2004-08-18

Points To Ponder – III

You can trust no one.

The MDMK headed by V. Gopalaswamy (a.k.a Vaiko) is part of the Congress-led UPA coalition. Mr. Vaiko is a self-confessed LTTE agent. When he was in the DMK, he visited Sri Lanka and met LTTE leader Prabhakaran without the knowledge of Indian authorities. When he returned, he was captured by the Indian Navy with a lot of cash and gold. Central intelligence agencies thought he might be part of an assasination plot to kill the DMK chief M. Karunanidhi. The DMK subsequently expelled Mr. Vaiko, who then formed the MDMK. Mr. Vaiko still voices support for the LTTE and yet Sonia Gandhi keeps in her coalition. Thanks to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalitha, Mr. Vaiko guy spent much of last year in jail.
Venezuelan President Hugho Chavez won an overwhelming victory in a recall vote. Chavez is an admirer of Fidel Castro of Cuba and has hit out against US attempts* to interfere in its country’s affairs. Venezuela is the world’s fifth largest oil producer, the only OPEC member in the Americas, and the fourth biggest supplier of oil to the United States. The US government has long coveted control of Venezuelan oil and had provided money to opposition groups and organized military coups against him. Because international observers had declared the vote as free and fair, it is a crushing defeat for the US. American news reports provide ample clues as to how deep the dissapointment is for American officials. Here is one from ABC News:

Despite an economic recession, rising crime rates and 15 percent unemployment, Chavez won widespread support among Venezuela’s poor majority by spending millions of dollars to teach adults to read, sending Cuban doctors to slums and offering loans to farmers and small businesses.

Critics say the programs, many inspired by Cuban models, are a way of spreading communist propaganda to the poor.
Suma Shirur, who is a world record holder, made it to the finals of the 10m shooting competition in the Athens Olympics. Yet, the next day, the Malayala Manorama had a life-size photograph of Anjali Bhagwat who did not even make it to the last eight.
Yesterday, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore won the first Olympic silver medal for India. But the top two news on DD Podhigai was Sonia Gandhi urging the constituents of the UPA coalition to make the CMP a success. Like her husband, who made Doordarshan into Panchayat Raj TV, Ms. Gandhi is now focussed on making Doordarshan her personal but taxpayer-funded, publicity outlet.
Shooter Rathore’s victory was not even the second in the news. That honour went to the release of a commerative stamp for the late Murasoli Maran. Incidentally, the TN Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa has alleged that the DMK made stamp release a family function.
Indian boxer Akhil Kumar lost to former world champion Jerome Thomas yesterday. Though the Indian pugilist landed many punches on the Frenchman, most of them were not counted by the judges. As the commentator mentioned, the judges simply were not awarding him points. Nobody in the Indian camp raised the issue with Olympic officials.
When Bill Clinton was the American President, the Republicans launched an investigation in to a financial scandal. A special prosecutor named Kenneth Starr was led the investigation. The following paragraph appears in his report.

Ms. Lewinsky testified that her physical relationship with the President included oral sex but not sexual intercourse. According to Ms. Lewinsky, she performed oral sex on the President; he never performed oral sex on her.(39) Initially, according to Ms. Lewinsky, the President would not let her perform oral sex to completion. In Ms. Lewinsky’s understanding, his refusal was related to “trust and not knowing me well enough.” During their last two sexual encounters, both in 1997, he did ejaculate. According to Ms. Lewinsky, she performed oral sex on the President on nine occasions. On all nine of those occasions, the President fondled and kissed her bare breasts. He touched her genitals, both through her underwear and directly, bringing her to orgasm on two occasions. On one occasion, the President inserted a cigar into her vagina. On another occasion, she and the President had brief genital-to-genital contact.

Even though it was a financial scandal, the prosecutor went so far as to investigate Clinton’s personal life. You definitely have to wonder why Republicans in the U.S. did not show this kind of thoroughness with Iraq.
In 1998, Israel tried to sell nearly 1000 Merkava-3 tanks to Turkey. But, Iran publicised a photo of a damaged Merkava tank that had been blown up in Lebanon by Hezbollah fighters using a shoulder-fired missile. This made Turkey to drop the idea of buying the Israeli tanks. Now, Iraqi resistance fighters are busting American tanks in Iraq. Countries like Iran, Syria and Russia might be busy assessing the effectiveness of anti-tank weapons on American tanks, particularly the Abrams M1. The Abrams main battle tank (MBT) is the pride of the US armor and has been developed after spending billions of dollars.
Sudan is the biggest country in Africa. It sits on a huge lake of oil. Muslims who live in the north form 70% of the population. The rest follow traditional African religions and Christianity. Christian rebels have been battling the Sudanese government for control of the oil fields in the south of the country. The United States and its allies in Africa like Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Uganda have been bankrolling the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) led by John Garang. Hence, the government of Sudan is hostile to the US. The country has however worked with several non-American companies such as Talisman of Canada and TotalFinaElf of France to exploit its vast oil resources. The US government citing religious persecution put sanctions on Sudan and attempted to put penalties on American and foreign companies dealing with Sudan. This turned out to be a mistake because American oil major were prevented from operating in Sudan. Now, the US is attempting to do an East Timor† in Southern Sudan citing ethnic crisis in the Darfur region. Predictably, journalists from American and British media are buzzing over this African nation like flies on a carcass, doing a lot of breast-beating and shedding a lot of artificial tears. This is a repeat of what they did in the Afghanistan (after the Soviet invasion), Balkans, and East Timor.
The Animal Planet channel showed a program about extreme fathers in nature. Emperor penguins and human dads were also on the list. They said that men can in fact go to the extent of breast-feeding their babies. They showed a researcher who made her boyfriend develop breasts (gynecomastia) purely by asking him to believe that he could. This must be good news for those idiots who call themselves as metrosexuals (girlie men). They can now be able to really keep in touch with their feminine side.

UPDATE (1/10/04): Also read Darfur: Is it genocide? from FinalCall.com.

I believe the best kept secret has been the hidden hand of the United States government, financing, funding and arming third party countries to facilitate and perpetuate the war hitting Sudan. There needs to be an independent investigation of our intelligence coordination, against insurgent groups in the country.

It is hypocritical for the United States government to speak of genocide and human rights abuses by the Sudanese government when, at the same time, they are covertly funding the insurgence and rebel groups in the country opposed to the government, which only serves to perpetuate the murder, the mayhem and the destruction of the human rights of the Sudanese people.

UPDATE (13/11/04): Today, there was a search for gynecomastia admirer in my referrer logs. So, I did some Googling and found the researcher at Unassisted Childbirth.com. The Animal Planet program is called The Most Extreme Dads.

– Read US Revealed to be Secretly Funding Opponents of Chavez

† – East Timor is a former Portugese colony in South-East Asia. In 1965, the CIA staged a coup in neigbbouring Indonesia by Gen. Suharto against Sukarno, a freedom fighter and the country’s first President. In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor. East Timor’s population was overwhelmingly Christian while the rest of Indonesia was essentially Muslim. When Suharto was deposed and democracy was established in Indonesia, American and British governments started making noise about the persecution of Christians in East Timor. Western correspondents such as those working for the CNN and BBC would go undercover and document atrocities inside East Timor. The Indonesian military was very much in control of the country and they made sure that the Western media got the stories they wanted. The international community was then convinced and East Timor became an independent nation in 2002. East Timor, it must be noted, has huge reseverves of gas and oil. It could have easily become a rich country but foriegn oil companies have other plans. Australia has claimed that its maritime border extends for 85% of the 600-mile sea separating the two countries. Under international laws, the border should have drawn halfway between the two countries, which would have given East Timor 100% of its petroleum resources including the oil-rich Greater Sunrise field. In March 2003, East Timor was forced to cede 79.9 percent of the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field to Australia. The entire worth of the field was an estimated $50 billion.