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Q: How to get a popup to show up after 3 seconds but once per user using css and jquery? I'm new to using jQuery and am having trouble figuring out how to show a popup using css only once per user. I got the popup to work so that it shows up every time, I just need to only happen once per user.
My HTML Code

Join

      <button class="buttonNews">More Info</button>
      <button class="buttonNews">No Thanks</button>

The script handling the jQuery

Thanks in advance.

A: To achieve this you need to keep track of whether or not the user has been shown the popup before. The simplest way of doing this is by using localStorage to manage a boolean flag, something like this:
$(document).ready(function() {
  if (!localStorage.getItem('popupPreviouslyShown') || false) {
    setTimeout(function() {
      $('#popUpMain').css('display', 'block');
      localStorage.setItem('popupPreviouslyShown', true);
    }, 3000);
  }
});

Working example

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Click here to read the March 2012 Market Commentary.
Economic conditions ended the first quarter of 2012 on a high note. Financial markets largely reflected the increase in optimism, delivering higher equity prices and further credit spread tightening. While the mood in the U.S. is far from jubilant, economic data are suggesting that better days are ahead of us. Headwinds still exist, however, which could derail the still-fragile recovery.
Click here to continue reading this commentary.


Robert Schumann was a German composer and an influential music critic. He is widely . Kinderszenen, Op. 15, completed in and a favourite of Schumann's piano works, depicts the innocence and playfulness of childhood. List of compositions by Robert - Clara Schumann - Compositions by Robert. 20 Jun - 3 min - Uploaded by Classical Music Only Title: Robert Schumann, Traumerei Date: Robert Schumann - Traumerei. 7 Jun Schumann's entire being was music, informed by dream and fantasy. Robert Schumann was a German composer and critic born in Zwickau on June 8, . Of the concerted works, the Piano Concerto is Schumann at his best.
Robert Schumann (8 June – 29 July ) was a German composer and an influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers. 12 Jan The complicated musical genius of Robert Schumann, by Steven Isserlis Dichterliebe – or indeed the piano or chamber music he was writing. Robert Schumann was a German composer of the Romantic period famed for his concertos, symphonies, chamber works, lieder, and piano music. Read Full.
Robert Schumann, in full Robert Alexander Schumann, (born June 8, , In he came under the musical influence of the Austrian composer Franz. His marriage to the pianist Clara Wieck dominates accounts of his life; mental illness, too, plays its appalling role. But Schumann was not only a turbulent genius;. Biography and work for Robert Schumann, Listen to classical music and Schumann's only completed piano concerto was started in and finished in . 2 / SCHUMANN: Kinderszenen (Schnabel) (, ), Naxos Historical .. CLASSICAL MASTERPIECES 3 - SCHUMANN: Symphony No. 3, " Rhenish".


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Q: How to call Vue Js methods in Form-wizard or step-validation of jquery? I used direct link of vue js and i want to call onchange method when i select option from dropdown. It's working fine when i put select tag out of wizard-form / steps-validation. When i put in in the wizard form or step form vue methods are not calling. I can access vue data but not access vue methods.
<form method="POST" enctype="multipart/form-data" class="wizard-form steps-validation" id="form">

                    Demo: *
                    <select name="country" data-placeholder="Select country" class="form-control form-control-select2" data-fouc  v-model="country" v-select="country" @change="onChange($event)">
                            <option value="1">India</option>
                                <option value="2">USA</option>
                        </select>

</form>

A: If i understood your question correctly, the solution for you is .native event modifier


There is no roadmap with step-by-step directions for the journey of caregiving. Every situation is unique - our life circumstances and the needs of our loved ones are constantly changing. ElderHelp's team of aging experts has created a series of online courses with valuable resources, worksheets, and other tools to help you better understand your role as a family caregiver.
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Independent Indian: Work & Life of Professor Subroto Roy
Life of MK Roy 1915:2012, Indian Aristocrat & Diplomat, Birth Centenary Concludes 7 Nov 2016
Thoughts, words, deeds: My work 1973-2014
Bibliography, Books, Public Lectures, Memoranda, Memoirs
Buju's Life & Paintings 14 Feb 1943:10 Jan 1998 (Draft 14.2.2018)
India-Pakistan Diplomacy During the 1965 War: the MK Roy Files
Solving a Problem of State Tyranny: Director General Siddhanta Das: Have Forest Service Officers been threatening ordinary citizens, seizing their property, then threatening them with arrest if they complain? If so, how many cases of wrongful seizure and wrongful imprisonment have WCCB caused among India's villagers and forest dwellers since 1994? There is immediate need for an Ombudsman to independently review all cases in each of your Five Zones!
My American years: Part One 1980-90: battles for academic integrity & freedom
Become a US Supreme Court Justice! (Explorations in the Rule of Law in America)
Fixing Washington: On Improving Institutional Design in the United States
Philosophy of Economics: On the Scope of Reason in Economic Inquiry (1989)
Apropos *Philosophy of Economics*
Science, Religion, Art & the Necessity of Freedom (2004)
A General Theory of Globalization & Modern Terrorism (2001)
Physics & Reasoning (An Ongoing Tract) by Subroto Roy DRAFT 01.12.2017
Is "Cambridge Philosophy" dead, in Cambridge? Can it be resurrected, there? Case Study: Renford Bambrough (& Subroto Roy) preceded by decades Cheryl Misak's thesis on Wittgenstein being linked with Peirce via Ramsey…
Economics as a Beautiful Subject: Its Concepts & Principles Explained for Everyone (DRAFT)…. by Subroto Roy
Rajiv Gandhi and the Origins of India's 1991 Economic Reform
Three Memoranda to Rajiv Gandhi 1990-91
Did Jagdish Bhagwati "originate", "pioneer", "intellectually father" India's 1991 economic reform? Did Manmohan Singh? Or did I, through my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, just as Siddhartha Shankar Ray told Manmohan & his aides in Sep 1993 in Washington? Judge the evidence for yourself. And why has Amartya Sen misdescribed his work? India's right path forward today remains what I said in my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture!
Sonia's Lying Courtier with Postscript 25 Nov 2007, & Addendum 30 June 2014
Much as I might love Russia, England, France, America, I despise their spies & local agents affecting poor India's policies: Memo to PM Modi, Mr Jaitley, Mr Doval & the new Govt. of India: Beware of Delhi's sleeper agents, lobbyists & other dalals
"Haksar, Manmohan and Sonia"
Modi & Monetary Theory: Economic Consequences of the Prime Minister of India
Introduction and Some Biography
Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India (1984)
Silver Jubilee of "Pricing, Planning & Politics: A Study of Economic Distortions in India"
My (armchair) experience of the 1999 Kargil war (Or, "Actionable Intelligence" in the Internet age: How the Kargil effort got a little help from a desktop)
Some Recent Articles
Critique of Monetary Ideas of Manmohan & Modi: the Roy Model explaining to Bimal Jalan, Nirmala Sitharaman, RBI etc what it is they are doing (Drafts 4 August, 7 August 2019; 27 August, 28 August, 30 August, 31 August, 1 September 2019)
S N Roy hears from Lytton: A 1922 case of British imperial racism in Indian governance (with lessons for today) [Draft text 12 August 2018]
On being reunited with Arrow Hahn after a dozen years
How the India-Bangladesh Enclaves Problem Was Jump-Started in 2007 Towards its 2015 Solution: A Case Study of Academic Impact on Policy
Pakistan's & India's Illusions of Power (Psychosis vs Vanity)
Delhi can never be improved — until the rest of India improves!
On India's Education Policy
(1) My 13 Sep 2019 Advice to PM Modi's Adviser: Let PM address each State Legislature, get all India Govt Accounting & Public Decision Making to have integrity (2) 16 May 2014 Advice from Rajiv Gandhi's Adviser to Narendra Modi: Do not populate the "Planning Commission" with worthies, scrap it, integrate its assets with the Treasury. And get the nationalised banks & RBI out of the Treasury. Tell them to read my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture with care. Clean Government Accounting & Audit is the Key to Clean Public Finances & a Proper Indian Currency for the First Time Ever
My Recent Works, Interviews etc on India's Money, Public Finance, Banking, Trade, BoP, Land, etc (an incomplete list)
drsubrotoroy
Index of Names and Subjects
15th Lok Sabha
1918 Influenza epidemic
1962 War
Abdul Ghaffar Khan
Academic economics
Academic fraud
AD Shroff
African ivory
Ahmadis
Aksai Chin
Alec Douglas Home
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Alexander Dubček
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America's Civil Rights Movement
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America's impatience
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America's mortgage crisis
America's torture debate
American democracy
American elections 2016
American financial crises
anarchy and governance
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Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov
Anglo-Russian Treaty 1907
Ann Dunham
Anna Schwartz
April Glaspie
Archer Blood
Arvind Panagariya
Asia and the West
Atal Behari Vajpayee
Attlee
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Bal Gangadhar Tilak
Bangladesh currency history
Bangladesh India land Boundary Agreement 2015
Bangladesh's economy
Barack Hussein Obama Senior
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Bengal Constitutional Politics
Bengal Legislative Council
Bengal Primary Education Bill 1919
Bengal's Public Finances
Bengali Adda
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Benjamin Strong
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Big Business and Big Labour
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BR Ambedkar
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Introduction and Contents
Iran's cinema
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Israel's nuclear weapons and policy
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MK Roy
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Pakistan in international law
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Pakistan's diplomacy
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Pakistan's exports
Pakistan's history
Pakistan's judiciary
Pakistan's military
Pakistan's murder of Indian POWs
Pakistan's nuclear weapons
Pakistan's politics
Pakistan's Rule of Law
Pakistan's terrorist masterminds
Pakistan's terrorist training institutes
Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran
Pakistani expansionism
Paper money and deposits
Parliamentary Backbenchers
Parliamentary Backbenches
Parliamentary Government
Pashtuns
Patrick Geddes
Patrick Minford
PC Mahalanobis
Perjury & Bribery in US Federal Court
Personality Cults
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Peter Bauer
Philip Cagan
Phoenix by DH Lawrence
PN Haksar
Political asylum
Political cynicism
Political legitimacy
Political mendacity
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Poppy and morphine
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Positive-Normative Distinction
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Practical wisdom
Prague Spring of 1968
Princeton University Economics Department
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Public Choice/Public Finance
Public property waste fraud
QD Leavis
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Rai Bahadur Umbik Churn Rai
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Ram Janambhoomi
RAND study of Mumbai attacks
Ranjit Singh
Rational decisions
Redeposits
Renford Bambrough
Reverse-Euro Model for India
RF Harrod
Robert Zoellick
Roy vs University of Hawaii
Roys of Behala
Russian spies in India
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Satyam corporate fraud
Scepticism and Dogmatism
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Science, Religion, Literature
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US in World Trade
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World Trade and Payments
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Zombie companies
"Climate Change" Alarmism (2008/9): The real battle is against corruption, pollution, deforestation, energy waste etc
December 18, 2009 — drsubrotoroy
Last year I wrote but happened not to publish this brief article which may be relevant today.
Climate Change Alarmism: The real battle is against corruption, pollution, deforestation, energy waste etc
Like the AIDS epidemic that never was, "climate change" is on its way to becoming the new myth sold by paternalist governments and their bureaucrat/scientist busybodies to ordinary people coping with their normal lives. E.g., someone says, without any trace of irony: "Everyone in the world should have the same emissions quota. Since Trotsky's permanent revolution is unfortunately on hold at the moment, and the world still happens to be partitioned into nations, once the per capita quotas are determined they would have to be grouped on a nationwide basis".
Trotskyism will have to be made of sterner stuff. Canada's Lorne Gunter (*National Post* 20 May 2008) reports that Noel Keenlyside, the principal scientist who suggested that man-made global warming exists, has now led a team from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and Max Planck Institute of Meteorology which "for the first time entered verifiable data on ocean circulation cycles into one of the UN's climate supercomputers, and the machine spit out a projection that there will be no more warming for the foreseeable future.…" Oops! So much for impending catastrophe. Rajendra Pachauri himself has in January "reluctantly admitted to Reuters… that there has been no warming so far in the 21st Century".
Mr Pachauri had earlier gone on Indian television comparing himself to CV Raman and Mother Theresa as an Indian Nobel Prize winner — in fact, Al Gore and the 2500 member "UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" chaired by Mr Pachauri shared the Nobel Peace Prize last year. Now the prediction from that UN "Panel" of "a 0.3 deg C rise in temperature in the coming decade" has been contradicted by Noel Keenlyside's own scientific results. Gunter reports further that 2007 "saw a drop in the global average temperature of nearly 0.7 deg C (the largest single-year movement up or down since global temperature averages have been calculated). Despite advanced predictions that 2007 would be the warmest year on record, made by such UN associates as Britain's Hadley Centre, a government climate research agency, 2007 was the coolest year since at least 1993. According to the U. S. National Climatic Data Centre, the average temperature of the global land surface in January 2008 was below the 20th-Century mean for the first time since 1982. Also in January, Southern Hemisphere sea ice coverage was at its greatest summer level (January is summer in the Southern Hemisphere) in the past 30 years. Neither the 3,000 temperature buoys that float throughout the world's oceans nor the eight NASA satellites that float above our atmosphere have recorded appreciable warming in the past six to eight years. Climate alarmists the world over were quick to add that they had known all along there would be periods when the Earth's climate would cool even as the overall trend was toward dangerous climate change."
Honest government doctors know that the myth that HIV/AIDS can spread at Western rates in a society as conservative and sexless as India's has diverted vast public resources away from India's numerous real killer diseases: filariasis, dysentery, leprosy, influenza, malaria, gastroenteritis, TB, whooping cough, enteric fever, infectious hepatitis, gonococcal infection, syphilis, measles, tetanus, chicken-pox, cholera, rabies, diptheria, meningococcal infection, poliomelitis, dengue and haemmorrhagic fever and encephalitis. Candid environmentalists similarly know that obsessing about climate change distracts from what is significant and within our power to do, namely, the prevention or at least regulation of the pollution of our air and water and prevention of the waste of energy using policies appropriate for a myriad of local communities and neighbourhoods.
The pollution of India's atmosphere, rivers, lakes, roads and public property is an unending disgrace. Pollution and corruption are mirror images of each other: corruption is to steal something valuable that belongs to the public; pollution is to dispose private waste into the public domain. Both occur conspicuously where property rights between public and private domains are vague or fuzzy, where pricing of public and private goods and services is distorted, and where judicial and legal processes enforcing contracts are for whatever reason weak or inoperable.
Walk into any government office in India and lights, fans, ACs may be found working at top speed whether or not any living being can be seen. A few rare individual bureaucrats may be concerned but India's Government as a whole cares not a hoot if public electricity or for that matter any public funds and resources are being wasted, stolen or abused.
At the same time, private motorists face little disincentive from pouring untaxed "black money" into imported gas-guzzling heavy automobiles regardless of India's narrow roads and congestion. There are no incentives whatsoever for anyone who does not have to do so to want to bicycle or walk to work. The "nuclear deal" involves importing "six to eight lightwater reactors" on a turnkey basis; like the Enron-Dabhol deal a decade ago, it makes no financial sense at all and will make even less if the rupee depreciates anytime in future. Our government policy is in general invented and carried out regardless of technical or financial feasibility; the waste of energy and pollution of the environment are merely examples of the waste of resources and abuse of public property in general.
Someone says "The North", mainly the USA, "is primarily responsible for climate change". He may mean Western countries have contributed relatively more pollutants and effluents into the world's waters and air which is probably a good guess since the West has also contributed more to the world's scientific, industrial and agricultural progress in general over the centuries.
But to think human beings today understand the complexities of climate and its changes adequately enough to be able to control it is a fatal conceit. Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London, is among many scientists who have challenged "the key contradiction at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol, the global climate agreement – that climate is one of the most complex systems known, yet that we can manage it by trying to control a small set of factors, namely greenhouse gas emissions. Scientifically, this is not mere uncertainty: it is a lie…The problem with a chaotic coupled non-linear system as complex as climate is that you can no more predict successfully the outcome of doing something as of not doing something. Kyoto will not halt climate change. Full stop." (BBC 25 February 2002). For Indian foreign or economic policy to waffle on about climate change is as ineffectual and irrelevant as for the Indian Finance Minister to waffle on about AIDS.
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On the curious pre-9/11 quaintness of current criticism of India's 1998 nuclear tests
August 28, 2009 — drsubrotoroy
I said towards the end of my June 4-5 2006 article in The Statesman "Pakistan's Allies"
"…America and its allies would not be safe for long since the civil war they had left behind in Afghanistan while trying to defeat the USSR now became a brew from which arose a new threat of violent Islamism. Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, whom Pakistan's military and the USA had promoted, now encouraged unprecedented attacks on the American mainland on September 11 2001 ~ causing physical and psychological damage which no Soviet, Chinese or Cuban missiles ever had been allowed to do…."
Earlier, in The Statesman of October 26 2005, I had outlined a series of recent US espionage failures
"There have been three or four enormous failures of American espionage (i.e. intelligence and counter-intelligence) in the last 20 years. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of Soviet communism were salubrious events but they had not been foreseen by the United States which was caught unawares by the speed and nature of the developments that took place. Other failures have been catastrophic.
First, there was the failure to prevent the attack that took place on the American mainland on September 11 2001. It killed several thousand civilians and caused vast, perhaps irreparable, psychological and physical destruction to the United States. The attack was without precedent. The December 7 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, though a surprise, was carried out by one military against another military and did not affect very many civilians (except that thousands of American civilians of Japanese ancestry came to be persecuted and placed in concentration camps for years by the US Government). And the last time the American mainland had been attacked before 2001 was in 1814 when British troops marched south from Canada and burnt down the Capitol and the US President's house in Washington.
Secondly, there has been a failure to discover any reasonable justification for the American-led attack on Iraq and its invasion and occupation. Without any doubt, America has lost, at the very least, an incalculable amount of international goodwill as a result of this, let aside suffering two thousand young soldiers killed, fifteen thousand wounded, and an unending cost in terms of prestige and resources in return for the thinnest of tangible gains. India at great cost liberated East Pakistan from the brutal military tyranny of Yahya Khan and Tikka Khan in December 1971 but the average Bangladeshi today could hardly care less. Regardless of what form of government emerges in Iraq now, there is no doubt the mass of the Iraqi people will cheer the departure of the bulk of foreign troops and tanks from their country (even if a permanent set of a dozen hermetically sealed American bases remain there for ever, as appears to have been planned).
When things go wrong in any democracy, it is natural and healthy to set up a committee to investigate, and America has done that several times now. For such committees to have any use at all they must be as candid as possible and perhaps the most candid of the American committees has been the US Government's 9/11 Commission. But it too has appeared no closer to finding out who was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks or who financed it and who, precisely, executed it. Osama Bin Laden may have been the ideological head of a movement allied to the perpetrators, and Bin Laden undoubtedly expressed his glee afterwards, but it beggars the imagination that Bin Laden could have been executive president in charge of this operation while crawling around Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. If not him, then whom? Mossad the Israeli spy agency was supposed to have pointed to a super-secret invisible Lebanese terrorist but nobody really knows. The biggest modern mass murder remains unsolved.
As for solutions, the American 9/11 Commission went into the same politically correct formulae that came to be followed in 2005 by British PM Tony Blair's New Labour Cabinet, namely, that "moderate" peace-loving Muslims must be encouraged and bribed not to turn to terrorism (indeed to expose those among them who do), while "extremist" Muslims must be stamped out with brute force. This rests on a mistaken premise that an economic carrot-and-stick policy can work in creating a set of external incentives and disincentives for Muslims, when in fact believing Muslims, like many other religious believers, are people who feel the power of their religion deep within themselves and so are unlikely to be significantly affected by external incentives or disincentives offered by non-believers. Another committee has been the United States Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence which reported in July 2004, and from whose findings have stemmed as an offshoot the current matter about whether high government officials broke the law that is being investigated by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
Bertrand Russell said in his obituary of Ludwig Wittgenstein that he had once gone about looking under all the tables and chairs to prove to Wittgenstein that there was not a hippopotamus present in the room. In the present case, however, there is in fact a very large hippopotamus present in the room yet the entire American foreign policy establishment has seemed to refuse to wish to see it. Saddam Hussain and OBL are undoubtedly certifiable members of the international gallery of rogues – but the central fact remains they were rogues who were in alliance with America's defined strategic interests in the 1980s. Saddam Hussain's Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and gassed the Kurds in 1986; an Iraqi Mirage on May 17 1987 fired two Exocet missiles at the USS Stark killing 37 American sailors and injuring 21. The Americans did nothing. The reason was that Saddam was still in favour at the time and had not yet become a demon in the political mythology of the American state, and it was expedient for nothing to be done. Indeed Saddam's Iraq was explicitly removed in 1982 from the US Government's list of states sponsoring terrorism because, according to the State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism, it had "moved closer to the policies of its moderate Arab neighbours".
The very large hippopotamus that is present in the room at the moment is April Glaspie, the highly regarded professional career diplomat and American Ambassador to Iraq at the time of the 1990 Gulf War. Saddam Hussein as President had a famous meeting with her on July 25 1990, eight days before he invaded Kuwait. The place was the Presidential Palace in Baghdad and the Iraqis videotaped the meeting:
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – "I have direct instructions from President (George Herbert Walker) Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threats against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship – not confrontation – regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait's borders?
Saddam Hussein – As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.
U. S. Ambassador Glaspie – What solutions would be acceptable?
Saddam Hussein – If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab – our strategic goal in our war with Iran – we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam' s view, including Kuwait ) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States' opinion on this?
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – We have no opinion on your Arab – Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)
Saddam had seen himself fighting Islamic Iran on behalf of the Kuwaitis, Saudis and other Arabs, and Islamic Iran was of course the sworn adversary of the USA at least since Khomeini had deposed America's ally, the Shah. Therefore Saddam could not be all bad in the eyes of the State Department. On August 2 1990, the Iraqi troops seen by American satellites amassed on the border, invaded and occupied Kuwait. On September 2 1990, the Iraqis released the videotape and transcript of the July 29 Saddam-Glaspie meeting and Glaspie was confronted by British journalists as she left the Embassy:
Journalist 1 – Are the transcripts (holding them up) correct, Madam Ambassador? (No answer from Glaspie)
Journalist 2 – You knew Saddam was going to invade (Kuwait ) but you didn't warn him not to. You didn't tell him America would defend Kuwait. You told him the opposite – that America was not associated with Kuwait.
Journalist 1 – You encouraged this aggression – his invasion. What were you thinking?
U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.
Journalist 1 – You thought he was just going to take some of it? But, how could you? Saddam told you that, if negotiations failed , he would give up his Iran(Shatt al Arab waterway) goal for the whole of Iraq, in the shape we wish it to be. You know that includes Kuwait, which the Iraqis have always viewed as a historic part of their country!
Journalist 1 – America green-lighted the invasion. At a minimum, you admit signalling Saddam that some aggression was okay – that the U.S. would not oppose a grab of the al-Rumeilah oil field, the disputed border strip and the Gulf Islands (including Bubiyan) – the territories claimed by Iraq?
Glaspie said nothing, the car door closed behind her, the car drove off. Nothing has been apparently heard from Glaspie ever since, and we may have to wait for her memoirs in 25 years when they are declassified to come to know what happened. It is astonishing, however, that the 521 page report of the US Senate's Select Committee on espionage about Iraq before the 2003 war finds no cause whatsoever to mention Glaspie at all (at least in its public censored version). It is almost as if Glaspie has never existed and her conversation with Saddam never happened. Glaspie has disappeared down an Orwellian memory-hole. Yet her conversation with Saddam was the last official, recorded conversation between the Americans and Saddam while they were still on friendly terms.
There may be many causes explaining how such serious failures have come to occur in a country where billions of dollars have been annually spent on espionage. Among them must be that while America's great strengths have included creation of the finest advanced scientific and technological base on earth, America's great intellectual weaknesses in recent decades have included an impatience with historical and philosophical reflection of all sorts, and that includes reflection about her own as well as other cultures. This is exemplified too in the third palpable failure of intelligence of the last 20 years, which has been to have not foreseen or prevented atomic weapons from being developed by America and Britain's Islamist ally and client-state, Pakistan, and thence to have failed to prevent the proliferation of such weapons in general. The consequences of that may yet turn out to be the most grave."
Now as it happens, a couple of days ago, eleven years after the Government of India's May 1998 underground nuclear tests at Pokhran, an Indian scientist who had something to do with them has engaged in a general discussion about the tests' efficacy. Indian newspapers duly reported this as part of an ongoing domestic discussion about nuclear policy.
Oddly enough, there has been an instantaneous reaction from American critics of India's nuclear activities – beginning with Dr Jeffrey Lewis:
"Yes, Virginia, India's H-bomb fizzled. K Santhanam (who was director of test site preparations for India's 1998 nuclear tests… has admitted what everyone else has known for a long time — that India's 1998 test of a thermonuclear device was unsuccessful.…"
Followed by Mark Hibbs:
"Is this cool or what? I remember what happened when I wrote that article in the fall of 1998 saying in the headline that the US had concluded that the Indian "H-Bomb failed." Almost overnight after the article was published I got a huge bundle of papers from BARC and DAE sent to me by diplomatic pouch from Mumbai informing me with all kinds of numbers that I was wrong. I gave the papers to laboratory geoscientists at several European countries and the US. One main CTBTO monitoring scientist told me explicitly: "Nope. The stuff in these papers is shitty science. They haven't shown that you are wrong." That having been said, please note however that, as PK Iyengar had made the case to me back a decade ago, once again this "news" is surfacing in India because their bomb makers want to keep testing. Some things in India are changing fast. Other things aren't."
Followed by Charles Mead:
"I got into a huge pissing match with the Indians on this issue as I was the principal author of Barker et. al. 1998 which had the yield estimates far below the Indian press releases. A number of Indian scientists tried to submit a comment to Science rebutting our analysis. We asked them to provide the in-country seismic data on which they based their analysis, but they refused. Luckily, in the end, their comment was rejected and never published. On a related note, I saw the other day that wikipedia has a glowing description of the Indian 1998 tests, citing the inflated yields and saying the tests were a huge technical accomplishment. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II In the next day or so, I plan to submit a corrected analysis."
Mark Hibbs:
"Charles, I recall one of your co-authors back then explained to me in nitty-gritty detail your frustration on this with these guys. Please do correct the record for posterity."
Charles Meade:
"Their arguments at the time were quite remarkable. They said that our seismic data didn't reflect the true yield because of a complex interference pattern caused by the simultaneous tests. Under these circumstances, they said that one could only obtain the correct yield from near field data. We said, "fine, show it to us". They refused and that was the end of their paper."
Yale Simkin:
"The Indian argument: 'For us to have a nuclear deterrent we must weaponise. For this, we must have fusion weapons, because these are smaller, lighter, and more efficient than fission weapons.' is a lot of hooey. They claim to be building a deterrent force, not a war-fighting arsenal with a counter-force capability. For the size and mass of their likely early-generation fusion designs, they can instead use basic fission bombs yielding in the multi-dekakiloton range – multiples of the hell weapons that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That should be sufficient to deter any rational adversary. And if they aren't rational, then you have no deterrent."
Hmmm. The choice of terminology even within such a brief discussion might reveal a little of the mind-set: "shitty science", "pissing match", "a lot of hooey"…
Rather uncool, really.
"A number of Indian scientists tried to submit a comment to Science rebutting our analysis. We asked them to provide the in-country seismic data on which they based their analysis, but they refused. Luckily, in the end, their comment was rejected and never published…. Their arguments at the time were quite remarkable. They said that our seismic data didn't reflect the true yield because of a complex interference pattern caused by the simultaneous tests. Under these circumstances, they said that one could only obtain the correct yield from near field data. We said, "fine, show it to us". They refused and that was the end of their paper.
Hmmm — once more. The words that I have placed in bold above might be prima facie evidence of incorrect and hence unfair editorial procedures having been followed at Science (distinguished as its general reputation may be as a journal). Why were these here-unnamed "Indian scientists" not allowed to speak for themselves, rather than have their now-unknown statements be bowdlerised out of their critics' memories a decade later (when these critics themselves had been the subject of the rebuttal)? Perhaps the rebuttal should not have been refused publication even if it came with an editorial caveat that all the data deemed necessary had not been provided (which may have been the case, for example, due to a Government gag-order). Readers today would have been able to judge for themselves.
I am happy to claim zero expertise in the field known rather sweetly as "Crater Morphology"; but post 9/11, post-Iraq war, it does seem to me a rather quaint form of prejudice to be using such words as those quoted above in discussing the precise tonnage of the Indian explosions and how, really, India's scientists were not up to it. Perhaps, when matters of public policy or international diplomacy become involved, science everywhere is too important to be left to the scientists.
Are all the available data out there in the public domain on which to judge whether the Indian explosions in 1998 were or were not what was precisely claimed at the time? Apparently not.
Does it matter to anything today? Hardly. Not even to the credibility of the Government of India (something on which I have had a lot to say over decades).
Do Governments lie? Yes Virginia, they do.
Governments the world over, whether Indian, American, Russian, Chinese, British, French, Israeli, Arab, Pakistani or whatever, let aside inter-Governmental bodies constituted by these Governments, are prone to exaggeration, propaganda, self-delusion, self-deception as well as deliberate mendacity, perhaps routinely on a daily basis.
(For myself as an individual, I have had to battle the demonstrated and deliberate mendacity of the government of one of the fifty States in the US federal courts for two decades now, as told of elsewhere…)
An Age of Government Mendacity has seemed to descend upon the world — which makes the smugness expressed so quickly today by the critics of India's 1998 explosions seem, as I have said, quaint.
Is the current Indian debate indicating something about keeping open the possibility of more tests and isn't this related to the Indo-US civil nuclear deal? It may well be, I do not know. My position for what it is worth has been clear and described in several articles in The Statesman in recent years e.g.
1) Atoms for Peace (or War) (March 5 2006)
"Atoms for Peace" was Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1953 speech to the UN (presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru's sister) from which arose the IAEA. Eisenhower was the warrior par excellence, having led the Allies to victory over Hitler a few years earlier.
Yet he was the first to see "no sane member of the human race" can discover victory in the "desolation, degradation and destruction" of nuclear war. "Occasional pages of history do record the faces of the 'great destroyers', but the whole book of history reveals mankind's never-ending quest for peace and mankind's God-given capacity to build." Speaking of the atomic capacity of America's communist adversary at the time, he said: "We never have, and never will, propose or suggest that the Soviet Union surrender what rightly belongs to it. We will never say that the peoples of the USSR are an enemy with whom we have no desire ever to deal or mingle in friendly and fruitful relationship." Rather, "if the fearful trend of atomic military build-up can be reversed, this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind…. if the entire body of the world's scientists and engineers had adequate amounts of fissionable material… this capability would rapidly be transformed into universal, efficient and economic usage". Eisenhower's IAEA would receive contributions from national "stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials", and also impound, store and protect these and devise "methods whereby this fissionable material would be allocated to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind.…to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world… to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind." When Eisenhower visited India he was greeted as the "Prince of Peace" and a vast multitude threw rose petals as he drove by in an open limousine.
Now, half a century later, Dr Manmohan Singh read a speech in Parliament on February 27 relating to our nuclear discussions with America. But it seems unclear even his speech-writers or technical advisers knew how far it was rhetoric and how far grounded in factual realities. There is also tremendous naivete among India's media anchors and political leaders as to what exactly has been agreed by the Americans on March 2.
Churchill once asked what might have happened if Lloyd George and Clemenceau told Woodrow Wilson: "Is it not true that nothing but your fixed and expiring tenure of office prevents you from being thrown out of power?" The same holds for George W. Bush today. Wilson made many promises to the world that came to be hit for a six by US legislators. In December 2005, Edward Markey (Democrat) and Fred Upton (Republican) promised to scuttle Bush's agreements with India, and once the pleasant memories of his India visit fade, Bush may quite easily forget most things about us. All the Americans have actually agreed to do is to keep talking.
It needs to be understood that submarine-launched ballistic missiles are the only ultimate military deterrent. Land and air forces are all vulnerable to a massive first-strike. Only submarines lurking silently for long periods in waters near their target, to launch nuclear warheads upon learning their homeland had been hit by the enemy, act as a deterrent preventing that same enemy from making his attack at all. Indeed, the problem becomes how a submarine commander will receive such information and his instructions during such a war. (For India to acquire an ICBM capability beyond the MRBM Agni rockets is to possess an expensive backward technology — as retrograde as the idea India should spend scarce resources sending manned moon missions half a century after it has already been done. The secret is to do something new and beneficial for mankind, not repeat what others did long ago merely to show we can now do it too.) A nuclear-armed submarine needs to be submerged for long periods and also voyage long distances at sea, and hence needs to be nuclear-powered with a miniature version of a civilian nuclear reactor aboard in which, e.g. rods of enriched uranium are bombarded to release enough energy to run hydroelectric turbines to generate power. Patently, no complete separation of the use of atomic power for peace and war may be practically possible. If India creates e.g. its own thorium reactors for civilian power (and we have vast thorium reserves, the nuclear fuel of the future), and then miniaturised these somehow to manufacture reactors for submarines, the use would be both civilian and military. In 1988 the old USSR leased India a nuclear-powered submarine for "training" purposes, and the Americans did not like it at all. In January 2002, Russia's Naval Chief announced India was paying to build and then lease from 2004 until 2009 two nuclear-powered Akula-class attack submarines, and Jaswant Singh reportedly said we were paying $1 thousand crore ($10 bn) for such a defence package. Whether the transaction has happened is not known. Once we have nuclear submarines permanently, that would be more than enough of the minimum deterrent sought.
Indeed, India's public has been barely informed of civilian nuclear energy policy as well, and an opportunity now exists for a mature national debate to take place — both on what and why the military planning has been and what it costs (and whether any bribes have been paid), and also on the cost, efficiency and safety of the plans for greater civilian use of nuclear energy. Government behaviour after the Bhopal gas tragedy does not inspire confidence about Indian responses to a Three Mile Island/Chernobyl kind of catastrophic meltdown.
That being said, the central question remains why India or anyone else needs to be nuclear-armed at all. With Britain, France or Russia, there is no war though all three are always keen to sell India weapons. Indeed it has been a perennial question why France and Britain need their own deterrents. They have not fought one another for more than 100 years and play rugby instead. If Russia was an enemy, could they not count on America? Or could America itself conceivably become an enemy of Britain and France? America owes her origins to both, and though the Americans did fight the British until the early 1800s, they have never fought the French and love the City of Paris too much ever to do so.
Between China and India, regardless of what happened half a century ago, nuclear or any war other than border skirmishes in sparse barren lands is unlikely. Ever since Sun Yat-sen, China has been going through a complex process of self-discovery and self-definition. An ancient nation where Maoism despoiled the traditional culture and destroyed Tibet, China causes others to fear it because of its inscrutability. But it has not been aggressive in recent decades except with Taiwan. It has threatened nuclear war on America if the Americans stand up for Taiwan, but that is not a quarrel in which India has a cogent role. China (for seemingly commercial reasons) did join hands with Pakistan against India, but there is every indication the Chinese are quite bored with what Pakistan has become. With Pakistan, our situation is well-known, and there has been an implicit equilibrium since Pokhran II finally flushed out their capacity. Had India ever any ambition of using conventional war to knock out and occupy Pakistan as a country? Of course not. We are barely able to govern ourselves, let aside try to rule an ideologically hostile Muslim colony in the NorthWest. Pakistan's purported reasons for acquiring nuclear bombs are spurious, and cruelly so in view of the abject failures of Pakistan's domestic political economy. Could Pakistan's Government use its bombs against India arising from its own self-delusions over J&K? Gohar Ayub Khan in 1998-1999 threatened to do so when he said the next war would be over in two hours with an Indian surrender. He thereby became the exception to Eisenhower's rule requiring sanity. An India-Pakistan nuclear exchange is, unfortunately, not impossible, leaving J&K as Hell where Jahangir had once described it as Heaven on Earth.
America needs to end her recent jingoism and instead rediscover the legacy of Eisenhower. America can lead everyone in the world today including Russia, China, Israel, Iran and North Korea. But she can do so only by example. America can decommission many of her own nuclear weapons and then lead everyone else to the conference table to do at least some of the same. Like the UN, the IAEA (and its NPT) needs urgent reform itself. It is the right time for serious and new world parleys towards the safe use of atoms for peace and their abolition in war. But are there any Eisenhowers or Churchills to lead them?
2) Our energy interests ( Aug 27-28 2006)
Americans are shrewd and practical people in commercial matters, and expect the same of people they do business with. Caveat emptor, "let the buyer beware", is the motto they expect those on the other side of the table to be using. Let us not think they are doing us favours in the nuclear deal ~ they are grown-ups looking after their interests and naturally expect we shall look after our own and not expect charity while doing business. Equally, let us not blame the Americans if we find in later years (long after Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have exited from India's stage) that the deal has been implemented in a bad way for our masses of ordinary people.
That said, there is a remarkable disjoint between India's national energy interests (nuclear interests in particular), and the manner in which the nuclear deal is being perceived and taken to implementation by the two sides. There may be a fundamental gap between the genuine positive benefits the Government of India says the deal contains, and the motivations American businessmen and through them Indian businessmen have had for lobbying American and Indian politicians to support it. An atmosphere of being at cross-purposes has been created, where for example Manmohan Singh is giving answers to questions different from the questions we may want to be asking Montek Ahluwalia. The fundamental gap between what is being said by our Government and what may be intended by the businessmen is something anyone can grasp, though first we shall need some elementary facts.
In 2004, the International Energy Agency estimated the new energy capacity required by rising economic growth in 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources like solar or wind power. Because gas prices are expected to remain low worldwide, construction of new nuclear reactors for electricity will be unprofitable. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700GW, of which only 150GW is expected from new nuclear plants, which will be in any case replacing existing plants due to be retired. Rational choice between different energy sources depends on costs determined by history and geography. Out of some 441 civilian reactors worldwide, France has 59 and these generate 78 per cent of its electricity, the rest coming from hydro. Japan has 54 reactors, generating 34% of its electricity from them. The USA has 104 reactors but generates only 20 per cent of its electricity from them, given its vast alternative sources of power like hydro. In India as of 2003, installed power generating capacity was 107,533.3MW, of which 71 per cent came from burning fuels. Among India's energy sources, the largest growth-potential is hydroelectric, which does not involve burning fuels ~ gravity moves water from the mountains to the oceans, and this force is harnessed for generation. Our hydro potential, mostly in the North and North-East, is some 150,000MW but our total installed hydro capacity with utilities was only 26,910MW (about 18 per cent of potential). Our 14 civilian nuclear reactors produced merely 4 per cent or less of the electricity being consumed in the country. Those 14 plants will come under "international safeguards" by 2014 under the nuclear deal.
It is extremely likely the international restrictions our existing nuclear plants have been under since the 1970s have hindered if not crippled their functioning and efficiency. At the same time, the restrictions may have caused us to be innovative too. Nuclear power arises from fission of radioactive uranium, plutonium or thorium. India has some 8 million tonnes of monazite deposits along the seacoast of which half may be mined, to yield 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal; we have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction. Almost all nuclear energy worldwide today arises from uranium of which there are practically unlimited reserves. Fission of a uranium atom produces 10 million times the energy produced by combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Gas and fossil fuels may be cheap and in plentiful supply worldwide for generations to come but potential for cheap nuclear energy seems practically infinite. The uranium in seawater can satisfy mankind's total electricity needs for 7 million years. There is more energy in the uranium impurity present in coal than can arise from actually burning the coal. There is plenty of uranium in granite. None of these become profitable for centuries because there is so much cheap uranium extractable from conventional ores. Design improvements in reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. "fast breeder" reactors "breed" more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. India has about 95,000 tonnes of uranium metal that may be mined to yield about 61,000 tonnes net for power generation. Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent of the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires "enriched uranium" or "yellow cake" to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide "waste" as in burning fossil fuels, the "spent" rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.
The plausible part of the Government of India's official line on the Indo-US nuclear deal is that removing the international restrictions will ~ through importation of new technologies, inputs, fuel etc ~ improve functioning of our 14 existing civilian plants. That is a good thing. Essentially, the price being paid for that improvement is our willingness to commit that those 14 plants will not be used for military purposes. Fair enough: even if we might become less innovative as a result, the overall efficiency gains as a result of the deal will add something to India's productivity. However, those purchasing decisions involved in enhancing India's efficiency gains must be made by the Government's nuclear scientists on technical grounds of improving the working of our existing nuclear infrastructure.
It is a different animal altogether to be purchasing new nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis from American or any other foreign businessmen in a purported attempt to improve India's "energy security". (Lalu Yadav has requested a new reactor for Bihar, plus of course Delhi will want one, etc.) The central question over such massive foreign purchases would no longer be the technical one of using the Indo-US deal to improve efficiency or productivity of our existing nuclear infrastructure. Instead it would become a question of calculating social costs and benefits of our investing in nuclear power relative to other sources like hydroelectric power. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100 per cent under the Manmohan-Montek deal-making, that would mean less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced.
This is where the oddities arise and a disjoint becomes apparent between what the Government of India is saying and what American and Indian businessmen have been doing. A "US-India Business Council" has existed for thirty years in Washington as "the premier business advocacy organization promoting US commercial interests in India.… the voice of the American private sector investing in India". Before the nuclear or any other deals could be contemplated with American business, the USIBC insisted we pay up for Dabhol contracted by a previous Congress Government. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board ~ or rather, its sovereign guarantor the Government of India ~ duly paid out at least $140-$160 million each to General Electric and Bechtel Corporations in "an amicable settlement" of the Dabhol affair. Afterwards, General Electric's CEO for India was kind enough to say "India is an important country to GE's global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy".
Also, a new "US-India CEO Forum" then came about. For two Governments to sponsor private business via such a Forum was "unprecedented", as noted by Washington's press during Manmohan Singh's visit in July 2005. America's foreign ministry announced it saying: "Both our governments have agreed that we should create a high-level private sector forum to exchange business community views on key economic priorities…" The American side includes heads of AES Corporation, Cargill Inc., Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd, PepsiCo, Visa International and Xerox Corporation. The Indian side includes heads of Tata Group, Apollo Hospitals Group, Bharat Forge Ltd, Biocon India Group, HDFC, ICICI One Source, Infosys, ITC Ltd, Max India Group and Reliance Industries. Presiding over the Indian side has been Montek Ahluwalia, Manmohan's trusted aide ~ and let it be remembered too that the Ahluwalias were Manmohan's strongest backers in his failed South Delhi Lok Sabha bid. (Indeed it is not clear if the Ahluwalias have been US or Indian residents in recent years, and if it is the former, the onus is on them to clear any perception of conflict of interest arising in regard to roles regarding the nuclear deal or any other official Indo-US business.)
Also, before the Manmohan visit, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official lobbyist in Washington, and went about spending half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the nuclear deal. After the Manmohan visit, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1,000 billion (1 bn =100 crore) opportunity in India. Before President Bush's visit to India in March 2006, Manmohan Singh signed vast purchases of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, as well as large weapons' deals with France and Russia. After the Bush visit, the US Chamber of Commerce said the nuclear deal can cause $100 billion worth of new American business in India's energy-sector alone. What is going on?
Finally, the main aspect of Manmohan Singh's address to America's legislature had to do with agreeing with President Bush "to enhance Indo-US cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear technology". What precisely does this mean? If it means the Indo-US nuclear deal will help India improve or maintain its existing nuclear infrastructure, well and good. There may be legitimate business for American and other foreign companies in that cause, which also helps India make the efficiency and productivity gains mentioned. Or has the real motivation for the American businessmen driving the deal (with the help of the "CEO Forum" etc) been to sell India nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis (in collaboration with private Indian businessmen) at a time when building new nuclear reactors is unprofitable elsewhere in the world because of low gas prices? India's citizens may demand to know from the Government whether the Manmohan-Montek deal-making is going to cause importation of new nuclear reactors, and if so, why such an expensive alternative is being considered (relative to e.g. India's abundant hydroelectric potential) when it will have scant effect in satisfying the country's energy needs and lead merely to a worsening of our macroeconomic problems. Both Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have been already among those to preside over the growth of India's macroeconomic problems through the 1980s and 1990s.
Lastly, an irrelevant distraction should be gotten out of the way. Are we a "nuclear weapons" state? Of course we are, but does it matter to anything but our vanity? Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had control over vastly more nuclear weapons and they declared together twenty years ago: "A nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought", which is how the Cold War started to come to an end. We need to remind ourselves that India and Pakistan are large, populous countries with hundreds of millions of materially poor, ill-informed citizens, weak tax-bases, humongous internal and external public debts (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), non-investment grade credit- ratings in world financial markets, massive annual fiscal deficits, inconvertible currencies, nationalized banks, and runaway printing of paper-money. Discussing nuclear or other weapon-systems to attack one other with is mostly a pastime of our cowardly, irresponsible and yes, corrupt, elites.
3) Need for Clarity A poorly drafted treaty driven by business motives is a recipe for international misunderstanding (August 19 2007)
Confusion prevails over the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Businessmen, bureaucrats, politicians, diplomats, scientists and now the public at large have all joined in the cacophony in the last two years. On Wednesday August 15, America's foreign ministry made the clearest most unequivocal statement possible as to the official American Government interpretation of the Indo-US nuclear deal: "The proposed 123 agreement has provisions in it that in an event of a nuclear test by India, then all nuclear co-operation is terminated, as well as there is provision for return of all materials, including reprocessed material covered by the agreement" (Sean McCormack). Yet our Prime Minister had told Parliament two days earlier: "The agreement does not in any way affect India's right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary". What is going on? Our politics are in uproar, and it has been suggested in these pages that the country go to a General Election to allow the people to speak on the matter. Clearly, we need some clarity.
Let us start at the beginning. How did it all originate? The private US nuclear industry prevailed upon India's government bureaucrats and businessmen over several years that nuclear power is the way forward to solving India's "infrastructure" problems. They would sell us, in words of the Manmohan-Montek Planning Commission's energy adviser, "six to eight lightwater reactors" (especially as they may not be able to sell these anywhere else). Our usual prominent self-seeking retired bureaucrats started their waffling about the importance of "infrastructure".
Then Manmohan Singh felt his foreign travels as PM could be hardly complete without a fife-and-drum visit to the White House. But before he could do so, Dabhol would have to be cleared up since American business in India was on a self-moratorium until GE and Bechtel were paid settlements of some $140-160 million each by the Governments of India and Maharashtra. GE's CEO for India kindly said afterwards "India is an important country to GE's global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy".
Also, before Manmohan's USA trip, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official Washington lobbyist and spent half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the deal. ("Why?" would be a good question.)
So Dr Singh was able to make his White House visit, accompanied by US business lobbies saying the nuclear deal can generate $100 billion worth of new American business in India's energy-sector alone. It is only when business has lubricated politics in America that so much agreement about the India-deal could arise. The "bottom-line" is that six to eight reactors must be sold to India, whatever politics and diplomacy it takes.
Now Dr Singh is not a PM who is a Member of the Lower House of Parliament commanding its confidence. He says his Government constitutes the Executive and can sign treaties on India's behalf. This is unwise. If he signs a treaty and then the Congress Party loses the next General Election, a new Executive Government can use his same words to rescind the same treaty. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. One reason we are so confused is that India has not signed very many bilateral treaties, and there is barely a noted specialist in international law anywhere in the country. Dr Singh's original mentor, PN Haksar, had gone about getting a treaty signed with the USSR back in 1971 which tided us over a war, though the USSR itself collapsed before that treaty ended.
Signing a treaty is much more than signing an international MOU. It requires a national consensus or a least a wide and deep understanding on the part of the public and the political class as to what necessitates the treaty. That plainly does not exist at present. Most people in India do not even know how nuclear power is generated, nor how small and insignificant nuclear power has been in India.
Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires "enriched uranium" or "yellow cake" to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require "highly enriched" uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide "waste" as in burning fossil fuels, the "spent" rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.
India's 14 "civilian" nuclear reactors presently produce less than 4% of our total power. 70% of our power arises from burning fossil fuels, mainly coal. Much of the rest arises from hydro. We have vast hydroelectric potential in the North and Northeast but it would take a lot of serious political, administrative and civil engineering effort to organise all that, and there would not be any nice visits to Washington or Paris involved for politicians and bureaucrats.
Simple arithmetic says that even if all our principal energy sources stayed constant and only our tiny nuclear power sector grew by 100%, that would still hardly increase by very much our energy output overall. Placing a couple of expensive modern lightwater reactors around Delhi, a couple around Mumbai and a few other metros will, however, butter already buttered bread quite nicely and keep all those lifts and ACs running.
The agreed text of the "treaty" looks, from a legal standpoint, quite sloppily and hurriedly written ~ almost as if each side has cut and paste its own preferred terms in different places with a nod to the other side. For example, there is mention of "WMD" initially which is repeated as "weapons of mass destruction" just a little later. There is solemn mention of the "Government of India" and "Government of the United States of America" as the "Parties", but this suddenly becomes merely "United States" and "India" in the middle and then reverts again to the formal usage.
Through the sloppiness comes scope for different interpretations. The Americans have said: try not to test, you don't need to, we don't test any more, and you have to know that if you do test, this deal is over, in fact it gets reversed. We have said, okay, we won't test, and if we do test we know it is over with you but that does not mean it is over with others. Given such sloppy diplomacy and treaty-making, the scope for mutual misunderstanding, even war, remains immense long after all the public Indian moneys have found their way into private pockets worldwide. Will a future President Jeb Bush or Chelsea Clinton send F-22 bombers to bomb India's nuclear facilities because India has carried out a test yet declined to return American equipment? Riding a tiger is not something generally to be recommended.
The answer to our present conundrum must be patience and the fullest transparency. What is the rush? If it is good or bad for us to buy six or eight new American reactors now, it will remain good or bad to do so a year or two from now after everyone has had a thorough think about everything that is involved. What the Manmohan-Montek Planning Commission needed to do first of all was a thorough cost-benefit analysis of India's energy requirements but such elementary professionalism has been sorely lacking among our economists for decades."
Posted in Academic freedom, Academic research, America's military-industrial complex, American history, Asia and the West, India's military doctrine, India's nuclear tests, India's Military Defence, India-United States business, India-US Nuclear Deal, International diplomacy, International politics, Iraq war, Mendacity, Military doctrine, Nuclear conflict, Nuclear energy, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan's nuclear weapons, Pakistan's terrorist masterminds, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistani expansionism, Political mendacity, Press and Media, Reason, Saddam, September 11 attacks, Strategic thinking, US Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Espionage, US Military Doctrine, US Pakistan policy, USA, United States, USSR, War, World History, World War. 1 Comment »
Atoms for Peace (or War)
March 5, 2006 — drsubrotoroy
by Subroto Roy
First published in The Sunday Statesman, March 5 2006 Editorial Page Special Article,
Posted in 1962 War, China, China's expansionism, China's History, China's military, China's wars, China-India Relations, China-Pakistan relations, China-Taiwan problem, China-Tibet problem, Cold War, Communists, Dwight D. Eisenhower, IAEA, India's Energy, India's Foreign Policy, India's History, India's Military Defence, India-US Nuclear Deal, Israel, Jahangir, Jammu & Kashmir, Manmohan Singh, Nuclear conflict, Nuclear energy, Pakistan, Balochistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, Submarine warfare, Tibet, UN/League of Nations, US Military Doctrine, USA, United States, War, Winston Churchill, World History, World War. Leave a Comment »
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Buju's Life & Paintings 14 Feb 1943:10 Jan 1998 (Draft 14.2.2018)
Path of the Pakistan Rupee 1947-1993
(1) My 13 Sep 2019 Advice to PM Modi's Adviser: Let PM address each State Legislature, get all India Govt Accounting & Public Decision Making to have integrity (2) 16 May 2014 Advice from Rajiv Gandhi's Adviser to Narendra Modi: Do not populate the "Planning Commission" with worthies, scrap it, integrate its assets with the Treasury. And get the nationalised banks & RBI out of the Treasury. Tell them to read my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture with care. Clean Government Accounting & Audit is the Key to Clean Public Finances & a Proper Indian Currency for the First Time Ever
India's General Elections: 543 Matrices to Help Ordinary Citizens Audit the Election Commission's Vote-Tallies
On Land-Grabbing
Did Jagdish Bhagwati "originate", "pioneer", "intellectually father" India's 1991 economic reform? Did Manmohan Singh? Or did I, through my encounter with Rajiv Gandhi, just as Siddhartha Shankar Ray told Manmohan & his aides in Sep 1993 in Washington? Judge the evidence for yourself. And why has Amartya Sen misdescribed his work? India's right path forward today remains what I said in my 3 Dec 2012 Delhi lecture!
Map of India, Afghanistan, Russia, China c. 1897
On India's Education Policy
Mistaken Macroeconomics: An Open Letter to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh 12 June 2009
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It really was a dark and stormy night. Not only was her driveway covered with a big piece of a downed tree during last week's storm, but there was a CMP live wire mixed in with the tree, branches and leaves. All I could think of was that CMP guy who has warned us since the ice storm to never touch a downed wire.
I was at the house of Blue Eyes on a rescue mission. The violent storm had split her tree in half. The half that fell (she warned the city repeatedly) took the phone and power line with it. It fell so hard that it tore the CMP box right off the house. I had to get in the house. So I reached for my trusty four-cell Mag-Lite to find that killer wire.
I have a few fetishes in life. Megyn Kelly, the Red Sox, Debbie Reynolds (yes!) and Charlize Theron. And flashlights.
I believe it all started with hotel visits to Beantown with Blue Eyes. Three times in a row, we were awakened by fire alarms in the middle of the night. Then, I decided to always, always, always keep a flashlight (or two) in every single piece of luggage, plus a few in the car. This fetish was reinforced on those Jefferson-Phil-forced marches through the Allagash. When you climb out of the tent at 3 a.m. for a watering session, you want something else in your hand, like a flashlight. The noises!
The fetish was aggravated by that eminent host Charleston John, who is as daffy as I about massive illumination. When he discovers another flashlight breakthrough, he informs me immediately. I order it on Amazon.com, forthwith.
Like the gun guys say, it's better that have one and not need it, than need it and not have it. Right?
Now, I have flashlights in my car, backpack, cooler, dry bag, suitcases and a few in the kitchen drawer. When my famed daughter Meara 3 went to Bean's for my birthday-Christmas gift, the helpful clerk suggested a Mag-Lite. "He has more than you do, " Said Meara 3.
So how in the name of Pinky Lee did I end up in the rain and the wind and the dark in Blue Eye's driveway, with a live wire lurking under the branches? We used to call that (expletive) Poor planning.
I stood there in the driving rain, channeling Scarlett O'Hara, and yelled to the curious neighbors, "As God as my witness, I will never be without a flashlight again as long as I live." Then I tiptoed through the branches in the dark, giving that live wire as much room as possible. In the dark. Stupid.
When I returned to cozy Cobb Manor with heat, lights, television and internet services (Blue Eyes had none), I surrounded myself with my lanterns, flashlights and candles, like Scrooge McDuck and his money. I was hoping for a blackout to illustrate my matchless preparedness, to make up for my impotence in the Blue Eyes driveway. When Blue Eyes and Chief Al lost power and showed up seeking shelter from the storm, I assigned them each an article of personal illumination. In a rare stroke of luck, the Lovely Sandra suggested the Coleman 10-day lantern as an addition to my collection. It arrived a few days before the storm and blackout.
When I tried to change the batteries in that massive Mag-Lite, I discovered that the task was impossible. The batteries had apparently rusted in place. Despite my best efforts to open the monster I could not change the batteries. Now that I remember, this happened a few years ago with another Mag. Clearly, I should change my batteries more often. Truth be told, these new compact LED flashlights have more illumination that the massive, four-cell Mag-Lites. I hate to admit it, but the time has come to move on.
There was only one thing to do. I got on the internet and connected to my friends at Amazon.com. They are always there, waiting, ready to help…if you have a credit card in good standing. They offered the UntraFireWF-502B, with 900 plus lumens with high, low and strobe settings for a mere $11.48 each. I would have paid $100 in that live-wire driveway. I took two.
It's better to have one than…well, you know.


The historical Pyhäniemi mansion is to be sold on auction with a starting price of one Euro. The building located in Kutajärvi, Hollola has 18 rooms, kitchen, sauna and 6 bathrooms. Definitely large enough for a big family.
The property includes the 970 square meter main building, as well as an additional 360 m2 side mansion. Recently the location has served as a leisure apartment for spending free time, during summers there have been art galleries and theather shows.
The mansion is a historical building, with the first mentions of it from 1467. Over the years the mansion had notable visitors like King Gustav III in 1783. It has served many businesses from cattle herding to cheese and farming of exotic cheeses.
A curious incident in the history of the building was in 1912 when owner Oskar Collin lost the mansion to Hendrik Max Gilse van der Pals, while gambling at the Monte Carlo casino. In the 1930's the mansion was a set for a lot of films, and it was also used for a movie in 2009.
Those looking to pick up the estate for an euro might be dissapointed, as there is plenty of demand for this type of historical buildings, which are rarely on the market.


If the response to both of these queries is usually a reverberating YES.
Fight Melancholy It comes as an encouraging element that a majority of all concerned service-seekers are interested in benefiting from Clinical supervision so that it is feasible to lessen the level of frustration till a good extent. Often, it is because of hormonal imbalance or additional specific causes that folks feel stressed-out or their character gets adversely affected. Further, it has been perceived that the idea process enables you to feel a lot depressed. This is the situation if you are supposed to come to terms with the importance of phoning a mental health doctor who remains motivated in assisting you to to revive your overall thought process.The medical diagnosis was a shock. I acquired no idea in the globe that men could even get breast malignancy, Kaitz said. A mastectomy was got by him, and 25 nearby lymph nodes were taken out, some with cancer. Radiation and Chemotherapy followed. Tests showed Kaitz, 52, got a BRCA genetic mutation that has been linked to breast and ovarian malignancy in women. He might have got gotten the mutation from his mother, who's also a breast cancers survivor.
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text:
Timothy Stratford, former Assistant US Trade Representative for China Affairs
With Joe Biden now in the White House, there are expectations of a shift in US policy towards Asia. But while President Biden's multilateral approach may differ sharply from President Trump's, many of the core challenges facing Washington remain. China, in particular, has already been described by key members of the Biden Administration as "the greatest foreign policy challenge of this century," and Biden has himself suggested that tariffs will remain in place while the US gets "back on the same page with our allies."
To update Corporate Members on these developments and the likely direction of US Asia policy under Biden, Asia House will be welcoming Timothy Stratford, former Assistant US Trade Representative for China Affairs, for a digital briefing on Tuesday 9 February.
Speaking from Shanghai, Stratford will share insights on the longstanding issues in US-China relations, and assess how the Biden Administration's approach to China will have implications for global trade and commercial opportunities.
Timothy Stratford is managing partner in Covington & Burling LLP's Beijing office and a member of the International Trade, Corporate and Public Policy Practice Groups. He is also presently serving as Chairman Emeritus of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Stratford was Assistant US Trade Representative from 2005 to 2010, responsible for developing and implementing trade policy towards mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Mongolia. Except for the five years he spent in Washington DC, Stratford has lived and worked in China since 1982 and is the most senior former US trade official working as a member of the US business community in China.
For more information about this off-the-record digital briefing, please contact Edward Danks, Content Producer, at edward.danks@asiahouse.co.uk
FIND OUT MORE about Corporate Membership at Asia House


J Health Polit Policy Law (1982) 7 (3): 667-685.
Historically, most health occupations have developed legal and ethical restrictions on price advertising and other characteristics of "commercial" practice. Many of these regulations recently have come under critical scrutiny, on the grounds that they inhibit free-market health care delivery, thus keeping prices high, and productivity and innovation low.
To help inform current health policy deliberations, we analyze the political history of anticompetitive regulations in one health occupation, optometry. Restrictions on commercial practice arose as a result of professional optometry's purge of commercial elements in the 1930s. Optometry's success in achieving commercial-practice restrictions at the state level was determined by the economic structure of the ophthalmic goods and services industry in each state in the 1930s, and by the political resources and organization of the competing interest groups.
Efforts to deregulate health occupations will precipate political conflict to the extent that economic interests are threatened. Opposition to deregulation will be based overtly on the grounds that quality of care will deteriorate, and a significant political investment by proponents of free-market health care will be required to overcome such opposition.


text:
Q: Access iPhones calendar events In my Iphone Application, I want to check the built in Calendar App for upcoming Events.
The aim would be to for example mute the app, when the user is supposed to be in a meeting.
I couldn't find anything on that matter though, as search results only present a way to implement your own calendar
So is it possible to get this acces ( and is there maybe a short example or link that i couldnt find) ?

A: No, you cant mute the iPhone
As the physical hardware switch is available, there's no software method for muting the entire device.
You don't need to fight with the framework, until he/she wants to mute it.
and if you want to check the upcoming events, you need to go through the Event store and EKCalendar.
and i guess you cant access the users events in your app with out his permission as this answer says
and there is a Simple EK Demo from apple, which may help you..
Cheers...