by the meltingpot: The play of the elements

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Indeed, what is at work in the recent return of realism is the revenge of geography in the most old-fashioned sense. In the 18th and 19th centuries, before the arrival of political science as an academic specialty, geography was an honored, if not always formalized, discipline in which politics, culture, and economics were often conceived of in reference to the relief map. Thus, in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, mountains and the men who grow out of them were the first order of reality; ideas, however uplifting, were only the second.
And yet, to embrace geography is not to accept it as an implacable force against which humankind is powerless. Rather, it serves to qualify human freedom and choice with a modest acceptance of fate. This is all the more important today, because rather than eliminating the relevance of geography, globalization is reinforcing it. Mass communications and economic integration are weakening many states, exposing a Hobbesian world of small, fractious regions. Within them, local, ethnic, and religious sources of identity are reasserting themselves, and because they are anchored to specific terrains, they are best explained by reference to geography. Like the faults that determine earthquakes, the political future will be defined by conflict and instability with a similar geographic logic. The upheaval spawned by the ongoing economic crisis is increasing the relevance of geography even further, by weakening social orders and other creations of humankind, leaving the natural frontiers of the globe as the only restraint.
So we, too, need to return to the map, and particularly to what I call the “shatter zones” of Eurasia. We need to reclaim those thinkers who knew the landscape best. And we need to update their theories for the revenge of geography in our time.
Here is the link for the whole write up.

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My view is that relations between countries in the coming decades are most likely to reflect their cultural commitments, their cultural ties and antagonism with other countries rather than other factors. Quite obviously, power will continue to play a central role in global politics, as it always does. But usually there is something else behind conflicts. In the 18th century in Europe, the issues to a large extent involved questions of monarchy versus the emerging republican movements, first in America and then in France. In the 19th century, it involved states identifying themselves through nationalism. In the 20th century, ideology came to the fore, largely, but not exclusively, as a result of the Russian Revolution. We had fascism, communism and liberal democracy competing with each other. Well, that’s pretty much over. Liberal democracy has come to be accepted, in theory at least, around the world, if not always in practice. So the question really is what will be the central focus of global politics in the coming decades? My argument remains that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states. The full interview is here.

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Every citizen in the City of Richardson will be able to access 756 Kbps of internet connectivity for free, from anywhere in the city. They will be able to access the internet from their homes, schools, restaurants and parks using standard wi-fi connections which are now installed on almost every notebook computer. That is almost as fast as many so-called high speed broadband connections that one pays dearly for today, and several times faster than the various hotspots at your local coffee shops. And I should note that the tax-payers of the City of Richardson are not paying one penny for this, and in fact are going to see additional revenues as a benefit. ... At the beginning of this letter, I suggested that this would be one of the fastest worldwide rollouts of a technology ever seen. It was just 20 years ago that the first cellular systems were being built. The rollout for mesh wireless systems is going to make that look slow. There are several reasons I make this assertion. But they all center on the facts that installing mesh systems will be cheaper and easier than any previous system and the economics in both the developed and especially the developing world will be so radically compelling. Throw in the fact the any astute politician will want to be at the front of this parade (They will all want to say, "I was the man who helped bring free internet to everyone!") and the groundwork is laid for rapid deployment. In Richardson and elsewhere, MeshLinx is offering the basic infrastructure for free. This avoids all the time consuming, political budget battles in the cities. When a service is offered for free, much of the mandated competitive process is eliminated. Next is the low cost of installation of the system. As noted above, Richardson is a city of roughly 100,000 people living in 27.4 square miles. It will "only" cost about $2,000,000 today to lay the wireless blanket I mentioned above. It will cost a great deal less in the future, as MeshLinx is building the pods at a pace of 100 a month today. The maximum output of the US pilot assembly line is 500 a month. When the demand exceeds this (and it will in a very short time) discussions have been held to move volume production to China. Of course, the world will need tens of millions of pods. The cost for a pod will be a fraction of today's cost, with that installation number for a city like Richardson soon being half (or less) the cost of today. What does that $1 or 2 million get you? The infrastructure to be an internet connection, telephone, security, entertainment provider and a whole lot more company. As noted, it will get cheaper as the number of pods being made each month rises, thus lowering their costs dramatically. This technology does have scale. The cost of physically putting up a pod is not a large part of the equation, as you simply need to run a power line, attach a few bolts to a mount on the side of a building or light pole and then off to the next point. Think about the 40,000 homes and businesses in Richardson. If and (hopefully) over time when 10% decide to pay $50 a month for 10-20 Mbps high speed internet access you could see a revenue of $2.5 million a year just from internet access. Now add in all the other income possibilities (phone, entertainment, security and don't forget advertising revenue on the free service!). Think about your town or country. What would service like this be worth? If you are a small city that does not have high speed connections available, how many businesses that could bring jobs do not come your way because they need reliable communications for their work and their employees? If you are in a developing country, where internet access is difficult and expensive, it will open whole new vistas. Couple that with the various programs which want to give cheap laptops to kids in poor countries, and you could see significant social progress in a generation. Here is the link.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

The play of the elements

My last post was essentially what had come to my mind on that day. But today it made me think more about the subject.

Well, I’ll admit that it would sound megalomaniac to most people! Manipur is such a small landmass with such a small people populating it that it should not shoulder any burden whatsoever of ‘giving light’ to anybody. It has enough problems of its own and it will need to pool all its available resources to focus on solving those problems.

That said, we must not also forget that now is the time for the global attention on what is to be done to finding ways for the free expression of the aspirations and the wishes of the Fourth World people.

To go swiftly to a non-controversial selection of a Fourth World people, let’s focus on Kurds.
Kurds are dispersed in Iraq, Iran and Turkey. All the three countries want their respective Kurd populations to be just they are right now—loyal minorities.

But the whole world, including the three nations of Iraq, Iran and Turkey knows most emphatically that the Kurds don’t like to be dispersed widely in three separate political entities, thereby robbing them of their rights to collectively decide their own destiny.

Now, all of the world’s attention is sharply focused on Iraq. And, so much has been written about how the imperialist British divided the Kurds by artificial lines and throwing them into the boundaries of so lenient three separate countries. At the moment, Iraq is in the process of constituting all over again from scratches. What the international community is going to do to undo the wrong done by the Brits 5 decades ago?

More pertinently, what’s the Kurds themselves going to do at this crucial juncture? The central power binding the Iraq as a nation has been smashed by the US military and the Kurds themselves have a reasonably strong armed forces ( as do the Shias and Sunnis, which are called the sectarian militias). Now is the historically most appropriate timing for expressing their aspirations and rights.

At this juncture, one astounding thing crops up. The Kurds cannot point to a ‘ Kurd way’ to put it in contrast to ‘Shia way’ or ‘Sunni way’ or, for that matter the ‘Iraqi way’. To say that staying in Iraq is preventing them from freely expressing their aspirations and wishes, they need to put the ‘Kurd way’ and the ‘Iraqi way’ in sharp contrast, convincing everybody about the incompatibility of the two living inside a single country.

But, where is the ‘Kurd way’? They try to find it in their pre-Islamic heritages. But the fiery swords of the foot soldiers of Mohammad cleanly swept them off the face of the earth. They cannot pick up a single thread, besides the name of their pre-Islamic faith.

Now, you replace the word ‘Kurd’ with any other name of a Fourth World community and you can well understand the dilemma they are in. I’m not saying that what you collective call the ‘Dalits’ or ‘Adivasis’ qualify as a nation or nationality (as in the case of Kurd) but their dilemma is the same as that of the Kurds. I also think that it is for the ‘dalits’ or the ‘adivasis’ to say it for themselves—it’s not our right to opine that they qualify for it or not.

Unlike the fate of the Kurds, Manipur’s society has those intangibles that make it possible to point out that there is the ‘Manipur way’. But the most profound and defining situation is that Manipur’s society have those intangibles side by side with the continuing revolt against the system (see my last post). You need to have these two elements in parallel so as to make any forceful historical statements.

Isn’t the intersection of the lines of these elements that produce such unpredictable situations, like the emergence of our ‘Nura Temsing-nabi’?

I mean to say that the play and interaction of such elements with the developments continually presented by the dynamics of history will likely to produce many situations which may serve as the SPARKS for the other Fourth World communities.

PS: This evening I saw Film Forum, Manipur (kind of Apunba Lup of the film fraternity of Manipur) putting posters in theatres proclaiming—‘ We support you, Nura Temsing-nabi’.

by the meltingpot

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Now at 2nd place

This is the 3rd