Regarding the Stupid White Men

Dear Mr. Gill

This is an informative, balanced and entertaining piece - really fun to read; I admit the title of book puts me off. How the election was handled, decided is a lesson for the entire world - even if the game was not played by the rules, there was enough circumspection for the consequences of a prolonged fight over exactly who won - that Gore relented.

This is typical ``FOLLOWER`` thinking. To shoot something down simply because ``society`` deems it ``racist`` (as if anything `racist` is inherently WRONG. NOT necessarily).

``The white men may have visited the most gruesome misdeeds on the human beings.``

Howinnahell did u get the courage to use the word ``MAY.`` Defend that word!

``but they don`t hold the monopoly on such things exclusively``

A sophomoric debating technique. Ur holding Moores statement to a DIFFERENT forum then he intended. He was NOT trying to say they have a monopoly.

``Who gave us the computers? White man.``

MAYBE this is because THEY had built the institutions needed to make these discoveries. HOW again were these institutions built? Through America`s wealth and research which is directly related to its foriegn dominance, slavery, genocide etc.

``Who developed the intellectual curiosity about physical sciences? White man.``

L.O.L!!

PS: I doubt anyone will touch this, but if u do, PLEASE do not make unnecessary assumptions. This doesnt mean that i think white people are ``evil`` or whatever. Im simply contesting the MISinformation written here. And MOORE IZ GOD-LIKE.

drumz #2

….oh man, are you going to have a ball with this:)...

Gill Sahib,

Thanks for the breath of fresh air; never thought I`d see a review on Moore on Chowk, but it serves me right for underestimating this pearl of a website.

Roger and Me was unbelievably funny; Moore and his cohorts have been known for dead on satire; not so endearing to those in the political class. Any thoughts on Joan Didion`s Political Fictions?

AIDS

AIDS is the most potent mystery of the 21st Century. There is no vaccine or cure. No-one knows for sure where it came from. No-one can adequately explain why it is devastating Africa and other Third World populations, but has not spread in the West.

There are many unanswered questions surrounding AIDS, and while it is known that the HIV virus definitely causes AIDS, its origin and mode of transmission still remain in dispute. While the scientific community believes HIV may have jumped species by ``a hungry African eating or having sex with a chimpanzee``, this origin scenario must seriously be questioned in light of recent discoveries. The explanation that the recent rapid spread of AIDS in Africa is by sexual transmission alone, must also be scrutinized as the disease fails to take hold in the Western World.

1. ``Depopulation should be the highest priority of US foreign policy towards the Third World``.

2. ``Reduction of the rate of population in these states is a matter of vital US national security``.

3. ``The US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less-developed countries. That fact gives the US enhanced interests in the political, economic and social stability of the supplying countries. Wherever a lessening of population can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resources, supplies and the economic interest of the United States``.

The National Security Council. NSSM 200 - ``Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security & Overseas Interests``, Washington DC, the White House, December 10, 1974. Declassified July 3, 1989.

Henry Kissinger wrote the above report in 1974, ten years before the announcement of the discovery of the HIV virus.

The scientific community state that HIV entered the human population of Africa for the first time around 1975, just months after this top-secret agenda. Tests on blood and tissue samples collected in Central Africa from 1964 - 1975 showed no evidence of HIV infection. ``Something dramatic happened in 1975``, said leading AIDS scientist Dr. Jay Levy.

At the start of the Cold War, both America and Russia eagerly pursued many avenues of biological weaponization. The Russian scientists concentrated their efforts on bacteria-based weaponry designed for use in a large-scale military war, including anthrax and plague. However, Russian spies discovered that the American program was far more advanced, and was specifically geared towards genetic engineering, cancer and viruses - a continuation of the Nazis` research. Recent disclosures by the Simon Wiesenthal Center show that the CIA gave Japanese war criminals immunity in return for medical research from the horrific experiment camp ``Unit 731``, whose victims numbered ten times those of the Nazi scientists, including American and British POW`s.

As a consequence in 1976, eight years before the discovery of the HIV virus, the Russians called for a ban on ``exotic`` arms - an expansion of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. According to Pentagon think-tank participants Alvin and Heidi Toffler in their book ``War and Anti-War``:

``The Russians warned of the hideous possibility of race-specific weapons genetically engineered to single out and decimate only the members of selected ethnic groups - the ultimate genocidal weapon for race war``.

Within the scientific community debate still rages about the origin of HIV/AIDS. Many claim it crossed from chimpanzees that carry a similar retrovirus now known as SIV. The crossover, it is claimed by the West, occurred when ``a hungry African ate a chimpanzee``. Not surprisingly Africans find this deduction to be startlingly racist and inaccurate as chimpanzee meat has been popular in the African diet since the beginning of the human race.

If a policeman were to be looking at the occurrence of AIDS as a potential crime or an unsolved mystery, he might begin by asking who gains from the consequences of the disease - i.e. the motive. Since the announcement of the discovery of the HIV virus on April 23 1984 the predicted spread of the disease in the West has not occurred. However, Africa now sees infection rates running as high as 40 percent in some regions, while many countries have a 25 percent infection rate. According to recent United Nations` AIDS in Africa reports ``The probability that you die from AIDS when you are 15 today is over fifty percent``.

If American teenagers were affected to this degree, parents would be running around in the streets screaming for help.

Head of UNAIDS Peter Piot says ``Entire generations are being taken out. We are going into societies were there are more people in their 60`s and 70`s than in their 40`s and 30`s. This is unheard of.`` Although sexual activity and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea are no greater or lesser than in other parts of the world, sexual transmission is blamed for the massively disproportionate spread of AIDS. And yet if initial infections occurred ten or more years previously, as is common with HIV/AIDS, these teens and children would have been too young to be involved in sexual behavior. Ignorance is also cited as a major factor, and yet the worst hit nations such as Zimbabwe, Botswana, and South Africa have the highest literacy rates - more than 90 percent. The only common factor amongst these age-groups is inoculation, which is widespread and implemented to most babies and children until their teens.

The population of Africa is irreversibly declining, which is causing massive economic and social instability. Agricultural production is slowing as thousands die every week, which will have a devastating effect on the continents poorest countries.

Strangely, fears of this disease negatively affecting the West do not seem to be very high. Indeed, Western governments are even working to prevent African nations from manufacturing their own protease inhibitor AIDS drugs. While these drugs are by no means a cure, they do offer sufferers an extension of life, while a cure is sought. This kind of Government level interference goes beyond concerns about trade and economics, and speaks of the deep rooted racism of the white Western World. Indeed, the icon and spiritual leader of this culture Pope John Paul II, has traveled extensively throughout Third World countries since the discovery of AIDS with the messianic fervor of a true Christian missionary. His purpose is to prevent the native people of the world from using rubber condoms, which he claims are ``evil`` as they are a form of birth control. And yet, condoms are the only known protection against AIDS.

In fact, the Roman Catholic Church is already deeply implicated in the spread of AIDS since 1975. The scientific community accepts that the initial Big Bang spread of HIV in Africa was caused by the re-use of unsterilized needles during inoculations in missionary hospitals. While sexual transmission amplified the rate of infection, it was not the major factor that caused the initial explosion of infections. The widespread re-use of ``dirty needles`` in the Congo/Zaire by Catholic missionary hospitals was vehemently opposed by American CDC scientists who urgently warned against the spread of disease. At Christmas 1976 virus specialist Dr. Peter Piot personally visited the headquarters of the Catholic ``Sisters of the Holy Heart of Maria`` in Antwerp, Belgium and warned the Mother Superior that her hospitals should either be closed or staffed by certified physicians.

This advice was clearly ignored as the Big Bang of primary HIV infections in fact did occur and continue unchecked until the discovery of the HIV virus eight years later in 1984. The first isolates of HIV were pin-pointed to have emerged simultaneously at the Belgium Catholic missionary hospital of Yambuku, Zaire, and at the Italian Catholic missionary hospital of N`zara, Sudan, which is over 700 miles away. According to CDC ``virus hunter`` Dr. Joe McCormick, HIV levels in blood taken from these locations in 1976 was at 0.7 percent (5 of 659 samples). Indeed, these virus samples are considered the prototype strain of the many subsequent mutations. By the early 1980`s HIV levels were around 4 percent, having been spread mainly by the re-use of unsterilized needles.

However, there is no explanation for today`s Big Bang-like spread of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, as a sterilized needle policy has been in place since the harsh lessons of the 80`s. In fact, prior to the end of the apartheid regime cases of AIDS in South Africa were one of the lowest on the continent, yet now it is the highest. In 1990 HIV infection was at 0.76 percent, and mainly restricted to gay, white males. Within a year of the 1994 ``end of apartheid`` elections, the rate was up to 10 percent, predominantly amongst black hetrosexuals. This rate of infection is unprecedented, surpassing even the original Big Bang of the late 70`s.

Now heading the United Nations AIDS unit, Dr. Peter Piot is unable to sufficiently explain this new and more widespread epidemic. Dr. Piot admits that sexual transmission alone does not explain this disaster. ``People just do not have that much sex. We have to admit we do not understand it completely`` said Piot, who has battled AIDS in Africa since its discovery. As ``Truth & Reconciliation`` hearings and the trial of Wouter ``Dr. Death`` Basson reveal the terrifying extent of the biological weapons program aimed at the black population, including ``freeze-dried HIV infected blood for use against enemies``, perhaps this new AIDS epidemic would be seen as a blessing by the white supremacists who controlled South Africa through their murderous military regime.

Most African countries still find themselves struggling for true independence against the white colonial powers that once controlled them overtly, and now control them covertly through the World Trade Organization (WTO), transnational corporations, and the enormous dept owed to the World Bank. The independence that was granted most African nations in 1960 completely undermined the vice-like grip of the European aristocratic powers who had controlled all of Africa`s natural resources through their various companies. Minerals, rubber, wood, crude oil, tin, copper, diamonds, gold, etc. are riches not to be given up lightly. It may be no coincidence that the former colonialists` interests are no greater than in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, precisely the countries hardest hit by the recent rapid and unusual spread of AIDS.

A more disturbing fact is that the vast mountain range covering most of South Africa is named after the Imperial and Royal Dragon Court sovereignty - the Drakensberg Mountains.

Many Africans believe that AIDS is a Western-backed conspiracy. ``It`s important we don`t just dismiss these theories as rantings in Africa, because many of the problems they point out have valid roots``, said Lisa Jacobs, spokeswoman for UNAIDS, headquartered in Geneva. Zimbabwe`s minister of Health, Timothy Stamps, who is white, said in a BBC interview last year that there was ``no doubt in my mind that South African apartheid agents had inoculated our population with diseases such as anthrax, Ebola, and even bubonic plague in the 1970`s during Zimbabwe`s liberation war``.

According to recent disclosures by Britain`s The Guardian newspaper American anthropologist Prof. James Neel, on behalf of nuclear & biological weapons designers, intentionally introduced by inoculation a virulent strain of measles into the Yanomami Indians of Venezuela in the mid-60`s. His team then monitored the spread of the disease, which killed thousands, and refused to give medical assistance to the sick and dying. Cornell University`s Professor Terry Turner believes that Neel ``was trying to test controversial eugenic theories like the Nazi scientist Josef Mengele``.

The 1960`s also saw the Knights of Malta-controlled CIA reaching its most heady heights of power within the American Government system. This was when the CIA began creating propaganda about overpopulation in developing countries, particularly Africa and its possible consequences for Western economic stability and comfort.

In the light of these facts a solution to all of the unanswered questions in the mysterious case of AIDS would become obvious to our fictional policeman.

The European power elite find themselves losing control of their most important assets. Through their Rosicrucian secret society connections, Freemasonry and the Knights of Malta, they find their strongest allies in the American CIA, a secretive body who is still largely unaccountable to the democratic American Congress.

During World War II Nazi physician Dr. Josef Mengele studied the effects of viruses and bacteria on thousands of Auschwitz imprisoned twins to analyse the relationship between disease and racial type. Indeed, being a highly regarded anthropologist, it is known that Mengele spent a period of time in Africa collecting blood and exotic viral samples. Like his mentor and collaborator Dr. Otmar Verschuer of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Mengele was obsessed with finding racial differences in human blood. As well as attempting to prove the biological basis of eugenics theories, Mengele`s Auschwitz research was done on behalf of the Nazi hierarchy to serve their bizarre occult beliefs. Pseudo-scientific studies included searching for anti-ageing properties in the blood of virgins, before and after coitus. These studies have been documented in letters to Hitler`s leading occultist and SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

Mengele`s commercial backers were not only the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics and Human Heredity, but also German pharmaceutical giant Bayer, as highlighted by a recent lawsuit against Bayer by surviving victims. Revealing the ``business as usual`` mentality of the war years, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute and Bayer Phamacuticals were owned by the J.D. Rockefeller/I.G. Farben oil/petro-chemical corporate alliance. Hence modern pharmaceutical companies are directly involved in the development of biological weaponry from its earliest stages, and have subsequently benefited from the appalling research carried out in the Death Camps. Bayer`s massive profiting from the use of its patented drug Cipro during the American anthrax attacks is a recent example of this. After escaping to South America Mengele supposedly drowned in Brazil in 1985, and his terrifying medical research has officially never been found.

According to Russia`s ex-deputy head of biological weapons Ken Alibek, now working for the US military, during the 1950`s US pharmaceutical company Merck and Co. ``was incubating lethal viruses on the lung tissue of human fetuses, while their Russian counterparts were clumsily using chicken eggs``. At the end of the war Bayer Phamaceuticals was temporarily seized by the Allies, and many Nazi scientists were recruited to work for Merck & Co. to advance America`s biological weapons capability. As a result of this recruitment, the US military and the CIA had the lead on the Russians, and ``viral cancer`` was always a major objective, as declassified documents have shown.

In 1969 the US military asked for 10 million dollars from Congress to further its cancer studies by developing:

``A new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organism. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease``.

Quoted from the Dept. of Defense Appropriations Hearings, 91st Congress, July 1, 1969, Washington DC regarding the Special Virus Cancer Program (SVCP).

The HIV virus, a mutation of the monkey leukemia virus SIV, could not be a better fulfillment of this brief. Following DNA tests, leading AIDS scientist Dr. David Ho placed the common genetic ancestor of the modern AIDS viruses somewhere around ``the 1940`s or early 50`s`` - the exact time that Mengele and his Nazi backers, then the CIA and its numerous military contractors were conducting their revolutionary genetic engineering research. The recent discovery of the Special Virus Flow Chart by AIDS investigators Dr. Len Horowitz and Dr. Boyd Graves supports the growing belief amongst the medical community that HIV is a man-made lab creation. Not surprisingly, Israeli scientists led by Dr. Alexander Kalinkovich at the International AIDS Conference 2000 in South Africa announced that their latest research shows that HIV may be race-specific to black Africans.

It is accepted that HIV/AIDS was initially spread in Africa by Roman Catholic missionary hospitals and their re-use of ``dirty needles``. These hospitals regularly get donations of medical supplies/vaccines directly from the Roman Catholic order of the Knights of Malta, via its members within the pharmaceutical industry. Since the 1970`s Knights of Malta-supported aid organizations such as AmeriCares or Knightsbridge International have provided medical supplies to needy countries including South Africa, Haiti, and Cambodia - countries which are now hardest hit by HIV/AIDS.

When historians/journalists Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln were investigating their book ``The Messianic Legacy`` about the political links between secret societies, the Vatican and intelligence agencies, they based much of their study upon the Catholic secret society ``The Priory of Sion``. From 1963 to 1981 the Grand Master of Sion was a Catholic abbot, Francois Ducand-Bourget, who prior to this appointment was the Magistral Chaplain of the Knights of Malta. Michael Baigent`s contact within Sion was its new Grand Master Pierre Plantard de St. Clair, of the Sinclair ``Grail family`` of Roslin, Edinburgh, which coincidentally is the global center of genetic engineering. Starting in 1982 Plantard indicated that 1984 was to be a critical year in the plans of Sion. In 1984 he said ``everything was in place, nothing could stop it now, the time had come to move on, and nothing could now stop it``. When asked was the present Pope a potential ally or adversary in whatever schemes were afoot, Plantard replied ``a rapprochement had been reached with the Vatican. Rome would cooperate. Certain concessions had been necessary in return, but they were essentially nominal``.

Nothing unusual occurred in 1984, apart from in April when the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS was announced to the world.

Also at this time Plantard de St. Clair suddenly announced his resignation from Sion, not only as its Grand Master but from the order itself, after 41 years a member. He did so because he could not approve ``certain maneuvers`` performed by his ``English and American brethren``. The Priory of Sion is a secret order of the European Holy Grail bloodline families, and authors of the infamous ``Protocol of the Elders of Sion`` that was directly responsible for inciting anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Its members include prominent figures of the Knights of Malta, and neo-Nazi organizations with links to South Africa`s apartheid regime. Africa is of prime importantance to Sion`s members - a 1959 article written by Plantard de St. Clair in Sion`s internally circulated publication ``Circuit``, stresses the need for a solution to the African independence movement, and proposes a ``United States of Euro-Africa... this being the sole stable foundation on which peace can be constructed``. Obviously his elite brethren didn`t agree, as recent documentation proves Knight of Malta/CIA chief Allen Dulles ordered the assassination of the Congo`s first democratically elected President. The Anglo-American contingent, the Knights Templar/Dragon Court and the Knights of Malta/CIA within the Order of Sion, swiftly deposed Plantard de St. Clair when they found out about his loose-tongued meetings with journalists Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln at such a crucial time in their covert endeavors.

Taking into account all these facts, our fictional policeman might ask himself what the motive for such devilry could be. He would soon discover it was the same motive that the ``Secret Church`` and the orthodox Roman Catholic Church have always pursued.

According to the white supremacist dogma of the Rosicrucian ``Secret Church``, the ``Negro and other sub-races`` must die and be reincarnated to allow for the evolution of Man`s consciousness.

Rosicrucian beliefs date back to ancient Egypt, and ironically its influence can be seen in the recent proclamation by Israel`s ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who said ``the Holocaust victims were reincarnations of the souls of sinners... they had to be reincarnated in order to atone``.

Initiated Rosicrucian Adolf Hitler said ``The greatest and most ruthless decisions will have to be made. A barbaric measure for the unfortunate who is struck by it, but a blessing for his fellow man and posterity, the passing pain of a century can and will clearly redeem millenniums from sufferings``. Though talking about the Jewish Holocaust, Hitler could well have been speaking of the African AIDS Holocaust. During the late 70`s and early 80`s the Vatican announced various warnings attributed to the ``Virgin Mary`` from a variety of sources. She constantly repeated that a ``Great Warning would come from God that would be good for some, and bad for others``. Perhaps the Virgin Mary and Adolf Hitler had the same speechwriters, so similar is their outlook. For how could the suffering endured by anybody be good for others?

Like the deceptive use of the ``Protocol of the Elders of Sion`` that Hitler used to ``prove`` a fictitious ``Jewish conspiracy``, the majority of the scientific community, while ignoring their own obvious culpability, is similarly blaming the victims of AIDS in Africa for having created the disease through their irresponsible behavior i.e. ``eating or having sex with a monkey``. As Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf ``If you tell a lie long enough, eventually it will be believed as truth... and the greater the lie, the more people will believe it``.

As regards the orthodox Roman Catholic Church, it is merely continuing its policy of genocide against Shamanism and the indigenous peoples of the world, as the history of Christianity & Racism clearly demonstrates.

Ultimately, the AIDS epidemic in Africa and throughout the developing world prevents these nations from achieving economic stability. This would have given them the power to control their own natural resources, and ultimately have affected the wealth and power of the Western corporate-aristocratic-military-industrial complex.

The Pentagon`s retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Colonel Jack Kingston, currently Chairman of the National Security Advisory Board in Washington DC intends to take the AIDS issue before a Congressional Hearing.

He recently said ``In my estimation, AIDS is a covert operation run amok that is bigger than any secret operation in U.S. history. It is more momentous in its implications to humanity than the atomic weapons Manhattan Project of World War II``.

Any experienced detective will tell you, a killer always leaves a trail of incriminating evidence, and Man`s history is not so dissimilar. In the context of everyday life, the sordid thoughts and actions of a murderer are difficult to grasp and seem unbelievable. As individuals we are unlikely to consider the causes and effects of such malevolence, unless through fate it touches our own lives. Similarly, the demonic manifestations of History are rarely faced until it becomes unavoidable. While the suggestions of a calculated genocide seem fantastic, a brief glance at perhaps the worst century in Man`s history shows this crime to be only another murderous act by the same historical predators.

It is perhaps, if we have the courage to look it squarely in the face, only equal to the unbelievable facts of recent European slaughter - the shipment of men, women and children in railway carriages, to over five hundred purpose-built camps, where they were put into shower rooms, and gassed with Zyklon B. Their bodies were placed into purpose-built ovens where the evidence of their existence was destroyed - why? Because they were Jews. If somebody had knocked upon your door pointing to the train and telling you this bizarre story, it would it have been easier to believe they were lying, than to try and stop the train.

The only hope is the fact that our fictional policeman can use the law of a democratic and free country, and stand before elected political representatives in the ancient struggle against feudalism and evil.

They may find that like a puzzling murder mystery, several hands were clutching the dagger.

Of China, the Frenchman Francois Quesnay wrote in 1767: ``No-one can deny that this state is the most beautiful in the world, the most densely populated, and the most flourishing kingdom known.`` Scientific discoveries in China reached a remarkable level.

When Portugal first established itself as a colonial power in what is now famine-stricken Mozambique, the local Arab-African city states there, with their ``fine stone houses and the air of elegance in the local courts and markets`` were ``a world comparable, if not superior, in material culture to Portugal`` (James Duffy). In Zimbabwe, when the 19th century white colonists found the ruined buildings after which the country is now named, they assumed that they must have been built by previous white invaders. They could not believe that black Africans were capable of such achievements.

In Ethiopia, in the Middle Ages - so Walter Rodney, a black Marxist historian murdered in 1980 as he tried to build a working class party in his native Guyana, wrote - ``The kings distinguished themselves by building several churches cut out of solid rock. The architectural achievements attest to the level of skill reached by Ethiopians as well as the capacity of the state to mobilise labour on a huge scale. Fine illuminated books and manuscripts became a prominent element of Amharic culture. Equally fine garments and jewellery were produced for the ruling class and for the church...``

The European powers had certain advantages over the peoples of Africa and Asia - a more dynamic economic system, more centralised state power, and better military technology. But overall there was no great superiority. The economics of colonialism are responsible for today`s economic gap between the average living standards in Britain and in India. At independence in 1947, the conditions of the Indian peasantry were roughly the same as they had been 200 years earlier. The colonial era which had enriched thousands of British investors and administrators had left the Indian peasants stuck in absolute poverty.

Underdevelopment is not due to lack of talent or energy by the people of the country. Like modern industrial development, it is the product of an economic system, capitalism. Before the 18th century or thereabouts, economic differences between parts of the world were much smaller than they are today. Or, to be more accurate, they were differences of a different sort. Some societies - ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient China - reached a much higher level of culture than others. But that was a difference that mostly concerned the ruling class. The ruling class might have literature, baths, roads, great temples and palaces, a varied and delicate diet, beautiful clothes and jewels - or not. Whatever happened in the wealthier spheres of society, the mass of the people did nothing more than scratch a bare living from the land.

Today we have the inverse situation. The wealthy have much the same technology, culture and luxury at their disposal in every country. But the standard of living of the working people ranges from the Western worker`s material comfort and relatively easy access to culture to the African peasant`s poverty and illiteracy. A luxury hotel in Africa provides similar service to a luxury hotel in New York. Even in the world`s most underdeveloped countries, such industry as there is can use recognisably similar technologies to those used in the advanced countries.

Capitalism has created - for the first time in history - the productive potential to free humanity from want. It has created freely-moving international technology and wealth. In the richer capitalist countries, strong trade unions have won greatly improved living standards for many workers. Yet even in the USA millions are destitute. And the average worker`s wage in Indonesia, for example, has, on a generous estimate, one tenth the buying power of a US wage. For millions of people in Africa, in India, and even in Latin America, life is as harsh and as precarious as it was 500 or 1000 years ago, if not more so.

The story of development and underdevelopment is the story of how capitalism`s drive to expand production has worked its way through unevenly, creating huge material advances in some areas while simultaneously creating ruin elsewhere.

The white man as cannibal

The decisive turning point in producing the present pattern of the world came in the 16th century. A new economic system - capitalism, the system of wage labour and of continuous accumulation and reinvestment of profits - emerged decisively from the neo-feudal societies of Western Europe. As yet, it was not industrial capitalism. The Industrial Revolution and large-scale factory production were still in the future. But this earlier capitalism - commercial capitalism - had its own technological revolution, with printing, more developed firearms and ocean navigation.

For centuries until then the central networks of trade had been the coastal shipping routes of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. But now the cities of the Arab world - until then the greatest on earth after China`s - and those of Italy were eclipsed. As ships began sailing the open seas regularly and relatively easily, the new centres of trade were the seafaring powers of the Atlantic - Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, England - who also established themselves in the Indian Ocean. Karl Marx summed this up as follows:

``The discovery of gold and silver in the Americas, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterise the dawn of the era of capitalist production [in the 16th century]... The colonies provided a market for the budding manufactures, and a vast increase in accumulation which was guaranteed by the mother country`s monopoly of the market. The treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement and murder flowed back into the mother-country and were turned into capital there.``

The rise of capitalist civilisation in Western Europe thus went together with the destruction of previous civilisations in other parts of the world. Black Africa`s particular blight was the slave trade. ``To discuss trade between Africans and Europeans in the four centuries before colonial rule [i.e., from the late 15th to the late 19th century] is virtually to discuss slave trade,`` as Walter Rodney puts it. Millions of Africans were forced into the status of human cattle and shipped overseas. Probably more than 10 million arrived alive in the Americas or Europe; maybe as many again died en route. The population of Africa stagnated from 1650 to 1850, while Europe`s nearly tripled and Asia`s more than doubled. Africa had handicraft industries, and trade based on them. But the handicrafts could not compete. They were displaced by the new trade in human beings against European manufactured goods. The African peoples were split up into small warring groups and statelets, as rival chiefs would make war on each other in order to capture prisoners for the slave trade. With the European traders, from their coastal forts and bases, also encouraging these divisions, the African peoples had no chance of establishing relatively strong, large states such as had arisen in Europe.

The slave trade was also the underpinning of modern anti-black racism. Suspicion and fear of strangers dates back long before the 16th century, and anti-Jewish discrimination was already well established in Europe. Systematic, widespread prejudice and discrimination based on skin colour started with the slave trade (though it did not reach full pitch until the late 19th century). The white slave traders and slave owners, adjusting the ideology of the ``rights of man`` to fit in with their economic activity, declared that black people were naturally primitive and inferior. Even worse, some black people were bludgeoned into accepting this, or half-accepting it. Racism itself in turn became something of an economic factor in the underdevelopment of black Africa.

The slave trade declined in the first half of the nineteenth century, as industrial capitalism developed, creating a wider and more universal need for the more flexible and elastic wage labour. A new chapter opened in Africa. In a sudden ``scramble`` at the end of the 19th century, practically the whole continent was divided up as colonies for the European powers.

The economic system established under colonial rule had three main features: limited capitalist enterprise, cash crop farming linked to European trading concerns, and forced labour. Mines - gold and diamond in South Africa, copper in Zambia, etc. - and capitalist farms or estates (especially in the areas where many whites settled, like South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya) employed wage labour. Railways and ports were also built. Rail networks were started in the 1880s and 1890s, and mostly completed by the early 1930s. Capital investment in black Africa was, however, much lower than elsewhere in the Third World. Up to 1930, for example, only 2% of British capitalism`s overseas investment was in Africa, while 14% was in India, 43% in the rest of the Empire and 22% in South America.

The wage labour was often casual labour, and the methods primitive. The great majority of the African population were still formally independent peasants. But they were driven increasingly from traditional subsistence agriculture (i.e., producing mainly for their own consumption) towards cash crops. ``The African peasant,`` as Walter Rodney records, ``went in for cash crop farming for many reasons. A minority eagerly took up the opportunity to continue to acquire European goods... Many others... took to earning cash because they had to pay various taxes in money or because they were forced to work... Examples of Africans literally being forced to grow cash crops by gun and whip were to be found in Tanganyika under German rule, in Portuguese colonies, and in French Equatorial Africa and the French Sudan in the 1930s.... The laws and by-laws by which peasants in British East Africa were required to maintain minimum acreages of cash crops like cotton and groundnuts were in effect forms of coercion by the colonial state...`` Forced labour was also used to build railways, roads and ports.

These elements were combined in different ways and in different proportions in different parts of the continent. But they meshed together in a single system - and one which had very little impetus towards raising productivity.

Force was required to tear Africans away from their traditional livelihoods and create a labour force for capitalist exploitation. But the forcible methods of the colonial regime did not completely destroy the traditional structures of the African economy, nor were they intended to. Collaboration with tribal chiefs provided the Europeans with a cheap method of administration. And the continuation of some subsistence farming allowed them to pay extremely low wages and prices for cash crops. Subsistence farming would keep the African workers alive, while wages or cash crops enabled them to pay their taxes and debts, and to buy a few European goods. The companies which controlled trade in the cash crops, like Unilever, brought huge profits back to Europe. Capitalist profiteers geared themselves into pre-capitalist forms of exploitation; they grabbed the proceeds of the peasants` surplus labour, done under pre-capitalist conditions, and, by selling the goods in Europe, transformed them into capital. The Africans suffered the evils both of capitalism and of pre-capitalist economic forms. They suffered the ruthless pressures and insecurity of the capitalist market economy, transmitted through the trading companies; and they suffered the isolation, primitive conditions, static technology and traditional hierarchies of pre-capitalist societies.

The Europeans brought little capitalist civilisation to Africa. Hardly any schools or hospitals were built for the black population until after the Second World War. In Nigeria in the 1930s, for example, there were 12 hospitals for 4,000 Europeans, and 52 hospitals for at least 40 million Africans. Although literacy was higher in Nigeria than in other colonies, still it stood at only 12% in 1952. There was a flurry of ``development`` spending after World War Two. Partly the colonial powers were responding to the fact that the old colonial economy was breaking down (under the impact of the drastic decline in primary-product prices in the 1930s) and something of a permanent wage-worker class had emerged. Also, they became convinced that independence was inevitable, and made efforts to create a reliable African middle class to which power could be transferred. But it was too little, too late, and not very useful anyway. After winning independence the new African states had a terrible heritage to overcome.

Gill Sahib: Thanks for providing a well researched, well written book review. You think perhaps one day a black man will have the courage to write a book on ``Stupid Black Men``, and talk about big-mouth Farrakhan or publicity-hungry Jackson or drug snorting would-be public figure Barry, or the millions of black women who head households where each child is born from a different father and each of the fathers is away on extended leave at an unknown address. And perhaps, some day we will have a book by a brown man on ``Stupid Brown Men`` and talk about the mobs of men that kill women and children in the name of God and Revenge in the subcontinent, about NS sitting in Saudi Arabia with his nihari-making cook. I bet the book would have to be in seven volumes.

The above is just to provide perspective to the book on white men. Your review was excellent, I should note. I may even read the book someday.

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Re : Who gave us the calculus? White man

I think not! This is factual inaccuracy at its best. Alegbra/calculus was invented by an Arab Mathematician Alkhwarizmi.

``In the 9th century, the Arab mathematician al-Khwarizmi wrote one of the first Arabic algebras, a systematic exposé of the basic theory of equations, with both examples and proofs. By the end of the 9th century, the Egyptian mathematician Abu Kamil had stated and proved the basic laws and identities of algebra and solved such complicated problems as finding x, y, and z such that x + y + z = 10, x2 + y2 = z2, and xz = y2.``

Re : Who gave us the calculus? White man

Corection : Calculus is based on the fundamentals of Algebra. Without Algebra Calculus would not have been possible. Algenbra was invented by an arab, Alkhwarizmi.

a) Why does the first response always almost get its own page?

b) We (meaning Indians and Pakistanis) gave the world the concept of zero = shoonyaa. Such is the glory of this.

c) Linda Lovelace was white.

d) Who gave us the House of Saud? White man. Who gave us Pakistan? White man. Who gave us Indian Penal Code 420 also in Pakistani Penal Code (okok)? White man.

whatever.

Did anybody know that Glenn Turner`s wife was also a Gill from Amritsar? Now she is a Minister in New Zealand.

White man still can`t make a good kabab, however.

Dear Friends,

Tyranny that masquerades as an open soceity, skin colour that determines who goes to purgatory, let us reflect upon this quote from the holy Quran.

Black/White skin and Creation:

``Abu Darda reported that the HOLY PROPHET SAID: Allah created Adam when he created him (sic). Then He stroke (sic) his right shoulder and took out a white race as if they were seeds, and He stroke (sic) HIS LEFT SHOULDER and took out a BLACK RACE as if they were coals. Then He said to those who were in his right side: Towards paradise and I don`t care. He said to those who were ON HIS LEFT SHOULDER: Towards Hell and I don`t care. - Ahmad`` (Mishkat ul-Masabih, translated by Karim, v. iii, p. 117)

I do not know how much calculs does Mr. Hayat know but calculus is very much different from algebra. Never mind, our knowledge is limited; nobody knows every thing. Calculus was invented by Sir Isaac Newton and by Gottfreid Wilhelm Leibniz, around 1675. Algebra came into being in the ninth century as Mr. Hayat correctly observed. Algebra was not invented, per se, by Al-Khwarizmi, although the nomenclature owes its origination to Khwarizmi. Hindus were already doing algebra in India during Al-Khwarizmi`s time; Al-Khwarizmi introduced the symbolic expressions which indeed was a revolutionary concept in that time; in fact it still is. The symbol, la, for the unknown quantity that Al-Khwarizmi used made it possible to write down algebraic equations and relationships among the various quantities. Without this symbolic notation, it would have been difficult to do much of mathematics.

However, calculus is a different breed. It deals with infinitessimal quantities (also the infinte ones) and uses the concept of `limits`. There was a priority dispute between Leibniz and Newton and their respective supporters; history has decided it in favor of Newton but no body can ignore Leibniz`s contributions. The notation dy/dx was originated by Leibniz. Many of those, like me, who had read calculus at the college level and had used it extensively in the Engineering courses or in the courses of other higher degrees, later on, did not understand the intrinsic physical concepts of calculus. We knew how to use it mechanically, from one step to the next to produce the answer. I beg to differ with Mr. Hayat although I wish to God, a Muslim had created calculus. Calculs is indeed beautiful.

The Islamic world produced a great scientist, Abdus Salam, of the international caliber and stature after several centuries, in our time. The Muslims could have felt proud of him and his work and used him as a beacon for further work but unfortunately he was excommunicated from the fold of Islam. I am making this statement with a straight face and as a matter of fact; it is not my intention to start a religious or political debate. And I am not an Ahmadi. I am proud of Salam that he was my compatriot, a Pakistani. What he believed in by way of religion was his own concern.

It takes a lot of hard work to do research; even to discover a small mathematical or scientific truth. Unfortunately, there are not many Muslims and the Islamic people who are at the forefront of the scientific and mathematical research these days. At the same time, there are many who are contributing to science in their own small and significant ways. We should value those people. Those people are making sacrifices (there is little money in research) and they are praise worthy for their efforts. Research work does exert great strain on family life. Excuse me for this digression.

I want to take this opportunity to thank hobbyty, Saminashah, and tahmed for their kind appreciation. I`ll take time to read progressive`s postings and resrve my comments about DRUMZ`s post; but I respect him/her for his/her ideas.

Wishing well,

Mohammad Gill

Asim Hayat #11 Only trouble is...what is a white man? I recall a Lebanese gentleman, in the course of recounting some incident in Africa with him, matter-of-factly referring to himself as a white man among the natives in Africa. So, the white man (Arab-variety) discovered algebra too - damn.

But wait, there is hope...the brown man discovered zero, I have been learnt many times on chowk. But...by converting to islam, we lost bragging rights on that too, I understand. And our brotherly yellow man (they are not really yellow, of course, unless jaundiced) wont give us bragging rights to the printing press and paper and firecrackers either. damn! damn! damn!

You and I are in deep trouble, brother, or should I say ``Fellow no-invention Paki man``.

re: freethinker # 15,

Calculus is indeed one of the most beautiful devices ever invented by mankind...the whole idea of gradient and shape and movement and approximation...it leaves one dizzy to think of what blessings calculus has brought us (of course, somehow those blessings become apparent only after one leaves those calculus exams behind).

re: tahmed # 15,

You don`t need bragging rights! A person like you gives bragging rights to a society :)

Very factual reply Mr Gill. Good article as well.

What little calculus I know is from my A levels and then through my undergrad Enginneering on to Advanced Courses on Integral and differential calculus as part of my Master`s Degree at Stanford. I have used it in my current job. But i guess knowing calculus does not automatically help one understand the history behind it. My Calculus professor at Stanford asked us to not go too much into the semantics of who invented what, rather to learn the ``damn`` tool and apply it. My amended reply indicates my reasoning for saying that without Mr Khwarizmi, Calculus was not possible. In a way,I guess i am trying to argue that without the contributions of a brown man, Newton the genius of his own time would have had to spend time inventing algebra first rather than building on it to create a new mathemtical tool.

Yes you are absolutely right;I was indeed trying to claim a moral scientific coup for us, the beleaguered Mulsims.So what that major breakthrough came almost 12 centuries ago.

You are very astute in observing ``What have we Muslims achieved recently``. Apart from blowing up buildings, not much. But the again, the white man has taken a lot more from us than he has given back, if only in scholarships to his best universities.

Best Regards

Asim

Folks: hobbyty #13 is a Hindutva rat incidentally, masquerading as hobbyty.

Curiously, no body has suggested so far that the language in which we are communicating, English, is the whiteman`s language.So what? There is an annual publication called Annual of the Urdu Studies which is edited and published by Dr. Muhammad Memon. This is a worth reading publication.Some of the papers published in its recent issue are:

A Gift of Ghazals by Louis Werner

Problems of Teaching Urdu in Germany: A Foreigner`s Reflections on the Status of Urdu, by Christina Oesterheld

Urdu in India, by David Matthews

The publication is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Asghar Ali Shahid, who was a Kashmiri-American and died young at the age of 52 years. He taught Creative Writing at the University of Utah and several other institutes. He wrote Ghazals in English. Ralph Russell, a Reader Emeritus, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, has devoted his life for reading Urdu and researching Urdu literature, and more importantly teaching it. The Urdu annual that I described above, has an Urdu paper in Urdu script written by Russell; the title of the paper is ``Shadam Az Zindig-e-Khesh (I am happy with my life)``. The creative intellectuals do not divide human thought and activity by drawing separating lines.

{

Folks: hobbyty #13 is a Hindutva rat incidentally, masquerading as hobbyty.

}

Dosent make a difference if an Islamic rat turns into a Hindutva rat.

And what about Algorithms?? Originated from Al-Khwarizmi (duly acknowledged by the white man)!

veeresh - ``White man still can`t make a good kabab, however``

??? but he can make a darn good steak !!

hayat #18 ``the white man has taken a lot more from us than he has given back, if only in scholarships to his best universities.``

So: it is the west that is learning from desis who come as students in universities in the US and UK, not vice versa. Very interesting. Do you also ask the professors to take a test at the end of each semester to see what they have learnt from you?

Hayat #18 As for calculus not being possible without Al-Khwarizm, please note that the Arabs themselves learnt from the Greeks and the Hindus Baghdad used to have scholars visiting from the west and the east, and that is how greek achievements in geometry and hindu achievements in math were learnt by the muslims. Your muslim chauvinism in claiming the muslims are at the foundation of all learning is a perfect example of the depths to which the muslims have fallen - converting your wishful thinking into ``facts`` (as you demonstrated on calculus), unwilling to accept that we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. You have a lot to learn, like all chauvinists.

Mr. Butthead321

I think Asim Hayat is trying to start a serious conversation, and by any stretch of imagination he is not putting down white men-that is your masters. Asim bashing was unnecessary and uncalled for. It only shows the buttheadedness of a person who projects himself as the self-appointed minister of vice and virtue at Chowk and a self-proclaimed harbinger of decency.

yours truly
Beavis

BTW, the fact Muslims learnt math from the Greeks and the Hindus and built upon it shows something brilliant about them. Societies begin to decay, degenerate, and stink when they stop learning from others. We Indians should know. We have been there.

Three cheers for societies that were open, that were eagerly learning from others, and didn`t feel they had learnt all there was to learn.

Tshmed seething with self rightoeus rage wrote: ``So it is the west that is learning from desis who come as students in universities in the US and UK, not vice versa. Very interesting. Do you also ask the professors to take a test at the end of each semester to see what they have learnt from you?``

Please take the time to read and try to understand what i wrote. Here it is again. ``But the again, the white man has taken a lot more from us than he has given back, if only in scholarships to his best universities.`` All I am saying is that just because 8 students from Pakistan get scholarships at Stanford every eyar to study sciences and engineering is not enough given that the western hegemonic forces have isolated the east from the west. The Empire robbed and plundered the resources of the indian subcontinent. Giving a few the opportunity to compete against ``their`` best at these universities does not make up for the intellectual and economical subjugation of the ``have-nots`` like us. I am under no illusion that my professors should be subjected to tests to gauge how much they learnt from Urstruly :)

Rather, I would go so far as to claim that the business of top Universities in U.S at the Masters and Phd level thrives on the input of the brown man as well. Stanford admits some 200 odd brown indians (vs our 8 brown Pakis) to graduate programmes every years, not to mention a few Bangladeshis. Similar is the trend at other leading light universities.

When I first went to Stanford, my professor who alos happened to be a leading researcher in my field, told em ``Asim you have been given the opportunity to create to something out of nothing``. Tahmed surely you do know why scholarships and fellowships are created in US. To gain and enrich the fields of study with diverse opinions and most importnatly groundbreaking ideas. A researcher might get paid about 3 times as much as a ``Desi`` grad student and will complain from twice as much about lack of resources. Thus the ``brown`` desi men are preferred over formal researchers. Its a handshake of sorts. Coming from athird world country It helps people like me and many others to realise a dream here in US, and for the University to utilise the best Pakistan has to offer at barely minimum wages. ``Brown`` men like mysefl whom you disdain for being strong enough to speak out, actually present the scientific work we do at conferences(acknolwledgoing the support of universities like Stanford) and journals. Nothing is for free. Science gains! A few of us go up to do wild and exciting things which we could not have done back home. I was simply questioning this balance. A few of us gaining at the cost of the majority in Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan, when all that ``they`` acquired was by hegemony, initially imperial hegemony and now economic hegemeony.

Surely now you can see where I was coming from. The ``brown`` peopel are contribiuting to science. This number si bound to increase over time, as more and more brown people have the economic constraints filled out according to Maslows` theory to be able to accomplish a bit more than just sustenance.

Unlike yoursefl, the white man knows the importance of foreign students from thirs world countries. According to the Economist ``At Harvard, for instance, 50% of the students enjoy “scholarships” from the university worth, on average, $19,000 (£13,400) a year. But then, by many estimates, Harvard is the second biggest charity in the world after the Roman Catholic church.`` Amazing Trivia Info:) Ever wondered why Harvard a bastion of tradition and learning would pass of such savings to the students. Because unlike yourself they are not averse to admitting

that studnets are the life of the university. Thye nd up contributing as much if not more at various levels back into the university life than the flow of information from the Dons down to them. These days the Professsors are too busy with their reaearch as well, So grad students end up teraching a lot of courses, with little or no interventions from the Professors. I guess you will have to eat your heart out, when you will learn that most of the really brilleint profesosrs can not teach. They are inarticulate and often end of confusing the younger folks. Grad students ebcause they have been through the ordeal of learning from XYZ professorr know how to explain things better ina way which a student can understand.

My professor at Stanford is a leading light within my field. He has been the department chair at Stanford, in an all white man departmnet. He is perhaps the mlost cited man in my field, with numerous books to his credit. He is a decent man, an American. He is from Pakistan just like myself and is proud to acknolwedge that!

Arriverderci mio caro Amico,

Asim

Comparing a steak to a kebab is trying to equate cybersex with the real thing.

There is effort and love that goes into a good kebab. There is usually not much more than a well fed animal and a sharp knife into a good steak.

Or is there?

Anycase, I am also informed by Secret Agent Momo & Manto-do-pyaaza-da-puttar that a particular morose thin gentleman from Bombay discovered steaks and further invented them while beating his meat one monsoon afternoon after defending Gokhale, Tilak & Savarkar.

whatever

``Hayat #18 As for calculus not being possible without Al-Khwarizm, please note that the Arabs themselves learnt from the Greeks and the Hindus Baghdad used to have scholars visiting from the west and the east, and that is how greek achievements in geometry and hindu achievements in math were learnt by the muslims. Your muslim chauvinism in claiming the muslims are at the foundation of all learning is a perfect example of the depths to which the muslims have fallen - converting your wishful thinking into ``facts`` (as you demonstrated on calculus), unwilling to accept that we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. You have a lot to learn, like all chauvinists.``

Phaijee,

Inna ghuussa. Ki gal hai, woti ney roti neyyo ditti?

Time and again, I am amazed at the sheer ability of Pakis to making statemnet on one`s behalf which have nothing to do with the original piece. Are you a paki medical doctor. I am forced to come to ask that qustion based on your ability to or the leack thereof of understanding coherent dialogue and using some logic given the context of the ``whole`` reply to be able to see what I am trying to say. Unless of course you are a born wreteched person, revelling in self denial and hatred of his own species, and sufferring from an acute form of ``inferiority`` complex.

Do u even know the meanning of a big word like ``chauvinist``. I am afraid I am not an Islamic crusader given the fact that you muyst have seen me interact here for almost more than 4 years. However, based on your reasoninbg ability, Ask Mommy before interacting any further. Ciao

Here is a Letter I wrote to the Economist about their patronising claims that Harvard is an educational charity. Basically Economist took the same patroning view that Tahmed holds that the universities are doing the foriegn students a favour. Might shed some more light on what i was trying to say which Mr Tahmed did not have the foggies about.

Sir,

Your article entitled “Brown-nosing” in the June 28th 2001 issue, made an eye-catching statement, ``At Harvard, for instance, 50% of the students

enjoy ``scholarships`` from the university worth, on average, $19,000

(£13,400) a year. But then, by many estimates, Harvard is the second biggest

charity in the world after the Roman Catholic church``. The implicit patronizing tone of the article notwithstanding, the concept of an “educational charity”, as you called it, compelled me to write a few words. I very much doubt that this letter shall ever grace your vaulted magazine’s feedback section, one can only try to get some points across,, and keep one’s fingers crossed.



It is simply amazing not to mention entertaining for one to see that the British “establishment” still suffers from a form of a supremacist disorder, despite having suffered some serious setbacks in the 20th century. Yet one would have expected that a reputable ``middle of the road`` magazine, like The Economist to be more calculating in their choice of words, not to mention checking the liberal dispensation of preposterous notions about ``educational`` charities. The fact that the article chose to downplay the extent of the benefit US gets from these so-called “educational charities”, just shows the tunnel vision, in so far as the British educational system is concerned where the elitist touch is very much there. Sadly, the British educationists are too busy counting their pennies and farthings by keeping their own ``lower-classes`` out of universities, specially the elitist

universities such as Cambridge and Oxford, just so that the country can be

run by ``old wealth”, not to mention putting up “price” barriers to prevent capable but often poor foreign students from creating a model of great economy and wealth that the US has witnessed in the past 25 years. Such prehistoric policies of “segregation” of educational opportunities are retrogression at its best. But then the so-called “old wealth” running Britain is perhaps rightly skeptical, not to mention, petrified of the creativity and entrepreneurial skills of the

young generation belonging to a global community; one without the nationalistic frontiers.

Why Britain is in the backwaters has much to do with the educational

system, which reinforces the educational apartheid within UK social standing

order. Having been a veteran of the British educational system and the US graduate education system now, I can safely vouch that the US system with its wealth of resources and better opportunities for creative individuals is light years ahead of the traditional, British educational system. Though I sincerely, wish the commercialism/hype associated with the US system could be toned down.



Oxford’s finally recognizing the need for financial compensation to some of the best minds, to labour on their behalf and excel in academic pursuits, represents a major milestone in UK university policymaking. I strongly suspect that the patronizing tone used by the author to disparage the educational scholarships provided by US to deserving foreign students, is nothing more than his paranoia, of a similar system being introduced in his country, whereby the elitist advantage might be seriously mitigated by the inclusion of educational opportunities to the brightest and poorest students within UK. It is still a very small step, though one in the right direction.



Asim Hayat

Stanford University, California

Prem

Are you sure you are imagining about ``calculus`` and not curves..., shapes..., gradients... etc. Your remark on calculus in a very poetic language was unusual read :-).

Ali1 #22 ``Dosent make a difference if an Islamic rat turns into a Hindutva rat.``

Agreed, we have Islamic rats like we have Hindutva rats. Hobbyty is not one though - one may disagree with his views, but he does not disguise himself as a hindu poster and misrepresent the teachings of hinduism, as this man did.

urstruly #24 My quota for exchanging posts with you is over for this year. Sorry.

``given that the western hegemonic forces have isolated the east from the west. The Empire robbed and plundered the resources of the indian subcontinent.``

And Africa, America, South America then there was mercantilism, Colonialism, imperialism, slavery, numerous genocides, and all that sh1t America has done... Whew...

What I find funny is that many of you think like THEM, based on their rules of political correctness. For example, CLEARLY no other race has been as ``destructive`` as the white race. Now, the white man will never admit 2 this (obviously) so he gets his lil pawns (thats several of u tuxedo wearing nutz) to do his dirty work.

So now u will warp ur weak logic and say things like ``there is no such thing as race`` or ``all races have done terrible things`` or other insane diversion tactics.

Jump Paki, jump!

Prem #27 With respect to the openness of muslim society in Baghdad to scholars from India and Greece, you write: ``Three cheers for societies that were open, that were eagerly learning from others, and didn`t feel they had learnt all there was to learn.``

This is exactly the point I was trying to make.

BUtthead

My quota for the year ain`t over. Aagay aagay daihkiyay hota hay kia

HOW FAR IS HEAVEN (OR HELL)

Dear Chowk People!

Recently, a friend sent me some scanned pages from a scientific journal, which I never heard of before, titled “Scientific Muslim”, which is published from Islamabad, Cairo, Istanbul, Riyadh, and several other cities in several languages, simultaneously. The reason that my friend sent it to me was that it contained an article from Dr. Bashir Mehomood, former Head of Physics Department of Quaid-e-Azam University. It is the same article, which Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy constantly lampoons in his articles and calls it psuedo-science. My friends! Now that I have read the actual paper itself, and based on my meager knowledge on the subject, acquired from reading magazines like “Discover” and “Popular Mechanics” over the years, I think Dr. Mehmood’s theory makes perfect sense. Allow me to add to this that I think our dear Prof. Hoodbhoy is a victim of professional jealousy that plagues scientific community all around the world, not just Pakistan or Muslim world but all over. Which I think is normal. But the way Hoodbhoy and his followers twist it to condemn Islam or Muslims is not only deplorable but shameful. I put forth, down below the excerpt from what Dr. Hoodbhoy has written, and below that Dr. Mehmood’s research paper. Your comments are most appreciated:

DR. Hoodbhoy writes:

[http://www.chowk.com/bin/showa.cgi?phoodbhoy_dec0701

Though genuine scientific achievement is rare in the contemporary Muslim world, pseudo-science is in generous supply. A former chairman of my department has calculated the speed of Heaven: it is receding from the earth at one centimeter per second less than the speed of light. His ingenious method relies upon a verse in the Qur`an which says that worship on the night on which the Qur`an was revealed, is worth a thousand nights of ordinary worship. He states that this amounts to a time-dilation factor of one thousand, which he puts into a formula belonging to Einstein`s theory of special relativity.] End quote.

Urstruly’s Note:

Now before you start the article below, keep one thing in mind that we are “assuming” that “heaven” exists and it is extraterrestrial. Assumption is an authentic and recognized component of scientific procedure of investigation. e.g. Until the start of last century all physicists were carrying out their experimentation under the “assumption” that Ether exists.

Read on:

RECEDING HEAVEN

By Dr. Bashir Mehmood

Cosmological inquiry is ancient, but only in the past 50 years or so have we begun to understand how the universe began and what its ultimate fate may be. The crucial perception came in the 1920’s, when Edwin P. Hubble demonstrated that the spiral nebulas are not local objects but independent system of stars much like our own, and thereby showed that the universe is a much larger place than had been imagined. Hubble showed further that the entire observable system of galaxies is in orderly motion as is now well known, the nature of that motion is expansion: all distant galaxies are receding from us.

That the universe is expanding is today considered established. A question that remains uncertain is whether the expansion would continue for ever or whether the receding heaven (galaxies) will some day stop and then reverse their motion, eventually fall together in great collapse. The answer to this question determines the geometrical character of the universe, that is, it determines the nature of space and time. If the expansion continues perpetually, the universe is “open” and infinite: if it will someday stop and reverse its direction the universe is “closed” and of finite extent.
In order to choose between those possibilities, astronomers construct mathematical models of the universe and then attempt to find observable features of the real universe that would confirm one of the models and exclude all others. So far no single measurement has been made with enough precision to settle the question unambiguously. Several independent tests are possible, however, the pieces of the puzzle had been supplied by many workers employing quite different techniques. It now seems feasible to assemble the pieces. Taken together, the available evidence suggests that the universe is open and that its expansion will never cease.

Isotropic Expansion:

I detected the recessional motion of the distant galaxies through measurement of their optical spectra. The spectra of most stars (and hence of heavens) are intruppted by dark lines representing the absorption of particular wavelengths by atoms in the cooler , outer layers of the stellar atmosphere: each chemical element generates a characteristic pattern of lines whose waveengths are precisely known from laboratory measurements. When the galaxiy is moving away from the observer, the wavelength of each spectral line is increased as result of the Doppler effect, so that all the lines appear to be displaced towards longer wavelengths and in particular to towards the red end of the visible portion of the spectrum. The displacement is called a red shift, and by measuring its magnitude the velocity of its recession can be calculated. When an object is moving toward the observer, the wavelength of the spectral lines are decreased by the Doppler effect and the lines appear to be displaced towards the blue end of the spectrum, an effect called blue shift. All the distant galaxies whose spectra was measured by me and by other observers show red shifts: they are therefore assumed to be receding from us.

The recessional motion has several remarkable properties. I showed that the velocity with which a galaxy recedes is proportional to its distance from us, so that a constant ratio of distance to velocity can be calculated. The ratio is such that a galaxy 10,000,000 light years from us recedes with a velocity of 170; another galaxy twice as far away receds twice as fast, or 340 km per second. Small departures from this rule are commonly observed because most galaxies are members of groups or clusters and have orbital motions along the line of sight connecting the eartg with a galaxy. Those motions are essentially random, however, so that in any large sample of galaxies that cancel one another. Nonrandom, systematic varations from te ratio have been found only for galaxies at the most extreme distances. As well shall see, these variations do not invalidate that rule but provide important information about the history of the universe.

A second characteristic of the cosmic expansion is its isotropy: it is the same in all directions. No matter where in the sky a galaxy is found, its recessional velocity is related to its distance by the same proportionality. This observation seems to suggest that the universe is remarkably symmetrical and, what is even more extraordinary, that we happen to be at it’s a very center. The crystal spheres of medieval cosmologies were no more geocentric.

There is, of course, another explanation, which can be understood most readily by considering a simple two dimensional model of an expanding universe. Imagine a spherical balloon with small dots painted on its surface, each dot representing a galaxy. As the balloon is inflated the distance between any two dots (always measured on the surface of this sphere) increases with a speed proportionate to the distance between them. No matter which.dot is designated the center, all other dots recede from it uniformly in all directions. Thus each.dot obsrves the same exapnsion and no one of them has a privileged position. Susch an expansion has no center:; more precisely, every point is its center.

It follows from this analysis of the expansion that the geometrical configuration of the dots cannot change. A balloon bearing a picture of Mickey Mouse continues to bear the same picture as it is inflated. All distances between points on the balloon are multiplied by the same factor. Similarly, in the real universe eight galaxies that happen to lie at the corners of a cube in one epoch will remain at the corners of a cube, albeit a larger one, as the universe expands.

[Rest of the article discusses other subjects such as Big Bang, Geometric Deceleration, and The Geometric Shape of Universe, which I thought are irrelevant to what Hoodbhoy contends, therefore, not being posted here.
]

Robert Fisk: Fear and learning in America

As an outspoken critic of US policy in the Middle East, Fisk expected a hostile reception when he paid his first visit to the American Midwest since 11 September. He couldn`t have been more mistaken

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=285777

European Crusades, Christianisation, and Colonisation

What happened to India when the British arrived?

On receiving silver bullion from Spain for the provision of 4,800 African slaves, Britain had a surplus of silver which it then used for trading with India.

At Battle of Plassey in 1757 British troops commanded by Robert Clive defeated the Bengal ruler a Mughal viceroy and put in British puppet. Robert Clive said there would be little or no difficulty in obtaining absolute possession of these rich kingdoms. At this point silver was no longer needed for trading with India.

Before British rule, there was no private property in land. The self-governing village community handed over each year to the ruler or his nominee a share of the years produce. East India Company put a stop to this and introduced a new revenue system superseding the right of the village community over land and creating two new forms of property on land - landlordism and individual peasant proprietorship. It was assumed that the State was the supreme landlord. Fixed tax payments were introduced based on land whereby payment had to be made to the government whether or not crop had been successful. As one British put it we have introduced new methods of assessing and cultivating land revenue which have converted a once flourishing population into a huge horde of paupers. Indeed the first effect was the reduction in agricultural incomes by 50% thereby undermining the agrarian economy and self-governing village.

In 1769 the Company prohibited Indians from trading in grain, salt, betel nuts and tobacco and discouraged handicraft. Company also prohibited the home work of the silk weavers and compelled them to work in its factories. Weavers who disobeyed were imprisoned, fined or flogged. Company`s servants lined their own pockets by private trading and bribery and extortion. Goods were seized at a fraction of their price and resold to their owners at five times their price.

In 1770s one writer said of Bengal : one continued scene or oppression. Systematic plunder led to a famine in which 10 million people perished. Bengal was left naked, stripped of its surplus wealth and grain. Famine struck in 1770 and took the lives of an estimated one third of Bengal`s peasantry. A Commons Select Committee report in 1783 said that natives of all ranks and orders had been reduced to a State of Depression and Misery.

In 1787 a former army officer wrote: In former times the Bengal countries were the granary of nations, and the repository of commerce, wealth and manufacture in the East...But such has been the restless energy of misgovernment, that within 20 years many parts of those countries have been reduced to desert. The fields are no longer cultivated, extensive tracks are already overgrown with thickets, the husbandman is plundered, the manufacturer (handicraftsman) oppressed, famine has been repeatedly endured and depopulation ensured.

As India became poor and hungry, Britain became richer. Colossal fortunes were made. Robert Clive arrived in India penniless - activities of Company investigated by House of Commons. The Hindi word loot was introduced into English language because of the plunder of India. Colossal fortunes helped fund Britain`s Industrial Revolution e.g.:

1757 - Battle of Plassey

1764 - Hargreaves spinning jenny

1769 - Arkwright`s water frame

1779 - Crompton mule (whatever that is)

1785 - Watt`s steam engine

When British first reached India they did not find a backwater country. A report on Indian Industrial Commission published in 1919 said that the industrial development of India was at any rate not inferior to that of the most advanced European nations. India was not only a great agricultural country but also a great manufacturing country. It had prosperous textile industry, whose cotton, silk, and woollen products were marketed in Europe and Asia. It had remarkable and remarkably ancient, skills in iron-working. It had its own shipbuilding industry in Calcutta, Daman, Surat, Bombay and Pegu. In 1802 skilled Indian workers were building British warships at Bombay. According to a historian of Indian shipping the teak wood vessels of Bombay were greatly superior to the oaken walls of Old England. Benares was famous all over India for its brass, copper and bell-metal wares. Other important industries included the enamelled jewellery and stone carving of Rajputana towns as well as filigree work in gold and silver, ivory, glass, tannery, perfumery and papermaking.

All this altered under the British leading to the de-industrialisation of India - its forcible transformation from a country of combined agriculture and manufacture into an agricultural colony of British capitalism. British annihilated Indian textile industry because a competitor existed and it had to be destroyed.

Shipbuilding industry aroused the jealousy of British firms and its progress and development were restricted by legislation. India`s metalwork, glass and paper industries were likewise throttled when British government in India was obliged to use only British-made paper.

The vacuum created by the contrived ruin of the Indian handicraft industries, a process virtually completed by 1880, was filled with British manufactured goods. Britain`s industrial revolution, with its explosive increase in productivity made it essential for British capitalists to find new markets. India turned from exporter of textile or importer. British goods had to have virtually free entry while entry into Britain of India goods was met with prohibitive tariffs. Direct trade between India and the rest of the world had to be curtailed. Horace Hayman Wilson in 1845 in The History of British India from 1805 to 1835 said the foreign manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms.



While there was prosperity for British cotton industry there was ruin for millions of Indian craftsmen and artisans. India`s manufacturing towns were blighted e.g. Decca once known as the Manchester of India, and Murshidabad-Bengal`s old capital which was once described in 1757 as extensive, populous and rich as London. Millions of spinners, and weavers were forced to seek a precarious living in the countryside, as were many tanners, smelters and smiths.

India was made subservient to the Empire and vast wealth was sucked out of the subcontinent. Economic exploitation was the root cause of the Indian people`s poverty and hunger. Under Imperial rule the ordinary people of India grew steadily poorer. Economic historian Romesh Dutt said half of India`s annual net revenues of £44m flowed out of India. The number of famines soared from seven in the first half of 19th Century to 24 in second half. According to official figures, 28,825,000 Indians starved to death between 1854 and 1901. The terrible famine of 1899-1900 which affected 474,000 square miles with a population almost 60 million was attributed to a process of bleeding the peasant, who were forced into the clutches of the money-lenders whom British regarded as their mainstay for the payment of revenue. The Bengal famine of 1943, which claimed 1.5million victims were accentuated by the authority`s carelessness and utter lack of foresight.

Rich though its soil was, India`s people were hungry and miserably poor. This grinding poverty struck all visitors - like a blow in the face as described by India League Delegation 1932. In their report Condition of India 1934 they had been appalled at the poverty of the Indian village. It is the home of stark want...the results of uneconomic agriculture, peasant indebtedness, excessive taxation and rack-renting, absence of social services and the general discontent impressed us everywhere..In the villages there were no health or sanitary services, there were no road, no drainage or lighting, and no proper water supply beyond the village well. Men, women and children work in the fields, farms and cowsheds...All alike work on meagre food and comfort and toil long hours for inadequate returns.

Jawarharlal Nehru wrote that those parts of India which had been longest under British rule were the poorest:Bengal once so rich and flourishing after 187 years of British rule is a miserable mass of poverty-stricken, starving and dying people.

India was sometimes called the `milch cow of the Empire`, and indeed at times it seemed to be so regarded by politicians and bureaucrats in London. Educated Indians were embittered when India was made to pay the entire cost of the India Office building in Whitehall. They were further outraged when in 1867 it was made to pay the full costs of entertaining two thousand five hundred guests at a lavish ball honouring the Sultan of Turkey.

In India, the hunger and poverty experienced by the majority of the population during the colonial period and immediately after independence were the logical consequences of two centuries of British occupation, during which the Indian cotton industry was destroyed, most peasants were put into serfdom (after the British modified the agrarian structures and the tax system to the benefit of the Zamindars - feudal landlords) and cash crops (indigo, tea, jute) gradually replaced traditional food crops. Britain`s profits throughout the 19th century cannot be measured without taking into account the 28 million Indians who died of starvation between 1814 and 1901.

The Colonial Legacy - Myths and Popular Beliefs

While few educated South Asians would deny that British Colonial rule was detrimental to the interests of the common people of the sub-continent - several harbor an illusion that the British weren`t all bad. Didn`t they, perhaps, educate us - build us modern cities, build us irrigation canals - protect our ancient monuments - etc. etc. And then, there are some who might even say that their record was actually superior to that of independent India`s! Perhaps, it is time that the colonial record be retrieved from the archives and re-examined - so that those of us who weren`t alive during the freedom movement can learn to distinguish between the myths and the reality.

Literacy and Education

Several Indians are deeply concerned about why literacy rates in India are still so low. So in the last year, I have been making a point of asking English-speaking Indians to guess what India`s literacy rate in the colonial period might have been. These were Indians who went to school in the sixties and seventies (only two decades after independence) - and I was amazed to hear their fairly confident guesses. Most guessed the number to be between 30% and 40%. When I suggested that their guess was on the high side - they offered 25% to 35%. No one was prepared to believe that literacy in British India in 1911 was only 6%, in 1931 it was 8%, and by 1947 it had crawled to 11%! That fifty years of freedom had allowed the nation to quintuple it`s literacy rate was something that almost seemed unfathomable to them. Perhaps - the British had concentrated on higher education ....? But in 1935, only 4 in 10,000 were enrolled in universities or higher educational institutes. In a nation of then over 350 million people only 16,000 books (no circulation figures) were published in that year (i.e 1 per 20,000).

Urban Development

It is undoubtedly true that the British built modern cities with modern conveniences for their administrative officers. But it should be noted that these were exclusive zones not intended for the ``natives`` to enjoy. Consider that in 1911, 69 per cent of Bombay`s population lived in one-room tenements (as against 6 per cent in London in the same year). The 1931 census revealed that the figure had increased to 74 per cent - with one-third living more than 5 to a room. The same was true of Karachi and Ahmedabad. After the Second World War, 13 per cent of Bombay`s population slept on the streets. As for sanitation, 10-15 tenements typically shared one water tap!

Yet, in 1757 (the year of the Plassey defeat), Clive of the East India Company had observed of Murshidabad in Bengal: ``This city is as extensive, populous and rich as the city of London...`` (so quoted in the Indian Industrial Commission Report of 1916-18). Dacca was even more famous as a manufacturing town, it`s muslin a source of many legends and it`s weavers had an international reputation that was unmatched in the medieval world. But in 1840 it was reported by Sir Charles Trevelyan to a parliamentary enquiry that Dacca`s population had fallen from 150,000 to 20,000. Montgomery Martin - an early historian of the British Empire observed that Surat and Murshidabad had suffered a similiar fate. (This phenomenon was to be replicated all over India - particularly in Oudh (modern U.P) and other areas that had offered the most heroic resistance to the British during the revolt of 1857.)

The percentage of population dependant on agriculture and pastoral pursuits actually rose to 73% in 1921 from 61% in 1891. (Reliable figures for earlier periods are not available.)

In 1854, Sir Arthur Cotton writing in ``Public Works in India`` noted: ``Public works have been almost entirely neglected throughout India... The motto hitherto has been: `Do nothing, have nothing done, let nobody do anything.....`` Adding that the Company was unconcerned if people died of famine, or if they lacked roads and water.

Nothing can be more revealing than the the remark by John Bright in the House of Commons on June 24, 1858, ``The single city of Manchester, in the supply of its inhabitants with the single article of water, has spent a larger sum of money than the East India Company has spent in the fourteen years from 1834 to 1848 in public works of every kind throughout the whole of its vast dominions.``

Irrigation and Agricultural Development

There is another popular belief about British rule: `The British modernized Indian agriculture by building canals`. But the actual record reveals a somewhat different story. `` The roads and tanks and canals,`` noted an observer in 1838 (G. Thompson, ``India and the Colonies,`` 1838), ``which Hindu or Mussulman Governments constructed for the service of the nations and the good of the country have been suffered to fall into dilapidation; and now the want of the means of irrigation causes famines.`` Montgomery Martin, in his standard work ``The Indian Empire``, in 1858, noted that the old East India Company ``omitted not only to initiate improvements, bur even to keep in repair the old works upon which the revenue depended.``

The Report of the Bengal Irrigation Department Committee in 1930 reads: ``In every district the Khals (canals) which carry the internal boat traffic become from time to time blocked up with silt. Its Khals and rivers are the roads end highways of Eastern Bengal, and it is impossible to overestimate the importance to the economic life of this part of the province of maintaining these in proper navigable order ....... `` ``As regards the revival or maintenance of minor routes, ... practically nothing has been done, with the result that, in some parts of the Province at least, channels have been silted up, navigation has become limited to a few months in the year, and crops can only be marketed when the Khals rise high enough in the monsoon to make transport possible``.

Sir William Willcock, a distinguished hydraulic engineer, whose name was associated with irrigation enterprises in Egypt and Mesopotamia had made an investigation of conditions in Bengal. He had discovered that innumerable small destructive rivers of the delta region, constantly changing their course, were originally canals which under the English regime were allowed to escape from their channels and run wild. Formerly these canals distributed the flood waters of the Ganges and provided for proper drainage of the land, undoubtedly accounting for that prosperity of Bengal which lured the rapacious East India merchants there in the early days of the eighteenth century.. He wrote`` Not only was nothing done to utilize and improve the original canal system, but railway embankments were subsequently thrown up, entirely destroying it. Some areas, cut off from the supply of loam-bearing Ganges water, have gradually become sterile and unproductive, others improperly drained, show an advanced degree of water-logging, with the inevitable accompaniment of malaria. Nor has any attempt been made to construct proper embankments for the Gauges in its low course, to prevent the enormous erosion by which villages and groves and cultivated fields are swallowed up each year.``

``Sir William Willcock severely criticizes the modern administrators and officials, who, with every opportunity to call in expert technical assistance, have hitherto done nothing to remedy this disastrous situation, from decade to decade.`` Thus wrote G. Emerson in ``Voiceless Millions,`` in 1931 quoting the views of Sir William Willcock in his ``Lectures on the Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal and its Application to Modern Problems`` (Calcutta University Readership Lectures, University of Calcutta, 1930)

Modern Medicine and Life Expectancy

Even some serious critics of colonial rule grudgingly grant that the British brought modern medicine to India. Yet - all the statistical indicators show that access to modern medicine was severely restricted. A 1938 report by the ILO (International Labot Office) on ``Industrial Labor in India`` revealed that life expectancy in India was barely 25 years in 1921 (compared to 55 for England) and had actually fallen to 23 in 1931! In his recently published ``Late Victorian Holocausts`` Mike Davis reports that life expectancy fell by 20% between 1872 and 1921.

In 1934, there was one hospital bed for 3800 people in British India and this figure included hospital beds reserved for the British rulers. (In that same year, in the Soviet Union, there were ten times as many.) Infant mortality in Bombay was 255 per thousand in 1928. (In the same year, it was less than half that in Moscow.)

Poverty and Population Growth

Several Indians when confronted with such data from the colonial period argue that the British should not be specially targeted because India`s problems of poverty pre-date colonial rule, and in any case, were exacerbated by rapid population growth. Of course, no one who makes the first point is able to offer any substantive proof that such conditions prevailed long before the British arrived, and to counter such an argument would be difficult in the absence of reliable and comparable statistical data from earlier centuries. But some readers may find the anecdotal evidence intriguing. In any case, the population growth data is available and is quite remarkable in what it reveals.

Between 1870 and 1910, India`s population grew at an average rate of 19%. England and Wales` population grew three times as fast - by 58%! Average population growth in Europe was 45%. Between 1921-40, the population in India grew faster at 21% but was still less than the 24% growth of population in the US!

In 1941, the density of population in India was roughly 250 per square mile almost a third of England`s 700 per square mile. Although Bengal was much more densely inhabited at almost 780 per square mile - that was only about 10% more than England. Yet, there was much more poverty in British India than in England and an unprecedented number of famines were recorded during the period of British rule.

In the first half of the 19th century, there were seven famines leading to a million and a half deaths. In the second half, there were 24 famines (18 between 1876 and 1900) causing over 20 million deaths (as per official records). W. Digby, noted in ``Prosperous British India`` in 1901 that ``stated roughly, famines and scarcities have been four times as numerous, during the last thirty years of the 19th century as they were one hundred years ago, and four times as widespread.`` In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis points out that here were 31(thirtyone) serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared to 17(seventeen) in the 2000 years before British rule.

Not surprising, since the export of food grains had increased by a factor of four just prior to that period. And export of other agricultural raw materials had also increased in similar proportions. Land that once produced grain for local consumption was now taken over by by former slave-owners from N. America who were permitted to set up plantations for the cultivation of lucrative cash crops exclusively for export. Particularly galling is how the British colonial rulers continued to export foodgrains from India to Britain even during famine years.

Annual British Government reports repeatedly published data that showed 70-80% of Indians were living on the margin of subsistence. That two-thirds were undernourished, and in Bengal, nearly four-fifths were undernourished.

Contrast this data with the following accounts of Indian life prior to colonization:-

`` ....even in the smallest villages rice, flour, butter, milk, beans and other vegetables, sugar and sweetmeats can be procured in abundance .... Tavernier writing in the 17th century in his ``Travels in India``.

Manouchi - the venetian who became chief physician to Aurangzeb (also in the 17th century) wrote: ``Bengal is of all the kingdoms of the Moghul, best known in France..... We may venture to say it is not inferior in anything to Egypt - and that it even exceeds that kingdom in its products of silks, cottons, sugar, and indigo. All things are in great plenty here, fruits, pulse, grain, muslins, cloths of gold and silk...``

The French traveller, Bernier