Category Archives: Politics

Pointing the finger

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An innocent bystander is dead, shot by the good guys. Now the London mayor is claiming that Jean Charles de Menezes, the ‘South Asian-looking’ guy shot by British special forces, was actually a victim of terrorism rather than the cops. It’s Livingstone, I presume:

London Mayor Ken Livingstone described Mr Menezes as a “victim of the terrorist attacks”. [Link]

More innocent people could be shot dead by police… Scotland Yard’s chief admitted yesterday. [Link]

Livingstone’s statement is faulty moral calculus and actively blocks the solution. First and foremost, you must assign responsibility accurately, otherwise you’ll never fix the problem. The terrorist attacks are a contributing cause. The primary cause is the commando who held him down and shot him seven times in the head.

Shoot to kill is indeed a good policy when you’re highly certain the suspect is a suicide bomber. But the criteria have to be tightened and the threshold for action tweaked. We have empirical proof of it: it’s de Menezes’ body. ‘He ran’ and ‘he had brown skin’ aren’t reason enough to kill someone. The criminal justice system doesn’t execute or even imprison people for those reasons.

This is an issue apart from the terrorists, who are obviously mass murderers. It’s of interest because society holds sway over its government’s shoot-to-kill criteria in a way that it doesn’t over deluded, nihilist 19-year-olds. We grant governments a monopoly on the use of force precisely because they have the duty and the means to use it correctly.

Several nonlethal weapons which might work exist today: bomb jammers, stun guns, beanbag guns, rubber bullets, plastic bullets, pepperball guns, sticky shockers, immobilizing goo, veiling glare lasers, flash bang grenades, pain-inducing microwaves and millimeter wave body scanners for detecting explosives.

Even more advanced solutions such as electromagnetic pulse guns and microwave guns which only affect electronics are under development. Many waves (electromagnetic and laser) affect different materials in different ways, for example by discriminating between the human body and explosives or detonators. X-rays, CAT scans, surgical and dental lasers, and luggage scanners rely on a variety of these effects.

But when you say ‘it wasn’t our fault,’ when you go into denial, you immediately truncate the search for a fix and the R&D investment needed to solve the problem. Western militaries have invested significantly in technology to curtail friendly fire. It’s worth doing so for law enforcement as well.

Previous post here.

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I do not consent…well maybe

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Slate’s wonderful “Explainer” series had an informative article detailing your rights while riding the trains (or buses) in New York and D.C. “Are Subway Searches Legal?” This is a particularly relevant topic given the current state of paranoia:

Depends on how it’s done. The Fourth Amendment protects people from “unreasonable searches or seizures.” As a general rule, the government can’t search your baggage without a reason to believe you’re a criminal. But according to legal precedent, a random search is acceptable if it fulfills special needs like public safety. If New York’s subway screenings are challenged in court, the city’s lawyers could argue that the program’s primary purpose is to protect the city from terrorism.

Unless a judge agrees that they fulfill a special need, the screenings will be on shaky legal ground. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that a roadblock used to screen drivers for drug crimes was unconstitutional, since its primary purpose was to apprehend drug traffickers. On the other hand, roadblocks that screen for drunk drivers have been deemed OK, since they promote highway safety. (The court did say in the 2000 ruling that “a roadblock set up to thwart an imminent terrorist attack” would almost certainly be constitutional.)

The key legal point here seems to be that such an extreme curb on privacy rights has to come with both a sunset clause and a geographical constraint:

Let’s assume the courts believe the subways searches are an effective deterrent for terrorism and that the recent subway bombings in London make them reasonable. Then a judge would have to consider whether the scope and duration of the searches is appropriate. The first random subway screenings occurred last summer in Boston during the Democratic Convention. A district court ruled that searches on trains that ran beneath the convention center were acceptable since they took place in a restricted area for a limited amount of time. The New York City searches, though, are taking place all over the system and seem to be of open-ended duration.

The judge must also consider how individuals are selected for screening. If police officers have too much discretion, they might single out certain kinds of people for “random” searches. To prevent profiling, cops are sometimes given a strict formula—in Boston, for example, every 11th passenger was pulled aside at some commuter rail stations. The NYPD says “numerical criteria” are being used, but spokesmen also say that large or suspicious-looking bags can be red flags.

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Fareed-peat

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After the London bombings, Jon Stewart summoned Fareed Zakaria back to The Daily Show to explain ‘his people.’

In this clip, Zakaria edges away from the neocon thesis that democracy alone can end terrorism, since the British bombers were born in a democracy. He claims the fundies have very low support throughout the Muslim world, pointing out the fundamentalist parties got under 5% in Indonesian and Malaysian elections (but he ignores the provincial elections in Pakistan).

Zakaria says the disaffected youth in Europe don’t feel socially integrated and are latching on to the ideology of the moment; today’s Islamic fundies would have been Marxists or Maoists 30 years ago. But he thinks the core of fundie support is gone in the Muslim world, and the virus will take some time to die out in Europe. In contrast, in the U.S. he says Muslims have done well economically and are much better assimilated.

Zakaria is right that the fundies have little public support, but only if you exclude some mighty key regions, such as Pakistan. And lack of support for fundamentalist political parties is not the same as lack of support for bin Laden or terrorist tactics.

Watch the clip.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3

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Neil Prakash in ‘Wired’ (updated)

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O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! …
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war; …
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

— Billy Shakes, Julius Caesar

Wired’s August issue prominently features Lt. Neil Prakash of the U.S. Army in a story about milbloggers called ‘Blogs of War.’ The Silver Star-decorated tank platoon commander has a striking full-page photo in camouflage, glowering as hard as a 28-year-old can glower.

The story says Prakash was born just outside Bangalore, the son of two upstate New York dentists. He’s quite pyro about firing the tank’s main gun and other testosterone sports. Prakash says his favorite sound is an F-16 strafing run: it sounds like a cat in a blender or as if God were ripping up a phone book in the sky (all quotes paraphrased). He also says something like, ‘I’d rather be commanding a tank than sitting in a call center telling someone in Bumfuck, U.S.A. how to reformat their hard drive’ 🙂

His platoon has been rotated out of Iraq and is currently recuperating in Germany. Prakash used the downtime to get married in Denmark.

Check it out on the newsstands. Here’s Prakash’s blog.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Update: The story has been posted.

By the crude light of a small bulb and the backlit screen of his Dell laptop, Neil Prakash, a first lieutenant, posted some of the best descriptions of the fighting in Fallujah and Baquba last fall:

Terrorists in headwraps stood anywhere from 30 to 400 meters in front of my tank. They stopped, squared their shoulders at us just like in an old-fashioned duel, and fired RPGs at our tanks. So far there hadn’t been a single civilian in Task Force 2-2 sector. We had been free to light up the insurgents as we saw them. And because of that freedom, we were able to use the main gun with less restriction.

Prakash was awarded the Silver Star this year for saving his entire tank task force during an assault on insurgents in Iraq’s harrowing Sunni Triangle. He goes by the handle Red 6 and is author of Armor Geddon. For him, the poetry of warfare is in the sounds of exploding weapons and the chaos of battle.

“It’s mind-blowing what this stuff can do,” Prakash tells me by phone from Germany, where his unit moved after rotating out of Iraq earlier this year. One of his favorite sounds is that of an F16 fighter on a strafing run. “It’s like a cat in a blender ripping the sky open – if the sky was made out of a phone book.” He is from India, the land of Gandhi, but he loves to talk about blowing things up. “It’s just sick how badass a tank looks when it’s killing.”

Prakash is the son of two upstate New York dentists and has a degree in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins. He’s a naturalized American citizen, born near Bangalore, and he describes growing up in the US and his decision to join the military as something like Bend It Like Beckham meets The Terminator. He says he admired the Army’s discipline and loved the idea of driving a tank. He knew that if he didn’t join the Army, he might end up in medical school or some windowless office in a high tech company. With a bit of bluster, Prakash claims that for him, the latter would be more of a nightmare scenario than ending up in the line of fire of insurgents. “It was a choice between commanding the best bunch of guys in the world and being in a cubicle at Dell Computer in Bangalore right now helping people from Bum-fuck USA format their hard drives.”

It’s taken some adjustment, but Prakash says his parents basically support his Army career, although his father can’t conceal his anxiety about having a son in Iraq. Prakash says he blogs to assure the folks back home that he’s safe, to let his friends all over the world know what’s going on, and to juice up the morale in his unit. “The guys get really excited when I mention them.”

By the time Prakash left Iraq early this year, the readers of Armor Geddon extended far beyond family and friends. He still posts from his base in Germany and is slowly trying to complete a blog memoir of his and his fellow soldiers’ experiences in the battle for Fallujah…

Blackfive himself has degrees in archaeology and computer science and avidly follows the postings of fellow bloggers. He describes Neil Prakash as “borderline Einstein…”

Prakash remains in Germany, awaiting orders to jump back into his beloved tank, which he calls Ol’ Blinky. He says he has no plans to resume his study of neuroscience, although it wasn’t completely useless in Iraq. “Neuroscience actually came in handy when I had to explain to my guys exactly why doing ecstasy in a tank when it’s 140 degrees out on a road that’s blowing up every day is a really bad idea.”

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A brown athlete represents

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amir-khan-selogo.jpgThe comment threads on this blog are ablaze with flaming hot conversation (not to be confused with those uber-yummy flaming hot cheetos, please).

Everyone has an opinion regarding last week’s devastating attack on London, especially when it comes to the issue of how to react to terror. A few of you have exhorted moderate, if not all Muslims to speak up and out about their horror over what a few fundamentalists wrought.

Someone famous seems to be reading your minds; Olympic-Silver Medal-Boxer Amir Khan is the son of Pakistani immigrants, he is considered by some to be “Britain’s highest profile Asian-Muslim sportsman”. As a British Muslim, he feels especially called to react to the bombings. He made the following statements today, the day before his debut as a professional boxer:

“The worst thing about last week was that some people will tar all Muslims with the same brush,” the 18-year-old told the Daily Mirror newspaper.
“The Asian community has been appalled with what has happened. I hope that by stepping into the ring I can show all young kids in Britain that there are better things to do than getting into trouble and mixing with bad people.
“The world Islam means peace.”

Indeed. Rather than misdirecting hostility towards innocents, puree a punching bag. Hell, IMO any extra-curricular activity is preferable to growing glassy-eyed and hypnotized by a charismatic terrorist mastermind. Continue reading →

My son the fanatic

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Following the comment thread on my last post it quickly became apparent that folks were going to fixate on the wrong labels and thereby detract from the more important discussion that needs to take place. “They weren’t South Asian, they were Pakistani.” “They weren’t Pakistani, they were Kashmiris.” “There is no such thing as South Asian.”

Allow me to propose that we put semantics aside to focus on the one label that really matters. There is one label that we can hopefully all agree on: They were Second-generation. Born and raised in a western country with all the freedoms and opportunities they could want. In this instance the pejorative “confused” really does apply.

When I was a child my mother told me a story that her mother had told her. I can only re-tell the story as it was told to me:

“Once when mami was young she was at a train station. There was a strange man there who simply looked at her and hypnotized her. The man was a Fakir. She followed him unable to control herself as he led her away. Fakir’s have magical powers. Really Abhi (I was shaking my head in disbelief). They are Muslim and they kidnap and convert you to Islam. Luckily the family got her back before she walked too far off. She didn’t remember anything that happened afterward and said she couldn’t control herself. A Fakir can just look at you and you’ll forget everything, your whole life.

Now bear in mind that my family is from Gujarat, where bigotry has persisted for generations. My mom is not a bigot but she believed (and still does) that a Fakir has mystical powers that can brainwash a normal person and get them to walk away from their life and convert to Islam (even though not all Fakirs are Muslim and the Sufi order is the least fundamental). I actually asked her to tell me this story again when I went home just last month.

Most of us know at least one person that is a “born-again” into some religion. Various things motivate these people. Many of them (like at least one of these bombers) were described as being out-of-control before their conversion (or re-discovery of their family religion). Others feel overwhelmed by the influence of the world they live in and retreat back to a basic set of instructions that they think will bring order to the chaos they feel. Some take this “order” too far by trying to impose their interpretation of that order on others. Most born-agains however are perfectly sane and choose to practice their new beliefs in private without a harmful thought toward anyone. How do we recognize in our second generation peers which path they have chosen to walk? Continue reading →

One-Track Uncle

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When growing up desi, you learn through painful experience to avoid One-Track Uncle at family parties. Whether it’s the greatness of fifth-century India, the importance of religion, American politics or the problem with ‘yooth’ these days, One-Track Uncle has a favorite harangue which he’s made his own soliloquy. And there are usually several of them at a party. With a little samosa and a little beer, you can usually get a circle of uncles launching monologues at each other and pretending to listen. They’ll politely ha-ha and not so subtly change the subject back to their own particular obsessions.

If only they had blogging back in the day.

So it surprises me not at all to find that One-Track Uncle also appears at the grandaddy of all circle jerks, the presidential press conference. Meet Raghubir Goyal, an Indian reporter whose obsession with Pakistan has become the subject of much humor inside the Beltway:

“The 32-minute pummeling was perhaps the worst McClellan received since he got the job two years ago… [he] robotically refused to answer no fewer than 35 questions about Rove and the outing of the CIA’s Valerie Plame.”… Pummeled by tough questions, McClellan time and again reached for a lifeline. His first… was “Raghubir Goyal of the India Globe, who reliably asks about Pakistan — and did so again…” That gambit had a payoff for McClellan: Once it seemed clear that the mumbling Goyal was just warming up, CNN chose to cut away from its live coverage of the briefing. [Link]

The idea is it becomes a feeding frenzy in the press room — you’re just getting hammered with question after question you don’t really want to answer, but if you’re careful you can call on somebody like Mr. Goyal, who’s known to all as Goyal, who will predictably ask you about isn’t it time we start bombing Pakistan, because he’s representing an Indian point of view… you can pretty reliably change the subject… [Link]

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Gulab the Shepherd

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A number of years ago my younger brother went to study in Egypt. While there he decided to climb Mt. Sinai alone. My mother has been blessed with two nature-loving yet slightly imbalanced sons. Upon returning to the U.S. he told me that while on Sinai he got lost and took several of the wrong trails. Eventually he found himself trapped on a cliff in cold weather without a visible means to get back on to surer footing. He thought he was going to die and started yelling for help. Eventually, from out of nowhere came a shepherd and pulled him off the cliff. Months Two years later, back in Cairo, a stranger approached my brother on the street and hugged him. He wondered why a strange man would be hugging him until he realized it was the same shepherd.

Time magazine has an exclusive account of the heroics of a South Asian shepherd and his village, once again proving that sometimes the most modest of men/women are needed to guide the way:

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A crackle in the brush. That’s the sound the Afghan herder recalls hearing as he walked alone through a pine forest last month. When he looked up, he saw an American commando, his legs and shoulder bloodied. The commando pointed his gun at the Afghan. “Maybe he thought I was a Taliban,” says the shepherd, Gulab. “I remembered hearing that if an American sticks up his thumb, it is a friendly gesture. So that’s what I did.” To make sure the message was clear, Gulab lifted his tunic to show the American he wasn’t hiding a weapon. He then propped up the wounded commando, and together the pair hobbled down the steep mountain trail to Sabari-Minah, a cluster of adobe-and-wood homes–crossing, for the time being, to safety.

What Gulab did not know is that the commando he encountered was part of a team of Navy SEALs that had been missing for four days after being ambushed by Taliban insurgents during a reconnaissance mission in northeastern Afghanistan.

After taking the SEAL to Sabari-Minah, Gulab called a village council and explained that the American needed protection from Taliban hunters. It was the SEAL’s good fortune that the villagers were Pashtun, who are honor-bound never to refuse sanctuary to a stranger. By then, said Gulab, “the American understood that we were trying to save him, and he relaxed a bit.”

The Taliban was not so agreeable. That night the fighters sent a message to the villagers: “We want this infidel.” A firm reply from the village chief, Shinah, shot back. “The American is our guest, and we won’t give him up as long as there’s a man or a woman left alive in our village.”

…Gulab now fears that his act of compassion may mean his death warrant. After returning the SEAL, he went back to grab his family and flee before the Taliban would come round seeking revenge. In the mountains of Kunar, fear is rising again.

Ironic isn’t it? The same Pashtun honor code that some believe allows Osama Bin Laden to evade capture, also saved the life of one of our NAVY SEALS. Continue reading →

Meet Talibert

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Orwell’s Ministry of Truth (‘Freedom is slavery’) could hardly have done better than the neo-Taliban running Pakistan’s nuttiest province. Americans are familiar with daft states. We call them ‘Florida’:

A controversial new law critics say will seek Taleban-style moral policing has been presented in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province… The proposed law calls for the establishment of a new department to “discourage vice and encourage virtue.” … hardline religious parties have enough seats in the provincial house to pass the bill.

It will be headed by a cleric called “mohtasib” – one who holds others accountable – to be nominated by the government. The principal duty of the cleric will be to “ensure adherence to Islamic values in public places”… the mohtasib will be required to ensure people pay adequate respect to azan (call to prayers), pray on time and do not engage in commerce at the time of Friday prayers. The mohtasib will also stop unrelated men and women from appearing in public places together and discourage singing and dancing… [Link]

Having already banned alcohol and wedding feasts, they’re now trying to persuade people to like their fundamentalist sect better by beating them in public. It’s motivational genius!

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Two birds with one stone

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The Arab sheikhs on their annual bird hunts in Pakistan also run side errands: kidnapping or buying little boys for use in sport.

Intense media interest forced many of the Gulf kingdoms to ban the use of children under 15 for camel racing. “The move failed miserably because child traffickers simply got fake passports which stated a four-year-old’s age as 16,” says Mr Burney.

Most of the repatriated children hail from the south-east Punjab districts of Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rahimyar Khan… These districts are the preferred hunting grounds for Gulf sheikhs, some of whom go there every year to hunt the houbara bustard… The three districts are also home to the Cholistan – one of Pakistan’s two main deserts and one of the few areas in the country where camels are regularly used for travel and trade. [Link]

These 40,000 kids are imprisoned, and many are raped:

… the boys are kept in terrible prison-like conditions where they are deliberately underfed to keep them light so the camels can run faster. [Link]

It is not uncommon for child jockeys to fall off and be injured while racing, and their illegal status means race track owners are often reluctant to take them to hospital… the boys often arrive with broken hands or broken legs. And many, he says, have been sodomised.

One boy shows me the scar he was left with after being trampled by a camel. Crudely stitched, it stretches from his chest down to his hips… “There was a child in the camp, and because he wanted to leave the camp and go to Dubai, one of the racetrack owners ran over the child in a truck and killed him,” he tells me. [Link]

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