Nation-Building

I've been meaning to comment on the Copenhagen conference, since the perspective from the Indian press is probably quite different from that in the US media. According to the papers here, Obama forced his way into a private meeting between Chinese premier Wen Jibao and Indian PM Manmohan Singh because he didn't want them "negotiating in private". China and India resisted all attempts by the US to make the Copenhagen draft legally binding, and fought monitoring and transparency tooth and nail. This plays well here as a strike against US/Western imperialistic moralizing, on behalf of the developing nations, whose champions are now... China and India? really? I am frankly disgusted. India and China - both nuclear powers and members of the UN Security Council - can no longer by any stretch of the imagination be considered "developing nations" and they are cynically using their endemic poverty as bargaining chips to benefit their industrial and economic elites. I...

L.K. Advani, of India's BJP party, is better known for fiery, nationalist, partisan rhetoric than he is for unity and change. At 80 years old, he's more McCain than Obama. However, as he makes his bid to be India's Prime Minister, he's trying to poach from the Obama playbook : For a few months, a small team of political strategists, computer specialists and management graduates in New Delhi has been studying Obama's speeches and slogans, Web site, campus outreach and rhetoric of change. "About 100 million first-time voters will enter the election landscape next year. That is a staggering number of young people. And the Indian youth is impatient for change," said Sudheendra Kulkarni, who heads up strategy for the campaign. ... "We want to project the image of Advani around the idea of change the same way that Obama's message resonated with people's hunger for change," Kulkarni said. More than two-thirds of India's 1 billion-plu...

A Japanese political activist has been arrested after he cut off his little finger and posted it to PM Shinzo Abe's ruling party, according to police. Yoshihiro Tanjo said he was protesting against Mr Abe's refusal to visit a war shrine, on the 62nd anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. The Yasukuni shrine is the one in Tokyo that honors all the Japanese war dead - including those later convicted of being war criminals. Personally I think that while cutting off your finger is extreme, there's a pretty cogent critique of Shinzo Abe to be made here. It's worth noting that the previous PM, Junichiro Koizumi, made a point of visiting the shrine despite the outcry of protests. I think that it's appropriate for the PM to do so, for the same reason that Confederate soldiers are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC - they were soldiers who fought for their nation, and even if there are a handful of genuine criminals buried alongside there,...