Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone - Issue #54: Why Modi is destined for Global Leadership

Frances Martel shares an interesting analysis on the side-story of the India-China conflict.

Amid military hostilities with China and leading the world’s only concrete plan to decouple from the Communist Party’s monopoly on manufacturing, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has emerged as the leader of the free world’s fight to contain Beijing, assuming a role now mostly vacated by President Donald Trump.

She discusses about how India, under Modi, is effectively taking on China. Something that people in every country - specifically in the US, cutting across party lines (even democrats) - want! The only issue is that leaders in all of the countries bearing the Chinese scourge are not willing to undertake that step. Because of the argument which talks about how eliminating China from business supply chains is an impossibility. This is where, Frances thinks India may have shown the spark and the way.

The concrete steps New Delhi is taking to boycott China, with a much weaker economy at home than America’s and a similarly dire Chinese coronavirus epidemic at home, shows that eliminating China from national supply chains is not a fantasy.

Do we realize the significance of what Frances Martel has written?

There is a global force which is largely perceived by people in almost all countries as negative. No leader and no country was willing to take it on. Only Trump had come to the fore speaking about it, albeit insincerely. He had really not done anything concrete to don that mantle.

Here came India’s Modi. And, took the fight into his own domain. Now, not only is he standing up to the global bully, he is being egged on to do more! One of the IANS survey clearly says that people expect the government to do more against China, not less. The mandate to Modi is clear.

This scenario presents very interesting outcomes for Modi and India:

it catapults Modi to the helm of the Chinese-resistance groups and countries globally. Those countries do not have to take “China on”. Now, they can achieve a lot of their goals by simple “backing India”. When Backing India = Fighting China, in a world that is increasingly anti-China, it is a situation custom-made for natural global leadership.
since he has continued trade relations with China, while making an example of the Chinese, other countries may be able to align with India (to counter China) and yet camouflage it as not being an “anti-China” move. India is doing far more than Taiwan or Hong Kong, but China cannot make an example of India globally. India can, however, do so with China - because of naturally existing ground-swell
Posits India’s strength as aspirational. When people want something, but their leadership is too weak to take action, it creates a natural sense of worthlessness. That is what people across Australia, US, Europe, and many other countries are going through right now. They want to take China on (COVID and more), but no one is listening. Modi does not have to campaign in Sri-Lanka or in Australia, but people there will be quoting Modi’s example as the worthy of emulation.

And, that is the beauty of taking on the fight against a bully. You don’t have to rally others who are too meek to stand up. They back you, even anonymously. For you hold hope and the only way out of their dark tunnel against the bully’s actions.

humans as guinea pigs

Guess which place is the haven for clinical trials when you want to get a drug out quickly?

Africa.

Cameroon, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa all have highly developed clinical trial capabilities, said Salim Abdool Karim, chair of South Africa’s ministerial advisory committee for COVID-19. Many other sub-Saharan African countries also have clinical trial capacity, said Daniel Bausch, director of the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team.

Very touching and even aspirational one would say. As this article says, the tests for COVID-19 drug have started in Africa. It also suggests that the tests are happening in Brazil and Britain. Any bets on where the main trials are happening?

First Vaccinations Begin in Africa for COVID-19 Trial

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Africa’s first participation in a COVID-19 vaccine trial started Wednesday as volunteers received injections developed at the University of Oxford in Britain, while officials said the continent of 1.3 billion people cannot be left behind.

www.usnews.com • Share

Dr. Atousa Mahdavi puts it in the proper context. It is not about vaccinations and science, but about using humans as animals!

Africa, the cheapest place to do human trials skipping animal trials, for pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines and all in the name of humanity and that “Africa should not be left behind”… Meanwhile there are the least number of deaths due to Covid in that continent. This is sad and wrong…

And, that is true.

cow smuggling and brutal murders

It is a war going out there for India’s cow population. Those who are profiting from the cow slaughter and smuggling industry - specifically in Bangladesh - now have a strong and violent lobby. They have worked to change the who narrative towards cow and religion. It was never about that. It was about economics. In August 2019, Swarajyamag reported that 20 people had been killed by the beef mafia in India because they were a hindrance in their smuggling racket.

Twenty persons have died in the last one year at the hands of cattle thieves. They are farmers, policemen and saadhus. These deaths have occurred in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

News like these - one where the BSF jawan lost his hand in an attack by the cattle smugglers in July 2019, and another where a BSF Officer died in an attack by the cattle smugglers are all too common.

BSF jawan gets injured in a tussle with cattle smugglers - The Economic Times

The smugglers, 25 in number, were equipped with country made bombs, sharpe edged weapons, sticks, high beam torches. Some members of the group were Indian, BSF said.

economictimes.indiatimes.com • Share

BSF Officer Attacked By Cattle Smugglers In Tripura Dies

Border Security Force (BSF) commanding officer Deepak Mondal who was attacked by smugglers along the India-Bangladesh border in Tripura earlier this week has succumbed to his injuries,

www.outlookindia.com • Share

Unfortunately, the fascist-liberal media of India and their friends in the global media share only one narrative - of beef lynchings. It was never about religion as much about basic survival and livelihood of the farmers and illegal trade.

It is in this context, that one needs to view the attack on VHP’s Gau Raksha Pramukh Ravi Vishwakarma and Bajrang Dal General Secretary - who were attacked by “some people” in Pipariya. This planned attack could very well have been planned by the cattle smuggling cartels. The sad part is that no one will talk about them and start a movement.

Karan Sharma

@IKaransharma27

VHP's Gau Raksha Pramukh Ravi Vishwakarma attacked with sharp-edged weapons and then shot dead by a group of ten people in Pipariya when he was returning from Hoshangabad with Bajrang Dal General Secretary in a car. VHP's Prant Sah Mantri Gopal Soni told it was a planned murder. https://t.co/PmE0jGMZ8q

9:12 AM - 27 Jun 2020

Not a single mainstream media outlet has discussed about this murder and those behind it. No one is talking about the global movement to back those who save the local livelihoods from these criminal cattle smuggling cartels.

That is why we had suggested in our last edition that it is time to dismantle the current media. It is time to create a new news framework that speaks the truth. Boycott TV News and Newspapers.

What the heck?

Incestuous royalty? 5,000-year-old Neolithic-era monument has been discovered. It is carved with mysterious symbols, marking it as the elaborate tomb of an important ancient man - a king possibly. The study published in prestigious scientific journal Nature, was produced by a team of scientists at Trinity College Dublin led by geneticist Lara Cassidy. The study examined the remains of 42 individuals buried at Neolithic sites throughout the country. Research into the king’s genetics reveals that his parents were likely to have been siblings. Rampant incest in Irish royal families in the past? (Source)

The Great monkey Escape Zookeepers were furious doing their morning inspection to find their clever primates had gone. They’d outwitted them and cleverly made a bid for freedom from their locked enclosure in a jailbreak as epic as classic movie The Great Escape (Source)

tech-point: interesting tech notes

Do you like the Tik-tok style videos and entertainment, but don’t want the Chinese app?

There is an alternative.

Chingari.

I have installed it and it is quite good. Still early days and it needs to have its servers optimized for fast delivery and scaling the performance, but the content is there. It has 1 million + downloads already.

Here is the link to download Chingari from Google Play Store and Chingari from Apple App Store.

Tiktok vs Chingari | Chingari Made-in-India app crosses 1 million downloads in less than 15 days of launch: All you need to know

The app was launched recently in India and has been called as a desi alternative to popular Chinese short video sharing platform, Tiktok.

www.timesnownews.com • Share

nota bene

Elite Chinese vs Bihar regiment: Five new militia divisions including former members of a Mount Everest Olympic torch relay team and fighters from a mixed martial arts club presented themselves for inspection at Lhasa on June 15, official military newspaper China National Defense News reported. So, in short, the soldiers, Gurjeet killed with bare hands and other Indian jawans fought were the Chinese elite. (Source)

Lichen park: Uttarakhand Forest Department has developed India’s ‘first’ lichen park in Munsiyari in Pithoragarh district of the state. The state has over 600 species of lichens of which around 150 are found in Munsiyari. (Source)

Migrant labor and Realty projects: Severe Capital and Labor crunch has stalled several real estate projects in major Indian cities. Around 90% of our project workers come from West Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and are not locals. And, that labor has gone back to their villages! (Source)

Falling icons: Princeton University is removing Woodrow Wilson’s name from its public policy school and one of its residential colleges after trustees concluded that the 28th U.S. president’s “racist thinking and policies” made him “an inappropriate namesake.” (Source)

Evangelist TV in Israel: The license for Shelanu TV, the Hebrew-language Christian evangelical TV channel which has been accused of seeking to proselytize in Israel, has been suspended. Shelanu TV, owned by parent company God TV, began broadcasting in Israel on the Hot cable network at the end of April after it received a license from the Council for Cable and Satellite Broadcasting earlier this year. (Source)

the need for security

In a very interesting comment, one person writes on this video:

Krishnamurti was beyond genius. When I see and hear him I feel like I’m in ancient Greece listening to Socrates.

And, that is so true for most of his talks.

But this discussion that I am sharing is indeed a rare occurrence.

He is discussing the “need for security” with three scientists and turning the entire argument which is held commonly on its head.

The need for security is foolish and actually rooted in memory.

This is a discussion between Krishnamurti and three scientists - David Bohm (Nobel Physics laureate), John Hidley and Rupert Sheldrake (biochemist)