In a recent article, former Indian Army officer Dr. Anil Athale warned that China is carefully orchestrating security-related incidents against India. Such incidents include Chinese military incursions into Indian territory in the Western and North-Eastern border regions of India, recent mistreatment of Indian diplomats and businessmen in China, recurring disputes on the issuance of visas, and diplomatic rows involving Chinese attempts to question Indian sovereignty in Jammu & Kashmir.
Colonel (retired) Anil Athale, who is an author of the official history of the 1962 India-China conflict and now coordinator of the Indian Initiative for Peace, Arms Control & Disarmament (a think tank based in the city of Pune), warned that the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is failing to prepare the country's armed forces to fight a likely war against China, which he warns could come as early as June/July 2012. He said that such a war could be like Pakistan's Kargil war, the 1999 conflict which originated after Pakistani troops and jihadists marched into Kashmir.
"It is time India woke up. Luckily, we do have some time. At the moment the Himalayan passes are frozen and no military operations are possible. The likely threat will only emerge in June/July 2012. It must be made clear that one is not talking of an all-out war. What we must accept is a short, sharp, attack by the Chinese, more in the nature of a slap!" he wrote in a recent article.
The article, titled "Expect a Chinese attack by June/July", was published by rediff.com, a leading Indian news and community portal.
Following are excerpts from the article:
"On December 14, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Told Parliament That His Government Does not Share the View That China Plans to Attack India"
"Last year when this author wrote about a Kargil-style foray by China in the near future, the idea was more in the realm of speculation. But the events of the last few months seem to move the likelihood from the speculative to the possible.
"But it seems that New Delhi is in deep slumber or has no time to pay attention to such 'minor' issues like national security when all attention is focused on the upcoming assembly election in [the northern state of] Uttar Pradesh…."
"This is an attempt by a student of history to give a wake-up call.
"What makes matters even worse than 'normal' in Delhi today is the inefficiency that has crept in all decision-making due to the 'Diarchy' that prevails in Delhi [i.e. a reference to decision making led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Congress party's boss Sonia Gandhi in whose hands real power resides]. For those unfamiliar with the term – this was the system in British India when the rulers of the princely states had all the trappings of power but the British resident exercised the real power…."
"[The ruling] United Progressive Alliance resembles that model with real power in the hands of the Gandhi dynasty while the prime minister has all the trappings of power. What this has done is the pivotal position of the Prime Minister's Office and its job of co-ordination and enforcement of the will of the government on the State machinery is severely compromised.
"In case of vital decisions on security issues, this can lead to disasters.
"The portents indeed are ominous. On December 14, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Parliament that his government does not share the view that China plans to attack India.
"Exactly half a century ago, another Indian prime minister [Jawaharlal Nehru] stuck to a similar view, until November 21, 1962. Broadcasting to the nation that day, that prime minister lamented that in this hour of peril, our heart goes to the people of Assam! [the northeastern region which faced a Chinese attack]
"As Jawaharlal Nehru spoke to the nation, the civil administration in Tezpur had begun to burn documents and currency in the government treasury, prison doors were thrown open, and everyone made a beeline to get across the Brahmaputra [river] by whatever means. The stage was being set for surrendering all territory north of the Brahmaputra to the Chinese.
"To the people of my generation, the memories of that day give goose pimples even today. The unfortunate similarities do not end there…"
"One of the Horror Stories of the 1962 Conflict with China was the Way India Made a Frenzied Effort to Arm the Soldiers with Modern Weapons [without Ammunition and Training]"
"[The] morale of the army was badly affected. As someone who has studied that conflict, including the famed Henderson Brooks Report [a classified report on India's defeat], one can say without any contradiction that 'loss of morale' was the single biggest cause of our debacle in 1962 [in the war with China]…."
"One of the horror stories of the 1962 conflict with China was the way India made a frenzied effort to arm the soldiers with modern weapons. The insistence on 'indigenous' production of arms and inability of the local R&D[Research & Development]/factories starved Indian soldiers of tools of war."
"So, what do we do?
"Brand new rifles (the 7.62 SLR) were airdropped at Dirang Zong, of course without ammunition! As if the soldiers are robots who can instantly master new weapons and begin using [them]!
"Our army's modernization is stuck in red tape of the deepest hue. Import of the critical lightweight howitzer, so important to provide artillery support to infantry in the mountains, is stuck in the courts/CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] clearances and what not.
"Anyone familiar with the armed forces remembers the phrase often used by superiors while giving orders, 'I do not care whether you beg, borrow or steal! I want this done!'
"It is time to remind the defense minister [A. K. Antony] that the country expects him to deliver security and efficiency. His primary job is to ensure honor and safety of the country, and not his honor, that must come last, always and every time.…"
"The Likely Threat will Only Emerge in June/July 2012; What We must Accept is a Short, Sharp, Attack by the Chinese…"
"It appears that China is carefully choreographing incidents … [against] India. First, there were several instances of Chinese troops crossing the border, marking their presence. We have dismissed these as 'minor' incidents.
"Then there was the verbal spat and exchange of notes over the Indian foray into oil exploration in Vietnam waters. The New Year saw ill-treatment of an Indian diplomat. Earlier, there were cases of Indian diamond merchants being imprisoned in China. All these could well be dismissed as minor incidents that involve local officials.
"If similar incidents were to take place on the India-Pakistan border, they are not to be taken seriously because in Pakistan nobody is in control of the armed forces or civilian officials.
"But China is NOT Pakistan – the People's Liberation Army [PLA], the media (including the Internet) are all under tight party/government control in China.
"India would be making a grave error of judgment if it considers these incidents as non- serious. There seems to be a design behind these orchestrated events, especially the forays by the PLA.
"It is time India woke up. Luckily, we do have some time. At the moment the Himalayan passes are frozen and no military operations are possible. The likely threat will only emerge in June/July 2012. It must be made clear that one is not talking of an all-out war.
"What we must accept is a short, sharp, attack by the Chinese, more in the nature of a slap!
"To those who claim that Indo-Chinese trade is too big – one needs to remind them that as a proportion of overall Chinese trade with the world, it is of very little consequence! It is time the ministry of defense cleaned up its act [and] got cracking in building up the Indian Army's military capability to face the Chinese threat."
The Indian government is ramping up efforts to fingerprint and iris scan the entirety of its 1.2 billion citizens in an ambitious scheme to issue national ID cards with biometric details. The plan has so far already enrolled 110 million people and issued 60 million numbers, with the aim of enrolling 200 million by this March and 600 million by 2014.
Find out about the history and consequences of biometric ID this week on GRTV - Behind the Headlines.
The Indian government is ramping up efforts to fingerprint and iris scan the entirety of its 1.2 billion citizens in an ambitious scheme to issue national ID cards with biometric details. The plan has so far already enrolled 110 million people and issued 60 million numbers, with the aim of enrolling 200 million by this March and 600 million by 2014.
The project stems from two separate, overlapping schemes, the Unique Identifcation program (UID), aimed at providing India’s 200 million poorest citizens with failsafe access to the country’s welfare system, and the National Population Register (NPR), aimed at providing a national ID card to help identify and deport undocumented immigrants.
Last month, the UID plan hit a roadblock when a Parliamentary committee issued a blistering attack on the scheme, calling it “directionless” and “full of uncertainty,” while critics note the danger of the project in the absence of coherent privacy laws. Just how the government will use the information, or even who will have access to it, has yet to be properly determined.
Although fast becoming the largest such database in the world, it is not the only government-administered repository of biometric details. Nations across the globe are increasingly turning to the collection of biometric information under a host of programs, including proposed national id schemes like the one being implemented in India.
Countries around the world are now adopting biometric passports and travel documents that use fingerprints and digital photographs to verify passenger identity. Presented as a way of streamlining and standardizing entry and exit procedures at national borders, what the public is not told is that these documents are the end result of a years-long process of coordination that has codified the technical specifications for these systems via international agreements. In addition, countries are increasingly agreeing on an infrastructure for sharing their biometric databases between each other via database sharing agreements that have received scant attention.
Governments around the world are eager to tout the potential benefits of these national identification registers in glossy promotional videos depicting gleaming science-fiction-like future societies of efficiency, however the privacy and civil liberties implications of this technology are seldom discussed.
The UK under the Labour government of Tony Blair and later Gordon Brown attempted to implement a national identity register and ID card system that would have required the logging of an extensive amount of personal and biometric information in a central database, but the program caused waves of protest and the government eventually gave in to the public outcry, scrapping the plan for the national registry and instead only implementing the biometric id scheme for foreign nationals:
Now, concerned Indian citizens are hoping that a boycott can be organized to help derail the Indian id card scheme to prevent the institution of an all-seeing surveillance state, and to keep this information from being sold to the highest bidder in a country notorious for its official corruption.
Global Research
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the international community Tuesday to take steps against Iran's nuclear program and "not sit idly by" during any attempt to carry out another Holocaust.
"This is a day when the world needs to commit not to allow another genocide and to act so that weapons of mass destruction don't reach the hands of Iran's ayatollahs. Only a combination of crippling sanctions and putting all the options on the table can make Iran stop," Netanyahu told the Knesset, which was marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"We can't stick our heads in the sand. The Iranian regime's emissaries, Hamas and Hezbollah, have already fired thousands of missiles at us, but when there are those who try to belittle or deny those who are warning of the danger, they apparently haven't learned their lesson. The lesson is that the countries of the world must be roused to act against the threat while there is still time."
Netanyahu raised the question of whether the world had learned the lessons of the Holocaust. He noted the uniqueness of the genocide committed against the Jews during World War II, but asked whether the establishment of the United Nations had prevented subsequent genocides.
The answer is no, he responded, citing the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Sudan. "When the world has intervened, it has always been late, and with masses of people paying with their lives," he said.
"Look what's happening in Syria. Despite progress, technology and the flow of information, the world is not stopping in its tracks over the men, women and children who are being murdered indiscriminately. Against this backdrop, can we say with certainty that the world would not sit idly by in the face of renewed attempts to exterminate our people?"
Netanyahu cited recent Iranian threats to destroy Israel and said many people have remained silent in the face of those threats and threats by Hezbollah and Hamas. He also noted remarks attributed last week to the Muslim mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, in which the cleric reportedly referred to the killing of Jews in an end-of-days struggle.
Referring to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem who took office in the 1920s and later collaborated with the Nazis, Netanyahu said: "Most unfortunate is that there is a tradition of hatred and extermination here. Haj Amin al-Husseini was among the architects of the Final Solution."
The worldwide observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day officially falls on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The international observance was designated in 2005 by the United Nations following an initiative by Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom when he was foreign minister. Israel's own national Holocaust commemoration day is held the week before Independence Day in the spring.
Also Sunday, opposition leader Tzipi Livni (Kadima ) said Israel does not justify its existence on the Holocaust but on the Jewish people's historic ties to the country.
"There are those who express identification with the people of Israel, but there are those who say that when we saved one people [the Jews], we caused injustice to another people," she told the Knesset. "We need to caution against making such a connection."
She added that Israel was not in danger of destruction. "Our role is to tell parents that the country is a secure place for their children," she said. "With such security, we should demand that the world do what is necessary to prevent those who don't accept the international community's values from obtaining [nuclear] weapons."
Speaker Reuven Rivlin said Israel did not have the privilege of pursuing a policy based on power alone. He added that Israel did not have the right to be apathetic about genocide attempts in Africa, Asia or the Middle East. "We don't have the right to deny the tragedies of other peoples," he said.
Haaretz
Credit Agricole and Societe Generale had their credit ratings cut from A+ with a stable outlook to A, while state bank Caisse des Depots et Consignations had its rating cut from AAA to AA+.
BNP Paribas, France's largest bank by market capitalisation and one of the largest financial groups in the eurozone, had its credit rating left unchanged.
S&P's actions follow its stripping France of its AAA rating nearly two weeks ago, as it downgraded several major eurozone countries, including Austria, Italy and Spain.
"The downgrade of some of these banks follows the downgrade of France," S&P said in a statement.
Before the sovereign downgrade, S&P factored two notches of government support into the ratings of the banks, however after cutting the country's rating the level of support was reduced to one notch.
Shares in Societe General, France's second largest bank by market capitalisation, closed down 1.2pc at €21.57 on Tuesday. Credit Agricole, which is France's third largest bank, saw its shares fall 4.1pc to close at €5.
Societe Generale said it was unsurprised by S&P's decision and had been expecting its credit rating to be cut ever since France's sovereign downgrade.
"This downgrade is a direct consequence of the methodology used by S&P, which builds into our rating an element of systemic support by the French state, whose own sovereign rating has been recently cut," said the bank in a statement.
Several other major eurozone banks are likely to see their ratings cut by S&P as the agency begins to factor in its other sovereign downgrades.
Germany is the only eurozone member to have a stable AAA rating from S&P.
The UK also continues to maintain a top-rating from all the major ratings agencies, though there are fears that if the economic situation were to worsen this could come under increasing threat.
The Telegraph
Borrowers and lenders are starting to grapple with the billions of dollars in commercial real estate loans made during the boom year of 2007 that are coming due this year, in a greatly contracted economy.
Experts have warned of a rash of recapitalizations, refinancings and building sales. In New York City alone, nearly $70 billion worth of commercial mortgages that were bundled together and issued as collateral for bonds are maturing this year. Of those, $26 billion, or 37.4 percent, are five-year loans that were originated during the height of the real estate bubble, when underwriting standards were loosest, according to data from the research firm Trepp LLC.
These include loans on prominent properties, including the Manhattan Mall, with $232 million maturing, and the Jumeirah Essex House, with a $180 million loan, according to Trepp.
“These loans are going to have the hardest time being refinanced since they were underwritten when property values and revenues were far higher,” said Thomas A. Fink, a managing director at Trepp. “We are going to see a wave of loans maturing this year, then again in 2014 and 2017, when the 7- and 10-year deals underwritten during the bubble mature.”
Most large commercial mortgage loans are typically not self-amortizing — that is, they require a balloon payment upon maturity.
While the number of loans maturing is expected to spike this year — $40.7 billion worth of securitized commercial mortgage loans matured last year and $49.5 billion worth is expected to mature in 2013 — the universe of lenders has shrunk. European banks, reeling from the debt crisis, have mostly stopped underwriting loans in the United States, while the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities remains relatively small, at roughly $30 billion in new issuance expected this year. And while insurance companies have increased their appetite for commercial mortgage loans, they are very conservative in their lending standards and selective in their deals.
“This means there may not be enough money available to refinance all of the debt that is coming due,” said Lawrence J. Longua, a clinical associate professor at the Schack Institute of Real Estate at New York University.
In a typical situation, a building that was worth $100 million in 2007 was financed with 80 percent debt, or $80 million. Now the loan — which was interest-only, meaning no principal was paid — is maturing. The borrower owes $80 million, but the value of the property has also dropped, to $80 million. This means that the ratio of the loan to the value of the property is 100 percent. Lenders have little appetite in this market environment for highly leveraged loans, so in one increasingly common outcome, the borrower will recapitalize the property by finding an equity partner to inject new capital into the deal, thereby lowering the overall amount of debt on the property.
Other possible resolutions include the lender extending the maturity date of the loan in the hopes that the property’s value will rise, or pursuing a foreclosure. It is also becoming more common for banks and other lenders to sell their loans to third-party investors who may negotiate with the borrower.
One factor that may drive more deal activity this year is that banks, special servicers and other lenders are eager to find solutions to troubled loans now, rather than postpone a resolution in the hope the market will improve down the road, said Scott Rechler, the chief executive and chairman of RXR Realty, which has recapitalized several properties in the last year, including the recent acquisition of 620 Avenue of the Americas.
“The first half of 2011 was very strong, with a lot of deal-making,” Mr. Rechler said, “but then several incidents, including the European debt crisis and the downgrading of the U.S. debt, made the market seem frothy. This was actually somewhat healthy because it put things back into perspective.”
As a result of these market jitters, he said, “lenders who had been waiting in the hopes that the market would improve, realized that things were still unstable and so they are more ready to resolve their loans now than in the past. Maybe not in the first quarter of this year, but by the second and third quarter I see a lot of things in the pipeline.”
Already, the number of recapitalizations has ballooned. There was $13.3 billion worth of recapitalizations nationwide in 2011, according to the research firm Real Capital Analytics, the most since the firm began tracking the number in 2001.
Another factor driving deal flow is the efforts by European banks to offload some of their American loan portfolios. In December, for example, Blackstone bought a $300 million portfolio of commercial loans backed by American properties from Eurohypo, the troubled real estate arm of Commerzbank in Germany. Other sellers include Allied Irish Banks, Bank of Ireland and Anglo Irish. American banks have also been shedding loans: In September, Bank of America sold nearly $1 billion worth of loans to several investors at a discount.
The sale of these loans can help spur deals because investors who buy these loans at a discount have more room to negotiate a payoff with the borrower, said Andrew A. Lance, a partner at the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. A loan that has an outstanding balance of $100 million, for example, may sell to an investor for $80 million, enabling the investor to settle the loan with the borrower for any price between $80 million and $100 million, resulting in a profit for the investor and a discount for the borrower. While under this situation the original lender loses out, in the case of several European banks, regulators are ordering them to increase capital and shrink their balance sheets.
Dune Real Estate Partners participated in such a deal last year when it acquired the loan on the Mark Hotel on East 77th Street from Anglo Irish, recently completing a recapitalization of the property. Dan Neidich, the chief executive of Dune Real Estate Partners, said: “There are so many players now who aren’t the natural owners of real estate — like banks and special services — that never intended to own equity and who want to exit those positions. It opens opportunities for people like ourselves, who are in the business of taking equity risk, and bringing capital into the market to restructure deals.”
But not all borrowers will find themselves in trouble. There are many New York landlords who can simply pay down the loans without much struggle, market experts say. Vornado Realty Trust, for example, refinanced a $430 million loan at 350 Park Avenue in January with $300 million in debt and $132 million in cash. It is currently in the market to refinance the $232 million loan maturing on the Manhattan Mall, at Broadway and 33rd Street.
Still, even those borrowers who can pay down the loans themselves will have to contend with the softened market. “The key issue that cuts across all property types and all kinds of loans,” said Dennis W. Russo, a partner and co-chairman of the real estate practice at the law firm Herrick, Feinstein, “is that property values — the value of the collateral that secures the debt — are down. Combine that with the fact that lenders are conservative right now, and the bottom line is that in many scenarios, borrowers are going to have to find additional capital.”
NY Times
In an interview ahead of a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the 81-year-old said that for the first time in his career he was baffled by the current state of the market, and saw no way to avoid a violent crisis which at its worst could result in the total collapse of the financial system.
Known as the "man who broke the Bank of England" after betting against the pound on Black Wednesday in 1992, Mr Soros plans to use his Davos address to issue a stern warning that he now considers it "more likely than not" that Greece will default in 2012. And unless Europe's leaders do more to stop it, the euro is likely to collapse with a devastating impact on the rest of the world, he will add.
The financier compared the crisis to the collapse of the Soviet empire and the Great Depression, adding that the old belief in the power of the market to prevent turmoil could no longer be relied upon.
He told Newsweek: "The euro must survive because the alternative – a break-up – would cause a meltdown that Europe, the world, can't afford. I'm not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I've known in my career. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world.
"The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system. We need to move from the Age of Reason to the Age of Fallibility in order to have a proper understanding of the problems."Warning that violence on the streets was inevitable unless the problems of unemployment and debt were addressed, he warned this could lead to the erosion of civil liberties and installation of a police state.
Asked about the likelihood of riots in the US, he said: "Yes, yes, yes. It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong arm tactics to maintain law and order which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained."
The Telegraph
The deeply fragile state of the global economy was laid bare ahead of official numbers on Wednesday that are expected to reveal the UK economy shrank by 0.1pc in the final three months of last year.
Evidence that the UK is contracting again would follow Tuesday's watershed moment for the national debt, which has breached £1 trillion for the first time in history.
Growth over the next two years in the world's advanced economies, including the UK, will be "too sluggish to make a major dent in very high unemployment", the IMF warned as it confirmed that it had cut its outlook for Britain in 2012 from 1.6pc to just 0.6pc – lower than the UK's official 0.7pc forecast.
Britain is predicted to bounce back to growth of 2pc in 2013, though, and outpace all its major European rivals, as the euro crisis pitches the single currency area into recession this year, which the region's economy contracting by 0.5pc.
Under a downside scenario that does not even include a euro break-up, the eurozone would plunge by a further 4 percentage points and global growth would tumble from 3.3pc to just 1.3pc.
Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, said the world economy is "in danger of stalling".
Figures from the Office for National Statistics today are expected to show that the UK economy has already stalled, contracting 0.1pc in the three months to December and leaving growth for the whole of 2011 at 0.9pc.
Sir Meryvn King, the Bank of England Governor, on Wednesday offered households little hope for the year ahead with a warning that the recovery would be "arduous, long and uneven".
According to the IMF, growth has been weaker than expected because of the "rise in sovereign yields, the effects of bank deleveraging on the real economy, and the impact of additional fiscal consolidation". The IMF again urged countries with "fiscal space" to slow down their consolidation plans, but refrained from identifying which countries it had in mind.
Last September, it suggested the UK should delay austerity if growth were to sink below expectations and gilt yields stay at historic lows. Both have come to pass. The IMF yesterday reiterated that countries "with very low interest rates... should reconsider the pace of near-term fiscal consolidation".
Treasury officials stressed that the IMF was not referring to the UK as the country does not have any "fiscal space" in regard to debt and deficit.
A Treasury spokesman said: "That our national debt has reached more than £1 trillion simply shows the unsustainable level of spending this country built up over the past few years, and shows why it is critical for our nation's future that we deal decisively with the deficit."
Public sector net debt excluding financial interventions rose to £1.004 trillion in December – equivalent to £16,400 per person and 64.2pc of GDP – as the Government borrowed £13.7bn last month. The deficit was better than forecasts of £14.9bn and means the UK has borrowed about £11bn less than at this point last year and is on track to hit its target of £127bn for 2011/2012.
However, economists cautioned that January will be critical as it is when most corporation tax and self-assessed income tax are collected.
The Telegraph
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took advantage of a special plenary meeting to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day to address the threats to Israel's existence.
"70 years after the Holocaust, much of the world remains silent in the face of Iran's declared intent to wipe Israel off the earth," Netanyahu said.
"Much of the world are silent in the face of calls by Hizbullah for the destruction of Israel, and its continued murderous activities. Many remain silent in the face of calls by Hamas to kill Jews wherever they are.
"These are days when most of the governments of the world remain silent in the face of cries of Palestinian Muftis to kill Jews wherever they are. Where is the condemnation of the Mufti? Not the Mufti of history, but the Mufti of today?
International Holocaust Remembrance Day should be the day the world stands behind the words 'never again,'" Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu added, "This is a day when the world should unite against weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of dark regimes, led by the Ayatollah and his regime in Iran. I send greetings to leaders leaders of Europe and praise them for the important step of taking sanctions against Iran."
He also singled out key Iranian oil consumers who have thus far refused to participate in sanctions against Iran and kept Tehran's oil exports from floundering.
"It is important that other countries around the world will join this action. I mean China, Japan, India, and South Korea. Only a combination of crippling sanctions and a credible military threat on the table can force Iran to reconsider its nuclear program," headded.
"We must ask ourselves whether we learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Can we take death threats seriously, or perhaps in this generation of Jews we do not see the danger before us? We can not stick our heads in the sand.
"The Iranian regime openly calls for Israel's destruction, is planning the destruction of Israel, and is working daily to destroy Israel. The lesson says should spur the world to action," Netanyahu said.
Iran has referred to Israel as "a one bomb state"
Arutz Sheva
