Future LiC SV wants talks with Pak

The killing of Osama Bin Laden has exposed Pakistan to the world as the epicenter of world terrorism. It has covertly/overtly/subvertly/extravertly/supervertly created, nurtured, enhanced, sustained many of the leading terror groups like Al Qaeda, Taliban, LeT, JuD and many others. However the future LiC of cHindu SV has deemed it fit that India should continue talking to Pakistan. He has been a rabid supporter of talks to a terrorist nation even when it kills citizens of India. But that should not affect him as he's not an Indian citizen.

India is unlikely to make the mistake of allowing Osama bin Laden to sabotage this win-win process from his watery grave in the Indian Ocean. Apart from economic gains, greater trade will gradually enlarge the constituency of those in Pakistan who have a stake in the normalisation of relations with India.

That really made sense as his other nugget

What the U.S. did on Monday may have been effective but it remains a second-best solution to tackling terror on Pakistani soil. The fight against the entire syndicate of terror has to be waged by the Pakistani police and security forces, acting under the complete control of the civilian government there. This is a message India needs to emphasise to the U.S. and other allies and friends of Pakistan and it will be most effective if delivered with tact and restraint.

Only problem is that is likely to happen if Kayani has dropped all his nukes on India or sometime in the year 4000AD. Reading this rubbish from Siddharth Varadarajan seems to many as what paid news means.

Any guesses on who's on Wikileaks Swiss Bank list?

Assange says that the names of Indians using benamis to make Swiss bank deposits will be revealed soon.

Praising the German government for its aggressive approach to unearth black money stashed away offshore, he said that India “should be more aggressive because India seems like it is losing per capita much more tax than Germany.” Mr. Assange alleged that the Indian government's response to the WikiLeaks cables was “one of the worst in the world” and a “clear attempt to mislead the nation on what the cables were.”

And here we were thinking the UPA Govt. was behaving responsibly by discussing Wikileaks allegations in Parliament and doing nothing!

Mr. Assange said the issue of stashing black money away in foreign banks was much worse than just local corruption as when money is pushed offshore, “...then every time they are selling rupees and the result is that the currency of the nation is debased... everything for all Indians becomes more expensive as a result of that transfer.”

Let us start guessing who's names make the list. It will be interesting to know who gets accused and who gets arrested, politicians? Mainstream media? Industrialists?

cHinduToon on cHinduleaks

cHindu made a huge hullaballoo on the interview with Assange. What were the interviewer and interviewee really thinking?
Here's what our "brain analyzer" had to say:

Will CPM stronghold West Bengal be stormed?

As West Bengal goes to the polls, there is some outlook that the last bastion of communism in India in West Bengal could fall by the wayside.
The CPM and its goons have been past masters of the art of stuffing ballots, strong arm techniques, spending money, any and every dark art of trumping up votes. However this time Mamta's Trinamool Congress with its support on the upswing along with the money and resources from the Congress at the Centre has made this a fight of the heavy weights. Its a battle UPA needs to win given the dismal few months with the Wikileaks exposes to the recent corruption marches. Typically with a heavy turnout one can expect a change in the regime. But with the ballot stuffing one never knows.
If the regime changes, CPM will be on the fast road to political extinction. It will clearly affect the loyalties of cHindu and perhaps announce the retirement of LiC.

Assange interviewed for cHinu editorial

The interview of the week. Assange interviewed by ...

I must say that India is not alone. I mean in our work we have exposed billions of dollars of corruption all over the world. And the First World is also not at all immune from it. Frequently we see the developing world corruption being facilitated by First World banks, which suck the money offshore and so on. And, in fact, India accounts for some of the highest amounts of deposits in Swiss banks, which must be questioned as to what that money is doing there.

Wikileaks portrayal of the joker Prakash Karat

Read this article in entirety if you need a long laugh. cHindu's editorialization of Karat's portrayal in wikileaks is incredible. They want to show the CPM buffoon as some kind of Superhero.

The Embassy, in a cable to Washington the same day (31968: confidential), described Mr. Karat as a “talented and skillful leader who is well-aware of his political importance.”

WTF! Karat as skillful? What election of importance did he win? Or for that matter an issue of importance that he has lead a debate on? Nothing. West Bengal or Kerala wins have been achieved by local leaders like Basu, Buddha, Achuthanandan etc.

Relatively young [at 57], he will be a powerful figure on the Indian political scene for years to come, and could play an increasingly important role in the formation of future Indian governments.”

Other than capitulating to the first UPA Government and help putting India further down the corrupt hellhole its in right now, Karat has little to provide.

The Marxist leader noted that land reform was the strength of the CPI (M) in West Bengal, “where it increased agricultural production, made the state into India's largest rice producer, and demonstrated that small farms can be productive.”

I'm sure the people who struggle for a single meal in West Bengal will feel happy to know how the CPM has solved World hunger at a single stroke.

Twisting wikileaks - Jaitley's remarks

Its one thing to make blatantly illogical statements analyzing current affairs like how Sidd V does in his columns in cHindu. Its absolutely ridiculous to portray the words of an American diplomat as fact.
( Thanks to fellow blogger Nationalizer for the heads up)
The article clearly states Jaitley's statement which reads:

In India's northeast, for instance, Hindutva plays well because of public anxiety about illegal migration of Muslims from Bangladesh. With the recent improvement of Indo-Pak relations, he added, Hindu nationalism is now less resonant in New Delhi, but that could change with another cross-border terrorist attack, for instance on the Indian Parliament,

However it chose to provide credence to the statement of the diplomat who claimed:

Pressed on the question of Hindutva, Jaitley argued that Hindu nationalism ‘will always be a talking point' for the BJP. However, he characterized this as an opportunistic issue

This is yellow journalism at its best. Shame on cHindu for distorting facs and not providing accurate explanations. Thankfully with Twitter people have challenged LiC and his minions to answer to facts. Though they still have proven to not be accountable.

Story of Indian crabs(diplomats) at the UN

There's common lore of a group of crabs sent in a box. The lid was open but none of the crabs escaped. It was not due to the fact that these crabs were too disciplined or lazy or unfocused. It was because they were too busy pulling each other down that they did not escape.
The cHinduLeaks provides a great story in real life of how our own UPA government decided to undermine its UN representative.

Accessed by The Hindu through WikiLeaks, the cable ( 64794: confnoforn) sent on May 19, 2006 by Mr. Wolff reports that Mr. Malhotra criticised Mr. Sen for taking a confrontational approach to the U.S. government. Not just that. Mr. Malhotra indicated he had been sent specially to counter the Permanent Representative. He told the U.S diplomat that he had — and would use — a “direct line” to New Delhi to ensure U.S.-India co-operation in New York.

This is precisely the kind of journalism we expect from cHindu. Good work by Nirupama Subramanian and Suresh Nambath. Lets hope there's follow up action to this article to put the UPA's feet to the fire.

cHinduLeaks - Sonia supports Islamic terror for Kashmiri votes

The cHinduLeaks via India cables, expose the key differences between Sonia G and then President Abdul Kalam.
In was a clear evidence of one person's conviction for justice and integrity and the other person's corrupt nature. The Congress with Sonia and Ghulam Nabi Azad argued with Kalam on the behalf of Afzal asking him to provide clemency. This for a known terrorist who was involved in the planning and execution of the attack on the Parliament.

It quotes unnamed party sources as telling the Embassy that if “the UPA grants a pardon for Afzal or stalls his execution, the Congress Party will be portrayed by BJP leaders as weak on national security. If, however, the President lets him hang, some fear Congress may lose support from their traditional Muslim vote block on a national scale.”

Another traitor who was exposed is Yasin Malik who has been claimed as a peace broker by cHindu and its pet Arundhati Roy.

Kashmiri Muslims feel sympathy for Afzal” and that his only crime was “buying a car.” (Afzal Guru was not a member of the team that attacked Parliament but had bought the Ambassador car which breached Parliament's first line of security.) “How does this warrant a death sentence?”

So in what is clearly a planned lack of suo motu by the Government the usual rigmarole of keeping terrorists within the justice system without meting out the punishment given by the courts was enforced.

The cable suggests that the “easiest option for the Congress may be to delay Afzal's execution for years to consider his appeal for clemency.” This is exactly what has happened. In February 2011, Home Minister P. Chidambaram clarified in Parliament that Afzal Guru's mercy petition, filed on October 3, 2006, had not yet been forwarded to President Pratibha Patil.

It is to be seen if cHindu and LiC will pursue justice with the same zeal they have pursued cases like Godhra or the Orissa killings.

The curious case of cHinduLeaks

One of the casual reader's pet peeves with the cHindu has been that it has been conservative beyond the point of boring. Rather than breaking news as early or even reasonably of value, it often waits until that news is dead or people have moved past it to pronounce its verdict. Case in point being the Wikileaks story. It was like the Godfather movie plot in slow motion. With Assange out of the spotlight (albeit temporarily), this has been passed over for other more important things like the situation in the Middle East, Japan earthquakes, World Cup etc. Now cHindu in typical cHind-like fashion decides to resuscitate the Frankenstein called Wikileaks which shall be thus named as cHinduLeaks.
So we will be looking at the analysis provided by cHindu and provide our usual colour commentary.

Wikileaks new site

You might have already noticed that the original wikileaks site is not accessible. It has moved to a new location. The New Delhi Embassy dispatches are here. There are not many now but hopefully, soon we will have the 3000+ cables. If nothing else, we will good fodder for conspiracy theories. I doubt whether it will have any meaningful political impact. For example, it says here about Rahul:

Swiss magazine Schweizer Illustrierte [2] in 11 November 1991 revealed that Rahul was the beneficiary of accounts worth $2 billion dollars controlled by his mother Sonia Gandhi.^[38][39]

Harvard scholar Yevgenia Albats cited KGB correspondence about payments to Rajiv Gandhi and his family, which had been arranged by Viktor Chebrikov,^[40][41][42] which shows that KGB chief Viktor Chebrikov sought in writing an "authorization to make payments in US dollars to the family members of Rajiv Gandhi, namely Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Paola Maino, mother of Sonia Gandhi" from the CPSU in December 1985. Payments were authorized by a resolution, CPSU/CC/No 11228/3 dated 20/12/1985; and endorsed by the USSR Council of Ministers in Directive No 2633/Rs dated 20/12/1985. These payments had been coming since 1971, as payments received by Sonia Gandhi's family and "have been audited in CPSU/CC resolution No 11187/22 OP dated 10/12/1984.^[40] In 1992 the media confronted the Russian government with the Albats disclosure. The Russian government confirmed the veracity of the disclosure and defended it as necessary for "Soviet ideological interest."^[41][42]

Did it have any impact on the dynasty?

I read the below and wondered why Menon was discussing elections with Hoolbrooke.
Wikileaks Cable Viewer

Menon also offered that he did not believe the Mumbai attacks themselves would play a major role in India’s upcoming elections, because efforts to capitalize politically on such a heinous event would likely backfire on any political party.

Wikileaks Release: The Hindu Edits Out Key Parts of The Guardian's News Item

Today's lead news item in The Hindu is a verbatim reproduction of The Guardian's front page news about the Wikileaks documents. However the most substantive and interesting elements of the The Guardian's item dealing with Afghan corruption, Chinese perfidy, the Putin/Berlusconi relationship and of Saudi donors bankrolling Al Qaeda have all been removed. Here are a few paragraphs mentioned in The Guardian's item not found in The Hindu version:

• Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, with one cable alleging that vice-president Zia Massoud was carrying $52m in cash when he was stopped during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denies taking money out of Afghanistan.
• How the hacker attacks which forced Google to quit China in January were orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticizing him personally.
• The extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, which is causing intense US suspicion. Cables detail allegations of "lavish gifts", lucrative energy contracts and the use by Berlusconi of a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italian go-between.

The Guardian's item reads "The cables name Saudi donors as the biggest financiers of terror groups...". The Hindu has changed that to read "The cables name countries involved in financing terror groups...". The reference to Washington's agreement with the government of Yemen to cover up the use of US aircraft to bomb Al Qaeda targets in that country has been omitted.

The omission of China and Saudi Arabia are easily explained but I am not sure about the rest.

Update: Thanks to Ananthkrishnan for clarifying on twitter that The Hindu has carried these facts (mentioned in the above post as being omitted) in its international news page. This is a link to that item taken from the New York Times.

Wikileaks and Propaganda Warfare

Just saw this video on the recent episode of the Wikileaks video regarding the US military's shooting of Reuters journalists. The professor's comments were thoughtful and something worth reflecting on as the Indian government is increasingly confronting a similarly hostile media environment in recent times. Security forces universally make judgment errors which cost lives of innocent people - that is not new but the enormous amount of adverse publicity it generates in today's world creates a challenge for governments in managing the situation. I have no issue with the need to ensure justice to victims but how are the broader consequences of adverse publicity to be combated when doing so is in the interest of retaining the support of the civilian population, morale of the security forces and the prerogative of the state to use force itself?