PRAY THAT:
God will protect Christians in India from attacks by fanatics, will help new believers in Rajasthan, Orissa, etc, come to Jesus’ name baptism, will help churches in India/Nepal/Bhutan grow in numbers and Spirit.
PRAISE THAT: Over 200 received Holy Spirit in NE India’s general conference, over 20 in S India’s, 10 in the Head & Heart Ministers’ Meeting in Pokhara, and 6 in the Head & Heart Ministers’ Meeting in Hyderabad.
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign was hurt by its ‘sleazy nature’ says Karen Johnson of Aurora, Colorado, and Helen Javennes of Kristiansand, Norway, says, ‘Clintons would do anything and say anything to win the White House. They’ve lost their sense of value and are not really concerned about serving people or helping the less fortunate’ (both on p12, ‘Letters’, Newsweek 2008/5/12.
Clinton didn’t give up until Obama had the delegates to clinch. And Obama’s candidacy is now racial—90% of blacks in recent contests vote for him, so he does well where blacks are a large portion of the Democratic Party, but that won’t help him as much in the general election because blacks vote for the Democratic Party anyway—having them on board doesn’t represent an increase unless they vote in larger numbers than before.
Indian Fareed Zakaria wrote in ‘The Rise of the Rest’ (Newsweek, 2008/5/12, p16-23), ‘The world’s tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is in Bollywood….largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao….most recent rankings, only two of the world’s ten richest people are American….In 2006 and 2007, 124 countries grew their economies at over 4 percent a year. That includes more than 30 countries in Africa. Over the last two decades, lands outside the industrialized West have been growing at rates that were once unthinkable….overall trend has been unambiguously upward….25 companies most likely to be the world’s nex great multinationals….four companies each from Brazl, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan, three from India, two from China and one each from Argentina, Chle, Malaysia and South Africa.’ True, but then he misrepresents the past by saying America was the most powerful nation in the world from the late 1800s. Wrong. America came to dominance on the ashes of World War II, was quickly caught up with by the Soviet Union, regained ascendancy in the late 1980s due to the Ronald Reagan military buildup, and is still today called the world’s only hyperpower, although the Bush administration has helped weaken America by making it impossible for America to respond to military challenges other than in Iraq and Afghanistan—for instance, the carnage in Sudan and Congo continues because we can’t stop it.
He says Muslim nations during the last five years have stopped favoring violence. Why won’t he notice that this is the same time America has been making violence not pay in Iraq and Afghanistan?
He says ‘the share of people living on $1 a day has plummeted from 40 percent in 1981 to 18 percent in 2004 and is estimated to drop to 12 percent by 2015. Of course. That’s 34 years. He doesn’t point out, though, that $1 doesn’t buy what it did a third of a century ago. A better comparison would have been to use terms adjusted for inflation. And this guy wanted to advise presidents? He calls the United States the ‘biggest of the bunch’ of small nations that have dominated the industrial world, then says ‘the real giants—China, India, Brazil…’ When did Brazil become a nation of larger population than the USA? When did it rank with India and China? India has more people than South America and Europe combined. Brazil might have 160 million—India has one state with that many people.
He’s got some good points: ‘Russians have long chafed over the manner in which Western countries remember World War II. The American narrative is one in which the United States and Britain heroically defeat the forces of fascism. The Normandy landings are the climactic high point of the war—the beginning of the end. The Russians point out, however, that in fact the entire Western front was a sideshow. Three quarters of all German forces were engaged on the Eastern front fighting Russian troops, and Germany suffered 70 percent of its casualities there. The Eastern front involved more land combat than all other theatres of World War II put together.’
He seems to feel that national media outlets newly provide alternatives to CNN and BBC, and uses NDTV as an example, but India had Doordarshan (the government media) giving alternative views decades ago, so that’s no argument for American non-dominance. As Zakaria admits, ‘The United States is currently ranked as the globe’s most competitive economy by the World Economic Forum. It remains dominant in many industries of the future like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and dozens of smaller high-tech fields. Its universities are the finest in the world, making up 8 of the top ten and 37 of the top 50, according to a prominent ranking produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. A few years ago the National Science Foundation put out a scary and much-discussed statistic. In 2004, the group said, 950,000 engineers graduated from China and India, while only 70,000 graduated from the United States. But those numbers are wildly off the mark. If you exclude the car mechanics and repairmen—who are all counted as engineers in Chinese and Indian statistics—the numbers look quite different. Per capita, it turns out, the United States trains more engineers than either of the Asian giants. But America’s hidden secret is that most of these engineers are immigrants. Foreign students and immigrants account for almost 50 percent of all science researchers in the country. In 2006 they received 40 percent of all PhDs. By 2010, 75 percent of all science PhDs’ in America ‘wll be awarded to foreign students. When these graduates settle in the country, they create economic opportunity. Half of all Silicon Valley start-ups have one founder who is an immigrant or first generation American….If these people are allowed and encouraged to stay, then innovation will happen here. If they leave, they’ll take it with them. More broadly, this is America’s great—and potentially insurmountable—strength. It remains the most open, flexible society in the world, able to absorb other people, cultures, ideas, goods and services. The country thrives on the hunger and energy of poor immigrants.’ He’s right to ask if the US government is in step with no longer having everyone coming to it. London is ‘now the world’s leading financial center—less because of things that the United States did badly than those London did well….the US health care system, which has become a huge liability for American companies. US carmakers now employ more people in Ontario, Canada, than Michigan because in Canada their health care costs are lower. Twenty years ago, the United States had the lowest corporate taxes n the world. Today they are the second-highest’ because other nations’ came down. If America wants to lead the system, it must be part of the system. ‘It is the global rule-maker but doesn’t always play by the rules. And forget about standards created by others. Only three countries in the worlddon’t use the metric system—Liberia, Myanmar and the United States.’
Japan’s economy has declined from 2nd (15 years ago) to 18th in per capita GDP, yet they restrict foreign direct investment. An attitude of ‘we are very good; we don’t need you at all. If you want to come to Japan, work on our terms…
just sort of encourages foreign investors to look elsewhere, where investment rules are more transparent,’ says EU trade delegation head to Japan, Peter van den Heuvel. Japanese governments say they must grow robustly, then plan for 5%, which is unlikely, but even if achieved, is low for East Asia. Japanese companies fear ‘a new investor wll come and force them to change doing business the way they have for years. They have the same level of resistance to domestic agents of change’, says Tony Miller of investment fund Ramius Capital. If Japan doesn’t watch it, the world will pass it by.
First China called the Dalai Lama a ‘devil’ with a human face and beastly heart. Nice of them. Now they want to talk to him. Strange. No wonder Tibet’s government in exile, in Dharamsala, doubts the clean and tender hearts of the Chinese government. While criticism threatens to spoil their Olympic event, they’ll offer talks. When demonstrations die down, Chinese officials will stall. And they insist the Dalai Lama be ‘sincere’? Tibetans demand no more clampdowns in Tibet, withdrawal of security forces from lamasaries, no more ‘patriotic education’ demanding monks to denounce the Dalai Lama, release of political detainees, fair trials for those accused of rioting. Good luck; they’ll need it. China’s state press still slams the Dalai Lama, soldiers still occupy lamasaries, foreign journalists and tourists can’t come, and secret trials sentenced people to terms from three years to life for rioting.
The Dalai Lama, meanwhile, says Taiwan’s future must be decided by its own people, that Tibetan culture and environment be protected. China thinks he still wants to redraw Tibet’s borders to include all ethnic Tibetan areas near it—a quarter of China’s land.
Comments by liberal Sean Wilentz and conservative George Will in ‘Left Starts to Rethink Reagan’, Newsweek 2008/5/12, p28-30:
Wile: ‘intellectuals, generally being liberals, didn’t think much of Ronald Reagan at the time…now they can no longer ignore him. His impact on the world and country, whether you like it or not, was so important that to ignore him is to ignore an entirety of American politics….overcome their own passions, their own dislikes. Some people had to grow up. Some people, it was a matter of all their ideas ripening.’
Will: ‘intellectual is not a synonym for liberal….emerged, particularly in the 1970s, a conservative intellectual movement….
Murray Kempton did for Dwight Eisenhower….take a step back and say, “Wait a minute, this man, who did after all run the most complicated war alliance in history, who had dealt with De Gaulle, Churchill, Roosevelt and all the rest, was not a child. He was a subtle, devious, guileful man” ….Reagan’s famous jokes were, I believe, to keep people at a distance…an armor of affability….
Reagan didn’t fit the mold…what mold, and who made it?
Wile: Reagan led ‘with the same spirit and optimism and forward-looking hope that liberals had projected, but in the name of policies that were frankly conservative.’
Will: ‘you cannot govern this country if you’re a pessimist….
Reagan simply understood when people said…Eisenhower’s smile was his philosophy….said that when the American people are happy, good things happen: they invest, they save, they have children. So he thought that getting America back to cheerfulness was an intensely practical program.
Wile: ‘two things that, if you stood looking to the future in 1980, would have been amazing. One is, we don’t have top marginal income tax at 70 percent. We are never, in our lifetimes, going to see that again. Secondly, the Soviet Union does not exist.’
Will: ‘a really effective leader undercuts his or her reputation by their various successes of leadership….Margaret Thatcher came into power when there was a question: Westminister…or…Transport House, the headquarters of the labor movement in Britain. She broke the power of the unions….so successful that people wonder now, what was the big deal? What did she do?
Wile: ‘Reagan was much more serious than people have given him credit for. He understood that governing required compromise….happy to go out and make a speech that made hm sound like he was the greatest doctrinaire….he’d go to the back room and get done what he could get done.’
Will: ‘You should have ideas, and they should be clear, but most of all they should be few—three at the most. Rearm the country, cut the weight of government and win the cold war. After that we’ll see.’
Wile: ‘Ronald Reagan made some very grave errors whle in office….the Iran-contra affair the S&L crisis….Deregulation… some things went right but a lot went wrong.’
Will: ‘One of the worst things that ever happened to American education but one of the best things that happened to American conservatism was busing of schoolchildren for racial balance. This just crystallized the sense of a lot of working-class Americans policies were imposed on them by people who had no intention of ever being exposed to them themselves. All these people sending their children to private schools were telling others which public school their kid should go to.’
Wile: ‘ways in which the liberal Democrats interpreted the resistance to their policies, which was always to blame the people who were resisting for being narrow-minded or racist, not up to their own enlightened idea of the way Americans ought to be….a contempt…an elitism that was not a part of the Democratic Party of Harry Truman…came into play in the aftermath of the black-power movement and Vietnam….you don’t go about winning people’s votes by saying, “You’re a small-minded racist”’
Will: ‘’68 was one kind of fracturing of the Democratic Party, but in a way, less important than the fracturing of ’72, be-cause that set ythe precedent for the Obama-Clinton divide between the well-educated and affluent liberals and the others….conscious, tough, skillful disenfranchising of organized labor and of the big city machines, by George McGovern. McGovern was thought of as a soft prairie farmer. He was one tough cookie, a man who took a nonexistent Democratic Party in South Dakota and produced a senator—that was himself—not many years later. What happened in ’72—the formalized, aggressive takeover of the Democratic Party by one faction at the expense of another—is what we’re seeing playing out right now….in ’76 Reagan makes a strong run and in ’80 he makes it into the White House over the remains of the badly divided Democratic Party.’
In what is now India, the state of Andhra Pradesh, in what in 1143 was called Warangal territory, Kakatiya dynasty kings reigned. A shepherd suggested to Raja Pratap Rudra Dev a fort on a certain hill. The raja saw the wisdom and built a bulwark, calling it Golconda (Golla meaning ‘shepherd’, konda meaning ‘hill’). In a pact of 1363, Raja Krishna Dev handed over the fort to Mohammed Shah of the Bahmani dynasty, which reigned at Golconda 1363-1518. In the late 1480s, the kingdom grew unstable and four of its five governors became independent, establishing their own dynasties:
Fatheulla-Imadul Mulk in Berar, Imad Shahi dynasty, 1490-1527; Ahmed Nizamul in Ahmednagar, Nizam Shahi, 1490-1663; Yousuf Adil Shah in Bijapur, Adil Shahi, 1490-1686; Khasim Bureed in Bidar, Bureed Shahi, 1492-1609.
A man born in Persia n 1452 came to India during the reign of Mohammed Shah Bahmani to deal in horses, and was appointed governor of Telengana in 1485. The king died, and this governor became Qutub ul-Malk and as Sultan Quli founded his own Qutub Shahi dynasty at Golconda. These kings of that dynasty reigned there:
Sultan Quli Qutub Shah 1518-1543
Jamshid Quli Qutub Shah 1543-1550
Ibrahim Quli Qutub Shah 1550-1580
Mohd Quli Qutub Shah 1580-1611
Sultan Mohd Qutub Shah 1611-1626
Sultan Abdulla Qutub Shah 1626-1672
Abul Hasan Tana Shah 1672-1687
The first three kings constructed the stone fort in 62 years they reigned. In 1587, the fourth king laid out city plans for Bhag Nagar, named for his favorite concubine Bhagmati, and from this city they ruled.
In 1656, Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb attacked and defeated Golconda, Abdulla sued for peace, and in the treaty Abdulla’s daughter married Aurangzeb’s son, Mohammed Sultan. Thirty-one years later, Aurangzeb attacked again, beseiged the fort for eight months, and conquered when a Golconda commander opened at night a fort gate. Aurangzeb had Abul Hasan Tana Shah arrested, taken to Dalatabad Fort, and jailed at Chini Mahal there for his life’s last fourteen years. Thus ended the Qutub Shahi dynasty. The Moguls appointed governors over Bhagmati, now called Hyderabad, first Rustum Dil Khan for 23 years, who, after Aurangzeb died, declared himself ruler of the Deccan, and so was jailed and killed by Prince Kam Baksh, who in turn died when Bahadur Shah Alam invaded and attacked. Dilawar Khan and Abdul Mansur Khan served as governors before, during the reign of Emperor Furrukh Sair, Nizamul Mulk Asif Jah was appointed, and served 1725-1737. When Mohammed Shah’s Mogul administration declined, Asif Jah gained independence and established a dynasty, succeeded by seven kings, the last being Nawab Meer Osman Ali Khan, ruler of Hyderabad when India gained independence in 1947 and this dynasty ended.
The Nizams of Hyderabad spent wealth lavishly and hoarded foolishly—rats ate through lakhs of rupees in the palace basement. Their prime minister built and furnished a mansion lavishly that is now the city’s main museum.
The Golconda fort demonstrates clever use of natural features (building on boulders) and great concern for water resources (many water tanks, since the fort isn’t by a river).
Loud noises are bad for you, so London’s Royal Opera House set a limit at 85 decibels and spent $100,000 on noise-reducing screens and high-tech earplugs to protect staff, and set a ‘noise schedule’ to make sure musicians don’t over a day average more than 85d. Since ‘Madame Butterfly’ can hit 135d, the opera house feels someone cramped their style. Tough.
A pneumatic drill or chain saw can reach 120d, as can a bagpipe band playing with at full volume, Glasgow’s International Piping Festival director, Roddy MacLeod, says this law is unworkable. Bagpipes are Highland instruments, anyway, so Glasgow’s International Piping Festival can bury its pipe dream and everyone can go to Inverness for this.
What goes up must come down. America’s housing market in the ‘bubble’ states of Florida, Nevada, California and western Arizona is collapsing. People have apparently noticed that the best part of America in which to live is West Texas, New Mexico, West Oklahoma, Colorado (except the Denver area), Utah, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho and Washington. If they’d added Nebraska and Oregon, I could have told them the same thing.
Books and magazines have inspired ministers for centuries. Paul Hasser of Centre for Liturgy of St. Louis University, Missouri, USA, says he as a boy saw priests read Sunday sermons directly from books.
How times change! Now the Internet, also, with sermons posted online provides inspiration and sometimes temptation to copy without attributing the original author, but the ethics of the people now demand honesty in stating which thoughts are one’s own and which are not. E. Glenn Wagner (pastor of evangelical Calvary Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA) and Robert Hamm (pastor of United Church of Christ in Keene, New Hampshire, USA) both admitted plagiarizing whole sermons, and both resigned.
Now, in Poland, a priest caught plagiarizing can face stiff fines or even three years in prison, so Wieslaw Przyczyna and other editors affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church published To Plagiarize or Not to Plagiarize to show priests how to use other sermons while not quoting verbatim without crediting sources. He says, ‘You need to give a clear signal: the text is not mine.’
PROTECTING CREATIVITY v OPPORTUNITY. Thomas Jefferson, inventor and America’s first commissioner of patents, said government should protect inventions ‘worth to the public and embarrassment of an exclusive patent.’ Business method patents, such as Priceline’s for selling airline tickets by auction, were first recognized in 1998.
LIBEL and SLANDER. Is or is not a critical statement, if accurate, still libel or slander? English libel law says a plaintiff must only prove the statement defamatory; the defendant must justify it, usually as being true or fair. In America in 1733, a court case acquinted a defendant on grounds that his statement was true. British law has reached lengths such that a Ukrainian tycoon sued in London an American-owned Ukrainian paper that had only 100 British subscribers. If anyone wonders how Britain came to this pretty pass, one need only peruse the British tabloids.
FREEDOM. America emphasizes freedom as an ideal more than any other nation. ‘Liberty or death.’ ‘Live free or die.’ ‘Land of the free.’ ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty! I’m free at last.’ Woodrow Wilson and George Bush both said they had a mission to spread freedom.
Freedom House, founded in 1941 by Americans worried about fascism, now watches freedom worldwide, and points out that in America:
a. ‘the number of documents classified as secret has jumped from 8.7m in 2001 to 14.2m in 2005, a 60% increase’;
b. ‘decades-old information has been reclassified. Researchers report that it is much more difficult and time-consuming to obtain information under the Freedom of Information Act’;
c. ‘Government whistleblowers have repeatedly been punished or fired—even when they have been trying to expose threats to national security that their bosses preferred to overlook’ and sites examples of Richard Levernier, border agents and airport baggage-handlers and security people, and that the Office of Special Counsel, ‘established to enforce laws designed to protect the rights of such people, is widely regarded as “inept and even hostile to whistle-blowers”.’
d. America’s incarceration rate was 1.39/1000 people in 1980, 7.5/1000 by 2006. 5.6m Americans (1/37 of the adults) has been in jail. More prisons are built, yet prisons operate at 131% of capacity. America also bans felons, and sometimes ex-felons, from voting, such that at any time 2% of America’s adults can’t vote due to past criminal convictions.
e. And American can get crazy about this: ‘Christopher Ratte, professor of archaeology, recently tried to buy his seven-year old son a bottle of lemonade at a baseball game. He was handed a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, an alcoholic drink, by mistake. Officials noticed the boy sipping the drink and immediately whisked him off to hospital. He was fine. But the family was condemned to legal hell: the police at first put the seven-year-old into a foster home and a judge ruled that he could go home only if his father moved out. It took several days of legal wrangling to reunite the family’ (Economist 2008 May 10, p47).
Renault-Nissan will introduce all-electric cars and a charging-points set-up in Israel and Denmark by 2011. They plan to launcha battery-powered car in America in 2010, and in every large car market by 2012. Everything is ready now except the batteries. Electric car batteries had only a 50-mile range in the early 1990s, now can go 200 miles, and fast-charge systems will allow 70% top-up in the time it takes to fill a tank with petrol.
In America, some Republican senators want to ease legal requirements to increase amount of ethanol used in fuel. The British government will selectively support biofuels.
In Harlem, New York, not one primary school has more than 55% of hits students reading at grade level. 75% of 14-year-olds cannot read at grade level. Therefore, Harlem parents are leaving the system. Where to go?
Harlem started charter schools within the government school system, and now has the most per mile of any place in America. At one of these, called Harlem Success Academic Charter School, tests taken at the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year showed only 11% of six-year-olds at their grade level in mathematics. By the end of the year, 86% were. How? Among other causes:
a. The school groups student by ability rather than by age;
b. Parents have to read six books a week to their children.
Result: 5000 people attended Harlem Success’ lottery to fill attendance slots, and 3,600 applied for 600 available places. 900 applied for 11 open slots in the second grade.
Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City’s schools, says he thinks the system is getting better, but this charter-school appeal transforms vision to ‘charterize’ the city’s whole school system of 1.1 million children.
Harlem Success will open three new schools this year. About 40% of all kindergarten children in Harlem applied for admission at Harlem Success.
Meanwhile, of course, some politicians are against charter schools, try to stop them, limit them, refuse to let them share buildings with public schools, demand that they unionize (which harms them as it does the public schools).
Chicago had some of the worst schools in America. Mayor Richard Daley announced Renaissance 2010 (‘Ren 10’) to bring 100 new schools to Chicago’s worst areas. Chicago’s business leaders formed the Renaissance Schools Fund, and recently conferred to discuss a ‘new market of public education’ to welcome ‘education entrepreneurs’ tostart schools, run them most as they choose, usually with longer days and sometimes with their own salary structure, and sets standards they must meet. Schools receive money on a per-pupil basis. Chicago is trying to bring Ren Ten’s flexibility to two new models: ‘performance’ schools, where teachers are unionized; ‘contract’ schools, which may hire non-union teachers but must still abide by some district rules. Chicago’s Office of New Schools says a good school needs reviews by local parents, educators and national experts, strong leaders, neighborhood outreach and a rigorous curriculum based on a clear mission. For instance, Urban Prep Charter Academy is designed to help local boys get to college. Longer school days give teachers more time to help students catch up in their ‘job’ of being a pupil. RSF chooses schools most likely to succeed, gives them start-up funds over 30 months, looks for sound management and uses data to aid performance. They test students every six weeks. Every five years, they assess each new school to decide whether to renew their contract or not. So far, 55 schools have opened: 32 charters, 19 performance schools and four contract schools. As they get close to their goal of 100, the state Senate might raise the cap, but of course the teacher unions might try to block it, claiming it creates a two-tiered system and mocks its attempts to ‘apply business models to students.’ Meanwhile, demand increases and, as gang violence increases in regular schools, many more parents want their kids at the charters.
At Urban Prep Charter Academy, 300 boys, 80% of them poor, each wearing a blazer and red tie, stand in straight lines in the gym, shout, ‘We believe. We are the young men of Urban Prep. We are college-bound.’ In 2006, 4% of the student began the school year reading at grade level; in 2007, 11%. In 2006, 87% were from poverty; in 2007, 83%. Groups of parents now visit local neighborhoods to tell parents about new schools and how to send their kids there. Now, parents have a choice.
Some black students who study hard get accused of ‘acting white’. Teachers know this. Roland Fryer asked many public school kids to name their friends. He counted it only if both parties named each other. For white pupils, the higher their grades, the more popular; for blacks, the reverse: ‘studiousness was stigmatized among black schoolchildren’. He gave cash—a nine-year-old kid completing an exam gets $5, for doing well, he gets more—can earn $250 this way. He also gave free mobile phones, which don’t work during school hours., and students can recharge them wthh call minutes only by studying (phone companies helped).
Universities recruit black scholars, admitting them with lower test scores than required for whites or Asians, but the most blatant racial preferences were outlawed in 2003, and more states are barring them altogether. Academic preferences hinder students who undeservingly get them because they get admitted to institutions where they can’t cope. ‘Many who drop out of top-tier colleges might have thrived at slightly less competitive ones….the net effect of pro-black preferences was actually to reduce the number of blacks who passed the bar exam. That is, racial preferences for black law students result in fewer black lawyers’ and ‘lowering the bar for blacks also reduces their incentive to excel at school’ (Economist, 2008 May 10, p32). This same phenomenon would be true of any race, tribe or caste.
How to save wall paintings? First, excavate land and, if you find remains to preserve, build housing development areas around them so homeowners have vested interest in their property values rising due to unique value added to the neighborhoods: ‘in a fast-growing area where many buyers lack roots, a bit of local history may help sales’ (Economist, 2008 May 10, p46).
Problem: dry areas tend to preserve remains, including images painted on or chipped into rock. However, early man needed water just as modern man does, so homes tend to occupy the same areas. Solution: allow buyers to excavate on condition that they donate what they find to a local museum—‘archaeological development’ saving the ruined remains by surrounding them with houses of living people who care to preserve them.