Saturday, January 04, 2020

American school for the assassins

With the latest assassination of Gen. Qassim Suleimani once again the United States is back in the news.

 General public has got a very short memory.
They have already forgotten about Abū Bakr al-Baghdadi
I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its people. —Secretary of State Henry Kissinger commenting on the election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile in 1970. Chile's coup d'etat was close to perfect. —Lieutenant Colonel Patrick J. Ryan, U.S. Military Group Commander, Santiago, Chile, October 1, 1973 Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. —President George W. Bush, September 11, 2.001 Almost three decades before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon killed over three thousand people, another act of unspeak- able horror took place in the South American country of Chile on Sep-
Duke University Press, Sep 13, 2004 - Political Science - 300 pages
2 Reviews
Located at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, the School of the Americas (soa) is a U.S. Army center that has trained more than sixty thousand soldiers and police, mostly from Latin America, in counterinsurgency and combat-related skills since it was founded in 1946. So widely documented is the participation of the School’s graduates in torture, murder, and political repression throughout Latin America that in 2001 the School officially changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. Lesley Gill goes behind the façade and presents a comprehensive portrait of the School of the Americas. Talking to a retired Colombian general accused by international human rights organizations of terrible crimes, sitting in on classes, accompanying soa students and their families to an upscale local mall, listening to coca farmers in Colombia and Bolivia, conversing with anti-soa activists in the cramped office of the School of the Americas Watch—Gill exposes the School’s institutionalization of state-sponsored violence, the havoc it has wrought in Latin America, and the strategies used by activists seeking to curtail it.
Based on her unprecedented level of access to the School of the Americas, Gill describes the School’s mission and training methods and reveals how its students, alumni, and officers perceive themselves in relation to the dirty wars that have raged across Latin America. Assessing the School’s role in U.S. empire-building, she shows how Latin America’s brightest and most ambitious military officers are indoctrinated into a stark good-versus-evil worldview, seduced by consumer society and the “American dream,” and enlisted as proxies in Washington’s war against drugs and “subversion.”

 Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)

 this organization was well known as the school of Americas in fact it was a school of assassins.
Number of right-wing dictators and their police and army members and generals were specially trained in activities of assassination by the United States government.

 I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its people. —Secretary of State Henry Kissinger commenting on the election of Salvador Allende as president of Chile in 1970. Chile's coup d'etat was close to perfect. —Lieutenant Colonel Patrick J. Ryan, U.S. Military Group Commander, Santiago, Chile, October 1, 1973 Today our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature I've directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. —President George W. Bush, September 11, 2.001 Almost three decades before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon killed over three thousand people, another act of unspeakable horror took place in the South American country of Chile on Sep-

 At its inception that's true of every radiation
it was called okay

Latin American Training Center-Ground Division[edit]

In 1946, the United States Army founded the Latin American Training Center-Ground Division (Centro de in our brain also block departments L deal with her problem Latino Americano, Division of [1]) at Fort Amador in the Panama Canal Zone 
in 1949 its name was changed to about the proton therapy.

U.S. Army Caribbean School

Mutual defense assistance agreements bound the U.S. Army to the militaries of Latin America by the middle of the 1950s, with only Mexico and Argentina as exceptions
After the 1959 revolution in Cuba, the U.S. Military adopted a national security doctrine under the perceived threat of an "international communist conspiracy."[citation needed] In 1961, President John F. Kennedy ordered the school to focus on teaching "anti-communist" counterinsurgency training to military personnel from Latin America

According to anthropologist Lesley Gill, the label "communist" was a highly elastic category that could accommodate almost any critic of the status quo

In recent years this label of communist has been rewritten as "terrorist" even a Saudi pilot killed two other Navy officers for their comments that he was a pornographic actor was labeled as a terrorist act.
Why this story completely disappeared from the news cycle?

Pensacola shooting: FBI working with presumption it was 'act of terrorism'


School of the Americas

In 1963, officials renamed the facility the U.S. Army School of the Americas "to better reflect its hemispheric 
General Pinochet and his compatriots in the Chilean armed forces were also aided and abetted by the United States despite their use ofterror at home and abroad. Almost all of the Chilean officers who overthrew Allende had trained at a U.S. military service school prior to the coup; most had attended the U.S. Army's prestigious School of the Americas, a training institution where Latin American soldiers learn counterinsur- gency warfare. The most notorious acts of international terrorism com- mitted by the Pinochet regime included the 1974 car bomb assassination of General Carlos Pratts and his wife in Buenos Aires; the 1974 attempted murder of Bernardo Leighton, the founder Of the Chilean Christian Dem- ocratic Party, in Rome; and the 1976 car bomb execution of Orlando Letelier, Allende's former ambassador to the United States, and his U.S. aide, Ronnie Moffat, in Washington, D.C. The assassinations were orches- trated by the Chilean secret police and connected to Operation Condor, a network of South American intelligence agencies that collaborated in hunting down and assassinating political dissidents who opposed the dic- tatorships in their respective countries. The fact that the Letelier murder was carried out in the heart Of Washington, D.C., testifies to the confi- dence with which Pinochet's secret police operated in the United States and suggests that the CIA was probably aware of its activities. 1orientation."
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Is the United Nations going the league of Nations way?

Is the United Nations going the league of Nations way?

A good a place as any to witness the slow decline of the post-second world war global "order" is the UN security council - if they would let you in, which they won't. Don't bother with that rarefied organ's "public" meetings. None of its real diplomatic business is conducted in the open. Seven key questions in 70 years of the UN security council In a reflection of the state of the world, the security council, which is charged with the maintenance of international peace, is busier than ever. Years ago, the council met for a few hours once or twice a week. These days it meets all day, often at night and weekends too. Overworked diplomats discuss an ever-lengthening agenda of crises, from North Korea to Libya. The long list of meetings and committees may demonstrate the council's energy in addressing the manifold factors behind modern conflict but it also reflects the council's failure: it doesn't take a diplomat to see that insecurity is spreading.

 So what is the standard of United Nations regarding assassinations like the recent one of Suleimani
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What happened to the Muslim custom of burying the body within 24 hours?

Why Soleimani's body is being brought to the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala

What happened to the Muslim custom of burying the body within 24 hours?
It's obvious that he was killed in battle

Funerals in Islam (called جنازة "Janazah" in Arabic) follow fairly specific rites, though they are subject to regional interpretation and variation in custom. In all cases, however, sharia (Islamic religious law) calls for burial of the body as soon as possible, preceded by a simple ritual involving bathing and shrouding the body,[1] followed by salah (prayer). Burial is usually within 24 hours of death to protect the living from any sanitary issues, except in the case of a person killed in battle or when foul play is suspected; in those cases it is important to determine the cause of death before burial. Cremation of the body is strictly forbidden in Islam.[2][3] It should be mentioned that the rites of a burial is not constituted in the Qur'an.
By MIRIAM BERGER | The Washington Post | Published: January 4, 2020

The funeral procession for Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani began Saturday in Baghdad, where he was killed a day earlier by a U.S. drone strike. The next stops for Soleimani's body were the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, sites that are holy for Shiite Muslims. Soleimani's burial was scheduled for Tuesday in Kerman, his hometown in southeastern Iran, state media in Iran reported.

Najaf is a center for learning and pilgrimage site for Shiites, who make up about two-thirds of Iraqi and the dominant branch of Islam in Iran.

Each year, thousands of Iranians, as well as other religious pilgrims, travel to Najaf to visit the golden-domed shrine of Imam Ali, one of the founding leaders in Islam and highly revered by Shiites. Ali was the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad. Shiites consider Ali, who was killed in 661 by a member of a rival sect, as the rightful successor to the prophet.

The city, and the clerics based there, has also been a quiet battleground for Iran in its efforts to extend political, economic, religious and military influence over Iraq, as The Post's Erin Cunningham and Mustafa Salim reported last year.

related articles
"In Najaf's dusty warrens, Iran has bankrolled schools and charities, built elaborate mosques and nurtured links with religious scholars in a bid to undermine the local clergy, who have long been fiercely independent," they wrote. "Clerics tied to Iran are promoting its particular brand of state-sponsored Shiite theology in the city's seminaries and have been maneuvering to install one of their own as Iraq's "marja," or supreme religious authority, Iraqi political operatives say."

That position is currently held by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, 89, Iraq's most influential cleric who has opposed some of Iran's core teachings around religious oversight of state affairs.

In November, during the height of protests against the Iraq's political establishment - including its links to Iran - protesters set fire to the Iranian consulate in Najaf.

Karbala is another sacred city in Shiite Islam, revered as the burial place of Imam Hussein. In the late 7th century, Hussein was killed in a battle that marked a doctrinal schism in Islam between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. His death is mourned and memorialized yearly in Shiite tradition known as Muharram, named after the month he was killed.

Karbala is a major pilgrimage site, with the mosque built in Imam Hussein's memory the main destination. Today the mosque is ornately adorned, but the elaborate renovations are relatively new. Under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led rule, Shiite sites were marginalized.

In the violence and civil war that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Karbala also was a battleground. In 2007, an attack against coalition troops killed five U.S. soldiers stationed there. U.S. officials have blamed Soleimani and his Quds Force for orchestrating it.
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Problems in education of children

Salaries are still being paid to ‘ghost teachers’ who never enter a classroom, while children lack the tools – and sometimes even the food – they need to learn
Inequality

'The help never lasts': why has (mexico's)India's education revolution failed?

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It's time to leverage distance education in Telangana

It's time to leverage distance education in Telangana 

If you really want to improve the literacy and education rates we need to think outside the box and leverage the new information technologies available to us.

Recently I heard from my brother that one of his college friends who comes from Telangana met with KCR and is planning to make a list of expatriates from Telangana.
My brother suggested to him that it is not enough to just make a list of people who are interested in helping but we need more space for cities such as what's the expertise and how much time they are willing to provide and what kind of help there willing to provide.
More than that important to know the specific needs and requirements of a particular area and segment of the economy or education which needs to be improved.
Education and health are very important and topics in which I am greatly interested.
Although there is an explosion of traditional institutions there is still a significant section of the population which is not being catered to. There is a need for setting up and nonprofit corporation entirely focused on distance education based on Internet technologies.
Mr. K .T. Ramarao may be the best person to start such an effort with the help of a significant number of IT professionals coming from India who may be interested in helping out without having to move India.

Excerpted from Distance Education - Algeria

Distance education is traditionally defined as, any educational or learning procedure in which the guide and the student are separated geographically. There is no interaction between students.

Distance education also known as distance learning or distributed learning, or remote education, has now existed for ages. It involves acquiring information from methods other then the traditional way of gaining knowledge – attending institutions. Some recent definitions have focused on it as a new development, involving advanced technology

Present-day distance learning is influenced a lot by computer and electronics technology. The technology has now made it possible for the guide and student to connect almost immediately. Study resources can be delivered instantly through computers, satellites, internet, cable television, interactive video etc.

History of Distance Education

Correspondence education, the initial form of distance education, developed in the mid-nineteenth century in Europe and then spread to the United States and so on.

Initially distance education used the finest technology available at that time, the postal system, to open educational prospects to people who wanted to study but were not able to attend traditional schools. People who gained most from correspondence education were women, professional people, physical disabled, and individuals who lived in areas where schools didn’t exist.

Isaac Pitman, a British is attributed to pioneering the concept of “distance education”. He started by teaching shorthand via correspondence in 1840. Students were asked to copy passages from Bible and send them for grading via the new penny post system.

In, American the distance education began in 1874 at Illinois Wesleyan University where bachelor and graduate degrees could be obtained without being actually present in the classes. The Chautauqua movement in the year 1882 gave the much required thrust to correspondence education.

Correspondence education became quite famous by 1900 and problems of excellence and fair practice came with the popularity. The National Home Study Council (NHSC) was formed in 1926 in part to deal with such issues.

Distance education went through a major change   after the invention of radio in the 1920s and the arrival of television in the 1940s. Distance education is increasingly using combinations of different technologies to improve communication between teachers and students. In 1900, after the arrival of computer, distance education took a big leap. Now the teachers and students can converse sitting face-to-face.

Students from business and university level have used the conferencing technique known as one-way video/two-way audio where pictures from television are transmitted to particular sites, people can reply to the newscaster via telephone. Television pictures can also be broadcast in two directions at the same time through telephone lines, so that teachers and students at one place can see and hear teachers and students in other places.

Types of distance learning

Distance learning does not rule out the traditional methods of learning. When used in the classroom or professional education. It is also called distributed learning.

Types of distance education based on the medium

1.    Internet
2.    Video
3.    Audio

Internet Based Courses

Students receive instructions through websites, email, electronic bulletin boards, and messaging systems.

Video Based Courses

Two types of video based distance learning courses are available

Pre-recorded – These are already recorded video tapes that are sent to the students which they can viewed as per convenience.

Two-Way Interactive – Computer, satellites, cameras, and television allow teachers and students to interact.

Audio Based Courses

This includes everything from phone conferences, radio broadcasting and prerecorded audio CDs.

Who offers distance learning programs?

Most of the universities nowadays offer distance and online learning programs for bachelor's degrees, master’s degrees, and PhD programs. You are certain to find a course of your interest that offers you with the skills you need to achieve your educational and professional goals.

Why distance learning? (Advantages)

1.    Ability to combine work with existing commitments
2.    Cheaper
3.    No deadlines
4.    Less pressure
5.    No set start date
6.    You can decide your time of and place of study.
7.    No matter where you live – you can still achieve a degree from anywhere in the world.

Disadvantages

1.    Distance learning requires self-motivation
2.    Lack of face-to-face time in virtual learning
3.    Distance learning does not offer immediate feedback.
4.    Distance learning must be accredited.
5.    Distance learning does not give students the opportunity to work on oral communication skills
6.    Distance learning does not always offer all the necessary courses online.
7.    Distance learning requires you to have constant, reliable access to technology.

Cost

Depend entirely on the choice of the course, university and the country. Cost of living in certain cities like New York, Paris and Tokyo is extremely high. Therefore it is quite evident that it will be expensive to study but joining distance learning will save money.

Job Prospects

With the economic uncertainties, combined with rising unemployment, it’s important to think how you can stand out in a cut throat job market. Taking up a new vocational course by distance learning will allow you to display self-motivation and attain new skills with negligible impact on your existing lifestyle, which will prove advantageous in the search for your next professional move.
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Friday, January 03, 2020

Mani shankar Iyer Needs treatment for senile dementia

Mani shankar Aiyar Needs treatment for senile dementia 

He almost single handedly destroyed whatever goodwill Indian National congress had  in the  minds of the  Indian public by making stupid comments.
great example is 

"After sparking a political firestorm when he called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "neech aadmi", a casteist slur meaning "sub-human" or "lowly person". Subsequently, he was suspended from the party's primary membership.

"Now he wants to compare agitation against CAA to the Navnirman Movement of  Gujarat
wants to know why a young Modi took part in  the  Navnirman Movement where  there  was violence and  damage  of property as if  Narendra modi personally destroyed  public property  then  and  now  as a PM  he has  no right  to  condemn violence and damage to public property 

"The Gujarat example set Bihar on fire — literally. “The ABVP (with which the reader will recall Modi was “associated”) formed the hard core of JP’s student revolutionaries” (Karnad). Their excesses may today be laid at Modi’s door. Karnad says: “… students torched government buildings, a public warehouse and two newspaper offices” — while Modi, the upcoming pracharak, took maun vrat. Yet, he has the gall as PM to tweet on December 16, 2019, that “never has damage to public property and disturbance of normal life been a part of our ethos”. “Never”? Then was the “arson and loot” of the Navnirman Movement and the “anarchy”, now deplored, which it engendered then, an aberration from our “ethos”? Or is sauce for the goose not sauce for the gander?"

Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar's comments asking for removal of PM
Narendra Modi irks Sonia Gandhi

 
Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar’s comments asking for removal of PM Narendra Modi irks Sonia Gandhi

Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar’s comments asking for removal of PM Narendra Modi irks Sonia Gandhi

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Thursday, January 02, 2020

Bonanza for Native Americans from Pharma company. Reality comes to bite the butt of US patent system

First it was casinos 
Now looks like it is  the  Big pharma com0panies  who want to essentially  buy the  Sovereign protection of the tribe to stop generic competitors .

 There should be no tears shed for  this crooked act on the part of both parties.

 from  NY TIMES
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/us/politics/allergan-eye-drops-indian-tribe.html

Indian(Native American) Tribe Joins Big Pharma at the Supreme Court, Defending a Lucrative Deal
The Trump administration, siding with the generic drug companies, said the evident purpose of Allergan's deal with the tribe ;was to allow Allergan to retain and enforce its patents.The Trump administration, siding with the generic drug companies, said the evident purpose of Allergan’s deal with the tribe “was to allow Allergan to retain and enforce its patents.”Credit...Brian Snyder/Reuters

By Robert Pear

    Jan. 26, 2019

WASHINGTON — When a pharmaceutical company sold its patent rights for a blockbuster drug to an Indian tribe 16 months ago, stymied competitors and consumer groups condemned the move as a flagrant abuse of the patent system.

This month, the company, Allergan, doubled down, asking the Supreme Court to rule that the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe can use its sovereign immunity to fend off challenges by makers of low-cost generic copies of the best-selling prescription eyedrops, Restasis.

Congress is gearing up for what promises to be a yearlong investigation of drug prices, with House and Senate committees planning to hold hearings on Tuesday. The deal between Allergan and the Saint Regis Mohawks promises to be front and center when lawmakers in both parties examine the use of patents to delay competition and keep prices high.

Restasis, a treatment of chronic dry eye disease, had sales of nearly $1.5 billion in 2017 — Allergan’s best seller after Botox.

In September 2017, Allergan transferred patents for the eye drug to the tribe in upstate New York near the Canadian border. Allergan paid the tribe $13.75 million up front and agreed to pay up to $15 million a year in royalties as long as the patents remained valid. At the same time, the tribe gave Allergan “the sole and exclusive right” to manufacture and market the drug in the United States for uses approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The company says it is trying to protect its “intellectual property.” The tribe says it needs the money to provide health, education, welfare, housing and other services for its members.

But Michael A. Carrier, a law professor at Rutgers University and an expert on pharmaceutical patents, said, “This has nothing to do with the purpose of tribal immunity and everything to do with evading the patent system.”

“Drug companies should not be able to use this shell game of transferring patents to Native American tribes just so they can escape review at the patent office,” Mr. Carrier said.

Generic drug companies, eager to sell low-cost copies of Restasis, have challenged the validity of the patents.
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And so far, the tribe has struck out in its efforts to use sovereign immunity as a shield for the patents.

Judge William C. Bryson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said he had “serious concerns about the legitimacy of the tactic that Allergan and the tribe have employed.”

“The essence of the matter is this,” he said, “Allergan purports to have sold the patents to the tribe, but in reality” it is trying to “rent the tribe’s sovereign immunity” to protect the patents and forestall competition. He found that four of the Restasis patents were invalid.

Restasis sells in pharmacies for an average cash price of about $657 for a month’s supply, according to the drug price website GoodRx.

The Trump administration, siding with the generic drug companies, said the evident purpose of Allergan’s deal with the tribe “was to allow Allergan to retain and enforce its patents.”

Allergan is still the “effective owner” of the patents, “for which the tribe paid nothing,” the Justice Department said. “In no real-world sense do these patents belong to the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe.”

Allergan and the tribe are now asking the Supreme Court to rule that the tribe can assert sovereign immunity in proceedings at the Patent and Trademark Office, and the move has attracted attention in Congress.

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, said he had drafted a bill to prevent Indian tribes from using sovereign immunity to block the review of patents by federal courts and the patent office.

“By transferring the patents to a tribe that had no part in the development of the drug, Allergan attempted to purchase sovereign immunity to rip off consumers,” Mr. Cotton said. “Allergan’s transfer of the Restasis patents to the Mohawk tribe was a sham.”

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has described Allergan’s deal as a “cynical ploy to shield its patents on a lucrative drug from review at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.”

In 2011, Congress created a special procedure under which an independent arm of the patent office — the Patent Trial and Appeal Board — can cancel patents if it finds that they were granted in error. Brand-name drug companies say these proceedings are often stacked against them and their patents.

Allergan is not the only company facing criticism on Capitol Hill.

In a Twitter post this past week, Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, singled out AbbVie: “They filed 247 patents for Humira, a single drug for arthritis. They received over 132 patents for that drug and are blocking competition for 39 years. They have increased prices 144% since 2012. This is a racket!”

Jillian Griffin, a spokeswoman for AbbVie, declined to comment about Mr. Khanna’s criticism. Global sales of Humira totaled $19.9 billion last year, the company reported on Friday.

A Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the chairwoman of the Special Committee on Aging, said some drug makers were trying to stave off competitors by surrounding their products with a web of overlapping patents — a “patent thicket.”

Consumer advocates, insurers and generic drug makers joined together this month in a new group, the Coalition Against Patent Abuse, to expose the ways in which brand-name drug companies try to extend their government-granted monopolies.

Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey and the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, endorsed the effort, saying, “Brand-name companies take actions that make it difficult for generics to enter the market.”

The tribe defended its novel arrangement with Allergan. While the tribe has a casino on its reservation, it said it could not depend solely on casino revenues to address the community’s “chronically unmet needs.”

The tribe tried to block review of the Restasis patents by citing its sovereign immunity, but the patent appeal board rejected this argument, as did the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The Supreme Court appears to be its last chance, at least for now.





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Wednesday, January 01, 2020

CARE LIST of Journals

   One can go here and search for the list of journals but once again the user interfaces are not very user-friendly unless you know the name of the journal is difficult to have a full list
you can copy paste the following URL and change the last alphabet that way you can search for a number of journals without even knowing about exact title of the journal.

https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/Apps1/User/WebA/AlphabetwiseList?alphabet=A


https://ugccare.unipune.ac.in/Apps1/User/WebA/AlphabetwiseList?alphabet=Z


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