US bleeding due to Wikileaks!

Forget Osama Bin Laden. US latest obsession must be Julian Assange, the man behind Wikileaks, who with a handful of others is day by day putting online more records and information depicting the hollowness of the claims made by the powerful leaders of the world, with the major target being the US.

US is running for cover since a massive leak of more than 92,000 top secret documents titled- "Afghan War Log" containing day to day reporting of the soldiers and intelligence reports. But now US is trying to show a bold face, telling the world that they had nothing to hide and all the info contained in those leaked documents was already shared with the concerned countries including India. But what they are failing to explain is why billions are poured into Pakistan when they have sufficient proof that ISI is funding Taliban or why civilian causalities were reported as enemy deaths. The documents clearly show the failing US led NATO forces there and why the war was not merited from the beginning.

But the world attention is also on Julian Assange, a former computer hacker from Australia who decided that he wanted to do his best to make all secrets public. His special attention is on US, but their website has also revealed documents about the toxic materials being thrown in the oceans alongside African coasts, affecting elections in Kenya by exposing corruption among many other projects.

How Wikileaks operates

WikiLeaks, which runs on funding from donors, has been rather secretive about how it operates. But essentially the idea behind the site is this: People who have access to controversial or classified documents can send them to the site, either through the internet or through the mail. Then a group of volunteer editors for the site decides what information is authoritative, what information is important, and publishes it accordingly. In this way, the site differs from traditional "wikis," such as Wikipedia, which can be edited and changed by anyone at any time. Only approved information ends up on the WikiLeaks site, but anyone is free to submit documents he or she believes should be made public. WikiLeaks offers these whistle-blowers anonymity and, to a degree, legal protection.

Technical backbone

Since WikiLeaks is in the business of publishing information that governments and multinational corporations want kept secret, the site employs some technical tricks that aim to keep it from crashing or being hacked.

The site keeps servers on multiple continents, and its sensitive information passes through countries -- such as Sweden, Iceland and Belgium -- that have offered WikiLeaks a degree of legal protection.

"We use this state-of-the-art encryption to bounce stuff around the internet to hide trails -- pass it through legal jurisdictions like Sweden and Belgium to enact those legal protections," Julian Assange said. The fact that WikiLeaks' servers and volunteers are all over the globe makes it, in effect, the "world's first stateless news organization." This is key to the site's ability to protect itself.

"WikiLeaks is organized so that if the crackdown comes in one country, the servers can be switched on in another," he writes. "This is meant to put it beyond the reach of any government or legal system." Assange reportedly has spent his life developing the tech skills needed to set up such a system.  "As a teenager in Melbourne, Australia, he belonged to a hacker collective called the International Subversives."  He eventually pleaded guilty to multiple counts "of breaking into Australian government and commercial websites to test their security gaps, but was released on bond for good behavior."

Julian Assange is on a mission and world is waiting to see his next revelations. But what should be also noticed here is the continuous failure of successive US govts to achieve their slated targets- capturing Osama, eradicating Taliban from Afghanistan, finding nukes or chemical weapons from Iraq, or now getting hands on Julian Assange. It seems their bad luck is just not stopping. 

The Curious Case of Chinese Currency-Yuan..

These days, i have been catching up on a lot of news concerning China. I have been fascinated by the astute manner in which they come out with different strategies-be it politics, economics or foreign affairs.

There are many strategic instances which can be quoted, like how smartly China has slowly and steadily made Tibet as part of their territory. And very recently their have been talks between Zardari and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao to build a railway line from China to Pakistan which would enable China to have a stronghold on the Indian border [with increased military base to attack if needed]

But, what i am going to discuss in detail is the changing phase of Chinese economy. Their currency, Yuan [Also known as Remnibibi] was in the spotlight recently. As we all know Chinese products are known for being cheap and quite a large chunk of the Chinese economy relies on exports. It had been pegged 6.83 to the USD since July 2008. Recently it was under heavy criticism from the US for not allowing Yuan to appreciate. China was accused of being a monopolist in the export industry [as they were literally stealing away the export business of other countries]. But things are slowly changing. I read a lot in the newspapers about how China is under pressure from other countries including India and US to allow Yuan to appreciate. Come to think of it, is China really "losing out" if Yuan appreciates? If you got your economics right- not so much, especially not the people of China. Read on, you will know why..

Ask yourself a question, essentially what are exports? They are -global demand for goods and services in the economy. Too much reliance on any component of demand is bad, in this case it is the exports. For instance, if there is a slump in global demand due to recessionary trends, Chinese exports will suffer and therefore the demand. Now if Yuan appreciates, the domestic demand would increase as the purchasing power of people in China would increase [taking the assumption that the Chinese are purchasing imports to satisfy their domestic consumption]. This would help the Chinese economy to reduce its dependence on exports. This would also mean more income in the hands of poor labourers which are paid abysmally low [which is how the Chinese are able to export products at such a cheap rate].

Now, it remains to be seen at what rate People's bank of China allow the Yuan to appreciate. China can play a clever game here, if the rate at which their currency appreciates is low, they can still maintain their world leader status as far as export market is concerned. Side by side, they would also steadily increase their domestic demand. This would further strengthen the Chinese economy. It's because of such clever strategies that i like to address China as- "our shrewd neighbour-China!!"

-Tejas Singh

BREAKING NEWS: There is No Indian Cricket Team, and there Never Was

Alas! But true. There is only one team, BCCI ki team, and not India ki team. BCCI has time and again proved that the only thing that matters to them is money, and not the national pride, or India, for that matter. You may have also noticed several times when their members have given preference to monetary contracts instead of options which may have been a pride for India.

First, there was the IPL. One may argue that it was the best option at that time but simply postponing the IPL after the Indian democratic elections could have been an option also. It would have been a nice thing to do, giving the largest democracy in the world respect for the democratic functions it performs, instead it became a matter of one person's ego and he was even praised for that. But that is understandable. Millions were at stake due to contractual obligations, and why does it matter to BCCI if the INDIAN Premier League actually happens in India or not, when the democracy of India was given second preference after the "billion dollar baby".

Second, India is not playing in the Asian Games. IOA president, Mr Suresh Kalmadi, has openly said that BCCI is not participating in the Asian games because there is no money in that. "It has become commercial...cricket has become very commercial. (In Olympic and Asian Games) There are only medals, no money. So, I don't think anybody from cricket world will be interested in taking part," he said. BCCI cited international commitments for not taking part in Asian games, where cricket is debuting in T20 format. "They (BCCI) had done it in Malaysia Commonwealth Games also. They sent a second string team there. So I was never keen and I did not put cricket into Commonwealth Games. I knew they won't make it, they will back out at the last minute. They said they would come to Asian Games, but they backed out. I knew this," he said.

Kalmadi was referring to the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur where India sent a second-string squad, while most of the frontline cricketers played against Pakistan in Canada. I need not add further.

Third, BCCI not agreeing to pre/postpone the India-Australia 2 tests to be played between Oct 2-14 in India, clearly clashing with CWG. Three ODIs are also to be played after the tests. CWG schedule was decided four years ago and BCCI was clearly informed about the time table of the event. But, hey, BCCI has control over 75% of the money in the world cricket. How can anybody tell them to adjust to the CWG, even when it is a matter of national pride for Indian citizens. Instead, we should thank them for giving us the option of either watching the world athletes fighting to get a medal for their country or the BCCI squad fighting it out on a cricket pitch, winning thousands as prize money, lakhs as salaries but zero medals. Mr. Kalmadi has clarified that a year ago, he had requested the then BCCI president Sharad Pawar not to schedule any cricket series on Indian soil during the Games. But, its highly unlikely that without any serious order or threat of disbanding them, BCCI will change their schedule to adjust India in it.

So, we were mistaken for a long time that the team for which we were cheering was an Indian team. But it was a team of a billion dollar enterprise called BCCI(Billionaires Control Cricket in India), run by billionaires to make more money. So never again say its India ki team, its BCCI ki team. R.I.P. Indian Cricket Team.

By- Rahul Bansal