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Live: Arvind Kejriwal addresses election rally at Shastri Nagar

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 03 Februari 2015 | 07.20

05:42 PM

One leader says you should have four kids, other says five: Kejriwal

05:39 PM

I thought Pm has come. He is a big leader. He will speak about big schemes. But he kept speaking against me: Kejriwal

05:39 PM

I have brought papers. I don't speak without proof. They file cases against me. Electricity metres have been installed by BJP leaders'comapanies: Kejriwal

05:35 PM

Crude oil is imported & then purified. If in lst 6months crude oil price has halved, shouldn't price of petrol too lessen?: Kejriwal

05:35 PM

BJP is saying they have reduced petrol price. But do you know how is petrol manufactured in India?: Kejriwal

05:27 PM

I don't sit on dharna for myself. I sit on Dharna for people, Kejriwal says.

05:27 PM

The BJP will give LPG subsidies only to the people who are below poverty line and have a BPL card. How many of you have a BPL card? You should also get subsidy, Kejriwal says.

05:26 PM

"When I was CM, no one took bribes. Corruption was eradicated in those 49 days. Now BJP is here and corruption is everywhere. They do not have the intent to remove corruption," Kejriwal alleges.

05:24 PM

Am I a Naxalite? Should I go to the jungle?

Arvind Kejriwal

05:23 PM

If you vote BJP again, your electricity meter will run faster, says Kejriwal

05:21 PM

Watch: AAP will fulfil its promises in future, says Arvind Kejriwal

05:19 PM

Arvind Kejriwal questions BJPs claim of taming inflation.

05:19 PM

What happened to the promise of decreasing power tariffs? asks Kejriwal at the election rally

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07.20 | 0 komentar | Read More

Blog: The Nucleus of Pakistanâ€™s Non-State Actors

Time has elapsed since the massacre in Peshawar and I don't want to say anything about it with the view that even the greatest outcry if it is put in words and formalized adds a mystery of acceptability to the phenomenon. I want to keep it in the background and make a different argument.

The Army and the ISI cannot solve the problem in Pakistan because they are the problem—or to be kind at least a big part of it. A clear picture of the power that the civilian government has was evident in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks where President Asif Ali Zardari in the heat of the moment told Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he would send the then ISI chief Shuja Pasha to India. Emboldened by this statement, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi who was in New Delhi at that time told TV journalists that we condemn the brutal assault and are co-operating with India; your PM has asked the DG ISI to come to India and our President has agreed.

An hour or so later Zardari realized that he had exceeded his brief (We don't know if General Kayani gave him a dressing down in person or on phone but something did happen) and the poor fellow had to make a U-turn and embarrassingly lie on national television to an international audience that he said that some junior official might come and never meant that the DG ISI would come. What happened instead was that Qureshi, who was on a four-day visit to the Indian capital, was picked up by a special Pakistan Airlines jet the very next morning and debriefed in Islamabad.

Mumbai Attacks

Little has changed since then. On the face of it the judiciary seems to be relatively-stronger and the press vibrant in the sense that you get to read and hear a lot more than what the Army would ideally like. But the judicial system operates under debilitating pressure and to compound it further the lack of witness protection ensures that the LeT terrorist Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi gets bail—the subsequent developments are not very heartening either.

The ISI routinely murders journalists who come in its way and there are some brave ones out there as they work with the knowledge that they can be taken out. Saleem Shahzad is one of the standout cases since he reported on the links between the Navy and the al Qaeda and was picked up by the ISI for it and later found dead. Sections of the press are completely-irresponsible as you can see the cartoon Zaid Hamid presented as a security expert and Hafiz Saeed, the man who carries a US $10 million bounty on his head as an international terrorist, using the media to get his message across whenever he wishes to (Let's wait and see how the ban on JuD and Saeed's monitoring unfolds). When they want to up the ante and bring someone more brazen on screen then the articulate version of Zaid Hamid, the brutal former ISI chief Hamid Gul is given talk-time on television.

The ISI runs a network of terrorist organizations across the region. Bruce Reidel of the Brookings Institute sees absolutely no difference between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the ISI and he knows just as we do that it is this notorious and rogue agency that shapes and controls the critical portfolios of Pakistani foreign policy. The Afghan policy—just like the Afghan Taliban—and all the various proxies who engage in covert war against India are controlled by the ISI. The statements of David Headley are enough to corroborate it though there is no dearth of credible intelligence to prove it even without him.

The United States is the only country that has some leverage over the real players in Pakistan given the billions and billions of economic and military aid that they have given and continue to give to it. They have little control over how the aid is used and their relationship with the country is as complex and fractured as Pakistan itself. There are layers and layers of deception and the rules of engagement are simple: trust no one; deceive everyone.

The CIA has a history of tactical blunders going back to General Zia-ul-Haq, the man who first realized the impotence of Pakistan in winning a conventional war against India and cultivated the clever use of jihad—basically to strike, deny and hide—and pushed the big game changer.

The big game changer is the fact that Pakistan has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world. Pakistan has climbed this ladder with amazing alacrity and is now among the top five countries (the fourth-largest) in the world in terms of nuclear weapons. The civilian governments throughout its intermittent years in power had no clue—forget control—over this rapidly-growing nuclear stockpile. A decent part of Western aid has been diverted through the Reagan years to fuel the nuclear programme and to fund terror operations against India. This nuclear industry operates without any international constraints and it's the Army and the state-within-the-state as the ISI is called that controls it.

Now take a look at the field and the players. You have the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizbul Mujahideen, the Haqqani network, al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Arab jihadis, several unaccounted radical nuts or free agents, and the Pakistan Army with its intelligence wing called the ISI. Consider the fact that Pakistan is the leading patron state-sponsor of terrorism in the world and simultaneously a huge victim of it.

I come to Peshawar now and look at what it reveals. If you can kill close to 140 young children in your own country by shooting them in the head from a point blank range then there is absolutely nothing in the world that you cannot do if you want to do it and have a window of opportunity to do it. All this spells Disaster for India and leaves them with very little options on the table unless shouting and scoring a point on a television debate counts. The intelligence that suddenly surfaces after a successful attack is a bit like sending troops after the battle is over.

This nuclear arsenal acts as an insurance policy to carry out covert militant strikes as escalation in such an environment is out-of-the-question especially since Pakistan uses every opportunity to remind the world that it is a nuclear-armed state and gives ample evidence of the fact that it is also full of lunatics.

What can we do? The risk of being out of the game here is far higher than that of being in it. The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.

It is no secret that Pakistan harbors a deep suspicion that the ultimate aim of the United States and its close allies is to annihilate its status as a nuclear-armed state. The suspicion is well-grounded as the probability of this arsenal falling into the hands of people who can murder small children by shooting them in their head is not zero. Nobody knows what that probability is but nobody can deny that there is some probability.

Senior Pakistani journalist Nazam Sethi in an interesting interview (I say interesting, not true) gives an explanation of why the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks happened. He lays the blame on President Zardari making a statement 'that he shouldn't have' after coming to power just about two months before the November 2008 attacks. In a televised conversation watched by millions and millions in India Zardari had said that I assure you that there would be 'No First Strike' from Pakistan's side (He was talking about a nuclear strike).

Sethi says that this was completely-against the Pakistani security establishment's basic tenet as Pakistan is way inferior to India in terms of conventional warfare and the nuclear arsenal is its main deterrence card. He then adds that Zardari's statement sent shock waves in Rawalpindi where they thought that this idiot is going mad and should be put in his place. Sethi then spells out that the rogue elements that the establishment maintains got a green signal for the Mumbai attacks and subsequently the peace process was stalled for four years. He emphasizes that what could India do in the aftermath of 2008; nothing. Then he goes on and adds that what can India do if another Mumbai happens. His answer is again a resounding nothing; they can't do a thing except going hysterical like they did in 2008 because the nuclear deterrence is alive and kicking.

So the leverage that the state-sponsored non-state actors in Pakistan have can be broken potentially in two ways. The first is that Pakistan neutralizes the entire jihadi machinery deep-rooted within its society and flourishing (most of it) under the patronage of the ISI. The second is that Pakistan (I don't know how and by what miracle) loses the status of being the fourth-largest nuclear power in the world and occupies a place of pride in the list of countries (assuming there is one) that have no nuclear capability.

Who knows what is easier?

There is no difficulty though in choosing what is more effective. You take the nuclear weapons out of the equation and the field becomes clear. Our covert capabilities have declined from what they were in 1971 but it's not something that cannot be rebuilt and used to take out high-value targets. These are the two fanciful ideal scenarios that hold no promise on the ground.

What we can do realistically is to put our house in order and raise the standard of our external intelligence gathering and its diligent processing. We can and must try and raise the cost of any misadventure for Pakistan and hit them where it hurts. The irresponsible and violent extremism coming from Pakistan is based on the assumption that we would act responsibly. If India will not go to war because some 160-odd people have been killed in Mumbai or because the Indian Parliament has been attacked then we can play with the idea that Pakistan will also not go to war if we take the initiative and eliminate what they themselves call as non-state actors.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

07.20 | 0 komentar | Read More

Blog: The Kejriwal agenda

Today, Delhi is awash in Narendra Modi hoardings. This is by itself is not surprising, for the new government shares the fondness that the old one had for pictorial self-promotion. The fact that Modi is the BJP's star proposition for the upcoming state elections, or for that matter any election in the near future, is also quite clear. What is new in these hoardings is the message- the familiar evocations of achche din and development have been supplanted by specific promises that are aimed at wooing the urban poor. Ditto for the few billboards that the Congress feels justified in spending its depleting war chest on. Bijli, paani, pucca housing have replaced loftier concerns. And of course, no one is fighting jihad in the name of love nor are too many returning home.

Just a few months ago, they thought they had buried Arvind Kejriwal, but as it turns out, they got careless about nailing the coffin shut. After winning 60 assembly segments in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP decision to keep putting off the Delhi elections has been widely regarded as a blunder, and it is difficult to argue the point. At that time, most felt that the AAP experiment was effectively over. The Modi effect was just too strong, and in spite of the fact the BJP in Delhi was a party led by bonsai sized leaders, the party was expected to romp home. But the party kept delaying the elections and Kejriwal kept burrowing his way through the entrails of the city, and today, regardless of what the outcome of the election might be, the BJP is in a state of high panic. Modi has blinked, and the BJP is gulping hard.

If Modi managed to create a constituency out of middle class aspiration, Kejriwal is attempting to do so out of underclass frustration. The urban poor has always been represented electorally, but what the AAP has managed to do is to create a sense that are not only representing this class but that they are championing them. The sense of identification that has been created is quite significant, and is of a different quality than what was managed hitherto by the Congress. The AAP's brand of messy fractiousness, their ability to sustain air of perpetual confrontation, of fighting a grinding everyday battle against circumstances that are always overwhelming, seems to strike a resonant chord with the life of the urban poor. In this battle, the niceties of behavior are not what is most important, it is the belief that someone is on their side that is what is key.

Which is why gone is the grand ambition of reforming politics itself, and even the battle against corruption has taken a back seat. The middle class has defected to Modi, for most part, and the sense of deep anger against the political system as a whole has just got buried a little bit deeper. There is hope, and Kejriwal evokes a sense of anarchy that is too unsettling. The middle class wants to be comforted, inspired even, and all that the AAP can offer is eternal strife. Winning the AAP way, does not feel like winning, and the middle class seeks above all to feels like winners.

As cities prosper, it would seem that they grow unhappier. The city, at a gross level becomes more attractive, while at the net level, it becomes less livable. This dichotomy between having better lives while living miserably lies at the heart of a new urban political vocabulary that the AAP has carved out for itself. Tangible frustration trumps abstract hope, or so the AAP believes. This is a new kind of secularism, the universality of urban dislocation, and one that overrides more local considerations.

All political parties seem to believe that the way to win this election is to beat the AAP at its game, rather than play their own. This is a win for Kejriwal, regardless of what happens in a week's time. For the first time Modi is being bracketed with another leader, and for the first time since the Lok Sabha elections, he is not setting the agenda. The BJP is the follower here, whether it is in the desperate gambit to project Kiran Bedi as their CM candidate or in the deployment of the Cabinet to try and win this election or indeed in the nature of questions it is asking Kejriwal, most of them vapid and petty, essentially contending that Kejriwal is not special- he is just another politician, pretty much like those asking the questions.

But this is a two-way mirror- if other parties are mirroring the AAP, so is the AAP mirroring them. The aura of righteousness around the party has dimmed substantially, and too much mud has been flung at it from those who were once part of it for it to be credible as a moral force anymore. It is now a force in a more classic political sense, in that it represents the interests of a particular constituency and is willing to do what it takes to get them a greater share of rewards. It still has some points of difference, but nothing an election or two might not dissolve. For now, what it appears to promise is a counterpoint, and that by itself has some advantages. What it has also underlined is that there is place for the politics of hope and mythmaking and there is place for the politics of passionate strife. The AAP had always promised to change politics and this they might just do, regardless of the outcome of this election, but this is not the revolution that their Lokpal movement had promised. But structurally it has shown that a counterpoint to the aspiration-led politics of the BJP does exist. Converting it into votes is hard, grinding work, but it can be done.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

07.20 | 0 komentar | Read More

Google, Uber may go to war over taxis: Bloomberg

Google Inc is preparing to offer its own ride-hailing service, putting it in direct competition with Uber, Bloomberg News reported, citing a person close to Uber's board.

Google is one of the biggest investors in Uber.

David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer and a member of Uber's board, has informed the app-based ride service of Google's plans, Bloomberg reported.

The source also said Uber's board was weighing whether to ask Drummond to resign, Bloomberg reported.

Neither Uber nor Google were available for comment.

Uber executives have been made privy to screenshots of Google's ride-sharing app, which is currently being used by Google's employees, Bloomberg reported.

Google's move may imperil Uber's reliance on the search giant, as the cab service's smartphone applications for drivers and riders are based on Google Maps.

Google recently said its driverless car technology was in development within its Google X research lab, but it is two to five years from being ready for widespread use, according to Bloomberg.

Uber also announced a tie-up with Carnegie Mellon University on Monday to create the Uber Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh aimed at developing Uber's own self-driving vehicle technology.
The partnership seeks to provide "research and development, primarily in the areas of mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology," Uber said in its blog.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Google taxi-gailing service,Lfyt,Uber

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