Author Archives: Lila

British Empire Worse Than “Oriental Despots”

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Here are some interesting facts about “benign” British rule in India:

In 1900, the average per capita annual income in various countries was as follows:

U.S.  –     $220

U.K. –     $180

France – $156

Germany – $124

Holland –  $110

Norway – $100

Austria –  $84

Italy  –    $80

Spain –  $80

Russia – $55

Belgium –  $14  (?)

British India – $5

(Source: William Digby, ” ‘Prosperous’ British India: A Revelation From Official Records,” 1901, cited by Taraknath Das in “Young India’s Reply to Count Tolstoi, Part III” in  The Twentieth Century Magazine, Volume 2.)

This was a decline from $9 per capita yearly income only 20 years earlier.

That is, Indian incomes were halved during just 20 years of British imperial rule.

The cause was glaringly evident – the huge tribute paid every year to the British, amounting to $175 million dollars.

(Source: Rev. J. T. Sunderland in “The Causes of Famine in India.”)

The tribute was only the latest form of plunder.

In just over half a century after The Battle of Plassey in 1757, the British plundered between $2.5 billion and $5 billion from Indian peasantry.

While the Russian Czar only took 1/10th of the produce of his Eurasian subjects and allowed for variations in production, the British took 20% of the production and made no allowance for failures of crops and natural disasters. Poor peasants paid as much as 65% of their net income in land revenue.

All told, there were more famines in India under British rule than in all the centuries before under Muslim rule.

British writers themselves pointed out that Britain’s “famine relief” programs were paid from taxes on the Indians themselves so that it was a matter of taxing the starving to feed the dying.

(Source: “The Causes of the Present Discontent in India,” C. J. O’Donnell.)

While famines under previous rulers had struck at the rate of roughly 1 in 50 years, under the British, they struck every 9 years and their toll in numbers was much higher. They also affected a much larger area.

In just 40 years between 1870 and 1910, famine took the lives of 30 million Indians.

(“The British Empire and Famine in Late 19th Century Central India,” Laxman S. Satya).

As for the total number of “avoidable deaths” through out the two centuries of British empire, estimates run into the hundreds of millions, and at an upper end, the figure of over a billion.  This, not the racist fantasies of propagandists like Jean Raspail, is genocide and race war:

British-ruled India provides the most appalling example of imperial lies in a quantitative sense. For two and a half centuries every British schoolchild has been told the dreadful but substantially fictional “story” of the Black Hole of Calcutta – how in 1756 the ruler of Bengal incarcerated 146 British prisoners (including a woman) in a small cell overnight and in the morning only 23 (including the woman) had survived. This story demonized the Indians, victims for two centuries of genocidal British rule in South Asia (1757-1947) – whilst the appalling rapacious taxation, famine and commerce-spread disease in British India has been substantially deleted from British history.

The horrendous “forgotten history” of British-ruled India commenced with the Great Bengal Famine in rapaciously over-taxed Bengal in 1769/1770 (10 million victims or one third of the population dying) and almost concluded with the World War 2 man-made Bengal Famine (which peaked in 1943/1944, took 4 million victims, was accompanied by horrendous sexual abuse of huge numbers of starving women and was very likely due to a deliberate “scorched earth” British war-time strategy to prevent Japanese invasion of India). [1] In between these 2 disasters a succession of appalling famines killed scores of millions; mercantile spread of epidemic diseases such as plague and cholera killed millions; and grinding poverty from British taxation was such that the annual death rate before 1920 was about 4.8%, falling to a still genocidal value of 3.5 % in 1947. The current annual death rate in India nearly 60 years after independence is about 0.9% – a huge improvement but still about 3 times greater than what it should be.”

 

 

Sartre’s Zionist Sympathies

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Joseph Massad (via Electronic Intifada):

In his recent book, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, famed Slovenian socialist intellectual Slavoj Zizek tackles the Palestinian question in a most unoriginal manner. What concerns him most is not the foundational racism of Zionism and its concrete offspring, a racist Jewish state, nor the racist curricula of Israeli Jewish schools, the racist Israeli Jewish media representations of Palestinians, the racist declarations of Israeli Jewish leaders on the right and on the left, or the Jewish supremacist rights and privileges guiding Zionism and Israeli state laws and policies – all of which seem of little concern to him – but rather Arab “anti-Semitism” which should not be “tolerated”.

Zizek makes Zionist-inspired propagandistic claims that have no bearing on reality, namely that “Hitler is still considered a hero” in “most” Arab countries, and that The Elders of the Protocols of Zion and other anti-Semitic myths are found in Arab primary school textbooks. While he seems to note Israeli discriminatory policies against Palestinian citizens of Israel and Israeli daily terror visited upon the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the conflict, for Zizek, seems like one of competing nationalisms and can be solved by possible NATO intervention. It is not Zionist Jewish colonialism and its commitment to European white supremacy in Jewish guise that the Arabs are reacting to and resisting; rather, it is Islam’s rejection of “modernity” triggered by a Jewish “cosmopolitanism” that characterises this conflict. “Israel’s stand for the principle of Western liberal tolerance” is attenuated in his essay by noting its neocolonial role, but this clearly does not prevent Zizek from visiting the racist Jewish state where he was a week ago delivering four lectures in which, according to Ha’aretzhe never mentioned the Palestinians or Israeli racism and terror once. Such is the legacy of Jean-Paul Sartre on many European leftist intellectuals.]

[Lila: I couldn’t find any proof that Sartre himself was of ethnic Jewish descent, although several websites referred to him as Jewish. However, at the end of his life, this infamous apologist for communist atrocities and outspoken atheist, whose theories poisoned the lives of millions of young minds, converted to Messianic Judaism, allegedly under the influence of his Jewish secretary. Again, my point in bringing up Judaism or Jewish ethnicity is not a racist one. It is because the Anglo-American Zionist establishment very often uses Jewish people and their concerns as the front behind which they operate. Thus it is important to identify mouthpieces of the Central Controllers. Sartre was one such mouthpiece.]

If Sartre failed to see how European Jews who left Europe as holocaust refugees arrived in Palestine as armed colonisers, Zizek’s approach is more insidious. While he insists that the holocaust is not connected to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he proceeds in viewing the Jewish colonists as still remaining holocaust refugees and possible victims of some alleged Arab anti-Semitism. Herein lies his obsession with opposing the alleged anti-Semitism to which these Jews are subjected by those who resist their racist violence. n,Zizek’s own anti-Semitism which manifests in reducing Judaism to the anti-Semitic notion of a “Judeo-Christian” tradition and which identifies Jews anti-Semitically as “cosmopolitan”,

[Lila: Of course, Judaism cannot be reduced to Judeo-Christian, but neither can Christianity. Indeed, there is a far better defense for Christianity being the legitimate development of historical Judaism, then there is of current Judaism being the antecedent of Christianity.]

is never clear to Zizek who projects it onto the Palestinians.

While suspending the status of European Jews as holocaust survivors, these European intellectuals fail to see that much of Zionist colonialism began half a century before the holocaust and that Jewish colonists were part of the British colonial death squads that murdered Palestinian revolutionaries between 1936 and 1939 while Hitler unleashed kristallnacht against German Jews. Zionism’s anti-Semitic project of destroying Jewish cultures and languages in the diaspora in the interest of an invented Hebrew that none of them spoke, and in the interest of evicting them from Europe and transporting them to an Asian land to which they had never been, is never examined by these intellectuals. Nor do they ever examine the ideological and practical collusion between Zionism and anti-Semitism since the inception of the movement.

Zizek seems observant enough, in another essay, to note that Zionist Jews are employing anti-Semitic notions to describe the Palestinians. His conclusion is not, however, that Zionism has always been predicated on anti-Semitism and on an alliance between Zionists and anti-Semitic imperialists, rather he perceives the alliance that today’s Zionists have with anti-Semitism might as the “ultimate price of the establishment of a Jewish State”.

When these European intellectuals worry about anti-Semitism harming the Israeli settler’s colony, they are being blind to the ultimate achievement of Israel: the transformation of the Jew into the anti-Semite, and the Palestinian into the Jew. Unless their stance is one that opposes the racist basis of the Jewish State, their support for Palestinian resistance will always ring hollow. As the late Gilles Deleuze once put it, the cry of the Zionists to justify their racist violence has always been “we are not a people like any other,” while the Palestinian cry of resistance has always been “we are a people like all others.” European intellectuals must choose which cry to heed when addressing the question of Palestine.”

Indonesian drug laws are Indonesia’s business.

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Indonesia’s drug laws are Indonesia’s business, says one American expat sensibly:

Nobody who has spent a significant amount of time in Indonesia will make the argument that Indonesia’s legal system is perfect. Corruption is a major problem, and laws ranging from traffic violations to environmental regulations are flouted with impunity. One of my fellow teachers recently confessed that he would never call the police unless he was the victim of a very serious crime because he fears getting shaken down in return for the crime being solved. However, with the exception of the province Aceh, which uses a limited form of Sharia law, Indonesia’s political and legal system is based on secular values[iv] and thus cannot be dismissed as the product of radical Islam, even if critics might have you believe otherwise. Furthermore, there is no doubt whether the aforementioned drug traffickers are guilty, rather the question is if Indonesia has the right to execute foreign drug dealers. Indonesia is well-known for its strict drug laws as its airports are full of warnings that drug trafficking offenses carry the death penalty and even customs declaration cards carry the ominous threat that drug traffickers face the death penalty. Anti-drug signs and speeches are a regular part of life at an Indonesian high school and drugs, even marijuana, are considered completely taboo. Of course, drugs exist and people abuse them, but in my own experience, the Indonesian approach is very different from the West, where many drugs are illegal, but young peoples’ drug experimentation is often tacitly accepted.

I do not believe that drug traffickers should be given the death penalty; however, my opinion is irrelevant as I am not an Indonesian citizen, and even if I were the majority of Indonesians disagree with me.[v] This article is not attempting to argue that countries should adopt the death penalty for drug trafficking, but we should avoid trying to impose our more liberal views about drugs on other countries. Trafficking large amounts of heroin is considered a very serious crime worldwide including in the countries that have abolished the death penalty. The National Institute on Drug Abuse summarizes the effects of the drug as “once a person becomes addicted to heroin, seeking and using the drug becomes their primary purpose in life.”[vi] Hopefully, I do not have to devote any more time persuading the reader that heroin is a terrible drug and that Indonesia has a right to protect itself from drug traffickers. Some pundits have argued that Indonesia should not proceed with these executions because supposedly the death penalty does not deter drug trafficking, but the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2012 World Drug Report revealed that there is a significantly higher percentage of Australians who abuse marijuana, amphetamine-type stimulants, and opioids (heroin, morphine, etc) than Indonesians.[vii] This makes intrinsic sense as the more serious the punishment for breaking a law the less likely people will do so. Obviously, there are other factors at work here as well, as many countries with less stringent laws have less drug abuse, but Indonesia should be free to combat drug dealers how it sees fit, and even if its methods are inefficient that is Indonesia’s problem, not ours.

According to The Economist’s 2012 Index of Democracy, the only Muslim-majority countries that are functioning democracies are Senegal, Malaysia, and Indonesia.[viii] Unfortunately, this list is unlikely to grow significantly in the future as the Arab Spring has not led to the expected growth in democracy, if anything the opposite has occurred. Thus, it makes sense for the West to do everything in its power to build strong relations and support the aforementioned Muslim-majority democracies, even if they are imperfect. Trying to interfere in a country’s legal system will only have adverse effects, even if the death sentences are commuted, as we risk alienating the Indonesian people, the majority of whom support the death penalty of drug traffickers[ix] and most likely do not want foreign countries interfering in their justice system. This should only be acceptable if there is a real injustice, but facing the consequences after being caught with a large amount of heroin or other narcotics is not an injustice and it is not worth damaging bilateral relations. Bob Carr, the former Australian foreign minister, put it best when he said “to produce a nationalist backlash in Indonesia would be terrible for Australia’s future in Indonesia and I really think in South-East Asia.”[x]

We expect immigrants and visitors to respect our laws, so it seems a little perverse to assume that our citizens will not be held to the same standard when travelling abroad. Indonesia is a much more conservative place than Australia, the Netherlands, etc, so if foreigners find this abhorrent, they should avoid traveling or visiting here, especially if they intend to engage in illicit activity. The only country which should be worried about how Indonesia deals with drug traffickers is Indonesia. Trying to influence domestic policy in other countries through coercion and cajoling may provide a short-term political popularity boost in your own country, but it is not a long-term formula for success, and we must respect Indonesia’s legal system. Otherwise the West risks permanently alienating Indonesia and similar countries by trying to strong-arm them into adopting our legal rules and ethics, which is bad for Indonesia, but even worse for us.”

And Alan Royle writes:

 Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is trying everything to get the condemned men’s sentences reduced to life imprisonment, on the rather dubious premise that capital punishment is barbaric, that all human life is precious and has value. Frankly, I doubt if the lady is all that familiar with the ‘all human life is precious’ argument. Why? Because one of her brilliantly thought through proposals to President Widodo of Indonesia is that our two nations do an ‘exchange’. The proposal is that Indonesia gives us back our two Australian drug dealers, and in return we give them three Indonesian ones captured on our soil. Then, our home-grown scumbags can serve a cosy prison sentence here, and the Indonesian scumbags can go home and get shot! Evidently, Miss Bishop’s understanding of the sanctity of life only applies to those holding an Australian passport. As I write, the death toll in Katmandu has climbed over 4,000 following the earthquake on April 25, yet the Australian media and government continue to focus their attention on the fate of the Bali 9 leaders. Where the Hell are our priorities? Virtually every Australian I know has enormous sympathy for the Nepalese people and none for two greedy drug dealers, so why does our media and government continually tell the world the opposite? There are vigils being held around the country, but they concern Nepal not Bali!”

Exactly right.  If the “sanctity of life trumps all’ argument were really held seriously, then of course, the US, UK , and Australia wouldn’t be turning away migrants who face starvation and/or war in their own countries.

But they do. Routinely.

In other words, if you are an innocent victim of catastrophe or war, don’t expect the self-proclaimed lovers of liberty to support your right to free movement to other countries.  Suddenly Jean Raspail gets trotted out. Europe’s very existence is threatened.

But, if you are a first world drug-trafficker inflicting untold misery on native teens and young people via hard drugs, then expect every bleating phony to rush out and defend the sanctity of life.

No one with half a brain can avoid knowing that they face the death penalty if they traffic in drugs in certain Asian countries. If you still, do it, because you want to make money off of ruined lives,  and if a lawfully elected government then sentences you to death, with the support of the culture and people in the country, and there is a legitimate and rational argument to be made that the law in question is just, your legal claim is non-existent.

 

 

Is Shiva Lucifer?

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On various end-times websites, the meme is being floated that Satan (the evil one) is Shiva, the third figure in the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

Except that Hindus understand Shiva as the destroyer of evil.

His exact parallel is Jehovah Sabaoth (Jahweh leading the battle or Christ with the sword destroying evil or the flames of the Holy Spirit).

He is not the defiant, vain-glorious fallen angel at all.

This is a false gnostic equation.

Agamic Hinduism has no equivalent for Satan that is precise because it does not give the same significance to evil as Christianity does.

The closest figure to Lucifer would be Rahu and Ketu, who are in fact regarded as malevolent deceivers cast down from the heavens just as Satan was.

Rahu is the head  (north node of the moon) and Ketu is the tail (south node of the moon) of the dragon (which is the eclipse of the moon).

Rahu-Ketu can be identified with the evil serpent called Satan (Shaitan in Islam) or adversary in the Bible.

Shiva in the Hindu pantheon is the equivalent of Yahu Sabaoth.

He is the part of  Godhead. that destroys evil.

Now, there are certain left-hand paths that involve the occult that can be fairly characterized as demonic and which have been attached to some forms of worship of Shiva and Kali (a form of Shiva’s consort).

The evil murderous thuggee cult was one such wicked form. But to equate that with Saivism as such is completely mistaken. Left-hand paths (tamasic practices) are forbidden to traditional Hindus.  We don’t equate the orgiastic rites of heretic Christians with Christianity nor the excesses of Sabbatean Frankists with Orthodox Judaism.

In the same way, the occult practices of heretics shouldn’t be equated with the Sattvic worship of Shiva.

 

Intelligence Ramps Up Anti-India Pressure? (Corrected)

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UPDATE:

I had a chance to look at the Vohra and Chatwal cases and neither looked to me like anything manipulated from above. The Vohra case looked like an extortion case (false rape charges) that the courts eventually threw out for lack of evidence and Chatwal was also exonerated of felony drug charges.  Furthermore, I’m not entirely sure of Manchanda’s credibility since he’s a former Freemason and CIA employee.

I’ve had a few exchanges with him about this case and I didn’t post anything about it because I was leery about the whole business.

So, Makow might be tossing in a couple of red herrings in order to discredit the entire “war on India” line.

[This is just speculation on my part and my concern is that something in this story will be found to be bogus and then discredit everything else in the piece.]

Caveat lector.

ORIGINAL POST

Henry Makow, an anti-feminist conspiracy site that might be disinformation but nonetheless has a lot of good information,  has an interesting piece on the travails of Rahul Manchanda, an Indian-origin diplomat who, reportedly, fell afoul of the powers-that-be when he refused to toe the line on Iran.

The dream turned into a nightmare after a fact-gathering trip to Iran in 2006, sponsored by what may have been a CIA-front group called “Network 20.”Manchanda found that contrary to Iran’s image as a fanatic terrorist state, Iranians actually love the USA and just wanted to enjoy the American Dream as well. They weresocrippled by sanctions they could barely keep their economy running, let alone pose a threat. They were friendly, intelligent, moderate people.Manchanda’s “whole world changed.”  When he returned, hewas pressured to write a report which vilified Iran. Instead, he urged the US to abandon adversarial colonial approaches and support democratic change in Iran. He says his report possibly influenced the 2007 “National Intelligence Estimate” which determined that Iran was not a threat.(With President Bush in happier times.) Manchanda was a “star” being groomed for higher things. His ethnicity made war mongering more credible to Americans. Similarly, he says “Obama has killed more brown people than any other president. If McCain had done it, he would be a war criminal.”

But after writing this report, the Cinderella Carriage quickly turned into a pumpkin. A series of scurrilous and defamatory lies appeared at “Rip Off Report” online, and both clients and staff fled his law firm in droves. He was subjected to many nuisance tax, labor and disciplinary audits.

“Overnight, I became a pariah,” he says. Suddenly, he was persona non grata in the mainstream media. In 2010, he filed for bankruptcy.  A one-man law firm today, he is still one of the top immigration attorneys in the United States.

A George-Soros-funded feminist group, “Sanctuary for Families” got to his wife and she divorced him, taking their two children and involving him a protracted legal battle that was unwinnable because top NYC law firms donated their staff to this agency. Judges live in fear of it. All of his motions were denied. His appeals to higher legal authorities fell on deaf ears.

But the Illuminati weren’t finish yet. A young woman, Kate Bose, left, who has connections with the NYPD Intelligence Dept. entrapped him in a romantic relationship.  After they moved into together, she accused him of “menacing” her during a verbal argument.  He now faces a year in jail for having an argument with a woman and he is convinced he will be murdered in prison.

Meanwhile Kate Bose, who was practically insolvent, was rewarded with a $100K job with Ralph Lauren…….

The judge Tandra Dawson, left, is reportedly on the Board of “Sanctuary for Families”……

Manchanda is one of a score of Indian-American celebrities being persecuted as a way of pressuring India to take a more anti-Iranian foreign policy. These include banker  Rajat Gupta,  intellectual Dinesh S’Souza, Indian ambassador Devyani Khobrogade, developer Lakhinder Vohra, hotelier Vikram Chatwal,  Mathew Martoma, Indian Ambassador Prabhu Dayal, Indian Ambassador Daughter Krittika Biswas, noted human rights lawyer Chaumtoli Huq, Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan, United States India Political Action Committee CEO Sanjay Puri, and countless others – all in New York City.”

[Lila: I’ve personally verified Manchanda’s earlier troubles with the family court in New York, but haven’t checked the later allegations.]
Of course, the high-level and thorough-going corruption of the US court system and political system never counts as corruption, when it comes to those “corruption indices” produced by the West,  on the basis of which writers like Jayant Bhandari come up with articles like this.
[I rephrased the last line to make it politer.]
Never mind that China, which Lew Rockwell often posits as a kind of answer to the US, is more corrupt than India and is on the 2014 list of the most corrupt countries in the world along with US allies Turkey and Afghanistan.
Are Turkey and Afghanistan –  both Abrahamic in faith – also pre-rational?
Never mind that the British came to power in India through the most corrupt means ever (the Doctrine of Lapse among them) – despite allegedly uniquely Western rationality and impeccable virtue.

We were all taken by surprise when Raja Saheb walked into the engineer’s house and made this proposition to him: “I know normally a contractor pays five per cent as commission to the engineer supervising his work but this is a big project and it is difficult to calculate each engineer’s share. You being the seniormost among them, I shall bring you on the first of every month a packet containing an amount equal to twice the salary of each member of the engineering staff here and you can distribute it among them.” After consultations with his colleagues, the engineer conveyed their acceptance of his proposal.

The fact is that in 1943 a government officer accepting money for favours rendered in his official capacity was as legal as the unwritten British Constitution, regardless of the stringent punishment provided against it in the written law.”

Rakesh Simha at The Russia and India Report has an excellent analysis of the “corruption” meme, as the Anglo-American powers deploy it and as it really developed:

In the West, India and Russia are depicted as corrupt to the bone. In 1976 the US embassy in New Delhi noted that “corruption is not a phenomenon which was brought to India by the West,” adding, “Hindu and other religious shrines in India have long been known for their corrupt practices.”

And where did the Americans dig up this evidence? “Kautilya, the ancient philosopher, in his treatise Arthasastra refers to various kinds of corruption and prescribes corresponding punishments,” writes the learned diplomat, whoever he or she was.

Surely ancient India did not have a monopoly on corruption. It was at any rate more transparent than most civilisations – past or present. Over 2300 years ago, the Greeks who were defeated by the Indians sent an ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya, the Indian emperor. Megasthenes wrote an account of his years at Patliputra, Chandragupta’s capital, which he described as one of the most efficiently run cities in the world.

Bookkeeping of every economic activity was meticulous and free from corruption – and Victorian moralising. Megasthenes writes: “The Superintendent of Prostitution looked after prostitutes, controlled their charges and expenditures, and appropriated their earnings for two days of each month.” Kautilya says it was the duty of the Chief Controller of Entertainers to ensure the income of a prostitution establishment was not reduced by the extravagance of its madam.

How the West won – with bribes

Nobody is arguing India was corruption-free before the British arrived. But the British institutionalised corruption in India because it was so common back in Britain.

In the year 1651 the British obtained an official order granting exemption from payment of custom duties. Again in 1715, another Mughal emperor in an act of irresponsible magnanimity signed a decree giving the British not just inland trading rights, but the right to keep a garrison.

The British regularly flashed forged decrees at border posts, to sneak through all manners of goods duty-free. They also illegally sold their duty-free passes to Indian traders.

J.M. Opal, associate professor at McGill University, says the collapse of Mughal rule and the onset of civil government by a for-profit British corporation made “an ideal milieu for corruption, venality, and violence”. In 1769-1770 when failed rains triggered severe hunger in Bengal, the British disrupted both the production and distribution of rice, in some cases profiting from the sudden spike in the price of calories – crisis turned into catastrophe. Several million people perished.

American justice: Cash for kids

For sheer venality, nothing is likely to beat the corruption that blights the American justice system. In 2009 an unprecedented case of judicial fraud unfolded in Pennsylvania, where two judges pleaded guilty to taking bribes in return for placing an estimated 5000 youths in privately owned jails.

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan received $2.6 million for sending juvenile suspects to prisons operated by two companies – the inappropriately named PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care.

Some of the children jailed were as young as 10 and at least one killed themselves because the excessive sentences ruined their lives. Some were locked up even after probation officers recommended against it – one teenager was jailed for two years for joyriding in his parents’ car.

Corruption in the West: Hidden but huge

Corruption in the West rarely makes it to the front pages. This is because income tax officers don’t get caught accepting a briefcase full of cash in exchange for a tax write-off. You don’t have to pay a bribe in London or LA to pass a driver’s test. There are no touts at railway stations.

In the West they have long since moved to the high stakes table. Why chase measly millions when you can start a war and take home billions? American bean counters will forever argue over how many dollars were spent on the disastrous Iraq War. They may settle on US$1700 billion or US$2000 billion, but what is undeniable is that American companies walked away with at least US$138 billion.

No company has profited more from the carnage in Iraq than Halliburton, the company headed by Dick Cheney. The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts.

Such blatant profiteering sends out only one message to future Cheneys – even during failed wars, the merchants of death profit.

Europe: Closely behind

In 2012 a poll by Eurobarometer showed that 74 percent of Europeans thought corruption was a major problem in their country. The results show around 20 million bribes are paid to officials in the 18 European Union nations covered by the report. The European Commission estimates the cost of corruption is equivalent to 1 per cent of EU GDP, some US$156 billion.

Britain’s BAE Systems, the maker of the Typhoon jet, is alleged to have operated a multi-billion pound slush fund for paying bribes to members of the Saudi royal family and senior military officials. After 9/11, American prosecutors found documents to prove that some of the BAE kickbacks to the Saudis were used to bankroll at least two of the hijackers.

Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s son was also allegedly involved in this affair. In fact, the American prosecutors said payments were made with the knowledge and authorisation of Britain’s Ministry of Defence officials.

Return of the bottom feeders

Even as the sharks operate with impunity, the decline in incomes and wealth in the West is coinciding with a rise in corruption in strange places. Last year, a former Apple Inc manager pleaded guilty to accepting kickbacks from suppliers and manufacturers in Asia seeking contracts with the California gadget-maker…..”

 Notably,  LRC, which published Bhandari, also runs neoconservative mouthpieces like Walter Williams and John Loftus;  pieces by ZeroHedge and James Altucher (both carry disinformation),  and race-war propaganda, for example, from Jean Raspail (via Charles Burris),  thereby proving, contra J. Bhandari, that servility to power and corruption are not solely the monopoly of Indian bureaucrats but flourish even among free market actors.
[I rewrote this last paragraph to make it less ad hominem.]

Nepal Earthquake Deaths Reach 2,500

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The 7.9 earthquake that hit Nepal two days ago has now exacted nearly 2500 deaths, making it the worst since a 1934 earthquake took the lives of over 8,500 people.

The earthquake set off a monstrous avalanche on Mt. Everest, destroyed the 200 foot Dharahara  tower  built in 1832, and has racked up reconstruction costs estimated at 20% of the country’ GDP.

India, Pakistan, the UK, and the US have all pledged aid, although, as yet, nothing has reached.

Some conspiracy researchers are adding this disaster to an earlier volcanic eruption in Chile in 2008  ; an earthquake in Haiti in 2010 that killed over 230,000 people; earthquakes followed by a tsunami in  China in 2010; as well as earthquakes in New Zealand that devastated Christchurch, as evidence of a pattern of increasing seismic activity world-wide.

For example, the number of big earthquakes doubled in 2014.

The increase could be triggered by purely geological events, but some think they could be precipitated accidentally or intentionally by weapons testing/research or, at least in the US,  by fracking for oil.

 

Somervell Of Everest: Another Kind Of Missionary

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Theodore Howard Somervell’s family recalls their modest father,  an exceptional athlete and mountaineer and  a successful painter and musician, who spent decades of his life in India as a missionary

The achievements of Theodore Howard Somervell, surgeon, artist and missionary, were many and varied – but even his family were amazed to discover that he had an Olympic medal.

“I didn’t know it existed until we went through his belongings after his death,” his son David Somervell says. “I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, what’s in this box?'” The medal is inscribed “Paris 1924” and on its rim three scratched initials can just be made out: THS.

It is one of 21 awarded to members of the first full expedition to Everest in 1922, in an era when mountaineering was included as an Olympic sport. Another medal, which belonged to medic Arthur Wakefield, is now at Everest base camp. Mountain guide Kenton Cool hopes to take that one to the summit this week, fulfilling a pledge made 88 years ago.

Somervell was a polymath of exceptional talents whose life echoes that of another Olympic gold medallist from 1924, the sprinter Eric Liddell, joint subject of the film Chariots of Fire. Like Liddell, Somervell was a committed Christian who joined the London Missionary Society. He worked as a surgeon at a hospital in Neyyoor in the modern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Unlike Liddell’s, Somervell’s Olympic triumph was completely forgotten.

David Somervell, now in his 80s, is a retired doctor who also worked as a missionary in India. “The trouble with my father,” he says, “was that he was a very good surgeon, a very good artist, a fine musician and also a very spiritual man. His saving grace was that he had a good sense of humour.”

Somervell’s work as a surgeon in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW I turned him into a pacifist.  In 1922 and then 1924, he was part of expeditions to climb Mt. Everest, an effort for which he won an Olympic gold later on.

Somervell could have stayed on in England and had a successful career as a consultant doctor and professional artist, but the loss of seven Sherpas on the expedition in 1924 changed his focus; his evangelical Christianity drew him to a more otherworldly career choice:

After Everest, Howard Somervell gave up the promise of a career in London at University College Hospital to work in India. “It’s extraordinary in a way,” David Somervell says, “but it’s very human. You see suffering and you want to do something about it. I think he thought that London already had plenty of doctors.”

Somervell annoyed fellow missionaries by dancing and playing cards on the boat out to India and he wasn’t interested in proselytising. The old ideas of medical missions as “a bait to catch the unwary”, he denounced as “un-Christian” and “wrong”. Yet he stayed 22 years, helping to transform the hospital, and later wrote – and illustrated – a textbook on abdominal surgery.”

In India, his memory is still kept alive in the many institutions he created and his innumerable students (including some of my family members) and colleagues, not least because his Christian witness was completely different from that of most missionaries:

Somervell (1890-1975) set up an X-ray unit in the Neyyoor hospital, introduced radium treatment for cancer, a first-of-its-kind in the country, performed hundreds of surgeries in a month, travelled to every village when cholera and malaria broke out in South Travancore.

He was also instrumental in setting up an exclusive hospital for the treatment of leprosy patients in Colachel in Kanyakumari district.

Tamil writer Jayamohan has written a short-story Olaisiluvai (The Palm Leaf Crucifix) based on the real-life incidents of Somervell. Malayalam poet Vyloppilli Sreedhara Menon has a poem on how the surgeon played the flute to give some soothing moments to a patient after a surgery.

The first portion of Olaisiluvai tells an incident about the missionary-surgeon converting the son of a palmyrah tapper to Christianity to deliver him from abject poverty, though Mr. Jayamohan ends the story with the surgeon handing over a portrait of Lord Guruvayurappan to a woman who had lost all her children to cholera.

“I wrote my story based on an incident narrated to me,” said Jayamohan. But, the autobiography of Dr. Somervell gives a different perspective, as he disapproved of conversion.

[Lila: As I do too, unless it is completely initiated by the one who converts.]

“The old idea of medical missions as a bait to catch the unwary and then proceed to proselytize him is obviously not merely out of date, but definitely wrong and unchristian,” he had argued in the book “After Everest: The Experiences of a Mountaineer and Medical Missionary.” Dr Somervell’s paintings of the Everest adorn the walls of the Royal Geographical Society’s House.

Francis Younghusband, a British Army Officer, in his foreword to the book, has recalled Dr Somervell as saying, “It is no part of our work as Christians to destroy Hinduism. Nor to go out to India with any feeling of racial and religious superiority, but to serve India in the spirit of Christ Himself – to be servants of Mankind.”

Dr. Somervell first came to Neyyoor in 1922, accepting an invitation from Dr Pugh, who was already working in the hospital, “in a tropical climate of continual damp heat, with a body which was far from physically fit.”

Later writing about his decision to work in Neyyoor, Dr. Somervell said: “Had I not then gone to India at the call of suffering, I could never have dared to look God in the face nor to say prayers to him again.”

Amid his back-breaking schedule, Dr. Somervell spent two hours a day learning Tamil so that he could communicate effectively with his patients.

He was fascinated by Indian music, describing Nagaswaram as “a very beautiful and striking instrument and mridangam, in skilled hands, a marvellous maker of rhythum”, but he regretted that the he could not succeed in his attempt to use these instruments at the church at Neyyoor.

After over two decades of service, he retired in 1945. He again came to Neyyoor in 1948. In 1949, he went to Vellore to pass on his surgical knowledge to Indian medical students and produce qualified Christian doctors. He worked again in Neyyoor (1950-51) and Vellore (1952-53). He also acknowledged the contribution of the Travancore Maharajas to his medical mission and also hailed a 1936 royal edict allowing all castes to enter Hindu temples.

A thorough-going English Christian, Dr. Somervell was critical of the caste system in India, regretting that “centuries of Hinduism, in spite of their great mystics, have never given untouchables a chance.”

He also said “caste is firmly embedded in the Indian mind, so much so that many Indian Christians take several generations to throw it off,” while narrating how his cook was not allowed to conduct his marriage in a church next door because he belonged to a different caste.

While arguing that Christianity gave the untouchables an opportunity for social uplift, he was not ready to blame Hinduism, saying, “It is not that Hinduism is bad in itself.”

“Some of the greatest sages of the world have been Hindus. Some of the stories of Hindu mythology are finer far than many of those in Old Testament. Rama is a finer character than Jacob and Sita and Savitiri have few peers in ancient Jewish literature,” he said.

However, for Dr. Somervell, all other religions are incomplete. “It is only in the New Testament that we find that part of our faith which satisfies and uplifts and gives us peace and power.”

Peacock Propaganda: The Masonic Yazidi Deception

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Hindu geopolitics gives the inside story of how the Yazidis (objects of ISIS/ISIL persecution) are being turned into Hindus as part of a Masonic/New World Order effort to create a world-religion and to ensnare Hindus into identifying with their geo-political aims:

And so the Yezidi plot thickens… a new delegation of Yezidi (some from the United States) have landed in India, right into the hands of ex-ISKONITE Brandon Parker. Brandon Parker is one of the founders of the “Yezidi Sanatan Dharma Society”, the goal of which is to “unite the two related” civilizations of the Yezidi and Hindus.  It would seem that those who wish to destroy both Hindu and Yezidi civilization under the guise of “interfaith” have not been discouraged by the recent outflow of evidence that the entire plan to label the Yezidis as Hindus is nothing more than a disingenuous plot to deflect both Hindus and Yezidis away from their own national causes and at the same time confuse their very identities.

Brandon Parker runs with the like of Mark Pinkham, a Templar (Catholic) who is also desperately trying to pervert and subvert both Hinduism and the Yezidi to create a new “Peacock Christ Cult” in India (see here), along with the cult leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his Art of Living (see here) who has no interest in maintaining the integrity of any religion but melding them all together into a New Age pot of nothingness.  Neither Parker and his Yezidi Sanatan Dharma Soceity, nor Mark Pinkham and his “Christ Cult” nor Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his Art of Living have any interest in promoting a free and independent Ezdistan Nation or unique Yezidi religious culture.  All three outfits are only interested in distracting the Yezidi from their own religious ideals and pushing them unto Hindus at the Hindus’ expense… creating nothing but mistrust between the two groups and facilitating the religious, cultural and national genocide of both. Why haven’t any of these groups promoted Ezdistan, a Yezidi nation, why are they all so gungho to push the Yezidi into India an confuse their identity?

Well Brandon Parker has really shown himself to have no scruples when it comes to his academic integrity and political allegiances.  In the below article published by World Hindu News, Mr. Parker shameless promotes the misconception that the Yezidi are from India, when their own legends state they are from Northern Iraq.  And right under his announcement that he had received the Yezidi delegation in India, he goes on to praise the recently departed Saudi King Abdullah as being a “respected soul” who “opposed Wahabbi Islam”. Um, Saudi King Abdullah ruled over an Islamic state where non-Muslims were killed for blasphemy, hardly a religious reformer or “respected soul”.  Who is this Brandon Parker and why are Hindus allowing him to control Yezidi-Hindu relations?

Hindus need to stand up and help the Yezidis build their own nation of Ezdistan, not allow ex-ISKONITES and Templars to use us to fund their “interfaith” games.

– Brandon Parker is a founder of the “Yezidi Sanatan Dharma Society” and is interested in “uniting the two related and ancient civilizations” of Hinduisn and the Yezidi religion. 

Vrndavan Brannon Parker attended Vedic Gurukula schools from the age of 4 to 14 years. He studied in the USA, Canada and in Vrindavan, India. His main focus has been on highlighting the similarities between the ancient cultures and civilisations around the world and defining their Vedic roots and he has been researching and publicly presenting Vedic Historical and Cross-cultural connections since 1996. Brannon dedicates his time to working with organizations that promote Vedic Dharma. 

Both   Nallein and Mr. Parker started the Yezidi Sanatana Dharma Society ( YSDS ) to unite two related and ancient civilizations, the Indians and the Yezidis. They can be reached at   Nallein Satana Al-Jilwah Sowilo - lotussuns@gmail.com  Vrndavan Brannon Parker Acbsp - brannonparker.vi@gmail.com - 


http://worldhindunews.com/2014100933404/%E2%80%8Byezidi-sanatan-dharma-society-yezidis-and-non-resident-indians-join-hands-for-the-yezidi-cause/




– Parker lies and states that the Yezidis are originally from India (they are originally from Iraq per their own legends)




The Yezidis are an Aryan people originally from Airyna Vaeja the mystical Homeland of Aryans which is in present day India.  The word Aryan is not related to race but refers to ‘The righteous’. The Yezidi calendar is 6764 yrs old and is the oldest in the Middle East. About 5000 years ago Yezidis migrated to Afganistan, Iran, Iraq and Middle East. At that time they were called Children of Melek Taus. Melek is an ancient Semite God of Babel and Caanite. Another spelling in Semite of Melek is Malik. Melek or Malik can be found in Sanskrit word Malaiklavon. Malaiklavon is another name for Murugan/Skanda, a God found in South India. - http://worldhindunews.com/2014100933404/%E2%80%8Byezidi-sanatan-dharma-society-yezidis-and-non-resident-indians-join-hands-for-the-yezidi-cause/




– Brandon Parker is excited to host the new delegation of Yezidis in India 


Picture1


 


– Brandon Parker praises dead Saudi ruler as being a “respected soul” and “leader of the opposition” against Wahabbi Islam


Picture2


 


– King Abdullah oversaw a nation where non-Muslims were sentenced to death




While King Abdullah championed interfaith dialogue on the world stage, in his own country, no religion other than Islam can be practiced in public. For example, The Guardian notes an estimated 1 million Roman Catholics live in Saudi Arabia -- most of them foreign workers -- but there's not a single church. Blasphemy and conversion from Islam are punishable by death.




Adherents of Islam’s Shia denomination also face discrimination under the Sunni regime. The Shia minority complains of systematic exclusion from government, jobs and education. Shiites who called for equal rights in the 2011 street protests wererounded up and jailed.


- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/saudi-king-abdullah-reformer_n_6534298.html





			

	
	



				
					


		

		
Wheelock’s Latin Website


				

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Delving into church history and messianic prophecies means stumbling through a lot of Latin….. and one summer session of Latin twenty-five years ago isn’t enough to get me through.


Is Humanae Vitae  pronounced Hoo-mahn-eye Weet-eye or is it Oo-mahn-ay Weet-ay…?


Or even Weet-ee?


Just one of many conundrums.


Don’t even start with something like Rorate Coeli…


Fortunately, I came across Wheelock’s Latin Series Website, which has lots of audio files of common Latin words that you can now pronounce confidently in front of strangers, without provoking derisive laughter.