Ravi S. Iyer: Worldly

Here is a rebuttal of views similar to and including the USA academic's recent article on "Coming Chinese Crackup" [See my blog post: US academic's rather shocking view of the current political and social situation in China ] by a professor in a Beijing university, Xie Tao, http://thediplomat.com/authors/xie-tao/ , "Why Do People Keep Predicting China's Collapse?", http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/why-do-people-keep-predicting-chinas-collapse/ . Some comments from me on the article: * Tao has certainly gone on the attack on Shambaugh! Hmm. Academics writing on politics perhaps have to face such articles attacking them and not just their views. But this seems to be a lesser version of what real politicians do and face. * About the author accepting that China has problems but then mentioning that USA too has serious problems and could be viewed as "terminally ill": Pessimistic view but does seem to have a lot of valid points. I think appalli...

Here is a US academic's rather shocking view of the current political and social situation in China, "The Coming Chinese Crackup", http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659198 . However, a recent comment from a Nate Smith, "Been predicted for years , I will only believe it when I see it actually happen .Probably the Tanks will roll instead .", seems to put the article in the right perspective. It would be very interesting to see a response to this article from a supporter of the Chinese govt. I hope and pray that the changes in China that the article mentions, are done in a peaceful and harmonious way so that there is no major disturbance to the Chinese people at large. Some comments from me on the article: * On the point about "badly broken" Chinese political system: Those are very strong words! * About Chinese economic elites being ready to migrate abroad and multimillion dollar USA-birth-tourism:  Well, I think a lot o...

Last updated on 25th March 2015   Important Note: This blog post is about a problem that I face due to some health issues that I have. Most other people may be completely unaffected by the Lead-Acid battery in Home PC UPS issue that I have mentioned in this blog post. [25th March 2015 update: I have found a good working solution to the problem given below. Details of the solution are provided towards the bottom of the post.] A few weeks ago my (home) PC UPS had a transformer burning problem due to which I ordered a new (home) PC UPS. I followed the advise of a UPS seller in my town which was to buy a 600 VA UPS from a well known multi-national company, as he had supplied that model to some persons in town, who seemed to be satisfied with it. Please note that, as far as I know, the usual (home) PC UPS models provided in India are all based on sealed lead-acid batteries, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93acid_battery . After connecting up the new PC UPS (600 VA mod...

Yesterday, I was stunned to see the sweeping victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in New Delhi city-state polls. Sure, AAP was clearly a front-runner but winning 67 out of 70 seats leaving BJP and its allies just 3 seats and the Congress none, was a huge shocker! This party is only slightly more than two years old and has leaders from the Indian educated middle-class. Arvind Kejriwal, its charismatic leader, burst on the scene as an anti-corruption activist supporting Anna Hazare in or around April 2011. Around one and a half years later (Nov. 2012) he and others launched AAP, which got a respectable 28 out of 70 seats in the previous New Delhi city-state polls in Dec. 2013, just a year later, and formed a minority government which lasted only 49 days. AAP govt. resigned as its Jan Lokpal (an independent citizen ombudsman body to investigate corruption cases) bill, they claimed, was blocked by the other political parties. After this dramatic resignation of AAP in Feb. 2014 it seemed...

Last updated on February 4th 2015 I saw the entire Indian Republic Day function on TV today morning. Somehow I felt very happy to see US president Barack Obama and US First Lady Michelle Obama being the chief guests at this function, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/obama-soaks-in-republic-day-spectacle-gives-thumbs-up-for-bsf-s-motorcycle-stuntmen/article1-1310778.aspx . The reports are that the crowd at the event too was very happy to have them there. I wondered why it was that I was so happy about them being chief guests. So here is some slightly long analysis of that: I became an adult (18 years) in 1980 around which time I think I was able to get some idea about India's relations with other countries, both from a people-to-people point of view, and from a country-to-country point of view, based on media reports and what I would hear in my circle of family & friends. At that time (1980), I think India had an odd relationship with USA. India's great frien...

Last updated on 28th December 2014 The episode, Cold War 12 out of 24: MAD Nuclear warfare threat (1960 - 1972) , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEqaBdX6LiY , 46 min. 42 secs, shook me up. Of course I knew about how nukes could devastate cities but I did not know that way back in the 60s itself, the nukes had become some orders of magnitude more powerful than the ones used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the two superpowers were actively considering that the other may launch a nuclear attack! I felt it appropriate to transcribe some portions of this video about how powerful nuclear weapons had become even around fifty years back, and how tense both the superpowers were about this nuclear war possibility, and have provided it as a comment in the youtube link above (Specific comment link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEqaBdX6LiY&google_comment_id=z13qutgqjl2pzb2g004ci1bpmnbgipprpxs0k ). If I recall correctly, the then (60s) Russian ambassador to the USA says in the v...

I just saw a really great Amanpour interview of Yousufzai and Satyarthi. I checked the CNN site ( http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/category/latest-episode/ ) - it does not have the transcript (or video) of the show put up yet - perhaps it may get put up later on. If readers are interested in knowing about activism related to prevention of child labour, and universal child education, and did not see this program live I think they should view the video (if available) or read the transcript. Given below is the text of a mail I sent to Amanpour a little while back: Subject: Deeply touched by your interview-program of Yousufzai and Satyarthi, Nobel peace laureates 2014 Dear Ms. Amanpour, I was deeply touched by your excellent interview-cum-show/program of Malala Yousufzai and Kailash Satyarthi, the Nobel peace prize winners for 2014, which I watched on CNN International (and initial part on CNN-IBN (India)). You asked a lot of relevant questions which received quite good answers from b...