How about this...Gagan wrote:Click on the image to go to the official white house press release page:
President Barack Obama greets Michaele and Tareq Salahi during a receiving line in the Blue Room of the White House before the State Dinner with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, Nov. 24, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Samantha Appleton)
The couple has been in close proximity to Obama in the past, photos show, raising fresh questions about how they have managed to get so near to the president, according to CBS.
One photo, apparently taken in the days before Obama took the oath of office, shows the Salahis in a group shot with Obama and some of the musicians who performed at an inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial, including Fergie and will.i.am.
"Lots of my dear friends here including, President OBAMA with MICHAELE, my husband Tareq, The Black Eyed Peas, Fergie, Will.i.am & Randy Jackson, formerly with JOURNEY the Rock Band who I LOVE!, and now Judge on American Idol," the caption says.
Other photos show the Salahis in the empty, glass-enclosed box from which the Obamas watched the concert and, according to the caption, "backstage with the Secret Service at the Lincoln Memorial during the Presidential Inauguration".
Meanwhile, FOX News questioned Michaele Salahi's claims that she was a former cheerleader for the Washington Redskins and she once modelled for Victoria's Secret, saying her resume as a Virginia socialite is increasingly looking like a fantasy.
A spokesperson for Washington Redskins told FoxNews.com Friday it's never heard of Salahi, while one for Victoria's Secret said she did not model for the company.
nikedragonfire (12 hours ago)
don't know but it seems to me that this whole thing was a set up just like Joe The Plumber. It was either done to distract the public from real issues or it was purposely done to put pressure on Obama. You just can't trust the CIA or the Secret Service. Call me Conspiracy Theorist.
Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/busin ... =2&_r=1&em
By HEATHER TIMMONS
Published: November 27, 2009
NEW DELHI — When 7-year-old Shiva Ayyadurai left Mumbai with his family nearly 40 years ago, he promised himself he would return to India someday to help his country.
In June, Mr. Ayyadurai, now 45, moved from Boston to New Delhi hoping to make good on that promise. An entrepreneur and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a fistful of American degrees, he was the first recruit of an ambitious government program to lure talented scientists of the so-called desi diaspora back to their homeland.
“It seemed perfect,” he said recently of the job opportunity.
It wasn’t.
As Mr. Ayyadurai sees it now, his Western business education met India’s notoriously inefficient, opaque government, and things went downhill from there. Within weeks, he and his boss were at loggerheads. Last month, his job offer was withdrawn. Mr. Ayyadurai has moved back to Boston.
In recent years, Mother India has welcomed back tens of thousands of former emigrants and their offspring. When he visited the United States this week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally extended an invitation “to all Indian-Americans and nonresident Indians who wish to return home.” But, like Mr. Ayyadurai, many Indians who spent most of their lives in North America and Europe are finding they can’t go home again.
About 100,000 “returnees” will move from the United States to India in the next five years, estimates Vivek Wadhwa, a research associate at Harvard University who has studied the topic. These repats, as they are known, are drawn by India’s booming economic growth, the chance to wrestle with complex problems and the opportunity to learn more about their heritage. They are joining multinational companies, starting new businesses and even becoming part of India’s sleepy government bureaucracy.
But a study by Mr. Wadhwa and other academics found that 34 percent of repats found it difficult to return to India — compared to just 13 percent of Indian immigrants who found it difficult to settle in the United States. The repats complained about traffic, lack of infrastructure, bureaucracy and pollution.
For many returnees the cultural ties and chance to do good that drew them back are overshadowed by workplace cultures that feel unexpectedly foreign, and can be frustrating. Sometimes returnees discover that they share more in their attitudes and perspectives with other Americans or with the British than with other Indians. Some stay just a few months, some return to the West after a few years.
Returnees run into trouble when they “look Indian but think American,” said Anjali Bansal, managing partner in India for Spencer Stuart, the global executive search firm. People expect them to know the country because of how they look, but they may not be familiar with the way things run, she said. Similarly, when things don’t operate the way they do in the United States or Britain, the repats sometimes complain.
“India can seem to have a fairly ambiguous and chaotic way of working, but it works,” Ms. Bansal said. “I’ve heard people say things like ‘It is so inefficient or it is so unprofessional.’ ” She said it was more constructive to just accept customs as being different.
Sometimes, the better fit for a job in India is an expatriate who has experience working in emerging markets, rather than someone born in India who has only worked in the United States, she said.
While several Indian-origin authors have penned soul-searching tomes about their return to India, and dozens of business books exist for Western expatriates trying to do business here, the guidelines for the returning Indian manager or entrepreneur are still being drawn.
“Some very simple practices that you often take for granted, such as being ethical in day to day situations, or believing in the rule of law in everyday behavior, are surprisingly absent in many situations,” said Raju Narisetti, who was born in Hyderabad and returned to India in 2006 to found a business newspaper called Mint, which is now the country’s second-biggest business paper by readership.
He said he left earlier than he expected because of a “troubling nexus” of business, politics and publishing that he called “draining on body and soul.” He returned to the United States this year to join The Washington Post.
There are no shortcuts to spending lots of time working in the country, returnees say. “There are so many things that are tricky about doing business in India that it takes years to figure it out,” said Sanjay Kamlani, the co-chief executive of Pangea3, a legal outsourcing firm with offices in New York and Mumbai. Mr. Kamlani was born in Miami, where his parents emigrated from Mumbai, but he has started two businesses with Indian operations.
When Mr. Kamlani started hiring in India, he met with a completely unexpected phenomena: some new recruits would not show up for work on their first day. Then, their mothers would call and say they were sick for days in a row. They never intended to come at all, he realized, but “there’s a cultural desire to avoid confrontation,” he said.
The case of Mr. Ayyadurai, the M.I.T. lecturer, illustrates just how frustrating the experience can be for someone schooled in more direct, American-style management. After a long meeting with a top bureaucrat, who gave him a handwritten job offer, Mr. Ayyadurai signed on to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, or C.S.I.R., a government-financed agency that reports to the ministry of science.
The agency is responsible for creating a new company, called C.S.I.R.-Tech, to spin off profitable businesses from India’s dozens of public laboratories. Currently, the agency, which oversees 4,500 scientists, generates just $80 million in cash flow a year, even though its annual budget is the equivalent of half a billion dollars.
Mr. Ayyadurai said he spent weeks trying to get answers and responses to e-mail messages, particularly from the person who hired him, the C.S.I.R. director general, Samir K. Brahmachari. After several months of trying to set up a business plan for the new company with no input from his boss, he said, he distributed a draft plan to C.S.I.R.’s scientists asking for feedback, and criticizing the agency’s management.
Four days later, Mr. Ayyadurai was forbidden from communicating with other scientists. Later, he received an official letter saying his job offer was withdrawn.
The complaints in Mr. Ayyadurai’s paper could be an outline for what many inside and outside India say could be improved in some workplaces here: disorganization, intimidation, a culture where top directors’ decisions are rarely challenged and a lack of respect for promptness that means meetings start hours late and sometimes go on for hours with no clear agenda.
But going public with such accusations is highly unusual. Mr. Ayyadurai circulated his paper not just to the agency’s scientists but to journalists, and wrote about his situation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. India is “sitting on a huge opportunity” to create new businesses and tap into thousands of science and technology experts, Mr. Ayyadurai said, but a “feudal culture” is holding the country back.
Mr. Brahmachari said in an interview that Mr. Ayyadurai had misunderstood nearly everything — from his handwritten job offer, which he said was only meant to suggest what Mr. Ayyadurai could receive were he to be hired, to the way Mr. Ayyadurai asked scientists for their feedback on what the C.S.I.R. spinoff should look like.
To prove his point, Mr. Brahmachari, who was two hours late for an interview scheduled by his office, read from a government guide about decision-making in the organization. Mr. Ayyadurai didn’t follow protocol, he said. “As long as your language is positive for the organization I have no problem,” he added.
As the interview was closing, Mr. Brahmachari questioned why anyone would be interested in the situation, and then said he would complain to a reporter’s bosses in New York if she continued to pursue the story.
) with such as gems as “director general who believes he knows all even though he has minimal depth of information and domain knowledge.” and that the director maintains “a close coterie of sycophants, mostly incompetent”.To me it says that reforms have only been going on for 18 years rather than 80, not about how anything "works" or doesn't, or about Indian values. And it seems to me that we always talk of future superpowerdom, not current. That follows from having 1 in 6 humans on the planet and from the basic arithmetic of compounding growth (unless of course a yeeevil Atlanticist conspiracy foils our plans as is almost certain to happen).Sanjay M wrote:And yet the realities of India's dilapidated infrastructure and rampant poverty speak volumes about how well India "works". People in India seem to have different standards compared to the rest of the world on what it means to have a system that "works". There is a difference in values.
A country that talks grandly of itself as a "shooparpowerr" with such a large proportion of its population living like sub-Saharan Africa, makes me roll my eyes.
I used to buy into this. Until someone made the point on another thread that Indian GDP today is about the same as Chinese GDP 6-7 years ago. Compared to this statistic, Indian performance on other metrics like the HDI puts it perhaps 15 years behind the Chinese. Since the government pursues and implements policies that would impact the HDI, the unmistakable conclusion is that Indian government is not as efficient as the Chinese. This would be even without slowdowns caused by the democratic process.S.Gautam wrote:To me it says that reforms have only been going on for 18 years rather than 80, not about how anything "works" or doesn't, or about Indian values. And it seems to me that we always talk of future superpowerdom, not current. That follows from having 1 in 6 humans on the planet and from the basic arithmetic of compounding growth (unless of course a yeeevil Atlanticist conspiracy foils our plans as is almost certain to happen).
Wow, I checked it out and it is quite startling. India GDP per capita at parity is 2900 today, which is where China was in 2002 (from IMF WEO DB). My faith in the GoI continues its decline into oblivion.vera_k wrote:I used to buy into this. Until someone made the point on another thread that Indian GDP today is about the same as Chinese GDP 6-7 years ago. Compared to this statistic, Indian performance on other metrics like the HDI puts it perhaps 15 years behind the Chinese. Since the government pursues and implements policies that would impact the HDI, the unmistakable conclusion is that Indian government is not as efficient as the Chinese. This would be even without slowdowns caused by the democratic process.
My observation is "majority" of PIOs wants best of both worlds, the western lifestyles and Indian short-cuts. I know many NRIs/PIOs who send their children to India for Medicine and Engineering courses that they wouldn't qualify per western-standards. If an NRI/PIO is planning to return to India, he cannot expect to have a US system/society in all aspects of life. Sometimes I wonder what would be the % of PIOs that return to India with a sole objective of serving this nation and society instead of for personal interests.S.Gautam wrote: Mort, I agree with that author in general (that PIOs find it hard to move to India). I just found the Ayyadurai affair comical.
Yup, just read it - its half nectar and the other half BS --> its essentially inedible rite now. Sure, Yindia has reasons to worry but none relate to the tripe sought to be painted as conventional wisdom.abhishek_sharma wrote:I don't know if this has been posted before:
Growing, Yes, but India Has Reasons to Worry
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/weeki ... r-web.html
Yeah, more than 50% is BS. However, what is incredible is the following remark by George Tanham:Hari Seldon wrote:Yup, just read it - its half nectar and the other half BS --> its essentially inedible rite now. Sure, Yindia has reasons to worry but none relate to the tripe sought to be painted as conventional wisdom.abhishek_sharma wrote:I don't know if this has been posted before:
Growing, Yes, but India Has Reasons to Worry
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/weeki ... r-web.html
Dilli's N-ambitions are mentioned with nary a word about the context of their development. Insurgencies mentioned with zero mention of the fact that the democratic process and rule of law have prevailed despite the gravest of provocations.
IMO, janta should read the BS to get a hint of the next spin sought to be put out by the bestern establishment types. And call it for the BS it is.
I did not know that in 1992 South India was worried about any northern dominance. I think that problem was solved in 1960s. Z. Brzezinski used to refer to these issues as well.Writing in 1992, the late American political scientist George Tanham drew attention to the lack of a broad cohesive vision. Indian foreign policy, he argued, was fragmented; he pointed, for example, to the very different threat perceptions in northern India, which tends to worry about Pakistan and China, and in the south, which is more focused on northern dominance and seaward threats.
That's because entire generations of "political scientist" and "foreign policy eggspurt" ch00tiyas graduate from the JFK School of Govt., Georgetown and other hallowed centers of Amirkhani policymaking, having heard that same Dulles/Brzezinski-lineage of claptrap since the day they first walked into class, and having regurgitated it endlessly in their term papers and dissertations. Worse, as part of their training, these gurus are indoctrinated to twist every datum coming from the subcontinent to fit the Dulles/Brzezinski garbage (discarding whatever refuses to fit), rather than considering for a moment that the old theories need to be remodeled to fit the data.abhishek_sharma wrote:Quote:
Writing in 1992, the late American political scientist George Tanham drew attention to the lack of a broad cohesive vision. Indian foreign policy, he argued, was fragmented; he pointed, for example, to the very different threat perceptions in northern India, which tends to worry about Pakistan and China, and in the south, which is more focused on northern dominance and seaward threats.
I did not know that in 1992 South India was worried about any northern dominance. I think that problem was solved in 1960s. Z. Brzezinski used to refer to these issues as well.
Rudradev wrote:
That's because entire generations of "political scientist" and "foreign policy eggspurt" ch00tiyas graduate from the JFK School of Govt., Georgetown and other hallowed centers of Amirkhani policymaking, having heard that same Dulles/Brzezinski-lineage of claptrap since the day they first walked into class, ...
...
We should not expect anything better from a person who was the most vocal admirer of Taliban in Afghanistan.This is the first article which talks about the entire border of India as a working border and in conflict. The idea is to project India as a evolving country and border not yet firmed up. This is to counter the Indian claim on Tibet and the entire kashmir and other historical capital region.abhishek_sharma wrote:I don't know if this has been posted before:
Growing, Yes, but India Has Reasons to Worry
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/weeki ... r-web.html
Not only is this non-sense taught at the JFK School of Govt. and other Ivy League institutes of foreign policy, its also taught in parallel at military academies such as Westpoint and Annapolis. The Bush people did not like academics from the east coast and as such dumped the school of thought that put out this garbage, sure the Bush people had many other faults, but foreign policy with regard to India had a different outlook to it. To that we must give them credit. Ombaba has brought these clowns back to the forefront to consolidate his political power at the expense of India. Ombaba's is not stupid and the blame for articles like this squarely rests on the shoulders of his administration. The Ombaba apologists on this forum just don't get it and have closed their minds to rational thought.Rudradev wrote: That's because entire generations of "political scientist" and "foreign policy eggspurt" ch00tiyas graduate from the JFK School of Govt., Georgetown and other hallowed centers of Amirkhani policymaking, having heard that same Dulles/Brzezinski-lineage of claptrap since the day they first walked into class, and having regurgitated it endlessly in their term papers and dissertations. Worse, as part of their training, these gurus are indoctrinated to twist every datum coming from the subcontinent to fit the Dulles/Brzezinski garbage (discarding whatever refuses to fit), rather than considering for a moment that the old theories need to be remodeled to fit the data.
Even the Indian/ "South Asian" eggspurts invited to these sacred Amirkhani institutions are chosen for their willingness to spout views that conform to the conventional wizzdump, rather than offer insights which in any way relate to the reality of the Indian subcontinent today. Garbage in, garbage out... hack thhooo.
Ultimately, India will have reasons to be thankful for this self-imposed institutional blindness of American "eggspurts". But first we must learn to act independently, i.e. wean ourselves away from the pathetic hope that Washington will "see reason" and treat us in a Dharmic manner. They will never see anything but what fossils like Brzezinski have trained them to see.
Is there any difference between foreign policy ideologies taught at east and west coast universities? George Shultz taught at MIT, Univ of Chicago and Stanford University. Condi Rice works for Stanford University. Nicholas Burns teaches at Harvard.Mort Walker wrote: Not only is this non-sense taught at the JFK School of Govt. and other Ivy League institutes of foreign policy, its also taught in parallel at military academies such as Westpoint and Annapolis. The Bush people did not like academics from the east coast and as such dumped the school of thought that put out this garbage, ... .
Though relations with China have improved following two years of early tension, many in Washington continue to press for the “containment” of China both by accepting India as a nuclear power despite New Delhi’s noncompliance with the nonproliferation treaty and by pushing various containment axes such as the “arc of peace and prosperity.”
First, the United States should engage in active diplomacy to prevent the outbreak of war between the two Koreas, between China and Taiwan, and between India and Pakistan.
Second, the new administration should recognize that the possibility of state breakdown presents a very different challenge, given that neither diplomacy nor deterrence may be able to prevent it. Where the threat of state breakdown exists, the United States needs to work closely with neighboring states—especially India, with regard to Pakistan; South Korea and China, with regard to North Korea; and India, China, and Thailand, with regard to Myanmar—in order to contain the damage and prevent wider conflict.
In recent years the United States and its Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) partners have been discussing how to bring the future large consumers—China and India—into the oil supply stabilization arrangements of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9 ... 877&page=4Mort Walker wrote:The only explanation as to why they got in is that she's a white hot looking tall blonde babe. A guarantee you that if it was any non-gora they would have been stopped.
Thankfully they were only publicity seekers and the PMO should make a stink about this to the SS as his life is constantly under danger by Islamic terrorists.
Secret service agents are trained to refuse entry to people making excuses to gain entry, so its not possible that these people made up some excuse to gain entry. Also, the white house gets over 1000 visitors every day, so these agents are also used to dealing with crowds and its not possible that they simply lost track of these people in the crowd.Acharya wrote:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=9 ... 877&page=4Mort Walker wrote:The only explanation as to why they got in is that she's a white hot looking tall blonde babe. A guarantee you that if it was any non-gora they would have been stopped.
Thankfully they were only publicity seekers and the PMO should make a stink about this to the SS as his life is constantly under danger by Islamic terrorists.
It is not that simple. Such power brokers are used by many lobby groups to get access to officials in DC. This lady has been to India and you can check it out in the album.
Somebody in the Indian lobby decided to take her help in getting connected.
But other lobby groups may have wanted to reduce the power of influence of this couple and they really made sure of that. The other way to make sure that any country is isolated in DC is make sure that their reps do not get access to any lobby group and connection to the key people in the administration.
Just as a FYI, this news paper is not even a regional one in Chicago. It has some following within the city limits perhaps.
The author responding to some angry comments putting him in place:NRao wrote:Just as a FYI, this news paper is not even a regional one in Chicago. It has some following within the city limits perhaps.
Michael Hughes says:
Ni-
I wasn't outright suggesting that, sorry if my point came across the wrong way. I was saying that some that have a surface level understanding would think that its easy. It is probably an issue that might not be able to be settled at all. I think I tried to write a balanced peace - quoting the newsweek article which seems friendly to India, for example.
Neshant wrote:what is the guy talking about
----
US offers Pakistan expanded partnership: report
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091130/w ... _diplomacy
Neshant wrote:what is the guy talking about
----
US offers Pakistan expanded partnership: report
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091130/w ... _diplomacy
The article is also reproduced by the Philadelphia Inquirer:U.S. offers new role for Pakistan
A BROADER PARTNERSHIP
Importance of country to Afghan effort recognized
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 30, 2009
President Obama has offered Pakistan an expanded strategic partnership, including additional military and economic cooperation, while warning with unusual bluntness that its use of insurgent groups to pursue policy goals "cannot continue."
The offer, including an effort to help reduce tensions between Pakistan and India, was contained in a two-page letter delivered to President Asif Ali Zardari this month by Obama national security adviser James L. Jones. It was accompanied by assurances from Jones that the United States will increase its military and civilian efforts in Afghanistan and that it plans no early withdrawal. …………………….
Proffered U.S. carrots, outlined during Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's October visit to Islamabad, center on a far more comprehensive and long-term bilateral relationship. It would feature enhanced development and trade assistance; improved intelligence collaboration and a more secure and upgraded military equipment pipeline; more public praise and less public criticism of Pakistan; and an initiative to build greater regional cooperation among Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.
Obama called for closer collaboration against all extremist groups, and his letter named five: al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Pakistani Taliban organization known as Tehrik-e-Taliban. Using vague diplomatic language, he said that ambiguity in Pakistan's relationship with any of them could no longer be ignored.
Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, was more precise in conversations with top Pakistani government and military leaders, U.S. and foreign officials said, stating that certain things have to happen in Pakistan to ensure Afghanistan's security. If Pakistan cannot deliver, he warned, the United States may be impelled to use any means at its disposal to rout insurgents based along Pakistan's western and southern borders with Afghanistan. ………………….
That would have been a welcome comment"The US believes that bilateral relations between Pakistan and India will be determined by the two countries, and not by us or any outside interest or any other country,"
PTI via DNA
but for the fact that it does not square with the commitment reported by Washington Post that US President Barack Obama has made to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s President Asif Zardari that the US would make “an effort to help reduce tensions between Pakistan and India” (See here).