Bill of Immunity to the Corrupt?

Here is one such case when politicians cutting across all established parties collude at the top in their mutual benefit. The Lokpal Bill, 1996, drawn up ostensibly to root out corruption at high places, has been introduced in the Lok Sabha and awaits the approval of both the Houses. Let us take a look at the smokescreen it has created to provide immunity to the corrupt that it claims to bring under its ‘objective’ scrutiny.

Clause 26 of the Bill mentions that after the Lokpal or the competent authority — Prime Minister or a House of Parliament — to whom Lokpal sends its report holds that the allegations of corruption made in a complaint against the Prime Minister, or a Minister or MP (present or past) have not been proved, "notwithstanding anything contained in any other law", "no prosecution shall lie on any complaint, report, information or otherwise and no court shall take cognisance of any offence on the basis of the same or substantially the same allegations." Further it says that once a complaint is made to the Lokpal nobody can take up the same complaint or any thing close to it in any court of law through a Public Interest Litigation or otherwise. In such a case there is also a ban on referring it for inquiry under the Commissions of Inquiry Act 1952. To think of it, imagine a situation once the Bill comes into effect, when someone (could well be the accused’s `paid complainant’) approaches the Lokpal with a case, then this could bring to a halt all pending investigations against the accused, a former or present Prime Minister, minister or MP. It could well be the case that the charge of a crime might absolve the criminal of all investigations into his crimes!

And if this is not enough, note what the Clause 14 says. It empowers the Lokpal to give directions for deferring or suspending any ongoing police investigations in matters covered by the complaints made to it.

The second farce about the Bill is that it seeks to make the public functionaries accountable to the people by imposing its own brand of censorship and curbing the right to information. Unlike in legal proceedings in the courts which the media can report to the general public and where public too can attend the legal trials, in case of the the proposed Lokpal, as under Clause 23, disclosure — printing or publishing — of any information in respect of any complaint of corruption under this legislation when the enquiry is in progress and three months after the report has been forwarded by the Lokpal to the Prime Minister or a House of Parliament, as the case may be, has been made punishable.

There are many more gems of justice that deserve attention. Contradictory to the government’s claim that the Lokpal would provide the common man with exemplary powers to censure his/her elected representative, every complainant, the government’s ‘common man’, has to pay a fees and take full responsibility for leveling charges and in case the complaint is found to be baseless, to discourage the same ‘common man’, serious punitive action extending to two years in jail and Rs.50,000 in fine will be imposed on the complainant.

Charges of corruption in our legal system are not necessarily covered only under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 but also under many other Acts, but the Lokpal restricts its ambit to the cases under this Act.

Regarding the constitution of the Lokpal, the Bill says that the Chairman of the Lokpal shall be from among past or present chief justices of Supreme Court. Fine. But the other two members of the Lokpal may also be from those ‘qualified’ to be judges of the Supreme Court. The loose end left here makes countless many from India’s entire judiciary eligible for the post including those who are also senior party politicians with legal background — the likes of Ajit Kumar Panja (who pleading on behalf of KL Chugh and JN Sapru, the arrested former ITC chairmen, argued that they should be granted bail on the ground that both were well-acclaimed and internationally renowned personalities) or Somnath Chatterjee (who has no qualms about fighting the case for the same two corporate crooks, as he says, "it will be a relation between a lawyer and client").

Still another notable point is that the Lokpal has no powers to punish the ‘guilty’. After finding someone guilty Lokpal can only report its findings to the PM or a House of Parliament and who knows what the ‘people’s representatives’ engulfed by the ‘global phenomenon of corruption’ might finally decide.

christopher pfeiffer ----- the master of bike stunting's

Since he was a little boy he is addicted to motorbikes and riding at the limit. And he lives his dream. Since 1996 Chris Pfeiffer is professional rider and has performed in hundreds of shows internationaly. Innovative is one way to describe him. Chris relentlessly pushes his limits with new tricks, projects and Off road races that set the pulse for Extreme Riding. Since 2000 he has intensively trained on big street bikes. Street bikes have become a growing part of his shows, the speed of the street bike has once again pushed his limits. Only three years later in 2003, Chris reached the high point of his career so far as he was crowned the Stunt Riding World Champion in Bechyne, Czech in front of 15.000 cheering fans and six enthusiastic judges, that selected him unanimously as first place. The year after, Chris scores the title Euroean Champion while already focussing on his first ever DVD "CP Moto Freestyle". This Disc sells great and distribution enlarges to North America, where the production even has been nominated for the "extremesports Oscar", the Xtremmy Awards in 2006. By January 1, 2006, Chris changes onto the BMW F800s and success immediately continues: After no more than 2 months of practice on the new bike, Chris wins the most prestigeous US Streetbike Freestyle Competition, the legendary "Stuntwars" in Florida and right after that, he wins all 3 rounds of the European Stuntriding Championships. The beat goes on: In February 2007, CP scores the Indoor World Championship title in Streetbike-Freestyle......
Name:	Chris “CP” Pfeiffer
Home:	Halblech / Bayern / Germany
Date of Birth	04/20/1970 in Schongau/Germany
First Motorcycle:	5 years old
Profession:	Professional rider
Speciality:	Stunt Riding
Education:	College with a dual major in sports and biology
Family:	Married to Renate. Three children: Pia, Amelie and Hannes
Hobbies:	Freeriding on ski, mountainbike, enduro and trialbike
Career Development:	Amateur trial from 1980-1992, since 1993 freeriding and shows on trialbikes, since 1996 professional, since 2000 stunt riding on streetbikes.
Titles:	4-times World  Champion Stunt Riding, 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009 4-times European Champion Stunt Riding 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008 Winner Stuntwars 2006 4-times Winner Erzberg Red Bull Harescramble, Extreme Enduro Race, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2004  German Youth Champion Trial 1985
Records:	Longjump (bunny hop) without a ramp over 33 people lying next to each other
Bikes:	Stunt: BMW F 800 R Enduro: BMW G 450 X Trial: Beta Evo 300 4T
Motto:	Live and let live... Chris discovered his passion for Motorbikes as a young kid. Already at 5 years of age, he was ready to take over the handlebars from his motorcycle-enthusiast father. After his first attempts at motorbike riding in his parents garden with a lowered Sachs 100, the Zuendapp with a side car became his favourite motorbike in the following years. All spare change went straight into the gas tank. As he turned ten, Chris became his first used Trial bike, participated in his first competition and was immediately infected by Trial Sport. In the following years, he toured successfully with his father to the competitions. Soon Chris became German Trial Champion in the Junior division und later competed successfully in the German Championships and the World Championships.   He graduated from high school at which time he decided to study Sport and Biology at the university in Munich. For lack of Trial and training possibilities in Munich, Chris decided to end his Trial career path and focus on with always gave him that adrenaline kick: Extreme Riding, Tricks on the physical borders. Every parking lot in Munich provides more than enough space for this kind of training. Only a short time later he had his first big performance as Show Rider in the largest indoor venue in Munich, Olympiahalle. He began to make a name for himself and soon after became a professional in 1996. In the same year, along with the shows, Chris decided to take a shot at the Gilles-Lalay-Classic and the Erzberg Rodeo, the hardest off road races in the world. He finished GLC and won Erzberg for the first time. Shortly after he became the first person to climb the 'Via Tina', a level 3 difficulty scale climbing route in Arco/Italy with the motorbike. Till today Chris is the only person to have ever accomplished this. In the following years he went on to make several more records, like the longest jump over 33 people lying next to each other without a ramp or any other special help on the home stretch at the Motocycle Grand Prix 1997 on Nuerburgring. During an attempt to break his own record on a german televised version of the Guinness Book of World Records show, Chris ran into technical difficulties and crashed, resulting in multiple compound broken bones and the first time in his professional sports career, a trip to the hospital. The next months brought several operations, Rehabilitation Training, hope, set backs, dull prognosis from the doctors. But after 13 months, his body was well enough to begin extreme motor biking again. Chris trained like crazy and won the 'Erzberg 2000'. Chris is back and outclassed the world best enduro riders. For the first time in the summer of 2000, he intensively concentrated his attention on Street Bike Freestyle. The inspiration of the ability of some Brazilian Stunt Professionals would not let him go and developed into a passion and main occupation. The Street Motorbike became to move towards the middle point of his shows. Things go a little insane when he rocks up the 1000 Ducati Monster. The easier to handle Trial Motorbike is not exactly sitting at home – some tricks are only possible with the Trial Motorbike and the combination of both the Street and Trial Motorbike allows a lot of different stunts. And exactly this wide repertoire makes Pfeiffers show what it is and brings his show up close and personal to the audience.

che and his family

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina, the eldest of five children in a family of Spanish and Irish descent; both his father and mother were of Basque ancestry.Basque The date of birth recorded on his birth certificate was June 14, 1928, although one tertiary source (Julia Constenla, quoted by Jon Lee Anderson) asserts that he was actually born on May 14 of that year. (Constenla alleges that she was told by an unidentified astrologer that his mother, Celia de la Serna, was already pregnant when she and Ernesto Guevara Lynch were married and that the birthdate of their son was forged a month later than the actual date to avoid scandal.) One of Guevara's forebears, Patrick Lynch, was born in Galway, Ireland, in 1715. He left for Bilbao, Spain, and traveled from there to Argentina. Francisco Lynch (Guevara's great-grandfather) was born in 1817, and Ana Lynch (his beloved grandmother) in 1868Galway Her son, Ernesto Guevara Lynch (Guevara's father) was born in 1900. Guevara Lynch married Celia de la Serna y Llosa in 1927, and they had three sons and two daughters.

Growing up in this upper-class family with leftist leanings, Guevara became known for his dynamic personality and radical perspective even as a boy. He idolized Francisco Pizarro and yearned to have been one of his soldiers. Though suffering from the crippling bouts of asthma that were to afflict him throughout his life, he excelled as an athlete. He was an avid rugby union player despite his handicap and earned himself the nickname "Fuser" — a contraction of "El Furibundo" (English: "The Raging") and his mother's surname, "Serna" — for his aggressive style of play.


Guevara on a burro at the age of 3Guevara learned chess from his father and began participating in local tournaments by the age of 12. During his adolescence he became passionate about poetry, especially that of Pablo NerudaNeruda[›]. Guevara, as is common practice among Latin Americans of his class, also wrote poems throughout his life. He was an enthusiastic and eclectic reader, with interests ranging from adventure classics by Jack London, Emilio Salgari and Jules Verne to essays on sexuality by Sigmund Freud and treatises on social philosophy by Bertrand Russell. In his late teens, he developed a keen interest in photography and spent many hours photographing people, places and, during later travels, archaeological sites.

With his parents and siblings in 1936In 1948 Guevara entered the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. While a student, he spent long periods traveling around Latin America. In 1951 his older friend, Alberto Granado, a biochemist, suggested that Guevara take a year off from his medical studies to embark on a trip they had talked of making for years, traversing South America. Guevara and the 29-year-old Granado soon set off from their hometown of Alta Gracia astride a 1939 Norton 500 cc motorcycle they named La Poderosa II (English: "the Mighty One, the Second") with the idea of spending a few weeks volunteering at the San Pablo Leper colony in Peru on the banks of the Amazon River. Guevara narrated this journey in The Motorcycle Diaries, which was translated into English in 1996 and used in 2004 as the basis for a motion picture of the same name.

Witnessing the widespread poverty, oppression and disenfranchisement throughout Latin America, and influenced by his readings of Marxist literature, Guevara decided that the only solution for the region’s inequalities was armed revolution. His travels and readings also led him to view Latin America not as a group of separate nations but as a single entity requiring a continent-wide strategy for liberation. His conception of a borderless, united Ibero-America sharing a common 'mestizo' cultureIbero-America[›] was a theme that would prominently recur during his later revolutionary activities. Upon returning to Argentina, he expedited the completion of his medical studies in order to resume his travels in Central and South America and received his diploma on 12 June 1953.

The Bolivian Diary

Also removed when Guevara was captured was his diary, which documented events of the guerrilla campaign in Bolivia. The first entry is on November 7, 1966 shortly after his arrival at the farm in Ñancahuazú, and the last entry is on October 7, 1967, the day before his capture. The diary tells how the guerrillas were forced to begin operations prematurely due to discovery by the Bolivian Army, explains Guevara's decision to divide the column into two units that were subsequently unable to reestablish contact, and describes their overall failure. It records the rift between Guevara and the Bolivian Communist Party that resulted in Guevara having significantly fewer soldiers than originally anticipated. It shows that Guevara had a great deal of difficulty recruiting from the local populace, due in part to the fact that the guerrilla group had learned Quechua rather than the local language which was Tupí-Guaraní. As the campaign drew to an unexpected close, Guevara became increasingly ill. He suffered from ever-worsening bouts of asthma, and most of his last offensives were carried out in an attempt to obtain medicine.

The Bolivian Diary was quickly and crudely translated by Ramparts magazine and circulated around the world. There are at least four additional diaries in existence — those of Israel Reyes Zayas (Alias "Braulio"), Harry Villegas Tamayo ("Pombo"), Eliseo Reyes Rodriguez ("Rolando") and Dariel Alarcón Ramírez ("Benigno") — each of which reveals additional aspects of the events in question.

The Cuban Legacy-- CHE GUVERA

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (June 14, 1928Birthdate[›] – October 9, 1967), commonly known as Che Guevara or simply Che, was an Argentine-born physician best known for his leading role in the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s, his prominent roles in the Cuban revolutionary government, and for his subsequent resignation from his Cuban offices in order to devote himself to further attempts to spread Marxist revolution around the world.
Guevara's motorcycle tour of Latin America as a young man brought him into direct contact with the severe poverty that afflicts many people in the region, a sharp contrast to the well-off surroundings in which he had been raised. He moved to Guatemala, and his involvement in the leftist social revolution under Guatemala's first democratically-elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, and his witnessing the 1954 right-wing military coup orchestrated by the American CIA radicalized Guevara; he became convinced that only a revolution by force against capitalism and against the influence of the United States in particular could remedy Latin America's extreme economic inequality. Guevara moved on to Mexico, where he met Raúl and Fidel Castro and joined the brothers' paramilitary 26th of July Movement to overthrow US-leaning General Fulgencio Batista. Though only 12 members survived the group's disastrous initial landing in Cuba, they finally overthrew Batista's government on January 1, 1959. Guevara served in various important posts in the new government, and wrote a number of articles and books on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare. Very influential with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Guevara advocated a hardline anti-capitalist foreign policy involving active efforts to create further socialist revolutions abroad and preparation for direct military conflict with the United States. He grew increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet Union, especially after the Soviets agreed to remove their long-range nuclear missiles from Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which he viewed as a betrayal. Guevara then went on several diplomatic missions to other Third World countries in an unsuccessful attempt to forge an anti-capitalist political and economic bloc that was not aligned with the Soviet Union.
Guevara resigned his government posts and left Cuba in 1965 with the intention of directly fomenting Marxist revolutions abroad himself. He first went to the Congo-Kinshasa (later called the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and then to Bolivia. He did not meet with the widespread popular support he had expected in either country, and both operations were unsuccessful. He was captured in Bolivia by a CIA/ U.S. Army Special Forces-organized military operation and was executed shortly thereafter, in La Higuera near Vallegrande on October 9, 1967. Participants in, and witnesses to, the events of his final hours testify that his captors executed him without trial. After his death, Guevara became an icon of socialist revolutionary movements worldwide. An Alberto Korda photo of Guevara (shown) has received wide distribution and modification. The Maryland Institute College of Art called this picture "the most famous photograph in the world and a symbol of the 20th century."

Guatemala

On 7 July 1953, Guevara set out on a trip through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. During the final days of December 1953 he arrived in Guatemala where leftist President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán headed an elected populist government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to bring an end to the U.S.-dominated latifundia system. In a contemporaneous letter to his Aunt Beatriz, Guevara explained his motivation for settling down for a time in Guatemala: "In Guatemala", he wrote, "I will perfect myself and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary."

Shortly after reaching Guatemala City, Guevara acted upon the suggestion of a mutual friend that he seek out Hilda Gadea Acosta, a Peruvian economist who was living and working there. Gadea, whom he would later marry, was well-connected politically as a result of her membership in the socialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) led by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, and she introduced Guevara to a number of high-level officials in the Arbenz government. He also re-established contact with a group of Cuban exiles linked to Fidel Castro whom he had initially met in Costa Rica; among them was Antonio "Ñico" López, associated with the attack on the "Carlos Manuel de Céspedes" barracks in Bayamo in the Cuban province of Oriente, and who would die at Ojo del Toro bridge soon after the Granma landed in Cuba. Guevara joined these "moncadistas" in the sale of religious objects related to the Black Christ of Esquipulas, and he also assisted two Venezuelan malaria specialists at a local hospital. It was during this period that he acquired his famous nickname, "Che", due to his frequent use of the Argentine interjection Che (pronounced /tʃe/), which is used in much the same way as "hey", "pal", "eh", or "mate" are employed colloquially in various English-speaking countries. Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and southern Brazil (where the interjection is rendered 'tchê' in written Portuguese) are the only areas where this expression is used, making it a trademark of the Rioplatense region.

Guevara's attempts to obtain a medical internship were unsuccessful and his economic situation was often precarious, leading him to pawn some of Hilda's jewelry. Political events in the country began to move quickly after May 15, 1954 when a shipment of Skoda infantry and light artillery weapons sent from Communist Czechoslovakia for the Arbenz Government arrived in Puerto Barrios aboard the Swedish ship Alfhem. The amount of Czech weaponry was estimated to be 2000 tons by the CIA though only 2 tons by Jon Lee Anderson. (Anderson's tonnage estimate is thought to be a typographical error due to how few scholarly sources support it.) Guevara briefly left Guatemala for El Salvador to pick up a new visa, then returned to Guatemala only a few days before the CIA-sponsored coup attempt led by Carlos Castillo Armas began. The anti-Arbenz forces tried, but failed, to stop the trans-shipment of the Czechoslovak weapons by train. However, after pausing to regroup and recover energy, Castillo Armas' column seized the initiative and, apparently with the assistance of US air support, started to gain ground. Guevara was eager to fight on behalf of Arbenz and joined an armed militia organized by the Communist Youth for that purpose; but, frustrated with the group's inaction, he soon returned to medical duties. Following the coup, he again volunteered to fight but his efforts were thwarted when Arbenz took refuge in the Mexican Embassy and told his foreign supporters to leave the country. After Gadea was arrested, Guevara sought protection inside the Argentine consulate where he remained until he received a safe-conduct pass some weeks later. At that point, he turned down a free seat on a flight back to Argentina that was proffered to him by the Embassy, preferring instead to make his way to Mexico.

The overthrow of the Arbenz regime by a coup d'état backed by the Central Intelligence Agency cemented Guevara's view of the United States as an imperialist power that would implacably oppose and attempt to destroy any government that sought to redress the socioeconomic inequality endemic to Latin America and other developing countries. This strengthened his conviction that socialism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify such conditions.

The "Cult of Che"

Despite the controversies, Guevara's status as a popular icon has continued throughout the world, leading commentators to speak of a global "cult of Che". A photograph of Guevara taken by photographer Alberto Korda has became one of the century's most ubiquitous images, and the portrait, transformed into a monochrome graphic, is, somewhat ironically, reproduced endlessly on a vast array of merchandise, such as T-shirts, posters, coffee mugs, and baseball caps largely for profit.

In Latin America, the perceived failures of the neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s intensified opposition to the Washington consensus, leading to a resurgence in support for many of Guevara’s political beliefs including Pan-Americanism, support for popular movements in the region, the nationalization of key industries and centralization of government. In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, a group with ideological roots in Guevarism were re-elected to government after 16 years. Supporters wore Guevara T-Shirts during the 2006 victory celebrations. Bolivian president Evo Morales has paid many tributes to Guevara and installed a portrait of the Argentinian made from local coca leaves in his presidential suite. In 2006, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who has been known to address audiences in a Che Guevara T-shirt, accompanied Fidel Castro on a tour of Guevara’s boyhood home in Córdoba, describing the experience as “a real honor”. Awaiting crowds of thousands responded with calls of “We feel it! Guevara is right with us!" Guevara’s daughter Aleida also transcribed an extensive interview with Chávez where he outlined his plans for “The New Latin America”, releasing the interview in book form. Guevara remains a key inspirational figure to the Colombian guerrilla movement, the FARC, and the Mexican Zapatista group.

In North America, Western Europe and many regions outside Latin America, the image had been likened to a global brand, long since shedding its ideological or political connotations, and the obsession with Guevara has been dismissed by some as merely "adolescent revolutionary romanticism". In the United States, a country often the focus of Guevara inspired protests in the hemisphere, his image was removed from a CD carrying case after significant public opposition which compared Guevara to Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler. Retail group Target Corporation issued a public apology for producing the item. American, Latin American and European writers, Jon Lee Anderson, Régis Debray, Jorge Castañeda and others contributed to demystify the image of Guevara via articles and biographies, which detailed his life and legacy in more unidealistic terms; and, in the case of Octavio Paz, was accompanied by a critical indictment of the Marxism espoused by many in the Latin American left. Political writer Paul Berman went further, asserting that the "modern-day cult of Che" obscures the work of dissidents and what he believes is a "tremendous social struggle" currently taking place in Cuba. Author Christopher Hitchens, a supporter of the Cuban revolution in the 1960s, summarised Guevara's legacy thus: "Che's iconic status was assured because he failed. His story was one of defeat and isolation, and that's why it is so seductive. Had he lived, the myth of Che would have long since died."