While the ruling BJP and the Congress party have fought over the Leader of Opposition's (LoP) post in the recent past, the Supreme Court on Friday stressed on the position's importance in governance and agreed to interpret it.
Friday, 22 August 2014
Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Sunday, 17 August 2014
Do not ignore India’s past, celebrate it (Sunday Guardian)
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M.D Nalapat is the Editorial Director of The Sunday Guardian.
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Ram Setu: ‘The Sri Lankan government would be willing to join in such a re-creation of the past, in view of the immense goodwill that an extension of Rama’s trail to Sri Lanka across the Ram Setu would generate in India.’
visitor to Europe would not fail to be struck by the pride that is shown in showcasing the past. In Vienna, a favourite of tourist guides is a dwelling designed by an architect who disliked flat surfaces, and so ensured that the floors of each room sported a clutch of small and big mounds, thereby making it a trifle less easy to walk on. In Paris, museums show sketches of Leonardo da Vinci and other greats from the past, some of which seemed somewhat unimpressive. No matter. They were each lovingly cared for, as much so as a mound of rocks an hour's train ride from London, Stonehenge, which is showcased as a major tourist attraction dating back to the days of the druids. Schoolbooks in Europe are filled with page after page of illustrious sons and daughters of EU countries, all presented in the context of the history of the world as seen through the eyes of Europe.
In contrast, India is a country where much of history has been rubbished as myth, to such a degree that for those passing through the school system, this is a country that in effect was born on 15 August 1947, much like Pakistan a day earlier. There is chapter after chapter in school textbooks on a very few "heroes of the freedom struggle", with most of the space being devoted to the Nehrus and Mahatma Gandhi.
Jawaharlal Nehru apparently agreed with his teachers in England that the ancient past of India was a myth, and that therefore the heroes and heroines celebrated in ancient epics were just characters in a novel. While Greeks may be proud of the Iliad and the Odyssey, in India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have been banished from histories of India as "myth", thereby constricting the history of the country in a way that would be sacrilegious in Greece or in Italy, where the exploits of Julius Caesar are celebrated to this day.
This columnist believes that the Ramayana and the Mahabharata described real life situations, and that Rama and Sita existed in flesh and blood during a time erased on the excuse of myth by colonial-era historians.
The Chinese Communist Party rebuilt much of the Great Wall of China, and what is needed to be done in India is to re-discover the truth of the epics. Were, for example, a tourist trail to be created that would retrace the journey of Rama to Lanka and back, the same would not only generate an awareness of the awesome past of this country, but also attract tens of millions of tourists and pilgrims from across the globe.
Certainly the Sri Lankan government would be willing to join in such a re-creation of the past, in view of the immense goodwill that an extension of Rama's trail to Sri Lanka across the Ram Setu would generate in India.
While a re-creation of Rama's path to Lanka on the lines of the Great Wall would be a joint enterprise between Sri Lanka and India, an authentic rendering of the life and travels of the Buddha would be a joint effort between India and Nepal, while re-creating the deeds of Guru Nanak would necessitate the cooperation of Pakistan, where several locations associated with the founder of Sikhism exist, whereas a rendition of events in the life of Mahavira could possibly be carried out entirely within this country.
Apart from a greater realisation in our people of what A.L. Basham saw as the wonder that is India as well as greater tourism, a spinoff of this effort would be a better atmosphere between India and its neighbours.
Also included would be a deepening of the understanding that cooperation between the countries of South Asia (including Afghanistan and Myanmar) is essential if a deadly common enemy, poverty, is to be eliminated.
It needs to be said at this point that those who seek to appropriate Rama and Sita to Hindus alone are doing an immense disservice to the memories of this illustrious pair, for they are the cultural treasure of every citizen of India and not just of those belonging to a single faith, just as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the Panchatantra and the Jataka tales, not to mention so many other treasures from the past, are the heritage of every citizen of India, and indeed of the world, and ought not to be either promoted or rejected on the grounds of religion.
What is needed is faith in India, and this can only develop to the levels seen in the US, the UK, Japan and China if the ancient past of our country is celebrated rather than put away as myth.
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Saturday, 16 August 2014
Hillary backstabs Obama over Iraq (Pakistan Observer)
M D Nalapat.
Friday, August 15, 2014 - Barack Obama dislikes risk, and seems not to mind making compromises with his conscience in order to avoid it. Although he won his party’s nomination for President of the United States because his team advertised a style of politics and a basket of policies very different from the crony-cosy mix favoured by Bill Clinton, once elected, very quickly adopted so many of the policies and personnel of his predecessor that in place of the expected Obama administration, what US voters got was a Clinton Lite regime.
In foreign policy, Hillary Clinton herself took charge, while at the Treasury, Tim Geithner was made the overlord. It will be remembered that the dilution as also the repeal of several safeguards to bank fraud which took place during the Clinton period ( 1992-2001) - combined with the further freeing of financial institutions from legal constraints by the George W Bush administration - was what led to the 2008 crash in financial markets. In foreign policy, the Taliban was enabled to take power in Afghanistan during the period when Bill Clinton was President. The records of travel of miscellaneous Taliban representatives to Washington during that period bear out the close relationship between that organisation and US officials, who saw in the group an ally which could “stabilise” Afghanistan at relatively low cost.
Rather than learn from such mistakes, Barack Obama embraced the very team that was responsible for them. Individuals such as David Axelrod or Davil Pflouffe who were core to his success were fobbed off with insignificant titles,while key such as control of the CIA and key departments went to Clinton favourites. Now in the final stretch of his period in office,all that President Obama has left is the ensuring of a legacy that will not be toxic but mildly inspirational. By her repeated verbal attacks on his policy during past weeks, Hillary Clinton is seeking to damage that legacy and to tarnish it,so that Obama does not overshadow her own partner, Bill Clinton.
In particular, Hillary Clinton has said that it was President Obama’s failure to “act decisively in Syria” that led to ISIS and the present disaster in Iraq. This is the reverse of the truth, which is that ISIS is the direct consequence of the policies pursued by Hillary Clinton in the region from 2011 to the period when she demitted the office of the Secretary of State. During that period, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the efforts by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UK and France to arm, train and fund extremists willing to go into battle against Bashar Assad. This columnist is no admirer of the Baathist regime in Syria, which has imposed a form of economic control that has choked the natural entrepreneurial instincts of the gifted people of Syria.
However, the fact remains that from 2007 onwards, Bashar Assad sought - albeit very slowly and only in patches - to liberalise the economy in Syria, so that by 2011,there were for example numerous tourist locations that were privately owned. However, that year the rebellion against President Assad started, fuelled by the powerful underground network of the Muslim Brotherhood and its backers in Qatar and elsewhere in the GCC Hillary Clinton is not alone among policymakers and academics within NATO who have discovered a species that does not exist in reality, the “moderate freed fighter”.
This columnist has been to Doha and to other locations in the region, and has met several of the “freedom fighters” who later went to Syria to give battle to Assad. There was a clear disconnect between those who talked of fighting and those who actually did the fighting. The first sedum ventured beyond the comfortable hotels where they were staying, nor the television studios in which they gave interviews about their heroic struggle. All the weapons and some of the cash collected by them got transferred to the actual fighters, who almost without exception were extremists motivated by a fanatic desire to change the region and later the world into a shape which Mullah Omar in his hideout would approve of.
The “moderate fighter” is a myth which comes to life only in television screens and in the policy papers drafted by bureaucrats eager to escape responsibility for the nightmare that life in many parts of the Middle East has become. Only those motivated by a fanatic ideology found the will and the determination to do battle against the resilient Syrian army, with even those within the fighters who were nationals of the UK, the US, Germany and other NATO-bloc countries having the same worldview as those from within the GCC or from North Africa. It cannot be a secret to the CIA or to MI6 that the entire fighting is been done,and has been done, by extremists rather than by “moderates”.
However, these agencies have protected their political masters by keeping silent over this fact, perhaps because they themselves were complicit in the strategy of arming, training and funding extremists to try and ensure that Bashar Assad was removed from office. Rather than Barack Obama,who from the start appeared sceptical of the French and British policy of arming fanatics to do battle against those in the region who were seen as negative towards the US and the EU, even if only verbally, it was then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who within the US policymaking establishment was responsible for the disaster that has descended on the Middle East, beginning with the encouragement to the Muslim Brotherhood to take over power in Cairo to creating chaos in Libya by replacing Muammar Kaddafy with a clutch of feuding warlords.
Later, giving the very elements who now comprise ISIS the means to wreak their murderous vengeance on the people of the region,who are overwhelmingly moderate but who to date have not been regarded as worthy of the attention and assistance given to the few who are fanatic. The Benghazi murder of Christopher Stevens, the very individual who assisted during 2011-12 the gangs that killed him in 2013, was the fruit of Clintonite policies more than anything to do with Barack Obama. Now, eager to once again occupy the White House, Hillary Clinton is expertly placing the blame of her own policy failures onto President Obama, beginning with the disaster in Iraq, a disaster caused by her own advocacy of a policy of helping the very extremists who are today slaughtering innocents in Syria and Iraq .
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=249605
Friday, August 15, 2014 - Barack Obama dislikes risk, and seems not to mind making compromises with his conscience in order to avoid it. Although he won his party’s nomination for President of the United States because his team advertised a style of politics and a basket of policies very different from the crony-cosy mix favoured by Bill Clinton, once elected, very quickly adopted so many of the policies and personnel of his predecessor that in place of the expected Obama administration, what US voters got was a Clinton Lite regime.
In foreign policy, Hillary Clinton herself took charge, while at the Treasury, Tim Geithner was made the overlord. It will be remembered that the dilution as also the repeal of several safeguards to bank fraud which took place during the Clinton period ( 1992-2001) - combined with the further freeing of financial institutions from legal constraints by the George W Bush administration - was what led to the 2008 crash in financial markets. In foreign policy, the Taliban was enabled to take power in Afghanistan during the period when Bill Clinton was President. The records of travel of miscellaneous Taliban representatives to Washington during that period bear out the close relationship between that organisation and US officials, who saw in the group an ally which could “stabilise” Afghanistan at relatively low cost.
Rather than learn from such mistakes, Barack Obama embraced the very team that was responsible for them. Individuals such as David Axelrod or Davil Pflouffe who were core to his success were fobbed off with insignificant titles,while key such as control of the CIA and key departments went to Clinton favourites. Now in the final stretch of his period in office,all that President Obama has left is the ensuring of a legacy that will not be toxic but mildly inspirational. By her repeated verbal attacks on his policy during past weeks, Hillary Clinton is seeking to damage that legacy and to tarnish it,so that Obama does not overshadow her own partner, Bill Clinton.
In particular, Hillary Clinton has said that it was President Obama’s failure to “act decisively in Syria” that led to ISIS and the present disaster in Iraq. This is the reverse of the truth, which is that ISIS is the direct consequence of the policies pursued by Hillary Clinton in the region from 2011 to the period when she demitted the office of the Secretary of State. During that period, she was an enthusiastic supporter of the efforts by Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UK and France to arm, train and fund extremists willing to go into battle against Bashar Assad. This columnist is no admirer of the Baathist regime in Syria, which has imposed a form of economic control that has choked the natural entrepreneurial instincts of the gifted people of Syria.
However, the fact remains that from 2007 onwards, Bashar Assad sought - albeit very slowly and only in patches - to liberalise the economy in Syria, so that by 2011,there were for example numerous tourist locations that were privately owned. However, that year the rebellion against President Assad started, fuelled by the powerful underground network of the Muslim Brotherhood and its backers in Qatar and elsewhere in the GCC Hillary Clinton is not alone among policymakers and academics within NATO who have discovered a species that does not exist in reality, the “moderate freed fighter”.
This columnist has been to Doha and to other locations in the region, and has met several of the “freedom fighters” who later went to Syria to give battle to Assad. There was a clear disconnect between those who talked of fighting and those who actually did the fighting. The first sedum ventured beyond the comfortable hotels where they were staying, nor the television studios in which they gave interviews about their heroic struggle. All the weapons and some of the cash collected by them got transferred to the actual fighters, who almost without exception were extremists motivated by a fanatic desire to change the region and later the world into a shape which Mullah Omar in his hideout would approve of.
The “moderate fighter” is a myth which comes to life only in television screens and in the policy papers drafted by bureaucrats eager to escape responsibility for the nightmare that life in many parts of the Middle East has become. Only those motivated by a fanatic ideology found the will and the determination to do battle against the resilient Syrian army, with even those within the fighters who were nationals of the UK, the US, Germany and other NATO-bloc countries having the same worldview as those from within the GCC or from North Africa. It cannot be a secret to the CIA or to MI6 that the entire fighting is been done,and has been done, by extremists rather than by “moderates”.
However, these agencies have protected their political masters by keeping silent over this fact, perhaps because they themselves were complicit in the strategy of arming, training and funding extremists to try and ensure that Bashar Assad was removed from office. Rather than Barack Obama,who from the start appeared sceptical of the French and British policy of arming fanatics to do battle against those in the region who were seen as negative towards the US and the EU, even if only verbally, it was then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who within the US policymaking establishment was responsible for the disaster that has descended on the Middle East, beginning with the encouragement to the Muslim Brotherhood to take over power in Cairo to creating chaos in Libya by replacing Muammar Kaddafy with a clutch of feuding warlords.
Later, giving the very elements who now comprise ISIS the means to wreak their murderous vengeance on the people of the region,who are overwhelmingly moderate but who to date have not been regarded as worthy of the attention and assistance given to the few who are fanatic. The Benghazi murder of Christopher Stevens, the very individual who assisted during 2011-12 the gangs that killed him in 2013, was the fruit of Clintonite policies more than anything to do with Barack Obama. Now, eager to once again occupy the White House, Hillary Clinton is expertly placing the blame of her own policy failures onto President Obama, beginning with the disaster in Iraq, a disaster caused by her own advocacy of a policy of helping the very extremists who are today slaughtering innocents in Syria and Iraq .
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=249605
Wednesday, 13 August 2014
Tuesday, 12 August 2014
Sunday, 10 August 2014
President Obama, pay heed to Tulsi Gabbard (Sunday Guardian)
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US Representative Tulsi Gabbard speaks after being awarded the Frontier Award at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 25 November 2013. REUTERS
his columnist was among the billions worldwide who exulted when Barack Obama beat overwhelming odds to become the US President. From a dysfunctional family background to living in a distant corner of the US to lacking the financial depth needed to succeed in a political career, it would have been a rare punter who betted on his holding the position that he has occupied for the past six years. And yet, it is this quality of looking ahead and discovering trends that are as concealed as they are concentrated which distinguish a statesperson from the overwhelming majority of political leaders. Unfortunately, for his place in history except as a curiosity, once in office, President Obama jettisoned most of his core team as well as the principles he claimed to champion. His Cabinet was stuffed with holdovers from the Bill Clinton era, as was the rest of the administration. In domestic policy, the opportunity to clean up the financial system was lost, while in foreign policy, Clintonite blindness to ground reality and obeisance to the theories spun out by think tanks resulted in the US (and its allies) being a major reason for the ongoing chaos and bloodshed in the Arab world. Together with those in charge of policy in France and the UK and Israel, Obama oversaw the disastrous arming of extremists in Libya and Syria that morphed into ISIS.
Unfortunately for his people, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving to be as destructive of the longer-term security of Israel as Ariel Sharon was. The latter engineered the 1980s involvement in the Lebanese civil conflict that made his country the only one in the western world which is the target of Shia (as separate from Wahhabi) terror. Netanyahu's following the likes of the GCC sheikhs, Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron, Francois Hollande and Hillary Clinton has been directly responsible for the arming, training and funding extremists who now threaten global stability on a scale several orders of magnitude higher than Osama bin Laden ever did. Certainly the Obama administration will be aware of the ways in which the fighters now in ISIS got the weapons and cash they are using to deadly effect, although embedded news channels carry the fiction that the weapons are from "captured Iraqi army stores" rather than direct transfers from France and other key NATO states, funnelled through GCC sheikhs who ought to have known better. The milquetoast measures against ISIS just announced by Obama are not going to be able to roll back a tide that in months will seep deep into populations, thereby creating cesspools which will take decades to flush out. Interestingly, even John McCain — who in his earlier avatar as a jihadi "freedom fighter" was calling for massive assistance to the very fighters now coalescing around ISIS — is asking for much greater US involvement in the battle against ISIS and affiliates such as Al Nusra.
Much more than Barack Obama, who seems to have embraced the hyper-risky policy of seeking to avoid all risk, or even John McCain, the voice within the US establishment who is talking the most sense is Tulsi Gabbard, a Representative from Hawaii, the home of the US President's grandparents. She has called for a massive US operation to destroy ISIS and its affiliates, the same way as the Taliban was finished off in Afghanistan with the help of the Northern Alliance in 2001, before the ISI rescued that organisation by persuading a gullible Dick Cheney to hold fire and later to fund warlords who were closet Taliban, thereby ensuring a revival of that scourge.
What is needed is a military operation on a scale sufficient to ensure the destruction of ISIS and its affiliates, a course of action that Obama is hesitating to carry out. Indeed, if Obama continues to prevaricate, what is needed is for Baghdad to ask for help from Moscow, Beijing and Delhi, so that these three countries can snuff out the virus unleashed on the region by the NATO-GCC partnership.
Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt assisted Joseph Stalin to defeat Adolf Hitler. Had it been Cameron and Obama, they would have demanded that Stalin be replaced by a politician of their choice as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union before sending any help.
It is good luck for the Taliban, ISIS and others steeped in ultra-Wahhabi ideology that there is no longer a Roosevelt or a Churchill in the western world, nor even a Tulsi Gabbard in the Pentagon, only the Cheneys, the Obamas, the Camerons and the Hollandes.
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ISI plans to use US, UN to tar Modi (Sunday Guardian)
New Delhi | 9th Aug 2014
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi
akistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, in a series of meetings held in late July and early August, decided to "fire on the shoulders of the US and the UN" to tarnish the reputation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Sources within London, New York and Geneva say that the plan is to ensure the further penetration by the ISI, and its auxiliary elements, of groups which will be used to paint India as a semi-fascist state. The aim is to convince the international community that Government of India is intolerant and neglectful of minorities, women and Dalits. The ISI is trying to ensure that the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva begins discussion on a complaint, which the Pakistan agency expects will get filed this year. The complaint will be by the US-based Coalition Against Genocide (CAG) and will contain strictures against the Modi government. According to a Washington-based expert, "16 of the 47 key NGOs (forming the CAG) have received partial or complete funding from the ISI", directly or through channels in the Gulf Cooperation Council and friendly contacts in western countries. "Nine of the CAG's key NGOs have extensive linkages with the Pakistan-American community, which is riddled with ISI sympathisers." These NGOs are leading the charge against India.
Although some effort has gone in the past to spotlight cases of anti-Sikh violence, the focus has shifted since the Narendra Modi-led NDA II government took office on 26 May. The effort now is to manufacture testimony and contrive evidence to show that India is a country where three human rights violations are rife. These are (i) violence against women (ii) human trafficking and (iii) "genocide" of Christians and Muslims, all of this by Hindus.
According to a London-based source, through its global network "the ISI has funded the travel of 247 individuals from India to Washington, Geneva and other capitals from 2007 to 2011". The purpose of such travel was to ensure that "testimony created and vetted in advance by ISI-linked individuals was given by such Indian nationals in the US Congress, the European Parliament and the UN Human Rights Council. Such assertions, the ISI colonels expect, will intensify already ongoing efforts to "depict India as a fascist state killing minorities and the disadvantaged in a systematic manner".
The speed and depth of Modi's diplomacy towards the SAARC countries has alarmed the ISI, which for the past 16 years has watched Delhi's footprint become fainter and fainter in the region. "The warming of relations with Sri Lanka and Nepal has been particularly worrisome for the colonels in the ISI", warned a London-based analyst, adding that "even worse is the fact that the public in both countries is now becoming more India-friendly". According to his colleague, "the warmth with which Modi's diplomacy was greeted by the Sinhala majority in Sri Lanka (which till now has been wary of India) and the cordiality with which even the Maoists greeted the Indian PM while he was in Kathmandu has sounded a warning to the ISI", which till now has found a welcome mat in both countries, largely because of the distaste of large sections of the population towards India, the Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka and the Maoists in Nepal.
A key official in Geneva warns that "since 26 May 2014, individuals across India are being located by ISI cutouts". These are those willing to present "black" (i.e. manufactured) testimony on the three human rights issues mentioned earlier. Another source from the same location claimed that "a mass grave relating to the Khalistan insurgency, which contained more than 50 bodies had been discovered in 2011 in Haryana" but that "the US administration had ensured that this be suppressed, as it did not want to embarrass the Congress Party", which was in power in both the state as well as at the national level (when the incident was alleged to have taken place). Systematic efforts spread over years to discover mass graves of Muslims in Gujarat were abandoned in 2011 as futile, clearly because none existed.
These sources say that the objective of the ISI's operation is to "character assassinate Prime Minister Modi by making NGOs penetrated by the ISI and its auxiliaries ensure that issues of genocide, violence against women, discrimination against Dalits and human trafficking enter the formal agenda of the UNHRC by mid-2015 at the latest". Efforts directed at the US Congress and the European Parliament have also been intensified. A source said that the UK-based Channel 4 "will soon air a documentary about Singrauli in India", which will paint the Modi government as being intolerant. Two individuals were named in this context, Krishan Gopal and Hugo Ward. However, these assertions could not be independently verified.
"The sizeable pro-Pakistan lobby in the US State Department and the Cold War residue of anti-India policymakers are working together with elements in contact with the ISI to ensure that hearings take place on Capitol Hill by mid-2015 at the latest that would bring together dozens of individuals with a coordinated message, that India is a hell on earth for minorities, women and Dalits", according to a London source. The source adds that the ISI has a budget of $34 million to fund (through hidden affiliates) the stay and travel of the more than 300 individuals from India who have been selected to present perspectives before these organisations.
It may be remembered that much of the funding for such "black" operations comes from the narcotics trade and from printing counterfeit currency, especially Indian rupees. Sources in Washington warn that the ISI, along with the pro-Pakistan lobby and its allies of convenience amongst religious fundamentalists in the US, angered by various anti-conversion laws "has enough influence to ensure that staffers on Capitol Hill and agencies such as the US Commission on Religious Freedom (USCIRF), the European Parliament or the Geneva-based human rights organisations call only those who present a negative view on the Modi government", a key official predicted, adding that "at such hearings, the other point of view is never heard".
Another tack agreed upon by the ISI colonels at the meetings was to ensure that more cases get filed in US courts against key political figures in India (connected with the Union government) on the grounds of human rights abuses. Such a process has become possible because of the extra-territorial International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) passed by the US Congress a decade ago. This law gives US courts the power to accept a complaint from a national of any country against the leader of any other country, and is an extraordinary example of the way in which the US Congress believes itself to be the successor to the British Empire, "where the sun never set". Interestingly, India has been lumped together with Afghanistan and Russia as a Tier 2 country under the law, rather than a Tier 1 country that (US authorities hold) upholds religious freedom. In a Tier 2 country, violations of religious freedom are held to be present in two of the following three heads: "systematic, egregious and ongoing", and placing a country under such a watch-list may open the door for sanctions against it by the US.
While US President Barack Obama rolls out the red carpet for Prime Minister Modi, the colonels in the ISI are looking towards other branches of government in the US to go into overdrive in the coming months against the NDA government on the issue of rights and freedoms. They are also mining their contacts to ensure that similar allegations against India get taken up in the European Parliament and at Geneva. In this task, they have the advantage of years of penetration of NGOs dealing with such matters in the US and European capitals, groups that have scarcely received attention in India, although they fund the stay and travel of hundreds of Indian nationals each year on missions to caricature this country as a state which systematically discriminates against minorities, women and the underprivileged.
"The ISI plan is to ensure that a torrent of negative hearings take place in Washington, Brussels and Geneva by mid-2015, so that the diplomatic outreach of the Modi government can be blunted", the London-based source warned, adding that "thus far, Indian officialdom has concentrated on its peers rather than the broader civil society, where the ISI has been much more successful in gaining access and influence", ironically, especially in those dealing with human rights.
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Friday, 8 August 2014
Will accountability reach Sonia & Rahul? (Pakistan Observer)
M.D. Nalapat
Friday, August 08, 2014 - In 1947,the Subcontinent finally got freed of control from afar, with the new state of Pakistan coming into existence and Burma, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan each going their separate way. While China was unified by Mao Zedong, the Subcontinent of India became a divided entity, and in time, each segment developed its own chemistry and ethos, separate from that of the rest. These days, any visitor to a South Asian country will sense that it is different from the others in the group. In particular,Pakistan has evolved over the years into a culturally distinct entity that has less and less in common with India, no matter what the sentimental individuals who annually light candles at the Wagah border crossing.
However, while the chemistry between SAARC member-states may be evolving on different trajectories, there is a bigger reality, and that is the extent of globalisation which is taking place. These days, young people in India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Sri Lanka or elsewhere in the region seek to gain admission in colleges and universities across the globe, rather than simply in their own countries. The fact is that demographics in Europe and Japan will ensure that many of the positions which otherwise would remain unfilled in them because of an ageing population will get taken by educated and trained migrants from within SAARC.
In India, should the Modi government begin training its young in Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese, citizens from India may get a head start in moving to Brazil, Argentina, Japan and other countries where trained human power is essential. There are schools in Brazil without teachers, hospitals without nurses, and companies lacking engineers. This void can get filled from India, should the young in the worlds most populous democracy be given opportunities to learn Portuguese, the language in which government and much else gets conducted in Brazil.
Unfortunately for its people, successive governments in India have failed to take advantage of international opportunities for migration, and thereby ensured that the people of India lagged far behind others. An example is the UK. During the two decades when it was relatively simple to move to that country, Jawaharlal Nehru and his successor Indira Gandhi made it very difficult for citizens to even get a passport, much less travel to another country with funds sufficient to enable them to search for a job. As a consequence, those from Pakistan got the edge in migration to the UK, despite the fact that India has a mch bigger population. Since the 1990s, after it has become clear that countries in Europe, South America and even Africa have vast opportunities for trained human power, no effort has been made by the state to ensure that language skills designed to give citizens of India an edge in locating jobs in specific higher-wage countries get imparted. The expectation is that these decades of neglect will get reversed, now that a practical, pragmatic Prime Minister has taken office in Delhi on May 6,2014.
Narendra Modi is the first citizen of India from the “backward castes” to become the Prime Minister. While Mahatma Gandhi constantly spoke of the poor and the disadvantaged, he chose a high-born person from an affluent family as India’s first Prime Minister. The new PM and his ministers promptly moved into the palatial residences and offices vacated by the departing English, and continued the tradition of VVIP culture which had been a feature of colonial times. Since then, VVIPs in India are in effect a breed apart from the rest of their country persons. They have special privileges at every stage and every hour of their lives, and very often completely escape accountability for their misdeeds. The culture within the VVIP establishment is to protect each other, so that the monopoly of power and access to loot continue.
The most privileged has been Sonia Gandhi, who has been indulged by every Prime Minister of India since Indira Gandhi, even by those she worked hard to destroy, such as P V Narasimha Rao (1992-96). The previous National Democratic Alliance government (led by Atal Behari Vajpayee) showed extraordinary solicitude towards Sonia Gandhi, who was treated by Vajpayee as a favourite daughter and protected from accountability with fierce loyalty. In this,Vajpayee was assisted by his National Security Advisor Braesh Mishra,who ensured that the Congress President was given every protection and privilege she demanded
Which is why it came as a surprise a week ago when a magistrate ordered both Sonia Gandhi as well as her son Rahul to appear before her on a charge of cheating and breach of trust (sections 420 and 406 of the Indian Penal Code). Fortunately for the two VVIPs, the High Court has ruled that for the moment, neither needs to appear in court the way lesser citizens do.
On August 12 the next hearing in the matter will resume. Will the High Court free Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi of making an appearance in court and facing charges brought against them by a private individual, Subramanian Swamy, or will it rule that the two VVIPs will have to trod the same path that less privileged mortals routinely do? The “National Herald” matter is serious, as it involves the transfer of assets worth several hundreds of millions of dollars to a company of which 76% is owned by Sonia and Rahul. The country is waiting to see if accountability has finally reached the shores of the super powerful, or whether the principle will once again beat a retreat before the powerful, the way it has for so many decades.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=249071
Friday, August 08, 2014 - In 1947,the Subcontinent finally got freed of control from afar, with the new state of Pakistan coming into existence and Burma, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan each going their separate way. While China was unified by Mao Zedong, the Subcontinent of India became a divided entity, and in time, each segment developed its own chemistry and ethos, separate from that of the rest. These days, any visitor to a South Asian country will sense that it is different from the others in the group. In particular,Pakistan has evolved over the years into a culturally distinct entity that has less and less in common with India, no matter what the sentimental individuals who annually light candles at the Wagah border crossing.
However, while the chemistry between SAARC member-states may be evolving on different trajectories, there is a bigger reality, and that is the extent of globalisation which is taking place. These days, young people in India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Sri Lanka or elsewhere in the region seek to gain admission in colleges and universities across the globe, rather than simply in their own countries. The fact is that demographics in Europe and Japan will ensure that many of the positions which otherwise would remain unfilled in them because of an ageing population will get taken by educated and trained migrants from within SAARC.
In India, should the Modi government begin training its young in Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese, citizens from India may get a head start in moving to Brazil, Argentina, Japan and other countries where trained human power is essential. There are schools in Brazil without teachers, hospitals without nurses, and companies lacking engineers. This void can get filled from India, should the young in the worlds most populous democracy be given opportunities to learn Portuguese, the language in which government and much else gets conducted in Brazil.
Unfortunately for its people, successive governments in India have failed to take advantage of international opportunities for migration, and thereby ensured that the people of India lagged far behind others. An example is the UK. During the two decades when it was relatively simple to move to that country, Jawaharlal Nehru and his successor Indira Gandhi made it very difficult for citizens to even get a passport, much less travel to another country with funds sufficient to enable them to search for a job. As a consequence, those from Pakistan got the edge in migration to the UK, despite the fact that India has a mch bigger population. Since the 1990s, after it has become clear that countries in Europe, South America and even Africa have vast opportunities for trained human power, no effort has been made by the state to ensure that language skills designed to give citizens of India an edge in locating jobs in specific higher-wage countries get imparted. The expectation is that these decades of neglect will get reversed, now that a practical, pragmatic Prime Minister has taken office in Delhi on May 6,2014.
Narendra Modi is the first citizen of India from the “backward castes” to become the Prime Minister. While Mahatma Gandhi constantly spoke of the poor and the disadvantaged, he chose a high-born person from an affluent family as India’s first Prime Minister. The new PM and his ministers promptly moved into the palatial residences and offices vacated by the departing English, and continued the tradition of VVIP culture which had been a feature of colonial times. Since then, VVIPs in India are in effect a breed apart from the rest of their country persons. They have special privileges at every stage and every hour of their lives, and very often completely escape accountability for their misdeeds. The culture within the VVIP establishment is to protect each other, so that the monopoly of power and access to loot continue.
The most privileged has been Sonia Gandhi, who has been indulged by every Prime Minister of India since Indira Gandhi, even by those she worked hard to destroy, such as P V Narasimha Rao (1992-96). The previous National Democratic Alliance government (led by Atal Behari Vajpayee) showed extraordinary solicitude towards Sonia Gandhi, who was treated by Vajpayee as a favourite daughter and protected from accountability with fierce loyalty. In this,Vajpayee was assisted by his National Security Advisor Braesh Mishra,who ensured that the Congress President was given every protection and privilege she demanded
Which is why it came as a surprise a week ago when a magistrate ordered both Sonia Gandhi as well as her son Rahul to appear before her on a charge of cheating and breach of trust (sections 420 and 406 of the Indian Penal Code). Fortunately for the two VVIPs, the High Court has ruled that for the moment, neither needs to appear in court the way lesser citizens do.
On August 12 the next hearing in the matter will resume. Will the High Court free Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi of making an appearance in court and facing charges brought against them by a private individual, Subramanian Swamy, or will it rule that the two VVIPs will have to trod the same path that less privileged mortals routinely do? The “National Herald” matter is serious, as it involves the transfer of assets worth several hundreds of millions of dollars to a company of which 76% is owned by Sonia and Rahul. The country is waiting to see if accountability has finally reached the shores of the super powerful, or whether the principle will once again beat a retreat before the powerful, the way it has for so many decades.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=249071
Thursday, 7 August 2014
Crisis reflects NATO's blindness to multipolar world (China Daily)
M.D. Nalapat
The United States and the European Union have imposed fresh sanctions on Russia over the escalating Ukraine crisis. There have even been calls to strip Russia of the right to host the 2018 World Cup or to boycott it after some Western leaders and media accused "pro-Russia separatists" of downing the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine on July 17.
The Western media (and some Western leaders) have been claiming right from the outset that the "missile" used to "shoot down" the plane was made in Russia. Their political goal is to turn international opinion against Russia and its supporters in Ukraine, and their strategic objective is to ensure a halt to the use of missiles by pro-Russia groups in order to give the Ukrainian military an immense advantage against them. The so-called voice transcripts that some Western media outlets cited as evidence to "prove" that pro-Russia groups shot down the aircraft could have been easily manufactured in any intelligence agency laboratory and, hence, will prove nothing unless those engaged in the "conversations" are identified beyond doubt.
Western powers have to accept the fact that Ukraine is a divided country, and perhaps needs a Cyprus-like solution, that is, partitioning into pro-Russia and pro-NATO parts. That the NATO refuses to acknowledge this and still believes that it can hold sway over the whole of Ukraine by eliminating Moscow's influence is indicative of what may be termed the "Bretton Woods syndrome".
In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US and its EU allies lost an opportunity to create a sustainable partnership with the newly formed Russian Federation by effectively insisting on surrender conditions for establishing any sort of relationship between NATO and Moscow. This is the fuse that ultimately led to the MH17 explosion. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO assumed that it could carry into the 21st century the Bretton Woods system, which was created in 1945 and handed the reins of the international architecture to the US and its key European allies.
Three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are NATO member-states while the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are still controlled by the military alliance partners. It is the refusal by the US and its allies to accept that the world has changed since 1945 that has led to the creation of alternative geopolitical architectures, such as the establishment of a BRICS development bank, which was announced in Fortaleza, Brazil, just over two weeks ago.
The "Bretton Woods syndrome" (or the refusal to accept and adjust to the realities of the post-1945 world) was manifested in the military sphere after the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since then, under specially created doctrines and a largely silent UN bureaucracy, NATO has been trying to get back the power that the US and key EU states enjoyed in the previous two centuries - of using military force to resolve issues to their advantage.
The Libyan government was toppled in 2011, followed by determined but until now unsuccessful efforts to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad even though Syria has maintained peace with Israel for four decades and more. Because the NATO alliance no longer has the power to enforce its will across the globe, each of its initiatives has been a disaster. Libya has dissolved into a fractured country, ruled by warlords. In Syria's case, the cash, weapons and training given to rebels, including terrorists, have ended up in the formation of the "Islamic State", creating monsters which threaten global security.
NATO has become a "monkey army", which can destroy a country very effectively but is powerless when it comes to rebuilding it - just as monkeys can wreak havoc but cannot clean up the resultant mess.
NATO powers tried their utmost last year to bring Ukraine into their fold, using the usual tactics of mobilizing street power and strengthening some elements in Ukraine who seem to be the "ideological descendants" of the pro-Hitler groups found in the country from 1941 to 1945. The Western military alliance's attempt failed, because Moscow refused to follow former Russian president Boris Yeltsin's script of accepting whatever punishment NATO inflicted on Russia.
The Russia-Georgia War in 2008 should have been a warning for the Western military bloc not to try its game in (or with) Ukraine. But a hyper-confident NATO, deep in the grip of the "Bretton Woods syndrome", went ahead and orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Kiev, replacing it with its own nominees.
What has followed shows that the world has moved far (nay permanently) away from the Bretton Woods system which empowered the US and the EU to dominate international discourse. MH17 is an indication of the chaos that will ensue - and has already ensued in many parts of the world - if the US and its NATO allies do not cure themselves of the "Bretton Woods syndrome" and change their policies to meet the demands of a multipolar global architecture, which had already taken shape in the 1990s but was ignored by the US and the EU in their blindness to carry forward their dominance and influence into the 21st century.
The author is vice-chair of Manipal Advanced Research Group, and UNESCO peace chair and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University, India.
(China Daily 08/07/2014 page9)
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2014-08/07/content_18262974.htm
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