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Full story here from Pam Martens via CounterPunch.org.

“A federal agency tasked with expanding the American dream of home ownership and affordable housing free from discrimination to people of modest means has been quietly moving a chunk of that role to Wall Street since 2002.  In a stealth partial privatization, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) farmed out its mandate of working with single family homeowners in trouble on their mortgages to the industry most responsible for separating people from their savings and creating an unprecedented wealth gap that renders millions unable to pay those mortgages. This industry also ranks as one of the most storied industries in terms of race discrimination.   Rounding out its dubious housing credentials, Wall Street is now on life support courtesy of the public purse known as TARP as a result of issuing trillions of dollars in miss-rated housing bonds and housing-related derivatives, many of which were nothing more than algorithmic concepts wrapped in a high priced legal opinion.  It’s difficult to imagine a more problematic resume for the new housing czars.

To what degree this surreptitious program has contributed to putting children and families out on the street during one of the worst economic slumps since the ’30s  should be on a Congressional short list for investigation.  HUD’s demand for confidentiality from all bidders and announcement of winning bids to parties known only as “the winning bidder”  deserves its own investigation in terms of obfuscating the public’s right to know and the ability of the press to properly fulfill its function in a free society. 

Despite three days of emails and phone calls to HUD officials, they have refused to provide the names of the winning bidders or the firms that teamed as co-bidders with the winning party.  Obtaining this information independently has been akin to extracting a painful splinter wearing a blindfold and oven mitts. 

That a taxpayer-supported Federal agency conducts a competitive bid program of over $2 billion and then refuses to announce the names of the winning bidders is beyond contempt for the American people.  If the Obama administration does not quickly purge this Bush mindset from these Federal agencies, he is inviting a massive backlash in the midterm elections.

The HUD program was benignly called Accelerated Claims Disposition (ACD) and was said to be a pilot program.  A pilot program might suggest to those uninformed in the ways of the new Wall Street occupation of America a modest spending outlay; a go slow approach.  In this case, from 2002 to 2005, HUD transferred in excess of $2.4 billion of defaulted mortgages insured by its sibling, the FHA, into the hands of Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns while providing the firms with wide latitude to foreclose, restructure or sell off in bundles to investors. HUD retained a minority interest of 30 to 40 percent in each joint venture. Citigroup was awarded the 2002 and 2004 joint ventures; Lehman Brothers the 2003; Bear Stearns the 2005.  I obtained this information by reconciling the aliases used by these firms in foreclosures of HUD properties to the addresses of the corporate parents.  I further confirmed the information by checking the official records at multiple Secretaries of State offices where the firms must register their subsidiaries to do business within the state. 

What the program effectively did was allow the biggest retail banks in the country to get accelerated payment on their defaulted, FHA-insured, single family mortgage loans while allowing another set of the biggest investment banks to make huge profits in fees for bundling and selling off the loans as securitizations. Once the loans were securitized (sold off to investors) they were no longer the problem of HUD or the Wall Street bankers. The loans conveniently disappeared from the radar screen and the balance sheet. The family’s fate had been sold off by HUD to Wall Street in exchange for a small piece of the action.  Wall Street then sold off the family’s fate to thousands of investors around the world for a large piece of the action. 

HUD has attempted to spin this program as a win-win for everyone with the suggestion that families would have more options under this program.  In a HUD February 17, 2006 report titled “Evaluation of 601 Accelerated Claims Disposition Demonstration,” a few kernels of truth emerged.  It was noted on page 4 that the private partners “determine how best to maximize the return on the loan…Loans liquidated through note sales generally earn a higher return than property sales, so the JV [joint venture] has an incentive to maximize the share of note sales relative to property sales.”  Rather than evaluating the success of the program on how many families were able to get a loan modification and remain in their homes, the report notes that “The benchmark for progress is the share of loans that have reached resolution.”

From its 2002 joint venture, Citigroup dumped en masse 2,599 loans in one securitization alone in August 2004.  It sold another 1,177 at other unknown times.  From its 2004 joint venture, it dumped 1,814 in one fell swoop.  The 2006 HUD report notes that following securitization “there is no information available on the [home] retention after the sale.”

According to HUD’s web site, another major award of $400 million to $800 million in defaulted mortgages was slated for October 23 of last year in the midst of a foreclosure and eviction crisis.   Lemar Wooley, in HUD’s Office of Public Affairs, advises that the deal never happened as a result of  “no acceptable bids being received.”  Given that we have been promised change we can believe in, I would have much preferred to hear: “We’ve sacked this program as an abhorrent example of privatizing profits and socializing losses while turning our backs on the neediest of our society.”

While this was clearly not a win-win for families in financial distress, two other red flags come to mind.  The 2006 HUD report notes that to be eligible for this program, loans had to be four full payments past due (five full payments past due for the 2005 Bear Stearns deal).  But to securitize the loans, the Wall Street firms had to bring the loans into performing status, that is, up to date in their payments.  The question arises as to whether the investors in the securitizations were advised that these were heretofore defaulted HUD loans.  One might be forgiven for pondering that as a material fact required in a prospectus since there is much data available showing that loans once in default tend to redefault. Some of these investors might unknowingly be you and your family members.  The loans could be sitting right now in public employee pension funds, mutual funds held in 401(k)s, etc.

The second concern is that many of the homes in the deals were foreclosed on in 2006, 2007 and 2008.  By HUD not keeping these loans and insisting on its legal mandate for lenders to attempt loan modifications, special forbearance or partial claims to bring the loans current, what impact did this program have on the foreclosure glut and overall property value declines.
It is worth noting what happened to the firms that HUD deemed qualified for this program:  Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 15, 2008.  Bear Stearns required a weekend rescue by JPMorgan Chase and the Fed on March 16/17, 2008.  Citigroup, which got the lions share of the HUD deals, exists today only because of a $45 billion direct infusion from unwilling taxpayers (overruled by their Congress) and hundreds of billions of dollars more in various other government backstop operations – some still undisclosed despite Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation.
Future articles in this series will look at how these deals started under the Clinton administration with awards to Goldman Sachs, GE Capital, Blackrock and others, with the dubious protection of Merrill Lynch as the overseer for HUD.  This program also went virtually unnoticed until charges of rigged computers and bid rigging erupted in headlines.  We will also look at the human suffering resulting from this macabre rewriting of the social contract in America.  The series begins today with the most unlikely candidate of all for helping people in need: Citigroup.

* * *

In the early evening of June 26, 2009 I was cleaning up emails I had saved for more careful reading at a later date when I bolted in my chair.  A message from a reader whom I have permission to call Melissa X advised that she had documentation that Citigroup was engaging in dubious real estate transactions out west under an alias.  I immediately answered with a request for specifics and received the following response:

“…a friend asked me to pull the real property records on a house a few doors down from him that he had heard sold at a very low price in a foreclosure sale.  After pulling the property records I just couldn’t believe the price this particular house sold for in the ‘foreclosure sale’ and started looking into the foreclosure purchaser, Liquidation Properties, Inc. (LPI).   I have been a litigation paralegal for 14 years, thus I have a good amount of investigation experience and also in real estate law as we have a considerable practice in real estate litigation.  Needless to say, my instinct told me something wasn’t right about this and I Googled the Directors of LPI, who happened to be high level executives at Citigroup Global Markets.  At first I thought that LPI wasn’t a subsidiary of Citigroup because when I was reviewing court records they have filings that say they are a privately owned company with no connection to a publicly traded company.  So, initially, I thought these high level Citigroup execs had formed this company that was purchasing these Citi foreclosures super cheap…one of the Directors of LPI is Jeffrey Perlowitz, who according to his online bio ran the trading desk at [Citigroup’s] Smith Barney during the housing ‘boom’ and is credited for ‘purchase, sales and trading of single family residential mortgages and asset backed securities…’  Then I ran LPI through Edgar [an SEC search engine] to see if I could find anything in SEC filings about this entity and that is how I ended up discovering LPI is actually a Citi subsidiary.  I know from reading your articles that you are well aware of how shady Citi is with their subsidiaries.  I particularly liked an article you wrote about the oil markets and how we can’t expect the sleuths at Congress to figure out why the prices went out of control, and then you linked it to a little talked about Citi subsidiary.”

It took but a few minutes to confirm that Liquidation Properties, Inc. was indeed a subsidiary of Citigroup.  Exhibit 21.01 of Citigroup’s December 31, 2008 SEC filing lists Liquidation Properties Holding Company Inc. and Liquidation Properties Inc. as subsidiaries chartered in Delaware. (But how many people are going to notice that when Citigroup has over 2,000 subsidiaries.) A quick click at the Secretary of State web site for Massachusetts, one of the many states in which Liquidation Partners, Inc. conducts business, revealed the following officers as of March 14, 2007: Randall Costa, President; Scott Freidenrich, Treasurer; Robyn Gomez, Secretary; Jeffrey Perlowitz, Director; Mark Tsesarsky, Director. But just as Melissa X had noticed, there was nothing on this filing to connect this firm with Citigroup or any publicly traded company.  In fact, the form indicated that there were only 200 shares of common stock outstanding.  Citigroup, on the other hand, has an unprecedented and unfathomable 22.9 billion (yes, billion) common shares outstanding, now withering in value alongside the faded dreams of financial security for its shareholders and customers.
I reviewed two other documents Melissa X had sent along: two foreclosure filings by Liquidation Properties, Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio stating that it was not a “party, a parent, a subsidiary or other affiliate of a publicly owned corporation.”

One other item stood out in this filing: the address of this firm was listed as 388 Greenwich Street in the trendy neighborhood of Tribeca, New York City.  That is where the raucous trading of exotic derivatives, commodities and mortgage securities has traditionally been handled.  The legacy of the swashbuckling culture of the notorious Salomon Brothers, a predecessor firm whose traders rigged the two-year note auction of  U.S. Treasurys in 1991, remains alive in these trading rooms.  Indeed, Jeffrey Perlowitz was a Salomon protégé.  The seminal book on the Salomon culture, Michael Lewis’ “Liar’s Poker,” assigns mortgage traders a philosophy of “ready, fire, aim.”
In other words, this is the address of the investment bank of Citigroup with whom these individuals are involved, not the calm bean counters at the retail bank, Citibank.  The investment bank specializes in mergers and acquisitions, lending and trading, with a sophisticated customer base of corporations, governments and institutions.  An investment bank is an unfit place for conducting or even overseeing the hand holding and financial counseling of frightened families who need urgent and sincere help to avoid loosing the roof over their heads.   

Call it divine intervention or call it happenstance, but Melissa X had chosen to electronically communicate with a stranger on the other side of the country who just happened to have an indelibly forged mental picture of  388 Greenwich Street in Tribeca. 

At 1 pm on May 20, 1997 an eclectic group of protesters filled the sidewalk in front of 388 Greenwich Street.  I was one of them.  My group, which included Gloria Steinem, came to name the firm (then known as Smith Barney) a Merchant of Shame for its privatized justice system which barred employees, as a condition of employment, from suing the firm in a public court setting.  Tribeca residents spontaneously joined us as they walked by to raise hell about the company’s bizarre selection of signage.

Cemented into the middle of the sidewalk in front of the firm was a 16 foot, 5300 pound, red steel umbrella representing the company’s logo at the time and, I imagined, the physical equivalent of Sandy Weill’s ego, then CEO of the firm. A Business Week article once quoted a former employee saying Weill would steal pennies off a dead man’s eyes.  Mr. Weill’s pennies, plucked from the dying firm’s eyes, eventually added up to $1 billion and he retired not long before the tens of billions of losses squirreled away in Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) in the Cayman Islands came home to roost.

In what I now recognize as the electronic manifestation of the whoring of Wall Street, a four-story red neon lighted umbrella was mounted near the top of this 39-floor building.  Both the sidewalk and building umbrellas were later removed but I did note in a recent visit to Manhattan that giant and bizarre electronic signs flash messages to pedestrians from the formerly sedate wealth management offices of major Wall Street firms in midtown.

Having verified Melissa X’s information that Liquidation Properties, Inc. was indeed a subsidiary of Citigroup with officers employed by the firm, endowed with the uncanny knack of capturing an inordinate amount of winning bids at foreclosure auctions in depressed neighborhoods, I sat about unraveling the multitude of Byzantine transactions in which it was involved.

The trail led to four more entities: Reo Management 2002, Reo Management 2004, SFJV-2002, and SFJV-2004.  (Reo is an acronym for real estate owned by a bank, typically after an unsuccessful foreclosure auction.) SFJV, I would later learn, was the name of the HUD joint ventures, an acronym for Single Family Joint Venture. SFJV-2002 and SFJV-2004 were, indeed, subsidiaries of Citigroup and being used to facilitate the transfer of foreclosed homes around the country.

The Reo Management firms were listed as subsidiaries of Residential Capital Corp. (ResCap) on its July 15, 2005 filing with the SEC but filings with the Secretary of State in Massachusetts showed the same Citigroup officials at 388 and 390 Greenwich Street in Tribeca as officers and directors:  Costa, Freidenrich, Perlowitz, Tsesarsky.  Filings with other Secretaries of State showed these same four individuals along with numerous other officials at Citigroup.  Reo Management 2002 showed 200 shares of stock issued to unnamed parties while Reo Management 2004 said stock details were not available online. 

Why on earth would Citigroup managers be officers of a competitor?  I called people in the know on Wall Street.  No one had ever heard about it or could offer an explanation.   I called Jeffrey Perlowitz’ secretary and sent her an email requesting an explanation from Mr. Perlowitz.  Mr. Perlowitz took the same position as HUD: silence.

ResCap’s operations include GMAC Mortgage and GMAC-RFC.  Until 2006, GMAC was a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, a company that had been around since 1919 to provide car financing to GM dealers and customers.  In 2006, a majority stake was sold to Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity/hedge fund whose investors are a tightly held secret.  The firm is now known as GMAC Financial Services.  In 2008 the Federal Reserve waived its magic wand and GMAC became a bank holding company (now called Ally Bank) and TARP gave $5 billion of taxpayer funds to the entity.  Another $7.5 billion was provided in 2009.  As of June 30th of this year, you and I involuntarily own 35.4 per cent of the firm with Cerberus and its secret investors owning 22 percent.

Since all of us hold the largest block of stock, I felt I might get some answers.  I emailed GMAC and asked what all of this was about.  A spokeswoman responded that “the loans which we acquired from the [HUD] auction happened to be those in which we co-bid with Citi.  The Reo Management 2002 and 2004 entities were set up as subs of those joint ventures to hold the resulting Reo properties until they were resolved.”  I countered with: “Why were officials of Citigroup serving as principals and directors of subsidiaries of ResCap?”   The spokesperson replied that both Reo Management 2002 and Reo Management 2004 had been dissolved and she had no further information.

After scrutinizing every scrap of paper available through HUD on these deals for endless weeks, I was, as a taxpayer, more than a little nonplussed that I had seen nary a word about co-bidders.  Citigroup operating under an alias in consumer real estate transactions was scary enough, but allowed to team up with another giant player also operating under an alias, all under the imprimatur of a Federal agency, that was beyond rational comprehension.

It’s not like the Federal government didn’t know Citigroup was a serial rogue.  Our tax dollars have been used since this Frankenbank was created to investigate serious crimes, while letting the company off with a fine so it could live on to create even bigger problems the next time around.  In 2001, Citigroup settled with the Federal Trade Commission for $215 million for predatory lending at one of its divisions.  In 2003, Citigroup paid $400 million to U.S. regulators for fraudulent research reports and improper handling of new stock offerings.  In 2004, Citigroup paid $2.65 billion to WorldCom stock and bond holders over its role in the demise of the firm.  Also in 2004 its private bank was kicked out of Japan for money laundering.  In 2005 Citigroup was fined $26 million by Europe’s Financial Services Authority for conducting a trade it internally named “Dr. Evil” that roiled the European bond market.  In that same year, it settled with the SEC for $101 million for helping Enron inflate cash flows and under report debt.  Also in 2005, it settled a private litigation over its role in the bankruptcy of Enron for $2 billion.

HUD’s own Regional Inspector General wrote in a 45-page report issued on November 13, 2008 that CitiMortgage, a unit of Citigroup, placed the FHA insurance fund at an increased risk of loss on one-third of the loans HUD audited at CitiMortgage as result of improper underwriting practices.
Melissa X took her concerns not just to me but to the U.S. Attorney’s office.  In one passage of an email to this U.S. Attorney she wrote: “It is such a disappointment to me that our Government has failed us so, and only continues to do so…One must wonder how much the American people will take of this before a total revolution occurs…”

While I was researching this story, a friend forwarded a video clip of Laura Flanders of Grit-TV interviewing the filmmakers of  “American Casino,” Andrew and Leslie Cockburn.  (Yes, they’re all – Laura included – part of that intrepid Cockburn clan whose spirit resides here at CounterPunch in the form of Alexander Cockburn.)  Carefully observe the face of Flanders, the Cockburns and the victims in the film clips.  They all muster  a brave front but I sense an ever present emotion to hang one’s head and weep for the nation. At one point Flanders asks:  “So you think it was all really a scam to transfer money from the vulnerable and the poor to the wealthy?  There was no positive interest in home ownership distribution involved?”  The answers from the Cockburns go to the heart of this crisis.  Both this clip and the movie “American Casino,” playing now in theatres across the U.S.,  provide a critical foundation for understanding that while our government and mighty military chased down men in caves in Afghanistan, the ivy league educated enemy within sacked our nation.  The film premiered in the U.S. in April, ironically, in Tribeca, just moments away from the real, live American Casino, Citigroup.  Watch the interview and clips from the film here: http://www.americancasinothemovie.com/“

Austerity Drive and Tharoor in CATTLE Class out of SOLIDARITY with HOLY COWS!

Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams, Chapter 372

Palash Biswas

Tharoor says 'no comments' on twitter remark
17 Sep 2009, 1835 hrs IST
Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for External Affairs keeps away from the Twitter trouble. He refused to comment on his 'cattle class' remark that he had made on the social networking site 'Twitter' yesterday (September 17) on the recent austerity drive.

While the minister is abroad on an official visit, sources in his office have said that no clarification has been sought and hence the Minister hasn't made any comment yet.

Shashi Tharoor had yesterday made comments that "he will travel cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows." BJP had sought Tharoor's expulsion from the post of Union Minister calling his remarks "a cruel joke and insult" to crores of people travelling in general class.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shiv Raj Singh Chauhan had said that having made such insensitive and insulting comments, he did not deserve to be a Union Minister. However, Congress also disapproved Tharoor's remark on economy class travel.

We totally condemn it (Tharoor's comments). The statement is not in sync with our political culture. His remarks are not acceptable given the sensitivity of all Indians," said AICC Spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan.

"Certainly the party does not endorse it. It is absolutely insensitive. We find it unacceptable and totally insensitive," she said when asked to comment on Tharoor's remarks on Twitter, a social networking website.
http://www.timesnow.tv/Tharoor-says-no-comments-on-twitter-remark/articleshow/4327550.cms





Shh(ashi)! Laugh at your peril
OUR BUREAU

New Delhi, Sept. 16: In this season of the austerity epidemic, the Congress cannot be accused of profligacy on one count: humour.

A tweet by junior minister Shashi Tharoor has got the Congress all twitched up, bringing forth abomination worthy of a dour old party.

Tharoor had tweeted in reply to a question that he would travel by “cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows”.

Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to receivers known as followers (in Tharoor’s case, the particular follower happened to be a journalist).

The reference to “cattle class” did hurt the Congress that stands for the aam aadmi but what seems to have really got the party’s goat is the crack at “holy cows”.

The Congress is now trying to figure out the identity of the “holy cows” Tharoor had in mind. Given the number of “holy cows” the oldest party in the land has, it should take some time to arrive at a consensus.

Was Tharoor taking a potshot at Sonia Gandhi, the spearhead of the current austerity mania, for setting the stage for his ouster from a five-star hotel where he was staying paying from his pocket?

Or was he throwing the tweet at Rahul Gandhi, who unfurled his brand of belt-tightening by travelling in a train’s chair car — a ride that was unfortunately spoilt by stones hurled by mysterious miscreants? (Not read in Twitter: a joke doing the rounds is that police themselves might have thrown the stones to ensure that the young Gandhi sticks to his security routine and spares them the headache of guarding trains.)

The Congress would not answer such questions. But Tharoor, who tweeted and took a flight to Liberia en route to Ghana, is in trouble back home.

“We totally condemn it (Tharoor’s tweet). It is completely unacceptable and can come from somebody who is unaware of our political culture and social realities,” Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said. “Certainly, the party does not endorse it. It is absolutely insensitive. We find it unacceptable.”

The Congress has rarely condemned a minister in a similar manner at an official media conference. Sources said the issue was discussed by senior leaders and a conscious decision was made to send out a tough message to those who seek to ridicule the austerity measures.

More than what Natarajan said, what she left unsaid should alarm Tharoor more, if the political rookie can figure out the importance of silence in the party.

Asked if Tharoor should be dropped from the cabinet, she said it was for the high command to decide. On another question if making such “an elitist person” a minister was a mistake in the first place, the spokesperson said it was the prerogative of the Prime Minister.

Tharoor is scheduled to return on September 21, unless the tweet-quake brings him scurrying back.

Tharoor’s tweet came in response to a question by the follower who himself had referred to “cattle class”.

Cattle class is widely used to frown on the way some airlines herd passengers into the low-fare section, not a direct reference to the passengers themselves. Besides, Twitter is not meant for official discourse but chit chat — a tool millions use to celebrate the spontaneity of communication and the urge to get across their

140-character opinion on everything under and above the sun.

But Natarajan had done her own research. “Cattle class is a jargon, a slang. A politician should not use it. In India, where millions of people travel by ordinary class, we don’t show such insensitivity.”

Those who know Tharoor, an author who has a way with words, said he could also have been referring to the general hysteria over belt-tightening by using a harmless pun (“holy cow”) that goes with “cattle”.

Not that the Congress does not have leaders whose razor-sharp wit can squeeze a smile out of even the most poker-faced colleagues and rivals. But the usually garrulous withdrew into a shell this evening, refusing comment even off the record — perhaps a reflection of a reluctance to be gored by those protecting the holy cows.

In a nation of such gravitas, Tharoor is unlikely to find many willing to bell the holy cows or enjoy a good laugh.


http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090917/jsp/frontpage/story_11506963.jsp


Forget petty differences to fight & finish our common Brahminical enemy
SIDDARTH BARVE, C/O ANUPAM BOOK CENTRE, 9,10&11 PARK VIEW, STATION ROAD, NALLASOPARA (W), THANE DT. - 401 203

I wish to pen down this piece with malice towards none.

There was an international exhibition of crabs. There were many containers of crabs but only few with peculiar characteristics are described here.

In one glass container there were strong white and black crabs. All these crabs were looking artificially strong but were bullying all the time, wanting to force themselves out of the glass container. But as the container had a lid they could not get out. When inquired the exhibition guide said these were American crabs.

AMAZING INDIAN CRABS
In another container we could see a majority of the crabs quietly lying at the bottom. The few of the cunning lot were trying to bully and force their way out. The guide said they were from Israel. Those that were lying and those bullying and suppressing the others were from the same country but the latter ones forcing themselves to come out are the zionist Israeli crabs.

Another container had crabs pretending to fight among each other. But actually each one was trying to help the other to get out of the container. They all had one objective to get out of the container en mass. The guide said “these were Aryan Eurasian crabs”. They are originally from the Arctic Pole which later migrated to Asia. “They are very cunning and always want to establish supremacy over other crabs by any unethical means”.

There was a huge gathering to see these peculiar crabs from different parts of the world. The most astonishing thing about the container was that it had no lid. Most of the crabs in each container were fast asleep. Many crabs were actually pretending to sleep which we could make out.

Some crabs were trying to climb up but the other “awakened” crabs pulled them down and never allowed a single crab to get out.

NEED FOR ENEMY
The exhibition guide said:

Ladies and gentlemen, the most astonishing and fascinating crabs on earth are exhibited here in the container without any lid. These are the aboriginal Indian crabs. Majority of them are always sleeping and many of them are pretending to sleep. Even if you try to harm, they will not react but try to run away. Very few of the awakened crabs try to come out of the container but immediately other crabs pull them down so much so even when the container was open not a single crab could get out”.

Every one clapped at this amazing piece of information.

I read an article in DV (June 16, 2009 by our Brother Dr. V.D. Chandanshive) titled: “Which BAMCEF should DV support”.

I thank Dr. Chandanshive because he is among the very few awakened ones who is not sleeping or pretending to sleep as the aboriginal Indian crabs. But I sincerely fail to understand whether there is any need for us to have an enemy — the Aryan Brahmins — since we seem to be capable enough to fill this gap.

I am at a loss to understand if our intellectuals are working to uproot the cruel Brahmanvadi establishment or trying their level best to save the enemy.

LAST 100 DAYS
To the best of my knowledge Kanshi Ram along with D.K. Khaparde, Dina Bhanaji etc. launched a social mission to uproot the centuries-old Brahmanvadi establishment. None ever claimed that he started it or claimed its ownership.

Together they invented a weapon to unite over 6,000 castes and subcastes of SC/ST/OBC and minorities through social and geographical networking. These missionaries were confident that if they carry on the mission successfully they could throw away the Brahmanvadi establishment which was the one and only cause of all sufferings. All the above great leaders created history after Babasaheb Ambedkar.

My sincere request is keep aside all your differences, unite, equip yourselves and face the deadly enemy.

As soon as the Congress, the original Brahminical party, won on May 16, 2009 a very special deadly programme, “Eventful 100 days of the new Govt.” took the highest priority. The most surprising part of this programme was that neither the Congress, which drafted the blue-print of the programme, nor parliament had anything to do with it. The blue-print was prepared by a blood-sucker industrialist, and handed over to Manmohan Singh through Harsh Patti Singhania, president of FICCI and all the major industrialists. Read the very first page of the Economic Times (May 20, 2009): “100 Days reforms blueprint readied”. That means govt. policies are made not in parliament.

The Brahminical Congress and Brahmana Jati Party (BJP) and the “Leftists” have converted our parliament into a farce. The PM appointed a committee, “Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Commerce” before privatisation started. This committee consisted of three blood-sucker industrialists: G.P. Goenka, Rajeev Chandrashekar, then FICCI president, and Nusli Wadia. These three jokers submitted a report: “How to get disinvestment going, building India’s future”.

ARUN SHOURIE ROLE
You will not believe that World Bank agent Manmohan Singh did his best to strictly implement the above private report. BJP on coming to power formed a new ministry called Disinvestment Ministry and the notorious Arun Shourie as the minister in charge.

This Punjabi Brahmin was honoured for writing a book, False God, against our great leader, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.

The moment he became the minister, he started attacking his prey. He sold off the govt.-owned Centaur Hotel in Bombay worth Rs. 500 crores (on the day of its sale) for just Rs. 83 crores to a fictitious company floated by a BJP supporter, Batra Consultancy. Within 3 months Batra Consultancy sold the same hotel for Rs. 116 crores to another blood-sucker BJP supporter, Sahara India. The rest of the booty was equally shared by all the street chores.

SALE OF AIRPORTS
This is daylight robbery by the Brahmanvadi party supported by the Congress. The saddest thing was after purchasing Centaur Hotel from this Batras, Sahara India handed over a letter to all the employees of Centaur Hotel terminating their services.

No news was published in the Bania papers. A 32-year-old young employee of the hotel, my neighbour, went into depression and died.

Centaur Hotel under the Hotel Corporation of India was sold exactly in the manner as mentioned in the conspiratorial private report, “How to get Disinvestment Going: Building India’s Future”.

The most sensitive sector, our airports, are also being sold to private capitalists. The latest being the Bombay Airport to GVK and the Delhi Airport to GMR as mentioned in the above report. No media reported it. In the Bombay airport, the fate of 2,010 permanent AAI employees, mostly from the SC/ST and OBCs, is sealed and they will be thrown out on the road any time.

SHARE MARKET BOOM
All the Brahmin-Bania suckers have joined to eat the fruits of the struggle made by our great leaders and we like the aboriginal inhabitant, Indian crabs, are either sleeping, pretending to sleep or busy pulling each others legs.

The Economic Times (May19, 2009) reports that the share market sensex shot up by 2110.97 points in just 60 seconds. Never did such a thing happen in the Indian stock market history. Why the hungry monsters were so happy? They were happy not because of the Congress victory but their agenda of unlimited privatisation of profit-making public sector undertakings to loot the country is coming up.

AIR INDIA TAMASHA
Only the share of profit-making PSUs have gone up in this 60 seconds. SAIL up by 21%, SBI 20%, BHEL 18%, Powergrid 17%, Indian Oil 17%, ONGC 16%, Bharat Petroleum 15%, GAIL 13%, NTPC 11%.

Many more profit-making PSUs will be sold to the butchers at throw- away prices. These PSUs have contributed Rs. 1,65,993 crore to the govt. exchequer during 2007-08. This information was suppressed. Economic Times (March 4, 2009) published this as a 2x4 inch item on page 4. This contribution is more than 25% of the annual budget for the year but no recognition by the govt.

What a conspiracy. But we are all fast asleep.

A big drama is going on about Air India. The govt. wants to show that it is trying to save it from a big loss. The media will create a horrible picture and make matters more worse for not paying the salaries to its employees for a month or two. They have further taken a decision to save Rs. 500 crore in the wage bill of its employees.

When Air India is “making a huge loss” how can it afford to buy 111 new aircraft to add to its existing 150 aircraft? Can there be bigger tamasha than this? A decision to sell Air India after merging it with Indian Airlines, will be soon taken. The Economic Times came out with the true picture. On May 20, 2009 it published a report headlined: “Let foreign airlines pick up stakes in Indian carriers”.

That means Air India is going to be privatized after a partial disinvestment along with a initial public offer (IPO) and sold along with the new aircraft to foreign airlines with an Indian partner within 100 days.

The Aviation Ministry headed by Praful Patel, the main culprit and the villain of this tamasha, has taken pains for the last 3 to 4 years by steering Air India Corporation in such a way that it goes into loss and, therefore, a strong case for sell-out is made. Praful Patel and the Congress in close consultation with the BJP and leftists will share the booty as was done in the case of selling two precious airports of our country.

OVER 35 LAKH JOB LOSS
This big Navtanki of selling PSUs worth millions of crores only for few thousand crores to the Indian corrupt capitalists under the pretext of collecting money for removal of poverty, empowering women and other popular tamashas only for a budget period of less than one year.

Over 7 lakh jobs in organised sector and over 28 lakhs in un-organised sector will perish once for all by the end of the year.

All the job loss will affect our people — aboriginal Indians.

ZIONIST ENTRY
The Economic Times (June 3, 2009) published a dangerous report: “Rothschild is invited by the govt. to draw up disinvestment (privatisation roadmap”.

This zionist group had enslaved the British economy in the 18th century, artificially created the depression of 1929, and now enslaving the American economy and funding wars and creating artificial economic crisis throughout the world.

The present world-wide “slow down” is a deliberate creation of these Rothchilds. Such a merciless butcher has been invited by their Brahmanvadi blood brothers.

UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS
You could stop a shark in the ocean from killing you but stopping the Rothchilds from killing you and the many generations to come is unthinkable. The only victims will be the original inhabitants of India.

We have still some time left to save ourselves. So instead of asking uncomfortable questions to Dalit Voice — “Whom shall DV support?” and making a case out of nothing/non-issues by throwing ball to other courts, let the wretched unite.

We request each and every awakened son and daughter of Mahatma Phule, Periyar Ramaswami, Shahu Mahraj, Babasaheb, Birsa Munda and all my minority converted Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Budhists to come together, leave aside all such differences and strengthen the mission of true liberation — true freedom for all of us and put an end to the dreaded disease, a disaster and cancerous appendage — Brahmanvad, and throw it out of our country once for all.

I sincerely thank Brother Dr. V.D. Chandanshive for giving me an opportunity and inspiration to write this small piece.

http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/sep_a2009/editorial.htm

Tharoor travelled economy much before austerity drive, Aides claim! Hypocricy has no limit in Indian Brahaminical Politics. Prabhsh Joshi, the Hindutva Zionist Icon of Sangh Gandhian Core Ideology Non Negotiable believes that the Brahmins are born to Rule and others should do all the LABOUR including Sports and entertainment! Manusmriti Rule is Holy thing in India. Joshi says all the competent Leader in different spheres of life in India, are only Brahamins. Being a posed Gandhian himself, he does not mention Gandhi, a gujrati bani as EFFICIENT leader but Pin Points on only Gandhi Nehru Dynasty as well as SANGH Brahmins as the IDEAL Icons of Indian Society.

Japanese two wheeler major Yahama launched its super-bike 'VMAX' in the country priced at Rs 20 lakh (ex-showroom-Delhi).

The company also launched limited edition of its 'FZ' series in three variants.

"I am hopeful that these bikes will get the same kind of enthusiastic response as our recently-launched other products got. The company has registered a year-on-year growth of 80 per cent during the month of January to August and we expect the coming months to be also fruitful," India Yamaha Motor Managing Director and CEO Yuki Mine Tsuji said.

The new VMAX comes with a 1,679 cc engine.

Tell me who would use the car? Minister of Foreign affairs spends Rs twenty Five lacs per day for a SUIT in a five Star Hotel then Flies in ECONOMY Class out of SOIDARITY with the Holy cows! The Cattle Flight is in No Means has to do anything with Indian Economy as all natioanl revenues and Resources are DIVERTED to the Killer Money Machine and for the CAPTURE the Mass Destruction agenda is being acomplished with merciless Surgical Precision under US Israel survellience! Newspapers and Media dare not to write anything against ECONMIC Reforms and genocide culture rather they JUSTIFY the Hegemony cuture of Ethnic Cleansing! Internal Censorship is so strong and MIND control Infinite, NO RESISTANCE is Possible. Even the Resistance like nandigram, singur, lalagrh and Gorkhaland are HIJACKED by the Manusmriti hegemony! Austerity Game is not OFFLINE, Not DERAILED! Mind You!



As far as Austerity is concerned, it is always related to Holy cows. In Holy Scripts, all Brahamins are HONEST and POOR and a living a life of AUSTERITY which justifies their role as Supreme Leader in Indian Society of caste system based on Discrimination, Injustice and Inequality. The Manusmriti makes the Eighty percent Indigenous aboriginal Minority communities the Bonded Labour of the Brahamins. Brahmins had all the MAJOR Four Rights in Indian society: one: Right to EDUCATION, Right to TEACH and Preach, Right to ARMS and Right to Property. Enslaved Majority Black Untouchables had no RIGHTS at all. They had to SURRENDER Property, Life and Land to the Brahamins. The Phenomenon repeats in So Called Free India, a Colonial Peripherry of zionist corporate US Imperialism , ruled by the Zionist Foreigner Brahamins who are Genetically Proved Original JEWS! Corporate Democracy may be PERSONIFIED as the Holy COW , the Ancient Poor and Honest Brahamins, to whom we have to SURRENDER Everything to get MOKSHA as all RITUALS have to be performed by only the Brahamins!

Monopolistic Aggression against BLACK Untouchable rural BHARAT varsh by the NRI shining India is ICONISED with Diffrent Brands in Diffrent Spheres. parliamentary representation and constitutional Job Reservation and quota make no DIFFERNCE as the Brahmins empowered with PONA Pact ENSURED to chose themselves who would represent the Untouchables, Minritis, Scheduled tribes and OBC. Economy and Policy making , Public utilities, Civil society, Intelligentsia and MEDIA are the FIELDS prohibited for the majority SC, ST, OBC communities! Hence the MIND Control is COMPLETE and the Brahaminical Hegemony continue to Perform the ASHWAMEDHA Yagay, now defined as Industrialisation, development, Infrastructure, Modernisation, IT, National Integrity and Security, war against Terrorism, Indo US Nuclear Deal, LPG, Open Market, Retail chain, URBANISATION, ECONOMIC Reforms and Miltary OPTION of Repression with Zero Intolerability! All these things ROOT into manusmriti Core ideology , MOTHER of all Indian and foreign Idelogies! So the BRAHMIN Returns with all the VENOM and VENGEANCE! And it is AUSTERITY!



Thus, the BRAHMIN marxist gestapo Led, the West Bengal government Thursday invited IT major Wipro and infosys to start new centres at Rajarhat in the northeastern fringes of the city and promised to give 45 acres of land to each of the companies.

"I'm proposing today (Thursday) through the media that we are ready to give 45 acres of land each to Wipro and Infosys. They can come and immediately take possession of the land and start new centres," Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said at a press conference here Thursday.

"These companies can create 16,000 jobs in two years. I had a talk with my colleagues. We will start talking to the companies. The price of the land will be negotiated with theses companies," Bhattacharjee said.

Wipro, Infosys rejected Buddha's offer

Days after scrapping the proposed IT township project at Rajarhat, the West Bengal government said it had suggested alternative land to Infosys and Wipro, a proposal rejected by the IT majors.

At a meeting of the ruling Left Front in Kolkata, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee informed that Housing Minister Gautam Deb had offered alternative 10 acre each to the two IT firms at New Town, Rajarhat, but they spurned the proposal, an LF leader said.

The two companies said they needed more land to set up their shop and the government was trying to accommodate them, Bhattacharjee told the meeting.

"The government wants to see that the two companies did business in the state," the chief minister was quoted as having told the meeting.

Earlier in the day, LF chairman Biman Bose told reporters that the state government had not rejected the proposals of Wipro and Infosys for setting up units near the metropolis.

Bhattacharjee told the meeting that the government had only scrapped the IT park which was to come up near the controversial Vedic Village resort, Bose said.

In April 2008, the state government had inked two MoUs -- one each with Infosys and Wipro -- for setting up IT facilities, for which they had sought 90 acre each. While for Infosys it would had been the first project, Wipro was planning a second one. A company had been floated for setting up an IT park near Vedic Village which now stood scrapped.



Hypocricy Unbound. Almost Three lac Corore for Nuclear ARMAMENT, Another Three lacs for BAILOUT for False Recession, Two lac corore for sixth pay commission. NGOs to Implemet Flagship Progrrames! Utilities Privatised. Disinvestment, Deportation, displacement and EXODUS Infinite! And the bastardised Politics perform the VEDIC Ritula of AUSTERITY as DEATH silently takes away LIFE !

So, Determined to imbibe austerity in its policies, the government has asked various departments to scrap or downsize expenses on insignificant activities by up to 10 per cent when they submit proposals for Budget 2010-11.

The Finance Ministry in the Budget Circular for 2010-11 said, "The estimates (RE 2009-10) must confirm to... instructions, which stipulate a 10 per cent and five per cent cut in non-plan, non-salary expenditure and other economy measures."

For the next fiscal, the circular added, "It is necessary to review the existing expenditure budget... to priorities the activities and schemes, both on the plan and non-plan side and identify those activities and schemes, which can be eliminated or reduced in size or merged with any other scheme."

As part of its economic drive, the Finance Ministry, earlier in the month, advised ministries and departments to cut by 10 per cent expenditure on travel, seminars, exhibitions and other office expenses. In case of other non- plan expenditure, the they were asked to reduce expenses by five per cent.

Following the government instructions on austerity, several ministers, including Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, have started flying economy class.

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday indicated that her ministry may refer allegations of irregularities in recruitment during the tenure of her predecessor Lalu Prasad to CBI.

"If necessary, allegations of irregularities in Railway Recruitment Boards (RRB) and Railway Recruitment Committees would be referred to an outside agency," she told reporters in reply to media reports that she has ordered a CBI inquiry into the allegations of irregularities in recruitment during Lalu's tenure.

MPs belonging to Lalu's rival JD-U had alleged that people sold their land to the former Railway minister's relatives in exchange for railway jobs and contracts.

The Union Minister said irregularities in recruitment have also come in from North Eastern and South Eastern Railways and from states like Orissa.

"There are also reports from the vigilance commission and the High Court has also given a verdict," she said, adding "several MPs have also complained about such irregularities."

However, she clarified that the inquiry was "not against Lalu. I have respect for him. This is against corruption in a particular department".

On the other hand, Business confidence in India is on the rise, defying the global downturn, says the country's apex business chamber as India pitches here strongly to attract more foreign investment in the core sectors of industry.

"Certainly there is a movement in foreign institutional investment and foreign direct investment has also begun to pick up," said Amit Mitra, secretary general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI).

"While rest of the world is shrinking, core sectors of steel, cement and auto industry in India are beginning to grow," Mitra told IANS on phone ahead of an institutional investors conference in New York starting Thursday.

Noting that the FICCI business confidence survey index for India which had plunged to 44 in the third quarter of 2008-09 had risen to 64 in the first quarter and 67 in the second quarter, Mitra said: "We are here to further kindle these forces."

Besides supporting the institutional investors conference, FICCI has also organised a round table for US businessmen Thursday with TKA Nair, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, Ajay Shankar, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy Promotion, and Meera Shankar, India's ambassador to US.

It's also hosting a dinner Thursday with India's Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde for major power companies including General Electric and Price Whitney.

These meetings are being organised ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's state visit here in November.

Meanwhile, Kamal Nath, India's Minister for Road Transport and Highways held a roundtable in America's financial capital focusing US investment attention on India's roads and highways. India's road network of 3.32 million km is second only to the United States and is in need of major upgrades.

Speaking to premier US engineering, construction and investment firms, Nath said: "This is one of the most important projects the Government of India has ever undertaken. Roads and Highways cross the country and touch every facet of life, as well as provide vital connectivity for trade and commerce."

India is set to launch the world's biggest Public Private Partnership programme that will result in the development of 15,000 km of roads and highways over the next three years at a cost of $70 billion. The current five year plan calls for $500 billion in upgrades to India's infrastructure sector-with about one-third of the investment coming from the private sector.

The roundtable was hosted by the US-India Business Council, in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, who has come under fire for his stay in a luxury hotel, had been travelling economy class much before the austerity measures were announced by the government.Sources close to Tharoor said the minister had taken almost 5 flights from Aug 9, travelling to Bangalore, Chennai and Kochi, and on all occasions he had booked himself in economy class. Tharoor ran in a spot of trouble for a message he posted on the social networking site Twitter, in which he said he would travel "cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!"

The Congress on Wednesday said minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor's remarks that he would travel in "cattle class out Shashi Tharoor of solidarity with all our holy cows" were not acceptable and the party high command may also decide if any disciplinary action is to be taken against him.

"The party strongly disapproves the statement of the minister. It is unacceptable, not respecting political or any other sensibilities," said Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan.

On his page on the micro-blogging site Twitter, Tharoor was asked, "Tell us minister, next time you travel to Kerala, will it be cattle class?" His reply: "Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows."

Asked whether any disciplinary action would be taken against the former UN diplomat, the spokesperson said: "This is something that the high command will decide."

The Congress and the government it leads have launched an austerity drive against the backdrop of drought in some parts of the country and rising prices of essential commodities.

Tharoor as well as external affairs minister S M Krishna were asked earlier this month to move out of five-star hotels where they had been staying for over three months - though at their own expense.

Tharoor, who was staying at the Hotel Taj Mahal on Man Singh Road, is now staying at an Indian Navy guesthouse.

"The austerity measures were announced mid-August during the party's working committee meeting but it came into effect later. However, Tharoor has been on these economy flights earlier. He began taking a Kingfisher flight from Mumbai to Kochi on Aug 9," said a close aide. The sources also pointed out that Tharoor was unlikely to respond to Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan who disapproved of the expression "cattle class" the minister used in his latest tweet.


Natarajan took strong exception to the term and, while refusing to be drawn into commenting whether any kind of disciplinary action was being initiated, said Tharoor was perhaps not conscious of the sensitivities since he was new to Indian politics.

"He is out for a week travelling to Ghana and Liberia where he has important engagements. I don't think he has time to respond to this (charge)," added the aide.

Ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi led the push to trim official spending in the backdrop of the country struggling with the worst drought in two decades and food prices on the rise.

Sonia Gandhi asked all Congress MPs to accept a 20 percent pay cut for a year and also set a personal example by forgoing her normal chartered plane and flew economy class to Mumbai early this week.

Her son and party general secretary Rahul Gandhi went one step ahead and travelled by train to Ludhiana in Punjab instead of chartering a helicopter.


Times of India reports:

The comic figure of "Tweety bird" lived dangerously, avoiding the machinations of the neighbourhood cat. As minister of twitter, UN
diplomat-turned-Congressman Shashi Tharoor might well be tempting fate with his unplugged comments on his party's austerity drive.

Having shown little taste for the rules of politics that often require a discreet silence, Tharoor has been an unrepentant twitterer. He has tweeted boldly about how boring he finds meetings as MoS for foreign affairs and having been peremptorily asked to move out of his five-star digs recently, he has shown no inclination for more "austere" ways.

In keeping with his view that he was hardly in the wrong as he was paying his bills, he tweeted that he would definitely travel "in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!" The suggestion that the austerity drive was a put on and the dig at economy travellers did not go down well with the party. Spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan told reporters that the party "strongly disapproves of the statement and finds it unacceptable". She said Tharoor's comments hurt sensitivty of people as thousands of Indians travelled economy class every day.

Natarajan deplored the minister's remarks and said, "This is not respecting the political sensitivity; we don't approve of such statement."

What seemed to have incensed the leadership was the minister's flippant remarks poking fun of the current austerity drive as a gesture to the drought-affected people.

While party chief Sonia Gandhi flew economy, general secretary Rahul Gandhi travelled in the chair car of Shatabdi Express to Ludhiana. With elections in Maharashtra and Haryana only weeks away, Tharoor's comments should be music to the Opposition camp.

Asked if any disciplinary action was being contemplated against the minister, Natarajan said it was for the party high command to take a decision about it. She termed Tharoor's views "insensitive" and not in tune with the party's culture.

Natarajan also averted a direct response when asked if "our holy cows" in Tharoor's twit had an allusion to Rahul.

However, unmindful of the storm his posting had raised, Tharoor went on twittering or "twitting" as some chose to describe it, about the traffic jam at Dhaula Kuan he faced on his way to the airport. He wondered if he was going to miss his flight.

Another posting was about the sartorial change his first foreign trip had brought about. "Am wearing a tie for the first time in six months and hating it," he wrote. Tharoor discovered the benefit of being in `mundu' as an MP from Kerala. "Politicians' garb at least freed my neck from this noose!"
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Cong-slams-Tharoors-twits-on-cattle-class/articleshow/5020004.cms



Doctors to get extra money to work in rural areas: Azad
Doctors who opt to work in rural areas will be duly compensated with extra money and weightage points that will help them while going for
higher studies, health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad announced on Thursday.

"The only way to attract the attention of doctors to work in difficult, most difficult and inaccessible areas is through incentives. We have requested the states to give us the list under the above categories. We can provide extra money as extra incentive," Azad told reporters.

"Assam has already done it. To encourage rural postings, additional weightage will be given in the post graduate examination at the rate of 10 percent for each year of rural service. It will be subject to a maximum of 30 percent extra weightage for three years of rural service," he said while giving details of his ministry's achievements in the last 100 days.

Azad said this service will have to be rendered after the internship period only. This service will not only help the National Rural Health Mission, but also help the MBBS doctors in accumulating extra weightage points for further studies," he added.

The Assam government had Wednesday appointed nearly 800 doctors in a recruitment drive that is expected to revolutionise the region's rural healthcare sector.

The recruitment campaign has a catch though, as the appointments were made for a one-year period as part of the government legislation that makes it mandatory for all MBBS graduates to serve for a minimum of one year in rural health centres.

"Assam has become the first state in the country to have carried out such a historic recruitment drive by appointing 768 doctors for rural postings in one single day," state Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said after handing over appointment letters to the doctors in Guwahati.

The young doctors would be getting a monthly fixed salary of Rs.25,000, besides free accommodation in their area of posting.

Ishrat's family moves SC against stay on Tamang report
Family members of Ishrat Jahan, who was killed allegedly in an encounter by Gujarat police on Thursday moved the Supreme Court
challenging High Court's order staying a magistrate inquiry report which had described the incident as fake encounter.

The Gujarat High Court on September 9 had stayed metropolitan magistrate S P Tamang's report on the plea of state government which had contended that the observations made in the report were beyond the jurisdiction of the judicial magistrate.

A single judge bench of Justice Kalpesh Javheri, while staying the report, had also ordered the appropriate authority of the high court to look into the actions of magistrate Tamang and take necessary action.

Magistrate Tamang's report had said the encounter in which 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan and three others were gunned down in 2004 while allegedly plotting to kill the Gujarat chief minister was fake and executed in cold blood by police officers for selfish motives.

The report of the investigation conducted by the magistrate had held senior police officers responsible for "staging" the encounter.

The four persons, claimed to have been killed by the police in an encounter on the outskirts of the city on June 15, 2004 were Ishrat, Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani.



Buddha govt offers 45 acres each to Wipro and Infosys


West Bengal government on Thursday offered 45 acres each to Wipro and Infosys for setting up units at Rajarhat, said Chief Minister
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

"I'm proposing today (Thursday), through the media, that we are ready to give 45 acres of land each to Wipro and Infosys. If they agree to the proposal, they can come and immediately take possession of the land and start new centres," Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told a press conference at the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) state headquarters. ( Watch Video )

"These companies can create 16,000 jobs in two years. I already had a talk with my cabinet colleagues, IT Minister Debesh Das, Housing Development Minister Gautam Deb and others about the proposal. We will start talking to the companies. The price of the land will be negotiated with them," Bhattacharjee said, adding that the land will be given on lease to both the IT giants.

On the infrastructure, he said that Rajarhat area already had housing, market complexes and road facilities.

"Now the state government will talk to these companies with the proposal. We can immediately hand over the proposed land to them (Wipro and Infosys).

"A few months back we'd identified land near Vedic Village area to set up an IT township there. But we didn't have any idea that they were acquiring land with muscle power and also with the help of some anti-social elements. Some unfortunate things also happened there... I was little upset with that," the chief minister said.

He said that the state government immediately dropped the project and decided not to go ahead with it as it was not morally correct, following the trouble that erupted over Vedic Reality - a joint venture between the private party and state's key IT agency Webel.

The proposed IT township at Rajarhat near Salt Lake had become controversial following allegations that land sharks - allegedly backed by promoters of Vedic Realty - had been involved in land acquisitions.

The state government depended on Vedic Realty to get land for the 1,600-acre IT project.

Both Infosys and Wipro had sought 90 acres from the state government for their ventures. ITC Infotech was also eyeing space in the IT hub.

Bhattacharjee said the land was already with the state government and they would just have to change the land map at Rajarhat slightly to accommodate the IT players.

300 terrorists waiting to sneak into J&K
Around 300 terrorists are waiting across the Line of Control in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) for an opportunity to infiltrate into
India, prompting the Army to strengthen its anti-insurgency security grid.

The terrorists have been spotted moving in batches from place to place along the LoC, apparently in search of vulnerable spots from where they could infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir, Defence Ministry sources said on Thursday.

The attempt was to push in as many terrorists as possible before the onset of winter when snowfall will make the mountainous terrains impregnable, the sources said.

"The next two months are crucial," they said, expecting a jump in the infiltration attempts.

In the recent times, there have been a number of attempts at infiltration, many times accompanied by firing from across the LoC to provide cover to such bids.

Security forces have killed at least 25 terrorists while foiling these infiltration attempts last month and these encounters took place at points along the LoC.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in an address to a conference of state police chiefs on Tuesday, had termed as worrisome secessionists and militant groups in Kashmir making common cause with "outside elements" and noted that infiltration across the LoC was going up.
46% Indian kids suffer from malnutrition: Study





Despite India's recent economic boom, at least 46% of its children up to the age of 3 still suffer from malnutrition making the country home

to a third of the world's malnourished children, a study said today.

Noting that the country is an "economic powerhouse but a nutritional weakling", the report by the British-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS), which incorporated papers by more than 20 India analysts, said "at least 46% of children upto the age of 3 in India still suffer from malnutrition."

"It's the contrast between India's fantastic economic growth and its persistent malnutrition which is so shocking," Lawrence Haddad, director of the IDS told The Times.

The UN defines malnutrition as a state in which an individual can no longer maintain natural bodily capacities such as growth, pregnancy, lactation, learning abilities, physical work and resisting and recovering from disease.

The report said India will not meet the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving its number of hungry till 2043 though it had committed in 2001 to reach it by 2015.

The report also highlighted the Government's failure to improve basic living standards for most Indians despite its unprecedented economic growth since 2004.

Sonia, ICICI's Kochhar among top 20 powerful women

Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, Chanda Kochhar, CEO of ICICI Bank India and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw Chairman, Biocon India are the only Indians in Forbes annual list of the 100 most powerful women. (See full List)

The list, which was released last night, includes fiery chief executives, brilliant politicians and beloved queens, but the model for all women who seek influence, is the cautious and uncharismatic German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Nooyi is listed as the third most powerful woman in the world, while Sonia Gandhi Kochhar and Shaw are ranked 13, 20 and 91 respectively. Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed is the only other South Asian in the list and is ranked 78.

Americans make up 63 of the 100, while only four women from Britain make the grade

In assembling the list, Forbes looked for women who run countries, big companies or influential nonprofits. Their rankings are a combination of two scores: visibility - by press mentions - and the size of the organization or country these women lead.

Besides Gandhi and Kochhar, Biocon's chairman Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw also featured in the list at number 91.

Gandhi improved her ranking from 21 last year to 13 this year, while Mazumdar-Shaw moved to 91 from last year's 99th place.

Nooyi retained her third position in the list.

Bahujan Samajwadi Party leader and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, who was ranked 59th in last year's list, did not figure in the latest list put up on Forbes.com.

Regarding Gandhi, Forbes said, she is "still the country's dominant force since she reluctantly entered politics in the 1990s." The landslide victory in the recent general election further strengthened her position as the leader of "India's most powerful political party" – Indian National Congress.

Kochhar was named as the first woman boss of India's second largest lender ICICI Bank and took charge in May this year. "She now oversees a bank with assets of USD 100 billion," Forbes said. She was instrumental in transforming the retail business of ICICI Bank and turning it into a retail banking powerhouse.

Besides, Anglo American Chief Cynthia Carroll, Temasek CEO Ho Ching, Kraft Foods Chief Irene Rosenfeld, DuPont head Ellen Kullman, WellPoint CEO Angela Braly, Areva Chief Anne Lauvergeon and Sunoco head Lynn Elsenhans are among the top 10 powerful women.

Interestingly, speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (35) was ranked ahead of Hillary Clinton (36), the US Secretary of State, Michelle Obama (40), the first lady of the US, and Queen Elizabeth II (42).

Other dignitaries in list are Melinda Gates (34), the Co-chairman Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Oprah Winfrey (41), Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed (78) and Chile President Michelle Bachelet (22) among others.

Forbes' Powerful Women list is based largely in terms of influence rather than celebrity status or popularity.

In assembling the list, Forbes looked for women who run countries, big companies or influential nonprofits.

"Their rankings are a combination of two scores: visibility -- by press mentions -- and the size of the organisation or country these women lead," the US-based magazine said.

Yamaha launches 'VMAX' priced at Rs 20 lakh


Govt takes no stand on gay sex, leaves it to Supreme Court

Shying away from taking any stand on gay sex, the government on Thursday virtually left it for the Supreme Court to decide on the "correctness" of the Delhi High Court order decriminalising homosexuality.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, considered the report of the three-member Group of Ministers formed on the issue and decided that Attorney General G Vahanvati will "assist" the Supreme Court on it.

"The Cabinet decided to ask the Attorney General to assist the Supreme Court in every way desired by it in arriving at an opinion on the correctness of the judgement of the High Court," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters.

To a volley of questions, she repeated the same formulation of her statement and said the Supreme Court can decide if the High Court was "right or not" in decriminalizing gay sex.

She refused to say anything more on the issue, maintaining that she was not authorised to "explain" further as the matter related to Cabinet proceedings. The Cabinet decided against taking any stand on the issue to avoid getting caught in any controversy, a minister said, explaining why it was left for the Apex court to take a view.

The Delhi High Court had passed an order about two months back legalising sex between consenting gay partners, earlier considered a criminal act under Section 377 of the IPC. Some religious bodies opposed it. A Christian organisation, a disciple of Yoga guru Ramdev and Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) have approached the Supreme Court which sought the government's response by October one.

The Supreme Court had earlier refused to stay the High Court order, saying it would await the response of the government. In view of the sensitive nature of the issue, the government set up a Group of Ministers comprising Home Minister P Chidambaram, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Law Minister Veerappa Moily to formulate a view on it.

The GoM was understood to have suggested that the government should not take a stand but leave it to the Supreme Court to decide. Indicating the GoM's view earlier this week, Moily had said the Cabinet should not be expected to take any stand as the government would only assist the Supreme Court in arriving at the "right" decision.

"The decision has been already given by the Delhi High Court (decriminalising gay sex). The only question is certain appeals have been filed before the Supreme Court in which we (government) are not the party...the parties are petitioners and respondents. Our law officers will deal with the question," he had said.



Meeting on Chinese incursions postponed

The China Study Group meeting to discuss the fallout of Chinese incursions into Indian territory, which was to be held on Thursday, has been postponed. No reason was given for the postponement of the meeting.

National Security Advisor M K Narayanan was to hold the meeting with top officials including Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar and Secretaries of Defence, Home and Foreign Ministries. The meeting was expected to take stock of the situation along the Sino-India border and to chart the future course of action, official sources said.

Besides Chandrasekhar, the meeting was to be attended by Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar, Home Secretary G K Pillai and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao. Top officials of the three armed forces and the Intelligence Bureau will also attend the meeting.

The meeting was to be called to take stock of recent reports of incursions by the Chinese army in Ladakh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, involving the air dropping of expired food canes, painting of rocks red among others.

Another media report said that two Chinese Sukhoi fighters had transgressed into Indian air space last month. The Indian Air Force, however, says no unscheduled flight inside Indian air space had taken place last month.

DALAI LAMA'S VISIT | INDIA-CHINA TUG OF WAR

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India snubs China, clears Dalai Lama's Arunachal trip

Surya Gangadharan / CNN-

New Delhi: Snubbing Beijing's diktat, New Delhi has cleared the visit of the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh. The Tibetan leader is also expected to visit Tawang which China covets.


China's dismissal of Indian concerns on border intrusions have left South Block troubled and dissatisfied. But now it's China's turn to face a clear snub from a neighbouring nation.


External Affairs Minister, SM Krishna said, "Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India and Dalai Lama is free to go anywhere in India. The only point is that he is not expected to comment on political developments."


Adding insult to the Dragon's injury, the Tibetans said Arunachal is a part of India, warning that China's border violations were provocative.


"The encroachment and insertion in the border area and not only in the northeast but also in the western borders is seen. It is seen particularly in Ladakh as lot of Ladakhi nomads have been disturbed (and it has been noticed) quite at length inside India, they have entered and they have painted even the rocks," said Tibetan leader Samdong Rinpoche.


Although reports of China firing at Indian border guards in Sikkim have been denied, tensions on the border have left some people in Sikkim uneasy about the future.


A local journalist, Arjun Rai said, "In 1962 there was some friction between India and China. So from then onwards we are feeling insecure. Anytime China can attack India."


Of late, China appears to have woken up to the damage to its image. Indian journalists In Beijing, Indian journalists were given a rare briefing where peaceful intentions were reiterated. But the gap between Beijing's words and ground reality remains unresolved.

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17/09/2009

Bharti Retail to become $1 bn firm by 2015: Mittal
New Delhi: Bharti Retail exuded confidence that it is "on course" to become a billion dollar company by 2015, and will open 40 more stores in the next three months notwithstanding the economic slowdown.

"We have now 28 Easyday (small stores), including two medium stores, running in the North and we shall be adding another 40 or so to make them 70 by December 2009," Rajan Mittal, vice chairman and managing director, Bharti Enterprises, told PTI.

The company will also open its second cash-and-carry store under the 50:50 JV with US-based Wal-Mart, the world's largest retail chain, by December this year.

"We are going as per our plan. Our plan is very clear. We want to be a Rs 1,000 crore (company) in the next three years by 2010-2011," Mittal said.

On whether the retail business of Bharti Enterprises -- which owns India's largest telecom company under Airtel brand -- be another billion dollar (about Rs 4,800 crore) company by 2015, Mittal said, "So if it is Rs 1,000 crore in three years. Surely...It should be earlier than that."

He, however, said it would require stabilisation in the real estate and the retail market. "My personal ambition is that it should be more quicker than telecom... This is not about my company. It is about ecosystem."

Mittal said only about five per cent of the industry constitutes organised retail, which is projected to grow to 25-30 per cent, opening growth opportunities for all.

Bharti plans to invest up to $2.5 billion by 2015 in retail business, covering 10 million square feet. Mittal said the slowdown has had only a marginal impact, mainly on account of "yo-yo" in real estate, but there was no change in the company's eight-year plan.

Talking about the 40 new stores that are coming up in the National Capital Region, he said, "We now have 28-29 Easydays and two stores which are medium stores...By the end of the year, we plan to have about 70 stores."

Mittal said majority of the new stores will be in the small format -- about 3,000 square feet each. Of these, five stores will be in the medium format (up to 50,000 sq ft), called 'Easyday Market', and most of the new ones will be in and around Delhi.

About the back-end, wholesale business, he said "We had targeted to open two cash and carry... One we have already opened and one we hope to open in December."

The existing store is in Amritsar and the other one will also come up in Punjab, he said.

Asked whether Bharti has been moving slow in the retail business, compared to other players, Mittal said, "First three years are very clear, it is our learning. We want to do it the correct way. Just opening stores makes no meaning. There is lot of other stuff that needs to be handled. We are actually on course."

Source: Business Standard

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RBI for info pool to fix frauds
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Mumbai In a bid to tackle rising frauds in the banking system, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks to build up a data or information pool of large-value frauds and analyse them periodically. This may act as a knowledge repository for policy responses.
The central bank has also said that in the matter of fraud investigation, banks may take immediate steps to identify staff with proper aptitude and provide necessary training to them in forensic audit so that only such skilled staff is deployed for investigation of large-value frauds.

It has been observed that the trend is more disquieting in retail segment, especially in housing and mortgage loans, credit card dues and internet banking.

Moreover, it is a matter of concern that instances of frauds in the traditional areas of banking such as cash credit, export finance, guarantees, and letters of credit remain unabated, the RBI said.

Banks are also advised to initiate necessary action at their end at the earliest.

“Banks may, with the approval of their respective boards, frame internal policy for fraud risk management and fraud investigation functions, based on the governance standard relating to the ownership of the function and accountability for malfunctioning of the fraud risk management process in their banks,” the RBI said.

Given the thin line of difference between serious wrongdoings and frauds, the bank should immediately put in place an adequately enabled and efficient ‘internal oversight framework’ that can prevent the wrongdoings and take punitive measures against the wrongdoers, the RBI said.

The Board for Financial Supervision (BFS) has felt the chief executive officers (CEOs) of the banks must provide singular focus on the “Fraud Prevention & Management Function” to enable effective investigation and prompt accurate reporting to appropriate regulatory and law enforcement authorities, including the Reserve Bank.

The board has also observed that in terms of higher governance standards, the fraud risk management and fraud investigation function must be owned by the bank’s CEO, its audit committee of the board and the special committee of the board, at least in respect of high value frauds.

Accordingly, they should own responsibility for systemic failure of controls or absence of key controls or severe weaknesses in existing controls which facilitate exceptionally large-value frauds and sharp rises in frauds in specific business segments leading to large losses for the bank.

The banks’ special committee of the board, which will be chaired by the CEO, should own the Fraud Investigation & Monitoring Function and discharge the relative oversight responsibility in a pro-active manner, the RBI said.

At present, the special committees are apprised by the banks’ senior management. It has been observed that the said committees give routine instructions on follow-up actions. The banks may have to review the roles and responsibilities of the vigilance function, internal audit function and risk management function.

“On the basis of the review, it may be decided as to what realignments and modifications are needed to ensure that ‘monitoring and investigation of large-value frauds’ are recognised as a distinct ‘function’ and the dedicated unit which is adequately enabled and free from potential conflict of interest is assigned the responsibility to undertake the function,” the RBI said.


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