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02-07-2011, 02:49 AM
[url="http://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/wharton-aerospace-defense-report/US-Ends-High-tech-Export-Restrictions-to-India-0211.cfm"]U.S. Ends High-tech Export Restrictions to India[/url]
Quote:Indian police investigating Google mapping contest
A security personnel answers a call at the reception counter of the Google office in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad February 6, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Krishnendu Halder
By Devidutta Tripathy
NEW DELHI | Fri Apr 5, 2013 7:14am EDT
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Police in India are investigating to determine whether U.S. Internet company Google Inc violated rules in a competition that asked users to add information about their local areas for its online map services after a government agency raised security concerns.
[color="#0000FF"]Google, which ran the "Mapathon" in India in February and March[/color], said its aim was to make more local information accessible to all and that it did not break any laws.
Police are acting on [color="#0000FF"]a complaint filed by Survey of India, the country's national survey and mapping agency[/color], which said the contest was illegal and may threaten national security.
"One complaint has been received and we are forwarding it to the cybercell for further action," said Chhaya Sharma, a deputy commissioner of police in New Delhi.
Google officials said the company had not yet received an official communication from the police.
Google invited users to help "create better maps for India" by adding knowledge of their neighborhoods and promised the top 1,000 mappers prizes of tablets, smartphones and gift vouchers.
[color="#0000FF"]Survey of India first wrote to Google saying its "Mapathon" was against rules and then filed a police complaint[/color], R.C. Padhi, a top official at the agency, told Reuters.
"We have to ensure that security is not compromised at any cost," Padhi said, adding that some information uploaded on Google Maps could be "sensitive".
Google is open to discussing specific concerns over the issue with public authorities in India, Paroma Roy Chowdhury, a company spokeswoman in India said in a statement.
[color="#800080"](Ooh, would ya look at that? A stooge. Hope Paroma's paycheck for playing high-placed muppet is worth it.
Mapping sensitive spots in India is like mapping the sensitive spots in Israel. India is a major target of christoislamic terrorists. If anything on the illegaly mapped areas blow up, people are morally at liberty to start breaking down Paroma's door. Oh and those of the Mapathon's entrants too - so it's imperative that the Mapathon collects the contact details of the everybody involved. After all, it's all Fun And Games until someone else loses an eye. Or their life, as is more often the case in India.)[/color]
"Google takes security and national regulations very seriously, and the Mapathon adhered to applicable laws," Roy Chowdhury said.
[color="#800080"](All I heard was blablabla. I'm just going to have to fast-forward to the Gawd Save The Queen bit, because that should mark the end of the excuses and PR. I hope)[/color]
LATEST IN SERIES OF DISPUTES
The investigation is the latest in a series of disputes between various governments and Google over privacy and security issues involving its popular mapping products.
In March, Google agreed to pay $7 million in the United States to settle an investigation into an incident in which its Street View mapping cars allegedly collected passwords and other personal data from home wireless networks between 2008 and 2010.
In 2011, city police in the southern Indian technology hub of Bangalore ordered Google to suspend a Street View service over security concerns, three weeks after the company started collecting images from the city.
Tarun Vijay, a lawmaker from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, last month complained to the government over the "Mapathon" contest.
"Will we allow any Indian organization to invite people for mapping their localities and have entire data stored in USA? Special to Google?," Vijay wrote on the Twitter social networking site on March 20.
"If there is a law, it has to be followed. I have asked whether Google followed the law," Vjay told Reuters on Friday, after meeting India's defense and interior ministers over the issue. "I have taken up that they should be acting urgently."
Separately, Google and other social media companies are also fighting a criminal case brought by an Indian journalist related to allegedly "offensive" content on their web sites.
(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by John Chalmers and Matt Driskill)
arcasm: Who knew treason came so cheap? Then again, when other Indians will sell the native religion - and even the Vedam - to aliens for money (or else for free/for a following/for the recognition/for a hobby), what's a few smallfry traitors in the comparison, right? Nothing really, so Google can't be blamed for trying I guess. And it's not like they *made* people fall for it. Many Indians nowadays are admittedly so easy. So very easy. India's number of desperate wannabe-progressive 3rd worlders* - seen conversing in some scary attempt at English every chance they get, and growing quite illiterate in anything local in direct proportionality (who can blame the aliens for laughing at them) - keeps increasing. Quote:my rediff piece on the berkeley leftists plotting to do damage to india
terrible headline, i know. but i have no control over the copy editor who decides on headlines. i had originally titled it 'chronicles of a conflict foretold', with apologies to gabriel garcia marquez
rediff.com/news/column/rajeev-srinivasan-the-time-will-come-when-america-can-dictate-to-india/20140303.htm
Posted by nizhal yoddha at 3/03/2014 08:53:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Quote:chronicles of a conflict foretold(Meanwhile, "nationalist" NRIs parked in the US - or who were once parked in the US, doesn't wash off - will go to sleep with the same ease as every other day. Now is not the time to grow a conscience.)
[color="#800080"](Editor's Title at link[/color] The time will come when America can dictate to India, and expect to be obeyed
March 03, 2014 16:26 IST
'A plausible American tactic,' Rajeev Srinivasan suspects, 'would be to try and prevent the BJP and Modi from coming to power by splitting the anti-Congress vote using the AAP, and in case that fails, to follow up with a Plan B to make India ungovernable, to create mass conflict through their agents.'
If you scan the news these days the world seems to be a tinderbox, waiting for just a small spark to set off a conflagaration. The much-commented-on, eerie, similarities with 1914 that people have noticed concentrated on the rise of China as a revanchist power bent on changing the status quo, much as a rising Germany was a century ago. But there are other risks in a globalised world. I wonder what the catalytic action might be that actually sets off a cataclysm, just as the assassination of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary set off World War I.
In addition to the quasi-revolution in the Ukraine, here are several other countries embroiled in, or at risk of civil war, or caught up in covert or overt violence:
Syria, where an actual civil war is going on with horrific human rights violations on either side.
Thailand, where the government and the opposition seem to have fought each other to a stalemate.
Venezuela, on the verge of a civil war over discredited Chavismo and corruption.
South Sudan, the newly created country already heading towards State failure.
Afghanistan, the perennial problem child, on the precipice of partition.
Egypt, with simmering dissent and a polarised populace.
And I am only covering a subset of the world's problems. Interestingly, with the singular exception of the Ukraine, none of these problem States is in the West's heartlands; they are at best peripheral to the concerns of the rich world. This is not to say that there has been no violence in the heart of the West: The brutality in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, etc. took place not so long ago.
Nevertheless, these strife-torn countries are a perfect excuse for breast-beating and moralising by the West, as is being demonstrated by the hand-wringing over the so-called Arab Spring. Or, for that matter, as was shown in the Scandinavian efforts in Sri Lanka's civil war. Conveniently, the West can formulate an updated version of the 'White Man's Burden' and give full vent to their bleeding-heart, knee-jerk liberal impulses. All, handily, at someone else's cost.
As annoying as European interference may be, it is worse when the Americans jump in to solve the world's problems. Americans have a self-image (partially true) of being innocents abroad, trying merely to bring order and democracy and hygiene to various benighted parts of the world.
Unfortunately, they often end up, like big, awkward children, breaking the very countries they are trying to fix (oops!), as in the case of Vietnam. Americans rushed in to 'fix' this French colony which the French wisely retreated from. Or Cambodia, which was collateral damage due to the American obsession with the Domino Theory.
Thus, it is a matter of great concern when Americans want to fix India. Much of the time, India is peripheral to the US foreign policy establishment, except when they are annoyed with it (as in the Nixon-Kissinger days) or they are trying to sell some snake oil to it (as in the much-ballyhooed case of the 'nuclear deal', which was, to digress for a minute, a selling out of India's national security in exchange for virtually nothing).
In fact, India does much better when it is not on the radar of America's self-styled do-gooders.
[color="#0000FF"]Therefore, it is alarming that a group at the University of California, Berkeley's business school is toiling on a project to 'create a policy and protocol framework for protecting people's rights in situations of internal armed conflict and mass violence' in India.
Which is amazing, considering that there is less violence and conflict in India than in any of the countries mentioned above, and that, anyway, there has been low-level insurgencies in India for decades.
This leads me to wonder, does the Berkeley group know something that the rest of us don't?
The context, of course, is that there have been persistent rumours that the US has 'assets' high in the Indian government. The long-sustained (but just-lifted) boycott of Narendra Modi (allegedly because a group of leftists and Muslims in the US were upset) is another indication that the US does have an interest in the 2014 Indian election: They do have a dog in this fight.
There is also the surprising and widespread white noise in support of the Aam Aadmi Party by such establishment stalwarts as The New York Times and The Economist, among others. It is hard, prima facie, to believe the Americans would genuinely embrace a self-proclaimed anarchist group with far-Left views on almost everything. Nevertheless, there they are, with their front foundations merrily giving away all sorts of awards and money to the AAP.[/color]
This fits in with an observed tactic on the part of the West to encourage leftist, nihilist dissident groups in other countries. It is rather evident by now that a Narendra Modi-led government would not be particularly easy to bribe or manipulate -- it does appear that he neither forgives nor forgets -- and that it would be, as with Shinzo Abe's administration in Japan, prone to care about the national interest, not America's.
This, of course, is anathema to the American world view based on George Kennan's Cold War views on hegemony.
Thus, as a first approximation, a plausible American tactic would be to try and prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party and Modi from coming to power by splitting the anti-Congress vote using the AAP, and in case that fails, to follow up with a Plan B to make India ungovernable, to create mass conflict through their agents.
This is not theoretical: Almost exactly the same tactic was followed in Kerala in 1959. It is widely believed that the duly elected Communist government of E M S Namboodiripad was overthrown by the CIA and friends making the place essentially ungovernable.
Therefore, there is the fear that the Americans have every intent to meddle in a post-Congress scenario by creating chaos. Of course, if that too fails, they have a Plan C, which I doubt if I need to spell out. But we shall let that pass for the moment.
The concern about the Berkeley group is magnified if you look at their Web site. Grandly claiming that an aim of this 'Armed Conflict Resolution and People's Rights Project' is to 'engage with affected communities, and periodically engage with members of the Government of India,' it identifies J&K, Manipur, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, and specifically Gujarat and Odisha as having been 'impacted by far-reaching violence on minority communities in recent history.'
[color="#0000FF"]In other words, the usual anti-Modi rhetoric about the Gujarat riots in 2002, with a few other topics thrown in for the sake of camouflage. Old wine in new bottles.
The impression that there is more to this group, attached to the Haas School of Business at Berkeley, than meets the eye, is strengthened by a perusal of the list of principals. One is a notable purveyor of anti-India ideas, who was implicated in the Faigate scandal as an unregistered lobbyist for Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence. Another is now out on bail on charges of embezzling funds from victims of violence. Another is attached to the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, which deals with nuclear weapons!
Many of the others are old war-horses from the FOIL (Forum of Indian Leftists which transmogrified one fine day into the Forum of Inquilabi Leftists), a group that is reflexively and viscerally opposed to many things in India, especially to right-leaning Hindus.
There are enough people with a known history of antipathy to Modi in this group to strengthen the impression that this whole thing is another exercise for Modi's benefit.
What is particularly sinister is that there is circumstantial evidence that seems to indicate that people like FOIL have, in the past, 'known' about certain events before they happened. Which, by Occam's Razor, would suggest that these events were not random, but were planned, and that the leftists were in the know.[/color]
Are they planning to just study conflict, or is there more?
Furthermore, if the objective is to study conflict, why does the focus lie entirely on India, with almost all the members of the working group being of Indian origin?
As I pointed out above, there is actual armed conflict in many other places right now, so why India alone?
[color="#0000FF"]The implication is that this group may well be witting or unwitting participants in a conspiracy to create violence in India.
There is an implicit American project going on regarding India anyway: Many American maps show the entire North-East detached from India, in addition to all of Jammu and Kashmir. There has been much pressure on India to give away the Siachen Glacier to Pakistan.
And given the fact that India has now become the biggest buyer of American arms, the time will come when America can dictate to an Indian government, and expect to be obeyed.
It looks as though the Berkeley group may be planning to add internal pressure as well to the mix to discomfit an Indian government. This is a matter of serious concern, and it is not too far-fetched to consider this a conspiracy to overthrow a future Indian government. In my book, that would be considered seditious, and it should be treated accordingly.[/color]
Image: US President Barack Obama with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Photograph: Press Information Bureau.
Rajeev Srinivasan
Quote:Kowshika Oleksandr Turchynov, the interim president of Ukraine, is a baptist, 2% of Ukraine
Yesterday, 11:44 PM
Quote:Indian Foreign Policy: A Wake Up Call
02-07-2014, Gautam Sen
Indians and their policy makers share a belief that they are ineffably decent people, who embody worthy moral values. This was clearly the basis for Nehruââ¬â¢s much-reviled, pompous self-righteousness. It was in fact a distorted legacy of the Gandhian syndrome of self-harm that assured partition of the worst kind imaginable. By and large, the good Indian took this unprecedented calamity in his stride even while its victims languished indefinitely in the paradise Nehru sought to inflict on a hapless nation. But Indians and their deluded rulers earnestly expected the world at large to note the solemn conviction pertaining to their essential goodness and behave with appropriate diligence towards their interests.
The real world predictably intruded very promptly and Indian expectations had to adjust to the harsh realities of a world indifferent to righteousness and thoroughly unpredictable. Hard experience forced India to accord greater priority to realistic behaviour that required self-defence in the shape of expensive weaponry, counter-intelligence, etc. But somewhere in the recesses of their psyche Indians never quite overcame the delusion that they would wake up one day to find the world had understood them and begun to engage with due regard.
The paradox is that in reality India only invites ridicule, contempt and even hatred abroad rather than the respect and affection it craves. Every single Indian neighbour espouses an admixture of these sentiments and the one to which is supposedly closest culturally harbours the greatest animus. Unfortunately, the upright Indian, preoccupied with reaping a harvest of crass material gratification, having lots of fun and generally self-absorbed, has not bothered to introspect. Every now and then Indians experience a rude shock, whether in the shape of the Kandahar hijack, aided by their very own estranged neighbouring cousins or 26/11, administered by their sworn enemy. But self-indulgence presides and everything is quickly forgotten.
An evaluation of some specific critical issues in the backdrop of Indian self-delusion and cupidity might provide insights into the Indian political predicament. It may be inferred that India has espoused the goal of economic and social development as paramount. In addition, dealing with its two adversarial neighbours has been a constant preoccupation, which, in fact, militates against the first goal. Both China and Pakistan seek to cut India down to size. It is an aspiration that has not diverged unduly from the entrenched British impulse to punish an India ruled by what they have always regarded as wily Hindus that dared expel them. The US soon subscribed to this view since India refused to kowtow with the great white imperial ruler of the earth, which also found its alleged proximity to the communist USSR insufferable.
The Anglo-Americans immediately embraced Pakistan, which abandoned with alacrity the supposed political and religious rationale that had prompted partition. Instead, it eagerly seized the opportunity of becoming foot soldiers in the millennial struggle against ungodly communism. The outcome was the complete and enduring militarization of Pakistan and its transformation into an aggressive ghazi state, committed to warfare. The consequences of that fateful decision have since led to its veritable unfolding implosion. The pinnacle of Pakistanââ¬â¢s wholehearted commitment to the Anglo-American imperial cause, in the name of Islam of course, came in the 1980s and the US war to corner the USSR in Afghanistan. As a reward for its cooperation, investigations reveal the US discreetly helped Pakistanââ¬â¢s quest to best India by acquiring a nuclear arsenal. It was of course facilitated directly by unstinting help from its all-weather friend, China. The three cynical agents of godly moral purpose engaged in a crusade to undermine the ungodly USSR and its supposed friend, India.
The question that might be posed is what would be the rationale for the Anglo-Americans to now abandon Pakistan in favour of India. India has of course been arguing strenuously that Kashmir is a legitimate part of the Indian Union, while also tenaciously upholding legal provisions that simultaneously undermine that very claim! Its response to Pakistani terrorism has been wayward, at the very best, but it has also been warning plaintively that Pakistani terrorism against India will spill over and impact the West itself. It duly did so on 9/11 and elsewhere, from London to Madrid. There is now an earnest Indian hope that the West, namely the US, will use its enormous financial and military clout over Pakistan, as its principal supplier of weapons, to somehow restrain it. There is, as yet, no sign of such a gratifying finale for India.
However, the reason for this Indian disappointment is not far to seek. The Anglo-Americans, leave aside China, which is fully committed to the Pakistani goal of harming India, have little to gain from switching their support to India and effectively abandoning Pakistan. In turn, the West will have no value to Pakistan if it repudiates all support for its claim to Kashmir and suspends help to sustain its quest for some sort of military parity with India, which the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal has indeed substantially allowed. The West would then lose an ally that has shown little hesitation in doing its bidding, even though there has been a public display of various discords in the recent past. One suspects these were manufactured to shield Pakistanââ¬â¢s military dictators from domestic hostility for their supine conduct in allowing the US carte blanche in the region.
Yet, Pakistan remains the only Muslim country with a serious army, which earlier protected US allies like King Hussein of Jordan. A military contingent, led by none other than the late President Zia ul- Haq, crushed a Palestinian revolt in what came to be known as Black September during 1970. It was Pakistani commandos who also rescued the reviled US-backed Saudi monarchy when the Grand Mosque was seized by religious zealots in 1979. Most significantly of all, Pakistan contributed hugely to the Afghan campaign, effectively instigating the retreat of the USSR from Afghanistan. The Afghan victory culminated in the historic triumph of the West in the Cold War. However, unpalatable it may be for self-important Indian bureaucrats and deluded Indian politicians, Pakistanââ¬â¢s usefulness to the West can hardly be doubted.
It should also be noted that the West does not actually hold the Pakistani government and establishment responsible for 9/11. In private, there is acknowledgment the catastrophe was partially due to forces unleashed by the historic Afghan campaign to dislodge the USSR from the country. In addition, Pakistan is cooperating exhaustively with the West to interdict further attacks on Western targets, if not others. In recent months, the usefulness of Jihadis from Pakistan has been rediscovered by the US, with a contingent, perhaps led by the Pakistani army itself, making its way to Syria to help overthrow Bashar Al Assad.
Pakistan, along with Turkey, has been the key third world allies of the West during the Cold War. Pakistanââ¬â¢s usefulness to Anglo-Americans political machination, especially in the Middle West, can hardly be denied. As a result, Pakistan has powerful allies in the US, whether it is the State Department, the CIA or the Pentagon, ready to argue its case. To quote the pithy raison dââ¬â¢Ãªtre offered by one US President in another context: ââ¬Ëthey may be bastards, but they are our bastardsââ¬â¢!
By contrast, if the US somehow compelled Pakistani authorities to cease terrorist activities against India the result can well be surmised. From the point of the view of the US, it would entail the loss of a substantial source of leverage over India if such an unlikely goal was attained. At present, fear of conflagration on its western border is a key facet in Indiaââ¬â¢s calculus of feasible policy options. In the aftermath of the end of the Cold War, India views with trepidation open hostilities with Pakistan since Chinese intervention may be in prospect, without the likelihood of a Russian response to deter the latter. Should this constraint on policy options disappear, India would have less need of US goodwill, for example, even in the climactic situation of a nuclear standoff with Pakistan, when US intervention would be invaluable.
The end of Indo-Pak hostility, which the cessation of terror against India would effectively imply, would transform Indian defence options. It would free anything up to 600,000 troops as well as other critical defence assets, for use on its northern border. It would, in other words, be a transformative moment for India. India would gain a degree of policy autonomy it has not possessed since independence. Its dependence on others, who may have helped achieved this highly advantageous outcome, would, paradoxically, also be far less. It should be noted that the legion of ignorant amateurs in India, pronouncing endlessly on peace with Pakistan and settlement with China, have understood little. These two conflicts are inseparably interlinked for India. Neither adversary is likely to jeopardise the core interests of their declared ââ¬Ëall-weatherââ¬â¢ ally by negotiating a separate settlement with India that would leave the other completely exposed!
India has two urgent goals with respect to China and their achievement through the intercession of the West, namely the US, is also problematic. The first is to maintain the northern LAC status quo and second, to curb China outsourcing nuclear deterrence to Pakistan. However, it should be noted that China regards India as one of the two countries with which it will need to settle accounts to emerge as the major player in Asia and attempt equalling the US in the global arena eventually. It is unclear what Indiaââ¬â¢s now obdurate conviction that the US needs it, because of changing geopolitical conditions, means for its modest goals of security on the Indo-Chinese LAC and a restraining influence over Pakistanââ¬â¢s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal.
The US calculus of how India might be useful, in the event of tensions with China and as a source of Chinese restraint, is not necessarily co-terminus with the two Indian goals identified above. In fact, there is little evidence that Chinese incursions into the Indian side of the LAC have been influenced by US grand strategy in Asia. However, it might be contended there would be major diplomatic fallout over serious Chinese adventurism along the border with India. Of course the US is seeking a measure of economic and military collaboration to reinforce Indiaââ¬â¢s defence capability and its value should be acknowledged. But they do not decisively assist Indiaââ¬â¢s immediate twin concerns, with Sino-Pak nuclear collaboration only continuing to deepen.
Perhaps India needs to consider the unsentimental reality of the Asian predicament that has emerged with the rise of a China determined to achieve its goals, by force if necessary. Countries in South East, like Vietnam, as well as the Philippines and indeed Japan, are not in a position to help India in the immediate future in the event of a dramatic denouement. Japanââ¬â¢s interests have converged with Indiaââ¬â¢s and it has a strong incentive to become a stakeholder in Indiaââ¬â¢s economic advance. However, that will require a decade or more and a serious Indian economic policy framework that its political class has hitherto proved incapable of implementing. Much more alarming is the highly plausible self-interested outcome of a Sino-US condominium in Asia than direct military encounter in Asia, which will suit neither. In negotiating such an overall settlement, the US will likely accede to two non-negotiable Chinese goals, the first pertaining to Taiwan and the second, securing unassailable control over Tibet, which may require border adjustments disfavouring India.
The sheer cynicism of US foreign policy cannot escape cursory observation of its shocking activities in the contemporary Middle East. It is prepared to destroy entire countries, indeed civilisations, to achieve shifting targets. Knowledge of the full history of the 1962 Indo-China border war and the international context continues to elude. Nehruââ¬â¢s dislike of the armed forces and inept interference, despite zero knowledge of military affairs and frequent threats by Defence Minister, Krishna Menon to court martial officers who dissented from him, may have instigated disloyalty within it.
It may be hazarded that some of Indiaââ¬â¢s most senior army officers and the IB chief were also suspicious of Nehruââ¬â¢s perceived attachment to communist hyperbole and were secretly in touch with Anglo-American governments. These Indian officers had achieved career successes during the British era, serving the colonial power faithfully and had not defected to the INA! They also evidently espoused sympathy for the Cold War Western response against the Soviet Union. The US had been meeting Chinese representatives in Warsaw since the mid-50s and was aware of Sino-Soviet differences and could have also known in advance of Chinaââ¬â¢s intention to attack India. It may have been anticipated by parties to the possible conspiracy, including disloyal senior Indian military officers, that a military encounter with China would bounce India out of the Soviet camp and into the arms of the West. The US had already concluded that Indian behaviour indicated fealty to the despised Soviet camp.
On the issue of Indiaââ¬â¢s unfulfilled aspirations of economic advance and social transformation, the idea that these goals will be actively aided by the outside world is another chimera of the ideological detritus of empire. Nothing could be further from the truth, Ricardo, Hecksher-Ohlin, Samuelson, et. al. notwithstanding. The real-world agents of the international economy, mostly operating from New York and London, are pitiless marauders. Their rapacious, scorched earth misconduct worldwide has apparently been missed by Indiaââ¬â¢s comprador class. Admittedly, these insatiable agents, wallowing in Pharaonic wealth, do not today dispatch armed levies to seize, in an older tradition, though that too happens more often than understood. They will do nothing for India that does not entail gargantuan returns for themselves. They will also subvert India, much as the international retail giants, being welcomed by their paid local Indian agents, are poised to do.
India will surely need foreign capital, but only a strong and ruthless Indian state can bend them to Indiaââ¬â¢s national purposes. The competence to do so has been singularly lacking in an India in the thrall of a third-rate media, a second rate bureaucracy and an essentially self-seeking political class. Rascals abound in every Indian nook and cranny, especially in the benighted city that is its capital. They are the overweening presence in the shape of the elephant in the living room, which needs to have its tusks, embedded in Indian body politic, extracted unceremoniously. The performance of the exceptional recent political dispensation, which came to power in May this year and assured the nation of its determination defend Indiaââ¬â¢s people, is still to unfold.
(Dr. Gautam Sen taught international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science)
Quote:Sam says:
July 3, 2014 at 11:36 am
Pakistan is well down the path of no return and India would be wise to do nothing to stand in the way of its self-destruction. A muscular response a la the Americans or the Israelis will only unite the different groups within Pakistan and set back the disintegration of this artificial state, which is the last thing that India needs to happen. For all the USââ¬â¢s machinations things are not going too well in Afghanistan or the Middle East, is it? Sometimes doing less results in more.
Observer says:
(Fortunately, this commenter does not appear to be the same as that islamaniac paki troll on Vijayvaani that calls itself "observer" too)
July 3, 2014 at 5:09 pm
I agree with the opinion above that Pakistan may well disintegrate. Indiaââ¬â¢s interests would be served by that. An Azad Baluchistan, a Sindhudesh, or a viable Baluchistan-Sindh-Karachi Federation would mean that the Punjab is landlocked and impotent. The North West Frontier Province, now known as Pakhtunkhwa should be part of Afghanistan as the Durrand line is but a colonial juxtaposition while the Afghans/Pathans are one people anyway.
That said, China is the real threat. China claims vast swathes of Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. It does not recognize Indian suzerainty over Kashmir. It continues to oppose Indiaââ¬â¢s entry in to the Nuclear Suppliers Club.
Narendra Modi and Sushma Swaraj need to understand the China threat. The BJP administration should not have rushed to ratify the Additional Protocol with the IAEA placing all Indiaââ¬â¢s civilian nuclear reactors under IAEA supervision merely with a view to join the Nuclear Suppliers Club. China will veto any such development. It was foolhardy of India to have ratified that Additional Protocol.
Narendra is at times a bit naive when he emphasizes relations with SAARC and China. Indiaââ¬â¢s real allies are Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan and Afghanistan ââ¬â following the Kautilyan precept of my neighborââ¬â¢s neighbor is my friend.** Nepal and Bhutan have special links with India. India has no real friends otherwise in SAARC. India should not acknowledge Chinese suzerainty over Tibet unless China reciprocates on Kashmir. The BJP needs a lesson in realpolitik.
(** I'm guessing Observer meant Kautilya's phrase "My enemy's enemy is my friend".
Sun Tzu's phrase was: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer still". Sorry, just revising.)
Quote:China claims vast swathes of Indian territory in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. It does not recognize Indian suzerainty over Kashmir.
Quote:Updated: 07/08/2014 17:26 | By Agence France-Presse
Beijing's South China Sea claim 'problematic': US official
Beijing's claim to almost the whole of the South China Sea is "problematic" and the Asian giant's actions have raised tensions, a senior US official said Tuesday on the eve of high-stakes talks.
Quote:Last updated: July 10, 2014 2:18 am
Pentagon plans new tactics to deter China in South China Sea
By Geoff Dyer and Richard McGregor in Washington and Demetri Sevastopulo in Hong Kong
Quote:Resist Chinaââ¬â¢s Cartographic Aggression against India
29/06/2014 14:18:37 Praveen Shanker Pillai
China has roiled the diplomatic waters in the region by publishing a new map that lays claim to swaths of the South China Sea that encompass almost all of Southeast Asia. The new Chinese map also shows Arunachal Pradesh as Chinese territory.
Professor Lee Yunglung at the South China Sea Institute of Xiamen University said that the map raises the South China Sea issue to a level of prominence equal to China's decades-long disputes with Japan over the East China Sea and the Senkaku Island.
He said the publication of the map serves a two-layered purpose. Domestically, the map "enhances Chinese citizens' understanding of China's sovereignty" over the South China Sea. On the international stage, the map gives a "more comprehensive narrative of the historical justification for China's claims of sovereignty" over the disputed area.
See the Chinese cartographic aggression at:
7online.com/news/chinas-new-map-roils-diplomatic-waters-in-region-/144803/
Chinese cartographic aggression has always preceded their actual military aggression. This has happened first with Tibet in 1950 and with Arunachal Pradesh, then, North East Frontier Province, and also with Aksai Chin in 1962.
Quote:The last hurdle on the Civil Nuclear Deal has finally been crossed, with President Obama using his executive powers.