As reported in NDTV, Press Trust of India:
New Delhi: The White House will, of course, stay in Washington but the heart of the famous building will move to India when President Barack Obama lands in Mumbai on Saturday.
Communications set-up, nuclear button, a fleet of limousines and majority of the White House staff will be in India accompanying the President on this three-day visit that will cover Mumbai and Delhi.
He will also be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast during his two-day stay there beginning Saturday. The measure has been taken as Mumbai attack in 2008 took place from the sea.
Arrangements have been put in place for emergency evacuation, if needed.
Obama is expected to fly by a helicopter — Marine One — from the city airport to the Indian Navy’s helibase INS Shikra at Colaba in south Mumbai.
From there, he will drive down in Lincoln Continental — the Presidential limousine — to the nearby the Taj Hotel.
Two jets, armed with advanced communication and security systems, and a fleet of over 40 cars will be part of Obamas convoy.
Around 800 rooms have been booked for the President and his entourage in Taj Hotel and Hyatt.
The article continues here.
Note: Obama will also be taking his personal chefs along to assure that his food in not spiked. I haven’t seen this kind of paranoia since Nixon resigned.
For those academics among us I found an interesting paper by The Disease of Power: Paranoia and Politics, Jonathan Bach Graduate Program in International Affairs New School University Prepared for the 2004 International Studies Association panel “Violence to Democracy” in Montreal, Canada.
Abstract: The war on terror highlights the paradox that the state of emergency can function not as the exception but as the rule. This paper explores the political dynamics of paranoia. Drawing on Elias Cannetti and Eric Santer it examines the contemporary emergence of what could be called the Paranoid State. In the Paranoid State the technology of surveillance turns the individual from an empowered soul into an observable object, voyeurism supplants intimacy, and secrecy and transparency replace knowledge and ignorance. In a Paranoid State the secrecy of the ruler increases disproportionate to the transparency of the ruled: the more secretive the ruler, the more the ruler also calls for unhindered transparency of the masses. The paper examines how a functioning democratic system functions to keep paranoia in check, and how the erosion of democratic checks and balances is accompanied by a culture of paranoia that intensifies what Santner terms a symbolic investiture crisis. This investiture crisis fundamentally alters the pragmatic and normative function of democracy and increases the danger of an apocalyptic politics of paranoia.
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.