India Changes Hands

 

This is a very important story you're not hearing much about.

India's government has changed hands radically as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the elections in a landslide, displacing the Congress party coalition that had ruled the world's most populous democracy for a decade. This was a massive election that took five weeks and involved tallying over 550 million votes.

Not only did the BJP win decisively,but they apparently have won enough mandates in India's 543 seat lower house, the the Lok Sabha to rule without having to form a coalition (The Lok Sabha is diorectly elected by India's people, while the upper house, the Rajya Sabha consists of members appointed by India's president and elected by thv ariuose state and territorial legislatures).

This means that India's Prime Minister will be Narendra Modi.

 

In his victory speech, he pledged to create a “shining India” that will make the 21st century “India’s century.”

“India’s social differences will come together and make a flag, just like different threads come together to weave a cloth,” Modi said. “People rose above caste rhetoric, a new foundation has been laid and will build a new shining India in the coming days.”

Modi is from one of India's lower castes.

Some of the key issues in the election were corruption, economic stagnation and ineffectual leadership by the quasi-socialist Congress party. India's growth rate has slowed, inflation is a major problem and investment has been curtailed by corruption and over-regulation from India's bureaucracy.

Modi promised voters a pro-business administration, fiscal responsibility, a more muscular foreign policy and clean , honest government.His record of economic growth in his home state of Gujarat was amjor selling point. His election sent the Indian stock market, the Sensex, soaring, and the rupee strengthened against the dollar.

A key question is how the Obama Administration is going to get along with Modi and the BJP. Relations between America and India plummeted to a new low.

One of the first things President did was to hammer on the Indian government about how they needed to 'make a settlement on Kashmir'. This shocked the Indians, who responded forcefully that the status quo was fine as far as they were concerned and the president (this is almost a direct quote) was 'barking up the wrong tree. He further angered them by excluding India from any meaningful input on Afghanistan, and by making a disgraceful deal with terrorist David Headly, AKA Daood Gilani. Headly, you might remember was the 'point man' for the hideous 2011 Mumbai terrorist attacks promulgated by Lashkar-e-Tiaba and Pakistan's ISI, scouting out targets in advance and recording coordinates for the terrorists on a GPS. The Obama Administration refused to even let Indian intel interrogate Headly directly, let alone extradite him. The President's conduct while in India where he refused to visit the Golden Temple further alienated India, and the recent disrespectful handling and arrest of one of India's diplomats last December in New York pretty much destroyed whatever was left of any good relations between India's previous Singh government and the U.S.

The Obama Administration has similar problems with Modi, mainly because the BJP's Hindu Nationalist stance was felt to be 'anti-Islamic'. However, the president took the initiative to telephone Modi, congratulate him on his election and invite him to visit the United States.

In a sense, Modi appears to be on the path to be India's Reagan. A populist, he faces the same challenges in many ways economically that President Reagan did, and his historic election appears to have been sparked by the same issues.

This is an historic change for India, and hopefully one for the better.

India Independence Day!!

Today is the day when the world's most populous democracy celebrates its independence. From Kashmir to Tamil Nadu, from Maharashtra to West Bengal, India's people are taking pride in their freedoms and their accomplishments:

 




खुश स्वतंत्रता दिवस, भारत

Many more!

More Chuck Hagel: He Accuses India of Terrorist Attacks On Pakistan!

This is just too precious.

Apparently, Hagel doesn't just  have a problem with Israel, Jews and Armenians...he hates India too!

From the Free Beacon via  Simply Jews:

I think I like the presidential candidate for the post of US secretary of defense more and more. A man who is able to use metaphor so fluently... but judge for yourself:

The Embassy of India chided secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel late Monday for suggesting in a previously unreleased 2011 speech that India has “for many years” sponsored terrorist activities against Pakistan in Afghanistan.

“India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan” in Afghanistan, Hagel said during a 2011 address on Afghanistan at Oklahoma’s Cameron University, according to video of the speech obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

India experts also criticized Hagel’s remarks earlier Monday as “paranoid” and “over-the-top.”

“It’s both over-the-top and a sharp departure from a U.S. position that has seen democratic India as a stabilizing influence in Afghanistan and Asia more broadly,” Sadanand Dhume, former India bureau chief at the Far Eastern Economic Review and current resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Free Beacon.

“It’s also exactly the sort of statement that would have frayed ties with New Delhi, which has been watching the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan with concern,” Dhume said, referring to the administration’s plan to remove most military forces from the war-torn country in the coming months.

Apparently this ignoramus the president wants as SecDef never heard about Mumbai, New Delhi, or any of the dozens of terrorist attacks Pakistan-back ed terrorists like Lashkar e taiba have launched directly at India.

Forget what our clueless President wants - is the U.S. Senate prepared to confirm a pro-Islamist moron as Secretary of defense who has already taken a stand against two of the only major allies we have with a significant military?

Simply Jews illustrates that with an amusing and very much to th epoint story about th eMiddle East, b ut you'll have to click on the link to read it.

Turkey's Erdogan: "We Blocked The Inclusion Of Israel In NATO"

Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was quite open about the matter when talking to reporters on a flight to Budapest, Hungary:

“We, as Turkey, would stop wrong steps [in NATO]. Thus, we saw such steps toward Israel’s inclusion in NATO. We prevented that,” Erdoğan said. “We have our own red lines. For us, to be involved in NATO with Israel is never considerable. To be with such a cruel understanding would conflict with our structure, history and culture.”

Erdogan also spoke about Turkey's 50 year quest to join the EU, saying the union was “hesitant because the members will not be able to do everything they want when Turkey gets in.”

In an interesting sidebar, Turkey has been making noises about ditching NATO to join the Shanghai Cooperative Organization (SCO), which regular members of Joshua's Army will recall me mentioning before.

The SCO is an organization with goals of becoming the anti-NATO, consisting of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, and Mongolia have the status of observer states. It focuses on trade, security and military cooperation, energy ( they're working on putting together a gas cartel) and joint development projects. The six member states control 60% of the land mass of Eurasia and its population is a quarter of the world's. With observer states included, its affiliates account for half of the earth's population. It also offers an alternative bloc to western democracy and to using the U.S. dollar as reserve currency for energy dealing.

If Turkey were to quit NATO and join, it would be a major realignment of the world's power blocs.

Erdogan first approached the SCO in 2011 and was granted 'dialogue partner' last year. They now want in as a full member, and are dangling quitting NATO (and revealing all of NATO's secrets) as bait.

For Turkey, the pluses are interesting. As Erdogan himself has said, the SCO "is much better, it is much more powerful [than the EU], and we share values with its members."

Those values are essentially non-Democratic, without the sort of commitment to freedom and human rights that characterize some of the other members of NATO.

Turkey also shares Islam with most of the membership.Every one of the members and observer states except Russia, China and India are Muslim, and a number of them are primarily composed of people of Turkic origin with cultural and linguistic heritage in common with the Turks.

The minuses? Turkey would stand to lose a great deal of foreign aid if they switched sides, there are still divisions in the country between Turks who are more Islamist in allegiance and those who still lean more towards the West.And Erdogan has three other issues that get in the way of his joining the SCO.

 First many if the six main members, especially  India, China and Russia are strongly opposed the Islamism Erdogan champions, and in th ecase of the three main members I cited, all have problems with Islamist aggression and terrorism.

Second, Erdogan's support for the insurgents trying to topple Syrian dictator Basher Assad sets him against one major member, Russia and one observer state, Iran.

And third, while Turkey's economy appears robust, it isn't.Inflation is at 6.5% and rising, food prices are soaring, the official unemployment rate is at 9.5% ( which means the real rate is closer to 13 or 14%) and there is a major imploding domestic credit bubble in consumer loans, which Turkey's banks are slamming out at 30% interest and up.Meanwhile exports continue to decline and Turkey's current account deficits is running at about $70 billion a year.

Since a good part of what the SCO is involved with is economic growth and investment, it might be problematic for them to take on a member whose economy could tank and become a drag on the organization, perhaps even a candidate for bailouts.  

According to one of my notorious Little Birdies, China is more or less favorably disposed to letting Turkey in as an observer state at least, while Russia and to a lesser extent India are strongly opposed.

Some horsetrading may go on, and we'll see what develops.

India Opts Out Of Participating In Iran Oil Embargo

India, the world's fourth largest oil consumer has informed the US and Europe that it will not participate in the embargo on Iranian oil scheduled to start - if it starts - this summer.

"It is not possible for India to take any decision to reduce the imports from Iran drastically, because among the countries which can provide the requirement of the emerging economies, Iran is an important country amongst them," Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters on a visit to the Unites States.

Yeah, sanctions'll work. Sure they will.

In a related item, India and Iran have agreed to drop the use of the dollar as a reserve currency for oil trading between the two countries. They're using gold.

India Celebrates Republic Day!

Republic Day is the day India celebrates its Constitution, written 3 years after India obtained its independence.

Congratulations to the worlds most populous democracy on its sixty third anniversary! Many more!

Pakistan: 'Keep Accusing Us Of Harboring Terrorists And We'll Stop Pretending We're Your Friends'

U.S. relations with our 'ally' Pakistan took another ratchet downwards when Pakistan's foreign minister accused the U.S. of using Pakistan as a scapegoat after American head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen testified before Congress and accused Pakistan's ISI agency of supporting the al-Qaeda linked Haqqani network in planning and executing last week’s 22-hour assault on the US Embassy in Kabul and a truck bombing that wounded 77 American soldiers a few days earlier:

The Haqqanis are "veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency [ISI]," he said in opening remarks before the Senate Armed Services Committee, adding that it had provided the Haqqanis with support to conduct the Kabul attacks:


"With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted the truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy," Mullen said of the recent attack on a base in Wardak that wounded 77 U.S. soldiers. "We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the June 28 attack against the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations."

Mullen said Pakistan's government has chosen to "use violent extremism as an instrument of policy," which jeopardizes its relationship with the United States and its role as a player in the region.

Speaking of its support for the Haqqani Network, Mullen said, "they may believe that by using these proxies they are hedging their bets, or redressing what they feel is an imbalance of regional power. But, in reality, they have already lost that bet."

He added that by "exporting violence, they have eroded their internal security and their position in the region. They have undermined their international credibility and threatened their economic well-being."

Panetta said that in recent high-profile meetings with Pakistani officials, U.S. officials have conveyed "a very clear message to them and to others that they must take steps to prevent the safe haven that the Haqqanis are using.

"We simply cannot allow these kinds of terrorists to be able to go into Afghanistan, attack our forces, and then return to Pakistan for safe haven and not face any kind of pressure from the Pakistanis for that to stop."

Panetta called the existence of safe havens "not tolerable" and "unacceptable," and said continued U.S. pressure on Pakistan's leaders was the only way they would get that message. "The only way to deal with the Pakistanis, " he said, "is to keep giving them a clear message of where the lines are. "

The Pakistanis, of course, had their own things to say about where the lines are.Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik baldly denied Mullen's accusations about ISI involvement with the Haqqani Network, and warned the U.S. that Pakistan would not allow a U.S. attack over the border aimed at the Haqqanis,who are apparently a protected species in Pock-kee-stawn.

“The Pakistan nation will not allow the boots on our ground, never,” Mr. Malik said in an interview with Reuters. “Our government is already cooperating with the U.S. — but they also must respect our sovereignty.”

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar likewise warned the U.S. not to cross what she called 'red lines' and not to use Pakistan as a scapegoat. ”If many of your goals are not achieved, you do not make someone a scapegoat,” she said, speaking to the American Government.

Khar spoke these lines with such conviction and inherent dishonesty that I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out she was related to Hillary Clinton somewhere along the line.

The Pakistanis have been nurturing, arming and training the Haqqani Network and other Islamist groups for years. In fact,things are so symbiotic that the Pakistani military and the Haqqani fighters both forces major bases practically next door to each other in Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan. The ISI has a similar relationship with Islamist terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and several others of that ilk.

Pakistan sees the Haqqanis in particular as an instrument of policy to attack India and protect their interests in Afghanistan, especially since they know that President Obama has a set-in-stone date for bugging out. He's going to want to campaign as the guy who killed bin-Laden and brought the troops home from those 'illegal' Bush wars.

The fact that Pakistan is a rogue basket case of a nation that actively supports terrorism (the Mumbai Attacks and the British 7/7 bombings are just two examples) and engages in a nice sideline of illegal nuclear proliferation to people like Iran and North Korea is also not exactly unknown to the United States. This isn't new information. That's exactly why we couldn't trust the Pakistanis with our knowledge that Osama bin-Laden had been hiding out in fancy digs with right to the Pakistani Military Academy in Abbotobad for six years, why Pakistan arrested five Pakistani informants who helped the CIA find out where Osama bin-Laden was hiding out and imprisoned them on charges of espionage and why almost every time we've let them know drone attacks are imminent the terrorists have safely moved away and we end up bombing an empty building.

We've essentially turned a blind eye towards Pakistan's treachery and enabled it because we need to bribe them. Around 75% of the supplies needed for our war in landlocked Afghanistan comes through the Pakistani port of Karachi and travels overland via the Torkhum Pass, which is why we've been paying Pakistan off to the tune of billions per year. And while we've finally begun the process of paying baksheesh to five countries instead of one to lessen the impact of our deteriorating relations withPakistan, it isn't nearly complete yet and will likely not have that much of an impact since our leaving Afghanistan is fairly imminent. So we'll do nothing now.

As for Pakistan, it's going to remain the same violent, corrupt Islamist hell hole it always was, with the added attraction of a civil war between various Islamist groups as the army splits apart into factions, with Pakistan's nuclear arsenal as the grand prize for the winner. You see, when Pakistan's powers-that-be got into in bed with various terrorist groups like the Haqqanis and Lashkar-e-Taiba, they thought they were going to be using them. Instead, they've made them strong enough that the Army isn't going to be either unified enough or powerful enough to take them on.

Our whole toxic relationship with Pakistan started because of our involvement in Afghanistan. Under the Bush Doctrine, we would have been more than justified in hitting Pakistan as well, and in terms of our war aims we likely would have been better off.

In the beginning it more or less worked because we had in Pervez Musharraf a dictator who at least stayed bought. Condi Rice, arguably one of the most inept Secretaries of State since William Jennings Bryan torched that arrangement by insisting that Musharraf allow the klepotocrat Bhuttos back in to the country as 'partners, to show more democracy', and the rest is history.

But as I've said before, it would be a nice touch if, as we left AfPak we took out Pakistan's nuclear facilities and perhaps kidnapped their rogue nuclear scientist AQ Kahn and took him to a nice, isolated interrogation room to find out exactly what he sold and to whom.

Of course, nothing remotely like that is going to happen under this president.

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Major Terrorist Attack In Mumbai; Twenty Dead, Hundreds Injured

Mumbai, India was hit by three bombs in crowded downtown districts today. The explosions were times so as to go off almost simultaneously, and placed to inflict maximum casualties.

This is the worst attack on Mumbai since the November 2008 attacks done with Pakistani complicity in the city's heart that killed 166 people.

The blasts occurred around 6:45 PM Local Time when people were involved in the rush hour commuting traffic and preliminary investigations indicate that a car and a motorbike were used in the coordinated attacks, which involved IED's. That would lead me to believe that local Muslim groups were involved, with covert backing from the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistan and India are scheduled to enter talks to try and normalize relations, later this month, so if the Pakistani government was involved directly like last time, it will be with a decent amount of deniability.Both Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani swiftly condemned the attacks in a statement.

The bombings occurred in crowded commercial districts in central Mumbai.

The first device was planted at Khau Gali in south Mumbai's Zaveri Bazaar. The second blast, planted under an umbrella, (it's the the monsoon season in Mumbai and the weather was rainy) at the Opera House, near Charni Road. The third bomb was placed on an electric pole at a bus stand in Dadar area. The first two bombs went off within one minute of each other, with the third one exploding less than ten minutes later.

The biggest blast was the one that occurred near the old Opera House district, now a major diamond and jewellery trading center.This area was the scene of numerous casualties in the 2008 attacks.

One of my local correspondents writes me the explosions were clearly audible all over the city, that there were blood and body parts lying in the streets amid broken glass and wreckage, and that he expects the death toll to end up being higher than it is now. He also told me that communications were disrupted in Mumbai because phone lines were jammed, so he was unable to inform his family that he was all right, or hear from them. That sort of not knowing remains one of the real tortures in these situations.

Several other Indian cities - Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore were also put on high alert. Noticeably, they all have significant Muslim populations.

President Obama issued a statement saying:

"I strongly condemn the outrageous attacks in Mumbai, and my thoughts and prayers are with the wounded and those who have lost loved ones. The U.S. government continues to monitor the situation, including the safety and security of our citizens. India is a close friend and partner of the United States. The American people will stand with the Indian people in times of trial, and we will offer support to India’s efforts to bring the perpetrators of these terrible crimes to justice. During my trip to Mumbai, I saw firsthand the strength and resilience of the Indian people and I have no doubt that India will overcome these deplorable terrorist attacks."

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Pakistani Actress Defies Mullahs Who Accuse Her of 'Immorality'

This is an amazing video that's in the process of going viral.

Pakistani actress Veena Malik committed a grave sin, apparently..she appeared on an Indian TV show dressed like a modern 21st century woman and actually behaved with love, decency and tolerance towards the Hindus in the cast.

Because of that, she's being roundly condemned in Pakistan and is under a death fatwa from the Taliban.

But that hasn't affected her raw courage at all, as she lays into an obscene, hypocritical Muslim cleric who denounces her for her 'crime'...appearing on the Indian “Big Brother” show to show the Indian public across the border that not every Pakistani is a savage, hate-filled monster and that there are Pakistanis like her that 'who believe in love, entertainment and fun.'

Unfortunately, there are a lot more Pakistanis like the cleric than there are like Veena Malik. I hope she's taking adequate precautions.

(hat tip, Allah)

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Jimmy Kimmel On Monkey Menace To Obama In India..

Too funny!

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Obama Not Taking A Fleet With Him After All

I am relieved to report that Barack Obama is not taking a fleet of US warships with him to India.

India's democracy is safe, at least for the time being.

The Indian media apparently miscounted - by quite a bit. And even Drudge got taken in.

Nor is the cost for Obama's 10-day Asian vacay quite as high as reported, although the White House won't say how much they're spending or exactly how many ships actually are involved. I think cutting the original report of $2 billion in half is probably a safe number, given the huge entourage, the vehicles and aircraft involved and the army of security.

Extravagant and unnecessary, but just not as insane as it seemed to be. Still as Allah Pundit remarked, an administration that can spend the amount of money and rack up debt the way Obama has makes anything seem possible.

(via memeorandum)

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Obama Takes A Roadtrip To India - At A Cost Of Over $2 Billion

Want fresh proof that President Barack Hussein Obama didn't get the message from the election on Tuesday?

The president is fleeing DC and getting out of a dodge with a four-day road trip to India.

He's taking along the majority of the White House staff, his personal Lincoln Continental Presidential limousine along with 40 other vehicles, two jets, armed with advanced communication and security systems, his personal Marine 1 helicopter, and a fleet of 34 US warships , including an aircraft carrier.

Then there's the special bomb-proof surface tunnel that is going to be installed by US Army engineers on the approach to Mani Bhavan, the Gandhi museum that the president's going to visit soon after he comes to Mumbai on Saturday.

The president and his entourage have booked a total of 800 rooms in Mumbai at the five -star luxury Taj Hotel and at the slightly less upscale Hyatt, where the 'help' will stay when they're not on duty. A similar amount of space has been booked at the equally opulent Maurya Hotel in New Delhi.

Cost to the American taxpayer? Around $2 billion when you include the cost of deploying the warships and the massive 500-man security detail.

$2 billion dollars for yet another vacation , while our country struggles with debt.

We no longer have a president, but a clueless, uncaring Bourbon king...Louis XIV redux.




UPDATE: Especially for all those Village Voice readers. It appears that Obama's ten-day jaunt will not cost $200 billion a day, but will likely end up costing about half that amount.

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Obama Insults India's Sikhs

The Golden Temple( Harimandir Sahib ) in Amritsar, India is a religious site for Sikhs equivalent to the Western Wall for Jews in Israel or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Christians.

Aside from its symbolism to 28 million Sikhs, it's a major tourist attraction that has been visited by a number of celebrities and world leaders, from Queen Elizabeth to Canadian PM Stephen Harper.Most Indians look on it as a cherished national symbol.

But President Barack Hussein Obama is going to give it a miss when he travels to India after the midterm elections...because Obama is not willing to cover his head while in the Temple, as the Sikh tradition requires.Or so the White House says:








Now, most non-Sikh visitors to the Golden Temple simply tie on kerchiefs conveniently sold by vendors outside. And obviously Obama has no problem covering his head (or,bowing, for that matter) when he wants to. So what's going on here?

If you look at some history, there has been historic animosity between Muslims and Sikhs since the days of the Muslim jihad against India. The Sikhs fought successfully against the Muslim Mughal empire after the ninth Sikh Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed by the Muslims after refusing to convert to Islam, and many Sikhs were killed during the violence surrounding the partition of India in 1947. The animosity continues to the present day.

It's obvious that for someone who either is a Muslim or who is extraordinarily concerned with appeasing Islam and Muslim sensibilities, a visit to the Golden Temple might be a problem.

I'm pretty sure that's why Obama is giving the Golden Temple a miss. Islam must be appeased at all costs, and insulting the Sikhs and the Indians comes second.

Remember when we were told how much Barack Obama was going to improve America's foreign relations?

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Obama Administration Strikes Disgraceful Plea Bargain With Mumbai Jihadi

The thought that an American government would do this makes me physically ill.

News that the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had reached a plea bargain with David Coleman Headley, who played a key role in the planning of the terrorist strike in Mumbai in November 2008 in which 166 people were killed, has caused an uproar in India.

The deal enables the US government to hold back from formally producing any evidence against Headley in a court of law that might have included details of his links with US intelligence or oblige any cross-examination of Headley by the prosecution.

Nor can the families of the 166 victims be represented by a lawyer to question Headley during his trial commencing in Chicago. Headley's links with the US intelligence will now remain classified information and the Pakistani nationals involved in the Mumbai attacks will get away scot-free. Furthermore, the FBI will not allow Headley's extradition to India and will restrict access so that Indian agencies cannot interrogate him regarding his links with US and Pakistani intelligence.

You remember Mumbai, of course. It was one of the more successful and horrific attacks carried out by adherents of the Religion of Peace armed and trained in Pakistan against a civilian city, where jihadis slaughtered civilians with no discrimination as to age or sex or anything else.

Headly, a Pakistani-born US national AKA Daood Gilani, was the point man for the operation, the one who scouted out the vulnerable targets for his Pakistani jihadi masters in Lashkar-e-Taiba:

David Coleman Headley personally visited every target site of the 26/11 terror strikes last year, carrying out a recce on behalf of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a police source said today.

Posing as a Jew, he even visited Nariman House, the Jewish Chabad centre, in July 2008.

The Mumbai police today carried out raids in Bandra, its adjoining suburb Khar and BPO hub Goregaon in search of Headley’s local acquaintances and contacts.

“He (Headley) mapped the Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus, Taj and Trident hotels and Nariman House. We are interrogating (filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son) Rahul to find out when he went to Leopold Café. That he did is certain — when he did that is what we need to know,” a top officer said.

Of course, they won't find out now...the Obama Administration has officially placed Headley under its protection.

Thanks to Headley, the Mumbai killers knew exactly where to go and even had their targets plotted out on GPS systems.That included the Chabad house, where Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, and his pregnant wife Rivkah, 28, were tied up and brutally tortured before they were murdered, along with 38-year-old Leibish Teitelbaum, 50-year-old Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich, Yocheved Orpaz, 60, who had been traveling in India with a daughter and grandchildren, and Bentzion Chroman, 28(HY"D).



The Obama administration's plea bargain with Headley was deliberately put together to shield him and his Pakistani handlers and raises some interesting questions:

The LeT began planning the attack on Mumbai sometime around September 2006. According to the plea bargain, Headley paid five visits to India on reconnaissance missions between 2006 and the November 2008 strike, each time returning to the US via Pakistan where he met "with various co-conspirators, including but not limited to members of LeT".

The plea bargain simply refers to the Pakistani handlers of Headley as A, B, C and D. But who are they? We will never know.

The LeT's close links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are legion and it is inconceivable that such a massive operation - with huge international ramifications and the potential to trigger war with India - could have been undertaken without the knowledge of the ISI, headed by General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, the present army chief, from October 2004 until October 2007.

The plea bargain says chillingly that after Headley's fifth visit to India, "Lashkar [LeT] Member A advised defendant [Headley] of a number of details concerning the planned attacks, including that a team of attackers was being trained in a variety of combat skills, the team would be traveling to Mumbai by sea and using the landing site recommended by the defendant, the team would be fighting to the death and would not attempt to escape following the attacks."

Yet, the operative part of the plea bargain not only rules out Headley's extradition to India but does not show that Headley gave any kind of formal commitment to the FBI to subject himself to interrogation by the Indians. He has merely agreed to give testimony in any foreign judicial proceeding that is held in US territory.

In essence, the Americans are saying that they will tell the Indians what Headley is saying and there is no need to interrogate him face-to-face.

A major part of the ten commandments of the Obama Administration - Thou must appease and protect Islam at all times,no matter what.

And just as with Israel, if that calls for alienating and disrespecting a loyal, long term ally, so be it.

Absolutely despicable.

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India Celebrates Republic Day

Republic Day in India celebrates it's Constitution, written 3 years after India obtained its independence.

Congratulations to the worlds most populous democracy on it's sixty first anniversary!

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Terrorist bombings in Hindu Holy City

One of the holiest and most important places on earth for India's hundreds of millions of Hindus is the city of Varanasi, also known as Benares, situated on the sacred Ganges River.




Today the city was rocked by three bomb blasts.Set up to go off ten minutes apart, the blasts were similar to last year’s bombing attacks by an al Qaeda-linked Kashmir group in New Delhi that killed 60 people... or for that matter, the London Bombings of last year.

The technique is designed to get people fleeing from one explosion into the blast range of a second timed to go off a few minutes later, and is,as they say, typical of the normal pattern in these things used by adherants of the Religion of Peace.

The shrine in Hinduism’s holiest city was crowded with thousands of pilgrims making offerings to the monkey-god Hanuman when the explosion occurred. Two more blasts struck a packed rail carriage at the local station and a ticket counter. Four unexploded bombs were found at a bathing platform of the River Ganges that runs through Varanasi.

Fifteen people are reported dead so far, and hundreds injured. As with the Dewali bombings last year, no group has taken responsibility....yet.

India and US sign nuclear deal

President Bush and Indian PM agreed on a landmark nuclear deal between the two countries today.

India will receive American nuclear know-how and fuel but won’t have to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which was the main sticking point in the deal.

“We concluded an historic agreement today on nuclear power,” US President George W. Bush said. “It’s not an easy job for the Indian Prime Minister to achieve this agreement. I understand. It’s not easy for the American president to achieve this agreement.”

The agreement acknowledges India’s status as a nuclear military power and provides for cooperation on civilian nuclear energy.

Now it's off to Pakistan, which should be a much harder nut to crack.
President Bush and the US and not particularly popular in the Muslim country.

The Musharref government has crackesd down on anti-American militants, banned protests in some areas and arrested people suspected of being security risks during Bush's visit.

Today, 4 people died in a car bombing outside the Marriott Hotel and the U.S. Consulate. At least one American foreign service officer was killed, and the fate of two other American diplomats who were in the car remained unclear.

President Bush en route to India, Pakistan

Leaving his political troubles over `Portgate' behind for the moment, President Bush will make an historic trip to the Indian subcontinent, meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

"The United States has not always enjoyed close relations with Pakistan and India," Bush said. "In the past, the Cold War and regional tensions kept us apart. But, today our interests and values are bringing us closer together."

In India, the president will probably be trying to work out the final details and perhaps even signing a nuclear cooperation deal with India. The idea is to seperate India's civilian and military nuclear program. India would be able to obtain help for its civilian energy program, if it agrees to IAEA safeguards.

Other topics Bush is likely to discuss with PM Singh in India are trade and investment, joint strategies for dealing with Iran and security cooperation.

Bush will likewise probably discuss these topics with Pakistan's President Musharref.

Lots of special `festivities' are scheduled for President Bush arrival in Pakistan.
Pakistani authorities have banned demonstrations in several major cities, and rounded up dozens of likely troublemakers and hard line Islamist imams. A nationwide strike is reportedly being scheduled while the president is in the region.