It is a two year old worm which has raised its ugly head. If you do not want to be devoured stop reading immediately and switch off the net. Immediately.
….
Web
administrators and computer security researchers on Tuesday scrambled to
fix a serious vulnerability in OpenSSL encryption used by thousands of
web servers, including those run by email and web chat providers. The
bug, dubbed Heartbleed, “allows anyone on the internet to read the
memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the
OpenSSL software”.

In other words hackers or cyber criminals
can use the Heartbleed bug to steal private encryption keys from a
server that is using OpenSSL protocols of SSL/TLS encryption and then
snoop on the user data, including passwords. There are reports that
servers of Yahoo, Imgur and Flickr have been affected. However, this is
around two-year-old bug and hence no one knows for sure how many people
have exploited it at how many servers have been compromised.

The bug is so serious and widespread that Tor Project, which manages the
anonymous Tor network, has advised web users to go offline for a while.
“If you need strong anonymity or privacy on the internet, you might
want to stay away from the internet entirely for the next few days while
things settle,” it said in a blog post.
…
regards

Perhaps there should be a 2-nation theory for muslims: the pure ones who are in a continuing mission (often genocidal) to improve the purity quotient versus the impure ones who mingle with idolaters and still manage to retain their identity and strike a blow for (imperfect) co-existence.

Sometimes the blows have been real and deadly, and they have been directed towards the aforesaid pure people, thereby stopping the zealots in their bloody tracks. That in our opinion is what is so wonderful about this story.

That said our overlords will always find a way to ensure that defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory (and progress). It is not realistic to expect leopards to change their spots, it will take a new generation of leaders to place the abstract notions of liberty, equality and fraternity on a firm pedestal. Here is hoping.
….
Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan has
kicked up another controversy when he said it was “Muslim soldiers” who
fought for India’s victory in the 1999 Kargil war against Pakistan.

The controversy-prone Khan, a minister in the Uttar Pradesh
government, dragged the Kargil conflict into the ongoing high voltage
Lok Sabha campaign at an election rally in Ghaziabad last night.


 
“Those who fought for victory in Kargil were not Hindu soldiers, in
fact the ones who fought for our victory were Muslim soldiers,” he said
in a speech laced with communal overtones.

Khan also went on to say that no one can guard the country’s borders better than those from the Muslim community.


 
“Recruit us in the Indian Army. No one can guard the borders of our nation better than us,” he said.


 
Former Army Chief Gen VK Singh, who is the BJP candidate from
Ghaziabad Lok Sabha constituency, condemned Khan’s remarks, saying the
Kargil war was “won by Indians”. “Anybody who talks of caste, creed and religion in the army needs to
be condemned. He may be anybody. The war was won by Indians and not by
any caste, creed, society, religion,” he said.

…
regards

The anti- religious offense laws come from the 19th century and remain stuck because the attitudes of the community leaders (all of them) which remain firmly in place (and may actually be inching backwards to 7th century and beyond). You have the case of MF Hussain who had to leave his native land, Taslima Nasreen who had to abandon her second home (after being expelled from her native land) and Salman Rushdie who will never be able to speak live in front of an Indian audience.

The religious mafia(s) are making it clear that they are hurt by every spoken word and will inflict maximum pain in return. It is time for the intellectuals to lead the battle but they have remained passive (unless some Hindutva angle is present). Why not demonstrate some principles for a change and stand up against intimidation by the bullies??

….
If Narendra Modi moves to Race Course Road this summer, India is set
for an epic culture war. Even if he remains as cautious in office as he
is being as a prime ministerial candidate, a future BJP-led government
in New Delhi would chill India’s beleaguered liberals to the bone. They
are already on the backfoot, since over the last ten years Congress has
not shown the slightest interest in protecting, for example, the
individual’s right to free speech. Nor has it reconsidered how a
commitment to the separation of State and religion might be updated for
the 21st century. 

The idea of offense and blasphemy in India remains
old-fashioned, with both offenders and offended following an imported
19th century script. As the original Penal Code of 1860 states,
imprisonment will be the punishment for anyone who ‘with the deliberate
intention of wounding the religious feelings of any person, utters any
word or makes any sound in the hearing of that person’.


For decades now, the idea of personal liberty in the form of
Nehruvian secularism and freedom of expression has failed to gain much
popular traction. This is not to suggest any infringement of freedom of
belief would ever be tolerated by India’s citizens, or that Indians lack
the right to openly express an opinion in a way that remains forbidden
in many countries, but rather that the current form of the debate
remains elitist and abstruse, and is often confined to the
English-language media. 

Thus a ban on a film or book may get reported
around the world as an attack on freedom, but it will rarely draw an
Indian crowd onto the streets. A dispute over the upkeep of the Dargah
Shah-e-Mardan, on the other hand, will, for example, produce over 25,000
passionate protestors, as happened earlier this month in Delhi; but it
will barely be reported in India and will be ignored internationally, as
if it were of no consequence.


What passes for secularism in India—which in practice is often a
system whereby political parties secure Muslim votes by wooing
hereditary and religious leaders—has its roots in the shift away from
reform and conversion in the wake of the great rebellion.


Queen Victoria, influenced by her well-educated German husband
Albert, had an aversion to Christian bishops and a great dislike for
missionaries. She even objected to her children’s governess telling them
to kneel while saying their prayers in the evening. Why couldn’t they
just lie in bed and pray? The settlement after 1857, with power passing
from the East India Company to the British Crown, was a way to maintain
British power at a time of weakness, but it was also a statement of
Victoria’s own beliefs.


Against the advice of her ministers, Queen Victoria made amendments
to a proclamation of future government policy, stating that from now on,
nobody in India would be ‘in any wise favoured, none molested or
disquieted by reason of their religious faith or observances, but that
all shall alike enjoy the equal and impartial protection of the law; and
we do strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority
under us that they abstain from all interference with the religious
belief or worship of any of our subjects’. This was—in an era when
Britain still had legalised discrimination against Jews and
Catholics—quite a step to be taking.


Individual freedom of conscience came first: missionary organisations
quickly flooded Windsor Castle with letters of complaint, but Victoria
did not budge. The toleration of the Indian state was guaranteed. More
than 150 years later, the royal proclamation of 1858 forms the basis of
India’s policy of freedom of belief. In Pakistan, the situation
reversed: the state legally discriminates against heretics.


The difficulty with the shape that toleration now takes in India is
not the theory, which remains admirable, but the practice. If artists
are in trouble with outraged members of a religious group, they are at
risk. If a film or a book is suppressed for spurious reasons by a
politician or a court order, the state will do nothing at all to protect
the right to liberty of expression. If Salman Rushdie appears at a
public event, no ‘secular’ leader will go near him, for fear of
contagion. A supposedly representative Hindu opponent of an academic
book will use outmoded and imported Christian arguments against impiety,
and ignore the expansive, eclectic traditions of Hinduism—in which
devotion is too intense to be troubled by the petty misrepresentations
of others.


A beleaguered liberal, asked what should be done about this impasse,
will generally answer that the Indian state needs to intervene legally
or physically at times of threat, and securitise the right to freedom of
speech—while knowing this is a political impossibility.  

What seems to
happen remarkably rarely (and much less, I think than it used to in the
post-independence years) is direct engagement between the opposing sides
of such arguments. It is striking that both Hindu and Muslim
traditionalists complain privately of being excluded from any
opportunity to discuss what it is that offends them, and feel they
suffer if their command of English is shaky.

When it comes to electoral politics, the assertion of secular values
is even more skewed. Indian Muslims still suffer from social exclusion,
lack of secure employment and chronic tokenism.


Earlier this year, I spent time with a Muslim leader in central India
who had an iron grip on his community: he, or his family, had control
of access to places at an engineering and medical college, the
opportunity for individuals to stand for election, and even the chance
to start a business. If an outside politician wished to hold a meeting
in the local areas under his control, they had first to seek the
leader’s permission. In his own view, and it was not wholly without
foundation, the power he wielded was necessary to protect the minority
community from hostile communal forces.


He spoke of progress. Would it not be helpful, I asked, if India had a
single law that applied equally to all citizens on matters such as
marriage, inheritance and the adoption of children? Absolutely not, he
answered, as I had expected. But the present divided system, a leftover
from earlier times, significantly weakens personal liberty by subsuming
individuals into a system of control based on compulsory group identity. Indian Muslim women, for example, can still be divorced by the utterance of the triple talaaq.
In many Islamic countries, this has been prohibited as archaic. Even
across the border, the triple talaaq was abolished under the Pakistani
Muslim Family Laws Ordinance in more liberal times in 1961. In India, it
remains firmly in place.

If any of these myriad areas of contention are to be improved, the
change has to come from what in India is perhaps inaccurately called the
left: secularists, progressives, liberals and former and current
communists. Were a BJP-led administration headed by Narendra Modi to try
installing a uniform civil code, for instance, the country would turn
into a sea of protest; coalition partners would fall away, probably
bringing down the government.

….

regards

The ink comes from the factory that the Mysore Maharajah had built and goes onto the voting finger around the world. Only one little company knows the secret recipe for indebility (unfortunately not fool-proof, yet). An Indian technology success story (until China figures out how to make it) which in addition to earning foreign exchange also contributes to  the Indian democracy brand.
…
Each bottle contains 10 ml of indelible ink.
“The contents of the bottle or the chemical formula used in its
manufacture is a State secret. Otherwise, people will start making
efforts to wipe the ink away and subvert the democratic process,’’ says
Hara Kumar, managing director, marketing, of the company.



Five years ago, the unit dispatched 1.9 million bottles to the EC. In
2014, the demand is up by almost 20 per cent. “Around 70 per cent of the
total order has already been transported to various state capitals
while the rest is being manufactured using a single shift,” says Kumar.

In the last financial year, the company’s turnover was Rs 18.92 crore
with a net profit of Rs 2.29 crore; 50-70 per cent of its total sales
can be attributed to indelible ink. Moreover, the company earns foreign
exchange too. It exports indelible ink to 28 countries in Asia and
Africa, including Turkey, Bhutan, Malaysia, Nepal, South Africa,
Nigeria, Ghana, Papua New- Guinea and Canada. It also supplies voters’
ink to the United Nations.

This company was started by the Mysore Royal family in 1937 and was
once called Mysore Lac and Paint Works Ltd. At the time, the company
also made special paints for application on war tanks. It was in 1962
that the company was granted an exclusive licence to manufacture and
supply indelible ink to the EC by the National Research Development
Corporation, Delhi.

“Indelible ink was used for the first time in the 1962 election.

Kumar says that over the years, the company has changed the
composition of the ink to address complaints that it can be easily
rubbed off. “Technically, once applied it will stay bright for more than
ten days and start fading only afterward. There is no chance that a
person can rub it off immediately and go to another booth to cast a
second vote,’’ he says.

Regardless of what Kumar or the teacher say, booth-level political
workers admit that the ink can indeed be erased. Assorted cleaning
agents may be used for the job: anything from toothpaste, hand
sanitisers, nail polish removers to dish washing liquids and alcohol.
And if those don’t work all that well, there are several YouTube videos
that demonstrate how to unmark your finger.
….
regards

Q. What did you have to pay to have your case heard?

A. Nothing sahib. NOT a penny. This is Islamic law sahib, not the Pakistani courts.
Q. What if they start passing bad orders?
A. Sahib, you think this is a joke, but this is not a joke. They are good people and they have changed the face of Waziristan. They are organized. They follow Islamic law. Why would they give bad orders?
anyone can make one mistake. but if they stop following Islamic law, we would all stop obeying them. After all, we know what Islamic law is. Disputes going back centuries have been settled in days. It is
almost like what you hear about the coming of Islam in Arabia. You too should do dawah and convert some kafirs in America to save your akhirat (afterlife). We Muslims should have rule of law. Look at the kafirs, they have rule of law, even though those are man-made laws, not the laws of Allah. We
should not be ruled by corrupt generals or other self seeking persons. Wouldn’t it be better to be ruled by Islamic law? Wouldnt it be better to have real justice? under the Taliban, even the weak have rights. Alhamdolillah.

Addressed to whoever is in charge of the universe: spare us the wonderful new age where we contemplate relationship problems with our personal digital assistants. This way lies complete societal collapse as we know it. Spare the Siri so that your child does not grow up to be a complete moronic automaton.

….
One of the unexpected pleasures of modern parenthood is
eavesdropping on your ten-year-old as she conducts existential
conversations with an iPhone. “Who are you, Siri?” “What is the meaning
of life?” Pride becomes bemusement, though, as the questions degenerate
into abuse. “Siri, you’re stupid!” Siri’s unruffled response—“I’m sorry
you feel that way”—provokes “Siri, you’re fired!”

….
regards

Rajanna Uganawadi and his ancestors have been working the soil on the outskirts of Bangalore as long as anyone can remember. Their seven acres are a patchwork of green plots pieced together amid the new apartment complexes sprouting up on farmland around India’s IT capital.

Next to Uganawadi’s cement-block house, a yellow tanker truck painted with lotus flowers backs up next to a stand of young banana trees. The stench of toilet water hangs in the air as a young man pops open a spout and a heavy stream of clear liquid and brown sludge sprays from the truck onto the base of the trees. It’s untreated sewage from a large apartment complex nearby.

From Waste to Resource

The man repeats this all day – draining out septic tanks and delivering the contents to farmers around Bangalore. It’s an extreme twist on the old adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

”So that’s it,” the man says. “I meet the need. Some people want it to be emptied and I take it from them and I give it to those who want it.”

The neo-con motto: sometimes you have to burn down the barn in order to spring clean the house. In medical/surgical terms, the doctors will declare the operation a success (aka mission accomplished) even if the patient shuffles off his mortal coil.

Many americans are (justifiably) convinced that their country is a force for the good. Indeed there are defenders of the empire who aver that the US Army should be the default awardee of the Nobel Peace prize (due to its role as globo-cop).

Of course when you are rich and powerful, the very people you wish to protect will want throw insults (and sticks) at you. People will accuse you of all sorts of crimes: betrayal of a trusted friend, vaccination masquerading as a sterilization program, twitter messaging to trigger a revolution….the list goes on.

Reihan Salam does not mind the ingratitude and would like to keep playing with a straight bat for the greater good of the world. And also because it is personal. However his argument about the Bangladesh war leaves us (a bit) confused. Richard Nixon never found the time (and the will) to tell the genocidal Pak Army to back off (despite being warned by his own diplomat of the innocent blood being spilled). As Reihan himself admits, all it required was for Nixon to lift his (little) finger- no invasions, no “moralistic crusades” were required.

The “neocon” in the Bangladesh war was Mrs Gandhi. Even though Reihan does not quite give her the full credit (that is due from one brother to the other), she withdrew her army once the battle was over and handed off power to the Bangladeshis. Perhaps America would have done good by following her example. Defeating Saddam was the easy part, it was winning the peace which proved bothersome for the USA in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

At a bare minimum, those of
us who favored the war might have hoped for a democratic Iraq in which
the rights of ethnic and religious minorities were respected and that
was more closely aligned with the United States than Iran. The new Iraq
fails on both of these counts.

….
regards

South Asia has always been identified as the most likely place where nuclear war-fare is likely to break out. we are now one step closer to that nightmare.

India has a no-first use nuclear policy while Pakistan does not. That may change with a new BJP govt at the helm. While this may appear only to be of symbolic importance nevertheless symbols are important. There should have been out of the box thinking (whereby NaMo would sit down with NaSha and discuss ways and means to strengthen regional security) instead what we have is more macho posturing.
….
The
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), widely tipped to form the next government,
pledged on Monday to revise India’s nuclear doctrine, whose central
principle is that New Delhi would not be first to use atomic weapons in a
conflict.
Unveiling its election manifesto, the party gave no
details, but sources involved in drafting the document said the
“no-first-use” policy introduced after India conducted a series of
nuclear tests in 1998 would be reconsidered.

Arch-rival Pakistan, which responded within weeks that year by conducting tests of its own, does not profess “no first use”.

The BJP made no mention of reviewing nuclear policy in its manifesto for the previous elections in 2009.

India adopted a no-first-use policy at a
time when it was under pressure from punitive embargoes by western
nations for its nuclear tests, but since then it has been unofficially
accepted as a nuclear power. The no-first-use policy was based on a premise that India would
retaliate so massively against a nuclear strike that an enemy would not
contemplate such a move in the first place.

However, a source
who advises the BJP said there has been significant debate in recent
years about being bound to the policy given the advances of Pakistan’s
nuclear capability.

He said Pakistan’s nuclear inventory may
have already overtaken that of its neighbour, and it has claimed
progress in miniaturization of weapons for use on the battlefield. “Do we need tactical weapons? This issue was never raised and discussed
because at the time it was not a concern.” said another source involved
in drawing up the manifesto.

There was no immediate reaction from the Pakistan government or its military, which controls foreign and defence policy. A former Pakistani national security adviser, retired Major General
Mahmud Ali Durrani, said he would not be concerned if India revised the
central tenet of its nuclear doctrine. “I don’t think it will
be of great consequence,” he said. “The nuclear doctrine here is MAD
(mutually assured destruction). If one side does it, the other side has
enough to cause unacceptable damage in response.”

….

regards