Nirvana - Singapore style

more often than not, the turn of events in the external environment can instantly make your political allies into a enemies and vice versa.

Meet Razy from New York. followed parents to US at the age of nine,
was the SMD product lead for the South America. Take on the worldwide role. Quota:80M, 10M hardware, 20M services and the rest software. Focus on Business process integraion.
Original from a small town not very far from Tibet in India.
Went back to India for the first time in 26 years.

Discussion with Prem.
On Sonia gandhi, italian. from the congress party.
Rajiv gandhi, he who weld the sword will be killed by it.
Support the tamil seperatist movement in Sri Lanka.Later assasinated by a tamil extremist.

State of Bihar, geographically, it may be close to NewDehli, yet it is uncontrolled.. crime rate is high..
weapons smuggling are rampant .. akin to a state of anarchy.

Dali lama's brother put up a resistance fight against the communist in china. then came the ping-pong diplomacy.. US used to have a base station in india to support the tibet seperatist movement.
it pull the plug on the station and handed the list of activist to china political leaders.

Forbidden Truth- US relation with the Taliban
the number one bestseller in France, two journalists reveal the secret negotiations between the Bush administration and the Taliban for control of Central Asian oil fields and the safe passage of Osama bin Laden, already the subject of an international arrest warrant, from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia. Oil makes strange bedfellows: Texas tycoons, Islamic fanatics, respectable bankers, high-ranking members of the Bush administration, pro-Taliban lobbyists, the Arabian monarchy, and patrons of terrorism—all had a stake in an expedient alliance. Exhaustive research into money trails and pipeline plans, and an astonishing revelation by the FBI’s ex- counter-terrorism chief, John O’Neill, suggests that the failure of that alliance precipitated the attacks of September 11 and is the real reason for the invasion of Afghanistan. O’Neill quit the FBI in protest over its inability to press Saudi Arabia on its connections with bin Laden. He charged the State Department with obstructionism (during the summer of 2001), and with proposing a quid pro quo to the Taliban: Let us run a pipeline from Kazakhstan through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean, and America will recognize the Taliban extremists and reward them with billions of dollars—and bin Laden can escape to Arabia. Other sources listed in the book, such as Ahmed Rashid’s Taliban, and reports from The Times of London, The Washington Post, and The Toronto Star, corroborate O’Neill’s accusations. O’Neill took a job as head of security for the World Trade Center and was killed on September 11, 2001.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs proposed 3 criteria that constitute a rogue state:
possession of weapons of mass destruction
grave and systematic violations of human rights
evidence of aggressive intent with regard to neighbouring nations.
If these three conditions were all met, the Security Council would consider the use of force in eliminating the threat. It would thus have clear criteria and it would have a mandate to consider superceding specific national sovereignties for the sake of common good.

advocate --> network governance --> generative common good --> peace and harmony

Wilson - after world war I, instituted the league of nations
Roosevelt and truman after world war II, came up with Marshall plan, UN, IMF, World Bank, and the Bretton Woods institution.

Soros "We have global markets but we do not have a global society. And we cannot built a global society without taking into account moral considerations."

"The difference between global capitalism and a global open society is not so great. It is not an either/or alternative ut merely a change of emphasis, a better balance between competition and cooperation, a reassertion of morality amid our amoral preoccupations."

Soros's view is consistent with those held by the father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith. Smith wrote 2 books on subjects that in his mind were interrelated: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations. In the first book, he set forth the commonly held view of the Enlightenment - that happiness is the greatest value and that one becomes happy by making others happy. His contemporary, David Hume, along with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, developed this into the theory of utilitarianism - that governance in society should strive for the greatest good for the greatest number.

In The Wealth of Nations, Smith worked not the implications of the first theory in the economic sphere. For him, consumption is the sole end and purpose of production. This was not a matter of opinion for him, but a matter of natural low. The interests of the producers of goods and services should only be assisted by the state insofar as they satisfy the consumers. For him, competition and free choice among consumers form the basis of the free market, not competition between the producers, or as we know them, the corporations. In Smith's view, the companies are only there to satisfy consumer needs. This is what, for him, contributes to the common good and the happiness of all: producers shouldserve the needs of the people. The people are made happy when their needs are met, and the producers receive a profit from this service. True capitalism, therefore, links the production of wealth with the needs of the common good.

extract from book -jim garrison " america as empire - global leader or rogue power?"

in his book Special Providence, policy analyst Walter Russell Mead calls this the "Jacksonian" tradition of American history, anmed after President Andrew Jackson, whose administration was characterized by fighting the Indians and taming the West during the 1830s. It was a time when the world was cast in black and white and the aim was to defeat the enemy without mercy, giving no quarter. The Jacksonian tradition is one of "us against them", and is infused by patrotic fervor, a culture of honor, and military pride.
Mead also notes other traditions: the "Hamiltonian", named after Alexander Hamilton, the first US secretary of the treasury, representing the American interest in developing commerce and trade; the Jeffersonian", named after President Thomas Jefferson, deeply concerned with protecting democracy and human rights; and the "Wilsonian," named after President Woodrow Wilson, heralding world-changing political ideals. All of these traditions conjoin to produce the totality of the American political expression , in terms of both its domestic and its foreign policy.
Prior to 9/11, the US was in a classic Hamiltonian phase. President Clinton focused his entire administration on the economy; balancing the budget, eliminating the deficit, forging free trade agreements,and presiding over robust economic growth. The US economy was better tended during his watch than perhaps at any time in modern American history, even considering the collapse of the high-technology economy and the stock market at the end of his administration in 2000. Americans were generally positive about the world,optimistic about the future and content with the multilateral framework of international relations in which America operated.

In the aftermath of 9/11, America experienced a fundamental reversal of emotions and perceptions. Almost overnight, the Jacksonian impulse gripped the president, and under his leadership, the American public. What had been a world-centric orientation was radically replaced by unilateralism, global diplomacy by military force, and congeniality with confrontation.

When the trumpet of the Last Judgment sounds the dead all rise from their graves and rush to the Field of Judgement "like men rallying to a Standard." There they take up their station before God, in two mighty crowds separated from each other, the faithful on one side and the unbelieving on the other; and each individual is judged by God... The bi-partition of the crowd in Islam is unconditional. The faithful and the unbelieving are fated to be separated forever and to fight each other. The war of religion is a sacred duty and thus, though in a less comprehensive form, the double crowd of the Last Judgment is prefigured in every earthly battle.
Elias Canetti "Crowds and Power"

Who is Osama bin Laden? He is America's family secret. He is the American president's dark doppelganger(double), the savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilized. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy:its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full spectrum dominance," its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts, and its marauding(raid) multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think.
Arundhati Roy

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
- quote attributed to Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), British statesman, author

America as Empire

During the entire 19th century, the US struggled militarily and diplomatically with Europe, particularly with Great Britain, always from the vantage pint of the weaker against the stronger. A substantial part of the American defense budget went to build an impressive string of forts up and down the western coast Many were used during the CIvil War, some remain operational to the present day.
During the administration of President Martin van Buren (1837 to 1840), the US supported Irish and Canadian rebels against the British in Canada, and this almost brought the two old rivals to war yet again. Then a dispute arose between Maine and New Brunswick in 1840, which led to the "Aroostock War," in which both Britain and the US deployed troops in the area. At the same time, the British were maneuvering to bring the newly independent state of Texas inside the British sphere of influence, which triggered the US annexation of Texas and served as instigation for the war against Mexico. Just as this war was subsiding, a conflict broke out in the Northwest in 1848 along what is now the Oregon border. Again the conflict was with the British over competing territorial claims, leading to the "Fifty Four Forty or Fight" slogan, which dominated the electionsof 1848.
The 1850s saw another spate of conflicts with the British as sourtherners sought to establish new slave states in Cuba and Nicaragua while the British were extending their control along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Central America in order to better coordinate communication among their far-flung colonial holdings. By this time, the British had taken up the antislavery campaign, and so their efforts to search American ships for slaves and their refusal to return any slaves they found contributed to constant antagonisms. But as soon as the Civil War broke out, the BRitish sided with the Confederacy, allowing the sourhern navy to outfit its boats in British harbors and seeking in numerous ways to ensure the breakup of the Union.
Napoleon III of France joined British in siding with the South and maneuvering to destroy the Union. His establishment of a puppet emperor in Mexico was the boldest move any European power ever made to contest the Monroe Doctrine. However, immediately after General Lee's surrender at Appomatox in 1865, General Ulysses Grant dispatched victorious Union troops to the Rio Grande. France withdrew its forces, leaving the defenseless "Emperor" Maximilian to be shot by a Mexican firing squad in 1867.
At the same time the US was forcing the French out of Mexico, it was dealing the Russions coming down from the north. Secretary of State William Seward made the historical purchase of Alaska from the Russion czar in 1867. It was ridiculed as "Seward's folly" at the time, but turned out to be one of the vitally important acquisitions in American history. It gave the US a huge piece of land strategically placed against the British in the Northwest and it pushed the Russions entirely out of the Western Hemisphere and back into Siberia.