Sowing The Whirlwind

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind
- Hosea 8:7

A very interesting passage from the Old Testament that pretty much sums up the looming fate that the land of the Rising Sun is slowly coming to accept. Expats have started to slowly move out of Japan in tiny droves. The very thought of radiation being carried south into Tokyo and its other cities alongside the memories of the horrific images of the fallout of the Chernobyl disaster in 1989 could give anyone the goose bumps.

However many Japanese are still staying put, hoping against hope that their Government would eventually issue a statement despite reasonable doubt, that things have been brought under control in Fukushima and that they can go on with their lives like before as if nothing ever happened. In fact, when the
earthquake followed by the tsunami first hit Japan on the 11th of March, the stability of the nuclear plant was a mere blimp on the scale of the tsunami disaster. It took a few days to blow its top off.

As the whole world decides to take stock of the safety of their Nuclear Plants, India wobbles in the middle of nowhere. After the landmark India-US Nuclear Deal in October 2008 that pulled India out of Nuclear Isolation and gave her access to the world market, things were indeed supposed to look up. Giant US Companies like Westinghouse and GE were lining up to get a large chunk of the Indian Nuclear pie where power generation is presently tagged at 4,800MW and projected to increase to 20,000MW by 2020.

For a country starved of energy where periodic power cuts are part of the norm, nuclear energy seemed like a Godsend. Its reputation for being both clean and reliable has not been tarnished even after both the Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island disasters. Moreover when one sees developed nations such as the US having more than 100 Nuclear power plants and France getting more than 50% of its power from Nuclear energy, one can only feel reassured.

However a rethink has already been initiated worldwide. Germany and Switzerland have already announced moratoriums on any new nuclear power plants in the offing while lobbyists were sleepless in Capitol Hill last week trying to prove to congressmen how safe Nuclear Power actually is. 

As much as the newly-emerged-from-nowhere antagonists would want to push their agenda of extreme caution, one must remember that nuclear fuel is by an large clean and does not pollute the environment as much as Fossil Fuels do. It also has the ability to drive an entire economy, as it does in France. Most importantly it does not contribute to global warming.

On the other hand protagonists should realize that it just takes one big tragedy (like the one in Japan to occur) to destroy its entire perception and nullify the benefits it has provided till now.The lasting after-effects of nuclear radiation upon our species could become a much trumpeted up charge used to freeze the use of Nuclear energy until we have more security structures in place.

However the very fact that nuclear radiation is harmful to humans should not be seen as the sole reason for putting nuclear energy on the backburner, for conventional sources of energy are already causing as much damage to the already fragile environment albeit at a much slower and less noticeable rate.

The IAEA should move fast to ensure that the structures that it has till date enforced to ensure security of nuclear plants are strictly adhered too. It also now has the arduous task at hand of designing disaster containment systems that would be able to sustain any possible incident of this magnitude or even greater that may occur in the future.

In all this hustle and bustle of repeated telecasts of floating houses, smoking power plants, a population shaken with facemasks and newsmakers who just want to get as close to the source of radiation as possible to make a story break, is the howling sound of a mighty whirlwind and an Industry who's entire future could depend upon the Control Rods in several of the defunct Nuclear reactors.

First on Technorati

Obama: To Intervene or Not to Intervene

Newsweek Magazine recently ran a cover story in it's February 21st edition, which read "Egypt : How Obama Blew it"

The editor takes great pains to prove that Obama's strategy of wait and watch has left America neither here nor there in its battle to win the moslem world. America, according to him, should have extended a hand to the revolution and done more to edge Mubarak out. 

Surprisingly the editor ignores a few of the salient points of American Foreign policy. To start with, (Noam Chomsky would definately concur with this) Americans have always propped up puppet regimes all over the world that serve their vital interests. In the Middle East, the objective was mainly to ensure that the price of oil was stable (or the price that they could buy it from the market was stable).

Indeed the bogey that western-sponsored dictators are any day preferable to hardline fundamentalists, worked for a time and served its purpose. The Obama administration was indeed caught by surprise and on the wrong foot especially when it had to choose sides in the Egyptian Revolution. On one hand, if it threw its weight behind the faceless revolution, other pro-US regimes in the region would have wilted causing more instability.

If it had ignored the protests it would have been taken to task for not practicing what it preaches. A few years ago when Iraq was forcefully overthrown, America had trumpeted it as the dawn of a new age of freedom and democracy for the Arab world. Iraq it seems was not the actual freedom struggle waiting to happen.

Obama and the Secretary of State's carefully calibrated reply reflects the changing contours of American Foreign Policy. Here is a government that could be relied upon to extensively lobby the United Nations into action, but act unilaterally they will certainly not (unlike the previous administration)!!

The case of the Libyan uprising however does make things a lot easier for the US to act. A tyrant with a large sovereign wealth fund who has no qualms about bombing his own people only to secure his throne is an ugly picture for all. The US administration should encounter little opposition when pushing the UN for Action. Howbeit, there will be other spoilsports in the game such as China or Russia who would have their own interests to see to.

This is probably the best shot the US may get to stand with the values it preaches, but they should rope in the UN. Acting unilaterally is indeed the way forward no matter how painstakingly slowly things move. The world community needs to act as a whole, the US can ill afford to be sucked into another war.

First posted on Technorati

They Covet !!

In a Jail cell, Jodie Foster who plays an FBI Investigator tries to interrogate a psychopath, played by Anthony Hopkins in a scene from the 1991 award winning movie The Silence of the Lambs. As the back-and-forth dialogue intensifies, the prison inmate leads the FBI agent down a path into the most basic of human natures. Read On:

Hannibal Lecter: First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius - of each particular thing ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?
Clarice Starling: He kills women...
Hannibal Lecter: NO. THAT IS INCIDENTAL!! What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by killing?
Clarice Starling: Anger, um, social acceptance, and, huh, sexual frustrations, sir... Hannibal Lecter: NO! HE COVETS !! That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.
Clarice Starling: No. We just...
Hannibal Lecter: No. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?

In some form or fashion, we all covet. We yearn for things we see most of the time, we lust for the finer spoils of life, to be seen sleepless in the corner office, and to be heard rambling on television. We wouldn't mind surmounting countless boulders with a timeless zeal oblivious to the parched earth on which our tender feet are being forced to tread on. In the end, while basking aloft on the summit we realize that much of the joy is actually behind us. 

Despite this, there are those who desire that which may just prove to be a shade better than what they already possess. They throng their nations capital city squares, maraud government property and have given the age-old crime called arson a new human face. Much of this and even more is all fodder for an over-hungry press ever too willing to cover just about anything.

CNN's Anderson Cooper may have taken a few blows on his face a fortnight ago on the streets of Cairo when the uprising in Egypt reached its zenith, but the real fight may be around the corner, maybe 6 months or a even year away. The main opposition party in Egypt - the Muslim Brotherhood is lying low right now biding its time, waiting for the opportune moment to reveal itself.

Meanwhile as the rest of the Middle East progresses from simmer to boil, Egypt flounders on uncertain of what the future may hold. For the moment though, the military is in charge, though history shows that in most cases, the men in forest green rarely give up the throne without a scuffle of some sort.

What about Libya? There is no doubt whatsoever that these dictators have indeed led their nations down the path of fiscal ruin. The numbers will surely tell you the story; almost 25% of Egypt's youth were unemployed when the riots began.

However, the fundamental question actually is:
"Is democracy the real answer to the regions ills"?

Democracy works to perfection, albeit with a few odd chinks in its armor. Some of its most important facets are the systems that protect the rights of the silent majority and even at times, halt the cries of the bloodthirsty steamrolling majority. Most Arab countries have structures that have flourished over time with a nexus between the oligarchy and the Global Financial Systems with little or scant regard to social issues such as these. The majority were permitted to languish while the rich became richer.

Now, the Arab Nations have chosen the path of the uprising for all the right reasons.

If one were to look a little harder, one can clearly distinguish the fact from the current frenzy. The truth is that they covet Democracy but do not covet its freedoms!! Most of the Arab world detests the freedoms that Western democracies offer to minorities. There are laws in the west that permit abortion, then there are laws against gender discrimination, sexual discrimination and many other forms of discrimination that folks in the Arab world wouldn't even pay heed to.

They covet what they see in the west, for lifestyles that appear fanciful, for streets that are paved with gold or just for its sheer sheen. Their path to democracy would regardless of the road they choose, be a tortuous one. They would pick and choose the bad apples to discard from the policy basket. Minorities would meanwhile live in temporary fear while the majority by and large may just choose to wield their pitchforks every now and then, so as to ensure that despite the freedom to choose, they still have the major say.
The engines of Change have begun to crank, more regimes may fall, but more blood will certainly be spilled.  

First Posted on Technorati