Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #159 - Assessing India-China War Situation; Disgusting Tiger Farms
(Photo by fernando bacheschi on Unsplash \ Chiang Mai, Thailand)
“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
It has taken millions of years for nature to evolve to a level of complexity it has today. All this was not an accident or even the doing of one mind. Nature, through its randomness and its natural selection, found ways to prioritize traits and characteristics that were the best over all those millions of years.
When man starts to fiddle with nature he thinks that he knows life and existence better than the intelligence of millions of years stored in the evolution of this Universe. Those who can at best memorize a book think they have the wherewithal in them to outthink a Universe that has taken so many eons to be shaped.
Have you known any greater insanity?
Whatever such a mind would generate would be downright ugliness.
assessment of India-China war situation
What the Indian Army is dealing with in Ladakh can be gauged from these two pictures. What happens to Pangong Tso lake when there is snow all over the place, can be seen here (Source). When we said that the Indian Army is trying to rush order the high altitude kits - for cold areas, we need to remember that very soon, in February, the soldiers up there will need those.
While China is using its depth of the area under its control in that part of geography (Aksai Chin and Tibet), the Indian airforce may be looking to take them head-on. As per one expert’s information, India may depend on a “disperse, absorb, recoup & retaliate” strategy with a plethora of border proximate airbases, infrastructural upgrades & new acquisitions. (Source) We will look into the comparisons later in this section.
We have to also acknowledge that the Indian strike capabilities are much lesser than the Chinese.
Even if the Indian fighter planes attack the Tibetan areas with nuclear gravity bombs (Source), they won’t be able to make their way much further as the Chinese defenses will be up.
A comparison between the Indian and Chinese nuke ranges is below.
The arsenal includes:
China’s range extends well beyond India.
Their arsenal?
So what are the options for India?
To use a wide range of options over land, sea, and air and keep China guessing will be the most critical component of India’s war strategy.
However, along the Himalayan region, India’s strength in a clash with China will be in the air defense area.
Having more machines and even sophisticated machines cannot ensure a victory in war. In a war, skill is the key. And, that is where the March 2020 Harvard report (Source) suggests Chinese are specifically weak.
Redundancy and the number of airbases that India has is a huge advantage to its air force, despite the high quantity of missiles at disposal with China. Why? Because of the expected damage that the Chinese ballistic missiles can do and its rather not so significant impact on Indian airforce.
You see the equation doesn’t quite add up for the Chinese despite the number superiority.
And, in the last few years, India has started making one more change in its airbases. It has started to integrate runway replacement fiberglass mats. This has significantly reduced the runway reconstitution timeframe. This essentially means that the situation with the missiles needed to incapacitate the Indian Air force will only get worse for China.
Here is the link to the Harvard study - (Source)
cool bomb - can the impact of a nuke be reduced?
APJ Abul Kalam asked an interesting question once.
"Can science create a 'Cool Bomb' to defuse or deactivate the deadly atom bomb?"
How to lessen the impact of a Nuclear explosion is something that fascinated at least one scientist.
Dr. Meera Chadha of the Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in New Delhi looked into how this can be done. Her mathematical models show that dust can help prevent the impact of the explosion. Hiroshima’s bomb had a 15 kilotonnes yield and burns were seen at a distance of 1 km and buildings were destroyed within the 1.6 km radius.
So, her goal was to reduce this radius to 1.2 or even 1 km. When she ran a model with 5 percent dust particles and solved the model for 5 equations, the energy released and damage radius reduced.
Then she decided to raise the dust levels and increase the complexity of the model.
But overall, the mathematical ingredients led to a satisfactory outcome. She recorded a substantial reduction in damage radius (over 40 per cent) and a reasonable reduction in pressure (about 10 per cent). This finding was published in another paper in the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan. (Source)
These are mere mathematical equations. They need to be tested in controlled lab experiments.
the disgusting world of tiger farming
When humans think that he can tweak nature to his own desires, however wanton, and start killing and pillaging other creations the way he wants, things can only get worse for all. It is collective karma.
The “wet markets” in China have been responsible for numerous viruses that have killed many across the world. These are markets that have a wild animal section where several exotic animals are kept and slaughtered for sale. These species include snakes, beavers, porcupines, and baby crocodiles, among other animals.
In China, close contacts between humans and food animals have resulted in the transmission of many microbes from animals to humans. The two most notable infectious diseases in recent years are severe acute respiratory syndrome and avian influenza. In this review, these two severe zoonotic viral infections transmitted by the respiratory route, with pandemic potential, are used as models to illustrate the role of Chinese wet-markets in their emergence, amplification, and dissemination. (Source)
That society has another disgusting secret that no one talks about. Tiger Farms.
A tiger farm is a breeding facility where tigers and other exotic or wild animals are bred like livestock for their meat, skin, and parts.
In China alone, there are reportedly 200 industrial-style farms with 5000 to 6000 tigers which are being bred ONLY for producing Tiger Bone Wine, Skins, and other products from it. Everything from their bones, teeth, genitals, to claws, are used for products!
Farms spread across China, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand house between 7,000-8,000 captive tigers. To put that number in perspective - only 3,500 to 4,000 tigers are left in the wild. (Source)
Even when international laws don’t allow it, Chinese laws do.
This kind of Tiger farming, albeit at the smaller scales, are happening in different South Asian countries. But all to cater to the Chinese market!
Investigators with the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) went to a house in Central Vietnam. They were taken to a large ostentatious house. The woman there removed a part of the wall and through the door went into a room which had cages with tigers in the dark. Live tigers inside a room.
There were more tigers in the backyard, the woman said, inviting the visitors to sit down to tea in the living room, where she made the offer. They could buy one of the tigers, whose price is determined per kilogram, plus an extra fee for processing the skin. Delivery to any of several cities in China was included in the base price, and for no extra, the buyers could also have the bones, teeth, genitals, and claws if they wished. (Source)
This is the kind of evil we are dealing with in this world today.
nota bene
Chinese soldier caught; to be returned: A Chinese soldier has been apprehended by security forces in the Chumar-Demchok area of Ladakh and taken into custody by the Indian Army, officials said on Monday. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier, identified as Corporal Wang Ya Long, was apprehended in the Demchok sector of eastern Ladakh on Monday after he had strayed across the Line of Control (LAC), the Indian Army said in a statement. They said he might have entered Indian territory inadvertently and will be returned to the Chinese army as per established protocol after following due procedure. (Source)
Pak planning to extend communications in J&K for terrorists: Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government has readied a plan to expand coverage of its mobile coverage in Jammu and Kashmir that is not only designed to help Pakistan-trained terrorists infiltrating into the valley but also neutralize the impact of a future communication blockade imposed by the government, people familiar with the matter said. The plan, according to a top security official in New Delhi, to tweak existing telecom towers and build new ones has been in the works for about a year. It was initially conceived to strengthen the existing phone network to help terrorists who have infiltrated into Kashmir. (Source)
Sugar and High Fructose cause mental disorders: For both children and adults, mental health disorders can have damaging effects on all aspects of their lives. As scientists examine the causes of attention-deficit hyperactivity syndrome (ADHD) and bipolar disorder, a new catalyst is emerging. Researchers from the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus say sugar intake may play a major role in these disorders and even aggressive behavior. Their study suggests fructose (a type of simple sugar) and uric acid increases the risk of developing various behavioral conditions. Researchers find that this component of sugar and high fructose corn syrup tricks the body into thinking it’s starving; thereby changing a person’s mental state as well. (Source)
Why are so many birds dying in the US?: Migratory birds in North America are dying in thousands. More than 1,000 dead birds have been observed, encompassing 194 species. The mass die-off has been tentatively attributed to the historic wildfires across California, Oregon, and Washington in recent months, which may have forced birds to rush their migration. But scientists do not know for sure – in part because nobody knows precisely how wildfire smoke affects birds. (Source)
Tech Companies defining market: Technology companies are set to end the year with their greatest share of the stock market ever, topping a dot-com era peak in the latest illustration of their growing influence on global consumers.
Source: WSJ \ Dow Jones Market Data via FactSet
from popular pastor to an ex-Christian
His church was one of the 540 fastest growing Churches out of more than 400,000 congregations in North America.
Tim Sledge was a career pastor with a Ph.D. in pastoral care. He was an acclaimed preacher and a Christian literature writer whose books are still used in church ministry. Forty years of preaching, pastoring, and teaching later, Tim got disillusioned both by the doctrines and the way Christianity is practiced today.
Here is an interesting discussion of how he left the dogma of the church and Christianity. He calls himself ex-Christian now.
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