Pakistan army retakes Swat towns

Hurrah!, wonderful news, Swat towns have been recovered from the clutches of Mullah Radio.

Remember the joke about the dogs who run and bark after moving cars? So say a dog did catch a car, what then?

Doesn’t this remind you of the same situation? What now? What exactly will happen that will avoid Mullah Radio version 2.0 to come back and do exactly the same thing?

Nothing. Zero. Watch and see the very same thing happen again.

Technorati Tags: Pakistan,Taliban,Jihadi,Islamists

Breathtaking vision to join gas networks of 8 countries!

I personally like people who paint grand visions which are realistic at the same time. When you hear about it, you go, bloody hell, it makes perfect sense and why on earth did nobody think of it before? Its not like proposing a vision to setup holiday camps on venus, but to join the gas networks of 8 countries. For core infrastructure like this, it is a scale matter, and bigger the scale, the better it is. And it provides energy security to Europe by providing an alternative to Russia. I quote:

Mol, the Hungarian oil and gas company facing a take-over bid from OMV of Austria, has proposed a merger of the gas transmission businesses of eight countries in central and south-east Europe to form a new $10bn company that could be floated on the stock market.
The radical project, given the working name of the New Europe Transmission System, would create one of the biggest gas networks in Europe. It would bring together the pipeline systems of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Austria.
Mol says unifying the networks would encourage investment, build connections between countries and create a single gas market in the region. It would also help open up alternatives to Russian sources of supply, such as the Nabucco project to bring gas from the Caspian region to the European Union.

Execution will be tough, but hey, so is any great and wonderful thing!, go for it!

Read, wonder and hope!

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Head of Financial Crime wanted!

I found this job advertisement heading absolutely side-splittingly funny!, imagine? advertising for a head of financial crime????

The mafia has gone all corporate, just read this bit

At the highest level you will be responsible for the effective formulation and delivery of the financial crime strategy for the UK-based business including implementation and presentation to senior board members.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Thomas Friedman's take on Iran's take on USA

I like Thomas Friedman, he does the vision thing. And his latest column is just brilliant. The short term thinking on part of the politicians is just breathtaking. Read and weep!

December 5, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist

Intercepting Iran’s Take on America
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

There are two intelligence analyses that are relevant to the balance of
power between the U.S. and Iran — one is the latest U.S. assessment of Iran,
which certainly gave a much more complex view of what is happening there.
The other is the Iranian National Intelligence Estimate of America, which —
my guess — would read something like this:

To: President Ahmadinejad

From: The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence

Subject: America

As you’ll recall, in the wake of 9/11, we were extremely concerned that the
U.S. would develop a covert program to end its addiction to oil, which would
be the greatest threat to Iranian national security. In fact, after Bush’s
2006 State of the Union, in which he decried America’s oil addiction, we had
“high confidence” that a comprehensive U.S. clean energy policy would
emerge. We were wrong.

Our fears that the U.S. was engaged in a covert “Manhattan Project” to
achieve energy independence have been “assuaged.” America’s Manhattan
Project turns out to be largely confined to the production of corn ethanol
in Iowa, which, our analysts have confirmed from cellphone intercepts
between lobbyists and Congressmen, is nothing more than a
multibillion-dollar payoff to big Iowa farmers and agro-businesses.

True, thanks to Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Congress decided to increase the
miles per gallon required of U.S. car fleets by the year 2020 — which took
us by surprise — but we nevertheless “strongly believe” this will not lead
to any definitive breaking of America’s oil addiction, since none of the
leading presidential candidates has offered an energy policy that would
include a tax on oil or carbon that could trigger a truly transformational
shift in America away from fossil fuels.

Therefore, it is “very likely” that Iran’s current level of high oil
revenues will last for decades and insulate our regime from any decisive
pressures from abroad or from our own people.

We have to note that obtaining open-source intelligence in America has
become more difficult, because traditional news shows have become more
comedic and more comedic news shows more authoritative.

For instance, CNN’s nightly business report is hosted by a man named
“Dobbs.” Real journalists come on his show and present transparently
propagandistic stories about immigration and trade and then he fulminates
about them, much the way our ayatollahs used to do about “Satanic Americans”
on late-night Iranian TV. So viewers have no real idea what’s happening in
the U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, at 11 p.m., something called “The Daily Show,” which appears on
Comedy Central, has fake journalists presenting what turns out to be the
real news.

Yes, our last I.N.I.E. in 1990 concluded that after the collapse of
communism, America was on track to become the world’s sole superpower and
most compelling role model for Muslim youth — including our own. We were
wrong. We now have “high confidence” that America is on a path of
self-destruction, for three reasons:

First, 9/11 has made America afraid and therefore stupid. The “war on
terrorism” is now so deeply imbedded in America’s psyche that we think it is
“highly likely” that America will continue to export more fear than hope and
will continue to defend things like torture and Guantánamo Bay prison and to
favor politicians like Mr. Giuliani, who alienates the rest of the world.

Second, at a time when America’s bridges, roads, airports and Internet
bandwidth have fallen behind other industrial powers, including China, we
believe that the U.S. opposition to higher taxes — and the fact that the
primary campaigns have focused largely on gay marriage, flag-burning and
whether the Christian Bible is the literal truth — means it is “highly
unlikely” that America will arrest its decline.

Third, all the U.S. presidential candidates are distancing themselves from
the core values that made America such a great power and so different from
us — in particular America’s long commitment to free trade, open immigration
and a reverence for scientific enquiry wherever it leads. Our intel analysts
are baffled that the leading Democrat, Mrs. Clinton, no longer believes in
globalization and the leading Republican, Mr. Huckabee, never believed in
evolution.

U.S. politicians seem determined to appeal either to the most nativist
extremes in their respective parties — or to tell voters that something
Americans call “the tooth fairy” will make their energy, budget, educational
and Social Security deficits painlessly disappear.

Therefore, we conclude with “high confidence” that there is little
likelihood that post-9/11 America will, as they say, “get its groove back”
anytime soon.

Who needs nukes when you have this kind of America?

God is Great. Long Live the Iranian Revolution.


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Scaling a flue epidemic

I talked earlier about how financial institutions would react to a flu or terrorist outbreak on say the communications networks. But you might very well wonder what is the probability of such a thing happening? Well, here's one opinion.

Read and Worry

THE Government's chief spook and threat watcher has warned that a repeat of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed up to 100 million people, was "real". Head of the Office of National Assessments Peter Varghese said changes in the flu virus, and in the human and animal populations it could effect, raised the threat of a fresh outbreak.

"The economic, social, political and security impacts would be very large,"Mr Varghese said. The 1918 pandemic claimed up to 20 per cent of people infected by the virus and about half those were aged between 20 and 40 years.

The ONA boss told a security in government conference in Canberra yesterday that the list of issues affecting the nation's security until 2025 was "long and will keep growing". He played down the threat from climate change in the pre-2025 period, but said resource security, including oil supplies, water scarcity and fish stocks, would be massive preoccupations of governments.

"This will heighten tension among major and emerging powers, but shouldn't by itself cause war," he said. And he predicted that Australian forces would be in Afghanistan for at least 10 more years. Meanwhile ASIO boss Paul O'Sullivan used his speech to warn that "non-state actors" such as al-Qaeda would continue to be a major threat.

He said that since 9/11 al-Qaeda had created new connections between its hard core frontier militants and urban radicals throughout the world. "The existence of intricate, dynamic networks linking frontier militants . .. and small groups of urban radicals . . . has globalised insecurity in a new way," Mr O'Sullivan said.

He said al-Qaeda and the global jihad Islamic extremist movement in general had shown that it was possible for networked extremists to operate simultaneously across the globe from war-torn nations to western capital cities.

"If this situation continues the future we face will be one where significant national security threats coexist with . . . relative stability and order." The ONA boss predicted terrorism would remain a destabilising force for at least a generation and Islamic extremism would be a threat in our region for a decade.

ONA was set up in 1977 to provide the prime minister of the day and his national security ministers with independent assessments of global threats. In just his second public speech in 18 months, Mr Varghese highlighted the emergence of China and India as key strategic and military drivers for the next 20 years.

Technorati Tags: Operational Risk,Healthcare

You dont have to be Muslim to be an Islamic Finance Scholar

This is the key, people tend to think that only Muslims can become Islamic Banking Scholars. That is not the case, and anybody can become an Islamic Banking or Finance Scholar. Here are more details.

Islamic Finance is on the growth path, there is a big paucity of Islamic Scholars and the current way of training them is way too complicated. You see, if you start putting together a strong bachelor degree or a professional degree (like CFA or a CA degree), there is no reason why students cannot do this degree and become a scholar. And with the CIMA degree, one can get this certification and start advising funds after some more training.

And this is going to be a growth industry, oil is not going to get cheaper and faith is going to get stronger. So the Muslim wealth funds and the Islamic investors are just going to grow and grow. They need support and since existing Muslim educational institutions are unable to supply the scholars, outside firms will step in.

If you think that people would not invest in funds that have been checked by say a Christian scholar of Sharia, they just need to have a front man who is Muslim, just like they have in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. So the chap is happy, he just rubber stamps the decisions, and the financial institution wins, the investor is happy, the industry is happy. Everybody is happy as larry! :)


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Educating Girls makes casteism go away

May this scrouge of casteism disappear! Educate the girls, get them creating wealth and setting up their own businesses, make them mobile and work all over India and the world and all this rotten groupism and casteism will go.

I am very happy with these results.

But of more concern is the issue with the language schools. Perhaps one should considere multi-lingualism as the standard rather than starting from a one language presumption!! In other words, start with say 3 languages from childhood schooling.


Read and Applaud and hope more girls are educated!



A study suggests that girls are proving to be quicker learners than
boys

NEW DELHI: As the processes of globalisation strikes deeper roots in
India, girls are proving to be quicker learners than boys. And,
these are not girls who have benefited from a privileged upbringing,
but those from more modest, urban working-class homes where
traditional caste identities are still quite strong.

These young girls, authoritative studies reveal, have been breaking
several social retardants and surging ahead in education and,
empowered by their skills, are making job and marriage choices which
are helping shake off their dependence on caste rules and the weight
of family tradition.

An extensive study published in The American Economic Review ,
conducted by economists Kaivan Munshi of Brown University and his
Yale University counterpart Mark Rosenzweig, shows that a
traditional institution like caste (jati) has been impacted by
schooling, career and marriage choices of boys and girls in
the "new" economy.

Its study areas are the dynamic urban context of Mumbai's Dadar for
1980-2001, and families of the metro's 'labour market'. These form
its fairly large sample size of 4,945, with upper-castes accounting
for 17.5%. The response to the inquiries reveals that the premium on
an English language education has gone up steeply. For boys it went
up from 15% in 1980-90 to 24% in 1990-2000. But it really shot up
for girls from near zero to 27% in the same period.

The study also found that English schooling contributed to increase
in inter-caste marriages as 31.6% of such respondents married
outside jati, several of whom were girls, as against only 9.7% of
those who studied in the Marathi medium. Among siblings, who were
subject of the study and who are currently employed, 13.9% of those
educated in English work outside Maharashtra. For those who studied
in Marathi, the percentage is just 2.1.

With marriage outside jati and out-migration seen to weaken caste
ties and networks, an exposure to the modern economy can produce
uneven results. Those with English education get better jobs and
this can result in differences between boys and girls of the same
jati and also challenge social networks. As the economists
conclude, "The forces of modernisation could ultimately lead to the
disintegration of a system that has remained firmly in place for
thousands of years."

The findings reveal that whether families put their children in
English or Marathi-medium schools may well be a deciding factor in
the trends uncovered by the study. These could form the basis of
similar inquiries in larger Indian cities. English school passouts
are placed well for the expanding white-collar job market, while
those from Marathi schools are more likely to be headed for the blue-
collar labour market.

The study showed that while a majority of boys from working-class
families still attend Marathi schools, more and more girls from the
same background are headed for English schools, increasingly making
a difference in their attitudes to social and personal matters.

The reason is not far to seek. Historically, women did not form part
of Mumbai's labour market — the mills, factories, dockyards or
construction sites. "Historical occupation patterns kept in place by
caste-based networks continue to shape occupational choice, and
hence schooling choice, for boys in the new economy," says the
study. "In contrast, lower-caste girls, who historically kept away
from labour market and so, have no network ties to constrain them,
take full advantage of opportunities that become available in the
new economy."

According to the study, growing disparities in school choices within
the traditional jatis not only point to a new gender equation in
boys and girls availing of emerging economic opportunities, but also
threatens the stability of the caste system, based on marriages
within the same sub-castes. Significantly, the change in favour of
girls took place despite English school fees being significantly
higher than those in Marathi schools (Rs 480 versus Rs 200 at 1980
prices) and other expenses at Rs 1,100 versus Rs 710, respectively.
This also suggests that parents of these girls were prepared to pay
more for their education. The area, moreover, had only 10 English
schools, performing better in terms of pass percentages, against 18
of the Marathi medium.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Foreign companies flee US bourses at record level

Remember what I said about regulation in the USA? Well, see one of the problems of that.

Read and weep!

A record 12.4% of foreign companies listed in New York have chosen to delist this year, as a committee of prominent academics and financiers endorsed by US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said the country's public equity market has continued to decline in competitiveness.

The number of delistings on the New York Stock Exchange has increased from 12 in 1997, 3.9% of all foreign listed companies, to 30 last year which was a rate of 6.6%, according to a new report entitled “The Competitive Position of the US Public Equity Market” by the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation.


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Body Ritual among the Nacirema

Body Ritual among the Nacirema
Horace Miner
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 58, No. 3. (Jun., 1956), pp.
503-507.

"Professor Linton first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the
attention of anthropologists twenty years ago (1936:326), but the culture
of this people is still very poorly understood. T h w r e a North American
group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and
Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is
known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the
east. According to Nacirema mythology, their nation was originated by a
culture hero, Notgnihsaw, who is otherwise known for two great feats of
strength-the throwing of a piece of wampum across the river Pa-To-Mac and
the chopping down of a cherry tree in which the Spirit of Truth resided."


All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

More on Muslim Prayers

More on my previous post on Muslim prayers in Hospitals while ill.

[4.43] O you who believe! do not go near prayer when you are Intoxicated until you know (well) what you say, nor when you are under an obligation to perform a bath-- unless (you are) travelling on the road-- until you have washed yourselves; and if you are sick, or on a journey, or one of you come from the privy or you have touched the women, and you cannot find water, betake yourselves to pure earth, then wipe your faces and your hands; surely Allah is Pardoning, Forgiving.

And you dont even have to face Mecca because:

[2.115] And Allah's is the East and the West, therefore, whither you turn, thither is Allah's purpose; surely Allah is Amplegiving, Knowing.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!