Agent Provocateur: January 2011

Meet Durgavati, mother of 52 children

Records show that a certain Durgavati, a name which is possibly shared by thousands of women in the deep interiors of the Hindi heartland, gave birth to 52 children in 2009. Aged 34, she gave birth to her first child on January 2, followed by another on January 9, a third on January 16, and so on. For every child born to her, she was given Rs 1,400 under the Centrally-funded Janani Suraksha Yojana. That adds up to Rs 72,800 for her family of 54 -- she, her husband and their brood of 52 children.

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Of ghosts and their funny ways

My watch tells me it's three in the morning. I will have to climb down three flights of stairs in an ill-lit office block and walk through a dark side lane to reach my car which is parked next to an ancient cemetery with crumbling headstones and graves overgrown with weeds and creepers.

Folklore has it that the ghazis who joined the 1857 mutiny and died in the battle for Delhi or were executed subsequently lie buried here.

On moonless nights when the wind blows strong through the keekar trees that grow wild in this cemetery, if you listen carefully, you can hear hoarse voices rise and fall in a rhythmic cant: "For the Faith! For the Faith! Victory to Mohammed!"

I have often wondered about the scratches that I discover in the most unlikely places on my car every morning. Poor things. Ghosts can't trim their nails, you see, they have to just let them grow.

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In distant Germany, LTTE lives

Berlin was the preferred destination of 'Jaffna Tamils' during the years when the LTTE was on the rampage and V Prabhakaran led a brutal campaign, testing the loyalty of his cadre by asking them to turn into human bombs. The immigrant 'Tigers' indulged in ruthless extortion, forcing indigent fellow Tamils to part with their meagre earnings; ran a flourishing trade in human trafficking, extracting a hefty fee from those whom they helped enter Germany illegally; and, were involved in a variety of crimes ranging from peddling drugs to pimping for minor Tamil girls forced into prostitution.
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Celebrating Tagore in Berlin

Here I am in Berlin, strolling down Kurfurstendamm on a windy, rain swept afternoon... Each day culture is celebrated in this city, though by a dwindling tribe of connoisseurs, in one form or another. Liberalism in Berlin has a saucily rebellious edge to it. Some would describe it as snobbishly subversive. Either way, it's all very charmingly heady. As the season of cultural events draws to a close, the highlight of this year's autumn is a grand exhibition of 98 paintings by Rabindranath Tagore, evocatively titled 'The Last Harvest'.
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Of Shashi, Ismail and shorshe begun

A wall of scarlet roses blocked the doorway, a massive bouquet held by a slightly built man. That was Ismail Merchant, trying to figure out how to get the roses in. After much struggle, that task was accomplished. Behind him stood Shashi Kapoor, a beatific smile creasing his face, a shawl casually draped across his shoulders. "Ismail stopped at a florist and picked up all the roses," Shashi Kapoor was almost apologetic. "No," Ismail Merchant corrected him, "I wanted 1001 roses but you wouldn't let me count them." Shashi Kapoor gently pushed him in.

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Maobadis and the law

The curious case of Binayak Sen

Is life term for Sen unfair?
(Watch video)
Big Fight, NDTV
Dec 25, 2010

Spurious protests over Binayak Sen

What is Section 124A?” Binayak Sen is reported to have asked the trial court judge after being held guilty of sedition and sentenced to life imprisonment. It is possible that Sen, accused and found guilty of helping Maoists in Chhattisgarh, was genuinely unaware of this particular section of the IPC. But ignorance of the law is not a tenable defence in the courts...

(Read more)

Left-lib sheds glycerine tears for Binayak Sen

Within minutes of the Chhattisgarh High Court refusing to grant bail to Binayak Sen, Delhi’s Left-liberal commentariat rushed to voice its disappointment and anger at what it described as “justice not being done”. A television anchor, famous for shrilly denouncing anything that does not fit into the Left-liberal (read libertine) worldview of jholawallahs, declared that the judge had dismissed Binayak Sen’s petition for bail “in less than a minute”.

(Read more)

Blog Polls

Has CWG corruption sullied India's image?
Yes: 74 (99%)
No: 1 (1%)
DK/CS: 0 (0%)
Total votes polled: 75

Is CWG an open loot?
Yes: 86 (86%)
No: 1 (1%)
DK/CS: 13 (13%)
Total votes polled: 100

Is Congress misusing CBI in Sohrabuddin case?
Yes: 344 (95%)
No: 13 (4%)
DK/CS: 5 (1%)
Total votes polled: 362

Should President's 'religious beliefs' decide mercy petitions from death row prisoners?
Yes: 3 (2%)
No: 123 (98%)
DK/CS: 0
Total votes polled: 126

Is it 'unpatriotic' to blame Rajiv Gandhi for letting Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson flee India?
Yes: 4 (2%)
No: 165 (97%)
DK/CS: 1
Total votes polled: 170

Should Arjun Singh be prosecuted for setting Warren Anderson free?
Yes: 113 (85%)
No: 4 (3 %)
DK/CS: 4 (3%)
It's Congress culture: 42 (31%)
Don't blame Congress: 6 (4%)
Total votes polled: 132

Has Israel acted justly in stopping Gaza flotilla?
Yes: 221 (80%)
No: 44 (16%)
DK/CS: 9 (3%)
Total votes polled: 274

Abani, baari aachho?

Shakti Chattopadhyay

অবনী বাড়ি আছো

দুয়ার এঁটে ঘুমিয়ে আছে পাড়া
কেবল শুনি রাতের কড়ানাড়া
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

বৃষ্টি পড়ে এখানে বারোমাস
এখানে মেঘ গাভীর মতো চরে
পরান্মুখ সবুজ নালিঘাস
দুয়ার চেপে ধরে--
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

আধেকলীন-- হৃদয়ে দূরগামী
ব্যথার মাঝে ঘুমিয় পড়ি আমি
সহসা শুনি রাতের কড়ানাড়া
'অবনী, বাড়ি আছো?'

Ôboni baŗi achho

Duar ẽţe ghumie achhe paŗa
Kebol shuni rater kôŗanaŗa
"Ôboni, baŗi achho?"

Brishţi pôŗe ekhane baromash
Ekhane megh gabhir môto chôre
Pôranmukh shobuj nalighash
Duar chepe dhôre
"Ôboni, baŗi achho?"

Adheklin hridôee durgami
Bêthar majhe ghumie poŗi ami
Shôhosha shuni rater kôŗanaŗa,
"Ôboni, baŗi achho?"

Abani, are you home?

The neighbourhood is fast asleep...
Suddenly I hear the night knocking at my door,
"Abani, are you home?"

Here it rains through the year
Here the clouds look like grazing cows
Here the lush green grass chokes my doorstep,
"Abani, are you home?"

Tired after my travels
I fall asleep, steeped in pain,
Suddenly I hear the night knocking at my door...
"Abani, are you home?"

[Iconic poetry that defined modern Bengali literature. 1965.]

The Two Christophers

By David Horowitz
I first met Christopher Hitchens in 1970 when I was editing Ramparts, then the largest magazine of the left. Christopher, who was fresh out of Oxford and ten years my junior, was embarking on his first adventure in the New World. When he arrived at my Berkeley office looking for guidance, and after we had gotten acquainted, he asked me in all seriousness, “Where is the working class?” Only the devout left — the “holy rollers” as I thought of them — still believed in this mythical entity in the nation where every man was king. But rather than make an issue of it, I directed my visitor to the local Trotskyists, failing to realize that he was one of them.
Read the scintillating essay here.

France vs Burqa

By Daniel Pipes

The French lower house of Parliament, the National Assembly, has voted 335 to 1 to prohibit from public places all "clothing intended to hide the face" with a €150 fine per breach. This step does not ban niqabs and burqas but constitutes one of many steps in this direction. The Bill fits into a much larger pattern of Western responses to this horrid, dangerous garment. Efforts to ban face coverings have passed or are under way in Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Australia. (The United States is conspicuously absent from this list.) In a review of these initiatives, David Rusin of Islamist Watch dubs them the "fashion trend of the year."
[Full text of article .]

Criminal intent and terrorist funding

By Scott Stewart

Whether we are talking about a small urban terrorist cell or a large-scale rural insurgency, it takes money to maintain a militant organization. It costs money to conduct even a rudimentary terrorist attack, and while there are a lot of variables in calculating the costs of a single attack, in order to simplify things, we’ll make a ballpark estimate of not more than $100 for an attack that involves a single operative detonating an improvised explosive device or using a firearm.
[Full text of STRATFOR Security Weekly.]

Kabab mein haddi!

Iqbal Khan, 48, and his 'bride', 18-year-old Rani, a transgender, after cops broke up their wedding!

By RIAZ KHAN

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Police in northwestern Pakistan broke up an apparent wedding between a businessman and his transgender bride, saying Tuesday they could face seven years in prison for violating laws against same-sex marriage in the devoutly Muslim country.
The pair denied the charges, saying the celebration was a birthday party, not a wedding.
Authorities also detained 43 guests, who were dancing to drums when authorities made the raid Monday in Peshawar city, police official Javed Khan said.
Businessman Iqbal Khan, 48, and his alleged bride, an 18-year-old whose formal name is Kashif but goes by Rani, will be charged with attempted sodomy, police official Shaukat Ali said. If convicted, they could face seven years imprisonment.
Police said the pair denied the gathering was a wedding. But Ali said it was apparent the two were getting married - pointing out that Iqbal Khan, a married father of five, paid 80,000 rupees ($940) to Rani's "guru."
In Pakistan, many transgenders are thrown out by their families and live in communal homes under the leadership of a "guru," a fellow transgender who looks after their needs and takes a cut of their earnings. (AP)

The Caucasus Emirate

Russia’s southernmost republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia are home to fundamentalist separatist insurgencies that carry out regular attacks against security forces and Government officials through the use of suicide bombers, vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, armed assaults and targeted assassinations. However, we have noted a change in the operational tempo of militants in the region. So far in 2010, militants have carried out 23 attacks in the Caucasus, killing at least 34 people — a notable increase over the eight attacks that killed 17 people in the region during the same period last year. These militants have also returned to attacking the far enemy in Moscow and not just the near enemy in the Caucasus...

Read Stratfor's Global Security and Intelligence Report here.

Courtesy: Stratfor

Jihadism and the Importance of Place

By Scott Stewart

From the perspective of a militant group, geography is important but there are other critical factors involved in establishing the suitability of a place. While it is useful to have access to wide swaths of rugged terrain that can provide sanctuary such as mountains, jungles or swamps, for a militant group to conduct large-scale operations, the country in which it is based must have a weak central government — or a government that is cooperative or at least willing to turn a blind eye to the group.

Read Stratfor's latest Global Security and Intelligence Report here.

Shashi Tharoor: Poster-boy of 'New India' falls from grace

Adam’s Family Jewels

Adam and Eve — bar tools set (almost anatomically correct) by EraPhernalia Vintage (here . . . every now & then).

By Tibor Krausz

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and He took the bone of Adam’s penis and made him a woman.”

Er, wait, wasn’t it from one of Adam’s ribs that Eve was created? Not according to Ziony Zevit. A professor of Semitic languages at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles Zevit posits that the Hebrew word tsela (literally “side,” but traditionally translated as “rib”) employed in Genesis refers in fact to Adam’s member.

Read full text here.

Intelligence Update 3

Tactical implications of Headley case

By Scott Stewart

A week after he was arrested in Chicago on Oct. 3, David Coleman Headley was charged in a federal criminal complaint with conspiring to commit terrorist attacks outside the United States and providing material support to terrorist organizations. The charges alleged that Headley was involved in a plot to attack a newspaper in Denmark that had published a collection of cartoons satirizing the Prophet Mohammed in September 2005.

See full text here.

[This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR]

Will Europe put its foot down?

By Hege Storhaug

In recent decades, Islam has exploded in Europe. You can see the changes with your own eyes from year to year – whether it’s the increasing presence of hijabs on the street in a city like Oslo, or the bearded men with ankle-high baggy pants, or the new and resplendent mosques that are under construction. People ask: What is the purpose of this project? Don’t we, as a nation, have a right to pass our own cultural legacy, our traditions and values, on to our children and grandchildren? Should we, in the name of tolerance, give in to the demands made by “others” whose influence is growing, and whose voices are becoming louder, as their numbers increase?

Read full essay here.

In the battle of ideas, symbols are important

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has been in the forefront of the campaign against Islamism, writes:

The recent Swiss referendum that bans construction of minarets has caused controversy across the world. There are two ways to interpret the vote. First, as a rejection of political Islam, not a rejection of Muslims. In this sense it was a vote fortolerance and inclusion, which political Islam rejects. Second, the vote was a revelation of the big gap between how the Swiss people and the Swiss elite judge political Islam...

Read full article here.

Global Muslim Population

A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion. More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world's Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. These minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.
These are some of the key findings of Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Muslim Population.

Ahmadinejad is Hitler reincarnate

Islamist reiterates Holocaust a 'myth'
at Quds Day rally

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was a "myth" as he addressed the annual Quds Day rally in Tehran on Friday, reiterating comments that sparked outrage around the world. "The very existence of this regime is an insult to the dignity of the people," the hardliner said referring to arch-foe Israel. "They (Western powers) launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews. "If as you claim the Holocaust is true, why can a study not be allowed?" the Iranian president said to chants of "Death to Israel" from the crowd gathered for the annual display of solidarity with the Palestinians. "The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie... a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust," he added. "This claim is corrupt and the pretext is corrupt. This (the Israeli) regime's days are numbered and it is on its way to collapse. This regime is dying." Similar comments made by Ahmadinejad shortly after his first election as president in 2005 also sparked an international outcry. Then he said Israel was "doomed to be wiped off the map."

[Tehran, September 18, 2009. Filed by AFP]

French pool bars 'burquini'

http://www.terrassa.net/archivos/223-3923-Imatge/burquini.jpg

By MARIA DANILOVA in PARIS

A Muslim woman garbed in a head-to-toe swimsuit -- dubbed a ‘burquini’ -- may have opened a new chapter in France’s tussle between religious practices and its stern secular code. Officials insisted Wednesday they banned the woman's use of the Islam-friendly suit at a local pool because of France's pool hygiene standards -- not out of hostility to overtly Muslim garb. Under the policy, swimmers are not allowed in pools with baggy clothing, including surfer-style shorts. Only figure-hugging suits are permitted.

Nonetheless the woman, a 35-year-old convert to Islam identified only as Carole, complained of religious discrimination after trying to go swimming in a burquini, a full-body swimsuit, in the town of Emerainville, southeast of Paris. She was quoted as telling the daily Le Parisien that she had bought the burquini after deciding “it would allow me the pleasure of bathing without showing too much of myself, as Islam recommends”. (AP)

Do not go gentle into that good night

By Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Under the Greenwood Tree

By Kanchan Gupta
I remember spending many a recess chatting with friends under the Greenwood Tree, swapping my Kissan mixed fruit jam sandwiches for soggy parathas, sharing Little Johnny jokes and whispering in Hindi which, of course, was prohibited on campus -- the only exception, reluctantly made, was during Hindi classes. We would snigger at the ‘Dingos’ — Anglo-Indian boys — who insisted they were from ‘Chakadapore’ and not Chakradharpur, lived in the school hostel, had runny noses, faintly blue-grey eyes and auburn hair, boasted about their fathers who drove steam engines at ‘jaldi speed’, called jamuns ‘black berries’, and went home for Christmas.
Full text.

CIA, ISI Spawned Taliban

Taliban execute a dissenter. US intervention in Afghanistan has proven not much different from US intervention in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and elsewhere. It had the same intent of preventing egalitarian social change, and the same effect of overthrowing an economically reformist government. In all these instances, the intervention brought retrograde elements into ascendance, left the economy in ruins, and pitilessly laid waste to many innocent lives. Click picture to read essay.

Vande Mataram

वन्दे मातरम् सुजलां सुफलां मलयजशीतलाम् शस्यशामलां मातरम् । शुभ्रज्योत्स्नापुलकितयामिनीं फुल्लकुसुमितद्रुमदलशोभिनीं सुहासिनीं सुमधुर भाषिणीं सुखदां वरदां मातरम् ।। १ ।। वन्दे मातरम् । कोटि-कोटि-कण्ठ-कल-कल-निनाद-कराले कोटि-कोटि-भुजैर्धृत-खरकरवाले, अबला केन मा एत बले । बहुबलधारिणीं नमामि तारिणीं रिपुदलवारिणीं मातरम् ।। २ ।। वन्दे मातरम् । तुमि विद्या, तुमि धर्म तुमि हृदि, तुमि मर्म त्वं हि प्राणा: शरीरे बाहुते तुमि मा शक्ति, हृदये तुमि मा भक्ति, तोमारई प्रतिमा गडि मन्दिरे-मन्दिरे मातरम् ।। ३ ।। वन्दे मातरम् । त्वं हि दुर्गा दशप्रहरणधारिणी कमला कमलदलविहारिणी वाणी विद्यादायिनी, नमामि त्वाम् नमामि कमलां अमलां अतुलां सुजलां सुफलां मातरम् ।। ४ ।। वन्दे मातरम् । श्यामलां सरलां सुस्मितां भूषितां धरणीं भरणीं मातरम् ।। ५ ।। वन्दे मातरम् ।।