VIJAY PRASHAD
Prashad just wrote the piece “The Fires in South Asia.” He said today: “Disoriented, the [Indian] state seeks easy solutions: more draconian legislation, more fiery rhetoric, and more warmongering. The Congress [Party]-led government is pushed from the right by the [Hindu nationalist] BJP, which seems to want an instant attack on Pakistan, a sort of Bush reaction to 9/11.

“Those in the government in charge of intelligence and security have been sacked. … In parliamentary India there is a measure of accountability from the government, in contrast to our system, where the people are accountable to the highest elected official.” Author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, Prashad is chair of South Asian history and director of international studies at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut.
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JACQUELINE CABASSO
Cabasso is executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation, which monitors nuclear weapons policy, and is a contributor to the book Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security? She said today: “The situation between India and Pakistan is always especially crucial because they both have nuclear weapons and because of the instability of the region. The recent U.S.-India nuclear deal, which was backed by Obama, Clinton and Biden — Biden really pushed for it — has undermined non-proliferation efforts.”

Cabasso recently won the Sean MacBride Peace Prize. For Cabasso’s acceptance address, as well as a recent Q and A “Will Nuclear Disarmament Be on Obama’s Agenda” — see wslfweb.org.

She notes that the nuclear weapons industry is attempting to prevent any meaningful disarmament efforts and is organizing the First Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit which begins Tuesday.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167