Notice

I shall be on the move for a week or two. I need a break from blogging and hope to get back by second week of April. Here is to all my friends ,

Take care, 

benny

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1848 and Aftermath -Nationalism

 The year 1848 can be considered as the beginning of the modern Europe.
In an obscure German paper Karl Marx published
the Communist Manifesto. It was a challenge to the entrenched order
that was at best benevolent but despotic and exploitative.

It all began with violent
changes across the channel. In England was the Chartism and in Franc
Louis Philippe had been removed from the French throne in February 1848,
and revolutions
were soon to convulse other European capitals.

In early 1848 none of the greater states of Europe functioned as democracies. Britain, where about one-in-five adult males (in England) had voting rights, and France, where voting rights were allowed to very wealthy men, amounting to about one-in-two-hundred of all adult males, were the least undemocratic. The other greater states of Éurope – the “Austrian” Habsburg Empire, Prussia and Russia operated as absolute monarchies where such Assemblies of Notables, Congregations or Diets, as were authorised to convene were understood to have administrative or consultative roles rather than political or legislative powers.   The European Revolutions of 1848 represent a widespead emergenc of situations, across much of Europe, where populist human aspirations variously sought constitutional, liberal, nationalist or socialistic changes in society often at the cost of traditionally influential dynastic or religious authorities. In February 1948, the British historian Lewis Namier (1888–1960) delivered a lecture commemorating the centennial of the European Revolutions of 1848. In this lecture Namier presented facts about the historical developments and themes evident in 1848 and reached the conclusion that:- “1848 remains a seed-plot of history. It crystallized ideas and projected the pattern of things to come; it determined the course of the following century.” Heartened by the French example a national revolt under the legendary Lajos Kossuth demanding a parliamentary government for Hungary and constitutional government for the rest of Habsburg Empire. As a result number of revolts sent Metternich out of power and ripples as far as Italy. The movement for Hungarian Independence lost by two reasons. Austria and Prussia despite their long running feud closed their ranks to protect the divine rights of their rule, Secondly the Czechs ,Romanians and Serbs within the empire resisted thus proving the ethnic minorities were the Achilles heel in the body of Nationalism. Cluster principle shows how impossible Nationalism is at heart. How can one divide mankind into labels? If Nationalism goes about to create a nation instantly there shall be cluster of divisions by the same argument that shall be on ethnic, sectarian lines. Here we see a paradox that works even this day. Hungarian nationalism of Kossuth was generously liberal; in combating the national feelings of the Slavs and other minorities in their midst the Hungarians were as illiberal as nationalists elsewhere. Earlier the Enlightenment and the French Revolution had declared the rights of man. “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” But it was another principle that spurred the Nationalism. “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body or individual can exercise authority, if it does not take its origin from the nation.” This is what Hitler as der Fuehrer demanded from the Germans and got.The exaltation of nationalism had set a conflagration in order to create great catastrophes. Shall Putin treat Ukraine as Hitler did in his time?(ack: age of the sage.org) benny

 

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Pen Portraits- Theodor Herzl

Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)
founder of the political form of Zionism, a movement to establish a Jewish homeland. His pamphlet The Jewish State (1896) proposed that the Jewish question was a political question to be settled by a world council of nations. He organized a world congress of Zionists that met in Basel, Switz., in August 1897 and became first president of the World Zionist Organization, established by the congress. Although Herzl died more than 40 years before the establishment of the State of Israel, he was an indefatigable organizer, propagandist without whose vision the state of Israel might have turned out altogether different and out of step with the times.

A Jew in name but in all other things totally assimilated into the prevailing consciousness of Germanic culture as an ideal,he even joined a fencing club Albia in his Vienna days to prove he was unlike the typical Jew bred in the dingy ghetto. 1881 pogrom in Tsarist Russia coincided with closer at home politicians of the Right and Catholic clergy inveighing against liberalism that had given Jews certain exceptions. The Church of Rome had singled the Jews for their ire since they supported Bismarck’s anti-clerical policies. The changing political climate was something like the verse from the Exodus. ‘There arose up a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph.'(ex.1:8)
It is however difficult not to bring in Moses for comparison. The original Moses turned back on the Egyptian culture but Herzl wanted to create a secular nation than a Jewish homeland revolving about the Torah. He did not even believe Moses as the author of Penteteuch. He was a Reluctant Moses who set out achieve his goal once he was sure of the vast scope of his mission. It appealed to the dreamer in him, and the oversized ego that equalled matched his commanding presence.

Born and brought up in the dual monarchies of Austro-Hungarian empire he spoke German and not Hungarian. Born to parents who were well to do (assimilated in secular ideals) he preferred literary fame above all. Among earliest of his heroes none were of Jewish persuasion. In his youth he had seen the Iron Chancellor creating a grand German Federation and in his life mission it must have unconsciously served as the template. Pan-Germanism was inclusive of all peoples subscribing to German culture that cut across various client states about Berlin. Growing up in Vienna Herzl was well tuned to the growing trends. There was also anti-semitism running into all levels of the society. As a reporter in Paris during the Dreyfus Affair he realized there was no other way to recast the proverbial Shylock image into a citizen of the world. It would require a nation. People don’t change from within, but change their social structure they would also change, a dictum that seems very valid. There were quite many detractors but it certainly speaks of the optimism and impermeable spirit of the man to stay his course.
In a sense his dedication to the cause to which personally he had great antipathy but nevertheless a great cause to give his all, makes him ‘King’ Herzl. He is rightly called the father of the nation of Israel.
benny

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The Crimean Conundrum

Today Crimea is seeking referendum in a move to break away from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.

Western powers have denounced the hastily organized referendum as illegal.

Some 59 percent of Crimea’s 2 million inhabitants are ethnic Russians, the minority question which has bedeviled since the early 19 th century resonates even this very day. Nationalism of Hungary Italy against monarchies have not yet sorted the friction between majority rights and minority rule. How the nation-builders got their act wrong we can see at the Paris peace conference after World War I.

That war felled the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, bequeathing to the Allied victors a hotch-potch of ethnic and cultural identities clamoring for statehood. The peace pitted Wilson’s “imperative principle” of self-government for formerly subject peoples was to stop the customary tendency of European statesmen sitting over fine dining and a smoke in the billiard room redrawing maps as though it were toting up gambling losses.

The U.S. President’s principle somehow didn’t extend to Ukraine. His opposition to a sovereign Ukrainian state was backed by the British and French, supporters of anti-Bolshevik forces in the civil war in the wake of 1917 revolution.While the Paris peacemakers bestowed statehood on the likes of Czechoslovakia and Hungary Ukraine was left to be fought over by Poland and Russia. Poland seized swathes of Ukraine’s territory and the rest was swallowed up in the newly formed Soviet Union,1922.

(British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said he had glimpsed a Ukrainian only once in his life “and I am not sure that I want to see any more,” Margaret MacMillan wrote in her 2001 book, “Peacemakers.”)

To be fair to the high-minded President Wilson he was hoping the resurgent Russian empire would reverse the Bolshevik takeover. Something we have seen similarly in the Middle East. Wave democracy for all your worth the region shall be all the better for it.

Wilson’s tactics in 1919, and the West’s ambivalence toward Ukraine after it finally broke free of Soviet control in 1991, show the limited options available to the U.S. and its allies in response.

Note: One supplicant inspired by what Wilson called “the sacredness of the right of self-determination” was Nguyen Tat Thanh. The man later known as Ho Chi Minh petitioned the conference to grant Indochina independence from France. Wilson never replied, according to “The Wilsonian Moment,” a 2007 book by Erez Manela, a Harvard University history professor.
A surgeon’s mistake is covered by a tombstone. What if a statesman makes a blunder? Mass graves as one sees in Vietnam and elsewhere make any personal tombstone redundant. ( ack:James G. Neuger /bloomber.net)

benny

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Death Isn’t the last word

Stars run out of their fuel and die. Supernovae is but the beginning. New stars emerge from debris.

We are made up what stars have sent out willy-nilly and considering these could have come from anywhere we might say Cosmos is our cradle. When we speak of earth is our home planet we are abridging many details and giving more focus on life form than our true state. We would hold stars as our family and we live among stars dying and being.

How on earth death can be any different for star children? There is nothing I brought myself save what my father bequeathed. Of course he merely passed what dying stars bequeathed to him down through several generations of his forebears. He passed on secrete packets of information encoded in his genes and my usefulness in these times is not much I can do about the past but what I adapt and use to be relevant from my time and place.

ii

Here I am quoting from Space.com news of March,14-Every black hole conceals a secret — the quantum remains of the star from which it formed, say a group of scientists, who also predict that these stars can later emerge once the black hole evaporates.

The researchers call these objects “Planck stars” and believe that they could solve a very important question in modern physics: the information paradox, or the question of what happens to information contained in matter that falls into a black holes.

Black holes are regions of space so incredibly dense that nothing, not even light, can escape from them. Most are thought to form at the end of a big star’s life, when its internal pressure is insufficient to resist its own gravity and the star collapses under its own weight.

Since the laws of physics no longer apply in a region of infinite density, no one knows what could possibly happen inside a black hole.

Stephen Hawking suggested in the early 1970s that black holes can slowly evaporate and disappear. But in this case, what happens to the information that describes an object that falls into a black hole? According to general relativity, information cannot simply disappear; inside a black hole, however, information apparently does. This “information paradox” has puzzled researchers for decades. “The quantum gravitational effects produce an effective repulsive force, so that matter wouldn’t have collapsed into a singularity.

This way, the universe would “bounce” when the energy density of matter reached the Planck scale, the smallest possible size in physics, causing the universe to expand again, and then possibly collapse again, and so on, back and forth.

Because of old age I drag my feet and I cannot bounce anymore. If my information cannot ever be lost I shall be around even though my soul is clothed with a new set of clothes and speak altogether new ‘lingo’ that as children have secret language to throw off parents from clueing in, I shall be still relevant.   

 

Death is but a change of worlds.

benny

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Quatrain #4- the Rubaiyat Free Translation

Now the New Year opens a new page for all:

My soul sounds and no more can in gloom dwell:

“Where He that was, He that is and will be”

If so be let Hope fill my barrel full.

benny

A Prosperous New Year for all,

 

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The Breeze and I

 

Nearly all of the Earth’s atmosphere is made up of only five gases: nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, argon, and carbon dioxide. Several other compounds also are present. Air can contain as much as 5% water vapor.

 

99% of the mass of the human body is made up of only six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Every organic molecule contains carbon.

 

Since 65-90% of each body cell consists of water (by weight), it isn’t surprising that oxygen and hydrogen are major components of the body. Hydrogen is a component of the water molecules in the body, as well as most other compounds.Oxygen is necessary for respiration. You will find this element in the lungs, since about 20% of the air you breathe is oxygen.

 

 Carbon is ingested in food the food we eat and in the air we breathe. Carbon accounts for 18.6% of the total mass of the human body.

 

Nitrogen is a component of proteins, nucleic acids, and other organic compounds.Nitrogen gas is found in the lungs, since most of the air you breathe consists of this element.

 

Calcium is a major component of the skeletal system. It is found in bones and teeth. Calcium is a metal. It readily oxidizes in air. Because it makes up such a large part of the skeleton, about one-third of the mass of human body comes from calcium, after water has been removed.The element is incorporated into the bones, combines with other elements including iron, potassium, sodium, magnesium and calcium. It is necessary for sexual function and reproduction, muscle growth, and to supply nutrients to the nerves.

 

Potassium primarily is found in the muscles and nerves as an ion. Potassium is important for membrane function, nerve impulses, and muscle contractions.

 

Sodium is important for proper nerve and muscle function. It is excreted in perspiration.

 

Chlorine aids in cellular absorption of water. It is the major anion in body fluids. Chlorine is a part of hydrochloric acid, used to digest food. It is involved in proper cell membrane function.

 

Phosphorus is found in the nucleus of every cell. Phosphorus is part of nucleic acids, energy compounds.

 

Magnesium is a cofactor for enzymes in the body.Magnesium is needed for strong teeth and bones.

 

Sulfur is a component of many amino acids and proteins.

 

 

In such a chemical cocktail that permeates the air,space and objects I see nothing but form and function. 
Form of man and form of plants thriving in cosmos to be of use to one another is simplicity in itself. We need oxygen and plants need carbon dioxide. In supplying each others needs we have fulfilled our roles that of course is one among many dimensions we run into each other. ‘I think there fore I am.’ In order to know that my brain again  of same substance as in Cosmos, fired up certain electro-chemical impulses. It has no reality outside myself really.

We palaver, chat up to higher-ups and make deals, cut corners,stab backs of each other and are locked up for some 30 years in Louisiana and released because of some lacuna in human justice and, thank God we have showed Law still reigns supreme under the sun. It is much about nothing really.

  benny 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mulla Nasruddin Stories -At the Hamam

At the Turkish hamam Mulla Nasruddin was being worked over very roughly by his attendant. Having subjected his client to uncalled for comments about his difficulties he ended his non-stop harangue by saying he always got the miserly ones who never tipped him for his pains. Suddenly he stopped short. He rudely pointed to his woolen mittens to show the dirt he had collected. ‘What am to do with these the fellow queried.

‘That was your tip!’ said Mullah as he walked out. 

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Why do I love Okra*?

 

Why do I love Okra?

It is mucous and sticks in my craw

To tell the truth. 

Why do I still eat it sautéed?

I ate my first helping 

While on my mother’s lap,

I cried all my four years’ worth

But thought I never had it so 

Good fed by my mother.

Past my prime I still eat

Okra that sticks in my craw-

For it is not mucous but a lump

Of memory and it fights for

Another helping.

benny

*Okra-vegetable,ladies finger,

 

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Mulla Nasruddin-Tales-playtime

Mulla one morning came across an ice-vendor who said, ’Nasruddin, here is the father of all ice. Straight from the mountain.’

‘Give me his son.’ He took a chunk in his box and said ‘hush lil baby I’m gonna eat you.’ Paying the vendor he walked off.

He went to Hamam. After a steam bath he felt thirsty. Under the shade of a tree he sat. ‘It is time I heard some baby-talk.’ He opened the box and poured the water down his throat,’gurgle, gurgle.’

With satisfaction he stood up to tell the standers-by, ‘I knew his grand father.’

They laughed indicating the mulla was a bit mad.

Then came hailstones and Mulla lifted his eyes to ask,’ Does your grandfather let you play outside at all hours?’

benny

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