There is, at least from my jaundiced point of view, some hope in the world today, as Delhi's High Court overturns the Indian law declaring same-sex relationships an unnatural act worth ten years imprisonment : Delhi's High Court ruled that the law outlawing homosexual acts was discriminatory and a "violation of fundamental rights". The court said that a statute in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which defines homosexual acts as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" and made them illegal, was an "antithesis of the right to equality". The ruling will inevitably be challenged in such a predominantly homophobic society, as evidenced by the statement of a major Indian mullah: The head cleric of Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, criticised the ruling. "This is absolutely wrong. We will not accept any such law," Ahmed Bukhari told the AFP news agency. What comforts me--and should provide an example for American Christian...

Earlier today I posted that PM Karzai of Afghanistan seeking closer ties with India to the detriment of Pakistan appears to be one of the reasons for the US beginning attempts to oust him. Here's some more meat to that Reuters story, and be sure to note the Iranian connection: KABUL, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai and India's foreign minister opened a new road on Thursday that will help link Afghanistan with a port in Iran and challenge Pakistani dominance of trade routes into the landlocked country. The 220-km (135-mile) road in the southwest Afghan province of Nimroz is the centrepiece of a $1.1 billion Indian reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. It has drawn sniping from Pakistan, worried about its rival's growing influence there. India, denied access through Pakistan, hopes to be able to deliver goods to Afghanistan through the Iranian port of Chahbahar, and this has triggered fears in Pakistan it is being encircled. "This project symbolises Ind...

We're fighting in Afghanistan and along the Pakistani border because it is the front-line of the war on terror, right? That's what President Obama assured us during the campaign, promising renewed attention to the conflict there, and an Iraq-like surge, while his Defense Secretary-to-be Robert Gates was assuring the Afghanis we'd be there for as many years as necessary to end terrorism and complete nation-building. Of course, the fact that we've known for a couple of years that Afghanistan has ten times larger reserves of oil and natural gas than previously reported, or that China is interested in developing them, should we pull out, or even that Coalition military deployments often seem to be more interested in defending a US-financed pipeline than rooting out Al Qaeda are not significant, right? These connections couldn't possibly explain why the Obama administration enters office committed to doubling down in Afghanistan, even if the price is foregoing any Ira...

From AP : NEW DELHI -India rejoiced Saturday at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the country's space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission.... To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China — and now India — have sent missions to the moon. The Indian Space Research Organization [ISRO] has a record that would make (and should) make NASA blush. From India Scribe Spot [fairly long, but worth it]: Why does India, a poor country, want to explore the moon instead of using that money to alleviate poverty? That was the question raised six years ago when India’s space agency ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) asked the government for $65 million to build and launch an unmanned scientific spacecraft to circle the moon.... The project ... will cost $2.2 billion in the first phase to put an Indian in orbit by 2014, and at least twice as much in the second phase to land him or her...

It has been a few months since I checked in on the buzz surrounding the imminent production of the world's cheapest car: Tata Motors Nano--a four-person mini- with a two-cylinder engine and a base price around $2,500. Several items of note: 1) Rising prices are also pushing at Tata Motors; while it will still be the cheapest car in the world, the Nano probably won't stay under $2,500 by the time production ramps up. 2) You won't find the Nano available in America any time soon, according to Auto Observer . The vehicle doesn't have air bags, doesn't meet US crash test requirements, and has an emissions profile equivalent to EU III, which places it about 2-3 years behind what it needs to have to be certified in the US. Tata Motors promises to it EU IV pretty soon, but it will need to get to EU V to be considered for US entry. (And the crash test hurdle may also be overcome soon, as well.) 3) Environmentalists are still up in arms about the Nano, because it will en...

My recent post on Ron Paul v Bob Barr has attracted (as of this writing) 16 comments, which is probably a record of some sort for Delaware Libertarian. This is one of those blogs, according to Google Analytics, that a lot of people read each day, but less than 1% of them every leave comments. This is quite different from a blog like Delawareliberal, where the thread UPDATED III: 43% of Delaware Super Delegates Pledged To Clinton is now up to 287 comments. This is unusual even for DeLib, but posts with 100 or more comments are not. So I began, just for the hell of it, to examine my previous postings to determine just exactly what draws people to this blog, and what causes people to comment. I learned that posts including in the title any of the following--"Ron Paul," "Michelle Obama," the "Tata Nano," or "circumcision"--will draw an unusually high readership and more comments than usual. I think this is because people search those terms fairly ...

A multi-polar world is re-emerging in the aftermath of the Cold War, and that foreign policy reality is far more significant than the war on terror. India, as has been noted here on several occasions, is not only poised to become a major world player in automobile manufacture , but is also pursuing military and nuclear links with Sarkozy's France . The Bush administration response: lecture India on how to deal with Iran. Here's the story from The Australian News (h/t to Sukrit Sabhlok at Thoughts on Freedom) USING uncharacteristically strong language, India last night told the US to butt out and mind its own business after Washington attempted to tell the country how to deal with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he visits New Delhi next week. Ahead of the visit, the first to India by the Iranian leader, a State Department official offered gratuitous advice to India on how to handle him, suggesting that it should take a tough line in pressuring Tehran on the nuclear ...

. . . as seen by a local expert. I can still remember being told by my parents about starving children in India. Later I discovered that India had become agriculturally self-sufficient. Now, while preparing a post on the escalating world food crisis, I found this interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva at Al Jazeera . It's not very long, but it is an interesting perspective.

"May [the Declaration] be to the world, what I believe it will be ... the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government." Thomas Jefferson's last letter written to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 In the chronicles of India's long march to independence people naturally tend to think of Mahatma Gandhi whose provocative use of non-violence brought the British Empire to its knees. But there were many groups advocating for Indian independence for a long time, many of them were inspired by the ideals of the American Declaration of Independence, as Gandhi himself was, until on January 26, 1930 Indians declared their independence to the world, led by a movement to end taxation on salt culminating on the march to Dandi . Our guest post today is an article by Mr.B. S. Prakash the Consul General of India in San Francisco an...

Regular readers will recall that a month ago I emphasized the importance of Nicholas Sarkozy's military and nuclear overtures to India . Now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is getting the US into the game, according to Al Jazeera : Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, has visited India for talks on military deals including a possible $10.2 billion fighter jet purchase.... Earlier this month India agreed to buy six Lockheed Martin military transport planes worth about $1 billion. The deal marked a major shift in military policy for India, which has traditionally looked to Russia for arms and aircraft.... The discussions come despite talks stalling between the two nations on a landmark nuclear co-operation deal which would reverse decades of US anti-proliferation policy with a nation that has tested nuclear weapons and refused to sign non-proliferation treaties. The agreement permits the US to send nuclear fuel and technology to India, which in turn would separate its military ...

...apparently to beat your damn head in. Wired has this hand-wringing report that all the environmentalists and economists are all worried about the potential mass sales of India's new $2,500-car, the Tata Nano. The Nano doesn't go on sale until fall, but already environmentalists say it will bring big increases in carbon dioxide emissions and pollution. "This car promises to be an environmental disaster of substantial proportions," Yale environmental law professor Daniel Esty told Newsweek. Some energy experts say all those new cars will increase demand for gasoline, with one telling CNN, "we'll get into a situation where we'll have to compete with them for gasoline, $4, $5 a gallon. Who knows how high we could go?" It would be easy to denounce the naysayers as western do-gooders with no moral standing to criticize India. But the most vocal critics include Indians who say the Nano will deepen the country's critical pollution, infrastructure and...

Regular readers will recall my treatment of the Franco-Chinese relationship that emerged under Jaques Chirac and continues full throttle with Nicholas Sarkozy at the helm. Today Sarkozy is in India, cementing a deal to bring India into compliance with the International Atomic Energy Agency (making the country eligible to purchase fuel and reactor technology more freely) and to strengthen France's existing position as a military supplier to India. From Al-Jazeera : France and India have completed negotiations on a civilian nuclear technology agreement, the two leaders said, but Sarkozy said the deal depends on India concluding its own agreement on nuclear safeguards with the IAEA. India's booming economy is desperate for energy, and such deals would allow the country to buy nuclear fuels and reactors. They would also bring India into the nuclear mainstream after decades of its isolation due to its refusal to sign non-proliferation treaties and its testing of nuclear weapons.....

Regular readers are aware that I have been posting a lot on India's automobile industry, which has led me to a lot of interesting places, including the discovery of at least one Indian libertarian (small-L but that's something) leaning blog: Freedom Noodles : "Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all." Doesn't post as often as you'd like (maybe once a month by a quick scan of the archives), but is interesting when it does. Check out Women and Self Defense : Yet another shocking incident of molestation in Mumbai has been in the news this year. The response and the advise give to women is predictable - curb your own freedom. Don't go out. Don't talk to strangers. Don't wear revealing clothes. I an earlier post, I had talked about why I am against this kind of approach and instead suggested Self Defense as the simple solution. I got comments about it not being a long term approach that does not cut the problem at it's roots. Worth ...

No, India's Tata Motors is NOT exporting the new $2,500-3,000 Nano to America, but you'll be seeing Tata products on US highways by year's end. Chrysler has signed an agreement to have Tata Motors to produce electric min-trucks for the American market : The deal, with the US carmaker's Global Electric Motorcars unit, is for an electric version of Tata's mini truck Ace that would be sold in the United States, the report said. "The battery-operated vehicle has passed required safety and reliability tests, and the prototype is ready for production," it said, adding they will be exported as completely built units. Tata Motors will begin exporting around 10,000 units by year-end, and ramp up to 50,000 units, it said. "We are indeed exploring the feasibility of a vehicle on the Ace platform with an electric engine suitable for the U.S., in collaboration with a U.S. company," a spokesman for Tata Motors told Reuters. "But it is premature at this st...

Trying to follow the story on Tata Motors new "cheap car" [they prefer "peoples' car"] has led me into some interesting places, and a look at a free-for-all if-not-exactly-free market like we normally think of it. You will recall that in perusing Indian news sources I pointed out both the land acquisition problems that Tata was having in regard to its proposed Nano production plant in Singur, and also my discovery that the Indian constitution does not consider property a "fundamental right" any more. So I got hooked on this story and tried to dig a little deeper. It turns out that Tata Motors-- described by the India Times as "a somewhat hidebound company"--is using the occasion of the Nano to completely re-organize its facotry system into "independent production hubs," and has dropped its plans for a Nano plant at Singur, shifting instead to Pantnagar in Uttarakhand. I don't know where any of these places are, which is a majo...

While most of the Net is still inundated with the original announcement of Indian automobile manufacturer Tata's new ultra-cheap Nano (and I can't resist this "why it's so cheap" picture), there is a part of the story that ought to be of far more interest to Libertarians and other Americans. We tend to assume too many similarities to our own culture and customs in other countries. Tata obviously needs a factory at which to churn out the production models of this new mini-box, right? I pick up this story from an Indian blog, Through the Corridors of Uncertainty , which required a fairly strange search pattern to locate. I started looking for it after viewing this picture of farmers burning the Nano in effigy in protest against their land near Singur being sold for the Tata Nano plant. Here's the set-up, from a political insider's point of view: The Singur controversy has attracted a strange set of bedfellows-the Tatas and the Left Government on one side re...

The release of, and controversy over, the new Indian Tata Nano (new car around $3,000, what's not to love?) got me started thinking about global automotive production, global warming, and all that. First I tried to find out about global automobile production, which has changed radically over the past few years, as China, India, and Brazil have surged forward in production. Here's the Top 22 for 2006 (every country that produces more than half a million cars per year): This is a list of countries by automobile production in 2006 mostly based on OICA accessed in September 2007. World/69.257.914 EU/18.887.996 1 Japan 11.484.223 2 US 11.263.986 3 China 7.188.708 4 Germ. 5.819.614 5 S. Korea 3.840.102 6 France 3.169.219 7 Spain 2.777.435 8 Brazil 2.611.034 9 Canada 2.572.292 10 Mexico 2.045.518 11 India 2.019.808 12 UK 1.648.388 13 Russia 1.508.358 14 Italy 1.211.594 15 Thail. 1.194.426 16 Turkey 987.780 17 Belgium 918.056 18 Iran 904.500 19 Cz...