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One year ago more than 200 innocent people doing nothing more than returning home from a hard day’s work were brutally murdered and hundreds more were injured in the name of an insidious and perverted ideology.

But the perpetrators of this dastardly crime are still at large and even basic security measures to make sure such tragedies never occur are yet to be taken. Our politicians aided by the heavily politicised media are more than happy to brush this and other such incidents under the carpet by invoking the so called “Mumbai spirit” and thus escape their own responsibilities to ensure safety and security in the vulnerable public places across the country.

A week after July 11, 2006, Western Railways installed close circuit television (CCTV) cameras at seven of the 28 suburban railway stations in Mumbai. It was decided that a total of 530 CCTV cameras would be installed throughout the suburban rail network. This has not happened yet, as mandarins continue to dither over whether it would be cheaper to hire these cameras rather than buy them.

This is just the tip of the iceberg that no one seems to be worried about crashing into time and again. As we did in the days following July 11, 2006, we’ll hear more about the indomitable spirit of Mumbaikars this week. By extension that’s the tragic tale of India and its general approach to terrorism: we can handle every tragedy; all we have to do is to keep calling it ‘moral victory’.[HT]

A former member of an radical Islamist terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiya, a group affiliated to Al-Qaeda, Dr Tawfik Hamid has severely criticised the liberal “intellectuals” and self proclaimed “progressives” for obfuscating the threat of radical Islamist ideology to the world at large and also being an obstacle to reformation in the Islamic world.His criticism also holds good for our own homegrown “intellectuals”.

Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals–who unceasingly claim to support human rights–have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah’s inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western “progressives” pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

Ouch! that hurts especially when it is one of those former “misguided youths” who is taking a potshot at thee.

Today, is the 76th anniversary of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. They were hanged on March 23, 1931 on flimsy, cooked up charges by the British colonial rulers. While they were interred in Lahore Jail during the period of their sham trial they were severely tortured and illtreated. While on the contrary whenever the Congress leaders were “jailed”, they were treated like royalty by the same foreign rulers. One wonders whether it was because the Congress was nothing but a British Weapon of Mass Delusion(WMD) aimed at fooling the Indian people.

Unfortunately, We are a country with a very severe problem of short term public memory. So as of today the only importance of this day for our people and our media is because the Indian Crikit team is on the verge of being eliminated from the World Cup Crikit.

Update- The Men in Blue just did it.

While their Comrades across the border are busy butchering innocent villagers, killing Policemen and assaulting an Union minister in the very hall of the Indian Parliament itself. The Maoist thugs in neighbouring Nepal in true Communist style have broken every one of the treaties they had signed with great fanfare a few months ago and are now single mindedly aiming to undermine the current interim government and seize full political power for themselves.

The End Game: Maoists fail to Abide by the Peace agreement

“The mere absence of war is not peace”, said J. F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis. This statement is relevant to Nepal’s context today. Despite repeated assurances from the Maoists that they have retracted from violent politics, the reality is vastly different. Clearly, the Maoist have made a travesty out of the peace process and arms management. It has become obvious that the elections to the Constituent Assembly cannot be held in the stipulated time frame for mid June. This unfortunate circumstance is mainly due to the failure of the government to confine Maoist to peacetime politics. This failure consequently led to the rapid deterioration of law and order. The ramification of the postponement of the elections is immense – a fluid political vacuum.

This is very much on expected lines. The standard communist practice is to consider every peace treaty as a mere timeout to regroup and rearm for the next round. In my post on the very next day this treaty was signed i had said.

The key ingredient necessary for this accord to succeed is to make sure that the Maoists are disarmed. As long as they are armed, they are dangerous and can renege on any ‘agreement’ signed on a ‘piece of paper’ any time they wish. It is absolutely imperative for the Nepal govt and the international community to make sure that all the arms are taken away from the Maoist groups and they are disbanded as a fighting force.

This observation had been made keeping in mind the treacherous history of the Communist movement. From the undermining of the Alexander Kerensky’s interim government in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1917 to the backstabbing of the Nationalist Chinese government distracted by the Japanese invasion of China in 1930’s by the Chinese Communists to the Communist North attacking South Korea first in 1950 to the efforts by the Vietnamese Communists to undermine South Vietnam in the 1950’s, the whole history is there for those who care to learn from it.

Read the rest…

Finally something is being done to atone for the idiocy of the partition era politicians who foolishly agreed to give away even non-Muslim majority areas like Chittagong port and surrounding areas (and ofcourse Lahore in the west) to Pakistan so that it could be “economically viable”, leaving India’s own North-east region landlocked, resulting in its isolation, the disruption of its traditional trade routes and subsequent plunge into the vortex of insurgency and terrorism. Now the decades of callous neglect of the North-East region is perhaps on the way to be rectified.

Myanmar port to bypass Bangla transit hurdle(Link via Shadow Warrior Blog)

GUWAHATI, MARCH 11: Come 2009, and India will no longer have to worry about not being allowed river transit between the North-East and the rest of the country through Bangladesh. Sittwe, a port in Myanmar, being developed with India’s support, will provide sea link to the North-East through Kaladan, a river in Mizoram.

While work has already begun in Sittwe, the crucial three-day meeting of the North-Eastern Council, which ended here on Sunday, focused on speedy development of the river so that North-East gets its sea outlet as early as possible. “The North-East cannot wait any longer. Once Sittwe is developed and Kaladan becomes fully navigable, we can forget about looking at Chittagong for a sea route,” Aiyar said.

This is what India should be doing and the Government should be commended for this move. It is not India’s business to decide on what kind of Government other countries should be having. It is also not prudent for us to take our foreign policy cues from some Western country or the leftist NGO/intellectual mafia on what our policy towards any other country should be. Our foreign policy should be based on our own national interests.

And it is worthwhile to observe that we are getting this crucial lifeline from an Myanmarese military junta which was sought to be isolated at one point even by the Indian Government alongside the West because of the internal political turmoil there. thankfully some better sense prevailed before it was too late. it is not that one should not be concerned about restoration of democracy in Myanmar. But we should realise that Myanmar is a sovereign country and we have no choice but to deal with those who are in power especially when there is so much at stake that we do not have the luxury of sitting on judgement on others.

On the other hand an Bangladesh which owes its very existence and survival to India plays dirty by allowing its soil to be used as a sanctuary for anti-India terrorists and at the same time refusing to give India permission to use its territory to transit to the North-East.

Bangladesh has turned down several requests by India to allow river transport transit from the North-East to the sea, compelling India to explore Sittwe in Myanmar— 160 km from Mizoram—situated at the mouth of the Kaladan river.

Union Minister for Development of Northeastern Region Mani Shankar Aiyar said Bangladesh’s refusal to permit transit facilities to India and its turning down repeated requests to use the Chittagong port for North-East will be history. “The focus is now on developing Kaladan and by the time the Sittwe port is ready, Kaladan will also become fully navigable,” Aiyar said.