Ganguly selected for Australia series, is it safe exit strategy?

Ganguly selected for Australia series, is it safe exit strategy?
By Khabrein.Info Correspondent,

New Delhi, Oct 1, 2008: Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly has been selected for test series against Australia. But some have called it a safe exit strategy for the talented Indian batsman.

Australian cricket team is presently in Jaipur preparing for forthcoming test series against India beginning October 4.

Earlier Saurav Ganguly was given a shock by selectors when he was not selected for Rest of Indian team in Irani Cup. At that time it was thought that it was the end of the road for the wily Indian batsman.

Sourav Ganguly is one of the best batsmen that India has ever produced. But he and seniors in Indian team including Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Virendra Sehvag and VVS Laxman, the famed Indian batting line up is being increasingly threatened by emerging batting line up in the team.
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Antony plays down differences with forces on 6t Pay Commission

Antony plays down differences with forces on 6t Pay Commission
By Khabrein.Info Correspondent,

New Delhi, Oct 1, 2008: After talking tough AK Antony has played down differences with armed forces on 6t Pay Commission recommendations.

Earlier in the eye of increasing belligerence by the government over the issue of anomalies in the sixth pay commission recommendations, Antony had warned forces chiefs of announcing pay rise from Defence ministry if they don’t make the announcement in this regard.

But this step was the last one and was coupled with the announcement to form a three member committee to look into the issue of anomalies in army officers’ pay viz a viz civilian officers.

Defence Minister AK Antony playing down the differences with armed forces chief on the issue of sixth pay commission implementation said that there was no difference.

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Govt. employees in J&K to get Sixth Pay Commission benefits

By Khabrein.Info Correspondent

New Delhi, Oct 1, 2008: The state government employees in troubled Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) state may be in for some good news soon. Sixth Pay Commission it seems is all set to be implemented in the state that is under virtual siege for the last three months.

The state government has formed a committee to look into the issue of implementation of the sixth pay commission in a state that is under continuous bouts of uprising against India. Both Jammu and Kashmir Valley are under siege due to continuous agitations from two different parties.

In Jammu the issue of land allotted to Shri Amarnath trust stoked fire that continued more than two months.

The agitators not only brought Jammu area to a standstill but were able to block main highway to Kashmir Valley thus imposing an effective blockade of the valley.

The state government of Jammu and Kashmir that was under constant demand to implement the sixth pay commission there has constituted two committees to look into the possibilities of enhancement of retirement age of the state government employees from 58 to 60 years and implementation of 6th Pay commission, sources in the administration told a local news agency. According to the reports, a proposal in State Administrative Council (SAC) meeting of September 24, 2008 for enhancement of retirement age from 58 to 60 and implementation of 6th pay commission for state government employees was to be adopted. However, the decision was put on hold as Youth Federation had submitted a memorandum to the Governor N N Vohra, asking him not to take any final decision in this regard.
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Sixth Pay Commission brings some joy to people’s lives

By Husna Anjum

New Delhi, Oct 1, 2008: Sixth Pay Commission notification has brought some joy to people’s lives. It has made 5.5 million central government employees happy. They say the pay panel recommendations’ implementation could not have come at a more opportune time. It has relieved millions of Government employees from top to the lowest order.

Steep price rise had troubled central government employees like never before. The inflation had eaten into the savings of the most people and most of the people had to fall back on either loans from relatives or from banks at ever increasing rates.

The life was becoming very tough for most of the people who work in the central government enterprises. The cash crunch was affecting most of the families and they were under increasing distress.

Sixth pay commission at least relieves the central government employees in some small ways. The 40 percent arrears that the central government workers will get this month will help them pay their debts and also save a part of the money that comes their way.
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Palin’s debate performance critical

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sarah Palin’s performance in the vice presidential debate Thursday night will determine the course of the last month of the presidential campaign.

If she does OK, the race will continue to be fairly close in the last few weeks, with the outcome still in doubt but Obama holding the advantage.

However, if Palin embarrasses herself and her party and contributes further to the belief that her nomination was a monumental mistake, the presidential race is over and the only remaining question will be the margin of victory.

So far, Palin has come across as unintelligent in interviews, and has been lampooned viciously for that. However, it’s an impression that may not be entirely fair — the more charitable and accurate word may be unknowledgeable. Perfectly smart people will sound stupid if asked to expound on topics they have not studied and thought about, and that seems to be what is happening with Palin.

Time and again, she has shown no real familiarity or comprehension of national or international policy. In fact, her interview with Katie Couric is destined to become political legend. Afterward, one McCain aide tried to explain Palin’s performance in that interview by claiming that Couric had asked Palin “a series of trapdoor questions.”

They weren’t trapdoor questions, they were basic questions, and simply put.

Things got even more absurd this week after a voter in Philadelphia asked Palin whether US forces ought to chase terrorists across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Absolutely, Palin said, thus taking a position identitical to that of Barack Obama and contradicting that of John McCain.

Here’s how the conversation with the voter, Michael Rovito, played out:

“How about the Pakistan situation?” Rovito asked. “What’s your thoughts about that.”

“In Pakistan?” Palin responded.

“What’s going on over there, like Waziristan?”

“It’s working with Zardari to make sure that we’re all working together to stop the guys from coming in over the border,” Palin said. “And we’ll go from there.”

“Waziristan is blowing up,” Rovito replied.

“Yeah, it is,” Palin said. “And the economy there is blowing up, too.”

“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Rovito asked.

“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.

It’s hardly unheard of for a vice presidential candidate to express views different from that of the presidential nominee. Joe Biden has already done so on occasion.

But in a later interview with Palin at his side, McCain claimed it was somehow “gotcha journalism” to have reported Palin’s response. Gotcha journalism, to report accurately a vice presidential nominee’s public response to a voter?

Here’s the interview. Note also how McCain and Palin try to mislead viewers about the nature of the exchange with the voter.

Gwynne Dyer: Workers will be forced to pay for Wall Street's failures

By Gwynne Dyer

This is not the Crash of 1929 revisited, and we are not heading into a second Great Depression. No developed country this time round is going to face the 25 percent unemployment rate that the United States experienced in the 1930s.

"Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay," Lenin said, but it's more complicated than that. They didn't manage to buy themselves out of the Depression, mainly because they didn't know how to use the government (i.e. the taxpayers) to restore credit and confidence. They know now, however, and they can still buy themselves out of this crisis despite the hitch in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday.

President George W. Bush's radio talk last week was all about getting the workers to pay: "When the government asks you to pay for mistakes on Wall Street, it does not seem fair, and I understand that. And if it were possible to let every irresponsible firm on Wall Street fail without affecting you and your family, I would do it. But that is not possible." So we're going to bail Wall Street out with $700 billion of your money.

The bailout legislation was negotiated with bipartisan support––and then the people's elected representatives baulked. Two-thirds of the Republicans in the House voted against it, but the Democrats had the majority to pass it with no Republican support whatsoever. It failed because 94 out of 235 Democrats voted against it too.

Some Republicans argued that they could not support "socialistic" measures like nationalising banks and capping executive salaries, but in most cases that was not their real problem, and it can hardly have been the Democrats' problem. What really drove the House's rejection of the bill was the fact that every member faces re-election in five weeks' time, and the workers (sorry, I mean the voters) don't want to wind up paying for the mistakes of Wall Street's capitalists.

They will be forced to pay in the end, because there's nobody else who can, but the timing is bad right now. All 435 Representatives have their jobs on the line in the elections on November 4, and those in marginal constituencies know that they will be severely punished at the polls if they use the taxpayers' money to bail out Wall Street now. A deluge of e-mails, letters, and calls from outraged voters has made that very clear to them.

After the election will be a different matter, and a bill quite similar to the one that failed this week will probably pass the House then without too much difficulty. There really is a financial crisis, and as soon as their own jobs are safe the politicians will deal with it. Or rather, they will arrange for the "workers" (as Lenin quaintly called them) to deal with it.

In the meantime there will probably be further bank failures and piecemeal government bailouts in many countries, for the "toxic" financial instruments based on subprime mortgages are widely held by banks and other financial institutions around the world. This does not add up to an economic Armageddon, although strenuous efforts are being made in the media to portray it as exactly that.

The stock market can crash (as it did in 1987) without having much effect on the real economy. Bank failures are more serious, but they do not have to entail wider economic disaster either. The business cycle was overdue for a recession anyway, and there is certainly going to be one now, but despite all the apocalyptic talk it hasn't arrived yet.

Even the countries where the housing bubble was biggest and the mortgage lending most reckless, the United States and Great Britain, are not yet technically in a recession. When it does arrive, it will probably be worse than the mild recession of the early 2000s, but maybe not as bad as the recessions of the early 1980s and the early 1990s. It will almost certainly not be as bad as the economic stagnation and runaway inflation of the 1970s, and it will be less bad in the big developing economies than in the developed ones.

As for a rerun of the Dirty Thirties, that is not on the table even in the United States, where deregulation was most extreme and the creation of impenetrably complex financial "derivatives" of doubtful value was most enthusiastic. So you might as well take what entertainment you can from this spectacle of mass folly among the high and the mighty.

The Masters of the Universe have been revealed as naive speculators who believed that property values could only go up. The journalists who preached the blessings of unregulated free markets have been unveiled as blind ideologues at best, and at worst paid propagandists. The response of American politicians at all levels has been pathetic.

It will be unpunished mass folly, of course: these people are not going to lose their homes and end up poor. Most won't even lose their jobs. It takes another old Commie (a pre-Commie, actually) to sum it up. In 1852, Karl Marx wrote: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."

Not the Great Depression, but the Reign of Folly.

Is it a 'bailout'? Is it a 'rescue'? The White House says ...

BAIL·out? RES·cue?

Are President Bush and supporters of his $700 billion plan to deal with the causes of the nation's economic turmoil promoting...

a.) A bailout?

b.) A rescue?

There may be no legal or legislative difference. And for those seeking help -- from individual homeowners trying to make their mortgage payments to Wall Street CEOs -- the description may be irrelevant.

But it is more than a semantic question. And the White House took issue today with the word BAILOUT -- especially when written in headlines and cable TV screen "crawls" in SCREAMING CAPITAL LETTERS.

The concern: It inherently suggests government help for investors whose risky gambles have left them deep in the red.

"It's really unfortunate shorthand for a very complicated issue," said Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto.

"Our critics took the language of a 'bailout for Wall Street,'" he said, and the news media adopted it as the shorthand to describe the administration's aid package.

He insisted, at the daily White House news briefing: "It is not a bailout for Wall Street. It is not a bailout for CEOs."

The word the White House prefers is "rescue."

Certainly, it carries less emotional weight.

As for definitions, here's some help from dictionary.com:

According to dictionary.com:

Bailout: An instance of coming to the rescue, esp. financially: a government bailout of a large company.

Rescue: to free or deliver from confinement, violence, danger, or evil.

So, which is it? A bailout? A rescue? Does it matter?

-- James Gerstenzang