"Our thoughts and prayers..."

"As latest batch of innocent Americans are left lying in pools of blood, cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes".

On the Apple guy's ouster..

Just because an executive is part of a winning team doesn’t mean an individual was the sole reason that team kept winning. A lot of people came together at Apple at precisely the right time and created magic. Similar plot lines unfolded at Google and then at Facebook. It happened at Microsoft and Sun. It is a story that repeats itself, and yet we forget about these magical confluences of luck and talent, and tend to believe in the power of one.

GigaOM: As JC Penney and Ron Johnson just learned, it is always about the team

The Top 0.1% Earn Half Of All Capital Gains

The top 0.1% are making about half of all capital gains. According to the Congressional Budget Office more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains.

Tax on capital gains had first been reduced in 1978 from 35% to 28%. At the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again to 20%– raised back to 28% in 1987. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%. Bush tax reduction on capital gains from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth.

'Ragheads' and Republicans

CNN has an op-ed piece entitled 'Ragheads' and Republicans: Is Sikhism a sickness?

I think we all know what the answer to that is. The rednecks have their own sickness going on, and it may in fact be incurable. It is the built-in insularity of the American Right that keeps them continually trailing the Left in the polls. It's only when they outgrow their infantilism that they'll be able to outflank the Left by reaching out in the directions they need to.

The lips firmly to the bottom – aka “strategic reassurance”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/09/AR2009110902793.html

feed them to the wolves - this is what Obama’s policy actually means to neighbors of China. It should come as no surprise; the blighter was their candidate all along.

Say what you will about Bush, but he never turned away the Dalai Lama and did make a studied pretence of standing up to the barbarians – remember that US spy plane that had to land on the mainland? What a circus that was, complete with hysterically shrieking han she-wolf of the dead chinese pilot.

Also it is strange that the Yanks defer to Russians (which, to clarify, is fine with me) while the hans push them around

All in all – we are quite alone in the world. Even the pygmy nations like Lankans now push us around.

pakistan: shafting your benefactor

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/world/asia/08pstan.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

the Pakistanis military think the US aid program is not good enough for them. I would find this amusing if it were not so tragic.

sometimes the Yanks behave like an abused wife when it comes to dealing with Pakistan. they hate the pakis but they can just never let go. always giving more - giving anything to be loved!

compare that to our PM - forever professing Indian 'love' for the US president - irrespective of who is in the chair!

MJ Akbar on Hillary's trip to India

Some light reading on Hillary's recent trip.

Another Manmohan capitulation

The Times and other mouthpieces have not even reported this on the front page.

US inspectors would be given access to Indian military bases to inspect American military systems in service with the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force, under the text of the end-use monitoring agreement agreed upon by the two sides on Monday during US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's visit to India.

India does not have such an agreement with any other country

Other write ups in this newspaper have the "redoubtable" SM Krishna saying that there's nothing wrong in opening ones kimono WIDE (as in REALLY WIDE) to intrusive american inspections.

If this is how totally Manmohan and Co are selling us down the drain in a deal so simple, imagine how total the sell-out in the nuke deal, once the technical gobbledegook is removed, must be.

The Dragon and its pet Dog

You've got to hand it to the Hans. They are past masters at shadow-boxing/deception, the whole works. All thanks to Sun Tzu who is the patron-saint of the current Chinese strategists. India should just mouth the usual platitudes and enjoy the show with some popcorn.

While at it, as someone was saying at Bharat Rakshak, maybe India can pay the North Koreans to have its own advanced nukes tested there.

From the article,

...the Chinese claimed to have learned about the recent nuclear test an hour in advance, which no one believes...

North Korea conducts 2nd Nuclear test

Hahahahahaha... So much for the carrot & stick diplomacy led by the US. China is back to thumbing its nose again via its proxy.

Play it again Sam: the Yanks now pining for Mianji

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/world/asia/25sharif.html

this circus never ceases to amuse. the Yanks in America are like the thrice-jilted lovers saying "someone - please take me in"

Mianji is as 'sharif' as they come of course - the only extremist in Pakistan is Musharraf's dog. Look how he narly took over that police academy - that rascal!

if all you make is rubber dogshit; all you earn will be Disney dollars

The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, spoke in unusually blunt terms on Friday about the “safety” of China’s $1 trillion investment in American government debt....

looks like the Hans are just realizing they screwed themselves over. The recent surge in dollar value will be short-lived. when the 'flight to safety' ends, the dollar will plummet. not that i want it to - but the laws of economics are inevitable. too much supply = lowered price.

the fed and Obama treasury have been flooding the world in dollars, and as Warren Buffet warned in his letter to Berkshire investor - this strong 'medicine' will have a bad after effect. burning the house down to roast the pig - etc.

Obama to Taliban - c'mon we are all Muslims here

Looks like the universally loved president is going to do what Brahma Chellaney has predicted all along; put the Yankee tail between Yankee legs, smooch the "good taliban" and run

this "surge, bribe and run" is going to be another disaster for India. not that the non-PM and madam are bothered. no skin of their backs. when the "bad taliban" come calling - well, too bad. just a few more murdered hindus in india as far as they are concerned.

obama's next move will be to get india to commit troops in Afghanistan. the desi dork media (TM - Bharat Rakshak forum) will fall over themselves to ensure that he can get as many as he needs. soon the lound banshee tv anchors will say "why pay an army if we do not use one"

of course - after screwing the defense services over for five years - the kkkangress will make sure that our soldiers go into afghanistan without guns and boots.

living up to Jawaharlal's dream - no?

US pulls the plug on latest Indian Warship

The Yanks just doing their thing. And these are the guys Dr. Manmohan has trusted our nuclear program with. And he also wants to buy 126 F-16s or F-18s from the Yanks, so that they can pull the plug again during an Indo-Pak or Indo-Sino war. India and the US are 'natural allies' and great democracies indeed...

State Bank of America?

the markets have been beating already beleagured bank stocks on the fear of nationalisation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/business/economy/21bank.html?hp

The economist Nouriel Roubini aka Dr. Doom, who first predicted this recession thinks there is no alternative to nationalisation. he should know. banks cannot lend now - there is no money to lend. many regional banks are going broke.

also notice that Chris Dodd is already agreeing to the idea. this Dodd is a really slippery character. he took a lot of campaign money from investment banker-types and championed freddie-fannie all his life. he should be called Sentaor Eel. i think the obama people have already decided on nationalising and are preparing the grounds for this by these soundbites to their atlanticist pals in the NYT.

being america of course - they will not call it nationalisation, but something else. not to worry.the hope-messiah snake-oil salesman aka President O will find a way to sell this as what we have been waiting for.

Manmohan & Dubya

Here is an interesting take by poster Rudradev at Bharat Rakshak Forum. Posting in full as the thread might be yanked off due to the politically correct admins at BRF. Rudradev btw has posted some gems before too. I have saved one particular post of his which succinctly sums up the Democrats worldview, especially as it relates to India & Indians. Will post it at an appropriate time.

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http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4740&sid=b45baf44f0b07d125c08cb3a9d153c80

On the 20th of January, we were subjected to the spectacle of Manmohan Singh behaving like a heartbroken grade-school groupie, when with tears in his eyes, he publicly told George W. Bush that he "loved" him. We might have been embarrassed, if Manmohan Singh hadn't already jaded our capacity for embarrassment in so many far more damaging ways.

On the face of it there don't seem to be many shared characteristics between the ideologies of the INC and the Bush Republicans. Manmohan Singh has earned a reputation for pusillanimity in matters of national security, even in the face of the gravest terrorist provocation, that is in stark contrast to the hawkishness of an American President who started two wars during his tenure.

And yet, if one looks beyond the immediate personas of these two leaders and compares their styles of disastrous governance... one discovers that they do, in fact, have much in common.

1) "ACT LIKE YOU KNOW BEST, AND SILENCE ALL QUESTIONERS. IT FOOLS ALL OF THE PEOPLE FOR LONG ENOUGH".

Firstly, both the Bush and the MMS regimes have made it a matter of doctrine to govern in the most obdurately autocratic manner possible. During the Bush regime's run-up to the Iraq war, all strategies (or lack thereof) were formulated in the utmost secrecy; what little information was shared with political leaders outside the Neocon fold turned out to be mostly false, and what was fed to the American people was sheer drivel.

During Manmohan Singh's pursuit of the "Indo-US Nuclear Deal", Congress stooges hurried to clinch a bad bargain with Washington so that the Nehru-Maino Dynasty could claim the credit for what Jaswant Singh had prudently begun to explore with Strobe Talbott. At that time, we saw much the same behaviour from the GOI as the Bush regime had demonstrated during the Iraq run-up. Despotic arrogance, an undemocratic refusal to consult the full spectrum of public constituencies as reflected in the sizeable number of opposition party seats in parliament, and a contemptuous dismissal of the Indian people's right to know how much of our hard-won strategic deterrent was being frittered away in exchange for a possible lemon.

Ultimately, Bush's Iraq war turned out to cost the American national interest dearly, even if it did benefit interested parties close to the ruling oligarchy. We still don't know what damage the Manmohan Nuclear Deal has done, but the GOI's reluctance to make public a cost/benefit analysis speaks volumes. I'm sure somebody has benefited, and I'm sure it isn't the Indian people... or Manmohan Singh wouldn't be hiding the details from them.


2) "WHEN MAKING APPOINTMENTS, PICK CANDIDATES FOR SERVILITY. WHO NEEDS COMPETENCE?"

Second, the extent of obvious cronyism in political appointments, and further, the extent to which sheer incompetents received key posts as a result of such cronyism, is a hallmark of both the Bush and the MMS administrations.

Everyone in the USA remembers FEMA head Mike Brown being congratulated by Bush in the aftermath of the non-response to Hurricane Katrina... "heck of a job, Brownie". Not quite as dramatic, but equally harmful, was Bush's stubborn backing of any of his picks... be they Donald Rumsfeld in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Harriet Myers as a candidate for Supreme Court Justice... even as their hopeless ineptitude became unbearably obvious.

It is the same with the Manmohan Singh regime. We've all seen the worth of Home Minister Shivraj Patil and National Security Adviser M K Narayanan in the wake of the Mumbai attacks. Yet, the GOI persists shamelessly with extra-constitutional attempts to get the extremely shady Mr. Chawla appointed Chief Election Commissioner, even as the present CEC recommends he be sacked for incompetence and corruption. And of course there's the outright shielding of criminals wanted by the Indian courts, such as Octavio Quattrochi.

Now it may be argued that Congress governments, especially those under Dynasty rule, have always made nepotism and cronyism the guiding principles behind their political appointments. Perhaps so. However, here's the difference: those earlier regimes, under JL Nehru, Indira Gandhi and even Rajiv had individuals at the helm who (at some level) cared about India and her interests. They appointed cronies, but at least they picked cronies capable of doing the jobs they were assigned. The Italian {Heroine} of 10 Janpath feels not the slightest obligation to consider the Indian national interest in the political appointments she dictates. Like the House of Bush in its Saudi dealings, she is unburdened by conscience or patriotism, and her sole concern is sustaining a national culture of misgovernance that ensures the continuing domination of the Dynasty for the foreseeable future.

3) "WHEN USEFUL, SUBVERT NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS. WHEN NEEDED, SUBVERT THE CONSTITUTION. ULTIMATELY THE REPUBLIC WILL PICK UP THE TAB".

The passage of the Patriot Act, and various ancillary pieces of legislation like the wiretapping bill, are subversions of the United States constitution that the Bush regime became notorious for. The extent of illegal spying, intimidation of political opponents and intrusion into the lives of private citizens that these tools were used to accomplish has yet to become clear. If indeed the Obama administration has granted immunity to its predecessors as rumored, it may never become clear at all.

The INC's subversion of India's national security apparatus to its own political agenda, however, has been equally blatant. From September 2008 onwards, we saw the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad pressed into extra-constitutional service as a Congress Gestapo; systematically persecuting Hindu spiritual figures such as Sadhvi Pragya Thakur on trumped-up terrorism charges; imprisoning and slandering a highly decorated serving military officer, Lt. Colonel Purohit, with similarly baseless allegations; and victimizing Hindu social workers like Swami Dayanand Pandey for their grassroots opposition to the predatory conversion activities of Christian missionaries (a cause dear to the heart of the Italian Sonia Maino).

We heard the deeply aggrieved head of the ATS, Hemant Karkare, reveal that these politically motivated anti-Hindu witch-hunts on which his Squad were being sent had consumed more than 90% of their time, effort and resources. This, even as worthwhile anti-terrorist investigations, such as those into the Delhi and Ahmedabad blasts, were deliberately snuffed out by Congress functionaries for reasons of political expediency and minority vote-banking.

We saw the hijacking of India's anti-terrorist apparatus continue until, despite ample forewarning, the Congress regime failed to prevent the terrorist attacks against Mumbai on the 26th of November 2008. A day when the exhausted Mr. Karkare went before the Congress Home Minister of Maharashtra to plead that his squad be relieved of the witch-hunt so that they may get back to doing their jobs... just hours before falling to a Pakistani terrorist's assault rifle not ten miles away.

Yet, what is a little hijacking of state machinery when the Congress government has successfully managed to hijack the Indian Constitution itself? Just as the Bush administration strove to accumulate unprecedented powers to the Executive, by browbeating the Legislative and undermining the Judiciary organs of the United States government; just as Dick Cheney became a creature with far more independent authority and far less accountability than any US Vice President in History... we have our own Sultana presiding over the Indian Republic with absolute power and complete impunity. Sonia Gandhi is not Prime Minister; she is not answerable to the elected representatives of the Indian people in the same way as even the most autocratic of Indian Prime Ministers, like Indira Gandhi, have ultimately been. In fact, she is not answerable at all... but she commands the blind obedience of Manmohan Singh, the titular Prime Minister, and his entire government. Indian democracy has been subject to this perversion of the constitution for five years now, and with each passing month the perversion becomes more acute.

4) "STAB THE ARMED FORCES IN THE BACK WHILE PRAISING THEM TO THEIR FACES"

At one point, it emerged that the Bush administration had sent American soldiers to war in two countries while simultaneously cutting down on Veterans' benefits. The backstabbing was covered up by a great deal of jingoistic rhetoric, and didn't come to light until much later.

In making policy, the Congress regime has done its best to "cut the armed forces down to size". They have systematically deprived those who defend our nation of the funds desperately needed to modernize by purchasing foreign equipment; and simultaneously crippled our indigenous military R&D efforts with a paralyzing quantity of red tape. In doing so, they have undone all the NDA administration's efforts to bring our armed forces to fighting form in the aftermath of Kargil. Adding insult to injury, and compounding the severely degraded morale of our troops, Manmohan Singh's government has further slashed the already meagre salaries paid those who are ready to lay down their lives for our country.

Today, lacking the spine to address Pakistani terrorism and intransigence, the Congress regime blames our armed forces for a "lack of preparedness to fight a war". One must wonder if that lack of preparedness is thanks in large part to their own neglect and sabotage.

It is notable that both of these regimes have not hesitated to shove the serving members of their countries' armed forces into harms way as necessary, ill-prepared as they might be, out of sheer political expediency.This was seen in the US invasion of Iraq, where US armed forces went in woefully unprepared for the kind of war they were required to fight; as also in the haphazard response to the Mumbai terrorist attacks, when the panicked Congress government's pathetic excuse for a National Security administration sent detachments of NSG to storm terrorist-controlled buildings without even the benefit of floor plans.

We may think of Bush as a courageous leader... and indeed, it must be said for him that next to Manmohan Singh he looks like one. However, both regimes have shown their readiness, at the drop of a hat, to blame people in uniform for their own shortcomings and political failures.

And finally, of course, there is the big question mark as to what Manmohan Singh has done with the strategic deterrent bequeathed him by his predecessors, in his mad hurry to steal the BJP's thunder and clinch the Indo-US Nuclear Cooperation Agreement. That is one of those things we'd probably never want to find out; but may end up finding out, despite ourselves, after it's too late to do anything about it.

5) "CULTIVATE A KENNEL OF SMALL, TOOTHY, CONSTANTLY-BARKING MEDIA CORPORATIONS TO SCARE, DISTRACT AND LIE TO THE PUBLIC"

The story of how FOX news contributed to George W Bush's ascension to the Presidency is well known. At CEO Roger Ailes' command, they called the 2000 election for Bush even before the votes in Florida had been entirely counted. Since then, they were the faithful cheerleaders of every ill-advised Bush policy initiative. More importantly, they were used to mount character-assassinations and slander campaigns against political opponents... to distract the people's attention with irrelevant sensationalism at convenient times...and to maintain a constant pall of fear, rendering the public vulnerable to manipulation.

These tactics are identical to those being used, every day, by the vast majority of English language media in India today on behalf of the Congress government. The Indo-US Nuclear Deal was cheered on deafeningly, and its opponents demonized as paranoid or regressive, by Congress plants in any number of previously respectable newspapers.

The constant anti-Hindu diatribes of every media outlet were never more obvious, or more pronounced, than during the Malegaon witch hunts, when the carefully coined term "Hindu Terrorism" crawled across the front of every television screen in every Indian home hundreds of times every day. The anti-Hindu hysteria whipped up by that slander campaign against the alleged protagonists of the Malegaon blasts served its purpose of distraction while Islamist groups sympathizing with SIMI were pandered to in the Congress' unending quest for Minority Votes. So distracted were the Indian people by this spectre of "Hindu Terrorism" that the Pakistani terrorist attack on Mumbai took them utterly by surprise... just as it did the anti-terrorism squad.

The Congress continues to peddle fear at every turn. It elevates dangerous, anti-national organizations as far-side threats to its regional rivals; Raj Thackeray's MNS against the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, the soft-Islamist PDP against the National Conference in Kashmir, the lunatic-fringe Sri Rama Sene against the BJP in Mangalore.

It then uses the consequences of its own elevation of such groups, to sow yet more fear among the people via sensationalist media coverage.

24-hour television reports of MNS goons assaulting North Indians in Mumbai, of atrocities by PDP-backed terrorists in Srinagar, of Sri Rama Sene idiots assaulting pub-goers in front of conveniently positioned television cameras...these things all serve a purpose. By engendering fear, such reports reinforce the Congress' message that they are the Sole Voice of Reason and Moderation; that any dissension from their centrist position equals dangerous anti-national extremism; and that the BJP and its supporters are as much of a threat to national survival as the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

One thing must be said for the Bush regime. Despite all their media manipulation, they never deliberately created negative media coverage harmful to the United States in order to serve their own political purposes.

Here the Congress has outdone them. One need only consider the myth of "Hindu terrorism against Christians", repeated ad-nauseam by the pro-Congress media, in the aftermath of Swami Laxmanananda's murder by pro-Missionary Maoist terrorists. One need only look at the fictitious numbers of "2,000", "3,000" and even "4,000 Muslims killed in the Gujarat riots" that the pro-Congress media continues to inflate year after year, because demonizing the Hindu parties is of greater importance than preventing the slander of Indian secularism by her enemies. And one need only read the Indian Express to find a completely concocted story about the RSS producing a soft-drink made out of "cow urine", penned by Congress hatchet-man Rajeev Khanna, which has found its way into every Hindu-bashing news outlet the world over not 24 hours since its inception.

To {Our Lady} of Janpath, none of this matters. It isn't her country, or her culture, that is being systematically denigrated by the clamour of her kept-media mouthpieces. It's ours.

So its really no surprise when her son, the Dynastic Heir Apparent, takes British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on a chummy tour of the provinces to observe the untouchable Slumdogs in their own habitat. And this, merely hours after said British Foreign Secretary has instructed us to give up Kashmir to the terrorist state of Pakistan, lest we face any more of the sort of well-deserved terrorist attacks that we saw in Mumbai last November.

No, not even the much reviled George W. Bush ever stooped that low.

6) "DRIVE THE ECONOMY INTO THE GROUND".

This couldn't be stated any more simply.

When George W Bush came to the White House, the American Economy was just coming off the Clinton boom, with multiple years of budget surpluses in its wake. He has now vacated it in the midst of the most disastrous crisis since the Great Depression.

When the BJP ran for re-election on their "India Shining" platform in 2004, the Congress responded to the slogan with derision. However, there's no arguing with the fact that we were enjoying an unprecedented 9+ % GDP Growth Rate at the time. Today, after five years of stewardship by the great architect of Indian liberalization, Manmohan Singh, and his pipsqueak Cambridge protege Chidambaram... that same economy is headed resolutely down the toilet.

Enough said.

"So help us God..."

Thus spake the Xtian godmen on the "Messiah's" swearing-in ceremony yesterday. Although it could very well turn out to be "God help us..." at the end of his 4-year term, just as it did with Dubya's reign.

As you would have seen, there was too much of the one and only "God" yesterday, as it always is in Massa-land. Once before the swearing-in and another after it by two different Xtian godmen(While we in "secular" India shudder to even think of our Hindu Gods & Godesses in official ceremonies). And in between some non-sensical poem read by some obscure woman, and also that bizarre musical performance by the noted violinist and cellist et al. They might as well have had some hard-rock or hip-hop to lighten-up the supposedly solemn ceremony. Although the actual swearing-in was an anti-climax as both the Messiah and the Chief Justice John Roberts were out of sync.

BTW, they say that the Xtian "God" created Man in His Image. So is "God" White, Black, Brown, Yellow or Red? Or is He half-Black & half-White?

Prof. Vaidya on Obama

Pretty hard-hitting article by the professor,

...Actually, whenever Democrats take power, India is treated like dirt. That some middle class Indians want to be treated like dirt is a different issue. Now it is not only the White Man’s Burden, but also that of a semi-Black Man...

B.Raman on Obama

This blog has articulated several times that it doesn't make a difference to India whether the Dems or the GOP win. They are 2 sides of the same coin. But Obama having Zbig as foreign policy advisor is particularly dangerous for India militarily and otherwise. And not just India, Zbig would most certainly want to provoke the Russian bear too.

Sarah Palin pranked by 'Sarkozy'

Hilarious prank played on Sarah Palin by Canadian radio station comedians posing as French President Sarkozy. Towards the end, the comedians even mention about a porn released in her name, "Who's Nailin' Paylin" about which she doesn't have a clue:-)

Enjoy the comedy!