Appropiate punishment

I have been following the Chinese Melamine in Milk scandal and wondering what would be an appropriate punishment for those who in their greed for fast profits caused kidney failures in infants. I would say force them to donate a kidney each (for those convicted shoot them and take both kidneys) or even more appropriately ; since adult kidneys cant be grafted on the infant victims, take the kidneys of the culprits' children. Let them use their ill-gotten profits to keep their children on dialysis for life. As you can tell THIS makes me very very angry.

Credit bailout and the nuclear deal

For those worried about Congress not having 30 days to vote on the nuclear deal hurray for the credit crisis. Congress may now stay on to pass the bailout law and that just might make it 30 days for the nuclear deal to get an up or down vote without amendments. Now the clincher for the conspiracy theorists - Did Westinghouse trigger the credit crisis?

How about a really modern Pentathlon?

The olympics are on and sports are on my mind. I find the Modern Pentathlon very interesting. Its origin is in the ancient pentathlon when competitors had to run,wrestle,long jump and throw a discuss and a javelin ; all skills needed by a Greek soldier. The modern pentathlon was created to test skills needed by a 20th century cavalry soldier behind enemy lines - fight with sword (epee fencing), pistol, ride an unfamiliar horse, swim and run cross country. Now while running and shooting are still essential skills for a soldier cant say the same about horse riding and fencing. How about a really modern pentathlon which would consist of cross country running with stops in between to shoot at targets ( you can take all the time you want to shoot but your clock on the run is ticking). This could be preceded by a 200 m snorkelling event ( sneaking up under water is something a modern soldier will prefer to swimming in). This could be preceded by a parachuting contest where you are judged on your accuracy in landing and the final event could be testing your skill at unarmed comabat - Judo, wrestling or Karate (choose one). So the complete sequence would be you jump out of a plane and maneovour your chute to land on a bullseye in the stadium. You then snorkel 200 m with penalties for surfacing. Based on these two events the next day you get your starting times in the cross country race cum shooting event ( the shooting could be sniper rifle or rapid fire pistol) Based on your ending times you get grouped into pairs for Judo so that 1 and 2 fight for the gold, 3 and 4 fight for the bronze and so on). If we want a heptathlon we could add Shotput to simulate throwing grenades and a separate rifle event to simulate sniping and have pistols in the cross country event.

Why China should build nuclear ships

That is Nuclear cargo ships. Its really simple when oil was 20$ a barrel the cost of shipping a container from Shanghai to the east coast was 3000 dollars but with oil at 120$ a barrel the cost has gone up to 8000 dollars (its not a direct multiple as ships have slowed down to save oil. So freight costs are not as high as they would be at the old speeds but the shipping times are higher and those costs do show up in other places like the cost of carrying inventory) In fact cost of shipping has gone up by so much that US steel made from Brazilian Ore in Pittsburgh at 40$ an hour labor is now cost competitive with steel made from ore exported from Brazil to China, processed at 1$ an hour and reimported to USA. As a result manufacturing has started to switch back to USA with furniture factories opening everyday in North Carolina. So how does this relate to Nuclear cargo ships like the ill fated NS Savannah? Well Nuclear cargo ships as the name suggests do not use oil and instead have nuclear reactors ala aircraft carriers. Now the NS Savannah when run in the 60s and 70s never saw a profit but that was the age of cheap oil and lax environmental regulations on oil ships. Also the Savannah was built as a goodwill demonstrator with of all things 10 passenger cabins and a swimming pool ( a swimming pool on a freighter?) Also the oil ships of the time could discharge their dirty ballast into harbors and did not have to use separate bunkers for low sulphur diesel when operating in port. In todays regulatory environment with high oil costs a nuclear cargo ship starts to look very nice. It could even be run at around 5000 dollars to ship a container from Shanghai to the east coast or even at 8000 dollars but in half the time ( unlike oil ships who are limited in their range and speed by the oil they can carry for nuclear ships all the fuel they will need for 30 years is put in at manufacture) by running much faster. That would mean it would still be economical for Walmart to import everything from across the world than to buy from local manufacturers even in an age of expensive oil. Hence I predict China building their own Nuclear cargo ships soon and also expect a loud outcry from so called US environmentalists(trade protectionists in disguise) against allowing Nuclear ships into US harbors (not that it will be so effective all China has to do is offload at Mexican ports and ship the rest of the way by train along the Trans Texas corridor)

The great petrol boondongle

Recently India has been abuzz with how the Oil Marketing companies are making huge losses and petrol prices need to be revised. I say hogwash. Lets look at petrol prices in USA a country which gives no subsidies on gas and has both federal and state government taxes. Gasoline (petrol as we call it in India) is 4 dollars a gallon. A gallon is 3.785 litres so its roughly 1.05 dollars a liter which works out to 44 Rupees a litre at 42 rupees to a dollar. So if gas with no subsidies can sell at 44 rupees in USA why does it need to be sold at 71 rupees (according to our great oil minister) to break even for the Oil Marketing companies. Just how inefficient are our OMCs? Actually Oil should cost even lesser in India than in USA for a variety of reasons. Firstly we are closer to the middle east so we spend less on hauling the crude here. Secondly we have much more modern refineries than the US which hasnt built a new refinery in 30 years. Our refineries can process Sour Crude (high sulfur crude) which is 10-15$ cheaper per barrel than the sweet crude price the government keeps talking about. Thirdly our environment standards are much lower than the US so our refiners can refine the oil much more cheaply. Fifthly we have cheap labor and thus our refiners run much cheaper. In fact India is one of the largest exporters of refined oil products - petrol and diesel in the region. Also with prices cheaper than us the US government uses their gas taxes to provide 6 lane elevated super highways with no toll. Just what do we get for our gas taxes? Any decent road is tolled (Roads within cities are paid through municipal taxes so are a separate issue). So just why is our gas price so high? Lets look at taxes. The Us imposes a federal 15 cent tax for building highways and various states impose a state tax which averages to 21 cent a gallon. So without taxes a US gallon is 3.74 dollars a gallon working out to 42 rupees a liter and the taxes are 2 rupees a liter. Now lets look at how much tax our Indian government imposes The central government imposes 14 rupees of Excise. The State Government impose 13 rupees of sales tax. This is before the highway building cess whish is just 60 paise a liter. So this means the Oil companies get around 23 rupees out of 50 rupees so they have a loss of around 10 rupees per liter (not 19 rupees as Indian petrol's production costs are roughly 33 rupees a liter not 42 for the reasons given above) So the OMCs are making a 10 rupee loss but the OMCs are owned by the central government so they take 14 rupees excise and pay 10 rupees of that to the Oil marketing companies as subsidy and are still left with 4 rupees profit. But the real culprits here are the state governments who do not give us anything in return for the 13 rupees they collect as excise. Thus all this moaning and groaning from the OMCs about underrecoveries is just bull. And the moaning and groaning from the state governments is even worse its hypocritic bull.

Should India own the Indian Ocean?

Read an article today on the collapse of the wild Tuna stocks and what struck me was that while fishing in the Mediterrenean is strictly regulated most of the Spanish and French catch is from the Indian Ocean and overfishing is leading to collapse. maybe India and Australia need to team up and make the Indian Ocean off limits for fishing for all but Indian Ocean Littoral states. I mean how would Canada react to an Indian trawler in the Grand Banks taking in unregulated Cod? Another case for a Blue Water Indian Navy

India invades the Gulf - A possible solution

Currently the Gulf economies are booming on the back of high oil prices and cheap labor provided by South Asians. The economies of India and China are growing at very fast rates and need more and more oil. China like the USA is also a big producer of oil so they are not so much at the mercy of the Gulf states but India which imports almost 90% of its crude is getting desperate. At the same time most jobs in the Gulf are done by Indians, Pakistanis and other third world nationals. In such a scenario an invasion of the gulf becomes very likely. This post sets out the scenario
December 2008 - The US elections have happened and Obama has won. Bush knows that Obama will do a quick and dirty pullout from Iraq and Afghanistan so he is desperately looking for a partner to stabilize the Middle East before the US needs to leave. He contacts the Indian government and proposes to immediately implement the Nuclear deal without any safeguards or conditions on what India does with the Uranium the US supplies. In return he wants India to send peacekeeping forces to Iraq to takeover from the American soldiers.
The Congress government knows its going to lose the next election in a few months time in any case so it doesnt care what their communist coalition partners say anymore. India agrees to send 3 regiments but negotiates for a few more thing. One US ignores Indian Air Strikes on terrorist training camps in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. This action guts out the cross border insurgency and frees up the regiments for deployment. Second India is allowed to buy the US carrier Kitty Hawk as is with all weapons systems for immediate deployment to the Gulf ( the Kitty Hawk is due for replacement in 2010 in the US navy). Indian troops are at first greeted with a cold shoulder as being American stooges but soon get control of the country. In this they are helped by their long experience in counter-insurgency and their willingness to take casualties to prevent collateral damage - e.g. when fired upon from a Mosque American troops would normally call in an airstrike on the Mosque but Indian troops send in commandos and clear out the insurgents even if that means taking Indian casualties. The troops infact dont use APCs or Helicopters at all within 3 months.
Mar 2009 US troops have withdrawn from Iraq and the Kitty Hawk is on station in the Gulf now with an Indian crew. Things have started to quite down and Indian Army contingents are giving R&R holidays to their soldiers who use it to mostly visit Dubai for shopping. While on such a vacation Indian Soldiers in Mufti (civilian dress) are subject to racist treatment from Arabs who are used to having Indians and Pakistanis do menial jobs in the Emirates. One such incident escalates with an Arab Teenager running over an Indian Soldier with his SUV. The soldier is well liked in the Indian Army and was a receiver of the Param Vir Chakra for actions in Mosul just the previous month. Indian army lodges a protest and quitely puts in a policy of all groups on Indian soldiers on R&R having at least one English Speaking officer with the soldiers and allows the Officer to keep his personal sidearm with him when in the Emirates. Emirates protests and tries to stop the weapons but bows to US pressure. Further incidents happen and finally lead up to an Indian officer shooting a Saudi bigot . The officer is arrested and Emirates hands him over to the Saudis. The Indian contingent in Iraq launches a cross border commando raid and rescues the officer leaving 18 Saudis dead. The Saudis try to retaliate against Indian and Pakistani workers in the Kingdom by cancelling everyone's visa and rounding them up in deportation camps. Emirates, Kuwait follow suit. In the roundups over a 100 workers are killed (these workers have gone into debt to buy visas to the Gulf and are not willing to leave without earning back their money). Most of the workers illed are Muslims from Kerala and Andhra Pradesh and it becomes an election issue. The Congress government wants to project an image of protecting Muslims and asks the Indian contingent in Iraq to immediately carry out some punitive raids against the Saudi holding facilities. The raids escalate due to Saudis launching F16s against the INS Ashoka (the erstwhile Kitty Hawk). Indian pilots are much better trained and equipped with Su 31 MKI naval variants. The cream of the Saudi and UAE airforce is soon resting at the botom of the Arabian Sea. Meanwhile Saudi and UAE economies are in total chaos. Everything from Oil Drilling to McDonalds to the Sewage System in these countries was being run by Expats who have either been rounded up or left the country due to fears of war. Their society collapses and reverts to Bedounism. The Indian Army sends in more Regiments on the INS Jalashva which is the erstwhile USS Trebton and these land on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia and proceed to immediately capture Mecca and Medina and declare them International Religious cities where any Muslim from anywhere in the world can visit without visas. To avoid hurting Muslim sensibilities the Indian regiments sent are the Grenadiers and J&K Rifles - regiments made up mostly of Indian Muslims and the action is portrayed as a liberation of Holy Muslim sites from a regime gone crazy. Soon India is in Control of Iraq , Kuwait, the Gulf States and the Red Sea and Persian Gulf coastlines of Saudi Arabia. Oil production is boosted up with a massive influx of workers from India and Pakistan. In order to keep the Pakistanis happy India hands over control of the Islamic protecterate of the Hijaz to the Pakistanis . The Pakistanis are more than happy to share the spoils as they are tired of the racist Arabs themselves. As South Asian workers can work in Saudi now without having to tolerate racism and a parasite class of Arabs production and efficiency takes off. India and Pakistan along with the US get first dibs on the oil generated. A democracy is established in the UAE and Kuwait with citizenship based on 5 years of residency. This leads to an Indian majority population which votes in a pro-India government. Meanwhile the Indian soldiers' rescues of the South Asian workers have led to an increase in South Asian solidarity and talks proceed on softening SAARC borders, unifying to a single currency the Rupee (replacing the Indian, Pakistani , Nepali and Sri Lankan Rupee, the bagladeshi Taka ) The new UAE government joins SAARC and votes in favour of joining the South Asian Union. The economies of the region freed up off their shortage of oil and with a labor intensive Oil industry available to absorb the excess working population, take off and are soon growing at China beating rates. The west is happy to get their oil from a democracy as well as the rapprochment of India and Pakistan thus removing a Nuclear flashpoint. China on the other hand is not so happy at losing its allies Pakistan, Nepal (the Nepali communists are voted out when they try to avoid joining the South Asian Union and visa free access to UAE jobs) and Myanmar who have reacted to the air raids with the better part of valor and joined the South Asian Union. China starts trying to stir things up with Iran and Afghanistan (they utilize their conduits with the Mujaheddin from the Soviet occupation days). India and US react by declaring they are for the peacefull independence of Tibet, East Turkestan and Inner Mongolia and start funding of radical separetist groups in these territories.

This scenario to be continued in the fall of the Chinese Empire scenario where China gets reduced to China proper without its colonies in Tibet, Mongolia, Yunnan.

Please feel free to comment on problems you see with this scenario.