Sharma Family Journal

All this news hoopla about Condoleezza Rice doing this enormous amount of work to stop the violence seems to be utterly pointless and makes the American press look extremely stupid. How can the main party in the war be a part of the diplomatic solution, unless she has a speciality in negotiating with herself?

It seems to be clear to the rest of the world that IDF is pushing buttons on weapons made in the US and hastily supplied to them via UK.

All that is needed, is for Mr Bush to pick up the phone and talk some Texan with Mr Olmert - the way he did with Musharraf a few years ago.

Using people like Rice and Powell to put a diplomatic face on military offsensives are an insult to the intelligence of most readers.

What the policy makers in Israel and USA are overlooking in the clearly assymetrical war that’s going on in the middle east is: the rate at which deadly weapons are available to individuals wanting to inflict mass destruction.

That’s not to say that every country should give in to terrorist black mail. On the other hand, killing hundreds of civilians on the basis of military superiority, might create enmity that might last a few generations. The cost of this might be a lot more 50 or a 100 years from now.

According to the Chinese government, not the most democratic society in the world, but has enough resources to gather statistics for those who are curious.

And more likely to be reported by western press because of their economic prestige than say if Hugo Chavez had released the report.

Another incisive article from Asia Times about the absence of these three words together in recent reporting (even critical ones) on Iraq.

If WMD was a sham and occupying Iraq was a non-goal, what then was the real goal? Permanent bases sounds plausible, with a military cost equal to the number of Russian soldiers dying in boot camps every year (The Economist alleges that parents need to pay officers to save their sons).

Reuters quotes a few people claiming that Islam is not unique in this kind of violence and quotes a couple of examples about buddhism and hinduism which seems to be completely irrelevant.

Of course, there will be criminals and fanatics in every religion. But that comes no where near the political islam in the current context.

If they quoted Babri Masjid, that’d have been a lot more relevant, although it’s also more political than religious.

It seems to me that these things have more to do with colonialism (a lot of Hindus feel that they got colonialized twice - once by muslims and again by christians) than with religion.

The cartoon row seems to be as much political as it is religious. Islam is unique in the sense that it brings together so many nations which are geographically and racially diverse. So it’s hard to compare it to other religions which have a much smaller and localized political component.

This probably is the best possible ending to the row over cartoons offending Islam. Instead of burning embassies, they should just excersize their
“freedom of speech” and be done with the whole thing, so that the next time, the other side is more sensitive.

This happens every 5-10 years in Indian newspapers as well. Normally I’d say we need more of these to reduce what seems to be over-sensitivity (to the untrained eyes of a disinterested third party) of either side in this war of civilizations. But everyime this happens, more people get killed, which is bad.

I had the privilege to listen to President Jimmy Carter (almost) in person yesterday. He’s doing a book tour and was talking about various things from poverty and disease to fundamentalism. But the thing that really struck me was his observation:

As the chasm between the rich and the poor widens (the rich got 20 times more rich in the last 100 years) and the poor get access to more information (say through cheap access to the web), it makes them very angry. And in the most desperate cases, they might want to lash out at the rich who seem to be so oblivious about their plight.

In a recent news article on Iranian president’s remarks about Israel,
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the EU’s nuclear diplomacy is “not made easier by the fact that Mr Ahmadinejad comes up with new ideas, that the people of Israel could move to Germany and Austria, to resolve the Middle East problem”.

A number of people condemned the idea, but no one provided a logical argument. Is it that sensitive a topic in European political discourse?

This is what the Arab street has to say according to Zogby.

Asked from a list of countries which they would like to be
the superpower, the first choice was France with 21 percent,
followed by China with 13 percent, Pakistan and Germany tied
with 10 percent, Britain with 7 percent, the United States with
6 percent and finally Russia with 5 percent.

Pakistan for the third place? A reminder that having a nuke is a must for being on the UN security council.

The next time someone from Mr Bush’s white house talks about spreading democracy in the middle east, someone should ask them about
Egypt