INDIA's Crown

>India's Crown
>
>Dr Chithra Karunakaran
>
>Dear Rising Kashmir Editor,
>
>This is in response to the article, ‘India has lost Kashmir by Mehdi Siddique.
>
>Kashmir has been an integral part of the world's largest democracy, even before India became a democracy. Kashmir has been an integral, indivisible and inalienable part of India since 1586.
>
>In 1586, one of the world's greatest-ever rulers, the greatest Mughal, India's foremost secularist, Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar, Akbar the Great, sent two loyal Hindu Rajput generals to Jammu and the Valley to overthrow the Turki (Muslim) upstart ruler.
>
>Akbar, the pre-eminent nation-builder, taught Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and every Mughal subject, about secularism.
>
>Akbar annexed Kashmir and Kashmir became part of Mughal India.
>
>Since then, no matter who ruled it after that -Turks, Afghans, Sikhs, Dogras, Rajputs, Jats, Marathas, British-Kashmir has remained a proud part of India.
>
>Kashmir is India's crown. India stretches from Kashmir in the North to Kanyakumari in the South, from Indian Ocean in the East to Indian Ocean in the West. That is India immemorial and Akbar made it real.
>
>If you know your own history you can think freely, critically, knowledgeably, independently, logically based on proof, evidence, fact, not opinion or belief, then no politician or fanatic can fool you.
>
>Dr Chithra KarunaKaran
>City University of New York [CUNY]
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
>KarunaKaran.Chithra@gmail.com
>

Dominant-Caste Hindu Advocates Tri-Partition -- AGAIN

Dominant caste Hindu Minister Advocates Tri-Partition -- Again.

I don't call them High caste, I call them Dominant castes. Or Oppressor castes.
The burden of proof is on these self-privileged individuals to PROVE that they care MORE about the Greater Collective Good (GCG), rather than their own selfish economic and political interests.

Sham Lal Sharma, the Brahmin J&K Minister of Health & Horticulture [what a ridiculous dual portfolio, an insult to Aam Koshur interests] recently advocated Tri-Partition, dividing Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, and allowing Valley separatists to rule Kashmir.

Never trust dominant caste Hindus.

They divided India in 1947, by colluding with the Brits, and now they are at it again in 2010.

They always promote their own dominant-caste economic interests, they will never support the rightful demands to peace, prosperity and unity of Aam Koshur in the Valley, in the great state of J&K, which is an integral part of India.

Look who the separatists are -- Geelani, Arundhati Roy, the dominant caste-Hindus are all on the same side. Now we see a clearer picture emerging.

The BJP/RSS, on the other hand are anti-separatism BUT they are pseudo-nationalists, because they are also caste-dominant and support dominant-caste interests

Therefore, Aam Janta Kashmiris, Aam Koshur can never ally with the BJP. Aam Koshur do not need the BJP/RSS to advise them about their rights as Indian citizens.
Aam Koshur REJECT the BJP/RSS, especially in the Valley and in Ladakh.
In Jammu BJP/RSS are buttressed by dominant-caste landed and powerful large-scale business interests.

On the OPPOSITE side of ALL these separatists and pseudo-nationalists, are the ordinary people of J&K (ordinary people like you and me) who want Education, Employment, Job Training, Microcredit, Gender Equity, Healthcare, Housing, Environmental Conservation and other demonstrable indicators of Social Justice and Human Dignity.

WE the People of India, including J&K, especially Aam Koshur, will win against ALL these separatists, pseudo-nationalists and dominant-caste vested interests.

I have volunteered as an educator in the Valley and in Ladakh for 3 years, and I have tried to educate myself by living with working families, observing and participating in the situation on the ground, as well as constructing a geopolitical analysis from a socio-historical point of view.

Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
Professor Social Sciences
City University of New York (CUNY)
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogsp...

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TOI copyright on J&K Tri-partition call by dominant caste minister Sham Lal Sharma
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Rising Kashmir copyright


Coalition simmers over Sham’s K remark

Statement under scanner: CM; NC upset, Cong blames media

Shabir Dar

Jammu, Dec 08: Health Minister Sham lal Sharma’s controversial remarks about trifurcation of the state are being examined and would be followed with due action if deemed necessary, said Chief Minister Omar Abdullah here Wednesday.

Meanwhile, National Conference has termed Sham’s “attempt to link” his remarks to the statements of senior party leader Mustafa Kamal as “unwarranted and uncalled for” even as Congress blamed media for “exaggerating” the minister’s statement.
“Due notice has been taken of the minister’s statement at an appropriate quarter. Please, allow them to examine the statement and in what context the statement was made. Whatever, action has to be taken will follow the examination of the statement,” Omar told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.
A day after Sham sought to clarify the context of his December 5 statement referring to senior NC leader Mustafa Kamal’s criticism of Congress party in recent times, NC objected to the minister’s “attempt to link” his controversial remarks with Kamal.
“It is very unfortunate that the minister has linked his statement with NC and its leadership,” read a statement issued by NC.
Stating that Kamal never made any remarks challenging the integrity of the state, the statement added, “He (Kamal) was infact admonished publically by NC President Farooq Abdullah on December 5 at Hazratbal for making certain remarks on Congress-NC relationship of the past.”
“He categorically asked Kamal not to make any statement on the historical perspective of the relationship between the two parties in the larger interest of the present coalition.”
Meanwhile, Congress leaders seem defiant over Sham’s remarks. “What wrong Sham has said? He has said that Jammu is not getting its due share in development and allocation of funds. His statement was blown out of proportion,” said a senior Congress leader.
Even, PCC Chief Saiffuddin Soz has come in support of the Congress minister saying, “Media has made mountain out of a molehill.”
Responding to Sham’s Tuesday statement, NC has asserted that the party always stood for the integrity of the state and for equitable development of all regions.
“Coalition under the leadership of chief minister Omar Abdullah is running very smoothly and working for the welfare of the state. The party is committed to smooth functioning of the coalition in the state,” reads the NC statement.
“The responsible elements must exercise restraint and not vitiate the atmosphere of goodwill and bonhomie the two parties are enjoying,” it adds.
Meanwhile, according to sources, the health minister and his close aides in Congress party met at the residence of MP Madan Lal Sharma, who is also Sham’s brother, last evening to prepare “defensive strategy” in view of the controversy raked by his statement. Besides the Sharma brothers, the meeting was attended by at least five Congress leaders, sources said.
“It was decided that a collective effort be made to avoid any further damage and the last evening’s clarification statement was part of that,” sources added.
Sources said Madan Lal left for New Delhi on Wednesday and is expected to prepare a defensive ground within the party. He has also asked some of the senior party leaders from the state to support Sham.

Discursive Indians & The Breath Eternal

Hey Subhash, so kind of you to write.

Q. Isn't the most precious attribute of the the "Hindu" lifeway, in fact the most precious attribute of Shinto Buddhism or Jaini belief or indigenous or any other non-revealed faith systems,
the culturally learned capacity to be deeply devotional without impinging on others?

The 'hindutva' crowd in my direct experience is a class/caste phenomenon, a troubling modernity that claimed Gandhi's life, with its extreme patriarchal posturing in the public sphere.

I remember encountering them at the Gateway of India, right after the taxi bombing, where they were holding a black flag demonstration against Islam. I saw a whole lot of lower middle class, ahistorical, non-college educated maharastrian MEN (not a woman in sight) shouting against "Islam" and "Islamic terrorism". I remonstrated with them and they threatened me with physical harm. At the time I was staying all alone, a 'Hindu' new yorker (:, in a mohalla in Dongree.

I also encountered them, again men, in Ladakh, this past year, where they were trying to get Buddhist nuns to 'work' with the BJP/RSS.

There were many disturbing nuances to these encounters which I am necessarily leaving out in this email exchange.

The one thing our ancient, composite, disparate, happily contradictory lifeway does not need is an organization purporting to speak for me, to represent me, to interpret in self-serving ways, my ethnicity, my culture, my beliefs, my lifeway, my breath. Does my breath need a throwdown from the HAF? It's obscene.

The Vedic Indus pre-social, pre-totemic way focused on the breath eternal, an observable (how very scientific) shared attribute of all living things.

So, let me exhale in my own way! Breath is not a brand. It's what we share with all living organisms. The African and Native American lifeways also revere breath.

The intrinsic beauty of the 'Hindu' Vedanta lifeway is its vast embrace of the universal human condition within as well as transcending the dynamic natural world.

In contrast, The Hindutva adherents. of another aeon constructed caste ideology on top of an occupational structure, to further their class and landed interests. And the colonial-imperial project, well -- you know how that deal went down!

I am happy to note that my dearest friends are Pakistani Lahori yoga practitioners, and one Kashmiri Sunni Muslim male, a gentle soul, who (with my help and at his request) has just managed to fund a meditation room in a public hospital in the Valley, where I have been going, alone and unencumbered, for the past five years.

So Subhash, thanks for writing and if you are on the East Coast, tea's on me.

Best,
Chithra Karunakaran
note: as for your point about ethical democracy, it is my lifeway and all I do is strive societally, using my breath. That is all.

If you pass me on my path, I am sure to engage, as we are doing now.

I have asserted, as perhaps you have, that I/we, in the public sphere, can be ethical, it is in our achievable nature to be so.
Yes elections are corrupting, we live in a millennia of increasing de-sensitization, shame and guilt are no longer viable, profit and prophets are!
But I/we persevere, vote, pick up trash, eschew plastic, plant tulips for a new york spring, drink tea from stainless steel cups on the Indian trains, because I/we have concluded, based on the best available information, that a paper cup is unsustainable, whether to produce or dispose. To my limited but unfolding understanding, that's ethical democracy as lived practice.

Dr. Chithra Karunakaran
City University of New York (CUNY)
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
www.disqus.com/EthicalDemocracy

====================================================================================
copyright Subhash Garg -- you own your own comments.

On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 3:57 AM, SG wrote:

Dear Chithra,

I don't understand this comment by you on a NY Times site: "A US organization calling itself the Hindu American foundation is in itself an embarrassment to multiethnic, multireligious secular India". Does secularism dictate that Indians hide their religion in a closet?

Indians in India look ridiculously sheepish, apologizing for being Indian to their former colonial masters. But in America, many of us ARE masters, and damn good at it too. We see no reason to kowtow to the white man. We know how to protest, and the NY Times story proves it.

If you find this assertiveness a threat, pray tell whose interests you serve?

By the way, isn't ethical democracy an oxymoron? After all, elections are expensive and all too frequent - and increasingly, a pitiful media circus devoid of merit. It's not like panchayat raj where the authorities earn their respect by integrity. Modern elections are a slanderfest.

Respectfully,

Subhash Garg
Milpitas, CA USA
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copyright Subhash Garg -- you own your own comments.
Dear Chithra,

Thank you for the illuminating comments on ethical democracy in living
practice, which I share, and your generous invitation to tea. I shall
keep it in mind. On the subject at hand, I don't know that the HAF
advocates violence and threatening behavior of the sort you describe.
I have found no reason to link them with Thackeray et al.

I agree that it is beautiful to pursue one's beliefs without impinging
on others. But what if others impinge upon you? Well, Gandhiji echoed
Christ, "turn the other cheek", and declared "there is no cause for
which I am prepared to kill". Shri Ram, Shri Krishna, Ma Durga and
others taught Hindus to fearlessly fight adharma, and not be afraid to
kill. As a Hindu I can respect Mohammad and love Muslims for
centuries, but if they kill 120 unarmed Hindus with zero provocation,
they better be very afraid. As a Gandhian I would probably invite them
to kill a few hundred more. I choose to be a Hindu.

With warm regards,
Subhash Garg
-------------------
copyright ethicaldemocracy
Hey Subhash,

I want to thank you for your emails. They have truly been valuable for me as I have tried to deepen my own understanding of the points at hand.

Our mutually respectful, vigorous email discussion hinges on text -- and the text reported in the NYTimes article asked the critical question "Who owns Yoga?"

The text of that same article further contained a direct quote from the purported "co-founder" of the Hindu-American Foundation who stated:

"“In a way,” said Dr. Aseem Shukla, the foundation’s co-founder, “our " issue" is that yoga has thrived, but *Hinduism* has lost *control* of the *brand*.” [my asterisked emphasis added]

It is 1) the question and 2) the assertion

that I have sought to address first in my New York Times comment and now in my responses to you. I am fortunate to have such an engagement.Thanks.


First, Nobody, but nobody, individual or group, according to historical evidence, "owns " "yoga" , not me , not you, certainly not the HAF.
The patriarchal posturing of the HAF is highly regrettable and dangerous.

They cannot presume to speak on behalf of me, or for me -- a breather!

Second, HAF's partiarchal, self-anointed authorities would seek to BRAND [their word, not mine, words matter and we can and must be held accountable for the words we use, in the public sphere] is preposterous and should be vigorously resisted.

To brand breath is to corporatize and profit from breath.

Every word in that HAF statement is questionable because it is unsupported by any evidence -- "Hinduism" "lost" "control" "brand"

Here's my empirical point:

Breath is pre-social, pre-totemic, pre-faith, pre-religious, pre-ideology, pre-Hindu.

Breath is evidential, it is observable in all organisms and the natural world. We can be in AWE of Breath, that one shared attribute of the universe, and we can do that, think that, feel that, without Faith, without beliefs.

Awe is possible without Faith or Belief, which in any case it precedes.

Breath precedes Awe!

I, a breather have Awe but not Faith or Belief, especially of the type that is "control"-led and prescribed by the HAF, or the mulla, or the papist, or the BJP,or the RSS, or the Bajrang Dal.

That is why no group can lay claim to breath. They cannot own it. Therefore they cannot own yoga, a manner of thoughtful, reflective Breath

Subhash, you have stated you are a Hindu, whatever that may be.
I support your stated belief, and it is true you do not need my support for your belief but I offer it anyway.

I only claim I am a breather -- and even that will cease!
Or take another form that nonone, nobody can "own" "brand" "control"

Best,
Chithra
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WikiLeaks Gets It! Wikileaks Gets It Out!

Wiki-L is shining a light in the most covert areas of US foreign policy.

Inconvenient truths are emerging, by the minute. Let all the factual evidence come out.

Then we can begin building the Truth, for Truth is emphatically a construction, as well as relativistic and absolutist, build up Truth on a foundation of Facts.

That is good for future prospects for Democracy everywhere, including in the US.

WikiLeaks is playing a role in exposing Saudi Arabia's role in West Asia.

WikiLeaks is playing a role in re-arranging the West Asia aka the Middle East, I never call it the Middle East, middle of what east of where?) dynamic, especially Iran's relations with Saudi Arabia.

If WikiLeaks succeeds in bringing down the Saudi government and unleashes democratic forces in Saudia, that would be the best thing for the entire region.

That will take along while, largely because of the US role in propping up Saudia's feudal dictatorship, for the sole purpose of getting cheap oil for American consumers and for the US war machine.

WikiLeaks Gets it, WikiLeaks Gets it Out -- and India Looks Better by the Minute. Keep going India, keep going on Gandhi's path.

Q. Will Norway dare to show courage and give Assange the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize? Probably not.
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Copyright NYTimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/28/world/20101128-cables-viewer.html#report/cables-09TRIPOLI771

Infected by the Hindutva Virus: The Case of Yoga

Infected by the Hindutva Virus: The Case of Yoaga

Oh no. Now, Hindutva fanatics living and working in the US (the Hindu American Foundation] are about to claim Yoga and make it their very own 'brand' along with pogroms against Muslims!

Watch this group morph into the HinduTaliban!

“In a way,” said Dr. Aseem Shukla, the foundation’s co-founder, “our issue is that yoga has thrived, but *Hinduism* has lost *control* of the *brand*.” [my asterisked emphasis added]

A US (note, NOT in India or from India) rightwing organization calling itself the Hindu American foundation is in itself an embarrassment to multiethnic, multireligious secular, democratic India.

The asinine, anal, (yeah the urologist) doc who reportedly co-founded the org. appears to be infected with the Hindutva virus, characterized by a pseudo-nationalist claim to a non-existent purity of composite, often contradictory and disparate beliefs and practices, originally associated with people living on the banks of the River Indus (Sindhu in Sanskrit), now in Pakistan!

"The Brand?" The extreme doc wants to "control" and "brand" Yoga! he says above "lost *control*. How appropriately anal!

And how does he propose to
" control" the yoga "brand?" Would that be a subsidiary of General Foods? Or would it become a profitable brand of the HAF?

Yoga is clearly separable from ANY and ALL faith traditions, and cannor be owned by any individual or organizational entity it is traditional knowledge like how to grow basmati rice!

Yoga is now universal practice, as is evident from the millions of (quite likely) sincere yoga practitioners worldwide.
Yoga's appeal both as exercise and healthful, mindful, lifeway has long surpassed faith and belief.

"Let it be" as the Beatles would say.

Dr. Chithra Karunakaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com


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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyregion/28yoga.html
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyregion/28yoga.html?sort=oldest&offset=7



copyright veg biryani and the NYTimes
157.
Veg Biryani
Hyderabad, India
November 28th, 2010
9:42 am
While it may be so, the fact that this foundation is focusing on such nonsense is truly remarkable. You'll note that it's the ABCD's (look it up if you don't know term) that are driving this, not anyone from India itself. The foundation would like the West to believe that all Hindus in India practice yoga. The reality is that India is the most sedentary and unfit country on earth (look at the numbers, not up for discussion) and there's a reason that it is the world's leader in heart disease and diabetes. The middle class does absolutely nothing in the way of physical activity and it's really only the wealthy counterparts to the yoga zealots that could possibly care about something as trivial as this and that would practice regularly.
Indians are extraordinary tolerant, no one outside of the uber-wealthy cares in the closed off enclaves of Indian society cares, and this foundation should refocus its efforts and save future embarrassment.

Republicans Pull a Pakistan!

The Republican Party has become very much like Pakistan in the US Congress.

What do I mean?

Well, US governments since the 1950's have been dealing with Pakistan as if Pakistan is a viable, reliable partner.
The US govt. got what it deserved. The US govt. exploited and manipulated Pakistan. By EXPLOITING Pakistan for 60 years, since the early 1950's, the US has created a dependent, though occasionally defiant, but still ALWAYS dependent client-state.
That is neither good for the US nor for Pakistan.
That is unethical double-dealing and the predictable result has been tragic for Pakistan and the Pakistani people, and counterproductive for US foreign policy in South Asia.

Just like the Democrats mistakenly viewed the Republicans in the House and the Senate.

Dems in the US Congress thought that Republicans could be counted on to be cooperative, collaborative and would pursue a bipartisan agenda that would benefit the American people. In fact the Dems capitulated to the Republican rightwing, antidemocratic agenda, beginning with Clinton and now continuing with Obama.

What happened instead?

When you Sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.

In the US Congress, Republicans are pulling a Pakistan!

Obama Tweaks Same Old US Powerspeak During India Visit

Is there anything more exasperating and undeserved than Obama's tweaking of the same old US Powerspeak?
Brand Obama is new improved Brand Bush. Nobody in India should expect any better.

Fortunately our own leaders in India know better than to buy Brand Obama.

Here are the reasons why in India we don't buy Brand Obama:

1. The US has exploited Pakistan for 60 years ever since the John Foster Dulles State Department of the early 50's, right after Partition.

2. Pakistan, weakened at Partition, was manipulated by the US to further its own invented Cold War strategy against the former USSR. The US turned Pakistan into a dependent, occasionally defiant, but always subordinate client-state.

3. Any pragmatic initiative by India, to develop Amity and Concord with Pakistan is rendered nearly impossible by continued US manipulation of Pakistan and physical military presence in the South Asia region.

No matter how slick his dance moves, India does not buy Brand Obama

Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York (CUNY)
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
----------------
NYtimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/world/asia/08prexy.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

MUMBAI — When Michelle Obama, the first lady, introduced her husband to a group of college students here Sunday, she urged them to ask him “tough questions.”
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They did.

“What is your take or opinion about jihad?” came the first question for President Obama at a town hall-style meeting at St. Xavier’s College. Next up: queries about spirituality, Gandhi, the American midterm elections and his government’s negotiations with the Taliban.

Finally, there was the question Mr. Obama confessed he had been waiting for: Why hasn’t the United States labeled Pakistan “a terrorist state?”

“Pakistan is an enormous country; it is a strategically important country,” Mr. Obama began carefully, before meandering around to a defense of his administration, in which he said its policy is to “work with the Pakistani government in order to eradicate this extremism that we consider a cancer within the country that can potentially engulf the country.”

The diplomatic response was indicative of the fine line Mr. Obama has walked on the topic of terrorism while in India. On Saturday, his first day here, he faced criticism in the local press when he paid homage to the victims and survivors of the 2008 terrorist siege in Mumbai without mentioning that the gunmen were Pakistani or suggesting, more broadly, that some groups in Pakistan pose a terrorist threat.

While the students at St. Xavier’s, a 140-year-old Jesuit institution in this pretty seaside city, were exceedingly polite to Mr. Obama — in interviews many said they admired him — they seemed unafraid to get straight to the point, even if Mr. Obama did not always get straight to his.

“Well,” the president said, tackling the opening question about jihad, “the phrase jihad has a lot of meanings within Islam and is subject to a lot of different interpretations.”

He carefully avoided saying he is opposed to jihad — commonly interpreted to mean “holy war” — and instead said, “I think all of us recognize that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence towards innocent people that is never justified. And so, I think, one of the challenges that we face is how do we isolate those who have these distorted notions of religious war.”

Sunday’s session, in a sunny outdoor courtyard surrounded by Gothic buildings, came on the second day of a 10-day, four-nation swing that will also take Mr. Obama to Indonesia, his boyhood home for four years, South Korea and Japan. He is spending the longest stretch, three days, in India. He left Mumbai later Sunday for the capital, New Delhi, where he was expected to address Parliament on Monday.

While Mr. Obama was dancing around questions — figuratively speaking — on Sunday, he also participated in some literal dancing, showing off some moves that, to the delight of photographers traveling with him, are likely to provide iconic images of his trip. Mr. Obama’s short performance came after student dancers doing a show for him implored him to join in.

The White House has cast the Asia trip as an economic mission that will also strengthen American diplomatic ties with emerging democracies and established ones; on Sunday, Mr. Obama also toured a small technology expo here with the aim of showcasing American partnerships with India in expanding agriculture.

Officials billed the college town hall as a chance for Mr. Obama to connect with ordinary Indians. But for a president still bruised from the trouncing his party took in last week’s elections, the appearance was also a chance to come before the kind of sympathetic crowd he now has trouble attracting at home.

“We call him the world king, king of the world,” said Chetman Rawal, 20, who studies commerce at the college. “I think he will change the world.”

It seemed a common sentiment. In interviews, students and faculty here uniformly spoke kindly of Mr. Obama, praising everything from ‘’his cuteness,” as one female student said, to his basketball skills, to his respect for “Gandhian principles.” On the question of how he applies those principles, Mr. Obama sounded a note of humility.

“I’m often frustrated by how far I fall short of their example,” he said, referring to Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, all of whom he said he is studying. “But I do think that at my best what I’m trying to do is to apply principles that fundamentally come down to something shared in all the world’s religions, which is to see yourself in other people.”

Indians followed the American elections closely, said Father Lawrie Ferrao, director of the institute of communications at the college. But he said people here are more interested in another election — the one Mr. Obama himself ran in 2008.

“The admiration for him with regard to his campaign, his optimism, his charismatic movement and charismatic leadership, that I think has not faded off yet,” Fr. Ferrao said. As to the outcome of the midterms, he gave an explanation Mr. Obama himself might have offered: “He was given an economy which was unsustainable.”

The president himself, when questioned on the races, pledged some “mid-course corrections and adjustments,” , though he was not specific about his plans. But in his commentary on Gandhi, he offered a lesson he had learned, one that perhaps provides some insight into how he might be feeling these days.

“On this journey,” Mr. Obama said, “you’re going to experience setbacks and you have to be persistent and stubborn, and you just have to keep on going at it. And you’ll never roll the boulder all the way up the hill, but you may get it part of the way up.”
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TOI copyright
Obama pushes India to talk to Pakistan
REUTERS, Nov 7, 2010, 05.56pm IST

Tags:Obama|Michelle|Manmohan Singh|Barack Obama|Abdul Basit
NEW DELHI: US President Barack Obama called on India on Sunday to bolster peace efforts with Pakistan that have floundered since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, relations seen as crucial to his troubled efforts to win the war in Afghanistan.

On the second day of his official visit to India, Obama faces a diplomatic tightrope in fostering ties with the growing global power, while at the same time helping Pakistan with billions of dollars in aid and promoting wider peace in Afghanistan.

Obama's first leg of a 10-day Asian tour has been hailed as moving the United States closer to India as Washington tries to revive a weak economy and gather support to pressure China on its currency. But on Sunday, India's worries about Pakistan dominated.

Peppered by questions from students at a college in India's financial hub, Obama toed a cautious line between the two nuclear-armed foes, saying both were needed to help stabilise Afghanistan where thousands of US troops battle militants.

"My hope is that over time, trust develops between the two countries, that dialogue begins, perhaps on less controversial issues, building up to more controversial issues," Obama told students under a hot midday sun.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit was quoted by news agency Press Trust of India as saying the United States ought to play an "effective role for an amicable solution of the longstanding issue of Kashmir" given close India-US ties.

Kashmir is at the heart of the dispute between the nuclear-armed rivals, who have fought two wars over the restive Himalayan region which they both claim.

The Mumbai attacks inflamed tensions between the foes, which have been to war three times since 1947 independence. India says elements within the Pakistan state were behind the rampage, when Pakistan-based gunmen killed 166 people in a 60-hour strike on hotels, a train station and a Jewish centre.

India immediately broke off peace talks with Pakistan, although there have been some largely fruitless top level meetings in the last year.

"India's investment in development in Afghanistan is appreciated," Obama added. "Pakistan has to be a partner in this process, in fact all countries in the region are going to need to be partners in this process.

"The United States welcomes that, we don't think we can do this alone."

India has given $1.3 billion in aid to Afghanistan, a policy that unnerves Pakistan which sees its northern neighbour as its own backyard of influence. India wants stability there to stop the country being used to harbour anti-Indian Islamist militants.

Obama said Pakistan was not acting quickly enough to deal with militancy within its borders, a view long expressed by many Indian officials who say Islamabad is hoodwinking Washington by taking aid while also backing militants in Afghanistan.

"There are more Pakistanis who've been killed by terrorists inside Pakistan than probably anywhere else," Obama said.

Obama will visit Indonesia, South Korea and Japan on the tour that will see Washington push to prevent countries unilaterally devaluing currencies to protect their exports, a top theme at the Group of 20 heads of state meet in Seoul next week.

Mauled in mid-term elections, Obama is trying to bolster exports and jobs by boosting business in countries like India, trying to show that US voters have more to benefit from India than fear from its cheap outsourcing industries.

To that end, Obama announced $10 billion in business deals that he said would support 54,000 jobs in the United States.

But on Sunday he called on Asian countries like India to open their economies more up to US firms. India restricts foreign investment in key areas like retail and financial services.

"It's not unfair for the United States to say, look, if our economy is open to everybody, countries that trade with us have to change their practices to open up their markets to us. There has to be reciprocity in our trading relationships," Obama said.

He said the United States was not making progress on unemployment quickly enough and he would take "some mid-course correction" after the mid-term elections.

"Unemployment in the US is very high now, relative to what it is typically. Although we are making progress, we are not making progress quickly enough," Obama said.

Earlier on Sunday Obama and is wife Michelle watched children in saris perform traditional dances. Michelle led an initially hesitant president to join in, mimicking their dancing moves as White House aides laughed at their commander-in-chief.

Later in the afternoon, Obama landed in New Delhi and greeted the waiting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with a hug. The Obamas and the Singhs chatted with each other for a few minutes, before the president went for a scheduled tour of a Mughal-era tomb. The leaders were to meet for dinner at Singh's residence later.


Read more: Obama pushes India to talk to Pakistan - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Obama-pushes-India-to-talk-to-Pakistan/articleshow/6884180.cms#ixzz14cchAWW3

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TOI copyright 11/08/10
text of Joint India-US statement Obama Manmohan
NEW DELHI: Following is the text of the Joint Statement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama.

Reaffirming their nations' shared values and increasing convergence of interests, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama resolved today in New Delhi to expand and strengthen the India-U.S. global strategic partnership.

The two leaders welcomed the deepening relationship between the world's two largest democracies. They commended the growing cooperation between their governments, citizens, businesses, universities and scientific institutions, which have thrived on a shared culture of pluralism, education, enterprise, and innovation, and have benefited the people of both countries.

Building on the transformation in India-U.S. relations over the past decade, the two leaders resolved to intensify cooperation between their nations to promote a secure and stable world; advance technology and innovation; expand mutual prosperity and global economic growth; support sustainable development; and exercise global leadership in support of economic development, open government and democratic values.

The two leaders reaffirmed that India-U.S. strategic partnership is indispensable not only for their two countries but also for global stability and prosperity in the 21st century. To that end, President Obama welcomed India's emergence as a major regional and global power and affirmed his country's interest in India's rise, its economic prosperity, and its security.

A global strategic partnership for the 21st century

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama called for an efficient, effective, credible and legitimate United Nations to ensure a just and sustainable international order. Prime Minister Singh welcomed President Obama's affirmation that, in the years ahead, the United States looks forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member. The two leaders reaffirmed that all nations, especially those that seek to lead in the 21st century, bear responsibility to ensure that the United Nations fulfills its founding ideals of preserving peace and security, promoting global cooperation, and advancing human rights.

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama reiterated that India and the United States, as global leaders, will partner for global security, especially as India serves on the Security Council over the next two years. The leaders agreed that their delegations in New York will intensify their engagement and work together to ensure that the Council continues to effectively play the role envisioned for it in the United Nations Charter. Both leaders underscored that all states have an obligation to comply with and implement UN Security Council Resolutions, including UN sanctions regimes. They also agreed to hold regular consultations on UN matters, including on the long-term sustainability of UN peacekeeping operations. As the two largest democracies, both countries also reaffirmed their strong commitment to the UN Democracy Fund.

The two leaders have a shared vision for peace, stability and prosperity in Asia, the Indian Ocean region and the Pacific region and committed to work together, and with others in the region, for the evolution of an open, balanced and inclusive architecture in the region. In this context, the leaders reaffirmed their support for the East Asia Summit and committed to regular consultations in this regard. The United States welcomes, in particular, India's leadership in expanding prosperity and security across the region. The two leaders agreed to deepen existing regular strategic consultations on developments in East Asia, and decided to expand and intensify their strategic consultations to cover regional and global issues of mutual interest, including Central and West Asia.

The two sides committed to intensify consultation, cooperation and coordination to promote a stable, democratic, prosperous, and independent Afghanistan. President Obama appreciated India's enormous contribution to Afghanistan's development and welcomed enhanced Indian assistance that will help Afghanistan achieve self-sufficiency. In addition to their own independent assistance programs in Afghanistan, the two sides resolved to pursue joint development projects with the Afghan Government in capacity building, agriculture and women's empowerment.


They reiterated that success in Afghanistan and regional and global security require elimination of safe havens and infrastructure for terrorism and violent extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Condemning terrorism in all its forms, the two sides agreed that all terrorist networks, including Lashkar e-Taiba, must be defeated and called for Pakistan to bring to justice the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Building upon the Counter Terrorism Initiative signed in July 2010, the two leaders announced a new Homeland Security Dialogue between the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security and agreed to further deepen operational cooperation, counter-terrorism technology transfers and capacity building. The two leaders also emphasized the importance of close cooperation in combating terrorist financing and in protecting the international financial system.

In an increasingly inter-dependent world, the stability of, and access to, the air, sea, space, and cyberspace domains is vital for the security and economic prosperity of nations. Acknowledging their commitment to openness and responsible international conduct, and on the basis of their shared values, India and the United States have launched a dialogue to explore ways to work together, as well as with other countries, to develop a shared vision for these critical domains to promote peace, security and development. The leaders reaffirmed the importance of maritime security, unimpeded commerce, and freedom of navigation, in accordance with relevant universally agreed principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and peaceful settlement of maritime disputes.

The transformation in India-U.S. defense cooperation in recent years has strengthened mutual understanding on regional peace and stability, enhanced both countries' respective capacities to meet humanitarian and other challenges such as terrorism and piracy, and contributed to the development of the strategic partnership between India and the United States. The two Governments resolved to further strengthen defense cooperation, including through security dialogue, exercises, and promoting trade and collaboration in defense equipment and technology. President Obama welcomed India's decision to purchase U.S. high-technology defense items, which reflects our strengthening bilateral defence relations and will contribute to creating jobs in the United States.

The two leaders affirmed that their countries' common ideals, complementary strengths and a shared commitment to a world without nuclear weapons give them a responsibility to forge a strong partnership to lead global efforts for non-proliferation and universal and non-discriminatory global nuclear disarmament in the 21st century. They affirmed the need for a meaningful dialogue among all states possessing nuclear weapons to build trust and confidence and for reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in international affairs and security doctrines. They support strengthening the six decade-old international norm of non-use of nuclear weapons. They expressed a commitment to strengthen international cooperative activities that will reduce the risk of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons or material without reducing the rights of nations that play by the rules to harness the power of nuclear energy to advance their energy security. The leaders reaffirmed their shared dedication to work together to realize the commitments outlined at the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit to achieve the goal of securing vulnerable nuclear materials in the next four years. Both sides expressed deep concern regarding illicit nuclear trafficking and smuggling and resolved to strengthen international cooperative efforts to address these threats through the IAEA, Interpol and in the context of the Nuclear Security Summit Communiqué and Action Plan. The two sides welcomed the Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation in the Global Centre for Nuclear Energy Partnership being established by India.

Both sides expressed deep concern about the threat of biological terrorism and pledged to promote international efforts to ensure the safety and security of biological agents and toxins. They stressed the need to achieve full implementation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and expressed the hope for a successful BWC Review Conference in 2011. The United States welcomed India's destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile in accordance with the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Both countries affirmed their shared commitment to promoting the full and effective implementation of the CWC.

The two leaders expressed regret at the delay in starting negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament for a multilateral, non-discriminatory and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the future production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

India reaffirmed its unilateral and voluntary moratorium on nuclear explosive testing. The United States reaffirmed its testing moratorium and its commitment to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and bring it into force at an early date.

The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to diplomacy to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, and discussed the need for Iran to take constructive and immediate steps to meet its obligations to the IAEA and the UN Security Council.

Technology, innovation, and energy

Recognizing that India and the United States should play a leadership role in promoting global nonproliferation objectives and their desire to expand high technology cooperation and trade, Prime Minister Singh and President Obama committed to work together to strengthen the global export control framework and further transform bilateral export control regulations and policies to realize the full potential of the strategic partnership between the two countries.

Accordingly, the two leaders decided to take mutual steps to expand U.S.-India cooperation in civil space, defense, and other high-technology sectors. Commensurate with India's nonproliferation record and commitment to abide by multilateral export control standards, these steps include the United States removing Indian entities from the U.S. Department of Commerce's "Entity List" and realignment of India in U.S. export control regulations.

In addition, the United States intends to support India's full membership in the four multilateral export control regimes (Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, Australia Group, and Wassenaar Arrangement) in a phased manner, and to consult with regime members to encourage the evolution of regime membership criteria, consistent with maintaining the core principles of these regimes, as the Government of India takes steps towards the full adoption of the regimes' export control requirements to reflect its prospective membership, with both processes moving forward together. In the view of the United States, India should qualify for membership in the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement according to existing requirements once it imposes export controls over all items on these regimes' control lists.

Both leaders reaffirmed the assurances provided in the letters exchanged in September 2004 and the End-Use Visit Arrangement, and determined that the two governments had reached an understanding to implement these initiatives consistent with their respective national export control laws and policies. The Prime Minister and President committed to a strengthened and expanded dialogue on export control issues, through fora such as the U.S.-India High Technology Cooperation Group, on aspects of capacity building, sharing of best practices, and outreach with industry.

The possibility of cooperation between the two nations in space, to advance scientific knowledge and human welfare, are without boundaries and limits. They commended their space scientists for launching new initiatives in climate and weather forecasting for agriculture, navigation, resource mapping, research and development, and capacity building. They agreed to continuing discussions on and seek ways to collaborate on future lunar missions, international space station, human space flight and data sharing, and to reconvene the Civil Space Joint Working Group in early 2011. They highlighted the just concluded Implementing Arrangement for enhanced monsoon forecasting that will begin to transmit detailed forecasts to farmers beginning with the 2011 monsoon rainy season as an important example of bilateral scientific cooperation advancing economic development, agriculture and food security.

The two leaders welcomed the completion of steps by the two governments for implementation of the India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement. They reiterated their commitment to build strong India-U.S. civil nuclear energy cooperation through the participation of the U.S. nuclear energy firms in India on the basis of mutually acceptable technical and commercial terms and conditions that enable a viable tariff regime for electricity generated. They noted that both countries had enacted domestic legislations and were also signatories to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation. They further noted that India intends to ratify the Convention on Supplementary Compensation within the coming year and is committed to ensuring a level playing field for U.S. companies seeking to enter the Indian nuclear energy sector, consistent with India's national and international legal obligations.

India will continue to work with the companies. In this context, they welcomed the commencement of negotiations and dialogue between the Indian operator and U.S. nuclear energy companies, and expressed hope for early commencement of commercial cooperation in the civil nuclear energy sector in India, which will stimulate economic growth and sustainable development and generate employment in both countries.

Just as they have helped develop the knowledge economy, India and the United States resolved to strengthen their partnership in creating the green economy of the future. To this end, both countries have undertaken joint research and deployment of clean energy resources, such as solar, advanced biofuels, shale gas, and smart grids. The two leaders also welcomed the promotion of clean and energy efficient technologies through the bilateral Partnership to Advance Clean Energy (PACE) and expanded cooperation with the private sector. They welcomed the conclusion of a new MoU on assessment and exploration of shale gas and an agreement to establish a Joint Clean Energy Research Center in India as important milestones in their rapidly growing clean energy cooperation.

The leaders discussed the importance of working bilaterally, through the Major Economies Forum (MEF), and in the context of the international climate change negotiations within the framework of the UNFCCC to meet the challenge of climate change. Prime Minister Singh and President Obama reiterated the importance of a positive result for the current climate change negotiations at the forthcoming conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Mexico and affirmed their support for the Copenhagen Accord, which should contribute positively to a successful outcome in Cancun. To that end, the leaders welcomed enhanced cooperation in the area of climate adaptation and sustainable land use, and welcomed the new partnership between the United States and India on forestry programs and in weather forecasting.

Inclusive growth, mutual prosperity, and economic cooperation

The two leaders stressed that India and the United States, anchored in democracy and diversity, blessed with enormous enterprise and skill, and endowed with synergies drawn from India's rapid growth and U.S. global economic leadership, have a natural partnership for enhancing mutual prosperity and stimulating global economic recovery and growth. They emphasize innovation not only as a tool for economic growth and global competitiveness, but also for social transformation and empowerment of people.

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama celebrated the recent growth in bilateral trade and investment, characterized by balanced and rapidly growing trade in goods and services. They noted positively that the United States is India's largest trading partner in goods and services, and India is now among the fastest growing sources of foreign direct investment entering the United States. The two leaders agreed on steps to reduce trade barriers and protectionist measures and encourage research and innovation to create jobs and improve livelihoods in their countries.

They also welcomed expanding investment flow in both directions. They noted growing ties between U.S. and Indian firms and called for enhanced investment flows, including in India's infrastructure sector, clean energy, energy efficiency, aviation and transportation, healthcare, food processing sector and education. They welcomed the work of the U.S.-India CEO Forum to expand cooperation between the two countries, including in the areas of clean energy and infrastructure development. They also encouraged enhanced engagement by Indian and American small and medium-sized enterprises as a critical driver of our economic relationship. They looked forward to building on these developments to realize fully the enormous potential for trade and investment between the two countries.

Recognizing the people-to-people dynamic behind trade and investment growth, they called for intensified consultations on social security issues at an appropriate time. The two leaders agreed to facilitate greater movement of professionals, investors and business travelers, students, and exchange visitors between their countries to enhance their economic and technological partnership.

To enhance growth globally, the Prime Minster and President highlighted both nations' interests in an ambitious and balanced conclusion to the WTO's Doha Development Agenda negotiations, and in having their negotiators accelerate and expand the scope of their substantive negotiations bilaterally and with other WTO members to accomplish this as soon as possible. They agreed to work together in the G-20 to make progress on the broad range of issues on its agenda, including by encouraging actions consistent with achieving strong, balanced, and sustainable growth, strengthening financial system regulation, reforming the international financial institutions, enhancing energy security, resisting protectionism in all its forms, reducing barriers to trade and investment, and implementing the development action plans.

Building on the historic legacy of cooperation between the India and the United States during the Green Revolution, the leaders also decided to work together to develop, test, and replicate transformative technologies to extend food security as part of an Evergreen Revolution. Efforts will focus on providing farmers the means to improve agricultural productivity. Collaboration also will enhance agricultural value chain and strengthen market institutions to reduce post-harvest crop losses.


Affirming the importance of India-U.S. health cooperation, Prime Minister and the President celebrated the signing of an MOU creating a new Global Disease Detection Regional Center in New Delhi, which will facilitate preparedness against threats to health such as pandemic influenza and other dangerous diseases.

Embracing the principles of democracy and opportunity, the leaders recognized that the full future potential of the partnership lies in the hands of the next generation in both countries. To help ensure that all members of that generation enjoy the benefits of higher education, the Prime Minister and the President agreed to convene an India-U.S. Higher Education Summit, chaired by senior officials from both countries in 2011, as part of a continued effort to strengthen educational opportunities. They welcomed the progress made in implementing the Singh-Obama 21st Century Knowledge Initiative that is expanding links between faculties and institutions of the two countries and the expansion in the Nehru-Fulbright Programme for Scholars.

Noting that the ties of kinship and culture are an increasingly important dimension of India-U.S. relations, President Obama welcomed India's decision to hold a Festival of India in Washington DC in 2011. Recognizing the importance of preserving cultural heritage, both governments resolved to initiate discussions on how India and the United States could partner to prevent the illicit trafficking of both countries' rich and unique cultural heritage.

A shared international partnership for democracy and development

Consistent with their commitments to open and responsive government, and harnessing the expertise and experience that the two countries have developed, the leaders launched a U.S.-India Open Government Dialogue that will, through public-private partnerships and use of new technologies and innovations, promote their shared goal of democratizing access to information and energizing civic engagement, support global initiatives in this area and share their expertise with other interested countries. This will build on India's impressive achievements in this area in recent years and the commitments that the President made to advance an open government agenda at the United Nations General Assembly. The President and Prime Minister also pledged to explore cooperation in support of efforts to strengthen elections organization and management in other interested countries, including through sharing their expertise in this area.

Taking advantage of the global nature of their relationship, and recognizing India's vast development experience and historical research strengths, the two leaders pledged to work together, in addition to their independent programmes, to adapt shared innovations and technologies and use their expertise in capacity building to extend food security to interested countries, including in Africa, in consultation with host governments.

Prime Minister Singh and President Obama concluded that their meeting is a historic milestone as they seek to elevate the India-U.S. strategic partnership to a new level for the benefit of their nations and the entire mankind. President Obama thanked President Patil, Prime Minister Singh, and the people of India for their extraordinary warmth and hospitality during his visit. The two leaders looked forward to the next session of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in 2011.


Read more: Text of joint statement of PM Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Text-of-joint-statement-of-PM-Manmohan-Singh-and-President-Barack-Obama/articleshow/6890825.cms#ixzz14iW9Yonw
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President
President
Obama Calls for India to Be Permanent Member of U.N. Security Council

Published November 08, 2010

| Associated Press

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Monday: A barefoot Indian worker sweeps the red carpet before the arrival of U.S. President Obama to a ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Presidential Palace in New Delhi, India.

AP

Monday: A barefoot Indian worker sweeps the red carpet before the arrival of U.S. President Obama to a ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Presidential Palace in New Delhi, India.

NEW DELHI -- President Barack Obama backed India for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council Monday, a dramatic diplomatic gesture to his hosts as he wrapped up his first visit to this burgeoning nation.

Obama made the announcement in a speech to India's parliament on the third and final day of his visit. In doing so, he fulfilled what was perhaps India's dearest wish for Obama's trip here. India has been pushing for permanent Security Council membership for years.

"The just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a United Nations that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate," Obama said. "That is why I can say today -- in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed U.N. Security Council that includes India as a permanent member."

The announcement brought the loudest applause of Obama's speech. But it does not mean that India will join the five permanent Security Council members anytime soon. The U.S. is backing India's membership only in the context of unspecified reforms to the council that could take years to bring about.

That makes Obama's announcement more of a diplomatic gesture than a concrete step. Nonetheless, it underscores the importance the U.S. places on fostering ties with this nation of 1.2 billion people, something Obama has been seeking to accomplish throughout his time here.

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Obama said repeatedly throughout his three days in India -- first in the financial center of Mumbai and then in the capital of New Delhi -- that he views the relationship between the two countries as one of the "defining partnerships" of the 21st century. He set out to prove it by making India the first stop on a four-country tour of Asia, and then through economic announcements, cultural outreach and finally the announcement about the U.N. Security Council.

India has sought permanent council membership as recognition of its surging economic clout and its increased stature in world affairs. The U.S. endorsement is certain to deepen the ties between them and could also send Obama's popularity in India skyrocketing to a level comparable to that enjoyed by George W. Bush. The former president is seen as a hero here for helping end India's nuclear isolation.

The five permanent members of the Security Council are the U.S., China, France, the United Kingdom and Russia.

Debate has raged for years over how to change a structure that is widely seen as outdated and it is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. So it's unclear when India's drive for permanent membership will ever be realized. But backing it at all is a critically important move from India's perspective.

In another important gesture to India, Obama went farther than he had previously during his stay in addressing the terror threat inside Pakistan, India's neighbor and archrival. Obama angered some here when he visited a memorial to victims of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks but didn't mention Pakistan, which was home to the attackers.

"We will continue to insist to Pakistan's leaders that terrorist safe-havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice," the president said in the address, to loud applause. "We must also recognize that all of us have an interest in both an Afghanistan and a Pakistan that is stable, prosperous and democratic -- and none more so than India."

Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Hindu-majority India have gone to war and remain deeply suspicious of each other. Indian officials accuse Pakistan's intelligence service of helping orchestrate the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people and say the country has not done enough to crack down on the Pakistan-based extremists held responsible.

Pakistan views India's ties with the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan as an effort by its old rival to encircle it.

Throughout his time here, Obama has taken pains to cast his visit as a search for U.S. jobs and benefits to people back home, sensitive to the priorities of U.S. voters who punished the Democratic Party in last week's midterm elections, in part over high unemployment. He touched on the theme again Monday.

"As global partners we can promote prosperity in both our countries," Obama said. "Together, we can create the high-tech, high-wage jobs of the future."

Obama departs early Tuesday for Indonesia, the country where he spent four years as a boy. From there, he heads to South Korea for a meeting of the Group of 20 developed and developing nations, and then to Japan for a gathering of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. He returns to Washington on Nov. 14.
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WikiLeaks' Assange Candidate for 2011 Nobel Peace Prize ? YES

I would like to propose the name of Julian Assange, Founder of WikiLeaks, for Nobel Peace Prize 2011, Oslo are you listening? More important, are you reading those leaks that expose US war crimes? Expose Iran war Crimes? Expose Iraq war crimes?

This is not just worthy of a Pulitzer. It's worthy of a Nobel. You heard the recommendation here first folks. Bigger than The Pentagon papers, which the NYTimes also published. I scooped it, in all humility, because Assange is enormously ethical.
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WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Chased by Turmoil
By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA
Published: October 23, 2010

NYTimes copyright

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Chased by Turmoil
By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYA
Published: October 23, 2010


LONDON — Julian Assange moves like a hunted man. In a noisy Ethiopian restaurant in London’s rundown Paddington district, he pitches his voice barely above a whisper to foil the Western intelligence agencies he fears.

He demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones and swaps his own as other men change shirts. He checks into hotels under false names, dyes his hair, sleeps on sofas and floors, and uses cash instead of credit cards, often borrowed from friends.

“By being determined to be on this path, and not to compromise, I’ve wound up in an extraordinary situation,” Mr. Assange said over lunch last Sunday, when he arrived sporting a woolen beanie and a wispy stubble and trailing a youthful entourage that included a filmmaker assigned to document any unpleasant surprises.

In his remarkable journey to notoriety, Mr. Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowers’ Web site, sees the next few weeks as his most hazardous. Now he is making his most brazen disclosure yet: 391,832 secret documents on the Iraq war. He held a news conference in London on Saturday, saying that the release “constituted the most comprehensive and detailed account of any war ever to have entered the public record.”

Twelve weeks earlier, he posted on his organization’s Web site some 77,000 classified Pentagon documents on the Afghan conflict.

Much has changed since 2006, when Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, used years of computer hacking and what friends call a near genius I.Q. to establish WikiLeaks, redefining whistle-blowing by gathering secrets in bulk, storing them beyond the reach of governments and others determined to retrieve them, then releasing them instantly, and globally.

Now it is not just governments that denounce him: some of his own comrades are abandoning him for what they see as erratic and imperious behavior, and a nearly delusional grandeur unmatched by an awareness that the digital secrets he reveals can have a price in flesh and blood.

Several WikiLeaks colleagues say he alone decided to release the Afghan documents without removing the names of Afghan intelligence sources for NATO troops. “We were very, very upset with that, and with the way he spoke about it afterwards,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir, a core WikiLeaks volunteer and a member of Iceland’s Parliament. “If he could just focus on the important things he does, it would be better.”

He is also being investigated in connection with accusations of rape and molestation involving two Swedish women. Mr. Assange denied the allegations, saying the relations were consensual. But prosecutors in Sweden have yet to formally approve charges or dismiss the case eight weeks after the complaints against Mr. Assange were filed, damaging his quest for a secure base for himself and WikiLeaks. Though he characterizes the claims as “a smear campaign,” the scandal has compounded the pressures of his cloaked life.

“When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like,” he said over the London lunch.

Exposing Secrets

Mr. Assange has come a long way from an unsettled childhood in Australia as a self-acknowledged social misfit who narrowly avoided prison after being convicted on 25 charges of computer hacking in 1995. History is punctuated by spies, defectors and others who revealed the most inflammatory secrets of their age. Mr. Assange has become that figure for the Internet era, with as yet unreckoned consequences for himself and for the keepers of the world’s secrets.

“I’ve been waiting 40 years for someone to disclose information on a scale that might really make a difference,” said Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed a 1,000-page secret study of the Vietnam War in 1971 that became known as the Pentagon Papers.

Mr. Ellsberg said he saw kindred spirits in Mr. Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old former Army intelligence operative under detention in Quantico, Va., suspected of leaking the Iraq and Afghan documents.

“They were willing to go to prison for life, or be executed, to put out this information,” Mr. Ellsberg said.

Underlying Mr. Assange’s anxieties is deep uncertainty about what the United States and its allies may do next. Pentagon and Justice department officials have said they are weighing his actions under the 1917 Espionage Act. They have demanded that Mr. Assange “return” all government documents in his possession, undertake not to publish any new ones and not “solicit” further American materials.

Mr. Assange has responded by going on the run, but has found no refuge. Amid the Afghan documents controversy, he flew to Sweden, seeking a residence permit and protection under that country’s broad press freedoms. His initial welcome was euphoric.

“They called me the James Bond of journalism,” he recalled wryly. “It got me a lot of fans, and some of them ended up causing me a bit of trouble.”

In late September, he left Stockholm for Berlin. A bag he checked on the almost empty flight disappeared, with three encrypted laptops. It has not resurfaced; Mr. Assange suspects it was intercepted. From Germany, he traveled to London, wary at being detained on arrival. Iceland, a country with generous press freedoms , has also lost its appeal, with Mr. Assange concluding that its government is too easily influenced by Washington.

He faces attack from within, too.

After the Sweden scandal, strains within WikiLeaks reached a breaking point, with some of Mr. Assange’s closest collaborators publicly defecting. The New York Times spoke with dozens of people who have worked with and supported him in Iceland, Sweden, Germany, Britain and the United States. What emerged was a picture of the founder of WikiLeaks as its prime innovator and charismatic force but as someone whose growing celebrity has been matched by an increasingly dictatorial, eccentric and capricious style.

Internal Turmoil

Effectively, as Mr. Assange pursues his fugitive’s life, his leadership is enforced over the Internet. Even remotely, his style is imperious. When Herbert Snorrason, a 25-year-old political activist in Iceland, questioned Mr. Assange’s judgment over a number of issues in an online exchange last month, Mr. Assange was uncompromising. “I don’t like your tone,” he said, according to a transcript. “If it continues, you’re out.”

Mr. Assange cast himself as indispensable. “I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the rest,” he said. “If you have a problem with me,” he told Mr. Snorrason, using an expletive, he should quit.

In an interview about the exchange, Mr. Snorrason’s conclusion was stark. “He is not in his right mind,” he said. In London, Mr. Assange was dismissive of all those who have criticized him. “These are not consequential people,” he said.

“About a dozen” disillusioned volunteers have left recently, said Smari McCarthy, an Icelandic volunteer who has distanced himself in the recent turmoil. In late summer, Mr. Assange suspended Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a German who had been the WikiLeaks spokesman under the pseudonym Daniel Schmitt, accusing him of unspecified “bad behavior.” Many more activists, Mr. McCarthy said, are likely to follow.

Mr. Assange denied that any important volunteers had quit, apart from Mr. Domscheit-Berg. But further defections could paralyze an organization that Mr. Assange says has 40 core volunteers and about 800 mostly unpaid followers to maintain a diffuse web of computer servers and to secure the system against attack — to guard against the kind of infiltration that WikiLeaks itself has used to generate its revelations.

Mr. Assange’s detractors also accuse him of pursuing a vendetta against the United States. In London, Mr. Assange said America was an increasingly militarized society and a threat to democracy. Moreover, he said, “we have been attacked by the United States, so we are forced into a position where we must defend ourselves.”

Even among those challenging Mr. Assange’s leadership style, there is recognition that the intricate computer and financial architecture WikiLeaks uses to shield it against its enemies has depended on its founder. “He’s very unique and extremely capable,” said Ms. Jonsdottir, the Icelandic lawmaker.

A Rash of Scoops

Before posting the documents on Afghanistan and Iraq, WikiLeaks enjoyed a string of coups.

Supporters were thrilled when the organization posted documents on the Guantánamo Bay detention operation, Sarah Palin’s e-mail, reports of extrajudicial killings in Kenya and East Timor, the membership rolls of the neo-Nazi British National Party and a combat video showing American Apache helicopters in Baghdad in 2007 gunning down at least 12 people, including two Reuters journalists.

But now, WikiLeaks has been met with new doubts. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have joined the Pentagon in criticizing the organization for risking people’s lives by publishing war logs identifying Afghans working for the Americans or acting as informers.

A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan using the pseudonym Zabiullah Mujahid said in a telephone interview that the Taliban had formed a nine-member “commission” after the Afghan documents were posted “to find about people who are spying.” He said the Taliban had a “wanted” list of 1,800 Afghans and was comparing that with names WikiLeaks provided.

“After the process is completed, our Taliban court will decide about such people,” he said.

Mr. Assange defended posting unredacted documents, saying he balanced his decision “with the knowledge of the tremendous good and prevention of harm that is caused” by putting the information into the public domain. “There are no easy choices on the table for this organization,” he said.

But if Mr. Assange is sustained by his sense of mission, faith is fading among his fellow conspirators. His mood was caught vividly in an exchange on Sept. 20 with another senior WikiLeaks figure. In an encrypted online chat, a transcript of which was passed to The Times, Mr. Assange was dismissive of his colleagues. He described them as “a confederacy of fools,” and asked his interlocutor, “Am I dealing with a complete retard?”

In London, Mr. Assange was angered when asked about the rifts. He responded testily to questions about WikiLeaks’s opaque finances, Private Manning’s fate and WikiLeaks’s apparent lack of accountability to anybody but himself, calling the questions “cretinous,” “facile” and reminiscent of “kindergarten.”

Mr. Assange has been equivocal about Private Manning, talking in late summer as though the soldier was unavoidable collateral damage, much like the Afghans named as informers in the secret Pentagon documents.

But in London, he took a more sympathetic view, describing Private Manning as a “political prisoner” facing a jail term of up to 52 years, without confirming that he was the source of the disclosed war logs. “We have a duty to assist Mr. Manning and other people who are facing legal and other consequences,” Mr. Assange said.

Mr. Assange’s own fate seems as imperiled as Private Manning’s. His British visa will expire early next year. When he left the London restaurant at twilight, heading into the shadows, he declined to say where he was going. The man who has put some of the world’s most powerful institutions on his watch list was on the move again.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Dexter Filkins from Kabul, Afghanistan.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 24, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

US/CIA Impedes South Asia's Efforts To Find Place In The Global Social Justice Order

US/CIA Impedes South Asia's Efforts to Find a Place in the Global Social Justice Order
The US Govt's foreign policy imperatives, which are, as always, driven and directed by the CIA, are seriously impeding efforts by neighbor states' attempts to find its rightful place in the Global Social Justice Order.

The out-of the-box thinking needed is really just common sense. India-Pak AMITY/UNITY is the need of the hour. But the US will not allow this to happen.

Out-of-the-Box Thinking -- Is it Out of Reach?

The "out-of-the-box" thinking we need in the South Asia context, pragmatically speaking, is out of reach for the foreseeable future. Why?

1. The US has gained "strategic depth" in South Asia. The US is now firmly entrenched in Afghanistan and Pakistan and has a brand-name, AkPak, to underscore its entrenchment.

Q. Who can get the US out of South Asia? Not India, certainly not Pakistan, and certainly not Afghanistan.

2. The US has therefore secured a geopolitical advantage in South Asia, on the Pak-Afghan border, from where it can a) monitor and threaten Iran, b) stand within striking distance of Russia, 3) monitor the underbelly of several republics that once formed the USSR. ALL these sovereign nation-states are resource-rich in oil and natural gas. Afghanistan is bursting at the seams with minerals estimated in the trillions, according to a recent New York Times report quoting the US. Geological Survey.

3. The US "strategic depth" achievement, at the cost of the entire South Asia region, is a direct consequence of activities by the US since the early 1950's to turn Pakistan into a DEPENDENT client-state. The US State Department had carefully fostered Pakistan as a dependent client-state (Israel in contrast is a DOMINANT client-state of the US), during its own invented Cold War against the Soviets.

Pakistan, weakened by Partition, especially forced separation of Muslims from their Muslim brother and sisters, fell prey to US manipulation and inducements and Paks's own knee-jerk anti-India policy from the 1950's, stumbled and fell right into the open claw of the American Eagle. Pakistan is a hapless VICTIM of US Cold War strategy, Pakistan's ISI is financed and controlled by the CIA.
Who governs Pakistan does not much matter, the USCIA is in charge, with the ISI in PAID subordination to US strategic goals.
4. The US is on Pakistani soil and and there is nothing Pakistan can do about it. The US is on Afghan soil and Afghanistan can do nothing about it.
The US has NEVER been able to place even ONE US soldier on Indian soil but still India cannot do anything about the US occupation and dominance of the South Asia region.
5. The main and for now, intractable problem is that Pakistan has ACCEPTED the US as its MASTER, instead of CHOOSING India as its ALLY.
6. The out-of-the-box solution, actually the common sense solution that has been there all along, is for India and Pakistan to have a joint political and economic strategy, to make South Asia strong and independent in the global economic and geopolitical order.

Q. Can that happen in our lifetime? Some of us hope so. Some of us dream of that possibility and act everyday to bring that possibility closer to reality.

Until then, the out-of-the-box solution, to build India-Pak AMITY/UNITY, to counter US power in the South Asia region, is out of reach.

Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York (CUNY)
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice

"Culture" of Poverty? POWER is Missing from this Equation

NYTimes Comment #155.
EthicalDemocracy
NYC
October 18th, 2010
11:22 am

\"Culture\" of Poverty? Corrupt POWER is Missing from this Equation

Ever since Oscar Lewis used the now (in)famous phrase, anthropology students, social justice activists, economists and of course politicians have been debating how culture and poverty have became conflated.

I think the missing part of this critical social equation is POWER and its obverse, Disempowerment.

It is directly harmful to POOR PEOPLE (yes, Poverty is all about PEOPLE, haves and havenots)to construe these POOR PEOPLE as sharing a Culture of Poverty. To merely say, like Harvard's Sampson, quoted above in your article, that culture is merely shared understandings is to conceal the role of POWER in the construction of the concept of Poverty.

Let me cite a personal example:

This summer, while I was volunteering in the Kashmir Valley, I spoke at a large meeting of career bureaucrats, clerics, politicians, on the topic of feminization of poverty in the Valley. I was in the process of trying to get govt. agencies to release goats to psychiatrically ill women, because these women has ASKED for GOATS, so they could earn their livelihood. These women understood perfectly they were sick BECAUSE they were POOR.

A henna-bearded Hajj-returned, indubitably devout and very sincere academician turned to me and then stated to the gathering \"Madam is right. Poverty is a curse.\"

I said \"Sir, I did not say that. I said Poverty is a CRIME committed by the government against its people.\"

You could have heard a pin drop. All the power-holders in the room kept silent.

I was never invited to speak again!

Poverty and Power are inextricably conflated. \"Culture\" is a misleading term, when applied to human rights and the right NOT to be poor is a human right.

Dr. Chithra Karunakaran

Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice

http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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NYTimes copyright
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/us/18poverty.html?scp=1&sq=culture%20of%20poverty&st=cse
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/us/18poverty.html?sort=newest

‘Culture of Poverty’ Makes a Comeback
William C. Eckenberg/The New York Times

[Picture]A vacant lot on East 110th Street in New York in 1952: the study of urban blight has long been influenced by political fashions.
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: October 17, 2010


For more than 40 years, social scientists investigating the causes of poverty have tended to treat cultural explanations like Lord Voldemort: That Which Must Not Be Named.
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George Tames/The New York Times

Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his office at Harvard in 1971.
The reticence was a legacy of the ugly battles that erupted after Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant labor secretary in the Johnson administration, introduced the idea of a “culture of poverty” to the public in a startling 1965 report. Although Moynihan didn’t coin the phrase (that distinction belongs to the anthropologist Oscar Lewis), his description of the urban black family as caught in an inescapable “tangle of pathology” of unmarried mothers and welfare dependency was seen as attributing self-perpetuating moral deficiencies to black people, as if blaming them for their own misfortune.

Moynihan’s analysis never lost its appeal to conservative thinkers, whose arguments ultimately succeeded when President Bill Clinton signed a bill in 1996 “ending welfare as we know it.” But in the overwhelmingly liberal ranks of academic sociology and anthropology the word “culture” became a live grenade, and the idea that attitudes and behavior patterns kept people poor was shunned.

Now, after decades of silence, these scholars are speaking openly about you-know-what, conceding that culture and persistent poverty are enmeshed.

“We’ve finally reached the stage where people aren’t afraid of being politically incorrect,” said Douglas S. Massey, a sociologist at Princeton who has argued that Moynihan was unfairly maligned.

The old debate has shaped the new. Last month Princeton and the Brookings Institution released a collection of papers on unmarried parents, a subject, it noted, that became off-limits after the Moynihan report. At the recent annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, attendees discussed the resurgence of scholarship on culture. And in Washington last spring, social scientists participated in a Congressional briefing on culture and poverty linked to a special issue of The Annals, the journal of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

“Culture is back on the poverty research agenda,” the introduction declares, acknowledging that it should never have been removed.

The topic has generated interest on Capitol Hill because so much of the research intersects with policy debates. Views of the cultural roots of poverty “play important roles in shaping how lawmakers choose to address poverty issues,” Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, noted at the briefing.

This surge of academic research also comes as the percentage of Americans living in poverty hit a 15-year high: one in seven, or 44 million.

With these studies come many new and varied definitions of culture, but they all differ from the ’60s-era model in these crucial respects: Today, social scientists are rejecting the notion of a monolithic and unchanging culture of poverty. And they attribute destructive attitudes and behavior not to inherent moral character but to sustained racism and isolation.

To Robert J. Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard, culture is best understood as “shared understandings.”

“I study inequality, and the dominant focus is on structures of poverty,” he said. But he added that the reason a neighborhood turns into a “poverty trap” is also related to a common perception of the way people in a community act and think. When people see graffiti and garbage, do they find it acceptable or see serious disorder? Do they respect the legal system or have a high level of “moral cynicism,” believing that “laws were made to be broken”?

As part of a large research project in Chicago, Professor Sampson walked through different neighborhoods this summer, dropping stamped, addressed envelopes to see how many people would pick up an apparently lost letter and mail it, a sign that looking out for others is part of the community’s culture.

In some neighborhoods, like Grand Boulevard, where the notorious Robert Taylor public housing projects once stood, almost no envelopes were mailed; in others researchers received more than half of the letters back. Income levels did not necessarily explain the difference, Professor Sampson said, but rather the community’s cultural norms, the levels of moral cynicism and disorder.

The shared perception of a neighborhood — is it on the rise or stagnant? — does a better job of predicting a community’s future than the actual level of poverty, he said.

William Julius Wilson, whose pioneering work boldly confronted ghetto life while focusing on economic explanations for persistent poverty, defines culture as the way “individuals in a community develop an understanding of how the world works and make decisions based on that understanding.”

For some young black men, Professor Wilson, a Harvard sociologist, said, the world works like this: “If you don’t develop a tough demeanor, you won’t survive. If you have access to weapons, you get them, and if you get into a fight, you have to use them.”
Seeking to recapture the topic from economists, sociologists have ventured into poor neighborhoods to delve deeper into the attitudes of residents. Their results have challenged some common assumptions, like the belief that poor mothers remain single because they don’t value marriage.
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Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

A Chicago mother and child in 1997 at the notorious Robert Taylor Homes, since demolished.

In Philadelphia, for example, low-income mothers told the sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas that they thought marriage was profoundly important, even sacred, but doubted that their partners were “marriage material.” Their results have prompted some lawmakers and poverty experts to conclude that programs that promote marriage without changing economic and social conditions are unlikely to work.

Mario Luis Small, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and an editor of The Annals’ special issue, tried to figure out why some New York City mothers with children in day care developed networks of support while others did not. As he explained in his 2009 book, “Unanticipated Gains,” the answer did not depend on income or ethnicity, but rather the rules of the day-care institution. Centers that held frequent field trips, organized parents’ associations and had pick-up and drop-off procedures created more opportunities for parents to connect.

Younger academics like Professor Small, 35, attributed the upswing in cultural explanations to a “new generation of scholars without the baggage of that debate.”

Scholars like Professor Wilson, 74, who have tilled the field much longer, mentioned the development of more sophisticated data and analytical tools. He said he felt compelled to look more closely at culture after the publication of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s controversial 1994 book, “The Bell Curve,” which attributed African-Americans’ lower I.Q. scores to genetics.

The authors claimed to have taken family background into account, Professor Wilson said, but “they had not captured the cumulative effects of living in poor, racially segregated neighborhoods.”

He added, “I realized we needed a comprehensive measure of the environment, that we must consider structural and cultural forces.”

He mentioned a study by Professor Sampson, 54, that found that growing up in areas where violence limits socializing outside the family and where parents haven’t attended college stunts verbal ability, lowering I.Q. scores by as much as six points, the equivalent of missing more than a year in school.

Changes outside campuses have made conversation about the cultural roots of poverty easier than it was in the ’60s. Divorce, living together without marrying, and single motherhood are now commonplace. At the same time prominent African-Americans have begun to speak out on the subject. In 2004 the comedian Bill Cosby made headlines when he criticized poor blacks for “not parenting” and dropping out of school. President Obama, who was abandoned by his father, has repeatedly talked about “responsible fatherhood.”

Conservatives also deserve credit, said Kay S. Hymowitz, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, for their sustained focus on family values and marriage even when cultural explanations were disparaged.

Still, worries about blaming the victim persist. Policy makers and the public still tend to view poverty through one of two competing lenses, Michèle Lamont, another editor of the special issue of The Annals, said: “Are the poor poor because they are lazy, or are the poor poor because they are a victim of the markets?”

So even now some sociologists avoid words like “values” and “morals” or reject the idea that, as The Annals put it, “a group’s culture is more or less coherent.” Watered-down definitions of culture, Ms. Hymowitz complained, reduce some of the new work to “sociological pablum.”

“If anthropologists had come away from doing field work in New Guinea concluding ‘everyone’s different,’ but sometimes people help each other out,” she wrote in an e-mail, “there would be no field of anthropology — and no word culture for cultural sociologists to bend to their will.”

Fuzzy definitions or not, culture is back. This prompted mock surprise from Rep. Woolsey at last spring’s Congressional briefing: “What a concept. Values, norms, beliefs play very important roles in the way people meet the challenges of poverty.”
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Why Neither India nor Pak can Trust the US: The Headley Instance

Q. Why was the India Gov so wretchedly uninformed?
Q. Why has India, the world's largest democracy not positioned itself to take cognizance of US-Pak intelligence-gathering and collusion in cross-border terrorism?
See my additional comments [ ] within the text of this NYTimes article, still working on it.

Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
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NYTimes copyright
U.S. Had Warnings on Plotter of Mumbai Attack
David Guttenfelder/Associated Press

Indian soldiers fought terrorists at the Taj Mahal Hotel in 2008.
By JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and GINGER THOMPSON
Published: October 16, 2010

This article is by Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson.
Enlarge This Image
Verna Sadock/Associated Press

David Headley in federal court in Chicago in 2009. In March, he pleaded guilty to helping plan the 2008 attacks on Mumbai.

Less than a year before terrorists killed at least 163 people in Mumbai, India, a young Moroccan woman went to American authorities in Pakistan to warn them that she believed her husband, David Headley, was plotting just such an attack.[What did the US do?]

It was not the first time American law enforcement authorities were warned about Mr. Headley, a longtime informer in Pakistan for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration whose roots in Pakistan and the United States allowed him to move easily in both worlds.

Two years earlier, in 2005, an American woman who was also married to the 50-year-old Mr. Headley told federal investigators in New York that she believed that he was a member of the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, created and sponsored by Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency.[What did the US do?]

Despite those warnings by two of his three wives Mr. Headley roamed far and wide on Lashkar’s behalf between 2002 and 2009, receiving small arms and counter surveillance training, scouting targets for attack, and building a network of connections that extended from Chicago to Pakistan’s lawless frontier.

Then in 2008, it was his handiwork as chief reconnaissance scout that set the stage for Lashkar’s strike against Mumbai, an assault intended to provoke a conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries, Pakistan and India.

It is unclear what United States officials did with the warnings they had gotten about Mr. Headley — who has pleaded guilty to the crimes and is cooperating with authorities — or whether they saw them as complaints from wives whose motives might be colored by their strained relations with their husband.

A senior administration official said Saturday, “We took the information, passed it around to the relevant agencies, and what came back was that the F.B.I. had a file on Headley, but it didn’t link him to terrorism.”[Example of continuing turf war between FBI and CIA. Who benefits? ISI]

Mr. Headley’s ability to hide for years in plain sight has rekindled concerns that the Mumbai bombings are another instance of a communications breakdown among the agencies involved in combating terrorism, much like the enormous intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

It also raises the question of whether United States officials were reluctant to dig deeper into Mr. Headley’s movements because he had been an informant for the D.E.A.[ ] More significantly, it may provide another instance of American reluctance to pursue evidence that some officials in Pakistan, its major ally in the war against Al Qaeda, were involved in planning an attack that killed six Americans.[the US neo-imperial project wqwhether in Iraq or Palestine or South Asia, is impervious to ethical geopolitical considerations]

The Pakistani government has insisted that its spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, a close partner of the C.I.A., did not know of the attack. The United States says it has no evidence to counter this, though officials acknowledge that some current or retired ISI officers probably played some role.[ ]

State Department officials and the F.B.I. said that they investigated the warnings they received about Mr. Headley, but that they could not confirm any connections between him and Lashkar-e-Taiba. And D.E.A. officials said they ended their association with him at the end of 2001, at least two months before Mr. Headley reportedly attended his first terrorist training.

The investigative news organization ProPublica reported the 2005 warning from Mr. Headley’s American ex-wife on its Web site and in the Saturday issue of The Washington Post. By ProPublica’s account, she told authorities that Mr. Headley boasted about working as an American informant while he trained with Lashkar. According to that report, she gave authorities audio cassettes and ideological material, and described e-mails she believed he exchanged with extremists.

But she was not the only one to come forward. An examination of Mr. Headley’s movements shows that United States authorities also heard from his Moroccan wife that he was involved in a terrorist group that was actively plotting against targets in India. Beyond these warnings, interviews illustrate his longstanding connections to American law enforcement and the ISI.

Among the findings:

¶ An officer of the Pakistani spy agency handed Mr. Headley $25,000 in early 2006 to open an office and set up a house in Mumbai to be used as a front during his scouting trips, according to Mr. Headley’s testimony to Indian investigators in Chicago in June.[ ]

¶ The ISI officer who gave Mr. Headley the cash, known as Maj. Iqbal, served as the supervisor of Lashkar’s planning, helping to arrange a communications system for the attack, and overseeing a model of the Taj Mahal Hotel, so that gunmen could find their way around, according to Mr. Headley’s testimony to the Indians.

¶ While working for Lashkar, which has close ties to the ISI, Mr. Headley was also enlisted by the Pakistani spy agency to recruit Indian agents to monitor Indian troop levels and movements, an American official said.[ ]

Mr. Headley was well known both to Pakistani and American security officials long before his arrest as a terrorist. He went to an elite military high school in Pakistan, whose graduates went on to become high-ranking military officers and intelligence operatives. After arrests in 1988 and 1997 on drug-trafficking charges, Mr. Headley became such a valued D.E.A. informant that the drug agency sent him back and forth between Pakistan and the United States.[Yet another example of the US agencies' turf war, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing]