NEWS Obama addresses House GOP retreat January 29, 2010 12:08 p.m. EST
Washington (CNN) — Partisan passions are set to take center stage Friday as President Obama meets with House Republicans vehemently opposed to the White House agenda.
Obama will huddle with the GOP caucus as it holds its annual retreat in Baltimore, Maryland. The president accepted an invitation from House GOP leaders to address their caucus.
At issue is whether it is possible for the Democratic president and increasingly conservative House Republicans to find a middle ground on a growing number of sharply divisive issues.
Political leaders on both sides of the aisle also are struggling to bridge a trust gap. Democrats have pointed to near-uniform GOP opposition to most administration initiatives as evidence that Republicans are pursuing a strategy of total obstruction to maximize gains in the upcoming midterm elections.
Democrats‘ tenuous ability to pass legislation on a strict party-line basis was undermined by last week’s special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts.
GOP state Sen. Scott Brown’s upset victory stripped Democrats of their 60-seat Senate “supermajority” and gave Republicans the ability to block votes on most bills.
Obama acknowledged the changed political climate in Wednesday’s State of the Union address when he told Republicans they now share in the responsibility of governing.
“If the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town … then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well,” he said.
“Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions. So let’s show the American people that we can do it together.”
Obama appeared to extend an olive branch to Republicans during the speech, announcing his intention to begin monthly meetings with both Democratic and GOP leaders.
“I know you can’t wait,” he said to laughter.
The health care overhaul and debate over a jobs bill promise to be among the top issues at Friday’s GOP retreat.
In his speech Wednesday, Obama challenged Republicans to come up with an alternative to his struggling health care plan. Republicans have said such challenges are disingenuous, pointing to a proposal that House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, unveiled in November.
Boehner’s proposal is less ambitious in scope than most Democratic plans. It costs much less and would extend coverage to far fewer uninsured Americans.
Is it just me or is this month going stupidly slow?
Christmas seems like ages ago, even my mam’s birthday seems like ages ago and that was only on monday! I’m back into my usual routine of hating and avoiding uni work and an inconsistent love/hate relationship with work. I seem to be changing my mind on a lot of things recently, but hopefully for the better. I’m coming to solid conclusions and actually making decisions rather than leaving everything to the old ‘it’ll happen if it should’ attitude which meant nothing was ever happening.
I’m sure you all know by now that I finally got my tattoo I’ve blogged so often about – and I’ve opened up a bet: anyone who can come up with an original joke and actually make me laugh/offend me wins a mahoosive £10 from yours truly. So far the moolah remains firmly mine. I do love my tattoo though, you may think its silly but it means so much to me on so many different levels, its a marker of the past, an affirmation of my opinions on certain matters and my mantra on how to move forward in the future. Also, if ever I’m feeling down it’s there to remind me to keep going, to live for the now and not the then, be that past ‘then’s or ‘then’s to come.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do with my life after uni, I don’t think I’ll ever really know what I want to be doing with my life, I’ll just end up doing whatever I fall into first, however the immediate time after graduation is starting to make some progress. Rather than the fullblown road trip me and Elizabeth were planning we’re now considering a simple pre-booked, pre-determined, pre-paid and pre-planned holiday. Probably going to be in Florida so we can rock up in Disney and Universal, which would be great because we’re both rollercoaster junkies. I’d love to go somewhere I’ve never been though so maybe we can manage to squeeze a weekend in NY on the end of the trip, we’ll have to look at prices and see what we can afford. As of right now I could probably afford the 2 weeks in FL, with tickets and shite….but not food or anything spending moolah… but I have plenty time to save some more.
I’m going to try my damnedest to make this the best year of my life so far, I’m going to have fun, make the little things count, live for the moment, not be afraid to try, smile and make as many friends as I can along the way. Hopefully I’ll manage to blog a lot more of what I’m doing rather than blogs about uni and shiz like that. Fancy coming along for the ride?
In the previous post I enumerated the promises of Barack Obama campaign promises. Bill Adair (Pulitzer Prize) published the Obama program that included 510 promises. Promises being executed are 240 promises, 86 promises were kept, 26 were compromised, and 62 were blocked by the oppositions.
How to amplify reforms: The modified universal health plan added 30 million more citizens to health coverage that should kick in 2013. Between now and then, the Administration has to pay close attention to the lobbying schemes for altering the plan, lightening bureaucratic inertia, and keeping the public convinced that the current program is but a stepping stone for the ultimate coverage of the remaining 20 million most needy citizens.
How to consolidate successes: There is a serious risk that the economy might falter again as what happened in 1930. The list of fragile sectors is long: Real Estates (private and commercial), too fast climbing in stock exchange trading, international trade crisis, and slow consumer confidence. Regaining optimism is more valuable than any grandiose public plans for re-launching economic development. Obama has to make sure that money will be available for job creation but no more extra expenses: the public deficit needs to get under control.
How to rectify faltering reforms: Regulating financial institutions should be the next priority. It is the public anger against the highway robbers in the financial circles that should be re-directed into more focused pressures on particular targets: Banks and financial multinationals are regaining overwhelming power. Otherwise, people will have to wait for the next financial crash to offer another opportunity for Obama to enact stricter regulations.
How to rebound in Foreign policies: Obama has to break with Washington provincial attitudes toward foreign policies. For a century, the US Administrations thought that it was imperative to secure internal consensus on foreign problem resolutions before taking serious decisions. It should be evident that securing internal consensus is an exhausting process and time consuming for urgent decisions; courageous long-term interest should be factored in the equation. Consequently, Obama has to retake the Israel/Palestine file as a Presidential personal will and thus take all the necessary initiatives to bringing an atmosphere of serious negotiation. For that, diplomatic initiatives toward Iran must be activated on first gear.
NEWS Poll: Half say start anew on health care bill January 26, 2010 6:06 p.m. EST
Washington (CNN) — Only three in ten Americans say they want Congress to pass legislation similar to the health care reform bills that have already been approved by the House and Senate, according to a new national poll.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey also indicates that nearly half the public, 48 percent, would like federal lawmakers to start work on an entirely new bill, and 21 percent feel Congress should stop working an any bills that would change the country’s health care system.
The survey’s Tuesday release comes one week after Republican Scott Brown’s victory in a special senate election in Massachusetts. The GOP win means once Brown is sworn in as a senator, the Democrats will lose their 60-seat super-majority in the chamber, making their chances of passing the current health care reform legislation extremely difficult.
“Opposition to health care legislation is highest among senior citizens,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Twenty-nine percent of people over 65 want Congress to stop working on health care completely, compared to 20 percent of people under the age of 50.”
According to the poll, Americans are equally divided on whether Congress will pass a health care bill by the end of the year.
Read the poll results (PDF)
Fifty-eight percent of people questioned in the survey oppose the bills previously passed by the House and Senate, with 38 percent supporting that legislation.
Would a stripped-down version win more support from the public?
“Yes, but a majority would still oppose a bill that would increase regulations on health insurance companies but not increase the number of Americans with health coverage,” Holland said. “Support for a bill that only deals with insurance companies rises to 47 percent, but 51 percent would oppose a bill like that.”
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted January 22-24, with 1,009 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report
KABUL—One of the three main leaders of the Afghan insurgency, mercurial warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has a long history of switching sides, and once fought against his current Taliban allies.
Now, he has held out the possibility of negotiating with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and outlined a roadmap for political reconciliation, opening what could be the most promising avenue for Mr. Karzai’s effort to peacefully resolve the conflict.
It is far from certain that any talks with Mr. Hekmatyar will begin, let alone succeed. But in contrast to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and allied insurgent chief Sirajuddin Haqqani, who refuse any talks with Kabul as long as foreign troops remain in the country, Mr. Hekmatyar took a much more conciliatory line in a recent video.
“We have no agreement with the Taliban—not for fighting the war, and not for the peace,” said Mr. Hekmatyar, who commands the loyalty of thousands of insurgents. “The only thing that unites the Taliban and [us] is the war against the foreigners.”
Unlike in previous videos, where Mr. Hekmatyar used a Kalashnikov rifle as a prop and expressed support for al Qaeda, in the latest tape, recorded in late December and provided to The Wall Street Journal by his aides in Pakistan, he assumed a professorial tone, wearing glasses and a black turban as he spoke in a quiet, soft voice.
Mr. Hekmatyar, who is 59 years old and lived in exile in Iran when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, built his movement over the last three years into a formidable force. His men dominate the insurgency in several eastern and central Afghan provinces, such as Kunar, Laghman and Kapisa, according to American intelligence estimates.
At the same time, a legal wing of Hizb-e-Islami, an Islamist party that Mr. Hekmatyar founded in the 1970s, participates in the Afghan parliament, with 19 of 246 seats. One of its leaders is minister of the economy in Mr. Karzai’s new cabinet. Though the legal Hizb-e-Islami denies formal links with Mr. Hekmatyar, many of its senior members are believed to maintain communications with the grizzled warlord, and openly support the idea of bringing him into the government.
Mr. Hekmatyar’s “reported willingness to reconcile with the Afghan government” has already become a key factor working against the militancy because it “causes concern that others may follow,” the U.S.-led international forces’ intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, noted in a recent presentation. In addition to subtracting fighters from the battlefield, such a reconciliation would boost the legitimacy of the Kabul government.
Currently, fighters of the three main groups—Mullah Omar’s Taliban in the south, where the bulk of combat takes place, the Haqqani network in the southeast, and Mr. Hekmatyar’s men in its strongholds—cooperate with each other, at least on the tactical level, American intelligence officials say.
But, while Mr. Haqqani made a formal oath of allegiance to Mullah Omar, recognizing him as his overall leader, Mr. Hekmatyar repeatedly refused to make such a pledge. In the tape, he said he spent “a couple of months” with Mullah Omar and al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri in 2002, but insisted that he “had no direct or indirect contact with them since then.”
He also said that the main reason he’s fighting American forces is because the U.S. allied itself with his bitter Afghan enemies after the Taliban’s downfall in 2001.
“It’s just a convenience for Hekmatyar to be with the Taliban,” says Marc Sageman, a terrorism expert who, as a Central Intelligence Agency officer in Pakistan, worked with Afghan insurgent leaders in the late 1980s. “Hekmatyar’s main goal is Hekmatyar. He’ll do anything that will help him out—it all depends on the deal he’s going to get.”
In the tape, Mr. Hekmatyar outlined his political program, calling for elections under a neutral caretaker government once U.S.-led forces withdraw, predicting that Hezb-i-Islami will win 70% of the votes, and saying that he would accept an impartial international peacekeeping force. While the Taliban brand Mr. Karzai a traitor, Mr. Hekmatyar promised to support the Afghan president should he stop being subservient to his American backers.
“Negotiations with the Afghan government will not be fruitful unless the foreigners give the Afghan government the authority to start negotiations independently—but unfortunately it has not been given this authority yet,” Mr. Hekmatyar said in the tape.
Similar overtures by Mr. Hekmatyar in recent months failed to produce any breakthrough. And, while some Afghan and American officials have already explored indirect contacts with Mr. Hekmatyar, the U.S. government so far refuses to make a meaningful distinction between him and the two other man insurgent chiefs.
“Each one has a different origin and orientation,” says Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. “But all work together and are linked to al Qaeda.”
A Pashtun former engineering student from the northern Kunduz province, Mr. Hekmatyar started out in politics as a pro-Soviet Communist. He embraced pan-Islamist ideology in the 1970s, and famously refused to meet President Ronald Reagan even as the U.S. was pumping millions of dollars into his guerrilla movement through the Pakistani intelligence in the 1980s.
After the pro-Soviet regime collapsed in 1992, Mr. Hekmatyar reduced large parts of Kabul to rubble as he fought rival mujahedeen commanders for control of the capital, and briefly served as the nation’s prime minister. Once Pakistan switched its support to the nascent Taliban movement in the mid-1990s, Mr. Hekmatyar was chased out by the Taliban, and had to seek refuge in Iran.
After the U.S. overthrew the Taliban in 2001, it excluded the warlord—who was seen as a spent force—from the new Kabul government. In the following months, as an embittered Mr. Hekmatyar started voicing support for the Taliban and al Qaeda, he was expelled by Iran, and was nearly killed by a U.S. airstrike. In 2003, Mr. Hekmatyar was designated a terrorist by the U.S. and put on the United Nations blacklist alongside Mullah Omar and Mr. bin Laden.
These days, some American officials say, Mr. Hekmatyar has managed to rebuild his fortunes in part because of help from elements of the powerful Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. Mr. Hekmatyar’s movement uses the area around the Pakistani city of Peshawar, with its teeming Afghan refugee camps, as its logistics hub. His daughter and son-in-law reside in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Pakistan denies it is giving any aid to the Taliban or its insurgent allies.
“Hekmatyar could be turned if the ISI wanted him to be turned,” says Bruce Riedel, a Brooking Institution scholar and former senior CIA officer who oversaw President Barack Obama’s Afghanistan and Pakistan policy review last year. “He is too closely tied to them to operate for us without their okay.” ASIA NEWS JANUARY 21, 2010 Afghan Insurgent Outlines Peace Plan. By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
While leisurely browsing the FT on Friday it is possible that you may of come across the co-location of two articles that, although directly applicable one another, contained no mutual consideration. These articles, considering respectively President Obama’s bite into banks (see article) and the US Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday to lift spending limits of corporations during campaigns (see article), cry out from the page to a major implication that is seemingly not consider elsewhere.
“It’s payback time for Wall Street” the initial article begins, but a successful crack down on the banks, which have led discussions in American and the World about the way financial services are conducted for the past 20 years, is at best unlikely.
Goldman Sachs’ declared net profits in 2009 of $13.4 billion, alongside bonus packages of $16 billion, dwarfing the 2006 Midterm election spending. Suggesting that the ruling will “make it much harder to get… …common-sense financial reforms” Obama has clearly become master of understatement. Today the crackdown has not only to face the already strong Wall Street lobbyists in Washington, alongside Republicans who want to see Obama unable to progress on key election promises, but will confront a record spend on election campaigning by corporates that may not be matched for many decades to come.
John Gapper, of the FT (01/22/10), writes that: “Banks, which are good at making financial bets, have been bad at making political ones”
The statement that banks have been good at making financial decisions does not stand out as the most apparent truth, but the idea that banks are not politically adept is, frankly, naive. The next step for Obama to take is far from clear, but for success in both his financial and healthcare reforms the decision of the Supreme Court needs to be mitigated. Obama may be keeping his characteristic cool for now but lets see what happens as we get closer to November.
Circa deci dies por li tremore de terre in Haiti secun opinion del General secretario del UN, Ban, li auxilie por li superviventes successe plu e plu bon.
Sur avanplan sta nu li furnition del homes e li re-construction, dit li General secretario del UN.
Li nov commissionat por extern afferes, sra Ashton, viageat ad-in li USA por interparoles pri li situation in Haiti. Li ministra pri extern afferes del USA, Clinton, dit pos li incontra, que li USA vole infortiar lor auxilie. Li mult persones sin hem besona asyles, nutriment e pur aqua.
Something weird is happening to labour markets in the rich world. The link between depth of recession and rise in unemployment is broken. And for the first time in a generation, Europeans can bask in the knowledge that their unemployment would have to rise in order to approach US levels.
In some countries – the US stands out – the decline in output has not been so terrible but the employment shake-out has been brutal. Many more American jobs have been lost than in other countries – and many more than in the past.
In large northern European economies – Germany, the UK and France – the loss of output has been exceptionally nasty and far surpassed expectations, but the loss of jobs has been relatively modest. In countries around Europe’s geographic and economic periphery, meanwhile – Spain and Ireland in particular – the economic crisis has taken its toll on both employment and output.
Around the world, the accepted relationship in economics between employment and output – known as Okun’s Law – does not even appear to be a dependable rule of thumb. Instead, it seems to be an arbitrary relationship. As for the effect of the financial and economic crisis on households and society, collateralised debt obligations are an irrelevance; jobs are everything, as President Barack Obama saw to his cost in Massachusetts this week.
The loss of a breadwinner’s job shocks and angers families; if unemployment persists it can rob individuals of hopes and dreams, add to already growing burdens on taxpayers, limit rises in living standards and transmit its malign influences across regions and generations.
The failings of flexibility
Macroeconomics has learnt the art of eating humble pie. Since the onset of the financial crisis, long-cherished predictions, theories and rules of thumb about the way whole economies work have fallen by the wayside. Is it now the turn of microeconomists to taste some of the same medicine when it comes to the labour market?
For years, it has been the settled view in economics that, in most cases, flexible labour markets are best. More jobs might be lost in a downturn, but this cost was far outweighed by the benefits of flexible pay and the ease of reallocating jobs from dying industries to dynamic ones. No body was more closely aligned with such recommendations than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Paris-based club of developed nations.
But now the OECD is modifying its view. “We have been promoting flexibility, not for the sake of it, but for economic performance and for workers to get into new jobs,” says Stefano Scarpetta, the OECD’s head of employment analysis.
This motivation is allowing a change of view. “Judging from the outcomes so far, short-time working schemes seem to have been rather successful in containing the job haemorrhage,” he says, adding that even his organisation is “a little bit more positive on public works programmes: we argue that as part of a labour market approach, they might be worthwhile”.
While this is not a wholesale repudiation of the OECD’s former views, it reflects the fact that, according to the organisation’s own analysis, the gains in employment flexibility of recent years have failed to protect employees from the economic crisis. “There do not appear to be any clear grounds for concluding that workers, generally, are any better or worse prepared to weather a period of weak labour markets than was the case for the past several recessions,” the OECD concluded in its latest Employment Outlook.
Some top economists argue that the theory of superiority of flexible labour markets applies only at full employment. It will not work well when there has been a large shock to demand, output is well below potential and jobs are effectively rationed. In these circumstances, German-style institutions that cushion and spread the pain are probably superior.
For professor Richard Freeman of Harvard University, the problem is simpler. Microeconomists and policymakers spent much too much time fiddling with the work incentives of poor people. “If the unemployed person or the welfare mother . . . doesn’t do quite as much work as we would like them to do, or as they should, that’s a very small cost to society; when a big banker takes excessive risks, it can bring the whole system to a disaster . . . so we took the eyes off the ball of the really risky part of capitalism.”
So what is going on in global labour markets? The standard and dependable theory is that the US, with its hiring and firing culture, has suffered sharp rises in unemployment but also achieved gains in relative and absolute productivity. That will see it in good stead in the years to come. By contrast, employers in big European countries and Japan have been slow to recognise the seriousness of the recession and have often been more hidebound, both by law and cultural obligations, in addressing it – and so have held on to staff at the expense of plunging labour productivity.
The prediction flowing from this line of thinking is that in the recovery, the US will have much more rapid jobs growth than Europe and will be better positioned globally because it has already endured the pain and, having taken the medicine, can enjoy the recuperation.
There has to be truth in the explanatory part of the theory, since it is a description of the data. The Conference Board, a global business organisation, calculates that output per hour worked rose 2.5 per cent in the US in 2009, while it dropped 1 per cent in the eurozone and 1.9 per cent in the UK. “These are unusually large differences in productivity growth between the US and Europe,” says Bart van Ark, the board’s chief economist. “US employers have reacted much more strongly to the recession than their European counterparts in terms of cutting jobs and hours.”
Europeans are already nervous about what the theory predicts. Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, European Central Bank executive board member, warned last week that “if capacity utilisation remains at low levels, job losses may increase further”.
But there are some big problems with the productivity story, both in explaining the trends in unemployment and in predicting what will happen next. The theory does not really explain why the UK, also with a hiring and firing culture, looks more like Germany and France than the US – in fact, even worse. It does not explain why US employers have shed staff much more readily in this recession than in the past; nor why British and German employers have clung to their labour this time round; nor why employers in Spain and Ireland are rather like those in the US and unlike those in northern Europe.
One issue that cannot be discounted is that the figures on output might simply be wrong. Statisticians around the world have a habit of miscounting gross domestic product, the output of an economy. Intriguingly, the mistakes made in recent years, as painstakingly documented by Kevin Daly at Goldman Sachs, have reflected certain national stereotypes. Between 1999 and 2006, gung-ho American statisticians overestimated the first stab at US annual economic growth by 0.3 percentage points. Their more sober European counterparts underestimated growth by about 0.5 points.
So while the news has persistently implied that the US is a far more dynamic economy than Europe, the later reality is that at least two-thirds of that superior performance was a statistical mirage. If the traditional patterns of revisions are repeated for 2009, the fall in US output will grow, bringing it more in line with the loss of jobs, while the opposite will occur for Europe.
Stefano Scarpetta, head of employment analysis at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, provides a second reason to doubt the simple productivity story. Advanced economies, he argues, have suffered from two quite distinct types of recession. One, characterised by an initial bust in housing construction before a drop in aggregate demand, is true of Ireland, Spain and the US; the other, hitting Germany, Japan, France and the UK, came predominantly via a collapse in consumer and business confidence and trade.
The argument that differing routes to collapse resulted in different impacts on jobs has much going for it. While a Californian housebuilding company knows it will be able to rehire a plasterer when a recovery comes, a Rhineland machine toolmaker cannot have the same confidence it will be able to find someone with the precise skills it needs when demand picks up.
Using this logic, Willem Buiter, chief economist of Citigroup, even dares to envisage a relatively optimistic outlook for the global jobs scene, saying: “The really good news might be that both [the US and Europe] have done the right thing given their institutions and demand.” But he adds that it is far too early to be sure this positive conclusion will survive the coming year.
T he detail of individual labour market stories gives good reason to doubt the strength with which the US labour market will bounce back. It also casts a shadow over some European prospects, particularly in peripheral economies.
The US has experienced the worst recession in terms of jobs for at least a quarter of a century, with the early 1980s as the only recent parallel. Data (for job openings and labour turnover and supply) initially showed unemployment surging, because hiring evaporated at the same time as fewer people left their jobs voluntarily and firing stepped up a little from its naturally high level. More recently, the less rapid rise in unemployment has come as the rate of firing has declined but hiring rates have remained stubbornly low.
The fear has to be that hiring might not return to its former levels and might be weaker than in the 1980s. A perception is emerging that America’s wheels of economic adjustment are not turning as rapidly as normal.
Like Europe in the 1980s, the US unemployed are finding themselves out of work for increasingly long periods. Four in 10 have been unemployed for more than six months and many more have quit the labour market entirely, with the participation rate at its lowest level since 1985. The long-term unemployed, becoming less and less likely to land a job, are thus also less likely to act as a restraint on the working population in seeking inflationary wage increases. That raises the possibility that the sustainable growth rate of the entire US economy could fall.
Part of the reason for the persistence of joblessness and the high numbers of dropouts from the labour market in the US this recession appears to be a decline in the mobility of Americans. The latest census data show a sharp drop in the proportion of Americans moving from one part of the country to another between 2004 and 2008 – perhaps a result of the housing boom-turned-bust that has left so many in negative equity.
“This is a serious long-term issue,” says David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “People who are discouraged may have trouble getting back into the labour market and, when they do, they generally have lower wages and less stable employment.”
Worst placed are the peripheral European economies, particularly Spain. There, companies have been firing the young, ethnic minorities and the low-skilled while hoarding older, more costly labour. The OECD’s Mr Scarpetta calculates that 85 per cent of jobs lost in Spain have been temporary contracts, a figure that rises towards 100 per cent in Italy.
So with a vicious unemployment problem touching 20 per cent of the labour force, Spain also lacks flexibility within companies. The danger is that these countries will lose both employment and productivity in the years ahead.
Big European economies, by contrast, are happy that growth in long-term unemployment is low, that the rise in joblessness has been so limited and that their temporary jobs programmes have received unexpected praise.
Alistair Darling, UK chancellor, told the Financial Times this week that the active role of government has helped, saying: “In the olden days, when you went along to the benefits agency, the discussion was about how much benefit, whereas the discussion now is, ‘how can we get you a job?’ ”
There are, nevertheless, country-specific fears for the future. In Germany, concerns centre on joblessness rising once the government’s Kurzarbeit (short-time working) scheme comes to an end. In the UK, the worry is that unemployment will rise again once the government begins to cut public spending next year. Moreover, the tendency for European companies to hang on to labour at the expense of lower profits may not be sustainable. Nor does it suggest the recovery will be rich in new jobs.
Although northern Europe is feeling pleased with its labour markets right now, the details suggest a need to be cautious about expecting either a US hiring boom or rapid European adjustments to new patterns of demand and employment. Around the world, weirdness in labour markets may turn out to be far from wonderful.
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Being from New York, and being a Yankee fan from birth, I never thought I would appreciate anything that the far left state to my right…but let me give it a try. Thanks to the voters of Massachusetts the Democrats will have to talk to a Republican in order to get their bills past. Now the health care debate can begin.
Congratulations also to Senator Scott Brown and his campaign staff for standing up to the norms of a blue state and running a successful campaign. Now do what you said you would do and do not become a run of the mill politician and let Washington corrupt you.
NEWS Analysis: Brown’s win changes political narrative for 2010 By Mark Preston, CNN Political Editor
January 20, 2010 3:24 a.m. EST
Washington (CNN) — Look no further than the two warning flares shot up from Virginia and New Hampshire Tuesday evening to understand how concerned Democrats are about the political consequences of losing the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat to Republican Scott Brown.
Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, called on his Democratic colleagues to suspend votes on their controversial health care legislation, warning it would be wrong to try and muscle a bill through Congress before Brown was sworn into office.
“In many ways, the campaign in Massachusetts became a referendum not only on health care reform but also on the openness and integrity of our government process,” Webb said in a statement.
Some 500 miles to the north, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley sent out an urgent plea for donations to help fund a special election next month for a state senate seat he fears losing.
“Over the past few weeks, radical right-wing activists turned Massachusetts into ground zero for the Tea Party movement, and we saw a taste of what’s to come in 2010,” Buckley wrote.
Brown’s victory has changed the political narrative in 2010.
Traditionally, the president’s party loses seats in the midterm elections. But now there is concern among some politically savvy Democrats who worry that the losses could be greater than originally anticipated in November all because of Brown’s win.
“It makes it really hard,” a senior Democratic operative, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Tuesday evening. “The frustrating thing for (Democratic) members is that it was preventable, it affects them and it was something that never should have gotten to this point.”
In a matter of two weeks, Democrats witnessed a sleeping Republican base come to life to rally around a little-known GOP candidate, who defied the odds to win the race to succeed the liberal lion from Massachusetts.
And after watching two governorships slip from their grasp in November, many Democrats have come to realize that the American public is not particularly happy with their stewardship of the nation.
Democrats have 10 months to try and regain the momentum, but the wind is now at the Republicans’ backs, and their first legislative victory will likely be slamming the brakes on President Obama’s signature domestic issue: health care reform. It is a mighty blow for a president, who just one year ago seemed unbreakable, unstoppable, unbeatable.
If we don’t figure out a way to talk to independent voters, we are done.
–High-level Democratic official
Brown is an unlikely savior for the Republican Party, which one year ago was disoriented, disorganized and disillusioned. A Massachusetts Republican has successfully brought together — for the time being — a party at war over the ideological purity of its membership.
There is still discord in the GOP, but Brown’s win gives Republicans another case study in how to run a successful campaign after their two gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia.
Martha Coakley’s loss provides Democrats with yet another example of how not to run a campaign after their earlier losses in New Jersey and Virginia.
One of the biggest challenges for Democrats is wooing back independent voters, who broke Brown’s way Tuesday to help him beat Coakley.
“If we don’t figure out a way to talk to independent voters, we are done,” lamented another high-level Democratic staffer, speaking freely on the condition of anonymity.
Republicans wake up Wednesday morning with a new vigor, and GOP strategists vow to try to use this win to broaden a playing field that one year ago seemed unrealistic. The GOP’s top target is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who is in danger of losing re-election, according to public polls.
But Republicans hope Tuesday’s victory also convinces some fence-sitting Democrats to follow the leads of Dennis Moore of Kansas or Rep. John Tanner of Tennessee and choose to retire instead of running for re-election.
For Obama, the loss will likely force him to reconsider his legislative priorities, as his support on Capitol Hill wanes in this midterm election year.
Conservative Democrats are less likely to back him on controversial issues such as health care and cap and trade, fearing that to do so would be political suicide. After all, Republicans were able to win Kennedy’s seat by running against the Obama agenda.
China May Pip USA to Become World largest Economy by 2030
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As per the latest report by Deutsche Bank, the economic and financial status of emerging market economies such as India and China will continue to do well in the future and the recent downturn will help accelerate the trend.
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Report also suggests that the (BRIC) economies” increasing size will be making itself increasingly felt in the world markets, ranging from trade and investment to commodity markets.
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Meanwhile, the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are likely to achieve significant growth in future.
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Meanwhile, BRIC nations are already ranked among the top 10 on a PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) basis.
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The impressive economic growth rates and greater participation in global trade and financial flows by the BRIC economies are re-shaping the global economic and financial architecture of these economies.
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It is expected that with the constant present growth of the BRIC economies, political, economic and financial realities of the world is going to change to the extent that China will replace the US as the World’’s largest economy by 2030.
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All the four big BRIC economies carry at least one investment grade rating, currently, at the same time.
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Moreover, China’’s and Russia’’s international status has been enhanced due to their substantial holdings of government controlled foreign assets.
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Trong động Craighead dưới chân núi vườn quốc gia Great Smoky thuộc Tennessee, một kỳ quan thiên nhiên của Hoa Kỳ (National Natural Landmark), có một hồ nước khổng lồ lớn nhất nước Mỹ, lớn nhất thế giới trong nhiều năm, hiện lớn hạng nhì trên thế giới, mang tên “The Lost Sea”, một vùng biển đã mất.
Tại sao mất? Theo truyền thuyết, một cậu bé 13 tuổi trong lúc rong chơi khu này, tình cờ đã khám phá ra hồ nước khổng lồ này, sâu trong lòng đất ở động Craighead. Cậu bé kể lại cho ba má biết. Mấy ngày sau gia đình trở lại đây tìm hồ nước này. Vì mưa gió nhiều trong mấy ngày liền, cửa hang nhỏ dẫn cậu bé vô hồ nước đã bị lấp. Hồ nước nầy mất tích suốt 60 năm.
Sáu chục năm sau, do một tình cờ khác, người ta đã tìm ra được biển hồ dưới lòng đất này. Người khám phá ra nhớ lại câu chuyện cậu bé đã kể 60 năm trước, mời ông cụ 73 tuổi tên Ben Sands trở lại để xem, đúng là hồ nước ông đã tìm được 60 năm trước, nhưng đã mất tích. Những người khám phá dành cho Ben Sands danh dự đặt tên cho biển hồ này. Ông đặt tên biển mất tích “The Lost Sea”.
Hồ nước này rất lớn, rộng hơn 4.5 mẫu Anh, dài 800 feet, rộng 220 feet. Tuy nhiên đó chỉ là một phần thấy được của hồ. Những chuyên viên lặn (divers) đã thám hiểm và thăm dò nhiều phòng ngập nước khác dưới đáy hồ, rộng mênh mông, nhưng vẫn chưa thấy được hạn định của hồ nước này. Kết quả công trình thám hiểm này trong những năm 1970 được đăng tải trên website của Jim Wyatt.
Vợ chồng tôi đã viếng động Craighead, đi tới tận hồ nước khổng lồ này, dùng tàu đi du ngoạn trong biển mất tích (The lost sea) này, đặc biệt lắm. Trong động Craighead có một loại thạch nhủ rất quí, ít thấy trong các hang động khác trên thế giới, có một thác nước nhỏ, nhỏ hơn thác Ruby tôi đã chia sẻ với các bạn trong một entry trước đây.
Đặc biệt động này là nơi một bộ xương Jaguar (beo đốm) đã được tìm thấy. Bộ xương nầy được 20,000 năm tuổi, và hiện được trưng bày ở bảo tàng viện American Museum of Natural History tại New York.
Tại hồ nước khổng lồ mang tên The Lost Sea, vợ chồng tôi đã xuống tàu đi dạo một vòng, cá trout lội nhởn nhơ dưới hồ vui quá. Cá trout ở đây lớn lắm, vì cấm câu cá nên chúng sống lâu, và được nuôi nấng tử tế nên lớn không thể tưởng. (Sẽ bổ túc sau).
Craighead Caverns: có vết tích của mọi da đỏ, và bình lính miền Nam đã ẩn náu ở đây trong trận chiến tranh Nam-Bắc.
The lost sea, biển hồ sâu dưới lòng đất lớn nhất Hoa Kỳ. Biển hồ tối om, xa xa nơi vách đá có để một bóng đèn nhỏ, để người chèo thuyền biết được hạn định của hồ..
“Craighead Caverns is an extensive cave system located in Sweetwater, Tennessee. It is most well known for containing the United States’ largest and World’s second largest underground lake, The Lost Sea. In addition to the lake, the caverns contain an abundance of crystal clusters called anthodites, stalactites, stalagmites and a waterfall.
Located in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, the caverns are named after their former owner, a Cherokee native american, Chief Craighead. The caverns were formerly used by the Cherokee as a meeting place and later they were mined by Confederate soldiers for saltpeter, a commodity necessary to the manufacture of gunpowder.
In 1939, explorers found the remains of a Pleistocene jaguar. The persons who made the discovery were cave guides Jack Kyker and Clarence Hicks, who were exploring in the cave during their off hours. They reported their find to Dr. W. J. Cameron and W. E. Michael of Sweetwater, who were the current owners of the cave. The owners submitted the bones to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where they were identified as bones of a very large jaguar and an elk fawn. George Gaylord Simpson, a vertebrate paleontologist at the museum, subsequently visited Craighead Caverns in May, 1940 where he recovered additional jaguar bones and made casts of several jaguar footprints in the mud floor of the cave. His excavation and findings are reported in American Museum Novitates, No. 1131 (August 6, 1941) on pages 1-12. The report includes photographs of the bones and footprints.
A mushroom farm was operated in the cave from 1939 to 1940. The manure for this operation was supplied from Fort Oglethorpe, where many horses were stabled. The mushroom beds were located in the Big Room, a few hundred feet northeast of the Historic Entrance. In 1947, a wooden dance floor was built in this same area of the cave, and a nightclub, know as the “Cavern Tavern”, was operated in the cave.
Craighead Caverns was added to the National Park Service list of National Natural Landmarks in 1973.
The lost sea
The lake was discovered in 1905 by a thirteen-year-old boy named Ben Sands. As the story goes, Sands, who often played in the cave, happened upon a small opening and crawled through. The room was so large he was unable to see the ends of the room with his lantern, so he threw balls of mud in all directions and heard splashes. When he went back home and told people of his discovery, they were hesitant to believe him. By the time they went back down to explore it with lanterns, the water had receded, leading to the name “The Lost Sea.”
The surface of the lake measures 800 feet long and 220 feet wide (4.5 acres) at normal “full” capacity. Cave divers have explored several rooms that are completely filled with water, without reaching the end of the cave. This exploration was conducted in the 1970s. A web site by Jim Wyatt, one of the main cave divers during this period of exploration, can be located on the internet. This site gives a very detailed description of their explorations.
For many years The Lost Sea was considered the World’s largest underground lake and is still recognized as the World’s second largest underground lake.
Boat tours of the lake are still given and for many people are the highlight of the tour. In times of extreme drought (such as 2007-08) the lake recedes significantly and the management had to extend the walkway and the boat dock in order to be able to provide the boat tours. According to the management of the Lost Sea, the water level in the lake dropped 28 feet below its normal level at the height of the drought. At such times, visitors see a much larger cavern above the lake surface.”
Certainly this is not the first time China is accused of using hackers to spy on other countries.
While the full scope of the attacks on Google and several dozen other companies remains unclear, the events set off immediate alarms in Washington, where the Obama administration has previously expressed concern about international computer security and attacks on Western companies.Neither the sequence of events leading to Google’s decision nor the company’s ultimate goal in rebuking China is fully understood. But this was not the first time that the company had considered withdrawing from China, according to a former company executive. It had clashed repeatedly with Chinese officials over censorship demands, the executive said.
Google said on Tuesday that that in its investigation of the attacks on corporations, it found that the Gmail accounts of Chinese and Tibetan activists, like Ms. Seldon, had been compromised in separate attacks involving phishing and spyware.
Independent security researchers said that at least 34 corporations had been targets of the attacks originating in China.
Adobe, a software maker, said it had been the victim of an attack, but said that it did not know if it was linked to the hacking of Google. Some reports suggested that Yahoo had been a victim, but a person with knowledge said that Yahoo did not think that it been subject to the same attack as Google.
via In Rebuke of China, Focus Falls on Cybersecurity – NYTimes.com.
Were the activists China’s target? Or what was it?
A year into his tenure, a majority of Americans would already vote against Pres. Obama if the ‘12 elections were held today, according to a new survey.
The Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll shows 50% say they would probably or definitely vote for someone else. Fully 37% say they would definitely cast a ballot against Obama. Meanwhile, just 39% would vote to re-elect the pres. to a 2nd term, and only 23% say they definitely would do so.
Defense Analysts and political scientists and students of international relations experts are watching the rhetoric out of Delhi with keep interests. The three capitals—are looking for small nuances to decipher what was said, when it was said and by whom
Here is the chronology of events. General Kapoor in what would be considered a highly provocative statement said that Bharat (aka India) was ready a two pronged war with Pakistan and China.
Reports on India’s revision of its defence doctrine to meet the challenges of a ‘two front war’ with Pakistan and China have of late received media focus. Pakistan has been prompt in its response, describing India’s reported move as ‘betraying hostile intent’ and reflecting a ‘hegemonic and jingoistic mindset’. D S Rajan in Rediff News
As expected there was an explosion in Pakistan. Political leaders, as well as the head of the army and major politicians and the National Assembly decried General Kapoor’s statements and called it an act of grave provocation.
If some analyst had expect an equally robust and angry response from Beijing, they were disappointed. The Chinese response to the Bharati general’s speech was stone silence.
The Chinese leadership saw through the Bharati “strategy” and looked at it for what it was—bluster. The Chinese leadership correctly weighed the Bharti actions and were prepared for it. Deng Xiao Peng had taught them well—Confucius says “keep a low profile, “don’t over react” and “build yourself up”, “avoid conflict” and project “soft power”. There is hard work of nation building to be done—empty chatter resolves nothing and produces nothing.
The Chinese response to Bharati provocation was decided upon decades ago. It does not nee to be reiterated.
Keep a cool head and maintain a low profile. Never take the lead – but aim to do something big. Deng Xiao Peng
Beijing sees Delhi’s bluster as an attempt to raise the stature of Delhi. What better way to raise the stature than to challenge an emerging superpower? One would think that Delhi is some way or form could ever compete with Beijing in anything> If Beijing had responded to General Kapoor’s juvenile delinquency, it would have reduced itself to Delhi’s level. By taking the high road and ignoring Delhi, Beijing reduced Delhi to what it was, a regional bully that can’t even compete with Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Nuclear prowess had reduced Bharati plans. Delhi hegemony hits a brick wall on its Western front. It cannot go one inch forward. The boundary has become sacrosanct, and all the huffing and puffing and paper exercises do nothing to intimidate Islamabad.
The sagacious Maleeha Lodhi, the former Pakistani Ambassador to the US and the UK is one of the most talented political scientist around. she also clearly saw through Delhi’s game and clearly identified the source of entire passages, and the origins of the vocabulary of the Delhi’s new “doctrine”. Delhi had clearly plagiarized it from the American Doctrine of war.
Even more interesting is the fact that Beijing analysts seem to have pre-empted what Delhi was trying to do, and already seem to have written about it. Here is D.S. Rajan on the subject again.
The People’s Republic of China does not appear to have come out so far with any official reaction on the subject; interesting however is that the same theme of India’s ‘two front war’, worded a bit differently as ‘two front mobile warfare’ has figured in an in-depth authoritative Chinese evaluation of India’s defence strategy, done as early as November 2009; it raises a question whether or not Beijing [ Images ] already knew about India’s reported revision of its defence strategy. This apart, it would be important to have a close look at what has been said in that analysis, for drawing meaningful conclusions. What follows is an attempt in that direction.
Titled ‘Great Changes in India’s Defence Strategy — War objective shifts to giving China importance, while treating Pakistan as lightweight’, the analysis contributed by Hao Ding, a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, published in the Party-affiliated Chinese language organ, China Youth Daily, on November 27, 2009, identifies following five shifts that have taken place in India’s defence strategy:
The Chinese have figured out Delhi’s strategy. Its Marketing 101. When Kia says its just as good as Samsung, it doesn’t increase its stature—but when it says it has better features than a Toyota, the strategy to make people think that its in the same league as a Toyota. Of course the strategy doesn’t work. No matter how many time GM, (with its billions of Dollars of marketing clout) said that its J cars, or K cars, or Saturns were better than Mercedes, or lately better than Toyota—the people didn’t really buy that line—and continue to buy Toyota, Nissan, and Mercedes—placing GM in bankruptcy.
Similarly Bharat’s goals are an over reach which cannot be sustained. A A Lada cannot go out and conquer the world—it lived and died in East Germany. Till Bharat gets its own house in order, and mends its fences with all her neighbors. Having an angry Nepal, a dissatisfied Bangladesh, a mad Sikkim, a seething Bhutan, a cold China, a fearful Maldives, and a belligerent Pakistan on its borders can never allow Bharat to achieve its full potential in world affairs.
‘In terms of goals, India now aims at becoming a global military power in contrast to its earlier objective to acquire a regional military power status.’ (The author’s comments say in this connection that prior to end of the cold war, India followed an expansionist and hegemonic policy in South Asia, dismembered Pakistan, annexed Sikkim kingdom and dispatched troops to Sri Lanka [ Images ] and Maldives [ Images ].
Bharat canot become a world power, unless it fixes its painful penury. Instead of purchasing a $3 Billion Aircraft Carrier, it needs to eliminate “Grabibabad” the largest slum in the world which is really a huge trash can where people live. Slumdog India can not be shining India just because a TV commercial calls it ‘shining’.
According to loft goals, Bharat wants to be a South Asia, power, a Central Asian giant and an Asia-Pacific Hercules. Loft goals for a country where 75% of the people eek out a living at less than $2 per day. Bharat wants to project itself as a Eurasian giant. Amazing goals for a country where 450 million Dalits and invisiable Untouchables don’t have the right to live. Amazingly most Indians cannot see their existence and ignore their poverty through tokenism (appointing one highly visible person in a high position).
India always was hegemonic. Its calim that it ever had “passive defense” as its policy is belies the facts on the ground—it bullied 560 states into joing the “Indian Unio” in 1948. Nehru declared that any state that would not join the union would be considered an enemy state. It blatantly and illegally took over Hyderabad which did not want to join the Union.
It was a regional bully. Now it wants to be a global bully—without the allies or the money to get there. Bharat’s ‘and aggressive defense’ is something that the Israelis use. Its planner face a Gordian knot. Delhi seems to be in a time warp. It feels that it is in 1972. It has failed to recognize the new nuclear realities of South Asia. It cannot comprehend that mutually assured destruction means just that. It wants to somehow find a sliver of hope to strangulate Pakistan that way it has a choke hold on Sikkim. When Islamabad doesn’t get in its hold—it cries foul and tries to destabilize it—using the Mukti Bahni and Lanka model. While exporting terror does, work, Bharat is unable to achieve its objectives, because its forces cannot cross its Western border—held at bay by Nuclear powered missiles, and tactical Nuclear weapons that will destroy only a moving army.
According to the Chinese analysts, Bharat faces security threats form”the low intensity conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir [ Images ] which can trigger a large scale conflict, the risk of a nuclear confrontation among the two nations and terrorism in South Asia.”
Though accurate, this threat perception is not actually accurate. Bharat faces three major threats to its existence. According to Indian Analyst, Bharat Verma, Bharat faces the biggest threat in Kashmir, the 2nd threat in the Northeast Seven Sister States in Assam and 89 insurgencies raging in almost every Indian state—including the lethal Naxal-Maoist threat that engulfs a huge swathe of land starting from the foot of the Himalayas in the North to the deep South in Andhra Pradesh. The recent issue of Talangana shoed the entire worked the fragile nature of the Indian Union. The people want more than 50 states—in varying degrees of secessionist tendencies. Denial of right willl further exacerbate linguistic, ethnic and religious tensions in Bharat—leading to a USSR type of implosion or a Yugoslavia type of implosion.
The Indian defence strategy has been revised in such circumstances; The ‘active defence’ concept has replaced the old line of passive defence, the basic ‘regional deterrence’ principle has been given a new meaning with ‘punishment deterrence’ concept taking place of the old principle of ‘only deterrence’. India is stressing on taking initiatives so as to be able to conduct a hi-tech ‘limited conventional war’ against the enemy ‘under conditions of nuclear deterrence’. D. S. Rajan
In accordance with the GM strategy (mentioned earlier), the Chinese analyst says ‘Looking from the angle of war objectives, India is now laying emphasis to giving China importance while treating Pakistan as lightweight, as compared to the past equal emphasis to China and Pakistan.’
The Chinese have repeatedly said that they are fully aware of the Indian thinking.
China, there is stable political situation, a fast developing economy, a continuously accelerating military modernisation drive and growing comprehensive national strength. India thinks that therefore, the potentials of ‘China threat’ to it are on the rise. It wants to correctly treat the dialectic relation between the changes that have occurred in military threats posed by Pakistan and China and prepare for all types of military struggles. Based on such reasoning, India has proposed the doctrine of ‘two front mobile warfare’.
Bharat has done a lot of rearranging of the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It thinks that the new pattern of the deck chairs will prevent the looming strategy. Instead of changing course and avoiding the iceberg, it spends all its time on the color scheme of the chairs. Bharat may be in an illusion
‘In matters of strategic deployment, India has shifted to a strategy of stabilising the western front and strengthening the northern front as well as giving equal emphasis to land and sea warfare, in contrast to the earlier stress only on land warfare.‘
(1) in recent years, India has carried out adjustments in its defence system to suit to the new needs. ‘Stabilising the western front and strengthening the northern front’ is a step in this direction. India has already made plans to dispatch additional forces- two mountain divisions- to the Sino-Indian border and deploy Su-30 fighter aircraft as well as missiles there in order to further strengthen its ‘partial military superiority’ vis-à-vis China, sufficient to fight a ‘middle or small-scale partial border war under hi-tech conditions’,
(2) India is increasing its deployment of mobile warfare-capable troops. Some units, on ‘double combat missions’, can launch mobile operations in both China and Pakistan fronts and
(3) India’s past attention only to land warfare is now getting shifted in the direction of the Indian Ocean, creating a deployment position capable of paying importance to both land and sea. A part of Indian troops so far located in the rear of the borders is being diverted for coastal defence purposes and a new naval fleet has come up in the south to increase strength in respect of the Indian Ocean.
China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one. If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it. Deng Xiaoping
We quote D. S. Rajan again.
‘India is making efforts to create long-range mobile operational strength and gain capacity to launch cross-combat missions.’ The Chinese military expert comments that structural adjustment of the Indian military is in progress with focus on building Indian Navy and Air Force as well as rapid action troops, leading to building up of global combat capability of Indian armed forces. The expert cites in this connection the war doctrines of the Indian Army [ Images ] (2004), Indian Navy (2005) and Indian Air Force (2007).
The analysis above needs to be examined together with a very recent Chinese assessment. Given under the title ‘Panoramic View of International Military Situation in 2009′, the analysis contributed by Ma Kang, deputy director, Institute of Strategic Studies, National Defence University, Liberation Army Daily, December 29 highlights the defence budget increases in the US, Russia [ Images ] and India. It points to India’s ‘24 percent defence budget increase’ in 2009 as compared to previous year as well as efforts to build an aircraft carrier of its own, launch of first home made submarine Arihant and goals set towards possessing ‘three dimensional nuclear strategic capability.’
What stand out are the unmistakable adversarial tones with which the two highly placed Chinese experts have talked about India. Especially, the evaluation of Hao Ding runs contrary to the officially declared perceptions of India and China that each nation is not a threat to other. Observers in India have reasons to raise their eyebrows on the reappearance of the terminology ‘partial border war’ after some gap, more so in a contribution made by an academician close to Chinese hierarchy (the last such reference figured in an unofficial strategic affairs website in November 2008).
Also odd is the timing of such comments when India-China bilateral defence, political and economic ties are progressing steadily — senior Chinese military officers including the Tibet [ Images ] commander have visited India recently, the Indian defence secretary is scheduled to visit Beijing for talks, both India and China have coordinated their actions in the conference at Copenhagen on climatic change, preparations are being made by both sides for the scheduled visit this year to China by the Indian President and lastly, India-China trade volume is slated to touch $60 billion by this year.
Not to place a break on Mr. Rajan’s rhetoric, and burst his bubble, but the Bharati Naval Chief says the following about China:
“In military terms, both conventional and non-conventional, we neither have the capability nor the intention to match China, force for force. These are indeed sobering thoughts and therefore our strategy to deal with China would need to be in consonance with these realities,” Indian Navy Chief, Admiral Suresh Mehta
Circa deci dies por li tremore de terre in Haiti secun opinion del General secretario del UN, Ban, li auxilie por li superviventes successe plu e plu bon.
Jan. 14, 2010 – National Journal