Narayanathe NaMo NaMo (Not in praise of Gujarat)

If listening to M S Subbulakshmi tapes was a part of your childhood then you are probably familiar with Annamacharya and/or his composition Narayanathe NaMo NaMo.

The phrase Narayanathe NaMo NaMo immediately came to mind when I heard that Gujarat's infamous NaMo (Narendra Modi) was inviting a Narayana i.e N.R.Narayana Murthy of INFY fame to advise the Gujarat Government on their recent electoral reform initiative to make voting compulsory. [Image from Indian Express]

I do not know if Mr. Murthy has accepted the offer or not... but both Mr. Murthy and NaMo were sharing the same dais when NaMo made the job offer. To be honest, I doubt if he will accept this specific offer. He will bide his time for something more grandiose than "advisor". That said, , if you can share a dais with the man who authored the Gujarat riots, you will not find it difficult to accept a job offer from the same man.

Mr Murthy's ex-colleague from Infosys is working with the UPA government on the UID scheme. It would make business sense for INFY to spread their bets between the NDA and UPA. Industry captains, have endorsed NaMo's genocidal credentials for Prime Ministership. Examples -

• Ratan Tata says Narendra Modi manages and Administers his state effeciently.
  
• Anil Ambani and Sunil Bharthi Mittal both think he should be running the country.
  

NaMo's exploits in the form of pogroms against muslims do not seem to trouble the conscience of these industry captains. [For more on Gujarat you can read this piece by Harsh Mander.]

Mr Murthy is not the only person working on a job offer from NaMo. It looks like Mr Amitabh Bachan, while promoting his film Paa to NaMo also offered to be a Brand Ambassador for Gujarat. I guess there is no harm in endorsing the NaMo's pogroms between his endorsements for Pepsi, ICICI, Parker pens, Nerolac paints, Reid & Taylor suits, and Dabur.

Mr Murthy is not media shy. He is an independent director in NDTV. Omkar Goswami, a well know journalist in India is an Independent Director in Infosys. There is no doubt that he will have some big names in the media batting for him whenever required.

It is a matter of time before Mr. Murthy makes a foray into respectable politics. Respectable politics is not the kind of politics that requires you to contest an election and win a democratic mandate. It is the kind of politics that allows you to use your media and industry connections to lobby for a constitutional office. It's about taking the concept of capitalism and converting it into crony capitalism. I hope I am wrong about Mr Murthy's goals.

Thinking Out Loud on Non Resident Whiners ( and a rant)

It's funny how folks get educated in India on Tax payer subsidies and go abroad and complain about India and it's socialist policies.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! and almost every other Fortune 500 company in the sates has been built with intellectual contributions from Indians educated in IITs, RECs and other government funded institutions.(Read as Tax Payer money). If you were brought up in India, almost every home cooked meal you had as a child was cooked on subsidized LPG.

This is not an argument on brain drain. Indians are welcome to go and work in any country of their choice. We have enough and more talent from where they came from. Except by family and friends, they will not be missed.

I too have many friends and close family working abroad who I miss dearly. The point is, I might miss them, the country doesn't . We can, as the saying goes, afford to spread the love.

What I do not understand is why a few people of Indian origin living abroad turnaround and say that our system sucks. I concede, socialist ideologies are like capitalist ideologies. They are both imperfect and unfair.

They (the few I refer to above) forget that they are a product of the Indian socialist system. They are welcome to live in New Jersey or Fremont or any place under the star spangled banner and support American occupation and war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine. They can continue to clap for the cause of genocide and disaster capitalism.  What irritates me is when they turn around and say that they did not benefit from socialism. They would not be where they are without many of the socialist policies that India has had in the last 60 years. 

• They will complain that "Indians" just don't get the concept of "copyright" and "ownership" but they will be transferring and copying Indian classical music in Gigabytes.
• They will claim that Hinduism needs a revival and is threatened by "other" religions while heating their beef burgers in the microwave. 
• They will call you a marxist, socialist or naxalite if you point out that they are as much a hypocrite as you are. (They use labels on resident Indians like a receptionist would use post-it notes).
  
• They complain about the "filth" in India. They readily forget that they pollute 500 times more than the average Indian.
  

I have no issues with any of them as long as they do not bring their political ideas on capitalism and shove it down my throat in the name of the Hindu religion.

1. If you suffer from an identity crisis...deal with it. Don't take it out on me. 
2. If you suffer from a sense of superiority...look a little more closely and you will realise that it is rooted in your own misplaced feelings of inferiority. 
3. If you think India is a big heap of problems...don't tell me you want to change things from "outside the system".
   

Freaks or Freakonomics (and Co-relating in the absence of reality)

Once upon a time, I was interested in the Freakonomics anecdotes. It all changed by the time I got to the end of the second chapter of the book. It reminded me of how “sales operations” guys come up with weird theories during sales reviews. Theories that don’t help you close deals or plan sales campaigns. Freakonomics has a very similar way of avoiding reality and the "big picture". I agree (like most others) that the authors are smart guys with a great talent for writing blogging. It's the lack of perspective in their content that worries me. They do have their fair share of critics. Some examples

• The Business Blog at Intuitive.com 
• The New Yorker

I have followed the freakonomics blog on the New York Times website and am convinced that their approach to economics is culturally biased. By the way, NYT has now stopped publishing any of my comments (even when I have something positive to say about the post). Update: I stand corrected. They published this last night.

Yesterday’s post- “Do jobs really cure insurgents?” got my attention.  The first half of the post read as follows-

"Does giving a man a job stop him from becoming a political insurgent? The generally accepted wisdom is that it does. In fact, the U.S. and other western powers have distributed millions of dollars of foreign aid in the hopes of reducing political violence and instability. But a new working paper from Eli Berman, Joseph Felter, and Jacob Shapiro may force policymakers to reevaluate this strategy. The researchers looked at unemployment and political violence against both the government and civilians in Iraq and the Philippines. They find that unemployment is actually negatively correlated with attacks against the government and statistically unrelated to insurgent attacks against civilians."

The working paper that Freakonomics was referring was published by National Bureau of Economic Research and based on a grant from (surprise, surprise!) The Department of Homeland Security.

Here is my two cents- 

• Cause: American invasion of Iraq Effect: More than 100,000 civilians in Iraq are DEAD.
  (Where do employment programmes fit in?)
• I would not be looking towards “insurgents” as the root problem. I would look at the fact that Iraq is an occupied country that was invaded illegally and without ‘just’ or any other cause. Operation “shock and awe” devastated the infrastructure of the country. 
• Disaster Capitalists lead by the likes of Halliburton and Black Water are “rebuilding” the country after bombing it flat. How? For e.g. - They are importing raw material after refusing use of local labor and factories to create raw material locally.
• To try and look at the insurgency problem through the lens of “employment” is, for the lack of a better word, STUPID. You have insurgents, not because they are employed or unemployed but because their country was bombed to smithereens by American troops. 
• You would not have to assess the functionality of development and employment programs if you had not blown up the country in the first place. 
• As far as economic research is concerned, this paper deserves nothing less than the ignoble. 
• I do not see any economic trends that deserves applause in the analysis. I would however hazard to suggest that the authors study the impact of development programs on insurgency while standing under US operated drones in NWFP in Pakistan. Maybe then, they will have better clarity on the co-relation between employment and insurgency.
• The paper and Freakonomics blogspost has a Friedmanesque stench to it. 

Urban Activists and Their Double Standards

A discussion group dedicated to one of the most elite neighborhoods in the country has been rife with discussion about a land grab. An order by the Supreme Court to preserve a piece of lung-space has been circumvented by the state government and the property has been transferred to the person who has the property titles to the land.

I appreciate and laud the efforts of these citizen activists who are democratically and legally waging a battle against the transfer of this lung space back to private hands.

These very same urban activists however call me a leftie or socialist when I say that the transfer of tribal land to the private sector is a similar issue. I find it amazing that some of the richest citizens in Bangalore could be so thick-skinned about how similar these issues are. When a land grab affects them directly it is an issue about environment. When a land grab does not impact them directly or indirectly it is encouraged as a necessary developmental sacrifice.

This very same discussion group recently had a thread related to how villagers near the Agra Lake area in Bangalore were forcing their way into a traditional burial ground and about how it was making life uncomfortable for the residents of nearby apartment blocks. Here again I was surprised with the tone in which the person who started the thread felt that the residents had a legal right to block the grave yard, construct on the grave yard and literally dance on graves. The lack of sensitivity to the rights of the villagers who are being displaced by the rapid development of Bangalore is embarrassing to citizens like myself.

Another discussion on the same list was related to how slums were coming up in the HSR layout area. The area is being developed rapidly and population levels are fairly high. On the one-hand, residents need the labor from these slums. They refuse to pay wages that would provide them with quality housing. On the other hand, they claim rights as tax payers to evict these slum dwellers. They fail to realize that the insanitary conditions in which they live is directly related to the level of wages that the people of HSR pay the residents of these very slums.

This divide between urban upper middle class India and the rest of India is worrying. The dichotomy in their perspectives is pure hypocrisy.

Techcrunch and going to Chile (and how Americans forget history)

I fell off my chair laughing at a piece in TechCrunch titled Chile Wants Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses, Your Tech Entrepreneurs.

The premise of the argument is that Chile is a great place to invest. I agree with the author. But the Author totally forgets to mention America's history with Chile (Kissinger advising Pinochet on Shock Therapy). Chile has a brutal chapter in history that has been scripted by the Chicago School and American Corporate Interests. I see no reason why the piece should have been structured to make it appear that their recent history resembles a picture postcard.

Lets look at some really funny quotes from the article -

"But Chile does have 40% of the world’s copper, a magnificent inflation hedge."

The last two people who shouted this from this from the top of the Military towers were Milton Friedman and General Pinochet. Chile was in Hyperinflation and the military junta brought in by the Chicago boys was killing people on the streets like they were swatting mosquitoes....to privatize the mines and wipe out local industry in the name of "structural adjustment".  When Americans start thumping their chest with those same lines, it sends a shiver down my spine.

"To top this off, Chile is a thriving democracy with one of the most open economies in South America. In fact, if I was starting a new tech company and didn’t need to be in any particular area, I’d start it in Chile in a heartbeat"

Chile has struggled and shed blood to put democracy back on track. The bloodshed had a lot to do with American presence. This fact is completely glossed over. Where tech companies locate these days has very little to do with democracy. It has more to do with the degree of conflict that the country is engaged in (directly and indirectly). Two examples - i) The USofA and the business of outsourced wars and ii) Israel and the high tech security industry that is bubbling over thanks to wars that their patrons are fighting in Asia. To link American enterprise with democracy is to forget history or to deny it.

"Everyone told stories about how Chile was built by immigrants and welcomed the world’s most skilled and most oppressed"

I wonder who this guy was speaking to? Definitely not the activists for democracy in the 70s and 80s in Chile. Except the Americans, most people have a different view of what happened after Allende was killed by the Pinochet junta. For Americans it was a perfect investment opportunity. For the people of Chile it was a disaster. They were the ones who were oppressed. To gloss over these facts like they never happened is naive.

I do not blame the author. He had to build a case for Chile in 500 words or less for TechCrunch. He chose to focus on the potential of Chile. Fair thing to do. However, it would have been more appropriate if the author had not created an image of the past that is far from the truth.

Can Red Paint Camouflage a Blood Bath? (and the Media's cry for blood)

The signs in the media are ominous. There appears to be a “calibrated” approach to building consent for definitive and armed action against “naxals”. Operation Green Hunt is what this campaign is going to be called.

There are several “news stories” coming together to make a military option look deceivingly inevitable. The government may end up biting of more than it can chew (for the wrong reasons) and worse, create an even bigger problem.  The Naxal problem is being painted red in the hope that it will camouflage a bloodbath by both the government and the Naxals.

The first coat of Red Paint is the “Chinese Threat”. The media is hyperventilating about Chinese incursions. The perception in the mainstream English media is that China is showing signs of threatening India’s sovereignty. The screams (which sound like birthing pains when they come from Arnab Goswami) are proving to be baseless and nothing more than a disguised sales pitch for increased defence expenditure for our borders with China. The media’s response and the muted denial of the Indian government is the first coat of “Red” paint that we are looking at. Fox-news would have been proud of some our Journos and analysts.

The second coat of red-paint is a beautiful bluff. Arcelor Mittal has threathened the government of Orissa that it would pull out of a 20 billion dollar project in Orissa unless Land Acquisition was hastened. The reason why land acquisition is progressing at such a slow place for the project is that there is resistance at the grass-roots. The people do not want to hand over their land and the Government cannot categorically show that the plant in question is a “public-purpose”. In such a backdrop, there is a fair reason for the delay under Indian law. Arcelor Mittal seems to think land for their company is an enshrined fundamental right in the Indian constitution. Rather than call the bluff, and request the company to take a hike, the Government is taking a rather subservient stance. It has said it will catalyse the land transfer. The second coat of Red Paint is now in place and the “markets” are beginning to see a beautiful shade of “Red” in driving away investment.

All we need now is some red polish to finish the job. This is done by changing the goal posts. You change the goals posts by changing the focus of the debate from the cruel and lopsided nature of development policies over the last 50 years. Instead you bring into sharp focus Naxal violence and display it once you have been able to gloss-over the context. It is easier to whip up anger over the beheading of a cop than it is to get the urban Indians angry about the horrific infant mortality rates in rural India. The dysfunctional analysis lumps a violent INDIAN grassroots resistance with the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Al Qaeda. Once you force urban India to link Naxal Violence with Mumbai Terror attacks….building consent for military action will become easier. All you need now is some hot air for the paint to dry. Indian media houses have an abundant supply of hot air. This is best seen in the way any intelligent debate is shot down with language such as “Romanticizing Naxalism” and “Intellectual Sympathisers”. By blocking of reasonable debate, you are left with hot air statements like “Naxalism is an attack on Indian sovereignty”.

Once dried, we will have a backdrop of red-paint and any blood-bath led by 70,000 para-military forces can be easily camouflaged, rationalized and sponsored with ad-spots on the 10PM news shows.

A key dramatic element that unfolded before the war on Iraq was Collin Powell and his infamous vial of Anthrax at the UN (and we thought Gadaffi was a raving lunatic). I will not be surprised if we see a similar dramatic plea in the “Indian war on terror”. Get ready to see little red books of Chairman Mao (or some such stupid equivalent) translated into Hindi as being clinching evidence of Chinese financial aid to the Maoists.

If the government decides to use the might of the Indian army, we will be inviting a civil a war. The red-paint may temporarily camouflage the blood-bath but it will not take long before the violence starts to affect the urban cities that seem to be disconnected from the rest of the country. Every name in the body count has been and will be an Indian citizen.

--#--

On a side-note this paragraph from a book I am currently reading sums up what the media is doing with Naxal debate very well.

"For "terrorists", read "guerillas" or – as President Ronald Reagan would call them in the years to come – "freedom fighters". Terrorists, terrorists, terrorists. In the Middle East, in the entire Muslim world, this word would become a plague, a meaningless punctuation mark in all our lives, a full stop erected to finish all discussion of injustice, constructed as a wall by Russian, Americans, Israelis, British, Pakistanis, Saudis, Turks, to shut us up. Who would ever say a word in favour of terrorists? What cause could justify terror? So our enemies are always "terrorists." In the seventeenth century, governments used "heretic" in much the same way, to end all dialogue, to prescribe obedience. Karmal’s policy was simple: you are either with us or against us. For decades, I have listened to this dangerous equation, uttered by capitalist and communist, presidents and prime ministers, generals and intelligence officers and, of course, newspaper editors."
-- Robert Fisk, Page 74, The Great War For Civilisation – The Conquest of the Middle East"

Operation Green Hunt - The Indian version of Shock Therapy

70,000 paramilitary forces are about to enter the poorest districts in India. The excuse for this march of troops is a Maoist Rebellion. Are we on the verge of a civil war that pit's urban India against the poorest citizens of this country? Citizens who have been at the wrong end of the development continuum? Citizens who's land is now coveted because they contain mineral wealth? The answer appears to be "yes".

The government is taking millions of their poorest citizens and putting them in the same basket that they put Al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists. This incorrect and outrageous re-labelling gives the Government the license to use military grade force on it’s own citizens. Once you get rid of these citizens you can transfer land from tribals and the forests to the mining company who’s share-holders are the first citizens of the liberalized and globalized world. The free-market will take control of all the “affected” districts. The Government will wipe out as much poverty as it can by wiping out as many civilians as it can.

Lakshmi Mittal has issued a threat to the Orissa government. He has said the he will pull out of a Twenty Billion Dollar investment unless the land acquisition is not “hurried-up”. If the Indian government was looking for an overt and corporate approval for Operation Green Hunt to place at the door-step of the first world, Lakshmi Mittal conveniently stepped in to provide it for them. Mr Mittal will not only get the land and mines but will also get a guarantee that others will be scared into submission to object to the land grab. Needless to say there will be a lot of bloodshed. Civilians will die, paramilitary forces will die and naxals will die. The mining company’s profits will rise. Lakshmi Mitall’s bluff is exactly what the media wants to hear to justify operation Green Hunt. 

We have a Home Minister who has represented Enron in India in his capacity as a Harvard educated lawyer. He has held office with one of the largest mining conglomerates. A conglomerate, who’s subsidiaries receive some of the largest and most coveted mining concessions. We have this man deciding to send in our troops to kill our own people. Both Osama Bin Laden and George W Bush would have been proud of this strategy if they were the authors.

Operation Green Hunt will have many of the ingredients of “shock and awe”. The porn stars of India Media will be “embedded” with the para-military forces. We will see a live telecast of genocide that will be inconceivably rationalized and justified by the media. Do not be surprised if you see a TATA TEA advertisement promoting “Jaago Re” as the civil war in Chattisgarh unfolds. As these events takes place in India and on TV screens in our living rooms – we will see laws being re-written. These laws will further alienate people from their lands. It will be India’s highest dose of Shock Therapy to date.

The unfortunate reality is that we are on the brink of a civil war. The smoke screen of a civil war is what the disaster capitalists create to change the laws of the land and transfer wealth and resources to shareholders and away from citizens. Bolivia, Chilie, Argentina, Poland and Russia all suffered under this mode of capitalism. There was a difference, they were sold-out by the world-bank and were under dictatorships. We are doing it under a democratically elected government.

The Iraq Playbook - New Delhi's Surveillance Plans

If the SiliconIndia.com website is to be believed, then "BOSCH may provide security systems for commonwealth games"

Surveillance is supposedly at the heart of counter-terrorist operations. I wonder what they are doing by outsourcing basic surveillance? This move to get the private sector involved in what should be a primary government responsibility is right out of the Iraqi playbook of American Disaster Capitalism.

It appears that BOSCH already provides security systems for the Mumbai Airport.

The question is, do they just provide the camera equipment and wiring - which is okay or do they go further in manning the cameras, defining the locations and controlling what is and what is not recorded? If they are doing more than supplying equipment I want to know how they can be held accountable in case the government (post-facto) says - "BOSCH was supposed to provide us with the information through their surveillance".

While this may seem trivial, this is exactly how the Disaster Capitalists Complex worked following the invasion of Iraq. Gunmen are paid by the hour and hired by the truckload as part of "surveillance measures". It started with the purchase of "security equipment" from American and Israeli companies.

I am not comfortable with the private sector getting a role in the surveillance of our public spaces. That should be the government's job.

A media that is obsessed with terror did not pick up the story. The article that I read - devotes more times to "market size" of security and BOSCH's revenues through security than anything else. No mention of experience other than some name-dropping and no analysis of how this will reduce the threat of terror.

Jeffery Sachs: The First Son of Disaster Capitalism on Climate Change

Milton Friedman was the father of contemporary disaster capitalism and the ideologue behind capitalist genocides post 1970. If he is the undisputed father than Jeffrey Sachs is the leading contender for the title of "first son". Sachs has successfully driven hundreds of thousands of people into the depths of poverty based on his agenda of structural reform in Bolivia, Poland and Russia. He man is now getting interested in the Copenhagen conference on Climate Change. The likes of Jeffery Sachs thrive in a crisis and find the most innovative ways of manufacturing and profiteering in a crisis. Their area of super-specialization is to bring a country to it's knees by forcing it to sell their assets and waiting for the coffers to get drained before stepping in with reforms that drive the country to poverty. Sachs, after killing democracy in Russia,  is now wearing a halo and talking about poverty, famine and climate change.

His article in today's Hindu - We need action, not Kyoto II - sent a shiver down my spine. If Iraq was a disaster capitalism success story than the climate crisis is tailor made for Sachs and Chicago Boys. The crisis will be the playground from which Sachs can wrest the title of successor to Milton Friedman.

This paragraph in the article is very revealing -

The climate issue is too complicated to swallow in one gulp, as was tried in Kyoto in 1997. This invites a toothless agreement that could be more posturing than progress. We should think about the component parts of real progress, and then insist on practical policies by all major players, even as the legal framework is hammered out for later signature. There is still time for a three-part package: a political framework, a financing package, and a series of practical steps announced by all major regions to tilt the trajectory on emissions.

When a disaster capitalist like Sachs who evangelizes the shock doctrine uses the term "political framework" it translates to killing democracy (Russia, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Poland) and butchering any opposition (preferably with a bloodbath). When he uses the words "major players" he refers ONLY to MNCs that profiteer based on his work.

When somebody like Sachs talks about a "financing package" it will mean removing the safety nets for the poorest of the poor in the globe and providing taxation benefits to the largest corporates. It will mean creating a free market for common property resources and putting a permissible price tag to corporate pollution rather than treat it as a crime.

Sach's "Practical Policies" led to the rise of the Oligarchs in Russia, an invasion of Chechnya, a doubling of the suicide rate, the destruction of the parliament building and immunity for businessmen and politicians from being prosecuted for corruption. How practical is that?

Based on Sach's track record around "Practical Policies", "Political Framework" and "Financial Packages it is obvious that the disaster capitalists are going to tax sub-saharan Africa and other poor countries while encouraging the increase of consumption in the first-world. They will find a way to make it look "fair" by inventing a way to trade "carbon" (read "trade" as "I pollute and you pay").

The fact that the article is bereft of any mention of the contribution that his country makes to global pollution is conspicuous.His call for an interim agreement will be the cornerstone argument adopted by the Americans in ensuring that a concrete settlement remains elusive. The only agreement acceptable to the disaster capitalists of this world will be a scenario where the First World can continue to create war, destabilize nations and steal their wealth either overtly or covertly. Such an agreement will be readily signed by Obama (even without a tele-prompter).

In my opinion, the best way to begin the Copenhagen Summit would be to burn an effigy of Jeffery Sachs and Milton Friedman. We should ensure that the IMFs, World Banks, WTOs and Halliburtons of this world have nothing to do with deciding the fate of our environment. We should also ensure that America has no space on the negotiating table. Their only mandate should be to comply. They lost their participatory rights the day they set foot in Vietnam.

We should ask for a complete retreat of all US troops to their barracks. America and Europe should be taxed for the environmental damage that they have caused over the last seventy years. Americans must be severely taxed to prevent any escalation of their destructively consumptive patterns. Any failure to comply should be dealt with in the same way that they dealt with Iraq. Bomb all the factories, bridges, hospitals, electricity plants and water treatment facilities on US soil. Once the corporatist structure of the US economy lies in ruins one will be able to see the world bloom and the environment begin to heal itself. Somebody has to tell Mr Sachs that Copenhagen is not about American Imperialism or economics. (...it is about the environment stupid!)

PS- Unlike some of us, the media still has their head where the sun does not shine. The media will go to any length to promote Sachs and his policies. The media continues to manufacture consent for people like Sachs who have so much of blood on their hands.

Agricultural Imperialism

When a country is being bombed by drones it presents a unique opportunity for capitalist imperialists to alienate people from their land. Land is the one asset that can prevent a person from falling prey to religious and capitalist fundamentalism. Take that away and you have a surefire recipe for profiteering.

In the background of drone bombings by the US, there are reports in the Pakistani media of the government giving away land for commercial farming. According to the report, irrespective of the sate of food security in Pakistan, these commercial farms can repatriate their produce (send it out of the country and into the hands of the new owners of the land).

• If somebody needed a formula to create terrorists, this one seems to be close to perfect.
• Bomb them with drones from above, pull the land from under their feet and deny them food when they are starving.
  
• I am sure the Indian right-brigade is taking notes and wondering how they missed this trick of alienating people from their own land (thereby enslaving them).
  

This does have a similarity with the SEZ issue.

Does size really matter?

When it comes to a nuclear phallus, does size really matter? Questions around an arms build up in the subcontinent is raising it's ugly head again.

At the risk of being called sexist, I would like to state on record that when it comes to nuclear armament, size does not matter - neither is it a deterrent. It is nothing but a guarantee for madness or Mutually Assured Destruction (I lifted that acronym from a really bad Hollywood flick).

There seems to be a growing number of right-wing twits and bloggers on the Internet that keep discussing the quality and quantum of the nuclear arsenal in India and Pakistan. Their posts and tweets almost always have a call for war.

While I appreciate their cynicism of peace initiatives, I would like to blame the media on all sides of all borders for fear-mongering and egging folks to demand for crazy things like "retaliation" and "destruction". These twits on the internet find their stories from the media.

If and (not when) we embark on our next war with our neighbors, I will like to put the blame on two parties who are well represented on both sides of the borders. Politicians (who are fed like stall pigs by disaster capitalists) and the media (who are paid to disseminate fear by disaster capitalists).

Trivia - name a peace expert that you have seen on NDTV, TimesNOW or CNNIBN (remember peace expert and not "strategic expert", "defence expert" or "intelligence expert").