Why Iran may not be behind the Israel embassy attack in India

The bomb attack of an Israeli embassy car has, predictably, led to accusations that Iran is the perpetrator.
For those accusing Iran for the attack, the link is very obvious: a bomb was found and defused in an Israel embassy car in Georgia around the same time; Iran's nuclear scientists have been killed recently in similar attacks suspected to be carried out by the Moss and and that country had threatened to hit back ...
A U.S. commentator said the attack shows how panicky the Iranian leadership is to have carried out the attack in a country that has now become its main oil customer.
Well, it is not so simple. None of this 'evidence' actually is fool-proof it you look at them impartially.
Granted, Iran has said it will hit back but that is not evidence that country carried out these particular attacks. Not even the fact that there were two coordinated attacks in two different countries at almost at the same time. At the most that just proves Israel was attacked in a coordinated manner -- it could have been any one. Iran is just an easy suspect.
Now to look at another aspect that is largely being ignored as Western media push the official line of American and European governments ranged against Iran over that country's nuclear weapons program.
If Iran wanted to strike at Israeli targets, why should it do that in India and try to sever its economic lifeline? Iran or its proxies could have done that in any other country, as they have proved many times before. The Iranian leadership may be in panic mode, but they are not fools.
They could as well have carried out such a strike in any western capital and proved their point much more forcefully. And if they carried out the Indian attacks, they could have done it much more effectively!
So who could have been behind the attacks? It is much more easy to suspect western intelligence agencies if you look at the circumstantial evidence. It is they who want to stir up things and rupture India-Iran relations . India is now that country's major oil customer and has resisted western efforts to cut down buying its oil. India has even worked out a payments system that is not impacted by the U.S.-sponsored sanctions.
Naturally it is in western interests to cut off this economic lifeline to Iran. And they would have calculated that such an attack would create a situation wherein the Indian government is forced to cut off its trade links to Iran.
So what about the coordinated attacks? The bomb in Tbilisi, Georgia, was only an attempt to ratchet up pressure and show a 'pattern.'
Well, both attacks failed. Could the western agencies have been so unprofessional? No, but the same applies to Iran; they may be technologically behind the west, but when it comes to such clandestine  attacks they have proved that they can strike at will, and effectively.
The failures just show that the brains behind the attack employed some ill-trained proxies. Why should that be Iran?

The world has changed, and it's payback time for British colonialists!

A column and a news story from the Economic Times have provided fuel for this article -- again on British aid to India.
First, Swapan Dasgupta writes about how British perception of Indians have changed over the decades as India's riches grew and Britian's declined. This is throwback to a few centuries earlier, or almost, when India's riches attracted the attention of the robbers in London.
Britain has, right from 1947 when it was forced to give India its freedom, tried to weaken this country and deny it its rightful place in the comity of world nations. That country's sole claim to fame is the wealth it plundered from the rest of the world, mostly India, and the way it brutally killed and pushed to poverty millions of people all over the world.
It has since then tried to keep India and the developing world weak through a variety of instruments, like the Commonwealth of Nations and British aid.
British aid in India has now become a joke, with India saying it does not want it and Britain says it won't stop giving it!
Clearly, there is something nefarious about the whole thing. British aid is going to cultivate Indian lobbyists, throgh non-profits and aid projects for the poor that actually line politicians' pockets.
But this time, with India opting for the French Rafale fighter, it is clear that British bribery is not working. India's decision to go for the Rafale is a sound one, and the Brits just cannot stomach it. As in the Mughal times, now they are hoping to overturn the Indian decision by greasing politicians' palms. The danger with India caving in is that buying British defense hardware will keep in place the unequal relationship that has existed between Britain and India. More importantly, it will help India's riches flow into Britain, again, setting off another round of financial exploitation.
The question that we Indians should be asking is why should we let these robbers get away with what they want. Any India politician who tries to scupper the Rafale decision and give the fighter contract to the Brits should be tried and imprisoned. The Brits' statements on tying aid to fighter contracts is enough evidence for that.
Britain should be let to die a slow, painful death, like the one it forced on many poor Indian artisans and farmers a couple of hundred years back. Those gruesome stories are equally horrible to the Nazi holocaust, just that the Brits were the winner of the World War II and were painted angels in history books.
If India wants to help any country in the West, it should be the United States. The steady stream of jobs that has come our way from the United States is responsible in a major way for our prosperity and economic rise. And we should try to reciprocate by giving the some arms contracts that will help them generate and keep jobs.
True, the United States has sided with the Paks several times but it was not with the aim of economic exploitation -- as was the case with Britain. The Americans were guided by their strategic calculus than economy in such decisions.
The second story is about how the Taliban has promised to capture and kill Prince Harry when he returns to Afghanistan. While we should not condone killing or threats of killing in any way, this statement from the Taliban shows how much the Brits have lost respect, and power, in the region.
They had kindled some of the world's worst, simmering conflicts during their colonial days and continued to stoke them by siding with one or the other party. Now is payback time!
This is called the wheel of Karma. For several generations of Indians who were pained to read about British atrocities and exploitation, with a feeling of helplessness, it is a time of joy. The Brits are getting it back!
With the power of the Internet the people of India can now make sure that our politicians cannot be swayed by British 'aid'. And we have nukes and long-range missiles now if the Brits every try any of their usual shenanigans.
Meanwhile, there is hope that it will not be easy for the Brits to swing the fighter contract their way -- read this article by Rajat Pandit in the economictimes.com.

Karnataka MLAs caught watching 'porn' -- but why the furor?

I am amused by the controversy over legislators in Karnataka allegedly watching porn on their mobiles inside the Assembly.
My question is, why make a ruckus after you have elected such people? We have long ago forgotten our responsibilities as free citizens in a democracy who can choose the people who will lead us. At the time of exercising our choice we go by all narrow considerations such as caste, creed, religion, etc. Little do we care about the suitability and capability of the person of our choice, or his moral integrity.
And suddenly things like this happen, we act surprised; we clamor for their resignation!
We get only the rulers that we deserve. Most of the people who kick up dust over this themselves are not averse to watching porn when they get the opportunity. They are pained and outraged only if the porn clip happens to be about a woman in their life, like a wife or a daughter. Anyone else is acceptable.
So why should they think the representatives they elect will be any different?
Then there is the media. Most journalists are as culpable as the average man, or the 'erring' legislators, when it comes to such things. As a journalist friend in New Delhi tweeted: "anointed saints of the press club, are we?"
The funniest part of this whole episode, to me, was the explanation offered by one of the legislators: it was scenes of rape that he was watching!

Say 'no' to UK aid; it's a tool to dictate to India

It seems the UK is still in colonial-master mode if the controversy over that country's aid to India is anything to go by. Britain gives India about $280 million in aid, puny by India's standards and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said as much.
The latest round of controversy is about how India spurned the Eurofighter Typhoon for the French Rafale, despite receiving British aid.
This has been a typical British tactic -- give India aid and use that leverage to make us buy their arms. Think of the Sea King helicopter deal. India bought those for our armed forces from the UK, and soon enough that country stopped the supply of spares over India's nuclear program. The fleet was grounded, hobbling the Indian Navy's anti-submarine and fleet air arm capabilities.
The current statement from British politicians, and I am sure behind the scenes maneuvers by the UK government, to tie that country's aid to India's fighter purchases rekindles memories of that humiliating episode. We should never ever buy British weapons; that country has a history of siding with Pakistan and trying to dictate our foreign policy. They just want Indian money to keep flowing into their coffers.
And I am surprised by all this outcry in Britain over 'aid' to India: after all that country's riches are a result of centuries of plunder of the East, especially India. Now that the cash-flow channels are slowly getting blocked, they want to open up new ones to keep the money flowing.
New Delhi should ask London to keep its aid, or better still, give it to the Pakistanis. Those guys are faster when it comes to payback, just they they prefer to pay back in kind -- in the form of terrorist bombs!

Is the U.S. getting ready to wipe out Pakistan's nukes and terror machinery?

The recent reports about how Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is figting to keep his job and how adamant anti-U.S. forces in the army have become are cause for serious concern.
If Pakistan falls to a military coup by Islamist officers, there is very real danger of the state itself using nuclear weapons for terrorist purposes -- at least making them available to terrorists.
The option before the United States and other world nations in such an event are not very palatable: take out Pakistan and its weapons.
The haste with which the United States is trying to get out of Iraq and Afghtanistan makes me think the Americans are already getting ready for such an eventuality.
They cannot take on and destroy the state-sponsored and protected terror apparatus in Pakistan if the U.S. army continues to be fighting many wars that are bleeding their resources.
And considering that the Pakistanis have a direct or indirect hand in fueling these conflicts, it makes eminent sense to destroy the fountainhead of terror than to let their army fight such bleeding actions which do not achieve much.
So is the U.S. getting ready to finally "bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age?"
Not sure, but from the haste with which they are trying to get out of Afghanistan -- by even talking to the Taliban -- and the simultaneous arm-twisting of the Pakistanis -- show the Americans have finally started seeing sense.
The world of Islamic terror cannot be wiped out without wiping out Pakistan.
And it is only karmic justice if the Americans -- who helped set up Pakistan as a dirty-tricks state -- do it.

Hazare is 'unelected tyrant'; so does the Congress want to go back to the elected tyranny of Indira Gandhi?

Congress has called Anna Hazare, who is leading a completely legitimate protest against corruption, an unelected tyrant! So what does the Congress want? An elected tyrant like Indira Gandhi?
People like Pranab Mukherjee have flourished under the tyrannical regime of Indira Gandhi and it is understandable they want back such regimes.
However, they forget that India of 2011 is not the India of the 1970s. The youth today have access to disruptive technologies that have the entire Middle East in upheaval, they want change, and they want accountability.
Political fossils like Pranab Mukherjee may not understand that but people like Rahul Gandhi may.
If the political class, which everyone knows is corrupt and is in cahoots with the corrupt in plundering India, does not want change, they have lost grip of reality.
The desire for change in India's middle class and youth just needs a spark and playing people like Baba Ramdev against these aspirations will only work for so long.
If India's political rulers, with the arrogance that they have been elected by the people -- a people we know care the least about the principles of democracy when the cast their votes -- think they can suppress the genuine aspirations of the Indian people, God save them!
Anna Hazare and his cause will win, whatever political detritus like Pranab Mukherjee or Digvijay Singh think.

China has more dam plans; more damage to the ecology

Here is this news about China planning to divert the Brahmaputra river to tackle its chronic water shortages, and the Facebook post by the Himalayan International Institute of India about maintaining nature's balance that I came across.
What this news shows is each nation trying to address its on self-created problems in isolation: without realizing that the world is a connected whole.
Whether it is India trying to dam up the rivers flowing to Pakistan or China trying to build dams on the Brahmaputra and other rivers, governments tend to forget that any so-called damage to downstream countries is not going to be restricted to those countries and populations.
Similarly, India's so-called experts have time and again come up with projects to link rivers in the north of the country to those in the south.
What these experts and short-sighted politicians don't understand is that our unsustainable development paradigms cannot be rectified and propped up with more damage to the ecology. They try to whitewash any ecological concerns with references to projected short-term gains.
The planet is being ravaged by human greed. It is time to look for holistic solutions to these problems rather than apply 19th and 20th century models of development and norms of human development.
The Himalayan International Institute's post shows puts it correctly: serving nature is serving the whole of creation; all development that hurts nature is not development. The faster we learn this lesson, the better.