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The Real Reason For Obama's Trip To India: The Sixth Biggest Arms Deal In U.S. History, Business Insider , Nov. 6, 2010,
Reuters reports that "On the agenda will be lucrative defense ties. The United States has held more military exercises with India in the past year than any other country, and U.S. firms Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp are bidding for a $11 billion deal for 126 fighter jets."
FRANCE 24 , 11/6/10,
"The list of various deals for military aircraft, artillery guns and other equipment currently being negotiated is a long one, "Ten Boeing C-17 aircraft. Four more P-8I aircraft. Possibly six more C-130 J aircraft. The F/A-18 Super Hornet and the F-16 are being offered to India in the MMRCA jet fighters tender .
India, which has become the world's largest arms importer contains one third of the world's extreme poor. The World Bank recently estimated that 456 million Indians (41.6% of the total Indian population) live under the global poverty line of US$ 1.25 per day.
With this sales trip, did Obama tacitly underwrite the continuing annual death of millions from starvation and malnutrition caused disease? No mention by media covering the president's economic boosting ideas for India of a yearly holocaust for more than two million children.
For many years in a row, Indian governments have not slowed the rate of starvation. The millions suffering chronic malnutrition, disease and slow death are awarded insufficient charity, not given the chance to feed themselves through access to land and resources enclosed.
As to the insufficient charity, India has had a surplus of grain since its highly touted 'Green Revolution' which is said to have made India's recent economic takeoff possible. Its just a question of priorities. Exported grain brings the exporter financial gain.
The starvation of millions over so many years, under the formal (or pseudo) democracy of huge India cannot be excused as unintended, or accidental or attributed to merciless forces of Nature. No! Nature has provided the wherewithal in resources for there to be no starving. And these resources have been stolen from these people, to make money and buy, among other luxuries, weapons of mass destruction.
Death from food privation in India over the same number of years that the Holocaust was perpetrated exceeds the six million figure of the Jews who perished, and is possibly greater than the more inclusive figure of eleven to seventeen million European citizens murdered in systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany.
Within India's capitalist parliamentary political economy, private profit takes precedence over life itself. Possibly Obama is understanding of this. He has frequently said that capitalism is overall the best system for the U.S.
On this trip he found it important to announced that he supports "India's rise as a global power." By his administration's 2009 agreement on lucrative nuclear technology transfer to India, Obama okays a deal that does not require India to restrict the number of nuclear weapons it plans to produce.
Starving children? They just don't figure into international business.
As a polite guest of state Obama describes his host, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as "one of the most extraordinary leaders I have met," In the eyes of a billion Indians, Prime Minister Singh, serving in such an critically important position, must indeed be seen as extraordinary in one way or another.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LI11Df02.html
Manmohan opts for the poor to starve
By Raja Murthy, Asia Times , 9/11/10
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