Absolutely correct....the 3 wise men speak.

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One of the GREAT figures of India:

From Wikipedia:

Amartya Kumar Sen, (born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist.
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He has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, economic and social justice, economic theories of famines, and indexes of the measure of well-being of citizens of developing countries. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1998.
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He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a senior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, distinguished fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he previously served as Master from 1998 to 2004.^[4][5] Sen is a member of the Advisory Board of Incentives for Global Health, the not-for-profit behind the Health Impact Fund. He is the first Indian and the first Asian academic to head an Oxbridge college. He also serves as the first Chancellor of the proposed Nalanda International University.^[6][7]
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Sen's books have been translated into more than thirty languages over a period of forty years. He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security. In 2006, Time magazine listed him under "60 years of Asian Heroes"^[8] and in 2010 included him in their "100 most influential persons in the world".^[9] New Statesman listed him in their 2010 edition of "World's 50 Most Influential People Who Matter".^[10] Sen was one of the 20 Nobel Laureates who signed the "Stockholm Memorandum" at the third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability in Stockholm, Sweden on 18 May 2011.^[11]

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Don’t want Modi as my PM: Amartya Sen

 

 

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PTI and the The Hindu newspaper

Coming out strongly against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on Monday said he does not want him to become India’s prime minister as he does not have secular credentials.

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The prominent economist also criticised Mr. Modi’s model of governance saying he did not approve of it.

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“Yes, I don’t want him,” Dr. Sen told CNN-IBN in reply to a question on whether he wanted him as his prime minister.

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“As an Indian citizen I don’t want Modi as my PM... He has not done enough to make minorities feel safe,” he said.

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On being asked why he did not want so, Dr. Sen said, “He could have first of all been more secular and he could have made the minority community feel more secure.”

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“No, I don’t approve of it... I don’t think the record is very good. I think I don’t have to be a member of the minority in order to feel insecure... We Indians don’t want a situation where the minority feel insecure and could legitimately think that there was an organised violence against them in 2002. I think that is a terrible record and I don’t think Indian Prime Minister as an Indian citizen... Of who has that kind of record. No, I do not.”

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Dr. Sen said physical infrastructure in Gujarat may be good but Mr. Modi has not done enough for minorities or for the majority. He also said that the Gujarat model needs to do much more on the health and education sectors and bring equity.

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He said Mr. Modi could have made the majority community feel that they are not maltreating the minority and going against the long Indian tradition of being tolerant.

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“He could have also taken both of the facts that Gujarat record in education and healthcare is pretty bad and he has to concentrate on that... as much as he is concentrating quietly as it has happened on physical infrastructure,” the Nobel laureate said.

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BJP recently anointed Mr. Modi as chairman of its election campaign committee.

Keywords: Amartya Sen, Narendra Modi, 2014 parliamentary polls, BJP, prime ministerial candidate, Gujarat riots, Gujarat growth model

Absolutely correct....3 wise men speak.

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This great man is not just another economist:

From wikipedia:

Jagdish Natwarlal Bhagwati (born July 26, 1934) is an American economist and professor of economics and law at Columbia University.^[1] He is well known for his research in international trade and for his advocacy of free trade.

Early years and personal life

Bhagwati was born in 1934, into a Gujarati family in the Bombay Presidency during the British Raj, and graduated from Sydenham College, Mumbai. He then went with "senior status" to read over two years for the BA in Economics at Cambridge (as did colleague and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen who was at Trinity College) where he was a member of St. John's College, Cambridge and received the degree in 1956. Bhagwati's experience at St John's College joined that of other eminent Indian economists including Sir Partha Dasgupta and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He received the Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967.
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Bhagwati is married to Padma Desai, also a Columbia economist and Russia-specialist; they have one daughter. He is brother of P.N. Bhagwati, former Chief Justice of India and also of S.N. Bhagwati, an eminent neurosurgeon. Bhagwati and Desai's joint 1970 OECD study India: Planning for Industrialization was a notable contribution at the time.
Bhagwati is a Democrat.^[2]

Career

Bhagwati has previously served as an external advisor to the Director General of the World Trade Organization in 2001, as a special policy advisor on globalization to the United Nations in 2000, and as an economics policy advisor to the Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade from 1991 to 1993. From 1968 until 1980, Bhagwati was an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [3] Bhagwati currently serves on the Academic Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch (Asia) and on the board of scholars of the Centre for Civil Society. He is a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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In 2000, Bhagwati was signatory to an amicus briefing, coordinated by the American Enterprise Institute, with the Supreme Court of the United States to contend that the Environmental Protection Agency should, contrary to a prior ruling, be allowed to take into account the costs of regulations when setting environmental standards.
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In January 2004, Bhagwati published In Defense of Globalization, a book in which he argues "this process [of globalization] has a human face, but we need to make that face more agreeable."
In May, 2004, Bhagwati was one of the experts who took part in the Copenhagen Consensus project.
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In 2006, Bhagwati was a member of the Panel of Eminent Persons who reviewed the work of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In early 2010, Bhagwati joined the advisory board of the institute for migrant rights, Cianjur – Indonesia.^[3]

Awards, honors and commentary

• Mahalanobis Memorial Medal of the Indian Econometric Society (1974)
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1982)^[4]
• Seidman Distinguished Award in International Political Economy (1998)
• Padma Vibhushan Award (2000)
• Lifetime Achievement Award of the Indian Chamber of Commerce (2004)
• Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star (2006)

Other awards include the Bernhard Harms Prize (Germany), the Kenan Enterprise Award (United States), the Freedom Prize (Switzerland), and the John R. Commons Award (United States). He has also received honorary degrees from the University of Sussex and Erasmus University, as well as others.^[5]
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Paul Samuelson, on the occasion of Bhagwati's 70th Birthday festschrift conference in Gainesville Florida, January 2005 said:

• "I measure a scholar’s prolific-ness not by the mere number of his publishings. Just as the area of a rectangle equals its width times its depth, the quality of a lifetime accomplishment must weight each article by its novelties and wisdoms.... Jagdish Bhagwati is more like Haydn: a composer of more than a hundred symphonies and no one of them other than top notch.... In the struggle to improve the lot of mankind, whether located in advanced economies or in societies climbing the ladder out of poverty, Jagdish Bhagwati has been a tireless partisan of that globalization which elevates global total-factor – productivities both of richest America and poorest regions of Asia and Africa."^[6]

Jagdish Bhagwati was the fictional winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in The Simpsons episode Elementary School Musical (The Simpsons).

Bibliography

Books

• Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya (2013). Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries. PublicAffairs. ISBN 1-61-039271-X.
• Jagdish Bhagwati (2008). Termites in the Trading System: How Preferential Agreements Undermine Free Trade. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-533165-6.
• Jagdish Bhagwati (2007). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517025-3.
• Jagdish Bhagwati (2002). The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington Mismanaged Globalization. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-52327-2.
• James H. Mathis, Jagdish Bhagwati (Foreword) (2002). Regional Trade Agreements in the GATT/WTO: Article XXIV and the Internal Trade Requirement. Norwell/TMC Asser Press. ISBN 90-6704-139-4.
• Jagdish N. Bhagwati (Editor), Robert E. Hudec (Editor) (1996). Fair Trade and Harmonization, Vol. 1: Economic Analysis. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-02401-2.

Articles

• Bhagwati, Jagdish (March 1964). "The Pure Theory of International Trade: A Survey". The Economic Journal 74 (293): 1–84. doi:10.2307/2228112.
• Bhagwati, Jagdish (November 1993). "The Case for Free Trade". Scientific American 269 (5): 18–23.
• Bhagwati, Jagdish (Fall 2009). "Feeble Critiques: Capitalism's Petty Detractors". World Affairs.
• Bhagwati, Jagdish (2008). "Protectionism". In David R. Henderson (ed.). Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (2nd ed.). Indianapolis: Library of Economics and Liberty. ISBN 978-0865976658. OCLC 237794267.

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No particular affection for either Modi or Rahul: Jagdish Bhagwati

PTI and Times of India.

After Amartya Sen's controversial remarks that he would not like to see Narendra Modi as India's Prime Minister, another noted economist Jagdish Bhagwati has said he has no particular affection for either Modi or Rahul Gandhi.

"I am not going to vote for Modi. I have no particular affection for him. But I have no particular affection for Rahul Gandhi also.

"I want all of the progressive people, no matter which party they belong to, to look at the ideas we are proposing and show where they stand and what they are going to do with these ideas," Bhagwati told CNN-IBN.

Asked if he would like to see Modi as Prime Minister, he said he would not go by personalities and like to see what their platforms and their programmes are. "I would also like to see debates between them like in America."

He said he was in favour of social indicators and social progress and the reason why liked the Gujarat model was that growth has taken place on social indicators.

"I don't know what his model is. What has happened in Gujarat is that relatively rapid growth has taken place. He has actually been very good about getting license cleared very fast, he has added to electricity supply which is a big problem...All of which is exactly the way development takes place and then I also find that social progress has taken place," Bhagwati said of Modi's governance.

Absolutely correct..3 wise men speak.

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Rahul is a nice smiley guy, who one thinks has not really grown up from his teenage years. He is a mummy's boy. 

He likes to party with his elite Congress Jet set friends....he is not evil, he is bad, he is not nasty, he is not manipulative, he is not a wheeler dealer. So he has zero skills as an Indian politician. Wearing a faux beard, and endlessly shaking hands with the aam admi in the villages is not going to change his fundamental character as an entitled, silver spoon in the mouth, rich brat who failed at Harvard and ran away from there, and failed in his studies in London, and ran away from there. 

So like mother like son.

He is also not really Indian, speaking English as his first preferred language, and too emotionally attached to the West to be a good Indian leader. 

It is possible that he has been recruited as a spy whilst in the USA. 

In a modern democracy the time for dynasty politics has lapsed.....therefore little Rahul should not be the next PM. 

He hasn't even penned a decent policy paper that deals with the myriad of problems that vex the masses, NOT even ghost written ones. He is also strangely very conspicuous from one to one, or even meet the press sessions......he is after all in his forties.

He could be a PM, with one of the Congress Grandees running him as a puppet just like Cheney/Bush II, or Hitler/Hesse-Bormann....BUT that would be sad, wouldn't it?

These are opinions/facts which I have stated before. Now lets look at his criminal side.

Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi not fit for PM's post: Anna Hazare

PTIand the Times of India.

Social activist Anna Hazare on Friday said that both Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi are "unacceptable" as Prime Minister as both are "not fit" to acquire the dignified post.

"Both Modi and Rahul Gandhi are unacceptable to me for prime ministership as both are not fit to take over the dignified and respected post," Hazare said responding to a question by reporters on different forces depicting the two as the Prime Minister's candidate.

Hazare, who was here to participate in his 'Jantantra Yatra', said that in the past ten years of his being the chief minister of Gujarat, Modi created hurdles in setting up Lokayukta which only goes on to stress his views that appointment of anti-graft ombudsman was not required to bring an end to corruption.

Hazare said that Rahul Gandhi was also not the right candidate for the post of Prime Minister.

Saying that corruption and wrongdoings are the result of party politics in the country, Hazare said that his Jankranti Morcha was trying to bring six crore dedicated workers together and with their help launch the second innings of struggle for the Jan Lokpal at Delhi's Jantar Mantar in December.

To a question on norms for poverty, Hazare said that those sitting in air-conditioned offices cannot rightly evaluate poverty. "Rs 33 cannot provide meal to one mouth," he added.

After Amartya Sen's controversial remarks that he would not like to see Narendra Modi as India's Prime Minister, another noted economist Jagdish Bhagwati had told CNN-IBN in an interview that he has no particular affection for either Modi or Rahul Gandhi.

Slummy, Smelly, Filthy Indian cities

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Detroit is broke, Indian cities limping too

Surojit Gupta of the Times of India.




 
 
 
 
Drive to any Indian city. Chances are you will wade into chaotic traffic and roads full of potholes. You'll see choked drains, overflowing and smelly bins and streetlights that don't work. (Shanties, over crowded footpaths, people communing with nature out in the open, people blowing their vehicle horns for no particular reason, beggars accosting you to give, power cuts, bribe for routine daily work, extremely chaotic traffic, zero sense of 'system' and 'rule" in big and small cities...anything goes mentality, and cows and other animals roaming freely in the streets)

The reason for the mess isn't difficult to unravel. Most of our municipal bodies are cash strapped, unable to take care of the city's needs. The workforce is poor. Given the indifferent reputation of urban bodies, they tend to attract talent that can't rise to the challenges at hand.

An assessment of our cities following the Detroit debacle shows how a lethal mix of mismanagement and lack of autonomy is driving our cities into chaos and possibly, collapse, if not addressed urgently. Take Bangalore - a city showcased as India's answer to Silicon Valley. Work on the city underpasses has remained unfinished and sweepers can't be paid as the Bruhath Bangalore MahanagaraPalike (BBMP) is broke. The BBMP's outstanding bills stand at Rs 1,300 crore as on July 19.

The civic body has taken loans of over Rs 3,365 crore. Contractors hired by BBMP have stopped civic works in protest. Bhopal's story is no different. The municipal corporation's finances are weighed down by staff salaries and the growing city's needs. Although funds from the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) breathed some life into the civic body, its health remains precarious.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is no better. Efforts are on to boost revenues through improved property tax collection. The KMC's total budget is Rs 3,500 crore. Of this, Rs 1,900 crore comes from government grants. It generates Rs 1,600 crore. The total expenditure is Rs 3,400 crore. That leaves very little for development work.

In Goa, the Panaji Corporation too is passing through difficult times. It depends on the government for staff salaries and other expenses. Revenue generation is shoddy.

The picture is as bleak in Kochi. The civic body depends on property, advertisement, entertainment and professional taxes and grants from the central and state governments. It expects to generate Rs 877.97 crore in 2013-14 against an estimated expense of Rs 849.86 crore. "The corporation is cash-strapped and depends on the state to execute big infrastructure projects. Bulk of its income goes in paying salaries and pensions," Mayor Tony Chammany said. Worsening matters is the civic body's inability to collect property tax dues and user charges. Citizens stubbornly resist paying and the state's powerlessness is inexplicable.

The compact between the service provider and recipient has collapsed when it comes to civic bodies. Most of them survive on funds from the centre and states and the trickle that comes in as taxes.

"State government assistance keeps the Jaipur Municipal Corporation afloat. Most of our earnings go in paying our 8,000-strong staff," Nita Khaitan, chairperson, JMC finance committee, says. Municipal bodies across UP are limping.

Lucknow municipal commissioner RK Singh told TOI almost all big city corporations such as Allahabad, Varanasi and Kanpur have no more than Rs 100-125 crore to carry out repair and maintenance - a pittance when seen against the enormity of the work needed to lick these decrepit cities into shape. TOI spoke to municipal corporations in major cities across the country and the story was strikingly similar: Financial crunch, lack of governance and autonomy, factionalism, political interference and overstaffing were endemic.

A handful of cities though have bucked this trend - Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, Nashik and Nagpur for instance. Experts say municipal corporations need greater autonomy and better fiscal management. These would help urbanization and make cities growth engines. This becomes imperative as more people flock to cities for jobs, education and a better life.                                              

Neo-liberal USA

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Always good to remember that the USA is the largest economy in the world at $15 trillion PPP, and per capita income of $50,000 because of a combination of economic models that have been experimented with since the country became independent.
 
 
 
 
 
A once fabulous city of 1.8 million, brimming with American ingenuity, creativity and honest hard labor.......BUT now under Jewish neo-liberalism from the Chicargo School of economics and Professor Milton Friedman, the city is a vast wasteland set for a post Apocalypse movie, and bankrupt.
 
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Little Entitled Randie

By Scott Creighton at American Everyman blog

Little Entitled Randie, the guy who got into medical school at Duke without a bachelor’s degree because his daddy went there and then later got into the senate because his daddy was in congress, is complaining that someone actually suggested the federal government bailout Detroit before the banksters and technocrats can chop it up and hand it over to the oligarchs for fun and profit.

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He screeched “over my dead body” in reference to the suggestion.
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After all, the entire point of the demolition of our economy was too facilitate the fire-sale that is going on right now in Detroit and cities like it across the country, so how much sense does it make to bailout Detroit at this final stage of the counter-revolution, the re-feudalization of America?
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When asked about all those people living on their pensions in Detroit and what is going to happen to them, Little Entitled Randie simply said “yeah, that’s a problem”

NEWSFLASH – Rand Paul is just another corporatist sycophant looking to feather his nest while suckling up to the country’s financial masters. His “libertarian” ideology is the EXACT SAME THING as the neo-liberal economic shock therapy model used by the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds for decades in other countries across the globe. Only difference is, over there they resisted it, here, the Paulites call it “liberty” Scott Creighton

(Well not exactly. In places such as Chile, Argentina, Russia where neo-liberalism was applied in full, the economic system collapsed quite quickly, and the respective countries headed for disaster. Given the obvious failure of Neo-liberalism as a viable economic model, many South American governments SUBSEQUENTLY rejected the advice of America to neo-liberalise their economy e.g Hugo Chavez and Venezuela. The BIG PROBLEM now, is that neo-liberalism is being introduced in some countries very gradually....learning from the mistakes of Chile, Argentina and Russia.......example the UK, India etc......where the peoples will and ability to identify neo-liberalism as the primary malaise is diminished)

A problem for those “other people”… not really a problem for Randie. He’s got a cushy “Big Guberment” job, don’t he? One which will provide him immeasurable wealth and access to the best healthcare in the world for him and his family for the rest of their lives and when he finally decides to call it quits (no folks, electronic voting elects these entitled fucks, you don’t) he’s got a massive pension in comparison, plus the opportunity to sell his influence to various companies til the day he dies.
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What’s Randie’s solution for those people who will be tossed out of our society like garbage at the end of their professional working careers? He offers none.
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Not only that, but he ends up acting as if the blame is on the people of Detroit and not the banksters and corrupt politicians who did all of this to them in the first place.
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“Over my dead body!” he exclaims stomping his little neoliberal foot down while every month the Federal Reserve pumps 80 billion dollars in bailout money to the banks owned by the people who run the Federal Reserve bank.
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Does he make such an exclamation with regard to that waste? No. Nothing. Zippo. Zilch.
But real people, people who have worked their entire lives dedicated to serving one need or the other of their local community, Detroit? Fuck them. That’s what Little Entitled Randie says, the whole time sitting back shoveling cash, literally, out the door of the House to the treasonous bankersters who designed this crippling austerity economy.
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Over at “Anti”-War, Justin Raimondo picks today to scribble a glowing rant about Little Entitled Randie and demonizes all those detractors who don’t sip the neoliberal libertarian Kool-Aid.

“If the “paleo” strategy was such a big mistake, how does Horwitz explain the Ron Paul phenomenon, which propelled a formerly marginal congressman from a rural district in Texas to the leadership of a national movement that today threatens the Republican establishment – and the Democratic establishment as well? The enormously successful Paul for President movement was the direct outgrowth of the very “sect” of libertarianism Horwitz and his buddy Goldberg disdain.” Justin Raimondo

No, dumbass. The Ron Paul campaign was an outgrowth of the Mitt Romney to take a dive for President Obama campaign, you idiot. Even the libertarians know that. They even know that over at the Daily Paul, for Christ’s sake.
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Personally I don’t see how anyone still take Raimondo seriously. He keeps trying to pretend that Ron Paul and his little entitled son are somehow “anti-establishment” in D.C. while nothing could be further from the truth.
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Ron actually staged his entire presidential run in order to prop-up the Mitt Romney “take a dive” campaign which was designed to keep Left Cover Obama in the White House. You have to be an idiot to not see that establishment supporting move. That’s to say nothing of the fact that “libertarianism” is simply another name for the Washington Consensus. 
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Compare the term “libertarianism” to “neoliberal” and you soon come to that understanding.
(Libertarianism in its 18th century form was a nice idea, that hasn't been actually applied in any specific country to date....for obvious reasons. The Modern Westphalia state requires a bureaucracy, central rule, and some measure of government intervention for the state to function effectively over the collective. So libertarianism as an idea can be toyed with marginally in a USA... say in the 18th century with 3 million people, and where 90% of the people live in the countryside. But in a state with 300 million people, where the majority are urbanized, and the JEWSA is also a superpower with 1000 global bases, with international commitments...then libertarianism fails as an ideology. 


Modern libertarism, and neo-liberalism are both Jewish ideologies meant to serve the special chosen tribe (especially their international capital and finance--LOOT AND SKOOT), and therefore are failures ....as glaringly exemplified by Russia under permanently drunk Yeltsin.....I mean get serious Jew...if you are applying one of your pet projects in an important country, as a show case model of the value of your special ideology, would you appoint a marginal character, who is permanently drunk to initiate it in Russia 1991--1998? Perhaps only a marginal character who is permanently drunk would accept such a worthless ideology for HIS COUNTRY, under duress and desperation. General Pinochet in Chile from 1975, and Carlos Menem the Syrian, in Argentina from the 1990's)
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There is absolutely nothing anti-establishment about Little Entitled Randie. 

He serves the corporate state just like all the rest, with a slightly different flavor: he claims doing away with regulations, the state, the EPA, public education, and basically any civil rights and workers rights are “liberty” (yeah, they are, but “liberty” for whom?)
(There isn't much, and there won't be much liberty in a Jew run police state which hassles grannies at the airport, whilst paradoxically/simultaneously millions of illiterate, unskilled, Latino's pour over the border unchecked every year.....to added to the ranks of the 50 million Americans who live on food handouts)  
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Today’s “let them eat cake” statement from Little Entitled Randie and the vacuous rants from his apologists like Raimondo tell you exactly what the entitled son of a career Big Guberment employee is all about.
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Russia preparing for war.

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Russia Orders Snap Drill of Missile Forces

New maneuvers follow largest military exercise since cold war


Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com

Just days after it concluded the biggest military exercise since the cold war, Russia has ordered its missile forces to conduct a snap drill in order to ascertain the readiness of putting intercontinental ballistic missiles on “high-alert” within a short time frame.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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“The headquarters and two missile divisions of the Orenburg Missile Army in Russia’s Urals region have been put on high-alert as part of snap combat readiness drills,” reports RIA Novosti.

The drills, which will run until Saturday, involve the redeployment of missile units which include those armed with nuclear-capable Topol (SS-25 Sickle) intercontinental ballistic missiles and RS-20V Voyevoda (SS-18 Satan) ballistic missile systems.

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“The goal of this snap check is to assess the ability of missile units to go on high-alert in required time and to evaluate their readiness to perform the designated tasks,” said Col. Igor Yegorov, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry.

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The missile drills follow in the footsteps of a similar “snap order” given by Vladimir Putin which tasked the Russian military to achieve full “combat readiness” as quickly as possible. Last week’s exercise involved 130 combat aircraft, 70 ships, 5,000 tanks, 160,000 troops and 320 tons of equipment, making it the biggest such drill since the Soviet era.

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According to Konstantin Sivkov, a retired officer of the Russian military’s General Staff, last week’s exercise “was intended to simulate a response to a hypothetical attack by Japanese and US forces,” although the drill received little attention from the US media.

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Russia has dramatically stepped up its military spending, with arms industry expenditure expected to soar nearly 60% over the next two years while the US military budget is cut by 15 per cent.

Back in May, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called on the nation’s defense industry to provide “state-of-the-art weapons superior to their Western analogs.”

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Russia is currently engaged in the largest military build-up since the cold war, including the development of a new missile defense radar in southern Russia designed to counter missiles launched from Europe, as part of maneuvers which pose, “a strategic threat to the United States and NATO allies,” according to US military officials.

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Russia is also working on a new generation of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles called the Yars-M which “Russian officials say will be able to penetrate U.S. missile defenses.”

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With two snap drills taking place in the space of little over a week, some are concerned that Russia is gearing up for conflict following the announcement that Israel had bombed Russian-made weapons in Syria earlier this month.

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With Barack Obama getting the green light from the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to arm jihadist rebels in Syria, a proxy war is developing as a result of Russia’s staunch support for President Bashar Al-Assad.

A Logical Rational approach to international bilateral dispute resolution.

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The USA brought the mullahs into power in Iran in 1979. In the 34 years since, the USA hasn't really tried hard to topple the puppet mullah regime, but rather adopted a policy of isolating the country, and defacto encouraging the mullahs to continue running the country in their Medieval manner.

Only very recently have sanctions been introduced by the USA against Iran, at the behest and energetic lobbying of Likud Israel, and Binyamin Netanyahu.

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Advocates of Iran Engagement Get Unexpected Boost

by Jim Lobe at antiwar.com




For the first time in many months, supporters of intensified diplomatic engagement with Iran appear to be gaining strength here.
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Following last month’s surprise election of Hassan Rouhani – widely considered the most moderate of a field of six candidates – as the Islamic Republic’s next president, the possibility of a deal over Iran’s nuclear programme has become more widely accepted.
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That was reflected most dramatically this week by the fact that 131 members of the hawkish, Republican-led House of Representatives – including a majority of House Democrats – signed a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to “reinvigorat(e) U.S. efforts to secure a negotiated nuclear agreement”.
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The letter, whose signatories included 17 Republicans, suggested that Washington should be prepared to relax bilateral and multilateral sanctions against Iran in exchange for “significant and verifiable concessions” at the negotiating table. It also implicitly warned against adding new sanctions at such a sensitive moment.
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“We must also be careful not to pre-empt this potential opportunity by engaging in actions that delegitimize the newly elected president and weaken his standing relative to hardliners within the regime who oppose his professed ‘policy of reconciliation and peace’,” the letter stated.
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Remarkably, most of the signatories – who together made up nearly a third of the House’s 435 members – signed on to the letter after a particularly bellicose appearance by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a widely-viewed public-affairs television programme last Sunday in which he urged Washington to increase pressure, including threats of military action, against Tehran and called Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”.
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The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful vanguard of the Israel lobby in Washington, took no public position on the letter. However, the group, which generally promotes the policies of the Israeli government, made clear that they would prefer that lawmakers not sign it, according to knowledgeable sources.
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“This is critical because it shows that there is a strong and bipartisan constituency even in the U.S. Congress, which has been one of the most inflexible elements in the U.S. government, that understands there is a historic opportunity before us and wishes to ensure that we do our utmost to explore it,” Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), told IPS.
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“Letters of this kind almost never get more than 30 signatures, and this one got well over that number, including some senior members and important Republicans, as well. It tells us that things are changing,” he added.
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Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the National Security Network (NSN), echoed that assessment. “The willingness of 131 members to sign this letter reflects a bipartisan expert consensus that’s been emerging over the last eight months or so that negotiations need space and focus to succeed,” she said. “That consensus has been strengthened by the election results in Iran.”
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The latest developments came as senior U.S. officials met their counterparts in the so-called P5+1 (U.S., France, Britain, Russia, China plus Germany) in Brussels in anticipation of a new round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme that is likely to take place in September, at least one month after Rouhani takes office Aug. 4.
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Created in 2006, the P5+1’s last meeting with Tehran took place in April in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The group reportedly tabled an offer to ease sanctions on Iran’s trade in gold and other precious metals and its petrochemical exports as a confidence-building measure (CBM) in exchange for Tehran’s suspending its 20-percent enrichment of uranium and transferring its existing stockpile out of the country.
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U.S. officials have told reporters that Iran has not yet formally responded to the offer and that therefore Washington is not yet prepared to modify the package. At the same time, the officials said Tehran should not see it as a “take-it-or-leave-it” proposal and that if it wanted a more comprehensive deal, the P5+1 would be prepared to discuss it.
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Earlier this week, 29 former senior U.S. experts and foreign diplomats, including some with experience in negotiating with Iran, sent their own letter to Obama.
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It urged him to show greater flexibility, a point on which three of the signatories, former U.S. Ambs. Thomas Pickering and William Luers, as well as a top nuclear-arms expert, Jim Walsh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, elaborated in an essay in this week’s New York Review of Books.
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“The United States is the dominant world power and, ‘negotiating from strength,’ should take the initiative and communicate directly with the new (Iranian) leadership,” said the essay, which included a detailed, step-by-step plan for reciprocal concessions leading to a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme.
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Among other recommendations, it called for Obama to send a brief, private message of congratulations to Rouhani on the latter’s inauguration; suggest, via friendly states, that the two meet personally, “perhaps as early as during the September UN General Assembly,” and, parallel to those steps, establish “regular, even routine, bilateral discussions” on regional issues, “perhaps beginning with Iraq and Afghanistan (and even Syria).”
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The latest developments appear to substantially reduce the chances that Congress will enact new unilateral sanctions against Iran before the end of the summer, and possibly the end of the year, according to sources on Capitol Hill.
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Until this week, it was considered a foregone conclusion that the House would pass a tough new package designed to tighten existing sanctions and impose a de facto oil embargo against Iran before its August recess. The leadership in the Democratic-led Senate has indicated it has no plans to act before September, if then.
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The widely respected Capitol Hill CQ Roll Call newspaper reported Friday that new economic penalties against Tehran are unlikely until the end of the year “at the earliest” and that “the slowdown …is starting to worry hawks on Capitol Hill and in Israel.”
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“There’s clearly an understanding forming in Congress about the stakes involved in these negotiations,” said Joel Rubin, director of policy and government affairs at the Ploughshares Fund, a California-based global-security foundation.
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“What this means is that for bills to go forward, there will need to be clarity about whether the negotiation track has serious potential, and those discussions will intensify in the fall, so there will be hesitation by many in Congress to get too far ahead of the administration,” he added.
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Moreover, the fact that 131 House members signed the just-released letter could persuade the House Republican leadership to put off a vote on the pending package, according to sources on Capitol Hill.
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They said the leadership, which works closely with AIPAC on Iran-related legislation, prefers to win by overwhelming margins – often approaching unanimity – on such bills, and that the possibility of substantial division suggested by the letter may act as a deterrent.
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“Public support in Congress for engaging Iran at the negotiating table has grown markedly since Rouhani’s election,” according to Dylan Williams, director of government affairs for J Street, a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group.
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“This letter sends a clear signal – both here and overseas – that there exists a politically viable path to resolving concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme through diplomacy,” he added, noting that among the signers were 22 members of the foreign affairs and armed services committees.

Many credible candidates in the NDA

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For a strong democracy, India needs an effective powerful opposition in parliament. The Congress looks tired after serving two terms.

Amongst the credible candidates for me to head the NDA, far from Indian politics is,  ‎Sushma Swaraj - ‎Arun Jaitley. Maybe Shri Uddhav Thackeray has a list of some other people, and that their credentials are even better than these two I have just mentioned, but are not that publicly well known by outsiders like me?

Narendra Modi is a polarizing demagogic figure in cosmopolitan India.....not unlike Hitler and Mussolini.It will be a loss for the NDA, for India, AND for South Asia if he were to be chosen as candidate for PM moving towards the next elections in 2014. His utterances thus far in a short span, far from being magnanimous and Catholic, have the feint veneer of communalism wrapped in sarcasm, and condescension. That kind of 'chota lauk' mindset cannot run India, but can ruin it in short order.

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Shiv Sena unlikely to back Narendra Modi for PM

By PTI and Times of India.

Notwithstanding the hype created by the BJP about Narendra Modi, its ally Shiv Sena on Friday did not appear to be enthused about projecting him as the NDA's prime ministerial candidate in the next Lok Sabha polls.

"The country needs a reliable face. Can you find one face who fits? Can you see one? Since we cannot see a clear face, let us elect a strong government," Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said at a programme organised by Assocham.

Later, when asked by reporters who would be the face of NDA in the elections, Thackeray said, "We have a lot of credible people. Have some patience. We will definitely show you the face."

The Sena chief's apparent disinclination to back Modi assumes significance considering that BJP has virtually decided to project him as its prime ministerial nominee for the Lok Sabha elections slated for next year.

He later had an hour-long meeting with senior BJP leader L K Advani, who had last month revolted against Modi's nomination as BJP's election campaign committee chief.

Shiv Sena has been having reservations to the projection of Modi as PM candidate, apparently because of his proximity to Uddhav's estranged cousin and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray.

In his address at the function, Thackeray said, "First bring in a strong government if you want a manifesto for development."

Targeting the UPA, he said it is difficult to make out who is running the country - the government or the media or NGOs or some other entity.

He said he does not want to single out Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the sorry state of affairs in the government which he described as "corrupt".