A lot of people admire him as a man of peace!

So WTF is he doing raising hackles in Nepal!

Parsing Sino-Indian Tensions

I have an article up at Asia Times Online under the pen name Peter Lee entitledDalai Lama at apex of Sino-Indian tensions.

It’s keyed to a high profile news item–the Dalai Lama’s provocative visit to a border town in territory held by India but disputed by China–and a significant but rather underreported development–the escalating political struggle between pro-Chinese and pro-Indian political forces now reaching its climax in Nepal.

The Chinese themselves have said that the biggest irritant to Sino-Indian relations is the unresolved border dispute. To them, it’s more of an issue than economic competition, India’s growing integration into the U.S. South Asian security regime, or Indian unease at Beijing’s cozying up to Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the Maldives at New Delhi’s expense and raising the specter of maritime encirclement.

An election in Canada is more than a year away

Image by The Stakhanovite Twins via Flickr

And here is the evidence:

Harper to visit India, China for 1st time

Last Updated: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 | 2:35 PM ET Comments205Recommend50

CBC News

Once you think about it you realize how stupid this is. Our economy depends on foreign trade and we need new markets desperately and it takes Harper 3 yrs to get the gumption to visit China, where he is probably unwelcome, and India, where his visit will likely have little impact. Chinese Canadians will think “better late than never” while Indo Canadians will give a low level cheer!

This is for Canadian political optics and nothing else! It is sad when a PM has to do something he obviously didn’t want to or didn’t see the reason to do!

 

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Here’s why I’m giving serious consideration to a move to China

I found this via HuffPo:

9 Signs of America in Decline

By

Image via WikipediaRick NewmanPosted: October 26, 2009

The sky isn’t falling, exactly. America isn’t on a fast track to irrelevance. Even in a state of total neglect, we could probably shamble along as a disheveled superpower for a few more decades.

But all empires end, and the warning signs of American decline seem to be blinking more consistently. In the latest annual “prosperity index” published by the Legatum Institute, a London-based research firm, the United States ranks as the ninth most prosperous country in the world. That’s five notches lower than last year, when America ranked No. 4. The drop might seem inconsequential, especially in the midst of a grueling recession—except that most of the world has endured the same recession, and other countries are bouncing back faster.

China and India have recovered smartly from the recession, for example. Brazil seems to be barreling ahead. Australia is growing faster than expected, prompting worry among government officials who fear they may have overstimulated the economy. The United States, meanwhile, is muddling through a weak, jobless recovery, and we have a lot of problems that could make prosperity feel elusive for a long time.

I still have the energy and interest to pursue business opportunities in China and I have had encouragement from my accountant and a respected business associate. My wife, who is Chinese from Dalian on the coast of the Yellow Sea, and I are having a good think about this.

We have lived there before and our financial fallback, my pension income paid in CDN $ looks pretty good at a conversion rate of $1 to 6.5 rmb, China’s currency. Rents for comfortable apts look ok, or about $700/month for a fully furnished 2 bedroom unit in a very good location in Dalian.

I am planning a move for next March or April.

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In 1940 Hitler and Stalin were doing their very best to destroy Poland

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I just viewed Andreaj Wajda’s film about the Katyn Forest Massacre. This event characterized Stalin’s paranoid politics as no other event could. We have the basic human honesty of the Poles to thank for that. They seemed beaten down by Hitler, Stalin and their own Communist politicians, but they survived and now they are telling their stories.

This morning I read that the conflict in Kashmir has taken the lives of over 70,000 over the last 40+ years. The title of this post by Arundhati Roy, an Indian writer, is titled “Is Democracy melting?”

I can recall too many reminders that India is the oldest and largest democracy in the world that works! And there is little doubt that if you need to find evidence of how messy democracy can be, there is no better democracy than India’s.

In the dirty thirties and bloody forties of the 20th century it was all about Hitler and Stalin. Now there is a leaky virulent strain of political violence that nests very effectively in SE Asia.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Wajda’s movie gave me the creeps with it’s forthright truth telling. The story revealed by Ms. Roy gives me the shivers, especially because so many new Canadians are from SE Asia. Will the virulent strain of political violence leak from Kashmir to India to Canada?

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A few weeks ago I posted here about the aborting of India’s Moon shot

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But according to this report the mission was 95% successful even if it was aborted.

So if my posting may have implied a failed space program the latest indicates that India is very much in the space business for profit too. The lead is “India launches seven satellites”.

So much for too hasty premonitions about India and its high tech stuff. Reading the latest from BBC.co.uk does make me feel lightly abashed, blushing et al.

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A very public stumble in India’s Space Program

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There is no denying that India is doing every thing it can to match China’s progress on the world stage including in Space. But India seems to have more than one problem in its Space Venture. Check this out.

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The practical value of democracy in South Asia

Image by premasagar via Flickr

Nothing is simple in this world where power of $$$$ holds sway more often than we care to openly admit. The message from the current state of democracy in middle class India doesn’t bode well for the future of democratic participation there. Here are words from Nareesh Fernandes writing from South Mumbai:

This contradicts India’s perception of itself as a deeply rooted democracy. Democracy is the superior virtue we claim as we smugly survey the chaos that military dictators have visited upon Pakistan. Democracy is our defense against China’s superior record of alleviating poverty and raising standards of health and literacy.

And yet our inability to protect religious minorities is obvious to the thousands of Muslim victims of the Gujarat riots of 2002. Our most famous painter, M. F. Husain, who lives in exile under threats from extremists for daring to paint Hindu deities in the nude, knows that we have yet to secure the right to free expression. And the brutality against ethnic separatist movements in the northeast and Kashmir demonstrates our unwillingness to make pragmatic compromises.

Our experiment with democracy has been far more successful than some others, but despite regular elections, it has failed many Indians. After all, in South Mumbai the government responds to its residents — whether they stand in the sun for that purple streak or not.

Naresh Fernandes is the editor of Time Out India.

Is it really surprising that the weight of MONEY POWER and Religion seems to be holding sway in Democratic India?

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Once again Rosa Brooks, LA Times, hits one on the head

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I have lotsa respect for her views. Have a boo at this excerpt to see what I mean:

Terrorism is nearly as old as humanity itself. In the 1st century AD, the Zealots of Judea began a series of covert killings of Roman occupiers and Jewish collaborators. The word “assassin” is thought to derive from “Hashshashin,” the name of a Shiite sect active during the Middle Ages whose members donned disguises to kill their victims in public places. The term “thug” is said to come from India — from the 17th to 19th centuries, a cult engaged in “thuggee,” the mass strangulation of travelers in caravans. And like modern terrorists of all ideological stripes, these ancient Zealots, assassins and thugs succeeded in part by sowing outsized fear.

Mumbai should remind us — again — of the folly of the Bush administration’s “war on terror.” Terror is an emotion, and terrorism is a tactic. You can’t make “war” against it. Even if meant as mere metaphor, “the war on terror” foolishly enhanced the terrorist’s status as prime boogeyman, arguably increasing the psychological effectiveness of terrorist tactics. Worse, it effectively lumped together many different organizations motivated by many different grievances — a surefire route to strategic error.

If only Obama could hire her for some communication thingee!

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Well the blood is not all washed away in Mumbai and

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

the accusations are flying. There was a heavy security lockdown up to a few days before the attack of last Thursday, but for unexplained reasons that lockdown was taken down. Now government ministers are resigning, recriminations flying ever lower and dirtier, general weeping and gnashing of teeth. The next step in that ramshackle democracy is to have large, noisy, bloody riots with all against all, I guess.

India is a mess of a country. The attack and long drawn out fight to eliminate the attackers in Mumbai proves beyond a shadow of doubt that there is a fundamental weakness in Indian governance.

Oh, it has a certain charm to it, like the mixture of feces and spices that apparently permeates most of the country. The scenes on TV seemed comical. Short security men with long guns, crouching, lying, standing, running and firing but ducking as they fired. What a comical scene, but murderous comedy for those Indians who were mercilously mowed down.

So where will the blame finally land! It belongs in Mumbai and Delhi. The Indians did this to themselves and it’s up to them to sort it all out without recourse to the old struggle with Pakistan and nearly every one of its neighbours.

The land of slumdog millionaires!

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India, starkly contrasting images

The Big Picture at boston.com offers 30+ images of India covering religion, curious rituals, space research, auto manufacturing, monsoon flooding et al.

Here’s a clip of one pic:

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