The Strident President Donald Trump

This past month I have been regularly watching the CNN news channel. I love the Trump-bashing that goes on in there, in true democratic spirit – reinforcing beyond doubt that USA is indeed the land of the free.

Until now I believed that President Donald Trump was a lot smarter person, in spite of his outlandish campaign rhetoric that he has been dishing out. As I wrote in my earlier post on him, I truly believed that once he became President, he would surprise us all by NOT fulfilling most of his campaign pledges.

It now appears that I may be completely wrong.

This morning when I put on the TV, I did so at the precise moment when President Donald Trump declared:

“We have to start winning wars again"

He is going to declare wars and he is going to win them! --- and to enable him to do that, he is proposing a defense budget of US$603 billion. This sum is more than the sum total spent by the rest of the world’s top 7 countries with the biggest defense budgets:

China                  215.0
Saudi Arabia         87.2
Russia                   66.4
UK                        55.5
India                      51.3
France                   50.9
Japan                     40.9

TOTAL :     US$ 567.0 billion 
Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

The lunacy does not stop there: since he had promised big tax cuts during the campaign, there is no way be is going to be able to wage wars and win them, through increased tax collection. So he proposes what he thinks is the next best thing – he proposes to finance his war mongering through budget cuts in such meaningful areas as foreign aid, healthcare and EPA.

Thirty-five years back (1981) President elect Ronald Reagan, another Republican, was the oldest President of America – at 69 years of age. Donald Trump at 70 now qualifies as the oldest elected US President.

President Reagan too was a great believer in military might. He spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build up American military might, so much so that at one point he told the Pentagon, “Defense is not a budget item. You spend what you need”.

President Reagan was so hell bent on military supremacy that in 1983, he announced the futuristic Strategic Defense Initiative – a hugely expensive Star Wars like missile defense system. There was one good outcome from all that posturing – it forced the USSR to embark on its own military build up, which many believe, ultimately contributed to its bankruptcy and the fall of Communism.

And yet, for all that, during his entire Presidency, Ronald Reason waged only one miserably absurd war – that of the invasion of Grenada, in October of 1983. However, the invasion of the tiny island defended by less than 1,000 militia did not bring any long term, or even short term, honor for the President or the world’s most powerful military power. In fact, in due course, the United Nations General Assembly voted 108:9 – to condemn the invasion as an unwarranted act of international aggression.

President Reagan was a staunch protagonist of  “Peace through strength”. He believed that he could maintain world peace through sheer military might. He was my hero because I believe in that. By contrast, President Trump wants to “Make America Great Again” by waging wars and winning them. I do not believe in that and thus I am not his fan.

The great economic powerhouse that is America gives out less than 1% of its budget in aiding needy foreign nations. Of that, in 2014, US$5.9 billion was spent in financing the purchase of weapons of war.

Instead of curtailing foreign aid and reduce funding for EPA’s programs, America will do well to increase them. I am told that President Trump is stridently against environmental protection because he believes that the claim that the environment is in a depleted state is whole lot of hogwash. But he would do well to listen to others and open his eyes and mind to the state of the environment. He cannot be oblivious to the weather related disasters that the great America has witnessed in recent times.

I think that for America and President Donald Trump, it would be cheaper to win hearts rather than wars. Along the way they will garner respect, esteem and goodwill.

America is a nation of immigrants – its greatness can be attributed to the contributions made by the immigrants – right from its formative years to the present. As on last count, the DHS’ Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) estimated that there were close to 12 million unauthorized immigrants living in America. One has to wonder why the US government did not act, even while the DHS was obviously keeping tract of all the unauthorized aliens. Donald Trump has to consider why the earlier administrations turned a blind eye to the issue, even while they were fully aware. To go blistering against them, as if it were a recent and sudden phenomena, is to invite problems and complications that he cannot even comprehend.

The way to making “America Great Once Again” cannot be through alienation of friends and supporters and partners and neighbors. America cannot survive in isolation - no one can.

"America First" is a gallant aspiration that deserves support, but the manner in which President Trump hopes to accomplish it for America is untenable - he cannot hope to achieve it by trampling on the aspirations of others. If President Trump believes that building the Mexican wall will advance his aspirations for achieving "America First", do it by all means but do not require Mexico to pay for its construction. You want it, you foot the bill.

President Donald Trump has to remember that even the lowly rat catcher is an integral and legitimate member of the human society.

President Donald Trump has to look to history – not a very ancient one at that – and draw lessons from it. For all its military might, for all its pile of nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles, atomic and hydrogen bombs, and with a combined military personnel of 1,385,116 – all that it took was one dedicated and determined lunatic to bring the mighty America to its knees and alter the very course of its history forever. 9/11 is proof that US$603 billion military spending is no guarantee that a foolproof defense system can be built.

If wars are to be fought and won, I think they have to be won in the minds of men, and not on battlefields. Subjugating nations and peoples through military aggression is too primeval.

How America behaves impacts us all. I urge President Donald Trump to have consideration for those of us who do not have the wherewithal to wage, or win, wars.

United Nations or United Ostriches?

Mr. Muammar Gaddafi is dead. Good riddance! There is a saying … he who lives by the gun, dies by the gun. He was a horrendously evil man and he deserved to go as he did. So, let us bundle him up, wrap him in rags, sprinkle camel piss over his lifeless body and bury him 10,000 miles deep into the sandy desert so that, if he should resurrect, it would take him a few millennium to resurface on the face of this earth.

Hang on, not so fast! The Human Rights Office of the UN wants to intervene. They want an investigation into his death. In their words; "More details are needed to ascertain whether he was killed in some form of fighting or was executed after his capture".

Oh really? Why is Mr. Muammar Gaddafi singled out for special treatment by the UN agency? What is so different or special about Mr. Muammar Gaddafi? Mr. Osama bin Laden was murdered in Pakistan (something that I still do not believe is the real truth) by the American soldiers and, supposedly, his body was thrown into the bottom of the sea – to serve as shark feed. The sentence of Mr. Saddam Hussein’s “death by hanging” was pronounced at Camp Cropper, an American controlled holding facility. Mr. Saddam Hussein’s hanging was carried out in the most humiliating manner – he was taunted till the end and an unauthorized mobile phone recording showed him falling through the trap door of the gallows.

Like ostriches, the moral eagles at the UNCHR stuck their heads into the sand and made no noise while all that was happening to lesser evils like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Why are they doing so now? The answer is: Double standards!

The UNCHR has a habit of putting their feet in their mouths – every time they open them. If you recall, the whole Southern Bhutan problem spiraled out of control because of their thoughtless and wrongful intervention. In part, the exodus of people from the South into the Nepal camps was caused by the false sense of security and encouragement provided by the UNCHR and their hasty and misguided support.

The world seems to be going a little mad in recent years. Are there some cosmic realignment happening up in the heavens that is causing such numerous natural calamities all around the world? Is the proper functioning of the human mind being affected, as a result? Can the madness of some of our MPs wanting to break a law and build the Gorgan-Shingkhar farm road across the alpine wilderness be explained by these unseen forces at play?

I spoke to one of the MPs of the ruling party on the matter concerning this crazy idea of a farm road. He agrees that he is at times dumb founded. He believes that there are unseen forces at play that seems to be directing the hand of the government into doing things that is designed to deliver victory on a platter – to the Opposition party, in the next elections.

Is this madness or what?

Death Of Osama bin Laden: A Monumental Hoax?

The Americans have finally announced the death of Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden. It took a while but it is finally here - the news that Mr. Osama bin Laden has been killed.

There is a school of thought that believes that Osama bin Laden was long killed in the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan but it wasn’t in the American interest to announce his death. I don’t know if that is the truth and, like the good professor James Bettinger of Stanford University once told me, a truth that cannot be proven is not a truth. However, I am intrigued - not so much by what is the real truth - as much as I am by the manner in which the truth is being orchestrated and presented to the world.

The “truths” that we are now being told do not ring true. There are so many things that do not fit together. In fact they sound downright stupid and implausible. Let us examine the following:

Osama bin Laden being labeled the world’s most wanted criminal

How far is this correct? The CNN, the BBC and even the NDTV calls Osama bin Laden the “world’s most wanted terrorist”. Is this fair? How does he qualify as the “world’s” most wanted? The term “world” would encompass all the countries on this earth. However, I know that in some countries, he is a hero and not a terrorist. Therefore, it is not fair to club those unwilling countries in the grouping of those countries who have declared him as a terrorist. Thus, I think we must downgrade him from the “world’s most wanted” to “America’s most wanted terrorist”.

Claim that the American Navy Seal entered the Pakistani state without the prior knowledge of the Pakistani government

I think this is bogus. I think the US had tacit approval of the Pakistani government and entered the Pakistani soil with prior knowledge of the Pakistani government and their security agencies. I cannot believe that the Americans would be so audacious as to commit an act of war on Pakistani soil, knowing full well that such an act is tantamount to infringement of Pakistani sovereignty. Pakistan is an ally and not a vassal state of the US.

However, it is convenient and, even expedient, to make such a claim. On the one hand, the Americans want to take full credit for the murder of their state enemy #1. It is good for politics. In fact, post killing, the American President grandly proclaimed that “Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan”. On the other hand, Pakistan as a Muslim state certainly would not want to be seen to be directly associated with the killing of a person who is seen as a martyr in most of the Muslim world. Thus, for the Pakistani government, it is good politics to claim ignorance and express consternation at the supposed unilateral American act. It is within the scheme of things for Pakistan to make feeble noises, once in a while, claiming infringement of their sovereignty etc. But at the end of it all, it serves their purpose to be seen as being totally ignorant of the American act.

Pakistan did not have a hand in the killing of Osama bin Laden

How could they have been involved, if it is really true that Osama was already killed in the Tora Bora caves years back? Also, if the claim that Osama was killed in the recent “targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan” is untrue and a charade, then surely the US cannot ask Pakistan to take part responsibility of the killing of Osama.

Further, Pakistan is a Muslim state and it will not go down well with their Muslim brethrens around the world - if it is known that they were directly responsible for the death of Osama. Thus, even if it is true that the Pakistanis collaborated with the Navy Seals to kill Osama, it will be in their interest to claim total disassociation with the act. The Americans recognize that compulsion on the part of the Pakistanis and, thus, they understand the need for the Pakistanis to distance themselves from the final act of killing Osama.

The death of Osama bin Laden is in no way the end of America’s fight against the Al Qaeda. In fact, it may be possible that this is actually the beginning of another phase in their war against terrorism. Thus, the value of Pakistani involvement as an ally in America’s fight against terrorism has not diminished in any way.

Sadly, however, the claim of Pakistani’s none-involvement is rather inconsistent and contradictory to what the American President had to say. I quote the following excerpts from the same speech quoted above:

 “Over the years, I've repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we've done. But it's important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding”.

Burial of Osama bin Laden’s body in the sea

Why was it necessary to hastily bury the supposed dead body of Osama bin Laden at the bottom of the sea? The stated official version put out by the Americans for such a dubious way is to “prevent the final resting place of Osama bin Laden from becoming a shrine and a place of pilgrimage for his followers”. How far is this plausible? Is the truth something else? Could it be possible that the real objective is to make it impossible for any one to retrieve the body, if verifications were required? Was such a preposterous act necessitated for the reason that the dead body actually was not that of Osama bin Laden?

What exactly is the truth?

BBC Filming Crew Kills Two Tigers in Bangladesh

A few days back, over breakfast at the Galingkha restaurant, my friend from Bangladesh, Dr. Ronald Halder - dentalist, ornithologist, photographer and author, introduced me to Sirajul Hossain, a naturalist and a photographer, also from Bangladesh. Two of them, accompanied by another birder/photographer friend, Md. Zamiruddin Faisal, are currently in Bhutan on a 10-days bird watching/photography tour of Bhutan.
 

It was inevitable that given our shared interest in photography and birding, we mostly talked of the photographic and birding opportunities offered by Bhutan. One other matter we talked about was of the tigers living and breeding in the high Himalayas of Bhutan and of those that lived and roamed the mangroves of the Sundarbans in Bangladesh. That is when I mentioned about the shameless claims made by the BBC team who recently made a documentary on the tigers of Bhutan. What Sirajul told me next left me in total shock and disbelief!

It seems that the BBC did something even worst in Bangladesh than what they did in Bhutan. In Bangladesh, they actually caused the death of few tigers - in the process of their film making and in their attempt to be dramatic and theatrical.

Following the incidences of the death of two tigers at the hands of the BBC filming crew, Sirajul published two articles titled; “The Death of Two Tigers: Immature science in immature hands” and “On Death and Survival of Tigers”. Both the articles were published in Bangladesh’s largest circulating English daily: The Daily Star. The first article appeared on 22^nd February, 2008 and the second one appeared on 7^th June, 2008.

The two articles clearly show that in their quest to make a dramatic film, the BBC couldn’t care less about the consequences of their actions to their subjects. One of the articles point to the fact that there is nothing professional about the way the BBC does things. In fact, the title of one of the articles, “The Death of Two Tigers: Immature science in immature hands” is revealing.

Since I leave for the East tomorrow, I do not have the time. But when I return, I hope to post a detailed commentary on the two articles published by the naturalist Sirajul Hossain. In the meantime, I hope this will alert the Royal government and its agencies to be wary of any future proposals they receive from the BBC.