The Good Neighbour

The good neighbours

Putting the nation first is the last thing that is on the minds of some of our media and celebrities. Following the disclosures of David Headley in the current trial of Tawahur Rana CNN-IBN was the first to scroll through the day ‘CNN-IBN was the first to expose the ISI links to 26/11 in July 2010’! Sure, we all remember that. We also remember Rajdeep Sardesai was the first man on the moon, don’t we? The race to claim being the first to break something or being the one to reveal some story even where it concerns national interests is the most shameful part of our media. Not to be left behind NDTV pulls out Mahesh Bhatt for his comments on Headley’s testimony. Hmmm wait! Mahesh Bhatt? The guy whose son was linked to this same Headley?

As the worst terrorist attack on Pakistani soil, at PNS Mehran, concluded the Tawahur Rana trial was under way. A message to CNN-IBN : any idiot in India knew the ISI and Pakistan are connected to the 26/11 attacks and many previous terrorist attacks. We don’t need the wisdom of CNN-IBN to educate us on this. These events follow the discovery and killing of Osama Bin Laden in a mansion near Islamabad. I suppose CNN-IBN knew Osama’s hideout too but for reasons of security must have suppressed the info. They are very conscientious. After all CNN-IBN showed the same concern in suppressing the cash-for-votes tapes in 2008. Remember that?

Anyway, now that Pakistan stands thoroughly and undeniably exposed some of our people need to hang their heads in shame. Shahrukh Khan, Mahesh Bhatt, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Barkha Dutt, Salman Khan, Mani Shankar Aiyar and, of course, Times Of India. Collectively these entities form the ‘Friends of Pakistan’ club in India. I am quite certain Shahrukh Khan would love to have Pakis around his house and as his neighbours. It would bring him great joy to see bombs falling all around or on his house every second day. That must be a thrill. What about Times of India? The earliest media outlet to back out on its promise “we will never forget” about 26/11. In just a year since 26/11 they came out with that crap called ‘Aman Ki Asha’. Song and dance with Pakistanis, a few awards here and there, a few matrimonial ads in their columns from across the border and TOI has proved it has strong memories of the 26/11 atrocities.

One of the worst mistakes Atal Behari Vajpayee ever made was to invite that war criminal Musharraf to a summit in July 2001. This was after Kargil. Few months after the failed summit, our parliament was attacked by terrorists. Since then our media has a great fascination for frequently having this war criminal lecturing on every issue concerning Pakistan and India. He is in exile from his own country and there is a warrant against him. NDTV alone has a long history of nurturing this war criminal as if he was some spiritual leader. (Read the post ‘Tainted? Have a chat with Barkha’)  India does not need anymore nonsense from this has-been who should still be treated as a war criminal. There are others like India Today and Hindustan Times who have hosted this war criminal in various seminars.

Another favourite of our media is Hamid Gul. He is a former head of the ISI and is known to have links with Al Qaeeda and the Taliban. The USA has even declared him wanted for terrorist links. Yet our media frequently hosts this man as if there are no other sensible voices in Pakistan at all. It is time our media, if any concern for the nation is left, stopped hosting such crooks and anti-India people.

I am in no way suggesting voices from Pakistan must be censored. Not at all. Democracy must allow all kinds of views to be aired, even those that hurt us. But democracy also means putting the country first. The media has the responsibility of not allowing known criminals to air their views and indirectly be used for some agenda setting. The Musharrafs and Hamid Guls are criminals who should not be allowed any airtime now that Pakistan has been proved to be what it is beyond the slightest doubt. There are journalists and other officials in Pakistan who can be allowed that freedom. Let me add that in many respects the Pak media is at least is a lot more independent than its Indian counterpart. We have more poodles.

There is this man called Shuja Pasha, the head of ISI. Following the killing of Osama he disappeared for a while. Then he surfaces to shoot out threatening messages to India. That any misadventure by India will have serious consequences and so on. There is a saying for fools like him. “Mian giraa magar tangdi oonchi hai” ! (Miyan has fallen but still has his feet up!) Bravo! Maybe PNS Mehran will remind him that India is not the threat.

As for the Mahesh Bhatts, Shahrukh Khans and some of their Bollywood clan, they would do well to embrace this new Pakistan. Pakistan may be our enemy but cleansing our own country would do us no harm. On most of those that firmly believe in the ‘Good Neighbour’ philosophy, you can rest assured it doesn’t come from any reason or reality other than religion or business considerations. 

A Shoe? All Over A Shoe?

“A personal security officer of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati touched a new low when he bent down to wipe her dusty shoes with his handkerchief during her visit to the district”. That’s the Times Of India on February 8. Will our news channels be far behind? They had a ball, as did the opposition parties in UP. The Congress, BJP, SP and, of course, our friends in the media like Rajdeep Sardesai and the rest.

And it’s even funnier when you hear the media or a Congressman calling it ‘feudal’ or ‘sycophancy’. What does Mayawati think she is? And why the hell is she wearing shoes anyway? Why can’t she learn anything from that intellectual called Rahul Gandhi who’s so bright in every which way. Sometime in February last year during Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Mumbai in the midst of a Shivsena agitation,  a Congress minister carried his shoes. You see that way there is no chance your shoes can get muddy and no one needs to clean it. And no one can accuse you of sycophancy or feudalism.

It is highly unfair of that security guard to have cleaned Mayawati’s dirty shoes. Such shoes are reserved for the likes of P. Chidambaram. I wonder what PC did with the shoes thrown at him. Were they dirty and soiled? Wait, even former Pak president Musharraf is reported to have shoes hurled at him just yesterday.

And it all started with poor old George W with that Iraqi journalist throwing shoes at him. Sometime back a rule was imposed at a student meeting of Rahul Gandhi. ‘Nobody is to wear shoes to the meeting’. We have come to fear shoes so much! And our political tryst with shoes go a long way back.

Sometime in 1977, Nani Palkhivala had stooped to measure Lillian Carter’s shoes (President Jimmy Carter’s mother) presumably to buy her some from India. This came to be known as ‘Shoe-string diplomacy’ I guess. The BJP (then part of the Janata Party in 1977) criticising Mayawati may have forgotten how important a role shoes play in politics and diplomacy. Palkhivala then explained that touching shoes or feet of elders is a sign of respect in Indian culture.

As recently as December 2010 TRS chief K. Chandrashekhar Rao promised to wash Sonia Gandhi’s feet if she gives statehood to Telengana. Scared as she was, Sonia Gandhi has since decided to wear shoes all day long, never letting KCR anywhere near her feet. It’s altogether a different matter that she often has her foot in her mouth for protection as well. The media celebrates shoes like nothing else. After all, 'boot-licking' is part of their daily chores.

My collection of shoes for the media keeps growing!

I have a collection of shoes too. A big pile. And they are exclusively reserved and piled in front of a pic of the Indian mainstream media. I add a shoe every day. My prayers are simple, someday I hope some security guard will mend the media’s ‘soles’ !

JuD: Jihad, N-War Solutions To Kashmir Issue

Any ‘moderate’ muslim anywhere in the world will tell you ‘Jihad’ is an ‘internal struggle’ for spiritual cleansing. I am confident that the likes of Digvijay Singh and Rahul Gandhi will agree. It’s only idiots like us who do not understand the real meaning of ‘Jihad’ and frequently stereo-type muslims.

“India has shown disappointment over the release of Hafiz Saeed, chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and a suspect for masterminding 26/11 Mumbai attacks. JuD is suspected to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. The release questions Pakistan’s seriousness in combating terror...Hafiz Saeed is also reported to be a co-founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)”.  That was a news report from June 2009.

On Sunday, February 6, at a Kashmir Solidarity Day meeting Lahore, Hafiz Saeed’s speech for spiritual cleansing of Kashmir was reported as under: (From DNA)

"You (Manmohan Singh) must remember that the movement of the Kashmiri people is nearing an end and I am telling you very clearly to immediately leave Kashmir. Otherwise we are ready to start a war against you to get this at any cost," "The only solution to the Kashmir issue is jihad," said Saeed. The jihad should continue "as long as Kashmir remains under Indian occupation" and there would be "no problem" if the fighting leads to nuclear war between Pakistan and India, he contended".

Well, we need not worry much about the JuD or the LeT. We have a bigger terrorist threat at home through Hindu Terror outfits. That is what Rahul Gandhi told an American Diplomat. Hafiz Saeed also blamed India for masterminding the 26/11 attacks. He is not wrong. The Digivijay Singhs and Aziz Burneys of India have also expressed similar sentiments. It was probably an RSS conspiracy.

A few days ago I wrote a post titled ‘Egypt & The Fifth Column’. The separatists in J&K are understandable. Why should we believe that there aren’t hidden separatists in the other parts of India? The more the weakness of the UPA government and greater their attempt to cloak the real threat of Islamic Terror with strident cries of Hindu terror the more emboldened the likes of JuD and LeT are likely to feel. For long many leaders have been calling upon muslims in India to merge with the mainstream. It may have happened to some extent. But there is a certain religious intolerance among certain sections of muslims which will inevitably fall prey to the designs of JuD and LeT, if they haven’t already done.

Not surprisingly, British PM David Cameron has recently announced that multiculturalism has failed in Britain. This follows earlier such announcements by Angela Merkel of Germany. The community being responsible for this according to them is not Hindus or Jains or Sikhs. They singularly point to muslims who have proved to be against any norm of democratic and liberal society. And on cue, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has announced that they would like to implement the ‘Sharia’ in Egypt.

Here is a video of a Fox News interview with Imam Anjem Chowdhary. This Imam is one who deeply desires complete Islamisation of Britain and is also reported to be a Sharia Court Judge in one of Britain’s Sharia courts. A Sharia court in Britain? Yes, there are more than 80 of them. And this is the multiculturalism that David Cameron states is failing.

                           Anjem Choudhary on Fox News "..You can live under Sharia"

Let me caution you, Fox News is often cited as a right-wing conservative news channel. I have not pasted this video for a Fox News’ programme but to reflect on the views of Anjem Choudhary. And he holds out this promise in the video “...Islam is coming to your backyard...you can live under Sharia”. But when our own politicians and media tarnish many Hindu outfits as ‘right-wing’, ‘communal’ and such choice tags you have to know what they are inviting into this country through a backdoor. A veritable fifth column. If we talk about these, don’t be surprised getting labelled as ‘Racist, Bigot, Propagandist or an Islamophobhe’.

So all the mediacrooks who were tom-toming the theory that the protesters in Egypt were seeking democracy, freedom and liberty should now stop lying and realise the fact that much of the protests was fueled by the Muslim Brotherhood and their ultimate aim is Islamic rule in Egypt. Our friendly neighbour, Pakistan, is already an ‘Islamic Democracy’. The Times of India, NDTV and similar news outfits desire nothing but great peace with Pakistan. Nothing wrong with that. The only problem is Islamic rule and Democracy are not compatible. According to the Islamists, democracy is man-made and that is not acceptable to them. Therefore, their God-made laws and systems will always triumph over man- made ones. That’s a certainty.

The columns that some of our media friends write could well be ‘The fifth column’ in reality. Aziz Burney was not the only one strident with his conspiracy theories about 26/11. Digivijay Singh, A.R. Antulay are among prominent subscribers of that theory. And among the many journals that espouse such theories has to be Tehelka. Yes, the journal that employs journalists who believe in journalism and who get paid to tell the truth!

An interesting piece about Tehelka titled “Turncoat Tehelka” appears on Sandeepweb, and I produce some excerpts below:

.....Back to the fearless paper’s fearlessness, we see that Tehelka in February 2009 published an article entitled THE CURIOUS TALE OF MUMBAI TERROR by one Raveena Hansa. The full text of the article is here. An unending stream of the author’s medically-untreatable bowel movements on an overdrive, it basically says the following:

• There are unanswered questions about 26/11.
• There are doubts about who killed Hemant Karkare.
• The attack is not entirely the work of Pakistani terrorists.
• We can’t rule out the possibility of “Hindutva terrorists.”
• Pakistan is as serious about shutting down terror networks as India is.

And then inexplicably, Tehelka took down that article from its site, a fact that went by unnoticed except that the indefatigable Barbarindian detected this sleight-of-hand and posed a question to the fearless paper. The paper responded with:

@barbarindian Sorry that article wasn’t published on Tehelka. Altho, same article on Countercurrents w/ diff headline Here.

That is the fearless Tehelka denying an article it carried supporting the conspiracy theories about 26/11. One needs to be reminded that Tehelka had nearly shut down some years ago. The blog Sans Serif carries a post about how the Congress government helped restore Tehelka. Is it any surprise that such a fearless journal would need to reward the Congress with some propaganda?

The dangers of the media being corrupt and not willing to call the lies spread by several politicians or events that unfold in the nation and the world is a clear warning that propagandist media will eventually destroy every democratic value and freedom that we cherish. Hafiz Saeed and his JuD are emboldened to threaten Jihad and N-war. And on the sidelines of the current SAARC meeting our journalists are busy interviewing various people on the next move for peace with Pakistan. We need a watchdog over the media so that they do not abuse the very freedom we cherish to open the backdoors to those who wish to destroy India.

Black Money Games From The Economic Times

Lately the topic of black money is being discussed all over the place. The Opposition parties, the Government and of course, the media are full of revelations. The UPA PM, Manmohan Singh, had assured action on black money within the first hundred days of the government. You can forgive him, he was busy with those who were bent on making black money rather than exposing those who were hoarding it. And where such money is concerned can Swiss banks be far behind? Everyone seems to have an idea how much amount Indians have stocked up in Swiss banks. They even quote reports from the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) to cite the amount of black money held in their banks. That’s the funny part! I never knew banks kept a separate account for White and Black money to enable them to make such disclosures in their report. 

Well, not according to the Economic Times. Stating clearly that the black money reports of Swiss Bankers Association was a myth ET ran an article (In Sept. 2009): “No black money statistics exist: Swiss banks” The article further goes on to add, as also quote an SBA official:  

“Various political parties and other groups have been claiming that the black money stashed away in Swiss banks by Indians exceed one trillion dollars.” Seeking to demolish the "myth" over these figures being "circulated as gospel truth", a top official at the Swiss Bankers' Association told media from Basel that there were no truth at all in such statistics. "Anyone claiming to have such figures should be forced to identify their source and explain the methodology used to produce them," said the SBA's Head of International Communications, James Nason. "We take all our statistics from Swiss National Bank and statistics about 'black money' simply do not exist." 

Coming from an established journal like ET that can be relied upon, right? And the article says “various political parties and other groups have been claiming.....” ! Really? Well, who was among the first to start the crap? Here’s the ET article from October 2008 excitingly titled: “Money lying in Swiss banks may hit markets via P-notes”. If one were to ask ET how much money actually came into India through P-notes I wonder what answer they would have. But wait, that’s not all! 

The reason for various political parties and groups talking big figures of black money is the ET itself. This is what the October 2008 article under reference said:

“According to the Swiss Banking Association report of 2006-- India topped the world with $1.45 trillion deposits in Swiss banks. Other countries were Russia $470 billion, UK $390 billion, Ukraine $100 billion and China $96 billion”. 

Now you can turn the world upside down, search in all your drawers and cupboards, even raid all the A. Rajas and the Radias of the world or try googling it – but you won’t find any such report with the above statistics.  So where in the world did ET come up with the statistics and what is their source? That India topped the black-money list of the SBA 2006 report with $1.45 trillion? That’s mainstream journalism for you! And then ET will tell you that various groups and political parties have been claiming that black money is stashed away in Switzerland. Pray, who is their source of information? If the Times can report Aishwarya Rai appearing in a wrestling event on the Jerry Springer show (a report based on a spoof) as a true story, what’s wrong in fake statistics from spurious websites. Right? 

Mind you, this disinformation crap may not have been actually started by ET itself, but for a newspaper to use unverified statistics from spurious websites is sensationalism at its best. And because they did, there are even more websites, blogs and politicians quoting these figures with ET as their source.   

That doesn’t in anyway diminish the seriousness of the black money issue. The recent query of the Supreme Court asking the government why it wasn’t disclosing names is a welcome step. One hopes the government will act. And when it does, don’t be surprised to find quite a few media outlets and media moghuls in that list of black money hoarders.