|
India Thinkers Net Archives Index
|
Subscribe
|
|
| << May13, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Law Board??™s Shariah Court Campaign |
May15, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]North East & islamic law update >> |
|
[1] From: "River Basin Friends\(NE\)" <riverbasinfriends@yahoo.co.in> Date: Fri May 13, 2005 9:27pm Subject: Call to evolve practical plan to tame Brahmaputra-Urjent Dear friends ,This needs an urjent debate and thinking ,it is a part of plan for ILR. ravi Call to evolve practical plan to tame Brahmaputra GUWAHATI, May 12 #8212; So far attempts to bring the Brahmaputra under control were based on the theories developed with the experiments conducted mostly on the smaller rivers. Hence there was no success in bringing the mighty river under control, said the Task Force for Flood Management and Erosion Control. It has hence laid stress on developing hypothesis on the basis of practical experience with the Brahmaputra for controlling it. It needs mention here that the Task Force also has to recognise the Brahmaputra as one of largest river systems in the world. It has said, the #8220;extremely dynamic fluvial regime of the river is marked by enormously high rates of water and sediment yield, unique pattern of channel morphology, dramatic bank line migrations, rapid bed level changes and accelerated rates of basin denudation#8221; (pp 6 of the Task Force Report #8211; 2.1.1.2). But the Task Force in its report has observed: #8220; Most of the theories of river engineering have been developed by (sic) the experiments on smaller rivers, which many times are defied by the Brahmaputra. Hence, hypothesis developed based (sic) on the practical experience on (sic) the Brahmaputra will impart greater viability to the schemes#8221; (pp 55 of the Task Force Report). It has hence recommended #8211; #8220;#8230; the various state flood control department(s) as well as the Brahmaputra Board should properly document their experiences, without bias or exaggeration, of the results to arrive at scientific conclusions.#8221; It has elaborated its argument in support of the above recommendation. This says that the respective States#8217; Governments have implemented number of short-term measures to control floods and erosion with mixed results. All schemes have not performed as envisaged. If these experiences of success and failure are properly documented, this will give a number of vital inputs for planning and designing similar projects in the future. It has also suggested that mathematical model studies should also be taken up for the reaches of the Brahmaputra from one node to another. Reasoning, it has said that the Brahmaputra River is highly braided in its entire reach of 640 km in Assam. It is free from such braiding at a few locations, called nodal points, where it is constricted due to natural, artificial and geological reasons. Moreover, the width of the river varies, on an average, between 6 km to 18 km. Most of its tributaries barring Siang, Dibang, Lohit, Subansiri and Jiabharali, are relatively small having comparatively low discharge. With these parameters, it is not possible to carry out physical model studies for a long reach of the Brahmaputra. But, such studies are necessary to develop long-term river training methods, said the Task Force justifying its recommendation for mathematical model studies on the river. Commenting on the erosion caused by the river, the Task Force has said that the Brahmaputra Board has discussed this serious problem in detail in its Master Plan. More than half the bank length of Brahmaputra in Assam is prone to erosion. The Sub-Group-I of the Task Force has recorded the river#8217;s sediment load of 0.8 to1.0 per cent between November and April and 6 to 25 per cent Between May and October. Many embankments have come up in the past few years and the river itself has changed its configuration often. It has been found from old records that navigation was common in the Brahmaputra and in its tributaries. The behaviour of the river was also monitored on a regular basis. There are existing points all along the Brahmaputra at intervals of about 10 km, where cross sectional data of the river was collected even during the British period. Several investigators have carried out morphological studies in the past in order to understand the river behaviour. The Brahmaputra Board has prepared a Master Plan in which the river as a whole has been covered in detail. The North Eastern Council (NEC), Shillong, also sponsored the morphological study of the Brahmaputra, which was entrusted to WAPCOS. The report was brought out in 1994. The Ministry of Water Resources has sanctioned a Plan scheme under which Brahmaputra is one of the six rivers selected for pursuing morphological studies. Under the proposed study, the relevant field data has to be collected which will be utilized for preparing the report. In addition, the shifting course of the river during the last 30 years is to be demarcated in order to identify the vulnerable reaches. A multidisciplinary committee under Member (RM), Central Water Commission (CWC) has been proposed to be constituted in order to provide guidance on the proposed studies, said the Task Force in its report. It needs mention that the Central Government had constituted the Task Force (Order No 24/3/2004-Er/2812-48 dated August 11, 2004 of the Ministry of Water Resources) following the devastating floods last year. The chairman of the CWC headed it as the chairman. The Task Force had in it representatives from the Ministries of Home Affairs, External Affairs, Environment and Forests, Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, Development of North Eastern Region and from the Central Water and Power Research Station (CWPRS). It had also the representatives from the Brahmaputra Board and the IIT, Guwahati, among others. http://www.assamtribune.com Circulated by:-- River Basin Friends AKAJAN District-Dhemaji.787059. Assam. India E mail.assamravi@... -------------------------------- [2] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Fri May 13, 2005 2:15pm Subject: Re: NAPM position on slum rehabilitation Awas Adhikar Sanyukta Kriti Samiti is also against any cut-off date, whatsoever. It too considers that the 'right to housing/shelter' is an inalienable component of the 'right to life' - a 'fundamental' right as per the Indian Constitution, and even otherwise a basic human right. But here the proposed 'extension' of the cut-off from 1995 to 2000, even from that limited and flawed perspective, is a cruel deception. The proposed 'regularisation' is nothing but plain and simple eviction. Because even in the best case scenario, the proposed 'benficiaries' will be thrown out of Mumbai - brutally stripped of their means of livelihood. Sukla --- HAZARDS CENTER <haz_cen@...> wrote: which is why in delhi we have taken the position> that the cut-off date itself violates the Right to Shelter, and that the Master Plan has enough provision for housing for the poor. Dunu --------------------------------------------------------- [3] From: dnrad1 <dnrad1@sancharnet.in> Date: Fri May 13, 2005 Subject: The Germans knew Sunday, May 08, 2005 Updated: 03:53 am Pioneer--- The Germans knew A large number of Germans kept silent about Hitler's "final solution" not because they were scared. They did not raise their voice of protest because they were intimidated. This silence stemmed from their adoration of Adolf Hitler and support for National Socialism-Kanchan Gupta What we knew, By Eric Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband, John Murray, ??20 More than half-a-century after the fall of Berlin and the end of World War II, it is only natural that public memory of those terrible days when apocalypse seemed imminent should have dimmed. Details of the war, the forging of international alliances, the manner in which it ended with an iron curtain descending on Europe, and the subsequent decades of Cold War are now of academic interest, catering to a dwindling few. For most, these are events of the previous century. Along with the battle between the Axis and the Allies for control over the world as it then existed, we have also almost forgotten the greatest evil ever committed by humankind - the extermination of European Jewry. Adolph Hitler's "final solution" - how we trivialise such horrendous crimes by glibly using it for scoring petty political points today - led to the slaughter of six million Jews. They were gassed, they were shot and they were starved to death. Those who survived the horrors of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Birkenau, Belzec, Dachau and other concentration camps, were forced into a death march when defeat stared the Nazis in their ugly faces. Six million men, women and children killed simply because they were Jews. Racially impure, the Nazis would say. The old, the infirm, the young and the healthy - no distinctions were made. Their property was seized, they were put on cattle cars and that was the way it ended - at the camps, the able-bodied were detailed for hard, backbreaking labour till they either dropped dead or were executed. The rest were sent to the gas chambers or made to dig their own graves before being shot dead. Hitler's macabre pursuit of Aryan racial supremacy did not end with the slaughter of the Jews or the appropriation of their wealth. They were shorn of their hair, the gold filling in their teeth was extracted. That was how Nazi wealth was created - and ferreted away in the vaults of banks in neutral Switzerland. The horrors of the Holocaust exercised an entire, post-War generation. But today our collective conscience is almost wiped clean of Hitler's crime. The flame of remembrance continues to burn at Yad Vashem in Israel, but those who denounce Hitler are also reluctant to concede Israel's right to exist as a homeland for Jews. What We Knew - Terror, Mass Murder and Every Day Life in Germany by Eric A Johnson, professor of history at Central Michigan University and author of Nazi Terror, and Karl-Heinz Reuband, professor of sociology at the University of Dusseldorf, based on their interviews with hundreds of survivors of the Holocaust, is a grim reminder of the horrors of Hitler's Nazi regime. More importantly, it raises questions that could redefine our understanding of the extermination of European Jews. Why did millions of Germans cheer Hitler and his party? How deep did anti-Semitism run in German society? Were Germans being truthful when after the war they claimed ignorance of what was happening at the concentration camps? What We Knew raises these questions through the recalled memory of survivors. And, the book asserts that it is erroneous to suggest that the vast majority of Germans were ignorant of Hitler's crime and, therefore, should not be held guilty. It is about Elise and Hermann Gottfried recall thinking of all Germans as "detectives in civilian clothing". And also about non-Jews like Hubert Lutz, who spent ten years in the Hitler Youth, and "never heard anybody suggest that you spy on your parents or that you spy on anybody else." Fact over-rides fiction in this gripping oral history of everyday life in the Third Reich - hauntingly melancholic and painfully graphic accounts of individuals who have neither forgotten nor forgiven. For many years after the war was over, many non-Jewish Germans insisted, "we didn't know" about the Holocaust. Others insisted, "If we had known and had tried to do something, we too would have been killed by the Nazis." Johnson and Reuband's research shows that at least a third of non-Jewish Germans knew about the slaughter of European Jews by the Nazis, the killing of the mentally ill and handicapped, and the widespread torture of innocents by the Gestapo. Worse, the book shows how a large number of Germans were involved in implementing Hitler's "final solution". No, they did not keep silent because they were scared. They did not raise their voice of protest because they were intimidated. This silence stemmed from their adoration of Adolf Hitler and support for National Socialism. What We Knew demonstrates, through the memory of survivors, that "intimidation and terror were rarely needed to enforce loyalty". Hitler's men, the book shows, ruled "primarily by consensus, not terror; it was a popular dictatorship". As the authors say, "far from living in a state of constant fear and discontent, most Germans led happy and even normal lives in Nazi Germany." They believe that the Holocaust "could not have been possible without the complicity of the majority of the German population". This is contrary to conventional wisdom that tends to forgive the Germans for their silence while Jews were being led to their slaughter. A last point: While Hitler and the Nazis are justly condemned for their crime against humanity, we often tend to ignore the fact that the US and the UK failed to open their doors to Europe's Jews. The US had a quota system whose implementation meant Jews wanting to flee the Gestapo and the Nazis had to stand in the queue for up to eight years. Much before their turn came, they were dead. Could many of the millions of victims have been saved? Yes. Even if the US and the UK were reluctant to embrace those persecuted by the Nazis - the bitter truth is that nobody wanted the Jews - their return to Israel (then the British mandate of Palestine) could have been facilitated. Instead, even the doors of their homeland were shut to them. Complicit cruelty? Or sheer anti-Semitism |
|
| << May13, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Law Board??™s Shariah Court Campaign |
May15, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]North East & islamic law update >> |
|
India Thinkers Net Archives Index
|
Subscribe
|
|
|
Archives powered by Zinester's Mailing List Service
Details on India Thinkers Net |
Browse for more newsletters at Zinester's Ezine Directory
Managed by Zinester's Mailing List Management |