Elections in US and time for Vir Sangvi to come up with ridiculous claims

And yet, when the results came in and Bush made his triumphant victory speech, I couldn

Colin Powell is on a roll. First he pissed off Taiwan. Then he said that he worked as a telephone operator and setup a phone call between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan. Jaswant Singh replied immediately.

“The way he has gone about claiming credit is a total concoction and a matter of imagination, the way he conjured up biological weapons in Iraq,” Singh said. “I don’t know whether the State Department of U.S.A., in addition to attempting to run U.S. foreign policy as best as it can, is also a telephone exchange and now is acting as a kind of elocution instructor to South Asia.”

As a minister, Singh was believed to have had good relations with his U.S. counterparts. But at the news conference, he said: “The U.S. bureaucracy are world champions in . . . inaction, in finding reason not to do things.” He added that the U.S. bureaucracy is three times ahead of its Indian counterpart in “obfuscating, obstructing and ensuring that nothing is done.” [India’s Ex-Foreign Minister Assails Powell]

The way he is changing policy at whim, one day he might even say Kashmir valley is a part of Pakistan.

After Nancy Reagan, one more Republican has broken ranks. The Governor of my home state of Kaa-Lee-Fawn-Ya is endorsing Proposition 71, a $3 billion dollar bond measure to fund human embryonic stem cell research.

The endorsement will also put him at odds with the state Republican Party, which officially opposes Proposition 71, and perhaps even the Bush administration – which has limited funding of the research. On the other hand, Schwarzenegger has said he supports the technology. His father-in-law, Sargent Shriver, is in the early grips of Alzheimer’s disease, which Proposition 71 supporters say could someday be treated by stem cells.

Stem cells are created in the first days after conception and are the building blocks of life. Some researchers hope to turn stem cells into replacement tissue to treat a variety of disease and injury. But many social conservatives oppose the research because it involves destroying microscopic embryos.[Governor endorses controversial stem cell proposition]

The Times Of India had an editorial on this issue and rightly points out

With such interest in stem cell research, it’s a matter of time before the European Union or even the Koreans become leaders in this field. Earlier this year, in a major breakthrough, a team of Korean scientists was able to create a line of human embryonic stem cells in a lab. Traditionally, Koreans are not seen to be at the cutting edge of research in science and technology. The US government’s involvement is not crucial to stem cell research. There are plenty of other countries which are more than willing to take the lead in this area[

जयकृष्णः | ജയകൃഷ്ണൻ USA October 19, 2004 1 Minute

Tom Friedman brings up one point which none of the anti-outsourcing people talk about

The second group of boomers barreling down the highway are the young people in India, China and Eastern Europe, who in this increasingly flat world will be able to compete with your kids and mine more directly than ever for high-value-added jobs. Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they’ll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work.

When was the last time you met a 12-year-old who told you he or she wanted to grow up to be an engineer? When Bill Gates goes to China, students hang from the rafters and scalp tickets to hear him speak. In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears. We need a Bill Cosby-like president to tell all parents the truth: throw out your kid’s idiotic video game, shut off the TV and get Johnny and Suzy to work, because there is a storm coming their way. [number is reducing. The bright minds + VC money created employment for many, but may not be in the future.

As the commentators noted in my post on The Draft coming back ?, that it is mostly democrats who are harping on it. A bill sponsored by Democrats which was lying dormant for 18 months was bought to vote and both Democrats and Republicans voted against it.

The vote put an end to HR 163, but Democrats and Republicans signaled they will continue to accuse each other of contemplating a revival of conscription, at least through the presidential campaign’s final month, and probably as long as U.S. troops are in Iraq.

For 18 months House Republican leaders ignored the bill, sponsored by liberal Democrats who complained that minorities and low-income Americans are doing a disproportionate share of the fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent days, however, Republicans grew increasingly alarmed by sometimes vague, sometimes direct suggestions that President Bush has a secret plan to reinstate the draft if reelected.[House GOP Brings Up Draft in Order to Knock It Down]

The President has publicly stated that there will be no draft. John Kerry too has stated the same. Does that end the issue ?

At the federal government level, there are so many restrictions against stem cell research in United States as it is against the religious beliefs of the President. But fortunately for us, the democracy in US is much more powerful and the states have lot of autonomy to formulate laws. Proposition 71 on the ballot in California is for providing $3 billion worth research using embryonic stem cells.

Stem-cell research uses embryos left over from treatments at fertility clinics. They are microscopic dots of a few dozen cells. Ordinarily, these embryos are destroyed or frozen indefinitely. No “new” embryos are created or destroyed because of stem-cell research. Stem-cell cures, when they come, will use cells reproduced in the laboratory and will not involve embryos at all. More immediately, passing up a shot at curing Alzheimer’s would at most allow some microscopic embryos already in deep freeze the right to be frozen for good. Stem-cell research is not a sure thing, but bold initiatives in which California is uniquely qualified to succeed are worth the initial gamble.[Yes to Stem-Cell Research]

I hope this propositions passes so that California can take the lead with other nations of the world like Britain and South Korea which are not being held back by religious beliefs.

Last night I attended a talk by Rajeev Srinivasan, Rediff Columnist, at Stanford University on India’s competitive advantage.

First he talked about what a great past India had, when there were great accomplishments in Mathematics, Medicine, education etc. Even as near as 1750, before colonialism set in, India had 25% of world trade. There was a school in each village and India was enjoying the fruits of globalization.

But then after Independence, Rajeev says that India fell into the Nehruvian Growth Rate of less than 5% due to the policies of the Governments which did not make infrastructure investments and popularized the licence-raj. The bureaucrats were spending more time telling people what they could not do.

To make India prosperous, we have to promote the advantages India has and for that we have to promote what he calls “Brand India”. As a case study he said, it is good to study how the Japanese entered the US Markets. Also there is a need to improve infrastructure and the legal framework.

There is lot of fear in India regarding multinations assuming that Indian companies would not be able to compete with them. But then he said that Indian companies can definitely adapt to the circumstances. He told the cases of Aravind Eye Clinic and the Japur Foot, both of whom are providing world class services at low rates. He also mentioned about the my home state of Kerala, where they have packaged Ayurveda and Tourism and created a industry which is providing employment to many people.

He then compared India against United States and China offering the pluses and minuses. One of the biggest problem with Indians is inferiority complex. But as the IT industry has shown, India can survive in a globalized world. In the past India has survived in a globalized world and it can again.

I have been reading Rajeev’s columns for long time and this is the first time I saw him and heard him talk and I have to say, I like his columns better. But I appreciate the fact that he has taken time to put a comprehensive view of India from cultural, economic and historical angle. But to spread Brand India he will have to reach to a wider audience, especially non-Indians.
For those of you who wonder, how he looks like, here is a picture. For people in Bay Area, there is another talk on Oct 7th at the University of California, Berkeley.

President Bush in the first debate mentioned that United States would have an all volunteer army. Then I was watching an interview of Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont with Tim Russert where he told candidly that a draft is unavoidable given the current circumstances. Now the NY Times has an article about it.

More than one-third of nearly 3,900 former soldiers mobilized under a special wartime program have resisted their call-ups. The Army National Guard fell nearly 10 percent short of its 2004 recruiting goal of 56,000 enlistees. The Army, concerned about recruiting, has eased some standards. And there have been bipartisan calls in Congress to expand the Army by more than 20,000 soldiers.

Just months ago, Pentagon officials suggested that a new draft could be avoided if recruitment and retention numbers stayed high. But as fighting in Iraq escalates, signs are growing that those numbers may not be adequate in the coming years. Thus, the new talk about a draft. [The Option Nobody’s Pushing. Yet]

If Bush gets re-elected, there can be more pre-emptive strikes against other nations as well. With the war now going on in two fronts and if the size of volunteer army is not increased, maybe the inevitable will happen.

Few days back, I had watched Outfoxed, a documentary about the absolutely pathetic Fox News Channel, which still maintains the slogan “Fair and Balanced”. Joshua Micah Marshall caught Fox fabricating John Kerry quotes. Later Fox apologized for its mistake.

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rusmfeld has said Iraq’s scheduled January elections might not take place in areas of that country where violence remains rampant. Rumsfeld told a U.S. Senate committee yesterday that the elections might only extend to 75 to 80 percent of Iraq due to heavy violence in the rest of the country. But he said such an election, while imperfect, would still be better than nothing.

Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State

The No. 2 official at the State Department said Friday that the elections planned for January in Iraq must be “open to all citizens,” contradicting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who has suggested that voting might not be possible in the more-violent areas.

“We’re going to have an election that is free and open and that has to be open to all citizens. It’s got to be our best effort to get it into troubled areas as well,” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a House committee Friday, after being asked about Rumsfeld’s words.