krishunni's Xanga

Sunday, May 13, 2007

Sun, 13 May 2007 09:43:34 GMT

Mayawati's Historic Win

The great beauty of Indian elections is that nobody loses. Even when you are routed, you can boldly claim victory. Listen to the Congress spokesman after the UP rout:"The courage of Rahul Gandhi is laudable.We increased our percentage and the number of seats".

The politics of bombast is an escape latch when the field is crowded with so many parties. Behind the brazenness, however,there is no hiding the facts. The basic fact in UP was that the people badly wanted Mulayam Sing out.

The politicians give it a respectable term: The incumbency factor. It is actually a shameless admission that once a party is voted in to power, it turns autocratic and irresponsible, as if by right.

The people's dilemma is that all parties are equally avaricious and short-sighted, leaving no meaningful choice. So,in two-front states like Tamilnadu and Kerala they resort to the sea-saw game. In multi-party jungles like UP they play merry-go-round.

Mayavati this time seemed to be moving forward to something new unlike others who were looking backwards.
Keeping her dalit fortress secure,she extended a welcome mat to Brahmins and Muslims. The long ostracized Brahmins were flattered by the wooing The Muslims were in a mood to welcome any new guardian anyway. What a combination, though -Brahmins and Dalits!

The bigger question is; Will she use the bigger opportunity to build something substantive, or will she again be just another politician enamored of unnecessary evils like the Taj corridor complex?
Like the AIADMK in Tamilnadu the BSP is a one-leader party. This is a variation of the kind of weakness that cripples the Congress. No political party can rise to historical levels when one person is the fount of all wisdom.

If Mayavati puts her unchallengeability to constructive purpose five years are enough to make a mark. If she doesn't, the UP electorate will again play merry-go-round.

source: TJS George in Indian Express

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Tue, 08 May 2007 08:52:13 GMT

Let the Games Begin: Protests Under Way Ahead of 2008 Beijing Olympics

In the thin air of Mount Everest base camp last week, a group of
five American activists thumbed their frozen noses at the Chinese Government by holding their own "opening ceremony" on behalf of Tibet.

They unfurled a banner that parodied China's Olympic slogan: "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008," it read. As a cameraman sent live images via the Internet, the activists even lit their own torch and sang the Tibetan national anthem -- minutes before Chinese border guards took them into custody.

The stunt was the latest effort to use next year's Olympic Games as a platform for advocacy on issues such as Tibet, Taiwan and human rights.

Winning the right to host Beijing 2008 was a coup for China. Not only will it shift the international spotlight and millions of tourist dollars towards the country for a few precious weeks, it was also a nod from the International Olympic Committee that the communist nation is fit to stand alongside past hosts from the "developed world," such as Athens, Sydney and Atlanta.

Since winning the bid, Beijing has been busy grooming itself for show. The government is spending $38 billion on infrastructure and promises to be "showing to the world a new, vigorous image of an open, modernized, civilized and well-developed metropolis."

Students for a Free Tibet members (from left) Shannon Service, Tenzin Dorjee and Laurel Mac Sutherland in Katmandu a few days after the Everest protest

But even though the games are still 16 months away, the backlash has already begun, with activists determined to insert their messages into the international media coverage of Beijing

source:World Politics Watch

Planet India

Tue, 08 May 2007 06:14:42 GMT

Planet India

India is the new America, affirms Mira Kamdar an Indian-American scholar in her latest book: Planet India: How the Fastest-Growing Democracy is Transforming America and the World. As its corollary she says:as goes India, so goes the world. Truly, it’s a book that is very bullish on India

Mira Kamdar grew up living between the United States, Europe and India. Kamdar, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School in New York and an associate fellow at the Asia Society, declares: "We already live on Planet India…This book is about what kind of planet that can be."The new and powerful India is technologically savvy, culturally hip, politically powerful and poised to challenge the dominance of the western world".

In Planet India, Kamdar tells the dramatic story of a nation in the midst of redefining itself and the world. Provocative, timely, and essential, Planet India is the groundbreaking book that will convince Americans just how high the stakes are-what there is to lose, and what there is to gain from India’s meteoric rise.

According to Kamdar,India has within its grasp all the elements it needs to imagine a different trajectory. Because it is still a developing country, it can choose to develop differently. India does not have to blindly follow the American agribusiness model and become another fast-food nation. It does not have to allow a military-industrial complex to dictate national priorities. It can - it must - forge its own path, lest a world hell-bent on consumption for its own sake and the dangerous vanities of military one-upmanship lead us all into oblivion

More importantly, Kamdar suggests that the notion in the West that developing economically means becoming, in all ways, like the existing developed Western countries - is a deeply prejudiced and flawed one. She believes that it comes as much from an inability to imagine an alternative model as from the hubris of assuming that "our" system is the best for everyone.

This is why India is so important. It is a non-Western, Asian country, an ancient civilization that is undergoing rapid growth and profound change. If India can do this, as a democracy and as an open society, yet do it as India, taking what makes sense from the West but doing so in order to invent a new paradigm that works for India, it will show that democracy and economic development can go hand in hand, that democracy and freedom of expression and of religion are not luxuries for developed, Western countries, and that there is a non-Western alternative to the Chinese model.

Kamdar has also authored another work: Motiba’s Tattoos.

source: INDOlink:Francis C. Assisi

India catches more steel balls and spy cameras for Tigers

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:35:01 GMT

India catches more steel balls and spy cameras for Tigers

Sri Lankan army despatches bodies of soldiers home from the war front

AFTER THE SIX TONNES OF BALL BEARINGS POLICE CATCH SOME MORE STEEL BALLS, SPY CAMERAS FOR TAMIL TIGERS

A week after catching six tons of steel balls to make claymore mines India’s Mumbai police caught Indian Rupees 150,000 worth of spy cameras about to be smuggled out to the same terrorist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The procurement of arms and other military equipment by the LTTE after the detection of six tons of ball bearings as raw materials for claymore mines by Indian law enforcement officials continued to make headlines in India when the Police also discovered another 5000 ball bearings and digital cameras used for spy work worth Indian Rupees 150 thousand rupees was once again caught in Mumbai area, according to police reports.
The Mumbai police sources revealed that four people including three hailing from Tamil Nadu were arrested from North Western Mumbai area suspected to be people dealing with the Tamil terrorist group LTTE. Police said the equipment included 65 Japanese made digital cameras believed to be used widely by the Tamil Tigers for spy work.
"The four were arrested from Vile Parle on Monday. They were in the process of sending a consignment of 65 digital cameras, 500 ball bearings, 21 camera lenses, 30 motherboard chips, 300 FM radio sets and other accessories collectively valued at Rs 15 lakh to Tamil Nadu," Additional Commissioner of Police (west region) Bipin Bihari told news reporters
The four were arrested while they were getting ready to ship them to Chennai from Vile Parle station, the police said. The goods were in a Maruti van from where the police took them.
Police Inspector Sudhakar Pujari said that Nainar, Sultan and Khan arrived in Mumbai on January 25 and were staying in Dongri. “There is reason to believe that the goods were meant for some illegal purpose, as the four travelled from Dongri to meet Khan — who owns a courier agency at Vile Parle. We believe they had sent goods to Chennai in the past too.” Coins from other countries, including Sri Lanka were also recovered.
“We learnt that one them came back from Hong Kong with these goods on January 28. They had planned to smuggle these goods to Chennai,” said Additional Commissioner of Police Bipin Bihari (western zone).
Strangely none of the people arrested for having dealings with the LTTE were Tamil people and all were Muslims.
The police said none of the suspects arrested could produce any receipts to indicate the suspected military related merchandise were purchased legitimately.
The police identified the suspects as Mohammed Kashim Nainar, Hamid Wahab Sultan and Mohammed Sayyed Ahmed (all from Tamil Nadu) and Rafiq Ahmed Atiullah Sheikh, a local who works for a courier company.
Police said it was too early to associate the seizure with the arrest of an alleged agent of the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at Oshivara on January27.
The very first to be arrested were eight alleged men suspected to be LTTE agents last week. That led to the arrest of Miraj Saheb Ismail, a tea vendor hailing from Tamil Nadu but living in Mumbai. He is the one who purchased the six tones of ball bearings from Mumbai. Thereafter the police detectives from Q branch of the Tamil Nadu Police arrested the seller of the steel balls Asghar Ali, who did business in South Central Mumbai’s Null bazaar. (EOM)

By Walter Jayawardhana World news

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Sat, 18 Nov 2006 12:54:04 GMT

The passing of India Nuke Deal

The passing of the India Nuclear Deal by US Senate is one fluttering proof of what could be achieved in Capitol Hill by sheer lobbying. When Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, took to the floor on Thursday to propose the India nuclear legislation, there was almost a reassured calm among the Indian American community as well as top diplomats on both sides who had hard-lobbied for the deal, that the nuclear deal would face no more hurdles.

For, Lugar is not only a foreign policy expert, but also the co-author of the Nunn-Lugar Programme that secured and destroyed materials that could be used for proliferating weapons of mass destruction at the end of the Cold War. In the US Congress, his word on non-proliferation counts.

Therefore, for both the Bush administration as well as Indian diplomats, it was crucial to win over Lugar and his House of Representatives counterpart Henry Hyde if there was any hope of getting the nuclear deal passed by Congress.

Pro-India lobbying groups and spin doctors from at least six major multinationals including Boeing, Bechtel, GE and Raytheon had parked themselves at Capitol Hill for nearly a year.

According to lobbying sources "the Indian American community, along with the Indian government and the MNCs interested in new-found nuclear market in India, spent a few million dollars in campaign funds, gala dinner events, high-tech presentations to congressmen and senators, multimedia dockets and specially-organised trips to India to make them feel comfortable about the deal.”

Full credits are also due to the untiring duo of Shyam Saran the ex Foriegn Secretary who was apponted as India's Special Envoy just to devote his full time to carry the deal through, and Nicholas Burns, US Undersecretary of State to convince Congress on the nuclear deal than anybody else.

In the words of South Asia scholar, foreign policy expert and author of "India: Emerging Power" Stephen Cohen: “Shyam Saran and Nicholas Burns have done more to convince Congress on the nuclear deal than anybody else. More so Shyam Saran who, with his regular visits to Washington to speak with congressional leaders, almost single-handedly was responsible for the deal to reach such a stage.” They have been together so much that Burns now calls Saran his “personal friend” and “the most knowledgeable person in the world on the US-India nuclear agreement”. With President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice involved with other events such as the war in Iraq, the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and a tense truce between Israel and Hezbollah, it was left to Burns to negotiate the deal and take it forward ever since the July 18, 2005 joint declaration

According to DNA World, The irony could not have been lost on Senator George Allen. The Virginia senator, best known for his “Macaca” allusion to S R Sidharth, an engineering student of Indian origin at the University of Virginia, who presided over the US Senate when the votes for the final passage of the deal were being counted. While campaigning for Virginia seat, Allen had called Sidharth, a volunteer for Democratic rival Jim Webb, a “macaca”, a racist slur. The resulting uproar cost Allen his seat. To be fair, Allen has been a proponent of the deal. He said, “I rise in strong support of the deal. We must realise that India’s nuclear weapons are for self-defence, and that India has no record of nuclear proliferation.”

US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns will visit India in December to start the final rounds of negotiations on the deal.

Burns will meet with key government officials in India after the US Congress agrees on a unified bill that will later become law.

The Maoist-Naxalite Threat In India

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 07:01:41 GMT

The Maoist-Naxalite Threat In India

Minister for Tribal Welfare, M. Mani Kumari, weeps inconsolably on news of her husband's death, who was shot dead by the PWG in Paderu (Vizag). AP CM, N. Chandrababu Naidu, looks on.
Photo by: P V Sivakumar.

Recent intelligence reports of strong Maoist-Naxalite nexus has posed new threat to the internal security of India as a whole and that of five states— Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttaranchal, West Bengal and Sikkim—in particular. These states touch the Himalayan kingdom along a 1751 km border. The development means trouble in future.

Rising violence over the years is now emerging as the single largest internal security challenge for India. Recently Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitted that growing Maoist insurgency was fast emerging as a big threat for the nation.

The naxalites under People’s War Group (PWG), a band formed in 1980 by Kondapally Seetharamaiah, a schoolteacher, promotes an armed revolution, targeting the state and the security forces as well as oppressive landlords. It began in Andhra Pradesh but has now spread to other tribal dominated states such as Chhattisgarh and Orissa.

According to latest reports the 'Naxals' as Maoists are addressed to in local parlance, have now spread to huge swathes of the country's hinterland in south, central and east India.

The insurgency, named after the town of Naxalbari where it emerged in 1967, is thought to affect 165 of the country's 602 administrative districts in a "red corridor" stretching from the southern tip of India all along its eastern half and up to Nepal,encompassing 12 states.

Thousands of people have died in nearly 40 years of Maoist violence including hundreds of policemen. Reports say 157 people had been killed in Maoist-related violence this year alone, up from 114 in the first quarter of 2005. Last November,on 13^th, Bihar authorities were shaken by a Naxal attack on Jehanabad prison. Some 250-rebel prisoners were freed, and a paramilitary leader was executed.

Recent Attacks

The Maoist attack on the district jail in Jehanabad exposed the hollowness of Bihar’s law and order machinery, besides revealing a picture of the ultra Left outfit’s influence in the state. The Centre has had to rethink their dealings with this mammoth socio-economic problem. According to the Home Ministry’s estimation, the Naxalites have “9,300 hardcore underground cadre and they hold around 6,500 regular weapons besides a large number of unlicensed country-made weapons

There were several major incidents in the first quarter of 2006. In early March, rebels hijacked a train in Jharkhand and held 40 passengers hostage.

The maoist attack on Chilakaluripet police station in Guntur district(AP) on March 11 was particularly chilling as four civilians, including a woman, were chased and done to death along with three policemen.

Eight men belonging to the upper castes were gunned down by Naxalites in Vempenta village in Kurnool(AP) district on March 1.

Four persons, including three policemen, were killed in twin strikes by armed naxalites who attacked policemen and broke open a jail at Ramgiri Udaygiri town in Orissa and detonated a landmine near Kankadaguda village, about 10 km from Ramgiri Udayagiri, in Gajapati district.

In a pre-dawn operation, reminiscent of Jehanabad jail break, naxalites came to the town in two trucks around 5 am and fired at the police station and an Orissa State armed police camp killing three personnel, official sources said.

One disturbing aspect of the increase in the Maoist violence is the growing militarization and superior army-style organization of the Maoists. What makes this even more frightening is the fact that the rebels, who till a decade were widely seen as Robin Hood figures fighting for the poor, have lost their ideological base and are now being led by hoodlums.

Central and state intelligence agencies have recently submitted reports on camps along the border to train suicide bombers and women, digging of trenches, procuring arms from People’s War Group (PWG) outfits in Andhra Pradesh and plundering of forest wealth from India.

Growing nexus

New Delhi fears, the Maoist groups, like People's War Group, Communist Party of India (Maoist) and Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninst), will link up with their counterparts in Nepal, where they have caused to overthrow the monarchy.

. What had actually caught the attention of Delhi were reports suggesting ISI backing to Maoist through "friendly" business relations between the Habib Bank in Pakistan and Himlayan Bank in Nepal. Habib Bank is identified as a funding agency of the ISI.

Measures

Now the government has taken a new stance on the Naxalites by bringing the affected states together to coordinate their response. It has said it will combine improved policing with socio-economic measures to resolve grievances that fuel the cause.

Some steps to improve dealing with the Maoist/Naxal problem should include:

* Setting up dedicated intelligence gathering agencies at state levels to deal with Maoist violence

* The Central government has asked all the Naxal-hit states to improve ground level policing people in police ranks to deal with the growing menace

* Strengthening the local police on all fronts, and training and equipping appropriately

* Setting up a special anti-Naxal wing on the lines of the ‘Greyhounds’ in Andhra Pradesh

* Encouraging joint operations under unified commands

Other steps towards eradicating this menace include states speeding up development and land reforms in Naxal-affected areas and the Centre offering an additional funds to step up security in these areas over the next five years.

It is believed that thousands have been displaced by the fighting between Naxals and the counter-insurgents. In several states especially Chattisgarh, Salvajudam, an anti-Naxal movement, has gained momentum to dislodge the rebels from their strongholds In several states, private armies and vigilant groups, which are often government-backed, have come up to counter the Naxals

The government is said to have mooted plans to raise a special tribal battalion with 1,200 members from the Naxalite-affected areas. Besides, the Centre has to also show a significant move towards a socio-economic-political approach, as opposed to a military approach.

It’s clear much more needs to be done. Only an increase in development projects and avenues for employment in these neglected and poor rural areas will be true evidence of sincerity on the part of the government in tackling this spiraling problem.

An Iraq In Slow burn

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:06:02 GMT

Afghanistan: The Plight Of The State…And The US

Barely five years into post-invasion and Karzai-ruled Afghanistan, the Taliban have ricocheted via Pakistan to hit the come back trail prominently. With tacit support from Pakistan army and its Inter Services Intelligence Agency, with plenty of funds from illegal opium trade, and with collusion of warlords in Pakistan’s frontier province of Waziristan, Taliban are now ruling the roost in Afghanistan’s southern provinces bordering Pakistan.

On the other hand, Karzai’s writ now seems to run apparently only in a limited circumference with Kabul at the center. It is said that Afghan military is losing soldiers who ditch their uniforms but keep their rifles, to get twice the pay under the Taliban that they were getting in their own army. Insurgents have already this year accounted for 163 deaths of coalition forces more than they did for all of last year.

Taliban are hardy pastmasters in saving their skins and surviving somehow to bid their time and rebound at the opportune period and place. When the bombs started to fall on Kabul in October 2001, Taliban just put out a call to the rest of the Muslims to mount a "global jihad against America" and fled to Pakistan. Pakistan’s frontier districts bordering Afghanistan, especially Waziristan, now serve as the springboard for them to bring large swaths of land under their sway in southern Afghanistan.

One should recall that Pakistan was once a key Taliban supporter, but switched sides to become an ally of U.S in its "campaign against terrorism" following Sept.11 2001, after receiving hard options, as now revealed by General Musharraf himself, of: either join the U.S. side or else… be "bombed to stone age". Though ostensibly Pakistan is an "ally" of U.S. in the "war against terror" it's core sympathies are still with the Taliban.

No wonder, Karzai is calling foul. He doesn’t mince words in alleging that Pakistan through its intelligence agency is complicit in providing safe haven to Taliban leaders like Mullah Omar. He could even reveal telephone digits, address, and GPS number of Omar’s hideout in Quetta.

The recent "peace pact" Musharraf signed with Pushtun tribal elders in Waziristan gives, in fact, credence to this allegation, not withstanding the argument in defense of the pact advanced by Musharraf, that the peace deal was designed to end armed attacks inside Pakistan and to stop the Taliban forces operating in the tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border from crossing over. There is force in the criticism that the pact would serve only to accommodate the militant forces that have sharply increased their attacks in Afghanistan having been freed of their concerns of any Pakistani interference.

What prevents an ultimate Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is an all-too-thin line of some 30,000 NATO troops and approximately 20,000 U.S. troops, the highest number since the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban regime. NATO commanders have repeatedly urged for more troops,. Except Poland's commitment of an additional 1,000 troops,however, no other country has been willing to pledge more forces.

Bush cannot count on either Pakistani or Afghan forces to prevail against the Taliban. His remark that if he had firm intelligence, he would not hesitate to issue an order to go after Osama bin Laden even in Pakistan has demonstrated his doubtfulness about Pakistan's ability(or sincerity) to strike against terrorists. Unless Bush can persuade his NATO partners to prevail in the fight for Afghanistan, on the battlefield and through the interdiction of the opium trade, the U.S. ousting of the Taliban in 2001 will have become a meaningless Pyrrhic victory . Meanwhile Afghanistan has become an "Iraq on a slow burn".

Chinese Soldiers Shooting Down Tibetan Pilgrims

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 08:36:29 GMT

Chinese Soldiers Shooting Down Tibetan Pilgrims

Shocking news with telltale evidence of a video of chinese soldiers brutally shooting and killing tibetan pilgrims on their way across the Himalayan Nepal border to visit holy Dalai Lama in India have just surfaced.

Pro Tv cameraman Sergiu Matei returned to Romania after climbing Himalaya and brought home with him this shocking story.
Sergiu and other climbers witnessed a "people hunt”, a scene that showed Chinese soldiers kill in cold blood a Tibetan pilgrim

Obviously this couldn't be the first such incident; such brutalities might have been going on all along the chinese border where there are native communities who only want their religious vows and traditional aspirations fulfilled. What military protocol can justify such barbarity? Chinese military tried to defend the outrage by putting up a story that the pilgrims when prevented from their trip attacked the army and the army shot in self defence. The video proves that this is a dastardly made-out lie.

China seized and appropriated Tibet claiming that the Himalayan theocratic state had always been a part of China, which forced Dalai Lama, the religious Head and spiritual father of the people, to flee the country across the ranges into India. If Tibet is in fact Chinese, is this the way to treat its own illiterate, ignorant peasantry?

Watch the shocking video.

.Video

Chinese soldiers shooting at Tibetan pilgrims

The Baluchistan Unrest

Fri, 13 Oct 2006 12:15:24 GMT

The Baluchistan Unrest

In the disturbed province of Baluchistan, Pakistan is being paid in the same coin with which it has always traded in Kashmir -instigating insurgency. This strategically important oil-rich province, about 3500 sq.km in area, having borders with Afghanistan and Iran, supplies 40 per cent of Pakistan's natural gas, yet remains backward with poor access to education and health facilities even in its urban areas.

All the signs point to a rebellion that is only growing in boldness and ferocity. The youth under the banner of Baloch Liberation Army has mounted sustained attacks in key sectors and Pakistan army camps. General Pervez Musharraf, uses a strategy of force that has so far resulted only in increasing violence.

In December last year Msharrafâ's helicopter was fired at with rockets, and in response, the increasingly unpopular General, who had already escaped three attempts on his life ordered a massive military operation, in which the most portending calamity happened. Baluchistan's most powerful and defiant Baluch tribal elder, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was killed.

The government says Bugti and some of his loyalists were killed when the cave they were hiding in collapsed after a massive explosion.

But the Baloch people doubts the official version of the story, especially since the military took a week to produce the body and conduct the funeral. The death continues to unleash violent protests across Pakistan and the attacks have continued, unabated, and have increased. Bugti's death could very well unite more moderate Baluch politicians and the extremists as both fights for rights they believe the Pakistani government has denied them for decades

    Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti

The 79 year old Bugti was the spearhead of the militant movement to wrest autonomy and adequate recompense for the rich natural resources exploited by Pakistan. He was elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan in1958 and made a minister soon afterwards, but only to fall foul of the ruling party. He was first incarcerated on criminal charges, first sentenced to death but pardoned, and later send to political oblivion by being disqualified for contesting elections and holding of public office

But Bugti made a strong come back by joining with Sulfiqar Ali Bhutto who made him Governor of Baluchistan which again lasted hardly for a year.

Bugti then went back to his people and returned to the political front by becoming the chief minister but only to be hustled by the federal government under Sulfiqar's daughter Benazir Bhutto who soon removed him as Chief Minister. Later, in 1993, he was elected to the National Assembly, but again the lower house of parliament which Bugti represented was sacked by then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan. By then Bugti had completely lost faith in the federal government. Of late he had become the most vociferous critic of the central establishment.

In his death Bugti has accomplished what he had always wanted: to unify his people. Now the struggle for an autonomous Baluchistan is in full swing.

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