Life still goes on.....

A long absence from blogging. So many things have changed since the last time I made an entry - a new title, new car (see last post), new job, new place......but same old procrastinating habits.

Anyway, Tom Friedman's op-ed from last weekend's NYT is, as usual, a balanced, nicely written article about anti-Americanism in the Islamic world. Interestingly, he contrasts the sentiments in other developing non-Muslim countires:

I am sure that young Taiwanese, young Koreans, young Japanese, young Poles and young Indians have their views on America, but they are not an obsession. They want our jobs, not our lives. They live in societies that empower their young people to realize their full potential and to express any opinion - pro-American, anti-American or neutral.

I first read Thomas Friedman more than 12 years ago - while I was still in school and for some reason, most probably due to the coverage by Prannoy Roy and co on the 'World this Week' (see below), passionately interested in the history of the creation of Israel and contemporary politics in the Middle-East. His book 'From Beirut to Jerusalem' (purchased at the 1992 Calcutta Book Fair) , though perhaps a little dated today, should still provide a compelling reading about the psyche of the different nations in the middle-east and the genesis of the Arab-Israeli conflicts. In my opinion, the book was written in a fairly objective manner - although in today's world it may be construed as somewhat left-leaning.


Update: It turns out that the WTW program was restarted back in late 2003 when NDTV launched its 24/7 news channel. Not suprising that I missed it when I was in India last January - number of channels during WTW's first run: 2 ; number of channels now: >100 maybe - with at least 5-6 completel;y news channels.