From a news-report from Liverpool..
A group of 11 Asian men plied five girls, as young as 13, with drink and drugs and… (Caution: May not be suitable for work; strong and explicit content)
The clue to the identity of these eleven men is hidden in this sentence from another report:
One girl, who was 13 when the alleged abuse began, told police that the men she met were ‘friends’ who looked after her and ‘her number would be passed around amongst the Pakistani men in her area’.
“Asian” has long been a …

This is what the Home Minister of an aspiring superpower says in a public statement (emphasis added):
‘This is not new. We know where he (Dawood Ibrahim) is…” Chidambaram told reporters when asked about his reaction to the lavish reception Dawood Ibrahim hosted for his son’s wedding in Karachi recently.’..(but) What is it that we can do from India,’ he asked.
I am speechless…and reminded of  We know its Pakistan but we hope its not

Also read: Now You See Him, Now You Don’t* and Another fellow Indian in Forbes List

Kapil Komireddi, writing in the Foreign Policy magazine, says:
Moderate Pakistan, if such a thing ever existed, is dead

Below, excerpts from a thought-provoking piece titled, Take Pakistan’s Nukes, Please (emphasis added):
..The attack on Sunday, May 22, by Taliban fighters on the Mehran naval air base in Karachi — its audacity, the foreknowledge it implied, the militaristic precision with which it was executed — carried a message: Pakistan is no longer a contested territory; it is now emphatically their turf. The reins of official power may not be in their hands yet, …

US President Barack Obama

Pakistan has been very obsessed with India. They see that as their existential threat. I think that’s a mistake

There is one more (emphasis added)..
Our job is to secure the United States. We are very respectful of the sovereignty of Pakistan. But we cannot allow someone who is actively planning to kill our people..we can’t allow those kind of active plans to come to fruition without us taking some action.
Past quotes are here.. Image courtesy: WhiteHouse

From a BBC report
‎”..We had located Bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan”
How many of our channels will highlight this info?
Will America now declare Pakistan a terrorist state?  Will Pakistan finally own up to supporting global jihadi terrorism & aiding/ abetting attacks against India?
Is it not time to hold Pakistan to account? …or – as Sh Jay Bhattacharjee put it in an email to me – “will one of the world’s most criminal countries going to get away scot free, once again ?”
Also read: ”All roads lead to Islamabad…“, All …

Courtesy Bhaskar Chatterjee, I stumbled on this “map” on a section of the the ToI website:

Might this be a strawman / trial balloon to see how a solution that makes the LoC as a permanent border is received by the public? or am I reading too much into this?
I remember the days when such a map in an Indian publication would have led to copies of the magazine/newspaper being confiscated and/or banned and the offending map censored. I also remember one of the first “official” letters I wrote in the IFS, …

A 5-min video snippet from a discussion on Jammu & Kashmir that I introduced and moderated at the London School of Economics last week.
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Please take a moment to subscribe to my YouTube channel too.  I have also attached below the slides I shared during the discussion. Comments welcome, as always. Thanks

Jammu & Kashmir LSE Mar ’11
View more presentations from B Shantanu

*** Related: Slides from past presentations can be found here.

Once upon a time, when I was young and naive – and the world was full of roses, I used to “trust” the BBC for telling us the news the way it was..That was a long time ago. I am not so young anymore (although only four years older than the “Youth Icon”!), certainly not as naive and I now know the world has thorns too. As for BBC, this snippet from a report says it all. This is how the corporation reported a recent controversial comment by Jack Straw …

Continuing the series on our “Param Veers”, today the story of Lt Col “Adi” Tarapore, hero of the Battle of Phillora – by most accounts, the biggest tank battle during the war with Pakistan in 1965.
From the Indian Army website:

The Param Vir Chakra is awarded for most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self sacrifice, in the presence of the enemy, whether on land, at sea, or in the air. The …

Continuing the series on our “Param Veers”…please take a moment today to remember the “Heroes of Tithwal“, Company Havildar Major Piru Singh Shekhawat and Lance Naik Karam Singh.
From the Indian Army website:

The Param Vir Chakra is awarded for most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self sacrifice, in the presence of the enemy, whether on land, at sea, or in the air. The decoration may be awarded posthumously.

*** Saluting our Heores – The Param …