The Dogs of War Redux

WTF? Honestly.

What else can I say? ...Except that this development may ultimately have a twist that actually outdoes Frederick Forsyth's magnificent plot.

And perhaps the ending may not be as "fortunate" as the novel.

Google's Do-It-Yourself Stasi File

Call me cynical (OK, even paranoid), but I saw this video dripping in saccharine sweetness - and the only thing I could think about was a Stasi File!

The erstwhile East Germany's secret police maintained minute, banal, and often absurd, personal details on its citizens. But according to an article in Spiegel Online, Herbert Ziehm - Head of the Department in Germany that now manages the Stasi Files archive: "More often than not, the Stasi did not need to apply pressure at all. In fact, many often felt snubbed if their information was deemed to be of no interest."

Hmmm...

Also, the fact that the files occupy over 100 kilometres of shelf space somehow reminded me of a Server Farm.

Hey, personal information is personal information... whatever manner it is stored!

What's next? An Internet kill switch?

The Government of India has amended the Information Technology (IT) Act to make the Internet safer. Presumably, for itself.

NGOs, free-speech advocates and legal experts are appalled that the new rules force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block websites hosting content that officialdom deems to be “disparaging”, “harassing”, “blasphemous”, or any of a whole range of other labels that are vague and open to interpretation. To make matters worse, there are no provisions to challenge wrongful interpretations.

News articles covering the subject seems to imply that this is a problem only if it is "enforced", but the very fact that the threat of censorship looms over Indian cyberspace is entirely unacceptable. All laws that rely on the whim of politicians or the judgement of their lackeys are inherently dangerous.

By the way, is there a law that allows the general public to selectively shut down a government department that it considers as "harassing"? Thought not.

The real cost of corporate profit

In an earlier post, I touched upon the woeful track record of the Government of India when it comes to protecting the nation's and its people's interests against unbridled greed of businessmen.

Whether callous neglect that led to an unprecendented tragedy in Bhopal; or supply of substandard equipment for soldiers fighting a high altitude war in Kargil; or kickbacks paid to an Italian middleman for Swedish military equipment; or selling national assets at a tax discount of trillions of rupees... Big business always wins, no matter how vile the act.

Despite the chatterati yaking away about India being a "Superpower"... I am sorry, the facts on the ground show that Indian lives are cheap. And India is rather like a large doormat for corporate houses.

Knowing very well (Manmohan Singh is supposedly an Economist) that India escaped the full brunt of the recent financial meltdown because of its stringent (albeit imperfect) financial regulations, has not stopped the Government of India from surreptitiously pushing through financial deregulation, including in Savings.

More importantly, study after study have shown that India was less affected by the recent economic crisis because the Indian economy was largely focused at the domestic market. But our erudite, doctorate-holding elected representatives go on a veritable signing spree of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) over the last two years.

So when the next economic crisis hits, India will be ripe for asset stripping by foreign investors and international financial institutions. Way to go, sirs.

This is NOT old news...


Since we have such an exemplary record of upholding Indian consumers' and producers' rights, it is heartening to see the line-up of eminent multinational successors of Union Carbide eager to strip profits from the Indian countryside: Walmart, DuPont, Bayer, Monsanto, and the Rothschilds.

I fear that Governement of India's policies are - deliberately or otherwise - leading the country into an unimaginable agro-holocaust!

To understand and appreciate just what is at stake, we must look back in history... The Bengal Famine of 1943 killed 3 million Indians... more than World War I, World War II, the entire Indian freedom struggle, and the death toll in the partition riots.

The chief cause, according to Dr. Amartya Sen, was not a drop in production... it was a combination of several factors - including steep food price inflation, falling wage value and unchecked exports.

What do you suppose will happen when profit-hungry multinational businesses are in control of food production and distribution in India?

Did the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation fund coercive vaccine research on girls in India?

PATH is an NGO funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It claims to be "an international nonprofit organization that improves the health of people around the world". One of its programmes being the vaccination of young girls against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a sexually transmitted disease passed on usually by sexual intercourse.

PATH's activities on HPV are based on a coordinated strategy developed by Harvard University, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and the World Health Organization (WHO) to "make HPV vaccines available, acceptable, and affordable to those most in need." This strategy too is funded by the sinister money spout of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In India, PATH allegdely conducted vaccine trails on possibly as many as 23,000 girls in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat under the guise of a "vaccination programme". The project had extremely strong backing from the government apparatus. This included "ordering" of all educational institutions to support the programme, and in tribal areas, parental consent was even substituted with that of hostel wardens!

It went smoothly for the munificent foundation... Till seven innocent girls died. The Indian government suspended the project - and true to form, commissioned a report.

The final report submitted found "large-scale ethical violations", and states that the "nature and objectives of these projects makes it evident that they are in fact clinical trials."

But despite exploiting unsuspecting girls as experimental guinea pigs, the "report finally does not fix the responsibility on any individual or institution despite evidence."

So who is being protected? And who really benefitted from the "vaccination" programme?

According to Rani Kumar, Dean of All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, “The ambivalent sentences in the consent form tantamount to covert inducement and indirect coercion especially in the light of the high cost of the vaccine.”

The vaccines are pushed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded PATH, and are manufactured by pharma giants, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The cost of vaccinating an individual is approximately $360.

This sounds familiar... If you haven't seen it, please watch The Constant Gardener based on a novel by John le Carré, and starring Ralph Fiennes.

By the way... Bill, Melinda, you have a daughter too. Is she vaccinated against HPV?

The open corporate takeover of government has begun

This 7-minute video tells a very disturbing story of how those given the job of acting as mere "representatives" of the public are increasingly utilising crises to transfer power from the public (who elect them) to corporate houses (who fund them).



But for this transfer of power to happen in a democracy, the public must first willingly handover an inordinate amount of power that is rightfully their's to "representatives" who constitute a "government". The trouble (and tyranny) begins when the public begins to believe that a government's role is to "rule" and "provide" for them - and not merely to "represent" them...



Incidentally, it was an American, Benjamin Franklin, who once said that anyone who is willing to trade liberty for a sense of security, deserves neither.

How corporations do the state's dirty work

The US Department of Justice believes every mobile phone user is a potential criminal.

On 10 May, the U.S. Department of Justice called for new laws requiring mobile providers to collect and store information about their customers! According to Jason Weinstein, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the DoJ, "when this information is not stored, it may be impossible for law enforcement to collect essential evidence."

Apparently, the push for mandatory retention of data is not new. Back in January 2011, CNET reported that the authorities are "frustrated" because no law exists to force service providers to track what customers are doing online.

And the irony of it all is that the DoJ's privacy-bustin' proposal was raised during a U.S. Senate hearing arising from the revelation that corporations like Apple, Google and Microsoft record information about users' locations without their consent!

Now what is the chance that this - or any other - Senate hearing will help tangibly improve consumer privacy?

Well... Surprise. Surprise.