A load of crap from an idle brain

Macho Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray has again come under limelight after he slammed India’s cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar in an editorial piece in Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece ‘Saamna’.

According to the reports, Bal Thackeray has come down heavy on Tendulkar’s remark. The master blaster had asserted that he is extremely proud of being a Maharashtrian, but he also added that Mumbai is a part of India and he plays for India.

Criticising master blaster for his remarks, Bal Thackeray urged Tendulkar to stay away from politics and concentrate on his game.

On Sunday, Tendulkar sent a poignant message to all who have been fighting for the cause of the Marathis.

Source: Headlines India

Ya, Sachin should concentrate on the game of cricket because Bal Thuggeray  continues his business of inciting hatred and violence even with one leg in the grave along with his nephew Raj Thuggeray.  While the bloody Congress / NCP government you elected to keep you safe and sound is busy politicking and finding out how much it would cost (swindle) to put up Shivaji’s statue in the  Arabian sea.

Meanwhile the price of daily essential goods skyrocket and farmers continue to commit suicide in droves all over Maharashtra unable to repay their debts.  And we are busy with our marathi pride.

We deserve such swines.

+++

The paper tiger of Maharashtra does what he does best, barking from behind the high walls of Matoshree or in the editorials of Saamna.  No one takes Bal Thuggeray serious anymore, but you cant discount the comedy that one gets out of his comments.

Stunned by his party’s third consecutive defeat at the hustings, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray today blamed the people of Maharashtra for “pushing the state back into hell” by re-electing the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine.

In an editorial in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna, which expressed the party’s shock and anguish over its rout in the 2009 assembly polls, the Sena chief and the newspaper’s editor wondered what were the great achievements of the Democratic Front government in the past 10 years that made people to vote for it.

“There was corruption, load-shedding, Maoist terror which killed policemen, suicides of thousands of farmers, Mumbai terror attacks, etc,” Thackeray noted in the editorial.

The results of the assembly elections held Oct 13 gave the Congress 82 seats and the NCP 62 — totalling 144 in the 288-member assembly. The opposition alliance got a drubbing with only 90 seats, the Shiv Sena getting 44 and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 46. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) got 13 seats.

Thackeray blamed the people for the defeat of the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) saffron alliance and for bringing back a “naalayak” (useless) government.

Rest of the news here

I would seriously miss this fellow when he steps into the grave.

+++

Too many exercises and co-operation in the defence field happening between the US and India these days.  Close on the heels of the armies of the two countries taking part in Yudh Abhyas 2009 at Babina near Jhansi, its time for the Air Force of the two countries to take part in Cope India 2009 at Agra.

Is it just co-incidence or is there too much that is not being read into it?  With Pakistan fast spiralling into a deep abyss, are India and US practising for the time when the threat of the Pakistani govt being run over by the Taliban comes true?

Is the close co-operation a signal that the governments of both sides accept the fact that Pakistan is fast losing its fight against the Taliban and the ISI propped up terrorists.  Maybe the governments know something that people in general dont know. Maybe its an exercise to practise how to decamp with Pakistani nuclear weapons in case of a runover of the Pakistani government by terrorists.

Finally the monster created, nurtured and propped up by successive Pakistani governments against India is coming back to bite the master itself.

Like the saying, “the one who digs a hole for the other falls into it himself first”. How true.  Not a good sign for India to see its neighbour descend into chaos, but there is nothing much India can do other than exasperate at the happenings in the neighbourhood.  The chickens have come home to roost.

How long the Pakistani government and its army will bury its head in the sand like an Ostrich before they understand that the monster they created is finally too big for them to control and is hell bent on destroying their own country.

It was Pakistan’s Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who declared that Pakistan will eat grass, but will make a nuclear bomb.  Looks like the time to eat grass has come.  Finally.

All pictures source:  LiveFist Visit that website for lots of pictures, videos of the Indo-US exercises.

+++

For a country that has always looked at Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) with suspiction and has resisted the entry of foreign money, the $100 billion mark that India has hit is not a mean achievement.

India has crossed the $100 billion milestone in FDI through equity since 2000 up to July this year testifying the country’s increasing profile as a safe and sound investment destination in the midst of the global financial crisis.

As much as 44% of the money came through the Mauritius route, apparently because the investors wanted to take advantage of India’s double taxation avoidance treaty with the island nation. The cumulative FDI inflows since 2000 and up to July 2009 amounted to $100.33 billion. The inflows in the first four months of the current financial year was $10.5 billion, according to data compiled by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. The other big investors included Singapore, the US, UK and the Netherlands.

Commenting on the $100 billion milestone, economists said India is being perceived as a safe and dynamic destination for global investors. “This is a reflection that India is being taken as a safe and dynamic destination for investment as the economy is growing at 6%. The investors also want to diversify their portfolio from China by investing here,” Rajiv Kumar, CEO and director of Icrier said. The FDI would further improve if the economic recovery continues.

“We did not receive much FDI initially…since 2008 we have started receiving good numbers…there are signs of economic recovery in a few countries and I think inflows will improve with the economic recovery,” Crisil principal economist D K Joshi said.

Ficci secretary general Amit Mitra said FDI not only brings money but also new technology and managerial capabilities. “FDI’s main impact comes from new technology, new managerial capabilities, new benchmarks in corporate functioning,” Mitra said.

Above news source: TimesofIndia

Picture source: The Hindu

+++

Time changes, people change, economies change and the powers wielded by countries change.  There was a time when Britain ruled half the world, today its nowhere.  There was a time when the US was the undisputed economic champion, today that aura is on the wane.

Its in these changing times we wonder if a group that consists of countries like Italy, Canada etc wield any power when the world is going throught the worst recession (courtesy the developed countries).  Of course the US, Japan and Germany are also a part of the G-7 group of countries, but do they really have any clout?  The G-7 as usual came out with a statement asking China to re-value it currency and hardly anyone cared a hoot.

After decades in charge, the club of rich, industrialised nations is fast losing sway as a share of global economic power shifts towards big developing countries. That was a lesson of the Group of Seven’s meeting in Istanbul at the weekend, when the absence of China showed the G7 could no longer tackle the world’s economic problems on its own.

Finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the G7 implored China in a diplomatically worded statement to let the Chinese currency rise, as they have done for several years. But China showed no sign of complying, and the G7 spent much of its time to discussing whether it should meet less often, with less pomp and perhaps with fewer public statements.

G7 statements have all too often “interested nobody because there’s no follow-up most of the time”, said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund.

Read the full article here

The G-7 or the group of Industrialized countries comprise

Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States

The G-20 comprises of

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa,  South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, European Union

A G-7 official hit the nail on the head when he mentioned

“The moment you have to tell people you are still relevant, it’s because you are not relevant,”

Above picture source: Astrocrush

+++

The proposed unique multi-purpose national identity cards would be issued to all citizens by 2010-2011, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said in Chennai on Monday.

In the first phase this year, 1.2 crore people in about 3,331 coastal villages and cities would receive the cards, he told reporters on the sidelines of a function in Chennai.

The card will be given to 110 crore people by 2010-2011.  Government has set up a Unique Identification Authority of India to implement the project aimed at obviating the need for multiple proofs of identity for citizens while availing any government service or for personal needs like opening bank accounts or seeking telephone connections.

Above news source: Indian Express

Picture source here

+++

The picture in today’s Deccan Chronicle says it all.  Not many urban city slickers might want to admit, but the truth is that Andhra Pradesh has lost one of its most loved Chief Minister.

Though i do have a grouse against him naming each and every project in Andhra Pradesh after the Nehru/Gandhi family, one cant discount the amount of work he did among the rural folk in AP.  From cheap loans for womenfolk to healthcare benefits to millions of poor people, to free power for farmers, to massive irrigation schemes to the tune of 1 lakh crore,  to building a state of the art airport in Hyderabad to building the 160 km Outer Ring Road to decongest the city, there was a reason why more than 40 people died of either shock or committed suicide on hearing YSR’s death.

The only person not only to survive the NTR storm in the 80s and still manage to keep his seat, but also to singlehandedly survive the onslaught of a combined opposition of TDP, Communists, Chiranjeevi, BJP, Telengana crowd in the 2009 Assembly and Lok Sabha elections and still come out victorious is no easy task.

Rest in Peace, YSR.  You will be missed for sure.  Not only by your loved ones, but also by your rivals who in the back of their minds always looked up to you as a rival worth fighting against.

+++

…and what the eff is RSS?   An organisation that has perfected the art of propagating hate against people of other religion?  Its a perfect case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh (RSS) mouthpiece Organiser has slammed Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah calling him a hate figure.

The Organiser editorial said that Jinnah was a frustrated, piqued and egoist person and added that he cruelly and constantly insulted Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and other Congress leaders for their correct and nationalist stand of not accepting Muslim League as the sole representative body of the Muslims.

It also said Jinnah was a hate figure like Mohammad Ghori, Mohammad Ghaznavi, Babar and Aurangzeb but is disliked more because his actions are fresh in memory, and millions of victims of his hate campaign are still alive.

article link

A good article in the Open magazine on why the BJP loves Jinnah so much.

Apart from their senility, I can only think of one explanation; they envy him his achievement. He has created a nation in their image, a nation based on the faith of the majority with no room for diversity. In Pakistan, the BJP finds its ideal.

The truth contrary to what Jaswant Singh says is that Jinnah has not been demonised enough. There is a strange complicity between men such as Jaswant Singh and a certain stream of liberal Indian thought that continues to argue that Nehru should have accommodated Jinnah’s ambition and prevented the Partition. It is a strange and baffling argument given all we know about Jinnah. By the perverse logic of that argument, we should reach out to Narendra Modi and offer him the post of PM to end the divisiveness that plagues us today. The BJP’s real problem is that they cannot lay claim to the Freedom Movement, nor are Gandhi and Nehru figures they can come to terms with. Under the circumstances, the best they can do is to devalue them. And what better way to achieve this than to compare them unfavourably with Jinnah?

The author exactly nails the point.  No matter what BJP says, its never believed in the secular fabric of India.  It simply cannot reconcile to the fact that Indians believe in different religions yet they are proud to be Indians.  The fact that our founding fathers believed in the right of every religion to be followed.  BJP  loves Jinnah so much simply because they see in Jinnah a person who managed to get a country all for himself based on Islam.  But inspite of their hate politics, the Indian public doesnt fall for their tactics.

There is nothing more comical than seeing the chaddi gang pressing the self-destruct button.  Fearing the worst that Arun Shourie might spill some more beans of the fakeness of the fake iron man of India, LK Advani,  the BJP has just asked Shourie to explain what he meant in his outburst the other day.

The BJP was full of morons was already known.  The fact that they dont understand english has just been confirmed.  Jaswant Singh has been daily dropping one bomb after another on how Advani knew of the terrorist exchange in Kandahar, but lied in his book that he was kept in the dark.  How he kept quiet when the butcher of Gujarat, Narendra Modi let his dogs free on innocent civilians and more.

Am waiting to read more fun from the stables of the chaddi gang in time to come.

+++