Category Archives: News

Pilgrimages ain’t what they used to be

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Forbes magazine reports on an article first published in the German magazine Cicero which asserts that the Pakistanis are helping the Saudis develop a nuclear capability under the cover of the Haj:

…during the Haj pilgrimages to Mecca in 2003 through 2005, Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims to come to Saudi Arabia.

Between October 2004 and January 2005, some of them slipped off from pilgrimages, sometimes for up to three weeks, the report quoted German security expert Udo Ulfkotte as saying.

According to Western security services, the magazine added, Saudi scientists have been working since the mid-1990s in Pakistan, a nuclear power since 1998.

Cicero, which will appear on newstands tomorrow, also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons ‘because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear program…’ [Link]

If this is true then it is a total slap in the face of the U.S., and the assurances that we supposedly have (right?) about Khan’s network being shut down is all bulls*it. Allowing a nation like Saudi Arabia any sort of nuclear capability is crazy, especially if you think that the monarchy there is doomed to failure and that a militant uprising is just a matter of time. Also, it’s not like they have an un-met energy demand.

The magazine also said satellite images indicate that Saudi Arabia has set up a program in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles. [Link]

We’ll have to keep an eye on this to see if any other news organizations follow-up on the German assertions.

Update: Pakistan rejects accusations. See below the fold. Continue reading →

The Britannia Cartel (updated)

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Dave’s post about the British Raj reminded me about the seamy underside of the British East India Company, namely its business in drugs. Imperial trade in opium was central to the success of the British empire:

Indian opium helped the British rule the world

By the early part of the nineteenth century, British Indian opium had stanched the flow of New World silver into China, replacing silver as the commodity that could be exchanged for Chinese tea and other goods…Opium revenues in India not only kept the colonial administration afloat, but sent vast quantities of silver bullion back to Britain. The upshot was the global dominance of the British pound sterling until World War I… [the] data supports, without opium the British global empire is virtually unimaginable. [Link]

The British energetically encouraged poppy growing, on occasion coercing Indian peasant farmers into going over the crop. By the end of the 1830s the opium trade was already, and was to remain, “the world’s most valuable single commodity trade of the nineteenth century.”(4)… [Link]

The definition of a drug cartel is a group with a monopoly on the distribution of an illegal narcotic. The empire, in the form of the East India Company, fits the bill quite neatlyWithout opium the British global empire is virtually unimaginable:

In 1773, the Governor-General of Bengal was granted a monopoly on the sale of opium, and abolished the old opium syndicate at Patna. For the next 50 years, opium would be key to the British East India Company’s hold on India. Since importation of opium into China was illegal … the British East India Company would … sell opium at auction in Calcutta on the condition it was smuggled to China. In 1797, the company ended the role of local Bengal purchasing agents and instituted the direct sale of opium to the company by farmers.

In 1799, the Chinese Empire reaffirmed its ban on opium imports, and in 1810 the following decree was issued:
“Opium has a very violent effect… Opium is a poison… Its use is prohibited by law.” [Link]

Certainly, the British ended up doing many good things in India. Still, we should acknowledge that the roots of the British Raj lie in something as dirty and illicit as the Medellin cartel. That a bunch of dirty narcoterrorists could give birth to the world’s largest, and (relatively speaking) one of its more humane empires, is perplexing indeed.

Continue reading →

The Guardians of the British Raj

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Stalin found it “ridiculous” that “a few hundred Englishmen should dominate India.” [Link]

A new book by historian David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2006), “helps explain how [the British civil servants in India] pulled it off.”

In yesterday’s Washington Post, noted author and UN official Shashi Tharoor gave a generally favorable review of The Ruling Caste. In Tharoor’s view,

The Ruling Caste paints an arresting and richly detailed portrait of how the British ruled 19th-century India — with unshakeable self-confidence buttressed by protocol, alcohol and a lot of gall…. [For example,] one 24-year-old district officer found himself in charge of 4,000 square miles and a million people [Link]

The arrogance of the British administrators and the paternalistic means by which they viewed their Indian subjects is upsetting, though not unsurprising. One viceroy is quoted by Gilmour as saying:

“We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race.”

According to Gilmour:

Few shared Queen Victoria’s “romantic feelings for ‘brown skins….'” Well into the 20th century, they spoke and wrote of the need to treat Indians as “children” incapable of ruling themselves.

Despite Gilmour’s insights into the personal lives and thoughts of these administrators, Tharoor is critical of the book’s failure to examine the Indian response to the British public officials, who were “members of the Indian Civil Service (ICS)”:

What is missing, though, is any sense of an Indian perspective on these men and their work. What did the subjects of their administration think of them? Gilmour does not tell us. He glosses over the prejudice and casual racism of many ICS men.

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VoA will no longer speak Hindi…but learns more Bangla

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From the newswire (thanks “Blue Mountain”) we see that the Broadcasting Board of Governors has decided to scale back some of its global Voice of America programming, seemingly to re-direct dollars to countries most in need of America’s voice.

This may come as a shock to millions of Hindi radio fans worldwide, Even as the Indo-US relationship scales a new peak, the popular Hindi service of the Voice of America seems all set to be closed down in six months, after being on air for more than four decades. In its annual budget, the Broadcasting Board of Governors has said it will close down VoA’s Hindi radio broadcasts along with four others–Turkish, Thai, Greek and Croatian. Although it is still under Congressional review, it is unlikely that the lawmakers would go against the board’s decision.

At the same time, VoA’s Urdu service is being increased to 18 hours a day, including a special six-hour broadcast for the tribal areas of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The duration of the Hindi service is one hour and 30 minutes. [Link]

This strikes me as short-sighted. What’s happening here is that the powers that be are shifting their dollars away from many of the countries in which VoA is popular and arguably effective, and is instead going to try and focus on immediate hotspots using more exciting forms of media (as exemplified by Radio Sawa and Al-Hurra TV). The Baltimore Sun has a nice op-ed outlining possible motivations behind these directed cuts and why they may be a bad idea:

The enemy media fire hard and fast, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a recent speech, and we must return the fire just as fast. As an example, he cites the extensive coverage of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Why not respond, he asks, by reporting on the mass graves of Saddam Hussein’s victims – torture answering torture, as it were. And non-journalists may have to paid to do the job. It is a kind of shock and awe of the media, a crucial part of the war on terror…

The Voice of America, to be sure, does not do this, and therein lies the problem. Dismissed as old-fashioned, stodgy and slow-moving, it is slated for drastic cuts by the supervising Broadcast Board of Governors…

Since, comparatively speaking, it costs so little, what’s the problem? Many say it is political. Every administration in Washington tries to nudge VOA this way or that way politically, but the pressure exerted by the current administration is said to be unprecedented…

This interference is not unique to VOA. It reflects what has happened at the Pentagon and the CIA, where dissenters have been demoted, reassigned, fired or otherwise silenced. [Link]

Continue reading →

Coffee cant

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How many times have you seen a desi profile begin with a sexualized coffee metaphor?

Amir Khan, Starbucks menu item

[Boxer] Amir Khan is a slender 19-year-old with smooth skin the color of café con leche. [Link]

That particular style was original before Starbucks was big, when light-skinned black girls calling themselves ‘Mocha’ showed up on prime time to tease the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Only thing is, everyone now knows that coffee beans are actually harvested by poorly-paid brown people. Awkward.

Personally, I say we bring the brewless fuck back in style. It’s so darn cute, so dang-diggly underused, that the NYT should apply it to everyone they profile. And the metaphor should evaluate whether the subject is bangable, through coffeerotica.

‘Oscar de la Hoya is a 33-year-old with skin the color of espresso.

‘Avril Lavigne is a 21-year-old with skin the color of a double tall, no-whip vanilla latte.

‘Alan Greenspan is an 80-year-old with skin the color of curdled whipping cream.’

Hey, if you’re good, kick it up a notch into cocoarotica: milk chocolate, caramel, dark chocolate with almond bits. Make the paper of record sound as subtle as hip-hop lyrics. Bam, now we’re cookin’ with gas.

Related posts: We’ve got a live one!, Sakina’s Restaurant, Anatomy of a genre, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

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Sooden rescu…err…I mean released

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By now most people are aware that 33-year-old Canadian peace activist Harmeet Singh Sooden (who celebrates his birthday today), along with another Canadian and one Brit, got their first taste of freedom in months on Thursday:

NOW he looks like a “Gandhian peace activist.”

The three hostages were freed Thursday from a house west of Baghdad by a joint U.S.-British military operation. The kidnappers were not there.

“Right before the intervention, they (the hostages) were bound and then their captors left their building,” said Peggy Gish, a member of the Chicago-based Christian Peacemakers Teams.

The U.S. military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, said the 8 a.m. rescue from a “kidnapping cell” was based on information divulged by a man during interrogation only three hours earlier. The man was captured by U.S. forces on Wednesday night. [Link]

The operation to rescue the three hostages was led by British SAS and MI6 as detailed in an article at Canada.com:

CanWest News Service has learned the raid was prompted after the Special Air Service and MI6 — Britain’s commando unit and its spy agency — opened negotiations with a kidnapping network after studying hostage tapes released to Arab television stations. Eavesdropping teams also tried to intercept cellphone conversations between the kidnappers and Arab television journalists.

The Canadian contingent is believed to have included the elite Joint Task Force 2, who were, according to Stephen Harper, “fully engaged and fully aware of what was going on…” [Link]

Now for the controversy. If you listened to the news yesterday you probably noticed that the language used to describe this event varied greatly. Some news organizations and groups said the hostages were “released.” Others, including military officials, said that they were “freed” or “rescued.” If you’ll reacall, these three are members of Christian Peacemaker Teams who oppose the occupation of Iraq and the presence of military there. It would put them in a tough spot if they had to publicly thank the military for Thursday’s events. Using different set of words and phrases can allow these different groups (e.g. military, CPT, and journalists) to all put their own spin on the actual events. I’d like to know more about the facts.

In Toronto, CPT co-director David Pritchard described the news as “release” rather than a “rescue” throughout the day. He said the news sent CPT workers on “a roller coaster of emotions…” [Link]

Continue reading →

Noonan & Freedom at Midnight

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Long-time mutineer KXB points us at a wonderfully written column by Peggy Noonan with her reflections on the classic Freedom at Midnight and its lessons as we grapple with Iraq –

I have been reading “Freedom at Midnight,” the popular classic of 30 years ago that recounted the coming of democracy to India. The authors, journalists Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, capture the end of the Raj with sweep and drama, and manage to make even the dividing of India and Pakistan–I mean the literal drawing of the lines between the two countries, by a British civil servant–riveting. But the sobering lesson of this history, the big thing you bring away, is this: They didn’t know.

Mountbatten and Nehru and Jinnah were brilliant men who’d not only experienced a great deal; they’d done a great deal, and yet they did not know that the Subcontinent–which each in his own way, and sometimes it was an odd way, loved–would explode in violence, that bloodlust would rule as soon as the Union Jack was lowered.

…The only one who knew what was coming was Gandhi, mystic, genius and eccentric, who drove the other great men crazy by insisting on living among and ministering to the poor, the nonelite. He knew their hearts. He had given his life for a free and independent India but opposed partition and feared the immediate chaos it would bring. He spent the eve of Independence mourning. Six months later he was dead.

What follows is a wonderful, treatise one of the perils of leadership – distance. Noonan reminds us that elites across societies and throughout history walk a fine line between leading people to a better future vs. the folly of trying to impose a possibly unattainable ideal.

And yet, it’s an intrinsic curse of humanity that excess in the service of progress will always be a risk. The only surefire way to avoid any cost is to nihilistically abandon the quest itself.

Continue reading →

87 Hours Until the DC Meetup!

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Yo Dad is coming!

Isn’t that the GREATEST picture? Want to know the absolute best thing about it? It’s true.

Are you ready for this jelly?

The much-adored and revered “Yo Dad” might make a cameo at the first-ever chocolate city SMeetup.

Wait! There’s more! The elusive “Yo Mom” might accompany him, too!

Go ahead. Take a moment to digest. I know I needed one.

According to highly placed, unnamed sources, the parent whose words inspire collective swooning on any thread he comments on will be at Amma’s in Georgetown this Saturday. NOW what’s your excuse for not coming? Even the legendary (six-hours?!) San Francisco events and Manhattan meets didn’t have THIS sort of star power. Surely you’ll be in attendance now, right? 🙂

After all, this will be our Abhi’s first meetup. Mind blowing, right? The father of this Mutiny will finally link himself publicly to this scandalous site; this brazen and ultra-rare excursion from the innermost sanctum of the North Dakota bunker shall concomitantly jeopardize his future chances for political office AND mark him as an unsuitable boy. Do you really want to miss that?

In addition to those headliners and legends, steadfast mutineers Kenyandesi, Msichana, CinnamonRani, Chai and the awe-inspiring Chick Pea from Hotlanta–who is making the rest of you look lame with her devotion to the cause, i.e. her willingness to travel– will be attending as well, according to our last call for RSVPs.

And you? Should we add you to the list?

WHERE: Amma’s Vegetarian Kitchen, 3291 M St. NW, Washington, DC 20007, 202-625-6625

WHEN: Saturday, 5:30pm (which should enable a 6pm start)

WHY: My fotolog is needing snaps, yaar. 😉

Continue reading →

Border Vigilantes

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The Minuteman Project (MMP) is a group of reportedly 6,500 volunteer citizens who are attempting to address and curb illegal immigration in the United States by patrolling the U.S.-Mexico and U.S.-Canada borders. The purpose of the group, in its own words, is:

to bring national awareness to the decades-long careless disregard of effective U.S. immigration law enforcement. It is a reminder to Americans that our nation was founded as a nation governed by the “rule of law,” not by the whims of mobs of ILLEGAL aliens who endlessly stream across U.S. borders…. Future generations will inherit a tangle of rancorous, unassimilated, squabbling cultures with no common bond to hold them together, and a certain guarantee of the death of this nation as a harmonious “melting pot.” The result: political, economic and social mayhem. [Link]

Not surprisingly, the MPP has generated a signficant amount of controversy: it has been accused of being racist, ineffective, illegitimate, and of having ties to Neo-Nazis. Last year, legal observers from the American Civil Liberties Union and the University of Arizona monitored the activities of the MMP volunteers, before the MMP left Arizona in April 2005. One concerned onlooker had this to say about the MMP’s work:

“It’s going to encourage a lot of negative implications for brown-looking people, if you want to call it that, racial profiling….” [Link]

To be sure, citizens can be an integral part of a wider law enforcement initiative. For example, community policing — which involves collaborative efforts between the police and members of the general public, and which demands compassion from the police towards the communities they serve — has shown encouraging signs of success, particularly in areas with high concentrations of minorities, such as Miami. However, the MPP is not a part of an official border patrol program; it is a self-appointed entity that acts in isolation and with an unfortunate view of diversity and multiculturalism. Moreover, there are fears from human rights organizations as to how the MMP actually carries out its patrolling efforts – through directly confronting migrants, apprehending them, or worse. Continue reading →

"The blacker the soul…"

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For the past week the darling of the media has been Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia:

President Bush welcomed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to the White House on Tuesday, calling Africa’s first democratically elected female head of state “a pioneer.”

In January, first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended the inauguration of the 67-year-old Harvard-educated former finance minister. She inherits a war-ruined nation of 3 million with an 80 percent unemployment rate, no running water and no electricity. Despite its diamond and timber wealth, Liberia is among the world’s poorest; ranked 206th in per capita income out of 208 countries on a 2004 World Bank list.

Neither leader publicly commented on U.S. aid to Liberia or Sirleaf’s request for Nigeria to hand over exiled former President Charles Taylor, who is wanted on war crimes charges. Taylor has been indicted by a U.N. tribunal on charges of committing crimes against humanity by aiding and directing a Sierra Leone rebel movement and trading guns and gems with insurgents infamous for chopping off the lips, ears and limbs of civilian victims. [Link]

The shadow of Charles Taylor will dominate Liberian politics for the forseeable future. Taylor is one of the main reasons why I have vowed never to purchase a worthless “rock” for anyone.

After the official end of the civil war in 1996, Taylor became Liberia’s president on August 2, 1997, following a landslide victory in July, in which he took 75% of the vote. The election was judged free and fair by observers, although Taylor’s victory has been partially attributed to the belief that he would resume the war if he lost, and therefore many people may have voted for him simply to preserve peace. For example, his campaign song included the words “he killed my ma, he killed my pa, I’ll vote for him…”

In June 2003, a United Nations justice tribunal issued a warrant for Taylor’s arrest, charging him with war crimes. The UN asserts that Taylor created and backed the RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, which is accused of a range of atrocities, including the use of child soldiers. The prosecutor also said Taylor’s administration had harbored members of Al-Qaeda sought in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania… [Link]

So that brings us to the negotiations which seek to extradite the scum bag from Nigeria. Many people are afraid that bringing him to justice will cause bloodshed by polarizing the fragile country once again. Some of the negotiations on Taylor’s behalf are being conducted by an American. He is an Indian American evangelical preacher to be precise: Kilari Anand Paul. Continue reading →