A few things to point out: 1. There is a theme of the tall, fair, wheat-eater of what is now Pakistan and his martial capabilities versus the cowardice of the short, dark, rice eaters of the north Indian plains and Bengal that recurs in Muslim thought, especially during the Pakistan movement, 1940-47. It is still extant today in Pakistani writings and conversation. I don't know how much Pakistani generals buy into that, but I assume they are influenced. 2. In post-1857-mutiny, the British stopped hiring the short, dark, rice-eaters, who were from the regions that had mutinied, and who were the major constituents of the British Indian Army upto that point, and started hiring the people from the North-West, and this is when the theory of the "martial races" of India began. I think some of its effect still lingers in Pakistan. 3. In 1970-71, East Pakistan won a parliamentary majority; but West Pakistan refused to accept this; this is what led to Yahya Khan's delaying the convening of parliament, and ultimately to the secession of East Pakistan. 4. India's softness is taken as weakness; to avert war it is necessary that India roar. 5. To everyone from India who thinks about these things it is apparent that any real security threat to India comes from China; Pakistan is a nuclear-armed nuisance. 6. In the long term, ASEAN is much more important economically than all the countries to the west of India upto Israel put together; the Middle East is of interest to the world only because of petroleum. Hence a renewed Indian push to revive its diplomatic ties with the countries to its East.

Virginia must be so proud of its Republican State Senators!

The real lesson is - fund the jihadis and get bitten by them. One classic case is Pakistan, that funded jihadis and now the jihadis have slipped the leash, and killed over 30,000 Pakistanis during the last ten years. Another case is the US in Afghanistan. Secular Afghans pleaded with the US administrations not to fund the mujahideen, to no avail, defeating the Soviet Union was a higher priority. Now the US has spent more than a decade in Afghanistan, accomplishing very little. To the US' credit, they seem to have learned a lesson, and have been careful in Libya and Syria (so far) not to fund the religious extremists. What has this to do with Israel? Well, Israel funded Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO. This from 2002, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10456.htm Quote: Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official. .... All of which disgusts some former U.S. intelligence officials. "The thing wrong with so many Israeli operations is that they try to be too sexy," said former CIA official Vincent Cannestraro. According to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson, "the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism." "The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer." "They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it," he said. End quote. The same article mentions the mistake the Egyptians also made, in funding jihadis and regretting it later, but does not go into detail.

The issue for our time is whether we are willing to undertake the discomfort and uncertainty of transforming our economy and its use of energy so that its impact on the biosphere of the earth is sustainable. Will we be Washingtons or will we be Jeffersons?

A retd. Colonel's view of Petraeus: http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/11/petraeus-agonistes-ii.html Quote: He was not the originator of the armed forces current doctrine on COIN. He did not triumph in Iraq employing that doctrine. The improvement in the security situation there happened because he was clever enough to accept marine and Special Forces sponsorship of the "awakening" of the Sunni Arabs to the fact that they did not wish to live under Al-Qa'ida rule. This led to the creation of the "Sons of Iraq" who, for a time, virtually wiped out the Sunni jihadis. This gave the Shia Arab dominated government a chance to at least partially assert its power in some parts of the country. This serendipitous set of events was carefully parlayed in the US media into the creation of an image of Petraeus as the heir of George Marshall. Iraq is slowly becoming a satrapy of Iran. Should Petraeus have credit for that as well? End quote.

Or this: http://aulia-e-hind.com/dargah/Intl/DataDurbar.htm or this: https://sites.google.com/site/pahleaap/dewasharif-dargah-lucknow or this: http://adayinlife.timesofindia.com/photoDisplay.php?photoId=64550 or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haji_Ali_Dargah Let us not have the fakery of an austere Islam paraded here.

Here: http://www.dargahajmer.com/v_photo.htm Per F.B. Ali, this does not exist (or ought not to exist).

To demean and ridicule the Prophet is to strike at the emotional core of being of every Muslim. It is an attack on their sense of identity, on who they are, on the very basis of their existence. (The dynamics at work here are similar to those that cause denial of the Holocaust to be such an extremely sensitive issue for Jewish people. Both are existential issues). Denying the Holocaust is telling Jews that no, you were not slaughtered in the millions in Europe during the Nazi era. Denying the Prophet - each of us who is not Muslim does it every time we hear the Azaan. Great man maybe, but not with the monopoly on knowledge of God, nor the sole way to heaven, salvation, nor the last we're going to hear from God. We are implicitly or explicitly denying the veracity of the Prophet. And yes, we know that Muslims are offended by that, and long for the day when the whole world will be Muslim, and we will thus be out of the state of jahiliya that we currently are in. This is **far** from an existential crisis for us!!! And we, we are not supposed to be offended by this attitude of Muslims, certainly not riot, and instead be grinfucked into extinction.

There is even a paper: http://www.etd.ceu.hu/2010/kalacinska_diana.pdf SOCIAL PROTEST IN LATVIA 2006-2009: POLITICAL DISENCHANTMENT AND IDENTITY FORMATION By Diana Kalainska Submitted to Central European University Department of Political Science In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Political Science Supervisor: Professor Bela Greskovit

And here is news of a trade union protest from June 2009. http://dalje.com/en-world/latvia-unions-protest-deep-budget-cuts/266189 "Several thousand people protested on Thursday against harsh Latvian budget cuts needed to win more international loans..."

And here is news of another protest from Feb 3, 2009, via the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2009/02/riga_latvia_since_dawn_the.html

...a hundred or so people made a shouting match at the Parliament The New York Times, Jan 14, 2009, records 106 arrests at a protest where "The rioting broke out Tuesday when around 10,000 people gathered in Dome Square for a protest that focused on political and economic grievances. Most people dispersed, but several hundred protesters remained and started throwing snowballs and cobblestones at government buildings."

Population chart for Latvia: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=lg&v=21

Sorry, in the previous comment, security police, not secret police, and they can go to prison.

It is also worth noting in this several part youtube Panel Discussion - Fiscal Austerity, Rainer Kattel, Jeffrey Sommers, Karsten Staehr, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, 2011 (URL to part 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qx0iEA9XuY ) Karsten Staehr notes that in Latvia the freedom ranking has fallen, see around 9:00 of this youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRoabZRV-ik that if someone writes in the newspaper convert your Lats into Euros, devaluation is imminent, they will be visited by the secret police.

Prof. Jeffrey Sommers, who has spent years in Latvia, had this to say that is relevant to Latvian stoicism: "Moreover, the airbrushing of Latvia's recent history by Samuelson and other pundits claiming the population has supported austerity is contradicted by the massive protests early on in its crisis. When these protests failed to bring about change, the public's response was to vote with their feet and exit the country. Indeed, when combined with its low-birth rate, this emigration from Latvia is creating a kind of demographic euthanasia that risks the very disappearance of this nation. " http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/16/latvia-anders-aslund-austerity

Proud helpers of ALEC, Unite! http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/exposing-alec-how-conservative-backed-state-laws-are-all-connected/255869/

This article from 2007 by Ariana Huffington: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/joe-klein-seeks-to-master_b_40479.html "But here is Klein on Meet the Press in February 2003: "This is a really tough decision. War may well be the right decision at this point. In fact, I think it--it's--it-it probably is." When Tim Russert presses Klein on why he thinks Iraq is "the right war," Klein responds, "Because sooner or later, this guy has to be taken out. Saddam has -- Saddam Hussein has to be taken out... The message has to be sent because if it isn't sent now, if we don't do this now, it empowers every would-be Saddam out there and every would-be terrorist out there." Does that sound like someone opposing the war?"

From answer to question 12: "Like any rational person, Joe will want to maximize revenue." It should be "maximize revenue minus cost"?

FBI response, from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/us/fbi-chided-for-training-that-was-critical-of-islam.html "In a statement posted on its Web site on Friday, the F.B.I. said the training material “does not reflect the views of the F.B.I. and is not consistent with the overall instruction provided to F.B.I. personnel.” The material was presented only once, in April, to an audience of 37 agents at the Northern Virginia Resident Agency, according to the F.B.I., “and was quickly discontinued because it was inconsistent with F.B.I. standards on this topic.” In the statement, the agency said that “as of August 2011, the individual who delivered the presentation no longer provides training on behalf of the F.B.I.” " ---- The FBI statement can be found here: http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/response-to-media-reporting-regarding-counterterrorism-training

Quote: Even at $5 per night you you would be talking about $5*365*300M = $547B in annual GDP.... Even if the utility of a hotel room reduced by $5 a night, that does not mean 300M people would pay $5 a day for access to Facebook. Facebook is currently free to its users and its annual revenue is around $2B. If each of its 150M American users was willing to pay just **$20 a year** for Facebook, that is $3B in user fees in addition, and surely Facebook would consider turning into a charged service. Let's put it in yet another way - suppose not having any water makes the hotel room worth less by $50 a day. Does that mean you are willing to pay $50 a day for water?