Is Modi's Solar Alliance At COP21 The Real Deal

(Image Courtesy: UNFCCC )

Quite recently I heard an eminent academic speak on the need for PM Narendra Modi to improve his relationship with the press. I think it was the economist Jagdish Bhagwati, a known Modi supporter but I could be wrong. Anyway, a recent event did make me think that perhaps he is right, by not directly engaging with the mainstream media, Modi is not only allowing his image being transformed to that of an opaque personality but also some of his real achievements get ignored and completely sidelined in the nation discourse.  But before that I must confess that though I see Modi the politician as a product of the RSS ideology, Modi the Prime Minister seems be too ambitious to be restrained by ideological shackles especially when it conflicts with his attempts to create his own legacy. This twin personas were especially evident when he was on election campaign in Bihar, his rhetoric being aggressive and almost uncouth and then his statesman like oration in the Parliament at onset of the Winter session which was way mature. However what really surprised me was the lack of adequate reportage by media as well as support from his own  supporters on social media on his successful launch of International Solar Alliance of 120 countries along with French President François Hollande during the Paris COP21 climate summit.

Posted By Danish 8:30 AM

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Cyber Warfare 2.0 : Operation Myrtus

Never mind the jargon  (or hyperbole if you would prefer) in the title, cyber warfare has indeed been taken to the next level in last  two years. The latest cyber-attack on Iran through the malware "Flame" (dubbed Stuxnet 2.0) wasn't surprising enough, it was expected. In a post I had made on October 2010, regarding the advent of cyber-weapon in most probability, Stuxnet being a precursor to a range of cyber weapons. After all Stuxnet had proved that a  cleverly crafted code snippet  can do what perhaps air-strikes may not be able to. This malware was successful in taking over control the computers in one of Iran's nuclear research facility,destroying centrifuges and pushing Iran's nuclear programme some years back. Given the huge return on investment, , 0 casualty  and stealthiness it provided, cyber weapons if properly executed, it is only natural that other nation-states follow the same.

Posted By Danish 5:46 PM

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Age of Cyber Warfare : The Advent of Cyber Weapon

In last few years there have been some major cyber-attacks involving nation states such as China  and Russia but the latest Stuxnet worm attack, takes cyber warfare to another level, where the damage may not be confined to digital assets but also to the physical world. Most security experts believe that the Stuxnet worm's design and perceived objectives indicates that the was aimed to disrupt Iranian nuclear program and most likely it was successful too.

Posted By Danish 2:16 AM

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Yet Another Tharoor controversy Or Yellow Journalism

Well, my blog is not supposed to be a running commentary on Shashi Tharoor! My admiration for him doesn't go beyond the ordinary, and it is shared with contemporary politicians such as Vajpayee, Navin Patnaik and more recently N.D. Tiwari :P However, every time Mr. Tharoor runs into a controversy, i feel compelled to express my opinion too. It is a bit strange considering the fact that i have at least three posts in various stages in the drafts but this one is a spontaneous post since i couldn't find the option to add a comment on Tharoor's website. It is a bit surprising that the website of a minister who is now known as Twitter Minister for his almost-religious participation in a promiscuously interactive platform such as Twitter, doesn't have much interactivity. Hope this message reaches him, his aides or whomsoever it may concern :D

Anyway, back to the controversy and thank GOD this time Twitter has no relevance unlike in previous controversies where a few semi-literate "writers" (wateva that means!) almost presented Twitter as a sort of a shady nook whose motley crowd and radical approach to communication, "spoilt" a good orthodox Congressman like Tharoor and led him to commit heresies. For once it is obvious that people will say what they have to say and journos would represent them as they want to, irrespective of the medium of communication.

Now, to the actual controversy, the lines in question are,

“That Indian foreign policy drew from our sense of civilisation, and the extraordinary contribution by Mahatma Gandhi and Nehruji’s articulation of our civilisational heritage, both enhanced India’s standing in the world but also earned us the negative reputation of running a moralistic commentary on world affairs—that has come through very clearly in your speech.” [emphasis mine] [Source]

(Pssst.. all wannabe journalists, when you quote somebody, you mark the text explicitly,attribute to the actual source and mention changes you make. )

If you take a look at the last line, it is very obvious that Mr. Tharoor was actually summing up the points made by Lord Bhikhu Parekh's speech in the Indian Council of World Affairs seminar. Ignoring this aspect while reporting cannot be anything but malicious. If a newspaper of Times of India's stature indulges in tactics which wouldnt even qualify as yellow journalism, there is reason to worry.

However, i would like to go further and ask what was wrong with the lines as such even if we were to disregard the above fact and especially hen it was said in an academic seminar?

What is wrong with just stating the obvious ?

The movement that shaped the Indian national identity of the late 1800s and 1900s, itself has grown from our sense of civilizational heritage as percieved and articulated by our founding fathers, could the foreign policy be any different ? Further, the moralistic lines Nehru followed was not perfect but getting caught in the cross-fire of the two great Cold-War rivals , the USA and the USSR was the last thing the infant Indian state should have wanted to get caught up in. Pakistan is the perfect example of how bad things could have gone if India did not take a neutral position during the Cold War.A moralistic approach put India in the non-aligned block's leadership, and gave it a much bigger role in global affairs. But it also earned the ridicule of the Western bloc, especially the USA which has always viewed its foe as the supreme evil that other free societies should help them defeat. But the same point of view is not tenable in India.

Anyway, the term "negative influence" refered to should be taken in a lighter context, and not always as criticism, one must not remember the context in which the statements are made. In this case it clearly seems to be an adulation in the same manner as one would say "brutally honest" .

Well, to be brutally honest, i must tell Mr. Shashi Tharoor that it seems he is trapped between the two Indias. The first one seeks, transparency, openness, progressive thought and the other orthodoxy,conservatism and propriety....

Posted By Danish 8:06 PM

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Is SRK's Detention A Big Deal ?

Shahrukh Khan detained by authorities in Newark and all hell has broken loose since then! From man in the street to the Minister of External Affairs of State @shasitharoor, most Indians are outraged but some people around me, online as well as offline seem outraged by the outrage!

Of course, holding an opinion that contradicts general percepts is an essential trait of neo-conservative intellectualism. One cannot claim to be an intellectual that if s/he is found to harbour the same opinion that the more common segments of the society do. I myself have been guilty of that often so this is not aimed at anyone specific. Coming back to SRK issue, those apathetic towards it have a couple of very valid points:

• Thousands of people are facing the same problem everyday, why call foul now that SRK has been subjected to the same treatment?
• The second point is that SRK is taking advantage of the incident to publicize his forthcoming movie.
  

I have little doubt that the second allegation has some substance. SRK's initial statement that he was targetted because of his surname "Khan" sounds too conspicous to be a coincidence with the fact that the title of his latest movie is,"My name is Khan." In the age of social media, an incident that helps you your brand name go viral is nothing less than a dream come true. A shrewd buisnessman like SRK would undoubtedly exploit the issue for making loads of money and perhaps that is what he is doing.

However, this does not change the fact that US immigration policy is utterly discriminatory and unjust. Time and again Indian citizens and even Ministers have been subjected to discriminatory treatment. Post-9/11, the US has been following a number of security policies which have been termed as prejudiced, unethical and in some case (like Guantanamo Bay prison) inhumane. There are people who believe that these rules have helped US thwart more terror attacks on its soil but that is not quite true (I have discussed this in one of my previous posts)

All that it has given is a sense of estrangement and humilation among a large section of global population. Forget the common man, the list of Indian celebrities detained/stripped frisked include former President APJ Abul Kalam,the then Cabinet Minister George Fernandez, Wipro Chief Azim Premji, actors Aamir Khan, Kamal Hassan, Mamooty, Irrfan Khan and scores of less popular Indian celebrities. Background information on any of these individuals shouldnt be difficult to access. After all, these people virtually live under the gaze of the public! Let me reiterate the fact that i am not justifying VIP culture, all i am saying is that since all of these people are well-known, collecting background information about them shouldn't be difficult at all. Moreover, it is not just frisking and question-answer sessions, from what earlier victims have described, it is an interrogation which can leave any one distressed

These incidents merely reflect the arrogance that the US officials display when dealing with Asian visitors. Arrogance which has resulted in traumatic experience for people whose only fault consist in carrying a Muslim name. No sovereign nation with even an iota of national pride can afford to allow its citizen being mistreated on regular basis. Brazil in 2004 gave an apt response to US racial profiling policy by implementing a policy of finger-printing US nationals only!
I would conclude with the question which has been it the back of the mind ever since Kalam was frisked. Is Musharraf subject to the same treatment that India's former President and one of its most respected citizen.

Posted By Danish 2:44 AM

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Tweeting a revolution or is it a black operation ?

For the past 24 hours #Iranelection and hash tags related to Iranian election has been trending on Twitter . What it essentially means, (for those unfamiliar with Twitter) is that the election in Iran and its fallout are the most talked about topic on Twitter. We have already seen the profound impact ¹ that Twitter has had on socio-political events in the past but this could be the biggest one considering the fact that the mainstream media was late in reporting the protests and has since been lagging behind the micro-blogging service. ( Please check out, Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter For News About Iran )

However, what really intrigues me is the question, whether the protest in Iran truly reflects the aspiration of the nation as a whole or is just a partisan struggle fueled by external powers. Once again the sources of most these news are either almost anonymous twitterers or those belonging to the opposition camp. The truth perhaps lies somewhere in between, the call for probe by Ayotallah Khameini indicates it. Ironically, Ashton Kucher, who has the largest following in Twitter, has likened the issue to the controversy around G.W. Bush's electoral victory in 2000!

Either way it is Iran's internal issue, it is, after all, the only country in the region that has some sort of democracy (that has not been forced on). So why is the global social media so obsessed with Iranian election results ? I guess it has more to do with the fact that the West is not comfortable with the fact that a hardliner like Ahmadinejad came so close to defeat and still survive. Of course, i am just speculating that he survived but anyway, this was an opportunity that a lot of people would have hated to let go of. That would also explain why the opposition is on the street but euphemisms like "tweeting revolution", coming from American and West European "social media activists" seem to me part of propaganda warfare in the lines of black operations. Only this time the agenda has been outsourced to the crowd populating the social web. John Robb has in his earlier blog posts discussed various 4GW strategies and manoeuvres that the US could adopt to bring down Iran, some of the proposed ones have been black operations of these nature.

At this juncture ishould confess that i don't have much love for Ahmadinejad nor for the ruling elite of Iran, but i cannot deny the fact that he has considerable support from the Iranian electorate as the numerous pro-Ahmadinejad demonstrations indicate. So all talks of freedom and democracy by activists on web sound hollow when one considers the fact that there was hardly any murmur of protest when China banned nearly all major web sites and services on the anniversary of the Tianmen massacre. Similarly, the torch-bearers of liberty and democracy were conspicuously silent when just few weeks back the Burmese junta filed fresh case against the famous Burmese pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi just days before her 13 year old detention was about to expire! As i have already mentioned what we are witnessing might well be a crowdsourced black operation, not unlike propaganda warfare except for the fact that in this instance its far too decentralized and viral in nature. The majority of the participants may actually have no clue about the underlying agenda if at all there is one !

Update:
1. Twitter one hour maintenance downtime has been postponed as demanded by bloggers/twitterers.

Posted By Danish 4:06 AM

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2008: A year of Doublespeak and Doublethought

The year 2008 was a mixed bag but personally i would view it as a bad one considering the increased number of terror attacks, and political upheavels across countries and continents and the uh-so depressing global economy slowdown. In that sense my following post is in many ways different from what i have posted before. Here is a transcript of a conversation that me and my muse in the context of the Mumbai terror attack and its fallout.

Me: Apparently, an FBI team has visited the village of captured terrorist Ajmal Kasab in Pakistan.

Muse : Wait a second! Hasn't Pakistan said that Kasab is not a Pakistani?

Me : Well, all that Pakistan has said is that India has not provided them "credible evidence" to prove that this terrorist, Ajmal Kasab, son of Amir Kasab of village Faridkot, in the Okara district of Punjab, Pakistan, as reported by Pakistani newspaper Dawn, is indeed a Pakistani national!

Muse: But didn't former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif say that Kasab's village had been cordoned off and his parents were not being allowed to speak to reporters?
Me: Actually, Nawaz Sharif has been misquoted and his statements have been taken out of context. What Sharif had said on the camera that all of us saw was that Kasab's village had been cordoned off and his parents had not been allowed to talk to the media. Sharif never said that Ajmal Kasab was a Pakistani!!! In fact, when he made those statements, being a politician, he was only taking a shot at the current government and his political opponents.But thats ridiculous! haven't many news agencies including Pakistan's own Geo TV and Dawn already proved Kasab's identity ? Even the government of Pakistan has in a manner accepted the fact but technically it lives in denial.

Muse: Isn't that paradoxical and perverted?
Me : It is actually doublespeak or implementation of the Orwellian concept of "doublethink". This concept was popularized by George Orwell in his dystopian novel "1984". Doublethink is described by Orwell as "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then,when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of the objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies-all this is indispensably necessary". In the current scenario Pakistan is using doublespeak in both disowning Kasab and accepting him at the same time.Pakistan itself is no stranger to terror attack, its very existence is under threat but why is it still unwilling to co-operate?There could be many reasons including the possibility of certain individuals and groups of being unpersons. However, the only thing that is clear is the fact that Pakistan is unwilling to act and despite what the US says, it is not doing enough to make Pakistan see sense. I doubt if Pakistan and the US view anti-India terror group in the same light as they do with their "own terrorists".

Muse : So how does one deal with nation-states that run with the hare and hunt with the hound, especially when the self-appointed global cop extends tacit support to it. Do we go back to our daily lives, sweat and toil for our secure future and wait for the next attack ???


Update
Here is the evidence that Pakistan has been hankering for! and the dossier that India gave to it

Posted By Danish 2:10 AM

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