In the latest issue of Time is featured a debate, Which Economy will Rule the World? This debate sputters intermittently in the pages of News Magazines. While China receives a bad press because of the perceived threst to Western economic hegemony, India escapes scrutiny aas it hides behind the facade of dynastic fascism bolstered by periodic elections, as if India is an exemplar of a flourishing democratic state. Between India and China, I can say with all authority at my command that China, tho...
Tamil politicians are back at their ususal game of barbarous bluster and brinkmanship. Vaigoplalaswami, the leader of one Dravidian faction has even threatened a blockade of Kerala over the Mullaperyar Dam issue. It appears that with the defeat of the LTTE and the return of nornalcy in Sri Lanka, the Western funded Human Rights activists not withstanding ( I wonder why they do not scream at what the White men are doing in Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan), Tamil politicians need an issue to...
Exactly 10 years after the horrific massacre at Columbine High in Colorado, the country must question itself over the unristricted access to guns and firearms of various kind. It is no use saying that the citizens have a constitutional right to bear arms, as the Bill of Rights lays down thwe condition in a "national militia". Therefore the founding fathers of the US Constitution did not envisage a situation in which a gun culture would emerge and flourish in the USA. Since that incident there h...
The recent speech by the President of the USA, Barack Obama, at George Town University has rightly been billed as a "major speech". Without the economy in this state of utter chaos it is quite conceivable that Obama would not have made iot ti the White House and he has the mandate to take stringent steps to kick start the economy. He has stresswed that the regulatory framework had not quite done its job and hence the very institutions that shouls have prevented the sub-prime crisis started beha...
Barack Obama seemed to be making all the right noices, well, until he clinched the Democratic Party nomination. The speech given before the AIPAC yesterday came as a huge surprise to me. I did not expect him to break the traditional frienship with Israel, but I did not expect him to sign on to the extreme right wing interpretation of Israeli-US relations. Obama was of course courting the powerful jewish American vote and we are all realistic or cynical enough to understand that the ocassio...
As of now Barack Obama has secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination for the presidential elections in November 2008. This much was never in serious doubt since Super Tuesday in March. It would not be correct however to believe that given the unpopularity of the Iraq War and George W Bush that a Democratic victory is a sure thing. Nothing can be further from the truth. Obama has avery tough fight on his hands and can use evry vote he can cadge out of a reluctant electorate. For ...
There is an air of confidence in the Obama camp; and this air of confidence is premature. I watched the interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, and I felt that the magic touch which enabled Barack Obama to connect with his audience was just not there. The hectic campaign season has perhaps taken its toll. It would be utterly wrong on the part of Barack Obama to assume, given the unpopularity of the Iraq War and the state of the economy to assume that victory is just round the corner. While it is ...
The great writer and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison wrote once that "White skin notwithstanding, Clinton is our first black president. Blacker than any actual person could ever be elected in our childrens' lifetime". With this kind of endorsement, it is hard to fathom the fact that his wife hasd dropped to single digits as far as Arican-American vote is concerned. The real reason for this fall is not hard to find. The highly negative campaign she ran against Obama made many believe that she...
One may say that November is still far away, and so there is no need to hurry over the nominations. However, this is the first time in recent memory that so late into the primaries, and yet no clear front runner is in sight. For the Republicans it appears that John McCain will, falling short of a major catastrophe, be the Republican nominee. The Democrats are doing, as always, what they do best, destroy each other with a vehemence that even the Republicans cannot match. The exit of John Edwar...
Let me start with a confession, because I do not want Dr Guy or Parated2k to accuse me of anti american sentiments. I am in a country that routinely sends criminals to Parliament, murderers are appointed ministers and the sons of politicians can rape and pillage with impunity. So when I express a genuine admiration for the civilised political discourse in the USA, I am not being condescending or being sarcastic. I am critical of certain aspects of Bush with respect to Iraq, but what I am writ...
Everyine blames the poor pollsters for predicting an outright win for Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primaries. In fact he got 37% of the ballots cast, exactly as predicted by the opinion polls. The figures for Hilary Clinton were wrong and were off target by 13 % points. Everone expected Obama to win and with the momentum of 2 victories he was to sail through to South Carolina where the African American votes were his for the taking. That at least was the conventional wisdom. But the upse...
The successful assasination of Ms Benazir Bhutto did not come as a surprise to me as I had virtually predicted it in an earlier blog. And dont jump to conclusions, I am continents away. Let me begin by saying that the death of this brave, courageous and at times imperious woman is a tragedy and my heart goes out to her three children and her mother.But in politics we must not let sentimentality cloud our vision, we must see the reality for what it is. Benazir Bhutto took the wrong decision...
A few days back I had predicted that the US support to "democracy" by brokering a power sharing arrangement with the Military regime in Pakistan will lead to instability in the region: the attack on the cavalcade of Ms Bhutto in Karachi proves that my assessment was right. The return of Benazir Bhutto to Pakistan at this juncture is not in the interest of peace in the region: her covert endorsement of US military strategy in the "War against Terror" has made Ms Bhutto's posion extremely vu...
When Great Powers collapse they do so in a spectacular manner. The Fall of Rome, the Mongols, the Chinese Empire and of course the latest on the block, the US Empire have all presented a awful and yes, a frightful spectacle. Why did the US fail in Iraq. This question will be debated for years on end and will provide the grist for several doctoral theses over the years. I see the collapse of US power in Iraq from two distinct points of view: Strategic and political. The Iraq study group made a...
The US invasion of Iraq has had one major consequence on the population of Iraq: It has splintered the population of that country along sectarian lines and the rift seems to be getting wider than ever. The previous regime has ensured stability in the region through a mixture of quile, strong-arm tactics and plain old fashioned terror. Whatever may have been the faults, real or imagined, of Saddam Hussein, no one can accuse the regime of playing hookey with the task of governance of the coun...