Kargil War, 9/11 Mumbai Terror Attack: Look Back

Salute to the War Heroes

Social media was abuzz with Kargil Vijay Diwas. On 26th July, 1999, India successfully took command of the high outposts which had been lost to Pakistan. The Kargil war was fought for more than 60 days that resulted in the loss of life on both sides.

Naik Deepchand, who went
to Kargil in 1999as a strapping 
six feet tall, returned without
both legs and a hand

Kargil Vijay Diwas is celebrated on 26 July every year in honour of the the Kargil War Heroes. We salute the martyrs and to our brave soldiers for their supreme sacrifice for the nation!

Kargil war saw India witnessing two major technologies:

1. Communicating from remote and inaccessible areas via Iridium handheld phone which works through a network of low space orbiting satellites owned and operated by a Canadian firm.

2. The luxury of live broadcast journalism in Indian television facilitating uplinking of signals directly to the satellite from any remote locations thus, making the content publicly available for viewing.

These two major technologies kept citizens glued to their television sets while many broadcast journalists turned out overnight heroes for broadcasting live from the battle field.

What did we learn from the Kargil war?

1. Broadcasting live from the battlefield and forward posts gave an advantage to our opponent since they were also closely monitoring such live feeds from the Indian TV satellite channels.

2. Victory for the Indian Army which could had been

   

   Iridium handheld phone

   achieved much earlier, was only getting stretched since strategic changes had to be done frequently due to the leaked information in live broadcast and voiceover reports through Iridium handheld phones. Pakistan army was having a ball-of-a-time since every bit of information about Indian troops movement was freely available, courtesy: Indian televisions.

3. Many would recall an episode where two young Indian army commissioned officers were interviewed live at their bunkers in the forward post. This made work easy for Pakistan army who tracked their location next day, bombarded the bunker and killed both officers.

Had there been no live broadcast coverage, then these soldiers would have lived today.

Repeat of the same act in the 9/11 Mumbai terror attack 

Outdoor Broadcast Van:
Representational Image 

In 2008 heavily armed Pakistan-based terrorists sneaked into India’s financial capital in a trawler boat, causing mayhem that left more than 166 civilians and armed forces dead. Here too, the courtesy of our Indian live broadcast television proved to be aiding the terrorists.

File Photo: Taj Mumbai 

Hotel Terror Attack

Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist in the Taj Hotel, infamous for killing scores of people was continuously receiving instructions and feedback in his mobile phone by his handlers based out of Pakistan soil as they were also tuned to the same Indian TV satellite channels.

It is strongly argued that had there were no live broadcast, then the casualties may had been much less though.

So where did we go wrong? 

There are several opinions and observations on both the Kargil war as well as the 9/11 Mumbai terror attack. 

During the Kargil conflict, it was the government of India seeking publicity which allowed live broadcasts coverage by news channels.There is no way that the broadcasting crew could have ever reached such places with their heavy equipments without being vetted by the ministry of defence.

Nor could they have ever got onboard a Mirage aircraft or reached remote places where firing was on without ministry of defence sanctioning it. 

The bottom line

It was an expensive lesson learnt in the hindsight. While blaming the journalists would be irrational, it would be prudent for the armed forces to be extremely strict in giving access for live broadcasts in such sensitive operations. 

In the light of the above, there is also a call for the Indian TV news channels to play restraint on their own and act responsibly. They should avoid the TRP game, shun away from the desire of a shortcut to the limelight or becoming an overnight hero especially in such sensitive situations. 

Jai Hind!

How Hospitals Treat Deceased?

Need of Ethics and Soft Skills! 

How are hospitals and nursing homes expected to treat patients who have died in course of undergoing treatment? By any standards, after the attending physician issues a death certificate, it is the basic decency of nurses to clean the patient and make them presentable before handing over the deceased to their kins.

Globally, the general practice is to lay the patient on their back with one pillow in place; straighten the patient’s limbs and place their arms by their sides; gently close the patient’s eyes if open by applying light pressure for thirty seconds. And finally, tidy the hair as soon as possible and arrange it into the preferred style.

Publisher-Writer Sujit Acharya

Soon after death occurs, one should be able to close the eyelids quite easily. However, after a while, once rigor mortis sets in, it can become difficult. 

All these are done to give the deceased dignity and show they are sleeping peacefully. It is an expression of respect and affection, part of the process of adjusting to loss and expressing grief.  

My uncle spent in a hospital at an Indian metro city nearly ten days dying. He was sleeping because his organs were shutting down, a natural process due to old age. He passed away on 30th November 2018. He was 91.

All hell broke loose in the lineage as soon someone shared half-a-dozen photographs of the deceased through WhatsApp. I was yet to receive though. My sibling who resides in a different city texted me that the images were extremely distasteful and was reluctant to show or share it with anybody!

After a week or so, those same set of images too landed up in my WhatsApp on a late

The Awful image of deceased

night. Honestly, I could not stare at the photographs for more than a second as it was just terrible and hurting me. Initially, I was fuming against the sender but then, a deeper thought came into my mind.

Observing the photographs, I felt that there had been serious deficiency on part of the hospital in handing over the deceased to kins without even caring to make it bare-minimum presentable! The eyes and mouth were wide open! And this only compounded lot of doubts and integrity of the hospital in question. 

If this was the state of affairs at a reputed hospital in a metro city, then one could imagine plight of millions of patients across the various Indian states who has to visit such type of health care centres on a regular basis.

The transformed image with closed eyelids and mouth

All these had choked me with emotions. I was convinced that our fun-loving uncle alias, Publisher & Writer Sujit Acharya, who was extremely health conscious, who took pride in his dressing and looks, would have never liked to be seen in such disgraceful images.

After months I was able to muster courage to view those photographs. Staring at them I was wondering deeply if anything positive could be done. With several hours of trial and error in my Mac, I was finally able to transform an appropriate image that should be acceptable in contrast to the ones shared! 

Yes, he is now peacefully sleeping - I am sure our uncle, affectionately addressed by many as Kuka, appears that his soul is satisfied!

Sujit Acharya

To conclude, hospitals, nursing homes and other health care organisations must

Publisher & Writer Sujit Acharya

ensure adequate dignity to the deceased. They should be trained in soft skills to deal with the deceased's grieve-stricken kins and loved ones. While there is a crying need of an effective competent government agencies to monitor hospitals and nursing homes from time to time, health organisations should also initiate punitive actions on its own against the erring personnel. 

Further, citizens who are armed with the power of internet can post their experiences in various social media. They should avoid circulating fake messages and instead genuinely report any such deficiencies as well as show whole heartedly praise for any good deeds shown. These steps may put the hospitals and nursing homes on their toes to thwart recurrence of such unpleasant episodes. 

BeAware Malware

BeAware, a Suspicious Malware!

Of late the very thought of opening my laptop and getting into work was making me feel lethargic as the machine appeared somewhat slow while certain applications kept on crashing all of a sudden. Initially, I had attributed all these symptoms to the upgradation of MacOS from High Sierra to Mojave and however, believed that gradually it would normalise. 

Months had passed but my machine was not any better that only further drifted me away from it. Had done all the standard diagnostic drills too but it was not of any help though. 

The BeAware malware

In my MacBook Air’s launch pad suddenly I had noticed a strange App with the name ‘BeAware’ which had a logo of a bee. I tried dragging it into the trash several times without any success nor was it visible in the Application folder.

I kept on wondering how did this strange App land up in to my launch pad as I had no knowledge of downloading it. Clicking this App would just flash for a fraction of a second with no results and then would remain in the dock.

I Google searched about this BeAware and checked up the Apple community link. Here I was shocked to learn that this was a suspicious surveillance malware that had globally hit MacBook Airs on 14 December 2018! It makes its entry in one’s laptop without seeking any permission which slows down the machine.

In the Apple community page, users projected various tips to get rid of this malware but it was simply not working for me. Some users suggested to download and run Malwarebytes or Etrecheck - a diagnostic tool. 

I had downloaded Malwarebytes which could only figure out this BeAware in the Activity Monitor. To delete it from the system, Malwarebytes suggests to download the pro version which has a price tag of around 3,000/- INR.  

The Activity Monitor

I decided to visit Asia’s largest computer market at Nehru Place, New Delhi for a solution. Most tech people here after examining my machine had only one common suggestion - format my SSD (Solid State Drive). I was extremely reluctant due to the various softwares, plugins, audio effects, projects, etc that were installed which would make me go crazy. 

Had also visited a couple of authorised Mac Service centres. Here, one has to make a flat down payment as service charge plus additional for any hardware, etc which hurts the wallet. At the back of all this, they were also remotely advising to format the machine.

Felt completely dejected and returned home. After a couple of days on a weekend I decided to take it as a challenge to locate this BeAware bug and remove it from my system. It was a tedious process of minutely going through numerous folders, but the end result was just rewarding. Finally, I was able to locate and drag it into the trash. Now my machine has become good as before!

Here is the method which I had dicovered that should take just five minutes to get rid of such stubborn malware from any mac computers:

1. Go to the Activity Monitor and disable the BeAware. The procedure of going to Activity Monitor is:- Go to ‘Finder’; in the menu bar on top select ‘Go’; In the dropdown menu select ‘Utilities’ and then click ‘Activity Monitor’

2. Go to desktop; In the top lefthand corner of the menu bar, click on the ‘Apple’ icon; Select system preference; Click ‘Users & Groups’: Click 'login items'; Tick check box of the 'BeeActive’ malware and click the minus sign ‘-‘ in the bottom to remove it

3. Go to desktop and click the ‘Macintosh HD’ icon; Select the ‘Application Folder’ and then straight drag the ‘BeeActive’ malware into the trash

The dropdown menu from MacHD

These three essential steps will free any mac computers from such malware.

Hope this helps to all mac users whose machines have been affected by such malware. 

The bottom line is that all such exercise has turned out to be a great learning and most importantly, I have saved my precious data and softwares as well as money.

An advise to all mac users is that in Apple’s system preference, always check in the ‘Firewall’ under Security & Privacy. Feel good doing all of my own and hope this experience helps other users.

Screen shot of my Launch Pad