A JUNIOR software engineer in the DRDO and a journalist working for a leading local English daily are among 11 people arrested by the Bangalore police in an alleged terror plot to attack a Right-wing columnist in a prominent Kannada daily, Hindu leaders and politicians. They were in regular touch with Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat-ul-Jehadi-al-Islami operatives in Saudi Arabia in connection with the alleged plot.
Among them are Muthi-ur-Rehman Siddiqui, 26, a journalist who has been with Deccan Herald for the last three years, Ejaz Mohammed Mirza, 25, a junior engineer in DRDO, his brother Shoaib Ahmed Mirza, 25, a masters in computer applications, and Mohammed Yousuf Nalband, 28, an electrician.
The others arrested from Bangalore are Abdullah alias Abdul Hakim Jamadar, 25 and Riyaz Ahmed Byahatti, 28. Among the arrested from Hubli are Obaidullah Imran Bahadur, 24, Mohammed Sadiq Lashkar, 28, Waheed Hussain, 26, Mahaboob Bagalkote, 26, and Dr Jaffar Iqbal Sholapur.
The exposure limit of radio frequency fields (base station emissions) across the nation will be brought down to one-tenth of the existing level from September 1.The Hindu: Mobile base station radiation limit will be cut from September 1
This comes in response to petitions in High Courts and the Supreme Court on fears of health hazards from mobile tower radiations. The issue of mobile tower radiations causing cancer has been a cause for concern to people across the country. In the past few months, members of civil society and resident welfare associations across the nation have been opposing the installation of new towers in their localities and questioning the continuance of the existing ones.
Remarkable if something penetrated the thick fog of obfuscation these fellows inhabit.
Quick, take screenshot before the mafia take it down.
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On Aug 30, 2012 7:24 AM, "sri wrote:
>
> Confessions of a troubled secularist
>
> http://www.asianage.com/columnists/confessions-troubled-secularist-053
>
> Aug 23, 2012
>
> Shiv Visvanathan
>
> If Muslims insist on speaking exclusively for Muslims and do not recognise Bodo suffering then theirs is an ethnic of narcissism
>
> This is an essay on secularism and the Indian Muslim. And I must admit the recent events have made this a difficult piece to write. Let me begin at the beginning.
>
> I was born in Jamshedpur where I saw riot after riot triggered in urban areas. I still remember the day in school when my classmate Obidul Islam came to say goodbye. He told me sadly that his family was going back to Pakistan. Obidul was a brilliant 100-metre runner and I am still unsuccessfully racing against him.
>
> As I grew older and watched the Mumbai 1992 riots and the Gujarat carnage of 2002, I saw with sadness how for the majority community, democracy tasted like castor oil, good for health but difficult to consume. While studying the Gujarat violence I saw how the community of Muslim survivors built a new citizenship around a community of law. I heard Mr Bandukwala, once professor of physics at Baroda University, tell the Hindus that even if you do not apologise I forgive you. Listening to all this I wondered what secularism meant.
>
> My secular friends practised a strange kind of casteism. In the aftermath of the riots they would talk to Muslims but stay away from Hindus who had also suffered. I found secularism becoming a form of ghettoisation where one community’s suffering was privileged over others. Worse, I found secularism empty and non-dialogic. It was catechism without a theology, a form of political correctness, where the Hosannas were the sons to the minority community and truth flew out of the window.
>
> Secularism, at least in terms of the relation of science to religion, is based on a false history. The battle between science and religion is a falsely constructed one. Tracts about the conflict between religion and science were published as a result of a struggle for power between scientists and theologians battling to control the modern university. They both wrote history backward, destroying the fact that religion and science have been reciprocally creative.
>
> I think Indian secularism cannot not engage with religion but must create a communicative relationship with it. I am reminded of the ending of an old movie, Inherit the Wind, where the hero, Clarence Darrow, picks up Darwin’s The Origin of Species and the Bible and holds them up as great books, each inspired by a different kind of truth. Secularism as dialogue insists on critique and this is what I am going to engage in.
>
> What happened in Mumbai, and is still happening, is atrocious. If Muslims are as rabid as Bal Thackeray, or Raj Thackeray, then one must say so. If Muslims insist on speaking exclusively for Muslims and do not recognise Bodo suffering then theirs is an ethnic of narcissism, and not a secular value. Unless Muslims realise that over a million Bodos have been displaced, the displacement of three million Muslims will make little sense. One man’s suffering cannot be the cause of another man’s celebration. This cannot be the secular way or the secular ethic.
>
> In our society, secularism has to be defined differently. It cannot be a battle between religion and science or separation between state and religion. Secularism is the way we respond to strangers. The stranger is the other who defines us. The first law of secularism should be hospitality. We welcome the other because he is not us. The other is the reminder that we are not complete as truths, that as fragments we need each other. The second law of secularism can be formulated after the Dalai Lama’s comment that George Bush’s behaviour “brings out the Muslim in him”. Similarly, after the Gujarat carnage I can say that Narendra Modi brings out the Muslim in me. It is a way of giving secular space a meaning where we become the other in their moment of suffering. Yet, our secularism allows for boundary walls. It realises that violence might come when identities are too close and separations are not maintained. Our secularism understands difference and distance creatively because our secularism is a theory
> of diversity not homogeneity.
>
> As a human rights activist I have to be secular by definition. I cannot fight only for Hindus because I am a Hindu. But I fight for Muslims because I am a Hindu. My duty extends beyond my community because my rights also extend beyond it. The very dialogicity of this secularism demands that I challenge both Muslim fundamentalism and Hindu fanaticism. Our society has become fragile today because Muslim violence and exclusivity has become a problem. To criticise the Muslim is not to demonise them. It is to use the reciprocity of citizenship to mirror each other. We have to realise that a few more riots can change the very nature of
> politics.
>
> I am writing this because I am concerned about the fate of democracy. The situation is tense and let’s not forget that Assam is the state with the second largest Muslim population in India. We need to understand that a coercive minoritarianism is as putrid as bully boy majoritarianism. The Muslim fanatic and the Hindu fundamentalist both threaten democracy and we need open ended democracy that challenges both. A Mulana Abdul Qadir Alvi is not an alternative to Raj Thackeray. He is merely a Muslim Modi with a skull cap. The danger is that a few riots can create an insecurity, a climate of hate that could bring a politician like Modi to power. This is a history that a secularist must seek to avoid. The current meaning of secularism is too narrow and impoverished. We have to reinvent words so that we understand the worlds we wish to live in. The pomposity of a narrow state-sponsored Western secularism is utterly useless in this new democratic battle.
>
> The writer is a social science nomad
>
Sanjit Das/Bloomberg
Ram Kishen, 52, half-blind and half- starved, holds in his gnarled hands the reason for his hunger: a tattered card entitling him to subsidized rations that now serves as a symbol of India’s biggest food heist.
Kishen has had nothing from the village shop for 15 months. Y...
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In the wake of the torching of churches in Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa and grenade attacks on other churches around the country, Protestant leaders are trying a new tack to get more help from the government: they're suing.
Christian leaders say the targeting of churches with grenades, bombs...
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Lessons on sex education and handing out contraception freely to young people has little impact on cutting teenage pregnancy rates in the UK.DH: Sex education doesn’t cut teenage pregnancy
But something different is happening now. “Instead of additional years of life being realized early in the life cycle, they are being realized late in life,” Stanford University economists Karen Eggleston and Victor Fuchs write in the cu …
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/08/28/economic-pros-and-cons-of-longer-life-spans/
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But something different is happening now. “Instead of additional years of life being realized early in the life cycle, they are being realized late in life,” Stanford University economists Karen Eggleston and Victor Fuchs write in the cu …
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/08/28/economic-pros-and-cons-of-longer-life-spans/
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Apple is an enormously wealthy and profitable company, we all know this. Sometimes, though, there’s a bit of context that really snaps it into crisp detail. One such observation was made earlier today by Counternotions on Twitter and shared on Mactrast.
The comment pointed out that the combined...
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(Reuters) - It was meant to be another night of music and dance, a brief distraction from life in the searing heat and dust of Afghanistan's conservative rural south for a small group of boys and girls in Helmand province's Roshan Abad village.
Instead it ended in brutality that even the Taliba...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/28/us-afghanistan-beheadings-idUSBRE87R0GZ20120828
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Subject: Azad Maidan Violence Video |
Fareed Zakaria’s apology was instant and unambiguous. Pit that against Barkha’s defiant non-apology. “I was gullible…I was silly…I may have been innocent, I made an error of judgement. I am sorry for that but that’s all…I’m not apologising for anything else.” She shall now live with the sword of doubt hanging over her head because every time I see her the Radia tapes play in my head. And I think she knows that.Firstpost: Why the fall of Xerox Zakaria is unthinkable in Indian media
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NASA is aiming to launch a line of small satellites called "PhoneSats" that are cheaper to make and easier to build than those it has produced in the past. To achieve this, engineers are using unmodified Android smartphones -- in one prototype, HTC's Nexus One, and in another, Samsung's Nexus S -...
http://mashable.com/2012/08/26/nasa-satellites-android/
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The National Commission of Minorities (NCM) has stirred up a hornet’s nest by coming up with a report which indicates an excessively skewed focus on the condition of Muslims in the recent Assam riots. A team representing NCM visited the riot-hit areas in Assam to prepare a report on the condition...
http://www.niticentral.com/2012/08/nmc-entrenching-minority-victimhood.html
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The validity of the jury decision in the Apple vs. Samsung patent trial has come under renewed scrutiny, with concerns that the speedy ruling could mean fundamental aspects of the process have been overlooked. Many were surprised that the jury in the San Jose case reached its $1bn decision agains...
http://www.slashgear.com/apple-samsung-jury-speed-doubts-raised-after-punishment-ruling-26243946/
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The initial narrative that unfolded in the media, of a disgruntled spinster-turned-spy, spilling state secrets for love or money or revenge—perhaps with the assistance, witting or unwitting, of the R&AW station chief—appeared to have come from the officials that investigated the case in the IB and Ministry of Home Affairs. The fact that RK Sharma’s identity had been leaked as well, however, suggested there might be a bigger story that had gone untold: one that had little to do with Madhuri Gupta, but instead revealed a bitter turf war that had played out inside the Indian High Commission in Pakistan, which pitted officers of India’s two civilian intelligence agencies against one another.The Caravan: Team of Rivals
ALL through the Eid holidays, my mind has been on the Northern Areas.
The brutal sectarian murder that took place near Babuser Pass may not sound like much of an economic story to most people, but it is of such universal importance that it would be naïve to think that economic matters are divorced from the steady descent of our country into a boiling cauldron of primitive hatreds.
However, the human tragedy that the killings represent is the first order of priority to highlight. There are only two overland linkages that the erstwhile Northern Areas have with the rest of Pakistan, and both of them have seen brutal sectarian murders.
The eyewitness accounts are chilling, where passengers are offloaded from buses, their papers examined, and Shias separated from Sunnis.
Then the grim firing line is assembled and in one quick burst of gunfire, those belonging to the minority Shia sect are gunned down. In one online eyewitness account, in the most recent of such killings, those whose lives were spared were made to shout slogans declaring the murdered ones infidels before they were allowed to resume their journey — in many cases those sent on
were family members of the dead — leaving behind the bodies of their murdered fellow travellers.
With both roads that connect them with the rest of the country now under attack, the people of the Northern Areas are effectively cut off from their own country. Air travel is far too limited to handle the traffic that goes back and forth, and there is no rail link.
Tourism is an important source of income for many people in these areas, which see visitors in large numbers from across East Asia and more spirited enthusiasts from across Pakistan. Of course, the killings deter people from visiting and impose a heavy cost on the people across this area.
Adding to the difficulties faced by the people in this region is the still unresolved issue of the Attabad lake, formed in January 2010 when a massive landslide blocked the Hunza River near what was the village of Gojal.
When the river levels rose with the arrival of summer, the water formed a lake behind the landslide, rising to a height of almost 100m in some parts and flooding a stretch of almost 20km of the Karakorum Highway. More than 6,000 people were displaced by some counts and the overland link to China was cut off.
To this day, the lake has not been drained, and the government appears to have abandoned all efforts to drain it. More than two years after the original tragedy, the only way to go beyond Attabad is by an hour-long boat journey in completely unregulated crafts.
During a recent visit I saw food, fuel and medicines being carried across the lake in those boats, taken down to the water’s edge on the backs of hardy young men. This is no way to keep a population of more than 30,000, north of Attabad lake, supplied with daily necessities or to operate our only road link to the world’s fastest-growing economy. This is no way to live up to state obligations to safeguard the livelihoods of citizens.
The people living north of Attabad lake have been trapped in a low-intensity disaster zone for more than two years now, and the tragedy is that the country appears to have forgotten about them.
Compounding the situation is the condition of the Karakorum Highway. This once proud road has been ripped up almost completely from the China border almost down to Thakot. It is being repaved by a Chinese construction company, and some stretches do present a fresh look, but the journey on this road has been turned into a nightmare as a result.
The highway is more than a strategic link for the army; it is a vital artery that connects all those living in the northern areas with the rest of the country, and with each other. The journey from Gilgit to Hunza, which used to be a most pleasant three hours or so now takes more than five hours. South of Gilgit the situation gets worse.
A simple question that everybody who has seen this road wants to ask is: why did they rip up the entire road to repave it?
Couldn’t it have been done in sections? Who gave the order to rip up the whole road?
It has been lying in this state for over two years now, and from the looks of it, it will be in this condition for at least as much longer.
Between murderous gangs prowling the road in the south and a disaster zone in the north, the people of Gilgit-Baltistan are stuck in a nightmare from which there seems to be no escape. They’re having a great deal of trouble getting the government to pay attention to the seriousness of the situation they face, and many of those who have tried to organise the local community have found themselves targeted by the security services and detained indefinitely.
The Gilgit-Baltistan government under Chief Minister Mehdi Shah should wake up to its responsibilities and work harder to resolve the issues under its control. It must make a greater effort to awaken the federal government to its responsibilities in the area too. He may be from Skardu himself, but the chief minister would do well to remember that he is an elected representative of Gilgit-Baltistan which also includes Hunza, Passu, Diamer, etc.
But the biggest responsibility belongs to the federal government. Until its fair share in federal resources is made available to it by virtue of having provincial status, Gilgit-Baltistan will continue to require federal assistance to execute its responsibilities.
The federal government can start by making a strong and credible commitment to maintain law order in the access routes to Gilgit-Baltistan.
The writer is a Karachi-based journalist covering business and economic policy.
At a time when the governance of the country is in total disarray, foreign policy is the least of India’s national preoccupations. Yet, thanks to a blundering Government that has lost its balance, India has committed one astonishing blunder and may be on the verge of another diplomatic boo-boo.
The first, predictably, centres on Pakistan, a country which is internally beleaguered and externally short of credibility and friends (barring China). Last week, in an astonishing show of cynicism, the Union Home Secretary accused forces in Pakistan of disseminating fraudulent and inflammatory propaganda aimed at inciting communal troubles in India. The purpose was charmingly blunt: to suggest that the tensions all over India flowing from the troubles in Assam’s Kokrajhar district were the creation of the proverbial ‘foreign hand’.
It is no one’s contention that forces in Pakistan, both official and non-official, are not inimical to India. For a very long time, official thinking across the Radcliffe Line has salivated over the likelihood of an eventual break-up of India. The war of a thousand cuts that General Zia-ul Haq launched in the early-1980s was aimed at encouraging every separatist trend in India, be it in Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab or the North-East. Since 1993, Pakistan has also been hyper-active in fermenting Islamist terrorism and its role in the Mumbai attack of 2008 has been extremely well documented. Even to this day, the promoters of the notorious Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are allowed a free run within Pakistan to disseminate their hateful anti-India message.
That certain Pakistani websites run by extremist elements (with or without official backing) did their bit to promote and nurture a sense of Muslim victimhood over events in Assam and Myanmar isn’t in any doubt. Some jihadi elements within India also echoed these themes in their websites.
However, it is one thing to be alert to the dangers of cyber disinformation. It is a completely different matter for the Centre to argue that the mobs in Mumbai, Lucknow and Allahabad were instigated by Pakistan.
The argument that otherwise good Muslims were cynically misled by dark forces may be good for TV chat shows. The problem arises when the Government starts touting this as the official explanation. Naturally Pakistan has demanded proof. And never mind supplying evidence that would leave Islamabad squirming in embarrassment, the Home Ministry has failed to satisfy colleagues in the Ministry of External Affairs. Indeed, India’s diplomats are themselves shamefaced over this ham-handed bid to pin the responsibility for our internal failings on Pakistan. Apart from everything else, this amateurish buck-passing has ended up putting needless question marks over the credibility of the evidence on Pakistan’s culpability in the Mumbai attacks. If there was a well-directed self-goal, this was it.
The Government, it would seem, is so caught up with obfuscation that it can’t tell its rear from its elbow. This week, the Prime Minister is going to take a break from ‘coalgate’ and other domestic headaches and travel to Teheran for a completely useless Non-Aligned Movement summit. I am no kill-joy and would not like to deprive junketeers of the opportunity of buying Persian carpets at bargain prices. Yet, there is a compelling case for the PM to cite domestic preoccupations and despatch External Affairs Minister SM Krishna to shake hands with President Ahmadinejad and other representatives of the Iranian theocracy.
That India and Iran has deep ‘civilisational ties’ is a cliché that often rivals the ritual boasts of us being a 5,000-year-old civilisation. No doubt both contain grains of truth which are supplemented by material interests. India still needs Iranian oil and needs Iran for an overland access to Afghanistan. The strategic importance of both should not be underestimated. If he doesn’t, it will be shameful.
At the same time, there are some features of the Indo-Iran bilateral relationship that could do with some clarification. The most important of these is the question of Iranian involvement in international terrorism.
It is understandable, though not morally defensible, that India chooses to look the other way (and at times even condone), Iran’s activities in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. As a country that has a glorious track record of preachiness, India has chosen to keep remarkably silent about Ahmadinejad’s repeated threats to wipe out Israel from the face of the earth — the latest one being his Quds Day address on August 17. But why has India chosen to be silent when Iran exports its terror to New Delhi?
The Delhi Police, after an uncharacteristically unpublicised inquiry, has gathered enough evidence to indicate that three Iranian nationals, along with one Indian, were involved in the explosion that left an Israeli diplomat seriously injured in February this year. Despite the evidence linking the Delhi bombing with the Bangkok bombing where Iranian nationals were also involved, Tehran has chosen to brazen it out, in the understanding that India is powerless to do anything. The issue is not merely that Iran must not be allowed to export its terror, but that India must make it clear that it will not countenance any physical harm to the representative of a friendly country — which is what Israel unquestionably is.
For too long, India has allowed its policy to be guided by spurious sectarian concerns. If the Prime Minister does go to Tehran at this inopportune moment, the least we can expect is for him to tell Ahmadinejad to lay off.
