Tag: india

Will We See Mushroom Clouds Over Kashmir?

One of the world’s, oldest and most dangerous conflicts went critical this past week as nuclear armed India and Pakistan traded threats of war. The Kashmir conflict is the oldest one before the UN.

In my book `War at the Top of the World’ I warned that the confrontation over Kashmir, the beautiful mountain state claimed by both Islamabad and Delhi, could unleash a nuclear war that could kill millions and pollute the planet.

After three wars and many clashes, it seemed the two bad neighbors had allowed the Kashmir dispute to fade into the background as their relations slightly improved.

Then came the murder last week of 26 Indian tourists at Pahalgam, a Kashmir beauty spot, by Muslim insurgents. Kashmir was roughly divided between India and Pakistan in 1947. The larger part of Kashmir was annexed by Indian troops as the entire region was scourged by massacres and rapine.

As a result, India’s portion of Kashmir became the only Muslim majority state in India. Kashmiri Muslims have waged a bloody struggle since the 1980’s to leave India or join Pakistan. Today, 500,000 Indian troops and an equal number of paramilitary police garrison the restive province.

I’ve been under fire three times on the Line of Control that separates the two Kashmirs and at 15,000 feet altitude on the remote Siachen Glacier. I was with Pakistani President Musharraf after he tried to seize Kargil which lies above Kashmir.

The outside world cared little about the India-Pakistan conflict until both Delhi and Islamabad acquired nuclear weapons. Their ‘hatred of brothers’, as I called it, pits fanatical Hindus against equally ardent Muslims who share centuries of hatred and are being whipped up by politicians.

Right wing Hindu militants in Delhi demand reunification of pre-1947 ‘Mother India.’ Pakistan has about 251 million citizens; India has 1.4 billion and a much larger GDP. Pakistan would be unable to resist a full-bore attack by India’s huge armed forces. So, it relies on tactical nuclear weapons to compensate for the dangerous imbalance.

But both sides nuclear arsenals are on hair-trigger alert and pointed at the subcontinent’s major cities. A decade ago, the US think tank Rand Corp estimated an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange would kill three million immediately and injure 100 million. Such damage would pollute most of the region’s major riverine water sources all the way down to Southeast Asia.

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Pakistan Warns Of ‘Act Of War’ After India Cancels Landmark Water Treaty

India is retaliating against Pakistan in major ways as tensions soar in the wake of the Tuesday terrorist attack on Indian-Controlled Kashmir, which killed 26 tourists in the picturesque region.

Not only has India closed its border to Pakistan, declaring that no visas will be given to Pakistanis, but the Indian government has downgraded its diplomatic ties with Islamabad and suspended a crucial water treaty. Pakistani visa holders in India have also been ordered leave the country within 48 hours.

The water issue will could impact hundreds of millions of people on both sides of the border, as the 1960 Indus Water Treaty delineates how water is distributed and used from six rivers that flow through both countries, starting in disputed regions of the Himalayas in the north.

The decision was made in a meeting chaired by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who cut short a trip to Saudi Arabia. All Pakistan military advisers who were previously cooperating with their Indian counterparts have also been given a week to leave.

During the terror attack on the tourist destination in the Baisaran Valley men were separated from women and children by armed militants which had descended on the area. The men, all civilians, were then asked their names before being executed at close range. 

This apparently was to confirm that they were Hindus. India has alleged that this was a Pakistan-backed massacre conducted by Islamic extremists due to the sectarian nature of the attack. Islamabad has long been accused of harboring Islamic terror groups along the disputed Jammu and Kashmir border region.

India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri specifically charged Wednesday press conference that “cross-border linkages of the terrorist act” had been “brought out” – in a clear reference to Pakistan. Authorities have identified that 25 victims were Indian, and one a Nepali citizen. 

Pakistan has firmly rejected it had anything to do with the massacre, instead saying that terrorism in India was “homegrown”. Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said “This is the result of a Hindutva [Hindu nationalist] government exploiting and killing religious minorities, including Christians and Buddhists,” He described to a Pakistan news service this was the result of “homegrown rebels.”

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Trump’s mass deportation raids result in 655% spike in arrests of terrorists roaming US — including one of India’s ‘most wanted’

The Trump administration’s mass deportation raids have nabbed more than 200 known or suspected terrorists since January — including one of India’s “most wanted,” who is accused of masterminding a grenade attack on a cop there and has ties to a US-designated terrorist organization in Pakistan.

Since President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have arrested 219 known or alleged terrorists, marking a 655% increase from the same period last year when 29 such arrests were made under former President Joe Biden, according to new Homeland Security data obtained by The Post.

Among the dozens of terrorists swept up in Trump’s raids was Harpreet Singh, a citizen of India who entered the US illegally on Jan. 27, 2022 by crossing from Mexico into Arizona and was swiftly released into the country by Border Patrol agents with a future court date, a DHS official said.

The Biden administration is to blame for allowing Singh to roam the country for more than three years, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Post.

“The Biden administration not only let a wanted terrorist into our country, but after he was arrested by Border Patrol agents, they released him into the interior of our country,” she charged.

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India Raids Soros-Backed Offices Linked to the Open Society Foundations in Karnataka

The Indian government raided George Soros-backed offices in Bengaluru on Tuesday.

The Enforcement Directorate raided eight Soros-backed offices linked to the Open Society Foundations (OSF), an organization backed by US billionaire George Soros, along with some linked entities in Bengaluru.

This action stems from allegations of violations under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), highlighting the government’s commitment to curbing foreign interference in domestic affairs.

Investigations revealed that between 2020-21 and 2023-24, approximately ₹25 crore (2.9 million) was funneled from Soros’ organizations to various Indian NGOs through complex financial arrangements.

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India’s First Transgender Clinic Shuts Down After Losing Its USAid Funding With ‘No Hope of Resuming’

India’s first transgender clinic has closed after losing its funding from USAid.

Mitr Clinic, located in the south Indian city of Hyderabad, had its USAid slush fund cut off as part of the recent 90-day freeze imposed by President Donald Trump.

All of the staff have been fired and customers have been urged to go elsewhere.

“We were informed that the funds had been cut off because president Trump ordered a freeze on our clinic’s funding,” a former clinic official told The Telegraph.

“We had been serving hundreds of transgender patients, providing mental healthcare and transition-related medical services.”

”We stopped operations in early February, with no hope of resuming.”

The clinic was founded in 2021 by USAID in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

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‘Neo-Nazi’ Indian Immigrant Sentenced to 8 Years For Renting U-Haul Truck to Attack White House – But the Story Doesn’t Add Up

In May 2023, Sai Varshith Kandula, a young Indian migrant living in Chesterfield, Missouri, drove a U-Haul truck and attempted to ram his way through a White House barrier. His plot failed and police arrested him.  Police investigators then pulled an apparent Nazi flag from a U-Haul truck after the crash near the White House and laid it on the street for photographers. 

It was a white supremacist attack!

As Kristinn Taylor reported — Eyewitnesses say the truck was driven twice into a barrier before stopping. The incident took place at the north side of Lafayette Park at 16th and H St, NW. Police laid out the flag on the sidewalk near the truck, apparently for the media to film, before folding it up and taking it away.

Of course, the story was suspicious from the get-go. The only thing they found in the truck was a Nazi flag? This was too convenient for Joe Biden and the FBI’s narrative of the dreaded white supremacist threat in America. It smelled like another fed operation.

After the feds dropped all of the serious charges against Sai Varshith Kandula, 20, he was sentenced on Thursday to 96 months in federal prison for his attempted attack on the White House, the DOJ said in a press release.

“Kandula pleaded guilty on May 13, 2024, to a charge of willful injury or depredation of property of the United States before U.S. District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich. Kandula is an Indian national who was born in Chandanagar, India. At the time of the incident, he was a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. with a green card. In addition to the prison term, Judge Friedrich ordered Kandula to serve three years of supervised release,” the DOJ said.

The story just doesn’t add up.

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Whistleblower Exposes TransUnion’s Shocking Outsourcing Scandal: Sensitive U.S. Data and Intelligence Databases are Being Handled by Underpaid Workers in India

In an alarming revelation sent to The Gateway Pundit by a reader who wished to remain anonymous, a former Senior QA Analyst for TransUnion has detailed how the company’s outsourcing policies, reliance on H1B visa workers, and mandatory DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) training have systematically displaced American tech workers—including those working on critical U.S. intelligence databases.

The anonymous source, who worked in the intelligence database sector for over 17 years, revealed how their role evolved from an entry-level assistant to a senior analyst responsible for training law enforcement officers and overseeing the quality assurance of highly sensitive databases.

These restricted systems are used by local, state, and federal law enforcement, as well as other government agencies, for intelligence gathering and investigative purposes.

Yet despite their extensive experience and dedication, the whistleblower’s position was ultimately eliminated as TransUnion shifted operations offshore to India.

The whistleblower disclosed that TransUnion moved thousands of U.S.-based jobs to offices in Chennai and Pune, India, leaving sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and critical intelligence databases in the hands of foreign workers.

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FDA Knows That China and India Drug Quality Is Poor, But Independently Collects and Tests Only about 0.001%

Quality control errors during pharmaceutical manufacturing are unfortunately common occurrences. The majority (around 50%) of employees that work in pharmaceutical manufacturing tend to have duties which are safety/quality-control related, but apparently even that isn’t enough. 

Even with a major focus on quality, there is still an estimated 2-3σ (sigma) level of imprecision when it comes to pharmaceutical manufacturing. That corresponds to 66,807 to 308,537 defects per 1,000,000 opportunities. But with pharmaceutical development being so complicated, there could be more than 1,000,000 “opportunities” for error. 

The above listed error calculation – while alarming enough – was referenced in small-molecule pharmacology. However, increasingly complex pharmaceuticals (such as today’s widely used biotechnological products, including GLP-1 diabetes/weight loss or mRNA products for Covid-19) have molecular weights that can be thousands times larger than small molecule compounds. That could mean an even greater opportunity for error. 

The FDA is abundantly aware of pharmaceutical fragility and potential quality shortcomings, including at the highest levels of its leadership. 

In fact, Dr. Michael Kopcha, the current Director of the FDA’s Office of Pharmaceutical Quality (OPQ), wrote and published the above published Six Sigma calculation, lamenting the imprecise nature of pharmaceutical manufacturing – back in 2017. 

Any alteration in structure that occurs during manufacturing has the potential to vastly change a compound’s clinical activity, including a change from therapeutic drug into a poison.

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Putin Brings Peace Between China And India – Violent Himalayan Border Region May Be Quieted

This year’s BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia has produced more than expected, beyond the trade and reserve currency foreshadowed developments, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has begun the process of implementing a peace deal on the Himalayan border, long a violently contested area.

The deal was put together on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit.

India and China have begun implementing an agreement to end a military standoff on their disputed Himalayan border, the two sides said on Friday, in the biggest thaw between the Asian giants since deadly clashes between their armies four years ago, reported Reuters.

Troops who were eyeball-to-eyeball at two points on the frontier in India’s Ladakh region in the western Himalayas had begun pulling back, an Indian government source said, heralding an end to the standoff.

The process began on Wednesday and is expected to conclude by the end of the month, a senior Indian army official said.

“According to the recently agreed solution between India and China … their frontline armies are implementing relevant work, with smooth progress so far,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said.

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India plans to launch a pilot project for facial recognition at airports for foreign nationals

Digi Yatra is a mobile-based platform that allows air travellers to store their ID and travel documents securely. The platform uses facial recognition to eliminate the need for physical ID checks, streamlining the airport experience, according to Hindustan Times.

Digi Yatra is currently only available for domestic flights within India but a pilot project for international visitors will be launched next year.

India has not yet launched an e-passport, which contains an embedded microchip storing biometric data, such as fingerprints or facial recognition.  So, a pilot project of Digi Yatra will be conducted with the help of foreign passengers who hold electronic passports (“e-passports”).

“Countries within the European Union, Singapore, etc have launched e-passports. A significant number of their citizens hold such passports. So, the pilot project will be done with their involvement,” Digi Yatra Foundation CEO Suresh Khadakbhavi said on Tuesday.

The Digi Yatra Foundation is a not-for-profit private company which is a consortium of five private airports that have a combined shareholding of 74%, and the Airports Authority of India holds the remaining 26%.

The company describes its Digi Yatra as [emphasis added]:

Digi Yatra is a Ministry of Civil Aviation, Govt. of India led initiative to make air traveller’s/ passenger’s journey seamless, hassle-free and Health-Risk-Free. The Digi Yatra process uses the single token of face biometrics to digitally validate the Identity, Travel, Health or any other data that is needed for the purpose of enabling air travel.Frequently Asked Questions, What is Digi Yatra? Digi Yatra Foundation

The pilot project will initially be implemented between two countries and will enable international visitors to use facial recognition as a boarding pass, with the Digi Yatra platform being made accessible in both regional and international languages.

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