This anecdote could find itself disseminated widely, within the US itself.Obama replied in his calm, no-nonsense style that he continued to have concerns about Modi’s past. The reply shook up the small audience which was hanging on to every word that came out of the president. ...
...
“My name is Barack ‘HUSSEIN’ Obama,” was all that he said in a reply that was pithy but pregnant in its implications.
Meanwhile the resident of the White House is in sh^t street with the Germans because of the Yanqui lust for spying upon its friends.The Germans already outraged about the Snoopgate hacking of Frau Merkel's cellphone,have insult added to injury with the latest spying scandal.Will these Yanquis ever learn? One doubts it.Unless they get kicked in the teeth and the nether end,they will go on regardless treating other nations including their friends like trash.
A New York newspaper has apologised after it referred to US President Barack Obama as a “n*****” in one of its headlines.
The writer James Lincoln Collier penned an opinion piece for the July edition of WestView News, which was entitled: “The N***** in the White House”.
Despite the use of the racist slur, the column was actually a pro-Obama piece that suggested far-right opposition to the President was influenced by the colour of his skin.
Collier wrote: “These far right voters hate Obama because he is black. The simple truth is that there is still in America an irreducible measure of racism.”
But the newspaper’s publisher conceded that the decision to use the offensive word was “wrong”.
George Capsis, 86, told Sky News that he had not followed the advice of his staff, who had all warned him not to use the racist term.
“He (Collier) did not realise how loaded that word was. He was very proud of what he did. He thought any black who read that article would say, 'how brilliant, how sympathetic, how intelligent you are',” Capsis said.
"He wanted to demonstrate that there were still these extreme, hateful, unthinking, unreasoning voices out there.”
He went on: “My staff were vehement. I thought that they were wrong. Now in retrospect I realise that I was wrong. You just can't use that word anymore, even if you are on the right side.”
Capsis added that the article directly below Collier’s, which was written by African-American columnist Alvin Hall, had been commissioned as a “rebuttal” piece.
Underneath the leader “The Headline Offends Me”, Hall wrote: “For me, just seeing the n-word in a headline or in an article always makes me bristle. I feel a knot of indignation, disgust, and anger form in my gut.”
Capsis said: “Alvin had an immediate, convulsive reaction to the headline, which goes right to his spinal column. He reacts with fury, electrically, and immediately dashes off a piece."
But Capsis admitted that having Hall’s piece next to Collier’s was not enough to justify the use of the n-word.
"Even the most liberal of liberals can't use that word if he is not black. The word itself triggers such a deep emotional and traumatic response that reason is gone," he said.
One member of Angela's Merkel's party has suggested that US agents should be expelled from Germany. Photograph: Andy Wong/AP
The White House was forced to defend its increasingly fraught relationship with Berlin on Monday as the Central Intelligence Agency maintained a conspicuous silence about new allegations linking it to a spying scandal involving a German intelligence official.
Reuters quoted two US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, who told the news agency that the CIA was involved in the alleged recruitment of the official, a 31-year-old employee of the German intelligence agency (BND).
The official was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of having sold secret documents to a contact at the CIA.
The controversy has threatened to upend an uneasy, monthslong diplomatic rapproachement between the two allies after chancellor Angela Merkel revealed the National Security Agency had monitored her cellphone, causing widespread outrage in Germany and even on Capitol Hill. President Barack Obama was prompted to pledge an end to spying on the leaders of allied nations.
But a longstanding reluctance to discuss intelligence matters in public left the administration scrambling to respond.
The White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said he could not comment on the arrest of a suspected US spy because it did not want to interfere in “a pending German law enforcement investigation” and because “it obviously goes to, purportedly, a direct intelligence matter as relates to the United States.”
But Earnest appeared to acknowledge that the suspicion alone may have already caused damage to its relationship with Berlin and sought to reassure its ally about the longer term relationship between the two countries.
“The relationship the US has with Germany is incredibly important,” said Earnest, insisting it was a partnership “built on respect” and “decades of cooperation and shared values”.
“All those things are high priorities not just of this administration but of this country, so we are going to work with the Germans to resolve this situation appropriately,” he said during the White House's daily briefing with reporters.
Germany was reported on Monday to be considering stepping up its counter-espionage efforts in light of the affair. Measures being considered in response to the scandal include monitoring the intelligence activities of nominal Nato allies such as the US, Britain and France, as well as expelling US agents from Germany.
According to a report in Bild, the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, has emphasised the urgent need for a "360-degree vision" of the foreign secret agency's activities. The newspaper claims to have obtained an internal document which outlines "concrete counter-measures", moving away from a policy of not spying on Nato allies.
Asked about the new policy, a spokesperson at the German interior ministry did not deny the reports and said "an efficient and effective counter-intelligence against all sides is important, necessary, and has to be better organised than it has until now."
The BND staffer, a technical support worker employed in a unit dealing mainly with the protection of German soldiers abroad, is alleged to have established contact with the American secret service by contacting the US embassy. Rather than report the contact to their allied German counterparts, the CIA is reported to have paid the agent €25,000 ($34,000) for 218 documents classified as confidential or top secret.
In a press conference on Monday, government officials declined to comment on the affair, but a number of high-ranking politicians and officials have expressed their outrage, with one member of Merkel's party suggesting that US agents should be expelled from Germany.
"If it emerges that the BND employee was really directed by American agents on German soil, then it would be hardly comprehensible if US employees could continue to do harm over here," Karl-Georg Wellmann of the CDU told Spiegel Online.
The German president, Joachim Gauck, said if the allegations turn out to be true, it would amount to "gambling with friendships and close alliances".
"Then it truly needs to be said: enough is enough," he added.
Merkel has been more guarded in her reaction, telling a news conference during her current trip to China: "If the reports are correct it would be a serious case."
In Washington, the administration’s discomfort was evident. Earnest was even forced to clarify that his brief comments on the subject should not be taken as a denial of US involvement in the affair. Initially asked whether Merkel was right to warn that the allegations, if proven, would be a “clear contradiction of trust between allies”, Earnest replied: “That's obviously a big 'if'.”
But when asked whether this was effectively a qualified denial of the claim, the US spokesman was forced to backpedal and make clear the White House was saying nothing to dispute the allegations at the this stage.
“That's not what it was,” clarified Earnest. “It was an observation about a question which was predicated entirely on a hypothetical – not that it was an unreasonable question.”
The CIA refused to make any comment about its alleged involvement in the latest spy-fueled rift between the US and Germany. A spokesman, Ryan Trapani, would not even discuss whether agency director John Brennan had, as Reuters reported, requested to brief Congress on the subject.
Notably, Trapani did not deny a CIA role.
Capitol Hill sources were unaware Monday of any briefing Brennan had offered to give legislators – often a method to defuse congressional tension or outrage ahead of a burgeoning scandal, particularly by the spy agencies.
Any such briefing would come at a delicate time for Brennan. The director has all but burned his bridges with the Senate intelligence committee a little more than a year into his tenure, thanks to ongoing acrimony over a congressional inquiry into the CIA's post-9/11 torture apparatus. The Obama administration is currently awaiting partial declassification of the panel's years-long inquiry, following a censorship process led by the CIA itself.
Another difficulty for Brennan with Congress is the opposition the panel's chairwoman, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, has voiced concerning spying on the US's ostensible partner in Berlin. Last year, Feinstein thundered against the NSA monitoring Merkel, even as the senator remained a staunch supporter of most other NSA surveillance, to include its domestic operations.
We need them, since we dont have time or money to integrate Russian or French missiles, that if the manufacture like HDW agree to cooperate, we have no choice in this case. Similarly, Boeing, Uncle SAM and Russia are highly unlikely to allow integration of Bramhos on say P8I. Better to have reasonable nos of say 100, of sub launched and air launched Harpoons for Jaguars, U-209's and P8I's, will atleast bring maintenance cost and training, storing costs down and will make easier for the crew in wartime.Madhusudhan wrote:Do we really need these missiles at 3x the price? Are there not alternate suppliers? I'm not an expert on these missiles, specific usages, or if alternates can serve the purpose for the military, but just curious. Seems like a criminal waste of taxpayer resources unless we are missing some other fine print in what is included.
The Kh-59MK airborne enhanced-range air-to-surface guided missile with the ARGS-59E active radar homing head is derived from the Kh-59ME missile with the TV/command guidance system. It is designed for engagement of a wide range of radar-contrast sea surface targets in both fair and adverse weather conditions at Sea States up to 6.
The missile makes part of weapon systems of the Su-30 type aircraft.
The ASK autometed testing system, making part of the OKA system, is modified for testing the Kh-59MK missiles during their scheduled servicing. The SNO-106MA ground support equipment is used for missiles' maintenance in technical positions, their shipping and storage in arsenals and depots, scheduled servicing, testing, and transfer for suspension under carrier aircraft.
Range is 285km against DD targets,145 km against small boats,speed 900-1050 KMH,length 5.7m,launch weight approx 930kg,warhead 320kg.
Offshore Tax Crackdown Opens With 30% Penalties for Banks
by RICHARD RUBIN, bloomberg.com
June 30th 2014 11:17 AM
The Internal Revenue Service is about to get an unprecedented look at bank accounts and investments U.S. citizens hold abroad, through a law that is making it harder to hide assets from the tax collector.
Tomorrow, the U.S. government will start imposing 30 percent taxes on many overseas payments to financial institutions that don’t share information with the IRS.
That new burden has frustrated overseas banks and U.S. expatriates. It’s also created a new standard of global bank-to-government information sharing designed to throw light on often difficult-to-trace accounts.
No one knows yet how successful the law will be in combating tax evasion. Still, it allows the U.S. to scoop up data from more than 77,000 financial institutions and 80 governments about its citizens’ overseas financial activities.
“I don’t think anything on this scale has ever been tried before,” said John Harrington, a former international tax counsel at the Treasury Department who is now a partner at Dentons in Washington. “The idea that it would go off without a hitch is sort of hard to imagine.”
Related:
What led to the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, was the inability of federal tax authorities to obtain clear information about financial accounts that U.S. citizens have outside the country. That’s especially important for the U.S., because unlike many other countries, it taxes citizens on their worldwide income regardless of where they actually live.
‘Honor’ System
“If you had an account outside of the U.S., you were pretty much on your honor to disclose that information,” said Denise Hintzke, the global tax leader for Deloitte Tax LLP’s Fatca practice.
In establishing the law, Congress and President Barack Obama in effect threatened to cut off banks and other companies from easy access to the U.S. market if they didn’t pass along such information. The U.S. was able to leverage its status as a financial center to demand action from governments and banks in other countries.
The proposal was barely debated when Congress in 2010 passed it as a budgetary offset to a tax credit for hiring. It was projected to raise $8.7 billion in revenue over a decade.
Congress hasn’t addressed it since then, although the Republican National Committee voted earlier this year in favor of repeal.
Withholding Tax
Under Fatca, U.S. banks and other companies making certain cross-border payments -- such as interest and dividends -- to foreign financial institutions must withhold a 30 percent tax if the recipient isn’t providing information about its U.S. account holders.
Later phases of the law will apply to a broader set of cross-border payments, such as gross proceeds from stock sales. Many non-financial companies will be affected, too.
The law has been accompanied by a new set of regulations and definitions, creating a cottage industry of advisers and interpreters. It was supposed to start Jan. 1, 2013, which was put off until tomorrow to give taxpayers more time to comply.
Fatca prompted more than 77,000 financial institutions to register for the program to avoid the withholding tax. As a result of that compliance, the government doesn’t expect to collect much direct revenue from the 30 percent levy, said a senior Treasury official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss planning for Fatca.
Direct Disclosure
In most cases, the law isn’t being implemented as written, because foreign banks said direct disclosure to the IRS would violate local laws. The prospect of withholding spurred negotiations between the U.S. and foreign governments, and other countries saw the potential benefits of reciprocal information exchange.
“This will become a sharing, automatically, between the various countries,” Hintzke said.
So far, the U.S. has reached final or provisional agreements with more than 80 jurisdictions, allowing for government-to-government information exchange or streamlined business-to-government exchanges.
The list includes jurisdictions that often are labeled as tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Guernsey. It also includes most of the world’s major economies, such as Germany, Japan, Canada and the U.K.
China Agreement
Last week, the U.S. announced an agreement in principle with China, allowing payments between the two countries to avoid withholding taxes. The official said negotiations with countries such as China often take more time because they ask for more during the talks.
The development of a global information exchange happened quickly, said Manal Corwin, who helped come up with the new rules at Treasury before moving to KPMG LLP, where she is national leader of the international tax practice in Washington.
“You’ve got countries and businesses applauding Fatca not so much because they like its existence,” she said. “It has become a way to prevent additional burdens that might have come into existence.”
Some expatriates renounced their U.S. citizenship rather than tolerate the requirements under Fatca and the lack of access to local banks that are refusing American customers or placing additional restrictions on them. The broad reach of the law means that it is affecting taxpayers who have been complying with the tax code.
Renouncing Citizenship
In 2013, 2,999 Americans renounced citizenship, the highest number on record, according to Treasury data compiled by Andrew Mitchel, an international tax lawyer. The four highest totals have all occurred since Fatca became law, though the exact reasons for renunciations aren’t reported.
“Fatca has been a pretty difficult blow for our U.S. expatriates,” said Martin Karges, senior director in international tax at BDO USA LLP in New York. “They may be shifting money to noncompliant jurisdictions.”
As the account information comes into the U.S. starting in 2015, the focus shifts to the IRS, which will use the data to guide its investigations into offshore tax evasion.
Even without Fatca in place, the U.S. has used prosecutions against Credit Suisse AG (CSGN) and UBS AG (UBSN) to glean information on Americans hiding overseas accounts.
Bankers, Lawyers
Prosecutors have charged more than 70 U.S. taxpayers and three dozen bankers, lawyers and advisers in their crackdown on offshore tax evasion. Those charged include H. Ty Warner, the billionaire creator of Beanie Babies plush toys; Igor Olenicoff, a billionaire real estate developer; and Brad Birkenfeld, a former UBS AG banker who blew the whistle on the bank.
The IRS has sponsored offshore voluntary disclosure programs since 2009 that have brought in about $6.5 billion in interest, taxes and penalties and prompted more than 45,000 Americans to reveal offshore holdings.
The tax agency has said it’ll have a relatively light enforcement touch for the first two years of Fatca for financial institutions that are trying to comply.
The resource-constrained IRS is making Fatca a priority without spending too much time on “small-scale” compliance matters, Commissioner John Koskinen said in a speech at a Washington tax conference earlier this month.
In ‘Shadows’
“The IRS and other enforcement agencies around the world will be able to focus on the structures and arrangements that, unfortunately but inevitably, will be devised to stay in the shadows in a new world of tax transparency,” he said. “And in that new world, governments will need to work closely together to shine light into those shadowy spaces until they no longer exist.”
Almost right up to the deadline, the IRS has been issuing forms and instructions and Treasury has been signing international agreements.
“We can question whether the cost is worth the benefits,” Harrington said. “But there’s no question there’s a cost, a big one. And it’s going to be ongoing too.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Richard Rubin in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at [email protected] Laurie Asseo
Or looking for a new king ?UlanBatori wrote:Anmol: Paco goes to Bahrain (and out of Bahrain)
Since the Repressed Opposition in Bahrain is Shia (isnt it?), I very much doubt if those are the ppl to whom Paco was bringing aid and succor. Probably making Arms Deals with the ISNT.
arun wrote:Looks like India is once again being gypped by the US.SanjayC wrote:Pentagon notifies Harpoon missile sale to India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 689219.cms
The US is supplying 65 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles to the UK at USD 140 Million. Deal was notified on the same day as India’s Harpoon deal.
Strange. Long ranged nuclear capable submarine launched sub-sonic cruise missile with a land attack capability package for UK is working out to a whole lot cheaper than India’s Harpoon deal which involves purchase of a lot fewer non-nuclear capable medium ranged sub-sonic submarine launched with some land attack / littoral capability Harpoon Missiles.:
United Kingdom – Tomahawk Block IV Torpedo Launched Land-Attack Missiles
India – UGM-84L Harpoon Missiles
Earlier Harpoon missile sale to India (For P8I / Jaguar) had similar issue of price gouging by US. Then it was reported that Harpoon missiles sold to India were nearly triple the price of those sold to Pakistan:
Harpoons: India to pay US almost three times more than Pak
UlanBatori wrote:Anmol: Paco goes to Bahrain (and out of Bahrain)
Since the Repressed Opposition in Bahrain is Shia (isnt it?), I very much doubt if those are the ppl to whom Paco was bringing aid and succor. Probably making Arms Deals with the ISNT.
The Gulf nation of Bahrain has ordered a U.S. diplomat to leave the country after he met with a Shiite opposition group. Bahrain is a key U.S. ally that hosts the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The Sunni monarchy there has staged a brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests. Tom Malinowski, U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor — and former Washington director for Human Rights Watch — had planned to meet with both Bahraini officials and human rights activists, including Nabeel Rajab, but Bahrain objected to his meeting with the opposition group Al Wifaq. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said the United States is "deeply concerned" about Bahrain’s decision to expel him.
src: http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/8/he ... tion_group
A group of scammers impersonating Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials is targeting Hindu and South Asian Americans. HAF needs YOU to help us understand the extent of the scam.
Many Hindu and South Asian Americans have received phone calls from individuals claiming to be from DHS or law enforcement. The callers generally state that the victim owes money to the federal government. The victim is demanded to pay a settlement to avoid further legal and financial penalties. In some cases, the victims are repeatedly harassed and threatened with imprisonment.
If you (or a family member) are contacted by a scammer claiming to be from the DHS (or have already been contacted by one), you should:
NOT provide the caller with any personal or financial information or make arrangements for payment.
Collect the number you were called from, as well as the scammer's name, the agency he/she claims to represent, and the amount and method of payment demanded.
Contact your local law enforcement and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to report the incident. You can complain to the FTC here.
Submit your case to HAF here.
Thank you for helping keep our communities safe.
The devil is in the details. Once we are sure that we are not comparing apples to oranges, I'm on board.LokeshC wrote:
So the US is acting like any other opportunistic (aka capitalistic) vendor.
Yes, this is a known scam, but I don't think it is specifically targeted to Indians or Hindus.Rony wrote:Protect Yourself: Hindu Americans Targeted Again
Many Hindu and South Asian Americans have received phone calls from individuals claiming to be from DHS or law enforcement.
I am sure the devil is in the details, but I refuse to believe that the US would act out of altruism towards India. Nor do I think being fair in the deal is in the US' interest. As far as mil-hardware goes, the US will extract whatever it can out of us. US MIC has a large lobby and a large voting base under its control and they will not let altruism or fairness to come in between what they want, which in this case is $$$s.Cosmo_R wrote:The devil is in the details. Once we are sure that we are not comparing apples to oranges, I'm on board.LokeshC wrote:
So the US is acting like any other opportunistic (aka capitalistic) vendor.
I distrust headlines by experience.
Why don't we buy arms through an intermediary?LokeshC wrote: arms become expensive when they are sold to India.
So the US is acting like any other opportunistic (aka capitalistic) vendor.
Come on, that's an Equal Opportunity Scam. The caller is usually a guy with a Chinese accent.Many Hindu and South Asian Americans have received phone calls from individuals claiming to be from DHS or law enforcement.
Diplomacy: K.P. Nayar
Washington is a city of frequent surprises, but this latest one about Barack Obama and Narendra Modi takes the cake. President Obama was at a fundraiser, a very, very exclusive one, to raise money for Democrats in the Senate and in the House of Representatives who are fighting the November election with their backs to the wall. There — predictably as Indians in their current national mood are prone to assumptions — one of the fat cat donors asked about India’s new prime minister.
Obama replied in his calm, no-nonsense style that he continued to have concerns about Modi’s past. The reply shook up the small audience which was hanging on to every word that came out of the president. It was a surprise because the media coverage after Modi’s rise as the new star over the Indian political horizon had created an impression that bygones are now bygones in the Modi-Obama equation, which the incumbent president, in any case, had inherited from his predecessor, George W. Bush.
The invitation to Modi to visit the White House in September, rarely extended to leaders who travel to New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly, had additionally been interpreted — quite wrongly as it turns out — that the United States of America had reversed course on its visa ban on the long-time former chief minister of Gujarat. One television station went so far as to assert that the US had done a U-turn on Modi. Nothing is farther from the truth.
Given such atmospherics, it was only natural that Obama’s admission that he continues to have concerns about Modi’s past triggered a supplementary question to Obama as a follow-up. The president was unflappable. He was a master of understatement. His reply was a classic. Once again, the answer vindicated the 2008 rhyming description of him during his first successful presidential campaign as “No Drama Obama.”
“My name is Barack ‘HUSSEIN’ Obama,” was all that he said in a reply that was pithy but pregnant in its implications. The president did not, of course, emphasize his Muslim middle name. The emphasis in the text here is mine. He did not have to: because the self-sustaining emphasis was not lost on anyone present at the fundraiser. There was a brief, but stunned, silence as everyone who heard the president digested the import of what Obama had said in six words that were worth a thousand.
Ever since I first met Obama in 2004 when he was elected to the Senate as one of its junior-most members and easily accessible then, I have heard him use his middle name only twice. At his inauguration on the steps of the Capitol building in 2009 and again in 2013. Those who follow Obama closely agreed that this fundraiser was probably the third time he used his Muslim name and its significance cannot be overlooked.
On a visit to Washington last week, I was recounted this very revealing anecdote on the strict understanding that if I ever wrote about it I would leave no clues about the source of my information, that I would be as vague as possible about this fundraiser and that I would also balance my account of the incident against the reality that notwithstanding the president’s personal concerns about Modi, the Obama administration will leave no stone unturned to work towards a thriving relationship with the new Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in New Delhi.
Whatever maybe tugging at the president’s heartstrings and triggering his feelings about the man who became India’s prime minister over a month ago, it is a given certainty that Modi will receive a spectacular red carpet welcome in the White House in September. There will not even be a hint during the visit of past baggage in Modi’s equation with two successive American administrations. Every effort will be made to live up to the prime minister’s expectation — which he has shared in the last few weeks in more than one private conversation — that his September sojourn is to be the most important of his foreign visits in the immediate future.
More than most politicians elsewhere, the only times US presidents and presidential hopefuls come anywhere near telling the whole truth is when they are at fundraisers. Which is not surprising because without fat cat donors, no public servant seeking high elected office has any chance of succeeding in America where money is the pivot on which elections revolve.
During the 2012 US presidential campaign, with only seven weeks to go before voting, the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, was caught in a surreptitiously taped video as admitting at a fundraiser that he did not care about the kind of people who support Obama because they take no responsibility for their livelihoods and think they are entitled to government handouts. Romney acknowledged in the leaked video that such Obama supporters account for “47 percent” of voters and that he, Romney, does not “worry about those people.”
Romney, according to opinion polls then, had a reasonable chance of defeating Obama, but Romney’s true self that was revealed to donors in a purportedly secret conversation severely damaged the Republicans and they did not recover in that presidential poll cycle. Obama quickly pounced on Romney’s disparaging remarks about nearly half of America’s population. His campaign said, “the president certainly does not think that men and women on Social Security are irresponsible or victims, that students aren’t responsible or are victims…”
Politics in America is replete with examples of truth having brought down aspirants for high office. In the 2006 Senate election season, a potential presidential hopeful, Virginia Senator George Allen, was caught on video making racist comments about an Indian American student volunteer for Democrats who was at his campaign event. “This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, macaca, or whatever his name is. He is with my opponent. He is following us around everywhere.” The leaked video did Allen in and he lost.
Wiser by such experiences, Obama’s fundraiser where he opened a small window to his true feelings about Modi was carefully managed to avoid any faux pas on account of leaks. Video cameras were out of question, of course. Donors had to deposit their mobile phones outside the venue, pens or even notebooks were not allowed. Every donor was then frisked to ensure that the president would not have to confront the ghosts of any of his truthful assertions to his moneyed supporters.
But there is nothing to beat the most conventional method of passing information which has stood the test of time: word of mouth. I have verified with a second donor what I was told by one donor about Obama’s remarks referring to the prime minister. The second donor, too, insisted on discretion, however, and protection of his identity because this US administration is seen in Washington as the most unforgiving in recent years, where those who fail tests of loyalty to the White House are treated as no less than apostates.
Yet it is a tribute to the perennial concessions that America makes to its larger interests and an example of its diversity of State machinery that work has already begun in earnest in Washington to guarantee that Modi’s first visit to the city as prime minister will be a milestone to remember in Indo-US relations. Like all successes, the perceived transformation of Modi from persona non grata into a welcome friend in the White House is a success that has many claimants for its fatherhood.
However, two names deserve mention: Frank Wisner, former US ambassador in New Delhi, and Ron Somers, who recently resigned as president of the US-India Business Council. These two men took it upon themselves while the Lok Sabha election campaign was under way to mobilize America’s business community as the vanguard of a change in attitude towards Modi.
Contrary to the impression in India, there is no evidence to support any claim that the US has changed its policy on a visa for Modi. His new job as head of India’s national government entitles him to an A-1 visa. As chief minister, he was not entitled to this visa and he was denied a visa in the category that he was eligible for as Gujarat’s top official. What the campaign by Wisner and Somers achieved was to cover up this zone of discomfort and provide respectability to the process of inviting Modi to Washington.
Once idiot, always idiot. Let this idiot to sleep with global guardians of green, while their cities burn.Barack ‘HUSSEIN’ Obama’s concerns regarding Narendra Modi
....
“My name is Barack ‘HUSSEIN’ Obama,” was all that he said in a reply that was pithy but pregnant in its implications. The president did not, of course, emphasize his Muslim middle name. The emphasis in the text here is mine. He did not have to: because the self-sustaining emphasis was not lost on anyone present at the fundraiser. There was a brief, but stunned, silence as everyone who heard the president digested the import of what Obama had said in six words that were worth a thousand.
Madhusudhan wrote:Showing up for a high-profile dinner and photo op is what I would classify as attention seeking. Maturity and Confidence would mean just doing transactional business until the SD attitude changes.
The USSD statement IIRC was :- He is free to apply for a visa in any capacity, but heads of state on diplomatic passports are automatically approved travel to the US.putnanja wrote:Many people think US has removed modi's name from the banned list. Pays to publicise it on SM, and hope some Indian channel picks it up? Will be good to see what explanation the US embassy/SD comes up with
, and they are sure to reject it if he ever applies in a personal capacity. I dont think he will do it, not while he is the PM. Philip Oltermann in Berlin
theguardian.com, Thursday 10 July 2014 14.30 BST
Angela Merkel last year accused the National Security Agency of tapping her phone. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The German government has asked the top representative of America's secret services in Germany to leave the country. Members of the government's supervisory panel announced the measure at a press conference in Berlin this afternoon.
Clemens Binninger, a member of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, who chairs the committee that oversees the intelligence services, explained that the move came in response to America's "failure to cooperate on resolving various allegations, starting with the NSA and up to the latest incidents".
The move comes in response to two reported cases of suspected US spying in Germany and the year-long spat over reported NSA spying in Germany, including claims that Merkel's phone was tapped.
Merkel's spokesperson, Steffen Seibert, confirmed the decision in an official statement, which said: "The government takes these activities very seriously. It is essential and in the interest of the security of its citizens and its forces abroad for Germany to collaborate closely and trustfully with its western partners, especially the US.
"But mutual trust and openness is necessary. The government is still prepared to do so and expects the same of its closest partners."
Burkhard Lischka of the Social Democratic party said: "For over a year we have been asking questions and failed to get a response." As a result, Lischka said, "cracks" had started to appear in Germany's relationship with America.
Andre Hahn, a Left party member on the supervisory panel, said that the recent string of spying cases had shown that "we wouldn't put anything past Russia and China. But there's blind trust in the US. This trust has now taken a knock."
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