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[1] From: "Aditya Mishra" <aditya11@sbcglobal.net> Date: Sun Sep 4, 2005 Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] River Saraswati a BIG HOAX (VT Rajashekar) I don't understand some guys who only know how to distort everything and like Hindi movies make every villain such a monster that it becomes ridiculous. They cannot tolerate an ordinary believable villain. ----- Original Message ----- From: <I. K. Shukla@...> Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] River Saraswati a BIG HOAX (VT Rajashekar) > It could bathe the mushrooming Advanis in religiosity, and Hindutva hordes > in "cultural nationalism". Before drowning them in the swamp of lies and > the piles of moola. ------------------------------------------ [2] From: "Aditya Mishra" <aditya11@sbcglobal.net> Date: Sun Sep 4, 2005 Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] River Saraswati a BIG HOAX (VT Rajashekar) It could very well have provided an underground channel for irrigation in an arid area. I have read somewhere that such an underground reservoir exist under Sahara desert and one may be tapped with more advanced technology. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mukul Dube" <arhardal@...> Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] River Saraswati a BIG HOAX (VT Rajashekar) > Let us assume for a moment that all the money spent on this > affair had proved that the river Saraswati exists. What then? > Would its water have been pumped up and made available for > irrigation? Or would it be reserved for the baths of Brahmins? ------------------------------------ [3] From: Rebecca Kurian <rkurian1@vsnl.com> Date: Sun Sep 4, 2005 Subject: The Two Americas.. myserenityin The Two Americas, By Marjorie Cohn Saturday 03 September 2005 Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died. What is Cuban President Fidel Castro's secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico, and specialist in Latin America, "the whole civil defense is embedded in the community to begin with. People know ahead of time where they are to go." "Cuba's leaders go on TV and take charge," said Valdes. Contrast this with George W. Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The day after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Bush was playing golf. He waited three days to make a TV appearance and five days before visiting the disaster site. In a scathing editorial on Thursday, the New York Times said, "nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis." "Merely sticking people in a stadium is unthinkable" in Cuba, Valdes said. "Shelters all have medical personnel, from the neighborhood. They have family doctors in Cuba, who evacuate together with the neighborhood, and already know, for example, who needs insulin." They also evacuate animals and veterinarians, TV sets and refrigerators, "so that people aren't reluctant to leave because people might steal their stuff," Valdes observed. After Hurricane Ivan, the United Nations International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction cited Cuba as a model for hurricane preparation. ISDR director Salvano Briceno said, "The Cuban way could easily be applied to other countries with similar economic conditions and even in countries with greater resources that do not manage to protect their population as well as Cuba does." Our federal and local governments had more than ample warning that hurricanes, which are growing in intensity thanks to global warming, could destroy New Orleans. Yet, instead of heeding those warnings, Bush set about to prevent states from controlling global warming, weaken FEMA, and cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee construction in New Orleans by $71.2 million, a 44 percent reduction. Bush sent nearly half our National Guard troops and high-water Humvees to fight in an unnecessary war in Iraq. Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Paris in New Orleans, noted a year ago, "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq." An Editor and Publisher article Wednesday said the Army Corps of Engineers "never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security - coming at the same time as federal tax cuts - was the reason for the strain," which caused a slowdown of work on flood control and sinking levees. "This storm was much greater than protection we were authorized to provide," said Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager in the New Orleans district of the corps. Unlike in Cuba, where homeland security means keeping the country secure from deadly natural disasters as well as foreign invasions, Bush has failed to keep our people safe. "On a fundamental level," Paul Krugman wrote in yesterday's New York Times, "our current leaders just aren't serious about some of the essential functions of government. They like waging war, but they don't like providing security, rescuing those in need or spending on prevention measures. And they never, ever ask for shared sacrifice." During the 2004 election campaign, vice presidential candidate John Edwards spoke of "the two Americas." It seems unfathomable how people can shoot at rescue workers. Yet, after the beating of Rodney King aired on televisions across the country, poor, desperate, hungry people in Watts took over their neighborhoods, burning and looting. Their anger, which had seethed below the surface for so long, erupted. That's what's happening now in New Orleans. And we, mostly white, people of privilege, rarely catch a glimpse of this other America. "I think a lot of it has to do with race and class," said Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. "The people affected were largely poor people. Poor, black people." New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reached a breaking point Thursday night. "You mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands of people that have died and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources we need? Come on, man!" Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had boasted earlier in the day that FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" under the circumstances. But, said, Nagin, "They're feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying. Get off your asses and let's do something!" When asked about the looting, the mayor said that except for a few "knuckleheads," it is the result of desperate people trying to find food and water to survive. Nagin blamed the outbreak of violence and crime on drug addicts who have been cut off from their drug supplies, wandering the city, "looking to take the edge off their jones." When Hurricane Ivan hit Cuba, no curfew was imposed; yet, no looting or violence took place. Everyone was in the same boat. Fidel Castro, who has compared his government's preparations for Hurricane Ivan to the island's long-standing preparations for an invasion by the United States, said, "We've been preparing for this for 45 years." On Thursday, Cuba's National Assembly sent a message of solidarity to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. It says the Cuban people have followed closely the news of the hurricane damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and the news has caused pain and sadness. The message notes that the hardest hit are African-Americans, Latino workers, and the poor, who still wait to be rescued and taken to secure places, and who have suffered the most fatalities and homelessness. The message concludes by saying that the entire world must feel this tragedy as its own. ----------------------------------------- [4] From: Regi P George <george_regi@yahoo.com> Date: Sun Sep 4, 2005 Subject: Weeding the Congress Grass! Campaign launched for biological control of a dangerous weed Gargi Parsai http://www.hindu.com/2005/09/04/stories/2005090400111200.htm --------------------------------- The weed was imported into India along with the PL 480 Mexican wheat seeds in the 50s It has the capacity to re-grow from the cut or broken parts It has no natural enemies such as insects and diseases because of which it spreads rapidly in India --------------------------------- NEW DELHI: The National Research Centre for Weed Science, an institute of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research, has launched a campaign for biological control of the Mexican parthenium weed through beetles imported from Mexico. The weed is popularly known as Congress grass. It is also called carrot weed because it resembles a carrot plant and is now found in all parts of the country. Parthenium hysterophorus is a weed that was imported into India along with the PL 480 Mexican wheat seeds in the 50s. The weed has since grown into uncontrollable proportions invading million of hectares of uncultivated wastelands, roadsides, railway tracks, etc. The fast growing weed is a nuisance in public parks, residential colonies and orchards. Not only that, it causes health hazards such as skin allergy, hay fever and asthma in human beings and is toxic to livestock. It squeezes grasslands and pastures, reducing the fodder supply. Scientists describe it as a "poisonous, allergic and aggressive weed posing a serious threat to human beings and livestock." The presence of parthenium in cropped lands results in yield reduction up to 40 per cent. The pollen grains inhibit fruit set in tomato, brinjal, beans, etc. It is also responsible for bitter milk disease in livestock fed on grass mixed with parthenium. Parthenium is a fast maturing plant with a deep tap roof that can grow to a height of 1.5 to 2 metres having branched leaves covered with fine hairs. It grows a large number of small white flowers and seeds of light weight that are easily dispersed to distant places causing allergy in human beings. Each plant can produce up to 10,000 seeds. It has the capacity to re-grow from the cut or broken parts. It has no natural enemies such as insects and diseases because of which it spreads rapidly in India. According to N.T. Yaduraja, Director of the Jabalpur-based Centre, one of the ways to control the weed is to uproot the weed before flowering. Any newly emerging seedlings should be removed. Herbicides such as glyphosate (one to 1.5 per cent) for total vegetation control or metribuzin (0.3 to 0.5 per cent) could be used if the grasses are to be saved. Another said an effective way of controlling the weed is to spread seeds of self-perpetuating competitive plant species such as cassia sericea, cassia tora, tagetus erecta and tephrosia purpurea. After much research, Mexican beetles (zygogramma bicolorata) was considered a "safe" biocontrol agent. The institute is now campaigning for using this beetle for parthenium suppression. The larvae feeds for 10 to 15 on the leaves and on maturity enters the soil and pupates below up to 15 cm depth. The beetles emerge after eight to 12 days and completes its life-cycle in 27 to 32 days. Both the adults and larvae are capable of feeding on the parthenium leaves thus checking the plant growth and flower production. Adults defoliate the plant. Immature flowers are cut by the beetles in an effort to chew the soft tissues beneath the flowers. Completely defoliated plants start to show die-back symptoms and gradually get killed. -------- |
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