The Ultimate Guide

View: Why I am saddened by Kasab's hanging

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 12:45:00 +0000

By : Shivam Vij

Rejoice, fellow Indians. Ajmal Kasab has been hanged. But please excuse me, I am not joining you. Your cheering and hooting and hurrahs feel like a medieval lynch mob celebrating the death of the sinner and not the sin. 'Barbaric' is the word that comes to mind.

This isn't merely about the morality or aesthetic of capital punishment. I want to ask you: What did we just achieve? Ten terrorists had come to kill and be killed, to cause maximum damage of the sort that they surely knew they'd be killed. Nine of them were killed in direct encounter. Did we hail their deaths? Do we say their deaths were justice?

So if we killed Ajmal Kasab four years later -- 'with due process' -- what exactly have we achieved?

I don't understand how his death brings justice to the 26/11 victims, whose real culprits are in Pakistan, and India does not seem to have the diplomatic leverage over Pakistan to bring them to justice. The street celebration over Kasab's hanging only proves that this was not about justice. It was about a feeling of revenge.

Commenting on the due process, Inspector Govilkar, who captured Kasab, told Rediff.com, "Am very happy today. We have proven to the world that we are a legitimate democracy."

My salutations to Inspector Govilkar for his bravery, but his comment is bizarre. I thought we were a legitimate democracy anyway, why do we have to prove it by hanging a terrorist we captured alive?

Perhaps we are not a 'legitimate' democracy. If we were, our law would be equal.

If we were a legitimate democracy, then the Srikrishna Commission Report on the communal violence in Mumbai in 1992-1993 would have been implemented.

If we were a legitimate democracy, the law would have been as speedy in bringing justice to the Samjhauta Express bombers as it has been in Ajmal Kasab's case.

If we were a legitimate democracy, we'd not force down a nuclear energy plant down the throats of an unwilling populace in Koodankulam.

If we were a legitimate democracy we wouldn't impose the Indian flag on millions of people in Kashmir and the north-east with the help of military jackboots.

If we were a legitimate democracy we wouldn't take away the land of farmers and tribals for a pittance and hand them over to corporates.

And we won't arrest people for condemning a general strike and liking a Facebook status update.

If we were a legitimate democracy our courts would have given capital punishment in other 'rarest of the rare' cases such as to Babu Bajrangi and Maya Kodnani for the Naroda Patiya massacre and to the lynch mob in Khairlanji that murdered an entire Dalit family in 2006.

But congratulations fellow Indians, we've hanged Ajmal Kasab and we are now a legitimate democracy -- mind you, not some wannabe democracy, but a legitimate democracy! Many democracies across the world have done away with capital punishment, perhaps they are illegitimate ones.

If justice is about setting examples to future terrorists so that they fear the long arm of the law, does this case do that?

We have only done Ajmal Kasab's handlers a favour by hanging him. While he asked for mercy, his handlers and trainers had indoctrinated him with jihad, he was prepared to sacrifice his life in fighting the enemy, in the cause of his religion and thus attaining heaven.

According to a report by Pakistani journalist Saeed Shah who visited Kasab's village in Faridkot, the graffiti there said, 'Go for jihad. Go for jihad.'

His 'martyrdom' will now be used to create more Kasabs -- you think I am being rhetorical? Well, Reuters' Islamabad bureau already reports getting a phone call from a Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander who said, 'He was a hero and will inspire other fighters to follow his path.'

No wonder we are now being warned about revenge attacks.

I am saddened by Ajmal Kasab's hanging because I oppose capital punishment -- for anyone, no matter what the crime. Just as the law seeks to punish those who take away life, the State has no right to take away life either (except in defending the lives of its citizens). How silly -- we seek to address the crime of mass murder with another murder!

Advocate Yug Mohit Chaudhry has pointed out that if we were so particular about due process, why did Kasab not get legal aid that he was entitled to, in drafting his mercy petition? He gave Jyoti Punwani the reasons in an interview why Kasab should have been granted mercy: 'An illiterate boy of 13 sold by his family to the LeT, brainwashed into jihad, transformed into a killing machine and sent as a foot soldier to India are mitigating factors that entitle him to the lesser penalty.'

Retribution is a kind of punishment to ourselves. Chaudhry explained in that interview: 'Excluding a fellow human being from entitlement to mercy has nothing to recommend it except a very base blood-lust that we encourage at our peril. If we have to become a more humane and compassionate society, and leave a better, less blood-thirsty world behind for our children, we have to curb our instinct for bloody retribution.'

He also said that mercy was a human quality not found elsewhere -- but perhaps we are resigned to being animal-like. Such is our hate.

It's funny to see holier than thou right-wingers on Twitter not be happy with the hanging. They're saying the government has done it at an opportune time when it is under political attacks, a stormy Parliament session on its doorstep. They are unhappy because now they can't complain that the United Progressive Alliance government is appeasing Muslims/Pakistan by not hanging Kasab.

Which is why Afzal Guru and not Ajmal Kasab is trending topic number one on Twitter India. These people were not happy when Kasab was not being hanged and they are not happy when Kasab has been hanged. They will never be happy.

Some of my friends who happen to be Indian Muslims don't agree with me. They wanted Kasab hanged so that the right-wing has one less stick to beat Indian Muslims with, so that the Hindutvawaadis can't say that the Congress is not hanging a Pakistani terrorist for appeasing Indian Muslims.

Some Pakistanis on Twitter are expressing happiness on Twitter -- Pakistan needs to hang its terrorists too, they are saying. In response to the Kasab hanging, the Pakistani foreign office has said it supports strong action against terrorism.

All of which only goes to show that capital punishment is more about politics than justice. Indian law now no longer restricts life imprisonment to 14 years. We could have kept Kasab in jail forever. That is what we should have done.

Rejoice Kasab's hanging if you will -- because terrorism and barbarism are apparently both human traits. Just spare me the claptrap about justice.

Source: http://www.rediff.com/news/column/view-why-i-am-saddened-by-kasabs-hanging/20121121.htm

Blasphemous Movie And Our Response

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 11:58:00 +0000

Those who support unchecked freedom of expression and insult or abuse in the name of freedom of speech should be treated in kind. They should be asked: If someone tells you ‘your mother was a prostitute and your father was a pimp’ how would you react? I am sure not even the most polite person on this planet will respond by saying: ‘Sir, please don’t say to me like this, it’s very impolite and indecent to say like this because I belong to a very respected family, so I would request you very humbly to avoid such language for me otherwise I will report this to police or take this matter to court and sue against you’. Rather, being decent and a well behaved person he may never abuse in response to the abusive language, but he will indeed slap the abuser on his face.

Forget about the latest 13-minute video trailer on YouTube which was made by some bankrupts like Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in America. Let such people make one hundred films like ‘Innocence of Muslims’ not a single Muslim will ever make a film insulting Jesus (peace be upon him) or Christianity. Let Salman Rushdie write 100 Satanic Verses, be sure not a single Muslim from the entire Muslim world will ever think to abuse or insult Jesus and Mary (pbuh). Let Jyllands-Posten publish thousands of cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as a terrorist, I can assure you that not a single Muslim from one billion population will ever make a single cartoon ridiculing Jesus (pbuh) or any Prophet. Did a single Muslim in the entire history even insult any religious personality or religious books of Jews, Christianity or Hinduism? Never. Because Muslims believe that Moses and Jesus were the prophets and messengers of God, and maybe some Hindu ‘gods’ were actually prophets, so they give the same respect to them like the prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The only difference is the Muslims follow only Muhammad (pbuh) because his teachings are in original forms. Muslims all over the world believe that Torah, Bible and Vedas all are divine scriptures so they respect all holy scriptures, but they follow only Holy Quran because it’s only divine book which is available in its original form undoubtedly. This is the greatness of the religion called Islam. In this way Islam unifies all religions of the world.

The problem is not just the film, the problem is the hypocrisy and dual standard of western world especially America. They want others to keep in limit but themselves they cross all limits. They forget the famous quote of Martin Luther King Jr “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. They do violent acts but preach others to be peaceful and calm. They stockpile nuclear arms but do not allow others to produce even nuclear energy. The whole world seems to be falling on the killings of four innocent American diplomats but no cries when every day innocent kids and women are being killed by American drones in Afghanistan. The hypocrisy of those so called champions of freedom of speech can be seen in their dealing with Julian Assange who is still hiding in the embassy of Ecuador in London.

The genesis of hate of Jews and Christians for the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is his birth in the family of Prophet Ismail (pbuh), not in the family of Prophet Ishaque (pbuh). Prophets Moses and Jesus (pbuh) were from the family of Ishaque (pbuh), and so Jews and Christians were expecting that the last prophet of God (about whom both Torah and Bible had given details) will be born in the family of their prophets. It is written in history books that in the lifetime of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), Jews and Christians had expressed their feelings which they later converted in enmity with Muslims and Islam.

In last 1400 years (Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was born in 571 AD), thousands of books have been written in the west to malign the character of the last Prophet of God Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Their main target is the character assassination of the Prophet in order to distort Islam. They have distorted their own religion in a way that now Christians make films depicting Virgin Mary (pbuh) as prostitute and Jesus (pbuh) as a gay (God forbid) and the whole Christian world enjoy such things in the name of freedom of expression shamefully. But Muslims can’t tolerate this at any cost, because they respect Prophet more than their life and this is the feeling of Muslims which Christian world fails to understand. They hate Prophet Muhammad because they do not respect Prophets Moses and Jesus. They hate Quran because they don’t have original Bible and Torah.

There are two types of people in the Christian world, one belong to the category of mindless idiots like Nakoula Basseley Nakoula who insults the great Prophet like Muhammad (pbuh), the other belong to the category of Karen Armstrong and Michael H. Hart, who in his famous book The Hundred: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, put Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) on top of the list and declared the prophet as the most influential person of human history. In his book Hart asserted that Muhammad was "supremely successful" in both the religious and secular realms.

There are two types of people in the Muslim world too. There are those who killed innocent American diplomats in Benghazi in response to the blasphemous film, who had nothing to do with the idiotic film. There are others who started distributing books about the life of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh). It’s said "Problems are opportunities in disguise". The problem created by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula could be the best opportunity to enlighten people with the life and character of the last Prophet of God Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

In Islam debate and dissuasion are always welcome, healthy criticism is always entertained. Thousands of books have been written by orientalists criticising many teachings of Islam but there were no protests by Muslims. But they are not ready to accept abusive language about the Prophet with ill intention. Those who want war between religions and civilizations must be brought to justice otherwise the entire humanity will become vulnerable to their assault one day.

twocircles.net

Rabindranath Tagore: His Religious View Especially For Islam

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:32:00 +0000

By Mohammad Aleem

It has been a widely accepted truth that God created mankind and all other beings on the earth and in the heavens. But many among us also don’t believe in it and form our different opinion regarding it. But what writers and poets of world repute think about it is always a fascinating and intriguing thing to look into. I am here talking about our world poet, Rabindranath Tagore who not only confessed time and again that he was a religious and spiritual person but also had some firm and unique views regarding his religious believes. Rabindranath Tagore was a widely read poet and had travelled far all over the globe. He had been in contact with almost people of every faith. Being an Indian he had seen many religions coming and flourishing in the long period of its history. He was a native of Bengal where most of the population consisted of Hindus and Muslims. Christians were also a part of that greater confluence of religion and culture. But it will be interesting to note what his views of religion were finally. I quote here from one of his greatly admired essays, the religion of an artist, he says:

“I was born in 1861. This is not an important date in history, but it belongs to a great epoch in Bengal, when the currents of the three movements had met in the life of our great country. One of these, the religious, was introduced by a great hearted man of gigantic intelligence, Raja Ram Mohan Roy. It was revolutionary, for he tried to reopen the channel of spiritual life which had been obstructed for many years by the sands and debris of creeds that were formal and materialistic, fixed in the external practices lacking spiritual significance.”1

Rabindranath Tagore always took Raja Rammohan Roy as his role model and followed his path religiously and very dedicatedly. Not only he but his father was also greatly influenced by that great thinker and social reformer of his time. Rabindranath recalls those days in these words quite vividly:

“I am proud to say that my father was one of the great leaders of that movement, a movement for whose sake he suffered ostracism and braved social indignities.”2

There were two other important movements also going on at that time. What were those two movements could be easily understood by the words of the poet himself clearly. He writes:

“There was a second movement equally important. Bankimchandra Chatterjee, who though much older than myself, was my contemporary and lived long enough for me to see him, was the first pioneer in the literary revolution which happened in Bengal about this time. Before his arrival, our literature had been oppressed by a rigid rhetoric that chocked its life and loaded it with ornaments that became its fetters.”3

He elaborates further:

“There was yet another movement started about this time called the national. It was not fully political, but it began to give voice to the mind of our people trying to assert their own personality. It was a voice of impatience at the humiliation constantly heaped upon us by people of who were not oriental, and who had, especially at that time, the habit of sharply dividing the human world into the good and the bad according to the hemispheres to which they belong.” 4

After going through these extracts, one can easily understand what the poet thought about his own religion which he was following and practicing during those days when he lived. He was not a practitioner of religion in the traditional sense in any way. So forming any view regarding his religious beliefs outside of this discourse would be quite difficult. He discards the beaten path of religious practices openly and brave heartedly. He says:

“These three movements (Raja Rammohan Roy, Bankim Chander Chatterjee, and national movement) were on foot and in all three the members of my own family took an active part. We were ostracized because of our heterodox opinions about religion and therefore we enjoyed the freedom of outcast. We had to build our own world with our own thoughts and energy of mind.”5

But when we delve deep into his writings we find some other interesting things also. He doesn’t look discarding the all religions so bluntly and brutally but he gives due respect and importance to all great religion of the world but in his own way and with his own understandings. He says:

“My vagabondage in the path of my literary career had another reason. My father was the leader of a new religious movement, a strict monotheism based upon the teachings of the Upanishads. My countrymen in Bengal thought him almost as bad as a Christian, if not worse. So we were completely ostracized which probably saved me from another disaster, that imitating of our past.” 6

But how he looks upon other religion is equally interesting to know. He gives homage to one of the great religions of the world, Islam in following words:

“Islam is one of the few great religions of the world and the responsibility is immense upon its followers who must, in their lives, bear testimony to the greatness of their faith. Our one hope of mutual reconciliation between the communities inhabiting India, of bringing about a truly civilized attitude of mind towards each other in this unfortunate country depends not merely on the realization of an intelligent self-interest, but on the eternal source of inspiration that comes from the immortal lines of these messengers of truth who have been the beloved of God and lovers of men. I am taking this advantage of the auspicious occasion today when I may join my Moslem brothers in offering my homage of adoration to the grand prophet of Islam and invoke his blessings for India which is in dire need of succor and solace.”7

Rabindranath Tagore takes his religious views regarding the Islam always in the greater interest of the mother country. He was aware of the fact that until we keep ourselves united as a cohesive force of power and love we can’t taste the sweetness of freedom. In one of the messages for the prophet number of the Peshwa, a famous journal of his time, he writes:

“I take this opportunity to offer my homage of veneration to the Holy Prophet, Mohammad, one of the greatest personalities born in the world, who has brought a new and potent force of life into human history, a vigorous ideal of purity in religion, and I earnestly pray that those who follow his path will justify their noble faith in their life and the sublime teaching of their master by serving the cause of civilization in the building of the history of the modern India, helping to maintain peace and mutual goodwill in the field of our national life.”8

Tagore was a man of love and beauty. He would draw his inspiration from nature. He loved to be in the company of birds and tranquility of the natural surroundings. His believing in the reward of great effort put by him was not earning a place only in the paradise but to feel that beauty and life on the earth itself. He says:

“I believe that the vision of paradise to be seen in the sunlight and the green of the earth, in beauty of the human face and the wealth of human life, even in the objects that are seemingly insignificant and unprepossessing. Everywhere on this earth the spirit of paradise is awake and sending forth its voice. It reaches our inner ear without our knowing it. It tunes our harp of life which sends our inspiration in music beyond the finite, not only in prayers and hopes, but also in temples which are flames of fire in stone, in pictures which are dreams made everlasting, in the dance which is ecstatic meditation in the still centre of movement.”9

Tagore never relied only on the destiny decided by God but he believed in the love of labor and the fruition of his desire in a sublime way. He puts his views regarding work and destiny in a very beautiful and delectable way. He says:

“A full life with full work can alone fulfill the destiny of man. When his worldly life is thus perfected, it comes to its natural end, and the fetters of work are loosened and drop off. As a help to view life and life’s ending with this simple, natural way, the Ishopanishad asks us to remember that, All that is in this world is enveloped by God. Enjoy that which he gives you. Covet not the wealth of others.”10

He had visited the many Muslim countries and earned good reputation and regard. Especially his visit to Iran and Iraq was worth remembering. The poet has very intimately written about the experiences of those days. He was a lover and great admirer of their great poets. These things clearly show that he was not aloof from Muslim society and its culture. And if one becomes so close to any culture, it is bound to take some effects of it also. We can’t say that Tagore was critical about any other religion. He loved and admired all and gave full merit to them. He knew that to make mankind more humane and considerate towards other it is necessary to follow some type of religion. But he was against ritualistic practices of any religion as we have seen from above mentioned extracts in which he has clearly opined that how a decadent system of religion makes the very worth of human life a mere game of undue practices and beliefs. He wants to see a man as a man and more humane and loving towards others. He writes in one of his articles in these thought provoking words:

“If you analyze the past history of India you find one remarkable thing. The names of the successful fighters and conquerors have all been forgotten, because they did not solve the racial and religious problem- problem of unity- which was so special India’s own problem to unravel. There have been kings and emperors, for instance, who fought against Buddhism and re-established Hinduism in India; but their names have been absolutely forgotten even by Hindu India itself. Our people have no respect for those who fought in order to persecute or overcome by force, religion or races which they thought to be alien to their own. But, on the other hand, such names as those of Kabir and Nanak are ever remembered by a grateful posterity. There is a long series of saints, who came into prominence during the great conflict between religious ideas of Hinduism and Islam in northern India. It was their noble mission to reconcile and harmonize religious truth by reaching out to a higher spiritual ideal. You have to keep in mind that most of these saints have come from the lower classes of the Indian community. One of them was a Muhammadan weaver; some were cobblers, some were outcasts. These saints are still held in the highest reverence because they helped, in their lifetime, to harmonize the differences of religion and race.”11

I take pleasure in the end in reciting one of his very famous poems from his masterpiece, Gitanjali:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken into fragments by sorrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. 12

Notes:

1. The English writings of Rabindranath Tagore, page, 684, volume, 3, Sahitya Academy, Delhi.

2. Ibid, page no. 683

3. Ibid, page no. 683

4. Ibid, page no. 683

5. Ibid, page no. 684

6. Ibid, page no. 686

7. Ibid, page no. 802

8. Ibid, page no. 802

9. Ibid, page no. 697

10. The English writings of Rabindranath Tagore, page, 240, volume, 4, Sahitya Academy, Delhi.

11. Ibid, page no. 289

12. The English writings of Rabindranath Tagore, page, 53, volume, 1, Sahitya Academy, Delhi.

Assam Riots: Real Issue is Development

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 13:31:00 +0000

By: Ram Puniyani

Perhaps the real problem lies in the stressed land and job scenario due to a rising population. Lopsided development has put employment under pressure all over the country. In Mumbai, Shiv Sena presents it as a non-Marathis vs marathi issue. In Assam, the problem is deflected by making it an India vs Bangladeshi immigrants issue. Politics aggravates things in Assam by bringing in the foreigner angle, when actually Bangla speakers have made up a sizeable chunk of the state population for over a century.

PRIME MINISTER Manmohan Singh has called the recent violence in Assam a blot to the nation. Fifty three people have died and almost four lakh people have been rendered homeless in the clashes that occurred last week in Khokrajhar and Chirang districts, between Bodos and ‘illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators’, majority of whom happen to be Muslims. There was some inexcusable delay in deploying the army in the area, which resulted in worsening of the situation. That the riots occurred just around the sowing season in what is the rice country of Assam is a worrying sign. Traumatised people are now crowding 250 ill-equipped relief camps set up by the government.

But this isn’t the first time such violence has hit Assam. The strife between ethnic groups and Muslims, who are labeled as ‘Bangladeshi immigrants’, has been going on for several decades. In 2003, the Bodo Territorial Autonomous Districts were formed following a peace treaty between Bodo activists and the government. The districts included Kokrajhar, Chirang, Baksa and Udalgiri. Estimates put the percentage of Bodos in these districts between 22 and 29. The rest are Tribals and Muslims. Despite being in minority, Bodos, with full powers in the region, initiated policies which have kept non-Bodos largely out of the social framework. Over the years, local disputes have been painted as problems between legal citizens and illegal immigrants with parochial politicking under ‘Assam for Assamese’.

The first major catastrophe in this occurred in the 80s, when the All Assam Students Union (AASU) demanded exclusion of Bangladeshi immigrants from the electoral rolls. In 1983, at least 2,000 people were killed in Nellie, near Guwahati. Those killed were Muslims, said to be illegal migrants and occupants of land that belonged to Lalung tribals. Tribhuban Das Tiwary Commission was constituted into the Nellie massacre, but the AASU, now Assam Gana Parishad (AGP), after coming to power dropped all the criminal cases against the culprits and the report of the Commission was never made public. A decade later occurred another series of violence, the victims of which are still living in relief camps. Last week’s carnage was preceded by a rumour that people from Bangladesh have brought in a huge cache of armaments and it soon got triggered into violence that left lakhs with nothing.

In the early 20th century, Assam was grossly underpopulated and generated little revenue. The neighbouring Bengal, on the other hand, was overpopulated, which resulted in frequent famines. To counter the problem, the British resorted to ‘human plantation’ encouraging people from Bengal to migrate to Assam. But to maintain the core policy of ‘divide and rule’, the immigrants and the natives were kept in separate areas. This migration of Bangla speaking Muslims went on for several decades and by 1930s, the Muslims comprised a sizeable chunk of Assamese population. Post partition, divided Bengal became East Pakistan and then Bangladesh, but even then both Hindus and Muslims continued migrating to Assam.

The question here is how is this immigration is looked at. Why are Nepalese immigrants to India never looked down upon or demonised here? Why even the Hindus coming from Bangladesh are treated as immigrants, while Bangladeshi Muslims are seen as infiltrators and a threat to our security?

THE PROPAGANDA by communal forces about so call infiltration by Bangledeshis has assumed alarming proportions. It has been the backdrop of many agitations in Assam. Surely the basic issue of lack of development in Assam has been deflected by political groups as the issue of displacement of locals from their lands by infiltrators. Right from Nellie to the present violence, in which displacement is the most dominant factor, the infiltrator propaganda has prepared the ground for carnage.

What is required today is to disarm the criminals, to rehabilitate the refugees and to ensure that they return to their homes for the sowing season. If this is not met, surely a bigger disaster of food deprivation is staring at us. We also need to debunk the myth of ‘infiltrators’ for good. The word has been misued for far too long. And lastly the wounded psyche of communities needs to be healed through a process of dialogue and justice.

Game of Fast and Dream For Power

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:46:00 +0000

The unravelling of Team Anna’s campaign against corruption holds many sobering lessons for everyone. For Team Anna themselves -struggling to explain the loss of crowds, the vanished media attention - it is a moment of humbling introspection. Clearly, revolutions cannot be constructed on the wind of television coverage. Nor can moral transformation be built on a storm of taunts. If you set out to change the world, can you mirror that which you criticise?

Too much of Indian politics has come to be merely a game of numbers rather than inspirational vision. Unfortunately, the India Against Corruption movement itself fell into that trap. Team Anna mocked the government for its spinelessness against coalition pressures, but in the hunt for numbers, they themselves built contingent alliances with unlikely men like Baba Ramdev and have struggled with the contradictions ever since.

In other ways too, Team Anna has been too precipitate from the start, always more eager for spectacle than substance. They took to the streets before they had fine-tuned their demands. They stirred up crowds with the promise of magic wands, overnight change, 80 percent eradication of corruption, a miraculous super structure of squeaky-clean officers, gimmicky polls, a toxic rhetoric, adamantine stands, and the heady language of a witch-hunt. They tried to shift the location of power, not the nature of it. Their praise was partisan; their assaults encyclopaedic. They supped with some parties, quartered others. Headlines were important for them; the details not. Popularity was crucial, the process incidental. Virtue, they claimed, was the exclusive domain of those in Anna caps: the curse of all corruption lay outside it.

For all these reasons and more, Team Anna’s movement was destined to hit rock. Its followers’ engagement ran skin deep. They bought the hype, the breaking news about “India’s Arab Spring” and “India’s Second Independence Movement”. They wanted romance not reason. But playing to camera can be risky business and everyone missed a basic point: India is a democracy not a dictatorship. Protest movements here can only improve process, not overthrow it. So, as the overblown promises failed to materialise, people folded their caps and returned home. The movement hadn’t trained them for the slow, long fight democracies demand. If television was bored, so were they.

Yet, it is a cardinal mistake for voices in government to gloat over this. The floundering of this movement is a loss for everyone. There is something discomfiting about watching — and criticising — the men fasting at Jantar Mantar while brazen proofs of corruption flood our every moment. No matter how flawed their design or exasperating their intent, the fact is, Team Anna has brought a historic — and long overdue — urgency to the issue of corruption. Just because the numbers have fallen, the camera lights have dimmed, and their reasoning become more befuddled, is the issue less important? The precise Jan Lokpal Bill that Team Anna was so obdurately demanding — unwilling to shift even a self-righteous comma — might have been a dangerous piece of legislation, but many of the principles they are espousing have great merit.

What is stopping the UPA government from seizing the moment and presenting a Bill in good faith — a year after it had first promised one? Why is the Standing Committee examining the Bill in the Rajya Sabha so delayed? And what of the other parties, who dined out on the UPA’s discomfiture last year but have failed to fast-track the Bill themselves?

It certainly seems infantile of Arvind Kejriwal to go on a fast unto death yet claim he will not negotiate with the government. What is he on a fast for then? Even more infantile to claim the collapse of the Northern Grid or plans to hospitalise him is some sinister government “conspiracy”. This country could do with a little less suspicion and a little more clear thinking.

In the final cut, our real national crisis is not the absence of a Lokpal, it is that the form of anti-corruption measures no longer matter. We have already tried all the tropes there is: independent regulatory mechanisms, oversight bodies, checks and balances, august citizens, even draconian laws. As the latest DGCA scam is proof, all these forms can be subverted. Team Anna can float its own political party or bring in an army of empowered policemen, but this country will still reel under corruption. The trouble is, the impulse for it runs in our very blood. And as long as we keep outsourcing the introspection, we are all in for a marathon fast.

Source: tehelka.com

Stop the Genocide of Muslims in Burma (Myanmar)

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 09:10:00 +0000

After reading and watching helplessly the recent massacre of minority Burmese Muslims by the Buddhist majority, let not another hypocrite sing that phoney 'song' about Buddhists being "peaceful."

In June 2012, hundreds Burmese Muslims have been butchered, and many more injured and made homeless in Burma as a result of religious intolerance by the Buddhist majority.

The Burmese military government, far from trying to resolve the problem and protect the minority, has been silently conniving with the rioters by creating greater hardships for the Muslim minority.

The reason of this June 2012 riot is unknown except for the periodical outbursts of the Burmese Buddhists to show their might and vent their anger on the helpless minority. It is commonly accepted that the June 2012 massacre of Burmese Muslims was intentionally orchestrated by the rioters in collaboration with the government. Yet the world, including the UN, is conveniently silent. The brazenly hypocritical and unscrupulous woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, is very prompt at accusing the Burmese military of human rights violations when she is under house arrest. But she finds nothing wrong when the military helps the Buddhist mobs to murder the innocent Muslim minority of her country.

As in India, anti-Muslim riots are nothing unusual in Burma. Violence in Burma against Muslims have been erupting periodically since the 1920s, based simply on religious intolerance by the Buddhist majority.

The Muslims of Burma mainly belong to the Arakan state in western Burma. They are known as Rohingya or Burmese Muslims. The term "Rohingya" has been derived from the Arabic word "Raham" meaning sympathy. Muslim settlements began being established in the Arakan province of Burma since the arrival of the Arabs in the 8th century.

Presently about 800,000 Rohingya live in Burma. The United Nations describes them as "one of the world’s most persecuted minorities." Yet it has never bothered to help them.

Religious freedom for Muslims in Burma has been systematically curbed. In the post 9/11 era, random accusations of "terrorism" against Muslims have become a common form of persecution and harassment by Burmese Buddhists. Burmese Government does not consider Rohingya Muslims as citizens and they are hated by the Buddhist majority.

Rohingya Muslims in Burma have long demanded recognition as an indigenous ethnic group with full citizenship by birthright. But the Government regards them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship.

"Nobel Prize winner," Aung San Suu Kyi, does not consider Muslims as citizens. Speaking at London School of Economics meeting on June 2012 during her visit to the UK, she said "Rohingya Muslims should not be considered citizens." Later during her press conference at Downing Street, she did not condemn the killings of Rohingya Muslims taking place in Burma. Instead, she simply said that this "ethnic conflict should be investigated and dealt with wisdom." It wasn't just an insufficient response but a very shocking one from someone supposed to have won a "Noble Peace Prize."

The Dalai Lama, continues to globe trot without mentioning a single word of the dangerously growing Buddhist intolerance in Burma, Thailand, Tibet and across the world.

Such intolerance and persecution invariably result in resistance by the oppressed. Many Muslims have joined armed resistance groups, fighting for greater freedom in Burma.

On June 3rd 2012, eight Muslims returning to Rangoon in a bus after visiting a Masjid in the Arakan province were attacked by a mob of hundreds of Buddhists and slaughtered brutally. An eye-witness reported that after the mass murder "the culprits were celebrating triumph spitting and tossing wine and alcohol on the dead bodies lying on the road."

"These innocent people have been killed like animals," said Abu Tahay, of the National Democratic Party for Development, which represents the country’s much-persecuted stateless Muslim Rohingya community.

The Rohingya Muslims of Burma have continued to suffer from human rights violations under the Burmese junta since 1970s. Over the years thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled to neighboring countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Bangladesh etc. Even as refugees they have been facing hardships and have suffered persecution by the

Thai government. In February 2009, a group of 5 boats packed with Burmese Rohingya Muslims were taken out and abandoned in the open sea by the Thai army. Four of these boats sank in a storm and one was washed ashore near the Indonesian islands. The few survivors who were rescued by Indonesian authorities told horrific stories of being captured and beaten by the Thai military and then abandoned at open sea.

Being "peaceful" or "humble" (as claimed by their biased supporters) is a far cry concerning the Burmese Buddhists. Their vindictive temperament prowls for vendetta, waiting to use even the most insignificant occurrence as an excuse to perpetrate violence on Burmese Muslims. At any time, if there's some ethnic disturbance between Muslims and Buddhists/Hindus in any other country, the Burmese Buddhists waste no time going on a murderous spree killing the Muslim minority in Burma. If there is the slightest of trouble between Muslims and non-Muslims in Indonesia, it's taken as a pretext to kill Muslims in Burma by Buddhist mobs. The destruction of the statues in Bamiyan (Afghanistan), created an immediate excuse to commit violence against Muslims in Burma in 2001. The firebrand Buddhist monks demanded a Muslim masjid to be destroyed in retaliation. Mobs of Buddhists led by monks, vandalized Muslim-owned businesses and property in Burma, and attacked and killed Muslims in Muslim localities.

Gruesome images of murdered Rohingya Muslims in the recent June 2012 riots in Burma have been circulated on websites, resulting in protests in several Muslim countries and by various human rights activists around the world demanding justice & protection in Burma for the minority, but has fallen on deaf ears as usual, getting little or no coverage from mainstream news channels.

PLEASE SEND THIS AROUND. THE WORLD HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW THE TRUTH.

Five Things You Must Know About Higgs Boson

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 10:24:00 +0000

What's the Higgs Boson particle? The universe is made of 12 fundamental particles and 4 fundamental forces. This is called the Standard Model of Physics. One more particle was predicted by Higgs, Brout and Englert in 1964. It explained the most important property of all matter - mass, and was called the Higgs boson (bosons are force-carrying particles named after Satyen Bose). The Higgs boson was confi rmed on Wednesday, half a century after the search began.

How did Higgs Boson get to be called the 'God particle'? Nobel winning physicist Leon Lederman unwittingly coined it. Out of frustration, he wanted to refer to the Higgs boson as the 'goddamn particle' but his editor didn't allow that. Higgs has distanced himself from the name saying: "I find it embarrassing. Although I'm not a believer, it is the kind of misuse of terminology that may offend some".

How did the large hadron collider (LHC) find it? Higgs boson is supposed to have originated a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang created the universe. Scientists tried to recreate the same conditions presumed to have existed then by making very high-speed protons collide with each other inside the LHC. Tracking millions of collisions occurring in seconds, they identified traces of a never-before-seen particle. Its mass is in the same range as predicted by theory: it is almost certain this is the Higgs boson

Why can't scientists confirm the discovery with certainty? They are being rigorous - as scientists should be. They say on one count they've found a particle that fits the predicted Higgs boson range of mass. But they have yet to completely identify its other properties. They've to explain all current observations, including the slightly higher than expected energy and absence of some other particles. That will take time. However, for all practical purposes, it is the Higgs boson.

So, what does it mean for science? The discovery confirms the Standard Model theory is valid. Other particles predicted by this theory have been confi rmed, but the missing Higgs boson was a glaring hole. Now that's closed. But there are other aspects of sub-atomic physics and of the cosmos that are unexplained, like dark matter (which makes up 25% of the matter in the universe but has never been seen), dark energy (which makes up 70% of matter in the universe but also has never been located), antimatter, supersymmetry (a theory that for every particle there is a heavier twin), etc. With the Higgs boson found, scientists can look at these aspects with more surety. Also, the most well-known force in the universe -gravitation - is still not fully explained. Such issues are still to be cleared.

Why Did World Forget Satyendra Nath Bose?

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 05:30:00 +0000

As Cern scientists celebrating for finding the Higgs boson, an Indian scientist after whom this particle is named, remains in virtual oblivion.

Media reports are replete with references to Peter Higgs, the British physicist who predicted the existence of such a particle in the early 1960s. But, that a boson - one of the two fundamental classes of subatomic particles - is named after Satyendra Nath Bose who preceded Higgs seems to have got buried deeper than the 27km tunnel under the Franco-Swiss border that hosts science's biggest hunt ever.

S. N. Bose’s work on particle statistics (c. 1922), which clarified the behaviour of photons (the particles of light in an enclosure) and opened the door to new ideas on statistics of Microsystems that obey the rules of quantum theory, was one of the top ten achievements of 20th century science and could be considered in the Nobel Prize class, which he never got.

Although more than one Nobel Prize was awarded for research related to the concepts of the boson, Bose–Einstein statistics and Bose - Einstein condensate - the latest being the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, which was given for advancing the theory of Bose–Einstein condensates - Bose himself was not awarded the Nobel Prize.

But his work on quantum mechanics was so substantial that they named one of the subatomic particles after him.

However, when science's biggest find came, Bose was missing from the limelight, even in India.

Why Wasseypur???

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 06:18:00 +0000

Gangs of Wasseypur released and for its gory theme received bricks and bouquet from audiences. The film is a crap if it claims that it is based on true story or even if its directors claim for an original story line and screen play. Those who want truth they can examine themselves, this movie is a concoction of ‘The Godfather’, Brazilian Movie ‘Cidade de Deus’ (City of God) and a Tamil Movie ‘Subramaniapuram’.

This movie tarnished the image of area which produced many hundreds Engineers, dozens of IAS’s and IPS’s, hundreds of Doctors. Best academicians and reputed businessmen.

Every city has a pocket where small bandwagon of outlaw resides; no one can deny this fact.

There are many pockets in Dhanbad where living is hell. Many more Mafias are living in posh localities of different parts of Dhanbad and all over India.

Then why Wasseypur? The name is intentionally used to malafide the area and the name used for creating sensation and publicity for a cheap Bollywood flick.

Like his other movies based mainly on Muslims of India ‘Black Friday’, Anurag is very fond for portraying Muslims in dark images. This movie is also based on same theme with extreme form of abuses and violence (so called expression of art).

Anurag tried his best to portray Muslims as savage brutes.

Why Civil-Military Conflict is Good for India

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 09:36:00 +0000

Civil-military disputes may be unseemly and potentially perilous to democracy, but Indians should welcome the feud between Indian Army chief General V K Singh and the Manmohan Singh government.

With India no longer in danger of a military coup, the disagreement is an important --albeit costly -- test of policy and institutional efficacy in an area of governance that is normally hidden from public view, often in the name of secrecy.

The seeming scandal bolsters the twin requirements of any national security system: Verifying the principle of civilian control over the armed forces even as it brings scrutiny to the mechanism of providing for defence.

The classic model of civil-military relations is absolutist: Civilian leaders have a right to be wrong, but failure is their burden to bear alone. In practice, however, civil-military relations have always been a two-way street.

Military officers, by virtue of their expertise and avowed apolitical character, can and do appeal directly to the people over the heads of their political masters. Political leaders, in turn, often leave the management of defence to professional military officers, both to avoid hard decisions about a subject matter rife with uncertainty and to shift the responsibility if things go badly.Consequently, most civil-military disputes follow a similar script: The military leader accuses the politician of sacrificing the country's security, sometimes with charges of corruption, and the political leader accuses the general of breaching rules that undermine the oath to serve and protect.

The current case certainly follows this pattern, as did India's last civil-military relations fracas, when former Indian Navy chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat and then defence minister George Fernandes conducted their public war of words in the late 1990s.

There is, of course, no absolute standard of national security. It is a relative concept. Governments try to match military threats with capacity. Doing less can invite attack. Doing more imposes an unnecessary burden on the nation. In most countries, military and political leaders differ over how much defence is necessary.

The question of how much defence India should have against China is debatable, but there is good reason for the relative positions of the two countries today: Military capacity has followed strategic policy. That China is militarily superior to India was established in 1962; confirmed in 1964, when China acquired nuclear weapons; and consolidated since 1979, when China launched its economic reform programme that turned the country into the fastest growing economy in the world.

India has periodically contested Chinese military superiority, and may do so again, but since the mid-1980s, New Delhi has sought detente with China. The Manmohan Singh government has continued a China policy that even the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, under Atal Bihari Vajpayee [ Images ], adopted. It is hardly surprising, then, that successive Indian governments have tried hard not to cast its developing relationship with the United States as anti-China.

Many Indians chafe at the idea of a detente with China, but these are not the people who run for elections. Politicians, regardless of their party, have decided repeatedly that it is better to have detente with China.

Not only China, India's elected officials have generally seen India's security environment as relatively benign; thought of armed force as an unacceptable instrument of State policy (with some notable exceptions, such as the 1971 war); sought to escape regional security dilemmas rather than engage in arms racing; and given priority to economic development over military spending.

The assertion by General Singh that the Indian tank fleet is 'devoid of critical ammunition' seems like criminal neglect, but when is India going to fight another tank battle?

The border with China is not tank terrain. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and has repeatedly said that it will use nuclear weapons if Indian tanks cross the border. Indian leaders have wisely chosen not to test whether that is an empty threat.

General Singh also claims that the India's air defence is '97 percent obsolete' -- how does anyone arrive at such a measure and what does the Indian Air Force have to say about it?

General Singh's letter mentions other, more credible gaps in the army's capacity, but, by all publicly available accounts, he does not lay out his priorities, without which it is impossible to determine how bad things really are. For example, the question of whether the tanks lack necessary ammunition cannot be answered without first answering the question of how many tanks India needs. In the melee following the leak of General Singh's letter, this remains unanswered.

The content of the March 12 letter should never have been surprising. For a number of years, Indian and foreign observers have been highlighting deep-set problems in India's defence policymaking. I would imagine that General Singh's predecessor and successor would write very similar letters, if they were asked.

What makes the letter extraordinary is the fact that it is not a routine matter for Indian military chiefs to write frankly to the country's prime minister on the state of readiness. That is the only acceptable explanation for why the letter has caused national consternation in India.

The alternatives are scandalous: Did General Singh write to the prime minister earlier, and was he ignored? Or, did the Army chief's date-of-birth problem cause him to be more critical of the government? The general has been willing to name names of those who tried to bribe him, but far more important evidence will be his prior reports on military readiness to the government, if ever these could be made public.

The problem in Indian defence goes beyond resources. Unlike other areas of government neglect such as school education, basic health care and road safety, defence has not suffered from the lack of resources.

For much of the last decade, Indian defence budgets have grown handily. There are reports that the armed forces are not being able to spend the money fast enough -- and the military has actually returned unspent money to the General Fund of India.

The dysfunction in Indian civil-military relations has its roots in the lessons of the defeat in the 1962 China war. India stumbled into and lost the war because of political interference. Since then, Indian political leaders have been wary about intervening in military issues.

The 1971 Pakistan war confirmed the military autonomy model, but since then few political leaders have taken a direct interest in military matters. The fear of intervention combined with the belief against the utility of armed force in politics resulted in political disinterest in military matters. All the political leaders wanted to do -- and were expected to do -- was to provide the resources and get out of the way.

But, of course, the politicians did not really leave the military alone even as they stepped back from publicly intervening in military matters. Instead, they installed a thick layer of bureaucracy to exercise proxy civilian control. There is now consensus outside Indian government circles that the bureaucratic insulation between the politicians and the generals does not serve India well.

Without regular and frank exchange of civil and military views, it takes civil-military conflict to break the news of dysfunction. Civil-military disputes can help correct imbalances in the national security policymaking system.

All other military reforms -- from the new position of the chief of defence staff, to a more effective military R&D system, to a clean and legitimate procurement process -- are predicated on political engagement of the military that usually follows a period of civil-military tension.

Whether this round of civil-military tension will lead to a period of reform in India is not yet clear.

The Indian government's first instinct seems to be to let this wind blow over with Singh's retirement on May 31. General Singh's own credibility is poor given the controversy over his date of birth.

But as more scandals arise, a new constituency for defence reform is bound to emerge and the country's political leadership will not be able to remain disengaged from military matters for long.

Forgotten Story of Chasnala Mining Disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 05:01:00 +0000

For those wondering what this Chasnala tragedy is all about here is a clue. This is the same story on which Bollywood movie Kaala Patthar directed by Yash Chopra and starring Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Shatrughan Sinha, Rakhee Gulzar and Neetu Singh hit the screens in 1979.

The business of news can be very demanding, uncompromising and extremely cruel. What defines news depends not only on the gravity of the incident, but also on how many people it impacts and more importantly in today's world by the TRPs (if it's a news channel), pageviews (if it's a news website) and copies sold (if it's a newspaper).

On all the three parameters the day Union Budget is presented in India is a big news day, preparations for which start weeks in advance in all the newsrooms across the country. And if on the same day Sachin Tendulkar, the so-called demigod of Indian cricket, scores his 100th international century, no matter if it comes on a placid, batsman-friendly pitch against Bangladesh, the madness in a newsroom is complete.

But what if the day is also a witness to a verdict announced in a 36-year-old case in which at least 372 miners met their watery grave deep inside a coalmine in Jharkhand. What chance do that tragedy, its aftermath and the case have of featuring in the national media?

ALMOST ZERO. YES ZERO.

For such news items do not ring a bell among the advertisers as they do not connect with the bourgeois or the upwardly mobile middle class, who form the largest consumer base and determine what news items should be on prime time television and the homepages of the websites.

But this story needs to be hold, even if to show how insensitive and callous India has become when it comes to the poor, and also to show how what the media projects as news may not always be the only thing happening across the country and the world.

On the day Pranabda presented his budget and Tendulkar reached the historic landmark, a group of people in Jharkhand's Dhanbad, the capital of India's Ruhr Valley, were eagerly hearing a local court pronounce its verdict in a case that lies buried deep inside the pages of history. The court pronounced its verdict in the more than 36-year-old Chasnala Colliery disaster case where according to official records 372 workers were killed.

Announcing the verdict, the court sent two former Indian Iron and Steel Company (IISCO) officials, R Bhattacharya and Deepak Sarkar, to one year in jail and also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 each on both the individuals. Bhattacharya was the manager of the colliery and Sarkar a project officer when the disaster struck the mine on

December 27, 1975. The Chasnala Colliery disaster rather massacre was one of the worst industrial accidents in Indian history and yet the accused have been give a jail term of just one year. Two other accused in the case, JN Ohri and SK Banerjee, died during the trial.

But for the families of the workers killed, the verdict brought no closure. Many families spent their life in penury as they pursued the case. Over the years several of them committed suicide, some of them moved out of Chasnala in search of better opportunities and livelihood while other just rued their fate.

The tragedy struck Chasnala Colliery on December 27, 1975 when several crore gallons of water flooded two mining pits, trapping the miners. While the real cause of the flooding is not known, the most plausible explanation is that an explosion ignited methane gas present in the mine resulting in the collapse of the mine wall and water from a nearby reservoir flooding the pits.

The sirens near the lifts that took the miners deep inside the mine started blaring, bringing the family members and onlookers near the pits. Their fears soon gave way to hysterical wailing, shouting and chaos as they realised that the colliery was ill-equipped to carry out the rescue operations and the trapped miners were doomed.

The rescue efforts went on for more than three weeks but not a single trapped worker could be saved. What made matters worse was that most of the bodies, too, were never recovered and the actual death toll remained a mystery due to poor records maintained by the colliery officials.

Making a travesty of the entire rescue operation some submersible pumps were brought from Poland and the erstwhile USSR a week after the flooding to pump the water out of the mines.

Dhanbad was in Bihar at the time of tragedy and the then state government appointed a panel under former Patna High Court Chief Justice UN Sinha to probe the disaster. Justice Sinha submitted his report on March 24, 1977 and on its basis the government filed criminal cases against four IISCO officials, charging them with only negligence!

The trial held far away from media glare, screaming and shouting self-righteous anchors and reporters was awaited with bated breath by the families of those killed in the mine disaster.

But the verdict has left them bitter and cursing their fate even as India fired by the electricity generated by coal moves on to claim its still elusive status as one of the powerhouses of the world.

Over 55 per cent of electricity in India is generated by coal-fired plants but for those left behind in Chasnala such statistics mean nothing. For them the names of those 372 (the unofficial toll is more than 600) etched on a memorial erected near the colliery is all that matters.

For the rest of India these 372 are not even statistics, but just a small price to pay for development. Similar accidents still take place across the coal mines in Jharkhand and other coal-mining regions particularly during the monsoon season, and hardly ever make news.

How To Hide Your Web History From Google

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:44:00 +0000

Google’s new privacy policy comes into operation tomorrow. Now most of us probably didn’t read the first draft when we signed up for Gmail. But it’s time that we read Google’s new privacy policy, partly because we use a number of Google products ranging from search to mail to Chrome to YouTube, and mostly because the policy aims at collecting information about Google users and is across its products. You can view the entire policy for your Google account by clicking on this link.

Microsoft which is on the war path with Google has already launched a complaint with EU regulators against Google’s new social networking site, Google +. This is probably because Google’s new search policy means that links which get a plus are likely to feature more prominently in search results.

For example if your friend clicked plus on a link it’s likely to feature in your results since Google + is now an integral part of search. The Google-advertiser nexus, is also quite annoying for the average Gmail user. But what is clear is that information you give to Google profile is riddled with privacy loopholes.

For those who are really paranoid about how Google is using your information, there is the option of going off the grid, which is basically, press delete, delete as many times as possible, then swear you’ll never use Google search, or YouTube again. And while you’re frantically deleting your Internet history, don’t forget to flush your Android down the toilet. For the rest of us who wish to use Google without giving out information that we don’t want to, here are two steps you can take.

PC World has a detailed post on how to take your privacy a bit more seriously. First and foremost go to your Google account settings and disable your web search history. For detailed steps on how to go about doing this, click on this link. It’s probably the most important step you can take to ensure that you what search for online doesn’t stay with Google. It might seem trivial that Google is collecting your search data, but it matters because it reveals a lot about user interests, preferences, political orientations, etc.

Some of this might not be information you want to share with the world and it’s perfectly legitimate to regulate this. The other big major step to take is go to the Google.com/dashboard. You can log with your account and see all the information that Google has related to your account, which is linked to all the products you use. The dashboard will let you change your privacy settings for each Google product. If you’ve never used this before you might see that nearly everything you put out is public and it’s probably best to change that option.

Yes Google has informed us well in advance of the change in it’s privacy policy. The policy is obviously going to be subject to some serious scrutiny in the coming days, but as users we can control to some extent what information is going out publicly.

Google Privacy Checklist: What to Do Before Google's Privacy Policy Changes on March 1

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:27:00 +0000

If you use Gmail, Google Docs, or any other popular G-service, you’re about to surrender a lot more personal information to the Googleplex...unless you take these steps to prevent it.

We've been talking about it for weeks, but the big day is almost here: On March 1, Google will implement its new privacy policy and terms of service, unifying 70 separate privacy policies and extending them across most of Google's offerings.

This grand consolidation means that all of your Google account data will live in a single database that every Google service can access. Google Maps will have access to your Gmail data, which will have access to your YouTube history, and so on. Google insists that this change will ultimately benefit users, but privacy advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation fear that users will lose control over the personal data they've shared with Google.

If you'd like to exert control over your Google-based data, you still have time to act before March 1. Google's privacy settings can be tricky to navigate--the privacy Dashboard doesn't provide full access to all privacy settings, and Google's Data Liberation tool doesn't support everything yet. But these tips should help limit what Google can find out about you.

Check the Dashboard

Your first destination is Google Dashboard. It provides an overview of the information Google has stored on your account across many of its most popular services. To get started, go to google.com/dashboard and log in with your Google account (typically an email address). There, you can see much of the data that Google has on you--from your Google+ account to your Gmail account.

Take a few minutes to click through the various services and to review the information Google is storing. Then clear out any data you no longer want associated with your account.

Clear Your Google Web History

Google Web History keeps track of your Web browsing in order to help Google serve up more-relevant search results, According to the company, Google Web History "saves information about your web activity, including pages you visit and searches on Google. Over time, the service may use additional information about your activity on Google or other information you provide us in order to deliver a better search experience."

Even while you’re logged out of your Google account, Google achieve a similar effect by tracking your search history via a browser cookie.

To turn this off, visit google.com/history while signed into your Google account and click Remove all web history. In the next screen, click OK to confirm your decision, and thenceforth Google will no longer track your Web history for the sake of improving search accuracy. As the EFF notes, however, Google may still log this information for various internal purposes.

If you don't have a Google account, or if you're logged out of your account, visit google.com/history/optout and click Disable customizations based on search activity.

Tweak Your Ads Preferences

By default, Google serves up "personalized" ads, based on search queries or on the content of your Gmail messages. For example, if you run a search for "Mobile World Congress," Google may serve up an ad for a phone or a tablet. If you find that kind of activity too invasive (or just plain creepy), you can dig into Google's privacy settings to disable personalized ads.

Head on over to Google's Ad Preferences page; and in the right-hand column, under 'Ads on Search and Gmail', click Opt out. From there, click the Opt out button to the right, and Google will stop serving up personalized ads based on your search results.

You can also opt out of personalized ads that appear on other sites through Google's Web ad services. In the left-hand column of the same Ad Preferences page, under 'Ads on the Web', click Opt out, and then click the blue Opt out button to the right.

Liberate Your Data

If you want to remove some (but not all) of your personal data from multiple Google services, head over to Google Takeout, which lets you download a copy of your data from Google Buzz, Circles, Docs, Picasa Web Albums, Gmail contacts, and other tools and services. Get started by logging in to the Google Takeout page. Once there, you can download your data for all supported services, or you can pick and choose the data you want to download. Once you've chosen what you want to download, click the Create Archive button at the bottom of the page. Google Takeout will create an archive consisting of your downloadable data (it may take a few minutes for Google Takeout to create the archive for you).

After downloading the archive, you can delete the data from the individual Google services. Unfortunately, doing so is a manually operation--Google doesn't let you automatically delete the data you download from its servers. In addition, Google Takeout doesn't yet support all of Google’s services, so you won't be able to take everything with you. Still, some data removal is better than none.

The Nuclear Option: Delete Your Google Account

If you feel truly paranoid, you can remove your Google account completely. Deleting your account will mean losing all of the information associated with it, including your Gmail account, your Google+ profile, and anything you've stored within Google Docs.

If you're willing to take the leap, log in to your Google account and visit your account settings page. Scroll to the bottom and, under Services, click Close entire account and delete all services and info associated with it. On the next page, Google will ask you to confirm that you really, truly want to delete your account. Follow the instructions, enter your password, take a deep breath, and click Delete Google Account.

On the other hand, you may want to delete just your Google+ account. If so, scroll to the bottom of the account setting page, and click Delete profile and remove associated Google+ features. From there, you can delete your Google+ content or your entire Google profile, which will remove you from Google+, Google Buzz, and several other services.

We're all for personal privacy, of course, but we also appreciate convenience. If you feel the same way, and you can deal with the reality that Google probably already knows a lot about you (and will soon know even more), you can leave your Google account as it is.

If you're on the fence, or just want to be fully informed about how Google collects and uses personal data, we recommend that you take one more step: Read Google's overview of its new privacy policy, or take the plunge and read the revised policies for yourself.

Jayant Baliga's Invention is A Power Saver

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:49:00 +0000

Baliga's invention has resulted in cost savings of over $15 trillion for consumers. "Because of the IGBT the world has not had to build at least 600 hydroelectric dams of the size [of the] Hoover Dam!" This reduces heat dissipation, which reduces the size and cost of the electronics. This also reduces electricity consumption, saving consumers money and reducing environmental pollution.

As a child, everyone has a favourite boast about their daddy. But few would have a story to match Prof Jayant Baliga's. "The first TV broadcast into a home in India occurred in my house."

In true tradition of a man of science this isn’t an empty boast. It really did happen. "My father, BV Baliga, was chief engineer of All India Radio after Independence. There was an exhibition in Delhi in the 1950s where they were using the All India Radio's setup of a camera and a transmitter to show a TV telecast within the exhibition premises. My father wanted to test if the signal could be received at a farther distance."

He had a television set installed at his house at Teen Murti Marg. "It caused quite a sensation in the neighbourhood," says Baliga. BV Baliga went on to head Bharat Electronics Limited, the heavyweight electronics public sector undertaking.

One might have expected Jayant to go firmly towards the future then: Computers. Instead, he invented something that joined two sister disciplines: Electronics engineering and electrical engineering. That device was the IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor), a switch just like the ones in any house. It is just that the one Baliga invented is super-small, can switch on and off 100,000 times a second and handle really high voltage power.

Baliga's invention has resulted in cost savings of over $15 trillion for consumers. "Because of the IGBT the world has not had to build at least 600 hydroelectric dams of the size [of the] Hoover Dam!" says Baliga.

Today, his invention is forming the basis of the emerging smart grid. These electrical supply networks of the future will replaces large and less efficient components with small, cheap and efficient semiconductor equivalent.

One emerging device that is holding out great hope is the transformer-on-a-chip. All of us have seen the large distribution transformers in our neighbourhood. Imagine that being replaced by something that is many times smaller!

It was the late 1970s and Baliga was heading a team of 40 scientists that was working on power semiconductor devices and high voltage integrated circuits at General Electric's Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York.

By then, the transistor—the device that makes computers possible—had been discovered and commercialised. Since Baliga was at GE, he focussed on a complementary area. He tried to develop a semiconductor device that could control equipment like compact fluorescent lights, airconditioners and electrical motors.

Essentially, the heavy duty stuff. All these applications need power electronic circuits that operate at high efficiency continuously. This reduces heat dissipation, which reduces the size and cost of the electronics. This also reduces electricity consumption, saving consumers money and reducing environmental pollution.

At that time, companies like GE and Westinghouse were developing their bipolar transistors for high-power devices, while another group led by Siliconix and International Rectifier was developing another type of transistor called the power MOSFET. The feeling in the industry was that the two technologies were incompatible because of different manufacturing practices and end customers.

It was Baliga who thought of combining the physics of the two. "There was a vice-president in GE who was developing a heat-pump for air-conditioning applications. He was frustrated that the exiting transistors were failing and that the circuit needed to drive the motor pump was too big, expensive, and very cumbersome to assemble," says Baliga, who had already been working for five years in this area. He rose to the challenge and created a mechanism by which the power surges did not blow out the transistor he had developed.

"It is a research that requires not only knowledge and creativity, but also perseverance. Jay [Baliga] exhibited all of these attributes. With his detailed knowledge of silicon fabrication methods and these transistor devices, he invented the IGBT," says Jim Bray, chief scientist, Electrical Technologies and Systems, GE Global Research.

The device was considered such a breakthrough for GE that Baliga personally briefed Jack Welch. "It wasn't a very usual practice for a scientist to brief the chairman. He came down from Connecticut to Schenectady," says Baliga. Welch decided that the discovery should be kept a secret.

"I wanted to publish about the invention, but that was embargoed for several years. But GE also rewarded me by making me a Coolidge fellow, the youngest ever in the history of GE," says Baliga.

The extent of Baliga's contribution to the world and the US Economy was recognised in 2011 when US President Barack Obama presented him with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. This is the highest form of recognition given by the US government to an engineer.

After that, while Baliga remained in academia, he also founded three companies between 1999 and 2011 to commercialise various semiconductor technologies.

Unfortunately, his association with India, which was fairly high in the 1980s, has declined. "In the 1980s and 1990s, I was visiting India every two years and would make the effort to meet with scientists at universities and government organisations (BEL, BHEL). During my biennial visits, I gave lectures at BEL, BHEL, CEERI-Pilani, IISc-Bangalore, and IIT-Madras. At the present time, I am not connected to any Indian science fraternity," he says.

One issue that has held him back is perhaps the lack of progress in India in semiconductor technology. And developing this does require a huge amount of capital investment. "My impression is that it would be very difficult to develop the types of semiconductor chips that I work on in India due to lack of infrastructure," says Baliga.

Source: IBN Live

Salman Rushdie Had To Pay For Hurting Muslim Feelings

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:46:00 +0000

By: Pavan K. Varma

No individual can claim in the name of freedom of speech the absolute right to insult without reason legitimate articles of faith of anyone.

The alchemy of globalisation is such that western nations and societies manage to project an image of superior ethics and freedom even while they dissemble and display double standards themselves. It is as if they can lay down the rules for 'civilised' and 'progressive' behaviour, but need not follow these themselves.

Without doubt the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) has assumed a proportion that its organisers could never have imagined when it began some six years ago.

I had attended the first edition in 2006 and there were a hundred people or so in the Durbar Hall, which was the only venue. Today, peak crowds are estimated at over 50,000; there are multiple events going on simultaneously; a dozen food outlets find it difficult to cope with the rush; book signing sessions have queues that stretch endlessly; college and school students attend in huge numbers. It is in every sense an unprecedented carnival.

The organisers - Namita Gokhale, Sanjoy Roy and William Dalrymple - deserve to be congratulated for this feat. There is no other cultural festival in the country that attracts such an attendance from all parts of the country and the world. Our international film festival in Goa is mostly a damp squib and the art triennale is equally lacklustre. The JLF is the only event that on its own strength can pull in the most famous international talent.

But the Diggy Palace, where the event is held, is showing definitive signs of creaking under the pressure of the crowd. This year, my session with Gulzar Saheb was moved from the smaller but more intimate Durbar Hall to the Mughal Tent, which has a capacity of 800. But 1,500 people turned up; it took some time for the aisles to be cleared before we could reach the podium to speak.

Unfortunately, for all the transparent enthusiasm of the audience, this year's festival was overshadowed by the Salman Rushdie controversy. I am afraid I do not subscribe to the somewhat hysterical view that his failure to participate signifies the end of democracy, freedom, free expression and values in India. It is beyond a tiny fig of doubt that Rushdie wrote a gratuitously blasphemous text in The Satanic Verses and has since flamboyantly defended his right to do so.

We all value freedom of speech but no society anywhere in the world believes in absolute freedom of speech. If you put something deliberately and provocatively in the public realm that hurts the sentiments of people on something as sacrosanct as faith, you must face the consequences of your action.

The West may lionise Rushdie and uphold his freedom of speech, but what has been its own track record? When the film The Last Temptation of Christ was made, it provoked in Europe a public outcry unprecedented in the history of religious films. Similarly, when The Passover Plot portrayed Christ as a charlatan, it was picketed out of existence in only a few weeks and never heard of again. In 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen cartoons caricaturing Prophet Mohammad. In spite of protestsby Muslims, and other liberal-minded people, the paper defended its decision on grounds of freedom of speech. But it was reported that the same editor had earlier turned down caricatures of Jesus as too offensive.

The alchemy of globalisation is such that western nations and societies manage to project an image of superior ethics and freedom even while they dissemble and display double standards themselves. It is as if they can lay down the rules for 'civilised' and 'progressive' behaviour, but need not follow these themselves.

Unfortunately, the English-speaking intelligentsia in our country often unthinkingly internalises these biases without independent and judicious application of mind. That is why I refuse to be straitjacketed into this ridiculous simplification that if you are critical of Rushdie you are anti-freedom of speech.

We must endeavour steadfastly to build a liberal society that values freedom of expression. No fringe fundamentalist or extremist group should hold a society to ransom. No individual, however, can claim in the name of freedom of speech the absolute right to insult without reason legitimate articles of faith of anyone.

Rushdie is a PIO and can come to India anytime, and has done so in the past. If he believes what he wrote was right, he can brave the reactions he has unleashed and fight for his cause here, rather than from a luxury brownstone abroad guarded by dozens of gunmen. Similarly, the authors who read out at the festival from the banned book, and who mostly live abroad, could have stayed on and fought for their convictions rather than parachuting in and out of India.

In any case, I believe that the JLF this year was a huge success even if Rushdie did not attend. It is, to say the least, going a bit overboard to judge it by a uni-dimensional issue of whether Rushdie came or not.

Source: www.indiatoday.in

Five Reasons Why India Inc. Can't Censor The Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:17:00 +0000

Kapil Sibal knows all this, right? So why is this bright star from Harvard Law School and St. Stephen's college now sounding so anachronistic in the Internet age? Is it the old "thou shalt display higher loyalty to the royal family than the prince himself" mantra?

In just 24 hours, in the Facebook alumni group of St Stephen's College, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal's ratings crashed faster than that of US President Barack

Obama or what former telecom minister A. Raja, now in judicial custody over second generation (2G) spectrum case, ever had.

In a survey to pick star alumni for a big debating clash with counterparts from the rival college across the road, Sibal was on the top five a week ago -- among other

stellar Stephanians like Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, former federal minister Mani Shankar Aiyar or former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor.

No longer!

As the #Idiot hash-tag topped Twitter trends, some withdrew their votes for Sibal, and there were posts like "Chuck him across the road" -- a scathing insult, equivalent to the Parsis' excommunication.

Just a preview of the global firestorm over the next two days!

The fire wasn't from anonymous teens. Seasoned analysts blasted Sibal. Investor Mahesh Murthy posted: "Censor this! :) ! Five of the top 10 Twitter trends in India

right now are: #IdiotKapilsibal, #KapilSibal, #Censorship, #FreeSpeech and #FreedomOfSpeech."

All this, for just one statement from a politician not unknown for his foot-in-mouth disease? Not quite. For, he has the power to misuse and try to make it happen.

During the Anna Hazare movement, Sibal summoned representatives of the social networks. In a king-and-subjects interaction, he kept them waiting, then kept them standing in his room; gave them a pre-emptive dressing down; and snapped: "I don't want any anti-government stuff on your networks. Fix it." There was no room for discussion.

So here's a five-point Internet 101 for the illustrious Mr. Sibal.

1. The Internet cannot be edited: Duh! In an early Dilbert strip, the pointy-haired boss demanded that Dilbert "download" the Internet and fax it to him. A decade down, it's not so funny any more.

The Internet is not traditional media. India's 1975 emergency and the media clampdown was possible because of the linear, broadcast nature of the old media. New media is distributed. No copy desk or censor board can "fix" it. There is no editor to arrest. And, most content is hosted outside India's jurisdiction.

2. User-generated content cannot be filtered: That would slow down the global Internet to a crawl, with posts appearing after days -- even assuming so many "editors" could be hired by, say, a Facebook or a Twitter.

Are phone operators responsible for "content" carried on their networks -- or their CEOs arrested if someone made a terror threat over a phone call? No, the telco is simply asked to help with the investigation -- into who made the call.

Yes, Internet content has the permanence and public-impact potential that a phone call does not, but equally, it lends itself brilliantly to self-regulation.

3. Peer review works: Wikipedia is the best example. Who could have imagined that a user-created encyclopedia could be so objective, and comprehensive? Yes, anyone can go in and edit anything (barring entries like "Kapil Sibal", which have been locked due to vandalism!).

If you make an inappropriate change, someone will come in and correct it. And so it is on Facebook or Twitter. Abusive posts will be reported, blocked, and the individuals knocked out of the site.

4. Draconian controls are not necessary: In this age of global cooperation on terror, companies cooperate. A rational request from India to Google or Facebook to bring down offensive content will be heard -- regardless of jurisdiction.

5. Yes, there are precedents for Internet control, but...: Such censorship is in countries India doesn't want to be -- China, Pakistan, Myanmar or Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan became a laughing stock when it issued a list of banned words for SMS messages. (That list is now standard reading for anyone wanting a quick lesson in present and future abuses that aren't in any dictionary.)

The big daddy of "regulation" is China, where everything is filtered, and if you break those filters, you are charged with treason. What a role model.

But wait.

Kapil Sibal knows all this, right? So why is this bright star from Harvard Law School and St. Stephen's college now sounding so anachronistic in the Internet age? Is it the old "thou shalt display higher loyalty to the royal family than the prince himself" mantra?

If Kapil Sibal is to defend himself against the charge of sycophancy, he is on a weak footing. There were many prior potential triggers for tackling social media, including fanatic religious posts, derogatory comments by Pakistan sympathisers, Anna Hazare, and more. That he finally picked a post that targeted Sonia Gandhi suggests that this was not out of serious, objective concern about India's stability, security or secular fabric.

Mayans Never Predicted World To End in 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 07:59:00 +0000

If you are worried the world will end next year 2012 based on the Mayan calendar, relax: the end of time is still far off.

So say Mayan experts who want to dispel any belief that the ancient Mayans predicted a world apocalypse next year.

The Mayan calendar marks the end of a 5,126 year old cycle around December 12, 2012 which should bring the return of Bolon Yokte, a Mayan god associated with war and creation.

Author Jose Arguelles called the date "the ending of time as we know it" in a 1987 book that spawned an army of Mayan theorists, whose speculations on a cataclysmic end abound online. But specialists meeting at this ancient Mayan city in southern Mexico say it merely marks the termination of one period of creation and the beginning of another.

"We have to be clear about this. There is no prophecy for 2012," said Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "It's a marketing fallacy."

The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico has been trying to quell the barrage of forecasters predicting the apocalypse. "The West's messianic thinking has distorted the world view of ancient civilizations like the Mayans," the institute said in a statement.

In the Mayan calendar, the long calendar count begins in 3,114 BC and is divided into roughly 394-year periods called Baktuns. Mayans held the number 13 sacred and the 13th Baktun ends next year.

Sven Gronemeyer, a researcher of Mayan codes from La Trobe University in Australia, who has been trying to decode the calendar, said the so-called end day reflects a transition from one era to the next in which Bolon Yokte returns.

"Because Bolon Yokte was already present at the day of creation ... it just seemed natural for the Mayan that Bolon Yokte will again be present," he said.

Of the approximately 15,000 registered glyphic texts found in different parts of what was then the Mayan empire, only two mention 2012, the Institute said.

"The Maya did not think about humanity, global warming or predict the poles would fuse together," said Alfonso Ladena, a professor from the Complutense University of Madrid. "We project our worries on them."

Source: Reuters

Towards An Asian Century

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 05:21:00 +0000

By Raghu Dayal*

China's amazingly rapid and increasingly assertive rise with its vigorous 'smile diplomacy' towards countries in Asia and Africa has been in contrast with India's slothful energies generally generating wariness, even indignation, among several of its South Asian neighbours. Nevertheless some of the most recent initiatives such as the accords with Myanmar, Vietnam and Bangladesh augur well for India to win and influence friends in the region around.

Myanmar, the size of France and Britain combined, strangely outside the eight-nation Saarc fold, commands a strategic location with the potential to change the geography in the sub-region. Recognising Myanmar as a natural bridge between the Asean and India, the Indian side reiterated during the recent state visit of President U Thein Sein its intention of building upon the commonalities and synergies between the two countries. This could advance its Look East policy, which itself signifies hope for the idea of an Asian Century.

Let India shed its hallmark lethargy and stupor, and infuse the requisite vitality and pace in its programmes; for example, build Myanmar's infrastructure and develop human capital.

For most of the past 2,000 years, it was India, not China, that enjoyed the closest connections with Southeast Asia. Burma, now Myanmar, was for over 50 years a part of the Bri-tish Indian empire, although it never formed an integral part of India. In the early 20th century, Myanmar enjoyed a higher standard of living than India. As its economy grew, there was a need for labour as well as entrepreneurial and professional skills, all of which came from India. By the 1920s, the influx from India turned Rangoon, now Yangon, into an 'Indian city'.

But much water has flown down the Irrawaddy since then. Tens of thousands of ethnic Indians had left at Myanmar's independence, while about 400,000 others were compelled to leave in 1964 following the ultra-nationalist army regime coming to power in 1962. The Indian population in Myanmar is now only a fraction of what it once was.

On the contrary, Myanmar is being drawn into the Chinese economic orbit. Mandalay is like a Chinese city now; of its population of about a million, at least a third are Chinese. China's forays into Myanmar have often been exploitative: the forests of its north andeast chopped down, the jade mines of the Kachin Hills denuded, many endangered species hunted and shipped.

Unrestrained China is ubi-quitous in infrastructure projects such as a deep sea port for oil tankers to take gas from the offshore Shwe field through 1,000-mile-long oil and gas pipelines. Like the huge hydroelectric projects on the Irrawaddy and Salween, this also has a strategic dimension, a part of resolving what President Hu Jintao in 2003 called 'The Malacca Dilemma', referring to China's dependence on the Straits of Malacca as its primary energy transit route. Despite this flurry of diverse activities, few jobs have been created for local people; a more unequal society has been established.

There is no historical precedent for the epic moves that are now unfolding. In the context of global economic power inexorably shifting to the east, and the changing geography of Asia, the triangular dynamic involving Beijing, New Delhi and Naypyidaw bristles with immense possibilities. China's string of pearls policy has, to many, meant a covert encirclement of India. Its tightening hold over Myanmar alarms India andother states in the region.

Even so, destined to be perhaps the two most important countries, home to more than one-third of the world's population, China and India are billed for stellar roles on the world stage of tomorrow - and have this great responsibility to be a part of, as much as a trigger for, a stable and peaceful world. In the 16 {+t} {+h} century, China and India together formed half the world's economy. Within a generation, this could well be the case again.

There is a history of Burma becoming a bridge between India and China. It appears that the time has come once again for the virtually defunct road to be reopened. The long sea route for vessels between several countries in the region via the Straits of Malacca could be replaced by a considerably shorter land route. The effect would be a mini version of what the Suez Canal did for the old Cape of Good Hope route.

With welcome winds of change now blowing through Myanmar, the time seems conducive to initiate these measures. To answer the obvious objections of geopolitical stra-tegists that road and rail links to China will raise the spectre of a militant China virtually invited to invade India, it can only be said that Chinese military superiority in any case makes that possible, with or without linkages.

What happened in India's last armed conflict with China happened without any such bridges. In any case, the Chinese rail link from Tibet to Kathmandu is a near reality; once that is through, they are at our doorstep.

Hope, not fear, is the creative impulse in life. Wisdom demands both sides realise there can be no war that either can really win - and there can be no peace that they can lose.

* The writer is a current affairs analyst and former CEO of a public sector company.

A Few Words For Anna Supporters

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 05:27:00 +0000

At a time when disagreeing with Anna Hazare is tantamount to treason, punishable with instant lynching by belligerent netizens, I choose to stick my neck out in the hope that somewhere out there, some people still have enough balance left to listen to a contrary view.

While I am unequivocally in favour of a scrupulously apolitical movement against corruption, Anna’s latest fast is terribly disillusioning.

It’s as if the citizens have rallied behind a deceptive ‘shortcut’ in the fight against corruption and ‘outsourced’ the same to the ‘do-gooder’ firm of Team Anna. Item numbers by Bollywood stars and spiritual gurus have added spice to the circus. Finally, 24-hour television has gleefully packaged this ‘reality show’, providing a perfect cathartic experience for a pathologically passive civil society, to believe they are ‘actively’ participating in a historic people’s struggle that has resulted in a great triumph within days.

Alas, the fight against corruption is nowhere that easy.

It takes no personal courage to join an anti-corruption rally, but how many of us are ready to stand up in our daily lives to resist everyday corruption that one comes up against? How many of us take the trouble to lend more than moral support to a friend, neighbour, acquaintance who seeks to remedy an injustice? How many of us aren’t corrupt ourselves either as ‘givers’ or ‘takers’ of bribe in some form or the other? How many of us are completely untouched by the culture of ‘doing and seeking favours’ for mutual benefit even in the private sector?

Make no mistake, the only way the culture of rampant corruption will ever be rooted out is by the refusal of every citizen to compromise and pay up, every single time. Not by lazy, big ticket, populist measures like fasts unto death and dharnas.

It’s no profound truth, just simple common sense. When you refuse to pay bribe, why is it that the person demanding it simply brushes you aside? Because he knows you are in a miniscule minority. Your fellow citizens are more than willing to oblige the bribe-taker, so he sees no need to humour you.

It is this kind of corruption that most of us face and need deliverance from. Sadly, that cannot be tackled by the Jan Lokpal Bill.

For, do you think that if a mammoth organisation like the Jan Lokpal Bill envisages is set up it is going to be staffed from top to bottom by angels? Pray where are we going to find these angels? Going by Indian society’s corruption quotient, we might end up with by far the most extortionist institution ever. For what better avenue of palm greasing and blackmail exists than dealing with complaints against anyone?

Thus Anna Hazare’s fast has the fatal potential of putting people’s faith in the wrong kind of impersonal solutions.
Moreover, can such so-called people’s movements be considered truly representative?

Figures floating around suggest that 4.4 million net users supported Anna, while the total number of netizens in India is nearly 40 million. What then about the ones who chose to be silent and outnumber the vocal ones several times over?

Apparently, a million people have protested in the metros in the last few days. Well, what about the 153,482,356 (153 million) Indians who voted for the current government? In any representative system, should 5.4 million people be allowed to dictate to a government elected by 153 million people?

Sorry, that’s simply not enough in a constitutional democracy. Not the least because the media has itself been guilty of over-hyped and rabidly one-sided coverage. If the fourth estate starts playing to the gallery and passes off propaganda as reportage, it loses its right to be considered a credible opinion-maker. For how do we know whether the credentials of Team Anna have not been ‘sexed up’?

Why does the media handle Team Anna with kid gloves? Why are no tough questions asked? Why is there no healthy skepticism about their credentials, their methods, their world view, their logic, their thoughts? Why this cloying worship of Anna Hazare? What if he turns out to be a flawed god?

By: Salil Desai

Who was “Great”? Alexander of Macedonia or Hazrat Umar Farooq of Islam?

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 07:24:00 +0000

"The name of Alexander is now only in books whereas the systems devised by Umar (R.A) are still prevalent in at least 245 countries of the world in some form. Even today, when a letter leaves a post office, when a policeman wears a uniform, when a soldier goes on a leave after six months of duty, when a government pays a stipend to a child, a destitute, a widow or a helpless person, the society automatically accepts Umar (R.A) as “The Great” and acknowledged him to be the biggest “Sikandar” ever."

Who was “Great”? The Alexander of Macedonia or Hazrat Umar Farooq (Radhiallaho-Anhu-R.A.) of Islam? Historians of the world are duty‐bound to answer this question.

We had read as a child that the Alexander of Macedonia became a king at the age of twenty and ventured out of Macedonia at 23. He first conquered the whole of Greece. Then he entered Turkey. After this he defeated Darius of Persia, entered Syria, moved to Jerusalem and then Babylon and Egypt and India. In India he fought King Porus and founded the city of Phalia in memory of his favorite horse. He started his return through Makran. He contacted typhoid on his way back and died in the year 323 B.C. at the age of 33 in the palace of Bakht Nasr (Nebuchadnezzar) at Babylon.

We have been told that he was a great general, conqueror and king in human history and was given the title of “Alexander, the Great”. We made him “Sikander-E-Azam”, the king of kings. But, today, on the eleventh year of the twenty‐first century, I question all the historians of the world if Alexander deserves this title when we have Umar Farooq (R.A). I am inviting all the historians of the world to compare the conquests and the achievements of Alexander and Umar Farooq (R.A.).

Now compare. Alexander was the son of a king ‐‐ the best instructors taught him how to ride a horse, he had tutors like Aristotle and was offered the throne at the age of twenty. On the other hand, Umar Farooq (R.A.) did not have any royal ancestor even in his seven previous generations, grew up minding herds of goats and sheep and had not got trained in the art of war from anyone.

Alexander had conquered 1.7 million square miles of land in ten years with an organized army Umar Farooq (R.A.), in ten years, conquered 2.2 million square miles of land including the Roman and Persian super powers with an un‐organized army. Even in these days of satellites and missiles and submarines, no ruler has a domain as vast as that of Umar (R.A.) which he had not only got conquered on mere horseback but had also managed and ruled it.

Alexander got many of his own generals killed during his conquests, many generals and soldiers deserted him, there were rebellions against him and his army even refused to proceed in India, but no companion of Umar (R.A) ever had the courage to disobey him. He was the commander who deposed the strongest general of Islam, Khalid bin Waleed (R.A.) right in the battleground and no one dared to disobey. He removed Saa’d bin Abi Waqas (R.A.) from the governorship of Kufa, fired Harith bin Kaab (R.A) as a governor, confiscated the wealth of Amro bin al Aas (R.A) and recalled the governor of Hamas and assigned him to grazing the camels. No one dared to disobey.

Alexander conquered 1.7 million square miles of land but could not give any system to the world, whereas Umar (R.A) gave such systems as are still prevalent the world over. He added the phrase “prayer is better than sleep” to the Fajr azaan, the taravih prayers were formally initiated during his rule, he instituted punishment for the consumption of liquor, started the Hijra system of accounting for dates, gave the concept of the jail, fixed salaries for the muezzins, arranged for light in the masjids, formed the department of police, laid the foundations for a complete system for the delivery of justice, got the irrigation system implemented and established military cantonments and the formal army.

Umar (R.A), for the first time ever in the world, granted stipends for the infants, the handicapped, widows and the helpless. He was the first ever to give the concept of the declaration of assets by the rulers, the government officials and the rich.

He established the institution of punishing the judges who didn’t do justice. He, for the first time, made the rulers accountable. He used to protect the trade caravans at night. He used to say that rulers, who deliver justice, sleep fearlessly at night. His saying is that “the leader of the nation is actually its servant”. His stamp read “Umar, death is enough of an admonition”. He never had two dishes on his table. He used to go to sleep with a brick as a pillow. While travelling, he would just stretch a sheet on a tree to make a shadow and go to sleep whenever sleepy.

He used to sleep on bare ground at night. His shirt had 14 patches, among them one of red leather. He used to wear thick coarse cloth and hated soft fine one. Whenever he appointed someone on a government position, he would get an estimate of his wealth and keep it with himself. If the wealth of that person increased during his tenure, he would be held accountable. Whenever he appointed anyone as a governor, he would advise him to never to ride a Turkish horse, wear fine cloth, consume fine flour, have a gatekeeper or close his doors to the distressed. He used to say that “pardoning a tyrant is injustice to the oppressed”.

His sentence “mothers give birth to free children, since when have you enslaved them” is still considered the charter of human rights. He said that he often wondered “how did Umar (R.A.) change?” He was the first Caliph of Islam who was given the title of “Ameer‐ul‐Momineen”.

Every religion of the world has a special characteristic, the special characteristic of Islam is justice, and Umar (R.A) is one who makes this true. His justice gave rise to the term “Adl‐e‐Farooqui” (the justice of Farooq). He was in debt when martyred and his loan was paid off by selling his only property according to his will. He was the only ruler ever to admit that even if a dog died of hunger on the banks on river Tigris during his rule, he would have to bear the punishment for this.

His Justice was such that when he died, a herdsman came running in a far off land in his domain shouting “men, Umar has died”. People asked him in astonishment who, thousands of miles from Medina, informed him of this in a jungle. The herdsman said “as long as Umar (R.A) was alive my sheep used to move around fearlessly in the jungle and no beast dared to even look at them. Today, for the first time, a wolf has taken away my goat. The fearlessness of the wolf indicates to me that Umar is no more”.

I invite all the historians of the world to think again, who was great, Alexander or Umar (R.A). I am sure enough, you will find Alexander to be gravel in front of a mountain, because the empire founded by Alexander vanished just five years after his death whereas the areas where Umar (R.A) planted the flag of Islam still echo with the sound of “Allah is the Greatest” and people still bow before the Allah of Umar (R.A).

The name of Alexander is now only in books whereas the systems devised by Umar (R.A) are still prevalent in at least 245 countries of the world in some form. Even today, when a letter leaves a post office, when a policeman wears a uniform, when a soldier goes on a leave after six months of duty, when a government pays a stipend to a child, a destitute, a widow or a helpless person, the society automatically accepts Umar (R.A) as “The Great” and acknowledged him to be the biggest “Sikandar” ever, except for those Muslims who, in their deep sense of inferiority, look around in fear even when reciting the words of faith.

The Muslims of Lahore had once dared the English that if they once decided to act, they will remind them of Changez Khan. Upon this Jawaharlal Nehru had smiled and said that “sadly these Muslims citing the example of Changez Khan had forgotten that there was an Hazrat Umar (R.A.) also in their history”. We are also forgetting today that among us was one Umar Farooq (R.A.) about whom the Prophet Mohammd - Peace be Upon Him (PBUH) had said that “if there could be a prophet after him, he would have been Hazrat Umar (Radiallaho Anhu-R.A.)”.

M F Hussain : 1915 - 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 06:02:00 +0000

'Mother' by M. F. Hussain

Osama Bin Laden - A Brief Profile

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 02 May 2011 05:14:00 +0000

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was one of the world's most wanted fugitive, blamed for many atrocities by the United States.

Alleged to be one of the main architects of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, he was in hiding ever since in the Pakistan-Afghan border areas.

The Taliban, who were ousted from power in Afghanistan after US launched military operation against them in 2001, were believed to be sheltering Laden.

Brief Profile: Osama bin Laden

The US had also accused him of masterminding a series of bombings against many US installations across the globe.

After 9/11, the US launched a global hunt for Osama bin Laden, the son of a billionaire Saudi businessman.

In 2007, the US Senate doubled the reward for the death or capture of the al-Qaeda chief to $50m.

Interestingly, Osama’s first foray into the internecine Afghanistan conflict was allegedly via US intelligence agency Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] when he was involved in the fight against the then Soviet Union's invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

Though the Russians were driven out by the Afghan mujahidin backed by the US and Pakistan, Osama's love affair with global fight against so called western influence further blossomed and culminated in the deadly 9/11 attack.

After the Taliban were overthrown, he joined cause with them in their guerilla war against US-led troops in Afghanistan.

He had also called for the overthrow of many autocratic Arab rulers, who he accused of siding with the US. In fact, he was banished from the Saudi terrritory for going openly against the monarch.

Osama was born in 1957 in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh. He was the 17th of over 50 children born to his Yemeni father, Muhammad and Syria-born mother Alia Ghanem.

There has been conflicting reports about his death in the past too, the first time being in 2001 when a section of Pakistan media reported that Osama died of lung complications.

The US had alleged that Pakistan knew about his whereabouts, a charge Pakistan always denied.

Barack Obama, the US president, said bin Laden was killed in Pakistani city of Abbottabad, about 150km north of Islamabad.

After Obama became president in 2008, he intensified the search against Laden and launched Predator drone attacks inside Pakistan, a constant point of acrimony between the two countries.

A Fast Unto Life

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 04:56:00 +0000

"Anna Hazare’s fast in Delhi is not meant to bring down a government, its solitary purpose is, or should be, to resurrect an India that had become so supine that it slept indolently while the wealth of this nation was being looted by a handful of politicians and their acolytes."

Mahatma Gandhi flagellated himself with 17 fasts. They were not all fasts unto the death; they could be time-specific. This did not reduce the risk to his life, for 21 days without any nourishment or medical intervention could drag a frail man with an average weight of some 110 pounds to death’s door.

Gandhi was a visionary, but not one ever trapped by illusion. He did not believe that a fast would persuade the British to pack up and leave the most lucrative part of their far-flung empire, the jewel of their crown, just because one obstinate, half-clad, toothless native had decided to stop drinking goat’s milk for a few days.

The British establishment always treated Gandhi with contempt (exceptions like Lord Irwin apart); and as defeat loomed in the 1940s this evolved into unmitigated loathing, not least because an extraordinary arsenal of non-violence, moral momentum, and an unprecedented national awakening had driven history’s mightiest empire into limp impotence.

When Gandhi started his liberation movement, the ranking Indian within the establishment, Lord Sinha, confidently averred that the British Raj would last for 400 years.

Thirty years later, the last Viceroy with any authority Lord Wavell (Mountbatten was a mere midwife, and left the motherland bleeding) had this to say in his diary on September 26, 1946: “The more I see of that old man (Gandhi) the more I regard him as an unscrupulous old hypocrite; he would shrink from no violence or bloodletting to achieve his ends... he is an exceeding cunning man to achieve his ends… he is an exceedingly shrewd, obstinate, domineering, double-tongued, single-minded politician”. You have to hate someone with unbelievable intensity to stitch together such a farrago of lies. Wavell wrote this just after his beloved British Raj had killed some four million Bengalis through another man-made famine.

Paradoxically, many of the British on the second rung admired the man who had made it his life’s work to destroy their empire. They understood that if they had been born Indian they would have been with Gandhi. On January 11, 1924, the superintendent of Pune jail, where Gandhi was interned, rushed the Mahatma to Sassoon hospital for an emergency appendicitis operation. The electricity went off when Colonel Maddock, the surgeon-general, was operating on the night of January 12, with the help of a British nurse; he completed his duty with torchlight. Gandhi thanked them for saving his life, and they were proud to do so.

The British constituted only half the challenge before Gandhi; the other, and bitter, half were fellow Indians. Gandhi knew that unless he could exorcise, or at least contain, the evil of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims, even success could become ash in his mouth. He had no instrument of coercion to use against fellow Indians, but he had a secret weapon: moral blackmail.

Fear of sin

He could hold his own life hostage through a fast while Indians sorted out between themselves whether the ransom, Gandhi’s life, was worth paying. Over and over again, India paid up, for no Indian, Hindu or Muslim, wanted the sin of a Mahatma’s death on his head.

It was in 1924, the same year as his appendicitis, that Gandhi went on a 21-day fast after the Kohat riots. Very deliberately, he chose to fast at the home of the great leader of the Khilafat movement, Maulana Mohammad Ali, in Delhi. By the time he sipped some orange juice on October 8, the fever of violence had passed, at least for the moment.

The instinctive reaction of governments to any such fast is cynicism. A government might be, in fact, as weak as a terminal patient in cancer ward, but will delude itself, till its dying breath, that to surrender before a man ready to sacrifice his life will make future governance impossible. The Congress, which had wept through Gandhi’s fasts, refused to compromise when a Gandhian went on a fast unto death to demand the creation of Andhra Pradesh in 1950.

The Gandhian died, and Andhra was born. The Akali Sants put fasts to effective public use during their movement for a Sikh-majority Punjab. The Marxists laughed about Mamata Banerjee’s weight when she went on a fast in Kolkata to protest against their land policy; on May 13, when the Assembly election results are out, Mamata will have the last laugh.

A fast succeeds not because it bends a government to its will, but because it is the yeast that foments the rise of a populace. Anna Hazare’s fast in Delhi is not meant to bring down a government, its solitary purpose is, or should be, to resurrect an India that had become so supine that it slept indolently while the wealth of this nation was being looted by a handful of politicians and their acolytes.

Anna Hazare is not waiting to see how many corrupt, hypocritical ministers come to his side; he wants to know how many Anna Hazares have emulated him on a street corner in front of their homes. He has asked just one question: do you, fellow Indians, have a conscience? If the answer is yes, then rise and save your nation from the death-grip of corruption. This is a fast for India’s life.

The Fatal Flaws in The Government's Lokpal Bill

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 05:26:00 +0000

India Against Corruption, a group formed by Anna Hazare and other social activists and former judges, has given 17 reasons why the Jan Lokpal Bill drafted by former Supreme Court judge Santosh Hegde, now the Karnataka Lokayukta, is far better than the Bill prepared by the union government.

The Jan Lokpal Bill, hailed as a civil society initiative, provides for a jail sentence to the corrupt within two years of filing a complaint and seizure of wealth acquired through illegal means. The Bill proposes that the Lokpal under it would have jurisdiction not only over politicians but also on Supreme Court and High Court judges and bureaucrats. The government Bill limits itself to the Prime Minister, ministers and Members of Parliament and proposes a probe by different agencies.

As Hazare told reporters in New Delhi, the Lokpal Bill has been introduced in Parliament eight times in the past four decades, the first time in 1969. But, it has never been passed apparently because politicians do not want to be held accountable.

The India Against Corruption group said it regrets that the latest draft of the Lokpal Bill prepared by the current UPA government demolishes whatever little exists in the name of the anti-corruption mechanism in the country and seeks to insulate politicians from action. This, its members say, is the reason why it has come out with another version of the Bill. The group argues that the Lokayukta Acts enacted by 18 states have proved to be quite ineffective.

On its website <http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org/>, the group presents a critique of the government Bill and gives 17 reasons why it is an eyewash. Here are some of the points raised by Hazare’s group:

1. The government Bill provides for nothing to recover ill-gotten wealth. A corrupt politician or bureaucrat can come out of jail and enjoy the money. The Jan Lokpal Bill seeks to recover from the accused the loss caused to the government due to corruption. It also increases punishment for the corrupt from a minimum of six months and a maximum of seven years to a minimum of five years and a maximum of life imprisonment.

2. The Jan Lokpal Bill seeks to empower the Lokpal to initiate probe suo motu and directly entertain public complaints. The government Bill requires complaints to be routed through the Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairperson.

3. The government Bill makes the Lokpal only an advisory body, vesting powers in the Prime Minister for action on its reports against cabinet ministers and in Parliament for action against the Prime Minister and MPs. The Jan Lokpal Bill gives the Lokpal powers to initiate prosecution after completing investigations. It also gives the Lokpal police powers to register FIRs, proceed with criminal investigations and launch prosecution.

4. It would be impossible for the Prime Minister to act against a cabinet minister on the basis of the Lokpal's report due to the compulsion of coalition politics. It gives the example of former telecom minister A Raja.

5. The Jan Lokpal Bill proposes merger of the Central Vigilance Commission with a part of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to create a single point of investigation in cases of corruption. The government Bill proposes to take away powers from the CBI to investigate politicians, thereby insulating them from investigations.

6. The government Bill gives power to the Lokpal to send to jail through summary trial anybody filing false and frivolous complaints, but it does not give the Lokpal power to send corrupt politicians to jail.

7. The government Bill proposes that all three Lokpal members should be retired judges, which could make retiring judges vulnerable to government influence just before retirement.

8. The government Bill proposes to have the Vice-President, the Prime Minister, leaders of both houses of Parliament, leaders of the Opposition in both houses, law minister and home minister in the selection panel for the Lokpal member. Barring the first one, the rest are politicians whose offices the Lokpal can investigate for corruption. Also, the committee will have a majority members from the ruling party or coalition.

9. Civil society has suggested that the committee consist of members with judicial background, the Chief Election Commissioner, the Comptroller and Auditor General and international awardees, like Nobel and Magsaysay awardees, of Indian origin.

10. It would become impossible for the Lokpal to investigate a case like the Bofors scam if the government Bill is enacted, as it proposes that the Lokpal will have no powers to probe a case against the Prime Minister, if the case deals with foreign affairs, security and defence.

11. The government Bill prescribes a time limit of six months to a year for the Lokpal to complete the inquiry. There is no time limit suggested for the completion of trial. The Jan Lokpal Bill, however, proposes that the investigations be completed within a year and the trial be over within the next year.

12. The government Bill gives no powers to the Lokpal to provide protection to those exposing political corruption, while the Jan Lokpal Bill empowers the Lokpal to provide protection to whistleblowers.

By: Iftikhar Gilani

Cash-For-Votes Cables Are Authentic: Assange To NDTV

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 05:06:00 +0000

In an exclusive interview to NDTV's Prannoy Roy, Julian Assange says that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is wrong to have questioned the authenticity of the WikiLeaks cable that stormed the Indian Parliament last week. However, he also stressed the charges are worth investigating.

A cable in 2008 sent from a US diplomat in Delhi says that the Congress bought MPs ahead of its crucial vote of confidence. The Left had pulled out of the government over the nuclear deal with the US.

Speaking to NDTV, Assange says the PM's statements "seem like a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material and it is not verified."

The WikiLeaks founder also says, "the cables are authentic but the contents of the cables may or may not be correct. They need to be investigated, interrogated."

Here is an excerpt from that interview.

NDTV: There is of course an alternate point of view that what you revealed in these cables is a set of opinions and assessments made by some American diplomats in the US embassy. And you were just saying that 'my task ends there in revealing these secret cables' but there are other points of view that says that it leaves a lot of collateral damage where opinions and assessments by these officials are taken as facts to embarrass and weaken their states. And people ask you is that a fair thing to do, just leave this out and wash your hands off it?

Assange: Absolutely not....it is not correct to say that all these cables are mere opinions by US diplomats...that is not true. These are official correspondence sent by Ambassadors, sent in their official capacity back to Washington. Their motivations are to improve their career prospects generally. So they want Washington to understand that they are engaged in the country. They are getting good sources of information and they are reporting back. This seems to be the predominant thing. But they report what they say are facts and they also present opinions...it is important to keep these two different. In the cases of these Indian cables which are causing such a furor about bribery...such an interesting case...it is very hard to understand why the US Embassy official would lie about that to Washington. What is more interesting is under what basis was he told that information? That the US Embassy official was shown that cash? Could it have been that it is a US issue? Could it have been to demonstrate how compliant certain parts of Indian Parliament work with US interest? Or it could have been to set up or frame another group? It is hard to see what benefit there would be in framing another group to Washington through that method. It is not clear what benefit it would be. ...Of course what the officials say and how they gain their knowledge too must be investigated and interrogated. But the comment I have been hearing from Prime Minister Singh....these, to me, seem like a deliberate attempt to mislead the public by suggesting that governments around the world do not accept the material and it is not verified ...absolutely false! Hillary Clinton last year December spoke to the Indian government last year, perhaps to Prime Minister Singh or that level to forewarn that this material would be coming out. There is no doubt that these are bonafide reports sent by the American Ambassador back to Washington and these should be seen in that context. That does not mean every fact in them is correct, you have to look at their sources and how they gave this information.