India-US Strategic News and Discussion

[Prem]

The rogue's gallery at the soon-to-be "Haas-been School of Business" seems like a circling the wagons effort to prepare for a post-Modi-win scenario in LS elections. They will be a useful thorn in his side. Since it will be Indian Sepoys publishing atrocity literature against other Indians, whites can sit back with coke + popcorn. It looks like a good cop, bad cop routine - Nancy Powell to engage with Modi, while the wasp nest is used to sting him on & off. Expect atrocity literature to reach fever pitch if/when Modi visits the U.SThe nest also helps in moulding the opinion of fence-sitting, US-admiring, liberal Indian graduate students in Universities. Expect their work to bounce off echo-chambers in US based NGOs like AID, Asha etc.Also expect "papers" on sustainable development, at the intersection of business+human rights+environment (read Posco+Adivasi+Orissa forest), which will give Jairam Ramesh the big OSince *both* conservative & liberal whites in the US hate Modi (for their own respective reflex reasons), I wouldnt be surprised if this program is sustained by wealthy conservatives.You are absolutely right. Spot on. That is the purpose.

Who so ever is making Modi Welcome Committee is very afraid of Asia's rise and Indian's refusal to play Paki for either slowing or destroying Asian economic rise and might. Modi's personal relation and warm hand shake with with both Japanese Abe and access to Chinese Jeb ( Pocket) is the opportunity for India to play very constructive role. Let him pay first state visit to Persia.

[MurthyB]

Extremist censorship holds Hindus in chains

BY SHIKHA DALMIA

The book, it claimed, had “hurt the feelings of millions of Hindus” with its overly erotic interpretations of their faith.

But by using censorship to salve Hindus' imaginary wounds, it'll ensure that the best scholarship about its own religion won't happen in its own country. It'll happen elsewhere, especially America.

One of their arguments is that the study of Hinduism has become dominated by American scholars and smacks of neo-colonialism that denies, as one put it, “Hindus their own experience of their own religion.” There are two problems with this accusation:

• First, it gets things backwards. One of Doniger's key aims is precisely to free Hinduism from the puritanical distortions imposed by Victorian British colonialists.

• Second, it is an admission of their own intellectual bankruptcy. Hindus feel threatened by contrarian interpretations because they haven’t developed a critical mass of scholarship of their own.

But that won’t happen in a political environment hostile to open inquiry. Free thinkers are unlikely to enter fields ruled by narrow dogmatism where certain interpretations have already been declared illicit.

And if they do, it won’t be in India. They’re likely to come to America, whose wealth and commitment to academic freedom has resulted in the greatest flowering of the liberal arts in our times. They’ll study with Americans like Doniger and get initiated in American norms of scholarship

The rot is deep, deep.

[ramana]

What these folks from Nehru and his predecessors are suffering from in "Treason of the heart". What they want to do is to change Hindus by interpreting Hinduism in a Modernist framework. There are different forms of this mental construct: WKKitis, minorities have first right on the nation, Hindus need to be denigrated. Essentially use shaming to bring about their idea of reform. Its deluded intellectualism that strikes at its roots. who thought they knew better than whichever bunch of backward or oppressed people it was that they had come to save. Usually they were applying to others what they saw as the benefits of their culture, and so obviously meritorious was their culture that they were prepared to be violent in imposing it. Some genuinely hat their own country, however, and see themselves promoting inside the values their own retrograde culture is blocking.
Totally like Kalidasa cutting the branch that he was sitting on. Only the have a Western safety net!

[Prem]

Swami Vivekanada's work provide antidote to the poisonous attacks like this . Modi using SV as his ideal and spreading the "good news" within India have already sliced in the in the Psudo Intellectual, Pseudo Scholar Mundi and now they are panicking. Rise of Modindia is not a conincident but ordained. Some Folks just dont get it. Its One Dwa of Lakho Dukh.

[UlanBatori]

Hu eej shik** Dal** and why does the naam evoke Seems familiar from somewhere..
Anyway, I am soooo glad for this Liberation, exactly like what the people being liberated from West Africa in the 18th century were taught to sing:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
....
The Lawd has prawmised good to me.
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
...
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

[MurthyB]

Hu eej shik** Dal** and why does the naam evoke Seems familiar from somewhere..

Theej are both tasveers of same Shik:

Bad lighting:


Good lighting:


And here she is giving a report to massa:

http://live.wsj.com/video/opinion-break ... 10665.html

The body language is quite interesting. Since this is the washington examiner, she tells them about "limited" gubermint before declaring Modi a demagogue. If she moves to the post, she can tell them about "beeeg" gubermint. Of-course, that has been equal-equaled by declaring Rahul G a dummy. Anyway, she is a good girl and finishes her report in the allotted time.

[SSridhar]

India hardens trade stance against US; wants dispute to go to WTO - ToI

The government is set to ask all its officials to stay away from any interaction with a delegation from the US International Trade Commission (USITC), a quasi-judicial agency, probing the impact of India's trade and investment regime on the American economy in what is seen as the latest sore point in economic ties between the two countries.

The move follows a meeting in the ministry of external affairs on Friday and comes after the government took the view that its laws and policies are its sovereign functions, while the US actions are unilateral. "The hearings relate to our patents regime and industrial and trade policies, which are governed by multilateral agreements, of which the US is also a signatory. So, if there is a dispute, it has to be settled at a multilateral forum like the WTO. No country can apply its own law extra-territorially," said an official privy to the discussions.

As a result, it has been decided that the USITC's request for meetings with officials in close to a dozen department will be turned down, leaving it with the option to hold talks with private companies and industry bodies.

[ramana]

Right after the Great Crash of 1929 Us launched trade wars with its partners.
Ombaba is doing the same under a different name as trade wars are a non no after they led to rise of Hitler.

[UlanBatori]

As a result, it has been decided that the USITC's request for meetings with officials in close to a dozen department will be turned down, leaving it with the option to hold talks with private companies and industry bodies.

Wonder if they will be scheduling special meetings with the Guhika Khoj ppl at the airport.

No country can apply its own law extra-territorially," said an official privy to the discussions.

What a strange concept! Glad to see this being re-discovered in Free India in 2014.

[Prem]

Hu eej shik** Dal** and why does the naam evoke Seems familiar from somewhere..
Anyway, I am soooo glad for this Liberation, exactly like what the people being liberated from West Africa in the 18th century were taught to sing:

Thy say defects in these worthies start from Mother's womb.There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness and refusal to see the truth.How to separate ugliness from Ugly is huge dilemma faced by all thinking beings. Intellectual hatred is the worst kind of hatred and these stiffed educated but unwise fellows are full of it. But their stitching and unstitching will come to naught as the common mango Desi man will decide the fate of Desh in 14. Folks like her can labor as much they want to please their Massters, they will be beautiful in their eyes as long as they serve. IMHO, they should leave the decision to define and decide to Indians in their own land. Only an idiot will use the word Presided over massacre in describing the next PM of India, The Most Democratically Elected Leader of Largest Spiritual Society on Earth.

[vera_k]

they haven’t developed a critical mass of scholarship of their own.

This much is true! Seeing how cows are eaten for food, there's lots of room for expounding on the benefits of respecting cows and generally assessing the state of the cows around the world. The Humane Society has been trying to get support for its cow protection efforts, but there hasn't been much reaction from Indian parties.

Factory farming abuses

[Prem]

they haven’t developed a critical mass of scholarship of their own.

Factory farming abuses

I can never forget German Ambassador in late 80s gave interview advising India should stick to agriculture and not "waste" efforts in Software. Many Indians were ticked off by his condescending attitude.

[shiv]

Cross post

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content ... picks=true
American Exceptionalism is Dead
Submitted by Bud Meyers on February 13, 2014 - 10:41pm


Having the mightiest military, more powerful than the world has ever seen, doesn't make America exceptional. An ever expanding middle-class, equal opportunity for all, fairness in the political process and worker's rights was what had also made America exceptional since World War II—when the rising tide of capitalism had once lifted all boats. Now it just lifts the biggest yachts.

That is an amazing article. It says that 50% of people in the US earn less than US$ 28,000.

I had calculated that a person earning minimum wages who is lucky enough to find enough work to be working the legal maximum of 44 hours per week plus overtime (can't recall how much) will earn about US $ 25,000 a year.

What this means in practice is that most people who earn minimum wages in the US will actually be earning far far less than US $ 25,000 a year, making minimum wages a political stunt that may keep people out of jobs rather than allow the employment of people at lower wages. The abysmally low wages in India are, yes, you guessed it, a consequence of a free market and competition, all those admired attributes of capitalism, except that there are so many people that for any given (low wage) there will always be someone else to do it for a bit less. It is socialism that says that everyone should spread out money equally in the form of minimum wages. What on earth were those morons thinking when the booked Devyani Khobragade for slavery?

Funny old world. This morning I heard about a prosperous young architect with a roaring business in Bangalore (friend of a friend) who was refused a tourist visa to the US because he is unmarried and might want to emigrate to the US. This young man, in his late twenties has just paid for and bought an Audi in Rupees in a Bangalore showroom @ 60 lakhs. That is US$ 100,000. This fellow would not even dream of giving up his roaring business to live in the US forever. How stupid can American policies get? Wasn't our Jones talking about long queues at the consulate?

[svinayak]

This young man, in his late twenties has just paid for and bought an Audi in Rupees in a Bangalore showroom @ 60 lakhs. That is US$ 100,000. This fellow would not even dream of giving up his roaring business to live in the US forever. How stupid can American policies get? Wasn't our Jones talking about long queues at the consulate?

We will be seeing moe rich Indians than the ones from America. People like this will be in the range of 400m in India

[habal]

the sooner middle-class and rest who occupy loftier positions in India realize the USA is not a natural friend, the better it is for Indian security. Indians need to develop a natural suspicion of USA like what they encounter when they visit redneckistan parts of USA.

Again the USA embassy bestows visas to injuns for tourism after verification of their bank pass books, to verify whether they are starving or non-starving vegetarian rapists/slavers. And entry into great USA was only permitted to those non-starving vegetarians. But post DK, they have now started to target the non-starving one's too because they dare to assert themselves before this might superpowa.

[chilarai]

Mumbai: DGCA grounds US aircraft after detecting damage in engine

[Philip]

With RG,Rajmoham Gandhi,not Rahulji,joining the AAP,the snakes have started coming out of their holes.His joining the Ford Foundation sponsored AAP is no coincidence.We are currently witnessing several well-known personalities across India extending their sympathy and support for the AAP and some even standing for parliament under the banner of the AAP.

The AAP has been a secret work in progress for quite some time.The CIA tainted Ramon Magsaysay awards for "leadership" were given a few years ago to ...Anna Hazare,"Crane" Bedi and a certain Fartacus,aka AK (read the piece on the AAP in the General td)! The AAP has recd. much moolah from various dubious entities,including the Ford Foundation.The FF's spearheading US interests and that of the CIA's is too well known to be repeated in this post.It is significant however that another individual,with strong US ties,RG,the "gene-uine" Gandhi,has joined the AAP bandwagon.But he was the Indian face of the MRA (Moral Rearmament Movement),now called the "Initiatives of Change",which has strong alleged links with the CIA.

RG's connections:
Quote:
....is a biographer and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, and a research professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is also a Scholar in residence at Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar.

Associated from 1956 with Initiatives of Change (formerly known as Moral Re-Armament), Rajmohan Gandhi has been engaged for half a century in efforts for trust-building, reconciliation and democracy and in battles against corruption and inequalities.


As Chairman Mao used to say,watch the snakes come out of their holes,,then chop off their heads.With the conspiracy behind the AAP,we suddenly see a steady stream of personalities joining the cause despite the antics of its current leader.Who knows,he may be the patsy founder to be supplanted after the elections by another figure..perhaps the grandson of the great mahatma,the Gene-uine Gandhi?!

Quote:
The CIA and Moral Re-Armament

In his 1989 book, The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's Original Political Operative, top spook Miles Copeland brags of the intelligence agency's control over both Moral Re-Armament and L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology movement. Copeland reports that he served in the 1950s as head of an agency entity known as The Political Action Staff. Under this umbrella, his assistant, Bob Mandlestam, developed an operation called "OHP," or "occultism in high places," described by Copeland as "a theory of political activism based on an impressively detailed study of ways in which leaders of the world based their judgments on one form or another of divine guidance." One of Mandlestam's projects was to "plant astrologists on certain world leaders." Another was to deploy "mystics" in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., home to many government figures, who would use "voodoo magic," based on rites prescribed by the CIA itself, to manipulate Congressmen.

As part of OHP, Copeland and Mandlestam began to utilize the Moral Re-Armament movement, which "gave us useful secret channels right into the minds of leaders, not only in Africa and Asia but also in Europe." After this, Copeland writes:

When Bob made similar arrangements with Scientology, ... we were on our way to having a political action capability which would make the highly expensive, largely ineffective and largely overt "covert action" of Bill Casey's CIA seem trivial by comparison. "MRA will hit 'em high, and the Church of Scientology will hit 'em low!" Bob liked to boast, and he was right.

Shocking as Copeland's revelations may seem, they barely scratch the surface of the age-old practice of political manipulation by cults. We will take up that matter, below, in the discussion of Moon's theology.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2 ... ation.html

More reading:
EXPOSÉ: THE “CHRISTIAN” MAFIA
http://www.insider-magazine.com/christianmafia.htm

[ManjaM]

http://news.yahoo.com/us-bans-bidis-mad ... 51215.html

Washington (AFP) - US regulators on Friday banned four types of small cigarettes known as bidis made by an Indian company, marking the Food and Drug Administration's first-ever oversight action against a tobacco product.

Bidis are small, hand-rolled cigarettes that contain tobacco wrapped in leaves from a tendu tree, and may come in various flavors.

US authorities say bidis contain levels of nicotine, tar and carbon monoxide several times greater than normal cigarettes.

The FDA move applies to four varieties made by Jash International, which a regulatory spokeswoman described to AFP as an Indian company with headquarters in Illinois.

The ban came about because the products were found to be substantially different from existing tobacco products on the market as of 2007, and did not meet new regulatory requirements, the FDA said.

"This means they can no longer be sold or distributed in interstate commerce or imported into the United States," the FDA said in a statement.

The order applies to Sutra Bidis Red, Sutra Bidis Menthol, Sutra Bidis Red Cone, and Sutra Bidis Menthol Cone.

Stores' existing inventory may be subject to seizure without further notice, the FDA said.

"Companies that continue to sell and distribute these products in the United States may be subject to enforcement actions by the FDA."

Asked for comment, a sales representative for Jash International told AFP a spokesperson would not be available until next week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that bidis contain higher levels of nicotine, tar and carbon monoxide than conventional cigarettes.

"Smoke from a bidi contains three to five times the amount of nicotine as a regular cigarette and places users at risk for nicotine addiction," said the CDC website.

Two percent of high school students and 1.7 percent of middle school students smoke bidis, according to a 2011 CDC survey.

The FDA was granted authority to regulate tobacco products in 2009 as a result of the Tobacco Control Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama.

The law is aimed particularly at curbing smoking among young people.

"Historically, tobacco companies controlled which products came on and off the market without any oversight," said Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products.

"But the Tobacco Control Act gave the FDA, a science-based regulatory agency, the authority to review applications and determine which new tobacco products may be sold and distributed under the law in order to protect public health."

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids commended the FDA, describing the order as "one of the most important enforcement actions the FDA has taken."

"Today's action sends a strong message to tobacco companies that the FDA will seriously enforce this critical provision of the law, which is aimed at preventing manufacturers from introducing products that are even more harmful, addictive or appealing to children," said a statement by the group's president, Matthew Myers.

Some 18 percent of people in the United States smoke. Tobacco use kills 480,000 Americans each year and is the nation's leading cause of preventable death.

This appears to be part of a continuing trend of regulatory action against Indian companies. An interesting comment -

not sure what CDC survey the author is quoting - the CDC website shows less than 1% of high school students smoked bidis in 2012. far higher percentages smoke cigarettes, cigars, hookahs, pipes and e-cigs than smoke bidis. bidis accounted for just under 4% of all tobacco use for high schoolers, but nearly 9% for middle schoolers. still, if the FDA really wanted to curb underage smoking, they would target products that make up a much higher percentage of underage tobacco use, particularly considering the sobering fact that 90% of smokers start before legal smoking age. while progress has been made over the last decade, dropping high school tobacco use to 24% in 2011 from 34% in 2000 (and from 15% down to 7% for middle schoolers), banning bidis based on "concern for the youth" is a crock. if tobacco products are known and proven to be that bad, either ban all tobacco products or respect people's rights to make dumb decisions with negative health consequences. similarly, drinking behaviors are developed before legal age, with 10% of 8th graders and nearly 40% of 12th graders using alcohol within the last 30 days in 2013. the fact is and likely will always be, that young people emulate adults, including in use of tobacco and alcohol products, shaving or wearing of body hair, make-up and jewelery, sexual activity and language choices. banning bidis isn't going to make squat for difference.

[Cosmo_R]

The NYT seems to be having a bird what with accusing evil Hindu right wingers/fundamentalists/extremist/terrorists of curtailing free speech:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/21/opini ... c=rss&_r=0

"...Journalists regularly face pressure, including direct threats, to tread lightly when reporting or commenting on Hindu-nationalist views or candidates. "

Oh Snap!, this is the same NYT that self censored the Mohammed cartoon now pontificating.

They are really going great guns on the 'Hindu extremists are more dangerous than anyone else" line that the Shezada repeated.

[Karan M]

Like i said earlioer, the turds are preparing for a modi led nationalist govt which will no longer serve as HMV unlike munna MMSs govt. so they are preparing the ground for pressure.

[shiv]

http://news.yahoo.com/us-bans-bidis-mad ... 51215.html

US authorities say bidis contain levels of nicotine, tar and carbon monoxide several times greater than normal cigarettes.

Amazing how the US can mask the noise of a fart so well that everyone who smells the fart thinks "I never heard a fart, the smell must be Chanel No 5"

The average beedi has one fifth the weight of tobacco that an average cigarette has, so it is a plain bluff by the FDA, no less, that beedis have "more nicotine" than cigarettes. It's another matter that cigarettes that are filtered are passed off as safe despite acting like a condom with holes that allows through some, but not all that is ejected.

I am not a supporter of beedis or cigarettes, but this is a clear case of my crap is healthier than yours.

[Vayutuvan]

I always thought CO is due to the paper the cigarette is rolled in. Nicotine by itself is not as harmful as CO is my understanding. Nicotine makes one addicted but the Co is what makes one fall ill. Is that correct?

[johneeG]

Which is more harmful:
beedi, cigarette or cigar?

If X smokes one of the above, which is likely to cause him more harmful effects?

If Y stands around while X is smoking, which is likely to cause Y more harmful effects?

And I thought the effects get amplified when smoke is accompanied by drinks, am I right?

BTW, in amirkhan, the cop can cavity search people if he/she smells something funny. So, its better not to give any excuse to the cop and avoid smoking or drinking completely in amirkhan.

[shiv]

I always thought CO is due to the paper the cigarette is rolled in. Nicotine by itself is not as harmful as CO is my understanding. Nicotine makes one addicted but the Co is what makes one fall ill. Is that correct?

It's the tars that get deposited in one's lungs and help cause cancer.

It's a long long time since I looked at "latest research" on cigarettes - but I am really surprised at the reference to CO. I need to check but I think CO is a bogey here - a fake accusation. CO has the habit of binding to haemoglobin but not unbinding itself as oxygen does. That is what leads to progressive CO poisoning and death. To my knowledge smokers do not roll over and die because of CO poisoning, as they should do as the CO in the cigarette smoke of a chain smoker progressively binds all the available haemoglobin in the blood till the later loses its capacity to carry oxygen and the man dies of oxygen starvation . Anything you burn, be it paper or tobacco will release some CO, and that includes the kitchen stove. I think that reference to CO in beedis is a "handwave" simply to cause alarm while pretending that it's not a problem with cigarettes.

[UlanBatori]

When negotiating with Americans, thank Alla* that the Foggy Bottom eej not bobulated with houris like this one from Dera ScarlettO'Hara Khan. Story is real. She did talk down the guntwit.

Tuff began her day by reading Psalms 23: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

An accurate description of an average Saturday afternoon ride on Dagar-e-Bakr In-terror-state-285 around D-SOHK

Wilder was riding a bus one day when he saw an enraged man hop on board. The man appeared to be high, his jacket was bloody, and he looked like he wanted to hurt someone. He started messing with passengers, trying to start a fight, when he came upon a young woman eating pretzels. "You want a pretzel?" she asked.
The man halted, confused, and then muttered, "Yes." "Open your mouth," the woman said. He did as commanded. The woman plopped a pretzel in the man's mouth. End of story. The man didn't bother anyone else because she had changed his channel, or shifted his thought patterns.

[Singha]

Man what a lin linear zen move. Cool stuff.

[ManjaM]

ToI Report

NEW DELHI: India-US ties are under stress again — this time over trade and investment — according to the government.

With calls in the US for designating India a priority foreign country (PFC), the worst downgrading of status by the US trade representative for inability to protect IPRs, the government is accusing US authorities of intimidating the Union health ministry over the issue of compulsory licences — which allow local firms to manufacture patented drugs - and simultaneously preventing other developing countries from acting against evergreening of drug patents.

A PFC tag can allow the US to impose unilateral sanctions against India for domestic laws which deny benefits to the US under any trade agreement. Government sources here said there seemed to be a two-fold agenda behind the "cacophony" emanating from the US.

"Pressure is being created on India's health ministry to not consider drugs for compulsory licences and at the same time there is also a deliberate attempt to use India to scare away other developing countries like Indonesia and Brazil from introducing legislation to prevent evergreening of drug patents, like section 3 (d) of Indian Patents Act (IPA)," said a source.

US pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer have demanded that India amend its patents law by doing away with section 3(d) altogether. This section prevents patenting new forms of a known substance in case it does not yield higher efficiency than the earlier substance. It was under this provision that the Supreme Court upheld a decision of India's Patent Office to deny a patent to Novartis for its drug Glivec.

India has also been disturbed by the proposed visit by US international trade commission ( USITC) to probe the fallout of India's trade and investment policies on the US economy. The government has already asked its officials to not entertain the agency saying any dispute related to India's trade policies or patents regime should be addressed at WTO.

While the US interlocutors have accused India of "continuous" use of compulsory licences (CL), which allows local firms to manufacture patented drugs, India has described this as a canard. The government has told the US authorities that India's controller-general of patents issued only one CL for a life-saving drug in March 2012, against a liver and kidney cancer product.

The government is trying to convince the Americans that Indian Patents Act is not an administrative matter under its jurisdiction but a quasi-legal process, with a separate and independent appellate body to adjudicate such cases. The final court of appeal in these cases is India's Supreme Court.

"In fact, India's Patent Office rejected in October 2013 a CL petition (for Bristol Myer's product Desatinib, a blood cancer drug) showing that the system is capable of exercising fair decisions," said an official.

Indian officials say that despite the negative publicity over the business environment and IPR regime in India, some 1,500 pharmaceutical compounds or composition patents have been granted to nine firms between 1995 and 2012.

Stung by the negative publicity, India has accused lobbyists for IPR issues in the US such as Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) of taking up patents only with regard to the pharmaceutical industry. It has highlighted before the Obama administration that, according to a study carried out by Ficci, losses caused by piracy in the US are estimated in the range of up to $50 million, especially in Virginia, California and Chicago city.

"The Indian music industry has a list of 476 websites in the US that pirate Indian musical content, and this was shared with the US formally some months ago. Similarly, satellite TV programming from India is being pirated by websites in the US which illegally provide live content streaming; this includes a large number of major Indian TV channels," said an official

"The truth is GIPC has worked to vitiate the atmosphere with a highly skewed report, which for the last two years arrives at a prearranged conclusion that India has the worst IPR protection system even when compared to other developing countries," he added.

Indian officials accuse the US authorities of repeatedly shifting the goal posts evan as India tries to address their concerns at the highest level.

"There is a growing perception in Indian official circles that despite significant efforts at the highest political level to address issues of concern to US interlocutors (taxation, transfer pricing, the roll-back of preferential market access), the Americans seem to want to pocket each positive and set out a fresh list of further demands. Or worse, to complain and nitpick at the granular level of every measure taken at their behest," said a source.

[Philip]

This is the new face of "slavery" by the "White Slavers" of yesteryear.Then it was the enslavement of peoples to be used as a captive servile workforce for free.Now it is the enslavement of developing nation's economies,"Eco-Slavery"!

If the US bans our beedis,then we should ban Coke and Pepsi with indecent haste.After all farmers have been using them as pesticides in the past,cheaper and more lethal!

[Cosmo_R]

I cannot believe how LGBTx the NYT has become. Anyone with a limp noodle to grind with pretensions of artistic hauteur is allowed space

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opini ... ef=opinion

"THERE was a time, only a few years ago now, when I prided myself as a host of parties — soirees, as some plummy guests called them. Before one such gathering, I was asked: “Are you having another sorry this week?” Rather than correct my guest’s French, I simply furnished the time, and the usual address: my sparse studio in the north Mumbai enclave of Juhu, overlooking a pond and a parking lot dotted with identically hooded black and yellow rickshaws."

Jeez!

[Anantha]

Regarding Cigarettes and beedis:
In general tobacco has other oxidant type chemicals such as nitroso/sulfite compounds that are free radicals and damage the DNA. Cigarette type tobacco is the worst due to tar in addition to the chemicals, Gutkha, snuff etc are not too far either. Some research shows pure nicotine improves memory and helps Alzeimers; take this with a bucket of salt, do not know who sponsors these studies.

[putnanja]

ToI Report

...

"There is a growing perception in Indian official circles that despite significant efforts at the highest political level to address issues of concern to US interlocutors (taxation, transfer pricing, the roll-back of preferential market access), the Americans seem to want to pocket each positive and set out a fresh list of further demands. Or worse, to complain and nitpick at the granular level of every measure taken at their behest," said a source.

Simple solution, announce that US defence companies will no longer be allowed to bid for new Indian contracts if US places India in priority list. But that of course requires b@lls, which is sadly lacking as long as MMS is in office.

[shiv]

I cannot believe how LGBTx the NYT has become. Anyone with a limp noodle to grind with pretensions of artistic hauteur is allowed space

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/opini ... ef=opinion

"THERE was a time, only a few years ago now, when I prided myself as a host of parties — soirees, as some plummy guests called them. Before one such gathering, I was asked: “Are you having another sorry this week?” Rather than correct my guest’s French, I simply furnished the time, and the usual address: my sparse studio in the north Mumbai enclave of Juhu, overlooking a pond and a parking lot dotted with identically hooded black and yellow rickshaws."

Jeez!

I first learned the word "soiree" in a book by Salman Rushdie, and later found the word in articles by people like Ayaz Amir. In India that word is not used often, I have the Macaulayite credentials to say that, including the fact that I was taught (some) French at school.

However there is an elite echelon of Indian society who do use that word - perhaps it i more of a Mumbai thing, don't know for sure. But there is this peculiar thing in which, for white English speakers - French culture represents the height of sophistication so using some French words indicates high social status. And those French words have to be pronounced just right even if the word or name is totally unpronounceable, like "Vuitton". Of course Indian sepoys of the type who wrote this article have absorbed that from their masters.

What has happened to me over the years is as follows. i found that I was generally pronouncing French and other western names right and pronouncing Indian words right as well. The average gora aadmi will rarely pronounce an Indian name right - while the average Indian will get Indian names right and mess up the French. So I was a kind of "neither here nor there hybrid". I have now become more sympathetic to mispronouncing unpronounceable names in English and French. No more "Gloster" for Gloucester. It's Glausester

And Louis Vuitton? It's Loo-is Wittan

[shiv]

Being a doctor was once a job with great purpose. Now it's just a business

As a physician, I resent the fact that the divisive healthcare reform debate has made my profession look like it is only a business, essentially a commodity. Growing up in the small hill-resort town of Nainital in northern India, I was the son of the only surgeon in this small town. Solely on his meager and fixed government salary, I saw my father care for scores of mostly poor people, operating on cases as diverse as cataracts, abdominal surgeries, gynecologic surgeries and even some types of neurosurgery. The power of the respect and gratitude that he received was the driving motivational force for a long and rewarding career in medicine. No amount of financial remuneration would have trumped this kind of professional satisfaction.

Following my medical schooling in India, he encouraged me to immigrate to to the US so that I would have access to the best healthcare resources and facilities. Like the proverbial "kid in a candy store", I readily became part of what I perceived as a perfect system where I could order seemingly any medical test or procedure in the interest of the patient. Coupled with my vast repertoire of recently acquired medical knowledge, this seemed like professional nirvana. That was then – the mid-1980s.

[rgosain]

"There is a growing perception in Indian official circles that despite significant efforts at the highest political level to address issues of concern to US interlocutors (taxation, transfer pricing, the roll-back of preferential market access), the Americans seem to want to pocket each positive and set out a fresh list of further demands. Or worse, to complain and nitpick at the granular level of every measure taken at their behest," said a source.[/quote][/quote]

Putnanja wrote:
Simple solution, announce that US defence companies will no longer be allowed to bid for new Indian contracts if US places India in priority list. But that of course requires b@lls, which is sadly lacking as long as MMS is in office.[/quote]

Actually Putnanja there are a number of option India can exercise before this:
1) Increase the number of compulsory licenses which are permitted under TRIPPS
2) Withdraw from TRIPPS altogether - the WTO rules allow for this
3) Ask pharma companies to give a breakdown of ethnic and black staff in their med-chem/discovery divisions. I know not relevant but it puts them on the backfoot and it's similar to western companies demanding that India follow their environmental and labour laws.

It should be borne in mind that the Clinton admininistration well before 1998 had already subjected India to barrage of trade and non-tariff sanction. Hints of of deja vu

[shiv]

3) Ask pharma companies to give a breakdown of ethnic and black staff in their med-chem/discovery divisions. I know not relevant but it puts them on the backfoot and it's similar to western companies demanding that India follow their environmental and labour laws.

Nice suggestion. This sort of demand is not difficult to make, but it requires self confidence among Indians that they are no less than anyone else and that they need not behave like Indians serfs to the American lord - which is how Indians often behave with regard to the US. US entities and personnel in turn begin to believe that they and their practices are above questioning at least partly because of docile servility of the type Indian house negro/sepoy mentality displays for them.

[member_22733]

Well more on this later but I have started to notice a pattern here:

We will go tough on crime and protect Americans translates to : We will try to catch the black guy violating even the smallest law and punish him for the longest time so that the illusion of being tough on crime is satisfied.

We will go tough on health care violators and protect Americans translates to: We will catch the Indian pharma violating even the smallest law and punish them with the harshest terms possible so that the illusion of being tough on health care is satisfied.

We will go tough on financial white collar criminals translates to: We will catch any Indian/Chinese/minority violating even the smallest law and punish them with the harshest terms possible so that the illusion of being tough on white collar crime is satisfied.


Note that in all these above cases there is one big thing: There is no political cost on those decisions, there is only political mileage in such rabble rousing. It destroys millions of life is none of the politicians concern, their culture itself is based on mass murder and violence and hence they cannot be expected to be any better.

Like Boss Tweed (IIRC) tells Bill the Butcher in the movie "Gangs on New York": "Its time to organize a hanging". Loosely translated: Lets get some innocent folks who have committed petty crimes to hang so that the illusion of being tough on crime is satisfied and political mileage be gained.

[kancha]

Any word on the United Airlines aircraft grounded at the Mumbai Airport? Media houses seem mum after the initial reports

[habal]

Well more on this later but I have started to notice a pattern here:

We will go tough on crime and protect Americans translates to : We will try to catch the black guy violating even the smallest law and punish him for the longest time so that the illusion of being tough on crime is satisfied.

We will go tough on health care violators and protect Americans translates to: We will catch the Indian pharma violating even the smallest law and punish them with the harshest terms possible so that the illusion of being tough on health care is satisfied.

We will go tough on financial white collar criminals translates to: We will catch any Indian/Chinese/minority violating even the smallest law and punish them with the harshest terms possible so that the illusion of being tough on white collar crime is satisfied.


Note that in all these above cases there is one big thing: There is no political cost on those decisions, there is only political mileage in such rabble rousing. It destroys millions of life is none of the politicians concern, their culture itself is based on mass murder and violence and hence they cannot be expected to be any better.

Like Boss Tweed (IIRC) tells Bill the Butcher in the movie "Gangs on New York": "Its time to organize a hanging". Loosely translated: Lets get some innocent folks who have committed petty crimes to hang so that the illusion of being tough on crime is satisfied and political mileage be gained.

there is something that strikes me about this that I would like to expand in the appropriate thread.

there are two seperate levers of control operating in USA much like India.

At one level (Corporate elite, Euro-Jewish elite) are trying to outsource as much production capability and industrial leadership around the world and out of USA. This reduces the primacy of USA. This group also leads in immigration as a leverage to control the 'son-of-the-soil' anglo-saxon's innate reflexes to control the decision-making apparatus in USA and establish white anglo-saxon supremacy over the rest. The first group are afraid of the second group just as the Congress ganga-yamuni elite are afraid of the BJP's hindutvavadi call to the sons-of-the-soil audience.

Second group is the the group that is entrusted with 'policy-implementation' which is where all there racist biases show up. Though policy-creation is in hands of the first group and they take care to formulate policies acceptable to all, but it is diffused by the time of implementation which is in the hands of rednecks and sundry hicks, like the cops who implement the policies are part of the second level/group. The first group is very much interested in liberalist policies because their own survival depends on it otherwise they can be easily overwhelmed by the vocal 'sons-of-the-soil' lobby.

[anmol]

UN Ambassadors: reconcile with terrorists.

[ramana]

If played right this will bring her down. Looks like power got to her head.

She should not be in the service.

anmol is this on twitter already?