Obama is behaving like Bush : Iranian minister

Speaking on the second day of the International Institute for Strategic Studies Regional Security Summit at the Ritz-Carlton Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki blamed the American presence in the region for its instability.

“They bombed Afghanistan (after 9/11) and then became so arrogant that they did not even feel the need to take the permission of the United Nations to bomb Iraq. They killed hundreds of innocent people in Iraq — people who had committed no crime,” he said in Farsi.

He accused the US of spreading lies and deception, citing the recent WikiLeaks controversy, and claimed that Iran was a friend to all Arab and Muslim countries in the region. “We are happy when Saudi Arabia flourishes. We are happy to note that Bahrain has become an important center of international banking. Why should we not be happy? These are our Muslim brothers,” he said while driving his point home.

It is the foreign intervention that is to blame for all the ills afflicting the region, he said. “It has been proven that foreign intervention creates unhealthy rivalries between neighbors. It is the presence of foreign powers in our region that is the immediate cause for regional divisions and strife.”

He denied claims that Iran was building a nuclear weapon and claimed the Americans were spreading lies.
“We are not. And let me clarify that throughout our 700 years of history and culture we have not used force against any of our Arab neighbors ... We cannot even think of it because our neighbors are Muslims.”

He said Muslim countries must not submit to pressures by outsiders that divide them and create instability and create divisions among friends in the region. “In the region it has been proven that foreign intervention creates unhealthy rivalries between neighbors.”

Iranian nuclear power, he said, will benefit the entire Muslim world. “Muslims must be happy to see other Muslims becoming powerful ... Our power is your power, and your power is ours,” he told the high-powered gathering. “We must not allow the Western media to tell us what to think of each other.”

According to him, things have not changed under US President Barack Obama. “We see the same policies are in motion that were started by (George W.) Bush. The American people had given Obama the mandate to stop the wars. He did not do so and was therefore punished in recent elections,” said Mottaki.

He said Iran is fully aware of the dangers of building nuclear weapons. “A nuclear bomb does only one thing: it destroys everything. Why will we go for such a weapon? Look at our history and show one instance where we have used force? We never sought weapons of mass destruction. Even when we were attacked by chemical weapons in the 1980s we did not think of building such weapons. These chemical weapons were by the way supplied by the American and European governments to Iraq.”

As recently as Thursday, the UN International Atomic Energy Agency restated that Iran was not fulfilling its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is signatory. The UN imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran in June for its continued noncompliance with the international watchdog group.

“It has been six months since they introduced the sanctions, and if they need more time in order to see if these sanctions worked they can wait a longer time. The sanctions have no impact on us,” the 57-year-old Iranian career diplomat maintained.


From Siraj Wahab's report in Arab News. More Here.

"Ratan, the media is very, very greedy" said Niira Radia to Ratan Tata.

"Ratan, They are buying up the media. They're using their buying power with the media. I can't tell the discussions I had with the media, in particular the Times Group and Dainik Bhaskar.... They say, Niira, every time we do a negative story on them, they withdraw advertising. So, I said, fine, others can also withdraw advertising.... They leverage every dollar of their mediaspend to ensure they don't get any negative publicity. The media is very, very greedy."


From Sukumar Muralidharan's comprehensive analysis on Radia Tapes, Indian Media. The catchy title of the analysis says it all: "Media : stenographer to power". To download the pdf version of the analysis click Here.

WikiLeaks Exposes Israeli Mafia's Growing Influence

I love how the pundits are yawning over the latest WikiLeaks revelations: oh, there's nothing to see here, it's all so boring, no "smoking gun," so let's just move right along. These people are just plain lazy: they want "scoops" delivered to their front doors, all neatly packaged and labeled as such. In short, they don't want to have to do any work, beyond the usual cut-and-paste. Which is why a lot of the really juicy stuff coming out of WikiLeaks continues to elude them.
Take, for example, this excerpt from a cable dated May 15, 2009 – entitled "Israel, A Promised Land for Organized Crime?" – sent by our embassy in Tel Aviv, which deals with the rising influence of Israeli organized crime:

"As recently as March 2009, Zvika Ben Shabat, Yaacov Avitan, and Tzuri Roka requested visas to attend a 'security-related convention' in Las Vegas. According to local media reports, all three had involvement with OC. Post asked the applicants to provide police reports for any criminal records in Israel, but without such evidence there is no immediate ineligibility for links to OC. Luckily, all three have so far failed to return for continued adjudication of their applications. Nevertheless, it is fair to assume that many known OC figures hold valid tourist visas to the United States and travel freely."

What are organized crime figures doing showing up at a "security-related convention" in Las Vegas? Well, it seems Mr. Zvika Ben Shabat is the President of "H.A.Sh Security Group," an Israeli company that offers security services worldwide. Indeed, they just signed an agreement to start a joint venture with India's giant Micro-Technologies, a company which is described as follows:

"Micro Technologies was established by Dr. [P.] Shekhar, who served as the person in charge on behalf of the Indian Government for advancement and development of the technology and software field in India (First Director Software Technology Park in India), and his company deals with the development of technologies and is already active in many markets around the world, amongst which are: Denmark, Brussels, Italy, New York, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and more. The company has security technologies for identification and monitoring of cell phones, vehicles, structures, computers, infrastructures and WIFI technologies."

In other words, they specialize in snooping, otherwise known as spying. The first Micro Technologies/H.A. Sh Security Group project is a "command and control center" to be built in Mumbai, India. As for what theH.A.Sh Security Group specializes in, well, take a look at these Youtube videos:  here,  here, and  here, for starters. And get a load of who is the Chairman of H.A.Sh Security: none other than retired Major General Dan Ronen, whose resume appears  here:

"2001-2003 – Israel Police: Head of the Operations Division, with the rank of Major General; Coordination of activities of all police units in the operational field; Coordination with the General Security Service and IDF units in the battle against terrorism; 2004-2007 – Israel Police: Commander of Northern Region (the largest of the police regions); Responsible for liaison and coordination vis-à-vis heads of local authorities; Responsible for leading and commanding the overall forces and systems during the second Lebanon War, in missions involving defense of the residents in the northern home front; Areas of Expertise: Combat against terrorism and suicide bombers coordination and operation of emergency and rescue organizations Combat against crime and crime organizations."

Gen. Ronen is listed as the Chairman of H.A.Sh Security Group, with Mr. Ben Shabat, variously described [pdf] as the President, Vice-President, and Director. So why is one of Israel's former top cops in a business relationship with a known member of the Israeli Mafia?
Enquiring minds want to know!

From Justin Raimondo's  report in Sabbah. More Here

Who is afraid of Arundhati Roy?

What is a society without its dreamers, its intellectuals and artistes? It’s like a body without soul, an individual without conscience. Writers and artistes are not just the cream of any society; they are our hearts and minds and the voice of our collective conscience. They do not just defend us and stand up for the vulnerable and voiceless amongst us, they also hold out the mirror to us when necessary from time to time, helping us see our warts and all.

Mature and tolerant societies accept the occasional reality check from their artistes and intellectuals with magnanimity and dignity it deserves. Because they are essentially a part of us — a more sensitive and caring part of our existence. And when instead of paying attention to this voice of our collective conscience, we try to stifle it, we in effect commit a moral hara-kiri. 

Men and women like Arundhati Roy aren’t born every day, even in a billion plus country like India. They are God’s gift to humanity. We should love, value and cherish them. We may not always find ourselves agreeing with them on many issues and it’s only natural. But turning on them in fury the moment they try to walk apart from the crowd or muster the courage to speak out against what they believe to be wrong is not only unfair to them but an affront to civil societies everywhere.

What has the celebrated author and activist done to earn the wrath of India’s increasingly intolerant chattering classes and some of its shrill, Fox News-like media? After all, as Roy argued in her dispassionate rejoinder this week in some newspapers, she has only said and recounted on Kashmir what the Indian government, especially the charismatic first Prime Minister Pandit Nehru and other leaders had repeatedly promised the Kashmiris and the world community in crucial months and years after the partition.

In his address to the nation over All India Radio on Nov. 2, 1947, Nehru said, “We are anxious not to finalize anything in a moment of crisis and without the fullest opportunity to be given to the people of Kashmir to have their say. It is for them ultimately to decide. And let me make it clear that it has been our policy that where there is a dispute about the accession of a state to either Dominion (of India and Pakistan), the accession must be made by the people of that state.”

In another broadcast the next day, the prime minister said, “We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given not only to the people of Kashmir and to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it.” In a letter on Nov. 21 1947 addressed to Pakistan Prime Minister Liyaqat Ali Khan, Nehru said, “I have repeatedly stated that as soon as peace and order have been established, Kashmir should decide accession by plebiscite or referendum under international auspices such as those of United Nations.”

Four days later, in a statement in the Constituent Assembly, on Nov. 25, 1947, Nehru declared, “In order to establish our bona fide, we have suggested that when the people are given the chance to decide their future, this should be done under the supervision of an impartial tribunal such as the UN. The issue in Kashmir is whether violence and naked force should decide the future or the will of the people.” Again in Constituent Assembly on March 5, 1948, the premier said, “Even at the moment of accession, we went out of our way to make a unilateral declaration that we would abide by the will of the people of Kashmir as declared in a plebiscite or referendum. We have adhered to that position throughout and we are prepared to have a plebiscite with every protection of fair voting and to abide by the decision of the people of Kashmir.”
Commenting on the bitter war of words between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, Nehru warned in Parliament on March 31, 1955, “Kashmir is perhaps the most difficult of problems between India and Pakistan. We should also remember that Kashmir is not a thing to be bandied between India and Pakistan but it has a soul of its own and an individuality of its own. Nothing can be done without the goodwill and consent of the people of Kashmir!”

There are dozens of such assurances in Nehru’s speeches and statements — and those of other leaders — promising the Kashmiris a fair deal. So this whole circus of prosecuting Roy and others on the charges of “sedition” is not just absurd but is a poor reflection on our maturity as a proud nation. Instead of celebrating our truly courageous, selfless artistes and intellectuals such as Roy and respecting their right to dissent and have their say, we are rushing to burn them at the stake.

India is not just the world’s largest democracy; it is without doubt its greatest and most colorful. We do it great disservice by heckling and attacking dissenting voices. As literary pundit George Steiner would argue, shooting a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs.

Whether we like it or not, Kashmir has always been a complex and thorny question and there will always be as many points of view on the issue as is possible.

Personally speaking, as an Indian Muslim, I would want nothing better than have this “paradise on earth” and its charming and refined people stay with India. In fact, this whole idea of “Muslim Kashmiris” going with “Muslim Pakistan” makes my generation of the post-partition, post-Ayodhya Muslims terribly uneasy. But it’s not for me or you to determine that question, is it? Ultimately, as Nehru repeatedly emphasized, it’s for the Kashmiris to decide.

Be it India or Pakistan, no one can force that decision on the Kashmiris on either side of the Line of Control at gunpoint. The battle for Kashmiri hearts and minds cannot be won with 700,000 soldiers constantly breathing down the Kashmiris’ neck. 

From Dubai based columnist  Aijaz Zaka Syed's write-up in Arab News. More Here

The curious case of Barkha Dutt (and others)

Excerpts from Silver Blaze (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes), by Arthur Conan Doyle

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

Reality TV met News Opinionating met Court TV yesterday when well known TV journalist Barka Dutt, news editor of the NDTV channel came under cross questioning by four editors - Sanjaya Baru of the Business Standard, Dileep Padgaonkar, former editor of the Times of India, Manu Joseph of the Open Magazine which broke the “Radia tapes” story and Swapan Dasgupta, right wing columnist and contributor to The Pioneer and The Telegraph among others.

The key behind this charade held by the channel was to bring into focus the role played by Barkha Dutt as a news editor reporting during the UPA-II cabinet formation based on information she received from corporate lobbyist Niira Radia. The conversations with Radia establish a few things - 

a) Barkha Dutt explicitly agrees to act as a message courier between Radia (ostensibly speaking for entities within the DMK) and Congress leaders - senior ones like Ghulam Nabi Azad for e.g., 

b) Radia was particularly keen on passing the message as to who among the DMK was a preferred candidate for ministership in certain berths.

The anger against Barkha Dutt expressed online was on various counts. Many in the public were linking this up with the 2G scam and role of DMK minister A Raja in it. They saw it as a case of Radia playing a facilitator for the re-entry of A Raja into the UPA-II cabinet despite serious questions about the 2G scam during UPA-I and journalists helping her in the process. It was galling for the public to see journalists who they ideally see as detached players wanting to partake into such murky processes orchestrated by corporate players.

No wonder, Barkha Dutt, being the high profile journalist that she is, was prominently highlighted along with a few others. The other high profile journalist Vir Sanghvi was caught even more red handed, playing the rat to Radia’s Pied Piper in helping in message delivery and opinion making about two issues - again the A Raja re-installation in cabinet and also the Mukesh Ambani line in the gas dispute between the Ambani brothers. Sanghvi has recently taken a break from writing his column, Counterpoint. And he makes a bogus defense based on “stringing his source”, but the proof is in the pudding that is his writing and there, as is pointed out earlier, he is caught red handed doing Niira Radia’s bidding.

Evidently Vir Sanghvi is more interested in pushing for the national interest as long as that interest expediently serves the corporate lobbyist's.

Barkha Dutt in her first response was outraged by the insinuations of lobbying in particular. She insisted that her assurances to Radia were basically “fibs” wanting to string her to get further information. And it is this outrage that pervaded her response besides the point on media ethics, where she questioned Open magazine (and Outlook magazine)’s decisions to publish transcripts of her conversations without contacting her for a response and so on.
This was evident in her replies during last night’s inquisition-of-sorts as well.

But substantively, the key question remained and asked only by a relative few - Siddharth Varadarajan of The Hindu in his article, and by the Open magazine’s editor, Manu Joseph and his colleague. 

Joseph asked Dutt why wasn’t it that as a news editor she saw it necessary to bring to the public’s purview that a corporate public relations person having two of the richest clients in the world and indeed most powerful in India, was trying to pass on messages on which DMK leader was suitable for a particular cabinet post? Wasn’t it obvious that the role of corporate players wanting to  have a say in getting ministers of their liking was a case of gross crony capitalism?
Why was her coverage restricted to the minute-by-minute reporting of what the DMK’s demands were and what bargains were being struck by the Congress and the DMK rather than this substantial question of great public import? And why wasn’t this point highlighted even during the height of the revelations of the 2G scam, as representatives of various political parties pointed out irregularities in the 2G auction and the losses to the public exchequer (as early as early 2008). Or even during the recent release of the CAG report that put a number to the notional loss suffered by the exchequer - a mind boggling Rs 1,76,000 crore. 
Why didn’t Barkha Dutt want to bring out the undue and unusual interest shown by corporate players in wanting A Raja’s continuation in cabinet, during her reportage of the 2G Scam recently? Surely it was in public interest to bring out the nuances and minutiae of how crony capitalism worked and how ministers were at the bidding of big corporate players who controlled the strings of functioning of democracy from without, wasn’t it?

No, according to Barkha Dutt. It was a mere judgement call whether to report this or not. This was commonplace - the undue and shady corporate interest in public affairs and day-to-day and she didn’t consider it important enough.

Here is where Barkha Dutt is trying to string the public along with her and fib to us. Here is where  the main contradiction is brought out clearly. Here is why the import of the Open magazine and Outlook magazine stories are brought out in the clear and in substance. It is similar to why the dog didn’t bark in the Silver Blaze story in the Sherlock Holmes series.

Our news media revels in trying to outdo each other in bringing out procedural, titillating details as if they are doing ball-by-ball commentary of a cricket game, when it comes to political reporting. But they do not want to displease their advertisers, mostly big corporate fund dispensers, by seeing and reporting things that are fundamentally wrong in the core issue of crony capitalism. It makes more sense for them to ridicule the political class and play up the middle class imagery of the crooked political class without distinction and difference and win eye balls in that process.

This is the problem with Indian news journalism. As Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times tweeted, “the larger problem of political journalism, esp[ecially] on TV: it privileges process minutiae over substance”. The question is why? This editorial in the EPW commenting on the Paid News issue can provide answers - “The Indian media is selling its soul to the market and forfeiting its claim to be an independent estate” or this editorial , which comments on the media coverage of the 26/11 incident says,

The manifest failures of the political establishment though, cannot obscure the fact that older notions of the media serving as a vigilant watchdog over public affairs have once again proven hopelessly romantic and outmoded. The media is a slave of the market. Its social role is little else than to serve as an echo chamber for the voices of the rich and the powerful, however shrill, irrational or lacking in coherence these may be.

Or more systematically as to how profit privileges public interest in the mass media, by the formidable intellectual, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in the excellent book, “Manufacturing Consent”. A film made on the subject can be viewed here - 

From Pragoti.org More Here