If you are rich, it can open many doors, especially in a developing nation. This is what the Chinese officials discovered recently when they wanted to visit El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay and Chad. China’s state controlled China Mobile Communications Corp is on a $5.3 billion dollar deal to buy Millicom International Cellular SA of Luxembourg. Chinese officials had to visit these countries to study Millicom’s finance and operations. Not having a diplomatic presence was a hiccup, but it was soon overcome by talking directly to the President or the concerned minister in each of those countries.
Then not all developing nations are the same. According to a new Wall Street Journal article, Indian Govt. has been treating Chinese businesses with suspicion. When China’s Huawei Technologies wanted to establish a new facility to make telecommunications equipment, permission was denied. Both China’s ZTE Corp and Hutchison Whampoa from Hong Kong were denied permission to do business. China’s CIMC-Tianda was allowed to setup air bridges in certain airports, but then were not allowed in some other airports.
The article suggests that Indians do not trust the Chinese because of the 1962 war. That is partly true. The two nations have not gone for war for more than 40 years and since time heals all wounds, the relationship should have gotten better. That may not happen since there are many reasons to remain suspicious of Chinese intentions.
The Indians have more reasons to worry that America and Europe due to the proximity and the semi-hostile relationship. China’s “managed proliferation” to Pakistan has not really helped smooth relations. The aggressive nature by which China is going on surrounding India also does bode well in improving confidence. Unlike other nations, most of China’s companies are state owned and may have more than business interests in mind.

With its new wealth, China has been inventively building trade and transportation links to further its larger interests. Such links around India

Large statues are usually made for Gods and Rajnikanth, There are statues like the Buddha in Bamiyan and Hyderabad, and Gomateshwara in Shravanabelagola which we all admire. Now joining that league is Chairman Mao. The place for the statue is also classy – Tibet.

CHAIRMAN MAO’S stern features are to gaze out over Tibet for the first time. A huge statue of Mao Zedong, whose Red Armies entered the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region in 1951 to extend Communist Party rule, is to stand in a newly built square in the town of Gongga. The 7.5m (24½ft) figure, weighing 35 tonnes, is a gift to the small Tibetan town just south of the regional capital, Lhasa, from the central Chinese city of Changsha, where Mao was born.
The statue was designed by Zhu Weijing, president of the Changsha Sculpture Institute. He has created a whole new image of the late chairman that will be unique to Tibet, with his features made to look more like those of Buddha. [Mao turns Buddhist for Tibet]

They should also place a statue of Mao under a Bodhi tree to see if it gets enlightened.

Nicholas Kristof, the Op-Ed Columnist of New York Times had an article on Aisha Parveen, a 20 year old Pakistani woman, who faces a terrible future because she ran away from a brothel. When she was 14, she was kidnapped and woke up in a brothel where she was sexually abused for about 6 years.

This went on for six years, during which she says she was beaten every day. The girls in the brothel were forced to sleep naked at night, so that they would be too embarrassed to try to escape. Ms. Parveen says she believes that two of them, Malo Jan and Suwa Tai, were killed after they repeatedly refused to sleep with customers. In any case condoms were never available, so all the girls may eventually die of AIDS.[A Woman Without Importance (TimesSelect subscription required)]

A man working in the brothel helped her escape and married her. Now she faces charges of adultry and the courts are planning to hand her over back to the brothel owner. She cannot go back to her parents since they could kill her for protecting the family honor. Now she lives in hiding.
That was one world. In another world within Pakistan, the Air Force has inducted four women as fighter pilots for the first time.

The women were part of a batch of 36 cadets who were awarded flying badges after three years of gruelling training at the PAF academy at Risalpur. Being a fighter pilot has until now been a purely male domain. Women could join the armed forces but only for non-combat jobs like the medical corps. Three years ago the PAF decided to allow women to train as fighter pilots.[Pakistan gets women combat pilots]

The protocol you use to browse the web, called HTTP is a stateless protocol. This means that once a request is served, the connection between the browser and the webserver is terminated and for a new request to the same server, another connection is established.
For example, when you type https://varnam.org in your browser, an http connection is made from your browser to the server hosting this site. Now after visiting the site, you find that there is an anti-communist article of your liking and click on it. For this request, a new connection is made, even though it is to the same server. What this means is that, there is no memory of the previous connection.
To understand this concept better, let’s take the help of P. Musharraf, the man running the country next door. Today he issued a statement that Pakistan should have increased cultural ties with India as it would lead to ‘speedy resolution of disputes’.
Currently India is on the receiving end of the explosive Pakistani culture spread by organizations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and there should be some way for us to reciprocate, by exporting some movies of Uday Chopra, Suneil Shetty and Bobby Deol. This call for increased cultural ties comes at a time when Pakistan has banned the import of Indian movies and Musharraf, the friendly culture-vulture, seems to have forgotten it. If this export cannot happen, how can any ‘dispute’ be solved?
For the sake of the media, Musharraf produces these sound bites one after the other without any memory of the previous transactions, just like the HTTP protocol.

The Los Angeles Times has an editorial on the prescence of terrorists in Bangladesh and the support of officials for Islamic extremism.

What makes the situation more precarious is that Bangladesh only just admitted that violent extremists were a problem. Since 2001, Western intelligence agencies have reported the presence in Bangladesh of Taliban remnants along with various other militant groups. It was not until February 2005, however, that Bangladesh addressed the issue at the behest of the international community, banning two terrorist groups and putting some of their ranks in prison.
But acknowledgment of a problem is just the first step in solving it. Bangladesh has yet to deal with one of the more disturbing aspects of its problem: the implicit support by some Bangladeshi officials of various Islamic extremist groups. The increasing involvement of mostly peaceful Islamic parties in the Bangladesh National Party’s coalition government is a positive development. But some ministers and officials are widely believed to have sympathy for the militant counterparts of those parties.
Bangladesh is far from becoming a haven for terrorists like Afghanistan was (and, some say, still is). But the development of ties among Bangladeshi politicians, local militants and extremists abroad could endanger an already tense region. Dhaka should break those ties whenever they are exposed.[Dangerous ties]

Related Links: Bangladesh – the new base

While the world has the impression that India and Pakistan are constantly bickering over major and minor issues, there are few instances where both countries speak with the same voice. Unfortunately such incidents do not get much press coverage. One such incident that has come to light is the issue of modernizing United Nations with new management techniques.

Some call what the U.S. is trying to achieve — with significant support from other countries, notably Japan — the GE-ization of the U.N., that is, introducing the modern management mechanisms of global companies. Together the U.S. and Japan provide more than 40% of U.N. funds (the U.S. 22% and Japan 19%). Among the leading opponents are Pakistan, Egypt and India.[John Bolton at the U.N]

Col Hemant Joneja of Indian Army’s 15 Corps says

Today, a group of 10 Pak soldiers appeared on the curve, where once the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road took a left turn towards Chakoti, and asked for help. ‘‘Then our jawans crossed over (the LoC) and helped them reconstruct their bunker,’’

Pakistan’s defence ministry spokesman Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan says

Soldiers of two armies got together on humanitarian grounds in the hour of crisis,” he said. Shaukat Sultan, however, said, “There is no question of Indian army crossing LoC to help rebuild bunkers. All our bunkers are safe and can withstand artillery shells.”

Indian Army Spokesman says

“Indian soldiers did not reconstruct any Pakistani army bunkers,” an army spokesman said in New Delhi, clarifying that the soldiers had gone across unarmed to give Pakistani soldiers picks and shovels to clear debris of some pillars of the Aman Setu bridge on the Pakistani side.

Related Links: Rashomon Effect – Episode 1