Author Archives: WholeDude

RED CHINA ON SLIPPERY SLOPE BECAUSE OF DEFENSE SPENDING

In my analysis, Red China lives on Slippery Slope because of defense spending. The reason is not that of amount spent on boosting military power. Red China cannot save herself from consequences of use of military power in performing evil actions. Defense spending did not save Soviet Union from falling apart.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

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No. 2 SPENDER CHINA TO BOOST DEFENSE SPENDING IN 2018 – ABC NEWS

Clipped from: http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-defense-budget-rise-173-billion-2018-53509979

The Associated Press

Chinese soldiers in usher uniforms march past journalists who line up to enter the Great Hall of the People for a press conference ahead of Monday’s opening session of China’s National People’s Congress in Beijing, Sunday, March 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

China’s defense budget will rise 8.1 percent to 1.1 trillion yuan ($173 billion) this year as the country prepares to launch its second aircraft carrier, integrate stealth fighters into its air force and field an array of advanced missiles able to attack air and sea targets at vast distances.

The figure released in a report Monday to the ceremonial National People’s Congress is an increase in the growth rate from last year, when finance ministry officials said the budget was rising 7 percent to 1 trillion yuan ($151 billion).

Years of double-digit percentage growth have given China the world’s second-largest defense budget after the United States, which is in a class of its own with a proposed budget of $716 billion for next year.

“We will stick to the Chinese path in strengthening our armed forces, advance all aspects of military training and war preparedness,” Premier Li Keqiang said as he read a report to nearly 3,000 delegates at the Great Hall of the People.

The armed forces will “firmly and resolutely safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests,” Li said.

China has the world’s largest military by number of personnel, but Li said the country had “basically completed” the target of reducing the size of the armed forces by 300,000 troops. That would leave the People’s Liberation Army’s strength at around 2 million troops.

But China’s defense spending as a share of GDP and the budget remains lower than that of other major nations, Zhang Yesui, a spokesman for the legislature, said Sunday.

This year’s defense budget comes to about 1.3 percent of last year’s GDP of 82.7 trillion yuan ($12.4 trillion).

Analysts don’t consider China’s publicly announced defense spending to be entirely accurate since defense equipment projects account for a significant amount of “off book” expenditures.

Noting that this year’s increase was roughly the same as last year’s when adjusted for inflation, Shanghai military expert Ni Lexiong said China was seeking to avoid a full-on arms race based on quantity of weapons, choosing instead to invest in high-tech systems and training.

Rivals such as the U.S., Japan and India should be less anxious at the moderate rate of budget growth, although they “won’t feel happy” to see rapid enhancements in China’s air, naval, missile and anti-satellite capabilities, said Ni, a professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.

China’s defense budget is so large now that double-digit annual percentage increases are no longer necessary, said military commentator Song Zhongping.

New funds are going mainly to raise living standards for service members, increase training and prepare for potential crises on the Korean Peninsula, the border with India or in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait, Song said.

Much of China’s energies have been focused on what is known as anti-access/area denial, or A2/AD operations, which seek to scare the U.S. Navy and other forces far from China’s shores.

China’s navy has been training rigorously on the Liaoning aircraft carrier, which was bought from Ukraine and heavily refurbished. In April, it launched a 50,000-ton carrier built entirely on its own based on the Ukrainian model.

It will join the improved Type 093B Shang class nuclear-powered attack submarine equipped with anti-ship missiles — considered only slightly inferior to the U.S. Navy’s mainstay Los Angeles class boats — and the Type 055 guided-missile destroyers at the forefront of China’s naval technology.

Such vessels stand to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, where the U.S. Navy has long been dominant and regional rivals such as Japan and India are stepping up their presence. Most navy ships already have anti-ship cruise missiles with longer ranges than those of their U.S. counterparts.

China’s navy is also relying on numerical superiority to boost its influence.

All three of China’s sea forces — the navy, coast guard and maritime militia — are the largest of their types by number of ships, allowing them to “maintain presence and influence in vital seas,” according to Andrew S. Erickson of the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute.

All three fleets are growing “leaner and meaner” due to a greater emphasis on technical sophistication, Erickson wrote, adding that the U.S. also anticipates facing a Chinese submarine fleet twice its number, though less technologically advanced.

In the air, China last month said it had begun equipping combat units with its J-20 stealth fighter jet, the country’s answer to fifth-generation jets such as the U.S. F-22 and F-35. No less impressive is China’s missile technology, particularly the DF-21D, which is built to take out an aircraft carrier, and a new air-to-air missile with a range of some 400 kilometers (249 miles) that could attack assets such as early warning aircraft and refueling tankers crucial to U.S. Air Force operations.

In a further display of sophistication, China said in early February that it had successfully tested a mid-course anti-missile defense system, deploying similar technology to that used to destroy a defunct Chinese satellite in 2007.

China’s military planners have also taken note of the U.S. shift this year in its threat analysis from terrorism to rivals Russia and China, said Yue Gang, a retired colonel and military analyst.

Though China doesn’t wish to be seen as a Russian ally, there is a renewed sense of big-power competition, Yue said.

“The smell of gunpowder is growing thicker,” he said.

MARCH 01, 2018 – A PASSAGE TO INDIA

On March 01, 1964 I was a student of Bachelor of Science(B.SC.)3-Year Degree Course at Giriraj Government Arts College, Nizamabad, India. My Spirit of Nationalism was at its peak after I witnessed China’s War of Aggression in 1962. My English Language Course introduced me to ‘A Passage to India’ novel authored by E.M. Forster, a story that deals with British Colonial domination of India.

I left India in January 1984 and arrived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. during July 1986. To my surprise, I learned about Forster’s visit to Ann Arbor.

On March 01, 2018, I reflect upon prospects of my own ‘Passage to India’. I cannot confirm it for I am not sure about Final Destination of my mortal Life Journey. If I have to revisit India which I have not done since 1984, I ask God to do the favor of giving me an opportunity to share my story as ‘A Passage to India’, the one and only story I love to publish.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

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E.M. FORSTER TAKES A PASSAGE TO INDIA – MAR 01, 1921 – HISTORY.com

Clipped from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/e-m-forster-takes-a-passage-to-india?

Literary

1921

Forty-one-year-old British writer E.M. Forster embarks on his second trip to India after an absence of eight years. Forster would turn his observations of the country into his fifth and most critically acclaimed novel, A Passage to India, published in 1924. The novel explored racism and colonialism through the story of an English tourist who accuses a respected Indian doctor of attacking her.

Forster was born in London in 1879, the son of an architect. His father died before he was two, and he spent most of his childhood with his mother and a great-aunt in an old house called Rooksnest, which later became the model for the country estate portrayed in Howard’s End. Forster was teased and tormented mercilessly at the private school he attended as a day student and remained shy and timid throughout the rest of his life. However, he found intellectual companionship during his university years at King’s College, Cambridge, where he joined a secret society of intellectuals called the Apostles.

Forster began contributing essays and stories to the newly formed Independent Review in 1903 and published his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, two years later. Like his later books, the novel looked at English discomfort with foreign cultures. Forster traveled widely, visiting Greece, Italy, and India, and later served with the Red Cross in Alexandria, Egypt, from 1915 to 1919. Forster made many close friends among the intellectual and literary “Bloomsbury set,” including Virginia Woolf.

Forster published five novels by 1924 and received an honorary fellowship from his alma mater in 1946, which allowed him to live in Cambridge for the rest of his long life. Although Forster lived to be 91, he published no novels in his lifetime after A Passage to India, although a sixth novel, Maurice, which dealt with homosexuality, was published after his death.

BEIJING’S DEBT CRISIS – CHINA’S MILITARY INSECURITY

In my analysis, China’s greater defense spending reflects her military insecurity driven by insurmountable Debt Crisis. The World’s largest military will bite dust for its doom cannot be warded off by paying ransom.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

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CHINA’S MILITARY FLEXES MUSCLES FOR DOMESTIC OBJECTIVE: MORE FUNDING

Clipped from: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-defence/chinas-military-flexes-muscles-for-domestic-objective-more-funding-idUSKCN1GC0KJ

BEIJING (Reuters) – With stealth jets entering service, leaked pictures of new high-tech naval artillery and proud reports of maneuvers that “dare to shine the sword,” China’s armed forces are putting on a show of power as they lobby for greater defense spending.

Although it is the world’s largest military, the People’s Liberation Army has been privately unhappy that it got less than double-digit funding increases the past two years. It has recently been making the case that it needs more money to deal with increased global uncertainty, diplomats and several sources with ties to the armed forces say.

In the run-up to the defense budget’s release at the annual meeting of China’s parliament next week, state media outlets have been filled with coverage of military drills, advanced new equipment and thrilling tales of derring-do in a new film very loosely based on China’s evacuating people from Yemen’s civil war in 2015.

The overall message is clear: China faces serious challenges, from U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of force against nuclear-armed North Korea to an increasingly tense border dispute with India and what Beijing sees as efforts by self-ruled Taiwan to assert its sovereignty.

Confronting those challenges requires cash, a point the military is now trying to drive home.

“If you keep telling your people China is facing all these threats, you have to be able to back it up to show you are spending enough,” said a senior Beijing-based Western diplomat.

President Xi Jinping promised in his keynote speech to the Communist Party Congress in October to make China’s armed forces world-class by the middle of the century. The military has deployed an increasingly sophisticated propaganda machine to make sure that promise stays top of mind.

A professionally shot air force video released to celebrate the Lunar New Year this month entitled “New fighters of the great power to safeguard the new era” led with footage of the latest fighter to enter service, the J-20 stealth jet, designed as a counterpart to the radar-evading the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.

“It looks like they are making the case for a large rise in defense spending,” said an Asian diplomat, speaking of the recent uptick in military-related stories in China.

NERVOUS NEIGHBORS

China’s defense spending is only about one-quarter that of the United States, if official figures are accurate. China has repeatedly said that it has no hostile intent, that its military is for defensive missions, and that defense spending is transparent.

Many of the country’s neighbors beg to differ, calling out what they see as Chinese saber-rattling as it ramps up drills in the region.

Vietnam, one of the most vocal opponents of China’s South China Sea claims, has tightened its military relationship with the United States. Taiwan has pledged to grow defense spending, and wants to buy new, advanced U.S. equipment.

FILE PHOTO: Soldiers of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) take part in a military parade to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the foundation of the army at the Zhurihe military training base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China, July 30, 2017. China Daily via REUTERS/File Photo

The official People’s Liberation Army Daily said this month that although China was committed to a defensive military policy, it had to “dare to shine the sword” with air patrols far from China’s coast, whether close to Taiwan or over uninhabited islets disputed with Japan in the East China Sea.

Such flights, it said, protected China’s “bottom line” on strategic issues.

One source with ties to the military said another pressing area for more spending was salaries, which have not kept up with those of private-sector workers.

“Simply relying on ‘the great Xi to lead us to victory’ won’t cut it,” the source said, referring to efforts to recruit the best and the brightest into the military by appealing to national pride.

BETWEEN THE LINES

The defense budget will only disclose a top-line number, with a percentage comparison to the previous year. No breakdown on spending is provided.

Last year, China’s parliament did not initially release the figure, sparking questions over transparency. But when it did, the budget increase was 7 percent, the smallest in more than a decade.

The budgeted increase of 7.6 percent for 2016 was the lowest in six years and the first single-digit rise since 2010, following a nearly unbroken two-decade run of double-digit increases.

Experts say the true figure is likely much higher than what is officially reported, with money for some military projects included in ostensibly non-military spending.

“Particularly given China’s civil-military integration, it is difficult to know where defense spending ends” and civilian research and development begins, said another Western diplomat, who analyses China’s military.

Some defense experts say that China is eroding the United States’ military technology dominance and that the People’s Liberation Army could surpass the U.S. military in artificial intelligence capabilities, which have become a spending priority for Beijing.

But in the absence of transparency about new technologies, such as an experimental electromagnetic railgun state media suggested this year was being tested aboard a Chinese warship, there is skepticism about their combat readiness.

China has not fought a war since 1979, a brief invasion of Vietnam that ended badly for China.

China’s Defense Ministry declined to comment ahead of the figure being released by parliament. The general percentage rise is typically given the day before parliament opens, and the raw figure the next day. Parliament opens March 5.

Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Michael Martina; Editing by Gerry Doyle

EUROPE IS UNDER GRIPS OF CHINA’S NEOCOLONIALISM

Zhejian Geely Holding, Chinese automaker which owns VOLVO has acquired 9.7 percent stake in Daimler. In my analysis, Europe is under grips of China’s Neocolonialism. It seems Germany is not able to defend Daimler’s Intellectual Property Rights from relentless attacks by Chinese Economic Expansionism.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

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CHINA’S GEELY RAID ON DAIMLER REIGNITES GERMAN KNOW-HOW FEARS

Clipped from: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-geely/chinas-geely-raid-on-daimler-reignites-german-know-how-fears-idUSKCN1GA048

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Automaker Geely’s purchase of a $9 billion stake in Mercedes maker Daimler rekindled fears in Germany on Monday of its highly-prized expertise falling into Chinese hands.

Economy minister Brigitte Zypries stuck to Berlin’s position that Geely’s [GEELY.UL] swoop was a business matter but said Germany’s openness must not be not exploited by other countries.

Geely, which owns rival Swedish carmaker Volvo, is pushing Daimler for access to know-how in electric and autonomous cars.

Germany tightened its rules on foreign takeovers last year, the first European Union country to do so, after a series of deals saw China gain access to high-tech know-how, while attempts by German companies to buy full control of Chinese rivals remains prohibited.

Although under German law, the government can only intervene if a threshold of 25 percent is exceeded, investors must abide by market rules, Zypries said in interviews with Daimler’s home-town newspaper Stuttgarter Zeitung and Handelsblatt newspaper.

Geely revealed its 9.7 percent stake in Daimler (DAIGn.DE) on Friday, surprising the market as it had not disclosed having crossed regulatory thresholds of 3 and 5 percent.

Financial and markets regulator Bafin, which oversees the proper disclosure of stakes said it was investigating whether there had been any breach of disclosure rules, which can result in fines of 10 million euros or more.

The Chinese carmaker first approached Daimler in November and asked it to issue shares, so it could buy a stake, as well as for access to battery technology to help set up an electric car joint venture in Wuhan, China.

Daimler, which employs 289,000 people, declined to do a deal as it had reservations about a new industrial alliance for fear of alienating its existing Chinese joint venture partner BAIC (1958.HK), a person familiar with the carmaker’s thinking said.

Daimler and BAIC on Sunday said they were planning to co-invest more than 11.9 billion yuan ($1.88 billion) to build a new local production base.

“Daimler has already rejected Geely’s overtures once, and Daimler execs we spoke with argue it’s simply not clear what Geely could offer Mercedes,” Bernstein Research analyst Robin Zhu said in a note.

STEALTH RAID

Geely responded to the rejection in November by enlisting Dirk Notheis, the former Chief Executive of Morgan Stanley in Germany and Yi Bao, a former CEO of Morgan Stanley Huaxin Securities, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Notheis, who declined comment, and Yi Bao, who could not be reached, devised a way for Geely to build a significant stake in Daimler using aggressive takeover tactics which German regulators had sought to quash.

Daimler AG70.23

DAIGn.DEXetra

-0.18(-0.26%)

• DAIGn.DE
• 1958.HK
• 0175.HK
• 000333.SZ
• KU2G.DE

Geely worked with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which declined to comment on Monday, to help secure a 9.69 percent voting stake using derivatives to help skirt disclosure requirements, two people familiar with the deal told Reuters.

Mercedes-Benz executives in Stuttgart were at first caught off guard by the approach but welcomed Geely in meetings on Monday to see how to “constructively discuss” industry changes.

Zhejian Geely Holding also owns several other carmakers including Sweden’s Volvo Cars, London’s black-cab maker LEVC and its own Geely Automobile Holdings (0175.HK). It has agreed to buy a $3.3 billion stake in Volvo Trucks.

KNOCK-ON IMPACT

The first sign of wider ramifications from Geely’s move on Daimler surfaced on Monday as Volvo Trucks dropped the chief executive of Geely’s Volvo Cars from its board, citing competition concerns with rival Daimler.

And EU trade ministers will meet this week to discuss a range of issues including how better to protect strategically important European companies from unwanted investors.

Several major deals during 2017 raised German sensitivities about multi-billion euro foreign takeovers, notably Chinese home appliance maker Midea Group (000333.SZ) buying German robotics firm Kuka (KU2G.DE), and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s buying German metering firm Ista.[L8N1QG3VD]

“The events of last Friday are the latest demonstrations of China’s growing confidence and assertiveness, growing desire to impose its will on global affairs, and growing willingness to exploit the German OEMs’ heavy reliance on Chinese profits,” Bernstein Research said.

Reporting by Michael Nienaber in Berlin, Georgina Prodhan, Arno Schuetze and Edward Taylor in Frankfurt and Johannes Hellstrom in Stockholm; Editing by Keith Weir and Alexander Smith

THE LIVING TIBETAN SPIRITS – WHAT IS MY FINAL DESTINATION ?

In my Consciousness, I host ‘The Living Tibetan Spirits’, the Spirits of young Tibetan Soldiers who gave their precious lives in Chittagong Hill Tracts during Bangladesh Ops of 1971. His Holiness the Dalai Lama expressed his desire to return to his home in Tibet. I admit that myself and ‘The Tibetan Living Spirits’ have no Home or Place that we may claim as our own. What is my Final Destination? I have no answer. If not His Holiness, I need ‘MANJUSHREE'(Manjusri) Bodhisattva of Wisdom to give Blessings of Compassion to complete my mortal journey with or without reaching Final Destination.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

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DALAI LAMA, CHINA AND THE HOMECOMING URGE

By CLAUDE ARPI

Clipped from: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/dalai-lama-china-and-the-homecoming-urge.html

It has been a lifetime wish for the Lama to visit Wutaishan, his native town. But he must follow his own saying: Look at situations from all angles. It is unwise for him to go on pilgrimage in China right now

At the end of 2017, Prof Samdhong Rinpoche, former Chairman of the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamshala and now, the Dalai Lama’s Special Envoy, went to China to ‘negotiate’ an eventual visit of the Tibetan leader to Wutaishan in Shanxi Province of northern China.

Mount Wutai is said to be one of the four sacred mountains in Buddhism. Each of the mountains is viewed as the abode of one of the four great bodhisattvas. Wutai is the home of Manjushree, the Bodhisattva of wisdom.

Since decades, the Dalai Lama has expressed the wish to visit Wutaishan in his lifetime. While in China, Samdhong Rinpoche is said to have met senior officials of the United Front Work Department in Kunming and Wutaishan to discuss the proposed visit, which would exclude Tibet, as Beijing does not want to see the Dalai Lama returning to his native land, where he is immensely popular.

Beijing believes that China could benefit from the visit by extracting a ‘statement’ from the Dalai Lama. But can the Tibetan leader ‘admit’ to Tibet always ‘belonging’ to China?

In his Five-Point Peace Plan speech in Washington DC in 1987, which heralded his Middle Way approach, the Dalai Lama stated: “The real issue …is China’s illegal occupation of Tibet, which has given it direct access to the Indian sub-continent. The Chinese authorities have attempted to confuse the issue by claiming that Tibet has always been a part of China. This is untrue. Tibet was a fully independent State when the People’s Liberation Army invaded the country in 1949/50.”

The Dalai Lama knows history can’t (and shouldn’t) be changed. In 1987, the Lama stated: “China’s aggression, condemned by virtually all nations of the free world, was a flagrant violation of international law. …China’s military occupation of Tibet continues.”

The recent secret, though formal, contacts between Beijing and Dharamshala, could make the public believe that there was a relaxation of the Chinese position. It is not the case.

On February 11, The Global Times reported: “The public security bureau (PSB) in Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region has released details on how the public can provide tips on activities of criminal gangs connected to the separatist forces of the Dalai Lama.”

Practically, it means that the Tibetans, who worship, or even simply respect, the Dalai Lama could now be termed criminals?

The mouthpiece of the Party continued: “[the circular] warns local people to be on the lookout for the ‘evil forces’ of the Dalai Lama that might use local temples and religious control to confuse and incite people against the Party and Government.”

The circular asked people to report on the activities of ‘foreign hostile forces’. Interestingly, a few weeks ago, Beijing announced the nomination of three Han cadres in the 20-member Tibet delegation to the National People’s Congress (NPC).

One of the delegates is Zhao Kezhi, the Minister of Public Security, responsible for the dreaded PSBs; he will ‘represent’ Tibet at the NPC. Probably wanting to show the leadership his efficiency, Zhao acted fast; the PSB’s circular said: “Criminal gangs are cancers on the healthy economic and social development, and gangsters are a chronic disease that severely disgusts the public”.

It listed 22 illegal activities to be reported to the PSB; three of them mention the ‘Dalai’s clique’: “The Dalai Lama has been in exile for decades but still holds the ambition to split China’s Tibet from the Chinese territory.”

Dai, a professor at Public Security University of China told The Global Times: “Collusion with criminal gangs is a tactic the Dalai group uses to spreading its message of separatism. These kinds of gangsters were involved in the Lhasa rebellion in the 1950s and the violent incident in 2008 in Tibet.”

Dai added “the spread of separatist gangs in Tibet is rampant. Only a campaign against the ‘gangsters’ would deter secessionist activities by the Dalai.”

Wang Xiaobin, a Chinese scholar at the Beijing-based China Tibetology Research Center, explained that the primary task for Tibet is “to maintain national and ethnic unity”. He cited a few groups in China “closely connected with the Dalai group…The Dalai group always interferes in national affairs by controlling temples, including lamas and living Buddhas, and by spreading a kind of ‘middle way’ to the world.”

Xinhua had earlier reported that the campaign would involve targeting “protective umbrellas of gang crime — the officials who shelter the criminals.”

This explains another Han nomination in the NPC’s Tibet delegation, Jing Hanchao, who is currently Vice-President of the Supreme People’s Court. Jing will make sure that the ‘criminals’ caught in the nets of Zhao Kezhi are heavily sentenced.

All this comes at a time when Beijing has just introduced sophisticated facial recognition software on the plateau. The circular promised that the PSB informers’ identity and safety will be protected: “The targets are gangsters who threaten political stability and infiltrate politics, or encourage the public to go against the Party.”

Beijing has also taken the campaign against the Dalai Lama internationally; there too it has been ferocious.

On February 8, The People’s Daily Online titled: ‘Mercedes-Benz: Don’t dare challenge China’s core interest’ while announcing that the German car company had apologized for quoting the Dalai Lama ‘in an extremely wrong message’. What did Mercedes-Benz do so wrong?

Next to one of its luxury cars, the German firm had quoted the Dalai Lama: “Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.”

You may think that it is a nice quote, but Beijing is not amused: “The post not only hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, but also challenged their bottom line on national sovereignty.”

The challenge is clear: If the firm, which sold 600,000 new cars in China in 2017, wants to continue to do business in the Middle Kingdom, it has to follow the paranoid regime’s diktats. The same misadventure had recently happened to the US hotel chain Marriott, who had to profusely apologize for wrongly marking Tibet and Taiwan as independent countries.

President Xi Jinping would have said in 2015 that foreign interference in China’s domestic affairs is intolerable: “Country, enterprise, or individual should not challenge the core interests of China, and [have] any activity to split China.”

Even after due apology by Mercedes-Benz, the Chinese newspaper said that “the apology lacks sincerity and reflects the German carmaker’s lack of understanding of Chinese culture and values. China’s core interests cannot be challenged.”

The paper even compared the Dalai Lama to Hitler: “How will the German people react if a foreign enterprise speaks highly of Adolf Hitler.”

It seems definitely unwise for the Dalai Lama, considered by Beijing as the ‘head of the gangsters’, to go on pilgrimage in China right now. Let us hope that the spiritual leader will not accept the diktats of the bully regime in Beijing.

(The writer is an expert on India-China relations and an author)

WHERE IS FRIENDSHIP? FROM SPACE FANTASY TO GROUND REALITY

On February 20, 1962 I was a student at Giriraj Government Arts College, Nizamabad, India entertaining my dreams of Friendship and living life with Space Fantasy. Space Travel was the topic of my presentation at my College Seminar sponsored by Science Association. I briefly floated a Club called ‘FRIENDSHIP CLUB’ to bring youth together in promoting Democracy, Freedom, and Peace, the American Values I imbibed.

On February 20, 2018 I am sharing the story about Friendship 7 Spacecraft to tell the world that I do not have an American Friend with whom I can communicate the Ground Reality that put an end to my Space Fantasy.

Rudranarasimham Rebbapragada

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AN AMERICAN ORBITS EARTH – FEBRUARY 20, 1962 – HISTORY.com

Clipped from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/an-american-orbits-earth?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2018-0220-02202018&om_rid=5b756c66f833f687988da82aab98ca63d678b12c9ea4193f1bf69fae34a8c785&om_mid=324738196&kx_EmailCampaignID=19086&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2018-0220-02202018&kx_EmailRecipientID=5b756c66f833f687988da82aab98ca63d678b12c9ea4193f1bf69fae34a8c785

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, John Hershel Glenn Jr. is successfully launched into space aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first orbital flight by an American astronaut.

Glenn, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps, was among the seven men chosen by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1959 to become America’s first astronauts. A decorated pilot, he flew nearly 150 combat missions during World War II and the Korean War. In 1957, he made the first nonstop supersonic flight across the United States, flying from Los Angeles to New York in three hours and 23 minutes.

Glenn was preceded in space by two Americans, Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, and two Soviets, Yuri A. Gagarin and Gherman S. Titov. In April 1961, Gagarin was the first man in space, and his spacecraft Vostok 1 made a full orbit before returning to Earth. Less than one month later, Shepard was launched into space aboard Freedom 7 on a suborbital flight. In July, Grissom made another brief suborbital flight aboard Liberty Bell 7. In August, with the Americans still having failed to make an orbital flight, the Russians sprinted further ahead in the space race when Titov spent more than 25 hours in space aboard Vostok 2, making 17 orbits. As a technological power, the United States was looking very much second-rate compared with its Cold War adversary. If the Americans wanted to dispel this notion, they needed a multi-orbital flight before another Soviet space advance arrived.

It was with this responsibility in mind that John Glenn lifted off from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral at 9:47 a.m. on February 20, 1962. Some 100,000 spectators watched on the ground nearby and millions more saw it on television. After separating from its launching rocket, the bell-shaped Friendship 7 capsule entered into an orbit around Earth at a speed of about 17,500 miles per hour. Smoothing into orbit, Glenn radioed back, “Capsule is turning around. Oh, that view is tremendous.”

During Friendship 7‘s first orbit, Glenn noticed what he described as small, glowing fireflies drifting by the capsule’s tiny window. It was some time later that NASA mission control determined that the sparks were crystallized water vapor released by the capsule’s air-conditioning system. Before the end of the first orbit, a more serious problem occurred when Friendship 7‘s automatic control system began to malfunction, sending the capsule into erratic movements. At the end of the orbit, Glenn switched to manual control and regained command of the craft.

Toward the end of Glenn’s third and last orbit, mission control received a mechanical signal from the spacecraft indicating that the heat shield on the base of the capsule was possibly loose. Traveling at its immense speed, the capsule would be incinerated if the shield failed to absorb and dissipate the extremely high reentry temperatures. It was decided that the craft’s retrorockets, usually jettisoned before reentry, would be left on in order to better secure the heat shield. Less than a minute later, Friendship 7 slammed into Earth’s atmosphere.

During Glenn’s fiery descent back to Earth, the straps holding the retrorockets gave way and flapped violently by his window as a shroud of ions caused by excessive friction enveloped the spacecraft, causing Glenn to lose radio contact with mission control. As mission control anxiously waited for the resumption of radio transmissions that would indicate Glenn’s survival, he watched flaming chunks of retrorocket fly by his window. After four minutes of radio silence, Glenn’s voice crackled through loudspeakers at mission control, and Friendship 7 splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. He was picked up by the USS destroyer Noa, and his first words upon stepping out of the capsule and onto the deck of the Noa were, “It was hot in there.” He had spent nearly five hours in space.

Glenn was hailed as a national hero, and on February 23 President John F. Kennedy visited him at Cape Canaveral. He later addressed Congress and was given a ticker-tape parade in New York City.

Out of a reluctance to risk the life of an astronaut as popular as Glenn, NASA essentially grounded the “Clean Marine” in the years after his historic flight. Frustrated with this uncharacteristic lack of activity, Glenn turned to politics and in 1964 announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Ohio and formally left NASA. Later that year, however, he withdrew his Senate bid after seriously injuring his inner ear in a fall. In 1970, following a stint as a Royal Crown Cola executive, he ran for the Senate again but lost the Democratic nomination to Howard Metzenbaum. Four years later, he defeated Metzenbaum, won the general election, and went on to win reelection three times. In 1984, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for president.

In early 1998, NASA announced it had approved Glenn to serve as a payload specialist on the space shuttle Discovery. On October 29, 1998, nearly four decades after his famous orbital flight, the 77-year-old Glenn became the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging. In 1999, he retired from his U.S. Senate seat after four consecutive terms in office, a record for the state of Ohio.