Everyone remembers Chandrababu Naidu as the CEO of Andhra Pradesh, the techno savy CM. According to one analysis, the two reasons he lost was “Telengana and Economics”:http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=46783.
bq. What else explains the anti-incumbency? No one can realistically claim that AP is worse off today than a decade ago. Even rural AP has progressed. Literacy rates have improved, demographic indicators have improved and so has rural infrastructure. It is wrong to suggest that Naidu was only about IT and bio-tech, only about Hyderabad and Cyberabad.
bq. Yes, there was a lot of hype and he was far too much of a CEO and not enough of a political leader. He was more committed to being at Davos than visiting a drought-stricken hamlet. He saw the Telangana issue only in terms of economic indicators and demand for water, not as a political and cultural alienation of a region that had a weak voice in successive TDP governments. He became, as I once titled my column on him, the Nizam Of Hyperabad!
bq. That, however, is not why he lost. He lost because he promised a ??Vision for 2020?? and just assumed the voter would remain invested in him in 2004, to be able to get there. Elections in democracies are about the here and now, Naidu spoke of only the distant and beyond.
If “this is a pre-game show”:http://www.madhoo.com/archives/003065.php#003065, then the NDA will be in serious trouble. The next Govt. formation might require some serious horse trading. Already the President is consulting “experts on a hung Parliament”:http://us.rediff.com/election/2004/may/11kalam.htm.
Sex Education
In United States, if any state takes any money from the Federal Government for sex-education in schools, then they are supposed to teach only sexual abstinence (due to Catholic beliefs ?) and should *not* provide any information on contraception. California, the state everyone hates, refused to take federal money and “started teaching about contraception”:http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/9207762p-10133041c.html.
bq. In briefings Thursday for House offices and today for Senate staffers, the California Wellness Foundation, which runs a statewide teen pregnancy initiative, said the state’s teen birth rate had dropped from 11th highest in the country in 1991 to 21st place in 2002.
bq. Brindis, citing figures from the state Department of Health Services, said the teen birth rate fell from 73 to 41.1 per 1,000 youths between the ages of 15 and 19. That drop exceeded the 30 percent decline in the national rate between 1991 and 2002, and put the state slightly below the national teen birth rate of 43 per 1,000.
And interestingly, the shift to this comprehensive plan was started under the Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.
A "U" Turn
The former First Lady Nancy Reagan has come out in “support of Stem Cell Research”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12862-2004May9.html. This must be shocking to the Republican party.
bq. Former first lady Nancy Reagan endorsed stem cell research Saturday night and made an impassioned call for taking the controversial procedure out of the political arena, saying it could help cure illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicts her husband. Such research is generally opposed by political conservatives and many antiabortion groups, because it involves the destruction of days-old human embryos. President Bush signed an executive order in 2001 limiting research to existing embryonic stem cell lines.
When it affects someone you love so much, your ideology can take a “U” turn.
Scientists in United States are falling behind researchers in other countries as they cannot use Federal money to study certain stem cells. But states like California and New Jersey have passed laws encouraging stem-cell research.
Our Friends, the Saudis
The Americans are not the only ones torturing their prisoners. CBS 60 Minutes had a glimpse of “Saudi Justice”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/06/60minutes/main615986.shtml this week.
bq. Why did the Government of Saudi Arabia frame seven westerners for a series of car bombings they didn’t commit? Those car bombings, which began in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in November 2000, killed three members of the expatriate community and severely injured several others. To Western observers, they were clearly the work of Islamic fundamentalists. But the Saudis were not about to admit that. So five Britons, a Canadian and a Belgian found themselves arrested, systematically tortured into false confessions and eventually convicted of those bombings.
Moral Outrage Mr. Koffi Annan ?
State Department and Pakistan
The U.S Department of State has released its reports on terrorism called Patterns of Global Terrorism – 2003. In the section for India it is mentioned that
In the states of Jammu and Kashmir, killings of civilians by foreign-based and Kashmiri militant groups continued and included the murder of numerous political leaders and party workers. The Indian Government asserted that Lashkar-i-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed were behind a number of high-profile attacks in the state, which included the massacre of 24 Hindu civilians in southern Kashmir in March and an attack on 17 October outside the Chief Minister?s residence compound in Srinagar.
If you read the whole report, you will find that the foreign land from where militant groups enter Kashmir is never named. The state department is oogling over Musharraf and for them Pakistan continues to be the most important ally in the US war on terror aka Finding Osama. The ally is so trustworthy that US forces are now going in and out as they please
The section on Pakistan is all about how well they are doing in their war on terror with absolutely no word about how they are supporting terrorists, who are creating problems in India and Afghanistan. Even if the Americans in the field suspect the Pakistani sincerity or if the ISI is inviting journalists to their meetings with terrorists, where it is declared that, “Nobody can deviate us from our goal of liberating Kashmir.”, the State Department is turning a blind eye to it.
Religious Principles
“Few days back”:https://varnam.org/archives/000372.html we saw how “The Da Vinci Code”:https://varnam.org/archives/000340.html united Protestants and Catholics. Now according to this report, Shias and Sunnis have united in certain regions of Iraq to fight the “the coalition forces”:http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=519245.
bq. Extraordinary scenes as Iraqi Shia were invited to pray in Sunni mosques yesterday were evidence of how deeply the Americans have misunderstood Iraqi society. Only months ago, the US was issuing dire warnings of civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia. Instead, the two communities have united against the occupiers.
But then when the world goes one way, Pakistanis “go the other way”:http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1083180354708.
bq. Pakistan’s paramilitary and security services were on high alert on Friday night after a suicide bomber attacked a Shia mosque in Karachi, the southern port city, leaving at least 15 dead and more than 125 injured. That attack was widely believed to be the work of members of hardline Sunni groups including factions that have campaigned for years for Shia muslims to be officially declared heretics. Some groups are believed to be linked to militant outsiders such as al-Qaeda, according to intelligence officials.
If Shias and Sunnis are confused, the “Christians and Muslims of Nigeria are not”:http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,4386,249819,00.html.
Religion! What a wonderful thing.
Northern Qi Buddhas
This is one of the 35 extraordinary 6th-century Chinese Buddhist statues that were accidentally unearthed in 1996 by workers leveling a school sports field in Qingzhou, a small city in Shandong Province on China’s northeast coast.
bq. Created during a 50-year period straddling the Northern Wei (386 – 534), Eastern Wei (534 – 550) and the Northern Qi (550 – 577) dynasties, the sculptures illustrate dramatic stylistic changes that occurred during that time. The unusual quantity of remaining gilding and vibrant red and green pigments on their surfaces provide a chance for the viewer to experience the impact of brightly decorated sculpture-the norm in ancient China. Many faces are gilded and some retain the remnants of painted mustaches, while the stone mandorlas-or backgrounds of the high relief sculptures-still display vibrant red pigments representing flames of light emanating from the Buddha.
bq. Northern Qi sculptors adopted a different style more akin to the Indian Gupta style. Free-standing figures were modeled wearing light, close-fitting monastic garments revealing the body contours of the wearer. Carved in the round, but with less-detail on the rear, these three-dimensional Northern Qi figures had downcast eyes- encouraging a compassionate exchange between the Buddha and the viewer below. Their low ushnishas furthered the impression that these Buddhas were more “human” and approachable. Iron hooks remaining on some sculptures indicate that independent mandorlas were attached to the statues. [From “Indian Archeology Mailing List”:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaArchaeology/]
The Apology
“Tom Friedman”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/06/opinion/06FRIE.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fThomas%20L%20Friedman in NY Times
bq. Mr. Bush needs to invite to Camp David the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the heads of both NATO and the U.N., and the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. There, he needs to eat crow, apologize for his mistakes and make clear that he is turning a new page.
Followed by “Little Green Footballs”:http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=10946_Friedman-_Were_All_Doomed_Unless_Bush_Grovels
bq. Thomas Friedman demands that Donald Rumsfeld be fired, and maybe the entire Pentagon along with him. He says it?s the only way to restore our honor. After laying waste to our military command, Friedman proposes that President Bush invite to Camp David the UN Security Council, and the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria, and grovel before them in abject shame, wearing sackcloth, rubbing ashes into his hair, and weeping.
but at the “end of the day”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/07/politics/07RUMS.html?hp
bq. President Bush said on Thursday that he was sorry for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers, but vowed that the man in charge of the United States military, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, would remain in his job. Mr. Bush expressed his regrets in the White House Rose Garden at the side of King Abdullah II of Jordan after they met in the Oval Office. The president, who had deplored the abuse but stopped short of an apology in Arab television interviews on Wednesday, appeared to direct his words to the king as the leader of an Arab nation.
Prisoner Abuse & Accountability
The Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal is getting murkier
bq. For one thing, the scandal is not just limited to six people – as House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter repeatedly insisted on Capital Report last night. His “six” doesn’t seem to include the soldier who, according to the one report, had sex with a female prisoner. Nor does it seem to include the two people cited in General Taguba’s report who work for two private companies – CACI and Titan – and apparently participated in interrogations.
bq. Moreover, the whole issue of contractor involvement in interrogations has stirred up a hornet’s nest on Capitol Hill. These contractors are not subject to the military justice system. They cannot be subject to court martial. So how exactly, some members of Congress want to know, will they be held accountable for their actions? [From CNBC Capitol Report Mailing List]
But will Donald Rumsfeld quit over this ? The answer is: “No”:http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/content.asp?y=2004&dt=0506&pub=Utusan_Express&sec=World&pg=wo_06.htm.
Peace ? Just wait and see
For those of you who think that love is flowing across the border from Pakistan to India, here is a “grim report”:http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=rEp8HSWcbZi3u%2FG6rbayBx%3D%3D.
bq. Good luck. For now, the militants have gone quiet, temporarily refraining from larger-scale terrorist attacks in Kashmir. But Pakistan’s army and intelligence apparatus has grown so close to Kashmir militants that it is almost impossible for the government to genuinely crack down. And, even if the government does try, the jihadis won’t go quietly into the night. Infuriated, they stormed out of the meeting with the representative from the ISI. “After betraying the Islamic government in Afghanistan [i.e, the Taliban], General Musharraf is now trying to let down Kashmiris,” said one of the militants who attended the meeting with the ISI man. “Nobody can deviate us from our goal of liberating Kashmir.”