Archive for the 'Politics' Category
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s plane, which encountered a mechanical problem after leaving Australia to return to the United States, landed safely in Singapore on Sunday.
“This was the pre-planned, scheduled fuel stop,” said Cheney’s spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride. “We were not diverted,” she added, following a comment by Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard that Cheney’s plane had been diverted to Singapore because of the mechanical problem.
McBride said there had been an issue with the electricity on the plane. Because of that, “a call was placed back to Sydney with the status,” she said, adding the electrical problem did not cut off Cheney’s ability to communicate with the rest of the world.
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I shouldn’t say this, but I kind of wish that his plane just disappeared in the middle of Pacific.
Politics | 25.02.2007 4:47 | 1 Comment
Sydney, Feb 24 (DPA) The United States could resort to force if diplomacy failed and Iran looked set to acquire nuclear weapons, US Vice President Dick Cheney said here Saturday.
‘All options are still on the table,’ Cheney said during a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
Cheney said every effort would be made to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions through diplomatic means.
‘But I have made the point, and the president (Bush) has made the point, that all options are still on the table,’ Cheney said after an hour-long meeting with Howard in his Sydney office.
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US to use force if diplomacy fails? What a joke. US is not trying diplomacy in the first place.
Politics | 24.02.2007 5:47 | No Comments
From now and then, someone like Josh Wolf emerges from nowhere and assures us that there is a future.
Josh Wolf, 24, has spent almost six months in jail. More time than any journalist in US history for protecting his sources. He was jailed on August 1st of last year when he refused to turn over video that he had shot of an anti-G8 demonstration in San Francisco to a federal grand jury.
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Too many things are going wrong in US, and the country is still doing a great disfavor to the world. At the end of the day, a number of US troops are still in Iraq and killing and raping innocent civilians everyday; most Americans are apathetic about it. Furthermore, US still has such a political environment that an article sounding almost like propaganda gets published on the biggest newspaper in the country. However, there is still a soul who speaks sense and tries to make the world a better place with his pen and his intellect even when he gets locked in jail unjustly (and possibly illegally).
Politics | 23.02.2007 10:36 | No Comments
Quite a few people already wrote about this, but I need to bring this up in this blog also. New York Times published the article “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says” a couple of weeks ago. Publishing this article shows that New York Times essentially complies with the government policies; New York Times is not critical of the government at the fundamental level.
I personally believe that there are many more examples besides this. Thomas Friedman, one of the star columnists of New York Times is a great example. He criticizes the Bush administration on the surface; however, he fundamentally does not differ from the administration. For example, he criticizes the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy, but he keeps emphasizing that the administration did not execute the war correctly; the decision to go to the war itself was correct according to him.
Politics | 23.02.2007 10:26 | No Comments
Major media outlets keep portraying Hillary Clinton as a leftist, but she’s far from it. As a matter of fact, she sounds very much like neo-conservatives. There is very little difference between her ideology and neo-conservative ideology. She is very militaristic.
I’m all for female President, but I cannot support this particular candidate. I’d like to think that she is only speaking like neo-conservatives to get votes, but I doubt it.
Politics | 20.02.2007 1:31 | No Comments
I like DemocracyNow, and here’s one of reasons. After I spent a couple of months in India, I find that most of major media outlets do not provide relevant news; more specifically, their news articles and programs are formatted to entertain the local audience (Americans, Japanese, etc.). There is really no objective analysis, nor is there any attempt to investigate today’s events and past events. DemocracyNow, while it is a small media outlet, has its objective analysis; it investigates today’s events and past events. DemocracyNow actually provides news that are relevant and affect so many people around the world, not just in US. This is one news source that I can appreciate even when I’m in India.
Politics | 20.02.2007 1:30 | No Comments
In developed western countries and westernized countries, it is often beloved that the business relationship and the personal relationship cannot be maintained simultaneously. Many Indian people seem to believe otherwise; the business relationship can only enhance and improve the personal relationship.
I am not exactly a pathological optimist and I tend to raise many questions and expect problems and difficulties, so that obviously makes me think that the business relationship can often create problems in the personal relationship or it can even break it, but such a thought does not even come to many Indian people’s mind. This is apparently a cultural difference between India and developed western countries and westernized countries.
Politics, India, Culture | 20.02.2007 1:28 | No Comments
Many of developed countries are multi-cultural and multi-ethnic. For example, US is multi-cultural and multi-ethnic. The complexity often creates number of social problems, so US has decided to separate church and state since the founding of the country. The country has made its complexity one of its appeals, and the separation of church and state has worked positively for the country over all. Many other developed countries, in particular, many western European countries such as UK, France and Holland, are also multi-cultural and multi-ethnic today as a result of immigrants’ settling in those countries; they are essentially adapting the same approach as US in order to bring balance in their societies. However, this is not the only model of the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country, nor is it the oldest model. India is actually multi-cultural and multi-ethnic (official languages alone count more than twenty two languages, and a number of different religions are practiced including Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity and Buddhism); India has developed and maintained its multi-cultural and multi-ethnic environment a little differently. When we look at three major functions of the society, the food distribution, marriage and the judicial system, we find that developed countries’ approach and India’s approach are very different.
We need to eat to live; therefore, the food distribution is a major function of the society and it is developed to accommodate everyone in the society. In cases of multi-cultural and multi-ethnic developed countries, they supply all kinds of food that they can physically supply. They supply all kinds of meat including beef, pork, chicken and fish. They also supply all kinds of vegetables and fruits. They also supply bread, pasta, rice, plain flour, potatoes and tacos. Given the food distribution system, everyone in those countries can get whatever he/she wants. If he is a Muslim and does not eat pork, then he can get beef, chicken and fish. If he is a vegetarian, then he can get all vegetables that he wants. This is not exactly how the food distribution system is structured in India; the food distribution system generally limits its supplies in terms of variety so that it serves everyone. Hindus do not eat beef and Muslims do not eat pork; as a result, butcher shops generally sell only chicken, mutton and fish; this creates no conflict. Also most Indians eat vegetables primarily; roughly 60% of Indians are vegetarians and they do not even eat eggs.
Many developed countries around the world promote the idea that any two people ought to be able to get married; inter-racial marriages are becoming very common. However, marriage in India is not quite like that. Even today, it is very common that family members arrange marriages. Two people, a bride and a groom meet just once or twice after their family members make the arrangement, and they decide to get married; something like this is very common. Religions and social classes play very important roles in marriage, and two people of the same religion get married commonly. Marriage is to preserve the existing social structure to a large extent.
Developed countries generally believe in the separation of church and state, and they define laws accordingly. In principle, laws should not reflect religious beliefs or practices. This is not the case in India. India has Indian Civic Law and each religion has its specific laws; there are separate laws governing Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and other religions.
Before I learned that India actually has a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic environment, I personally believed that the model that multi-cultural and multi-ethnic developed countries promote is the right model, but now I do not have as strong conviction as I used to. India’s model seems to be working fine at least in India, and I personally do not believe that it needs to change radically any time soon. It seems that both models have merits, and they can improve as they learn from each other.
Edit: The article is written by J. Watanabe.
Politics, India, Culture, Judicial System | 19.02.2007 11:13 | No Comments
Many of those in developed countries fear that emerging economies like India and China would take over the leadership in the world economy in foreseeable future. You can spend hours, days, weeks or even months discussing why this can possibly happen, but the simple fact is that the vast majority of people in emerging economies work hard and honestly and they try to get something out of their hard work. I have been in India for the last couple of months and I have seen how people work. It is a bit of exaggeration to say that most people in developed countries do not work hard or honestly, but too many people work in such a way that they do not exactly contribute to the development of their economies.
First, too many people in developed countries do nothing; they do not work. I am personally for social programs such as tax-funded healthcare and tax-funded education, but the simple fact is that too many people rely on those social programs and do not work; furthermore, social programs in some countries are too generous. For example, UK has some of the most generous social programs and its government just hands out cash to too many people; the government does not hand out just enough cash for people to survive but it hands out more than enough to them so that they can even entertain themselves.
Second, too many people in developed countries force them to feel content while they work for good hours. Not everyone has to have ambition to become a billionaire, nor does becoming a billionaire automatically contribute to the development of the society. However, when people work for good hours, they ought to understand that they deserve certain results financially. It is true that money is not everything. It is also true that being able to find meaning and value in life is very important. However, it is almost a trend to speak of such meaning and value in developed countries today; they focus too much on finding meaning and value, and they start neglecting the fact that they ought to get financial and materialistic results. There ought to be a good balance. Philosophy is very important, but that alone does not contribute to the development of their economies.
Third, too many people in developed countries essentially achieve their financial gain by stealing from others. One of examples is corporate executives’ terminating employee pensions, liquidating what employees already contributed and telling analysts and shareholders that they increased profit. This is not wealth creation; this is wealth extraction. Another example is that those who run businesses while they destroy the environment; this is also not wealth creation, but it is wealth extraction. These practices do not contribute to the development of their economies ultimately, but they only stifle their economies in the long run.
I exaggerated a little bit and wrote that too many people in developed countries either do nothing, force them to feel content while they actually live unfulfilled life or steal from others, but this is not entirely false. The way in which people in developed countries go to work is different from the way in which people in emerging economies go to work. The former go to work to wait for tomorrow while the latter go to work to create something; they go to work to improve their life. There is a tremendous difference between the two, and one obviously does not lead to prosperity, while the other leads to prosperity and creation of wealth.
Edit: The article is written by J. Watanabe.
Ideology, Politics, India, Business (India) | 19.02.2007 8:44 | No Comments
Global Climate Change (Global Warming) is finally becoming a part of our daily vocabulary, and even oil companies stopped denying the phenomenal. However, it seems that many of those in developed countries blame developing countries for this though developed countries clearly caused it. It also seems that many of those in developed countries prematurely assume that developing countries like India will not address the problem of CO2 emission and accelerates Global Climate Change (Global Warming). It is true that developing countries ought to do a lot to cut CO2 emission, but they are not as wasteful as most developed countries already. India is a great example, and applications of energy conservation exist in India.
Because of lack of electricity and natural gas, a house or a flat in India typically has one small tank in its bathroom to heat up water. One can get hot water using the machine, but it’s not sufficient to take shower. So, he/she typically keeps hot water in a big bucket and then takes bath. Obviously there is no bathtub. This is how one takes bath in India, and this alone saves a lot of electricity, and thus, India does not have to burn a lot of coals which emits CO2.
It gets quite cold in parts of India like Delhi in winter. The temperature can go down close to 0 degree (Celsius) sometimes. However, no one uses any heater. One dresses warm to keep him/her warm, but that’s about the only thing that one does to keep him/her warm in India. This also saves a lot of electricity, and this leads to lower CO2 emission.
More and more people drive automobiles in India, but most people drive scooters and motorcycles to get around. Engines are between 50cc and 125cc; they are quite small. This enables India to emit a lot less C02 than countries in which a lot of people drive SUVs and tracks US .
India has a long way to go to shift from traditional energy sources, such as coals and oil to new energy sources such as solar and wind to emit a lot less CO2; however, it is too convenient for developed countries to blame developing countries like India for Global Climate Change (Global Warming). What they should be doing is quite the opposite; they should be learning how Indian people manage to live without using so much energy.
Edit: This article was written by J. Watanabe
Politics, India, Global Climate Change | 8.02.2007 8:49 | No Comments