The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
Herding the cadres in the same direction of subversive actions requires an action plan. Toolkits are that plan. They are exposed because someone is watching. But why silence? The Games of Subversion.
Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay
“People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.” ― James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room
The world may not be saying openly. The establishments and the intelligence agencies in the West and in other countries hit by the COVID virus originating in Wuhan may not be speaking about it.
But they know.
And would be presumably mad about the declaration of a global war and unleashing of a deadly “weapon of mass destruction” without a murmur in the world.
Why the silence?
Have they been bought? All of them? From the low level officers to the most seasoned ones of the most famed and powerful organizations that the world has seen?
Or, they are engaged in a “fight to finish”.
They realize that there is no easy or halfway tactic that can answer the actions of the last 2 years.
Silence, when it is this unusually frustrating and just doesn’t make any sense at all, is always an indicator of only two things:
The challenger feels confident in his apparent exploits and the thrill that they provide.
The incumbent, if his strengths and hunger are anywhere close to his old ways, will always plan to come back in ways and with a strategy that is nothing short of fatal.
Modi’s silence at everything that is happening also has that quality. It does not make sense. And, he is not one who will submit easily.
Be ready for a joy ride in the coming days.
ANNOUNCEMENT: We have been writing this newsletter non-stop for over an year now. We will take a break for 2 weeks starting next week to rejuvenate and reflect. We will try and share some quick thoughts in text or audio but it will be time to think through how to improve our offering. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, please write to us.
The break will be from May 24th through to June 6th.
A toolkit said to be from the Indian National Congress has come out in public. It is a document that details how India’s health, security, and well-being can be sabotaged to gain political advantage. Here are the pages that have come out.
When you see how the messages were being spread in the last few weeks you realize that the playbook in the “Toolkit” was being followed to the T.
Fighting the internal political wars using toolkits is not new. It has been going on for a long time. Without any word coming out. Or anyone retaliating.
During the Indo-China war, the Communists in India were losing face. There was hostility all around.
As the narrative tide was turning against the Communists in India, Ajoy Ghosh and BT Ranadive wrote a letter to the Chinese to desist from calling everyone in Indian politics as “Indian imperialists” and “Indian expansionists”. Instead, they said that two parties in India should be targeted for attacks – Jayaprakash Narayan’s Praja Socialist Party and Jan Sangh – BJP’s predecessor.
The origins of the narrative against the Jan Sangh / BJP / RSS by the left, while letting Congress off the hook (in fact even working with them) has its origins here.
There is a fundamental flaw in Western democracy that rests on rules pushed by the left-liberal dispensations. It is trying to live up to rules that the left liberals have foisted on the society, even when they themselves will not live by it.
Subversion is a multi-faceted strategy and is often a long-term thing.
What is subversion? It is often confused with dissent. It is not. Dissent is a camouflage that is used to hide the actions that are subversives. Those activities are deliberately created in ways that the boundary between dissent and subversion can be blurred. The more an adversary can blur the boundary, the greater space he has to run his subversive activities.
This blurring of the boundaries is achieved by the use of journalists and intellectuals - as the Chinese adage, we cite later, asserts.
The British and the Americans have obviated such attempts by the Chinese and Russians by demonizing these two establishments and their intentions.
It is a lesson that India needs to learn as well.
Fitzroy Maclean, for example, went to Moscow in 1937 on a diplomatic posting. He went to witness how Stalin was purging his opponents across the Soviet Union. He came back in 1939 and wrote a secret memo. The MI6 devised a plan based on that to counter USSR. It was codenamed Lyautey, after a French general.
General Lyautey had asked his gardener to plant some trees for providing shade. The gardener replied that they would take decades to grow! The General retorted that then there was no time to lose - do it immediately!
MI6’s Lyautey plan was a long-term strategy to break the Soviet Union. They wanted to do it by inciting unrest amongst USSR’s religious and ethnic minorities over the subsequent 50 years.
In a way, they succeeded. USSR dissolved on December 26, 1991. 52 years after the MI6 initiated the Lyautey plan.
The timeline has been shortened beyond belief with the advent of social media, big data, and artificial intelligence. It is not just possible to know the populations of the adversaries but also subvert their minds by using the right tools.
When your adversary knows you better than your spouse and he does so based on your own open public interactions, then there is a population waiting to be colonized. All on a silver platter.
The Chinese have their own brand of the subversive playbook. (Source)
China has been using “third-party spokespeople” who have been ‘cultivated’ by Chinese lobbyists in the US to create vocal supporters of the Chines establishment. In 2003, when the official document for objectives of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was revised, “media warfare” became an important and explicit part of China’s military strategy.
“Their view of national security involves pre-emption in the world of ideas,” says former CIA analyst Peter Mattis, who is now a fellow in the China programme at the Jamestown Foundation, a security-focused Washington thinktank. “The whole point of pushing that kind of propaganda out is to preclude or preempt decisions that would go against the People’s Republic of China.”(Source)
Nigerian investigative journalist Dayo Aiyetan had set up The International Center for Investigative Reporting, ICIR, and had exposed the thriving illegal trade in timber from Nigeria and a large part of West Africa being carried on by the Chinese businesses in 2016. He had received a call from someone with a job offer at the China Central Television (CCTV) – the state broadcaster, which had opened up a hub in Nigeria some time back. Double the money and job security. He refused.
One of the ways that the Chinese are infiltrating the education system – colleges and K-12 (Kindergarten to 12th grade) – is through its, innocuously named, Confucius institutes. Even though the parent organization is marketed as a Non-Profit Organization, it is part of the Chinese establishment tool.
Hanban is in fact controlled by high officials of the Chinese party-state implementing the policies of the PRC propaganda apparatus. The governing council of Hanban, which annually sets its agenda, has long been headed by a member of the Politburo. A number of its ranking officials, beside their high status in such ministries as foreign affairs, finance and national development, are members of so-called small leading groups of the Party’s propaganda and ideology sections — which thus function as conduits for the realization of Politburo policies in the operations of Confucius Institutes. (Source)
These Confucius Institutes have been working to infiltrate for the last two decades. 550 Confucius Institutes have been created globally since 2004. Roughly 100 in the United States and 29 in the United Kingdom. Around 1200 Confucius classrooms are based in primary and secondary schools.
How does the partnership work?
The CIs are joint ventures between the host university or school, a partner university in China, and Hanban, a controversial agency under China’s education ministry. It oversees CI operations and provides partial funding, staff, and other support. (Source –BBC)
The same Hanban which has close ties with the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party.
In India 54 MoUs had been signed between the Confucius Institutes and some prestigious Indian Universities like the IITs, BHU, JNU and NITs.
Between journalists, publications, and loaded cultural and educational centers, the Chinese are targeting India in many ways.
Their joint venture and deal with the Indian National Congress is just one of the many avenues.
Indian Vaccine Exports halted Until October: India is unlikely to resume major exports of Covid-19 vaccines until at least October as it diverts shots for domestic use, three government sources said, a longer-than-expected delay set to worsen supply shortages from the global Covax initiative. Battling the world's biggest jump in coronavirus infections, India halted vaccine exports a month ago after donating or selling more than 66 million doses. The move has left countries including Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and many in Africa scrambling for alternate supplies. (Source)
Congress Toolkit: Various BJP leaders on Tuesday (18 May) shared screenshots of what they call is a "toolkit" of the Congress party to adopt various underhand techniques to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP led central government. This "toolkit" has been attributed to the AICC Research Department. "Use the phrase Indian Strain whenever talking of new mutant. Social Media volunteers can call it Modi Strain", the alleged toolkit states. The toolkit which contains the Congress symbol on the top right corner of each shared page, calls for the use of dramatic photographs of funerals and dead bodies which is already being done by foreign media. It goes on to say that such journalists can be facilitated by the local Congress cadre. (Source)
Amazon to buy MGM: Amazon is reportedly in talks to acquire movie giant MGM for $9 billion, at a time when the world's largest telecommunication company AT&T has announced to merge WarnerMedia with Discovery to create a new media giant that will compete with leading streaming players like Netflix. While The Information reported Amazon is in discussions to acquire MGM Holdings between $7 billion to $10 billion, Variety said in its report on Monday that $9 billion is the amount MGM was hoping to zero in. MGM owns a major film library, with interests in the long running James Bond franchise as well as other well-known titles such as Rocky and Pink Panther. (Source)
Explosives galore in Maharashtra: As many as 14000 gelatin sticks, 4000 detonators, and other explosive materials were seized from two different locations in Maharashtra. In a raid by Thane’s Crime Branch Unit, cops seized 12000 gelatin sticks and 3000 detonators from Bhiwandi on Monday. As per the police, the sticks were packed in 60 boxes with each carrying 190 sticks in a safehouse. Upon receiving the information, a team was constituted to raid Mittal enterprise located at the Karivali village to seize the explosive materials. Following the raid, one person identified as Gurunath Kashinath (53) has been taken into custody. (Source)
Kar (or Karpo) is white and Zangs means Copper. Zanskar means White Copper. It is a land that is pristine in its beauty and harsh in its way of life. Winters are white and snowy and summers bring hard work.
Watch this beautiful and very informative documentary on an area in India that is often ignored.
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Today’s ONLINE PAPER: Check out today’s “The Drishtikone Daily” edition. - THE DRISHTIKONE DAILY
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
The US used its currency supremacy backed by its military supremacy to weaponize economics. Now, it is coming back to haunt in the multipolar world.
Rare Earth Elements (REE) will change and rule the world as oil did in the last century. China dominates that industry like no other. And it uses that monopoly to beat down on its adversaries.
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