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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (40109)	4/19/2004 5:47:40 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793559

Interesting new Blog - World is Green : Suhit Anantula's Blog on Rural India - Let me begin by telling you the most heartening thing I have observed on my travels this election. Wherever I have gone I have met ordinary, humble Indians - the type our politicians rudely call the ``common man'' - who have a single thing they want from their elected representatives and this is a decent standard of living. There has been much talk since the last round of Assembly elections of how people voted for bijli, sadak, pani but if you explore the meaning of this in some depth, as I have lately been doing, you find that people want to live like they see people live on television. They want water to come out of taps in their homes. They want homes that look like houses and not mud huts. They want electricity so they can watch their favourite programmes on television and not just to run the tube well. They want their children to go to schools that have proper classrooms with chairs and tables, they want mobile phones and Maruti cars, and they want their sons and daughters to get jobs in proper offices and not just in the fields. Jobs are what they want more than anything else because they see them as the key to getting everything else. In earlier Lok Sabha elections, even in the last one, there were other issues that dominated. Last time round, there was anger at Sonia Gandhi for having pulled the government down over ``272 and many more coming'' and there was a feeling that Atal Behari Vajpayee needed to be given a fair chance to rule India. Earlier there were all sorts of other reasons that influenced voting. Assassinations, caste, corruption, temples, secularism and going back to '77 democracy itself, but this time round when the voter says koi kaam nahin kiya about his MP he immediately points to open drains, unbuilt roads and irregular supplies of electricity and water as evidence. The truth is that however much India might be shining, the average Indian, even the middle-class Indian, continues to live in conditions that would be considered unfit for human beings in almost any other country. He wants this to change and he wants change to happen tomorrow. When I speak of a standard of living I begin with the image of a decent house. But, in our fair and wondrous land on account of the state having taken full responsibility for providing ``housing for the poor'' in socialist times the poor in our cities live mostly in windowless hovels without clean water, sanitation or minimum public hygiene and always on the edge of filthy, open drains. Living standards in rural parts are only marginally better in that there are open fields (instead of dirty lavatories) and clean air but the average dwelling is still pretty much a windowless hovel. Well, dear readers, on my travels this time I was pleased to see that most people no longer considered this good enough and the reason for the change is television. I have not so far been to a single village where television had not arrived in one way or other. Desperately poor Dalits in Bihar said they watched it in the houses of the upper castes and in villages that had never seen electricity they used tractor batteries to watch. Television has acted in rural India as an engine of change. Us intellectual types bemoan the evils of MTV and Hindutva's culture police fear that our ``ancient civilization'' will fall to pieces when it clashes with America's instant culture but for the average Indian television has brought the 21st century into his cloistered, blinkered world. And, you cannot begin to imagine what a closed world it was not so very long ago. worldisgreen.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (40109)	4/19/2004 5:48:02 PM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793559

he also stated he and cheney are long time friends. met all the time and support each other. He supported bush going to war. believes today it was the right thing to do. glad saddam is gone, glad his regime is gone. Powell still on Hanity clearing up woodward erros of his way in the book.

To: LindyBill who wrote (40109)	4/19/2004 7:24:32 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Respond to of 793559

Powell just denied he found out about the military plan in Iraq AFTER Prince Bandar. He just told Hannity he helped develop the plan and knew Rumsfeld was meeting with Bandar. He should publicly offer to go on 60-minutes with Morley Safer next Sunday to clear up this mess.

To: LindyBill who wrote (40109)	4/19/2004 11:32:27 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793559

Breaking: Edit: Looks like this is a later time than the one I se dLB posted...AP Interview: Powell Says More Countries May Follow Spain in Leaving Coalition Apr 19, 2004 By Barry Schweid The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that one or more countries may follow Spain's lead and withdraw peacekeeping troops from Iraq "based on their own political situation." Hours later, Honduras said it was pulling out its 370 soldiers. Last month, Spain's new Socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, "indicated the troops would be staying through the end of June, which is when they are supposed to come out," Powell said in an interview with The Associated Press. And, Powell said, Zapatero had said that Spanish officials would then examine a U.N. resolution on peacekeeping if one was ready by then. "And suddenly, troops are being withdrawn," Powell said with obvious disappointment with Zapatero's announcement Sunday he was ordering their departure "as soon as possible." Powell said he expected the United Nations to approve a resolution on peacekeeping before the United States hands over political power to Iraqis on June 30. Late Monday, Honduras followed Spain's lead, with President Ricardo Maduro announcing his country will bring home its troops "in the shortest time possible." Honduran forces had been serving in Najaf under Spanish command, alongside small forces from El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Powell, in the interview with The AP, denied he had been left out of the loop on Iraq within the Bush administration, or that he had been hesitant about taking on Saddam Hussein. Powell said he was committed from the outset to President Bush's war plan in the event diplomacy failed and was well informed about Bush's strategy. "I was as committed as anyone else to seeing an end to this regime, the destruction of this regime that put people in mass graves," Powell said. Disputing an account by Bob Woodward in a new book, "Plan of Attack," Powell said Bush and all his national security advisers had agreed in August 2002 to ask the U.N. Security Council to seek a peaceful resolution and to go to war if the effort failed. "We all talked to Woodward. It was part of our instructions from the White House," Powell said. He said he had "just a couple of phone calls" from the Washington Post editor. Powell dismissed Woodward's suggestion that Bush already had made up his mind by Jan. 11 last year to go to war against Iraq and that Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar, had been informed of the decision that day. Asserting that the final decision did not come until March, Powell said he was "intimately familiar with the plan and I was aware that Prince Bandar was being briefed on the plan" by Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I knew as much as anybody," Powell said. "I was included in all of the military planning and preparations." Asked about his relationship with Cheney - Woodward wrote that the two were barely on speaking terms - Powell described their association as excellent. He also said he did not recall referring to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and other civilian conservatives in the Pentagon loyal to Cheney as the "Gestapo office." "It is a terrible term to use and it is out of place, completely out of place," Powell said. On the Middle East, Powell said the administration had been stymied on peacemaking until Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon offered to withdraw from Gaza and dismantle four settlements on the West Bank. Palestinians and other Arabs should seize the opportunity rather than criticize Bush for saying some Jewish population centers might remain on the West Bank in a peace deal, Powell said. "We are not prejudging or prejudicing the outcome," he said. But, he said, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia was being undercut by Yasser Arafat as predecessor Abu Mazen had been before resigning. "The reality is settlements are going to be removed" and the Palestinians, instead of criticizing, should "make the most of it," Powell said. AP-ES-04-19-04 2252EDT This story can be found at: ap.tbo.com