In its profile of General James L. Jones who is expected to be named the National Security Advisor by President-elect Obama, the New York Times outlines the full Obama foreign policy team. The new team is expected to be named on Monday.

The selection of General Jones will elevate another foreign policy moderate to a team that will include Robert M. Gates, a carry-over from the Bush administration, as defense secretary and Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state. By bringing a military man to the White House, Mr. Obama may be trying to cement an early bond with military leaders who regard him with some uneasiness, particularly over his call for rapid troop reductions in Iraq.

But General Jones will also be expected to mediate between rivals, particularly in dealing with Mr. Gates, who has his own power base at the Pentagon, and with Mrs. Clinton, who has told friends that she does not expect the national security adviser to stand between her and the president.

And while other generals, including Colin L. Powell and Brent Scowcroft, have successfully made the transition to national security adviser, the experience has sometimes been rocky, as in the career of John M. Poindexter, a retired admiral who fought an uphill battle during the Reagan administration to mediate between George P. Shultz at the State Department and Caspar W. Weinberger at the Pentagon before finding himself caught up in the Iran-contra affair.

Mr. Obama is expected to announce his national security team on Monday in Chicago, with Mr. Gates at the Pentagon, Mrs. Clinton at the State Department, General Jones at the White House and possibly Adm. Dennis C. Blair, who is retired, as director of national intelligence. What is notable is that none of them have a long history with Mr. Obama, and none are known to be particularly close to him.

Among Mr. Obama’s previous inner circle of foreign policy advisers, both Susan E. Rice and Gregory Craig crossed swords with Mrs. Clinton during the presidential campaign. Ms. Rice may end up as ambassador to the United Nations, but Mr. Craig will become White House counsel. Two others, Anthony Lake, a national security adviser under President Bill Clinton, and Samantha Power, a Harvard scholar and author who left the campaign after she was quoted as making remarks critical of Mrs. Clinton, appear unlikely to end up with top jobs.

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So even gay penguins face discrimination, though granted they did commit the theft of an egg from a heterosexual penguin couple. From the Harbin Zoo comes yet another tale of gay penguins. A couple of gay penguins are attempting to steal eggs from straight birds in an effort to become “fathers”. The other birds in response have ostracized the couple.

Via the UK Daily Telegraph:

The two penguins have started placing stones at the feet of parents before waddling away with their eggs, in a bid to hide their theft.

But the deception has been noticed by other penguins at the zoo, who have ostracised the gay couple from their group. Now keepers have decided to segregate the pair of three-year-old male birds to avoid disrupting the rest of the community during the hatching season.

A keeper at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China explained that the gay couple had the natural urge to become fathers, despite their sexuality.

“One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite this being a biological impossibility for this couple, the natural desire is still there,” a keeper told the Austrian Times newspaper.

“It’s not discrimination. We have to fence them separately, otherwise the whole group will be disturbed during hatching time,” he added.

There are numerous examples of homosexuality in the animal kingdom, but gay penguins have captured the public’s attention more than any other species.

A German zoo provoked outrage from gay lobby groups after attempting to mate a group of gay male penguins with Swedish female birds who were flown in especially to seduce them. But the project was abandoned after the males refused to be “turned”, showing no interest in their would-be mates.

In 2002 a couple of penguins at a New York zoo who had been together for eight years were “outed” when keepers noticed that they were both males.

I am sure that here in California marriage is only for one male penguin per one female penguin.

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“El operativo tuvo la luz del Espíritu Santo y la protección de nuestro Señor Jesucristo y de la Virgen en todas sus expresiones.”

The operation had the light of the Holy Spirit and the protection of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Virgen in all her expressions.” — Álvaro Uribe, President of Colombia

Those were the words of President Álvaro Uribe back in July after the dramatic rescue of Ingrid Betancourt, Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, and Keith Stansell, the three American military contractors employed by Northrop Grumman and eleven members of the Colombian military and police in Operacion Jaque. One could say he was just caught up in the excitement of the moment but that’s not the case. President Uribe has instituted a weekly Wednesday rosary prayer session in Casa de Nariño, Colombia’s Presidential Palace. Then there’s this exhortation:

“Cuando el pueblo colombiano despierte, cuando el pueblo colombiano anochezca, tiene que pensar en Dios, en la Virgen María y en su Ejército”.

When the Colombian people awake, when night falls upon the Colombian people, they have to think in God, in the Virgin Mary and in their Army.”

Clearly, the President of my beloved Colombia is a rather religious (and utterly delusional) man. And this troubles me greatly. And apparently I am not alone though I am hardly in the company of many others. On Facebook, there is now an ateos colombianos group. It has nine members. Polls suggest that Colombians remain rather religious even if they no longer attend Sunday mass. An Opinómetro-Datexco poll last month found only 3.3% of Colombians self-describe as atheists (far fewer compared to the 19% in France but favorable to 5% in the United States who self-describe as atheist). From my own personal experience, I can say that my mother has found it easier to accept my homosexuality than my atheism even though the former is more recent news to her but the latter has been a raging battle since my teens. She didn’t really bat an eyelash when I finally told her that I was gay but she still sends me “The Daily Word” as a gift subscription hoping for some miraculous reconversion. It goes unopened in the trash when it arrives.

Still President Uribe’s overt religious nature is a departure in Colombian politics. I simply can’t recall another Colombian President who so frequently references the Virgin Mary. And thus Uribe’s religious statements are causing a stir in what is a secular state since 1991 leading prominent Colombians to come out of the atheist closet and publicly declare their non-belief. Cambio, the Colombian progressive news weekly, has run with a cover story highlighting those who have so far made such declarations of atheism or agnosticism. Among the atheists are Juan Manuel Charry, a Constitutional lawyer, Carlos Palau, the film director, and Andrés Mejía Vergnaud, an economist. Among the agnostics are Carlos Gaviria Díaz, a former Presidential candidate and the leader of the leftist Polo Democrático and Jorge Humberto Botero, the former Commerce Minister.

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Like Obama, I have lived in Indonesia. Unlike Obama, I didn’t live in Jakarta. Thankfully, because it’s an awful place. Jakarta is a mega-city of mega proportions with mega problems. Jakarta currently is the twelfth largest city in the world with about 8.5 million residents inside the city limits. In metro-Jakarta, the population rises to more than 23 million. Now for a historical perspective, Jakarta in 1930 had a population of under a half million. Like many cities in the developing world, Jakarta has grown so fast that infrastructure development has lagged by twenty plus years. When I lived in Indonesia back in 1993-94, 60% of the city’s population lived in kampungs, the slums. Today, that number is up to 75%. And that’s deemed a success because of Indonesia’s internal resettlement programme has diverted hundreds of thousands to other points in the archipelago.

The city is actually sinking. Jakarta is sinking by 4 to 6 cm (about an inch to an inch and a half) every year. Many of the city’s flood channels are clogged with rubbish and human waste that in effect they become open sewers spreading tropical water-borne diseases like typhoid. Add to that deforestation in the foothills and the development of expensive villas for the affluent and the result is that when the heavy rains come the water simply has nowhere to go.

From today’s Jakarta Post:

Heavy rainfall in early Monday morning has inundated several roads in Jakarta and created traffic jam in at least eight areas, Jakarta Traffic Police reported.

Jakarta Police Traffic Managemenct Center said Monday rain water flooded roads in Pancoran through Pasar Minggu areas in South Jakarta with 10 to 30 centimeters of water.

In West Jakarta, water inundated a part of Jalan Joglo and Puri Kembangan intersection. Water also flooded thoroughfare in Kapuk Muara, North Jakarta and in front of Duren Sawit Hospital, Kodim Housing Complex and Cipinang Penitentiary in East Jakarta.

Traffic police also warned for traffic jam near Lebak Bulus Bus Station in South Jakarta, due to an pipe construction work.

I love Indonesia and I’d happily live there again. Just not in Jakarta.

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The smoke has not yet clear from the ruins of the Taj nor have all the corpses been buried but it seems likely that India post-Mumbai will be a different than the boisterous optimistic self-assured India of just last week. India will head towards general elections due by May 2009 now with a very serious pall cast over its multi-ethnic secular democracy. Indeed, state elections are now on-going in five Indian states and may provide a harbinger of things to come as those results trickle in over the next month. Kashmir, the spark that engulfed Mumbai, is voting as we speak.

Prime Minister Singh has ruled ably with a left of centre coalition called the United Progressive Alliance. His domestic policies have been widely credited for a broad economic expansion but he has made the US-India nuclear agreement and peaceful relations with Pakistan the cornerstone of his foreign policy. On the latter score, his approach is bound to be questioned and severely criticized. The problem is Pakistan, not the approach itself. Pakistan is an artificial state, an odd assortment of peoples who have little in common other than they are all nominally Muslims. India too is an artificial state but unlike Pakistan it is secular due to its multitudes of faiths. Islam is the tail that wags the Pakistani dog. The question for India now is how does it avoid becoming an Hindu cobra that spits venom all around.

The New York Times looks at how the crisis may shift India’s political landscape:

At midmorning on Friday, as Indian troops continued to comb through the devastated Oberoi hotel, an unexpected guest appeared on the sidewalk: Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and arguably India’s most incendiary politician.

Speaking before a row of television cameras, he said the central government had failed to tackle a growing terrorism threat and he found fault with a speech by India’s prime minister a day earlier. “The country expected a lot from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,” he said, “but his address to the nation was disappointing.”

The appearance of Mr. Modi — who has been barred from entering the United States for violations of religious freedom — signaled how the two-day siege of Mumbai had instantly turned into political ammunition for coming national elections. After a string of attacks across Indian cities earlier this year, Mr. Modi’s party, also known as the B.J.P., pledged to make national security its main campaign issue. This week’s audacious attacks on the country’s commercial capital, and their timing, gave the party an additional boost.

Five state elections are under way, with the city-state of Delhi going to the polls on Saturday. National balloting is expected to be held next spring.

It was only four years ago that the Bharatiya Janata Party, then leading a coalition government, was routed in national elections, partly because of at least two high-profile terrorism episodes during its tenure: a suicide attack on the Indian Parliament building in 2001 and the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1999.

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