THE JASMINE REVOLUTION–Part – I

At times, few events, though not very often noticed, normally not even thought worth being covered by national media, but when the acts happen to be of SUPREME SACRIFICE or same order, change course of not alone history but geography too. The attempt is not to dub an act of self immolation as an act of bravery, and normally hundreds of cases of self immolation and attempts of self immolation get reported in media every year, besides lot many which even fail to find space in news media in nearly all the corners of the world which without fuelling in a minor change in governance.

The name “Mohamed Bouazizi” is not a famous or well known name even today, and thus indirectly gives an impression that history in due course of time may even forget to contain any record of this name for reference of future generations. The act of self immolation by this Tunisian Street Vendor to protest against the corruption is an apt example of helplessness being faced by common men, irrespective of him being a citizen, subject, at mercy of any dictator, fascist or Junta or probably any other form of Structure of Governance.

Strange are ways things are destined, much beyond human vision and imagination, it seems if  21^st Century were a Century of Convergence of Scale for nearly every sphere of human related activities. A Century standing witness to Convergence of Communication Technology and Tools, Convergence of Economies of Nations, Convergence of Trade, Convergence of Financial Governance, and perhaps even Convergence of Revolutions against Governance Structures across various nations and probably the list continue…s, neither can it be covered in this deliberation nor will it be attempted.

Till a couple of months back, the individual of the day was busy in himself thinking that all the problems could happen and will happen with others only, aptly defined selfish by Adam Smith and the league, was thinking of governance all around the globe being cool, calm and pleasant except the places messed up by United States of America. Perhaps still the individuals will remain individuals and will rarely form a society or nation; as people aware of history know very well that even the phenomenon or concept of nation is a gift of as recent as nineteenth century.

Connecting back, it was morning of December 17, 2010 when Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26 years old street vendor of Tunisia immolated himself protesting against corruption, an event of the magnitude often not even noticed by world media, the Arab World has not remained the same as it was till hours before of this act on the same day. It has left whole geo-political area simmering and inhabitants rumbling.  It has initiated a chain reaction.

The chain reaction, that has already made twenty three years old rule of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, (in power since 1987) now a chapter in history of Tunisia. It did not stop here itself. It perhaps turned a torchbearer for other nations of geopolitical area often called as Gulf (British call it as Middle East), or as the author calls it, the Middle West. It did not stop at Tunisia. The next link in chain turned out to be Egypt. In Egypt, the war hero of Egypt Israel War of 1973 that made Egypt a power centre in Middle West and one time air force officer Hosni Mubarak was shown door after his thirty year rule. To world it may look a silent transition made success by people of Egypt but sources say that at least 300 people lost their life and another 3000 suffered injuries. Reality about real causalities is not known due to initial crack down on media and still no real transition to any new form of governance taking place. It is probably still another Hosni Mubarak just individual may differ, as no real transition to any form of governance has taken place, but junta in control.

“The phenomenon being deliberated, as on date, has come to be known as SIDI BOUZID REVOLT in Arab World and as JASMINE REVOLUTION elsewhere.”

Similar turmoil, protests against governments in place, in numerous other nations of gulf is being seen and also the ruthlessness and lack of human emotions with which they are being suppressed and retaliated by various governments in place. It is the same story today in Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Libya and Yemen.

Probably crossing the borders of a nation or two, some simmer is being felt in China too. The world that is networked today with Internet or World Wide Web (normally first place to face fire and wrath of unpopular governments) is now witness to call for Jasmine Revolution that has spread through Internet in China and Chinese police could be seen in high alert cracking down on expected activists oriented towards democracy in Beijing and Shanghai.

Always Yours — As Usual — Saurabh Singh

THE ARRIVAL OF U. S. S. GEORGE WASHINGTON AIRCRAFT CARRIER IN YELLOW SEA HAS TRANSFORMED INTO A CONUNDRUM FOR CHINA

THE ARRIVAL OF U. S. S. GEORGE WASHINGTON AIRCRAFT CARRIER IN YELLOW SEA HAS TRANSFORMED INTO A CONUNDRUM FOR CHINA

Professor Saurabh Singh‘s comment on International Polity

Scholar of Domain of Knowledge Named Administrative Sciences

Dilemma of nature that may be dubbed as unique in its own kind, i.e,

?        TO SPEAK OR NOT TO SPEAK

ƒ       Should it protest angrily and aggravate ties with Washington, or

ƒ       quietly accept the presence of a key symbol of American military pre-eminence off Chinese shores

?        BACKGROUND

ƒ        The USS George Washington, accompanied by escort ships, is to take part in military drills with South Korea following North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island.

ƒ        The Shelling on Tuesday is one of the most serious confrontations since the Korean War a half-century ago.

?           IT’S A SCENARIO WHICH CHINA HAS ALWAYS PREVENT

Only four months ago, Chinese officials and military officers shrilly warned Washington against sending a carrier into the Yellow Sea for an earlier set of exercises

Some said it would escalate tensions after the sinking of a South Korean navy ship blamed on North Korea.

Others went further, calling the carrier deployment a threat to Chinese security.

?           CHINESE BELIEVE THAT THEIR OBJECTIONS WORKED

Although Washington never said why, no aircraft carrier sailed into the strategic Yellow Sea, which laps at several Chinese provinces and the Korean peninsula.

This time around, with outrage high over the shelling, the U.S. raising pressure on China to rein in wayward ally North Korea

a Chinese-American summit in the works, the warship is coming, and Beijing is muffling any criticisms.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL RICHARDSON, Commented..,

[A visiting research fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies]

“I think China must be quietly cursing North Korea under their breath.”

“The Scenario can very well be taken as a of the adverse Outcome of North Korea’s most recent belligerence.

Belligerence by NORTH KOREA has transformed in “HOT POTATO IN THE MOUTH SCENARIO***” for CHINA

China, as of now can neither “open the mouth nor Keep it shut”; as regards to deployment of U.S. Naval Ship George Washington, which happens to be a Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier, in the East China Sea,”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman reiterated Beijing’s long-standing insistence that foreign navies obtain its permission before undertaking military operations inside China’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 230 miles (370 kilometers) from its coast.

The statement also reiterated calls for calm and restraint but did not directly mention the Yellow Sea or the planned exercises.

Global Times, a nationalistic tabloid, in an editorial expressed its worries by stating  that a U.S. carrier would upset the delicate balance in the Yellow Sea, [Ignoring the fact that the George Washington has taken part in drills in those waters numerous times before.]

North Korea, not ready to come out of its belligerence, has warned that the U.S.-South Korean military drills were pushing the peninsula to the “brink of war.”

?        A MORE PASSIVE APPROACH SEEMS A BETTER TRADE OFF FOR CHINA

Its credibility with Washington and trading partner South Korea would get a boost

Put North Korea on notice that its actions are wearing China’s patience thin

PROFESSOR ZHU FENG, Director Peking University’s Center for International and Strategic Studies opined:

“The Chinese government is trying to send Pyongyang a signal that, if they continue to be so provocative, China will just leave the North Koreans to themselves.” He added further that “What China should do is make the North Koreans feel that they have got to stop messing around.”

 

CHINA FEARS RESORTING TO TOUGHER ACTIONS AGAINST NORTH KOREA

Chinese administration is of the view that cutting the food and fuel assistance Beijing supplies — would destabilize the isolated North Korean dictatorship, possibly leading to its collapse.

The adverse outcome as a resultant of tougher actions against North Korea may lead to flood of refugees into northeastern China and result in a pro-U.S. government taking over in the North in very recent future.

China may also be mindful of its relations with key trading partner Seoul, strained by Beijing’s reluctance to condemn Pyongyang over the March ship sinking. Raising a clamor over upcoming drills in the wake of a national tragedy would only further alienate South Korea.

CHINA, PERHAPS ARE INTELLEGENT ENOUGH &, WOULD BE AWARE OF THE ACTS THAT MAY MANISFEST, IF MISTAKE AT ANY LEVEL IS COMMITTED, IN FORM OF BENEFICIAL OR  HARMFUL  TO THE INTERESTS OF CHINA.

NEW ERA ON HORIZON TO HAVE RENEWED EXCHANGES WITH WASHINGTON

• President Hu Jintao is scheduled to make a state visit to Washington in January hosted by President Barack Obama — replete with a state dinner and other formal trappings that President George W. Bush never gave the Chinese leader.

• Before that Gen. Ma Xiaotian, one of the commanders who objected to the George Washington’s deployment earlier this year, is due in Washington for defense consultations. Those talks are another step in restoring tattered defense ties, a key goal of the Obama administration.

Thus CHINA at MOMENT could pray alone and practice Restraints on its Defense Policy and Diplomatic Offices.

CHINA could expect some luck also; as it may land up with few sounds reasons to ask USA to pull out it’s Aircraft carrier George Washington far away from Yellow Sea; as it may be gifted some information in the way of wiki leaks.

Whereas USA and South Korea, as on the moment are planning an artillery exercise  as part of the Whole Exercise with USA troops; the North Korea is busy arranging its array of  missiles, blaming that USA awr exercise has put the Korean Peninsula at the brink of War.

 

————-So better wait and watch; even minor laps, on the part of any party may change or dictate; the whole course of global environment in a manner as to alter the path and orbit other than current; and may be to an unthought-of manner or unimagined or unanalyzed till date. The new equation and chapter may take birth to substitute the present equation in International Relations, Trade, Economy & polity.

The discussion in normal context is stopping here for the time being and will be initiated further if set and patterns of variables change due to any reason.

INDIA

I would love to add, before closing, that India till now is required to be on alert but not worried. India has enough might to foil any endeavor having malignancy by any neighboring nation or any lunatic national head. To defend itself, the Mother Nature by itself, has gifted India a number of Cover. Added to that resource gifted to India happens to KNOWLEDGE, which has added glitter gold and is going to perpetually provide India an edge over any other nation, in the form of its human resource, i.e., Citizen of India.

——————Professor Saurabh Singh, Subject Matter: Administrative Sciences; INDIA

[The closing paragraph and few pictures have been added for India Audiences of my Blog, due to their status of fellow citizen.]

*** The Phrase coind by Mr. Saurabh Singh to express a situation in which “one can neither swallo nor omit the things in mouth”.

Always Yourd —  As Usual —- Saurabh Singh

Get Introduced with Barak M Obama — before he Lands in Mumbai-INDIA

Obama at bottom of his popularity and further confidence broken by  Poll Results

India, stand by to welcome a wounded American President. A crushing defeat in the mid-term Congressional elections stares President Obama’s Democratic Party on the eve of his four-nation trip that begins with a three-day Mumbai-Delhi swing later this week. The expected rout is likely to impact his agenda for the visit, which has already been heavily weighted towards economic issues at the expense of a strategic outreach with an eye on Tuesday’s polls.

But it has not made much difference, and things don’t look good for Obama. A 12-foot-high stack of pumpkins on the White House lawns on Sunday generated jokes about why Democrats are running scared on Halloween, which Obama celebrated with his kids after taking a break from the pell-mell of last-minute campaigning.

Democrats are in danger of losing both the House of Representatives (where all 435 seats are at stake) and nearly a third of the 100-member Senate, besides a host of governorships and state legislatures in play.

Almost every opinion poll has projected a heavy defeat for the Democrats, with the certain loss of the House of Representatives and possibly even the Senate. Republicans are poised to erase the 39-seat difference in the 435-member House to take control of the chamber.

In the words of Harvard Historian Professor James T. Kloppenberg

Professor James T. Kloppenberg ‘s authored book has been published on just the past Sunday by Princeton University Press.

Professor chose to focus on the influences that shaped President Barack Obama’s view of the world, he interviewed the president’s former professors and classmates, combed through his books, essays and speeches, and even read every article published during the three years Obama was involved with the Harvard Law Review (“a superb cure for insomnia,” Kloppenberg said). What he did not do was speak to Obama. “He would have had to deny every word,” Kloppenberg said with a smile. The reason, he explained, is his conclusion that Obama is a true  intellectual — a word that is frequently considered an epithet among populists with a robust suspicion of Ivy League elites. In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition, Kloppenberg explained that he sees Obama as a kind of philosopher president, a rare breed that can be found only a handful of times in US history.

“There’s John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, then Abraham Lincoln and in the 20th century just Woodrow Wilson,” he said. To Kloppenberg the philosophy that has guided Obama most consistently is pragmatism, a uniquely American system of thought developed at the end of the 19th century by William James, John Dewey and Charles Sanders Peirce. It is a philosophy that grew up after Darwin published his theory of evolution and the Civil War reached its bloody end.

Pragmatism maintains that people are constantly devising and updating ideas to navigate the world in which they live; it embraces open-minded experimentation and continuing debate. “It is a philosophy for skeptics, not true believers,” Kloppenberg said. Those who heard Kloppenberg present his argument at a conference on intellectual history at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center responded with prolonged applause. “The way he traced Obama’s intellectual influences was fascinating for us, given that Obama’s academic background seems so similar to ours,” said Andrew Hartman, a historian at Illinois State University who helped organize the conference.

Kloppenberg  chose to focus on one slice of the president’s makeup: his ideas. In the professor’s analysis the president’s worldview is the product of the country’s long history of extending democracy to disenfranchised groups, as well as the specific ideological upheavals that struck campuses in the 1980s and 1990s. He mentions, for example, that Obama was at Harvard during “the greatest intellectual ferment in law schools in the 20th century,” when competing theories about race, feminism, realism and constitutional original intent were all battling for ground.

Obama was ultimately drawn to a cluster of ideas known as civic republicanism or deliberative democracy, Kloppenberg argues in the book . Taking his cue from Madison, Obama writes in his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope that the constitutional framework is “designed to force us into a conversation,” that it offers “a way by which we argue about our future.” This notion of a living document is directly at odds with the conception of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who has spoken of “the good, old dead Constitution.”

Kloppenberg compiled a long list of people who he said helped shape Obama’s thinking and writing, including Weber and Nietzsche, Thoreau and Emerson, Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison. Contemporary scholars like historian Gordon Wood, philosophers John Rawls and Hilary Putnam, anthropologist Clifford Geertz and legal theorists Martha Minow and Cass Sunstein (who is now working at the White House) also have a place.

Despite the detailed examination, Kloppenberg concedes that Obama remains something of a mystery. “To critics on the left he seems a tragic failure, a man with so much potential who has not fulfilled the promise of change that partisans predicted for his presidency,” he said. “To the right he is a frightening success, a man who has transformed the federal government and ruined the economy.”He finds both assessments flawed. Conservatives who argue that Obama is a socialist or an anti-colonialist (as Dinesh D’Souza does in his book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”) are far off the mark, he said.

“Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by,” he told the audience in New York. “He has a profound love of America.” And his opposition to inequality stems from Puritan preachers and the social gospel rather than socialism. As for liberal critics, Kloppenberg took pains to differentiate the president’s philosophical pragmatism, which assumes that change emerges over decades, from the kind of “vulgar pragmatism” practiced by politicians looking only for expedient compromise. (He gave former President Bill Clinton’s strategy of “triangulation” as an example.)

 

Always Yours——— As Usual——–  Saurabh Singh