Blueprint For DL21C: Party Inside A Party

At a gay rights event on the Upper West a few months before he became state party chair, Dave Pollak suggested I do it and I produced this: Democratic Vision For The 21st Century. I emailed it to him the following morning.

DL21C is the top political organization in the city. It is just that Charlie Rangel is not in my political league, who the fuck is Dan Berger? (Madhesi Movement Victory In Nepal, Don't Forget Burma, Pay Attention To China, Yellow Rose, Eliot Spitzer Needs To Go Into Business With Me, Barack In Town With South Asians For Obama: March 27, The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal) Don't you threaten me?

I think the DL21C Chair should gun for running for President Of The United States. If you can run the top political organization in the top progressive city in the country, the world, why can't you run a country? Maybe not now, but down the line. Barack will get his eight years, then it is an open field.

I carry 10,000 years of male guilt. I am ready for a woman president.

In this post, I will touch upon mainly on organization.

2016 will surely be a broadband election, likely a wireless broadband election. Media as we know it today will not be there. Anyone running for president will have to be their own media for a big part.

DL21C has to become a completely digital organization. Every event has to be videoblogged. And it is okay, actually desirable to have more than one video blogger in attendance. This is key. This might be the single biggest step the DL21C could take at this stage. It is so easy to do, hosting is free. Anyone can purchase a video camera for a few hundred bucks. Many people already own one.

Then the DL21C also has to move to videoblog many of its internal meetings. Ordinary members should be able to see how events are planned. You got to open things up.

New York City is a very special place. When you organize a political event here, you can assume there is a national, global audience for it. All the fancy guests you bring, but if you don't videoblog the events, I am like, what a waste.

The Facebook page for the organization is impressive: Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century. There are almost 600 members. It is amazing to me how many of them are women. But so few of them show up for events. At some point these women will come out of the closet. That also goes on to show traditionally excluded groups of people find the digital tools of involvement very appealing. It is egalitarian to go digital.

If there had been online video for all past DL21C events, can you imagine what that would have meant? Granted online video did not exist in 1993 or even 2003, but just a thought.

DL21C organizes great events, but it can not stick to only organizing events. There is an urgent need for an online think tank. And this would be almost entirely online. You would use Blogger, word processing for the internet age. Here, the key thing would be to employ the spectrum concept.

Health Care As A Spectrum
The Spectrum Concept: Wide Applications
The Spectrum On Gender
The Spectrum/Dialogue Concept Is Key To Power

You build a spectrum on all policy issues: education, health, you name it. The spectrum idea is that if you can rope in people from 5 to 10, you got a majority. The idea is to try and build a permanent progressive majority. People at the cutting edge can do all the cutting edge work they want to do, but those who run for office take people from 5 to 10 on each spectrum along with them.

This think tank would be run by the DL21C central chapter in New York City, but it will be peopled by members across the country. There would be a special effort to dig into the top academic institutions across the country.

You build a robust, local template, and then you work to set up a chapter each in the largest city in each state. All the top elected officials in the state should think it an honor to show up for a DL21C event. And the entire time you are building this huge online video library of their appearances.

Money, Message, Organization

Organization would be the 50 plus DL21C chapters across the country. Message would be the think tank. Money will be raised online aplenty. Look at my boy Barack, he seems to be doing just fine. In my personal capacity, I take my company public. Right now I am busy assembling my tech team in Mumbai, NYC's sister city.

We go take the White House. We start by lifting the DL21C ban on me. I should be able to go to all DL21C events I might want to go to. I would like to start with the event on April 1. Mr. Pollak, Chairman, Sir, can you help?

Tuesday, April 1

7:00 pm

Superdelegates: A Foolish or Smart Solution to the Democratic Nomination Battle?
Location TBD

Please RSVP!

My take on the situation: A Model Primary Season.





Visits on previous 'day': 437.

Don't Forget Burma, Pay Attention To China

Anti-China Protests Escalate in Nepal Voice of America

This Will Also Go To Waste

This uprising in Tibet and elsewhere is also on schedule to going to waste for lack of political clarity. Political leadership is lacking. The uprising in Burma went to waste last year.

Street Action: Where The Action Is

People come out in the streets, and next thing you know the White House is paying attention, the Prime Minister of Britain is paying attention. A few weeks later when the streets go empty, those people then move on to other things, whatever is now in the headlines.

Street action is the dog that wags the tail.

Tibetan Diaspora Is Not Acting Right

I am a Buddhist. I think the world of His Holiness. He is better than the Pope. He is better than any mullah or pastor on earth. He is better than Jeremiah Wright, no offense to Barack. But he is a spiritual leader, he is a religious leader. He is not a political leader. His remark that Mao treated him "like a son" tells me all I need to know about him politically.

The Tibetan diaspora has to enact the church and state separation. The political leadership has to be elected every four years or so. The political leadership can not be someone born to it.

This uprising has not been the handiwork of the Tibetan diaspora. This has been homegrown and spontaneous. But it is true the diaspora is working in close coordination.

Seek Allies

Tibet's number one potential ally is Taiwan. If Tibet and Taiwan can together come around to a common goal of a federal, multi-party China of state funded parties, the rest of China will follow them.

Imagining A Federal, Multi-Party China Of State Funded Parties

Make Use Of The Olympics

Let 2008 be that year when China wakes up to itself as the world wakes up to China. Strike when the iron is hot, or when the world is paying attention.





In The News

Bush calls Hu to urge Tibet talks BBC News The anti-China protests began on 10 March ..... The Tibetan government-in-exile says about 140 people have been killed ..... the delay in Mr Bush's response is a measure of how delicate relations are between the US and China - two countries whose huge economies are deeply interlinked. ...... French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also called for dialogue over Tibet - adding he had not ruled out boycotting the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games being held in China in August. ..... Bush will attend the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
European Leaders Press China Over Tibet New York Times
Nepal Police Break Up Tibetan Protest Voice of America Police in Nepal armed with batons dispersed a protest Tuesday by Tibetan refugees and monks in front of the Chinese Embassy.

Pitt And Jolie Related To Obama And Clinton? San Francisco Chronicle, USA Brad Pitt can trace his family tree back to Barack Obama and Angelina Jolie can follow hers to Hillary Clinton ..... Obama is a distant cousin of Pitt ..... Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, as are Clinton and Jolie, twice removed.

Obama Warms to Wrapping Up Contest New York Times and has been adding more superdelegates to his column at a faster clip than she has .... Clinton, meanwhile, has indicated that she is willing to slug it out for the nomination through the summer ...... Nor did he get much writing done, as he had said he had hoped; instead he said he enjoyed reading a book, Philip Roth’s latest novel, “Exit Ghost.”

Barack Obama talks about his church, the Rev. Wright and his mom Los Angeles Times, USA Wright gave at least three sermons a week for 30 years ..... she was "not a believer."

Obama took the risk to confront race relations in America San Francisco Chronicle
Obama bounces back - speech seemed to help San Francisco Chronicle
Clinton stokes Obama pastor row amid Bosnia embarrasment AFP
Clinton criticizes Obama over his pastor's inflammatory words Boston Globe
Clinton Would Have Left Obama's Pastor The Associated Press
The GOP attack plan for Hillary Clinton Salon former GOP Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, shooting pumpkins in his backyard to prove Vince Foster was murdered by White House hit men. Or the $50 million Whitewater investigation, which dragged the country through six years of political turmoil ..... former Sen. Trent Lott, musing publicly that "maybe lightning will strike" Clinton before she could be sworn in to the Senate in 2001. ...... Republicans are digging deep into Obama's past now, ready to chip away at any warm feelings about him voters may still retain after a bruising primary. ....... McCain's campaign will call her a liberal and paint her support for ending the war in Iraq as a surrender to terrorists (the same strategy they'd use against Obama)


I Will Take Brad Pitt Over Dick Cheney Any Day

Pitt And Jolie Related To Obama And Clinton? San Francisco Chronicle, USA Brad Pitt can trace his family tree back to Barack Obama and Angelina Jolie can follow hers to Hillary Clinton ..... Obama is a distant cousin of Pitt ..... Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, as are Clinton and Jolie, twice removed.

Somebody - has to be some Republican, a Hillary Republican - somewhere along the way revealed Barack is a distant cousin of Dick Cheney and we have been suffering since. We lost New Hampshire, we did not do as well in New York City as I thought we might. People don't like Dick Cheney around here.

This contest was supposed to be over in January. Then I thought we might wrap it up on February 5. Did not happen. Then I thought March 4. Did not happen. I am blaming Dick Cheney. Otherwise we have had the money, the message, the man. What else do we need?

We lost Ohio. Who do you think is responsible? Two whisper campaigns did us in. One that Barack is a Muslim, another that he is a Dick Cheney cousin. The Muslim thing you can discount, especially now that everyone knows he has had a Christian pastor for over 20 years. But how do you make Dick Cheney go away? It is not true that Barack is a Muslim. But it is true that Dick Cheney is a distant cousin of Barack. That is not a notion you can hope to dispel.

So far I have kind of kept a distance from Barack, otherwise I have a feeling he might be my cousin too through his sister Maya. I mean, I did like the idea of being related to Barack, but I was wary of his Dick Cheney baggage. If Barack is my distant cousin, is Dick Cheney also my distant cousin. I can't stand the thought. I am not for that much mingling of the races. That would be a little too much for me.

But now I am kind of warming up to Barack after this Brad Pitt revelation. I would not mind having Brad Pitt in the family. I think he is a decent guy. What do you think?

Tera Saath Hai To Mujhe Kya Kami Hai

In The News

India silent as China deploys forces on Nepal soil Times of India China stationed forces on the Nepalese side of the border with Tibet last week ..... The Chinese forces were in plainclothes, but armed with small weapons .... the major diplomatic snub inflicted by China when its foreign office summoned Indian ambassador to Beijing, Nirupama Rao, at 2am to give her a list of demonstrations that Tibetans planned to organize in India. .... foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee and US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice jointly addressing the Tibet issue in Washington.
Fresh violence in Sichuan, China vows action fortnight-long monks-led pro-independence protests ..... the first major challenge to the Communist giant in two decades.
Detroit's mayor indicted in sex scandal Reuters The criminal charges stem from text messages between Kilpatrick and Beatty dating back to 2002 ..... now included more than 40,000 pages of documents as evidence, including text messages. ..... Granholm, a prominent Clinton supporter

Clinton, Obama campaigns snipe at each other Newsday
Poll boost for Obama after race speech Guardian
Experts Analyze Impact Of Obama's Speech On Race Voice of America
Obama-Clinton tie in new poll: Pastor flap erased Baltimore Sun
Clinton Says She ‘Misspoke’ About Dodging Sniper Fire New York Times
Clinton's YouTube ad backfires Globe and Mail and Casey just happens to have grown into an 18-year-old Obama supporter. She saw the ad and started talking to the media about how she didn't agree with the "politics of fear" that the Democratic hopeful was using.

Barack Obama surfaces in the Caribbean Los Angeles Times
Clintons lose luster with black voters Chicago Tribune
Richardson: Clinton Backers Practice "Gutter" Politics. U.S. News & World Report
Clinton rolls out economic crisis plan NEWS.com.au the acute economic anxiety stalking Americans ...... she trails Senator Obama in pledged delegates, the popular vote and in fundraising. ..... "She was very gracious, she was not happy, she did say she was disappointed," Gov Richardson ..... on vacation with his family in the US Virgin Islands.

Asia Day Ahead: JPMorgan Quadruples Bear Stearns Bid (Update1) Bloomberg
XM, Sirius merger clears Justice Department scrutiny Bizjournals.com
Riots rage in China as protests overshadow Olympic ceremony AFP 130 people had now been confirmed killed in the Chinese crackdown after two weeks of protests ....... The Olympic flame is scheduled to pass over Mount Everest in Tibet in early May, and through the capital Lhasa the following month. .... Its journey is expected to spark a wave of global protests against Chinese authorities over Tibet and a range of other issues, such as Beijing's record on human rights and religious freedoms.

Clinton's road to nomination gets steeper Christian Science Monitor with Florida and Michigan giving up last week on new primaries ..... some 300 superdelegates, or party leaders, who remain uncommitted. ...... The efforts in both states bogged down in a quagmire of legal, financial, and logistical questions, as well as bitter disagreements between the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

Geraldine Ferraro, Geremiah Wrong: A Dialogue

Geraldine Ferraro, Geremiah Wrong: A Dialogue

Geraldine Ferraro: You racist bigot!

Geremiah Wrong: Lady, you are no clean spigot yourself.

Geraldine Ferraro: You have one filthy mouth.

Geremiah Wrong: Another way to look at it would be that I am oozing with black anger.

Geraldine Ferraro: So you now claim to speak for an entire people? And not just for yourself?

Geremiah Wrong: In case you did not notice, that chicken coming home to roost was not an original line. I borrowed it from Brother Malcolm X. I also intend to borrow his greatness.

Geraldine Ferraro: A God fearing man would not say God damn America. It is America that puts food on your table.

Geremiah Wrong: If God can damn New Orleans, is America a sacred cow?

Geraldine Ferraro: So you stand by your word?

Geremiah Wrong: If white men can stand by their word, why can't this black brother?

Geraldine Ferraro: You support a black man for president. Because he is black? Is that not racist?

Geremiah Wrong: Your slave owner great-grandfather, and your restaurant owner father would know better.

Geraldine Ferraro: Slavery and segregation are dead horses. How long do you intend to beat those dead horses?

Geremiah Wrong: Segregation lives in my personal memory. Slavery is on Discovery Channel. They are not going away. Not on my dime.

Geraldine Ferraro: You are a disgrace to your church.

Geremiah Wrong: Too late to make that point. I am retired.

Geraldine Ferraro: You are a disgrace to Obama 08.

Geremiah Wrong: Too late to make that point. They already kicked me out.

Geraldine Ferraro: You are a disgrace to America.

Geremiah Wrong: America is a disgrace to me.

Geraldine Ferraro: Do you vote?

Geremiah Wrong: If a brother is running.

Geraldine Ferraro: If Barack were a white man, he would not be where he is today. You agree?

Geremiah Wrong: I agree. He would already have been in the White House for 200 plus years.

Geraldine Ferraro: It is so much harder for a woman. Ask me what it was like in 1984.

Geremiah Wrong: 1984, the book?

Geraldine Ferraro: No, stupid. When I ran.

Geremiah Wrong: You ran the marathon?

Geraldine Ferraro: No. When I ran for Vice President Of The United States.

Geremiah Wrong: I thought that was brother Jesse in 1984. Actually I am pretty sure.

Geraldine Ferraro: Do you ever read? Or do you just preach?

Geremiah Wrong: Neither. Not no more. I have served my time on the pulpit.

Geraldine Ferraro: But the woman thing.

Geremiah Wrong: Black liberation also automatically applies to black women. Don't black women look black to you?

Geraldine Ferraro: There's no point talking to you. There is a short circuit in your brain.

Geremiah Wrong: This conversation has felt unreal the entire time to me as well. Why are we even talking?

Geraldine Ferraro: Because you have a big mouth.

Geremiah Wrong: Lady, can we please just not go into the name calling territory? I have a reputation to live up to.

Geraldine Ferraro: It is not like you ever ran for Vice President.

Geremiah Wrong: Like you did.

Geraldine Ferraro: You are not in my league.

Geremiah Wrong: I am not white. I know that. That is the point I have been making my entire life.

Geraldine Ferraro: I was talking about achievement, not skin color.

Geremiah Wrong: You mean the achievement gap? It all goes back to slavery.

Geraldine Ferraro: Out you bring that dead horse.

Geremiah Wrong: If it is on Discovery Channel, how dead can it be?

Geraldine Ferraro: You know, the Hillary 08 people kicked me out as well.

Geremiah Wrong: Really? Just when I thought we had no common ground at all.

Geraldine Ferraro: I guess we do have a little bit to start with after all.

Geremiah Wrong: Welcome aboard.

James Watson, Now, Was He Your Pastor?
Talking About Race, Finally
Geraldine Ferraro, Geremiah Wrong

Yellow Rose

Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues

Yellow Rose

When you giggle, when you laugh
I get to wash
My 10,000 years of male guilt

Look happy for me, will you?

Queen, sometimes I think
Does it matter
That we are not together

You could not be president without me
On my own, I could not become
A billionaire

Two high voltage careers
And one happy relationship
Has never been done before

This is a brave new century

Love is electricity
Work is magnetism
Together they make for electromagnetism

Love is oxygen, lifeblood
Work is worship
If you believe in love

You will believe in God
That you have to find on your own
Or not, it is okay to doubt

Mouthing it
Is of anthropological
Interest

New York City is so much light
It is actually sound
DC is charming

The progressive political religion
That will engulf the planet
We will help build

Infrastructure
Political, social, economic
Infrastructure

We are the New York Mafia
Here to take over
The world

We measure progress
In the dollar figures
On every forehead

Shanghai has the skyscrapers
But not New York City's diversity
We live in the capital of the world

You run its premier
Political
Organization

Your 5.0 world I marvel at
As it unfolds in your presence
And absence

People are clay to you
You make pottery
Out of them

They get happy
When they are
Relevant to you

Let me just
Watch
You

In the love department though
Our entire mutual past
Feels dense with love

There are threads everywhere
Threads that no third person
Can make sense of

In the most public places
Privacy
Is possible

It feels to me like
You waited while I
Worked through my private pain

Pain from institutional abuses of power
In Kathmandu, Kentucky
Places that are part of my identity

Like my fingers
The landscapes
In my mind like scars

I will not have it
Any other
Way

But it is not about the past
Although that it is
It is not about the present

Even if that is all we got
And it is not even about a future
That has not happened, none can predict

The loftiest dreams can go mush

It is that feeling
That finally it is
Happening to you

You have found
The One
You are not in control

The Pahadis and Madhesis
Are all the drama in Nepal
But they are like medical patients

To me
In New York City

Race is for real
But so is technology

It is time to shame the men
Into making progress on gender
Fundamental progress

Progressive men
Will have to
Comply

5.0 and 2.0
A war between the sexes?
I think not

Instrumental?
Relational?
Maybe a little bit

Look in th eye
Open your mouth
And talk

Experience
The extreme interactivity
Of face time

If that is the point
I am getting it
I am getting there

I am one of those
My people persons
I can't think just of me

That is
My
Predicament

My Third World people
They need the message of democracy
Without exception

The Arab countries
Have to become democracies
Before they start making sense

Mostly though
It is about
Private moments

It is that feeling
That chemistry
That communication

Of being understood
Of wanting desperately
To understand

To give
It
All

To
Touch





Yellow Rose
Yellow Rose To Reclaim
Yellow Roses To Keep
Yellow Roses

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.

I go so far as to think that you own the universe.

Yellow Rose To Reclaim

I have named you queen.

When you go through the streets
no one recognizes you.
No one sees your crystal crown, no one looks
at the carpet of red gold
that you tread as you pass,
the nonexistent carpet.

Yellow Rose To Reclaim

At the Sounds Of Brazil
In a sea of women
Filtered by their taste of music
I missed you intensely
After having thought the chapter closed.

A Seattle woman said
She had a 5:30 AM flight back home.
I said, I hope you get plenty of sleep
On the plane.
And, by the way, nice music.
Have a nice life, I got to head out.

At the Leela Lounge
Some women from Law School
On Spring Break
Wanting to know
If I will walk them to the train station.
Was I chivalrous?

But I missed you.

That was indication
There is another chapter to the book
And another.

You have done me the favor
Of firmly saying
It is face time or not
I have been sinking deeper and deeper into the swamp
Of spending too much time alone
Too much time online, alone
To the detriment of my health
And basic social oxygen.

At moments of anger
We have taken turns
Of offering narratives
That discount the other.
Taking full advantage of
Not having hooked up yet.

The truth is
I never stopped liking you.
I have been moving towards you
Relentlessly
I have not meant to
Seek your permission.

Maybe 99% of white women
Follow the Miss 99% rule
Does that mean there is greater solace
Among 100% of Indian women
I think not, I know not.
What about white women who did like me
But who I did not click with?

I don't deal with race with you.
I deal with a world that deals with race.
It has not been you.

We share a religion
The progressive political religion.
I tried attending a Buddhist service
One Sunday on the Upper West Side
Upon invitation from a Japanese American young woman
From a Women's Unity Day event
Who met her NYU boyfriend in India.
I could not sit through
I could not focus on the mind
When I soar every day with group dynamics.
The difference is between a cell and an organism.

Long ago
You seeped into my subconscious.
Perhaps even deeper.
You did not ask.
I did not grant you permission.
You did not wait.

And yet you keep me away.

Every time you make your statements
You are right, you are right every single time
But by the time you are done making your statement
You end up alone. I end up alone.

You are used to being alone.
Make space for me.

You make it sound like there is
All the time in the world.
There is not.

When we have misunderstood each other
We have acted to prove the other right
I guess there are no short cuts.
We will risk becoming a laughing stock
To the world
While we have our lovers' quarrels
Before we are formally so.

I so wanted to take a look.

You wanted to shut the door in my face
Enough times
That I also would think the chapter closed.
Point taken.
Now open up.

Let's establish channels of
Communication.
There is so much living to do.
So much to talk about.

Or throw me to the dogs
Once and for all.
Talk to me no more
Through messengers and
Security guards and receptionists.
English is my sixth or ninth language
It is hard enough when you talk to me direct.

Don't touch me means you will touch my private part
I don't like you never did means
The event has not started yet, but stick around
Let's have a conversation.

You seek combat
Verbal jujutsu.

Take back your threat to become
Condi Rice.
You are not going to become one
You are going to appoint a few.
I was grossly misunderstood.
All I meant was let's meet outside of events.
But events are where we meet, my bad.
Why get distracted?

It is finally happening to me
Put me through
Another mandatory coat check.

Yellow Roses To Keep
Yellow Roses

Between the lips and the voice something goes dying ..... The way nets cannot hold water.

Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing.
I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you.
My life before anyone, my harsh life.

A Model Primary Season

A Model Primary Season

This has been a model primary season. Every state got to feel it mattered. All the superdelegates will get to feel similarly important and outright indispensable. This will be their chance to make small talk to Bill Clinton and then go ahead and ignore him. The entire party in all 50 states will have been involved before we get the nominee. Wow, is this something or is this something? This is how the nomination process is supposed to play out. I am not bored.

Black Man, Woman

If you are a white male you can be mediocre like George Bush and still be president. But we have an amazing black man not running against some random white male, and an amazing woman not running against some random, mediocre white male, but against each other, and in such a tight race that their ending up on the same ticket is a foregone conclusion. Is this something or is this something?

The Progressive Way

Making progress on race and gender is not some kind an anti white male agenda. It is the progressive thing to do. I am male but I am for making progress on gender. So what does make me? It makes me a progressive, that's what. Sexism is not good for men either. It gnaws at your soul, saps energy overall.

Whimper

If Barack had won New Hampshire, he would have won with a bang, the race would have been over. If he had won New York or California on February 5, it would have been a victory with a bang. If he had won Ohio on March 4, it would have been woohoo. But the way this thing is playing out, it will go all the way to the convention, and he will barely sqeek by. That doesn't take away from the glamor though. Lincoln barely won. Kennedy barely won. I see greatness gleaming from Barack's impending narrow victory.

Race: Charged

Some people say, don't talk about race, that is a charged issue. Of course it is a charged issue. But I don't get the don't talk about it part.

I am like race, I am a charged individual. Talk about me.

Race Speech: A Victory

Barack scored a major victory with his race speech. The Wright wrong has been righted. Hillary's numbers are down again. There was talk he might want to give another speech on race. I wrote one last year.

JFK, Obama Parallels: Catholic, Black

In The News

Pakistani Party’s Leader Chooses a Prime Minister New York Times
Taiwan victor promises China ties BBC News
Taslima episode shame for India NDTV.com
Tibetan revolt has China's empire fraying at Times Online the roof of the world once again looks like a hostile place to most Chinese. ...... many Chinese do not believe that Tibet is secure and do not think things can go on as they are. ..... Fiercely resisting a Chinese campaign to force them into new towns, the nomads burst onto television screens around the world last week as they galloped into village after village at the head of protesting Tibetans. ...... “All the shops and businesses have been closed for three days,” said a Tibetan clerk, speaking by telephone from Litang on Friday. “It’s very tense.” ....... “Tibetans are being told they will be detained until the end of the Olympics; and once the Olympics are over court proceedings will begin,” a local source told Radio Free Asia. ...... “A Tibetan from Aba killed two Chinese people with a knife on Xiaotiandong Road,” said a taxi driver, repeating a rumour that spread like wildfire via the taxi radio link and text messages. ...... Local Chinese feared a terrorist attack. ..... China’s empire is fraying at the edges. ...... the city’s business people went to make money in Tibet but would never buy a home there. ..... “The central government’s policy towards Tibet has clearly failed”
Wright to deliver 3 sermons at Wheeler Houston Chronicle
Cuba Condemns Criticism of China The Associated Press

All parties in Nepal must stop violence for polls: UN AFP
Pope Baptizes Prominent Italian Muslim The Associated Press
Did Bill Clinton Call Obama Unpatriotic? CBS News "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics." ..... a "deliberately pathetic misreading of what the president said." ....... "As a Hispanic-American, I was particularly touched by his words," Richardson said. "Senator Obama has started a discussion in this country that is long overdue and rejects the politics of pitting race against race."
Obama's speech on race rings true for Britain, too Guardian
Polls suggest Obama rebounding from pastor flap Baltimore Sun
McCain Gains from Clinton-Obama Feud ABC News
Was Bill Clinton Questioning Obama's Patriotism? ABC News
Patriotism spat tars latest round of Clinton-Obama battle AFP
Obama Adviser Likens Bill Clinton Comments to Joseph McCarthy Bloomberg

The Obama Dividend Newsweek All presidents are blind dates. ..... even many conservatives agree with liberal editorial writers that Obama's approach was brilliant ..... using the bully pulpit to instruct and illuminate and rearrange our mental furniture ...... The election of President Barack Hussein Obama would blow the minds of people in the Middle East and other regions ......... Just look at Kenya, where one tribe involved in the recent unrest loves Obama (because his father was a member), and the other tribe has no use for him. ...... He told the crowd that kids couldn't keep on "drinking eight sodas a day," then went in Bulworth's direction. "I know some of y'all got that cold Popeye's [chicken] out for breakfast. I know," Obama said with a smile. He continued: "That's why y'all laughing. You can't do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school … It's not good enough for you to say to your child, 'Do good in school,' and then when that child comes home, you got the TV set on, you got the radio on, you don't check their homework, there is not a book in the house, you've got the videogame playing." Instead of being jeered, he was cheered wildly. ......... that they need to stop being homophobic and anti-Semitic. ..... Obama knows how to think big, elevate the debate and transport the public to a new place.
An Easter Break question: Can Hillary Clinton win? Baltimore Sun do-over votes in Florida and Michigan appear next-to-impossible ..... whether Clinton could conceivably pull off a superdelegate-fueled victory even if she trails in pledged delegates and popular votes. ..... "Hillary’s path to the nomination is not 'narrow,'" he wrote this week. "It’s barricaded."

Imagining A Federal, Multi-Party China Of State Funded Parties

Imagining A Federal, Multi-Party China Of State Funded Parties

China will not become a democracy like America. Tibet will not become another country. Taiwan will not seek or get full independence. But China can not remain as it is. China has to become a federal, multi-party democracy of state funded parties. The Chinese Communist Party could still rule for a decade or two uninterrupted if such a change were to be brought about. But the CCP is nowhere close to budging, not even an inch, on democracy. They don't feel a counter force.

Mainstream China itself will have to rise. Tibet and Taiwan alone can't do it.

Tibet In The 1950s Was Politically Feudal

The idea of an unelected spiritual leader also being the political leader has no place in this century. The Tibetan diaspora has to engineer a church and state separation. I am a Buddhist, I think the world of the Dalai Lama. But political leadership must be separate and elected.

The protests in Tibet lack political clarity. The oppression and discrimination are very real. And it is obvious the protesting crowds have been inspired by what happened in Burma in Fall 2007, and in Nepal in April 2006, January-February 2007, and February 2008. Street action is the best way to fight entrenched authoritarianism.

The efforts in Nepal succeeded because there was political clarity. That was lacking in Burma, and is lacking now in Tibet.

Chinese Action

China's economic growth for the past few decades has much to teach the rest of the Third World. Don't throw the baby with the bath water. The communist party's autocracy is not a reason to disrespect its amazing economic stewardship.

China: Bank To The Third World

China has been a banker to America. But why America? China instead should become a banker to the Third World. Kind of like micro credit, but between countries.

Wake Up CCP

The only way Taiwan will become just another province of China is if China becomes a multi-party democracy. Because China is not a democracy, it finds itself on the side of dictatorships in many parts of the world, be it Burma, or Darfur. That is no way to become a world power. China has worked hard to learn western technology. Mao's Marxism was imported from the west. The Chinese Communist Party should now work hard to learn western democracy. But it need not be a photocopy. It can be an improved version.

China can not realize its full potential as a one party state. But if the CCP is the reason why China becomes a federal, multi-party democracy of state funded parties, then the CCP gets to continue to be in power for decades. That would make things smooth. It would become a model democracy. In American democracy money has too much influence. China could be the new and improved version of democracy.

Human Rights

There is a document called the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights. There is a reason it starts with the word universal. Religious freedom is a basic human right. In a federal, multi-party China, Tibet will be one of many states. The Dalai Lama may be the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, and Buddhists all over the world, but he will not be a political leader. A regional Tibetan party may compete at the ballot box with the CCP for state power in a state parliament. That is the future we have to move towards.





In The News

Obama recaptures edge over Clinton USA Today 48% of Democratic voters favoring Obama and 45% Clinton.
Media Asks "The Beginning of the End for Clinton?" NPR A "drumbeat" has started to sound in the media the past week with the speech on race by Sen. Barack Obama and with the announcement of Bill Richardson's endorsement of Obama - "this could be the beginning of the end for Clinton." ...... Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning." ..... there will be no knockout blow, no head shot. Rather it will be a long, slow exit that causes pain to everyone involved
First a Tense Talk With Clinton, Then Richardson Backs Obama New York Times despite two months of personal entreaties by her and her husband ...... described Mr. Clinton as more philosophical than angry about it. ..... rejecting the candidacy of a close friend ...... “There’s something special about this guy,” Mr. Richardson said of Mr. Obama. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but it’s very good.” ...... Richardson stopped returning Mr. Clinton’s calls days ago ....... as of Friday, Mr. Richardson said, he had yet to pick up the phone to tell Mr. Clinton of his decision. ...... Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said ....... a positive campaign about hope and opportunity ...... Richardson is the 62nd superdelegate to endorse Mr. Obama since Feb. 5, compared with fewer than five who have moved into Mrs. Clinton’s column since then.

After Years of Political Turmoil, Nepal Busily Prepares for Vote Washington Post a decade of insurgency that claimed an estimated 14,000 lives and left this nation the poorest in the world outside Africa ..... Its first attempt at democracy was in 1950, but for more than five decades, the king and parliament engaged in power plays that sapped the country. The political turmoil was punctuated in 2001 when the crown prince gunned down 10 members of the royal family, including the king, before shooting himself. ......... scattered violence continues ..... Armed groups calling for autonomy for Nepal's southern Terai region, on the Indian border, have threatened to stage attacks and disrupt the vote. ...... Maoists have been accused of several other attacks on candidates, and on Tuesday a Maoist group was accused of charging a police post after rival candidates fled inside for protection. For their part, the Maoists accused police in another district of threatening to open fire on locals if they did not vote for the Nepali Congress party. ......... Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress party has said he will succeed Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala .... the first act of the constituent assembly will be to abolish the monarchy

Political Memo Clinton Treats Obama Pastor With Extreme Caution New York Times
Former rival endorses 'extraordinary' Obama Independent
Richardson Throws Support to Obama Washington Post
Obama Aide: Bill Clinton Like McCarthy The Associated Press
Gallup: Obama has narrowed Clinton's lead to 2 points USA Today Over the past two days, Clinton's advantage has narrowed from 7 points to 5 points and now to 2. ...... the race is back to a near tie. It is possible that Obama's aggressive efforts to diffuse the Wright story, including a major speech ... have been effective.
Obama outpaces Clinton again at fundraising Bizjournals.com in January, Obama raised $242,745 in the Pittsburgh region, compared with Clinton's $146,055

Tibetans appeal for world's help, but they're resigned to getting ... International Herald Tribune with the world counting on the emerging superpower to keep the global economy ticking as the United States appears headed into a recession. ....... Nancy Pelosi, lent her voice, calling China's crackdown "a challenge to the conscience of the world." ...... Pelosi was the first major foreign official to meet the Dalai Lama since the start of the unrest. She visited him in Dharmsala ...... a planned meeting between British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Dalai Lama. ..... last year China temporarily barred U.S. warships from docking in Hong Kong after U.S. President George W. Bush presented the Dalai Lama with the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress' highest civilian honor.
After repeated clashes with China, Taiwanese voters look for a quiet spell advocates wedding Taiwan's high-tech expertise with China's white-hot economic boom to restore the island of 23 million people to its former place as one of Asia's four economic tigers, together with Singapore, South Korea and Hong Kong. ...... 57-year-old Ma, who has a doctorate in law from Harvard .... a democracy that often descends into brawling on the floor of Parliament.
Dalai Lama gives Pelosi a warm welcome in India
Wall Street's slump becomes Main Street's problem

From Wall St. to Main St., an economic slump deepens The broadening of the economic slowdown, the plunge in home prices and near-paralysis in the financial system are fueling worries that what most economists now see as an inevitable recession could end up being especially painful. ...... the downturn will last longer and inflict more bite on workers and businesses than the last two recessions, which gripped the U.S. economy in 2001 and for eight months straddling 1990 and 1991. ..... rising incomes in China, India and elsewhere spell growing demand for meat. ...... economists say, as the impact of lowered interest rates kicks in later this year, encouraging businesses to expand and hire. Tax rebate checks to be mailed out by the government this spring may lubricate spending as well. ..... the economy will shrink only modestly during the first half of 2008, then resume expanding as more money washes through the system. ....... Households have borrowed against the increased value of their property to buy cars, send their children to college and add home theater systems.

Bhutanese reluctantly stepping into world of democracy

Obama Has Clear Money Advantage The Associated Press Clinton lived hand to mouth during the rush of presidential primaries while Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama outspent her and put money in the bank. ...... Obama raised at a clip of nearly $2 million a day in February, an open spigot of money that left him with $30 million in the bank for March. ..... even though he outspent Clinton 2-to-1 heading into the March 4 contests in Texas and Ohio, he lost both those primaries ...... On Friday, a month before the primary in Pennsylvania, Obama launched three ads in the state, two of them brand new. One is a 60-second commercial that is mostly biographical; the other two are 30-second spots that portray Obama as a politician who fights special interests and who works in a bipartisan way. ....... the general election money can only be used in the fall. Whoever loses the nomination would have to return that money to the donors. Clinton has been the most aggressive at raising general election money, with nearly $22 million in the bank. Obama has $8 million set aside for the fall.