India-US Strategic News and Discussion

[svinayak]

live audience in grilling politicians about India and US

[AKalam]

Not sure how relevant this info is, but Rupert Murdoch's current wife is Chinese:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendi_Deng

[shukla]

Obama's India Visit: More hype less substance?

CNBC-TV18's Karan Thapar sat down with with the foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao to discuss whether the visit really deserves the kind of adulation it has received and the road ahead for the two super powers.



Excerpt from the conversation.

Q: The press and the public are convinced that the Obama visit was a great success, what is your government’s considered view?
A: I would share that opinion entirely. The visit of President Obama to India was I believe a great success. It is a reflection of the state of relations between India and the United States today, two of the world’s largest, biggest, most successfully functioning democracies. We have a global strategic partnership with the United States and when President Obama came to India and addressed our audiences here and reached out to the Indian people if I may say because that was very evident in his meetings with the youth particularly in Mumbai and also in his address to our parliament, he spoke of this defining nature of the partnership between India and United States today. This is a partnership that is devoted to innovation, to development and indeed it is a strategic partnership.

Q: For many people, the key point was the President’s commitment to support India’s candidature to a permanent seat in the security council but given that this is neither imminent nor is it going to be easily achieved, how significant a commitment was this?
A: I think it was a political statement, it was a statement with symbolism, it was a statement with substance. What the United States was conveying to the people of India and indeed to the world when President Obama spoke in out in support of our candidature was that firstly that the United States is prepared to contemplate a moderate expansion of the security council and secondly that it sees a role for India, the participation, the inclusion of India in an expanded security council.

Q: You said this was a substantial statement but The Hindu has pointed out that there was a marked difference in the language President Obama used when he supported India’s candidature compared to the language America had used earlier for Japan. In Japan’s case, the Americans had said that they unambiguously support a permanent seat for Japan. The Indian language wasn’t quite that unequivocal?
A: There are always nuances in such statements, I don’t deny that but I think what we need to understand and agree on is that there is an underlying subtext, an underlying meaning to what President Obama had to convey to our people when he spoke about our candidature.
Basically what he is saying is that India is a democratic great power, India and the United States share a defining partnership, infact the national security strategy of the United States which was unveiled a few months ago spoke of India, Russia and China as big powers. There is no questioning of India as a rival on the global stage.

Q: The second concern is that the American President hasn’t committed himself to working to achieve that expansion of Security Council, leave aside, expediting it, doesn’t that in a sense dilute the commitment he has made to India’s candidature?
A: I wouldn’t join the doubting Thomases on this. I would like to say and I speak here as a practitioner and I am aware of the ground realities, back in New York, our two permanent missions are closely in touch with each other. Even after President Obama spoke in parliament and made this expression of support, the two permanent representatives have reached out to each other, have exchanged notes, have been speaking of the very positive nature of this development.

Q: So they are working to take this forward?
A: They are working together and let me also add that within the United Nations, from the floor of the general assembly, there is a ground swirl of opinion and support building on the question of expansion of Security Council. So the vast majority of member states in the United Nations support the principle of expansion of the Security Council.

Q: India has unequivocal support from Britain and France, how strong and unequivocal is the support to have from Moscow for your permanent seat in the Security Council?
A: Let me say that Russia has said that it regards us as a deserving and as a strong candidate for inclusion in the permanent membership of a Security Council.

Q: Is that full commitment?
A: Russia and India have a very time tested and a solid relationship, a friendship that goes back over the decades. So the bandwidth of our relations is so strong, enduring and wide ranging that we are very confident that Russia will be supportive of our candidature.

Q: I am going to get that repeated, you are very confident that Russia will support India’s candidature for a permanent seat?
A: I am confident given the very healthy state of India-Russia relations.

Q: You have just come back from Beijing, did you get any favourable expression of support, any shift towards the favourable direction in the Chinese position?
A: I would like to draw reference to the joint statement that was issued in January of 2008 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Beijing and there was this vision of a shared partnership between India and China in the 21st century that was unveiled at that time and there China has stated that it understood India’s aspirations to play a larger role in global affairs including in an expanded security council. That is where the matter stands. Obviously China and India need to discuss this further and one of the signaled developments I would say in recent months and weeks has been China’s readiness to discuss to have consultations with India on UN related matters and including on the expansion of the Security Council.

Q: So the Chinese position is as it was expressed in January 2008, there has been no advance on that since then?
A: Let me put it this way that you have to embed this in the metrics of the India-China relationship and this is a relationship that has grown, that has evolved and that has expanded into a number of areas. I do reference to the fact that multilaterally there is a great deal of cooperation between India and China.

Q: So there is room for movement and change here too?
A: I believe there is room for movement and change, I am not saying it is going to happen immediately, it is going to be a process and that process has tied to the evolution of our dialogue and discussions with China.

(Video links to full Interview) -

http://www.moneycontrol.com/video/curre ... rticle_Vid

[ShivaS]

Not sure how relevant this info is, but Rupert Murdoch's current wife is Chinese:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendi_Deng

You put it in the right place.
Also As person knowing Telugu language I find her last name interesting (read I mean) and suits her life style.

[chetak]

Not sure how relevant this info is, but Rupert Murdoch's current wife is Chinese:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendi_Deng

You put it in the right place.
Also As person knowing Telugu language I find her last name interesting (read I mean) and suits her life style.

Seriously doubt whether rupert has any "deng" left in him.

Old man with young wife is like buying book for others to read.

[joshvajohn]

Obama's support kicks of hectic efforts for India's UNSC bid
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/obama ... id/717252/

[shukla]

Obama's support kicks of hectic efforts for India's UNSC bid
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/obama ... id/717252/

So he did 'mean' it..

[svinayak]

Obama's support kicks of hectic efforts for India's UNSC bid
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/obama ... id/717252/

So he did 'mean' it..

It is the wrong time to 'accept' support from US when it has credibility problem.

[svinayak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyreg ... oga&st=cse


Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul

Dr. Shukla said reaction to the yoga campaign had far exceeded his expectations.

“We started this, really, for our kids,” said Dr. Shukla, a urologist and a second-generation Indian-American. “When our kids go to school and say they are Hindu, nobody says, ‘Oh, yeah, Hindus gave the world yoga.’ They say, ‘What caste are you?’ Or ‘Do you pray to a monkey god?’ Because that’s all Americans know about Hinduism.”

With its tiny budget, the foundation has pressed its campaign largely by generating buzz through letters and Web postings to academic journals and yoga magazines. The September issue of Yoga Journal, which has the largest circulation in the field, alluded to the campaign, if fleetingly, in an article calling yoga’s “true history a mystery.”

The effort has been received most favorably by Indian-American community leaders like Dr. Uma V. Mysorekar, the president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, in Flushing, Queens, which helps groups across the country build temples.

[shyam]

Indian Scientists popular for faking results

New Delhi: A U.S. based consultant found that Indian scientists were more likely to cheat when reporting scientific results than scientists from other countries.

The Journal of Medical Ethics published that out of 50 academic papers related to the life sciences, 17 were withdrew, over the past 10 years. 34 percent of the papers were rejected as there was some kind of fraud or fake information in the papers. The papers had copy findings of other scientists, some papers had faked or made up theories and some were fudged from many findings.

The Society for Scientific Values tracks such cases, which is run by volunteers.

Independent scientists such as Bob O'Hara confirmed the result. He found that Indian scientists' papers were five times more likely to be retracted for fraud than those by scientists of other countries.

Dinesh Abrol, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies in New Delhi said that it was not a new thing and that many of the senior scientists had been involved in such frauds. Earlier this year, leaders of the nation's top science organizations, or academies, had to apologize when a high-level inter-academy report on genetically modified crops was found to contain lifted text.

Indian Scientists are lucky as there are no nationally framed rules for punishing research fraud. But Institutions stand responsible for their own scientists and their actions.

[Christopher Sidor]

Obama's India Visit: More hype less substance?



Excerpt from the conversation.

Q: India has unequivocal support from Britain and France, how strong and unequivocal is the support to have from Moscow for your permanent seat in the Security Council?
A: Let me say that Russia has said that it regards us as a deserving and as a strong candidate for inclusion in the permanent membership of a Security Council.

Q: Is that full commitment?
A: Russia and India have a very time tested and a solid relationship, a friendship that goes back over the decades. So the bandwidth of our relations is so strong, enduring and wide ranging that we are very confident that Russia will be supportive of our candidature.

Q: I am going to get that repeated, you are very confident that Russia will support India’s candidature for a permanent seat?
A: I am confident given the very healthy state of India-Russia relations.

Please do forgive me, this is not a forum of Indo-Russia Relationship, but it does appear to me that the Foreign secretary has said that Russia's backing of our aspiration to the UNSC permanent seat is not unequivocal.

[A_Gupta]

Indian Scientists popular for faking results

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101130/j ... 238575.jsp

New Delhi, Nov. 29: India tops this list relating to scientific research narrowly ahead of America, but don’t start feeling proud yet.

The two countries’ scientists appear to lead all others in perpetrating fraud in scientific papers and having them retracted, a new study of research misconduct suggests.

The study analysed the origins and authors of 788 scientific papers that were listed in PubMed, a database of medical research literature, and retracted between 2000 and 2010. It found that the US had the largest number of retractions but came second to India when the proportion of papers retracted because of fraud was considered. (See chart)

Among the 788 retractions, 197 papers (a proportion of 0.25) were pulled out for fraud. The findings of the study, published earlier this month in the Journal of Medical Ethics, suggest that the fraud sprang from “a deliberate effort to deceive” rather than “naive or inadvertent behaviour”.

India and the US have nearly the same proportion of papers involving outright fraud to the total number of retracted papers, with India’s figure of 0.34 slightly higher than America’s 0.32. China had a lower proportion of papers involving fraud: 0.22.

“The results suggest that fraud is almost as likely in the US as in India, although the US has a strong regulatory system in place to limit misconduct while India has no such mechanisms,” said Nandula Raghuram, a member of independent ethics watchdog Society for Scientific Values, which has investigated several cases of research misconduct.

BTW, the above, IMO, is madrassa arithmetic. What they should be calculating is not what percentage of retracted papers are retracted due to fraud, but rather, what percentage of published papers are retracted due to fraud.

2. How the US is reporting this:
http://healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory. ... cID=646003
U.S. Scientists Commit Most Research Fraud: Study

Falsified papers were more likely to appear in high-profile, influential medical journals as opposed to more obscure ones.

3. Read the abstract here:
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2010/1 ... 0.038125v1

[ShivaS]

so was it fizzle then?

[Christopher Sidor]

Cross posting from the Wikileaks forum.
Indian and US preceptions differ on Taliban

While the entire article is hard to swallow, and I dont have the links to the cables of wikileaks which would support the cause as espoused by the article, some notable points are

....
But the intriguing part is what the US President Barack Obama said, namely, that Wikileaks hasn’t brought anything new to the table. Which means, Washington knew all along since 2004 how the smart Pakistani generals operate — especially the then chief of Pakistan’s ISI by the name Pervez Kayani — and worse still, kept defraying the latter’s ‘expense account.’
....
....
Few will recollect that the first time the US conceded Pakistan’s special interests in Afghanistan was after a visit by the then US secretary of state Colin Powell to Islamabad in mid-October 2001. (also refer to the recent american statement, which was signed by Obama, that acknowledged chinas role in south aisa.)
....
....
How do these various strands add up? One, the US is not quite the bumbling superpower at the mercy of the Pakistani generals, as the Indian strategic community estimates. Plainly put, this has been a symbiotic relationship. Two, the US never shared the Indians’ one-dimensional view of the Taliban as representing the forces of darkness.
....
....
Three, the US is not terrified of the Taliban. On the contrary, the Taliban leaders willingly accepted funding by US oil companies in the past and there is no reason why they — including the Haqqanis — shouldn’t do so again.

As the article had pointed out India should have realized when the, Kunduz airlift happened, what was going to be the end game in Afghanistan. In fact Pakistan's tendencies would have got reinforced by the kunduz airlift.

Another factor which India did not take into consideration, was that Taliban was a pariah in US because of the troubles which Bill Clinton was going through due to Monicagate scandal and the blue dress. He badly needed the women votes, which would shore him up. And one of the cost of the women vote was Taliban's isolation. After all Clinton publicly admitted, on TV, that he lied. 9/11 happened, very early in Bush Jrs term. Otherwise Taliban would have been accommodated. There are other regimes in West Asia which are American allies, whose conduct is as bad as was Taliban's.

While having cordial and deep relationship with America are necessary for India. India should not have scarified its options w.r.t to Afghanistan and Iran on the altar of the Indo-US relationship. The current America's mission in Afghanistan is an American mess, and we should not dirty ourselves with the sludge from this mission. But the problem is that we are too closely identified with the yanks in Afghanistan, which is not a good thing for India.

This again brings out the basic contradiction in Indo-US relationships. Our viewpoints and interests are not aligned with the Americans. They never were and never will be. We might agree on a few points, like China threat, but in most of the other cases, we have different priorities.

[Raja Ram]

ShivaS
Your posting style reminds me of spinster, urf Umrao Jaan, urf John Snow. Same person?

[putnanja]

India’s ‘best friend’ Solarz dead

Former US lawmaker Stephen J. Solarz, who spoke in favour of India at a congressional hearing within days of the Pokhran-II, and was instrumental in setting up of the South Asia bureau in the Department of State died yesterday.

Stephen was 70. He had esophageal cancer.

He was one of the leading foreign policy experts in the House of Representatives during nine terms starting in 1975 and known as the best friend of India in the Congress.
..
...

[vera_k]

Noted scholar dies in US

Did his book spark off the army census?

[ShivaS]

He was from NJ and a good friend of H1Bs especially

[Philip]

Pipelineistan!

How could Russia, China, and Iran not interpret the war in Kosovo, then the invasion of Afghanistan (where Washington had previously tried to pair with the Taliban and encourage the building of another of those avoid-Iran, avoid-Russia pipelines), followed by the invasion of Iraq (that country of vast oil reserves), and finally the recent clash in Georgia (that crucial energy transportation junction) as straightforward wars for Pipelineistan? Though seldom imagined this way in our mainstream media, the Russian and Chinese leaderships saw a stark "continuity" of policy stretching from Bill Clinton's humanitarian imperialism to Bush's Global War on Terror. Blowback, as then Russian President Vladimir Putin himself warned publicly, was inevitable -- but that's another magic-carpet story, another cave to enter another time.

In Central Asia, some of the biggest stakes revolve around the monster Kashagan oil field in "snow leopard" Kazakhstan, the absolute jewel in the Caspian crown with reserves of as many as 9 billion barrels. As usual in Pipelineistan, it all comes down to which routes will deliver Kashagan's oil to the world after production starts in 2013. This spells, of course, Liquid War. Wily Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev would like to use the Russian-controlled Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) to pump Kashagan crude to the Black Sea.

In this case, the Kazakhs hold all the cards. How oil will flow from Kashagan will decide whether the BTC -- once hyped by Washington as the ultimate Western escape route from dependence on Persian Gulf oil -- lives or dies.......

Welcome, then, to Pipelineistan! Whether we like it or not, in good times and bad, it's a reasonable bet that we're all going to be Pipeline tourists. So, go with the flow. Learn the crucial acronyms, keep an eye out for what happens to all those U.S. bases across the oil heartlands of the planet, watch where the pipelines are being built, and do your best to keep tabs on the next set of monster Chinese energy deals and fabulous coups by Russia's Gazprom

Look,the common mistake being made over and over again is to view the war in Afghanistan as revenge for 9/11.Like Iraq,where the true intent was to steal Iraq's oil,in Afghanistan the real prize is control of the country to bring out Central Asian oil from the Caspian Sea ($150 billion already invested by the US in the giant Kashagan platform) through Afghanistan to Pak and the Arabian Sea.This will make the US/West less dependent upon Gulf/ME oil.Years ago the Taliban went to Texas to discuss a deal with Unocal which failed.The attempt is still being tried which is why the hilarious attempts to strike a deal with the Afghan Taliban are going on behind the scenes.Pak will benfit emormously from it.Catching Osama is a red herring.It's oil that "greases" the war.

It is also why the US in the Wiki exposes are cock-sure that the Iran-Pak-India oil pipeline will never be built.The US will sabotage every effort for it to be built.China will try as hard as poss. to see that a Sino-Pak-Iran pipeline can be built,but even here the US might be able to sabotage the plan.The only hope for India is a direct Indo-Iranian undersea pipeline forgettiong about Pak altogether.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=in

The U.S. government promoted the Afghan pipeline in the 1990s as an alternative to shipping Caspian oil through Iran to the Gulf. Despite increasing contacts between U.S. and Iranian officials since September 11, Washington has continued to brush aside calls for an Iran pipeline. But if U.S.-Iran relations warmed to the extent that Washington dropped its opposition to a transit route across Iran, the Afghan pipeline proposal would likely be one of the first casualties, analysts say.

Upstream, the Norwegian oil-and-gas publication, reported in late December that Gazprom of Russia was trying to revive the plan for a gas pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. "The problem is Gazprom doesn't have the money," says Julia Nanay of the Petroleum Finance Company, an energy consulting group. "They need partners with deep pockets."

American officials still believe a Western-backed pipeline across Afghanistan makes sense in the long run. "The pipeline is one of those things out there in the future," argues a State Department official, who estimates that Afghanistan could earn $100 million-150 million a year in transit fees. "Something could happen in the next 10-15 years . . . once there's a stable government in Afghanistan, the business environment in India is more conducive and relations between India and Pakistan are more stable

Here is a link for the same.Notice some very familiar names of those at the heart of the covert plan!

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=in

Unocal and the Afghanistan pipeline
by Larry Chin

Unocal's Central Asia envoys consisted of former US defense and intelligence officials. Robert Oakley, the former US ambassador to Pakistan, was a "counter-terrorism" specialist for the Reagan administration who armed and trained the mujahadeen during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s. He was an Iran-Contra conspirator charged by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh as a key figure involved in arms shipments to Iran.

Richard Armitage, the current Deputy Defense Secretary, was another Iran-Contra player in Unocal's employ. A former Navy SEAL, covert operative in Laos, director with the Carlyle Group, Armitage is allegedly deeply linked to terrorist and criminal networks in the Middle East, and the new independent states of the former Soviet Union (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrghistan).

Armitage was no stranger to pipelines. As a member of the Burma/Myanmar Forum, a group that received major funding from Unocal, Armitage was implicated in a lawsuit filed by Burmese villagers who suffered human rights abuses during the construction of a Unocal pipeline. (Halliburton, under Dick Cheney, performed contract work on the same Burmese project.)

Later, Unocal's consortium, CentGas, would secure another contract for a companion 1,050-mile oil pipeline from Dauletabad through Afghanistan that would connect to a tanker loading port in Pakistan on the coast of the Arabian Sea.

Although Unocal had agreements with the governments on either end of the proposed route, Bridas still had the contract with Afghanistan.

The problem was resolved via the CIA and Pakistani ISI-backed Taliban. Following a visit to Kandahar by US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robin Raphael in the fall of 1996, the Taliban entered Kabul and sent the Rabbani government packing.

[arun]

Nothing new. The US yet again, as in the past under various pretexts like evidence destroyed in testing etc., attempting to assist the Islamic Republic of Pakistan in covering up their involvement in Islamic terrorism targeting India:

US defended Pak, shielded ISI chief after 26/11 strikes?

The Cable sent by US Ambassador Anne Patterson is available here:

US embassy cables: PRESERVING INFORMATION SHARING

[Lalmohan]

if you look at munna through the prism of oil security from the arabian and CAR regions, then unkil's desire to prop up the munna at all costs becomes more apparent
ironically, if iran did not have the revolution, the role of munna would be much reduced...

[dinesha]

From State Department Daily Briefing..
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/12/152291.htm

QUESTION: Secretary Gates, during his press conference on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” said that the U.S. is an indispensible country and other nations work with us on three – for – because of three reasons: out of fear, out of respect, and out of need. Where will you place India and Pakistan in these?

MR. CROWLEY: We are building strategic relationships with both countries because they are important not just to our interests, but most importantly they’re – as you chart the future course of developments in the world, Pakistan and India will have an impact on those developments.

QUESTION: Let us see if we can follow up on that. Can you rate every country in the world along those lines?

MR. CROWLEY: I’ll get right on that, Matt.

QUESTION: Thank you. (Laughter.) I do have --

[CRamS]

I must admit, I only skimmed through this op-ed by Roemer. Is the signal to noise ratio at least as high as 0 dB or is it way negative to warrant its dismissal as used car salemsman hot air?

[ShivaS]

It is not in the interest of TSP, PRC and Russia if ther is a reproachment betwen Unkil and Ayotollahs

[Lalmohan]

ayatollahs will be replaced by another middle class soft revolution within a decade, that new iran will be quite a dynamic and interesting country - and one with whom unkil might want to do business

[SwamyG]

India diplomat gets 'humiliating' pat-down at Mississippi airport

Meera Shankar, Indian ambassador to the United States, was in Jackson last weekend as a guest of the Janos Radvanyi Chair in International Security Studies at Mississippi State University.

While in town, Shankar met with Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, representatives from the Mississippi Development Authority and members of the Indian community in Jackson, and she spoke to more than 100 people at the Executive Lecture Forum of Jackson.

But her departure is what has many concerned.

New TSA regulations went into effect Nov. 1 allowing federal security officers at airports to switch to more thorough — but often controversial — "pat-downs" for passengers who require hand searches.

Shankar presented her diplomatic papers to officers and was escorted by an MDA representative and an airport security officer, but witnesses said she was subjected to the hands-on search.

"The way they pat them down — it was so humiliating," said Tan Tsai, a research associate at MSU's International Security Studies center who witnessed the screening. "Anybody who passed by could see it."

[Singha]

Under the new guidelines, most who receive the full pat-downs are those who set off metal detectors or decline to use body scanners. Jackson Evers does not have body scanners yet because additional infrastructure is needed.

Shankar did not set off the metal detector, according to witnesses.

The guidelines also allow searches to be conducted in private if a passenger requests. Witnesses said Shankar asked for a private screening, but she was led to a clear box where two officers searched her in clear view.

"She is a very strong woman, but you could see in her face that she was humiliated," Tsai said. "The Indian culture is very modest."

[abhishek_sharma]

We should probably return the favor.

[vera_k]

We should probably return the favor.

If only Indian procedures were as egalitarian. But the brouhaha over this incident seems to derive more from the dislike ordinary Americans have for the new TSA screening methods.

[Singha]

Brazil (under ex presi Lula) imo is the onlee country that made life tough for americans in exchange for americans trying to act smart on brazil wrt visa etc. Americans have to obtain a visa to visit brazil and I hear its not been made easy to get one quite a comedown for a tribe used to flashing their eagle passport and gaining instant entry.

[Pratyush]

Unacceptable that an Indian Diplomatic passport holder is subjected to this kind of action. The lady is an accrideted ambassador to the US.

If the GOI had any spine it would have reclalled the ambassador for discussions immediately. But asking and expecting this from the present lot is foolish.

[ShivaS]

Boss log we deserve because we serve unkils interests,may the Pat was appreciative of her speech?

[vera_k]

I don't see what option there is but to comply with TSA if the ambassador has to live in USA. Is there such a thing as an ambassador who lives offshore? Maybe ambassador can hand over charge to Modiji so both governments get up to speed on latest outsourcing practices.

[Pratyush]

The Ambassador has diplomatic immunity and by that right she can be exempted from these checks.

[Philip]

Meera should file a "molestation" charge against the officer! The next time Hillary comes-a-visiting....but then she isn't worth "putting a feel" machan!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -down.html

But a Transportation Security Administration spokesman said diplomats are not exempt from the searches and that Ms Shankar, who was wearing a sari at the time, "was screened in accordance with TSA's security policies and procedures."

If these are the US own rules for "diplomats",then the next time the US ambassador arrives in India we can also give him,in the VIP lounge of course,a nether end "orifice" search

[MChandraSekhar]

I don't see what option there is but to comply with TSA if the ambassador has to live in USA. Is there such a thing as an ambassador who lives offshore? Maybe ambassador can hand over charge to Modiji so both governments get up to speed on latest outsourcing practices.

Now, screening is an euphemism here, its more like a groping actually, which was done in a see-through box, a movie for others present to watch while standing in the line. It was not done privately, even after the ambassador requested it. Out of apparently 30 members, she was singled out because she was wearing a saree (which reveals hands, mid-riff) which was seen as bulky garb (in TSA-speak, read as Muslim outfit under which she could have hidden hijacking material to blow the plane), though she hadn't even set off the metal detector.

Anyway, nothing is gonna happen out of this. Shri SM Krishna is saying there are procedures thru which we will lodge a protest. Yeah, right, as if that is going to help. I have seen ridiculous comments from Amrikhans, saying that particular TSA officer deserves Employee of the year, a big raise, because the diplomat could have been a terrorist, plane could have been hijacked, how can a diplomat be treated differently from public etc. Arrogant idiots.

As others have already said, the current government will send a strongly worded letter and sleep on it. What is needed is for us to have our babus direct our pandus to implement such procedures on those specific two-bit state department officials, senators, and other rabid dogs who keep visiting India only to undermine us. Because these TSA junta seem to have institutionalised the behaviour to perpetrate such incidents on high-ranking Indian government officials.

[RajeshA]

Meera should file a "molestation" charge against the officer! The next time Hillary comes-a-visiting....but then she isn't worth "putting a feel" machan!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -down.html

But a Transportation Security Administration spokesman said diplomats are not exempt from the searches and that Ms Shankar, who was wearing a sari at the time, "was screened in accordance with TSA's security policies and procedures."

If these are the US own rules for "diplomats",then the next time the US ambassador arrives in India we can also give him,in the VIP lounge of course,a nether end "orifice" search

He should be strip searched down to his bones, then all his stuff should be confiscated, then all passengers be asked to use their mobile cameras on him, then he should be sent home in a pink frock or Japanese schoolgirl uniform. Then the Indian Govt. should simply say, "barhe, barhe shehron men, aisa kabhi kabhi ho jata han. He should chill out"!

[Philip]

Well said MC reg. the TSA bum-chum of the TSP!
Even the western press are remarking and noting how the TSA is yet again through itsv perverts masquerading as airport security officials,"fingering" well-known Indians when they transit the US.If the US can demand that Assange be arrested according to US law,then so should the offending American pervert be deported to India to face trial for molestation of our envoy.However,the govt. of eunuchs have the world's most soft-spoken FM whose diplomatic virility matches that of his illustrious PM on security.

US Airport security “humiliates” yet another famous Indian
By Guy Adams
The Foreign Desk

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2010/12/ ... us-indian/

As any visitor to these shores will almost certainly know, there are few institutions which provide a worse advertisement for America and its values than the shouty ladies and gentlemen who staff the local airport security facilities.

Not content with frisking old ladies and creating the kind of queues once seen outside bakeries in Soviet-era Moscow, the TSA (as the stable-door-shutting agency in charge of protecting the skies is called), has now sparked a diplomatic dispute between the US and the world’s largest democracy.

Meera Shankar, the Indian ambassador (pictured here with President Obama), made the mistake of visiting the Deep South last week, to address students of the University of Mississippi’s International Studies programme.

On her way home, she wore a Sari. Big mistake. To the cosmopolitan folk manning the security queue at Jackson airport (whose geographical, political and historical awareness appears to mirror that of Sarah Palin), the traditional Indian outfit apparently looked like Muslim garb. So she was identified as a potential terrorist and singled out for what is known in the trade as “additional screening.” You can read local news accounts of the incident here.

Result: one highly-offended ambassador, who – while officially declining to comment on the affair – has vowed to never again venture back to the KKK’s favourite State. Being groped, in plain view of fellow travellers, was “humiliating,” it seems.

“This stupid incident ruined the whole [visit],” her host Janos Radvanyi, chair of the local university’s international studies department, told reporters. “She said, ‘I will never come back here. We are sending her a letter of apology.”

Ambassador Shankar isn’t the only eminent Indian to fall foul of the regrettable tendency of US airport security staff to presume that all people of Asian appearance are likely terrorists.

Last year, Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, one of the most famous men on the planet, was given a thorough going-over at Newark airport, leading him to accuse staff of “racial profiling,” telling fans he too felt “angry and humiliated.”

[Gus]

Brazil also photographs and fingerprints all American visitors. Not sure if they are still doing it.

[Venkarl]

"I am rather surprised by the way the Indian ambassador to the US has been treated. This has happened for a second time in three months{when??}," External Affairs Minister SM Krishna told reporters in New Delhi.

"Let me be frank, this is unacceptable to India. We are going to take it up with the government of US that such unpleasant incidents do not recur," said Krishna.

He added that there were "certain well-established conventions, well-established practices, as to how members of the diplomatic corps are treated in a given country".

woww..Krishnaji...don't you know that talking overboard will attract a warning from PMO? so cool down....kuch nahi ukhaada jaayega..we know all this is a "Show of a non-existent spine"

I feel sorry for Meeraji..