With Musharraf’s days in office now numbered, folks have been taking stock of his time in office and what the future holds for Pakistan. Amardeep’s piece talks about the New Guy coming in and raises the disturbing possibility that he might be too much like the Old Guy. Not Mushie but even worse, the guy(s) he replaced. And thus, the potential that Gilani is just the latest in a long string of popular leaders who’ve made up Pakistan’s checkered history with Democracy.

“A military dictatorship is a military dictatorship, and a democracy is a democracy. And the latter is always automatically better than the former.” …or is it?Via 3Quarks, I came acros an excellent piece from S. Abbas Raza titled “Defending Dictatorship: Another View on Pakistan“. Raza’s article takes a provocatively contrarian view of what’s possible in Pakistani politics (as opposed to what’s desirable) and readily recognizes the limits of dictatorship –

A military dictatorship is a military dictatorship, and a democracy is a democracy. And the latter is always automatically better than the former. It is safer to agree with this statement and to look at every particular complex political situation through the lens of this cliché than to risk having one’s liberal-democratic credentials questioned. But as a friend of mine once remarked, “All arguments for democracy in Pakistan are theoretical. For dictatorships, the greatest argument is the actual experience of Pakistani democracies.” Very similarly, another friend recently commented that “There are of course no theoretical arguments for a dictatorship, only practical ones.” In the case of Pakistan, the last two civilian democratic governments were sham democracies, and while I by no means support everything Pervez Musharraf has done, especially recently, there are various things for which his government deserves praise.

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UPDATE: Just got the sad news that Sameer passed away this morning in Seattle. He was surrounded by family and friends and went peacefully. I’ll post more details later but for now, reading Sameer’s last post is a great window into his mind and his appreciation of all the energy friends, family and mutineers sent his way.

(Anna has posted a memoriam)

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Many of you took part in one of several successful bone marrow drives for Vinay & Sameer which cumulatively registered nearly 25,000 new South Asians to the national database.

Both Vinay and Sameer beat the odds by finding matches with a few weeks of each other and had succesful transfusions. Unfortunately, both have since taken a turn for the worse – Sameer’s case in particular.

Vinay’s leukemia has, unfortunately, relapsed – Vinay’s leukemia came back about three weeks ago. He enjoyed close to three months at home with Rashmi, close friends and family and was thankful for every minute of it. He has since been put on a different treatment regiment with a positive outlook and his general health means he’s spending time at home with friends and family.

Sameer had a perfect 10/10 factor match and made a triumphant return home on Feb 11 (A GREAT read – Sameer’s own tongue adds a lot to the post). Unfortunately, complications from the transplant process resulted in a severe infection, loss of consciousness, and most recently, a stroke – We found out yesterday that Sameer had a stroke while in the unconscious state. The CT Scan shows that the right side of his brain is affected. This area controls motion on the left side of the body, etc. There is also swelling in the brain which can put pressure on the brain stem. Sameer’s back in the ICU and his prognosis is not good. However the situation unfolds, his friends and family certainly appreciate kind thoughts, words, & prayers from mutineers near and far.

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One of the things we like to do at the Mutiny is bring to light “a different kind of Desi” from time to time. Sure, we know all about desi docs, entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists and the like. But how about world famous body builders and wrestlers?

Kickin’ Sand in Yo Face

The interesting tale of the only Desi Mr Olympia, Manohar Aich is a fascinating refutation of the received wisdom of so many school playgrounds across the US. Yes Virginia, there are some Bad Desi Dudes out there.

Wikipedia gives his tale rather cursory treatment –

Manohar Aich, (born 1912) is an Indian bodybuilder. He won the 1952 Mr Universe championship. He is also three-time Asian Games gold medalist in body building. Being only 5′ tall, he was given the name “Pocket Hercules”. He currently lives near Kolkata and has retained an excellent physique even at the age of 93 years.His chest measured 54 inches with a waist of 23 inches giving him the best v-cut.

For me, it’s the then and now picts that really stand out –

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Hey folks – I’ve been overseas for the past few weeks so I haven’t been totally on top of things on this side of the pond. Still, I can say for sure is that over there, they’re generally rooting for Obama to win the election.

Unfortunately, electioneering brings out some of the whackiest, most populist, and thus must economically-deranged policy proposals from otherwise intelligent candidates. Obama – for all his credits – shows that he’s not immune to the bug; this time taking on outsourcing –

Barack Obama on Monday made an aggressive pitch at Ohio’s blue-collar workers by proposing a “Patriot Employers” plan that would lower corporate taxes for companies that did not ship jobs overseas.

…Mr Obama’s plan would lower the corporate tax rate for companies that met criteria including maintaining their headquarters in the US, maintaining or increasing their US workforce relative to their overseas workforce, holding a neutral position in union drives among their employees and providing decent healthcare.

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Abdul Kader Mollah

There are many reasons countries are and/or stay impoverished. While globalization, unfair tariffs, a history of colonization, and other external bogeymen often receive a disproportionate share of the blame, a significant % of the fault also lies internally.

This article, posted on the news tab by mutineer Art Vandalay presents a particularly galling example –

He was a lowly sales assistant on a salary of $100 a month, but Abdul Kader Mollah allegedly amassed a personal fortune of $300 million by becoming Bangladesh’s Mr Big of corporate bribery.

In 12 years with the Titas Gas Distribution Company, Mr Mollah struck corrupt deals with thousands of factories to undercharge them for the gas they consumed, and pocketed millions of dollars in bribes in return, officials claim.

With a population of ~150M, Mr. Mollah quite literally stole 2 bucks from every man / woman / child in the impoverished nation over the course of his treacherous career.

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A fascinating AsiaTimes piece discusses the completion of the latest US military base in Afghanistan. What makes this particular one so special? It’s designed to strike into Pakistan –

KARACHI – Another piece of the United States’ regional jigsaw is in place with the completion of a military base in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, just three kilometers from Bajaur Agency in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Pakistani intelligence quarters have confirmed to Asia Times Online that the base, on a mountain top in Ghakhi Pass overlooking Pakistan, is now operational…The new US base is expected to serve as the center of clandestine special forces’ operations in the border region. The George W Bush administration is itching to take more positive action – including inside Pakistan…

…with the new Kunar base, American special forces will carry out extended operations, which means a limited war against Taliban and al-Qaeda assets in the tribal areas. These clandestine operations can be done with or without Pakistan’s consent.”

For Mushie et. al., the situation boils down to a form of “I know, but can’t do anything, so I’ll stay put” – Continue reading →

Sonia Shah: Beat me to the History Channel

For many folks, showing up on the 6 o’clock news or having your mug on the cover of Time or Newsweek is the epitome of “making it.” For a strange breed of geeks like me, however, it’s being interviewed on History Channel.

When I’m working at home, it + a few other, similar channels are the “background music” to my daily office chores and it makes up perhaps 75% of my overall TV viewing. Thus, while I don’t know who won last year’s American Idol, thanks to History, I can probably tell you more than you wanted to know about key ingredients in modern ag economics. Oh yes, I’m a hoot at parties.

So, imagine the surprise when they aired a 2 hour documentary titled Crude this past Sunday and interviewed a young-ish desi woman by the name of Sonia Shah for her commentary. And, to make my budding jealously worse, she wasn’t merely interviewed but actually wrote a book chunks of the program were based on…

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