One-party authoritarian regimes silencing mass populations and incarcerating critics or unwelcome voices are now a norm in the West. Are we seeing the rise of self-proclaimed democracies that are decidedly anti-democratic?
India's ambitious Deepwater Greenfield Port at Vadhavan is set to revolutionize global trade routes and strengthen national security. How will it impact trade, security and geopolitics.
Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #299 - Is this World War 3 already?
The threats, the technologies, the warnings, and the strangely powerful virus proliferation - speaks of a situation that seems much more than mere coincidence. Is it?
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
We had once tried to look at how the strategies of the virus attacks are very relevant to understanding the attacks on the security of a nation by rogue and anarchist elements (Issue #151 - The Naxal-ISI plot to destabilize India). We need to repeat it today.
The virus doesn’t attack our cells and bodies in a frontal attack in a one-to-one fight with our cells. It has a six-step process, where it first prepares its host, our body. Then it incorporates itself as part of our cells and the genetic material and then uses our cells to proliferate its - virus’ - genetic material! By then we have become the agents of the virus whose only aim and goal is to destroy us - its host. The viral replication and attack process follows 6 steps
attachment
penetration
uncoating
replication
assembly
release
Here is how these processes work.
Attachment and penetration: the virus attaches itself to a host cell and injects its genetic material into it.
Uncoating, replication, and assembly: the viral DNA or RNA incorporates itself into the host cell’s genetic material and induces it to replicate the viral genome.
Release: the newly-created viruses are released from the host cell, either by causing the cell to break apart, waiting for the cell to die, or by budding off through the cell membrane.
Once the virus cells incorporate within the host cells, the battle for the host cells is almost but lost.
Today we will see if what is happening in India - as overwhelmingly hopeless and existential an attack as it looks like - could have been orchestrated?
Are the virus and the breaking India forces which use the strategies of a virus, unleashing the first stage of an undeclared World War?
GRATITUDE: Thanks to ‘The Bach’ and Soundaraji for their very generous contributions to Drishtikone. Thank you so much! Truly humbled. 🙏
The secret world of India’s opposition
The opposition in India has been absconding at important junctures for weeks on end, without information. The absence has been remarkable in its secrecy.
In the last four years since 2015, according to the Modi government, Rahul has travelled abroad at least 247 times — an average 62 trips in a year, which amounts to five a month. The data was provided by Home Minister Amit Shah last month, when he was discussing the Special Protection Group (SPG) Bill in the Lok Sabha. (Source)
In fact, as the COVID situation in India was coming down the Congress Party chief Rahul Gandhi embarked on another secret trip abroad. No disclosure on where he was going and no information on who he was meeting there and why he was making that trip.
Secrecy in dealings and ways is not new for the Congress’ defacto Chief family. In 2008, the Gandhi family members signed an MoU with the Chinese Communist Party. No one knows the contents of the deals and what it actually says.
During UPA1 in 2008, the Congress party and the Communist Party of China (CPC) had signed a deal in Beijing for exchanging high-level information and co-operation between them. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) also provided the two parties with the “opportunity to consult each other on important bilateral, regional and international developments”. Interestingly, the MoU was signed by the then Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi and on the Chinese side, it was signed by none other than Xi Jinping himself, who was then the Chinese vice-president and standing committee member of the CPC’s politburo. The MoU was signed in the presence of his mother and party president Sonia Gandhi. (Source)
The country has been kept in dark on what the cooperation actually was for? It may very well be beneficial for the country, but no one knows. If it was good for the country, one wonders, why wouldn’t the party take mileage from this serendipitous deal?
So one just wonders.
The secret undisclosed MoUs, the secret undisclosed trips abroad, and the verbatim repeating of the Pakistani and Chinese narrative?
The sleeper cells and a country ridden by enemy - and specter of Civil War
India is a hotbed of Pakistani and Chinese sleeper cells. Every few months some sleeper cell is busted in the country. (2014, 2019) Last year, a Chinese espionage network was busted.
The special cell of Delhi Police has arrested a Chinese woman and a Nepalese man, besides freelance journalist Rajeev Sharma, and claimed to have busted an espionage ring. All three have been booked under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) for allegedly passing sensitive information to Chinese intelligence. (Source)
Last year in August, the Chandigarh intelligence unit alerted the intelligence agencies on how Pakistan’s handlers were creating an alliance between local gangsters and the Jihadi groups in India.
Chandigarh intelligence unit recently alerted other intelligence agencies of possible alliance between Pakistan’s terror outfits and local gangsters in India to disrupt law and order situation in the country, ANI reported. (Source)
And, in the anti-CAA protests last year, a lot of Jihadi sleeper cells were active in hiring recruits for their operations from the students who were participating there.
Banned terror outfits might use the ongoing anti-CAA protests to carry out attacks in several parts of the country including the National Capital, inputs received by the security agencies have suggested. According to sources, intelligence agencies have information that the sleeper cells of some terror outfits are already striving to identify the vulnerable students, who are proactively participating in these protest, and can be radicalised. (Source)
The country saw how widespread has been the attack on India during the anti-CAA and Farm bills protests from the forces within and outside India. In fact, the Madhya Pradesh Home Minister even went on to say that the farm bill protests were an “experiment” and could be replicated.
In a widely watched interview with Edward Griffin, former KGB spy Yuri Bezmenov had discussed how a country’s society is subverted in four steps:
Demoralization: During this stage, the moral fibre and integrity of the country is put into question, thereby creating doubt in the minds of the people.
Destabilization: The objective is to change the status quo, particularly the country's economy, foreign relations, and defense systems.
Crisis: This stage involves a revolutionary change of power. This is where a cataclysmic event upsets and divides the country thereby creating panic among the citizens.
Normalization: In this stage, the target country’s population finally acquiesces and begins to assimilate the narrative of the enemy as the new normal.
If someone would go above the daily cacophony of the news debates and arguments, keeping the personal ideologies, political alignments, and agendas aside - one would find that stages 2 and 3 (destabilization and crisis) are being unleashed on India at an unimaginable pace.
Will any direct action by the government agencies lead to an eruption of the Civil War? How will that situation be used?
In fact, statements of some top opposition politicians is trying to push just that situation!
When Congress was plundering the national wealth during its many scams of several lakh crores, India’s destabilization was being done in a completely different way. But with the reigns in the hands of a party and group which has not been touched by any scam, the aim is to not just take the person and group away from power but set an example out of him and his group.
It does not matter if you think Modi has done exactly what you want in your wish list, but one thing is clear - the fanatical hatred being promoted for him by those who are actually targeting India is unprecedented. It is almost of the same vigor that the Allied forces (who had nuked millions out of existence) had used against the Nazis.
Does that even make any sense?
To Modi’s detractors, Modi and his group of ministers may not be perfect or even politically desirable, but such level of hatred? That is not normal. What is he stopping the others from doing that the attacks have to be so outlandishly aggressive and demeaning?
Those who understand the laws and the actions he has taken, know that the rhetoric against him has no basis in logic or facts.
COVID as Breaking India weapon?
Now, let us come to the COVID situation. There is one set of numbers that stand out. And one needs to clearly look at them. The increase in the COVID Positivity Rate in India.
What does Positivity Rate mean?
A high percent positivity means that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, transmission is elevated in the jurisdiction and community mitigation measures are warranted to reduce transmission. A high percent positivity means there is a high rate of SARS-CoV-2 infections due to extensive transmission of the virus in the geographic area. (Source)
More than anything, the transmission of the COVID virus had accelerated by end of March to astonishing levels, where it the Positivity Rate was doubling every 15 days.
India, which by November 2020, had already secured 2 billion doses, was looking at the end of the road by the beginning of the new year.
Local manufacturing deals are also likely to determine where the first shipments of vaccines go, says Bech Hansen. India, for example, has secured more than 2 billion doses of vaccine, in part by leveraging access to the manufacturing capabilities of the Serum Institute of India in Pune, the world’s largest vaccine maker. (Source)
Given where India’s trajectory was, it was a reasonable assumption. What had not been factored into the equation was a rapidly doubling transmission.
A transmission so rampant that the entire medical infrastructure would collapse.
And, the fact - that this virus specifically - the SARS-2 could be weaponized and used in a bio-terror attack!
[In this newsletter we are not accusing any state or any group of committing a crime. The situation could be the work of a state, terror group, or a set of mercenary rogue scientists]
Was COVID-19 a Bio-terror attack?
US State Department caught hold of a document titled “The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapons” which outlined the Chinese military's plans with regards to bioweapons. Notice what it says.
CHINESE scientists probed weaponising coronaviruses five years before the Covid pandemic, bombshell documents reveal.Documents obtained by the US State Department reportedly show People's Liberation Army (PLA) commanders predicted that World War 3 would be fought with biological weapons. US officials obtained the papers which were written by military scientists and senior Chinese public health officials in 2015 as part of their own investigation into the origins of Covid-19, reports The Australian. Chinese scientists described SARS coronaviruses - of which Covid is an example - as heralding a “new era of genetic weapons”. They boasted the viruses could be “artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponised and unleashed in a way never seen before”. (Source)
One thing that the document emphasized was the collapse of the enemy’s medical infrastructure.
That is significant.
Because many countries and areas - from Italy to New York state to now, India - have seen the collapse of the medical infrastructure.
India’s situation has been significantly impacted by a variant that no one is clearly giving details on - except that its transmission rates are very high.
While mutations are common as the virus navigates its way through multiple infections, some mutations can result in higher infectivity and lethality. Latest reports show a new variant in cases from West Bengal, a state in the eastern region of India. This ‘triple mutant’- B.1.618 is suspected of having evolved from the double mutant and could be highly transmissible and likely to evade the immune response. It is characterized by the deletion of two amino acids in the spike protein and also contains the E484K and D618G mutations. This triple mutant has been detected in other states such as Maharashtra, Delhi, and Chattisgarh too. (Source)
So, this begs the question - if there was a talk about the use of SARS virus as a bio-weapon and the potential of another emerging technology called genome-editing becoming mainstream:
Could the second wave variant have been a Genome-edited SARS virus version?
We are not talking about some outlandish stuff. We are talking about a threat that has been at the top of threat charts of US Intelligence for the last 5 years now.
Global fears on Genome-edited bio-weapons commonplace
For two years running, 2016 and 2017, and then again in 2019 genome editing was shared as a top threat in the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community. (Source)
And, it is no surprise that many folks have been warning of its use in customizing viruses and their spread that could take countless human lives.
Concerns are also mounting that gene editing could be used in the development of biological weapons. In 2016, Bill Gates remarked that "the next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist intent on using genetic engineering to create a synthetic version of the smallpox virus". More recently, in July 2017, John Sotos, of Intel Health & Life Sciences, stated that gene editing research could "open up the potential for bioweapons of unimaginable destructive potential". (Source: Phys.org)
In fact in 2016, James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence called gene editing a “Weapon of mass destruction.”
That’s according to James Clapper, U.S. director of national intelligence, who on Tuesday, in the annual worldwide threat assessment report of the U.S. intelligence community, added gene editing to a list of threats posed by “weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.” (Source: MIT Technology Review)
CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) the most popular technique for gene editing is very low cost and easy to use. Heck, the basic ingredients can be bought online for $60!
Development of bioweapons is banned by the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, a Cold War–era treaty that outlawed biological warfare programs. The U.S., China, Russia, and 172 other countries have signed it. Millet says that experts who met in Warsaw last September to discuss the treaty felt a threat from terrorist groups was still remote, given the complexity of producing a bioweapon. Millet says the group concluded that “for the foreseeable future, such applications are only within the grasp of states.” (Source: MIT Technology Review)
Interestingly, the writer of the popular Netflix series “Designated Survivor” discussed a possibility where CRISPR technology could be used to create a more transmissible version of SARS-2 or Coronavirus.
When we’ve emerged on the other side of the pandemic, Covid-19 will someday make a good story. But I worry that CRISPR could make Covid-19 look like child’s play. CRISPR is a new genetic tool that lets scientists cut out a DNA sequence in an organism’s genome and replace it with another. The hope is that this ingenious scissors-and-glue system will be used to treat devastating genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia. But there’s a dark side to CRISPR. A scientist or biohacker with basic lab know-how could conceivably buy DNA sequences and, using CRISPR, edit them to make an even more panic-inducing bacteria or virus. What’s to stop a rogue scientist from using CRISPR to conjure up an even deadlier version of Ebola or a more transmissible SARS? (Source)
In fact, the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the aspirations of terrorists to use bio-weapons for the attack has sent chills down the global intelligence agencies’ spines.
The deliberate use of disease-causing agents — like viruses or bacterias — as an act of terrorism "could prove to be extremely effective." Damage to humans and economies could be "significantly higher" than that of a "traditional" terrorist attack. (Source)
But what really needs to be looked at is not just a virus pandemic and the highest echelons in China discussing it as a potential weapon for World War 3, but that using Genome Editing technology something absolutely evil could be unleashed on an enemy.
And, given the low cost of actually doing it, this does not even need a state behind the attack. It could just be a small group of evil but motivated scientists!
Another report, says China is also focusing its attention on gene editing technologies. So far, the world has guarded itself against biological agents that are of natural origin. But with the help of technology adversaries can hack diseases, and make them deadlier. Two years ago, the US Military had raised an alarm as per which re-created viruses and toxic bacteria are the new age threats. In 2016, the US Intelligence community put gene editing on its list of potential weapons of mass destruction. The world is not ready for these modern bioweapons. (Source)
Rachel M. West and Gigi Kwik Gronvall warn in their paper on “Biosecurity Implications of Gene Editing” in a recent special issue on CRISPR in the journal Perspectives in Biology and Medicine on what such a threat could entail.
The potential for CRISPR to revolutionize genetic engineering also raises concerns that it could increase biosecurity threats by lowering barriers for the development of biological weapons. The ability to rapidly modify a genome at relatively low cost compared to previous methods could make CRISPR systems [End Page 82] attractive for nefarious actors at all levels, from individuals through nation states. In the realm of biosecurity threats, CRISPR may be misused to create increased-virulence pathogens, neurotoxins, and even de novo organisms (DiEuliis, Berger, and Gronvall 2017; DiEuliis and Giordano 2017). A de novo organism would be completely synthetic, although it may have the same genome as an existing pathogen like smallpox. Creating a completely novel organism using synthesis is theoretically possible, but it is likely to require extensive training, funding, and time for research and development, which is less possible for some types of actors (Gibson et al. 2010). (Source)
Why would such bio-weapons - the gene-edited ones be so terrible and deadly? Because, with it, you can target specific groups and populations! In our past newsletter - Issue #196 - Our Barbarik Future - we have discussed this technology and the havoc it can unleash in great detail!
Let us understand the threat in some detail here.
Gene-edited ‘Genetic Weapons of Mass Destruction” for targeting specific groups
In 2004, the British Medical Association (BMA) came out with a report titled “Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity II.” In that report, the BMA warned about genetically engineered bio-weapons that could target specific ethnic groups.
Such "genetic bombs" could contain anthrax or bubonic plague tailored to activate only when genes indicated the infected person was from a particular group. (Source)
But last year the Cambridge University research went even deeper. They said that the unscrupulously created bio-weapons could target specific individuals even within an ethnic group.
Biological weapons could be built which target individuals in a specific ethnic group based on their DNA, a report by the University of Cambridge has warned. Researchers from Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) said the government was failing to prepare for ‘human-driven catastrophic risks’ that could lead to mass harm and societal collapse. (Source)
What would those who want to target specific ethnic groups or even individuals within that ethnic group need? A humongous and deep bank of genetic mapping information.
“In a particularly bad case, a bio-weapon could be built to target a specific ethnic group based on its genomic profile.” (Source)
Using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, the Chinese company has worked its way to the genetic pool of many countries.
While the U.S. struggled to come up with enough tests to manage the world’s largest coronavirus outbreak, a Chinese genetics company took less than a month to build testing centers thousands of miles away in the Middle East.
By moving swiftly, Shenzhen-based BGI Group won hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with traditional U.S. allies including Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Now the U.S. is warning those countries that they may be giving Beijing access to highly prized personal data that will propel economies of the future. The push against the adoption of Chinese testing technology is part of a wider row between the U.S. and China that’s complicated global efforts to mount a response to the pandemic. (Source)
Do we see the coming together of so many technologies and their components for the start of a new World War?
The problem is that it is a World War that no one has declared and no one can even prove is underway. In fact, the mainstream narrative is overwhelmingly to the contrary.
Yet, how things have gone wrong and the way at the Indian government has been flanked on every side - from the West Bengal violence, the sleeper cells, the opposition that may be working with the enemy, and the very unusual rise in an extra-hyper-transmissible virus - shows that it is nothing short of an attack.
The deep psychological wounds that the Chinese document predicted such a bio-attack may have on a population while the medical system collapses - is the ‘End of Life’ scenario that India is now grappling with.
To call it all a coincidence is to underwrite the currently underway World War. Which is being fought as we speak.
market corner: 10 quick bytes
Amazon infuses Rs 915 cr in Indian marketplace entity - more
Center releases Rs 8,923 cr to 25 states as grants for rural local bodies - more
8 crore retail, wholesale traders incur Rs 6.25 lakh cr business loss due to Covid restrictions - more
India's exports surge 80% to $7 billion during May 1-7 - more
The number of SMEs going for restructuring 2.0 could be lower as Covid maybe contained over 3 months: Crisil - more
MFs on buying spree for 2nd month in a row, infuse Rs 5,526 cr in equities in April - more
India's power consumption grows nearly 25% in the first week of May - more
M&As rise 8% to $32.3 bn till Apr despite Covid wave: Report - more
North-East states, hills play host to long-term workationers as Covid wave washes over metros - more
ByteDance hires thousands to challenge e-commerce king Alibaba - more
nota bene
BARC paid Waze protection money: One of the senior officials from the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) told the Enforcement Directorate (ED) that the agency paid Rs 25 lakh to tainted Mumbai police inspector Sachin Waze after it was named in the television rating point (TRP) rigging case last year. The letter alleges that Waze was paid this amount in order to stop him from harassing BARC officers. BARC India’s head of vigilance Lt Col Dharamveer Mahecha revealed that the agency as under extreme stress due to the numerous demands and threats that were made to them. (Source)
Major terror Attack Averted: A major terrorist attack on security forces in Jammu and Kashmir was foiled with the recovery of 19 hand grenades from a terrorist hideout in Poonch district on Sunday. The Indian Army’s Rashtriya Rifles and the Jammu and Kashmir Police launched a “well-coordinated joint operation” in the Phagla area of Surankote in Jammu’s Poonch after receiving a specific input that terrorists were planning to target security forces on NH 144A (Jammu-Rajouri-Poonch highway). This is the second major recovery of explosives in the Jammu region in as many days. (Source)
Indian Variant deadly: Rapidly spreading Indian variant of SARS-CoV-2 (B.1.617) could be accelerating India's devastating second wave of the pandemic, the World Health Organization's top scientist said on Sunday. In an interview to news agency AFP, Soumya Swaminathan warned that "the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it's an extremely rapidly spreading variant." (Source)
Merkel’s China love and EU Human Rights: In European Union Parliament, there is a saying that their human rights policies are so tight that they can fit into the bonnet of a BMW car. The EU’s suspension of ratification of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China has not only sounded a death knell of the agreement but is a strong rebuff to German Chancellor Angela Merkel pro-China policies of the past 15 years. While Germany, and to some extent France, were behind the CAI’s conclusion in December last year, the fact that it set a low ambition bar on Chinese aggression against Taiwan, Hong Kong and human rights abuses in Xinjiang, had led to strong opposition from the Greens and Liberal members of European Parliament. The EU media and other pressure groups had also highlighted similar concerns. Many hinted that the CAI was moving till now mainly as it was a personal project of the German Chancellor and would lose steam eventually once see demits office in September this year. (Source)
video corner: The Southall Punjabis
The Punjabi culture and settlements in the UK are best understood in the structure of Southall as a cultural hub. The earliest Punjabis had settled there in the 1950s and 1960s. Their struggles, their journeys as they worked hard to establish themselves are very interesting.
Let us see that journey in this very informative video.
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