One of those ongoing, identity debates is what term appropriately encompasses “us”. “South Asian” is a little too stuffy, geographic, doesn’t account for some parts of the diaspora, and has a slight of Oriental-ish tinge to it (South of what? Is Europe implicitly the center/norm?). I just don’t go around high-fivin’ South-Asians in da house.

“Desi,” on the other hand, has a nice congenial ring to it and doesn’t seem as loaded with meaning dependent on some relation to the “other”. Plus, it’s “soft” enough that it avoids all those debates about Indian vs. Pakistani vs. Sri Lankan vs. Bhutanese (?) and so on. A 4th gen Fijian Indian is far more easily “desi” than “South Asian”.

But alas, there’s a new sort of Desi out there that might muddy the waters a bit. One use is described here –

If a Desi analyzer can be miniaturized and automated into a surgical tool, a surgeon could, for example, quickly test body tissues for the presence of molecules associated with cancer. “That’s the long-term aim of this work,” Dr. Cooks said.

Say whuh? It’s an acronym –

…a tiny spray of liquid that has been electrically charged, either water or water and alcohol, is sprayed on a tiny bit of the fingerprint. The droplets dissolve compounds in the fingerprints and splash them off the surface into the analyzer. The liquid is heated and evaporates, and the electrical charge is transferred to the fingerprint molecules, which are then identified by a device called a mass spectrometer. The process is repeated over the entire fingerprint, producing a two-dimensional image.

The researchers call the technique desorption electrospray ionization, or Desi, for short.

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Richard Fernandez (aka Belmont Club) has a great, link-filled post on the most recent airstrike within Pakistan –

…yet another missile struck al-Qaeda in the Pakistani border area. “One of al Qaeda’s top chemical and biological weapons experts was killed in an air strike by a CIA pilotless drone,” according to CBS News. Abu Khabab Al-Masri is dead, according to al-Qaeda website. Several other men were killed in the strike.

Al-Masri’s central roles in both Al Qaeda and the lives of any frequent flier are pretty impressive –

…The LA Times says al-Masri was behind the failed post-September 11 plot to blow up airplanes en route from Britain to the United States, an event now memoralized in the restrictions on passenger-embarked bottles of fluids.

The innovative techniques required special instruction. Masri envisioned his operatives injecting the liquid explosives, a highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide mix, with a syringe into the false bottoms of innocuous containers such as sports drinks, sneaking the components aboard and assembling bombs after takeoff.

…The Associated Press also credits al-Masri with training the suicide bombers who attacked the USS Cole.

This strike is only the most recent in 5-6 other high profile hits in the past few months. Tellingly, the daily, operational grinding that is being inflicted on Al Qaeda in Pakistan is also evident and likely played a crucial role in finding al-Masri –

…With the decimation of his henchmen, the master bomber was forced to venture out himself and train volunteers who were often of indifferent quality.

Masri assumed more control. … Last spring, he taught bomb-making in compounds in North Waziristan to aspiring suicide attackers, including a 21-year-old Pakistani living in Denmark and a 45-year-old Pakistani-German, according to U.S. and European officials. U.S. anti-terrorism source sees Masri’s role as a symptom of decline. “The fact he trained them himself shows you some of the limitations of the network,” the source said.

A recurring topic for me on SM is how so many of our notions of civilized state behavior get chucked out the window when dealing with technologically- / globalization-charged 21st century terror orgs. Continue reading →