Twenty-first Century India: It is not the job of the US to stop Pakistani terrorism against India

An excellent article from the blog Twenty-first Century India: It is not the job of the US to stop Pakistani terrorism against India.

Unprincipled politicians in India are counting on the short memory of Indians concerning terrorist attacks in India.

GoI blocks blogs hosted by blogspot.com

I've been away from blogging here, so I didn't get to cover the Bombay train blasts. Mostly, we've been preoccupied with my father-in-law's health problems.

The Indian government's lame response was to block access to blogging domains that terrorists might access such as blogspot.com.

UPDATE According to Sandhya Jain, the GoI banned certain Hindu websites and blogsites "as the first concrete governmental action in the face of such a murderous attack on civil society":

In all, the government has blocked about 18 websites to supposedly check the spread of terror and hate messages on the Internet in the wake of Mumbai’s serial blasts. It is being claimed that the websites could be used by terror groups to communicate and spread provocative messages. The government did not announce the ban officially, and it was the ISP providers who confirmed receiving the site-blocking order. The premier blog site, Blogspot.com (http://blogspot.com/)) has been blockaded and this sent the entire blogging community into acute disarray, as technical reasons have forced a blanket ban on all blogs, since specific pages on the blogspot.com cannot be blocked; only the site can be jammed [italics mine].

Sandhya Jain then recommends actions that users can take to get around GoI jamming of Blogger:

Since the move is reminiscent of the Emergency—the anniversary of which passed barely three weeks ago—anxious bloggers have urgently sought (and found) solutions to the crackdown on freedom of speech. One is to visit www.guardster.com and use the free proxy at the bottom of the page; this will ensure that the Blog sites work without a hitch. Additional proxy sites can be found on this site and there is also www.econsultant.com/proxylist/index.html. One enterprising citizen has suggested using the anti-censoring site of our friendly neighbour, Pakistan. It seems that all blogspot blogs can be accessed at http://pkblogs.com a site created by Pakistani bloggers to bypass blockades by the Islamabad regime. Now that is a confidence building measure!

Found through the Pseudo-secularism blog. Please share this information with anyone affected by this blockade.

wcco.com - Repaired After Vandalism, Hindu Temple Debuts

Good news.

Three months ago, vandals entered the new temple for the Hindu Society of Minnesota and destroyed parts of the walls and icons that were shipped from overseas. The temple is now ready for worship...

For more, read wcco.com - Repaired After Vandalism, Hindu Temple Debuts (found through Hindu Press International).

This blog had reported on the vandalism in our April 11, 2006 posting.


Still from video about opening of the temple of the Hindu Society of Minnesota

Also check out the video about the opening of the temple from the WCCO website.

Categories: Hindu, Temples

Arise Arjuna: Patna Rice

I discovered the blog Arise Arjuna by accident, through checking web stats ... apparently, someone was using the "next blog" button in Blogger to discover random blogs, and Arise Arjuna referred the user to my blog.

The author describes himself as a " Management professional with love for technology and contributing my bit for changing the world for better." He's involved with an interesting project to brand "Patna Rice" as a Geographic Indication, like Darjeeling tea or "100% Colombian Coffee."

He writes:

Also got engaged in a project Patna Rice to establish Patna Rice as a GI and gain benefits for farmers and others associated with it. Of course a better branding for my hometown and also a Pilot for future projects are main drivers as well. The project also was a great learning experience in terms of a Global Collaborative team with Opensource/Free technologies and leveraging expertise from people in diverse arena and locations. Has been a fantastic first half of year and hope to continue in the same vein. Gave a chance to explore building a website in collaboration with group members who provided content, graphics and above all ideas these have also had a chance to continue my reading momentum.

More about this project can be found in his article Patna Rice as a Geographic Indicator. Among the goals of this project is to give people pride of place.

We wish Atul and his colleagues the best of success in this endeavor!

2005 Hindu Human Rights Report - Hindu American Foundation [HAF]

Today the Hindu American Foundation held a press conference on Capitol Hill on the release of its 2005 Hindu Human Rights Report covering Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Fiji, Pakistan, and Jammu and Kashmir.

In the years that I've maintained the Sanatana Dharma web site (www.geocities.com/sanatana_dharma2002), I've seen many efforts at Hindu activism flounder. The Hindu American Foundation is certainly the best-organized effort I've seen. For that reason, I was privileged to be part of their 2005 Government Outreach and Leadership Conference.