Make America White Again: Trump aide Miller (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Hopefully, Real Donald Trump will step forward and be the colour-blind unifier.

WASHINGTON: Consider an important difference between US and Indian history. In 1947, the Congress Party leadership troika of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel surprisingly accepted the breaking away of a third of the territory of the country on the grounds of religion, although the Mahatma subsequently maintained that the separation was not based on religion but on unspecified other factors. Less than a century previously, newly-sworn in President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln refused to accept the secession of 7 of the 34 states of the Union, and began a war against the secessionists that lasted four years and four weeks, beginning in April 1861. More US troops (from both sides) died during that war than have been lost in every other war waged by the US. If the Congress Party leadership troika put up substantive resistance to the operationalising of the toxic Churchill-Jinnah plan to partition India, the same remains a secret. Lord Louis Mountbatten secured the assent of the Congress troika to the hugely destructive partition of India in record time, with even the Mahatma keeping silent rather than undertaking a fast unto death in order to roll back assent to the plan to break the country up and thereby render naught his life’s mission of uniting Hindus and Muslims in the common cause of freedom from British rule. Instances are not rare where matters of grave consequence have been decided in a manner adverse to the overall interests of the population of our country. An example—one of several—took place at Simla in 1972, when even 93,000 Pakistan Army prisoners of war and their defeat were not sufficient to ensure that negotiators led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could force Z.A. Bhutto to agree that the Line of Control in Kashmir was the International Boundary. Jawaharlal Nehru refused to convert into reality Homi Bhabha’s plan to ensure that India joined the club of countries that detonated a nuclear device before China did. Soon afterwards, Bhabha died in an air crash. Of course, whatever scraps of information are there in official records about this and multiple other matters of great concern to the public remain sealed from them. Each political party promises transparency but lapses into amnesia once it assumes office. Strangely, historians write in glowing terms about the way in which events have been guided by the leaders who took office from 15 August 1947 onwards. Should any citizen express a view less rosy, some busybody is certain to get filed an FIR against such temerity, and a kindly magistrate is thereupon likely to convert this into a judicial proceeding that has the ability to drain the finances, the time and sometimes even the liberty of those less adulatory than the hero worshipping historians of India. Why, how and by whom the partition of India took place is an insufficiently discussed subject. Had those who led the newly independent country reversed through force the Churchill-Jinnah partition of the country that was almost effortlessly implemented through Mountbatten, the geopolitical consequences would have been immense. The undivided country would have immediately been among the top four players in global geopolitics, the way China became after Mao Zedong integrated Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang into the People’s Republic of China.

Had Abraham Lincoln been as unwilling to resort to a just war in 1861 as the Congress Party troika was in 1947, had he kept silent as the Confederacy was created by slaveholders in the southern states of the US, the country would not have been the global power it became soon after the trauma and losses suffered during the civil war. The price of war was high, but the future rewards of unity were much higher. “If” is an interesting term in history, and it is less than certain that the politicians who took office as President of the US after the passing away of Franklin Roosevelt would have had the will to go ahead with a bloody conflict, had there been a secessionist bid during their tenures in office. The question seems wholly academic now, but may not be a decade from now, given the less than subtle efforts of many within Team Trump to “Make America White Again”. Even a casual visitor to the US senses a growing divide within the country. A divide that is based on race, on income and opportunity and that is based on beliefs. It is a matter of disappointment that Donald Trump, who is as feisty in the White House as he was in Trump Tower fighting back challenges to his real estate empire, appoints office-holders who have the same mindset as Stephen Miller, a Trump White House luminary who would clearly be delighted were 40% of the present US population to sail away to Asia, Africa and South America permanently. Sadly for Miller and others who owe fealty to such views, he was born about 90 years too late. The US that Miller and his clones are seeking to change is very different from what was the country then. Today, African-Americans (to take an example) are represented in newsrooms and on television in a manner that is far more pronounced than is the case with those of select historically disadvantaged societal groups in India, who in India remain substantially under-represented even in the “liberal” professions. In US boardrooms, in faculty clubs, as well as in several other institutions, the many of those present look very different from what a Stephen Miller wants a US citizen to look like. Whether through seeking to reduce the recorded population of states such as Texas, California and New York through changing census classifications or trying to push many whose ethnicity is not European into leaving the country, the present Republican Party leadership is battling a tide that is too swollen to hold back. Even with the help of a Senate majority guided by a Stephen Miller cast of mind, and a Supreme Court that is looking more like a Miller court with each new appointment, at most two more US Presidential elections can be won by such tactics. After that, the Republican Party will become too toxic to win back the White House in a generation. It is surprising why a US President at home in the liberal traditions of New York has allowed his administration to increasingly resemble that of Governor George Wallace of Alabama in the 1960s. Hopefully, the Real Donald Trump will step forward and be the colour-blind unifier that the times demand.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/make-america-white-trump-aide-miller

‘Hindu assertion’ is the effect of governance bias (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

The continuing disconnect from ancient tradition of the three holy sites is creating an invisible sense of victimhood in the minds of hundreds of millions of Hindus.

Since the 1980s, there has been a growing consolidation of what may be described as “Hindu-ness” in India. This ought not to be a surprise. Since 1947, political parties seemed to forget what the majority community was in their incessant focus on the minorities, principally the Muslims. Unfortunately, in a trait that is shared by policymakers across the globe, those involved in policymaking identified the interests of the Muslim community with those espoused by a fringe of religious fundamentalists. As a consequence, even a Prime Minister as modern and well-travelled in his outlook and ways as Rajiv Gandhi panicked at a few less-than-spontaneous demonstrations and statements into getting passed the Muslim Women’s Bill, an action that further entrenched the fringe at the heart of decisions involving the community. Rajiv Gandhi heeded the counsel of those in awe of hardliners, and refused to back his minister Arif Mohammad Khan in the latter›s support to the Shah Bano judgment of the Supreme Court. Not that such a choice was an unusual event in the politics of the country. Since Mahatma Gandhi›s backing for the quixotic Khilafat movement and the refusal by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to seek to reform Muslim personal law in the manner he did in the 1950s with certain outdated traditions of the Hindu faiths, ending in the effort by the Manmohan Singh government to get passed a «communal violence» bill that in effect made it mandatory on the part of the authorities to act as though only the Hindus were guilty of communal violence, the direction of state policy was to take for granted the acceptance of the Hindu population to being treated as though they in fact were the minority. Another UPA gem was the Right to Education Act, in which only schools begun by Hindus have to set aside a quarter of their seats for students who are in effect chosen by local officials and politicians. In a country where the Christian community in particular has distinguished itself by setting up a plethora of educational and other institutions, such an exclusion must be galling for the many Muslims and Christians who wish to join their Hindu brethren and be part of the solution to the problem the RTE was intended to assist in solving. Similarly, there will be more than a few within the Muslim community who are less than joyful at the fact that those in their community who seek more than a single wife are even after 1947 given the freedom to do so, a freedom not enjoyed by them in any other country where the community is in a minority. Even traditions as violative of gender justice as the practice of triple talaq have been allowed to continue without any hindrance.

When India became free in 1947, it was expected that the policy introduced during the British era of taking over temples would get reversed. Both in 1998 as well as in 2014, with the coming to office of two BJP-led governments, it was taken as imminent that temples would be rendered as free of state control as churches and mosques are. Instead, even the few large temples still outside the clutches of the government are by one means or the other entering the clutches of the administration of the day. Much of the donations that flow liberally to such seized property get spent in ways that are very different from the intent of the donors. These are but of a few of the ways in which in India, the majority community suffers from several of the disabilities that the minorities endure in countries where Religious Dominance reigns. Among the most consequential is the fact that what are acknowledged as the three most holy sites of the Hindu faith remain cut away from the tradition that they had been nurtured in for millennia. These are the Ram Janmabhumi, the Krishna Janmasthan and Gyan Vapi in Varanasi, the latter being as precious to Hindus as the Vatican is to Catholics. Both the Ram Janmabhumi as well as the Krishna Janmasthan are akin to what Bethlehem is to the Christian faith. Given that India was partitioned on the basis of religion, and given that Hindus are over a billion in number out of the total population of the country, it may have been expected that these three holiest of holy sites would revert back to their ancient traditions, but as yet this has not only not happened, there seems very little prospect of it taking place at all. In the case of many Hindus, not overtly but subliminally, the continuing disconnect from ancient tradition of the three holy sites is creating an invisible sense of victimhood in the minds of hundreds of millions. Just as the creation of a firebreak stops a much larger fire from spreading, the return to ancient traditions of just these three sites would damp the feelings of victimhood that are the fuel for what is termed as “Hindu assertion”. That such a trend is taking place is obvious, but it needs to be understood that it has not been created by the BJP or its affiliates. Instead, several of the slogans of the BJP and its affiliates is the effect of this self-assertion of the majority community. Slogans that have repeatedly failed to get transformed into fact during periods of BJP rule.

Allow it to be mentioned with pride and love that the mother of this columnist belonged to the Muslim faith in the final decades of her life. Barring the fringe (that others continue to mistake for the whole), the Muslim community would overwhelmingly welcome rather than oppose the return to ancient traditions of the three sites at Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi. There will be a few Hindus who would say that the process of reclaiming ancient tradition should not stop at three, but go further. However, such individuals can be isolated and exposed as a fringe in the climate of hope and trust that would follow the peaceful return of the three sites. Even a politician as active in Hindu causes as Subramanian Swamy has several times stated that only the three sites mentioned above are needed to calm the waves of disquiet that have slowly built up strength across Hindu society. These three and not a single one more would be enough to create the firebreak needed to ensure that our country proceeds in the direction of brotherhood of all faiths.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/hindu-assertion-effect-governance-bias

India’s CEC becomes Censor-in-Chief (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Biopic on Modi has been banned by CEC until 2019 Lok Sabha elections get over.

The present Election Commission of India (ECI) , had it been around in the 1980s, may have stopped the screening of Attenborough’s Gandhi on the grounds that exhibiting the movie gave an electoral advantage to the party in which the Mahatma served for much of his life. Similarly, it may have advised US authorities to block the screening of Spielberg’s Lincoln during the period when a Presidential election was taking place, so that Lincoln’s Republican Party did not derive (what in the Commission’s view would be) an unmerited advantage caused by such a screening. The Chief Election Commissioner and his colleagues have banned Vivek Oberoi’s biopic on Narendra Modi from being screened until the lengthy 6-week period deemed necessary by the Election Commission for conducting the 2019 Lok Sabha elections gets over. Producer Vivek Oberoi ought to sue the EC for punitive damages, as the ban means that the very period when overflow audiences may be expected for the movie will end without it having been screened. The propensity of colonial-minded institutions and officials in India to pass order upon order that restricts the lifestyle, liberty and property of India’s 1.27 billion non-official citizens has only multiplied over the years rather than get scaled back, as ought to have been the case. In an order that has a scope apparently going beyond even the renowned Pyongyang Model of Free Speech, the ECI has ordained that any “material that subserves the purposes of any political entity or individual connected to it” needs to be blocked until examined by a committee headed by a retired Supreme Court judge or a former Chief Justice of a High Court. Given the pace at which the machinery of justice functions in India, it is a near certainty that a verdict on such a stoppage of free expression is unlikely to come before an election (or the next) get over. Should the committee finally rule against such orders, the EC could go on appeal to the higher courts, so that serving judges get the opportunity to deliberate and decide on the decisions of retired brethren. To those unschooled in the arcane mindset so beloved of officials steeped in the colonial processes lovingly retained by that admirer of officialdom, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, it seems odd to expect that political parties, candidates and their supporters would seek not to do what the Election Commission regards as anathema, which is to be in support of actions that have the effect of “furthering electoral gains” and “advancing the electoral prospects of a candidate or party”. Without specifying what it means, the Election Commission of India, which has been hand-picked by the Modi government, seeks to enforce a “level playing field” amongst all candidates and parties. Would the ECI clarify in operational terms what this vague phrase means? Will it start by enforcing the limits on expenses mandated by law, and disqualifying those candidates who exceed even by a rupee the unrealistically low election expenditure limits set by law.

Is a citizen of India so simple-minded that he or she would change voting behaviour simply by watching a movie, even assuming that such a change is not the fundamental right of every citizen? Is it not the right of every citizen to watch whatever movie he or she wishes, provided that it does not deal with noxious themes such as child pornography? Congress President Rahul Gandhi has refreshingly spoken several times about doing away with colonial-era laws such as those relating to criminal defamation, laws whose existence he was clearly unaware of during the ten years before his party lost the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Rather than seek to block a clearly adulatory movie about Modi, what admirers of the Nehru family should have done was to produce a film about Rahul Gandhi, showcasing him as the ideal 21st century leader that India needs. It needs to be added that while several may view either or both the Rahul and Modi biopics, few of them are likely to vote simply on the basis of such a viewing. Only the Election Commission of India believes that our citizens are too simple minded to be trusted with the products of cinematic licence. In the past, thousands of years ago, some in society were judged not deserving enough to be taught to read and write, and were forced to remain illiterate. Ekalavya had his thumb amputated for bettering a so-called “higher born” youth in archery. A similar complex, that most of us in India just do not merit the rights and freedoms enjoyed by citizens of countries such as the US or the UK, seems to be at play within the governance structure in India, where decisions that block information and restrict freedoms rain down by the hour upon a populace that believed it had been freed from colonial rule 72 years ago.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court of India seems to be listening to the need for transparency. The absurd proposition by a law officer that documents should be treated as non-existent because they were photocopied and published in a newspaper was just dismissed by the SC. A Law officer has now argued before the Apex Court that the ordinary citizen has no right to know just who is donating vast amounts of money to political parties, when almost nobody gives such a payment unless he or she is paying for past services or is giving an advance on future favours. Surely a citizen needs to know if individuals such Dawood Ibrahim, a sometimes resident of Karachi, are among those who through associates in India have given funds to any political party. Secrecy about sources will only protect the Dawood Ibrahims from discovery. Why should any law-abiding individual be “shy” of admitting that he or she has funded a political party? Surely that is not a crime in a democracy. Fortunately, the SC has dismissed such a colonial-era argument as well although as yet only the ECI and not the citizenry is to be given information on donors. Given that the colonial mindset of so many officials prevent them from regarding ordinary citizens of India as deserving of freedoms and rights denied them through a maze of laws and regulations based on the British era, hopefully the Supreme Court of India will move further in the direction it is now taking, much as the US Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren did in the 1960s to expand the boundaries of freedom in that country and create the foundations for strong growth. India needs a similar era of judicial activism in defence of rights and freedoms not of the state but of the citizen. Rights and freedoms that are essential for double digit economic takeoff in the era of the Knowledge Economy.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/indias-cec-becomes-censor-chief

Money, muscle, media fail Turkey’s ‘Caliph’ Erdogan (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

His stifling control over governance has not saved him from electoral disaster. 

After 17 years in power, during which his Justice & Development (AK) Party won every electoral contest it entered, President R.T. Erdogan of Turkey has just witnessed a defeat. That too, of proportions so substantial that it will give confidence to numerous foes of Erdogan and his policies who have long been silent, biding their time till the leader, whose followers consider him the new Caliph, loses enough support. Even cities such as Hatay and Adana, which were long considered as much an AK Party bastion as Amethi and Rae Bareli have been of the Congress Party, have switched to the opposition this time around. Given the heft that mayoral posts carry in the Turkish political system, the loss of Ankara and Istanbul to the Opposition will impact the next Presidential elections, opening the possibility that Erdogan will lose. Which is why attempts are being made by the AK Party, through use of pliant agencies, to try and overturn the popular verdict through tampering, a situation not unknown in India.

In Tamil Nadu’s Sivangaga constituency, for instance, the Electoral Officer decided in 2009 in an opaque fashion to declare P. Chidambaram the winner by around 3,000 votes. As has been the norm in the NDA government, whose score is unimpressive where actual VVIP accountability for financial crimes is concerned, the BJP-led government has shown no interest in investigating why the Sivaganga electoral officer in question took the decision he did during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. Perhaps this is another case of officials protecting other officials, an outcome that is rampant within the government. Worse, till now the array of legal talent available to Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been unable to convince the courts to not give order upon order to ensure that Chidambaram not be subjected to custodial interrogation. Son Karti, although briefly incarcerated, has been permitted to travel abroad almost at will because the government failed to convince the courts that the 2019 Lok Sabha candidate of the Congress Party from Sivaganga is influential enough and resourceful enough to ensure that records overseas be rendered harmless to the son of an individual whose many admirers claim that he is “100% certain” to be the next Finance Minister of India and “40% certain” to be the next Prime Minister, should the BJP be the loser on 23 May. Opacity is, of course, the preferred option in a governance system that has since 1947 followed with fealty British colonial practices.

To take a recent example, the Attorney General of India argued on 3 April before the nation’s apex court that the application of the Right to Information Act to the proceedings of the Supreme Court collegium (which selects judges) would “destroy judicial independence” and make both the judiciary as well as the government “shy”, whatever that means. Surely the AG has confidence in the integrity of the SC collegium. Given that the collegium functions in a manner optimum to the public interest, it would be to the credit of the apex court should its selection process be made transparent, the way they are in the United States. Those against whom false charges are made have the option to put the record straight in public. Unless such charges be shown to be accurate, there is scant cause for worry that the life of an individual subjected to the scrutiny of the public would be destroyed in the manner suggested by the principal law officer of the Government of India. And if the charges get substantiated, the candidate must be made to step aside from consideration. AG Venugopal needs to look at developments in technology, which are continuously making governance processes transparent that were otherwise cloaked in secrecy. Rather than be overtaken by technology and the rising hunger for information and accountability in the ultimate sovereign, the overwhelmingly youthful people of India, it would be best to accept the inevitable and be at the vanguard of the spread of transparency in the processes of governance, rather than seek to stymie the right of a free people to know how all those with immense power over their lives get chosen.

Returning to Turkey, with each year that he has been in power, Erdogan has sought to increase his powers and shorten the list of those opposing him. The media in Turkey resembles that in Cuba or in Vietnam, as does the judiciary and the election authorities. In effect, the law in Turkey is morphing into what President Erdogan wants it to be, much as the law in Pakistan is what the Chief of Army Staff regards as proper. During the elections just concluded, the stifling control that President Erdogan and his followers have over practically the entire spectrum of the governance mechanism in Turkey has not saved him or the party he leads from an electoral disaster. There are two reasons why. The first is that Erdogan deliberately sought to turn Turkish society away from modernisation by demonising such impulses as “anti-Turkish” (aka pro-Western) and boosting the heavily religious elements (mainly in rural society and in the small towns) as being the “genuine” Turks. This celebration of attitudes and lifestyles that the country has sought to leave behind since the time of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk has alienated Erdogan from much of the professional and student fraternity, although fear of jail is preventing most from openly expressing their disdain for the “Caliph”. The other reason for Erdogan’s fall in popularity is the fact that the Justice & Development Party is delivering neither. The country has become a quasi-religious autocracy (Turkey is the only country besides China that backs Pakistan on the Masood Azhar sanctions issue) that has jailed more journalists than any other country in the world. The judiciary trembles at the very mention of Erdogan’s name, and bends over backwards, forwards and sideways to carry out his wishes. As for development, Turkey has tipped into recession, the currency is in free fall, and unemployment is rising at an accelerating pace. Such facts on the ground have prevented the AK Party’s overwhelming superiority in money, muscle and media from ensuring a victory in the mayoral polls. Should President Erdogan try and gerrymander the results by using the election authorities and the judiciary, he is likely to witness a “Turkish Spring” similar to that just waged in Algiers against the dictator, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The waves of popular support for gaining the freedoms that are commonplace in mature democracies will doom those who seek to run their countries the way Stalin did the USSR. 2019 is not 1929.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/money-muscle-media-fail-turkeys-caliph-erdogan

Apprehend the ‘Hindu Terror’ mythmakers (Organiser)

By M D Nalapat

On February 19, 2007 powerful blasts killed nearly six dozen passengers and guards travelling from India to Pakistan on the Samjhauta Express. The blasts occured near Panipat without any prior warning. The only India-Pakistan train service had been launched on July 22, 1976 in the glow of the 1971 victory of the combined Indian Army and the Mukti Bahini over the genocidal troops of the Pakistan army stationed in that territory. Although the former had inflicted a comprehensive defeat on the latter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi heeded the entreaties of Prime Minister ZA Bhutto of Pakistan (who had repeatedly called for a thousand year war with India, besides other unflattering epithets describing this country and its people) and allowed each of the 93,000 Pakistan army Prisoners of War to return to their stations in Pakistan without any of them having to face charges of genocide before a court comprising of Indian and Bangladeshi military personnel assisted by human rights activists.

Neither was there any serious effort from the Indian side to ensure that Prime Minister Bhutto agree to the ceasefire along the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir as the recognised boundary, together with the return of Haji Pir to India after it had been given away to Pakistan at Tashkent in 1965. Nor was any effort made to free the many prisoners (including members of the armed forces) who had been incarcerated and tortured in jails in Pakistan for long periods of time, some of whom may still have survived to the present even under such atrocious conditions. India lost at the negotiating table all that had been won by this country’s army, navy and air force on the battlefield, and got in exchange nothing except a whiff of Shalimar perfume from Prime Minister Bhutto. Once he was deposed and executed by Chief of Army Staff Zia-ul-Haq, who made frequent use of the Samjhauta Express for ferrying operatives and communications gear across the border to ISI elements in India who were in the process of launching the Khalistan Movement that would create mayhem in the Punjab for more than a decade. As has been the case in India with several events involving national security, an enquiry was launched that meandered along on a lazy course, despite evidence that the blast had been carried out on the instructions of GHQ Rawalpindi, using local recruits and material. After a comprehensive enquiry conducted on its own, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned a Pakistan national, Arif Qasmani, for inter alia being among the perpetrators of the blasts that took place on the Samjhauta Express two years back.

As a consequence of briefings received from international sources disturbed at the speed with which Pakistan was becoming an endemic focus of terror on the globe, The Sunday Guardian has over the years carried multiple reports on a plan developed and carried out by GHQ Rawalpindi. In order to divert global attention away from itself, GHQ Rawalpindi put into operation a plan to create a perception that India too had become a terror hub. In particular, that the terror gangs were from the majority community. This plan is in operation even at the present time, with the worldwide network of ISI agents of influence (including select NGOs) busy planting the myth that India is a country where Hindu gangs murder and kill the same way as Wahabbi groups do in Pakistan and Afghanistan. More than a few of the attacks on Christian churches and the killings of Muslims accused of keeping or trading in beef have been carried out by what was termed by Vladimir Lenin as “useful idiots”. These are individuals who carry out the wishes of the ISI without knowing that this is the organisation pulling the strings. Several in fact believe that they are acting against the ISI when they carry out acts of violence. The reality is that they have been motivated by “false flag” recruiters who conceal the fact that they are acting on behalf of GHQ Rawalpindi. Trackers of Pakistan-based terror masterminds say that around a sixth of the recruitments made by the ISI in India are from Hindu or other non-Muslim communities, while another fifth consist of “useful idiots” from the same social group. These perform in the manner demanded by the ISI without most of them being aware of the involvement of that organisation in the planning of their activities. Some of the agents and superiors of the ISI occupy positions of responsibility within cities in India, and are in a position to influence policymakers to commit actions that in effect assist the ISI in its operations in India. These may be divided into two broad streams:

 

(a) Standard terror operations across the country

 

(b) False flag terror operations (such as some cases involving the murder of those suspected of transporting or storing beef) designed to assist the global campaign of the ISI to spread the myth that India is in the grip of a wave of “Hindu terror” and ought to be placed in the same category as Pakistan

 

Two countries track events and personalities in Pakistan far more in detail than do agencies based in India. These are China and the United States. Individuals in both became aware of the plan developed by GHQ Rawalpindi at the start of 2007 to damage the reputation of India by portraying the Majority Community as a collection of violent fanatics. This from a country whose minority population has declined from 38% of the population in 1947 to less than 2% now, while in India, those within the citizenry who are not Hindu by faith have crossed 200 million, three times what they were on the day Jawaharlal Nehru correctly said that he and his associates had redeemed their pledge to the people, but “not wholly or in full measure”, a characterisation that has remained accurate through the decades since that remark was made on August 15,1947. Based on inputs provided by trackers of GHQ-inspired terrorism who are based outside the country, The Sunday Guardian warned repeatedly in its columns that the ISI was in the process of implementing an operation designed to portray India’s majority community as having almost as many terrorists within their midst as Wahabbi groups in Pakistan.

 

It is likely that the Samjhauta blast was carried out by the ISI precisely because most of the victims would be Pakistani nationals, and hence it would be credible were Islamabad to deny that its agencies had any hand in the outrage. In tandem, networks in India were tasked with launching “False Flag” operations, so that members of the Hindu community could get blamed for carrying out acts of terror. It needs to be emphasised that a few such actions (though not the Samjhauta blasts) may have been carried out by “useful idiots” of the ISI recruited by those who camouflaged themselves as being patriots. However, these would have been insignificant in number when compared to the mayhem unleashed by Wahabbi groups Investigations into the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai were marked by the reluctance of elements in the higher levels of the Home Department of the State of Maharashtra to acknowledge that there were local elements who had assisted the death squads that had come ashore from Pakistan to carry out the attacks. Information about each of the locations that were attacked was provided by members of the networks supporting ISI activities in Mumbai. Despite denials from Islamabad, it was soon obvious to trackers based in New York that the operation was carried out by the ISI. However, even the capture of Ajmal Kasab was not sufficient to convince some high profile individuals in Delhi and Mumbai that the military in Pakistan was behind the attack. Some even blamed Indian agencies on the grounds that “the attacks were carried out by Indian agencies to defame Pakistan”. Such individuals are clearly the “useful idiots” of the ISI.

 

However, the manner in which a clutch of officials and politicians concocted the nursery tale of “Hindu Terror” gives rise to the supposition that at least some within this group of creators of the fantasy of “Hindu Terror” could have been willing agents (as distinct from dupes) of the ISI. It is astonishing that the BJP-led government that took office on May 26, 2014 has not so far done any enquiry into the cabal of officials and politicians who spun the web of deceit that there was a gargantuan and growing “Hindu Terror” network in India.

 

Despite some officials revealing that they were tortured for refusing to hop onto the bandwagon of the mythmakers, despite affidavits having been forged or destroyed, despite records having been tampered with concerning Operation Hindu Terror, not a single official or politician (including the two Union Home Ministers and their yes-men within the official machinery) who worked 24/7 to concoct the fantasy that there was a “Hindu Terror” network in the country) has been investigated and made accountable by the present government. It is these individuals who sought to divert attention away from the ISI in the case of the Samjhauta blasts by blaming innocent people belonging to the majority community. Such a looking away from the need to bring to book the guilty brings back memories of the Cryogenic Engine Sabotage Operation, when innocent scientists were falsely accused of espionage by officials working (as either frank agents or as useful idiots) of a foreign intelligence agency seeking to sabotage India's cryogenic engine program. None of those who participated in the torture of innocent scientists have been disturbed, although some justice has been given to Nambinarayanan, who was among the victims of the operation carried out by local dupes and associates of a foreign intelligence agency.

 

Mahatma Gandhi forgave even Adolf Hitler, so saintly was the Father of the Nation. This government has adopted the saintly attitudes of the Mahatma by refusing to take action against the higher ups who carried out GHQ Rawalpindi's plan to defame a country and a community. Unless this group be exposed and punished, more such sabotage of the national interest as took place in the Cryogenic Engine Sabotage Operation or the Hindu Terror Operation will take place, weakening the country and damaging its reputation.

https://www.organiser.org/Encyc/2019/4/1/Apprehend-the-Hindu-Terror-.html

The North Block-RBI effect on Lok Sabha polls (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

North Block has continued Chidambaram-era policies with increased gusto. India needs low interest rates, low taxes and low regulations for double digit growth.

Raghuram Rajan continued the damage done to the Indian economy by his predecessor, former Reserve Bank of India Governor Yaga Reddy. Apparently responding to suggestions from merchant bankers in wealthy countries, Reddy raised bank interest rates mercilessly, a toxic brew continued by Rajan, a Chicago School economist whom Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal and Rahul Gandhi have separately praised on multiple occasions. Perhaps such admiration was because of the dimming of memory of the havoc that was caused to the poor and the middle class in South America and elsewhere by Chicago School economic theories being put into practice. Both Reddy and Rajan have immense respect for western economics, yet this has not reduced their enthusiasm for carrying out central bank policies that are the opposite of those seen in wealthy economies. In each of these, as also in fast-developing China, interest rates are kept low so as to increase investment, lower the costs of business, and spur consumption in the economy rather than the hoarding of private cash in banks. In contrast, arbitrage sharks from wealthy countries seek a policy of high interest rates in India, so that they can borrow dollars, pounds or euros in banks located in their headquarter country and deposit them in India so as to get the advantage of high interest rates. In India, even companies that have an “A” rating pay 10% and more in bank interest. The plight of weaker companies can therefore be imagined. Small wonder that the toxic economic policies of the Chidambaram era (that have been continued by North Block even after 26 May 2014) has led to Indian businesses being reduced to morphing as underpriced pickings for foreign funds such as Canada’s Brookfield. This group has recently invested both in a stressed New York property belonging to the Kushner family as well as—soon afterwards—in Westinghouse, a nuclear power company in the US that has, after its takeover by the fund, received a raft of orders, including from India and very soon, Saudi Arabia. It would of course be churlish to claim any link between (a) the rescue of Kushner’s skyscraper in New York (b) the acquisition at a low price of Westinghouse, a company that had a very skimpy order book when it was taken over and (c) the fact that it is now bloated with orders for its nuclear power plants.

Good intentions are of little value if the policies generated by such thoughts get formulated solely by officials and their lawyers and accountants. Entrepreneurial input is needed for efficacious policy. In the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code of India (IBC) for example, which came into force about two years ago, it was thought that recovering the dues of an ailing business would (through the Code) be made as simple in India as it is in countries such as the US or the UK. Although around 12,000 cases have been filed under the IBC, as on date, less than 20 have actually been resolved. Under the restrictively designed Section 29A of the Code, promoters whose companies have become unviable (even if because of causes beyond their control) have been placed in the same category as those who have been delinquent in their responsibilities. If an individual is in charge of a company that holds a non-performing asset beyond a year, he or she now gets summarily excluded from any future link with the company, even if the role of such an individual within a company has been to mitigate the negative effects of deterioration in overall business conditions, including interest rates pegged at Reddy-Rajan levels. Clearly, the IBC has been drafted by individuals who have themselves not begun or run a company, but by those whose entire career has been in the bureaucracy. Lately, the one year period has been shortened to 180 days, after which the company is told to await its fate in the bankruptcy court. This when even three years is often too short a period in India for a business turnaround, given the pace at which government departments as well as the justice mechanism function. Let us not even talk about the Kafkaesque complexity that made it torture for companies big and small to carry out GST reporting and payments obligations. Even North Block has had to dilute some of its absurdly complex provisions because of widespread distress among those paying GST. A growing economy depends on a brisk circulation of money, and this was reduced substantially by the November 8, 2016 demonetisation. Another damper on availability of bank finance (apart from “phone banking” NPAs for which only the bank officers and not the politicians making the calls get caught) has been the wave of arrests of bank officials in a rising number of cases. It remains a mystery—among many—why Rs 12,000 crore worth of Vijay Mallya’s assets have been frozen by the Enforcement Directorate rather than used to repay his debts, as the frozen cash is much more than the money owed to banks that lent money to Kingfisher Airline. Fortunately for air passengers, the bureaucracy has not killed off Jet Airways in the manner it did Mallya’s pride turned folly.

Given the “Jail Them Now” signals coming out of the offices of the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) and no doubt soon from the Lokpal, there is no guarantee that a bank manager sanctioning a loan or resolving the financial troubles of a faltering company will not lead to a visit and worse by the CBI even after a decade. Only a very courageous banker now dares to sanction loans in these days of cash famine when even profitable companies take nearly a year to pay suppliers of goods and services what is owed out of normal business.

There was a time not long ago when the telecom sector, for example, employed more than ten million people and counting. Around half of those jobs have been lost over the past decade, which saw the Supreme Court cancel nearly 200 telecom licences in a single decision. Whether it be Systema, Telenor, Aircel,RCom or Tata, they have all lost horrendous amounts of money in India because of a dizzying and ever changing maze of regulations. And telecom is not the only sector to have seen its employment totals shrink. The UPA-era destruction by P Chidambaram and his official accomplices of an Indian commodity exchange that had expanded into Dubai and Singapore caused a further loss of close to a million jobs. Despite Narendra Modi replacing Manmohan Singh, North Block has continued most Chidambaram-era policies with increased gusto. India needs low interest rates, low taxes and low regulations for double digit growth. If such RBI-North Block policies do not materialise and soon, there will be over a hundred million very upset youths roaming the streets of India within the term of the next government. Should Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the party he leads fall substantially short of a majority in the next Lok Sabha, he has only to stroll across the road from South Block to North Block to find out why.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/north-block-rbi-effect-lok-sabha-polls

Forecasts of Opposition defeat are premature (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

The 2019 verdict will as much be a verdict on the performance of North Block as it will be on the achievements of South Block.

The Congress Party seemed on the edge of irrelevance, if not extinction, after the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. During the poll campaign, there was a steady barrage of allegations of corruption against the top leaders of the UPA government. After the polls, it was expected that the country would before long witness a series of trials of the UPA grandees, in which they would face charges of misuse of office and the securing of illicit wealth. Such trials never took place, and not surprisingly. The new government handed over power to the civil service on a scale seldom seen in the country’s history. Civil servants have the primary responsibility for governance, acting under the directions of the Prime Minister’s Office. The Modi PMO is headed by the formidable duo of Ajit Doval and Nripendra Misra, both loyal to—and in sync with—Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Not surprisingly for the traditions of his cadre, Doval has relied overwhelmingly on the Indian Police Service (IPS) in matters relating to security and Misra on the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). While the UPA chaired by Sonia Gandhi involved civil society to an extent in the framing of policy, such division of responsibility (for policy analysis and discussion) between the civil service and civil society was dispensed with by Prime Minister Modi. Even in the appointment of the Lokpal, the only “lok” under consideration for membership in this latest of anti-corruption watchdogs has been the tiny fraction of the population comprising former members of the civil service and the higher judiciary. Entrusting even a few responsibilities within the governance mechanism to those outside this tiny subset of India’s 1.27 billion people was a leap too far for the present government, which has followed the example of its predecessor in filling even the Right to Information boards with those whose entire career has been marked by the keeping away from the public of information relating to the processes of governance. In other words, selections to RTI boards have been made from those who have spent their working lives in the executive and the judiciary. The public are, as usual, looking in from the outside, following the practice inherited from the days of the British colonial period and retained and added on to since the departure of the former colonial masters to the UK. As the very civil servants who assisted UPA grandees in their fund collection continued in office undisturbed by the change in the leadership of the Central government that took place on 26 May 2014, it is no surprise that none of the UPA grandees serially accused of serial wrongdoing by the BJP during the 2014 Lok Sabha campaign have had to spend a day in prison. Prosecuting them would have led to questions about the role of certain prominent civil servants in facilitating their activities. Today, to take just a single example, the absence of any prosecutorial action since 2014 against the DMK top tier by the present government (indeed, the post-2014 exoneration of DMK bigwigs including Dayanidhi Maran and A. Raja) could put that party in a position to (along with the Trinamool Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party) make the difference between majority and minority status in the next Lok Sabha.

In the next Lok Sabha, it is as close to a certainty as is possible in politics that the Congress Party will emerge as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha after the BJP. Its regional allies would like the Congress Party to gain enough seats to ensure that a non-BJP government takes office, but would be almost as dismayed as the BJP were the Congress LS tally to cross 110 seats. Even if a generous portion of seats had been given by Congress to the BSP (if not the SP, whose influence in these states is slight), the Congress Party would have secured more seats in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh than it eventually did, thereby not simply bruising the BJP, but humiliating it at the hustings, the way that took place during the Bihar Assembly polls. Given the reality of the threat that a BJP led by Narendra Modi would pose to the Congress were it to return to office, it would have made strategic sense to have cut a generous deal with the BSP and even allocated a few seats to the SP in the three states just mentioned, rather than enter into a situation where most of the votes secured through the charisma of Priyanka Gandhi will come from the SP-BSP rather than from the BJP kitty. There is logic in the attacks being made by ruling party campaigners against Rahul and Priyanka, for making them and not the rest of the opposition the main focus of negative attention (in states where there is no seat adjustment between 24 Akbar Road and other anti-BJP parties) will ensure that the Congress Party polls more anti-Modi votes at the expense of other anti-Modi parties. Prime Minister Modi has a mind and a memory that is remarkable for its depth and intensity, and it is likely that he has understood the error made through listening to those Union Cabinet colleagues who urged the PM to be “statesmanlike and not vindictive” and abstain from prosecuting UPA-era grandees, in the belief that they would never (at least in 2019) pose a threat to the BJP majority in the Lok Sabha. BJP rhetoric about hyper-graft during the UPA days is met by the retort that “nothing was proved over the last five years”, thereby considerably weakening the effectiveness of a line of attack that was central to CM Modi becoming PM Modi. The opposition parties, should they come to power, will not be as forgiving of the BJP in terms of enquires and prosecutions as the present ruling party has been of them during its term.

Modi is far and away the most popular leader in the country, but so was Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he battled Sonia Gandhi in 2004. The performance of North Block during the term of the present government has not been anything to write home about, although several of the officials who have so clumsily handled important responsibilities during this period have been given generous promotions. The 2019 verdict will as much be a verdict on the performance of North Block as it will be on the achievements of South Block, which is why it is too early to bring out the champagne in the BJP’s new headquarters.
https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/forecasts-opposition-defeat-premature

Kim on course to resume nuclear tests after Trump’s Hanoi walkout (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

The North Koreans claim that during the talks in Vietman, Donald Trump was ‘clearly not the person in command’ on the US side.

Beijing: North Korea’s leader, Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un, may order fresh nuclear tests and missile launches as a consequence of his interaction with US President Donald J. Trump in Hanoi. The manner in which Trump conducted the meeting was, in the view of the other side, wholly different from the businesslike and confident manner the New York billionaire had shown in his earlier Singapore summit with Kim. This time around, the US President was clearly a “prisoner of the gangster group led by (NSA) Bolton and (Secretary of State) Pompeo”, according to the DPRK side. Discussions at a location in Northeast Asia with those familiar with the thinking of the leadership core of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have made it clear that trust within North Korea’s key policymakers is diminishing in the ability—if not as yet the willingness—of President Donald J. Trump of the United States to “sincerely negotiate an agreement with Pyongyang that meets the DPRK’s conditions” of (1) assured regime survival over the long term, and (2) a green light to all countries to initiate unrestricted inbound and outbound trade, investment and commercial flows with Pyongyang.

According to these individuals, the Donald Trump who met with DPRK Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un in Hanoi was visibly different from the “much more confident and assured man” who met with Kim in Singapore. This time around, the US President was “clearly not the person in command” on the US side, and during the course of the talks, was “completely reliant” on cues made over to him by his “Cold War associates”, in contrast to Trump at the Singapore summit, “who took his own decisions”. It needs to be mentioned that in the view of the North Korean leadership core, almost all the official associates of Trump adhere to Cold War views and seek to “tempt and mislead” the Supreme Commander of North Korea into taking what the US side has demanded “for the past 40 years”, which is to make concessions that would permanently incapacitate the ability of the DPRK to have any nuclear-related program, including that relating to non-military uses. They said that such a de-nuclearization could “only evolve on a regional basis and over a period of time sufficient to build complete trust between the US and North Korean sides”. It is not possible “in the arrogant hurry (that US officials demanded in Hanoi of the DPRK) through the mouth of President Trump”.

According to the interlocutors spoken to at the Northeast Asian location, the US position at the Hanoi talks (as articulated by the 45th President of the world’s most powerful country) was that Supreme Commander Kim should “blindly follow the wishes of Washington” and that only after he obeyed could any discussion on matching US steps take place. They added that “the US side was evasive and unclear about the road map, if any, for corresponding concessions on their side”, which gave rise to the suspicion that “all that they wanted was to trick North Korea into (unilaterally) abandoning its most effective deterrent against aggression and getting only honeyed words from President Trump and vague promises from his official associates in return”.

‘TRUMP NOT WILLING TO LISTEN’

While the abrupt “walking away” of President Trump from the negotiating and even the mealtime table at Hanoi surprised the globe, key elements close to the leadership core of the DPRK see the manoeuvre as “pre-planned” and designed as an attempt to “humiliate the leadership (of North Korea) before the international community”. The Presidential snub came at a time when, in the North Korean view, Supreme Commander Kim was “attracting tens of millions of admirers all over the world every month for his steadfast commitment to a permanent peace on the Korean peninsula in line with the wishes of the noble Korean nation”. Unlike at the Singapore meeting, “when President Trump paid great attention to the ideas expressed by Supreme Commander Kim”, President Trump in Hanoi seemed “not even to want to listen to the DPRK leadership, but simply repeated over and over that he (Trump) should be trusted and his wishes obeyed immediately, because (in his view) he was a man who all his life had kept his word”. Trump “over and over” said that the North Korean side should obey the wishes of the US delegation by repeating, in effect, what Saddam Hussein and later Muammar Gaddafi had agreed to in Iraq and Libya earlier. President Trump wanted the US view to prevail “in order to dazzle his people with the sacrifice of the safety of the Korean people, while not caring about the harsh impact on the noble people should the nuclear defensive systems so painfully created by them over several decades be surrendered”, and that too “without any clear and enforceable plan” from the US side about how and when they would ensure that the “irreplaceable conditions” (of regime survival and freedom of operation within the international trading system) be made operational. On the contrary, the US side was “vague and evasive” about the steps they would take in response to acceptance of their demands, talking only in “generalities and in sugary formulae without specific action plans and time frames”. In contrast, the US side had “well-thought out timeframes and action plans that they wanted the DPRK to accept and to immediately begin implementing”.

During the nearly two dozen discussions that have taken place with different elements of the US and the North Korean side over the past eleven months, it was obvious that “none of the associates of President Trump have given up their repeatedly stated desire to force the end of the DPRK popular regime led by the wise hand of the Supreme Commander” and get it replaced with a “puppet government led by traitors to the noble Korean people” that Washington would fully control. To the shock of the delegation from Pyongyang, the US side acted as though South Korea “had zero power to take independent decisions”, and that Washington would decide “all such matters on behalf of Seoul”. In fact, the US side claimed in conversation that “no country, including China and Russia, would dare to disregard the sanctions imposed on the DPRK through the United Nations Security Council”, and that the noble Korean people would “starve to death unless the leadership core surrendered to US demands”. Such “inhuman thought” created “grave doubts” in the North Korean side about the “sincerity of the US side to negotiate an agreement that met the minimum conditions” set by the DPRK leadership for any agreement on regional de-nuclearization.

‘ASKED ONLY FOR TRADE’

According to the individuals spoken to from a Northeast Asian location, all that the North Korean side asked in Hanoi was to “permit their compatriots in the South as well as fraternal countries such as the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, to have trade and commercial links with the DPRK without fear of US retaliation”. They added that this was all that was requested in exchange for “verifiable and substantial measures that would be concurrently get taken by the DPRK towards de-nuclearization” of the Korean peninsula. However, the US position, as articulated by President Trump, was that “the DPRK should first surrender and then the US side would decide what rewards should be given for such life-changing and permanent concessions”. Also, the US side was firm that it was expected that China, Russia and South Korea must obey Washington and impose “gangster sanctions on the Korean people”. Unlike during the Singapore meeting, when President Trump was more attentive to the other point of view and seemed less guided by his associates, in Hanoi he kept “repeating the same formulas that had been talked about by his associates earlier in their discussions (with the North Korean side) and which had already been rejected as inadequate”. Trump in Hanoi seemed much less interested in a genuine negotiation and remained focused on “insisting on his point of view and on his conditions being unconditionally and immediately accepted”. Only the “polite nature of Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un and the innate culture of the noble Korean people ensured that at no stage was the Supreme Commander unfriendly or disrespectful to the much older US President”, who was clearly in the “mental grip of Cold War associates and was no longer free to express or to implement his own ideas” the way he did during the Singapore meeting between the two leaders.

While there was a casual mention of an offer of a meeting in Washington later in the year, it was made clear both by Trump as well as separately by his associates that “this would be a surrender ceremony, and that before the visit, the process of eliminating DPRK’s main defensive systems should begin”. When the Supreme Commander made it clear that “national honour would not permit such a one-sided deal”, President Trump declared “in a tutored manner” that the conference was over and that “he was returning to Washington immediately”. It was clear that the US President was “only following the script written out for him by the Cold Warriors that filled his team”, and that he “no longer had either the will or the ability to come to a decision on his own that was fair to both sides and not a surrender”. The North Korean side became aware of the change in President Trump since the previous meeting. The earlier “decisiveness and autonomy of thought and suggestions for action” that the President of the US had in past meetings and communications was “totally absent” in Hanoi from the start.

FADING HOPES OF COMPROMISE

“Honour intact and preserving his steel will”, Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un returned to headquarters after the Hanoi summit and immediately afterwards convened successive meetings of the core leadership of North Korea. What the decisions were at such meetings was not indicated, but there seems a possibility that the North Korean side has given up hopes of a mutually agreed compromise, at least during the period when a weakened President Trump is in office. If this be so, they are likely to resume the development of “nuclear defensive systems”, including a hydrogen device, that the leadership core believes would insulate them from the possibility of attack by the US and the country they loathe even more than they do the US, which is Japan. In contrast, there is substantial goodwill within Pyongyang for South Korea and its people. According to the interlocutors spoken to, the manner in which the US side talked of South Korea, as though it were a “slave state that had no right to take its own decisions”, shocked the DPRK delegation. The expectation in Pyongyang is that “the noble spirit of the Korean people will rise within the (South Korean) leadership and ensure that the two sides cooperate with each other and build stronger and stronger bonds so that the entire peninsula benefits”.

However, the question in Pyongyang is the extent to which the Moon Jae-In government can withstand pressure from the Trump administration to retain the harsh sanctions regime that is in place on the DPRK. The attitude of China and Russia will be crucial. If Moscow and Beijing refuse to participate in what is described by the sources spoken to as “collective punishment by the US government of the Korean people for their refusal to surrender when they did not even after the 1950s’ war with the US”, a South Korea under the current leadership may follow the example of Beijing and Moscow, and should Washington object, may begin to adopt a “non-aligned” posture in the emerging Cold War 2.0 between the Russia-China axis and the US-led alliance, the key component of which in East Asia is Japan, the target of much of North Korea’s nuclear offensive systems.

‘WEAK TRUMP CANNOT DELIVER’

The perception of a US President so weakened by the viciously personal attacks on him and his family members that he has lost all freedom of manoeuvre does not entirely fit such moves by Trump as his repeated efforts at getting funding for a border wall that has the ability to prevent illegal crossings only in a Hollywood movie. What seems clear is that the leadership in Pyongyang, in its decision to enter into substantive talks with the US side, relied on the “businessman realism” of Donald Trump and his power as the Chief Executive of the US “leading the majority party” to ensure a “fair” agreement that would have a “mutually acceptable timetable involving corresponding and simultaneous measures by both sides, rather than any unilateral concession” by the DPRK. The loss of a Republican majority in the US House of Representatives and the toll that the Mueller-Cohen circus is having on the Trump Presidency seem to have diluted the earlier confidence in Pyongyang that President Trump had not just the intention, but the power to agree to and to implement on the US side what the leadership core in North Korea considers a fair deal. They attribute his insistence on “unconditional surrender” at Hanoi as being caused by his growing political weakness, leading to the US Head of State coming completely under the influence of individuals such as National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who in his earlier avatar as Director CIA is known by the DPRK leadership core to have worked on “plots for regime beheading” and encouraging a meltdown in North Korea. It has been noted by the “shrewd and far-seeing mind of the Supreme Commander” that neither Bolton nor Pompeo has expressed “any regret” for their longstanding position that the leadership core in Pyongyang needed to be eliminated through all or any available means. In the view of the DPRK leadership core, such a “lack of remorse” indicates that their “secret intention is to work towards a removal of the leadership while professing good intentions in the talks”.

Overall, it would seem a difficult task to once again persuade the North Korean side to believe in the possibility of what they consider a “fair” agreement meeting the two pre-conditions (regime survival and freedom to trade) that are “not negotiable”. After the Hanoi meeting that was cut short by the US side, the probability is for the DPRK to develop and to exhibit more lethal nuclear and missile “defence” capabilities, so as to make the US acknowledge the reality of a nuclear North Korea and stand aside while those countries that seek good relations with Pyongyang (principally South Korea) develop mutually beneficial linkages in, what this writer had, in a talk in the National Assembly at Seoul, termed a “Bright Sunshine Policy” towards North Korea.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/kim-course-resume-nuclear-tests-trumps-hanoi-walkout

China risking its own interests for Pak GHQ (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Beijing’s unhelpful stance on Azhar runs the risk of upsetting commercial ties between China and India.

It was ten years ago that China, prodded by the military in Pakistan, first placed a hold on the UN Security Council’s 1267 Sanctions Committee doing the obvious and declaring Masood Azhar as a global terrorist subject to international sanctions. Last month’s Pulwama attack, accepted as being his doing by Azhar himself, has created a mood in India that will no longer watch the government confine itself to platitudinal expressions of regret and concern at China’s solicitude for Masood Azhar. They ask for action, and an obvious target for those unhappy with Beijing’s support for Azhar would be telecom exports to India, which are in the $50 billion range this year in a total trade of over $100 billion. Of this, the surplus of exports over imports of China is $60 billion this year. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both India-China trade as well as China’s trade surplus with India has reached levels that are high and rising. In a situation where Chinese telecom manufacturers are facing protectionist measures from the US and from an increasing list of other countries, India has been an exception. Given the anger in India over China’s latest blocking of the move by all other UNSC members to designate Azhar as a global terrorist, Prime Minister Modi faces substantial criticism for being “soft on China”, and there is a clamour from within his own party to place restrictions on Chinese telecom imports into India on security grounds. The argument given by those asking for a complete ban on Chinese telecom products and services into India is that the industry is vital for internal security, and that by once again blocking efforts by the global community to assist India by taking a tough line against a self-acknowledged terrorist of long standing, China has shown that it continues to follow the wishes of the Pakistan military even when that force has been seeking to engulf India in chaos through resort to terrorism.

During 2009, 2016 and 2017, there were zero consequences from India for China’s blocking of UNSC action through a technical hold. This time around, the Government of India will earn the tag of being as careless about national security challenges as the A.B. Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh governments were, unless action gets initiated against Chinese trade with India. Only two countries support Pakistan over Azhar, and these are Turkey and China. As a consequence, an argument is being made by China-sceptics that normal commercial dealings with that country in telecom products carry a security risk. The post-Pulwama support shown by China to the Pakistan military and its terrorist associate crossed a red line on 13 March. Public anger at this move by China has surprised the Lutyens Zone, which is habituated to ignoring the harm done to India by other countries and refusing to retaliate in return. After the Azhar slap at the UNSC, Prime Minister Modi will be under pressure to retaliate, just as he did after the Pulwama massacre, fortunately with the backing of the major opposition parties, including the Congress Party led by Rahul Gandhi, all of whom are calling for a strong response by Modi to China’s latest veto on UNSC action against Azhar.

Beijing’s unhelpful stance on Azhar runs the risk of upsetting commercial ties between China and India. Trade is good for both countries. Even though the $100 billion figure seems large, in reality the potential of trade between the two countries that together hold 2.7 billion people is around $300 billion. Of this, India’s imports from China could be $200 billion and its exports $100 billion, comprising items such as services, Information Technology and pharmaceuticals. besides the raw materials that have thus far dominated this country’s exports to the other. Greater cultural contact between China and India would be good for both sides, with Chinese movie starts acting in Bollywood, Tollywood and other productions, and Indian actors and actresses acting in Chinese movies. Music, dance and other forms of entertainment could be made mutually popular, especially if television channels in both countries screen each other’s wares. Overall, there is no substantive cause for any type of conflict between the two most populous countries on the globe, provided China is on India’s side in the matter of cross-border terror.

The reason why GHQ Rawalpindi seeks to protect Azhar is obvious. It has put into operation a plan to make parts of Jammu & Kashmir another Taliban Afghanistan, and in such a transformation, the Jaish e Mohammed (JeM) has been given the lead role. Azhar, who was released in 1999 by the Vajpayee government, is therefore a prized asset of the Pakistan military. The surprise is that the hold of GHQ Rawalpindi over the decision-making process in Beijing is so strong that China repeatedly sacrifices its own interests in order to bat for a terrorist at the UNSC. Beijing has so misunderstood the post-Pulwama mood in India as to believe that this time as well its backing for GHQ Rawalpindi against India will as usual get overlooked, barring a few statements from the MEA. After GHQ Rawalpindi began its latest drive in 2015 to convert parts of Kashmir into an Afghanistan-style cauldron of violence to the detriment of the people living there, terror attacks planned by it and carried out by local recruits have become more and more audacious. Only a very strong response by India on any backing for such moves can retrieve the situation. After the latest technical hold on declaring Azhar a global terrorist, the option of placing curbs on China’s telecom exports to India is becoming an option that may be difficult for those looking only at corporate bottom lines to resist for much longer.

In 1971, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi through D.P. Dhar formed an alliance with the USSR that gave her the backstop needed to take on the Pakistan army. In the same way, India now needs to establish a close military alliance with the US. This would give Delhi the flexibility needed to take on Pakistan’s military once again as was done in 1971. Decisions such as the purchase of the S-400 system from Russia, or the delay in signing the third India-US foundation defence agreement, make no sense in the present geopolitical context. Of the two global superpowers, China has clearly declined to move away from its embrace of Pakistan. That leaves only the US as a superpower partner. The latest Chinese decision on Masood Azhar at the UNSC makes imperative the need to demonstrate that such a move cannot any more be followed by “business as usual”, especially in fields vital to security such as energy, infrastructure and telecom. China may soon learn that choices involve costs, and that by supporting the GHQ Rawalpindi terror machine against India, Beijing is putting at risk what is potentially its largest market in Asia.

https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/china-risking-interests-pak-ghq-rawalpindi

Iran and Taiwan: Two crises waiting to happen (Sunday Guardian)

By M D Nalapat

Mutual peeling away of Taiwan-related ambiguity by the PRC and the US points to the rising risk of a cross-strait confrontation between the two superpowers.

TAIPEI: If an international news channel is to be believed, Prime Minister “Bibi” Netanyahu of Israel has warned that his navy could soon move to prevent oil exports from Iran from reaching markets such as India, South Korea and Japan. It is impossible to close access through the Persian Gulf to Iran and keep the blockade limited to that country. The clerical regime in Teheran (as distinct from the lay establishment headed by President Hassan Rouhani) has both the means as well as the will to ensure that oil exports from other nearby countries too will get blocked through that passageway, a situation that could immediately double and treble oil prices to the detriment of the global economy. The Prime Minister of Israel, assuming that he is serious about seeking to block all exports of oil from Iran, will expect that the United States and Saudi Arabia will back him in such an enterprise. Unfortunately for him, the coming together of two friends of Iran—Russia and China—has resulted in another powerful military alliance being formed that is arrayed against select US strategic objectives (such as the emasculation of Iran). The potential for a major conflict is therefore far from absent. The Iranian military and security system is likely to respond to US-Israel-KSA moves not only by conventional means, but through the use of asymmetric methods, especially within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a grouping in which substantial Iran-responsive networks are embedded. Fresh fronts are likely to get launched against Israel via Lebanon, Syria and parts of Palestinian territory. Although President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarief of Iran are trying to convince the rest of the country’s leadership that the nuclear deal, or JCPOA, is still alive after the deathblows landed on it by Donald Trump, it is unlikely that many will fail to reach the conclusion that only a nuclear deterrent has the heft needed to protect Khameini’s Iran from going the way of Saddam’s Iraq or Gaddafi’s Libya. Just as Boltonesque US demands have almost certainly resulted in North Korea resuming work on developing and testing a hydrogen device as well as missiles capable of reaching the US east coast, it is likely that Iran will before long resume its march towards nuclear capability at an accelerated pace, to make up for the time lost through trusting the NATO powers to adhere to not just the letter but the spirit of the JCPOA. The US has abandoned both, the Europeans the latter. While North Korea seems to have crossed a deterrence threshold, thereby ensuring that military action against it would inflict unacceptable harm on Japan and Guam at the least, Iran is some way away from such immunity. Because of the hiatus in Teheran’s development of nuclear capability caused by the JCPOA negotiations and signing, the clerical regime in Iran is still vulnerable to an all-out military strike by the US and Israel, although such an attack is likely to generate side effects that are more toxic to the security of Israel than prevails at present. However, just as George W. Bush thought about Iraq in 2003, “Bibi” Netanyahu may believe that divine forces are on his side during a conflict with Iran, and this may lead to him pressing the long-threatened war trigger, especially once assured of US participation.

Another fuse waiting to be lit is across both sides of the Taiwan Straits. For decades, a deliberate ambiguity about the indefinite future course of events helped ensure that nothing more lethal than missile-rattling or warship cruises take place. However, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong early this year removed all ambiguity about Beijing’s operative plans for Taiwan. Xi Jinping has made it explicit that the “1992 Consensus” (embodying the fiction that while there is one China, both sides of the strait have different interpretations about the concept) cannot mark an indefinite pause, or indeed two different interpretations. The “1992 Consensus” must in a relatively brief period be followed by the absorption of Taiwan into the People’s Republic of China in a variation of Deng Xiaoping’s “One Country Two Systems” Hong Kong model. Under the Xi formulation, at best, Taipei can expect a “One Country Three Systems” solution, but cannot for much longer avoid merger with the PRC.

On the US side, there has been since the 1980s a corresponding ambiguity about the security status of Taiwan vis-a-vis what is still the world’s most lethal military. The Taiwan Relations Act does not explicitly make mandatory a US military response in the event of an armed attack on Taiwan by the PRC, nor thus far has Taipei been designated a US ally on the lines of Tokyo, Seoul and (despite Rodrigo Duterte) Manila. That is changing. A sprawling US “representative office”, complete with uniformed military guards, will soon open for business in Taipei, and it is likely that high level visits on both sides will begin, even before the next Taiwanese presidential election early next year. As yet unacknowledged in public, Taiwan seems on the way to becoming a defence and security ally of the US. This will be as part of the “First Island Chain”,which is intended to keep the PRC from accessing the eastern waters of the Indo-Pacific unimpeded. Driven by the imperative of regime survival in Taiwan, the DPP, under the shrewd and feisty Tsai Ing-wen, seems on course to strengthen US-Taiwan defence linkages in a second term enough as to remove any ambiguity about Washington’s response to a PRC invasion of the island. Clearly, the calculation in both Washington as well as Taipei is that such a development would take away the appetite in Beijing for initiating a cross-strait conflict. This mutual peeling away of Taiwan-related ambiguity by both the PRC as well as the US draws attention to the rising risk of a cross-strait confrontation between the two superpowers, which are now explicitly foes of each other in the manner that the US earlier was with the USSR

Should the JCPOA with Iran melt down formally as it already has in practice; should Netanyahu form a ruling coalition of even more hardline elements than presently after the Israeli election and move against Teheran; and should the PRC accelerate its drive to absorb Taiwan, a step that is likely to meet with kinetic resistance from Washington, the world will move into still more “interesting” times.

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