Quick notes: CIA and Cryogenics, Paki Biology...

• The Kerala Police and IB chiefs were willing tools in CIA's hands.  Don't forget that it was just after this case broke out that the then IB's Additional Director Rattan Sehgal was given compulsory retirement after he got charged with spying for USA.  No doubt the CIA succeeded through this case to thwart India's indigenous development of Cryogenic engine. 



• Under pressure from the US, Russia refused to part with Cryogenic technology. But it agreed to provide four more fully made cryogenic engines, taking the number of such engines in India's kitty to seven. The man who then headed ISRO's cryogenic project, Nambi Narayanan, managed to bring in crucial components of the engine from Russia without drawing US attention. When Air India refused to fly in the hardware fearing US embargoes, the ISRO team used Russia's Ural Airlines to transport it in three consignments.



• Another Bamiyan: Two thirds of some 80,000 books and manuscripts housed in a Lebanese library were torched by Mohammedans.



• Biology lessons for Pakis:

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Raymond Davis Arrested for Parking Lot Fight

Raymond Davis, the CIA contractor whose arrest in Pakistan over the shooting of 2 ISI agents sparked a major diplomatic incident between both countries, and ultimately forced the US to pay blood money for his release, has again been arrested for another altercation in the US.

Apparently, Davis has been arrested for assault after getting into a fight with another motorist over a parking spot at a local shopping mall. When it comes to parking at the mall - don't mess with the CIA! (Gee, I'd hate to think what happens to you if you nab an ISI parking spot in Rawalpindi.)

Who is Fethullah Gulen?

Fethullah Gulen is a well-connected Turkish billionaire who fled to the US, and is believed to be serving a US agenda in Central Asia. It's not clear to me whether this particular agenda would be in India's interests. Anyhow, he seems to have ties to Turkey's newly re-vamped security establishment, following the purge of Ataturkists.

It seems to me that the more the CIA supports Islamism in Central Asia, the more difficult it will be for the US to defeat AlQaeda. I guess that Americans don't care that they are shooting themselves in the foot, but at least India needs to be wary of being shot through collateral damage.

Here is an excerpt from one of Gulen's sermons:

"You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here"

It seems Gulen prefers a "velvet revolution" approach over AlQaeda's directly confrontational jihad.

'Friends, Not Masters'

Pakistanis officials are loudly whining to the US that they don't want to be treated like slaves or puppets? Oh really - as if the Pakistanis themselves aren't already treating the Afghans this way?