Some background on suspected Mumbai conspirator, David Headley, in an interview in December 2009 on India’s ND TV with the Daily Beast’s Gerald Posner.
Tag Archives: India
Headley Spy Case Raises Questions In India About CIA Role
Asia Times columnist M. K. Bhadrakumar writes that US citizen David Headley, a key player (Indian sources say, the mastermind), in the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people* has reached a plea bargain with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that allows the US Government to hold back from producing evidence against him in a court of law that would have revealed details of his ties to US intelligence. [*163, according to the NY Times, March 26, 2010; 165, according to the Wash Po, March 27, 2010]
Headley will be protected from cross-examination by the prosecutor, and the 166 victims will not be represented by a lawyer at the Chicago trial that’s now commencing.
Nor can he be extradited to India or questioned by Indian agencies about his links to US and Pakistani intelligence.
(Note: He will be accessible to India through video conferencing, deposition, and Letters Rogatory)
Headley, the son of a former Pakistani diplomat and an American socialite from Philadelphia (according to the NY Times piece), was a drug-pusher in the 1990s who then went on to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency.
He’s said to have prepared for the attack with five visits to India between 2006 and 2008, each time returning via Pakistan and meeting with several handlers, some of whom included members of the terrorist group Lakshar-e-Toiba (LeT), which has close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)
Headley has reportedly named five-six serving officers of the Pakistan army as among the leaders of the Karachi Project, which organizes attacks on India through fugitive Indian jihadis being sheltered in Karachi by the ISI and the LeT.
The Asia Times article goes on to ask some questions about the CIA’s possible involvement that are likely to strain US-Indian relations:
“How much did the CIA know?
The plea bargain details that while working as an American agent Headley attended at least five “training courses” conducted by the LeT in Pakistan, including sessions in the use of weapons and grenades, close-combat tactics and counter-surveillance techniques, from February 2002 until December 2003.
Training courses in April and in December 2003 were each of three months’ duration and in such close proximity to the 9/11 attacks that it stretches credulity to believe the CIA didn’t care to know what their agent was doing in the LeT training camps.
Today, the heart of the matter is how much did the CIA know in advance about the Mumbai terrorist strike and whether the Obama administration shared all “actionable intelligence” with Delhi?
A senior Indian editor wrote on Sunday, “Headley … was convicted on drug charges and sent to jail in the US. We know also that he was subsequently released from jail and handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which said that it wanted to send him to Pakistan as an undercover agent. All this is a matter of public record. What happened between the time the US sent Headley into Pakistan and his arrest at Chicago airport a few months ago? How did an American agent turn into a terrorist? The US will not say.”
Yet, cooperation in the fight against terrorism lies within the first circle of US-India strategic cooperation. The Mumbai attacks led to unprecedented counter-terrorism cooperation between India and the US – “breaking down walls and bureaucratic obstacles between the two countries’ intelligence and investigating agencies”, as a prominent American security expert, Lisa Curtis, underscored in US congressional testimony on March 11 regarding the Mumbai attacks and Headley.
To quote Curtis, “Most troubling about the Headley case is what it has revealed about the proximity of the Pakistani military to the LeT.”
Curtis put her finger spot on the US government’s deliberate policy to view the LeT through the prism of India-Pakistan adversarial ties. This is despite all evidence of the LeT’s significant role since 2006 as a facilitator of the Taliban’s operations in Afghanistan by providing a constant stream of fighters – recruiting, training and infiltrating insurgents across the border from the Pakistani tribal areas.
The US policy is impeccably logical. It prioritizes the securing of Islamabad’s cooperation on what directly affects American interests rather than squandering away Pakistani goodwill by Washington covering for the Indians.
This political chicanery lies at the core of the unfolding Headley drama. What emerges, even if one were to give the benefit of the doubt to the CIA, is that Headley was its agent but he possibly got involved with Pakistan-based terrorist organizations and became a double agent
No doubt, the US administration is behaving very strangely. It has something extremely explosive to hide from the Indians and what better way to do that than by placing Headley in safe custody and not risk exposing him to Indian intelligence?”
Surreal India
Daily life in India grows more surreal for the ordinary man, says writer Pritish Nandy:
“You can’t afford food? No worries, we will give you a stunning cricket extravaganza with lots of movie stars and pretty cheerleaders.
You feel insecure because Maoists are now in 20 states and have killed more people than the jihadis? Don’t bother, we will buy you a $2.35 billion refurbished old Russian warship.
Your cities are crumbling under the pressure of migration because agriculture’s no longer a sustainable profession? No stress, we will build you fancy bridges and flyovers and walkways where no one will ever walk.
You can’t find a job despite all your education? No sweat, we promise 30% reservations for women in the Lok Sabha.
Increasing terrorist strikes are scaring you? Chill yaar, we will give you the perfect Indo-US nuclear deal.
Public transportation in the cities is on the verge of collapsing? Not an issue, we are building helipads at prominent locations.”
— Pritish Nandy, “The Wonderland That’s India,” Times of India, March 15, 2010
The Great Missile…er…Engineering Gap…
An article in the Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 20, 2005, suggests that data-manipulation abounds in tech rivalry between countries. Our geeks beat yours, is the 21st century version of saber-rattling:
“India provides the clearest example of how the numbers can be interpreted differently. The 350,000 engineers that it supposedly graduated last year is almost certainly false. After publishing that number in October, the National Academies revised it downward to 200,000 in a note issued last month. The Duke study pegs the number at 215,000, but it also points out that nearly half of those are three-year diplomas – not the four-year degrees counted in the US.
More four-year diplomas than India
Last year, the US awarded bachelor’s degrees to 72,893 engineering students, according to the American Society for Engineering Education. But using India’s more inclusive definition, the Duke study finds the US handed out 137,437 bachelor’s degrees last year, more than India’s 112,000. The US number is far more impressive in rela-tive terms, since India has more than three times as many people.
China’s numbers are more problematic because its government does not break them down. In its revised figures, the National Academies reduced the Chinese total from 600,000 to 500,000. The Duke study pegs the total at 644,106, as reported by the Chinese Ministry of Education. But the study also points out that, as with India, the Chinese total includes engineering graduates with so-called “short cycle degrees” that represent three years or less of college training.
“China includes in its count a lot of graduates – including auto mechanics – who would not be included as engineers in the US or many other nations,” says Gary Gereffi, a coauthor of the study and a professor of sociology who directs Duke’s Center on Globalization, Governance, and Competitiveness.
A press spokesman of the Chinese embassy in Washington declined comment, and its education office there did not respond.
China still graduated 351,537 engineers with four-year degrees. That’s 2-1/2 times the US total (although China has four times the US population).
For its part, the National Academies stands by its report, even after its revisions. “I don’t think we believe at all that these new numbers change the ultimate recommendations we have,” says Deborah Stine, of the National Academies. “The US is well behind other countries.”
Back toward 1986 graduation peak
The number of US engineering graduates peaked in 1986, fell back, then has slowly built back up since the late 1990s, says Daniel Bateson, of the Engineering Workforce Commission.
While US numbers don’t approach China’s, some experts say the quality of US graduates remains superior. A McKinsey Global Institute study last summer found that only 10 percent of Chinese engineers and 25 percent of Indian engineers were capable of competing for outsourced work.”
My Comment
We love the land of our birth dearly, but stereotypes have a reason for existing. My countrymen – and I know every variety of them — are not always as self-critical as they should be. Many call them arrogant…
Satyameva Jayate is the national motto: Truth Always Triumphs.
But Satyam (Truth) Computers found that with Big Four Accounting Firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) signing off on them, cooked books can also triumph…at least until the market collapses.
Indian cricket teams, in terms of sheer talent possibly the best in the world, are nonetheless notorious for snatching defeat out of the mouths of certain victory. They tend to rest on their duffs, when they should keep their heads down and put their money in their shoes.
True, there is a strong professional and entrepreneurial class. But remember, this is a country of a billion and a third, where nearly a billion people live lives of bare subsistence.
There’s universal corruption. The Corruption Perception Index 2009 by Transparency International has ranked India as the 85th most corrupt country, among 180 countries in the world. It is 19th on the bribery index.
There’s mind-numbing bureaucracy The Hong Kong-based political and economic risk consultancy group (PERC) reports that Indian civil servants are the least efficient among 12 Asian counterparts: Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Philippines, Indonesia and India.
India, Thailand, and Malaysia face the worst political and social risks, adds PERC.
In some states, the courts and police are feared worse than criminals.
Indian society is often sickeningly color and status-conscious.*
India is a good long-term bet for investment, if you’re careful and monitor your positions. But it’s a sure-fire disaster for cocky, blind-folded speculation.
Update (March 17, 2010):
*I add a quote from an inter-racial couple:
“My partner is white and I am black, facts of which the Indian public reminds us daily. Bank associates have denied me chai, while falling over to please my white friend. Mall shop attendants have denied me attentiveness, while mobbing my partner. Who knows what else is more quietly denied?
“An African has come,” a guard announced over the intercom as I showed up. Whites are afforded the luxury of their own names, but this careful attention to my presence was not new. ATM guards stand and salute my white friend, while one guard actually asked me why I had come to the bank machine as if I might have said that I was taking over his shift.”
Manmohan Singh Needs to Emphasize Discipline, Not Blame Democracy
C. Gopinath, writing in The Hindu, blows away the notion that democracy can be blamed for slow decision-making and bureaucratic delays in India:
“It is easier for Dr Manmohan Singh’s to admit that we have bottlenecks in areas of roads, power and ports. Everybody knows that. It is also easy to blame democracy, for that is something we are not going to give up. The unintended message, unfortunately, is that we have to put up with these inefficiencies.
Other observers have chimed in, talking about a democracy tax or a discount due to democracy. The real problem is that we lack the work ethic that should drive us to excellence. Instead, the dominant ethic seems to be that the individual should do whatever it takes to get ahead, and forget about the rest of society. Look at the way we treat garbage (keep the house clean and dump the trash outside), drive on the road violating rules just so we are ahead, and so on.
Statesmen should not be finding excuses for lapses but challenging the people to new heights. The former President, Mr Abdul Kalam, continues to do a great job inspiring people with his vision for a prosperous future.
If Dr Manmohan Singh is looking for a theme on which to build his legacy, he should pick discipline. Nobody seems to be paying attention to it.”
India Changing…
Jayant Bhandari in Liberty Unbound:
“Now, as I travel through India’s smaller towns and villages, I gather many impressions, both of change and of continuity.
I stay in rooms that cost me $2 a day, and purchase all-you-can-eat food for 50 cents. I pay my driver the princely sum of $7 a day. To Westerners, these prices will appear astonishingly low, but inflation of food prices in India is close to 20%. Food is very expensive for regular folks, and speculators are being blamed. I am constantly amazed that there is never any mention of the fact that the Indian government still runs one of the most efficient printing presses in the world — printing money, of course. The only thing that limits inflation is the high rate of real economic growth. Yet the Indian government is getting extremely addicted to increasing expenditures. The government’s fiscal deficit is about 12% of GDP. To me this is like addiction to heroin. What will happen if the growth rate falters?
In an isolated place, a woman sells me a 15-kilogram bag of fruit for a total of 60 cents — fruit worth about $15 in Bhopal. Her companions think she’s won a lottery. These wretched women chase me and beg me to buy some from them. I feel sorry for the little girl who had tears in her eyes. Yet I am repelled by the fact that so many Indians easily grovel and beg. The worst is when well-off people do this. A visit to a government office in India is essential if you want to understand the degradation that the Indian public accepts even today.
I meet the top management of a company constructing a major highway. The highway was deemed uneconomical, so the government and the company agreed that they would use eminent domain to confiscate a lot more land than was necessary from the farmers, at 5% of the market value. The extra land would be converted into condos or commercial space. The poor people would subsidize development. Why should they subsidize the development of the country? This is socialism in practice, although the farmers are branded communists when they rebel. Meanwhile people in the West believe there is something romantic about poverty — a view that is not only hypocritical but pathetically wrong..…”
Pankaj Mishra On The Strength Of Passivity
The old world, with its failures, weaknesses, and poverty, has at least a proper estimation of the limits of human action, says writer Pankaj Mishra in an oped in the New York Times, last August:
“India may have been passive after the Mumbai attacks. But India has not launched wars against either abstract nouns or actual countries that it has no hope of winning or even disengaging from. Another major terrorist assault on our large and chaotic cities is very probable, but it is unlikely to have the sort of effect that 9/11 had on America. Continue reading
More Fall Out From Dubai On Indian Market
“Segments of the economy such as consumer durable and core industrial growth that are driving the current recovery in the Indian economy are purely a function of domestic stimulus initiatives and remain to that extent relatively insulated,” HDFC Bank said in a report today.
However, areas such as exports, remittance, banking and construction as well as real estate are likely to see further damage, the report added.
Exports are going to be the most affected by Dubai woes, as the UAE region is now India’s largest export destination toppling the United States.
Besides, bullion trading in Dubai is likely to be impacted, which may have ripple effect for India as around $29 billion of gold from the country is being traded in Dubai.”
IMF Sells Gold to India (Updated)
Update 2 (Nov 3): The only other explanation I can think of is that the Indian government is privy to information indicating that the demise of the dollar is much closer at hand than is being given out..
Update 1:
OK. As you know, I’ve found this Indian purchase a bit puzzling. I have a bunch of questions:
*Why didn’t the Indian government make a big purchase earlier this year, at $900, rather than now, at the top?
*What, if any, is the connection between this and the Fisk report a few weeks ago about the Gulf Arabs moving out of the dollar, which a lot of people found odd, despite the reputation of the reporter? The report bumped up the price of gold.
Now, here’s Chuck Butler of Everbank, via The Daily Reckoning:
“I told you yesterday that I thought it would be a “wash” for the dollar and the gold price… But that was before I learned that the Reserve Bank of India paid for their $6.7 billion dollars worth of gold with… SDRs.”
(Note:Reuters reports that the sale was in dollars – which would be dollar negative).
What does this mean? That, over the whole past 15 -20 years of “globalization” while the US Govt. inflated its money and sold its treasuries and fake derivatives all over the world in return for real work and real savings, who were the buyers?
Countries like India, where large parts of the middle-class stored its savings in dollars. Now those dollars are seen as so unsound that the IMF (which is the new locus of Anglo-European global domination) won’t accept them for payment of gold.
That means the Indian government has to give up its SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) in exchange.
Now the resurgent IMF is where the globalists are exerting their power and not in the G20 (which was supposed to augment the power of developing nations when it was established in 1999).
As I blogged earlier, the Financial Stability Board is the new regulatory agency that will coordinate with the IMF, but it includes the G20 and also Spain and the European Commission and is headed by ex-Goldmanite, Mario Draghi and it’s housed at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. So that is a double hit to any representation India will have in the forum.
India sold gold at the bottom in the 1990s; and is now buying it at the top nearly 20 years later – thus selling part of the gains of these past years. At least, so it seems to me. To me this smacks of neocolonialism.
And now, it becomes easier to understand why the center-liberal establishment media is interested in co-opting the anger against Goldman and channeling it into various subplots of the financial crisis (naked short selling, the bail-outs etc.etc).
I see this as an elaborate feint to divert world attention from the reprise of Anglo American and European colonization over the last two decades – accomplished, with a “black” president in charge.
Here’s a piece on IMF sales of gold in 1999. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/imf-sells-gold-to-hep-debt-of-poorest-nations-1090154.html
Notice how similar the language is – they’re doing it to increase funding to the poorest countries, etc. etc.
In the news, Bloomberg reports:
“The International Monetary Fund sold 200 metric tons of gold to the Reserve Bank of India for about $6.7 billion, its first such sale in nine years.
The transaction, equivalent to 8 percent of global annual mine production, involved daily sales from Oct. 19-30 at market prices and is in the process of being settled, the IMF said in a statement yesterday. The average price to India, the biggest consumer, was about $1,045 an ounce, an IMF official said on a conference call. Gold for immediate delivery gained 0.2 percent.”
My Comment:
Interesting. The Indian government doesn’t buy gold at the bottom (2000) but now, when it’s at all time highs (shades of the British government selling gold at the bottom).
Now, the Indian central bank is reputed to be very savvy, as are Indian gold buyers. Most commentators expect gold to consolidate, if not correct, before pushing on. It would make sense for the Indian government to wait and buy it on dips.
This is a good move for the IMF. But for the Indian government, which managed to steer the banking system past the whirlpool of unwinding derivatives, I wonder if this move is astute.
Look at the peculiar facts, as reported in the New York TimesWall Street Journal)
“In the last one year, China has increased its gold holdings, by weight, by 75.69%, Russia by 18.78%, the Philippines by 18.50% and Mexico by 108.91%.
Compared with this, India’s central bank did not add anything to its gold reserves in the last one year, according to Bloomberg data.
(Lila: Why not? Why buy gold at record prices when the government was unwilling to buy when it was trading much lower, only this year?)
In fact, the share of gold in India’s total reserves has dwindled over the decade.
In March 1994, the share of gold in the total reserves of the country was 20.86%; by the end of June 2009, gold constituted only 3.7% of the total reserves.”
Even the IMF expressed surprise, as Breitbart.com notes:
“A senior IMF official said that the IMF was “lucky” in selling the 200 tonnes to India for roughly 1,045 dollars an ounce, compared with 850 dollars an ounce in April 2008.”
(Lila: In other words, over the whole period of globalization, India sold it’s gold and bought US treasury…dollars…just what the US government was desperate to get rid off, so it wouldn’t drive inflation at home…)
Again, India sold gold cheap and bought it back at its height. Does that sound like savvy behavior from a country renowned for well trained economists and smart gold buyers?
A former governor of the Indian central bank (Reserve Bank of India), Bimal Jalan, said it was to help the IMF meet its funding needs for loans to the poorest countries, for which it had looked to India and China.
As an aside, in an earlier post, I speculated that the report (by Robert Fisk, a very respected source) about Gulf Arabs moving out of the petrodollar – which was promptly denied – might have been a rumor circulated to bump up the price of gold to help IMF gold sales….maybe, I wasn’t so far off, after all.
I went back to an earlier post this year, in February, which quotes from a list in Richard Russell’s letter:
Note: The list looks inaccurate. I’ll go back and find why Russell’s numbers are so different from the World Gold Council figures below them). (Note: Russell is referring to tonnes of gold; the WGC figures are for dollar amounts. So the discrepancies we refer to at in the percentages).
The US has 8,135 tonnes….64.4% of reserves
Germany — 3,412… …64.4% of reserves
IMF — 3,217… … …(1)
France — 2,508… … …58.7%
Italy — 2,451… … …61.9%
Switzerland — 1,040… …23.8%
Japan — 765.2… …1.9% …(a potential gold-buyer)
China — 600.0… …0.9% …(should be a big buyer)*
A reader notes that this number is too low. I assume it’s a number from before China started buying off market. Compare with list below.
Russia — 495. 9… …2.2% …(is a buyer)
Taiwan — 422.2… …3.6% …(should be a buyer)
India — 357.7… …3.0% …(should be a buyer)
UK — 310.3… … …14.5% …(sold most of its gold at the low price)
Saudi Arabia — 143.0… …11.4% (should buy gold)
South Africa — 124.4… …9.0%
Australia — 79.8… … …6.3%
So there you have it. Among countries, Italy, France, Germany, and the US have the most gold. Switzerland has a third of what they have. The UK, South Africa, Australia, and Saudi Arabia are next with about 1/5th – 1/10th as much. Russia and Japan have only a small percent in gold. China and India have even less. What do most Asians have? Debt (treasuries and dollars) from the US. Neo-colonialism anyone?
Correction:
CNBC has the following completely different list of top gold holding countries compiled by tradermark via Seeking Alpha, posted October 13, 2009.
(Note: Data is based on the World Gold Council’s September 2009 report and is converted to US short tons at a rate of 1 T = 1.102311 US tons. All monetary estimates are calculated at the rate of 1oz gold = $1042 US).
United States $298.4 N/A
Germany $125.0 69.2%
International Monetary Fund $118.0 N/A
Italy $89.9 66.6%
France $89.7 70.6%
China $38.7 1.9%
Switzerland $38.2 29.1%
Japan $28.1 2.3%
Netherlands $22.5 59.6%
Russia $20.9 4.3%
European Central Bank $18.4 18.8%
Taiwan $15.5 3.9%
Portugal $14.0 90.9%
India $13.1 4.0%
Venezuela $13.1 36.1%
New Findings About Race in India..
This news item republished at the genetics blog, Gene Expression, is likely to have some impact in India, where there’s been a long-standing debate about the North Indian-South Indian divide, also known as the Aryan-Dravidian divide.
There are several theories about the origin of the different peoples of India. The most popular one and the one that’s favored by the most prominent historians is the Aryan invasion theory.This theory suggests that there was a substantial difference between a preexisting population of shorter, darker people in South India (called Dravidians) and an invading bronze- age culture of taller, fairer people (Aryans) that brought in Vedic or Hindu culture.
This theory, of course, has had a lot of repercussions not only for history and anthropology, but also for politics. The Aryan invasion theory depicts Hindu culture as having a foreign origin, so it was considered colonial, if not racist, by many Indian scholars.
Anthropologists consider Indians to be a branch of a widely dispersed Indo-European group that sent out branches to Persia (Indo-Iranian), Europe (Indo-European) and India (Indo-European). Race theories that developed in the 19th century tended to use this Aryan theory as their foundation (if I’m not mistaken).
However, many Hindu nationalists have considered the Aryan invasion theory a colonial distortion and have argued instead that the movement of people was in the opposite direction. In other words, the Aryans moved outward from India. This would make India the mother culture of the Aryans
Critics of this Indian origin theory call it an outgrowth of Hindu chauvinism. The debate has been a pretty heated one, as a consequence.
Now comes new research.
The Times of India notes:
“The great Indian divide along north-south lines now stands blurred. A pathbreaking study by Harvard and indigenous researchers on ancestral Indian populations says there is a genetic relationship between all Indians and more importantly, the hitherto believed “fact” that Aryans and Dravidians signify the ancestry of north and south Indians might after all, be a myth.
“This paper rewrites history... there is no north-south divide,” Lalji Singh, former director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and a co-author of the study, said at a press conference here on Thursday.
Senior CCMB scientist Kumarasamy Thangarajan said there was no truth to the Aryan-Dravidian theory as they came hundreds or thousands of years after the ancestral north and south Indians had settled in India.
The study analysed 500,000 genetic markers across the genomes of 132 individuals from 25 diverse groups from 13 states. All the individuals were from six-language families and traditionally “upper” and “lower” castes and tribal groups. “The genetics proves that castes grew directly out of tribe-like organizations during the formation of the Indian society,” the study said. Thangarajan noted that it was impossible to distinguish between castes and tribes since their genetics proved they were not systematically different.
The study was conducted by CCMB scientists in collaboration with researchers at Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. It reveals that the present-day Indian population is a mix of ancient north and south bearing the genomic contributions from two distinct ancestral populations – the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) and the Ancestral South Indian (ASI). ”