By Richard S. Ehrlich

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican's acknowledgment that Catholic priests sexually abused nuns in several countries has sparked outrage and international investigations to stop the reported rapes, pregnancies and abortions which allegedly led to at least one death.

The Jammu road blockade was but a catalyst.for the long simmering desire of a certain section of Kashmiris for azadi ,to surface in the form of a massive march to Muzaffarabad by highly charged participants.It was as much anti India as it was pro Pakistani and for azadi. No kashmiri had died of starvation or due to absence of medicines ;no apple grower had committed suicide as a result of the 3 days blockade.

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill (H. R. 7081) that approves the 123 Agreement, but which is contradictory to the assurance given by the Prime Minister to the nation. An identical version is before the US Senate for voting. Even as late as 26 September 2008, the Prime Minster was seeking an agreement that would 'satisfy India'. This has not come to pass, and it will be interesting to see how the Indian government and the Indian media will 'spin' this into a victory for India. The Indian side is supposed to have been unhappy with the language, but what is worrisome is the content and compulsions of the Bill. Even the title of the Bill, 'United States-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act', makes it clear that they seek to press their non-proliferation agenda. The Bill makes a number of things explicitly clear, and reveals the true colours of the nuclear deal.

The American President is careful not to lie to his Congress – his letter, seeking Congress approval for the Indo-US nuclear deal, stated that assurances of fuel supply to India are not legally binding. The same however cannot be said of the UPA Prime Minister when he addressed Parliament on the issue or of the UPA Chairperson when she spoke to the farmers of Andhra Pradesh about how good the nuclear deal was for India. It is a fact that only Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh have actively pushed for the deal while other heavyweights in the Congress and Congress’ allies in the UPA have only been making polite noises; not opposing the deal but not welcoming it either with the kind of fervour that the UPA Chairperson and Prime Minister have consistently maintained. If anything there is a marked lack of enthusiasm both within the Congress and the UPA over the deal.

Source: http://www.tehelka.com

One faith-based programme that Bush goes gaga about is the prison-based InnerChange Freedom Initiative started by Charles Colson. Incidentally, Colson was one of the characters from the Watergate episode; he spent seven months in prison for obstructing justice in a one of the Watergate cases. "InnerChange is an intensive Bible-centered program, ostensibly open to inmates of all religious persuasions, but every month inmates are evaluated on whether they "demonstrate a belief in Jesus Christ," wrote Robyn E Blumner, perspective columnist of the St Petersburg Times, on September 28, 2003. "Those inmates who fail to show the proper level of piety are removed and lose the special freedoms and privileges dangled before inmates as incentives to participate," he added. Bush introduced InnerChange into the Texas prison system when he was governor. At present it operates in four states and the Bush government subsidises its conversion activities with the American tax-payers' money.

What underlies all this is that the Bush administration's conservative evangelical worldview has proliferated to countries like India. Here the Church and Christian NGOs have been involved for a long time in the provision of voluntary social service. But churches and Christian NGOs in India and the trans-national (read American) faith-based NGOs who have a large presence in India have gleefully responded to the message emanating from the White House. Bush's support for religious conversion has happened on the persuasive power of the dollar. It is safe to say that almost all evangelical organisations in India and non-Catholic churches and the Christian NGOs get their funding from their American patrons or from USAID. These groups, like CARE or World Vision tend to Christian social workers and consciously infuse Christian religiosity as part of the help they provide to socially and economically marginalised communities.