Yantra , Tantra, Mantra

In the latest mass shooting atrocity in Las Vegas of some random vile individual whose motives are still unclear, of course it was inevitable that people bring up the culture of guns to forward their own pet agendas. The anti gun crowd tries to reduce and discourage gun ownership while those who subscribe to the idea that  2nd Amendment encourages gun ownership wont hear any of it. I am sympathetic to the latter crowd. But when they make the correlation between higher gun ownership and less murders , they like the anti gun crowd are missing the forest for the trees. Fact of the matter is that the U.S is a very violent society and this violence is a feature not a bug of the tremendous thirst drive and pressure for individual over achievement. Japan of course has no gun laws and has a very low crime rate. But one suspects that even if it was awash in guns there would be relatively little gun violence except for Japanese men a far less painful way of commiting suicide than seppuk...

The BJP government and its mother and sister organizations RSS and VHP's aggressive approach against cattle traffickers and abbotoirs are quite successful if this triumphant Hindutvadi source is any indication. https://bharatabharati.wordpress.com/tag/cattle-trafficking/ Meanwhile... Almost 20,000 women and children were victims of human trafficking in India in 2016, a rise of nearly 25 percent from the previous year, government data released on Thursday showed. . .. Figures showed there were 9,104 trafficked children last year -- a 27 percent increase from the previous year. The number of women trafficked rose by 22 percent to 10,119 in 2016. Hari Om (Trademark- Justice Katju)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXtwpiYKpp8 "The FBI, as we know, is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to expose the Democrats emails. The Senate meanwhile is investigating whether the Obama Administration investigated the Trump campaign for the collusion that the FBI is investigating. The Judiciary Committee is investigating why the Attorney General failed to investigate Hillary Clinton's attempt to avoid the FBI investigation into the Attorney General's failure to investigate her emails to the Democrats which the Russians hacked in an attempt to interfere with our election, which the Senate is investigating in an attempt to find out if the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians' hack of the Democrat's emails which the FBI is investigating to see whether the Obama Administration was investigating the Trump campaign.  The House Intelligence Committee is investigating whether the House Intelligence Committee overstepped i...

For the record, while I enjoyed the Bahubali series , I am not really that captivated by it as the rest of the country and dont quite understand the fuss. The performances were actually rather subdued ,perfectly pitched and on note , which is surprising keeping in mind the over the top operatic style of the series. To this end poor Prabhas has been underrated while Ramya Krishnan, Sathyraj and Daggubati Rana recieved the lions share of the praise. The visual effects were a mixed bag , some good ,some bad, same goes for the action scenes. and music score However one thing that stands out and was excellent through out was set design. Here the film makers, polish, orignality and talent truly stand out. The other aspects of the film were too beholden to Hollywood blockbusters like Lord of the Rings and 300( a particularly immature and vile film IMO), Im happy to say though that Bahubali shares with LOTR the elevated ideas of honor,courage,kingly duty,friendship and justice. Of c...

I should specify the alt right - a motley collection of libertarians, anti PC crusaders, lonely gamers and neo Nazis who banded together in an odd alliance to help elect President Trump. When I speak of the alt right, I have in mind the most vocal of this lot-the Ron Paul isolationists as well as the neo Nazi wing(but I repeat myself) is shocked shocked that Trump bombed the Syrian air bases taking out 20% of the Syrian air force in one go following the ghastly chemical attack on Syrians by Assad. Every one of these deranged weirdos are howling with righteous indignation from Ann "Adams apple" Coulter, the flamboyant right wing gay Milo Yianopolous("Trump is my daddy") to Paul Joseph Watson of the crackpot Infowars site which promoted theories such as Dark Knight Rises predicted Sandy Hook shootings in 2012and Israel caused 9/11. They have turned their ire not so much on Trump but Jared Kushner, Trump's Orthodox Jewish son in law and his daughter Ivanka Tru...

I have seen various rationales for India sub par performance in pretty much every field (relative to its large size and impressive history) ranging from colonialism, socialism, rapacious capitalism, Hindu religion, Islamic dhimmitude ,plunder and psy ops warfare over population etc etc. But all of these miss the forest for the trees. The main reason India is so horribly mismanaged is because Indian institutions whether Indian army, navy and air force,railways,  IAS, IPS as well most of the Indian bureaucracy ,media , elite universities is based on British models and these models were predicated on a foreign power exploiting India as a source of manpower, raw material ,money and other capital. The British have left to be replaced by a "swadeshi" set of theives, crooks and incompetents who view the Indian populace irrespective of class, sect or caste as cattle to squeeze dry or if necessary sacrificed for their meat. If none of these institutions function as to our satis...

Anthony Daniels who usually writes in his nom de plume Theodore Dalrymple paid a visit to North Korea in the late 1980s as the usually discriminating North Koreans mistakenly assumed he was friendly to the regime as he had once with Julius Nyere of Tanzania who was a friend of the despot Kim Song. He had made several remarkable observations. None more than what was a implicitly a tribute to capitalist society but it end up as an indavertent satire. Source I went several times during the festival to Pyongyang Department Store Number 1. This is in the very centre of the city. Its shelves and counters were groaning with locally produced goods, piled into impressive pyramids or in fan-like displays, perfectly arranged, throughout the several floors of the building. On the ground floor was a wide variety of tinned foods, hardware and alcoholic drinks, including a strong Korean liqueur with a whole snake pickled or marinated in the bottle, presumably as an aphrodisiac. Ever...