Autocracy

 I finished reading a book written by Anne Applebaum. Titled “Autocracy, Inc: The dictators who want to run the world,” it provides a powerful perspective on what is going on in the current administration. Here are some of the important points she makes, starting from the end of World War II, when “Everyone assumed that in a more open, interconnected world, democracy and liberal ideas would spread to the autocratic states. Nobody imagined that autocracy and illiberalism would spread to the democratic world instead.” 

She then describes Putin’s Russia as an example of what happened.  “It was not a poor dictatorship, wholly dependent on foreign donors. Instead, it represented something new: A full-blown autocratic kleptocracy, a mafia state built and managed entirely for the purpose of enriching its leaders. The true beneficiaries of this system: Oligarchs whose fortune depend on their political connections.” 

 

“Less frequently mentioned (beneficiaries) are the legitimate Western institutions, companies, lawyers, and politicians who enabled his schemes, profited from them, or covered them up.” According to Anne, Putin was “well acquainted with the double standards of Western Democracies, which preached liberal values at home but were very happy to help build illiberal regimes everywhere else. Kleptocracy and autocracy go hand in hand.”

 

Another dictator described in the book, Chavez of Venezuela, had a message, “If you are loyal, you can steal. Like Putin, he made a different political calculation, one designed not to make his country prosperous, but to keep himself permanently in power. Like Chavez, our president lies repeatedly and blatantly, as do other modern dictators. The point is not to make believe a lie; it is to make people fear the liar.”

 

Moving on to how the modern technologies are helping these autocrats, Anne says that, “The Chinese began using new information technologies that were just then beginning to change politics and conversations around the world. Chinese algorithms will be able to string together data points from a broad range of sources—travel records, friends and associates, reading habits, purchases—to predict political resistance before it happens.”

 

Further, “Many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., persuade people that our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.”

 

Along the same lines, it is interesting to see how the conversations about human rights are being distorted. “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created in 1946, the early optimistic days of postwar world. It asserted that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. No one should be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. These documents and treaties are collectively known as rules-based order. They describe how the world ought to work, not how it actually works. Autocracies are now leading the charge to remove that kind of language from the international arena altogether.”

 

So, what can be done? According to Anne, “Gene Sharp has written a book called “From Dictatorship to Democracy. The appendix (of this book) contains a list of 198 nonviolent, anti-authoritarian tactics.” One of the tactics involves “The display of symbols---badges, flowers, logos, colors---force people to take sides. Note the Cedar revolution in Lebanon, the Green movement in Iran, the Arab Spring.” 

 

That may not be enough to sustain a movement. The book mentions that “Sometimes the fame or notoriety of the leader can unify a movement.” For examples, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar. “However, the modern autocratic regimes smear not just their opponents but also their ideas. Most of the times, modern autocracies prefer to silence critics without creating corpses. A martyr can inspire a political movement, while a successful smear campaign can destroy one.”

 

Cynically, “Corruption allegations against dissidents deflect attention away from the corruption of the ruling party. This reinforces public conviction that all politics is dirty. Technologies built in Silicon Valley and public relations tactics invented on Madison Avenue meshes with dictatorial behavior to create coordinated online harassment campaigns.” 

 

The book mentions, “Although autocrats work together to keep one another in power, there is no alliance of those of us who are fighting for freedom. It is important to show that we are united and we have support from the free world. We are more numerous than they are.” To that end, “In the autumn of 2022 in Vilnius, there was the first even meeting of the World Liberty Congress, a gathering of people who have fought autocracies all around the world. The argument being made was that we are not an opposition, we are an option, a better option.” 

 

It is important to note that, “Many countries don’t fit comfortably into either category, democracy or autocracy. Because autocratic alliances are largely transactional, they can shift and change, and the often do. Powerful people benefit from the existing system, want to keep it in place, and have deep connections across political spectrum.” 

 

What we need is “not a war against any specific country, such as China, but against autocratic behaviors, where ever they are found. The autocracies want to create a global system that benefits thieves, criminals, dictators, and the perpetrators of mass murder. We can stop them. We can put an end to transactional kleptocracy.” 

 

“We can fight back by understanding that we are facing an epidemic of information laundering and exposing it when we can. The social media platforms are so easy to game. Reform of these platforms is a vast topic. Fight against evidence-based conversation requires broader international coalition. Authoritarian narratives are designed to characterize dictatorships as stable and democracy as chaotic.” 

 

The book concludes by emphasizing that, “Nobody’s democracy is safe. There is no liberal world order anymore, and the aspiration to create one no longer seems real. But there are liberal societies, open and free countries that offer a better chance for people to live useful lives than closed dictatorships do.  They can be saved but only if those of us who live in them are willing to make the effort to save them.”

 

So, it is quite clear that our country is making a transition toward becoming an autocracy as well as a kleptocracy. We have now joined the cabal of others such as Russia, China, Venezuela, Myanmar, Hungary, North Korea and Zimbabwe, among others. I am sure our support, now provided to Russia, will be extended to the others as well. A few people in our country will become even more wealthy, while a vast majority will go through agony. We will be fed with lies that our leader, even if not perfect, is much better than the others. Hopefully, the constitution will prevail and in four years we may revert to Democracy. However, I would not hold my breath. 

 

None of the countries in the cabal have made that transition. 

LIFE 1943

  

LIFE was an important news magazine that was published every week for many decades, before becoming a monthly magazine in 1972, and eventually, ceasing to publish in 2000. I grew up with LIFE magazine in our household in India, along with National Geographic, Time and Reader’s Digest. You see, my parents were quite in tune with what was happening in the US.

 

So, I picked up a copy of a LIFE magazine at a flea market in Pasadena. It was the June 14, 1943 issue, with cover story of High School graduation. This was a special graduation for many students, as almost all male (called “boys”) were drafted and went to war. Remember, World War II was still raging. None of the graduating women was drafted and many were destined to go to college.

 

This is a remarkable issue in terms of what it shows and what it does not.

 

As can be expected, the issue has many reports and photos from the battle front. The main story is on the war in North Africa, including that on bombing of Tunis. There is a story on a movie called “Five Graves to Cairo” featuring the actor who played Field Marshal Rommel. 

 

The Nazi war on Russian civilians is described using graphic drawings by an artist. What a horrible war it was!!There is a report on Attu Island of Japan. The Allied soldiers are shown fighting Japanese hiding in snow. Pearl Harbor salvage operation is described in detail. 

 

There are many other non-war related stories as well. There are photos of a monkey digging up a garden, a guy called James Byrne (known as “assistant president”) giving a speech in South Carolina, bare backs as the latest fashion (how scandalous!), a woman called “the pretzel girl” based on her remarkable aerobics, carnivorous plants, and Literary England (showing places that were selected by English authors for their books). Of course, there are photos from the afore mentioned high school graduation, in which every woman (“girl”) looks identical, and so does every man (“boy”). All white.

 

What is really interesting is to go through the advertisements occupying good deal of the magazine. Here are some observations:

 

·      At the first glance, there is not a single black, brown or Asian person in the entire magazine….not one in the stories, and none in the advertisements. The only place I found, after much searching, is an advertisement for Seaforth toiletries, where a British officer in Calcutta orders an Indian servant to bring him a jugful of something so he can shave. 

·      There is a Rube Goldberg’s contraption (remember him?) that shows how a war worker sawing off a pipe would eventually launch “Adolf, Musso and Hiro” by big guns so that “they never trouble the civilized world again”. 

·      There are several full-page advertisements by car companies (Oldsmobile, Buick, Chevrolet) building war machinery. Also, shown is a Boeing factory making bombers.

·      There were numerous types of whiskies being sold during that time, as is apparent from the advertisements. These include, Paul Jones (never heard of it), Seagram’s, VAT69, Canadian Club and Teacher’s. Also advertised are Gordon’s Gin, and Merito rum. No wines or beers. 

·      There is a cute advertisement for Easterbrook fountain pen, which allows writers to change points (nibs), also one on razor blades (remember them?)

·      Interestingly, a lot of advertisements show grooming products for men. Toiletries, shaving lotions, tie bars, cuff links, shirts, “Bill folds”, and so on. 

·      Finally, of course, there are advertisements for cigarettes and cigars. Smoking was in full bloom.

 

 

Different times, indeed. 

Far out

 I enjoy thinking about the future. So, I like to read science fiction books, especially those that are based on hard science. These books provide scenarios on how the future might evolve. 

To that end, I have enjoyed reading books written by Kim Stanley Robinson, a prolific author based in California. The last book I read, “2312” is as interesting as the previous one. 

 

As the title suggests, Kim describes the world almost 300 years from now. Several intriguing developments that have taken place by the time year 2312 arrives

 

Human beings now live on most of the planets, and many of their moons. For each planet (and moon) humans have developed a way of living appropriate for the climate condition. 

 

·      On Mercury, where a principal character lives, the problem is heat from sun. If you are in open sunlight, you will get fried in no time. So, you have to keep moving ahead of sunrise. That is not a major problem because the planet revolves very slowly. What is a particularly intriguing solution is that an entire city, called the Terminator, is built to move on rails. Of course, if there is a problem with the rails and the city cannot move, there is a huge crisis.

·      On Venus, humans have designed a solar shield, once again to protect the plane from intense heat. If the solar shield is threatened, the entire population on Venus is at risk. 

·      For the population living on Titan, a moon of Saturn, where another important character is from, the problem is reverse. It is too cold, and so the habitats are designed to allow people to survive intense cold.

 

Transportation among these planets and moons is provided on asteroids that are hollowed to provide capacity and luxury to travelers. They rotate slowly so humans are able to enjoy “gravity” in form of centrifugal force. Called terrariums, these massive spaceships come in different flavors each suited to different expectations of long travel. 

 

Space elevators, anchored at equators, are commonly used to transport people from the planet to a geosynchronous orbit. This way, they can catch ferries to spaceships without having to burn a lot of fuel to get into the orbit. Both Earth and Mars have such space elevators. 

 

There is a move to repopulate earth with animals—reanimation---that involves dropping animals using various landing technologies. Of course, this repopulating is not enthusiastically endorsed by everyone. 

In the future, humans don’t come as either male or female. There are multiple varieties, and most humans come equipped with both sex organs. That is the case with the two main characters of the book. 

 

Artificial intelligence has a firm hold on civilization. Most people have an AI device, “qube”, embedded in their heads. Some, however, prefer to wear them on wrists (like an Apple watch). These qubes provide whatever assistance their humans need. There are also humanoids, robots, walking around and they are indistinguishable from humans. One main part of the story deals with a coup engineered by the qubes against humanity. 

 

The book is a fascinating journey through an imagined future. The detail with which Kim paints the picture made this book a NY Times Bestseller and won the Nebula Award. 

 

 

It does stretch your imagination. 

When you lose everything

 While growing up, my father spent some twenty years in Myanmar, or Burma as it was known then. His father (my grandfather) worked in an insurance company and there were opportunities for someone like him in Rangoon in what was then a part of British India. As the years went by, the family expanded. My father, the oldest son, had at that time two sisters and two brothers. The large family had a good life.

Everything then changed. Japan, with its imperial ambitions, decided to invade Burma. World War II was raging after all, and the Japanese were aggressively expanding the land they had conquered. 

 

With bombs falling, my grandfather made a crucial decision to have my grandmother and five children escape Rangoon while they could. He would stay behind to take care of business. 

 

My grandmother packed up the best she could and the family (without my grandfather) headed to the port to catch one of the last passenger ships to leave Burma. My father, when telling the story, talked about bombs falling everywhere on the port and there was no certainty that they would get out alive.

 

The did get out and after some weeks on the sea, they made it back to India, as refugees. The place they could go back to was my home town where there were some relatives who could look after them. The big question was what had happened to my grandfather.

 

As, there were no means of communication, my father used to go to the train station and wait for trains to come in from the east. Perhaps my grandfather would be on one of them. Slim as the chances were, a miracle happened and one day my grandfather appeared alive and well. 

 

He had a horrific tale to tell. After his family had departed, he decided to do the same along with some friends. The port was closed for civilians and the only choice they had was to walk to India. Imphal, the closet city in India, was 340 miles away and that was by the straight road. The use of that road was not available to “natives” as the British army was pouring into Burma and using it. 

 

One can only speculate how many miles they walked each day, where they slept, or what did they eat. If you fell sick along the way, you were abandoned to die because they could not wait. Finally, they reached Imphal and my grandfather made his way back to my home town located in the Western part of India. My grandfather’s brother was not so “fortunate”. He disappeared during the war, as he did not leave Rangoon. 

 

After the family reunited, my grandfather got a job in another state and took his family there. By now they had one more child (my youngest uncle), but my father did not go with them. He got a scholarship to study medicine in Bombay (now Mumbai). He met my mother in the college, they got married, and moved to a small town as doctors. Meanwhile, my grandfather lost his job and it was up to my parents to take care of the entire family which included both my grandparents and five siblings. There were hardships, of course, but they were safe and could rebuild their lives after losing everything. 

 

This is the lesson my father imparted to his children and his younger siblings. Do not despair when everything you cherish is gone. You can always rebuild. 

 

What an important lesson for us as we contemplate what would have happened if the recent fire, which wiped out our neighboring town, had moved south and taken our house as well.

 

 “You need to move on,” is what my father would have told us citing his own example.  

 

Lessons from a fire

 In Los Angeles, winter is when it rains. During the preceding two winters, it rained a lot, making the whole area greener than normal. However, in January 2025 it had not rained for over nine months and all the vegetation had dried up. Moreover, in this area, strong winds called Santa Ana are quite common during this time of the year. During the winter of 2025, they came in unusually strong, with wind gusts up to 90 miles per hour. Combine dryness with fierce winds presented a deadly combination for fire. Any spark in a wrong place could have created a conflagration and there were many such sparks.

The worst one was the Palisades Fire which burned the town of Pacific Palisades and a part of Malibu. The other was Eaton Fire, which started in the Eaton Canyon and quickly destroyed the town of Altadena and a part of Pasadena. 

 

We, living in Pasadena, experienced the Eaton fire first hand. Fortunately, we live in the southern part of the city and escaped destruction. Except for several false alarms for evacuation (we abided by the first one and ignored the rest), and foul air, we escaped the destruction caused by the fire. 

 

Nevertheless, this incidence taught me many lessons. Here are six of the most important lessons we learned. 

 

1. Life is a crap shoot

 

Totally. When you read about plane crashes you wonder why a group of people had to die while most others are able to fly in comfort. Similarly, we continued to enjoy an almost normal life while people just a few miles away lost everything. For no fault of their own, except being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps we experienced “survivor guilt”.

 

2. Our material possessions are fragile

 

Our friends who lost their houses had everything under the sun a few days ago, and in a moment, all was gone. How fragile are our material possessions?

 

As one of my friends said, “To quote Adi Shankaracharya from his immensely popular Bhaja Govindam: मा कुरुधनजनयौवनगर्वम्। हरति निमेषात् कालः सर्वम्। Don’t be proud of your wealth, people and youth; time snatches it all away in a flash.”

 

3. Certain items are worth preserving

 

In spite of the fragility of our material possessions, we have to make an attempt to preserve certain items if we have a warning of an impending catastrophe. Even those who lost their houses were able to scoop up some items before they had to flee. So, the lesson we learned is that there is a need to prioritize and make hard decisions regarding what is worth preserving and what can be sacrificed.

 

In this day and age, where almost every bit of information is on our laptops or iPhones, they are the most important items that need to be saved Next are hard discs and camera chips that contain records and photographs. Several paper documents are also worth saving (passports, house deed, birth certificates, social security cards, naturalization certificates and so on). In addition, jewelry is important to save, more sentimental value than anything else. Finally, old photographs, travelogues, professional records, memorabilia are worth preserving, even though you may have electronic records of many of these items. 

 

4.  People are good hearted and caring

 

The outpouring of support by citizens for people affected by a calamity such as this is heartwarming. Food, clothing and water is available for those who need them, and various Go Fund sites have opened up to raise money. There is no Republican or Democrat divide, nor is there any consideration for race of people. 

 

Even for us, we got text message, emails and calls from around the world, even from people we had met only once a long time ago. They were all concerned. We got offer for housing from people living in this area, if we needed. It was amazing.

 

5. The media provides a more horrific view than reality

 

These fires have been horrible. They have burnt to ashes some 3000 houses. Streets are desolate and people are evacuated. Some have perished in the fire. That is what most people, including us, have seen on television and social media. Horrible as that is, one needs to remember the destroyed area is just a tiny fraction of this vast metropolis. Almost everywhere you look, the life is almost normal, except for the area that were unfortunately in the path of the fire. 

 

These normal life areas don’t get mentioned on TV because that type of news does not attract viewers.  So, for friends and relatives living outside LA, the image is that of total destruction, more so than what is happening in reality. We got so many messages and calls from our friends and family worried that the whole city was burning. That was not the case. 

 

6. Climate change is here. 

 

To quote an article from NY Times (1/10/2025), “With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.” “Wildfires are burning hotter and moving faster. Storms are getting bigger and carrying more moisture. And soaring temperatures worldwide are leading to heat waves and drought, which can be devastating on their own and leave communities vulnerable to dangers like mudslides when heavy rains return.”

 

What we got is a taste of what is happening around the world. Instead of doing something about it, our country is going to head in the wrong direction under the reign of a despot who has promised to increase drilling and abandon most of the environmental protection. 

 

Looking in the future, I wonder how habitable will be parts of our world due to the effects of climate change? 

Social Network

 We are all social animals. Some are more so than others, but it is hard to imagine life without a network of friends and family members. When I reflect on my social networks, I can see how they have changed over life time. Moreover, these changes have been driven primarily by technology.

While growing up in India, with almost no telephones around, the only way to make friends and make them a part of your network was through physically being at the same place at the same time. That meant knocking on doors, or gathering to play at home or in a field at a previously agreed time. 

 

When I moved away from my town for studies, I could have written letters to keep in touch with the old friends, but that did not happen often. Except for occasional letters to my parents, I did not correspond much. The only time I revived my old contacts was when I went back home.

 

Telephone had arrived by then, but the use was primarily for local calls. My parents were the primary users. We did not use it to chitchat with friends. Also, there was an issue that many of them were not privileged to having telephones in their homes. Walking over to their houses was the only way to maintain the social network. 

 

Then, I moved to US and a whole set of new challenges presented themselves in maintaining the old network. Although public phones were around, we did not use them for overseas calls--- that was way too expensive. Writing letters---using “aerograms”, as they were called, or lightweight stationary--- were the only ways to keep in touch. For more urgent communication, there was a little more expensive alternative, a telegram. 

 

Somehow, through letters, I was able to keep in touch with a selected group of people back home. However, I now had a set of friends in the new country. When not physically meeting them, I kept in touch using telephone calls. All local, mind you, and all on landlines. 

 

The next innovation was electronic mail, or email. Now a letter could be sent instantaneously to whoever had an email address. Thanks to AOL (America-On-Line), I started communicating with people all over the world. Pretty soon, I had the capability to send group emails, so communication with a whole bunch of people became possible. Keeping the social network going was now relatively easy.

 

Then came cell phones and our ability to connect went up. Initially, they were just phones and there was no text function, but I could communicate from where ever there was a cell phone signal. When we had smart phones, I could start texting people so they could communicate at their leisure. Thanks to applications like “WhatsApp”, it was now possible to connect with people in India, or around the world, without any charges. 

 

Social media applications, such as FaceBook, changed the paradigm of social network once again. Now it was possible to post photos that people in in my network could see. Not only was it possible to keep in touch with folks around the world, but also see what they were up to, even in minute details. Interestingly, I could now get in touch with people I had lost contact with. FaceBook was helping me revive old networks and relationships. 

 

Further, people I had physically met while on travel could keep in touch with me long after the event, using FaceBook or other similar social media offerings. This group of new friends included fellow travelers or local guides we had met while travelling.

 

Having an active social network no longer required physical proximity, as when I started. Now, I could keep in touch with a much more extended network around the world.

 

As I look at the situation now, a common theme in my social network, as defined above, is that with a very few exceptions, I have met all people in my network at least once. That is not true with, say, a hobby related network I belong to, Flickr. We all in that network have a shared interest in photography, or, creating visual images, but have never met.

 

Over the fifteen years, I have made “friends” with other photographers. We post photos (or images) and make comments on each other’s work. However, I have never met them, nor do I have too much information on them. Most often, I do not even know what they look like or what part of the world do they live.

 

The progression in technology already makes it possible to meet these people, say through holograms or virtual reality glasses. The only thing missing is the social need. If that hurdle is overcome, there will come the day when we will all be in the same room, virtually. I will meet all my Flickr friends---Mark, Tim, Victor, Renee, Silene, Sonja, Amba, Maarten--- and interact with them just as I did with my friends in the old home town. 

 

It would be like the good old days, except, the much larger network will be international and include friends I have never physically met, or likely to meet.

 

 

 

 

Election from a vision perspective

  

Frequently management consultants are called in to develop a strategic plan for a corporation. I know the process fairly well, because I used to be a management consultant too.

 

A major step in the process is to develop a vision for the corporation. This is based on what is happening in the external world and what the stakeholders in the corporation are saying. Three to five years from now, the corporation may need to look different from what it does right now because the external environment is constantly shifting and opportunities emerge. Such vision is at the foundation of what a strategic plan would look like. It will be a roadmap for how to get there from here.

 

A corporation does not have to deal with alternate-visions. It could be that the workers in the company may feel differently from the management about where the corporation is heading, but in most cases, they have faith that those running the company to know what they are doing. They also have the ability to leave the corporation if they disagree. In an extreme situation, they may go on strike. That however, does not change the vision a great deal, only how the benefits of fulfilling the vision would be distributed.

 

It is different for democratic nations. There could be different visions and the election will give right to someone to implement strategy to achieve the selected vision.

 

What the Democrats were trying to do in the recent presidential election was to communicate a vision for US in face of changing environment, both externally and internally. There are major trends such as globalization, advanced technologies and changing demographics of this country. Their vision would recognize these changes and incorporate them in the way the country would look like.  “We look ahead”, was their mantra. 

 

However, there was a competing vision that was proposed. This vision reminded people that the country does not need to follow global changes in the environment, but can go back to the good old times. “Make America Great AGAIN” is what the opponents said.

 

There is an obvious appeal to that alternate vision. People have a myopic memory as they recall the past. It is almost always “Good old times” and not “Bad old times”.  When looking back, it feels good to remember times when inflation was low, and those pesky immigrants were few. Unlike a corporation, people of the country can change the direction of the country by a simple vote, so that the alternate vision can be achieved. 

 

To a large percentage of people, that seemed to be a much more appealing task then doing something new with no clear benefit to them. It really did not matter that the huckster pedaling the alternate vision was coming up with unworkable ideas. The force of his personality was sufficient.  The story he told was convincing.

 

So, now, hold on to your seats.