HSD1

Back then all regiments were issued with two flags. One tended a green/red flag which was the 'Royal House' flag - the other flag could be blue/black/yellow/red/green/white and was the Regimental Flag. Where as most Royal Flags seem similar, Regimental Flags tended to vary based on the decision of the regimental commander. Some used Hindu gods/goddesses, others used symbols associated with Punjab/Indo-Aryan/Aborigine/First Indus Civilization, basically anything that reflected their heritage and a sense of destiny rather than personal religous beliefs. Could you imagine if an Italian created a website where he tried to appropriate British Royal Navy warships simply because they were named after Roman and Ancient Greek gods/goddesses? These guys just reflect how dim Sikhs in the West generally are when it comes to things that dont involve making money. I dont know how anyone can take them seriously.

Je suis Lahore............anyone?! Also in the news, tens of thousands have marched on the streets of many Pakistani cities today - to demand Sharia law. It's only a matter of time before the entire country implodes.

Not a massive fan of GOT simply because most people who recommend it seem to love the sauciness anot much else lol. Each season seems to have the first eight episodes as filler, with loads going on in the last two episodes of the season, forcing you to watch over 10 hours per season just to get to the good bits. Not a great series to binge watch to be honest unless you're massively into magic and dragons type fantasy. TWD on the other hand is amazing. Season 2 is a bit boring but the other seasons more than make up for it. Otherwise I'd recommend the following: Spartacus: All Seasons - loads of fighting, great story, twists in the plot all over the place. Great fun to watch. Black Sails: Spartacus with pirates basically. Turn: Based on the intelligence side of the American War of Independence it's a lot more interesting and factual than most tv shows. The Man In The High Castle: A TV show based on the Philip Dick novel, lots to mull over regarding people's values and the effects of colonisation. There is enough there to keep you going for a few years!

I cant believe this book has taken five years to write. Further on from Dal's point about skewing the narrative, I just hope he's doesnt dumb it down and avoid talking about the political and social climate amongst Sikhs before the war started. The thing was that the Sikh army divided itself after Chillianwallah to stop the British just running every time they got smashed. One division would lure the British along and fight them, the other would swing round to their rear and cut off their escape. The Brits realised what was going on and managed to attack one division before it could link up with the other one. The plan failed and it was obvious from Gujrat that they now had better artillery now (from the siege guns of Multan and Royal Navy) so it was a bit pointless to carry on fighting. Especially as the Brits had started agitating Muslims to revolt and further reinforcements were moving up from Sind.

Tu rendeh, there's 200 million muslims in Pakistan and when their country eventually implodes it will kick off massively in East Punjab.

The guy looks like a young rolf harris. I heard he only went to Isisland because he had a letterbox fetish and wanted the authentic Arab experience. Wonder if he's enyjoying Raqqa, the city which the Russian Air Force regularly flies too - I heard it's their #1 destination!

This is a terrible topic, it just gives the fundos a chance to get wound up and show the rest of us how stupid they are. Still better than most of Paapiman's spam topics though.

This is the anniversary article from a local newspaper which gives a more thorough account of what actually happened that night. Strong parralles with what happened in Tulsa and other parts of the US later in the early 20th Century. http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article22195713.html

Here is the original article attached to the snake charmer picture above if you cant read it.

http://series.fountainink.in/indian-worker-isis-iraq-escape/

And so, fearing for their lives, hundreds of Sikhs fled Bellingham. Many went by train south to Seattle and Oakland; some, north to Vancouver, B.C., where similar riots awaited them. In fact, just three days after the Bellingham incident, Lee writes in her book, "Vancouver was ripped apart by a related anti-Asian riot that swept through the Chinese and Japanese quarters and left destruction in its wake." In Seattle, a week after Bellingham, a wire report headlined "Hindus Attempt to Slaughter Swedes" tells the story of a bizarre bar fight between "20 Swedes and a hundred 'Hindus' [who were] recently from Bellingham." Midfight, the Swedes, joined by a policeman and a one-legged man, barricaded themselves in a saloon until the so-called Hindus fled. News reports following these attacks elsewhere in the country were often gleeful. "Every Hindu mill employee in the city has quit work, and nothing will persuade them to remain," a wire service reported. "They are fleeing to more congenial pastures of the North like flocks of sheep." Decades later, those "congenial pastures" remain elusive for Sikh Americans. From unnamed Sikhs who suffered attacks on "Hindoos" to Inderjit Singh Mukker or Prakash Singh or Amrik Singh Bal, all attacked in recent years for being "Muslim," the justifications may have changed, but the violence is much the same. http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/01/02/461479969/long-before-they-were-apparent-muslims-sikhs-were-targeted-in-u-s

http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/on-the-brink-of-an-abyss-punjab-s-governance-economy-are-in-shambles/story-9zoQR2xLAmwI362Qu6entJ.html

What people have to bare in mind is that only two sides are really interested in the facts of what happened - us and the British. If you know anything about the way in which the British describe their history it comes as no surprise the way they describe their losses as being small. Each historical book written by British historians that I have read tends to round off each battle with a little paragraph about how there were more enemies than Brits but somehow they still managed to kill plenty of the enemy and win. - it can feel like reading a cricket score rather than an actual factual set of figures! It's a bit like those war films where the people who made the film like to show their side mowing down loads of the other side, whilst each of their losses is given a heroic moment to signify their importance over the enemy. It should therefore come as no surprise that the British fudged their casualty figures during the Anglo-Sikh Wars, doing things like only reporting on one regiment's losses as the figure for the entire army, not counting how many of their own sepoys they lost or simply just ordering the press not to report on any casualties. Considering how many British regiments used to have days named after battles from the Anglo-SIkh Wars where the officers would hand over all battle standards to their sergeants to commemorate how during the actual battle their officers were wiped out just shows where the actual truth lies. Or reading more factual accounts showing the levels of shell shock and grief caused by their losses inflicted on the Brits mentally. As for our losses, we'll never know. The casualty figures were kept by the regiments but after the Wars the headquarters would have been taken over by the Brits so all evidence would no longer be available. Some accounts are passed down by the families from some of the old regiments but these are largely anecdotal. Personally, I think Sikh casualty figures were lighter than the Brits for most battles but overall may have been higher in the first war due to the events of Sobraon and what went down in Patiala. In the second war I think the massacre of Sikh troops retreating from Gujrat would have tipped the casualty figures to balance earlier British losses in the war. On balance, it's probably best not to get too worked up about the actual numbers. The British could replace their losses in the time it took a ship to sail from Portsmouth to Calcutta, where as we were a minority ruling a empire full of backstabbers and idiots, we could not replace the quality and quantity we lost. Not even all this time since those wars.

I thinks the reluctance is more to do with the fact that the average sikh coconut in Canada has more in common with the singhs hired by the likes of Hopkinson than they do with a freedom lover like Mewa Singh. It's a bit rich for Hindustanis to appropriate the Ghadar party especially as many of their beliefs were a mixture of Sikh Imperial attitudes towards liberating all of India from the pre-colonial era combined with newer schools of thought that included Socialism and Nationalism. I doubt the Ghadars from the turn of the last century would celebrate Partition, 1984 and the way Hindustan has become a more modern version of British India with brown folk instead of white folk in charge of impoverishing the masses and poisoning their minds with bigotry and fecklessness.

Do you know what pound shot that swivel gun alongside the swords fires and how old it is? Wonderful pictures btw, any measurements you have of the firearms would be great to know.

If there's a ful blown recession most of these countries will have to pull out of their commitments against Daesh anyway, the coalition America has put together is such a loose bunch of nobodies everyone knows its just for show.

That's one way to look at it. But it would be a pretty Daily Mail way of looking at it. In Britain, the Government has instigated insurrection against the Syrian government, sold weapons to Saudi Arabia that have made their way to terrorist groups in the country and refused to take any more than a handful of refugees. The Germans on the other hand have sent modern arms to the Kurds, offered homes to the displaced and opened their health and psychiatric facilities to the Yazidis in order to rehabilitate their girls and women who have been tortured by ISIS. They have even flown some of these girls out of Iraq at their own expense and not moaned about it. Compare this to the UK where the NHS and Social Services have no hope of helping the thousands in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford etc who have been abused and it's laughable anyone points fingers at the Germans. It's not their fault the Sunni men are renowned for being brave when it comes to taking advantage of women and children, but not when it comes to fighting a proper fight. How the Sunnis can act like this in a country that has taken them in has just shown others not to be so sympathetic - the Sunnis are shooting themselves in the foot in the long term. I've noticed this about you KDS, you are keen to point out problems in other societies, but you must have heard about the grooming in Canada/UK amongst Sikhs? You must also known that Badal has banned media outlets from reporting on the caste and religion/race of sex offenders after the massive spate of rapes in East Punjab perpetrated by muslims? Plenty of horror stories coming out of East Punjab about muslim men raping widows and grooming girls in orphanages whilst intiimidating staff. Not to mention all the weapon stockpiles discovered in Ludhiana and Chandigarh in houses containing large numbers of sulleh. Maybe we should be a bit more worried about what's about to go down under our noses rather than watching what happens elsewhere like it's a soap opera on some banal desi TV channel.

Just like after the 'peaceful' protests ended in Syria in 2010, the extremists shift to attacking education and media outlets. The media outlets are targetted to spread fear and to reduce the ability for the other side to keep their populace informed. The educational establishments are targetted to disrupt career progression of young people by forcing them to look to other means of making a living - in Syria a lot of former university students have been drafted into the ranks of various ISIS units who conduct special operations. Attacking educational establishments such as cadet academies and universities highlights the states inability to protect it's young.... and in turn safeguard it's future. That's the message behind this.

http://scroll.in/article/801617/a-century-on-canada-sikhs-are-making-peace-with-an-inconvenient-history-with-a-play

Armaan had carried a “power bag” to school, meaning his backpack has a built-in battery charger for a cell phone. Numerous companies sell these bags, which are not cheap but popular enough to be sold out right now in several styles and categories on Amazon. “The student in front of me, who is the one who made the accusation. . . said that [the backpack] looked like a bomb,” [Armaan] Singh said, per a report in the Washington Post. “Then Friday. . . I came back to that period and he was in front of me again and he said ‘I’m going to go tell on you. I’m going to go tell on you and say all this stuff about you. I’m going to go tell on you.’ Singh said he laughed at the other student, who did the same. But the other student wasn’t joking. He made good on his threat, telling the teacher that Armaan had a bomb. The teacher told the principal, who called the police, which came to school and “grabbed” him. Now at home because he’s been suspended from school, Armaan must wear an ankle monitor as he awaits his court date. Though he is twelve years old, it is currently unclear whether he’ll be tried as a juvenile or an adult, and what charges he will face for the crime of carrying a trendy backpack to school. There are more than a few parallels to “clock kid” Ahmed Mohamed, who was fourteen years old and living with his family in a Dallas suburb when he was accused of bringing a bomb to school. But the specifics of Armaan’s situation more closely resemble the targeting of Veereender Jubbal, a Sikh who was set up to become the face of terrorism after the November 13 Paris attacks. Veerender is not a Muslim or a terrorist. He’s a Canadian. But, like Armaan, Veerender has a goofy sense of humor and loves to play video games, and he was maliciously targeted by racist individuals in the gaming community who knew that he had no involvement whatsoever with Islamic extremism, but went ahead and labeled him a terrorist anyways. Newspapers around the world picked up a doctored image of Veerender which had falsely identified him as one of the 11/13 Paris bombers, thereby placing his life in real danger. Since November 23, after being inundated with vitriol and threats, Veerender turned himself into “Ghost Veerender” and went on a Twitter hiatus. In Armaan’s case, a nameless “bully” targeted the most vulnerable kid in striking range at his school: a boy with a serious heart condition who was not only the new kid but whose race and religion identified him as an outsider. The bully chose his victim well: the police are vociferously defending their actions despite no evidence of any wrongdoing on Armaan’s part. Instead, at every step of the way, the bully’s lie was supported, endorsed, and reinforced by the actions of every adult authority figure who ought to have known better. That they did not is far more troubling than a child acting cruelly. The institutional response is only comprehensible inside a racist framework that makes it seem reasonable to assume that all brown people are Islamic extremists conspiring to blow up white Americans, and presumed to be guilty rather than innocent. “Protect and serve? My ass,” the Sikh bank clerk complains in Spike Lee’s film, “Inside Man,” 2006, about a confounding bank heist where the police are unable to distinguish the hostages from the criminals, and so they treat the victims as if they’re violent felons. “Where’s my turban?” the bank clerk asks angrily. “I’m not talking to anyone without a turban. It’s part of my religion to cover my head as in respect to God. I’m a Sikh. Not an Arab, by the way, like your cops called me outside…First you beat me and now you want my help…admin cut tired of this shit. What happened to my admin cut civil rights? Why can’t I go anywhere without being harassed?” It shouldn’t even be relevant that Sikhs are not Muslims, because being mistaken for “an Arab” isn’t the nut of the problem. What’s wrong is being attacked and bullied, period. What’s worse is the cultural condoning of such violence. Yet numerous reports have not only been tracking a surge of Islamophobia since 9/11 and the spike of hate crimes against Muslims since 11/13, but also they’ve also repeatedly pointed out–in tones of near despair—that, collectively, white Americans are fine with it. Islamophobia is so thick and pernicious that a shameful number of Republicans (and Democrats) are in favor of bombing Agrabah just because it’s somewhere in “Arabia” — when it’s actually the fictional setting of the Disney film “Aladdin.” Given the difficulties of countering the Disneyfied geographic imaginary, it shouldn’t be too surprising that in Texas, racist paranoia has made it possible for a bully to accuse brown kid of bringing a bomb to school, and the institutions of education and law enforcement rush to validate the accuser, not the victim. In this era of “see something, say something,” an increasingly intolerant political narrative affirms that the bully did the right thing. Things you learn by going today to school and obeying the rules. Paula Young Lee is the author of "Deer Hunting in Paris," winner of the 2014 Lowell Thomas "Best Book" award of the Society of American Travel Writers. She is currently writing outdoor adventure books for middle grade and young adults. Follow her on Twitter @paulayounglee http://www.salon.com/2015/12/18/its_the_clock_kid_all_over_again_a_12_year_old_sikh_boy_is_the_latest_victim_of_racist_terrorism_paranoia/

So annoying how people live like paupers over here just to horde their wealth over there and rub it into poor people's faces. Farm Land ownership and foreign money need to be detached, the older generation need to make money from one or the other, not wreck their homeland to act like old school Sardars. Acting like this in a modern, post-Partition world is just laughable.

Eh? He's wearing traditional Punjabi business attire, stop being so racist. Seriously though I was more on about his attempts at building a road system and ambulance service which are more like something a cargo cult would do than what the people in E.Punjab actually need. And indebting them for his visions,

It's part and parcel of British class culture that some people are above question and others are guilty simply due their station in life. One thing about people with no power is that they are reluctant to see the worst in those who rule them as the truth can be too hard to contemplate - that the lives of the poor and disadvantaged are subject to the whims of the rich and powerful. That is why this issue has been untouched in their society - no one had the will or power to see it through to bring people to account. Also in the last couple of decades British society has come the closest to escaping the 'Layer Cake' social system it has been renowned for exporting around the world. Personally I think these exposures will be whitewashed and brushed under the carpet eventually so people can go back to holding their 'betters' in awe. My respect to those who still uncover the dirt and rub people's noses in it though. Historically, this probably started with the Saxon invasion of Britannia and the Norman invasion of England. The treatment of women and children after both invasions has been ignored by historians, mostly as the English are never going to be negative about their ancestors. In the aftermath of both invasions one group found itself having total power over another, with no recourse for any crimes committed, allowing them to use rape and paedophilia to keep others subjegated. I could go on, but there isnt much point in boring you all - just look at how quickly female equality spread in Britain after the age of marriage was increased, slums were cleared and orphans were treated better. It was things like that which made it harder for these sickos to get away with what they wanted. As for our own history, everyone knows those stories about British officers chasing after orphan boys in Lahore's marketplaces had an element of truth about them...

Sikhs are having so few kids as for the last decade all the youngsters in Punjab have left to be 'brickies and prossies' abroad. Obviously if they hadnt and had families the decline wouldnt be so severe. You also have those men/women who get married later or arent in a position to support a family. The government, community and religious institutions should be trying to help but most of those are in the hands of selfish idiots. As for the arrests, why not name,publicise and shame the police officers involved? Start a letter writing campaign? Amnesty International have used these tactics and they do work.

The Badals are beyond contempt. Even George Osbourne and IDS wouldnt sink to such depths to get money out of the common people. When are people there going to realise how much damage Badal has done trying to live like a foreign ruler?