"As a result, nobody currently in power has remotely begun to seize any kind of control over our future."

So Deepak you prefer govt to seize control over our future? You are upset that the Govt. has too little control over our lives, too much freedom to squander?

Well the good news is that if Obama seizes control I'm sure we the people will have much less freedom to screw up our lives.

I can't wait!

Long live the elites and down with lapel pins!!!

Cheers or Hail Leader

Steve

Today you have all been the witness of how a woman has taken your country to a greater height than any man has done is the last fourty years.

She may not be your next president but she certainly is a very very strong woman who has shown that women can be as strong and powerful as men.

I admire her even more by the way she has pronounced her faith in your democratic party and is willing to go do her utmost to bring this party into the White House in the human form of Barack Obama.

Hello government, there is a very strong general here that you will need in order to get your house into order!!

Mieke

Aloha Deepak

I am grateful for Standly Miligram report for it is letting go expectations of human behavior:: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gary.sturt/milgram.htm

As in your Peace book, in reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment: http://www.prisonexp.org/ it was the container that needs to change. The bad apple in the barrel isn't the problem. love patty

Aloha Deepak and Everyone

In reading the book, House of Bush, House of Saudi I couldn't really put the pieces together why they became so close, until someone on Coast to Coast, had said that the only reason we won the war with Germany was because of the oil. We had put an oil embargo on Japan, who had planes that they weren't able to get off the ground and the Germans were defeated in trying to get oil from Russia, to utilize their tanks and planes. The Bush's moved to Texas after World War II and made their money in oil. It is the reptilian brain, actually some people think the oil comes from dinosaurs' remains. And OPEC purchased forty percent of the world food market... where they will have part in controlling the price.

U have to be the Peace you see and elect nobody for President. It is to be self-governing for we believe in a physical reality, that thinks it can think. love patty

It's interesting how this half-sleeping American giant holds the future in his hand. We all do... and if we sleep at the wheel of our life story, well... how can one drive in one's sleep?

Good luck, Obama, and congratulations Hillary for finally allowing the solution. These two people will find the way together, because they are listening to the self. I think America is waking up. Wow :)

A lot of stuff you have said I agree with.

But remember, both parties are lying to the people.

Last Thursday, Obama and Clinton showed up TOGETHER at the AIPAC meeting, made twin speeches in which they both swore allegiance to the AIPAC agenda. They know who is holding the strings of power.

Obama, in particular, stated that he would do "Everything" in his power to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. In case you missed his meaning, he repeated, for emphasis, the word "Everything."

Obama also told AIPAC that he wanted them to dispel any idea he was oppsed to their ideology, and told them that he would be a "true friend of Israel."

Sen Clinton then in her speech also said the wanted to "make it clear" that Obama is a "true friend of Israel."

So make of that what you may.

I hate to pop your bubble, but the USA is not leaving Iraq anytime soon, regardless of who is President, and we may very well end up at war with Iran, again, regardless of who is President.

There are people in this country who occupy positions that do not change every four years and who have a major impact on policy. You generally don't see their names plastered all over the front pages. That's what they have politicians for, to run interference between them and the public.

The Military-industrial-political complex, AIPAC, enterprises such as the Carlyle Group, and such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation have tremendous reach over the political landscape in this country.

They humored the Fundie Christians with Hucklebee (who they knew didn't have a chance in blue hell), and it's OK with them if Obama is President, but there are few touchy policy areas where even Presidents can find themselves in deep doo-doo fast, if they meddle in the wrong people's affairs.

Energy policy, the PNAC, and the AIPAC agenda are three of those things.

The cancer has metastasized in America, and the doctors of American politics have decided to take the tack of lying to the dying patient while taking them to the cleaners financially.

Obama is a seriously savvy politician. He didn't beat the Clinton machine on good looks. They had a killer strategy machine of their own, honed in one the most hard-ball political scenes in the USA - Chicago. In fact, as Michelle Obama herself said, "Where do think we're from?"

Obama knows how to make deals with the devils. Please do not kid yourself about that.

I still think he's the better candidate.

But maybe McCain is talking straighter. At least he is not hiding the fact that he will support the military-industrial-political machine if he's elected.

McCain is promising them more wars and job security if elected. That's the kind of talk they warm up to.

I say, more than likely, they'll get those things as a concession from Obama, whereas McCain is just saying up front he'll give them what they want.

Who is more honest?

It is not so clear as some people think.

Hello Deepak and Everyone,

Hi Mieke, you write, "Today you have all been the witness of how a woman has taken your country to a greater height than any man has done is the last fourty years" She may not be your next president but she certainly is a very very strong woman who has shown that women can be as strong and powerful as men."

that was a great observation and I just wanted to do a repeat printing...:))) one woman to another...

Repubicans who are happy with the state of affairs in our Nation will vote for McCain. Republicans who are not happy with McCain are a possible Democratic vote, or they will vote another ticket. Democrats will vote for Barak Obama unless they cannot find it in themselves to vote for a Black Candidate or they simply do not know enough about Barak Obama and do not feel comfortable voting for someone they do not know or trust. I think most, if not all, Hillary Clinton supporters will vote with the Party ticket even if they are not crazy about Barak Obama. Really, at this point in time most people have made up their minds.

Looking at the past eight years Americans either feel the war was totally the wrong way to go, and President Bush with his Administration led our Nation into deeper debt and conflict because of that choice but also they inflicted so muchloss of life for the Iraqis, and for young Americans serving in the armed services....not to mention the huge added responsibility of taking on the total rebuiding of a Country that was destroyed by us. And the stuff I just mentioned is stuff concerning the Iraq Invasion...the domestic situation, job, health care, immigration, problems with domestic spying, screwing with the Justice Dept...I mean the list is eight years long....if Americans need to be sold on changing leadership then there is something so deeply disturbing going on with fellow Americans that I do not think even the second coming of Jesus could rectify.....

so, the propagandists from both sides of the aisle, the right and the left, can zipper it...and save their breath(the may need it when a nuke goes off while being transported from location A to B) because the writing is on the wall..and...as a voter you already like what has been written and want it to continue or you don't and you will vote appropriately...

Really, only the propagandists give a flying fluke about a pathetic little piece of costume jewelry, the real life American voter is thinking about someone's dead son or daugher, killed in action in Iraq or that Iraqi family who may have picked up the pieces of their children, mother, or father after an IED went off in their market place, or the health care they need and do not have and the list goes on and on.

If the propagandists can still sell a republican president to the American people, this time round, then all I can say is.....I have this pin....it only costs about 25 bucks....available on ebay...

nite....ruth

"yet the public tells pollsters that it trusts McCain over Obama on national security."

The offset to this could be to bring Wesley Clark into the picture. He is a retired four-star general of the United States Army. That has a new consciouness perspective. I would trust him to make right decisions, and he brings all the experience people claim Obama is missing.

Perhaps as Vice President or something else?

Ref. #6 by yogi-one

Last night’s statement from the Obama campaign clarifying the candidate’s reference to an eternally undivided Jerusalem in his AIPAC speech the other day, shows why he’s among the best politicians on the American scene; and why he just may become our next president.

Many including me took this phrase out for special criticism as I thought it needlessly compromised future flexibility in dealing with the issue of Jerusalem. Many in the blogosphere and Palestinians as well took special umbrage at Obama’s attempt to curry favor with the no-compromise set among the AIPAC membership.

Obama issued this clarification to the Jerusalem Post on the comment:

"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," Obama declared Wednesday, to rousing applause from the 7,000-plus attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.

But a campaign adviser clarified Thursday that Obama believes "Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties" as part of "an agreement that they both can live with."

"Two principles should apply to any outcome," which the adviser gave as: "Jerusalem remains Israel's capital and it's not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967."

He refused, however, to rule out other configurations, such as the city also serving as the capital of a Palestinian state or Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods."

http://www.jpost.com

Not every politician can get away with this sort of rhetorical “nimbleness.” What he’s done is mollify the AIPAC crowd with his original statement. And in the follow-up he’s expressed what I believe is his true policy agenda. And he’s artfully fudged the difference by referring to the division of Jerusalem between the War of Independence and 1967 War. Personally, I believe most people will give him the benefit of the doubt. The only ones who won’t are the militants like Mort Klein, Malcolm Hoenlein and Daniel Pipes (joined, of course, by those on the far left who don’t trust Obama’s loyalty to Palestinian rights).

From the JPost artcile:

"He refused, however, to rule out other configurations, such as the city also serving as the capital of a Palestinian state or Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1212659672984&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

I think MJ Rosenberg in an Huffington Post artcile says it best:

(M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy for Israel Policy Forum, an organization supporting US efforts to advance an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Previously, he worked on Capitol Hill for various Democratic members of the House and Senate for 15 years. He was also a Clinton political appointee at USAID. In the early 1980s, he was editor of AIPACs weekly newsletter Near East Report.)

"While the crowd inside the Washington Convention Center was pleased by Obama's speech, a lot of people outside the room were not. One phrase in particular was a turn-off for the critics. It was Obama's reference to Jerusalem as "the capital of Israel" which "must remain undivided." The statement was widely criticized as pandering, particularly by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. Other critics said that Obama's position would doom Israeli-Palestinian negotiations because if the city is to remain undivided, there is nothing to negotiate about.

Pandering? Obviously Milbank has not attended very many speeches in which politicians really pander to a Jewish audience. If he had, he would know that panderers do not endorse the peace process and do not call for high-level US involvement to advance the two-state solution. Instead they routinely bash Palestinians as terrorists -- getting their audiences to their feet by using the "never again" mantra as justification for hanging on to the territories and, even more, the status quo.

That is not what Obama did. I don't believe he ever has. Nor, to its credit, did his audience hold back in its applause, waiting for the "red meat" that never came.

Times are changing.

Obama emphasized that he will make negotiations a priority. "We can and we should help Israelis and Palestinians both fulfill their national goals: two states living side by side in peace and security." He pointedly said that he would not wait seven years before becoming personally involved in advancing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward the two-state solution.

His determination to promote negotiations was unambiguous.

Nonetheless, Obama's critics insist that a President cannot advance negotiations while simultaneously pledging that Jerusalem must remain undivided.

I certainly hope that he can, because I do not believe that Jerusalem will ever again be physically divided. Nor do I believe that it should be. Perhaps I'm naïve but, for me, the idea of dividing cities and peoples in an effort to achieve peace is oxymoronic. Peace requires removing walls, not building new ones.

That is why I never liked the whole idea of unilateral disengagement. Disengagement failed because it was accomplished without negotiating with Palestinians or even consulting with them. It was as if the Palestinians didn't matter. They would take whatever Israel gave them.

It didn't work out that way. The Israelis pulled out and Hamas havoc followed. As many of us predicted, only a withdrawal negotiated with Mahmoud Abbas would have been likely to succeed. (It might even have prevented Hamas' rise to power.) One thing is certain, the results of a negotiated withdrawal could only be better than those of a unilateral withdrawal -- the onslaught against Sderot and the walling off of a million Palestinians.

Obama knows that Jerusalem is one of the "final status" issues on which Israelis and Palestinians must reach agreement if there is to be peace. He also knows, as everyone does, that without an agreement on Jerusalem, peace cannot be achieved.

But he understands that peace should not require the physical division of Jerusalem, but rather the sharing of it. That means, as President Clinton envisioned, that East Jerusalem would revert to Palestinian control while West Jerusalem would remain Israeli. Special arrangements would be made for the holy sites.

That can be done while maintaining the physical unity of the city, i.e., no walls. Yes, that will require ingenuity. But, even more, it requires will and imagination.

There are those who argue that it is unrealistic to expect Israelis and Palestinians to share the city and that security for both peoples can only be ensured by separation.

I don't buy it. Envisioning Israeli-Palestinian peace these days is in itself an act of hard-headed faith. So is imagining that the settlements will come down and that Palestinian militants will accept the right of Israelis to live in what these militants consider to be Palestine. An agreement based on cold "realism," on the premise that the only way to ensure security is through physical separation is doomed to fail.

I have to admit that I have strong feelings on this subject. I made my first trip to Israel in 1968, exactly a year after the reunification of the city. I was with a Jewish student group and we spent a few months at the Rivoli Hotel on Salah-al-Din Street. Salah-al-Din Street is East Jerusalem's Main Street. Just outside Herod's Gate, adjacent to the Damascus Gate, it is the heart of Palestinian Jerusalem. I think we were the first Jewish group ever housed there. We may also have been the last.

Back in 1967, the hope was that Jerusalem would become one city after 19 years of division. But, in the years since, the two sectors have grown further apart. One of the new Israeli highways practically cuts the city in two and it is physically more difficult to move from one side to the other today than at any time since 1967. Whenever I'm in Jerusalem, I walk over to Salah-al-Din to see my old haunts. Other than cops and the occasional soldier, there are few Israelis to be seen. Palestinians don't venture up the hill to the other side much either.

Peace will be achieved not by further division but by the real unification that will be produced when undivided Jerusalem serves as the shared capital of two countries. Dividing it with walls and checkpoints would tear the heart out of the city. Sharing it would save its soul.

Jerusalem is very much on the negotiating table. As Obama said on CNN after the speech, "Obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be a part of those negotiations.

While the crowd inside the Washington Convention Center was pleased by Obama's speech, a lot of people outside the room were not. One phrase in particular was a turn-off for the critics. It was Obama's reference to Jerusalem as "the capital of Israel" which "must remain undivided." The statement was widely criticized as pandering, particularly by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post. Other critics said that Obama's position would doom Israeli-Palestinian negotiations because if the city is to remain undivided, there is nothing to negotiate about.

Pandering? Obviously Milbank has not attended very many speeches in which politicians really pander to a Jewish audience. If he had, he would know that panderers do not endorse the peace process and do not call for high-level US involvement to advance the two-state solution. Instead they routinely bash Palestinians as terrorists -- getting their audiences to their feet by using the "never again" mantra as justification for hanging on to the territories and, even more, the status quo.

That is not what Obama did. I don't believe he ever has. Nor, to its credit, did his audience hold back in its applause, waiting for the "red meat" that never came.

Times are changing.

Obama emphasized that he will make negotiations a priority. "We can and we should help Israelis and Palestinians both fulfill their national goals: two states living side by side in peace and security." He pointedly said that he would not wait seven years before becoming personally involved in advancing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward the two-state solution.

His determination to promote negotiations was unambiguous.

Nonetheless, Obama's critics insist that a President cannot advance negotiations while simultaneously pledging that Jerusalem must remain undivided.

I certainly hope that he can, because I do not believe that Jerusalem will ever again be physically divided. Nor do I believe that it should be. Perhaps I'm naïve but, for me, the idea of dividing cities and peoples in an effort to achieve peace is oxymoronic. Peace requires removing walls, not building new ones.

That is why I never liked the whole idea of unilateral disengagement. Disengagement failed because it was accomplished without negotiating with Palestinians or even consulting with them. It was as if the Palestinians didn't matter. They would take whatever Israel gave them.

It didn't work out that way. The Israelis pulled out and Hamas havoc followed. As many of us predicted, only a withdrawal negotiated with Mahmoud Abbas would have been likely to succeed. (It might even have prevented Hamas' rise to power.) One thing is certain, the results of a negotiated withdrawal could only be better than those of a unilateral withdrawal -- the onslaught against Sderot and the walling off of a million Palestinians.

Obama knows that Jerusalem is one of the "final status" issues on which Israelis and Palestinians must reach agreement if there is to be peace. He also knows, as everyone does, that without an agreement on Jerusalem, peace cannot be achieved.

But he understands that peace should not require the physical division of Jerusalem, but rather the sharing of it. That means, as President Clinton envisioned, that East Jerusalem would revert to Palestinian control while West Jerusalem would remain Israeli. Special arrangements would be made for the holy sites.

That can be done while maintaining the physical unity of the city, i.e., no walls. Yes, that will require ingenuity. But, even more, it requires will and imagination.

There are those who argue that it is unrealistic to expect Israelis and Palestinians to share the city and that security for both peoples can only be ensured by separation.

I don't buy it. Envisioning Israeli-Palestinian peace these days is in itself an act of hard-headed faith. So is imagining that the settlements will come down and that Palestinian militants will accept the right of Israelis to live in what these militants consider to be Palestine. An agreement based on cold "realism," on the premise that the only way to ensure security is through physical separation is doomed to fail.

I have to admit that I have strong feelings on this subject. I made my first trip to Israel in 1968, exactly a year after the reunification of the city. I was with a Jewish student group and we spent a few months at the Rivoli Hotel on Salah-al-Din Street. Salah-al-Din Street is East Jerusalem's Main Street. Just outside Herod's Gate, adjacent to the Damascus Gate, it is the heart of Palestinian Jerusalem. I think we were the first Jewish group ever housed there. We may also have been the last.

Back in 1967, the hope was that Jerusalem would become one city after 19 years of division. But, in the years since, the two sectors have grown further apart. One of the new Israeli highways practically cuts the city in two and it is physically more difficult to move from one side to the other today than at any time since 1967. Whenever I'm in Jerusalem, I walk over to Salah-al-Din to see my old haunts. Other than cops and the occasional soldier, there are few Israelis to be seen. Palestinians don't venture up the hill to the other side much either.

Peace will be achieved not by further division but by the real unification that will be produced when undivided Jerusalem serves as the shared capital of two countries. Dividing it with walls and checkpoints would tear the heart out of the city. Sharing it would save its soul.

Jerusalem is very much on the negotiating table. As Obama said on CNN after the speech, "Obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be a part of those negotiations.

But, he added, "Israel has a legitimate claim on that city." That is absolutely right."

Apologies for the double text in the second half of the above post.

Apologies for the double text in the second half of the above post.

Dr Chopra writes, “The second reason for today's bad news is an addiction to unreality”.

morning everyone,

There is a very good article in the washingtonpost.com today on Iran and the US...by David Ignatius..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/06/AR2008060603152.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

for those interested...ruth

No wonder America is being really dumbed down.When I first read about this I thought it was a joke. In my mind, this never could happen to the first world power.

To be intelligent is now to be elitist.

I thought that glamorization of ignorance was a third world thing. My fault.

Should this guy be President of the United States of America?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9izhjnaLa3M

A Christian president who supports bombing other nations ?
I wonder which Christ said that...The one I know said:

'If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also"

The 1973 Arab-Israeli war resulted in an oil embargo by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. Americans had to spend hours filling gasoline in their cars and prices shot up. Nixon and all subsequent presidents since then, failed to formulate an energy policy. Europe took sensible and proper steps to tax oil, promote public transportation and produce energy efficient cars. Gasoline in the EU costs nearly two dollars fifty cents or one hundred INRs a liter. Another oil shock was delivered by the 1979 Iranian revolution with the overthrow of the Shah, takeover by Khomeini and the taking of American diplomats hostage in Tehran and the Iran-Iraq war. Once again America took no sensible measures to conserve energy or develop alternate energy resources.

Oil prices shot up again when Saddam captured Kuwait a decade later. Brazil used its tropical location to grow sugarcane and make ethanol from it and use it as an additive or replacement for petrol. America fooled King Fahd of Saudi Arabia into believing that his illegitimate rule was threatened by Saddam and landed hundreds of thousands of its troops in the kingdom to defeat Saddam. The war was over in days but America kept large numbers of troops, planes and arms in Saudi Arabia, generating fears in the ruling family, unease in the population and animosity in the Salafists. Repeated terrorist attacks by Osama and Al Qaeda led to demands of withdrawal by the Saudis. This was a second setback. The fall of the Shah had dealt the first blow to the US Middle East policy of making the Shah as a linchpin and delegated junior bully to carry out US foreign policy there.

The election of the Bush Cheney neo-con cabal, the worsening US economy after the tech bubble blew up in 2000 and the September 2001 terrorist attack provided a perfect excuse to lie, misinform and instill fear into the ignorant and gullible American public to attack Iraq, to take over its rich oil resource and to establish permanent military bases in the Middle East to keep Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States in line and to have a stranglehold on the oil jugular of Europe, Japan, China and India. Russia was a basket case after the break up of the Soviet Union with an economy spiraling downward and a military unable to defeat even the Chechnya uprising. Lies of Saddam being responsible for the 9-11 attack and being on the verge of sending out unmanned aerial vehicles loaded with nuclear weapons to bomb America were used to justify attacking Iraq.

The UN Security Council that India is dying to become a permanent member of, is nothing but a rubber stamping lowly clerk of America and with veiled threats, promise of aid and some arm twisting, unanimously passed a resolution ordering Iraq to comply or face dire consequences. The rest of the foolish Council members did not see the US ruse till it was too late. By the time France and Russia realized and threatened to veto a second resolution permitting use of military force by America, it claimed that the first resolution had already authorized the use of force. Thus the US started an illegal and immoral war that by the UN charter constituted the worst war crime. The toothless hags of the Security Council and its Secretary General (really just a peon called a Class 4 government servant in India) then far from prosecuting the US as a war criminal, gave it the legitimate authority of an occupying power and allowed it to imprison, torture and kill Iraqis and manage and spend Iraq’s oil income.

The UN mandate as an occupying power ends in December 2008 and is not renewable as Iraq has a sort of elected government mainly consisting of incompetent crooks who like Indian MPs and ministers, do no work, bicker when the parliament is in session, take frequent trips abroad at government expense, fly free within the country and take long vacations. Initially the US appointed the Iraqi government and wanted to select the Iraqis to write the Iraq Constitution but Ayatollah Sistani objected, so they reluctantly agreed to elections, so much for spreading democracy in Iraq, not to mention the democracies the US supports in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Gulf States and Pakistan with their kings, generals and tyrants.

Then the US tried to privatize Iraq’s oil by selling it for a song to western oil companies, but the Iraqi oil workers union protested and the UN said an occupying power has no right to do that. For the last few years it has been pressing the Iraqi parliament by arm twisting and rumors of bribes to pass an oil law to allow the nationalized oil company to keep only a small percent of the oil wells and let the western oil companies buy the oil wells and exploration rights of most of the oil wells. It also wants the western oil companies to pick and choose the exploration areas first leaving mostly dry areas with poor prospects to the Iraqi oil company. (Like Enron’s Dabhol power plant and bribes)

Does that sound familiar like the pressure on India to sign a civil nuclear pact which gives India no reprocessing technology, puts most of its reactors under intrusive IAEA and US inspection in perpetuity (meaning forever), does not guarantee Uranium fuel and delays all reprocessing of spent fuel until a new approved reprocessing facility is built to new US specifications with rights of intrusive inspection by the US? In addition it forbids India from testing nuclear weapons forever with a threat to take back billions of dollars of nuclear power stations bought from America at highly inflated prices. On top of all this it commits India to a future fissile material cutoff treaty limiting its nuclear weapons initially and reducing them to zero by attrition for lack of Plutonium. As though all this is not enough, it requires India to follow US foreign policy objectives and refrain from any natural gas or energy deals with Iran. The Indian people who are advocating the signing of the nuclear deal from the start or have recently changed their mind in its favor are either stupid, looking for new American Sahibs to replace the British masters, may have financial benefits from the trade or may have been persuaded by other means, which I leave the reader to conceive and imagine.

Back again to Iraq. The US is also pressuring the Iraqi parliament to sign a Status Of Forces Agreement instead of a treaty. By American law, a treaty signed by America with another nation has to be ratified by the US Senate. The Senate controlled by Democrats may vote down a treaty but can do nothing about a SOFA which is totally left to the president and needs no Senate approval. A prior president had signed a Comprehensive Test (nuclear) Ban Treaty, but the US Senate few years ago refused to ratify it, so the US reserves the right to test nuclear weapons which it is banning India from doing because our dumb prime minister wants to sign treaties in opposition to the majority of our parliament and wants to trap India by pushing it into the CTBT and NPT by the backdoor. The best defense of the current Indian government is that it is made up entirely of a stupid ruling coalition, the worst reason I once again leave to your imagination. Interested readers can google a recent article by Dr. Iyengar former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission or Dr. Chellaney, a well known strategic thinker.

The SOFA gives the US to maintain a large number of military bases in Iraq with as many personnel as it wants. They would be authorized to attack, imprison, inflict violence and even kill any Iraqi and would be exempt from and immune to any Iraqi law. It further allows the US to use its military assets in Iraq to attack any other (most likely Iran) country without notifying the Iraqi government. It gives the US total control of Iraqi airspace and puts the Iraqi Defense, Interior and National Security ministries under US supervision for ten years, as also any Iraqi armament purchases. The only missing part of the deal is what the British gave us Indians, the exclusive right to pull the rope of the Punkah to keep the Sahibs comfortable by blowing a cooling breeze in the hot summers.

The US administration is said to be twisting arms, coercing and may even be bribing the Iraqi parliament to sign the deal. Subtle hints have been made that the Iraqi prime minister’s post is in jeopardy if the SOFA is not signed by July 2008. An additional threat used is appropriating 40% of the fifty billion dollars of Iraqi oil sale funds that the US holds. Currently the US government has banned execution of all court judgment reparations against Saddam’s government for civil and criminal cases. The US government is threatening that if the present Iraqi government doesn’t sign the SOFA in its present form, the US will allow the US court judgments currently banned and held in abeyance to collect the monetary fines which will deplete twenty billion dollars. In other words it is telling Iraq that if you don’t sign to become our slaves, you will lose twenty of the fifty billion dollars that we are holding as your trustee. At the same time the US is appealing to other countries to extinguish and forgive Iraq’s debts. Will our stupid Indian leaders ever learn that with friends like these who needs enemies?

By the way any arms bought from the US cannot be used by India in any war that the US disapproves of. Only Israel can use US arms anywhere and Pakistan is allowed to use US arms obtained under the false pretext of fighting terrorism to attack India or occupy Kargil. The US gave nuclear bomb capable F-16s to Pakistan to fight Al Qaeda. If you are as foolish as our prime minister to believe that, only stupid Indians like us will elect you and your party to rule besides those who hope to get rich during corrupt governance.

That brings me to the last but not the least item of this article. Bush Jr., while addressing the Israeli parliament has clearly stated that Iran must be stopped from uranium enrichment which can lead to acquiring nuclear weapons at all cost and by all means. Israeli prime minister at the Israeli lobby’s annual convention has urged the US to attack Iran and threatened to do so himself if the US doesn’t. John McCain, the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, all have unequivocally stated at the same convention that Iran must be stopped even by military means if needed. There are already two US aircraft carriers in place in the Straits of Hormuz. When Iraq signs the SOFA agreement the attack on Iran will begin. It is already being blamed for insurgent attacks on American troops in Iraq, supporting Hamas in Gaza and Hizbollah in Lebanon without incontrovertible proof (like accusing Saddam of having nuclear weapons). Starting a new war is Bush’s hope of diverting the American people’s attention from the economic debacle and improving the chances of Republican McCain’s election because of his war and military experience (versus none of Obama).

In the meantime US banks with huge losses and diminishing capital are given a free rein to generate obscene profits by trading from wild gyrations of the US (other markets are dragged up and down the same way) markets and stratospheric and ballistic rise in oil and other commodities. This will help to partly replenish their capital, with the Federal Reserve Bank providing the money to bet and gamble. So in the present day America, the private financial institutions, the national reserve bank and the government are all betting big to gamble for oil on which the economy and daily life of Americans are addicted to. This is leading to starvation, privation and riots in other parts of the world. But who cares, when told that the others in France could not get or afford to eat bread, France’s Queen Marie Antoinette said, ”Then let them eat cake”.

http://www.boloji.com/rt3/rt307.htm

Not that the truth means anything anymore on IB, but we are not a Christian govt, we are a secular govt and the majority of the citizens are Christian.Should I say India is a Hindu nation, aren't they are pacifists? Or Islam is a religion of peace, why the Jihad?

Also the quote 'If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" refers on a personal level, it means I would turn the other cheek if slighted, not a nation or asking another person to turn his/her cheek. Why would I have any business to tell someone to fight or not fight?

But again don't let the truth get in your way, it's the Christ you know that counts.

Boy say anything critical against Muslims and Naj comes to the rescue with many many words.

Cheers everyone,

Steve

You are wrong. Giving the other cheek applies to human beings. Taken as individuals or as collective, it does n´t matter. Those two modern concepts were not part of debate in Christ´s time.
But like you say, that´s just the truth.

"Why would I have any business to tell someone to fight or not fight?"

Maybe because you have some humanity...You know the laws of nature,
action and reaction. You know that when one hurts, one gets hurt... And you don´t want that.

"It´s impossible to harm others only." is a sentence I like. The laws of nature don´t allow that. Regardless of how much military power one has, what goes, comes back.

"A time comes when silence is betrayal"

Excerpts:

"I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked me, and rightfully so, what about Viet Nam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today ̶ my own government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent…"

"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours."

"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. "

"A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, on injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love"

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

What is the difference in electing an African American, or a woman for that matter, if there is no such 'revolution of values'?

"The Indian people who are advocating the signing of the nuclear deal from the start or have recently changed their mind in its favor are either stupid, looking for new American Sahibs to replace the British masters, may have financial benefits from the trade or may have been persuaded by other means, which I leave the reader to conceive and imagine."

Hi Naj,

I presume you have carried this article by Gaurang Bhatt because you agree with his views. And I write this because I don't. Let's just say I would be satisfied to be classified "stupid" because I do belong to the tribe which he castigates here. I would rather be in the company of people who support the deal than those who oppose it, like our homegrown comrades, merely because of their basic anti-US stance/ideology.

Without going into a detailed rebuttal, because I think the stage is long past when the opposing camps can be given any new material to change their opinions, there are just three questions that I have to put to those who oppose this deal.

Why don't they come up with some solution to problem that our nuclear establishments are working at 50% or less capacity because of a critical shortage of fuel? No one seems to come up with alternatives other than saying 'thorium' which is years away from us at the present. Secondly, what is so wrong in trying to improve one of our primary failings - a disastrous lack of power generation capacity whether nuclear, thermal or hydro? Thridly, why are so many of the most vociferous opponents of this deal shouting themselves hoarse that we sign deals with Russia, France etc. but not the USA when even these countries say they will not budge an inch unless we first sign the US deal?

Regards
Dara

"Unfortunately, Obama forgot to wear a flag label pin, and now one has to worry about trivialities reigning supreme once again."

Uh....Deepak....I don't think the issue is that he forgot to wear a lapel pin...I think the issue is that he unapologetically, unabashedly, refused to wear a lapel pin. That is quite a difference. But, as my buddy "Amber" states, truth doesn't seem to matter a lot here at IB anymore!

"....the smiling vacuousness of a Ronald Reagan.."
Yet, this untested 'Curious George' look alike is just the very picture of poise, intelligence and charisma? Hehehe!! He wouldn't make pimple on the Gippers ass!

Can't you just hear the big eared messiah? Instead of "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!!", It would probably be more like this, (whine, whine, snivel, snivel) "Uh, Mr. Gorbachev, uh, sir,...can we talk about this wall? No? you don't want to? Uh....no, no that's fine...you do whatever you'd like sir. I'm a flaming American liberal, I'll always back down for tyranny! Huh? You want to build a bigger wall? No, no...that's OK with me, sure. You also want to station missle batteries in Cuba, and train them on all the major American cities? Oh that would be fine...we'll have many fine conversations and you can keep me updated on the progress...what's that? The progress is none of my business? Oh well...that's fine also... whatever you want sir. Whatever we get, we deserve, it'll just be our chickens coming home to roost...I know...cause my pastor told me so. My wife will finally be proud of her country.. watching it burn...."

As for turning intelligence in to Elitism... well, I think it's fair to say that John Kerry is an Elite...but we never saw anything approaching intelligence from him... and so on down the road..

The very words you've written here, smack of elitism. And dear Dr. Chopra we'd never doubt your intelligence....but....

I was driving down the road the other day, and a big bird crapped all over my windshield...what a mess...but...I had a thought....I think one of DK's Black Swans flew over Deepak and dumped a whole load of shit on his head!! So...now...DK and Deepak can only see America thru shit covered glasses!!!

Y'all have a great day!!

:)

Ok, the laws of nature don´t matter anymore. It´s all about Tex Willer John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Do exactly as Tex Willer do in the comics, and like in the comics, you won´t get reaction for your actions! You´ll kill harm and do bad, and those same thing won´t happen to you.

When I was young, cowboys were, too, my heroes. But then I learned to separate fiction from what´s possible according to natural law.
Cowboys may have the morals on their side, but that doesn´t make them immune to the reactions from their actions.

"One aspect of modern politics has been to elevate the trivial.."

Could one reason for this be the unusually long duration of the Presidential campaign?

To me, someone not overly exposed to the US election system, it seems unusal that a party takes over a year to decide its candidate for the Presidency and then gives that person just 4 months to actually take on the bigger battle of succeeding.

With such a long campaign period the real beneficiery is the media, who have a field day cooking up stories and stirring the pot. As a columnist pointed out this morning, length of time rather than substance seems to be the objective.

Dara

Hay again Naj,

Want to thank you for introducing that site (boloji.com). Seems interesting, what little Ive seen so far.

Dr Gaurang Bhatt, whom you have quoted here, seems like a bit of a loose cannon. Some gems from him:

"Indians are basically pragmatists as evident from their admiration and worship of Krishna. He had the ability to confuse, confound and twist every metaphysical and ethical problem to a simple, idealistic answer unsuitable to human nature and shroud it by idealistic theist transference of responsibility to justify everything
Lest I be misunderstood, I am no admirer of Islam. I think it is a bigger fraud than other religions,
propagated by the sword and lust by ignorant fools, seduced by an illiterate, whose sexual appetites
included Ayesha, a girl of nine and Zainab, his adopted son's wife. The recent events in Iraq clearly
prove that the difference between Jews and Arabs is that during the barbaric custom of circumcision, the Arabs end up with inadvertent loss of much more tissue due to the fanatical surgical zeal of their religious operators."

"No Nuclear War! What A Shame?
From America's point of view, it would be a godsend, because 140 million Islamic terrorists of Pakistan would become burnt toast and another 250 million would be massacred in the ensuing mayhem in India and Bangladesh, thus providing a partial final solution of ridding the earth of vermin and concluding the unfinished crusade against terrorists even though Islam is a noble and peaceful religion as the belligerent French, Viennese, Venetians, Franks and Indians know"

The Obama Offset to McCain’s suggestion that we “Cut Taxes”.

Just cutting taxes is not prudent because it results in congress borrowing more money on behalf of each citizen with interest due. Bankers like this idea, however the fiscally responsible thing to do is to cut costs and eliminate inefficiency, and we can begin with “black project budgets” for example. Of course we want to reduce taxes but to do this we need to eliminate the disease industry and establish universal health. We also need to switch the food staple to Amaranth immediately and initiate

With an agreement to immediately initiate the new health system policies and protocols we can cut insurance premiums in half, and costs associated with Medicaid and Medicare will be drastically reduced. Cutting insurance premiums will help every business and consumer. This is a for real solution with dramatic realized impact.

(R) evolution

Obama's own words about why he doesn't wear the flag pin:

"You know, the truth is that right after 9/11 I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest, instead I'm gonna try to tell the American people what I believe what will make this country great and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism."

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/10/04/397319.aspx

Personally, I think this an excellent answer... it basically says 'appearance' isn't what the issues are about... it's about communicating ideas instead of symbols...