Prime Minister Dreams

Bangladesh: India v. US

This news-item is from October 2013, but the Bangladesh issue mentioned is on-going, there has been no meeting of the minds between the Indian and US sides.  The disagreement stems over the what to make of the radical Islamists in Bangladesh - the Jamaat-e-Islami.  India wants them marginalized, the US wants to them to be let into the mainstream.

This news-item is the only one that I've found that provides an explanation of what the US State Department might be thinking.  Supposedly the radical Islamists in Bangladesh are more free-market-oriented; and supposedly they will moderate themselves once in power (though they radicalized further the last time they were in power). 

Reciprocity

Diplomatic relations, it seems, are best conducted with strict reciprocity.   The diplomatic spat between India and the US over the arrest and post-arrest treatment of Indian diplomat Ms. Devyani Khobragade has led India to withdraw privileges that have long been extended unconditionally to US diplomats in India.  For instance, India has diplomatic facilities in Nepal that US diplomats used to be allowed to use.  As reported widely (e.g., here)

The US ambassador {to India} Nancy Powell, who was all set to spend her Christmas in Nepal, was forced to cancel a scheduled trip there after the {Indian} foreign ministry refused to extend her special privileges that usually come with the job. 

Powell had notified the foreign ministry about her trip and asked for the use of the protocol lounge and other privileges like security and immigration assistance, but she was curtly reminded that all of these had been withdrawn as India had decided to deal with the US on the basis of reciprocity.
Indian Ambassadors to the US never got such privileges, but for many years India decided to allow the US these and many other perks to signal that these were accorded to a special friend.

Meanwhile, relations between the US Department of Defense and the Indian Defense Ministry continue to be excellent.

Consumer spending & the US economy

The table below is from W.R. Emmons at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,  January 2012.
Published here for future reference.

Composition of GDP in the U.S. and Canada

U.S.
Average annual share of GDP (percent)	Consumer expenditure	Investment	Net exports	Government expenditures
1961-70	61.8	20.5	0.6	17.1
1971-80	62.5	20.6	–0.3	17.2
1981-90	64.6	20.3	–1.9	17.0
1991-2000	67.3	18.9	–1.5	15.3
2001-10	70.0	18.6	–4.5	15.9
Canada
Average annual share of GDP (percent)	Consumer expenditure	Investment	Net exports	Government expenditures
1961-70	58.8	23.3	0.7	17.1
1971-80	54.4	23.8	0.5	21.2
1981-90	54.9	21.5	1.7	21.7
1991-2000	57.6	19.2	2.1	21.2
2001-10	56.4	21.4	2.4	19.8
Differences: U.S. minus Canada
Average annual share of GDP (percent)	Consumer expenditure	Investment	Net exports	Government expenditures
1961-70	3.0	–2.8	–0.1	0.0
1971-80	8.1	–3.2	–0.7	–4.0
1981-90	9.7	–1.2	–3.6	–4.8
1991-2000	9.7	–0.2	–3.6	–5.8
2001-10	13.6	–2.8	–6.9	–3.9

SOURCE: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

De-Macaulayization

Indian billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla,  in an essay in a volume "Reimagining India" makes the following confession:

...Ironically, before we became more international, I used to be much more impressed by someone who could speak the Queen's English than, say, a chartered accountant from Jodhpur whose spoken English required some effort to understand.  Now when I look across all our operations in places like Brazil or Egypt or Thailand, I see a whole host of people who aren't comfortable in English, who need interpreters, but who are very, very good at what they do.  Sadly, it took that experience for me to respect an accountant from Rajasthan—my home state—as much as a graduate of St. Stephen's in Delhi.  At one time we even wanted to run English classes for some of our employees!  Now it's not an issue in my mind.  If you can get your point across, if you are adding value, if you are competent, then bloody hell to your English.

Birla out-grew what is a common malady of Anglicized Indians.

Maya Tudor: Promise of Power: Review

A review of Maya Tudor's "The Promise of Power", by B. Surendra Rao.

The dynamics of Indian freedom movement under the Gandhian leadership emanated from its ability and willingness to connect with disparate constituencies in a bid to develop a programmatic unity, so that by 1947 “Congress had helped delimit an Indian nation, establish its egalitarian character, and broadly popularise nationalism in the consciousness in a broad swath of colonial Indian society…” The Muslim League as the ‘institutional incarnation of Pakistani nationalism’ was “anti-democratic in the sense that it rejected a defining process of democracy.” Its social and political alliances were weak, it had no economic programmes to project and was driven only by its anti-Hindu rhetoric and the Pied Piper charisma of Jinnah. If Congress was able to hammer out coherent coalitions with class groups with conflicting interests, the Muslim League merely cobbled together “a relatively incoherent distributive coalition” eschewing the need to build regional and local party organisations.

and

The jacket of the book carries two photographs: One, of the bare-headed Mahatma addressing a disparate but attentive crowd of khadi-clad women and men in the open, and the other of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, - imperious, cigarette between his lips and under a parasol held by a liveried servant, holding court. Together they offer a fine example of visual semiotics. 

America - where are the new jobs?

This is from March 2012, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It is a projection of where the new jobs in the US economy are going to be.  One can take a look at it and ask - which of these jobs arise because of the munificence of the 1%?

Compensation of locally employed staff at US consulates

This is from 2009 (CNN, via BRF).

This is about a report from the US Department of State Office of the Inspector General, "Review of Locally Employed Staff Compensation Issues".   I hope that Clinton, as Secy. of State, resolved the issues identified in the report.  Other documents on the site do not address that. However, other documents on the site about specific embassies say that the ongoing freeze on US federal employees' compensation has kept the US from addressing pay issues for Locally Employed Staff (for instance, Buenos Aires in February 2013).

Quoting directly from the first report linked above (from 2009):

Fifteen truths about the American criminal justice system

By a former public defender.

Truth #15:

If middle- and upper-class American communities were policed in the same manner working-class and working-poor communities are—that is, if standard operating procedures, applicable criminal codes, and the U.S. Constitution were applied equally, at both the arrest and prosecution stages, against citizens of all socioeconomic classes—a substantial percentage of our nation’s criminal statutes would soon be appealed, repealed, or dramatically amended.

Also, part of Truth #4:

Given how overbroad most criminal statutes are, most Americans probably have, at some point, technically committed a misdemeanor-level crime, such as simple assault, theft, a driving offense, a trespass, an act of vandalism, or a more esoteric malfeasance such as unsworn falsification, hindering prosecution, or misconduct after a car accident. But most of us live in lightly policed neighborhoods and are therefore never caught or punished for our misdeeds. That doesn’t change the fact that nearly every American is, at least by the language of the statutes their own elected representatives enacted, most likely a criminal. 

Sad Customs

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/12/jfk-customs-destroyed-11-of-my-instruments.html

"Boujemaa Razgui, a flute virtuoso who lives in New York and works with many US ensembles, was returning to base over the holiday when Customs officials at Kennedy Airport asked to see his instruments. Bourjemaa carries a variety of flutes of varying ethnicity, each made by himself over years for specific types of ancient and modern performance.  
. . .  
At JFK, the officials removed and smashed each and every one of his instruments. "

(Via dailykos.com )

Syria - worth noting

We didn't go to war in Syria, but this is nevertheless worth noting.

"...buried on page 8, below the fold, 18 paragraphs into a story under the not-so-eye-catching title, “New Study Refines View Of Sarin Attack in Syria.”.... the Times’ “vector analysis” – showing the reverse flight paths of two missiles intersecting at a Syrian military base – has collapsed..."

and

"....few Americans knew about these challenges to the Official Story because the mainstream U.S. news media had essentially blacked them out. When renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh composed a major article  citing skepticism within the U.S. intelligence community regarding the Syrian government’s guilt, he had to go to the London Review of Books to get the story published."

Magnificent Delusions

If you don't have the time to read Pakistan's former Ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani's "Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding", then this cartoon
conveys a great deal. It, of course, needs updates, with drones, and so on, to reflect the current situation.  

One could go into an excursion of how American leaders were charmed by Pakistani dictators in uniform - notably, Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan.

Or one can go to the very beginning, where the perceptive Margaret Bourke-White wrote the following, reporting on her interview with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of the nation of Pakistan:

Straw, Camel, Back

The Hindustan Times reports:

Officials here concede that given New Delhi's past track record, it was never conceived by the American foreign policy makers that India would react to the arrest of its diplomat the manner it did after the December 12 incident.

After all, there had been precedent of Indian envoys and top past and present officials being subject to humiliating and disrespectful treatment during their US visits, mostly at the airports, and there was hardly any protest, they said.

Aam Admi Party and Arvind Kejriwal

One of the phenomena of 2013, that may mark a new beginning for India is the rise of the Aam Admi Party (Ordinary People's Party).   The Times of India had this reflection as Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Delhi:

No one could have imagined at the beginning of 2013, or even six months ago, that Arvind Kejriwal would return to the Ramlila Maidan, two and a half years after Anna's big anti-corruption fast, to take oath as chief minister before the year was out. This has been a peaceful political revolution of epic proportions - and we, as a nation, should feel proud. Kejriwal may be the man of the moment, but this not about him - or any one person. This is about the idea of India. We have been called a flawed democracy, and indeed there are times when a sense of hopelessness takes over; but it's also the flaws that help us appreciate beauty when it shines through. There is no greater beauty on earth than to behold the will of the people be given voice without having to resort to violence. So let us pause for a moment to cherish the precious, and yes imperfect, beauty of our democracy.

For Kejriwal, the real challenge - of governance - begins now. He has changed the rules of the game, playing the role of an outsider with consummate political savvy. Whether his 'movement' can go national will depend on how wisely he runs Delhi. It will also depend on whether the Congress, having extended support, is willing to give him a fair chance. Its decision to boycott the swearing-in ceremony does not bode well for the future. The party that helped give us this beauty we call democracy should know that it has diminished itself by its churlishness. It should also know that a little grace never hurt, even in politics. 

Face of the Year 2013

The Indian Express newspaper has named the Indian voter the Face of the Year 2013.

In a year of political chaos and administrative drift, India fought back in Delhi and the heartland states which went to polls in the first week of  December. The Angry Young Voter became the Face of the Year, seething with anger, upsetting political fortunes by turning out to cast ballots in record numbers. Who constitutes this new phenomenon that has stunned the establishment? Young, idealist, activist, wired, tech savvy, free-thinker, impatient, energetic, aggressive, alienated and angry— meet the new voters. Aged between 18 and 25, they are students, some employed, many unemployed, women and men, desperately in search of jobs and predominantly from middle class families.
The dominant issues that sent them in droves to booths were inflation, unemployment and women’s safety. Corruption by the ruling elite had been the theme of 2013, leading to massive protests in Delhi, Mumbai and other cities. Inability of the state to protect women was behind the anger that propelled large-scale participation of women voters everywhere.

Elections are held in India every five years. The turn-out for the state assembly elections in the last three cycles is as follows:

State	2003	2008	2013
Delhi	47%	58%	67%
Rajasthan	68%	67%	75%
Madhya Pradesh	67%	69%	72%
Chhatisgarh	71%	71%	75%

It is sometimes good to take a break from American cynicism and apathy.  The 2012 Presidential elections had a turn-out of 53.6%. The 2010 elections, which gave us our much beloved do-nothing Republican Congress had a turn-out of 37.8% (source).  The 63.1% turnout in 1960 has not been surpassed in five decades.  Despite having in many ways a lot worse government than the US, Indians haven't given up on government in the way Americans have.

Hoisted from the comments: MJ Akbar on The Blood Telegram, etc.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/good-riddance-2013-long-live-2014

The best books I read this year were both from America. The Blood Telegram: India's Secret War in East Pakistan by Gary Bass, is less on the secret war conducted by Delhi and far more on Washington's secret policy of indifference towards the Pakistan Army's genocide in what was then East Pakistan during the fateful year of 1971, which ended in a war that created a new nation, Bangladesh. The second great read was The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer, which graphs the lives of the two brothers, one a secretary of state and the other a CIA chief. They controlled American foreign policy during the Eisenhower administration between 1952 and 1960.

If you think there are too many secrets on the cover, rest assured this is no exaggeration judging by what is revealed between the covers. If you want to revel in America-bashing, go ahead. There is enough to fuel a lifetime of fulminations. But I also marvelled at the unwritten sub-text, which neither author chose to stress: how focused and unrelenting America, with its many leaderships, is when it comes to national interest.

...

One wonders when India's foreign policy will be injected with a little more steel of self-interest, instead of being a charity shop of good intentions. It is good that Indian diplomats have stood up for one of their own in America. But this is only evidence of what they can do, individually and collectively, if they are given the freedom to stand up for their country with equal backbone.

Do Elephants have Souls?

For a Hindu, the answer is easy.   For everyone else, this essay (via David Brooks' column in the NYT).

Carol Buckley, co-founder of the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, a retirement ranch for maltreated veterans of circuses and zoos, describes the arrival of a newcomer to the facility. The fifty-one-year-old Shirley was first introduced to an especially warm resident of long standing named Tarra: “Everyone watched in joy and amazement as Tarra and Shirley intertwined trunks and made ‘purring’ noises at each other. Shirley very deliberately showed Tarra each injury she had sustained at the circus, and Tarra then gently moved her trunk over each injured part.” Later in the evening, an elephant named Jenny entered the barn — one who, as it turned out, had as a calf briefly been in the same circus as Shirley, twenty-two years before:

There was an immediate urgency in Jenny’s behavior. She wanted to get close to Shirley who was divided by two stalls. Once Shirley was allowed into the adjacent stall the interaction between her and Jenny became quite intense. Jenny wanted to get into the stall with Shirley desperately. She became agitated, banging on the gate and trying to climb through and over.

After several minutes of touching and exploring each other, Shirley started to ROAR and I mean ROAR — Jenny joined in immediately. The interaction was dramatic, to say the least, with both elephants trying to climb in with each other and frantically touching each other through the bars. I have never experienced anything even close to this depth of emotion.

We opened the gate and let them in together.... they are as one bonded physically together. One moves, and the other shows in unison. It is a miracle and joy to behold. All day ... they moved side by side and when Jenny lay down, Shirley straddled her in the most obvious protective manner and shaded her body from the sun and harm.

They were inseparable until Jenny died a few years later.

"The Blood Telegram" : Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide

Dexter Filkins reviewed in the NYT "The Blood Telegram" by Gary Bass back in September:

In “The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide,” Gary J. Bass, a professor of politics at Princeton, has revived the terrible and little-known story of the birth of Bangladesh in 1971, and of the sordid and disgraceful White House diplomacy that attended it.
....
Bass lays out his indictment of the White House: Nixon and Kissinger spurned the cables, written by their own diplomats in Dacca (the capital of East Pakistan), that said West Pakistan was guilty of carrying out widespread massacres. Archer Blood, the counsel general in Dacca, sent an angry cable that detailed the atrocities and used the word “genocide.” The men in the White House, however, not only refused to condemn Yahya — in public or private — but they also declined to withhold American arms, ammunition and spare parts that kept Pakistan’s military machine humming.
....

The voices of Kissinger and Nixon are the book’s most shocking aspects. Bass has unearthed a series of conversations, most of them from the White House’s secret tapes, that reveal Nixon and Kissinger as breathtakingly vulgar and hateful, especially in their attitudes toward the Indians, whom they regarded as repulsive, shifty and, anyway, pro-Soviet — and especially in their opinion of Indira Gandhi. “The old bitch,” Nixon called her. “I don’t know why the hell anybody would reproduce in that damn country but they do,” he said. 

....

These sorts of statements will probably not surprise the experts, but what is most telling is what they reveal about Nixon’s and Kissinger’s strategic intelligence. At every step of the crisis, the two men appear to have been driven as much by their loathing of India — West Pakistan’s rival — as by any cool calculations of power. 

When India and Pakistan went to war:

At this point, the recklessness of Nixon and Kissinger only got worse. They dispatched ships from the Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal, and even encouraged China to move troops to the Indian border, possibly for an attack — a maneuver that could have provoked the Soviet Union. Fortunately, the leaders of the two Communist countries proved more sober than those in the White House. The war ended quickly, when India crushed the Pakistani Army and East Pakistan declared independence. 

Back in 1943, Winston Churchill ("I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion") let his dislike of Indians get the better of him, and refused to let relief be sent for the Bengal famine; and somewhere between 1.5 million and 4 million people died.

Such death tolls are the price of not being independent and not being strong - your fate is determined in far-away London or Washington.

Justice?

(via digby) Matt Taibbi on the outrageous settlement the US DOJ made with the HSBC bank.

Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), {Assistant Attorney General & Clintonista} Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.

The banks' laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC's Mexican branches and "deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows."

"...and justice for all" applies only to the suckers who actually recite the pledge of allegiance. Corporations are persons who don't recite the pledge of allegiance, whose money talks, and who are scoff-laws.

On a more serious note, the Clintons are as pro-Corporation as any Republican - somehow the Democratic Party has to come up with a more progressive candidate for the Presidency in 2016.   The only condition in which I vote for Hilary Clinton is if the alternative is seriously worse.

So you might ask, what's the appropriate financial penalty for a bank in HSBC's position? Exactly how much money should one extract from a firm that has been shamelessly profiting from business with criminals for years and years? Remember, we're talking about a company that has admitted to a smorgasbord of serious banking crimes. If you're the prosecutor, you've got this bank by the balls. So how much money should you take?

How about all of it? How about every last dollar the bank has made since it started its illegal activity? How about you dive into every bank account of every single executive involved in this mess and take every last bonus dollar they've ever earned? Then take their houses, their cars, the paintings they bought at Sotheby's auctions, the clothes in their closets, the loose change in the jars on their kitchen counters, every last freaking thing. Take it all and don't think twice. And then throw them in jail.

Sound harsh? It does, doesn't it? The only problem is, that's exactly what the government does just about every day to ordinary people involved in ordinary drug cases.

Seriously, don' t try selling to me the idea that third world countries are more corrupt than the US.   US Attorney Preet Bharara's statement below sounds just like so much propaganda:

Finally, this Office’s sole motivation in this case, as in all cases, is to uphold the rule of law, protect victims, and hold accountable anyone who breaks the law – no matter what their societal status and no matter how powerful, rich or connected they are.

The only time the powerful, rich and connected are taken down is when they offend the even more powerful, rich and connected. 

A sad day....

On February 28, 2002, ex-Parliamentarian Ehsan Jafri was killed by a mob - here are the circumstances of his death, as per Wiki

On February 28, 2002, when riots broke out in Gujarat, he was killed by a rampaging extremist Hindu mob. By early morning, a large mob gathered at the Gulbarg Society in the Chamanpura suburb of Ahmedabad. This was an almost entirely Muslim housing society where the septuagenarian Ahsan Jafri lived. According to First Information Report of the incident filed by police inspector K.G. Erda, the violent extremist Hindu mob started attacking Muslim owned establishments in the morning and were dispersed by the police. However, they reassembled around 1 PM armed with swords, sticks, pipe and kerosene. had blown up gas cylinders to blast through walls in the Gulbarga society. The report also mentions that the rioters were guided by voter lists and computer printouts with the addresses of Muslim-owned properties, information obtained from the local municipal administration. This claim was repeated by at least five Muslim witnesses presented before the Nanavati Commission.

Chamanpura is in central Ahmedabad and barely a kilometer from the police station, and less than 2 km from the Police Commissioner's office. Believing the area to be safe given Jafri's presence, many Muslims in the area had gathered in his compound. Around 10:30 in the morning, the Ahmedabad Commissioner of Police, P.C. Pandey, personally visited Jafri and apparently assured him that police reinforcement would be coming. In the next five hours, Jafri and top Congress officials of the state repeatedly kept calling the police and other government officials requesting safe transport for the residents, but no help arrived. The FIR by Erda further stated that the police station had 130 policemen on duty that day, and were well armed with teargas shells. However, no one was deployed to disperse the crowd, despite Ehsan Jafri and top Congress politicians repeatedly contacting the Director General of Police, Police Commissioner, the Mayor, Leader of Opposition in the State parliament, and other top government officials.

Today the Indian judicial system once again pronounced that there is no case for prosecuting the then- and current- Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi and a slew of top officials of Gujarat.

Fine, maybe they are not involved. But clearly, somewhere between the top officials and the policemen on duty, a decision was made not to try to disperse the mob, or to ignore the calls for help or to be incommunicado from taking orders from the top for no good reason.

What is sad is that the Indian judicial system has failed to nail down the responsibility for this failure to act. 

For the widow Zakia Jafri, who has been fighting for justice for the past decade it must be an extremely sad day, and my heart goes out to her.