Is A. R. Antulay a Pakistani mole?

Many bloggers are asking this question these days. On any other day we would have laughed at this very idea and moved on. But not after hearing the sort of suspicious comments repeatedly made by the union minister even after the minister realized that it could cost his political career. Risking ones personal political career to sell some infinitely stupid conspiracy theory, that too at the highest level, even when his own political party runs the country, looks unusually suspicious.

The millionaires of Government of Karnataka

The names and assets of officials raided by Lok Ayukta:

Devaraj, Assistant Engineer, BBMP, 1.61 Crores
S R Patellapa, Assistant Director, Agriculture, 1.28 Crores
C M Chandre Gowda, AEE, KIADB, Mysore, 3 Crores
C Srinivasan, conservator of forest, Mysore, 1.55 Crores
S C Jayachandra, Chief Engineer (Hemavathi project), Gorur, 84.53 lakhs
Veeregowda, Village Pancahayat Secretary, Rajanukunte, Yelahanka, Rs 94.11 lakhs
Chandrashekhar Venkanna Chowhan, AEE, Almatti, 77.42 lakhs.

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Do you know some more millionaires in the Government of Karnataka? Add their names to the database here.

A.R.Antulay – It’s time to apologize to the nation and resign

God! How can this happen again!!

Most of us have not even completely forgotton how the shameless Achuthanandan barged into the house of Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan even after his father asking him not to visit, and passing on unthinkably cheap comments against the martyr’s father. Now we have a Union Minister, displaying a new low!

To quote Anthulay, “We may need a separate inquiry to find out how his [Karkare's] end came. Karkare found that there are non-Muslims involved in the acts terrorism during his investigations in some cases. Any person going to the roots of terror has always been the target.”

He added, “Superficially speaking they (terrorists) had no reason to kill Karkare.  Whether he (Karkare) was victim of terrorism or terrorism plus something, I do not know”.

Mr.A.R.Anthulay, you have done an unpardonable mistake. Choosing to do politics over the death of a martyr and using it for communal purposes!!

You better apologize to the nation and quit.

No. We will never forgive you.
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Note : We have decided to put A.R.Anthulay as the first entry into F.A.C.T’s National Shamelist of Politicians and Bureaurocrats involved in corrupt practices.

Click here to read the Report on A.R.Antulay in NYTimes.

Ratan Tata planning own anti-terror machinery

Source : http://ibnlive.in.com/

New Delhi: Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Tata, whose group owns the Taj chain of hotels, says he is planning to set up his own anti-terror mechanism to protect his people and assets. Speaking exclusively to CNN-IBN Tata said the police force was ill-equipped to handle the Mumbai terror attack.

“You have to accept that you cannot just constantly react to something after it takes place. You have got to look at creating a deterrent and that starts with good intelligence and sustained intelligence. It starts with the ability to put into action a plan that deals – closes of the airport, everyone knows what they are supposed to do rather than think on your feet after the event. It calls for mechanisms to make that happen,” says Tata.

He recounted that when the firing at the Taj Hotel took place, for a period of time there was a view that it was a gang war and the local police were to deal with it.

“In the Taj the first contingent of policemen came with three policemen. They were ill-equipped to handle them, in fact one of them got killed, the other got shot badly and one remains. The naval seals or commandos were there a couple of hours later. But we had to go through this state machinery to get it and that took a set of time. So it was just not coordinated and easily accessible,” Tata says

According to Tata, the question of leadership comes from the fact that there has to be leadership in knowing what to do. “The Fire Department didn’t know what to do. The commandos came too late. The police were not equipped to engage. There didn’t seem to be means of getting reinforcements. So all in all, there was an issue of not having a single leader. “

“We have decided that we will now look at anti-terrorism or protection of our assets and our people ourselves and we will try to create a deterrent. We will not try to create heroes who will engage in the enemy but to try and find as many invisible forms of deterring this, containing them or thwarting their efforts and that’s what we are engaged in doing and we will seek external expertise to help us set it up,” he adds.

While 2007 was a stellar year for the Tata Group with its flagship companies grabbing headlines for its big global acquisitions, in 2008, however, the business conglomerate’s fortunes took a U-turn and the group has been plagued by setbacks.

Tata, however, remains optimistic saying the demand in the economy has not dried up and there is a need to invigorate the economy.

“There have been huge bailouts for the financial sector because it cannot be allowed to die. The rest of the economy is now left without funds and an ultra conservative and ultra risk-averse financial community. We have gone into a period where bona fide businesses do not have demands, where sentiment is negative and I think the government for the first time has to take a much, much more proactive role in providing confidence and enthusiasm to the consumers that they will in fact will see an uprising in the economy,” he says.

Now they want to ban Google-Earth to fight terrorism!

It is reported that one of the over-enthusiastic Mumbai advocates has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) asking the Mumbai high court to ban Google Earth. It is not yet confirmed completely whether the court has passed such an order respecting the request, though some reports claims so.

It is great to see citizens taking ownership and bringing up things of national importance in front of the country which is repeatedly ignored by the elected governments and the administration. On the other hand it really sad that people also use this to get some quick popularity. In this case the latter seems to be motive.

Google took the world by a pleasant surprise when it opened up the satellite maps of the world to the people, for free. Till then accurate maps were considered to be the prerogatives of governments and security agencies and were primarily used for defense, national planning etc. Google brought this to the ordinary citizen of the country, which till then was never done or never attempted by any government anywhere on planet.

Consider this. The only free maps provided to the citizens of this country by Survey of India, which finds immense pride to be the oldest scientific department of India, are the following maps – ‘the geographical maps for children’.

The vision of ‘Survey Of India’ states : “Survey of India will take a leadership role in providing user focused, cost effective, reliable and quality geospatial data, information and intelligence for meeting the needs of national security, sustainable national development and new information markets”. Clearly catering the common man’s need is not a primary goal. The only application of maps for public, they can imagine, it seems is for teaching the children. (Sorry for being so sarcastic, but having one of the oldest institutions [founded in 1767] and still common public deprived of quality maps for its use tells a lot in itself). It is only after going to moon that ISRO is thinking about doing something similar to the common public with Project Bhuvan. Identifying the needs of common man and utilizing the avalable technology, it looks, still a rocket science in India.

The person who is unnecessarily diverting public’s attention from important issues, must have at least thought about this before setting out on ambitious task of getting Google-Earth banned:
1.) Can the government ban Google-Earth throughout the world? Who is going to loose if Google-Earth is only banned inside India? Will the terrorists who get trained across the border stand to loose anything from such a ban? Or will it be really difficult for them to gather these details from our neighbor’s intelligence offices?
2.) Why not the locations of Prime minister’s home or location of India’s parliament kept secret. Isn’t keeping them secret would prevent attacks similar to the one on parliament?
3.) Following the same argument, shouldn’t we also think about banning the use mobile phones, satellite phones?
4.) Shouldn’t we also ban GPS use for fishing boats considering terrorists used the same to locate their way to Mumbai coast?

By banning Google-Earth, the greatest loss is for the common public. It does not change anything for the determined terrorists, who did several recces of the location before attacking. What is of prime importance is improving securities of important installations and not hiding information. Taking the country to the stone age and hoping that terrorists come with swords and arrows to fight is utter foolishness.

It is sad that our country still has people (apart from politicians) who like to exploit the situations for their own benefits. We can only say, “Father, forgive them, because they don’t know what they‘re doing“.

Dec 13 : Shame on you Congress… Shame on you Left…

Note :  F.A.C.T does not support any political party, neither it is biased towards any religion.

It is 7 years to the attack on Indian parliament.  On that unfortunate day, nine people were killed, many of whom were security personnel trying to save more than 200 parliamentarians who were inside the building at the time of attack. 5 terrorists were also killed in the gun battle. The key conspirator Gazi Baba was later killed by Indian security forces an year later. Considering what happened in Taj,

first bullets have to go through me…

A survivor recollects the dreadful day….

Mine is a story so improbable that if it were made into a movie, no one

would believe it. It begins innocuously enou gh with a dinner

reservation with another couple (Shiv and Reshma) at a leading

restaurant in a world class hotel, and ends 12 hours later in a brazen

commando assault by the Indian army that allowed us to be freed. My

point in relaying this story is not to tell a sensational true story,

but express my eternal gratitude and to pay tribute to the staff of The

Taj Mahal Hotel, who literally sacrificed their lives in

disproportionate numbers so that we could ultimately survive. They,

along with the bravery of the Indian army, are the true heroes and are

deserving of due respect.

Why is it like this?

It is 5.55 in the evening. I park my bike in a corner next to the Kanteerava stadium and start walking briskly towards the B.R.V Junction. I had received an e-mail, asking people to come and attend a candle light vigil in memory of the unfortunate victims of Mumabi attack.

It’s 6. I reach B.R.V.Junction. I ask an autowallah and he confirms that it is infact the junction. But something was missing, the crowd. I look around. Have they left already? I may have been late by 2 minutes. So how far they must have walked? I look at the watch again, its still 6 or may be 5:59 to be exact. I look around again. I see a couple of students waiting at the corner of the road. I can see a paper roll peeping out of the bag. Oh, that must be the placard, I tell myself. Shocked seeing just 5 of them, I stand there for a second, without knowing what should I do next. Then I see two more people joining them. I walk upto them and ask ‘Are you for the candle light vigil’. One of them tries to smile sheepishly and says ‘yes’. Now there 6 or 7 of us.

Instead of feeling pity about myself, my resolve to be part of that vigil becomes stronger. Another 10 mins passes. We tell each other, whatever may be the number of people, we will start in another 20 minutes and start our walk towards Mahathma Gandhi park and light the candles. We decide to wait till 6.30.

.. and they promptly condemned the incident and wished speedy recovery of the injured

Shivraj Patil condemns blast in Rajdhani Express

New Delhi, Dec 13, 2007 (ANI): Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil today condemned blast in the Rajdhani Express in Assam.

“I convey my sympathies to those killed and pray for speedy recovery of those injured in the incident,” said Patil in a message.

“People of our country understand the designs of terrorists and will not be cowed down by such incidents. The State Governments and Railways will take necessary steps to provide protection to passengers and see that such incidents do not recur,” he added.

How many more lives?

Here is the list of attacks that took place in 2008 alone:

• May 13, 2008 - at least 63 were killed in 9 bomb blasts along 6 areas in Jaipur.63 deaths
• July 25, 2008 – at least 2 were killed and 20 injured in 8 low intensity bomb blasts in Bangalore.2 deaths
• July 26, 2008 – 56 were killed and over 110 injured in 17 serial bomb blasts in Ahmedabad.29 deaths
• September 13, 2008 – at least 15 were killed and over 110 injured in 5 bomb blasts in Delhi markets.21 deaths.
• September 27, 2008 – 1 killed and at least 17 injured in bombings at Mehrauli area 2 bomb blasts in Delhi flower market.1 death.
• September 29, 2008 - 10 killed and 80 in bombings in Maharashtra and Gujarat bomb blasts.10 deaths.
• October 1, 2008 – 0-4 killed and up to 100 injured in Agartala bombing.4 deaths.
• October 21, 2008 – 17 killed and at least 40 injured in Imphal bomb blast.17 deaths.
• October 30, 2008 – 45+ killed and at least 300 injured in Assam bomb blast.77 deaths.
• November 26, 2008 – At least 180 killed and 287 injured in a coordinated attack in Mumbai.[9]125 deaths and increasing

Does anyone need any more explanation about how the whole issue is treated by the leadership?

Should we believe when the government says strongest action will be taken?