Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Lets call it the Dumbbell Axis -- the Jewish State as one bell and "Hindia" as the other. In the ongoing struggle to make the whole planet safe for limited liability corporate settlement, these two are Big Sam's best sidekicks.

Now I may scorn chatter over the Zionic placebo for personal reasons. But I'll make up for it with a Philippic over the subcontinent's "liberal" hegemon, possibly the conscience of the earth itself, the post-Raj Hindu chauvinist republic.

My old friend Mr Y, late of the state department's dirty-tricks staff, aka 'deep bottom', phoned recently (shortly after the recent Mumbai rumble and before his "official" resignation from the foreign service last week):

Y: "We gotta cadge those swami-soaked humanist fraud bastards into more border rattling nonsense -- really shake their neighbors up -- we need 'em to start taking a few chapters from the Mini-Me book of culls. Shit, man, it's in uncle's strategic interests -- takes the heat off us and our loser crusade up there in Kaboolaboolaville."

Me: "Really? Delhi another Tel-y? Why now -- and not say back in '63 or '71?"

Y: "Simple. We're in deeper around there now -- that Dulles do-little type crap is a one way ticket to nowhere. We gotta start by letting those urine-drinking Hindu-fundie weirdos loose. The Punjabi Pakis gotta get forced into blowing their misbegotten dogs' breakfast of a nation apart -- back into its primal constituents."

He went on, in a downright Nixonian geopolitical vein:

"The roof of South Asia is formed by Tibet and Afghanistan -- the Hindustanis need to blow that roof off eventually, but first they gotta shatter Pakistan. It's a bulwark of the status quo, a fuckin' turd in the drain of world-historical progress. Oh, and Israel isn't crazy about the Paks either. As you know."

Me: "And this is in Uncle Emperor's best interests?"

Y: "Absolutely -- we need a new Balkans over there -- a real mess. Either that, or China and Russia will be making muskrat love right in front of our faces."

This is a problem:

But this is not:

I know, I know, it's hard to get all these towelheads straight. But you can always count on the New York Times to explain -- there are towelheads, and then there are towelheads:

Leaders Gather for Nuclear Talks as New Threat Is Seen

WASHINGTON — Three months ago, American intelligence officials examining satellite photographs of Pakistani nuclear facilities saw the first wisps of steam from the cooling towers of a new nuclear reactor.....

The Pakistanis insist that they have no choice. A nuclear deal that India signed with the United States during the Bush administration ended a long moratorium on providing India with the fuel and technology for desperately needed nuclear power plants.

Now, as critics of the arrangement point out, the agreement frees up older facilities that India can devote to making its own new generation of weapons....

Mr. Obama met with the leaders of India and Pakistan on Sunday, a day ahead of a two-day Washington gathering with 47 nations devoted to the question of how to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.... this meeting has quite limited goals: seeking ways to better secure existing supplies of bomb-usable plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The problem that India and Pakistan represent... is deliberately not on the agenda.

“President Obama is focusing high-level attention on the threat that already exists out there, and that’s tremendously important,” said Sam Nunn... "the fact is that new production adds greatly to the problem.”

Nowhere is that truer than Pakistan, where two Taliban insurgencies and Al Qaeda coexist with the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal. According to a senior American official, Mr. Obama used his private meeting Sunday afternoon with Yousaf Raza Gilani, Pakistan’s newly empowered prime minister, to “express disappointment” that Pakistan is blocking the opening of negotiations on a treaty that would halt production of new nuclear material around the world.

Experts say accelerated production in Pakistan translates into much increased risk.

“The challenges are getting greater — the increasing extremism, the increasing instability, the increasing material,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, who as a C.I.A. officer and then head of the Energy Department’s intelligence unit ran much of the effort to understand Al Qaeda’s nuclear ambitions.

“That’s going to complicate efforts to make sure nothing leaks,” he said. “The trends mean the Pakistani authorities have a greater challenge.”

Few subjects are more delicate in Washington.

(There are one or two, though):

The Times continues:

India... is making new weapons-grade plutonium, in plants exempted under the agreement with the Bush administration from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. (Neither Pakistan nor India has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.)

The Obama administration has endorsed the Bush-era agreement. Last month, the White House took the next step, approving an accord that allows India to build two new reprocessing plants. While that fuel is for civilian use, critics say it frees older plants to make weapons fuel.

“The Indian relationship is a very important one,” said Mr. Nunn, who influenced Mr. Obama’s decision to endorse a goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. But he said that during the Bush years, “I would have insisted that we negotiate to stop their production of weapons fuel....”

"During the Bush years", he would have "insisted". But now -- well, these are no longer the Bush years. And so presumably there will be no "insistence", impotent as it would undoubtedly be, from Mr Nunn.

You can't make this stuff up. Allow me to repeat:

“The challenges are getting greater — the increasing extremism, the increasing instability, the increasing material,” said Rolf Mowatt-Larssen of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, who [was] a C.I.A. officer and then head of the Energy Department’s intelligence unit...

Wild, isn't it? The Ivy/Langley connection is very old news, of course -- in fact, it was never news -- but here we have the Times advertising it as a credential.