The President of Honduras, Jose Manuel Zelaya was woken up by soldiers and put on a plane to Costa Rica still in his pajamas. Coups by armed forces are always harmful and almost always result in a destructive dictatorships. No better example than Pakistan. On the other hand politicians everywhere seem engaged in increasing their powers and have become intolerant of dissent. Any criminal act, natural calamity or terrorist strike is an excuse for increasing police powers and surveilance of honorable taxpayers. There is Patriot Act in the US, the ubiquitous CCTV in every country and a DNA database in the UK. India is already a police state where every citizen is suspected to be a criminal and treated as such. You want a mobile connection? You have to provide proof of address, photograph and full personal details. Six years ago I wanted to buy a new car, a most harmless exercise and good for the economy. The problem was that it could not be registered as I was living in rented accommodation. How would they catch me if I suddenly changed my residence? Wonderstruck I asked if I was supposed to buy a house for Rs. 3 million to register a car costing Rs. 3 hundred thousand and I was told that I am a trouble maker. Now the government is to award a unique number to every citizen which will identify that person from cradle to grave. How long before a number is tattooed on the skin or a chip implanted into every baby at birth? Sound familiar? Hitler thought about it half a century ago.

Pakistani cricket captain, Younis Khan, has called on his players to demand more money to play in the IPL. I really fail to understand why any Pakis should be playing in the IPL at all. There are a lot of people who say that politics should not intrude into sport or art so Pakis should be treated the same as others. There are others who say that people to people engagement will improve understanding and end decades of hostility. Firstly, it is not about politics. Whether you are a cricketer, a film star or a singer you are first an Indian. You are born of the womb of this country and, therefore, must not have anything to do with enemies of this country. Secondly, you may engage with Pakis till doomsday but they will continue to be our enemies. Their school books are full of lies and teach them to hate India, their mullahs teach them that hindus and jews should be exterminated and their armed forces need the hysterical hostility with India to justify their hold on power and the economy. These are facts and whistling in the wind will not change them. We should drop all contact with Pakis at every level. We have nothing to lose but individual Pakis will lose millions. It is just possible that some among these might start challenging the lies put out by the establishment. Thank God the Chinese do not speak any Indian language otherwise they would have taken over this country with the help of these idiots.

The Inter Services Intelligence or ISI is seen as the main problem in Pakistan. It is a state within a state, obeys no one and its loyalty to the state is questionable. The ISI created the Taliban and even now may be helping them fight the Paki army. No one knows what its agenda is and it is possible that there are elements who want a panislamic Caliphate stretching over the globe and following universal sharia. Thus Pakistan will never be able to control or eliminate the Taliban and may eventually collapse leaving nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue elements. India also has a similar organisation which is beyond the control of the politicians. It does not want a Caliphate but wants effective control of all institutions of the country to do as it wants. It is called the Indian Administrative Service or the IAS. It is also a state within the state. The IAS has concentrated all power in its hands and does whatever it likes. It has the distinction of being the worst administrative service in Asia but awarded itself huge pay rises last year. It is not trusted by the other services such as the Police, Foreign service and Customs. Last year, while awarding itself huge salary increases, it humiliated the armed forces with pennies so infuriating the chiefs of the forces that they refused to meet IAS officers. IAS fellows ignore RTI enquiries or give false reasons why they will not answer and regularly ignore court orders including those of the Supreme Court with impunity. The country will remain third world while the IAS remains in existence and, unfortunately, there is no one with the stature to take them on.

In 1980 I bought a 78 rpm vinyl single of ' Blame it on the Boogey ' by one Michael Jackson. Billy Jean followed and the rest is history. He was a genius and no other singer had his movements and sense of rhythm. He was definitely eccentric but perhaps too much of a super star for a black man. He was accused of child molestation and months of court case followed. No man, however rich, can match a government's spending power and although pronounced innocent he was in severe financial trouble. Hounded by creditors, rumours and innuendos he appeared to be a broken man. Perhaps it is best that he has died before he was reduced to singing on the sidewalk for pennies thrown into an inverted hat. Whether the charges were trumped up I do not know but Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Mike Tyson were certainly put in their places for getting too uppity. Perhaps Americans may be entertained by a black man provided he does not become too famous. Mr. Obama better watch his back.

In 2000 the north of Uttar Pradesh was broken off to form the hill state of Uttarakhand with its capital in Dahradun. Elections a couple of years later brought in a Congress government noted for one man who was revered because he had carried Sanjay Gandhi's shoes on his head. There followed a boom in property prices with prices doubling almost every week in unregistered sales. A construction boom followed and virtually all trees were chopped down making Dehradun indistinguishable from any stinking UP town. Suddenly everyone including maid servants and vegetable vendors were property dealers. New expensive cars replaced older, smaller models. Two years ago elections brought in a BJP government headed by retired Maj. Gen. Khanduri who was immediately hated because he refused to accept bribes and, horror of horrors, expected the kleptocrats to work for salary. He increased property rates of various circles and made registration compulsory reducing black money. He stopped destruction of river beds for extracting free sand and stones for construction. He mandated registration of illegal marriage halls and would pay contractors only for work done. All black money fellows combined to ensure that Congress won all five parliamentary seats in last month's elections and jubilation followed. Vicious infighting ensued among BJP ranks and two days back Gen. Khanduri was made to resign as Chief Minister. Two lessons. As the inventor of the totally corrupt neta-babu raj Congress is still in demand by the black money fellows and instead of trumpeting its clean administration the BJP chose to descend into the slime for personal gain. Mother India weeps.

You have one family with complete power for around fifty years kept in their position by vast numbers of poisonous invertebrates and a freeloading press. Power flows down the generations from father to daughter to son to wife to son as easily as the slime of sycophancy. Members occupy public properties each worth about Rs. 2 billion at taxpayers' expense and travel everywhere in 7 star comfort. They are above the law and have no reason mind their Bs and Qs because they are absolutely certain of the allegiance of the security services. There is no demand for any merit because they have been told since birth that they deserve. They must be hyper intelligent because they have been feeding the people the same garbage about concern for the poor for half a century and are still believed. This simple stratagem allows them to levy crippling taxes while doling handouts to the grateful naked subhumans. It also allows them to control industries and banks with which to finance their lives. Yes, Naxals are terrorists and deserve to be exterminated but why did people reach such a stage in their own country? Why are the locals and tribals supporting them? Why did locals protect a filthy murdering bandit like Veerappan for decades? Woolly headed liberals forever talk about the inequality of wealth when it is inequality of justice which is infinitely more infuriating.

Every country in the world seems to have a large number of humans, mainly men, who are parasites and survive by preying on that society from inside. We are not talking about romantic psychos like the Baader Meinhof gang or murderous psychopaths such as Al Qaeda but about ' followers ' or, as is commonly known in India, chamchas. These men appear normal, will probably be employed and give very pursuasive reasons why they follow but, in actuality, they are ruthless, lacking in any form of morality and ready to carry out any act, however depraved, for the men they follow. We are seeing practical examples in Iran in the form of black shirted Basij militia who are so ready to kill and wound even when professional police hold back. We have the same men in Bengal, killing and burning for the CPM, called cadre. Same men are seen dancing like demented baboons when Congess wins elections. Same men regularly tune into Rush Limbaugh, swear that guns are religion and think that Ronald Reagan was a prophet. Same men are Zanu PF veterans hacking opponents of Mugabe with machetes. These parasites are present in every human society. They are physically healthy and capable of work but would rather attach themselves to a politician. They will carry out any order, take the blame if caught and do anything to bring victory to their chosen master. Once that is accomplished they will hope to be rewarded with riches that they could not accumulate with honest labour. That is why the word democracy is so beloved of every villain from Mugabe to Kim il Sung to Khamenei.

The Supreme Leader, Khamenei, has blamed the ' evil British ' and the ' evil Zionist media ' for the troubles in Iran and not the blatant stealing of the elections and the subsequent murders to cover up. This in a theocracy that believes in chopping hands for theft and in hanging as a punishment for murder. Before that it was the Great Satan during Khomeini's time. Mao's China blamed the running dogs of capitalism and capitalist lickspittles. Reagan found the Soviet Union an evil empire while Bush wanted to sort out the axis of evil. Mugabe is surviving by blaming evil neo colonialists led by the British. Evo Morales of Bolivia described the killing of indigenous people in Peru as genocide and Peru retaliated by calling him an enemy. Hugo Chavez regularly describes the US as a regional bully. China is described by its neighbours as a hegemon which is true. All these people describe themselves as leaders while they strut around on the world stage indulging in name calling like stupid schoolboys. Perhaps we should follow Sacha Baron Cohen and call all of them ' batty boys.'

Only a month after the so called greatest democratic exercise on earth, namely the great Indian elections, we are seeing what democracy really means to people. Maoists or Naxals have taken over Lalgarh, a village in West Bengal killing members of CPM which is the ruling party in the state. Naxals armed with AK7s and local tribals armed with bows and arrows have taken over police stations, killing police men, and local administrative offices. CPM, or the Communist Party, Marxist, was the firm ally of the Congress during virtually the whole of the life of the last government and is supposed to be for the poor especially the village poor. Congress is still celebrating its election victory which it attributes to its wonderful policies for helping the aam aadmi, policies which it has been trumpeting for almost fifty years it has ruled India. Yet farmers and tribals have to take up arms and kill to be heard. It is not surprising that the Congress and CPM are brothers seeing their love for the poor. Truth is that they love the poor so much that they will always keep them that way. After all how will they win elections if they do not embrace a few Kalawatis and announce grandiose plans for helping the aam aadmi. Anything so that they can remain khas.

Enthused by its massive election victory the Congress is apparently thinking of ways to bring more wealth to the villages. What could be more laudable than bringing prosperity to rural India thus getting rid of poverty as well as creating some 700 million more consumers whose spending will stimulate industry leading to job creation thus leading to more consumers and so on? So the thinking goes. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has already been there and done that. When elected President he started a massive social program bringing thousands of doctors from Cuba to improve health care and opened schools to bring education to the poor. His distribution of the country's oil wealth made him very popular with the poor until the prices dropped. Having increased spending and people's expectations he is suddenly faced with collapsing revenues leading to desperation. He nationalised rice mills accusing them of inflating prices and is now nationalising the oil industry. Inceasing government controls will reduce efficiency, increase corruption and cause scarcity. Suddenly he may find himself facing a situation like Zimbabwe. The reason is that every policy built on lies is bound to fail. The truth is that poverty is because of increasing population especially of the poor and unless politicians face the truth and start to seriously address this problem nothing will happen. With the poor growing exponentially neither the earth's resources nor increasing wealth creation is going to work. Time to read some fables to politicians i.e. who will bell the cat?

Seems that whatever happens in any corner of the world at any time there is some person taking pictures with a mobile phone. Recently pictures of police in the UK brutally beating and repeatedly tazing a fellow on the ground at 3AM were shown on television news. Now we are getting pictures and news of peaceful protestors being beaten and shot by police and Basiji thugs in Iran. The authorities are trying desperately to stop the spread of information by restricting foreign journalists to their hotels, blocking internet access, disconnecting mobile phone and sms services but people are still finding a way of getting news and pictures out through Twitter, Facebook and by going through computers in other countries. Recently pictures of the successful landing of a passenger airliner on Hudson river was being seen all over the world even while the television giants were still trying to get their helicopters to fly. Suddenly there is hope that technology will bring an end to dictatorship unless your people are destitute and cannot afford computers as in Zimbabwe and North Korea. China seems to be the only exception. Its people see their children crushed by tanks, killed by collapse of sandy buidings in an earthquake or die of melamine poisoning but its people still defend the brutal thugs ruling the country. Perhaps when you are human cockroaches eating everything that lives you start to hide in dark crevices at the sight of any light. After all technology is light.

In the last one week there have been revelations about private medical schools in the south demanding between one to four million rupees from candidates seeking admission. Apparently this came about as the result of a sting operation by a newspaper. Apparently the medical school in question belongs to a minister in Delhi elected last month. Our freeloading journalists must be either completely stoned or brain dead not have realised that most doctors practising in India are quacks. Firstly there is reservation for various scheduled castes, tribes, widows, ministers recommendations and so on which allows completely unfit candidates to get seats in medical schools. Then there are private schools where rich parents can pay millions to get there stupid children get medical degrees including postgraduate ones. The most perverted are the so called alternative medicine schools. Absolute duds enter shady ayurvedic, unani or homeopathy colleges, get some degree, put Dr. in front of their names and start prescribing allopathic medicines without even the basic knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology or phramacology. Even physiotherapists call themselves doctors and prescribe any drug they want without any control. Only the candidates that qualify for admission from the general list have some knowledge but to survive the competition from totally unscrupulous quacks they have to get down to that level. So the people die. If only we had an honourable press.

Just as he is putting pressure on India not to react to Paki terrorism Mr. Obama is putting pressure on Israel to accept a two state solution, stop settlement building and allow Palestinians to control half of Jerusalem. Yesterday the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu offered to accept a Palestinian state provided it is demilitarised, Israel is accepted as a Jewish state and the international community gives ironclad guarantee of Israel's security which would mean real troops on the ground. These are very reasonable requests. A separate state for all Palestinians with its own government to look after its people, increase trade with the world and protected from any attack by Israel by the presence of foreign troops. This could bring untold prosperity for the Palestinians and permanent peace to the region. As expected, the Palestinians have rejected the offers straight away. Hamas, which is an Iranian terrorist arm, will never accept any proposal for real peace because it will have no reason to exist. The farcical theft of the Iranian elections shows that the country is no different from North Korea. It will speed up its efforts to get a nuclear weapons and continue its attacks on Israel. However Israel is not India. Its small size means that any serious attack will mean annihilation and its leaders are patriots. If seriously threatened it will not hesitate to use its own nuclear arsenal. Thus Mr. Obama's overtures to Islamic zealots while pressuring genuine democracies may yield exactly the opposite result to what he really wants.

On June 22 an exhibition on packaging will be starting at the McCormick Center in Chicago, US of A. A lot of business men and company managers applied for US visa but to the shock and dismay of all about 80% seem to have been refused. We are not talking of students who might stay back as illegal immegrants or suspicious shifty eyed fellows with heavy bulging belts. We are talking about people with high paying jobs in this country who were travelling at great expense to see what new machines or materials they could buy to improve their businesses. They may have been tempted by the rise in the exchange rate of the rupee against the dollar but that is nothing unsual. All tourists, including Americans, look at exchange rates. So why would the US refuse visas to legitimate businessmen who would have spent money in the US these recessionary times? Maybe it is to do with the Obama administation's AfPak policy wherein Pakistan has been embraced as an indispensable partner in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Just after the Mumbai attacks the US pressured India not to react because they did not want the Paki army to divert soldiers from the Afghan front. Recently the anti Indian fellow Burns was in Delhi talking about a demilitarised border with Pakistan which means giving a clean highway for terrorists to enter India. How they can have the effrontery to come to our country and say that no matter how many Indians die American lives are more precious I do not know. Sadly our craven politicians will still bow and scrape. When Obama was elected I wrote that blacks are no less racist than whites. It is no comfort to be proven right.

Trouble with stuffing ballot boxes full of false votes in a countrywide presidential election is that you are never sure of exactly how many ballots to stuff. When the order comes down chamchas have to make sure that they guarantee a win and will tend to err towards overkill. The margin of victory can thus become embarassing. That is what seems to have happened in Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad is said to have around 65% of votes cast although the opposition candidate Mr. Moussawi was earlier claiming victory. The government has already gone into damage control by interfering with mobile messaging services and forcing opposition newspapers to print only ' official ' announcements and delete any opposition statements. The fascist Revolutionary Guard thugs are threatening to beat up anyone demonstrating against the results. And what of the Supreme Leader whose word is law and may not be challenged? I would have thought that the word 'Supreme' may only be used for God especially in an Islamic Republic but obviously I am wrong. Mr. Khamenei may profess to be just another religious leader but he obviously thinks he is God just as Hitler, Idi Amin and many other dictators have thought before. We are yet to hear what this God like Supreme Leader has to say about the fast one pulled by his protege but I am not holding my breath hoping for truth and justice. I think that the real God is hiding in fear from the true faithful while the infidels look on.

There seems to be a concerted effort to brainwash the Indian public. The interesting question is now that the election is won what is the necessity to constantly forecast evermore fantastic growth of the economy? One day it is the Prime Minister forecasting above 9% growth followed by other members of the countless ministerial crowd. The freeloading press is doing its very best to spread the fairy tales. All this gas has sent the Sensex zooming upwards like a hot air balloon from below 9000 a couple of months back to over 15500 today. News from other countries would suggest that recession in the US and the OECD countries may be bottoming out but onset of genuine recovery is far from certain. China is desperately trying to avoid deflation. The very suggestion of the end of recession has sent oil to $ 70 a barrell. Dollar has weakened against all major currencies and the Indian rupee has jumped from over 50 to around 46 to a dollar which will hit exports even harder. After a brief appearance monsoon clouds seem to have disappeared. Fiscal deficit, including the states, is over 10%. By increasing salaries of useless kleptocrats expenditure has jumped. So why this phony optimism. According to the economics expert of a sunday paper all this is creating confidence and a feelgood effect which will stimulate happiness. Apparently people will happily start to spend and happy bankers will start lending and happy industrialists will employ more people thus creating a virtuous cycle of happiness. And unrestrained happiness will lead to enormous growths. Doctors have a term for this - nuts.

Two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were arrested by North Koreans apparently having crossed over from China without permit and have been sentenced to 12 years labour. To get so far inside China they must have received permission from the Chinese government and must have been accompanied by Chinese minders or, at least, interpreters. How could they cross the border to the North Korean side without any warning from the Chinese? A lot of people smuggling occurs along this border as North Koreans try to escape hunger and poverty and hence the Chinese are sure to have numerous guards all along the entire border. How were the ladies allowed to just cross over without going through customs and immigration check points? One theory is that North Korean soldiers kidnapped the two from the Chinese side of the border. Again it is hard to imagine the Chinese allowing such violation of their territory and sovereignty. Now that the ladies have been sentenced surely the Chinese can easily secure their release by leaning on the North Korean government which cannot survive even one day without Chinese support. The more I think about it the more it stinks of Chinese dirty tricks. This is a country that is quietly extending its influence across the world and dreams of total domination. Perhaps they are gauging the toughness and determination of the Obama administration. Let us hope Obama does not fail this test.

What a sad place the world has become. In the elections to elect members for the European Parliament or MEPs the results show a sad lack of choice for people to trust. In Britain the far right British National Party has won two seats and its leader said that the members of the main parties are all liars. Of course, the main parties are suffering because of the revelations about expenses claimed by MPs. In France Nicolas Sarkozy's party have done well bcause of the divisions among the Socialists. This inspite all the lampooning Mr. Sarkozy has faced regarding his personal behaviour. Silvio Berlusconi of Italy is widely reviled as the man who uses his control of television channels to win elections and then uses parliament to block corruption cases against himself. Photographs printed in Spanish newspapers show topless girls cavorting with a naked man in his villa and his wife is divorcing him because of his penchant for teenage girls. Despite all the scandals his party has done well. The only leader with some credible popularity is Angela Merkel who is seen as a sober person getting on with her job. Of course, all the dishonourable politicians will claim to have been vindicated by the voters just as the Congress has claimed after its recent victory. This is the party which instituted the neta-babu raj synonymous with absolute corruption but won because the BJP was led by a greedy old man whose craving to become Prime Minister led him into complete negativism. It is not just Burma or China where people are deprived of any choice. All these countries which loudly extol their democratic systems have no choice either. How extremely tragic.

I never cease to marvel at the white man's genius at whitewashing his savage and brutal nature. Mr. Obama is in France to attend the anniversary of the DDay landings on Normandy beach. There will be fly pasts, wreaths and plenty of salutations to the heroes of the past beautifully presented to make us believe that the Nazis were an aberration and that basically white folk are, well, white. As schoolboys we thrilled to see movies like The Longest Day, Guns of Navarone and The Dirty Dozen and believed the Holywood version of good British and Americans fighting bad Germans. No mention of the fire bombing of Dresden or the nuclear genocide of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since World War 2 the whites have decided not to kill each other and formed the EU but there is still the hunger to kill. So they have chosen Asia. From Korea to Vietnam and Laos to Iraq and Afghanistan asians are providing fodder for their hunger to kill. Not just war. The white man uses savagery in politics and economics as well. The ghettoisation of Native Americans and Aborigines in Australia still go on. Apartheid had to go because it brought bad name to whites but whiteskin descendants of European still control most of the land and mineral wealth of South America from Bolivia to Brazil to

Seems that Sri Lankan President Rajapakse's mother did not teach him the simple lesson which is that if you tell a lie then you have to tell many more lies to cover the first one. Truth is that Mr. Rajapakse's lie is a whopper and his efforts to cover it is gradually leading him into a dark alley of no return. Sri Lanka has consistently claimed that no civilian was killed as a result of heavy bombardment of the safe zone. The government did not allow any journalist anywhere near the conflict area thinking that it could control outflow of news. Once the refugees came pouring out there was a problem with so many eye witnesses to what had happened so it has confined to refugees into concentration camps under the pretext of looking for LTTE fighters. Yesterday it has arrested doctors who were saving lives in the conflict zone and charged them as terrorists. Their crime was to tell the media that thousands of civilians have been killed and injured in shelling which appeared to come from government forces. Mr. Rajapakse has two options. To come clean and offer compensation to Tamils for injury and death or continue to deny the truth and use increasing amounts of force on Tamils to stay quiet. On the 20th anniversary of the massacre at Tianannmen Square he can take the Chinese option and try to silence any Tamil that speaks out but he should remember that humiliating a people will not bring peace to Sri Lanka and another Prabhakaran could arise. The world does not forget. Ask Mr. Kissinger who is unable to leave the US for fear of being arrested for crimes in Vietnam. Pity, the president's mother forgot to tell him that truth is often the best option.

Politics, it seems, is all about lies and hypocrisy. British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown is under fire for the scandal over claims made by members of parliament for expenses. The Conservative Leader, David Cameron scents blood and repeatedly asks Mr. Brown to call a general election. From his performance at Prime Minister's Question Time in the Commons one would be forgiven for thinking that Tory MPs are squeaky clean and reluctantly claimed only the barest expenses. Nothing can be further from the truth. The list of Tory MP's claims published by the Telegraph show that Tories were just as greedy and twotiming as Labour. Tories claimed for cleaning swimming pools, horse manure and even a love seat. One Tory who owns 24 houses claimed over 100,000 pounds as expenses for a second home. Such expenses claims must have been going on for decades under various prime ministers and with everyone's hands in the till it is hard to understand why Brown is being singled out for approbrium. It is his bad luck that the scam has been exposed at this time. However Brown should be made to pay the price, not for the expenses scam, but for the state of the economy. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years and did nothing to regulate the excesses of the financial sector. He allowed bankers to claim huge bonuses, companies to evade taxes by registering in low tax countries and privatised utilities increasing household bills. Yet he is being acclaimed for his bold financial rescue plan. The Tories should circumspect before shouting for a general election because even if they win they will be illegitimate only 25% of voters turn out. As they say, when you are in a hole stop digging.

In an interactive session organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce the outgoing British Deputy High Commissioner, Simon Wilson said that the condition of roads is West Bengal is ' horrible and dangerous.' Last week Ms Mamata Bannerjee, the new Railway Minister asked the central government not to provide any financial help for the victims of hurricane Aila because, according to her, the money will not reach the affected people but will end up in the pockets of CPM cadres. This from the leader of Trinamul Congress who has herself been elected from Bengal. In over thirty years that the communists have ruled Bengal they have reduced the state to one of the most backward. They have successfully created a culture of sloth and hostility to private enterprise. Companies have left the state and when Tata wanted to set up a plant to manufacture the Nano he was driven out. Young people prefer to get handouts from the Party rather than get an education and work for high wages. Whereas the Metro in Delhi builds entire sections in two to three years the same work takes over a decade in Bengal. Same with flyovers. On the twentieth anniversary of Tiannanmen Square massacre you wonder why the Chinese people do not boot out the murderers. At least they have an excuse in that they do not know anything different but Bengalees travel all over India. Do they not see how the rest of the country is bounding ahead? Yet they keep voting for the commies. Maybe the electronic voting machines are not so foolproof after all.

Mr. Obama is travelling to the middle east with a message of democracy, rule of law, and human rights for all citizens. Fortunately for politicians and lawyers there is no tax on words so they can endlessly spout big sounding sentences without really meaning any of it. Throughout the world democracy has come to mean periodic marking of a piece of paper after which politicians are at liberty to do whatever they please. At the bottom of the league of nations are countries like Zimbabwe, North Korea and China which allow no freedom at all and any opposition to the ruling junta will get you into prison and even killed. Just above are countries such as Egypt and Iran where people are allowed to travel in and out but not to criticise the rulers. The majority of countries are a mishmash of freedom and repression. From outward appearance India would appear to be totally free but a freeloading press, controlled police and a judiciary that drags cases for decades means that there is no law and those in power can and do get away with murder. Even in countries which preach democratic values through megaphones it is much the same. Thus, in Britain, the murderers of Stephen Lawrence got away scot free and the coroner would not allow a verdict of unlawful killing against the police in the execution of De Menezes. In the US, the President and all the members of the House and Senate quake before the National Rifle Association, a right wing organisation which has put the right of gun ownership above the right to life. Different problems in each country but no true liberty for the people. It is time we have citizens' corporations which protect our rights and hold politicians to account. I cannot imagine any politician agreeing to that.