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Obama interview in Indian magazine

Byoliveridley

In an exclusive interview, the US presidential hopeful speaks on a range of subjects: the nuclear deal, Mahatma Gandhi, his ability to reconcile Islam with modernity, and how he wouldn’t have put all eggs in the Musharraf basket

‘I Am Reluctant To Seek Changes In The N-Deal’ : outlookindia.com

Interesting interview. Obama says the right things most of the time, so no surprises here. The interviewer also helpfully provides a summary at the top of the interview where he tells us what Obama said and what it means, a little bit of contextualization that goes a long way in helping the reader get perspective on the issues. Western journalists should try this sometime…

On the nuclear deal

“I continue to hope this process can be concluded before the end of the year…. I am reluctant to seek changes.”

His remarks suggest he is opposed to renegotiating the deal, as the BJP has demanded. Should the deal not be sealed this year, Obama as president isn’t likely to impose new conditions, a fear the UPA has constantly stoked to compel its critics to fall in line.

Now that’s an interesting observation because the proposed India-US nuclear deal will formalize India’s standing as a nuclear weapons power while providing the country with access to reactor fuel and technology. The deal will also mean that India will have to come under the purview of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure that certain nuclear safeguards can be agreed upon and met. The so called communist parties of India are protesting this as an affront to the sovreignity of the Indian State and have withdrawn support to the Indian government, who faces a very delicately balanced vote of confidence next week.

Both the US and Indian governments are currently in agreement that the deal needs to be done before Bush leaves or else… Obama’s thrown a little bit of cold water over this idea, which will weaken the ruling party’s hand a little. The deal has been ratified by the US, so the only thing standing in the way is the continued stability of the current Indian government.

What do I think? Nothing much other than it appears that India is getting most of what it wants from this deal, a formalization of its nuclear weapons status, access to more civilian technology and legitimization of its nuclear programme in return for some safeguards (which are good for safety and non-proliferation anyway). It’s just that the opposition BJP cannot possibly support the deal because they are the opposition and recent election results in various states have them reasonably confident of getting back in power in New Delhi if the government were to fall and elections were to be called. The left is trying to remain relevant and is usually reflexively anti-US. So dealing with the US government is like dealing with Satan for the “communist” parties (right, call yourselves communists, insult to the word).

In other, more personal parts, we find out that Obama was in Pakistan for a few weeks when he was 19, which I did not know, but is apparently common news knowledge.

Interesting times, he’s not even president yet and still has great influence on happenings far away.

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  • Vice President Piyush (Bobby) Jindal?

    Byoliveridley

    On Feb. 8, a caller to The Rush Limbaugh Show asked the conservative host if there were any chance of McCain adding Newt Gingrich to the presidential ticket. Sighing audibly, Limbaugh regretfully described it as unlikely before rattling off the usual list of names of potential VPs. One stood out. “Bobby Jindal,” the host declared, pausing for effect. “I did an interview with Bobby Jindal. He is the next Ronald Reagan, if he doesn’t change. Bobby Jindal, the new governor of Louisiana, is the next Ronald Reagan.”

    Vice President Bobby Jindal? | The American Prospect

    Piyush Jindal was an unnaturally precocious kid who picked up his name bobby at the age of four from watching the Brady Bunch. Did he know then that Bobby Jindal would be Rush Limbaugh’s choice for Vice President, whereas Piyush Jindal would be earning millions in a law firm somewhere? As a South Asian, I guess I am expected to feel good about this guy who won political office multiple times in the state of Louisiana, no less. He’s only 36 years old! When has the presidential candidate been twice as old as his running mate?

    Obviously, he’s something special, someone so smart and charismatic that he’s reached achieved great power and fame in politics at an age when most people are just starting out. One note of caution on his achievements, they’ve all been in the state of Louisiana, a state so mismanaged and corrupt that the application of a technocratic approach would yield such immediate and obvious benefits.

    During his tenure, Jindal turned a $400 million deficit into a budget surplus by cutting per-beneficiary Medicaid spending  and reducing the work force by 1000 employees,

    Low hanging fruit, eh! (maybe not, he’s a smart guy who knows how to get things done!)

    His religious and social beliefs?

    On social issues, Jindal has a record only James Dobson could love. He strongly and openly opposes abortion (without exception, even in cases of rape and incest), supports teaching intelligent design in public schools, has proposed bans on both stem-cell research and flag burning, and voted for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. McCain, on the other hand, has flip-flopped on all these issues except flag burning.

    On McCain’s biggest problem with the conservative base, immigration, Jindal would be an effective counterbalance: He has consistently been an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, and voted in favor of building a border fence. His economic record is a bit less dogmatic. He tends to vote against free trade agreements like CAFTA but consistently sides with energy interests over environmentalists. For example, he favored a motion to lift the moratorium on offshore gas drilling, one of many votes that led the League of Conservation Voters to give him a rating of just 7 percent.

    There you have it, full on religious fanatic anti-environment far-right conservative! Here’s a guy who would force a 12 year old girl to give birth to a child that was the product of her father raping her. Hate to get graphic, but that’s what Mr Jindal supports, plain and simple.

    It would be very interesting to get into Mr Jindal’s head. What made this kid in high school convert to Christianity? This article tries to shed some light. However, its only source is a letter written by Bobby himself. Like with most human beings, that whole post-event rationalization is on full tilt!

    His combination of skills and ideas is hardly rare in South Asian circles. South Asians of a certain upbringing tend to be well educated, competent, technocratic (can’t get that word out of my head, that’s what he is, Bobby “the technocrat” Jindal), while simultaneously being very socially conservative. I can understand the abortion ideas, or the anti-gay ideas,  and the further anti-evolution and anti-environment pandering. He seems to have made a quick study of every conservative virtue and has decided to make them all his own, no straying for Bobby “the conformist” Jindal! he even has one token non-conformist “anti free-trade” position, Cho Chweet!!

    But no, if I had a vote, I would never vote for him, even if we may share an ethnicity. His ideas about government, church-state separation, evolution, war, abortion and the environment are abhorrent to me. But, he will make a fairly formidable candidate. This is probably not his time, I would give him a few more years.

    FWIW, McCain’s probably going to pick Huckabee as his VP to reel in the religious right, but Jindal’s not going anywhere yet.

  • Pakistan troops 'repel US raid'

    Byoliveridley

    Pakistani troops have fired at two US helicopters forcing them back into Afghanistan, local Pakistani intelligence officials say.The helicopters flew into the tribal North Waziristan region from Afghanistan’s Khost province at around midnight, the reports say.

    BBC NEWS | South Asia | Pakistan troops ‘repel US raid’

    What the hell is the US doing starting another war? Don’t they have other things to worry about?

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    Musharraf and the never ending dictatorship

    Byoliveridley

    Pakistani opposition leaders and activists have been detained in the wake of President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to declare emergency rule.The
    acting head of the party of exiled former PM Nawaz Sharif was arrested, senior lawyers have been detained and the country’s chief justice sacked.PM Shaukat Aziz said that hundreds of people had been held, and the emergency would last “as long as is necessary”.Scheduled elections could be delayed for up to a year, he added.But no decision had been made over the date of any election, he added, insisting the government remained committed to the democratic process.

    BBC NEWS | South Asia | Musharraf targets key opponents

    Apparently, lessons are never learned. Just like General Zia ul-Haq before him, Musharraf pays a lot of lip service to democracy while riding his military coat tails to a permanent dictatorship. Just like General Zia-ul-Haq before him, the world thinks that he’s the last bastion standing between Pakistan and an Islamic fundamentalist state. Just like Zia-ul-Haq before him, he pretends to hold elections, then subverts the results because of “emergency conditions” and “extenuating circumstances”.

    It is rather sad and depressing, Zia ul-Haq was the first Pakistan “president” I knew, always ratcheting up war rhetoric against India. The Benazir Bhutto-Nawaz Sharif years seemed more like a soap opera between two rich and influential feuding Punjabi families than the brutal power struggle that continues to this day. And now, General Musharraf, who is depicted in Western media as the last man standing between the Taliban and Pakistan.

    The point? Pakistan, with its independent press, well-established middle class, a quasi-independent judiciary and politically intelligent electorate deserves better. I am not sure that Musharraf would survive without the propping up he receives from the US. But the rug needs to be pulled from under him. Behind that sophisticated veneer (imagine, a third world leader who speaks English and can wear a suit!!!) lurks just another power hungry tinpot dictator.

  • Ah, Propaganda

    Byoliveridley

    Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

    Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand – New York Times

    Of course, the word “propaganda” is first used on page 4 of the article, long after most people stopped reading. Not that I am surprised or shocked or anything, it was clear that all those military suits on the screen were spouting propaganda from the very beginning. They said the same things, used the same words, it was always well timed and planned, but apparently, no one in the media bothered to ask them about it. The media must have thought “very patriotic folks them, they wear a lot of lapel pins!”

    I fail to see how this meticulously detailed story will have any impact on anything that happens in the States. What would John McCain’s reaction be to this news? Will anyone actually ask him if he would have done the same thing? Will there be any protests, calls for resignations, impeachments, court martials, media boycotts? Maybe a shocked letter to the editor or two, maybe a million blog posts like this one, nothing more.

    God Bless America, it has lived up to all my expectations finally!! Pravda, Xinhua and Goebbels have nothing on these guys. It looks like all the president’s people and all the mass media colluded to sell this war to the American people and make each other very rich. Wonderful! Note that a small part of every dollar spent on cable and newspapers goes to support this war effort. Note that a small part of everyone’s taxes go to support this war effort.

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  • Tehelka Stings Hindu fundamentalists

    Byoliveridley

    1237962D-6F94-40E0-98D5-3F7BC7A163CA.jpg

    Big news out of India in the last few days. Tehelka has posted plenty of video of what they say are the results of a six month operation investigating the Gujarat riots of 2002, in which an estimated 2000 people, mostly Muslims were killed. The state government led by Narendra Modi of the BJP looked the other way for the most part and was accused of inciting, even planning the violence.

    These videos are hidden camera interviews with people in the VIshwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bajrang Dal and various other Hindu fundamentalist and extremist groups that do they BJP’s dirty work. They tell the story that the government had more than a passive hand in the riots. Not that this was not obvious to anyone with even a little bit of familiarity with goings on in Gujarat, but it is good to have all this information catalogued on YouTube in all its gory detail.

    Pass the Roti has more on this story…

  • | |

    Sunita Narain on the Tata Nano

    Byoliveridley

    nano.jpg Unless you have been living under a rock recently (hey, nice way to start a blog post, insult your reader(s)), you must have heard of the Tata Nano, the much ballyhooed cheapest car ever built. People ask me (after all, I am Indian and pretend to know a lot about the environment) what I think of the Nano. Well, it’s hard to summarize in an elevator pitch. Obviously, given the state of public transportation in the cities, people want private vehicles to travel in, more convenient, fewer people to jostle against, etc. People previously riding scooters and motorcycles (and carrying entire families in a two wheeler) would prefer this car. But, traffic’s going to get worse, and cars occupy a lot of road space while not carrying that many people.

    Anyway, my thoughts aside, Sunita Narain (one of India’s most famous environmental activists) and director of  The Center for Science and Environment (India’s most active Environmental NGO) writes one of her typically insightful editorials in Down to Earth, the CSE’s flagship publication.

    Let’s take the ‘affordability’ question first. The fact is that cars—small or big—are heavily subsidized. The problem is that when economists (including those who run the government) fret and fume about mounting subsidy bills, they think of farmers—fertilizer, electricity and food—not our cars. But subsidy is what they unquestionably get.The subsidy begins with the manufacture of cars. When we read about the Singur farmers’ struggle to stop government from acquiring their land for the Tata car factory we don’t join the dots. We don’t see this as the first big subsidy to motorization. The fact is, in Singur the manufacturer got cheap land, interest-free capital and perhaps other concessions—the Left Front government in West Bengal never made public full details of its attractive package. This brought down the cost of production and allowed the manufacturer to price the Nano at Rs 1 lakh

    The Nano-flyover syndrome | Editor’s Page | Down To Earth magazine

    All very true. Cars are heavily subsidized, taxation, parking, you name it, money quote…

    Since cars take up over 75 per cent of the road space, even though they move less than 20 per cent of the people, it is obvious whom this expenditure benefits the most.

    Yes, cars are not a very efficient way to move people, they’re convenient because Indian cities are not being planned to prioritize public transport that is convenient, safe and clean. India’s  per capita income (nominal) is about a $1000 per year and the nano, even in its cheapest form, is about 3 years worth of the average income. So, your average Indian, even if she lives in a city and makes twice this average, will not buy this car. So, she’s stuck on the bus which crawls ever so slowly due to all these nanos flitting about. Or, she’s on a scooter/bike facing ever increasing pollution due to these cars and risking life and limb as traffic pushes vehicles closer and closer together.

    But of course, this seems to be the pattern of development and optimists will argue that at some point in time, the infrastructure will catch up to the point that there will be room for all these cars and money for all the people to buy all these cars. But as Ms. Narain points out, 20% of Delhi is already covered with roads (hard to get that number in context though, I have no idea what percent of NYC is road covered, for instance!), so finding room to build more roads is going to be hard.

    Something’s gotta give, I don’t know what!

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