I bet you did not know that the US Constitution is “sharia compliant.” No, seriously it is. Ok, I am not an expert on the US constitution, and quite frankly I don’t know the first thing about sharia except that I believe that it is about Islamic law and that all Islamic countries have to conform to sharia. So that’s why it came as a bit of shock to learn that the US constitution was sharia compliant. Here’s how.

India, like all other countries of the world, is embedded in the larger context of the world. Naturally therefore India’s fortunes and the prospects for its development are circumscribed by the world’s prospects. Religion — especially the monotheistic ones — are arguably one of the most powerful of the forces that shape the human world. One cannot hope to study economic growth and development without understanding how religion is impacting the world at large. One fact is undeniable: when societies undergo severe stress, they fracture along predictable lines. The …

In connection with the previous post on the US leading in weapons sales, I thought it would be nice to see a short excerpt from President Eisenhower’s farewell speech of 1961 warning Americans of the dangers of the military-industrial complex.

“U.S. leads world in foreign weapons sales” reports Reuters. Sure that is as surprising as being told that Indian politicians are crooked. But the item helpfully reports figures.

I have maintained for a while that the reason that Pakistan gets propped up by the US and its allies is that India and Pakistan are engaged in a dollar auction game and therefore anytime Pakistan is about to go bankrupt (and therefore be unable to continue the game), the US and its allies rush to prop it up. How much money is involved in keeping Pakistan alive so that it can continue to wage jihad against India? Here are the figures from an article, “Fail, then reap rewards,” by …

Perhaps most humans are congenitally belligerent and can be reasonably expected to get into fights. But it takes institutionalized big businesses to create a war machine that raises ordinary human belligerence to levels of superhuman insanity. The war machine — and one can argue that indeed there is only one such thing but with a global reach, even though its components are multinational in the sense that people from various nations participate in their creation and maintenance — is so pervasive that it seems to be as natural, unchangeable, and …

This year, 2009 CE, marks the 200th birth anniversary of Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882), and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859). Contrary to what one may suppose, the phrase “survival of the fittest” does not occur in that book. It was Herbert Spencer (1820 -1903), who coined it in his book Principles of Biology, (1864).[1]
Spencer warned that “the ultimate result of shielding men from …

{Continued from part 1.}
In the ultimate analysis, ideas matter. Ideas are what distinguishes humans from all known forms of terrestial living beings. The differences one observes in the development of various societies ultimately boil down to the set of ideas that a society developes, borrows, adopts, adapts, and uses. Ideas as embodied in the institutions and mores of society ultimately dictate how prosperous it is. A set of ideas that persist and pervade the collective consciousness of a society can be called an ideology. After controlling for all other factors …

BBC reports that Israel conducted an exercise that amounts to a rehearsal for an attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. It is a strong signal — to all including the US, Europe, and Iran — that it is serious about halting Iran’s nuclear bomb-making ambitions. Good for Israel and good for the world.
All this goes to show that entertaining the idea of building a gas pipeline from Iran to India — via Pakistan, of all places — at the cost of a few billion dollars was silly beyond belief. …

Only recently did I become aware that there is a local politician in Mumbai named Raj Thackeray and that he has been inciting people to violence to stop non-Marathi speaking people from migrating to Mumbai. The man, in my considered opinion, is a certifiable idiot and an evil one at that. But then there is nothing particularly remarkable in Raj Thackeray’s quest for votes through divisive politics. The British quite successfully implemented it and ever since political independence, politicians across the spectrum have been dividing India along regional, caste, and …

Pakistan matters critically to India. One could dismiss it as a failed tin-pot dictatorship and is of little consequence with respect to India’s development and economic growth. But it is just because it is a tin-pot dictatorship that it matters. Even more precisely, it has been made into a tin-pot dictatorship so that it can serve as a lever to indirectly control India. I deliberately say “made” because it is a tool used by the West and therefore fashioned by and kept in “good” shape to serve the purpose. Principally, …

Sarah Kass of the Jerusalem Post calls the Israli-Palestinian “The Longest-running Reality Show.” Brief excerpt:

In a comment on my musings on “An entirely avoidable tragedy”, Jack Stack wrote
You are quick to point out issues (again) with the US. Yep, Iraq, but at the same time, we’ve done quite a bit for literally every nation since we became a nation. We can debate the merits of capitalism, democracy, etc or we can understand that India is still a young country that has needs – similar to many other countries.
I can appreciate Jack’s point of view. I stand entirely justifiably accused of pointing a …

It should come as no surprise that the US is selling arms to Pakistan.
“2,769 Radio Frequency TOW 2A missiles, 415 RF bunker buster missiles, fly-to-buy missiles in both these categories, 121 TOW launchers for wire-guided and wireless missiles, E-2C HAWKEYE 2000 Airborne Early Warning Systems, simulators and support equipment. Their total worth could be up to $1.04 Billion.”

If publishing a bunch of cartoons results in significant death and destruction around the world, imagine what it must require to actually speak critically of Islam on an Arabic television program. Dr Wafa Sultan has — how should I put it — gonads the size of the globe. A Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, she is talking. Her talk is not pretty.

The cartoon row has prompted a bunch of writers to issue a statement warning against Islamism, the new totalitarian threat, BBC reports. Three of the writers are from the Indian subcontinent; three are from Iran; three from France.
The full text of the statement follows.

F. Scott Fitzgerald had noted that “the rich are different from you and me.” Ernest Hemmingway agreed and said, “Yes, they have more money.” Having more money is a significant difference because the most important of its derivate effects is that they have more power. The concerns of the rich are more important; their pain is more acute; their viewpoint is more worthy of consideration; their comprehension of the world more accurate. As Tevya, the poor farmer in The Fiddler on the Roof notes while dreaming of being a rich …

Bestsellers touting the benefits of globalization are a regular feature of our times. Case in point: Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat. The title is supposed to shock the reader. “Damn! I thought the world was round. Thanks Tom, you are a bloody genius.”

No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempts to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future. —- Ludwig von Mises
Indian policy makers’ optimism is matched only by their …

From The Acorn an important message:

Indian taxpayers are paying for the security of a man who is personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Indian soldiers, and through his sponsorship of terrorism, for the deaths of thousands of Indian civilians. Far from showing any remorse, he is brazenly unapologetic about the whole thing.

[Source: The Acorn.
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