India At War

The past week saw the worst terror attacks in Indian history. The financial hub of India, Mumbai and it's most important icons were targeted. About 200 people lost their lives, including 30 foreigners. All evidence point to the Pakistani link [surprise!]. As a terrifying narrative of urban guerrilla warfare emerged live on TV screens around the country and the world, it was slowly dawning on all of us, the utter magnitude of the situation. Our nation was helplessly impotent in dealing with terrorism and had a system that bred and laid laurels on mediocrity at the top levels. The image of corrupt politicians getting Z+ security with NSG commandos contrasted with brave Mumbai ATS officers wearing ineffective armor marching to their certain deaths, will resonate disturbingly in our minds forever. The following is an excerpt of an email that I sent to my friends a few days back. I felt strongly that I should publish it on my blog as millions across the country feel cheated and outraged. Make no mistake about it. I am not a war monger and we Indians are not so by nature. The Americans had their 9/11, the British their 7/11, while we have been putting up with our own 26/11s in Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Varanasi, Ahmedabad and many other cities and towns across India for the past decade. To those who advocate peace & diplomacy : The patience of the Indian people have run out. The time for diplomacy is over. We are angry. With Pakistan. With our politicians. With our bureaucracy. This time however is different. The call to action is loud and clear. Please read through and do post your comments. They are much appreciated during this time of national debate.

Enough Is Enough !! It's Time To Act !

All of us Indians feel the same way. That enough is enough. Those idiots in the government & bureaucracy should be held accountable. Although I won't advocate throwing these ignoramuses from the top of a building or declaring war against Pakistan, I am extremely lenient to both ideas right now. But anger is good to the extent of it being constructive. Let us pick the pieces and start all over again. We should start thinking differently since only a secure nation can become successful economically. We criticize our politicians all the time but how about us becoming politicians ourselves and become the change we want to see? Obama has shown that change truly is possible in politics. Our bureaucracy & our security infrastructure needs to be re-organized. Who better to do that than we ourselves? Well, those words are easily said. But how do we get started? How do we start to hold the govt accountable? The luxuries that these people enjoy are from what people like you and me pay the government as taxes, bribes and all the import and export duties and whatnot. I suggest all of you start to question the government. They have a constitutional duty to answer to us. A powerful tool is already available - The Right To Information Act. You can file an application under the RTI act to know how the politicians spend our money. Visit this link to learn about filing RTI forms. For example, those of you in the coastal states can file requests to know about the present status of our maritime security, whether there are any emergency protocols in place to handle situations like a tsunami or a terror attack, how much is being allocated for modernizing the police force? These people are answerable to all of us. They are public servants. You can do this and more like get in groups and file Public Interest Litigations [PILs] like the one that Mumbai lawyers filed yesterday for separating the police force from the politicians. Get involved in debates. Instead of chit-chatting about the latest bollywood gossip in your college & workplace cafeteria, talk about real issues, try to find creative solutions. Instead of doing senseless final year projects like library info systems that most of us computer science students [from what I have seen] are prone to do, how about creating security related applications like surveillance equipment, bomb disposing robots and new ways to fight crime and terror?. And do not forget that basic power that most of you have : the Right to Vote. Get out and vote. Every vote counts. Read this rediff.com article to know about a growing civil disobedience movement in Delhi & Mumbai. Think of ways to co-ordinate activities across different cities.

And do not forget one important thing : no matter how much we criticize our politicians or our bureaucracy, we will and should present a united face to the rest of the world. The Pakistani media and establishment have been remarkably successful in being influential in the world media by suggesting that India is being irrationally aggressive towards a "peacable" Pakistani nation. Just read this callous Financial Times article. Irrational? Absolutely! See this pakistani news video footage for instance. One can see that even the most moderate of Pakistani voices are heavily and irrationally anti-Indian. Each one of you should realise something : that Pakistan is fundamentally untrustable and unreliable. We realise and forget this lesson in vicious circles again and again. Remember 1998 when Vajpayee was talking about opening Indian borders, peace with pakistan and blah blah? What happened next? The Kargil incursion. Remember the whole idiotic Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai drama that you learned in your history books? What happened next? The 1962 Indo-China war. We have become used to our politicians making strategic blunders and then our brave soldiers and police officers like Maj. Sandeep Unnikrishnan and Hemant Karkare cleaning the mess up and making the ultimate sacrifice for the country.

What can you do about the Pakistani issue? I suggest that you start presenting the threat that India faces to the world media by writing to editors of leading magazines around the world, to influential groups like the American Jewish lobby & the Indian American community. The lack of accountability is one thing that every politician & terrorist in the present and our many conquerors in the past has taken advantage of. Because we are divided by them on the basis of religion, caste and langauge and we are too busy fighting amongst ourselves. It is time to act. It is time to ask some hard questions :

- Why is it that significant parts of Chattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh are virtually in a different nation altogether under the control of the maoists??

- Why is that Bangladeshi migrants can come into our nation across our "open" borders in Assam almost unchallenged? And how come they settle down and get the same privileges and rights of Indian citizens?

- Why is that the Central & Maharashtra governments simply ignored the warnings by the Intelligence Bureau and the RAW about possible sea based attacks on Bombay??

- Why is that Afzal Guru, a terrorist who has been found guilty by the Supreme Court and sentenced to death for trying to destroy our parliament, the citadel of Indian democracy, still alive and well?? Why is the govt tying this issue to vote bank politics?

- How come that the Defense minister of the then NDA govt, Jaswant Singh "escorted" Maulana Masood Azhar and two other terrorists to Kandahar during the IC814 hijacking in 1999? Why was there not any attempt to rescue the hostages using our commandos? [Please don't justify it by saying that it was in Afghanistan, the Taliban was in control etc etc coz Israel had rescued hundred of their citizens from Uganda who were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists during the famous entebbe incident. ]

- Why wasn't there any retaliation against the attacks on the Indian embassy which according to international diplomatic rules is Indian territory? Why was there no retaliatory attack against Pakistan when the CIA itself said that the ISI was involved?

- How did Bombay limp back on its feet every time after the terror attacks that had been hitting the city for the last few years? Was it because of the "spirit" of Bombay or simply because of the fact that the people were helpless and had no other option but to go to work to feed their families??

This could very well be one of the pivotal moments of our country's history. Do not fear to question authority. Let us make a better India for us and our future generations. Let them not know us as an impotent nation that fails to protect and care for it's own. Let us unite as a nation for the war on terror, corruption, poverty, hunger, the "chalta hai" attitude and plain indifference. This is war thrust upon us whether you like it or not. Let us set aside all our petty issues & differences and answer the call of our nation. Because if we don't, no one will.
Vande Mataram !

Update : Although nothing happened for some months, me and my friends at the Samskriti club are beginning to make a difference right in the campus itself. More on that later!

Manhattan Project 2.0

MQ-9 Reapor UAV armed with hellfire missiles over Iraq

Last month, Bob Woodward revealed during an interview on 60 minutes [CBS], the existence of a top secret US military program that was behind the dramatic reductions in violence in Iraq over the past few months [I'm talking in the relative sense here]. Bob was on air talking about his new book "The War Within". In his book, he compares this secret program to the Manhattan project, the famous 1940's multibillion dollar project that ended up making the first atomic bomb. The new Manhattan project as Woodward calls it involves some esoteric technology [acc. to him] that enables UAV's to track and target terrorists from afar. When asked about the nature of this tech, he declined to comment citing security issues. But the funny thing is, as many commentators have noticed, the pentagon has been remarkably forthcoming about their STTW [See Through The Wall] and CTTL [Continuous Clandestine Tagging, Tracking, and Locating] technology development over the past few years. Generally people were dismissive of his claims accusing him of sensationalism in order to promote his new book.

But that doesn't sound right. Bob Woodward [pictured left] doesn't need this sort of cheap publicity. This Pulitzer winning journalist is close to being journalism royalty. In 1972, Woodward along with Carl Bernstein brought to light the mothership of all political scandals, the infamous Watergate incident that resulted in the resignation of President Nixon [a latter day Bush]. I wouldn't go into the details here but I would recommend that you watch the movie "All The President's Men" with Woodward played by the ubercool Robert Redford. In addition to that Woodward is an associate editor at The Washington Post. So much for him making tall tales. The US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley too acknowledges in the book's foreword about the existence of such a project.

"All I have to do is point the sensor at him," said a military officer familiar with the system, "and a missile can be off the rail in seconds." [LA Times]

Scores of Iraqi insurgent leaders are dying inside their safe houses struck by missiles fired by Predator drones flying often miles away. I think he is onto something. Something significant is happening here. Let me give you a run down of possible candidate technologies :


Heat Sensing
Good for direct sensing. Ruled out for STTW as the sensors are not sensitive enough to detect through walls. But this tech is still relevant it can be used for identifying known terrorists, since each individual has a unique thermal signature. Although I wonder what will happen if they come down with a fever?

RFID tags
Thousands of insurgents were captured and released repeatedly over the past 5 years. It is likely that RFID chips could have been implanted on their bodies. But then again this would require the detectors to be present at close proximity due to the low power of embedded RFID chips.

Remote mobile phone tracking
A technology that was used by the special forces from the 80's onwards. The following is an excerpt from a Register article on CTTL -

the ability to track or even remotely activate phone handsets: there are credible reports - for instance in this book, by respected UK defense hack and former British Army intelligence-corps operator Mick Smith - that quite amazing mobe trickery was in use by US spec-ops elements as long ago as the 1980s. It's now common advice even among biz security types to remove mobile phone batteries during sensitive meetings, and serious criminals or terrorists would nowadays completely discard any phone that might have come to the notice of the authorities.

Radar
One of the more plausible STTW technologies, a lot of research has been done in using low frequency ultra-wideband(UWB) radar to detect human bodies. Refer to this US Army Research Laboratory report on Human body radar signature : [pdf]

Tera-Hertz radiation sensors
This one is my favorite because I seem to be the only one talking about it. I remember T-rays from a Discovery Channel documentary a few years before. This technology relies on submillimeter terahertz radiation emitted by all human bodies & objects. Although prototypes like ThruVision are being developed for airport security scanners, they operate at short distances. But instead of relying on ambient t-rays, researchers have come up with semiconductor t-ray lasers that can be carried on handheld devices. But the problem remains that current t-ray lasers will operate only at -100°C. Maybe that is the breakthrough that the military had, the creation of small mountable t-ray lasers & detectors that operate at higher temperatures. A Los Angeles Times report have already talked about US military drones being fitted with unspecified devices onboard. According to the report - "The devices are roughly the size of an automobile battery, but are heavy enough that outfitted Predators in some cases carry only one Hellfire missile instead of two." The effect of these devices, according to a former U.S. military official interviewed by the Times, is that insurgents, even indoors, "are living with a red dot on their head."

Though a Manhattan type project could have taken place, it is doubtful whether it is the only the thing that helped quell the violence in Iraq. The "Anbar Awakening" movement was also pivotal since it saw Sunni tribal leaders allying for the first time with the US Army to fight "Al Qaeda In Iraq". And no less significant was the still holding ceasefire agreed to by the Mahdi militia of Moqtada Al-Sadr. It may turn out that the most significant effect of STTW technologies used in Iraq is in making terrorists feel helpless and terrified. But this type of technology could raise some serious questions about privacy if employed during peace time at a time when governments all around the world are slowly assuming the role of "Big Brother".

Another trend that I see here is the increasing reliance on drones by the US military in Iraq, Afghanistan & and even in the border regions of good ol' Pakistan :). Drones like the Global Hawk & The MQ-9 Reaper are so much in demand that General Dynamics is facing difficulty producing enough on time. All that is missing is a lil' bit of AI on the drones & and also our beloved Skynet, that human loving benevolent AI military system that takes over the world by killing over half of humanity in the Terminator series. Boy, I can't wait for Terminator : Salvation to come out !!

Smiley Navras

Premise
A week before. It is Onam time in the campus. There is going to be an interdepartmental Onam Pookalam [flower arrangement] competition. The Computer Applications department had always ended up in either of the top two positions since the competitions began a few years back. And this time it's my batch [the 2nd years : halfway between naive and sensible :) ] that has to manage the pookalam for the CA dept. No sweat.

The geek saves the day
We plan on a conventional geometric design. and mind you people tend to be really conservative when it comes to pookalam designs. The girls decide on some design. But yours truly was unconcerned with all of that since he was busy reading "Watchmen" by Alan Moore. It is a pretty ordinary novel if you discount its postmodern themes, the characters who are all superheroes and the fact that it is the only graphic novel to be included in the Time magazine "the 100 best English-language novels" and the only one to win the Hugo award ... phew. Anyways the oft-repeating blood splattered smiley in the novel stuck in my mind as did the smiley that appears on the mars surface. The mars smiley I later discover really does exist.

So there I was talking to my friend Sanju about the large hadron collider at 3 in the morning. I told him about the teeny-weeny possibility of black holes and "strangelets" being formed by the LHC transforming our planet into bluish goo, and he started laughing, thinking that I was joking [let's see who is laughing in a few days when the LHC starts, ha!]. That very instant, instead of feeling outraged by his lack of consideration for the one in a billion chance of a black hole forming on the earth, I had this strange vision of smileys showing the navarasas. [Yeah ... ok ... It is not exactly how it all happened but just bear with me]. I told sanju about it. The conversation went something like this :
Sanju : "Wow man!! That's a great idea!!"
Me : "Dude, I was just kidding!"
Sanju : "Hmmm ... ok"
Me : "You know that we don't have a chance against the other departments don't you? They have more money and manpower than us. And this time ours seniors will be busy with laying 3 pookalams in the ashram. So it's just us and the juniors."
Sanju : "Yup. We don't stand a chance with our existing design"
Me : "Yeah .... it's like we have nothing to lose ..."
Sanju : "Let's try something different then!"
Sanju,Me in chorus : "I know, a pookalam based on smileys!!"

Long story cut short, I managed to convince the girls the next day about the change in design [don't ask, hell is better]. The juniors were a more amiable bunch, most just didn't care. We didn't mention the idea to the seniors because they generally tend to "receptive" to new ideas [wink, wink].

The Navarasas


So what are the navarasas? Apart from the impressive but incorrectly named Matrix Revolutions soundtrack "Navras" by Juno Reactor, most people [westerners and Indians alike ] are not aware of the significance of the navarasas in Indian culture in the fields of dance, theater and art. All the possible emotional states that can be expressed by a human being are categorized into the following 9 [also described by the bharatanatyam poses in the picture shown above] :

• Love - Sringaram
• Comic - Hasyam
• Pathetic - Karunam
• Furious - Raudram
• Heroic - Viram
• Terrible - Bhayanakam
• Odious - Bibhatsam
• Surprise - Adbutam
• Tranquility - Shantam

[courtesy : Wikipedia]

The Pookalam
Concocting crazy ideas is easy but after that comes the hard stuff : the designing. We spent hours getting the expressions right with the smileys. It had to be simple and to the point. We consulted Yahoo! & AIM emoticons and navarasas as expressed by bharathanatyam, kathak and kathakali. Getting hasyam, raudram, adbutam, shantam and karuna on smileys was easy. I designed the sringaram smiley with heart shaped eyes. But bibhatsam and bhayanakam proved to be hard to design. Many redesigns later we decided on Varun's [another friend] design for bibhatsam and mine and sanju's design for bhayanakam. The background design provided by Sanju was already a winner at a contest at his previous college [his team won 1st]. It would signify the lack of any apparent design in the flow of emotions that we all go through. But on careful scrutiny one could see that the background had the shape of an Omkar.The contest here emphasized on having a theme for the pookalam. And we had plenty to offer : The confluence of the ancient and modern, a tribute to the sms and IM age where emotions are expressed by short ASCII art .... You get the drift.
Without much further ado I present to you the "Smiley Navras" [Insert rousing music here]

The Aftermath
Based on the reactions from all who saw our design, we were clearly the favorites. But then again, Al Gore too was the favorite for the US presidential election in 2000 ;).
The results were out in the evening : The CA department got 2nd with a traditional boat replica as the prize !! :) . The IT dept beat us to numero uno. It turns out that theirs was bigger than ours [The maximum diameter was 2m while ours was 1.5 m] and they had arranged some traditional Kerala stuff besides the pookalam [para, pudava etc] that somehow none of us remembered. But the IT dept's pookalam was clearly excellent. And ... I was a bit pissed off.
It was great to be in the 2nd place nonetheless [oh boo hoo :( ]. We were the underdogs and our innovative idea clearly won over the other more expensive ones from the other departments.

The virtuous circle continues : today morning my brother went and laid the exact same design at his school [Kendriya Vidyalaya, TVM]. His team won the first with 97 points out of a possible 100 with the 2nd team trailing way behind at 85!! :)

Oh yeah and it turns out that Al Gore got an even better deal : An Oscar, a Nobel peace prize and a halo over his head. Things really have a way of working out I guess. :)