We support President Putin of Russia

I am writing this message from India. I just wanted to let you know that we stand by you in your fight against the imperial powers of the west, particularly the USA and England.

For the last 400 years they have rained in death, destruction and devastation to satisfy their insatiable greed for other people’s land and wealth, including our own India. There is probably not a single part of the world that escaped their destructive wars and systematic loot. Even today their army continues to kill, torture and displace people all over the world to grab and loot their wealth. Only you stand on their path of complete world domination and subjugation of the rest of the world. Under your able leadership Russia is moving from strength to strength, so that now the colonizers are terrified of you. Please give them such a bloody nose that they never dare to muddle around in other countries anymore.

Please note that the whole of India stands by you. Not just India, but the rest of the world, oppressed by the west stand with Russia, in Asia, Africa, Latin America.

Only problem is that the west has complete domination of the propaganda machine due to their control of the English language, the Internet and other PR mediums. Please make sure that they don’t win this part of the war. For example, the RT TV channel is taken out from Indian networks. Bring that back and make sure people hear the other side of the story.

Hope you stay in good health and spirit and bring this conflict to a successful conclusion.

Subhendu

Facebook is Evil

Is Facebook, or its parent company Meta the most evil corporation in the world? Maybe not. The cigarette companies or the arms dealers may be more harmful.

But I think it is safe to say that it is the most pernicious software company in the world, led by the most evil CEO in the short history of computer software.

When I started my career in Computer Software in the 90’s, computers were still a novelty and people who worked with computers were treated with respect as scientists and pioneers. Those days are gone. Computers are now a household appliance used by even grandmothers. People tend to treat computers with annoyance and suspicion lest they will be cheated by some scammer and hacker. But still it was not hated as evil until Mr. Zuckerberg brought it down to dust with his rapacity and arrogance. To be fair, he is not alone. But he is by far the face of evil in large tech companies.

You know you have hit the rock bottom when a corrupt, shady, unsavoury organisation like the Australian Government sues you for cheating. That Mark Zuckerberg is a greedy, arrogant entitled person was clear from his student days. Here is a glimpse on how he treats his target customers. He thought they are Dumb fucks. Now you may say he was just 19 year old. He did not know. But he did not change even when he grew up. In 2005 he tried to fool the world by donating all his wealth to a foundation, which is completely owned by him. I could not find much info about the charity activities of that foundation. Maybe some pittance was given, but that is negligible and also for questionable purposes. Who is he trying to fool? His customers I guess.

Facebook spreads hate that is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people around the world. A little investment to moderate those content could save hundreds of lives. But Facebook spends almost negligible amounts for monitoring fake news and hateful content. Here is a small list.

Recently a whistleblower named Frances Haugen revealed how facebook misled inventors and pushed hateful contents for profit.

Facebook spread hateful content that led to riots and killings of Hindu minorities in Bangladesh

Facebook helped spread the genocide against the Rohingyas in Myanmar.

Meta has helped the US Government to wage their illegal wars and help spread their propaganda. Again these wars kills thousands of people all over the world

Recently Meta promoted violence against the Russians during the Ukraine war. Obviously they don't care about Ukraine. They are just doing this to appease the US government and to make more money by pushing violence.

This is just a tiny sample. If someone collects all such incidents, it will be 100 times this list.

The sad part, most of this damage could have been contained by a little less greed, by spending a tiny amount of money moderating contents. But Mark would not not even spend a few millions to protect his customers, while he keeps his hundreds of billions. Why should he? We are just “dumb fucks”, expendible.

He sells our private data to anyone who pays, without any scrupule. This data is then used mostly for harmful purposes like rigging elections, influential public opinion etc.

The US Congress did the sham investigation and hearing of all tech companies, including Meta. It was obvious during their testimony how they are compromising privacy, security and well being of their users. But they did absolutely nothing. Money can buy silence from anyone.

Then there are other more damaging effects of Facebook. From loss of time, productivity, social life, to loss of concentration, anxiety depression and sucide from using the harmful products that Mr. Zuckerberg promotes. And Meta does not spend any money to contain the damaging effects of these products. I have not seen any large scale study funded by them to study the bad effects of constant exposure to social networks or any publicity campaign to educate the users, particularly children. Even cigarette companies fund cancer research. But not Mark. To him, his customers are “dumb fucks”, to be scarificed on the alter of his greed for billions.

And he is right. We are “dumb fucks”. We keep using his products, harm ourselves and make him rich. Technology is everywhere these days. We cannot live without them. But surely we can choose which technologies are useful to us and which are harmful.

I stopped using Facebook a long time ago. Never used Instagram. I still use WhatsApp, grudgingly, because it is difficult to live without in India. But I am cutting down. Every time I send a message, the ugly face of Mark Zuckerberg flashes in front of my eyes and I think how he is profiting by selling my privacy. And I stop.

I hope others will also stop, soon.

Note: Most of these information is collected from the internet. I do not have the training or the capacity to fact check them. But they are from renowned brands. I have reasonable confidence that they are correct. Please feel free to correct any inaccuracy.

War in Ukraine

I am no pundit of geopolitical events, world economy or politics. This article is written purely from what I saw on TV and gathered from the internet. The war in Ukraine has made me so angry and helpless that I was forced to write this piece to give an outlet to my emotions.

Please read this nice article first.

It is customary in writing about the invasion of Ukraine to start by expressing sorrow at the plight of the Ukrainian people. I will skip that in my post. Primarily because they have brought it onto themselves. They have consistently provoked Russia at the behest of the West, knowing fully well the consequences, not just the government, but the people.

• They have deposed an elected government in collaboration with the far right movement, which is openly Nazi, inluding their emblem.
• They now have a real Nazi militia, The Azov Battalion, fully supported by the govermnet, that commits war crimes in the Donbas region.
• They have slaughtered 14000 Russian speaking people, burying them in mass graves.
• They have elected successively radical leaders that suppressed the rights of the Russian speaking people, banned Russian language, even though 30% of Ukrainains has Russian as their mother tongue.
• They sent 7000 troops to invade Iraq, during Terrorist Bush’s Iraq-Oil-Grab war.
• Even now, when their country is half destroyed, millions of people fleeing their home, I did not see a single Ukrainian speaking about settlement, negotiation or peace. Only talk is about more sanctions, more weapons, more war against Russia.

Well if war is what you want, then why complain? You got what you want. Fight it. We are not going to fight it for you. If any country ever deserved war, it is Ukraine.

The less we speak about the west and their media, the better. Even since the crisis started, neither Biden nor Borris, even spoke of negotiation or peace. They only spoke about how to destroy Russia. That is their objective all along. So that they get a free hand to exploit the world, conquer Venezuela for example. For west Ukraine is a sacrificial lamb, to be sacrificed on the altar of their global domination. They baited Ukraine to provoke Russia into a bloody war. Now they are using civilian dead bodies to shore up support in their own country to wage proxy war. BBC and other media always have photos of a child refugee on their front page. Again no discussion about negotiated settlement. Just channelling the outpouring of common peoples emotions to war hysteria. This is nothing short of media terrorism. But who is at fault here for this deception of the west? Ukraine. Only three months ago they saw what America did to Afghanistan. They just cut loose and disappeared in a week, leaving the Afghans and all their “allies' ' Including India in the lurch. Poor India invested 3,000,000,000 there to promote “Freedom and Democracy” for America. Over night all that gone to Taliban to be used to bomb India. And still, Ukraine did not learn.

Now this article is not about how the war started. This is about my wishful thinking about what will be the outcome of the war. My hope is that Russia and China and the rest of the world, including India, that has been suffering from exploitation, death and destruction from the west for the last 400 years will benefit from this war.

Again I admit freely that I know nothing about economics and war and geopolitics. I am just an angry spectator from a third world country. This is my wishful thinking.

• Russia will put a stop to NATO expansion and subdue Ukraine for good. NATO will now get the point. They simply cannot overpower Russia. Not until there is a determined leader in Russia like President Putin. And at some point some of the less jingoistic European members will demand that NATO comes to terms with Russia. Europe needs Russia as much Russia needs Europe. I mean, how long can you ban Dostoevsky.
• The Russian economy will emerge stronger. It will diversify from it’s heavy reliance on energy export to other sectors like manufacturing etc.
• Russia and China will develop alternate currencies to challenge the dollar. This is the doomsday for America. For decades America waged war against Libya, Iraq even used threats against its closest allies who had challenged the dollar. Not this time.
• Russia and China will create alternate payment and clearing systems. This will challenge SWIFT, Mastercadr and Visa. I think India should pitch in with UPI.
• The Russian army will gain crucial combat experience. Other than minor skirmishes in Chechnya and Ossetia, the Russian army has not fought a war for a long time. Whereas America is constantly fighting wars all over the world. This puts the Russian army at a disadvantage. Same thing happened between India and China. Because India fights a constant proxy war with Pakistan, our soldiers are battle ready. So they could give a befitting reply to the Chinese army during the Galwan conflict.

As for India, so far we have done the right thing by staying neutral in this conflict. We should take care of our interests. But I fear that BJP is pro western and they may cave in to American pressure. If that happens, that will be bad for us. Hope we have not forgotten our lessons from Afghanistan.

This article is written in extreme haste. Please ignore any mistakes.

Update 9 March: After posting this article, I was a bit uncomfortable about why I was defending an aggressor. Have I misgudged in my naive affinity to Russia. Then I came across this article. So I am not alone thinking in this line.

Two Escapes

In this article I will describe two daring escapes by two remarkable leaders of India. These stories are so fascinating and their impact so profound that there are no parallels like them in human history. They fought against odds that are so overwhelming that the David versus Goliath story becomes pale in comparison. An ant against an elephant is a more apt comparison.

First Escape:

Shivaji Bhonsale escaped from his Agra prison, where he was imprisoned by Emperor Aurangzeb on 19 August 1666. The escape itself from one of the strongholds of the empire is miraculous. But his subsequent journey back to his kingdom through thousands of kilometres of hostile territory is just incredible. He started with just a few men and little money. He deceived the imperial guards and search parties by travelling through a much longer route of Mathura, Allahabad, Varanasi, Puri, Golkonda and then back to his country. On the way he had to abandon all his followers in fear of getting detected, he lost all his money, he begged for provision and eventually against all odds reached home safely.

After reaching home, he crowned himself king. He challenged the richest and mightiest empire of his time and eventually brought about its downfall in less than 50 years of his death.

The odds that he fought against are incredible. He fought the combined forces of the Mughal Empire and its two sultanates Bijapur and Golconda at the height of their power. Their combined strength included a million strong army, hundred thousand cavalry, over two thousand pieces of artillery manned by the finest European gunners. They had a combined revenue of five billion rupees, one third of the global GDP.

Against this Shivaji had less than fifty villagers and two hundred rupees a year revenue from his land. But he fought with steadfast determination and insatiable quest for liberty and eventually overpowered all three adversaries and established a kingdom based on justice and equality. He faced religious persecution under the Mughal rulers. So he ensured that all citizens get equal rights and no one is persecuted in his realm. Finally when he died after establishing a strong, peaceful and prosperous kingdom, he was so loved by his people, that he entered the pantheon of the great rulers like Ashok and Akbar.

Second Escape:

On 16 January 1941 Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose escaped from his home in Calcutta, where he was kept in house arrest by the British rulers of India. He travelled through Dhanbad, Delhi, Peshawar, Jalalabad, Kabul, Central Asia, Moscow and finally reached Germany. There he raised an army to fight against the British Colonial rulers of India. Then he travelled to Japan via submarines evading all the allied blockades and reached Japan, again raised an army, went to Singapore, then Burma and fought against the British army. He lost the battle. But due to his determined push, the British Empire, the mightiest Empire in human history crumbled to dust in less than 10 years.

When he started his journey, Netaji did not have any followers. He had just been ousted from his own Congress party, of which he was the elected president. He was arrested and kept interned in his house by the British police. He did not have any alliance with any foreign power. What he had was a burning desire to free his countrymen from the tyranny and oppression of an alien power. And with that inspiration he achieved what no one could ever dream of, decolonization of half the world. It is sad that he did not live to see this new world.

Sources:

Mahaniskraman

Shivaji: The Grand Rebel

I recently read the book Mahaniskraman by Sisir Kumar Basu, a thrilling account of Netaji’s escape from house arrest. Sisir Basu, Netaji’s nephew, drove him during the first leg of his journey to Gomo.

Last November I went to Kolkata. There I visited the museum dedicated to his life in Victoria Memorial. Although I hated the idea that a colonial monument is used as the site for a museum after him, I liked the exhibits. Particularly one depicting his escape graphically. I stood in front of it for a long time thinking how passionately he must have hated subjugation by an alien power that he undertook this journey to free up his country from bondage. I have a desire to translate Sisir Basu’s book to English to make it available for all Indians to read.

Last month I read the book Shivaji: The Grand Rebel. Very nice book on Shivaji’s life and time. Then the idea struck me that these two escapes had such a profound impact on human history that I felt like sharing with you all.

Thanks for reading.