We see corruption generally as a third world problem and a problem which is
primarily at the governmental level. But far too frequently, we ignore the
role played by the major corporations of the world in starting, propagating
and yes sheltering the corrupt guilty. Over the past few months, I have
continuously read a series of stories relating to white-collar crime and
still do not think that we are taking this seriously enough. And we are not
talking about small fly by night operators, we are talking about giants of
the corporate world such as Samsung of South Korea, Boeing of USA, Siemens
of Germany and British Aerospace of United Kingdom. These companies span all
aspects of our lives and most importantly, via their products and services
also look after our health, national security and economies. Who are we
talking about, what has been done and what can be done more to combat this
scourge?



Continued on at:

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/04/business-white-collar-corruption.html

or

http://tinyurl.com/5ubdc9





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Have you heard about the greatest generation? This is the generation which
was born around the early part of the 20th century and fought in the Second
World War. These are the people who fought because it was the right thing to
do and went on after the war to build one the most prosperous societies
known to mankind. The next big war, Vietnam War, produced what I would call
as the bewildered generation. Between drugs, peace, liberalism, a whole
generation was lost to society but just when life was settling down, 9/11
happened. It is too early to say but between 9/11, Afghanistan, the Bush
Administration and Iraq, a new generation is forming which will define
America for the next thirty years at the least. I call it the angry
generation. What will the angry generation do?



Continued on at:



http://tinyurl.com/6yf5gl



or



http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/04/mind-gap-generation-gap-that-is.html



--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The Islamist terror and subsequent Iraq War have let loose a huge debate
around what is "Just War"? The Islamists claim that Just War is Jihad and it
is perfectly legitimate to fight against oppression by unbelievers. The Iraq
Just War claims are based (and debated) upon legal arguments arising from UN
and parliamentary resolutions. As it so happens, both the UN and western
parliamentary resolutions are broadly based upon Judeo-Christian religious
heritage and in particular, the Just War theories going back to the 12th
century teachings of St. Aquinas, who - it has been said - was influenced
greatly by books written by religious scholars expounding on the legal
reasons and justifications of Jihad. But there is another strand of human
thought around the Just War theory, which goes back centuries and millennia
before Just War was a twinkle in the eyes of the Abrahamic faith
theologians. Let us explore that a bit.



Continued on at:

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/04/just-war-or-war-that-is-just-war.html



or



http://tinyurl.com/5cwbw4





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Islamophobia exists and is steadily getting worse. A phobia is a strong
irrational or powerful fear and dislikes of something, in this case, the
religion of Islam. This phobia has attained such strong levels, that the
Organisation of Islamic Countries has commissioned and recently released an
Annual Report on Islamophobia. On reading the report, I was torn between two
feelings; the first was serious concern about Islamophobia in the world and
second was sheer bewilderment at the OIC as to how they help propagate the
very Islamophobia that they want to eliminate.



Continued on at:

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/03/review-of-organisation-of-islamic.html

http://tinyurl.com/2uhjwr







--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

please remove me from your mail list...thanks

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Countries faced with terrorism are currently struggling with how to
establish legal precedents, so that they can handle terrorists. Because
there is no clear cut answer, you get situations which range from outright
human right abuses of legal systems, such as Guantanamo Bay all the way to
situations where terrorists are released only to commit terrorism acts again
right after they have been let loose. This is not unusual. Legal systems
down the ages have had major systemic shocks, such as this and the power of
a liberal democracy lies in the fact that it is able to incorporate these
shocks and re-emerge stronger. If you do not believe me, see how the British
Indian Legal System reacted when it was faced with the "Thugs".



Continued on at:




<http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/03/impact-of-paradigm-changing-events-on.
html>
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/03/impact-of-paradigm-changing-events-on.h
tml

http://tinyurl.com/2jr4ah











[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I am seeing articles about how marking positions to market is contributing
to the recession and how it should be stopped or amended almost daily in the
financial press. But this is dangerous thinking, because if you cannot mark
to market, then how did you manage to value it in the first place and if you
did, who was the idiot who bought it without having the ability to value it
on a mark to market basis? Because that is what it means. The value of
transparency and mark to market goes way beyond some badly priced
instruments. Mark to market provides one of the foundations of western
civilisation. How so?



Continued on at:

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-is-mark-to-market-vital-for.html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for shorter daily comments)

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I have already written about refugees
<http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2004/07/home-is-where-heart-is.html> before
but this time I want to look at what do the Bangladeshi, Kashmiri, Tamil,
Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Refugees in India, Kosovo Albanian Refugees, Palestinian
Refugees in various Arab countries, Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran,
Hutu refugees in Zaire, Cambodian refugees in Thailand, Cuban refugees in
USA and all the other refugees all over the world have in common? Well, they
have all been used by "other people" for their own needs and agendas. And
these "other people" use these refugees as part of an explicit strategy, not
for purely humanitarian objectives. I was quite surprised when I worked
through the argument.

Continued on at:
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-refugees-for-your-own-purposes.ht
ml



--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

For those who have been living in the Outer Hebrides inside a cave for the
past 10 years, this essay does not apply. For most of the other denizens of
this country who are connected to the internet, PayPal would be familiar
term. In any case, Paypal is an online payment system which is used for
online electronic transactions, primarily on EBay. And according to a recent
report, it is the most popular online payment service in the UK, which had
nearly five times the number of unique visitors to its site compared to the
second best one. How on earth did an e-commerce site get to be on top of the
pile? Surely financial institutions should be wiping the floor of these
e-commerce sites? Well, yes and no. What lessons can be learnt and what does
the future hold? Here's a wild stab at it.



Continued on at: http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/03/paypal-challenge.html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Once upon a time, when Muslims were restive, worried about having been left
very far behind the West in terms of scientific, political, economic and
educational levels, when the west was overpoweringly overwhelming the Muslim
world politically, a polyglot man arose who talked, wrote, taught and
convinced a generation with a new way of looking at Islam. Muhammad Abduh,
who died about a hundred years ago (1905), can be said to have influenced a
generation of Muslim students and thinkers about how to take Islam forward
to face the modern age. And now, a century later, we are again in almost the
same situation. Who was Muhammad Abduh?



Continued on at:

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/02/reformer-who-died-too-soon.html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for shorter daily comments)

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

URL correction:

http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/02/emperor-is-wearing-albanian-clothes.htm
l

-----Original Message-----
From: Bhaskar Dasgupta [mailto:bdasgupta@...]
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 1:23 AM
To: Bhaskar Dasgupta
Subject: [CounterTerrorism-L] With a grain of piquant salt: The Emperor is
wearing Albanian Clothes

Kosovo has declared independence on the 3rd Sunday of February, 2008 and the
expectation is that it will be recognised by USA, UK and many other
countries immediately. As soon as these western powers do recognise Kosovo
as an independent country, it will immediately cause a huge dislocation in
the fabric of all other separatist terrorist campaigns, their supporters and
the states/groups who oppose them. We have examples ranging from the
Turkish, Iranian, Syrian or Iranian Kurds, Northern Irish Catholics,
Palestine, Malaysian Indians, Kashmiri Muslims, Naga's etc. in India, Thai
Muslims, Sri Lankan Tamils, Darfurians against Arab Sudanese to the Turkish
Cypriots. This will make the international political scenario very
complicated and the hypocrisy galore of almost all countries will be
exposed. How so? Well, let us take a look.



Continued on at
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/02/emperor-is-wearing-albanian-clothes.htm
l





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



Views expressed in the discussion groups are the individual writers' and do
not necessarily represent the views of the authors' affiliations and
organizations or the editorial policy of Sacks Publications or Scipolicy-The
Journal of Science and Health Policy.

The discussion groups are for academic and scholarly debate and information
sharing, and the postings are important public policy and historical
information that are freely made available to researchers, policy analysts,
students, news media, and the general public.

c) Copyright SCIPOLICY, 2004  The several discussion groups, the
journal and the website are the intellectual property of the authors and
SCIPOLICY. Prior written permission is required to copy or republish
materials.
Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CounterTerrorism-L/messages

To unsubscribe or change your mail settings to "Digest" rather then
individual e-mails go to
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Scipolicy-L/  and log in and then select your
desired action.

Help control SPAM: Forward spams received to the Federal Trade Commission
for investigation and prosecution: SPAM@...

Yahoo! Groups Links

Kosovo has declared independence on the 3rd Sunday of February, 2008 and the
expectation is that it will be recognised by USA, UK and many other
countries immediately. As soon as these western powers do recognise Kosovo
as an independent country, it will immediately cause a huge dislocation in
the fabric of all other separatist terrorist campaigns, their supporters and
the states/groups who oppose them. We have examples ranging from the
Turkish, Iranian, Syrian or Iranian Kurds, Northern Irish Catholics,
Palestine, Malaysian Indians, Kashmiri Muslims, Naga's etc. in India, Thai
Muslims, Sri Lankan Tamils, Darfurians against Arab Sudanese to the Turkish
Cypriots. This will make the international political scenario very
complicated and the hypocrisy galore of almost all countries will be
exposed. How so? Well, let us take a look.



Continued on at
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/02/emperor-is-wearing-albanian-clothes.htm
l





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The House of Al Saud is built on land which is criss-crossed with tectonic
fault lines which are almost constantly moving. And the al Saud way of
handling these fault lines is not to improve the house by making it
flexible, open and earthquake proof but to try to pour concrete down the
fault line chasms. The concrete is radical Islam, authoritarianism,
fundamentalism, sectarianism, oil money, corruption etc. with predictably
sad results. And that is just now, what will happen in 10 years time? One
way of finding out is to take a detailed look at the Saudi education system
sausage machine to see what will come out on the other end. The answer is
that the supply of ideology, money and people from Saudi Arabia to fuel
global jihad will actually increase.



Continued on at:
<http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/02/house-that-al-saud-built.html>
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/02/house-that-al-saud-built.html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Julius Caesar is very well known in the world, his history, his deeds and
wars. The month July was named after him, but how many people know about the
Caesar Augustus who had the following month named after him? In many ways,
Augustus left a deeper imprint on the world than Julius did. And despite
being a total out and out imperialist, he understood the concept of
institutions and drove it forward. The man, who can arguably be said to be
the father of Western Civilisation, is not well known at all. Let us explore
this fascinating man who still influences you and me.



Continued on at:
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2008/02/august-personality-that-caesar-augustus
.html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hence America should ‘decommision’ its nuclear weapons on China before they
have a chance to cause any real harm—at least the nukes leftover from
pacifying the Middle East and Muslims?







From: CounterTerrorism-L@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:CounterTerrorism-L@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of rjriley rjriley.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 25, 2007 11:24 AM
To: CounterTerrorism-L@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CounterTerrorism-L] FW: [IP] Enemies at The Firewall





Thursday, Dec. 06, 2007 *
Enemies at The Firewall*
By Simon Elegant/Beijing
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1692063,00.html>

Tan Dailin lets out an audible gasp when he is told that he was identified
in the U.S. as someone who may have been responsible for recent security
breaches at the Pentagon. "Will the FBI send special agents out to arrest
me?" he asks. Much as they might want to talk with him, though, FBI agents
don't have jurisdiction in Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province,
where Tan lives. And given that he has been lauded in China's official press
for his triumphs in military-sponsored hacking competitions, Tan is unlikely
to have problems with local law enforcement. But Tan and his seven
companions, who make up the self-proclaimed Network Crack Program Hacker
(NCPH) group, are taking no chances. A couple of weeks after they spoke to
TIME, they shuttered the group's website, on which they used to proudly post
specially designed hacking programs that could be downloaded for free.
Visitors now find only a notice that the page is being redesigned.

Tan and his fellow hackers may be lying low for now. But the controversy
over the activities of hundreds of Chinese like them will only continue to
grow. Though the evidence remains mostly circumstantial, a picture is
emerging of a coordinated effort by Chinese-military authorities to recruit
hackers such as Tan and his group to winkle out information from computer
systems outside China and launch cyberattacks in future conflicts.

China has long regarded cyberwarfare as a critical component of asymmetrical
warfare in any future conflict with the U.S. From China's perspective, it
makes sense to use any means possible to counter America's huge
technological advantage. A current wave of hacking attacks seems to be aimed
mainly at collecting information and probing defenses, but in a real
cyberwar, a successful attack would target computer-dependent
infrastructure, such as banking and power generation. "Can one nation
deliver a crippling blow to another through cyberspace?" asks American Sami
Saydjari, head of the private computer-security group Cyber Defense Agency
and former president of Professionals for Cyber Defense. "The answer is a
definite yes. The Chinese know we are much more dependent on technology, and
the more you depend on it, the more vulnerable you are."

Hacking attacks from the Middle Kingdom aren't new. In 1999, after U.S.
planes bombed Beijing's embassy in Belgrade, and again in 2001, when a
Chinese fighter crashed after a collision with a U.S.
surveillance plane, Chinese hackers conducted cyberbattles with their U.S.
counterparts. For several years beginning in 2003, U.S.
government servers were subjected to a coordinated series of hacker attacks,
code-named Titan Rain, which officials said had originated in China.

The scale and sophistication of the activities apparently conducted by Tan
and his group--and their alleged ties to the People's Liberation Army
(PLA)--are an insight into China's effort to establish a corps of civilian
cyberwarriors. A recent series of intrusions into the systems of Western
governments and major corporations was blamed on China (though none of the
intrusions have been specifically tied to Tan and his group). This month
British media reported that the country's top antiespionage official had
sent a letter to 300 major corporations warning that they faced attacks from
"Chinese state organizations." In May computers in the office of German
Chancellor Angela Merkel were compromised by programs that had originated in
China. In June U.S.
military officials said an attack from China had penetrated a computer
system at the Pentagon--though nonclassified, it included a server used by
the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Beijing denies that it is
behind hacker attacks. Jiang Yu, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry,
described such reports as "wild accusations" and said they reflected a "cold
war mentality."

Outside China, however, the worries continue. "Recent events have made
Western governments very nervous that this is just the tip of the iceberg,"
says Saydjari. "[The Chinese] have launched the equivalent of a Sputnik in
cyberspace, and the U.S. and other countries are scrambling to catch up."

Meet the Geek Brigade
Gathered around the table at a restaurant in Chengdu on a recent evening,
Tan, a.k.a. Withered Rose, and seven other members of the NCPH workshop
don't look as though they could bring the U.S. economy to a halt. All in
their early 20s, rail thin and with the prison pallor acquired from long
nights spent hunched over monitors, they look like what they are: a bunch of
nerds. They refuse to give their real names, referring to one another by
nicknames--Blacksmith, Firestarter, Fisherman, Floorsweeper, Chef, Plumber,
Pharmacist. All vehemently deny having anything to do with attacks on U.S.
government systems. "Messing with the U.S. Department of Defense is no small
thing," says Floorsweeper. "We read about arrested terrorists, about
Guantánamo. Who gets away with messing with the U.S. government?"

O.K., so what does the NCPH, which Tan founded in 2004 when he was a student
at Sichuan University of Science and Engineering, actually do?
The answer starts out vague, but eventually pride gets the better of the
young men. They acknowledge that the group first got its reputation by
hacking 40% of the hacker associations' websites in China. That was during
their "young and hotheaded college days," as Fisherman puts it. The NCPH is
also famous for the remote-network- control programs they wrote and offered
for download. These programs, which allow hackers to take over other
computers, are exactly the kind that were used to obtain documents,
spreadsheets and other materials from U.S. government offices in the most
recent attacks.

[snip]

-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thursday, Dec. 06, 2007 *
Enemies at The Firewall*
By Simon Elegant/Beijing
<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1692063,00.html>

Tan Dailin lets out an audible gasp when he is told that he was identified
in the U.S. as someone who may have been responsible for recent security
breaches at the Pentagon. "Will the FBI send special agents out to arrest
me?" he asks. Much as they might want to talk with him, though, FBI agents
don't have jurisdiction in Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province,
where Tan lives. And given that he has been lauded in China's official press
for his triumphs in military-sponsored hacking competitions, Tan is unlikely
to have problems with local law enforcement. But Tan and his seven
companions, who make up the self-proclaimed Network Crack Program Hacker
(NCPH) group, are taking no chances. A couple of weeks after they spoke to
TIME, they shuttered the group's website, on which they used to proudly post
specially designed hacking programs that could be downloaded for free.
Visitors now find only a notice that the page is being redesigned.

Tan and his fellow hackers may be lying low for now. But the controversy
over the activities of hundreds of Chinese like them will only continue to
grow. Though the evidence remains mostly circumstantial, a picture is
emerging of a coordinated effort by Chinese-military authorities to recruit
hackers such as Tan and his group to winkle out information from computer
systems outside China and launch cyberattacks in future conflicts.

China has long regarded cyberwarfare as a critical component of asymmetrical
warfare in any future conflict with the U.S. From China's perspective, it
makes sense to use any means possible to counter America's huge
technological advantage. A current wave of hacking attacks seems to be aimed
mainly at collecting information and probing defenses, but in a real
cyberwar, a successful attack would target computer-dependent
infrastructure, such as banking and power generation. "Can one nation
deliver a crippling blow to another through cyberspace?" asks American Sami
Saydjari, head of the private computer-security group Cyber Defense Agency
and former president of Professionals for Cyber Defense. "The answer is a
definite yes. The Chinese know we are much more dependent on technology, and
the more you depend on it, the more vulnerable you are."

Hacking attacks from the Middle Kingdom aren't new. In 1999, after U.S.
planes bombed Beijing's embassy in Belgrade, and again in 2001, when a
Chinese fighter crashed after a collision with a U.S.
surveillance plane, Chinese hackers conducted cyberbattles with their U.S.
counterparts. For several years beginning in 2003, U.S.
government servers were subjected to a coordinated series of hacker attacks,
code-named Titan Rain, which officials said had originated in China.

The scale and sophistication of the activities apparently conducted by Tan
and his group--and their alleged ties to the People's Liberation Army
(PLA)--are an insight into China's effort to establish a corps of civilian
cyberwarriors. A recent series of intrusions into the systems of Western
governments and major corporations was blamed on China (though none of the
intrusions have been specifically tied to Tan and his group). This month
British media reported that the country's top antiespionage official had
sent a letter to 300 major corporations warning that they faced attacks from
"Chinese state organizations." In May computers in the office of German
Chancellor Angela Merkel were compromised by programs that had originated in
China. In June U.S.
military officials said an attack from China had penetrated a computer
system at the Pentagon--though nonclassified, it included a server used by
the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Beijing denies that it is
behind hacker attacks. Jiang Yu, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry,
described such reports as "wild accusations" and said they reflected a "cold
war mentality."

Outside China, however, the worries continue. "Recent events have made
Western governments very nervous that this is just the tip of the iceberg,"
says Saydjari. "[The Chinese] have launched the equivalent of a Sputnik in
cyberspace, and the U.S. and other countries are scrambling to catch up."

Meet the Geek Brigade
Gathered around the table at a restaurant in Chengdu on a recent evening,
Tan, a.k.a. Withered Rose, and seven other members of the NCPH workshop
don't look as though they could bring the U.S. economy to a halt. All in
their early 20s, rail thin and with the prison pallor acquired from long
nights spent hunched over monitors, they look like what they are: a bunch of
nerds. They refuse to give their real names, referring to one another by
nicknames--Blacksmith, Firestarter, Fisherman, Floorsweeper, Chef, Plumber,
Pharmacist. All vehemently deny having anything to do with attacks on U.S.
government systems. "Messing with the U.S. Department of Defense is no small
thing," says Floorsweeper. "We read about arrested terrorists, about
Guantánamo. Who gets away with messing with the U.S. government?"

O.K., so what does the NCPH, which Tan founded in 2004 when he was a student
at Sichuan University of Science and Engineering, actually do?
The answer starts out vague, but eventually pride gets the better of the
young men. They acknowledge that the group first got its reputation by
hacking 40% of the hacker associations' websites in China. That was during
their "young and hotheaded college days," as Fisherman puts it. The NCPH is
also famous for the remote-network- control programs they wrote and offered
for download. These programs, which allow hackers to take over other
computers, are exactly the kind that were used to obtain documents,
spreadsheets and other materials from U.S. government offices in the most
recent attacks.

[snip]





-------------------------------------------
Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com

US Navy ships fired upon pirate boats off the coast of Africa and were
engaged in a wide ranging sea battle over long distances. The pirate boats
were sunk, but this is just a small episode in a wider war of religion,
imperialism, diplomacy and military efforts lasting for years. The local
rulers are very upset with the USA, but the US Armed forces are not taking
no for an answer and are practising gun-boat diplomacy to the core. Other
nations are hoping that USA will be successful in eradicating this menace of
piracy. While the USA is beset with war related fatigue and challenges,
which is pretty obvious, it has clear congressional backing to do something
about these pirates. The pirate leaders are using the Islamist Jihadi
resistance framework to defy the USA, but to no avail. And all this in
America's 1815 war against the Barbary Pirates of North Africa.





http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/12/fifteen-men-on-dead-man-chest-and-they.
html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Prometheus was sentenced by Zeus to have his liver eaten by a giant eagle
(think Garuda), while being chained to a rock. The liver would be eaten,
then re-grow, and again be eaten by this eagle. Poor sod, and poor eagle
(think about the monotonous diet!). The point I am making here is a bit of
an obscure one. After each Indo-Pakistan war, commissions were created to
understand / audit the war, its reasons and results and how to avoid the
errors and better oneself next time. However, it is something like
Prometheus, if you do not listen or learn the lessons, your liver will be,
with great precision and enjoyment, ceremoniously eaten on a regular basis.
Did Pakistan learn its lessons? For that matter, did India learn its
lessons? Let us take a look, shall we?



Continued on at:
<http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/11/eagle-has-landed-again-and-again-and.h
tml>
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/11/eagle-has-landed-again-and-again-and.ht
ml





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

USA's counter terrorism effort in the Global War against Terror is frankly
creating more terrorists than it is stopping. If the objective was to reduce
the number of terrorists, then it has failed, because the number of
terrorists and terrorist incidents is indeed increasing. If the objective
was to reduce the territory they cover, then that too has not happened. If
the objective was to reduce the terrorists' influence, then the influence
has grown. If the idea was to reduce Islamist religiosity, then that too it
has increased. Keeping things static is no fun gun. One has to aim at
removing, reducing and eradicating these totally. The main reason behind
this is that USA sees this problem in purely military terms. That is why it
keeps on using military means primarily and then gets surprised at the
results that terrorism is not reducing.



Continued on at:
<http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/11/to-keep-on-doing-same-thing-while.html
>
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/11/to-keep-on-doing-same-thing-while.html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Recently, I had the privilege of attending an event, which had one of the
highest concentrations of international relations intellectual horsepower
that I have ever seen. The luminaries were discussing a very fundamental
topic recently arising after the Iraq War fiasco, namely, "After the
Unipolar Moment: How Fragile is the World Order?" As you know, the words
hyperpower and unipolar world were used for the USA after the Soviet Union
collapsed. But now Gulliver has been tied down and the limits of his power
have been rather cruelly exposed. So what did the luminaries say and what do
I think about this? Who is the world's daddy then?



Continued on at: http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/11/whos-your-daddy.html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Lamicela [mailto:jlamicel@...]
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 3:22 PM
To: CARR-L@...
Subject: A New Way to Look at Terrorism Enforcement

==========================================
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
==========================================

Greetings.  A special new TRAC terrorism page features a unique national map
displaying the location of recent federal convictions for all individuals
who have been categorized by the Justice Department as spies or terrorists,
or those whose prosecution the government thought might prevent or disrupt
potential or actual terrorist threats. Click on one of the many visible
locations -- such as Atlanta or Seattle or Gulfport, Florida -- to get a
list of convictions so far in the current fiscal year of people who either
(1) are from that city or (2) were convicted in that federal district or
branch. You may then click on the list for a detailed report on each of the
defendants. The new Terrorism Enforcement page can be found at:

     http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/terrorism/

In addition to the map, you will also find easy links to other TRAC
features. One set of links gives quick, free access to very timely
month-by-month reports on terrorism prosecutions and convictions for the
last five years. Also available from the page are links to a free series of
more extensive reports that TRAC has posted on terrorism enforcement.
Finally, the page has a link to TRAC's Data Interpreter which lets you
quickly design your own report based on a very wide range of different
subjects and agencies -- for the nation as a whole or for individual
districts. All these reports are available to subscribers to our TRACFED
data service; non-subscribers will incur a fee for some of them.


David Burnham and Susan B. Long, co-directors Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse Syracuse University
488 Newhouse II
Syracuse, NY  13244-2100
315-443-3563
trac@...
http://trac.syr.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Laurie Mylroie [mailto:sam11@...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 12:25 PM
To: Laurie Mylroie
Subject: Iraq's Weapons, World Magazine

<< Col. Spertzel believes many of those programs continued up until the war.
In a Jan. 27 interview Col. Spertzel told WORLD that, despite Mr. Kay's
recent statements, he has seen nothing in the work of the Iraq Survey
Group-or from his own sources-to render his 2002 assessment obsolete: "There
is ample evidence of continuing programs and no reason to believe that they
would instantly disappear." >>

http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/02-07-04/international_1.asp

World Magazine
February 7, 2004
Volume 19
Number 5

WMD-gate?
IRAQ: In the scandal over missing weapons of mass destruction, did George
Bush lie?
By Mindy Belz

It will take more than David Kay saying it ain't so. But for some, it will
be enough.

The head of postwar weapons inspections for Iraq used his Jan. 23
resignation as opportunity to air a pent-up grievance: Mr. Kay said of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, "I don't think they exist."

"I'm personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly
produced weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Kay said. "We don't find the
people, the documents, or the physical plants that you would expect to find
if the production was going on."

During interviews with The New York Times, The Sunday Telegraph, Reuters,
and others after his resignation, Mr. Kay said that Iraq "gradually reduced
stockpiles" of potential weapons of mass destruction and that by the
mid-1990s most stockpiles were eliminated. He blamed U.S. intelligence for
creating a false impression of Iraq's WMD capability.

If true, that assessment gives Democratic presidential candidates their own
arsenal against President Bush, who based the invasion of Iraq last year in
significant part on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction threat. And what
better way to nuke the president's reelection plans than using the words of
his own mass weapons czar. Expect Mr. Kay's comments to recycle through the
presidential debate season like cardboard ducks on a midway shooting range.

But while war opponents believe Mr. Kay's statements are a clear indication
that Mr. Bush misled Americans in the lead-up to war, key Iraq
experts-including a former UN weapons inspector-say more questions are
raised than answered by Mr. Kay's post-mortem.

Critics have already pointed out that Mr. Kay's statements to reporters
contradict more in-depth analysis he provided in an October 2002 interim
report of the Iraq Survey Group. In it he said that, in spite of many
obstacles to the WMD search, his Iraq Survey Group, or ISG, already had
discovered "dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts
of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the
inspections that began in late 2002." He said the ISG found suspected WMD
documents in a pile of warm ash in a prison in July 2003, and vials of
botulinum in the home of an Iraqi scientist. The most recent assertion by
Mr. Kay that Iraqi WMD do not "exist" also goes against his statements
suggesting Iraq may have moved WMD to Syria.

Mr. Kay's statements also contradict earlier findings of UN inspections
teams without directly refuting them. Although the work of UN inspectors
going back nearly a decade was hampered by Saddam Hussein and thwarted even
by the Security Council, it produced volumes of evidence of extensive
programs in unconventional warfare. The two agencies, UNSCOM and its
predecessor, UNMOVIC, failed to halt the buildup of chemical, biological,
and nuclear capabilities but did document its worrying existence.

"He is trying to say that six months of work under Iraq Survey Group is as
legitimate as nine years under UNSCOM," said Laurie Mylroie, a consultant on
Iraq in both the Clinton and Bush administrations and author of "Bush vs.
the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on
Terror."

A key former weapons inspector in Iraq, retired Army Col. Richard O.
Spertzel, told WORLD: "If Dr. Kay says there are currently no weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq, he may be right. But the absence of evidence is
not the evidence of absence."

Col. Spertzel joined UNSCOM in 1994 after a 28-year military career where he
honed his expertise in bioweapons. As a condition of surrender at the end of
the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was to give up all weapons of mass destruction
within 15 days. Those conditions were never met, and successive
international teams would try to force his compliance. Col. Spertzel served
as a weapons inspector and head of UNSCOM's biological weapons team for four
years, making more than 40 trips to Baghdad, where he oversaw all
inspections of bioweapons facilities and met with top-level officials,
including Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz.

He discovered ample evidence that Saddam was directing a campaign to build
and use unconventional weapons. He was part of a four-member team that
discovered Iraq was using 18 metric tons of growing medium to produce
anthrax and botulinum toxin-out of scale with any legitimate civilian
purposes. They also discovered viral programs underway to develop camel pox,
rotaviruses, and hemorrhagic conjunctivitis. In 2002 testimony before the
House Armed Services Committee, Col. Spertzel described "a well-planned
broadly encompassing program" that included a "terrorist component." Col.
Spertzel said then, "There is no doubt in my mind that Iraq has a much
stronger BW [biological weapons] program today than it had in 1990."

More importantly, Col. Spertzel believes many of those programs continued up
until the war. In a Jan. 27 interview Col. Spertzel told WORLD that, despite
Mr. Kay's recent statements, he has seen nothing in the work of the Iraq
Survey Group-or from his own sources-to render his 2002 assessment obsolete:
"There is ample evidence of continuing programs and no reason to believe
that they would instantly disappear."

Since the war, Col. Spertzel said he has been told by an unnamed Iraqi
source "with 100 percent reliability" that the regime's bioweapons program
was sent to Syria then transferred to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, an area under
control of the Syrian Army and known to be a training ground for the
Hezbollah terror group.

Other Iraqi contacts have told him other WMD programs were either destroyed
in the weeks leading up to the war after President Bush issued an ultimatum
to Saddam, or they were buried in desert sand. "You are not moving
munitions, you are moving agents. That doesn't take much to do," he said.

To find such stashes will take the cooperation of Syrian authorities and
Iraqi informants. But while the Iraq Survey Group employs more than 1,200
personnel-drawn from the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and other
military posts-it has employed few, if any, former inspectors. Hamish
Killip, a British inspector under UNSCOM and former colonel in the Royal
Engineers, is the only Iraq Survey Group adviser WORLD could confirm with
prewar Iraq weapons inspection experience.

If there is one target which gets policemen, counter terrorism strategists
and tacticians, politicians and other assorted terrorism managers very
nervous, it is a religious place of worship getting involved in terrorism.
Mostly, this involves terrorists holing up inside a temple, mosque or church
or might involve terrorists attacking a temple, mosque or church. We
unfortunately have quite a few of such events in the recent past and we can
draw some inferences. Despite these implications and lessons learnt, with
the best will in the world, best media control, best money, and best
everything, this is a nightmare situation which very rarely comes out fine.
Let us take a look.



Continued on at:



http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/10/when-god-is-replaced-by-terrorist.html





--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

So here we have a country which was considered to be a colonial enterprise
in the Middle East, hated with a vengeance, totally imperialistic, only
interested in its own culture and shoving its language down the native
throats, only interested in the natives' oil and in return selling arms to
repressive regimes. And then thirty years later, it has suddenly become a
close friend of the very same people who previously thought of them as an
enemy. Yes, Sir, I am referring to France, the same cheese eating
surrendering monkeys who have successfully managed to turn their foreign
policy dramatically upside down, inside out, and to turn enemies into
friends. Compare that to the USA and UK, which are still embroiled in that
hell-hole called as the Middle East. What happened there? Any lessons to be
learnt?



Continued on at:
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/10/those-frogs-have-better-middle-east.htm
l



--------------------------

Bhaskar Dasgupta

  <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/> http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/ (for
shorter daily comments)

  <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/> http://piquancy.blogspot.com/ (for longer
weekly essays)

---------------------------





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The 1857 War of Independence or Great Mutiny has been directly seared into
the national psyches of many countries and impacted a great many more
countries indirectly. The Great British Empire, on which the sun never set,
arose properly right after 1857 and lasted for about a hundred years before
disintegrating extremely rapidly. I just finished reading William
Dalrymple's latest Magnus Opus, The Last Mughal, (ISBN0747587264) which
tells the story of Delhi before, during and after the mutiny; describes the
work of the major protagonists; the searing indictment of how religion was
used and misused; outlines how one empire collapsed and another was born
from the ashes; tells of the atrocities and ideals; explains the impact on
royalty as well as on the common man and the pitiful end of the Last Great
Mughal. Needless to say, this is a very powerful book and made a deep impact
on me for a whole host of frequently contradictory emotions and reasons.



A British Old Soldiers Association few weeks ago tried to pay respects to
the British Soldiers killed in 1857 and buried in Meerut in 1857 and ended
up with protests and vandalism of the graves. That's how emotive this
subject is. An ex-serviceman site in the UK expressed extreme surprise at
the emotions and exclaimed rather naively, "surely they have forgotten about
it by now?". No, Sir, they have not forgotten.



I have talked before about how the same event can be looked at differently
by different people, relating to their national biases, their education
systems, their national ethos and a lot of other factors. And I have yet to
see any event other than the 1857 war which has so many different
interpretations. The English saw 1857 as a great mutiny, but also that an
accidental empire wasn't really the way to go about it. It got rid of the
East India Company and ruled India by direct rule. Also the sheer size of
the British India Army, as well as the huge economy, gave a further fillip
to the Empire building in Africa, South East Asia, China and other places.



Continued on at:
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/09/war-of-independence-or-great-mutiny.htm
l


===========
Bhaskar Dasgupta

With a grain of piquant salt!
http://piquancy.blogspot.com <http://piquancy.blogspot.com/>  (for longer
weekly essays)
http://dailysalty.blogspot.com <http://dailysalty.blogspot.com/>  (for daily
short commentary)
===========





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Imagine facing a situation where your darling child has been born and very
soon was been diagnosed with an exceedingly rare illness (only sixty
patients in the world are known to have it). You are faced with a situation
that there is no known cure, not much research being done and consequently
treatments and medical care are very expensive. And the disease is
progressive but not that fast, so you have to watch your child slowly
suffering. You literally see your little bundle of joy diminishing right in
front of your eyes. I cannot imagine this, but my friend is currently going
through this and he needs help. And I resolved to help out by whatever
little I can do.

More here: http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/09/hope-springs-eternal.html

Can you help? Please help this brave girl and her loving family. Please
contribute whatever you can spare to her appeal fund. Please visit the
website and leave messages of support. Do forward this essay and the website
address to as many friends and family you have and can. This is not a
forward joke, but a real life little girl who needs your help. Please do
mention her in your prayers to whichever God you believe in. And hug your
child, niece, nephew or your neighbour's child when you finish reading this.
I am sure God will listen to that prayer.
http://www.tillysappealfund.com/


<http://lh4.google.com/bdasgupta/RvTau-ag_9I/AAAAAAAAAHo/a4QBdfieJVE/clip_im
age002%5B3%5D.jpg> clip_image002

And for the first time, all this to NOT be taken with a grain of piquant
salt but hopefully with a generous heart!


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The Muslim Brotherhood is a much mis-understood and under-estimated force in
today's political climate across the globe. Like the various communist
parties globally, drawing sustenance from the same original thinkers such as
Marx, Engle, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, etc but having very distinct local
characteristics, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has similar antecedents through
Al Banna and Qutb as their thinkers while having very local characteristics.

The brotherhood is looked upon with suspicion by western governments, media,
local governments, NGOs; you name it, with the exception of the general
local country citizens and members. This MB has had different levels of
successes and failures in different times in different countries but going
forward, it is my belief that the MB will be an increasingly important
force, one which cannot be ignored.

The world's geo-political framework currently does not have space for either
the ever evolving ideology or the political structure of the MB and the
earlier people make the mental shift; the better it is for the world. Let us
see the how's and why's of this rather interesting phenomena that is the MB.

Continued on at:
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/09/muslim-brotherhood-force-not-to-be.html




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article240
9865.ece

September 8, 2007

China's cyber army is preparing to march on America, says Pentagon Tim Reid
in Washington

Chinese military hackers have prepared a detailed plan to disable America's
aircraft battle carrier fleet with a devastating cyber attack, according to
a Pentagon report obtained by The Times.

The blueprint for such an assault, drawn up by two hackers working for the
People's Liberation Army (PLA), is part of an aggressive push by Beijing to
achieve "electronic dominance" over each of its global rivals by 2050,
particularly the US, Britain, Russia and South Korea.

China's ambitions extend to crippling an enemy's financial, military and
communications capabilities early in a conflict, according to military
documents and generals' speeches that are being analysed by US intelligence
officials. Describing what is in effect a new arms race, a Pentagon
assessment states that China's military regards offensive computer
operations as "critical to seize the initiative"
in the first stage of a war.

The plan to cripple the US aircraft carrier battle groups was authored by
two PLA air force officials, Sun Yiming and Yang Liping.
It also emerged this week that the Chinese military hacked into the US
Defence Secretary's computer system in June; have regularly penetrated
computers in at least 10 Whitehall departments, including military files,
and infiltrated German government systems this year.

Cyber attacks by China have become so frequent and aggressive that President
Bush, without referring directly to Beijing, said this week that "a lot of
our systems are vulnerable to attack". He indicated that he would raise the
subject with Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, when they met in Sydney at
the Apec summit. Mr Hu denied that China was responsible for the attack on
Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary.

Larry M. Wortzel, the author of the US Army War College report, said:
"The thing that should give us pause is that in many Chinese military
manuals they identify the US as the country they are most likely to go to
war with. They are moving very rapidly to master this new form of warfare."
The two PLA hackers produced a "virtual guidebook for electronic warfare and
jamming" after studying dozens of US and Nato manuals on military tactics,
according to the document.

The Pentagon logged more than 79,000 attempted intrusions in 2005.
About 1,300 were successful, including the penetration of computers linked
to the Army's 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 4th Infantry
Division. In August and September of that year Chinese hackers penetrated US
State Department computers in several parts of the world. Hundreds of
computers had to be replaced or taken offline for months. Chinese hackers
also disrupted the US Naval War College's network in November, forcing the
college to shut down its computer systems for several weeks. The Pentagon
uses more than 5 million computers on 100,000 networks in 65 countries.

Jim Melnick, a recently retired Pentagon computer network analyst, told The
Times that the Chinese military holds hacking competitions to identify and
recruit talented members for its cyber army.

He described a competition held two years ago in Sichuan province, southwest
China. The winner now uses a cyber nom de guerre, Wicked Rose. He went on to
set up a hacking business that penetrated computers at a defence contractor
for US aerospace. Mr Melnick said that the PLA probably outsourced its
hacking efforts to such individuals. "These guys are very good," he said.
"We don't know for sure that Wicked Rose and people like him work for the
PLA. But it seems logical. And it also allows the Chinese leadership to have
plausible deniability."

In February a massive cyber attack on Estonia by Russian hackers
demonstrated how potentially catastrophic a preemptive strike could be on a
developed nation. Pro-Russian hackers attacked numerous sites to protest
against the controversial removal in Estonia of a Russian memorial to
victims of the Second World War. The attacks brought down government
websites, a major bank and telephone networks.

Linton Wells, the chief computer networks official at the Pentagon, said
that the Estonia attacks "may well turn out to be a watershed in terms of
widespread awareness of the vulnerability of modern society".

After the attacks, computer security experts from Nato, the EU, US and
Israel arrived in the capital, Tallinn, to study its effects.

Sami Saydjari, who has been working on cyber defence systems for the
Pentagon since the 1980s, told Congress in testimony on April 25 that a mass
cyber attack could leave 70 per cent of the US without electrical power for
six months.

He told The Times that all major nations - including China - were scrambling
to defend against, and working out ways to cause, "maximum strategic damage"
by taking out banking systems, power grids and communications networks. He
said that there were at least a thousand attempted attacks every hour on
American computers. "China is aggressive in this," he said.

Programmed to attack

Malware: a "Trojan horse" programme, which hides a "malicious code"
behind an innocent document, can collect usernames and passwords for e-mail
accounts. It can download programmes and relay attacks against other
computers. An infected computer can be controlled by the attacker and
directed to carry out functions normally available only to the system owner.

Hacking: increasingly a method of attack used by countries determined to use
electronic means to gain access to secrets. Government computers in Britain
have a network intrusion detection system, which monitors traffic and alerts
officials to "misuse or anomalous behaviour".

Botnets: compromised networks that an attacker can exploit.
Deliberate programming errors in software can easily pass undetected.
Attackers can exploit the errors to take control of a computer.
Botnets can be used for stealing information or to collect credit card
numbers by "sniffing" or logging the strokes of a victim's keyboard.

Keystroke loggers: they record the sequence of key strokes that a user types
in. Logging devices can be fitted inside the computer itself.

Denial of service attacks: overloading a computer system so that it can no
longer function. This is the method allegedly used by the Russians to
disrupt the Estonian government computers in May.

Phishing and spoofing: designed to trick an organisation's customers into
imparting confidential information such as passwords, personal data or
banking details. Those using this method impersonate a "trusted source" such
as a bank or IT helpdesk to persuade the victim to hand over confidential
information. (Michael Evans)

Last week I reviewed the recent book, titled 'Lies, Lies and More Lies' by
Vivek (ISBN: 978-0-595-43549-4), which is a collection of articles aiming to
shed light on Hindutva. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a nation
and there is also nothing wrong in defining that nation on the basis of
religion. But nationality, as a measure of human identity and possibly
politics has to be very dense and logical from an intellectual basis. I
identified some issues with the thesis and this week I pick up and continue
with the rest of the book and end with some suggestions on Hindu
nationalism.

In Part Two of the book, Jaswant Singh is quoted saying that Kashmir is at
the core of Indian nationhood. I found this very curious, because it echoes
what the Pakistani politicians have been saying since 1948. We have moved
far beyond trying to define Indian nationhood as a fountainhead of
secularism. The problem with using this quote is that it negates most of the
author’s other points. If India is not a believer in denominational
definitions of nationhood, then why is the author conflating Hinduism with
'Indianness'? See the inconsistency?

Kashmir has been rehashed quite a lot, but I am surprised that the author
missed out on the rampant corruption and vote theft in the 1989 elections.
Also the solid support given by Kashmiris of all stripes to India during the
1965 war and the miscalculations by the Pakistani Generals, or the
(estimated) 80,000 killed and missing in the two decades long insurgency.
Chapter 8 is something that I definitely sympathise with. The plight of the
Kashmiri Pandits is very bad and their neglect has been shameful indeed. The
last quote on page 69 is very telling. I have seen this quote repeated for
Jews, Hindus, Communists, Liberals, Conservatives, Christians, etc. any
discriminated against community tends to drag out this quote and bang on
about it. It has become totally overused to the point of being a cliché now,
but that’s just a personal opinion.

The Chattisinghpura massacre has too many unanswered questions, and I am
very suspicious of the "official" statements. There have been far too many
inconsistencies in the story; no follow-up massacres of Sikhs happened, the
Kashmiri militants rejected the accusation far too strongly. I do accept
that Kashmiri terrorists attack Hindu labourers, Pandits and pilgrims, but
Sikhs have been a new one back then and none since then.

I am not surprised at Arundhati Roy's assertions, the Arundhati school of
writing has its own dubious pleasures, one of them being wallowing in a
surfeit of hyperbole, fantasy and just lightly dusted with facts. But the
Graham Staines murder is very cavalierly treated by the author, as is the
IDRF report and the accusations thereof. The breaking story of most of the
US electronic infrastructure of the US based Hindu council being the same as
that of the Sangh Parivar came out after the book was published, but the
situation is the same.

Chapter 13 skips the BJP Rath Yatra, which helped in inflaming passions. Bit
unfortunate that. Also it skips the most crucial element, which was the way
too many reported incidents of official stage government machinery being
used to identify and isolate Muslims. Yes, Hindus were killed, but
curiously, so many years after that event, Muslims are still inside DP camps
and subject to economic boycotts. The usage of the state machinery was the
kicker putting the riots beyond the pale. And it is indeed tragic that the
author points to the fact that the anti-Sikh riots (also state sponsored)
happened. One crime does not excuse another, I am afraid. And no, it is not
against Hindus at all, because if it had been so, then Hindus across the
country would have been affected. Does the author know of anywhere else such
an incident happened? If 1984 was a blot on India, then Gujarat was a body
blow, because it just showed that the Hindus are equally barbaric as any
others.

Chapter 15 talks about how Karnataka State Government is actually in charge
of the Temple trusts and is worrisome and frankly not on. The state
government has no business being in the religion business and should hand it
over to the local temple trusts immediately, under regulatory control just
like all charities are. So if a temple, mosque or church is engaged in
receiving charitable donations, then accounts have to be filed in public. So
I agree with the author that the donations given by the faithful have to be
ring fenced and hypothecated for the purpose for which the donation has been
made.

The other remarks about commentators commenting unfairly about Hindus is a
viewpoint and there is nothing much to be said about that, but the fact that
we have a good broad open press which singularly treats every bit as
different is good. Mind you, the points in Chapter 16 and 17, relate more to
the English language press which is relatively small in coverage, the
vernacular press, the other media channels like tape cassettes, etc. are
really hair-raising.

I was also reminded of Edward Said in his very obtuse book 'Orientalism'
while reading this chapter. It evoked the same feeling of victimhood based
upon a select reading of facts. "Our newspapers possess a degree of freedom
that is unmatched in the world. That this freedom has been blatantly misused
in recent times is another story" on Page 110 points to a fundamental
misreading of the facts. You cannot praise freedom of speech in the press
and then complain that it has been misused. Remember what Voltaire said?

Chapter 19 is something which I again agree with. Religious based
discrimination is an anathema to me, whether it is the OBC/SC/ST or what
have you. To hell with all these religious denominations, if you do want to
give sops and help, then help them as poor Indians. There is nothing more
corrosive than to give one poor Indian a leg up and give another identical
poor Indian a shove off simply because s/he happens to be born into another
religion, caste or creed. Disgusting.

One can argue for a strong political voice for Hindus but I am afraid that
form of political consciousness does not function for such a heterogeneous
lot like Hindus. For example, the Christian democratic parties in Europe are
totally different by country in terms of their ideological underpinning and
allies. The other problem is that as soon as you plug in religion into a
political party, you introduce an element of tension between secularism and
religion. By it's very nature, if you are reliant on one religion’s tenets,
you have to treat others differently, but for a political party to aim for
government, once inside government, you have to treat everybody equally,
hence the tension. The biggest mistake that the Hindus have made is to make
a political party in the first place, because that exposed them to the
demands of governance. If they had stuck to being a social, religious and
cultural organisation, then they would have made a better fist of it. I
suppose the love and lure of power was too strong. Also, creating a nation
out of Hindus means trying to force them into one straitjacket and as the
past history has shown, it is not possible. People will throw you out if you
try to impose a common religious idea.

Second, while many elements of this book point to inconsistencies and
discrimination against Hindus, the basic inconsistencies of the arguments
and the limited use of facts means that the book remains what I would call
as a pamphlet. If the author is hoping for a Hindu consciousness based upon
arguments such as these, then he has to work much harder and go back to
basics. He has to think about what do they want to be, Hindu or Indian, a
secular person or a religious person? a political party or a religious
group? a desire for equality without any reference to casteism or other
religious ills? a huge amount of thought needs to be generated. Some hints,
consider why the luminaries such as Vivekananda and Dayanand never breached
the boundary between nation, religion and politics. That is the reason why
their message still resonates. Compare that to the fate of Gandhi, who
managed to make a pig's ear out of the mix between religion and politics and
that is the reason why his reputation is taking so many hits these days. And
ironically, he being a firm committed Hindu did not save him from being
bumped off by another Hindu who thought he was betraying the Hindu cause.
Politics and religion never mix!

So the conclusion is that the author would be better off arguing for equal
treatment of Hinduism under the equality perspective. He needs to stop
whining about being a victim, because it is demeaning and frankly
embarrassing, see the example of the Palestinians, the almost constant
whining and moaning is so irritating. He should not confuse India, Hindu,
Hinduism, Bharat, Buddhism, Secularism etc. and aim to reform Hinduism by
eradicating social and religious ills such as the position of women, widows,
caste, and superstition. Encouraging the usage and spread of Sanskrit, Tamil
and other Hindu languages, of traditional schools of learning ranging from
ayurveda, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, literature, etc. is also an
option. An Indutva rather than Hindutva so to say, and one will see that
many of the inconsistencies and incoherence dies away. One has a far
stronger historical, economic, sociological, anthropological, philosophical,
theological and even epistemological basis than relying on Hindutva, More
importantly; one will see that all the objectives of Hindutva are satisfied
by the Indutva concept and very little of the religion specific downsides.

Mixing religion with politics never works and l never will recommend doing
so. If one does want to see how others have defined a nation on the basis of
religion, one can read about people starting from Shaka for the Zulus,
Theodore Herzl for Zionism and the various books on Jinnah for Pakistan.
These three chaps would be good indicators on how a nation can be
constructed and how complicated and impossible it is to reconcile a
religion, a nation and a state. And no, Sarvarkar’s and Golwalkar’s books
and thoughts are not at par, they are inapplicable and in many cases
inconsistent. Oh! The last thing, remember Godwin’s law!

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Rage is a funny thing in humans, it makes you forget the boundaries of
civilised behaviour. You cannot define rage or even what constitutes
civilised behaviour. But you know when you see rage and you know when
boundaries are breached. We have seen enraged boys on our screens and
newspapers, but many times, the public expression of rage is staged and thus
they become the rent boys.

Finally and unfortunately, while one's rage might be justified by one's own
frame of reference, when it violates the world's frame of reference of
civilised behaviour, then it backfires and you end up being a lady boy.
Allow me to explain.

Continued on at
http://piquancy.blogspot.com/2007/08/rage-boys-rent-boys-lady-boys.html