see if there are enough deep thinkers.
> with the extra time available, to address some of these issues with
> me. Anyone?
>
> Another post  here mentioned something about the "heating condition of
> the universe" and well quite frankly, I must hear more on this topic
> as well. I have had my own ideas on that subject  and I have a feeling
> the information will simply validate those ideas.  However, I do not
> know why this heating is happening, do you?
>
> Ok, I do not want to annoy any of you so I will stop with these vague,
> but meaningful, to me, questions for you all.  With a sincere hope to
> have someone, or many, open in conversation to me. I am honest and
> sincere and turned on by intelligence .. I hope that isn't offensive
> to any of you either.  I have no problems with being told I am wrong
> and will gladly consider the evidence that proves the statement.
> Personally, I find the thought of walking around believing in
> something that is based in error, very upsetting and welcome fact and
> truth, with open arms. Hopefully this will put you at ease and somehow
> give you some insight into me as well.
>
> Finally... Consider this.....The purpose of life, the reason we are
> here ... the meaning of it all... is simply to BECOME LOVE.  Think
> about it and let me know what you think. I am very interested in
> hearing what you have to say.  Thanks for your time. Be blessed.

[Mind's Eye] Hello and questions worth pondering

Hello all. I am new to the group and am interested in talking about
these deeper topics with anyone who will allow it. I have so many
questions that need affirmation as well. One for example I thought of
from reading the God particle post. In it someone posted that we can
not measure it, because we are actually in it. I do not disagree, but
was wondering if there is any evidence to support the idea that space
is actually intelligent or perhaps more in line with intelligent
energy fields both receptive and productive? I guess what I am most
in need of would be the current science theory in many areas of
study. I would very much enjoy these types of study and
conversation.

Secondly, does anyone want to consider the fractal in the pondering of
God and spirit? I was under the impression that most philosophers
exclude the idea of there being a God or spirit, although this is not
an educated impression and perhaps it is wrong entirely. I put this
question out there in order to see if there are enough deep thinkers.
with the extra time available, to address some of these issues with
me. Anyone?

Another post here mentioned something about the "heating condition of
the universe" and well quite frankly, I must hear more on this topic
as well. I have had my own ideas on that subject and I have a feeling
the information will simply validate those ideas. However, I do not
know why this heating is happening, do you?

Ok, I do not want to annoy any of you so I will stop with these vague,
but meaningful, to me, questions for you all. With a sincere hope to
have someone, or many, open in conversation to me. I am honest and
sincere and turned on by intelligence .. I hope that isn't offensive
to any of you either. I have no problems with being told I am wrong
and will gladly consider the evidence that proves the statement.
Personally, I find the thought of walking around believing in
something that is based in error, very upsetting and welcome fact and
truth, with open arms. Hopefully this will put you at ease and somehow
give you some insight into me as well.

Finally... Consider this.....The purpose of life, the reason we are
here ... the meaning of it all... is simply to BECOME LOVE. Think
about it and let me know what you think. I am very interested in
hearing what you have to say. Thanks for your time. Be blessed.

[Mind's Eye] Re: Writing Ideas

Still trying to work out the issue of the moderation group. Hopefully
then, we can all look at the issue of Allan's ban.

On Sep 30, 6:40 am, gabbydott <gabbyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tz, I almost forgot that I meant to ask my question: Where is Allan?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:20 PM, gabbydott <gabbyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Good points, Molly!
>
> > As for the Dalai Lama in his painted and sculptured by the people shape,
> > his murder has already begun. Whether they'll still be able to create the
> > mystery of detecting the right next reincarnation is already written in the
> > stars, as Pat would say.
>
> > The passion market over the time has had many approaches of best practice
> > exploitation. Nothing new here either.
>
> > On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Molly <mollyb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Interesting notion, Neil.  My brother Micheal was a software engineer
> >> for Intel and worked with global teams to develop software like this
> >> for market.  Life certainly is reflective.  Enormous amounts of money
> >> and effort are put into product development and marketing for
> >> technologies like this.  My hunch is it has already been worked on as
> >> long as quantum computing but the technology is catching up with the
> >> idea.
>
> >> A universal translator for understanding has been the life's work of
> >> the Dali Lama, hasn't it?  Compassion.  The market so far seems
> >> undeveloped.
>
> >> On Sep 29, 10:12 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > After one discovers the idea (such as lip reading plus sound to text)
> >> > was only 'inventive' because you didn't know anyone else had thought
> >> > it up, you are left with technical development - which we usually give
> >> > up because we lack expertise or think others can do better.  One might
> >> > think of getting the expertise together and going into product
> >> > development.  Funding is a clear block to this.  What's left to us?
> >> > What came to me was a form of murder mystery set in a team developing
> >> > products like my 'universal translator' and new gadgets helping with
> >> > detection.
>
> >> > On Sep 29, 10:38 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > > Incidentally, Intel gave away the code for its lip reading software in
> >> > > 2003 and attempts to integrate facial speech and sound had been made
> >> > > then,tough I don't know of any on the market (haven't looked).
> >> > > Currently, if I say something like 'Islamic banking still leaves its
> >> > > poor poor' I get something Orn would ban me for.  It's the non-
> >> > > technical development of ideas and writing that interests me.
>
> >> > > On Sep 29, 10:25 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > > > My work with other people has usually been disappointing.  It's
> >> > > > limited to a little university teaching and reading graduate
> >> > > > submissions in the main.  Trying to write with other people is
> >> broadly
> >> > > > a disaster and I'm in need of getting my own into focus.  I've been
> >> > > > ill with energy sapped and the exercise I need to take hasn't helped
> >> > > > much yet, though the new dog is a real treat when not eating my
> >> > > > socks.  It's a bit of a new start.  Quite a few people write,some
> >> very
> >> > > > well and This is an invitation to share and perhaps develop work
> >> > > > between group members.
>
> >> > > > I've tried speech-to-text software with dismal failure over the
> >> years,
> >> > > > once building a monster pc with shed-loads of memory to no effect.
> >> > > > More recently, trying the latest stuff on university approval, I
> >> found
> >> > > > the stuff as hopeless and that it varied with my partial denture in
> >> or
> >> > > > out.  This led me to the germ of an idea,which if any good I should
> >> > > > patent before mentioning.  I video conference from a small netbook
> >> > > > with its own webcam and colleagues use text translation when stuck
> >> for
> >> > > > understanding.  This now works very well, but we obviously want
> >> voice
> >> > > > translation to prevent repetitive stress injuries from the keyboard.
> >> > > > I've seen some old films (silent) with a voice over lip-reading
> >> > > > software - the best known are from Hitler's archive.  There's a
> >> > > > product development possibility in this.
>
> >> > > > I'd like to know whether this makes as instant sense to other ME
> >> > > > people as me.  I haven't looked into this much as.it spurred me
> >> into a
> >> > > > sub-plot in my novel and that's what I'll be up to for a while.  We
> >> > > > could 'write' this 'product development'.  I'm partly suggesting
> >> this
> >> > > > for real but also as a metaphor (maybe) for more developmental
> >> writing
> >> > > > on our ideas generally.  I won't say more at this stage.

[Mind's Eye] Re: Writing Ideas

Apparently his line has gone dead. I know the actual idea has been
done - the point would be what we could do with our own ideas. I
rather hoped someone would have chipped in on the disappointment that
ideas are rarely new but this need not matter too much. Maybe even to
the point of the chance we broadly kill off creativity as a default.
I agree on the Lama Gabby. I was once close enough to see right into
the eyes of his adulators and was nauseous - no one should encourage
that sort of thing.

I'm wondering,in part, what bit of the critical eye is actually more
encouraging that "admiration".


On Sep 30, 11:40 am, gabbydott <gabbyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tz, I almost forgot that I meant to ask my question: Where is Allan?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:20 PM, gabbydott <gabbyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Good points, Molly!
>
> > As for the Dalai Lama in his painted and sculptured by the people shape,
> > his murder has already begun. Whether they'll still be able to create the
> > mystery of detecting the right next reincarnation is already written in the
> > stars, as Pat would say.
>
> > The passion market over the time has had many approaches of best practice
> > exploitation. Nothing new here either.
>
> > On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Molly <mollyb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Interesting notion, Neil.  My brother Micheal was a software engineer
> >> for Intel and worked with global teams to develop software like this
> >> for market.  Life certainly is reflective.  Enormous amounts of money
> >> and effort are put into product development and marketing for
> >> technologies like this.  My hunch is it has already been worked on as
> >> long as quantum computing but the technology is catching up with the
> >> idea.
>
> >> A universal translator for understanding has been the life's work of
> >> the Dali Lama, hasn't it?  Compassion.  The market so far seems
> >> undeveloped.
>
> >> On Sep 29, 10:12 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > After one discovers the idea (such as lip reading plus sound to text)
> >> > was only 'inventive' because you didn't know anyone else had thought
> >> > it up, you are left with technical development - which we usually give
> >> > up because we lack expertise or think others can do better.  One might
> >> > think of getting the expertise together and going into product
> >> > development.  Funding is a clear block to this.  What's left to us?
> >> > What came to me was a form of murder mystery set in a team developing
> >> > products like my 'universal translator' and new gadgets helping with
> >> > detection.
>
> >> > On Sep 29, 10:38 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > > Incidentally, Intel gave away the code for its lip reading software in
> >> > > 2003 and attempts to integrate facial speech and sound had been made
> >> > > then,tough I don't know of any on the market (haven't looked).
> >> > > Currently, if I say something like 'Islamic banking still leaves its
> >> > > poor poor' I get something Orn would ban me for.  It's the non-
> >> > > technical development of ideas and writing that interests me.
>
> >> > > On Sep 29, 10:25 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> > > > My work with other people has usually been disappointing.  It's
> >> > > > limited to a little university teaching and reading graduate
> >> > > > submissions in the main.  Trying to write with other people is
> >> broadly
> >> > > > a disaster and I'm in need of getting my own into focus.  I've been
> >> > > > ill with energy sapped and the exercise I need to take hasn't helped
> >> > > > much yet, though the new dog is a real treat when not eating my
> >> > > > socks.  It's a bit of a new start.  Quite a few people write,some
> >> very
> >> > > > well and This is an invitation to share and perhaps develop work
> >> > > > between group members.
>
> >> > > > I've tried speech-to-text software with dismal failure over the
> >> years,
> >> > > > once building a monster pc with shed-loads of memory to no effect.
> >> > > > More recently, trying the latest stuff on university approval, I
> >> found
> >> > > > the stuff as hopeless and that it varied with my partial denture in
> >> or
> >> > > > out.  This led me to the germ of an idea,which if any good I should
> >> > > > patent before mentioning.  I video conference from a small netbook
> >> > > > with its own webcam and colleagues use text translation when stuck
> >> for
> >> > > > understanding.  This now works very well, but we obviously want
> >> voice
> >> > > > translation to prevent repetitive stress injuries from the keyboard.
> >> > > > I've seen some old films (silent) with a voice over lip-reading
> >> > > > software - the best known are from Hitler's archive.  There's a
> >> > > > product development possibility in this.
>
> >> > > > I'd like to know whether this makes as instant sense to other ME
> >> > > > people as me.  I haven't looked into this much as.it spurred me
> >> into a
> >> > > > sub-plot in my novel and that's what I'll be up to for a while.  We
> >> > > > could 'write' this 'product development'.  I'm partly suggesting
> >> this
> >> > > > for real but also as a metaphor (maybe) for more developmental
> >> writing
> >> > > > on our ideas generally.  I won't say more at this stage.

The Dead Begin to Speak up in India

The Dead Begin to Speak up in India

Posted: Fri, 30 Sep 2011 

by Arundhati Roy

 

Kashmir-Unmarked-gravesA Kashmiri farmer walks past unmarked graves in Bimyar, west of Srinagar, in 2009. Photograph: Mukhtar Khan/AP

At about 3am, on 23 September, within hours of his arrival at the Delhi airport, the US radio-journalist David Barsamian was deported. This dangerous man, who produces independent, free-to-air programmes for public radio, has been visiting India for 40 years, doing such dangerous things as learning Urdu and playing the sitar.

Barsamian has published book-length interviews with public intellectuals such as Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ejaz Ahmed and Tariq Ali (he even makes an appearance as a young, bell-bottom-wearing interviewer in Peter Wintonick's documentary film on Chomsky and Edward Herman's bookManufacturing Consent).

On his more recent trips to India he has done a series of radio interviews with activists, academics, film-makers, journalists and writers (including me). Barsamian's work has taken him to Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan. He has never been deported from any of these countries. So why does the world's largest democracy feel so threatened by this lone, sitar-playing, Urdu-speaking, left-leaning, radio producer? Here is how Barsamian himself explains it:

"It's all about Kashmir. I've done work on Jharkand, Chattisgarh, West Bengal, Narmada dams, farmer suicides, the Gujarat pogrom, and the Binayak Sen case. But it's Kashmir that is at the heart of the Indian state's concerns. The official narrative must not be contested."

News reports about his deportation quoted official "sources" as saying that Barsamian had "violated his visa norms during his visit in 2009-10 by indulging in professional work while holding a tourist visa". Visa norms in India are an interesting peep-hole into the government's concerns and predilections. Using the tattered old banner of the "war on terror", the home ministry has decreed that scholars and academics invited for conferences and seminars require security clearance before they will be given visas. Corporate executives and businessmen do not.

So somebody who wants to invest in a dam, or build a steel plant or a buy a bauxite mine is not considered a security hazard, whereas a scholar who might wish to participate in a seminar about, say, displacement or communalism or rising malnutrition in a globalised economy, is. Terrorists with bad intentions have probably guessed that they are better off wearing Prada suits and pretending they want to buy a mine than admitting that they want to attend a seminar.

David Barsamian did not travel to India to buy a mine or to attend a conference. He just came to talk to people. The complaint against him, according to "official sources" is that he had reported on events in Jammu and Kashmir during his last visit to India and that these reports were "not based on facts". Remember Barsamian is not a reporter, he's a man who has conversations with people, mostly dissidents, about the societies in which they live.

Is it illegal for tourists to talk to people in the countries they visit? Would it be illegal for me to travel to the US or Europe and write about the people I met, even if my writing was "not based on facts"? Who decides which "facts" are correct and which are not? Would Barsamian have been deported if the conversations he recorded had been in praise of the impressive turnouts in Kashmir's elections, instead of about daily life in the densest military occupation in the world (an estimated 600,000 actively deployed armed personnel for a population of 10 million people)?

David Barsamian is not the first person to be deported over the Indian government's sensitivities over Kashmir. Professor Richard Shapiro, an anthropologist from San Francisco, was deported from Delhi airport in November 2010 without being given any reason. It was probably a way of punishing his partner,Angana Chatterji, who is a co-convenor of the international peoples' tribunal on human rights and justice which first chronicled the existence of unmarked mass graves in Kashmir.

In September 2011, May Aquino, from the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (Afad), Manila, was deported from Delhi airport. Earlier this year, on 28 May, the outspoken Indian democratic rights activist, Gautam Navlakha, was deported to Delhi from Srinagar airport. Farook Abdullah, the former chief minister of Kashmir, justified the deportation, saying that writers like Navlakha and myself had no business entering Kashmir because "Kashmir is not for burning".

Kashmir is in the process of being isolated, cut off from the outside world by two concentric rings of border patrols – in Delhi as well as Srinagar – as though it's already a free country with its own visa regime. Within its borders of course, it's open season for the government and the army. The art of controlling Kashmiri journalists and ordinary people with a deadly combination of bribes, threats, blackmail and a whole spectrum of unutterable cruelty has evolved into a twisted art form.

While the government goes about trying to silence the living, the dead have begun to speak up. Perhaps it was insensitive of Barsamian to plan a trip to Kashmir just when the state human rights commission was finally shamed into officially acknowledging the existence of 2,700 unmarked graves from three districts in Kashmir. Reports of thousands of other graves are pouring in from other districts. Perhaps it is insensitive of the unmarked graves to embarrass the government of India just when India's record is due for review before the UN human rights council.

Apart from Dangerous David, who else is the world's largest democracy afraid of? There's young Lingaram Kodopi an adivasi from Dantewada in the state of Chhattisgarh, who was arrested on 9 September. The police say they caught him red-handed in a market place, while he was handing over protection money from Essar, an iron-ore mining company, to the banned Communist party of India (Maoist). His aunt Soni Sori says that he was picked up by plainclothes policemen in a white Bolero car from his grandfather's house in Palnar village.

Interestingly, even by their own account, the police arrested Lingaram but allowed the Maoists to escape. This is only the latest in a series of bizarre, almost hallucinatory accusations they have made against Lingaram and then withdrawn. His real crime is that he is the only journalist who speaks Gondi, the local language, and who knows how to negotiate the remote forest paths in Dantewada the other war zone in India from which no news must come.

Having signed over vast tracts of indigenous tribal homelands in central India to multinational mining and infrastructure corporations in a series of secret memorandums of understanding, the government has begun to flood the forests with hundreds of thousands of security forces. All resistance, armed as well as unarmed has been branded "Maoist" (In Kashmir they are all "jihadi elements").

As the civil war grows deadlier, hundreds of villages have been burnt to the ground. Thousands of adivasis have fled as refugees into neighbouring states. Hundreds of thousands are living terrified lives hiding in the forests. Paramilitary forces have laid siege to the forest, making trips to the markets for essential provisions and medicines a nightmare for villagers. Untold numbers of nameless people are in jail, charged with sedition and waging war on the state, with no lawyers to defend them. Very little news comes out of those forests, and there are no body counts.

So it's not hard to see why young Lingaram Kodopi poses such a threat. Before he trained to become a journalist, he was a driver in Dantewada. In 2009 the police arrested him and confiscated his Jeep. He was locked up in a small toilet for 40 days where he was pressurised to become a special police officer (SPO) in the Salwa Judum, the government-sponsored vigilante army that was at the time tasked with forcing people to flee from their villages (the Salwa Judum has since been declared unconstitutional by the supreme court).

The police released Lingaram after the Gandhian activist Himanshu Kumar filed a habeas corpus petition in court. But then the police arrested Lingaram's old father and five other members of his family. They attacked his village and threatened the villagers if they sheltered him. Eventually Lingaram escaped to Delhi where friends and well-wishers got him admission into a journalism school. In April 2010 he travelled to Dantewada and escorted villagers to Delhi to give testimony at the independent peoples' tribunal about the barbarity of the Salwa Judum and the police and paramilitary forces. In his own testimony, Lingaram was sharply critical of the Maoists as well.

That did not deter the Chhattisgarh police. On 2 July 2010, the senior Maoist leader, Comrade Azad, the official spokesperson for the Maoist party, was captured and executed by the Andhra Pradesh police. Deputy Inspector General Kalluri of the Chhattisgarh police announced at a press conference that Lingaram Kodopi had been elected by the Maoist party to take over Comrade Azad's role (it was like accusing a young school child in 1936 Yan'an of being Zhou Enlai). The charge was met with such derision that the police had to withdraw it. Soon after they accused Lingaram of being the mastermind of a Maoist attack on a congress legislator in Dantewada. But oddly enough, they made no move to arrest him.

Lingaram remained in Delhi, completed his course and received his diploma in journalism. In March 2011, paramilitary forces burned down three villages in Dantewada – Tadmetla, Timmapuram and Morapalli. The Chhattisgarh government blamed the Maoists. The supreme court assigned the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Lingaram returned to Dantewada with a video camera and trekked from village to village documenting first-hand testimonies of the villagers who indicted the police. By doing this he made himself one of the most wanted men in Dantewada. On 9 September the police finally got to him.

Lingaram has joined an impressive line-up of troublesome news gatherers and disseminators in Chhattisgarh. Among the earliest to be silenced was the celebrated doctor Binayak Sen, who first raised the alarm about the crimes of the Salwa Judum as far back as 2005. He was arrested in 2007, accused of being a Maoist and sentenced to life imprisonment. After years in prison, he is out on bail now.

Kopa Kunjam was my first guide into the forest villages of Dantewada. At the time he worked with Himanshu Kumar's Vanvasi Chetna ashram, doing exactly what Lingaram tried to do much later – travelling to remote villages, bringing out the news, and carefully documenting the horror that was unfolding. In May 2009 the ashram, the last neutral shelter for journalists, writers and academics who were travelling to Dantewada, was demolished by the Chhattisgarh government.

Kopa was arrested on human rights day in September 2009. He was accused of colluding with the Maoists in the murder of one man and the kidnapping of another. The case against Kopa has begun to fall apart as the police witnesses, including the man who was kidnapped, have disowned the statements they purportedly made to the police. It doesn't really matter, because in India the process is the punishment.

It could take years for Kopa to establish his innocence. Many of those who were emboldened by Kopa to file complaints against the police have been arrested too. That includes women who committed the crime of being raped. Soon after Kopa's arrest Himanshu Kumar was hounded out of Dantewada.

Eventually, here too the dead will begin to speak. And it will not just be dead human beings, it will be the dead land, dead rivers, dead mountains and dead creatures in dead forests that will insist on a hearing.

In this age of surveillance, internet policing and phone-tapping, as the clampdown on those who speak up becomes grimmer with every passing day, it's odd how India is becoming the dream destination of literary festivals. Many of these festivals are funded by the very corporations on whose behalf the police have unleashed their regime of terror.

The Harud literary festival in Srinagar (postponed for the moment) was slated to be the newest, most exciting literary festival in India – "As the autumn leaves change colour the valley of Kashmir will resonate with the sound of poetry, literary dialogue, debate and discussions …"

Its organisers advertised it as an "apolitical" event, but did not say how either the rulers or the subjects of a brutal military occupation that has claimed tens of thousands of lives could be "apolitical". I wonder – will the guests come on tourist visas? Will there be separate ones for Srinagar and Delhi? Will they need security clearance?

The festive din of all this spurious freedom helps to muffle the sound of footsteps in airport corridors as the deported are frog-marched on to departing planes, to mute the click of handcuffs locking around strong, warm wrists and the cold metallic clang of prison doors.

Our lungs are gradually being depleted of oxygen. Perhaps it's time use whatever breath remains in our bodies to say: "Open the bloody gates."

Source:theGuardian





--
Shahzad Shameem

--
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The Dead Begin to Speak up in India

The Dead Begin to Speak up in India

Posted: Fri, 30 Sep 2011 

by Arundhati Roy

 

Kashmir-Unmarked-gravesA Kashmiri farmer walks past unmarked graves in Bimyar, west of Srinagar, in 2009. Photograph: Mukhtar Khan/AP

At about 3am, on 23 September, within hours of his arrival at the Delhi airport, the US radio-journalist David Barsamian was deported. This dangerous man, who produces independent, free-to-air programmes for public radio, has been visiting India for 40 years, doing such dangerous things as learning Urdu and playing the sitar.

Barsamian has published book-length interviews with public intellectuals such as Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ejaz Ahmed and Tariq Ali (he even makes an appearance as a young, bell-bottom-wearing interviewer in Peter Wintonick's documentary film on Chomsky and Edward Herman's bookManufacturing Consent).

On his more recent trips to India he has done a series of radio interviews with activists, academics, film-makers, journalists and writers (including me). Barsamian's work has taken him to Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan. He has never been deported from any of these countries. So why does the world's largest democracy feel so threatened by this lone, sitar-playing, Urdu-speaking, left-leaning, radio producer? Here is how Barsamian himself explains it:

"It's all about Kashmir. I've done work on Jharkand, Chattisgarh, West Bengal, Narmada dams, farmer suicides, the Gujarat pogrom, and the Binayak Sen case. But it's Kashmir that is at the heart of the Indian state's concerns. The official narrative must not be contested."

News reports about his deportation quoted official "sources" as saying that Barsamian had "violated his visa norms during his visit in 2009-10 by indulging in professional work while holding a tourist visa". Visa norms in India are an interesting peep-hole into the government's concerns and predilections. Using the tattered old banner of the "war on terror", the home ministry has decreed that scholars and academics invited for conferences and seminars require security clearance before they will be given visas. Corporate executives and businessmen do not.

So somebody who wants to invest in a dam, or build a steel plant or a buy a bauxite mine is not considered a security hazard, whereas a scholar who might wish to participate in a seminar about, say, displacement or communalism or rising malnutrition in a globalised economy, is. Terrorists with bad intentions have probably guessed that they are better off wearing Prada suits and pretending they want to buy a mine than admitting that they want to attend a seminar.

David Barsamian did not travel to India to buy a mine or to attend a conference. He just came to talk to people. The complaint against him, according to "official sources" is that he had reported on events in Jammu and Kashmir during his last visit to India and that these reports were "not based on facts". Remember Barsamian is not a reporter, he's a man who has conversations with people, mostly dissidents, about the societies in which they live.

Is it illegal for tourists to talk to people in the countries they visit? Would it be illegal for me to travel to the US or Europe and write about the people I met, even if my writing was "not based on facts"? Who decides which "facts" are correct and which are not? Would Barsamian have been deported if the conversations he recorded had been in praise of the impressive turnouts in Kashmir's elections, instead of about daily life in the densest military occupation in the world (an estimated 600,000 actively deployed armed personnel for a population of 10 million people)?

David Barsamian is not the first person to be deported over the Indian government's sensitivities over Kashmir. Professor Richard Shapiro, an anthropologist from San Francisco, was deported from Delhi airport in November 2010 without being given any reason. It was probably a way of punishing his partner,Angana Chatterji, who is a co-convenor of the international peoples' tribunal on human rights and justice which first chronicled the existence of unmarked mass graves in Kashmir.

In September 2011, May Aquino, from the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (Afad), Manila, was deported from Delhi airport. Earlier this year, on 28 May, the outspoken Indian democratic rights activist, Gautam Navlakha, was deported to Delhi from Srinagar airport. Farook Abdullah, the former chief minister of Kashmir, justified the deportation, saying that writers like Navlakha and myself had no business entering Kashmir because "Kashmir is not for burning".

Kashmir is in the process of being isolated, cut off from the outside world by two concentric rings of border patrols – in Delhi as well as Srinagar – as though it's already a free country with its own visa regime. Within its borders of course, it's open season for the government and the army. The art of controlling Kashmiri journalists and ordinary people with a deadly combination of bribes, threats, blackmail and a whole spectrum of unutterable cruelty has evolved into a twisted art form.

While the government goes about trying to silence the living, the dead have begun to speak up. Perhaps it was insensitive of Barsamian to plan a trip to Kashmir just when the state human rights commission was finally shamed into officially acknowledging the existence of 2,700 unmarked graves from three districts in Kashmir. Reports of thousands of other graves are pouring in from other districts. Perhaps it is insensitive of the unmarked graves to embarrass the government of India just when India's record is due for review before the UN human rights council.

Apart from Dangerous David, who else is the world's largest democracy afraid of? There's young Lingaram Kodopi an adivasi from Dantewada in the state of Chhattisgarh, who was arrested on 9 September. The police say they caught him red-handed in a market place, while he was handing over protection money from Essar, an iron-ore mining company, to the banned Communist party of India (Maoist). His aunt Soni Sori says that he was picked up by plainclothes policemen in a white Bolero car from his grandfather's house in Palnar village.

Interestingly, even by their own account, the police arrested Lingaram but allowed the Maoists to escape. This is only the latest in a series of bizarre, almost hallucinatory accusations they have made against Lingaram and then withdrawn. His real crime is that he is the only journalist who speaks Gondi, the local language, and who knows how to negotiate the remote forest paths in Dantewada the other war zone in India from which no news must come.

Having signed over vast tracts of indigenous tribal homelands in central India to multinational mining and infrastructure corporations in a series of secret memorandums of understanding, the government has begun to flood the forests with hundreds of thousands of security forces. All resistance, armed as well as unarmed has been branded "Maoist" (In Kashmir they are all "jihadi elements").

As the civil war grows deadlier, hundreds of villages have been burnt to the ground. Thousands of adivasis have fled as refugees into neighbouring states. Hundreds of thousands are living terrified lives hiding in the forests. Paramilitary forces have laid siege to the forest, making trips to the markets for essential provisions and medicines a nightmare for villagers. Untold numbers of nameless people are in jail, charged with sedition and waging war on the state, with no lawyers to defend them. Very little news comes out of those forests, and there are no body counts.

So it's not hard to see why young Lingaram Kodopi poses such a threat. Before he trained to become a journalist, he was a driver in Dantewada. In 2009 the police arrested him and confiscated his Jeep. He was locked up in a small toilet for 40 days where he was pressurised to become a special police officer (SPO) in the Salwa Judum, the government-sponsored vigilante army that was at the time tasked with forcing people to flee from their villages (the Salwa Judum has since been declared unconstitutional by the supreme court).

The police released Lingaram after the Gandhian activist Himanshu Kumar filed a habeas corpus petition in court. But then the police arrested Lingaram's old father and five other members of his family. They attacked his village and threatened the villagers if they sheltered him. Eventually Lingaram escaped to Delhi where friends and well-wishers got him admission into a journalism school. In April 2010 he travelled to Dantewada and escorted villagers to Delhi to give testimony at the independent peoples' tribunal about the barbarity of the Salwa Judum and the police and paramilitary forces. In his own testimony, Lingaram was sharply critical of the Maoists as well.

That did not deter the Chhattisgarh police. On 2 July 2010, the senior Maoist leader, Comrade Azad, the official spokesperson for the Maoist party, was captured and executed by the Andhra Pradesh police. Deputy Inspector General Kalluri of the Chhattisgarh police announced at a press conference that Lingaram Kodopi had been elected by the Maoist party to take over Comrade Azad's role (it was like accusing a young school child in 1936 Yan'an of being Zhou Enlai). The charge was met with such derision that the police had to withdraw it. Soon after they accused Lingaram of being the mastermind of a Maoist attack on a congress legislator in Dantewada. But oddly enough, they made no move to arrest him.

Lingaram remained in Delhi, completed his course and received his diploma in journalism. In March 2011, paramilitary forces burned down three villages in Dantewada – Tadmetla, Timmapuram and Morapalli. The Chhattisgarh government blamed the Maoists. The supreme court assigned the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Lingaram returned to Dantewada with a video camera and trekked from village to village documenting first-hand testimonies of the villagers who indicted the police. By doing this he made himself one of the most wanted men in Dantewada. On 9 September the police finally got to him.

Lingaram has joined an impressive line-up of troublesome news gatherers and disseminators in Chhattisgarh. Among the earliest to be silenced was the celebrated doctor Binayak Sen, who first raised the alarm about the crimes of the Salwa Judum as far back as 2005. He was arrested in 2007, accused of being a Maoist and sentenced to life imprisonment. After years in prison, he is out on bail now.

Kopa Kunjam was my first guide into the forest villages of Dantewada. At the time he worked with Himanshu Kumar's Vanvasi Chetna ashram, doing exactly what Lingaram tried to do much later – travelling to remote villages, bringing out the news, and carefully documenting the horror that was unfolding. In May 2009 the ashram, the last neutral shelter for journalists, writers and academics who were travelling to Dantewada, was demolished by the Chhattisgarh government.

Kopa was arrested on human rights day in September 2009. He was accused of colluding with the Maoists in the murder of one man and the kidnapping of another. The case against Kopa has begun to fall apart as the police witnesses, including the man who was kidnapped, have disowned the statements they purportedly made to the police. It doesn't really matter, because in India the process is the punishment.

It could take years for Kopa to establish his innocence. Many of those who were emboldened by Kopa to file complaints against the police have been arrested too. That includes women who committed the crime of being raped. Soon after Kopa's arrest Himanshu Kumar was hounded out of Dantewada.

Eventually, here too the dead will begin to speak. And it will not just be dead human beings, it will be the dead land, dead rivers, dead mountains and dead creatures in dead forests that will insist on a hearing.

In this age of surveillance, internet policing and phone-tapping, as the clampdown on those who speak up becomes grimmer with every passing day, it's odd how India is becoming the dream destination of literary festivals. Many of these festivals are funded by the very corporations on whose behalf the police have unleashed their regime of terror.

The Harud literary festival in Srinagar (postponed for the moment) was slated to be the newest, most exciting literary festival in India – "As the autumn leaves change colour the valley of Kashmir will resonate with the sound of poetry, literary dialogue, debate and discussions …"

Its organisers advertised it as an "apolitical" event, but did not say how either the rulers or the subjects of a brutal military occupation that has claimed tens of thousands of lives could be "apolitical". I wonder – will the guests come on tourist visas? Will there be separate ones for Srinagar and Delhi? Will they need security clearance?

The festive din of all this spurious freedom helps to muffle the sound of footsteps in airport corridors as the deported are frog-marched on to departing planes, to mute the click of handcuffs locking around strong, warm wrists and the cold metallic clang of prison doors.

Our lungs are gradually being depleted of oxygen. Perhaps it's time use whatever breath remains in our bodies to say: "Open the bloody gates."

Source:theGuardian





--
Shahzad Shameem

--
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[MSUAtheists]:591 Videos I mentioned last night.

Here is the Nova documentary on the Dover School Board v Kitzmiller



Here is a good tear down of the Kalam argument.


Here is a good interview with an ex-scientology actor


This was supposed to be a debate on creationism but the creationist backed out.  So Ken Miller gave a speech on evolution vs creationism.  One of the bonuses of this video is that Ken Miller is catholic, so it shows that the purpose of the theory of evolution is not to convert christians.

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Re: [Mind's Eye] Re: Writing Ideas

Tz, I almost forgot that I meant to ask my question: Where is Allan?

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:20 PM, gabbydott <gabbydott@gmail.com> wrote:
Good points, Molly!

As for the Dalai Lama in his painted and sculptured by the people shape, his murder has already begun. Whether they'll still be able to create the mystery of detecting the right next reincarnation is already written in the stars, as Pat would say.

The passion market over the time has had many approaches of best practice exploitation. Nothing new here either.


On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Molly <mollyb363@gmail.com> wrote:
Interesting notion, Neil.  My brother Micheal was a software engineer
for Intel and worked with global teams to develop software like this
for market.  Life certainly is reflective.  Enormous amounts of money
and effort are put into product development and marketing for
technologies like this.  My hunch is it has already been worked on as
long as quantum computing but the technology is catching up with the
idea.

A universal translator for understanding has been the life's work of
the Dali Lama, hasn't it?  Compassion.  The market so far seems
undeveloped.

On Sep 29, 10:12 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> After one discovers the idea (such as lip reading plus sound to text)
> was only 'inventive' because you didn't know anyone else had thought
> it up, you are left with technical development - which we usually give
> up because we lack expertise or think others can do better.  One might
> think of getting the expertise together and going into product
> development.  Funding is a clear block to this.  What's left to us?
> What came to me was a form of murder mystery set in a team developing
> products like my 'universal translator' and new gadgets helping with
> detection.
>
> On Sep 29, 10:38 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Incidentally, Intel gave away the code for its lip reading software in
> > 2003 and attempts to integrate facial speech and sound had been made
> > then,tough I don't know of any on the market (haven't looked).
> > Currently, if I say something like 'Islamic banking still leaves its
> > poor poor' I get something Orn would ban me for.  It's the non-
> > technical development of ideas and writing that interests me.
>
> > On Sep 29, 10:25 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > My work with other people has usually been disappointing.  It's
> > > limited to a little university teaching and reading graduate
> > > submissions in the main.  Trying to write with other people is broadly
> > > a disaster and I'm in need of getting my own into focus.  I've been
> > > ill with energy sapped and the exercise I need to take hasn't helped
> > > much yet, though the new dog is a real treat when not eating my
> > > socks.  It's a bit of a new start.  Quite a few people write,some very
> > > well and This is an invitation to share and perhaps develop work
> > > between group members.
>
> > > I've tried speech-to-text software with dismal failure over the years,
> > > once building a monster pc with shed-loads of memory to no effect.
> > > More recently, trying the latest stuff on university approval, I found
> > > the stuff as hopeless and that it varied with my partial denture in or
> > > out.  This led me to the germ of an idea,which if any good I should
> > > patent before mentioning.  I video conference from a small netbook
> > > with its own webcam and colleagues use text translation when stuck for
> > > understanding.  This now works very well, but we obviously want voice
> > > translation to prevent repetitive stress injuries from the keyboard.
> > > I've seen some old films (silent) with a voice over lip-reading
> > > software - the best known are from Hitler's archive.  There's a
> > > product development possibility in this.
>
> > > I'd like to know whether this makes as instant sense to other ME
> > > people as me.  I haven't looked into this much as.it spurred me into a
> > > sub-plot in my novel and that's what I'll be up to for a while.  We
> > > could 'write' this 'product development'.  I'm partly suggesting this
> > > for real but also as a metaphor (maybe) for more developmental writing
> > > on our ideas generally.  I won't say more at this stage.


Re: [Mind's Eye] Re: Writing Ideas

Good points, Molly!

As for the Dalai Lama in his painted and sculptured by the people shape, his murder has already begun. Whether they'll still be able to create the mystery of detecting the right next reincarnation is already written in the stars, as Pat would say.

The passion market over the time has had many approaches of best practice exploitation. Nothing new here either.

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Molly <mollyb363@gmail.com> wrote:
Interesting notion, Neil.  My brother Micheal was a software engineer
for Intel and worked with global teams to develop software like this
for market.  Life certainly is reflective.  Enormous amounts of money
and effort are put into product development and marketing for
technologies like this.  My hunch is it has already been worked on as
long as quantum computing but the technology is catching up with the
idea.

A universal translator for understanding has been the life's work of
the Dali Lama, hasn't it?  Compassion.  The market so far seems
undeveloped.

On Sep 29, 10:12 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> After one discovers the idea (such as lip reading plus sound to text)
> was only 'inventive' because you didn't know anyone else had thought
> it up, you are left with technical development - which we usually give
> up because we lack expertise or think others can do better.  One might
> think of getting the expertise together and going into product
> development.  Funding is a clear block to this.  What's left to us?
> What came to me was a form of murder mystery set in a team developing
> products like my 'universal translator' and new gadgets helping with
> detection.
>
> On Sep 29, 10:38 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Incidentally, Intel gave away the code for its lip reading software in
> > 2003 and attempts to integrate facial speech and sound had been made
> > then,tough I don't know of any on the market (haven't looked).
> > Currently, if I say something like 'Islamic banking still leaves its
> > poor poor' I get something Orn would ban me for.  It's the non-
> > technical development of ideas and writing that interests me.
>
> > On Sep 29, 10:25 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > My work with other people has usually been disappointing.  It's
> > > limited to a little university teaching and reading graduate
> > > submissions in the main.  Trying to write with other people is broadly
> > > a disaster and I'm in need of getting my own into focus.  I've been
> > > ill with energy sapped and the exercise I need to take hasn't helped
> > > much yet, though the new dog is a real treat when not eating my
> > > socks.  It's a bit of a new start.  Quite a few people write,some very
> > > well and This is an invitation to share and perhaps develop work
> > > between group members.
>
> > > I've tried speech-to-text software with dismal failure over the years,
> > > once building a monster pc with shed-loads of memory to no effect.
> > > More recently, trying the latest stuff on university approval, I found
> > > the stuff as hopeless and that it varied with my partial denture in or
> > > out.  This led me to the germ of an idea,which if any good I should
> > > patent before mentioning.  I video conference from a small netbook
> > > with its own webcam and colleagues use text translation when stuck for
> > > understanding.  This now works very well, but we obviously want voice
> > > translation to prevent repetitive stress injuries from the keyboard.
> > > I've seen some old films (silent) with a voice over lip-reading
> > > software - the best known are from Hitler's archive.  There's a
> > > product development possibility in this.
>
> > > I'd like to know whether this makes as instant sense to other ME
> > > people as me.  I haven't looked into this much as.it spurred me into a
> > > sub-plot in my novel and that's what I'll be up to for a while.  We
> > > could 'write' this 'product development'.  I'm partly suggesting this
> > > for real but also as a metaphor (maybe) for more developmental writing
> > > on our ideas generally.  I won't say more at this stage.

[Mind's Eye] Re: Writing Ideas

Interesting notion, Neil. My brother Micheal was a software engineer
for Intel and worked with global teams to develop software like this
for market. Life certainly is reflective. Enormous amounts of money
and effort are put into product development and marketing for
technologies like this. My hunch is it has already been worked on as
long as quantum computing but the technology is catching up with the
idea.

A universal translator for understanding has been the life's work of
the Dali Lama, hasn't it? Compassion. The market so far seems
undeveloped.

On Sep 29, 10:12 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> After one discovers the idea (such as lip reading plus sound to text)
> was only 'inventive' because you didn't know anyone else had thought
> it up, you are left with technical development - which we usually give
> up because we lack expertise or think others can do better.  One might
> think of getting the expertise together and going into product
> development.  Funding is a clear block to this.  What's left to us?
> What came to me was a form of murder mystery set in a team developing
> products like my 'universal translator' and new gadgets helping with
> detection.
>
> On Sep 29, 10:38 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Incidentally, Intel gave away the code for its lip reading software in
> > 2003 and attempts to integrate facial speech and sound had been made
> > then,tough I don't know of any on the market (haven't looked).
> > Currently, if I say something like 'Islamic banking still leaves its
> > poor poor' I get something Orn would ban me for.  It's the non-
> > technical development of ideas and writing that interests me.
>
> > On Sep 29, 10:25 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > My work with other people has usually been disappointing.  It's
> > > limited to a little university teaching and reading graduate
> > > submissions in the main.  Trying to write with other people is broadly
> > > a disaster and I'm in need of getting my own into focus.  I've been
> > > ill with energy sapped and the exercise I need to take hasn't helped
> > > much yet, though the new dog is a real treat when not eating my
> > > socks.  It's a bit of a new start.  Quite a few people write,some very
> > > well and This is an invitation to share and perhaps develop work
> > > between group members.
>
> > > I've tried speech-to-text software with dismal failure over the years,
> > > once building a monster pc with shed-loads of memory to no effect.
> > > More recently, trying the latest stuff on university approval, I found
> > > the stuff as hopeless and that it varied with my partial denture in or
> > > out.  This led me to the germ of an idea,which if any good I should
> > > patent before mentioning.  I video conference from a small netbook
> > > with its own webcam and colleagues use text translation when stuck for
> > > understanding.  This now works very well, but we obviously want voice
> > > translation to prevent repetitive stress injuries from the keyboard.
> > > I've seen some old films (silent) with a voice over lip-reading
> > > software - the best known are from Hitler's archive.  There's a
> > > product development possibility in this.
>
> > > I'd like to know whether this makes as instant sense to other ME
> > > people as me.  I haven't looked into this much as.it spurred me into a
> > > sub-plot in my novel and that's what I'll be up to for a while.  We
> > > could 'write' this 'product development'.  I'm partly suggesting this
> > > for real but also as a metaphor (maybe) for more developmental writing
> > > on our ideas generally.  I won't say more at this stage.

Subtle But Measured Backtracking by US on Mullen Remarks

Subtle But Measured Backtracking by US on Mullen Remarks

Posted: Thu, 29 Sep 2011

Source:RupeeNews.com

Washington seems to have gone into damage control. In what would be considered an official response to the wild and crazy accusations by a defeated general who wanted his excuses for the defeat recorded on the eve of his retirement–the Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung have written a front page column in theWashington Post which is todays's Washington Post headline "Mullen's Pakistan remarks criticized". Interestingly enough, the headline for the paper is different than the headline of the articles which says "Adm. Mullen's words on Pakistan come under scrutiny."

Mullen

The criticism of Admiral Mullen's statements come from Pentagon sources. The backtracking is subtle, measured and nuanced, however there is some level of withdrawal from the position that the "Haqqani Network is a veritable arm of the ISI". According to DeYoung and Miller, officials in the Pentagon say that while the Pakistan provide the Haqqanis "santuaries", "funding" and "support", it may be a stretch to say that the Haqqanis are a military unit of the ISI which takes its orders from the ISI.

The Washington Post story identifies "the internal criticism by the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to challenge Mullen openly, reflects concern over the accuracy of Mullen's characterizations at a time when Obama administration officials have been frustrated in their efforts to persuade Pakistan to break its ties to Afghan insurgent groups".

To the ordinary layman the subtle difference may be lost, but it surely does describe a difference. The very fact that the WP carried a story which is critical of the person in charge of the war in Afghanistan leads analysts to believe, that his parting shot at Pakistan is being taken with a pinch of salt. What is important about the story is the fact that it prompted "new levels of indignation among senior officials in both the United States and Pakistan". What is important in the story is the fact that it highlights that there is indignation in Washington over Mullen's remarks. The Pakistanis of course have reacted to the accusations as almost a "declaration of war." and are busy preparing a diplomatic and national response. All political parties have been invited to a All Party Conference in Islamabad and the army top brass got together to mull over the options.

The US may have been trying to put pressure on Pakistan, and Young and Miller say that Mullen may have crossed the line, ever so gently in the application of pressure, to blatant accusations. The US wants the pressure on Islamabad, and it does want Pakistan to chase out the Haqqanis, but somewhere in the pressure is a fine line, which in the eyes of the Pentagon officials–Mullen may have crossed.

The WP story says "Mullen's language 'overstates the case,' said a senior Pentagon official with access to classified intelligence files on Pakistan, because there is scant evidence of direction or control." While Mullen's statement may have given the impression that there is "direction and control, Pentagon and Washington sources seem to backtrack from that accusation.

In effect, the US is clearly saying that the ISI did not direct the Kabul attacks "The Pakistani government has been dealing with Haqqani for a long time and still sees strategic value in guiding Haqqani and using them for their purposes," the Pentagon official said. But "it's not in their interest to inflame us in a way that an attack on a [U.S.] compound would do."

  • U.S. military officials said that Mullen's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee has been misinterpreted, and that his remark that the Haqqani network had carried out recent truck-bomb and embassy attacks "with ISI support" was meant to imply broad assistance, but not necessarily direction by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
  • "Can they control them like a military unit? We don't think so.

The WP story clearly says "But Mullen's pointed message and the difficulty in matching his words to the underlying intelligence underscore the suspicion and distrust that have plagued the United States and Pakistan". The WP story and the Pentagon officials quoted in the story seem to suggest that Mullen's testimony has not been bought by all arms of the US government, including the Pentagon. Words of a defeated general are being weighed in the crucible of facts, and it seems that Mullen seems to have stretched the truth or just lied.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said that Mullen's statement is "not language I would use." He also said that the comment is "consistent with our position" and tried to dismiss questions about it as a "matter of semantics." However a Pentagon spokesman said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta endorsed the view of Admiral Mike Mullen. The Press secretary George Little told reporters that the "The secretary and the chairman both agree that there are unacceptable links between elements of the Pakistani government and the Haqqanis…"Everyone here understands there's a link between elements of the Pakistani government and the Haqqanis…"At the analytic level, there's no disagreement." The key word I guess is "analytical level" and "operational level." The White House and the Pentagon seem to be saying that ther are links, but there is no proof that the ISI directed the attack in Kabul.

The Pakistanis have been yelling at the top of their voices that they have contacts with the Haqqanis, just like the US has contacts with the Talibs. How else would the US be talking to the Talibs.

  • Pakistani officials acknowledge that they have ongoing contact with the Haqqani network, a group founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was one of the CIA-backed mujaheddin commanders who helped drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Now in poor health, Haqqani has yielded day-to-day control of the network to his son, Sirajuddin.

Whatever the US does to dampen the damage done by Admiral Mullen, the fact is that the Pakistanis have taken this to be a threat from an unreliable ally. The firestorm in the Pakistani media is reflective of the anger felt in Pakistan. The fiery speeches in the "All Parties Conference" and the discussions in the local and National assemblies in Pakistan are proof on how the Pakistanis feel. All this strengthens the hawks in Pakistan that want to break military relations with Washington and want to focus on an alliance with Iran, China and Russia and the region.







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Shahzad Shameem

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