The Texas Debate was quite an event. Both candidate seated sedately in the Great auditorium of Texas, Austin, a campus where more than 30 years ago the first of several campus shootings took place, the latest being De Kalb. Hillary Clinton was at here charming best and Barack Obama looked confident: just the right mix of reserve and openess to look presidential. The debate raised several questions and at the end of it the lead of Barack Obama will become impossible for Hillary to br...
The spectalular series of victories won by Mr Barack Obama, eight in a straight row, raises two questions. How can we expalin his success. And two, what are the lessons to be learnt from the Obama style of political rhetoric and communication. I am surprised that the American media has not started analysing the style and substance of Barack Obama's speeches and public addresses. In mu opinion there is no politician in the English speaking world today who deploys the poetical cadence of the En...
Super Tuesday has come and gone, but the scene is still confused and perplexing. The Republicans have more or less sewn up the nomination process, even, though Senator John Mccain has a harvest of only 517 delegate out of a required total of 1,191. His nearest rival, Mitt Romney has 219 delegates and Huckabee has 158. The surprising aspect of Super Tuesday was the fact that the Baptist minister Mike Hukabee was able to win 5 states and win in states like Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee and West...
the most disturbing aspect of Orwell's dystopia in 1984 was the image of "big brother" watching everyone with his system of spying and invasion of privacy. The atomization of civil society into a million individual pieces so well brought out by Orwell has already become a reality in most parts of the world, especially those with a high degree of computer and cybernetic integration. In fact, many years ago, Robert Jnuk, the survivor of one holocaust, spent the rest of his life pointing out t...
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...
When we follow the American elections from across the world, we notice a strage sense of disconnect between what is "democratic" in the USA and the rest of the world. The election of the American president is surely one of the most complex and mind boggling political process anywhere in the world. As the 2000 election showed, though Al Gore won the majority of the popular votes, the rival candidate was able to steal the election as he won, not discounting help in Florida, the majority of the ...
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...
It sound so cruel to say so soon after the horrific assasination of Benazir Bhutto that events appear twice in history, first time a tragedy second time a farce. The unfortunate death of a brave woman is now acquiring all the trappings of a South Asian dynastic soap opera. The immense groundswell of sympathy for the slain woman is being systematically squandered by the People's Party and its leadership, especialloy her husband, Mr Asif Ali Zardari. There seems to have been a concerted attemp...
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...
The talk show host Ms Oprah Winfrey is known all over the world as a concerned voice for the disadvantaged. The school that she constructed in South Africa for poor children reinforced her image of being a television version of Mother Theressa. However her decision to openly back Barack Onama in his bid for the Presidency seem to me to smack of a slight bow towards identity politics.I have nothing against Obama and indeed, I find him quite engaging as a politician and he does not have to carr...
I am sometimes amazed at the cold blooded hypocricy of the Bush-Cheeeny administration. On the one hand they are figfhting a self declared war on terroism using all the weapons that amodern state can provide, and they are trying to chain the most valuable asset in this war, President Pervez Musharraf with the heavy chains of human rights and democracy of the US variety. Both are incompatiable with each other. The US seems to have forgotten the basic lesson of history: The Pakhtoons are distr...
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...
In 1857, exactly 150 years ago, soldiers of the then Bengal Army rose in rebellion against the English rukers of India. Historians have been debating the outbreak of 1857 ever since. However on the occasion of the 150 anniversary of the Mutiny several tourists from England, particularly the great great grand son of General Havelock and other members of the familires of the descendents of the Engish officers who faught against the Indian troops, wanted to pay homage to their ancesors at their ...