The State of Absaroka

While the history of United States is reasonably well documented, there are some less known facts, such as the existence of a short lived plan to create a state called Absaroka in 1939.

The tale of the would-be rebels, who called their new state Absaroka (pronounced ab-SOR-ka), from the Crow word meaning “children of the large-beaked bird,” then faded into the mist. Details were forgotten — how a baseball-player-turned-street-commissioner in Sheridan named A. R. Swickard appointed himself governor and began hearing writs of grievance, and how license plates were distributed along with pictures of Miss Absaroka 1939, the first and apparently last of her breed. There was even an Absarokan state visit, when the king of Norway made a swing through Montana. [Going Down the Road – A State That Never Was in Wyoming – Series – NYTimes.com]

Sanskrit in United States

Besides yoga, the actual classes were extremely well taught and a lot of fun! Having teachers only five or six years older than me made the classes more enjoyable, and they personally inspired me to speak in actual Samskritam. In just one week, I was able to speak basic sentences in Samskritam. It was also interesting to note that Samskritam had many similarities to Latin, which I study at school, like a third gender besides masculine and feminine.[Shraddhaa For Youth, Jaahnavii For The Entire Family (email Arun Sankar]

That’s from the report by Swathi Krishnan, a 10th grader who attended a week long Sanskrit camp in the East Coast. Meanwhile the registration for jaahnavii2008, a residential Sanskrit Camp for the entire family in New Jersey, is open.

Also from Arun’s e-mail.

Two year’s before on a Gurupoornima day umd_samskritam launched the website http://www.speaksanskrit.org
. Last year on Gurupoornima day, campus samskritam network (CSN) was
officially launched and its online magazine – vishvavani. This year on
the Gurupoornima day the 4th issue of vishvavani is being released

The World as seen from United States

This presentation by the CEO of Public Radio International does not reveal any new information to people who are used to watching Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton every other day, while major events happen around the world. For an American resident looking for intelligent news, cable news offers no help. After watching World News on any of the major networks, you will realized that (a) it is not about news, but about the anchors (Hey I am Katie Couric, I am reading news!) and (b) World in this case means America.

The only place where you get intelligent, in depth analysis of world events is Public Radio, which is mostly funded by the listeners. Programs like Forum, Fresh Air, On Point, and Charlie Rosecover topics which are uninteresting to the MSM, but still none of them match Economist in terms of breadth.

Kerala and San Francisco

Last month, members of DYFI and the Merchants association ransacked a Reliance retail shop in Paravur.The police did not bother to prevent this and no one was arrested. In
Kerala, the politicians and business groups have decided that a
consumer should buy only from shops run by them and not from
supermarkets run by Reliance or Spencers.

Over
the last one month I have been talking to people and visiting places to
find the reasons behind the agitation against retail shops.
Interestingly the retail shops targeted are all based in India
(Reliance, Spencers etc.). There are two main reasons behind this
agitation

1. The majority of big retail
business is controlled by certain groups. They are the main people who
are funding this. In Kerala if you pay money you can hire a lot of
anti-social elements. It is estimated that there are 4 million
unemployed youth here!

2. In many places,
politicians have a stake in the local retail shops or supermarkets.
They know that there substandard supermarkets cannot compete with the
efficient shops run by Reliance or Spencers. [Reliance retail shop ransacked by criminals at paravur]

Thus when a Malayali goes on his mandatory exile, a place he can settle
down comfortably and get the ambiance of the home state would be San
Francisco. This is a place where supervisors are working on legislation
to ban all chain stores

The city’s restrictions on new
chain stores have become increasingly tough over the past few years. In
2003, the Board of Supervisors approved a law requiring proposed
coffeehouses and pharmacies to provide notice of their intent to open.
That made it easier for opponents to request Planning Commission
hearings and to argue against the stores.

In
recent months, however, chain store owners with applications before the
Planning Commission have encountered renewed hostility and skepticism.
Some commissioners have stated flatly that they don’t like chain stores
under any circumstances. [S.F. grows ever more hostile to chain stores ]

Politicians Finally Get It

United States is the largest consumer of bottled water and since water bottles are made of a type of plastic which is difficult to break down, 86% of the bottles become garbage. Landfill clogging by these bottles became a major issue and many city councils took action by banning the bottles in government meetings, replacing them with water pitchers and drinking fountains. Restaurants too joined in, encouraging the use of tap water.

The environmentalists started a campaign and the bottled water industry reacted by releasing advertisements. On radio programs, the bottled water industry spokesmen argued that the issue is consumer choice; if a consumer has the freedom to eat a mango grown in Philippines, he also has the freedom to drink San Pellegrino.

After all that initial posturing the bottled water industry is now trying to accommodate the environmentalists, so that they are not seen on the wrong side in this issue. The solution they came up did not make the bottle disappear, but made it eco friendly by featuring smaller labels and bottles made with less plastic.

The present trend is growing environmental awareness among private businesses to make up for unenthusiastic stance of the Bush Administration. Buying from farmers market is popular and Low Carbon diet is the new mantra. The rising popularity of the environmental movement has recognition among politicians on both sides of the aisle and nothing says it better than this advertisment.

Lotta Examined Lives

Learning philosophy is in vogue. Students at various universities are registering for Philosophy 101 classes, reading Socrates and debating the metaphysics behind “The Matrix”.

David E. Schrader, executive director of the American Philosophical Association, a professional organization with 11,000 members, said that in an era in which people change careers frequently, philosophy makes sense. “It’s a major that helps them become quick learners and gives them strong skills in writing, analysis and critical thinking,” he said.

Max Bialek, 22, was majoring in math until his senior year, when he discovered philosophy. He decided to stay an extra year to complete the major (his parents needed reassurance, he said, but were supportive).

“I thought: Why weren’t all my other classes like that one?” he said, explaining that philosophy had taught him a way of studying that could be applied to any subject and enriched his life in unexpected ways. “You can talk about almost anything as long as you do it well.”[In a New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined]

If this trend stays, then reading Ravikiran will be required in many graduate schools.

Prakash Karat's history lesson

Recently CPI (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat called President George Bush a fool andsaid that he had a poor understanding of history. Mr. Karat was attending a function commemorating the 90th anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution was angry that President Bush had compared Lenin to Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler. But guess who has a poor understanding of history?

Following an assassination attempt on Lenin, Stalin wanted a policy of “open and systematic mass terror” to be enforced and Lenin agreed. Red Terror was announced as a policy on September 1, 1918.

“To dispose of our enemies, we will have to create our own socialist terror. For this we will have to train 90 million of the 100 million of Russians and have them all on our side. We have nothing to say to the other 10 million; we will have to get rid of them.”

Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.[Purpose of the Soviet Red Terror]

According to some historians between 1917 and 1922 about 280,000 people were killed through summary executions and supression of rebellions. The repression was against peasants, industrial workers and any one who did not agree with the revolutionaries. Still such brutality is not called holocaust by historians because that credit goes to Hitler alone.

The Sunday edition of New York Times had two stories related to that era and the first one is about the last Russian czar Nicholas II, and his family whom Lenin ordered to be killed in July 1918. Eleven people (czar,the czar’s wife, five children, doctor and three servants), were killed, but the remains of only nine were found. A bunch of amateur detectives have now found some bones and pieces of jars that held the acid used to disfigure the bodies and DNA tests will decide if they belong to Aleksei, 13 and his sister.

The second story is about the time of Stalin. In his book The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, Orlando Figes writes about what happened to millions of ordinary people during the time of the great communist revolution.

Each story had its own disheartening logic. Stalin’s campaign to intimidate the population had no moral limits. Figes tells of Pavlik Morozov, a teenager said to have been killed by older family members because he had denounced his father for selling false papers to kulaks living in nearby “special settlements.” (The kulaks were a category of so-called richer peasants who were regarded as the principal obstacle to collectivization.) The father was sentenced to a labor camp and later shot. After the boy’s death, the Soviet press created “a propaganda cult” around his case. Maxim Gorky called for a monument to be erected because the boy had “understood that a relative by blood may also be an enemy of the spirit, and that such a person is not to be spared.”[Stalin’s Children]

Similar to how Jihadis around the world worship Osama bin Laden people like Prakash Karat worship mass murderers like Lenin and Stalin and they get offended when the truth about them is told. Mr. Karat may hate George Bush, but at least the latter has his history right.

Faith and American Presidency

The first contested election in United States was the one of 1796 when the main contestants were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Jefferson lost the election as Adams portrayed him as secularist while painting himself as a man of faith. Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers, who was behind the separation of Church and State learned quickly and for the election of 1800 he changed his tactic.

Both political parties reached out to Christian voters. Federalists praised Adams’ public support for religious institutions; their opponents trumpeted Jefferson’s passion for religious liberty. Each side claimed its candidate was a Christian–or at least as good a Christian as the other guy. By all accounts, Evangelicals still voted overwhelmingly for Adams but not in sufficient numbers to overcome the popular surge for Jefferson’s party, which captured the presidency and both houses of Congress. Adams later blamed his defeat on fears that he was too tied to Evangelicals.[Declarations of Faith]

Faith, thus is an important part of American elections and every candidate makes sure that they assert their religious credentials — even the liberals.

Hilary Clinton’s devout Christianity has shaped her liberalism. She told New York Times that her Methodist faith has been “a huge part of who I am, and how I have seen the world and what I believe in, and what I have tried to do in my life.” She carries a Bible on her campaign travels and confidently quotes from St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley, the father of Methodism.

Another liberal, Barak Obama, proudly projects his Christianity and delivers many of his key campaign speeches before church congregations. It comes as a surprise to many secular Indians that the very liberal President Jimmy Carter describes himself as a Bible evangelist, and asserts that his Christian faith provided the moral compass to guide his presidency. [Was the US Senate Attack on Hinduism an isolated Instance?]

Misrepresenting the Founding Fathers

In United States the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was written by two Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, in 1779 and was passed by the Virginia General Assembly into law. The statute declared that the imposition of religion by government officials is impious. In the statue Jefferson also argued that the imposition of anything on a human mind is wrong and what a person thinks is no business of the government.

Jefferson was able to pass this statute at the Federal level, but various states had religious tests and established churches for a long time, but eventually they too saw the light and fell in line with the point of view of Madison and Jefferson. According to Garry Wills, historian and Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University, the Founding Fathers were deists who believed in creation, providence and after life. They did not believe that Jesus was divine and you could get things by praying for them

United States was not created as a Christian nation and when it was launched did not have an official cult or official religion. In fact that was the only new thing in the American Constitution since federalism, independent judiciary, bicameral legislature, and tripartite administration existed either in theory or practice. In England the King was the head of Church as well as the State, but United States had the separation of Church and State from the beginning and that was unprecedented for those times. Recently when the Dalai Lama was asked what he would do if he got control over Tibet he replied that he would enforce the separation of Church and State the American way.

Pandering to the Christian Right, Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain recently stated that United States was a Christian Nation. Looks like Sen. McCain needs to enroll for basic American history courses or read Head and Heart: American Christianities.

Judgement Day

Jesus was notorious for the company he kept. He ate with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes. In fact, this is one of the major criticisms Jesus’ opponents weighed against him. Just look up “sinners” and “tax collectors” in the Gospels, and you’ll be amazed how often this theme appears.

A careful look at the Gospel stories reveals something even more remarkable: in not one story does Jesus criticize these people — or even call them to repent. Instead, Jesus invited himself to share meals with them. He enjoyed their company, and he brought them blessing with his presence. It’s that simple. [Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers]

While prostitutes were looked down upon by the followers of Jesus, they were willing to tolerate them because they thought prostitution helped in curbing something they hated more – homosexuality. St. Augustine considered that the existence of prostitutes was essential in society to control lust.

In medieval Southern Europe women married early while men married late. The woman was expected to be a virgin and have relations only with the husband. Unmarried men had two options – homosexuality or prostitutes and the Church thought prostitutes were preferable. In fact the clergy were the main clients in English cathedral cities and towns with large religious houses and at Dijon one fifth of the clients were members of the clergy [Ward].

The Church had very retarded opinions at that time and you would think that in the year 2007 they would have caught up with the heliocentric world. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas belive that the death of American soldiers in Iraq are God’s punishment for tolerating homosexuality. So in an amazing display of compassion they picket military funerals holdings placards bearing slogans like ”Thank God for dead soldiers” and ”God hates fags.”

A jury has now asked this Church to pay about $ 11 million in damages to the parent of a marine killed in Iraq. This is called Judgement Day.