So now I run another anti-malware program that catches what my first one missed.

SIXTEEN infections, not including suspicious files.

Most are ad-ware, but several were very dangerous trojans and back-doors.

Now, there’s the explanation for my disabled wi-fi suddenly starting up without my doing anything.

The spoof email to my account was probably a test.  It seems more than one were sent from my email account.

Certain other things happened which show that someone/bot had been able to take over my account and/or computer.

Meanwhile. one of my readers, despite my clear statement that I do not email to private addresses or on private forums any longer (unless I know them reasonably well) insisted on using my old account to cc me, while filing complaints against the government.

What, not enough of troubles of my own without dragging me willy-nilly into another mess?

Then there’s the recent invitation sent my way to run a web-site to defend  some people being targeted by the government.

It looked interesting until I saw it intended to solicit funds from other governments.

I don’t know if this person was serious or not or just didn’t think things through.

But I wouldn’t touch such a thing with a twenty-foot barge pole.

Voluntarily doing something, or working as a community, is one thing. 

Asking for the assistance of a foreign government makes you an agent of that government.

And yes, I know there are many registered foreign agents doing just that kind of thing in this country, many prominent lobbyists and lawyers included.

But  that’s not my cup of tea and never has been.

Voicing one’s constitutionally protected right to political dissent, criticism, and debate is one thing. Suing the government using funds derived from another government is another.

Now why would a lawyer ask a stranger to get involved in such a thing?

And why, after such a solicitation, as well as the invitation I blogged about, does my computer go down to serious malware, my email get spoofed and my account used to commit TOS violations?

I’m writing this late at night after yet another day of straight ten hours at the computer, uninstalling old software and reinstalling; changing passwords half-a-dozen times; resetting  security software; writing complaints  and copying log-files.

The web was supposed to make things easier.  It’s made it infinitely more complex, tiring, and dangerous.

The risk of battery or rape is not excessive for most middle-class people with some sense of self-preservation.

But the web instantly erases that modest advantage.

On the web,  you might as well be in a war-zone, crawling in the trenches, your mouth full of mud, while marauding soldiers grab knapsacks, kick open doors, and shoot up families.

Metaphorically, the web is not the wild west. It’s the front-line of  total war.

Despite changing software and connections, my security has been catching dozens of ad-ware and malware programs every day.

Today, it was spoofed mail.  Before that it was a deleted security device.

My wireless – always disabled – was mysteriously lighting up on and off.

Each by itself could  just be a  technical glitch,of course. The unknown devices I was worried about before have acquired names and a local habitation since…….

But the chance of every problem being technical is remote. Out there in the darkness, there’s always someone watching your traffic, waiting for your guard to slip.

Yet,  my esteemed readers don’t make things easier for me. They insist, not just on writing to me via email,  but to old addresses that have turned into spam dumps that I dare not erase lest some criminal recycles them for his sinister schemes.

When someone writes to one of them, it just means more spam, more hackers,  more head-ache  and harassment for me.

And it means you get blocked and your email falls into a black hole.  Which is where it belongs if you insist on thwarting me.

Headaches from enemies is one thing.  From my readers, it gets a bit depressing.

If the information you want to send me does not fit into the comment box or is too confidential for it, please convert it into a pdf file, and, if need be, encrypt it and paste it into a blog comment anywhere with a notice to me not to publish it.

I will read it and copy it to my files before deleting it. This gives me some protection against set-ups or malware.

You can use encryption but then you will have to find a way to get the encryption password/key to me. I am thinking of creating a forum in which this can be done.  Any help would be appreciated.

Sorry to be so difficult but I have already run into so many “characters” on the web (just Google), my default position is guilty until proved innocent.

I absolutely do not talk on the phone/IM to strangers any more.  There are too many scum-bags looking to set-up people that way.

If I trust you, I will give you a PO Box to which you can snail-mail.

I don’t care if you’re the Aga Khan rolled into Newton and you have crumpets with the Queen every Thursday;  please humor me on this.

Update:

Ecatel, the outfit to which the IP traces back, has been fingered as hosting all kinds of activity, including Russian criminal business networks, say some hosting forums, 

ORIGINAL POST

It was an interesting week on the net.

Over the weekend, some email accounts of mine vanished or were somehow blocked. Trying to get them back, I had a technician check my computer. He found that a third-party had hacked my network address.

I shut down the blog, had my computer/network repaired and did a bit of research on spam being sent my way.

My blog email, which I hadn’t accessed in many months,  was so bloated with spam messages that I couldn’t even open it.

Deleting even one item took me ten minutes until I changed my email software.

There were almost thirty THOUSAND emails in my inbox.

Apparently, someone had subscribed that email address to every newsletter under the sun – credit card services, auto insurance, dating sites, hook-up sites, financial sites, just about everything.

You wonder what else your email has been used for.

It took me one-and-a-half days of non-stop work to clean out the mail-bag. I unsubscribed to some of the newsletters, then gave up, because there were so many.

My blog security software tell me that I average 300 spam comments at the blog per day, which is about as much as Wenzel at EPJ  and his blog gets nearly twenty times the traffic, if not more.

Very strange.

The technician told me there were round-the-clock brute force attacks on my website from foreign IP addresses.  Apparently,  this is normal these days.

A few days ago, I discovered that my own IP address was eliciting complaints for hacking and spam. Apparently, the third-party that hacked my IP address was using it to do nasty stuff to other people.

It was all very nerve-racking and sobering.

Just now, hardly back on the net for a few hours,  I find that the very same IP address behind last week’s attacks is again attacking me.

(93.174.93.218)

Is this every blogger’s experience?

The IP address goes back to the Hague in the Netherlands to some outfit called Ecatel.

I wondered if I should call or write to complain. I see that the IP has been listed on 15 spam/malware sites.

I recently received social- network connection requests from some prominent people. But I tend to be skeptical, especially, if, after Googling, I come across anything in their background that hints they might know targets of my blogging.

Red flags go up at once.

After a decade on the net, I’m wary of pre-texters, saboteurs, and intelligence operatives/dupes.

So,  I decided to delete the requests.  My apologies if, in doing so, I snubbed well-intentioned people.

I think I just fixed my feed. Please check and let me know if it works.

Gary North at EPJ:

“I’m glad that Snowden did what he did, because I wanted to hear evidence that backed up what James Bamford wrote about the NSA over two decades ago. It was nice to see that Bamford’s warning was validated by Snowden’s relations. But nobody cared about Bamford’s book, and nobody really cares about Snowden’s revelations — not enough to cut the NSA’s budget.

Snowden’s revelations serve as a mirror. We looked into the mirror, and we saw what manner of people we are. We just don’t care. We didn’t care in 1913, so why should we care today?

Once the voters concluded that they could force the rich to pay more in taxes than they did, privacy ended. Envy was basic to the grant of power to the IRS. Envy is alive and well. Privacy isn’t.

As long as there is an IRS, there will be an NSA.

CONCLUSION

Until the voters’ minds change regarding big government, exposure of major infringements on our liberties has no effect in rolling back the state.

If voters accept the interventionist state, they are glad to hear about the Bad Guys. “They are making us safer.” “They are protecting us from terrorists.” “We need them.” “The loss of our privacy is the price of liberty. It’s worth paying.”

The variant regarding the NSA: “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.”

“Your papers, please. You have nothing to fear if you have not done anything wrong.”

This assumes that the state is benign. It assumes that the state only goes after bad guys.

There has been no uprising of the American people to defend their privacy.

If you think I am exaggerating, I have two words for you: Lindsey Graham.

Now, the NSA can really get busy. “No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

The only thing that can roll this back is a budget crisis. To think that anything else can roll it back is naïve. Budget cuts can do it; nothing else can. It is going to take the fiscal crisis of the federal government to roll the system back. Nothing else will.”

Comment:

As to the conclusion that Snowden’s revelations ultimately help the NSA, I came to it the day I heard about them, as a search of this blog will show you.

[In fact, a conspiracy theory hatched here involving one Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald even got shot down in the major media, which misattributed it to Scott Creighton, at whose blog I left a link.]

However, I differ from North on his interpretation of these things.

And that is to be expected, because I don’t quote Bamford….and he does…and you can draw your own conclusions from that.

Here goes.

People are not rising up, because they cannot rise up.

If all your information (from financial records to medical records, from private conversations with lawyers to private conversations with family and friends, both respectable and embarrassing) are with the government and if the government has grown lawless, operating through private contractors and in bed with crony media, crony capitalists, and crony socialists, then exactly how  do you organize to resist without the fear that somewhere somehow something spoken in the privacy of your bedroom (Donald Sterling), some minor infraction that everyone commits (Dinesh D’Souza), some whispered false allegation substantiated by words torn out of context from a private letter or conversation, will not surface to destroy not just you, but your family, and not just for a brief moment, but for the eternity that is the web?

It is neocons now (D’Souza, Sterling) or celebrities and royals. But the masses themselves are not far behind, as the rise of revenge porn shows. From spying on illicit relations to spying on licit ones is but a step.

Words cannot be undone, but they used to be momentary and used to be for a few; they were between you and your god.

Now they are forever and they are for everyone; they are between you and the little gods who rule.

So, yes, no one is rising up.

But, to blame this on amorphous qualities shared by everyone (envy) and to tell us that people are ultimately at fault because they, like their rulers, suffer from it is to mistake the nature of the fight.

If envy enabled the IRS, envy will enable whatever succeeds the IRS.

The following is the list of alleged scams submitted by the Congress to the Gujarat governor and the President:

Land for Nano plant at low rate

The state government allotted 1,100 acres of land to Tata Motors Ltd (TML) to set up the Nano plant near Sanand. The land was allotted allegedly at Rs. 900 per square metre while its market rate was around Rs. 10,000 per square metre. In short, the government gave Tata Motors total monetary benefit of Rs. 33,000 crore.

Land sold cheap to Adani Group

Land was allotted to Adani Group for the Mundra Port & Mundra Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Re1 per square metre. This is grossly lower than the market rate.

Cheap land for real estate developer, not for airforce

The Gujarat government allotted 3,76,561 square metre of land to real estate developer K Raheja at Rs. 470 per square metre, while the South-West Air Command (SWAC) was asked to pay Rs. 1,100 per square metre for 4,04,700 square metre land.

Agricultuure University land allotted for hotel

State government allotted 65,000 square metres of land belonging to Navsari Agriculture University in Surat to Chatrala Indian Hotel Group for a hotel project despite objection from the institute. This deal was allegedly brokered by the chief minister through his office causing a loss of Rs. 426 crore.

Border land for chemical firms

A huge plot of land near the Pakistan border was allotted to salt chemical companies said to be close to BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu.

Essar Group’s encroachment

State government has allotted 2.08 lakh square metres of land to Essar Steel. Part of the disputed land is CRZ and forest land that cannot be allotted as per Supreme Court guidelines.

Land given to Bharat Hotel

Prime land was allotted to Bharat Hotels without auction on Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway in Ahmedabad. The company has been allotted 25,724 square metre land.

Corruption in allotment of lakes

State government, in 2008, awarded contracts for fishing activities in 38 lakes without inviting any tenders; bidders were ready to pay Rs. 25 lakh per lake.

Land given to L&T

Larson & Toubro (L&T) was allotted 80 hectare land at Hazira at the rate of Re1 per square metre.

Land allotted to other industries

Instead of auctioning prime land in the major cities of the state, the Gujarat government had allotted the land to some industries and industrialists who had signed MoUs in the five editions of VGGIS.

Cattle feed fraud

The Gujarat government had purchased cattle feed from a blacklisted company at Rs. 240 per 5 kg; whereas, the market rate is just Rs. 120 to Rs. 140 per 5 kg.

Scam in Anganwadi centres

Two bidders apparently formed a cartel and bid for supplying supplementary Nutrition Extruded Fortified Blended Food (EFBF) to Anganwadi centres of the state. One company bid for three zones, while the other for only two. Guidelines were violated, causing the state exchequer a loss of Rs. 92 crore.

GSPC

Despite an investment of Rs. 4,933.50 crore, GSPC has been able to earn only Rs. 290 crore from the 13 out of 51 blocks of oil and gas discovered by the company. Contractual relations of Geo-Global and GSPC deserve investigation since Geo-Global is to be hired for a higher fee, above profit-sharing.

Luxury aircraft used by CM

Instead of using commercial flights or state-owned aircraft and helicopter, chief minister Narendra Modi had used private luxury aircraft for around 200 trips in five years. The cost had been borne by the beneficiary industries.

Rs. 500 crore SSY scam

The Rs. 6237.33 crore Sujalam Sufalam Yojana (SSY) announced in 2003 was to be completed by 2005 but it is still not completed. Public accounts committee of Gujarat assembly unanimously prepared a report indicating a scam of over Rs. 500 crore which was not tabled.

Indigold Refinery land scam

Around 36.25 acre farmland in Kutch district was purchased and sold in violation of all norms by Indigold Refinery Ltd.

Swan Energy

49% of the shares of Pipavav Power Station of GSPC were sold to Swan Energy without inviting any tenders.

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Forbes published a map of the distribution of the world’s billionaires in 2013:

From Veda.HareKrishna, a list of sources for the historicity of Krishna, which has been widely accepted for decades:

For example, very common in Indology books, even from Hindu authors, are words like “mythology”. It is derived from the Greek root mitos, untruth, seen also in the Spanish word men-ti-ra, falsity, and ultimately coming from the Sanskrit mithya.

Another example of misunderstanding is when some traditional believers say, “In this work I will be proving that Lord Krishna was an historical personality”, etc. because Lord had been long recognized as an historical personage:

Dr. Bimanbihari Majumdar, 1968: “The western scholars at first treated Krishna as a myth… But many of the Orientalists in the present century have arrived at the conclusion that Krishna was a ksatriya warrior who fought at Kuruksetra,…” (1)

Dr. R. C. Majumdar, 1958: “There is now a general consensus of opinion in favour of the historicity of Krishna. Many also hold the view that Vâsudeva the Yadava hero, the cowherd boy Krishna in Gokula… were one and the same person.” (2)

Horace H. Wilson, 1870: “Rama and Krishna, who appear to have been originally real and historical characters,” (3)

Dr. Thomas J. Hopkins, 1978: “From a strictly scholarly, historical standpoint, the KRISNA WHO APPEARS in the Bhagavad-Gita is the princely Krishna of the Mahabharata… Krishna, the historical prince and charioteer of Arjuna.” (4)

The New British Encyclopaedia: “Vasudeva-Krisna, a Vrisni prince who was presumably also a religious leader levitated to the godhead by the 5th century B C.” (5)

Rudolf Otto, 1933: “That Krishna himself was a historical figure is indeed quite indubitable.” (6)

1. Majundar, Bimanbihari. Krishna in the History and Legend. University of Calcutta. 1969, pp. 5
2. Majumdar, R. C. The History and Culture of the Indian people, vol. I, pp. 303
3. Wilson, Horace H. The Visnu Purana. Nag Publishers. 1989, pp. ii
4. Hopkins, Thomas J. et al. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna. Five Distinguished Scholars on the Krishna movement in the West. Groves Press, N.Y. l983, pp. 144.
5. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1984, vol. 7 Micropedia, pp.7
6. Otto, Rudolf. The Original Gita, cit. for Majumdar Bimanbihari, ot. cit. pp. 5

Preciado in the Sophistic Cycle

Counter-critique of “First historical evidences of Krishna” (Primeras Evidencias Históricas Sobre Krishna” Estudios de Asia y África, Vol. XV; #4 by Benjamín Preciado Solís)

by Horacio Francisco Arganis Juarez. Graduate in Linguistics and Literature at U A de C and M.A. in Gaudiya Vaisnava philosophy and Theology in IBCH. Reseacher Professor in Saltillo, Coahuila, Northeast of Mexico.

(graduade student of the Education Sciences and Humanities Faculty at the U A de C, Round Campus, and priest of Radha Govinda Mandir, ISKCON, Saltillo City, Northeast Mexico)

One Indologist, Benjamin Preciado Solis, published a lecture in l980, where he tries to present the first historical evidence about Sri Krishna Vâsudeva (c. 3200 – 3175 B.C.), the magnanimous Yadava prince, identified as Godhead incarnate in the Indian culture. He tentatively brings up puzzling concepts of Christian supporters of borrowing theory like Lessen, Weber, E. Hopkins, etc. Besides he kowtows before another British imperialist scholar upholding the same idea, A. L. Basham.

Preciado was honest in recognizing his inability to arrive at a conclusion, creating a trinket hypothesis while adulterating the age of Ghata Jataka and the Puranas, assigning them to the Christian era. This attempt has been futile because Ghata Jataka dates to the 3rd century B.C. and the Puranas are mentioned in the old Upanishads like Chandogya 7.1.14, Brhad-aranyaka 2.4.10 and others archaic texts. He made an amusing statement referring to evidence. First he said: “We can count those evidences with the fingers of our hands”. And then he stated: “The evidence is obtained from fourteen sources — eight literary and six archeological”. However, a close study of his own evidence shows that there are more than fourteen:

1. Chandogya 3.17: Krishna Devakiputra.
2. Ashtadhyayi of Panini. Mentions Krishna.
3. Nirukti of Yaska: Krishna and his wives Jambavati and Satyabhama.
4. Baudhayana-dharma-sutra: Three names of Krishna are mentioned – Kesava, Govinda and Damodara. But there are more in this quote: “Madhva, Madhusudana, Hrshikesha, Padmanabha and Vishnu”, usually describing Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita as well as in Srimad Bhagavatam; and the book makes reference to “the servants of Vishnu”.
5. Indika of Megasthenes: Surasena, the Yadus’s King, Mathura, the birth city of Krishna, Krishnapura or Kampura, Yamuna river, Krishna like Hari.
6. Quintus Curtius, who mentioned “Poros” (Purus) with an image of Krishna Hari before the battle with Alexander the Great.
7. Artha-shastra of Chanakya: Krishna and Kamsa, the birth history of Krishna, the Vrishnis, Dvaipayana or Vyasa, Balarama and devotees of Krishna with shaved head and tuft of hair (sikha).
8. Mahanarayana Upanisad: Krishna Vasudeva recognized as Vishnu-Narayana.
9. Mahabharata: Krishna mentioned everywhere.
10. Bhagavad-gita: Krishna’s teachings.
11. Grammar of Patanjali: Krishna is not an ordinary king but the Supreme, Krishna the enemy of Kamsa, Balarama, Janardana (Krishna), one temple of Balarama and Kesava (Krishna), Akrura the uncle, Svaphalka the granduncle, Ugrasena the grandfather, Vasudeva, Balarama, Andhakas, Vrishnis, Kurus.
12. Maitrayaniya Samhita of Yajur Veda: Allusions to Krishna in the Narayana Gayatri similar to Mahanarayana Upanisad quoted before (but according to him without the name Vasudeva).
13. Nidesa, a Buddhist book: Shows Krishna and Balarama.
14. Ghata Jataka: Refers to Krishna as Vâsudeva.

Archaeological evidence:

15. Heliodorus’s Column: Vâsudeva the God of gods.
16. Ghosundi inscription: Bhagavan Sankarshana and Vâsudeva.
17. Hathibada inscription: Bhagavan Sankarshan and Vâsudeva.
18. Another column of Garuda in Besnagar of a Bhagavata king dedicated to Bhagavata (Vasudeva).
19. The cave of Queen Nagnika in Deccan: Inscriptions of Sankarshana and Vâsudeva.
20. Mora inscription: Krishna and Balarama and Krishna’s sons Pradyumna, Samba, Aniruddha.
21. Inscription of Sodasa in Mathura: Krishna Vâsudeva.

In the footnotes:

22. One stamp of Gopal (gopalasya) from Kumrahar.
23. Coins of Agathocles, Indo-Greek king, with Krishna and Balarama (6 pieces).

Dr. Preciado states that there were fourteen sources but points out 21 plus two more in his footnote 43 on pp. 782. In other words, 23 with at least 40 historical references about Krishna. And the Mahabharata with 100,000 verses often talking about Krishna.