'THE WAR AGAINST HINDUISM' by Stephen Knapp

Discussion:

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and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)

2010-09-23 17:26:20 UTC

Forwarded message from Stephen Knapp

The War Against Hinduism

(Written July, 2001, but still going on)

By Stephen Knapp
(Shri Nandanandana daas)

Over the years we have all heard about the many attempts that have
been made in India to convert various sections of society from
Hinduism to either Christianity or Islam. But only after one of my
trips to India did I really get a much clearer understanding of what
has been going on. Furthermore, most people, as well as many Indians,
are not fully aware of how the war against Hinduism is happening, nor
how serious it is. It is taking place on many levels, and because of
this, in some areas the practice of Hinduism is declining rapidly.

When I was traveling in June of 2001, I had gone on a lecture tour,
speaking every night on the importance of Vedic culture at places
like Mumbai, Nagpur, Warangal, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Hyderbad,
Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Chennai. So I had the chance to meet with
many of the intellectuals and some of the spiritual leaders in these
areas, and learned how conversion was a very hot issue.

Now I dont have anything in particular against Christianity itself.
I was born and raised a Christian, so I know what it is, but also how
they work.

My main contention is when the teachings that are said to come from
Jesus are twisted and misinterpreted into something that does not
spread the genuine love of God and humanity that we are all supposed
to develop, but becomes the dog-like barking and criticism against
every other religion that is not Christian. This does not only go on
toward every religion outside of Christianity, but also within it
between Catholics and Protestants and other denominations. It seems
that this faith has become not something that promotes our
similarities for cooperation, but our differences in that everyone
who is of an unrelated Christian denomination are all going to hell.

In regard to India, there is a great number of missionaries of
various denominations who are working there right now, all competing
for the most number of converts. The Southern Baptists alone are a
group that has nearly 100,000 career missionaries in North India, all
working to spread the "good word." We also find that in order to make
converts from Hinduism some of the numerous Catholic priests in
Southern India dress like sannyasis, and call their organizations
ashramas. This is to make Christianity more similar to the Vedic
traditions. Bharat Natyam dance is also taught in the Christian
schools, but with Christian symbols and meanings replacing the Vedic.
This is all in the attempt to actively sway Hindus over to
Christianity.

One way they are trying to bring Christianity deep into the culture
of India is by superimposing its rituals, symbols, and even types of
dress on the Hindu forms of the same. Thus, you will see the cross on
the lotus, some priests dress in saffron, and some churches have the
ambiance of a Hindu temple. If this keeps up, maybe one day
Christianity will be more Hindu than Christian. While traveling in
the far Northeastern states of India I have seen some of the tactics
that the Christian missionaries have used to help make converts, such
as offering cheap polyester pants to the tribals of the Northeast if
they become Christian, or even offer motor bicycles if they help
convert their brothers, which also means their wives and family. In
other places like Madhya Pradesh, as noted in the Neogy Report, the
missionaries give small loans on interest to the tribals, who cannot
pay back such loans easily.

However, if they become Christian, then such loans and the interest
are dismissed. This is what goes on in the democracy of India, and
under the tolerance of the Hindus, while if one such incidence would
ever occur in a Muslim country, the result would be an immediate
expulsion of the missionary from that nation.

Another trick that has been done is that missionaries, while treating
the sick, will give medicine of no value and ask the tribal to take
it while offering prayers to his local deity. Naturally, no cure of
disease is likely to occur with the useless medicine. Then the
missionary gives the tribal real medicine and asks the tribal to take
it while offering prayers to Jesus.

Then when there is a recovery, it is attributed to the power of
Christ and not to the medicine. Such conversion activities take place
these days more often in the tribal areas under the guise of social
service. However, true social service should be done without
expecting anything in return, including conversion.

Another thing that takes place is mass healings at meetings similar
to revivals. What they do is pay people to attend the healings
portraying themselves as being sick, or invalids on crutches, etc.,
who then get called up and are miraculously cured of their disease.
This is attributed to the power of Christ, which then convinces many
tribals that they too can benefit in various ways if they become
Christian. This has not had much of an effect amongst the Brahmana
classes, but the lower classes who attend are more vulnerable and are
impressed by such things, and are then swayed toward Christianity.
This is why Christian conversion tactics have been focused more
toward the tribal areas than other regions of India. So these
conversions are not taking place due to pure preaching of the Bible
or the message of Jesus, but are accomplished by trickery and the
emphasis on material facility.

This is, of course, what is being objected to by the general Hindu
population.

However, when or if people convert for purely spiritual reasons, then
there is no objection.

Another way conversions are accomplished is with the promise to the
Dalits or the lower caste Hindus that they will not have any more
caste recognition by becoming Christians. However, after conversion
many find out that this is not true. Even amongst the converted
Christians there is found to be a caste mentality, with the lower
castes forced to use separate doorways, separate seating, or have
marriages performed only among equal caste Christians and in separate
facilities, or to even be buried in separate cemeteries.

When this becomes obvious to those who are newly converted, some of
them want to come back to being Hindus again, which has been
facilitated by such organizations as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

An interesting point is that in spite of these duplicitous ways of
converting that the Christians have used, the Christian churches have
threatened violence against the process of reconversion back to
Hinduism that had been launched by the VHP. It is as if they do not
want anyone to have the right to do what they are already doing. It
was Rev. V. K. Nuh, secretary of the Nagaland Baptist Convention who
said, "If someone tries to impose their faith, Christians in this
region will not surrender. There will be a battle and we shall have
no option. There will be a physical and religious war if attempts are
made to propagate Hinduism by forceful means in the Northeast."

In this same line of thinking, Rev. M.D. Oaugma, head of the Garo
Baptist Convention of Meghalaya said, "It could be a threat to
Christianity if we remain silent to the VHPs game plan of mass
conversion. We shall have to fight, we shall have to resist."
(Maharashtra Herald, July 11, 1998) Of course, it is easy for Hindus
to be nonchalant toward other religions because they feel that each
spiritual path takes you toward God. So in this light, it is alright
to be tolerant of them or let them thrive. But the problem is that
not all religions feel the same way toward Hinduism. Some feel that
Hinduism is a culture that should be removed or destroyed. An example
of this is that in Northeast India, in states like Assam, Nagaland,
and Manipur, they have witnessed a surge of nearly 200% in their
Christian population in the past 25 years due to the wily tactics of
foreign missionaries.

Their grasp is so strong now that practicing Hinduism is forbidden in
some areas. Where is the democratic freedom in that? Hindus can no
longer do worship or arati in the open because of the fanaticism in
parts of the land.

Durga puja has become almost obsolete as deities are destroyed or
stolen in broad daylight. This confrontational climate has led to
numerous militant outfits sponsored by the Church who are fighting
for secession from India.

So now the Northeastern portion of India wants to secede from it, and
another part of India will be lost if this should happen.

If the Catholic Church in particular is supposed to espouse the
message that God is love, and that it is by love of God and neighbor
that mankind is saved, it certainly has not shown much of that kind
of love toward any other religion. With the Popes recent call for
conversions in Asia, it certainly shows that it is not a friend of
other religions, but still holds the goal that other spiritual paths
should be brought down to be replaced by Christianity. This should be
clearly understood. This is also the case with the Baptists and other
denominations.

While I was in New Delhi, I also met with Mrs. Shanti Reddy, a member
of a government agency called the National Committee for Women. She
revealed that another thing that missionaries have done was to kidnap
young Indian children. What one Christian missionary couple in
Chennai was doing before they were arrested was to bribe tribals into
giving their young baby girls to them. They would pay the tribals as
little as 2000 to 5000 rupees for baby girls, and then turn around
and sell the girls to foreigners for as much as $30,000 to $40,000.
According to the records that had been confiscated from the
missionaries home, this had been a thriving business, and nearly 25
of such transactions had already taken place. The Indian authorities
said they probably saved 300 baby girls from such a fate from the
indications on the records they found. So this has been another one
of the forms of activities that such missionaries do for their own
benefit and profit against the real interest of India. However,
whenever Hindus react with force against such people, they are
labeled as fundamentalists, antagonists, communalists, or worse. But
how can you expect that Hindus should not display serious and violent
reactions when such activities become obvious? It usually takes a lot
to make Hindus react, as they are often most pacifistic and tolerant
people. This is also why they make lousy terrorists, they just do not
see things that way. Nonetheless, another way that India is slowly
losing its Vedic culture is through the process of secular or English
and Christian education. Of course, in public schools all Vedic books
have been removed from the curriculum.

So there are no possibilities to study the ancient Indian literature
or art in such institutions. So Vedic values are no longer part of
what the children are taught. Furthermore, the Christian schools,
often staffed by Christian missionaries, can teach Christian values
in their classes, and include a short study of the Bible everyday, or
the Koran if its an Islamic school. The so-called secular government
has even helped them with free land and facilities. Since these
schools offer English in their education, along with good discipline,
many of the middle classes of Indians are favoring sending their
children to these schools. Today, in the Indian cities, many of the
parents of children are the graduates of Christian schools, who also
send there own children to such schools. As this trend continues,
there will be a decreasing number of Hindus in the educated sector.
Thus, children in India, with the help of the secular government, are
learning Christian values and perceiving their own history and
culture as something less than honorable. They are taught that such
important books as the Bhagavad-gita, Ramayana, Bhagavata Purana and
other Vedic texts are nothing more than mythology, and not a result
of one of the most profound civilizations in the world.

They are also taught that their own God is but a demon and the only
real way to God is through Jesus.

An example of this is that a few devotees from the New Delhi Iskcon
(Hare Krishna) temple go out and give presentations to the childrens
classes in schools. Some of the questions that are asked by the
children are, "Who is your God?" and "hat can your God do for me?"
and so on. Obviously, these questions are nothing but a direct result
of the Christian and English oriented education that these children
are receiving. Now I ask anyone, isnt this practically a covert form
of conversion? This form of education indoctrinates the children to
doubt their own culture, and disrespect their own history and
traditions. As a result of this form of education, the Hindu
population is slowly forgetting the unique history and lofty culture
of their homeland.

As I traveled around, it was not unusual to see elementary schools
around India with a name something like "Saint Xaviers School."
People should know that this Francis Xavier, who is now one of the
greatest so-called "

saints," feverishly declared, "When I have finished baptizing the
people, I order them to destroy the huts in which they keep their
idols; and I have them break the statues of their idols into tiny
pieces, since they are now Christians. I could never come to an end
describing to you the great consolation which fills my soul when I
see idols being destroyed by the hands of those who had been
idolaters." (From "The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier,"
1993, pp 117-8) This was his goal, to destroy Indian culture and make
India a Christian nation. So it is ironic that now India embraces the
schools that honor him in this way. How could they not know his true
intention?

What is often not recognized is that, up until recently, for the last
50 years the politicians who have been directing the destiny of India
are the ones who have an anti-Hindu attitude. They have set the
economic direction and the educational policies that the country has
been forced to follow.

They have also promised the protection of the religious minorities
with the hopes of acquiring votes. This has been one of the reasons
why the secularists in the Congress party have treated everything
that is Hindu with disdain.

Another aspect of the loss of Vedic culture in India is that the
younger Indian people, especially ages from 15 to 25, are readily
giving up Vedic customs to follow the more decadent so-called
freedoms of the West. They see the western movies, they read what the
celebrities say in the papers, and they admire them and want to adopt
their forms of dress and lifestyles.

Thus, in the big cities like Mumbai you have Indian couples living
together without marriage, which is something you never would have
seen before a few years back. Now the Vedic principles are looked
upon as something obsolete, something that restricts the style that
those who look to the West want to adopt. Thus, they are leaving
Indian traditions behind and losing respect for anything Vedic. In
this way, they adopt foreign standards, or lose so much respect for
Indian and Vedic values that they become embarrassed to admit their
Hindu background and heritage. Furthermore, Sanskrit scholars at the
temples are also slowly dying out, and the modern Indians view the
Ramayana and Mahabharata as merely myths or gaudy television shows.

Although India has been invaded by outsiders so many times and has
always survived, what we are talking about is more than mere property
or geography. What is actually being threatened is the basis of
Indian culture itself.

As younger generations give up their Vedic heritage, even if they
return to it later when they are older and looking for more
philosophical support, with whatever percentage of loss occurs with
each generation, time has shown that it is never fully recovered. A
portion of it is lost forever.

Another way of looking at this is that India presently enjoys an 85%
Hindu majority in its population. This may sound quite significant,
but in actuality this includes 15% Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains. So it
is really only a 70% majority. How many more generations will go by
before we see a big drop in this percentage due to the process of
secular (meaning Christian or English, or even Islamic) education, or
with the present rate of conversions by tactless Christians? This
percentage could easily drop well below 50% in only a few more
generations at the present rate of change.

How many more generations will it take before the Hindu majority is
no longer a majority, but a minority in its own country? As Hinduism
declines, you will see that the demands on the government and those
voted into politics will also change, and the laws will also alter
more in favor of the increasing minority religions at the expense of
declining Hinduism. Then as the years go by there will appear only
small clusters of Hindu or Vedic communities, most likely centered
around prominent holy places, until the more aggressive religions act
in ways to diminish these as well, in the same way that they are
presently doing in other countries.

The point of all this information is that it is time for all Hindus
and supporters and followers of the Vedic culture, Sanatan-dharm, to
realize what is actually happening and give up your timidness or
nonchalance and speak out while such freedom still exists. We must
become more pro-active for defending this culture. The point is that
if you do not take it seriously, I can assure you that there are
others who take this inaction and tolerance extremely seriously to
promote their own goals and religions in India. It is because of this
that India may not always remain the homeland of an active and
thriving Vedic culture as it is now. We need to protect whatever is
left of it and maintain the present liberties that Hindus or
followers of Vedic culture still have in India. Then we all can
continue to engage in Vedic traditions without hindrance, and with
full freedom. For this, we need to unite ourselves in a concerted
effort to make this happen. And it most certainly is possible.

Not long ago, as told to me by Professor Subhash Kak, it was noted in
a reputable publication that now 1% of the Russian population claim
that they are Hindu. The article stated that this was primarily due
to the preaching efforts of Iskcon. This shows a major social impact.
This shows what is possible if we can work together in a concerted
effort. This is why I am convinced that if we all work in a pro-
active way under the banner of a united family of Vedic followers, or
Global Vedic Community, we can keep and even expand the present
freedoms that we now have to practice Vedic and indigenous
traditions, and keep India as the homeland of Vedic culture, the most
ancient roots of humanity.

India must be protected and kept as the homeland and center of the
Vedic heritage, Sanatan-dharm, Hinduism. Without it, what is its
value, in spite of whatever else it accomplishes? The value of
Hinduism and India are clearly expressed in the words of the famous
English theosophist Dr. Annie Besant. She put great emphasis on the
value of India, its history, the Vedic culture, and its importance to
the world. As written in the cover notes from the book, Hindus, Life-
Line of India, by G. M. Jagtiani, she says: "After a study of some
forty years and more of the great religions of the world, I find none
so perfect, none so scientific, none so philosophic, and none so
spiritual as the great religion known by the name of Hinduism. The
more you know it, the more you will love it; the more you try to
understand it, the more deeply you will value it. Make no mistake;
without Hinduism, India has no future. Hinduism is the soil into
which Indias roots are struck, and torn of that she will inevitably
wither, as a tree torn out from its place.

Many are the religions and many are the races flourishing in India,
but none of them stretches back into the far dawn of her past, nor
are they necessary for her endurance as a nation. Everyone might pass
away as they came and India would still remain. But let Hinduism
vanish and what is she? A geographical expression of the past, a dim
memory of a perished glory, her literature, her art, her monuments,
all have Hindudom written across them. And if Hindus do not maintain
Hinduism, who shall save it? If Indias own children do not cling to
her faith, who shall guard it? India alone can save India, and India
and Hinduism are one."

In this light, it is absolutely necessary that as followers of
Sanatan-dharm, Vedic culture, we realize that we need to repair
whatever differences we have between us regarding whatever issues
there may be. This is necessary in order to work with some
cooperation with whomever we can if we expect to be a substantial
force in defending the Vedic cause. Otherwise, all the issues that
invariably come up, although these should not be ignored, should not
take so much of our attention that our preaching or sharing or
promoting of our culture stops. Otherwise, we will only serve as
contributors to the continuing deterioration of all spiritual
standards as the age of Kali-yuga progresses. This preaching, of
course, means that we must all stay in touch with and practice the
Vedic standards, and be ready to let others know of its advantages,
and to defend it from those who wish to see its demise.

We cannot allow ourselves to be led into the danger of endless debate
that leads to inaction. We all must be pro-active in some way to help
defend and spread Vedic culture. Then we can work together to keep
the freedom we presently have to practice the Vedic traditions and
keep India as the homeland of a thriving, dynamic, and still living
tradition. Such freedom does not come without its challenges, and we
must be prepared as a society to meet those challenges. To take such
freedoms for granted means that its only a matter of time before
they are lost. And that is exactly what some people want to happen.
So we must be willing to work all the harder to prevent such a
decline of our Vedic heritage.

This article is also at: http://www.stephen-knapp.com

End of forwarded message from Stephen Knapp

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

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Since newsgroup posts are being removed
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this post may be reposted several times.

h***@indero.com

2010-09-23 18:05:15 UTC

Permalink

"Not long ago, as told to me by Professor Subhash Kak, it was noted in a
reputable publication that now 1% of the Russian population claim that
they are Hindu. The article stated that this was primarily due to the
preaching efforts of Iskcon. This shows a major social impact. This
shows what is possible if we can work together in a concerted effort.
This is why I am convinced that if we all work in a pro- active way
under the banner of a united family of Vedic followers, or Global Vedic
Community, we can keep and even expand the present freedoms that we now
have to practice Vedic and indigenous traditions, and keep India as the
homeland of Vedic culture, the most ancient roots of humanity."

Yes, there is hindu missionary activity.

India is not hinduism and hinduism is not india.

The best way to keep one's religious freedom is to make sure your
neighbor has his. If his can be taken from him, then your freedom can
be taken from you.

Equal standing as the indian constitution proclaims is that path. That
constitution was put in place by a hindu majority and is maintained by a
hindu majority.

All citizens of india have the exact same freedoms.

cogitoergosum

2010-09-23 18:19:03 UTC

Permalink

Delhi CWG__SNAFU: Situation Normal All Fucked UP
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/

...and I am Sid Harth

and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)

2010-09-23 18:29:26 UTC

Permalink

cogitoergosum

2010-09-25 20:59:29 UTC

Permalink

Delhi CWG__SNAFU: Situation Normal All Fucked UPhttp://cogitoergosum.co.cc/
...and I am Sid Harth

Portrait of A Hindu Hoodlum I
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/2010/09/25/portrait-of-a-hindu-hoodlum-i/

Koenraad Elst
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Koenraad Elst

Koenraad Elst
Born 1959
Nationality Belgian (Flemish)
Occupation writer

Koenraad Elst (born 7 August 1959) is a Belgian writer and orientalist
(without institutional affiliation). He was an editor of the New Right
Flemish nationalist journal Teksten, Kommentaren en Studies from 1992
to 1995, focusing on criticism of Islam, various other conservative
and Flemish separatist publications such as Nucleus, ‘t Pallieterke,
Secessie and The Brussels Journal. Having authored fifteen English
language books on topics related to Indian politics and communalism,
Elst is one of the most well-known western writers (along with
François Gautier) to actively defend the Hindu way of life. He
frequently contributes to right-wing publications.

Biography

Elst was born in Leuven, Belgium into a Flemish Catholic family. Some
of his family members were Christian missionaries or priests.[1] He
graduated in Indology, Sinology and Philosophy at the Catholic
University of Leuven. He then obtained a Ph.D. from the same
university. The main portion of his Ph.D. dissertation on Hindu
revivalism and Hindu reform movements eventually became his book
Decolonizing the Hindu Mind. Other parts of his Ph.D. thesis were
published in Who is a Hindu and The Saffron Swastika. He also studied
at the Banaras Hindu University in India. Several of his books on
communalism and Indian politics are published by the Voice of India
publishing house[2].

In his twenties, he participated in the New Age movement, worked in a
New Age bookstore and organized New Age events[3], although he later
seemed to depart from New Age groups[4]. In the 1990s he became
interested in the European Neopagan movement: he co-edited the extreme
New Right[5] Tekos journal [5] from 1992, together with “pagan high
priest” Koenraad Logghe, whom he joined at the “World Congress of
Ethnic Religions” [6].

During a stay at the Banaras Hindu University between 1988 and 1992,
he interviewed many Indian leaders and writers.[6] He wrote his first
book about the Ayodhya conflict. While establishing himself as a
columnist for a number of Belgian and Indian papers, he frequently
returned to India to study various aspects of its ethno-religio-
political configuration and interview Hindu and other leaders and
thinkers.

In 1989, Elst met Sita Ram Goel after reading Goel’s book History of
Hindu Christian Encounters. Elst later sent Goel a manuscript of his
first book Ram Janmabhoomi Vs. Babri Masjid: A Case Study in Hindu
Muslim Conflict. Goel was impressed with Elst’s script: “I could not
stop after I started reading it. I took it to Ram Swarup the same
evening. He read it during the night and rang me up next morning.
Koenraad Elst’s book, he said, should be published immediately.”[7] In
August 1990, L. K. Advani released Koenraad Elst’s book about the
Ayodhya conflict at a public function presided over by Girilal Jain.[7]
[8]

His research on the ideological development of Hindu revivalism earned
him his Ph.D. at Leuven in 1998. He has also written about
multiculturalism, language policy issues, ancient Chinese history and
philosophy, comparative religion, and the Aryan invasion debate. Elst
became a well-known author on Indian politics during the 1990s in
parallel with the BJP‘s rise to prominence on the national stage. He
describes himself as an independent scholar.[9]

Elst says that his language has “softened and become more focused on
viewpoints rather than groups of people such “the” Muslims or the
Marxist historians.” [10] He writes that he has reoriented his
scholarly interests towards more fundamental philosophical studies and
questions of ancient history, rather than questions in the centre of
contemporary political struggles.[11]

Opinions

Religion and politics

At the end of March 2008, Koenraad Elst ridiculed Hugo Claus‘s
decision to commit euthanasia, claiming that it was influenced by the
purple agnostic lobby to embarrass the Roman Catholic Church [12].

Nouvelle Droite and Vlaams Belang

Elst actively contributes to nationalist New Right Flemish
publications, and has shown sympathy to the Nouvelle Droite movement
since the early 1990s. He has sometimes criticised that movement in
relation to particular topics. He said that the collaborationist
aspects of the careers of two Belgian writers were covered up in
Nouvelle Droite articles, and that he suspected that “its critique of
egalitarianism in the name of ‘differentialism’ could at heart simply
be a plea against equality in favour of inequality, Old-Right style”.
[13]

However, his endorsement with the Nouvelle Droite is still active:

Wisely or unwisely, I have not taken my scepticism to be a reason for
any active hostility to the Nouvelle Droite people, some of whom I
count as friends… Time permitting, I accept invitations from that
side, so that I spoke at their conference in Antwerp in 2000, if only
as a stand-in for an announced speaker who had cancelled at the last
minute for health reasons (Pim Fortuyn, no less, the Dutch liberal
sociology professor who criticized Islam, subsequently went into
politics, and ended up murdered by a leftist).[14]

Jan De Zutter criticized Elst for being too close with the Vlaams
Belang, as in June 1992, Koenraad Elst gave a speech directed against
Islam at the Vlaams Blok Colloquium where the party proposed its first
version of its 70 point anti-immigration policy[15] Elst said that he
spoke there because it was the only party where the “problem of Islam”
was brought up, but that he also explicitly said that he did not agree
with the party’s solution for that problem, and disapproved of their
xenophobia.[16] He stated that the VB can not be and was never his
party because of its xenophobia and ethnocentrism.[17] Since this
event, he has often been accused of being the party’s specialist on
Islam and its link with the new Pagan Movement.[citation needed]
Though he himself denies any affinity to the party program,[18] he
admits to “lukewarm” sympathy for the Flemish cause (of independence).
[19] Lucas Catherine contrasted Elst’s viewpoint with the viewpoint of
Filip Dewinter, who according to him could not have been very happy
with Elst’s opinion that not Muslims, but Islam, is the problem.[20]

Islam

Some of his books or articles contain harsh criticisms of Islam as a
whole (among others “Wahi: the Supernatural Basis of Islam“, “From
Ayodhya to Nazareth“, an article written in the form of an open letter
to the Pope and Indian church Bishop Alan de Lastic, whom Elst calls
“Your Eminences“, and in which he invites them to ask Muslims for
repentance towards Christians, or “Ayodhya And After“, a book in which
he delves into the realm of establishing a purported link between
Ayodhya and the conflict between Palestinians and Israel -section 2.2
Jerusalem and Ayodhya-, not an isolated attempt in some far-right
European movements; similarly, section 13.2 of that book is called
Islam and Nazism). More precisely, Elst argues often that “not Muslims
but Islam is the problem”. [21] [22]. His views on Islam are markedly
in line with the neoconservative think-tank “Middle East Forum“, to
which he has contributed.[23]

Belgian journalist and neoconservative activist Paul Belien has
reported that Elst thinks that “Islam is in decline, despite its
impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Elst
is merely a “last upheaval.”

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Elst is one of the few western writers (along with François Gautier)
to actively defend the Hindutva movement[24] though he makes some
secondary criticisms about particular points. For instance he claims,
“there is no intellectual life in this Hindutva movement”.[25] He
claims that Hindutva advocates have not developed a “wellfounded
coherent vision on a range of topics which any social thinker and any
political party will have to address one day”, and that there is as
yet very little original or comprehensive work being done in the
Hindutva movement.[25] According to Elst, “Hindutva is a fairly crude
ideology, borrowing heavily from European nationalisms with their
emphasis on homogeneity. Under the conditions of British colonialism,
it was inevitable that some such form of Hindu nationalism would
arise, but I believe better alternatives have seen the light, more
attuned to the genius of Hindu civilization.”[26]. Sometimes, Elst is
critical of Hindutva for not going far enough in its criticism of
Islam[27]. He has also criticized fringe Hindutva writers for claiming
that the Taj Mahal is a Hindu temple, or for claiming that the Vedas
contain all the secrets of modern science.[25].

The same pattern also applies with respect to Elst and the RSS. Elst
views the RSS as an interesting nationalist movement, while addressing
some secondary critics, in which Elst criticizes the RSS for not going
far enough in the nationalist realm. For instance, he says that RSS’s
intellectual output is minimal: “Most of its pamphlets and manifestoes
contain a lot of puffed-up patriotism and wailing over the Partition
of the Hindu motherland, but little penetrating analysis that could be
the basis for imaginative policies and a realistic strategy.”[27] Elst
has criticized alleged Anti-Hinduism and anti-Hindu biases. Elst
writes for example that “when Hindus complain of factual problems such
as missionary subversion or Muslim terrorism, it is always convenient
to portray this spontaneous and truthful perception as an artefact of
“RSS propaganda”.[28]

Elst’s book Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid, a Case Study in Hindu-
Muslim conflict (1990) was the first book published by a non-Indian on
the Ayodhya debate.[25] His opinion is that “until 1989, there was a
complete consensus in all sources (Hindu, Muslim and European) which
spoke out on the matter, viz. that the Babri Masjid had been built in
forcible replacement of a Hindu temple.”[29] He claimed that
politically motivated academics have, through their grip on the media,
manufactured doubts concerning this coherent and well-attested
tradition.[25] Elst alleges that the anti-Temple group in the Ayodhya
conflict have committed serious breaches of academic deontology and
says that the “overruling of historical evidence with a high-handed
use of academic and media power” in the Ayodhya controversy was the
immediate reason to involve himself in the debate.[30]

Elst’s book Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam makes
the case that the Islamic history in India is being whitewashed. He
claims that there is a larger effort to rewrite India’s history and to
whitewash Islam. He says that the goal and methods of this alleged
history rewriting is similar to the denial of the Nazi holocaust, and
that in India jihad negationists are in control of the academic
establishment and of the press.[31]

Elst’s book The Saffron Swastika proposes an examination of the
rhetoric of “Hindu fascism”. He argues that “objective outsiders are
not struck by any traces of fascism in the Hindutva movements, let
alone in the general thought current of anti-imperialist Hindu
awakening. While one should always be vigilant for traces of
totalitarianism in any ideology or movement, the obsession with
fascism in the anti-Hindu rhetoric of the secularists is not the
product of an analysis of the data, but of their own political
compulsions.”[25]

In an article, he writes that the current tendency to accuse Hindu
movements of “fascism” is nothing but a “replay of an old colonial
tactic.”[32]

On the topic of the “Indigenous Aryans” polemic within Hindu
nationalism, Elst writes

“One thing which keeps on astonishing me in the present debate is the
complete lack of doubt in both camps. Personally, I don’t think that
either theory, of Aryan invasion and of Aryan indigenousness, can
claim to have been “proven” by prevalent standards of proof; even
though one of the contenders is getting closer. Indeed, while I have
enjoyed pointing out the flaws in the AIT statements of the
politicized Indian academic establishment and its American amplifiers,
I cannot rule out the possibility that the theory which they are
defending may still have its merits.”[33]

The Hindu nationalist N.S. Rajaram criticized Elst’s book Asterisk in
Bharopiyasthan because of Elst’s alleged agenda of “rescuing Indo-
European linguistics from oblivion”.[34] Elst’s views on the Aryan
Invasion Theory were also criticized by, for example, Hans Hock[35],
Edwin Bryant[36], George Cardona[37] and by Michael Witzel[35].

Influences

Elst has published in English and Dutch. He contributed for example to
the conservative magazine Nucleus.[38][39] He is also a contributor to
the conservative internet magazine The Brussels Journal, the Flemish
satirical weekly ‘t Pallieterke and other Belgian and Dutch
publications. He has also written for mainstream Indian magazines like
Outlook India. He wrote a postscript to a book written by Daniel Pipes
(The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West). He has
also published critiques of Islamism in the West[40]. According to
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, he has connections to the far-right Vlaams Blok.
[41]

He has described himself as “a secular humanist with an active
interest in religions, particularly Taoism and Hinduism, and keeping a
close watch on the variegated Pagan revival in Europe.”[42]

In his books, articles, and interviews, he describes some of his
personnal motivations and interests in Indian nationalism and
communalism[43][44][45].

Reviews

David Frawley wrote that Elst has a command of political and social
issues in India that is unmatched by any western writer and researched
in great detail.[46].

Criticism

Manini Chatterjee, in a review in the Calcutta Telegraph, called
Elst’s book Ramjanmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid a “very bad book”.[47] She
also said that it was marred by miserably tentative terminology, like
“maybe” and “possibly”.[27] Paul Teunissen’s review of the same book
criticizes Elst for the unfavourable portrayal of Syed Shahabuddin.
[47]

Thomas Blom Hansen described Elst as a “Belgian Catholic of a radical
anti-Muslim persuasion who tries to make himself useful as a ‘fellow
traveller’ of the Hindu nationalist movement”[48] Ashis Nandy
criticized the alleged dishonesty and moral vacuity of Elst.[49].

Sarvepalli Gopal in the book Anatomy of a Confrontation calls Elst “a
Catholic practitioner of polemics” who “fights the Crusades all over
again on Indian soil”. He also says that it is difficult to take
serious an author who “speaks of the centuries when there were Muslim
rulers in India as a bloodsoaked catastrophe”.[27]

Ayub Khan says that Koenraad Elst is the most prominent advocate of
Sangh Parivar in the West. He further says: “Such is his importance in
Hindutva circles that L.K. Advani quoted him at length while deposing
before the Liberhans Commission investigation the demolition of Babri
Masjid.” In a reply to Ayub Khan, Elst says that he has been critical
of the Sangh Parivar in his writings.[50]

Christian Bouchet criticized Elst’s book The Saffron Swastika for
having placed far too much trust in Savitri Devi‘s autobiography, and
for claiming that Savitri Devi was bisexual.[51]

Elst has replied to most of his critics in books or in articles.[52]

Bibliography

•Dr. Ambedkar – A True Aryan (1993)
•Asterisk in Bharopiyasthan, Koenraad Elst, Voice of India
•Ayodhya, The Finale – Science versus Secularism the Excavations
Debate (2003) ISBN 81-85990-77-8
•Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002) ISBN 81-85990-75-1
•Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991) [7]
•BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence (1997) ISBN 81-85990-47-6
•Decolonizing the Hindu Mind – Ideological Development of Hindu
Revivalism, Rupa, Delhi (2001) ISBN 81-7167-519-0
•The Demographic Siege (1997) ISBN 81-85990-50-6
•Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar, Voice of India (1993)
•Gandhi and Godse – A review and a critique ISBN 81-85990-71-9
(transl: Pourquoi j’ai tué Gandhi, examen critique de la défense de
Nathuram Godse par Koenraad Elst, Les Belles Lettres)
•Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam (1992) ISBN
81-85990-01-8
•Psychology of Prophetism – A Secular Look at the Bible (1993) ISBN
81-85990-00-X
•Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid. A Case Study in Hindu-Muslim
Conflict. Voice of India, Delhi 1990. (a large part of this book is
included in Vinay Chandra Mishra and Parmanand Singh, eds.: Ram
Janmabhoomi Babri Masjid, Historical Documents, Legal Opinions &
Judgments, Bar Council of India Trust, Delhi 1991.)
•Return of the Swastika, Koenraad Elst, Voice of India
•The Saffron Swastika – The Notion of Hindu Fascism. (2001) ISBN
81-85990-69-7
•Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate Aditya Prakashan (1999) ISBN
81-86471-77-4
•Who is a Hindu? (2001) [8] ISBN 81-85990-74-3
•Linguistic Aspects of the Aryan Non-Invasion Theory, In Edwin Bryant
and Laurie L. Patton (editors) (2005). Indo-Aryan Controversy:
Evidence and Inference in Indian History. Routledge/Curzon. ISBN
0-7007-1463-4.
•The Rushdie affair’s legacy. Postscript to Daniel Pipes: The Rushdie
Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West (1990), Transaction
Publishers, paperback (2003) ISBN 0-7658-0996-6
•Gujarat After Godhra : Real Violence, Selective Outrage/edited by
Ramesh N. Rao and Koenraad Elst. New Delhi, Har-Anand Pub., 2003, 248
p., ISBN 81-241-0917-6.
•“The Ayodhya demolition: an evaluation”, in Dasgupta, S., et al.: The
Ayodhya Reference, q.v., p. 123-154.
•“The Ayodhya debate”, in Pollet, G., ed.: Indian Epic Values.
Râmâyana and Its Impact, Peeters, Leuven 1995, q.v., p. 21-42. BJP
Hindu Resurgence. Voice of India, Delhi 1997. (adapted from a paper of
the International Ramayana Conference and the October 1995 Annual
South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin)
•The Ayodhya debate: focus on the “no temple” evidence, World
Archaeological Congress, 1998
•India’s Only Communalist: In Commemoration of Sita Ram Goel (edited
by Koenraad Elst, 2005) ISBN 81-85990-78-6
•The Rushdie Rules Middle East Quarterly, June 1998
•Foreword to: The Prolonged Partition and Its Pogroms Testimonies on
Violence against Hindus in East Bengal (1946–1964) by A. J. Kamra.
•India’s Only Communalist: an Introduction to the Work of Sita Ram
Goel. In “Hinduism and Secularism: After Ayodhya”, Arvind Sharma (ed.)
Palgrave 2001 ISBN 0-33 79406-0
•“Banning Hindu Revaluation”, Observer of Business and Politics,
1-12-1993,

Notes

1.^ The Problem of Christian Missionaries
2.^ Michael Witzel, ‘Rama’s Realm: Indocentric rewriting of early
South Asian archaeology and history’ in: Archaeological Fantasies: How
Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public
Routledge (2006), ISBN 0-415-30593-4, p. 205.
3.^ New Age Fascism: Review of an Exercise in Marxist Defamation
4.^ Hinduism, Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey
5.^ Country Reports – Stephen Roth Institute for The Study of
Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism
6.^ Elst, K. Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam
7.^ a b Sitam Ram Goel, How I became a Hindu. ch.9
8.^ Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991) Footnote 64
9.^ “So, Mr. Ghosh may be the Director of the Indian Council of Social
Science Research, but as an independent scholar I am not impressed by
such titles and positions.” Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu
Society (1991)
10.^ Koenraad Elst. Who is a Hindu? Chapter Four
11.^ Ayodhya, The Finale – Science versus Secularism the Excavations
Debate (2003) ISBN 81-85990-77-8
12.^ De Apotheose van Claus
13.^ http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/Nazi5Poewe1.html
The religion of the Nazis
14.^ http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/Nazi5Poewe2.html
The religion of the Nazis
15.^ Jan De Zutter “Heidenen voor het blok – Radicaal rechts en het
moderne Heidendom” (Heathens in favour of the Blok – the radical Right
and modern Heathenism), ISBN 90 5240 582 4 (Published by Uitgeverij
Houtekiet, Antwerpen / Baarn; 2000), p 17
16.^ http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/dutch/isvb.html Het
VB en de islam
17.^ Wat is racisme?
18.^ [1] Het VB en de islam – Koenraad Elst, published in Nucleus,
october-november 2001
19.^ [2] Vlaanderen, Kasjmir, Tsjetsjenië, Kosovo… Het ene separatisme
is het andere niet (Flanders, Kashmir, Chechnya, Kosovo: one
separatism does not equal another) – Dr. Koenraad Elst, published in
Secessie, Antwerpen, 2001
20.^ Lucas Catherine – Vuile Arabieren, p.81, quoted at [3] Het VB en
de islam – Koenraad Elst
21.^ Book Review – Saffron Wave
22.^ Let’s Combat Communalism “Koenraad Elst–Sangh Parivar’s
Apologist”, a review of Decolonizing the Hindu Mind: Ideological
development of Hindu Revivalism (Rupa, Delhi 2001), by Ayub Khan in
Communalism Watch, 13 March 2003
23.^ [4]
24.^ See M. R. Pirbhai Demons in Hindutva, writing a theology for
Hindu nationalism, Modern Intellectual History (2008), 5 : 27-53
Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S1479244307001527, and Dibyesh
Anand Anxious Sexualities: Masculinity, Nationalism and Violence doi:
10.1111/j.1467-856x.2007.00282.x BJPIR: 2007 Vol 9, 257–269 p.259.
25.^ a b c d e f Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)
Chapter Fifteen
26.^ Let’s Combat Communalism
27.^ a b c d Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam
(1992) ISBN 81-85990-01-8
28.^ Hinduism, Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey — A preliminary
reply to Ms. Meera Nanda
29.^ Koenraad Elst. Who is a Hindu? Chapter Nine
30.^ Koenraad Elst. Who is a Hindu? Chapter Eleven
31.^ Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam (1992) ISBN
81-85990-01-8
32.^ Was Veer Savarkar a Nazi?
33.^ Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate Aditya Prakashan (1999) ISBN
81-86471-77-4
34.^ N.S. Rajaram, “This asterisk has no fine prints”, Review in The
Pioneer, 18 March 2007
35.^ a b Edwin Bryant and Laurie L. Patton (editors) (2005). Indo-
Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History.
36.^ The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture By Edwin Bryant.
Oxford University Press
37.^ The Indo-Aryan Languages By Dhanesh Jain, George Cardona.
Routledge
38.^ Nucleus Nucleus on Dutch Wikipedia
39.^ bharatvani.org op.cit.
40.^ The Rushdie Rules, by Koenraad Elst, Middle East Quarterly, June
1998
41.^ Sanjay Subrahmanyam in the Times of India, August 22, 2006
42.^ bharatvani.org op. cit.
43.^ Elst interview
44.^ Voice of Dharma review
45.^ Let’s combat communalism
46.^ David Frawley:How I became a Hindu.
http://www.hindubooks.org/david_frawley/how_i_became_a_hindu/journalistic_work/page9.htm
47.^ a b Koenraad Elst Who is a Hindu? (2001)
48.^ Thomas Hansen. The Saffron Wave. (p.262)
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/reviews/saffronwave.html
49.^ A. Nandy (“Creating a Nationality”, p.5)
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/interviews/sulekha.html
50.^ Let’s Combat Communalism “Koenraad Elst–Sangh Parivar’s
Apologist”, a review of Decolonizing the Hindu Mind: Ideological
development of Hindu Revivalism (Rupa, Delhi 2001), by Ayub Khan in
Communalism Watch, 13 March 2003.
51.^ The eternal return of Nazi nonsense: Savitri Devi’s last writings
Savitri Devi Mukherji: Le National-Socialisme et la Tradition
Indienne, with contributions by Vittorio de Cecco, Claudio Mutti and
Christian Bouchet, published in the series Cahiers de la Radicalité by
Avatar-éditions, Paris/Dublin 2004.
52.^ For example, Ayodhya-The Case Against the Temple, Asterisk in
Bharopiyasthan, http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/politics/PolSec03AyubKhan1.html

See also

•Voice of India
•Michel Danino
•David Frawley
•Ibn Warraq
•Srđa Trifković
•Oriana Fallaci
•Andrew Bostom
•Swapan Dasgupta
•G Anil Kumar
•N. S. Rajaram
•Arun Shourie
•Girilal Jain

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Koenraad Elst

•Personal Blog of Dr. Elst
•Articles and Books by Dr. Elst
•Quotes by Koenraad Elst
•Koenraad Elst at the Brussels Journal
•An Interview With Koenraad Elst
•Interview with India Currents Magazine, Feb. ’96
•Pondering Pagans Hinduism Today
•Tamil translation of his articles on Wahi / வஹி: இஸ்லாத்தின் அமானுட
அடிப்படை – ஒரு பார்வை
•Review of Koenraad Elst’s Ayodhya and after
•Criticism and review of Elst’s positions on ‘revivalism’. “Koenraad
Elst–Sangh Parivar’s Apologist” by A. Khan (reply by Elst)

v • d • e

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Portrait of A Hindu Hoodlum IV
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/2010/09/25/portrait-of-a-hindu-hoodlum-iv/

Stephen Knapp
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This biography of a living person does not cite any references or
sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material
about living people that is un-sourced or poorly sourced must be
removed immediately. (July 2010)
Stephen Knapp

Stephen Knapp assembling a lightpainting, 2006.
Birth name Stephen Knapp
Born October 15, 1947 (1947-10-15) (age 62)
Worcester, Massachusetts
Nationality American
Field Architectural installation, mixed-media sculpture, photography,
and ceramics
Training Hamilton College
Movement Lightpainting

Stephen Knapp (born 1947, Worcester, Massachusetts) is an American
artist best known for his use of the medium of lightpainting He has
gained an international reputation for large-scale works of art held
in museums, public, corporate, and private collections, which are
executed in media as diverse as light, kiln-formed glass, metal,
stone, mosaic, and ceramic.

Knapp has written and lectured on architectural art glass, the
collaborative process, and the integration of art and architecture.
His work has appeared in many publications including Art and Antiques,
Architectural Record, ARTnews, Ceramics Monthly, The Chicago Sun
Times, Honoho Geijutsu, Identity, Interior Design, Interiors, The New
York Times, Nikkei Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Sculpture
(magazine), and 90+10.

[edit] Life and work
Stephen Knapp was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1947, and
received his B.A. from Hamilton College in 1969. For nearly a decade
after graduating from college, he worked as a fine art photographer,
selling his work to corporate and private collectors in the United
States and abroad. During this early stage in his career Knapp worked
closely with Polaroid Corporation on their 20×24 camera, creating
large scale instant photographs.

Soon enough, though, photography was not enough. Knapp began to look
more closely at permanent materials. Various types of ceramic, mosaic,
metal, stone, and glass filled his studio as he developed the
innovations for which he is known today—combining mediums and
processing techniques and working craftsmen, fabricators, and
manufacturers from around the world on an increasingly grand scale.

Stephen Knapp (right) at work on a ceramic mural in Shigaraki, Japan,
1985.
Research took Knapp to Japan in 1985 where he created some of the
world’s largest glass-glaze ceramic murals. He had come upon a factory
in Japan that made huge photo-ceramic murals, a technique used by
Robert Rauschenberg in the early 1980s. Though the photo decal
technique seemed tailor made for him, he became fascinated with a
thick glass glaze—a crackle glaze—that had been developed for
architecture. Changing surfaces to reflect the light was to become a
major influence on later work.

The following year he used photo-transfer techniques to define the
images to be etched and anodized in aluminum, creating one of the
world’s largest etched-metal murals—a 14’ x 72’ piece for the Hamilton
County Justice Complex in Cincinnati.

A pattern was now forming—Knapp used the research for one project to
enhance the next. When it came time to create two large etched
stainless-steel murals for McDonnell Douglas’s Douglas Center in
California, he developed a new technique of mixing paints to change
the look of the surface depending on the angle of light. The kinetic
force of these murals lent a palpable energy to the work. A closer
look at the murals reveals his interest in creating illusions of
space, which he would later explore in his lightpaintings.

During the 1990s, his increasing fascination with light led Knapp to
kiln-formed glass—the heating of glass to take on the shape of a form
below, resulting over the decade in large installations across the
United States. An acknowledged expert in his field, he frequently
wrote and lectured on architectural art glass, the collaborative
process, and the integration of art and architecture. In 1998 he
authored The Art of Glass for Rockport Publishers.

Also during the 1990s he started spending more time on personal work,
creating sculpture as well as furniture from kiln formed glass and
steel and hanging pieces of dichroic glass and stainless steel.

Done for the Night, 2008, light, glass, stainless steel, 13′ x 12′ x
10′.
In 2002, after nearly a decade of development, Knapp introduced his
lightpaintings. No longer hanging glass and steel structures, in these
new works the glass was attached to walls with a single light fixture
illuminating the entire piece. The light that passed through the
various pieces of glass was no longer an effect in space, as it was in
the sculptural lightpaintings, but was now simultaneously collected
and dispersed on the wall.

In a series of solo shows in 2004 and 2005 Knapp experimented with new
coatings and laminating techniques that took him beyond dichroics and
increased the range of his palette and gave him greater control in
painting with light.

In 2005, he received his first museum commission from the Flint
Institute of Arts, Flint, Michigan. Temporal Meditations, a 9’x 30’
installation, became the first lightpainting in a museum collection.

In 2006, Knapp’s first major exterior lightpainting, Luminous
Affirmations, a permanent 60’x 100’ exterior installation, was
installed on the north face of Tampa, Florida’s City Hall as part of
their “Lights on Tampa” program. Large-scale commissions followed
throughout 2006, including his Seven Muses, a 35’x 95’ commission for
The Charles W. Eisemann Center, in Richardson, Texas, and First
Symphony, for the Sursa Performance Hall at Ball State University,
Muncie, Indiana.

Installation view at night of First Symphony, 2006, at Ball State
University, Muncie, Indiana.
In early 2007, “Stephen Knapp: Lightpaintings” opened at the Alden B.
Dow Museum in Midland, Michigan, before traveling to the Butler
Institute of American Art, in Youngstown, Ohio, followed in 2008 by
the Dennos Museum Center, in Traverse City, Michigan, and the South
Dakota Museum of Art, and in 2009, by the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid
City, South Dakota. The exhibit firmly placed lightpaintings at the
intersection between painting and sculpture. 2009 saw a commissioned
installations and a solo lightpainting exhibit at the Chrysler Museum
of Art, Norfolk, Virginia,

Throughout Knapp’s career there have constants—a continuous research
into materials, a commitment to the techniques and processes involved
in enlarging his designs, and an exploration of the historical,
cultural, and technical precedents which are the basis for both his
personal and commissioned pieces, and, above all, light.

[edit] External links
•Lightpaintings website
•tour of the work
•videos
•Stephen Knapp website
•“90 + 10 ” Article by Carlos Piedrabuena (Spanish and English)
•“Attracted To Light” – from Art Of The Times Summer 06
•“Stephen Knapp: The Art of Illumination” by Vince Carducci
•Exhibits Development Group website
•[1] – Hare Krishna
Persondata
NAME Knapp, Stephen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Worcester, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Knapp“
Categories: 1947 births | Living people | American artists | People
from Worcester, Massachusetts
Hidden categories: Unreferenced BLPs from July 2010 | All unreferenced
BLPs

•This page was last modified on 24 September 2010 at 18:06.
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Stephen Knapp (deleted 30 Mar 2008 at 00:36)
From Deletionpedia

This is a copy of the page Stephen Knapp (other versions), which
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Wikipedia pages.

Singularity deleted Stephen Knapp because AfD discussion:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Knapp.

This reason is not always accurate (how?)
This page was created 22 May 2005 and deleted 30 March 2008 (1042
days).
201248825
purgeOf 47 edits,
13% (6) were made by anonymous editors21% (10) were minor edits6% (3)
reverted other people’s editsThe page was edited most often during May
2005. (info).

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Metric 0.93508929375674
For the literature scholar and university administrator see Steven
Knapp
For the former driver in the Indy Racing League see Steve Knapp
2008 March 25 This page was deleted using Articles for Deletion. The
deletion discussion can be read on Wikipedia.
This article does not cite any references or sources. (September
2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable
sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Stephen Knapp is an author of numerous works, largely dealing with
theories regarding the history of ancient India. As a member of the
International Society for Krishna Consciousness he studied under the
direction of the movements founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami
Prabhupada who gave Stephen the name Nandanandana dasa upon
initiation. He is president of the “Vedic Friends Association” [1] and
is a supporter of the Out of India theory and of claims (by P.N. Oak
and others) that the Taj Mahal was originally built by Hindus.
[citation needed]

He argues that the name American comes from the Sanskrit word Amaraka
(land of immortals)[2], the name England from Vishnu’s title
Angulisthan, Sudamapuri became Shrewsbury, Jagannathapuri became
Ainsbury, Shaileshpuri became Salisbury, Sankarapuri became Cambridge,
Deutschland comes from Daityasthan, the Shaks became Czechs. Hungary
is Shringeri, Budapest is Buddhaprastha, etc.[3]

Works
•Proof of Vedic Culture’s Global Existence
•The Secret Teachings of the Vedas: The Eastern Answers to the
Mysteries of Life
•The Universal Path to Enlightenment
•The Vedic Prophecies: A New Look into the Future
•How the Universe was Created and Our Purpose In It
•Toward World Peace: Seeing the Unity Between Us All
•The Key to Real Happiness

See also
•David Frawley
•Koenraad Elst
•Francois Gautier
•Alain Danielou
•Michel Danino

References
1.↑ vedicfriends.org
2.↑ Death of the Aryan Invasion Theory
3.↑ Returning To The Roots

External links
•Homepage
•Old Time Belief, old time language, by Mark Newbrook
Hindu reform movements

Ayyavazhi · Arya Samaj · Ramakrishna Mission · Gandhism · Hindutva ·
Sri Aurobindo Ashram · Parisada Hindu Dharma
Topics Bhakti · Caste · Indian independence movement · Persecution of
Hindus · Shuddhi · Women in Hinduism
Writers Sri Aurobindo · Ananda Coomaraswamy · Alain Daniélou ·
Koenraad Elst · David Frawley · Sita Ram Goel · M.S. Golwalkar ·
Mahatma Gandhi · Harsh Narain · Gedong Bagus Oka · The Mother · Srila
Prabhupada · Raja Ram Mohun Roy · Pandurang Shastri Athavale ·
Ramakrishna · Dayananda Saraswati · Satsvarupa dasa Goswami · V.D.
Savarkar · Keshub Chandra Sen · Swami Sivananda · Arun Shourie · Ram
Swarup · B.G. Tilak · Girilal Jain · Swami Vivekananda · Yogananda ·
Swami Vipulananda · Arumuga Navalar

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index.php?title=Stephen_Knapp_%28deleted_30_Mar_2008_at_00:36%29“
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…and I am Sid Harth

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Knapp
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< Wikipedia:Articles for deletion

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed
deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent
comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as
the article’s talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits
should be made to this page.
The result was delete. Singularity 00:36, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Stephen Knapp
Stephen Knapp (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View
log)
Book advertisemet with no reliable third party sources. Article is an
advertisement for a non notable book. Also, does not meet the
standards of Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Thanks. Ism schism (talk)
02:02, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

•Note: This debate has been included in the list of Hinduism-related
deletion discussions. —Ism schism (talk) 02:05, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
•Note: This debate has been included in the list of Authors-related
deletion discussions. —Ism schism (talk) 02:06, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
•Delete Non notable person. Non notable book advertisements. No
Wikipedia:Reliable sources in article. Thanks. Ism schism (talk)
02:07, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
•Delete Non-notable guy. There is no reliable source. Masterpiece2000
(talk) 04:02, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
•Delete without prejudice for recreation if notability can be
established. But, at present, there seems to be no sources on the
subject really independent of him. The ISKCON website is the only one
I think really independent of him, and it probably doesn’t qualify as
sufficient for these purposes. John Carter (talk) 19:07, 25 March 2008
(UTC)
•Delete – fails WP:NOTE (non-notable) and WP:RS (no reliable sources).
Also, his works are self published, and neither famous nor notable. –
Shruti14 t c s 22:16, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
•Delete Non notable person. Non notable book advertisements. No
Wikipedia:Reliable sources in article. Thanks.Govinda Ramanuja dasa
USA (talk) 05:54, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please
do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the
appropriate discussion page (such as the article’s talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.orghttp://wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Stephen_Knapp“
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…and I am Sid Harth

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Conflict, Hindu Society, History, Hot Off The Presses, Indian society,
News, Views and Reviews, Religious fundamentalism, Terrorism

25/09/2010

« Portrait of A Hindu Hoodlum III

Portrait of Hindu Terrorism I »

and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)

2010-09-27 01:51:36 UTC

Permalink

cogitoergosum

2010-09-27 08:18:13 UTC

Permalink

WW III
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/2010/09/27/ww-iii/

WW III Weapon

Stuxnet worm mystery: What’s the cyber weapon after?

Stuxnet worm attack has been centered on Iran, studies show. Experts
offer dueling theories as to the cyber weapon’s target: Iran’s Bushehr
nuclear power plant or the nuclear fuel centrifuge facility at Natanz?

In this 2008 file photo released by the Iranian President’s Office,
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, visits the Natanz
Uranium Enrichment Facility some 200 miles south of Tehran. Some cyber
security experts say the Natanz plant could be the target of the
Stuxnet worm.
Iranian President’s Office/AP/File

By Mark Clayton, Staff writer / September 24, 2010

Top industrial control systems experts have now gleaned enough about
the Stuxnet worm to classify it as a cyber superweapon. But the
mystery of what its target is – or was – remains unsolved, though
guesswork about its mission is intensifying among those who have
studied Stuxnet’s complicated code.

Educated guesses about what Stuxnet, described as the world’s first
cyber guided missile, is programmed to destroy include the reactor for
Iran’s new Bushehr nuclear power plant, as well as Iran’s nuclear fuel
centrifuge plant in Natanz. Both facilities are part of Tehran’s
nuclear program, which Iranian officials say is for peaceful purposes
but that many other countries, including the United States, suspect
are part of an atom-bombmaking apparatus.

The Bushehr power plant was supposed to be humming by now, but is not
– a possible sign that Stuxnet impaired one of its vital systems, says
one computer security expert. But another analyst who has also been
assisting on the Stuxnet case says the worm’s internal order makes
that scenario unlikely. The nuclear fuel centrifuge plant in the
Iranian town of Natanz is a better fit and a larger nuclear threat, he
says.

There is no independent confirmation that Bushehr or Natanz or
anyplace else has been attacked by a directed cyberweapon. But
competing theories are emerging about Stuxnet’s target. Here are two
from a cybersecurity duo from Germany who have worked, separately, on
deconstructing Stuxnet – and why they think what they do.

Ralph Langner is no Middle East policy wonk or former diplomat privy
to insider information. He is a German software security engineer with
a particular expertise in industrial control system software created
by industrial giant Siemens for use in factories, refineries, and
power plants worldwide.

This week, Mr. Langner became the first person to detail Stuxnet’s
peculiar attack features. He explained, for example, how Stuxnet
“fingerprints” each industrial network it infiltrates to determine if
it has identified the right system to destroy. Stuxnet was developed
to attack just one target in the world, Langner says and other experts
confirm. His best guess as to the target?

During an interview with the Monitor about Stuxnet’s technical
capabilities, Langner pointed at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. He
cites shards of information he has gleaned from open sources,
including news accounts, as well as his technical understanding of the
attack software. Here are his main arguments for his case.

Iran is the epicenter of the Stuxnet infection. Geographic studies by
Microsoft, Symantec, and others show the majority of infections to be
in Iran, making it a likely location for Stuxnet’s presumed target.

• Bushehr is a high-value target. Damaging the nuclear power plant
would deal a blow to Iran – a blow that would be worth the
considerable time and money a government would expend to develop such
as sophisticated cyberweapon.

• Concern about Bushehr is high among nations with cyberwar
capability. The imminent completion of the nuclear plant has roiled
the international community. Dismayed parties include the US and
Israel, in particular. But China, Russia, and France also are presumed
to have sophisticated cyberwarfare capabilities.

• Bushehr uses Siemens software and equipment. Stuxnet appears to
target Siemens SCADA systems. Bushehr was built largely with equipment
from Siemens, the German industrial giant that began the reactors in
the 1970s but later pulled out of the project. The plant still uses
industrial control software created by Siemens, but it has been
installed by Russian contractors.

• Stuxnet spreads via USB memory sticks. A steady flow of Russian
contractors to the Bushehr construction site ensured outside access to
the plant’s computer system. USB memory sticks are an invaluable tool
for engineers during construction of sophisticated computer-intensive
projects. Contractors building the plant would likely have made wide
use of them – giving Stuxnet a way to move into the plant without
having to rely on the Internet.

• Bushehr’s cyberdefenses are dubious. A journalist’s photo from
inside the Bushehr plant in early 2009, which Langner found on a
public news website, shows a computer-screen schematic diagram of a
process control system – but also a small dialog box on the screen
with a red warning symbol. Langner says the image on the computer
screen is of a Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) industrial software control system called Simatic WinCC – and
the little warning box reveals that the software was not installed or
configured correctly, and was not licensed. That photo was a red flag
that the nuclear plant was vulnerable to a cyberattack, he says.

“Bushehr has all kinds of missiles around it to protect it from an
airstrike,” Langner says. “But this little screen showed anyone that
understood what that picture meant … that these guys were just simply
begging to be [cyber]attacked.”

The picture was reportedly taken on Feb. 25, 2009, by which time the
reactor should have had its cybersystems up and running and
bulletproof, Langner says. The photo strongly suggests that they were
not, he says. That increases the likelihood that Russian contractors
unwittingly spread Stuxnet via their USB drives to Bushehr, he says.

“The attackers realized they could not get to the target simply
through the Internet – a nuclear plant is not reachable that way,” he
says. “But the engineers who commission such plants work very much
with USBs like those Stuxnet exploited to spread itself. They’re using
notebook computers and using the USBs to connect to one machine, then
maybe going 20 yards away to another machine.”

In the end, the evidence pointing most strongly toward Bushehr is
Bushehr itself, Langner says. “What would be the one prime target that
would be worth the whole scenario – all the money, the teams of
experts needed to develop Stuxnet? Bushehr is the one target that
might be worth the cost.”

Not so fast, says Frank Rieger, a German researcher with GSMK, a
Berlin encryption firm that has been helping governments on the
Stuxnet case, who is familiar with the internal architecture of
Stuxnet. His theory is that Stuxnet’s target is a different facility
in Iran: Natanz.

The Natanz nuclear centrifuge facility is widely condemned as a
nuclear weapons threat. It currently produces low-enriched uranium for
power plants, but nonproliferation experts it could be converted to
produce highly enriched uranium fuel for use in nuclear weapons.

Two things in particular may make Natanz a more likely Stuxnet target,
Mr. Rieger says.

• Stuxnet had a halt date. Internal time signatures in Stuxnet appear
to prevent it from spreading across computer systems after July 2009.
That probably means the attack had to be conducted by then – though
such time signatures are not certain.

• Stuxnet appears designed to take over centrifuges’ programmable
logic controllers. Natanz has thousands of identical centrifuges and
identical programmable logic controllers (PLCs), tiny computers for
each centrifuge that oversee the centrifuge’s temperature, control
valves, operating speed, and flow of cooling water. Stuxnet’s internal
design would allow the malware to take over PLCs one after another, in
a cookie-cutter fashion.

“It seems like the parts of Stuxnet dealing with PLCs have been
designed to work on multiple nodes at once – which makes it fit well
with a centrifuge plant like Natanz,” Rieger says. By contrast,
Bushehr is a big central facility with many disparate PLCs performing
many different functions. Stuxnet seems focused on replicating its
intrusion across a lot of identical units in a single plant, he says.

Natanz also may have been hit by Stuxnet in mid-2009, Rieger says. He
notes that “a serious, recent, nuclear accident” was reported at that
time on WikiLeaks, the same organization that recently revealed US
Afghanistan-war documents. About the same time, the BBC reported that
the head of Iran’s nuclear agency had resigned.

Lending some credence to the notion that Stuxnet attacked more than a
year ago, he says, is the International Atomic Energy Agency’s finding
of a sudden 15 percent drop in the number of working centrifuges at
the Natanz site. Rieger posted that data on his blog.

“Bushehr didn’t present the immediate threat that Natanz and the other
centrifuge plants did at that time and still do,” Rieger says. “What
is clear is that there was an enormous amount of effort spent to do
Stuxnet in this way, and it all points [to a target with] a high level
of priority assigned to it by the people who did it.”

Virus hits Iran nuclear programme
By Daniel Dombey in Washington and agencies

Published: September 27 2010 01:56 | Last updated: September 27 2010
01:56

Iran confirmed on Sunday that its nuclear programme had been affected
by a mysterious computer virus, but sought to play down the impact.

Mahmoud Jafari, head of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, said the
Stuxnet worm had only affected staff computers rather than the system
running the reactor itself.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Iranian president sours nuclear talks hopes – Sep-23.Sunni-led Arab
states on alert over Shia Iran – Sep-23.UN powers ready for new talks
with Iran – Sep-23.Russia axes missile deal with Iran – Sep-22.Gulf
states in $123bn US arms spree – Sep-20.Iran fear triggers arms surge
– Sep-20..“A team is inspecting several computers to remove the
malware … Major systems of the plant have not been damaged,” he told
the official IRNA news agency.

But Iran’s state-run Mehr news agency reported that the IP addresses
of 30,000 computer systems infected by the worm had also been
detected.

Stuxnet, the first program designed to cause serious damage in the
physical world, has hit an unknown number of power plants, pipelines
and factories over the past year.

Since Iran has suffered most of the infections, questions have been
raised about whether the virus is connected to western governments’
top secret sabotage campaign against Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Ashgear Zarean, deputy head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, insisted
that precautions had prevented the worm from hitting Bushehr.

“It is expected that the vigilance and skills of Iranian experts would
once again thwart the cyber-warfare of the enemies,” he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our
article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute
by email or post to the web.

…and I am Sid Harth

Conflict, Hot Off The Presses, News, Views and Reviews, Terrorism

27/09/2010

« Wanted Urgently: Snake Charmers

and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)

2010-09-27 08:20:44 UTC

Permalink

cogitoergosum

2010-09-27 21:29:59 UTC

Permalink

Obama’s Internal Wars
http://cogitoergosum.co.cc/2010/09/27/obamas-internal-wars/

Obama's Internal Wars

Watch Your Step

This Week at War: Obama vs. Team Surge

The president is going to regret putting off an inevitable showdown
with Gates, Mullen, and Petraeus over Afghanistan.
BY ROBERT HADDICK | SEPTEMBER 24, 2010

A collision between Obama and the Afghan surge faction is inevitable

Of the many revelations in early previews of Bob Woodward’s new book
Obama’s Wars, the most corrosive is the obstinacy President Barack
Obama faced from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman
Adm. Mike Mullen, and then Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus.
According to the Washington Post’s reporting of the book, Obama
repeatedly pressed his military advisors for an exit plan from
Afghanistan. “I’m not doing long-term nation-building. I am not
spending a trillion dollars,” Obama said. Yet according to the Post,
Gates, Mullen, and Petraeus — whom I will term the Afghan surge
faction — essentially barred from consideration any plan that did not
involve a counterinsurgency strategy requiring at least 30,000 more
U.S. troops. In spite of their resistance to his wishes, Obama chose
not to confront the surge faction, opting instead to accommodate their
policy inside a muddled compromise. But the compromise will only delay
an inevitable clash.

COMMENTS (19)

Woodward’s book strongly reinforces the impression that Obama’s
paramount goal in Afghanistan is to find the exit. Gates, Petraeus,
and others have attempted to dilute the harmful effect of Obama’s July
2011 deadline by explaining that any U.S. withdrawal will be very
gradual and “conditions-based.” Woodward’s exposition of Obama’s
restless eagerness to get out wipes away those efforts.

If one purpose of the surge was to achieve negotiating leverage over
the Taliban, Woodward’s book will instead reinforce their
determination to hang on and fight. Indeed, according to the Wall
Street Journal, it is U.S. commanders who are downgrading their
expectations for military progress. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is
now likely to redouble his efforts to make a separate peace with
Pakistan and the Taliban, a chilling prospect for many of
Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic groups.

Thus, by next summer the United States is likely to face hardened
Taliban resolve, a more belligerent Karzai, and an Afghanistan that
might be splintering along ethnic lines, trends reinforced by Obama’s
yearning for the door. If by next summer the counterinsurgency
strategy’s hoped-for improvements have not arrived, Obama’s long-
delayed confrontation with the surge faction will very likely occur.
Obama is likely to look for a new team to implement the policy he
wanted all along. The White House has already probably been preparing
for Gates’s retirement and the end of Mullen’s tour as Joint Chiefs
chairman. The termination of Petraeus’s command in Kabul would be much
more dramatic.

For the United States, there is a strict inverse relationship between
the size of a troop commitment to a shooting war and the amount of
time the public will allow for clear results. For example, in contrast
to the political time pressure Obama feels regarding Afghanistan, the
small but successful foreign internal defense missions the United
States conducts in Colombia and the Philippines are under no time
pressure as they gradually accumulate progress.

When policymakers choose a military strategy that comes with a short
fuse, periodic decision-point crises get built into the strategy.
According to Woodward, Obama perceived that the American public would
give him just two years to do something in Afghanistan. True, but only
because of the options forced on him by the Afghan surge faction. One
of the crises built into Obama’s Afghan strategy was a clash with the
promoters of that strategy. Obama might regret not having that clash
in 2009, before he committed so much prestige and so many lives to a
strategy he never had the resolve to properly see through.

Does the terrorism threat in Yemen warrant a billion-dollar response?

Officials at U.S. Central Command are pushing a six-year $1.2 billion
security force assistance program for Yemen. If approved, the program
would provide Yemen’s military and police with automatic weapons,
patrol boats, helicopters, transport aircraft, spare parts, other
support equipment, and training. This long-term $200 million per year
commitment is a huge change in policy; in 2006, U.S. security
assistance to Yemen totaled just $5 million. Centcom’s plan does not
please everyone. The State Department is resisting, claiming that the
program is too big for Yemen and that a six-year commitment forfeits
U.S. leverage over Yemen’s subsequent behavior. Others are concerned
that Yemen’s autocratic ruler, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, will use
this enhanced military power to battle his domestic opponents rather
than al Qaeda. And some wonder whether the pricey attention Yemen is
now receiving from U.S. national security officials is simply an
overreaction to the al Qaeda presence there.

It is Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric now hiding in Yemen and
the spiritual motivator to at least three recent homegrown terrorist
plots, who has caused Yemen to rise to the top of the U.S.
government’s worry chart. The president has already authorized a
Hellfire missile for Awlaki’s forehead, should someone be able to find
him. While that manhunt goes on, U.S. counterterrorism officials now
speculate that more small-scale terrorist attacks inside the United
States, like those instigated by Awlaki, are likely.

Given a choice between doing less and doing more in Yemen, the
political risk calculus for the Obama administration is to overrule
the State Department and approve Centcom’s big security force
assistance program. The virtual absence of terrorist attacks inside
the United States since 2001 has burdened the government with
maintaining this nearly perfect record indefinitely. A single carbomb
or a one-person Mumbai-style shootout will be viewed by many as a
dramatic homeland security failure. Homeland security officials seem
resigned to the near-impossibility of thwarting all such small-ball
attacks in advance. But after such an attack occurs, the public will
want to know what the government was doing to suppress the source of
the problem in places like Yemen. Thus, from the perspective of
political risk management, the administration has a strong incentive
to show that it was executing a vigorous counterterrorism program,
like that proposed for Yemen.

The U.S. government has another reason to try out Centcom’s plan for
Yemen. Win or lose in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government will
not be attempting any more large-scale, manpower-intensive
counterinsurgency and stabilization campaigns anytime soon. Another
approach is needed. The new model will be security force assistance
and foreign internal defense programs like Centcom’s plan. Advocates
of this approach will want to demonstrate that in the post-
counterinsurgency era, this model can work for a tough case like
Yemen.

Some will still object that the plan for Yemen, though a better
approach than what’s currently in place, is too large, too expensive,
and too wasteful. Perhaps, but it is more important now to show that
the model can work. After that happens, policymakers can worry about
economizing.

Comments (19)

RAY GIBBS
11:12 PM ET
September 24, 2010

Whatever the cost
Get al-Awlaki.

RAY GIBBS
11:16 PM ET
September 24, 2010

Whatever the cost
Get ben Laden.

RAY GIBBS
11:28 PM ET
September 24, 2010

Whatever the cost
Former Sen. Chuck Hagel to replace Sec. Gates when the Sec. steps
down. That will bring order to disorder–some perceive.

PUBLICUS
10:37 AM ET
September 25, 2010

Yes, a new model is needed
Agreed, but still, the US government can pump 200m a year into Yemin
or any other place or places and still see the perfect record of no
terror attacks against the homeland shattered. Then of course the
criticism would be more severe if the US were successfully attacked
while putting so much money into such a (model) program as proposed
for Yemin. Lose-lose.

But if a successful model along these lines could be developed, it
would be a significant and big win. Since Korea but Vietnam especially
the US has been searching and hunting for a model counter insurgency
strategy. The Centcom proposal seems worth the money, effort and time.
If developed successfully, it could save the lives of many American
military personnel and help to preclude the kind of foreign
expeditionary force deployments we’ve seen end in failure over the
past 50 years up to the present.

LOVEFORE
11:12 AM ET
September 25, 2010

But apart from this
But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and
political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are
wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world
is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be
maxsiki? quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually
the slaves of some defunct economist.
very good :w

DON BACON
5:17 PM ET
September 25, 2010

pentagonal thinking
Anybody who knows anything, and I include General Petraeus, has said
that this thing will end not through a military victory but through
negotiations. Yet the only people in the strategy meetings, just as in
the photo above, were in the military chain of command. No wonder
Gatesy is slapping his head. “I wish I’d bugged out sooner,” he’s
thinking.

Obama said in March 2009 that the US would form a “contact group”
composed of involved nations to work a diplomatic track. It was never
done.

. . .together with the United Nations, we will forge a new Contact
Group for Afghanistan and Pakistan that brings together all who should
have a stake in the security of the region — our NATO allies and other
partners, but also the Central Asian states, the Gulf nations and
Iran; Russia, India and China.

There are many factions involved in this war, and they aren’t all in
the Pentagon & White House. They include Karzai vs. Taliban, Pashtuns
vs. other Afghans, India vs. Pakistan (that’s a major one), as well as
China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the neighboring -stans.

The main reason for the Iraq surge was to provide sufficient security
for reconciliation, but it never happened. Now here we have a
president, Karzai, who is actually working on reconciliation,
including the jirga he called in June, and he’s getting a little
support from Petraeus but not a peep from Washington.

Well, of course not. The Pentagon doesn’t do diplomacy. That’s why we
have a State Department, he said, jovially.

General McChrystal assessed a year ago that Pakistan sees its arch-
enemy India gaining influence in Afghanistan.

Indian political and economic influence is increasing in Afghanistan,
including significant development efforts and financial investment. In
addition, the current Afghan government is perceived by Islamabad to
be pro-Indian. While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan
people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to
exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures
in Afghanistan or India. — p.2-11

He also assessed that Pakistan is supporting the Taliban.

Afghanistan’s insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan. Senior
leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups are based in Pakistan,
are linked with al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups, and are
reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan’s ISI.

In December Obama announced that the US would partner with Pakistan,
which is supporting the Taliban, which is killing US troops. Helloooo!
That’s pretty stupid, if not criminal.

Third, we will act with the full recognition that our success in
Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.

Okay, guys, fight your war for another ten years, waste a lot of lives
and money, but military action alone won’t get you anything but
conditions-based grief.

KELLY
5:52 PM ET
September 25, 2010

Deja vu
“…the program would provide Yemen’s military and police with automatic
weapons, patrol boats, helicopters, transport aircraft, spare parts,
other support equipment, and training.”

” Win or lose in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government will not be
attempting any more large-scale, manpower-intensive counterinsurgency
and stabilization campaigns anytime soon. Another approach is needed.”

Sure. And if the equipment and training don’t produce the desired
results, throw in a few thousand troops. Just to get things going. And
then a few thousand more.

How many times have we heard this before?

DR. KUCHBHI
6:08 PM ET
September 25, 2010

It takes a President …
to snatch defeat from the possibilities of victory.

Obama did so single handedly when he announced an exit date for
Afghanistan. It is arguably the single most stupid thing a wartime US
president has done (with the possible exception of going into Iraq).

Put yourself in the shoes of our NATO allies
- Could they be more Tibetan than the Dalai Lama? Better to announce
earlier pullout dates, don’t you think – even though they were happy
to help against an erstwhile regime that could be a potential threat
to them too?

Put yourself in the shoes of Hamid Karzai
- Could he afford to make enemies with the Taliban who had the backing
of a neighboring country’s army and intelligence agencies with his
limited infrastructure? Better to cut a deal with them while he still
had some shred of authority even though he hated the guts of the
neighboring terrorist supporting country and the Taliban’s agenda.

Put yourself in the shoes of the average Joe Blow Afghan
- Could he/she afford to piss off the Taliban? What would happen to
them after the American withdrawal? Better to support them against the
Americans even though you had nothing in common with their philosophy
and hated them – if only to save your family.

Put yourself in the shoes of our Pakistani “friends”?????
- Could they afford to piss off the Taliban – who despite their ugly
terrorist face had been less resentful of Pakistani meddling in
Afghanistan in the past, allowing them to set up terrorist camps
providing the ISI with plausible deniability. Better to cozy up to
them again and insist on being interlocutors on their behalf.

Put yourself in the shoes of our Indian friends?
- Could they afford to piss off the Taliban or Iran for that matter
any more, now that the US support was going to be wavering based on
the day of the week? Better to look for alternatives to the US
support…

For want of a resolute speech, the East was lost, all for the want of
a sensible speech…

NICHOLAS WIBBERLEY
7:52 PM ET
September 25, 2010

Nor defeat, no victory.
By 2009 there were no possibilities for victory. If you decide to
leave, you abandon fantasy objectives. Obama was in large part elected
on the expectation that he would exit Afghanistan and, if he holds
firm, he will. It seems perfectly reasonable to set a schedule. Of
course there will be regional consequences but the announcement at
least gives the parties the opportunity to position themselves for the
time the stuff hits the fan. Do you think it would be better to leave
one dark night without any warning?

If you find yourself taken to a casino and you are not a gambling man,
you don’t have to win or lose, you can just leave.

DR. KUCHBHI
10:57 PM ET
September 26, 2010

Differences in recollection
I recollect Obama being elected (to some arguable degree) on the
platform of ending the Iraq war and providing right resourcing the
“right” war – not on the platform of ending Afghanistan. The thought
was that providing the right resources to the war in Afghanistan could
still pull off victory. Hence the two surges (one less advertised than
the other) after he took charge.

I don’t think it would be better to leave one dark night without any
warning?

I do think that until you decide to start pulling your troops out, it
behooves you to provide your allies, your army, those who your army
depends on to provide them intelligence and local Afghans with hope, a
sense of purpose and a vision of victory.
It also is good sense to provide your enemies with the fear of god if
they do not capitulate.

Anything short of that is shooting yourself in the foot. Obama put in
more troops and announced a withdrawal date. Make of that what you
will..

JAYDEE001
11:49 AM ET
September 27, 2010

The ‘possibilities of victory’?
This is a pipe-dream if ever there was one. The chance for victory in
Afghanistan was lost in 2002. More than eight years of ‘under-
resourcing’ cost the US and its allies any chance of ‘victory’ in
Afghanistan. If there was no deadline, it is a guarantee that the
generals would just continue to ask for more troops. Republics do not
fare well in protracted military conflicts against committed
insurgencies. We need to understand that. We keep forgetting.

Obama’s biggest mistake was in making that war the ‘right war’ during
the campaign. By the time the 2008 election was concluded, the war
there had been ignored for too long, because of the preoccupation with
the mess we created in Iraq. If there ever was a chance for a military
victory in Afghanistan, it disappeared well before Obama took office.
When it was clear that the military would not settle for the status
quo or a complete withdrawal, when it was clear the right wing would
not let Obama back away from his promises to commit the necessary
resources to that conflict, he split the difference: give them over
30,000 more troops, give the Pakistanis some additional military aid,
but set a deadline for US involvement – or at least he tried.

Obama is in the same fix that LBJ (and later Nixon) was in Vietnam.
He’s faced with an inevitable loss to a committed foe (the Taliban),
backed by a backstage actor he can’t touch (Pakistan’s ISI abetted by
its senior military leaders and probably its president), and an
increasingly expensive war that will sap the US economy at a time when
domestic affairs warrant more time and attention. On top of that, he’s
still got one foot trapped in Iraq, the war he wanted to end, and now
we are increasingly involved in smaller military adventures in Yemen.
And if he tries to simplify his problems by backing away from any of
these military ventures, his political opponents will carp that he is
‘soft on terrorism’. We now lack the ability to deal with problems in
either North Korea and Iran, or with future problems in Iraq, when
that nation’s political institutions collapse – as they most certainly
will.

Obama needs to pull a Nixon – declare that the Afghan government is in
charge and walk away. If he had simply pulled out of both Iraq and
Afghanistan at the outset, his life now would be infinitely less
complicated. And the US would be no less safe for the result than we
are with troops dying in a winless war that just makes us look less
loke a superpower than we like to think we are. The only winners in
this war are the military leaders and the corporations who supply the
arms. But then, that is the whole point.

RFISHER19
6:49 PM ET
September 25, 2010

The President vs the Pentagon
Sooner or later it had to come to this: choose peace, world peace,
disarmament, support United Nations and international peace efforts,
reduce war expenditures, cut back on financing death and war &
weapons. Can he “bell the cat”? Of course the major opponents of world
peace, United Nations, disarmament, reducing military expenditures,
will be the Defense Dept & Pentagon & arms industries. Where is a US
Department of Peace? or Disarmament? or Reduction in Weapons? De-
militarization? When will the US begin spending similar resources on
promoting and establishing peace?

The danger signs are present: the challenge has been made. Of course
the entire war industry (political & business) will not take this
lightly, because it threatens their very way of life (the war
oligarchs & plutogarchs, all of whom are bottom-line capitalists
making profit from war and death).

RFISHER19
7:07 PM ET
September 25, 2010

The President vs the Pentagon
Sooner or later it had to come to this: choose peace, world peace,
disarmament, support United Nations and international peace efforts,
reduce war expenditures, cut back on financing death and war &
weapons. Can he “bell the cat”? Of course the major opponents of world
peace, United Nations, disarmament, reducing military expenditures,
will be the Defense Dept & Pentagon & arms industries. Where is a US
Department of Peace? or Disarmament? or Reduction in Weapons? De-
militarization? When will the US begin spending similar resources on
promoting and establishing peace?

The danger signs are present: the challenge has been made. Of course
the entire war industry (political & business) will not take this
lightly, because it threatens their very way of life (the war
oligarchs & plutogarchs, all of whom are bottom-line capitalists
making profit from war and death).

MARTY MARTEL
11:09 PM ET
September 25, 2010

US destined to loose in Afghanistan
The loss of US Afghan mission was predicated in November, 2001 when
during the siege of Kunduz the Bush administration allowed Pakistan to
spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban
operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz.
Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar
in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan from where Mullah
Omar’s QST has been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

Furthermore in order to chase Saddam’s imaginary WMDs, Bush
administration allocated huge military resources to Iraq, thereby
denying Afghanistan sufficient troops to provide security against
Taliban.

In addition, Bush recruited Musharraf’s Pakistan to fight the very
terrorist threat that Pakistan itself created. So Musharraf played
duplicitous game of running with the hare while hunting with the
hounds. While capturing and killing some Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders
based on US intelligence, Musharraf continued to shelter, protect and
support Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Quetta Shura Taliban in Quetta,
provincial capital of Baluchistan and Haqqani network in North
Waziristan.

According to Bob Woodward’s book titled ‘Obama‘s war‘, Mike McConnell,
Bush’s director of National Intelligence tells Obama soon after his
victory in the November 2008 presidential elections that Pakistan is a
dishonest and untrustworthy partner, unwilling or unable to stop
elements of its intelligence service from giving clandestine aid,
weapons and money to the Taliban. Bush has to know what Mike McConnell
knew but Bush never confronted Musharraf about his duplicity according
to published reports.

According to the book, President Barack Obama is quoted as saying at
an Oval Office meeting on November 25, 2009 that “We need to make
clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan”. President believes
that the war on terror in Afghanistan could not be won without
attacking and eliminating the Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in the
Pakistani tribal belt according to the book.

While clearly understanding the real culprit of Taliban resurgence in
Afghanistan, President Obama nonetheless continued Bush policy of
mollycoddling Pakistan and so will pay the price for the failure of US
Afghan mission.

While multiplying US drone attacks on Haqqani’s network in North
Waziristan, top trio who drives Obama’s Afghan policy i.e. Gates,
Mullen and Petraeus continue to offer alibis for Pakistani
government’s support to Mullah Omar’s QST, Haqqani’s HQN, Hekmatyar’s
HiG and Al Qaeda by refusing to order drone attacks on Mullah Omar’s
QST.

With an ally like Pakistan, US indeed does NOT need an enemy to loose
in Afghanistan.

DISIGNY
9:09 AM ET
September 26, 2010

“The Model”
Seriously, grown-up people want to know if the military model of
foreign policy will “work”?! It is the same model we have been using
for 100 years, and no, it doesn’t work. It is what has resulted in the
US becoming a modern version of the British Empire, and now on the
verge of collapse. If that is “working”, what would failure look like?
Oh yes, I know: the Commies would come over and steal your SUV..

VIDYUTK
3:10 PM ET
September 27, 2010

End this three ring circus
I have no clue what this war has achieved other than massive arms
sales, legitimizing of Pakistan’s local damage, radicalizing Pakistan
further, bringing Afganistan to a standstill, providing resources for
cross border terrorism in India, deaths of American soldiers, NATO
soldiers, Pakistani soldiers, innocents in two countries….
destabilizing Pakistan by forcing the establishment to act against
national inclination….. vast, vast damage…. oh and yes, about 3% of
the bad guys got killed while their numbers swelled by 300%

But perhaps the worst damage is what no one realizes. The US losing a
large part of its ‘threat factor’. Sometimes the threat of a war is
far more potent than an actual war. Check out how the world dances to
some crazy Pakistani tunes – nuclear nation, unpredictable….. placate
them quick. That is the power of the threat of war. In an actual war,
whichever side would win, would win, but with the threat gone, there
would be no reason to hold back.

The concern is that as the world sees a bunch of ragtag militias run
circles around the US, the next time the US would like to power
something done, they might actually need to use war, because the
threat of war wouldn’t work. Oh, of course, the country to do that
would be leveled totally, but the point is that it would be far more
messy and couldn’t be used for many kinds of pressure.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the third world war start
between Pakistan and US if the strikes get worse. Pakistan has nukes
and nothing to lose with the country’s credibility in tatters and its
precious sovereignty flaunted (psychologically). US has power, but not
quick access to supplies and China would like its two cents of course.

This thing really needs to stop unless someone has an idea not tried
before. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different
results is folly.

VIDYUTK
3:36 PM ET
September 27, 2010

US needs to get out
And the US knows that they need to get out with an excuse that lets
them save face. A limited India-Pak war would suit them, I guess. So
would the collapse of Pakistan. All they need is for someone else to
be responsible for making it impossible to continue.

And the machinery is in place behind the scenes. Check out the
‘unacceptable’ about Pakistan coming out of the woodwork. Most of it
is known, but in new packaging, revealed as a big time secret. Two
kinds of Pakistani treacheries ‘coming to light’ – double crossing US/
NATO and ‘proofs’ of damage to India. Interesting ‘fears’ of an India-
Pakistan war in case of another attack in the US.

Various ways – wikileaks, books being written, classified documents
mysteriously becoming known… the idea is that Pakistan is a worthless
piece of shit and its been asking for something bad to happen to it.
As if all that wasn’t known from the word go.

If India still doesn’t take the bait (very likely) and if there is no
terror attack on India soon (also likely – the ISI is not stupid, it
is going to wait the US out), I imagine Pakistan will do something
utterly ‘unacceptable’ that requires the US to attack it or the US
will do something that will leave Pakistan with no choice but to
retaliate, leading to the end of the war, because there will be no
more ally and thus, supply lines. Russia will be left holding the mop
up crown, which is something it wants anyway, because of Afganistan.
Accordingly, relations are improving between Russia and Pakistan (to
the discomfort of India).

Of course, I don’t understand international relations very well, so I
may be misunderstanding things.

KUNINO
3:51 PM ET
September 27, 2010

How come nobody bashes the generals?
The Woodward book does nothing but add a little color and detail to a
picture long obvious to many: the president is faced with a mutiny by
senior military figures. The people who made that clear were the
generals — plus an admiral.

They have also made clear that they still don’t know how to “win” in
Afghanistan, and several of them, most recently Generals Petraeus and
McChrystal, have made it clear that victory in any usual sense of the
word is not really on the table, anyway.

That was a telling moment in the new book when Fainting David
Petraeus, sipping on what i hope was his first glass of red wine, made
clear that presidential attempts to exercise appropriate civilian
control of the military, was really only fucking with David Petraeus.
It’s interesting that he said this in front of a witness; it’s
interesting the witness, one way or another, helped to get it into
print. This ain’t war. it’s warring personalities.

In this comment string, DR KUCHBI makes the extravagant and baseless
claim that the current president is the reason defeat in Afghanistan
is certain. This is a classic piece of Obama-bashing, and it displays
the more or less obligatory complete lack of substance. The generals
were offering no promises of victory before Mr Obama called for next
year’s start to withdrawal, and nobody other than the more hyperbolic
military flacks were claiming to see real signs of it.

If any president is responsible for the current state of affairs, that
man was George Bush, who actually did what Obama wants to happen again
starting next July. Mr Bush started a similar withdrawal in 2002
because he wanted to use his military to attack Iraq, for what we now
recognize as no good reason. How could he have betrayed the US force
in Afghanistan that way? How come nobody today recognizes that this
foolishness contributed to the current unfortunate position? (Probable
answer: America doesn’t care about what’s happening there.)

And how come nobody seems interested in what exactly generals have
achieved in Afghanistan since 2001?This is a story of fast-changing
command on principles seemingly designed to help general officers fill
out their career achievements and applied on the old Vietnam principle
that the man on the top should be relieved before able to understand
the local situation fully.

Who has a list of all those revolving-door commanders? What specific
achievements can be put to the names of each?

What, in our realpolitik world, could President Obama do to change
this dreadful command before the midterm elections?

Bob Woodward: Enter the spinmeister of the White House revolving door

Posted By David Rothkopf Wednesday, September 22, 2010 – 5:22 PM
Share

It is a tradition in Washington, as much a part of the fabric of this
elegant old Southern whore of a town as inaugural balls, losing
baseball teams, and the annual drag race across Dupont Circle. It is
the release of Bob Woodward’s latest book and the resulting howls of
pain from those whose sensitive parts got bound in between the pages
of his unfolding expose.

This latest opus is called Obama’s Wars and refers to at least two of
the three wars tearing dominating the attention of Obama and his
advisors — the one in Iraq, the one in Afghanistan and the one between
the advsiors themselves. (The Washington Post, for example, logically
concludes from the fact that book devotes no attention to Iraq that
the title does not actually refer to that particular war.) It, like
Woodward’s past works, is full of headline grabbing observations.
Among the grabbiest of them:

Hamid Karzai is a manic depressive. Frankly, that’s the best thing
that’s been said about him in Washington for months. Furthermore,
being slightly deranged is hardly a disqualification to be a world
leader. If it were, the United States would have considerably fewer
allies than it does now. Particularly, in Europe. (Sapete chi siete.
Or to put it another way, if only I could say “off his meds” in
Italian…)
Secretary of Defense Bob Gates asserts Tom Donilon would be a
“disaster” as National Security Advisor. This may be news to the
legions in the press corps and policy community that love the smart
and capable Donilon, but former Deputy National Security Advisor,
former CIA Director Gates is one of the most thoughtful students of
the U.S. national security apparatus ever to also serve in several of
its top positions. He is loved and respected by even more members of
the press, policy and political communities. Therefore, even though he
is known to be departing, his comment on Donilon won’t be helpful to
Donilon’s chances to succeed Jim Jones (see below).
Richard Holbrooke asserts the President’s Afghanistan strategy “can’t
work.” That would be correct.
Vice President Joe Biden calls Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard
I have ever met.” First reaction: he must not have been paying much
attention during all those years in the Senate. Second reaction: after
Hillary Clinton, Richard Holbrooke is still almost certainly the best
all around talent that the Dems have on foreign policy. And if being
egotistical were a disqualification for service in this
administration, those Afghan policy discussions could have taken place
in a phone booth.
Petraeus assails Axelrod as “a complete spin doctor.” To which Axelrod
probably responded, “thank you very much.”
Jim Jones privately refered to Obama’s political inner circle as “the
water bugs” or “the Politburo.” And in private they refer to him as
“the soon-to-be former National Security Advisor Jim Jones.”
You may call all this low gossip, but it is significantly closer to
addressing important issues than, say, the games playing in the Senate
yesterday over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” That said, Woodward’s book,
according to reports goes much further and reveals that the discord
and conflicts in the administration reflect real differences and
frustrations regarding the formation of AfPak policy and a president
who seems to be as divided on the policy as his team.

The surfacing of the unflattering history does beg one question,
though. If this is what happens every time Bob Woodward talks to
senior administration officials, why do senior administration
officials continue to talk to him? In the answer lies a clue into the
real nature of Washington today: even top officials are much more
motivated by their narrow self-interests and thus their desire to
ingratiate themselves to the guys who write the stories that become
history than they are to their president and, in some cases, to the
best interests of their country. Flattery, promises of protecting
identities and a chance to even scores and elevate themselves always
seem to do the trick and the result are terrific books, living history
and political problems for one White House after another.

Of course, the Woodward book is just the tip of the iceberg. With the
Obama White House revolving door about to start spinning faster than
the rotor of the helicopter idling on the South Lawn, the book
contracts will soon be doled out, the reporters will soon be taken
into departing officials’ confidences and more secrets will slip out
of the shadows of the Obamaverse. (It’s already happening…)

Perhaps it was inevitable. But of course, as in many other areas, this
administration was once thought to be different from those that came
before and thus more examples of its dispiriting sameness are the last
thing it needs. The famous discipline was a sham. Actually, the tough
rules on speaking to the press were never going to work as long as the
administration’s leadership failed to understand the only way to truly
create discipline would be to earn genuine loyalty.

…and I am Sid Harth

Conflict, Hot Off The Presses, News, Views and Reviews, Terrorism

27/09/2010

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