+400%vinod wrote:Super effort anmol.
I think BRF as a forum could be targetted seriously. Need to keep a backup of all the content and email ids, trolls would increase and attempt to shut down the forum would be there. In case, it happens, members have to be contacted and it has to be resurrected again.
Hopefully, it won't happen but its better to be prepared!
Hmm. I am not worried about email(I remember using ISP email.. which I never used for anything other than brf).mahadevbhu wrote:anmol, not to sound alarmist, but would you or the admins like to "sanitize" your br presence by changing your username/email or some such ?anmol wrote:thank yoy Sankuji vinaji chaanakyaji
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+10000Remember, social media is basically like guerrilla warfare in tactics, hit hard, create maximum effect, and then runand move the battle to another place. Use maximum leverage and try making it viral. Those effects are impossible to control . The opposition is left to fight a losing battle in manipulation individual likes/dislikes in FB, or comment sections of main articles, while the very mention of the thing itself and coming out in a caption is a massive defeat. Those guys are fighting a rearguard. Dont bother with them. Run around them to the next theater.
Devyani row: How US political wing let security team run amok
Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN | Jan 14, 2014, 04.00 AM IST timesofindia.indiatimes.com
January 14th 2014
WASHINGTON: Somewhere in the middle of an epic 400-page tome on the History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (BDS) of the US state department, there is a black and white photo of Special Agent James McDermott providing protection to PM Jawarharlal Nehru and defence minister Krishna Menon as they arrive in New York City in 1961 to attend the UN session.
As the month-long diplomatic spat between India and the US over the so-called Khobragade episode simmers and recedes to the background, the photo is a stark reminder of BDS' primary function — "providing a safe and secure environment for the conduct of US foreign policy" by protecting US and foreign leaders — and how it went off the rails vis-a-vis New Delhi, when the bureau arrogated for itself the task of rescuing a housekeeper employed by a diplomat.
Under any other circumstances, such interference would have invited contempt charges from the court, but the couple at the centre of what New Delhi sees as an outrageous and contemptible caper, US embassy officials Wayne May and his wife Alicia Muller May, have both left New Delhi after the husband was turfed out by MEA in retaliation for Devyani Khobragade's expulsion. Both had diplomatic immunity. As the Mays return to Washington, there is no sign that the state department has any intention of examining what drove them to pursue their activist agenda in New Delhi that shook bilateral ties to its roots.
But their social media presence and online fingerprints are being keenly examined by the digerati, who see in their observations the very epitome of the "Ugly American," a widely used pejorative term describing a blundering, offensive American that traces its origins to the eponymous book by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick.
In the book, set in the fictional south east Asian country of Sarkhan, a local journalist writes: "For some reason, the people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the US. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious. Perhaps they're frightened and defensive, or maybe they're not properly trained and make mistakes out of ignorance." Going by their social media observations, the Mays fit the bill, recording their complaints about cows on the road, moaning about lack of red meat, and ridiculing local customs and mores. The irony is that Alicia Muller May was the embassy's Community Liaison Officer.
Wayne May himself sets the tone soon after his posting to New Delhi in 2010. In a March 2011 interview to a college journal, he cites "unhealthy living conditions like air and water pollution, the threat of disease and sickness, bad traffic" among the challenges of serving in India. All true, as most Indians would themselves acknowledge, except that, read in conjunction with various other observations by his wife and their friends, it appears they had ill-concealed contempt for a country they were asked to serve in. Their digital presence has now been largely scrubbed. May did not respond to a message last Friday when this paper first reviewed the social media entries of the husband-wife, shortly before they hit public domain.
But in Washington, there is no sign of any concern about what is now brewing to be a PR disaster on the heels of a diplomatic fiasco.
More recent disclosures by Devyani Khobragade's attorney Daniel Arshack, who believes the case involved major flubs in judgment and an "embarrassing failure of US international protocol," point to the US attorney Preet Bharara's office trying to extract a guilty plea from the diplomat as part of any deal. He and two Indian diplomats who participated in the negotiations "were troubled by the intransigence of the US attorney's office," Arshack said, even as both Khobragade and the Indian government rejected the idea of pleading guilty. Indian sources said New Delhi even rejected the idea from the prosecution that she should plead guilty to a lesser charge of misdemeanor.
As far as the Indian side is concerned, one of the questions that remains unanswered is why the higher level state department officials did not step in to stop the bilateral bleeding once it became obvious that the BDS and their law-enforcement associates, who seemed to be acting in tandem, had a poor case, particularly when it came to using human trafficking provisions to rescue the Richard family.
One surmise: The state department's political bureaucracy, going up from assistant secretary Nisha Biswal to her boss Wendy Sherman to her boss Bill Burns to his boss John Kerry, all of whom were engaged in talks with visiting Indian foreign secretary Sujatha Singh while the arrest was in the works, did not want to take on the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. They are, after all, the people who watch their backs all the time, and are therefore, "not to be messed with." Except, they may have made a mess of US-India relations — for now.
I don't think you have done anything illegal which require sanitization or be afraid of POTUS/GOTUS. In fact it is GOTUS which has egg on its face for its actions and utterances of its low IQ staff.anmol wrote:
But the name... I dont think that can be "sanitized" as just like those FB posts this too is part of the web.(thread is open to everyone so google/bing have already indexed this thread)...
Exactly.chaanakya wrote:I don't think you have done anything illegal which require sanitization or be afraid of POTUS/GOTUS. In fact it is GOTUS which has egg on its face for its actions and utterances of its low IQ staff.anmol wrote:
But the name... I dont think that can be "sanitized" as just like those FB posts this too is part of the web.(thread is open to everyone so google/bing have already indexed this thread)...
The blossoming of ties with the United States has become an important diplomatic asset for India in recent years. Yet, the heady glow of the much-ballyhooed strategic partnership helped obscure prickly issues that arose much before the Devyani Khobragade episode. In truth, the Obama administration’s reluctance to accommodate Indian interests on major issues, coupled with the fundamental challenge of managing an asymmetrical relationship, has created fault lines that are testing the resilience of the partnership.
One aspect of the relationship, however, has thrived spectacularly — U.S. arms sales to India. In just a few years, the U.S. has quietly emerged as India’s largest arms supplier, leaving Russia and Israel far behind. This development is linked to the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear deal. Although it remains a dud deal on energy, with little prospect of delivering a single operational nuclear power plant for years to come, it has proved a roaring success in opening the door to major U.S. arms sales. The 2005 nuclear agreement-in-principle incorporated a specific commitment to ramp up defence transactions.
The booming arms sales — rising in barely one decade from a measly $100 million to billions of dollars yearly — have seemingly acquired an independent momentum. Nothing better illustrates this than the fact that, at the height of the Khobragade affair, India, far from seeking to impose any costs on America, awarded it yet another mega-contract — a $1.01-billion deal for supply of six additional C-130J military transport aircraft. When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited the White House last September, among the gifts he took for President Barack Obama was a commitment to purchase $5 billion worth of new arms.
Today, India’s largely one-sided defence relationship with the U.S. is beginning to look akin to its lopsided ties with Russia, with weapon sales serving as the driving force. However, unlike the torpid Indo-Russian non-military commerce, the two-way Indo-U.S. trade has quadrupled in just seven years from $25 billion in 2006 to about $100 billion in 2013.
Still, few Indians are raising the key questions: How are India’s security interests being advanced by substituting the corrosive import dependency on Russia with a new dependency on the U.S., without progress to build a domestic arms-production base? What makes the strategic partnership “special,” given that Washington also has special relationships with India’s regional adversaries — a security alliance since 2004 and strategic partnership since 2006 with Pakistan, and a “constructive strategic partnership” with China since 1997 that predates the strategic partnership with India? Is a relationship locking India as a leading U.S. arms client sustainable in the long run?
Let’s be clear: India can never emerge as a major international power in a true sense, or acquire a military edge regionally, if it remains dependent on imports to meet even its basic defence needs. The capacity to defend oneself with one’s own resources is the first test a nation must pass on the way to becoming a great power.
Leading arms importer
Ominously, a still-poor India has emerged as the world’s biggest arms importer since 2006, accounting for 10 per cent of all weapons sold globally. Such large-scale imports might suggest that India is pursuing a well-planned military build-up. In truth, such imports lack strategic direction, given the absence of long-term political thinking or joint tri-service planning and command. They are being made in a haphazard manner, although any imported weapon makes India hostage to the supplier-nation for spares and service for the full life of that system.
The rising arms imports, far from making India secure, are only exposing new gaps in its capabilities to decisively win a war. The inveterate dependency burdens Indian taxpayers, forcing them to subsidise foreign military-industrial complexes. Worse still, defence transactions remain the single largest source of kickbacks for India’s corrupt and compromised political elites. This factor alone explains why India has failed to replicate in the conventional-arms sector its impressive indigenous achievements in the fields where imports are not possible — the space, missile and nuclear-weapons realms.
For the U.S., displacing Russia as India’s largest arms supplier has been a diplomatic coup. Rarely before has America acquired a major arms client of such size so rapidly. The U.S.’s India success indeed parallels what happened in the early 1970s when Egypt switched sides during the Cold War, transforming itself from a Soviet arms client to becoming reliant on American arms supplies. The difference is that unlike the perpetually aid-dependent Egypt, India buys weapons with its own money.
With U.S. military spending slowing and other export markets remaining tight, American firms are eager to further expand arms sales to India. The fact that the U.S. now conducts more military exercises with India than with any other country creates a favourable political milieu for its defence firms to aggressively push their wares for sale. Even so, the troubling lack of competitive bidding or transparency in the arms deals — all clinched on a government-to-government basis — has become conspicuous. In the one case where India invited bids — to buy 126 fighter-jets — American firms failed to make it beyond the competition’s first round.
Diplomacy without leverage
The annual value of India’s arms contracts to the U.S. already surpasses American military aid to any country other than Israel. Diplomacy, to be effective, must be backed by leverage and cross-linkages to minimise the weaker side’s disadvantages. Yet, New Delhi has not tried to leverage its contracts either to persuade the U.S. to stop arming Pakistan against India or to secure better access to the American market for its highly competitive information-technology and pharmaceutical companies, which are facing new U.S. non-tariff barriers. India’s new frontier of dependency has emerged even as the U.S. bolsters Pakistan with generous military aid.
To be sure, the U.S. signed a four-point declaration of intent with India last September to move beyond the sale of complete weapon systems to co-production through technology transfer. Translating that intent into practice won’t be easy, though. According to the joint declaration, efforts to identify specific opportunities for collaborative weapon-related projects will be pursued in accordance with “national policies and procedures.” But if U.S. policies and procedures do not evolve in the direction of facilitating such collaboration, the declared intent will remain little more than pious hope.
The declaration clearly sought to pander to India’s desire for a less inequitable defence relationship. By dangling the carrot of India being upgraded to the same level as America’s “closest partners,” the declaration also peddled a catchy slogan excitedly lapped up by the Indian media. The U.S. is now willing to co-produce some smaller defensive systems with India, such as the Javelin anti-tank missiles. Such restricted technology transfers, the U.S. believes, will pave the way for securing additional multibillion-dollar contracts to sell large readymade weapons to India.
Significantly, U.S. arms to India fall mainly in the category of defensive weapons. Russia, by contrast, has transferred offensive weapon systems to India, including strategic bombers, an aircraft carrier, and a nuclear-powered submarine. Will the U.S. be willing to sell high-precision conventional arms, anti-submarine warfare systems, long range air- and sea-launched cruise missiles, and other conventional counterforce systems that could tilt the regional military balance in India’s favour?
The China factor
Another issue relates to the strategic benefits from a closer defence relationship. True, such a relationship will have a countervailing value vis-à-vis China. Yet, it is also true that America has a deeper engagement with China than with India. Indeed, China is now central to U.S. economic and strategic interests. This fact helps to explain why the Obama administration has chartered a course of neutrality on territorial disputes between China and its neighbours, shying away from holding joint military exercises in Arunachal Pradesh.
A wake-up call for Asian states that rely on the U.S. as their security guarantor was Obama’s inaction on the 2012 Chinese capture of the Scarborough Shoal, located within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. America’s indifference to its commitment to the Philippines under their Mutual Defence Treaty emboldened China to effectively seize a second Philippine-claimed shoal. This is proof that despite its “pivot” toward Asia, the U.S. won’t act in ways detrimental to its close engagement with China. Obama’s foreign policy bears a distinct transactional imprint.
A wise India would consider declaring a moratorium on arms purchases from all sources to give itself time to strategise its priorities and clean up its procurement system. A moratorium of just three years will save the country a whopping $20 billion without compromising national security. With non-traditional threats — ranging from asymmetric warfare in the form of cross-border terrorism to territorial creep through furtive encroachments — now dominating India’s security calculus, procurement of more mega-weapons to meet traditional security challenges must wait until the nation has added strategic direction to its defence policy.
(The writer is a geostrategist and author.)
Russia expels US journalist David Satter without explanation
Moscow authorities ban writer from the country in first expulsion of US journalist since the cold war
...Satter's new role was an adviser to the broadcaster Radio Europe/Radio Free Liberty , which is ... He was also working on a book on Russia's post-communist history. Satter said he had been unable to collect his notes, clothes and other ...
Joint Intelligence Council chief meets delegation from U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s office for talks focussed on Afghanistan
Indian and United States intelligence services began a three-day meeting on Monday, the first high-level dialogue between the two countries since the crisis sparked off by the arrest of Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in December. Led by Joint Intelligence Council chief Ajit Lal, an Indian delegation met officials from the office of the Director of National Intelligence for the latest in a series of discussions on regional security and strategic issues.
“The latest round of the dialogue is focussed on events in Afghanistan leading up to the United States drawdown in 2014,” a highly-placed Indian government source told The Hindu. “The United States is extremely concerned at Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s delay on signing a security agreement, and hopes India will be willing to use its influence to persuade him to do so.”
Peter Lavoy, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs, had visited New Delhi last month for scheduled discussions on the situation in Afghanistan, following President Karzai’s visit to New Delhi. However, key defence, intelligence and diplomatic officials declined to meet Dr. Lavoy following Ms. Khobragade’s controversial arrest in New York.
Last week, two senior U.S. officials, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Assistant Secretary of State Nisha Desai Biswal postponed their visits to New Delhi.
External Affairs Ministry sources in New Delhi declined to comment on the JIC-DNI meeting, saying they could not comment on intelligence issues.
Eleven rounds of dialogue have been held between the DNI and the JIC, with the two organisations meeting each June in Washington, D.C., and in New Delhi in January. No details were immediately available on the composition of the United States’ delegation.
“It is important for India that the intelligence dialogues continue, irrespective of problems that will from time to time crop up in the relationship with the United States,” former Intelligence Bureau chief Ajit Doval told The Hindu. “Both countries have vital interests which need to be discussed at the highest level.”
Founded in 1998, the JIC is mandated to provide the government with big-picture assessments of strategic issues. Its secretariat, which reports to the Cabinet Secretariat, produces papers and strategy documents based on analysis of information from the Research and Analysis Wing, the Intelligence Bureau, and the directorates of military, naval and air intelligence.
Keywords: Indian-U.S intelligence services meeting, Devyani Khobragade issue, Joint Intelligence Council chief, Ajit Lal, Director of National Intelligence
Well then, keep up the good work. I'm sure the US embassy staff are all top notch professionals and will never let their personal cocerns affect their appointed duties. Like steel those people.shiv wrote:It will have exactly no effect.TSJones wrote: So go ahead keep the retaliation innuendo going. It's sure to get you what you want.
When the US wants to keep a country close, the GOTUS mollycoddles and bribes diplomats and influential people from that country. When the US does not need a country to implement its foreign policy or import anything important, then a Khobragade type relationship would be unsurprising. House slaves like Bharara, who are more loyal to the US than George Washington are there in considerable numbers to help out.
The hurt that I feel is only because US behaviour is so boorish and so much in contrast with the widely publicized American portrayal of the US possessing a degree of culture and decency. When it comes to acting like assholes, Indians can be right up there with America. It is nice to be transparent to each other.
The real danger about being nasty to American diplomats and citizens is that the US may willingly sacrifice its own diplomats/citizens for its relationship with the country. That would be very worrying. That is what the US does with its real allies, countries who have consistently and loyally helped America fight for freedom and justice in this world, like Pakistan.
An Islamic country must never be allowed to have nukes in the first place, we already have one which is a constant threat to everybody and it will be disastrous to add another Islamic nation to that list. Iran is no "secular" state but only a bit more reasonable than the other Islamic states but given that I am comparing it with other Islamic nations so you can gauge that the standard isn't pretty high. The threat about Iran going nuclear should be kept alive but never they be allowed to make one and if destroying them is the only option so as to stop them from making one then India must wholeheartedly support that cause but chances of things coming to that are very slim. You might remember very well the reaction of Iranian media to 26/11.Lilo wrote:^ Me thinks there won't be War - just more tightening of screws by the Western Axis - unless Iran has some how suddenly (or foolishly) given up its chemical/biological/dutty Nuke weapons in the interim negotiation period as these weapons are the ultimate guarantee for its soverginity.
Remember hundreds of thousands of Iranians were gassed by Saddam's chemical weapons in the Iran Iraq war with Western nudging and wink-wink nod-nods so I hope that fire still burns in their bellies for Iran to remain steadfast in its nuclear goal.
As soon as Iran nuke bum is once tested (even if a subkiloton like NoKo nuke), the mutual belligerence will come to its logical conclusion and Iran Israel and Massa can come to a natural(and more sustainable) understanding . Then India will benefit as there will be another Independent nation for Massa to remain wary of -- kind of.. like how India's residual independence(or whatever that's left of it) makes it the biggest spying target for NSA as revealed by Snowden.
Finally ME with Israel and Iran as two stable poles can better manage and control the Sunni ferment occurring all around them .
The state department's political bureaucracy, going up from assistant secretary Nisha Biswal to her boss Wendy Sherman to her boss Bill Burns to his boss John Kerry ..
Just witnessed their professionalism .TSJones wrote: I'm sure the US embassy staff are all top notch professionals .
http://israelamerica.wordpress.com/2011 ... d-luttwak/Edward Luttwak wrote:There is a good measure of social control in Iran, and that is the price of genuine imported Scotch whiskey in Tehran, because it’s a) forbidden, and b) has to be smuggled in for practical purposes from Dubai, and the only way it can come from Dubai is with the cooperation of the Revolutionary Guard. The price of whiskey has been declining for years, and you go to a party in north Tehran now and you get lots of whiskey. And it’s only slightly more expensive than in Northwest Washington.
But on the other hand, the regime is doing something for which they will have my undying gratitude—that is, they have been manufacturing the one and only post-Islamic society. They created a situation in which Iranians in general, worldwide, not only in Iran, are disaffiliated. They are converting Muslim Iranians into post-Muslim Iranians
(Iran needs that posturing to keep its frontline groups(Hezbollah) holding lines) . Israeli intelligence cheifs regularly allude to this in their interviews (which is drowned in the continuous bluster of the Israeli civilian heads of govt) If Wendy Powell has any shame or dignity, she should just resign and go home. The European Union Monday said it is following the case of two Italian marines in India "very closely" and noted that any decision on this case would be "very carefully assessed" even as an EU commissioner has called on the EU to stop free trade negotiations with India .
"We continue to follow the situation very closely as we have been from the very beginning that any decision on this case would be very carefully assessed from our side," an EU spokesperson for foreign affairs, Maja Kocijancic, told a news conference here.
According to media reports, the two Italian marines, Salvatore Girone and Massimiliano Latorre, may face trial under charges that provide for capital punishment if they are found guilty. The two were detained in India after shooting dead two Indian fishermen while guarding an Italian oil tanker off the southern state of Kerala in February 2012.
"We the European Union encourage India to find as a matter of urgency a mutually satisfactory solution to this long standing case in accordance with international law and UN conventions on the law of the sea," said Kocijancic who is the spokeswoman for EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton.
"This issue also has a bearing on the issue of global fight against piracy to which the EU is strongly committed. We will continue to follow the case," she added.
Meanwhile, the EU Commissioner responsible for industry and entrepreneurship, Antonio Tijani, who is from Italy , tweeted "Can we keep negotiating FTA India when death penalty is considered against EU citizens fighting sea piracy?I think not."
I think we are on the same wave length. Like we used to say in the Corps, they royally screwed the pooch. Their job effectiveness is in serious doubt.putnanja wrote:I am sure TSJ made that comment about the US embassy officials being "top notch professionals" in jest.
After having personally brought the Indo-US relations to the brink, I wonder whether she has any sort of credibility with the Indian government! Of course, the US will stand by her as the issue was "monitored and authorized" by kerry, so they will be proud of her work. Now that the Indian government knows that the issue was orchestrated by the US embassy here, how much regard will they have to Wendy, without whose nod things wouldn't have become this bad? Does the US government seriously think that Wendy will be useful to further India-US relations? I hope Indian government is making it clear to the US SD that the buck stops with the ambassador.
They should slowly withdraw all these "top notch professional , made of steel " diplomats from the US embassy in New Delhi, and just replace them. Else, the bitterness will linger for a long time, and will not help US.
^^ Normally would be OT, but the timing makes it relevant. I too have been wondering how the EU would step in. After all, they might think this might be a good opportunity to gang up and turn some more screws on us. An example is the language used here:and why is that posted here? I am reporting all these three posts, including mine as OT.
Anyway, my last post on this, maybe we can discuss this in an EU thread."Can we keep negotiating FTA India when death penalty is considered against EU citizens fighting sea piracy?I think not."
Virupaksha wrote:and why is that posted here? I am reporting all these three posts, including mine as OT.
) that US wants the relationship to mend and India is going out of its way to publicly appreciate that.
Writes Szalavitz:
The truth is that our perceptions of marijuana—and in fact all of our drug laws—are based on early 20th century racism and "science" circa the Jim Crow era. In the early decades of the 20th century, the drug was linked to Mexican immigrants and black jazzmen, who were seen as potentially dangerous.
Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (an early predecessor of the DEA), was one of the driving forces behind pot prohibition. He pushed it for explicitly racist reasons, saying, "Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men," and:
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
The main reason to prohibit marijuana, he said was "its effect on the degenerate races." (And god forbid women should sleep with entertainers!)
Although it sounds absurd now, it was this type of propaganda that caused the drug to be outlawed in 1937—along with support from the Hearst newspapers, which ran ads calling marijuana "the assassin of youth" and published stories about how it led to violence and insanity. Anslinger remained as head of federal narcotics efforts as late as 1962, whereafter he spread his poisonous message to the world as the American representative to the U.N. for drug policy for a further two years.
Before marijuana was made illegal, the American Medical Association's opposition to prohibition was ignored, as was an earlier report on marijuana in India by the British government, which did not find marijuana to be particularly addictive or dangerous. That "Indian Hemp Drugs Committee" reporthad concluded way back in 1894 that, "The moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all."