suchandra

Problem seems that feeding the poor causes some people getting envious?

DKS takes potshots at ISKCON

He questioned the validity of the grants given by both the governments to ISKCON

http://www.bangaloremirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=10&contentid=2009061720090617100143758e7fae357&sectxslt=

Bangalore Mirror Bureau Posted On Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 10:01:43 AM

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), Bangalore came under a new attack on Tuesday. This time, state Congress working president D K Shivakumar has alleged that the Society is misusing government programmes to mobilise funds for its activities from the international scene.

Speaking to media persons, Shivakumar said, “The ISKCON, on the pretext of feeding poor children across India, is collecting several crores of rupees from abroad. It has amassed huge wealth through generous contributions by foreigners. But in reality, both the state and the central government have been funding the programmes. Also, it is unconstitutional to raise money abroad by citing the government’s programmes.”

Questioning the validity of the grants given by both the governments to ISKCON, Shivakumar said, “If they are raising money outside India to run the government’s programmes, why should the governments grant any money? They should immediately stop granting funds to the Akshaya Patra programme. If ISKCON is facing a monetary crunch, it should adopt constitutional measures; otherwise, it should withdraw itself from the programme.”

Reacting to the allegations, Chanchalapati Das, Vice Chairman of ISKCON’s Akshay Patra Foundation, clarified that there had been no violations in running the programme. “We incur a cost of around Rs 5 for a meal per child. However, the support we get from the government is about Rs 2.84 per meal, by means of subsidy over rice and other forms. Further, it is the responsibility of the ISKCON to raise the required additional sum of Rs 1.46 per child. As we are feeding around 10 lakh children across the country, the amount comes close to Rs 15 lakh and this we raise through donations from individuals and corporate donors.”

He added, “To ensure transparency and accountability in the whole process, the records of the foundation are done by a renowned audit company. Further, the three-member committee appointed by the Education Department to look into the controversy has scrutinised all the records and the procedures of operation and given a clean-chit to Akshay Patra.”

Better fake cheese. The real cheese is a product of the dairy industry which is in the business of slaughtering and mistreating cows.

This might be presently true. On the other side isn't this where kali-yuga is heading at? No more milk, no more vegetables, no more fruits, finally - no more food except meat? Then it goes further, at the end of kali-yuga people becoming cannibals, eating each other. Isn't this what we support by agreeing to fake-cheese? Stop milk production, just slaughter the cows.

Next, material nature arranges to extinct the cows, etc.

"Now you have got food in chaos, but there will be no food also. Then the mother and father will eat their own children. This is world, this Kali-yuga, everything. No food will be produced. Now by your talent, you are producing nice food, but producing food, the, tilling the ground some way or other, by machine or by this way… There must be rain, so many conditions. But time will come when there will be no rain. Then what you will do with your tractor and machine? You’ll have to eat the tractor. That’s all. What you will do? There will be no rain. It is said that “There will be cloud, there will be lightning, but there will be no rainfall.” These are stated in the Śrīmad- Bhāgavatam. This is the result of our sinful life, restriction. Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ, ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā [Bg. 3.27]. These rascals are thinking, “We are master.” What master you are? You are under the control of nature fully."

Posted, June 08 2009 08:39: At today's Sunday feast program several new guests came. We did harinam yesterday and this one man we gave an invitation care to came to our program today for the first time. He is ~ 65 yrs old, and has been a 7th day Adventists and vegetarian most of his life.

He said he is a retired engineer who helped design an underground city for Sandia Labs (US Government) outside of Los Alamos NM. He said there is an underground city there complete with underground runways for fighter jets and nuke bombers where rock covered doors open and jets fly into the mountain, or take off, then the doors shut and from the sky you can't see a thing but mountain side. He said under the ground there is a vast city, with shopping malls, living quarters, and work facilities. He said there are tunnels that stretch 90 miles, with high speed train cars which connect various underground sites together. He said it is not just one city under ground, but many cities all inter-connected. Not just under ground, but these cities are under mountain ranges, extremely fortified. He said it was going to be where the President would live in case of nuclear war, but, he said they have built a separate city for that elsewhere and he doesn't know where that is. The Sandia Los Alamos facility will be a military underground command post. Impenatrable from air strikes or even a direct atomic blast, as it is located under mountains.

Anyway, he said through people he knows who still work at that city that the latest thing they heard was that - an idea that has been kicked around by the Illuminatos, as he called them, who he said were calling the shots behind the world powers, that they have been talking of Faking an attack on earth by what they will say will be Aliens from space. He said that they have imagining lasers (inference lasers) that can create holographic images in the sky. The lasers excite certain atmospheric layers and create images.

They can animate the images. So, they will project int the sky space ships flying over head. Craft that will appear to move across the sky at extremely high speeds, even appearing in one location one second, and another location another second. (Since they are projecting the illusion of the images via laser, like a gigantic video projector, they can make them appear to move as fast as they want. Then the idea is to coordinate their location in the sky with satellites already in place far out in space that can fire bursts of microwave energy beams at various random targets, like buildings, cars, trucks, bridges, and make it appear that the flying saucers are firing on various cities.

The idea is to create a panic and rally people behind the cause of fighting the alien invasion, while instituting stringent martial law and rounding up all subversive elements in society. This way they can kill many innocent people (to cut down the population) by making it appear that the aliens from space have done the evil work, and not just some avoidable war between countries. Or diseases that doctors may say were engineered in labs. They will also be able to round up masses of people - for their own safety, and the masses will let them, thinking it is all necessary. He claims this plan has been in the works for many years, and that some of the large spottings of UFO's many years back over some SWestern cities was simply a test of the laser imaging devices, and tests to see if people took them as real, or faked images. The tests worked, but they never went through with it. He said he heard they are now revisiting the idea.

He may be just a big talker, or who knows? If we start hearing stories of an alien invasion, think twice before you believe it all.

ys Ameyatma das

Train requires huge amount of infrastructure.

Think twice about 'green' transport, say scientists

http://news./s/afp/20090608/sc_afp/climatewarmingtransportcarbonlifestyle

Sun Jun 7, 8:02 pm ET

PARIS (AFP) – You worry a lot about the environment and do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint -- the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change.

So you always prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, faithful to the belief that this inflicts less harm to the planet.

Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study.

Its authors point out an array of factors that are often unknown to the public.

These are hidden or displaced emissions that ramp up the simple "tailpipe" tally, which is based on how much carbon is spewed out by the fossil fuels used to make a trip.

Environmental engineers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath at the University of California at Davis say that when these costs are included, a more complex and challenging picture emerges.

In some circumstances, for instance, it could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city -- even in an SUV, the bete noire of green groups -- rather than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport.

"We are encouraging people to look at not the average ranking of modes, because there is a different basket of configurations that determine the outcome," Chester told AFP in a phone interview.

"There's no overall solution that's the same all the time."

The pair give an example of how the use of oil, gas or coal to generate electricity to power trains can skew the picture.

Boston has a metro system with high energy efficiency. The trouble is, 82 percent of the energy to drive it comes from dirty fossil fuels.

By comparison, San Francisco's local railway is less energy-efficient than Boston's. But it turns out to be rather greener, as only 49 percent of the electricity is derived from fossils.

The paper points out that the "tailpipe" quotient does not include emissions that come from building transport infrastructure -- railways, airport terminals, roads and so on -- nor the emissions that come from maintaining this infrastructure over its operational lifetime.

These often-unacknowledged factors add substantially to the global-warming burden.

In fact, they add 63 percent to the "tailpipe" emissions of a car, 31 percent to those of a plane, and 55 percent to those of a train.

And another big variable that may be overlooked in green thinking is seat occupancy.

A saloon (sedan) car or even an 4x4 that is fully occupied may be responsible for less greenhouse gas per kilometer travelled per person than a suburban train that is a quarter full, the researchers calculate.

"Government policy has historically relied on energy and emission analysis of automobiles, buses, trains and aircraft at their tailpipe, ignoring vehicle production and maintenance, infrastructure provision and fuel production requirements to support these modes," they say.

So getting a complete view of the ultimate environmental cost of the type of transport, over its entire lifespan, should help decision-makers to make smarter investments.

For travelling distances up to, say, 1,000 kilometres (600 miles), "we can ask questions as to whether it's better to invest in a long-distance railway, improving the air corridor or boosting car occupancy," said Chester.

The paper appears in Environmental Research Letters, a publication of Britain's Institute of Physics.

The calculations are based on US technology and lifestyles.

It used 2005 models of the Toyota Camry saloon, Chevrolet Trailblazer SUV and Ford F-150 to calibrate automobile performance; the light transit systems in the San Francisco Bay Area and Boston as the models for the metro and commuter lines; and the Embraer 145, Boeing 737 and Boeing 747 as the benchmarks for short-, medium- and long-haul aircraft.

Google founders' mentor found dead in swimming pool

Rajeev Motwani, Stanford professor who worked with search engine founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, dies aged 47

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jun/07/rajeev-motwani-dead-google-swimming-pool

A US computer science professor who played a key role in the creation of the internet search giant Google has been found dead at the age of 47 after apparently falling into his swimming pool.

Rajeev Motwani was mentor to Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, when they were PhD students at Stanford university. His body was found in the pool of his home in Atherton, California, on Friday.

A spokesman for the university said the cause of death was unclear. Friends said he could not swim, but was planning to learn. Some reports speculated that Motwani, who regularly worked late into the night, could have accidentally fallen into the pool after going outside in the dark.

On his blog, Brin led tributes to Motwani as the inspiration behind a number of computing advances. "Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it," he wrote.

"When Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organisational."

A 1998 paper written by Page, Brin and Motwani, unearthed by the blog TechCrunch, discussed the development of Google. "We have developed a global ranking of web pages called PageRank based on the link structure of the web that has properties that are useful for search and navigation … We have used PageRank to develop a novel search engine called Google, which also makes heavy use of anchor text," it said.

Stanford said Motwani's work on data mining influenced the way algorithms are used in Google searches. It pointed out that he was also an influential investor who backed the initial development of what turned out to be a number of successful hi-tech companies and initiatives, including the internent payment giant PayPal.

"Rajeev's connections to Silicon Valley were all important, but he will be remembered most for the personal friendships he had with students, faculty colleagues and staff in the department. We will all miss him tremendously," Jim Plummer, the dean of the school of engineering, told the university's news service.

Motwani was born in Jammu, India, and grew up in New Delhi. He travelled to the United States for his doctorate in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is survived by his wife, Asha Jadeja, and two daughters.

If birds fly directly south, they stay in the same time zone, or close to it. If they were to fly to a drastically different time zone, they would have to stop to rest anyway, and so would catch up with the light/dark cycles.

Court fiat on Iskcon, Mumbai

Posted On Saturday, June 06, 2009 at 01:48:05 AM

The City Civil Court has directed Iskcon, Mumbai to pay Rs 27.78 lakh to Iskcon, Bangalore as cost of suit filed over the temple ownership issue.The Fifth Additional Bangalore City Civil Court had declared Iskcon, Bangalore as the absolute owner of Radhakrishna temple at Rajajinagar and ordered Iskcon, Mumbai not to interfere in the affairs of the Bangalore body. BMB

http://www.bangaloremirror.com/index.aspx?page=article&sectid=10&contentid=200906062009060601480540969031

Yeah and the last dooms day was supposed to be 2000.

They reccommend getting their book as a guide to survival.

The Vaisnavas are saying we all must face death and to read their books on how to die in the right consciousness.

Agreed, I'm also very sceptical concernig dooms day - our former GBC used to be really freaky about this and after this experience, damage was millions, nobody would ever believe in this. But 2012 seems to be different. Something will happen there, at least a big change. There should be the Golden Age right now, but things get always worse. All know something gonna be happen.

Surviving 2012 and Planet X

source: http://planetxforecast.com/

"Thousands of years ago, the ancient Sumerians, Mayans, Egyptians, Hebrews, Celts and numerous other cultures set down prophetic warnings in their wisdom texts and folklore about 2012.

• 2012 and Planet X Videos
  
• Learn About Our Survival Book

Diverse in their origins, they all converge on the Mayan date of 2012, and their many warnings to us are very precise. They speak of a massive, reddish object that will fly through the core of our solar system in 2012 with catastrophic results.

What's This All About? — Watch Our Videos

This 5-part video series offers a straightforward view of this coming human event. It is available on several popular video sharing sites such as YouTube, Google Video and many more. Produced and hosted by Marshall Masters, a former CNN science feature field producer, it is an ideal Planet X / 2012 primer for those new to this vital topic. Click here to see them now, or on your favorite video share site.

Use Our Book, Planet X Forecast

and 2012 Survival Guide to Prepare

"Chance favors the prepared

mind."—Louis Pasteur

What is Planet X? It could be a comet, rogue planet, or as this book maintains, a dying brown dwarf companion to Sol. In the years to come, its elliptical orbit will bring it into the core of our system, where it will enrage our Sun. Once that happens, Earth’s greatest pains will come the moment fate puts us in the cross hairs of a perfect solar storm.

The purpose of this book is to help those who now agree that time is of the essence. It does this by offering a practical 2012 tool kit of how-to survival knowledge, for those who’ll be left to fend for themselves." Read More

Looks like the Chinese don't print money?

China Central Bank warns Federal Reserve over 'printing money'

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: "Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our legislature."

"I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States," he told the Wall Street Journal.

His recent trip to the Far East appears to have been a stark reminder that Asia's "Confucian" culture of right action does not look kindly on the insouciant policy of printing money by Anglo-Saxons.

Mr Fisher, the Fed's leading hawk, was a fierce opponent of the original decision to buy Treasury debt, fearing that it would lead to a blurring of the line between fiscal and monetary policy – and could all too easily degenerate into Argentine-style financing of uncontrolled spending.

However, he agreed that the Fed was forced to take emergency action after the financial system "literally fell apart".

Nor, he added was there much risk of inflation taking off yet. The Dallas Fed uses a "trim mean" method based on 180 prices that excludes extreme moves and is widely admired for accuracy.

"You've got some mild deflation here," he said.

The Oxford-educated Mr Fisher, an outspoken free-marketer and believer in the Schumpeterian process of "creative destruction", has been running a fervent campaign to alert Americans to the "very big hole" in unfunded pension and health-care liabilities built up by a careless political class over the years.

"We at the Dallas Fed believe the total is over $99 trillion," he said in February.

"This situation is of your own creation. When you berate your representatives or senators or presidents for the mess we are in, you are really berating yourself. You elect them," he said.

His warning comes amid growing fears that America could lose its AAA sovereign rating.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5379285/China-warns-Federal-Reserve-over-printing-money.html#

Hi

 

I have colitis with mucus and flatulence, due to this there is pain in abdomen and stomach upper part. How should I control gas element? Due to pain sometime I become hyper. I also have acidity so everything attacks me. Any auyurved mild medicine which I can take without medical supervision.

Thanks for your help

Fasting for 24 hours.

Every year about 1 mio tons of fake cheese - analog cheese are being produced in the European Union

There is some fake cheese that is made out of oil mixed with gm starch and not milk. This is called cheese food. It is not cheese.

It is obviously very oily and almost all restaurants use it on their pizza or in their salads. They use this fake cheese because it is less expensive.

Everyone knows the basic ingredients of pizza are dough, tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese. But a new study has found that much of the pizza being served is made with so-called “fake cheeses”, that aren’t really cheese at all. Ilya Marritz has more.

It looks like cheese, smells like cheese, it often even tastes something like cheese. But cheese it isn’t. Petra Zachari of the Consumers Defense Association explains what her group found when they took the so-called “cheese” being served in some restaurants to the laboratory.

“We did discover that what is basically very common on the market especially in big stores and restaurants, which is alarming, is that people get fake cheese instead of real cheese. You order for example pizza and there should be cheese because on the menu it’s written ‘with cheese’, or fried cheese and you get fake cheese, not it’s not real cheese.”

Yes, even the classic dish of deep-fried cheese, or smazeny syr, is often made from imitation cheese - usually a combination of vegetable oil and starch. Real cheese is made from milk, and contains milk fat, milk carbohydrates, and milk protein.

“We actually made a little excursion and we did taste ten of them, some of them are really disgusting. And you can really tell the difference because it’s transparent or white, it’s more liquid, it has a different texture and it’s not tasty at all.”

The Consumers Defense Association found 19 restaurants alone in the region of North Bohemia serving the stuff. Zachari says imitation cheeses are often found in fast food, because it’s cheaper.

In the Czech Republic, chief health officer, Michael Vit, has promised action, but what about Germany?

“We will make it a normal part of our inspections. We’ll go to pizzerias and take samples from what they call cheese, and if after we test the fat and find that it’s vegetable oil and not milk fat, we will declare it to be fake cheese.”

Recently Dr. Vit was authorized to inspect for false advertising in food products.

“The Ministry of Health and my department - the Public Health Authority - have until now only been checking for harmful substances that could hurt your health. But under new health laws, now we’re also responsible for making sure customers aren’t misled. And this is the first such case we’ve identified.”

Michael Vit

Whatever harm fake cheese may do to the public trust, it probably won’t do anything bad for your health. It’s lower in fat than real cheese, and contains no cholestorol.

“Please don’t think though that it’s a health risk. There really is agreement that these imitation cheeses are not harmful to one’s health. It’s just that if you buy a product and think you know what you’re getting, you shouldn’t have to find out later that you were eating something other than mozzarella.”

Petra Zachari of the Consumers Defense Association says the manufacturers of imitation cheese deliberately package it to mislead customers.

“it cannot be called cheese so it has funny names like Pizza a la Mozzarella, or Ambra or Pizza Mia or Cheese Alternative. Usually you have real cheese and fake cheese and fake cheese and it has the same packaging so sometimes people when they hurry they just grab one package and they don’t realize it’s the fake one and not the real one. We found it in Delvita and Albert and places like that.”

Does anyone have an opinion about the situation with the Sikh's that is developing in Europe and India?

Here is the main story: http://news./s/ap/20090525/ap_on_re_eu/eu_austria_temple_shooting_22

 

However adding context to this is a Reuters story which says

 

Why would it so enrage anyone that someone wants to follow a living guru?

It happened here in Vienna, the only thing the newspapers say is that they cannot figure what was the motive ? Ok, you say, the Sikhs are against living gurus? Today the news said, that the leader died during the night in the hospital. But so far there was never anything like that, Sikhs attacking a living guru.

Hello Suchandra:

To be fair, you should show a drought map of the middle east. It is already a desert due to their expert killing of cows and saintly people.

Your argument that "Islam is primarily a social network of poor people helping each other materially," is wholly specious. You make it sound like Islam is akin to the welfare department of our local government, which it is NOT. Also, not every Islamic country is poor: Saudi Arabia is a prime example of an Islamic country that is wealthy, primarily due to oil revenue.

 

Did you know that Saudi Arabia intends to spend U.S. $10 per person to proselytize each American citizen for Islam ? "Proselytize", from "proselyte". "Proselyte, see CONVERSION".

 

The point you seem to fail to realize, Suchandra Prabhu, is that Islam is a threat to your ability to practice Krishna consciousness. If you're O.K. with that, than keep on the way you are, although you might eventually want to consider changing your avatar from Krishna with a cow to something a little more...Islamic. I'm not O.K. with that, and that is why I am vocal about the issue.

 

Lastly, Prabhu, you did not answer my question, "Certainly people have to be educated to follow religious principles, but to a Muslim a religious principle is to convert or kill the infidel. How do you deal with that?"

 

To answer the OP's ?, "Has Hawaii Officially Endorsed Islam," I would say no, the fact that they let an Islamic propagandist make that statement was not an official endorsement of Islam. They were just being nice and politically correct...

 

With this, I am going opt out of any further discussion at least on this thread, as 1.) I have other things to do, 2.) I want to concentrate on my personal sadhana, and this is mostly a disturbance to it, 3.) I am finding internet forums in general mostly useless, 4.) I don't feel that I am helping anyone with my comments, and 5.) Jahnava-nitai das will close down this thread at some point, right in mid-stream.

 

jeffster/AMd

Just read Caitanya Caritamrita how the Vaishnavas were dealing with Muslims. This is your problem you don't study how Lord Caitanya empowered Muslims as namacarya and how Gaudiya Vaishnavas were earning millions by working for the Muslims. All over Africa Islam is primarily a social network of helping each other to survive. These are not my words, it is fact. They cannot just leave Islam without losing the material support of the network. But I don't have any problem if you again and again want to point how everything I say is humbug. Just use google and find the facts.

Did the deserts come about because of cow killing or killing saintly brahmanas ? The way I heard it, and I don't consider it authoritative, is that deserts came about because of brahmana killing. If deserts came about because of cow killing, than the entirety of Europe should be a desert.

 

To call Islam "a social network," although that is certainly an aspect of Islam, or any religion for that matter, is an oversimplification. Yes, governments are corrupt, and that only exacerbates the problem. However, to attempt to ease the situation by strapping on suicide belts and blowing up civilians in bazaars, no matter how much they're convinced that they are correct, is just plain demonic.

 

Certainly people have to be educated to follow religious principles, but to a Muslim a religious principle is to convert or kill the infidel. How do you deal with that ? How would you convince them that our religious principles of sanatana-dharma is superior ?

 

jeffster/AMd

Right, cows and brahmanas have to be protected. You cannot kill the cow and expect nice climate. Southern Europe, Spain, Southern France, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia, Turkey is already a desert. Middle and Northern Europe has long winter periode, people suffer through this. Living in the ancient world without terrible cold winter and nice climate was like living on the heavenly planets.

I don't remember Krishna telling Arjuna to strap on an explosives belt and go into a crowded market place and blow up civilians.

 

jeffster/AMd

People seem to act the fool. Islam is primarily a social network of poor people helping each other materially. Corrupt governments are to be blamed for mismanaging their countries and thus creating outbreak of violence among impoverished fellow citizens. Since Islam and Christianity support cow killing, although their founders prohibited the killing of animals, the whole ancient world, Egypt, Israel, all Mediterranean states were turned into 100% deserts. People have to be educated how to follow religious principles, not to drop the bomb on Islam.

Scientists are now saying the Earth is a little lighter than we thought. The calculated weight is 5.978 sextillion metric tons, or 5,978 followed by 18 zeros. But the latest measurements show the true weight is actually 5.972 sextillion metric tons. So, does this mean the Earth is losing weight and thus rotating differently?

Prabhupada, Tokyo, January 28, 1975: Similarly, all these planets, they are rotating with high speed. Just like this planet. It is rotating 25,000 miles in twelve hours. Is it not? The circumference of this earth is 25,000 miles and… Yes, day and night, twenty-four hours. Almost one thousand miles per hour it is… Now the car is moving seventy miles per hours. It appears very with good speed running. But the earth is running at one thousand miles per hour, but we cannot understand. The arrangement is so nice. The perfection that it is… We cannot understand it. It is practical. We see the morning, day, coming. That means earth is moving. When the aeroplane moves also, there are so many jerking, those sound. They’re all imperfect. But here you see that such perfect arrangement, it is moving one thousand miles per hour, and there is no jerking. There is nothing of the sort. We are thinking, “We are sitting in the same place.” And there is no brain? Here it requires so much brain to move the car orderly on the street. So many police has made, so many government, scientist, this, that, so many, and this not only one planet, but many millions: yasya prabha prabhavato jagad- anda-koti [bs. 5.40]First of all there are many millions of universes, jagad-anda-koti. Koti means unlimited. Or 100,000 times 100,000. So yasya prabha prabhavato jagad-anda-koti-kotisu [bs. 5.40]. And each universe… Kotisu asesa-vasudhadi. Vasudha means planet. Just like this is one planet. Asesa. Asesa means you cannot count, so many. That’s a fact. You are seeing every day. Asesa-vasudhadi-vibhuti. And each planet has got different climate, different varieties, not that every planet is of the same. Now they are studying that the moon planet is also planet, but it is differently situated. Differently situated, as they are studying, that is different from the sastras, but there is difference from this planet to that planet. These modern scientists, they say that there is no life, and there cannot be any living entity, considering the atmosphere. But from the sastra we know in the moon planet… That is one of the heavenly planets, and there are living entities. They are living for ten thousand years, and it is very cold there. Therefore they drink soma-rasa. And some of the scientists, they say that the temperature in the moon planet is 200 degrees below zero. So similarly, you will find every planet is different from the atmospheric condition of the other planet.

Yet another so called proof that we evolved from the apes?

Fossil Ida, the 'eighth wonder of the world'?

Deal in Hamburg bar led scientist to Ida fossil, the 'eighth wonder of the world'

• Anonymous collector kept fossil in private for quarter of a century

• Purchase of specimen with $1m price tag was huge gamble for scientist

• How Ida fits into the primate family tree

* James Randerson and Ed Pilkington in New York

* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 May 2009 22.40 BST

Watch Jørn Hurum discussing this major find Link to this video

Hunched around a table at a vodka bar in Hamburg, Jørn Hurum, a palaeontologist, was about to make the scientific gamble of his life. Thomas Perner, a fossil dealer whom he knew well, had insisted they met; he had something very special to show him.

Looking nervously over his shoulder for prying glances, Perner put three .photographs of a fossil on the bar table. "My heart started beating extremely fast," said Hurum. "I knew that the dealer had a world sensation in his hands. I could not sleep for two nights."

Rumours had been flying around for years in the palaeontological community about a spectacular primate fossil specimen. Now Hurum was one of the first people in the world to see it.

James Randerson on the unveiling of Fossil Ida Link to this audio

Like a real-life Indiana Jones, his first thought was how he could ensure the fossil was saved for scientific study rather be lost to a private collection. "I was just thinking about how to get this to an official museum so that it could be described for science."

But to do that he would have to take the biggest gamble of his career. On the strength of the potential he saw in those photos he would have to find the $1m asking price for the specimen or risk it going underground again. "They were very high stakes," said his close colleague at the University of Oslo and long-time friend, Prof David Bruton. "He took a terrible risk."

Today, after two years of painstaking, secret scientific work that required an internationally renowned team to invent techniques to study the fossil, the results of Hurum's wager were made public.

The fossil was unveiled to the world amid a blaze of publicity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was shown behind a glass box, its elongated back and slinking tail curved like a new moon.

Several groups had scrambled to attach their names to the find, from Michael Bloomberg, New York's mayor, who was photographed beside the fossil with his arm round a schoolgirl, to the Norwegian minister of higher education, who pledged $350,000 of government money to the project. The publishers Little Brown gave a speech, having brought out a book on the discovery in deepest secrecy and the record time of just four months.

At the centre of events was Hurum. He declared that the find, named Ida, was "the most complete fossil before human burial". He showed pictures of the Mona Lisa and the Rosetta Stone, making the point about the importance of this discovery, and he called it the Holy Grail of palaeontology. Another speaker alluded to the moon landings.

The story of the primate fossil began in the summer of 1983 in Germany. An anonymous collector, accompanied by Perner, was fossil hunting at the Messel pit, a shale quarry near Darmstadt, Germany. The site has yielded an amazing array of exquisitely preserved fossils, including more than 60 pygmy horses, some of which were pregnant, eight species of crocodile, more than 1,000 bats, and insects with the colours on their wings still visible.

What happened after the mystery collector stumbled on Ida at the bottom of Turtle Hill remains unknown. But what is clear is that he knew he had something very special. He prepared the fossil meticulously and with some skill (if he had not the layers of oil shale in which it was found would have disintegrated). He added it to his private collection and, it seems, showed it to no one. "This is typical for collectors," said Hurum. He said he knew collectors who kept their best specimens hidden even from others who shared their passion. "It is something about owning a part of history, that you know when you show it to people it will change things … It is a powerful feeling to have something … nobody knows about."

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/19/fossil-ida-missing-link-discovery

Calls on Practice Used by 1st Christians

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Zenit.org).- A note from the Vatican has reiterated a directive that the name of God revealed in the tetragrammaton YHWH is not to be pronounced in Catholic liturgy.

Bishop Arthur Serratelli, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Divine Worship, in a note informing prelates of the Vatican directive, said the indications "do not force any changes to official liturgical texts," but might cause "some impact on the use of particular pieces of liturgical music in our country as well as in the composition of variable texts such as the general intercessions for the celebration of the Mass and the other sacraments."

Commonly used songs with phrases such as "Yahweh, I know you are near," will need to be modified.

The June 29 Vatican message, from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, clarified that the name of God revealed in YHWH was not pronounced by the first Christians, following the tradition already in use.

It explained: "The venerable biblical tradition of sacred Scripture, known as the Old Testament, displays a series of divine appellations, among which is the sacred name of God revealed in a tetragrammaton YHWH -- hwhw. As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was held to be unpronounceable and hence was replaced during the reading of sacred Scripture by means of the use of an alternate name: 'Adonai,' which means 'Lord.'

"The Greek translation of the Old Testament, the so called Septuagint, dating back to the last centuries prior to the Christian era, had regularly rendered the Hebrew tetragrammaton with the Greek word Kyrios, which means 'Lord.' Since the text of the Septuagint constituted the Bible of the first generation of Greek speaking Christians, in which language all the books of the New Testament were also written, these Christians, too, from the beginning never pronounced the divine tetragrammaton."

Theology

The Vatican goes on to note that this practice had "important implications" for New Testament Christology.

"When in fact, St. Paul, with regard to the crucifixion, writes that 'God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name" (Phil 2:9), he does not mean any other name than 'Lord,' for he continues by saying, 'and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord' (Phil 2:11; cf. Isaiah 42:8: 'I am the Lord; that is my name')," the Vatican note explained.

"The attribution of this title to the risen Christ corresponds exactly to the proclamation of his divinity," it continued. "The title in fact becomes interchangeable between the God of Israel and the Messiah of the Christian faith, even though it is not in fact one of the titles used for the Messiah of Israel."

"Avoiding pronouncing the tetragrammaton of the name of God on the part of the Church has therefore its own grounds," the Vatican concluded. "Apart from a motive of a purely philogical order, there is also that of remaining faithful to the Church's tradition, from the beginning, that the sacred tetragrammaton was never pronounced in the Christian context, nor translated into any of the languages into which the Bible was translated."

Positions of different Vaisnava groups vary on the level or quality of omniscience in a departed Vaisnava guru. He may be “living still in sound” but to some he just “ain’t hangin’ around”. And indeed, the confusion is almost enough to make one wonder how many elements of the Vaisnava guru-sishya tradition some might want from the Shankarites. After all, Shankara was at least around before Madhva.

 

I don’t understand the idea of omniscience in an empowered jiva. How can one know everything without being present everywhere? And if you were running and playing with Krishna why would you want to? The Sankarites superimpose all the attributes of Iswara and Brahman on the guru. But the Vaisnava by his own admission never becomes an incarnation of God.

 

So the sishya is required to make offerings to his Vaisnava guru first, whether here or departed, so that the guru can then offer it to Krishna. Sri Krishna is described as the ultimate enjoyer, the supreme enjoyer and the only enjoyer. But I am considering that there is a crisis of power in the ability to sacrifice enjoyment for Krishna, and perhaps on both sides.

 

Say for example you enjoy the City of San Francisco. So you want to make a sacrifice and offer the entire city to your guru. You may not have the power to do this. You would have to go to Goloka after the entire city was transformed into cintamani and place it as an offering at the lotus feet of your guru. So in the meantime you are probably just going to end up enjoying your trip to San Francisco.

It depends on the level of your consciousness. Some folks believe that the Sun has departed when it gets dark at night. Others consider that this is our limited vision, if you go up in the sky you'll find that the Sun is always the same, no rising, no setting.

Similarly, some say, guru such and such has departed, others say what you mean by departed? It is your position which makes it look like a Vaishnava has departed.

WEBWIRE – Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Donation will provide buses for midday meal program

Bengaluru, INDIA - The Motorola Foundation has joined hands with the Akshaya Patra Foundation to support their vision that "no child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger" Through a donation from the Motorola Foundation, Akshaya Patra will receive two state-of-the art vehicles for transporting free midday meals to 5,000 school children per vehicle.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a leading organization that addresses two of the most immediate challenges facing India, hunger and education. Through its school lunch program, the organization feeds over one million underprivileged children everyday in government-run schools in India. These meals provide children with the incentive to come to school, stay in school and provides them with the necessary nutrients they need to develop their cognitive abilities to focus on learning.

“The Motorola Foundation strives to develop relationships with organizations such as Akshaya Patra that provide better education for children and social support for the underprivileged,” said Sweeney, director, Motorola Foundation. "We are proud to support programs that make a difference in people’s lives and in the communities where Motorola operates"

“We are grateful to the Motorola Foundation for helping us bring smiles to the faces of thousands of children,” said Madhu Pandit Dasa, chairman, Akshaya Patra Foundation. “With continued support from companies such as Motorola, we are confident we can bring the benefits of Akshaya Patra to more and more children in this country.”

Sudhakar Ramakrishna, corporate vice president, Wireless Broadband Access Solutions and Software Operations, Motorola Home & Networks Mobility presented the keys of the state-of-the-art vehicles to the chairman of the Akshaya Patra Foundation, at a kick-off event held in Bengaluru. By leveraging technology in cooking and delivery, Akshaya Patra has built a global reputation for efficiency and quality.

“Akshaya Patra should be commended for their generous initiatives in India,” said Ramakrishna. “Not only are they revitalizing India’s children, but also the local farmers, teachers and communities.”

About Akshaya Patra

Akshaya Patra is the largest NGO run school meal program around the world, focusing on issues like hunger and poverty by providing free nutritious meals in schools to encourage education among the underprivileged. The program uses centralized, automated kitchens for cooking food which is then distributed to schools through special purpose vehicles. For more information, please visit http://www.akshayapatra.org/

The program is independently governed by a Board of Trustees, an Advisory Panel consisting of professionals from the corporate world & bureaucracy, dedicated employees and a team of volunteers. A study in the year 2008 by AC Nielsen Org Marg, has vouchsafed for the efficacy of the program in increasing attendance in schools, improving nutritional status of these children, enhancing their learning abilities and reducing drop out rates.

All contributions to The Akshaya Patra Foundation are eligible for 100% tax deduction under section 35AC/80GGA (bb) of the Income Tax Act 1961 in India.

About Motorola Foundation

The Motorola Foundation is the charitable and philanthropic arm of Motorola. With employees located around the globe, Motorola seeks to benefit the communities where it operates. The company achieves this by making strategic grants, forging strong community partnerships, fostering innovation and engaging stakeholders. The Motorola Foundation focuses its funding on education, especially science, technology, engineering and math programming. For more information, on Motorola Corporate and Foundation giving, visit www.motorola.com/giving.

About Motorola

Motorola is known around the world for innovation in communications and is focused on advancing the way the world connects. From broadband communications infrastructure, enterprise mobility and public safety solutions to high-definition video and mobile devices, Motorola is leading the next wave of innovations that enable people, enterprises and governments to be more connected and more mobile. Motorola (NYSE: MOT) had sales of US $30.1 billion in 2008. For more information, please visit www.motorola.com.

Unfortunately, Kali yuga is an age in which there is only Evil and Greater Evil. Because no government heads are guided by Dharma, their policies only bring increased suffering. Having said that, we should be able to quite readily and clearly discern which parties are which, as evidenced by their activities. Furthermore, we have a right to defend ourselves from those who openly avow to destroy us. Whether that gives us a right to pre-emptive strikes is an issue that I have not yet fully resolved. If we get lucky, demons will destroy each other, yet because we are not so pious, we may likely get some direct heat from this ongoing conflict. No sane man wants to see others suffer, yet the Taliban time after time stop at nothing to further their own skewed aims. They should be openly and actively be opposed by all.

 

The following link shows the plight of the refugees that this situation is already creating:

 

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/07/swat-pakistan-taliban-camps

 

jeffster/AMd

Hopefully this is solved, a giant US military base in Afghanistan with 68,000 troops will be surely a guarantor for long lasting peace in that region.

A giant US military base emerges in Afghanistan

In the forbidding Afghan desert, US engineers are carving out a sprawling military camp as part of a dramatic American troop build-up designed to confront Taliban insurgents.

The desolate plain in southern Helmand province that Afghans call the "desert of death" has turned into a hive of frenetic activity, underscoring President Barack Obama's decision to expand the US military commitment to the war.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates flew into Camp Leatherneck on Thursday to get a first-hand look as dozens of bulldozers kicked up clouds of dust and soldiers swung hammers in searing heat.

Some of the newly arrived soldiers at the camp told Gates they were still waiting for radios and other equipment to arrive.

Gates promised to look into the problem and said later at a news conference in Kabul that moving such a large number of troops and so much equipment was a "logistical challenge" in a country with a shortage of airports and major roads.

Every day military planes ferry in more marines and soldiers to the camp that has emerged out of the desert seemingly overnight, protected by miles of sand walls topped with barbed wire along with rows of barrier walls.

"It's been real busy," said Captain Jeff Boroway from the 25th Naval Construction regiment.

"This place was desert at the end of January. I mean nothing. And now you've got a 443-acre (179-hectare) secure facility," he told reporters.

Boroway said engineering units were rushing to finish work on the camp to accommodate the deployment of thousands of additional troops, including most of an 8,000-strong brigade of US Marines.

The escalation of the war against the Taliban has raised concerns among some in Obama's own party that the administration could be drawn into an open-ended mission.

But US commanders and officials say their aim is to train Afghan forces to eventually take over security duties.

The camp, which is being built next to a smaller outpost dubbed "Bastion" that has served British troops, will include a vast airfield that eventually will be home to 55 helicopters and other aircraft, said Lieutenant Colonel David Jones.

The airfield, which he called a huge "parking space" for choppers, will be 4,860 feet (1,481 metres) long and is the largest such project in the world in a combat setting, said Jones, who leads a marine squadron in charge of the effort.

The labour-intensive work requires levelling off the runway area and setting down sheets of metal alloy that are then anchored into a mat.

The runway project began about a month ago and has to be finished by the end of June, officers said.

The temporary metal mat, which will later be replaced with asphalt, "provides a secure place for any aircraft to land, park and take off," Boroway said, and is "a lot safer and better than dirt."

He said his troops and contractors have moved mountains of sand in their efforts to boost defences.

They are also expanding another US base in the southern city of Kandahar.

All the digging and bulldozing in the desert has put a premium on water, especially for the runway construction.

As a result, troops were collecting water from the base's kitchens and showers to compact dirt at building sites, the Navy officer said.

The base is needed quickly with the US military presence in Afghanistan due to double by the autumn, when the Obama administration says up to 68,000 troops will be in place.

Boroway said his team was working 12-hour days in searing heat to finish. "They know the importance of this," he added.

http://news./s/afp/20090508/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestusmilitary/print

Please someone let me know what is nagarjun ? I cannot post website link because i have not made 15 posts yet...but if you google it you will come across this siddhashram.blogspot...Thank you.

In a plate place a Nagarjun and worship it by offering flowers and rice grains. then keeping your gaze fixed on it chant the following mantra 31 times.

 

 

 

Om Namo Bhagwate Aarogyam Dehi Om Namah

 

Do this regularly for seven days. After seven days drop the Nagarjun in a river or pond.

Could be that Nagarjun was a poet?

Nagarjun (Hindi:नागार्जुन, Baba Nagarjun, Vaidya Nath Mishra, Yatri) (June 30, 1911-November 4, 1998), was a major Hindi and Maithili poet who has also penned a number of novels, short stories, literary biographies and travelogues, and was known as Janakavi- the People's Poet <sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference">[4]</sup><sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference">[5]</sup>.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjun

There's also a medical center in South India called Nagarjun: http://www.nagarjun.com/html/group_home.htm

That which is predestined to happen, will happen.

 

If World War 3 is predestined, then what can we do about it?

Could be that the Muslims in India go ballistic when million of Taliban are slaughtered in Pakistan.

Pakistan attacks Taliban in Swat valley

Pakistani security forces launched artillery and rocket attacks on Taliban positions in the Swat valley this morning amid growing expectations of a major military offensive.

Helicopter gunships fired on a militant-controlled emerald mine outside Mingora, the main town in Swat, while soldiers fired artillery towards Taliban positions from a paramilitary base, residents said.

The Taliban seized control of Mingora on Monday, attacking government installations and forcing a retreat by outgunned police. The fresh fighting, triggered by an attack on Taliban positions in neighbouring Buner, precipitated the collapse of a controversial peace deal in the one-time tourist haven.

The government is indicating that an organised army offensive against the Taliban is imminent, while provincial officials say they expect 500,000 refugees to flee the valley, adding to another 500,000 people displaced by earlier violence.

Thousands of Swat residents left yesterday by car or on foot. But many more remain trapped inside their homes amid fighting and the reimposition of a government curfew.

The attacks come as Barack Obama today holds talks with the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan in Washington amid deepening American anxiety about the growing Taliban threat in the region.

Richard Holbrooke, the US administration's special representative for the region, told Congress yesterday that America's "most vital national security interests" were at stake in Pakistan.

The US president and national security team will meet the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, separately and then together in what US officials describe as "historic talks".

Obama has asked Congress to approve a large increase in aid to $1.5bn (£1bn) a year over five years.

Holbrooke said that Pakistan was not a "failed state" but faced tremendous challenges that could affect the safety of its nuclear arsenal.

He said the US needed "to put the most heavy possible pressure on our friends in Pakistan to join us in the fight against the Taliban and its allies. We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without Pakistan's support and involvement."

Holbrooke said the talks, which will continue at a lower level tomorrow, would be "historically important".

"We are talking today about an issue that is of direct importance to our national security," he said, noting that comparisons of the situation to the Vietnam war were inaccurate because the enemy in that case had never posed a direct threat to the US. The Taliban and al-Qaida remained the most serious threat to national security, he said.

The fighting in Swat follows the collapse of a three-month truce with the Taliban in the valley where the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said there has been an abdication of government control to extremists.

Senior administration officials will urge Pakistan to step up its own fight against militants as the US moves to expand military operations in Afghanistan. The US team will seek assurances from Zardari, who is seen as a weak leader, that his country's atomic weapons are secure.

"The president is deeply concerned about the security situation," the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said yesterday. "That's why we're sending additional troops to Afghanistan, and that's why we'll talk with both the Afghans and the Pakistanis about our renewed commitment in helping them seek the aid that they need to address those extremists."

Senior administration officials say the goal is to get Afghanistan and Pakistan to work together on a shared extremist threat to their countries. They hope the message will carry extra weight coming straight from Obama.

The outcome, they acknowledge, will be measured by concrete results. That includes, for example, the degree to which the Pakistani army – with its traditional strategic focus on India – takes the fight to militants within its own border. US officials say there is no intention to put American forces in Pakistan, which Pakistani officials strenuously oppose. "That's the end of that subject as far as we're concerned," one official said.

Ahead of Obama's discussions with Zardari and Karzai, Clinton will see them and their delegations separately at the state department before bringing the two sides together. Later, at the White House, Obama was to follow the same pattern in talks with the two leaders.

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/06/barack-obama-afghanistan-pakistan-presidents

Could Monsanto Be Responsible for One Indian Farmer's Death Every Thirty Minutes?

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/05/05/Could-Monsanto-Be-Responsible-for-One-Indian-Farmers-Death-Every-Thirty-Minutes.aspx

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Over 1,500 farmers in the agricultural Indian state of Chattisgarh have committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure. The state was hit hard by falling water levels.

Bharatendu Prakash, of the Organic Farming Association of India, said that, "Farmers' suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death."

Mr. Prakash added that the government needs to take up the cause of the poor farmers just as they fight for a strong economy.