Bridge to the future, floor on the gas

Barack Obama has said he wants any Detroit bailout to be "a bridge to somewhere". He's talking about pushing new automotive technologies. The only new technology based product that keeps coming up is the electric car, like Ford's Volt.

But electric cars are unlikely to be economically viable for a long time, especially given the current gas prices. What to do?

The solution is obvious: put a floor on gasoline prices. Tax gasoline so that it's guaranteed to always be at least (say) three dollars a gallon, forever. The biggest unknown that confronts unconventional energy technologies is the future price of gasoline. Take this out of the equation.

This suggestion has been made many times, by many people, from environmentalists like The Carbon Tax Center, through observers like Tom Friedman, to ultra-conservatives like Charles Krauthammer. Why aren't we hearing this being proposed by anyone responsible for making policy yet? This would be a golden opportunity to pass such a tax.

Nicholas Kristof gets an earful on Kashmir

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote what the U.S. should do for Pakistan. His advice to Obama was mostly about improving education and basic services in Pakistan, to help counteract growing militancy.

Unfortunately, he also gave this suggestion:

...we should push much harder for a peace deal in Kashmir -— including far more pressure on India —- because Kashmir grievances empower Pakistani militants.

The outpouring of comments on his blog was disproportionately about the Kashmir suggestion, an overwhelming amount of it negative, from desi readers.

Kristof then added a clarification on his blog:

Let me clarify that this is not just to “appease” Pakistan, but because India’s own behavior in Kashmir has often been shameful. Paying more attention to Kashmir and to human rights violations (in both Kashmirs) is not only geopolitically correct, but it’s also the right thing to do.

This "clarification" seems to have inflamed his Indian readers even more. Tsk, tsk. He has really put his foot in it now, exposing his own ignorance about the India-Pakistan problem. This was perhaps to be expected from someone who has "been coming to Pakistan for 26 years" and who quotes Ahmed Rashid's "Descent into Chaos". All good things, but if these are his only sources of information, then it's no wonder he's been brainwashed beyond help by Pakistani talking points.

Whose side is the Pakistan army on?

The Washington Post reports today that another U.S. missile strike in North Waziristan killed 5 militants, including an Al Qaeda operative Rashid Rauf, who held dual Pakistani and British citizenship:

Before his arrest, Rauf's ties to the Pakistani terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed stirred strong suspicions among intelligence experts that he may have also had connections with rogue elements within Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, also known as the ISI. [...]

Suspicions about Rauf's connections to Pakistani intelligence agencies deepened after he escaped from custody in December 2007. [...]

Rauf's attorney at the time, Hashmat Habib, claimed Rauf was subsequently taken into ISI custody. Until Saturday's strike in North Waziristan, Rauf's whereabouts were not publicly known.

(full article here).

So let me get this straight: this guy was connected to the ISI, the ISI may even have had him in custody, and yet he was with fellow extremists when he was killed.

Whose side is Pakistan on, anyway?

Why I'm voting for Barack Obama

Tomorrow is voting day. Here are the reasons why I'll be filling in the oval for Barack Obama:

Obama is rational and clear-headed

Obama doesn't simply react, or fall back on old paradigms that he is comfortable with, but instead thinks problems through. A conservative lawyer who has worked with him back in his law school professor years says that he always wants to hear both sides of an argument before making up his mind. He asks searching questions to satisfy himself that he understands the argument, and then he picks the side that makes sense to him. We have seen this quality in him again and again during the past two years. He has been attacked and provoked many, many times, but he never loses his cool. When he opens his mouth, he has usually thought about what he is going to say.

A huge contrast with John McCain, whose modus operandi seems to be to work with two minutes of information gathering followed by a "decisive", seat-of-the-pants gamble, which he will then stick with, come hell or high water. See his selection of Sarah Palin as an example. See also his parachuting-in during the financial crisis between the presidential debates, for another example. With McCain, everything seems to be personal--- his angry outbursts have left behind a string of victims over the years. I'm a pretty conservative guy. McCain scares me.

Barack Obama is extremely competent.

Obama has shown an enormous capacity to learn new things over his life -- raised by a single mother of modest means in Hawaii, he studied hard and got into Harvard Law School, later to teach constitutional law, before taking up public office. He has also shown the ability to run a half-billion dollar campaign in fifty states over almost two years, beating even the Clinton machine in the primaries. The guy learns fast, and he can get things done.

McCain, in contrast, was the son of admirals who graduated toward the bottom of his class in military training, and married into money. A lot of his achievements seem to have been handed to him on a silver platter. While he has gotten bills passed in the senate, I have seen little evidence of outstanding competence. I don't have much confidence that he can get things done.

I want to tell my kids.

My children are not white, and I want to be able to tell them they can be anything they want to be in this country --- and mean it. If Obama wins, people's attitudes about what America stands for will change, both here and abroad.

As Romans Do

In tenth standard back in India, we had Shakespeare's Julius Caesar for ICSE. Always was my favorite. But last week I saw the best movie on ancient Rome, ever. Not exactly a movie, but a TV series. Or, as they would say, "it's not TV, it's HBO":



Boston Brahmin doesn't have cable, but he does have a home theater setup, and the series is available on DVD. The costumes and colors look totally stunning.

The complete first season consists of a dozen episodes about 45 minutes long. What can I say: the mixture of real historical figures and a few fictional ones, the ultra-realistic view of ordinary life in Rome circa 44 BC, the all-British cast, the lavish production, everything is totally excellent. It's very violent and explicit, beyond R rated, definitely not for children. Read all about it on IMDB.

Case closed, you wish

The godfather of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, is increasingly frustrated at his house arrest. On July 4th, he started to declare his own independence to news agencies: he says the Pakistan government was fully involved in nuclear proliferation:

"His claims stood in stark contrast with his 2004 confession that he was solely responsible for spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. But Dr. Khan has since renounced that confession, saying he made it to avoid implicating other Pakistani officials."

(NYT link, registration required)

This new claim has the ring of truth, as many analysts will tell you. Boston Brahmin himself had argued, back in 2004 when Khan was arrested, that:

In a country so completely dominated by the army, it is inconceivable that the country's crown jewels at Kahuta could be sold without the knowledge of the brass.

(Pointer to 2004 post by Boston Brahmin) Yet, the New York Times, Washington Post, and other Western news outlets continued for years to repeat as facts, Pakistan government claims that AQ Khan was a "rogue" scientist working on his own.

Khan's interviews yesterday took the government by surprise. But denials were quick: "all lies and false statements". Today, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry insisted that its nuclear proliferation case was closed. (link to AP wire article).
Case closed? You wish.

From Russia with Love

Last week, Boston Brahmin had the opportunity to read a book because of a
transcontinental flight. And a fantastic thriller it was, too:



Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith, is a murder mystery set in Stalin's Soviet Union, around 1953. In the workers' paradise that is the USSR, there's no such thing as murder; the only criminals are those who are enemies of the state. The state is actually more horrible than a serial murderer.

But what's more horrible still is today's Russia--- Putin's Russia. See an Op-Ed in today's Washington Post by a courageous journalist, Julia Latynina. This article was translated from the Russian. It talks about the clear impunity of Putin's thugs:

The right to commit crime has become part of official privilege. If the victim doesn't raise a fuss, no one is punished. If the victim appeals to the public, he or she is harshly punished. The very fact of appealing to the public is perceived as a challenge to the regime.

(Link to Washington Post op-ed.)
The comparison with Stalin's Soviet state is chilling. Or, it should be, but it isn't.