The covert war on Iran's nuclear programme was launched in earnest by George Bush in 2007. It is a fair assumption that the western powers had been trying their best to spy on the Islamic Republic since the 1979 Iranian revolution, but the 2007 "presidential finding" put those efforts on a new footing...
Despite the millions spent, stalled machines and deaths of leading scientists, Iran has steadily built up its stockpile of enriched uranium to 4.5 tonnes – enough for four nuclear bombs if it was further refined to weapons-grade purity. At most, the covert war has slowed the rate of progress, but it has not stopped it.
Friday, 4 November 2011
Leonardo da Vinci's Virgin on the Rocks before and after restoration.
The exhibition leads up to one great climactic moment, when the National Gallery's Madonna of the Rocks is shown face to face with an earlier version of the same painting from the Louvre. In the words of Nicholas Penny, the director of the gallery – and a man not given to breathless exaggeration – this is "a juxtaposition that was almost certainly not seen even in Leonardo's own lifetime, nor at any time since, and one that is unlikely ever to be repeated".
It doesn't get any better for Leonardo scholars – especially as the London Madonna of the Rocks, traditionally regarded as the inferior of the two, with fewer passages confidently to be ascribed to the master, has recently been cleaned and studied afresh. The French version, yellowed and more damaged, at first glance looks the poor relation. But then, gradually, the subtlety and softness of the Paris version begins to emerge. An ambiguity to the gaze of the angel that sits on the right of the picture, pointing at John the Baptist, but apparently looking at something that might be behind your left shoulder..
It is that ambiguous gaze of Leonardo's subjects that mesmerises in the early rooms of the exhibition. Here we are shown how Leonardo broke the mould of Milanese royal portraits by rendering sitters not in strict profile, but half-turned towards or away from the viewer..
Thursday, 3 November 2011
Goa’s Rs 800 cr mining scam
The country’s mining scandals have claimed one chief minister already. On 5 September, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested G Janardhan Reddy, former Karnataka minister, for the Obulapuram Mining Company’s role in illegal mining as documented by the Karnataka Lokayukta in July. Since the CBI is said to be probing the roles played by as many as 65 mining companies, the logical question is: who will be the next big fish to be caught in the net?
The Goa Chief Minister, Digambar Kamat, bids fair to be the next target of inquiry. Official data and documents accessed by Firstpost on show that he either aided or abetted or looked the other way when illegal mining activities running into over Rs 800 crore were taking place. And this figure refers to only illegal mining over the last four years.
For example, Goa government records show that there are 90 active iron ore mines in the state. But 48 of them were shown to be extracting more than what their environmental clearances (EC) allowed them. In other words, more than half the mines are breaking the law – and Kamat has done little to rein them in. Read more:
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/yeddy-reddy-kamat-goas-rs-800-cr-mining-scam-is-next-76286.html
Also read about the debate between Hartman de Souza and the Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal on how and why Tehelka didn't report the story:
http://kafila.org/2011/11/03/an-open-letter-to-tarun-tejpal-hartman-de-souza/
Also read about the debate between Hartman de Souza and the Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal on how and why Tehelka didn't report the story:
http://kafila.org/2011/11/03/an-open-letter-to-tarun-tejpal-hartman-de-souza/
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Anti-Ahmadism In India
CM Naim argues that Indians, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, must learn from the sectarian developments in Pakistan, and make every effort to stop any expression of sectarian prejudice in public contexts
Commenting on a textbook for high schools in UP that mentioned Quadiani's among Muslim sects the General Secretary of the Jama’at-i-Islami (Hind), Mujtaba Faruque (has) argued: “The Qadiani sect is in fact a product of the Jews and the Christians. That the centre of the Ahmadiyyas is in Britain is clear testimony to this. He said that the UP government should realize that it was not wise to hurt the Muslims. He warned that they would be compelled to launch a movement if the essay was not expunged immediately.” Apparently Mr. Mujtaba Faruque does not know or remember that Maulana Maududi sent his son to study and live in that most nefarious of the lands of the Christians and the Jews, namely the United States, and eventually came there himself for medical treatment that, sadly, did not suffice. I hope someone in the Minorities Commission would take notice of his inflammatory statement against all Jews and Christians.
The so-called “Maulanas” fail to understand that a school textbook is neither a missionary tract nor a site to declare someone kafir, that even a heretic Muslim remains a part of the history of Muslims—he does not become a part of some other religious history—and that it is not the state’s job to take sides in sectarian matters. They claim that “all” Muslims are united in considering the Ahmadis beyond the pale of Islam, but then many of the same Muslims turn around and feel no hesitation in hurling accusations of heresy against each other, to the extent of any degree of violence. Just look at what has been happening for years in Pakistan.
Extreme sectarianism in Pakistan began with the anti-Ahmadiyya movement in 1953 that was led by the Ahrars and fully supported by the Jama'at-i-Islami. The existing elected government successfully stopped it. The movement remained dormant for two decades, but then gained enormous strength in 1974 after Z.A. Bhutto, in an act of political opportunism, conceded its demand to declare the Ahmadis "non-Muslim."
Gen. Zia-ul-Haq only worsened the situation with his draconian laws, and allowed sectarian fanaticism to expand into persecuting all religious minorities in Pakistan. He also fully exploited the sectarian passions of the mullahs and maulanas to keep the ordinary Pakistani beguiled while expanding the army’s control in every sector of Pakistan’s economy. What began as a campaign against the Ahmadis has now turned into a raging battle between most of the Muslims sects in Pakistan, who come together only when they wish to beat up on some hapless Hindu, Sikh, or Christian. Then they go back to bashing each other, not sparing even the sacred precincts of mosques and Sufi shrines..
That a religious majority might take to persecuting a religious minority is a possibility that everyone unhesitatingly understands. What is not so readily understood is that a minority itself often consists of one or two prominent collectives plus several smaller ones, and that the “majority” within a minority can persecute the smaller groups under the same psychological compulsions of authority and control that it accuses the national majority of displaying against it. [1] That is where state institutions must intervene, and play their critical role of both vigilance and diligence in providing physical, social, and economic security to all citizens of the country.
Read the whole article: <http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?266910>
Also see by the same author:
The Second Tyranny of Religious Majorities
Commenting on a textbook for high schools in UP that mentioned Quadiani's among Muslim sects the General Secretary of the Jama’at-i-Islami (Hind), Mujtaba Faruque (has) argued: “The Qadiani sect is in fact a product of the Jews and the Christians. That the centre of the Ahmadiyyas is in Britain is clear testimony to this. He said that the UP government should realize that it was not wise to hurt the Muslims. He warned that they would be compelled to launch a movement if the essay was not expunged immediately.” Apparently Mr. Mujtaba Faruque does not know or remember that Maulana Maududi sent his son to study and live in that most nefarious of the lands of the Christians and the Jews, namely the United States, and eventually came there himself for medical treatment that, sadly, did not suffice. I hope someone in the Minorities Commission would take notice of his inflammatory statement against all Jews and Christians.
The so-called “Maulanas” fail to understand that a school textbook is neither a missionary tract nor a site to declare someone kafir, that even a heretic Muslim remains a part of the history of Muslims—he does not become a part of some other religious history—and that it is not the state’s job to take sides in sectarian matters. They claim that “all” Muslims are united in considering the Ahmadis beyond the pale of Islam, but then many of the same Muslims turn around and feel no hesitation in hurling accusations of heresy against each other, to the extent of any degree of violence. Just look at what has been happening for years in Pakistan.
Extreme sectarianism in Pakistan began with the anti-Ahmadiyya movement in 1953 that was led by the Ahrars and fully supported by the Jama'at-i-Islami. The existing elected government successfully stopped it. The movement remained dormant for two decades, but then gained enormous strength in 1974 after Z.A. Bhutto, in an act of political opportunism, conceded its demand to declare the Ahmadis "non-Muslim."
Gen. Zia-ul-Haq only worsened the situation with his draconian laws, and allowed sectarian fanaticism to expand into persecuting all religious minorities in Pakistan. He also fully exploited the sectarian passions of the mullahs and maulanas to keep the ordinary Pakistani beguiled while expanding the army’s control in every sector of Pakistan’s economy. What began as a campaign against the Ahmadis has now turned into a raging battle between most of the Muslims sects in Pakistan, who come together only when they wish to beat up on some hapless Hindu, Sikh, or Christian. Then they go back to bashing each other, not sparing even the sacred precincts of mosques and Sufi shrines..
That a religious majority might take to persecuting a religious minority is a possibility that everyone unhesitatingly understands. What is not so readily understood is that a minority itself often consists of one or two prominent collectives plus several smaller ones, and that the “majority” within a minority can persecute the smaller groups under the same psychological compulsions of authority and control that it accuses the national majority of displaying against it. [1] That is where state institutions must intervene, and play their critical role of both vigilance and diligence in providing physical, social, and economic security to all citizens of the country.
Read the whole article: <http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?266910>
Also see by the same author:
The Second Tyranny of Religious Majorities
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Zoroaster and the Ayatollahs
'..In that upheaval of some thirty years ago, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini surprisingly emerged as the leader of the unwieldy and incongruent coalition of cultural forces that united to overthrow the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. In the months leading up to the revolution, Khomeini used remarkable discipline to conveniently hide his true theocratic, antimodern cultural paradigm, feigning instead support for the democratic, nationalist and leftist values and aspirations that defined the demands of the 1979 revolution. Once ensconced in power, however, Khomeini famously declared that the revolution was not carried out for economic gains but for pious ends. The economy, he said, “is for donkeys.” Creating a new Islamic society, fashioning new men and women based on an Islamic model that had been perfected in the prophetic era of Muhammad some fourteen centuries earlier, finally discarding the cultural values of modernity was, he now claimed, the real goal of the revolution.
Now even regime stalwarts concede that this project of cultural remodeling has failed miserably. And the failure, along with its incumbent cultural fluidity and political instability, is in no small measure the result of the resilient societal ethos dominant in Iran on the eve of the revolution..
IT HAS become something of a commonplace to say that for more than a thousand years Iran has been defined by a bifurcated, tormented, even schizoid cultural identity: pre-Islamic, Persian-Zoroastrian elements battling with forces and values of an Arab Islamic culture. The paisley, easily the most recurrent image in the Persian iconographic tradition, is said to capture this tormented division. It represents the cedar tree that Zoroaster planted in heaven which was bent by the winds of Islamic hegemonic culture. Adapting in this way has been the key to the ability of Iranian culture to survive marauding tribes and invading armies. But Iran and its heavenly cedar bend only to lash back to their upright gait when immediate danger has passed and occasion for reasserting traditional values has arisen.
Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that even Shiism—since the sixteenth century the dominant and “official” religion of Iran—is in its fundamental structure nothing but a form of Iranian nationalism..'
Yeddyurappa set aside rules to allot land to RSS
The RSS was among the major beneficiaries of Yeddy's land largesse. The state government allotted prime commercial lands and residential plots valued at around Rs.50 crore at throw-away prices to as many as six RSS- affiliated organisations and seven leaders from the RSS background whereas more than 3,50,000 people have been waiting patiently for allotment of a plot developed by government agencies. No wonder the state RSS unit leaders are rallying behind the jailed-Yeddyurappa as a thanks-giving service for his magnanimity.. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/karnataka-land-scam-b.-s.-yeddyurappa-rss-bjp/1/158133.html
Israel rushes settlement growth after UNESCO accepts Palestinians
Israel is to expedite the construction of about 2,000 homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in response to the Palestinians' successful bid to join Unesco. Israel also imposed a temporary halt on the transfer of tax revenues which it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA) pending a final decision on whether to impose a long-term freeze. Israel collects about £630m a year in VAT and customs revenues which it passes on to the PA. A meeting of eight senior cabinet ministers agreed the punitive measures – which include a ban on Unesco missions to Israel – on Tuesday following the symbolically significant vote at the United Nations' cultural and educational agency.
Settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal under international law.
Settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are illegal under international law.
Also see:The Israel Separation Barrier: Security Wall or Confinement Wall? - The "Separation Barrier" is not an isolated issue; it is the culminating issue of a suspect agenda. The suspect agenda has Israel creating settlements that intrude on Palestinian life and provoke Palestinian militants to terrorist actions. The terrorist actions are then used as a reason for constructing a barrier, a security wall whose intention shields aggressive responses to Israel's territorial ambitions in the West Bank.
Expropriation of Palestinian lands deep in the West Bank for use in Israel's "Separation Barrier," also called The Security Wall, has emphasized Israel's transgressions on Palestinian life and property. The United Nations (UN) overwhelmingly voted (144 to 4) a resolution that demands a stop to construction of the barrier and removal of the sections already completed. A UN Report concludes that "Palestinian families and communities are being separated from each other. Communities adjacent to Jerusalem are being cut off from the city, which they rely on for commerce, work and essential social services."
The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies."Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (August 12, 1949)
The settlements, declared illegal by several UN resolutions and deemed as possible war crimes, were started by a Labor government immediately after the 1967 war and have steadily increased with each Israeli government. The infrastructure of buildings, roads, and utilities have encroached upon the physical, social and economic well being of the Palestinians.
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