Mayank Chhaya Daily

Let me answer that question. I am not going to answer that.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was on slippery ground yesterday while answering questions about two missile strikes by Predator drones that killed at least 15 people in western Pakistan.

“Let me take your Pakistan question first. As you know I am not going to comment on those matters,” Gibbs said.

“What do you mean by that? You will never speak of any operational action taken by United States military. Is that what you are saying?” he was asked by a surprised White House press corps.

Gibbs: “I am not going to speak about these matters today.”

When he was told that other US officials had confirmed about the strikes, Gibbs said “I am not going to get into these matters.”

“If other members of the US government are confirming it, why aren’t you confirming it?” he was asked.

“I am not going to get into these matters,” was the reply again.

This exchange was an indication of how it is not always possible to be candid about government despite one’s best intentions. It can be reasonably argued that Gibbs’s treatment of the persistent questioning from the media on Pakistan may offer an insight into the working of the Obama administration. It can be equally reasonably argued that it is just a single instance where the press secretary chose not to be forthcoming which in no way could mean he would remain so for ever.

The drone strikes should not surprise anyone considering that President Barack Obama has consistently maintained that if Pakistan cannot and will not take out terror targets on its soil, the US will. Pakistan’s outrage is understandable but gut tells me that secretly it may be happy that someone else is doing the dirty work for them. One can always raise the argument of sovereignty against such strikes but in the areas being bombed Pakistan’s sovereignty is non-existent. Islamabad’s writ does not run in these tribal areas any way. If anything loosening the grip of the Taliban- Al Qaeda combine is the only way to restore some semblance of Pakistani sovereignty over this region.

So far so good on Kashmir

Good sense seems to have prevailed in the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as the Obama administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan while excluding  India in general or Kashmir in particular from hi purview.

Obviously, President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are well advised on the region so far. It would have been a diplomatic disaster to have added India to Holbrooke’s brief. New Delhi would have taken such an inclusion with unconcealed displeasure. While there is some media speculation that India is part of his mandate, there is nothing to suggest that to be the case in the announcement made yesterday.

The border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, particularly the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), constitute the gravest danger to the world. In a detailed report on FATA for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) principal author Shuja Nawaz says this: “This most dangerous spot on the map may well be the source of another 9/11 type of attack on the Western world or its surrogates in the region. Should such an attack occur, it likely will be spawned in the militancy that grips FATA and contiguous areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan today.”

It makes perfect sense for Obama to pay particular attention to Pakistan and Afghanistan, even though it may be tempting to call for the resolution of the Kashmir problem which has been successfully exploited by groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba to draw in aimless young men and turn them into terrorists. I suspect Obama and Clinton would still reach out to New Delhi to discuss how to deny terror groups the fodder that comes from the insurgency in Kashmir. Clearly, that is not the same as appointing a special envoy for the region.

It is possible that the Obama administration is waiting to see how the Kashmir Valley progresses in the aftermath of fairly successful state assembly elections which have ensured the rise of the young but seasoned politician Omar Abdullah as its chief minister. No one who knows the region can say that the insurgents have been eliminated for even the foreseeable future but there has certainly been a significant dip in the violence. I apprehend that the more successful democratic processes in the valley are the more provoked insurgent groups might feel to derail everything. A beginning has been made in Jammu and Kashmir and it deserves a chance to go the distance. It would help to add a rider that many such beginnings were made in the past only to be undone.

Rahman more less guaranteed an Oscar

A R Rahman's musical genius is beyond question but I do not think 'Slumdog Millionaire' is his best work. Unfortunately, with the Oscar nomination that score will get canonized as such. While ‘Jai Ho’ is quite a foot-tapping number what has worked for it is the larger context of the movie. I personally thought the song felt forcibly slapped in at the conclusion of the film. And yet it works simply because it underscores the eventual triumph of the movie’s protagonist Jamal (Dev Patel) after a series of harrowing challenges.

The song was originally composed for filmmaker Subhash Ghai’s dud ‘Yuvraj.’ I can guarantee you had the song been actually used for that Ghai film and then shown to the same group of critics at the Golden Globes and or the jury at the Oscars they would not have warmed up to it.

Rahman features in three separate Oscar nominations for best music scores and two best songs for ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’ The two specific songs nominated are ‘Jai Ho’ and ‘O Saya’. It is clear now that Rahman will score at least one of them, if not for best score (quite likely) he would get it for ‘Jai Ho.’

Two of my predictions about Slumdog getting nominated best film and best director have been vindicated as well. Overall Slumdog features in 10 categories, including best cinematorgraphy, best writing, and best editing. It is expected to score big.

Rich coming from Saudis

When the intelligence chief of one of the world’s most repressive regimes advises a sovereign democracy on the hazards of political disagreements, you know there is a huge problem.

The News daily of Pakistan has a disturbing story about how Saudi Arabia is trying to broker peace between President Asif Ali Zardari and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. After jointly fighting against General Pervez Musharraf the two are said to be at each other’s throats these days.

According to the News, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz’s message to both was "Don't disturb the present political arrangement.” "Let the PPP (Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party) government in Islamabad and the PML-N's (Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League) in the Punjab function without interruption, as it will bring stability to the country. The friends of Pakistan can deal with foreign pressures and threats in a more mature manner," the message said.

Notwithstanding that the Saudi prince is motivated by concerns of Pakistan’s stability, coming from Saudi Arabia the advice is a bit rich. If I were a Pakistani I would find the advice meddlesome and remind the Saudis to first set their own house in order.

It appears that the growing rift between the PPP and PML-N has the potential to unleash political chaos yet again in Pakistan. The primary reason behind the bad blood is the question of restoring supreme court judges, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury, who were sacked by the Musharraf government. Zardari is obviously disinclined to do so because he is worried Chaudhury could reactivate the corruption cases against him which were dropped as part of a deal with Musharraf that allowed Zardari and his assassinated wife Benazir Bhutto to return from exile in October 2007.

The two parties also do see not eye to eye on the 17^th amendment to constitution that Musharraf pushed through to concentrate more power into the presidency. The PML-N wants it revoked while Zardari is said to want to transfer the powers to the prime minister’s office with the eventual aim of becoming prime minister himself.

Clear break from the past

Here is a quick news analysis that I wrote yesterday and published worldwide.

By Mayank Chhaya, Indo-Asian News Service

Belying expectations of soaring phraseology, President Barack Obama’s inaugural address was a resolute, robust and workmanlike repudiation of his predecessor’s policies.

Standing barely 15 feet away former President George Bush, Obama kept his tone equanimous but left no doubt in anybody’s mind that he was unapologetically breaking free from the past eight years.

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” Obama said in what could only be described as a direct rejection of President Bush’s policies of abridging civil liberties behind the cover of security.

“Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet,” he said. Taken together these assertions sounded like a comprehensive denunciation.

Even on a seemingly non-political subject such as science he could not resist himself when he said, “We will restore science to its rightful place.” He was unambiguously saying that science had lost its primacy in national discourse under the previous administration. During the past eight years from global warming to stem cell research and from evolution to climate research everything came under a rejectionist’s glare. It was clear that Obama seeks to reverse all that.

While Bush was widely seen in India as particularly friendly towards India, Obama must have won quick hearts by speaking of America’s multicultural and multireligious character. In saying “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers," he probably became the first US president to mention Hindus in an inaugural address. Considering that Hindus make up barely one percent of America’s population the reference to Hindus as a distinct group in the country was a surprise to many. He was obviously motivated by a wish to underline how inclusive his administration wants to be, particularly by also mentioning “non-believers.” In a polity that had been dominated by evangelical Christians for the past eight years this was a dramatic departure.

Even the symbolism of using his entire name Barack Hussein Obama while taking the oath constituted a radical departure in a country where a large number of people at the very least find it incongruous , if not downright unacceptable, not to have someone with an identifiably Christian name of their president.

The rise of a president of a mixed African and Caucasian heritage nearly 150 years after Abraham Lincoln led the campaign to abolish slavery represents a profound shift. This first became evident when Obama got 53 percent of the popular vote, much higher than Bush did at the height of the so-called evangelical awakening in 2004.

It is clear that what began as one fiercely ambitious politician’s quest for the world’s most powerful office a little less than two years ago is turning out to be an expression of collective aspiration. 

Resolute rejection

 

A grab of the new White House website

Just a few quick thoughts on what has been heralded as a historic inauguration ad nauseum.

A wheelchair-bound Dick Cheney provided unexpectedly powerful symbolism to the retiring Bush administration as Barack Obama took over as the 44^th president.

There appeared to be poetic justice in Cheney, who became a subject of withering humor and biting satire throughout the last eight years, having been advised to use the wheelchair after he damaged his back trying to shift some boxes at his new home. Those who could not stand the former vice president’s politics could not have planned Cheney’s exit better.

Obama’s speech was robust and workmanlike contrary to the expectations of elegant and even soaring phraseology. The speech was a resolute repudiation of his predecessor without any attempt to couch it or nuance it.  “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” Obama said in what could only be described as a direct rejection of President Bush’s policies.

The overall tone of the address seemed to suggest that the country ought to quickly consign the past eight years to irrelevancy and embrace a whole new approach. It was a surprisingly direct rejection of someone sitting barely 15 feet away from him.

India watch out for Kashmir

I have been saying this for sometime now how an Obama administration could unsettle the status quo that Washington has maintained on the question of the Kashmir dispute. Now that President Barack Obama is finally taking over, India needs to closely watch his approach towards Kashmir as it fits in the broader mosaic of Islamic radicalism.

Of course, Obama has many competing and equally consequential worries staring him the face from the 12.01 p.m. today. Kashmir may not seem anywhere close to his immediate concern but as he begins to pay close attention to the contiguous geostrategic region of Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, the Himalayan state and its over two-decade-long ferment is bound to factor in seriously in any new policy formulation.

In this context it is important to note the recent comments of Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband, particularly about creating some incentives for Pakistan to continue with its military pressure on its western border with Afghanistan. Explicit in that was that Kashmir requires to be resolved were Pakistan to cooperate with the US and the West in battling the Al Qaeda-Taliban combine. "Resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms and allow Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders,” Miliband had said in an article in The Guardian newspaper just before his recent visit to India. In an ideological sense Miliband’s comment coincides neatly with what the Pakistan based terror group  Lashkar-e-Taiba, the main accused in the Mumbai terror attacks, has been saying about Kashmir.

India was not at all happy with his comments and made it clear to him and Britain without couching its language in diplomatic nuance. But beyond that it is reasonable to speculate that Miliband’s comments could have acted as a trial balloon for the Obama administration. Obama himself has spoken in terms of the US helping to resolve the Kashmir dispute, a suggestion that he probably knows India bristles at.

Taken together New Delhi will be well advised to monitor how quickly Kashmir features in either Obama’s or his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s policy matrix. It is very clear that Obama would go after Pakistan far more aggressively than the Bush administration ever did. The best way for Obama to soften the blow on Pakistan’s western front is by simultaneously stepping up the pressure on its eastern border.

I doubt if Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s sanguine praise of George Bush in the specific context of India would have been lost on the Obama team. For someone who has followed South Asian politics and its deep emotional content for over two decades, all I can say to anyone who cares to listen is that the powers that be in New Delhi do not take slights or interventions or meddling very well. It is no longer possible to railroad the world’s biggest democracy, which is also a huge economy to boot.

Odds of anyone becoming US president

It has been widely said that the rise of Barack Obama paves the way for  anyone in the US to rise to the highest office in the land. Let me put that non-sense in a statistical perspective.

Obama is only the 44^th president in the 233-year-old history of America. That means on an average each president has lasted a little over five years and two months.

If there is a young man or a woman somewhere in America aspiring to occupy the White House some day, their prospects are pretty bleak. The next 100 years will see only 20 people rise to that level. Out of the current US population of 300 million such odds are just not worth the effort. And when you consider that Obama raised $742 million and spent $712 million you begin to realize how exorbitant it is to win the White House.

As for the chances of a woman becoming the first US president, the challenge is quite obvious. There has been none in 233 years. So all those young women aspiring for the job, it is likely to remain an aspiration.

Plugging self

While I come up with a post or two for today here is a plug for the Finnish edition of my book 'Dalai Lama: Man Monk Mystic". It is called 'Munkki Mystikko Ihminen' and published by Otava. This for my vast Finnish readership.

http://www.otava.fi/kirjat/tieto/2008/fi_FI/dalai-lama/

The size (of your wallet) matters

 

 

It seems the size does matter; size of the wallet that is. British scientists say that the richer the male partner the greater (more frequent) the female orgasms.

In case you do not understand the connection here is what one of the scientists says. “Women's orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner,” said Thomas Pollet, a psychologist at Newcastle University, who conducted the research.

He gives a fancy scientific name such as “evolutionary adaptation” for what simpler folks uncharitably call gold diggers. I bring this nugget of information without any personal take on it other than saying that as a mere journalist my wallet is necessarily small.

Logically, one can argue that the frequency of female orgasms must have reduced dramatically in recent months considering the wallet sizes across economies have shrunk so much. I shudder to think about the sex lives of billionaires whose fortunes were halved overnight because of stock market crashes. Think of a billionaire who was worth say 15 billion dollars in the morning and when he returned home at night it had dropped to 5 billion dollars. One can only imagine what awaited him in the bedroom.

Pollet and his co-author Daniel Nettle reached their conclusion after studying data from what is described as one of the world's biggest lifestyle studies, namely the Chinese Health and Family Life Survey. Under this some 5,000 Chinese people were surveyed. “Increasing partner income had a highly positive effect on women's self-reported frequency of orgasm. More desirable mates cause women to experience more orgasms,” Pollet has been quoted as saying by Britain’s The Sunday Times newspaper.

I wonder about the quality of the Chinese sample considering that incomes never really go up that much in China for most people.