Tag: India

The Little War That Could

Inkwell Institute

War/Conflict Desk

Since my stint in the army I have studied war and conflicts and their causes and effects…….there is one that I have been watching for many years and it is the one that could push the limits of acceptability…….

While we were watching the antics of the police in Ferguson and the world’s reaction and while we were mouthing our disgust at the actions of ISIS and the death of Foley….a small conflict that has been simmering for decades erupted into a minor skirmish that could turn ugly with a capital “U”………there is so much more to the world than in our little prism…

Let’s return to the year 1947………The partition of the Indian sub-continent along religious lines led to the formation of India and Pakistan. However, there remained the problem of over 650 states, run by princes, existing within the two newly independent countries.

Because of its location, Kashmir could choose to join either India or Pakistan. Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of Kashmir, was Hindu while most of his subjects were Muslim.  Unable to decide which nation Kashmir should join, Hari Singh chose to remain neutral.

Indian and Pakistani forces thus fought their first war over Kashmir in 1947-48. India referred the dispute to the United Nations on 1 January.   In a resolution dated August 13, 1948, the UN asked Pakistan to remove its troops, after which India was also to withdraw the bulk of its forces.

In all there have been 3 wars fought over Kashmir region….1947, 1965 and 1999……and during the lulls of actual war there have been many cross border skirmishes between the army of India and Pakistan.

The wars have been over territory but they are also as much about religion as the province of Kashmir……..you know me……there has got to be a reason that I bring up this conflict…a conflict that few seem to care about……

And you would be right in the assumption that there is something going on in the neighborhood of Kashmir…….on 24 August 2014 Reuters reported…….

– Indian and Pakistani troops intensified firing across the border over the weekend killing at least four, an Indian official said on Sunday, straining ties between the arch rivals who recently called off top-level diplomatic talks.

Last week India said its foreign secretary would not meet with her Pakistani counterpart as scheduled on Monday because of plans by Pakistan to consult separatists from the border state of Jammu and Kashmir ahead of the meeting.

 

According to India’s Defence Ministry, there have been 70 ceasefire violations by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir since Modi took over.

 

“Pakistani troops violated ceasefire again today and restored to heavy firing targeting 22 Border Security Force (BSF) posts,” BSF Inspector General for Jammu frontier, Rakesh Sharma, told Reuters.

There we have a couple of odd army units firing across some line at each other….what could possibly make this so damn important?

These two countries have fought 3 wars over the region….if that is not bad enough both of these countries are nuclear capable states…….think about that for a couple of minutes.  This region could hold the key to the next ‘great war’.

 

Does War Return?

Inkwell Institute

World Desk

While most Americans were glued to their tellie watching and listen for the buzz words that would send them into a political frenzy….Benghazi……Benghazi…..and Benghazi……….the amusing point of the this whole silly stuation….it is so damn important but less that 30% of Americans could find Benghazi on a map…..I digress……while Americans were otherwise distracted the world’s largest democracy had a national election.

Yes, I am talking about India and its 500 million voters…….since 1947, the year of their independence from the British Empire the politics have been ruled by the Gandhi family and the Congress party…….but all that influence and power came crashing down around their ears……..a man named Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)………..which in most cases would be an improvement over a single party rule….but in this case I have my doubts.

Why?  Modi and the BJP are ultra-nationalistic Hindus……..in the past he has made some disturbing comments…….Modi’s warnings that Muslim immigrants in the east better have their “bags packed” seem especially ominous when one considers his administration oversaw the 2002 Gujarat riots, which saw the deaths of at least 790, and by some accounts nearly 2,000, Muslim civilians……….Modi’s provincial cabinet ministers were accused of direct involvement in the riots, and while Modi himself was never firmly implicated he has since 2005 been denied entry to the United States. Despite this, the US says that it “looks forward” to working with Modi’s government.

Modi is a member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a cultish paramilitary group of ultra-nationalist Hindu activists founded in the 1930s and modeled along the same lines as various right-wing ethno-nationalist groups in the ascendant at the time: the Italian fascists, the German National Socialists, and the right-wing Zionist followers of Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Gandhi’s assassin was an RSS militant, and the group has been at the center of the anti-Muslim riots that have wracked India in recent times.

At the core of RSS-BJP ideology is the idea of Hindutva, which idealizes Indian ethnicity and upholds a mythology that portrays Indians as the first pure “Aryan” race, which supposedly sprang from the Arctic region eons ago. Partisans of Hindutva adopted the swastika – an ancient Indian symbol – as the emblem of their movement, and the constitution of RSS specifies that the leader of the cult must be a blue-eyed Sarasvat Brahmin.

I bring all this up for one simple reason….Kashmir.

An area of India that is claimed by Pakistan and to a small portion of China…….the region is predominately Muslim and has been in contention since independence in 1947.  Several small wars have been fought in the past over this region…..and because of the conflict both sides of the situation has nuclear weapons….mull over that for  bit.

Since Modi is linked to anti-Muslim sentiments will this become a major sticking point now that he is in “control”?

Maybe not right away…..he needs to time to consolidate is power base and then the real Modi will surface……..either for good or bad.

There is more at stake in the world than who knew what in northern Libya.

Who Are The BRICS?

Here i must give my readers a warning….they may want to sit down for this…..recently our guy Mitt Romney trying to boost his foreign policy cred called Russia the most important problem for the US…..that they were enemy #1…….here is the rub…….I agree with Mitt on this…..SURPRISE!  Not because of his lame ass attempt to look relevant but rather situations developing in the world……

While most of the Us has been voicing their opinion on what occurred the night that Trayvon Martin died there has been a meeting of the BRICS……these are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa……or what we call the “developing world”……

annual summit of the so-called Brics countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – has received scant attention in the west. That may be because the grouping has achieved little in concrete terms since its inception in 2009. Critics deride it as a photo-op and talking shop.

But this neglect, or disdain, may also reflect the fact that the Brics, representing almost half the world’s population and about one-fifth of global economic output, pose an unwelcome challenge to the established world order as defined by the US-dominated UN security council, the IMF and the World Bank. The truth of the matter probably lies somewhere in-between. The five national leaders – presidents Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Dmitri Medvedev of Russia, Hu Jintao of China and Jacob Zuma of South Africa and their host in Delhi, India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh – are not noted for iconoclastic radicalism.

Brics boosters project a grandiose vision. India’s commerce secretary, Anand Sharma, said this week the group sought nothing less than “to create a new global architecture”. But commentators interpret such ambitions as essentially anti-American hot air. Pointing to a signal lack of substantive policy agreements, they suggest a desire to counter Washington’s global dominance is the Brics’ sole unifying objective.

“There are calls to establish a permanent secretariat and even a development bank in an effort to bolster the grouping’s political impact,” wrote Walter Ladwig of the Royal United Services Institute. “But this focus on institution-building is misplaced. It is the fundamental incompatibility of the Brics nations, not their lack of organisation, which prevents [them] acting as a meaningful force on the world stage”. Ladwig continued: “Beyond the issues of economic governance, in many key areas the Brics nations are actually in strategic competition. Within Asia, India and Russia are potential obstacles to China’s presumed regional dominance. At the international level, Russia, Brazil and India desire the emergence of a multipolar international system in which they are major actors, with the latter two seeking membership in an expanded UN security council.

Read More…

The US has faced the formation of the EU, which was basically set up in this fashion but has learned to live with it…….but the BRICS will be a different story altogether………more competition in the world and when there are moves to end the dollar usage in the world economy……(post to follow)…….

Send A Thank You To Our Leaders

Inkwell Institute

International Desk

We have heard all the political rhetoric about the decline of American trade and how we are losing the race to the Chinese and the Indians….the Dems blame the lack of education and innovation…the Repubs blame it on the debt…they blame everything on the debt…..but are they just bumping their gums or is there truly a decline?

According to the prestigious firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers:

According to the report by PwC, the coming years will see global trade undergo “fundamental change” as emerging economies such as China and India begin to “dominate the top sea and air freight routes”.PwC’s findings are in line with the World Bank’s prediction that China’s economy will eclipse the US by 2030, if it can sustain its growth.

Its chief economist Justin Lin said on Wednesday that, if China continued to grow at an annual rate of 8%, it would be twice the size of the US economy in 20 years.

It is official……if we continue to do NOTHING we will become a second class trader in the world economy…..but what can we do is build a fire under the lame ass pigs in Washington that have created this situation…them and their special interest handlers…….thanx to such dynamite things as free trade agreements and banks that do nothing more than move money around and paper work…..they, banks, no longer invest in America and that is where we have gone terribly wrong, by allowing these people to do this and get away with killing an industry…….

What we need are politicians with courage and that is a dying breed……we need people that care about their country and NOT the next campaign…and as long as we allow this situation to continue the quicker we can kiss a prosperous country good-bye!

A Better Way To Till Your Fields

It is another one of those weeks where there was a tempest of accusatiopns from both sides and absolutely NOTHING was accomplished in Washington….looks like all were just farting around until they can have yet another break from doing as little as possible and getting paid for that action…..not a bad job if you can get it.

For that reason I have another Sexy Sunday report for my readers enjoy.

This latest tidbit is from an article in Reuters:

Farmers in an eastern Indian state have asked their unmarried daughters to plow parched fields naked in a bid to embarrass the weather gods to bring some badly needed monsoon rain, officials said on Thursday.Witnesses said the naked girls in Bihar state plowed the fields and chanted ancient hymns after sunset to invoke the gods. They said elderly village women helped the girls drag the plows.

“They (villagers) believe their acts would get the weather gods badly embarrassed, who in turn would ensure bumper crops by sending rains,” Upendra Kumar, a village council official, said from Bihar’s remote Banke Bazaar town.

Now if you think about it…the US has some of its worst droughts since the 1920’s…if this works in India…I say let us try it here….besides naked women doing work in the fields has got to be more interesting than watching some over weight redneck on a tractor….Just a thought.  The only problem would be that we probably would not see all the “goodies” because of the massive tatoos.  Oh well……..

India-Russia Nuke Deal

Wait!  Did not the US just soign a nuke deal with India?  Why do they need this much assistance?

President Medvedev signed the accord in the Indian capital, Delhi, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The deal follows the landmark civilian nuclear accord between India and United States earlier this year.

In September, the Nuclear Suppliers Group lifted a ban that had stopped India from getting access to the global nuclear market.

The Russian agreement is part of a series of deals, including ones on space and defence sales.

But wait there is more.

And India will buy 80 military helicopters from Russia, cementing a relationship that dates back to the Cold War.

President Medvedev also pledged to support India’s fight against terrorism following last week’s Mumbai attacks.

The Russian president is on a three-day visit. On his arrival in Delhi, he was welcomed with a full military salute at the presidential palace.

Later, he visited the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian nation.

India and Russia have been traditional allies and around 70% of India’s military hardware comes from Russia.

note:  damn I have been busy!  this is my 2500th post since April……wordy old fart, huh?

Will There Be A New World Order?

The present crisis did not come out of the blue, it has been in the making for decades, accelerated by deregulation, privatisation, and other economic rationalist policies (neo-liberalism), globalisation and the domination of larger and larger and ever more power­ful monopolies. The most powerful and greedy, the most parasitic and non-productive of these were the giant financial conglomerates. They built the shaky house of cards that spans the globe and is crumbling today.

Nobody is daring to predict the outcome of the present financial crisis, not even how many years it might take to work through. With foreign sovereign funds lined up to take the pickings and massive new debts accumulating to foreign central banks and more takeovers in the wings, the control and ownership of private investment capital is set for a very substantial restructuring and with it considerable shift in economic and political power.
Spending more on the military and starting more wars will not restore the US as the sole super power. US imperialism looks set to be substantially weakened as an international power, although not any less dangerous or desperate to assert global domination.

China is on the ascendancy, and other economic centres including, India and Russia, pose serious threats to US economic interests. Europe also poses a challenge, but it remains to be seen how well it can shore itself up against US developments.

Such shifts in power have been in process for some time; this financial crisis could see them take a new leap forward.

India Flexes Its Muscle

The Mumbai, an Indian warship, was slicing through choppy monsoon seas one recent morning when a helicopter swooped in overhead. Commandos slithered down a rope, seizing control of the destroyer.

It was a drill, Indian soldiers taking over an Indian ship. But the purpose was to train them to seize other countries’ ships in distant oceans, a sign of a new military assertiveness for the world’s second-most-populous nation.

India, which gave the world the idea of Gandhian nonviolence, has long derided the force-projecting ways of the great powers. It focused its own military on self-defense against two neighbors, Pakistan and China.

“India sees itself in a different light — not looking so much inward and looking at Pakistan, but globally,” said William S. Cohen, a secretary of defense in the Clinton administration who in his new role as a lobbyist represents American firms seeking weapons contracts in India. “It’s sending a signal that it’s going to be a big player.”

India is buying armaments that major powers like the United States use to operate far from home: aircraft carriers, giant C-130J transport planes and airborne refueling tankers. Meanwhile, India has helped to build a small air base in Tajikistan that it will share with its host country. It is modern India’s first military outpost on foreign soil.

India’s buildup has several overlapping motivations. It now trades vigorously with the world, most critically in oil. It has bought oil fields or engaged in exploration in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Russia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and beyond. Not coincidentally, it has demonstrated a new interest in keeping the sea lanes through which that oil and other wares sail free of pirates and militants.

A more robust military is also vital for protecting millions of Indian workers in the Persian Gulf, who are from time to time threatened by political volatility. But the most pressing motivation may be the fast-moving Chinese.