The Simpsons - India Outsourcing

watch and laugh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9_iQim8Mtw

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Regards,
Karthik Iyer

Why a green card does not mean permanent residency

Print Article - US: 750,000 immigrants asked to replace green card

US: 750,000 immigrants asked to replace green cards PTI | August 23, 2007 | 22:06 IST Seema Hakhu Kachru in Houston Nearly one million legal residents in the United States whose green cards do not have expiration dates may soon have to pay $370 to replace them, or face imprisonment. Green cards are proof of authorisation to live and work in the US. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services on Wednesday announced a proposal that requires nearly 750,000 legal permanent residents who were issued green cards between 1977 and 1989 that lack expiration dates to replace their cards. The plan does not require Congressional approval. The proposed change, once finalised, gives applicants 120 days to update their cards. Those who willfully neglect to comply could face up to 30 days in jail or fine up to $100, or both. "The change will allow the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to issue more secure permanent resident cards, update cardholder information, conduct background checks and electronically store applicants' fingerprint and photographic information," according to the agency's statement. Although the change would not invalidate the legal status of cardholders, the proposal notes that failure to obtain replacement cards could cause problems when traveling or looking for work. The proposal states that affected permanent residents must apply between October 22 and February 19. Previously, immigration authorities had encouraged permanent residents with old-style green cards issued before 1989 to renew them -- but replacement was not mandatory. All green cards issued after 1989 expire every 10 years. The announcement is the latest in a series of measures outlined by the Department of Homeland Security to tighten immigration controls within existing laws and regulations. Two weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced plans for tougher enforcement, including fines and stiffer requirements for employers who knowingly hire or retain undocumented foreign workers. The new proposal requires applicants to provide current biographic and biometric (photographs and fingerprint) information. The rule also proposes a mechanism for terminating green cards without an expiration date. Under the rule, USCIS would be able to terminate permanent resident cards without an expiration date via notice in the Federal Register.

sri sri ravishankar vs Zakir naik

Sri sri and Zakir Naik on one platform. It looks like sri sri shines thro!
Just do a keyword search in youtube:
"Islam & Hinduism" for other videos in the series

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOipXyNN9UQ

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Regards,
Karthik Iyer

The R&AW Facts

A good article on the defeats and victories of India's external intelligence agency: R&AW
From: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IH18Df03.html

Page 1 of 2
BOOK REVIEW
India's silent warriors
The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane by B Raman

Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia

Secrecy and intelligence agencies are synonymous. Very rarely does the general public get a peek into the shadowy world of spooks and their death-defying deeds shrouded behind the iron curtain of state secrets.

In a new offering from India's premier publishing house on



strategic affairs, B Raman, the former head of the Counter-Terrorism Division of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), pries open the black box with hard-hitting scrutiny. The Kaoboys of R&AW is at once a nostalgic tribute to India's silent warriors and an inquisition into what is wrong with their legendary organization.

Raman's opening salvo is fired at the US State Department, which was much hated in R&AW during his 26-year tenure. One State Department official may have passed on to Pakistan Indian intelligence reports on Khalistani terrorists that New Delhi had shared with Washington. In 1992, the State Department threatened to impose economic sanctions on India after it refused permission for US sleuths to go on an aerial-photography mission along the Sino-Indian border. In 1994, it warned New Delhi that if R&AW did not halt covert missions in Pakistan, the United States would "act against India" (p 5).

Moving back to 1971, Raman chronicles the decision of India's then-prime minister Indira Gandhi to deploy the two-and-half-year-old R&AW into action as the East Pakistan crisis deepened. R&AW trained Bengali guerrillas and organized a psychological-warfare campaign against Pakistani rulers. Almost every day, Indira had at her disposal bugged extracts from telephonic conversations of the Pakistani top brass on the evolving situation. She did not make a single decision on the Bangladesh issue without consulting the R&AW chief, R N Kao.

Between 1969 and 1971, clandestine units of R&AW disrupted Chinese-backed Naga and Mizo insurgent traffic, sanctuaries and infrastructure in Myanmar and East Pakistan. The Richard Nixon administration in Washington initiated a joint program with Islamabad to hit back at India by encouraging a separatist movement among the Sikhs of Punjab. The US National Security Council, led by Henry Kissinger, sponsored allegations in the press and public forums of violations of Sikhs' human rights. US interest in the Khalistan insurgency remained firm up to 1984.

Intriguingly, R&AW and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) simultaneously colluded to prevent a possible Chinese takeover of northern Burma. George H W Bush, the director of the CIA from 1975-77, became a personal friend of Kao. Later, when Bush was US vice president, Kao succeeded in persuading him to turn off the aid tap to Khalistani terrorists. Raman comments here that "benevolence and malevolence go side by side in relations between intelligence agencies" (p 42).

In the mid-1970s, Kao sensed the urgency of enabling R&AW to collect intelligence about US movements in the Indian Ocean region. He cobbled together a liaison relationship with the French and Iranian intelligence agencies to monitor the Americans, an oddity given that the shah of Iran was among the closest allies of the United States. To Raman, R&AW's present capacity to stalk the US remains weak. He chides the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for "not seeming to be unduly concerned about it" (p 48).

Shortly after R&AW's creation in 1968, Kao arranged a secret liaison relationship with Israel's Mossad to "learn from its counter-terrorism techniques" (p 127). In the early 1980s, Pakistan was genuinely worried about the chances of a joint Indo-Israeli operation to destroy its uranium-enrichment plant at Kahuta. For 12 years, Mossad officers were posted in New Delhi under the cover of South American businessmen.

An interesting development Raman mentions is secret meetings in the late 1980s between the chiefs of R&AW and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) that were facilitated by Prince Talal of Jordan. The ISI denied harboring Khalistani terrorists but, outside media glare, it did hand over to R&AW some Sikh deserters of the Indian Army.

Raman favors exchanges of this sort over inane joint counter-terrorism mechanisms, so that the top spooks of both countries meet each other periodically without a formal agenda and "compare notes on developments of common interest" (p 234).

Raman partially blames the lack of objectivity of R&AW's branch dealing with Bangladesh for the decline in its performance in India's eastern frontier after 1975. Witchhunts by politicians, nepotism, discriminatory internal security checks, minimal interaction between senior and junior officers, permissiveness and trade unionism have added to R&AW's woes over the years. Persisting frictions over recruitment and inter-service seniority "come in the way of R&AW officers developing an esprit de corps even 39 years after formation of the organization" (p 133).

K Santanam of R&AW's science and technology division was the first to assess that Pakistan was covertly constructing a uranium-enrichment plant. He systematically monitored developments relating to Pakistan's nuclear program, including the procurement racket of Abdul Qadeer Khan. Raman reveals that, in an unguarded moment, Indian prime minister Morarji Desai indiscreetly told Pakistani dictator Zia ul-Haq that he was aware of Islamabad's nuclear schemes.

R&AW trained the intelligence officers of many independent African countries and assisted the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa and Namibia. Retired R&AW officers were deputed to work in training institutes of intelligence agencies of some African states. Raman terms it a pity that R&AW frittered away its 

Continued 1 2 

Page 2 of 2
BOOK REVIEW
India's silent warriors
The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane by B Raman

Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia

goodwill in Africa through subsequent negligence, ceding ground to China. In 1971, R&AW counterinsurgency specialists also empowered the Sri Lankan government to crush the uprising of the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna.

In the context of some R&AW reports on Khalistani terrorists



proving wrong, Raman avers that "lack of coordination in trans-border operations, often resulting in inaccurate, misleading and alarming reporting, continues to be the bane of our intelligence community" (p 97). Kao was crestfallen at the negligence and lax supervision of senior staffers of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) that allowed Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984.

Likewise, Raman's cautions about a threat to the life of Rajiv Gandhi from Sri Lankan Tamil extremists "were treated with skepticism" by the intelligence community with fatal consequences. "Everybody in Delhi" was convinced that they "would never harm Rajiv because he and his mother had helped them more than any other Indian leader" (p 236).

Raman bluntly notes that Indian security agencies "rarely admit their deficiencies. That is why we keep moving from one tragedy to another" (p 244). The IB's jealousies, reservations and prejudices against R&AW leave much to be desired and fragment India's intelligence faculties. Two parallel setups in the IB and R&AW are a duplicating luxury that the Indian taxpayer is burdened with.

Raman devotes many words to weaknesses in R&AW's counterintelligence capability that came to the fore in the 1980s. The French intelligence agency penetrated the Indian Prime Minister's Office, and the CIA was found to be collecting documents in R&AW's Chennai office. The recent defection of R&AW's Rabinder Singh to the US after years of undetected service as a CIA mole reflects the sorry state of affairs. Last year, the CIA was reported to have infiltrated India's National Security Council Secretariat. Raman envisages a day when "the sensitive establishments of this country have been badly penetrated under the guise of intelligence cooperation" (p 255).

Linguistic weaknesses of R&AW staff often come in the way of analytical and operational work in India's surroundings, thanks to a "needless fascination for west European languages" (p 130). MI5, now known as the British Security Service, had "more Punjabi-Gurumukhi-knowing experts than the IB and the R&AW put together" (p 152). Raman also finds fault with the structure of India's national-security management under the governments of Atal Bihair Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, wherein the chief of R&AW has been reduced to a subordinate of the national security adviser with little direct access to the prime minister.

Though Raman exonerates R&AW from the charge of politicization in comparison with the IB and the Central Bureau of Investigation, he admits that R&AW officials gave "ideas" to prime minister Rajiv Gandhi to cover up the controversial Bofors kickback scandal. Bofors "brought out some of the worst traits in our intelligence and investigative agencies" (p 177). Yet it was during Rajiv's reign that R&AW, particularly its Pakistan division, regained strong covert-action capacity that could "bite again".

It was in the Rajiv era that R&AW played a key behind-the-scenes role in normalization of New Delhi-Beijing relations and launched a hotline between its chief and his Chinese counterpart. The political leaders of the two countries could also use it to avoid the normal diplomatic channel. During the first Gulf War of 1991, Chinese intelligence offered oil supplies to India to overcome any shortages that might crop up. Overall, Raman considers R&AW to be inadequate in analyzing data on China.

At the end of the Cold War, R&AW harnessed its closeness to Russian intelligence to secure assurances that whatever the changes in political dispensation in Moscow, there would be no wavering in its friendly stance toward India.

On India's fiasco in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1989, Raman terms it Rajiv's folly and not R&AW's. However, he does take many senior officers of security agencies, including R&AW, to task for "egging him on into more and more unwise actions" (p 208). R&AW was outstanding in the 1990s in intercepting communications and naval arms smuggling of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

When the insurgency began in Indian Kashmir in 1987, R&AW jammed Pakistani broadcasts and telecasts and reverse-broadcast Indian propaganda in Pakistani Kashmir. It mobilized anti-Pakistan elements in the Muslim community in India as well as the subcontinental Muslim diaspora in Europe. It strengthened networking with various segments of Pakistan's political class and civil society that were "well disposed towards India" (p 227). R&AW also began building contacts with mujahideen leaders in Afghanistan who were unhappy with the insidious role of the ISI in their country.

After the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, the first act of mass-casualty terrorism on the ground in India, R&AW pieced together credible evidence of the direct hand of the ISI. Kao remarked at that time in disgust that, in spite of solid proof, "the US will never act against Pakistan for anything it does to India". Raman adds wryly that "this is as valid today as it was in the past" (p 277).

Raman concludes that R&AW is like "the proverbial curate's egg, good in parts" and requiring genuine improvements in crisis prevention, intelligence analysis, and coordination with fellow agencies in India.

A treasure trove of unknown information and incidents that mark a much misunderstood and maligned agency, this book is a frank account of cloak-and-dagger agents who defend Indian interests through deniable acts.

The Kaoboys of R&AW: Down Memory Lane by B Raman. Lancer Publishers, New Delhi, August 2007. ISBN: 0-9796174-3-X. Price: US$27, 294 pages.


--
Regards,
Karthik Iyer

history of Islam in india

From: http://www.blogs.ivarta.com/india-usa-blog-column16.htm

Are Hindus Cowards or Is It Failed Islam in India?
By: Dr. Madan L. Goel
8/5/2007 1:04:16 PM
Author's Home Page
Views expressed here are author"s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is at the bottom.

(Madan L.Goel is Professor of Political Science in Florida. He lectures and writes on topics related to India, Hinduism and international conflict.)
 

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Feedback to author

That "Hindus are cowards" is a theme which has been repeated ad nauseam. Mahatma Gandhi wrote: "Hindus are cowards and Muslims are bullies." A large number of Hindus themselves accept this epithet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. History does not bear out the conclusion.

A brief review of Islamic expansion is necessary.

Islam may be dated to 610 AD, when Mohammad began having conversations with Archangel Gabriel. Mohammads message one true God named Allah attracted a number of followers. But the leaders of Mecca rejected his new teaching. Conflict ensued. In 622, Mohammad was forced to flee to Medina, some 240 miles to the North. Mohammad became the leader of Medina and within a few years felt emboldened to raid Meccan caravans. Mecca signed a treaty of friendship and allowed Muslims to enter the city for pilgrimage. This treaty, however, was abrogated two years later. Muhammad captured Mecca in a bold move. He was now an unchallenged leader. By the time Mohammad died in 632 AD at age 62, he had become the supreme figure in all of Arabia.

Muslim conquests did not stop with the death of Mohammad. Within two years, the holy warriors attacked and conquered the two very powerful empires of the period: Byzantium and Persia. It seemed that, armed with faith in Allah, nothing could stop the soldiers of Islam. In 712, Arabs captured a slice of Sindh on the frontiers of India. In 715 they took Spain after decimating North Africa.

In less than 100 years after Mohammad"s death, the Islamic rule stretched from the frontiers of India all the way to Spain. Victories resumed after a hiatus of three centuries. Believers captured Anatolia (Turkey) in 1071, the throne of Delhi in 1201, and Constantinople in 1453. The Ottomans, once established in Constantinople, took over the countries of Eastern Europe including the Balkans. Only in 1683 did the clock turn when the Turks failed in their siege of Vienna and retreated.

Islam"s rapid rise from insignificance to vast international empire had a touch of the miraculous. How could the Muslims have attained all this if God was not on their side? The fabulous military victories demonstrated to the faithful God"s pleasure with their ways and displeasure with the ways of the infidel.

Observation

Islam's conquest of India was incomplete. The South in India never fully fell under Islam. Majority of the Indians continued being Hindu and maintained their culture even though they labored under Islamic weight. Contrast the situation in India with Islamic conquest of Byzantium, Constantinople, Persia, Egypt, North Africa and Eastern Europe (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc). Here, the local cultures and indigenous religious groups (Pagans, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians) could not and did not withstand Islamic pressure and they succumbed. Arab imperialism imposed a new language and a new culture. For example, the Berbers of North Africa (the dominant ethnic strain in Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, etc) have come to believe that they are ethnically Arab, which they are not. Similarly, Africans in northern Sudan identify themselves as Arabs.

The Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul (Beyond Belief, 1998) observed that the Arabs were the most successful colonizers in the world. Arabic becomes a sacred language for over a billion people. Bowing towards Mecca five times a day must surely count as an ultimate symbol of Arab cultural imperialism.

The failure of Islam in India was lamented by Altaf Hussein Hali (1834-1914), who otherwise sang the praises of Islam. In his famous poem called Mussadas, which now is a required reading in many Pakistani schools, Hali lamented as follows. I give the lines in both Urdu and English translation (stanza # 113).

Voh Din e Hijazi ka bebaak bera
Nishan jis ka aksay alam me pahuncha
Mazhaam hua koi khatra no jis ka
Na Oman me thithka Na Qulzum (Red Sea) me jijhka
Kiye paar jis ne saton sumundar
Voh duba dahane me Ganga ke akar

That fearless fleet of Hijaz (Bagdad),
Whose mark reached the extreme limits of the world
Which no hesitation could obstruct
Which did not falter in the Gulf of Oman or in the Red Sea
That Hijazi fleet which spanned the seven seas
Lies shattered in the mouth of the Ganges

Allama Sir Mohammad Iqbal (1873-1938) also lamented that Hindus (Kafirs) prospered while the Muslims were backward and poor. In his long poem Shikwa (Complaint), Iqbal penned the following famous lines:

Tujh ko maloom hai leta thaa koi naam tera
Qavat e buzoo e Muslim ne kiya kaam tera
. . .
Qahar to yeh hai ke kafir ko mile Hur-o-qusur
Aur bichaare Muslmaan ko faqt vada i Hur . . .

Allah, do you know that none sang your story
It is the strength of the Muslim that spread your glory . . .

The shameful thing is that Kafirs enjoy Houries in this life
But Poor Muslims have only a promise of Houries in after life

When temples and shrines were being destroyed, Hindus turned within and produced the most lyrical devotional poetry. Mirabai, Kabir, Guru Nanak, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Surdas, Ravidas, Tulsidas, these and many more composed their poems during Muslim ascendancy in India. It is easier to bring down temple walls. How do you bring down the shakti encased in shlokas and bhajans? Who survives after 500 years? Mighty Babar or Guru Nanak?

Hindus should give up the false notion that they succumbed miserably before the Muslim or British colonization. Shivaji defeated a Mughal army in 1660; Europe followed in defeating the Turks in 1683 (on 9/11/1683, mark the date) at Vienna. India was the first country in all of Asia and Africa to throw off the British colonial yoke in 1947. Independence in Afro-Asia followed only after India succeeded.

Today the headlines dominate the threat from monotheistic, closed ideologies, especially radical Islam. Quietly without firing a shot, however, Indian ideas are resurgent in the globe. From 10 to 20 percent of the American populace subscribe to New Thought spiritual philosophies derived largely from Vedanta. The 21st century may well be an Indian century, not because of India's growing economic might, but because of its perennial philosophy. The clock has begun to turn in favor of ideas that first took root in India some 2,500 years ago: Oneness of Godhead, inherent divinity of man, pluralism, religious freedom and non-violence. See the last part of author's article Oneness in Hinduism

This however will not happen automatically or without joining the fight against obscurantism. The strikes against Hindu civilization arise from several quarters: importation of cheap westernization, materialism, sectarian divides, paucity of great leaders, India being targeted for conversions, and inability of Hindus to come together. The brief historical account given here should provide confidence that the challenges facing the Indian civilization can be met.

Dr. Madan L. Goel

--
Regards,
Karthik Iyer

YouTube - PostSecret

A very touching video of people anonymously sharing their secret hopes and fears.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rTkp1dek4
also visit postsecret.com for a look at the interesting postcards.

outrocking the devil !!

I dont know which movie this is from but it is simply outrageous comedy by Jack Black!
They have a rock duel against the devil !




Check this TENACIOUS D - Kickapoo video as well !

--
Regards,
Karthik Iyer

the soldier of the future