‘A gift of love’! LuLu Yusuff Ali saves Kerala woman's house from bank repossession

Mangaluru: BJP candidate in Dakshina Kannada Capt Brijesh Chowta has received a letter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi wishing him victory in the election.

In the letter, which the BJP shared with the media, the PM has lauded Chowta’s exceptional services in the armed forces as a part of the Gorkha regiment, especially in counter-insurgency operations. Modi also has mentioned about Chowta’s efforts as an organiser of the Mangaluru Lit Fest and his dedication to preserve the cultural heritage of the region.

“I am certain that you will immensely contribute towards the welfare of people and the region of Dakshina Kannada. Through this letter, I would like to tell the people of your constituency that this is not an ordinary election. Families across India, especially the senior members, would remember the difficulties they have gone through in the last five to six decades. In the last 10 years, the quality of life of every section of society has improved, with many of these troubles removed. Yet, a lot more is still to be done and this election will be decisive in our mission to ensure a better life for everyone,” reads the letter. 

“Your exceptional service in the armed forces as a part of the Gorkha regiment, especially in counter-insurgency operations, is commendable. Additionally, your efforts as an organiser of the Mangaluru Lit Fest demonstrate your dedication to preserving the cultural heritage of the region. I am certain that you will immensely contribute towards the welfare of people and the region of Dakshin Kannada”

“With the blessings of the people, I am confident that you will reach the Parliament. Team members like you are a great asset for me. As a team, we will leave no stone unturned for the welfare of the people of your constituency and the country. Through this letter, I would like to tell the people of your constituency that this is not an ordinary election. Families across India, especially the senior members, would remember the difficulties they have gone through in the last 5-6 decades. In the last 10 years, the quality of life of every section of society has improved, with many of these troubles removed. Yet, a lot more is still to be done and this election will be decisive in our mission to ensure a better life for everyone.

“This election is an opportunity to connect our present with a bright future. Every vote that the BJP gets will go towards forming a stable government and impart momentum in our journey to become a developed nation by 2047. The people of India themselves have made up their minds to support this vision and are leading the way in this election. I am aware that the summer heat poses problems to everyone. But this election is extremely important for the future of our nation. I appeal to the voters to cast their votes early in the morning, before the heat sets in.

“It is important that our workers motivate people to go out and vote in large numbers. Focus on winning the booth. Victory in every booth leads to success in the constituency. At the same time, I request workers of our party to take care of their health and that of other people around them. As a candidate of the BJP, I urge you to convey my assurance to each voter that every moment of my time is dedicated to the welfare of my fellow citizens. I send you my wishes for your victory in the election,” stated PM Modi in the letter.

A massive tragedy struck Moscow last week as five armed assailants stormed the Crocus Concert Hall and opened indiscriminate fire on concertgoers, murdering over 130 and wounding many more.

The horrific massacre at the glitzy commercial center, which prompted a massive manhunt, led to the arrest of one assailant at the scene of the crime and others in the Bryansk forest, about 340 km southwest of the Russian capital. 

Almost immediately, Daesh (or as the West calls “ISIS”) claimed responsibility for the ghastly massacre, releasing body cam footage of the shooters opening fire on people at the popular concert hall. 
Since then, many have raised questions about the terrorist group’s motivations and objectives of the attack - and rightfully so.

Daesh has historically been at the service of Western powers. For example, any time the US needs an excuse to justify military operations from Syria to Iraq - Daesh just happens to raise its ugly face and sow chaos and destabilization.

In fact, Daesh is still the main justification for why the US illegally occupies much of Syria and Iraq - despite Axis of Resistance forces led by the late anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani destroying the edifice of the terror group in the region.

Or when Iran faced foreign plots in the form of armed riots in 2022 - rioters that had received training and financial support from American agencies - Daesh took advantage of the chaos and killed over a dozen pilgrims in a cowardly attack on the Shah Cheragh shrine in southern Iran’s Shiraz city.

The timing of the attack came as local security agencies were busy containing the armed rioters, and was seemingly a final bid by foreign hostile powers to foment chaos and disorder in Iran. 

Chaos and destabilization are key to the nefarious plots hatched by US imperialists to push their hegemonic agendas. Since the very beginning of the Cold War, the US has been notorious for using mercenary proxy forces in order to advance its imperialistic goals. 

So what is Daesh doing in Moscow? Three events come to mind that suggest things aren’t exactly what they seem. In other words, there is more to it than meets the eye.

Let’s switch back to January 2024 - outgoing US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said “Putin faces some nasty surprises on the battlefield this year.”

Nuland was referencing the $60 billion supplemental funding for Ukraine from US Congress - funding that has from the start never been kept track of. Billions of dollars worth of money go into weapons, logistics, and other “aid.” It is no secret that Ukraine has been using mercenaries - even Takfiris. 

Daesh fighting in Ukraine is not even a new development. Reports of Daesh fighters fleeing Syria to fight in Ukraine could be recorded as far back as 2015. Fighters were trained under Daesh and then sent to Ukraine to fight Donbas separatists on behalf of the Kiev regime.

We have seen Daesh fighting on the same side as American interests at least twice in recent times - once in Syria against the democratically-elected Syrian government, and second in Ukraine, against Russia – a key US adversary. Also, let’s not forget Afghanistan where Daesh fought the Taliban alongside the US.

Nuland insists that Putin will face challenges on the “battlefield” but Ukrainian drone attacks and bombings throughout Moscow have already set a terroristic precedent for attacks on Russian soil.

A diversity of tactics by employing Takfiri terrorists is still carrying out the same violence by other, more shocking means. 

Second, the US knew in advance of a terrorist attack - with the US embassy in Moscow cautioning Americans to avoid large gatherings days before the dastardly attack that claimed more than 130 lives.

In a message to Americans, the embassy stated: “The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists are planning to attack large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts, in the near future, and US citizens should avoid large gatherings for the next 48 hours.”

Though the message was posted on March 7 and warned of an imminent attack within two days, it seems the US had some damning intelligence. To what degree this information was shared - if it was shared at all - remains unclear.

It is well within the US playbook to post a message of this nature before an attack to absolve themselves of any wrongdoing - but what did the embassy staff and their handlers knew in advance?

The knowledge of the imminent attack also raises other questions. The apprehended shooters revealed they were recruited by unknown people via Telegram, and offered a million rubles for the job.

This is not the modus operandi of Daesh - who typically send fighters on missions that would most certainly ensure they do not survive. However, this does have the markings of the US - which has previously tested Daesh recruitment methods via entrapment cases. 

Furthermore, Russian intelligence confirmed years ago that the US has been training Daesh for attacks on Russian soil. So regardless of whether the assailants were Daesh or not, US influence is clearly in one way or another seen in this attack.

Even if Daesh wants to take credit for the attack, ultimately they are just tools in the hands of their American financiers who are seemingly only deployed when the US needs to cause commotion. 

And of course, there is the final point - the timing of the attack, and the usage of Daesh itself - corresponds to the international critical lens on Israel.

The Tel Aviv regime has never been under more pressure and detested to such a degree. Its war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip and disregard for international law have exposed its illegitimate nature.

The public image of Israel has simply never been worse, and they would need something absolutely horrific - and something they can use to their own benefit politically - to get out of the mess.

So where does Daesh come in? One must recall the first few weeks of the Al Aqsa Storm operation - where Zionist media started a campaign falsely equating Hamas with Daesh (ISIS).

The campaign, circulated with the false slogan “Hamas is ISIS” painted Hamas resistance fighters as Takfiri terrorists in order to gain international support for the Zionist cause.

This backfired massively. Hamas and Daesh are well-known enemies, are not ideologically aligned, and do not consider themselves allies in the slightest matter.

This Zionist lie was so far-fetched that even Western media outlets such as Time magazine, Politico, and AP news agency published articles detailing how the two groups are not alike. 

Now, as the Zionist image is in tatters, a Daesh attack works in its favor - as it always has.

Racist Zionist politicians and pundits scrambled to social media to warn the world of “Islamism” and to insist yet again that Daesh is the same as Hamas, warning that if they do not destroy Hamas the world would see these attacks in Europe and in the United States, carried out by Hamas (who have never conducted terrorist operations as all of their targets are military targets, and further Hamas operations are limited to only occupied Palestine). 

The attack that killed over a hundred innocents is being used as Israeli propaganda to conduct their own war crimes against the Palestinian people.

At best, this is standard Zionist racism and propaganda. At worst, the Zionists themselves had a direct hand in this, at a bare minimum having some knowledge from US intelligence services.

The entire situation screams of foreign manipulation and shadowy Western actors. Daesh has been the Western tool for over a decade now to sow chaos and mayhem - and it seemingly continues to be a go-to tactic for CIA-Mossad operations. 

Over a hundred lives were lost and thousands were changed forever. The world must mourn with Moscow and the Russian people over this horrific loss of life - but it must also remain vigilant and ask the right questions.

Who really benefits from chaos and destruction in Russia? Who really benefits from chaos and destruction in Somalia, Iraq and Syria, where Daesh also operates? 

One thing is undeniable: wherever you find Daesh, you will always find the shadow of the US with it.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of coastaldigest.com)

Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh city in southern Vietnam in the country's largest financial fraud case ever, state media Thanh Nien said.

It's a rare verdict - she is one of very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime, i.e. looting one of the country's largest banks over a period of 11 years.

The decision is a reflection of the dizzying scale of the fraud. Truong My Lan was convicted of taking out $44bn (£35bn) in loans from the Saigon Commercial Bank. The verdict requires her to return $27bn, a sum prosecutors said may never be recovered. Some believe the death penalty is the court's way of trying to encourage her to return some of the missing billions.

The habitually secretive communist authorities were uncharacteristically forthright about this case, going into minute detail for the media. They said 2,700 people were summoned to testify, while 10 state prosecutors and around 200 lawyers were involved.

The evidence was in 104 boxes weighing a total of six tonnes. Eighty-five defendants were tried with Truong My Lan, who denied the charges.

"There has never been a show trial like this, I think, in the communist era," says David Brown, a retired US state department official with long experience in Vietnam. "There has certainly been nothing on this scale."

The trial was the most dramatic chapter so far in the "Blazing Furnaces" anti-corruption campaign led by the Communist Party Secretary-General, Nguyen Phu Trong.

A conservative ideologue steeped in Marxist theory, Nguyen Phu Trong believes that popular anger over untamed corruption poses an existential threat to the Communist Party's monopoly on power. He began the campaign in earnest in 2016 after out-manoeuvring the then pro-business prime minister to retain the top job in the party.

 The campaign has seen two presidents and two deputy prime ministers forced to resign, and hundreds of officials disciplined or jailed. Now one of the country's richest women has joined their ranks.

Truong My Lan comes from a Sino-Vietnamese family in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. It has long been the commercial engine of the Vietnamese economy, dating well back to its days as the anti-communist capital of South Vietnam, with a large, ethnic Chinese community.

She started as a market stall vendor, selling cosmetics with her mother, but began buying land and property after the Communist Party ushered in a period of economic reform, known as Doi Moi, in 1986. By the 1990s, she owned a large portfolio of hotels and restaurants.

Although Vietnam is best known outside the country for its fast-growing manufacturing sector, as an alternative supply chain to China, most wealthy Vietnamese made their money developing and speculating in property.

All land is officially state-owned. Getting access to it often relies on personal relationships with state officials. Corruption escalated as the economy grew, and became endemic.

By 2011, Truong My Lan was a well-known business figure in Ho Chi Minh City, and she was allowed to arrange the merger of three smaller, cash-strapped banks into a larger entity: Saigon Commercial Bank.

Vietnamese law prohibits any individual from holding more than 5% of the shares in any bank. But prosecutors say that through hundreds of shell companies and people acting as her proxies, Truong My Lan actually owned more than 90% of Saigon Commercial.

They accused her of using that power to appoint her own people as managers, and then ordering them to approve hundreds of loans to the network of shell companies she controlled.

The amounts taken out are staggering. Her loans made up 93% of all the bank's lending.

According to prosecutors, over a period of three years from February 2019, she ordered her driver to withdraw 108 trillion Vietnamese dong, more than $4bn (£2.3bn) in cash from the bank, and store it in her basement.

That much cash, even if all of it was in Vietnam's largest denomination banknotes, would weigh two tonnes.

She was also accused of bribing generously to ensure her loans were never scrutinised. One of those who was tried used to be a chief inspector at the central bank, who was accused of accepting a $5m bribe.

The mass of officially sanctioned publicity about the case channelled public anger over corruption against Truong My Lan, whose fatigued, unmade-up appearance in court was in stark contrast to the glamorous publicity photos people had seen of her in the past.

But questions are also being asked about why she was able to keep on with the alleged fraud for so long.

"I am puzzled," says Le Hong Hiep who runs the Vietnam Studies Programme at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

"Because it wasn't a secret. It was well known in the market that Truong My Lan and her Van Thinh Phat group were using SCB as their own piggy bank to fund the mass acquisition of real estate in the most prime locations.

"It was obvious that she had to get the money from somewhere. But then it is such a common practice. SCB is not the only bank that is used like this. So perhaps the government lost sight because there are so many similar cases in the market."

David Brown believes she was protected by powerful figures who have dominated business and politics in Ho Chi Minh City for decades. And he sees a bigger factor in play in the way this trial is being run: a bid to reassert the authority of the Communist Party over the free-wheeling business culture of the south.

"What Nguyen Phu Trong and his allies in the party are trying to do is to regain control of Saigon, or at least stop it from slipping away.

"Up until 2016 the party in Hanoi pretty much let this Sino-Vietnamese mafia run the place. They would make all the right noises that local communist leaders are supposed to make, but at the same time they were milking the city for a substantial cut of the money that was being made down there."

At 79 years old, party chief Nguyen Phu Trong is in shaky health, and will almost certainly have to retire at the next Communist Party Congress in 2026, when new leaders will be chosen.

He has been one of the longest-serving and most consequential secretary-generals, restoring the authority of the party's conservative wing to a level not seen since the reforms of the 1980s. He clearly does not want to risk permitting enough openness to undermine the party's hold on political power.

But he is trapped in a contradiction. Under his leadership the party has set an ambitious goal of reaching rich country status by 2045, with a technology and knowledge-based economy. This is what is driving the ever-closer partnership with the United States.

Yet faster growth in Vietnam almost inevitably means more corruption. Fight corruption too much, and you risk extinguishing a lot of economic activity. Already there are complaints that bureaucracy has slowed down, as officials shy away from decisions which might implicate them in a corruption case.

"That's the paradox," says Le Hong Hiep. "Their growth model has been reliant on corrupt practices for so long. Corruption has been the grease that that kept the machinery working. If they stop the grease, things may not work any more."