Rajeev’s Almanack

Daniel Markey was Policy planning staff member, South and Central Asia portfolio, U.S. Department of State (2003-2007). He is now a senior fellow for South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. It is interesting to listen to the diissolution of Musharraf through the words of Dr. Markey:

Mar 3 2008

Musharraf is a diminished asset. He is exceedingly unpopular. No one disagrees with that. The time has come to really get on sort of the right side of history, essentially for the United States to jump into the future and work with more popular forces in Pakistan

Feb 23 2008

Musharraf is obviously a poison pill. He is fading out.

(more…)

Bill Foster, the former Fermilab physicist, won the special election to replace Speaker Dennis Hastert in the House of Representatives for the next eleven months. There will be a regular election with the rest of the country in November, for a full term of two years. The margin of victory, 53-47, would be respectable anywhere, but is a stunning upset in a heavily Republican district: Foster ran as a Democrat.

Foster was the first political candidate endorsed by the Almanack. Science is at the core of so many national issues. Yet, so few in Congress display a scientific frame of mind. We cringe when otherwise responsible politicians deny evolution, get overly excited over climate change theories, or diagnose a neurological condition just by watching someone on TV. Even basic arithmetic is suspect, when miracles are preferred over mere mathematics.

Foster’s victory is not going to put an end to any of this. It was probably caused by larger political factors rather than any new enthusiasm for science. After all, Chicago is the epicenter of the Obama phenomenon and Foster had his support.

Nevertheless, we take joy in Foster’s victory and wish him well in the tougher contest he will face in November.

A parable, possibly of Buddhist origin:

The baker dangled the freshly made bread under the Bodhisatva’s nose. He knew it was overpriced, but the smell still enticed Him. So He breathed in deep. The baker, knowing he had lost the sale, said

“Hey, if you are enjoying the smell of my bread, you have to pay for it”

He shook the coins in his pockets:

“You can hear the sound of my coins in return for the smell of your bread”. And He walked away.

Only pay for what you have bought.

National Poll:

AP reports that Obama is catching up even in New York (Quinnipiac University Polling Institute)

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THE NUMBERS - DEMOCRATS

Hillary Rodham Clinton, 53 percent

Barack Obama, 39 percent

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A Quinnipiac poll on Jan. 22 had him trailing, 51 percent to 25 percent.

FermiLab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) is the premier High Energy Physics research facility in the US. Located outside Chicago, it is named for the renowned Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi. SLAC is the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the second most important center in the US for High Energy Physics. Both institutions are in deep trouble due to budget cuts mandated by Congress. FermiLab is planning to lay off 100 `permanent’ PhDs, a total of 200 employees; those remaining will be subject to a `rolling furlough’, amounting to a 7% wage cut. SLAC will experience an RIF of 250 employees, which ought to hurt more as its total size is smaller.

Cutbacks at Argonne National Laboratory (also near Chicago) and to Fusion research are even more drastic. If the current proposals are to become law, the US will also default on commitments to international agreements to create the next fusion research reactor.

FermiLab is experiencing what Los Alamos went through about ten years ago. (more…)

When we published the post reprinted below, we did not have President Clinton in mind. All of us are familiar with leaders who find it hard to bow out, even after their time is up.

The wisdom of the American people in imposing a limit of two terms on Presidents is clearer now than ever before. Not only does it save the country from ineffective leadership, it saves a President past his prime from making a public fool of himself.

Whatever Mrs. Clinton’s claims to the Presidency, her case is not strengthened by letting the former President be her main advocate. Clearly, she understands this. Early in the campaign, President Clinton played the role of strategist-in-chief. Karl Rove not withstanding, there is no one who understands American politics as well as him. So this would be how he is most useful for her.

So what changed in the last three weeks? It looks to us that Senator Obama successfully baited Bill Clinton into becoming an attack-dog. (more…)

Times, they are a-changing. It was not too long ago that Indian diplomats used to make speeches at the UN General Assembly condemning Israel. A new, more pragmatic, generation is in charge of India now. Fewer speeches at the UN. More interested in development and return on investment. Even from the space program. Due to various sanctions, India had to develop the capability to launch into space on its own: a slow and painstaking process. Now that it is able to launch reasonable size payloads, it would like to enter the commercial launch business. As of now, India offers the cheapest launch options- $14M for a 650 kg payload in low Earth orbit. There is some question about reliability though; this can nullify the cost advantage because of the insurance needed.

It is important therefore to show that you can deliver reliably. The latest launch of a `Remote Sensing Satellite’ with `Synthetic Aperture Radar’ in polar orbit (i.e., spy satellite) for Israel went off exactly as planned, although months past the original date. This ought to attract more business. Also, make a few people mad; but probably not make many new enemies.

So why did Israel choose the Indian Space Research Organization for this launch? It is doubtful it is for technical reasons. Israel most likely has the capability to launch such a payload on its own.Even otherwise, Israel has many other options. It could be for strategic reasons. India is already Israel’s largest customer for arms exports. Some trade in the other direction could be a good way to cement a deeper strategic relationship. It could be a good way of keeping tabs on what India is up to.

Or may be it was just a good arrangement for both sides. Sometimes a rocket is just a rocket.

Bill Foster: Businessman, Scientist, Democrat

Congress makes decisions that require scientific knowledge all the time. Yet very few Congressmen have a science background. So it is in all of our interests to have scientists run for Congress.

Bill Foster, a physicist with a distinguished career at Fermilab, is doing just that. (I know him only by reputation.) He is running for the seat vacated by the retirement of former Speaker Dennis Hastert. It turns out that Foster is a successful businessman as well! He and his brother started a company that is now one of the world’s largest manufacturers of lighting equipment for the theater. A rare combination of talents.

Sadly, the support of 22 Nobel Laureates probably won’t help much in the real world. But the Chicago Tribune endorsement ought to matter.

Contribute to his campaign. If you live in the 14th District of Illinois, ( in true Chicago Democrat tradition) Vote Early, Vote Often on primary election day, Feb 5th.

Actually, early voting began on Jan 9th. The `vote often’ bit is not entirely a joke either. You can vote twice for the same seat: once to pick the person who will fill out Hastert’s term and another for the full term in the next Congress.

Update Jan 26: The Daily Kos reports on the race.

Feb 6: It looks like Foster won the democratic primary narrowly. The district traditionally leans Republican by five points, but could be within reach this election year.

Feb14: The race is a dead heat. Remarkable, as this is a District previously represented by the Republican Speaker of the House. Foster has a real chance!

Feb 23: From the Robert Novak column:

McCain presided over a $1,000-a-ticket fund-raiser in Sugar Grove, Ill., for conservative dairy magnate Jim Oberweis. Although Hastert carried the district easily, Republican nominee Oberweis faces a serious battle against liberal Democratic physicist-businessman Bill Foster. Oberweis lost previous primary bids for governor and the U.S. Senate.

An analogy is often made between scientific research and exploration. In High Energy Physics, the accelerator physicists are the ship builders, the theoreticians the map makers, phenemenologists the navigators and the experimentalists are the sailors. The spokesman for the experimentalists is the captain of the ship, a dashing figure with power over life and death during the voyage. Ah, if only we were still in this romantic era..

Exploring in Canoes

The mega collaborations of thousands of physicists, that are being formed, are more like aircraft carriers. A good way of projecting power, but a bad instrument for exploration.

“But you can’t go exploring in a canoe”, I am told when I bring up this point.

Actually, you can. Canoes were exactly what the polynesians used to explore and settle the largest ocean on Earth, the Pacific. (more…)

It’s official. The Grey Lady hath spoken. The Pakistani secret service (ISI) has been aiding terrorists even as they claim to be fighting them. Not only that, they rigged the original election that made Musharraf President. The plan was to hold the extremists in reserve, to use against India and Afghanistan when the Western powers lose interest in the region. Except they ISI lost control of them. Once you convince people that they will go to heaven for killing, it is hard to make them stop. Duh.

Will anything change because NYTimes wrote a font page lead story stating the obvious? Probably not. Still, it is one step in the right direction.

Breaking News….

The crack investigation team set up by General Musharraf to investigate the death of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto has submitted its report. The conclusions might surprise some who made hasty deductions based on a grainy video.

Mrs. Bhutto died from a severe case of indigestion. Having lived abroad for so long, her stomach could no longer handle the spicy food of her homeland. A particularly spicy meal of Naan and Chicken Tikka at Army HQ in Rawalpindi did her in. Other than that, the dinner was a nice affair.

In the videos shown you can see her bending over suddenly with stomach pain. Purely by coincidence a young man in the crowd can be seen raising a revolver and aiming it at her head. The near simultaneity of these two events led most of the world to mistakenly conclude that Mrs. Bhutto was assassinated. The truth is mundane but inescapable.

Unscrupulous elements are trying to take advantage of the confusion. They will be put down mercilessly. The truth has always been on the side of the Glorious Pakistan Army.

Absurdistan Zindabad!

We return to our regularly scheduled program now.

Other Posts on Pakistan

Contrary to popular wisdom it really is the time now to assign blame. It lies squarely with the Pakistani Army and its Commander-in-Chief, Pervez Musharraf. The same army assassinated her father, Zulfikar Bhutto, after a sham trial. The same army has been plundering the country’s wealth and put its judges in jail in the name of security. (more…)

Next in Line?

Despite his willingness to blog on our site , I also think it is time for Musharraf to go. It is not enough that he `take off his uniform’. It is time for Musharraf to retire from the Army and give up the Presidency. If he is merely overthrown by his own hand-picked successor, the situation will only get even worse. (more…)

The Lincoln of Pakistan

Other posts edited by P. Richard Saunders

Editor’s note I am posting here the full text of my dear friend Mushie’s decree imposing emergency rule. A partial text of the decree has been published before by BBC. I have been able to obtain additional secret parts of the decree as well as Mushie’s own commentary explaining the thinking behind it. A couple of words had to be redacted to preserve good relations with allies. So here goes: (more…)

My friends abroad, I am writing this with joy in my heart. Our long national nightmare is over. Full Democracy has been achieved and Full Justice has triumphed. Extremism in all its forms has been defeated. The humiliation of public servants by the judiciary has been stopped. Our Mission has been Accomplished. (more…)

Read Also Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3

The shadowy machinations in Pakistan bring to mind another time and place where a President who had also been a General acted decisively to enforce a Court Order. The President was General (retd.) Eisenhower dealing with a crisis that started almost exactly fifty years ago today. The Governor of Arkansas, Mr. Orval Faubus, was determined to prevent black children from attending the same school as white children. In a bit of political grandstanding, he personally blocked the entrance to the school in Little Rock Arkansas to prevent the Federal Marshals from carrying out an order of the supreme Court (in Brown v. Topeka) to integrate schools. (more…)

We were just leaked a white paper on the situation in Pakistan written by up and coming analysts who used to man the South Asia Desk at State. Now they write in a blog named The Washington- Not!. For reasons of modesty they wish to remain anonymous. But they acknowledge the influence of the ponderous and inebriated Malarkey penned by a more senior former State Department official (from whom they hope to get a job some day). (more…)

Read Also Part 1, Part 2

Pakistan is at a turning point. There might be reason to be cautiously optimistic. The Supreme Court has recently (more…)

P. Richard’s Almanack

Politicians are despised everywhere. According to most of us, they are corrupt, devious, self-serving, lazy, unprincipled, ignorant and dumb. Not a day goes by that we don’t hear about yet another politician doing something idiotic or getting into legal trouble¹.Yet, we need these rogues. (more…)

Read the latest in this series Environmentalism is a Conservative Cause

The debate on global warming caused by human consumption of hydrocarbons appears to be over. We are told that the polar ice cap will melt. Bangladesh will get inundated. Hurricanes will increase in intensity. Crops will fail. Riots will break out. Anecdotal evidence of the coming catastrophe mounds day by day. A glacier in the Antarctic is shrinking. The NorthWest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific (that many generations of explorers looked for in vain) has almost opened up- only 60 miles of ice floes remain unmelted in the summer. The Sacred Phallus of Siva that forms every year from ice almost didn’t appear this year: the Himalayas must be getting too warm. Stranded polar bears have been spotted drowning as the ice floes they are standing on melt. Sea turtles are said to be dying off because the ocean is too warm for their eggs to hatch. (more…)

See also Part 1 Part 3

A couple of thoughtful comments by Biswajit and Miuw on my last post have provoked me to write a follow up. Several points were raised and I will try to give my response to each.

Is Global Warming for Real? I have not made up my own mind mind about this, because I find the Earth’s atmosphere such a daunting physical system that I don’t know any one can make accurate predictions. However, people who know much more about it are doing so confidently so I have to concede that Global Warming must be for real. It is even harder to predict (more…)

The debate on global warming caused by human consumption of hydrocarbons appears to be over. We are told that the polar ice cap will melt. Bangladesh will get inundated. Hurricanes will increase in intensity. Crops will fail. Riots will break out. Anecdotal evidence of the coming catastrophe mounds day by day. A glacier in the Antarctic is shrinking. The NorthWest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific (that many generations of explorers looked for in vain) has almost opened up- only 60 miles of ice floes remain unmelted in the summer. The Sacred Phallus of Siva that forms every year from ice almost didn’t appear this year: the Himalayas must be getting too warm. Stranded polar bears have been spotted drowning as the ice floes they are standing on melt. Sea turtles are said to be dying off because the ocean is too warm for their eggs to hatch. (more…)

American businesses compete with each other trying to please the customer. Every employee is constantly reminded that the customer is right, no matter what. So one gets used to being greeted with a smile as you enter, have questions answered courteously and promises kept.

In the part of India I am from, Kerala, things are definitely different. (more…)

The Politics

Read First Part I: The Theology
For some one outside of the two ancient faiths, the power game between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church is interesting as a case-study in politics: the longest continuing political struggle in human history. (more…)