While at the park one day, a woman sat down next to a man on a bench near a playground. "That's my son over there," she said, pointing to a little boy in a red sweater who was gliding down the slide. "He's a fine looking boy" the man said. "That's my daughter on the bike in the white dress." Then, looking at his watch, he called to his daughter. "What do you say we go, Melissa?" Melissa pleaded, "Just five more minutes, Dad. Please? Just five more minutes." The man nodded and Melissa continued to ride her bike to her heart's content. Minutes passed and the father stood and called again to his daughter. "Time to go now?" Again Melissa pleaded, "Five more minutes, Dad. Just five more minutes." The man smiled and said, "OK." "My, you certainly are a patient father," the woman responded. The man smiled and then said, "Her older brother Tommy was killed by a drunk driver last year while he was riding his bike near here. I never spent much time with Tommy and now I'd give anything for just five more minutes with him. I've vowed not to make the same mistake with Melissa. She thinks she has five more minutes to ride her bike.
The truth is, I get Five more minutes to watch her play."
Life is all about making priorities, what are your priorities?
Give someone you love 5 more minutes of your time today!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Master is the Door
You are lost on the street. T here is rain, thunder, wind, and cold; you need shelter. You look
around and you find a door. You come to the door because it is more inviting, more charming, more joyful than anything out on the street. When you enter the door of the Master, you
come Home. You see the world from a new perspective. From inside you can still hear the
thunder and see the rain, but it no longer disturbs you. Inside there is warmth and security. The
world looks much more beautiful--not a nasty place, but a place filled with love, cooperation,
compassion. Your fear drops away.
When you can see the whole world through the eyes of the Master, it is a sign that you have
come to the Master; you have entered the door. This is the purpose of having a Master.
If you are still seeing the world as before, then you have not yet come to the Master; you are still
standing out in the street, cold and wet; you are only looking at the door, you have not yet entered in.
Question: What does it mean to “see through the eyes of the Master”?
Just this: Every situation that you face, you are thinking If this situation comes in front
of the Master, how would he handle it? If this complication comes to the Master, how would he take it? If someone blames the Master, what would he do? The key is to feel the Presence of the Master. The Master is the Presence, not a relationship. Relationships can be broken, mended, and broken again. There is craving and aversion in every relationship. This is the wheel of sansara, the misery of the world. All relationships go topsyturvy, whereas the Presence is vast, infinite, stable and centered.
Don’t make the Master a worldly relationship. “Oh, he looked at me.” “He didn’t look at me.”
“Oh, he said this.” “He didn’t say that.” “Somebody else is close; I am not close.” All this garbage comes into it. Just enter the door of the Master and come Home. Only the Presence of the Master will bring fulfillment to your life--and to all your relationships
...Sri Sri
These and many more things are taught at The Art Of Lving. This knowledge of "Presence instead of Relationship" can be applied to all of your problems, and mind it, it does help a lot. There is open messages and open knowledge here. No hidden messages to be deciphered. Everything is just in mind. The way people handle their situations, the way the things are assumed, all these change the effect of the situations on us.
Feeling the presence of a Guru, this is a very ancient Indian teaching, more lately being adapted by some non-Indian teachings also. The logic is simple. The uncouncious mind does connect to your Guru, when you require urgent help and find no other way out. You simply imagine the way your guru will be handling the situation and your problems are settled.
In the more recent additions to this technique it is suggested, that the guru can be assigned for different aspects of your problems. Like have a guru for your love life. Another guru for your office work. Your guru can be anyone. Either living or Dead. Either Younger or Elder. Either Relationship or Stranger. It is upto you to define the guru, and leave the situation in guru's hand. The guru will guide you through....
around and you find a door. You come to the door because it is more inviting, more charming, more joyful than anything out on the street. When you enter the door of the Master, you
come Home. You see the world from a new perspective. From inside you can still hear the
thunder and see the rain, but it no longer disturbs you. Inside there is warmth and security. The
world looks much more beautiful--not a nasty place, but a place filled with love, cooperation,
compassion. Your fear drops away.
When you can see the whole world through the eyes of the Master, it is a sign that you have
come to the Master; you have entered the door. This is the purpose of having a Master.
If you are still seeing the world as before, then you have not yet come to the Master; you are still
standing out in the street, cold and wet; you are only looking at the door, you have not yet entered in.
Question: What does it mean to “see through the eyes of the Master”?
Just this: Every situation that you face, you are thinking If this situation comes in front
of the Master, how would he handle it? If this complication comes to the Master, how would he take it? If someone blames the Master, what would he do? The key is to feel the Presence of the Master. The Master is the Presence, not a relationship. Relationships can be broken, mended, and broken again. There is craving and aversion in every relationship. This is the wheel of sansara, the misery of the world. All relationships go topsyturvy, whereas the Presence is vast, infinite, stable and centered.
Don’t make the Master a worldly relationship. “Oh, he looked at me.” “He didn’t look at me.”
“Oh, he said this.” “He didn’t say that.” “Somebody else is close; I am not close.” All this garbage comes into it. Just enter the door of the Master and come Home. Only the Presence of the Master will bring fulfillment to your life--and to all your relationships
...Sri Sri
These and many more things are taught at The Art Of Lving. This knowledge of "Presence instead of Relationship" can be applied to all of your problems, and mind it, it does help a lot. There is open messages and open knowledge here. No hidden messages to be deciphered. Everything is just in mind. The way people handle their situations, the way the things are assumed, all these change the effect of the situations on us.
Feeling the presence of a Guru, this is a very ancient Indian teaching, more lately being adapted by some non-Indian teachings also. The logic is simple. The uncouncious mind does connect to your Guru, when you require urgent help and find no other way out. You simply imagine the way your guru will be handling the situation and your problems are settled.
In the more recent additions to this technique it is suggested, that the guru can be assigned for different aspects of your problems. Like have a guru for your love life. Another guru for your office work. Your guru can be anyone. Either living or Dead. Either Younger or Elder. Either Relationship or Stranger. It is upto you to define the guru, and leave the situation in guru's hand. The guru will guide you through....
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Bangalore Blast. It was today...
It is Friday (July 25, 2008) today, and it is my turn for the vehicle pooling.
As always I am awake at 6.20 am. Didi is already done with the dishes and about to get ready to prepare the lunch for my nephew, me and her. Jijaji always has his lunch at office itself. She is cooking dal and roti. By 7.45am lunch boxes are ready and didi is about to leave. I am still doing my daily yoga and jijaji is helping my nephew to get ready for school. Today I make my own lunch. I don’t want to take dal for office lunch. I made sweet rice for lunch and planning what all features I can add to an ordinary project for the client. My vehicle partner calls up and says that he just woke up and is getting ready (Pretty usual stuff for him to get up late and get late).
Everything is as usual. No change in the situation. No change in the lives.
We both get onto my bike and start off to our office. Today we are taking the service road towards our office to bypass the usual traffic jam at the junction near our house. We reach our office before time. I start working upon the project. I start doing multi-tasking: I start reading news on my google reader using mozilla firefox. Till then my outlook opens up and I start catching up with my friends using IMO. And before I get to know, it’s already time to lunch at 1pm.
Me and my friends start having our lunch. We are catching up the live action of cricket: India-Sri Lanka Test match. We are speculating what will be the final score Sri Lanka will pose for India to achieve? This is amongst are normal time pass while having lunch. We discuss about lots of things for whiling away the time, totally unaware of what lies ahead in time for the people of Bangalore. For us. For the world. Everyone unaware of the things to happen for the day.
Everything is as usual. No change in the situation. No change in the lives.
We all come back at our seats. Unaware of the welcome mail already present in my mailbox. The mail was:
Urgent Alert, bomb blasts in Bangalore.
Today at 1.30 pm 3 blasts occurred at Mysore Road, Adugodi, and Forum. Employees are requested to stay calm and within the company premises.
It was a mail from my friend, he had forwarded the mail from his office. I thought he was just kidding. I thought this could not happen in Bangalore atleast. I dismissed the mail as a prank. But then immediately there was a pop-up on my web communicator. My colleague just said that something has happened in Bangalore. I immediately opened up the google search page and checked: “Bomb blasts Bangalore”. It didnt gave search result relevant to this. I thought it must be another hoax. Then people started entering my office bay and all were on their mobile phones. Tensed. Perplexed. Astonished. I thought has this really happened?
I asked them “What has happened? Why are you so tensed?” they said “Hey! Don’t you know? There are bomb blasts in Bangalore. Where are you dude?” I suggested lets immediately go to canteen to check the news on the TV. We are going to the canteen, on the way more people are joining us. All of us are thinking what has happened? How big is the explosion? How many have exploded? Till we reached to the canteen, there are two more blasts reported. Within 15 minutes there are more reported blasts within the city.
Everything is as un-usual. Total change in the situation. Many changes in the lives.
This was the first time I was hearing the blasts in the city in which I live. Never had I, before, heard this kind of incident. I was looking at the people’s faces. I felt the fear, anger, amazement and the bag of emotions which I hadn’t imagined. People started receiving calls asking for their wellness. Some people were terrified and angry as their calls were not getting connected to their friends, relatives. Their FAMILY. The networks were jammed to stop the rumor mongerers. The people started analyzing the situation and deducting the person/ organization who could conduct such kind of act. Everyone was immersed in the situation.
8 blasts, 1 death with 8 injured. The blasts were mild blasts using gelatin and some hurting stuff. Today was an unusual day.
I have experienced many cities. All the cities have been calm and quite. This city being IT capital, the Silicon City of Asia, had all the ingredients and the attractions for a terror strike. Ahh, “TERROR STRIKE”. People associate this quoted word sentence to only the North-East India or the Kashmir. Rest of the Indian peninsular region being quite and calm. Then why has such kind of attack on the Indian IT capital? Many theories are doing the round in my mind. Is it to show that the terrorists are still present in India, to warn the government “Beware, we are still here”. Or was it a precursor to something heavier, more deadly. Or was it just to show to government the terrorists striking power, the immaculate timing of the blasts?
But then immediately I got a phone call on my cell. It was from my friend from Goa, who is doing his MBA. He was concerned. I was thinking should I say him the truth about the vicinity of location to my residence, or to say that the location was very far. The truth was the location is quite near and I was planning to go that place on Saturday. But telling him that would have not done any good. He would be more sorry than happy. I didn’t not say that the reported death too, was at the same location which is near to my residence. I told him, “Hey everything is alright. Didi is at home, nephew too is on his way back. The school is in other direction than the blasts ites. Jijaji is in office. I am in office.” He also wanted to check with our another friend in bangalore. She is married and lives with her husband and brother-in-law. I called her up. The call didn’t get through. I called again, then again, and finally got through. She picked it up quite late. My first sentence “Are you OK?”. To my amazement she said, she is in Pune. She has gone there to see off his brother-in-law to US. I was thankful that she was in Pune. Then I immediately sent an sms to jijaji asking about how the things are at his side? He said he was ok. Then I called up my cousin who is in the same office as Jijaji. She too was in office itself.
Finally the canteen got a bit emptied and employees had started going back to their workstations. Till evening a warning was announced on the PA system, not to leave the office and the cabs will be arranged. The Bangalore traffic conditions was bad. Everyone was heading towards their home, to get along with their family, to be together. There was huge traffic jam. Me and my pool partner decided to leave late. Till then we thought of doing our project work.
Everything is usual. Total change in the situation. Many changes in the lives.
Later while riding back to home, I was thinking, has this incident did any change in life? Did it affect the way I think? Did it affect me? Or Did it affect anyone?
Is it resilience of the people to take up this kind of incidence or is it indifference?
Are the people really affected by such kind of things? I feel people are getting used to such kind of incidence. People do not feel the attachment towards other. There is no affection left. But the immediately what counter convinces this thing is, even if I feel affectionate to those affected by the incidence, what change can I bring in their lives. There is no way I can help them with my meager resources. If I give it to the government, will there be no corruption to suck up my helping money? Will my help money reach the needy? Will there be any difference made with my donated amount?
People keep swinging between these extremes and do not settle on any thought as their final ideology. There is a group of people who want to help, another group who is indifferent towards all the incidents and there is another group who want to cash in from the helping hands. There are 10 answers and 100 questions to be answered. This imbalance doesn’t help anyone. And finally……
Everything is usual. No change in the situation. No change in the lives.
The ultimate reality remains is:
In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once.
As always I am awake at 6.20 am. Didi is already done with the dishes and about to get ready to prepare the lunch for my nephew, me and her. Jijaji always has his lunch at office itself. She is cooking dal and roti. By 7.45am lunch boxes are ready and didi is about to leave. I am still doing my daily yoga and jijaji is helping my nephew to get ready for school. Today I make my own lunch. I don’t want to take dal for office lunch. I made sweet rice for lunch and planning what all features I can add to an ordinary project for the client. My vehicle partner calls up and says that he just woke up and is getting ready (Pretty usual stuff for him to get up late and get late).
Everything is as usual. No change in the situation. No change in the lives.
We both get onto my bike and start off to our office. Today we are taking the service road towards our office to bypass the usual traffic jam at the junction near our house. We reach our office before time. I start working upon the project. I start doing multi-tasking: I start reading news on my google reader using mozilla firefox. Till then my outlook opens up and I start catching up with my friends using IMO. And before I get to know, it’s already time to lunch at 1pm.
Me and my friends start having our lunch. We are catching up the live action of cricket: India-Sri Lanka Test match. We are speculating what will be the final score Sri Lanka will pose for India to achieve? This is amongst are normal time pass while having lunch. We discuss about lots of things for whiling away the time, totally unaware of what lies ahead in time for the people of Bangalore. For us. For the world. Everyone unaware of the things to happen for the day.
Everything is as usual. No change in the situation. No change in the lives.
We all come back at our seats. Unaware of the welcome mail already present in my mailbox. The mail was:
Urgent Alert, bomb blasts in Bangalore.
Today at 1.30 pm 3 blasts occurred at Mysore Road, Adugodi, and Forum. Employees are requested to stay calm and within the company premises.
It was a mail from my friend, he had forwarded the mail from his office. I thought he was just kidding. I thought this could not happen in Bangalore atleast. I dismissed the mail as a prank. But then immediately there was a pop-up on my web communicator. My colleague just said that something has happened in Bangalore. I immediately opened up the google search page and checked: “Bomb blasts Bangalore”. It didnt gave search result relevant to this. I thought it must be another hoax. Then people started entering my office bay and all were on their mobile phones. Tensed. Perplexed. Astonished. I thought has this really happened?
I asked them “What has happened? Why are you so tensed?” they said “Hey! Don’t you know? There are bomb blasts in Bangalore. Where are you dude?” I suggested lets immediately go to canteen to check the news on the TV. We are going to the canteen, on the way more people are joining us. All of us are thinking what has happened? How big is the explosion? How many have exploded? Till we reached to the canteen, there are two more blasts reported. Within 15 minutes there are more reported blasts within the city.
Everything is as un-usual. Total change in the situation. Many changes in the lives.
This was the first time I was hearing the blasts in the city in which I live. Never had I, before, heard this kind of incident. I was looking at the people’s faces. I felt the fear, anger, amazement and the bag of emotions which I hadn’t imagined. People started receiving calls asking for their wellness. Some people were terrified and angry as their calls were not getting connected to their friends, relatives. Their FAMILY. The networks were jammed to stop the rumor mongerers. The people started analyzing the situation and deducting the person/ organization who could conduct such kind of act. Everyone was immersed in the situation.
8 blasts, 1 death with 8 injured. The blasts were mild blasts using gelatin and some hurting stuff. Today was an unusual day.
I have experienced many cities. All the cities have been calm and quite. This city being IT capital, the Silicon City of Asia, had all the ingredients and the attractions for a terror strike. Ahh, “TERROR STRIKE”. People associate this quoted word sentence to only the North-East India or the Kashmir. Rest of the Indian peninsular region being quite and calm. Then why has such kind of attack on the Indian IT capital? Many theories are doing the round in my mind. Is it to show that the terrorists are still present in India, to warn the government “Beware, we are still here”. Or was it a precursor to something heavier, more deadly. Or was it just to show to government the terrorists striking power, the immaculate timing of the blasts?
But then immediately I got a phone call on my cell. It was from my friend from Goa, who is doing his MBA. He was concerned. I was thinking should I say him the truth about the vicinity of location to my residence, or to say that the location was very far. The truth was the location is quite near and I was planning to go that place on Saturday. But telling him that would have not done any good. He would be more sorry than happy. I didn’t not say that the reported death too, was at the same location which is near to my residence. I told him, “Hey everything is alright. Didi is at home, nephew too is on his way back. The school is in other direction than the blasts ites. Jijaji is in office. I am in office.” He also wanted to check with our another friend in bangalore. She is married and lives with her husband and brother-in-law. I called her up. The call didn’t get through. I called again, then again, and finally got through. She picked it up quite late. My first sentence “Are you OK?”. To my amazement she said, she is in Pune. She has gone there to see off his brother-in-law to US. I was thankful that she was in Pune. Then I immediately sent an sms to jijaji asking about how the things are at his side? He said he was ok. Then I called up my cousin who is in the same office as Jijaji. She too was in office itself.
Finally the canteen got a bit emptied and employees had started going back to their workstations. Till evening a warning was announced on the PA system, not to leave the office and the cabs will be arranged. The Bangalore traffic conditions was bad. Everyone was heading towards their home, to get along with their family, to be together. There was huge traffic jam. Me and my pool partner decided to leave late. Till then we thought of doing our project work.
Everything is usual. Total change in the situation. Many changes in the lives.
Later while riding back to home, I was thinking, has this incident did any change in life? Did it affect the way I think? Did it affect me? Or Did it affect anyone?
Is it resilience of the people to take up this kind of incidence or is it indifference?
Are the people really affected by such kind of things? I feel people are getting used to such kind of incidence. People do not feel the attachment towards other. There is no affection left. But the immediately what counter convinces this thing is, even if I feel affectionate to those affected by the incidence, what change can I bring in their lives. There is no way I can help them with my meager resources. If I give it to the government, will there be no corruption to suck up my helping money? Will my help money reach the needy? Will there be any difference made with my donated amount?
People keep swinging between these extremes and do not settle on any thought as their final ideology. There is a group of people who want to help, another group who is indifferent towards all the incidents and there is another group who want to cash in from the helping hands. There are 10 answers and 100 questions to be answered. This imbalance doesn’t help anyone. And finally……
Everything is usual. No change in the situation. No change in the lives.
The ultimate reality remains is:
In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Money Drain
Last week I received a mail speaking about how our country loses its money by buying the foreign products. Below are few statements out of the mail.
Indian economy is in a crisis. Our country like many other Asian countries is undergoing a severe economic crunch. Many Indian industries are closing down. The Indian economy is in a crisis and if we do not take proper steps to control those, we will be in a critical situation. More than 30000 crore rupees of foreign exchange are being siphoned out of our country on products such as cosmetics, snacks, tea, beverages...etc which are grown, produced and consumed here . A cold drink that costs only 70 / 80 paisa to produce is sold for nine rupees, and a major chunk of profits from these are sent abroad. This is a serious drain on indian economy. "coca cola "and" sprite " belong to the same multinational company, "coca cola"? Cant you consider some of the better alternatives to aerated drinks. You can drink lemon juice, fresh fruit juices, chilled lassi (sweet or sour), butter milk, coconut water, jaljeera, enerjee, masala milk..........Everyone deserves a healthy drink, including you!
Over and above all this, economic sanctions have been imposed on us. We have nothing against multinational companies, but to protect our own interests we request everybody to use indian products only for next two years. With the rise in petrol prices, if we do not do this, the rupee will devalue further and we will end up paying much more for the same products in the near future.
What you can do about it?
1. Buy only products manufactured by wholly indian companies.
2. Enroll as many people as possible for this cause.
Each individual should become a leader for this awareness.
This is the only way to save our country from severe economic crisis. You don't need to give-up your lifestyle. You just need to choose an alternate product.
List of products provided by Indian companies
1. Bathing soap:
Use - cinthol & other godrej brands, santoor, wipro shikakai, mysore sandal, margo, neem, evita, medimix, ganga , nirma bath & chandrika
Instead of - lux, lifeboy, rexona, liril, dove, pears, hamam, lesancy, camay, palmolive
2. Tooth paste:
Use - neem, babool, promise, vico vajradanti, prudent, dabur products, miswak
Instead of - colgate, close up, pepsodent, cibaca, forhans, mentadent .
3. Tooth brush:
Use - prudent, ajanta , promise
Instead of - colgate, close up, pepsodent, forhans, oral-b
4. Shaving cream:
Use - godrej, emani
Instead of - palmolive, old spice, gillete
5. Milk powder:
Use - indiana , amul, amulya
Instead of - anikspray, milkana, everyday milk, milkmaid.
6. Mobile connections
Use - bsnl, airtel
Instead of - hutch
It did seemed logical & horrifying.
Logical because these things do actually happen and there is lot of truth involved in it. The foreign multinationals get huge sums of profit by selling their products on a royalty. People here just become the followers of the leader. What is actually required is that we should rise above the situation in creating an Indian Leader like the Tata’s to whom the foreign companies will follow. In India, people just “like” to read about it and don’t actually “do” anything about it. Their conscience is satiated by reading these things and they feel they have contributed. The actual way to contribute is not by thinking alone. There must be some action associated to what your thoughts are.
Horrifying, because this is the situation for the Indians for the past 2000 years. There is no change at all. The Indian kings and the politicians have always been retroactive. Look at all the big battles drawn on the Indian soil, all the attacks been targeted on the India. The attackers from the north have taken so much gold from here. Mohammad Ghouri had attacked India four times and every time he had taken all the gold and the riches from the Indian emperors. Indians had never disappointed him and neither did to the British.
Even though we had the capability to rise again from the downfall we never rose to the occasion of actually invading other countries and bringing back our gold. We were the people who believed in self content. We had never conquered any territory outside the mainland India. Except King Ashoka others were happy fighting amongst themselves for the ultimate power. King Ashoka had established a lot of territories under his kingdom.
Understandings from the past history leads us to another point of concern is the way we live our lives. Do we Indians actually dream of becoming big in world picture? Answering to this question some people might start thinking what is this question? Aren’t we going ahead in the terms of buyouts of the foreign companies? I would ask then, whether is this question ever struck to them to make something big in their lives? Just a handful of industrialists are paving their ways to get ahead. But look at the companies they are acquiring. The resident government of their home country is making it a point that the already employed people and not rendered un-employed, i.e. their jobs are not moved to India. But is there such kind of thinking available on the Indian soil? Are the politicians actually concerned about the development and money drain? The other countries make it a point that their countries money is not siphoned off.
So let us make it a point to contribute towards the wellness of our country. Let us buy foreign currencies at the rate as they are buying our currencies. Lets have
1 Rs = 45 US $
1 Rs = 33 CAN $
Etc….
Indian economy is in a crisis. Our country like many other Asian countries is undergoing a severe economic crunch. Many Indian industries are closing down. The Indian economy is in a crisis and if we do not take proper steps to control those, we will be in a critical situation. More than 30000 crore rupees of foreign exchange are being siphoned out of our country on products such as cosmetics, snacks, tea, beverages...etc which are grown, produced and consumed here . A cold drink that costs only 70 / 80 paisa to produce is sold for nine rupees, and a major chunk of profits from these are sent abroad. This is a serious drain on indian economy. "coca cola "and" sprite " belong to the same multinational company, "coca cola"? Cant you consider some of the better alternatives to aerated drinks. You can drink lemon juice, fresh fruit juices, chilled lassi (sweet or sour), butter milk, coconut water, jaljeera, enerjee, masala milk..........Everyone deserves a healthy drink, including you!
Over and above all this, economic sanctions have been imposed on us. We have nothing against multinational companies, but to protect our own interests we request everybody to use indian products only for next two years. With the rise in petrol prices, if we do not do this, the rupee will devalue further and we will end up paying much more for the same products in the near future.
What you can do about it?
1. Buy only products manufactured by wholly indian companies.
2. Enroll as many people as possible for this cause.
Each individual should become a leader for this awareness.
This is the only way to save our country from severe economic crisis. You don't need to give-up your lifestyle. You just need to choose an alternate product.
List of products provided by Indian companies
1. Bathing soap:
Use - cinthol & other godrej brands, santoor, wipro shikakai, mysore sandal, margo, neem, evita, medimix, ganga , nirma bath & chandrika
Instead of - lux, lifeboy, rexona, liril, dove, pears, hamam, lesancy, camay, palmolive
2. Tooth paste:
Use - neem, babool, promise, vico vajradanti, prudent, dabur products, miswak
Instead of - colgate, close up, pepsodent, cibaca, forhans, mentadent .
3. Tooth brush:
Use - prudent, ajanta , promise
Instead of - colgate, close up, pepsodent, forhans, oral-b
4. Shaving cream:
Use - godrej, emani
Instead of - palmolive, old spice, gillete
5. Milk powder:
Use - indiana , amul, amulya
Instead of - anikspray, milkana, everyday milk, milkmaid.
6. Mobile connections
Use - bsnl, airtel
Instead of - hutch
It did seemed logical & horrifying.
Logical because these things do actually happen and there is lot of truth involved in it. The foreign multinationals get huge sums of profit by selling their products on a royalty. People here just become the followers of the leader. What is actually required is that we should rise above the situation in creating an Indian Leader like the Tata’s to whom the foreign companies will follow. In India, people just “like” to read about it and don’t actually “do” anything about it. Their conscience is satiated by reading these things and they feel they have contributed. The actual way to contribute is not by thinking alone. There must be some action associated to what your thoughts are.
Horrifying, because this is the situation for the Indians for the past 2000 years. There is no change at all. The Indian kings and the politicians have always been retroactive. Look at all the big battles drawn on the Indian soil, all the attacks been targeted on the India. The attackers from the north have taken so much gold from here. Mohammad Ghouri had attacked India four times and every time he had taken all the gold and the riches from the Indian emperors. Indians had never disappointed him and neither did to the British.
Even though we had the capability to rise again from the downfall we never rose to the occasion of actually invading other countries and bringing back our gold. We were the people who believed in self content. We had never conquered any territory outside the mainland India. Except King Ashoka others were happy fighting amongst themselves for the ultimate power. King Ashoka had established a lot of territories under his kingdom.
Understandings from the past history leads us to another point of concern is the way we live our lives. Do we Indians actually dream of becoming big in world picture? Answering to this question some people might start thinking what is this question? Aren’t we going ahead in the terms of buyouts of the foreign companies? I would ask then, whether is this question ever struck to them to make something big in their lives? Just a handful of industrialists are paving their ways to get ahead. But look at the companies they are acquiring. The resident government of their home country is making it a point that the already employed people and not rendered un-employed, i.e. their jobs are not moved to India. But is there such kind of thinking available on the Indian soil? Are the politicians actually concerned about the development and money drain? The other countries make it a point that their countries money is not siphoned off.
So let us make it a point to contribute towards the wellness of our country. Let us buy foreign currencies at the rate as they are buying our currencies. Lets have
1 Rs = 45 US $
1 Rs = 33 CAN $
Etc….
Thursday, July 17, 2008
World Economic Crisis - Thanks America
We saw last week that our economic crisis is driven primarily by the global economic crisis that in turn is driven by the upward spiralling price of oil and the downward spiralling value of the dollar. The third crisis, which for us is at least as great, is the global food crisis. This last should suit America because it will make food dependent countries even more dependent while it will still retain enough strength to feed the vast majority of its own people. For us the food crisis should be much less acute than the oil and dollar crises because we are principally a food-growing country with the capacity to easily feed our own people, while the other two crises are totally out of our control. We are their helpless hostages.
When the world recession of the Nineties started, it used to be said that, “He who has cash is king.” Today, because cash is increasingly losing value (purchasing power) at an alarming rate, the wisdom is: “He who has land is king.” Or should be if he has any sense. This is true both for individuals and states. By that measure, we are a very lucky and wealthy country. The USSR with the world’s mightiest military machine laced with 32,000 nuclear warheads collapsed because it couldn’t feed its own people.
To simply accept the contention that the global food crisis is caused only by too much land being allocated to producing crops that produce the petroleum substitute biofuel ethanol is to be simplistic in the extreme. High food prices are also driven by high petroleum prices. Where do you think the farmer gets electricity from that runs his pump to water his fields? What do you think runs his tractors and harvesters, the trucks on which his produce is transported from farm to market? High oil prices mean higher electricity costs, or even inadequate electricity as we now have. What happens then? We end up with food too expensive to buy or even scarce, probably both, as we also now have. It all goes back to oil and its price, not to mention distribution and greed-driven hoarding. We have to make a doable plan immediately to use our energy resources in the most efficient and optimum manner to overcome energy shortfalls both in terms of quantity and price.Europe alone is sitting on proverbial “lakes of wine and mountains of butter.” Why not put all this food into the markets of the poor? It all has to do with Control without Responsibility, America’s latest doctrine. America knows what it is doing, not just regarding food but also oil. They had the decline of the dollar under control too, until China stepped in. The tragedy is that we do not know what they are doing and we do not know what we are doing.
The initial fall of the dollar was deliberately targeted to reduce the trade imbalance between America and China. America had the internal strength to withstand the fallout or so it assumed, forgetting how indebted it is and to whom and that it has neither the output levels nor the pricing of oil totally under its control. The US had been asking China for years to revalue the Yuan, which it thinks is artificially undervalued. When China did not the US decided to devalue the dollar instead, but it was a managed devaluation, nothing to go hysterical about. Then two things happened to make the US lose some control, enough to make a difference: China decided to sell some of the US debt that it holds and Iran set-up its Euro-denominated Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB) on May 5. This knocked the wind out of the dollar.America is the most indebted country in the world. On June 3, 2008 at 9:04:07 GMT its national debt stood at $9,477,171,636,632.85. That, I think, is just under $9.5 trillion! Which means that at the same time and date each US citizen was indebted to the tune of $30,890.69. Considering that the poverty line in America is $18,500 per annum, an American owes nearly twice as much as the income of the 10 percent Americans or over 30 million human beings that live in abject poverty in the richest country in history. These are the joys of market forces capitalism for you. The US national debt has been growing at the rate of $1.55 billion per day since September 28, 2007.
Gandhi was right: “There’s enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
The US debt would still have been manageable if it had been indebted to itself. America forgot how indebted it is to China before needling it. China is the world’s largest investor in US Treasury bills, bonds and securities ($400 billion in US T-Bills alone) and holds more US debt than any other country (a staggering 40 percent) except Japan. In addition, it holds a huge reserve of US dollars because its currency, like ours, is tied to the dollar. When a country has you by where it hurts most, you do not needle it lightly. Around mid-April China fired a shot across America’s bow when Xiu Jian, Vice Director of the Bank of China, the country’s central bank, said that it is considering shifting a major portion of its national currency reserve of $1.4 trillion into “more stable” currencies. The dollar took a nosedive and fell to record lows the lowest ever against the Euro, the lowest in a generation against the Sterling and the lowest in 57 years against the Canadian dollar. China fired another shot across America’s bow by divesting 50 percent of its $400 billion US T-Bills to establish a $200 billion fund to help diversify its holdings in equities and stocks around the world. China wisely stopped because the USA is also its largest trading partner (that is where America has clout over it and most other countries) and killing the goose that lays golden eggs would have meant China killing itself.
Europe, however, couldn’t avoid the fallout as high Euro and Sterling values started eroding its exports alarmingly while it becomes too expensive to breathe in. A lot of EU exports are shifting from Europe to China.However, don’t forget that if America was not the cleverest country in the world because of its knowledge bank, the largest there is, it would not be in the position of primacy that it is in. To imagine that China can destroy the dollar simply by selling its debt and holdings is to be naive. America is not going to take this lying down. It could demonetise. It could force the price of oil so high that China’s economy goes into reverse gear. Or it could simply revert to the gold standard that it left in 1971 and which is the source of much of the world currency crisis because it exposed the illusion of paper money backed by itself as the mirage that it really is not worth the paper it is printed on. If all currencies are worth so many dollars, what is the dollar worth? Hot air? It became oil, but that is de facto, therefore no total control. I wonder whether the price of gold has shot up only because people find it a safer investment bet in today’s uncertainty or because the US is also quietly busy buying up gold just in case it has to go back to the gold standard and leave the rest of the world in the lurch.
Next week the Iran Bourse will open to trade oil, not in dollars but in Euros. The Iranian Oil Bourse (OIB) was registered on May 5 this year. The consequences are horrendous: with the dollar no longer the sole currency with which to trade oil, its credibility as the benchmark has weakened gravely and thrown all world currencies into a tailspin either crashing in value making essential imports unsustainable or increasing in value reducing their exports drastically causing huge trade deficits, as with Europe. There has been a run on non-oil producing Third World currencies as capital flight continues unabated. That is why soft currencies are weakening against all hard currencies while non-dollar hard currencies are strengthening.The fall in the dollar’s value was one of the triggers of the oil price rise.
Three other triggers contributed heavily too:
the greed-driven speculation of oil brokers and hedge funds,
the Iraq war and
the new Iranian oil bourse that caused a further decline in the dollar, raising oil prices even more, like a self-sustaining upward spiral.
Now add a fourth trigger: the increasing probability of some kind of strike against Iran.
Estimates are that the Iraq war alone trebled the cost of oil. By May the world had spent an extra $6 trillion on higher energy prices alone since the Iraq war. Else the price would have been $40 even less but for greedy speculators and hedge funds. Oil has been trading on two dollar-denominated oil bourses, NYMEX and IPE, both privately owned by US citizens. They play a huge role in determining crude oil prices. The New York Mercantile Exchange Inc (NYMEX) was established more than 135 years ago. London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), now Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), was established in 1980. NYMEX “pioneered the development of energy futures and options contracts in 1978 as [a] means of bringing price transparency and risk management to this vital market.”
This is precisely what opened the door to greed-driven speculation that has driven the price of crude unnaturally high. “IPE is one of the world’s largest energy futures and options exchanges. Its flagship commodity, Brent Crude, is a world benchmark for oil prices…” Brent is British North Sea, not OPEC.This kept the demand for the dollar high as oil producers were paid in dollars that they invested in western, particularly American, banks, stocks, bonds, real estate, in bailing out US corporations (like Saudi Prince Al Waleed once did Citibank and recently the UAE did) and buying billions of dollars worth of useless armaments. It was also necessary for oil-importing countries to have huge dollar reserves to buy oil. But when on May 5 Iran registered its Euro-denominated IOB in competition with the dollar-denominated NYMEX and IPE, and many countries supported it, the dollar took more beating.This requires some explaining. Iran did this to break free from the tyranny of the dollar. Russia and Europe welcomed the Iranian oil bourse because 70 percent of Europe’s oil is imported from Iran. The two most oil-hungry nations growing hungrier by the day, China and India, also said that they were very interested. Now you see why Iran’s president is “the most dangerous man in the world?” It has nothing to do with the damned nuclear bomb. It has to do with the detonation of the oil bomb that has detonated the dollar bomb.
For America this is war, literally, because having left the Gold Standard in 1971 it had, de facto, made oil the commodity on which the dollar is based by ensuring that oil is sold mostly in dollars. (When Saddam said in April 2002 that he was considering selling some Iraqi oil in Euros he signed his death warrant). Came the decline in the dollar came the decline in the value (purchasing power) of oil revenues as well as OPEC’s dollar-based assets. Oil-exporting countries started thinking in terms of selling some oil in Euros. This would put the dollar even more on the skids. President Bush’s first Middle East trip this year, ostensibly a “peace mission”, was actually to deliver what Mike Whitney calls “the horse’s head” (as in the film, The Godfather). “Bush went to the trouble of travelling half-way around the world to tell the Saudis and their friends in the Gulf States that they were going to continue linking their oil to the dollar or they were going to “sleep with the fishes.”Why did the Arab countries say that they might shift partly to Euro? With the fall in the dollar’s value, OPEC saw the real value of its oil, its dollar surpluses and dollar holdings decline too. Since oil has largely been sold in dollars through NYMEX and IPE, oil sellers put their hordes of surplus “petrodollars” in US banks, real estate and other investments. But now the dollar’s decline has made selling in dollars no longer as valuable as it was. While buying in dollars means that oil-importing countries have to have many more dollars to buy the same amount of oil because not only has the oil price kept rising, its price has also gone up with the erosion of Third World currencies (as has their foreign debt). Oil import bills have doubled and trebled since the oil price rise started, making a mess of national trade balances.
When recently Saudi Arabia announced a small increase in oil output, crude prices should have fallen. Contrarily, they went up instead, underlining the influence of greedy speculators and manipulative hedge funds. Plus the probable attack on Iran. However, Saudi Arabia didn’t say it would increase oil output because of US pressure but for the obvious reason that, like China, its doesn’t wish to kill the geese that lay golden eggs for the oil-producing countries. There is more. Saudi Arabia has not forgotten the lesson from the famous oil price hike of 1973: don’t take the price of oil so high that alternative energy sources become viable. When oil goes beyond $150, American shale oil, heavy crude and Canada’s Calgary oil sands will variously become viable. So will solar power. Once they tap these resources, what then? Plus one cannot rule out the bizarre possibility that Saudi Arabia has been told that Iran will soon be attacked. That would leave Goldman Sachs’ prediction of oil at $200 by year’s end far behind and drive its price up beyond imagination, leading to a global economic meltdown. Better to start reducing prices now by increasing output than wait for the possible fallout.
However, this last is only conjecture and will always sound fanciful until it actually happens.
The only way America can strengthen the dollar is by creating a trade surplus. IMPOSSIBLE.
That would mean reducing their workers to near-slavery to compete with Chinese wages and other inputs. What will happen in the US? Chaos for sure. Maybe a workers revolution, but looking at the situation as it is now, it is more likely to be a re-run of Germany post-1929, and some form of an extreme right wing movement will emerge.
The romantic socialist notion of a “workers revolution” aside, there is a point here. The Great Depression of the 1930s caused a rightward swing in Germany and led to the emergence of the Nazis. Yes, America is a democracy because its system works for it, but democracy is fragile. It doesn’t take much adversity to derail it.Before you get too excited, let me caution you that the assumption that that America will suddenly collapse is wishful thinking. It is we who are more likely to collapse, at least before America does.
Sure history is witness to the fall of many civilisations, empires and superpowers. They all collapsed because they ran out of intellectual steam that led to decadence and internal contradictions. Only Britain’s was a managed withdrawal from empire. But America is not the Soviet Union. It is a country crafted by consensus, not force. Its people are proud to be Americans, not sullen like the Soviets were. It is based on the ideals of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The USSR was based on an unworkable and increasingly inhuman Leninist-Stalinist totalitarianism. America is dynamic, not decadent. The American Declaration of Independence is one of the greatest pieces of writings by man.
In contrast, Lenin’s voluminous works read like a dirge. The first three words of The Declaration of Independence “We the people” bring a lump to the throat because they say it all. Today America is so far ahead in knowledge of all kinds, especially in the sciences, that no country has a chance of catching up unless America loses its great ideals. The problem with America is that it does not accept the right of others to practice those same ideals if it does not consider the outcome to be in its interest or if it threatens its hegemony. Yes, China, Russia and Germany will soon acquire polarity too, but the magnetism of the American pole will still be the greatest because America has primacy over all fours sources of global power -- knowledge, communications, finance and military. China, Russia and Germany have strengths in only one or two, not all four. That’s the difference
When the world recession of the Nineties started, it used to be said that, “He who has cash is king.” Today, because cash is increasingly losing value (purchasing power) at an alarming rate, the wisdom is: “He who has land is king.” Or should be if he has any sense. This is true both for individuals and states. By that measure, we are a very lucky and wealthy country. The USSR with the world’s mightiest military machine laced with 32,000 nuclear warheads collapsed because it couldn’t feed its own people.
To simply accept the contention that the global food crisis is caused only by too much land being allocated to producing crops that produce the petroleum substitute biofuel ethanol is to be simplistic in the extreme. High food prices are also driven by high petroleum prices. Where do you think the farmer gets electricity from that runs his pump to water his fields? What do you think runs his tractors and harvesters, the trucks on which his produce is transported from farm to market? High oil prices mean higher electricity costs, or even inadequate electricity as we now have. What happens then? We end up with food too expensive to buy or even scarce, probably both, as we also now have. It all goes back to oil and its price, not to mention distribution and greed-driven hoarding. We have to make a doable plan immediately to use our energy resources in the most efficient and optimum manner to overcome energy shortfalls both in terms of quantity and price.Europe alone is sitting on proverbial “lakes of wine and mountains of butter.” Why not put all this food into the markets of the poor? It all has to do with Control without Responsibility, America’s latest doctrine. America knows what it is doing, not just regarding food but also oil. They had the decline of the dollar under control too, until China stepped in. The tragedy is that we do not know what they are doing and we do not know what we are doing.
The initial fall of the dollar was deliberately targeted to reduce the trade imbalance between America and China. America had the internal strength to withstand the fallout or so it assumed, forgetting how indebted it is and to whom and that it has neither the output levels nor the pricing of oil totally under its control. The US had been asking China for years to revalue the Yuan, which it thinks is artificially undervalued. When China did not the US decided to devalue the dollar instead, but it was a managed devaluation, nothing to go hysterical about. Then two things happened to make the US lose some control, enough to make a difference: China decided to sell some of the US debt that it holds and Iran set-up its Euro-denominated Iranian Oil Bourse (IOB) on May 5. This knocked the wind out of the dollar.America is the most indebted country in the world. On June 3, 2008 at 9:04:07 GMT its national debt stood at $9,477,171,636,632.85. That, I think, is just under $9.5 trillion! Which means that at the same time and date each US citizen was indebted to the tune of $30,890.69. Considering that the poverty line in America is $18,500 per annum, an American owes nearly twice as much as the income of the 10 percent Americans or over 30 million human beings that live in abject poverty in the richest country in history. These are the joys of market forces capitalism for you. The US national debt has been growing at the rate of $1.55 billion per day since September 28, 2007.
Gandhi was right: “There’s enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
The US debt would still have been manageable if it had been indebted to itself. America forgot how indebted it is to China before needling it. China is the world’s largest investor in US Treasury bills, bonds and securities ($400 billion in US T-Bills alone) and holds more US debt than any other country (a staggering 40 percent) except Japan. In addition, it holds a huge reserve of US dollars because its currency, like ours, is tied to the dollar. When a country has you by where it hurts most, you do not needle it lightly. Around mid-April China fired a shot across America’s bow when Xiu Jian, Vice Director of the Bank of China, the country’s central bank, said that it is considering shifting a major portion of its national currency reserve of $1.4 trillion into “more stable” currencies. The dollar took a nosedive and fell to record lows the lowest ever against the Euro, the lowest in a generation against the Sterling and the lowest in 57 years against the Canadian dollar. China fired another shot across America’s bow by divesting 50 percent of its $400 billion US T-Bills to establish a $200 billion fund to help diversify its holdings in equities and stocks around the world. China wisely stopped because the USA is also its largest trading partner (that is where America has clout over it and most other countries) and killing the goose that lays golden eggs would have meant China killing itself.
Europe, however, couldn’t avoid the fallout as high Euro and Sterling values started eroding its exports alarmingly while it becomes too expensive to breathe in. A lot of EU exports are shifting from Europe to China.However, don’t forget that if America was not the cleverest country in the world because of its knowledge bank, the largest there is, it would not be in the position of primacy that it is in. To imagine that China can destroy the dollar simply by selling its debt and holdings is to be naive. America is not going to take this lying down. It could demonetise. It could force the price of oil so high that China’s economy goes into reverse gear. Or it could simply revert to the gold standard that it left in 1971 and which is the source of much of the world currency crisis because it exposed the illusion of paper money backed by itself as the mirage that it really is not worth the paper it is printed on. If all currencies are worth so many dollars, what is the dollar worth? Hot air? It became oil, but that is de facto, therefore no total control. I wonder whether the price of gold has shot up only because people find it a safer investment bet in today’s uncertainty or because the US is also quietly busy buying up gold just in case it has to go back to the gold standard and leave the rest of the world in the lurch.
Next week the Iran Bourse will open to trade oil, not in dollars but in Euros. The Iranian Oil Bourse (OIB) was registered on May 5 this year. The consequences are horrendous: with the dollar no longer the sole currency with which to trade oil, its credibility as the benchmark has weakened gravely and thrown all world currencies into a tailspin either crashing in value making essential imports unsustainable or increasing in value reducing their exports drastically causing huge trade deficits, as with Europe. There has been a run on non-oil producing Third World currencies as capital flight continues unabated. That is why soft currencies are weakening against all hard currencies while non-dollar hard currencies are strengthening.The fall in the dollar’s value was one of the triggers of the oil price rise.
Three other triggers contributed heavily too:
the greed-driven speculation of oil brokers and hedge funds,
the Iraq war and
the new Iranian oil bourse that caused a further decline in the dollar, raising oil prices even more, like a self-sustaining upward spiral.
Now add a fourth trigger: the increasing probability of some kind of strike against Iran.
Estimates are that the Iraq war alone trebled the cost of oil. By May the world had spent an extra $6 trillion on higher energy prices alone since the Iraq war. Else the price would have been $40 even less but for greedy speculators and hedge funds. Oil has been trading on two dollar-denominated oil bourses, NYMEX and IPE, both privately owned by US citizens. They play a huge role in determining crude oil prices. The New York Mercantile Exchange Inc (NYMEX) was established more than 135 years ago. London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), now Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), was established in 1980. NYMEX “pioneered the development of energy futures and options contracts in 1978 as [a] means of bringing price transparency and risk management to this vital market.”
This is precisely what opened the door to greed-driven speculation that has driven the price of crude unnaturally high. “IPE is one of the world’s largest energy futures and options exchanges. Its flagship commodity, Brent Crude, is a world benchmark for oil prices…” Brent is British North Sea, not OPEC.This kept the demand for the dollar high as oil producers were paid in dollars that they invested in western, particularly American, banks, stocks, bonds, real estate, in bailing out US corporations (like Saudi Prince Al Waleed once did Citibank and recently the UAE did) and buying billions of dollars worth of useless armaments. It was also necessary for oil-importing countries to have huge dollar reserves to buy oil. But when on May 5 Iran registered its Euro-denominated IOB in competition with the dollar-denominated NYMEX and IPE, and many countries supported it, the dollar took more beating.This requires some explaining. Iran did this to break free from the tyranny of the dollar. Russia and Europe welcomed the Iranian oil bourse because 70 percent of Europe’s oil is imported from Iran. The two most oil-hungry nations growing hungrier by the day, China and India, also said that they were very interested. Now you see why Iran’s president is “the most dangerous man in the world?” It has nothing to do with the damned nuclear bomb. It has to do with the detonation of the oil bomb that has detonated the dollar bomb.
For America this is war, literally, because having left the Gold Standard in 1971 it had, de facto, made oil the commodity on which the dollar is based by ensuring that oil is sold mostly in dollars. (When Saddam said in April 2002 that he was considering selling some Iraqi oil in Euros he signed his death warrant). Came the decline in the dollar came the decline in the value (purchasing power) of oil revenues as well as OPEC’s dollar-based assets. Oil-exporting countries started thinking in terms of selling some oil in Euros. This would put the dollar even more on the skids. President Bush’s first Middle East trip this year, ostensibly a “peace mission”, was actually to deliver what Mike Whitney calls “the horse’s head” (as in the film, The Godfather). “Bush went to the trouble of travelling half-way around the world to tell the Saudis and their friends in the Gulf States that they were going to continue linking their oil to the dollar or they were going to “sleep with the fishes.”Why did the Arab countries say that they might shift partly to Euro? With the fall in the dollar’s value, OPEC saw the real value of its oil, its dollar surpluses and dollar holdings decline too. Since oil has largely been sold in dollars through NYMEX and IPE, oil sellers put their hordes of surplus “petrodollars” in US banks, real estate and other investments. But now the dollar’s decline has made selling in dollars no longer as valuable as it was. While buying in dollars means that oil-importing countries have to have many more dollars to buy the same amount of oil because not only has the oil price kept rising, its price has also gone up with the erosion of Third World currencies (as has their foreign debt). Oil import bills have doubled and trebled since the oil price rise started, making a mess of national trade balances.
When recently Saudi Arabia announced a small increase in oil output, crude prices should have fallen. Contrarily, they went up instead, underlining the influence of greedy speculators and manipulative hedge funds. Plus the probable attack on Iran. However, Saudi Arabia didn’t say it would increase oil output because of US pressure but for the obvious reason that, like China, its doesn’t wish to kill the geese that lay golden eggs for the oil-producing countries. There is more. Saudi Arabia has not forgotten the lesson from the famous oil price hike of 1973: don’t take the price of oil so high that alternative energy sources become viable. When oil goes beyond $150, American shale oil, heavy crude and Canada’s Calgary oil sands will variously become viable. So will solar power. Once they tap these resources, what then? Plus one cannot rule out the bizarre possibility that Saudi Arabia has been told that Iran will soon be attacked. That would leave Goldman Sachs’ prediction of oil at $200 by year’s end far behind and drive its price up beyond imagination, leading to a global economic meltdown. Better to start reducing prices now by increasing output than wait for the possible fallout.
However, this last is only conjecture and will always sound fanciful until it actually happens.
The only way America can strengthen the dollar is by creating a trade surplus. IMPOSSIBLE.
That would mean reducing their workers to near-slavery to compete with Chinese wages and other inputs. What will happen in the US? Chaos for sure. Maybe a workers revolution, but looking at the situation as it is now, it is more likely to be a re-run of Germany post-1929, and some form of an extreme right wing movement will emerge.
The romantic socialist notion of a “workers revolution” aside, there is a point here. The Great Depression of the 1930s caused a rightward swing in Germany and led to the emergence of the Nazis. Yes, America is a democracy because its system works for it, but democracy is fragile. It doesn’t take much adversity to derail it.Before you get too excited, let me caution you that the assumption that that America will suddenly collapse is wishful thinking. It is we who are more likely to collapse, at least before America does.
Sure history is witness to the fall of many civilisations, empires and superpowers. They all collapsed because they ran out of intellectual steam that led to decadence and internal contradictions. Only Britain’s was a managed withdrawal from empire. But America is not the Soviet Union. It is a country crafted by consensus, not force. Its people are proud to be Americans, not sullen like the Soviets were. It is based on the ideals of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The USSR was based on an unworkable and increasingly inhuman Leninist-Stalinist totalitarianism. America is dynamic, not decadent. The American Declaration of Independence is one of the greatest pieces of writings by man.
In contrast, Lenin’s voluminous works read like a dirge. The first three words of The Declaration of Independence “We the people” bring a lump to the throat because they say it all. Today America is so far ahead in knowledge of all kinds, especially in the sciences, that no country has a chance of catching up unless America loses its great ideals. The problem with America is that it does not accept the right of others to practice those same ideals if it does not consider the outcome to be in its interest or if it threatens its hegemony. Yes, China, Russia and Germany will soon acquire polarity too, but the magnetism of the American pole will still be the greatest because America has primacy over all fours sources of global power -- knowledge, communications, finance and military. China, Russia and Germany have strengths in only one or two, not all four. That’s the difference
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Why attacks on India embassy in Afghanistan?
While Afghan security sources have projected the incident as an attempt to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the neo Taliban has projected it as an operation to demonstrate its capability even in Kabul, despite all the security precautions taken by the government. The incident has revealed serious deficiencies in route security and perimeter security.
The deficiencies in route security enabled six heavily-armed terrorists enter the city and reach the hotel without being detected and intercepted anywhere. The deficiencies in perimeter security enabled the perpetrators to take up position in a room of the hotel without being detected and fire from there.
Apart from these physical security deficiencies, was there also complicity by any member of the security forces? That is a question, which should be worrying the Afghan authorities. In Iraq, many successful terrorist strikes have been made possible by internal complicity.In Afghanistan, till now, there have been few instances of such complicity." Forty one people are reported to have been killed by a suicide bomber with a Vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device outside the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7. Four of them are stated to be Indian nationals -- including the Indian defense attaché, a counselor-level diplomat and two security guards.
From the indications available so far, it is evident that it was a targeted attack on the Indian mission. Was it also a targeted attack on the defense attaché? This question arises from the fact that the vehicle-borne suicide bomber reportedly rammed his vehicle against two cars of the mission as they were about to enter the mission. North Atlantic Treaty Organization officers in Afghanistan have spoken of a 40 per cent increase in the infiltration of terrorists from the tribal belt of Pakistan into Afghanistan since the new Pakistani government suspended military operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and entered into peace negotiations with them. Even as acts of terrorism -- including suicide terrorism -- have increased in Afghan territory, there has been a sharp decrease in acts of suicide terrorism in Pakistani territory.
The increasing Indian presence in Afghanistan for assisting in the economic development of Afghanistan and for strengthening the capability of the Afghan government in various fields has been a constant source of criticism by Pakistan, which has taken up the issue repeatedly with the US and other NATO countries. Urdu newspapers in Pakistan had even accused India of fomenting trouble in Balochistan from covert bases in Afghan territory.
Pakistan thus has a strong motive to target Indian nationals and interests in Afghanistan through its surrogate, the Taliban. During the last three years, there has been a steep increase in acts of suicide terrorism by the neo Taliban of Afghanistan headed by Mulla Mohammad Omar.
Initially, the suicide attacks were by individual suicide bombers who carried the IEDs on their person. The modus operandi using VBIED, which causes many more fatalities than individual bombers carrying the IED, was and is still being used with devastating effect in Iraq by Al Qaeda. Training in this has been imparted by Al Qaeda to neo Taliban volunteers in the training camps of Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Jihad Group, another Uzbek organization, in North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
The successful attack outside the Indian mission has been made possible by poor security on the road in which the Indian mission is located. One would have, therefore, expected the level of road security and access security on this road to have been high. The details available so far do not speak of any specific physical security deficiency in the Indian mission itself .
Al Qaeda has been looking for opportunities for a major terrorist strike against the US and Israel. Even if Al Qaeda has no motive presently for targeting Indian nationals and interests, it badly needs a successful terrorist strike against the US or other Western powers in order to prove to its followers and admirers that its capability for action against the US and Israel remains strong.
The deficiencies in route security enabled six heavily-armed terrorists enter the city and reach the hotel without being detected and intercepted anywhere. The deficiencies in perimeter security enabled the perpetrators to take up position in a room of the hotel without being detected and fire from there.
Apart from these physical security deficiencies, was there also complicity by any member of the security forces? That is a question, which should be worrying the Afghan authorities. In Iraq, many successful terrorist strikes have been made possible by internal complicity.In Afghanistan, till now, there have been few instances of such complicity." Forty one people are reported to have been killed by a suicide bomber with a Vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device outside the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7. Four of them are stated to be Indian nationals -- including the Indian defense attaché, a counselor-level diplomat and two security guards.
From the indications available so far, it is evident that it was a targeted attack on the Indian mission. Was it also a targeted attack on the defense attaché? This question arises from the fact that the vehicle-borne suicide bomber reportedly rammed his vehicle against two cars of the mission as they were about to enter the mission. North Atlantic Treaty Organization officers in Afghanistan have spoken of a 40 per cent increase in the infiltration of terrorists from the tribal belt of Pakistan into Afghanistan since the new Pakistani government suspended military operations against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and entered into peace negotiations with them. Even as acts of terrorism -- including suicide terrorism -- have increased in Afghan territory, there has been a sharp decrease in acts of suicide terrorism in Pakistani territory.
The increasing Indian presence in Afghanistan for assisting in the economic development of Afghanistan and for strengthening the capability of the Afghan government in various fields has been a constant source of criticism by Pakistan, which has taken up the issue repeatedly with the US and other NATO countries. Urdu newspapers in Pakistan had even accused India of fomenting trouble in Balochistan from covert bases in Afghan territory.
Pakistan thus has a strong motive to target Indian nationals and interests in Afghanistan through its surrogate, the Taliban. During the last three years, there has been a steep increase in acts of suicide terrorism by the neo Taliban of Afghanistan headed by Mulla Mohammad Omar.
Initially, the suicide attacks were by individual suicide bombers who carried the IEDs on their person. The modus operandi using VBIED, which causes many more fatalities than individual bombers carrying the IED, was and is still being used with devastating effect in Iraq by Al Qaeda. Training in this has been imparted by Al Qaeda to neo Taliban volunteers in the training camps of Al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Islamic Jihad Group, another Uzbek organization, in North Waziristan in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.
The successful attack outside the Indian mission has been made possible by poor security on the road in which the Indian mission is located. One would have, therefore, expected the level of road security and access security on this road to have been high. The details available so far do not speak of any specific physical security deficiency in the Indian mission itself .
Al Qaeda has been looking for opportunities for a major terrorist strike against the US and Israel. Even if Al Qaeda has no motive presently for targeting Indian nationals and interests, it badly needs a successful terrorist strike against the US or other Western powers in order to prove to its followers and admirers that its capability for action against the US and Israel remains strong.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
*The Secret - Talk by Poojya Gurudev on Aug 24th 2007, Bangalore Ashram*
Our life runs through intention. Everything we do has either a desire or intention or unconscious habit attached to it. If you want to call it desire, as 'a desire arises in the mind', I have no objection. But there is a difference between intention and desire. People don't understand this. Even if you say 'I don't want any desire", it is a desire.
Why some people desire gets fulfilled, others don't? Desire is a feverishness attached to a wish or a thought. If not fulfilled, they make you miserable. Because desire doesn't seem to bring fulfillment.
Unfulfilled desire gives a void. Fulfilled desire gives a greater void. If desire is the mother of sorrow, then shouldn't we not desire?
[Here comes the knowledge. The secret knowledge of desire and intention.] Most of the people in the world do not know the difference between intention and desire. An intention has to be dropped. Have an intention, have an attention and consciously drop it. If you hold on to the intention, intention becomes desire and desire causes heartache.Intention, attention and manifestation. Your attention goes to fights, to problem. If your mind is clinging on to negative, that's what is going to grow. People don't understand this. Instead of attention, intention they turn the intention into a feverish desire and become depressed. Intention is beyond fleeting positive and negative thoughts. Only those thoughts that translates into intention becomes action.Let us see the distinction between desire and intention.
Intention has a purpose
Desire has feverishness.
Intention has a goal. If your attention is all the time on the negative, switch it to positive. The feeling of abundance, feeling you have abundance andabundance will grow. Your attention is not there. You never put your intention onit and you say it didn't manifest. Many people who say "I am poor" do notput their intention and attention on it. Clarity comes only through depth of meditation and meditation cannot happen when mind is feverish with desire.Bringing desire to intention, putting attention and allowing time to manifest is a really intelligent way to deal with desire.
*Question:* If you drop an intention, how can it convert into action?
*Answer:* Intention should go with a feeling. Intention is a need that comes withinyou. Then it becomes an intention. Like someone wants a car or transportation, they really need a car, then you just put an intention, sankalpa - I really need this.One is fantasy - it is not a real need, your heart, your soul is not longing for it. Like someone else has a car, I also want a car. Someone has a bigger house. I also want. This is not a need. It is not going to happen. If you say "Im so tired of moving houses, and more people are coming and I need a bigger hall", then it is an intention. And then you add the clause "Anythingbetter than this is ok". "This or anything better than this, I can accept".But if you have not kept your commitment, you are not sincere, you are cheating, nature will know that. It will also cheat you! Nature will also not give you the power to manifest what you intend!
Why some people desire gets fulfilled, others don't? Desire is a feverishness attached to a wish or a thought. If not fulfilled, they make you miserable. Because desire doesn't seem to bring fulfillment.
Unfulfilled desire gives a void. Fulfilled desire gives a greater void. If desire is the mother of sorrow, then shouldn't we not desire?
[Here comes the knowledge. The secret knowledge of desire and intention.] Most of the people in the world do not know the difference between intention and desire. An intention has to be dropped. Have an intention, have an attention and consciously drop it. If you hold on to the intention, intention becomes desire and desire causes heartache.Intention, attention and manifestation. Your attention goes to fights, to problem. If your mind is clinging on to negative, that's what is going to grow. People don't understand this. Instead of attention, intention they turn the intention into a feverish desire and become depressed. Intention is beyond fleeting positive and negative thoughts. Only those thoughts that translates into intention becomes action.Let us see the distinction between desire and intention.
Intention has a purpose
Desire has feverishness.
Intention has a goal. If your attention is all the time on the negative, switch it to positive. The feeling of abundance, feeling you have abundance andabundance will grow. Your attention is not there. You never put your intention onit and you say it didn't manifest. Many people who say "I am poor" do notput their intention and attention on it. Clarity comes only through depth of meditation and meditation cannot happen when mind is feverish with desire.Bringing desire to intention, putting attention and allowing time to manifest is a really intelligent way to deal with desire.
*Question:* If you drop an intention, how can it convert into action?
*Answer:* Intention should go with a feeling. Intention is a need that comes withinyou. Then it becomes an intention. Like someone wants a car or transportation, they really need a car, then you just put an intention, sankalpa - I really need this.One is fantasy - it is not a real need, your heart, your soul is not longing for it. Like someone else has a car, I also want a car. Someone has a bigger house. I also want. This is not a need. It is not going to happen. If you say "Im so tired of moving houses, and more people are coming and I need a bigger hall", then it is an intention. And then you add the clause "Anythingbetter than this is ok". "This or anything better than this, I can accept".But if you have not kept your commitment, you are not sincere, you are cheating, nature will know that. It will also cheat you! Nature will also not give you the power to manifest what you intend!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Million reasons to smile
In one of the mails i received i found this "peaceful" story.
There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all the pictures. But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them. One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peacefully towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace. The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all. But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on the nest--in perfect peace. Which picture do you think won the prize? The king chose the second picture. Do you know why? "Because," explained the king, "peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace." "When Life gives you a thousand reasons to cry, Show that you have a million reasons to smile.”
There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all the pictures. But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them. One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peacefully towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace. The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all. But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on the nest--in perfect peace. Which picture do you think won the prize? The king chose the second picture. Do you know why? "Because," explained the king, "peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace." "When Life gives you a thousand reasons to cry, Show that you have a million reasons to smile.”
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
VC++ .Net 2005, some tips
- For accessing the “range” value in the word document the syntax is different for C# and VC++. To access the range value for the paragraph object the following is to be done
VC++ :
Word::Paragraph ^oPara1;
oPara1 = oDoc->Content->Paragraphs->Add(oMissing);
wrdRng = oDoc->Bookmarks->default::get(oEndOfDoc)->Range;
oPara1->default->default= "Heading 2";
C# :
Word.Paragraph oPara1;
oPara1 = oDoc.Content.Paragraphs.Add(oMissing);
wrdRng = oDoc.Bookmarks.get_Item(ref oEndOfDoc).Range;
oPara1.Text = "Heading 2"; - For preparing the application for the client having a different language than English the following code has to be added for the operations to be performed in the Excel sheets:
System::Globalization::CultureInfo ^ originalCulture = System::Threading::Thread::CurrentThread->CurrentCulture;
System::Threading::Thread::CurrentThread->CurrentCulture = gcnew System::Globalization::CultureInfo("en-US");
…..
….
The application code
…..
…..
System::Threading::Thread::CurrentThread->CurrentCulture = originalCulture;
This is required as the language of the OS for the client system maybe other than English. This changes the display format in the client machines and the default behavior of the keyboard inputs. The above code helps to change the behavior of Excel according to the English language.
Also the problem may occur when the application uses the values being displayed in the UI at the client side. As the values (e.g. Date) may have a different format in the client machine using the value directly for some calculations (e.g. Querying the database) may give a run-time error. - For calling a function in the Office applications (like MS Word) there are two methods
Late binding:
findObj->GetType()->InvokeMember("Execute", BindingFlags::InvokeMethod, nullptr, findObj, args7);
This function invokes the function “Execute”. So at the run-time the function to be invoked is understood.
Early binding:
findObj->Execute((Object ^) sFindText,oMissing,oMissing, oMissing,oMissing, oMissing,oMissing,oMissing,oMissing,(Object ^)sReplaceText,oMissing, oMissing,oMissing,oMissing, oMissing);
One of these two methods can be used for calling a function. - Use “Überschrift” instead of “Heading” as the font name in the word document creation. This is specific to German language.
- The code when compiled on the German OS system, may sometimes not work on an English OS system. The solution is to recompile the same on the English OS. This recompiled code will work on both the systems viz. German OS and English OS systems. The piece of code to be checked for the execution inconsistency is the part where threading is undertaken. The code which initializes and starts the thread has to be checked for the possible error.
- MS Access uses the format “mm:dd:yyyy” (US format)for the dates in the queries to be executed. We were formatting the query in “dd:mm:yyyy” (German format). The query output differed to what was expected.
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