• diary political and General News Events from Feb 2

NIGERIA - Presidential and National Assembly elections.
SUNDAY, APRIL 22
FRANCE - First round of presidential elections.
LONDON - London Marathon. Link: www.london-marathon.co.uk
MONDAY, APRIL 23
BRUSSELS - EU Foreign Ministers Meeting.
STRASBOURG - EU parliament plenary session (to April 26).
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - Court-martial of Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins, a U.S. Marine suspected of being the ringleader in the kidnap and murder of an Iraqi grandfather.
LONDON - British singer George Michael scheduled for trial charged with being unfit to drive.
BERLIN - Lower-level bilateral talks between EU envoys on forging a new EU constitution expected to take place between April 23 and May 4.
TUESDAY, APRIL 24
BRUSSELS - Fraud Europe 2007, a conference dedicated to fraud detection, prevention & investigation/recovery across Europe from both a corporate and regulatory focus.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25
NEW YORK - 6th annual Tribeca Film Festival (to May 6). LINK: www.tribecafilmfestival.com
THURSDAY, APRIL 26
ANKARA - Deadline for candidates to register for Turkey's presidential election.
SATURDAY, APRIL 28
WEST INDIES - SPORT - CRICKET - World Cup Final.
SUNDAY, APRIL 29
MALI - Presidential elections.
MONDAY, APRIL 30
N.IRELAND - Northern Ireland smoking ban comes into effect.
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that Reuters will file a story based on the event. [20070131 163706 GMT]
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Document LBA0000020070131e31v0005v

Indian Entrepreneurs Betting Heavily on Nigeria
Timothy Armitage

261 words

29 January 2007

Global Insight Daily Analysis

WDAN

English

Copyright 2007, Global Insight Limited. All Rights Reserved.
The Indian high commissioner to Nigeria, Harihara Subramaniam Viswanathan, has revealed that Indian entrepreneurs have invested more than US$10 billion in the Nigerian economy over the last seven years. He said he expects to see a spurt of Indian investment in Nigeria's power, rail, petroleum, and agricultural, extending its current presence in Nigeria's textiles, chemicals, electrical equipment, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and fishing industries. Calling Nigeria India's largest African trading partner—with bilateral annual trade turning over more than US$3 billion per annum—Viswanathan pointed to computer components, software services, railways, power generation and electricity transmission, telecommunications, defence, and machine tools as potential growth areas for Indian exports to Nigeria.
Talking about national defence, he promoted the two countries moves to strengthen defence relations, hinting that the Indian government would extend the contract to include supporting the Nigerian police on matters of internal security.Significance: Nigeria and India share strong ties, and the increasing involvement of both India and China is changing the development scene in Nigeria and on the continent. Nigeria, flush with oil revenues and a performing non-oil sector through 2006, a stronger banking and financial sector, and a strong push to develop the country's infrastructure and attract foreign investment, is increasingly seen as a hotbed of potential. Business confidence in Nigeria has improved since President Olusegun Obasanjo took office a little over seven years ago. Nigeria has embarked, albeit slowly, on a path of economic liberalisation to improve its business environment and boost business confidence.
Document WDAN000020070129e31t0002q
Interview: Senator Charles Schumer of New York
4,794 words

28 January 2007

News Forum (WNBC New York)

NWSF

English

(c) Copyright 2007, WNBC. All Rights Reserved.
GABE PRESSMAN, host:
The president of the United States this week appealed to Congress and the American people for one more chance. With the Democrats in control of both Houses for the first time in six years, and New York's junior senator announcing that she's running for the White House, President Bush needs to exercise all his powers of persuasion to get the cooperation of lawmakers. He wants support for his plan to send more troops to Iraq to stabilize the chaotic situation there. He needs people like New York's senior Senator Charles Schumer, who led the Democratic effort to win control of the Senate. Schumer's new book, "Positively American," came out this week. It's a program designed to appeal to middle class Americans and win back the White House for his party in 2008. Schumer accuses his own party of losing touch with its base, the middle class.
Announcer: From NewsChannel 4 HD, this is NEWS FORUM.
PRESSMAN: Good morning, I'm Gabe Pressman.
Senator Charles Schumer, welcome to NEWS FORUM.
Senator CHARLES SCHUMER: Good morning.
PRESSMAN: And congratulations on being the architect of the Senate takeover.
Sen. SCHUMER: Well, I had a good amount of help from a lot of people, so.
PRESSMAN: And you're still pretty close.
Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah. Oh, very close. We want to increase the margin next time. That's one of the reasons I wrote the book.
PRESSMAN: And before we get to the book, and it's right here...
Sen. SCHUMER: Let's hold it up there, Gabe.
PRESSMAN: "Positively American." Senator, President Bush this week warned the joint session of Congress, and you were there, that it would be wrong and dangerous to undercut the new Iraq strategy, the so-called surge.
Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah.
PRESSMAN: Do you agree with that?
Sen. SCHUMER: No, and neither do some of the leading generals. I mean, the surge, more troops might make sense if you had a new strategy behind it. But it's the same old strategy. We're policing a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites, who have hated each other for hundreds of years. And just putting another 20,000 troops there makes no sense whatsoever. So you're going to get on this resolution, this nonbinding resolution, which is only a first step, but you will not only get most every Democrat to vote no, saying the surge is a bad idea, you're going to get close to a majority of the Republicans. You even have John Warner, a leading military expert, leading hawk, hardly a moderate, he's a conservative Republican, saying--leading the resolution, saying the surge is a bad idea.
PRESSMAN: What about the semantics.
Sen. SCHUMER: Escalation.
PRESSMAN: The word escalate, the word augment, the word increasing. Do you favor any one of those words?
Sen. SCHUMER: Well, it is an escalation, there's no question about it, so I guess I used that. The president uses the surge, so I say that so people will know what you're talking about. But it's more troops, that's what it is, and you can call it what you will. To put in more troops, to back a government, Maliki, who A, doesn't want the troops, and he's a loser if there ever was one. He's controlled by this guy, Sadr, who's our enemy. He can't do anything right. Even the execution of Saddam Hussein was totally botched. And we're putting in more troops to defend him? It's a road doomed to failure. And you know, this is not--you're risking the lives of more people now. I am for a strong foreign policy, strong military, but you don't risk lives unless you have a real change in strategy and a hope of winning.
PRESSMAN: The people voted overwhelmingly against a war. Dwight Eisenhower, when he was running for president, said, "I'll take the boys, I'll get the boys home from Korea."
Sen. SCHUMER: He did.
PRESSMAN: And he did.
Sen. SCHUMER: Right.
PRESSMAN: Bobby Kennedy ran for president by advocating getting out of Vietnam.
Sen. SCHUMER: Right.
PRESSMAN: Why are the Democrats so wimpy on this issue? Why don't they simply just say let's bring the troops home today?
Sen. SCHUMER: Well, some have. Senator Kerry, Senator Kennedy. I think the question is not whether they should stay there for a very long time but how do you extricate them in a way that leaves as small a mess as possible? It's going to be a mess, regardless, and if we were to just pull them all up right now, first, the civil war would resume, but as I said, that's not our business. That's what no one bargained that we'd police a civil war. The worry I would have is we got to make sure that al-Qaeda type terrorists don't take root in Iraq and use it as a base the way they used Afghanistan. And that--so our plan, we do have a Democratic plan. It was supported by 39 of the 44 Democratic senators in the last Senate, it'll be supported by most everyone now, which says take out most of the troops quickly and just save enough that can swoop in and do counterterrorism. There's one--you know, if al-Qaeda starts taking root, do that. But don't patrol the streets of Baghdad when there's a war between the Shiites and the Sunnis.
PRESSMAN: So you're against patrolling the streets of Baghdad, and that is precisely what we're now in the process of doing.
Sen. SCHUMER: You know, if we took it on ourselves just to police every civil war around the world, first, we'd have to have a draft and draft everybody from 15 to about 50. And second, the world would hate us for it. That's not our job. To protect ourselves? Yes. When the president initially said, `Well, this is a war on terror,' people--most Americans said we'll go along. It's clearly not anymore. Are there slight pockets of al-Qaeda that could grow into terrorists if we totally left them alone? Yes. But we can deal with that with many fewer troops and them not being in harm's way.
PRESSMAN: One final question on the wimpiness front. Isn't it a fact that...
Sen. SCHUMER: The wimpiness front?
PRESSMAN: Isn't it a fact that...
Sen. SCHUMER: Wasn't he in Popeye?
PRESSMAN: Four years have passed. Isn't it a fact that the Democrats have been wimpy? They've been afraid...
Sen. SCHUMER: I don't think so.
PRESSMAN: ...to take a vigorous stand?
Sen. SCHUMER: I don't think so. I think we have taken a careful stand, it's a balanced stand. It may not be as strong as some people want, but certainly, this resolution--look, for six years, we didn't control the Congress. We couldn't have a hearing in anything. Now we've been in charge a month and a half. George Bush is being asked questions, the military commanders are being asked questions, we're on the path to a resolution.
PRESSMAN: But doesn't leadership require sometimes when you're in the minority to take a stand on what you think is right?
Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah, but we've taken a stand but we couldn't have much effect. We called for most of the troops to be withdrawn within four to six months. We still call for that.
PRESSMAN: In your book, "Positively American," I'd just like to ask you about a few things you said. Your words.
Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah.
PRESSMAN: "Washington Democrats too often took their"--let's see--"cues from interest groups without considering the needs of the average person."
Sen. SCHUMER: Right.
PRESSMAN: What interest groups?
Sen. SCHUMER: Oh, all kinds. Left, right and center. The example I use in there is I came to Washington in 1980. This--that phrase comes from a depiction of 1980. Why did Reagan win? Crime was ripping apart my district. Everyone was in panic. I would put on my--I'd pull my jeans over my pajamas and run downstairs to see if my car was burglarized, it happened so often. And I get to Washington and when I get on the Crime Subcommittee 'cause I want to stop crime, and who is running the Crime Committee? The ACLU. Basically Don Edwards, who was the chairman, a lovely man, former FBI agent from Berkeley, California, gave them a veto power over anything. And the ACLU's view was let a thousand guilty people go free lest you convict one innocent person.
That happens too often. It happens on every issue, even to this day. Democrats and Republicans pay too much attention to interest groups. I wrote this book, Gabe, I wrote the book because I think whoever is able to put a platform together that appeals to the average voter will be the dominant party for the next 25 years and can set America right. And Republicans have--Reagan Republicanism, which was so popular 15 years ago, is gone. But we have to come up with something to replace it and no one's talking about that. People said, `Well, you won the election in 2006,' yes, but we had two words helping us, "George Bush." It was an anti-Bush election. In 2008, Bush will be gone. Unless Democrats can answer this question, `What do you Democrats stand for,' we're not going to win. This book attempts to answer that.
PRESSMAN: Another excerpt from the book, quote, "The overwhelming reason for our victory was that Bush had screwed up."
Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah, I just said that.
PRESSMAN: You just said that. And little more colorful language here.
Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah, yeah.
PRESSMAN: But you feel that you didn't win as much as Bush lost.
Sen. SCHUMER: Well, let's put it like this: We got great candidates who appealed to the middle class. This book, there's a fictional couple in the book called Joe and Eileen Bailey...
PRESSMAN: I know.
Sen. SCHUMER: He's an insurance adjuster, he lives in Massapequa, makes 50,000. Eileen, his wife, works in a medical office, makes about 20, 25,000. They're your typical New York swing voter. They liked Reagan, they liked Clinton and then they liked Bush. Now, they voted for the Democrat. And what I'm saying is we had candidates who appealed to Joe and Eileen. That's how we won. I helped pick them. We had the resources to get the message out. But the message was basically, we're not Bush. We now have to say who we are, and that's why we've proposed 11 goals that the Democratic Party, that all of us should promise the middle class we're going to achieve.
PRESSMAN: Including?
Sen. SCHUMER: Including first, raise our math and reading scores by 50 percent. You can't have mediocre schools when you're competing with Chinese and Indian kids.
PRESSMAN: Right.
Sen. SCHUMER: Cut the property taxes by 50 percent because it's property taxes that tax the middle class. Hey, now how do you deal with that since the schools are funded by the property tax? We say the federal government should actually triple aid to school districts, provided the school district, A, meets standards for the kids and the teachers. And B, freezes the property taxes.
PRESSMAN: Well, there are a couple of examples...
Sen. SCHUMER: Now, here's another thing we have proposed.
PRESSMAN: Yeah.
Sen. SCHUMER: We propose raising illegal--lowering illegal immigration by 50 percent. Each one's a number. That's why we call it the 50 Percent Solution. So the voters can hold us accountable whether we've achieved it or not. And increasing legal immigration by 50 percent. Why? Because we need immigrants in this country. Immigrants are great. But we should have a rational system where we take the people we need, not just whoever crosses the border.
PRESSMAN: OK. We'll be back with United States Senator Charles Schumer after these messages.
(Announcements)
PRESSMAN: And we're back now with New York senior Senator Charles Schumer.
Before we get back to the serious issues, I wanted to ask you a personal question.
Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah.
PRESSMAN: You live with three other guys in a house in Washington.
Sen. SCHUMER: Yes, in Washington, yeah.
PRESSMAN: One of them is Dick Durbin. He's the--he outranks you, right?
Sen. SCHUMER: Right. He's the number two man in the Senate. I'm number three.
PRESSMAN: And you're number three. Does he get special perks?
Sen. SCHUMER: Oh, well, this is interesting. There are two bedrooms in the house and there are four of us, OK? George Millan, he's the landlord, he has the master bedroom. He's never had it. His wife and kids moved out 20--I've lived in that house 24 years.
PRESSMAN: Yeah, I see--I see this picture...
Sen. SCHUMER: There it is.
PRESSMAN: ...from The Times, yeah.
Sen. SCHUMER: Anyway, so he gets one bedroom. Now, when I moved in, I was the junior guy in 1982. But Marty Russo lost, Leon Panetta was appointed chief of staff to the president, so his wife came and they couldn't live there. So I should have had seniority when Durbin came in. Durbin said, `I'm not living downstairs, share--you know, on a couch, sharing it, sharing another--you know, that whole space. It's the living room, really, with someone else. I said, `I'll stay down there. I'm not--I'm not fussy.
PRESSMAN: There's a picture of you eating Chinese food.
Sen. SCHUMER: Oh, yeah.
PRESSMAN: I presume?
Sen. SCHUMER: We don't do much cooking in the house. It's basically cereal and takeout Chinese.
PRESSMAN: It's something in the ethnic sense about Chinese food and Jewish politicians.
Sen. SCHUMER: Exactly.
PRESSMAN: And Jews in general.
Sen. SCHUMER: I guess but I'm the only Jew there. In fact, the house has three Catholics, and I took them once to Israel and we did the stations of the cross together, so it was a great ecumenical move.
PRESSMAN: You mentioned--getting back to the serious side of things--you mentioned before the danger facing you, the Democratic Party, in 2008. Do you think there's a real chance that you could lose that election?
Sen. SCHUMER: Oh, yes, I do. Here's why. The middle class, seriously, is up for grabs. Why? They bought in--you know, in 1932, the middle class, whatever there was of it, was with Roosevelt. Democrats lost touch, as I mentioned, on the crime issue, but on other issues, too. So Reagan comes in and says, `Get government off your back. I'll help get government off your back, keep your taxes low.' The middle class bought into Reagan. And for about 25 years, 20, 25 years, they were with Reagan. Even when Clinton was there, the Reagan philosophy was dominate. He just sort of put a Democratic face on it, as he had to. I don't disagree at all with what he did. But you know, he would brag, we've made government even smaller than Reagan.
But now, technology has changed the world, Gabe. Terrorism, that's 'cause of technology. It allows small groups of people to hurt us. We worry that our kids have to compete with Japanese and Indian and Chinese and Brazilian and Nigerian kids. That's technology. Technology even is having us live longer. A little girl, baby girl born today could live to 100. What does that mean? Not only Medicare and Social Security, how do you keep them, but to the average person, people get married later, they have kids, maybe. They may not even have them or have them later. Then they have 30, 40 years of leisure. How do you deal with all this? So technology's made our world different. Even little things, like pornography is on the Net. I had a friend of mine, very liberal, but she called me up one day and she said, `My kid is watching pornography on the Net. I just discovered it. Do something!'
So you need government. Government is back in style. That's one of the things we say in the book, 'cause the average person who felt so good about things in 1980 is now, they don't feel they're doing terribly, but they're worried about the future. And the party that puts together a vision, a platform that appeals to the average middle class person, not to the interest groups, will be the dominant party for 25.
I wrote this book--I didn't want to write a book, and I don't really--I hope it sells but that's not the reason I wrote it. I wrote it to begin Democrats to lay out their vision. 'Cause you know, wherever we go, people say, `What do you Democrats stand for?' And nobody has a very good answer. No one's even tried an answer. This book attempts to first begin to answer that question by appealing things. Like I think Joe and Eileen Bailey, as seen through this couple...
PRESSMAN: Right.
Sen. SCHUMER: ...as I was saying, they're not anti-immigrants but they're anti illegal immigration. Change it!
PRESSMAN: Has Hillary--has Hillary Clinton, the junior senator from New York, has she stolen some of the thunder from the idea of having a platform to run on?
Sen. SCHUMER: No. In fact, I talked to Hillary and I hope she takes some of the ideas from this book. I hope Obama does. I hope Edwards does, because we need ideas. And this election, mark my words, is going to be less about personalities than the previous elections and more about issues. You know why? Because people are worried.
PRESSMAN: Do you endorse Hillary?
Sen. SCHUMER: I do.
PRESSMAN: And formally? You've...
Sen. SCHUMER: Well, yes. I don't know if it's--I said to the media when they asked, she called me, she said, `I'm running.' I said to her on the