Deoband first: A fatwa against terror
1 Jun 2008, 0000 hrs IST,TNN
NEW DELHI: For the first time ever, Islamic seminary Darul-Uloom Deoband issued a fatwa against terrorism on Saturday, stating Islam had come to wipe out all kinds of terrorism and to spread the message of global peace. The Darul-Uloom had denounced terrorism for the first time in February, but had not issued a fatwa so far.
Saturday’s fatwa, signed by Darul-Uloom’s grand mufti Habibur Rehman, asserts that "Islam rejects all kinds of unjust violence, breach of peace, bloodshed, murder and plunder and does not allow it in any form".
Citing the "sinister campaign" to malign "Islamic faith...by linking terrorism with Islam and distorting the meanings of Quranic Verses and Prophet traditions", Mahmood Asad Madani, leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, had wanted Deoband to spell out the stand of Islam on world peace.
The fatwa, issued before a huge gathering of Muslims in Delhi’s Ramlila Ground for the Anti-Terrorism and Global Peace Conference, went on to say, "It is proved from clear guidelines provided in the Holy Quran that allegations of terrorism against a religion which preaches and guarantees world peace is nothing but a lie. The religion of Islam has come to wipe out all kinds of terrorism and to spread the message of global peace. Allah knows the best."
The conference was addressed by Jamiat chief and Darul-Uloom’s deputy rector Hazrat Maulana Qari Sayed Mohammed Usman.
He called the conference historic as Muslims of different sects and ideologies — including Nadwatul Ulama Lucknow, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind and All India Muslim Personal Law Board — ratified the fatwa against terrorism.
The exclusively-male turnout that read an "oath of allegiance" to the fatwa cheered most lustily as speakers attacked the US.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind leader Madani, an MP, stated that the fatwa should be welcomed by the entire Islamic world.
"Killing of innocent people is not compatible with Islam. The biggest challenge faced by us today is terrorism (which) threatens to strike at the very root of the secular structure of our society besides causing irreparable loss," stated Madani.
Notwithstanding the caveats like "unjust" and "innocent", which may make it appear falling short of an
unequivocal condemnation of terrorism, the fatwa is viewed by many as a significant step forward towards rallying the public opinion against terrorism.
Coming after the February 25 denunciation, it is seen as reflective of the growing recognition on the part of clerics to counter misgivings about interpretations of scriptures.
Deoband has lately been under intense focus because many of the terrorist groups — from Taliban to Jaish and Harkat — are widely perceived to be Deobandi in orientation.
However, it was when the deputy rector of Deoband, Usman, came down heavily on "the dual policy of America" that the massive crowds cheered the most. "Whenever Christian and American interests are hurt in any part of the world, they take prompt action to set things right even at the cost of human lives. They maintain silence though when Muslims are the victims," he said, further criticizing the US for its support to Israel.
According to Usman, Jamiat recently held a series of conferences and meetings with madrassas in Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Surat, Varanasi and Kolkata to carry forward the anti-terror movement which was initiated at Deoband in February. Usman said that many people, especially in the West, were carrying out a propaganda that terrorism was synonymous with jehad.
He said that while terrorism is destructive, jehad is constructive. "Terrorism is the gravest crime as held by Quran and Islam. We are not prepared to tolerate terrorism in any form and we are ready to cooperate with all responsible people," he said.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
UN: Myanmar Forcing Cyclone Survivors out of Camps
UN: Myanmar Forcing Cyclone Survivors out of Camps
UN official says Myanmar is forcing cyclone survivors out of refugee camps
YANGON, Myanmar May 30, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press
People line up outside an aid tent in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday, May 29, 2008 awaiting medical treatment. Aid and relief has been slow getting to affected areas and people after a cyclone hit southern Myanmar causing mass destruction and death.
Myanmar's military government is forcing cyclone victims out of refugee camps and "dumping" them near their devastated villages with virtually no aid supplies, U.N. and church officials said Friday.
Eight camps set up by the junta for homeless victims in the Irrawaddy delta town of Bogalay were "totally empty" as the clear-out continued, said Teh Tai Ring of UNICEF, speaking at a meeting of U.N. and private aid agency workers discussing water and sanitation issues.
"The government is moving people unannounced," he said, adding that authorities were "dumping people in the approximate location of the villages, basically with nothing."
After his remarks were reported, UNICEF issued a statement saying they referred to "unconfirmed reports by relief workers on the relocation of displaced people" affected by the May 2-3 storm.
However, Teh said the information came from a relief worker who had just returned from the affected area and that "tears were shed" when he recounted his findings to UNICEF officials earlier in the day.
At a church in Yangon, meanwhile, more than 400 cyclone victims from the delta township of Labutta were evicted Friday following orders from authorities a day earlier.
"It was a scene of sadness, despair and pain," said a church official at the Yangon Karen Baptist Home Missions, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of official reprisal. "Those villagers lost their homes, their family members and the whole village was washed away. They have no home to go back to."
All the refugees except for a few pregnant women, two young children and those with severe illnesses left the church in 11 trucks Friday morning, the official said.
Authorities told church workers the victims would first be taken to a government camp in Myaung Mya — a mostly undamaged town in the Irrawaddy delta. It was not immediately clear when they would be resettled in their villages.
Aid groups said Myanmar's military government was still hindering foreign assistance for victims of the cyclone, despite a promise to U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon to ease travel restrictions.
UN official says Myanmar is forcing cyclone survivors out of refugee camps
YANGON, Myanmar May 30, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press
People line up outside an aid tent in Yangon, Myanmar, Thursday, May 29, 2008 awaiting medical treatment. Aid and relief has been slow getting to affected areas and people after a cyclone hit southern Myanmar causing mass destruction and death.
Myanmar's military government is forcing cyclone victims out of refugee camps and "dumping" them near their devastated villages with virtually no aid supplies, U.N. and church officials said Friday.
Eight camps set up by the junta for homeless victims in the Irrawaddy delta town of Bogalay were "totally empty" as the clear-out continued, said Teh Tai Ring of UNICEF, speaking at a meeting of U.N. and private aid agency workers discussing water and sanitation issues.
"The government is moving people unannounced," he said, adding that authorities were "dumping people in the approximate location of the villages, basically with nothing."
After his remarks were reported, UNICEF issued a statement saying they referred to "unconfirmed reports by relief workers on the relocation of displaced people" affected by the May 2-3 storm.
However, Teh said the information came from a relief worker who had just returned from the affected area and that "tears were shed" when he recounted his findings to UNICEF officials earlier in the day.
At a church in Yangon, meanwhile, more than 400 cyclone victims from the delta township of Labutta were evicted Friday following orders from authorities a day earlier.
"It was a scene of sadness, despair and pain," said a church official at the Yangon Karen Baptist Home Missions, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of official reprisal. "Those villagers lost their homes, their family members and the whole village was washed away. They have no home to go back to."
All the refugees except for a few pregnant women, two young children and those with severe illnesses left the church in 11 trucks Friday morning, the official said.
Authorities told church workers the victims would first be taken to a government camp in Myaung Mya — a mostly undamaged town in the Irrawaddy delta. It was not immediately clear when they would be resettled in their villages.
Aid groups said Myanmar's military government was still hindering foreign assistance for victims of the cyclone, despite a promise to U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon to ease travel restrictions.
Archbishop’s killer, Abu Omar, gets Death sentence
Death sentence for Archbishop’s killer
Timothy Lavin
The Iraqi Central Criminal Court sentenced an al-Qaida leader to death for the murder of a Chaldean archbishop last week, drawing praise from the US Government but angry opposition from Iraqi Catholic leaders, writes Timothy Lavin.
Ahmed Ali Ahmed, known as Abu Omar, was convicted of murdering the Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, and will face execution. Archbishop Rahho was kidnapped by masked gunmen as he left Mass in Mosul in late February and found killed in March.
"If he were still alive, Archbishop Rahho himself would not permit that someone would die for him," Auxiliary Bishop Shlemo Warduni of Baghdad said, according to Asia News. "This conviction does not meet Christian values," Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk told AFP. "We are not satisfied with this decision because the Church is against the death penalty."
The US embassy in Baghdad said the verdict was just. "Reiterating our condolences to the archbishop's family and community, we commend the Iraqi authorities for bringing the perpetrator of this brutal crime to justice," an official statement said.
Timothy Lavin
The Iraqi Central Criminal Court sentenced an al-Qaida leader to death for the murder of a Chaldean archbishop last week, drawing praise from the US Government but angry opposition from Iraqi Catholic leaders, writes Timothy Lavin.
Ahmed Ali Ahmed, known as Abu Omar, was convicted of murdering the Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, and will face execution. Archbishop Rahho was kidnapped by masked gunmen as he left Mass in Mosul in late February and found killed in March.
"If he were still alive, Archbishop Rahho himself would not permit that someone would die for him," Auxiliary Bishop Shlemo Warduni of Baghdad said, according to Asia News. "This conviction does not meet Christian values," Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk told AFP. "We are not satisfied with this decision because the Church is against the death penalty."
The US embassy in Baghdad said the verdict was just. "Reiterating our condolences to the archbishop's family and community, we commend the Iraqi authorities for bringing the perpetrator of this brutal crime to justice," an official statement said.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
War of the Dolls: Barbie vs. Bratz
JOHN BERMAN, ANNA WILD, KELLY HAGAN and IMAEYEN IBANGA reports that the makers of Barbie and Bratz are in a heated legal battle.Mattel Inc.'s iconic blond doll and MGA Entertainment Inc., producers of the popular Bratz dolls are in the court to settle the disputes over rights to their dolls.Carter Bryant, the man who designed the nine-inch Bratz dolls, worked at Mattel when he came up with the concept, and therefore it owns the dolls. The Bratz dolls arrived on the scene in 2001. Ever since its arrival Barbie's sales dropped, almost 12 percent,$46.6 million,in the first quarter of this year alone.
The Los Angeles-based MGA claimed that Mattel changed the design of its "My Scene" dolls to more closely resemble Bratz dolls. Though Mattel sued Bryant, the designer of their dolls, but finally settled with their former employee for undisclosed terms.
The Los Angeles-based MGA claimed that Mattel changed the design of its "My Scene" dolls to more closely resemble Bratz dolls. Though Mattel sued Bryant, the designer of their dolls, but finally settled with their former employee for undisclosed terms.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Miss Tibet joins hands in support of freedom march
Miss Tibet joins hands in support of freedom march
Wed, May 28 07:35 PM
New Delhi, May 28(ANI): Shouting passionately for a free Tibet protesters took to the streets of India's capital on Wednesday.These students symbolically started their march at Mahatma Gandhi's memorial Rajghat, vowing to keep their demonstration peaceful.
Joining them was Miss Tibet 2006 Tsering Chungdak. Using her status to further the cause against Chinese rule, she says Tibetans want freedom.
Wed, May 28 07:35 PM
New Delhi, May 28(ANI): Shouting passionately for a free Tibet protesters took to the streets of India's capital on Wednesday.These students symbolically started their march at Mahatma Gandhi's memorial Rajghat, vowing to keep their demonstration peaceful.
Joining them was Miss Tibet 2006 Tsering Chungdak. Using her status to further the cause against Chinese rule, she says Tibetans want freedom.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Quake Brings Rare Freedom for Journalists in China
Quake Brings Rare Freedom for Journalists in China
Foreign Journalists Given Unprecedented Freedom to Report on China Quake
By WILLIAM FOREMAN Associated Press Writer
BEICHUAN, China May 26, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press
Jiang Guohua, the Communist Party secretary of Mianzhu city, kneels on the ground pleading with... Expand
Jiang Guohua, the Communist Party secretary of Mianzhu city, kneels on the ground pleading with protesting parents, whose children were killed in a school collapse during China's recent devastating earthquake, not to complain to higher authorities, in Mianzhu in southwest China's Sichuan province Sunday, May 25, 2008. Despite Jiang's pleas, the parents of the 127 children who died in the collapse kept marching Sunday and eventually met with higher officials, who told them the government would investigate. (AP Photo) Collapse
(AP)
More Photos
Rows of body bags were laid out along streets for all to see. Sobbing parents furious about shoddily built schools that collapsed and killed thousands of children were able to speak freely. Military helicopters carried reporters to tour the disaster zone.
The earthquake that flattened a wide swath of central Sichuan province May 12 has been a historic event for journalism in China. Never before have the nation's leaders allowed foreign reporters so much freedom to cover a major disaster.
Chinese leaders haven't fully explained the new openness, and periods of thaw can be brief here. Only time will tell if it is a real policy shift — a bold break from the Communist Party's traditional tight control on the release of news, particularly bad news.
It might just be a response to the disaster's exceptional magnitude — the death toll may exceed 80,000 and 5 million people are homeless — and the government's pledge to be more open before the Beijing Olympics.
"We have adopted an open policy because we think it was not only the disaster for Chinese people, but the people of the world," Premier Wen Jiabao said during a weekend tour of the quake zone. "Our spirit of putting people above all and our open policy will not change."
The contrast to previous disasters is stark.
In the past, regions ravaged by floods, earthquakes, typhoons and other catastrophes were mostly sealed off to foreign media. Information from the no-go zones was treated like state secrets. Reporters trying to cover disasters without official permission — almost never granted — were stopped by police. Notebooks were seized, and photo files deleted.
When Associated Press journalists went to cover a quake that struck the western region of Xinjiang in 2003, police waited for them in their hotel lobby and interrogated them about their reporting. As recently as two months ago, security officials in Sichuan set up roadblocks and turned back journalists trying to cover protests by ethnic Tibetans in the region.
Foreign Journalists Given Unprecedented Freedom to Report on China Quake
By WILLIAM FOREMAN Associated Press Writer
BEICHUAN, China May 26, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press
Jiang Guohua, the Communist Party secretary of Mianzhu city, kneels on the ground pleading with... Expand
Jiang Guohua, the Communist Party secretary of Mianzhu city, kneels on the ground pleading with protesting parents, whose children were killed in a school collapse during China's recent devastating earthquake, not to complain to higher authorities, in Mianzhu in southwest China's Sichuan province Sunday, May 25, 2008. Despite Jiang's pleas, the parents of the 127 children who died in the collapse kept marching Sunday and eventually met with higher officials, who told them the government would investigate. (AP Photo) Collapse
(AP)
More Photos
Rows of body bags were laid out along streets for all to see. Sobbing parents furious about shoddily built schools that collapsed and killed thousands of children were able to speak freely. Military helicopters carried reporters to tour the disaster zone.
The earthquake that flattened a wide swath of central Sichuan province May 12 has been a historic event for journalism in China. Never before have the nation's leaders allowed foreign reporters so much freedom to cover a major disaster.
Chinese leaders haven't fully explained the new openness, and periods of thaw can be brief here. Only time will tell if it is a real policy shift — a bold break from the Communist Party's traditional tight control on the release of news, particularly bad news.
It might just be a response to the disaster's exceptional magnitude — the death toll may exceed 80,000 and 5 million people are homeless — and the government's pledge to be more open before the Beijing Olympics.
"We have adopted an open policy because we think it was not only the disaster for Chinese people, but the people of the world," Premier Wen Jiabao said during a weekend tour of the quake zone. "Our spirit of putting people above all and our open policy will not change."
The contrast to previous disasters is stark.
In the past, regions ravaged by floods, earthquakes, typhoons and other catastrophes were mostly sealed off to foreign media. Information from the no-go zones was treated like state secrets. Reporters trying to cover disasters without official permission — almost never granted — were stopped by police. Notebooks were seized, and photo files deleted.
When Associated Press journalists went to cover a quake that struck the western region of Xinjiang in 2003, police waited for them in their hotel lobby and interrogated them about their reporting. As recently as two months ago, security officials in Sichuan set up roadblocks and turned back journalists trying to cover protests by ethnic Tibetans in the region.
China not to endorse India's bid to UN Security Council seat
China outsmarts India over UN Security Council seat
New Delhi:The symphony of South-South cooperation at the recent conclave of foreign ministers of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) at Yekaterinburg was jarred by China's refusal to endorse India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council (UNSC). In the joint communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, Chinese delegates scotched Russian proposals of supporting India's cause of entering the elite league at the UNSC.
There are two ways of interpreting the latest Chinese attempt to cut India down to size and remind it of the hurdles facing its global ambitions. One reaction is of dismay that China went back on a prior commitment to recommend India for a permanent seat at the UNSC. In November 2006, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee claimed that Chinese President Hu Jintao had "reiterated" that Beijing was in favour of New Delhi's inclusion as a permanent member of the UNSC. Thus, the Yekaterinburg drama could be seen as a volte-face act of backtracking by China.
The second, more realistic, reading of the situation is that Indian officials have been applying a glossy spin to the chameleonic Chinese positions of the past, which never overtly pledged approval of a permanent UNSC seat for New Delhi. It is worth recalling that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's 2005 visit to India did not yield any definitive comment that China would be happy to second India's goal of bagging a permanent seat at the UNSC.
Likewise, despite the assertion of Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon that President Hu had "assured" India on a bilateral visit in 2006 that China "would not be an obstacle" to New Delhi's push for permanent membership of the UNSC, no concrete guarantee was given in writing at the Joint Declaration.
Thus, the firm refusal of China to sign a communiqué at Yekaterinburg that unambiguously championed a permanent seat for India at the UNSC is actually consistent with Beijing's hide-and-seek strategy on the issue. More than China deluding India by rescinding on its past promises, it appears to be a case of India allowing itself to be deluded by building make-believe castles.
The last few years have witnessed numerous summits and governmental exchanges between India and China. China is now India's largest trading partner, with the annual volume of trade standing at $40 billion and expected to touch $60 billion by 2010. The political side of the relationship has also improved, with usage of phrases like 'strategic partnership' by both sides. India's containment of the Tibetan upsurge in March 2008 was applauded by China with appreciative pats. The fact that China even accepted relief aid from India for rehabilitating earthquake victims in Sichuan earlier this month suggests that Asia's giants are getting along, if not cavorting together.
Yet, in a puzzling disconnect with these trends, the military competition between the two countries is intensifying. India has been noting with great concern China's rapidly expanding space weapons programme. The discovery of a secret Chinese nuclear submarine base on the Hainan Island and the exposure of a massive nuclear missile site in central China remind New Delhi of its vulnerability to overwhelming attack. The continuing impasse over the disputed border between the two countries stands in sharp relief to the expansion of commercial goods traffic across the Nathu La pass that had been closed since the 1962 war.
These contradictory logics in the India-China relationship are fuelled by the disentanglement of the private sector from the state in both countries. The enormous corporate interests of India and China view their counterparts across the McMahon Line as compatriots with whom business can be done for mutual benefit. Economic liberalisation and private sector booms in both countries have unleashed an appetite for economic interaction that does not have to wait for resolution of military and strategic conflicts. Whether or not China is sympathetic to India becoming a permanent member of the UNSC is immaterial to exporters and importers of the two countries, as long as their profits flow.
Although states disallow the gains of trade from getting lost in the acrimony of military-strategic rivalry, they are essentially political actors with political ends. So, even as the Indian and Chinese chambers of commerce may raise toasts to each other, the standoff over a permanent seat for India at the Security Council will dog its relations with China.
New Delhi needs to drop its blinkers and openly admit that China is not sanguine about India joining the P-5 at the Security Council. Optimistic Indian diplomats argue that China has indicated in private settings that its main objection is that India's bid is knotted with Japan's attempt to garner a permanent seat. This is a red herring, because Chinese military journals and think tanks are closely monitoring India's economic, technological and military advances. To assume that China's strategic planning is Taiwan- or Japan-centric misses the changing reality of New Delhi's rise and the discomfort it is generating in Beijing.
From 1955, when Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru conceded an offer for a permanent seat at the UNSC to China, New Delhi has permitted itself to be outsmarted by Beijing on this contentious issue. It is now high time to stop living in illusions and to acknowledge that China is one of the obstacles to India's quest for global stature.
Source: Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi:The symphony of South-South cooperation at the recent conclave of foreign ministers of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) at Yekaterinburg was jarred by China's refusal to endorse India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council (UNSC). In the joint communiqué issued at the end of the meeting, Chinese delegates scotched Russian proposals of supporting India's cause of entering the elite league at the UNSC.
There are two ways of interpreting the latest Chinese attempt to cut India down to size and remind it of the hurdles facing its global ambitions. One reaction is of dismay that China went back on a prior commitment to recommend India for a permanent seat at the UNSC. In November 2006, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee claimed that Chinese President Hu Jintao had "reiterated" that Beijing was in favour of New Delhi's inclusion as a permanent member of the UNSC. Thus, the Yekaterinburg drama could be seen as a volte-face act of backtracking by China.
The second, more realistic, reading of the situation is that Indian officials have been applying a glossy spin to the chameleonic Chinese positions of the past, which never overtly pledged approval of a permanent UNSC seat for New Delhi. It is worth recalling that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's 2005 visit to India did not yield any definitive comment that China would be happy to second India's goal of bagging a permanent seat at the UNSC.
Likewise, despite the assertion of Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon that President Hu had "assured" India on a bilateral visit in 2006 that China "would not be an obstacle" to New Delhi's push for permanent membership of the UNSC, no concrete guarantee was given in writing at the Joint Declaration.
Thus, the firm refusal of China to sign a communiqué at Yekaterinburg that unambiguously championed a permanent seat for India at the UNSC is actually consistent with Beijing's hide-and-seek strategy on the issue. More than China deluding India by rescinding on its past promises, it appears to be a case of India allowing itself to be deluded by building make-believe castles.
The last few years have witnessed numerous summits and governmental exchanges between India and China. China is now India's largest trading partner, with the annual volume of trade standing at $40 billion and expected to touch $60 billion by 2010. The political side of the relationship has also improved, with usage of phrases like 'strategic partnership' by both sides. India's containment of the Tibetan upsurge in March 2008 was applauded by China with appreciative pats. The fact that China even accepted relief aid from India for rehabilitating earthquake victims in Sichuan earlier this month suggests that Asia's giants are getting along, if not cavorting together.
Yet, in a puzzling disconnect with these trends, the military competition between the two countries is intensifying. India has been noting with great concern China's rapidly expanding space weapons programme. The discovery of a secret Chinese nuclear submarine base on the Hainan Island and the exposure of a massive nuclear missile site in central China remind New Delhi of its vulnerability to overwhelming attack. The continuing impasse over the disputed border between the two countries stands in sharp relief to the expansion of commercial goods traffic across the Nathu La pass that had been closed since the 1962 war.
These contradictory logics in the India-China relationship are fuelled by the disentanglement of the private sector from the state in both countries. The enormous corporate interests of India and China view their counterparts across the McMahon Line as compatriots with whom business can be done for mutual benefit. Economic liberalisation and private sector booms in both countries have unleashed an appetite for economic interaction that does not have to wait for resolution of military and strategic conflicts. Whether or not China is sympathetic to India becoming a permanent member of the UNSC is immaterial to exporters and importers of the two countries, as long as their profits flow.
Although states disallow the gains of trade from getting lost in the acrimony of military-strategic rivalry, they are essentially political actors with political ends. So, even as the Indian and Chinese chambers of commerce may raise toasts to each other, the standoff over a permanent seat for India at the Security Council will dog its relations with China.
New Delhi needs to drop its blinkers and openly admit that China is not sanguine about India joining the P-5 at the Security Council. Optimistic Indian diplomats argue that China has indicated in private settings that its main objection is that India's bid is knotted with Japan's attempt to garner a permanent seat. This is a red herring, because Chinese military journals and think tanks are closely monitoring India's economic, technological and military advances. To assume that China's strategic planning is Taiwan- or Japan-centric misses the changing reality of New Delhi's rise and the discomfort it is generating in Beijing.
From 1955, when Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru conceded an offer for a permanent seat at the UNSC to China, New Delhi has permitted itself to be outsmarted by Beijing on this contentious issue. It is now high time to stop living in illusions and to acknowledge that China is one of the obstacles to India's quest for global stature.
Source: Indo-Asian News Service
Monday, May 26, 2008
Manmohan, Pranab differ on N-deal with US: Natwar
Monday, May 26, 2008
Manmohan, Pranab differ on N-deal: Natwar
New Delhi: There are differences in the way Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, see the much-discussed India-US civilian nuclear deal, former foreign minister Natwar Singh has said.
"The prime minister says the deal is on and they will get it through but when Mukherjee is asked about it there is a big question mark. Mukherjee has even said the deal is not going to pass," Natwar Singh told IANS in an interview.
When told that it was Mukherjee who is selling the deal to the Left parties on behalf of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Natwar Singh said: "Much depends on how enthusiastic he himself is about the deal."
The India-US civilian nuclear deal has run into rough weather with the Left parties - who lend outside support to the UPA government - opposing it. The main opposition party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is also opposed to the deal in its present form.
The US government has repeatedly told the Indian government that time may be running out for the deal to materialise as the George Bush presidency enters its last leg ahead of polls.
"The UPA government has gone about the deal in the wrong manner. When it knew that parliament would not approve it, it should not have gone ahead," said Natwar Singh, who was external affairs minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet till December 2005. He was succeeded by Pranab Mukherjee.
Natwar Singh had to resign when he, and his son Jagat Singh, were named beneficiaries by a UN inquiry committee headed by Paul Volcker in an Iraqi oil scam.
The former minister said the draft of the civilian nuclear deal had undergone several drastic changes since he first saw and approved it as external affairs minister on July 18, 2005. "Manmohan Singh and I saw it during our visit to Washington. I supported it then for two reasons. One, it tacitly recognised India as a nuclear power. And two, it was energy-oriented."
Natwar Singh said the term energy was later downplayed and non-proliferation was emphasised. "There were no questions about the 123 agreement, the Hyde Act, or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections then," he said. "The US has shifted the goalpost several times," he said, adding: "I don't see the deal going through".
Natwar Singh, who was in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) before joining the Congress, said: "The United States is selling this deal to us in an attempt to pitch us against China. We should not fall for it. (US President) George Bush has tried to sell it so that he can claim it as an achievement.
But the next US president is not going to endorse it, whether it is John McCain (Republican candidate) or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama (Democrat frontrunners)."
Source: IANS
Manmohan, Pranab differ on N-deal: Natwar
New Delhi: There are differences in the way Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, see the much-discussed India-US civilian nuclear deal, former foreign minister Natwar Singh has said.
"The prime minister says the deal is on and they will get it through but when Mukherjee is asked about it there is a big question mark. Mukherjee has even said the deal is not going to pass," Natwar Singh told IANS in an interview.
When told that it was Mukherjee who is selling the deal to the Left parties on behalf of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), Natwar Singh said: "Much depends on how enthusiastic he himself is about the deal."
The India-US civilian nuclear deal has run into rough weather with the Left parties - who lend outside support to the UPA government - opposing it. The main opposition party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is also opposed to the deal in its present form.
The US government has repeatedly told the Indian government that time may be running out for the deal to materialise as the George Bush presidency enters its last leg ahead of polls.
"The UPA government has gone about the deal in the wrong manner. When it knew that parliament would not approve it, it should not have gone ahead," said Natwar Singh, who was external affairs minister in the Manmohan Singh cabinet till December 2005. He was succeeded by Pranab Mukherjee.
Natwar Singh had to resign when he, and his son Jagat Singh, were named beneficiaries by a UN inquiry committee headed by Paul Volcker in an Iraqi oil scam.
The former minister said the draft of the civilian nuclear deal had undergone several drastic changes since he first saw and approved it as external affairs minister on July 18, 2005. "Manmohan Singh and I saw it during our visit to Washington. I supported it then for two reasons. One, it tacitly recognised India as a nuclear power. And two, it was energy-oriented."
Natwar Singh said the term energy was later downplayed and non-proliferation was emphasised. "There were no questions about the 123 agreement, the Hyde Act, or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections then," he said. "The US has shifted the goalpost several times," he said, adding: "I don't see the deal going through".
Natwar Singh, who was in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) before joining the Congress, said: "The United States is selling this deal to us in an attempt to pitch us against China. We should not fall for it. (US President) George Bush has tried to sell it so that he can claim it as an achievement.
But the next US president is not going to endorse it, whether it is John McCain (Republican candidate) or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama (Democrat frontrunners)."
Source: IANS
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Sichuan Earthquake: Ban Ki-Moon praises the Chinese
CHENGDU, China — The secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, flew to the heart of China’s earthquake zone in Sichuan Province on Saturday to praise the nation’s response to the disaster and pledge his organization’s support.
Mr. Ban met in Yingxiu, one of the towns hardest hit by the earthquake, with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao. “If we work hard, we can overcome this,” Mr. Ban said with Mr. Wen standing by his side. “The whole world stands behind you and supports you.”
The State Council, China’s cabinet, has placed the confirmed death toll at 60,560 from the May 12 earthquake and counted 26,221 more people as missing. But on Saturday, Mr. Wen said the death toll “may further climb to a level of 70,000, 80,000 or more.”
The Chinese authorities said they were making an all-out push to rescue 24 coal miners trapped underground by the earthquake nearly two weeks ago. Mr. Wen, however, gave the clearest indication to date that China had largely concluded its effort to find survivors amid the rubble of towns that lie flattened throughout the earthquake zone. “Previously our main priority was the search and rescue of affected people,” Mr. Wen said. “Our priority now is to resettle the affected people, and to make plans for the post-quake reconstruction.”
China is struggling to cope with the immediate crisis, which is to provide temporary shelter to an estimated five million people left homeless by the earthquake. Beijing has made an emergency appeal to other provinces to provide tents for the large numbers of people whose homes have been destroyed and who have no other shelter.
China has also created a sort of adoption program in which other provinces have been designated to provide financial and material support for the reconstruction of counties in Sichuan Province that were devastated by the quake.
Mr. Ban, the United Nations leader, visited Sichuan immediately after visiting Myanmar, where some 130,000 people were left dead or missing by a cyclone on May 3, and his actions and comments seemed to invite comparisons between the responses of the two countries.
During his visit to Myanmar, Mr. Ban was able to secure a promise from the authorities there to allow foreign aid workers into the country, but this comes weeks into the crisis.
“The Chinese government, at the early stage of this natural disaster, has invested strenuous effort and demonstrated extraordinary leadership,” Mr. Ban told reporters in Yingxiu, according to Reuters. He added: “I’m coming from my visit to Myanmar, where 130,000 people were killed or missing. It was very humbling and very tragic.”
Speaking later during his flight out of China, Mr. Ban was asked if his praise of China was intended as a message to Myanmar’s leaders. “You may have your own interpretation,” he replied, according to Reuters. “I just wanted to talk about the facts.” (Courtesy The New York Times)
Mr. Ban met in Yingxiu, one of the towns hardest hit by the earthquake, with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao. “If we work hard, we can overcome this,” Mr. Ban said with Mr. Wen standing by his side. “The whole world stands behind you and supports you.”
The State Council, China’s cabinet, has placed the confirmed death toll at 60,560 from the May 12 earthquake and counted 26,221 more people as missing. But on Saturday, Mr. Wen said the death toll “may further climb to a level of 70,000, 80,000 or more.”
The Chinese authorities said they were making an all-out push to rescue 24 coal miners trapped underground by the earthquake nearly two weeks ago. Mr. Wen, however, gave the clearest indication to date that China had largely concluded its effort to find survivors amid the rubble of towns that lie flattened throughout the earthquake zone. “Previously our main priority was the search and rescue of affected people,” Mr. Wen said. “Our priority now is to resettle the affected people, and to make plans for the post-quake reconstruction.”
China is struggling to cope with the immediate crisis, which is to provide temporary shelter to an estimated five million people left homeless by the earthquake. Beijing has made an emergency appeal to other provinces to provide tents for the large numbers of people whose homes have been destroyed and who have no other shelter.
China has also created a sort of adoption program in which other provinces have been designated to provide financial and material support for the reconstruction of counties in Sichuan Province that were devastated by the quake.
Mr. Ban, the United Nations leader, visited Sichuan immediately after visiting Myanmar, where some 130,000 people were left dead or missing by a cyclone on May 3, and his actions and comments seemed to invite comparisons between the responses of the two countries.
During his visit to Myanmar, Mr. Ban was able to secure a promise from the authorities there to allow foreign aid workers into the country, but this comes weeks into the crisis.
“The Chinese government, at the early stage of this natural disaster, has invested strenuous effort and demonstrated extraordinary leadership,” Mr. Ban told reporters in Yingxiu, according to Reuters. He added: “I’m coming from my visit to Myanmar, where 130,000 people were killed or missing. It was very humbling and very tragic.”
Speaking later during his flight out of China, Mr. Ban was asked if his praise of China was intended as a message to Myanmar’s leaders. “You may have your own interpretation,” he replied, according to Reuters. “I just wanted to talk about the facts.” (Courtesy The New York Times)
Careless Quip by Hillary Clinton
'You Get Careless': Obama Blames Clinton RFK Quip on Stress of Long Campaign
Obama Says He Accepts Clinton Explanation of Controversial Comment
By TAHMAN BRADLEY, KATE McCARTHY, JOHN COCHRAN and MICHAEL S. JAMES
May 24, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama gives Hillary Clinton the benefit of the doubt that she had no hidden meaning when she invoked the assassination of Bobby Kennedy as an explanation for remaining in the Democratic presidential race.
Clinton Kennedy Obama
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., mentioned the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in defending why her race against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has continued to June.
"I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Sen. Clinton and I have been campaigning," he told the Puerto Rico radio station Isla, "sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make. And I think that is what happened here.
"Sen. Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it," he added, "and I would take her at her word on that."
Clinton's remarks to the editorial board at the Argus Leader in South Dakota Friday struck some nerves partly because it came in the wake of Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy's health problems and because of longstanding concerns about Obama's security.
"People have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa," Clinton said Friday. "I find it curious because it is unprecedented in history. I don't understand it.
"You know, my husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary sometime in the middle of June. Right?" she added later in the conversation. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just-- I don't understand it."
The remarks initially prompted a less-gracious response from the Obama campaign Friday. Campaign spokesman Bill Burton said the remarks were "unfortunate."
Clinton soon apologized, saying she meant no offense.
She was backed up by a supporter, Robert Kennedy, Jr. who said in a statement: "It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June."
Today, the Rev. Al Sharpton talked to Clinton about her remarks and gave her the benefit of the doubt.
"I don't believe that anyone is dumb enough to suggest that something happen to Sen. Obama," Sharpton said.
But ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, former chief strategist for George Bush's 2004 campaign, told ABC News Radio that Clinton's remark was a huge political misstep.
Obama Says He Accepts Clinton Explanation of Controversial Comment
By TAHMAN BRADLEY, KATE McCARTHY, JOHN COCHRAN and MICHAEL S. JAMES
May 24, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama gives Hillary Clinton the benefit of the doubt that she had no hidden meaning when she invoked the assassination of Bobby Kennedy as an explanation for remaining in the Democratic presidential race.
Clinton Kennedy Obama
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., mentioned the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in defending why her race against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has continued to June.
"I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Sen. Clinton and I have been campaigning," he told the Puerto Rico radio station Isla, "sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make. And I think that is what happened here.
"Sen. Clinton says that she did not intend any offense by it," he added, "and I would take her at her word on that."
Clinton's remarks to the editorial board at the Argus Leader in South Dakota Friday struck some nerves partly because it came in the wake of Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy's health problems and because of longstanding concerns about Obama's security.
"People have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa," Clinton said Friday. "I find it curious because it is unprecedented in history. I don't understand it.
"You know, my husband didn't wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary sometime in the middle of June. Right?" she added later in the conversation. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know, I just-- I don't understand it."
The remarks initially prompted a less-gracious response from the Obama campaign Friday. Campaign spokesman Bill Burton said the remarks were "unfortunate."
Clinton soon apologized, saying she meant no offense.
She was backed up by a supporter, Robert Kennedy, Jr. who said in a statement: "It is clear from the context that Hillary was invoking a familiar political circumstance in order to support her decision to stay in the race through June."
Today, the Rev. Al Sharpton talked to Clinton about her remarks and gave her the benefit of the doubt.
"I don't believe that anyone is dumb enough to suggest that something happen to Sen. Obama," Sharpton said.
But ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, former chief strategist for George Bush's 2004 campaign, told ABC News Radio that Clinton's remark was a huge political misstep.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Is John Hagee anti-Semitic ?
Jews defend Hagee's words
By Julia Duin
May 24, 2008
Evangelist Rev. John Hagee leads a march of Christians in support of Israel in Jerusalem. Jews rushed to the pastor's defense yesterday claiming the pastor is not anti-Semitic and an ally of the Jewish people. (Associated Press)
Jewish allies of the Rev. John Hagee rushed to his defense yesterday to say the Texas evangelist is not anti-Semitic despite Sen. John McCain campaign's repudiation Thursday of the evangelist's endorsement.
"John Hagee is one of the Jewish people's best friends," Los Angeles talk show host Dennis Prager said on the air yesterday morning. "Identifying John Hagee with anti-Semitism would be like identifying Raoul Wallenberg, the great Swede who saved thousands of Jews in the Holocaust, with anti-Semitism."
Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, of Congregation Rodfei Sholom in San Antonio, appeared at an afternoon press conference yesterday to say Mr. Hagee's "words were twisted and used to attack him for being anti-Semitic."
In actuality, Mr. Hagee "interpreted a biblical verse in a way not very different from several legitimate Jewish authorities," the rabbi said.
"Viewing Hitler as acting completely outside of God's plan is to suggest that God was powerless to stop the Holocaust, a position quite unacceptable to any religious Jew or Christian," the rabbi said.
"I have devoted most of my adult life to ensuring that there will never be a second Holocaust," Mr. Hagee told reporters. "I have worked tirelessly to eliminate the sin of anti-Semitism from the Christian world and to ensure the survival of the state of Israel."
At issue was Mr. Hagee's reference — in a late 1990s sermon and in his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown" to Adolf Hitler being a "hunter" used by God to force Jews to emigrate to Israel.
In a reference to the Book of Jeremiah, whose author predicts a scattering of the Jewish people but saying God would bring them back to the promised land, Mr. Hagee says in the sermon: "How did [the Holocaust] happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."
By Julia Duin
May 24, 2008
Evangelist Rev. John Hagee leads a march of Christians in support of Israel in Jerusalem. Jews rushed to the pastor's defense yesterday claiming the pastor is not anti-Semitic and an ally of the Jewish people. (Associated Press)
Jewish allies of the Rev. John Hagee rushed to his defense yesterday to say the Texas evangelist is not anti-Semitic despite Sen. John McCain campaign's repudiation Thursday of the evangelist's endorsement.
"John Hagee is one of the Jewish people's best friends," Los Angeles talk show host Dennis Prager said on the air yesterday morning. "Identifying John Hagee with anti-Semitism would be like identifying Raoul Wallenberg, the great Swede who saved thousands of Jews in the Holocaust, with anti-Semitism."
Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, of Congregation Rodfei Sholom in San Antonio, appeared at an afternoon press conference yesterday to say Mr. Hagee's "words were twisted and used to attack him for being anti-Semitic."
In actuality, Mr. Hagee "interpreted a biblical verse in a way not very different from several legitimate Jewish authorities," the rabbi said.
"Viewing Hitler as acting completely outside of God's plan is to suggest that God was powerless to stop the Holocaust, a position quite unacceptable to any religious Jew or Christian," the rabbi said.
"I have devoted most of my adult life to ensuring that there will never be a second Holocaust," Mr. Hagee told reporters. "I have worked tirelessly to eliminate the sin of anti-Semitism from the Christian world and to ensure the survival of the state of Israel."
At issue was Mr. Hagee's reference — in a late 1990s sermon and in his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown" to Adolf Hitler being a "hunter" used by God to force Jews to emigrate to Israel.
In a reference to the Book of Jeremiah, whose author predicts a scattering of the Jewish people but saying God would bring them back to the promised land, Mr. Hagee says in the sermon: "How did [the Holocaust] happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."
Thursday, May 22, 2008
India blames World Bank, IMF for food, fuel crisis
India blames World Bank, IMF for food, fuel crisis
22 May 2008, 1132 hrs IST,PTI
UNITED NATIONS: Firmly rejecting the contention that rising consumption in developing nations was responsible for the soaring food and fuel prices, India has blamed the policies of World Bank and IMF and "excessive and unsustainable" demand in developed countries for the crisis.
"This consumption trend has existed for more than a decade," said Indian UN Ambassador Nirupam Sen, pointing out that over last two years, the demand for oil has gone up one per cent but prices in dollar terms have risen by 90 per cent.
Addressing a special meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council to consider the issue of rising food prices, he held financial crisis leading to weakening dollar and diversion of grains to production of bio-fuels among the major causes.
Sen also blamed the policies followed by the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI) responsible and severely criticised their advice to countries to shift from food crops for domestic population to cash crops for exports.
The debate came in the backdrop of UN agencies warning that more than one billion could added to those already needing food assistance because of high prices. Finger pointing over the issue was sparked off after the US and EU said the growth of India and China which has led to rise in consumption level has led to the shortage.
Rejecting the BWI's prescription of eliminating restriction on food exports in the interest of market purism, Sen told the delegates that this continues the tradition of these institutions' advice which is partly responsible for the crisis in the first place.
In terms of consumption, the problem is not per capita consumption in developing countries but excessive and unsustainable consumption in developed nations, Sen said.
Decrying the "dismal" response of the international community to the crisis, he said the initial conjunction of lower food prices and high oil prices led to sale of grain to energy producers for conversion into bio-fuels.
In several developed countries, Sen said, land for food crops shrank as it was lost to bio-fuels and supported calls for roll back.
"For the first time, there is a direct link between oil prices and food prices, oil markets and food markets, as our Prime Minister has said.
"It is this structural consequence that is disturbing and complicates policy," he added.
The financial crisis, Sen said, too has had an impact. "A consequence is that speculators, encouraged by the dollar's relative decline, 'invest' in food futures to profit from the 'commodities super cycle'", he said.
Conceding that this is not a primary cause of the crisis, he said "but it makes it worse".
"Hopefully this bubble would also burst with at least a marginal beneficial effect on food prices," he added.
Stating that the international community collectively can do much, he told the delegates that for various international bodies, key areas are land development, water management and seed technology.
22 May 2008, 1132 hrs IST,PTI
UNITED NATIONS: Firmly rejecting the contention that rising consumption in developing nations was responsible for the soaring food and fuel prices, India has blamed the policies of World Bank and IMF and "excessive and unsustainable" demand in developed countries for the crisis.
"This consumption trend has existed for more than a decade," said Indian UN Ambassador Nirupam Sen, pointing out that over last two years, the demand for oil has gone up one per cent but prices in dollar terms have risen by 90 per cent.
Addressing a special meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council to consider the issue of rising food prices, he held financial crisis leading to weakening dollar and diversion of grains to production of bio-fuels among the major causes.
Sen also blamed the policies followed by the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWI) responsible and severely criticised their advice to countries to shift from food crops for domestic population to cash crops for exports.
The debate came in the backdrop of UN agencies warning that more than one billion could added to those already needing food assistance because of high prices. Finger pointing over the issue was sparked off after the US and EU said the growth of India and China which has led to rise in consumption level has led to the shortage.
Rejecting the BWI's prescription of eliminating restriction on food exports in the interest of market purism, Sen told the delegates that this continues the tradition of these institutions' advice which is partly responsible for the crisis in the first place.
In terms of consumption, the problem is not per capita consumption in developing countries but excessive and unsustainable consumption in developed nations, Sen said.
Decrying the "dismal" response of the international community to the crisis, he said the initial conjunction of lower food prices and high oil prices led to sale of grain to energy producers for conversion into bio-fuels.
In several developed countries, Sen said, land for food crops shrank as it was lost to bio-fuels and supported calls for roll back.
"For the first time, there is a direct link between oil prices and food prices, oil markets and food markets, as our Prime Minister has said.
"It is this structural consequence that is disturbing and complicates policy," he added.
The financial crisis, Sen said, too has had an impact. "A consequence is that speculators, encouraged by the dollar's relative decline, 'invest' in food futures to profit from the 'commodities super cycle'", he said.
Conceding that this is not a primary cause of the crisis, he said "but it makes it worse".
"Hopefully this bubble would also burst with at least a marginal beneficial effect on food prices," he added.
Stating that the international community collectively can do much, he told the delegates that for various international bodies, key areas are land development, water management and seed technology.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Racist grammar in US electioneering
Frontline
Volume 25 - Issue 11 :: May. 24-Jun. 06, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
Racist grammar
VIJAY PRASHAD
Barack Obama’s opponents have turned to the coded language of race perfected by Republicans. But even this is not effective as few can resist the Obama allure.
THE “race card” is out in full force. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, Republicans want to make their stand against Democrats. The city is at the centre of the 1st Congressional District, where a special election was held on May 13. Reliably conservative, the Republican Party has held the seat for several decades. The seat was hard fought between the Democrat Travis Childers and the Republican Greg Davis. Both are white, and both are fairly conservative. They would have to be to compete in a district that sent George Bush back to the White House in 2004 with a plurality.
The Republican Party sent out its heavy hitters (Vice-President Dick Cheney among others) to prevent a Democratic victory in the Deep South. They did not want the Democrats to use this victory as a harbinger of what is to come this November: an across-the-board Democratic victory against a party too closely identified with the Iraq debacle and the imploding economy. For Republicans, it was far better to turn this election into a mandate on race than to allow the real grievances of the population to enter the ballot box.
One part of the onslaught against Childers, who eventually won the election, was that he was in the same party as Barack Obama. Advertisements using images of Obama with Childers, drawing on fears that Childers is as liberal as Obama, flooded television channels. But this was not just about politics. It was also about reviving fears that Childers was too closely affiliated with a powerful black man.
This was the old Republican playbook, which was well crafted during the Nixon years and named the “Southern Strategy”. In 1964 and 1968, the overtly racist George Wallace ran for President on his own party ticket. Wallace’s run created the basis for a racist coalition against the victories of the civil rights movement. It was this coalition that was adopted by Nixon into the Republican Party, and which became its base for the next 30 years. A combination of poor whites, whose only claim to dignity was that they were legally superior to blacks, and the big business faction threw its support behind the racist populism of Republicans.
When Ronald Reagan ran for office in 1980, he went to the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, just to the south of the 1st Congressional District to announce his candidacy. In 1964, a group of white supremacists killed three civil rights workers in this small town of several thousand. Reagan chose it not for its numbers but as a symbol of the Republicans’ quiet solidarity with entrenched racism.
Reagan returned in 1984 and chanted “The South Will Rise Again”, a long-time favourite phrase of the racist Ku Klux Klan. Rather than consider that it was his own policies of privatisation and deregulation that threatened the livelihood and dignity of the white working class, Reagan and Republicans put the onus on what they called “special interests”, whose main beneficiary, they pointed out, were blacks. Hatred for the advancement of blacks and an irrational fear of “black domination” allowed Republicans to package themselves as the defenders of “American values” and “state’s rights”, code phrases for racism in a world that no longer honours overt racism.
Coded language
Overwhelmed by the Obama phenomenon, Hillary Clinton and her team have resorted to the kind of coded language that appeals to this racist voting bloc. After her loss in the South Carolina primary, where the Democratic electorate is substantially black, Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, told the press, “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. Jackson ran a good campaign and Obama ran a good campaign here.”
On the surface, this is empirically true. However, a little beneath the surface lies another reality. The reporters did not ask Bill Clinton about Jackson, nor did they ask him if Obama ran a good campaign. His statement was unsolicited. The point he seemed to be making is that Obama won in the same way as Jackson won: as black men they appealed to the “black vote”. Obama is not a candidate for President, Bill Clinton seemed to suggest, but a black man who would do well in South Carolina but cannot win the majority of the votes in the country.
When he was roundly criticised for this remark, Clinton lost his temper and suggested that he was being unfairly charged with racism and that the Obama camp “played the race card on me”. The Obama people disputed that their campaign won only because Obama is black, but they did not say that Clinton was being racist in his comments. He, however, took the occasion to play the aggrieved white man unfairly called racist. In doing this, Clinton appealed to those other white men who might find their privileges threatened by the presence of non-white people in their workplaces and neighbourhoods.
The surreptitious use of this kind of highly charged race language continued from South Carolina to Pennsylvania and onward. Eager to win the “white vote”, Hillary Clinton’s campaign began to question the ability of a black man to win over white voters. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Clinton supporter, told the press, “Some white Pennsylvanians are likely to vote against Barack Obama because he is black. You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African American candidate.”
Bill Clinton went to small Pennsylvania towns, to rooms with all-white audiences, to warn them that Obama did not represent “voters like you”. After her loss in North Carolina and slight win in Indiana, Hillary Clinton told the press that Obama does not have the support of “working, hardworking Americans, white Americans”. The only hardworking Americans in her scenario are white Americans, a view held precisely by those who believe the racist dogma that non-whites leech the system.
Terms like “swing voters” and warnings about “electability” have swept the punditocracy, which pretends to be neutral when discussing how the “white working class” will vote, without a consideration of how the Clinton camp has joined the Republicans to grow their constituencies on a racist soil.
When Obama’s former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, became the focus of a controversy about his comments on America, Hillary Clinton seized on them to point out once more that Obama carries too much baggage to appeal to these “white voters”.
Clinton made no noise about the distasteful comments made by John McCain’s religious friend, John Hagee, who attacked the humanity of core Democratic voters (gays and lesbians, Jews and African Americans).
Wright speaks the “truth to power”, arguing that United States history is filled with examples of the government being unjust to the people. Hagee, on the other hand, speaks the truth to the powerless, claiming that events such as Hurricane Katrina occurred because New Orleans is a city that welcomes gays and lesbians.
Clinton saw the political opening against Obama and took it but did not go after Hagee-McCain. Making common cause with McCain allowed Hillary Clinton to appeal once more to that racist white bloc against Obama. But this concern for working-class whites is shallow.
In 1995, Hillary Clinton told her husband at a strategy session that he owed nothing to this demographic which failed to vote for his agenda in the 1994 midterm election. “Screw ’em,” she said. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill.” This section now allows Hillary Clinton a wedge against Obama.
Obama’s appeal
Barack Obama shone in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention. He was a local politician from Illinois, given the stage at Boston fortuitously, at John Kerry’s request. Obama catapulted himself to fame principally because he appealed to the population to give up the politics of despair and cynicism for the “politics of hope”.
Obama’s slogans “yes we can” and “you are the change you are waiting for” offered a bright light through the darkness of the Bush years. Few are untouched by the phenomenon, which is not so much about the actual programmatic beliefs of Obama as with the sense that the U.S. is not on a one-way road to destruction. Obama is the parachute to another world.
Hard to beat on these terms, Obama’s opponents have turned to the coded racist grammar perfected by Republicans. But even this is not as effective as it once was. It gave Hillary Clinton the edge in Pennsylvania, but it did not give her as much a victory as she wanted in Indiana. In another special election, in Louisiana, Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated his Republican rival in a conservative district. The Republicans painted Cazayoux as a clone of Obama. While that cut into his lead, it could not bring him down.
The Mississippi election portends a shift in the power of this “white vote” and the declining significance of racist electioneering. The Republicans now talk of Obama’s “toxicity” in the general election, but perhaps if the Louisiana and Mississippi elections are any indicator, the ground might have shifted from Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Few can resist the Obama allure. Even the man who officiated over the wedding of George Bush’s daughter, Reverend Kirbyjon Caldwell, is an Obama supporter. The race card might finally be trumped.•
Volume 25 - Issue 11 :: May. 24-Jun. 06, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
Racist grammar
VIJAY PRASHAD
Barack Obama’s opponents have turned to the coded language of race perfected by Republicans. But even this is not effective as few can resist the Obama allure.
THE “race card” is out in full force. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, Republicans want to make their stand against Democrats. The city is at the centre of the 1st Congressional District, where a special election was held on May 13. Reliably conservative, the Republican Party has held the seat for several decades. The seat was hard fought between the Democrat Travis Childers and the Republican Greg Davis. Both are white, and both are fairly conservative. They would have to be to compete in a district that sent George Bush back to the White House in 2004 with a plurality.
The Republican Party sent out its heavy hitters (Vice-President Dick Cheney among others) to prevent a Democratic victory in the Deep South. They did not want the Democrats to use this victory as a harbinger of what is to come this November: an across-the-board Democratic victory against a party too closely identified with the Iraq debacle and the imploding economy. For Republicans, it was far better to turn this election into a mandate on race than to allow the real grievances of the population to enter the ballot box.
One part of the onslaught against Childers, who eventually won the election, was that he was in the same party as Barack Obama. Advertisements using images of Obama with Childers, drawing on fears that Childers is as liberal as Obama, flooded television channels. But this was not just about politics. It was also about reviving fears that Childers was too closely affiliated with a powerful black man.
This was the old Republican playbook, which was well crafted during the Nixon years and named the “Southern Strategy”. In 1964 and 1968, the overtly racist George Wallace ran for President on his own party ticket. Wallace’s run created the basis for a racist coalition against the victories of the civil rights movement. It was this coalition that was adopted by Nixon into the Republican Party, and which became its base for the next 30 years. A combination of poor whites, whose only claim to dignity was that they were legally superior to blacks, and the big business faction threw its support behind the racist populism of Republicans.
When Ronald Reagan ran for office in 1980, he went to the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, just to the south of the 1st Congressional District to announce his candidacy. In 1964, a group of white supremacists killed three civil rights workers in this small town of several thousand. Reagan chose it not for its numbers but as a symbol of the Republicans’ quiet solidarity with entrenched racism.
Reagan returned in 1984 and chanted “The South Will Rise Again”, a long-time favourite phrase of the racist Ku Klux Klan. Rather than consider that it was his own policies of privatisation and deregulation that threatened the livelihood and dignity of the white working class, Reagan and Republicans put the onus on what they called “special interests”, whose main beneficiary, they pointed out, were blacks. Hatred for the advancement of blacks and an irrational fear of “black domination” allowed Republicans to package themselves as the defenders of “American values” and “state’s rights”, code phrases for racism in a world that no longer honours overt racism.
Coded language
Overwhelmed by the Obama phenomenon, Hillary Clinton and her team have resorted to the kind of coded language that appeals to this racist voting bloc. After her loss in the South Carolina primary, where the Democratic electorate is substantially black, Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill, told the press, “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. Jackson ran a good campaign and Obama ran a good campaign here.”
On the surface, this is empirically true. However, a little beneath the surface lies another reality. The reporters did not ask Bill Clinton about Jackson, nor did they ask him if Obama ran a good campaign. His statement was unsolicited. The point he seemed to be making is that Obama won in the same way as Jackson won: as black men they appealed to the “black vote”. Obama is not a candidate for President, Bill Clinton seemed to suggest, but a black man who would do well in South Carolina but cannot win the majority of the votes in the country.
When he was roundly criticised for this remark, Clinton lost his temper and suggested that he was being unfairly charged with racism and that the Obama camp “played the race card on me”. The Obama people disputed that their campaign won only because Obama is black, but they did not say that Clinton was being racist in his comments. He, however, took the occasion to play the aggrieved white man unfairly called racist. In doing this, Clinton appealed to those other white men who might find their privileges threatened by the presence of non-white people in their workplaces and neighbourhoods.
The surreptitious use of this kind of highly charged race language continued from South Carolina to Pennsylvania and onward. Eager to win the “white vote”, Hillary Clinton’s campaign began to question the ability of a black man to win over white voters. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Clinton supporter, told the press, “Some white Pennsylvanians are likely to vote against Barack Obama because he is black. You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African American candidate.”
Bill Clinton went to small Pennsylvania towns, to rooms with all-white audiences, to warn them that Obama did not represent “voters like you”. After her loss in North Carolina and slight win in Indiana, Hillary Clinton told the press that Obama does not have the support of “working, hardworking Americans, white Americans”. The only hardworking Americans in her scenario are white Americans, a view held precisely by those who believe the racist dogma that non-whites leech the system.
Terms like “swing voters” and warnings about “electability” have swept the punditocracy, which pretends to be neutral when discussing how the “white working class” will vote, without a consideration of how the Clinton camp has joined the Republicans to grow their constituencies on a racist soil.
When Obama’s former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, became the focus of a controversy about his comments on America, Hillary Clinton seized on them to point out once more that Obama carries too much baggage to appeal to these “white voters”.
Clinton made no noise about the distasteful comments made by John McCain’s religious friend, John Hagee, who attacked the humanity of core Democratic voters (gays and lesbians, Jews and African Americans).
Wright speaks the “truth to power”, arguing that United States history is filled with examples of the government being unjust to the people. Hagee, on the other hand, speaks the truth to the powerless, claiming that events such as Hurricane Katrina occurred because New Orleans is a city that welcomes gays and lesbians.
Clinton saw the political opening against Obama and took it but did not go after Hagee-McCain. Making common cause with McCain allowed Hillary Clinton to appeal once more to that racist white bloc against Obama. But this concern for working-class whites is shallow.
In 1995, Hillary Clinton told her husband at a strategy session that he owed nothing to this demographic which failed to vote for his agenda in the 1994 midterm election. “Screw ’em,” she said. “You don’t owe them a thing, Bill.” This section now allows Hillary Clinton a wedge against Obama.
Obama’s appeal
Barack Obama shone in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention. He was a local politician from Illinois, given the stage at Boston fortuitously, at John Kerry’s request. Obama catapulted himself to fame principally because he appealed to the population to give up the politics of despair and cynicism for the “politics of hope”.
Obama’s slogans “yes we can” and “you are the change you are waiting for” offered a bright light through the darkness of the Bush years. Few are untouched by the phenomenon, which is not so much about the actual programmatic beliefs of Obama as with the sense that the U.S. is not on a one-way road to destruction. Obama is the parachute to another world.
Hard to beat on these terms, Obama’s opponents have turned to the coded racist grammar perfected by Republicans. But even this is not as effective as it once was. It gave Hillary Clinton the edge in Pennsylvania, but it did not give her as much a victory as she wanted in Indiana. In another special election, in Louisiana, Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated his Republican rival in a conservative district. The Republicans painted Cazayoux as a clone of Obama. While that cut into his lead, it could not bring him down.
The Mississippi election portends a shift in the power of this “white vote” and the declining significance of racist electioneering. The Republicans now talk of Obama’s “toxicity” in the general election, but perhaps if the Louisiana and Mississippi elections are any indicator, the ground might have shifted from Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Few can resist the Obama allure. Even the man who officiated over the wedding of George Bush’s daughter, Reverend Kirbyjon Caldwell, is an Obama supporter. The race card might finally be trumped.•
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Myanmar mourns 134,000 dead
Myanmar mourns 134,000 dead
21 May 2008, 0340 hrs IST,REUTERS
YANGON: Myanmar started three days of mourning on Tuesday for the 134,000 dead and missing from Cyclone Nargis as diplomats pressed the reclusive generals to speed up aid to 2.4 million survivors.
Flags would fly at half mast until Thursday, state television said a day after the first appearance in the disaster zone by junta supremo Than Shwe, who left Yangon for a new capital 250 miles to the north in 2005.
The bespectacled 75-year-old senior general was shown touring storm-hit parts of Yangon on Sunday and the Irrawaddy Delta on Monday, fuelling speculation that after two weeks, the leadership has woken up to the scale of the disaster.
"It is not insignificant that he has been forced out of his lair," a Yangon-based diplomat said. "There are obviously some in the military who see how enormous this is, and how enormously wrong it could go without further support."
Aid experts say massive foreign assistance, ideally on the scale of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami aid effort, is needed to prevent the death toll from hunger and disease soaring. The onset of the monsoon season in the Irrawaddy Delta is making life even more miserable for those clinging to survival. Daily downpours are making it hard to salvage what little stores of rice escaped the storm's initial wrath.
"Our rice could recover if the sun ever got the chance to shine," one weather-beaten farmer said in a delta village. "But it will never be good quality again."
The junta has accepted foreign aid flights, including some from the US military, into Yangon and allowed UN agencies to distribute supplies. However, it has been loathe to let foreign aid teams into the delta for fear the presence of outsiders might threaten the military's 46-year grip on power.
Checkpoints have been set up on roads. Soldiers and police are searching vehicles, taking down license plates, and asking "Are you all Burmese?" However, the diplomatic wheels are starting to turn, raising hopes that experts adept at establishing networks to distribute aid may finally be able to help.
21 May 2008, 0340 hrs IST,REUTERS
YANGON: Myanmar started three days of mourning on Tuesday for the 134,000 dead and missing from Cyclone Nargis as diplomats pressed the reclusive generals to speed up aid to 2.4 million survivors.
Flags would fly at half mast until Thursday, state television said a day after the first appearance in the disaster zone by junta supremo Than Shwe, who left Yangon for a new capital 250 miles to the north in 2005.
The bespectacled 75-year-old senior general was shown touring storm-hit parts of Yangon on Sunday and the Irrawaddy Delta on Monday, fuelling speculation that after two weeks, the leadership has woken up to the scale of the disaster.
"It is not insignificant that he has been forced out of his lair," a Yangon-based diplomat said. "There are obviously some in the military who see how enormous this is, and how enormously wrong it could go without further support."
Aid experts say massive foreign assistance, ideally on the scale of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami aid effort, is needed to prevent the death toll from hunger and disease soaring. The onset of the monsoon season in the Irrawaddy Delta is making life even more miserable for those clinging to survival. Daily downpours are making it hard to salvage what little stores of rice escaped the storm's initial wrath.
"Our rice could recover if the sun ever got the chance to shine," one weather-beaten farmer said in a delta village. "But it will never be good quality again."
The junta has accepted foreign aid flights, including some from the US military, into Yangon and allowed UN agencies to distribute supplies. However, it has been loathe to let foreign aid teams into the delta for fear the presence of outsiders might threaten the military's 46-year grip on power.
Checkpoints have been set up on roads. Soldiers and police are searching vehicles, taking down license plates, and asking "Are you all Burmese?" However, the diplomatic wheels are starting to turn, raising hopes that experts adept at establishing networks to distribute aid may finally be able to help.
China mourns quake victims
China stands still to mourn quake victims
By DESSIANING ARIYANTI, Associated Press Writer
WENCHUAN, China - China stood still Monday in mourning over tens of thousands of earthquake victims, and the government appealed for more international aid to cope with the country's deadliest disaster in a generation.
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Construction workers, shopkeepers and bureaucrats across the bustling nation of 1.3 billion people paused for three minutes at 2:28 p.m. — exactly one week after the magnitude 7.9 quake hit central China.
Air-raid sirens and the horns of cars and buses sounded in memory of the dead.
In Beijing's Tiananmen Square, thousands of people bowed their heads and then began shouting "Long Live China!" and thrusting their fists in the air. Traffic on the capital's highways and roads stopped, and some drivers got out of their cars.
The confirmed death toll from the May 12 quake rose to 34,073, the State Council, China's Cabinet, said Monday. Another 9,500 remained buried in Sichuan and more than 29,000 were missing, the provincial government said, according to Xinhua.
Officials have said they expect final death toll to exceed 50,000, with more than 245,000 reported as injured. Quake-related losses to companies totaled $9.5 billion, Deputy Industry Minister Xi Guohua said.
In an indication of the challenge in dealing with millions of homeless and injured survivors, China said it would accept foreign medical teams and issued an international appeal for tents.
"China requests the international community donate tents as a priority when they donate materials because many houses were toppled in the quake and because it is the rainy season," ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement, also thanking the international community for its help so far.
In the disaster area, more than 200 relief workers were reported buried over the past three days by mudslides while working to repair roads in Sichuan, Xinhua reported.
An official confirmed mudslides had caused some deaths but gave no details. "The total death toll is still being counted," said the official at the Sichuan provincial Communications Department who only gave his last name, Shi.
More potential landslides were predicted by the Central Meteorological Observatory, with heavy rains forecast this week for some areas close to the epicenter.
Meanwhile, 14 Taiwanese escaped a massive landslide in Sichuan. They were located by authorities using satellite positioning data from the group's tour bus on Friday, Chinese authorities said, and were set to head home Monday.
The military was still struggling to reach areas cut off by the earthquake, with more than 10,000 discovered stranded in Yinxiui valley near the epicenter, China National Radio said Monday. There was no information on casualties there, and 600 soldiers were hiking into the area.
During three days of national mourning ordered by the government, flags were to fly at half-staff and public entertainment was canceled — an unprecedented outpouring of state sympathy on a level normally reserved for dead leaders.
Rescuers also briefly halted work in the disaster zone, where the hunt for survivors turned glum despite remarkable survival tales among thousands buried. Two women were rescued Monday after being trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building at a coal mine in Sichuan, Xinhua reported.
A convoy of police cars, ambulances and other rescue vehicles let off a long blast from their horns as the workers in orange jumpsuits stood quietly with eyes downcast, some removing their white hardhats.
"Our hearts are so heavy, so many of our compatriots are dead," said rescuer Ma Tang Chuan. "As long as we try out best, we have some small hope."
Volunteers at Wangfujing shopping street handed out white ribbons reading, "lovingly remember," before hundreds of shopkeepers spilled into the street. The period of silence started early and ended up stretching past the three-minute mark, before it was broken by a burst of sound from a construction site next door.
"It's the first time we've stopped," said Bai Zhenzong, a worker at the site. "This is awful. This shows how importantly the Chinese government is treating this."
Chinese President Hu Jintao and other top Communist Party leaders were shown on state TV bowing their heads, white flowers pinned to the lapels of their dark suits. Hu had spent three days touring the worst-hit areas of Sichuan.
The moment of tribute also was marked in Hong Kong, where double-decker buses sounded their horns. Rides and performances were halted for three minutes at Hong Kong Disneyland, and the daily fireworks show was canceled.
The government order for the mourning period said all Internet entertainment and game sites had to be taken off-line and users redirected to sites dedicated to commemorating earthquake victims, the Chinese news Web portal sina.com said.
China's National Grand Theater will cancel or postpone all performances during the three days, and media reports said numerous bars, nightclubs, karaoke parlors and movie theaters had shut down beginning at midnight in major cities such as Beijing, Shenyang and Changsha.
Newspapers across China printed their logos in black and some ran entirely without color. Several front pages were covered in black, with simple messages in white text across the middle: "The nation mourns," "Pray for life," and "National tragedy."
The mourning period begins as hope of finding more trapped survivors dwindled, and preventing hunger and disease among the homeless became more pressing.
Hu Yongcui, 38, said she did not care about the official show of mourning as she headed to Beichuan, near the quake's epicenter, to search for her missing 17-year-old daughter.
"I can't feel anything. I have no words," she said. "I just want to go home. I just want to find my daughter."
In a sign the search for survivors was concluding, Japan said it was considering withdrawing rescue crews to be replaced with an expanded medical team to treat survivors because of declining opportunities to use their technology to hunt for trapped victims.
"It's been a week since the earthquake and at this point chances we can make use of our technology is very limited. It's time to think about what to do with our rescue operation," Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters, according to Japan's Kyodo News agency.
"There is definitely a need for medical experts, and we can dispatch a team whenever there is a request," he said.
In Dujiangyan, three local government officials were removed from their posts for dereliction of duty over the earthquake — the first officials punished, Xinhua reported. One of the officials was reprimanded for miscounting casualty figures, while the others were punished for failing to come to work.
The Communist Party's discipline committee had instructed all officials to "stand at the front line" of the disaster and vowed to deal harshly with those who did not, the agency said.
___
Associated Press writers Audra Ang in Beichuan, and Cara Anna, Anita Chang and Henry Sanderson in Beijing contributed to this report.
By DESSIANING ARIYANTI, Associated Press Writer
WENCHUAN, China - China stood still Monday in mourning over tens of thousands of earthquake victims, and the government appealed for more international aid to cope with the country's deadliest disaster in a generation.
ADVERTISEMENT
Construction workers, shopkeepers and bureaucrats across the bustling nation of 1.3 billion people paused for three minutes at 2:28 p.m. — exactly one week after the magnitude 7.9 quake hit central China.
Air-raid sirens and the horns of cars and buses sounded in memory of the dead.
In Beijing's Tiananmen Square, thousands of people bowed their heads and then began shouting "Long Live China!" and thrusting their fists in the air. Traffic on the capital's highways and roads stopped, and some drivers got out of their cars.
The confirmed death toll from the May 12 quake rose to 34,073, the State Council, China's Cabinet, said Monday. Another 9,500 remained buried in Sichuan and more than 29,000 were missing, the provincial government said, according to Xinhua.
Officials have said they expect final death toll to exceed 50,000, with more than 245,000 reported as injured. Quake-related losses to companies totaled $9.5 billion, Deputy Industry Minister Xi Guohua said.
In an indication of the challenge in dealing with millions of homeless and injured survivors, China said it would accept foreign medical teams and issued an international appeal for tents.
"China requests the international community donate tents as a priority when they donate materials because many houses were toppled in the quake and because it is the rainy season," ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement, also thanking the international community for its help so far.
In the disaster area, more than 200 relief workers were reported buried over the past three days by mudslides while working to repair roads in Sichuan, Xinhua reported.
An official confirmed mudslides had caused some deaths but gave no details. "The total death toll is still being counted," said the official at the Sichuan provincial Communications Department who only gave his last name, Shi.
More potential landslides were predicted by the Central Meteorological Observatory, with heavy rains forecast this week for some areas close to the epicenter.
Meanwhile, 14 Taiwanese escaped a massive landslide in Sichuan. They were located by authorities using satellite positioning data from the group's tour bus on Friday, Chinese authorities said, and were set to head home Monday.
The military was still struggling to reach areas cut off by the earthquake, with more than 10,000 discovered stranded in Yinxiui valley near the epicenter, China National Radio said Monday. There was no information on casualties there, and 600 soldiers were hiking into the area.
During three days of national mourning ordered by the government, flags were to fly at half-staff and public entertainment was canceled — an unprecedented outpouring of state sympathy on a level normally reserved for dead leaders.
Rescuers also briefly halted work in the disaster zone, where the hunt for survivors turned glum despite remarkable survival tales among thousands buried. Two women were rescued Monday after being trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building at a coal mine in Sichuan, Xinhua reported.
A convoy of police cars, ambulances and other rescue vehicles let off a long blast from their horns as the workers in orange jumpsuits stood quietly with eyes downcast, some removing their white hardhats.
"Our hearts are so heavy, so many of our compatriots are dead," said rescuer Ma Tang Chuan. "As long as we try out best, we have some small hope."
Volunteers at Wangfujing shopping street handed out white ribbons reading, "lovingly remember," before hundreds of shopkeepers spilled into the street. The period of silence started early and ended up stretching past the three-minute mark, before it was broken by a burst of sound from a construction site next door.
"It's the first time we've stopped," said Bai Zhenzong, a worker at the site. "This is awful. This shows how importantly the Chinese government is treating this."
Chinese President Hu Jintao and other top Communist Party leaders were shown on state TV bowing their heads, white flowers pinned to the lapels of their dark suits. Hu had spent three days touring the worst-hit areas of Sichuan.
The moment of tribute also was marked in Hong Kong, where double-decker buses sounded their horns. Rides and performances were halted for three minutes at Hong Kong Disneyland, and the daily fireworks show was canceled.
The government order for the mourning period said all Internet entertainment and game sites had to be taken off-line and users redirected to sites dedicated to commemorating earthquake victims, the Chinese news Web portal sina.com said.
China's National Grand Theater will cancel or postpone all performances during the three days, and media reports said numerous bars, nightclubs, karaoke parlors and movie theaters had shut down beginning at midnight in major cities such as Beijing, Shenyang and Changsha.
Newspapers across China printed their logos in black and some ran entirely without color. Several front pages were covered in black, with simple messages in white text across the middle: "The nation mourns," "Pray for life," and "National tragedy."
The mourning period begins as hope of finding more trapped survivors dwindled, and preventing hunger and disease among the homeless became more pressing.
Hu Yongcui, 38, said she did not care about the official show of mourning as she headed to Beichuan, near the quake's epicenter, to search for her missing 17-year-old daughter.
"I can't feel anything. I have no words," she said. "I just want to go home. I just want to find my daughter."
In a sign the search for survivors was concluding, Japan said it was considering withdrawing rescue crews to be replaced with an expanded medical team to treat survivors because of declining opportunities to use their technology to hunt for trapped victims.
"It's been a week since the earthquake and at this point chances we can make use of our technology is very limited. It's time to think about what to do with our rescue operation," Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura told reporters, according to Japan's Kyodo News agency.
"There is definitely a need for medical experts, and we can dispatch a team whenever there is a request," he said.
In Dujiangyan, three local government officials were removed from their posts for dereliction of duty over the earthquake — the first officials punished, Xinhua reported. One of the officials was reprimanded for miscounting casualty figures, while the others were punished for failing to come to work.
The Communist Party's discipline committee had instructed all officials to "stand at the front line" of the disaster and vowed to deal harshly with those who did not, the agency said.
___
Associated Press writers Audra Ang in Beichuan, and Cara Anna, Anita Chang and Henry Sanderson in Beijing contributed to this report.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Kasparov launches Russian opposition 'assembly'-Rest of World-World-The Times of India
Kasparov launches Russian opposition 'assembly'-Rest of World-World-The Times of India
Kasparov launches Russian opposition 'assembly'
18 May 2008, 0103 hrs IST,AFP
MOSCOW: Chess legend-turned-fierce Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov led the opening today of an opposition alternative parliament aimed at "restoration of democracy" in Russia.
About 500 Kremlin opponents ranging from liberals and human rights activists to Communists joined Kasparov in central Moscow for the self-styled "national assembly".
It was the latest attempt by Kasparov to unite Russia's weakened and often bickering opposition against former president, now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his successor President Dmitry Medvedev.
A founding charter called for "restoration of democracy and popular government in Russia" and blamed the authorities for "taking the country to the brink of national disaster."
The session was marked by strong emotions, as well as farce.
A young woman from Samara declared after reading out the charter: "I will not spare my efforts or my life for the restoration in Russia of sovereignty and power of the people." Delegates stood to respond: "We swear, we swear."
"We should spit in the face of tsars Putin and Medvedev," the woman added.
Kasparov, considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time, accused Russia's rulers of creating a "feudal fiefdom" and lambasted mainstream opposition parties such as Yabloko and SPS, which did not attend the assembly.
As Kasparov spoke a toy penis with wings buzzed across the hall and around him. It was not clear who was behind the stunt.
Similar incidents mounted by Kremlin-backed youth groups were frequent during Kasparov's uphill campaign against the Kremlin in the run-up to parliamentary elections in December and Medvedev's controversial election in March.
Kasparov launches Russian opposition 'assembly'
18 May 2008, 0103 hrs IST,AFP
MOSCOW: Chess legend-turned-fierce Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov led the opening today of an opposition alternative parliament aimed at "restoration of democracy" in Russia.
About 500 Kremlin opponents ranging from liberals and human rights activists to Communists joined Kasparov in central Moscow for the self-styled "national assembly".
It was the latest attempt by Kasparov to unite Russia's weakened and often bickering opposition against former president, now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his successor President Dmitry Medvedev.
A founding charter called for "restoration of democracy and popular government in Russia" and blamed the authorities for "taking the country to the brink of national disaster."
The session was marked by strong emotions, as well as farce.
A young woman from Samara declared after reading out the charter: "I will not spare my efforts or my life for the restoration in Russia of sovereignty and power of the people." Delegates stood to respond: "We swear, we swear."
"We should spit in the face of tsars Putin and Medvedev," the woman added.
Kasparov, considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time, accused Russia's rulers of creating a "feudal fiefdom" and lambasted mainstream opposition parties such as Yabloko and SPS, which did not attend the assembly.
As Kasparov spoke a toy penis with wings buzzed across the hall and around him. It was not clear who was behind the stunt.
Similar incidents mounted by Kremlin-backed youth groups were frequent during Kasparov's uphill campaign against the Kremlin in the run-up to parliamentary elections in December and Medvedev's controversial election in March.
India in China's nuke crosshairs-India-The Times of India
India in China's nuke crosshairs-India-The Times of India
India in China's nuke crosshairs
17 May 2008, 0049 hrs IST,Rajat Pandit,TNN
Chinese missile launch site
Source: Federation of American Scientists, 2008
NEW DELHI: China has more worrying news for us. Latest satellite pictures have identified a large area in central China with 58 launch pads for nuclear-capable ballistic missiles which apparently target north India and south Russia. (Watch)
Coming soon after the discovery of the sheer extent of China's underground nuclear submarine base at Hainan Island in South China Sea, it's yet another reality check for the Indian defence establishment.
TOI had highlighted earlier this month how Hainan had jolted the Indian establishment, with navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta expressing concern about the number of nuclear submarines and long-range missiles "in our neighbourhood".
The new satellite pictures show 58 launch pads and command and control facilities spread over a 2,000 sq km deployment area near Delingha and Da Qaidam in the northern parts of Qinghai province.
An analysis of the photos by the Federation of American Scientists, a reputed US non-governmental organization which works on nuclear and arms control issues, holds "the sites are for targeting Russia and India".
But while China has been swift to resolve disputes with Russia, even importing weapon systems worth an estimated $13 billion from Moscow in the last seven-eight years, it continues to adopt an aggressive border posture as far as India is concerned.
Moreover, Russian missiles and counter-missile measures are more than a match for the Chinese ones. In sharp contrast, India has stark asymmetry vis-a-vis China in terms of strategic and military capabilities.
"It's foolhardy for India's political leadership to assume all is hunky-dory with China by citing the $40 billion bilateral trade figure. With the boundary dispute showing no signs of being resolved amid tussle for energy resources, China clearly remains India's long-term threat," said an official.
Though India has steadily improved its relationship with China, with several military CBMs being implemented along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control, the armed forces remain concerned about Beijing's "continuing deep linkages" with Islamabad in the nuclear and missile arenas.
India in China's nuke crosshairs
17 May 2008, 0049 hrs IST,Rajat Pandit,TNN
Chinese missile launch site
Source: Federation of American Scientists, 2008
NEW DELHI: China has more worrying news for us. Latest satellite pictures have identified a large area in central China with 58 launch pads for nuclear-capable ballistic missiles which apparently target north India and south Russia. (Watch)
Coming soon after the discovery of the sheer extent of China's underground nuclear submarine base at Hainan Island in South China Sea, it's yet another reality check for the Indian defence establishment.
TOI had highlighted earlier this month how Hainan had jolted the Indian establishment, with navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta expressing concern about the number of nuclear submarines and long-range missiles "in our neighbourhood".
The new satellite pictures show 58 launch pads and command and control facilities spread over a 2,000 sq km deployment area near Delingha and Da Qaidam in the northern parts of Qinghai province.
An analysis of the photos by the Federation of American Scientists, a reputed US non-governmental organization which works on nuclear and arms control issues, holds "the sites are for targeting Russia and India".
But while China has been swift to resolve disputes with Russia, even importing weapon systems worth an estimated $13 billion from Moscow in the last seven-eight years, it continues to adopt an aggressive border posture as far as India is concerned.
Moreover, Russian missiles and counter-missile measures are more than a match for the Chinese ones. In sharp contrast, India has stark asymmetry vis-a-vis China in terms of strategic and military capabilities.
"It's foolhardy for India's political leadership to assume all is hunky-dory with China by citing the $40 billion bilateral trade figure. With the boundary dispute showing no signs of being resolved amid tussle for energy resources, China clearly remains India's long-term threat," said an official.
Though India has steadily improved its relationship with China, with several military CBMs being implemented along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control, the armed forces remain concerned about Beijing's "continuing deep linkages" with Islamabad in the nuclear and missile arenas.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Thomas L. Friedman on New Cold War
Op-Ed Columnist
The New Cold War
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 14, 2008
The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran.
Thomas L. Friedman
That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.”
For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other questions?
The outrage of the week is the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah attempt to take over Lebanon. Hezbollah thugs pushed into Sunni neighborhoods in West Beirut, focusing particular attention on crushing progressive news outlets like Future TV, so Hezbollah’s propaganda machine could dominate the airwaves. The Shiite militia Hezbollah emerged supposedly to protect Lebanon from Israel. Having done that, it has now turned around and sold Lebanon to Syria and Iran.
All of this is part of what Ehud Yaari, one of Israel’s best Middle East watchers, calls “Pax Iranica.” In his April 28 column in The Jerusalem Report, Mr. Yaari pointed out the web of influence that Iran has built around the Middle East — from the sway it has over Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to its ability to manipulate virtually all the Shiite militias in Iraq, to its building up of Hezbollah into a force — with 40,000 rockets — that can control Lebanon and threaten Israel should it think of striking Tehran, to its ability to strengthen Hamas in Gaza and block any U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace.
“Simply put,” noted Mr. Yaari, “Tehran has created a situation in which anyone who wants to attack its atomic facilities will have to take into account that this will lead to bitter fighting” on the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi and Persian Gulf fronts. That is a sophisticated strategy of deterrence.
The Bush team, by contrast, in eight years has managed to put America in the unique position in the Middle East where it is “not liked, not feared and not respected,” writes Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast negotiator under both Republican and Democratic administrations, in his provocative new book on the peace process, titled “The Much Too Promised Land.”
“We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton over how to make peace in the Middle East, and then we stumbled for eight years under George Bush over how to make war there,” said Mr. Miller, and the result is “an America that is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon.”
Look at the last few months, he said: President Bush went to the Middle East in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went in February, Vice President Dick Cheney went in March, the secretary of state went again in April, and the president is there again this week. After all that, oil prices are as high as ever and peace prospects as low as ever. As Mr. Miller puts it, America right now “cannot defeat, co-opt or contain” any of the key players in the region.
The big debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is over whether or not we should talk to Iran. Obama is in favor; Clinton has been against. Alas, the right question for the next president isn’t whether we talk or don’t talk. It’s whether we have leverage or don’t have leverage.
When you have leverage, talk. When you don’t have leverage, get some — by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran.
The only weaker party is the Sunni Arab world, which is either so drunk on oil it thinks it can buy its way out of any Iranian challenge or is so divided it can’t make a fist to protect its own interests — or both.
We’re not going to war with Iran, nor should we. But it is sad to see America and its Arab friends so weak they can’t prevent one of the last corners of decency, pluralism and openness in the Arab world from being snuffed out by Iran and Syria. The only thing that gives me succor is the knowledge that anyone who has ever tried to dominate Lebanon alone — Maronites, Palestinians, Syrians, Israelis — has triggered a backlash and failed.
“Lebanon is not a place anyone can control without a consensus, without bringing everybody in,” said the Lebanese columnist Michael Young. “Lebanon has been a graveyard for people with grand projects.” In the Middle East, he added, your enemies always seem to “find a way of joining together and suddenly making things very difficult for you.”
The New Cold War
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: May 14, 2008
The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran.
Thomas L. Friedman
That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.”
For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other questions?
The outrage of the week is the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah attempt to take over Lebanon. Hezbollah thugs pushed into Sunni neighborhoods in West Beirut, focusing particular attention on crushing progressive news outlets like Future TV, so Hezbollah’s propaganda machine could dominate the airwaves. The Shiite militia Hezbollah emerged supposedly to protect Lebanon from Israel. Having done that, it has now turned around and sold Lebanon to Syria and Iran.
All of this is part of what Ehud Yaari, one of Israel’s best Middle East watchers, calls “Pax Iranica.” In his April 28 column in The Jerusalem Report, Mr. Yaari pointed out the web of influence that Iran has built around the Middle East — from the sway it has over Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to its ability to manipulate virtually all the Shiite militias in Iraq, to its building up of Hezbollah into a force — with 40,000 rockets — that can control Lebanon and threaten Israel should it think of striking Tehran, to its ability to strengthen Hamas in Gaza and block any U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace.
“Simply put,” noted Mr. Yaari, “Tehran has created a situation in which anyone who wants to attack its atomic facilities will have to take into account that this will lead to bitter fighting” on the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi and Persian Gulf fronts. That is a sophisticated strategy of deterrence.
The Bush team, by contrast, in eight years has managed to put America in the unique position in the Middle East where it is “not liked, not feared and not respected,” writes Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast negotiator under both Republican and Democratic administrations, in his provocative new book on the peace process, titled “The Much Too Promised Land.”
“We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton over how to make peace in the Middle East, and then we stumbled for eight years under George Bush over how to make war there,” said Mr. Miller, and the result is “an America that is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon.”
Look at the last few months, he said: President Bush went to the Middle East in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went in February, Vice President Dick Cheney went in March, the secretary of state went again in April, and the president is there again this week. After all that, oil prices are as high as ever and peace prospects as low as ever. As Mr. Miller puts it, America right now “cannot defeat, co-opt or contain” any of the key players in the region.
The big debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is over whether or not we should talk to Iran. Obama is in favor; Clinton has been against. Alas, the right question for the next president isn’t whether we talk or don’t talk. It’s whether we have leverage or don’t have leverage.
When you have leverage, talk. When you don’t have leverage, get some — by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran.
The only weaker party is the Sunni Arab world, which is either so drunk on oil it thinks it can buy its way out of any Iranian challenge or is so divided it can’t make a fist to protect its own interests — or both.
We’re not going to war with Iran, nor should we. But it is sad to see America and its Arab friends so weak they can’t prevent one of the last corners of decency, pluralism and openness in the Arab world from being snuffed out by Iran and Syria. The only thing that gives me succor is the knowledge that anyone who has ever tried to dominate Lebanon alone — Maronites, Palestinians, Syrians, Israelis — has triggered a backlash and failed.
“Lebanon is not a place anyone can control without a consensus, without bringing everybody in,” said the Lebanese columnist Michael Young. “Lebanon has been a graveyard for people with grand projects.” In the Middle East, he added, your enemies always seem to “find a way of joining together and suddenly making things very difficult for you.”
Stealing Rocket launchers for terrorists
Australian army captain stole 10 rocket launchers
Thu, May 15 09:01 AM
SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian army captain was jailed for 10 years on Thursday for stealing 10 rocket launchers, five of which were sold to an alleged terrorist cell.
Shane Della-Vedova, 46, was arrested in April 2007. In November he pleaded guilty to two charges of stealing and possessing 10 rocket launchers between 2001 and 2003.
Police said five launchers were sold to a criminal who then sold them to a member of an alleged terrorist cell. Only one of the 10 rocket launchers has been recovered.
Della-Vedova's actions "strike at the very heart of state and federal security", said New South Wales District Court Judge Jonathan Williams in handing down the sentence on Thursday.
"It's difficult to imagine the use of such a weapon other than for the uses of terrorism," said Williams.
"I also find it extraordinarily difficult to believe that Mr Della-Vedova wouldn't have had well in mind that these weapons ... were more likely to be used for some criminal, terrorist-type activity," he said. "He was either prepared to turn a blind eye to these probabilities or acted in reckless disregard of them."
Judge Williams said nine rocket launchers still missing posed a serious domestic threat and could be used against Australians serving in war-torn parts of the world, reported local media from the court in Sydney.
Della-Vedova told police the launchers were part of a consignment he was supposed to destroy and he initially took them by mistake. "He simply forgot they were in his vehicle," said a defence statement to the court.
Thu, May 15 09:01 AM
SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian army captain was jailed for 10 years on Thursday for stealing 10 rocket launchers, five of which were sold to an alleged terrorist cell.
Shane Della-Vedova, 46, was arrested in April 2007. In November he pleaded guilty to two charges of stealing and possessing 10 rocket launchers between 2001 and 2003.
Police said five launchers were sold to a criminal who then sold them to a member of an alleged terrorist cell. Only one of the 10 rocket launchers has been recovered.
Della-Vedova's actions "strike at the very heart of state and federal security", said New South Wales District Court Judge Jonathan Williams in handing down the sentence on Thursday.
"It's difficult to imagine the use of such a weapon other than for the uses of terrorism," said Williams.
"I also find it extraordinarily difficult to believe that Mr Della-Vedova wouldn't have had well in mind that these weapons ... were more likely to be used for some criminal, terrorist-type activity," he said. "He was either prepared to turn a blind eye to these probabilities or acted in reckless disregard of them."
Judge Williams said nine rocket launchers still missing posed a serious domestic threat and could be used against Australians serving in war-torn parts of the world, reported local media from the court in Sydney.
Della-Vedova told police the launchers were part of a consignment he was supposed to destroy and he initially took them by mistake. "He simply forgot they were in his vehicle," said a defence statement to the court.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Governement to Rescue OMCs
Centre to compensate oil marketing companies
Sujay Mehdudia
Bonds worth Rs. 35,300 crore to be issued
NEW DELHI: Faced with surging crude oil prices in the international markets and massive under-recoveries being incurred by the oil marketing companies (OMCs), the government has decided to compensate them by issuing oil bonds to the extent of 50 per cent against incurring under-recoveries during 2007-08 on sale of petrol, diesel, kerosene and domestic LPG at subsidised prices.
Although the decision to issue the second instalment of oil bonds is not in accordance with the demands raised by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry, the decision has come as a big relief to the bleeding OMCs, who are faced with hiked under-recoveries.
The second instalment of oil bonds comes after a meeting between Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Tuesday. Oil bonds of the value of Rs.35,300 crore would be issued to the OMCs. As of now, oil bonds of the face value of Rs.20,333 crore covering the period April-December 2007 have been received.
‘Welcome development’
Stating that it was a welcome development, Mr. Deora said the Finance Minister appreciated the problems faced by the OMCs in an endeavour to insulate common man from the impact of highly volatile global oil prices which had been increasing steeply of late.
Mr. Deora said although his Ministry had demanded around 57 per cent oil bonds, the Finance Ministry had not accepted it,
However, he said whatever has been released was a welcome step towards mitigating the financial difficulties of the OMCs.
The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs had considered the matter in its meeting held on February 14 and authorised the Finance and Petroleum Ministers to decide on the quantum of under-recoveries for 2007-08 to be covered by oil bonds.
Sujay Mehdudia
Bonds worth Rs. 35,300 crore to be issued
NEW DELHI: Faced with surging crude oil prices in the international markets and massive under-recoveries being incurred by the oil marketing companies (OMCs), the government has decided to compensate them by issuing oil bonds to the extent of 50 per cent against incurring under-recoveries during 2007-08 on sale of petrol, diesel, kerosene and domestic LPG at subsidised prices.
Although the decision to issue the second instalment of oil bonds is not in accordance with the demands raised by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry, the decision has come as a big relief to the bleeding OMCs, who are faced with hiked under-recoveries.
The second instalment of oil bonds comes after a meeting between Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Murli Deora and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Tuesday. Oil bonds of the value of Rs.35,300 crore would be issued to the OMCs. As of now, oil bonds of the face value of Rs.20,333 crore covering the period April-December 2007 have been received.
‘Welcome development’
Stating that it was a welcome development, Mr. Deora said the Finance Minister appreciated the problems faced by the OMCs in an endeavour to insulate common man from the impact of highly volatile global oil prices which had been increasing steeply of late.
Mr. Deora said although his Ministry had demanded around 57 per cent oil bonds, the Finance Ministry had not accepted it,
However, he said whatever has been released was a welcome step towards mitigating the financial difficulties of the OMCs.
The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs had considered the matter in its meeting held on February 14 and authorised the Finance and Petroleum Ministers to decide on the quantum of under-recoveries for 2007-08 to be covered by oil bonds.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Debating Electronically
Here is a helpful article pointing to a new way of exercising democratic power
The Future of Debating in an Electronic Democracy
Written by William J. Kelleher
When Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton recently issued a debate challenge to her Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama, she urged him to face off with her in a debate without a moderator, Lincoln-Douglas style. He refused, saying he already debated Clinton 21 times, "the most in primary history." But Clinton may be on to something. With the help of electronic campaigning and Internet voting, here is my suggestion for the right way to use debates to choose a President.
I propose taking advantage of an electronic debate process by organizing a Presidential Election Competition, from local roots to national champion. Internet voting can make this possible, if we use it sensibly. We can reorganize the debate and presidential process to make full use of existing electronic voting technology, and make the process 10 times more democratic!
I suggest calling this "The State Selection Debates." It could start on the same day in each state. These would be real debates, not softball news conferences -- with two contenders at a time. These could be one-hour debates, starting with opening statements, then rebuttals, a period of spontaneous interchange, and closing statements.
The debates could be broadcast on statewide TV, the Internet, cellphone lines, podcasts, and mobile Internet devices. After each debate, the voters in every state can cast their ballots electronically to determine the winner [Ed. note: American Idol style]. As I discussed in an earlier ThinkerNet post about Internet Voting, the electronic balloting process can be as secure and precise as a bank transfer.
A preference vote can be used to reduce the possibility of a tie. The voter can rank each debater from 1 to 10. This would make the vote a better reflection of the voter's judgment than would a mere up or down vote. Let's say each state holds two one-hour debates. On one day, four hopefuls would have their chance to be considered by the electorate. With 50 states, there would be 200 candidates being given a fair chance to run for president.
Suppose a state has a dozen qualified contenders. In three evenings the voters could select six winners. The next week, three debates would result in three winners. A round of debates a week later would produce The State Champion.
Sound complicated? Actually, it's not. All it would take is just adapting the organization principles of systems that we know work well. Consider, for example, the Miss America Beauty Pageant and the Golden Gloves Boxing Tournament. Here are two homegrown competitions, as American as red, white, and blue. They are also organizational models for the way to organize a Presidential Election Competition.
In the current system, the two political parties each give us a handful of party insiders. They engage in a spending contest on TV advertising. Iowa and New Hampshire get first pick. Voters in the other 48 states sit around twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do.
Internet voting can make all states equals. Then there would be 50 State Champions. In the following week, a couple of rounds of Regional Debates could bring this down to four finalists. Later, two evenings of debates, followed by e-voting would settle the question. The President is the top vote getter, and the Vice President, the second vote getter.
If boxers and beauty queens can understand the rules of their respective competitions, the American voters can understand both this proposed process, and how much more democracy Internet voting can give them.
— William J. Kelleher, PhD, political analyst, author of Progressive Logic and The New Election Game
The Future of Debating in an Electronic Democracy
Written by William J. Kelleher
When Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton recently issued a debate challenge to her Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama, she urged him to face off with her in a debate without a moderator, Lincoln-Douglas style. He refused, saying he already debated Clinton 21 times, "the most in primary history." But Clinton may be on to something. With the help of electronic campaigning and Internet voting, here is my suggestion for the right way to use debates to choose a President.
I propose taking advantage of an electronic debate process by organizing a Presidential Election Competition, from local roots to national champion. Internet voting can make this possible, if we use it sensibly. We can reorganize the debate and presidential process to make full use of existing electronic voting technology, and make the process 10 times more democratic!
I suggest calling this "The State Selection Debates." It could start on the same day in each state. These would be real debates, not softball news conferences -- with two contenders at a time. These could be one-hour debates, starting with opening statements, then rebuttals, a period of spontaneous interchange, and closing statements.
The debates could be broadcast on statewide TV, the Internet, cellphone lines, podcasts, and mobile Internet devices. After each debate, the voters in every state can cast their ballots electronically to determine the winner [Ed. note: American Idol style]. As I discussed in an earlier ThinkerNet post about Internet Voting, the electronic balloting process can be as secure and precise as a bank transfer.
A preference vote can be used to reduce the possibility of a tie. The voter can rank each debater from 1 to 10. This would make the vote a better reflection of the voter's judgment than would a mere up or down vote. Let's say each state holds two one-hour debates. On one day, four hopefuls would have their chance to be considered by the electorate. With 50 states, there would be 200 candidates being given a fair chance to run for president.
Suppose a state has a dozen qualified contenders. In three evenings the voters could select six winners. The next week, three debates would result in three winners. A round of debates a week later would produce The State Champion.
Sound complicated? Actually, it's not. All it would take is just adapting the organization principles of systems that we know work well. Consider, for example, the Miss America Beauty Pageant and the Golden Gloves Boxing Tournament. Here are two homegrown competitions, as American as red, white, and blue. They are also organizational models for the way to organize a Presidential Election Competition.
In the current system, the two political parties each give us a handful of party insiders. They engage in a spending contest on TV advertising. Iowa and New Hampshire get first pick. Voters in the other 48 states sit around twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do.
Internet voting can make all states equals. Then there would be 50 State Champions. In the following week, a couple of rounds of Regional Debates could bring this down to four finalists. Later, two evenings of debates, followed by e-voting would settle the question. The President is the top vote getter, and the Vice President, the second vote getter.
If boxers and beauty queens can understand the rules of their respective competitions, the American voters can understand both this proposed process, and how much more democracy Internet voting can give them.
— William J. Kelleher, PhD, political analyst, author of Progressive Logic and The New Election Game
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Dwindling Food Security
The Hindu - Indian Newspapers in English Language from eight editions.
Volume 25 - Issue 10 :: May. 10-23, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
FOOD SECURITY
Shock in the rice bowl
P.S. SURYANARAYANA
in Singapore
In Greater East Asia, home to the world’s leading exporters of rice, the overall price situation remains unstable.
PRECISELY when many in the developed bloc were frantically counting their money at the height of a surreal shock over subprime rate, the globalising world was jolted by a potential crisis of subsistence that would hit the poor and other vulnerable sections very hard. Is there a link, therefore, between the slippery subprime banking rate and the soaring prices of rice and other staples?
While this question is best left to the economists with a clear conscience for fair play and justice, the politics of the new food crisis is just as poignant as the current uncertainties and the widely perceived fears of a future shock relating to several staple diets are. In Greater East Asia, home to the world’s leading exporters of rice as also some of its big consumers, the overall situation at the end of April remained unstable and critical.
Public protests flared up in some pockets of South-East Asia, such as Indonesia and Cambodia and the Philippines, especially over the skyrocketing prices of rice and other food items and over fears of scarcity. As this report is written, such demonstrations of public anger have not spun out of control, thereby lulling the authorities into believing that they would be able to prevent or ride out the gathering storm. At another level, panic buying, particularly in countries with rice surpluses such as Thailand and Vietnam, raised concerns about chain reactions that might make it impossible to stave off a full-blown crisis.
It was under these circumstances that the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) took the line that the cheap food era was now a thing of the past but there was also no cause to fear a scarcity situation.
Not downplaying the storm signals, though, Rajat M. Nag, Managing Director-General of ADB, said in Singapore on April 22 that “we just have to accept that the era of cheap food is over, if the era of cheap oil [for fuel] is [also] over”. In the bank’s assessment, he said, the rice stocks across Asia “are the lowest in decades”, but there was no room for “a doomsday picture of huge scarcity”.
Suggesting that rice exporters like India and Thailand should desist from imposing export bans or resorting to price controls, Nag said such measures would, in the bank’s view, produce a “counter-productive effect on the micro-decisions of farmers”. The avoidance of such measures would be “good economic policy” and earn the exporting countries political or moral dividend in their neighbourhoods.
KHAM/REUTERS
A paddy field near Hanoi. Vietnam is the world's second largest rice exporter.
The ADB’s advice to the developed bloc was to “rethink the biofuels programme, including the whole issue of subsidies” that was designed to boost the diversion of farming from its age-old focus on food to the new and supposedly eco-friendly focus on fuel. Nag said actions by the developed countries to bring about an early and successful conclusion of the Doha round of global trade talks would also give “a very major boost to the developing Asia’s farmers”.
Some highlights of the ADB’s perceptions and prescriptions deserve mention at length. The rice price increases have already produced a “very, very serious impact on nearly 1.2 billion people”. Roughly 600 million people in these socially vulnerable sections have an average earning of less than $1 a day, while a similar number has a marginally higher income quotient above $1 a day. Before the latest rise in food prices, these people were spending almost 40 per cent to 50 per cent of their meagre incomes on daily necessities. By the fourth week of April, the same index rose as high as 80 per cent, particularly in some South Asian countries.
While worldwide, prices of all food items have gone up by over 80 per cent in the past three years, the situation with regard to rice in Asia is more acute. In the past year alone, a threefold rise in rice prices was registered, and buyers have had to pay almost twice as much in the first few months of this year. The vagaries of the weather apart, the latest price trends are seen by institutions such as the ADB as the inevitable result of rising production costs. The space-age velocity that drives up the prices of oil-for-fuel is recognised as the overall factor behind the rising costs of production in the agriculture sector as well. Some other cyclical factors, such as the weather in countries such as Australia and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, are also conspicuous. Of equal or greater importance are the structural issues on the farm front, such as inadequate irrigation facilities and rural finance. In the ADB’s reckoning, farm-related infrastructure in the developing countries should be enlarged through greater investments. The bank itself, for instance, extended $1 billion to India towards its rural finance requirements last year.
Another structural issue that has caused “a supply shock”, not amounting to a “doomsday” picture though, is that in some growing economies across Asia traditional rice farms are being put to other productive purposes. In Vietnam alone, according to the ADB estimates, about 40,000 hectares a year are being taken away from rice production to make way for industrial plants, special economic zones or other urban infrastructure. In Thailand, the area under rice cultivation declined by 13 per cent in the decade ending 2005. Significantly, in the Asian and global contexts, Thailand is the world’s largest rice exporter, followed by Vietnam.
Yet another structural factor that is causing worry is that the cropping intensity in Asia has not gone up in real terms from what it was in the 1980s. One related reason has been identified as the slackening attitudes of the emerging economies towards investment in irrigation systems. So, most of the area under agriculture in Asia still remains rain-fed, says the ADB.
These structural factors have led to a negative spin-off in the form of rice productivity losses. The ADB studies indicate that the growth in the yields has started to taper off, in the classical sense of the law of diminishing returns. Gone are the sumptuous yields of the era of Green Revolution.
WALTER ASTRADA/AFP
Ugandan women drag bags of food given to them as relief by the World Food Programme at Morulinga in Moroto district, one of the driest and least developed areas in this east African country.
Acquiring added importance, in the context of these supply constraints, is the rise in demand for rice and other food items, caused by the growth in incomes. China, India and Vietnam are seen to top the list of countries that have begun to display not only an increase in consumption of rice but also an increase in the consumption of grain-intensive food.
It is in this macro-level situation that Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, who held talks with Thai leaders in Bangkok on April 27 and 28, said India would “support Thailand’s leadership” for the convening of a “rice summit” to consider steps to try and prevent the crisis on the commodity front. Thailand, Vietnam and India, he pointed out, had roles to fulfil, from “the suppliers’ point of view”, in the search for an effective solution.
Besides the obvious relevance of Thailand and Vietnam to any search for answers, India and China are known to be the other key players. Given such a complex farm scene, Kamal Nath called upon the developed bloc to make tangible proposals on agriculture and other issues and break the current impasse in global trade talks.
Until the end of April, Thailand was busy affirming its resolve to refrain from imposing a ban on rice export. The assurance did enhance Bangkok’s credentials to preside over a possible “rice summit”, especially given the concerns in some quarters over the actions by India and Vietnam to curb their independent exports of rice in some select ways. However, Thailand remained under some negative light too as importers were not amused at the way the Thai rice prices peaked above the $1,000-mark for every metric tonne.
In Vietnam, the leaders were eager to prevent the people from pressing the panic button. However, a particular spree of panic-buying did occur, thanks to the fears of hoarding by wholesalers in anticipation of long-term price rises on the export front.
The Philippines, which depends considerably on rice imports, found itself caught in a web of popular anxieties and political assurances. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, never really free from a siege on the political front at home for reasons related to her alleged “usurpation” of power, sought to endear herself to the people on an issue close to their hearts. Promising severe punishment to hoarders and ordering actions against some “errant” traders, she maintained that “the supply or rice is secure for the foreseeable future”.
Malaysia, another key importer of rice, announced new plans to enlarge the area under rice cultivation and boost domestic supplies. However, the new political landscape in that country, dominated by the unprecedented emergence of a vibrant opposition coalition on the national scene, could yet turn into a theatre of tussle over the rice issue as well.
With China preoccupied with issues concerning the holding of the forthcoming Beijing Olympics, Japan announced plans for over a $100-million emergency aid to help poor countries tide over their additional costs of importing rice. Tokyo promised to make food security a prime agenda for the Group of Eight summit to be hosted by Japan this year.
Volume 25 - Issue 10 :: May. 10-23, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU • Contents
FOOD SECURITY
Shock in the rice bowl
P.S. SURYANARAYANA
in Singapore
In Greater East Asia, home to the world’s leading exporters of rice, the overall price situation remains unstable.
PRECISELY when many in the developed bloc were frantically counting their money at the height of a surreal shock over subprime rate, the globalising world was jolted by a potential crisis of subsistence that would hit the poor and other vulnerable sections very hard. Is there a link, therefore, between the slippery subprime banking rate and the soaring prices of rice and other staples?
While this question is best left to the economists with a clear conscience for fair play and justice, the politics of the new food crisis is just as poignant as the current uncertainties and the widely perceived fears of a future shock relating to several staple diets are. In Greater East Asia, home to the world’s leading exporters of rice as also some of its big consumers, the overall situation at the end of April remained unstable and critical.
Public protests flared up in some pockets of South-East Asia, such as Indonesia and Cambodia and the Philippines, especially over the skyrocketing prices of rice and other food items and over fears of scarcity. As this report is written, such demonstrations of public anger have not spun out of control, thereby lulling the authorities into believing that they would be able to prevent or ride out the gathering storm. At another level, panic buying, particularly in countries with rice surpluses such as Thailand and Vietnam, raised concerns about chain reactions that might make it impossible to stave off a full-blown crisis.
It was under these circumstances that the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) took the line that the cheap food era was now a thing of the past but there was also no cause to fear a scarcity situation.
Not downplaying the storm signals, though, Rajat M. Nag, Managing Director-General of ADB, said in Singapore on April 22 that “we just have to accept that the era of cheap food is over, if the era of cheap oil [for fuel] is [also] over”. In the bank’s assessment, he said, the rice stocks across Asia “are the lowest in decades”, but there was no room for “a doomsday picture of huge scarcity”.
Suggesting that rice exporters like India and Thailand should desist from imposing export bans or resorting to price controls, Nag said such measures would, in the bank’s view, produce a “counter-productive effect on the micro-decisions of farmers”. The avoidance of such measures would be “good economic policy” and earn the exporting countries political or moral dividend in their neighbourhoods.
KHAM/REUTERS
A paddy field near Hanoi. Vietnam is the world's second largest rice exporter.
The ADB’s advice to the developed bloc was to “rethink the biofuels programme, including the whole issue of subsidies” that was designed to boost the diversion of farming from its age-old focus on food to the new and supposedly eco-friendly focus on fuel. Nag said actions by the developed countries to bring about an early and successful conclusion of the Doha round of global trade talks would also give “a very major boost to the developing Asia’s farmers”.
Some highlights of the ADB’s perceptions and prescriptions deserve mention at length. The rice price increases have already produced a “very, very serious impact on nearly 1.2 billion people”. Roughly 600 million people in these socially vulnerable sections have an average earning of less than $1 a day, while a similar number has a marginally higher income quotient above $1 a day. Before the latest rise in food prices, these people were spending almost 40 per cent to 50 per cent of their meagre incomes on daily necessities. By the fourth week of April, the same index rose as high as 80 per cent, particularly in some South Asian countries.
While worldwide, prices of all food items have gone up by over 80 per cent in the past three years, the situation with regard to rice in Asia is more acute. In the past year alone, a threefold rise in rice prices was registered, and buyers have had to pay almost twice as much in the first few months of this year. The vagaries of the weather apart, the latest price trends are seen by institutions such as the ADB as the inevitable result of rising production costs. The space-age velocity that drives up the prices of oil-for-fuel is recognised as the overall factor behind the rising costs of production in the agriculture sector as well. Some other cyclical factors, such as the weather in countries such as Australia and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region, are also conspicuous. Of equal or greater importance are the structural issues on the farm front, such as inadequate irrigation facilities and rural finance. In the ADB’s reckoning, farm-related infrastructure in the developing countries should be enlarged through greater investments. The bank itself, for instance, extended $1 billion to India towards its rural finance requirements last year.
Another structural issue that has caused “a supply shock”, not amounting to a “doomsday” picture though, is that in some growing economies across Asia traditional rice farms are being put to other productive purposes. In Vietnam alone, according to the ADB estimates, about 40,000 hectares a year are being taken away from rice production to make way for industrial plants, special economic zones or other urban infrastructure. In Thailand, the area under rice cultivation declined by 13 per cent in the decade ending 2005. Significantly, in the Asian and global contexts, Thailand is the world’s largest rice exporter, followed by Vietnam.
Yet another structural factor that is causing worry is that the cropping intensity in Asia has not gone up in real terms from what it was in the 1980s. One related reason has been identified as the slackening attitudes of the emerging economies towards investment in irrigation systems. So, most of the area under agriculture in Asia still remains rain-fed, says the ADB.
These structural factors have led to a negative spin-off in the form of rice productivity losses. The ADB studies indicate that the growth in the yields has started to taper off, in the classical sense of the law of diminishing returns. Gone are the sumptuous yields of the era of Green Revolution.
WALTER ASTRADA/AFP
Ugandan women drag bags of food given to them as relief by the World Food Programme at Morulinga in Moroto district, one of the driest and least developed areas in this east African country.
Acquiring added importance, in the context of these supply constraints, is the rise in demand for rice and other food items, caused by the growth in incomes. China, India and Vietnam are seen to top the list of countries that have begun to display not only an increase in consumption of rice but also an increase in the consumption of grain-intensive food.
It is in this macro-level situation that Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, who held talks with Thai leaders in Bangkok on April 27 and 28, said India would “support Thailand’s leadership” for the convening of a “rice summit” to consider steps to try and prevent the crisis on the commodity front. Thailand, Vietnam and India, he pointed out, had roles to fulfil, from “the suppliers’ point of view”, in the search for an effective solution.
Besides the obvious relevance of Thailand and Vietnam to any search for answers, India and China are known to be the other key players. Given such a complex farm scene, Kamal Nath called upon the developed bloc to make tangible proposals on agriculture and other issues and break the current impasse in global trade talks.
Until the end of April, Thailand was busy affirming its resolve to refrain from imposing a ban on rice export. The assurance did enhance Bangkok’s credentials to preside over a possible “rice summit”, especially given the concerns in some quarters over the actions by India and Vietnam to curb their independent exports of rice in some select ways. However, Thailand remained under some negative light too as importers were not amused at the way the Thai rice prices peaked above the $1,000-mark for every metric tonne.
In Vietnam, the leaders were eager to prevent the people from pressing the panic button. However, a particular spree of panic-buying did occur, thanks to the fears of hoarding by wholesalers in anticipation of long-term price rises on the export front.
The Philippines, which depends considerably on rice imports, found itself caught in a web of popular anxieties and political assurances. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, never really free from a siege on the political front at home for reasons related to her alleged “usurpation” of power, sought to endear herself to the people on an issue close to their hearts. Promising severe punishment to hoarders and ordering actions against some “errant” traders, she maintained that “the supply or rice is secure for the foreseeable future”.
Malaysia, another key importer of rice, announced new plans to enlarge the area under rice cultivation and boost domestic supplies. However, the new political landscape in that country, dominated by the unprecedented emergence of a vibrant opposition coalition on the national scene, could yet turn into a theatre of tussle over the rice issue as well.
With China preoccupied with issues concerning the holding of the forthcoming Beijing Olympics, Japan announced plans for over a $100-million emergency aid to help poor countries tide over their additional costs of importing rice. Tokyo promised to make food security a prime agenda for the Group of Eight summit to be hosted by Japan this year.
The Hindu - Indian Newspapers in English Language from eight editions.
The Hindu - Indian Newspapers in English Language from eight editions.
TN youth enters Guinness book
Ramanathapuram (TN) (PTI): A 21-year old youth from this district of Tamil Nadu has created a new Guinness record by blowing off 151 candles in a single breath.
V Sankaranarayanan, a native of Velipattinam, who performed the feat in January last, has received the certificate from the Guinness Book of World Record, which was handed over to him by District Collector A Kishorekumar at a function recently.
Sankaranarayanan bettered the record held by David Lamy of France, who extinguished flame of 117 candles at a time in 2001.
An expert in controlling his breathe, an art that he learnt from his yoga master, Sankaranarayanan says "it is difficult to blow even 20 candles in a single breath. I practised breathe exercises to achieve this."
"I practised for at least six months increasing the number of candles slowly," he said.
TN youth enters Guinness book
Ramanathapuram (TN) (PTI): A 21-year old youth from this district of Tamil Nadu has created a new Guinness record by blowing off 151 candles in a single breath.
V Sankaranarayanan, a native of Velipattinam, who performed the feat in January last, has received the certificate from the Guinness Book of World Record, which was handed over to him by District Collector A Kishorekumar at a function recently.
Sankaranarayanan bettered the record held by David Lamy of France, who extinguished flame of 117 candles at a time in 2001.
An expert in controlling his breathe, an art that he learnt from his yoga master, Sankaranarayanan says "it is difficult to blow even 20 candles in a single breath. I practised breathe exercises to achieve this."
"I practised for at least six months increasing the number of candles slowly," he said.
Mystery Indian analyst spooks world economy-Intl Business-Business-The Times of India
Mystery Indian analyst spooks world economy-Intl Business-Business-The Times of India
Mystery Indian analyst spooks world economy
10 May 2008, 1155 hrs IST,Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN
Murti's super-spike theory
Arjun "Spike" Murti has forecast that a barrel of oil could even touch $ 200 (Reuters Photo)
WASHINGTON: They are calling him Arjun "Spike" Murti, but his real middle name is Narayana, the supreme manifestation of the Hindu God Vishnu.
Supreme he is, in the oil world. The little known Indian analyst at Goldman Sachs has become a cause célèbre -- or a doomsday prophet -- for his forecasts about oil prices, based on what he calls the "super-spike" theory, predicated on rising demand for crude and limitations in refining capacity.
Murti, 38, now a managing director at Goldman Sachs, first came to the fore as far back as 2003-2004 when he predicted that oil prices would breach $80 a barrel when it was still in the 30s. He was sneered at. He was mocked again when he predicted in 2005 that it would double from $50 to $100 before the end of the decade.
Last month, when he forecast that a barrel of oil could even touch $200, no one was laughing as it surged to $125 on Friday.
So little is known about Murti that it is driving the info-hungry media batty. Unlike many analysts, he does not appear on business television; he does not give interviews (he did not respond to emails for this story), and there are no pictures of him in the public domain.
Database searches do not provide much information (other than his dire forecasts) except that he lives in New Jersey with his wife Rita and sold a million dollar home couple of years back. And oh, he ran a 5km race in Summit, NJ in 2006, timing 24:49m.
He's the phantom analyst who's got the world market spooked. Some of what he is - a blunt-speaking, candid analyst - can be gleaned from his one appearance before the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce in July 2004, where he is introduced as a "Managing Director and Senior Equity Investment Analyst" covering the oil sector at Goldman Sachs, his lair for nearly a decade.
In a trenchant testimony that clearly spoke to the crisis developing today, Murti basically tells US lawmakers that the country is up schitt creek, to use that euphonious euphemism, unless it weans itself away from gas-guzzling SUVs, particularly since it has not build any new refineries for the past 30 years and the administration offers few incentives to energy companies to do so.
"The lack of fuel switching options for transportation fuels and consumer preferences for large, powerful, and comfortable vehicles are the key reasons oil demand...Very simply, most Americans would rather own a large, gas-guzzling SUV and pay more for gasoline than an embarrassingly cramped but fuel-efficient Mini," he tells the Congressional panel.
"In our view," he continues, "it would be logical for the US government to proactively implement policies that encourage a reduction in the growth rate of oil demand. We note that the cost of waiting will likely result in much greater economic damage over the long term than the short-term inconvenience of no longer being able to buy an inexpensive SUV as an example."
Examples of logical demand reduction choices he suggests include *Disincentivize the use of SUVs for mass markets *Encourage market adoption of hybrid vehicles *Introduce incentives to use mass transportation in major population centers (e.g.,tax city driving during certain hours of the day) etc.
Obviously, few one paid any heed in the US - and in India for that matter, which has blindly followed American fossil fuel-based auto culture. "Maybe he's a big Buffy fan or something," one blogger sneered, referring to the vampire slayer in the film and TV series, when he first forecast the sharp spike in oil prices. Some conspiracy theorists suggested darkly that his predictions were aimed at helping energy majors rake in windfall profits.
But many in the financial media backed him. "Murti's report is a thoughtful, 30-page piece of logical analysis that was grossly oversimplified," noted Fortune , dismissing the notion of insider trading as "idiotic." Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria noted as far back as 2006 that given the consumption patterns in the US, which he called the "gorilla of globas gas," Murti's forecast did not look bubbly anymore.
Murti himself never once attributed the demand from India, which consumes 2.5 million barrels of oil a day (one third of China and one eighth of US) for the spike. Today, most doubters of Murti's spike theory stand punctured as price for a barrel of crude moves up from looking like a basketball score to a Twenty20 total.
As they moan about paying $3.65 a gallon at the pump, Americans could well be muttering Narayana, Narayana...
Discuss this story with other readers. Click on 'Discuss' link at the top and bottom of the story. To know more about this feature click 'here'.
Mystery Indian analyst spooks world economy
10 May 2008, 1155 hrs IST,Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN
Murti's super-spike theory
Arjun "Spike" Murti has forecast that a barrel of oil could even touch $ 200 (Reuters Photo)
WASHINGTON: They are calling him Arjun "Spike" Murti, but his real middle name is Narayana, the supreme manifestation of the Hindu God Vishnu.
Supreme he is, in the oil world. The little known Indian analyst at Goldman Sachs has become a cause célèbre -- or a doomsday prophet -- for his forecasts about oil prices, based on what he calls the "super-spike" theory, predicated on rising demand for crude and limitations in refining capacity.
Murti, 38, now a managing director at Goldman Sachs, first came to the fore as far back as 2003-2004 when he predicted that oil prices would breach $80 a barrel when it was still in the 30s. He was sneered at. He was mocked again when he predicted in 2005 that it would double from $50 to $100 before the end of the decade.
Last month, when he forecast that a barrel of oil could even touch $200, no one was laughing as it surged to $125 on Friday.
So little is known about Murti that it is driving the info-hungry media batty. Unlike many analysts, he does not appear on business television; he does not give interviews (he did not respond to emails for this story), and there are no pictures of him in the public domain.
Database searches do not provide much information (other than his dire forecasts) except that he lives in New Jersey with his wife Rita and sold a million dollar home couple of years back. And oh, he ran a 5km race in Summit, NJ in 2006, timing 24:49m.
He's the phantom analyst who's got the world market spooked. Some of what he is - a blunt-speaking, candid analyst - can be gleaned from his one appearance before the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce in July 2004, where he is introduced as a "Managing Director and Senior Equity Investment Analyst" covering the oil sector at Goldman Sachs, his lair for nearly a decade.
In a trenchant testimony that clearly spoke to the crisis developing today, Murti basically tells US lawmakers that the country is up schitt creek, to use that euphonious euphemism, unless it weans itself away from gas-guzzling SUVs, particularly since it has not build any new refineries for the past 30 years and the administration offers few incentives to energy companies to do so.
"The lack of fuel switching options for transportation fuels and consumer preferences for large, powerful, and comfortable vehicles are the key reasons oil demand...Very simply, most Americans would rather own a large, gas-guzzling SUV and pay more for gasoline than an embarrassingly cramped but fuel-efficient Mini," he tells the Congressional panel.
"In our view," he continues, "it would be logical for the US government to proactively implement policies that encourage a reduction in the growth rate of oil demand. We note that the cost of waiting will likely result in much greater economic damage over the long term than the short-term inconvenience of no longer being able to buy an inexpensive SUV as an example."
Examples of logical demand reduction choices he suggests include *Disincentivize the use of SUVs for mass markets *Encourage market adoption of hybrid vehicles *Introduce incentives to use mass transportation in major population centers (e.g.,tax city driving during certain hours of the day) etc.
Obviously, few one paid any heed in the US - and in India for that matter, which has blindly followed American fossil fuel-based auto culture. "Maybe he's a big Buffy fan or something," one blogger sneered, referring to the vampire slayer in the film and TV series, when he first forecast the sharp spike in oil prices. Some conspiracy theorists suggested darkly that his predictions were aimed at helping energy majors rake in windfall profits.
But many in the financial media backed him. "Murti's report is a thoughtful, 30-page piece of logical analysis that was grossly oversimplified," noted Fortune , dismissing the notion of insider trading as "idiotic." Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria noted as far back as 2006 that given the consumption patterns in the US, which he called the "gorilla of globas gas," Murti's forecast did not look bubbly anymore.
Murti himself never once attributed the demand from India, which consumes 2.5 million barrels of oil a day (one third of China and one eighth of US) for the spike. Today, most doubters of Murti's spike theory stand punctured as price for a barrel of crude moves up from looking like a basketball score to a Twenty20 total.
As they moan about paying $3.65 a gallon at the pump, Americans could well be muttering Narayana, Narayana...
Discuss this story with other readers. Click on 'Discuss' link at the top and bottom of the story. To know more about this feature click 'here'.
Friday, May 9, 2008
British Airways removes beef from menu - International News – News – MSN India - News
British Airways removes beef from menu - International News – News – MSN India - News
Friday, May 09, 2008
British Airways removes beef from menu
British Airways
London: British Airways has taken beef off its menu for economy-class passengers on most international flights to avoid offending Hindus.
The carrier, whose second biggest long-haul market is India, has instead switched to a fish pie or chicken portion, citing "religious restrictions," British newspaper the 'Daily Mail' reported today.
"We can only serve two options and beef and pork obviously have religious restrictions. We have to try to use two meals which appeal to as many customers as possible. This summer season we are offering customers in World Traveler on most long-haul flights a choice of chicken and fish pie.”
"We also look at trends from major supermarkets to see what types of meals are popular and fish pie style meals are selling well at the moment. These two meals proved popular in tasting tests and are also proving popular on board.”
"We are still serving beef based meals on certain menus in First Class and Club World and are currently deciding on whether or not to use beef on the menus for World Traveler customers for the winter season," a Spokesperson for British Airways was quoted as saying.
The Hindu Council in the United Kingdom has welcomed the decision. A Spokesperson said, "the Hindu community welcomes this decision and the news it has been made partly because Hindus don't eat beef.”
"Hindus have a great deal of respect for British culture and are well integrated into the British way of life, so it's good to see evidence of how they are literally flying the British flag by choosing British Airways.”
"Hindus are tolerant of other faiths and do not expect everyone to stop eating a food item because they do not eat it."
© Copyright 2008 PTI. All rights reserved.
Friday, May 09, 2008
British Airways removes beef from menu
British Airways
London: British Airways has taken beef off its menu for economy-class passengers on most international flights to avoid offending Hindus.
The carrier, whose second biggest long-haul market is India, has instead switched to a fish pie or chicken portion, citing "religious restrictions," British newspaper the 'Daily Mail' reported today.
"We can only serve two options and beef and pork obviously have religious restrictions. We have to try to use two meals which appeal to as many customers as possible. This summer season we are offering customers in World Traveler on most long-haul flights a choice of chicken and fish pie.”
"We also look at trends from major supermarkets to see what types of meals are popular and fish pie style meals are selling well at the moment. These two meals proved popular in tasting tests and are also proving popular on board.”
"We are still serving beef based meals on certain menus in First Class and Club World and are currently deciding on whether or not to use beef on the menus for World Traveler customers for the winter season," a Spokesperson for British Airways was quoted as saying.
The Hindu Council in the United Kingdom has welcomed the decision. A Spokesperson said, "the Hindu community welcomes this decision and the news it has been made partly because Hindus don't eat beef.”
"Hindus have a great deal of respect for British culture and are well integrated into the British way of life, so it's good to see evidence of how they are literally flying the British flag by choosing British Airways.”
"Hindus are tolerant of other faiths and do not expect everyone to stop eating a food item because they do not eat it."
© Copyright 2008 PTI. All rights reserved.
Mandela is no more a terrorist, decides US - International News – News – MSN India - News
Mandela is no more a terrorist, decides US - International News – News – MSN India - NewsMandela is no more a terrorist, decides US
Mandela is no more a terrorist, decides US
Washington: Fourteen years after Nelson Mandela became South African president after its first democratic elections in 1994, the US House of Representatives has passed a bill to remove his name from its lists of terrorists.
Unanimously passed Thursday, the bill would remove any notation that would characterise the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa ANC and its leaders -including Mandela - as terrorists, from all US databases.
"This long-overdue bill is the direct result of a stunning and embarrassing story for the United States," said the bill's author, Democrat Howard Berman, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"Despite recognising two decades ago that America's place was on the side of those oppressed by apartheid, the Congress has never resolved the inconsistency in our immigration code, which treats many of those who actively opposed apartheid in South Africa as terrorists and criminals," he added.
Nobel laureate Mandela became South Africa's first black president on May 10, 1994 heading a 'Government of National Unity' after his ANC won 62 percent of the votes in the country's first democratic elections with full enfranchisement.
For decades, the ANC had resisted apartheid and advocated the rights of black South Africans - first through non-violence and community activism, and then through the actions of its military wing.
The racist white South African government banned the ANC in 1960, and the US denied entry to ANC members based on the group's activities. With the end of apartheid in 1990, the ANC grew to become a leading political party and today continues to lead South Africa in a multiracial, multi-party democracy.
Berman said: "Astonishingly, while South Africa completed its monumental political transition, the US position regarding entry for ANC's leaders remained frozen in time.
"Leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Govan Mbeki - father of President Thabo Mbeki - were continually barred from entry to the US and had to apply for special waivers to gain entry."
Berman's legislation effectively removes the 'terrorist' label from the names of current and former ANC members.Congressional sources said the legislation has the support of the State Department and is expected to receive unanimous approval from the US Senate as well.
Once President George Bush signs it into law, ANC membership alone will no longer trigger additional investigation into an individual's application for a visa to the US.
Source: IANS
Mandela is no more a terrorist, decides US
Washington: Fourteen years after Nelson Mandela became South African president after its first democratic elections in 1994, the US House of Representatives has passed a bill to remove his name from its lists of terrorists.
Unanimously passed Thursday, the bill would remove any notation that would characterise the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa ANC and its leaders -including Mandela - as terrorists, from all US databases.
"This long-overdue bill is the direct result of a stunning and embarrassing story for the United States," said the bill's author, Democrat Howard Berman, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"Despite recognising two decades ago that America's place was on the side of those oppressed by apartheid, the Congress has never resolved the inconsistency in our immigration code, which treats many of those who actively opposed apartheid in South Africa as terrorists and criminals," he added.
Nobel laureate Mandela became South Africa's first black president on May 10, 1994 heading a 'Government of National Unity' after his ANC won 62 percent of the votes in the country's first democratic elections with full enfranchisement.
For decades, the ANC had resisted apartheid and advocated the rights of black South Africans - first through non-violence and community activism, and then through the actions of its military wing.
The racist white South African government banned the ANC in 1960, and the US denied entry to ANC members based on the group's activities. With the end of apartheid in 1990, the ANC grew to become a leading political party and today continues to lead South Africa in a multiracial, multi-party democracy.
Berman said: "Astonishingly, while South Africa completed its monumental political transition, the US position regarding entry for ANC's leaders remained frozen in time.
"Leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Govan Mbeki - father of President Thabo Mbeki - were continually barred from entry to the US and had to apply for special waivers to gain entry."
Berman's legislation effectively removes the 'terrorist' label from the names of current and former ANC members.Congressional sources said the legislation has the support of the State Department and is expected to receive unanimous approval from the US Senate as well.
Once President George Bush signs it into law, ANC membership alone will no longer trigger additional investigation into an individual's application for a visa to the US.
Source: IANS
Thursday, May 8, 2008
The Five Mistakes Clinton Made - Yahoo! News
The Five Mistakes Clinton Made - Yahoo! News
The Five Mistakes Clinton Made
By KAREN TUMULTY Thu May 8, 11:40 AM ET
For all her talk about "full speed on to the White House," there was an unmistakably elegiac tone to Hillary Clinton's primary-night speech in Indianapolis. And if one needed further confirmation that the undaunted, never-say-die Clintons realize their bid might be at an end, all it took was a look at the wistful faces of the husband and the daughter who stood behind the candidate as she talked of all the people she has met in a journey "that has been a blessing for me."
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It was also a journey she had begun with what appeared to be insurmountable advantages, which evaporated one by one as the campaign dragged on far longer than anyone could have anticipated. She made at least five big mistakes, each of which compounded the others:
1. She misjudged the mood
That was probably her biggest blunder. In a cycle that has been all about change, Clinton chose an incumbent's strategy, running on experience, preparedness, inevitability - and the power of the strongest brand name in Democratic politics. It made sense, given who she is and the additional doubts that some voters might have about making a woman Commander in Chief. But in putting her focus on positioning herself to win the general election in November, Clinton completely misread the mood of Democratic-primary voters, who were desperate to turn the page. "Being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change," says Barack Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod. Clinton's "initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands." But other miscalculations made it worse:
2. She didn't master the rules
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified - and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign now acknowledges privately:
3. She underestimated the caucus states
While Clinton based her strategy on the big contests, she seemed to virtually overlook states like Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, which choose their delegates through caucuses. She had a reason: the Clintons decided, says an adviser, that "caucus states were not really their thing." Her core supporters - women, the elderly, those with blue-collar jobs - were less likely to be able to commit an evening of the week, as the process requires. But it was a little like unilateral disarmament in states worth 12% of the pledged delegates. Indeed, it was in the caucus states that Obama piled up his lead among pledged delegates. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they - bewilderingly - seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."
By the time Clinton's lieutenants realized the grave nature of their error, they lacked the resources to do anything about it - in part because:
4. She relied on old money
For a decade or more, the Clintons set the standard for political fund-raising in the Democratic Party, and nearly all Bill's old donors had re-upped for Hillary's bid. Her 2006 Senate campaign had raised an astonishing $51.6 million against token opposition, in what everyone assumed was merely a dry run for a far bigger contest. But something had happened to fund-raising that Team Clinton didn't fully grasp: the Internet. Though Clinton's totals from working the shrimp-cocktail circuit remained impressive by every historic measure, her donors were typically big-check writers. And once they had ponied up the $2,300 allowed by law, they were forbidden to give more. The once bottomless Clinton well was drying up.
Obama relied instead on a different model: the 800,000-plus people who had signed up on his website and could continue sending money his way $5, $10 and $50 at a time. (The campaign has raised more than $100 million online, better than half its total.) Meanwhile, the Clintons were forced to tap the $100 million - plus fortune they had acquired since he left the White House - first for $5 million in January to make it to Super Tuesday and then $6.4 million to get her through Indiana and North Carolina. And that reflects one final mistake:
5. She never counted on a long haul
Clinton's strategy had been premised on delivering a knockout blow early. If she could win Iowa, she believed, the race would be over. Clinton spent lavishly there yet finished a disappointing third. What surprised the Obama forces was how long it took her campaign to retool. She fought him to a tie in the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests but didn't have any troops in place for the states that followed. Obama, on the other hand, was a train running hard on two or three tracks. Whatever the Chicago headquarters was unveiling to win immediate contests, it always had a separate operation setting up organizations in the states that were next. As far back as Feb. 21, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was spotted in Raleigh, N.C. He told the News & Observer that the state's primary, then more than 10 weeks away, "could end up being very important in the nomination fight." At the time, the idea seemed laughable.
Now, of course, the question seems not whether Clinton will exit the race but when. She continues to load her schedule with campaign stops, even as calls for her to concede grow louder. But the voice she is listening to now is the one inside her head, explains a longtime aide. Clinton's calculation is as much about history as it is about politics. As the first woman to have come this far, Clinton has told those close to her, she wants people who invested their hopes in her to see that she has given it her best. And then? As she said in Indianapolis, "No matter what happens, I will work for the nominee of the Democratic Party because we must win in November." When the task at hand is healing divisions in the Democratic Party, the loser can have as much influence as the winner. View this article on Time.com
The Five Mistakes Clinton Made
By KAREN TUMULTY Thu May 8, 11:40 AM ET
For all her talk about "full speed on to the White House," there was an unmistakably elegiac tone to Hillary Clinton's primary-night speech in Indianapolis. And if one needed further confirmation that the undaunted, never-say-die Clintons realize their bid might be at an end, all it took was a look at the wistful faces of the husband and the daughter who stood behind the candidate as she talked of all the people she has met in a journey "that has been a blessing for me."
ADVERTISEMENT
It was also a journey she had begun with what appeared to be insurmountable advantages, which evaporated one by one as the campaign dragged on far longer than anyone could have anticipated. She made at least five big mistakes, each of which compounded the others:
1. She misjudged the mood
That was probably her biggest blunder. In a cycle that has been all about change, Clinton chose an incumbent's strategy, running on experience, preparedness, inevitability - and the power of the strongest brand name in Democratic politics. It made sense, given who she is and the additional doubts that some voters might have about making a woman Commander in Chief. But in putting her focus on positioning herself to win the general election in November, Clinton completely misread the mood of Democratic-primary voters, who were desperate to turn the page. "Being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change," says Barack Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod. Clinton's "initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands." But other miscalculations made it worse:
2. She didn't master the rules
Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified - and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee. Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign now acknowledges privately:
3. She underestimated the caucus states
While Clinton based her strategy on the big contests, she seemed to virtually overlook states like Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, which choose their delegates through caucuses. She had a reason: the Clintons decided, says an adviser, that "caucus states were not really their thing." Her core supporters - women, the elderly, those with blue-collar jobs - were less likely to be able to commit an evening of the week, as the process requires. But it was a little like unilateral disarmament in states worth 12% of the pledged delegates. Indeed, it was in the caucus states that Obama piled up his lead among pledged delegates. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they - bewilderingly - seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."
By the time Clinton's lieutenants realized the grave nature of their error, they lacked the resources to do anything about it - in part because:
4. She relied on old money
For a decade or more, the Clintons set the standard for political fund-raising in the Democratic Party, and nearly all Bill's old donors had re-upped for Hillary's bid. Her 2006 Senate campaign had raised an astonishing $51.6 million against token opposition, in what everyone assumed was merely a dry run for a far bigger contest. But something had happened to fund-raising that Team Clinton didn't fully grasp: the Internet. Though Clinton's totals from working the shrimp-cocktail circuit remained impressive by every historic measure, her donors were typically big-check writers. And once they had ponied up the $2,300 allowed by law, they were forbidden to give more. The once bottomless Clinton well was drying up.
Obama relied instead on a different model: the 800,000-plus people who had signed up on his website and could continue sending money his way $5, $10 and $50 at a time. (The campaign has raised more than $100 million online, better than half its total.) Meanwhile, the Clintons were forced to tap the $100 million - plus fortune they had acquired since he left the White House - first for $5 million in January to make it to Super Tuesday and then $6.4 million to get her through Indiana and North Carolina. And that reflects one final mistake:
5. She never counted on a long haul
Clinton's strategy had been premised on delivering a knockout blow early. If she could win Iowa, she believed, the race would be over. Clinton spent lavishly there yet finished a disappointing third. What surprised the Obama forces was how long it took her campaign to retool. She fought him to a tie in the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests but didn't have any troops in place for the states that followed. Obama, on the other hand, was a train running hard on two or three tracks. Whatever the Chicago headquarters was unveiling to win immediate contests, it always had a separate operation setting up organizations in the states that were next. As far back as Feb. 21, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was spotted in Raleigh, N.C. He told the News & Observer that the state's primary, then more than 10 weeks away, "could end up being very important in the nomination fight." At the time, the idea seemed laughable.
Now, of course, the question seems not whether Clinton will exit the race but when. She continues to load her schedule with campaign stops, even as calls for her to concede grow louder. But the voice she is listening to now is the one inside her head, explains a longtime aide. Clinton's calculation is as much about history as it is about politics. As the first woman to have come this far, Clinton has told those close to her, she wants people who invested their hopes in her to see that she has given it her best. And then? As she said in Indianapolis, "No matter what happens, I will work for the nominee of the Democratic Party because we must win in November." When the task at hand is healing divisions in the Democratic Party, the loser can have as much influence as the winner. View this article on Time.com