How Twitter is changing the world

I've been reading a lot recently about the growing influence of social networking, particularly Twitter. It seems really fascinating to me how a system that's based around the idea of 140 word long posts can have such an impact on something like Iranian or Moldovian politics, not just in the United States.

Social Networks Spread Iranian Defiance Online (NYT):

As the embattled government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be trying to limit Internet access and communications in Iran, new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions.

Iranians are blogging, posting to Facebook and, most visibly, coordinating their protests on Twitter, the messaging service. Their activity has increased, not decreased, since the presidential elections on Friday and ensuing attempts by the government to restrict or censor their online communications.

On Twitter, reports and links to photos from a peaceful mass march through Tehran on Monday, along with accounts of street fighting and casualties around the country, have become the most popular topic on the service worldwide, according to Twitter’s published statistics.

A couple of Twitter feeds have become virtual media offices for the supporters of the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi. One feed, mousavi1388, (1388 is the year in the Persian calendar) is filled with news of protests and exhortations to keep up the fight, in Persian and English. It has more than 7,000 followers.

Mr. Moussavi’s fan group on Facebook has swelled to over 50,000 members, a significant increase since election day.

Labeling such seemingly spontaneous antigovernment demonstrations a “Twitter Revolution” has already become something of a cliché. That title was already given to the protests in Moldova in April.

But Twitter is aware of the power of its service. Acknowledging its role on the global stage, the San Francisco-based company said Monday that it was delaying a planned shutdown for maintenance for a day, citing “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.”

Twitter users are posting messages, known as tweets, with the term #IranElection, which allows users to search for all tweets on the subject. On Monday evening, Twitter was registering about 30 new posts a minute with that tag.

One read, “We have no national press coverage in Iran, everyone should help spread Moussavi’s message. One Person = One Broadcaster. #IranElection.”

The Twitter feed StopAhmadi calls itself the “Dedicated Twitter account for Moussavi supporters” and has more than 6,000 followers. It too sends visitors to the Flickr feed from the rally.

The feed Persiankiwi, which has more than 15,000 followers, sends users to a page in Persian that is hosted by Google and, in its only English text, says, “Due to widespread filters in Iran, please view this site to receive the latest news, letters and communications from Mir Hussein Moussavi.”

Some Twitter users were also going on the offensive. On Monday morning, an antigovernment activist using the Twitter account “DDOSIran” asked supporters to visit a Web site to participate in an online attack to try to crash government Web sites by overwhelming them with traffic.

By Monday afternoon, many of those sites were not accessible, though it was not clear if the attack was responsible — and the Twitter account behind the attack had been removed. A Twitter spokeswoman said the company had no connection to the deletion of the account.

The crackdown on communications began on election day, when text-messaging services were shut down in what opposition supporters said was an attempt to block one of their most important organizing tools. Over the weekend, cellphone transmissions and access to Facebook and some other Web sites were also blocked.

Iranians continued to report on Monday that they could not send text messages.

But it appears they are finding ways around Big Brother.

Many Twitter users have been sharing ways to evade government snooping, such as programming their Web browsers to contact a proxy — or an Internet server that relays their connection through another country.

Austin Heap, a 25 year old IT consultant in San Francisco, is running his own private proxies to help Iranians, and advertising them on Twitter. He said on Monday that his servers were providing the Internet connections for about 750 Iranians at any one moment.

“I think that cyber activism can be a way to empower people living under less than democratic governments around the world,” he said.

Global Internet Freedom Consortium, an Internet proxy service with ties to the banned Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, offers downloadable software to help evade censorship. It said its traffic from Iran had tripled in the last week.

Shiyu Zhou, founder of the organization, has no idea how links to the software spread within Iran. “In China we have sent mass e-mails, but nothing like in Iran,” he said. “The Iranian people actually found out by themselves and have passed this on by word of mouth.”

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School who is an expert on the Internet, said that Twitter was particularly resilient to censorship because it had so many ways to for its posts to originate — from a phone, a Web browser or specialized applications — and so many outlets for those posts to appear.

As each new home for this material becomes a new target for censorship, he said, a repressive system faces a game of whack-a-mole in blocking Internet address after Internet address carrying the subversive material.

“It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world,” he said. “The qualities that make Twitter seem and inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful.”

America could take some lessons in capitalism... from China

China Goes on a Smart Shopping Spree, Time Magazine:

The world might be sinking into its worst recession in generations, but China is on a wild shopping spree. Sitting some $2 trillion of cash reserves, Beijing is taking advantage of the woes of others to cement its grip on new sources of commodities ranging from olive oil to crude oil —often at fire-sale prices.

China's growth rate may be slowing in concert with the world economy, but even at that slower rate, its economy continues to expand, requiring a steady increase in supplies of oil, copper, aluminum and other minerals. And laying in sources of supply for those commodities also helps it prepare for the next boom. As economies across the world shrink, Chinese officials have told reporters in Beijing in recent weeks that they see a rare chance to expand its sources for primary commodities. "There are editorials in the Chinese press saying that this is a one-in-one hundred-year's opportunity," says Erika Downs, China energy fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "There is a sense that this is a moment to be seized, that with competition lower they can get a good deal."

Recent deals with Brazil and China highlight Beijing's ability to use loans a means of securing energy supplies. In mid-February, Beijing negotiated a $10-billion loan to Brazil's state-owned oil company Perobras, as well as a $25-billion loan to Russia's state-run oil company Rosneft. Both companies' revenues have plummeted in recent months as crude oil prices fell by more than two-thirds. China offered large cash amounts in a tight credit market, but rather than require that the loans be serviced and repaid in cash, Brazil and Russia will repay the loans in crude oil supplies to China over the next two decades. Russia will ship eastern Siberian oil, while in Brazil, China hopes to get a share of major offshore fields which have recently been discovered. So, no matter what happens to the global economy, China is assured steady oil supplies over the next 20 years from two major oil-producing countries, in regions which are far more politically stable than China's suppliers in Africa.

But China's shopping spree has gone far beyond oil. The Australian government is examining a bid by the Aluminum Corp. of China or Chinalco to buy an 18% stake of the heavily indebted minerals giant Rio Tinto, for about $19.5 billion. It is also considering a bid by the Beijing trading company Minmetals to buy Australia's mining company Oz Minerals for about $1.7 billion — enough to wipe out that company's debt. Meanwhile, Chinese president Hu Jintao made a five-country swing around Africa in early February, signing deals in Tanzania and Madagascar on agriculture and telecommunications, and promising debt relief to the poorest continent.

China's appetites are good news for manufacturers in demand-depressed Europe. Last Wednesday, Beijing's Commerce Minister Chen Deming arrived in Germany with executives from about 90 Chinese companies, on a multi-billion-dollar shopping trip around Europe. The delegates signed more than $10 billion worth of deals in Germany alone, and another $400,000 worth of deals on a brief stop in Switzerland. Next stop was Spain, where the Chinese party bought about $320 million worth of goods ranging from auto parts to olive oil. Finally, in Britain they signed deals worth about $2 billion, including ordering 13,000 Jaguar cars. And while thousands of German auto workers marched in protest at layoffs in the country's debt-ridden auto industry, the Chinese delegates signed a deal to buy $2.2. billion worth of BMWs and Daimlers. Germany's new Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told reporters in Berlin that the Chinese visit had "come at the right time."

The shopping spree serves China's purposes, too, helping to head off possible retaliation from Western countries against the huge trade surpluses maintained by Beijing. An unnamed European diplomat in Beijing told the Financial Times on Wednesday that China's "biggest nightmare" is being ordered by the U.S. and Europe to raise the value of their currency by 30% or face a 30% rise in tariffs. The pressure to revalue the Chinese currency could come as early as April 2, when the Group of 20 richest countries in the world meet in London, and where President Obama is scheduled to meet Chinese president Hu Jiantao for the first time. In the run-up to that crucial meeting China's buying spree is aimed at soothing Western anger about the country's economic policies. "This is a smart diplomatic move," says Damien Ma, China analyst at the Eurasia Group in Washington. "China is seen as whittling down its trade surpluses."

China's buying spree has, however, been selective. The United States was conspicuously absent from its global shopping itinerary. The last major Chinese bid to buy a U.S. company ended in diplomatic disaster, when the China National Offshore Oil Corp. or CNOOC offered to buy the California oil company Unocal in 2005, in a deal worth about $18.5 billion, and a backlash in Congress prompted the angry Chinese to withdraw the offer. Unocal was finally sold to Chevron. More recent Chinese investments in the U.S. have also fared badly: Beijing has lost billions in recent months from investments in Morgan Stanley and the Blackstone Group, and Chinese officials who approved those investments have now come under fire in Beijing. "People are saying, 'Why did you invest in that?'," says Downs of the Brookings Institution. "They feel they have been burned in the U.S. and they don't want to be burned again."

Still, for many in Europe, Asia and Latin America, the Chinese offer welcome relief. And it's not as if there are any rival suitors right now.

By Vivienne Walt

A look at China's currency manipulation

China Bashing Once Again from The Becker-Posner Blog:

During his confirmation hearing before the United States Senate toward the end of January, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner accused China of "manipulating" its currency. This is not a statement that helps to further China-US cooperation on trying to stimulate the depressed world economy and on other issues- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now in China trying to mend some fences. Yet Geithner's statement is a correct evaluation of the Chinese policy of keeping the value of its currency, the yuan, low relative to the dollar and other currencies. It is far less clear, however, whether this and related Chinese policies harm the US and other countries.

By keeping its currency cheap, China encourages greater exports since that policy makes Chinese goods cheaper on world markets. This policy also discourages imports by Chinese consumers and producers since it raises the cost of foreign goods in terms of the yuan. Partly due to its manipulation of the value of the yuan, China has run large surpluses on its current account in recent years because the value of its exports has been significantly above the value of its imports. China has accumulated over $2 trillion of reserves. The world recession has sharply reduced China's exports, but surprisingly the recession has reduced China's imports by much more, so that its foreign trade surpluses have grown greatly during recent months.

Some American producers have had trouble competing with cheap Chinese imports, and have either gone out of business, or shifted production overseas, mainly to China itself. Since China mainly exports goods produced with low priced labor that is not available in richer countries, their exports have not had a major impact on production in the richer countries. Far more significant to developed countries are the reductions in the cost of imported clothing and many other goods from China. Consumers, especially low income consumers, now take for granted their ability to buy cheaply many everyday goods that would cost perhaps five times as much were they made in the US, Western Europe, or Japan.

The Chinese government holds most of its more than $2 trillion in official reserves in US Treasury securities. China gets a bad deal from selling goods made by Chinese labor and capital in exchange for large amount of paper assets that yield low returns. China has accumulated far more reserves in the form of these assets than can be justified as a buffer against fluctuations in its imports and exports, or than is wise given its low standard of living. The US seems to have made the better bargain by exchanging low interest paper assets for a rich variety of consumer and producer goods.

Does China's ownership of large quantities of US government bonds give China the opportunity to "blackmail" the United States into more favorable policies toward China through threats to flood the international capital market with these assets? China has not made such threats, perhaps mainly because they would not be credible. Since China owns only a rather small fraction of US Treasury obligations, and an even smaller fraction of total liquid assets traded on world capital markets, a threat to sell their US governments would give China only a little leverage on world interest rates, including those paid by the United States government. Moreover, China, along with other governments, holds US Treasury assets because they are considered among the safest of all assets, especially during these turbulent times. By selling their US Treasury bonds, China would have to take on riskier assets at a time when China is trying to cut its exposure to risk.

To be sure, the high savings rates of China and other Asian countries during the past decade are partly responsible for the low world interest rates that contributed to the housing bubbles in the United States and other countries. To that degree, China bears some indirect responsibility for the financial crisis that is afflicting much of the world. However, China too is being badly hurt by the world recession. Moreover, excessive bank lending and borrowing, and government encouragement of sub prime loans, were much more important culprits in generating excesses in the housing market.

The extensive protectionist policies practiced by the Chinese government do hurt the United States and other countries, including China itself. Chinese protectionism is especially common in the financial sector; while foreign banks are being allowed greater access to China markets, they are still subject to considerable discrimination. The general trend in China (and other nations) toward less protectionism has been set back by the global recession, as China has recently introduced various "buy China" programs in its steel and other industries.

China bashing during past decade is reminiscent of the Japan bashing that occurred during the 1980s. It turned out that Japan's substantial export surplus with the US, its extensive accumulation of US Treasury bonds, and its purchases of assets in teh US did not hurt the United States, but were for the most part foolish actions on the part of the Japanese government and businesses. I believe that similar conclusions will be reached about the parallel Chinese practices.

"Mideast's Ground Zero"

From Thomas Friedman's NYT Op-Ed piece:

The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?”

That is, Gaza is a mini-version of three great struggles that have been playing out since 1948: 1) Who is going to be the regional superpower — Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Iran? 2) Should there be a Jewish state in the Middle East and, if so, on what Palestinian terms? And 3) Who is going to dominate Arab society — Islamists who are intolerant of other faiths and want to choke off modernity or modernists who want to embrace the future, with an Arab-Muslim face? Let’s look at each.
WHO OWNS THIS HOTEL? The struggle for hegemony over the modern Arab world is as old as Nasser’s Egypt. But what is new today is that non-Arab Iran is now making a bid for primacy — challenging Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran has deftly used military aid to both Hamas and Hezbollah to create a rocket-armed force on Israel’s northern and western borders. This enables Tehran to stop and start the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at will and to paint itself as the true protector of the Palestinians, as opposed to the weak Arab regimes.
“The Gaza that Israel left in 2005 was bordering Egypt. The Gaza that Israel just came back to is now bordering Iran,” said Mamoun Fandy, director of Middle East programs at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. “Iran has become the ultimate confrontation state. I am not sure we can talk just about ‘Arab-Israeli peace’ or the ‘Arab peace initiative’ anymore. We may be looking at an ‘Iranian initiative.’ ” In short, the whole notion of Arab-Israeli peacemaking likely will have to change.
CAN THE JEWS HAVE A ROOM HERE? Hamas rejects any recognition of Israel. By contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, has recognized Israel — and vice versa. If you believe, as I do, that the only stable solution is a two-state one, with the Palestinians getting all of the West Bank, Gaza and Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, then you have to hope for the weakening of Hamas.
Why? Because nothing has damaged Palestinians more than the Hamas death-cult strategy of turning Palestinian youths into suicide bombers. Because nothing would set back a peace deal more than if Hamas’s call to replace Israel with an Islamic state became the Palestinian negotiating position. And because Hamas’s attacks on towns in southern Israel is destroying a two-state solution, even more than Israel’s disastrous and reckless West Bank settlements.
Israel has proved that it can and will uproot settlements, as it did in Gaza. Hamas’s rocket attacks pose an irreversible threat. They say to Israel: “From Gaza, we can hit southern Israel. If we get the West Bank, we can rocket, and thereby close, Israel’s international airport — anytime, any day, from now to eternity.” How many Israelis will risk relinquishing the West Bank, given this new threat?
SHOULDN’T WE BLOW UP THE BAR AND REPLACE IT WITH A MOSQUE? Hamas’s overthrow of the more secular Fatah organization in Gaza in 2007 is part of a regionwide civil war between Islamists and modernists. In the week that Israel has been slicing through Gaza, Islamist suicide bombers have killed almost 100 Iraqis — first, a group of tribal sheikhs in Yusufiya, who were working on reconciliation between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and, second, mostly women and children gathered at a Shiite shrine. These unprovoked mass murders have not stirred a single protest in Europe or the Middle East.
Gaza today is basically ground zero for all three of these struggles, said Martin Indyk, the former Clinton administration’s Middle East adviser whose incisive new book, “Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Diplomacy in the Middle East,” was just published. “This tiny little piece of land, Gaza, has the potential to blow all of these issues wide open and present a huge problem for Barack Obama on Day 1.”
Obama’s great potential for America, noted Indyk, is also a great threat to Islamist radicals — because his narrative holds tremendous appeal for Arabs. For eight years Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda have been surfing on a wave of anti-U.S. anger generated by George W. Bush. And that wave has greatly expanded their base.
No doubt, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are hoping that they can use the Gaza conflict to turn Obama into Bush. They know Barack Hussein Obama must be (am)Bushed — to keep America and its Arab allies on the defensive. Obama has to keep his eye on the prize. His goal — America’s goal — has to be a settlement in Gaza that eliminates the threat of Hamas rockets and opens Gaza economically to the world, under credible international supervision. That’s what will serve U.S. interests, moderate the three great struggles and earn him respect.

"What you don't know about Gaza"

From New York Times Op-Ed:

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."


The one thing I still don't quite understand, is if Hamas and the Palestinians are so intent on a peaceful coexistence, why won't they make changes to their founding charter which contains such language as the following:

""The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)" Article 7

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory)" Introduction

"Arab countries surrounding Israel are asked to open their borders before the fighters from among the Arab and Islamic nations so that they could consolidate their efforts with those of their Moslem brethren in Palestine."
Source

There's not nearly the level of treatment and devastation by Israel in the Fatah controlled West Bank and I believe it's telling of the different attitudes when at so many pro-Palestine protests there are burning of American and Israeli flags and at pro-Israel protests there are Israeli flags. This is not to say I support the blatant disregard for any restraint by the Israeli military but I also don't think that articles such as the one above give the Israeli position justice, because when you face an enemy that on principle is unapologetically aiming for your all out extermination, the sentiment the aim of “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people” becomes a little more understandable (though not necessarily justified).

What should be done about Pakistan?

I'd like to propose an admittedly radical solution to what I believe is a rather significant problem. The problem, in a word, is Pakistan. The solution, in a word, is dissolution. To wit, I contend that Pakistan should dissolve from existence, cease to continue as a nation, and it should be divided up and annexed by its two immediate neighbors. Specifically, the provinces of Baluchistan, The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP) should be annexed by Afghanistan; and the Sindh, Punjab, Northern Areas, and the little sliver of Kashmir under Pakistani control should be annexed by India.

First, let's briefly discuss why Pakistan is a problem. To begin with, the country itself is, for lack of a better euphemism, in shambles. On the verge of bankruptcy, Pakistan is an economic non-entity on the world stage. Furthermore, the Islamic "Republic" of Pakistan has been ruled by a military dictator for 33 of the country's 61 years of existence. Its most recent democratically elected leader was assassinated and her husband took her place. Since its inception Pakistan has continuously struggled between becoming a democratic republic with Islam as the state religion and becoming an Islamic despotism with Sharia law enforced by propagating a combination of fear and ignorance. I won't go too deep into the past, because it takes a few minutes of looking into Pakistan's history to see it is a country that came from nowhere with nothing and is going nowhere with nothing except violence and bloodshed.

Pakistan has always been a problem, yes; but why is it a problem today? Well, that's a soft-toss and so easy to hit out-of-the-park that I won't. I'll just briefly have you consider the following: the massacre in Mumbai in November; the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul in the summer; I'll mention again the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; the insurgency in Afghanistan being launched from Pakistan; the fact that Osama bin Laden is alive and well in Pakistan; and the fact that over the past year there have been over 50 suicide bombings on Pakistani targets by Pakistan terrorists within Pakistan. Pakistan is the epicenter of terrorism, especially in the Subcontinent region. The worst part is, the ISI, Pakistan's version of the CIA, and its military not only neglect to do anything about the terrorists within their country, they actively work with these militants to terrorize their neighboring countries and their own citizens. They are clearly harboring bin Laden and keeping the US and NATO forces off his trail. To make things worse, the civilian government has essentially no control over the military, especially the ISI. Pakistan is a terrorist state. Pakistan = Terrorism.

This brings us to my solution. Violence begets violence, and retaliation of terrorist tactics breeds more terrorism. We're seeing this in Israel and Gaza today (and can discuss that in another post), and ending terrorism, actually ending it, seems pretty much impossible. But for the people of the Indian Subcontinent, with lots of resources and a reconstruction period unrivaled since the splitting of Berlin after WWII, terror may be defeated. Pakistan = Terrorism. End Pakistan = end the terrorism. Yes, there will be pockets of violent instigators who resent the new democratic rulers, but least the most organized, deadly, and vicious parts of terrorism, which are the ISI-backed cells spread across the madrasas and camps of Pakistan, can be stopped.

Baluchistan and the NWFP, which share language and culture with the Afghan people, has always been claimed by many fervent Afghans to belong to Afghanistan. Punjab, which is a State and language in India, and well as the Sindh, which really includes the Sindhi people on either side of the border, can legitimately be considered Indian lands. In this region, in 1947, the British crudely carved up a parcel of land for some tough young Indians in the Muslim League and it eventually led to the nuclear-armed disaster that we call Pakistan. My solution is: divide it up, give the culturally Afghan areas to Afghanistan, which, with the help of NATO, can hope to create a proud democratic nation from the ashes of nearly three decades of war; and the culturally Indian lands give back to India, which is a secular nation that holds more Muslims that Pakistan's entire population.

Many can argue that adding more Muslims to India, which already has problems dealing with sectarian violence and its periodic bouts of Hindu Nationalist, anti-Muslim movements, and having them even more enraged because of an occupation of their former-country, would do more harm than good. However, if there is an international effort to stabilize the region,this can be overcome. Because of the close cultural ties, assimilation into Afghanistan and India for the respective regions of Pakistan should take a generation at most, if done right.

I guess that's the hard part...doing it right.

Thoughts?