julian assange

The Mitr

NYT Newspeak

Asylum is for people who are afraid to return to their own country because they fear persecution, unlawful imprisonment or even death because of their race, their ethnicity, their religion, their membership in particular social or political groups, or their political beliefs.
Mr. Snowden undoubtedly fears returning home because he would be arrested and prosecuted. But those fears do not qualify him for asylum. And does he really feel safer in a country where Mr. Putin, an increasingly authoritarian leader, has jailed and persecuted his critics?
via NYTimes

This is complete newspeak on part of NYT. Mark the last words in the first quote “their political beliefs”. The case of Snowden is not about military secrets, but about his political beliefs. The belief that those in power should not abuse it, the belief that those who have abused the power should be brought to light. It is in fact for these very beliefs they are targeting him.
And why should not he fear arrest and prosecution? As they have done with Manning, they will do with him and Assange. This would be just to set an example, so that no one else does it. Actually Putin and Obama are no different. If at all someone from any other country, lets say Cuba, would come to the US, having leaked Cuban secrets, won’t the US consider giving them asylum. And does giving that person the asylum, has to do anything with how Obama himself is running the show. If spying on your own people, breaching their privacy to the fullest is okay then jailing and persecuting the critics is no different.
 

The Mitr

What is in thy name?

They say “What is in the name?”, I ask “What is in thy name?”
I use the alias damitr in many places. It is actually an acronym for my full name. My name among its various meanings also means something which is ‘the immeasurable.’ But recently while solving an anagram problem it had an idea: what all meanings can be derived from this acronym?
So I used a Free Software named an,  apparently one of the original writers of the program is Julian Assange. But the usage is very simple, and it is available on Debian repositories,
So I typed
$an damitr
And I got all the possible combinations of these 6 words. It turned out some of them are quite meaningful and do actually make sense why I am ‘the immeasurable’!
Some of the interesting  anagrams are:
triad m
admit r
dirt am
am  dirt !
dirt ma
ma dirt
dart i’m
i’m dart
dart mi
dram it
Mt. Arid
Mt. Raid
rid mat
rid tam
dim tar
dim art
dim rat
mid art
mad it r
Dr Mita
Dr. Amit!
Dr Tima
Dr. Tami
Dr. Itam !
di mart
i’d mart
id mart
id tram
i’d tram
di tram
ad trim
d tarim
Among others…

The Mitr

WikiLeaks and India

Now that Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks is causing some people sleepless nights in the West, the effect is slowly being felt in India. With the expose, exposing the incumbent Congress and the opposition BJP every now and then. The counter accusations follow from the parties. Some things that I have noted when an expose happens is as follows:

  1.  Typically the party in the soup tries to downplay WikiLeaks itself, saying that this is what has been said by the US diplomats and is nothing more than office gossip.
  2. At the same time the other party mounts an attack on the party in soup, trying to tell us “Isn’t it the same thing that we were saying from so many years?” And they will tell you how the other party is bad to its core. In this case they never question the authenticity of WikiLeaks. 
  3. The cycle repeats. Only the role of the parties are changed!

So WikiLeaks is like a hot potato, which none of our political parties have courage to handle. As soon as they land with one, they try to throw it away as soon as possible. When it is in someone else’s hand they will try to make some brownie points out of it.

Indian media with some exceptions is trying to play down the damage done by WikiLeaks to the political and the civil system. They may be hand-in-glove with those accused, or may be afraid that their own names may appear in the future issues of WikiLeaks.