Obama, Modi, And The Sling Shot Effect

Barack Obama was the most exciting politician on the planet in 2009. Today that person is Modi. But Modi is also that Jupiter around which Obama can give himself additional momentum through the sling shot effect. In getting close to Modi, Obama can give his final two years in office new life. He need not be a lame duck. He can approach his final two years in office with renewed vigor. And proximity to Modi can help.

Obama's act on immigration reminds me of the guy I volunteered for in the 2007-08 cycle. The guy I volunteered for was, is bold. He need not go quietly into the sunset.

India is the new Britain. Britain being America's closest ally served the Cold War purposes. That era ended a while ago. In the current struggle known as the War On Terror, India is the new Britain. India is America's new best friend. This War only ends after every Muslim country has been turned into a vibrant democracy. And India is the laboratory that can make it happen. The separation between mosque and state has to be first established fully in India. And then it can be taken to the rest of the Islamic world.

Obama going to be Chief Guest at India's Republic Day celebrations in January is a great sign. He will come back to America after that trip as if he just won an election.

We must live in a decidedly post-colonial world where the rulers of the two largest democracies look like Gandhi and MLK.

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The British Parliament Was Also Wrong About Hitler

Stamp of the Greater German Reich, depicting Adolf Hitler as the Führer of the Reich. The stamp's value is 42 Pfennig. Deutsch: Die Briefmarke des Grossdeutschen Reiches. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For a decade the British parliament stayed in denial on Hitler. As long he does not directly attack Britain, he is fine, that was the thinking. Churchill was the lone voice who saw Hitler for who he was. It took some major catastrophes for the British parliament to finally start making sense on Hitler.

If the British parliament had woken up to Hitler years before it did, the world might have been able to skip a world war.

The car is the modern day horse carriage. Assad is a modern day Hitler. The guy has already slaughtered over 100,000 of his own people in less than a year.

The White House has to make a call on this one.

Wars are always ugly. You never have the best intelligence and the best resources. The timing is never right. You make mistakes along the way. Wars are expensive. They are almost always hard to get out of. But there are times when a war is the only just option and a just nation just has to make the plunge. Gandhi was alive at the time Hitler was alive. But I doubt Gandhi had a solution for Hitler.

There is the British parliament and then there is this thing called leadership.

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London Has Become Cairo (2)

Image via Wikipedia

Wall Street Journal: Repressing the Internet, Western-Style: As the British police, armed with the latest facial-recognition technology, go through the footage captured by their numerous closed-circuit TV cameras and study chat transcripts and geolocation data, they are likely to identify many of the culprits. ..... Authoritarian states are monitoring these developments closely. .... They hope for at least partial vindication of their own repressive policies. ..... Prime Minister David Cameron said that the government should consider blocking access to social media for people who plot violence or disorder. ...... After the recent massacre in Norway, many European politicians voiced their concern that anonymous anti-immigrant comments on the Web were inciting extremism. They are now debating ways to limit online anonymity. ....... acts of terror briefly deprive us of the ability to think straight. We are also distracted by the universal tendency to imagine technology as a liberating force; it keeps us from noticing that governments already have more power than is healthy. ...... After violent riots in 2009, Chinese officials had no qualms about cutting off the Xinjiang region's Internet access for 10 months. ...... In their concern to stop not just mob violence but commercial crimes like piracy and file-sharing, Western politicians have proposed new tools for examining Web traffic and changes in the basic architecture of the Internet to simplify surveillance. ..... Should America and Europe abandon any pretense of even wanting to promote democracy abroad? Or should they try to figure out how to increase the resilience of their political institutions in the face of the Internet?

I have never believed in political violence. I don't today. But I do believe in mass action. I don't believe in rioting. But then I don't see the London riots as simply a law and order problem.

The economic roadmap that the Conservative government in Britain has in place as the solution to the recession is precisely the wrong move to make. This is a time for massive rethink on the part of governments and also massive spending to make up for lost private expenditures. Britain is going the wrong way.

If America were to go down that cut the spending route, the recession would deepen, and there would be riots in America.

What is happening in London is less a failure of the British police to control mobs and more the failure of the Conservative government. It is primarily a policy level failure.

There is a need for a massive rethink of the nation state also in long established democracies. Instead of protesting Wikileaks (Learning The Wrong Lessons From Wikileaks) government departments and agencies should be embracing social media like tech startups.

The Internet And The Emperors

There should be talk of one gigabit per second kind of internet access for all and the resultant universal lifelong education. The goal should be universal health care. The goal ought be a Global Marshall Plan.

When it is time to think big, Cameron has thought small. And he has problems on his hands. Tea Party, take note.

London Riots: Debate
The Stimulus Bill Was Messed Up
Three Million Jobs
Global New Deal Needed
London Has Become Cairo
A Second Stimulus Bill Needed

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Rumbles Of Another War?

Image by Kodak Agfa via Flickr

Iran

I don't believe the basic premise of this Time article completely. But increased volatility is bad enough news for that part of the world, war or no war. This is troubling.

Time: Is The Middle East On The Brink Of Another War?

last Friday's unprecedented joint visit to Beirut by the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Syria ....David Cameron's pleas to Turkey to keep open its communication channels with Israel's leaders ...... despite the outward calm, the region may be on the brink of another catastrophic war ...... exceptionally quiet and uniquely dangerous, both for the same reason ...... "As Hizballah's firepower grows," the Crisis Group notes, "so too does Israel's desire to tackle the problem before it is too late ... What is holding the current architecture in place is also what could rapidly bring it down." ...... Israel is determined to strike a devastating blow more quickly than it did during the last conflict ..... Hizballah believes its capacity to fire missiles into Tel Aviv is key to restraining Israel from returning to finish off the Shi'ite militia ..... the self-styled "axis of resistance" — Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizballah — have deepened their alliance ..... "tensions are mounting with no obvious safety valve." ..... in the tragic tradition of Middle Eastern wars that have erupted in part because the adversaries failed to understand one another's intentions..... his movement's "divine victory" in standing up to Israel's 2006 offensive, a feat that made him a hero on the streets of the Arab world, Hizballah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah ....... the Israel-Lebanon border, where both sides have been preparing for the next war ever since the last one ended, neither desiring that option but both accepting it as inevitable ...... should Iran's nuclear facilities come under attack, Hizballah's rockets would figure prominently in Tehran's retaliation plans...... "there is no mechanism in place to either address or ease" those mounting tensions

Extensive dialogue mechanisms have to be sought. Those of use who operate in democratic frameworks tend to look down upon those who don't, and I might not want to argue with that, but if that looking down upon leads to vastly reduced engagement, that can create situations that run counter to the self interests of the larger world.

While we hope to create new realities, we have to engage with realities as they exist.

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