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What about confederation between–India,Pakistan and Bangladesh.

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Written by Saeed Qureshi
Shared by Syed Ehtisham
“A confederation is a union of sovereign states, united for purposes of common action often in relation to other states. The member states of a confederation retain their sovereignty, they have an implicit right of secession<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession>. Some of the well-known and firmly successfully functioning federations around the world are Belgium, Canada, Union, America, Serbia and  Switzerland<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation#Switzerland>.”
The racial and religious discords between Hindus and Muslims as well as historical perspective, were the predominant reasons for creation of India and Pakistan. Population-wise, the Hindus are 74 per cent followed by Muslims whose percentage is 15 per cent. During the past fourteen hundred years, the Muslims conquerors from the Arab peninsula and the Central Asian states had been assailing, conquering and ruling the territories in India.
The first prominent conquest of Sindh and the remaining territories up to Multan in the Indian sub-continent was by a Muslim Omayyad general Muhammad Bin Qasim in 710-711 AD. His victories became a prelude to the later Islamic military onslaughts and occupation of territories for several centuries. One of the Muslim conquerors Mahmood Ghanavi, reportedly, launched seventeen military forays mostly on the coastal territories of India including the Somnath Temple. He conquered Lahore city in 1015 AD. Each time, after plunder, he went back to his seat of power Ghazni in Afghanistan and never thought of becoming a local ruler or the monarch of the captured territories. He however appointed governors in the conquered territories.
Until 1160 AD, the Ghaznavid Empire<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghaznavids> was spread from central Afghanistan east to the Punjab, later another Afghan Muslim ruler and army general Shahabuddin Ghori conquered all the Ghazni occupied territories. From Shahabuddin Ghori onwards a series of conquerors from the North followed and established their islamic dynasties one after another by defeating their Islamic predecessors and local non-Muslim potentates. The last was the Mughal empire established by Zahiruddin Babar which lasted until 1857 when Britain took over India by deposing the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar in 1857. He was exiled to Rangoon (Burma) along with his family. The British colonial rule in India began in 1793 and ended in 1947<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidencies_and_provinces_of_British_India#British_India_(1793-1947)>. At midnight on 14–15 August 1947, the two successor self-governing states of Pakistan and India came into being.
The Islamic dispensations promoted Islam in every possible manner: be it building mosques or preaching Islam either by peaceful or other means. The local Hindu, Buddhists and other religious populations were the pristine natives and believers in polytheism and worshippers of idols, statues and animals. They had an entirely different cultural, religious and historical background.
The advent of Muslims in ancient India led to the faith-based collusion between local faiths and that of Islam. One may imagine the sense of alienation and deprivation by the Hindus and other non-islamic minorities under the control of an alien nation, culture and religion that continued for centuries. But this is how the human history had been all along and in all the societies.
Under the bourgeoning pressure of liberation movement led by both the Muslims’ political party “All India Muslim League<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_India_Muslim_League>” and “The Indian National Congress” party for the Hindus, the British monarchy decided to leave India. Yet the most fundamental dilemma before them was as to whom to transfer power. The Muslims were the nation from whom the British took over power. The Indian Hindu majority population would not want to live under a latter-day Islamic governance.
The Muslims had the same perception of alienation under the Hindu majority rule, all the more when they have been ruling the Indian Subcontinent for 12 centuries either fully or partially. Both the communities viz. Hindus and Muslims started colliding in their claims to be the successor to the British rule in the India. The Hindus would not want India to be divided nor were ready to accept the Muslims as taking over India as rulers.
The bitter and unflinching conflict of claim over power led to the division of India according to the size of the population of both the communities. Thus, in August 1947, the British India was partitioned into two parts by the outgoing British government under then then viceroy Lord Mount Batten. Thus, two states viz, Bharat for the Hindus and Pakistan for the Muslims emerged. This was indeed a myopic resolution as perceived in the light of the perpetual military conflicts and confrontations that happened in later times between India and Pakistan and which still continue.
The partition led to a massive upheaval, displacement and migration of the population across the unguarded borders which meant the Muslims migrating to Pakistan and the Hindus from the Pakistan’s territories to India.  Millions of migrating people and families perished on the way because of the bloodshed carried out on both the sides by mostly the religiously hate-filled bands of looters, as well as other assailants and marauders.
Unfortunately, since 1947 both the successor states of British India have seldom been entirely friendly or good neighbors. There have been some undecide areas called “disputed territories”, whose placement or alliance either with India or Pakistan couldn’t be decided one way or the other during the time pf partition. However, their fate was to be decided later by the plebiscite or through the vote of the people of those territories as enshrined in the partition plan. Their choice was whether they wanted to integrate with India or Pakistan.
One of such territorial disputes is about the valley of Kashmir. However. In case of Kashmir, India always opposed the plebiscite option under the apprehension that the majority Muslim population of Kashmir would prefer to join with Pakistan than India.  In the meantime, the settlement of Kashmir dispute is still in a state of limbo. That one issue, not only entailed several armed conflicts between India and Pakistan, but also adversely affected their economies which were partly diverted from peoples’ welfare to the production and procurement of weapons including the nuclear arsenal.
During the last 70 years, besides several standing armed conflicts, bloody clashes and other armed engagements, India and Pakistan have fought four major wars in 1947,1965, 1971 and 1999. We all know how devastating these military incursions have been for both the neighbors for a durable peace and unhindered economic progress in the Indian subcontinent.
The simple question ignored by both the Muslim and Hindu leadership should have been that if Hindus and other religious non-islamic denominations lived under the Islamic rule for a pretty long period of time, why couldn’t they live together after the exit of the Britain from the Indian Subcontinent. As such that division should be taken as an historic blunder.
Suppose one of the countries dominates and defeats the others by ascendency of nuclear power, would that mean that the victor would, thereafter, rule peacefully. Wouldn’t it generate perennial jingoistic and military conflict between India and Pakistan. Let us keep in mind that in an atomic war no side would be victor. All would be the losers.
However, the most damaging aspect is the intention, mentality and competition for acquiring the capability for mutual destruction and annihilation. God forbid if both the countries use atomic weapons then It could be the first atomic war after the dropping of two bombs by USA on two cities of Japan Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) during the world war-II. In those atomic bombings, millions of people perished or maimed.  Even after 71 years of those devastating nuclear attacks, the normal life or livable environment couldn’t be entirely revived.
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh should not suffer from false egos but understand that the people are most important for all the three regional countries. Would Hinduism or Islam prevail after the holocaust of wars? No way. On the contrary the surviving population in the Subcontinent would suffer for centuries. This present technology is not that of 50s. It is hundred times more destructive than what it was several decades ago.
The historic folly of partition can be rectified if all the three states of the Indian Subcontinent, namely India, Pakistan and Bangladesh join hands in a confederal setup and move along with peace, dignity and togetherness for a glorious future of their people. That milestone would ensure economic and social stability for their people suffering enormously for all these decades due to the bitterness between the two countries of India and Pakistan.. If Saudi Arabia and India per say, are more cordial friendly states despite deep religious cleavage, why cannot the Islamic states of Bangladesh and Pakistan on one side and Republic of India on the other live peacefully with each other..
Let us admit that partition of India was demanded by the Muslims and not by the Hindus. Now It should be the Muslims of the Indian Subcontinent who should take initiatives in calling for a confederation.
The people of Bangladesh had a genuine reason and grounds to separate because the majority party Awami League from East Pakistan was not given the right to form the government after her victory in the first General elections held in Pakistan<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan> on 7 December 1970.. Instead, they were victimized and brutalized by a massive military onslaught and operation causing innumerable deaths widespread destruction and ruination on both the side. The People of former East Pakistan launched a civil war under Awami league party headed by Mujiburehman and won that war with the help of India.
Thus, a separate country Bangladesh came into being. That backlog of stigma, tragedy and humiliation for the then west Pakistan and its armed forces and even the West Pakistan’s political parties can be allayed through a confederation. Yet the attainment of that goal depends upon the consent of the people of Bangladesh as well as India.
Within a confederation, the people would be able to visit all places that are spiritually and by faith sacred and precious to all the religions, faiths and denominations. The disputed territories would be no more disputed to be safeguarded and fought by heavy military contingents. The people of Kashmir and other disputed areas, struggling for territories, identities and national rights would become part of a government that would be their own. Thus, they would be able to enter power corridors through public votes from their respective areas of representations. On top of it, the tension and animosity that is rampant and persistent at the cost of national progress, peace and prosperity would vanish. Is that a bad bargain.?
The religious fanaticism would give way to better understanding and respect and faith-based co-existence for all beliefs. Anyway, the people are more important as for peace and the mutually honorable cohabitation is concerned.. The Muslims would go to their mosques and the Hindus to their temples and the other denominations to their places of worship.
Thus, the vested and intriguing role of the leading world powers to blackmail and pit one developing country against another for selling weapons and military hardware, could be halted. That would in turn be helpful in eliminating poverty and backwardness in all the three members of confederation.
Let the leadership from the three regional countries join hands, sit together, click the button and take a giant step for a grandiose and historic decision of entering into confederal set up. If Hindus, Muslims and other religious minorities have been living together for ages, then they can still live in a confederation which would safeguard their lives, as well as quality of life and ensure peace in the Subcontinent.
The writer is a senior journalist, former editor of Diplomatic Times and a former diplomat..

Why is there zero gravity in space? By Michelle Thaller

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Michelle Thaller: Joshua, you ask a really great question, “Why is there no gravity in space?” I bet you’ve seen pictures of the astronauts up in the space station and they’re floating around as if there’s no gravity at all. This is actually a really interesting misconception about what’s going on with the astronauts. And it gets to one of my favorite questions in all of astronomy, and that is: what is an orbit? What’s happening when astronauts are orbiting the Earth? And why does it appear like there’s no gravity in space?

So, to talk about why this is kind of a misconception, the astronauts are about 200 miles above the surface of the Earth in the space station; the space station orbits around us about once every 90 minutes. It’s not that they’re so far away from the Earth that there’s no gravity—in fact, if you built a skyscraper that was 200 miles tall and you were up on one of those top floors you might weigh a tiny little bit less, but you probably weigh at least about 80 percent what you normally would. You’re really not that much farther away from the Earth. So it’s not that they’re weightless because they’re in space and far away from the Earth, they’re actually close enough to the Earth to feel the gravitational pull of the Earth itself. So what’s going on? Why are they floating around?

Well, this is what an orbit really is. We have to get spacecraft going very, very fast to put them into orbit. That’s why we put them on rockets. Rockets launch spacecraft and get them going very, very fast, and if you’re in orbit where the space station is, you’re traveling at about 17,000 miles an hour.

Now, what happens to those astronauts is that they’re going very, very fast but they’re actually freely falling towards the Earth. The Earth has gravity, and that gravity is pulling them down just the same as what would happen as if you dropped a ball. If you dropped a ball it would fall to the floor. The same thing is happening to the astronauts; they are falling towards the surface of the Earth.

But here’s a cool thing: they’re going so fast they keep missing the Earth as they fall. And that’s the definition of an orbit.

Now think about it this way: I talked about dropping a ball and the ball just falls straight down; what would happen if I put the ball in a little cannon and shot it out? The ball would start to drop towards the Earth the minute it left the cannon, but the cannon has given it some velocity, and so the ball might go a hundred yards, right? It might actually go a hundred yards before it fell because the cannon gave it that velocity.

Now, let’s take an even bigger cannon, let’s take a huge cannon that can shoot things many, many miles. So you shoot the ball out, the ball is still falling freely towards the Earth all the time, but now it goes farther because you’ve given it more velocity. And maybe with a really big cannon, you can shoot a ball a hundred miles.

What about with a rocket? With a rocket, you could get something going so fast, up to 17,000 miles an hour, that as it fell freely towards Earth, Earth would keep curving away under it and it would keep missing it.

That’s what an orbit is, and that’s why you need a rocket to get into orbit. You need to get yourself going so fast that, as you fall back towards Earth, you keep missing it.

So the astronauts are not weightless because there’s no gravity in space; the astronauts are falling the same way a skydiver is falling freely through space, it’s just that they’re going so fast they keep missing the Earth.

They are all the time falling towards the Earth going fast enough that they keep missing it.

Everything that’s in orbit around anything else is doing the same thing. Right now you and I are falling freely towards the sun, but the Earth is moving, actually at about 30,000 miles an hour, and we keep missing the sun as we go around it, and that means we’re in orbit around the sun.

The moon is in orbit around the Earth. It’s falling towards the Earth, it’s just traveling so fast it keeps missing it. You’ve asked an excellent question. Everything in space that is orbiting is freely falling under gravity, it’s just going too fast to ever hit anything.

http://bigthink.com/videos/michelle-thaller-why-is-there-zero-gravity-in-space?utm_source=Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e9898486a6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_06_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_45b26faecc-e9898486a6-43656993

“Post-America World & Post-America, America” By F. Sheikh

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After WWII, two new super powers emerged, United States of America and Soviet Union. America took a central stage in world politics as well as in world economy. Britain and other colonial powers were forced out of their colonial lands. American expanded its influence in many of those countries. America’s Marshal plan for war ridden Europe expanded its influence in Western Europe. Soviet Union took Eastern Europe under its fold and started to compete with America for its own influence in other countries. This gave us cold war, arms race, proxy wars and ideological war around the globe. America supported even dictators and monarch, especially in the Middle East, for its influence and economic interests.

America became a military giant and at the same time an economic powerhouse attracting talent from around the globe. Soviet Union tried to match America’s military might and dominance, but it sorely lacked economic development and disintegrated in 1991, leaving one super power standing-United States of America.

Despite America’s record of supporting favorite dictators, toppling unfriendly regimes and brutal ideological wars, it was still seen in the world as a symbol of human aspirations of liberty, success, and individual prosperity. Overall America projected itself as a force of good, democratic values, and morals; and it considered itself guardian of those values in the world and at home.

All this perception started to change after America’s fierce and revengeful response to brutal 9/11 attack. In anger and short-sightedness, it trampled on the very same values and ideals, both at home and abroad, which it wore as a badge of honor and national identity. It adopted torture forbidden by Geneva Convention, opened Rendition Torture Centers abroad, locked up prisoners, including some innocents, for years at Guantanamo Bay without Habeas corpus, abused prisoners at Abu Gharib and in Afghanistan, and violated civil liberties at home with Patriot Act. Cities were bombed to stone ages with thousands of innocent civilians killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.  America eroded its leadership in the world as guardian and leader of moral, liberal, and democratic values.

President Obama tried to reverse this erosion by half measures, but it has taken its roots. Anti-terrorism evolved into an industry requiring full attention and resources at the expense of other priorities. United States forced other countries to adopt similar anti-terrorist measures and allocate essential resources. Tyrants and oppressive regimes further strengthen their grip on power by utilizing anti-terrorist excuses. Meanwhile globalization created extreme inequality that went unnoticed and unattended by the mainstream political parties. Eroded values and inequality, a fertile ground for populous parties and demagogue leaders, gave us Donald Trump and populous leaders in other countries.

Donald Trump destroyed, within a short time, last vestiges of America’s leadership and moral standing in the world and is isolating itself from rest of the world. We are still superior economic and military power, but we are no longer the leader. It is a post-America world unfolding in front of us. Western Europe is adrift, while China is flexing its newfound economic muscle. New technology, including social media, has provided new tools to adversaries that can sow the seeds of discontent and factionalism without much investment. America lost its leadership at a crucial moment when it was needed the most to create strong global norms and rules to prevent the abuses of new technology which has the potential of great benefits but at the same time potential of unleashing destructive forces. This leadership was critical when the global and domestic infrastructure in every sphere of life depends on new technology.

When you are a world leader, you are under pressure to perform better in every aspect, both abroad and at home. The world holds you at a higher standard. When the leadership standing is eroded, performance deteriorates. It is a vicious cycle. When your own expectations are low, and others also expect low from you, it is hard to improve performance.  In a recent article in Washington Post, Ben Guarino writes that some top researchers from ivy league institutions are moving to China for lack of funding and visa restrictions. China is offering them all the resources needed and better monetary benefits. China is attracting talent from the rest of the world also that was our hallmark and lifeline.

America itself is a post-America country now. American ideals, values and patriotism take a back seat to personal and political party interests. Our political leaders are no different from third world country leaders who do not hesitate to undermine established national institutions of democracy for personal interests. Our business corporations are richer than country, but no longer feel obligation to the country that provided them resources to get rich.

Can it be reversed? Off course, but first we must restore our ideals, morals and stop the slide. It will get harder with every passing day, especially with incompetent and shortsighted leadership.

 

What’s the difference between A.I., machine learning, and robotics?

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Artificial intelligence is everywhere. On your screens, in your pockets and one day may even be walking to a home near you. The headlines tend to group together this vast and diverse field into one subject. Robots emerging from the labs, algorithms playing ancient games and winning, AI and its promises are becoming a part of our everyday lives. While all of these instances have some relationship to AI, this is not a monolithic field, but one that has many separate and distinct disciplines.

A lot of the times we use the term Artificial intelligence as an all-encompassing umbrella term that covers everything. That’s not exactly the case. A.I., machine learning, deep learning, and robotics are all fascinating and separate topics. They all serve as an integral piece of the greater future of our tech. Many of these categories tend to overlap and complement one another.

The broader AI field of study is an extensive place where you have a lot to study and choose from. Understanding the difference between these four areas are foundational to getting a grasp and seeing the whole picture of the field.

Artificial intelligence

At the root of AI technology is the ability for machines to be able to perform tasks characteristic of human intelligence. These types of things include planning, pattern recognizing, understanding natural language, learning and solving problems.

There are two main types of AI: general and narrow. Our current technological capabilities fall under the latter. Narrow AI exhibits a sliver of some kind of intelligence – be it reminiscent of an animal or a human. This machine’s expertise is as the name would suggest, is narrow in scope. Usually, this type of AI will only be able to do one thing extremely well, like recognize images or search through databases at lightning speed.

General intelligence would be able to perform everything equally or better than humans can. This is the goal of many AI researchers, but it is a ways down the road.

Current AI technology is responsible for a lot of amazing things. These algorithms help Amazon give you personalized recommendations and makes sure your Google searches are relevant to what you’re looking for. Mostly any technologically literate person uses this type of tech every day.

One of the main differentiators between AI and conventional programming is the fact that non-AI programs are carried out by a set of defined instructions. AI on the other hand learns without being explicitly programmed.

Here is when the confusion starts to take place. Often times – but not all the time – AI utilizes machine learning, which is a subset of the AI field. If we go a little deeper, we get deep learning, which is a way to implement machine learning from scratch.

Furthermore, when we think about robotics we tend to think that robots and AI are interchangeable terms. AI algorithms are usually only one part of a larger technological matrix of hardware, electronics and non-AI code inside of a robot.

Robot… or artificially intelligent robot?

Robotics is a branch of technology that concerns itself strictly with robots. A robot is a programmable machine that carries out a set of tasks autonomously in some way. They’re not computers nor are they strictly artificially intelligent.

Many experts cannot agree on what exactly constitutes a robot. But for our purposes, we’ll consider that it has a physical presence, is programmable and has some level of autonomy. Here are a few different examples of some robots we have today:

  • Roomba (Vacuum Cleaning Robot)

  • Automobile Assembly Line Arm

  • Surgery Robots

  • Atlas (Humanoid Robot)

Some of these robots, for example, the assembly line robot or surgery bot are explicitly programmed to do a job. They do not learn. Therefore we could not consider them artificially intelligent.

These are robots that are controlled by inbuilt AI programs. This is a recent development, as most industrial robots were only programmed to carry out repetitive tasks without thinking.  Self-learning bots with machine learning logic inside of them would be considered AI. They need this in order to perform increasingly more complex tasks.

“I’m sorry, Dave…” — Hal 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

What’s the difference between Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?

At its foundation, machine learning is a subset and way of achieving true AI. It was a term coined by Arthur Samuel in 1959, where he stated: “The ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.”

The idea is to get the algorithm to learn or be trained to do something without being specifically hardcoded with a set of particular directions. It is the machine learning that paves way for artificial intelligence.

Arthur Samuel wanted to create a computer program that could enable his computer to beat him in checkers. Rather than create a detailed and long-winding program that could do it, he thought of a different idea. The algorithm that he created gave his computer the ability to learn as it played thousands of games against itself. This has been the crux of the idea ever since. By the early 1960s, this program was able to beat champions in the game.

Over the years, machine learning developed into a number of different methods. Those being:

  1. Supervised

  2. Semi-supervised

  3. Unsupervised

  4. Reinforcement

In a supervised setting, a computer program would be given labeled data and then be asked to assign a sorting parameter to them. This could be pictures of different animals and then it would guess and learn accordingly while it trained. Semi-supervised would only label a few of the images. After that, the computer program would have to use its algorithm to figure out the unlabeled images by using its past data.

Unsupervised machine learning doesn’t involve any preliminary labeled data. It would be thrown into the database and have to sort for itself different classes of animals. It could do this based on grouping similar objects together due to how they look and then creating rules on the similarities it finds along the way.

Reinforcement learning is a little bit different than all of these subsets of machine learning. A great example would be the game of Chess. It knows a set amount of rules and bases its progress on the end result of either winning or losing.

A.I., 2001, Stephen Speilberg

Deep learning

For an even deeper subset of machine learning comes deep learning. It’s tasked with far greater types of problems than just rudimentary sorting. It works in the realm of vasts amounts of data and comes to its conclusion with absolutely no previous knowledge.

If it was to differentiate between two different animals, it would distinguish them in a different way compared to regular machine learning. First, all pictures of the animals would be scanned, pixel by pixel. Once that was completed, it would then parse through the different edges and shapes, ranking them in a differential order to determine the difference.

Deep learning tends to require much more hardware power. These machines that run this are usually housed away in large data centers. Programs that use deep learning are essentially starting from scratch.

Of all the AI disciplines, deep learning is the most promising for one day creating a generalized artificial intelligence. Some current applications that deep learning has spurned have been the many chatbots we see today. Alexa, Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana can thank their brains because of this nifty tech.

A new cohesive approach

There have been many seismic shifts in the tech world this past century. From the computing age to the internet and to the world of mobile devices. These different categories of tech will pave the way for a new future. Or as Google CEO Sundar Pichai put it quite nicely:

“Over time, the computer itself—whatever its form factor—will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an A.I. first world.”

Artificial intelligence in all of its many forms combined together will take us on our next technological leap forward. Full Artcle

posted by f.sheikh