How the state of Pakistan was named

 

 

How the state of Pakistan was named

 

There have been many stories about how Pakistan was named for Muslim provinces taken out of Hindustan. The composite Hindu Muslim states in India was under Hindu rulers and then Muslim and Hindu rulers and finally the British.

 

In 517 BC it was Persian Emperor Darius who ordered Scylax, his Greek subject from Caria (western Turkey) to survey the river Indus from Peshawar to its exit into the sea, part of his empire. And for the first time, the West became acquainted with India. Herodotus's chapters on Indian history were based on records of that exploration. Thus the name of India as the territory east of the river Indus was given by the Greek historian born in Asia Minor, now known as Turkey.

 

Some diplomat friends said that according to some Pakistani diplomats (perhaps Punjabis) the alphabet K in Pakistan stood for Kashmir .So I replied that the word India covered Indus River and its valley.

 

The Arabs called India-Al Hind and Indians -Hindi. It is the Turks from Central Asia, who named India as Hindustan as they have named their own countries like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, etc.

 

I am amazed at the total lack of understanding shown by anchors on India's TV channels and even by retired Indian diplomats and the so-called experts on Pakistan. There is nothing but jingoism and when the Pakistanis across the frontier are also allowed to participate, there is exchange of hot words and literally abuses.

 

To anyone with any common sense of international affairs, it should be clear that Pakistan was created by British as a week buffer state between India and USSR, so that there is no contact even across the Wakhan corridor. Also Middle East where UK and US controlled oil fields.

 

It was basically designed to keep India down limited to regional influence in which endeavour the Americans took over after the British and even the Chinese ( who also helped in Nuke tech). The money for the financially strapped Pakistan has been gifted both by USA and some other Western countries and Saudi Arabia and Gulf states and their citizens who all promote extreme forms of Islam in Pakistan .The result is there for all to see. Beginning with Field Marshal Ayub khan the country's foreign and defence policy has been handed over to USA, Saudi Arabia and the state destroyed almost completely.

 

It is like a house on fire next door to India with open warfare between the Pakistani state and the military against various brands of terrorists which the Pakistani state and ISI had created first against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, then against India specially Kashmir and elsewhere, including allowing 2611 attacks on Mumbai with US knowledge.

 

While discussing Afghanistan, Indian anchors and so-called experts, but really empty heads including Indian diplomats keep on hoping that American troops will stay on. The American troops have done whatever damage they had to do .Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have to be pacified brought to entomic path –sab ka vikas ie every ones development by neighbouring countries like Iran, Russia Central Asia, China and India.

 

Below is the article by an eminent Pakistani journalist Khaled Ahmed on how the state of Pakistan came to be named .

 

K Gajendra Singh .23 March 2015. Delhi .

 

A tale from Karakalpakstan

 

Written by Khaled Ahmed | Published on: March 21, 2015 12:19 am

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-tale-from-karakalpakstan/99/

 

The Aral Sea, situated in the autonomous Karakalpakstan region in Uzbekistan, was once the world's fourth-largest inland sea. Today, it is only 10 per cent of what it used to be. The two rivers that fed it were largely diverted in a failed cotton-production project during the Soviet era. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says it is one of the planet's most shocking environmental disasters. Once a flourishing fishing port, Karakalpakstan is today a city of sand and salt.

 

Under Stalin, the Soviet Union created a new autonomous area in the Uzbek republic of what Muslims in India knew as "Turkistan", anciently associated with the Karakalpak (black cap) Turkic tribe. (The cap, not necessarily black today and completely differently shaped, may have become known in Pakistan as the Jinnah cap.) There is no reason why this desolate region south of the Aral Sea should become the origin of the name Pakistan, but thereby hangs a curious tale.

 

Sometime in the early 1980s, a scion of the famous house of Fazl-i-Hussain visited my uncle, Agha Ahmad Raza Khan, in Zaman Park, Lahore, and I, as a young journalist, was called in to listen to his conversation. The guest was an Indian diplomat, the retired ambassador Azim Hussain. I must here recall that his father, Fazl-i-Hussain, a Punjab chief minister, was immortalised in a teaching wing of the Government College Lahore (GC) building where I studied for six years and taught for an additional four.

 

Fazl-i-Hussain led the Unionist Party — which he had founded in 1924 — and governed united Punjab, opposing the politics of both the Congress and the Muslim League. He was gratefully remembered in GC as a reformer who gave Muslims proper institutional representation. Azim Hussain was his third son. Like his father, Azim was a Cambridge graduate and, like him, had been called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn. His sister was to marry another great son of Punjab, lawyer Manzur Qadir, who wrote Pakistan's first constitution in 1960 and became Pakistan's foreign minister during the Ayub Khan era. Khushwant Singh recalled that his friend Manzur saved his life by accompanying him to the border during Partition in 1947, when Lahore was gripped by communal riots.

 

Azim (1913-2007) practised law and served in the Punjab government from 1937 to 1942. He joined the Indian diplomatic service in 1948 and was deputy high commissioner in London from 1957 to 1960, and subsequently held ambassadorial positions in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Switzerland and the Holy See. After his career in the Indian diplomatic service, he was elected deputy secretary general of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, where he lived till his death.

 

Sitting in Zaman Park, he told me that the word Pakistan was inspired by the Central Asian region of Karakalpakstan, and was not an invention of Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, who more recognisably first carved out dozens of Muslim homelands in India with funny names — like Osmanistan for Hyderabad, Bangistan for Bengal and Maplistan for Kerala — and then wrote his pamphlet, "Now or Never" (1933), in which he put down the name "Pakstan" (note the absence of the "i") for the first time.

 

Azim insisted that the name was actually coined by a Punjabi civil service trainee in London, Khwaja Abdur Rahim. I reproduced his conversation in the weekly, Viewpoint, then edited by the late Mazhar Ali Khan, father of my favourite writer-activist, Tariq Ali. Azim understandably repudiated it upon realising it could affect his position in the Commonwealth Secretariat.

His version went like this. Khwaja Rahim was reading a British journal on Central Asia while riding a bus — in an area called Golders Green — in London and came upon a map that showed Karakalpakstan as a new autonomous region under Stalin. According to Azim, the spine of the journal divided the word into Karakal and Pakstan. Hence Chaudhry Rahmat Ali's spelling of Pakistan.

 

Later, I saw the map in Olaf Caroe's book, Soviet Empire: The Turks of Central Asia and Stalinism (1953). The map was in this later publication but the name of the region was not exactly divided by the spine of the book. I assume that the "Pakstan" of Chaudhry Rahmat Ali became "Pakistan" when written in Urdu, because Urdu has no vowel letters and they are frequently "assumed" by its speakers. Today, Pakistanis mispronounce Kazakhstan as "Kazakhistan".

 

Historian K.K. Aziz in his comprehensive Chaudhry Rahmat Ali: A Biography admits that many contemporaries of Ali thought he had not coined the name of Pakistan. One such was another uncle of mine of Zaman Park, Jehangir Khan, who had gone to England as a member of the Indian cricket team in the early 1930s and had stayed on to finish his doctorate in history at Cambridge. He thought Khwaja Rahim, the Indian civil servant, had coined the name, prompting Jinnah to call it a "students' dream".

 

Another non-civil service student, Mian Abdul Haq, thought so too and in 1964, wrote in the daily Nawa-e-Waqt Lahore that Khwaja Rahim had suggested the name to him in 1932. Yet another friend of Ali, Jamil Wasti, was in London when a Bengali Muslim pointed out after reading the pamphlet "Now or Never" that there was no letter in Pakstan denoting Bengal. Pakistan was supposed to represent all Muslim regions through the letters of its name. If "B" for Bengal is not there, it simply strengthens the other thesis of derivation from Karakalpakstan.

 

Aziz reported in his book that Ali showed his borrowed formulation to Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who was in London for the Round Table Conference. Iqbal thought it was a good name, but the other Muslims in the delegation dismissed it as a "students' dream". Bengali Muslim students in London objected, claiming that Pakistan as an acronym omitted reference to Bengal. Since Khwaja Rahim was a civil servant, Ali was likely allowed to "own" the coinage. Ali later turned on Jinnah for being conciliatory towards the Congress on Partition and insultingly called him "Quisling-e-Azam".

 

Aziz also pointed out in his book that Ali tried to return to India to attend the 1940 Lahore session of the Muslim League, where the famous "Pakistan Resolution" was adopted, and landed in Sri Lanka two months ahead of the date. He was dissuaded by Khwaja Rahim — representing Punjab as a civil servant — who advised him to return to London. Ali rejected the suggestion and landed in Karachi in February 1940 and was there when the 1940 resolution was passed. He returned to London in May. According to Aziz, both the Unionist Party of Punjab and the Muslim Leaguers attending the 1940 session disliked Ali. The Leaguers thought Jinnah didn't like him; the Unionists didn't like the word Pakistan. The resolution didn't mention the name either.

 

This little anecdote carries no authority. I am intrigued by it because it carries some remarkable "clues". I must say I was never completely convinced by the acronym deployed in the textbooks. Even "A" for Afghania (Pakhtunkhwa) is a bit of a stretch. Two "Bs" for Bengal and Balochistan — the latter is supposed to be contained in the "tan" ending — were missing anyway, while "K" for Kashmir is there.

 

The writer is consulting editor' 'Newsweek Pakistan'

 

 

Oil and Gold Geo-politics

 

Oil and Gold Geo-politics

 

Since many months the price of oil has plummeted from nearly 120USD per barrel to USD 60 per barrel and even 40. Some suggestions have been made that it may come down to even 20, which I believe is unlikely. However, it may possibly hover between USD 40-USD 60 per barrel. But one never knows. US stimulus money without any backing was being used to prop up the price of oil and other commodities. For the time being, it appears that fracking for oil and gas, a very dubious harmful and very greedy method of producing energy without taking into account long-term ill effects, which is the policy of neo-capitalism, has been given a welcome suspension if not death for the time being. There have been agitations against fracking all over America, even in Canada, England and elsewhere.

 

However, fight for search, production and routes for transport of petroleum or gas would continue to dominate the world strategic balance and disturbances. These were brought about in greater Middle East and North Africa after the catastrophic policies followed by US and dutifully backed by British poodle, while the military-industrial complex and energy sector in the West has gained .But USA and Europe are no longer the power they were before 2003. UK has become a standing joke.

 

It may be recalled that one of the major objectives of the Marshall plan was to make Europe change from use of coal for energy to oil, which had been discovered in Middle East, which were under the tutelage of London and Washington .Thus Europe became indebted to USA and UK because of  diversion from coal for energy and industry. In the process research into clean use of coal was probably retarded.

 

It is before WWII that Washington and Riyadh signed agreements to be a part defence alliance . Saudi Arabia provides its immense energy resources and Washington and London provide military protection to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. As has been brought out London decided to divide India for reasons including one of not allowing an independent nonaligned India any direct linkages with USSR, not even across the Wakhan corridor.

 

USA has exploited ruthlessly its status of dollar as the reserve currency, without which it is bankrupt .Now many countries, including even China, Saudi Arabia and others have interest in keeping the dollar steady as sudden decline would bring about unintended consequences for the world economy. Interlinked economies have become like a worldwide casino, in which USA has control over chips which it can increase or decrease.Mostly with these chips it is making money ie from those who haave to keep dollars because of its being as reserve currency and bilateral trade settlements .

 

But slowly many countries especially from the Brics and even others have started using their own currencies for bilateral trade .New International development banks are being created to counter the World Bank and International monetary fund. Last year some reports had suggested that the dollar will come under severe strain in the middle of 2015.

 

According to reports, the Federal Reserve is thinking of finally levying interest rate by minimum amount increase which will lead to withdrawal of some of the Trillion 3 dollars stimulus gurgling around stock exchanges all around the world.

 

Another lifetime strategic development to consider is the emergence and acceptance of Iran as a major regional power by U.S.-led West, even Moscow, much to the discomfort of Saudi Arabia. China needs energy from Iran as does India and if Pakistan can be pacified then Iran can provide much of all the energy needs which India requires. It was a foolish decision on the part of Prime Minister MMSingh to vote against Iran in Vienna and send the case to United Nations. There is little point in babbling about civilisation similarities when you hurt Tehran in their time of distress. New Delhi did not even extract a good price since US was interested in squeezing Iran .Apart from photo-ops which Indians love with white leaders ,India got a unfair indo-us nuclear deal . NDA was rightly opposed to it.

 

China is courting Iran for its energy needs and as a big new market for supply of military hardware and other goods for which you will soon find US, EU nations, Russia, China and others competing. Once the sanctions are relaxed or removed Iran will add one to two million bpd, which will go into keeping the oil prices down, even if Saudi Arabia cuts down its oil production .Good news for India and lucky BJP.

 

Riyadh  is in a real quandary. They are worried about the ISIL fighters, an organisation which was openly and surreptitiously created by USA, NATO powers, including Turkey, Jordan and Gulf states led by Riyadh and which now controls parts of Syria and Iraq in adjoining Eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia, which has Shia majority and big part of total of Saudi energy reserves.. It is unlikely that USA will let Saudi Arabia down. The problems lie within with restive young population not part of the thousands of princes corporation called  Saudi Arabia Inco .But US is not likely to provide troops, as decorated Marine Col Murtha had said that the American army was broken in Iraq , never mind  immense and brutal destruction brought to that country.

 

 An apprehensive Saudi Arabia, does not even trust most of its tribes to be the soldiers in its army.It is really worried and according to media reports wanted Pakistan to provide some brigades on its on the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. For a decade Pak troops were stationed in Saudi Arabia after 1979 Shia revolution in Iran .Reportedly Nawaz Sharif has declined for the time being .

 

Riyadh is also worried that sooner or later, Iran will have nukes and the balance in the Gulf will go in its favour. There were reports nearly 10 years ago in German media that Saudi Arabia, which had given huge grant for the development of nuclear bombs to Pakistan might even have a few of them somewhere in Saudi Arabia itself. In any case, at some stage, it may ask Islamabad to pay for all the assistance Riyadh has given.

 

But Pakistan itself in a very sorry state of affairs. There is very little point in India being gleeful about it. The hell fire raging in Pakistan has been created of course, with full support from Pakistani leaders and rulers, with military and financial support from the US led West ,Saudi Arabia and even China. It has completely broken down .Pakistan terror apart from spilling over into India can also pose dangers to China through training of Uighur terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

 

In a fanciful future world, there can be energy pipelines, from Iran to India via Pakistan and Central Asia to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan. If all Asian powers, beginning with Russia , China, India and later on, Japan come together ,Pakistan may even build energy corridors .China , has already suggested an industrial corridor through Park occupied Kashmir and Pakistan, which will ultimately lead to Baluchistan port of Gwadar.

 

A recent article below explains the reasons how the big oil companies used whatever means at the command including lies to keep the oil price high and made massive profits.

 

In another article it is explained how the Western attempt to squeeze Moscow by bringing down the price of oil since Russia's budget depends highly on its export of energy, has been countered by Putin by selling energy for gold or dollars and then converting the latter into gold . The dollar is overpriced and gold underpriced. Russia, China and India are big buyers of Gold .Recently Alan Greenspan , former FED chairman, was forced to admit that in international trade gold is the only currency acceptable.

 

K Gajendra Singh 19 March, 2015, Delhi

 

 

Big Oil's Broken Business Model 
The Real Story Behind the Oil Price Collapse 
By Michael T. Klare

Many reasons have been provided for the dramatic plunge in the price of oil to about $60 per barrel (nearly half of what it was a year ago): slowing demand due to global economic stagnation; overproduction at shale fields in the United States; the decision of the Saudis and other Middle Eastern OPEC producers to maintain output at current levels (presumably to punish higher-cost producers in the U.S. and elsewhere); and the increased value of the dollar relative to other currencies. There is, however, one reason that's not being discussed, and yet it could be the most important of all: the complete collapse of Big Oil's production-maximizing business model.

Until last fall, when the price decline gathered momentum, the oil giants were operating at full throttle, pumping out more petroleum every day.  They did so, of course, in part to profit from the high prices.  For most of the previous six years, Brent crude, the international benchmark for crude oil, had been selling at $100 or higher.  But Big Oil was also operating according to a business model that assumed an ever-increasing demand for its products, however costly they might be to produce and refine.  This meant that no fossil fuel reserves, no potential source of supply -- no matter how remote or hard to reach, how far offshore or deeply buried, how encased in rock -- was deemed untouchable in the mad scramble to increase output and profits.

In recent years, this output-maximizing strategy had, in turn, generated historic wealth for the giant oil companies.  Exxon, the largest U.S.-based oil firm, earned an eye-popping $32.6 billion in 2013 alone, more than any other American company except for Apple.  Chevron, the second biggest oil firm,posted earnings of $21.4 billion that same year.  State-owned companies like Saudi Aramco and Russia's Rosneft also reaped mammoth profits.

How things have changed in a matter of mere months.  With demand stagnant and excess production the story of the moment, the very strategy that had generated record-breaking profits has suddenly become hopelessly dysfunctional.

To fully appreciate the nature of the energy industry's predicament, it's necessary to go back a decade to 2005, when the production-maximizing strategy was first adopted.  At that time, Big Oil faced a critical juncture.  On the one hand, many existing oil fields were being depleted at a torrid pace, leading experts to predict an imminent "peak" in global oil production, followed by an irreversible decline; on the other, rapid economic growth in China, India, and other developing nations was pushing demand for fossil fuels into the stratosphere.  In those same years, concern over climate change was also beginning to gather momentum, threatening the future of Big Oil and generating pressures to invest in alternative forms of energy.

A "Brave New World" of Tough Oil

No one better captured that moment than David O'Reilly, the chairman and CEO of Chevron.  "Our industry is at a strategic inflection point, a unique place in our history," he told a gathering of oil executives that February.  "The most visible element of this new equation," he explained in what some observers dubbed his "Brave New World" address, "is that relative to demand, oil is no longer in plentiful supply."  Even though China was sucking up oil, coal, and natural gas supplies at a staggering rate, he had a message for that country and the world: "The era of easy access to energy is over."

To prosper in such an environment, O'Reilly explained, the oil industry would have to adopt a new strategy.  It would have to look beyond the easy-to-reach sources that had powered it in the past and make massive investments in the extraction of what the industry calls "unconventional oil" and what I labeled at the time "tough oil": resources located far offshore, in the threatening environments of the far north, in politically dangerous places like Iraq, or in unyielding rock formations like shale.  "Increasingly," O'Reilly insisted, "future supplies will have to be found in ultradeep water and other remote areas, development projects that will ultimately require new technology and trillions of dollars of investment in new infrastructure."

For top industry officials like O'Reilly, it seemed evident that Big Oil had no choice in the matter.  It would have to invest those needed trillions in tough-oil projects or lose ground to other sources of energy, drying up its stream of profits.  True, the cost of extracting unconventional oil would be much greater than from easier-to-reach conventional reserves (not to mention more environmentally hazardous), but that would be the world's problem, not theirs.  "Collectively, we are stepping up to this challenge," O'Reilly declared.  "The industry is making significant investments to build additional capacity for future production."

On this basis, Chevron, Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, and other major firms indeed invested enormous amounts of money and resources in a growing unconventional oil and gas race, an extraordinary saga I described in my book The Race for What's Left.  Some, including Chevron and Shell, started drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico; others, including Exxon, commenced operations in the Arctic and eastern Siberia.  Virtually every one of them began exploiting U.S. shale reserves via hydro-fracking.

Only one top executive questioned this drill-baby-drill approach: John Browne, then the chief executive of BP.  Claiming that the science of climate change had become too convincing to deny, Browne argued that Big Energy would have to look "beyond petroleum" and put major resources into alternative sources of supply.  "Climate change is an issue which raises fundamental questions about the relationship between companies and society as a whole, and between one generation and the next," he had declared as early as 2002.  For BP, he indicated, that meant developing wind power, solar power, and biofuels.

Browne, however, was eased out of BP in 2007 just as Big Oil's output-maximizing business model was taking off, and his successor, Tony Hayward, quickly abandoned the "beyond petroleum" approach.  "Some may question whether so much of the [world's energy] growth needs to come from fossil fuels," he said in 2009.  "But here it is vital that we face up to the harsh reality [of energy availability]."  Despite the growing emphasis on renewables, "we still foresee 80% of energy coming from fossil fuels in 2030."

Under Hayward's leadership, BP largely discontinued its research into alternative forms of energy and reaffirmed its commitment to the production of oil and gas, the tougher the better.  Following in the footsteps of other giant firms, BP hustled into the Arctic, the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, and Canadian tar sands, a particularly carbon-dirty and messy-to-produce form of energy.  In its drive to become the leading producer in the Gulf, BP rushed the exploration of a deep offshore field it called Macondo, triggeringthe Deepwater Horizon blow-out of April 2010 and the devastating oil spill of monumental proportions that followed.

Over the Cliff

By the end of the first decade of this century, Big Oil was united in its embrace of its new production-maximizing, drill-baby-drill approach.  It made the necessary investments, perfected new technology for extracting tough oil, and did indeed triumph over the decline of existing, "easy oil" deposits.  In those years, it managed to ramp up production in remarkable ways, bringing ever more hard-to-reach oil reservoirs online.

According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy, world oil production rose from 85.1 million barrels per day in 2005 to 92.9 million in 2014, despite the continuing decline of many legacy fields in North America and the Middle East.  Claiming that industry investments in new drilling technologies had vanquished the specter of oil scarcity, BP's latest CEO, Bob Dudley, assured the world only a year ago that Big Oil was going places and the only thing that had "peaked" was "the theory of peak oil."

That, of course, was just before oil prices took their leap off the cliff, bringing instantly into question the wisdom of continuing to pump out record levels of petroleum.  The production-maximizing strategy crafted by O'Reilly and his fellow CEOs rested on three fundamental assumptions: that, year after year, demand would keep climbing; that such rising demand would ensure prices high enough to justify costly investments in unconventional oil; and that concern over climate change would in no significant way alter the equation.  Today, none of these assumptions holds true.

Demand will continue to rise -- that's undeniable, given expected growth in world income and population -- but not at the pace to which Big Oil has become accustomed.  Consider this: in 2005, when many of the major investments in unconventional oil were getting under way, the EIA projected that global oil demand would reach 103.2 million barrels per day in 2015; now, it's lowered that figure for this year to only 93.1 million barrels.  Those 10 million "lost" barrels per day in expected consumption may not seem like a lot, given the total figure, but keep in mind that Big Oil's multibillion-dollar investments in tough energy were predicated on all that added demand materializing, thereby generating the kind of high prices needed to offset the increasing costs of extraction.  With so much anticipated demand vanishing, however, prices were bound to collapse.

Current indications suggest that consumption will continue to fall short of expectations in the years to come.  In an assessment of future trends released last month, the EIA reported that, thanks to deteriorating global economic conditions, many countries will experience either a slower rate of growth or an actual reduction in consumption.  While still inching up, Chinese consumption, for instance, is expected to grow by only 0.3 million barrels per day this year and next -- a far cry from the 0.5 million barrel increase it posted in 2011 and 2012 and its one million barrel increase in 2010.  In Europe and Japan, meanwhile, consumption is actually expected to fall over the next two years.

And this slowdown in demand is likely to persist well beyond 2016, suggests the International Energy Agency (IEA), an arm of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the club of rich industrialized nations).  While lower gasoline prices may spur increased consumption in the United States and a few other nations, it predicted, most countries will experience no such lift and so "the recent price decline is expected to have only a marginal impact on global demand growth for the remainder of the decade."

This being the case, the IEA believes that oil prices will only average about $55 per barrel in 2015 and not reach $73 again until 2020.  Such figures fall far below what would be needed to justify continued investment in and exploitation of tough-oil options like Canadian tar sands, Arctic oil, and many shale projects.  Indeed, the financial press is now full of reports on stalled or cancelled mega-energy projects.  Shell, for example, announced in January that it had abandoned plans for a $6.5 billion petrochemical plant in Qatar, citing "the current economic climate prevailing in the energy industry."  At the same time, Chevron shelved its plan to drill in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort Sea, while Norway's Statoil turned its back on drilling in Greenland.

There is, as well, another factor that threatens the wellbeing of Big Oil: climate change can no longer be discounted in any future energy business model.  The pressures to deal with a phenomenon that could quite literally destroy human civilization are growing.  Although Big Oil has spent massive amounts of money over the years in a campaign to raise doubts about the science of climate change, more and more people globally are starting toworry about its effects -- extreme weather patterns, extreme storms, extreme drought, rising sea levels, and the like -- and demanding that governments take action to reduce the magnitude of the threat.

Europe has already adopted plans to lower carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020 and to achieve even greater reductions in the following decades.  China, while still increasing its reliance on fossil fuels, has at least finally pledged to cap the growth of its carbon emissions by 2030 and to increase renewable energy sources to 20% of total energy use by then.  In the United States, increasingly stringent automobile fuel-efficiency standards will require that cars sold in 2025 achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon, reducing U.S. oil demand by 2.2 million barrels per day.  (Of course, the Republican-controlled Congress -- heavily subsidized by Big Oil -- will do everything it can to eradicate curbs on fossil fuel consumption.)

Still, however inadequate the response to the dangers of climate change thus far, the issue is on the energy map and its influence on policy globally can only increase.  Whether Big Oil is ready to admit it or not, alternative energy is now on the planetary agenda and there's no turning back from that.  "It is a different world than it was the last time we saw an oil-price plunge," said IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven in February, referring to the 2008 economic meltdown.  "Emerging economies, notably China, have entered less oil-intensive stages of development… On top of this, concerns about climate change are influencing energy policies [and so] renewables are increasingly pervasive."

The oil industry is, of course, hoping that the current price plunge will soon reverse itself and that its now-crumbling maximizing-output model will make a comeback along with $100-per-barrel price levels.  But these hopes for the return of "normality" are likely energy pipe dreams.  As van der Hoeven suggests, the world has changed in significant ways, in the process obliterating the very foundations on which Big Oil's production-maximizing strategy rested.  The oil giants will either have to adapt to new circumstances, while scaling back their operations, or face takeover challenges from more nimble and aggressive firms.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What's Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2015 Michael T. Klare

 The Golden Trap of Chess Master Vladimir Putin ~ [must read]

Posted on November 30, 2014by Jean

https://jhaines6.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/must-read-the-golden-trap-of-chess-master-vladimir-putin-must-read-eng-rus-ita/

Posted by SyrianFreePress

An article definitely to be spread and read, especially by those who have not well understood the political economic and military strategy of Putin and today's Russia. (SFP)

"The Golden Trap of Chess Master Vladimir Putin"

By Dmitry Kalinichenko for Investcafe.ru

Accusations of the West towards Putin traditionally are based on the fact that he worked in the KGB. And therefore he is a cruel and immoral person. Putin is blamed for everything. But nobody ever accused Putin of lack of intelligence.

Any accusations against this man only emphasize his ability for quick analytical thinking and making clear and balanced political and economic decisions.

Often Western media compares this ability with the ability of a grandmaster, conducting a public chess simul. Recent developments in US economy and the West in general allow us to conclude that in this part of the assessment of Putin's personality Western media is absolutely right.

Despite numerous success reports in the style of Fox News and CNN, today, Western economy, led by the United States is in Putin's trap, the way out of which no one in the West can see or find. And the more the West is trying to escape from this trap, the more stuck it becomes.

What is the truly tragic predicament of the West and the United States, in which they find themselves? And why all the Western media and leading Western economists are silent about this, as a well guarded military secret? Let's try to understand the essence of current economic events, in the context of the economy, setting aside the factors of morality, ethics and geopolitics.

After realizing its failure in Ukraine, the West, led by the US set out to destroy Russian economy by lowering oil prices, and accordingly gas prices as the main budget sources of export revenue in Russia and the main sources of replenishment of Russian gold reserves.

It should be noted that the main failure of the West in Ukraine is not military or political. But in the actual refusal of Putin to fund the Western project of Ukraine at the expense of the budget of Russian Federation. What makes this Western project not viable in the near and inevitable future.

Last time under president Reagan, such actions of the West's lowering of oil prices led to 'success' and the collapse of USSR. But history does not repeat itself all the time. This time things are different for the West. Putin's response to the West resembles both chess and judo, when the strength used by the enemy is used against him, but with minimal costs to the strength and resources of the defender. Putin's real policies are not public. Therefore, Putin's policy largely has always focused not so much on effect, but on efficiency.

Very few people understand what Putin is doing at the moment. And almost no one understands what he will do in the future.

No matter how strange it may seem, but right now, Putin is selling Russian oil and gas only for physical gold.

Putin is not shouting about it all over the world. And of course, he still accepts US dollars as an intermediate means of payment. But he immediately exchanges all these dollars obtained from the sale of oil and gas for physical gold!

To understand this, it is enough to look at the dynamics of growth of gold reserves of Russia and to compare this data with foreign exchange earnings of the RF coming from the sale of oil and gas over the same period.

Moreover, in the third quarter the purchases by Russia of physical gold are at an all-time high, record levels. In the third quarter of this year, Russia had purchased an incredible amount of gold in the amount of 55 tons. It's more than all the central banks of all countries of the world combined(according to official data)!

In total, the central banks of all countries of the world have purchased 93 tons of the precious metal in the third quarter of 2014. It was the 15th consecutive quarter of net purchases of gold by Central banks. Of the 93 tonnes of gold purchases by central banks around the world during this period, the staggering volume of purchases – of 55 tons – belongs to Russia.

Not so long ago, British scientists have successfully come to the same conclusion, as was published in the Conclusion of the U.S. Geological survey a few years ago. Namely: Europe will not be able to survive without energy supply from Russia. Translated from English to any other language in the world it means: "The world will not be able to survive if oil and gas from Russia is subtracted from the global balance of energy supply".

Thus, the Western world, built on the hegemony of the petrodollar, is in a catastrophic situation. In which it cannot survive without oil and gas supplies from Russia. And Russia is now ready to sell its oil and gas to the West only in exchange for physical gold! The twist of Putin's game is that the mechanism for the sale of Russian energy to the West only for gold now works regardless of whether the West agrees to pay for Russian oil and gas with its artificially cheap gold, or not.

Because Russia, having a regular flow of dollars from the sale of oil and gas, in any case, will be able to convert them to gold with current gold prices, depressed by all means by the West. That is, at the price of gold, which had been artificially and meticulously lowered by the Fed and ESF many times, against artificially inflated purchasing power of the dollar through market manipulation.

Interesting fact: the suppression of gold prices by the special department of US Government – ESF (Exchange Stabilization Fund) – with the aim of stabilizing the dollar has been made into a law in the United States.

In the financial world it is accepted as a given that gold is an antidollar.

In 1971, US President Richard Nixon closed the 'gold window', ending the free exchange of dollars for gold, guaranteed by the US in 1944 at Bretton Woods.

In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin has reopened the 'gold window', without asking Washington's permission.

Right now the West spends much of its efforts and resources to suppress the prices of gold and oil. Thereby, on the one hand to distort the existing economic reality in favor of the US dollar and on the other hand, to destroy the Russian economy, refusing to play the role of obedient vassal of the West.

Today assets such as gold and oil look proportionally weakened and excessively undervalued against the US dollar. It is a consequence of the enormous economic effort on the part of the West.

And now Putin sells Russian energy resources in exchange for these US dollars, artificially propped by the efforts of the West. With which he immediately buys gold, artificially devalued against the U.S. dollar by the efforts of the West itself!

There is another interesting element in Putin's game. It's Russian uranium. Every sixth light bulb in the USA depends on its supply. Which Russia sells to the US too, for dollars.

Thus, in exchange for Russian oil, gas and uranium, the West pays Russia with dollars, purchasing power of which is artificially inflated against oil and gold by the efforts of the West. But Putin uses these dollars only to withdraw physical gold from the West in exchange, for the price denominated in US dollars, artificially lowered by the same West.

This truly brilliant economic combination by Putin puts the West led by the United States in a position of a snake, aggressively and diligently devouring its own tail.

 

Re: UK Home Minister,”Pedophilia in Britain ‘woven into the fabric of society’ –What about a film, BBC !

UK Home Minister,"Pedophilia in Britain 'woven into the fabric of society' –What about a film, BBC !

http://rt.com/uk/240777-uk-sex-children-may/

Pedophilia in Britain 'woven into the fabric of society' – Theresa May

Published time: March 14, 2015 15:26

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Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May (Reuters/Daniel Leal-Olivas)

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Children, Crime, Law, Politics, Robert Bridge, Sex, UK

As the UK has launched a new-judge led inquiry panel to investigate a pedophile ring operated in 1980s, the Home Secretary warns the allegations are just a "tip of an iceberg" and the problem is "woven, covertly, into the fabric of our society."

Following a spate of allegations concerning the abuse of children by adults, many of who abused their positions of power and status, Home Secretary Theresa May said Britons still do not appreciate the"true scale of that abuse."

Writing in the Telegraph, May warned that the investigation into predators of children will "lead into our schools and hospitals, our churches, our youth clubs and many other institutions that should have been places of safety…"

Following Thursday's announcement of a four-person panel to investigate the criminal activities against minors, May said Justice Lowell Goddard would be empowered to "compel witnesses and the removal of any cut-off date from the Terms of Reference" allowing Goddard to track the evidence "wherever it takes her."

The original inquiry, which was delayed after two chairs were forced to stand down, was set up to investigate allegations of a pedophile sex ring made by the now deceased Conservative MP Geoffrey Dickens, operating in Westminster during the 1980s.

Read moreAnonymous asks activists to help fight pedophiles in 'Operation DeathEaters'

May said she had personally met with young survivors and understood that their lives would be so much harder due to the "pain and distrust that had become a part of them."

May wrote: "In my discussions with older victims and survivors and their representatives, I began to realize how abuse is woven, covertly, into the fabric of our society."

She then relayed a meeting she had with one of the victims of past abuse, who told her:"Get this inquiry right and it will be like a stick of Blackpool rock. You will see abuse going through every level of society."

"I fear she is right. I have said before and I shall say again, that what we have seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg," May said.

Aside from public institutions, the probe may also lead to the highest levels of British society.

Following allegations that British celebrity and former BBC presenter Jimmy Savile had violated hundreds of children and adults over the span of his lengthy career ("Giving Victims a Voice" organization reported that over 400 people had filed complaints against Savile), allegations of a Westminster pedophile ring possibly involving many well-known MPs have surfaced.

Read moreAt least 40 UK politicians complicit in alleged Westminster 'pedophile ring' – report

In July 2014 Peter Mckelvie, a whistleblower who kicked off UK police pedophile probe Operation Fernbridge, disclosed a list compiled by police of current and former politicians suspected of participating in the child sex abuse.

He revealed that as many as 40 British MPs and peers either knew about or took part in the Westminster "pedophile ring."

Mckelvie, who spent more than 20 years compiling evidence of alleged child abuse by people in authority claimed there was enough evidence to arrest at least one senior politician, the Daily Telegraph reported in July 2014.

"I truly believe it represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity and that once its work is done, we will never look at society in the same way again," May wrote.

READ MORE: Cover up? Review of Home Office handling of Westminster child sex allegations slammed

The Home Secretary said: "Where there is evidence a person has abused their position – no matter how high or how low that position – it will be passed to the police to investigate. So if there has been a cover-up, we will uncover it."

Yet, she questions why some people don't understand the need for an inquiry. "What's the point?" they say. "It's so long ago and we know it all now. Leave it in the past where it belongs."

Meanwhile, hundreds of registered sex offenders have gone missing in the UK.

A Freedom of Information request by the Press Association has revealed that the whereabouts of 396 convicted offenders are unknown to police. Some have been at large for over a decade.

 

Indians, Indo-Europeans, languages and civilisations; Aryans and Others

Indians, Indo-Europeans, proto-Indo-European languages and civilisations

Aryans and Others

 

And at the end is an interesting article on Aryans and others by Prof Figueira on the subject, which becomes very relevant in India today when in the wake of majority in the parliament, with only 31% of votes, right-wing BJP leaders and their fanatic fringe outfits are trying to subordinate every other way of thinking, culture and language to their yoke. But for a crushing defeat in Delhi state  elections by Aam Adami party(Aap) led by Arvind Kejriwal, PM Modi and his party, especially its lunatic fringe would have made life miserable for many Indians, especially from minorities.

 

In the evolutionary ladder of governance, societies have moved up from the tribal model when the warrior chief, sometimes the head priest too, was the ruler. Security of the tribe and wars was their major preoccupation.

 

Then perhaps emerged city-states, kingdoms and after the tyranny of the elected and electable, real Democracy! This unfortunately is like the problem of a moving object. Never solved .In present times there are really no true democracies. The USA which Pres Obama claims as the oldest democracy is nothing but oligopoly in which, the corporate interests, led by military-industry complex decide who will be the next president, finance his election and then he is at their call whether it is Bush or Obama.

 

In India we do not even have a representative democracy because with percentage of votes of 31% only ,BJP has got a majority in the central Parliament .In India's largest state of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh rules with a majority after getting only 29% of the votes caste. I call them tyrannies because once a party gets elected; it keeps on using all unfair and fair means to get re-elected. Let that pass.

 

After the kingdoms and religion-based empires emerged, in Europe nation states based on some kind of common denominator, language, ethnicity, religion of people, etc came up .It was based on a common denominator. Never mind. It still persists. In creating language and common ancestry based nation states lots of myths have been created. To please the Turks, Kemal Ataturk, father of the secular Turkish republic had claimed that all languages emerged out of Turkish and Anatolia was the land of origin of the human race. Or something to this effect. Similar claims have been made by all nation states , beginning with Europe and elsewhere.

 

I made some study about the origin of Aryans, Indo-Europeans, proto-Indo-Europeans and their  languages, especially after my retirement from Turkey in 1996 and my stay there for more than year and half, where I found ample material at the British Institute of archaeology in Ankara. I have come to the conclusion that the terms, proto-Indo-European of proto-Indo-European languages from which all races and all similar languages have emerged is like finding a common denominator  ie taking bits and pieces from all tribes ,languages and cultures. A bit like defining the most fundamental particles in physics, mostly pure mathematics and speculation.

 

As for civilisations and culture, let me quote from my article on Eastern foundations of Western civilization, on Alexander, origins of western civilisation, Iliad and Odyssey etc                         

'How Alexander "the Great "has been glorified as a Western conqueror of the East.  He was a small town homosexual boy who was taught the intricacies of state protocol, running of an empire and the divinity of the emperor by older civilisations of Asia Minor, Egypt and Persia. If he had followed the advice of his teacher Aristotle and not learnt from the so called barbarians, his vision would have remained limited and shallow.  The desert Arab tribes were civilized by the Byzantine courtiers and princesses in Damascus and Sasanians from Persia in Iraq after being conquered by Muslim Arabs.  So were the nomad Central Asian Turks and Mongols (also by Chinese) by the Persians.   

As there was little comparable civilisation in Western Europe and certainly USA in pre Christian era, they claim that there civilisation, culture and thought originates from the Greeks of Aegean and Asia Minor (Turkey).  According to them, Greek civilisation and culture evolved and flourished in Crete and evolved when Greeks (pirates) coming from the Aegean islands settled on the west coast of Asia Minor (called Ionia-Yunani) .Therefore Minoan civilisation of Crete forms the basis of Greek and hence Western civilisation.  

 It is too simplistic and illogical, if not downright absurd. Why not Cyprus, Malta, Sicily?  At that time, there were flourishing civilisations in Egypt, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Persia, Sogdiana and India. Persian Empire extended up to western Turkish coast with Sardis as its outpost. Most Greek city states in Asia Minor were under the Persians, who could cross over the Dardanelles or the Bosporus at will or occupy Greek lands.  The first Greek victory over Persians is celebrated as Marathon race in sports.  The first victory of the West over East!  

Cretian civilisation is derived from Egyptian and Phoenician.  Both are indebted to Mesopotamian, verily the mother of all civilisations, which evolved mostly between Tigris in Euphrates in Iraq and southeast Turkey.  The evolution in human progress took off six millennia ago.  But fourth millennia BC was remarkable, not only in Mesopotamia but in the Nile valley and the Indus Valley. From family unit's polity developed into villages and cities, kingdoms and empires.  The cities were ruled by a god and in his name by the king.  To begin with, the first deity was Earth, Mother Goddess. Civilisations in Mesopotamia were created by Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, Assyrians and others. Nile got cylindrical seals from Mesopotamia and the beginnings of writing.  The Nile civilisation is magnificent, well preserved but unidirectional and flourished in isolation, without the stimulus of exchange.  

If one studies the Egyptian or Pharoanic civilisation, much has been contributed to it by the Nubians of Upper Egypt.  Many Pharaoh's had thick lips and crinky hair.  Or La, Egyptians are bad enough and now to claim that the Sudanese might have influenced the Greek and hence the Western Judo-Hellenic Christian civilisation. Yes, after the development of civilisations in Mesopotamia and the Nile valley, it filtered to eastern Mediterranean, which became a cradle of civilisations, with exchange of ideas through trade and people. That is how the island of Crete acquired civilisation. 

The achievement of a civilization may be expressed in terms of its best points—moral and ethical, aesthetic, scientific, and, not least, literary. Legal theory flourished and was sophisticated. Early on, it was expressed in several collections of legal decisions, the so-called codes, of which the best-known and the earliest is the Code of Hammurabi.  Throughout these codes recurs the concern of the ruler for the weak, the widow, and the orphan.

There are 25 firsts achieved by Sumerians.  These include wheels, the plough, the loom, the potter's wheels, the brick, and the sail, working with metals and finally writing. Technical accomplishments were perfected in the building of amazingly accurate Ziggurats (temple towers resembling pyramids), with their huge bulk, and in irrigation, both in practical execution and in theoretical calculations.  At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, an artificial stone often regarded as a forerunner of concrete was in use at Uruk (160 miles south-southeast of modern Baghdad); The ultimate weapon to spread civilisations remains systematic writing.  

Judaism, mother of all revealed Abrahmic religions in West Asia is claimed to be the first monotheistic religion.  But it could have been perhaps influenced by Avestan/Zoroastrian/ pre-Vedic religions in Mesopotamia. In 14^th century BC it was an Aryan Mitanni (a kingdom at the borders of Turkey and Syria) princess Gilukhepa, perhaps the well known and famous Nefertiti, who fully supported her husband Pharaoh Akhenaton's (AmonhotepIV) efforts to bring in (and perhaps inspire) monotheism, for single God Aton (Sun or Mithra like!). This concept was too sudden and undermined the vested powers of the priests.  It was dislodged and soon after Akhenaton was removed from power.  New work in Egypt is moving in that direction.  It was from Egypt that Moses led the Hebrews out to lay the foundations of Judaism.  

Now let us take the story of Iliad and Odyssey. For Western culture and civilization, they are almost like Mahabharata and Ramayana are for India, making its author Homer one of the most influential authors in the widest sense. The two epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education down to the time of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.  The Homeric epics had a profound impact on the Renaissance culture of Italy.  Since then the proliferation of translations has helped to make them the most important poems of the classical European tradition. 

Iliad was finalized probably around 750 BC and Odyssey 650 BC (Greek writing started around 650 BC).  It is felt that Odyssey, so different from Iliad was not composed by Homer, the blind bard born in Asia Minor, but probably by a young lady (a Jane Austin) somewhere on the Sicilian coast with time to spare.  Let that pass. But there certainly is historical basis for the story of abduction of Spartan King Manaus's wife Helen by Trojan Prince Paris.  Manaus's brother King Agamemnon of Achaeans, then decided on a voyage of punishment and retrieval. This is when strangely an artificial line, straits of Dardanelles, has been introduced by the Europeans to divide the world into East and West and the victory over Trojans is taken as of the west over East.  Why?  Later Alexander made offerings at Troy (also at Egyptian oasis Siva) before embarking on his conquest of Asia. Ottoman Sultan Fethi after conquering Constantinople also visited Troy.   

We need not go into the details of the two epics and Troy.  But in the search to find the exact place and the time of the events, credit might be given to Heinrich Schliemann.  Inspired by Iliad's description, he started digging at Troy site but damaged the real Troy.  He was a mythomaniac and big liar.  Paris's father King Priam King of Troy is an hour's walk on the Asian side from the Dardanelles.  This strategic site, controlling the sea borne trade from the Mediterranean and Aegean to the Black Sea and beyond has been inhabited since fourth millennium BC. Troy 6, site of Homer's Iliad has been dated to about 1260 BC.  

At the same time, there was the majestic and magnificent Asian Hittite Empire (1800 BC to 1200 BC) in central Turkey, whose capital Bogazkoy's citadel has a circumference of five kilometers.  The Troy fortress measures 200 yards by 150 yards.  Excavations show that Troy perhaps fell as a result of weakening by an earthquake.  It was assaulted and set on fire, women and children taken as slaves.  Evidence from Hittite archives indicates that Troy was a small state in alliance or subordinate to it. It was attacked when the Hittite empire was in decline and fighting its new enemy the Assyrians in the East.  So all this 10 year long Great Trojan war drama was a storm in a tea cup in the ocean of Hittite Empire, which extended from north of Turkey to Syria and up to Babylon (Iraq.)  Hittites were contenders for the control of Syria with the Egyptian Pharaohs and local Aryan kingdom of Mitannis in Turkey and Syria.   

The regions linking the river basins of Euphrates and Tigris, Oxus and Jaxartes, Indus and Ganges have contributed more to religion, culture and civilisation than the rest of the world put together. Comprising of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Central Asian Republics, Afghanistan and the Indian sub-continent, there has always been natural interaction in the area through travel, trade, migration and conquest for over five millennia, with many civilisations having also evolved and flourished in desert oasis.  The more civilized areas were dominated first by Indo-Europeans charioteers and then the horse riders from Asian Steppes who shaped the Eurasian history.  Aryans of India migrated from the steppes of north of the Black and Caspian Seas and Kazakhstan from 3^rd to 1^st millennia BC.  Later Turks and Mongols migrated from the eastern Asian steppes to the Indian sub-continent, Iran and Turkey then known as Asia Minor, where as mentioned earlier had evolved and flowered ancient Greek and Hellenic thought, culture and polity as a result of interaction of incoming Greeks with the existing Asian civilisations of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, and India beyond.  Turkey has more Greek sites than Greece and more Roman monuments than Italy. 

With a continuous history this area has been the cradle of most civilizations, thought, philosophy and religions; pre-Vedic to Vedic religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Avestan, Zoroasterism, Manichaeism, Judaism, Christianity with its various strands and schisms, Islam and such bye-lanes as Alevis, Alawaites, Yezidis, Druzes and many others.  Indo-Iranian, Ural- Altaic and Semitic languages have mingled with each other and local languages to produce such a mosaic of languages and tongues.  Culturally, linguistically, ethnically and spiritually there is no region in the world which is so rich and diverse but also has so much in common. 

Let us now take western (hence Greek) philosophy, which begins with Thales (who predicted 585 BC solar eclipse). Thales who established the Miletian school (near Smyrna-Izmir, Turkey) speculated that everything consisted of liquid, his disciples Anaximander said there was unity behind multiplicity and Anaximanes that everything was vapour. They are considered spiritual forefathers of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.  By 6^th century BC schools of Jain and Buddhist philosophy were well established apart from Upanishads, Yoga, Charakva and Sankhya, which have an even older tradition perhaps going back to 8^th century BC.  While religion and philosophy in India are fused; Buddhism, Jainism and some other schools started as philosophy of life without creating or relying on Gods.  Socrates with his inner (intuitive) voice and trances with Plato made a team like Ramakrishna Paramhansa with Swami Vivekananda i.e. intuitive speculator and philosopher with his eloquent spokesman. We know about Socrates only from Plato' writings. 

The Orphic and Pythagorean and later Parmenides philosophy or cults are similar to Indian philosophy.  Perhaps the ideas had traveled via Alexandria, hub of eastern Mediterranean, then held in high regard as a place for learning and wisdom , where  Greeks and others used to congregate and learn. Ugarit port on the Syrian coast was another meeting place for traders, travelers and wise men from the west i.e. Cyprus, Crete etc and east i.e. Iraq, Persia and India beyond.  Greeks and Indians were employed in Susa, capital of the Persian Empire, which also ruled north India.  So exchange of ideas and philosophy was normal. Scylax, a Greek origin Persian subject from Asia minor was commanded by Emperor Darius to navigate river Indus from Kabul to its delta on the Arabian Sea, from whose records Herodotus and West learnt about India. 

Earlier Greek writings and thought had everything; logic, speculation, myths, mystery and beliefs.  It's a difficult to say when the divergence between East and West commenced.  And why? European rationalism and renaissance! Does it have something to do with the colder climate of Europe, which made them think more rationally and did not lend to development of intuitive powers.  We can see the divergence even in the evolution of Christianity, Western and Orthodox.  Western theology turns towards dualism making a distinction between the spirit and the matter. Eastern theology maintains that spirit and matter are the two interdependent manifestations of the same ultimate reality.  Christianity has been influenced by Mithraism (from pre-Vedic cult ), then very popular with Roman legions, senators and even Emperors who built Mithra temples all over central and east Europe and Asia Minor. Christmas is celebrated on 24 December eve, time of  Mithra's birth ( when the Sun starts waxing ).   

The divergence between conscious intuition of the East and rational thought of the West was perhaps complete after de la Carte announced  "I think therefore I am. ' Of course there's no place for intuition in this.  But many western scientists have declared that only intuition had led them to the discoveries of science.  Zen masters use Kaons, apparently illogical riddles, to unlock intuitive powers. West then took as faith Darwin's theory of evolution that mutations cause species to change at random and the fittest survives and not Lamarck's theory that species change because they make determined effort to change.  It has played havoc with human history. Survival of the fittest theory brought in colonialism, imperialism and cultural orientalism. West also evolved divisive nationalism, Marxism, capitalism, ideological totalitarianism.  For these causes and ideologies many scores of millions were butchered in, so far the most violent of all , the 20^th century.  

As for Mahabharata and Bhagvad Geeta they could not have been composed in India before 1500 BC , because horses skeletons are found first in Frontier province of Pakistan of the subcontinent . Horses' natural and original habitat was the Eurasian steppes where they were first domesticated around 2500 BC and then used with chariots , evolved  perhaps in Khorasan area ie central Asia, Persia, Afghanistan etc.( More above)

 

 Let me also quote from my other articles on Indo Aryans or Indo-Iranians and cultural assimilation of Iran from which India has borrowed and which India refuses to acknowledge.

 

Old linkages between India and Iran
India's linkages and relations with Iran are ancient and almost umbilical. Not far from Iran's western border, around the junction of Turkey, Syria and Iraq in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, a chariot-riding Indian-Iranian military aristocracy, embedded among indigenous Hurrians, ruled its Mitanni kingdom between 1500 BC to 1200 BC. It used pre-Vedic Sanskrit phrases, worshipped common Daivya and Assura gods like Indira, Nasatya and Varuna, Mithra. The Mitannis had apparently separated from the main Aryan body, which after many centuries in the region of Amu and Syr Darya had moved on to Iran. Then after some acrimony there was a split into factions: Vedic with Daivya gods and Avestan with Assura gods, with the Vedic stream going on to the land of Sapt Sindhu, ie northwest India and beyond. On a theory based on linguistic, cultural, religious and other similarities, Iranian and Indian Aryans are, if not racial cousins, at least linguistic and cultural ones.

During the Muslim rule, Persians came as bureaucrats with the Turkish rulers in India and left a deep influence on Indian culture, civilization and languages; Hindustani, Urdu and Hindi. From Akbar's time, the Persians formed the majority of the Muslim Amir ul Umra, that is, courtiers and civil servants. To get in with Persian and its derivative Urdu as the language of the court and administration (even during the British era), even the Hindus took on some of their traits, like Moghului cuisine (Persian cuisine is the mother of most cuisines, except French and Chinese) and meat eating. Also adopted were a love of music and dance. Kayastahs dominated the civil services during the British rule.

Iran: A cradle of civilizations
Situated at the crossroads and itself a cradle of many great civilizations, Iran has exercised great civilizing influence since ancient times. Whosoever (King of Kings, Sahanshah in Darius's words, its Hindu equivalent being Maharajdhiraj) ruled what now constitutes Iran, they exercised great political and cultural influence not only in the neighborhood but also in far-off places.

During the classical Greek political and social evolution in western Asia Minor which Turkey was then called, the Persian Achaemenid dynasty had its satrapies and outposts on the Aegean coast, known as Ionia, from which the word Yunan for Greece entered the eastern lexicon. In 517 BC it was Persian Emperor Darius who ordered Scylax, his Greek subject from Caria (western Turkey) to survey the river Indus from Peshawar to its exit into the sea, part of his empire. And for the first time, the West became acquainted with India. Herodotus's chapters on Indian history were based on records of that exploration.

But Islam did not liberate the sophisticated and evolved Persians, deeply influenced by spiritual and speculative Avestan, its excessive rituals and love for the intoxicant soma having been curbed earlier by Zoroaster's reforms (Buddhism was a similar attempt against Brahmanical rituals and excesses in India around the same time). Then the Persians lost their language, Pehlavi, which emerged a few centuries later as Persian in modified Arabic script. Having been ruled by Arabs, Turks, Mongols and Tartars for eight-and-half centuries, there emerged the Sufi-origin Persian Safavids, who became finally masters of their own land, which more or less comprises present-day Iran. At the same time, to preserve their sect and survive, Iranians after centuries of foreign rule developed an uncanny ability not to bring to their lips what is on their minds, and have institutionalized it as takiyya, ie dissimulation.

They had modified simple Arab Islam into a more sophisticated and innovative Shi'ite branch, with the direct descent of Imam Ali's progeny from Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Mohammed, echoing their deeply ingrained sense of the divinity of rulers. They strengthened (against the Arab caliphs and Turkish sultans) the status of the imams, who among more egalitarian Sunnis are no more than prayer leaders, in line with the Indian-Iranian tradition of placing priests higher than rulers (as are Brahmins in the Indian caste system). By tradition, Azeri (Turkish) speaking Iranians become chiefs of the armed forces. Ayatollah Ali Khameini is an Azeri speaking Iranian.

The status of the imam evolved into the doctrines of intercession and infallibility, ie, of the faqih/mutjahid. (Somewhat like Hindu shankracharyas and the fraternity of learned pandits). The speculative Aryan mind fused the mystic traditions into Sufi Islam, bringing out the best in Islamic mysticism and softening the rigors of austere and crusading Islam which had emerged from the barren sands of Arabia. There were unparalleled contributions by Rumi, Hafij, Attar, El-Ghazali, Firdaus, Nizami, El-Beruni, Omar Khayyam and others to Islamic philosophy and civilization. Their answer to interminable Islamic theological arguments on free will vs predetermination was that the opposites were the obverse and reverse sides of the divine mind, similar to the concepts in Hindu philosophy. Hindustani poetry, music, painting and architecture owe much to their Iranian cousins. Sufis played more than an equal role in the conversion to Islam of India as did the sword or material inducements. Sufi pirs are still as revered as Hindu or Sikh holy men in India.

Given below is the article by Prof Figuiera.

 

K.Gajendra Singh ,15 March, 2015,Delhi.

Aryans and Others

Written by Dorothy M Figueira | Updated: March 13, 2015 3:08 pm

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/aryans-and-others/

 

The figure of the Aryan has captivated literary imagination in both India and the West since the classical era and provides a fitting subject of inquiry for comparatists who wish to examine its cross-cultural emplotment. However, from a solely literary perspective, identifying the Aryan is a challenging task, since the texts used to delineate this figure are elusive; they function as absent authorities, often evoked but rarely cited. Moreover, the Aryan is not just the figure that historians and linguists have sought to isolate, situate and follow in its migrations, but has also been the subject of myth-making. Myths regarding the Aryan have been wielded to deconstruct identity and construct new social forms. In my book, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorising Authority through Myths of Identity, I examine how the Aryan myth is a shared myth in Europe and in India from the Enlightenment to the modern era.

 

My study begins by charting the initial discussions regarding the Aryan in the work of Voltaire and his quest for an Aryan urtext in the Ezour Vedam. Voltaire sought in Indiaa sophisticated culture as far removed as possible from that of the ancient Hebrews. In this respect, ancient India provided him with an alibi in the true sense of the term, an elsewhere upon which he could superimpose his critique of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

 

As canonical Sanskrit texts were gradually translated into European languages and disseminated, 19th-century mythographers sought to read the history of the Aryans through their myths. Aryan India was cut to fit the Romantic ideals of a revealed monotheism and the development of a people's unique character, and their gradual degeneration. With the appearance of Max Mueller's edition of the Rig Veda and his voluminous commentary, the Aryans were no longer merely Europe's distant cousins. Their textual presence finally confirmed the existence of a tradition as old as (if not older) than that of the Bible. In the West, this "discovery" of the Aryans through the Veda effectively displaced the Jews from their central position on the world stage. The Jews could now be assigned a subaltern role in history. For the remainder of the 19th century, this myth of the Aryan was employed to construct an ideal imaginary past for Europe. It fostered nationalism and, in the process, identified a mythic scapegoat in the figure of the Jew. The Jew and the Aryan would now become the operative dyad, as seen in the work of Nietzsche, Gobineau, H.S. Chamberlain, and finally in the ravings of Nazi ideologues.

 

At roughly the same time that the European Romantics were speculating about their imaginary Aryan ancestors, the Hindu reformer Raja Rammohan Roy was laying the foundation for the Brahmo Samaj with translations of Sanskrit scriptures into vernacular languages. In order to affect his reform, Rammohan Roy felt that this literature needed to be liberated from 

its Brahmin custodians. Toward this end, the raja sometimes even rewrote texts to depict an ideal Aryan past in which certain religious practices (such as idolatry and sati) did not exist. With his translations, he established rules for textual validity and corrected the excrescences that he felt had led to extreme practices. The raja's reform strategy was subsequently emulated by Dayananda Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, who also sought to make Sanskrit canonical sources available to a wider rangeof believers by developing a series of interpretive strategies to extricate Vedic revelation from its hermeticism and ritualism. In order to portray the Aryans as sophisticated, Dayananda "translated" the Veda to show that they had knowledge of telegraphy and chemistry. The myth of the Aryan Golden Age promulgated by both these Hindu reform movements set the stage for the development of Hindu nationalism.

 

By the time of Tilak, an ideal portrait of the Aryan had been activated to foster nationalself-esteem. Like Dayananda, Tilak attributed to the Aryans knowledge of science and technology. As valiant survivors of an ice-age glacial catastrophe in the Arctic, the Aryans travelled from the North Pole to civilise the world. Tilak's Aryans were so advanced that they survived this migration and brought their considerable skills (and their scriptures) to the lands they invaded. Vivekananda would further develop this theme of racial and cultural superiority. Unlike other Indian reformers, Vivekananda did not limit his campaign to the domestic front but exported it abroad. It was before Californian and Chicagoan society matrons that he detailed his vision of an Aryan future grounded in a racialist argument. In this glorification, it was clear that the Brahmin descendants of the Aryans would be the only true beneficiaries of this myth-making.

 

Jyotirao Phule and B.R. Ambedkar, however, recognised that these various theories needed reinterpretation in order to locate the struggles of the oppressed castes within the historical perspective of the Aryan conquest of India. Phule began by revising the Aryan invasion theory to define culture by its subculture. He turned the myth of the Aryan back upon the elite, by taking just those strengths and virtues attributed to the Aryan by Western Orientalists and Brahmin reformers and transferring them to the lower castes. Instead of appealing to an Aryan Golden Age, Phule called for the reestablishment of an alternative mythical age — a non-Aryan Golden Age during the reign of King Bali. More importantly, by challenging the myth of a utopian Indian past, he introduced the new category of reason into the discussion.

 

Ambedkar began his mission where Phule left off. Ambedkar started by challenging the authority of the Veda as the source of Aryan identity. He called into question its canonicity and infallibility and rejected its racial portrayal of the Aryans. He also questioned textually based social reform that clearly served the needs of the privileged, lettered castes. Ambedkar concluded that all privileged-caste Hindu speculation regarding the Aryans was nothing but a strategy devised to support Brahmin superiority, justify their overlordship over non-Brahmins and satisfy Brahmin

arrogance. In their anti-Aryan polemics, both Phule and Ambedkar launched a radical attack on Hindu revivalism, codified as it was in the elite myth of the past.

 

Valorising the irrational in myth was (and is) symptomatic of the same disease that enables the irrational to flourish in politics. It is this "underside" of myth that my book examines: how Europeans and Indians deployed myths regarding the ancient Aryans in their various reform and nationalist projects. In both the East and the West, the resulting conclusions were, unfortunately, the same. If you did not possess Aryan blood, you could not be civilised and those peoples identified as non-Aryan "others" needed to be neutralised or even destroyed. Phule and Ambedkar saw the danger inherent in the Aryan myth, challenged it, and sought to debunk it.

 

If someone had told me when I was writing this book that its thesis would be relevanttoday, I would have been surprised. But as I assess the present situation, I am astonished by the degree to which its thesis resonates today. I never envisioned that the Aryan myth could be resuscitated so easily, as in those instances when the elected leader of a secular India discusses the genius of the ancient Indians having knowledge of plastic surgery, aeronautics and reproductive technology; or when, on a recent visit to New York, he praises the superiority of modern diasporic professional Indians. Are such recent claims to past and present Indian exceptionalism any different from those of Dayananda, Tilak, or Vivekananda? The myth of Indians inhabiting a Golden Age of technological and moral advancement is the same. It has its believers, as recent events have demonstrated. In light of this ongoing deployment of the Aryan myth, our task becomes clear. We must remember the work of Phule and Ambedkar, and look to their legatees to challenge this mythmaking and offer a counter-narrative.

 

Excerpted from the preface to 'Aryans, Jews ,Brahmins' (2015) published by Navayana. Figueira is professor of comparative literature at the University of Georgia, US.

First Published on: March 13, 201512:00 am

Raj  

And India was never the cradle of Civilization, it was probably Mesopotamia. Harappa and Mohenjadaro were first major large civilizations. India was home to the first largest organized civilization. It was one of the first - not the first, never the only one. It is an ancient civilization, one of the older ones - not the first, never the only one. Please steer clear from such nationalistic views - look at it purely through a scientific lens.

about 15 hours ago ·   (0) ·   (0) ·  reply (0) · 

Raj  

And even in languages, the classification is obsolete. Everyone these days speaks English, an Indo-European language. So really, the classifications are purely for identifying the origins, which in itself is also questionable because of the ease of how such languages may be adopted by other, so-called, outsiders. The hypotheses are extremely difficult to prove in a lab - look at English, are we all Anglo-Saxons? Or are the Anglo Saxons really Germans in disguise? And the Germans are East Europeans or Eurasians? So the origin is difficult to prove. Best stick to out of Africa theory - we're all Africans. Fact of life, deal with it. This includes the modern Europeans (also African origins).