Found on the net:
It’s the honour code.
If only Airport Security could work that way —
If you are dangerous,
You must not board
Self regulation for would-be terrorists
February 3, 2016John Cleese – “Political correctness creating 1984”
February 2, 2016That “political correctness” is oppressive is self-evident. It is the tool that the liberal left have been using – with some success – to shut down opposing views by stifling them. Political correctness is nothing more than trying to control other people’s behaviour (and sometimes even their thoughts). More often than not, for the mob applying pc to shut others up, it is a sign of their abdication of thought. It is a shame that so many young people on college campuses just follow the herd rather than thinking for themselves. But nearly always, the instigator of a pc campaign will be a left leaning activist who would deny others the freedom of thinking.
Now even John Cleese has been moved to attack the political correctness that so dominates university campuses.
Entertainment: British actor John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, says the enforcement of political correctness has come at the expense of comedy.
In a video for Big Think, Cleese speaks specifically about college campuses, where he says he’s been warned not to perform because “any kind of criticism or any individual or group could be labeled cruel.”
Cleese also recalled something said to him about the issue by London psychiatrist Robin Skynner, with whom he’s worked on two books about psychology and psychiatry.
“[Skynner] said, ‘If people can’t control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people’s behavior.’ And when you’re around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what’s going to upset them next,” says Cleese.
He adds, “The whole point about humor, the whole point about comedy, and believe you me I”ve thought about this, is that all comedy is critical … All humor is critical. If you start to say, ‘We mustn’t; we mustn’t criticize or offend them,” then humor is gone. With humor goes a sense of proportion. And then as far as I’m concerned, you’re living in 1984.”
Jerry Seinfeld made the same point last year:
…. “I hear that all the time,” Seinfeld said on The Herd with Colin Cowherd. “I don’t play colleges, but I hear a lot of people tell me, ‘Don’t go near colleges. They’re so PC.’”
Seinfeld says teens and college-aged kids don’t understand what it means to throw around certain politically-correct terms. “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist;’ ‘That’s sexist;’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” he said. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Giving money to Roma beggars is not a good idea
February 1, 2016Virtually every supermarket in Sweden has a Roma beggar siting outside at the entrance – in all weathers and even when it is -20ºC. About 90% of the thousands in Sweden are thought to be from Romania. Train and bus stations are also well covered. Certainly their presence is almost ubiquitous. The urge to drop any loose change I may have into their bowls is heavily tempered by the conviction that this is well organised begging and is actually a well-oiled “enterprise”. My perception from my limited observations is that the pitches for each beggar are allocated somehow, that they work shifts of about 4 hours per individual and that each is equipped with a mobile phone. They seem to be dropped off and picked up from their allocated positions by car. It seems they are overwhelmingly from Romania, taking advantage of the EU’s free travel arrangements. They are not, I think, receiving any welfare payments.They usually congregate and live in trailer parks, camp sites or other common land in – mainly – run-down caravans.
A petrol station carpark where dozens of beggars live. Photo: The Local
The Roma beggars in Sweden are far less wretched than the beggars I am used to seeing in India but their situation is still pretty awful. Presumably it is not as bad as they would have it back in Romania. Nevertheless my gut feeling has been that putting money in their begging bowls is not a good thing since it can only lead to the conclusion that “begging works”. I suspect that giving money to these beggars will only make it a “successful enterprise” and can only entrench and promote that enterprise. The enterprise will only be discouraged and stop if it is unsuccessful.
The report from a government enquiry has just been published and it seems to support my gut-feeling that giving money to the “begging enterprise” is not a good idea.
The Local (SE): Swedes should not offer cash or welfare services to Roma beggars asking for money in the streets, the lead investigator behind a key national inquiry has said.
Sweden’s national coordinator for vulnerable EU citizens, Martin Valfridsson, presented the findings of a major government begging inquiry on Monday alongside equality minister Åsa Regnér.
“I don’t think [giving money to beggars] is what helps individuals out of deep poverty in the long run. I really believe that the money is more useful with organizations in the countries of origin,” he said.
Sweden has experienced a surge in EU migrants – mostly part of the Roma community from Romania and Bulgaria – begging on streets around the country in the past year.
“We see that the number of vulnerable EU citizens have increased sharply. It’s EU citizens who don’t have the right to welfare in Sweden. In 2015 there were up to 5,000 vulnerable EU nationals in Sweden with a small dip after the summer. Of those around 70 are children,” said Valfridsson.
He also suggested that offering places in schools to children of EU migrants could lead to more vulnerable families bringing their children to Sweden while begging in the Nordic country.
“I don’t think we should generally offer schooling to these children,” he said. …….. Valfridsson further discouraged municipalities from making campsites legally available to Roma travellers.
“That creates new difficulties. Society helps reestablish those slum communities we have worked so frantically to get rid of. The message is that you’re allowed to come here, but if you do you must live here legally. Society must have a strict approach to that you’re not allowed to settle on someone else’s land,” he said.
Gravitational “constant” is not constant but varies periodically
February 1, 2016Newton’s gravitational constant, G, is surprisingly variable and varies periodically. The period is 5.899 +/- 0.062 years which is the same period by which the length of day varies and is also about half the 11 year solar cycle.
The reasons for this are unknown and speculations about currents in the earth’s core and magnetic effects abound.
The simplest explanation is that it is the same magic which causes gravity (and calling it space-time does not reduce its magical qualities) which also causes the solar cycle and is also the same magic which governs the movement of the earth around the sun and the corresponding length of day.
John D. Anderson, Gerald Schubert, Virginia Trimble, Michael R. Feldman, Measurements of Newton’s gravitational constant and the length of day, EPL 110 (2015) 10002, doi:10.1209/0295-5075/110/10002
Abstract:About a dozen measurements of Newton’s gravitational constant, G, since 1962 have yielded values that differ by far more than their reported random plus systematic errors. We find that these values for G are oscillatory in nature, with a period of P = 5.899 +/- 0.062 yr, an amplitude of (1.619 +/- 0.103) x 10^{-14} m^3 kg^{-1} s^{-2}, and mean-value crossings in 1994 and 1997. However, we do not suggest that G is actually varying by this much, this quickly, but instead that something in the measurement process varies. Of other recently reported results, to the best of our knowledge, the only measurement with the same period and phase is the Length of Day (LOD – defined as a frequency measurement such that a positive increase in LOD values means slower Earth rotation rates and therefore longer days). The aforementioned period is also about half of a solar activity cycle, but the correlation is far less convincing. The 5.9 year periodic signal in LOD has previously been interpreted as due to fluid core motions and inner-core coupling. We report the G/LOD correlation, whose statistical significance is 0.99764 assuming no difference in phase, without claiming to have any satisfactory explanation for it. Least unlikely, perhaps, are currents in the Earth’s fluid core that change both its moment of inertia (affecting LOD) and the circumstances in which the Earth-based experiments measure G. In this case, there might be correlations with terrestrial magnetic field measurements.
A set of 13 measurements of G exhibit a 5.9-year periodic oscillation (solid curve) that closely matches the 5.9-year oscillation in LOD measurements (dashed curve). The two outliers are a 2014 quantum measurement and a 1996 measurement known to suffer from drift. The green dot is an estimate of the mean value of G after the 5.9-year periodicity is removed. Credit: J. D. Anderson, et al. ©2015 EPLA
Is capital punishment being applied (unofficially) in the UK?
January 30, 2016
Daniel Pelka
A mother and stepfather were found guilty of the horrific and brutal murder of her 4 year old son. They were both sentenced to serve “at least” 30 years imprisonment in August 2013.
Mariusz Krezolek was convicted of murdering Daniel Pelka alongside his partner Magdelena Luczak, who was the boy’s mother. ….. were both jailed for 30 years in August 2013 after a court heard they subjected Daniel to “unimaginable acts of cruelty and brutality”. ….. Daniel Pelka, whose physical condition was likened by a doctor to that of a concentration camp victim, is alleged to have been deliberately starved over several months.
The mother was found dead in her cell in July last year and had, it was said, “hanged herself”.
Magdelena Luczak: Mother jailed for murdering four-year-old son Daniel Pelka dies in prison
Paramedics attended the 29-year-old’s cell at HMP Foston Hall in Derby at around 7:15am on 14 July. She was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a Ministry of Justice spokesman.
The stepfather, now 36, was found dead in his cell on Wednesday this week
Daniel Pelka: Stepfather Mariusz Krezolek who abused and murdered four-year-old found dead in prison
A Prison Service spokesperson said: “HMP Full Sutton prisoner Mariusz Krezolek was found unresponsive in his cell at 8.30am on Wednesday 28 January. “Staff immediately attempted resuscitation but he was pronounced dead shortly after.
By all accounts they would both have been prime candidates if capital punishment were still in force.
Officially, of course, the UK no longer has capital punishment – even for the most heinous cases.
But deaths while in captivity always carry a trace of a question. Certainly the deaths are very convenient for the UK authorities, both during the custodial period and the period of welfare and social care thereafter. And I can’t help wondering if there couldn’t be just one coincidence too many in this case.
Half of all union members in the US work for the government
January 29, 2016It is only to be expected that most people will vote in favour of their own vested interests.
It is also only to be expected that those whose income depends on government spending will vote for the continuation or the increase of government spending or for the continuation or increase of taxation for that purpose.
One of the fundamental strengths of “democracy” is supposed to be that every individual has an equal vote, but the corresponding weakness is that merit and ability and behaviour are not of any value.
The result is that it is mere existence as an individual that suffices to have an “equal vote”. And if everyone has the vote it is assumed that “democracy” has been attained – as if it were some sort of state of grace. The only real criterion is that of age, even if some countries still have some other criteria in force. The merit of the individual is irrelevant. Votes can and are bought by promises or by free meals or by money or by a bus-ride. A “bought” or coerced vote weighs as heavy as one that is freely given. (There is nothing wrong in buying or selling votes – the flaw lies in that the seller has a vote equal to that of free elector). A fool has the same vote as a wise man. A large tax contributor is equated to a small tax contributor. Government servants paid for by taxes have the same weight of vote as the tax payers. Priests and politicians have the vote. The behaviour of an individual does not affect his vote. Experience, intelligence, wisdom, competence or criminality are all considered equally irrelevant. A majority vote is considered to be the “will of the people” where “constitutions” are supposed to prevent excesses against minorities. But constitutions are subject to the same majority vote. One hundred and one idiots take precedence over one hundred wiser men.
And there is something nor quite right if a majority living off a minority can vote to continue the oppression.
CNS News: 48.9% of Union Members Worked for Government in 2015
The percentage of American wage and salary workers who belonged to a union was only 11.1 percent in 2015, but the percentage of union members who worked for government was 48.9 percent, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“The union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of unions–was 11.1 percent in 2015, unchanged from 2014,” the BLS said in press release published today. But the 7,241,000 government workers whom the BLS estimates were members of unions in 2015 equaled almost half of the estimated total of 14,795,000 union-member wage and salary workers in the nation.
…… Government wage and salary workers were far more likely to belong to a union than private-sector wage and salary workers, the BLS reported. “Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.2 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.7 percent),” the BLS said in the press release that accompanied the release of the data.
It is only to be expected then, that most of these will vote in favour of increased government spending (which means the Democrats in the US.
Anthropogenic effects no threat to Indian monsoon “for a century or two” as Potsdam alarmism is debunked
January 28, 2016The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany is the most rabid disseminator of global warming alarm especially about sea-level rise. Stefan Rahmstorf is the Grand Mufti of this religion and most of its”science” is little more than conjecture based on speculation. They have also been forecasting increased variability and catastrophic effects on the Indian monsoon by computer simulations from 20 different climate models (none of which has succeeded in predicting the current temperature hiatus).
A new study now shows that previous Potsdam Institute monsoon forecasts were badly flawed and omitted “a dominant term in the equations of motion” no less. The equations of motion are about as basic as one can get. The new study goes on to show “that both a corrected theory and an ensemble of global climate model simulations exhibit no abrupt shift in monsoon strength in response to large changes in various forcings”. The authors don’t expect any drastic failure of the monsoon for the “next century or two”.
William R. Boos, and Trude Storelvmo, Near-linear response of mean monsoon strength to a broad range of radiative forcings, PNAS January 25, 2016, doi:10.1073/pnas.1517143113
Significance
Previous studies have argued that monsoons, which are continental-scale atmospheric circulations that deliver water to billions of people, will abruptly shut down when aerosol emissions, land use change, or greenhouse gas concentrations reach a critical threshold. Here it is shown that the theory used to predict such “tipping points” omits a dominant term in the equations of motion, and that both a corrected theory and an ensemble of global climate model simulations exhibit no abrupt shift in monsoon strength in response to large changes in various forcings. Therefore, although monsoons are expected to change in response to anthropogenic forcings, there is no reason to expect an abrupt shift into a dry regime in the next century or two.
The Calcutta Telegraph reports:
India’s monsoon is in no danger of catastrophic collapse in response to global warming and air pollution, two atmospheric scientists said today, refuting earlier predictions that the monsoon could shut down within 100 years.
The scientists at Yale University in the US who used computers to model the Earth’s atmosphere, land and oceans have found that the expected changes in the monsoon will not abruptly alter their strength or their water volume.
Their results contradict earlier forecasts by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany portending frequent and severe failures and even a breakdown of the monsoon, which is critical to India’s food, water resources and economy.
“Our models show that monsoon rainfall will change smoothly in response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, air pollution, and changes in land use,” William Boos, an associate professor at Yale University told The Telegraph. “We should expect changes in the monsoon rainfall in response to changes in the global mean temperature in the coming decades, but there is no reason to expect those changes to be abrupt,” Boos said.
The earlier modelling exercises had predicted that the monsoon, under the influence of global warming and air pollution, would experience a “tipping point” that would lead to a sharp drop in rainfall over India.
Boos and his colleague Trude Storelvmo have now shown that the theory and models that were used to predict such “tipping points” had omitted a key term in climate behaviour, ignoring the fact that air cools as it rises in the atmosphere. ……
….. A decade ago, a study by Potsdam Institute researchers suggested that increasing air pollution and forest loss could lead to a sharp reduction in rainfall within a span of decades. And three years ago, another study from the Potsdam Institute predicted a 40 to 70 per cent reduction in rainfall.
The Potsdam Institute is just one of the many so-called institutes which ensure funding by generating alarmist theories which cannot be tested.
In Sweden, “pc” now stands for political cowardice
January 27, 2016I am an immigrant in Sweden. I suppose I was, like any expat, an “economic migrant” when I was recruited into Sweden 32 years ago, since I accepted the economic package that was offered then to move to Sweden. But an initially expected 3 year stay has now become 32 years. Our children grew up here and though I have lived in five countries over the years (India, UK, Japan, Germany and Sweden), we have settled here and made Sweden our home. It is the most open country I know. And as the Swedish national anthem puts it Ja, jag vill leva, jag vill dö i Norden (“Yes, I wish to live, I wish to die in Norden”).
One aspect about life in Sweden that I find frustrating though, is the amount of servile conformity I find in the supposedly “free press” and among the main-stream political parties. Conformity and “political correctness” have religious overtones here. I suppose the media are free to apply self-censorship if they so wish. But their fear of deviating from “political correctness” borders on cowardice. It becomes interesting when one “political correctness” conflicts with another. In the wake of the mass sexual harassment of girls and young women by gangs of “asylum seeking youths”, the sexism narrative is pitted against the multiculturalism orthodoxy. We now have the ridiculous statements of Swedish feminists (and the conforming media), claiming that the harassment is just about gender and not about culture.
Normally the media are so sanctimonious and correct about “feminism” versus “sexism” (TV even more than the press), as to be positively embarrassing. I cringe at the banality of some of the programs on Swedish TV. They end up as religious ceremonies to the glory of the pc gods (and LGBT is the name of one such god). But it is apparently even more divinely correct to pretend that ignoring problems with immigrants (which are cultural rather than race or ethnicity issues), will make the problems go away. This fear is in turn based on the misguided assumption that culture and ethnicity are the same (or could be mistaken to be the same).
The media (and political parties) have lived in the belief that reporting problems with certain groups of immigrants will only play into the hands of the right-wing, anti-immigrant, Sweden Democrats. Yet the backlash to this intentional hiding of reality has only helped propel the Sweden Democrats to record highs in support. If the intentional self-censorship was meant to prevent that, then it has been spectacularly counter-productive. After the refugee crisis, the immigration policies of the Red/Green government are now almost identical to those proposed earlier by the Sweden Democrats. If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is that hiding a problem or pretending it does not exist, always precludes addressing the problem. Craven compliance with political correctness has become political cowardice. Integration of immigrants in large numbers can never be easy. There are different things to be done for integration depending upon whether the newcomers are from Somalia or Afghanistan or Morocco. But these things can be done. But not if the the press and authorities pretend that the problems don’t exist.
Why is it, for example, that it is only the right-wing web-sites and the foreign press which reports that the 15-year old asylum seeker who allegedly stabbed a young asylum worker to death was of Somali origin? There cannot be many people in Sweden who do not now know that – but yet the authorities and the mainstream media will not mention the fact. They persist – in a denial of intelligence – in pretending that the origin of the alleged murderer is not pertinent to the case.
Why is it that no part of the mainstream Swedish media has the courage to publish anything along the lines of these two recent articles in The Spectator. The Spectator in the UK may support the conservatives and is certainly right of centre, but it is hardly a fascist rag.
Spectator 1:
It’s not only Germany that covers up mass sex attacks by migrant men… Sweden’s record is shameful
…… The answer can be discovered in the reaction to the Cologne attacks. Sweden prides itself on its sexual equality and has even pioneered a feminist foreign policy. When hundreds of women were reported to have been molested and abused in Cologne — at the hands of an organised mob — the reaction from Swedish politicians and pundits ought to have been one of outrage.
Instead, we were told that the events in Cologne were not unusual. An article in Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest tabloid, argued that it was racist to point out that the perpetrators in Cologne had been described as North African or Arab, since German men had carried out sexual assaults during Bavaria’s Oktober-fest. Another Aftonbladet article said that reporting on the Cologne attacks was bowing to right-wing extremism. Over the last week, we have been told over and over that the real issue is men, not any particular culture — that Swedish men are no better.
Then last week Sweden’s own stories began to emerge.
And then The Spectator had this article about the murder of Alexandra Mezher by the alleged 15-year old Somali asylum-seeker.
Spectator 2:
Why can’t the Swedish authorities be honest about crime and immigration?
…. Yesterday, a 15-year-old at an immigration centre stabbed and killed one of its female employees in Mölndal, near Gothenburg. It’s the kind of story that shakes the country to its core. Sweden has taken a staggering number of unaccompanied children – some 20,000 in the past four months – so the government has to act in loco parentis. To keep them out of trouble, as well as educate and accommodate then. It’s a very tough ask, a job that many Swedes fear is simply beyond the competence of government. In such circumstances, appalling things can happen.
A police spokesman had this to say:
‘It was messy, of course, a crime scene with blood. The perpetrator had been overpowered by other residents, people were depressed and upset. These kinds of calls are becoming more and more common… We’re dealing with more incidents like these since the arrival of so many more refugees from abroad.’
What makes this worse is that in Sweden, the police refuse to say if the suspect was an asylum seeker or not. This happens time and time again: a weird and unusual crime (say, a stabbing in Ikea or a rape on a ferry) and the Swedish police (and press) refuse to say whether the perpetrator is an immigrant – as if admitting as much would somehow feed anti-immigrant sentiment.
In fact, the refusal to level with the Swedish public is having the opposite effect. News of an attack brings grief and outrage, but the sense that the authorities are not telling the whole truth brings a new level of anger and suspicion. All of this further undermines public support for immigration, and hands votes to the Sweden Democrats.
….. And, in this way, a xenophobic populist backlash is being incubated in the most open country on earth.
New study debunks Himalayan glacier melting alarm – again
January 27, 2016Over the next two decades we are going to see the gradual disappearance of global warming as the favourite meme for alarmists (after all, global warming has been solved by the Paris Agreement). Every alarmist theme over the last 80 years has been debunked, but the eco fascists merely move on to the next doomsday scenario. Whatever happened to peak oil and a world without energy? or the population bomb and the death of humanity? or peak food, mass starvation and starving billions? or the banning of DDT for the now failed elimination of mosquito borne threats? One wonders what the next alarmist theme will be? Global cooling could always come back. Vaccinations or GMO or gene selection for humans perhaps. Radiation from cellphones?
One of the much hyped stories in the last decade was the “melting of the Himalayan glaciers” and the consequent loss of clean water for one billion or more people. This story was hyped and overhyped before it was shown to be based on newspaper speculation put out by the usual suspects (WWF, Greenpeace, FoE and similar ecofascists). The IPCC – with Pachauri at its head – made idiots of themselves – again. Now comes a new paper in Nature – Global and Planetary Change that in Tibet “water supplies will be stable and may even increase in the coming decades”.
University of Gothenburg Press Release
The Tibetan Plateau has long been seen as a “hotspot” for international environmental research, and there have been fears that water supplies in the major Asian rivers would drastically decline in the near future. However, new research now shows that water supplies will be stable and may even increase in the coming decades.
A report by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2007 suggests that the glaciers in the Himalayas will be gone by 2035. This statement was questioned and caused a great stir. …..
….. Since the statement by IPCC in 2007, the Tibetan Plateau has been a focus of international environmental research.
A research group led by Professor Deliang Chen at the University of Gothenburg, in close collaboration with researchers from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, headed by Professor Fengge Su, has studied future climate change and its effect on the water balance in the region. The great Asian rivers have their source on the Plateau or in the neighbouring mountains.
The researchers recently published a study in Global and Planetary Change which modelled the water flows upstream in the Yellow River, the Yangtze, the Mekong, the Salween, the Brahmaputra and the Indus. The studies include both data from past decades and simulations for future decades.
The results show that water flows in the rivers in the coming decades would either be stable or would increase compared to the period from 1971-2000. …..
….. Dr. Tinghai Ou, who was responsible for the climate projections in the study, has commented that increased precipitation and meltwater from glaciers and snowfall are contributing to increased water flows in the region.
Ah well!
Time to find a new doomsday scenario.
French contingent leads Indian Republic Day parade
January 26, 2016At India’s Republic Day celebrations today in Delhi, and partly since President Hollande is on a visit to India and was the chief guest, a French military contingent led the way at the grand Republic Day parade. It is the first time that foreign military forces have participated in the Republic Day parade. In 2009, a contingent of 400 Indian troops from the three services participated in the Bastille Day celebrations in Paris and led the march down the Champs Elysee. At that time PM Manmohan Singh was President Sarkozy’s guest.
I first visited the Republic Day parades as a child, three or four times, in the late 1950s and then had the privilege of attending three times between 2000 and 2006. It is one of the annual, spectacular highlights of the Delhi calendar and even the invariable, early morning, January mist cannot dim the colour and spectacle and pageantry of the occasion. It is also a strange but unique juxtaposition of cultural and military displays, which works remarkably well for a spectacle. India only became a Republic in 1950 and my fading memory of the early parades is of something much smaller with very little security, but still of the same stirring mix and colour and pageantry. The Republic Day celebrations in Delhi end with a less showy – but much more impressive -Beating the Retreat ceremony, around sunset on 29th January.
This is the first time that foreign military soldiers have taken part in the parade. ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images
IBTimes: For the first time in the history of India’s Republic Day parades, a foreign contingent marched in New Delhi on the country’s 67th Republic Day. A French Army contingent from the 35th Infantry Regiment, one of the oldest active regiments of France, took the historic steps by saluting Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, as chief guest of honour French President Francois Hollande watched and clapped. ….. The contingent led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bury had been practising for the parade for more than a week. ……. The choice for the 35th Infantry regiment was not random and kept in tandem with Indo-French military relations dating back to centuries. The 35th Infantry Regiment founded in the 1600’s and now headquartered in Belfort, served in India, joining the army of Hyder Ali, a south-Indian leader, by fighting British troops between 1781 and 1784. The motto of the regiment is “tous gaillards, pas d’trainards”, meaning “all strapping fellows, no dawdlers”.
Indian contingent leading bastille Day march on 14th July, 2009 PHOTO: AFP PHOTO/ERIC FEFERBERG
The parade – which is touted to be Europe’s oldest and largest military parade – is held to commemorate the birth of the French revolution in 1789.
Indian troops led French military personnel down the Champs Elysee. The Indian contingent of 400 personnel – comprising personnel from the army, the navy and the air force – marched 1.5 km – from the Arc de Triomphe to the presidential stand.
The contingent – led by jawans from the Maratha Light Infantry, one of India’s oldest army regiments – marched to a 90-member Indian band.
Beating the Retreat 2010 — image Sify News
The k2p blog 