If it's true, and if it really happened, it would have dramatic consequences for US-India relations. And there are at least 2 countries that would like to see that happen.
They seemed to have called Canada’s poker hand successfully knowing no one takes Canada’s leadership seriously anymore. Probably the most unserious leadership you’d want in a global conflict requiring being tough and assertive. Unlike US<>Canada the Sikh killing was predated by a long series of bad looks by Canada re: India. They knew the deal.
Canada hasn’t even risked releasing any evidence months later. The issue seems DOA.
> seemed to have called Canada’s poker hand…issue seems DOA
The investigation is progressing at a normal pace. It’s incorrect to suggest it’s DOA. It also had a multibillion-dollar impact on multiple Indian investments, so to suggest it had no consequences is also wrong. (On a fundamental level, the killings Streisand effected the Khalistan cause. I’m of Indian descent and had not heard of Operation Blue Star [1].)
> Canada hasn’t even risked releasing any evidence
If the intel was American SIGINT, Ottawa wouldn’t have the authority to unilaterally release it.
> the intel was American SIGINT, Ottawa wouldn’t have the authority to unilaterally release it.
They havent released any details of how they knew, we learned it was US from journalism. If they violated our sovereignty we have a right to know the details. The Indian gov can figure out they were wiretapped already. If ever there was grounds for releasing sensitive Intel this was it.
When the Saudis killed that journalist it was revealed that Turkey had microphones inside their embassy. This is not some huge deal to reveal espionage of other agencies when the stakes are so high.
I’m not sure what sort of evidence you think they’ll suddenly discover 6 months later which justifies not explaining the details which cause them to make the accusation in the first place.
I don’t get how they can’t tell the public what the Indian gov specifically did but it was worth imposing the consequences of making the accusations public?
> Indian gov can figure out they were wiretapped already
But not how. Given how shadily they’re behaving, I wouldn’t want to declassify sources and methods too hastily either. If the rewards from keeping those methods live outweigh the gains from disclosure, that’s a valid foreign policy call.
> but it was worth imposing the consequences of making the accusations public
From all accounts, it going public was an accident. Ottawa was forced by the media getting a whiff of it. Washington made grunts and groans when necessary.
Are you kidding me? Operation Blue Star was to liberate the Holy Temple of the Sikhs from the hands of a few Terroists who had seized it for 2 long years. All sorts of peaceful negotiations to get them out failed. They even shot and killed a Police man who had gone to the Temple for his daily prayers in the Temple itself. The liberation of the Golden Temple and handing it back to the Sikhs is not a "bad deed". It is a "good deed".
If you don't understand the issue better not to comment on it. It has nothing to do with Israel-Gaza War and is not at all like it. Khalistani Terrorism is a fringe extremist movement that never took off in India. All the Terrorists who supported it ran to Canada, UK and US and sought refuge there. Don't forget that there are 26 million Sikhs in the World, with 20 million living in India and that too in one State of Punjab alone. The Khalistanis who live in the West hardly account for even 100,000 in total. They cannot and will never speak on behalf of the entire Sikh community. They just don't have the numbers.
If the West wants to break relations with India by supporting this Terror group then it can do so. But we won't let our sovereignty and territorial integrity be threatened by a group we consider equivalent to Al Qaeda/Taliban. This group has been instrumental in bombing of Air India Flight 182 in which 268 Canadian Citizens were killed. India had asked for extradition of the Terrorist who carried out the bombing 40 years ago before the bombing even took place. The Prime Minister of Canada then (Trudeau's father) denied the extradition. And because he denied the extradition, the Terrorist was able to plot the attack and carry out the deadliest Terror attack in Canadian history.
> The liberation of the Golden Temple and handing it back to the Sikhs is not a "bad deed". It is a "good deed"
I guess I understand why they’re pissed off now.
> West wants to break relations with India by supporting this Terror group
False dichotomy. You don’t conduct extrajudicial killings on American soil, full stop. If you do, you’re an enemy. This is a line even the Soviets respected. (And if you attempt it, don’t do it so stupidly you get caught. Twice.)
Consider the political repercussions of America offing an Indian right now. Of course it would kill coöperation. No matter how much it made sense. It would be difficult to imagine the contrition it would take to heal that wound. And currently, there is zero contrition coming from New Delhi.
> Learn your history before it is too late
It’s never too late. And there are tens of thousands of frozen conflicts worldwide. The only reason this one is relevant is because New Delhi made the Khalistani cause international news.
> I guess I understand why they’re pissed off now.
I am sure you don't. Because you don't seem to be coming off as someone who is genuinely ignorant about this issue considering you have been defending Khalistanis everywhere and in every comment. If some Terror group takes over the Vatican, executes the Pope and seizes it, I am sure US would be sending in Special Forces into the Vatican liberating the City and not be wasting time negotiating with Terrorists. India on the other hand only launched Operation Blue Star when getting the Terrorists to surrender through peaceful negotiations failed. We waited and negotiated for 2 effing long years before finally deciding to send in the Indian Army. If India's Operation Blue Star was something that offended the Sikh population in India, 20 million Sikhs would have fought back. And Sikhs are known to be one of the strongest warriors, don't take BS and are very straightforward.
> You don’t conduct extrajudicial killings on American soil, full stop
Why? Is America some God given land that is not to be touched? What sort of BS is this? You are holding Terrorists who are literally issuing threats to our Diplomats putting up massive hoardings calling for their Assassinations and then also threatening to bomb our planes and airport, and we have to just sit quiet and do nothing while your stupid bureaucracy doesn't move an inch forward in extraditing them? We are not morons here. We will seek and destroy all Terrorists wherever they may live. Even on the Holy Land of America. Consider it a favour from our end for not making your innocent Citizens go through another 9/11. India should have done an extra-judicial killing of these Terrorists 4 decades ago. Then Air India Flight 182 would never have been bombed and 268 innocent Canadian Citizens wouldn't have lost their precious lives. Because PM Pierre Trudeau had an Ego issue for not approving the Extradition. You know why that fool did not approve the Extradition? Because he stated that India did not recognize the Queen as the Constitutional Monarch despite being in the Commonwealth. Yes, this is the retarded reasoning he gave for not approving extradition of a dreaded Terrorist. He said that "India was insufficiently deferential to the Queen". That India only recognized the Queen as Head of Commonwealth and not Head of State of India.
> Consider the political repercussions of America offing an Indian right now
Again read your history. CIA has been involved in offing plenty Indian Nuclear scientists. Read up on "India's vanishing nuclear scientists" [1].
It is ridiculous to see a Westerner talking against "extra-judicial killings" when the West does this all the damn time! Was offing Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan not extra-judicial killing? Was drone strikes in Pakistan not extra-judicial killing? WTF are you talking about mate?
You are truly ignorant and living under a rock! Study your history. It is full of West backstabbing of India. India has always been on the right side of history and history will judge us positively for that.
Lots of good stuff here. It would come through cleaner with a measured tone.
> Is America some God given land that is not to be touched?
Yes, to Americans, obviously.
> CIA has been involved in offing plenty Indian Nuclear scientists
Got it, a CIA operative went on the record with a Hong Kong newspaper to out a conspiracy that nobody in New Delhi bothered to notice.
> India has always been on the right side of history and history will judge us positively for that
This is common to hear in India. It is, obviously, wrong—no people or even person can say this universally. But it’s also dangerous. Because it’s an attitude that tends to precede a predictable path of politics that accompanies a loss of honest introspection. (If you’ve always been right, no need to interrogate the past.)
This is such a partisan take: It's okay to not like the Trudeau government, but to distort your worldview based upon it is not productive. What "evidence" you think Canada must release to satisfy your zeal? Canada isn't appealing to some world hot take court for justice.
And I have no idea what Canada's purported "poker hand" was. The government revealed an incident when the media discovered it and it continues at its normal pace behind the scenes. India had an apocalyptic, absurdly over the top fit and Canada yawned. India has literally zero sway over Canada so it was all rather ridiculous.
And this US revelation clearly springs from exactly the same well (via exactly the same intelligence sharing). I mean, when the Canada revelation happened the US leaked that they were investigating something and has repeatedly announced their concern about this. If anything the outsized Indian reaction to Canada was precisely because they thought they could preempt this from the US.
Oh come on India bullied Canada and got away with it. Maybe there is some “justice” coming but all that’s happened is Canada showed it was too scared to take any risk at all, had a soft as hell muted response by a leader who clearly isn’t respected enough to be taken seriously to sell consequences. His behaviour before this incident set this up for failure too, it’s a long built up pattern where Canada is losing its position as a diplomatic power player and this just shows our leadership as a global moral authority is basically been nullified.
This is diplomatic and precedent setting as much as it’s a pursuit of some specific criminal justice.
Obsessing about not disrupting the the economic/diplomatic/immigration status quo, not offending anybody even when they seriously violate your sovereignty, and just generally playing nice guy is not how you deal with this sort of situation.
It's funny, you clearly read the news in this very thread (US publicly denouncing a kill plot on US soil), yet you absolutely don't manage to connect the two.
Extrajudicial killings by governments have happened for time eternal. There is absolutely nothing new or precedent setting about this. The truth is that most of the time governments deal with it quietly and behind the scenes. It's actually incredibly odd for the US to have announced what they have, and it is almost certainly because of the Canada thing.
>a leader who clearly isn’t respected enough
You have partisan glasses on. What do you think any other leader would have done? Would Harper have declared war? Would PP in the future?
Given that India absolutely flipped their shit (they've backtracked on all of it, as an aside...so powerful), clearly Canada's announcement by itself was an enormous action.
But seriously, what do you think the US is going to do? The most powerful nation on the planet is going to...send some diplomatic cables and express their disatisfaction.
>But seriously, what do you think the US is going to do?
If Canada had any sway, they could prod US to delay or suspend military tech transfer to India to compel an investigation. But obviously Canada doesn't have that kind of leverage.
That's some bizarre logic. Especially given this submission is actually about India trying to kill a guy in the US... I guess the US has no sway over the US. Those Americans really wish they had that sort of leverage.
Canada is completing its investigation, at which point they'll name various Indian government agents and charge them with murder. India will declare diplomatic immunity. Do you really think the horrendously corrupt Modi government is going to investigate its own actions in any meaningful or viable way?
And just to be clear, the US announcing what they did is clearly putting its full weight behind Canada's findings.
Sway is factor of domestic politics. US has sway not to over react precisely because it was a failed attempt. They can and would rather sweep dead brown American under rug than to undermine budding strategic condominium with India. Certainly they couldn't care less over dead brown Canadian. If India actually assassinated an American, on American soil no less, the US domestic politics would lose their shit at current US military tech transfers to India (like GE engines to HAL).
I think US has the leverage to at least compel Modi to pretend to cooperate, or at least offer up fall guys like they did MBS over Khashoggi, if they were to put full weight behind Canada. Which they haven't, except to affirm Canadian findings, which they pretty much have to unless they want to blow up US/CAN relations. Current rhetorical support is meaningless.
> His behaviour before this incident set this up for failure too, it’s a long built up pattern where Canada is losing its position as a diplomatic power player
I think the situation isn't as bad as it seems from the inside.
In defense of Trudeau: ask a number of people outside Canada to name any Canadian Prime Ministers, and I bet most of them will readily be able to name only Trudeau. I just looked at the Wikipedia list and I only recognized four names, one of them because I knew Justin Trudeau's dad had once been Prime Minister, and one of them because Nardwuar embarrassed him once. What I'm saying is, I don't think there's some golden age of Canadian global influence that Justin Trudeau has caused you to fall from, and if that's your measure, he's actually not doing too bad.
Given the absolute over-the-top histrionics by the Indian contingent regarding Canada's revelation (one that was basically forced when media got ahold of the info), clearly Canada complaining meant an enormous amount to India and Indian expats. That whole situation was utterly bizarre. Canada abandoned free trade talks with India.
The best part was the continued assertions that Canada stood alone (courtesy of our navel gazing, self-critical media which is how it should be, but is a bit asymmetrical when countering fanatics), all the while the US continually stated that they backed Canada. Indeed, it is overwhelmingly likely that the intel for both incidents had a common source.
Another interesting revelation that flew under the radar-
The Modi government of India is basically acting like an autocracy now. All of the Indians who spent so much time attacking Canada might spend a little more time looking inwards.
You mean to say autocracies are easier to predict because they behave with a firm consistent control (until they leave). They are obviously not always aligned with our foreign policy goals. All you have to do is name a handful of current autocracies that come to mind.
> autocracies are easier to predict because they behave with a firm consistent control
Correct. This is actually a criticism of Cold War era U.S. foreign politics, where a short-term “win” was prioritised over strategic alignment, the lesson being it almost always backfired.
The only way we can build resilient alliances is by turning friends into allies, not those we’d like to ally with into “friends.” My concern is we’re doing the latter, again, with India.
There are multiple instances of Cold War era US autocratic allies developing into democracies, such as Portugal, Spain, South Korea, Chile, Argentina, and Greece. The claim that these alliances “almost always backfired” is just not true; it succeeded more often than it failed.
Actually this is the way the world works, whether we like it or not, whether we can change it or not. Doesn't hurt to constantly call attention to it but it may not make much of a difference if its consequences are kepr below the threshold of acute suffering.
I hesitate to respond, but in this case, it is actually a relevant argument. In Italy ( and other nations for that matter ), fascism became popular, precisely because it was 'more efficient' than the pesky democracy with all its turns and stakeholders and all that. In a sense, it delivered ( while also providing high amounts of power to its leaders -- and as we know from history, power tends to corrupt ).
A totally uncritical media, owned by crony businessmen who supports him, just amplifies his party's message and creates the impression that he delivers. Imagine if 95% of the viewership is for some version of fox news. His dramatic failures (like the botched up demonitization) are silently forgotten. Combine this with a huge social media propaganda machinery that circulates fake news, most Indians are forced to live in an alternate reality.
All media is owned by cronies for parties. It's how Indian politics works.
For example, in Punjab the main Punjabi news channel (PTC) is owned by the Badal family - who used to control Punjab as leaders of SAD until 2018 when they lost elections to the INC and then the AAP in 2022.
The main Tamil language news media company Sun Group is owned by the grand-nephew of the founder of the ruling DMK.
The 2 main Telegu language media companies - ETV and Sakshi TV - are owned by businessmen related to the leaders of the BRS and YSRCP respectively.
The BJP will end up losing power at some point, but Indian media is already owned by political dynasties and that will never change.
Another disaster was his handling of Covid. People were literally begging on streets for oxygen cylinders. He can't put together a sentence to speak in front of media w\o reading from a prompter. He's winning elections by hyped-up narratives, playing with emotions, oppression, lies, religion and caste play cards.
”All in all, the Nijjar affair takes the lid off the acute contradictions in India’s foreign policies. The assumptions driving the foreign policy’s China-centric thrust turn out to be delusional; the “westernist” trajectory has landed in a cul-de-sac; the assiduously propagated larger-than-life global image of India turns out to be a mirage; foreign policy built on personality cult and opportunism rather than rational and consistent principles attuned to the world in transition got battered; and, most important, the hubris in India’s diplomacy boomeranged.
The Nijjar affair poses an existential dilemma. Surrendering to the US diktat will make India look a surrogate state and a laughing stock in the Global South. Indians won’t approve of it.
On the contrary, ignoring the diktat will be hugely consequential. Make no mistake, Five Eyes had a gory history against the Soviet Union; in the post-cold war era, it all but destabilised Hong Kong, and is today an active player in Myanmar and Thailand in India’s neighbourhood. Its entry in the subcontinent is ominous.“
I wouldn't dig too deep into M. K. Bharadkumar's views. He was part of the Indian Attaché to the Soviet Union and later Russia and Uzbekistan, and worked closely with both them when supporting the Northern Alliance during the Afghan Civil War in the 90s [0][1]
Clearly, since India had warm relations with USSR and it was an important diplomatic portfolio and the diplomats top caliber. That simply means he was one of their top diplomats.
> He leans pro-Russia and anti-American
Good for him. It’s a free world and he’s entitled to his views and preferences. Regardless, he is intelligent, highly experienced, and provides a fresh (“oh no”) perspective on these matters.
Canada (or US) is no saint here. I think India is just learning these tactics from West. If you can't get the criminals and terrorist in front of your court because they operate from other countries which encourages such people and use them as a tool to interfere and destabilize your society, you are left with no option but to get rid of them using similar tactics.
The USA has employed drone strikes on non-US soil against Al Qaeda members who were, as I recall, quite eager to terrorize and destabilize "the great Satan", as they called it.
Do you actually believe that Canada, the US, or any other part of the West is trying to "interfere and destabilize" India? If so you really need to touch grass and put down the propaganda pipe. Many Indians seem to think that because Canada doesn't actively stomp on activities that you personally don't approve of it's sanctioning them, seemingly having no concept of how freedoms work.
If the West were trying to destabilize India I suspect it would be incredibly easy to achieve, which is exactly why there is that defensiveness and hitting at shadows. But the West isn't because India has long been a useful counter to regional powers.
What is absolutely true is that the Modi government is spectacularly corrupt. Every opponent of Modi is a "terrorist" -- even opponents in government. The government is falling further and further down the well towards fascism, all while proud Indians convince themselves that everyone else is actually the problem.
For someone so uninformed about the geopolitical history of India, you speak far too confidently.
This is a common tendency for many Americans, read 10 uni-dimensional articles in your favorite newspaper on some topic, do not bother to read any history on said topic, then come to strong opinions and bully people who see things differently. Maybe it is you who should put down the "propaganda pipe" and consider this issue for the complicated nuanced thing it is.
If they had solid evidence the person committed a serious crime, particularly actual terrorism, it'd have been no problem getting Canada to turn them over.
The real issue is they wanted to kill someone who wasn't a criminal. Which, ultimately, is just plain old homicide.
I just checked and India and Canada do have an extradition treat (unlike Canada and China), so there is merit to this comment. They had requested extradition of Nijjar, but didn’t give time for the request to even go to court.
What's you thoughts on Canada harboring Khalistani separatist and not acting since years? Same with US - Pannun is US Citizen, also designated terrorist, openly threatening to blow Air India plane.
I would be amazed if Sunak condemned Modi for something that happened in Canada, stands to gain more from their relationship than with Canada I imagine. (Perhaps, and I don't mean it conspiratorially or that it would be a reason, but just as an aside - even more so with a breakdown in India-Canada relations than without at the same time.)
I'm not saying it's the best move for the country long-term (nor that it isn't!) - just that I'd be surprised to see it from Sunak. 'In the short-term, maybe' only adds to it: there'll be a general election before the end of Jan '25.
Fair enough, and doubly a shame as Sunak’s criticism would probably carry more weight there than most of the others, given his heritage. He has been a very underwhelming PM, which is a shame given his obvious potential, and the very low bar his predecessors set.
Canada is yet to still present the evidence too few people know the 1985 air India bombing was mostly affecting Canadian citizens and perpetrated by khalistani Sikh extremists
The article is light on specifics, which I suppose is understandable given the nature of it, but my first question is if is considered state sponsored? If so that would be very incendiary to U.S. - Indian relations and maybe a reason for the reticence of details.
That said, Panun did also threaten to blow up an Air India flight by Nov 19th (clearly didn't happen).
That said, there won't be blowback between India and US relations as a whole. The US is too important to India and India is too important to the US.
The Indian method also sucks from an OpSec standpoint - Indian agencies transfer Senior Police from state level to RAW or IB and those state police departments might brag about it on their websites. This is a big issue with Punjab Police (who tend to manage the Khalistan issue)
> Panun did also threaten to blow up an Air India flight by Nov 19th
Source?
The article says “Pannun angered Indian officials this month by issuing a video in which he warned Sikhs not to fly on Air India because it would be ‘life threatening’ and that “he told the FT he was not making a violent threat against the airline.
Given the context of Sikhs being murdered overseas by New Delhi, that statement seems to have multiple reasonable interpretations.
An Air India flight was blown up in 1985 by Canadian Sikh terrorists killing 329 people. With that context, it’s easy to see how this would be considered a threat.
> With that context, it’s easy to see how this would be considered a threat
Not really? Threats require specificity and credibility. Using simply ethnicity or even cause as the sole qualifier for credibility isn’t something most people do.
This is a person with a history of provocations making an indirect threat. I’m not saying he deserves punishment, but I can see why the Indian government would take his threat very seriously.
> a person with a history of provocations making an indirect threat
It’s sort of like an Iranian student group saying American Airlines isn’t safe to fly anymore. Like, okay? Not nice. But not quite a threat. (Certainly not a credible one.)
The issue is that this statement of Panun will be used against innocent Sikhs and will cause undue burden on them, in the worst case leading to human rights violations. India has no qualms with using draconian laws like UAPA, NSA, and sedition and ruin the livelihoods of people and their families.
I don't know how credible I am (fwiw white British, Christened but agnostic, no particular bias except perhaps 'hey guys can't you resolve this peacefully somehow') and it's difficult for me to understand much, but I think he's not being that direct about it, but kind of alluding to it, talking a bit euphemistically.
In the beginning after saying 'we are urging Sikhs not to fly Air India' in English, which sounds like boycott, he switches to Hindi[0] and says similar with 'on the 19th November' (unnis navambar ko) - why would a boycott be so specific; then he says same date 'Indira Gandhi airport [Delhi international, i.e. North India but not Punjab] will be closed' (band rahega).
Later he says something about 'khalistani airport' which I would guess is his way of referring to Amritsar or Chandigarh (the two international airports in Punjab afaict, perhaps the former because it's cleanly Punjab vs. the latter seems to be the capital city of both Punjab and Haryana states, kind of an interesting quirk) but it's difficult for me to understand much more. Edit: actually it's Chandigarh, I just realised the sentence is 'Shaheed Bhagat Singh [name of Chandigarh airport] will be the khalistani airport' (khalistani airport hoega). Again you could say it's a boycott: take your money to Punjab's airports, not Delhi's - but why's the latter 'closed', why 19 November specifically. As an economic boycott, that being done by the subset of Sikhs who follow him on a single day would have trivial impact, it'd be completely inconsequential.
I realise that's not much, maybe it helps a bit, I was mainly interested for myself as a learning exercise really! (My vocabulary's quite limited, but more than that I struggle just with listening/speaking fast enough, so trying to practice more in ways other than reading.)
[0] or maybe Punjabi, I'd have thought it would be, and they're similar enough spoken that I'd pick bits up anyway, but seems more familiar (i.e. Hindi) word endings/conjugations to me (even where I don't know the actual word) than there would be if it was Punjabi (which I might recognise from '-da's and '-di's for example)
> he switches to Hindi and says similar with 'on the 19th November' (unnis navambar ko) - why would a boycott be so specific
Specific date and limited specific location boycotts are a frequently done because they are easier to motivate people for the amount of symbolic impact (because people can rearrange purchases rather than actually cancel them), and because they can prime people for a longer or more general boycott. Its not an uncommon strategy. (People do argue against it because the impacts are largely symbolic, for the same reasons it is easier to organize, and because there is an argument that they can lead to exhaustion -- "I've done the one thing and now you want more" -- more than priming. So there is controversy in the kinds of groups that call for boycotts about them, but, they are still a thing that is done, not an unplausible boycott technique that makes "threat" the only plausible interpretation.)
Do you, in your reading, see a threat? Because I’m not. (Certainly not “that Indira Gandhi Airport will be attacked on November 19th.”)
I think it’s dramatically framed to generate clicks. But a lot of right-wing gun crap also sounds like that, and I don’t think they’re always making credible threats.
Honestly I don't understand enough to be that confident about it. Maybe I'm naive and too trusting, but personally I took the news org (youth-run or not) sharing it - who presumably do understand it - at face value. I think it's fair to say it's a relatively violent movement - the Wikipedia entry has a section on 'militancy' but not 'peaceful protests' or 'boycotts' for example - but it's not one thing, it's an idea or collection of ideas and there are various groups and factions, so I really don't know anywhere near enough about it - you'd have to take this video in the context of what else this particular guy's said about his own views, rather than what others have done to the same end - in the name of 'khalistan' - really.
No his translation is only partial considering he is not a Punjabi. Pannun clearly says "Sikh panthalayo unni november ko baad Air India me safar ni karna. Jaanu khatra ho sagda hai". You can match the timeline in the video from 0:16 to 0:22.
Translates to: "Sikh people (panth) don't travel in Air India after 19th November. There will be a threat to your life (Jaanu = Life, khatra = Threat, ho sagda hai = possibility of a threat)"
Who will threaten Sikh lives in Air India after 19th November? It is literally reminder of Air India Flight 182 bombings.
Oh so it is Punjabi, I didn't pick up on that sagda (vs. Hindi would be sakta) for example. (And I thought it was the single day because of 'ko', Hindi would be 'ke baad' - I might've realised except the 'baad' still isn't that clear to me.)
For whatever it's worth, I concur with that transcription & its translation - I can't find jaanu online but it's so close to Hindi (jaan) that I don't doubt it at all. (It's a hell of a lot easier for me to realise what he's saying when it's written out by someone else, heh.)
(I've also vouched for parent comment, it's informative and afaict accurate, I don't understand why it would be dead.)
For what? He only partially translated the text. Pannun literally issues a threat in the video: "Jaanu khatra ho sagda hai" which translates to "Your life will be in Danger". He is telling the Sikhs not to board Air India flights after November 19th and that there will be threat to their lives. In other words, he is saying they will repeat what they did to Air India Flight 182: bomb the planes mid air. And that Sikhs should not travel Air India from November 19th onwards as he doesn't want any Sikh to lose his/her life in the bombings.
Just ask any Punjabi speaker and he will tell you the same thing!
I can't believe you people see conspiracy in everything! Get your head out of the sand. The West is harbouring dangerous criminals and terrorists. They owe you no loyalty. They will destroy your society. India is in the right here.
To be clear I wasn't trying to hide anything, I've already said elsewhere that I took the tweet at face value, assumed it was correct and true that he was saying what was claimed.
Anything I missed is just because I'm learning Hindi, can't follow quickly, have limited vocabulary, and he's speaking Punjabi anyway which is slightly different as you know. I only offered an attempt at a partial translation at all as a sort of learning exercise for myself, and because fluent speakers hadn't chimed in at that point.
No I am not saying anything as a negative. I am only talking about him taking the partial translation as complete and going along with it. If he was genuinely interested in knowing the Truth, he would have pursued it further himself and found a translation easily in the hundreds of articles already published about this exact story. But I doubt his intent.
Nothing to do with you though! Sorry if it came across that way!
EDIT: Also if I might add, whatever you translated was accurate. Great job! Your Hindi is already pretty good! And it is surprising you were able to pick that up from Punjabi which is definitely a lot different in comparison to Hindi!
That the US and India aren't each other's closest ally confuses me. It's the 2 biggest democracies, both are on uneasy terms with China, there's an enormous Desi diaspora here. Both are heavy into high-tech with struggling manufacturing bases. Both have a history of trouble with Islamic terrorism, both ardent allies of Israel. Each is the largest country in their region.
Hell, we speak the same language (kinda, I know it's a lingua franca etc)! So why are we allies with Pakistan, a country that openly hates us, instead of India?
> the US and India aren't each other's closest ally confuses me
We increasingly are.
> why are we allies with Pakistan, a country that openly hates us, instead of India?
India openly allied with the Soviets, so we took the other side. Also, India was an immature democracy through the 70s, when it flirted with outright authoritarianism. It isn’t until recently that it has become a middle-income democracy with a high-income upper-middle class and cosmopolitan elite.
> India openly allied with the Soviets, so we took the other side.
I’m afraid you have it backwards. India and the Soviet Union signed a treaty only after the US sent its seventh fleet towards India during the 1971 India-Pakistan conflict. US supported Pakistan in the war and India had no choice but to align with the Soviets to deter them.
> India and the Soviet Union signed a treaty only after the US sent its seventh fleet towards India during the 1971 India-Pakistan conflict
New Delhi and Moscow were transferring technology in “steel, defense, railways, construction equipment, metal & mining [and] petrochemicals” by the time “Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union supported India's stance on the Kashmir conflict against Pakistan and over Portuguese coastal enclaves such as Goa” in 1955 [1]. The MiG-21 was co-produced in India in the 1960s.
Technology transfer and verbal support is nothing like coming to a country’s rescue during a war. An official treaty was only signed during the events of 1971 war. US-Pakistan mutual defense treaty dates back to 1954.
> Technology transfer and verbal support is nothing like coming to a country’s rescue during a war
Co-producing warplanes is as good as a treaty. Right in front of leaders visiting each others’ capitals.
Bottom line is India never courted the West. Pakistan did. Neither drove the other into anyone’s arms; American relations in Pakistan were focussed on the Middle East, India’s in the Soviets with China. When the theatre shifted to India v Pakistan, the table was already set and everyone assumed their places.
Not sure what your point is? Yes, Pakistan has been our “ally from
Hell” for at least a generation. Meanwhile India has wound up with weapons made by a “partner” who reports to its geopolitical rival.
The point is it’s difficult seeing history following a different path. America was rebuilding and de-colonialising Europe. That required involvement in the Middle East. It was simultaneously countering the Soviets, globally. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was the only one concerned about Chinese army’s potential in Central Asia. India, being close to that, was similarly concerned. (As it remains.)
Absolutely right, and my point. From Pakistan we get mass death and destruction, but India brings Bollywood, Satya, and a bunch of entrepreneurs. The Pakistan alliance was a mistake, we should atone and cozy up to India.
> Pakistan alliance was a mistake, we should atone and cozy up to India
We shouldn’t be cozying up to anyone for the sake of it. And we should think twice about what we do with a state blundering its way into the extrajudicial killing club on our own soil.
> We shouldn’t be cozying up to anyone for the sake of it. And we should think twice about what we do with a state blundering its way into the extrajudicial killing club on our own soil.
You just described what US has been doing for the past 7 decades.
> described what US has been doing for the past 7 decades
Well, yes, it's a double standard. But even we didn't try assassinations within the Russian SSR. Again, not because we're righteous. But because we aren't stupid. If we got caught, it would create blowback for us and sympathy for the Soviets. (Also, we weren't courting alliance, investment and trade with the Soviets?)
Like what we're seeing now. Incompetently-executed covert actions. Plenty of blowback. International awareness and with it, sympathy, for a group that previously had neither. (Going out on a limb and guessing this story is being milked for fundraising in the Gulf.)
Where we commonly see extrajudicial activity is in places generally considered lawless and/or powerless. And in most of those cases, I would argue it served to undermine American interests in the long run.
Not really, no. One is a financial commitment, the other is a military commitment. They're very different.
India never courted the West because Pakistan already had close relations with them. The order matters since your argument is US aligned with Pakistan only because India aligned with Soviet Union. US had its own motivations (obviously) around curtailing Soviet influence in Afghanistan.
> One is a financial commitment, the other is a military commitment. They're very different.
The U.S. co-producing nuclear submarines with Australia isn’t a military commitment?
> your argument is US aligned with Pakistan only because India aligned with Soviet Union
This was never said? We didn’t ally with India because it was allied with the Soviets. We have no problem allying with both sides of a regional spat e.g. Israel & Saudi Arabia, Turkey & Greece and Japan & Korea.
> Will the US send a naval fleet to Australia if the latter is attacked?
You’re kidding, right? Of course we would. (Unless it’s chickenshit business, like Indonesia and Oz getting into a coast guard squabble over migrant boats.)
When you co-produce weapons, you send high-ranking technical advisors and expensive kit that needs guarding. This is why e.g. deploying a ballistic missile radar isn’t just plopping down a radar. It involves deploying troops around it. We have defence treaties with countries whom we don’t trust enough to co-produce with. Co-production is a big deal.
I'm not kidding. But you're talking about something different.
India and Soviet Union had a different kind of co-production deal. It has always been, even to this day with Russia, technology transfer and licensing i.e. you help develop systems and then fully hand over to India. No troop deployment, you're only in it for the money. The BrahMos missile development is the best example of this.
> even to this day with Russia, technology transfer i.e. you help develop systems and then fully hand over to India
No troops, but certainly Russians. When the “help develop systems” part is in effect, you’re as good as allies.
There are more broken defence treaties than cases of military technology coöperation betrayals. That is why those deals are so closely scrutinised. Treaties promise something in the future. Co-production delivers something today.
Maybe there was foreign policy naïveté in New Delhi at the time. I don’t think so, but perhaps. On the Soviet side, they certainly knew what they were doing.
> When the “help develop systems” part is in effect, you’re as good as allies.
Sure, I agree with that. But there are different degrees of being allies. "Help develop systems" is nowhere near "risk your own troops to defend another country" (a.k.a. NATO). That's the distinction I'm trying to make.
Agree. But the meaningful part of NATO isn’t the paper, it’s the deployments. Same for the ‘54 pact with Pakistan. If someone attacked Pakistani military installations, there was a good chance of taking out an American. That’s the deterrence.
The Soviets didn’t put boots on the ground, so a similar risk wasn’t present. But one, that wasn’t knowable at the time. And two, there absolutely would have been Russian assets in the vicinity while everyone was learning how to do their jobs.
Well, NATO conditions on paper are what kicked in post 9/11 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most NATO countries risked their troops because the US was attacked, even though their own military installations/deployments were never attacked.
True. I shouldn't say that the paper is worthless. But between a piece of paper and materiel, there are very few cases were a country would choose the former.
India and the US did court each other til the mid-1960s. IIT Kharagpur was built by UIUC and IIT Kanpur by UC Berkeley, along with JK Galbraith's strong lobbying for Indians rule industrialization in "Economic Development" and "The New Industrial State".
After JFK and Nehru died, the relationship tanked. Indira Gandhi leaned pro-Socialist economically with the 1969-73 nationalization drive that impacted American businesses, and LBJ and Nixon both detested Indira at a personal level (though to be fair the feeling was mutual). India supported the North Vietnamese during the war [0] and also began military tech transfers with the USSR and France during that time period [1] due to their mutual "Non Aligned" policy.
There was an actual chance that India would have become a global factory, but the nationalization drive in the 70s and 80s [2] lead to American enterprises in India shifting to newly open China
This is the usual American lack of any historical knowledge concerning their own actions on display.
US took Pakistan's side first, we only made the Indo-Soviet friendship deal in 71 because we had no other choice, or just accept being obliterated by US Navy while intervening in Bangladesh. We were one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned movement of third world countries and one of the leaders of that group. We did not want to be involved in cold war between the west and USSR and took no sides until we were forced to for survival.
Can you imagine that? The world's strongest and second-strongest democracies aiming their guns at the world's largest on behalf of an Islamist-Military dictatorship that was committing a genocide.
As usual, Americans forget all of this or don't even bother to read about it in the first place.
Sorry, but I suggest you educate yourself on the correct timeline of events. Also, kindly read Nixon's declassified statements and the 1971 tapes. The kind of racist bigotry he regularly espoused would break several HN guidelines - so I cannot post his statements here - please look them up online. He had an unnerving, extremely rabid, irrational hate-on for Indian people.
New World Order is a paradigm where US runs the show for everyone else. The world’s largest democracy is a threat to this. One of the worlds largest economies is also a viable economic opportunity. + Military / Geopolitics. These are all factors in play at the same time
How would EU be different? It is not a country but as an economy it has similar population as the US, geographical proximity to asia and africa and many well established economic powerhouses. If the US should feel threatned it would be by the EU.
The reason the US does not like China is not because of their economy but their politics and military ambitions. Both China and India have nukes so they can defend their territory against the US just fine. China wants to expand into taiwan, the south china see and even some west china territory India controls and who knows what else.
If you think about it, being wealtheir than the US does not affect the US much so long as the US is still a competing consumer economy and the dollar is the global currency (kind of like english being lingua franca, unless the world trusts China more than the US to pay its bills, RMB will never displace the dollar ) what changes for the US? So long as GDP is the same and the US does not rely on exports for survival it can still maintain the most powerful military. The problem is with China using their wealth to compete with the US military similar to USSR which might lead to a world war 3 situation.
India on the other hand, no doubt will improve its military but I don't see India spending 100B+ a year on military or foreign bases and multiple aircraft carrier strike force groups and all that. The only real conflict opportunity for India are pakistan and China but if India is allied with the US then the US and NATO countries will be a deterrent. Much of why India is neutral on ukraine and won't publicly be closer to the US is a result of economic dependencies such as oil and trade routes. A prosperous india might be able to break free from those shackles and equally compete with EU and the US as well as with China.
> If the US should feel threatned it would be by the EU.
The EU is a society that is winding down.
Americans are sensible and realize the future of innovation and progress lies in countries that have young people.
A bunch of old Europeans are not a threat. Europe is utterly feckless anyway and is unlikely to ever be able to field a large enough army to actually be a threat
I haven't seen it put this way - food for thought.
Reminds me of that attempted mass murder at yet another Winter Festival in France - doesn't make any sense that this would happen again and again by Islamists from a US perspective, but from a "fuck it, we're just giving up" perspective it makes perfect sense.
> Europe is utterly feckless anyway and is unlikely to ever be able to field a large enough army to actually be a threat
In a list of American geopolitical concerns, a traditional force on force land invasion wouldn't even make it into the top 100. Swap out "Europe" for any other political entity real or imagined and it would make no difference.
EU is part of Nato. US gave protection to EU if they protect US against it’s enemies. It all has to do with war. With NATO US can bully anyone and EU can feel protected. All wars are for power. All wars consist of alliances between nations. That is the new world order. Not some /r/conspiracy bs but straight military power and nukes. US plays games with countries to get best outcome as it a nations goals. Right now India will not bend the knee as Modi won’t sell out the country and give in to US. US is playing long game by being friendly with both China and India. China wants territory India has as per all the border skirmishes going on as per the 5 fingers of Mao. Instead of US telling China fuck off they play both sides in hopes of leveraging a situation to get military alliance. Through military alliance they can get the best economic deals, use the country up, and move on to next while adding another powerful ally to their list. You are doing too much analysis and not understanding the mechanisms of power which is simply military strategy and alliances. It is about who your friends are.
> New World Order is a paradigm where US runs the show for everyone else
Have you watched our politics? We don’t want to run shit. Running shit is expensive.
Also, America did run the show. Twice. After WWII, when it held a global nuclear hegemony. And after the fall of the Soviet Union, when it was the sole superpower. Both times we basically did everything we could to slough off the responsibility.
US doesn’t want to run the world and control other countries? This is an incredibly immature understanding of geopolitics. Do you understand what NATO is? Do you understand how many military bases the US has. Do you understand the involvement of the US in wars outside its own country. Do you understand the political and military powerhouse the US is. Do you not understand these goals have been accomplished with only Russia and China pushing back? US has formed a strategic alliance with every powerhouse except Russia. What US wants occurs. It has nothing to do with money. It has to do with spheres of influence. I can’t believe I am downvoted for voicing my opinion by uneducated techies who do not understand global politics. This website becomes more like Reddit every week. Why am I downvoted for providing my opinion?
> US doesn’t want to run the world and control other countries?
Of course we want more influence. But we don't want to run things.
It's not because we're nice people or whatever. It's because we're a maritime and trade power while our competitors have historically been land powers. We want someone rich we can trade with who takes care of their own problems at home.
> Do you not understand these goals have been accomplished with only Russia and China pushing back?
A lot of the world is constantly pushing back against all kinds of hegemony. To add to your list, there is no love lost for America in Brazil, much of Africa, most of the Arab world nor in Central Asia.
> What US wants occurs
Have you seen how discordant our alliance talks are? They're multilateral and messy. The only reason Europe and America are in step with one another is because of Russia. The only reason the Quad exists is because of China.
Modi, for all his faults, has made a huge pivot towards America like no other PM before him. India and US are closer than ever before, even in the backdrop of India’s neutrality stance in Russia-Ukraine conflict. There are multiple defense agreements between the countries, including intelligence sharing, at levels we have not seen before.
But India hates playing the second fiddle, so they don’t want be a traditional “ally” that the US can push around at will. They want to be more like “partners”.
The relationship with Pakistan is mostly historical as it provided access to Afghanistan and acted to counter Soviet/Russian influence in the region. India, although officially neutral, was in practice a semi-ally of the USSR and then Russia for a mix of ideological and economic reasons. But those relationships are likely to reverse over the next few years for the reasons you suggest. Pakistan no longer has anything of value to offer to the USA; their only card to play is threatening to form an alliance with China.
India follows a policy of neutrality and the us wants a country in the region who will allow it to have a military presence.
Pakistan is okay with giving up sovereignty of American military bases. India is not. Thus the US nominally allies with Pakistan and India steers clear because of that.
Although as others have said, India clearly favors the US these days
Because the US got in bed with China because China was opposed to the Russians.
It's also why the US was down with Cambodia (they, together with China opposed Vietnam, who the US opposed because it decided to intervene in the losing side of a failed French colonial conflict.)
Natural allies really. But it's not all good though, there's been a hard and strangely growing anti-western sentiment for a while now. It's big enough to become a problem in the near future.
Also, western governments pay very little attention to understanding India, it's all colonial era stereotypes for the most part. Even the largest and most well known newspapers rarely send anyone with a deep understanding of the country to cover it, and they give a very shallow lopsided, uni-dimensional impressions of the country to their audience.
He does seem very un-Sikh. In my experience, quickest way to disarm a Kirpan is to just tell the assailant I'm not a Sikh. I don't understand the theology behind it. As far as I can guess, everyone outside the Khalsa are functionally children, limiting Sikh violence to just other Sikhs. I've observed multiple bizarre Sikh tendencies like that and observe them nowhere else. Another is the tendency for Sikh cab drivers being stabbed or shot after refusing to deny they are muslim, the rate of which far exceeding actual muslims, which means that muslims have less qualms denying they are muslim than sikhs.
Rather strange that FT, a British business newspaper is the primary reporter of such a huge geopolitical event. How come it was the one to contact "the people familiar with the case" first and not literally any American news channel?
> US authorities...issued a warning to India’s government over concerns it was involved in the plot
I'm interested in how some of these diplomacy decisions actually play out. I'm hoping some insider writes a book later.
Compare, for example, the case with Shireen Abu Akleh. It seems very clear she was deliberately killed by the IDF. She was an American citizen, wearing full press gear. As far as I can tell, the US never even gave a "stern warning" to Israel.
A cursory search for Shireen Abu Akleh says she was killed by an Israeli soldisr in the west bank. American citizens dying in a foreign country is not a sovereignty threat
Yes, it's a somewhat different diplomacy issue. Surely, though, a citizen of your country being killed by an allied country's military, that you give billions of dollars to every year, is...an issue of some magnitude?
If this is indeed Indian government they are aware they are conducting an opp on US soil. I have hard time imagining IDF has a policy of deliberately targeting US Citizens.
>I have hard time imagining IDF has a policy of deliberately targeting US Citizens.
I agree with that, but I think it's fairly easy to assume they have a policy of deliberately targeting journalists, the citizenship probably didn't come into play in the decision.
Looking at the history even if such policy exists they are def. trying to avoid targeting western journalists. As sad as it sounds if she looked like a westerner she would prob be alive. On the other hand I have no clue clue if Hamas etc. have history of using vests and other press gear as cover in their ops.
Compare the number of journalists killed in combat for any past entire year globally, and journalists killed in the last 5 weeks in Gaza, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon.
Edit: I did mean "globally". Not compared to some single conflict. Compare to all journalists killed in combat, everywhere, for 2022, 2021, etc. As opposed to 6 weeks in small defined regions.
I don't think there is an equivalent war zone to compare too. Say in Ukraine the front line is 1500 km long vs Gaza is tiny. If majority of journalists were killed from gun fire that would be fairly conclusive if they are killed from shelling or airstrikes it would be less clear.
Re:Edit the point is still the same if the cause is gun shot it's fairly conclusive if the cause is airstrike or shelling than it's more likely to be collateral damage.
More collateral damage to journalists than the sum total of what happened across an entire year across the entire globe. That doesn't raise an eyebrow?
This is most covered conflict playing out in very constrained area again if most deaths are from air strikes or shelling to me it would be indication that collateral damage is more likely explanation if most deaths are from targeted small arms fire it would be indication that journalists are being targeted.
There are pretty few details for me to make a judgment to be honest. From me observing Ukraine war journalists at/or close to the front line are generally with mil. units at or near military positions. So how would you distinguish ?
The links you provide have 0 details other than journalists being in an area where active fighting or fire exchange is happening. If journalists are in an open area not near military units assets or positions and get hit that would obviously indicate they were specifically targeted.
> the US never even gave a "stern warning" to Israel
Washington publicly demanded an independent investigation, in effect calling the Israeli investigation a sham. The FBI even got involved. That’s likely the reason Israel ever admitted that it was an Israeli bullet that killed her.
Also, as other mentioned, getting killed abroad is night and day from getting killed at home.
You do know for tens of millions of Americans rapture and eventual salvation is not possible until Jews are firmly settled in the holy land. Israel has the backing to kill as many as necessary. Who is Shireen Abu Akleh?
It seems a bit different. The claim is that she was in the area where the IDF was capturing terrorists. I don't know if the IDF intentionally targeted her like some claim, but there is at least some plausible deniability that Israel has that India doesn't.
There's a pretty big difference between a soldier during the heat of a firefight shooting someone that (at a distance) they might genuinely perceive as a threat vs a targeted assassination of a political enemy while they eat dinner.
The Mossad is certainly capable of killing people in more low profile ways. There's no reason to believe this was ordered at a high level. Most likely, it was an individual soldier's fault.
And the fact that she had press gear on is really not the kind of guarantee one might hope.
Here's a video of a "medic" grabbing a downed Hamas fighter's AK47 to give it to another fighter so they can use it to try to kill IDF soldiers:
Even the IDF isn't trying to say anything like that. They say it was "accidental". Though there's lots of convincing analysis it was very deliberate. Where the shooter would have been shooting right at 2 people, nobody else in their sights, with blue vests/helmets and "PRESS" labels.
That's actually very much what I'm saying. It may have been accidental in the sense that it was not the deliberate plan of anyone, but happened during combat, due to a soldier's bad/unethical judgement call.
What about them? Almost all of those are examples of the IDF targeting enemy militants who are actively involved in military operations against Israel, many of which have murders innocent civilians.
Seems pretty obvious that the theme among those killings is self-defense. And if a scientist is working on Iran's nuclear weapons program, that counts as self-defense in my book. If someone is a "politician" of an active terrorist organization, that's also fair game to my mind. Bin Laden could be deemed a "politician" by some, but he would be more honestly categorized as a terrorist leader.
If Israel's goal was to kill civilians, they could kill millions of civilians any time they want. They go through effort not to kill civilians.
But I'm in total agreement with people arguing that the IDF should go much further in preventing civilian deaths, even if it results in more IDF deaths, which it likely would.
So if some intelligence agency deems e.g. Ben-Gvir a "politician" of active terrorist organization, it's OK to assassinate him in Israel? How about scientists working on Israel's "possible" nuclear weapons program?
It was probably an individual decision rather than high-level but that's only because the Israeli leadership has normalized killing Palestinian civilians and the military personnel know there will be no repercussions unless it is so bad that they can't cover it up.
They used the normal playbook in this case (blame Palestinian terrorists) and when there was enough evidence to disprove that assertion they just threw up their hands and said "accident" and that was it.
Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. And if it was completely deliberate, with no mitigating circumstances, I'd be in favor of the responsible person being imprisoned for a very long time.
India has been directly accused of this by Canada; confirmed by several sources outside Canada. It's basically impossible to deny India had done this.
Mind you, India hates Canada. We are stealing all their top talent as migrants.
On the subject of khalistan. You drive by a gurduwar here in Canada and they all seem to be pro-khalistan.
They have to do it now. India is about to become the Asian super power in China's collapse. When this shift happens, the sikhs will have no opportunity for independence for probably 200+ years.
> We are stealing all their top talent as migrants.
Lol no. The USA is stealing India's top talent. Canada is just getting whatever residue remains at the bottom of the educational immigration barrel, filled with washouts who couldn't get a job back home so they decided to enroll at a fake degree mill (yes, there are exceptions, far and few).
The top talent part is largely Untrue. That goes to USA. Canada mostly gets a lot of students and the universities they go to for the most part don't have a great reputation.
I mean, it's not Canada's fault or lack of trying. It's very hard to be attractive to top talent when you're next to USA really, especially when most of us are in the tech industry.
Should two of the world's leading democracies fall out over something like this? Both countries have a track record of assassinating national security threats on the territories of other countries, including allied states.
How are you sure it did not happen? I am not suggesting India tried everything first, but neither party here has a proven track record of trustworthiness. If India wants to stop him by any means, the best strategy would be to not ask and be denied; it would be a shame if something happened to him later.
Feel it is worth to note that democracy only concerns how a government is selected within a country. A country’s behavior at the international level is another dimension, not much related to its internal system of governance, at least in principle. Therefore it is not surprising that a democratic country behaves similarly to an autocratic or authoritarian one.
> country’s behavior at the international level is another dimension, not much related to its internal system of governance, at least in principle
I don’t believe this is true, diplomatically or in warfare. Democracies don’t tend to go to war against each other, for example [1]. They also fight harder, and with more technological sophistication, when they wage war.
One tidbit: Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the target in this question, is claimed to be a CIA asset. Recently, he 'threatened to blast' Air India flights. Same group he associated with bombed Air India Flight 182 in 1995, killing 329 folks--and one Canadian security services agent was involved in this blast, that's why Canada sabotaged the investigation [1][2]. Another reason why Canada didn't help the post-blast investigation: victims are not white, and the key suspect in that blast was sought for extradition, but Trudeau's dad declined that extradition request because 'India only recognized Her Majesty as Head of the Commonwealth, and not as Head of State.'[3]
Even some Indian security official claimed that Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is an American asset in a public forum. That's why he can openly call for bombing Indian flights without any repercussions whatsoever, because he is protected by CIA (therefore by FBI/DOJ). 'It is not for any other reason that Indian intelligence chief told the CIA Director that the only reason they don’t take action against SFJ’s G.S Pannun, who holds dual citizenship of US and Canada, for openly calling for assassinations of Indian diplomats and burning of Indian flag could be because he is actually a CIA agent and batting on behalf of Langley.' [4]
> Exactly. And you will find a lot of Khalistani shills here, in this very comment section, defending this Terror group
Almost nobody on here gives a fuck about Khalistan or Sikh separatism, we just don't care for a) the kind of jingoistic attitude that you're exhibiting right now; b) a foreign country killing our citizenry.
> The West should understand clearly that India will not tolerate Terror groups being harboured and protected in the West...We don't owe the West any explanation anymore.
too big for britches. Your country is still fundamentally a third-world country that is reliant on commerce with richer nations. Most of its economic power comes from being really big; but it's not South Korea or Japan, which are successful and developed countries in deeper and more fundamental ways.
> Like literally what is the difference left between a rogue state like Pakistan and US/Canada/UK etc if both are following the same script of harbouring Terrorists on its soil and refusing to extradite them on flimsy grounds?
A third world country where the rule of law applies questionably does not get to decide whether a Canadian or American refusal to extradite is flimsy or not.
And, for all its faults, Pakistan is not a "rogue" state.
I have one parent from India, one parent from Pakistan. I know them both well. They are both shithole countries whose populations have a misplaced, unearned, and arrogant sense of pride.
India has a massive population living in poverty, and remains fairly backwards in a number of ways. It's not an impressive country.
> First learn what "third-world" means. It is not what you think it means. Third-world means those countries who chose to remain non-aligned (part of the Non-Aligned Movement) during the Cold War Era.
I am aware this is where the term originated from. But we both know quite well what it actually means in common parlance, and no amount of "but akshully" from you can change that.
> India is going to be the next superpower after China whether you like it or not. We will exert our dominance to protect our interests whether you like it or not. If you don't like it you can go fuck yourself.
This is tough talk for a country where people live in open sewers in major cities and which recently had to shut down some of those cities due to crisis-level pollution. India cannot compare to China.
You can tell people to fuck themselves over the internet because it angers you that a number of people in this thread bursting your nationalist fantasy bubble and still consider your country a second-rate global actor and D-tier place to live, but at the end of the day we live in a country where the standard of living is simply not within India's reach any time soon, and whose success, in terms of economic dominance, and both soft and hard power, India will never be able to attain.
> Yes it does and we will enforce it whether you like it or not. We will eliminate all terrorists on Western soil and we will do it with or without your approval. We have already done it in Canada. USA is not any different for us.
I would love for the Indian government to be so extreme and reckless so as to keep doing it and force the West to reckon with the kind of country it is and impose some actual penalties--but we both know that India's government, even at their most brazen, are not as courageous as you are over the internet.
We've banned the other account, but you also broke the site guidelines badly in this thread.
We ban accounts that get involved in this kind of flamewar, and we've had to warn you before. If you keep doing it, we'll end up having to ban you too, so please stop.
So the right move was to brazenly assassinate this person instead of accusing them? If what you're saying is true, the Indian government stands to lose quite a bit by killing their strongest evidence of American intervention.
Few things: (a) a sealed indictment wrt the plot against Pannun (b) India openly told CIA that Pannun is a CIA asset, that’s why he was not taken out (c) India wants this guy gone (d) Five eyes taps every diplomatic mission out there.
See all these things in the recent Nijjar-Canada-India tussle. I believe both (b) and (c) are true. SIGINT(d) can hear the chatter that Indian diplomats talked about Pannun.
Given the media is the lapdog of security agencies, we need more than (a) and what Bloomberg/NYtimes/Wapo/AP/FT says. That’s why I consider this saga as a manufactured consent. BTW, I’m not saying that Indian media is sacrosanct.
There is a Punjabi gangs/politicians/khalistan/drug-trade/asylum-immigration-scam nexus.
Those accusations don't change much. I know United States attained Indian communications by using their deeply-integrated FIVE EYES backdoor to identify the collusion to Canada. They actually announced it in the original press release, presumably because it's not bad press relative to the other ways the United States abuses counterintel.
The system is unfair, and I'm not acquitting the US of all responsibility here either. On a global stage though, it should be obvious that nobody cares about this surveillance. We all pay for it and use it every day, and upgrade to new surveillance phones when they come out. Trying to whip up an anti-FIVE EYES sentiment is an obvious ploy by incumbent Indian conservatives (that already control local media) to get things under the radar. America will never declassify the entire report because they never do; any "tip of the hand" would show the world how deep they run. Imagine the fallout if a supposedly "encrypted" channel like WhatsApp or iMessage was abused? It would be Armageddon on the market with the defense sector to blame. America never rolls like that.
There is not a single country on this planet without disdain for superior surveillance, but it the ends are not going to be worth the means in this situation. You just leveled some pretty damning accusations at America; now all you need is evidence and a living diplomat to prosecute and you could prove your point.
Sikh separatist is a bit light, the man (pannu) doesn't even wear a turban and has made videos calling that could be taken as threats to airliners. More of an extremist.
I want to share an anecdote. In the early 2000s, during the H1B blooming period for IT workers in the Bay Area, an Indian friend living in Fremont used to tell me that an Indian “detective” agency was active locally making sure that role placements were not jeopardized.
The Indian govt is saying that the conversation mentioned in FT was related to organized crime [0].
This does track with the modus operandi I've been hearing about. The IB/RAW attaché has been placing hits on a couple of these people [1] (please find the Vancouver Sun article the ToI article is basing it on - ti Google fu is failing me but I remember reading it back in July).
In general, there is an ongoing gang war in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, and the US-Canada Diaspora after the AAP won Punjab elections.
In Punjabi politics there is often implicit coordination between specific gangs and parties. Some gangsters would align with SAD, and others with INC. After the AAP won in 2022, the entire system fell apart, as the AAP is the new kid in town, and plenty of older gangs and biradiris didn't have links with them. Add to that the ongoing gang war in Delhi NCR as development is speeding up, meant that there are new players entering the game and there's active consolidation both between parties and gangs.
I guess Lawrence Bishnoi has turned to a RAW asset based on all of this news.
I was surprised how many people sided with India when they assassinated that Sikh in Canada. Especially considering the Indian response was basically "Yea well he deserved it, though it wasn't us."
Some of what was going on was entering hate speech. There were posters of Indian consulate folks with crosses on them near the gurudwaras. Those folks received death threats, threats of their kids getting kidnapped.
Anyone advocating for violence and death is a no-no in my book.
Peaceful protests are perfectly fine but this was in gray area.
213 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 308 ms ] threadCanada hasn’t even risked releasing any evidence months later. The issue seems DOA.
The investigation is progressing at a normal pace. It’s incorrect to suggest it’s DOA. It also had a multibillion-dollar impact on multiple Indian investments, so to suggest it had no consequences is also wrong. (On a fundamental level, the killings Streisand effected the Khalistan cause. I’m of Indian descent and had not heard of Operation Blue Star [1].)
> Canada hasn’t even risked releasing any evidence
If the intel was American SIGINT, Ottawa wouldn’t have the authority to unilaterally release it.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Blue_Star
They havent released any details of how they knew, we learned it was US from journalism. If they violated our sovereignty we have a right to know the details. The Indian gov can figure out they were wiretapped already. If ever there was grounds for releasing sensitive Intel this was it.
When the Saudis killed that journalist it was revealed that Turkey had microphones inside their embassy. This is not some huge deal to reveal espionage of other agencies when the stakes are so high.
I’m not sure what sort of evidence you think they’ll suddenly discover 6 months later which justifies not explaining the details which cause them to make the accusation in the first place.
I don’t get how they can’t tell the public what the Indian gov specifically did but it was worth imposing the consequences of making the accusations public?
We do. But not immediately.
> Indian gov can figure out they were wiretapped already
But not how. Given how shadily they’re behaving, I wouldn’t want to declassify sources and methods too hastily either. If the rewards from keeping those methods live outweigh the gains from disclosure, that’s a valid foreign policy call.
> but it was worth imposing the consequences of making the accusations public
From all accounts, it going public was an accident. Ottawa was forced by the media getting a whiff of it. Washington made grunts and groans when necessary.
If you don't understand the issue better not to comment on it. It has nothing to do with Israel-Gaza War and is not at all like it. Khalistani Terrorism is a fringe extremist movement that never took off in India. All the Terrorists who supported it ran to Canada, UK and US and sought refuge there. Don't forget that there are 26 million Sikhs in the World, with 20 million living in India and that too in one State of Punjab alone. The Khalistanis who live in the West hardly account for even 100,000 in total. They cannot and will never speak on behalf of the entire Sikh community. They just don't have the numbers.
If the West wants to break relations with India by supporting this Terror group then it can do so. But we won't let our sovereignty and territorial integrity be threatened by a group we consider equivalent to Al Qaeda/Taliban. This group has been instrumental in bombing of Air India Flight 182 in which 268 Canadian Citizens were killed. India had asked for extradition of the Terrorist who carried out the bombing 40 years ago before the bombing even took place. The Prime Minister of Canada then (Trudeau's father) denied the extradition. And because he denied the extradition, the Terrorist was able to plot the attack and carry out the deadliest Terror attack in Canadian history.
Learn your history before it is too late!
I guess I understand why they’re pissed off now.
> West wants to break relations with India by supporting this Terror group
False dichotomy. You don’t conduct extrajudicial killings on American soil, full stop. If you do, you’re an enemy. This is a line even the Soviets respected. (And if you attempt it, don’t do it so stupidly you get caught. Twice.)
Consider the political repercussions of America offing an Indian right now. Of course it would kill coöperation. No matter how much it made sense. It would be difficult to imagine the contrition it would take to heal that wound. And currently, there is zero contrition coming from New Delhi.
> Learn your history before it is too late
It’s never too late. And there are tens of thousands of frozen conflicts worldwide. The only reason this one is relevant is because New Delhi made the Khalistani cause international news.
I am sure you don't. Because you don't seem to be coming off as someone who is genuinely ignorant about this issue considering you have been defending Khalistanis everywhere and in every comment. If some Terror group takes over the Vatican, executes the Pope and seizes it, I am sure US would be sending in Special Forces into the Vatican liberating the City and not be wasting time negotiating with Terrorists. India on the other hand only launched Operation Blue Star when getting the Terrorists to surrender through peaceful negotiations failed. We waited and negotiated for 2 effing long years before finally deciding to send in the Indian Army. If India's Operation Blue Star was something that offended the Sikh population in India, 20 million Sikhs would have fought back. And Sikhs are known to be one of the strongest warriors, don't take BS and are very straightforward.
> You don’t conduct extrajudicial killings on American soil, full stop
Why? Is America some God given land that is not to be touched? What sort of BS is this? You are holding Terrorists who are literally issuing threats to our Diplomats putting up massive hoardings calling for their Assassinations and then also threatening to bomb our planes and airport, and we have to just sit quiet and do nothing while your stupid bureaucracy doesn't move an inch forward in extraditing them? We are not morons here. We will seek and destroy all Terrorists wherever they may live. Even on the Holy Land of America. Consider it a favour from our end for not making your innocent Citizens go through another 9/11. India should have done an extra-judicial killing of these Terrorists 4 decades ago. Then Air India Flight 182 would never have been bombed and 268 innocent Canadian Citizens wouldn't have lost their precious lives. Because PM Pierre Trudeau had an Ego issue for not approving the Extradition. You know why that fool did not approve the Extradition? Because he stated that India did not recognize the Queen as the Constitutional Monarch despite being in the Commonwealth. Yes, this is the retarded reasoning he gave for not approving extradition of a dreaded Terrorist. He said that "India was insufficiently deferential to the Queen". That India only recognized the Queen as Head of Commonwealth and not Head of State of India.
> Consider the political repercussions of America offing an Indian right now
Again read your history. CIA has been involved in offing plenty Indian Nuclear scientists. Read up on "India's vanishing nuclear scientists" [1].
It is ridiculous to see a Westerner talking against "extra-judicial killings" when the West does this all the damn time! Was offing Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan not extra-judicial killing? Was drone strikes in Pakistan not extra-judicial killing? WTF are you talking about mate?
You are truly ignorant and living under a rock! Study your history. It is full of West backstabbing of India. India has always been on the right side of history and history will judge us positively for that.
[1]: https://asiatimes.com/2019/07/indias-vanishing-nuclear-scien...
> Is America some God given land that is not to be touched?
Yes, to Americans, obviously.
> CIA has been involved in offing plenty Indian Nuclear scientists
Got it, a CIA operative went on the record with a Hong Kong newspaper to out a conspiracy that nobody in New Delhi bothered to notice.
> India has always been on the right side of history and history will judge us positively for that
This is common to hear in India. It is, obviously, wrong—no people or even person can say this universally. But it’s also dangerous. Because it’s an attitude that tends to precede a predictable path of politics that accompanies a loss of honest introspection. (If you’ve always been right, no need to interrogate the past.)
And I have no idea what Canada's purported "poker hand" was. The government revealed an incident when the media discovered it and it continues at its normal pace behind the scenes. India had an apocalyptic, absurdly over the top fit and Canada yawned. India has literally zero sway over Canada so it was all rather ridiculous.
And this US revelation clearly springs from exactly the same well (via exactly the same intelligence sharing). I mean, when the Canada revelation happened the US leaked that they were investigating something and has repeatedly announced their concern about this. If anything the outsized Indian reaction to Canada was precisely because they thought they could preempt this from the US.
Thank you for saying this. It's nice to know there are still reasonable people here.
This is diplomatic and precedent setting as much as it’s a pursuit of some specific criminal justice.
Obsessing about not disrupting the the economic/diplomatic/immigration status quo, not offending anybody even when they seriously violate your sovereignty, and just generally playing nice guy is not how you deal with this sort of situation.
Extrajudicial killings by governments have happened for time eternal. There is absolutely nothing new or precedent setting about this. The truth is that most of the time governments deal with it quietly and behind the scenes. It's actually incredibly odd for the US to have announced what they have, and it is almost certainly because of the Canada thing.
>a leader who clearly isn’t respected enough
You have partisan glasses on. What do you think any other leader would have done? Would Harper have declared war? Would PP in the future?
Given that India absolutely flipped their shit (they've backtracked on all of it, as an aside...so powerful), clearly Canada's announcement by itself was an enormous action.
But seriously, what do you think the US is going to do? The most powerful nation on the planet is going to...send some diplomatic cables and express their disatisfaction.
If Canada had any sway, they could prod US to delay or suspend military tech transfer to India to compel an investigation. But obviously Canada doesn't have that kind of leverage.
Canada is completing its investigation, at which point they'll name various Indian government agents and charge them with murder. India will declare diplomatic immunity. Do you really think the horrendously corrupt Modi government is going to investigate its own actions in any meaningful or viable way?
And just to be clear, the US announcing what they did is clearly putting its full weight behind Canada's findings.
I think US has the leverage to at least compel Modi to pretend to cooperate, or at least offer up fall guys like they did MBS over Khashoggi, if they were to put full weight behind Canada. Which they haven't, except to affirm Canadian findings, which they pretty much have to unless they want to blow up US/CAN relations. Current rhetorical support is meaningless.
I think the situation isn't as bad as it seems from the inside.
In defense of Trudeau: ask a number of people outside Canada to name any Canadian Prime Ministers, and I bet most of them will readily be able to name only Trudeau. I just looked at the Wikipedia list and I only recognized four names, one of them because I knew Justin Trudeau's dad had once been Prime Minister, and one of them because Nardwuar embarrassed him once. What I'm saying is, I don't think there's some golden age of Canadian global influence that Justin Trudeau has caused you to fall from, and if that's your measure, he's actually not doing too bad.
Regards,
Justin Trudeau
The best part was the continued assertions that Canada stood alone (courtesy of our navel gazing, self-critical media which is how it should be, but is a bit asymmetrical when countering fanatics), all the while the US continually stated that they backed Canada. Indeed, it is overwhelmingly likely that the intel for both incidents had a common source.
Another interesting revelation that flew under the radar-
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/30/indian-opposition-leaders-...
The Modi government of India is basically acting like an autocracy now. All of the Indians who spent so much time attacking Canada might spend a little more time looking inwards.
But any government that delivers 8% growth is safe, and currently Modi is doing so.
Correct. This is actually a criticism of Cold War era U.S. foreign politics, where a short-term “win” was prioritised over strategic alignment, the lesson being it almost always backfired.
The only way we can build resilient alliances is by turning friends into allies, not those we’d like to ally with into “friends.” My concern is we’re doing the latter, again, with India.
The basic problem being the need for trust that things will last past the head of state.
For example, in Punjab the main Punjabi news channel (PTC) is owned by the Badal family - who used to control Punjab as leaders of SAD until 2018 when they lost elections to the INC and then the AAP in 2022.
The main Tamil language news media company Sun Group is owned by the grand-nephew of the founder of the ruling DMK.
The 2 main Telegu language media companies - ETV and Sakshi TV - are owned by businessmen related to the leaders of the BRS and YSRCP respectively.
The BJP will end up losing power at some point, but Indian media is already owned by political dynasties and that will never change.
Another disaster was his handling of Covid. People were literally begging on streets for oxygen cylinders. He can't put together a sentence to speak in front of media w\o reading from a prompter. He's winning elections by hyped-up narratives, playing with emotions, oppression, lies, religion and caste play cards.
https://www.indianpunchline.com/nijjar-affair-poses-an-exist...
”All in all, the Nijjar affair takes the lid off the acute contradictions in India’s foreign policies. The assumptions driving the foreign policy’s China-centric thrust turn out to be delusional; the “westernist” trajectory has landed in a cul-de-sac; the assiduously propagated larger-than-life global image of India turns out to be a mirage; foreign policy built on personality cult and opportunism rather than rational and consistent principles attuned to the world in transition got battered; and, most important, the hubris in India’s diplomacy boomeranged.
The Nijjar affair poses an existential dilemma. Surrendering to the US diktat will make India look a surrogate state and a laughing stock in the Global South. Indians won’t approve of it.
On the contrary, ignoring the diktat will be hugely consequential. Make no mistake, Five Eyes had a gory history against the Soviet Union; in the post-cold war era, it all but destabilised Hong Kong, and is today an active player in Myanmar and Thailand in India’s neighbourhood. Its entry in the subcontinent is ominous.“
And then (strangely more vigorous)
https://www.indianpunchline.com/india-wont-be-bullied-in-mul...
He leans pro-Russia and anti-American.
[0] - https://valdaiclub.com/about/experts/341/
[1] - https://new.thecradle.co/columns/mk-bhadrakumar
> He leans pro-Russia and anti-American
Good for him. It’s a free world and he’s entitled to his views and preferences. Regardless, he is intelligent, highly experienced, and provides a fresh (“oh no”) perspective on these matters.
When has germany deployed assassination?
If the West were trying to destabilize India I suspect it would be incredibly easy to achieve, which is exactly why there is that defensiveness and hitting at shadows. But the West isn't because India has long been a useful counter to regional powers.
What is absolutely true is that the Modi government is spectacularly corrupt. Every opponent of Modi is a "terrorist" -- even opponents in government. The government is falling further and further down the well towards fascism, all while proud Indians convince themselves that everyone else is actually the problem.
This is a common tendency for many Americans, read 10 uni-dimensional articles in your favorite newspaper on some topic, do not bother to read any history on said topic, then come to strong opinions and bully people who see things differently. Maybe it is you who should put down the "propaganda pipe" and consider this issue for the complicated nuanced thing it is.
The real issue is they wanted to kill someone who wasn't a criminal. Which, ultimately, is just plain old homicide.
In the short-term, maybe, but none of them are benefitting from an India who feels it can bully any of the other five
Same thing happens when Canada criticizes Saudi Arabia, etc.
That said, Panun did also threaten to blow up an Air India flight by Nov 19th (clearly didn't happen).
That said, there won't be blowback between India and US relations as a whole. The US is too important to India and India is too important to the US.
The Indian method also sucks from an OpSec standpoint - Indian agencies transfer Senior Police from state level to RAW or IB and those state police departments might brag about it on their websites. This is a big issue with Punjab Police (who tend to manage the Khalistan issue)
Source?
The article says “Pannun angered Indian officials this month by issuing a video in which he warned Sikhs not to fly on Air India because it would be ‘life threatening’ and that “he told the FT he was not making a violent threat against the airline.
Given the context of Sikhs being murdered overseas by New Delhi, that statement seems to have multiple reasonable interpretations.
If this is the best source available, we’re probably best without it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182
Not really? Threats require specificity and credibility. Using simply ethnicity or even cause as the sole qualifier for credibility isn’t something most people do.
This is a person with a history of provocations making an indirect threat. I’m not saying he deserves punishment, but I can see why the Indian government would take his threat very seriously.
It’s sort of like an Iranian student group saying American Airlines isn’t safe to fly anymore. Like, okay? Not nice. But not quite a threat. (Certainly not a credible one.)
Is there a credible translation? The parts in English are indistinguishable from a call for boycott. (Not disagreeing.)
In the beginning after saying 'we are urging Sikhs not to fly Air India' in English, which sounds like boycott, he switches to Hindi[0] and says similar with 'on the 19th November' (unnis navambar ko) - why would a boycott be so specific; then he says same date 'Indira Gandhi airport [Delhi international, i.e. North India but not Punjab] will be closed' (band rahega).
Later he says something about 'khalistani airport' which I would guess is his way of referring to Amritsar or Chandigarh (the two international airports in Punjab afaict, perhaps the former because it's cleanly Punjab vs. the latter seems to be the capital city of both Punjab and Haryana states, kind of an interesting quirk) but it's difficult for me to understand much more. Edit: actually it's Chandigarh, I just realised the sentence is 'Shaheed Bhagat Singh [name of Chandigarh airport] will be the khalistani airport' (khalistani airport hoega). Again you could say it's a boycott: take your money to Punjab's airports, not Delhi's - but why's the latter 'closed', why 19 November specifically. As an economic boycott, that being done by the subset of Sikhs who follow him on a single day would have trivial impact, it'd be completely inconsequential.
I realise that's not much, maybe it helps a bit, I was mainly interested for myself as a learning exercise really! (My vocabulary's quite limited, but more than that I struggle just with listening/speaking fast enough, so trying to practice more in ways other than reading.)
[0] or maybe Punjabi, I'd have thought it would be, and they're similar enough spoken that I'd pick bits up anyway, but seems more familiar (i.e. Hindi) word endings/conjugations to me (even where I don't know the actual word) than there would be if it was Punjabi (which I might recognise from '-da's and '-di's for example)
Specific date and limited specific location boycotts are a frequently done because they are easier to motivate people for the amount of symbolic impact (because people can rearrange purchases rather than actually cancel them), and because they can prime people for a longer or more general boycott. Its not an uncommon strategy. (People do argue against it because the impacts are largely symbolic, for the same reasons it is easier to organize, and because there is an argument that they can lead to exhaustion -- "I've done the one thing and now you want more" -- more than priming. So there is controversy in the kinds of groups that call for boycotts about them, but, they are still a thing that is done, not an unplausible boycott technique that makes "threat" the only plausible interpretation.)
Do you, in your reading, see a threat? Because I’m not. (Certainly not “that Indira Gandhi Airport will be attacked on November 19th.”)
I think it’s dramatically framed to generate clicks. But a lot of right-wing gun crap also sounds like that, and I don’t think they’re always making credible threats.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2017/01/2...
Translates to: "Sikh people (panth) don't travel in Air India after 19th November. There will be a threat to your life (Jaanu = Life, khatra = Threat, ho sagda hai = possibility of a threat)"
Who will threaten Sikh lives in Air India after 19th November? It is literally reminder of Air India Flight 182 bombings.
For whatever it's worth, I concur with that transcription & its translation - I can't find jaanu online but it's so close to Hindi (jaan) that I don't doubt it at all. (It's a hell of a lot easier for me to realise what he's saying when it's written out by someone else, heh.)
(I've also vouched for parent comment, it's informative and afaict accurate, I don't understand why it would be dead.)
For what? He only partially translated the text. Pannun literally issues a threat in the video: "Jaanu khatra ho sagda hai" which translates to "Your life will be in Danger". He is telling the Sikhs not to board Air India flights after November 19th and that there will be threat to their lives. In other words, he is saying they will repeat what they did to Air India Flight 182: bomb the planes mid air. And that Sikhs should not travel Air India from November 19th onwards as he doesn't want any Sikh to lose his/her life in the bombings.
Just ask any Punjabi speaker and he will tell you the same thing!
I can't believe you people see conspiracy in everything! Get your head out of the sand. The West is harbouring dangerous criminals and terrorists. They owe you no loyalty. They will destroy your society. India is in the right here.
Anything I missed is just because I'm learning Hindi, can't follow quickly, have limited vocabulary, and he's speaking Punjabi anyway which is slightly different as you know. I only offered an attempt at a partial translation at all as a sort of learning exercise for myself, and because fluent speakers hadn't chimed in at that point.
Nothing to do with you though! Sorry if it came across that way!
EDIT: Also if I might add, whatever you translated was accurate. Great job! Your Hindi is already pretty good! And it is surprising you were able to pick that up from Punjabi which is definitely a lot different in comparison to Hindi!
It is.
Sannu Punjabi andhi hai. Koi Pakistani hega is thead vich jo translation nu verify vi kar sakta hai?
Hell, we speak the same language (kinda, I know it's a lingua franca etc)! So why are we allies with Pakistan, a country that openly hates us, instead of India?
We increasingly are.
> why are we allies with Pakistan, a country that openly hates us, instead of India?
India openly allied with the Soviets, so we took the other side. Also, India was an immature democracy through the 70s, when it flirted with outright authoritarianism. It isn’t until recently that it has become a middle-income democracy with a high-income upper-middle class and cosmopolitan elite.
I’m afraid you have it backwards. India and the Soviet Union signed a treaty only after the US sent its seventh fleet towards India during the 1971 India-Pakistan conflict. US supported Pakistan in the war and India had no choice but to align with the Soviets to deter them.
New Delhi and Moscow were transferring technology in “steel, defense, railways, construction equipment, metal & mining [and] petrochemicals” by the time “Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union supported India's stance on the Kashmir conflict against Pakistan and over Portuguese coastal enclaves such as Goa” in 1955 [1]. The MiG-21 was co-produced in India in the 1960s.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/India–Soviet_Union_relations...
Co-producing warplanes is as good as a treaty. Right in front of leaders visiting each others’ capitals.
Bottom line is India never courted the West. Pakistan did. Neither drove the other into anyone’s arms; American relations in Pakistan were focussed on the Middle East, India’s in the Soviets with China. When the theatre shifted to India v Pakistan, the table was already set and everyone assumed their places.
The point is it’s difficult seeing history following a different path. America was rebuilding and de-colonialising Europe. That required involvement in the Middle East. It was simultaneously countering the Soviets, globally. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was the only one concerned about Chinese army’s potential in Central Asia. India, being close to that, was similarly concerned. (As it remains.)
> 180 degree reversal
Got it, we should ditch India and give weapons to China.
We shouldn’t be cozying up to anyone for the sake of it. And we should think twice about what we do with a state blundering its way into the extrajudicial killing club on our own soil.
You just described what US has been doing for the past 7 decades.
Well, yes, it's a double standard. But even we didn't try assassinations within the Russian SSR. Again, not because we're righteous. But because we aren't stupid. If we got caught, it would create blowback for us and sympathy for the Soviets. (Also, we weren't courting alliance, investment and trade with the Soviets?)
Like what we're seeing now. Incompetently-executed covert actions. Plenty of blowback. International awareness and with it, sympathy, for a group that previously had neither. (Going out on a limb and guessing this story is being milked for fundraising in the Gulf.)
Where we commonly see extrajudicial activity is in places generally considered lawless and/or powerless. And in most of those cases, I would argue it served to undermine American interests in the long run.
Not really, no. One is a financial commitment, the other is a military commitment. They're very different.
India never courted the West because Pakistan already had close relations with them. The order matters since your argument is US aligned with Pakistan only because India aligned with Soviet Union. US had its own motivations (obviously) around curtailing Soviet influence in Afghanistan.
The U.S. co-producing nuclear submarines with Australia isn’t a military commitment?
> your argument is US aligned with Pakistan only because India aligned with Soviet Union
This was never said? We didn’t ally with India because it was allied with the Soviets. We have no problem allying with both sides of a regional spat e.g. Israel & Saudi Arabia, Turkey & Greece and Japan & Korea.
I mean troop commitment. Will the US send a naval fleet to Australia if the latter is attacked?
You’re kidding, right? Of course we would. (Unless it’s chickenshit business, like Indonesia and Oz getting into a coast guard squabble over migrant boats.)
When you co-produce weapons, you send high-ranking technical advisors and expensive kit that needs guarding. This is why e.g. deploying a ballistic missile radar isn’t just plopping down a radar. It involves deploying troops around it. We have defence treaties with countries whom we don’t trust enough to co-produce with. Co-production is a big deal.
India and Soviet Union had a different kind of co-production deal. It has always been, even to this day with Russia, technology transfer and licensing i.e. you help develop systems and then fully hand over to India. No troop deployment, you're only in it for the money. The BrahMos missile development is the best example of this.
No troops, but certainly Russians. When the “help develop systems” part is in effect, you’re as good as allies.
There are more broken defence treaties than cases of military technology coöperation betrayals. That is why those deals are so closely scrutinised. Treaties promise something in the future. Co-production delivers something today.
Maybe there was foreign policy naïveté in New Delhi at the time. I don’t think so, but perhaps. On the Soviet side, they certainly knew what they were doing.
Sure, I agree with that. But there are different degrees of being allies. "Help develop systems" is nowhere near "risk your own troops to defend another country" (a.k.a. NATO). That's the distinction I'm trying to make.
The Soviets didn’t put boots on the ground, so a similar risk wasn’t present. But one, that wasn’t knowable at the time. And two, there absolutely would have been Russian assets in the vicinity while everyone was learning how to do their jobs.
India and the US did court each other til the mid-1960s. IIT Kharagpur was built by UIUC and IIT Kanpur by UC Berkeley, along with JK Galbraith's strong lobbying for Indians rule industrialization in "Economic Development" and "The New Industrial State".
After JFK and Nehru died, the relationship tanked. Indira Gandhi leaned pro-Socialist economically with the 1969-73 nationalization drive that impacted American businesses, and LBJ and Nixon both detested Indira at a personal level (though to be fair the feeling was mutual). India supported the North Vietnamese during the war [0] and also began military tech transfers with the USSR and France during that time period [1] due to their mutual "Non Aligned" policy.
There was an actual chance that India would have become a global factory, but the nationalization drive in the 70s and 80s [2] lead to American enterprises in India shifting to newly open China
[0] - https://academic.oup.com/book/32264/chapter-abstract/2684597...
[1] - https://academic.oup.com/book/10629/chapter-abstract/1586347...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/12/archives/reaction-is-mixe...
US took Pakistan's side first, we only made the Indo-Soviet friendship deal in 71 because we had no other choice, or just accept being obliterated by US Navy while intervening in Bangladesh. We were one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned movement of third world countries and one of the leaders of that group. We did not want to be involved in cold war between the west and USSR and took no sides until we were forced to for survival.
Can you imagine that? The world's strongest and second-strongest democracies aiming their guns at the world's largest on behalf of an Islamist-Military dictatorship that was committing a genocide.
As usual, Americans forget all of this or don't even bother to read about it in the first place.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38380982
The reason the US does not like China is not because of their economy but their politics and military ambitions. Both China and India have nukes so they can defend their territory against the US just fine. China wants to expand into taiwan, the south china see and even some west china territory India controls and who knows what else.
If you think about it, being wealtheir than the US does not affect the US much so long as the US is still a competing consumer economy and the dollar is the global currency (kind of like english being lingua franca, unless the world trusts China more than the US to pay its bills, RMB will never displace the dollar ) what changes for the US? So long as GDP is the same and the US does not rely on exports for survival it can still maintain the most powerful military. The problem is with China using their wealth to compete with the US military similar to USSR which might lead to a world war 3 situation.
India on the other hand, no doubt will improve its military but I don't see India spending 100B+ a year on military or foreign bases and multiple aircraft carrier strike force groups and all that. The only real conflict opportunity for India are pakistan and China but if India is allied with the US then the US and NATO countries will be a deterrent. Much of why India is neutral on ukraine and won't publicly be closer to the US is a result of economic dependencies such as oil and trade routes. A prosperous india might be able to break free from those shackles and equally compete with EU and the US as well as with China.
The EU is a society that is winding down.
Americans are sensible and realize the future of innovation and progress lies in countries that have young people.
A bunch of old Europeans are not a threat. Europe is utterly feckless anyway and is unlikely to ever be able to field a large enough army to actually be a threat
Reminds me of that attempted mass murder at yet another Winter Festival in France - doesn't make any sense that this would happen again and again by Islamists from a US perspective, but from a "fuck it, we're just giving up" perspective it makes perfect sense.
In a list of American geopolitical concerns, a traditional force on force land invasion wouldn't even make it into the top 100. Swap out "Europe" for any other political entity real or imagined and it would make no difference.
Have you watched our politics? We don’t want to run shit. Running shit is expensive.
Also, America did run the show. Twice. After WWII, when it held a global nuclear hegemony. And after the fall of the Soviet Union, when it was the sole superpower. Both times we basically did everything we could to slough off the responsibility.
Of course we want more influence. But we don't want to run things.
It's not because we're nice people or whatever. It's because we're a maritime and trade power while our competitors have historically been land powers. We want someone rich we can trade with who takes care of their own problems at home.
> Do you not understand these goals have been accomplished with only Russia and China pushing back?
A lot of the world is constantly pushing back against all kinds of hegemony. To add to your list, there is no love lost for America in Brazil, much of Africa, most of the Arab world nor in Central Asia.
> What US wants occurs
Have you seen how discordant our alliance talks are? They're multilateral and messy. The only reason Europe and America are in step with one another is because of Russia. The only reason the Quad exists is because of China.
Only in population, which is irrelevant, since nobody is contemplating a land war. Economically [1] and militarily [2], America has bigger allies.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...
[2] https://power.lowyinstitute.org/data/military-capability/sig...
But India hates playing the second fiddle, so they don’t want be a traditional “ally” that the US can push around at will. They want to be more like “partners”.
Pakistan is okay with giving up sovereignty of American military bases. India is not. Thus the US nominally allies with Pakistan and India steers clear because of that.
Although as others have said, India clearly favors the US these days
It's also why the US was down with Cambodia (they, together with China opposed Vietnam, who the US opposed because it decided to intervene in the losing side of a failed French colonial conflict.)
Also, western governments pay very little attention to understanding India, it's all colonial era stereotypes for the most part. Even the largest and most well known newspapers rarely send anyone with a deep understanding of the country to cover it, and they give a very shallow lopsided, uni-dimensional impressions of the country to their audience.
I'm interested in how some of these diplomacy decisions actually play out. I'm hoping some insider writes a book later.
Compare, for example, the case with Shireen Abu Akleh. It seems very clear she was deliberately killed by the IDF. She was an American citizen, wearing full press gear. As far as I can tell, the US never even gave a "stern warning" to Israel.
I agree with that, but I think it's fairly easy to assume they have a policy of deliberately targeting journalists, the citizenship probably didn't come into play in the decision.
Compare the number of journalists killed in combat for any past entire year globally, and journalists killed in the last 5 weeks in Gaza, the West Bank, and southern Lebanon.
Edit: I did mean "globally". Not compared to some single conflict. Compare to all journalists killed in combat, everywhere, for 2022, 2021, etc. As opposed to 6 weeks in small defined regions.
There was also a specific aerial bombing of a journalist's two story home that looks very targeted.[3]
Counting just face to face killings seems flawed. It really appears like they have some flow of intelligence to act on in many ways.
[1] https://news.sky.com/video/israeli-airstrike-on-south-lebano...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/reuters-videograph...
[3] https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-strike-kills-family-repo...
Washington publicly demanded an independent investigation, in effect calling the Israeli investigation a sham. The FBI even got involved. That’s likely the reason Israel ever admitted that it was an Israeli bullet that killed her.
Also, as other mentioned, getting killed abroad is night and day from getting killed at home.
The Mossad is certainly capable of killing people in more low profile ways. There's no reason to believe this was ordered at a high level. Most likely, it was an individual soldier's fault.
And the fact that she had press gear on is really not the kind of guarantee one might hope.
Here's a video of a "medic" grabbing a downed Hamas fighter's AK47 to give it to another fighter so they can use it to try to kill IDF soldiers:
https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/17rff07/west...
But who cares, right?
If Israel's goal was to kill civilians, they could kill millions of civilians any time they want. They go through effort not to kill civilians.
But I'm in total agreement with people arguing that the IDF should go much further in preventing civilian deaths, even if it results in more IDF deaths, which it likely would.
They used the normal playbook in this case (blame Palestinian terrorists) and when there was enough evidence to disprove that assertion they just threw up their hands and said "accident" and that was it.
Mind you, India hates Canada. We are stealing all their top talent as migrants.
On the subject of khalistan. You drive by a gurduwar here in Canada and they all seem to be pro-khalistan.
They have to do it now. India is about to become the Asian super power in China's collapse. When this shift happens, the sikhs will have no opportunity for independence for probably 200+ years.
Lol no. The USA is stealing India's top talent. Canada is just getting whatever residue remains at the bottom of the educational immigration barrel, filled with washouts who couldn't get a job back home so they decided to enroll at a fake degree mill (yes, there are exceptions, far and few).
I mean, it's not Canada's fault or lack of trying. It's very hard to be attractive to top talent when you're next to USA really, especially when most of us are in the tech industry.
Anecdotally, I have met many Indian people in IT and they have all been top talent.
I think the cardinal sin here is not trying to extradite the person, or asking the host country for permission or assistance via some backchannel.
I don’t believe this is true, diplomatically or in warfare. Democracies don’t tend to go to war against each other, for example [1]. They also fight harder, and with more technological sophistication, when they wage war.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patrick-Mello/publicati...
Even some Indian security official claimed that Gurpatwant Singh Pannun is an American asset in a public forum. That's why he can openly call for bombing Indian flights without any repercussions whatsoever, because he is protected by CIA (therefore by FBI/DOJ). 'It is not for any other reason that Indian intelligence chief told the CIA Director that the only reason they don’t take action against SFJ’s G.S Pannun, who holds dual citizenship of US and Canada, for openly calling for assassinations of Indian diplomats and burning of Indian flag could be because he is actually a CIA agent and batting on behalf of Langley.' [4]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182
[2] https://espionage.substack.com/p/canadian-intelligences-dirt...
[3] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/a-tale-of-tw...
[4] https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/view-how-trudeau-s-a...
Almost nobody on here gives a fuck about Khalistan or Sikh separatism, we just don't care for a) the kind of jingoistic attitude that you're exhibiting right now; b) a foreign country killing our citizenry.
> The West should understand clearly that India will not tolerate Terror groups being harboured and protected in the West...We don't owe the West any explanation anymore.
too big for britches. Your country is still fundamentally a third-world country that is reliant on commerce with richer nations. Most of its economic power comes from being really big; but it's not South Korea or Japan, which are successful and developed countries in deeper and more fundamental ways.
> Like literally what is the difference left between a rogue state like Pakistan and US/Canada/UK etc if both are following the same script of harbouring Terrorists on its soil and refusing to extradite them on flimsy grounds?
A third world country where the rule of law applies questionably does not get to decide whether a Canadian or American refusal to extradite is flimsy or not.
And, for all its faults, Pakistan is not a "rogue" state.
I have one parent from India, one parent from Pakistan. I know them both well. They are both shithole countries whose populations have a misplaced, unearned, and arrogant sense of pride.
India has a massive population living in poverty, and remains fairly backwards in a number of ways. It's not an impressive country.
> First learn what "third-world" means. It is not what you think it means. Third-world means those countries who chose to remain non-aligned (part of the Non-Aligned Movement) during the Cold War Era.
I am aware this is where the term originated from. But we both know quite well what it actually means in common parlance, and no amount of "but akshully" from you can change that.
> India is going to be the next superpower after China whether you like it or not. We will exert our dominance to protect our interests whether you like it or not. If you don't like it you can go fuck yourself.
This is tough talk for a country where people live in open sewers in major cities and which recently had to shut down some of those cities due to crisis-level pollution. India cannot compare to China.
You can tell people to fuck themselves over the internet because it angers you that a number of people in this thread bursting your nationalist fantasy bubble and still consider your country a second-rate global actor and D-tier place to live, but at the end of the day we live in a country where the standard of living is simply not within India's reach any time soon, and whose success, in terms of economic dominance, and both soft and hard power, India will never be able to attain.
> Yes it does and we will enforce it whether you like it or not. We will eliminate all terrorists on Western soil and we will do it with or without your approval. We have already done it in Canada. USA is not any different for us.
I would love for the Indian government to be so extreme and reckless so as to keep doing it and force the West to reckon with the kind of country it is and impose some actual penalties--but we both know that India's government, even at their most brazen, are not as courageous as you are over the internet.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We ban accounts that get involved in this kind of flamewar, and we've had to warn you before. If you keep doing it, we'll end up having to ban you too, so please stop.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules from now on, we'd appreciate it.
See all these things in the recent Nijjar-Canada-India tussle. I believe both (b) and (c) are true. SIGINT(d) can hear the chatter that Indian diplomats talked about Pannun.
Given the media is the lapdog of security agencies, we need more than (a) and what Bloomberg/NYtimes/Wapo/AP/FT says. That’s why I consider this saga as a manufactured consent. BTW, I’m not saying that Indian media is sacrosanct.
There is a Punjabi gangs/politicians/khalistan/drug-trade/asylum-immigration-scam nexus.
The system is unfair, and I'm not acquitting the US of all responsibility here either. On a global stage though, it should be obvious that nobody cares about this surveillance. We all pay for it and use it every day, and upgrade to new surveillance phones when they come out. Trying to whip up an anti-FIVE EYES sentiment is an obvious ploy by incumbent Indian conservatives (that already control local media) to get things under the radar. America will never declassify the entire report because they never do; any "tip of the hand" would show the world how deep they run. Imagine the fallout if a supposedly "encrypted" channel like WhatsApp or iMessage was abused? It would be Armageddon on the market with the defense sector to blame. America never rolls like that.
There is not a single country on this planet without disdain for superior surveillance, but it the ends are not going to be worth the means in this situation. You just leveled some pretty damning accusations at America; now all you need is evidence and a living diplomat to prosecute and you could prove your point.
This does track with the modus operandi I've been hearing about. The IB/RAW attaché has been placing hits on a couple of these people [1] (please find the Vancouver Sun article the ToI article is basing it on - ti Google fu is failing me but I remember reading it back in July).
In general, there is an ongoing gang war in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, and the US-Canada Diaspora after the AAP won Punjab elections.
In Punjabi politics there is often implicit coordination between specific gangs and parties. Some gangsters would align with SAD, and others with INC. After the AAP won in 2022, the entire system fell apart, as the AAP is the new kid in town, and plenty of older gangs and biradiris didn't have links with them. Add to that the ongoing gang war in Delhi NCR as development is speeding up, meant that there are new players entering the game and there's active consolidation both between parties and gangs.
I guess Lawrence Bishnoi has turned to a RAW asset based on all of this news.
[0] - https://theprint.in/diplomacy/after-ft-report-on-us-foiling-...
[1] - https://m.timesofindia.com/india/contract-for-nijjar-hit-was...
Anyone advocating for violence and death is a no-no in my book.
Peaceful protests are perfectly fine but this was in gray area.