You've all a rather old and diverse culture to get a grasp of. Makes it kind of hard for me to write timely and topical articles on what I can see in the Times of India.

I am curious about Kashimir. If I'm understanding correctly, a variety of Hindus were withdrawn from that region, and while it's India's, Pakistan claims it.

I guess my questions are:

1. Is that assessment true?
2. How much do you all care about Kashmir? As much as we'd care if Mexico took Texas? Or only as much as we'd care if China took back "our" Taiwan?
3. Assuming you care a lot, what's keeping you from having the undisputed right to it? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but on the balance, I'd be betting on India in a Indo-Pakistani war. In fact, it seems so lop-sided, I'm not sure how you'd lose. What am I missing?

(If it's us, relax, we're cowards. Why do you think we're always so fierce with non-nuclear nations, while "yes sir'ing" to China?)

Guess that's all for now, though having read your 400 plus page Constitution (Okay, some parts I skimmed!) I'm wondering how you all manage over there. We've learned – not that it did us any good – that the more writing, the less rights. The "Weimar Republic" comes to mind.

You seem to have economic freedom, though not as much as you should. Funny how you all and China are doing the "unofficial capitalism" thing at once. And quite clever, too. If only one of you did it, the other would lose. I'm hoping we learn from that and become capitalist again ourselves.

Oh, here's one more question – what's up on the literacy? I was surprised to see it at 64 percent…what is keeping it down? Is that Education bill not being signed really what's responsible? I had thought you already had a regular public school system over there. If not, allow me to say that if your output is phenomenal now – and it is – you will truly come into your own with a higher literacy rate. You'd be surprised – as we were 150 years ago – just how many poor kids can become super-rich productive geniuses, with just a bit of basic education.

Feel free to ask me any questions about America. I'm an armchair anarchist, so I can be cynical about any of our hallowed institutions!

American reaction to Wikileaks? Varies. On the right (republican/conservative) there's the usual gang of idiots screaming for indictments, arrest and even, sad to say, prison or execution – which will never happen. These folks are making way to much of it.

On the left (democrat/liberal) there's two camps, one saying it's a non-issue due to the first amendment, the other camps saying, "Yes, it's bad, but the first amendment still allows it."

The truth – as the vast majority of we in the middle know is this – Constitutional law allows the printing of it no matter what any 100 year old Espionage Act says, and that while they might get away with punishing the guy who stole the secrets, they can't touch the guy who published them.

Also, most of us – those who aren't big on politics – see this as a boring non-issue. Gee, a bunch of secret papers letting us know that our government still sucks. That diplomats can lie. That politicians can plot. That leaders do things opposite as to what they say…lol…I mean, come on, this is news?

There's no actual "leak" to this "Wikileaks", in that it's not telling anyone who's been around the block a few times anything they didn't already know. There's nothing new here, just the latest version of the same tired cycle of deceit, doltishness and dissembling. In other words, business as usual.