Saturday, September 12, 2009

Muthoot Murder UPDATE 3

To be read in continuation of CPM State Secretary & his  S shaped knife theory.

Also UPDATE 1 and UPDATE 2

The Muthoot murder  plot just got thicker. A local television channel got a blacksmith in Alappuzha to say on camera that the 'S'-shaped knife that police recovered from the house of prime accused Kari Sathish had actually been custom-made for the police by him, and that the order to make the knife had been received after IG Vinson M Paul had revealed at a Press conference that an 'S'-shaped knife had been used in the murder.

Earlier, Pinarayi Vijayan held the RSS responsible for the murderas according to him,

"It is the RSS that uses the S-shaped knife for attacks."

Intensifying the plot, the mother of the self-confessed killer, Kari Sathish has alleged that the police had themselves planted the knife at their home, which the police recovered later from their home.

Senior police officials are yet to counter the allegation.

when pictures do not say a thousand words

few weeks back internet was splashed with pictures of President Obama with a wandering eye “checking out”  a delegate from J8 (Junior 8) summit.  Even this blog carried those pictures

It now seems was a motivated campaign by a section of conservative media in US. Please check the tape- the actual video shows a far different story.

Having seen similar campaigns by “secular media” in India, I think its important to clear the air

Friday, September 11, 2009

The C’s that is killing CPM

After intensive study spread over several months, CPM has managed to  pinpoint the ideological and social cause that is afflicting the party cadre to “C”. Yes it is the “C” that is killing the party. No its not the “C” as in communism. It is the “C” as in consumerism, careerism, casteism and capitalism that is bugging and corrupting the young Marxists.

It might be a challenge for CPM to force its cadre to give up gluttonous craving for the bourgeois style of life. After all its only few months since a CPM central committee member in Kerala rubbished suggestions to revive old Spartan lifestyles. He said

“like of yore, you can’t build the party by eating vadas, drinking black and smoking beedis”, 

CPM party newspaper in Kerala, Deshabhimani, recently translated the feat of an American eating 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes as the contestant literally eating roasted dogs, not knowing it’s a sausage-sandwich garnished dish served hot.

Is UPA = Ulta Pulta Affidavits

Just like Justice Mukherjee Committee report on Godhra Carnage, S P Tamang report on Ishrat encounter was released with near perfect timing. The Maharashtra state election are looming and as always seculars had Modi on crosshair. 

Congress spokesman Manish Tewari as usual spoke from wrong end of the body 

"It has become increasingly evident that there is man-eating government in Gujarat" 

M Veerappa Moily, The Law Minister told us that Modi  would have been in "some other place" if the fake encounter had taken place in a foreign country. Hope Moily will realize that those countries donot have many Afzal Guru’s enjoying state hospitality while assorted secular Human right activists are fighting his case. 

Never mind the fact that as per NHRC data for alleged Fake Encounters 2004-2005: Gujarat has only 5 cases pending, while Congress ruled AP had 21, Maharashtra had 29, Mother of Secular SP ruled UP had 175, and lastly congress ruled National Capital Delhi had 18. Congress ruled  AP recently announced cash rewards ranging from Rs 20,000 to Rs 12 lakh for killing Naxalites. A total of Rs 16 crore was put on the heads of 1,133 Maoists. Lastly has congress forgot how KPS Gill under their own rule dealt with terrorists “summarily”?

And then it hit them out of blue, all grand plans went awry. Things went so wrong that Mr. Roy of NDTV could not prevent himself from lamenting the fact that the Gujarat government had "dug up" a Home Ministry affidavit that claimed that Ishrat Jahan was indeed a terrorist. Then it was confusion and utter chaos all-round.

For secular print media, Ishrat encounter suddenly moved to page 3, they found more merit in informing the nation the pranks which priyaka plays and likes of NDTV started discussing whether encounter killing are necessary evil? The issue is snowballing into a major controversy between the Home and Law Ministry. Law officer who filed the affidavit got the sack as he was lowest in the food chain. Minor details like affidavit was cleared by then Special Secretary (internal security) Anil Choudhary & was in the knowledge of the then Home Secretary Dhirendra Singh was  got lost in translation.  Also lost in fine print were the facts contained in affidavit about disclosure of Shahid Mehmud, LeT’s chief operational commander in central Kashmir, and his Pakistani associate Zahid Ahmed (arrested in June 2004) to say that Amjad Ali had entered India under instructions from LeT’s boss Muzammil to organise terror networks.

One can only sympathize with Congress predicament of having to explain to nation where they stand? With their home ministry who have certified that Ishrat is a terrorist or with the party or Low opps Law ministry who has been running a strong public campaign that Ishrat's was innocent

In the melee, only causality is fight against terrorism and the innocents who get killed by it. I guess it worthy a sacrifice at the altars of irresponsible political opportunism of congress

Terrorists are non-state combatants using strategies and tactics forbidden  by international humanitarian law. They donot deserve any mercy

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Now a “Halal” search engine

Across the world, Muslims can now safely surf the Internet without running the risk of ending up on the wrong side of GOD. Now the have  a Islamic search engine -- ImHalal.com -- that differentiates what material is 'halal' (allowed) and what is 'haram' (forbidden) in Islam.

Search engine gave me a result for murder, I guess that would mean its 'halal' (allowed)

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While a search for Love, was not returned as its Haram level of 1 out of 3

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Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Christian council plumps for Jagan

All-India Christian Council has demanded that demanded that YSR son and Kadapa MP Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy be named the next chief minister of the State.

Austerity and Sacrifice Congress Style

For over three months now, External Affairs Minister S M Krishna is at ITC's Maurya on Sardar Patel Marg and his junior Shashi Tharoor at Hotel Taj Mahal on Man Singh Road. Krishna is checked in at the Maurya's Presidential suite on the 16th floor. There is no declared tariff for the four Presidential suites in the hotel which have had guests like US President George W Bush and Bill Clinton. Industry insiders say the room tariff is in the range of Rs 1 lakh plus per night. Tharoor has been staying in a Taj suite and the lowest tariff for suites in the Taj Man Singh is Rs 40,000 per night (executive balcony suite)

  Rate Days Total

S M Krishna

100,000 100 10,000,000
Sashi Taroor 40,000 101 4,040,000
      14,040,000

1.4 Crore for just 100 day stay… Who pays … God Knows

Strange case of Afzal Khan, Afzal Guru and Israt Jahan

Maharashtra is burning, Hindu Idols are being destroyed. Why? Because a welcome arch put up by some communal dimwit depicted Chhatrapati Shivaji killing Bijapur general Afzal Khan. I donot understand why these communal Hinduvadis want to rakeup such dead issues even if it is a well accepted historical fact… If certain section of our population identify with Afzal Khan or Afzal Guru(Damn so confusing…) so be it. We are a secular country, we have to respect sentiments of every section of society afterall we bank on their votes. In fact, India take steps to secularize all our festivals. Any festival like Independence Day, 1971 Victory etc that can hurt sentiments of some sections of society should be banned.

In another case, Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate S.P. Tamang after one month of  intensive inquiry has released a 240 page handwritten report in which he has concluded that the four alleged terrorists ( Ishrat Jahan, Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani) killed by Gujarat police were not linked to any terror group and their encounter was fake. His herculean task is unparalleled(except for may be Justice Mukherjee report) and has won laurels from all secular fronts. I am sure he would explain to the nation what the two Pakistanis  who were killed along with Israt were doing in India? I guess we can secularly assume that they were here to watch cricket match.  Similarly, I guess mouthpiece of LeT, Ghazwa Times was just being “loudmouth” when they claimed that Ishrat Jahan was their activist. Has Justice Tamang checked about the possibility that some communal Dimwit hacking LeT website and posting the message on their behalf to defame LeT and Ishan. All this still donot explain affidavit of the union ministry of home affairs filed in the Supreme Court which insist that the four had links with the Lashkar-e-Taiba. But then UPA Government affidavits have become like what we say in Kerala Payam Chakku(old Sack) – Not reliable. Some time back they were caught on wroing foot trying to give authentication certification for Lord Ram.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Indian Media

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Is China itching for a Border War?

Also read “How china betrayed India several times” and “China encircling India

The recent and ongoing spat between China and India over disputed territories in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh has flared up further after Chinese troops entered nearly 1.5 kilometers into Indian territory near Mount Gya, recognized as the international border by both India and China. The Chinese soldiers painted “China” in Chinese characters with red spray paint all over the boulders and rocks. This incident comes weeks after Chinese helicopters entered into Indian air space along Damchok area and Trig Heights in Ladakh and air dropped canned food containing frozen pork and brinjal, which had passed the expiry date.

In international arena, China for first time tried to influence the territorial dispute through a multilateral institution when they tried to block a 2.9 billion dollar Asian Development Bank (ADB) loan to India on the grounds that part of the loan was destined for water projects in Arunachal Pradesh. They also led the botched attempt to stymie the U.S.-India nuclear deal by blocking the Nuclear Suppliers Group from opening civilian nuclear trade with New Delhi. More recently, there were reports of China trying to undermine the Indian brand through export of fake pharmaceutical products labeled “Made in India.”

This hardening of Chinese stance toward India started three years ago when the Chinese ambassador to India publicly raked up the issue of Arunachal Pradesh. Since then, the Indian army has seen Chinese military incursions increase in frequency across the post-1962 line of control. According to Indian defense officials, there were 270 line-of-control violations by the People’s Liberation Army and 2,285 instances of “aggressive border patrolling” by it last year alone. Other border incidents also are being reported, such as the PLA demolition of some unmanned Indian forward posts at the Tibet-Bhutan-Sikkim trijunction and Chinese attempts to encroach on Indian-held land in Ladakh.

All this makes one wonder what is china upto?

Is China trying to divert attention from its domestics issues?

In the past few years, growing disparities of income, official corruption, and the lack of democratic institutions is  fueling social unrest in China.  Often-understated government figures give an indication of the extent of growing social unrest in China. A recent Ministry of Public Security report says there were 8,700 “mass incidents” in 1993; 32,000 in 1999; 50,000 in 2002;  58,000 in 2003 and 87,000 in 2005.

Although political observers have described social unrest among farmers and workers since the early 1990s, recent protest activities have been broader in scope, larger in average size, greater in frequency, and more brash than those of a decade ago. Protests are growing in average size from 10 or fewer people in the mid-1990s to about 52 people per incident in 2004. In the first half of 2005, there were over 340 protests involving more than 10,000 people.

Zhou Tianyong, a researcher at the Central Party School in Beijing, wrote in the China Economic Times 

“The redistribution of wealth through theft and robbery could dramatically increase and menaces to social stability will grow. This is extremely likely to create a reactive situation of mass-scale social turmoil,"

The rioting in Xinjiang Autonomous Region on July 5 was the worst in the history of the People’s Republic of China and cost the lives of 197 Han Chinese and Uyghurs. It was the greatest loss of life since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. The situation became so worse that Hu Jintao peremptorily left the G8 meeting in L’Aquila, Italy, on July 9 to take personal control of the situation. This was a serious loss of face for the President of China in the eyes of the world’s public.

A public opinion poll released by a research center affiliated with the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that 91 percent of respondents said the justice system was unfair while 80 percent said they wanted to elect their officials directly. A majority said the party Congress should focus on improving social welfare and job creation and should adopt new political reforms.

The growing internal unrest is making Beijing jittery.

Although the Communist Party has increased membership to 64 million, the party is losing its grassroots appeal in rural areas where local officials’ corruption has bred resistance. The party is also losing popularity in industrial centers. According to party journals, only 17 percent of private firms employed party members in 1999 and only 3 percent had any kind of party organization. But even where the party has managed to gain a foothold in foreign and private enterprises, its role is far less important. In urban China, party activities may be confined to government institutions and departments where party membership remains a prerequisite for advancement. 

As the orthodox ideology waned drastically, if not completely, in Chinese political life and the Chinese lost their confidence in communism and Marxism, the leadership found that they had little alternative but to cultivate national pride and patriotism to hold the country together.  Patriotism was designed to counteract regional decentralization, to divert attention from inequalities such as the unequal distribution of wealth, to suppress democratic movements in China and to shift public attention from domestic social unrest to international problems.

After the Tiananmen crisis, the Chinese government preached patriotism under the slogan of "Renewing China". Beijing pursued a campaign of patriotic education focusing on China's humiliating past to arouse awareness of suffering. In 1990 Chinese government incited anti-West patriotism through two commemorations: the May 4th Movement and the 150th anniversary of the Opium War.

Hu Jintao’s pragmatic, non-ideological agenda has two core values—maintaining social stability to further economic development and sustaining Chinese culture to enrich national sovereignty. The current spike in social unrest (especially in Xinjiang) seriously undermines Hu Jintao policies thus jeopardizing his position in party. The leadership in communist party may be tempted to use a brief border war with India to divert the attention of its population from growing unrest in China and strengthen its grip on society & party.

A window of opportunity

The new government in Japan and US has given China a window of opportunity to  settle its border row with India.

India’s growing strategic ties with the United States are more than offset by America’s own rising interdependence with China, to the extent that U.S. policy now gives Beijing a pass on its human-rights abuses, frenetic military buildup at home and reckless strategic opportunism abroad. America’s Asia policy is no longer guided by an overarching geopolitical framework as it had been under President George W. Bush, a fact reflected by the Obama administration’s silence on the China-India border tensions.

In addition, the significant improvement in China’s own relations with Taiwan and Japan since last year has given Beijing more space against India. A third factor is the weakening of China’s Pakistan card against India. Pakistan’s descent into chaos has robbed China of its premier surrogate instrument against India, necessitating the exercise of direct pressure.

We are at Critical Juncture of History

Like in the pre-1962 war period, India is again now at a critical juncture , it has become commonplace internationally to speak of India and China in the same breadth. The aim of “Mao’s India war,” as Harvard scholar Roderick MacFarquhar has called it, was large political: To cut India to size by demolishing what it represented — a democratic alternative to the Chinese autocracy. The swiftness and force with which Mao Zedong defeated India helped discredit the Indian model, boost China’s international image and consolidate Mao’s internal power. The return of the China-India pairing decades later is something Beijing viscerally detests.

China never thought India as an important trade partner or rival until now. China’s attitude towards India has always been contemptuous. When talking about Indian to Chinese people(Shanghaiese in particular), they will probably tell you that 70 years ago, Indians were working as doormen in Shanghai. A recently declassified letter (March 2, 1973), from Henry Kissinger to Richard Nixon, showcases the utter contempt Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai had for the Indian leadership. Kissinger says, inter alia,

“In South Asia, the Chinese believe India remains Moscow’s principal agent; their distrust of New Delhi remains as potent as ever... Chou (Zhou) displayed a particular contempt for the Indians and a personal dislike for Indian leaders. He related several cynical and disdainful anecdotes about Prime Ministers Nehru and Gandhi.... In response, I said that we would go slow in any improvement of relations with New Delhi and would keep the PRC informed.”

Things are certainly changing now when China realized that the competition from India is real and serious. India is claiming to switch their focus from back office service to manufactory; Indian has English language advantage over China; Chinese Yuan is forced to appreciate against US dollar, etc.

Attacks on India in the Chinese media is increasing per day

The People’s Daily and the Global Times, both working under the close watch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), have recently made derogatory comments on a purely internal Indian affair, the restructuring of its defense forces in Arunachal Pradesh.

On June 11, the Global Times wrote:

“But India can’t actually compete with China in a number of areas, like international influence, overall national power and economic scale. India apparently has not yet realized this. India is frustrated that China’s rise has captured much of the world’s attention.”

A week later, in an editorial the Communist Party’s mouthpiece Peoples’ Daily, Li Hongmei stated:

Many Indians actually have very subtle impressions (sic) upon China, which has been translated into a very complicated mindset - awe, vexation, envy and jealousy - in the face of its giant neighbor. The reason for this mentality is multi-faceted, and brought about by both historical factors and reality. In 1947, when India freed itself from the British colonization and won independence, it was one of the global industrial powers, ranking Top 10 in the world and far ahead of the then backward China. But today, China’s GDP has tripled that of India and per capita income doubled, which turns out to be a totally unacceptable fact to many Indians. And with China’s galloping economic growth since its adoption of the reform and opening up policy in the late 1970s, the wealth gap between China and India has increasingly widened.”

Under these scenarios, Chinese will always attempt to cut India down to size and create hurdles in its global ambitions. A recent suggestion from a Chinese think-tank that India should be broken up into smaller states also falls under this strategy. 

Against this background, It is just a matter of not if but when Beijing actually sets out to teach India “the final lesson” by launching a 1962-style surprise war. If India is not to be caught napping again, it has to inject greater realism into its China policy.

Monday, September 07, 2009

Succession Planning

After YSR Episode, leaders from certain party are implementing crash plans to train their progeny to succeed.