PLAThe Egyptians have Mirages, F16’s and can buy anything. Yet they opted for K8… Same story about fc1… Let those ruskies say what they want. They are expensive. But will deliver avionics…
PLAI find the JSF deal somewhat strange. OK, the US will make a nice plane. I do believe that. But do you know that nothing can be altered or maintained without US personel? And that the JSF will be downgraded for export? And the US is protecting its own industry in this project? Sounds fishy to me.
PLAMKI is also a fine plane. But I think US sees China as the major threat. Kind of Mc Arthur reaction… No brains and big mouth. A person that wanted to nuke every city in China. Neo-conservatism is a threat. Not China. That i swhy US is doing nice to India (deliveries via Israel).
PLAMKI is also a fine plane. But I think US sees China as the major threat. Kind of Mc Arthur reaction… No brains and big mouth. A person that wanted to nuke every city in China. Neo-conservatism is a threat. Not China. That i swhy US is doing nice to India (deliveries via Israel).
PLAThe real reason is that the government is not responsible for braking of human rights if they hire “private” firms.
PLAIn that respect I agree with Erez. We do not use mini digital servo´s or optimized digital circuit. It is all plug and play stuff. And those very light cells… They are a pain in the … Not good enough for hobby. And reloading those is even more a cry… The capacity isn´t that huge yet so using them for up to one hour…
PLAThanks Crobato.
Look. The mig21f is smaller and agile compared to a more powerful and bigger nose Bis. Since the mig21 is very small and it is wrong to make a light fighter bigger and heavier even if compensated with thrust. It is the same logic of turning F16 into heavy bomber… It is possible… But at what cost? The mig21 was just a wraparound the powerful engine. There is no space for pilot. There is no space for decent avionic set. And it is not developed to be a very potent a2g… So maybe with updates it can be improved… But is stays a very light and agile fighter. Don’t make that mistake like Hitler did. M262 as a bomber…
PLAOriginally posted by milavia
I think both the Block 60 and the Su-30MKI are both overrated and sources full of bias, so it is quite an interesting but difficult comparison.
Totally agree. If emotion comes the biggest factor in discussion then it is over. Just look at personal attacks. Do we actually talking about planes? I don’t think so. Thanks Milavia.
PLAMirage: nukes are dirty buss… Even for India…
here:
Nuclear curbs
Dr S M Rahman
The persecution of the Gladiators-Christians – deemed ‘lowly’ by the Romans was an entertainment for the elite. The Gladiators had to fight the wild animals for the delight of the spectators, where the applause was for the victory of the wild beasts, not for the humans. Most Gladiators fell, a few survived. Their survival was not relished. A similar game is on in the nuclear coliseum. The Muslim nuclear Gladiators-probable ones-like Libya and Iran have fallen; Pakistan the real one is on its feet yet. Will it be slain or mere curb will do?
George Bush has provided this entertainment to his prospective voters in the forthcoming presidential elections on November 9, 2004. Routing Afghanistan through daisy cutters and all other state-of-the-art weapons, total rupture of Iraq along with successfully intimidating Libya and Iran to abandon their nuclear programmes and coercively making them agree to surveillance by the UN agencies have served as morale booster for the gullible US public, which reportedly has gone to raise his popularity curve. Such are the sports the big nations play, ironically ignoring all the rhetoric and over-trumpeted values of sovereignty, equality, justice and human rights. All these are reduced to airy nothing. No order prevails in the unipolar world, except what the super lord wills.
The propaganda blitz is against Pakistan’s nuclear thievery and proliferation through international black marketing and more specifically slings and arrows are targeting Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan who is considered the main pillar of Pakistan’s nuclear edifice. He made them very angry. Why Pakistan? The whole nuclear gambit is fraud. There has never been and perhaps never will be any moral substance in the making of nuclear weapons. Deception and deceit was the midwife in the birth of the monstrous weapon called ‘atomic bomb’. The sane advice was given by Einstein and Bertrand Russell not to make the bomb. “Remember your humanity” they counseled, but to no avail. According to Nobel Laureate Rotblat, the nuclear age was “conceived in secrecy and usurped even before birth by one state in order to gain political dominance.”
USA’s justification for making the nuclear bomb was that the Nazis were about to make one. This was based on lies, no different from the recent attacks on Iraq, on the concocted allegation that it was developing WMDs, now so blatantly exposed to the world. Both Blair and Bush are pitted against the global conscience. It was in the knowledge of USA that the Nazis had abandoned their nuclear programme. What is even more ironical is that despite knowing that the King of Japan was willing to sign the document of surrender, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to be nuked. An example was to be set that any nation daring defy USA would meet the similar fate. The message was for the erstwhile USSR, which was, by then not a nuclear power. Setting examples is the obsessive strategic compulsion on the part of USA.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was also threatened by Henry Kissinger that an example would be made of him if he embarked upon nuclear programme to augment Pakistan’s security. By not heeding to the warning he had to go to the gallows. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who allegedly passed on atomic secrets to the then Soviet Union, were executed even though clemency appeals were made by Einstein and the Pope. The crime was not of the magnitude to warrant death sentences, as the secret they had passed on could not have contributed to the making of the bomb. Eisenhower, the then President of US rejected the appeal and ordered their execution on the ground that it would be an example to deter the rival ‘USSR’ from espionage activities. USA did not spare Oppenheimer, the father of its own atomic bomb and he was immensely humiliated and dubbed a security risk. The fault was that he had opposed the making of hydrogen bomb, which his compliant subordinate, the nuclear scientist Teller had agreed to produce. The Russian nuclear scientist Sakharov on a similar charge was persecuted. Ironically when he died, USA granted him posthumously, the coveted US citizenship. Nuclear villain of one is the hero of the other. President Musharraf cognizing this reality, did not act like Eisenhower.Nuclear non-proliferation is a non-starter. The brutal blow to it was made by the US itself by the rejection of CTBT by its Senate in 1999. Bush administration’s hostility to CTBT also led to its withdrawal from ABM Treaty. The US is no more willing to fulfil its obligation to nuclear disarmament and on the contrary is building its reliance on its nuclear weapons for an indefinite future. It is also spending colossal amount for developing tactical nuclear operational weapons and not mere as deterrence. This callous sensibility does not lend any credibility to convince the world that it is really serious about non-proliferation. Its only abiding concern is Pakistan, which has sneaked into the nuclear club, despite all road blocks, frictions, sanctions, punitive measures and loud-mouthed intimidations.
Eric Margolis in his write up appearing in Toronto Sun, January 11, 2004, makes some very pertinent observations:
“Muslim nations, it appears are the only ones not allowed to possess WMDs. Now that Iraq has been crushed the White House’s next targets clearly are Iran and Pakistan.”
“Israel has sold India advanced nuclear warhead and missile technology.” This statement can be supported by an extract from the book by Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy: ‘By way of Deception’. “One of my assignments, in mid-July 1984, was to escort a group of Indian nuclear scientists who were worried about the threat of the Islamic bomb (Pakistan’s bomb) and had come on a secret mission to Israel to meet with Israeli nuclear experts and exchange information.”
“Whole business is worthy of Alice in wonderland. Who came down form the mountain to ordain that only the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India and Israel are allowed to possess nuclear weapons or sell nuclear technology?”
USA has never reconciled to Pakistan’s emergence as a nuclear power. Seymour Hersh in his writing— ‘On the Nuclear Edge,’-makes some interesting revelations. Gates as an emissary of USA, had come to counsel Pakistan not to seek confrontation with India as it would lead to a nuclear war. “United States”, he said, “had hard evidence that Pakistan had crossed the line and developed nuclear warheads.” The American criticism prompted a bitter protest from President Khan (Ghulam Ishaq Khan). He accused the United States of being “hypocritical in its sudden concern over Pakistan intentions. ‘Now, after the Afghanistan war is over, you are squeezing us, Khan was quoted as telling Gates. You’re telling me what’s going on. Don’t you also know what’s going on in India and Israel? It’s double standard’.” Gates told General Beg “General, our military has war-gamed every conceivable scenario between you and the Indian’s and there is not a single way you win.” He (Beg) was very “Cool” Gates said. Both President Khan and General Beg sought US commitment without success “to reward Pakistan for not using nuclear weapons in case of all-out war with India (1990) by providing a full-scale airlift of conventional arms and ammunition, as had been done to bolster Israel in the early days of the 1973 Mideast war.” It is not hard to decipher USA’s latent objectives.
Disinformation, deceit and lies, were the weapons USA used during the cold war. Ralph Mcghee a career CIA agent, who spent the last few years of his career studying CIA archives; concludes: “The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency. It is the covert action arm of the president’s foreign policy advisers. In that capacity it overthrows or supports foreign governments while reporting ‘intelligence’ justifying those activates. It shapes its intelligence…to support presidential policy. Disinformation is a large part of its covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies.”
Pakistan indeed faces an existential crisis by ruthless intimidations and propaganda orchestrated from all direction, most regrettably from within the Defeatist Brigade as some one characterized it. In the words of Margolis “President Pervez Musharraf, who has been unfailingly responsive to US demands, may soon be asked to place Pakistan’s nuclear weapons under joint US – Pakistani control, a prelude to the total elimination of its nuclear arsenal, scientists, and weapons manufacturing capability”. This shall never be. Pakistan will jealously guard its nuclear prowess.
The writer is Secretary General of FRIENDS.
PLAbigger nose?
PLAUnfortunately we have to wait to see more info but surely it is good. Shalom.
PLAHere is some Indian newspaper reaction about Pakistan and the title…
Article by Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI – Clearing the way for close military ties, resumed sale of defense equipment and millions of dollars in direct economic assistance, United States President George W Bush has lifted the sanctions imposed against Pakistan following the bloodless military coup led by now-President General Pervez Musharraf in October 1999. The move comes a week after US Secretary of State Colin Powell announced in Islamabad that Pakistan’s status was being elevated to that of a major non-NATO ally (MNNA). Sanctions related to Pakistan’s nuclear tests in 1998 have already been lifted.
As a result, India is questioning its own “strategic partnership” with Washington, and many influential Indians are calling US rhetoric hollow and saying it confers no benefits. Some influential Indians even are talking of economic warfare with the US “enemy”.
India is deeply worried, in view of Pakistan’s past belligerence toward New Delhi whenever it was able to establish close military and economic ties with the US. The Sikh-majority Indian state of Punjab and Muslim-majority Kashmir became problem spots for India during the period of close Pakistan-US military ties in the 1980s when they launched a joint campaign to send Soviet troops packing from Afghanistan. Now the US and Pakistan have launched what some in India consider to be another joint jihad, this time against the same jihadis whom they had urged, trained and financed to fight the Soviet infidels in the 1980s. At that time they were referentially called mujahideen, but now the joint jihad has forged even closer ties between Washington and Islamabad.
“There could be problems if Pakistan uses its MMNA tag to put up a price vis-a-vis Indo-Pak issues,” a senior official in India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) told journalists. MEA officials are indicating that New Delhi will formalize its position on Islamabad’s MNNA status only after getting to understand its “behavior pattern” in the aftermath of the US decision.
India’s experience in the context of Pakistan’s Cold War-era alliance with the West under the Baghdad Pact – a defense pact involving Middle Eastern countries from 1954 until 1979 – and its successors, the Central Treaty Organization and the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was no different. Pakistan tried to get help from its allies for its war against India in 1965 and 1971, but without success. Citing these experiences, India’s ministry of external affairs sources said: “The MNNA status is an enabling provision aimed at facilitating defense supplies. We have to see what actually gets delivered.”
Soon after Powell’s announcement, Robert Blake, deputy to US ambassador David C Mulford, had met senior MEA officials, US embassy sources said. Blake is believed to have told officials that Washington considered India as its strategic partner and was committed to further cementing Indo-US ties.
Yet, a lot of confusion and uncertainty has crept into the steadily growing US-India relationship. The fact that India was kept completely in the dark about the latest lifting of sanctions against Pakistan has exposed what New Delhi considers to be the hollowness of claims that India-US ties are strategic in nature.
Busy in their re-election campaign, Indian leaders are trying to show that they are not worried about Pakistan’s major non-NATO ally (MNNA) status. They have even rejected with disdain the suggestion that the US also was willing to consider a MNNA status for India, if it applied for it.
But the more India thinks, the more it gets worried. Pakistan’s MNNA status cannot be simply dismissed as of no great consequence. The worry is, however, not just about how Pakistan will respond and how this will affect India’s relations with the US. The entire gamut of India’s ties with the West, even the policy framework regarding globalization and liberalization of its economy, is coming under scrutiny. The very feasibility of the transfer of Western technology to India – the primary reason why India had decided to open up its economy in the early 1990s – is becoming questionable. Hardly any worthwhile technology transfers have taken place as of yet or are likely to take place in the foreseeable future, despite all the promises and sweet words about so-called strategic ties.
One reason this is cause for serious concern for those espousing pro-globalization policies in the last few years is that from all indications, the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to increase its tally of seats in the parliament this spring. If this happens, the BJP will grow stronger in the governing alliance and its ideological mentor, the Hindu fundamentalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its extended family, called the Sangh Parivar, will come to have a greater say in policy formulation.
The RSS-linked Swadeshi Jagran Manch, with its pronounced anti-globalization views, is waiting in the wings to run India’s economy and foreign relations, something that will not suit the US. The manch believes that the West has been able to maintain its economic pre-eminence by teaching false economics to the developing countries. While some can dismiss leftist and socialist anti-globalization campaigns as of no consequence, they cannot treat the Hindu Right in present-day India with the same contempt.
So the future of US-India ties will depend largely on the election results. RSS-supported economists believe that the world has entered the era of economic warfare with the developed nations and that by kowtowing to the US, India is merely prolonging its status as a developing country. This is also the view of India’s president, missile scientist Dr Abdul Kalam, whom the RSS sponsored for the post of the president, even though he is a Muslim. The ideas expressed in his books – about economic warfare – are very popular in the country.
In a recent write-up, Sangh Parivar’s favorite economist, Bharat Jhunjhunwala, praises Kalam: “President Kalam has placed the objective of India becoming developed by 2020. The Western countries have misled us into believing that we can improve our conditions only by receiving technology and capital from them. A healthy young man will stop playing football if he is told everyday that he is not capable of playing the game. Similarly, the West has told us that we cannot become equal to them and we have meekly accepted their talk. The West has no roadmap for the developing countries becoming “equal” even, say, after hundred years. Their strategy is to keep us locked into the “developing” mode. Dr Kalam has done well to break this hypnosis and proclaim that our objective is to become developed by 2020.”
Whether or not Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani fully understand the implications of Kalam’s 2020 vision, they are crisscrossing the country in the present election campaign propagating his message. “India 2020” has become a BJP slogan. In his book, India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium, Kalam says, “It is not just that the Indian nuclear tests are resented. If tomorrow Indian software export achieves a sizable share in the global market, we should expect different types of reactions.
“Similarly, if India becomes a large exporter of agro-products, various new issues would be raised. Developed countries are setting up non-tariff barriers to trade to deny us the opportunities to reach the developed status. Even a simple analysis of many of these global transactions indicates a much deeper fact: The continuous process of domination over others by a few nations. India has to be prepared to face such selectively targeted actions by more powerful players. What appears to be emerging is new kind of warfare.”
Jhunjhunwala, comments in his column in the pro-government newspaper The Pioneer, considered close to the RSS: “The West has been able to maintain its economic pre-eminence by teaching false economics to us. It has taught that developing countries should increase their exports so that their production comes up to global standards. But increase in exports also means we export more of our resources. We pack our water and soil into the basmati rice and send it for consumption by foreign people. The farmer is being told that selling his water and soil is the route to prosperity. We are exporting larger quantities of our resources at lower prices.
“It never dawns upon us that it is not necessary to export in large quantities to attain global efficiency. Exports in small quantities are sufficient for the purpose, just as one reception is sufficient to establish the beauty of the new bride. The correct route is to produce efficiently, reduce the quantity and increase the price of our exports and consume more of it ourselves. But we have been taught that eating coarse rice ourselves and exporting basmati rice will beget us prosperity. Truly, we should make cartels of our exports like iron ore, tea, coffee and jute and raise their prices like OPEC [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] has done for oil. We should increase our imports, not exports.”
This is consistent with Kalam’s observation that since 1990s the “world has graduated into economic warfare”. Jhunjhunwala continues: “There is need to clearly understand our role in maintaining the strength of the developed countries. The World Bank has pointed out in its Global Development Finance report that the developing countries have become net exporters of capital. Developing countries are buying US Treasury Bills and depositing their money in Western banks in order to hold their forex reserves. Each year they are collectively sending about US$100 billion to the developed countries through this route. Another $100 billion is going through illegal remittances.
“The developed countries are receiving about $200 billion a year through these routes and are making $150 billion worth of FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] in the developing countries. They are net recipients of capital of about $50 billion. They are using their money sent by us to buy our goods. The Reserve Bank of India buys US Treasury bills and Indian businessmen send their incomes abroad through hawala [illegal channels]. The US uses the money to buy our cloth and basmati rice, which we sell cheap in order to increase our export volumes as mentioned earlier.
“At the center of this unholy cycle – of we providing money to our enemy – is our continued buying of US Treasury bills or the dollar-denominated US securities. The US is running a trade deficit of $500 billion a year. The strength of the US and the dollar exists only as long as it can persuade the rest of the world to provide it with capital inflows to this extent. India and China are willing accessories to this US dominance by providing it with money through purchase of US Treasury bills and the like. If we were to stop sending this money to the US, the US would not be able to meet its import bills and the dollar would have to collapse – taking the US economic strength down along with it. That would lead to a totally different world scenario.”
This is hardly the language of strategic partnership with the West that the BJP and the main opposition Congress party have been speaking of in the past decade. Indeed phrases like “economic warfare” and expressions like “enemy” for the West sound ominous coming from the pens of eminent personalities who have no reason to mouth empty rhetoric in the fashion of rabble-rousing politicians. These are deeply thought-out positions taken by responsible thinkers who have the good of India and the developing world at heart.
Even the original architect of India’s globalization policy, the former Congress prime minister P V Narasimha Rao (1991-96) is alarmed at the turn of events. In a recent two-part article in the influential newspaper The Hindu, the octogenarian says: “In point of fact, not much that can be called meaningful has happened after the Cold War to demonstrate that a new era has dawned. One feels a little alarmed about why the expected golden period has not arrived and why the possibility of its appearance is becoming dimmer by the day ? If we are to sustain democracy and development round the globe, there is no alternative to a genuinely multilateral, non-discriminatory, and development-oriented trading system.”
India’s hopes go up in smoke
India’s dream that Bush’s “next steps in the strategic partnership with India” would lead to easier access to US high technology has been dashed. The US placed severe restrictions on transfer of dual-use technologies, which have both civilian and military applications, to India following its 1974 nuclear tests. But In mid-January 2004, Bush and Vajpayee announced the upgrading of the existing “Glide Path” relationship to “Next Steps”. Both leaders heralded it as a new era of cooperation. Curiously, they refused to provide any details. Two months later, as Powell visited India this month, he brought nothing worthwhile with him.
A senior US official stated that “India would receive no substantial technology unless the US was satisfied that India had tightened export controls.” He further insinuated that Indian organizations had re-exported US technology to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s regime, but didn’t provide any evidence to support his allegations. Another senior US official stated that US cooperation in space technology would be “limited to humanitarian and scientific issues … and would not have anything to do with electronic components or space launch vehicles or high-resolution imagery”.
Analyst Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad comments in an article in the Hindustan Times titled “America’s two-timing”: “It’s hypocritical for the US to deny much-needed technology to the peaceful space program of a fellow democracy and a key ally in the ‘War on Terror’, when it has long countenanced transfer of dual-purpose technologies by US corporations to a totalitarian nuclear power like China. China’s People’s Liberation Army obtained satellite and missile technologies – such as encrypted radiation-hardened integrated circuits from Loral, post-boost vehicle technologies from Lockheed, telemetry systems from Motorola and nose-cone technologies from Hughes. Washington had denied permission for export of these very technologies to India following its Pokhran nuclear tests in May 1998.
The greatest disappointment to India has of course been in what is now known as the A Q Khan affair. US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz revealed that Washington acquiesced in Musharraf’s pardon of Khan in return for greater Pakistani cooperation in crushing the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It was after this revelation that Indian intelligence and defense officials stopped wondering why the US had not put enough pressure on Pakistan to call off its test firing of the Shaheen II nuclear missile on March 9, even though it appeared so inconsistent with the mood of bonhomie prevailing in the sub-continent on account of the ongoing peace process and several successful confidence-building measures, including the resumption of cricketing ties after 14 years.
The US has about two months to change its current outlook. Whichever government comes to power in India following the forthcoming elections, it will insist that Washington clarify the meaning of terms like “strategic partnership”, see that Pakistan does not resume its roguish behavior vis-a-vis India and transfer not only dual-use technologies, but even the much-needed defense, space, nuclear and missile technologies to India. The alternative will be strengthening the hands of those who want to take India down a different path.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [email]content@atimes.com[/email] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
This post has been edited by sfhussain on Mar 27 2004, 01:44 PM
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>>>A.Q. Khan says Western governments repeatedly tried to prevent Pakistan from developing a nuclear weapon capability, but they were foiled by the greed of their own companies: “Many suppliers approached us with the details of the machinery and with figures and numbers of instruments and materials … In the true sense of the word, they begged us to purchase their goods. And for the first time the truth of the saying, They will sell their mother for money,’ dawned on me. We purchased whatever we required..
PLAF7pg is just there to hold attackers… Or to guard space around imporant area’s. And it will not be there flying 1 v 1.
PLAErez. With extremely respect to you and Israeli industries. I do fly eletric planes. And builded a few. I am humble but flying a delta with low speed inside small buildings? Maybe I missed a textbook. The US has same builded the same plane but the only difference is the time of flying. Since it is not sailplane I assume the engine is working continuously. Feeding the receiver, mini servo’s or other parts is not energy consuming. Running an engine (certainly unbrushed) for an hour is something new. maybe with with multiple gear options. So take it as a question not as a bashing…
shalom.
PLARe: F-16 v/s SU-30 MKI
Originally posted by xanadu
Well uncle sam has the habit of rewarding bad behaviour when it suits its interests and then repents at lesuire. It has now designated Pakistan as a MNNA inspite of its nuclear proliferation thus enabling it to get the latest goodies -“read latest americian weapons” . This should enable the F- 16 to alnd up in Pak soon enough. Its major opponent is going to be the IAF su-30MKI.
How is the F- 16 going to stack up against the MKI?
Xana… Xana… Can’t stop repeating propaganda based in inferiority complex. One… It hasn’t said it is going to give F16 and two it will not give high tech. But probably some posters are ****ing in their pants with just the imagination.
About Pakistna getting it. Well. Fighting Al Qaida isn’t that easy. And since Pakistan is quite busy doing that why not rewarding it. If you love to hear Israel fighting terrorism then it is ok, but Pakistan different… Sure.
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