December 3rd, 2008
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Earlier today, I interviewed South Asia expert Howard B. Schaffer on America’s role in the aftermath of the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack.
Howard B. Schaffer has spent much of his 36-year career dealing with U.S. relations with South Asia, including a stint as ambassador to Bangladesh. He has recently finished writing a book on America’s role in Kashmir, titled ‘The Limits of Influence’, which will be published by the Brookings Institute early next year. He is now the Deputy Director at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University.
In a 23 minute interview, we spoke about the history of America’s role in the Indian sub-continent and how it is likely to change in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack.
Ambassador Schaffer believes that we will have a replay of the escalation in tension between India and Pakistan we saw in 2002 after the attack on the Indian parliament and international pressure will mount on Pakistan to take definitive action against Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, given the transitional government in United States, a weak government in Pakistan, and an end of term government in India, no decisive action is likely to be taken by any of the three governments.
December 3rd, 2008 |
Posted in Citizen Journalism, Noteworthy, Podcast, Vidcast
| Tagged with America, Bombay, Georgetown University, Howard B. Schaffer, India, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Kashmir, Mumbai, Pakistan, Terror Attack, United States |
August 21st, 2008
Later in the evening, I’ll be going for a book reading session of ‘Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics’ by Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox at Busboys and Poets.
Surprisingly, neither the Netroots Rising website, nor the book’s Amazon page offers a blurb! So, here’s the blurb from the Busboys and Poets events listings –
The 2006 elections will be remembered as the year when the center of power in American politics shifted from traditional “top-down” central broadcasters to new “bottom-up” decentralized activists in the blogosphere and netroots. The authors give firsthand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, most notably as when the national balance of power was tipped by Jim Webb’s “rag-tag army” of bloggers and netroots activists who provoked and exposed the gaffe that proved fatal to George Allen’s senatorial bid.
It seems to me that the prominent use of social media tools in election campaigns has introduced social media to a set of Americans who wouldn’t have been interested in it otherwise. As a result, there’s suddenly a lot of interest in the use of social media to engage (young) citizens in civic issues. Books like Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age and ‘Netroots Rising’ are an indicator of this interest.
August 21st, 2008 |
Posted in Flat or Not, Social Change 2.0, Social Media
| Tagged with America, Busboys and Poets, Civic Engagement, India, Lowell Feld, Mobile Web, Nate Wilcox, Netroots Rising, Rebooting America, Social Media |
