India has rebuffed a call by the United States for it to ask Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.

The foreign ministry said neither India nor Iran needed external guidance on how to conduct bilateral relations.

It said relations between the two spanned centuries, and they were capable of handling them with due care.

Earlier, a senior US official said Washington would welcome India telling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to curtail Tehran’s nuclear programme.

President Ahmadinejad is due to visit Delhi next week.

(Continue reading: BBC News)

Police in Indian-administered Kashmir have lobbed teargas shells to break up a violent demonstration in Srinagar.

The demonstrators were protesting over the issue of nearly 1,000 unmarked graves discovered in border areas of the valley.

Several people, including three members of the media, have been injured in the clashes.

The incident began with a procession by a group of women from the Jama Masjid, or Grand Mosque, in the city.

They demanded an investigation into the whereabouts of the people who have disappeared after, it is alleged, they were arrested by the Indian security forces.

The procession was led by the mother of a prominent militant, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar.

Prayer meeting

Her son-in-law Sirajuddin has been missing since his arrest, allegedly by the paramilitary border security force (BSF) in 1992.

The main separatist alliance, the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) organised namaz-e-janaza, or funeral prayers, on Friday for the people buried in unmarked graves.

The biggest prayer meeting was held in the Jama Masjid.

The APHC Chairman Umar Farooq also attended the prayers. 

He said the discovery of the unmarked graves has caused concern among parents about the well-being of the disappeared persons.

He appealed to what he called “the civilised world” to put pressure on the Indian government to inform next-of-kin about the whereabouts of those who have disappeared.

He said the unmarked graves were an example of the kind of atrocities the Indian government had perpetrated in Kashmir.

“Such examples are hard to find even in the times of Halaku and Changez Khan,” he said.

Amnesty International and other human rights organisations have urged the Indian government to launch urgent and impartial investigations into the unmarked graves.

Pakistan has also expressed its concern and demanded an investigation.

But the Indian army has said the reported discovery of the unmarked graves is an attempt to malign the military. 

/bbc news

The demand comes after a refusal by the Ministry of Home Affairs to grant further BlackBerry licenses.

MUMBAI, India — Canadian spies are set to help India’s intelligence agencies intercept BlackBerry messages to prevent the mobile e-mail service being shut down across the subcontinent.

The Indian government believes that messages sent via the BlackBerry system, which is licensed to mobile operators by Research in Motion (RIM), a Canadian company, pose a threat to security because of the difficulty of tracing and intercepting them.

It has given the four domestic mobile operators that offer the service in India — Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, BPL Mobile and Reliance Communications — until the end of the month to detail how they route their users’ e-mails.

It acted after India’s security services had raised doubts over whether they could “lawfully access” BlackBerry’s encrypted system, which traffics messages between a handful of secure servers, all based outside India.

The move again places the security credentials of the gadget cherished by millions of corporate high-fliers in the spotlight.

Assessments of the system vary: it is trusted by the British Government to relay “restricted” information. Others blacklist it as unsafe.

RIM insists that its technology is impregnable to spies. After France barred MPs and their advisers from using the system last year, RIM said that “rumors speculating that can be intercepted and read by the National Security Agency in the U.S. or other ’spy’ organizations are based on false and misleading information.”

Last week, RIM and its operator partners met officials from the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and representatives from the Canadian Embassy to try to prevent a BlackBerry blackout being imposed in India, sources said.

It is understood that further contact between the two countries’ security agencies was agreed in an effort to allay India’s concerns.

RIM said that it would not comment on “confidential regulatory matters.”

An estimated 400,000 of RIM’s 12 million users are in India, a figure that is likely to rise rapidly.

//fox news//

By PETE YOST

WASHINGTON (AP) — A businessman pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy for illegally exporting sensitive military components to India.

Appearing before a federal judge in Washington, Parthasarathy Sudarshan admitted to a scheme to conceal the true destination for electronic parts used in missile guidance systems and jet fighters, and night vision filters used in combat aircraft.

Sudarshan came to the United States and opened an office in Simpsonville, S.C.

He was accused by the government of conspiring to violate U.S. export restrictions by directing at least seven American firms he did business with to send deliveries to Singapore or to the office in South Carolina, where Sudarshan then re-exported the items to India.

According to papers filed in the case, Sudarshan coordinated with and took direction from a co-conspirator who was identified only as an Indian government official in Washington, D.C. The court papers identify five other co-conspirators, all employed by Sudarshan’s business.

Officials at the Indian Embassy in Washington had no immediate comment.

Sudarshan’s company, Cirrus, made 16 shipments in 3 1/2 years of microprocessors, memory chips and other items that ended up in units at the Indian government’s defense ministry or space center, the court papers stated.

Some of the exported items were built specifically for military use and required licenses from the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.

Sudarshan did not get the licenses, nor did he get licenses for other electronic components from the Commerce Department, which restricts the export to certain countries involved in developing nuclear weapons or ballistic missile delivery systems.

The equipment went to three Indian government agencies: the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, which researches spacecraft and ballistic missiles; Bharat Dynamics Ltd., a key agency in the nation’s guided missile program; and the Aeronautical Development Establishment, which is developing the Tejas combat jet.

Sudarshan, 47, faces a maximum five-year prison term for conspiring to violate two federal laws including the Arms Export Control Act.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina scheduled sentencing for June 16.

The United States imposed sanctions in 1998 after India conducted tests of its nuclear weapons, with the Commerce Department placing a number of enterprises in India on a list that included some of Sudarshan’s principal customers.

According to evidence presented by Justice Department prosecutors in court Thursday, Sudarshan told one prospective customer that the sanctions were no obstacle for one of his enterprises. “Orders, like, flew … it was flowing like water,” he was quoted saying. The court papers identified the enterprise as Bharat Electronics Ltd.

//associated press//

India emerges as leading competitor in global military market following $10bn jet fighter contract

The US secretary of defence, Robert Gates, arrives in the Indian capital, New Delhi, next week to promote a $10bn jet fighter contract, underlining the country’s emergence as one of the world’s biggest military markets. To update its Soviet-era arsenal India says it will need to spend $45bn in the next five years, and it has been courted by western states that are barred by arms embargoes from selling to China, the other expanding Asian military power.

US officials admit in private that arms sales to India also cement strategic ties as a hedge against Beijing’s growing clout in Asia. Gates’s visit, due next Tuesday, comes just before a March deadline for bids on the contract for 126 new fighters.

K Subramanyam, a defence analyst, said: “With the Americans you purchase not just weapons but a security relationship. The Saudis build it into their calculations. No surprise if we do too.”

The US will be competing with Russian and European rivals to sell the Indian air force a new “strike capability”. The Eurofighter Typhoon, which has been developed by Britain, Italy, Spain and Germany, is also being considered by Delhi.

However the rising defence budget, which dwarves spending on education and health, has met mounting domestic criticism. Praful Bidwai, a prominent columnist, said defence accounted for almost 19% of government spending. “We spend 1% on public health and education is 5% or 6% of the outlays.” “[India is] a poor country and we are spending like crazy on guns. A government report last year found that 77% of Indians live on less than 20 rupees [25p] per day.”

India’s modernised military has seen it acquire a “power projection” far beyond its shores. It boasts the capability to shoot down incoming missiles and says it can launch missiles from air, land and sea.

There is little doubt about its ambitions. In the summer of 2006, as Israeli air strikes shook Lebanon, four warships from the navy arrived off the Lebanese coast to rescue 2,000 South Asian nationals. Indian air force pilots have repeatedly defeated their American counterparts in mock dogfights. War games last year off the country’s south-western coast, with the US, Australia, Japan, and Singapore, triggered a formal protest from Beijing.

The arms deals and new strategic relationship with the US have mollified Washington, which had been angered by the Indian government’s failure to push ahead with a nuclear deal that President George Bush had called “historic”. Under the accord India could import nuclear fuel and reactors despite having tested nuclear weapons but not signed the non-proliferation treaty. However, the deal has been kept on ice after opposition from the government’s communist allies.

via//The Guardian

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf gets a bad press; Benazir Bhutto a too kind one. Which of them is the real rogue?

When Musharraf, as Pakistan’s top army commander, tried to engineer war with India over Kashmir in 1999, he demonstrated his roguish side. Yet even many of his opponents in Pakistan will concede that since he deposed Nawaz Sharif and assumed power he has been largely a benevolent dictator.

Compared with the last days of the Shah – and many in the American foreign policy establishment are falsely comparing what happened then with what is happening today in Pakistan – the country remained until Bhutto’s assassination rather stable, except in its lawless frontier provinces that border Afghanistan, a problem area even in British colonial days.

Until now, Musharraf has rarely cracked the whip. His riot police act with relative moderation. His jails are not full. Executions are rare and never for political offences. Pakistan today is not Iran of yesterday, neither in the type of leadership nor in its degree of religious fervour: the Islamist parties have never gained more than 11 per cent of the vote in a free election.

Bhutto and her husband seem manifestly corrupt. The one chance of nailing her lay in Switzerland where she had stashed cash in quantities she could never have earned honestly. At the time of her death she was appealing a Swiss conviction for money laundering. Many believe she was implicated in her brother’s death. Certainly she quarrelled with both her brothers and her mother, all of whom competed to have the lead billing in the family’s political drama. She also was estranged from her husband.

Yet now, according to her will, her husband was her chosen successor. For Bhutto, keeping the family – to wit her 19-year-old son – in the line of power was more important than developing a democratic, openly competitive, party.

In comparison, Musharraf has done no great favours for his family, nor earned excessive wealth. He is a down-to-earth army man, who when younger loved to test his macho side.

It was under Musharraf that Pakistan extended the olive branch to India over Kashmir. Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, praised Bhutto as someone who had wanted to break the “sterile patterns of the past” that had brought them to war three times over disputed Kashmir.

But this was a gratuitous backhanded slap at Musharraf. Singh knows as well as anyone that the Kashmir dispute is grounded for lack of Indian resolve to go the last mile. He also knows that the militancy that plagues the region, spreading its infection into Afghanistan and to the frontier provinces of northwestern Pakistan originates in large part among the fighters who first engaged in violence in Kashmir in an attempt to oust the Indian presence.

There is no doubt that the Pakistani military was in large measure responsible for developing this infection when it built up the strength of the mujahidin in Kashmir. It provided training. It helped with logistics and provided military materials over a long period of time.

But, apart from clandestine illegal work by some local Pakistani military and intelligence officials, this support network has been closed down by Musharraf. This doesn’t stop the militants from drawing their military requirements elsewhere or stop them organizing a big bombing from time to time in India. Nor does it stop them working with the Taliban and the other militants of northwest Pakistan. In their eyes, India has designs on Afghanistan and is the enemy of all Islamic militant movements.

A peace agreement on the lines proposed by Musharraf – which most Western diplomats will tell you is as handsome an offer as they ever imagined – would shut down Kashmir-grown militancy once and for all. The militants are no longer as popular as they were inside Kashmir and the proposed peace deal would finally pull the carpet from beneath them. Moreover, it would be a singular contribution to the lessening of all Pakistan-based terrorism.

Why doesn’t Singh do it? Because of pressures from his own military. Because of the aspiring great power role of the foreign policy establishment that can’t bear to treat Pakistan as an equal. Because of the ultra chauvinism of Singh’s coalition partners, the Communists. Because the priority with the Communists on policy is to persuade them to agree to the pending nuclear deal with the U.S.

But now that Musharraf is losing political strength all bets are off. Pakistan itself may be consumed by this infection of militancy.

DETROIT – An Indian carmaker that will unveil the world’s cheapest car next week may soon produce two of the world’s premier brands as well.

Ford Motor Co. revealed Tata Motors Ltd. was the top bidder for its Jaguar and Land Rover brands yesterday and entered into “focused negotiations at a more detailed level,” meaning Tata was named preferred bidder for the storied British automakers.

“While no final decision has been made, we will proceed with further substantive discussions with Tata Motors over the forthcoming weeks,” Lewis Booth, executive vice president of Ford’s European units, stated in a release.

Ford executives have said they expect to sell the two British automakers early this year.

Ford spokesman Jay Ward in London would not say how much Tata bid, nor would he say whether two other bidders, Indian automaker Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and US private equity firm One Equity Partners LLC, still were in the running. Last month, people close to the negotiations with Ford said potential suitors had submitted bids for both companies ranging from $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

A person briefed on the negotiations who requested anonymity because the talks are confidential said yesterday that Mahindra and One Equity still were under consideration, although Tata is the likely buyer. “Ford hasn’t told them to go away, and that’s the end of it,” the person said. “Tata’s emerged as the preferred partner.”

Tata plans to unveil its ultracheap $2,500 car next week.

Tata chairman Ratan Tata said recently that acquiring Jaguar and Land Rover would help bring global visibility to his group – a sprawling conglomerate that makes a variety of products, including steel and software.

via//Boston Globe

Nineteen years ago at the end of December, Benazir Bhutto, fresh from her first, exhilarating election victory and newly sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, met Rajiv Gandhi, the youthful prime minister of India, for talks in Islamabad. She was 35, he was 44. There was obvious good will, almost intimacy, between them. The air was full of promise and hope that these two modernizing scions of dominant political families would turn decades of war and hostility between their nations into a new era of peace.

Three and a half years later, Gandhi was assassinated. There had been no breakthrough with Pakistan to bolster his legacy. Now Bhutto is dead, at another moment of renewed anticipation. An age of hope is over.

There is a terrible symmetry in the lives and deaths of these two political leaders. Both were the children of powerful people: Indira Gandhi as India’s prime minister and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto her counterpart in Pakistan. Together, in 1972, they had negotiated an agreement over Kashmir, but their heirs were never able to build on it. Their respective children, Rajiv and Benazir, had seen those parents suffer politically motivated deaths: Indira murdered in 1984 by bodyguards revenging her attacks on Sikhs, and Zulfikar hanged under the regime of General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in what many Pakistanis consider a thinly disguised judicial execution.

Young Gandhi and Bhutto, both killed in suicide attacks, ultimately became the victims of inherited policies. Rajiv Gandhi had tried to put an end to Indian meddling in Sri Lanka and its support for a vicious Tamil Tiger rebellion. He was killed by a Sri Lankan Tamil suicide bomber, a woman who moved toward him to touch his feet in an age-old gesture, then triggered an explosion that blew them both apart. While it is too early to know who killed Benazir, Pakistan’s policies on Afghanistan are the backdrop to this tense and dangerous moment. Her father and his successors had supported Afghan rebels in order to become a player in Afghanistan and counter Indian influence in Kabul lately aligning riskily with American policies. Rajiv’s mother, whose intelligence agencies roamed the region causing havoc, had set out to weaken Sri Lanka, South Asia’s most developed nation.

Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi were both campaigning to return to power when they died. Both had been elected, then vilified. She lost support among middle-class Pakistanis for her feudal ways and unwillingness to take on social issues–child labor or the mistreatment of women–or chip away at the power of the military, and was driven from office twice on charges of corruption, much of it attributed to her husband. In India, Rajiv was the perennial butt of attacks from unreconstructed leftists and traditionalists who scoffed at his Westernized style, Italian wife and fresh ideas that rattled the khadi crowd. On the night he died, a policeman told me they had identified his remains by his expensive imported running shoes. Suspicions linger that Gandhi or those close to him may have been involved in illegal payments for arms contracts.

Tragically, political violence has been the bane of modern South Asia, from Afghanistan and Pakistan east to Bangladesh. Militants and fanatics of all stripes and dogmas and grievances have assassinated leaders since much of the region gained independence from Britain in the mid 1940s. It has been a formidable hindrance to development of political institutions.

In New Delhi, Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed in 1948 by an outraged Hindu. Pakistan’s first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was assassinated in 1951–in the same Rawalpindi park where Benazir Bhutto was attacked–and General Zia ul-Haq perished in a still mysterious plane crash in 1988. In Sri Lanka in 1959, Prime Minister S.W.R.D Bandaranaike fell victim to a fanatic Buddhist monk, the first of two generations of more than a half-dozen leading politicians to die in shootings and bombings. (Tamil Tiger rebels would later try but fail to kill Bandaranaike’s daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, when she was president.) Sheikh Mujibir Rahman, founder and first Prime Minister of independent Bangladesh, was murdered in 1975; in 1981 Bangladeshi President Ziaur Rahman, was shot in an army coup. Nepal’s entire royal family was wiped out in one evening in Kathmandu in 2001, apparently by a disaffected crown prince.

Hindus and Muslims killed one another by the hundreds of thousands after the partition of British India in 1947 into Pakistan and modern India. And compared with Pakistan since then, India has experienced much more large-scale sectarian and political violence, with thousands of Sikhs butchered in the streets of Delhi and elsewhere in North India after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, and up to 2,000 Muslims slaughtered by Hindu nationalists in Gujarat–Mahatma Gandhi’s birthplace–in 2002. In both cases, political parties have been deeply implicated yet no political leader has been punished–in a democracy.

As the world mourns the loss of Benazir Bhutto, it would be myopic to focus only on Islamic-inspired violence and on Pakistan. This is a region with a turbulent post-independence political history. Our (Islamophobic?) preoccupation with Muslim terrorism in Pakistan and Afghanistan often blocks out a bigger picture. From end to end, South Asia is a region drenched in blood.

via//The Nation

The most intriguing question that arises from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto is who plotted and carried out the killing.

After the failed assassination attempt in Karachi, observers in Pakistan theorized extreme Muslim groups who were outlawed by President Pervez Musharraf, or Al-Qaida elements aligned with these groups, were responsible.

From these groups’ point of view, Bhutto and her party are an enemy, perhaps an even more dangerous enemy than Musharraf. Yet, in Pakistan, considered one of the world’s most fertile breeding grounds for conspiracy theories, many more possible suspects will be bandied about. Indeed, the blame can be laid at the feet of any of a large number of elements.

The most astounding aspect of Thursday’s events is the negligence displayed by Bhutto’s security detail. According to reports, the assassin managed to approach Bhutto and position himself within a short distance of her, before proceeding to shoot her and detonate the explosives with which he was strapped. Not only did the assassin want to cause maximum casualties, but he also hoped that authorities would later be unable to identify him and thus ascertain which organization he was working for.

What makes the security failure all the more startling is the fact that it comes just weeks after the first assassination attempt following Bhutto’s return to Pakistan from a lengthy political exile.

In the attempt, suicide bombers killed 150 people, although Bhutto escaped unharmed. Under these circumstances, it was chiefly incumbent on her security guards to do all in their power to prevent direct access to her, even during the course of an election campaign in which a candidate seeks to come into contact with the public.

One can make the claim – and some already have – that foreign agents of countries in conflict with Pakistan (re: India) orchestrated the assassination so as to create chaos and to create an image of a country that is unstable and unreliable.

Others will point the finger at Musharraf and his supporters, who viewed Bhutto as a rival who was likely to win next month’s elections.

The likelihood of both claims is extremely low, especially considering the apparent deal in principle struck between Musharraf and Bhutto whereby both would enter a power-sharing arrangement and form a joint coalition.

Another possible perpetrator is former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, a bitter political rival of Bhutto who once ordered her husband arrested on corruption charges.

via//Haaretz

Child workers, some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant.

Speaking to The Observer, the children described long hours of unwaged work, as well as threats and beatings.

Gap said it was unaware that clothing intended for the Christmas market had been improperly subcontracted to a sweatshop using child labour. It announced it had withdrawn the garments involved while it investigated breaches of the ethical code imposed by it three years ago.

The discovery of the children working in filthy conditions in the Shahpur Jat area of Delhi has renewed concerns about the outsourcing by large retail chains of their garment production to India, recognised by the United Nations as the world’s capital for child labour.

According to one estimate, more than 20 per cent of India’s economy is dependent on children, the equivalent of 55 million youngsters under 14.

The Observer discovered the children in a filthy sweatshop working on piles of beaded children’s blouses marked with serial numbers that Gap admitted corresponded with its own inventory. The company has pledged to convene a meeting of its Indian suppliers as well as withdrawing tens of thousands of the embroidered girl’s blouses from the market, before they reach the stores. The hand-stitched tops, which would have been sold for about £20, were destined for shelves in America and Europe in the next seven days in time to be sold to Christmas shoppers.

With endorsements from celebrities including Madonna, Lenny Kravitz and Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker, Gap has become one of the most successful and iconic brands in fashion. Last year the firm embarked on a huge poster and TV campaign surrounding Product Red, a charitable trust for Africa founded by the U2 lead singer Bono.

Despite its charitable activities, Gap has been criticised for outsourcing large contracts to the developing world. In 2004, when it launched its social audit, it admitted that forced labour, child labour, wages below the minimum wage, physical punishment and coercion were among abuses it had found at some factories producing garments for it. It added that it had terminated contracts with 136 suppliers as a consequence.

In the past year Gap has severed contracts with a further 23 suppliers for workplace abuses.

Gap said in a statement from its headquarters in San Francisco: ‘We firmly believe that under no circumstances is it acceptable for children to produce or work on garments. These allegations are deeply upsetting and we take this situation very seriously. All of our suppliers and their subcontractors are required to guarantee that they will not use child labour to produce garments. In this situation, it’s clear one of our vendors violated this agreement and a full investigation is under way.’

Professor Sheotaj Singh, co-founder of the DSV, or Dayanand Shilpa Vidyalaya, a Delhi-based rehabilitation centre and school for rescued child workers, said he believed that as long as cut-price embroidered goods were sold in stores across Britain, America, continental Europe and elsewhere in the West, there would be a problem with unscrupulous subcontractors using children.

‘It is obvious what the attraction is here for Western conglomerates,’ he told The Observer. ‘The key thing India has to offer the global economy is some of the world’s cheapest labour, and this is the saddest thing of all the horrors that arise from Delhi’s 15,000 inadequately regulated garment factories, some of which are among the worst sweatshops ever to taint the human conscience.

‘Consumers in the West should not only be demanding answers from retailers as to how goods are produced but looking deep within themselves at how they spend their money.’

Source: The Guardian

The United States sells death, destruction, and terror as a fundamental instrument of its foreign policy. It sees arms sales as a way of making and keeping strategic friends and tying countries more directly to U.S. military planning and operations. At its simplest, as Lt. Gen. Jeffrey B. Kohler, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told The New York Times in 2006, the United States likes arms deals because “it gives us access and influence and builds friendships.” South Asia has been an important arena for this effort, and it teaches some lessons the United States should not ignore.

Neoconservatives are great observers of war and warriors, though they are sometimes not in complete agreement about the numbering of the conflicts that they send other people’s sons and daughters to fight. Norman Podhoretz, the patriarch of the neocons, believes that the Cold War was World War III and that the U.S. is now fighting World War IV against “Islamofascism.” He intends to expand World War IV by slating Iran as the next domino to fall to America’s military might. Podhoretz undoubtedly sees the current global conflict as something that is good and necessary, both containable and winnable, but as his judgment on Iraq was fallible, his prediction of Iran’s rapid destruction is also unreliable. It might be useful to imagine just how war with Iran could play out if the Iranians don’t roll over and surrender at the first whiff of grapeshot.

It might start with a minor incident, possibly involving an American Marine patrol operating out of the new base at Badrah near the Iranian border. The Marines are surrounded by superior Iranian forces claiming that the Americans have strayed inside Iranian territory. The Marines refuse to surrender their weapons and instead open fire. The Iranians respond. Helicopter gunships are called in to support the Marines, and artillery fire is directed against Iranian military targets close to the border. President Bush calls the incident an act of war and, in an emotional speech to the nation, orders U.S. forces to attack. A hastily called meeting of the UN Security Council results in a 17-1 vote urging the United States to exercise restraint, with only Washington voting “no.” In the UN General Assembly, only the U.S., Israel, Micronesia, and Costa Rica support the military action. The U.S. is effectively alone.

In the first few days, overwhelming American air and naval superiority destroy Iran’s principal air, naval, and army bases. Iranian Revolutionary Guard facilities are particularly targeted and are obliterated, as are the known Iranian nuclear research and development sites. Population centers are avoided, though smart weapons destroy communications centers and command and control facilities. There are nevertheless large numbers of civilian casualties and widespread radioactive contamination as many of the targeted sites are in or near cities. Infrastructure is also hit, particularly bridges, roads, and power generation stations close to known nuclear research centers and military sites. The U.S. media, which had supported the administration’s plans to engage Iran, rallies around the flag, praising the surgical attacks designed to cripple Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. Congress supports the bombing, with leaders from both parties praising the president and commenting that Iran had it coming.

The Pentagon and White House call the attacks a complete success, but Iran strikes back. With five years to prepare, Iran has successfully hidden and hardened many of its military and nuclear facilities, a large percentage of which are undamaged. The aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower operating in the Persian Gulf is hit by a Chinese Silkworm cruise missile and grounds itself in shallow water to avoid sinking. Three other support vessels are also hit and severely damaged when they are attacked by small craft manned by suicide bombers. Pro-Iranian riots break out in Beirut, where the government is forced to call in soldiers to shoot at the crowds. In the south of Lebanon, Hezbollah fires salvoes of rockets into Israel. Israel responds by bombing Lebanon and Syria, which it blames for the attacks. Iranian Shahab-3 missiles also strike Israel, killing a number of civilians. The Israeli Defense Forces are mobilized, and troops are sent to the northern border. Syria and Lebanon also mobilize their forces. Rioters in Baghdad attack US. .troops and the American embassy and are driven back only after the soldiers open fire and call in helicopter gunships. Snipers attack American soldiers all over Iraq. Shi’ites sympathetic to Iran sabotage Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil fields. The Saudi fields suffer some damage, and hundreds of alleged saboteurs are shot dead by Saudi security forces. An oil tanker out of Kuwait is hit by a Silkworm close to the Straits of Hormuz and runs aground. Another hits a mine planted by Iran. Insurers in London refuse to cover any tankers transiting the Persian Gulf. Oil shipments from the region, one quarter of the world supply, stop completely, and oil goes up to $200 a barrel. Wall Street suffers its biggest loss in 20 years, with the Dow Jones index plummeting by more than 800 points.

The U.S. offers Iran a cease-fire, which Tehran rejects. Two days later, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is assassinated under orders from Tehran. Fearing that he will be next, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf flees to Dubai. Order breaks down in both countries. The Pakistani army declares a state of emergency. Several leaders in the Pakistani tribal areas that are sheltering Osama bin Laden declare themselves independent. Fighting increases in Iraq with U.S. soldiers being targeted by both leading Shi’ite militias. U.S. troops evacuate Baghdad, fighting their way out with heavy casualties. There are reports of Iranian soldiers and militiamen massing at the border. Rioters in Basra succeed in cutting the main roads leading to Kuwait that supply U.S. forces.

The U.S. scrambles to contain the damage, pressuring the Pakistani army to put down the riots and secure the country’s nuclear arsenal, while at the same time trying to restore order in Kabul through the multinational force. Several NATO allies balk at using their soldiers in what they see as a burgeoning civil war, and the U.S. suffers heavy losses in street fighting before withdrawing to its bases. Taliban-backed militias take over much of Kabul and Kandahar. Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif, which is largely Shi’ite, declares itself part of Iran. Waves of Iranian soldiers and militiamen cross the border into Iraq, where they are welcomed by the Iraqi militias. U.S. troops are under siege countrywide and are forced to withdraw into their bases where they can be supplied by air. The Iraqi government resigns and is replaced by a group of Shi’ite clerics. The government in Lebanon falls and is replaced by a coalition headed by Hezbollah. A salvo of Iranian Silkworm missiles sets the Saudi Arabian eastern oil fields ablaze. Saudi Arabia sends an urgent message to Tehran declaring that it is “neutral” in the fighting and will not assist the U.S. in any way. Kuwait sends the same message, as does Egypt. Kuwait refuses to allow the U.S. to use its men and supplies at Camp Doha against Iran. In Bahrain, rampaging Shi’ite crowds depose Sheik Khalifa al-Khalifa and set up an Islamic Republic which immediately demands that the U.S. Fifth Fleet dismantle its headquarters and go home. The Dow Jones index loses another 1,000 points.

The U.S. attempts to get China and Russia to mediate with Iran to end the fighting, but they refuse to do Washington any favors, noting that they had opposed the attack in the first place. Suicide bombers attack London, Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. The attacks are poorly planned and inflict only a few casualties, but panic sets in and the public demands that the respective governments do something. The U.S. tells the Iranian government that unless resistance ceases, nuclear weapons will be used on select targets. India and Pakistan are alarmed by the U.S. threat and put their own nuclear forces on high alert, as does Israel. Russia and China also increase their readiness levels to respond to the crisis.

Iran refuses to concede defeat, and the Iranian people rally around the government. The U.S. public clamors for action. Oil prices continue to surge, and even the long term viability of petroleum supplies is in question as the Straits of Hormuz continue to be closed. Another U.S. ship is sunk by suicide attackers in the Persian Gulf. U.S. troops are under fire nearly everywhere in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Anti-American rioting takes place in Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Dhaka. The U.S. consulate general in Karachi, Pakistan, is overrun and sacked. Forty Americans are killed, along with hundreds of Pakistanis. The Pakistani army announces that it can no longer protect Americans. There are frequent terrorism scares in a number of American cities, which are under red alert security lockdown, though there are no new attacks. As a preventive measure, Muslim leaders and some antiwar activists are arrested and detained at military prisons, including Guantanamo. Israel continues to be bombarded from inside Lebanon and Syria. Its air attacks on targets in both countries inflict major damage on civilians but are unsuccessful in stopping the rockets. Rioting rocks the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas flees to Cairo. India threatens to attack Pakistan if there is any question about the security of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal.

The United States uses a neutron-type bomb against the main Iranian nuclear research center at Natanz, which it had already bombed conventionally and destroyed. It vows to bomb again if Iran continues to resist. Iran is defiant and fires another wave of Silkworms at U.S. ships, sinking one. Suicide bombers hit U.S. targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia and China place their nuclear forces on high alert. Pakistani militants take over parliament, aided by radical elements in the army and the intelligence service. India launches a preemptive strike against the main Pakistani nuclear centers at Wah and Multan, where the country’s arsenal is believed to be concentrated. Pakistan has hidden some of its nukes elsewhere, however, and is able to strike back by bombing New Delhi. World War III has begun.

Source: AntiWar.com

After decades of brutal military rule, Myanmar’s people have taken to the streets to demand democracy, and they are being mowed down. China, India and Russia have the means — but apparently not the will — to stop Myanmar’s vicious junta from murdering more of its citizens. The three countries regularly proclaim themselves world powers, yet they refuse to accept the moral responsibility that must come with that position.

China is Myanmar’s chief trading partner and protector. Many other countries, including the United States, refuse to do business with the regime, but India and Russia are comfortably making money off the generals and helping keep them in power, with arms and energy deals. So far, they all have refused to use that leverage — a shocking demonstration of greed and political cowardice.

On Wednesday, Beijing ruled out calls for international sanctions and stopped the Security Council even from condemning the junta’s indiscriminate use of force against pro-democracy protests. On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed sanctions as premature and said he “assumed” the violence will stop.

China is an authoritarian state, and Russia is increasingly anti-democratic. Officials in both fear internal dissent and fear setting a precedent that would allow others to criticize their own repressive ways. As in the case of North Korea — another client state — Beijing disingenuously argues its influence with Myanmar only goes so far. And despite that claim, Beijing managed to persuade the junta to allow a visit by a special United Nations envoy.

The response of India, the democracy on which the United States hopes to build a key security and economic relationship for the 21st century, also has been weak and pathetic. New Delhi issued a carefully nuanced call for political reform and said nothing about sanctions.

We are heartened that the normally supercautious Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose members are Myanmar’s immediate neighbors, expressed revulsion with the junta’s crackdown. But we fear that so long as the three major regional partners refuse to get tough with the generals, such outrage will make little difference.

China will host the 2008 Olympics, which it sees as a coming out party for its rising international power. Beijing’s rulers need to know that the world is watching to see whether it will now use its influence to stop the killing in Myanmar — or again abdicate the responsibilities that come with real world leadership.

Source: New York Times

India is in the throes of a revolution of rising expectations, a country animated by a providential sense of its own possibility.

Female infanticide is highest in some of India’s wealthiest districts

Already, it is close to dislodging Japan as the world’s third largest economy, if purchasing power is taken into account. And by 2040 should have eased past China to become the planet’s most populous country.

Though progress can be agonisingly and needlessly slow, especially in the countryside, living standards are improving, along with literacy rates and life expectancy.

In Mumbai not so long ago, I visited what can only be described as a gentrified slum, where a young father sat in front of his colour television mesmerised by the fast-moving ticker racing across the bottom of the screen.

He was checking on the value of his share portfolio, and happily it was increasing with each occasional blink of his eyes.

Daring to dream

Even in the shanties, still stinking and overcrowded, people are daring to dream. The signs of change are everywhere.

Inequalities aside, the crude equation that increased wealth will lead ultimately to decreased suffering should apply to most of India’s social and economic maladies.

A baby girls means a future dowry and a financial burden for a family

Yet there is one problem that prosperity is actually aggravating.

I saw this for myself in a hospital in Punjab, where we filmed a young mother giving birth, with the help of a surgeon’s scalpel, to her second daughter.

The Caesarean section was a complete success, and the safe arrival of such a beautiful ball of life should have been greeted with uncomplicated delight.

But the mother had failed once again to provide her husband with a son and heir, so it was a singularly joyless occasion.

Old attitudes

Handed the little girl, not yet 10 minutes old, the women of the family were disapproving and edgy, fretful perhaps of how they would break the news to the men folk, who had not even come to the hospital.

On the maternity ward a few minutes later, I was asked by one of the ladies – the mother’s sister, I think – whether we would like to name the baby girl.

Why pay 50,000 rupees to your new in-laws when you can pay 500 rupees for an abortion? Soap opera to save girls Cradles collect girls

We demurred, of course. Then came an even more extraordinary request: did we want to take the baby, not just to hold, but to have?

In another time, she might have been killed.

For this prosperous Punjabi family, we seemingly offered a less savage means of disposal.

In modern-day India, sex selection, the all-too-common practice by which female foetuses are terminated before birth, conforms to a very different and disturbing calculus: increased wealth brings increased access to prenatal ultrasounds and sonograms.

New and more widely available technology, the engine of India’s relentless economic growth, is also fuelling female foeticide.

Illegal

According to a study by Unicef, a higher percentage of boys are born now than 10 years ago in 80% of India’s districts.

FACTS AND FIGURES   Female infanticide occurs in 80% of states Worst-affected states include wealthiest areas 927 girls born for every 1,000 boys Infant mortality rate: 60/1,000 Source: Unicef

Only last month in the state of Orissa, the skulls of 40 female foetuses and newborn girls were discovered in an abandoned well.

More distressing still, sex selection is worst in the most affluent parts of the country: Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat.

In northern Punjab, for example, there are just 798 girls under the age of six for every 1,000 boys. The national average is 927.

Even though it is illegal in India for a doctor to reveal the gender of an unborn child, the law is rarely enforced.

Over the past 20 years, it has been estimated that some 10 million female foetuses have been aborted.

Girls are unwanted because they are seen as a financial burden. Landholdings can pass to in-laws and dowries, which themselves are illegal, siphon money from families.

First birthday

Why pay 50,000 rupees to your new in-laws when you can pay 500 rupees for an abortion? You do not even have to leave home.

Many unscrupulous doctors carry portable ultra-sound equipment in the boots of their cars.

Increased consumer choice is one of the hallmarks of the new India.

Tragically, it is being applied, with almost industrial efficiency, to depress the female birth rate.

Source: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6934540.stm

Shiv Sena “activists” vandalise Outlook office in Mumbai to “protest” Bal Thackeray being “portrayed in a negative light” in Outlook’s Independence Day special issue

Some goons calling themselves Shiv Saina “activists” forcibly entered the Outlook office on the sixth floor of Raheja Chambers in Nariman Point at around 3 PM today, asked for the “editor” and proceeded to ransack the office and threaten the staff members on being told that there was no senior person around.

And the ostensible reason for this sudden outburst of violence? Their party chief being “portrayed in a negative light” in Outlook’s Independence Day special issue, which included Bal Thackeray in a list of villains.

It remains unclear whether the specific objection was to be called a villain, the company Thackeray was made to share (his name featured alongside such personages as Nathuram Godse, Gaya Ram, the faceless terrorist, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Sanjay Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Mohammed Azharuddin, HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar, Jagdish Tytler, Dawood Ibrahim, Beant Singh and Satwant Singh) or the accompanying text and illustration. But as a mute testimony to the accuracy of the short-profile, office equipment, fax machine, photo-copier machine and window panes were left smashed in today’s incident.

The Editor’s Guild has called it a direct attack on the freedom of the press “especially in a democratic set-up where political parties are duty-bound to eschew violence,” and Outlook editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta has called it a crude attempt to muzzle journalists. “This is a blatant attack on the freedom of the press. The Shiv Sena activists attacked our editorial office in Mumbai and made no attempt to disguise their identity,” he said when asked for his response to the outrage in Mumbai, adding that he spoke to Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh immediately after the attack. “He was quite disturbed after hearing of this attack. We have to consider and introspect that this kind of attack on the press is happening when India is celebrating its 60 years of independence. It is a crude attack on the freedom of the press.”

Meanwhile, the Editor’s Guild has asked Maharashtra government to provide protection for the magazine and demanded legal action against those who perpetrated the attack and also asked that the “Shiv Sena too should take action against such of its members who have indulged in the attack.”

Update: As we write, Shiv Sena on its part has tried to distance itself from the attack with party spokesman Sanjay Raut saying it was the handiwork of a “mob”: “I am aware of Sainiks burning copies of Outlook but I don’t think the attack on their office was orchestrated by Sainiks. It was a mob attack and the Shiv Sena will not claim any responsibility for it.”

Source: Outlook
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070814&fname=outlookattack&sid=1

Related: BBC News: Hindu hardliners attack magazine