Why India Won't Get A Permanent Seat At UNSC

India has been actively pursuing its quest for permanent membership of the UN Security Council (UNSC). It has pushed for text based negotiations in the UN General Assembly (UNGA) as a step to move forward the agenda of UNSC reform and expansion stuck fruitlessly in the Open-Ended Working Group all these years. Now that the UNGA has resolved to commence such negotiations in the 70th UNGA session, there is sense of progress. Many would rightly say that the start of text based negotiations does not mean that India is anywhere near obtaining permanent membership. The text in question is not a mature document that could be finalised or significantly progressed during the current UNGA session. In reality, this is the start of a long drawn-out process with no visible closure date. No breakthrough that brings us within striking distance of our aspiration has actually been achieved.

Hard reality

Some believe that an unjustified sense of achievement is being projected officially, or, worse, that official India is being hopelessly naive in ignoring the hard reality that UNSC expansion remains a remote proposition. To think that our professionals have been hypnotised by their success in terms of better structuring the process would be unwarranted. They understand that the process now begun does not guarantee success on substance within any predictable time-frame. The negotiating text is a 25 page document that contains the views of diverse groups of countries, whether the L69, the G-4 or the African group, on five identified parameters, namely, the size of the expansion in the permanent and non-permanent categories, regional distribution, the working methods of the Security Council, its relationship with the UNGA, and veto powers. These are complex issues on which negotiations could drag on for ages. To expect concrete results from the 70th UNGA session would be to harbour illusions.

Nevertheless, to view the introduction of a negotiating text as a futile exercise would not be justified either. That China, Russia and the Uniting for Consensus (UFC) countries (comprising countries like Pakistan, Italy, Mexico, Egypt, South Korea etc) have rejected the text and strongly opposed its introduction suggests that they see this step as a breach in their strategy to continue stalling the process of reform and expansion through open-ended discussions without any working text. They have made demarches with member states to change their position, but without success. China, Russia and US have effectively boycotted the process by refusing to provide any inputs to the negotiating text. The UFC countries too have not provided any input but have asked the UNGA president to attach their letter to the text. France and UK have, on the contrary, provided inputs. Russia’s negative position has been particularly noted in India. We expect China to block our bid for permanent membership as much as possible.

Highly restrictive

We know the highly restrictive US position on expansion, including its ambivalent phraseology on our claim for permanent membership. Russia has supported our candidature for years now, which is why its heavy-duty opposition to a negotiating text has come as a surprise. This suggests that they along with China actually do not want UNSC expansion. In discussions with us the Russians apparently claim that they have no issue with India’s membership and that of Brazil, but are strongly against that of Japan and Germany. The UN Charter requires a two-third majority for amendments, but Russia wants the expansion and reform issue to be decided by a larger majority, a “near consensus” as they say.

Current challenge

Russia otherwise insists on the supremacy of the Charter, but, inconsistently, not in this case. Their other argument that the vote will be “divisive” is not convincing because the last expansion was decided not only by a two-third majority, but was divisive, as two permanent members abstained. While we are of the view that reform and expansion will improve the functioning of the UNSC, the Russians are concerned about disintegration and fragmentation of the UN as a result. We would prefer Russia to be less rejectionist on the issue.

The immediate challenge is to ensure that the next UNGA chair picks up the baton from his predecessor and sees that Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) on the negotiating text begin in November. Beyond that, if no consensus is reached on a text which can be put to a vote- which one can safely assume would be the case — other choices are available. It can be a member driven or chair driven process. A broader coalition, which would include India, can take the initiative to present their own text for vote. The ING chair at some stage can present a text-a “zero draft” for further negotiations, emulating the process followed with the adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda by world leaders this month in New York. If ever a decision gets taken with no P-5 veto in the UNSC (politically difficult if the UNGA delivers a two-third majority on the issue), all member countries will have to ratify the agreement.

If cynics are right in doubting whether the P-5 will easily agree to share power with would-be aspirants, the more hopeful may not be wrong in believing that circumstances will force a change. The crisis we see today reflect the failure of the UNSC as presently constituted to ensure global peace and security.

Hasgeek, and their ramblings to support exorbitant ticket rates

Hasgeek has announced a javascript workshop as part of their annual javascript convention in India, jsfoo. Below is the screenshot from the blog entry announcing the workshop.

Yup, the cost of an entry ticket to this nodebots workshop is INR 15000/- . Yes. Apparently, only the rich can attend hasgeek's workshops, even if they are based on free/open source technology.

Look at other workshops too:

 

And then, three days later they post a supporting entry on their blog about why the rates for their conventions and workshops are exorbitantly priced.

Scolling down their various entries, it can be seen that in the past, they have actually written a five-part-miniseries about their ridiculous ticket pricing.

This just goes on to confirm that hasgeek is more of  a pr company than company trying to imbibe hacker-culture in India.

The only hasgeek workshop I attended was Droidcon-2013. I attended the beginner level workshop, because on the Android platform, I was a beginner. Having worked in enterprise software all my career, I was craving for a bit of coding again, to hit the compile button and create magic again, like in my school/college days. The beginners workshop was priced at a reasonable 1k INR only.

And…it was worth it. The 2 day workshop was instructed by these exceptional speakers:
                  

Now I must say that not all of the topics in the agenda was covered. Due to the unique mix and match of the participants at various experience levels, a few things had to be skipped to keep time. But the speakers did a fantastic job of covering maximum area among themselves. They invested quality time in properly sharing their wealth of information with us, the participants, and more than happy and patient to take questions. By tea-break on the first day, there were phones going buzz and blink in the room running cool new apps developed by newbie developers themselves !

I was intrigued. For a long time I had been out of touch with open source languages, I was trying to find a way back in, to at least code in my little freetime, if not part of my daily office regime. Workshops and conventions like these are exactly what people like me wanted, simple and cost effective events which was well within the reach of coders, but which delivered as promised. I was delighted, and determined to return to another hasgeek workshop soon. But I could never.

Well one reason was that I hardly had the time. But the real reason was that all the workshops and conventions were priced exorbitantly high. For a 6 hour workshop on a topic of free technology, I could not justify shelling out many thousands of rupees.

And now things have come to a point were only the filthily rich can afford to participate and share their knowledge on free software.

Wakeup , hasgeek. No amount of follow up posts on your blog can justify the humungous amounts you are charging for your events. Not cool.

PS:

And now I am trying to watch the sucking jfsoo livestream on youtube.

Mr Robot. Or, the continuous goof-ups of Elliot Alderson, vigilante hacker.

 

There is a lot of buzz online about the new TV series Mr Robot, currently airing on USA network. Breaking away from the procedural and investigate formulaic shows, Mr Robot follows the story of Elliot, a young 20-something cyber security engineer in New York, and how moonlights as an 'ethical' hacker. He is, fortunately, on the good side of the world and the wrong side of the law as he uses this hacking skills to expose hidden criminals and save a few innocents in the process. He suffers from social anxiety, and chronic depression, and it is stated he occasionally suffers from schizophrenic delusions. He is brilliant on-line on any network, but sucks IRL (in real life). The show itself is getting accolades for depicting real life, plausible hacking. But for me, it also hammers home the idea that when it comes to real life situations, Elliot (and others like him) cannot handle themselves responsibly.

 

For instance until episode six, which aired yesterday, all that Elliot has done in this show is to screw up. Continuously. Repeatedly.

His first mistake  was definitely in the pilot episode, which got rave reviews and set expectations high for this series one month before it even started airing. After a brilliant depiction of DDoS style attack, and his counter hack to prevent further damage,  Elliot is presented with a choice. Up till that point in his life, Elliot had flown under the radar, without getting into trouble with any authorities. But now, he can either expose the hacker group f-society, or frame Terry Colby, his customer's CTO. And Elliot, reacting to how Angela was made to leave a meeting room, decides at the very last moment to frame Terry. Bad choice. We later come to know that framing Terry was just a first step for f-society, who recruit him for bigger and more dangerous things further up. If he had simply exposed f-society, he could have ended it all, and gone back to his hacker-vigilante life. Technically, this goofup was required, this is the action which starts the stage for the later events in the series. So Elliot HAS to make this mistake for the sake of the series.

Second mistake.  Getting Fernando Vera arrested. This happens in the second episode. Now this might not have been the first time Elliot is exposing a drug dealer, but he explains in his voice-over that he gets this drugs from Vera via Shayla. And he needs his drugs to stay in control. Shayla getting abused by Vera was occupational hazard. But he started caring for Shayla, and the only way he could protect her was to get Vera out of the equation. This will lead to two things later on. Without his drugs, Elliot goes through painful withdrawals, which could affect his life ,and could even jeopardise operation destroy-steel-mountain. The other thing, Shayla gets killed by Vera. That was painful.

Mistake numbre trios. Elliot gives in to his daemons. His childhood and back life was not explained till this point, but then it is made clear that his father death to cancer was caused by Evilcorp. And when this truth hits him, he puts aside logic and decides to take things personally, in an act of revenge. This will lead him to think of a way to bring down Evilcorp's servers in a 'humane' way with very little spare time. And for this, he decides to team up with f-society. Big mistake. But I think later the show will establish that Elliot was always part of the group. And we all know that Mr Robot is not real. He is simply an illusion, created by poor Elliot himself.

Fourth one was in the fourth episode. Elliot gets the Chinese hacker group, Dark Army, involved in his plan. He clearly knows that the DA hacks only for profit, and will understand his reason for targeting E-corp. But he gets their help. This gets Angela in danger, her personal life is destroyed, and it might also affect her work at allsafe. And.. the DA turns back at the last moment, leaving Elliot and his team on their own. And all this because he decides to go ahead with a poorly put together plan.

Five. Elliot goes in personally to steel-mountain to install his hack. He does not have the best social skills to talk to people without coming off as awkward. But he does it anyway. This way he runs into Tyler, his nemesis. He cooks up a story about some audit, but the truth is , he has lied. So he will have to back this up tomorrow in a later episode somehow. Which means more lying. Sending somebody else  he could have avoided the confrontation.

And his biggest mistake so far, coming up at number 6. He gets Vera freed from the jail. Once Vera got Shayla kidnapped, there was no plan in which Elliot and she could come out save forever. He should have handled that more diplomatically, could have flatly refused he knew her. But by playing to Vera's demands, he has endangered the two other girls in his life; Angela and Darlene. And with Shayla's death, he could again turn to revenge and do something stupid.

In the pilot episode, Elliot was able to balance his day job, and his nighttime hacktivism perfectly, neither coming in each other's way. But now the two sides have to dangeroulsy muddled up. It will take him a miracle to come out of this.

And some pretty neat hacks.

 

 

Ratings of this show have declined over time.

Android Studio Problems

 

I got a few days holiday, and I thought I planned on learning and picking up on the new Android Studio IDE which was released in December last year, and maybe develop an app. I had attended a two day beginner's workshop at DroidCon 2013, and had learnt quickly the basics of Android app development. Since then, I lost my projects and code to a hard-drive crash. The new Android Studio looked easier to learn. Or so I thought.

For a beginner, Android Studio sucks. It is too complex a development platform. Before one can start developing apps, one has to first play and win the rpg-game "Installing and Settingup  Android Studio". I have tried and failed for two days to get the basic setup up and running, I think this is because I have multiple installations of Java on my machine. After installation, the studio.exe can be launched, but it tries to connect and download the latest SDK. I had downloaded the bundled version, but looks like it does not have the SDK itself, just the IDE. And…don't get me started on gradle. I wish there was a way to turn it off and do things the way it was done on Eclipse.

Google, if you want to welcome more developers to your platform, you will have to make things easier. Experienced Android developers may not have issues in picking up the new studio. But beginners like me will be lost.

I am going to try again from office, first downloading just the IDE (because the bundle is a joke), and use the faster connection from office to get the SDK. Hopefully, things will be faster.