The UK-based Guardian ran a lovely little story on Uday and Qusay, Saddam Hussein's now dead sons. Patrick Graham, a writer with the newspaper looks back on his brief encounters with the sons of Saddam, feared and despised while they lived; dead, bogeymen who helped to justify the war on Iraq. Read on

Earlier today, I was reading a story published in The Atlantic on ten international-security developments that aren't getting as much attention as it deserves. Written by analysts from The Rand Corporation, it hit me hard because of the ten concerns outlined, three had its origins in India. Primarily;

** The Hindu Muslim divide
** The Tehran - New Delhi Axis
** The Indus water fight

In the long run, however, I would dismiss these concerns.

Sure, the the Hindu Muslim divide concerns most Indians and on the face of it the schisms are far too deep. Like I had mentioned in an earlier posting, given these schisms, how will India survive as a nation state? As much as there is room and reason to believe it will, should it? Is it worth losing so many lives? Will all of this lead to civil war? Frightening.

But India will survive. To understand why, look at the next concern Rand Corporation highlights.The Tehran - New Delhi axis.

Think about it. A Tehran - New Delhi axis on the one hand. A Tel Aviv - New Delhi axis on the other hand. Both of these being managed by the same government without upsetting the apple cart in any which way. At the end of the day, it all boils down to good economics. Given a choice between economics and parochialism, economics wins hands down. In the eighties, I'm not sure any country could have managed relationships of this kind deftly. That it can now, is a tribute to the compelling logic of economics.

Extrapolate these relationships on foreign policy to domestic policy. Civil strife can kill the economy. Which is why, New Delhi will do its damndest best to quell uprisings -- either subtly or not so subtly.

As for the Indus Water dispute, well, back home in India, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are fighting over water from the Cavery. I wonder who was it that said wars in the next century will be fought not between civilizations or nations, but over water. Having said that, I sincerely believe over the next couple of months, as relationships between India and Pakistan thaw, this is an issue that will be sorted out bilaterally.

Perhaps, all of this may sound naive to folks like those at the Rand Corporation. But hey, if you guys stopped looking at countries like India and Pakistan condescendingly and simply acknowledge that they have the expertise to resolve their problems, alarms bells won't go off as often as it does now.

How do you build an online music business that is just about legal and knows how to make money? Sure, Apple's iTunes is a harbinger of things to come. But it isn't quite in consonance with the times. It's still too damn "corporatish" a model for my comfort. I mean, do you remember the heady feeling that Napster provided when it was around? It was as much about sharing and joy as much as it was about music. The ability to share music with afficionados around the world, the joy of discovering a new piece of music. There was magic. In everything else that followed, the magic has been missing. Until today morning, when I read about an idea. There is something about the whole idea that makes you feel warm deep down. And you know that you want to share in it -- be part of magic, once again. Snapster, son of Napster, as described by Robert Cringley.