billcoe

Nice find!

Hot damn, now THATS a story!

It shocks me that these guys trust politicians more than they trust each other. Frankly, I trust the people I know to do the right thing much more than any politician, some of whom are great and honest people, but too many of whom are drawn to politics just for the power and the desire to control others. For me, that's the crux of the nut. Do you trust the people you know more than politicians? I do. Tvash doesn't. __________________________________________________________ Take care Bug, don't let them get ya down.

Here's something I don't understand. Maybe you can explain it to me. I'm reading the recent biography on Ben Franklin. Self made man and arguably one of the smartest guys in the colony's. In 1747 he got just a few of his peeps together and formed a militia in Pennsylvania. Yet there was already plenty of British Soldiers in the area. Why would he do that? Why would the framers insist that is a right any and all of us should have? The book only makes note of him doing it, not any reason behind it.

I specifically used the word Could. You are having reading comprehension issues again. If you want to roll over and let politicians pound sand up your un-lubricated ass, then you go right ahead, but keep me out of it.

The fact that you guys think you can be safe by restricting guns surprises me as I thought you were all smarter than that. Mexico restricted them in 1968, yet when you look at the Juarex/El Paso situation it is clear what can occur. Consider: On the side of the border where guns were restricted: heavily armed drug dealers are running crazy in the area, honest people who chose to have a weapon are criminals and the police and politicians are corrupt. Murders are rampant. While on the other side of the border, despite the fact that every damn Texan seems to have gun and they are available on every street corner including Sears and Wal Mart and despite that availability is a peaceful respite next to Juarez. I know that there are places where the reverse is true as well. However, for you to want to voluntarily give up one more check in the checks and balance of power equation both saddens and causes displeasure for me. It's not a good thing to change the way we've successfully integrated this over the last 236 years since the founding of the country. I'm joining the NRA today as one more small measure of that commitment. From wikipedia: "Crime [edit] Drug cartel violence Recent violence among rival drug cartels has resulted in more than a quarter of the country's 3,800 drugs-related murders reported to have taken place there since the start of the year; Juarez has one of the highest murder rates of cities in Mexico.[12] Recent murders in the city have grown not only in numbers, but also in barbarity. A man recently was found near a school hanging from a fence with a pig's mask on his face, and another one was found beheaded hanging from a bridge in one of the busier streets of the city.[13] Journalist Charles Bowden, in an August 2008 GQ article, wrote that multiple factors, including drug violence, government corruption, and poverty have unleashed a disordered violence that now permeates the city.[14] [15] In January 2004, police unearthed a grave containing 12 bodies in a Ciudad Juarez backyard.[16] Mexican investigators found 19 more bodies buried in the backyard of a house in Ciudad Juarez, increasing the tally of corpses found there to 36, officials said March 15, 2008. Federal agents began digging in the yard on March 1, 2008, initially finding six dismembered bodies. Ciudad Juárez has been plagued by violence as Mexico's crackdown on powerful drug cartels stokes turf wars among traffickers who have been linked to hundreds of killings in the years 2006 and 2007.[17] [edit] Female sexual homicides Main article: Female homicides in Ciudad Juárez Over the past 10 years Juárez has seen over 400 women fall victims to sexual homicides, their bodies often dumped in ditches or vacant lots. In addition, grassroots organizations in the region report that 40 remain missing. Despite pressure to catch the killers and a roundup of some suspects, few believe the true culprits have been found. A controversial 2007 book called The Daughters of Juarez, by Teresa Rodriguez.[18] implicates high-level police and prominent Juárez citizens in the crimes." This is in a country where purchasing any weapon is highly restrictive. You want that here? It could happen. Why change what has been working for 236 years?

Chastity belts are coming back eh?

I think Prole is feeling that he should have gone with the Maverick. and his wingman: That bear, a known environmentalist, seen here resting on those ever so soft and sensuous shoulders, would have been Sec. of Interior. Guess who would have gotten special rights then and been re-introduced to California?

[video:yahoo]10933377&src=news Teddys next, part of the feed the wildlife program. Something identical happened to a buddy who lives on Klamath lake. He (and a bunch of others) watched his neighbors family mutt hauled off by an Eagle while they were having an outdoor dinner party. They never saw the dog again, some toy breed.

Not at all Doug, in fact, if you applied enough pressure to the turd you might even create diarrhea. Please advise if you are going to try that though, as I want to be elsewhere when it happens.

Or old and crotchety like Pink.

Holy crap, the very NEXT click goes to google news and I see this story as of 43 min ago, 2 hours after I posted that up there. No joke. F**K ME IN THE ASS WITHOUT LUBRICATION LINK "President-elect Barack Obama will formally announce New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as his commerce secretary on Wednesday, FOX News has confirmed. Richardson will join Obama at a news conference in Chicago for the announcement, a Democratic official told The Associated Press. Richardson, an early and outspoken supporter of Obama during the Democratic primary this year, reportedly was disappointed that the secretary of state job went to Sen. Hillary Clinton. But Obama convinced him he would play a major role as commerce secretary, and help him promote key legislation in Congress. Richardson was energy secretary and United Nations ambassador in President Clinton's administration. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination this year, but eventually dropped out and endorsed Obama. He is one of the nation's most prominent Hispanic politicians, and was in the U.S. House before joining Clinton's Cabinet. Obama named his economic team last week and his national security team on Monday, filling half of his Cabinet." __________________________________________________________________ I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING I JUST POSTED UP THERE. UNFRIKKAN BELIVABLE What was the title of that post? Oh, "Obama is a Douchebag Sellout" I understand your point of view better now.

I voted for Barr Prole. Neither candidate was addressing what I thought was important. Balancing the budget being #1. I said at the time that I'd go with Obama 65%/35% over McCain if that was the choice. I was able to vote my way because the election in this state was overwhelmingly for Obama, had it been close, which it wasn't, I would have voted Obama. I thought Obamas TV special was fantastic, it is true but it didn't shift the percentage much for me just because a guy could buy a TV program. I'd already given the lead to Obama because of the debates and the way he'd handled himself in the primary. Especially where Hillary started attacking him, and he responded that he wouldn't retaliat in kind: and he didn't. Bravo for that. BTW, previous election, it was the Bush attacks on Kerry which totally cemented me 100% in the Kerry camp. That a candidate needs to make up lies about there opponent should be discouraged, although most didn't see it that way and the low-life approach the Bush campaign took did reward that approach. If I get a vote on your cabinet pic, I've always loved Isaac Hayes, especially when he was the Duke of NY in the Snake Plisken movie. Sad to see him gone, I'd probably vote for him anyway, and you could put George Wallace (the comedian) in there in his place. BTW, I suspect that soon enough, all of us will have plenty to bitch about, you are just starting in sooner than the rest of us. I hope that's not true: but suspect otherwise.

Not speaking for JayB, but I was damn near livid when Ron Wyden, senator from Oregon, sponsored a bill that was quickly approved which gave the Tuna fishermen off the Oregon coast, who had caught too many fish so the price had plummeted, 14 million dollars because they were having tough times, despite having holds stuffed with Tuna. Why the taxpayers should pay the fishermen $14 million dollars and encourage more overfishing is insane. They could have offered to buy some of the fishing licenses out if they needed help, and even overpaying would have had a positive effect.

Thanks Rob. That place may be a bit empty right now too. I'll be able to get on some prime routes. See this: my flight out is this Friday Dec 5th. It's been closed for over a week and a half or so. Looks like I'm going to squeek in by the skin of my balls. "BANGKOK, Thailand – Thailand's prime minister was ousted Tuesday after weeks of protests closed the capital's airports, stranding 300,000 travelers. Protesters promised to lift their siege, and international flights were expected to resume Friday. The government of Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat was doomed when the nation's Constitutional Court dissolved Thailand's top three ruling parties for electoral fraud in the 2007 vote that brought them to power. Somchai was banned from politics for five years. Somchai did not formally resign, as the protesters had demanded for months, but accepted the ruling. "It is not a problem. I was not working for myself. Now I will be a full-time citizen," he told reporters in Chiang Mai, the northern city where his paralyzed administration has been forced to govern since Wednesday. Protest leaders said the airport seizures would end Wednesday. With the waning of the political crisis, the official in charge of Thailand's airports said Suvarnabhumi international airport will resume operations on Friday. "Please have confidence in us," said Vudhibhandhu Vichairatana, the chairman of the Airports of Thailand. He called the flights a birthday gift for Thailand's revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who turns 81 on Dec. 5. The airport reopened to cargo flights Tuesday. Officials had earlier said the airport would not reopen for commercial flights before Dec. 15, but Vudhibhandhu said he brought forward the date because an inspection revealed the airport had suffered no damage and could become operational more quickly. After Tuesday's court decision, government spokesman Nattawut Sai-kau said the six-party governing coalition would step down. Despite the appearance of a smooth political transition, the ruling is expected to widen the dangerous rift in Thai society that many fear could lead to more violence between pro- and anti-government groups. Late Monday, an explosive device fired from an elevated highway fell among hundreds of protesters inside Don Muang airport, killing one person and wounding 22. The death raised to seven the number of people killed in bomb attacks, clashes with police and street battles between government opponents and supporters. On hearing the court's decision, a cheer rose from thousands of members of the People's Alliance for Democracy occupying the international airport. "My heart is happy. My friends are very happy," said Pailin Jampapong, a 41-year-old Bangkok housekeeper choking back tears as she jumped up and down. "This is a blow for corruption," said Nong Sugrawut, a 55-year-old businessman at Suvarnabhumi. Somchai had become increasingly isolated in recent weeks. Neither the army, a key player in Thai politics, nor the country's much revered king offered firm backing. But hundreds of his supporters gathered outside the court, saying the swiftness of the ruling — which came just an hour after closing arguments ended — appeared predetermined. At one point they cut off the power supply to the court, but electricity was restored with diesel generators. "The court is not qualified to make this ruling. They are nothing more than apologists for the alliance, who are ruining the country," an activist shouted through a megaphone outside the court. Somchai's People's Power Party, the Machima Thipatai party and the Chart Thai party were found guilty of committing fraud in the December 2007 elections that brought the coalition to power. "Dishonest political parties undermine Thailand's democratic system," said Court President Chat Chalavorn. The ruling sends Somchai and 59 executives of the three parties into political exile and bars them from politics for five years. Of the 59, 24 are lawmakers who will also have to abandon their parliamentary seats. But lawmakers of the three dissolved parties who escaped the ban can join other parties, try to cobble together a new coalition and then choose a new prime minister. Until then, Deputy Prime Minister Chaowarat Chandeerakul will become the caretaker prime minister, said Suparak Nakboonnam, a government spokeswoman. She said parliament will have to pick a new prime minister within 30 days. The protesters accuse Somchai of being a proxy of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the alliance's original target. Thaksin, who is Somchai's brother-in-law, was deposed in a 2006 military coup and has fled the country to escape corruption charges. Alliance supporters are largely middle-class citizens who say Thailand's electoral system is susceptible to vote-buying and argue that the rural majority — the Thaksin camp's political base — is not sophisticated enough to cast ballots responsibly. They have proposed discarding direct elections in favor of appointing most legislators, fostering resentment among rural voters. The protest leaders have been charged with several criminal offenses, but are out on bail, and it is not known when they will be tried. ___ Associated Press reporters Jocelyn Gecker, Vijay Joshi and Mick Elmore contributed to this report. Collapse Article"

Sh*t Prole, is there anything you Don't bitch about? I only have personal knowledge of one person. Bill Richardson. I have heard that he is the most ineffective administrator ever. Period. He jumped on the Obama train early and as a minority would normally be a candidate for one of these jobs. That Obama didn't pick an obvious political hack due to political reasons I find very encouraging. THATS REAL CHANGE RIGHT THERE DUDE. Some of the folks he chose were acknowledged qualified people head and shoulders above others and obvious choices. Some you can argue about (Hillary). I wasn't 100% convinced during the primaries that Obama was the dude, but as I said then, I was still at least 65%/35% thinking Obama was better than John McCain for the challenges we face as a country. The challenges the new pres is facing are arguably as harsh as any president since Truman. This is the guy for that job. My opinion, obviously you don't agree. So perhaps you really need to move to China,, I hear they are constructing the workers paradise over there.

Well said Rob. Just wait till you get old and crotchety like me. Then you look back and see a little here, a little there: all quietly moving in what appears to be 1 direction. Rights are being taken away from us. Things we take for grated that are just privileges as well. Thanks for the reminder that it's not all gloom and doom. You are right on that. All of the issues I bring up are being dealt with in the system....gradually. However, the Bush admin seems to be able to toss them faster than the system can say "STOP" or "NO WAY". I have hope that the Obama admin slows it down or reverses course so that the Constitution, which every President swears to up hold, is not continually shit on. I recall during the Nixon years, as dark as they were, that deep constitutional issues WERE dealt with successfully, and the prick was forced to resign, and eventually it was reaffirmed that he was under the same laws as the rest of us, rather than be the king over all of us which he wished to be. ___________________________________________________________ On the South African thing, lets just ask Bobby Model who was there more recently than any of us and can discuss cement blocks and other projectile things. opps, tasteless. Take care all

Here's something new for you to try Rob. Read the entire post. Do so with an open mind and without prejudging the contents. Then lets see if you have a different response.

I'm surprised a supposed libertarian like you would espouse such a cavalier opinion about your privacy rights and the danger of giving them up, particularly the naive "I've got nothing to hide" argument. Sarcasm, like Pink lays out so well, often doesn't translate well Pat. I'd like to commend you on both a well thought out, and non-attacking response too! My take is that it's really like boiling frogs. You toss a frog into a pot of boiling water and it will jump right out they say. While if you put in in warm water and slowly crank the heat up, it will eventually boil to death. Like that here, a little bit at a time and pretty soon your cooked. Gun rights are but a small part of this government intrusion into our lives. Slowly the institutions we are use to seeing in place are being attacked very slowly and gradually. Hopefully it will change under our new gov't, however, our rights have not been one of their issues, and the gun restrictions are on their agenda even if the other items are not. Politicians, by their nature, tend to seek power for it's own sake, often at someone else's (in this case-ours) expense. Often these take years to get through the courts to be found unconstitutional. The wiretapping challenge which was earlier won in a lower court by the ACLU was overturned in district court as the defendants could not prove they WERE being wiretapped, and thus have no standing to challenge the law. Back to square one for that one. Today's news is the federal governments intent to crank the heat on us frogs one more degree on a new burner. Here's that story originally from the Washington Post. Link "8:46 p.m. PT, Sun., Nov. 30, 2008 The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said. There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement." Each one of these can be difficult to argue on their own. Sure they are tapping every phone call in the US, but don't you want to be safe? (insert sarcasm sad face emoticon here). Sure they are going to start inserting federal troops into civilian areas in violation of a 130 year old law, but don't you want to be safe? (insert sarcasm sad face emoticon here) Sure they will be restricting your ability to own firearms...but don't you want to be safe? (insert sarcasm sad face emoticon here) It's true that they can suspend habeus corpus,....that the president can order you and your loved ones held without a trial, or as long as he damn well feels like doing so: in clear violation of our laws since our very founding, but don't you want to be safe? (insert ANOTHER sarcasm sad face emoticon here) I guess the question is, don't we all want to be safe from all these real or imagined things? (insert final sarcasm sad face emoticon here) I guess I'd like to be safe and left in peace by my own damn government. I want this for all of you as well, because if you don't get it, I sure as hell won't, despite the fact that I'm a lot more establishment than some of you yazoos on this board. Last night, in the dark of night they're kicking in the door and dragging some poor American off to be tortured because the poor bastard has an Arabic name, but tomorrow it's us. (this nightmare is currently really happening to some poor bastard at this very moment. If the bastard is guilty of terrorism, no sane judge would let him off. Except that the NSA would have to provide the details of how he was caught, and they got that illegally, so they CAN"T go before a judge. So dude is hauled off and tortured. IN OUR COUNTRY, AND IT'S UTTER BULLSHIT AS PINK SAYS. So it continues. This might be a good time to send some money to the ACLU, they must be working overtime. ACLU Web site link

Beal Edlinger II 10.2mm x 60M Rope Drycover Sale: $104.76 http://alpenglowgear.com/gear/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_49&products_id=212 The 70m drycover (not the goldenshower drycover) is $120 which is awesome. Don't know the shipping fee.

Link Gent knows about half of the folks I know, and I've accompanied him to Yosemite a couple of times. Last time with his wife Chau who also climbs and is fun to be with. Very skilled, very friendly. A++ as a companion. Haven't seen a lot of either of them since they had TWINS! If you go to club Milf (club sport) Gent is one of the workers there, has a little bit of a Finnish/German accent.

I got an E-mail from Gent that he's doing an aid climbing clinic. Here's a good guy and very qualified. If you're interested, here ya go. When: Tuesdays, Dec. 9th and 16th; 7-9 PM Where: Clubsport Adventure Center What: A dry and warm place to come practice/dust off your aid climbing skills (i.e. climbing a bolt ladder, jumaring, building a haul anchor/system) Who: Anybody with basic aid climbing skills (Clusport belay certification required) How much: Non-members $20 for one session, $30 for both (remember that this includes the entrance fee) Members $15/$25 To register, call Activities desk at (503)968-4555 AFTER TUESDAY (it won't be in the system until then). E-mail or call me (503-968-4535 noon to 6 PM on Tuesday) with questions. "

Congrats Bryan! Looks like some real sweet ice. Quite the "approach":-) Love those pictures dude!

We are in total agreement on this Matt. Well spoken yourself sir. My wife was shocked that I was so pissed when they went running into Iraq like that I was yelling and damn near throwing things against the wall. As the initial victorys unfolded, I was even more shocked that my countrymen all seemed to be supporting it 100%. Then when our allies didn't back our bullshit play, we started giving them shit for it. Remember "Freedom Fries"? Interestingly, my wife and I went to Paris not long after this f*ing invasion, at a time when the French were supposedly pissed at us, however, I found them to be very gracious and kind hosts. So some of that must have been media frenzy. My son had shown me a U-Tube video which totally cracked him up about the same time which I will link here. It was a multi-player rollplaying computer game. Everyone is sitting at their computers trying to plan a strategy (like the world an the UN was doing re: Iraq). Leroy Jenkins so reminded me of the administration's rush to get in there. Total disregard of what everyone else is doing and thinking. Poor planning. Like when they fired General Shinseki, chairman of the joint chiefs, when he disagreed with Donald Rumsfelt and suggested they needed more troops before the attack. This is Leroys screen, his perspective: look how distracted he is as the planning occurs. [video:youtube]LkCNJRfSZBU Goddammit Leroy Bush. Fu*ing moron. I have no excuses for our behavior about that, the failure of politicians, or of our treatment of prisoners or the additional powers granted to the President by congress. Rudy's original post was not about Iraq, but about the attacks on, and murders of, innocents in India. My earlier post was addressing that and things like that. But check out this video and tell me that you don't see the entire administrations being Leroy.

Background intel report on this subject, and a reminder again that India has been facing this crap for quite some time. "Monday, August 4, 2008 And now, as if the world had forgotten, Indian terrorism Now that Washington and the world’s attention is shifting from an ameliorating situation in Iraq to Afghanistan-Pakistan, out of the fog of war lumbers the huge hulk of India. The most recent terrorist attacks in two Indian cities have dramatized some realities long camouflaged by more dramatic headlines elsewhere. If the Indian authorities know who actually perpetrated these deadly horrors, they have confused the media thoroughly. But two salient features do quickly come forward: The usual accusations, however valid they may have sometimes been in the past, of all acts of Indian Muslim terror being directly instigated and operated by Pakistan have not been made this time. These brutish but rather amateurish efforts have been acknowledged to have been homegrown. And they are growing evidence that the infection of Islamofascism is an increasing phenomenon among India’s more than 150 million Muslims. That despite New Delhi lulling itself into false optimism that its nominally secular society and its very huge diversity including a variegated Muslim community would spare it. But it is now obvious that various Muslim international and local terror groups are quickly spreading their venom inside the Indian Muslim community. As important, even the semi-government Indian websites which monitor terrorism throughout the region are now admitting the obvious: the country’s security apparatus is totally incapable of meeting this new terrorist challenge. New Delhi officials make the required pronouncements about the high priority the issue takes. But the kinds of inadequacies that have been exposed in the police forces in the U.S. and Western Europe since 9/11 are even more dramatic in India. And what is even more shocking is that with its Maoist insurgencies blossoming in a dozen areas for more than two decades, those techniques have never been developed. But the problem is not just India’s. Contrary to the wishful thinking which has plagued the State Department for almost a decade now in its puerile effort for a shortcut to policy in the Subcontinent, this Indian problem is part and parcel of any effort to achieve progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In a flash of self-delusion during the Clinton years, the U.S. diplomatic establishment had convinced itself it could arbitrarily separate American bilateral relations with each of the bitter players in what used to be called the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent. The U.S., it was said, would defy the intensity of a conflict which has dictated the foreign and much of the domestic policy of both countries since their inception in 1947 and through two and a half largely unresolved wars. But the obvious truth is that any U.S. policy directed toward Pakistan must take into account its effect on India and the reverse. For example, to help the Pakistani military enhance its capabilities, the U.S. has extended $10 billion in military aid since President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s about-turn after 9/11 and withdrawal of support from the Taliban government in Kabul. This American benefice – and the continuing support Pakistan received from what it calls its “all weather” ally, China — has helped drive the Indians into a vast expansion of their own forces in its effort to exert hegemony over the Indian Ocean region. Even Sen. Obama, after his photo ops visit to the region, discovered the relationship of the Indo-Pakistan confrontation to the problem of rooting out the terrorists in the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal areas. He blithely suggested that Washington would have to turn its attention to it. One doesn’t know whether this was simply the normal campaign oratory or whether, indeed, he does not know how much the U.S. – and so many others – have invested in the problem of Indo-Pakistan enmity over the last six decades. Nor for anyone who has had any exposure to the issues, is the knowledge of how difficult is any settlement of the major issue, Kashmir, the contested state that not only lies between India and Pakistan, but also abuts China in Tibet and neighbors Afghanistan. And, unfortunately, “Kashmir” trials and tribulations are intimately bound up with the border issues among all the parties. Furthermore, India’s internal Islamicist terrorist threat grows at a time of a number of other intertwined and equally complex issues. New Delhi has launched a massive armaments program involving doubling to more than $30 billion by 2012 as the country’s military seeks to modernize and replace its largely Soviet military hardware. By 2022 spending is expected to reach $80 billion in purchases of the latest planes, ships, tanks, and other equipment. Although both sides emphatically deny it, strategists in both Washington and New Delhi see a tacit Indian-American alliance as a counterweight to China’s increasingly formidable armament program about which Beijing reveals nothing. That proposed alliance has just played a role in a crisis for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government. An agreement negotiated by him and the Bush Administration to open up transfer of U.S. nuclear technology for power generation was opposed by his Communist partners whose votes sustained his fragile coalition government. Although contributing little to India’s energy hunger, the business community saw the agreement as the door opening a vast transfer of technology for its growing export trade with the U.S. It was also seen as a necessary part of Singh’s program to liberalize the Indian economy. India’s abandonment — if halting — of Soviet-style planning in the past decade has brought the Indians double digit growth. And its trading relationship with the U.S., including the ultra hi tech offshore information technology software industry, has brought new hope for breaking out of the world’s worst poverty for millions of Indians. But, just as in China, the problem of the great bulk of India’s 1.3 billion people – soon to surpass China as the world’s largest population – still is held back by a primitive rural sector. [Protecting this subsistence agriculture dictated India’s blocking – along with China — the latest proposed round of tariff reductions at negotiations in Geneva in late July.] Their flight to the cities, as in China, threatens to engulf the progressive urban areas. And even the green revolution – new plant varieties and agricultural methods for the wealthier landlords — which ended endemic famine in the country has not solved this basic problem. Electoral politics, in fact, has aggravated it by the temptation for Singh’s party to go back to rural social programs that proved failures over the long period of post-independence stagnation – a flight of fancy, for example, into a program for guaranteed rural income through subsidies. At the moment, with energy and food prices rising worldwide, India is facing a threat of inflation. Singh – and his back-seat driver, Sonia Gandhi, widow and daughter-in-law of former Nehru prime ministers and inheritor of the Congress Party leadership – has now patched together a coalition of regional parties. But he will soon have to face an election where his principal opponent will be the Bharatiya Janta Party, a spokesman for India’s new rising entrepreneurial class but also with its tainted origins in Hindu chauvinism. Its complicity two years ago in the important state of Gujarat in a pogrom against Muslims, and the failure of the federal government and the courts to deal with it summarily, was one pretext for the recent terrorist bombings. Unfortunately, increasingly, India’s electoral system has become a victim of block voting by caste – including the attempt to seduce the Muslim voters. Singh recently had to suspend local government in Kashmir after communal riots broke out over a local land issue. Keeping a lid on the increasingly rebellious Kashmiris demanding independence or adherence to Pakistan requires New Delhi to maintain more than half a million security forces, some of them aligned along the Line of Control [LOC] in the fragile armistice with Pakistan. The tribals who pose the growing problem for U.S., NATO – and Pakistani – forces on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have been intimately involved in the Kashmir struggle since it developed at independence. India charges, with a good deal of evidence, that Pakistan uses the tribal jihadists to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir. Despite continuing peace talks between New Delhi and Islamabad, the rate of incidents on the LOC have increased recently. The Pakistanis, of course, claim, probably justifiably, that India’s RAW [Research and Analysis Wing], contributes to its political and military problems in tribal areas, particularly in its huge western state of Baluchistan, bordering Afghanistan. And New Delhi has long claimed that Pakistan’s ISI [inter-Services Intelligence], which before 9/11 backed the Taliban in Afghanistan, is responsible for terror attacks against Indian targets – the most recent a bloody assault on the embassy in Kabul. It remains to be seen, of course, whether – as a series of bombings in Mumbai [bombay] in 1993 which ended as suddenly as they began – India is now in for a continuing terror campaign. But the elements are all there – including a terrorist organizations among Indian Muslim students and professionals, the hallmark of sophisticated terror developments in the West. But should it come, it would add new elements of difficulty to the already devil’s brew that faces U.S. strategists in the region. Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com." http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/s0390_8_01.asp