Episode 14 Northwest and North India

A History of India

Michael Fisher (2016)

Film Review

Following the fall of the Mauryan Empire, the Gupta Empire (4th-6th century AD) was the only major kingdom in north India. Arising in the fertile Gangetic plain, the Gupta Empire increased agricultural production and trade sufficiently over time to conquer various kingdoms to its south and west.

During this period the population of north India consisted mainly of so-called Indo-Greek Bactrians.* Destablization by the 327 BC invasion by Alexander Great subjected the region to a regular influx of Central Asian tribes. During the 2nd century BC, the Scythians eventually conquered much of modern day Gujarat and Rajistan. During the 1st-3rd century AD, the Kushans,** who dominated the Silk Road, occupied the Indus Valley. In the 3rd-4th century AD, the Persian Sassanian Empire conquered the Indus valley with the rest of the Kushan. At the end of 5th century, the Huna (Huns), driven west by China would assume control of the Indus Valley.

Surviving 200 years, the Gupta dynasty eventually conquered all of north India. Chandragupta II (taking his name from the founder of the Mauryan empire Chandragupta Maurya) was the third Gupta king (375-415 AD). His armies were known with their prowess with the steel longbow and the elephants they rode into battle (thanks to abundant iron, coal and elephants in Magadha, his main power base).

He extended his rule across the entire Gangetic plain and acquired new territory on the Deccan Plateau by intermarrying with a Deccani royal family. Flourishing urban economies caused Sanskrit literature, astronomy and mathematics to flourish during a period that also saw the rise of Ayurvedic medicine and the concept of zero.

Paying Brahman priests to advise them, the Gugta emperors mainly embraced Brahmanism, except for the Indus Valley, where support from the Kushan Empire empowered Mayahana Buddhism.

Weakened by numerous Hun invasions, the Gupta empire collapsed in 550 AD and splintered into numerous smaller warring kingdoms.

Owing to a lack of archeological remains, most evidence from comes from coins and the records of visiting Chinese Buddhists.

*Bactria is the Roman term for an ancient Persian kingdom on the Central Asian steppes.

**SeeThe Role of the Kushan Empire in the First Silk Road

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/366254/366199

EU Times

The global climate cult is getting ready to kick its war on food into overdrive with 13 nations – many of them major cattle and food-producing states led by the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Spain – signing onto a commitment to place farmers under new restrictions intended to reduce emissions of methane gas.

The Global Methane Hub announced in a May 17 press release that agriculture and environmental ministers and ambassadors from 13 countries, including the United States, have signed a commitment that pledges to reduce methane emissions in agriculture. The U.S. was represented by Biden’s climate czar, John Kerry.

What does this mean and why should you care? We’ll break it down.

According to the press release issued by these nations and posted at Global Methane Hub:

“Last month (in April 2023), the Global Methane Hub collaborated with the Ministries of Agriculture of Chile and Spain to convene the first-ever global ministerial on agricultural practices to reduce methane emissions. The ministerial brought together high-ranking government members to share global perspectives on methane reduction and low-emission food systems. The gathering led to a statement in which the nations committed to support efforts to improve the quality and quantity of, and access to, finance for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in the agriculture and food sectors and to collaborate on efforts aimed at lowering methane emissions in agriculture and food systems.”

Conference participants included the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Climate & Clean Air Coalition, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Inter-American Development Bank.

The World Bank, another creation of the post-World War II, U.S.-led liberal rules-based order, has been talking a lot lately, along with the U.N., about a coming famine. The World Bank issued a white paper just last week, on May 22, titled Food Security Update: World Bank Response to Rising Food Insecurity.

The director of the United Nations World Food Program has also been putting out, starting in September of last year, dire warnings about a coming global famine.

So it’s curious to me that, at the very time the globalists are warning about food shortages and famine, their mouthpieces at the World Bank, the U.N., and within the administrations of the U.S. and its allies (notice China and Russia are nowhere to be found in these preposterous anti-food policies), are talking about converting over to a new and unproven form of “sustainable” farming that’s focused more on reducing methane than it is on producing the highest yields of food.

Modern food production is bad, they tell us, because it produces methane which supposedly harms the environment.

“Food systems are responsible for 60% of methane emissions,” said Marcelo Mena, CEO of Global Methane Hub. “We congratulate countries willing to take the lead in food systems methane mitigation and confirm our commitment to support this type of initiative with programs that explore promising methane mitigation technologies and the underpinning research of methane mitigation mechanisms to create new technologies.”

John Kerry is also very excited about taking valuable, productive farmland offline, reducing the size of cattle herds, and turning our food-production systems over to technocrats and globalists offering vague promises of “new technologies.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. is busy trying to mitigate methane emissions not just in America but worldwide, stating on its website: “The United States provides key leadership, funding and technical expertise for international methane emission reduction efforts, resulting in more than 1,140 methane mitigation projects through GMI as of 2021.”

In just one example, the Biden administration plans to spend $1.5 million in taxpayer funds on a program aimed at “empowering” female climate change activists in the “patriarchal” society of northern Kenya, documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

John Kerry said in a statement, “Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term. Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge.”

The May 17 press release further states that, “The focus of the conference was the deployment of science-based practices, innovation, and technologies in line with sustainable food production…”

The nations signing onto this pledge to transform their farm policies are the United States, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Germany, Panama, Peru and Spain.

The government of Spain will organize a second conference in 2024 to monitor and advance implementation efforts related to the statement and encourage more countries to join, according to the May 14 press release.

In order to save the planet from emissions that come from cow farts, they claim it’s necessary to force farmers to change the way they farm, converting their land and livestock to more “innovative” methods and “science-based practices.” These methods will need to be implemented not just on farms but throughout the “food systems.”

They never come out and say what these “innovative” changes are, only that they will be based on “new technologies” and “science-based.”

We can presume from this language that among the practices being considered are replacing a major portion of the beef and dairy cattle, pork and chicken stocks that populations rely on for protein with insect larvae, meal worms, crickets, etc. The U.N., World Economic Forum and other NGOs have been promoting meatless diets and the consumption of insect protein for years, and billionaires have invested in massive insect factories being built in the state of Illinois, in Canada and in the Netherlands, where meal worms, crickets and other bugs will be processed as additives to be inserted into the food supply, often without clear labels that will inform people of exactly what they are eating. Bill Gates is also partnering with other billionaires to invest in the production of lab-grown meat, a process that involves using cancer cells from cows, chickens and pigs to quickly grow artificial meat.

Farmers will be increasingly forced off their land, as is already happening in the Netherlands, which is the world’s second leading net exporter of food after the United States.

All this will add up to a coming famine the likes of which has never been witnessed by the current generation of people on earth. It’s all by design. Globalists like Dennis Meadows, the author of the 1972 Club of Rome-endorsed book The Limits to Growth, informed us of the globalists’ plans to drastically depopulate the earth. His comments in the video below were made I believe in 2017.

[…]

Via https://www.eutimes.net/2023/06/13-nations-agree-to-abolish-farming-in-order-to-save-the-planet/

Robert F Kennedy Jr

American Resurrection

Colin Todhunter

Global Research

In March 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine. 

Guterres said food, fuel and fertiliser prices were skyrocketing with supply chains being disrupted and added this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.

According to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, there is currently sufficient food and no risk of global food supply shortages.

We see an abundance of food but skyrocketing prices. The issue is not food shortage but speculation on food commodities and the manipulation of an inherently flawed global food system that serves the interests of corporate agribusiness traders and suppliers of inputs at the expense of people’s needs and genuine food security.

The war in Ukraine is a geopolitical trade and energy conflict. It is largely about the US engaging in a proxy war against Russia and Europe by attempting to separate Europe from Russia and imposing sanctions on Russia to harm Europe and make it further dependent on the US.

Economist Professor Michael Hudson recently stated that ultimately the war is against Europe and Germany. The purpose of the sanctions is to prevent Europe and other allies from increasing their trade and investment with Russia and China.

Neoliberal policies since the 1980s have hollowed out the US economy. With its productive base severely weakened, the only way for the US to maintain hegemony is to undermine China and Russia and weaken Europe.

Hudson says that, beginning a year ago, Biden and the US neocons attempted to block Nord Stream 2 and all (energy) trade with Russia so that the US could monopolise it itself.

Despite the ‘green agenda’ currently being pushed, the US still relies on fossil fuel-based energy to project its power abroad. Even as Russia and China move away from the dollar, the control and pricing of oil and gas (and resulting debt) in dollars remains key to US attempts to retain hegemony.

The US knew beforehand how sanctions on Russia would play out. They would serve to divide the world into two blocks and fuel a new cold war with the US and Europe on one side with China and Russia being the two main countries on the other.

US policy makers knew Europe would be devastated by higher energy and food prices and food importing countries in the Global South would suffer due to rising costs.

It is not the first time the US has engineered a major crisis to maintain global hegemony and a spike in key commodity prices that effectively trap countries into dependency and debt.

In 2009, Andrew Gavin Marshall described how in 1973 – not long after coming off the gold standard – Henry Kissinger was integral to manipulating events in the Middle East (the Arab-Israeli war and the ‘energy crisis’). This served to continue global hegemony for the US, which had virtually bankrupted itself due to its war in Vietnam and had been threatened by the economic rise of Germany and Japan.

Kissinger helped secure huge OPEC oil price rises and thus sufficient profits for Anglo-American oil companies that had over-leveraged themselves in North Sea oil. He also cemented the petrodollar system with the Saudis and subsequently placed African nations, which had embarked on a path of (oil-based) industrialisation, on a treadmill of dependency and debt due to the spike in oil prices.

It is widely believed that the high-priced oil policy was aimed at hurting Europe, Japan and the developing world.

Today, the US is again waging a war on vast swathes of humanity, whose impoverishment is intended to ensure they remain dependent on the US and the financial institutions it uses to create dependency and indebtedness – the World Bank and IMF.

Hundreds of millions will experience (are experiencing) poverty and hunger due to US policy. These people (the ones that the US and Pfizer et al supposedly cared so much about and wanted to get a jab into each of their arms) are regarded with contempt and collateral damage in the great geopolitical game.

Contrary to what many believe, the US has not miscalculated the outcome of the sanctions placed on Russia. Michael Hudson notes energy prices are increasing, benefiting US oil companies and US balance of payments as an energy exporter. Moreover, by sanctioning Russia, the aim is to curtail Russian exports (of wheat and gas used for fertiliser production) and for agricultural commodity prices to therefore increase. This too will also benefit the US as an agricultural exporter.

This is how the US seeks to maintain dominance over other countries.

Current policies are designed to create a food and debt crisis for poorer nations especially. The US can use this debt crisis to force countries to continue privatising and selling off their public assets in order to service the debts to pay for the higher oil and food imports.

This imperialist strategy comes on the back of ‘COVID relief’ loans which have served a similar purpose. In 2021, an Oxfam review of IMF COVID-19 loans showed that 33 African countries were encouraged to pursue austerity policies. The world’s poorest countries are due to pay $43 billion in debt repayments in 2022, which could otherwise cover the costs of their food imports.

Oxfam and Development Finance International have also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totalling $183 billion over the next five years.

The closure of the world economy in March 2020 (‘lockdown’) served to trigger an unprecedented process of global indebtedness. Conditionalities mean national governments will have to capitulate to the demands of Western financial institutions. These debts are largely dollar-denominated, helping to strengthen the US dollar and US leverage over countries.

The US is creating a new world order and needs to ensure much of the Global South remains in its orbit of influence rather than ending up in the Russian and especially Chinese camp and its belt road initiative for economic prosperity.

Post-COVID, this is what the war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and the engineered food and energy crisis are really about.

Back in 2014, Michael Hudson stated that the US has been able to dominate most of the Global South through agriculture and control of the food supply. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has transformed countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.

The oil sector and agribusiness have been joined at the hip as part of US geopolitical strategy.

The dominant notion of ‘food security’ promoted by global agribusiness players like Cargill, Archer Daniel Midland, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus and supported by the World Bank is based on the ability of people and nations to purchase food. It has nothing to do with self-sufficiency and everything to do with global markets and supply chains controlled by giant agribusiness players.

Along with oil, the control of global agriculture has been a linchpin of US geopolitical strategy for many decades. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests and poorer nations adopted agri-capital’s chemical- and oil-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development.

It entailed trapping nations into a globalised food system that relies on export commodity mono-cropping to earn foreign exchange linked to sovereign dollar-denominated debt repayment and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives. What we have seen has been the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.

And what we have also seen is countries being placed on commodity crop production treadmills. The need for foreign currency (US dollars) to buy oil and food entrenches the need to increase cash crop production for exports.

The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) set out the trade regime necessary for this type of corporate dependency that masquerades as ‘global food security’.

This is explained in a July 2022 report by Navdanya International – Sowing Hunger, Reaping Profits – A Food Crisis by Design – which notes international trade laws and trade liberalisation has benefited large agribusiness and continue to piggyback off the implementation of the Green Revolution.

The report states that US lobby and trade negotiations were headed by former Cargill Investors Service CEO and Goldman Sachs executive – Dan Amstutz – who in 1988 was appointed chief negotiator for the Uruguay round of GATT by Ronald Reagan. This helped to enshrine the interests of US agribusiness into the new rules that would govern the global trade of commodities and subsequent waves of industrial agriculture expansion.

The AoA removed protection of farmers from global market prices and fluctuations. At the same time, exceptions were made for the US and the EU to continue subsidising their agriculture to the advantage of large agribusiness.

Navdanya notes:

“With the removal of state tariff protections and subsidies, small farmers were left destitute. The result has been a disparity in what farmers earn for what they produce, versus what consumers pay, with farmers earning less and consumers paying more as agribusiness middlemen take the biggest cut.”

‘Food security’ has led to the dismantling of food sovereignty and food self-sufficiency for the sake of global market integration and corporate power.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/engineered-food-poverty-crisis-secure-continued-us-dominance/5790815

Children’s Health Defense

Dear friend,

A new federal bill that threatens to eliminate all state and local control in cell tower and small cell placements is making its way through Congress. Proposed bill H.R. 3557 aims to expedite the deployment of wireless and other communications facilities through a massive federal power grab that strips away state and local control in permitting and regulatory review processes – the very mechanisms designed to protect citizens from the threats posed by wireless facilities.

If H.R. 3557 passes, it will result in a truly unrestricted proliferation of cell towers and small cell installations near schools, playgrounds, and homes without any local or community input.

Learn More and Take Action

Cell towers and small cells endanger our health, damage the environment, and jeopardize our privacy and autonomy. Despite these threats, H.R. 3557 systematically removes state and local jurisdiction, prohibits temporary suspensions of installations and eliminates critical regulatory safeguards such as environmental and historic preservation reviews.

We cannot afford to lose all local control and must not allow the wireless and telecom industry to expand unchecked based on misguided and one-size-fits-all federal laws. We must stop this advancement of corporate interests at the expense of the health, safety and well-being of people and the environment.

Help us #KillHR3557 by telling your elected officials to oppose H.R. 3557, the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2023.

In truth

The Team at Children’s Health Defense

Via http://support.childrenshealthdefense.org/site/MessageViewer

Image credit: solaruk.net

Iowa Climate Science Education

The same question can be asked of wind turbines and old lithium-based batteries. Experts warn of a waste mountain by 2050.

While they are being promoted around the world as a crucial weapon in reducing carbon emissions, solar panels only have a lifespan of up to 25 years, says BBC News.

Experts say billions of panels will eventually all need to be disposed of and replaced.

“The world has installed more than one terawatt of solar capacity. Ordinary solar panels have a capacity of about 400W, so if you count both rooftops and solar farms, there could be as many as 2.5 billion solar panels,” says Dr Rong Deng, an expert in solar panel recycling at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

According to the British government, there are tens of millions of solar panels in the UK. But the specialist infrastructure to scrap and recycle them is lacking.

Energy experts are calling for urgent government action to prevent a looming global environmental disaster.

“It’s going to be a waste mountain by 2050, unless we get recycling chains going now,” says Ute Collier, deputy director of the International Renewable Energy Agency.

“We’re producing more and more solar panels – which is great – but how are we going to deal with the waste?” she asks.

It is hoped a major step will be taken at the end of June, when the world’s first factory dedicated to fully recycling solar panels officially opens in France.

ROSI, the specialist solar recycling company which owns the facility, in the Alpine city of Grenoble, hopes eventually to be able to extract and re-use 99% of a unit’s components.

As well as recycling the glass fronts and aluminium frames, the new factory can recover nearly all of the precious materials contained within the panels, such as silver and copper, which are typically some of the hardest materials to extract.

These rare materials can subsequently be recycled and reused to make new, more powerful, solar units.

Conventional methods of recycling solar panels recover most of the aluminium and glass – but ROSI says the glass, in particular, is of relatively low-quality.

The glass recovered using those methods can be used to create tiles, or in sandblasting – it can also be mixed with other materials to make asphalt – but it cannot be used in applications where high-grade glass is required, such as the production of new solar panels.
. . .
“By 2030, we think we’re going to have four million tonnes [of scrap] – which is still manageable – but by 2050, we could end up with more than 200 million tonnes globally.”

To put that into perspective, the world currently produces a total of 400 million tonnes of plastic every year.

[…]

Via https://iowaclimate.org/2023/06/04/solar-panels-an-eco-disaster-waiting-to-happen/

By Barbara Boyd

LaRouche PAC

Scott Ritter has produced an explosive background report on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. His report appears to prove that since at least October 14, 2020, this very corrupt little man and superb method actor, the hero in the Hollywood Western-type script controlling perception of the Ukraine slaughter, is acting as a direct agent of Britain’s MI6, with MI6 chief Richard Moore acting as his direct handler. Appropriately, Ritter released his video during the ongoing NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, which will be marked in history as a turning point in the war.  That summit concludes today, July 12,2023. Ritter calls his exposé Agent Zelensky Part I and promises a follow-up.

The long-anticipated summit was supposed to celebrate the success of Ukraine’s vaunted spring counteroffensive and provide an escalated roadmap for its admission to NATO (the very issue which ignited this war). In the sixteen months of fighting, Ukraine has been radically depopulated both through panicked emigration of millions and the outright suicidal slaughter of tens of thousands demanded by Ukraine’s controllers in their quixotic quest to recapture Russia. Europe has been forever altered along with the entire geopolitical map.

But predictably, the spring counteroffensive failed spectacularly, crashing against the reality of a superior Russian industrial base, superior armaments, and, in many respects, a superior Russian fighting culture. Now it is admitted that Ukraine is out of trained soldiers and out of munitions—and so is NATO and the United States.  As usual, Joe Biden deflected from this situation with a blustering speech declaring Putin’s “insatiable lust for land and power” would be met by long term security guarantees from the G7 countries avoiding the fact that Ukraine will not be joining NATO.  This semantical distraction will not be lost on a Russia now grounded in the fact that is at war with all these countries.

Under the new arrangement, the UK and France have announced that they are going to provide long range missiles to Ukraine capable of reaching Russia. The United States will provide primitive cluster bomb munitions—munitions which are banned by most civilized countries because they create unmapped minefields over the entire area in which they are used, rendering territories unsafe for human habitation. The cluster shells are to replace the 155 mm shells which the United States and NATO have depleted down to nothing.  The G7 guarantees replace a Ukraine membership in NATO which will require, according to the summit, Ukraine winning the war and cleansing itself of its endemic corruption.

The Biden Administration envisions the “security guarantees” it will now be providing to being similar to those it provides to Israel.  Thus, Washington, which could end this war in ten minutes as Donald Trump has emphatically noted, has formally now announced a forever war down to the last Ukrainian. According to current Washington rumor, Poles and Lithuanians are now also prepared to fight. Somehow, according to these wags, this would not indicate NATO’s direct involvement in the war, even though both countries are members of NATO. Russia has prepared itself for this escalation which could readily spiral completely out of control and engulf all of Europe.

This war is hated by the American population. Every time Donald Trump mentions it in his stump speeches and calls for immediate peace negotiations, huge cheers erupt. When Trump’s primary opponents attempt to support the war, they are roundly booed and rejected.  The Washington Post of this morning claims that Republican opposition to the war has now peaked at 44% and backhandedly attributes this to the firing and censoring of Tucker Carlson.

Despite the fake news, NATO is falling apart as citizens in Europe, riven by the economic depression resulting from both the war and the Green New Deal, take to the streets in protest. There is desperation in Washington and London based on the dawning realization that they have failed and their populations hate them. As Lyndon LaRouche emphasized, the point at which our “elites” come to realize the end of their delusion is the point of greatest danger to the people as a whole. But it is also the point at which the population comes to recognize that the elites are quite mad and will never do the right or just thing, and that political action ending the war and removing them, is the key to our survival. Support for Donald Trump is the spearpoint of that political action.

Scott Ritter’s Bombshell

The 35-minute video produced by Scott Ritter presents Zelensky’s rise to power, from a popular, if degenerate, comic (his act involved playing the piano with his penis) to hero of the Western world, as a carefully crafted intelligence operation. Ritter notes that Zelensky’s starring role in the massively popular television show, Servant of the People, in which a teacher becomes Ukraine’s leader, paved the way to his presidency. As Ritter notes, Zelensky won election because he promised peace in Ukraine’s civil war which had been precipitated by the 2014 color revolution and coup created by the U.S. State and Defense Departments and their British controllers. Following his election, he was informed that pursuit of a peace policy would result in his immediate execution by the overt Nazis deployed through U.S. and British intelligence operations to control the Ukrainian population. Thereafter, Zelensky embraced the Nazis he had previously condemned.

Ritter provides a detailed account of Zelensky’s corruption, with multiple million-dollar offshore accounts and residences throughout Europe and the shaping of his image through the employment of Washington and London PR firms on permanent deployment. His portrait traces the country’s devolution to a satrap warrior state with every move choreographed by British and U.S. intelligence services. He particularly focuses on the role of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, a joint institution of the German and U.S. defense departments, in training all of Ukraine’s civil servants, and the role of British and U.S. intelligence services in promoting an overt Nazi ideology as a controlling myth governing Ukraine’s fighting forces.

According to Ritter’s sources, direct British intelligence control over Zelensky resulted from his administration’s involvement in the sabotage of a major Western intelligence operation in Syria in which the British had thought that they had trapped key Wagner mercenary forces. The British held Zelensky responsible for the failure because the Wagner forces had been tipped off by a call from Zelensky’s office. Zelensky was called to London and met at MI6 headquarters with Richard Moore, the head of MI6. Ritter asserts that this violates all protocol for an independent sovereign head of a sovereign state. Following that October 14, 2020, meeting, all Zelensky’s personal security was taken over by the British—involving a force of some 1,800 personnel. At the same time, all opposition press in Ukraine were censored and taken out of existence at British command.

When Pope Francis attempted a peace initiative for the war, Zelensky met with him, but was also shepherded to the meeting by Richard Moore, his controller, in an obvious charade. He presented the Pope with an icon of the Virgin Mary holding a black blank figure where Christ would normally appear. He said it was to symbolize the loss of Ukrainian children during the war, but was obviously completely offensive to Catholic belief and resulted in outrage in Italy.  That was not the only way Zelensky dissed the Pope.  He appeared in his well-known sweatshirt and fatigues at the Vatican—the shirt emblazoned with the symbol of the OUN Ukrainian nationalists, Hitler’s World War II collaborators. After spending a short time with the Pope, Zelensky then spent hours with the British head of the Vatican’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Paul Gallagher.

[…]

Via https://www.larouchepac.com/scott_ritter_bombshell_zelensky_is_a_british_agent_otherwise_the_nato_death_cult_continues

Episode 13 Decanni and the Southern States

A History of India

Michael Fisher (2016)

Film Review

After the fall of the Mauryan Empire in the 2nd century BC, it would be a full millennium before a single dynasty united all of India. During the first millennium AD, the region continued to grow economically, with increasing trade between forest people, pastoralists, farmers and city merchants. International trade also became increasingly important, owing to the subcontinent’s strategic position on trade routes linking the Mediterranean and China.

This lecture mainly focuses on political and economic development in south India. On the northern Deccan Plateau, the major languages were Marathi, Hindi and Oriva/Odia, which are all derived from Sanskrit. Teluga was spoken in the southeast and Kannada in the West. People in the Peninsular South, spoke Tamil in the East and Malayiam in the West. Teluga, Kannada, Tamil and Malayiam are all Dravidian languages. There were also many scattered dialects in south India, including some belonging to Adivasi forest dwellers.

During the first millennium AD, the the vast majority of south India either belonged to the Shudra varna (artisans, landholders and laborers) or were outcasts (mainly Adivasi).

The Satavhana Dynasty

As the Mauryan empire collapsed, the Satavhana dynasty asserted their authority in the Deccan Plateau. They claimed hereditary linkages to both the Brahman and Kshatriya, with some adhering to Buddhism rather than Brahmanism. Thwarted in their efforts to expand north by Scythians* (aka Sahas) who occupied northwest India, they advanced east to the western coast where they engaged in trade with Rome and Southeast Asia. The Satavhana dynasty collapsed in 220 AD, after the Scythians pushed south and invaded the Deccan Plateau.

Palava Dynasty

Between the 4th – 9th century AD, the Peninsular South was ruled by the Palava** Dynasty. Thanks to river irrigation and northeast seasonal monsoons, the region was an extremely productive rice growing region. It became very wealthy thanks to international trade.

Tamil Dynasties

Their best known Tamil king Mahendravarman I, ruled from 600-630 AD, was born a Jain and converted to Hindu Shaivism after Saint Appar (the leader of a Tamil religious movement devoted to the god Shiva), appeared to him.

Ancient copper plates discovered in the Peninsular South, reveal the Palava kings routinely made gifts of land to Brahman priests for performing rituals for them. This continual demand for land created pressure for military expansion.

In the 9th century, the Palava dynasty was replaced by the (Tamil) Chola dynasty, who were previously subordinate to the Palava kings. The Chola, who ruled the southeast Indian coast, established massive trade and naval networks that extended to Southeast Asia. They are best know for their large palatial temples.

During the height of Palava rule, the Tamil Pandya dynasty ruled the upland interior of south India, reaching the height of their power in the 13th century AD. However for the majority of the first millennium, most of south India followed the Dravidian model of kingship. Most kingdoms were small and focused on local deities. Many were unmarried Tamil goddesses who ate meat (which enhanced their shakti or cosmic energy). Their single status made them especially powerful because their shakti wasn’t controlled by a husband.

One such Tamil goddess was Minakshi (“fish-eyed one”). Like many Tamil goddesses, she became “sanskritized” after becoming a consort of Shiva and agreeing to be reborn as the mortal daughter of a Pandyan king. Raised as a warrior owing to her three breasts, she ;ed the Panyan army and had dominion over all kings and all gods prior to marrying Shiva and losing her third breast.

*See Militarized Nomads: Who Were the Scythians, Huns and Mongols

**Tamil for twig. According to Tamil mythology, the mother of the first Palava king wrapped him in a twig and floated him down a river to protect him from enemies.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/366254/366197

Eric Rogers

Florida Today

The Brevard Republican Executive Committee has joined a growing list of Florida GOP chapters calling on Gov. Ron DeSantis to ban the COVID-19 vaccine, which it called a “biological weapon” in a resolution this week.

The nonbinding resolution was passed by a supermajority vote of committee membership Thursday. It now goes to DeSantis, Brevard County’s legislative delegation and state party leaders, joining similar motions of support from committees in more than half a dozen other counties.

Brevard executive committee Chairman Rick Lacey did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.

A draft version of the resolution reviewed by reporters closely mirrors one passed by the Lee County Republican Party in February, drawing national headlines.

Via https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/07/14/brevard-republicans-move-to-ban-covid-19-vaccine-as-biological-weapon/70409865007/