by the meltingpot: NOW, with a wider meaning.

Now Reading!

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.

Now at 2nd place

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.

This is the 3rd

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.

Friday, August 31, 2007

NOW, with a wider meaning.

This should be the last part! I should really resist the temptation of wanting to continue from the previous day’s post! Well, I’m continuing from my last post.

Did some subtle changes in the quality of the playing field of the insurgency ‘sector’ occur in the meantime?

Did these changes in the quality of the playing field bring about the 180 degrees reversal in what the Naga perceived to be their ‘national interest’?

To my mind, the answer is ‘yes’.

Well, I’ll take this risk of appearing to praise the working of some Imphal-valley based rebel groups and speak out loudly.

This is the first time in the history of the Indian nation that some rebel groups’ political activities make a discernible impact on its foreign policy. This impact is presently making ripple effects in the nation-to-nation relations with India with several of its neighbours. Most of its neighbours are re-designing the diplomatic ‘ammunitions’ to be aimed towards India.

The most visible case is Burma India relations. Suddenly India seems to be obsessed with attempting to leaf frog to a cozy diplomatic relations with that country. Rangoon was bombarded with the sudden official visits of all the heavyweights of the Indian political establishment. Not to be outdone, top military officials were making secret trips to Rangoon. They are also supplying military hardware to the military junta there defying the will the International Community and discarding its much vaunted moral high grounds. They are also giving technical and training support to the junta. All these Indian efforts don’t seem to produce any perceptible dent in the Burmese government’s stance.

Unlike Bangladesh, the Burmese has no history of wanting to spite the Indians without any particular reason. Much more than impressed with the Indian handouts, Burmese leaderships are quick to come to grips with the previously unseen vulnerability of the Indian nationhood.

This is the same case with that of Chinese leadership. I think they are not much bothered with what’s happening in Burma despite the fact that the Burmese seem to have a lot of unexplored oil fields. Neither do they want to annex Arunachal Pradesh. Why should they suddenly make an issue of an Arunachali IAS probationer visiting Beijing? We have to remember here that they refused visa to the Arunachali because they were claiming that Arunachal Pradesh was a disputed area resulting in the whole of the IAS probationers, of which the Arunachali was a member, canceling their goodwill trip to Beijing. To my mind, we are all seeing these things because the Chinese leadership are quick to sense a possible vulnerability of the Indian nationhood and nimble enough to hastily act on it when presented with the first opportunity.

We know that even without all these diplomatic buildups in the region, the US will anyway give access to the nuclear supplies to India. They perceived that tying down the Chinese with an Indian ‘problem’ is in their national interest. So, making India stronger to ‘an acceptable level’ is the aim of US foreign policy. In this scenario, there is no possibility that they are not factoring in the political activities of the Manipur rebel groups in their diplomatic moves in the region.

Coming to the local, is it in the Naga’s( or the Kukis’s) ‘national interest’ to tie down the Imphal valley based rebel groups with ‘a boundary problem’?

If we try to answer this question, it is easy to see that the demand for the integration of Naga ( or Kuki) dominated areas into a single administrative set up is now not a simple thing od re-demarcating some boundary lines amongst the neighbouring states.

NOW, it carries a wider meaning.

by the meltingpot

Now Reading!

Now at 2nd place

This is the 3rd