and the reason I have been thinking about this for the past few days is the sorry state of Tourism in India, where every few days we keep hearing about some woman tourist harassed, this was after the young girl Scarlett Keeting got killed in Goa.
And basically it is tough out there even when you know the city and I just wonder how people even come for work and mainly from America, it is Indian ex pats who can return home and then conduct business between the 2 countries and I would not recommend for either black or white Americans to go out and touch the world, since really a lot of places in the world are a pretty tough gig, even the places you think are OK, like Germany, can be a tough gig, let alone places in Asia and elsewhere.
But then Chidanand Rajghatta in the Times of India, has now changed his tune from being a Bush and Musharraf booster to just being a kinda sorta straight reporter for American news for India and for advice to Indians, gave some stats on India tourism and other countries.
And I think he wrote that our tourism here is about 5 million which is pathetic, compared to 80 million for France and in the 50s for America and China.
So those were quite an eye opener, but then I began to think that certainly India can do a lot better, but so can America.
Becoz the 50s are just small potatoes and people still want to visit, but maybe the tourist traps of New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas etc are all tuckered out.
There are still vast areas especially in the South and Mid west that do not get their share and it is a pity that roads like the 1 -49 north of Shreveport are taking so much time to get built and even down South there is such a complicated road system, except for short stretches.
And it occurred to me that America hasnt realized that a) the energy crises is not going away
b) there is no energy fix and c) other countries including India and China are busy corralling big blocks of energy resources in Africa and Russian Bloc or Central Asian countries.
So America has not made her resources and infrastructure fit the people who dont just wanna get in their car and drive to a vacation spot or take a plane to it, especially since many vacation spots like say the Louisiana plantations or in Georgia or Mississippi or Rio Doso in New Mexico are not exactly plane friendly.
Plus you need a car when you get there and plus even if planes go or to places like Bemidji in Minnesota, you have to wait hours for connections and then ride those dinky planes which scare the heck out of you.
So even for the domestic industry, lack of tour buses, trains and good main artery roads deter good tourist traffic to a lot of places which could use the industry.
With the sad fall of New Orleans, Louisiana is really feeling the pinch, but a lot of other places which are still functional just wont get the business, becoz first of all nobody even knows they are there and if they did, nobody for instance in New York wanna go down there to drive.
On top of which, the slightly paranoid culture is another deterrent, like in the 80s classic movie about a couple of New Jersey boys and the New Jersey lawyer who set them free and his sexy Brooklyn talking girlfriend. I know the movie, but right now all the names escape me. The weirdness of many places in the South and Mid west and especially the fear of weirdo law enforcement can be a real deterrent to tourist dollars getting there.
And America's economic crisis like its energy crunch is not gonna go away with a bunch of wishes.
And domestic tourism is just a little bit, but mainly it is re allocating money that is already in the country.
In the end, what they have to do is attract a lot more money and it has to be from Overseas and for that they have to stop thinking about Foreign people as potential immigrants and start thinking of Foreign people as customers.
Universities have already made the switch, but tourist destinations and deep in the heartland both in the South and Mid West have not grokked the reality that somehow they have to be user friendly for Foreign people, who may not just hire a car and drive around.
so that means setting up tours, roads, buses and trains and user friendly food stops and user friendly convenience stops and all of this at the same time as keeping America safe from people who have harmful intentions, just like we have to do in India, we have to keep India safe from nuts and terrorists and in the case of so called friendly nations, spies. smugglers and drug dealers as well.
So it is not going to get less complicated, but a lot has to be done that's all.
Bye bye
Friday, April 4, 2008
was the Hillary Bosnia lie deliberate and what impact will it have
So I should say that when I first heard that Hillary had fibbed about Bosnia, I was pretty dismayed. Oh no, I said, this sounds like their Clinton selective memory and all the bad things we hate about Bush and Cheney.
And of course, it triggered fears the right wing nutso machine would say they had always been liars and had lied about Whitewater and the $5000 check and shredded documents and of course the lie about the health committee which she pretended was just her folks, when it was a bunch of outsiders too and she got scuttled in her own preciousness.
And then we had to defend Clinton male about his precious parsing and his sex which was not sex and then sit through excruciating details while all kinds of annoying right wingers salivated over the details and told us how semen got on to the blue dress and put up with Ken Starr's torturous reaches of fantasy to make it all seem like an impeachable offense.
So it triggered a lot of weird feelings and basically my impulse was there's a bunch of voters gonna vote on this, they are gonna decide.
And then I thought, maybe the chick did mis-remember, maybe she was scared her mad husband was sending her into a war zone rather than a pacified zone, so she recalled her fears rather than the calm, happy reality.
And then Jay Leno said, do ya wanna sleep deprived lady answering the phone at 3 am.
So the lie per se had quite a deterrent effect, although like I said I was not ready to throw my support to Hillary, but thought if people wanted Barack, they should have him, although his untestedness and his babe in the woodness and his inability to articulate a strategy for American defense were quite scary, even before all the weirdness of his pastor and the Hate America gig he was on.
Then lately, in fact after reading Hillary joked about the snipers in Burbank on Jay Leno, a show which will only air here in Mumbai tonite and I may see it tonite or in the re run if any at 3.00 pm tomorrow or Monday, I am not sure, I began to see things differently.
I still feel it is a scary occurrence becoz it triggers a lot of there go the Clintons fibbing again and I was genuinely concerned that she did not know whether she was in sniper territory or calm territory.
Especially since a guy, I think it was someone called Heyman, apparently working for the US through the UN, said, hey, the point of the trip was to show that Bosnia was at peace, that's why we sent the First Lady and even Anderson Cooper said, would they send Sindbad and Sheryl Crow if there were snipers on the tarmac.
But now I think the fib may have been deliberate and the First Lady wants to be sure her war creds are intact, but does not want to invoke her trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, for obvious Bush related reasons, but wants to differentiate herself from the Kumbaya Candidate Barry Obama.
Because his babe in the woodness and his feeling we will all just get along is just as scary as McCain's warrior impulse, even with all the problems in Iraq and around the world, but somehow, America is going to have to deal with being a guarantor of world safety, preferably with the ability to bring other people along.
This is not to say people are longing to go to war, although George Clooney may want us to in Darfur and some guy in an op ed wrote some scary stuff about 3 days ammo and a bunch of bombing sorties, which lemme tell ya, if we even think of getting into Sudan, will make Mogadishu look like a happy memory or a mild blip.
We do not want the Chinese triads and the Sudanese nuts on our case, tell the rebels to make peace and we will help them to get the resources they need. We are not going to get our hands on Sudanese oil by encouraging the rebels to keep fighting and they are the ones who have refused to sign the peace deal.
But in any case, I think Hillary deliberately lied about the snipers and people keep repeating that, it is to show she doesnt mind running into a war zone.
This itself is a differentiation from the Kumbaya Barry Obama and I think it may make a difference in the places she hopes.
We'll see.
And of course, it triggered fears the right wing nutso machine would say they had always been liars and had lied about Whitewater and the $5000 check and shredded documents and of course the lie about the health committee which she pretended was just her folks, when it was a bunch of outsiders too and she got scuttled in her own preciousness.
And then we had to defend Clinton male about his precious parsing and his sex which was not sex and then sit through excruciating details while all kinds of annoying right wingers salivated over the details and told us how semen got on to the blue dress and put up with Ken Starr's torturous reaches of fantasy to make it all seem like an impeachable offense.
So it triggered a lot of weird feelings and basically my impulse was there's a bunch of voters gonna vote on this, they are gonna decide.
And then I thought, maybe the chick did mis-remember, maybe she was scared her mad husband was sending her into a war zone rather than a pacified zone, so she recalled her fears rather than the calm, happy reality.
And then Jay Leno said, do ya wanna sleep deprived lady answering the phone at 3 am.
So the lie per se had quite a deterrent effect, although like I said I was not ready to throw my support to Hillary, but thought if people wanted Barack, they should have him, although his untestedness and his babe in the woodness and his inability to articulate a strategy for American defense were quite scary, even before all the weirdness of his pastor and the Hate America gig he was on.
Then lately, in fact after reading Hillary joked about the snipers in Burbank on Jay Leno, a show which will only air here in Mumbai tonite and I may see it tonite or in the re run if any at 3.00 pm tomorrow or Monday, I am not sure, I began to see things differently.
I still feel it is a scary occurrence becoz it triggers a lot of there go the Clintons fibbing again and I was genuinely concerned that she did not know whether she was in sniper territory or calm territory.
Especially since a guy, I think it was someone called Heyman, apparently working for the US through the UN, said, hey, the point of the trip was to show that Bosnia was at peace, that's why we sent the First Lady and even Anderson Cooper said, would they send Sindbad and Sheryl Crow if there were snipers on the tarmac.
But now I think the fib may have been deliberate and the First Lady wants to be sure her war creds are intact, but does not want to invoke her trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, for obvious Bush related reasons, but wants to differentiate herself from the Kumbaya Candidate Barry Obama.
Because his babe in the woodness and his feeling we will all just get along is just as scary as McCain's warrior impulse, even with all the problems in Iraq and around the world, but somehow, America is going to have to deal with being a guarantor of world safety, preferably with the ability to bring other people along.
This is not to say people are longing to go to war, although George Clooney may want us to in Darfur and some guy in an op ed wrote some scary stuff about 3 days ammo and a bunch of bombing sorties, which lemme tell ya, if we even think of getting into Sudan, will make Mogadishu look like a happy memory or a mild blip.
We do not want the Chinese triads and the Sudanese nuts on our case, tell the rebels to make peace and we will help them to get the resources they need. We are not going to get our hands on Sudanese oil by encouraging the rebels to keep fighting and they are the ones who have refused to sign the peace deal.
But in any case, I think Hillary deliberately lied about the snipers and people keep repeating that, it is to show she doesnt mind running into a war zone.
This itself is a differentiation from the Kumbaya Barry Obama and I think it may make a difference in the places she hopes.
We'll see.
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