The Race for the Riches of the Arctic region

As the Earth’s icy north melts due to Global warming the countries around the Arctic ocean make a mad rush to gain control of its natural resources.

Riches Await as Earth’s icy North Melts

The latest report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the ice cap is warming faster than the rest of the planet and ice is receding, partly due to greenhouse gases. It’s a catastrophic scenario for the Arctic ecosystem, for polar bears and other wildlife, and for Inuit populations whose ancient cultures depend on frozen waters.

But some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century.

The US Geological Survey estimates the Arctic has as much as 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas. Russia reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the Arctic sector approaching $2 trillion.

All this has pushed governments and businesses into a scramble for sovereignty over these suddenly priceless seas.

Humans are Still Evolving

Hope they do better this time.

Human Evolution Still very much On

Hu­man ev­o­lu­tion has been speed­ing up tre­mend­ous­ly, a new study con­tends—so much, that the lat­est ev­o­lu­tion­ary changes seem to large­ly ec­lipse ear­l­ier ones that ac­com­pa­nied mod­ern man’s “ori­gin.”

The stu­dy, along­side oth­er recent re­search on which it builds, amounts to a sweep­ing re­ap­prais­al of tra­di­tion­al views, which tended to as­sume that hu­mans have reached an ev­o­lu­tion­ary end­point.

The find­ings sug­gest that not on­ly is our ev­o­lu­tion con­tin­u­ing: in a sense our very “orig­in” can be seen as on­go­ing, a ge­net­i­cist not in­volved in the study said.

Its Not Just a Game

Vivek has published an open letter from an Indian Cricket fan who gives a sharp retort to all those ‘losers’ in the Indian media and “intellectual” circles who yap non-stop about how it is all only a game after all and wonder why Indian fans “overreact”.

 Stop saying “it’s just a game” because for us, it is clearly not.And by “us” I mean millions of other people like me. Many of us grew up at a time when India was short on Role Models, Cable TV, Internet, Multiplexes, Video Games, Mobile Phones, Cars, Shopping Malls and many other things. In those days, a good spell by Kapil Dev and a good inning by Sachin Tendulkar were the only things that brought some cheer in our drab lives. Little surprise then, that we fell in love with the game. So much in love, in fact, that a good Indian performance was all we cared about. And why not? It is our team. Isn’t it?

Read it all here 

Remembering Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru

Today, is the 76th anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. They were hanged on March 23, 1931 on flimsy, cooked up charges by the British colonial rulers. While they were interred in Lahore Jail during the period of their sham trial they were severely tortured and illtreated. While on the contrary whenever the Congress leaders were “jailed”, they were treated like royalty by the same foreign rulers. One wonders whether it was because the Congress was nothing but a British Weapon of Mass Delusion(WMD) aimed at fooling the Indian people.

Unfortunately, we are a country with a very severe problem of short term public memory. So as of today the only importance of this day for our people and our media is because the Indian Crikit team is on the verge of being eliminated from the World Cup Crikit.

Update- The Men in Blue just did it.

Update- Rajinder Puri writing in Samachar not only says that the Congress party was nothing but a British Weapon of Mass Delusion aimed at the people but goes one step further and calls it a traitorous party whose dissolution is imperative for the sake of the country’s future.

Contrary to the contemporary historian’s view that there would be no India without the Congress, I believe there will never be an independent India until the Congress –not Congress leadership –is buried fathoms deep. All political parties in India derive their culture from the Congress. The burial of the Congress would imply therefore burial of an all pervasive political culture. India’s political activity up to now has been in the shadow of the Congress. To justify burial of the Congress a brief outline seems necessary of the dissident view of recent history.

The Congress was created by the British to provide means for peaceful dissent after the violent Kuka revolt and the 1857 Mutiny. Free political expression by Indians enabled the British to govern wisely. Throughout the Congress’s freedom struggle, the British exercised influence over Congress leaders. There is no dearth of archival data to vindicate this fact.

Ravaged by the Second World War, dominated by US influence, intimidated by the Soviet threat, Britain granted India Independence in 1947. It did so wholly on its own terms. It partitioned the nation. It succeeded in transferring populations through engineered riots to create an overwhelmingly Islamic Pakistan which became later a member of the CENTO and SEATO defence treaties intended to contain Soviet and Red Chinese communist expansion.

Britain ensured that India and Pakistan would remain dominions of the British Commonwealth. It has been rightly said, therefore, that 1947 did not signify the sub-continent’s winning of independence, but a transfer of power from departing Englishmen to their brown understudies.

Accepting Partition was a brazen betrayal of the pledge given to the nation by the Congress. The Congress therefore lost the moral right to govern a free India. It ruled India as the appointee of the departing colonial power. Mahatma Gandhi faltered and allowed the betrayal. He later tried to undo the damage. He attempted to settle in Lahore and work against Hindu-Muslim division. His assassination aborted the attempt. His last will and testament, written on the day he died, sought dissolution of the Congress party.

Naxalite Nightmare

Ajai Sahni writing on Rediff warns that left unchecked the Naxalites can become a big security nightmare for the Indian state.

The ‘Red Corridor’, extending from ‘Tirupati to Pashupati’ (Andhra Pradesh to Nepal), has long been pass in the Indian Maoists (Naxalites’) conception. Maoist ambitions in India now extend to the farthest reaches of the country, and this is not just a fantasy or an aspiration, but a strategy, a projection, a plan and a programme under implementation. A multiplicity of Maoist documents testify to the meticulous detail in which the contours of the current and protracted conflict have been envisaged, in order to ‘intensify the peoples’ war throughout the country’.

These documents reflect a comprehensive strategy, coordinating all the instrumentalities of revolution — military, political, economic, cultural and psychological — harnessed through the ‘three magic weapons’ Comrade Mao spoke about: the Party, the People’s Army, and the United Front.

The Maoists have established regional bureaus across a mass of nearly two-thirds of the country’s territory (Map 1) and these regions are further sub-divided into state, special zonal and special area committee jurisdictions (Map 2) where the processes of mobilisation have been defined and allocated to local leaders. As these maps indicate, there are at least five regional bureaus, 13 state committees, two special area committees and three special zonal committees in the country. This structure of organisation substantially reflects current Maoist organisational consolidation, but does not exhaust their perspectives or ambitions. There is further evidence of preliminary activity for the extension of operations to new areas including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Meghalaya, beyond what is reflected in the scope of the regional, zonal and state committees. A ‘leading team’ recently visited Jammu & Kashmir to assess the potential of creating a permanent party structure in the form of a state committee to take the Maoist agenda forward in the state.

Within this broad geographical spread, the Maoists include, in their inventory of ‘immediate tasks’, among others, the following:

• ‘Coordinate the people’s war with the ongoing armed struggles of the various oppressed nationalities in Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur and other parts of the Northeast.
• ‘Build a broad UF (United Front) of all secular forces and persecuted religious minorities such as Muslims, Christians and Sikhs�
• ‘Build a secret party apparatus which is impregnable to the enemy’s attacks�
• ‘Build open and secret mass organisations amongst the workers, peasants, youth, students, women and other sections of the people�
• ‘Build the people’s militia in all the villages in the guerrilla zones as the base force of the PGA (People’s Guerrilla Army). Also build armed self-defence units in other areas of class struggle as well as in the urban areas.’

The Maoist strategy is clearly to fish in all troubled Indian waters, and to opportunistically exploit every potential issue and grievance to generate a campaign of protests and agitations. The principal vehicles for these ‘partial struggles’ are ‘front’ or ‘cover’ organisations of the Maoists themselves, on the one hand, and a range of individuals and organisations best described, in a phrase often attributed to Lenin, as ‘useful idiots’ — well intentioned and often gullible people who are unaware of the broader strategy and agenda they are unwittingly promoting through their support to specific and unquestionably admirable causes.

The last category can include everyone from the Human Terrorist Rights Mafia, Mainstream Media personalities to so called “intellectuals”, some of them could perhaps be well intentioned and gullible but some others might well be Communist sympathizers and quislings.

Nandigram Massacre

Communist thugs massacre poor, innocent, defenseless villagers in Nandigram, West Bengal because they dared to stand up to their tyranny and prevent the commies from stealing their land and livelihoods.

Warning – graphic video

With the fall of the Soviet Union died the Communist ideology. Now the surviving communist regimes in China, Cuba and West Bengal state in India have lost their ideological veneer and have become plain thugocracies who maintain their power only through sheer terror, intimidation and cheating. They always arrogate themselves the right to speak for the common people but have no qualms to kill them if they dare challenge them in anyway and ofcourse with the usual accompanying gaudy red rhetoric that it is all for their own good !!

This is similar to what is happening in China, very much admired by Indian communists and their sympathizers in the media and intellectual circles, where the Communist government there is stealing land from its poor farmers for the sake of “development”, which could mean anything from a factory to a shiny hotel and golf course, through intimidation and violence. The Chinese government is also involved in a massive organ trafficking scam stealing organs from poor people to sell it to rich foreigners.

Update- Nandigram Media Archive at  sacredmediacow.com

Herschelle Gibbs Hits Six Sixes in One Over

Gibbs’ six sixes to savour

Herschelle Gibbs smashed his way into World Cup history when he hit six sixes in one over in a Group A match against the Netherlands on Friday.

The South African batsman became only the third man ever to achieve the feat in first class cricket and the first in the World Cup. India’s Ravi Shastri and West Indian Garfield Sobers are the only other players to have hit six sixes in an over in first class cricket.

source- cricclips.com

Illegal Bangladeshi Immigration Into India

A two year old TV documentary, perhaps originally produced by and telecast on Aaj Tak, on the issue of illegal Bangladeshi immigration to India and its links to rising terrorist violence in many parts of the country. It is quite well researched and well made with interviews of many experts, on the ground investigations and hard data.

In the words of former CBI director Joginder Singh- India is ‘tolerating’ upto 5 crore(50 million) illegal immigrants on its soil.

p.s- The program is only in Hindi with no English subtitles. But if you have a working knowledge of Hindi it is not very difficult to follow.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Channel 4 of the UK strikes against the Global Warming fundamentalists with a brilliant documentary presenting the views of many reputed climate scientists and experts who are sceptical about the ‘Theory of Man Made Global Warming’.

Also available here

The Indo-US Nuclear Deal Plods On

The Public spotlight that was on the Indo-US nuclear deal until it was passed by the US Congress and signed by President Bush into law in December last year has dissipated. But it is now that the real drudge work to hammer out an 123 agreement, getting NSG approval and an India specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA has to be done.

Brahma Chellaney in an op-ed piece titled Long-Maul Exercise in The Asian Age analyses the action that is taking place behind the scenes.

The controversial US-India nuclear deal may not be in the news these days but it quietly continues to ferment new issues. Even as America and its friends persist with their hard sell of the deal, increasing doubts about the wisdom and costs of pushing ahead with it on terms set by the US Congress have gripped the Indian establishment.

The projected timeframe for stitching up the final deal continues to slip. When the agreement-in-principle was unveiled on July 18, 2005, it was sanguinely claimed by both sides that by spring of 2006, the deal would take effect. Then when the Hyde Act was passed, US officials voiced optimism that the final deal would be before Congress by July 2007.

Now Washington has further revised the deadline to late 2007 or early 2008. Even that seems overly optimistic when one bears in mind that after almost 20 months, only the first of the five phases has been completed to clinch the final deal. There is still a long road ahead for the two sides to traverse.

Let’s not forget that the US-China nuclear deal, signed in 1984, took nearly 14 years to come into force, and another nine years thereafter for Beijing to place its first import order for US reactors. The US-India deal, in fact, involves more processes and complicating factors. Long after the original actors involved in the July 18, 2005, accord have faded into history, India would still be grappling with the deal-related issues.

Indeed the deal’s main benefit for India remains the symbolically important message of July 18, 2005 that the United States, reversing a three-decade punitive approach toward India, has embraced it as a “responsible” nuclear state.In other words, India is already savouring the main gain from the deal.

The actual incentive proffered by the US — the lifting of civil nuclear sanctions — is of less significance because high-priced imported commercial power reactors can play only a marginal role in meeting India’s energy needs.