The power of anger can break the heart

If the heart were to be likened to a badly behaved child, the main traits the person would suffer from would be anger and hostility besides a host of other habits like smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, physical inactivity, obesity etc! It’s a known fact that negative emotions, primarily in the form of anger and hostility are bad for the health in general and the heart in particular. Anger can break the heart literally and metaphorically.
Conceived in the head, these traits gnaw away at the heart, for the heart and mind cannot be separated. The two cross-talk through a process of chemical conversations with health of one affecting the health of the other and vice-versa.
These chemicals are essentially stress hormones like adrenaline, noradrenaline and other harmful mediators like inflammation, which play an important role in the deposition of cholesterol in the arteries of the body, a process called atherosclerosis. And this damage is not limited to the heart.
Research has shown that people considered the least agreeable and the most antagonistic were at a 40 per cent increased risk for arterial wall thickening all across the body. As an oriental saying goes, “You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.”
The harmful stress hormones, adrenaline and nor-adrenaline increase the heart rate, the blood pressure and the breathing rate and produce a sugar deficiency that makes an angry person’s blood tend to clot. Long term hormonal imbalances affect the body’s immune system too and chronically angry people frequently battle colds and flu, asthma, arthritis and a flair up of skin disorders. They also try to find a substitute for their unhappiness by over-eating, smoking and drinking too much alcohol and are prone to depression, which may trigger even more angry responses.
Simply put, if you are a healthy person and anger and hostility form a staple of your persona, there is a 19 per cent more chance of your getting an illness of the likes of angina, a heart attack and stroke, than if you were calm and content!
Recent research has also shown that men, who bottle up frustration at the work place, covertly coping with it, are twice as likely to have a heart attack as men who express their feelings openly. Angry older men, as stereotypes go, are most vulnerable but excessive ire can take a toll at any age. Hotheads are six times more likely to suffer heart attacks as compared to their cooler counterparts.
Anger comes in many forms: annoyance, irritability, frustration, vexation, resentment, animosity, ire, indignation, wrath, rage, hostility, violence, depression, cynical behaviour… the list can go on endlessly.
The ill effects may creep in surreptitiously and one may not know till a very late stage and therefore preventive stress management especially the role of regular exercise and diet besides other stress relief measures like yoga, transcendental meditation and prayers cannot be over emphasised.
Counselling sessions with psychologists are very much in order and psychologists should not be taken as doctors who deal with ‘loony’ people but who are a very integral and essential part of the maintenance of the sanity of healthy people. However, this dawning seems to be lacking even in the medical profession. Amongst the advice dished out by doctors to patients, the admonition to “bring down stress levels” often comes as an afterthought, “See you after two weeks, Mr Singh. Oh, and do bring down your stress levels and try not to get angry at trifles...” This in fact should be our primary ‘mantra’ for health.
The writer is CEO and Chief Cardiac Surgeon, National Heart Institute, New Delhi
Source: The Asian Age

Semantics of terrorism

WHEN we discuss issues that have to do with terrorism we often tend to avoid using the correct word or description. Therefore, the first casualty is the truth.
In order to remain in the safe world of non-controversial matters, we avoid discussing the real drivers of terrorism. Instead, we identify hunger, poverty and unemployment as the causes of terrorism. An analysis under this framework does not pay dividends; one must identify the real motivating force that drives terrorism if we are to create the right policies.
We fall into this trap because our minds are hardwired by culture, religion, history and our specific national narrative that forces us to view objects from a preconceived angle. For example, as soon as the recent tragic killings began in Norway, yellow journalism ran amok initially. The western media as well as Al Jazeera called it a jihadist attack; some even accused the
Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami organisation as the instigator.
Police finally charged Breivik, an ‘ethnic Norwegian’, with a history of far-right and anti-Islamic views as the accused. This underscores the point that the media is not neutral. All the current self-praise about being rational and enlightened is imaginary. The East and West have both created the ‘other’ as our Neanderthal forefathers did before us. Similarly, we write evasively when we discuss the causes of terrorism.
The war on terrorism is a phenomenon that prevents clear thinking. The Norwegian tragedy showed that when a society is threatened by any danger the impulsive reaction is to accuse the cultural ‘enemy’. In Western Europe, until the Second World War, the Jew was the accepted scapegoat. The new ‘enemy’ is now the Muslim in Europe and the US.
If western societies come under further economic or security stress then Muslims will be the scapegoats. The recent rubbishing of the Kashmir Action Committee in Washington is another example of a similar turf and cultural war between the ISI and the CIA and FBI. All major intelligence agencies fund lobbies to enlarge their influence within an important country; KAC was apparently doing that for Pakistan. The FBI wants to reduce Pakistan’s footprint in Washington.
In a similar manner, in our attempt to avoid taking controversial positions, some analysts claim that hunger and food shortage leads to terrorism. Clearly, the shortage of food in households is due to the lack of income. Another faulty conclusion is that poverty leads to terrorism. Such statements conceal the real forces driving terrorism. If the causes are denied then solutions cannot be found.
Research conducted in Swat last year provides some important indicators. For instance, it was noted that neither poverty nor the deteriorating provision of social services, nor the concentration of land in the hands of a small elite were sufficient causes by themselves of the rise of terrorism in Swat. What then is the cause?
It was found that the increase in the idea of the threat to Islam from the invasion of Afghanistan by the US in 2001, coupled with the use of Pakistan’s military against tribes in Fata in 2004, convinced the religiously inclined population in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal areas that the invasion of Afghanistan was a prelude to an attack on Pakistan’s identity of which religion is an important component.
The melding of a separate regional Islamic identity anchored in jihad began with the arrival of the formidable Islamic warrior Syed Ahmed Shaheed from Patna in 1826 to what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The call for jihad was made after the East India Company won the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the conservative Muslims concluded (correctly as it turned out) that Britain was planning to displace Muslim rule in India.
The Islamic ramparts in India were strengthened by Shah Waliullah’s family. One of their important contributions in association with other ulema was to dispatch 800 warriors from eastern India to the Pakhtun belt to organise the jihad; first against the Sikhs and later the British who replaced the former as rulers in 1849. In an interesting interregnum in this episode, Peshawar was declared an Islamic emirate in 1829 under Syed Ahmed before the Sikhs wrested it back.
Malakand and the surrounding areas formed the core region of manoeuvre of Syed Ahmed’s jihad that was etched in the collective memory and is revived whenever the people are convinced that their Islamic identity is under threat. In the survey mentioned earlier, 87 per cent of the respondents said that they began to support jihad due to the persuasion of local
religious personalities.
Later, the militants solidified their hold over society in Swat by the use of terror as a control mechanism. The local religious leaders were assisted by the TTP and jihadi outfits from Punjab. Radicalism was fanned and acts of terrorism were committed to prevent the government from falling completely under the sway of US policies.
Secondly, the people in Swat could not be won over by religious rhetoric alone. The militants obtained support for their cause by linking the current events with the past historic, religious and cultural experiences of the region.
Religiously inclined militants explain that the approach followed in Fata and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the best method of containing the enthusiasm for the West shown by the government and Pakistan’s westernised elite. This then appears to be the foremost driver of terrorism in Swat. It could also be the explanation for the wider terrorism in Pakistan and the unending war in Afghanistan.
The policy recommendation emerging from this discussion clearly is that either the government
should align its policies with national aspirations or expect to face violence.
The writer is chairman of the Regional Institute of Policy Research in Peshawar.
azizkhalid@gmail.com
Source: Dawn News

A shaky dialogue

IT looked good, it sounded good — and in the fraught world of Pak-India relations, that was probably good enough, for now.
The young Pakistani princess outshone her dapper Indian counterpart; the media was agog; and the outside world looked on approvingly. So are the constituencies for peace in India and Pakistan back with a bang? Not quite.
What this week has been about is atmospherics and optics. Make the environment in which talks are conducted more congenial and make all the noises necessary to reassure the other side of interest in talks — without ceding anything meaningful on any front.
Improving atmospherics and optics is nothing to scoff at when you’re talking about a six-decade-old problem to rival any other on the global stage. But Pakistan and India have been down this road many times before. It is reasonable to ask, will this time be any different?
On the Indian side, the peace constituency appears to have been bolstered by at least four things. The Indian PM and his national security adviser are still keen on better ties with Pakistan. The US is pushing for an improvement in Pak-India relations because of the potential regional dividends.
India has realised that the post-Mumbai attempt to diplomatically isolate Pakistan was a bad idea because the rest of the world doesn’t see Pakistan through an Indian lens. And India wants to see the Mumbai perpetrators brought to justice, something unlikely to ever occur if India disengages Pakistan.
But the first real public test for the peace constituency in India will come when it has to push domestically for a deal on some of the mid-level stuff, a deal on Sir Creek perhaps or more improbably, Siachen.
Another significant opportunity will come in private, when the contours of the post-American future of Afghanistan begin to get fleshed out in the months ahead. If India and Pakistan accommodate each other there, or at least refrain from intractable stubbornness, the dialogue between India and Pakistan would get a boost.Sitting here in Pakistan, though, it’s difficult to predict whether the supporters of dialogue on the Indian side will prevail or not.
Not that it’s any easier predicting stuff about the Pakistani side.
Hina Rabbani may bring a touch of soft power, Salman Bashir may talk tough, Shahid Malik may look tough, but the real power lies in the hands of the generals. And it’s hard to say what they are ultimately thinking. At least this much is clear, though: keeping relations with India on the boil at the moment isn’t in the army’s interest.
With so many irons in the fire — fending off the US, salvaging a domestic reputation tattered in recent months, trying to recover internal security, figuring out what’s next in Afghanistan, cash drying up — stoking the fires with India doesn’t really make sense.
But India-centricness remains. The generals’ stripes are too deep to scrub out and a ‘cold peace’ is the most the generals have been able to contemplate in terms of concessions to an opponent they viscerally mistrust and are suspicious of.
Cold peace would amount to conjoined twins staring off in different directions, interacting with the rest of the world on separate terms, ignoring cooperative solutions that would benefit both and each quietly watching for any harm directed its way from the other side.
So, are the generals just buying time and space for themselves by letting the civilians and bureaucrats talk peace but keeping them on a very short leash, hoping ultimately to return to competing strategically or perhaps forcing a cold peace?
History suggests the generals are unlikely to have changed their stripes. And with the civilian government having surrendered the national security and foreign policy domains to the uniformed lot, there’s little pressure on the generals to change their minds, if not mindsets.
Reality, however, can have its own way of intervening.
We threaten India, India threatens us — historically, the spill-over of conflict has been limited. But with the addition of nuclear weapons, the rise of India and the terrorism problem in Pakistan, along with sorting out Afghanistan in the medium term, the relationship has taken on a new dimension.
When the relationship between India and Pakistan was at its lowest ebb following the stand-off over prosecution of the Mumbai plotters in Pakistan, it was the US that was essentially keeping the two sides talking to each other.
And as far as the US is concerned, economic integration of the region, stretching from Central Asia to India with Afghanistan and Pakistan in between could be just the right tonic to reduce strategic tensions in the region.
The generals have always resisted economic integration with India, arguing that political issues have to be resolved before economic opportunities can be tapped.
But as the economy continues to sag and the effects of that continue to spread deeper and wider, business and trade interests may become more vocal in their demands. Economic integration — trade and investment opportunities from roaring India — remains the one element that has the potential of transforming the relationship between India and Pakistan, and undercutting the generals’ view of the relationship.
Interestingly, an attempt within the last year by big business to convince the generals of the merits of trade with India was initially met with a cautious nod of approval. But then, when the plan was ready to be unveiled to the public, the generals pulled the plug.
So as atmospherics and optics are improved in the latest round of dialogue, perhaps there is also an opening for a significant and long-lasting success: more trade and investment between India and Pakistan.
The writer is a member of staff.
cyril.a@gmail.com
Source: Dawn News

Find the Right Hair Style for your Face Shape

Finding that perfect hair style only takes a bit of research before you hit the hair salons
Having the right hair style can be a big decision, with many people using their hair as their way of expressing their personality, their style, their individuality. Most people go through many different hair styles in their life, simply going into their favourite hair salons with a picture of a celebrity and saying "I want that." Sometimes this can work, sometimes it won't. But why? Why does a one hair style look so great on one person but a bit of a mess on another?
It's all about the face shapes and balance. The shape of a person's face will dictate what looks good and what doesn't, with symmetry playing the most important role. To get the most out of your hair, you need to find out what your face shape is.
The first step? Work out what face shape you have. Of course, you can simply ask a hair dressers or hair salons , but if you are contemplating what hair styles you want and what would suit you there is a simply experiment that you can do to determine just what face shape you have. So past methods include tracing your face shape in a mirror with lipstick, but if you don't want to ruin your favourite lip shade there is an easy scientific method that gives you the best results.
Start by using either a tape measure or ruler and take down the following measurements of your face:

1. Measure across the top of your cheekbones
2. Measure across jaw line from the widest point to the widest point
3. Measure across forehead at the widest point which you will find will generally be halfway between the eyebrows and hairline
4. Measure from the tip of the hairline to the bottom of the chin

When looking at these results, compare them to the criteria below to determine what face shape you have.

Round Face

Relatively equal in width and height with the widest measurement being your cheeks.
This face shape is ideal for hair with height and fullness at the crown of the head with off centre parts also complimenting by minimizing the roundness of the cheeks. Short and long hair can match but layering is essential with short hair styles better when brushed away from the face, with tight layering to achieve a lengthening of the face.
Centre parts, straight fringes, chin length blunt cuts and fullness at the cheeks can emphasise roundness, so it is better to avoid these styles.
Celebrity Round Faces: Christina Ricci, Drew Barrymore, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst

Square Face

Equal lengths in width and length with no real widest point as forehead, cheeks and jaw are all relatively the same width.
Square faces are typically recognisable for their strong jaw line, with the best hair styles for this look being those that soften this line with soft curls and volume. Use of layering, wave or roundness around the face, and soft bangs all add this softness and can lessen the sharpness of a square face. Off centre parts and height at the crown can also be very attractive as it will add symmetry without adding angles.
Square faces should avoid long straight styles, or blunt cuts as this will only add to the edges of the persons face. A short, blunt bob is the worst choice, but layering would soften this look if a short cut is what you are after.
Celebrity Square Faces: Demi Moore, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rosario Dawson, Angelina Jolie

Oval Face

Oval faces have length as 1.5 times of the measurement of their faces width. Key attributes include high cheekbones and a relatively narrow chin, though balanced with their rounded forehead.
One of the most balanced faces, most hair styles suit this face shape due to its symmetry with short, medium and long hair lengths suiting. One style tip that many hair salons suggest is slicking the hair back from the face and taking advantage of the balanced hairline.
Heavy fringes are probably not one of the best choices, as it may add weight to the top of the face, creating a heavy look.
Celebrity Oval Faces: Jennifer Anniston, Jessica Alba, Uma Thurman, Tyra Banks

Heart Face

Widest point is the cheeks and extends to the forehead with a narrow chin that tapers in.
Due to your narrow chin, this can often be a focus for a heart-shaped face. As a result, chin length or longer styles work well as they add width and balance the face. Fringes work well with this face shape, especially side swept fringes or side parted hair.
Heart shaped faces should typically avoid short, cropped styles that focus on the upper face and have height at the crown of the head. Additionally, softness is better to have around the face so slicked back hair is also better avoided.
Source:hairsalon.com.au

Russia may lose 30% of permafrost by 2050

Russia's vast permafrost areas may shrink by a third by the middle of the century due to global warming, endangering infrastructure in the Arctic zone, an emergencies ministry official said Friday.

"In the next 25 to 30 years, the area of permafrost in Russia may shrink by 10-18 percent," the head of the ministry's disaster monitoring department Andrei Bolov told the RIA Novosti news agency.

"By the middle of the century, it can shrink by 15-30 percent, and the boundary of the permafrost may shift to the north-east by 150-200 kilometres," he said.

The temperature of the zones of frozen soil in oil and gas-rich western Siberia territories will rise by up to two degrees Celsius to just three or four degrees below zero, he predicted.

Permafrost, or soil that is permanently frozen, covers about 63 percent of Russia, but has been greatly affected by climate change in recent decades.

Continued thawing of permafrost threatens to destabilise transportation, building, and energy extraction infrastructure in Russia's colder regions.

"The negative impact of permafrost degradation on all above-ground transportation infrastructure is clear," Bolov added.

Scientists have said that permafrost thawing will set off another problem because the process will release massive amounts of greenhouse gas methane currently trapped in the frozen soil.

Source: Yahoo

APNewsBreak: Rosa Parks essay reveals rape attempt

NEW YORK (AP) — Long before Rosa Parks was hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement," she wrote a detailed and harrowing account of nearly being raped by a white neighbor who employed her as a housekeeper in 1931.

The six-page essay, written in her own hand many years after the incident, is among thousands of her personal items currently residing in the Manhattan warehouse and cramped offices of Guernsey's Auctioneers, which has been selected by a Michigan court to find an institution to buy and preserve the complete archive.

Civil rights historian Danielle McGuire said she had never before heard of the attempted rape of Parks and called the find among Parks' papers astounding.

It helps explain what triggered Parks' lifelong campaign against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men, said McGuire, whose recent book "At the Dark End of the Street" examines how economic intimidation and sexual violence were used to derail the freedom movement and how it went unpunished during the Jim Crow era.

"I thought it was because of the stories that she had heard. But this gives a much more personal context to that," said McGuire, an assistant professor of history at Wayne State University in Detroit. Her book recounts Parks' role in investigating for the NAACP the case of Recy Taylor, a young sharecropper raped by a group of white men in 1944.

Of her own experience, Parks wrote, "He offered me a drink of whiskey, which I promptly and vehemently refused. . He moved nearer to me and put his hand on my waist. I was very frightened by now."

"He liked me. .. he didn't want me to be lonely and would I be sweet to him. He had money to give me for accepting his attentions," she wrote.

"I was ready to die but give my consent never. Never, never."

Most people know the story of Parks, a black, middle-aged seamstress who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955. Guernsey's President Arlan Ettinger said her personal papers reveal a much more complex individual, one who spent a lifetime fighting for racial equality and against the sexual violence of black women.

Parks is credited with inspiring the civil rights movement with her solitary act of defiance on Dec. 1, 1955, that led to the Supreme Court outlawing segregation on buses. She received the nation's two highest honors in her lifetime, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor.

She died in 2005 at age 92, leaving the trove of personal correspondence, papers relating to her work for the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, tributes from presidents and world leaders, school books, family bibles, clothing, furniture and more — about 8,000 items in all.
"It is wonderful and breathtaking," Ettinger said. "It will be up to the institution that ends up with it to make this material known to the world."

Proceeds from the sale will go to resolve a dispute over her estate, divided between her relatives and the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development that she created in 1987.

Guernsey's, known for its sale of iconic and celebrity collections, took an inventory of Parks' homes in Detroit soon after she died and is looking for an institution to buy her archive, which Ettinger described as the most complete he's ever seen.

The only thing missing, he quipped, is the bus itself. The bus is in The Henry Ford, a museum in Dearborn, Mich.
The archive reveals an infinitely complex individual, Ettinger said.

Parks worked on many cases with the NAACP, including the Scottsboro defense of nine black teenage boys accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. She was involved in the black power conventions in the 1970s and the anti-apartheid movement in the 1990s.

Parks wrote on anything she could get her hands on. The backs of church pamphlets and NAACP flyers are filled with her thoughts and observations.

There are detailed notes on how African-American citizens should comport themselves during the bus boycott following her arrest that lasted 382 days and about the organization that led it, the Montgomery Improvement Association, headed by a young pastor named the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Elsewhere, she laments about life under the oppressive Jim Crow laws and asks what is wrong with the world when her jailer refuses her a drink of water.

She also vividly recalls an incident when she was 10 years old involving a white boy who threatened to hit her. Demonstrating some of the determination she exhibited on the bus decades later, Parks writes "I picked up a small piece of brick and drew back to strike him if he should hit me. I was angry. He went his way without further comment."

Parks' memoirs include one with author Jim Haskins and another with one of her attorneys in the early 1990s, but by then said McGuire, "her story was pretty much well-rehearsed, and limited to her time in Montgomery and the bus incident."

Cuban-Americans fret over travel restrictions home

MIAMI (AP) — Sonia Rodriguez whipped up milk-and-espresso drinks at the Latin American Grill as talk turned to a new push in Congress to tighten restrictions on travel to Cuba. Like growing numbers of Cuban-Americans, she's worried about the U.S. reinstating strict limits on how often she can visit relatives and even how much money can be sent to loved ones on the island.

Rodriguez left Cuba 11 years ago. Like many in South Florida, she is worried Congress might succeed in bringing back the Bush-era of travel only once every three years and a $1,200 annual cap on annual remittances. Also under way is an effort to restore stricter limits on the kinds of educational and cultural exchanges now permitted with the authoritarian government of Raul and Fidel Castro.

Supporters say new restrictions would stop a lucrative travel business and money flow that props up a communist dictatorship.

"Of course the government gets some of our money, but what are we going to do? Should our families starve?" responded Rodriguez, as she served patrons at the walk-up window of the cafe in the Miami suburb of Doral.

She sends money to her mother. Of her last visit, she added: "I couldn't even spend money on taking my mother out. I just had to buy the basics, milk, toilet paper — those kinds of things."

Soon after taking office, President Barack Obama eased the family travel restrictions to pre-Bush administration levels. He has also issued regulations encouraging travel opportunities for religious, cultural and educational groups. Pure tourist travel is still prohibited under the U.S. trade embargo imposed on Cuba decades ago.

But two Republican Cuban-American congressmen from Miami-area districts are sponsoring measures to roll back the Obama changes, highlighting the division between those who left Cuba long ago and those who arrived more recently and still have ties to the Caribbean nation.

Last week, the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a sweeping bill targeting a Cuba travel and remittances. Republicans and Democrats on the panel backed the move pushed by Rep. David Rivera, R-Fla.

Rivera says the Bush limits were enacted because of abuses to the system, and that a visit once every three years was a reasonable compromise. There is currently no limit on the number of trips Cuban-Americans can make to visit family in Cuba.

Although the full House likely will approve the bill this fall, its prospects are bleak in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart has pushed for a narrower measure targeting only Cuban-Americans. His measure is part of a must-pass financial spending bill, although Senate Democrats could oppose the provision on Cuba. All but certain is opposition from the Obama administration.

Diaz-Balart said too many people were taking advantage of eased travel to Cuba to act as merchandise couriers, propping up the island's faltering economy, and in turn its government.

"This is not a humanitarian issue," he said. "People who go there ten or fifteen times a year. It's become a business, and a very lucrative business for the Castro regime."

At the Latin American Grill, customer Juan Manuel Gomez represents the view of many who — like Diaz-Balart's family — left just before or after Cuba's 1959 revolution. Gomez came to the U.S. from Cuba a half century ago when he was 7.

"Fidel shot my uncle and my cousins after the Bay of Pigs," Gomez said. "The only way I would go back to Cuba is if Castro is gone. No other exceptions."
Gomez said many newer Cubans have come more for economic opportunities than for political freedom and don't share his views.

Olivia Wilde to play porn star Linda Lovelace in upcoming biopic

Good new, you guys! Olivia Wilde, it seems, is set to play porn star Linda Lovelace in the upcoming biopic Lovelace. (To clarify, this is not the same Linda Lovelace film that Lindsay Lohan dearly departed. That one's called Inferno and now involves Malin Akerman and Matt Dillon in the lead roles.)

So Hollywood is making two (TWO!) films concerning the late porn star? Yes.

Lovelace is being made by Howl directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. The project will tell the story of Linda Lovelace, a woman who was "used and abused by the porn industry at the behest of her abusive husband before taking control of her life and finding redemption as a feminist and anti-porn crusader."

Like most films these days, James Franco's name is also being thrown about to star in it.

Wilde told E!, "I'm being very careful about my next project since I'm now in a position where I can be really picky - thank God, finally." Adding that playing Lovelace would be "a tremendous honor. She was a fascinating woman, with where she came from to Deep Throat​ to then working with Gloria Steinem​ and Nora Ephron​. It’s really fascinating."

Lead image: Olivia Wilde for Vanity Fair, photo by Norman Jean Roy

Source: The Vine

Naughty but Nice

My mother always told me it's what's underneath that counts.  My grandmother however always told me to wear nice underwear in case I got hit by a bus... More about emergency room doctors than passing pedestrians I think, but the message is the same - whether it's a saucy weekend away or a trip to the corner store, it's best to be prepared.

Lingerie, as it suddenly becomes when lovingly stitched from silk and lace instead of target cotton blends, is somewhat an abused area of apparel these days. It can be difficult to tread the thin line between steamy and seedy, my thoughts are that line is drawn fairly clearly by a clothes line strung with poly-blends and synthetic lace. In red. That campaign for natural fibres shouldn't stop short where it counts the most. Once you have removed all such offending fabrics from the scented draw in which you keep your secrets, it's time to think about design.

Crotchless, 'open back' sequinned teddies are not sexy. They are a a staple of the sex trade, and I'm hoping that whoever is lucky enough to see you in your scants is going to work for it, not pay for it.  Part of seduction is the slow reveal, part of what makes lingerie is the beautiful, suggestive promise of sex, not a blatant "this way, come get it". If that's what you're trying to say, you should probably be naked. There was a time when the lingerie floor of Galleries Lafayette and several select designer boutiques understood this, now there's no excuse.

La Perla has long been making women, and subsequently men, very happy.  If it's a little conservative for your tastes, Myla accessorises its seasonal pieces with six- speed Marc Newson -designed sex toys, and in terms of style they sit where Agent Provocateur used to, should do, but doesn't. For French and frilled try the flirtatiously sexy Fifi Chachnil, or do yourself a serious favour and shop Kiki de Montparnasse.

It's not just about pleasing the one you're with though, wearing carefully selected pretty things under your over things creates a whole new state of mind that can't help but make you feel better about your day. Remember though, the only thing less sexy than the practical is the screaming seams of an ill-fitting, uncomfortable undergarment. There is, however, nothing more attractive than a woman with an attractive secret- slip on some of these sweet, silk nothings.


Source: The Vine

Open war?

While Wednesday’s stand-off between the executive and the judiciary had left many expecting charged proceedings on Thursday, there were few fireworks in Courtroom No 1 as the Supreme Court gave the government yet another opportunity to submit the prime minister’s reply regarding the reinstatement of FIA official Hussain Asghar and the removal of Sohail Ahmed from his post of Establishment Secretary. This came after the attorney general assured the court that he had personally spoken to the prime minister and requested the court to grant him time to submit his reply. The day before, as news came in that Sohail Ahmed was made Officer on Special Duty (OSD), the court had said the move was meant to ‘punish’ Ahmed for obeying court orders

In the background to the court’s orders, government circles argue they are being hassled by an acrimonious court and in fact held a federal cabinet meeting on Wednesday to discuss the court’s “interference in the executive domain.” Babar Awan accused the court of being biased against the federal government and alluded that coercive measures were being used to get the court’s decisions implemented. The prime minister himself responded emotionally to the SC decisions and said there was a limit to everything and the court was now encroaching upon, and undermining, his authority as chief executive. This is an unfair charge since the chief justice has explained many times that he respects the discretionary powers of the prime minister; but what the prime minister seems to have forgotten is that under Article 190 of the Constitution he is duty bound to aid the SC in the implementation of its orders. Instead, he has come to be seen as stone-facedly impeding the court’s affairs. Realising the domain of executive authority but keeping in view the peculiar facts and circumstances of the Haj and NICL cases, instead of passing orders itself, the SC has always first sent the issue to the government through the attorney general. It is only when that has repeatedly failed to bear results that the court has examined the administrative orders in exercise of the powers of Judicial Review and passed orders in both cases. The court has given the government countless chances to prove that it is interested in accountability and rule of law but it is now increasingly clear that the federal government has launched an open war not just against the judiciary but also against the very principle and practice of accountability itself.
Source: The News

10m drug users have hepatitis C: study

PARIS: Some 10 million people who inject illegal drugs have hepatitis C while 1.2 million have hepatitis B, according to the first global estimate of infection rates among this population, published Thursday.

Both viral diseases are debilitating and potentially deadly, and public health officials must step up efforts to combat blood-borne transmission and to lower treatment costs, the researchers urged.

The health and economic costs of hepatitis C (HCV) spread via injected drugs, on its own, may be as high or higher than for similarly transmitted cases of HIV, they said.

The study, published in the British journal The Lancet, found that fully two-thirds of the global population of "injecting drug users" have been exposed, and thus infected, to HVC.

About 80 percent are destined to develop chronic infections, and up to 11 percent of these individuals will, within two decades, suffer cirrhosis, which can cause liver failure and cancer.

There is currently no vaccine for the hepatitis C virus.

The portion of drug users with HCV -- inferred from the presence of hepatitis C antibody -- varied among the 77 countries from which data was collected. The rate was 60 to 80 percent in 25 nations, including Spain (80 percent), Norway (76), Germany (75), France (74), the United States (73), China (67) and Canada (64).

In 12 countries, the percentage was higher than 80, including Italy, Portugal, Pakistan, The Netherlands, Thailand and Mexico, which had a 97 percent infection rate among mainlining drug users.

The United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia had among the lowest percentage, just over half.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) can be transmitted intravenously, as well as via sexual contact, and from mother to child.

There are 350 million people chronically infected worldwide, almost all of them exposed to the virus as children. "This is why universal infant vaccination against hepatitis B is so crucial to long term control of the virus," the authors note.

HBV is the second most important known human cancer-causing agent, after tobacco. The virus also causes cirrhosis and liver cancer, and is blamed for some 600,000 deaths each year, according to the World Health Organisation.

The study, led by Louisa Degenhardt of the Bernet Institute in Melbourne and Paul Nelson of the University of New South Wales, also in Australia, canvassed data from 59 countries on HBV rates among drug users who use needles.

Infection rates were five to 10 percent in 21 countries, and more than 10 percent in 10 countries, including the United States (12 percent).

Worldwide, the highest rates were in Vietnam (20 percent), Estonia (19), Saudi Arabia (18) and Taiwan (17).

The authors said high prices for medicine remains a major barrier to treatment of viral hepatitis, much as they have been in the past for HIV and AIDS.

"There are growing efforts to bring viral hepatitis treatments into the same lower cost access framework as antiretrovirals," they said, referring to the standard drugs used to hold HIV in check.

"But the significance of viral hepatitis needs to receive great attention than it does at present." (AFP)

Source: The News

Fat is more dangerous for South Asians: study

WASHINGTON: Weight gain can be more dangerous for South Asians than for Caucasians because the fat clings to organs like the liver instead of the skin, said a study published Thursday.

The main difference between Caucasians and South Asians comes down to how much space there is to store fat in the body and where it holes up, said Sonia Anand, lead author of the study in the public access journal PLoS One.

"South Asians have less space to store fat below the skin than white Caucasians," said Anand, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at McMaster University.

"Their excess fat, therefore, overflows to ectopic compartments, in the abdomen and liver where it may affect function."

When extra fats clings to the organs, it can cause high glucose and lipid levels, which are risk factors for heart disease.

That means South Asians with a weight and height ratio, or body mass index (BMI), that would be considered in the healthy range for Caucasians may merit screening for conditions like diabetes and coronary artery disease.

The Canada-based study recruited 108 people in all, some first- or second-generation immigrants from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or Bangladesh and the rest Caucasian subjects whose ancestry could be traced to Europe.

They underwent a series of measurements and tests to assess body fat, cholesterol and sugar levels.

"Young, apparently healthy South Asians have greater metabolic impairment
compared to white Caucasians who tend to develop metabolic changes at higher levels of obesity and at a more advanced age," said the study.

South Asians tended to have lower HDL (or good) cholesterol, higher total body fat but lower levels of abdominal fat, fattier livers and less lean muscle mass than Caucasians of similar age, height and weight.

"This study helps explain why South Asians experience weight-related health problems at lower BMI levels than Caucasians," said Arya Sharma, director of the Canadian Obesity Network and a co-author of the study.

"For the clinician, this also means that individuals of South Asian heritage need to be screened for the presence of heart disease and diabetes at lower BMIs." (AFP)

Source: The News

China launches navigation satellite

BEIJING: China launched its ninth navigation satellite on Wednesday, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing sources at the launch centre.

A rocket carrying the "Beidou", or Compass, navigation satellite orbiter blasted off from the Xichang Satellite Launching Centre in southwestern Sichuan Province at 5:44 am (2144 Tuesday GMT), it said.

The satellite is one of 35 that China is putting into orbit to form the Beidou navigation system, a global positioning system completely developed by Chinese technology, Xinhua said.

China started building its satellite navigation system to break its dependence on the US Global Positioning System (GPS) in 2000.

The network is expected to provide global services by 2020, the report said. (AFP)
Source: The News

S.African man wakes after hours in morgue fridge

JOHANNESBURG: A South African man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge — nearly a day after his family thought he had died, a health official said.

Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said the man awoke Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family called in an undertaker who sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack.

Morgue owner Ayanda Maqolo said he sent his driver to collect the body shortly after the family reported the death. Maqolo said he thought the man was around 80 years old.

"When he got there, the driver examined the body, checked his pulse, looked for a heartbeat, but there was nothing," Maqolo told this news agency.

But a day after staff put the body into a locked refrigerated compartment, morgue workers heard someone shouting for help. They thought it was a ghost, the morgue owner said.

"I couldn't believe it!" Maqolo said. "I was also scared. But they are my employees and I had to show them I wasn't scared, so I called the police."

After police arrived, the group entered the morgue together.

"I was glad they had their firearms, in case something wanted to fight with us," Maqolo said.

He said the man was pale when they pulled him out.

"He asked, 'How did I get here?'" Maqolo said.

The health department said the man was then taken to a nearby hospital for observation and later discharged by doctors who deemed him stable.

Kupelo, the health department spokesman, urged South Africans to call on health officials to confirm that their relatives are really dead.

The man's family was informed that he was alive during a family meeting convened to make funeral arrangements. They're very happy to have him home, Maqolo said.

But Maqolo said he is still trying to recover from the traumatic experience.

"I couldn't sleep last night, I had nightmares," he said. "But today I'm much better." (AP)

Source: The News

Kat Von D on Dealing with Jesse James Breakup: 'I Suck'

The day didn't go as planned for Kat Von D.
What would have been her first public appearance following her split from Jesse James turned into a dramatic exit when she walked out of the Good Day L.A. studio Wednesday before her interview even began. Then it turned into a Twitter war with one of the show hosts. Finally, she says, it turned into a moment of clarity.
"What can I say?" the title of her Wednesday night blog post reads. "I suck. I allowed today to get the best of me."
A day after news broke that James, 42, and Von D, 29, called off their engagement, the LA Ink star, who's supposed to be promoting the new season of her show (set to premiere Thursday), says she's not saying sorry – she's saying she's "not strong enough."
"It is in my nature to admit when I'm weak," she writes.
She's also not apologizing – or dissing – her relationship with James, with whom she first stepped out last summer.
"In my relationship, I never before felt as solid and strong – even though the world said different by all the criticism," she says. "Lost a lot of friends and even caused turmoil within some of my family members because of the bull– the media put out there. Some fans even changed their perception of who they thought I was."
The tattoo artist also clarified that although "none of this happened overnight," she had only the best intentions for her relationship with James.
"It felt like it was just the two of us against the world," she says. "Never planned on walking away from this relationship, let alone the timing of things."
Source: People.com

There's only one rule when hooking up with Hugh Hefner in the bedroom: There are no rules – or so reveals Miss June 2004.

"I've heard girls say they have a lot of fun in there," says Hiromi Oshima, a Playmate who spoke to PEOPLE during Playboy TV's "TV for 2" party Tuesday night at the Playboy Mansion.

In fact, many Playmates were quick to defend Hefner after his ex-fiancée Crystal Harris said on Howard Stern's radio show that her only sexual encounter with the 85-year-old Playboy founder lasted "like two seconds."

Following her appearance, Hefner Tweeted that Harris lied about their relationship.

"Hef is a lover," says Dani Mathers, who works at Playboy TV. "I think they definitely had sex more than that one time and it wasn't two minutes. Hef definitely has a sex life."

Regardless of who's telling the truth, everyone agrees that Hefner is generous to those he loves.

"I think the whole thing with Crystal is really sad, and Hef is such an amazing man. He provides so much for everyone that's around him and all of the Playmates," says Shanna McLaughlin, who appeared in the magazine in July 2010. "I think some things should be kept private between two people, especially in a break-up scenario."

Crystal Harris is moving on from Hugh Hefner, but not without taking a few parting shots at her former fiancé.

Harris, 24, said Tuesday on Sirius XM Radio's Howard Stern Show that sex with the 85-year-old Playboy founder lasted "like two seconds."

"Then I was just over it," she says. "I was like, 'Ahhh.' I was over it. I just like, walked away. I'm not turned on by Hef, sorry."
Source: People.com

who bought a stolen iPhone

Emily Kitson thought her iPhone 4 was gone forever when it was stolen from beneath a cash register while she was at work.
Her partner, Josh, was beginning to think so too after dealing with what he said was an unhelpful police officer.

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On Saturday May 21 this year, Ms Kitson, 19, had been working at a lolly store at Broadmeadows Shopping Centre in Victoria.
"It was just like a normal Saturday and I had my phone underneath the till where everyone else leaves their phone," Ms Kitson said.
During the day she served a man she described as being in his 30s or 40s who "distracted both of the staff and paid for his lollies and left". Immediately after serving him, though, another man came up to Ms Kitson, she said, and told her that he saw the man she just served steal her phone.
"I checked and ... it was gone, so I went and got the security guard and they sort of chased after him."
After waiting about an hour, Ms Kitson said she was told by security that the man who stole her phone had got away in a taxi but that they had imagery on CCTV footage of him stealing it.
Tracking app discovered
Following the iPhone theft, Ms Kitson said she called Josh, who remembered installing "Google Latitude" on to her phone, a location-aware app that lets authorised friends track where someone's phone is. The app uses GPS, wi-fi and mobile phone towers to determine a phone's location.
Luckily for Ms Kitson, Josh was an authorised friend. "I completely forgot about it," she said.
After realising the app was installed, Ms Kitson said Josh told her he had tracked the phone "to a place about a kilometre from the shopping centre". The location was constantly updating.
With CCTV footage available for police to obtain from Broadmeadows Shopping Centre and the Google Latitude app pinpointing the phone to a suburban house, Emily and her partner believed they had some hope in retrieving it with the help of police.
Police involvement
But Ms Kitson said, the police officer she and Josh spoke to at Broadmeadows police station was unhelpful to deal with. "I told them everything that I had, I gave them a description, I said that we had tracked [the thief] to an address and that it was still updating and that I had him on video doing it," Ms Kitson said.
But the police officer she spoke to "wasn't very nice", she said.
"He didn't seem to be very interested in what we were saying. I don't know if it was because we were young. [But] he sort of gave me the impression that I was lying [and] he said that [he didn't] understand how something like [this could] happen."
Despite this, Ms Kitson said the officer wrote down the information she gave him on a notebook and said that he would send a report to her by Tuesday.
"I was a bit disheartened considering how much we had," she said. "I figured [the information I gave them] would be enough for them to actually do something. I didn't think that I would get my phone back - but at the very least maybe the [thief] would get charged because I heard from people within the shopping centre that he was the common person there that stole a lot of stuff."
Case chased up
Josh "was pretty upset" about the officer's effort, Ms Kitson said. "So he sort of just started chasing it up and ringing up and seeing if it had been reported."
In doing so, she said he "found out that the guy that I had spoken to at the police station had gone on ... leave and hadn't even reported the incident". Comment is being sought from police on this claim.
"It wasn't even reported yet, which was the very least that we would expect," Ms Kitson claimed, which led her partner to continue to call police, checking up on the case.
"He just kept talking to people and they just kept stuffing him about and saying 'You're just going to have to wait it out,'" she said.
What made it worse for the pair was that the phone was not insured.
Ms Kitson understood there were "more important crimes out there" than a stolen iPhone but believed that with the information she had the case could be closed fairly quickly.

Safety warning over taxi app

An app through which taxi customers can book a ride without going through a cab company launches in Brisbane today.
The first app of its kind in Australia, goCatch has already attracted 400 cab drivers in Sydney, 300 cab drivers in Melbourne and was used by 1300 customers since it launched in those cities a month ago.
However cab companies, who have already launched their own similar apps, have warned about potential safety and licensing issues.

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Developers of goCatch, Andrew Campbell and Ned Moorfield. Photo: Supplied

How it works
While it is currently only available on iPhones, goCatch's creators plan to make it available on Android, Blackberry and Microsoft's Phone 7 systems within months.
The app is the brainchild of two Sydney men, Andrew Campbell and Ned Moorfield, who developed the software in February and launched the scheme in Sydney and Melbourne on June 23.
It won support from the New South Wales government and has the backing of the NSW Taxi Drivers Association.
Queensland Transport is examining the concept.
The app is downloaded free of charge by cab drivers and by customers from iTunes.
The person booking the taxi can see where the cabs are in their immediate area, touch their iPhone screen to "hail" the cab, and track its arrival.
Mr Campbell said the app intended to stop cab drivers wasting time waiting on cab ranks and driving around looking for fares.
"We want to try to make their jobs easier. A lot of time a taxi driver can spend up to half their shift driving around with an empty cab looking for someone to collect," he said."
"Drivers work long shifts and the reason they do that is to try to earn more than the minimum wage."
The views of 250 cab drivers were sought when the software was being developed, he said.
What the cab companies say
Both Yellow Cabs and Black and White cabs already have launched free mobile phone apps linking customers to drivers via companies.
Yellow Cabs general manager Bill Parker warned goCatch was working as a customer network for cabs and would need to be licensed by the Queensland Government.
He said there were safety aspects - particularly for young women - that needed examination.
"The fact is that when people ring cab drivers privately, then there is a security or safety aspect. That is the rule. So I don't think they will be able to operate," he said.
Mr Parker warned police and emergency services would need to be able to track the cab drivers' movements.
Mr Campbell said companies would still be able to track cabs on their own system and disagreed goCatch would not be able to operate in Queensland.
"It is up to the networks to vet drivers and to give them training and give them uniforms and support them offering to get them work,'' he said.
"The government relies on the networks to effectively self-regulate the industry.
"All we are doing is we are making it easier for the networks, for the drivers, for the passengers.''
What a cabbie thinks
Sydney taxi driver Andrew Horne has taken fares via goCatch for a fortnight and believes the scheme will work "very, very well".
He said drivers still worked for the cab companies and simply were able to get extra fares.
"The law says you have to be hooked up to the network and nothing will change on that," he said.
"This will just give them the opportunity to get extra business."

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/digital-life/smartphone-apps/safety-warning-over-taxi-app-20110728-1i271.html#ixzz1TT1pTNsY

Sleep with your iPhone? You're not alone

You gave it a pet name. It knows more about you than your mother does. Sometimes you even sleep with it. In fact, you're so attached to it that being separated for only a few minutes could send you into a panic.
While smartphone users worry about mobile hacking and other security threats that are making news these days, psychologists and others are concerned about another equally troubling issue: the growing obsession among people who would much rather interact with their smartphones than with other human beings.

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"Watching people who get their first smartphone, there's a very quick progression from having a basic phone you don't talk about to people who love their iPhone, name their phone and buy their phones outfits," said Lisa Merlo, director of psychotherapy training at the University of Florida in the US.
The increasing dependence comes as more people worldwide ditch their iPods, cameras, maps and address books in favour of the myriad capabilities of a smartphone. After all, companies have rolled out thousands of applications that do everything from track your heart rate to guide you through the streets of New York City. While smartphones have made life easier for some, psychologists say the love of them is becoming more like an addiction, creating consequences that range from minor (teenagers who communicate in three-letter acronyms like LOL and BRB) to major (car accidents caused by people who text while driving).
Merlo, a clinical psychologist, said she's observed a number of behaviours among smartphone users that she labels "problematic". Among them, Merlo says some patients pretend to talk on the phone or fiddle with apps to avoid eye contact or other interactions at a bar or a party. Others are so genuinely engrossed in their phones that they ignore the people around them completely.
"The more bells and whistles the phone has," she says, "the more likely they are to get too attached."
Michelle Hackman, a recent high school graduate in Long Island, New York, won a $US75,000 prize in this year's Intel Science Talent Search with a research project investigating teens' attachment to their mobile phones. She found that students separated from their phones were under-stimulated — a low heart rate was an indicator — and lacked the ability to entertain themselves.
Most of the teens at Hackman's affluent high school own smartphones, she says, and could even be found texting under their desks during class. "It creates an on-edge feeling and you don't realise how much of the lecture you're missing," Hackman says.
For some, the anxious feeling that they might miss something has caused them to slumber next to their smartphones. More than a third of US adults — 35 per cent — now own a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Centre, and two-thirds of them sleep with their phones right next to their beds.
Michael Breus, a psychologist and sleep specialist, said in his clinical practice, his patients often describe how they answer emails, text and surf the web as they're trying to wind down at night. He says this is a bad idea.
"This behavior can increase cognitive arousal," he says, "leading to the No. 1 complaint I hear: 'I can't turn off my mind and fall asleep'."
Trouble sleeping isn't the only problem smartphones junkies exhibit. Some people are willing to do almost anything to feed their addiction — including spending more money for the data plans than they can afford.
And consumers' dependence on mobile phones is only expected to grow as people use their phones for things like shopping and banking. Mobile commerce — purchases made when shoppers access stores' websites or mobile applications through their phones — is expected to account for $US6 billion in sales this year, according to Forrester Research.
For instance, Kristyn Wilson, a marketing professional in Columbus, Ohio, in the US uses her phone to locate stores and compare prices, in addition to ordinary tasks like checking email and sending texts. She also uses it to buy entertainment vouchers through daily deal site Groupon and even to pay for her coffee at Starbucks, where she simply has to wave the phone in front of a scanner. As a result, she rarely separates from the device.
"My phone is in my hand all the time," says Wilson, who stops short of sleeping next to her phone. "You have to draw the line somewhere."
For others, being away from their phone will almost certainly cause separation anxiety. According to researchers at the Ericsson ConsumerLab, some people have become so dependent on being able to use their smartphones to go online anytime, anywhere, that without that access, they "can no longer handle their daily routine".
Keosha Harvey, a party booker in Burlington, North Carolina, in the US can attest to that. She uses her iPhone for both personal and business communications, so she panicked when it crashed earlier this month, taking all of her "important contacts" with it. Apple replaced it for free, but she lost her pictures and more than 400 songs, she says.
"The most frustrating part is that lost feeling you get when you are so used to having a phone," says Harvey, who also has had Blackberry devices "go dead" on her in the past. "You feel a sense of nakedness without it."
Tonia Zampieri lost her iPhone in a cab on New Year's Eve while on vacation in Washington DC. Having paid her fare with cash, she had no way of tracking down the cab company, and her older-model phone didn't have the tracking software that comes standard now. She had backed up her contacts on her computer six weeks earlier, but she lost other data, including videos of her niece.
The worst part, Zampieri says, was the feeling of being cut off.
"I was without a phone for four days, and it was excruciating. I kept going to look for it but then I'd be like, 'I don't have it. That's right,'" Zampieri says. "It's definitely a borderline addiction for me."
AP

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/sleep-with-your-iphone-youre-not-alone-20110727-1hz5e.html#ixzz1TT1eTfLG

‘We are as vulnerable as Kabul’

Julio Francis Ribeiro is a retired police officer famous for his courage, integrity and common sense. He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan. Mr Ribeiro has been commissioner of Mumbai (then Bombay) police, and played a key role in tackling the Punjab insurgency in the 1980s. Later he served as India’s ambassador to
Romania. In this email interview with Dippy Vankani, he accords the pivotal role to developing better human intelligence to deal with the issue of terrorism, especially in a city like Mumbai.

Why is Mumbai targeted again and again?
Mumbai is targeted again and again because terrorists only choose places that are internationally known and where they will garner the maximum publicity. Terrorism is sustained on publicity. Publicity is like oxygen for terrorism.

After the 9/11 attacks, there have been no terror attacks in America because of its policing apparatus, but Mumbai continues to face terror strikes time and again. How different are we from Karachi, Kabul or Baghdad?
You cannot compare the situation of Mumbai with that of the United States. We live in a very dangerous part of the world whereas the US is far away from the hub of the Islamic world. We are as vulnerable as Karachi and Kabul since the epicentre of jihad terrorism is now in South Asia.

Is there any mechanism that can make the city immune to such attacks in the future?
Unless terrorism is laid to rest, as happened in Punjab, we will continue to experience such attacks. In Punjab, terrorism ended when the Jat Sikh farmers turned against the terrorists who belonged to their own community. When our Muslim brothers in Mumbai will give information to the police about suspicious movements or suspicious persons in their localities, that would sound the death knell of terrorism of the jihadi variety in our city.

Do you think that the underworld and terror outfits make a lethal combination in the current terror scenario?
The underworld and terror outfits are intrinsically different, though some criminal elements do join the ranks of the terrorists after some time. The underworld flourishes by bribing and corrupting the police and politicians. Terrorists only pump bullets into both. They do not bribe.

How powerful do you think is the Mumbai police commissioner, now with units like the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) going out of the purview of that position? How different is the role of the commissioner now from it was in your time?
I did not know that the ATS has got out of the purview of the Mumbai police commissioner! This is news to me. The ATS has to keep the police commissioner in the loop and keep him informed of their findings at all times. This is happening even at present.
The difference between my time as commissioner and now is that over the years values have changed and politicians have also changed. New parties like the Shiv Sena have emerged and at one stage even formed the government in the state. They had a different — and I may say a totally unconventional — view of governance. It did not do the police force much good. The police in my time was under my control. The control of the commissioner at present cannot be as total because the power centre has shifted to the home department. This is not a good thing for security concerns and for the public in general.

The high court has recently asked officers to refrain from planting theories in the media in sensitive cases. What is your view on this?
I am happy that the high court has asked officers to refrain from planting theories in the media in sensitive cases. The problem is that there is proliferation of electronic media in particular, and everybody is in search of stories and sound bytes. Even junior officers are now being approached and they find it very thrilling to have their faces on TV. This has caused a lot of confusion and speculation about investigations of crime. Also, many anchors have become detectives and are examining witnesses even before they are cross-examined in the court. The high court should come down heavily on them.

Too many agencies are now involved in investigation, including Central agencies like the National Investigation Agency and the National Security Guard. Do you think that too many cooks might spoil the broth?
I agree that the number of Central agencies has increased tremendously over the years. Every time there is a crisis, which the government finds difficult to explain to the people, the only answer is to constitute a new organisation. More people are of course employed, but the results are never apparent. So, too many cooks are spoiling the broth. They are getting into each other’s hair, and egos are clashing all the time. This is not good for the public cause.

The police is now equipped with technological assistance like CCTV footage and mobile phone surveillance. Do you think that the focus is now shifting from human intelligence and the police is relying more on these scientific resources?
Technological intelligence can never substitute human intelligence. Both are required. CCTV and mobile phone surveillance should be left to Central agencies, but police stations should concentrate on human intelligence and should befriend the minority community, in particular by treating them with dignity and respect that is the right of every citizen. When that happens, terrorism will be dealt a death blow.

Do you think recommendations of the Ram Pradhan Commission, set up to review the government’s response to the November 26, 2008, Mumbai attacks, came to grips with the issue and would help foil attacks, if implemented? Could Wednesday’s attacks have been averted in the light of these recommendations?
The Ram Pradhan Commission largely dealt with the issue of sharing of intelligence inputs between various agencies. They had found that the inputs were not shared or, if shared, were not considered important. That was the main problem during the 26/11 attacks. So they made several recommendations on that, which are now followed by the agencies.
They had also made several recommendations on acquiring certain equipment to deal with terror attacks, and most of the equipment has been acquired by the state. Some of the equipment might not have been acquired so far only because of procedural delays like getting quotations etc. But I must point out that the commission’s recommendations would not have helped in averting the attacks on Mumbai. The only way it could have been averted is through human intelligence.

Source: The Asian Age

Good luck to Yingluck

On July 3, 2011, the Thai elections resulted in a resounding victory for the Puea Thai Party, headed by the youngest sister of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Yingluck Shinawatra, born in 1967, is the youngest sibling of the former Prime Minister and will be the first woman Prime Minister of Thailand.
Ms Shinawatra is one of the youngest leaders to emerge in the country after a period of five years, 2006 onwards, when there was a reversal to the consolidation of Thai democracy.
Thailand, which had emerged from military rule in 1992, suffered a setback with the 2006 coup. Since 2006, all attempts to form a democratic government have been futile because of the stand-off between the “Red Shirts” (representing the lower classes and the urban poor) and the “Yellow Shirts” (the elites and middle classes).
The Puea Thai Party is derived from the erstwhile Thai Rak Thai party, which was formed and led by Mr Shinawatra from 2001 to 2006. The party won both elections, in 2001 and 2005. But the military coup of 2006 abruptly ended the growth of both the Thai Rak Thai and its leader, Mr Shinawatra, who is now in exile.
It is widely believed that given the political turmoil in Thailand, there was a pre-election arrangement that the newly elected Puea Thai Party would be allowed to form the government. Given the stand-off between the supporters of Mr Shinawatra and the Democrat Party led by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who has enjoyed the backing of the Army, there is apprehension that a smooth transition is unlikely even though the Army has agreed to allow the rightful winners of the July 3 elections to take over.
Interestingly, in an election campaign that threw up many political formations, the Puea Thai Party, headed by Ms Shinawatra, managed to garner 265 of the 500 seats. The ruling Democrat Party has come second with only 159 seats.
Following the electoral victory, Ms Shinawatra is looking to garner further support from five other parties and form a coalition with a total of 299 parliamentary seats.
Surprisingly, within a span of just six weeks, Ms Shinawatra has moved from being a total political novice to Thailand’s Prime Minister-in-waiting. She has a business background and very little political experience or acumen. But Mr Shinawatra has declared her his protégé. Like her brother, Ms Shinawatra has made populist promises, while simultaneously calling for national reconciliation in a deeply divided polity. Her popularity is linked to her family name, which was her campaign ticket. She was seen as giving credibility to a name that has been linked to controversy. Ironically, it was her looks and appearance that received the most attention from the media, leaving little room for a debate on her political experience, or lack thereof.
One of the challenges that lie ahead for Ms Shinawatra is the question of amnesty for her exiled brother currently living in Dubai. In the name of promoting national reconciliation, she has called for amnesty for her brother, the former Prime Minister convicted of charges of corruption and sedition. A tricky factor in the issue of amnesty for Mr Shinawatra will be leveraging the political class that despises Mr Shinawatra. This will be by far the most critical test for Ms Shinawatra. Whether she is able to break away from the shadow of her brother or stay with it remains to be seen. However, given the weight of his influence, a breakaway seems unlikely.
There are also deeper economic challenges for the country. The elections came at a time when inflation in Thailand is high and has begun to affect the rural areas. Some of the populist measures promised by Ms Shinawatra, such as a raise in the minimum wages, are unrealistic. In her campaign, Ms Shinawatra promised a 40 to 75 per cent hike in wages, a move which will further push the economy towards turmoil. Also, investments are likely to fall if she goes ahead with the populist measures she has promised, including the distribution of iPads to eight million school children.
There is also uncertainty over the manner in which the Army will be accommodated. In a country where the Army has ruled for 60 years, from 1932 to 1992, the stakes for the military in the political outcome are significant. The role of the Army in the crackdown on Red Shirt protesters last year led to the deaths of 91 people. One of the reasons why the question of amnesty and national reconciliation remains ambiguous is that the Army also needs to be tried for its excesses. Most crucial in all this will be the role of the monarchy itself. In a country where monarchy is revered and seen as the highest authority, the aging monarch’s influence over political outcomes cannot be ruled out.
One of the areas where the Puea Thai Party has not done well is in the troubled regions of southern Thailand where the movement for a separate state is being spearheaded by Muslim groups of Malay ethnicity. Successive governments have made little effort to devolve power to the south which recently witnessed the emergence of Malay Muslim candidates who wanted a regional representation in the elections. However, success in the south went to candidates from the Democrat Party who did not advocate any form of regional autonomy or power sharing.
Ms Shinawatra has tough days ahead. She will have to show willingness to promote national reconciliation in a country that has been politically divided between the Yellow Shirts and the Red Shirts. While a semblance of class struggle is visible in this divide, between the middle classes and elites on one hand and the lower classes and urban poor on the other, the underlying fact is that it was a struggle for political power between two large business groups that claimed to represent two different groups of the Thai population.
On closer scrutiny it is clear that the divides are far more complex than the mere appearances of a class struggle. Given the complexities that mark the political landscape in Thailand, the agenda set for Thailand’s first woman Prime Minister seems daunting.
Dr Shankari Sundararaman is an Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi
Source: The Asian Age

A halfway house

With the exception of 9/11, American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and Princess Diana’s death, no live TV coverage has so fixated the viewers across the world, or at least in English-speaking countries, as the recent “firestorm” unleashed by the monstrous phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s mighty media empire.
A remarkable feature of the whole squalid episode was that though there were street demonstrations against the media mogul, and hatred for him was manifest, these were secondary. Primarily, it was Parliament that grasped the nettle. Prime Minister David Cameron was clearly vulnerable and this showed. For he had not only employed as his director of communication Andy Coulson, a tainted former editor of News of the World, but also attracted odium because of his proximity to Mr Murdoch and his trusted minions. The Opposition, led by Ed Miliband of the Labour Party, had found an opportunity to push the Prime Minister and the government to the wall. Yet, the parliamentary battle on the highly emotive event was fought, broadly though not entirely, with the necessary decorum. No less importantly, it was before a parliamentary committee, and not any other agency, that the most powerful media magnate in the world grovelled, calling it the “most humble day” of his life, though he passed on all blame to others.
In the House of Commons there was barracking only twice — first when Mr Cameron was defending himself spiritedly and later when Mr Miliband was targeting Mr Cameron for offering only “a half-apology”, not a full apology, for his “catastrophic error” of hiring Mr Coulson and “bringing him into the heart of the Downing Street”. On both occasions, the Speaker rose and told the members that each side must listen to the other without creating any disturbance. He was obeyed even as verbal slings and arrows continued to fly across the floor.
Indeed, there was no shouting and screaming even when Mr Cameron, while accepting that he had seen Mr Murdoch and his lieutenants quite often, added delicately: “(But) I can assure the House that I have never held a slumber party or seen Rebekah Brooks (the CEO of News Corp and a close confidante of Mr Murdoch) in her pyjamas.” (This clearly was a hit at his predecessor, Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose wife had invited Ms Brooks to a “slumber party”.)
Riveted to all this I kept wondering whether honourable members of Indian Parliament were watching the vigorous two-hour session of questions and answers and, if so, were they drawing any lessons from it. Of course, another gnawing thought in my mind was that the Indian media, both print and electronic, is no less crass, craven and compromised than its British counterpart. In fact, it is doubtful if media in any other country is tarred with the brush of such infamy as “paid news”. Therefore, it must also do soul searching.
That, however, will have to be discussed separately and later because, for the present, attention has to be focused on Parliament. It is not only the apex legislature of the country but also the centrepiece of institutions that underpin democracy. The bitter truth is that the Indian Parliament has been debased, systematically, deliberately and persistently to a point where it is perilously close to its nadir.
What an irony it is that this was not always so. Since Independence until the end of the Nehru era, this country’s Parliament earned worldwide admiration. In the mid-1950s, Professor W. Morris-James of Britain wrote a book to say that though India’s Parliament seemed to be a “sounding box” of Nehru, it was also a “Grand National Assembly” where all national issues were discussed “fully and freely”. It should be, he added, a “role model” for the newly emerging nations of the Third World.
On a cold December evening in 1957, our Parliament proved the professor right. Feroze Gandhi, a Congress member and the son-in-law of the Prime Minister, in the course of a special debate demanded by him, had exposed devastatingly the Life Insurance Corporation’s questionable investments, totalling over a crore of rupees, in the dubious firms of an industrialist named Mundhra. Nehru’s response was to applaud the “majesty of Parliament” — how strange these words sound in the present context — and to appoint a commission of inquiry, headed by eminent Justice M.C. Chagla. The judicial report came within two months. As a result of it the then finance minister, T.T. Krishnamachari, had to resign and several distinguished civil servants such as H.M. Patel lost their jobs.
Sadly, the practice of stonewalling any demand for investigation into charges of corruption began in the time of Indira Gandhi, and, as a consequence, so did the pernicious practice of noisy disruption of parliamentary proceedings. On one occasion when Indira Gandhi refused to share with the Opposition the findings of the Central Bureau of Investigation, so tall a leader as Morarji Desai threatened to sit on a dharna inside the House indefinitely. She skilfully worked out a compromise, the like of which was witnessed again. The stonewalling pattern continued, deteriorated over time and has now acquired frighteningly destructive proportions. Over the last decade the almost daily disruption of Parliament on any pretext has become routine.
Let me assert that had Parliament been engaged, in recent months, in a full and unhindered discussion on egregious corruption, the source of nationwide anger, there might never have been the Anna Hazare fast at Jantar Mantar or the less savoury Ramdev drama.
Every single party is equally responsible for the lamentable situation. When in power, all parties, big and small, have one stand that they reverse immediately after losing power. Just look at the BJP’s contradictory approaches to corruption in Delhi and in Bengaluru! The result is the almost complete undermining of Parliament’s dignity, authority and efficacy. If this state of affairs goes on unchecked, something will have to give. Countless were the occasions when, from the Chair in the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee warned of exactly this. In India’s neighbourhood Parliaments have often been locked by the military. Must the elected “representatives of the people” themselves do so here?
Source: The Asian Age

Blame all, blame none

It is both bizarre and a sad commentary on national life that the gruesome massacre of over 90 people in Norway should have produced political ripples in faraway India. On the face of it, there is absolutely nothing to link the deranged Anders Behring Breivik, the self-professed Justiciar Knight of the Knights Templar, to India.
Unlike two or three members of the xenophobic English Defence League with whom this self-absorbed Norwegian had at least some human contact, Breivik appears to have been a loner in every other respect, and consciously so. His interactions with persons of similar political inclinations were through Facebook and other Internet sites, and were guarded. And it is doubtful whether his Facebook friends included any Indian similarly obsessed by the imagery of the 12th century Crusaders.
Yet, India did intrude into his consciousness insofar as he viewed Hindus as one of the early victims of an Islamic expansionism that was now threatening to overwhelm Europe. His grand sweep of world history, as reflected in his 1,500 page political testament he posted on the Internet just hours before he undertook his killing spree, contained sporadic references to India’s past and present. While most would view these as patchy and over-simplistic references, culled from the Internet, to contemporary sectarian tensions, others have quite deliberately detected a common purpose linking Breivik and some of the advocates of Hindu retributive terror. A section of the media blessed with sharp sensationalist antennae has been quick to draw its own conclusions from the Knights Templar’s show of solidarity with “sanatan dharma” movements and particularly their ability to keep control of the streets against Islamist encroachments.
At a time when the Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh has charged the RSS of organising “bomb making factories” and home minister P. Chidambaram has linked the BJP’s agitation over the 2G scandal to a sense of nervousness over investigations into “saffron terror”, it is inevitable that there are moves to locate Breivik’s exhaustive fulminations in an Indian context. From the perspective of one-upmanship games that are played out each evening on the TV news channels, this is entirely understandable. Politicians need to take potshots at their opponents and the electronic media needs to combine news with a generous measure of entertainment. The danger arises when people holding positions of responsibility start mistaking their little fun and games for reality.
The biggest danger lies in the growing demonisation of “Rightwing” in the Indian popular discourse. Ever since the suspected involvement of Sadhvi Pragya and Colonel Purohit in the Malegaon bomb blasts came into public notice and was followed by Swami Assemananda’s purported confessions in the Mecca Masjid and Samjhauta Express bombings, there has been a spirited attempt to suggest that the security establishment have either erred grievously or were guilty of communal bias in focussing primarily on Islamist/jihadi conspiracies. The Batla House encounter in Delhi and the focus on the Azamgarh links of the Indian Mujahideen were seen as examples of this miscalculation. The US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks indicate that influential politicians such as Rahul Gandhi believed that “saffron terror” far outweighed the dangers to national security posed by groups with an Islamist orientation. Indeed, had it not been for the fortuitous arrest of Ajmal Amir Kasab, it is quite likely that the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai would have been the subject of a politicised tug-of-war, with claims and counter-claims vitiating the inquiries. Even the documented involvement of Pakistan in the Mumbai attacks hasn’t prevented parallel conspiracy theories from being aired and being conferred a measure of respectability.
The perception that an anti-Islamist “Rightwing” poses an equal, if not greater, threat to national security is likely to be bolstered by last weekend’s killings in Norway. Read with the publicity-seeking antics of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and the killing of 168 people by the Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, there are compelling reasons why investigative agencies shouldn’t foreclose the possibilities of the non-Islamist or even anti-Islamist dimensions of terror. The Mumbai Police were, for example, absolutely right to approach the investigations into the serial blasts earlier this month with an open mind. Yet, the relentless quest for “balance” should not contribute to investigations premised on the virtues of denial.
The belief that society may be damaged by competitive terrorism, however, needs to be kept in perspective. The evidence from the West suggests that whereas Christian fanatics and white supremacists have killed some 200 people in the past decade, the corresponding tally for those inspired by Islamism was a staggering 4,000. In the United Kingdom, the country most affected by the terror virus in Europe, the number of “Rightwing” loonies convicted in the past 10 years for the possession of dangerous weapons and explosive and for plotting terror strikes was six; in the same period, the corresponding figure for convictions for Islamist-related terror offences was 138.
We do not have any corresponding figures for India (since cases rarely reach a judicial culmination), but my guess is that, like in Europe, the danger from “Rightwing” terror remains a potential one. It could become more real if vigilance is lowered.
Finally, following the 9/11 attacks, there has been liberal indignation over the relative indifference of counter-terrorism strategies to the “roots of terror”. It has been said that the basis of Islamist rage should also be addressed. By this logic, it becomes incumbent on society to read Breivik’s verbose testimony — that includes proposals for forcible conversion of immigrant Muslims in Europe to Christianity, a 50-year ban on their maintaining contact with their countries of origin and the creation of ghettos where permissive “liberal” lifestyles may be tolerated — with a measure of seriousness. If terror has no religion, it can hardly be said to have a secular rationale.
The logic of viewing all terror with the yardstick of equivalence can lead the democratic world to undertake a voyage from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Swapan Dasgupta is a senior journalist
Source: The Asian Age