The Ultimate Guide

Jharkhand - Story Of A Big Loot

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:43:00 +0000

Koda & Co made Rs 3.6 crore a day!

An unlikely threesome has spawned one of India's biggest political scams - a daily wage labourer turned-window grille-fixer-turned-Chief Minister and his two buddies, one who started off selling milk door-to-door and the other selling chewing tobacco. Following is a story of how a Rs 4,000-crore empire was built on loot from Jharkhand's ore-rich mines in just three years....

If you divide the money allegedly made by Jharkhand leader Madhu Koda (39) and his two buddies, Binod Sinha (39) and Sanjay Choudhary (41) by the number of days Koda was in office as chief minister and as minister of mines in the BJP-led Arjun Munda government, it comes to a jaw-dropping Rs 3.6 crore a day. And this isn't a figure being trotted out by Koda's rivals. This is the official estimate of probe agencies on the basis of the riches they have been able to uncover so far to draw the contours of a massive political scam.

In a land where public money is looted routinely by politicians and swindles are a dime a dozen, the Madhu Koda drama unfolding in one of India's most backward, even if mineral-rich, states should not have generated more than cursory interest. However, the sheer scale of it all has left even the most cynical gaping. Five money-counting machines found in Koda's house worked at a breathless pace to sift through bundles of currency notes with which the gang of three bought hotels in Thailand, mines in Liberia, companies in Dubai, and much else in Indonesia, Laos and Malaysia.

In all, the scam is said to be worth Rs 4,000 crore. In a stunning disclosure, a senior income-tax official told Crest that over Rs 1,450 crore was sent out to Dubai through hawala (the earlier figure was placed at Rs 500-600 crore). When asked about this, CBI director (investigations) Ujjwal Chaudhary didn't deny the amount: "It does seem to be around that figure. But a number of things have to be verified. We still have to question a number of people. Some are cooperating but others are not."

Within days of taking office as CM in September 2006, Koda renegotiated and signed mining MoUs worth Rs 1,98, 362 crore (or nearly two lakh crore rupees!) with as many as 44 firms. Soon, his associates were buying up real estate and property in Jharkhand, Delhi and abroad, transferring hundreds of crores overseas by hawala, spawning as many as 25 companies in less than two years to give a new meaning to "India Shining!" and create an empire that could match some of India's biggest business houses.

There are some who still regard Koda & Co as "poor simple boys" who went astray after learning the ropes from political wheeler-dealers of parties like the BJP, the RJD and the JMM with whom Koda had cohabited at some time or the other. The three were - so to say - boys in a candy shop, stuffing their mouths in fear of the goodies suddenly disappearing. "Koda is basically a simple rustic gone awry," says Saryu Rai, the BJP's "Chanakya" in Jharkhand, at whose feet Koda is said to have learnt the art and craft of politics.

This somewhat sympathetic view doesn't quite do justice to Koda's cunning, his extreme care while signing on files, his "inclusive" political style (like giving video cameras to all ruling party MLAs and cash "rewards" of Rs 20,000-40 ,000 to them every month), his exclusive lifestyle (wearing designer jeans, shopping in Gurgaon malls, holidaying in Thailand), or the sheer sophistication of his entire operation that involved not just his cronies, Sinha and Chaudhary , but hawala operators in Mumbai, fixers in Thailand, con men in Liberia and financiers in Dubai, and possibly political gurus from other parties.

The Koda saga has its origins in a very unlikely setting - a small village, Patahatu, tucked away in the extreme southern corner of Jharkhand where mineral riches abound, as do pervasive ignorance and extreme poverty. Koda's father, Rasik, was a labourer in Gua, attached to his one-acre land and the local brew haria. He wanted son Madhu to become a daroga (police sub-inspector), but the son had other ideas. He was interested in politics, studied in Zila School, Chaibasa, did his graduation by correspondence, joined the RSS and then the All Jharkhand Students Union, worked his way up under the kind gaze of BJP stalwart Babulal Marandi, won two elections (one even after the BJP denied him a ticket) to emerge as destiny's own political child of Jharkhand.

With the help of three other independents - Kamlesh Singh, Enos Ekka and Harinarayan Rai - he made and broke governments. In 2000, he won the Jaganathpur assembly seat and joined the Marandi government as panchayati raj minister. In 2005, he won the same seat as an independent and when the BJP fell short of a majority, he supported the Arjun Munda government for a price - the mines portfolio. There he found his real calling. Coming from the ore-rich region, Koda knew the business inside out. It's said he sometimes challenged the district mines officers on the size of reserves in each mine.

In September 2006, Koda and the three independents withdrew support from Arjun Munda to topple his government . And then before you could spell "political uncertainty", Madhu Koda had emerged as a consensus candidate to head the next government with the help of the Congress, the JMM, the RJD, the Forward Bloc and another tiny group. All this happened within days, showing that even while he was Munda's mines minister, Koda was playing footsie with all others - the trademark of his "inclusive" political style that kept tongues sealed while he allegedly made money hand over fist.

Koda's friendship with Binod Sinha and Sanjay Chaudhary also blossomed around this time. Sinha was a dudhwalla , selling milk door to door in Chaibasa. And Chaudhary sold chewing tobacco (khaini). Both, of course, grew out of their humble origins to write remarkable rags-to-riches stories by diversifying into tractors (Sinha is involved in a Rs 3 crore tractors scam too), sewing machines, cement, and goods to below-poverty-line families. In Koda's company, they swelled to become jet-setting magnates , fixing mining deals, buying and selling property, and running hotels.

In fact, so thick were the three that Ranchi buzzed with chatter about their friendship. It was said that after the last official left chief minister Koda's residence at night, Sinha and Chaudhary would drop by and stay well after midnight. The "unholy nexus" grew was raised in the assembly in 2007. Koda didn't bat an eyelid, admitting, "Yes, they are my friends." It's a friendship he doesn't disown even now. From Ranchi's Apollo hospital, where Koda has been admitted, he told Crest: "I was friends with Sinha and Chaudhary and have been to foreign countries with them, but I don't know about their investments or money laundering." The duo are now absconding.

The CBI, of course, doesn't believe him. Nor do people like Vinod Singh, the CPI(ML) MLA, who have seen Koda more closely. "His rise both in politics and in terms of financial gains has been phenomenal," he said. "And he didn't have to struggle much to amass this huge wealth after he was shown the way by his political gurus in the BJP, the JMM and the RJD."

Still, Koda's money-grubbing ways didn't raise any special outrage in Jharkhand, partly because of the generosity with which he shared the spoils, and partly because of his understated personality, which only once in a while erupted in outrageous flamboyance. Like when he went down on his knees to get back his childhood flame and wife, Gita, in 2006 after she had eloped with an engineer four months after their marriage in January 2004. Gita melted, Ranchi cheered and somewhere Koda got humanized as a loving, even if somewhat shady, young man.

Things might have carried on swimmingly well for Koda & Co but for a PIL that triggered the larger investigation now on.

Koda's father, Rasik, however, still maintains that his boy is a "simple man" like him and he will eventually emerge clean. Journalists who covered Madhu's wedding recall Rasik selling haria to the guests. When asked why he was charging money from wedding guests, he said, "Well, it's mine. This haria has made Madhu a minister. It has wonderful qualities." Recent pictures show Rasik in a short dhoti carrying twigs on his head, not quite the person who would realize that his brew alone wouldn't give son Madhu the requisite high.

It might, though, if it came wrapped in wads of notes.

Source: TOI

Blast in Goa - Why Not A Spade A Spade?

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:09:00 +0000

By: Ram Puniyani

When any blast takes place, and what are popularly called ‘Jihadi Terrorists’ are suspected, the newspapers generally devote front page banner headlines, with all details and suspicions spelt out day after day. In cases related to Nanded types or the ones related to Hindu Jagran Samiti type, the coverage is relegated to small columns in the back pages. The visual media which generally carries non-stop running commentary around such an event is now muted when it comes to Hindutva inspired terror.

Goa, the paradise for tourists, witnessed a bomb kept in a scooter going off on the eve of Diwali (17th Oct 2009) in Margao. It killed Malgonda Patil and seriously injured Yogesh Naik. Another bomb was detected in Sancoale in a truck carrying 40 youth for Narkasur competition. Interestingly Narkasur day, one of the five festivals of Divali, is celebrated in Goa on a big scale. Sanatana Sanstha, to which both the activists belong, is opposed to Narkasur festival on the ground that it is celebration of evil. The second aim of this blast was to create communal tension in Margao, which has a history of communal violence. Fortunately, the bomb went off before being planted in the crowded place and so the casualty was less.

This is the same Sanatan Sanstha, which came to light in the context of a blast which occurred in Gadkari Ragayatan in Thane on 4th June 2008, this had injured seven people. In one of the few cases of success in investigating such cases in Maharashtra or anywhere for that matter, the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) of Police, succeeded in nabbing the culprits, against whom cases are going on still. It was a clear case of involvement of Hindu Right wing organizations involved in a case of terrorism. The culprits belonged to Hindu Janjagaran Samiti (HJS), an outfit of Sanatana Sanstha, whose one of the ashrams is based in Panvel near Mumbai. These culprits were also involved in other blasts, in Vashi, Panvel and Ratnagiri.

In Thane the blasts were done to protest against the play Amhi Pachpute, a satirical play on Mahabharata. The allegation was that the play insults Hindu Gods. The earlier blast in Panvel was in a theater where the film Jodha Akbar was being screened. In this film the Hindu princess is married to Akbar, a Muslim king, and that is regarded by these outfits as insult to Hindu religion.

Sanatan Sanstha founded by Dr. Jayant Balaji Athwale is inspired by the political ideology of Savarkar of Hindu Mahasabha and Hedgewar of RSS. It has branches spread all over, including one in Panvel near Mumbai, while its head office is in Ramnathi in Goa. In earlier Thane and nearby blasts also all the accused belonged to this organization. Sanatan Sanstha says it has nothing to do with the blasts, despite the fact that those involved were members of the organization. Police is investigating the links of these accused with the recent Miraj Sangli riots in Maharashtra on the eve of elections (2009).

The same organization also brings out a paper called Sanatan Prabhat, carrying the ideas of Hindu Rashtra, and propagating against minorities. Since the last overt action from this organization, no serious action has been taken against this organization, despite Maharashtra ATS asking for a ban on this organization. Now it surfaces that Goa transport miniter Dhavalikar’s wife Jyoti is also associated with this organization. It is again same organization which campaigned forcefully against the screening of M.F. Hussein’s film 'Through the eyes of a painter', due to which the screening of the film in the Goa Film Festival held in November 2008 was shelved.

One recalls that starting from April 2006, many acts of blasts done by the RSS associates, Bajrang Dal, Sadhvi Pragya group etc. came to light. The pattern of these was to target the mosque at time when the crowd of Muslims is maximum there, especially on the Jumma, Friday afternoon namaz (prayer). In case of Sanatan Sanstha associates the blasts so far seems to be taking place to protest against something which they don’t approve of, staging of play Amhi Pachpute, screening of Film Jodha Akbar to here in Goa the celebration of Narkasur festival. The Hindutva related terror seems to be having two types of operations, from which they can be demarcated. And so within the Hindutva inspired terror groups these two clear cut demarcations need to be understood.

What is strikingly painful is the police and media response to such events. One knows that in Bajrang Dal- Sadhvi Pragya variety of terrorism starting from Nanded to Malegaon, the investigation has been lukewarm and slow. Initially the investigators refused to believe that Hindu Right wing groups can be part of terror acts. It is only after Hemant Karkare’e immaculate investigation unearthing the role of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Dayananad Pande and company that it was taken with some seriousness. One recalls Karkare having stated that he has collected all the evidence against Sadhvi group. Despite that why the investigation is so slow?

One also recalls that while doing this investigation, Karkare was under immense pressure, he was called Deshdrohi (anti National) etc. His pain and anguish went to the extent that he shared this with a senior police officer, Julio Rebeiro, who in turn correctly advised him to continue doing his work with same degree of professionalism. It is same Karkare who got killed in the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai prompting the then Minorities Affairs minister A.R. Antuley to state that there may be something more than meets the eye in the murder of Karkare. Will the truth ever come out?

When any blast takes place, and what are popularly called ‘Jihadi terrorists’ are suspected, the newspapers generally devote front page banner headlines, with all details and suspicions spelt out day after day. In cases related to Nanded types or the ones related to Hindu Jagran Samiti type, the coverage is relegated to small columns in the back pages. The visual media which generally carries non-stop running commentary around such an event is now muted when it comes to Hindutva inspired terror.

Abhay Vartak, the spokesperson of Hindu Sanatan Sansthan said that his organization has nothing to do with these blasts. He went on to say that talk of his organization being part of it and so banning it, is meant to defame his organization. But still the problem remains, those who have done it are part of his organization. Why they are regularly involved in it, in personal capacity or as organization is a question which needs to be answered? What they preach, teach, indoctrinate due to which the terrorists are mushrooming in his Ashram needs to be investigated.

A terrorist is a terrorist. To mete out different treatments to them according to their religion is a product of biased minds and distorted social common sense, which needs to be overcome to strive for justice.

Inside Balochistan’s Ravaged Heartland

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:13:00 +0000

If you want to know what is happening in Pakistan’s troubled province of Balochistan, just go to Sariab Road, in its capital, Quetta. Most people who live on its 6-km stretch are Baloch. For the Hazaras, Punjabis and Pashtuns — the other groups in this multi-ethnic city — Sariab Road is ilaqaghair (a no-go area).

After crossing the railway tracks that separate Sariab Road and Quetta Cantonment — or “Pakistan”, as the Baloch nationalists call it — the first thing you notice is an army tank to welcome you, next to a chauki or fortified post. Nationalist slogans and the emblems of banned militant organisations such as the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) and the Baloch Republican Army (BRA) adorn the walls: “We want freedom from Pakistan!” “No to Gwadar port!” “Red salute to the martyrs of Balochistan!”

Vehicles of the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) are parked on both sides of the road. Opposite Sariab Road police station stands the new red brick building of Asaap newspaper. “Asaap” is a combination of the Balochi words for “fire” and “water.” “Our commitment to the land is so strong, we’ll cross both fire and water,” is emblazoned next to the entrance. Below, in bold letters: “If you want to know, understand, think or speak Balochistan, read Asaap.”

The building is quiet and empty. There is no furniture or human presence on the ground floor. On the first floor, Asaap’s editor, Abid Mir, is sitting in a small corner room. He is reluctant to talk. “We closed down the newspaper because of tremendous tremendous pressure and intimidation from the Pakistan government and security agencies.” The last edition of the newspaper came out on August 18. But Abid Mir still comes to the office everyday. One of the most influential Urdu newspapers in the province, Asaap has been denied government advertisements for the last four years. As there is little commerce or industry in Balochistan, few advertisements come from the private sector. Once, Asaap would publish Baloch writers and run stories about missing people. Now, Abid Mir the proud Baloch earns a living by teaching Pakistan’s national language, Urdu, at the nearby Balochistan University.

The university’s main gate is on Sariab Road, too. However, immediately behind it lies another gate – a sandbagged army post. However, it is the grey vardee (uniform) of the FC that can be seen all over the place. A whopping 500 FC troops are posted here to maintain law and order in Balochistan University.

The university, which was closed for two months because of the “law and order situation,” reopened recently after Eid. Amjad, a 24 year-old former president of the Baloch Student Organisation (BSO) is one of the few students who has returned. “You feel you’ve entered a garrison, not a university,” he remarks, adding, “The FC took away 26 Baloch students last week. My friend Mujeeb was among those kidnapped. Pakistan’s security agencies have left no political option for us. They have turned all liberal forces into radicals by torturing them.”

According to him, the BSO serves as a nursery for nationalists who are in hiding or fighting in the mountains. The student leader’s father was an active member of the established Balochistan National Party (BNP), which has traditionally stood by Pakistan, demanding more rights for the Balochis. But he and his brothers advocate a “free” Balochistan. “We have convinced our father after many long fights and arguments; today, he is a radical like me.”

Amjad remembers when he was a patriotic Pakistani. As a teenager, he proudly put up a poster of Kargil war hero Captain Karnal Sher Khan. “Pakistan needs to reflect upon what made me hate Pakistan,” he says. “They make us feel like slaves. If I wear western clothes, I can move freely in Quetta city. However, if I wear my baggy Baloch salwar, I am sure to be strip-searched.”

Friendly and polite, law student Shahzeb Baloch says he was picked up by the intelligence agencies in March. “They tortured me everyday,” says Shahzeb. “During interrogation, my hands were tied and I was blindfolded. They kept accusing me of being a RAW agent and insisted that I had provided weapons to militants. Their aim is to terrorise Balochis, but after this episode I have no fear left in me. Earlier, I had 80 percent hatred for them; after my return, it’s 100 percent.” The Baloch students say that the Pakistani authorities have no idea how to tackle the militancy and that is why they started picking up politically aware students who demanded more rights.

“The BSO is a progressive student organization,” says Shahzeb. “We have no connection with militant organisations like the BLA or the BRA, but we do support them politically. That is why many of our leaders are detained by security agencies. They are trying to weaken the movement and kill the idea of azadi (freedom).”

The BSO has an active women wing, with 700 registered female members. For the offence of treason, 25-year-old Karima Baloch was fined Rs 150,000 and sentenced to three years in jail by an antiterrorist court; her appeal is pending. “Baloch women have come out to fill the gap created when our men were taken away or killed,” says Karima, who has been campaigning for missing Balochis. Her own family members have disappeared.

Advocate Kachkol Ali’s house is also on Sariab Road. Ali is well known in Quetta. He was the opposition leader in the last Provincial Assembly and represented another moderate party, the National Party (NP). In April 2009, three of his clients — well-known Baloch separatist leaders — were abducted from his office in the town of Turbat. Five days later, their mutilated corpses were found. Ali accuses Military Intelligence (MI) and the ISI of the abduction. Today, he is bitter. “We hate Pakistan so much that it is better we separate.’’

However, A host of moderate Baloch political parties advocate more autonomy and more rights for Balochis over the huge natural resources in their province. All of them boycotted the 2008 elections. Possibly the most influential of them is the BNP’s Mengal group, which has boycotted parliamentary politics for the last decade.

The BNP demands only that which Pakistan demands for Kashmir: “We want the UN to conduct a referendum here,” says party general secretary Habib Jalib. “The people will decide whether we want to stay with Pakistan or not. We don’t demand anything from Pakistan. They have made us into a colony. But unfortunately, some Balochis are working with the colonial rulers.”

After the 2008 elections, the provincial government has been headed by the Pakistan People’s Party, with a Baloch, Aslam Raisani, as chief minister. “Separatist leaders keep demanding independence for Balochistan, just like it was demanded for Bangladesh, but we won’t let it happen,” says Suraya Ameeruddin, PPP senator from Balochistan. “Our president Asif Ali Zardari asked for forgiveness from the Balochis for the murder of Akbar Bugti and other slain leaders. It is a fact that the Balochis have been deprived of their rights. But how can we give away such a big province with so many national resources?” The PPP government has promised to bring development to the impoverished province. Says Ameeruddin, “Once these frustrated young Baloch get jobs and facilities, they’ll stop joining the ranks of the BLA or the BRA. They will stand with us.”

The Baloch Republican Party (BRP) is considered to be the political face of the underground, separatist BRA. Hundreds of BRP activists have disappeared. Party chief Brahamdagh Bugti, a grandson of Akbar Bugti, is in hiding. For many youngsters, the handsome 28-year-old Brahamdagh is a Che Guevara-like figure. Officials say he is in Afghanistan and have accused India of supporting him through its consulates there. But party leader Dr Abdul Hakeem Lehri rubbishes all claims that the movement is run by a “foreign hand”: “If Pakistan had any real evidence that India supports us, would they have spared us? Every Baloch household has a reason to fight with them. The story of a foreign hand is just to satisfy the Pakistani elite.”

Like many Baloch separatist leaders, Lehri is disillusioned and bitter. “Our fight is with the establishment in Islamabad. They think they have seven lakh soldiers. But Russia had 20,000 warheads. Do they think this rotten nuclear bomb is going to work for them? Someone is going to steal it soon anyway!”

To add to this, the Afghan Taliban’s central command is reported to be in Quetta. While the Pentagon is sure enough of their presence there to mull drone attacks on them, Pakistan has officially denied any Taliban presence in the province. However, a top security official in Quetta admits that the Afghan Taliban leaders are relaxing there. “They are in the opposition these days in their country, so they are here. If Karzai could live in Quetta for ten years, what’s wrong with it? They are not a threat to us until and unless we disturb them. American drone attacks will only provoke them,” he warns.

Malik Siraj Akbar is the bureau chief of the English national newspaper Daily Times and is intimately familiar with Balochistan and its people. He says that Islamabad has always focused on curbing Baloch nationalism and the separatist movement in the province and has ignored the influx of Taliban. “For Islamabad, a Baloch is a trouble maker and a Talib is a friend. They have always been protecting the Taliban and Afghan refugees in order to create a demographic imbalance.”

However, let alone the Baloch, local Hazaras and even Pashtuns are perturbed by the strong presence of the Taliban. Hazaras are mainly Shiites and came to Quetta because they were persecuted in Afghanistan. Now, regular targeted killings of Hazaras in the city have intimidated them.

One Hazara who is working with an NGO in the city says, “We can easily be identified as Hazaras by our appearance. Sunni extremists kill us because we are Shias. Every morning, I set out for work, not knowing if I will return home in the evening.”

Slain Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti’s son Talal Bugti, who heads his father’s Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), says, “The Taliban are outlaws and dacoits. I am in favour of drone attacks on them but they have been given protection by the army’s Corps Commander, Quetta.” Contrary to his nephew, the guerrilla fighter Brahamdagh, Talal Bugti and his party are agitating for more autonomy within Pakistan and a higher rent for the Bugti land under which the massive Sui gas fields lie. He however, believes that the Baloch issue will not be solved under the current dispensation. “Their bosses and godfathers in the intelligence agencies have not given them the authority. It is beyond their power to talk about our interests,” says Talal.

Mukhtar Chalgiri is regional director of the Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO), a leading Pakistani NGO. “No one is as frightened by these target killings as we are, because they are targeting the educated, enlightened and progressive voices of Quetta. Some people don’t want progressive thought in Balochistan. So far, 35 intellectuals have been killed in Quetta city.”

Chalgiri says security forces and intelligence agencies have strong economic and political interests in Balochistan. And they still believe they can manage the situation. “The ISI and MI are overconfident. They say that they broke the USSR and played well in Afghanistan,” he says.

Even after a year and a half of democracy in Pakistan, Balochistan is still waiting for President Zardari’s promises to be fulfilled. The Balochs still feel that they are governed by the army and treated as second-class citizens. Their hatred for the centre and the big brother Punjab is growing. The divide between the various “nationalist” parties is being bridged by their radicalization. The calls for an independent Balochistan are getting louder, not only from feudal sardars but from the educated middle and lower middle class. But in Islamabad nobody seems to hear them as Pakistan is pre-occupied with its war in Waziristan.

By: Qurratulain Zaman

Ex-Maharashtra IG Smashes India's “Islamic Terrorism” Myth In A New Book: Who Killed Karkare?

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:20:00 +0000

The Real Face of Terrorism in India

A new book curiously titled Who Killed Karkare? says a nationwide network of Hindutva terror that has its tentacles spread up to Nepal and Israel is out to destroy the India most Indians have known for ages and to remould it into some kind of Afghanistan under the Taliban.

The writer, a former IG Police of Maharashtra, SM Mushrif, has reconstructed a fearsome picture out of former Maharashtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare’s chargesheet against alleged Hindutva terrorists like Lt. Col. Purohit, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur and others.

The chargesheet pointed towards a mind-boggling nationwide conspiracy with international support to destabilise the constitutional order and the secular democratic Indian state that upholds it, to be replaced by a Hindutva state run according to a new Constitution. For that the conspirators were prepared for a massive bloodbath, using bomb attacks on religious places to trigger an anti-Muslim holocaust.

Mushrif, who has over three decades of diligent policing behind him and whose feats include exposing the Telgi scam, has made an elaborate case out of nearly a dozen blasts over a large area of the country conducted by Hindutva terror groups of different stripes. His case: a section of India’s intelligence services, a miniscule group in the armed forces and a section of different state police forces have been compromised and infiltrated by these elements, a development that bodes ill for the future of the country.

In Hemant Karkare’s net (of investigations, of course) many big and small fishes of VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and Sanatan Sanstha (which has been found to be involved in Diwali-eve blasts in Goa last week) had been trapped. Serving and retired army officers, academics, serving and retired officials of India’s premier intelligence service were ensnared in Karkare’s fishing net. The menacing power of the latter groups, inspired by sustained anti-Muslim hate campaigns of the last six decades, gave the plot a sinister and highly destructive character.

Among the plans unearthed by Karkare was a blueprint for the assassination of 70 prominent Indians who could by a hindrance to the project of Hindutva. Interestingly, most of the persons marked for elimination would, naturally, be Hindus because it is they who primarily run the dispensation. The conspirators were also unhappy with organisations whose Hindutva they suspected to be less virulent than desired.

Mushrif, who very well knows the power of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to make or mar lives and careers, says he is prepared to face the consequences of hostility of this power hub. He musters “evidence” to show that the IB has regularly been interfering with regular police investigations to let Hindutva terrorists slip out of the net and replace them with random Muslim youth. To fudge the issues further obliging police officers in the states would not mind exterminating a few Muslim youth to be branded posthumously as “terrorists”.

There are quite a few number of such cases where such extra-judicial killing of Muslim youth has turned out to be false police encounters. All this is done to cover tracks of Hindutva terror. Mushrif says a “Brahminist” network that has its origins in Maharashtra, and is closely knit across political parties, government services, including IB, and other vital sectors of life is behind the terror that seeks to destroy the secular, democratic state. He hastens to clarify that very few Brahminists are Brahmins. Many are from other high Hindu castes, some from middle and lower castes.

Most Brahmins are fair-minded and would not like to associate themselves with hate ideologies. Hemant Karkare, too, was a Brahmin, Mushrif says. So is Mushrif’s son-in-law.

It is pertinent to note that “Brahminism” and “Brahminical order” first appeared in Dalit protest vocabulary in the Dalit uprising movement in Maharashtra towards the turn of the 20th century. Mushrif, who appropriates part of this vocabulary for the present discourse, says that Maharashtra still remains the centre of this ideology that, among other things, has the dubious distinction of killing the Father of the Nation.

The power establishment that really runs the affairs of this country (Mushrif says it is not Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh or Rahul Gandhi) does not want to expose the Hindutva terrorists. One example is the blasts in Samjhauta Express, which the IB said was carried out by Pakistan’s ISI. Mushrif quotes a report in The Times of India that said, “the Centre had blamed the ISI on the basis of the IB’s findings.” However, during a narco-analysis test under Karkare, Lt. Col. Purohit had admitted having supplied the RDX used in the blast. The IB, which draws its power from its proximity to the Prime Minister (its director briefs the PM every morning for half an hour), did not want Karkare’s investigation that blew the cover off the IB’s shenanigans, to continue.

Once Karkare was removed from the scene, the IB moved in to fill his position with KP Raghuvanshi, a pliant police officer with extremely low credibility among Muslims for his record of letting off known Hindutva terrorists and implicating innocent Muslim youth even in bomb attack cases on mosques.

There are quite a few interesting vignettes here, like Raghuvanshi and Col. Purohit’s association with Abhinav Bharat in Maharashtra, whose hand was evident in a series of blasts across the country. It has old connections with men like Veer Damodar Savarkar (whose relative Himani Savarkar leads the Abhinav Bharat movement), Dr Munje, who led the Hindu Mahasabha, and other Hindutva luminaries. It is at the Bhonsala Military Academy run by these groups that Purohit trained police officers, including Raghuvanshi. Mushrif asks a pertinent question: Will Raghuvanshi pursue the investigation against Purohit, his guru? A plausible answer is, perhaps no. Already charges have been dropped by a special court under MCOCA against 11 accused, including Purohit, on the grounds of insufficient evidence produced in the court by the prosecution.

This was just the beginning of the undoing of Karkare’s painstaking investigation. Mushrif says slowly the system is working to undo all of Karkare’s work and let off the terrorists who over the years destroyed scores of lives and wreaked irreparable economic damage. The ATS team under Karkare had pointed out VHP leader Praveen Togadia’s role in the blasts. The ATS under Raghuvanshi dropped the investigation against him saying (please hold your laughter) they do not know who Togadia is!

A number of investigations have been thus sabotaged by the powers that be and the tracks of the Hinduta terrorists duly covered. The 319-page book is crammed with such information.

But what about who killed Karkare? Mushrif says two teams were at work on 26/11 – one which did the maximum damage, and was from outside. The smaller team took advantage of the confusion of the moment and acted only on the relatively small CST-CAMA-Rangbhavan stretch that killed Karkare. It was a desi unit that wanted Karkare and his men out of the way.

By M Zeyaul Haque

Author: SM Mushrif
Price: Rs 300/ USD 25
Pages: 319
Publisher: Pharos Media, New Delhi

From The Eyes Of Dantewada

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:38:00 +0000

THE STRUGGLE IN THE SPRAWLING FORESTS OF CHHATTISGARH TELLS THE BLOODY STORY OF THE STATE, THE NAXALS AND THE PEOPLE CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE.

By Ajit Sahi

FIRST, A DISCLAIMER: I do not support, justify or approve of the Naxals’ creed of violence. I don’t even believe that they can secure for their peoples the lofty goals of liberty, justice and equity by the means of violence. As Mahatma Gandhi powerfully argued through his public actions and in his copious writings on human history, no one — not even a State — can sustain a moral order using the immoral means of violence. Indeed, Gandhi’s refusal to seek from the British a pardon for Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdeo brought him ridicule at the time, and is still unforgiven by millions of followers of the Shaheed-e-Azam. But Gandhi — pardon the expression — stuck to his guns in opposing the creed of violence, irrespective of the practitioner.

On March 23, 1931, after the British hanged the trio, Gandhi wrote: “These heroes had conquered the fear of death. Let us bow to them a thousand times for their heroism. But we should not imitate their act. In our land of millions of destitute and crippled people, if we take to the practice of seeking justice through murder, there will be a terrifying situation. Our poor people will become victims of our atrocities. By making a dharma of violence, we shall be reaping the fruit of our own actions.” Gandhi could well be speaking for the millions of Chhattisgarh’s tribals, who today face a terrible fate as both the Naxals and the State have adopted the dharma of violence and arguably stare at the worst face-off in the Naxals’ 40-year insurgency. It would be futile to indulge in crystal ball gazing on the likely outcome of Operation Green Hunt, the all-out paramilitary offensive against the Naxals that’s already dug in heels in south Chhattisgarh and is expected to turn full-blown in November. Watchers fear that the State will end up killing far more non-Naxal innocent tribal people than the Naxals, who have been entrenched in the deep forests for over four decades.

But this is not about condemning the Naxals’ or the State’s violence. This is about asking hard questions about why the Naxal violence exists. Again, Gandhi’s writing on the day of Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom could well describe both the Naxal and her supporters among the tribal populations. Wrote Gandhi: “Bhagat Singh was not a devotee of non-violence, but he did not subscribe to the religion of violence. He took to violence due to helplessness and to defend his homeland”(italics mine).

Gandhi could be speaking of the “helplessness” of thousands of Chhattisgarh tribals who’ve been driven into the arms of the Naxals due to the terrorist violence let loose since 2005 by the controversial police-backed tribal militia Salwa Judum (literally: Peace March), who have killed, maimed, burnt, hacked, raped the tribals and continue to do so.

This is news that you are never likely to hear from PM Manmohan Singh or Home Minister P Chidambaram, who only tell you that the Naxals are the biggest terrorist threat to India. They and their echo chambers in the media resonate with a singular narrative, crassly distilled by our learned home minister as “you-are-either-with-‘us’-orwith- the-Naxals”. Anyone who so much as questions the justness or even the efficacy of Operation Green Hunt is decried as a double-faced ‘Leftist intellectual’ who must be condemned for supporting the insane violence of “India’s worst enemies”. This narrative goes like this: the Naxals are gun-toting, crazed ideologues who reject the State and have vowed to replace it with a non-democratic Maoist-Communist State. (“I would not like to live in a Naxal State,” said filmmaker Sudhir Mishra — who’s made a movie on the Naxal quagmire — on a CNN-IBN show last week. Ergo, he seemed to suggest, the take-no-prisoners Operation Green Hunt is justified.)

The narrative further says that these terrorist Naxals are hardened beasts that kill our policemen with utter brutality, ambushing them, beheading them. Who in their right minds could ever even appear soft on such hateful beings?

After 9/11, when US President George Bush facetiously argued that the terrorists attacked his country because “they hate our freedoms”, veteran British reporter of the Middle East war theatre, Robert Fisk — the world’s only journalist to have interviewed Osama bin Laden thrice — said that if the inquiry into a robbery must begin with the motive, the question to ask is: why did the 9/11 perpetrators carry out these heinous acts? Similarly, India deserves to know: what is the Naxals’ motive in relentlessly killing the police and security agencies like beasts? Here’s why.

On October 12, 2009, police swarmed the district collector’s office in Jagdalpur, a small town in south Chhattisgarh. They were there to prevent thousands of villagers from storming a jan sunwai (public hearing) called to debate the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report for a proposed Tata steel plant in the district. Legally, this meeting should have been open to all, especially to the 6,000-odd people of the 10 villages near Jagdalpur that the steel plant will gobble up.

THERE IS strong resistance in at least six of these 10 villages to be displaced from their lands for the project. Most people have refused to accept compensation for land. Four of these six villages (Kumbli, Dhuragaon, Takaraguda and Sirisguda) passed resolutions in gram sabhas during October 2-6 asking the district administration to postpone the public hearing due to the climate of uncertainty created by Operation Green Hunt. About 1,000 letters on these resolutions were sent to the district collector.

Of course, the district collector didn’t postpone the hearing. Instead, the police set up barricades along the 30-km stretch from the villages to Jagdalpur, and stopped all buses so that villagers who might protest the Tatas’ project don’t reach the public hearing. About 25 villagers, led by former CPI MLA Manish Kunjam, did reach the public hearing. “We asked them, where would the effluence from the steel plant be dumped?” Kunjam told me over the phone. “They had no answer.” Kunjam says the Tatas’ EIA report (prepared by Dastur & Co) has failed to meet the standards set by two crucial policies that govern the displacement of tribals for industrial projects: the National Rehabilitation Policy and the Panchayat Extension to the Scheduled Areas Act.

According to both, the EIA report for an industrial project that would displace tribal people must also look into the “social impact” besides the environmental impact. “There is no mention of the ‘social impact’ in the report,” says Kunjam. The Indian Constitution, through Schedules 5 and 6, gives special status to the tribal people. Further, by signing a UN treaty in 1957, India had promised that displaced tribals would be given good land in lieu of that acquired.

Of course, this guarantee didn’t work for the poor tribals of the Narmada Valley earlier this decade, as the Supreme Court allowed dams on the river which displaced millions of villagers, on the grounds that such action met “overriding national interest”. But such an argument could hardly be pressed in the courts in favour of a steel plant. No wonder then that the Centre and the Chhattisgarh government are restive as the Tatas’ project is delayed because of the villagers’ refusal to part with land.

Technically, the Tatas have completed the ‘land acquisition process’. Some villagers have initiated a Chhattisgarh High Court lawsuit arguing against the Tata project, but few have faith in the outcome of the judicial process, knowing how slowly that wheel always turns. It must be said that the steel plant has support in and around Jagdalpur town, perhaps due to the belief that it will bring jobs. Two months ago, the Naxals killed a local politician, Vimal Meshram, who had vociferously supported the steel project. Activists working in Bastar for long say the Naxals had little presence in Lohandiguda, where the 10 villages are located, until the Tatas’ project controversy warmed up. Today, unsurprisingly, the Naxals are said to have struck roots in the region.

ON THE day — October 12 — the government turned the public hearing on the Tata EIA into a farce, long-time Bastar resident and Gandhian activist Himanshu Kumar had visitors late at night at his makeshift ashram in the smaller town of Dantewada, west of Jagdalpur. These were survivors of attacks by the police and Special Police Officers (SPOs) drawn from the Salwa Judum.

While the media highlighted the Naxals’ beheading of policemen, allegations that the police and Salwa Judum- SPOS have been killing tribals and creating terror in Bastar forests have been consigned to the media’s black hole. Sitting through the night to take their testimonies, Kumar prepared a list of people who have been killed in two attacks in the last three weeks, on September 17-18 and then on October 1. Here are just some of them:

• SPOs killed Madvi Deva of village Gachhanpalli at a rivulet on September 17. Another village’s Patel claimed seeing Deva being buried in the Chintagupha police station compound.

• CRPF men and SPOs cut off the breasts of 70-year-old Dudhi Muye, an invalid who could not walk, and stabbed her to death on September 17.

• CRPF and SPOs caught Madkami Muke of village Gachhanpalli and tied her up with her own sari. They beat, stabbed and shot her husband in front of her. Muke saw the attackers stab and shoot Madvi Joga, 60, in his field. She saw them strip 35-year-old Madvi Hidma, stab and shoot her.

• Also in Gompad village, four of a family — Madvi Bajar, 45, his wife Madvi Subbi, his married daughter, Kartam Kanni, 20, and younger daughter Madvi Mutti, 15 — were killed by SPOs. The attackers cut off the tongue and fingers of Kartam Kanni’s two-year-old son.

• Muchaki Aanda of Bhandarpadar village and his nephew, Madvi Deva, were returning from Andhra Pradesh when the police caught them. They were hacked to death with axes and knives, their bodies dumped near corn fields. Two villagers informed Deva’s mother, Madvi Joge, of their killing.

On October 11, Kumar and several other activists and lawyers travelled south of Dantewada to visit Nendra village. Until last year, Nendra had been a ghost town, after the Salwa Judum burnt it down two years ago, forcing residents to flee. Kumar’s NGO, Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA), had had it rebuilt and persuaded the villagers to return. Within hours of the activists’ visit to the village, news of their presence spread quickly. More than 200 people from villages nearby assembled there, converting the meeting into a people’s tribunal. Since September the SPOs have killed wantonly in Nendra. Six people have gone missing.

In the last two months, as a precursor to Operation Green Hunt, police have harassed VCA activists. One volunteer has been jailed and tortured on false charges. Ironically, the Naxals, too, distrust Kumar, especially because of his efforts to repopulate the villages burnt down by Salwa Judum. You see, the people of those villages have found an answer away from both the Naxals and the Indian State, in Kumar’s Gandhian methods of resistance. Many of those who have gone back to their villages had been eager to turn the Naxals away.

But now, of course, the renewed Salwa Judum violence and Operation Green Hunt could once again quickly fatten the Naxals’ enrollment registers. Such is the scale of the Indian State’s violence that it is turning even Kumar increasingly despondent. “I stare dumbly at all these people who come to me, the old man who saw his daughter raped and son shot dead, the young wife who was raped repeatedly, the family whose house was burnt down,” Kumar said to me one night on the phone from Dantewada, unable to sleep. “They keep saying to me: help us. I keep quiet. Because how do I help them?”

And then, he added: “I am too much a son of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave to ever leave the path of nonviolence. But I look at these people and wonder, if I were a tribal person, raped, shot, abused, humiliated, wouldn’t I, too, pick up the gun to defend my family, my home, my lands, my forests?”

Source: Tehelka

Use Twitter Intelligently - When & How

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:33:00 +0000

Unlike some people, I maintain a good relationship with e-mail. I keep my inbox empty, and junk mail no longer wastes my time, thanks to the combination of Gmail's spam filtering and C-Command's $30 SpamSieve 2.7. Because I'm almost always too busy for microblogging and random chatting, I use Twitter only occasionally and instant messaging even less. Nevertheless, I've discovered that in certain situations, Twitter is a better way to communicate than e-mail.

1. When avoiding junk-mail filters is a priority

Twitter doesn't include--or need--anything like the spam filtering that's de rigueur for e-mail, because it's inherently an opt-in system. You follow only those people you want to read about, and you can "unfollow" people at any time if you don't want to read any more of their tweets. You can also block people who follow you if you don't want them to receive your tweets (although they can still view your public page on the Twitter Web site). This makes it quite easy to avoid junk tweets, however you define them. As a result, if you want to be positive that someone gets a message from you and that it won't be inadvertently swallowed by his or her spam filter (as has happened to me several times recently, when sending completely innocuous e-mail messages to colleagues), a direct-message tweet may be just the ticket.

To send a direct message, start a tweet with a D followed by a space and the username (as in D joekissell). This is different from simply replying to a tweet by putting another person's Twitter username, preceded immediately by an @ sign (as in @joekissell) at the beginning of a tweet. When you reply normally, everyone who follows both you and the other person will see what you wrote--and so will the person whose username you typed, whether they follow you or not. In addition, your tweet will show up in your public feed. By contrast, when you send a direct message to another user, only that person will see it (and not anyone who follows either of you). The trick is, you can send a direct message only to someone who follows you, so for two-way direct messages, you and the other person must be following each other. So, for example, if you follow me and try to send me a direct message but I don't also follow you, the message won't go through.

Likewise, if you know that your correspondent suffers from an overflowing e-mail inbox, a direct message can ensure that your communication stands out from the crowd. In any case, one catch is that you must be confident that the other person checks Twitter regularly. If they tweet frequently, that's pretty much a given. But also make sure the other person knows how and where to look for direct messages, because some Twitter clients (especially on the iPhone) make them easy to miss.

2. When you need a handy universal contact page

Another situation in which Twitter shines is when you don't want to give out your personal e-mail address. Your Twitter page is public--anyone can search for your name and also see what you write, unless you specifically protect your account. This means you can refer all those random people who run into you at conventions or who stumble on your Web page to your Twitter page as a contact method. The result will be that they can't contact you privately unless you also agree to follow them; this can significantly decrease the incidence of unwanted messages!

3. When you want to tell friends about the newest dancing baby video

Direct messages aren't the only way in which Twitter can substitute for e-mail. If you like to forward to your friends the URLs for interesting Web sites, funny pictures of your pets, or other such non-sensitive subject matter, you can probably distribute the same information more quickly and easily in a tweet. Although you won't be able to control who sees the information, that fact may be an advantage in that the interesting, funny, or otherwise noteworthy content is disseminated further. You'll also reduce the amount of mail in your inbox because each recipient won't feel obligated to reply!

4. When your group needs a fast way to share

Twitter may also be a good alternative to mailing lists for small groups that need to share critical information with each other in real time and don't want to risk e-mail delays or outages. For example, the staff of TidBits has a special, protected Twitter account (that is, one whose tweets are visible only to people explicitly allowed by the account owner). All the staff members follow and are followed by that account, so if one of us needs to alert the rest of the staff to something in a hurry, we can simply type a quick direct message rather than send an e-mail message.

Source: PC World

Windows 7 Unveiled In Market

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:27:00 +0000

Although the official U.S. launch event is still some hours away, Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system has hit the market, going on sale in a number of countries across the globe.

Executives from Microsoft have fanned out to celebrate the launch of the company's core product upon which the rest of Redmond's empire has been built. The software giant is counting on favorable reviews and new features to help Windows rebuilt its image in the face of a disappointing response to Windows Vista.

Microsoft is touting the value of Windows in the face of a resurgent Apple. As part of the launch, Microsoft is celebrating seven days of deals in a number of key markets, including the United States. Among the specials is a $1,200 package from Hewlett-Packard and Best Buy that includes a Netbook, laptop, desktop, monitor and router as well as in-home installation.

"The Best Buy offer is a home makeover," Microsoft Vice President Tami Reller told CNET News. "For the price of a Mac you have a new notebook, a new Netbook, a new desktop, and a new router to bring it together with the help of the Geek Squad."

In addition to landing on new PCs, Microsoft will also sell stand-alone versions of Windows 7 that can be used to upgrade an existing PC. Although Microsoft still offers a half-dozen different flavors of the operating system in all, Redmond is focusing its energies around two versions--the Home Premium and Professional versions.

It will sell both a full version of the operating system that can be used on any hardware as well as an upgrade version to be used on existing PCs. Although both Windows XP and Windows Vista can be upgraded to Windows 7, only Vista can be done without backing up and reinstalling both programs and data.

A huge marketing blitz will accompany the debut of Windows 7, with Microsoft continuing its "I'm a PC" campaign, by featuring average users who point to various aspects of the new operating system as representing their idea.

Microsoft plans to formalize the launch with an event here with CEO Steve Ballmer (CNET News will cover the 11 a.m. ET event live). The software maker is also opening its first retail store, in Scottsdale, Ariz., as well as a "Windows Cafe" in Paris.

Steven Sinofsky, the divisional president who has spearheaded the development of Windows 7, is presiding over the Japanese launch of the product, while designer Julie Larson-Green is at an event in London.

Microsoft employees in Redmond's Building 37 plan to remotely ring the bell to open Nasdaq trading on Thursday, while Microsoft and its computer maker partners will ring the closing bell.

The product has already gone on sale in Australia.

Source: CNET

Pakistan’s Big Battle

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:31:00 +0000

Pakistan has finally begun a long overdue military offensive against the Taliban in the South Waziristan tribal region. The decision to take the battle into the Pakistan Taliban heartland came after the militants made clear they are now in a full-scale war against the state. The Army has hesitated to go into South Waziristan, evidently apprehensive of getting bogged down in what has sometimes been described as an ‘unwinnable’ war.

Previous offensives in the tribal region ended with the military making peace deals with the militants, abandoning the area to the Taliban, and allowing them to entrench themselves there. It was also that the military did not seem entirely convinced of the threat posed to Pakistan by the Taliban. In 2008, the Inter-Services Intelligence chief, Lt. Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, famously referred to the Taliban leader, Beithullah Mehsud, who was killed two months ago in a U.S. missile strike, as a “patriotic” Pakistani. But the recent attacks on the Pakistan Army headquarters and in Lahore left the military with little choice but to act against a wellspring of unrelenting terrorism within Pakistan. From the time the Taliban virtually took over Swat earlier this year, public opinion has favoured an all-out military operation. The United States too was eager to see the Pakistan Army launch the operation. The violent agenda of the South Waziristan militants is aimed more at Pakistan, but it is clear that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan does the bidding of the al-Qaeda — providing it and the Afghan Taliban important back office support from its stronghold while receiving arms and money from them.

Can the military offensive succeed? The Pakistan Army declared victory in Swat, but it is widely believed that the militants simply melted away into the mountains. Very few of the Swat Taliban leaders were caught. South Waziristan is a larger area with an estimated 10,000 battle-hardened militants and a terrain more treacherous. The other question is whether an operation in South Waziristan is sufficient in itself. In the last few terror attacks, the Taliban’s alliances with a number of militant groups based in South Punjab, including anti-India groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed, have emerged in clear light.

Predictably, the Army has downplayed the significance of these linkages, emphasising that South Waziristan alone is the ‘centre of gravity of terrorism.’ It is quite conceivable that the country’s security establishment remains reluctant to root out the jihadist militants who have served as its allies against India. What it needs to realise is that it can no longer afford to overlook this threat to state and society.

Source: The Hindu

Mathematician Vikram Buddhi Rots in US Jail For 'Threatening' Bush

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:42:00 +0000

Come Join Hands To Free A Bright Indian!

A comparison of the case of 31 year old Iranian-American journalist Ms. Roxana Saberi sentenced by Iranian Court and the case of 37 year old Indian Graduate Student of Purdue University Mr. Vikram Buddhi awaiting sentencing after a U. S. jury found him guilty in US District Court, has much to show the entrenched preferences of the United States of America.

With all the proclaimed adherence to the rule of law, the administration of justice in the United States fails as badly as in any other country of the world and sometimes even more badly. Neither the powerful and pervasive American media nor the recent popularity of President Barack Obama can hide this fact.

When Vikram Buddhi, 37, a national science talent scholar and IIT- Bombay silver medallist, got an admission to the prestigious Purdue University's mathematics department in 1996, he told his parents he was excited about the challenges his course would bring.

Little did he know then that less than a decade later, the challenge was to be a gritty legal battle fought from a Chicago jail.

The fight is to exonerate himself of a charge, brought against him by the US Secret Service, of posting threats on a Yahoo! chat board to the lives of former US President George W. Bush and his wife Laura, former Vice- President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynn, and former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

On June 25, 2007, a grand jury at a US district court in Indiana held Vikram guilty of the 11 charges brought against him under a law called Title 18, United States Code. But for some reason, the district judge has not yet pronounced his sentence. Vikram faces up to 35 years in jail for an offence that his father, retired Indian Navy captain B. K. Subbarao, insists has no basis in truth.

The Indian government hasn't responded to his appeals to intervene in the matter. Subbarao, who was garnering support for his son in the US, was deported from there earlier in August, after being paraded in chains on the Purdue campus. The action against Subbarao has made it impossible for him to go back to that country in the next 10 years. Subbarao had gone to the US on an emergency visa on June 25, 2006.

Vikram, who was pursuing a twin- track Ph. D. in pure and applied mathematics, was honoured twice with the best teaching award by Purdue's department of mathematics.

His troubles started in January 2006 when messages on Yahoo! chat boards that urged Iraqi people to avenge the deaths of innocent people in their country were traced to a Purdue IP address. It has not yet been established whether the IP address was being used by Vikram.

The US Secret Service picked him up for interrogation on January 16, 2006, but released him two days later after finding no cause to press charges against him.

The Secret Service, according to transcripts presented to the US court hearing the case, had prepared a report stating clearly that Vikram was no threat in any way to any of its protectees. Yet, on April 14, 2006, the Secret Service arrested him and launched a federal prosecution.

The case has several disturbing aspects. The trial transcripts, according to lawyers in India who are mobilising public opinion for Vikram's release, seem to suggest that Judge James Moody did not allow the jury to be briefed on the law regarding speech threat cases.

More importantly, the chat board postings could not be linked to Vikram in any way. The Purdue computer system, from which these messages were posted, has had a history of being hacked. But these facts did not impress the judge.

Says Somnath Bharati, a Supreme Court advocate and member of the IIT- Delhi senate, who has been busy mobilising opinion in favour of Vikram's release: " They have not been able to link the messages to Vikram. They have not been able to establish that they were posted from his computer. He is a victim of racial discrimination." Subbarao has written to external affairs minister S. M. Krishna and also to US President Barack Obama, secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, and former US attorney- general Alberto R. Gonzales on Vikram's case. He is yet to hear from any of them.

Delhi Forum coordinator Vijayan M. J., who is campaigning for Vikram's release, says: " The Centre has not moved a finger on the case. The way the judge has behaved smacks of a racial bias. No American student would have been dealt with like that." Says Bijulal M. V., human rights researcher at the law unit of the Indian Social Institute, " Vikram's right to be treated as an equal before the law has been violated. What is India doing to help Vikram? Nothing. Compare this with the efforts of the American government to free the journalists in North Korea and the case of Roxana Saberi, an Iranian- American journalist who was sentenced by an Iranian court." Subbarao, too, had spent months in jail on the charge of being an American spy. A critic of the original design of India's nuclear submarine, he was arrested in May 1988 under the Official Secrets Act and Atomic Energy Act, 1962, from the Sahar International Airport, Mumbai, before he could leave for a conference abroad.

Subbarao argued his own case in prison and successfully disproved the charges against him. He studied law in jail and went on to get a law degree, and is now an advocate in the Supreme Court.

" While in jail, I helped 17 innocent prisoners get released," he reminisces.

But he is yet to see justice being done to his only son. Someone put it aptly - " Lightning has struck the same family twice."

Source: Mail Today

Ishrat Jahan Was Killed in Fake Encounter in Gujarat

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:19:00 +0000

Laakh baithe koi chhup chhup ke kameen gaahoun mein
Khoon Khud deta hai jalladoun ke maskan ka suraag
Saazishein laakh udhaati rahein zulmat ke naqaab
Le ke har boond nikalti hai hatheli pe chiraag !!!

Zulm phir zulm hai, badhta hai to mit jaataa hai
Khoon phir Khoon hai, tapkega to jam jaayega !!!

"However much one lies in ambush
Blood betrays butcher’s hideout
Conspiracies may veil in thousand darkly mask
Each blood drop ventures out with burning lamp on its palm.

Repression is still repression, rising, it must flop
Blood is still blood, spilling it must clot. "

In yet another major setback to the Narendra Modi government in Gujarat, Ahmedabad metropolitan magistrate S.P. Tamang, has ruled that the incident in which Ishrat Jahan and three others were killed in June, 2004, was yet another case of “fake encounter.”

In his 243-page hand written report on the encounter, Mr. Tamang has named the then “encounter specialist” of the Gujarat police, D.G. Vanzara, and others as accused in the “cold blooded murder” of the teenaged girl and three others.

Vanzara and several other policemen are already in jail in connection with the Sohrabuddin case which the State government confessed before the Supreme Court was a case of “fake encounter.”

A special three-member team of top police officers of the State appointed by the Gujarat High Court for a fresh investigation into the Ishrat Jahan encounter is seized of the matter.

Claiming that Ishrat and three others were killed in fake encounter by the police officers for their personal interests, get promotions and gain appreciations from the Chief Minister, Mr Tamang appended a list of top police officers running into about two pages who he held responsible for the fake encounter. Besides Vanzara and his then deputy in the Crime Branch police, N. K. Amin, who along with Vanzara was also arrested in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, the list includes the then Ahmedabad police commissioner, K. R. Kaushik, the then chief of the Crime Branch, P. P. Pandey, another alleged encounter specialist Tarun Barot and a host of other senior police officers.

Mr Tamang’s report said the Crime Branch police “kidnapped” Ishrat and three others from Mumbai on June 12 and brought them to Ahmedabad. The four were killed on the night of June 14 in police custody, but the police claimed that an “encounter” took place on the morning of June 15 near Kotarpur water works on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. The rigor mortis that had set in clearly indicated that Ishrat died between 11 p.m. and 12 midnight the previous night and the police apparently pumped bullets into her body to substantiate the encounter theory.

It said the explosives, rifles, and other weapons allegedly found in their car were all “planted” by the police after the encounter.

Tum ne jis Khoon ko maqtal mein dabaanaa chaaha
Aaj vo kuchaa-o-bazaar meia aa nikla hai
Kahin shola kahin naarah kahin patthar ban ke
Khoon chalta hai to rukta nahin sangeeno se
Sar jo uthta hai to dabtaa nahin aaeeno se !!!

"The blood you sought to suppress in abattoir
Today that blood moves out into street
Here an ember, there a slogan, there a stone
Once blood comes to flows, bayonets are no avail
Head, once it is raised, is not downed by law’s hail !!!"

report from The Hindu

Murdered Palestinian Organs Extricated and Transplanted In Jewish Patients

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 06:59:00 +0000

"The reporter Donald Bostrom, Aftonbladet claim that Levy Rosenbaum, a Jewish resident of New York Brooklyn, is involved in human organ trafficking. Bostrom stated that nearly half of kidney transplants conducted in Israel since 2000 were illegally purchased from Latin America, Turkey and Eastern Europe. The reporter also claimed that Israel’s Foreign Ministry is aware of the illegal trade but acted against it. Rosenbaum was arrested in July after he told an undercover FBI agent that he is a “match maker”, the agent was taping him while posing as a customer. Later on, Rabbis and elected officials were arrested in New Jersey for human organ trafficking. Rosenbaum said that he buys bodies from poor families in Israel for $10,000 and would then sell the organs to patients in the United States for $160,000.In its report the Aftonbladet newspaper noted that Israel is the only Western state that does not condemn illegal organ trade, and fails to take any legal action against the doctors and persons involved in it."

Israeli officials and spokespersons have been railing against a leading Swedish newspaper for publishing a report claiming that the Israeli occupation army murders Palestinians in order to use their organs for transplants for Jewish patients.

The young man, Bilal Achmed Ghanan, 19,was taken away alive by an Israeli military helicopter and brought back by the Israeli state army five days later, dead. As his family members buried him, they saw a large scar running from his stomach to his chin.” Photo: Donald Bostrom

The tabloid Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s most popular newspapers, on Tuesday, 18 August, reported that Israeli occupation soldiers had been murdering Palestinian youngsters in the West Bank in order to extricate their organs and sell them. The report carried a photograph showing the body of a victim of such an execution, with a large scar running from his chin to abdomen.

The report quotes the family of one of the victims as saying that “our sons were plundered from their organs.” The report also makes a connection with the recent corruption scandal in New Jersey involving elected officials, rabbis, and illegal organ trading.

The author of the report, Donald Bostrom, spoke of a strong suspicion among Palestinians that young men’s organs were harvested by the Israeli army. He suggests that the International Court of Justice in the Hague should open an investigation into the matter.

Witness
Bostrom quotes a Palestinian witness as describing one case in which the Israeli occupation army shot dead a young Palestinian from a West Bank village and then extricated his organs. The Palestinian victim is identified as Bilal Ahmed Ghniyan.

“He was taken away by a military helicopter and brought back by the army five days later, dead. As his family members buried him, they saw a large scar running from his stomach to his chin.”

Bostrom also quotes other eye-witnesses testifying that their sons were used as “forced organ donors.”

“Blood libel”
Israeli spokesperson and Foreign Ministry officials were raving and ranting against Aftonbladet accusing the mass circulation newspaper of indulging in “blood libel” and making “canards” against Israel .

Arrested by FBI - This is Levy Rosenbaum - the Jewish Rabbi & his Jewish Termites who pays $10,000 for Kidneys from kidnapped Palestinians for his American based Human Organ Business.

Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor said the Swedish newspaper had “turned the demonization of Israel into a sacred cause.”

Other Israeli officials threatened to sue the Swedish newspaper for libel, claiming that the report was an expression of anti-Semitism.

Israel has been reacting with exaggerated sensitivity toward international criticisms of its manifestly harsh treatment of Palestinians and the brazen racism associated with this treatment.

Earlier this year, the Israeli army, using internationally-banned weapons launched a massive and deadly blitzkrieg on the virtually unprotected population of the Gaza Strip, killing, maiming and incinerating thousands of innocent civilians, including hundreds of children.

Human rights organizations described the huge rampage of terror and death, which lasted for more than 20 days, as “clear war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”

Similarly, Israel had killed thousands of innocent civilians in the West Bank , and many of the victims were sent to the Abu Kabir forensic institute for autopsy operations.

However, it is unclear if the vital organs of these young victims were always disposed of or taken out for transplant in Jewish patients.

The Israeli army, which exerts huge political and legal influence in Israel, nearly always resisted scrutiny of its operations in the West Bank which are carried out in utter violation of international law, especially the international humanitarian law.

Precedent
In January, 2002, an Israeli cabinet minister tacitly admitted that organs taken from the bodies of Palestinian victims might have been used for transplants in Jewish patients without the knowledge of the Palestinian victims’ families.

The minister, Nessim Dahan, said in response to a question by an Arab Knesset member that he couldn’t deny or confirm that organs of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli army were taken out for transplants or scientific research.

“I couldn’t say for sure that something like that didn’t happen.”

The Arab Knesset member who posed the question to Dahan is believed to be Ahmed Teibi. Teibi pointed out that he had received “credible evidence” proving that Israeli doctors at the forensic institute of Abu Kabir extracted such vital organs as the heart, kidneys, and liver from the bodies of Palestinian youth and children killed by the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank .

Murdering Palestinians for their organs

During an interview with al-Jazeera TV in 2002, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat accused the Israeli apartheid regime of murdering Palestinian infants, children, and youths and harvesting their vital organs for transplants.

"They murder our kids and use their organs as spare parts` Why is the whole world silent? Israel takes advantage of this silence to escalate it's oppression and terror against our people," said an angry President Arafat.

During the interview, which took place on 14 January, 2002, Arafat held up photos of the mutilated bodies of the children.

"I'm not worried about myself", as the President is under house arrest, "I'm worried about the Palestinian people who have been under siege for the past 15 months."

Israel had admitted that doctors at the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir had harvested the organs of 3 Palestinian youth killed by the Israeli army near Khan Younis.

After 10 days the bodies of the three victims were returned to their families for burial but with their organs and even their eyes removed.

Israel never carried out a serious investigation into this and other incidents involving the extrication of vital organs from the body of Palestinian victims killed by the Israeli occupation forces.

According to reporter Saira Soufan, the illegal harvesting of the organs of Palestinian soldiers and freedom fighters has been documented since before the 1990's.

“Upon return of the soldiers' bodies to their mourning families, the pillage of body parts is discovered during the burial process.

“ The empty cavities have been filled with garbage such as cotton wool, garden hoses, and broomsticks, then sewn up as a result of a so-called ‘autopsy.’”

Occasionally, Israeli authorities steal body organs from the bodies of tourists who die in Israel .

An unpublicized instance occurred in 1998, when a Scotsman, Alistair Sinclair, died under mysterious circumstances in the Ben-Gurion Airport lockup.

Mr. Sinclair's parents sued the Israeli authorities upon finding that their son's heart and other organs missing. A replacement heart and organs were sent to his mother, who didn’t believe that these were those of her son's.

Source: Global Post

Isreal Defence Forces - A Band Of Human Organ Thieves?

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:25:00 +0000

Israeli army steals body organs from Palestinian men after killing them for trade. Recent scandal that shook Israel and the United States when rabbi Isaac Rosenbaum was arrested for trafficking in human organs. Senior editor of the swedish newspaper Aftonbladet Donald Bostrom witnessed the murder of a 19 year-old Palestinian and the theft of his organs.

A diplomatic row between Sweden and Israel has intensified, with Israeli politicians urging Stockholm to condemn a newspaper article they have described as "blood libel".

In the report, published in Sweden's leading tabloid, a freelance journalist accused the Israeli army of stealing body organs from Palestinian men after killing them.

"The statements in the Swedish press were outrageous," Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was quoted as telling his cabinet on Sunday.

"We are not expecting an apology from the Swedish government ... We are expecting condemnation."

The Swedish government has refused to apologise for the article published in Sweden's Aftonbladet on Monday last week, saying the country's press freedom prevents it from intervening.

The controversy comes two weeks before Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, is to visit Israel, with Stockholm currently holding the rotating EU presidency.

"There is no question of cancelling or delaying this visit, but it is clear that this incident will cast a worrying shadow over meetings if it is not resolved," Yigal Palmor, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said.

Previous reports had said Israel was discussing to either not accept Bildt's visit, or to receive him, but refuse to discuss any other matter than the article.

Bildt has written on his blog that it was understandable that the article's allegations aroused strong feelings in Israel.

But Sweden would not obey to demands to repudiate the article or intervene to prevent such articles from being published, he wrote.

"Our country does not work like that - and neither should it.

"If I devoted myself to correcting all the strange claims in the media, I would probably not have time to devote to very much else. And criticism of one item might be taken to mean that I think everything else is good."

In the article, Donald Bostrom, a Swedish freelance journalist, writes about the shortage of body parts in Israel and makes references to the so-called New Jersey scandal earlier this summer which involved rabbis, illegal organ trading and money laundering.

Bostrom then gives what he says is his own eyewitness account of an IDF raid on a Palestinian village in 1992.

Allegedly, a rioter named Bilal Achmed Ghanaian was shot, taken away by the military and brought back dead five days later with a scar running from his stomach to his chin.

The article has sparked outrage in Israel, with scores of ministers and commentators calling it anti-Semitic and reminiscent of medieval libels that Jews killed Christian children for their blood.

"In the Middle Ages, slander was spread accusing Jews of preparing Passover matza [unleavened bread] with the blood of Christian children," Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli finance minister, said.

"And today it is IDF [Israel Defence Forces] soldiers who are accused of killing Palestinians to take their organs."

Steinitz said on Sunday that the crisis would continue "as long as the Swedish government doesn't change its attitude towards this anti-Semitic article.

"Those who do not condemn it are not welcome in Israel".

Daniel Seaman, the head of the Israeli government press office, said on Sunday he would not give accreditation to two of the newspaper's reporters planning to visit the Gaza Strip.

"We are not obliged to accredit them. It will take time. We have to conduct verifications, maybe to examine their blood type to know whether they can be organ donors," he told army radio.

A spokesman for Israel's interior ministry said it was freezing the issue of entry visas to Swedish journalists, though those already working in the country would not be
affected for now.

The newspaper commented on its story on Sunday, acknowledging that it had no proof of any organ theft but argued that the story deserved publication because of the issues it raised.

"I'm not a Nazi. I'm not an anti-Semite. I'm a responsible editing executive who gave the green light to the publication of an article because it asks a number of pertinent questions," Jan Helin, the editor-in-chief of Aftonbladet, wrote.

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, has asked the security establishment's legal adviser to look into the possibility of filing a libel suit against Bostrom.

Source: Al Jazeera

Google's 'Doodle 4 Google' Contest For School Children

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:28:00 +0000

You know the Google Doodle right? We are talking about the artistic, funny graffiti you see on the Google Logo on its homepage on special occasions, dates or even birthdays of famous personalities. Ever wondered what goes behind the scenes and who designs those in the first place? Well, that's not what we're here for to discuss right now. Nevertheless, if we just pressed your curiosity button, you can read more on that here.

What we were here was to report a recent Google announcement regarding its Google Doodle contest for Indian school children. So, if you are currently a student in any school in India (between standards 1st and 10th), you are eligible to have your work of art displayed on the Google Homepage on Children's Day. (You know when that occurs, we believe!). All you need to do is to win this contest!

The theme of this competition is 'My India' and for your work to feature on the Google Homepage, all you need to do is to create a Google Doodle, with an India-specific theme in mind and impress the judges. As the theme says, you should create a doodle that represents India. You have many ideas to work on, ranging from India's culture to its advances in terms of science and technology. Your friends over at Google are interested in seeing these representations of what India means to you and how you represent it using images. Since this happens to be a contest, there will be one winner whose work, apart from being featured on the Google Homepage, will also receive a brand new laptop and a help your school avail a technology grant of Rs. 1 lakh!

To apply, students can register online at http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/doodle4google/

Source: Techtree.com

Cocaine On Money: Drug Found on 90% of U.S. $ Bills

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:18:00 +0000

If you live in the United States or Canada, chances are you have cocaine in your wallet.

Bekari-o-Uryaani-o-Mai'Khaari-o-IfLaas
Kya Kam Hain Farangi Madaniyat Ke Fatoohaat?

Wo Qaum, Ke Faizaan-e-Samaawi Se Ho Mehroom;
Hadd Uske Kamalaat Ki Hai Barq-o-Bukharaat.

[ Unemployment, nakedness, Drunkenness, bankruptcy etc;
Are these the mean triumphs of the Western civilization?

That nation which is deprived of heavenly grace
Doesn't Progress beyond than electricity or steam! ]

Mohammad Iqbal (Poet, Philosospher)

Nearly nine out of ten bills circulating in the U.S. and its northern neighbor are tainted with cocaine, according to what's being called the most definitive research to date on the subject.

What's more, researchers were surprised to find hints that more Americans are using the illegal drug, said study leader Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth.

In a similar study by the same team in 2007, 67 percent of U.S. bills were found to be tainted with cocaine. The new study puts the percentage at 85 to 95—a jump of roughly 20 percent, Zuo said.

The drug gets on paper money during drug transactions and when people roll bills to snort cocaine powder, Zuo said.

Stress spurred by the worldwide financial crisis may be driving people to abuse cocaine, one of the most common illegal drugs in the world, Zuo said in a phone interview.

The new findings could "help raise public awareness about cocaine use and lead to greater emphasis on curbing its abuse," Zuo said in a follow-up email.

Cocaine Country
Part of the reason the new study is so complete, Zuo said, is because the team used new equipment, a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer, which doesn't ruin the money—allowing the scientists to test more bills without breaking the bank.

The team collected banknotes from the Brazil, Canada, the U.S., China, and Japan.

With 5.8 million people having used the drug at least once in 2007, the U.S. is the world's biggest cocaine market, according to the 2009 UN World Drug Report.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the U.S.—along with Canada—had the highest percentage of cocaine-permeated bills in the study.

Of the 234 U.S. bills collected in 17 large and small cities, nearly 90 percent had traces of cocaine, especially in larger cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Detroit. Ninety-five percent of the dollars found in Washington, D.C., had cocaine embedded in their fibers—among the highest in the study.

In keeping with their reputations for having relatively low rates of cocaine use, China and Japan yielded bills with relatively low levels of cocaine contamination.

Asian drug-taking practices could conceivably be partly responsible for the lower percentages of cocaine-tainted bills. Zuo doesn't know, for example, whether Asian cocaine users inhale through rolled bills as many Western users do.

"It is for sure that drug abuse in different countries and regions has different use patterns which may affect cocaine contamination on money," he said via email.

Regardless of where you live, though, there's little chance of getting buzzed off your bills, Zuo said. Even in the U.S. and Canada, the concentrations are simply too small.

Findings today at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C.

Source: National Geographic News

Racist Uncle Sam Did It Again - Mammootty, APJ, Now SRK

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 06:51:00 +0000

It seems almost scripted. A universally-adored Indian star, respected as much for the casual manner in which he wears his religious identity and his Indian-ness, makes a movie about being profiled because of religion in a post-9/11, terrified, United States. Then, on the way to a publicity tour in America, he gets stopped — because, he fears, ‘his name is Khan’, as the movie is to be called. But it is not scripted. And neither is the outrage, which is very real — and on a different order of magnitude from when another hero of middle-class India who for many transcends identity, former president Kalam, was frisked at Delhi airport recently. Because this isn’t about VIP privileges.

The central issue here is not a ‘do-you-know-who-I-am’ insult to Khan’s honour, regardless of what his own somewhat confused statements on the subject might imply. It isn’t an American immigration official’s job to know who is a movie star where. Nor should we expect it to be. No, what explains the outrage is the whiff of profiling that surrounds the entire incident. Now, it might well be the case that, the actor’s claims notwithstanding, the fact that Khan’s name is Khan has very little to actually do with why he was stopped. US immigration software frequently chooses people to stop and question further randomly; that randomness is sometimes moderated by a complex set of parameters, the details of which are not public for security reasons. (Within the US, such parameters typically do not officially include, for legal reasons, race, ethnicity or religion.) That being said, however, the US needs to do a better job of making the case that Khan was not singled out because of the religious connotations of his name — and that is something the US would not do to citizens of a friendly nation.

They must do this because it matters. It impacts the domestic politics of friendly nations; and it is rapidly reaching the point at which it affects how a large section of the Indian middle class thinks of America. The one experience unique to all those travelling to the US is immigration; and the reaction to this — and to earlier such stories — shows that that experience isn’t great, and builds up resentment. People are all-too-willing to believe that a great liberal nation has betrayed its principles egregiously by ‘harassing’ Khan. It’s a short step from there to a festering belief — erroneously — that this is the act of an arrogant, racist society. America’s authorities at the highest level need to recognise that this apparently minor problem could have very major implications indeed.

Source: Indian Express

Nicholas Sarkozy - The Naked Truth

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:44:00 +0000

By Yvonne Ridley*

I suppose there must be some men around who might get a kick out of the thought of pre-pubescent boys fumbling over pictures of their wife in the buff ... or even dirty old, syphilitic men playing with themselves, but I wonder if the pocket-sized French Leader (a mere 5ft 5ins tall) is secure and confident in his marriage to a much younger woman?

Political opportunist Nicolas Sarkozy forgot three fundamental lessons when he decided to denounce the burqa.

The first one is that men should stay well clear of becoming embroiled in expressing opinions on womens clothes, unless of course you happen to be called Lacroix, Gaultier, Lagerfeld or Ghesquiere.

This was a lesson learned the hard way by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who was pilloried when he questioned the niqab after asking a female constituent to lift her veil so he could see her face.

Could you imagine him making the same request of any female members of the Saudi royal household during one of his galloping missions to the Middle East?

Foolishly Scotsmen Gordon Brown and John Reid, hailing from a country where men wear pleated skirts and paint their faces blue, then waded in with the grace of a couple of dancing bears.

Even the Bishop of Rochester - a man who wears a pointy hat and a purple dress - chipped in his dislike of the niqab, full face veil or burqa.

Of course they were all dispatched very quickly by Muslim women in Britain who proved themselves to be anything but oppressed, subjugated creatures. And just to show there's real solidarity across women of faith and no faith, quite a few western feminists expressed their disdain at Straw and Co. while standing shoulder to shoulder with their Muslim sisters.

The second lesson is try and be sincere if you are taking up a cause. Sarkozy feigned his utmost respect for women by saying he felt the burqa represented the unacceptable symbol of women's enslavement - today I can unveil him to be a purveyor of weasel words.

If he really cared about the subjugation of women he would seriously tackle the appalling levels of domestic violence French women suffer at the hands of French men - two million are victims of bullying, violent partners ... a staggering 400 are murdered by their spouse.

So how many women in France actually wear the burqa? The answer is a very tiny minority - so much so that when the BBC's Emma Jane Kirby went to interview a burqa-wearing woman in Paris she couldnt find a single one!

The former BBC's Europe correspondent went to the Muslim quarter in the capital but all she could find were lots of women of North African origin wearing hijabs. She was given blank expressions and shrugs of the shoulder when she asked if any of them knew women who wore burqas - and the local Islamic dress shops didnt stock any.

So why would Sarkozy launch such an onslaught on the burqa, describing Muslim women who wear it as 'prisoners behind a grille, cut off from social life, deprived of their identity'?

As pointed out by one Islamic observer: 'The irony is that many Muslim women would say the current headscarf ban in France has created exactly this situation for them'.

Well the real reason had nothing to do with the burqa and everything to do with Sarkozy putting pressure on the Liberal Left, throwing a few cheap shots at the expense of Muslim women while trying to pick up a few votes at their expense as well.

Sarkozy, like many male politicians, is pretty gutless so in a pathetic attempt to disguise his real motivations in wanting to pick up votes, he invents a proposed ban of the burqa as a defence of women's rights. This, he knows will go down well with the French electorate who see veiled women as a threat to their liberal self esteem.

Using women to win votes is a common political ploy - I remember when Tony Blair and George W Bush claimed their invasion in Afghanistan was in defence of women’s rights and designed to liberate Afghan women.

Those two even used and pushed their own doting wives to stand in front of the world's media to justify their husband's invasion of the country - on a recent visit I can tell you there are few career women emerging from the rubble of Kabul.

So next time a politician tries to drive through any form of controversial measure or make a spectacular announcement, please dont fall for the mealy-mouthed excuse that they are doing it for the liberation of women and/or ethnic minority groups.

Reading the weekend newspaper opinion pages and columnists, I was amazed at how many supposedly intelligent, feministas fell for the Sarkozy bull.

But they did - hook, line and sinker exhibiting an astonishing shallowness in their writing.

I genuinely have a feeling Sarkozy is one of these weak-kneed, lily-livered men who trembles at the thought of empowered women. And I think the sight of a woman in a burqa makes him feel inferior.

Could it be that because his wife - as beautiful as she is - has bared all for every man on the planet to ogle, that the very sight of a burqa-clad female makes him feel insecure in his own relationship?

As any European schoolboy can testify from the pictures Blu-tacked to his ceiling, to the crumpled, sticky torn out, somewhat crusty pages of last year's GQ hidden under their bed, France's First Lady is the stuff of male fantasies.

I suppose there must be some men around who might get a kick out of the thought of pre-pubescent boys fumbling over pictures of their wife in the buff ... or even dirty old, syphilitic men playing with themselves, but I wonder if the pocket-sized French Leader (a mere 5ft 5ins tall) is secure and confident in his marriage to a much younger woman?

Consider this, if a woman chooses to be veiled rather than show her face to a man, is she doing so to protect her husbands feelings, in which case she could be seen as being compliant and servile, or - more importantly - is she doing so to protect her own face from the violation of a man's eyes?

Could it be that some of these women, when peering out of their burqas at the French leader, feel so special that they do not want the likes of him staring at all of their features?

And this, I believe, is what disturbs Sarkozy because if burqa-clad women dont want to be peered or leered at by men like him then this would be seen not as a show of subjugation but a sense of female superiority.

Could it be that because every bloke on the planet who wants to, can study in detail every curve and crevice of his naked young wife, that the very sight of a burqa-clad female makes him feel uncomfortable in his own relationship?

After all Mrs Sarkozy can be viewed in all her naked glory by anyone who can access the internet or a copy of last years GQ.

And then someone paid $91,000 for a naked portrait at a Christies auction in New York.

On top of that it appears someone stole hundreds of highly intimate images of Frances First Lady and an ex-lover a couple of months ago.

Fascinating stuff, but lets not dwell too long on this subject, I have yet to raise the third lesson Sarkozy needs to learn and that is: People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

A quick scratch beneath the thin veneer of public office reveals the French leader to be a sauteur.*

And the source of this information is none other than the long-suffering Cecilia Sarkozy, who had to put up with 18 years of being married to a man with behavioral problems including being mean, cold and a serial womanizer.

In the book Cecilia, published by Flammarion in January 2008, she said of her husband: "He has a ridiculous side. He is undignified. Nicolas doesn't come over like a president. He has a real behaviour problem ... He needs someone to point it out to him. I did it for 18 years and I can't do it any more. I am the last person who can do it."

These, and other, extracts incensed Sarkozy and his estranged wife's lawyers sought an injunction to prevent publication on the grounds that the book had invaded the former first lady's privacy" not that it was inaccurate. The former French first lady Cecilia Sarkozy, divorced in October 2007, is quoted as criticizing her ex-husband's morals, his parenting skills and his fitness to be president.

That must have been extremely crushing and hurtful for Frances little emperor. But no more hurtful than attacking and scapegoating harmless Muslim women. I wonder if he feels as though they are judging him from behind their veils?

Well we are all judging France's Little Emperor now and the verdict isnt a good one.

*Sauteur: A vulgar term for a serial womanizer.

*Yvonne Ridley is a broadcast journalist and author who presents a weekly political show called The Agenda for Press TV.

Pay visits on her website http://www.yvonneridley.org/

Murder In Plain Sight - Another 'Batla House' Encounter In Manipur

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:26:00 +0000

In Manipur, death comes easy. In this damning sequence of photos, a local photographer captures the death of a young man, killed in a false encounter by the police in broad daylight, 500 metres from the state assembly. How can a State justify such a war against its own people?

1. Chongkham Sanjit, 27, is seen standing in a PCO with the Manipur Police Commandos adjacent to a pharmacy (marked by an arrow)in Imphal on July 23

2. Though surrounded by commandos, there is no obvious resistance from Sanjit (marked by a red circle))

3. Sanjit is seen calmlywalking away with the heavily armed commandos

4. While a commando reaches for his pistol, Sanjit remains visibly calm. They are standing barely 500 metres from the state assembly

5. Sanjit, known to be a former member of the People’s Liberation Army, had retired on health grounds. Though surrounded, he is calm and there seems to be no urgencyor imminent violence in the picture

6. In a sudden turn of events, Sanjit is hustled away roughly by the commandos

7. Sanjit is dragged by the commandos into the pharmacy. He has been surrounded by commandos for several minutes and is obviously unarmed

8. A few minutes later, commandos drag Sanjit’s dead body out of the pharmacy

9. Sanjit’s body is thrown into a truck. At no pointwhile the camera was clicking had he offered any resistanceto the commandos

10. Sanjit’s dead body on the truck. The camera continues to click. The commandos make no attempt to stop the public gaze

11. The body of Rabina Devi, a pregnant bystander. She was killed a few metres away in the police firing when they chased a fleeing youth

12. Sanjit’s body on a stretcher. His family claims he had broken his earlier links with the militants and was leading a normal life

If any picture can speak a thousand words, these photos could fill volumes. They capture a shootout that happened in the heart of Imphal, Manipur’s capital, barely 500 metres from the state assembly, on July 23. They show the moments before, during and after the ‘encounter killing’ of a 27-year-old Indian citizen – a young man called Chongkham Sanjit, shot dead by a heavily-armed detachment from Manipur’s Rapid Action Police Force, commonly known as the Manipur Police Commandos (MPC).

There is a grotesque and brutal history to the bullets that killed this young man. For years, decades even, security forces in Manipur have faced allegations of human rights violations and extrajudicial murders committed under cover of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). In 2000, Irom Sharmila, stirred by the gunning down of 10 civilians, including an 18-year-old National Child Bravery Award winner, by the Assam Rifles, started a hunger fast — that lasts to this day — in protest against the AFSPA. In July 2004, the nation was rocked by the protests of a group of Manipuri women who marched to an Assam Rifles base in Imphal, stripped naked and raised a searing banner: “Indian Army Rape Us”. They were protesting the rape, torture and murder, a fortnight earlier, of Thangjam Manorama, 32, who was picked up from her home at night by the Assam Rifles.

Manipur rose up in protest that day, and in August 2004, the Centre relented, withdrawing the AFSPA from Imphal’s municipal zone. ‘Post-Manorama,’ as history is marked in Manipur, the army has taken a backseat, withdrawing outside the municipality. However, life in Manipur is still lived on the tightrope. In a seemingly new counter-insurgency strategy, the MPC has unleashed a reign of terror in the state.

The organisation known as the Manipur Police Commandos (MPC) was first set up in 1979 as the Quick Striking Force (QSF). Former Inspector General of Police, Thangjam Karunamaya Singh told TEHELKA, “They were trained for special operations. But the men had strict instructions. They were told to fire only when fired upon and pay special attention to the needs of women, children and the elderly. If they arrested somebody on suspicion, they had to take responsibility for their security,” stated Singh.

The MPC does not fall under the AFSPA but has now become notorious across the state. It operates only in the four districts of Manipur – Imphal East, Imphal West, Thoubal and Bishnupur. The MPC is housed in isolated commando barracks and has minimal contact with the general population, though its personnel are all locals.

Extra-judicial killings, and, in particular, fake encounters by the MPC have become common in Manipur. In 2008, there were 27 recorded cases of torture and killing attributed to the MPC. Where once they conducted ‘encounters’ in isolated places, they now do not think twice before operating in cities, in broad daylight, as they did on July 23. In several incidents, innocent civilians carrying money and valuables have been robbed and sometimes killed. In some cases official action has been taken against commandos for misconduct. For instance, in July 2009, five police commandos who had reportedly robbed three youths were suspended. But for the most part, their extra-judicial activity goes scot free.

According to the official version of Sanjit’s encounter death at 10:30am on July 23, a team of MPC personnel was conducting frisking operations in Imphal’s Khwairamband Keithel market. They saw a suspicious youth coming from the direction of the Uripok locality. When asked to stop, the version goes, the youth suddenly pulled out a gun and ran away, firing at the public in a bid to evade the police.

The official record states that the youth was finally cornered inside Maimu Pharmacy near Gambhir Singh Shopping Arcade. He was asked to surrender. Instead, he fired at the police. The police retaliated and the youth was killed. The account states that a 9mm Mauser pistol was “recovered”. The youth was identified from his driver’s license as Chongkham Sanjit, son of Chongkham Khelson of Kongpal Sajor Leikai, Manipur.

Usually, such official versions of encounters are difficult to disprove though everyone may know them to be false. But in an almost unprecedented coincidence, in Sanjit’s case, a local photographer rushed to the scene and managed to shoot a minute-by-minute account of the alleged ‘encounter’. The photographs clearly reveal that, contrary to the official version, Sanjit was, in fact, standing calmly as the police commandos frisked him and spoke to him. He was escorted inside the storeroom of the pharmacy. He was shot point blank inside and his dead body was brought out. The photographer, fearing for his safety, does not dare publish these pictures in Manipur.

Eyewitness accounts partly corroborate the police version — except their account is obviously about a young man other than Sanjit. These witnesses state that a youth did escape from a police frisking party about a hundred metres away from where Sanjit was killed. The police chased this youth and opened fire, killing an innocent bystander, Rabina Devi — who was pregnant at the time — and injuring five other civilians. Afterwards, the police showed the media a 9mm Mauser pistol which they alleged was thrown away by the militant before he fled. After about half an hour, the police claimed to have killed the youth who escaped from their hands “in an encounter”; according to them, this youth was Sanjit. The photographs clearly indicate otherwise.

The police claim Sanjit was a member of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a proscribed insurgent outfit. Chief Minster Okram Ibobi Singh also made a controversial statement in the assembly that day, asserting that there was no other alternative but to kill insurgents.

Sanjit was indeed a former PLA cadre. He was arrested in 2000 but freed. In 2006, he retired from the outfit on health grounds. In 2007, though, he was detained again under the NSA and was only released a year later. Since then, he had been staying with his family at his home at Khurai Kongpal Sajor Leikai and had been working as an attendant in a private hospital.

But even if Sanjit was a former militant, he should not have have been killed in a false encounter. The photos show him talking to his killers, calmly, without offering any resistance. He was frisked moments before the shootout. He was not an insurgent on the run. In fact, Sanjit had to make periodic appearances before the Court, a requirement that the Court later lifted. “Legally speaking, Sanjit was a free man,” says M Rakesh, a lawyer at the Gauhati High Court’s Imphal Bench. There are also significant inconsistencies in the police versions of the recovery of the weapon. First, they said it was flung away by the fleeing militant. Then they said it was recovered from Sanjit after the encounter. As the photos show, Sanjit was ushered into the pharmacy, not chased in. Also, if Sanjit was, in fact, armed with the 9mm Mauser, why wasn’t it found during the frisking? Why, as the photos show, was he taken inside the storeroom?

The law says if a death is caused by state forces in an encounter which cannot be justified by Section 46 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the officer causing the death would be guilty of culpable homicide. In this case, only a rigorous investigation can establish what exactly transpired. Instead of instituting a judicial enquiry, however, the state government is setting up a departmental enquiry, which is unlikely to yield any justice to the victims’ families. Sanjit’s family claims he had broken his earlier links with the militants and was leading a normal life. They say he had gone out that day to buy medicines for his uncle, who is undergoing treatment at Imphal’s JN Hospital. Says Sanjit’s mother, Inaotombi Devi, “Life is very cheap in Manipur.”

Manipur is routinely roiled by such devastating narratives. Ex-MLA 78-yearold Sarat Singh Loitongbam’s son Satish Singh was killed by the armed forces. Though a devout Hindu, he refuses to perform his son’s last rites until his name is cleared of wrongdoing. Like Satish, there is Ningombam Gopal Singh, a 39- year-old Grade-IV employee at the Imphal Bench of the Gauhati High Court, a man who was chatting over tea with women at a hotel when he was dragged off by men in plainclothes, to be shot dead in an ‘encounter’. There is 24-year-old Elangbam Johnson Singh, a student and part-time salesman, picked up by the MPC while out with a friend and killed in an encounter, his corpse at the morgue bearing signs of torture. Stories like these are a grotesque lattice in Manipur. “Life in Manipur,” as one observer puts it, “is like a lottery. You are alive because you are lucky.”

Source: Tehelka

The Total Solar Eclipse - An Experiance Of A Life Time

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:44:00 +0000

The wait and expectation are over. The eagerly awaited longest total solar eclipse in many parts of northern India that started at dawn was witnessed by millions of people live and many more millions on the screens of television. Various news channels, including the foreign ones, telecast live the solar eclipse covering China and different cities of northern India. It was indeed an experience of a life time.

The next total solar eclipse in these areas will be witnessed in the year 2132.

Surat in Gujarat was the first India city to witness this total solar eclipse. However, clouds on the horizon marred the clear view. The village of Taregna near Patna in Bihar, which was hyped as the best place to view the solar eclipse could not live up to its reputation as the people gathered there, over 50,000, were disappointed as the clouds robbed them of the celestial spectacle.

The solar eclipse as witnessed in northwest China (Crescent of a Mosque)

The solar eclipse as seen through a razor wire fence on Combat Operation Outpost McClain in Logar Province in Afghanistan.

The solar eclipse as witnessed on New Delhi skies.

Solar eclipse as witnessed at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh

An aircraft manoeuvring during the solar eclipse in New Delhi

However, thousands of people gathered in the holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh were lucky to witness the total solar eclipse as the sky was clear. It was a full three minute long total eclipse that converted the dawn into pitch dark for a brief period of time and it is said that the people could see few stars as well. The people could witness the corona of the sun and the golden ring as well.

Partial solar eclipse was witnessed in many cities of northern India such as Guwahati in Assam, Delhi, Agra and Kurukshetra where lacs of people took a holy dip.

Though the total solar eclipse is a brief occurrence, astronomers, scientists and common people make it a point to witness it as such celestial phenomenon is an experience of a life time. While astronomers and scientists use this occasion to gather additional knowledge about various aspects related with the eclipse, the common people, many of whom ascribe religious significance to such happenings undertake fast, take a dip in holy rivers and ponds and do charity by donating clothes or money to the needy.

Source: Dajiworld

IBM Roadrunner - World Fastest Computer

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:48:00 +0000

IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory held on to its title as the world's fastest computer, followed once again by Cray's Jaguar.

The biannual Top500 list, released Tuesday at the 2009 International Supercomputing Conference, also saw two new systems enter the top 10. Both systems -- the IBM BlueGene/P called Jugene and the Juropa, which is built from Novascale and Sun Microsystems Sun Blade x6048 server -- were at Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany. The Jugene achieved 825.5 teraflops and the Juropa 274.8 teraflops. A teraflop is a trillion floating point operations per second.

But the IBM Roadrunner remained the king with 1.105 petaflops. The system became the first to break the petaflop barrier in June 2008. The Cray XT5 Jaguar system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory was a close second at 1.059 petaflops. A petaflop is a quadrillion floating point operations per second. IBM's Jugene entered the top 10 as No. 3.

The two new Germany-based systems were the only supercomputers in the latest top 10 that were not based in the United States, which is the leading consumer of high-performance computers. Fully 291 of the Top500 systems are based in the United States.

Hewlett-Packard maintained a narrow lead in the number of systems in the Top500, but IBM remained ahead in terms of overall performance. Quad-core processor-based systems have taken over the Top500, accounting for 383 systems.

The entry level for the list moved up to 17.1 teraflops on the Linpack benchmark from 12.64 teraflops six months ago. Total combined performance of all 500 systems grew to 22.6 petaflops, compared with 16.95 petaflops six months ago and 11.7 petaflops a year ago.

A total of 399 systems are now using Intel processors, slightly up from 379 systems six months ago. IBM Power processors are the second most commonly used processor line with 55 systems, down from 60. They're followed by Opteron line from Advanced Micro Devices, which accounts for 43 systems, down from 59.

The Top500 list is compiled at the University of Mannheim, Germany; the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The full list is posted on the Top500 Web site.

Stalinism Alive - China Shuts Mosques, Banned Friday Prayer in Xinjiang

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 04:58:00 +0000

Beijing cannot afford to lose its grip on a vast territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.

Ethnic tensions in China's far-west Xinjiang shift from the streets to mosques of the regional capital on Friday, with many Uighur Muslims saying the authorities would not let them observe their main day of prayer.

Security forces have imposed control over Urumqi, but the prayers after midday will be a test of the government's ability to contain Uighur anger after Han Chinese, China's predominant ethnic group, again attacked Uighur neighborhoods on Tuesday.

Several mosques throughout an overwhelmingly Uighur bazaar district of Urumqi displayed notices that usual prayers were suspended, and men at other mosques said they thought there would be no prayers on Friday, the special day of prayer for Muslims.

"It won't be open," said a man keeping watch outside the big Dong Kuruk Bridge Mosque, with its minarets jutting out above an adjacent expressway. Troops and armored vehicles were stationed beside the mosque.

"The Communist Party won't allow us," said the man, who would not give his name.

"Under instructions from superiors, normal prayer will be suspended from today," said a notice at the gateway of the nearby Guyuan Mosque. It was dated Wednesday. "Anybody wishing to pray ... please do so at home."

Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely Muslim and share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia, make up almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people.

Chinese president Hu Jintao, forced to abandon a G8 summit in Italy by the ethnic violence in Xinjiang, has said maintaining social stability in the energy-rich region was the "most urgent task."

Hu described the Sunday riots as a "serious violent crime elaborately planned and organized by 'three forces' at home and abroad."

"Three forces" is a term China uses to refer to religious extremists, separatists and terrorists it says menace Xinjiang.

The decision to silence collective prayers could rankle Uighurs, but thousands of troops and anti-riot police appeared ready to quell any fresh protests. Nearly all Uighurs are Muslim, adhere to the strict interpretations of Islam.

"Jumu'ah is the time of the week when we must pray. For us, it would be an insult to shut it down," said Ahmed Jan, a Uighur resident near the Dong Kuruk Mosque. "If we're not allowed to hold normal religious activities, there will be a lot of anger."

But there appears little likelihood that China will slow its drive to punish those found guilty of killing Urumqi residents in the Sunday mayhem, when cars and buses were burned.

Again on Tuesday, thousands of Han Chinese, shouting for vengeance, attacked Uighur neighborhoods, and many Uighur residents said people died. The government has not released any numbers.

Authorities have posted notices in Urumqi urging rioters to turn themselves in or face stern punishment.

Those who gave themselves in would be treated more leniently or even avoid punishment, the notices said. Anyone who provided evidence or turned in suspects would be rewarded and protected by the police, they said, providing a hotline.

Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in most key cities, including Urumqi.

Beijing cannot afford to lose its grip on a vast territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region.

What is Inside Google's OS Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:17:00 +0000

Google Microsoft rivalry has just got fiercer. Search giant Google is once again ready to take on Microsoft with its new operating system. The company announced Google Chrome OS on its blog this week, saying that the lower-end PCs called Netbooks from unnamed manufacturers will include it in the second half of 2010.

A high-stakes duel between the two technology powerhouses has been steadily escalating in recent years as Google's dominance of the Internet's lucrative search market has given it the means to threaten Microsoft in ways that few other companies can.

Google already has rankled Microsoft by luring away some of its top employees and developing an online suite of computer programmes that provide an alternative to Microsoft's top-selling word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications. With Chrome OS, Google attempts to wrest away Microsoft Corp's long-running control over people's desktop.

Here's looking further what is Google's OS all about.

The new Google Chrome Operating System will be an open source, meaning the programme code will be open to developers. The operating system will run in a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel -- computer coding that has been the foundation for the open-source software movement for nearly two decades.

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using users favourite web technologies. And these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Announcing Google Chrome OS, Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management and Linus Upson, Google’s engineering director said it would be “our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”

It's surely open source, but it's not Android. As Pichai and Upson wrote on Google's official blog, "Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google."

Google has already introduced an operating system for mobile devices, called Android that vies against various other systems, including ones made by Microsoft and Apple Inc.

Analysts expect Google to make the new OS free, or charge at most charge a nominal fee. They believe that the company's traditional business model has been to earn revenue off connecting applications or advertising.

The search giant initially aims to install the new system on small, low-cost computers popularly known as Netbooks. These slimmed down laptops are currently giving which are currently outselling more powerful personal computers. Google said that it believed the software would eventually be used on PCs as well.

Google is touting the 3S of the new OS: speed, simplicity and security. According to Google, the OS is fast and lightweight to start up and get onto the web in a few seconds.

As Pichai and Upson wrote in the blogpost, "We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web."

Just like the Chrome browser, Google lays special emphasis on OS' security. The search giant has completely redesigned the underlying security architecture of the OS.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips. The OS will support all Web-based standards. Google is talking to manufacturers and hopes to have netbooks in the market in the second half of 2010.

All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using web technologies. These apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Massacre in Xinjiang China

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:48:00 +0000

At least 200 people were killed and more than 1500 injured in riots Sunday in China's far western province of Xinjiang, China's state media reported Monday.

It's the worst ethnic violence in China in years, if those numbers are correct, and a sign of how sharp ethnic tensions have become in the remote, desert region. Xinjiang's native ethnic Uighur population has long complained of discrimination by Han Chinese settlers who have flooded into the province and are now the majority.

Thousands of Uighurs poured into the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, on Sunday, according to eyewitness accounts. The New York Times reports that rioting raged for several hours on Sunday, before Chinese government troops locked down the main Uighur part of the city. The violence began after police challenged protesters who were demanding a probe into the killing of two Uighur workers in a June 26 brawl at a toy factory in southern Guangdong Province.

China's state-controlled media is portraying the violence in Xinjiang as an orchestrated attempt by ethnic Uighurs to terrorise Han Chinese in the region.

The scenes of violence on television show the crowds attempting to overturn a police car and throwing stones at the security forces. Vehicles are on fire.

Two women, both Han Chinese, are shown looking on in shock. Both have blood on their hands.

One wipes the other's face as she tries to comfort her. A man who looks like he has been beaten is shown sitting on the side of the road.

The scenes are being repeated hourly on news bulletins on state television stations.

The reports were the second and third item on the national news broadcast at 1800, including a report from a hospital treating some of the injured.

It is clear, though, that the authorities are doing their best to restrict the amount of coverage available from independent sources on the internet, on sites like YouTube and Twitter.

Access to Twitter in China appears to have been blocked following the protests.

Users outside the country report that some images of what appears to be a peaceful protest, initially at least, have been uploaded onto YouTube.

It is difficult to see that footage in China at the moment though, and so impossible to verify where and when it was shot.

'Fomenting unrest'
YouTube has been difficult to access here for some weeks.

The Chinese version of Twitter, Fanfou.com, has not been blocked but efforts to search using keywords like "Xinjiang", "Urumqi" or "riots" return no results.

On other Chinese news sites such as sina.com, sohu.com or 163.com, the official version of the incident in Xinjiang has been posted but internet users are prevented from leaving comments underneath.

China's response to Sunday's violence has been to accuse foreign forces of fomenting the unrest.

The country's official news agency, Xinhua, quoted an unnamed Chinese official who claimed the riot had been "masterminded by the World Uighur Congress".

The violence was "pre-meditated and organised," he is reported to have said.

Uighur groups in the US deny this. They say they are being blamed as a way of distracting attention from the real cause of the Uighurs' discontent, the discrimination they face and the oppression they are subjected to by the Chinese authorities.

It is not the first time the Chinese have suggested this kind of violence is the work of "separatists".

They made similar claims after riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa last year.

The streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, are reported to be quiet although eyewitnesses say there is a heavy security presence.

Losing control?
It is also reported to be impossible to access the internet in that part of China at the moment.

Throughout the morning in China, the official news agency Xinhua offered several updates, revising upwards the estimate of the number killed and injured.

Much of the information came from a news conference in the regional capital given by local officials.

A serious outbreak of ethnic violence like this is, of course, a concern for the authorities.

One of the sparks was said to have been an incident last month in southern China in which two Uighurs were killed during a clash between workers from the Uighur and Han communities.

Xinjiang is, however, a remote part of the country, some 3,000 km ( 1875 miles) from Beijing, so the violence there is unlikely to have much of an impact elsewhere in the country unless there is a sense that in Urumqi the authorities are losing control.

HIglights of Union Budget 2009 Presented To Indian Parliament

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:25:00 +0000

The finance minister of India on Monday outlined plans to speed infrastructure development and unveiled increased spending for farmers and the poor in the first budget since the Congress-led government was re-elected convincingly in May.

Following are the highlights from the budget speech:

* "The first challenge is to return the GDP growth rate of 9 percent per annum at the earliest."

* "The second challenge is to deepen and broaden the agenda for inclusive development."

* "There are signs of revival in domestic industry and foreign investors have also returned to Indian markets in the last couple of months."

* "It is possible that the two worst quarters since the global financial meltdown in September 2008 are behind us."

* "While the global financial condition has shown improvement over the recent month, uncertainty relating to the revival of the global economy remains. We cannot, therefore, afford to drop our guard.

* "We have to continue our efforts to provide further stimulus to the economy."

* 2008/09 GDP growth seen at 6.7 pct.

* To ensure more flexibility to India Infrastructure Finance Co Ltd

* Have asked states to remove bottlenecks on infrastrcture projects

* Allocates 5 bln rupees for Mumbai flood project

* Liquified natural gas infrastructure in the country to be expanded

* To raise allocation for National Highways Development by 23 percent

* To raise allocation for urban poor schemes to 39.73 billion rupees in 2009/10

* Targeting agriculture credit of 3.25 trillion rupees

* To pay additional interest subvention of 1 percent to farmers who pay short-term farm loans on schedule

* To extend agriculture debt waiver by 6 months

* Plans to move towards nutrient-based subsidy regime for fertilisers

* To offer direct subsidy to farmers

* To extend interest subvention to exporters in 7 sectors till March 2010

* To give relief to exporters hit by global financial crisis

* To allocate 40 billion rupees to encourage lending to small firms

* To set aside 1 billion rupees for banking services in unbanked areas

* To allocate of 391 billion rupees for rural jobs programme in 2009/10 , 144 percent more than in 2008/09

* To raise allocation for rural roads scheme by 59 pct in 2009/10

* To raise allocation to Bharat Nirman infrastructure programme by 45 percent

* To allocate 70 billion rupees for rural electrification scheme

* To allocate 20 billion rupees for rural housing under National Housing Bank

* To set up 2 handloom clusters, 1 power loom cluster

($1=48.17 rupees)

Indian Rail Budget Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:34:00 +0000

Presenting the Railway Budget for 2009-10 in Parliament, Minister of Railways Kumari Mamata Banerjee announced that there will be no increase in passenger fare and freight tariff. She said that the budget will have approach for ‘inclusive growth’ and expansion of rail network to take development to every corner of the country.

Presenting the railway budget she proposed an outlay of INR 40,745 crore for 2009-10. Out of this, INR 2,921 crore will be spent on new lines, INR 1,750 crore on gauge conversion and INR 1,102 crore on passenger amenities, which is 119% more than the allocation in the interim budget. INR 424 crore will also be spent on railway staff amenities.

She proposed freight loading target of 882 million tonnes and estimated gross freight receipt at INR 88,419 crore

Giving an overview of financial performance of the Railways in 2008-09, the minister informed that freight loading during the period grew by 5% while traffic receipt increased by 11.4% to reach INR 79,862 crore

The budget has proposals for 7 new lines, gauge conversion of 17 lines and doubling of 13 railway lines. In addition, proposals for 53 new lines, 3 gauge conversion and doubling of 12 lines will be processed during the year.

Highlights:
1. NO INCREASE IN PASSENGER FARE AND FREIGHT TARIFF

2. BUDGET TO HAVE INCLUSIVE GROWTH AND EXPANSION OF RAILWAY NETWORK TO EVERY CORNER OF THE COUNTRY

3. PLAN OUTLAY OF INR 40,745 CRORE PROPOSED FOR 2009-2010,

4. PASSENGER AMENITIES GET HIGH PRIORITY, TO GET 119% INCREASE

5. TRAFFIC RECEIPTS DURING 2008-09 INCREASE BY 11.4 % WHILE FREIGHT LOADING GREW BY 5%

6. SPECIAL TRAINS FOR PERISHABLE FARM PRODUCE, FACILITIES FOR TRANSPORTATION OF RURAL CRAFT

7. WORKS FOR 7 NEW LINES, GAUGE CONVERSION OF 17 LINES AND DOUBLING OF 13 LINES TO BE TAKEN UP

8. FASTER PARCEL SERVICES PROPOSED ON THREE ROUTES

9. TATKAL SCHEME TO BE MADE PASSENGER FRIENDLY

10. RAILWAY TICKETS TO BE MADE AVAILABLE THROUGH POST OFFICES AND ‘MUSHKIL AASAAN’ MOBILE VANS

10. CONCESSION FOR PRESS PERSONS INCREASED TO 50%

11. MONTHLY TICKET OF INR 25 FOR UNORGANIZED SECTOR/POOR UNDER ‘IZZAT’ SCHEME

12. “ONLY LADIES’ EMU TRAINS AT DELHI, KOLKATA AND CHENNAI

13. “YUVA TRAINS” FROM RURAL HINTERLAND TO METROS AT CONCESSIONAL FARE

14. 12 NEW POINT-TO-POINT “DURANTO” TRAINS

Ø 57 NEW TRAINS, EXTENSION OF 27 TRAINS AND INCREASE IN FREQUENCY OF 13 TRAINS AND AIR-CONDITIONED DOUBLE-DECKER TRAINS PROPOSED

15. 50 STATIONS TO BE UPGRADED TO WORLD CLASS STATIONS

16. LONG DISTANCE TRAINS TO HAVE ON-BOARD DOCTORS AND INFOTAINMENT SERVICES

17. HANDICAPPED AND AGED PERSONS TO HAVE MORE AMENITIES

18. SPECIAL FUND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF NORTH EAST RAILWAY

19. QUAZIGUND-ANANTNAG LINE TO BE COMPLETED BY NEXT MONTH

20. 6560 RAILWAY STAFF QUARTERS TO BE CONSTRUCTED AND GROUP ‘D’ EMPLOYEES TO GET SCHOLARSHIPS FOR THEIR GIRL CHILD

21. RAILWAYS TO COME OUT WITH WHILE PAPER ON FINANCIAL STATUS AND VISION-2020 DOCUMENT

Legalization Of Homosexuality - India is Waiting For Doom!

noreply@blogger.com (Aftab Ahmad) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:45:00 +0000

Several important principles which most people seem to be unaware of (particularly those who teach in the schools of law and legislators of societies) are: Man has not been given the authority and power to define the nature of crime. That authority is rightfully reserved only by God. Therefore the responsibility of all mankind has is to embrace laws in accord with the Laws of God. The reason God is the rightful One to define the nature of crime is because He is the Creator of all mankind. Therefore it is God who can best define what is evil for man.

“The people of Lut gave the lie to the messengers. When their brother Lut said to them: Will you not guard (against evil)? Surely I am a faithful messenger to you; Therefore guard against (the punishment of) God and obey me: And I do not ask you any reward for it; my reward is only with the Lord of the worlds; What! do you come to the males from among the creatures And leave what your Lord has created for you of your wives? Nay, you are a people exceeding limits. They said: If you desist not, O Lut! you shall surely be of those who are expelled. He said: Surely I am of those who utterly abhor your actions. My Lord! deliver me and my followers from what they do. So We delivered him and his followers all, Except an old woman, among those who remained behind. Then We utterly destroyed the others. And We rained down upon them a rain, and evil was the rain on those warned. Most surely there is a sign in this, but most of them do not believe. And most surely your Lord is the Mighty, the Merciful.” (Quran 26:160–175)

It is the Almighty God, the One to whom all mankind is responsible (Romans 3:19), who has defined homosexuality as a crime (Leviticus 18:22).

Several important principles which most people seem to be unaware of (particularly those who teach in the schools of law and legislators of societies) are: Man has not been given the authority and power to define the nature of crime. That authority is rightfully reserved only by God. Therefore the responsibility of all mankind has is to embrace laws in accord with the Laws of God. The reason God is the rightful One to define the nature of crime is because He is the Creator of all mankind. Therefore it is God who can best define what is evil for man.

Not only has God defined the true nature of crimes, but He has also prescribed what the punishment for them should be. The natures of the divinely prescribed punishments imply how heinous the crimes are. Although a particular crime is a different kind and have different characteristics to other crimes, yet it may be equal or greater in heinousness. Thus God has not prescribed that homosexuals should merely be spoken against, rejected, discriminated against, or banished from the nations, but He requires that they be put to death by every government under which they reside (Leviticus 20:13) and no sorrow should be had for them.

Thus we see that God requires death for homosexuality just as he requires death for murder. This tells us that homosexuality is at least equal to the heinousness of murder. All homosexuals should be regarded by every society to be just as much criminals as are cold-blooded murderers.

Although homosexuality is at least as heinous as the crime of murder, it can be and is often more heinous than murder. When a person commits the crime of murder, he may not murder but one person and may never commit the crime again. Or even if he murders 10 or a 100 people, at some point his murders stop. But homosexuals often remain such their entire lives and they may commit the act hundreds of time. They may also spread the AIDs virus to many innocent people who may die from the AIDs.

The great heinousness of homosexuality does not stop with the nasty acts of gay or homosexual people, but also extends itself in many other ways into the societies. Homosexuals often like to have some kind of contact and influence on children. This is why they hang around Boy's clubs, or become school teachers and why many of them in America work at Walt Disney. Many of them are pedophiles and want to recruit or teach children to accept homosexuality. And since homosexuality is at least equal to murder, this is equivalent to teaching children to become murderers.

The terrible influence of the crime of homosexuality also extends itself in the societies by homosexuals being allowed to function in the societies, by them becoming prominent members of communities, and becoming leaders and serving in various positions of government. In this way, homosexuals seek to remove all rightful stigmatization of homosexuality from the societies by making laws in favor of homosexuality. Again, this is equivalent to murderers going unpunished and being allowed to function in the societies as prominent leaders of the societies and being allowed to serve in government to make laws in favor of murder.

THE FILTH OF HOMOSEXUALITY
Surely human law is blind!!!

Have you not understood how vile and filthy the act of homosexuality is? Do you not perceive the need for personal hygiene? Wouldn't a hygienically conscious male consider a female to be very filthy if her vagina was filled with excrement and he got it and its stench on himself during the sexual act? That is how filthy the act of homosexuality is, even when it is performed by senators, congressmen, doctors, attorneys, newspaper editors, teachers, celebrities and etc. Homosexuality is an extremely filthy act regardless of who performs it.

Homosexuals also perform oral anal sex. That is even more unclean! By doing so, they ingest human feces. Don't you understand how filthy human feces is? It can carry all kinds of terrible diseases, including typhoid, cholera, amoebic dysentery, the Aids virus, hepatitis A, worms, bacteria and bowel inflictions. Who but nasty totally depraved maggots enjoy having colon or anal sex even when they know they will get feces, its stench and bring its diseases upon themselves!

Not only is the act of homosexuality physically filthy, but it is also morally filthy. So why do you say that anyone who opposes homosexuality speaks filth and you do not regard the act of homosexuality filth? Your sympathy for homosexuality proves you to be a very filthy person.

The terrible immoral and physical uncleanliness of homosexuality makes it the next moral crime to bestiality. If one does not have moral scruples against committing the verminous unnatural act of homosexuality, he or she will not scruple against the filthy and unnatural act of bestiality. This is one of the things that make the act of homosexuality so vile and heinous. When depraved humans get adjusted to practicing and receiving pleasure from a particular level of depravity, they will not remain satisfied with the degree of degraded pleasure they receive in that realm, but will begin to lust for the pleasure that can be derived from the next level. For those who derive sinful pleasure from the act of homosexuality, the next level is bestiality. Now you know the true origin of Aids among mankind. It had its origin from homosexuals who had and continue to have anal, genital and oral sex with animals. Now you understand one reason God forbids fornication. The next time you get ready to have illicit sex of whatever type, you might want to ask: "With whom or with what kind of animal did this person last copulate with?"

ARE YOU DEMON-POSSESSED?
Are you a homosexual or gay male who feel you are a female with a male's body? Or are you a homosexual or gay female who feel you are a male with a female's body? Its time you are told the truth about what is happening to you.

The terribly abnormal feelings you have are indisputable indicators that you are morally sick and totally depraved. But please note carefully the following fact: The feelings, thoughts, imaginations and indecent desires you have that are opposite to your physical gender and proper role may also indicate that you are possessed by one or more demons. Think about it: Why are you physically a male who feel you are really a female? Or why are you physically a female but feel you are a male? What would make you feel you are the opposite to your physical gender when you do not willfully or intentionally make yourself feel that way? It is because another being inhabits your body. At some point in the past, one or more demons entered into you and began to inhabit your physical self. As a result, you can clearly see your true physical gender, but the demon(s) are preventing your true self from manifesting itself and are making you feel, speak, have desires and act in ways opposite to your true gender.

You are terribly sick and need help. If you turn to science or to the field of psychiatry or to the so-called experts of the world, they will deceive you and make you feel you are normal. If you turn to the institution falsely called the "church", it will do the same. There is no one who can help you except God Himself.

The total depravity of human nature and demon possession of humans are both the result of mankind having fallen from their original state of righteousness in which God created them.

HATRED FOR HOMOSEXUALITY IS RIGHT AND GOOD
It is a sin for men to act effeminate, and it is also a death worthy crime in the sight of God for humans to be gay or to commit the abominable act of homosexuality. It is also a sin for women to be masculine, and a death worthy crime for them to commit the act of lesbianism and embrace such a life style. If you are repulsed or nauseated by gay males and females and their unnatural and nasty sexual acts, your repulsion is normal and right in the sight of God Most High - the One who created humankind and who condemns homosexuality.

Do not allow any person, any special interest group or any law to erode your repulsion against homosexuality. And do not allow yourself to be deceived into thinking your feelings are abnormal if you have been tagged as being "homophobic". The people who do not have such repulsion - who tolerate homosexuality and sympathize with it are the ones who are morally and psychologically sick and insane. Same sex attraction is a moral crime and the act of homosexuality is a death worthy crime against God and humankind. If you are repulsed against homosexuality, you are not so because of ignorance and deception or insanity. But you are so because the act is truly evil. The reason you ARE NOT repulsed against opposite sex attraction is because it is right and proper. "Heterosexuality" is not a so-called "sexual orientation". It is the way God create humans to function. God never meant for humans to be attracted to the same sex any more than He meant for them to be attracted to animals. Homosexuality is an abandonment or perversion of the way God originally created mankind. There is not a sane law in the entire universe that will condemn a proper relationship between a man and a woman. Not even sick homosexuals condemn opposite sex attraction. But in every society on earth, there is a natural and right repulsion against homosexuality because it is not right for humankind. If you are not repulsed against homosexuality, something morally is terribly wrong with you - you are a sick individual.

In their effort to justify homosexuality, gay people and their sympathizers make the false claim that a negative attitude against gay people is due to ignorance or religious dogma. In no case where there is a sane intolerance to homosexuality is that so. However, it is a fact that people tolerate and justify homosexuality or sympathize with gay people because of ignorance, deception, denial and depravity. All the nations on earth are really heathen nations that do not embrace Christian principles as their dogma. Nevertheless, a negative attitude against homosexuality is to be found in every nation. This is not due to ignorance or religious dogma, but to common sense. Where ignorance and deception prevails and where love for evil abounds, homosexuality also thrives. Any so-called "education" in favor of homosexuality is none other than deception.

Homosexuals use many methods to deceive the gullible into tolerating homosexuality. One way they do so is to point to same sex attraction among animals. Do not be deceived into thinking that since same sex attraction has been observed among animals that this somehow legitimizes same sex attraction for humans. Some animals are also known to eat carrion, excrement and attack and kill humans. If same sex attraction among them can be rightly used to legitimize same sex attraction among humans, so can all their other unclean and murderous tendencies. Animals are irrational creatures that are not accountable to God. Only totally depraved fools point to the nasty actions of dogs as examples to follow rather than live according to the righteousness of God. Homosexuals prove they have fallen lower than animals by making animals as their mentors and examples to follow. One thing for sure is creatures of instinct demonstrate that they are more righteous than homosexuals, because they do not seek to justify their acts by the nasty acts of homosexuals.

Homosexuality is one of the many manifestations of the total depravity of mankind. It is part of the evidence that demonstrates the sad totally depraved state into which all mankind has fallen. It evidences that the wrath of the Almighty God hangs over the heads of every graceless human.

THE GENDER AND IDENTITY OF EVERY PERSON ARE IMMUTABLE
God has created only two genders among mankind. He has also given each person a unique identity. The fundamental identity of a person goes beyond physical properties and is also spiritual - primarily related to the soul of a person. A mild to drastic physical change will change the physical appearance of a person, but can do nothing to alter his or her true identity as it is rooted to his or her soul. Not even the greatest physical change, which is physical dissolution, can do the same.

Therefore the true identity and gender of a person are immutable. There is nothing whatsoever that can be done to change the two. Once conceived in the womb, a person's identity and gender remains the same forever because his soul lives forever.

Since a person's gender is part of his or her immutable identity, no person's true gender can be changed. And since a person's gender is united to his immutable identity and his identity goes beyond physical properties, then any physical changes he undergoes, be they mild or the most drastic, cannot alter the true gender of the person.

The principle of "physical change" is well known in the field of science. It states that physical change "does not affect the composition (identity) of a substance." When you sharpen a pencil, the pencil undergoes change, but it has the same composition or chemical properties. Even when a substance changes state, such as becoming a gas or liquid, the composition of the substance does not change.

So-called "educated" people are thoroughly familiar with these facts, but it is only when they begin to talk about homosexuality that all common sense is lost and they begin to deceive themselves and the rest of gullible society. Even after a person dies, he is still regarded as "he" and she is still regarded as "she." It is when people start talking about homosexuality do they start foolishly thinking a person's real gender or identity can be changed.

There is an ultimate reason why the genders of humans are immutable. It is because every person must ultimately stand before the judgment seat of God to give account of his deeds in this world. If a person's gender and identification can be changed, he or she would not be the same person on the Day of Judgment and would not receive the proper recompense for his life in this world. A complete change of identity and gender would defeat ultimate justice.

ARE HOMOSEXUALS BORN THAT WAY?
Many infants are born throughout the world community with physical and mental defects. All of the defects are rightly considered to be abnormalities which justify efforts to remove them, to discover their causes, and to prevent further occurrences. You will never hear of a case wherein a government or anyone in the fields of science, medicine, psychiatry, etc. uses any kind of rationalization in effort to justify the abnormalities or to label them as normal conditions on the basis that the people who have them were born that way. Even nonphysical mental retardation, cerebral palsy, seizure disorders, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are all considered abnormalities for which cures are rightly being sought.

However, when it comes to the nonphysical immoral abnormality of homosexuality, a strange, inverted spirit exerts a deceptive influence upon the thinking of people who are ignorant, naive, deceived, and moral criminals. "Born that way" is used to deceptively justify the existence, remove all stigmas, and create tolerance for the horrific crime of homosexuality.

If it is true that homosexuals are born as homosexuals, why is their heteromorphic condition not regarded as a defect in light of the facts that their inverted thoughts, demeanor, unclean desires, and lifestyle are departures from what is right for humans in the senses that they are against nature or contrary to the way God has intended humans to function -- the institution of marriage is corrupted; conjugal relationships are corrupted; the act is unnatural and highly unhygienic; the act has not been designed by God to propagate humanity; the condition is a detriment in every way to the mental, physical, and moral well-being of children and the rest of humankind, etc.?

If it is true that homosexuals are born as homosexuals, and if it is true that homosexuality should not be regarded as a defect, why are people who are born as hermaphrodites rightly regarded as having a birth defect? Homosexuality does far more harm to humanity than what the uncorrected hermaphroditic condition can ever do. The homosexual has a spiritual and moral defect which has no right of existence just as much as the hermaphrodite has a physical defect which needs correcting. If it is true that homosexuals are born as homosexuals, it is the responsibility of government and society to correctly label, legally stigmatize and criminalize it as a terrible moral defect on which government and society should use drastic effort to correct, discover its social causes, and correctly assess its damnable effects on society and humanity. Furthermore, they should make aggressive efforts to punish it to prevent further occurrences.

The truth about homosexuality should be discerned from the fact that the all-wise and all-knowing God -- the One who created humans and therefore knows what's best for them -- has condemned effeminate males (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) and masculine females (Romans 1:26-27). He also has condemned homosexuality as an abomination (Leviticus 18:22) and has prescribed for such a crime the penalty of death by the hands of corporeal government (Leviticus 20:13). The penalty is to be extended to people who merely commit the act, people who sympathize with homosexuals, and people who seek to promote tolerance in society for not only such people but also their criminal condition and life-style. But it should be duly noted that God has not condemned in any way people who are born as hermaphrodites or anyone else who has been or will be born with any other physical or mental birth defect. Those facts suggest that the hermaphroditic condition and the rest are noncriminal defects.

However, homosexuality is a spiritual, moral, and partly mental defect, created in some cases after birth. It takes hold of people through the total depravity of their own being. From within their intrinsic depravity, the learning or creation processes in many cases are induced in them at an early age (which helps create the illusion that these were born that way) by heathen or homosexual parents, heathen or homosexual relatives and friends, and a heathen environment. As it is being created in children, it is tolerated or nurtured by their environment and society, protected by heathen governments, and thereafter maintained by each homosexual through their total depravity, deliberate choice, and blatant defiance of what is right for their gender. Thus, in the end, heathens see the need to seek cures for or prevent the occurrences of physical and mental abnormalities which are noncriminal, but seek to justify and establish moral sicknesses and depravity which are criminal. The former defects do not create an evil society, but the latter creates hell on earth.

If it is true that homosexuals are born as homosexuals, why isn't the inverted condition apparent at birth as indisputable proof that they are born that way? Why can't medical technology of some type be used to reveal that some males and females are gay at birth? No such technology exists because homosexuality is not a physical condition but a spiritual and moral one. Homosexuality is created in people in at least three ways: 1. People are taught or induced in their early years to be gay; 2. people make a conscious choice from the depravity of their own hearts to live such a lifestyle; 3. some homosexuals are possessed by one or more gay demons. Those who become homosexuals through the first two ways are not born as homosexuals and can possibly refuse to practice their inverted desires. But the males and females who become gay as a result of demon possession may get possessed in the womb before their birth. Others people may get possessed at some point after birth. Those who are possessed are compelled to live as homosexuals and can't turn from it. Thus the claim that homosexuals are born that way is indeed true for some of them. But having been born that way or having been possessed by a gay demon in no way legitimizes their condition and their indecent acts.

As stated several times before, homosexuality has no right to existence. In order for it to exist, it has to silence or crush its opposition. The only real opposition it has comes from proper moral laws and the people who hold to them. Thus, homosexuality thrives by suppressing righteousness and the people who rightly oppose homosexuality. It does the former by aggressive and successful efforts to deceive the public against the high criminality of homosexuality in order to create tolerance for it, and by placing themselves in respectable and key positions in order to create laws in favor of it and to get government to protect it. It does the later by incongruently stigmatizing those who rightly oppose it with labels designed to deceptively portray them as having some type of mental defect and as those who express an unjust hatred for homosexuality. The undeserved stigma that is placed upon those who rightly oppose homosexuality turns out to be a great injustice done to them just for heathens to enjoy their nasty compulsion and acts of depravity which in the end has dire effects upon society. Such injustice is allowed and backed by the nearly all so called “progressive governments”.

THERE SHOULD BE THE DEATH PENALTY FOR HOMOSEXUALITY
Aren't you beginning to at least get a glimpse of why God commands governments to put homosexuals to death (Leviticus 20:13)? Or are you still foolishly closing your eyes, ears and hearts to the truth? By having allowed homosexuals to live and function in society, they are proving that homosexuality does indeed do immeasurable and irreparable harm to the proper social order and welfare of humankind. This is clearly seen in their insistence to adopt innocent children and to legalize same sex marriage. The curse of homosexuality is also apparent in many other ways. Because it is such a great curse to humanity, the God who created humans says put homosexuals to death (Leviticus 20:13)! They ought not to be allowed to live!

If any society foolishly allows them to live, they will gradually endeavor to shape society in such a fashion to legitimize their evil and extend to themselves the same rights that society should only extend to worthy citizens. If allowed to live, they will seek to be educated. If allowed to be educated, they will seek employment in key fields of society and positions of public trust so as to enable them to promote their evil and nasty agenda. They will become doctors, psychologists, scientists, senators, congressmen, judges, etc. Once they attain key positions, they will seek to remove all stigma against homosexuality and seek to redefine, reeducate (deceive) and reshape society to accept their depravity. This will bring a greater curse upon any healthy society for generations.

It is clear that homosexuality is not truly a private issue that affects only those willfully involved. But it is an issue that negatively affects the whole of society.