But before we delve into the life of 'Lardbucket'... (did you know that the man has no guts, really! Half his guts were removed because of some weight-loss shit)
ToI would have splashed an image of Dubyaman on the front page anyway, but then again no other Indian media house got an interview with (purportedly) the most powerful man in the world. Quite a coup and the telly channels will be running around with their tails between their legs. Love it! At the end of the day, whether you hate the man (which many of you do) or love him (few of you) or are indifferent like me - because I believe the economic policies forwarded by John Kerry were detrimental to India's interests, so despite everything it was a good thing for India that Dumb-ya won. But then again, Bush-man is responsible (in a way) for $70 oil and half the world hating Americans. Anyway, beginning that argument over here would be facile.
Now back to the defender of the UP Rajputs - Amar Singh. One friend's father, a UP Rajput once told me how proud he was of Amar Singh, because Amar Singh had given the Rajput his own back. The argument puzzled me because the Samajwadi Party was always Yadav-centric, but anyway. Amar Singh was one of Delhi's two big party animals - the other being Rajeev Shukla - who incidentally Amar holds responsible for the tapes. Now, what is Amar Singh so bloody scared of? Is he scared that the entire world will discover that he was nothing more than a very high-class pimp? I wonder what his cut was? Now what is even more surprising is that Amar Singh had kids through IVF and that too not because his wife had any problems - so we had a rather unique case the Impotent Important Pimp.
Now as Amar Singh's erstwhile 'close friend' Vir Sanghvi never fails to point out, after the new dispensation came to power in Delhi, Amar Singh disappeared from the Delhi circuit. Maybe the powers that were in the Congress had their own means of organising 'entertainment' - don't believe for one second that they are any holier than thou, at least one veshthi comes off at alarming speed every night and another made a lot of foreign trips so that he could get 'bang bang'. Or maybe, it was Rajeev Shukla's turn in the spotlight. How many fat men can the power circuit handle at one time? At the same time, Subroto Roy, Amar Singh's close friend also did the complete disappearing act - the story goes that the one with the veshthi gave our friend some problems.
Even bureaucrats realising that Mrs G was out to get the SP as the Congress aims for a comeback in UP started ignoring Amar Singh. He couldn't even play Mr Fix-It anymore. And this happens. Now what was Amar Singh 'alledgedly' talking about - dirty talk with some of Bollywood's sultriest actresses (ugh!), transferring bureaucrats and fixing a case in the Allahabad HC (the last of which he was really scared about). Amar Singh is trying to use his 'special' relationship with Harkishen Singh Surjeet as a 'Get out of Jail' card by playing the 'secularism' bogey, but its unlikely that he'll get Prakash Karat backing him, given the mans hatred of such characters.
So what happens next? I have no clue, but it'll be fun. My advice to Amar Singh, take up that house in Amby Valley that your friend has given you and lie low for a few months. And if the Samajwadi Party wants to avoid being decimated by the Congressi media, it might be advisable for the SP to call snap polls in UP. The smiles in the BJP camp must be getting wider and wider, because the Congress isn't still A-OK in UP, the BJP might just pull off some more seats, either that or UP is destined to become India's next Bihar. And talking about Bihar, I think Nitish Kumar is doing a great job, in controlling the flow of stories out of the state.
And just a small bit of information to everybody, Government security agencies tap each and every phone call and text message you make in India. Thats right, each and every call. So next time you talk to your pimp/drug dealer/gun runner please know that Big Brother (Sister?) is listening to your every word. OK, so only if you use certain key words does the system get alerted, but everyday in those bunch of buildings behind Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium every call is recorded and stored for over a month. Detective Agency my ass!
PS : I might (might - being the operative word) just make a run down to Goa for the weekend (I've got a Ford Fiesta for a test drive) so I'll see ya people the other side of the weekend.
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so where are the transcripts. why hasn't someone uploaded it somewhere. is it really that hush hush?
or this time someone really got to amar singh
Nosy T_M's curiosity piqued, out come the questions:
1. What about Rajnath Singh? I thought after his conflict with Kalyan Singh he was the savior of UP Rajputs. Why would the Rajputs touch a Samajwadi Party-wallah with a bargepole. How much of a clout does Amar Singh have in UP anyway?
2. When did Rajeev Shukla become a Congressi? He had been fairly close to BJP, and his sala was a one-time BJP minister.
3. Of all the things she can potentially hate, why does Mrs. G v2 hate SP and Amar Singh so much?
(answers by email fine as well)
btw K, I realised from the latest edition that you read Thomas Friedman ... or do you?
do give me a feedback on the Fiesta ... i am looking at the possibility of upgrading ...
I still find it hard to understand the expression people's faces when I tell them that there are no issues with user data being handed over by the telecos to the cops when it is asked for, without any resistance and that the lines are quite happily tapped here. Some of the network engineers I know have some real horror stories.
is it the same veshthi that gives way to saville row at davos? juicy gossip indeed for a bombaywalla! so keep it going.
"And just a small bit of information to everybody, Government security agencies tap each and every phone call and text message you make in India."
This is not completely true. Let me give you some reasons as to why it is so.
First, contrary to what you may have heard, speech recognition technology is still in it's infancy. Even the Americans arereported to have only 25-30% success rate. If you want to test it try and use the speech recognition in windows. I know that military grade software is more reliable but it still cannot recognise speech without training on the voices(kind of like hearing the same voices again and again for 100's of times). When you add static to the conversation the efficiency of the software efficiency goes down the toilet. Kinda like trying to identify the lyrics in a white stripes track :)
Second, storage space. Yes storing millions of flagged conversations even with the best compression technology requires huge(I mean HUGE like Penta bytes) storage spaces and very, very powerful computers to operate. The costs could run in to tens of billions.
Third, man power. Though not a major deterrent(at least in India). Going through all the flagged conversations trying to find useful information is akin to searching for a needle in a haystack. To shift through all the data collected in a single day throughout India you will potentially need thousands of people. Any recruitment of thousands of people would have been noticed by the media.
Finally. Yes, it is easy to monitor text messages. But you can bypass the monitoring by very elementary methods. Like spelling stuff wrong or spelling backwards or using simple encryption(replace text with numbers).
Don't worry big brother doesn't have a slighest clue.
I have a friend who works with one of the leading speech processing research groups in the US. I have seen demonstrations of their software numerous times, and my friend fills me up on the state of the art in the field frequently. What Anil says is absolutely correct. The field is in its infancy. The accuracy rates are very low, especially when the system is tested by independent testers (not the developers who train the system).
And trust me, military grade software is not more reliable, because the handful of speech processing labs in the US all work on military projects. The only speech processing work for non-military use is by Google, and that's because they recently hired one of the world's leading researchers in the field.
Anil, Thalassa, it is not speech recognition that is the problem, it is, like I commented earlier, the ease with which the investigating agencies can demand and get information from the service providers. Best part is that very few know about this since nobody wants to rub the law the wrong way. For instance, if you get a phone bill over a certain amount, both the tax chaps and the spooks get alerted. What fun.
Firstly, the gvernment rarely listens in unless they want to, but call recordings are kept for 30 days and call records for a lifetime. Now if the government wants to listen in to a particular indiviual they can without much difficulty. But Big Sister is watching as Amar Singh just discovered.
TM : Mrs G might be angry that the SP is picking on the bachha.
Oh, and what about that particular phone call in Amar Singh ki Amar Kahani which has him talking to God, the 'group editor' of a media house, who is probably to the media what Amar Singh is to politics? Apparently, there are some media wars involved as well. The BJP media can't stay mute for long.
As dor speech recognition, all that crap is done for terorrist activities - which is why Indian intelligence fails all the time. Tapping someone's phone by phone number is easy, damn easy. Top editors, investigative journos, rival politicians and politically inclined industrialists. Most learn the art of evading snooping: they use mobiles under other people's names, PCO booths etc, keep two mobiles, change one numbah often, etc, etc. So I am surprised Amar Singh has behaved in a novice manner. Btw, he deserves it: he's had too much of dalali: he was merely a ransom artist in Kolkata.
If only Abu Salem had met AMar SIngh...!
The conversation with God, it seems was all about AB and God wanting AB for his show. Now, according to God there is another conversation with Amar Singh - this time when a 'Sabe Tez' channel pulled an act of 'dubious' journalism and a reporter entered AB's room to 'interview' him while the man was almost dying. Amar Singh, AB's buddy, the little head popping out behind AB whenever he went out was fuming and seething - and maybe, just maybe, the pimp-meister was justified. The CD also contains a call to God's boss.
More intrigue.
Now replies - To all those who think VR isn't that advanced - you'ld be surprised how good VR has become in India - have you ever tried any of the operator's short-code premium numbers (123 Hutch, 646 Airtel etc) - they are all voice activated. A company in Bangalore has developed the software - which can distinguish 15 Indian languages and several dialects. True, using code-words or badly saying the words (or spelling in the case of SMS) allows one to get away with it, but that said, the government is still routing all your calls through a central monitoring service - which means it can tap into anybody them want to anytime. And data storage really isn't an issue - calls can be recorded at low-bandwidth (32kbps, mono and then further compressed) and stored.
Bona - The 'saucy' bit? Yes, I read Friedman. See the other blog for a car review of sorts.
Thalassa : Friend is right, Mulayam and the SP have been very nasty to Rahul baba. But I still don't understand this level of hatred.
One more point - I'm told that the conversations with god go beyond AB Baby - one conversation is supposedly about the Noida land scam where Amar Singh and Mulayam Yadav whacked loads of land in Noida and sold it to corrupt property developers (An old Congress art form - just look at Delhi). The other more damning call was made by Amar Singh pleading Natwar Singh's case - asking why Natwar was being targeted by God's magazine - which means that the recording are fairly recent. Very recent.
For the recod - God's magazine targeted Natwar because 10 Janpath gave them the story.
cut me some slack, man. Who is this God? Are you talking about the editor of TOI or India Today?
Arrey Anil Prabhu, aap itnay dumb hain kya?
Arrey Anil Prabhu, aap itnay dumb hain kya?
Sorry was too dumb to see. Got it now.
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
Great Post.....
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Thanks for sharing....
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