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Davis is a great place to live if you like snow but don't want to live smack in the middle of it all winter. Lake Tahoe resorts are 1.5-2 hours away in good weather without traffic. If you're just looking for something cold to fall on, there's ice skating closer by, but still none in Davis.
On storm days, it can take 3x as long, or CHP can close highways for safety. Before your trip, call CalTrans at 800-427-7623 or check online if Chain Control is in effect. If your ride is not 4x4 or AWD, get tire chains. Way cheaper to buy at a local store like Kragen Auto Parts, Napa Auto Parts, or Les Schwab Tire Center in South Davis.
Tahoe Ski Resorts
- A part of Palisades Tahoe, Alpine is a favorite of many hard riding locals because of the varied terrain, good vibes and inbounds backcountry. Lift tickets are as much as $279 during the regular season.
- Boreal is the closest resort to Davis on the North Shore (up Interstate 80) and only costs $25 on select Fridays. Boreal is a small resort so it is best for beginners or people who want to ride their killer terrain parks.
- Donner Ski Ranch is located close to Boreal and Sugar Bowl. It is a small and cheap resort that is best suited for beginners. Although it does have some nice cliffs to drop off of on powder days.
- With half of the mountain in California and half in Nevada, Heavenly offers beautiful views of Lake Tahoe.
- Homewood is located right on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe so it has amazing views. It is small and fairly cheap but still has some steepish terrain and nice lines. Locals like it on powder days when the roads to the other resorts are hard to access. As an added benefit, it is nice and sheltered, so windy days at Homewood are few and far between.
- Kirkwood is one of the best resorts in Tahoe. Located on Highway 88, away from the rest of the area it takes a little bit longer to access than many resorts. Learn the shortcut through Fiddletown and it won't seem so far. Some terrain is steep - lots of chutes (but they tend to let up too soon), the parks are good and the snow is usually fantastic due to the high elevation, which means that along with the great snow there is usually a lot of wind. An excellent place on a powder day - Palisades takes all day to get tracked up.
- Jokingly reffered to as "Flatstar", Northstar's front side is pretty darn easy. The resort over-rates their runs, turning blue squares in to black diamonds and greens in to blues. The Backside and Lookout Peak offer nice terrain for intermediate and above skiers. One nice thing is that there aren't as many good people that ride here so powder can be found well in to the afternoon if you know where to look after a storm.
- Sierra is the closest resort to Davis on the South Shore (up Hwy 50). Rather less challenging, but lots and lots of skiable terrain between the trails in the trees - excellent on a powder day.
- Soda Springs is a small, family-oriented ski resort located closer than Boreal on Hwy. 80. Great day trip for snow tubing (no sledding), learning to ski on bunny hill, a toddler "Planet Kids" zone complete with moving carpet and mini-snowmobile track, and "Kids X" beginner terrain park. There are only 2 lifts, and a few trails.
- Palisades Tahoe (Formerly Squaw Valley)
- Squaw Valley, home of the 1960 Winter Olympics, is one of the largest resorts in the area. It attracts many of the regions most devoted ski bums due to the "world class" terrain (featuring a plethora of mogul runs usually covered in ice, but not much else). Absolutely the best steep skiing in northern CA - KT22 lift is never crowded - very few knuckledraggers because of the difficulty. The vibe can seem a little pretentious to a poor UC Davis student. It is a part of the Ikon Pass; season passes start at around $500 for students in the college club program, available in Davis through the UC Davis Alpine Ski and Snowboard Team or Snow Club.
- Sugar Bowl is one of the closets resorts to Davis because you don't have to cross Donner Pass. It hosts great snow, nice steeps and plenty of terrain. While the parks usually suck, that is not why one goes to the bowl. This is an excellent resort.
Central/Southern Sierra Resorts
These resorts are a VERY long way away from Davis.
- Mammoth Mountain is located in the Eastern Sierra's. They boast an summit elevation of 11,053 feet and a large portion of the mountain lies above the tree line, giving you many open bowls to choose from. Just for comparison Squaw Valley's highest peak is Granite Chief at 9050 feet. The town is also has many fun restaurants, bars and many inexpensive places to stay. The drive is about 5 hours from Davis. Easiest way to get here is by driving through south Lake Tahoe and heading over the Kingsbury Grade and then hitting 395 south until you see the Mammoth Lakes turn-off. The drive on 395 South is beautiful. For some great steeps and terrain check Mammoth out, it is well worth it.
- June Mountain
- Bear Valley Bear Valley is hardly a long way from Davis. Davis to Truckee is about 115 miles and Davis to Bear Valley is about 150 miles. Bear Valley has two things to offer you as opposed to the 'Tahoe' experience. No I80 traffic jams. No lift lines. Otherwise Bear Valley has decent terrain parks, decent snow, decent double blacks (albeit SHORT), and a laid back attitude.
- Sierra Summit
Conditions / Mountain Information
Clubs and Organizations
- UC Davis Alpine Ski and Snowboard Team- a team with competitive and noncompetitive skiing and snowboarding; they have their own cabin in Truckee and are a team of 30-60 good friends that just like to ski/board together
- Outdoor Adventures - runs ski mountaineering, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, Shasta, Yosemite and Snowcave Building courses
- SOS - Ski or Snowboard Club at UC Davis - is the largest club on Campus and it's main goal is to help students to go skiing or snowboarding for a cheap price
- Davis Back Country Skiers is a group/forum for Tele, Alpine Touring/Randonee, splitboarders, and cross-country skiers
Tahoe Deals
If you plan to ski/ride a lot, it is best to buy a season pass. Many resorts offer slightly restricted passes for only $200-300. It is best to buy early before the offers expire (sometimes before UC Davis starts Fall Quarter.)
- Members of SOS get pretty good discounts on various tickets, tuneups and equipment.
- Snowbomb is a good place to get deals. Their Tahoe Card can be a good value.
- SlidingOnTheCheap.com - lists ticket deals
- Boreal - Every Friday lift tickets are only $20 for college students.
Cheap places to stay
During the winter, most people want to stay indoors when in the mountains. Camping or sleeping in your car is still an option for those Living Cheaply. People often stay in a friend's cabin or share a hotel room.
- Clair Tappaan Lodge - This Sierra Club has a lodge at Soda Springs that offers "inexpensive" (~$50/night) lodging and meals.
- Sno-parks - sleep in your car all season long for a $25 season pass good for 22 locations throughout Tahoe
- SOS helps members find rides up to the snow.
- Alpine Adventures - Provides ski bus trips to Tahoe, and fully escorted vacations to resorts in North America and Europe.
- Amtrak - trains or buses drop you off in Truckee, far away from any resort
- Napa Auto Parts - sells snow chains
- NorCal Ski Bus - Runs trips to Tahoe on Saturdays.
- NACSki - Tahoe trips to various resorts, as low as $30 for RT bus ride
Places to get gear
- Big 5 Sporting Goods
- Ground Zero Boardshop
- Ken's Bike & Ski
- Outdoor Adventures - rents Telemark, Alpine Touring (Randonee), and cross country skis, avalanche safety gear, and snowshoes. Doesn't rent downhill stuff.
- Skibutlers
Backcountry Skiing Information
- Davis Back Country Skiers - up-to-date beta on snow and avy conditions, carpooling info, local skiers, trips, etc.
- Bob's Links - All the links you need and want
- avalanche.org - current advisories on snow stability
- California Avalanche conditions - More informative than above link
- SierraBackcountry.org - Excellent site for information on Central and Southern Sierra conditions and routes.
- TahoeBackcountry.net - Trip reports from the Tahoe region.
- TheBackcountry.net - While a store website, it has lots of information on where to go in the Tahoe Region.
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2009-07-30 02:23:54 I just got back from the Graeagle area... Suffice to say, it's really nice. My advice is that you should try it if you like Tahoe, but would be willing to trade one big lake for a few dozen smaller ones, and basically no crowds to speak of. —JoePomidor
2010-02-05 14:01:24 Does the Boreal deal for "college students" work for graduate students or do you actually have to be an undergrad? —FloridianPlywood
- I haven't done it in years, but the couple of times I went back as an undergrad they just wanted to see that you had a student ID. I would be very surprised if A) they checked carefully enough to realize you were a grad student; or B) declined you the deal because of it. —TomGarberson
2010-03-03 15:20:54 I'm a Davis Enterprise reporter looking to head up to Northstar or Sierra this weekend (March 6-7) to capture local ski/snowboard feature story. If you think you've got something, ring me at 747-8052 or email me at email@example.com —jon.edwards
2011-10-12 15:37:21 Squaw Valley plus Alpine Meadows Ski Pass all season long for one low price!
enter promotion code: <deleted (see comment below)> when you check out or call over the phone to get your pass. See you on the slopes! —GaryFisher
2011-11-30 03:26:30 dear "Gary Fisher": i've deleted your promo code, which only benefits you even though you claimed it would give discounts people who use it. have a good day. —watson


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As much as I love Twitter, I have to admit I haven't seen that familiar blue Twitter home page in quite a while. Why? because although Twitter is amazing, I can only fully leverage it by using a range of Twitter tools. I've written several blog posts on Socialable about some of my favorite and most used Twitter tools but I thought it would be a good idea to create a series of 101 of the top social media and blogging tools. So here is the first in the series - and it made sense to start with Twitter seeing as it's my social media "weapon of choice" and generates over 50% of the traffic to Socialable.
1. Hootsuite Hootsuite is undoubtedly one of my favourite and most used social media tools. I literally couldn't manage my own social media let alone all our clients without it. A very easy to use dashboard for engagement, scheduling messages, responding to Twitter messages, direct messages etc. It also has a host of reporting and measuring features although I prefer to use other tools for this. It recently launched the ability to send messages at optimum times (similar to the Buffer feature which I love). Also available on the go with your smart phone.
2. TweetDeck Bought by Twitter back in 2011 you would think that this would be the top dashboard for Twitter. Whether it will still be here for 2013 remains to be seen as the latest news cites that it risks closure over repeated failure to file financial records.
3. MarketMeSuite This great social media dashboard is similar to Hootsuite and TweetDeck. You can use it to manage and market on multiple social profiles, schedule messages across social networks, use Geo-targeting to locate customers nearby and many others.
4. SproutSocial SproutSocial has everything you need to enhance your social media effectiveness: monitoring, engagement, measurement and growth. You can use it to schedule updates, monitor your brand and your competition, find targeted customers, and measure your success with analytics.
5. Plugg.io This great management tool for Twitter and Facebook allows you to manage multiple accounts and separates Tweet streams, to make it easier to manage. It also helps you get more followers with their friend suggestions, and helps you "tweet awesome stuff" by plugging into your favorite blogs and news sources.
6. SpredFast A useful dashboard that you can use it to manage your social media as well as monitor and measure your voice (including uploading videos) across multiple social media platforms from one place.
7. MediaFunnel With MediaFunnel you can manage as many as 25 different social media channels. Features also include monitor brand and keyword mentions, talk with your audience from one place, assign and manage customer requests and drive traffic to your landing page and blog. It also allows for multiple users and roles.
8. Cotweet This is a great social media management tool that also has a free version. Use it for engagement, brand building, customer support, advanced workflow, analytics, third-party integrations and productivity tools. They also have a mobile app and show a very comprehensive profile of each of your followers that helps you understand them better.
9. Netvibes You can use Netvibes to keep track of news and trends, to create fun personalized widgets, monitor your account in real time, get your analytics and find out what people think of you.
10. Sysomos Sysomos is another great dashboard that has everything you might need for your social media engagement. They offer a real time monitoring dashboard, analytics and insights (including sentiment, demographics and influencers), engagement and management of all your social profiles, not just Twitter. No free trial though - but you can request a demo of this tool used by big brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Microsoft.
11. Argyle Social Argyle Social is a dashboard that you can use for all of your social media engagement needs: publishing content, engaging with followers, analytics and a new feature, Argyle Social Contacts, that helps you "connect the dots between social relationships and customer relationships."
12. Splitweet this very basic free Twitter tool helps with the easy management of multiple Twitter accounts. As I said before, it's very basic: you have all of your accounts in one place, where you can follow all of your contacts' tweets easily and monitor your brand and reply to tweets.
13. BirdHerdThis basic Twitter dashboard is specifically designed for Twitter management by teams and groups. Get your entire team to post, send messages and monitor Twitter accounts from one place, and control who posts what.
Automated Tools
14. SocialOomph is another great Twitter tool that I use on a regular basis. As far as I'm aware it's the only tool in the marketplace where you can send recurring scheduled updates. You can manage multiple Twitter accounts from it. As well as scheduling tweets you find people, keyword alerts, send welcome messages to new followers and a lot of other great features.
15. Bufferapp is another one of my favourite Twitter tools. You can schedule all of your articles, pictures and videos and Buffer will "automagically" share them for you. Their "optimum time" posting is a great feature and I mainly use Buffer for this purpose. Also has the ability to manage multiple accounts and invite your whole team to use it. You can also get free and detailed analytics on all of your posts. Buffer also offer buttons and browser extensions and a mobile app for iPhone and Android.
16. Twuffer Twuffer is an easy and free-to-use Twitter tool that allows you to schedule tweets for the future. If you want to make sure that you never forget to announce your future releases, and that you appear to never sleep, than Twuffer is the perfect tool for that.
17. Dlvr.it If you are tired of having to schedule tweets and posts every time you finish a new article than try Dlvr.it. It's a great way to remove the hassle of having to promote your blog posts all the time. And the greatest part is that it doesn't work only with Twitter, but also with Facebook and LinkedIn.
18. TwitterfeedIf you have a blog and want to link it to your Twitter feed with minimal effort, than Twitterfeed is another useful tool. It enables you to send a tweet just as soon as you publish your latest blog post.
19. TweetReach is an interesting tool that shows you "how far your tweet traveled". Simply type in your Twitter handle on this free service, and you can find out how many accounts you've reached with your last 50 tweets, what were your most retweeted tweets, who are your top contributors are and much more useful information.
20. TwitterCounter this is another free useful tool. It shows you all of your most basic Twitter stats in a fun, interactive way. You can also get different widgets and buttons to put on your blog or website that show your recent Twitter visitors and follower numbers.
21. TweetStats is a stats tool that graphs your Twitter stats for you. It can show you graphs of your tweets per hour and per month, your tweet timeline and reply statistics. However, because it is free, it takes quite long to load your stats, depending on how many other people are using the service at the same time.
22. Vizify A great, free and very fun analytics tool. Simply enter your name and you will see your basic Tweeter activity - retweets, tweets that got no response, geographic locations of followers, most retweeted tweets, best followers, favorite themes. All of this information is presented in a attractive and very fun infographic.
23. Twitonomy this is an amazing and free tool that is still in its beta stage. I was really impressed with it because for a free tool, it has quite a few different methods of analysis: tweets and retweets, replies, mentions, hashtags, links, followers and people you are following, tweets per day of the week and per hours of the day...and the list goes on! They also provide some interesting ratios that will show you if you are on the right way or if you should change your Twitter tactics.
24. TweetGrader A free tool that is powered by Hubspot. It's a very simple and easy to use tool that will show you your twitter ranking/grade. It will tell you how influential you are on Twitter, based on a number of factors, such as the number and power of your followers and your level of engagement within the community.
25. TweetTronics TweetTronics looks at what people are saying to one another in real-time and then analyzes that data and converts it into "understandable results that you can act on". It is an interesting tool, although it doesn't offer too many features, like other analytical tools.
26 Twentyfeet Track all your Twitter and Facebook stats from one place. All you have to do is aggregate all your stats and they will notify you by email whenever your attention is needed. I wrote a more in-depth review on Twentyfeet here.
27. Twitalyzer Twitalyzer is an amazing analytics tool that uses a plethora of different metrics. They also integrate data from Rapleaf, PeerIndex and Klout.
28. Backtweets if you want to know who is sending people back to your website, than there is an easy, quick and free way to do it: Backtweets. Simply enter the keywords in the search bar, and you will see all the tweets that link back to your site. And the best part is that URLs are found no matter the form they were tweeted in, whether they were full URL links or shortened URLs.
29. WhoTweetedMe this "contagious content analytics" from Hubspot will analyze URLs and shows you the most influential retweeters, potential reach and timelines. It works best on blog post URLs that are no older than 2 weeks.
30. Foller.me gives you rich insights into any public Twitter profile, with near real-time data about topics, mentions, hashtags, followers, location and more. It's a great tool to find out not only how you are getting along on Twitter, but also your competition.
31. CrowdBooster If you want to get your Twitter analytics and suggestions and tools from the same place, than try CrowdBooster. Connect either with your Twitter account or with your Facebook account to get targeted recommendations, insights about each message, follower and fan growth over time and deep audience insights. You can also view your Twitter and Facebook accounts from the same, centralized place.
32. Visibli This social marketing and analytics tool helps you optimize your social media engagement. Visibli provides detailed, real-time analytics for all the links you shared on Twitter and helps you optimize your content for maximum engagement. Their engagement bar is very useful and by using it I've seen an increase in my traffic.
33. BottlenoseThis great tool provides you with live social intelligence by analyzing activity across all the major social networks. You can use it to search, monitor, analyze, target and engage in real-time - all from one place.
Get more engagement
34. InboxQ if you want to establish new relationships, get relevant followers and engage with more people, than try InboxQ. It is a great tool that will find questions on Twitter matching the keywords you choose. This way you can start a conversation with someone that is interested in the same thing you are. You can also add the InboxQ app to your Hootsuite account.
35. Tweriod this simple tool has a very specific feature. It analyzes your tweets and your follower's tweets in order to find out when your followers are online. This way, you will know when the best time to tweet is, and you will reach a lot more people.
36. Tinker is a great tool that you can use to help with your Twitter (and Facebook) engagement. Simply enter a topic or a few keywords in the search bar and discover and join the top conversations on Twitter and Facebook. Great way to build new relationships and meet new people.
37. ITweetLiveThis innovative tool helps you converse with up to thousands of different Twitter users every day in just a few steps. It uses a Conversational Artificial Intelligence search engine that uses advanced Natural Language Processing and clustering tools to gather similar status updates, provide response suggestions based on real-time Twitter analytics, and measure engagement levels.
Finding Followers
38. NearbyTweets find out who is talking near you, literally! Type in a keyword, and find out who is tweeting in your town using that keyword. A great way to monitor real-time buzz and for building new relationships!
39. TweetArchivistfind, analyze and archive tweets with Tweet Archivist. You can create archives of tweets and then analyze them through visualizations made by Tweet Archivist of: volume over time, top users, top Urls, top words, language, source of tweet, user mentions, hashtags and media.
Cool Tools
40. Brandfluencers use this amazing tool to find out who brings traffic to your website via Twitter and reward them. Simply login with your Google Analytics account and see who sends tweets that bring you traffic to your website. You can then publish this ranking and offer a prize to the person who gives you the most traffic. Great way of motivating your followers to promote you on their Twitter accounts and getting more traffic!
41. GroupTweet if you have more than one contributor to your Twitter account, than GroupTweet is the tool for you. No matter how many people in your team, anyone can tweet from the same account. Contributors' names can be hidden or shown at the beginning/end of each Tweet and they can login to the group's private dashboard, or from their personal Twitter accounts.
42. ClicktoTweet this tool is used by top blogs, such as Hubspot. It basically makes your website's content more shareable on Twitter. Write a preloaded tweet and then ClicktoTweet will generate a customized link that when clicked on by a visitor, it will be automatically added to their Twitter status box. It's similar to a Retweet button, but it does more than simply advertise your blog title. Try putting in quotes and facts and figures, for example.
43. Twitrratr If you want to find out quickly what people really think of certain topics, products, companies etc., try this great, easy-to-use tool. Twitrratr distinguished between positive and negative tweets surrounding any word you wish. You'll find out in percentages how many people are positive, negative or neutral about the particular product, brand, celebrity etc.
44. Woobox A great app that brings your Twitter feed to your Facebook page. It is basically a Twitter tab for your Facebook page that shows your tweets, hashtags or search terms from your Twitter profile as a tab on your Facebook page.
45. TweetChat If you want to monitor and chat about one topic at a time, and stop the rest of the Twittersphere from getting in your way, then try TweetChat. Simply type in the hashtag that you want to follow and then talk to people in real-time. I love using this tool when I want to have a conversation, it works particularly well if there are lots of people joining the conversation. They also have a feature called "smart pausing" which allows you to pause refreshing the page, so you can keep up and "user control" which allows you to block spammers and feature only the people you like.
46. TwitLonger Use Twitlonger when you simply need more than 140 characters to express yourself! Write what you want to and then a link to what you said will be automatically posted to your Twitter account.
47. Parrotfish Download this tool for your browser so you can see the full preview of each tweet. It's great for those tweets that have links to photos and videos.
48. Twitcam If you want your followers to get more insight into you and your business, than Twitcam is perfect for you. You can use this tool to broadcast any video live - simply connect your webcam, login with Twitter and click the broadcast button. Twitcam will then post your video description and link to your Twitter account so that all your followers can see. You can also chat with viewers while broadcasting via twitter, right from the broadcast page. And once you are done, don't worry about losing the video - it will be automatically archived by Twitcam.
49. TweetyMail Tweetymail lets you tweet via email, send and reply to Twitter DMs, follower users - all from your email! You can also use it to create custom email alerts for tweets, mentions etc. and receive powerful and detailed notifications for new followers and DMs.
50. Triberr If you are blogger and want "more eyeballs on your content" than Triberr could be of real help. I'm a massive fan of Triberr, which is a content distribution network for bloggers that gives them a platform to group into tribes. From there, Triberr makes it fun and easy for tribe-mates to share each others' content via their Twitter. Triberr is not only a fantastic way to generate more traffic but also a good way to network with other like-minded people.
51. Revisit Revisit is a real-time visualization of the latest tweets about a specific topic. You can use it to get a sense of the temporal dynamics in the Twitter stream.
52. TweetOldPost You can use this Wordpress plugin to tweet about your old posts so you can get more hits for them and keep them alive in the twittersphere.
53. Twtvite Use this great tool to create events and groups on Twitter. You can use it to send invitations and sell tickets, create guest lists, nametags and even to take a post-event survey!
54. TweetBackup this easy to use tool will backup all of your Twitter feed for free. Not only that, but it will also backup your entire list of Twitter friends. If anything happens to your account, you will have all of your data saved on TweetBackup's online server.
Relationship Management
55. Commun.it is one of the best free relationship management tools out there. Manage your Twitter relationships from one place and find out who your top influencers, supporters and potential customers are. It's a great tool that will help you get the most out of each and every 140 characters you tweet and will help you build relevant connections and relationships! I wrote a more in-depth review of Commun.it which you can read here.
56. SocialBro is a great tool that helps you understand your Twitter followers better. You can use it to take group actions when managing your contacts (which helps save a lot of time!), and to understand your followers: find out who your influencers are, get rich profiles of each of your followers, and you can also see when your followers are online, so you'll get a better reach!
57. Contax.io is a free contact management tool for Twitter and Facebook. It will track your followers and friends and provide you with all the details you need to decide when to follow back. Use it to manage relevant, real-time relationship data for your personal and business accounts.
58. FollowerWonk use FollowerWonk to get a better understanding of your followers. Find out who they are, where they are and when they tweet, find out who the influencers are in your niche and compare your social graphs to others.
59. MentionMapp Explore your Twitter network in a very innovative and interactive way. Find out who interacts the most, what people are talking about, find interesting and relevant people to follow and much more.
60. TrueTwit TrueTwit is a validation service that helps you avoid spammers, by verifying if the people you follow and are following you are not robots. You can try the TrueTwit Basic package, which is free, or TrueTwit Premium that has a few more features (though not the most useful of features...)
61. Tweepi this great tool helps you get rid of all the people who aren't following you back, automatically follow back new followers and clean up all of your inactive followers. And they have recently added a great feature - force undesirable followers to unfollow you!
62. ManageFlitter one of my favorite tools that I use to tidy up my Twitter account. It has a useful feature to find out which of your followers are active/not active. Not only does it have the ability to unfollow large numbers of people, but you can also find out when the best time to post is (based on your account) and get your Twitter analytics.
63. Refollow one of the best free tools that helps you sort out your followers. Use it to see who hasn't tweeted for up to 90 days, who never tweets, see who is talking about you so you can follow them back and engage and see users' bio stats before you follow them. This great tool also allows you to sort all of your followers with different measures.
64. TweetPsych can create a psychological profile of any public Twitter user and compares it to others in its database. It uses linguistic analysis algorithms on the last 1000 tweets to identify traits that are used more or less frequently by the analyzed user. Quite an interesting tool that helps you understand your followers better.
65. Twendz is another interesting Twitter tool that helps you get a feel for the sentiment surrounding different Twitter conversations. It highlights conversation themes as well as the sentiment of different tweets related to the topic you are interested in. Use it to understand your followers better and to get a better understanding of their emotional reactions.
66. WhoUnfollowedMe Use this simple tool to see who isn't following you back and who you aren't following back. It's very easy to use (and free) and there's no need to create an account, because you can sign in directly with Twitter.
67. FriendorFollow Friend or Follow might not be the only one of its kind, but it's still a tool worth mentioning. You can use it to find out for free who unfollowed you on Twitter, who is not following you back, who you aren't following back and also who your friends are.
68. Twimbow This web app uses vibrant colors to help you engage with your Twitter followers. It filters users into different groups, it catches important tweets among the others, it colour codes mentions, retweets and DMs and it distinguishes between different types of messages.
69. Twitblock is a great tool that will help you find out if your followers are truly fans or just spammers. Scan for spammers and get them all in one list - this will make it easier for you to block them or report them, all from one place.
70. SocialMention is similar to Google Alerts, only it is for social media only. Get real time social media search and analysis alerts about your brand, company or anything else that might be relevant to your business.
71. TweetLevel measures your buzz in real time on Twitter with this great tool. You can see how much people are talking about your brand, the Tweet Level of a topic or hashtag in order to boost your engagement, who the top influential tweeters are on any topic, what web links are shared the most and find out how influential you are on Twitter.
72. TweetBeep Anytime someone mentions you or your product or company, TweetBeep will send you an update. Well, not every time, but you will receive hourly updates by e-mail (if you want to receive them more regularly you need to upgrade to their paid account). It is a great tool that could really help with your customer care and your online reputation management.
73. RetweetRank Measure and track your retweets with this simple, free tool. Simply enter your username (or someone else's) in the search bar to see your rank. Retweetrank will look up your recent retweets, number of followers, friends and lists, compare these numbers with other users' and then assign you a rank. It's a great way to find out how you stack up against the competition.
74. SocialPointer SocialPointer is a free real-time monitoring tool. It allows you not only to monitor your brand, but also to respond and engage in real time with other Twitter users. It is still in its beta version, so maybe there is more to come!
75. SocialSeek another great, free tool that is in its beta version. Choose any topic that you wish to know more about, and get all the latest tweets, news, videos and photos in one place. It's a great tool for monitoring (but without analyzing) any topic you want.
76. Wildifire Social Media Monitor use Wildfire app and you can monitor your performance across all of your social media platforms. After you find out how you are doing in the social media realm, you can also check out your competition and see how your social media is stacking up against them, by follower bases.
77. Monitter enables you to monitor a set of keywords on Twitter in real time. You can also narrow the search to certain geographic locations. This way you can find out what's going on in different parts of the world.
78. NutshellMail Use this tool to monitor and manage your Twitter and Facebook activity from one place. NutshellMail tracks your brand's social media activity and emails you a summary on your schedule.
79. BrandChirp BrandChirp is a great brand management tool for Twitter. You can use it to effectively monitor, manage and resolve all brand activity. It also has a "target follow" feature that can help you reach a bigger audience and establish new connections.
80. SharedCount use SharedCount to track URL shares, likes, tweets, and more. Enter a website address in the search bar and you will find out how many people have shared it on different social media platforms.
81. Twilert Twilert is a web app that will send you email updates regularly of tweets that contain any keyword you want. It's a great tool for brand monitoring - without the hassle of having to do regular searches on Twitter.
82. SocialMotus have recently launched this great social media marketing and monitoring tool for Twitter and Facebook. It allows you to manage, schedule and publish posts, monitor and engage and also to analyze and measure your performance.
83. TweetBigThis free Twitter management tool has many useful features: an rss management tool that allows you to tweet from your favorite sources, analysis of the followers of your competitors in order to identify relevant users to follow, automatic follow back, tweet scheduling, follower gathering based on keywords and topics you are interested in, and red carpet finder (finding your most influential followers).
News/Content Curation
84. Scoop.it Connect with your Twitter or Facebook account, enter all the topics you want to follow and start scooping news. And if you find an interesting scoop, you can tweet it right from their website.
85. Paper.li Publish your own online newspaper for free! You can use it to publish any web content, such as Twitter, Facebook or your blog, into an online newspaper. And Paper.li will monitor all of your content sources for you to update your paper automatically. You can also customize your paper, add your logo and branding.
86. Curate.me Use Curate.me to get the best news from your friends and the people you follow straight to your inbox. You can get personalized news based on your interests. This way you won't miss any of the top tweets and shares.
87. Trap.it is a tool that gets smarter as you use it more. It will discover high quality content and new sources for you, helping you to never miss any article that you might be interested in. It is quite similar to Scoop.it and Addictomatic.
88. TwylahYou can use Twylah to share your tweets with "awesome looking" websites and widgets. Twylah basically takes your tweets and creates a website out of them. It's a great tool that will help you get noticed beyond Twitter, get you more traffic from your tweets and bring your message into focus by automatically organizing by your trending topics.
Measuring Social Influence
As social media has grown there have been more and more tools that measure your influence online. Below are 3 of the most common used ones. It's worth mentioning that I'm not a huge advocate of them and take their scoring with a "pinch of salt". They are a useful guide but they're algorithms change and often it's more about quantity than quality hence my feelings.
89. Klout Use this tool to find out what your "Klout score" is. Connect your social networks to Klout (Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn) and then it crunches this data and gives you an overall score. There has been much controversy about Klout's scoring and how their algorithms work, I wrote a post here about it. They did however recently change their algorithms, another useful post which lots of experts chimed in on (including myself!) is here.
90. Kred is quite similar to Klout. You can sign in with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and find out how influential you are on each of these platforms. They have a few more extra features, such as Kred Story, which is a visual history of your social media influence; you can also see other people's most influential content, the most popular tweets and words for any active hashtag and a lot of other interesting information.
91. PeerIndex is my personal favorite if you are going to use these tools. It's a free tool that helps you understand your impact in social media by measuring interactions across the web. With it you will learn not only who influences you, but also who you influence. You can also receive PeerPerks depending on how influential you are.
92. SocialBuzz can be used to search social networks in real time. Apart from Twitter, it also supports Facebook and Google+. It has several main features: search using multiple keywords, exact keywords and minus keywords tool, quick location filtering, search results analytics and three-column layout of the search results.
93. TipTop A Twitter-based search engine that will help you discover real people that you can engage with, discover people's emotions about particular topics and everything else that people may be talking about that is related to your search.
94. Twazzup Use Twazzup to filter Twitter - get only the news you want out of the live Twitter content. You can then find out who are the most influential people on a given topic.
95. PostPost With PostPost, you can see on your homepage all the topics, photos, videos and links from the people you are the most connected to on Twitter. They also have a search engine that you can use to find any Tweet, link, photo or video that you and the people you follow have shared with each other in the past.
96. SnapBird With SnapBird, you can search beyond Twitter's history. Use it to look for tweets from your own timeline, tweets mentioning you, through someone's favorites or search for a conversations between you and other Twitter users.
97. Tweepz It's not always easy to find interesting, relevant people to follow on Twitter. That's where Tweepz comes in - it lets you search for twitter users by city, keyword or names in their bios.
98. TwtrlandUse this great tool to search for any name, location or tag from Twitter and let Twtrland visualize the social footprint of your keyword. You can use it to discover new people, get a glimpse of their social impact and find ways to connect and increase your network.
99. Hashtagify.me This is a free tool that could really help you compose better tweets with better hashtags. Simply type in any hashtag you can think of and Hashtagify will show you relevant hashtags around the topic. These hashtags are displayed in different sized bubbles, so you can find out in an interactive way which hashtags are more popular than others.
100. Tagdef Hashtags can be quite confusing sometimes and often times you might not even understand what a hashtag could possibly mean! That's where Tagdef comes in: enter a hashtag in the search bar and this free tool will tell you what it really means.
101. WhatHashtagIf you want more people that could be interested in you or your company to find you on Twitter, than hashtags are one of the best ways to go. However, it's not always easy to get a hashtag right. That's where WhatHashtag comes in. Simply enter your search keyword in the search bar and WhatHashtag will give you the most popular hashtags used worldwide to discuss that particular topic.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Link this page to your website.. Copy the below code and paste it into your webpage, blog or forum:
How to restore a memory card with no requirement of technical knowledge? Download simple to operate photos rescue utility.
Industrious employee calendar software helps to enlarge big scale companies by providing facility to maintain successful employee working timetable.
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Provides medical reference material on CD-ROM and online for physicians.
Offers clinical decision support tools for medical professionals, and occupational health and regulatory information systems for environmental health and safety specialists.


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- buster 4.16-2
- buster-backports 5.04-1~bpo10+1
- testing 5.10-1
- unstable 5.10-1
X25(7) | Linux Programmer's Manual | X25(7) |
x25 - ITU-T X.25 / ISO-8208 protocol interface.SYNOPSIS¶
#include <sys/socket.h>#include <linux/x25.h>
x25_socket = socket(AF_X25, SOCK_SEQPACKET, 0);
X25 sockets provide an interface to the X.25 packet layer protocol. This allows applications to communicate over a public X.25 data network as standardized by International Telecommunication Union's recommendation X.25 (X.25 DTE-DCE mode). X25 sockets can also be used for communication without an intermediate X.25 network (X.25 DTE-DTE mode) as described in ISO-8208.Message boundaries are preserved — a read(2) from a socket will retrieve the same chunk of data as output with the corresponding write(2) to the peer socket. When necessary, the kernel takes care of segmenting and reassembling long messages by means of the X.25 M-bit. There is no hard-coded upper limit for the message size. However, reassembling of a long message might fail if there is a temporary lack of system resources or when other constraints (such as socket memory or buffer size limits) become effective. If that occurs, the X.25 connection will be reset.
Socket addresses¶
The AF_X25 socket address family uses the struct sockaddr_x25 for representing network addresses as defined in ITU-T recommendation X.121.
struct sockaddr_x25 { sa_family_t sx25_family; /* must be AF_X25 */ x25_address sx25_addr; /* X.121 Address */ };
sx25_addr contains a char array x25_addr[] to be interpreted as a null-terminated string. sx25_addr.x25_addr[] consists of up to 15 (not counting the terminating null byte) ASCII characters forming the X.121 address. Only the decimal digit characters from '0' to '9' are allowed.
Socket options¶
The following X.25-specific socket options can be set by using setsockopt(2) and read with getsockopt(2) with the level argument set to SOL_X25.- X25_QBITINCL
- Controls whether the X.25 Q-bit (Qualified Data Bit) is accessible by the user. It expects an integer argument. If set to 0 (default), the Q-bit is never set for outgoing packets and the Q-bit of incoming packets is ignored. If set to 1, an additional first byte is prepended to each message read from or written to the socket. For data read from the socket, a 0 first byte indicates that the Q-bits of the corresponding incoming data packets were not set. A first byte with value 1 indicates that the Q-bit of the corresponding incoming data packets was set. If the first byte of the data written to the socket is 1, the Q-bit of the corresponding outgoing data packets will be set. If the first byte is 0, the Q-bit will not be set.
The AF_X25 protocol family is a new feature of Linux 2.2.BUGS¶
Plenty, as the X.25 PLP implementation is CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL.This man page is incomplete.
There is no dedicated application programmer's header file yet; you need to include the kernel header file <linux/x25.h>. CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL might also imply that future versions of the interface are not binary compatible.
X.25 N-Reset events are not propagated to the user process yet. Thus, if a reset occurred, data might be lost without notice.
socket(2), socket(7)Jonathan Simon Naylor: "The Re-Analysis and Re-Implementation of X.25." The URL is ftp://ftp.pspt.fi/pub/ham/linux/ax25/x25doc.tgz.
This page is part of release 4.16 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.2017-09-15 | Linux |


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Note: This product could be shipped to India only. It can't be shipped out side of India as it is regulated to ship internationally.
Product Details:
This Utility Knife is completely handmade by the master artisans of Reha, namely Amad Thariya, Hemraj Maheshwari and Majid Osman, and has been designed by Rohit Ramesh Chandak, a student designer as a part of his Graduation project, from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
Made using ancient techniques that involve cold forging, sand casting and polishing and buffing, this knife features scalloped edges and a slightly longer blade than a standard paring knife. The handle is made using the locally available and much more durable Babul wood, and also brass rivets and plates in order to provide ease as you slice fruits and vegetables, or simply use it for food prep.
Product Care:
- Sharpen little and often to keep your knife sharp. Not suitable for electric or ceramic wheel knife sharpeners. We advise using a handheld steel rod sharpener and to use close to the cutting edge of the knife
- Store knives securely and separately after use and always keep out of reach of children
- Always cut on a stable, dry, non-slip surface, synthetic or wooden boards are best
- Always wash knives separately, using warm, soapy water, and dry thoroughly. Never leave knives to soak in water. Hold the handle when drying (not the blade) and dry from the handle down to the blade
- Never leave acidic foods on a knife blade after use as this may cause discoloration
- Never leave sharp knives loose in a drawer
- Never test the sharpness of a knife by running your fingers along the blade edge
Please note: These knives cannot be sold internationally
- At KHAMIR, we take great care in delivering your product/s to you, and we partner only with reputed national couriers. Shipping within India is FREE for all orders above ₹1200. For orders below that, we charge a flat ₹100 shipping fee.
Because each craftsperson and artisan's process is unique, shipping times may vary. Make sure to check the shipping information on the product page for individual shipping before placing an order.
It takes approx. 4 - 7 working days to deliver your product at your doorstep.
- Our courier partners will be able to deliver your KHAMIR product/s to you from Monday to Saturday: 9 AM to 7 PM. Working days exclude public holidays and Sunday. Delivery time is subject to factors beyond our control, including unexpected travel delays from our courier partners and transporters due to weather conditions or strikes.
- We accept change in address requests ONLY IF the order hasn't been shipped. Please note that this request can only be fulfilled if the new address is within the same state.
- As soon as your package ships, we will email you your package tracking information.
International Shipping
- Currently, the process of placing an order for international deliveries is manual -- which means, if you like any product, you can email or WhatsApp (+91 9099908050) us and we will be happy to process your order.
- We ship across the globe with DHL and FedEx. Real-time shipping is calculated based on your product selection and country.
- All local taxes and custom duties are charged extra by the Shipping carrier based on your respective country. Most countries allow import up to a certain amount without any duty. This amount is called De Minimis values. Please check following link to know the De Minimis values of your respective country. Country-wise De Minimis Values
- Disclaimer : These values are subject to change by the respective tax authorities of your country. Khamir is not in a position to take any responsibility for the inaccuracies or decision made by the information listed in the De Minimis Values. For further assistance, drop us an Email at firstname.lastname@example.com with your requirement.
Thank you for taking the time to go through our policies. We hope we've been able to answer your questions and improve your online shopping experience with us. As always, please reach out to us if you have any questions. We're happy to help!
Namaste! Thank you for taking the time to look into our policy on returns, exchanges, cancellation and refunds.
While your reason to do so is completely justified, before you go ahead, we'd like for you to take a moment to understand how our products are made. Every Khamir product is handcrafted by Kutch's traditional crafts people with care, time and patience. We assure you that all our products are a labour of love. Owing to their uniqueness, our products may be slightly different from each other. We'd like for you to not think of an irregular weave, print or stitch as a defect. Remember, handloom by definition means a glorious uncertainty when it comes to uniformity.
Each of our shipments are carefully inspected before leaving Khamir, but if you are not satisfied with your purchase or gift, under certain circumstances, we will replace the product free of cost.
Please read below our return and exchange policies before you return any item:
What can and cannot be returned?
You're probably happy to know that we can offer returns and exchanges on certain products but still disappointed that we don't offer them on all. Please make it a point to understand which products are eligible for return/s before placing an order with us.
Returnable Products | Non-Returnable Products |
Fabrics | Masks |
Clothing | Handkerchiefs |
Accessories | Key-Chains |
Home-Furnishing | Bells |
Kitchenware | Products on Sale |
Footwear | |
Home-Decor |
- As you know, we admire and respect the efforts and artistry of hands that brought life to each of Khamir's products. We feel you share the same view with us, so we request you to return your purchase/s with care.
- To be eligible for a return, the Khamir product must be unused, unwashed, must be in the same condition as you received it, and have the original Khamir tag/s attached.
- To complete your return, we'd like for you to return our products in their original packaging, along with your invoice/s within 10 days of receiving the merchandise.
Oh no, you received a damaged or incorrect product?
In the unlikely event that your merchandise arrives damaged, you should email us a photo of the damaged product/s with the barcode within 48 hours of receiving your order/s.
What we can offer
- Exchange the product/s with an alternative of your choice (of course of the same purchase value)
- Give you a full refund for the price you paid for the product/s
We promote conscious consumerism, and therefore would like for you to consider your purchase carefully. We put a lot of effort into providing product/s details and images to help you make an informed decision before placing an order. So, if you're reluctant to purchase something that you have yet to see in person, we think it's safe to say that if you're drawn to it online then you will not be disappointed when you receive the product/s.
In case this still doesn't sound convincing enough, here's what we can do:
- Exchange the product/s with an alternative of your choice (of course of the same purchase value)
- Give you a full refund for the price you paid for the product/s
Please note: International deliveries are not refundable.
Please refer our Refund/ Exchange Policy page for detailed information.
Manufacturer/ Seller / Importer Address
Khamir, Crossroads Post Village, Behind BMCB Social City, Lakhond Rd, Kukma, Gujarat 370105 INDIA
Packaged by
Khamir, Crossroads Post Village, Behind BMCB Social City, Lakhond Rd, Kukma, Gujarat 370105
Marketed by
Khamir, Crossroads Post Village, Behind BMCB Social City, Lakhond Rd, Kukma, Gujarat 370105
Country of Origin


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Until recently, thousands of tiny, potential protein-coding regions in the genome called "small open reading frames" or "smORFs" have been difficult to identify. They are now getting well-deserved attention for the important biochemical functions they play in the cell—like making your heart beat.1
In the present study published in Science, researchers found two smORF-encoded proteins in fruit fly genomes that were 28 to 29 amino acids in length and involved in regulating calcium transport and calcium intake in muscle and heart cells.1 And based on these proteins' 3-D shape and function in flies, the researchers found two counterparts in humans, which they also characterized and found to be involved in calcium uptake and heart muscle function as well.
Based on their 3-D shape, the researchers claimed that the human smORF proteins evolved from fly smORFs over a span of 550 million years, despite the fact that the DNA sequences that encode them showed virtually no similarity. The authors of the report revealed this contradiction burying it in the middle of their report where they said, "We searched for conservation of these smORFs in other species by using Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) and only identified them in other Drosophilids [other fruit flies] (page 1118)."1 In other words, the DNA sequences for these smORFs were specific only to fruit flies and showed no evolutionary relationship to humans or any other creature. For all practical purposes, the evolutionary story behind this discovery was marginal all along.
Most of the proteins produced in the human genome are about 500 amino acids long on average. The proteins encoded by smORFs are only about 10 to 30 amino acids long and have been largely found by happenstance while studying gene mutations. Noted Harvard University physiologist, Alan Saghatelian (not an author on the current study) said, "These things have fallen through the cracks of traditional gene-finding algorithms, and most of the ones we know about have been serendipitously discovered."2
Interestingly, the smORF-related genes that contain segments that encode these small proteins—called long non-coding RNAs or lncRNAs—are often quite long (much like protein-coding genes), are complexly regulated, and highly multifunctional.1 These lncRNA genes occupy the regions of the genome once thought to be nothing but junk DNA. However, lncRNAs have been found to be highly cell and tissue specific in their function and also encode other important regulatory molecules like micro RNAs. Some lncRNAs also combine with various proteins to make different types of important cell machinery and are key players in epigenetic modifications (chemical tagging) in controlling the genome's function.3 Amazingly, lncRNAs are also proving to be key players in DNA repair, 3-D chromosomal positioning in the nucleus, and overall genome stability and function.4
Since no real DNA sequence-based evolutionary relationships exist for these human and fruit fly smORFs encoded within lncRNA genes, the most important news about this discovery is the continuing revelation of pervasive design and function in the genome—further negating the weak evolutionary paradigm of junk DNA.
- Magny, E. et al. 2013. Conserved Regulation of Cardiac Calcium Uptake by Peptides Encoded in Small Open Reading Frames. Science. 341 (6150): 1116-1120.
- Yong, E. Hidden Treasures. The Scientist. Posted on the-scientist.com August 22, 2013, accessed September 20, 2013.
- Rinn, J. L. and H. Y. Chang. 2012. Genome Regulation by Long Noncoding RNAs. Annual Review Biochemistry. 81:145–166.
- Ohsawa, R. J. H. Seol, and J. K. Tyler. 2013. At the intersection of non-coding transcription, DNA repair, chromatin structure, and cellular senescence. Frontiers in Genetics. 4 (36). doi:10.3389/fgene.2013.00136.
*Dr. Tomkins is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and received his Ph.D. in genetics from Clemson University.
Article posted on October 14, 2013.


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(Note to TomDispatch readers: A favor: In addition to everyone who bookmarks TomDispatch, over 18,000 of you now get e-mails letting you know whenever a new piece has been posted. [Many tens of thousands more read pieces from the site reposted elsewhere.] Most new readers sign up for those e-mails thanks to word of mouth, a formidable force in the on-line world. For those of you already are hooked on TD, I want to urge you to lend the site a little more of that word-of-mouth power. I hope you'll consider writing perhaps 10 people you know who might benefit from getting TomDispatch regularly, urging them to go to the "sign up" window at the upper right of the main screen, put in their e-mail addresses, answer the confirmation letter that will quickly arrive in their e-mail boxes [or, fair warning, their spam folders], and so join the TD crew. Where else could you get someone, as below, thinking aloud about the nature of turnout at antiwar demonstrations, or, in the coming month, get to read writers like Mike Davis, Robert Dreyfuss, and Susan Faludi, among others, bringing you takes on the world that are truly out of the ordinary and the mainstream. For those of you with a few extra minutes, who are willing to spread the word, many thanks in advance. Tom)
As I was heading out into a dark, drippingly wet, appropriately dispiriting New York City day, on my way to the "Fall Out Against the War" march one of 11 regional antiwar demonstrations held this Saturday I was thinking: then and now, Vietnam and Iraq. Since the Bush administration had Vietnam on the brain while planning to take down Saddam Hussein's regime for the home team, it's hardly surprising that, from the moment its invasion was launched in March 2003, the Vietnam analogy has been on the American brain and, even domestically, there's something to be said for it.
As John Mueller, an expert on public opinion and American wars, pointed out back in November 2005, Americans turned against the Iraq War in a pattern recognizable from the Vietnam era (as well as the Korean one) initial, broad post-invasion support that eroded irreversibly as American casualties rose. "The only thing remarkable about the current war in Iraq," Mueller wrote, "is how precipitously American public support has dropped off. Casualty for casualty, support has declined far more quickly than it did during either the Korean War or the Vietnam War." He added, quite correctly, as it turned out: "And if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration can do to reverse this decline."
Where the Vietnam analogy distinctly breaks down, however, is in the streets. In the Vietnam era, the demonstrations started small and built slowly over the years toward the massive in Washington, in cities around the country, and then on campuses nationwide. In those years, as anger, anxiety, and outrage mounted, militancy rose, and yet the range of antiwar demonstrators grew to include groups as diverse as "businessmen against the war" and large numbers of ever more vociferous Vietnam vets, often just back from the war itself. Almost exactly the opposite pattern the vets aside has occurred with Iraq. The prewar demonstrations were monstrous, instantaneously gigantic, at home and abroad. Millions of people grasped just where we were going in late 2002 and early 2003, and grasped as well that the Bush dream of an American-occupied Iraq would lead to disaster and death galore. The New York Times, usually notoriously unimpressed with demonstrations, referred to the massed demonstrators then as the second "superpower" on a previously one superpower planet. And it did look, as the Times headline went, as if there were "a new power in the streets."
But here was the strange thing, as the "lone superpower" faltered, as the Bush administration and the Pentagon came to look ever less super, ever less victorious, ever less powerful, so did that other superpower. Discouragement of a special sort seemed to set in initially perhaps that the invasion had not been stopped and that, in Washington, no one in a tone-deaf administration even seemed to be listening. Still, through the first years of the war, on occasion, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators could be gathered in one spot to march massively, even cheerfully; these were crowds filled with "first timers" (who were proud to tell you so); and, increasingly, with the families of soldiers stationed in Iraq (or Afghanistan), or of soldiers who had died there, and even, sometimes, with some of the soldiers themselves, as well as contingents of vets from the Vietnam era, now older, grayer, but still vociferously antiwar.
However, over the years, unlike in the Vietnam era, the demonstrations shrank, and somehow the anxiety, the anger though it remained suspended somewhere in the American ether stopped manifesting itself so publicly, even as the war went on and on. Or put another way, perhaps the anger went deeper and turned inward, like a scouring agent. Perhaps it went all the way into what was left of an American belief system, into despair about the unresponsiveness of the government with paralyzing effect. As another potentially more disastrous war with Iran edges into sight, the response has been limited largely to what might be called the professional demonstrators. The surge of hope, of visual creativity, of spontaneous interaction, of the urge to turn out, that arose in those prewar demonstrations now seemed so long gone, replaced by a far more powerful sense that nothing anyone could do mattered in the least.
When it comes to the Vietnam analogy domestically, the question that still hangs in the air is whether, as in the latter years of the Vietnam era, the soldiers, in Iraq (and Afghanistan) as well as here at home, will take matters into their own hands; whether, as with Vietnam, in the end Iraq (and Iran) will be left to the vets of this war and their families and friends or to no one at all.
The Consensus Gap
Here's the strange thing: As we all know, the Washington Consensus Democrats as well as Republicans, in Congress as in the Oval Office has been settling ever deeper into the Iraqi imperial project. As a town, official Washington, it seems, has come to terms with a post-surge occupation strategy that will give new meaning to what, in the days after the 2003 invasion, quickly came to be known as the Q-word (for the Vietnam-era "quagmire"). The president has made it all too clear that he will fight his war in Iraq to the last second of his administration and, if he has anything to say about it (as indeed he might), well beyond. In their "classified campaign strategy for the country," our ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, and the president's surge commander, Gen. David Petraeus, are reportedly already planning their war-fighting and occupation policy through the summer of 2009, and so into the next presidency. The three leading Democratic candidates for president, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards, have refused to guarantee that American troops will even be totally out of Iraq by 2013, the end of a first term in office as essentially has every Republican candidate except Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas. In fact, in Washington, the ongoing war is now such a given that it's hardly being discussed at the moment (as the one in Afghanistan has never been). The focus has instead shifted to the next possible administration monstrosity a possible air assault on Iran that would essentially guarantee a global recession or depression.
Meanwhile, the American people having formed their own Iraq Study Group as early as 2005 have moved in another direction entirely. On this, the opinion polls have been, and remain (as Mueller suggested they would), unanimous. When Americans are asked how the president is handling the war in Iraq, disapproval figures run 67 percent to 26 percent in the most recent CBS News poll; 68 percent to 30 percent in the ABC News/Washington Post poll; and, according to CNN's pollsters, opposition to the war itself runs at a 65 percent to 34 percent clip. As for "staying" some course in Iraq to 2013 or beyond, that CBS News poll, typically, has 45 percent of Americans wanting all troops out in "less than a year" and 72 percent in "one to two years" in other words, not by the end of, but the beginning of, the next presidential term in office. (The ABC News/Washington Post poll indicates, among other things, that, by 55 percent to 40 percent, Americans feel the Democrats in Congress have not gone "far enough in opposing the war in Iraq"; and that they want Congress to rein in the administration's soaring, off-the-books war financing requests.)
In other words, the Washington elite are settling ever deeper, ever less responsively, into the Big Muddy, while the American Consensus has come down quite decisively elsewhere. For all intents and purposes, it seems that most Americans are acting as if some policy page had already been turned, as if Iraq was so been there, done that. Perhaps many are also assuming that the present administration is beyond unreachable and that any successor will be certain to fix the problem; or, alternately, that nothing the public can do in relation to the Washington Consensus, including voting, matters one whit; or some helpless, hopeless combination of the two and who knows what else.
As I sat in that rumbling subway car on my way to the march in lower Manhattan, I kept wondering who, between the Iraq-forever-and-a-day crowd and the been-there-done-that folks might think it worth the bother to turn out at an antiwar rally on such a lousy day. And it was then that a brief encounter from the summer came to mind.
I'm now 63 years old and increasingly feel as if my 1950s childhood came out of another universe. Sometime in August, I ran into a "kid" maybe in his early thirties employed by a consulting firm to do what once would have been the work of a federal government employee. He gamely tried to explain the sinews of his privatized world to me. As he spoke, I began to wonder whether he was interested in working in the federal government, not just as a consultant to it. To ask the question, I began explaining how I had grown up dreaming about being part of the government the State Department, actually. It seemed to me then like an honorable, if not downright glorious, destiny to represent your country to others. It was a feeling that left me deep into the 1960s when I had, in fact, already been accepted into the United States Information Agency (from which I would have, a good deal less gloriously, propagandized for my country). It was only then that anger over the Vietnam War swept me elsewhere.
I told the young consultant that, when young, I had dreamed of doing my "civic duty" and his eyes promptly widened in visible disbelief. He rolled that phrase around for a moment, then said (all dialogue recreated from my faulty memory): "Civic duty? No one in my world thinks about it that way any more." He paused and added, hesitantly, "But I might actually like to be in the bureaucracy for a while."
That was my moment to widen my eyes. What I once thought of as "the government" had, in the space of mere decades, become "the bureaucracy," even to someone who would consider joining it and, the worst of it was, I knew he was right. This was one genuine accomplishment of a quarter-century-plus of the Republican "revolution" (and the Clinton interregnum). All those presidential candidates, running as small-government outsiders ready to bring Washington big spenders to heel, had, on coming to power, only fed that government mercilessly, throwing untold numbers of tax dollars at the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex, ensuring that they would become ever more bloated, powerful, and labyrinthine, ever more focused on their own well-being, and ever less civic; ensuring that the government as a whole would be ever more "bureaucratic," ever less "ept," and always ever more oppressive, with ever more police-state-like powers.
All that had been strangled in the process made smaller, if you will was the federal government's ability to deliver actual services to the population that paid for it. All that was made smaller in the world beyond Washington was whatever residual faith existed that this was "your" government, that it actually represented you in any way. As the state's bureaucratic, military, and policing powers bloated, so, too, did the electoral process and lost as well was the belief that your vote could determine anything much at all.
Looking back, this was, in a sense, what 9/11 really meant in America. The one thing that a government, which had long reinforced its own powers, should have been able to deliver was intelligence and protection. So it wasn't, I suspect, just those towers that crumbled on that day. What also crumbled was a residual faith in "we, the people." This was actually what the Bush administration played on when it urged Americans not to mobilize for its Global War on Terror, but simply to go about their business, to as the president famously put it 16 days after 9/11 "get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." In a sense, Bush and his top officials were just doing what came naturally further sidelining the American people so they could fight their private wars in peace (so to speak).
The "bureaucracy" had strangled the very idea of the "civic." Who would even think about entering such a world today as a "civic duty," rather than as a career move; or imagine Washington as "our" government; or that anyone inside the famed Beltway, or near the K-Street hive of lobbyists, or in Congress or the Oval Office would give a damn about you? This is why, at a deeper level, the Washington Consensus today has next to nothing to do with the American one.
American Disengagement
When people look back on the Vietnam era, few comment on how connected the size and vigor of demonstrations were to a conception of government in Washington as responsible to the American people. Even the youthful radicals of the time, in their outrage, still generally believed that Washington was not living up to some ideal they had absorbed in their younger years. Whatever they were denouncing, the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in their Port Huron Statement, for instance, spoke without irony or discomfort of "[f]reedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people these American values we found good, principles by which we could live as men."
Though they may not have known it, they were still believers, after a fashion. By and large, the demonstrators of that moment not only believed that Washington should listen, but when, for instance, they chanted angrily, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" that President Lyndon Baines Johnson would be listening. (And, in fact, he was. He called it "that horrible song.") Which young people today would believe that in their gut? Who would believe such a thing of "the bureaucracy"?
Don't forget, demonstrating is another kind of civic duty but perhaps a waning one. I was struck this weekend that, even among people I know, many of whom had demonstrated in the Vietnam era and had turned out again in the early years of this war, next to none were on the streets this Saturday. Most were simply going about their business with other, better things to do.
The fact is: Attending a march like Saturday's is still, for me, something like an ingrained civic habit, like gulp voting, which I can't imagine not doing even when it has little meaning to me or keeping informed by reading a newspaper daily in print (something that, it seems, just about no one under 25 does anymore). These are the habits of a lifetime, and they don't disappear quickly. But when they're gone, or if they don't make it to the next generation intact, it's hard, if not impossible, to get them back.
If you need another point of comparison, consider TV comic Stephen Colbert's joke (or is it?) race for the presidency in his home state of South Carolina (or the fact that, in a Rasmussen Report telephone poll, he garnered 13-percent support in the Republican field just days after announcing his run). Again, I'm old enough to remember the last time something like this happened. Sometime in the late 1950s the details escape me a few fans of the cartoon strip Pogo decided to launch a "Pogo for President" campaign in election season. (Mind you, that strip, about a talking opossum and his pals in Okefenokee Swamp, was a classic with a critical, political edge. Who could forget the moment when Howland Owl and the turtle, Churchy LaFemme, decided to enter the nuclear age by creating uranium from a combination of a Yew tree and a geranium?) In the strip, Pogo did indeed run for president, and its creator, Walt Kelly, used that hook to promote perfectly real voter-registration campaigns. But as I remember it he was horrified by the real-life campaign for his character and insisted that it be stopped. You didn't, after all, make a mockery of American democracy that way. It just wasn't funny.
No longer. Now, the "character" is launched onto the field of electoral play by the creator himself, who also happens to be promoting a book in need of publicity; and Colbert's ploy is hailed as a kind of transcendent reality, not simply a mockery of it, even on that most mainstream of Sunday yak shows, Tim Russert's Meet the Press. Of course, the joke and it's a grim one indeed is on what's left of American democracy, which, as Colbert obviously means to prove, is the real mockery of our moment.
Perhaps we all have to hope that, when he's done with the election, he'll turn his attention to demonstrations in a world increasingly uncongenial to "civic duty" of any sort. It seems that we've entered a time in which even demonstrating can be outsourced, privatized, left to the pros, or simply dismissed (like so much else) as hopeless, a waste of time. So I was heading toward this demonstration, wondering not why more people weren't there, but why anyone would be.
Penned in on the Streets
And here's how it felt:
"From the moment I looked across the aisle in the subway and saw the woman with the upside-down, hand-painted sign an anguished face, blood, and 'no war' on it and she noted my sign, also resting against my knees but modestly turned away from view, and gave me the thumbs up sign, I knew things would be okay. As my wife, a friend, and I exited the subway at the 50th Street station on the west side of New York, I noted three college-age women bent over a subway bench magic-marking in messages on their blank sign boards, a signal that we were heading for some special do-it-yourself event."
Oops! Sorry, that was my description of the first moments of a massive antiwar march half a million or more people took part in New York City on Feb. 15, 2003, just over a month before the invasion of Iraq was launched.
On my subway car Saturday, there were no obvious demonstrators carrying signs; no eager faces or hands ready to give a thumbs-up sign; no one who even looked like he or she was heading for a demonstration. (Of course, I had no handmade sign and didn't look that way either.)
A signature aspect of this era's antiwar demonstrations, from the first prewar giants on, has been the spontaneous, personal signage, often a literal sea of waving individual expressions of indignation, sardonic humor, hope, despair, absurdity, you name it.
On Saturday, most of the signs were printed and clearly organizationally inspired; not all, however, as the shots by Tam Turse, the young photojournalist who accompanied me, eloquently indicate.
As for the police, well, here's how it felt with them:
"They still had us more or less confined to the sidewalk and a bit of the street on one side of the avenue, and cars were still crawling by. But already demonstrators were moving the orange police cones quickly set up for this unexpected crowd on an unexpectedly occupied avenue ever farther out into the traffic. Soon, to relieve pressure, the police opened a side street and with a great cheer our section of the rolling non-march burst through up to Second [Avenue] where we found ourselves in an even greater mass of humanity, heading north on our own avenue without a single car, truck, or bus."
Uh-oh, my mistake again! That, too, was the Feb. 15, 2003 demo. This time, I came out of the subway at 23rd Street and was promptly accosted by a confused young German woman, postcards clutched in one hand. She pointed at two blue mailboxes on the corner and asked, in charmingly accented English, how you put the cards in. "Oh," I said, "let me show you." And I promptly pulled on each mailbox handle, only to find them locked. The police had undoubtedly done this as an anti-terror measure. The woman was relieved, she told me, that she wasn't "mad." No, I assured her, it was the world that was mad, not her.
The rest of the march was, in essence, a police event, the demonstrators penned in by moveable metal barricades, "guarded" often by more police personnel than onlookers. From the moment we began to march in the rain, the police presence was overwhelming, starting with a well-marked NYPD "Sky Watch" tower, a mobile tower that can be raised anywhere in which police observers can spy on you from behind a Darth Vader-style darkened window. In fact, we marchers were penned in by the police as we headed south for Foley Square, cut off, for instance, from the large cross street at 14th by a row of dismounted police using their motorcycles as a barricade. Police vehicles and police on foot moved slowly in front of the demonstration as well as behind it. Police even marched in the demonstration (though not as demonstrators). Essentially, it was, as all rallies and demonstrations now seem to be in our growing Homeland Security statelet, a police march.
Led by a sizable contingent of soldiers, vets, and military families, there were perhaps 10,000 marchers a rare occasion when my own rough estimate fit the normal police undercount on a dreary, rainy day, which is no small thing. Each of them left his or her life for a few hours to take a walk (or, in the case of one elderly lady, to be wheeled, encased in plastic, or for two "grannies for peace" to be peddled in a volunteer pedicab) in mild discomfort, to chant, to call out, even in a few creative cases, to display feelings on individual placards or constructions or in group tableaux. Each of them, for his or her own reason, was civic, even global. Add up all the people who did this in 11 cities nationwide, and the numbers aren't unimpressive. But with unending war, as well as perpetual death and destruction on the Bush administration menu, with the horizon darkened by the possibility of a strike against Iran, and a population which has turned its back on most of the above, it was, nonetheless, clearly underwhelming.
Meanwhile, in Iraq on Saturday, according to news reports, it was just an ordinary day, the usual harvest of decomposing corpses, deadly roadside blasts, assassinations, kidnappings, U.S. raids, and, bizarrely, the breakfast poisoning of 100 Iraqi soldiers. One American death was announced on Saturday. We don't yet know who the soldier was, only that he died "when he sustained small arms fire while conducting operations in Salah ad Din [Province]." He could, of course, have come from New York City, but the odds are that he came from a small town somewhere in the American hinterlands, from perhaps Latta, S.C., or Lone Pine, Calif.
He might, or might not, have ever visited Disney World. He might have joined the overstretched U.S. armed forces for the increasingly massive bonuses the military is now offering to bind the poor and futureless close in a war that has been rejected by the American people; or perhaps he simply signed on with some of that residual sense of civic duty that's fast fleeing the land; or, possibly, both of the above. Perhaps, if he hadn't died, he would, like 12 former captains who recently wrote "The Real Iraq We Knew" for the Washington Post op-ed page and called our "best option to leave Iraq immediately," have returned to speak out against the war. Who knows. Already, for 3,839 Americans in Iraq and 451 Americans in Afghanistan, we will never have a way of knowing.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
Tam Turse is a photojournalist working in New York City. Her photos of the demonstration discussed in this piece can be viewed by clicking here.
Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt


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Education Marlow
- Bisham Acadamy School - Contains information for parents, prospective parents, newsletters, photos and news.
- Burford School - A primary school which caters for children in both the infant and junior phases of education. Information and insight into the everyday life of the primary school plus contacts.
- Great Marlow School - Mixed secondary school GCSE and 6th Form for pupils aged 11-18. Information on curriculum as a Specialist Technology school, news and staff contact details.
- M S M Driving - Details services of driving instructor Roy Evans plus information about the test and car maintenance.
- Marlow Church of England Infant School - Includes information about the school, classes and news.
- Performance Unlimited - Executive and performance coaching, offering business training programmes for executives and managers. Course diary and contacts.
- Sir William Borlase's Grammar School - A voluntary aided co-educational grammar school. Information and history of the school, their aims, curriculum, facilities and extra curricular activities. Contact details for various staff included.
- The Training Shop (UK) Ltd. - Offer training and consultancy for trainers, and educational toys, along with hints and tips on how and why to use them.


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Ham, Egg & Manchego Breakfast Muffins
In my family growing up we always had our big Christmas dinner celebration on Christmas Eve. This meant that Christmas day could be left stress-free to enjoy whatever Santa might have delivered as well as each others company without the insanity of running around preparing a huge meal afterward. Of course being that my family is a bunch of Virginians, you know this feast was sure to include a huge country ham which we would pick at for days.
A whole ham is still a tradition of mine for the holidays which means I've gotten to play with different ways to use the leftover ham. This recipe is a current favorite for Christmas morning. After the feast is over the night before I just cut up the ham I need for the morning and shred my cheese. Then it's just the super quick assemble of these irresistible breakfast muffins and 15 minutes in the oven before they are ready to be devoured. Pretty much less time than it takes to open presents! Another fabulous thing about this breakfast "muffin" is that you can pretty much throw whatever you want in these awesome little crescent roll crusts. Why not go crazy and put leftover turkey, stuffing and a spoon full of gravy beneath that cracked egg? Or if your holiday protein of choice is a prime rib roast, cube that up and throw it in with some leftover mashed potatoes and blue cheese. The world is your breakfast muffin! Wait, is the saying "the world is your oyster"? Does that mean it should be, "The breakfast muffin is your oyster"? 😉 Regardless, these things are highly addictive so I suggest on making several batches if you have a crowd larger than 2. Just sayin.
Soooooo I might have gone a little photo crazy while making these. Just in case you had any questions as to the process, this string of photos should clear that right up. 😉
First your roll your dough out.
Then cut that dough in half to make squares…
…or a muffin tin with a square of dough.
Add a healthy dose of ham and cheese to each of the lined muffins (or ramekins)
Finally crack an egg on top and pop those suckers into the oven!
*This post is sponsored by Pillsbury. All contents and opinions are my own.


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A landmark Cold War-era arms control treaty between the United States and Russia officially collapsed on Friday, triggering fears of a new arms race.
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, banned ground-launched cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 km (310-3,400 miles). More than 2,600 missiles were destroyed by 1991.
But both sides walked away from the pact Friday, each blaming the other for its demise.
"Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement. He accused Russia of failing to destroy all of its 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile systems, which the U.S. says are noncompliant.
In turn, Russia's Foreign Ministry released a statement that read, in part, "By denouncing the INF Treaty, the United States confirmed its commitment to abolishing all international instruments that do not suit it for one reason or another. This leads to an actual dismantlement of the existing arms control architecture."
The Trump administration announced in February that the U.S. was suspending its obligations under the 1987 INF treaty and would pull out in six months if Russia wasn't in compliance. That declaration prompted Moscow a day later to make its own withdrawal announcement.
Russia has consistently denied breaching the pact and insisted that the technical capabilities of its missile systems fall within the parameters of the agreement.
On Friday, Pompeo said Russia had developed, produced, flight-tested and fielded multiple battalions of its noncompliant missiles since "at least the mid-2000s." Trump administration officials said this week that they believe "all of western Europe is within range of this missile system."
NATO also pointed the finger at Russia for the INF Treaty's collapse. "We regret that Russia has shown no willingness and taken no demonstrable steps to return to compliance with its international obligations," the military alliance said. "A situation whereby the United States fully abides by the Treaty, and Russia does not, is not sustainable."
NATO said it would respond in a measured way to risks posed by Russia's 9M729 missile to ensure deterrence and defense, using military exercises, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "We don't want a new arms race," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference. "And we have no intention to deploy new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe."
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Washington's steps to dismantle the INF Treaty and other arms control agreements "would eventually backfire on Washington."
A senior Trump administration official said at a briefing this week that the U.S. plans to flight-test a weapons system that would have violated the treaty. The official said the test would take place in the coming weeks, but that the United States was "years away from having an effectively deployable capability" because of "our steadfast adherence to the treaty for some 32 years."
European countries, including the U.K. and Germany, denounced the ending of the INF treaty. So did the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of non-governmental organizations in dozens of countries. The coalition called upon "the leaders of all responsible nations to step up" and join the 2017 U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
There also are fears that Washington and Moscow might walk away from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, an Obama-era agreement to limit nuclear weapons. That treaty is scheduled to expire in early 2021.
If it is not extended or replaced, "there will be no legally binding limits on the world's two largest strategic arsenals for the first time since 1972," according to The Arms Control Association, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.
When Reagan and Gorbachev came together at the White House to sign the landmark INF treaty, the U.S. president began by saying, "This ceremony and the treaty we are signing today are both excellent examples of the rewards of patience."
He went on to discuss a future full of possibility. "We can only hope that this history-making agreement will not be an end in itself, but the beginning of a working relationship that will enable us to tackle the other urgent issues before us," Reagan said.
The INF treaty did not come up in a phone call on Wednesday between President Trump and President Vladimir Putin, a U.S. official said at a briefing this week. The two leaders were said to have discussed trade as well as forest fires raging in Siberia.
On Friday, Pompeo said President Trump is beginning "a new chapter" and "a new era of arms control." The secretary called upon Russia and China to join in.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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By Ajai Shukla
By Ajai Shukla
@ajai sir
dont know why the year end review leaves a few things still unanswered, like
1. Status report of N-LCA
2. Status report on INS Vikrant at Kochi
3. Status report on K15/K4
4. Status report of INS Arihant(supposedly a SSGN)
and many more
Ajai sir i am no defence analyst but I think 2 things need to be addressed next year
1. Steps to engage Republic of Somaliland in Horn of Africa
2. Use of INS Viraat which is very much battle worthy till 2025 after 2013 when Harriers are retired.
In my opinion using the ship as a helicopter carrier and under ANC tri service command will be better option.
Your views on this
Joydeep Ghosh
@joydeep ghosh
here are a few answers i have to ur questions
1. will make its maiden flight by dec end or jan begining
2. The initial sea trial (dunno wat its called but thats the first time the ship experiences itself in seawater)...was abt to happen in november which is delayed by 6 months and is likely by march-april 2012
3. no idea
4. sea trials on...bt the project is kept very secretive and mysterious
and about INS Viraat....it will have Mig 29K planes...india is already in process of acquiring 8 helicopter landing utilities as far as i know...
"The MoD review falsely eulogizes the long-delayed Kaveri engine, which DRDO is developing for the Tejas. While the Kaveri did indeed complete "Flying Test Bed" trials in Russia this year, powering a modified IL-76 transport aircraft, it remains well short of the power needed for the Tejas fighter."
Is the MOD being false or are you spreading falsehood? It is true that Kaveri is delayed but care to write about certain fact like:
1. Not more than two or three countries in the world can make an engine of the same level as the so called "failed" Kaveri?
2. How much technology gap was covered with this so called failed Kaveri?
3. That the present Kaveri even if it works as designed (which it is close to) will not meet IAF's significantly CHANGED needs for the Tejas
4. That India has not even designed a bike engine and the Govt was trying to leapfrog from nothing to something so complex that beyond US, France and Russia, no body else can do it...and India is close to getting there....despite the fact that we did not have the infrastructure or know how to develop such a complex product....
Mercifully, the mandarins at MoD have more sense to appreciate our achievements rather than crying about how we are bad and how others are better than us....
Re Ajai Shukla
Sir, you are one of the few reporters who are canvassing for indigenous development of military equipment. Recently you carried an article on estimated cost of development of LCA and compared with western programmes. But I believe that the analysis may have been stymied with lack of data. I would like to point recent articles point out that "present inflation adjusted" cost of Rafale is around US$ 190-210 million spread over 286 units. Estimating current production cost of Rafale at around US$ 90-110 million (from various reports) leaves us with estimate of around US$ 25 to 30 Billion for R&D cost involved in Rafale programme. This clearly shows that Indian LCA is massively underfunded with current inflation adjusted cost of US$ 2 Billion.
Similarly we are putting in half of PAKFA R&D costs estimated to be around US$ 10 to 15 Billion with engine & radar etc. The first tranche of funding is around Rs 1500 crores. While our own AMCA gets only US$ 2 Billion while first tranche of funding is around Rs. 100 crores only.
Similarly Arjun Mark-2 costs have gone up massively by adding remote controlled weapon station, 2 additional thermal sights, etc which are missing in T-90s. This shows that by one means or other we place our own programmes at dis-advantage.
Colonel Ajai Shukla (Retired) is a columnist, commentator and journalist who covers regional security issues in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific, military technology and India's defence economy. Read More