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Faster, Smaller, Lighter Missiles: How Brahmos Leads The Way?
Indo-Russian supersonic missile, Brahmos may see a new competitor – the French missile, ASMPA.
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The past and future of Brahmos | Image source: http://www.rian.ru
xactly one year ago, on June 20th, 2012, the French Government reported the successful test for their new upgraded missile – the ASMPA (Air Sol Moyenne Porte Ameliore).
Competition For Brahmos
Except for the weight, the new ASMPA is a Yakhont-Brahmos missile clone – like Brahmos, the French missile is also ramjet powered, kerosene-fuelled; 200-500 kg payload; 250-500 km range .
After a decade of ignoring the existence of a Mach-3 missile with Russia and India, the successful test of the new French missile should have been announced with much fanfare. Varying reports confuse ASMPA, deceptively named after its predecessor, the ASMP, which too was not widely inducted or utilized. Curiously, even one year later, very little has come out in the open. After more than a decade of silence, such a giant leap should have made the French Defense industry shout from rooftops.
With the end of Cold War, France probably does not need the ASMPA missile right now? France may decide to produce the ASMPA if the threat profile to France changes? Due to MTCR, anyway France cannot sell many of these missiles?
Why produce a missile that France does not need and cannot sell?
Maybe, India with Pakistan and China as rivals, needs to keep a high profile on new developments!
ASMPA Firsts
The ASMPA is expected to be integrated with the Rafale – something that was not done till September 2012.
Considering that this is less than 1.0 ton in weight, (globalsecurity.org gives weight specs. as 860 kg), compared to the nearly 3.0 tons that the Brahmos weighs, the ASMPA is major leg up.
For India, the ASMPSA missile means it can be something that can be fitted on all the Su-30MKIs, the MiG-29s, maybe even the ancient MiG-21s. At one ton, the Su-30MKIs will not need the major modifications, which is under discussion with the Russian vendors for the last 18 months.
Logic and The Rationale
Therefore, the ASMPA is probably the one reason why India opted for the Rafale. Possibly, that is also the reason why the signing of the Rafale contract is being delayed. Do the French have a missile that they can sell? Is it vaporware? Announced, tested, prototyped – but not in production and yet to be inducted.
MTCR regulations create artificial limits – probably the range of Brahmos is more than 300-km and the ASMPA range is less than 300-km. By declaring the range of the ASMPA missile to 500-km, France can claim that MTCR regulations stop it from sale or transfer of missiles and missile technology.
India’s indigenous interceptor missiles already attain speeds of Mach3-Mach-4. So, Indian requirements is probably limited to weight-reduction – which France seems to have achieved.
The Global Matrix
It is also a matter of much curiosity, that the Americans and the British or the Germans could not crack this technology – but the French did? After all, the test-integration of ASMPA with Rafale took two years after its test firing from a Mirage-2000N.
While the French do have a long history of experimental ramjets and hypersonic engines, integration into production, induction of these technologies has been lagging. It is in the stabilization, production and induction of supersonic ramjets that Indo-Russian partnership has excelled.
Not surprisingly, after the ASMPA announcement, India and Russia promptly announced that the Brahmos will be upgraded from supersonic speeds (Mach2.5-Mach3) to hypersonic speeds (Mach5-Mach6).
Laser guided missiles are one of Russia’s weaknesses. To overcome this technology shortcoming, Russia has signed a deal with France for integrating a system using French components.
France and Russia have also been co-operating on ramjet and scram jet technologies. Was there technology or a component barter between the French and the Russians?
ON AUGUST 20th 1998 Bill Clinton ordered American warships in the Arabian Sea to fire a volley of more than 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at suspected terrorist training camps near the town of Khost in eastern Afghanistan. The missiles, flying north at about 880kph (550mph), took two hours to reach their target. Several people were killed, but the main target of the attack, Osama bin Laden, left the area shortly before the missiles struck. American spies located the al-Qaeda leader on two other occasions as he moved around Afghanistan in September 2000. But the United States had no weapons able to reach him fast enough.
They have now pinned their hopes on an alternative approach: superfast or “hypersonic” unmanned vehicles that can strike quickly by flying through the atmosphere, and cannot be mistaken for a nuclear missile.
These hypersonic vehicles are not rockets, as ICBMs are, but work in a fundamentally different way. Rockets carry their own fuel, which includes the oxygen needed for combustion in airless space. This fuel is heavy, making rockets practical only for short, vertical flights into space. So engineers are trying to develop lightweight, “air breathing” hypersonic vehicles that can travel at rocket-like speeds while taking oxygen from the atmosphere, as a jet engine does, rather than having to carry it in the form of fuel oxidants.
The term hypersonic technically refers to speeds faster than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5, equivalent to around 6,200kph at sea level and 5,300kph at high altitudes (where the colder, thinner air means the speed of sound is lower). Being able to sustain flight in the atmosphere at such speeds would have many benefits. Hypersonic vehicles would not be subject to existing treaties on ballistic-missile arsenals, for one thing. It is easier to manoeuvre in air than it is in space, making it more feasible to dodge interceptors or change trajectory if a target moves. And by cutting the cost of flying into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the technology could also help reduce the expense of military and civilian access to space.
All this, however, requires a totally different design from the turbofan and turbojet engines that power airliners and fighter jets, few of which can operate beyond speeds of about Mach 2. At higher speeds the jet engines’ assemblies of spinning blades can no longer slow incoming air to the subsonic velocities needed for combustion. Faster propulsion relies instead on engines without moving parts. One type, called a ramjet, slows incoming air to subsonic speeds using a carefully shaped inlet to compress and thereby slow the airstream. Ramjets power France’s new, nuclear-tipped ASMPA missiles. Carried by Rafale and Mirage fighter jets, they are thought to be able to fly for about 500km at Mach 3, or around 3,700kph.
It’s not rocket science
But reaching hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 and above with an air-breathing engine means getting combustion to happen in a stream of supersonic air. Engines that do this are called supersonic-combustion ramjets, or scramjets. They also use a specially shaped inlet to slow the flow of incoming air, but it does not slow down enough to become subsonic. This leaves engineers with a big problem: injecting and igniting fuel in a supersonic airstream is like “lighting a match in a hurricane and keeping it lit,” says Russell Cummings, a hypersonic-propulsion expert at California Polytechnic State University.
One way to do it is to use fuel injectors that protrude, at an angle, into the supersonic airstream. They generate small shock waves that mix oxygen with fuel as soon as it is injected. This mixture can be ignited using the energy of bigger shock waves entering the combustion chamber. Another approach is being developed at the Australian Defence Force Academy. In a process known as “cascade ionisation”, laser blasts lasting just a few nanoseconds rip electrons off passing molecules, creating pockets of hot plasma in the combustion chamber that serve as sparks.
Scramjet fuel must also be kept away from the wall of the combustion chamber. Otherwise, it might “pre-ignite” before mixing properly, blowing up the vehicle, says Clinton Groth, an engineer at the University of Toronto who is currently doing research at Cambridge University in England (and who has consulted for Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce, two engine-makers). To complicate matters further, scramjets move too fast for their internal temperature and air pressure to be controlled mechanically by adjusting the air intake. Instead, as scramjets accelerate, they must ascend into thinner air at a precise rate to prevent rising heat and pressure from quickening the fuel burn and blowing up the combustion chamber.
In other words, igniting a scramjet is difficult, and keeping it going without exploding is harder still. Moreover scramjets, like ramjets, cannot begin flight on their own power. Because they need to be moving quickly to compress air for combustion, scramjets must first be accelerated by piggybacking on a jet plane or rocket. There are, in short, formidable obstacles to the construction of a scramjet vehicle.
A Chinese programme to convert a nuclear ballistic missile into an aircraft-carrier killer, by packing it with conventional explosives, had reached “initial operational capability”. The DF-21D, as it is called, is designed to descend from space at hypersonic speed and strike ships in the Western Pacific. Even though the accuracy of the DF-21D’s guidance system is unknown, the missile is already altering the balance of power within its range.
DARPA suggested, America will need “the new stealth” of hypersonic vehicles. Similarly, Russia’s deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, remarked last year that the design of hypersonic missiles had become a priority for the country.
via Hypersonic missiles: Speed is the new stealth | The Economist.
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- Cruise control: India’s Cruise missile family (semcotechservicesblog.wordpress.com)
- India test-fires BrahMos missile from ship (indrus.in)
- Indian Air Force looks to acquire BrahMos missiles by year’s end (indrus.in)
- BrahMos supersonic missile successfully test fired off Goa coast (ndtv.com)
- Cruise missile threat in Asia (japantimes.co.jp)
- BrahMos supersonic cruise missile successfully test-fired (thehindu.com)
- BrahMos missile can’t be intercepted in the next 20 years, says Chief Scientist (terminalx.org)
- M51 Nuclear Missile Fails on a Test Launch from a Newly Upgraded Submarine (defense-update.com)
India’s Deficient Healthcare System: Is Public Healthcare the Only Model?
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Must India model its healthcare system on the vastly inefficient and costly healthcare system of the West?
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US Healthcare costs and expenditure | Credits and source details embedded in image.
he Euro-zone health system costs the tax-payer close to a trillion dollars (two-thirds of total healthcare expenditure paid by the State; total healthcare expenditure by EU is 10% of EU GDP, that is US$ 15 trillion). Ditto multiplied by two for the US. One trillion and two trillion for EU and US respectively.
As a result of high tobacco consumption, aging problem, China’s expenditure on healthcare is expected to be a trillion dollars by 2020, due to proposed expansion of facilities, coverage.
The combined population of the US and EU is about the 800 million – versus the 1200 million of India. Even if due to lower costs, India were to replicate the EU and US systems, the expenditure will be US$3 trillion. That is 50% more than the Indian GDP.
Simplistic?
Sure. But, if we are going to throw around billions and trillions that belong to taxpayers, why worry?
These systems will collapse – and when that happens, there will be plagues and epidemics across the West.
Remember that less than a 100 years ago, the flu-epidemic killed tens of millions in the West. Conservative estimates start at 2 crores, go to realistic estimates of 4 crores (40 million) and some estimates go beyond 5 crores (50 million). This depletion in population, coupled with WWI deaths toppled the West into the Great Depression, ten years later.
As John M. Barry, author of “The Great Influenza,” has observed, “Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century; it killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years.”
The State as the natural and logical answer to every social problem is uniquely modern extension of Desert Bloc model of governance. The confidence that media and academia project in this model has no relation to reality.
We have seen the collapse of Spain, Portugal as imperial powers, Britain is at a tipping point – and many expect Pax Americana to follow.
Why must India duplicate this vastly inefficient and costly healthcare system of the West, as this recent article in the FT suggests.
Western governments could haul New Delhi to the WTO dispute panel to challenge its patent law as non-compliant with global trade rules, generics executives’ and health activists’ bigger worry is that the EU, and eventually the US, will secure provisions in new free-trade deals. These provisions would give western drugmakers more tools to stop Indian generic rivals.
Western pharmaceutical companies counter that India’s real health crisis is not the price of a handful of patented drugs but of a government that has abdicated its responsibility to ensure decent healthcare for its citizens. India’s government spends less than 1.2 per cent of gross domestic product on healthcare.
Some western companies, led by GlaxoSmithKline, are trying tiered pricing strategies in India to reflect the extremes of its wealth and poverty. Merck Sharp and Dohme sells its patented diabetes drug Januvia in India for about $24 per month, 80 per cent lower than its global price.
Still, the cut-rate price for Januvia has not deterred Glenmark, an Indian generics firm, from making its own version, which it sells for 30 per cent less than the discounted price. Last month MSD tried unsuccessfully to get a court order stopping Glenmark from selling its medicine, and protracted litigation lies ahead.
“You can parachute free medicine across the country but that will not improve access because you don’t the health infrastructure,” says Mr Shahani. “You don’t have doctors, you don’t have nurses, you don’t have nursing homes and you don’t have diagnostics.”
Shortages of nurses and orderlies meant young doctors had to do menial tasks such as carrying laboratory samples or wheeling patients into the operating theatre.
The junior doctors say the public hospital is so overstretched – and poorly managed – that they have to make snap decisions on how to handle patients, as if processing the wounded from a battlefield.
“This government doesn’t want patients to die, so our major concern is to prevent death, but what about proper management after that?” asks Sameer Prabhakar, a doctor at Safdarjung. “A doctor seeing 100 patients a day won’t have time.”
Safdarjung’s problems resonate across India’s public health system, which is starved of funds. Clinics struggle to cope with the flow of patients who can spend days queueing to see a doctor, only to be told they will have to wait months for treatment – even for potentially fatal diseases such as cancer.
India has just six doctors and nine hospital beds for every 10,000 people, compared with 15 doctors and 38 beds in China, and 24 doctors and 30 beds in the US, according to UN data. “The biggest question is: why is the government not building more hospitals and opening more medical colleges?” says Dr Prabhakar.
The emergence of swish upmarket private hospitals catering to India’s rich and middle classes is exacerbating the strain on public hospitals, as doctors, nurses and other specialists are drawn to the higher salaries and better working conditions.
With India spending just 1.2 per cent of gross domestic product on health – compared with nearly 3 per cent in China – the problems will not be resolved easily. Many poor Indians go to unqualified quacks. Lower middle-class patients are driven to private hospitals they cannot afford, clocking up debt to pay for essential treatment.
Related Articles
- World economy in a tizzy, but Indian pharma flying high (thehindu.com)
- Should pharma MNCs be peeved? (rediff.com)
- India’s Solution To Drug Costs: Ignore Patents And Control Prices – Except For Home Grown Drugs (forbes.com)
- Fortis Healthcare to raise Rs 322 cr via IPP (news.in.msn.com)
Ranking Moms Is Just So Bad An Idea
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Why is this British NGO so desperately putting down moms from Africa?
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No mother is any lesser than any other. To try and show superiority …| Cartoon by Randy Bish, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review – May 10, 2013 via PoliticalCartoons.com
herever in the world it is, bringing up children is a job second to none.
Every mother and father, and societies that help them bring up a child deserve a lot of respect.
To see people scoring points likes this …
For Moms in Finland, every day is Mother’s Day. A new report from the non-profit Save the Children says that the Scandinavian nation is the best country on the globe for mothers to live.
Scandinavia is definitely a good place to be a Mom. Finland, which often places high on education and quality of life in other international lists, is followed by Sweden at no. 2 and Norway at no. 3. In fact, all but one of the top 10 countries where Moms are the safest are European, with Australia placing tenth.
The ten unsafest places for mothers are all located in Central Africa, with the Democratic Republic of Congo ranking worst. An estimated 98% of newborn and 99% of maternal deaths occur in developing countries where basic health care services are scarce.
Check out the top 10 best and worst countries for mothers below, and see the full report here.
Best:
1) Finland
2) Sweden
3) Norway
4) Iceland
5) Netherlands
6) Denmark
7) Spain
8) Belgium
9) Germany
10) Australia
Worst:
167) Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
168) Chad
1
69) Nigeria
170) Gambia
171) Central African Republic
172) Niger
173) Mali
174) Sierra Leone
175) Somalia
176) DR Congo
Proof of the pudding
So, if these Western countries are so good for women and becoming mothers, how come women here don’t want to become mothers often enough?
Why are these top 10 countries having so few babies? Why are their populations shrinking?
Motherhood statements on Mother’s Day that don’t hold up?
Simple statements that these countries have lowest infant mortality, maternal mortality, etc would have been enough.
But if you try ramming in a truck through simple data like this, it looks awfully close to talking down to us in Third World?
And if you know, your own backyard needs fixing, why waste time in putting down other people? Like how children in Britain want a brother /sister more than any other gift for Christmas? Or how the State thinks that it has more rights in naming a child compared to the child’s parents?
If your social systems are so good, why try these kind of dubious tactics to score points over people in Africa, who are down right now.
Pointing fingers at others is …
Bad psychologically.
Bad in ethics.
Not to forget Bad Journalism
Related Articles
- DR Congo ‘worst place for mothers’ (bbc.co.uk)
- What makes a country a good place to be a mother? | Debate of the day (guardian.co.uk)
- World Mothers’ Index: UK Falls To 23rd Place (news.sky.com)
Japan’s Child Pop. shrinks By 150,000 to a record low
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India has more children than the total population of any country in the world – except China.
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How about doing a few things just coz they are right? Mebbe not ‘necessarily’ ‘profitable’ | Joel Pett, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, Cartoonists and Writers Syndicate, and was published on December 7, 2009 in USA TODAY
f people are becoming richer, more educated, in better living conditions, in a technologically superior time than any other in history, why can’t they afford children?
Earlier, when the father alone could raise a family of ten, today’s parents are afraid that, “even two incomes are no longer enough to make ends meet before pay day.”
You Pay For This …
The One Big reason that parents in the West and Japan are not having children is because of the cost.
Sheer economic costs.
A recent post in the Newsweek elicited much discussion and reactions – broadly falling into two categories.
Personal financial limitations and difficulties and social values on the other hand.
Apart from a sermonizing David Cameron, in UK, a recent report suggested that just one child, “a child from birth to adulthood will cost £140,000. This means the average couple works two years to fund each offspring – couples with children are twice as likely to file for bankruptcy as those without.”
The Other Big reason is, Western social and political leaders have made it uncool to have children.
Like this French woman-writer, Corinne Maier, who, disturbed at an exhibition of Belgian surrealists, decided, “at that point, I thought, ‘I really regret it, I regret having children.’ ” Her subsequent book, “40 Reasons for Not Having Children” in French, was also translated and sold well in English.
An American ‘comedian’ Adam Carolla was caught moralizing: “The best parenting of all is not shitting out the kids when you can’t afford the kids.”
The last word on this.
The Optimum Population Forum judges the price of a condom to have had a nine million per cent “return on investment” when set against the cost to the planet of having a child.
In such a moral atmosphere, which self-respecting set of parents would start a family?
It is a brave child, who dares to come into this kind of unwelcome society.
This over-production, over-waste, over-war model can change. How about a 2ndlook? | Cartoon by Steve Greenberg on Oct. 22, 1994. in Seattle Post Intelligencer. For an updated cartoon – http://goo.gl/r9HLa
Am I Backward?
Why is the ‘developed’ world choose to commit a ‘demographic’ suicide.
Beats me!
But then, by common consensus of the superior Western media and its Brown-American cheerleaders, I am from an under-developed country like India.
Can I even begin to understand ‘development’?
By the way, here are the latest stats on the self-inflicted genocide of Japan.
As the nation celebrated the national Children’s Day holiday on May 5, the number of children under 15 years of age fell 150,000 from a year earlier to a record low 16.49 million as of April 1, according to government estimates released on May 4.
The child population shrank for the 32nd consecutive year and hit the lowest level since statistics became available in 1950, the internal affairs ministry said.
The estimates, based on national population census and other surveys, were compiled for Children’s Day on May 5.
Those under 15 years of age accounted for 12.9 percent of the total population, one of the lowest levels in the world. The corresponding figure is 19.6 percent in the United States, 16.5 percent in China and 15.6 percent in South Korea.
According to the estimates, there were 8.44 million boys and 8.04 million girls. By age, 3.55 million were between 12 and 14; 3.4 million were between 9 and 11; 3.2 million were between 6 and 8; 3.17 million were between 3 and 5; and 3.16 million were between 0 and 2.
via Child population shrinks 150,000 to record low 16.49 million – AJW by The Asahi Shimbun.
Compelling logic, eh? First you impoverish people, then take away everything – and then blame them for all the problems! | Cartoon by Catherine Pain in a post titled Why are we surprised when we get what we pay for? on 24 April 2013; source & courtesy – open.ac.uk
By the way, the Indian children are nearly 31% of the gross population – and India has about 44 crore children.
India has more children than the total population of any country in the world – except China.
Related Articles
- Japan’s child population falls for 32nd year in row (english.kyodonews.jp)
- Lessons From Record Decrease in Japan’s Population (quicktake.wordpress.com)
- Over 2,000 fewer farmers every day (thehindu.com)
- Bogus ADHD diagnoses on the rise (douglassreport.com)
- Japan’s population falls by record level (japantimes.co.jp)
- Japan: The worst developed country to be a mother? (bbc.co.uk)
- Leave them alone (guardian.co.uk)
- China’s one-child policy increasingly being questioned (pri.org)
- Saving Japan: promoting women’s role in the workforce would help (japantimes.co.jp)
Hollywood Games In China
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Just like Shashi Tharoor was well-grounded in the West, son @ishaantharoor is learning how to push Western interests..
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Po, the Panda confronts Shen the despotic ruler of Gongmen city.
efore we get to the main story, let us have the basics out of the way.
Back To Basics
What is India’s national bird? Peacock.
Where does the panda come from? China.
Which country was the world’s largest producer of gunpowder elements till 100 years ago? India.
How did India take advantage of its gunpowder production to wage war, conquer nations, enslave people and loot? The British did that.
What about India’s export of steel in medieval and colonial eras? India’s Wootz steel to global markets.
For how long has India ruled over China, Tibet, Iran in the last 2000 years? Nil.
America’s Story For China
In May-June 2011, Hollywood released a much anticipated sequel to a successful film. The original film had grossed more than US$25 million in China alone. The sequel was expected to do much more – and finally grossed nearly a US$100 million (official figure – US$91.5 million) in China. Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson, (an American from Korea) the sequel was named the most successful film made by a woman.
In ancient China
Here is the storyline.
Despotic Peacock Prince Shen, of the benign Peacock clan returns from exile, usurps the throne. Despotic Peacock Prince Shen expands armament production, disrupting military balance based on hand-to-hand combat.
Despotic Peacock Prince Shen plans to turn fireworks into war materiel, manufacturing cannons. Despotic Peacock Prince Shen would like to make his Gongmen city kingdom into an imperial force, threatening Valley Of Peace, home of Po, the Panda. Despotic Peacock Prince Shen soon after usurping the kingdom, captured all the metal and made it into large cannons and guns.
The film – Kung Fu Panda-II.
One of the Top 3 films in China for 2011 – grossing nearly a US$100 million in China. Made by Spielberg’s Dreamworks, released by Hollywood, let us see what this film is actually telling us.
This film shows the Peacock prince (India), as a historical oppressor. Prince Shen, misusing the Chinese ‘invention’ of fireworks-gunpowder for war, using metal and gunpowder for oppression of China. Po, the Chinese Panda battles and defeats the Peacock Prince (India).
The Plot Thickens
This imagery was probably the reason why this film evoked protests and boycott in China. Since Hollywood has such low traction in India, this film has not provoked any reactions in India. Or possibly since most Indians swallow Western propaganda hook-line-and-sinker, having an image of a benign West, drilled into their thinking.
Who’s funding Steven Spielberg’s movies? When it seemed that Dreamworks would fold!
Anil Ambani.
Who’s funding Anil Ambani’s power plants in India. China. Will someone in Dreamworks pay for this gross insult? Wonder if Anil Ambani has been briefed about this ‘game’ by Spielberg?
Remember Spielberg’s story on how he lifted the Satyajit Ray script for ET. Some readers have traced Spielberg’s antipathy to India, as depicted in Temple of Doom, to being ‘caught’ out in this ‘inspiration’.
Maya’s Apprentince
Many among India’s leadership have links to Western citadels of maya. Many leaders today ensure that their children are well-grounded in Western culture, education, industry, media academia. These apprentices will then try and take over papa’s fiefdom.
These ‘prince-lings’ are being well-educated by Western ‘specialist’ in maya. Propaganda.
No wonder, even before the bombed street is released, clean in Boston, Ishaan Tharoor is outlining how America can blame Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran Korea, China, Syria – everyone, except US.
Or as can be seen by the tutoring being given to Ishaan Tharoor by a Western academic.
Is this not how the West wants to keep India & China apart, glowering at each other.
Beijing officials are increasingly worried about India’s ambitions. If you look at the writings of Chinese experts, they refer to Indian military posturing in the Indian Ocean and also to military partnerships India is developing with several countries in Southeast Asia and East Africa. In the public realm, Chinese Netizens’ views of India are very negative. You get the sense the Chinese never seemed to expect India to climb up to the ranks of the great powers. Now, as India attempts to make that leap, the Chinese are very worried of its impact on China’s primacy in Asia.
It wouldn’t first be open war. China and India are building up their interests in conflict-prone and unstable states on their borders like Nepal and Burma — important sources of natural resources. If something goes wrong in these countries — if the politics implode — you could see the emergence of proxy wars in Asia. Distrust between India and China will grow and so too security concerns in a number of arenas. It’s an important scenario that strategic planners in both Beijing and Delhi are looking at.
At the same time, India won’t let itself be drowned in America’s orbit. It’s important for India to have its strategic independence. It has a very long and historically close relationship with Russia, which in turn is close to China. So it’s a little more complicated. I don’t think the Americans have thought very strategically about all of this.
via China-India Competition: Is a Military Clash Inevitable? – TIME.
Related Articles
- The Curtain Rises on a Farce in China (theepochtimes.com)
- Spielberg gifts his coffee table book to Big B (vancouverdesi.com)
- Spielberg mingles with Bollywood stars in India (cnsnews.com)
- Spielberg to produce ‘Kashmir film’ (bbc.co.uk)
- India, China trying to resolve ‘incursion’ issue (thehindu.com)
- Want to remake an American movie with Indian director: Steven Spielberg (movies.ndtv.com)
- In Mumbai, Steven Spielberg Talks Kashmir Project, MLK Film, ‘Tintin’ & Bond: Report (deadline.com)
Adoration Of The West: Cannot Stop, Cannot Rest, Cannot End
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Yet no Indian leader gets the kind of respect that foreign leaders get in India..
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argaret Thatcher’s death unleashed a wave of grief.
Guess what? In India.
In the last 70 years, the Anglo-Saxon Bloc has gone downhill. From a position of absolute world power to being challenged by China – and now even India.
Yet no Indian leader gets the kind of respect that foreign leaders get in India.
Does it stop here?
Look at this twitter exchange here.
simplistic reading of the tweet can be taken to mean, ‘FBI is the gold standard. And since FBI is taking time, NIA can also take time.’
Going by Praveen Swamy’s general tenor, it is not far-fetched to see what Praveen Swami implies. But for Indian chatterati, twitterati, FBookeratti, bloggeratti, hero worship of the West cannot stop, cannot rest, cannot end.
The last word.
Related Articles
- Lessons From Record Decrease in Japan’s Population (quicktake.wordpress.com)
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Lessons From Record Decrease in Japan’s Population
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This commitment by Indian society to universal, lifelong marriage has attracted many, especially women.
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Between the State and the Church, we are seeing unprecedented levels of intervention in our sexual lives | Cartoon by Lee Judge on February 13, 2011
ukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki are the not the only nuclear disasters that have hit Japan. The bigger disaster is unfolding in slo-mo.
Japan’s population has dropped by a record 284,000.
As of Oct. 1, 2012, the country’s population was estimated at 127,515,000, down 0.22 percent from the previous year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said April 16.
The decline is the largest in both number and rate since 1950, when comparable figures were first available.
The population dropped for the second year in a row for the first time.
Japanese society continues to age, with the population of elderly, aged 65 or over, estimated at 30,793,000, up 1,041,000 from the previous year. It was also the first time that the elderly outnumbered children, aged 14 or under, in all 47 prefectures.
The natural decrease, or the difference of deaths and births, was the largest ever at 205,000. This marked the eighth straight year of natural decrease for men and the fourth straight year of natural decrease for women. By prefecture, Tokyo, Saitama and Chiba marked the first instance of a natural decrease.
via Record decrease in Japan’s population – AJW by The Asahi Shimbun.
Maya means … Propaganda … ?
The only reason India is not sitting on a demographic time bomb, is because of our देसी मन्द बुद्धि desi-mand buddhi (rustic minds). Especially from the Indo-Gangetic plains.
This देसी rustic mindset that our ruling elites look at with contempt, did not get fooled by the massive propaganda drive by the West – using the Indian State as its agent.
Not Individuals … But Families As Building Blocks Of Society
The Indian system of family stability is based on three principles: –
1. Universal marriage. In the rest of the world, the rich marry, the poor: –
- Forever chase ‘relationships’
- Associated with prostitution
- Become users of pornography
2. New families funded by families and relatives with income stream from property, profession, business for groom and and start-up capital of gold to bride.
3. Since, all girls and boys, especially during periods of social chaos, political instability (like British Raj) may not find matches, marriages are arranged by social ‘intervention’ to keep the system of universal marriage functional.
People Know …
This commitment by Indian society to universal, lifelong marriage has attracted many, especially women. Indian men are seen by Russian women as ideal husband material. On the other hand, apart from the staggering levels of prostitution, sex-deprivation has triggered a wave of sexual-abuse of children across Europe and US. Widely, but not limited to the Catholic Church system.
Charity … Anyone?
This pattern of sexual misbehavior has claimed a life this time.
Peter Roebuck, a cricket player-coach-writer recently jumped to his death from his 6th floor hotel room in South Africa. After receiving a suspended sentence in an British court for not-so deviant behavior with his South African trainees, he emigrated to Australia.
Similarly, in India too, we have seen these various do-gooders use their ‘charity’ work to gain access to unwilling sexual partners.
Promoted by the Desert Bloc ‘system’ is
– Sexual repression in the masses
– An impossible marriage mechanism with crazed alimony system
– Antagonistic and confrontational gender relations
– A flourishing prostitution industry
– A distorted religious system that promotes celibacy
Charity seems like a facade for gaining access to sexual partners in all these cases. The cause may be the sexual repression rather than dubious charity.
Islamic Demographics
Indian Muslim population is growing because they have persisted with the Indian family model. In West Asia, Islamic populations are meager and much below Indian growth levels. Muslim populations are increasing only in countries where Indian influence is strong – and therefore commitment to universal marriage is strong. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia.
Meher system in all these societies (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia) is nominal, weak. The day Muslims (from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia) become ‘fully’ Muslim, implement the Meher system, their populations will start decreasing.
The only two countries that has come close to India in this metrics are Indonesia and China. Thanks to Mao and Western propaganda, in China that has changed. Progressive Liberals in India are desperate to implement the Chinese model in India also – in connivance with the West.
Seems like Russian women know more about marriage …
Related Articles
- Perils of voyeurism (thehindu.com)
- Sexual repression (lunaticoutpost.com)
- Japan’s population falls by record level (japantimes.co.jp)
- Teen says parents forced her into one-month marriage (foxnews.com)
- “so over marriage equality” – The Feministing Five: Kate Bornstein (thefemmetasticfeminist.wordpress.com)
- Bulgaria with EU’s Lowest Marriage Rate (novinite.com)
- American counties hollow out from aging, finance crisis and youth migration (wired.com)
- Census shows record 1 in 3 US counties are dying (miamiherald.com)
- India is set to become the youngest country by 2020 (thehindu.com)
- Record number of counties losing population (sfgate.com)
America: Labor Economy & Imports
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In 1923-1924 US passed racist laws to specifically bar Indian, Chinese and the Japanese immigrants to US. Less than 30-years later, the US overturned these laws. Enlightenment! Liberalism? .
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So, is this why US labor force has been stagnant for nearly five years? Immigration down to the US? | Pulitzer prize winning cartoon by Steve Breen; in The San Diego Union-Tribune, on April 5, 2008
esert Bloc societies of West Asia and the West, have historically, been labor-importers due to the anti-family and anti-marriage design of their societies.
Why labor shortages
The biggest importer of labor in the last 200 years has been the USA.
After the US Civil War, slave-imports dried up. In the last 100-years, as sources of slave-labor from Africa and indentured-labor from India dried up, US was able to suck out surplus labor from Europe.
Not Quite A Labor Of Love
As European migrants arrived by shiploads into the US, gates to the US for Chinese, Indians (and East Europeans) clanged shut.
The Supreme Court of the USA (SCOTUS) found ways and means to justify racism, exclusion in the USA. In the Thind case (United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923)), SCOTUS upheld GOTUS laws to disallow Indians from entering the USA.
Soon after Thind’s legal challenge, the GOTUS rushed other laws to limit immigration. Asian exclusion laws ( Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act (Pub.L. 68–139, 43 Stat. 153, enacted May 26, 1924)) stopped Chinese and Japanese from entering the USA.
Costs & Price Of War
In WWII, Europe lost between 2 crores-4 crores (mostly) males. This had two major effects on the Western economies.
One is that immigration from Europe to US dried up. In the next seven years (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952), GOTUS removed all restrictions on Asian immigration into the USA. It also removed racial segregation practices and laws, thus increasing Black labor availability for US industry.
The second big change was in women’s empowerment. With more than 2 crore people fighting WWII, another 2 crore dead, severe labor shortages led to a boom in women’s employment. Employment led to organisation, organization helped to improve earnings. With earnings came empowerment. Women’s Suffrage, the 50-year struggle in the West, for women’s right to vote finally happened after WWII.
California … Here I Come!
Immi-grunts are by their very nature, opportunistic.
Looking to exploit better economic opportunities, instead of creating opportunities. They can serve a useful function in reducing labor-price imbalances. Seeking to maximize their own earnings, immi-grunts are seen in a not very kindly light by the host nation.
So, why has labor growth stagnated for five years? | Graphic source & courtesy – economist.com
The slide in the unemployment rate – a full percentage point since September – owes mostly to rising employment (as measured by the household survey). But the decline in unemployment has been helped by the failure of the labour force to grow more quickly. While it has fluctuated considerably, the labour force is only slightly larger now than in December, 2007, when the recession began. Yet in January, 2008, the Congressional Budget Office reckoned it would be some 5m larger by now, or 159.5m (see chart).
What happened to those 5m people? Why aren’t they showing up as unemployed? Some are discouraged workers or other people who want to work but aren’t counted as unemployed; but I reckon they account for only one third of the missing 5m.
So what about the others? Is it early retirement? Disability? Returning to school? Illegal immigrants returning home (or failing to enter the country in the first place)? Or were they never there to start with – the labour force simply isn’t growing as quickly as we thought it should, for demographic or other reasons? Whichever it is, it is a troubling sign that our economic potential could be a lot lower than we thought just a few years ago. And that’s the real bad news.
via America’s labour force and the economy: The missing five million | The Economist.
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- Study finds migrant workers “tricked and trapped” into forced labour in the Middle East (famagusta-gazette.com)
- US immigration reform could improve economy, says conservative thinktank (guardian.co.uk)
- India’s Demographic Dividend: Where are the jobs? (policyblog.oxfordindiasociety.org.uk)
- What does it mean to be a slave in the 21st century? | Roger Plant (guardian.co.uk)
- Immigration Into Britain: Bubble Before The Collapse (quicktake.wordpress.com)
- Saudi curbs spark expat fear…anger (arabtimesonline.com)
- No Skills? No Problem! (reason.com)
- Will Aging Baby Boomers Drag Down U.S. Growth? (blogs.wsj.com)
- Why Mark Zuckerberg Is Pushing For Immigration Reform (business.time.com)
- Does Congress Care about American Workers? (thetribunepapers.com)
Can The Agriculture System Of The Developed West Feed the World?
Western farmers get more subsidy than the GDP of 125 countries in the world.
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Used food tins with overwhelming propaganda branding stacked near the town of Dadaab, Kenya, on Tuesday, July 26, 2011. | Image source – AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam; courtesy – theatlantic.com
ooking at butter mountains, lakes of wine and milk, in Europe and US after the starvation and famine in Africa, it can be easy to jump to wrong conclusions.
Just 60 years ago, Europe was dependent on food imports – and was on limited rations.
Food aid is frequently a market seeding program to create markets for Western food multinationals. A Somali refugee with a high-energy biscuit at the Ifo refugee camp on July 24, 2011 in Dadaab, Kenya. | Image source – Oli Scarff/Getty Images; courtesy – theatlantic.com
Today the story is different.
The price of a ton of skimmed-milk powder, which in the summer of 2007 was above €3,000, had fallen roughly in half. In Germany it is currently around €1,400.
Farmers had been hit by a slump in demand for commodities caused by the global financial slowdown, and by the strength of the euro.
“We export a lot to Russia in terms of butter, cheese to the United States and milk powder to Africa and Asia, and all these are hit by the strength of the euro”.
Though the EU managed to dispense with its butter stocks in 2007, grain mountains and wine lakes still exist.
The latest figures show that 717,810 tons of cereals is piling up, along with 41,422 tons of sugar and 2.3 million hectoliters of wine, according to the European Commission.
Graphic source & courtesy – economist.com on Jul 1st 2010
Currently, there is belief that food shortages in the West were an exception – maybe even an aberration.
This confidence and belief has grown to the extent that the West seriously asks itself.
“But can we feed the world this way?”
following World War II, with the onset of the “Green Revolution,” feeding the world became a national mantra. It was a ubiquitous “good” that handily justified the discovery that the petrochemicals used in warfare could find postwar applications if dumped on our food supply.
However, 75 or 100 years ago, such a question would never have entered into our dialogue. To ask a local farmer or homesteader how his or her production methods were going to feed the world would have been absurd. The local producer’s job was to support the family, the community, and his or her bioregion–not the world.
“Feeding the world” was the background tune playing in the bank, on the car radio of the seed salesman, in the office of the accountant as farmers were counseled to “get big or get out,” to expand their production and change their growing practices to participate in a global food supply, rather than a regional one.
Can the local, sustainable food movement in the United States feed the world? Hell, no. Nor can the industrial agricultural paradigm. No one can feed the world. One country cannot do it, nor can any specific model of production.
Thus, I leave you with one question: What can you do today that will enable the world to feed itself?
via The Downside of Expecting America’s Agriculture System to Feed the World | Alternet.
As Europe & US play out a charade of negotiations, it is Africa and Asia which is suffering from food shortages. | Cartoon by Peter Nicholson; on July 5, 2005; source & courtesy – nicholsoncartoons.com
Truthfully?
Forget about the world. Forget about pollution, environment, green-planet, ecology, rain forests et al.
Think of yourself.
Between the US and the EU, the agricultural system gets close to US$100 billion dollars. Western farmers get more subsidy than the GDP of 125 countries in the world.
Western governments subsidize their farmers by a sum greater than the GDP of countries like Morocco, Oman, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tunisia, Kenya, Libya, Tanzania among many others.
The West can afford this subsidy regime for now. One more crisis like the ongoing Great Recession – and these subsidies will have to go. When agricultural subsidies to Western farmers go, food from dinner tables across the West will also vanish. As subsidies decline, Western consumers may see food shortages and nearly 50% increase in food prices.
Go.
Worry about that.
Related Articles
- Can We Feed the World? (project-syndicate.org)
- Food MythBusters – Do we really need industrial agriculture to feed the world? (globalelite.tv)
- Inspiring the agriculture students of the future (abc.net.au)
Levels of total farm income and total subsidy over the years in the US
Rage, Anxiety In The West: BRICS Must Be Doing Something Right
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If corruption is all about cornering wealth, power and resources, look at concentration of power.
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Is the West assuming leadership of the global financial system, so that they can pervert the system like this? | Tom Toles, in washingtonpost.com on 18 Mar 2010
he day-after BRICS announced their plan to start a BRICS Development Bank in New Delhi last year, reactions in Western media barely concealed anger at the BRICS proposal.
Sample this.
Outside endemic corruption, uncertain or wholly absent rule of law, and relatively low per capita income and life expectancy, there wouldn’t appear to be much that unites this disparate collection of nations. But there are at least two things that do – high growth and trade.
via Why a Brics-built bank to rival the IMF is doomed to fail – Telegraph.
See this statement in wider context.
Rule of Law
On the rule of law, I would agree.The is West is truly the land of law.
Between the US and EU, on a population base of little over 80 crores, the West has about 27 lakh (2.7 million) prisoners – EU (total pop. 50 cr.; prison pop. – 6.07 lakh) and the USA (total pop. 31 cr.; prison pop. 21 lakh). With 27 lakh prisoners, the West is a world leader in imprisonment. Coincidentally, the West labels itself as the Free World.
Graphic source and courtesy – economist.com.
Exclude children, the old and women from the population ‘eligible’ for imprisonment, we are left with around 27 crore adult males. This would mean that one out of every hundred Western males is in prison.
Comparably, in India, with an overall population of 120 crores, the numbers in prison is around 3 lakhs. Of the nearly 30 crore males, India has just 3 lakhs in prison. Just one in thousand, adult Indian male is in prison.
To enforce the rule of law, the West has also become a Prisoner Planet. Is that what is missing in BRICS? Brazil and Russia have lower imprisonment rates, compared to the US – but it is still high compared to India.
No, thanks!
Corruption … or Collusion
On the matter of corruption, again he is right.
After the rule of law, with strict rules about libel and slander, corruption cannot see the light of day. But if corruption is all about cornering wealth, power and resources, look at the …
The West-dominated global financial system has pioneered a system that depends on mass-employment, low-entrepreneurial activity, excess production coupled with excess pollution and waste. | 2003 Cartoon by David Baldinger
Concentration Of Power
How does one measure concentration of power.
Today the most popular method is the Fortune /Forbes /Businessweek /FT 500 listing of Top corporates.
These listings demonstrate that half the world’s economic output is controlled by about 5000 companies run by about 25,000 individuals. Add another 25,000 politicians and bureaucrats. We have about 50,000 people controlling the lives of 800 billion people of the West – and influencing the lives of non-Western societies.
Between the mega-corporations and State, 60%-75% of the work force is employed or paid for being unemployed.
In some of the inefficient states like India, mega-corporations and the State employ less than 3 crore people – which is less than 5% of the Indian labour force.
Forget Western correspondents, there are quite a few NRI chelas for such Western journalists. Like Hong-Kong based, Venky ‘Chumboo’ Vembu. (Don’t know what Chumboo is? Never mind, Vembu knows what chumboo is).
To get an unprovoked reaction of rage and anger, BRICS must be doing something right.
More power to BRICS.
Related Articles
- BRICS Comes Of Age At Durban – Analysis (eurasiareview.com)
- BRICS Lessons From Durban – OpEd (eurasiareview.com)
- BRIC by brick (thehindu.com)
- BRICS has arrived, so will the mortar (Comment) (news.in.msn.com)
- BRICS Countries Dump The Euro, Establish Bank (eurasiareview.com)
- Durban Summit: BRICS to launch its own bank to counter WB/IMF (foreignpolicyissues.wordpress.com)
- Jim Willie’s “Most Important Article Ever”- USDollar: Ring-Fenced & Checkmate (silverdoctors.com)
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