DoJ is Taking a Bribe

In response to Indian fraudster Gautam Adani hiring a friend of Donald Trump as his lawyer, the Department of Justice will be dropping criminal charges against the Indian financier.

This is corrupt as hell.

When the Justice Department indicted India’s richest man in the final weeks of the Biden administration, prosecutors described an “elaborate” bribery scheme involving “corruption and fraud at the expense of U.S. investors.”

Now, according to several people with knowledge of the case, the Justice Department is planning to drop the charges altogether.

The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of the prominent firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

Mr. Giuffra’s efforts on Mr. Adani’s behalf culminated in a previously unreported meeting last month at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, according to people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Giuffra ticked through about 100 slides outlining why prosecutors lacked basic evidence, as well as the jurisdiction even to bring the case, one of the people said.

Another slide also made an unusual offer: If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs, echoing a pledge he had made in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election.

As part of the same meeting, Mr. Giuffra sought to resolve a parallel civil case against Mr. Adani brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as a separate investigation by the Treasury Department. The S.E.C. announced its settlement with Mr. Adani late Thursday; the Treasury Department could unveil its own deal in coming days.

Although prosecutors later told Mr. Giuffra that the $10 billion investment would play no role in the resolution of the criminal case, his offer received a favorable response from at least one senior Justice Department official at the meeting, according to the people familiar with the meeting.

 These folks need to be disbarred and prosecuted.

Maybe Lockheed-Martin Rat-F%^$#ery

A British F-35B experienced mechanical problems and was forced to land in India.

It now appears that they cannot fix the aircraft on site, and so they will have to pull it apart and ship it back to the UK. 

This seems a bit extrema, and I'm inclined to believe that Lockheed-Martin's death grip on maintenance for the aircraft is responsible for this.

Either the maintainers do not know how to repair the system, or are not allowed to repair the system because of LM restrictions 

Otherwise, you could just fly parts in and fix it:

The UK’s F-35B fighter jet, currently grounded at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport in Kerala, couldn't be repaired on-site and is now likely to be dismantled, CNN-News18 reported, citing top government sources

According to the sources, the British Navy is sending a larger aircraft to transport the jet and has assured that all dues — including parking and hangar fees — will be settled with India, the report claimed.

I think that this sort of crap is why Boeing got the "F-47" contract.

The USAF does not want to deal with the Lockheed-Martin IP roach motel maintenance model.

Boeing Can't Catch a Break

I am not sure if Boeing deserves to catch a break, but whether it is the fault of Boeing, or the airline, or a flock of birds, the first fatal crash of a B787 is yet another bump in the already pothole infested road that is Boeing.

Officials have revealed few clues that would explain why a London-bound Air India Boeing 787 went down about 30 sec. after liftoff from Ahmedabad airport, making a seemingly controlled descent into a residential area after failing to maintain altitude.

Air India Flight 171 (AI 171) was airborne for less than 30 sec., surveillance video from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport’ shows. The aircraft rotates near the end of Runway 23 and climbs for about 12 sec. It then levels off for a moment before entering a sudden but steady descent into a nearby area about 1 nm from the runway end. Its landing gear remained down throughout the entire flight sequence.

The pilots issued a mayday call to air traffic control immediately after liftoff “but thereafter no response was given by the aircraft to the calls made by ATC,” India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said. Several news outlets in India said the mayday message included a description of “no thrust,” but Aviation Week could not independently verify the reports.

There were fatalities on the ground, and one survivor on the aircraft, who reported hearing a bang before the crash.

We should get more information over the next few weeks. 

Yeah, This Ain't Good

We have missile and drone attacks and what appears to be the largest dogfight in decades, going on between India and Pakistan.

Given that both countries possess substantial nuclear arsenals, this is ……… How to phrase this? ……… Profoundly concerning.

India said early Wednesday that it had conducted several airstrikes on Pakistan, hailing a victory in the name of vengeance for the terrorist attack that killed 26 civilians in Kashmir last month.

But evidence was also growing that the Indian forces may have taken heavy losses during the operation. At least two aircraft were said to have gone down in India and the Indian-controlled side of Kashmir, according to three officials, local news reports, and accounts of witnesses who had seen the debris of two.

The Indian government said its forces had struck nine sites in Pakistan and on Pakistan’s side of the disputed Kashmir region, in what it described as retaliation for a terrorist attack that killed 26 civilians in Kashmir. Pakistani military officials said that more than 20 people had been killed and dozens injured after six places were hit on the Pakistani side of Kashmir and in Punjab Province. Residents of the Indian side of Kashmir said at least 10 people had been killed in shelling from the Pakistani side since India carried out its strikes.

………

India said on Wednesday that it had struck Pakistan after gathering evidence “pointing towards the clear involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists” in last month’s attack on civilians in a tourist area in Kashmir. It said that its military actions had been “measured, responsible and designed to be nonescalatory in nature.” It added that it had targeted only “known terror camps.” 

In its own statement on Wednesday, the Pakistani government called the Indian strikes “an unprovoked and blatant act of war” that had “violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.” Pakistani military officials said they had begun a “measured but forceful” response, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif claimed that the country’s forces had downed five Indian aircraft — a claim that could not be verified.

In its own statement on Wednesday, the Pakistani government called the Indian strikes “an unprovoked and blatant act of war” that had “violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.” Pakistani military officials said they had begun a “measured but forceful” response, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif claimed that the country’s forces had downed five Indian aircraft — a claim that could not be verified.

One Indian official confirmed the crash of three aircraft, but cautioned that the reasons were not clear. Two other Indian security officials confirmed reports that some Indian aircraft had gone down, but would not elaborate on the details. They all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of military action. 

News channels and witnesses said at least one aircraft had gone down on the Indian side of Kashmir. A second aircraft was reported to have been downed in the Indian state of Punjab, according to Indian news reports and a witness account.

Analyzing witness photos from one wreckage site, in the village of Wuyan in India-administered Kashmir, a weapons researcher identified the debris as an external fuel tank for a plane. The analyst, Trevor Ball, of Armament Research Services, said the tank was likely from a Rafale or Mirage fighter jet, both of which are made by the French manufacturer Dassault Aviation and used by India. Mr. Ball could not confirm whether the tank had come from an aircraft that had been hit by enemy fire.

I'm rather surprised that the Pakistanis appear to have done so well, not because they were using Chinese equipment, which they were, but because they were using relatively low end Chinese equipment, the Chengdu J-10 and CAC JF-17, and they took out a Sukhois and Rafales, which are not low end aircraft.

More concerning than aviation geekery though is that both sides have nukes, and this can go pear shaped quite quickly, and the fallout (pun intended) from uncontrolled escalation and literally go nuclear.

The Very Epitome of Modi India

In addition to his fascist Hindu supremacist proclivities of Narendra Modi, it should be noted that his government has been profoundly corrupt, and there is no better example of this than the rise of Gauam Adjani, who parlayed his close connection with Modi and the BJP into a multi-billion dollar empire:

US prosecutors charged Gautam Adani with helping drive a $250 million bribery scheme, in a stunning blow to India’s most powerful businessman and close ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Federal prosecutors alleged on Wednesday that Adani, one of the world’s richest people, and other defendants promised to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to win solar energy contracts, and concealed the plan as they sought to raise money from US investors. US law allows federal prosecutors to pursue foreign corruption allegations if they involve certain links to American investors or markets.

As an aside here, I am generally not a fan of US assertions of the extraterritoriality of its laws, but this one seems to apply, because some of the behavior occurred in the US. (See here)

The five-count indictment also accuses Gautam’s nephew Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain, both executives at Adani Green Energy Ltd., of breaking federal laws.

………

The indictment’s impact on Indian business and politics will be far-reaching. Not only does the Adani Group run everything from airports to power generators in the country, the conglomerate is Modi’s key partner in his efforts to build the country’s domestic infrastructure as well as widen its geopolitical influence. While the appointment of a new US Attorney in New York after the return of President Donald Trump to office early next year may impact how the case plays out, Adani’s ambitions and his relationship with the Indian government will likely be permanently altered.

………

The charges mark an enormous setback for Asia’s second richest man just as his businesses were recovering from the blow dealt by short-seller Hindenburg Research’s January 2023 report that alleged fraud and corporate governance issues in the group. That episode had also incidentally forced Adani to abandon a domestic share offering by its flagship due to the resulting rout in its stock.

………

The SEC, which is a civil law enforcement agency, provided detailed allegations against both Adanis and another one of the co-defendants, Cyril Sebastien Dominique Cabanes, in a parallel lawsuit. The regulator identified the firm involved in the alleged bribery scheme, which wasn’t named in the indictment, as Adani Green Energy.

According to the regulator, Gautam Adani spearheaded an effort to pay or promise hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian state government officials to induce them to enter contracts that Adani Green needed to develop India’s largest solar power plant project. At the same time, he and his nephew falsely touted the company’s compliance with antibribery principles and laws in connection with a $750 million bond offering, the SEC said.

 My guess is that this all will be dropped after Adani finds a back door way to pay off Trump, but YMMV.

Forget it Jake, It's Infosys

What a surprise, Indian IT consultancy Infosys has been accused of, stringing along new "Hires" by delaying their on-boarding and requiring them to do unpaid pre-training.

This is not a surprise.  The founder of the company called for a 70 hour work week, and their (completely illegal) abuse of the H1B process in the United States is perhaps the most extreme of any of the indian "Body Shops."

Indian IT firm Infosys has been accused of being “exploitative” after allegedly sending job offers to thousands of engineering graduates but still not onboarding any of them after as long as two years. The recent graduates have reportedly been told they must do repeated unpaid training in order to remain eligible to work at Infosys.

Last week, the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), an Indian advocacy group for IT workers, sent a letter [PDF], shared by The Register, to Mansukh Mandaviya, India’s minister of Labor and Employment. It requested that the Indian government intervene “to prevent exploitation of young IT graduates by Infosys." The letter, signed by NITES president Harpreet Singh Saluja, claimed that NITES received “multiple” complaints from recent engineering graduates “who have been subjected to unprofessional and exploitative practices” from Infosys after being hired for system engineer and digital specialist engineer roles.

According to NITES, Infosys sent these people offer letters as early as April 22, 2022, after engaging in a college recruitment effort from 2022–2023, but never onboarded the graduates. NITES has previously said that “over 2,000 recruits” are affected.

I'm beginning to think that Infosys employees should take a page from certain Indian steel workers,  though their specific protest methods, setting fire to senior managers' cars with the managers inside, seems a bit excessive.

Headline of the Day

Pakistan thought it was playing USA, turned out to be Team India H-1B

—The Indian Express, commenting on the shocking win of the Us Criucket team against Pakistan in the World Cup

I have about as much interest in, and knowledge of, Cricket as I do the subtleties of Zoroastrian theology, but I am interested in the H1B angle. 

This wasn't Pakistan losing to India B, it was Pakistan losing to India H1-B. That was the popular take on Friday at Dallas where USA shocked one-time world champions Pakistan in a nail-biting Super Over finish in a group game of the World T20. With as many as six cricketers of Indian descent, most of them on temporary H1-B visas that allow companies to hire overseas employees, featuring in the historic win, the joke would be a hit in the immigrant community.

Yeah, it's a pretty good joke.

Where I Want to Go on Vacation

Yoshida Village, Shimane Prefecture, Japan.

They have a vacation package where you spend a couple of days smelt steel, specifically tamahagane, the steel that is traditionally used in their swords.

I also want to hit Sri Lankha to participate in a wind driven "monsoon" furnaces recreation.

I am the dullest man on the face of the earth.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan

It appears that Imran Khan and his allies won the election by a sufficient margin that the military was unable to cheat to a victory.

Even while massive vote fraud and voter suppression was orchestrated by the ISI (Pakistani military intelligence) it was not able to overcome the massive number of voters who are sick of their crap:

………

Consider this: The leading opposition party, the populist PTI, led by legendary cricket star Imran Khan, was officially banned from the ballots by the courts. Its candidates were forced to run as independents instead. The candidates were prohibited from using the PTI’s party symbol – a cricket bat – on the ballot, a crucial marker in a country where some 40 percent of the population can’t read. Khan himself was jailed on bogus charges and ruled ineligible to run. Candidates who did file to run were abducted and tortured and pressured to withdraw. So were the new ones who then replaced them. Virtually the entire party leadership was imprisoned or exiled. Rallies were attacked and bombed; rank and file workers jailed and disappeared. Campaigning was basically impossible as candidates had to go into hiding.

On election day Thursday, polling locations were randomly changed and the internet and cell service was taken down. Western media described the race as over, a fait accompli for the military’s preferred candidate Nawaz Sharif. And yet.

And yet. Pakistani voters came out in such historic numbers that it caught the military off guard. The ISI — Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency — was prepared to steal a close election or nudge Sharif to his inevitable victory, but they were swamped by the tsunami they didn’t see coming. In a crucial mistake, they had allowed individual polling locations to release official vote tallies, which parties and TV broadcasters could then total up themselves.

According to those broadcasts, watched by millions of people, PTI (or “independent”) candidates had won 137 seats by official counts, well on their way to a majority (there are 342 seats in the National Assembly; 266 are filled by direct elections). There were another 24 seats where 90 percent of the vote was counted and PTI was ahead. It was a clear landslide.

Then the military moved in, shutting down the election commission website and halting the count. Military and police forces surged into polling locations. Fantastical numbers began to be announced, sometimes just reversing the totals so the winner became the loser. The military was clearly unprepared to steal such a resounding victory, and the obviousness of the fraud forced politicians in the UK and U.S., including even the State Department, to denounce it.

All of this puts the State Department in a difficult position. It’s widely known the U.S. is no fan of Imran Khan. The U.S. prefers to work directly with the Pakistan military as a check against China. Khan has long said he wants a better relationship with the U.S., yet we refuse to believe him – our preferred approach was to oust him, put in more pliant clients, and shrug as the military dismantled democracy in the runup to the election. (The U.S. denied playing a role in ousting him, but we very much did, as The Intercept reported.)

I'm only being slightly sarcastic when I say that the only thing worse for a country being a US adversary is being a US strategic partner. 

I don't know how this will sort out, but my prediction is that there will be a lot of bribery and violence directed against those candidates disfavored by the Pakistani military.

Amazing

Just a strip mall


Hole in the wall

On our way up to Western Massachusetts to pick up the last of Nat's summer job, and in Allentown, we stopped for a late lunch in Allentown Psnnsylvania.

After searching for a while, we ended at an Indian place in a strip mall, Cumin N Eat, at 3333 Hamilton Blvd, Allentown, PA 18104 ph: (610) 351-0343. (Facebook page here)

It does not look like much, but it was excellent.

I had goat Chettinadu, , which the waiter recommended, which was exquisite, while Sharon* had the Paneer Majestic, which Sharon* said was the best Paneer she had ever tasted. (I had a bite, it was quite good)

It is highly recommended, though I would have to add, on your first time, order the mild.

Their food has some serious heat to it, and I just got the medium.

I think that my tuchas may resemble a Japanese war flag in the morning, but I have to say that it would be worth it.

This is a very pleasant surprise, and might be the best  Indian food that I have ever had.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Getting Your Archeology On

It appears that from 2600 BCE through 1900 BCE, there was a sophisticated and complex Indus Valley society which shows no sign of the class stratification typical of the time.

There are no palaces, no massive temples, just well laid out communities with good homes all of a similar size.

Little more than a century ago, British and Indian archaeologists began excavating the remains of what they soon realized was a previously unknown civilization in the Indus Valley. Straddling parts of Pakistan and India and reaching into Afghanistan, the culture these explorers unearthed had existed at the same time as those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and covered a much larger area. It was also astonishingly advanced: sophisticated and complex, boasting large, carefully laid out cities, a relatively affluent population, writing, plumbing and baths, wide trade connections, and even standardized weights and measures.

What kind of a society was the Indus Valley Civilization, as it came to be known? Who lived there and how did they organize themselves? Archaeologists and other experts ask these questions to this day, but the first explorers were already noticing some unique features.

In Mesopotamia and Egypt, “much money and thought were lavished on the building of magnificent temples for the gods and on palaces and tombs of kings,” observed Sir John Marshall, who supervised the excavation of two of the five main cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, “but the rest of the people seemingly had to content themselves with insignificant dwellings of mud.” In the Indus Valley, “the picture is reversed and the finest structures were those erected for the convenience of the citizens. Temples, palaces, and tombs there may of course have been, but if so, they are either still undiscovered or so like other edifices as not to be readily distinguishable from them.”

In its heyday, from about BC 2600 to BC 1900, the Indus Valley Civilization created what may have been the world’s most egalitarian early complex society, defying long-held presumptions about the relationship between urbanization and inequality in the past. Its large cities were expansive, planned, and boasted large-scale architecture, including roomy residential houses, and smaller settlements in the surrounding areas appeared to support a similar culture with a similar standard of living.

The most tantalizing feature of the ancient Indus Valley remains is what they appear to lack: any trace of a ruling class or managerial elite. This defies the longtime theoretical assumption that any complex society must have stratified social relations: that collective action, urbanization, and economic specialization only develop in a very unequal culture that takes direction from the top, and that all social trajectories evolve toward a common and universal outcome, the state. Yet, here was a stable, prosperous civilization that appeared to remain that way for centuries without a state, without priest-kings or merchant oligarchs, and without a rigid caste system or warrior class. How did they manage it?

I don't claim to have much in the way of vision, but I cannot understand how such a society would function.

I can see it in hunter-gatherer tribes, but for a complex civilization, you need complex intensive agriculture, sophisticated infrastructure, etc.

It appears that these peoples were more imaginative than I am:

………

In the late 1990s, Indus archaeologists started to consider a new concept that seemed to better fit the facts. Heterarchy asserts that complex political organization, including cities, can emerge through the interaction of many different, unranked social groups, rather than from top-down decisions by an elite: that cooperation, not domination, can produce collective action. It’s now widely argued that multiple social groups contributed to the construction of Indus cities and the economic activities that took place in them, and that none seemed to dominate the others.

Bolstering this argument, no evidence exists that any group of Indus producers was excluded from the use of scarce materials that craftspeople had to obtain from long distances away, or that particular groups limited access to those materials to seize a higher position for themselves in Indus society. One of the most distinctive and technically dazzling products of the Indus culture are stamped seals engraved with imagery and text; over 2,500 have been found at Mohenjo-daro alone. But the seals were produced by many different groups of artisans in many locations, and there is no evidence that a ruling class controlled production. Technological styles tended to cross-cut different groups of artisans, indicating a great deal of openness and knowledge sharing.

Indus city-dwellers built large- and small-scale public buildings; the Great Bath at Mohenjo-daro is a massive structure that contained a large paved bath assembled from tightly fitted baked bricks, waterproofed with bitumen and supplied with pipes and drains that would have allowed control over water flow and temperature. At Mohenjo-daro, nonresidential structures were built atop brick platforms that were as substantial as the structures erected on top of them, and would have required a great deal of coordinated action. It’s been calculated that just one of the foundation platforms would have required 4 million days of labor, or 10,000 builders working for more than a year.

Yet, at both Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, these large nonresidential structures were relatively accessible, suggesting that they were “public,” as opposed to palaces or administrative centers restricted to a privileged class. Some of these may have served as specialized spaces for exchange, negotiation, and interaction between different groups clustered in neighborhoods or along important streets and roads. These spaces may have helped the city-dwellers maintain a high degree of consensus on planning and policy and ensured that no one group was able to accumulate wealth at the expense of the rest.

This sounds an awful lot like Marx's definition of true Communism, which was to follow the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.  (Spoiler, no Communist regime got past the dictatorship part)

I wish that we knew how they did it. 

It might not have any application to today, or it might have application to today, but either way, I would love to know how this was done.

Silly Rabbit, You Should Have Used a Drone

In case you missed it, Canada has accused India of murdering one of its citizens, a Sikh separatist, in Canada.

The victim, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was shot in his truck in a parking lot in Surrey, BC by masked assistants. 

This sounds like the sort of thing that Modi would do, particularly given his history with non-Hindus, blithely encouraging sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands, primarily Muslims, in India.

So, Modi is a murderer with genocidal tendencies, the only question is whether is the one who called the shots on this murder.

Needless to say, these allegations have created a major machlokes in diplomatic relations:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Monday that “agents of the government of India” had carried out the assassination of a Sikh community leader in British Columbia in June, an explosive allegation that is likely to further sour relations between the two nations.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr. Trudeau said that he had raised India’s involvement in the shooting of the Sikh leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, directly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Group of 20 summit meeting earlier this month “in no uncertain terms.” He said the allegation was based on intelligence gathered by the Canadian government.

“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Mr. Trudeau told lawmakers. He said Canada would pressure India to cooperate with the investigation into the killing of Mr. Nijjar, who advocated Sikh separatism.

Mélanie Joly, the foreign minister, later announced that Canada had expelled an Indian diplomat whom she described as the head of India’s intelligence agency in Canada.

India’s foreign ministry rejected the Canadian allegations on Tuesday morning as “absurd” and politically motivated, saying that Canada had long provided shelter to “Khalistani terrorists and extremists” who threaten India’s security. Khalistan is what Sikh separatists call the independent state they seek to create.

The ministry said that Mr. Modi had “completely rejected” the allegations when Mr. Trudeau presented them to him. “We urge the government of Canada to take prompt and effective legal action against all anti-India elements operating from their soil,” the ministry said in a statement.

Seeing as how these sorts of assassinations have become commonplace, almost routine, over the past few decades, though typically with the strikes coming from the west and directed toward the east.

This is one of the reasons why assassination is a bad policy.  It goes both ways.

Also, and more importantly, if you normalize this policy, and it has been normalized by the US since 911, then you can have someone like Modi, whose definition of terrorist is little more than "Uppity Minority" making the same decision.

Indian Prop Lands Near Lunar South Pole

India's first moon landing

India's Chandrayaan-3 probe just landed in the Lunar south polar region, the first such landing of a probe in that region, and the first lunar landing for India.

It's also got a small rover, so it there is a pretty good chance that it will find any water that is there to find.

The first images from India's Chandrayaan-3 mission taken after the probe's historic moon touchdown reveal a pockmarked surface near the lunar south pole.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) shared the images on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday (Aug. 23), about four hours after the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft completed its smooth descent.

The first set of four images were taken by the lander's Horizontal Velocity Camera as it was nearing the surface of the moon. An additional image from the Landing Imager Camera, shared a little later, shows a glimpse of the landing site, including a portion of the spacecraft's landing leg and its shadow.

………

The landing made India only the fourth country in history to successfully put a spacecraft on the surface of the moon, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. Chandrayaan-3 is also the first spacecraft in history to touch down near the lunar south pole, an area that is currently attracting the attention of scientists and space agencies from all over the world.

Scientists think that the permanently shadowed polar craters contain water ice trapped in the rocks, which could be extracted and used to support a permanent human presence on Earth's natural companion. Moreover, these lunar craters could be used to build next-generation telescopes that would allow astronomers to see farther than they can today.

A small rover called Pragyan arrived on board Chandrayaan-3 and will soon deploy and commence its exploration of the exciting region, so many more fascinating images are likely to come soon. Both the rover and the lander, however, are unlikely to remain operational for more than two weeks, as ISRO doesn't expect the vehicles' batteries to make it through the two-week lunar night.

Still, it should be an exciting 2 weeks.

Of Course They Did

It turns out that elements of the the United States security apparatus actively encouraged and managed the overthrow of Imran Khan as Pakistan's PM.

This is some seriously stupid sh%$.

When we did it in Iran, it gave us the Ayatollah Khomeini and rule by the mullas, when we did it in the Ukraine, it led to the Russian seizure of the Donbass and Crimea in 2014, and our machinations in Latin America have made the migration crisis on the southern border much worse. (Also Carter and Brzezinski buying a civil war in Afghanistan directly led to the 911 attacks, and Kennedy's support for the coup in Vietnam that killed Diem)

This sh%$ does not work, and in the medium to long term, the United States suffers the consequences:

The U.S. State Department encouraged the Pakistani government in a March 7, 2022, meeting to remove Imran Khan as prime minister over his neutrality on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a classified Pakistani government document obtained by The Intercept.

It should be noted that for the aggressive actions of the State Department to been taken, there had to be support and approval from some of the US intelligence agencies.

These days, the State is a lot like a platypus, they don't do much, which of the real authority in foreign relations being housed in the intelligence apparatus, the military, and the National Security Council.

The meeting, between the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and two State Department officials, has been the subject of intense scrutiny, controversy, and speculation in Pakistan over the past year and a half, as supporters of Khan and his military and civilian opponents jockeyed for power. The political struggle escalated on August 5 when Khan was sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges and taken into custody for the second time since his ouster. Khan’s defenders dismiss the charges as baseless. The sentence also blocks Khan, Pakistan’s most popular politician, from contesting elections expected in Pakistan later this year.

One month after the meeting with U.S. officials documented in the leaked Pakistani government document, a no-confidence vote was held in Parliament, leading to Khan’s removal from power. The vote is believed to have been organized with the backing of Pakistan’s powerful military. Since that time, Khan and his supporters have been engaged in a struggle with the military and its civilian allies, whom Khan claims engineered his removal from power at the request of the U.S.

The text of the Pakistani cable, produced from the meeting by the ambassador and transmitted to Pakistan, has not previously been published. The cable, known internally as a “cypher,” reveals both the carrots and the sticks that the State Department deployed in its push against Khan, promising warmer relations if Khan was removed, and isolation if he was not.

………

The document was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous source in the Pakistani military who said that they had no ties to Imran Khan or Khan’s party. The Intercept is publishing the body of the cable below, correcting minor typos in the text because such details can be used to watermark documents and track their dissemination.

………

On March 2, just days before the meeting, Lu had been questioned at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing over the neutrality of India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in the Ukraine conflict. In response to a question from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., about a recent decision by Pakistan to abstain from a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s role in the conflict, Lu said, “Prime Minister Khan has recently visited Moscow, and so I think we are trying to figure out how to engage specifically with the Prime Minister following that decision.” Van Hollen appeared to be indignant that officials from the State Department were not in communication with Khan about the issue.

The day before the meeting, Khan addressed a rally and responded directly to European calls that Pakistan rally behind Ukraine. “Are we your slaves?” Khan thundered to the crowd. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?” he asked. “We are friends of Russia, and we are also friends of the United States. We are friends of China and Europe. We are not part of any alliance.”In the meeting, according to the document, Lu spoke in forthright terms about Washington’s displeasure with Pakistan’s stance in the conflict. The document quotes Lu saying that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” Lu added that he had held internal discussions with the U.S. National Security Council and that “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.”

Lu then bluntly raises the issue of a no-confidence vote: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister,” Lu said, according to the document. “Otherwise,” he continued, “I think it will be tough going ahead.”

In the meeting, according to the document, Lu spoke in forthright terms about Washington’s displeasure with Pakistan’s stance in the conflict. The document quotes Lu saying that “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” Lu added that he had held internal discussions with the U.S. National Security Council and that “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.”

Lu then bluntly raises the issue of a no-confidence vote: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister,” Lu said, according to the document. “Otherwise,” he continued, “I think it will be tough going ahead.”

………

The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.

I don't know the consequences of the US interference in Pakistan, but if the past is prologue, we have created a situation where Pakistan will become less stable and more hostile to US interests, and given that they are one of the 8 nuclear armed nations in the world, it ain't good.

Getting Your Metallurgical/Historical Geek On

Notice the pattern

We have an interesting article on Damascus steel from 1998. (Also called Wootz, Bulat, Pulad, Fuladh, and Bintai)

The hypereutectoid (high carbon) steel is known for its strength, toughness, and a water like surface finish.  (Most of the stuff that you see today called "Damascus" is pattern welded, a completely different type of steel.)

While it is named for Damascus, the steel, a crucible steel, was actually made in South Asia, specifically India and Sri Lanka.

The secret of making this steel was lost in the 1800s, and we now have an explanation as to why.

The short version is that this was less of a secret than it was an loss of access to very specific materials.

The steel was created from ore that contained minute traces of elements like (primarily) vanadium, manganese, and tungsten, which facilitated the formation of carbide spheres in the steel.

Then with precise control of heat while forging these spheres become stretched, creating the patterns. (OK, that part is a bit of a secret)

With the suppression of steel production in by British colonial authorities, they wanted the Indians to buy British steel, not make their and the possible exhaustion of the original mines.

INTRODUCTION

The arms and armor section of most large museums display examples of Damascus steel weapons. These steels are of two different types, pattern-welded Damascus and wootz Damascus, both of which were apparently first produced prior to around 500.^1,2 These steels have in common an attractive surface pattern composed of swirling patterns of light-etched regions on a nearly black background. The pattern-welded steels were produced by forge welding alternating sheets of high- and low-carbon steels. This composite was then folded and forge-welded together, and the fold/forge cycle was repeated until a large number of layers was obtained.

This article is concerned with the second type of Damascus steel, sometimes called oriental Damascus. The most common examples of these steels are swords and daggers, although examples of body armor are also known. The name Damascus apparently originated with these steels. The steel itself was produced not in Damascus, but in India and became known in English literature in the early 19th century³ as wootz steel, as it is referred to here. Detailed pictures of many such wootz Damascus swords are presented in Figiel's book,⁴ and the metallurgy of these blades is discussed in Smith's book.⁵

Unfortunately, the technique of producing wootz Damascus steel blades is a lost art. The date of the last blades produced with the highest-quality damascene patterns is uncertain, but is probably around 1750; it is unlikely that blades displaying low-quality damascene patterns were produced later than the early 19th century. Debate has persisted in the metallurgy community over the past 200 years as to how these blades were made and why the surface pattern appeared.^6-8 Research efforts over the years have claimed the discovery of methods to reproduce wootz Damascus steel blades,^9-12 but all of these methods suffer from the same problem—modern bladesmiths have been unable to use the methods to reproduce the blades. The successful reproduction of wootz Damascus blades requires that blades be produced that match the chemical composition, possess the characteristic damascene surface pattern, and possess the same internal microstructure that causes the surface pattern.

DAMASCUS STEEL

Wootz steel was produced as roughly 2.3 kg ingots, commonly referred to as cakes, that are solidified in a closed crucible. It was a relatively high-purity iron steel with 1.5% carbon. The cakes were shipped to Damascus, Syria, where bladesmiths learned to forge them into the swords that displayed a beautiful surface pattern. The hypereutectoid carbon level of these steels plays a key role in producing the characteristic surface pattern, because the pattern results from alignment of the Fe₃C particles that form in such steels on cooling. When western Europeans first encountered these patterned weapons, they adopted the name Damascus steel. Wootz Damascus blades possessing the highest-quality damascene patterns were produced in the 16th-17th century.⁴

Both the internal microstructure and the chemical composition of these steels were well established early in this century.^11,13 The internal microstructure of a wootz Damascus blade possessing a high-quality damascene surface pattern is a unique metallurgical microstructure.⁸ It consists of bands of small (generally around 6 mm diameter) particles of Fe₃C (cementite) clustered along the band centerline. The bands have a characteristic spacing in the 30-70 mm range and are contained in a steel matrix. The structure of the steel matrix varies depending on how the smith heat-treated the blade, but it is generally found to be pearlite. The bands lie parallel to the forging plane of the blades. By manipulating the angle of the blade surface relative to the plane of the bands, the smith can produce a variety of convoluted patterns of intersection of the bands with the blade surface. With polishing and etching, the Fe₃C particles cause the bands to appear white and the steel matrix nearly black; thus, the surface pattern is created.

Reproducing Wootz Damascus Blades

In recent work, a technique to produce blades that match the best museum-quality wootz Damascus blades in both surface appearance and internal microstructure has been developed. Figure 1 presents a blade recently made by one of the authors, A.H. Pendray, showing the characteristic damascene surface pattern. It has been specially prepared to include the famous Mohammed's ladder pattern that appears on many of the higher-quality museum swords and blades. The circular pattern between the ladders is often termed the rose pattern, and it is also sometimes found on high-quality museum blades.⁴ A longitudinal section from an adjoining piece of this blade is also shown, which illustrates the aligned bands of clustered cementite particles typical of the better quality museum blades.

A detailed picture description of the production process for this blade has recently been published.¹⁴ In addition, the technique has been fully described in the literature,^15-17 and it has been shown that blades possessing high-quality damascene patterns can be repeatedly produced utilizing the technique. The technique is, in essence, a simple reproduction of the general method described by the earlier researchers. A small steel ingot of the correct composition (Fe + 1.5C) is produced in a closed crucible and is then forged to a blade shape. However, some key factors are now specified. These include the time/temperature record of the ingot preparation, the temperature of the forging operations, and the type and composition level of impurity elements in the Fe + 1.5C steel. It appears that the most important factor is the type of impurity elements in the steel ingot. Recent work^17-18 has shown that bands of clustered Fe₃C particles can be produced in the blades by the addition of very small amounts (0.03% or less) of one or more carbide-forming elements, such as V, Mo, Cr, Mn, and Nb. The elements vanadium and molybdenum appear to be the most effective elements in causing the band formation to occur. An obvious question raised by these results is, are these elements also present at low levels in the 16-18th century wootz Damascus blades?

This is a seriously fun read. 

Well, it is a fun read for me, and I apologize for nothing.

Headline of the Day

Pensioner Urinating on Train Tracks Killed by Flying Cow Launched 100ft into the Air by Carriage

—LBC News

I guess you never know when there will be a cow with your name on it, but "Another man in the area narrowly escaped being caught by the flying animal carcass."

To quote Depeche Mode, "I think that God has a sick sense of humor."

A pensioner was killed in a freak accident when he was struck by a flying cow launched 100ft into the air by an express train.

Shivdayal Sharma, 82, was reportedly urinating next to a train track in the region of Alwar, India, when the incident occurred on April 19.

It's thought the animal was hit by the Vande Bharat express train before landing on Mr Sharma.

Another man in the area narrowly escaped being caught by the flying animal carcass.

Mr Sharma had worked as an electrician at Indian Railways, before retiring 23 years ago, India Today reports.

It really is remarkable how much mischief cows do in our world, heart disease, methane emissions, deforestation in the Amazon basin, and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

If I didn't know better, I would think that cows are merely masquerading as slow-moving cud-chewers, and that they are in fact the malevolent agent of some sort of alien empire determined to bring humanity to its knees.

About Bloody Time

Seattle has mast a law making caste a protected class, making caste-based discrimination illegal, making it the first municipality in the nation to do so.

This initiative was pushed by council person, and Indian immigrant, Kshama Sawant. (It should be noted that in interviews Swant has noted that she is a Brahman, so this is an action against her own personal privilege)

Member of the Indian community (mostly high caste) argued that there was no caste discrimination, and that this would lead to additional discrimination against South Asians in the United States, which sounds an awful lot like the statements by the religious right who claim that the real bigotry is interfering with their "right" to descriminate:

Seattle made history Tuesday as the first city in the U.S. to expressly ban caste-based discrimination after an outpouring of input from South Asian Americans.

An ordinance introduced by District 3 Councilmember Kshama Sawant — Seattle’s only elected socialist and the only Indian American on the council — added caste to the list of statuses protected under Seattle’s existing anti-discrimination policies.

“This bill is not technically complicated, it’s a very simple question: Should discrimination based on caste be allowed to continue in Seattle?” Sawant said Tuesday, noting that she hopes the decision will be a “beacon” for other cities to follow suit.

………

Caste is a hierarchical system, stemming from Hinduism in India, in which societal status is assigned to an individual at birth. Of the five main caste groups, those on the lowest rung of the system, members of the oppressed Dalit caste, are deemed “untouchables,” while the Brahmins, known as the priestly caste, reside at the top. There are thousands of subcastes, and while India officially banned the system, its influence is still felt in South Asia and by South Asians in America.

………

Opponents of the ordinance argue that the law will discriminate against Hindus and that with more than 2,000 different castes, it’s too complicated of an issue to enforce. Others thought it was hasty or unnecessary.

“Americans of South Asian descent aren’t born or raised with intrinsic knowledge of caste,” opponent Neha Singh said, later calling the ordinance “Hinduphobic.”

“This ordinance is attempting to create a formula in a space where no one knows what they’re talking about,” Singh added.

It should be noted here that Singh is a name that is generally associated with a family of the Brahman Caste, though obviously this is not definitive.

It is human nature to try to protect one's privilege, no matter how specious the argument.

Before the vote Tuesday, Sawant’s office denounced the argument that the policy would harm Hindus, comparing the stance to that of Christians who claim same-sex marriage imposes on the religious rights of those who oppose it.

“Everybody understands this is a right-wing argument,” Sawant said in a statement published before the vote. “Genuine progressives support freedom of religion, but also understand that that cannot be an excuse to abuse LGBTQ people or discriminate against them.”

………

Many of the Dalit or caste-oppressed individuals who spoke in favor of the ordinance withheld some or all of their names in public comment out of fear of retaliation from current employers. Groups ranging from religious organizations and higher education groups to the Alphabet Workers Union of Google employees spoke more freely in a joint letter sent to the City Council.

Given the back-tracking by the current Indian government on caste protections, and its steadfast opposition to counting caste members in the upcoming national census, it will be very interesting to see how this effects the upcoming Indian elections.

I Need to Post This

Part 1, about an hour

Part 2, also an hour

As you may or may not be aware, the BBC produced a documentary about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi it concludes that not only did he tacitly support the pogroms in Gugarat in, he actively supported them using the levers of power that he had as chief minister of Gugarat in 2002.

His goal was to ethnically cleanse Muslims from mixed areas.

This is not a surprise, and I probably would not have noticed the BBC documentary at all, but for the fact that the government of India is using pulling out all the stops to suppress any distribution of the two episodes describing this, including attempting to strong arm social media sites into taking down the videos.

So I noticed this because of the Streisand Effect, those attempts to suppress this story got a lot of ink.

So here are the videos, with links for downloads at the end:

Students at Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of India’s premier liberal institutions, gathered on Tuesday evening for a screening of a new BBC documentary about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But university officials had other plans.

They swiftly locked the entry gates at the New Delhi campus and cut off electricity in the winter chill, leaving the students to sit and watch the program on laptops and cellphones, their faces glowing beneath a blank projection screen. Then, just minutes into the viewing, which the students were holding in defiance of an order by the public university, they were attacked by a smaller group of masked men throwing stones.

“They will shut one screen, and we will open hundreds,” said Aishe Ghosh, one of the student activists who attended.

The documentary, “India: The Modi Question,” focuses on Mr. Modi’s role during Hindu-Muslim riots that tore through the state of Gujarat in 2002, when he was its chief minister. The deaths of a group of Hindu pilgrims in a fire at a railway station prompted a wave of mob violence in which about 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed, and perhaps 150,000 uprooted.

Mr. Modi’s critics at the time accused him of clearing the way for the carnage, or at least turning a blind eye to it. The BBC special cites an unnamed British official who wrote that the massacres bore “the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing” of Gujarat’s Muslim minority, and it reveals that a British investigation in 2002 had found Mr. Modi “directly responsible.”

………

But the government has not stopped at criticizing the documentary. It has also taken steps to make it difficult to view inside India, the latest intervention in the free flow of information by state machinery that carefully tends to the image of India’s most powerful leader in generations.

Without banning the documentary officially, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting blocked segments of “The Modi Question” from appearing on YouTube, with the cooperation of the site’s parent company, Alphabet. The ministry took that action under a cluster of “I.T. rules” passed in 2021 that allow it to suppress virtually any information that appears online.

Such measures are unusual but not unprecedented — in 2015, the government blocked another BBC documentary, “India’s Daughter,” concerning a notorious rape and murder in New Delhi. (YouTube has since made it viewable.)

Twitter has been more resistant to barring content at the direction of the Indian government, but it, too, blocked posts linking to footage from “The Modi Question.”

Yeah, vaunted free speech absolutist Elon Musk capitulated to Modi and his fascist supporters in less time than it takes me to type this.

Real profile in courage there.

In any case, it's good that the brutal riots and ethnic cleansing is getting some attention again.

Modi really needs to end up at The Hague some day.

In any case, you can download the videos for Episode 1 and Episode 2 at the links.

Full disclosure, I have only viewed bits and pieces of the videos, but it is enough to convince me that I need to help distribute them as far and wide as possible.

There is an African Proverb

One of the interesting results of the war between Russia and The Ukraine is the collateral damage in countries that are not participants.

We see this in skyrocketing fuel shortages and food shortages, but the most extreme case I've seen so far, as described by John Helmer, is the collapse of Sri Linka.

The short version is that emergency shipments of oil from Russia to the island nation were never off-loaded because of attempts by the Sri Lankan government to enforce US sanctions as a result of US pressure:

The President of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, was toppled from power in Colombo and forced to flee the country on July 13, leaving behind a prime minister he had appointed to succeed him, assuring his immunity from prosecution and delaying national elections for two years. A week earlier, on July 6, Rajapaksa telephoned President Vladimir Putin and requested emergency shipments of Russian fuel to the country on credit because Sri Lanka had run out of fuel and also the money to pay for it.

The last Russian shipment, 90,000 tonnes of Russian crude oil to restart Sri Lanka’s sole but bankrupt refinery, had been ordered from intermediary traders and then delivered to port in May. However, the oil could not be unloaded until the government produced the cash to pay for it.  Rajapaksa followed in the last days of June by sending two officials to Moscow to ask for direct government-to-government oil deliveries without cash. There was no Russian agreement.

………

In Moscow the Russians interpreted Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa to be making a public show of asking for Russian help in order to persuade Washington to rescue them instead.

The Kremlin was convinced the Sri Lankans were scheming and bluffing. The reason was that on June 2, at Colombo’s airport, an Aeroflot Airbus Flight SU-288, with more than two hundred Russians returning to Moscow from holiday in the country, had been prevented from departing;  the aircraft had been stopped by an order from a judge of the Commercial High Court. Ostensibly, the court was acting on a lawsuit filed against Aeroflot by an Irish aircraft leasing company called Celestial Aviation Trading 10 Limited.

In fact, that entity was a front for AerCap, the dominant global aviation leasing corporation in the world, controlled by General Electric of the US;   Celestial Aviation is an AerCap special purpose vehicle;  its claim against the Aeroflot aircraft in Sri Lanka was part of Washington’s sanctions war — and Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe were immediately told so by Russian officials. They claimed the court order was a “commercial dispute” with “no involvement of the state”;  the Russians didn’t believe them. 

The aircraft was released on June 6 and a court official charged with corruption. But a month later, by the time Rajapaksa was appealing to Putin, Aeroflot had not restarted its flights. There would also be no Russian oil nor credit to save Rajapaksa. 

………

The State Department and the Pentagon were actively courting Rajapaksa during the weeks leading up his ouster. A delegation of US officials led by Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland [Victoria Nuland?  Where have I heard that name before?] and the Pentagon official in charge of Sri Lanka, Amanda Dory, were in Colombo on March 22-23. “You are a vital partner of the United States at a key crossroads in the Indo-Pacific,” Nuland declared, “and we are eager to support you at this critical moment…We share a commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific and as the Foreign Minister said, to a rules-based, democratic, international order.” That meant US opposition to Sri Lanka’s relations with China and Russia. “I want”, Nuland emphasized, “to particularly make note of the fact that Russia’s brutal aggression in Ukraine just underscores for all of us the importance of the democracies, strengthening ourselves and standing together in the face of brutal autocratic behavior, coercion, aggression. Whether it’s coming from Russia, whether it’s coming from other autocracies around the world.”

………

In April Nuland followed with an official warning that if Sri Lanka’s relationships with Russia or China crossed Nuland’s red lines, Rajapaksa would face sanctions. “Malign influence countries could displace any U.S. agreements being signed. We will mitigate this risk by staying tied in with our allies, friends and partners along with steady engagement across the Sri Lankan services to ensure the U.S. remains a partner of choice. Congressional scrutiny could limit the amount of funding available to Sri Lanka for Security Cooperation/Security assistance.”

It seems to me that Sri Lanka in general, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa in particular.,is roadkill on the “Domino Theory” road, like Laos and Cambodia were.

When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.

H/T naked capitalism.

Today in Well, Duh

The invaluable Caitlin Johnstone obsers that that the US foreign policy establishment has absolutely no concern for human rights beyond using it as a hammer, and observes that we are now, after over a decade of ignoring the slow motion ethnic cleansing of Muslims in India, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is suddenly concerned now that New Dehli is lukewarm on anti-Russia sanctions.

She cites a Politico article where Rex Tillerson was literally instructed by a State Department stalwart that Human rights is taught that human rights is only used as a cudgel against uncooperative nations.

I'm shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here. (Your winnings sir.)

The United States is suddenly very concerned about human rights violations in India, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken telling the press on Monday that "we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials."

While it is true that India's right-wing government is guilty of human rights abuses and has been for years, it is also true that the US State Department does not actually care about human rights abuses.

A leaked State Department memo from the early days of the Trump administration showed neoconservative empire manager Brian Hook teaching a previously uninitiated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that for the US government, "human rights" are only a weapon to be used for keeping other nations in line. In a remarkable insight into the cynical nature of imperial narrative management, Hook told Tillerson that it is US policy to overlook human rights abuses committed by nations aligned with US interests while exploiting and weaponizing them against nations who aren't.

No, the US State Department does not care about human rights abuses. Blinken's remarks are just the latest in a series of shots across the bow that the US empire has been firing at New Delhi to warn it against moving into alignment with Moscow.

………

In an article last week titled "India to Face Significant Cost If Aligned With Russia, U.S. Says," Bloomberg reported the following:

President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser said the administration has warned India against aligning itself with Russia, and that U.S. officials have been “disappointed” with some of New Delhi’s reaction to the Ukraine invasion.

“There are certainly areas where we have been disappointed by both China and India’s decisions, in the context of the invasion,” the director of the White House National Economic Council, Brian Deese, told reporters at a breakfast Wednesday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. The U.S. has told India that the consequences of a “more explicit strategic alignment” with Moscow would be “significant and long-term,” he said.

This is completely unsurprising.