On January 26, 1986, French humorist Coluche, who had set up Les Restos du Cœur a few months earlier, invited a number of artists and public figures to appear on television as a promotional move. The band, whose line-up was never the same, was dubbed “Les Enfoirés” in reference to one of Coluche’s catchwords. After Coluche died in a motorbike accident (June 19, 1986) his widow, Véronique Colucci, called on those who had participated to continue his actions, and the band was revived for a further television show. The concept has since evolved into an annual concert, bringing together up to forty artists and celebrities from various backgrounds. The funds raised by the concerts and derived records under the name “Enfoirés” are donated to Les Restos du Cœur. One of the key features of Les Enfoirés is “La Chanson des Enfoirés”, a song which became a sort of hymn to the charity, written by Jean-Jacques Goldman, a long-time supporter of the organisation.

• Profile
• Massacres
• In pictures

//

Survivors have had little justice. Only 20 people have been convicted for the killings (Photo: Soutik Biswas)

Nearly 3,000 members of India’s Sikh community were massacred after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards on 31 October 1984. Rahul Bedi, one of the first journalists to reach the affected areas in the capital, Delhi, recalls events.

The 25th anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s assassination revives stark memories of some 3,000 Sikhs killed brutally in the orderly pogrom that followed her killing.

The wave of ethnic cleansing which raged unhindered across the country, especially in Delhi, after Mrs Gandhi was shot dead ended only with her cremation on 2 November.

During these three days droves of Sikhs were determinedly hunted down by Hindu mobs from their homes, corralled and slaughtered like animals.

The trigger for Mrs Gandhi’s killing was the storming of the Golden Temple in Sikhism’s holy city Amritsar four months earlier to flush out Sikh militants fighting for an independent homeland of Khalistan or Land of the Pure.

Sikh shops and establishments were targeted and burnt

The heavily-armed militants – many of them former soldiers – had barricaded themselves inside the temple and were dislodged only after three days of bitter fighting. Some 1,000 people, including women and children pilgrims and about 157 soldiers, died.

Tanks too were employed to end the siege, leaving Sikhs highly aggrieved.

The eventual and possibly avoidable storming of the Golden Temple generated a wave of violence leading to Mrs Gandhi’s assassination, the anti-Sikh riots and a vicious insurgency across Punjab that was eventually stamped out by the military around 1993, although not without widespread human rights abuses.

But the 1984 Delhi riots rocked the world, more so for the state’s direct involvement and public justification of the blood-letting.

‘Earth shakes’

Reacting to the continuing Sikh killings in Delhi and other places, newly appointed Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi declared at a massive rally in the capital that “once a mighty tree falls, it is only natural that the earth around it shakes”.

One of the worst massacres took place in two narrow alleys in the city’s poor Trilokpuri colony where some 350 Sikhs, including women and children, were casually butchered over 72 hours.

Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed in the massacres (Photo: Soutik Biswas)

The charred and hacked remains of the hundreds that perished in Trilokpuri’s Block 32 on the smoky and dank evening of 2 November 1984 were stark testimony to the unimpeded and seemingly endless massacre.

Soon after news of Mrs Gandhi’s killing by her Sikh bodyguards spread, Hindu mobs swung into action – like they did elsewhere in the city armed with voters’ lists – in Trilokpuri against the low caste Sikhs inhabiting one-roomed tenements on either side of two narrow alleyways barely 150 yards long.

With local police connivance they blocked entry to the neighbourhood with massive concrete water pipes and stationed guards armed with sticks atop them.

For the next three days marauding groups armed with cleavers, scythes, kitchen knives and scissors took breaks to eat and regroup in between executing their bloodthirsty mission.

Sikhs were killed in the main railway station (Photo: Ashok Vahie)

When as a reporter then with the Indian Express newspaper I along with two other colleagues visited the area on the eve of Mrs Gandhi’ funeral, both lanes were littered with bodies, body parts and hair brutally hacked off, forcing us to walk precariously on tip-toe.

It was impossible to place one’s foot flat on the ground for fear of stepping on either a severed limb or a body.

Earlier in the day two policemen on a motorcycle had emerged from Block 32 and reassured us that shanti or calm prevailed inside it and no untoward incident had occurred.

A few hours later on returning to the spot we saw that the entire area was awash with blood, a large proportion of it black coagulated mounds over which flies buzzed lazily.

Abject terror

It was also piled high in the open drains on either side of the tenements, never efficient at the best of times, alongside other human remains.

As we walked through this implausible slaughter in the light of hurricane lamps provided by some residents, the complete silence despite the large mob surrounding us was eerie.

No one spoke and nothing, except the bizarre, dancing shadows moved during this surrealistic interlude.

Even one of the only survivors – a young polio-afflicted mother – holding her new born in her arms gazed sightlessly upon us.

Her blank look momentarily changed into one of abject terror as we bent down to take her child to whom she fiercely clung.

She probably took us to be the butchers who had massacred her entire family piled up high in the room behind her.

A whimper led us to a barely conscious young Sikh, hiding under a heap of bodies, his slashed stomach wrapped crudely around with a turban.

Riot victims have been waiting for justice for 25 years (Photo: Soutik Biswas)

All he wanted was water, parched after over 36 hours of concealing himself under the mound of corpses and bleeding steadily. He died soon after in hospital.

Some doors down a two-year-old girl, unmindful of the bodies, walked lazily over to us holding out her arms asking to be taken home.

Unfortunately, she was home; but one littered with the bloated bodies of her parents and siblings killed two nights earlier.

Police arrived in Trilokpuri 24 hours later when the Indian Express revealed the horrific massacre.

Sadly, there were no Sikhs left to protect.

Two inquiry commissions and seven investigative committees into the 1984 Sikh riots later no one has been held guilty for the Trilokpuri killings.

Of the 2,733 officially admitted murders, only nine cases have so far led to the conviction of 20 people in 25 years; a conviction rate of less than 1%.

But Manmohan Singh’s elevation to India’s prime minister in 2004 was looked upon by the flamboyant Sikh community as the vindication of its destiny of being born to rule.

Previous transgressions by his Congress party were forgiven but not forgotten and his casually tied trademark blue turban represented a collective crown for the enterprising but persecuted Sikh community.

Mr Singh, they said, was king.

Rahul Bedi is based in Delhi and works as the India correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly and the Irish Times. During the 1984 riots he was with the Indian Express.

bbc.co.uk

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: 2009-2010

25-Oct-2009 19:38 EDT

Related Stories: Alliances, Americas – USA, BAE, Britain/U.K., Contracts – Awards, Contracts – Modifications, Design Innovations, ECM, Electronics – General, Engines – Aircraft, Europe – Other, FOCUS Articles, Fighters & Attack, Finmeccanica, GE, Issues – International, Issues – Political, Lobbying, Lockheed Martin, Middle East – Israel, Northrop-Grumman, Official Reports, Other Corporation, Partnerships & Consortia, Policy – Procurement, R&D – Contracted, Radars, Rumours, Security & Secrecy, Sensors & Guidance, Testing & Evaluation, Transformation

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F-35A: incoming…
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The F-35 Lightning II is a major multinational program which is intended to produce an “affordably stealthy” multi-role strike fighter that will have three variants: the F-35A conventional version for the US Air Force et. al.; the F-35B Short Take-Off, Vertical Landing for the US Marines, British Royal Navy, et. al.; and the F-35C conventional carrier-launched version for the US Navy. The aircraft is named after Lockheed’s famous WW2 P-38 Lightning, and the Mach 2, stacked-engine English Electric (now BAE) Lightning jet. System development partners included The USA & Britain (Tier 1), Italy and the Netherlands (Tier 2), and Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Turkey (Tier 3), with Singapore and Israel as “Security Cooperation Partners.” Now the challenge is agreeing on production phase membership and arrangements, to be followed by initial purchase commitments around 2008-2009.

This updated article has expanded to feature more detail regarding the $300 billion F-35 program, including other contracts as well as notable events. New material is highlighted by putting it in green type. Recent news include American calls to restructure the program in the wake of the Pentagon’s new cost estimate, a possible 2/3 cut in Britain’s order, reports that Japan has had to pay to look at the F-35’s specifications, and a Danish decision to cut the number of fighters its competition will buy…

• The F-35 Family of Aircraft (i.e. “Continue reading…”)
• F-35 Program: Production Timelines & Structure
• F-35 Program: Controversies and Competitions
• F-35 Program: Events & Developments, CY 2009-2010 [updated]
• F-35 Program: System Development & Production Contracts, FY 2009-2010 [updated]
• F-35 Program: Ancillary and Sub-contracts, FY 2009 – 2010 [updated]
• Additional Readings & Sources

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Up to $853.3M to Lockheed Martin for Trident Ballistic Missile Support

25-Oct-2009 18:01 EDT

Related Stories: Americas – USA, Contracts – Awards, Lockheed Martin, Missiles – Ballistic, Submarines

D-5 vs. C-4 on right
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Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Sunnyvale, CA received a not-to-exceed $853.3 million cost-plus-incentive-fee/ cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide support for production of Trident II D-5 ballistic missiles as well as maintenance of deployed D-5 and C-4 missiles.

The Trident C-4 has been in service since 1979, but the Trident II D-5 is more recent. First deployed in 1990, the D-5 is scheduled for operational deployment until 2042.

At the same time as it moves ahead with D-5 production, the US Navy is replacing D-5 missiles on 4 Ohio-class SSBNs with Tomahawk cruise missiles. “SSGN ‘Tactical Trident’ Subs: Special Forces and Super Strike” has more on that story.

The Navy recently tested 2 D-5 ballistic missiles from the USS West Virginia [SSBN 736] submarine in the Atlantic Ocean…

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Up to $202M for US Navy Sheet Metal Repair and Fabrication Work

25-Oct-2009 16:17 EDT

Related Stories: Americas – USA, Bases & Infrastructure, Contracts – Awards, Delivery & Task Orders, Small Business, Submarines, Support & Maintenance, Surface Ships – Combat, Surface Ships – Other

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The Southwest Regional Maintenance Center in San Diego, CA awarded 6 firm-fixed-price multiple award 5-year term contracts to provide sheet metal repair and fabrication services – such as repairs to partitions, ductwork, and piping – onboard US Navy ships and other government vessels within a 50-mile radius of San Diego. The maximum ceiling value for all 6 contracts is $202 million.

The 6 small business qualifiers will compete for delivery orders under the terms and conditions of the contracts. Each contractor will provide all personnel, management, administrative and production services, material, tools, equipment, and required support to perform the work.

And the winners are…

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Modern Homo sapiens is still evolving. Despite the long-held view that natural selection has ceased to affect humans because almost everybody now lives long enough to have children, a new study of a contemporary Massachusetts population offers evidence of evolution still in action.

A team of scientists led by Yale University evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns suggests that if the natural selection of fitter traits is no longer driven by survival, perhaps it owes to differences in women’s fertility. “Variations in reproductive success still exist among humans, and therefore some traits related to fertility continue to be shaped by natural selection,” Stearns says. That is, women who have more children are more likely to pass on certain traits to their progeny. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2008.)

Stearns’ team examined the vital statistics of 2,238 postmenopausal women participating in the Framingham Heart Study, which has tracked the medical histories of some 14,000 residents of Framingham, Mass., since 1948. Investigators searched for correlations between women’s physical characteristics – including height, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels – and the number of offspring they produced. According to their findings, it was stout, slightly plump (but not obese) women who tended to have more children – “Women with very low body fat don’t ovulate,” Stearns explains – as did women with lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Using a sophisticated statistical analysis that controlled for any social or cultural factors that could impact childbearing, researchers determined that these characteristics were passed on genetically from mothers to daughters and granddaughters.

If these trends were to continue with no cultural changes in the town for the next 10 generations, by 2409 the average Framingham woman would be 2 cm (0.8 in) shorter, 1 kg (2.2 lb.) heavier, have a healthier heart, have her first child five months earlier and enter menopause 10 months later than a woman today, the study found. “That rate of evolution is slow but pretty similar to what we see in other plants and animals. Humans don’t seem to be any exception,” Stearns says. (See TIME’s photo-essay “Happy 200th Darwin Day.”)

Douglas Ewbank, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania who undertook the statistical analysis for the study, which was published Oct. 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), says that because cultural factors tend to have a much more prominent impact than natural selection in the shaping of future generations, people tend to write off the effect of evolution. “Those changes we predict for 2409 could be wiped out by something as simple as a new school-lunch program. But whatever happens, it’s likely that in 2409, Framingham women will be 2 cm shorter and 1 kg heavier than they would have been without natural selection. Evolution is a very slow process. We don’t see it if we look at our grandparents, but it’s there.”

Other recent genetic research has backed up that notion. One study, published in PNAS in 2007 and led by John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, found that some 1,800 human gene variations had become widespread in recent generations because of their modern-day evolutionary benefits. Among those genetic changes, discovered by examining more than 3 million DNA variants in 269 individuals: mutations that allow people to digest milk or resist malaria and others that govern brain development. (Watch TIME’s video “Darwin and Lincoln: Birthdays and Evolution.”)

But not all evolutionary changes make inherent sense. Since the Industrial Revolution, modern humans have grown taller and stronger, so it’s easy to assume that evolution is making humans fitter. But according to anthropologist Peter McAllister, author of Manthropology: the Science of Inadequate Modern Man, the contemporary male has evolved, at least physically, into “the sorriest cohort of masculine Homo sapiens to ever walk the planet.” Thanks to genetic differences, an average Neanderthal woman, McAllister notes, could have whupped Arnold Schwarzenegger at his muscular peak in an arm-wrestling match. And prehistoric Australian Aborigines, who typically built up great strength in their joints and muscles through childhood and adolescence, could have easily beat Usain Bolt in a 100-m dash.

Steve Jones, an evolutionary biologist at University College London who has previously held that human evolution was nearing its end, says the Framingham study is indeed an important example of how natural selection still operates through inherited differences in reproductive ability. But Jones argues that variation in female fertility – as measured in the Framingham study – is a much less important factor in human evolution than differences in male fertility. Sperm hold a much higher chance of carrying an error or mutation than an egg, especially among older men. “While it used to be that men had many children in older age to many different women, now men tend to have only a few children at a younger age with one wife. The drop in the number of older fathers has had a major effect on the rate of mutation and has at least reduced the amount of new diversity – the raw material of evolution. Darwin’s machine has not stopped, but it surely has slowed greatly,” Jones says. (See TIME’s special report on the environment.)

Despite evidence that human evolution still functions, biologists concede that it’s anyone’s guess where it will take us from here. Artificial selection in the form of genetic medicine could push natural selection into obsolescence, but a lethal pandemic or other cataclysm could suddenly make natural selection central to the future of the species. Whatever happens, Jones says, it is worth remembering that Darwin’s beautiful theory has suffered a long history of abuse. The bastard science of eugenics, he says, will haunt humanity as long as people are tempted to confuse evolution with improvement. “Uniquely in the living world, what makes humans what we are is in our minds, in our society, and not in our evolution,” he says.

yahoo news

WASHINGTON — NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The new view will change the way researchers view and study the interaction between our galaxy and sun.

The sky map was produced with data that two detectors on the spacecraft collected during six months of observations. The detectors measured and counted particles scientists refer to as energetic neutral atoms.

The energetic neutral atoms are created in an area of our solar system known as the interstellar boundary region. This region is where charged particles from the sun, called the solar wind, flow outward far beyond the orbits of the planets and collide with material between stars. The energetic neutral atoms travel inward toward the sun from interstellar space at velocities ranging from 100,000 mph to more than 2.4 million mph. This interstellar boundary emits no light that can be collected by conventional telescopes.

The new map reveals the region that separates the nearest reaches of our galaxy, called the local interstellar medium, from our heliosphere — a protective bubble that shields and protects our solar system from most of the dangerous cosmic radiation traveling through space.

“For the first time, we’re sticking our heads out of the sun’s atmosphere and beginning to really understand our place in the galaxy,” said David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The IBEX results are truly remarkable, with a narrow ribbon of bright details or emissions not resembling any of the current theoretical models of this region.”

NASA released the sky map image Oct. 15 in conjunction with publication of the findings in the journal Science. The IBEX data were complemented and extended by information collected using an imaging instrument sensor on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Cassini has been observing Saturn, its moons and rings since the spacecraft entered the planet’s orbit in 2004.

The IBEX sky maps also put observations from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft into context. The twin Voyager spacecraft, launched in 1977, traveled to the outer solar system to explore Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In 2007, Voyager 2 followed Voyager 1 into the interstellar boundary. Both spacecraft are now in the midst of this region where the energetic neutral atoms originate. However, the IBEX results show a ribbon of bright emissions undetected by the two Voyagers.

“The Voyagers are providing ground truth, but they’re missing the most exciting region,” said Eric Christian, the IBEX deputy mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “It’s like having two weather stations that miss the big storm that runs between them.”

The IBEX spacecraft was launched in October 2008. Its science objective was to discover the nature of the interactions between the solar wind and the interstellar medium at the edge of our solar system. The Southwest Research Institute developed and leads the mission with a team of national and international partners. The spacecraft is the latest in NASA’s series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers Program. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA and the European and Italian Space Agencies. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., provides overall management for Cassini and the Voyagers for the Science Mission Directorate.

To view the sky map and for more information about IBEX, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ibex

For more information about other NASA science missions on the Web, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Belgrade | 16 October 2009 | Bojana Barlovac

Serbian fixed line operator Telekom Srbija (photo by emportal.rs)

Skopje | 16 October 2009 | Sinisa-Jakov Marusic

Macedonia’s Parliament, photo by Ognen Teofilovski

On Friday afternoon, the Macedonian government requested an urgent session of parliament to discuss the ratification of a border agreement with neighbouring Kosovo.

Local media speculate that this will pave the way for establishment of diplomatic ties, which were conditioned by Skopje on resolving the border issue, after it recognised Kosovo’s independence last year.

The signing of the border agreement could happen this weekend or on Monday, A1 TV reported.

The Macedonia-Kosovo border was left unmarked, due to a long-standing spat between Belgrade and Pristina over who has jurisdiction over the Kosovo side of the border.

Following the 1999 NATO military campaign against Serbia, Kosovo became an international protectorate, declaring independence in 2008.

Macedonia recognised Kosovo last year and the two countries subsequently began the process of border demarcation.

The International Civilian Office, ICO, in Kosovo, as the main supervising authority for the implementation of the Ahtisaari status plan for Kosovo, has been intensively engaged in resolving the issue.

Despite the fact that Serbia has no effective control over the Kosovo-Macedonia border, Belgrade still insists that the border delineation should be conducted in conjunction with its officials and not with those from Pristina.

Macedonia has been under pressure to establish diplomatic ties with Kosovo, since one quarter of its population are ethnic Albanians.

On the other hand, Macedonia has strong economic ties with both Serbia and Kosovo and the loss of either would have a significant impact on the local economy.

www.balkaninsight.com