Boston Brahmin

Plain talking

2010-10-23T13:08:00.002-04:00

Steve Coll of the New America Foundation always provides excellent analysis. The main thrust of his latest article, "Kashmir: The Time Has Come", is that Barack Obama needs to do some plain talking, as when he did about the Kashmir problem before his election in an interview:

For us to devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible approach, and essentially make the argument to the Indians, you guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower—why do you want to keep on messing with this? To make the argument to the Pakistanis, look at India and what they are doing—why do you want to keep on being bogged down with this particular [issue] at a time when the biggest threat now is coming from the Afghan border? I think there is a moment when potentially we could get their attention. It won’t be easy, but it’s important.

(Link to Steve Coll's article)

Coll advocates plain talking by the U.S. administration in this way:

A reconsidered American approach to Kashmir should return first of all to the tone of Obama’s Time interview: honest talk about an admittedly difficult problem. More such straight talk is now required. The United States and India share an interest in the emergence of a stable, economically successful Pakistan with an army that believes it is in Pakistan’s national interest to stop fomenting jihadi violence in Afghanistan and India. It is difficult to imagine that such a Pakistan will evolve if groups such as Lashkar are not disarmed, delegitimized, and defunded. And it is difficult to imagine that such an achievement would be possible in the absence of a political settlement that satisfies the great majority of Kashmiris and delivers economic benefits to Pakistan, such as preferential access for textiles to American markets, as well as water and energy security. President Obama and his foreign policy team should articulate this alternative to the status quo before Indian and Pakistani publics, without embarrassment.

These sentiments are correct, but missing from Coll's argument is the conversion of the Pakistan army into a normal military force, subject to political control. This, Coll should know, is the crux of the problem in South Asia. No amount of convincing Pakistanis and Indians is going to matter a whit as long as the Pakistan army's incentives remain intact: incentives that reward state-funded terrorism with American money to the military, and a military budget that finances foolhardy wars but that remains secret from civilian view, let alone civilian control.

Coll's thesis here might be more convincing if he talked more plainly about the Pakistan army and about what the U.S. administration could do to put it back in its box. Yesterday's announcement of 2 billion in fresh military aid shows that this administration does not believe it has any options, and that any diplomatic talk is just hot air.

Nilekani's ideas

2010-10-08T04:22:00.003-04:00

An excellent, quick summary of where India is today, from Nandan Nilekani at TED.

Nilekani explains using a few key ideas, for example:

It used to be that we thought people were mouths to feed, but now we think of them as an asset.

From TED's blurb:

Nandan Nilekani, visionary CEO of outsourcing pioneer Infosys, explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress.

In fifteen minutes, Nilekani outlines quite a vision of where India is and where it needs to be. Worth watching. (Watch 15-minute clip on YouTube)

Human rights? Meh!

2010-09-30T11:37:00.002-04:00

Today's New York Times has a report by Jane Perlez:

An Internet video showing men in Pakistani military uniforms executing six young men in civilian clothes has heightened concerns about unlawful killings by Pakistani soldiers supported by the United States, American officials said.

The authenticity of the five-and-a-half-minute video, which shows the killing of the six men — some of whom appear to be teenagers, blindfolded, with their hands bound behind their backs — has not been formally verified by the American government. The Pakistani military said it was faked by militants.

But American officials, who did not want to be identified because of the explosive nature of the video, said it appeared to be credible, as did retired American military officers and intelligence analysts who have viewed it.

So, what happens now?

The video adds to reports under review at the State Department and the Pentagon that Pakistani Army units have summarily executed prisoners and civilians in areas where they have opened offensives against the Taliban, administration officials said.

The reports could have serious implications for relations between the militaries. American law requires that the United States cut off financing to units of foreign militaries that are found to have committed gross violations of human rights.

But never has that law been applied to so strategic a partner as Pakistan, whose military has received more than $10 billion in American support since 2001 for its cooperation in fighting militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda based inside the country.

Holding your breath? Best you don't.

Old habits die hard

2010-08-29T08:24:00.003-04:00

A hopeful story from Pakistan (may its tribe increase), spoiled by the usual old American habits of short-term thinking.

The New York Times tells us about the new breed of politicians rising in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, where politics has long been a matter of pedigree, Jamshed Dasti is a mongrel. The scrappy son of an amateur wrestler, Mr. Dasti has clawed his way into Pakistan’s Parliament, beating the wealthy, landed families who have ruled here.

This is a big change. As the article explains,

For years, feudal lords reigned supreme, serving as the police, the judge and the political leader. Plantations had jails, and political seats were practically owned by families.

Instead of midwifing democracy, these aristocrats obstructed it, ignoring the needs of rural Pakistanis, half of whom are still landless and desperately poor more than 60 years after Pakistan became a state.

But now, it seems, the stranglehold of the feudal classes slowly loosens. Newer, more populist candidates get elected, who actually meet with their constituents and try to address their concerns. Of course, many of them are rough men with criminal records, but:

Whatever the case, he is deeply appealing to Pakistanis, who have chosen him over feudal lords for political seats several times. Local residents call him Rescue One-Five, a reference to an emergency hot line number and his feverish work habits. Constituents clutching dirty plastic bags of documents flock to his small office for help, and he scribbles out notes for them on his Parliament letterhead like a doctor in a field hospital.

Contrast this example with a feudal lord:

Mr. Mehmoud, 48, is a wealthy man of leisure, who spends more time relaxing in his house — a pink replica of a Rajasthani palace with a hand-carved facade — than on his job as a lawmaker. Sometimes he talks to his constituents, but more often he watches them go by from the window of his speedy, white Hummer.

For years, people voted for him anyway, partly out of habit. His ancestors were considered to be distant relatives of the Prophet Muhammad, which inspires awe and respect. But more important, his constituents were tied to him economically. His family owned the land they worked and often their houses. His carpet has a worn patch where generations of peasants sat in supplication.

No wonder the feudals are losing their seats, as labor becomes more mobile and more people wake up to their rights.

So, does the American analyst see this as a hopeful sign? Of course not:

The result is a changing political landscape more representative of Pakistani society, but far less predictable for the United States. Mr. Dasti, 32, speaks no English. His legislative record includes opposition to a sexual harassment bill. He has 35 criminal cases to his name and is from the country’s conservative heartland, where dislike of America runs deep.

So, it doesn't matter if he's popularly elected: he doesn't speak English, is a Neanderthal like Newt Gingrich, and comes from a backward and xenophobic area, so we have a problem with it? We still haven't changed our old habits in how we look at Pakistan.

And finally, this is the paragraph that made Boston Brahmin sputter out his morning coffee:

The changes also leave room for Islamists. In the neighboring district of Dera Ghazi Khan, a hard-line mullah, Hafiz Abdul Karim, came within a few thousand votes in 2008 of unseating Farooq Leghari, a former president of Pakistan. His weapon? Efficient, Islamist campaign workers and free water pumps.

So far, Islamists have not tapped popular frustration in a systematic way at the ballot box, and the military, the country’s oldest, strongest institution, would probably put down any broader uprising, analysts say.

Ah -- not to worry. Our favorite nephew, the Pakistan army, will take care of the uppity natives if needed.

This analysis is wrong on so many levels. Let me just list three: first, even if the hard-line mullah's workers are Islamists, if he is running for elections with free water pumps, this can only be a good thing, no? Second: do we still really want the Pakistan army to intervene in politics? If running for elections and winning by giving the people water pumps is the "broader uprising", then we need more of those in Pakistan. What legitimacy does the army have in intervening? And third: have we not learned yet that the army is an ally of the Islamists, in fact the sponsor and protector of some of them? In every army action, the army picks and chooses its favorite Islamists.

One would think that the U.S. troops being killed in Afghanistan by Pakistan army-sponsored Islamists might give these analysts pause. But no. Before Pakistan, the real change, it seems, is needed in our own analysts, whose old habits die hard.

The Sun in the Sky

2010-08-11T09:58:00.007-04:00

A recent paper by Matt Waldman of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government documents systematic and ongoing support by the Pakistan military of the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Some excerpts, based on interviews with several Taliban and Haqqani commanders:

Support to the Afghan insurgency is official ISI policy. It appears to be carried out by both serving and former officers, who have considerable operational autonomy.

A number of analysts suggest that due to American and international pressure in 2006, 2007 or later, Pakistan has curtailed its support for the insurgents, but there is little evidence to support this.

Waldman summarizes that:

Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude. The conflict has led to the deaths of over 1,000 American and 700 other foreign military personnel; thousands of Afghan soldiers, police, officials and civilians; and an unknown number of Afghan, Pakistani and other foreign insurgents. It has already cost America nearly $300 billion, and now costs over $70 billion a year. As a Haqqani commander put it: ‘Of course Pakistan is the main cause of the problems [in Afghanistan] but America is behind Pakistan.’

Why is Pakistan doing this? Their overriding concern is India.

As Steve Coll explains (The New Yorker, 1 March 2010): ‘Pakistan’s generals have retained a bedrock belief that, however unruly and distasteful Islamist militias such as the Taliban may be, they could yet be useful proxies to ward off a perceived existential threat from India. In the Army’s view, at least, that threat has not receded.’

So, what does Waldman conclude that the U.S. should do?

The priority must be to address the fundamental causes of Pakistan’s insecurity, in particular its latent and enduring conflict with India. This requires a regional peace process and, as Bruce Riedel has argued, American backing for moves towards a resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

So, in other words, if the Kashmir dispute is resolved, the Pakistan army will no longer see India as a threat, and they will then stop sponsoring terrorism? This conclusion sounds weak, because it is based on the assumption that the Pakistan army's hatred of India is a rational response to something India has done or not done.

But this hatred is not based on what India does or does not do. It is a self-sustaining mechanism of survival for the Pakistan military, whose enormous clout and influence within Pakistan depends on always having an external threat. Their hatred of India is institutionalized since the founding of Pakistan, and especially since Zia's Islamization.

And that is as clear as the Sun in the Sky.

Hearts and minds in Afghanistan

2010-01-20T19:31:00.006-05:00

The latest ABC NEWS/BBC/ARD poll from December 2009, Afghanistan--–where things stand, naturally concentrates on the increasing confidence (since last year) that Afghans have in U.S. and ISAF forces and in the Afghan National Army.

But buried within the report is a question whose answer has been almost unchanged since last year:

Overall, please say if you think each of these countries
is playing a positive, neutral, or negative role
in Afghanistan now?

              12/23/09 – Summary table

              Positive  Neutral  Negative  No opinion
a. Russia          22    38       31        9
b. Iran            27    29       39        5
c. Pakistan         9    13       73        5
d. India           36    44       13        6
e. U.S.            45    18       31        6
f. U.K.            28    31       31       10
g. Germany         32    39       19        9

There is also an "overall impression" question, whose results are similar:

Now I’m going to ask what you think about some people and groups.
Is your opinion of [INSERT] very favorable, somewhat favorable,
somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable?

              12/23/09 – Summary table

                 ----- Favorable -----   ---- Unfavorable ----   No
                 NET   Very   Somewhat   NET   Somewhat   Very  opinion
a. The Taliban    10    3         7       89     13        75     1
b. Osama Bin Laden 6    2         4       91     13        77     3
c. The U.S.       51    8        43       46     21        25     3
d. Pakistan       16    2        13       81     32        49     3
e. Great Britain  39    7        32       53     28        24     9
f. Iran           50   18        32       45     25        20     6
g. Germany        58   17        42       34     21        14     8
h. India          71   29        42       22     14         7     7
i. Hamid Karzai   82   55        28       13      8         5     5
j. Al Qaeda and other
   foreign jihadis 8    3         5       86     19        67     6

The most popular entity here, after Hamid Karzai's 82 percent favorable rating, is India. And the most disliked, after the Taliban and Al Qaeda, is Pakistan.

Problem avoidance

2009-12-05T11:02:00.003-05:00

Ex-CIA officer Graham Fuller wrote in the Huffington Post about why the United States should de-escalate in Afghanistan:

India is the primary geopolitical threat to Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Pakistan must therefore always maintain Afghanistan as a friendly state. India furthermore is intent upon gaining a serious foothold in Afghanistan -- in the intelligence, economic and political arenas -- that chills Islamabad.

(Link to his May 10, 2009 article).
This line may be straight out of General Kayani's diary. It accurately describes the perception in the leadership in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, Fuller presents this "geopolitical threat" from India as an objective truth. As Shashi Tharoor said last month in an interview, Pakistan has nothing that India seeks.

Fuller's article is also dishonest because it leaves out an obvious part of the equation: Pakistan's continuing support of Islamist militas as leverage against its neighbors. If, as Fuller suggests, America draws down its military footprint in Afghanistan, then the Taliban will come back with Pakistan's support, either overt or tacit. Afghanistan will return to the pre-9/11 clutches of the Taliban--- a hell-hole for ordinary Afghans, and where the 9/11 attacks were hatched.

The problem with the knee-jerk anti-war movement is that is avoids the truth and seeks to bring us back into our shells. That's no way to engage with the world.

A bankruptcy of logic

2009-12-03T09:31:00.002-05:00

Of all the people complaining about President Obama's Afghan war escalation, Tom Friedman takes the cake:

Iraq was about "the war on terrorism." The Afghanistan invasion, for me, was about the "war on terrorists." To me, it was about getting bin Laden and depriving Al Qaeda of a sanctuary—- period. I never thought we could make Afghanistan into Norway-— and even if we did, it would not resonate beyond its borders the way Iraq might.

To now make Afghanistan part of the "war on terrorism"—- i.e., another nation-building project-— is not crazy. It is just too expensive...

(Here is his Op-Ed in the New York Times).

So, let me get this straight: the war in Iraq, launched on false premises and so badly executed, was a necessary nation-building project? And the war in Afghanistan, being escalated by Obama precisely to help "get Bin Laden and depriving Al Qaeda of a sanctuary" is too expensive? This doesn't make any sense.

I think I prefer the knee-jerk anti-war crowd to this kind of sophistry. At least the anti-war people are consistent.

Now it's on HBO-- Terror in Mumbai

2009-11-23T08:18:00.005-05:00

Now that it is showing on HBO, with Fareed Zakaria presenting, maybe Dan Reed's documentary "Terror in Mumbai" will actually be seen. When it was first aired on Britain's Channel 4 this summer, no one in the United States seemed to know or care.

For those who still don't know what "Terror in Mumbai" is: it is a brilliant, gripping documentary about the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. In the words of director Dan Reed:

Of all the material which I acquired in the course of making my documentary, Terror in Mumbai, it is the phone intercepts - recordings by Indian intelligence of mobile phone traffic between the young gunmen and their handlers back in Pakistan - which I found the most chilling.

The close-up rustling, the tense silences, the gunshots, the amazement at the luxury of the five-star hotels which continued to amaze me every time I played back the recording during the edit. And above all the horrifying, dead-pan practicality of the preparations for taking the lives of innocents.

(Link to his notes at Channel 4 web site).

HBO adds a presentation by Fareed Zakaria, who says,

Much as the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. did in 2001, the events that unfolded last November in Mumbai served as a terrifying wake-up call, not just to India but to the rest of the world. It broadened the spectrum of our enemies and brought attention to the number of different terrorist groups that exist, who may be bigger and better organized than we ever imagined. The fact that a small group of gunmen was able to inflict so much pain, and the government of the second most populous nation on earth was unable to stop them for three days, should change our sense of the dangers out there.

Here are the schedules for the HBO showings. Happy Thanksgiving.

The Headley Affair

2009-11-20T08:16:00.002-05:00

Indian newspapers have been abuzz for weeks about the arrest in Chicago of two men of Pakistani origin: David Coleman Headley (aka Daood Gilani), and Tahawwur Hussain Rana. These two stand accused by the FBI of a conspiracy to do violence against the editors of Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper in Denmark that published cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.

It seems that both Headley and Rana had traveled multiple times to India, possibly to scout locations for terrorist attacks. So, India's new NIA wants to investigate them for links with Lashkar-e-Taiba.

But the most explosive significance of their arrest is not mentioned in the unsealed complaint---not only is Headley accused of collaborating with Lashkar-e-Taiba, but that he worked closely with two ex-military officers in Pakistan; he regularly visited Pakistan, where he was born and attended school. A New York Times article yesterday said,

The case is one of the first criminal cases in which the federal authorities seem to have directly linked terrorism suspects in the United States to a former Pakistani military officer, though they have long suspected connections between extremists and many members of the Pakistani military. Intelligence officials believe that some Pakistani military and intelligence officials even encourage terrorists to attack what they see as Pakistan’s enemies, including targets in India.

(Link to NYT article).

This thing is what the Pakistan Inter-Services Public Relations (IPSR) typically calls "a sensitive matter", not to be discussed in polite company. The FBI, unlike the CIA or the U.S. military, is likely to follow the threads to their logical conclusions. The next few days should produce significant findings, especially if Headley is cooperating.

In Deep Denial

2009-11-04T07:57:00.003-05:00

Even for Pakistan, the suicide bombing last week (Oct. 28) in Meena Bazaar in Peshawar was especially horrific. Mostly women and children were the target. They died in large numbers and are still being dug out.

But more horrifying than the attacks themselves is the reaction of so many ordinary Pakistanis:

Many Pakistanis said only foreigners were capable of such devastating attacks...

"I'm telling you categorically -- the people behind this bomb are the Indians and Mossad," an oil trader, who has relatives in the United States and whose building was damaged, said.

(Link to UPI story.)

Where does this abiding suspicion of India come from? Perhaps from the 1971 war, in which India helped break up Pakistan, says commentator Khurram Hussein.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Taliban attempted to deny responsibility for this bombing. (See full report in The Times of London).

Muridke and Quetta, too

2009-10-08T10:01:00.005-04:00

The House and the Senate both passed the multi-year bill on assistance to Pakistan. Aid to Pakistan has been continuing for many years now. What's different about this package is the strings attached to the money.

The bills require "a certification by the Secretary of State" that Pakistan's government is (1) helping the United States to dismantle supplier networks for nuclear materials, (2) acting against terrorist groups within its borders, and (3) that the military is not interfering in governance.

The third point is really the key: that the Pakistan military must keep its nose out of politics, leaving policy to the civilians.

But wait, there's more! Take a look at the key provision (2) in more detail:

(A) ceasing support, including by any elements within the Pakistan military or its intelligence agency, to extremist and terrorist groups, particularly to any group that has conducted attacks against United States or coalition forces in Afghanistan, or against the territory or people of neighboring countries;

(B) preventing al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, from operating in the territory of Pakistan, including carrying out cross-border attacks into neighboring countries, closing terrorist camps in the FATA, dismantling terrorist bases of operations in other parts of the country, including Quetta and Muridke, and taking action when provided with intelligence about high-level terrorist targets; and

(C) strengthening counterterrorism and anti-money laundering laws

Notice in (B) the mention of Quetta and Muridke. This is also new (and it wasn't in the original Kerry-Lugar Senate version). (Link to H.R. 3642).

Quetta is the city in Balochistan where the Afghan Taliban leaders are based. So far, the US military has ignored Quetta, to Boston Brahmin's utter bewilderment. Adding that to the bill explicitly is a good thing for the US effort in Afghanistan.

Muridke is the town near Lahore where the Lashkar-e-Taiba (or, technically, its civilian front organization) is based. The inclusion of Muridke is sure to make the Indians happy, and it is a acknowledgement that the Pakistan military has been making meaningless distinctions between good and bad terrorists.

Stay out of Afghanistan

2009-09-21T19:15:00.002-04:00

General McChrystal's assessment of the Afghanistan counterterrorism effort has an interesting paragraph on India's influence in that country:

While Indian activities largely benefit the Afghan people, increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India.

(See full text of the unclassified version in the Washington Post).

So, let me get this straight: The Indians are helping the Afghans, which we all want to do, but this will exacerbate regional tensions.

The only reason for exacerbating regional tensions, he says, is because the Pakistanis don't like Indians helping the Afghans. He warns that the Pakistanis will take "countermeasures" in Afghanistan and in India. Countermeasures like what, more state-sponsored terrorism? But I thought the Pakistanis were on our side, and any Pakistani support of the Haqqani terrorist network is only "reported" support from "some sections of the ISI". Tsk, tsk--- things get so complicated when you don't call a spade a spade. I thought generals were supposed to speak plainly. But the religion in Washington says that the Pakistanis are on our side, and evidently McChrystal doesn't want to touch that Shibboleth right now.

I wonder what General McChrystal suggests should be done about this Indian "problem". To help save Afghanistan, should we be asking the Indians to get out and stay out? Inquiring minds want to know.

Security starts with common sense

2009-08-17T14:56:00.003-04:00

About the incident at Newark where Shah Rukh Khan was questioned for a couple of hours (NYT Lede blog link):

As an American, here’s what bugs me about this incident: Security personnel interrogated the film star for nearly two hours before letting him make a phone call. During that time, our taxes were paying their salaries and they were not looking at hundreds of other passengers.

Shah Rukh Khan is not just a VIP; he is probably better known than Tom Cruise to ethnic Indians. According to the Asian American Federation,

Indian Americans were the largest Asian ethnic group in New Jersey in 2000, with 180,957 people, or more than one-third (34 percent) of the state’s Asian population.(aafny.com)

Detaining him was obviously a waste of time. Any of dozens of passengers or staff at Newark airport could have told Security who he was. Our security databases and procedures are inadequate, and our personnel lack common sense and an awareness of their environment, which is the first principle of security.

Is the TSA the agency that is responsible for this? I feel safer already, traveling in the U.S. under their watchful eye.

The return of the right-wing conspiracy

2009-07-22T23:20:00.003-04:00

I thought Obama's press conference was very useful and tried to illuminate why health reform is urgent and what the main principles are in the bill that he wants.

Then, I look at the coverage in the NYT and Washington Post---and almost every user comment in the first hundred or so is intensely negative and full of lies! What's going on? Clearly, the Republican FUD machine (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is in full gear.

Others have noticed this, too: see I am so annoyed.

The Ice House Lincoln

2009-06-14T22:41:00.003-04:00

Readers might know that Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Mass., was once "harvested" for winter ice, which was shipped regularly to Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras in the 19th century. If you didn't know about this fascinating trade, or the crazy entrepreneur Frederic Tudor who started it, you can read a review of "The Frozen-Water Trade" here.

But that trade is a gift that keeps on giving. Last Saturday a rare Lincoln stamp was sold for over four hundred thousand dollars. The stamp was on an envelope sent by a New England ice merchant to India:

Markings on the envelope reveal that it traveled across the Atlantic, by train through Germany and Italy, by ship to Egypt and again from Suez to Bombay, and then by train across India.

(see article in today's NYT here). Cheers.

Composing plain text messages in fixed width fonts

2009-06-14T08:21:00.001-04:00

A pet peeve of mine:

Many people don't know how easy and convenient it is to compose messages in plain text with a fixed-width font. Apparently, the people who wrote the google mail application don't, either. So, here are my reasons:

1. Better keyboard feedback - each character I type moves the cursor ahead by a good amount, whether it's a narrow character like a comma or a wide character like a "w". You can type faster this way.

2. Ability to quickly format a short table or list in the message without using the mouse. Not having to use the mouse helps you type faster.

3. Plain text messages are easy for people on diverse mail systems to read exactly the way they are formatted, since they are usually presented with fixed width fonts.

4. Plain text is a simple, elegant, and efficient way to communicate -- smallest size per content.

It should be very easy to add this option to gmail. But when I had asked this question a few years ago by sending email to google help, I never got any replies or acknowledgement. Lack of this basic feature is the reason I don't use gmail as much as I otherwise would.

Come on, Google Mail team. We're not asking for much.

Rajeev Motwani, the Enabler

2009-06-12T16:17:00.002-04:00

Rajeev Motwani died last Friday in a freak accident at his home, and Silicon Valley is now a poorer place. (Article in the Mercury News).

Not just because he was a key investor in startups and helped found many dozens of them (summary here). I always knew he was a cool dude because of his original PageRank paper with Sergey Brin and Larry Page (see paper). PageRank was the technology at the heart of Google.

But the outpouring of grief on the web is totally unlike anything I had expected to see. He appears to have touched many, many people. He had the knack of quickly getting to the crux of a problem and help his listener understand it. A few minutes of conversation with him has often changed people's lives. Google cofounder Sergey Brin puts it well:

his legacy and personality live on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.

(Sergey Brin's full blog post is here).

A person can love it

2009-04-20T22:14:00.005-04:00

Boston Brahmin saw the latest revival of Guys and Dolls on Broadway last weekend, and it was a matinee to remember. This is a classic, the quintessential Broadway musical about New York characters from a certain mythical age. The language and the music are thoroughly enjoyable. You don't need to know anything to follow the simple story and admire the professional production. The little Brahmins had a ball, too-- and as teenagers, they are not easy to please.

A tale of two couples, Nathan Detroit, a fast-talking, down-on-his-luck gambler in 1930s New York, his anxious stripper fiancee Miss Adelaide, Sister Sarah Brown, a missionary trying to reform the city of sins, and her beau Sky Masterson, Guys and Dolls is based on characters from Damon Runyon's short stories. There have been many revivals of the original 1950 production. Nathan Detroit has been played over the years by luminaries Frank Sinatra and Nathan Lane; this latest version is played by Oliver Platt, who has big shoes to fill, and he does so. (Hear Platt's interview today on NPR)

The New York Times reviewer called this Guys and Dolls "static" and "stiff" (see review). Well, he obviously didn't see the same show that I did. Trust me, you want to see this.

The return of the lawyers

2009-03-15T23:17:00.003-04:00

You heard it here first: Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari has agreed to reinstate the supreme court judge Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. This is good news and a very optimistic moment for Pakistan. Not only has Nawaz Sharif won his political confrontation with Zardari, but the country's lawyers, who have been agitating non-stop for many months, have succeeded in establishing the principle of an independent judiciary. The strengthening of its institutions is a step in the right direction for that unfortunate country and its people.

The New York Times article quotes the special envoy Richard Holbrooke:

the United States applauded “the statesmanlike act by President Zardari and hope that it will help defuse a dangerous confrontation so that Pakistan, with the help of its many friends, can address the nation’s pressing and urgent needs.”

(link to article.)
Give me a break. This was no statesmanlike act. Even the most die-hard supporters of Zardari can see that the unpopular president was simply forced to give in to reality. Security forces in Punjab refused to carry out their orders against Sharif and his party. Even Zardari's own partymen began to desert him. Information minister Sherry Rehman resigned when TV networks were muzzled.

Where does this leave the United States? Who cares. When did we last worry about Pakistan's "pressing and urgent needs"? Everybody knows that all we care about is its nuclear weapons and its Islamist radicals. After our history of consistently backing the wrong horse in Pakistan, helping to destroy its already crumbling institutions, and willingness to do the quick and dirty thing instead of what is right, we have lost all credibility with the Pakistani public, and deservedly so.

Boston Brahmin hopes that a fresh beginning can now be made. If the people are willing to seize their democracy and make it their own, then there is hope for the future.

Gathering dangers

2009-02-23T11:15:00.002-05:00

While the sorry state of the economy occupies us, we tend to lose sight of other gathering dangers. Pakistan's takeover by Islamist militants is now a distinct possibility. This would be a disaster unlike any other we've faced before. And it's entirely preventable.

Here's a touching story about the shutting down of a girls' school by Taliban in Pakistan's Swat valley (15-minute video on the New York Times web site).

What is to be done? Here's a report in the Economist, suggesting why the Pakistan army is failing and what to do about it. (Link: In the face of chaos, Economist, Feb 19, 2009). In particular, let's not start giving in to those who say that the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. It must be our top foreign policy priority.

Stop betting on the consumer

2009-02-02T13:41:00.004-05:00

The U.S. consumer is saving more and spending less, says today's New York Times:

Americans cut their spending for a sixth month in December and, perhaps more significant, put more into their savings accounts, the government reported Monday, as they worried about losing their jobs and earning less in a deteriorating economy. [...] "If households are shying away from spending, what’s going to cause businesses to start spending again?" a senior economist [at Moody's said].

(See article in New York Times)

Well, Boston Brahmin is not an economist, but surely the fact that U.S. economic growth has been led by consumer spending in the past doesn't mean it needs to continue this way in the future? Now that we have discovered that Wall Street's unrealistic "growth" in the past decade was based on a Ponzi scheme, the great unwinding we're all living through is inevitable. Clearly, the rest of the economy is adjusting to the new realities, which include expensive credit.

Given all of this, isn't the government's insistence on bailing out the big banks that made bad loans just tilting at windmills, and a tremendous waste of taxpayer money? It's trying to make credit easier to obtain, but the fundamental problem is not the lack of credit, but the lack of trust. It's no wonder that those banks that have already been bailed out in this way are just sitting on the capital, not lending. They have no rational incentive to lend given the poor visibility into future cash flows, just as consumers have no rational incentive to borrow when their jobs are in jeopardy. Why blame them?

What the government needs to concentrate on is two things:

1. Increase the safety net for people who are laid off. For example, COBRA benefits will be extended in a bill being worked on in Congress last weekend. At about $40 billion, this is money well spent.

2. Stop the bleeding in home mortgages, which we are told is the root cause of the current losses. For example, the Obama administration says it favors giving bankrupt homeowners foreclosure relief by letting them have their mortgages modified under court protection. This won't cost the taxpayers a cent, and it will encourage lenders to rework the loans voluntarily.

On top of the above, any spending that improves the infrastructure of the country should help. What will not help is trying to artificially get borrowers and lenders to act against their own best interests.

Incentive to be obsolete

2009-01-26T13:44:00.005-05:00

If you have a television with an antenna that you use to watch broadcast American channels, then you know that on February 17th, all full-power TV stations in the United States will stop analog NTSC broadcasts, rendering your analog television set obsolete (See full info at the Commerce Department's web page).

This is not a tragedy. The government giveth what it taketh away. Many manufacturers sell digital converter boxes that can catch digital ATSC broadcasts (which the TV stations are already transmitting) and output a signal suitable for your TV. Since Congress mandated the switch to digital, it has tried to compensate consumers, by making available $40 coupons, maximum two per household, which you can use toward the purchase of such a box.

So far, so good. Boston Brahmin does have an analog TV set, which gets used on occasion (for example, Barack Obama's presidential inauguration). Believing in being prepared, and not wanting my tax dollars to go to waste, I applied for one of these coupons. But I discovered a small and annoying hitch in the government's program.

The government's coupons cannot just be used for any converter boxes:

TV converter box models must meet technical and performance standards determined by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in order to qualify for the Coupon Program.

And the NTIA has decided that if your converter box provides even a single high-quality output suitable for high-definition (HD) televisions, for example, HDMI or component video connectors, then your entire box does not qualify for the coupon and you must pay full price.

Their reasoning is understandable: Congress's program is targeted toward households that depend on their analog television sets to get important information over the air, and not toward consumers who have the money to shell out for an HDTV.

Understandable, but not valid. They are ignoring the economics of how rational consumers should actually buy components of a system. Today, a converter box that can output HD signals is no more expensive to make than one that outputs only standard definition (SD) signals. In fact, they have the same underlying electronics. In order to become an "eligible" converter box, manufacturers have essentially disabled their boxes so that they cannot output HD signals. Ideally, given a choice, you should always buy an HD-capable box, because when you get an HDTV, you could start using your box's HD outputs and enjoy the better picture and sound. In a few years, when your television can be expected to go kaput, you would probably have to buy an HDTV, anyway, since even if there were any standard definition TV's to buy, they would probably not be any cheaper.

Yet, because of this perverse incentive from the government, consumers are being forced to buy maimed technology that limits them to a standard definition picture, far into the future -- or waste lots of money, their own and the government's. Oh, well.

By the way, I bought the Insignia NS-DXA1 box, retailing for $60, which is the same device as the Zenith DTT900 except for the logo. It has an excellent picture, sound, and on-screen menu. When I hooked it up to my old rabbit-ear antenna, it discovered well over a dozen Boston-area broadcast channels in all their digital perfection.

You had me at Hindu

2009-01-23T23:59:00.008-05:00

President Obama (it feels good to write those two words!) said in his inauguration speech:

We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.

This line made Boston Brahmin's day.

It's nice to be acknowledged by the president that I am American, too. I will never forget what then-Vice President George H.W. Bush said to a reporter in 1987: "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots." And I will never forgive.

In India it's a common sentiment to respect all religions. Every neta worth his salt knows to sprinkle it in his speech. The first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-1964), was an agnostic. Even the right-wing BJP respects and celebrates the "Indian traditions of the Muslims, Christians and Parsis" (link to their manifesto).

But the Land of the Free is far more conservative and backward in this respect than India, and many powerful people, particularly in the Republican party, still consider this a Christian nation. It is unprecedented for a Presidential inaugural address to include the words Hindu and non-believer. As both, Boston Brahmin has put up with a lot, including a "National Prayer Service" at the "National Cathedral."

Given that God's Own Party (see Kevin Phillips's article) would count even worshipping Hindus as "non-believers", and therefore unpatriotic, I find it difficult to understand how any Hindus can ever support a Republican candidate in any election. But I know there are such people, proving that the world is full of mystery.

Obama was speaking to all of us who don't follow any Middle-Eastern religion, acknowledging our American-ness. Whether he meant by "Hindu" a follower of Sanatana-Dharma, or just any South Asian generally, this is a great step forward. In any case, the guy walks the talk of a new inclusiveness. Congratulations, America! We're at last catching up to where India was sixty years ago.

Slumdog hit the trifecta

2009-01-16T12:12:00.004-05:00

NPR's OnPoint with Tom Ashbrook today had an hour-long segment on Slumdog Millionaire. (You can listen on their web page.)

There was a question whether Indian movies deal with the poverty and the realism in the same way. Somebody asked whether the Indian government will be upset about the police brutality. There have indeed been many Indian movies that showed poverty, police brutality, and the universal urge to get ahead. An example, in addition to Madhur Bhandarkar's Traffic Signal, was Govind Nihalani's Ardh Satya (1983). Commentators who claim that India does not produce such movies are simply wrong and are being unkind to Indian directors.

But such movies have not done well at the box office in India, and I doubt that Slumdog will do well there, either. What makes money with Indians (and the Indian diaspora) is the dream-like melodrama with songs, hot dances, and a poor storyline.

Slumdog hit the trifecta: it dealt with the hard subject matter as part of an uplifting story (Simon Beaufoy gets the credit here), it has excellent production values and a clear vision that can hook in Western audiences (Danny Boyle is primarily responsible for this), and it was backed by a Hollywood studio (both Warner and Fox Searchlight picked it up), which gave it the exposure.

So now, it's showing on many more screens. Go see it. And even if the first few scenes are hard to take, just sit through them.

Never enough for a desi parent

2009-01-08T14:26:00.003-05:00

Aasif Mandvi rocks. He is hilarious in his Daily Show segment about Dr. Sanjay Gupta possibly becoming the next Surgeon General:

Daily Show with John Stewart (video)

Mandvi acts like an exaggerated desi parent, for whom no achievement is ever enough. Here are the three things about the segment I liked:

1. Let's face it, the selection of the glamorous Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General, good or bad, is fertile ground for comedy.

2. Aasif plays on the prototypical desi insistence on competition (race is, let's face it, a race! China, Japan, India -- let's see which Asian superpower wins!), and love of titles and labels "actually, Jon, it's DOCTOR Aasif Mandvi..."

3. Fine gradations of status are vastly important: "You mean it's a position BELOW the cabinet?" Utter disappointment!

This segment reminds Boston Brahmin of some British TV sitcoms that feature people of Indian origin. I had never before seen such knowing fun being poked at desis in the United States. Another first for The Daily Show by Jon Stewart. Totally cool!

Charter of Democracy in peril

2008-12-24T19:54:00.002-05:00

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari is breaking the Charter of Democracy that Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had signed in 2006.

Zardari wants to keep the bad provisions inserted in the constitution by dictators, because it would be politically inexpedient to remove them as his party had promised. At issue is mainly Section 58-2(b), which makes it easy for the president to topple a democratically elected government.

If Zardari were to keep to the agreement, then Nawaz Sharif's PML(N) has promised to support Zardari's PPP. If these two parties were to work together, they could bring the Pakistan Army under control at last. Nawaz Sharif is willing, but Zardari is not.

The Bush administration must make it clear to Zardari that he must follow through.

Slumdog Millionaire is your destiny

2008-12-23T11:21:00.003-05:00

Boston Brahmin and the Missus saw "Slumdog Millionaire" last weekend at the West Newton cinema. Loved it!

It's the kind of predestined love story, with two Dharavi urchins growing up as orphans, one brother becoming a gangster, that used to be common in the seventies Manmohan Desai or Prakash Mehra films. In fact, Zanjeer (1973) comes up as one of the answers to the TV quiz show in the movie. The main thing added by the British director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy is proper character development, fast camerawork and editing, and good production values.

You have got to see this movie -- it will make you laugh and cry the way movies no longer do. Before you go, please read this review by the Boston Globe critic. You might also want to read Simon Beaufoy's article in the Guardian after the Mumbai attacks.

Boston Brahmin's only complaint is that the movie is not widely released. In the West Newton cinema it's playing on two screens, but most cinema chains don't have it, which means most of America cannot see it (you can see the trailer on YouTube). Also, a word of caution: the first few scenes are extremely violent and disturbing, and not for children.

Crowley versus the truth

2008-12-16T21:44:00.002-05:00

In the current issue of The New Republic, Michael Crowley says that the Afghan war is very difficult and could become a quagmire for Barack Obama.

But Crowley's article is based on a string of cliches from armchair analysts, like this one:

Meanwhile, the recent savagery in Mumbai has India and Pakistan at each other's throats again, a development that indirectly benefits Afghan insurgents.

This single sentence is enough (although there are many more in this ponderous article) to demonstrate Crowley's cluelessness.

The "recent savagery" in Mumbai is the handiwork of the Pakistani extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a long-time protege of the Pakistan military. The Mumbai attackers were trained, according to the captured terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab, by military officers.

Given this, India has shown remarkable restraint. India and Pakistan are not at each others' throats, because they understand what Crowley and his ilk don't --- that the civilian government in Pakistan lives in fear of the Pakistan army. It is the Pakistan army that is against peace with India. It is the Pakistan army that will not countenance any Indian help for Afghanistan --- it made that a condition for helping the Americans. It is the Pakistan army that is responsible for harboring the Afghan Taliban in Quetta, and allowing them to stage raids into Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers. And it is the Pakistan army that prevents the U.S. from prosecuting its war within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA in Pakistan. This is what makes the Afghan war difficult, not some romantic notion of unconquered Afghans since Alexander the great, another cliche that Crowley presses into service.

Crowley's entire article is shallow. Boston Brahmin hopes that Obama has better counsel, or God help us.

The New York Times is behind the times

2008-12-06T07:42:00.004-05:00

The New York Times editorial board is either ill-informed about Pakistan, or just deliberately being dense.

Last week's editorial about the Mumbai attacks was urging Indian police not to point fingers, and admonishing India in advance against going to war with Pakistan, when there have been no signs of any such war being prepared.

Now that more and more evidence is emerging that the Mumbai attacks were planned and executed by Pakistanis, today's editorial at last mentions that Pakistan needs to cooperate.

But then it goes on to say:

India’s growing investment and intelligence network in Afghanistan also is feeding Islamabad’s insecurity and sense of encirclement. India must be transparent about its involvement in Afghanistan.

What?? So now, the Times editorial board is making excuses for Pakistan's terrorist bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008, which killed 58 people. Every U.S. intelligence expert knows that this bombing was orchestrated by the ISI through an extremist organization.

When I last checked, Afghanistan and India were sovereign countries. Afghanistan can host as many embassies as it likes, and Indians can make as many investments as they want. Any "feelings of encirclement" are Pakistan's problem and cannot be used to excuse a terrorist bombing. This editorial (link) is an apologia for what is rapidly looking like a terrorist state.

Bridge to the future, floor on the gas

2008-11-25T06:33:00.004-05:00

Barack Obama has said he wants any Detroit bailout to be "a bridge to somewhere". He's talking about pushing new automotive technologies. The only new technology based product that keeps coming up is the electric car, like Ford's Volt.

But electric cars are unlikely to be economically viable for a long time, especially given the current gas prices. What to do?

The solution is obvious: put a floor on gasoline prices. Tax gasoline so that it's guaranteed to always be at least (say) three dollars a gallon, forever. The biggest unknown that confronts unconventional energy technologies is the future price of gasoline. Take this out of the equation.

This suggestion has been made many times, by many people, from environmentalists like The Carbon Tax Center, through observers like Tom Friedman, to ultra-conservatives like Charles Krauthammer. Why aren't we hearing this being proposed by anyone responsible for making policy yet? This would be a golden opportunity to pass such a tax.

Nicholas Kristof gets an earful on Kashmir

2008-11-23T09:18:00.004-05:00

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote what the U.S. should do for Pakistan. His advice to Obama was mostly about improving education and basic services in Pakistan, to help counteract growing militancy.

Unfortunately, he also gave this suggestion:

...we should push much harder for a peace deal in Kashmir -— including far more pressure on India —- because Kashmir grievances empower Pakistani militants.

The outpouring of comments on his blog was disproportionately about the Kashmir suggestion, an overwhelming amount of it negative, from desi readers.

Kristof then added a clarification on his blog:

Let me clarify that this is not just to “appease” Pakistan, but because India’s own behavior in Kashmir has often been shameful. Paying more attention to Kashmir and to human rights violations (in both Kashmirs) is not only geopolitically correct, but it’s also the right thing to do.

This "clarification" seems to have inflamed his Indian readers even more. Tsk, tsk. He has really put his foot in it now, exposing his own ignorance about the India-Pakistan problem. This was perhaps to be expected from someone who has "been coming to Pakistan for 26 years" and who quotes Ahmed Rashid's "Descent into Chaos". All good things, but if these are his only sources of information, then it's no wonder he's been brainwashed beyond help by Pakistani talking points.

Whose side is the Pakistan army on?

2008-11-22T14:20:00.003-05:00

The Washington Post reports today that another U.S. missile strike in North Waziristan killed 5 militants, including an Al Qaeda operative Rashid Rauf, who held dual Pakistani and British citizenship:

Before his arrest, Rauf's ties to the Pakistani terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed stirred strong suspicions among intelligence experts that he may have also had connections with rogue elements within Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, also known as the ISI. [...]

Suspicions about Rauf's connections to Pakistani intelligence agencies deepened after he escaped from custody in December 2007. [...]

Rauf's attorney at the time, Hashmat Habib, claimed Rauf was subsequently taken into ISI custody. Until Saturday's strike in North Waziristan, Rauf's whereabouts were not publicly known.

(full article here).

So let me get this straight: this guy was connected to the ISI, the ISI may even have had him in custody, and yet he was with fellow extremists when he was killed.

Whose side is Pakistan on, anyway?

Why I'm voting for Barack Obama

2008-11-03T13:47:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow is voting day. Here are the reasons why I'll be filling in the oval for Barack Obama:

Obama is rational and clear-headed

Obama doesn't simply react, or fall back on old paradigms that he is comfortable with, but instead thinks problems through. A conservative lawyer who has worked with him back in his law school professor years says that he always wants to hear both sides of an argument before making up his mind. He asks searching questions to satisfy himself that he understands the argument, and then he picks the side that makes sense to him. We have seen this quality in him again and again during the past two years. He has been attacked and provoked many, many times, but he never loses his cool. When he opens his mouth, he has usually thought about what he is going to say.

A huge contrast with John McCain, whose modus operandi seems to be to work with two minutes of information gathering followed by a "decisive", seat-of-the-pants gamble, which he will then stick with, come hell or high water. See his selection of Sarah Palin as an example. See also his parachuting-in during the financial crisis between the presidential debates, for another example. With McCain, everything seems to be personal--- his angry outbursts have left behind a string of victims over the years. I'm a pretty conservative guy. McCain scares me.

Barack Obama is extremely competent.

Obama has shown an enormous capacity to learn new things over his life -- raised by a single mother of modest means in Hawaii, he studied hard and got into Harvard Law School, later to teach constitutional law, before taking up public office. He has also shown the ability to run a half-billion dollar campaign in fifty states over almost two years, beating even the Clinton machine in the primaries. The guy learns fast, and he can get things done.

McCain, in contrast, was the son of admirals who graduated toward the bottom of his class in military training, and married into money. A lot of his achievements seem to have been handed to him on a silver platter. While he has gotten bills passed in the senate, I have seen little evidence of outstanding competence. I don't have much confidence that he can get things done.

I want to tell my kids.

My children are not white, and I want to be able to tell them they can be anything they want to be in this country --- and mean it. If Obama wins, people's attitudes about what America stands for will change, both here and abroad.

As Romans Do

2008-10-25T06:47:00.005-04:00

In tenth standard back in India, we had Shakespeare's Julius Caesar for ICSE. Always was my favorite. But last week I saw the best movie on ancient Rome, ever. Not exactly a movie, but a TV series. Or, as they would say, "it's not TV, it's HBO":

Boston Brahmin doesn't have cable, but he does have a home theater setup, and the series is available on DVD. The costumes and colors look totally stunning.

The complete first season consists of a dozen episodes about 45 minutes long. What can I say: the mixture of real historical figures and a few fictional ones, the ultra-realistic view of ordinary life in Rome circa 44 BC, the all-British cast, the lavish production, everything is totally excellent. It's very violent and explicit, beyond R rated, definitely not for children. Read all about it on IMDB.

Case closed, you wish

2008-07-05T08:36:00.006-04:00

The godfather of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, is increasingly frustrated at his house arrest. On July 4th, he started to declare his own independence to news agencies: he says the Pakistan government was fully involved in nuclear proliferation:

"His claims stood in stark contrast with his 2004 confession that he was solely responsible for spreading nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. But Dr. Khan has since renounced that confession, saying he made it to avoid implicating other Pakistani officials."

(NYT link, registration required)

This new claim has the ring of truth, as many analysts will tell you. Boston Brahmin himself had argued, back in 2004 when Khan was arrested, that:

In a country so completely dominated by the army, it is inconceivable that the country's crown jewels at Kahuta could be sold without the knowledge of the brass.

(Pointer to 2004 post by Boston Brahmin) Yet, the New York Times, Washington Post, and other Western news outlets continued for years to repeat as facts, Pakistan government claims that AQ Khan was a "rogue" scientist working on his own.

Khan's interviews yesterday took the government by surprise. But denials were quick: "all lies and false statements". Today, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry insisted that its nuclear proliferation case was closed. (link to AP wire article).
Case closed? You wish.

From Russia with Love

2008-06-22T19:10:00.004-04:00

Last week, Boston Brahmin had the opportunity to read a book because of a
transcontinental flight. And a fantastic thriller it was, too:

Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith, is a murder mystery set in Stalin's Soviet Union, around 1953. In the workers' paradise that is the USSR, there's no such thing as murder; the only criminals are those who are enemies of the state. The state is actually more horrible than a serial murderer.

But what's more horrible still is today's Russia--- Putin's Russia. See an Op-Ed in today's Washington Post by a courageous journalist, Julia Latynina. This article was translated from the Russian. It talks about the clear impunity of Putin's thugs:

The right to commit crime has become part of official privilege. If the victim doesn't raise a fuss, no one is punished. If the victim appeals to the public, he or she is harshly punished. The very fact of appealing to the public is perceived as a challenge to the regime.

(Link to Washington Post op-ed.)
The comparison with Stalin's Soviet state is chilling. Or, it should be, but it isn't.

Why Fox News is evil

2008-04-20T11:02:00.004-04:00

Here's proof that those military "expert analysts" on Fox "News" and other TV outlets have been lying to support the Bush administration: in return for access to senior officials and implied promises of defense contracts,

members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

The full New York Times article by David Barstow is here.
This article shows why the New York Times remains, in Boston Brahmin's estimation, an unchallenged source of independent and accurate reporting.
Our modern democracy's Chomskian dysfunction lies exposed in all its sordid spectacle: the clear conflicts of interest, the government that uses classified information in its propaganda war against its own people, and media outlets that won't vet their sources.

The Chinese people at least have an excuse for their ignorance, because their totalitarian government controls the media. What's ours?

People's Republic of Excuses

2008-03-31T13:14:00.006-04:00

The furor over the Tibetan riots in the West has a familiar ring: Free Tibet! Boycott the Olympics! And predictably, these Western reactions and coverage in the press has a lot of Chinese people angry at the "biased" and "uninformed" rantings of Westerners who simply don't understand China.

Tom Doctoroff wrote a long article on the Huffington Post, saying it would be counterproductive to boycott the Olympics:

The rise of an Olympics-worthy China validates the Middle Kingdom's entire worldview and confirms, in no particular order, the ebb and flow of history, the cyclical essence of yin and yang, as well as a renewed Mandate of Heaven. Beijing 2008 represents a vindication of Han culture.

In other words, we should try to understand China better (See full article on Huffington Post.)

All this mumbo-jumbo about the Chinese view of life is simply apologia for the indefensible. Let's look at the facts, shall we?

If Western articles on the riots are uninformed, then surely the Chinese government takes most of the blame, since it refuses to allow journalists to visit Tibet, or in fact, any place in China, without minders. And pardon me for dismissing Chinese residents' claims about the riots, since all news is effectively controlled by their government, so they quite literally don't know what they are talking about. The People's Republic of China consistently ranks near the bottom of the press freedom index complied every year by Reporters Without Borders (see 2007 rankings).

No amount of cultural sensitivity can gloss over the fact that the single-party government of the People's Republic of China is an abomination. The government does not release figures, but Amnesty International estimates that China leads the world, by a very long shot, in the number of people executed every year. Latest 2007 estimates will be reported by Amnesty on April 15th, but the previous year, sixty-four percent of executions world-wide were at the hands of this regime (see 2006 report). How can anyone defend these people?

Still waiting for the uprising

2008-03-19T17:04:00.003-04:00

The Decider said today:

The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror. For the terrorists, Iraq was supposed to be the place where al-Qaeda rallied Arab masses to drive America out. Instead, Iraq has become the place where Arabs joined with Americans to drive al-Qaeda out. In Iraq, we are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology, and his murderous network.

(See full text of the Bush speech on the White House web site).

Obviously, George Bush has left us mortals behind and entered an exalted spiritual plane, where an alternate reality reigns. So it's impossible to explain what he is talking about. Let's see what the Director of National Intelligence says in its last National Intelligence Estimate from December 3rd, 2007, which was released in declassified form:

1. Al Qaeda is and will remain the most serious threat to the Homeland.

2. Al Qaeda has protected or regenerated [...] in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

(See full NIE on the DNI web site.)

This directly contradicts what Dubya is saying. What "large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden" is he talking about?

There is, clearly, no end to Bush's grand delusions; his only saving grace is that he is completely incompetent. But the real depressing thing is this: where is the uprising against George Bush and his apologists like John McCain, who want to continue the Iraq war and promote it as a part of our Global War on Terror?

Throw them in the dungeon

2008-03-09T08:23:00.002-04:00

The inventor of the game "Dungeons and Dragons", Gary Gygax, died this week in Wisconsin.

For those who don't know, Dungeons and Dragons was the first popular role-playing tabletop game, sort of an elaborate board game. Originating in the mid-seventies, these games were the ancestors of diverse entertainment. Ethan Gilsdorf writes in the Boston Globe:

But since the 1980s, so-called fantasy escapist pursuits have gone mainstream. Dungeons & Dragons inspired blockbuster fantasy movies and J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, and boosted interest in Renaissance fairs and Tolkien. Adults now play Xbox and PlayStation as much as kids. Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs, like World of Warcraft and Second Life, have entranced tens of millions worldwide. Even Dungeons & Dragons has become an online game.

Then he goes on:

Yet few have paused to consider the nature of the fascination, or its effects. Exhausted by our troubles, America seems nostalgic for a lost age. Wouldn't the world be better if we were ruled by benevolent kings and had real encounters with magic? If alchemy and mystery, not politics or media, ruled the lands? If a boy wizard or hobbit thief could wield real power?

Gilsdorf need not be worried: we already are ruled by a king (albeit not benevolent) using alchemy and mystery. After vetoing Congress's law that would have restricted the CIA to the tactics in the Army field manual on interrogations, Bush once again claimed that the lack of terrorist attacks in the U.S. was "not a matter of chance." (See Bush's radio address at the White House web site.)

Obama's foreign policy principles

2008-03-03T12:34:00.003-05:00

Barack Obama is a great candidate for president, most of all because of his foreign policy principles.

Yeah, there's a lots of analysis by pundits (see Washington Post analysis by Karen DeYoung) which declares that his policies are not much different from the "mainstream". But this is missing the forest for the trees.

Obama has a completely different world view compared to anyone else in the Washington beltway, and refreshingly so. Although he has in his "candidate cabinet" a few old-timers, he listens most of all to Samantha Power.

Samantha Power was until 2005 a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she taught Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy (ISP-221). Before that she was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. But after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, she joined his team and has been stumping for him publicly and advising him privately ever since. The principles that Obama talks about are justice, human rights, and multilateralism, and they are ones that Obama and Power share.

Her interview in Salon from a couple of weeks ago is most instructive.

The line that gets Boston Brahmin most is on what we need to do about foreign policy:

[we] have to figure out a way to inject concern for human beings into our foreign policy.

The Europeans are coming

2008-02-26T19:25:00.008-05:00

The 80th Oscars for acting were all picked up by Europeans.

While unusual lately, this has been the case for all sorts of performance art. Readers might not know who this is, back from 1968:
This is Dusty Springfield, a British singer whose "white soul" album Dusty in Memphis is one of the all-time greats. Boston Brahmin recently rediscovered her song "Son of a Preacher Man" from this album, which is reproduced on the soundtrack of the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction.

Written by John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins, "Son of a Preacher Man" is sung by a woman remembering her first love, a preacher's son. Dusty Springfield's husky voice gives the recording an unforgettable, haunting ambience. It's hard to believe that her voice was dubbed. Rolling Stone magazine says:

Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler brought her way down South, to Memphis, to make this album. She was so intimidated by the idea of recording with session guys from her favorite Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding hits that she never sang a note there. Her vocals were overdubbed in New York. But the result was blazing soul and sexual honesty [...] that transcended both race and geography.

(See review in Rolling Stone magazine).

Amen. These qualities come through in the Pulp Fiction soundtrack CD. That Quentin Tarantino sure knows his songs.

What the election results mean

2008-02-23T10:02:00.003-05:00

Journalist Ahmed Rashid analyzes the results of the elections in Pakistan and the subsequent jockeying between parties to form a government. The new alliances at the provincial level between the PPP and various regional players are worth noting, especially the one with the ANP in the NWFP:

In the North Western Frontier Province that has been torn apart by civil war, the majority of seats have been won by a PPP ally, the Awami National Party (ANP).

The ANP has perhaps some of the most seasoned and battle-hardened politicians in the country - a pedigree that goes back to the 1930s.

It has tried, despite blockages put up by Mr Musharraf, to foster a more modern and moderate image of Pashtun nationalism than the one put up by the Pakistani Taleban and al-Qaeda. Now it will have every chance of success.

See full article on BBC site.
This secular ANP is the same as the old NAP of Bacha Khan (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the "Frontier Gandhi"). They have won this election in NWFP on the promise of better governance than the religious coalition MMA.
While the U.S. punditocracy is focused monomaniacally on whether the new Pakistan government will be less willing than Musharraf to continue the war on terror (a ridiculous proposition -- the specter of Jihadi terrorism threatens everyone in Pakistan), we seem less interested in what it is that these people actually want. It seems the answer is: the same that we want: clean water and electricity.

How to open a coconut

2008-02-17T04:58:00.005-05:00

At the Maine Caucus, Chelsea Clinton gave an example of how Hillary is a problem solver. The Clintons had bought a coconut and were trying to break it open:

Chelsea allowed as how her father and she had gone outside, and thrown the coconut again and again onto the hard asphalt of the governor’s mansion’s driveway, hoping to make a dent. But the coconut, alas, refused to yield.

Finally, Hillary came outside with a hammer.

(see NYT op-ed by Jenny Finney Boylan).

What this reminded Boston Brahmin of was: few people really seem to know how to open a coconut. It should open in two neat halves, and it should not make your kitchen look like the site of a bomb blast. It's time for a lesson.

So, let's assume you have in your hand a coconut with the husk removed, which is what the Clintons seem to have had. It looks like a hard, bristly nut, bigger than a baseball. (If the husk is still on it, the coconut will look like a light football; you'll have to rip open the husk with a strong screwdriver and make the coconut bald first).

Step 1: One end is pointed; look for the three dark penny-size spots on the other end. These are the "eyes". Probe them with a pointed tool, like a small screwdriver or a corkscrew. One of the three will be soft. Punch a hole in it, making it as big as you can.

Step 2: Pour out the coconut water into a glass through the hole. The water should be delicious, otherwise the coconut may be old or spoiled.

Step 3: Wet the "equator" of the coconut (if the pointed end is a pole) with water. I just open a very narrow stream of water from the kitchen tap and slowly turn the coconut under it to wet the entire equator. Rub the equator with your finger to help the water to soften the shell. (This step is optional, but Boston Brahmin has always found that it helps.)

Step 4: Hold the coconut firmly in your palm. On a hard and strong surface, repeatedly strike the coconut along the equator, turning it slightly each time. I usually squat on my concrete porch; a driveway also works. Be firm, but you don't have to swing it like a baseball bat: keep rotating the coconut and striking it. The best spot to start with is the place where the natural "meridian" seam meets the equator. After a few cracks, it usually starts to split roughly along the equator. Then start to be more gentle. You don't want to pinch your skin into the opening cracks.

The above method produces two neat halves. As to how to scrape out the pulp, the best thing is the scraper traditionally used in South India, or the "gkra-dtai" used in Thailand. (See samples of tools at GourmetSleuth). But if you don't have that, you'll have to use a knife.

Now, there are web sites where people try to explain this, e.g., this one, but they try to punch out all three eyes, which is not worth the trouble. The soft eye is very easy to pierce, but the other two are much harder. And they make the same mistake that Hillary made, which is to try to smash it with a hammer. It produces messy smithereens. Very unprofessional.

We have tortured, and we would do it again

2008-02-06T21:31:00.000-05:00

CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that the Administration has used waterboarding on three detainees.

"We used it [waterboarding] against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about Al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

(See full story in Chicago Tribune.)

This is an admission of a crime. Waterboarding is already torture according to the Geneva Conventions, which apply to all detainees in the custody of the U.S. government.

Senator Richard Durbin (D - Illinois) wrote a letter yesterday to Attorney General Mukasey asking him to investigate possible crimes by the administration.

In his letter to Attorney General Mukasey, Durbin wrote, “In light of your testimony that, ‘There are circumstances where waterboarding is clearly unlawful,’ the Justice Department should investigate the instances in which the Administration has used waterboarding to determine whether any laws were violated.”

In the beginning, there was Deadwood

2008-02-06T19:24:00.001-05:00

Boston Brahmin loves his local library (yeah, New England!). In addition to books, they have an extensive DVD collection. Since BB doesn't subscribe to cable television, he had never seen the HBO series "Deadwood" until he saw the first season on DVD.

"Deadwood" is historical fiction, set in 1876 in a small mining town ("camp") in Dakota Territory. Gold had been found in these hills, but they had not yet been incorporated into the United States, so it was still the crucible in which the country was still being cooked.

"Deadwood" is far more realistic than the insipid Westerns that we are used to seeing. The best thing about it is the language: old, yet very rough and full of profanity, just like the primeval mining towns must have been in the olden days, before there were any laws.

The British actor Ian McShane (extreme left in the picture above) plays the remarkable warlord-like Al Swearengen, owner of the Gem Saloon, where all manner of vices abound. Also appearing are a host of historical characters including Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, and others.

Do you like "The Sopranos"? "Deadwood" makes that look like kindergarten: it explores not just crime but also law, politics, architecture, capitalism, and power. Caution: this series is not for the squeamish, nor for children. (See Nancy Franklin's review of the first season in The New Yorker from June 2006).

Run, don't walk, to get the DVD version of Deadwood. The DVD mastering is very high quality, and I believe all three seasons are available. The writer/creator David Milch (who created police dramas like "NYPD Blue") has created a masterpiece.

Why I liked Tare Zameen Par

2008-01-27T21:03:00.001-05:00

Yes, it's a tear-jerker, and yes, there are a few loose or slow areas that could be usefully cut, but "Tare Zameen Par" (Little stars on Earth) is a fun movie that makes you laugh and cry.
Westerners may not understand how difficult it is in India to pay attention to learning disabilities, and of how little awareness there is of this problem. The whole story, by Amole Gupte, will jar as unbelievable. But people who have lived in India know that it's very realistic, and the film shows how parents and teachers can tragically miss the signs.
This kind of "message" film can be very tricky to pull off without sounding preachy, earnest, and boring, but director Aamir Khan has managed it by holding the melodrama and not talking down to his audience. The Bollywood format of two-and-a-half hours is way too long for this slight story, and the first half is taken up entirely by the many humiliations heaped on a spirited 9 year old boy (Darsheel Safary) by his increasingly frustrated teachers and parents. But Boston Brahmin found that the film works perfectly if you skip the entire first half and just watch the portion after the intermission! (There is one spectacular animation scene about half an hour before the intermission, where the letters from the child's notebook float clean off the page in a jumble. Don't miss that.)
The little Brahmins enjoyed scenes of the boarding school in Panchgani and its cartoonish teachers. There was not a dry eye in the living room in the end, when the little boy gets a little help and finds his groove. Highly recommended!

A thumpin' from Obama, in Strom's backyard

2008-01-27T11:34:00.000-05:00

The MSNBC blog "first thoughts" says about Barack Obama's convincing primary win in South Carolina:

Obama’s victory last night in South Carolina was by the biggest margin we’ve seen so far in a contested race this primary season. Obama did it by winning about 80% of the African-American vote, as well as about a quarter of the white vote. Sure, his share of the white vote there dropped some 10-plus points compared to other states. But remember, this is the South, and the white vote was always going to be a little more difficult for Obama to capture southern whites.

Plenty of blame has been aired for such a convincing failure of the Clinton machine: their mud-slinging, Bill Clinton's over-the-top criticism, and general negativity. Despite these, or as some say, because of these tactics, Barack Obama has done very well indeed. In Strom Thurmond's backyard, too!
There may be many reasons for Barack Obama's popularity, but the simplest, most obvious one was summarized by JFK's daughter Caroline Kennedy in her Op-ed in the New York Times today:

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

And this is why so many people are drawn to Obama. Amen.

Pants on fire

2008-01-24T21:47:00.000-05:00

A nonprofit organization called the Center for Public Integrity has documented 935 instances of post-9/11 lies told publicly by the Bush administration, either claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or that Saddam had links with Al Qaeda.
They have composed an online database that analyzes each of these statements for the truth as known at the time the statement was uttered.
Here are some choice words from their report:

[T]he Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.

It concludes:

Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials.
Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.

Boston Brahmin is still waiting for the Bush administration to pay for their deeds. But not holding his breath.

They are at the gates

2008-01-18T07:48:00.000-05:00

The barbarians are at the gates, or perhaps they have already entered. Peshawar is now intimidated by militant threats (the usual -- wear burqas, don't watch Bollywood movies, etc.).
Today's New York Times has an article by Jane Perlez, Frontier Insurgency Spills Into a Pakistani City.

The Taliban and their militant sympathizers now hold strategic pockets on the city’s outskirts, the police say, from where they strike at the military and the police, order schoolgirls to wear the burqa and blow up stores selling DVDs, among other acts of violence.
Suicide bombings, bomb explosions and missile attacks occurred an average of once a week here in 2007, according to a tally by the city’s police department. In 2006, while there were occasional grenade attacks and explosions, the authorities did not record a single suicide bombing or rocket attack inside the city.
The proximity of Peshawar to the tribal areas where the Taliban and Al Qaeda have regrouped in the past two years makes the city a feasible prize for the militants in Pakistan’s quickly escalating internal strife that pits the Islamic extremists against the American-backed government of President Pervez Musharraf.

The tribal areas are practically ruled by the jihadis already. On Wednesday, they attacked a fort in South Waziristan, killed 27 members of the Frontier Corps paramilitary units, and occupied it.
But this is a "settled area", like the Swat valley, which the Pakistan Army thinks it controls. As we say in the subcontinent, are they wearing bangles? And there is disturbing news about junior officers and other ranks refusing to fight, instead surrendering to the jihadis.

They still don't get it

2008-01-16T09:14:00.000-05:00

A scoop on the destruction of the CIA tapes is in today's Washington Post.

How did the director of clandestine operations Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., decide to order them to be destroyed?

[...] senior CIA and White House officials advised against destroying the tapes, but without expressly prohibiting it, leaving an odd vacuum of specific instructions on a such a politically sensitive matter. They said that Rodriguez then interpreted this silence -- the absence of a decision to order the tapes' preservation -- as a tacit approval of their destruction.

"Jose could not get any specific direction out of his leadership" in 2005, one senior official said. Word of the resulting destruction, one former official said, was greeted by widespread relief among clandestine officers, and Rodriguez was neither penalized nor reprimanded, publicly or privately, by then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss, according to two officials briefed on exchanges between the two men.

See the pattern here? The administration makes public statements like "we need to get tough" and "forward-leaning", directly calls public officials from the Vice President's office to exert pressure for quick results, and when the officials ask for explicit direction, gives only legalese and leaves ambiguity. See full article by Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus here.

And here's the upside-down priority list again: as to why Rodriguez's boss Porter Goss didn't reprimand him for destroying the tapes,

"Frankly, there were more important issues that needed to be focused on, such as trying to preserve a critical [interrogation] program and salvage relationships that had been damaged because of the leaks" about the existence of the secret prisons, said a former agency official familiar with Goss's position at the time.

So, relationships had been damaged because of the leaks about the existence of the secret prisons. What about the damage caused to the country because of the secret prisons?

Surprising candor

2008-01-15T03:56:00.000-05:00

A surprisingly frank article on Pakistan's ISI appeared in the New York Times today.

"Militants escape control of Pakistan," says the headline, above a nice shot of Musharraf and Kayani.
Obvious and hardly news, certainly, but these things are usually not talked about so directly in the U.S. press. Here are some more bald statements, attributed to "former ISI officials" and "officials close to the agency":

In the 1990s, the ISI supported the militants as a proxy force to contest Indian-controlled Kashmir.
In the 1980s, the United States supported militants, too, funneling billions of dollars to Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan through the ISI, vastly increasing the agency’s size and power.

As to whether Musharraf was playing a "double game", as is commonly believed:

[F]ormer Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that Mr. Musharraf had ordered [after 9/11] a crackdown on all militants. It was never fully carried out, however, because of opposition within his government and within ISI, they said.
Some senior ministers and officials in Mr. Musharraf’s government sympathized with the militants and protected them, former intelligence officials said. Still others advised a go-slow approach, fearing a backlash against the government from the militants.
Inside the ISI, there was division as well. One part of the ISI hunted down militants, the officials said, while another continued to work with them.

See entire NYT article here.

These facts have been available for many months; some of them for years. Why come out with them now?

Our planet, but not yours

2008-01-14T13:51:00.000-05:00

Tata Motors's plan to produce a $2,500 car (see article in Forbes magazine) has launched many op-eds. The most comprehensive of these is probably Mira Kamdar's in today's Washington Post. After many paragraphs of predictable hand-wringing about how, if millions of Indians and Chinese start to own cars, the planet is doomed, she ends with:

As one college student told me last year: "Just when we can finally start to enjoy the things you people have had for decades -- cars, air conditioners -- you tell us, 'Sorry, too late, you can't now.' I mean, you created this mess. You won't reduce your consumption, but you tell us we can't increase ours."

She has a point.

Sure, she does. (See Mira Kamdar's entire op-ed in the Washington Post.) The question is, what are we going to do about it? Mira Kamdar says,

We can only hope that India and other Asian countries emulate our good new habits rather than our bad old ones.

What "good" habits would these be? She mentions that New York city is planning to tax cars and make bicycles more convenient, but maybe we should wait until these plans are converted to reality, before prescribing them for India. In fact, all of the environmental problems of the globe are here already, whereas India's billion cars aren't going to be here until years from now and are a marginally relevant distraction from what we need to do today.

But Kamdar is promoting her new book.

Ah, now it all becomes much clearer...

Pakistan: what is to be done

2008-01-03T10:47:00.000-05:00

Prof. Barnett R. Rubin of NYU has a totally incisive piece on the current situation and prospects for Pakistan. He makes a few minor mistakes, but overall this is the best analysis I have read in a while.

Rubin covers in one place, among other things:

The motivations of Musharraf and the military.
The forgotten supreme court that Musharraf has hijacked and Bush has abandoned.
The ISI's systematic vote rigging, which Bhutto was about to expose when she was killed.

Here's the concluding paragraph of this long, highly recommended posting:

A genuine free election in Pakistan today could very well confront President Musharraf with a parliament that would not recognize him and that would openly challenge the power of the army. But the military no longer has the capacity or legitimacy to rule Pakistan. The time for a pacted transition is past. The choice before Pakistan is democracy or disintegration.

In this conclusion, he agrees with Ahmed Rashid's article in Yale Global, another recommended op-ed.

Also read the International Crisis Group's report published yesterday:

[...] the policy outcomes that need to happen over the next two months, and which should be strongly and consistently supported by the international community, and particularly those like the U.S. most capable of influencing them, are:

Musharraf’s resignation, with Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro taking over under the constitution as acting president and appointing neutral caretaker governments at the national and provincial levels with the consensus of the major political parties in all four federal units;

postponement of the polls, accompanied with the announcement of an early new election date. The Election Commission announced on 2 January a postponement until 18 February. This is reasonable in and of itself but it said nothing about the other crucial changes discussed in this Briefing and which are needed if this step is to contribute to restoration of democracy in Pakistan;

full restoration of the constitution, including an independent judiciary and constitutionally guaranteed fundamental freedoms of speech, assembly and association and safeguards against illegal arrest and detention;

reconstitution of the Election Commission of Pakistan, with the consensus of all major political parties; and

the transfer of power and legitimate authority to elected civilian hands.

Hear, hear. Also, while we're at it, we'd also like the U.S. constitution to be reinstated, including the entire Bill of Rights.

No security for Bhutto

2008-01-01T14:28:00.000-05:00

Bhutto was denied proper security by the Pakistan government, according to Indian experts who provide similar security to ex-Prime Ministers and other VIPs.

The SPG official is of the firm opinion that the upgrades might have saved Ms Bhutto’s life. According to him, four cardinal principles of security for high-risk targets were violated in the course of Ms Bhutto’s campaign rally at the Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi [...]

Ms Bhutto’s vehicle should have been shielded from the crowd by the presence of other escort cars, which would have rendered it more difficult for an attacker to find a suitable line of fire. This was indeed one of the complaints listed in her e-mail [to American confidant Mark Siegel].

See full story by Praveen Swami in the Hindu newspaper. (SPG = Special Protection Group, a specialized protection force formed by India's interior ministry following a review after Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984. They are considered highly effective and conversant with the security requirements for VIPs in South Asia).

Some commentators in the West have written that Bhutto should have arranged for her own security. But these measures require permission from the authorities: permission which was not granted to Bhutto. And as an ex-Prime Minister, she was entitled to proper security; security that she repeatedly demanded but was never given.

In light of the clear danger to her, and the bombing of her homecoming rally in October, there is simply no excuse behind which the Musharraf government can hide. They killed the woman, as surely as pulling the trigger. And now they are trying to cover it up by intimidating the doctors who tended to her.

Doctors without orders

2008-01-01T14:14:00.000-05:00

The doctors who tried to revive Benazir Bhutto in her final hours are now afraid for their lives.

Pakistani authorities have pressured the medical personnel who tried to save Benazir Bhutto's life to remain silent about what happened in her final hour and have removed records of her treatment from the facility, according to doctors.
In interviews, doctors who were at Bhutto's side at Rawalpindi General Hospital said they were under extreme pressure not to share details about the nature of the injuries that the opposition leader suffered in an attack here Dec. 27.
"The government took all the medical records right after Ms. Bhutto's time of death was read out," said a visibly shaken doctor who spoke on condition of anonymity [...]

See full report by Emily Wax and Griff Witte in the Washington Post.

This entire report is so consistent with the Musharraf government's incompetent bungling, that it's totally believable. They are certainly hiding something.

A reassuring thought

2007-12-30T20:47:00.000-05:00

Here's a gem of American foreign policy thinking: a blog from the editors of Foreign Policy magazine.

Blake Hounshell writes that we shouldn't be depending on individuals in Pakistan, but instead encouraging democracy. That's good advice, but here's how he ends his analysis:

[...] stringent U.S. oversight has ensured that Pakistan’s pro-Western military would retain firm control over the country's nuclear arsenal. Indeed, Pakistan's military would still wield a great deal of power under any civilian leader, as it did under Bhutto and Sharif. It's a reassuring thought.

See full post here.

Oh, great. So, we should be reassured that the Pakistan military will retain power and firm control over the nuclear arsenal?

This would be the same Pakistan military that:

Is known to have spread nuclear technology among many "rogue states", and now continues to shield A.Q. Khan from any questioning by atomic energy experts or by the U.S. government?
Remains a closed mafia whose budgets cannot be audited, which acquires public land and resources illegally, which can place retired officers as CEOs in any public sector undertaking, and is not answerable to any civilian government in Pakistan?
Indoctrinates its officers and jawans to believe that civilians are corrupt and that the military alone knows what is best for the country (obviously untrue, given today's sorry state of Pakistan)?
Uses its intelligence services to spy on, intimidate, and assassinate journalists and politicians, and uses jihadis to achieve its own ill-conceived objectives?

With this kind of "stringent U.S. oversight", I guess we should all sleep well.

The hit on Benazir

2007-12-29T23:44:00.000-05:00

The Pakistan government's official version of events has changed twice, and it is hotly contested:

Authorities initially said she died from bullet wounds, but subsequently Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said Bhutto was killed when the shockwaves from the suicide bomb smashed her head into the sunroof as she tried to duck back inside the vehicle.

Bhutto's spokeswoman Sherry Rehman said, "We saw a bullet wound in the back of her neck. What the government is saying is actually dangerous and nonsensical. They are pouring salt on our wounds."

The government blamed the attack on Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Tehrik-i-Taliban, a newly formed coalition of Islamic militants along the Afghan border believed to be linked to al-Qaida and committed to waging holy war against the government.

But a spokesman for Mehsud, Maulana Mohammed Umer, said, "We strongly deny it. Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto."

See full story at the International Herald-Tribune.

The Pakistan government has rejected international probes into the assassination, saying that they are capable of handling it. Meanwhile, the rioting in Karachi and elsewhere continues.

Iraq was a distraction

2007-12-29T20:00:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post today chastised Barack Obama for saying that our misadventure in Iraq was a distraction from Pakistan (see editorial from today).

The editorial thundered:

After the candidate made the debatable assertion that the Iraq invasion strengthened al-Qaeda in Pakistan, his spokesman, David Axelrod, said Ms. Clinton "was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which we would submit was one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Qaeda, who may have been players in the event today."

What Obama actually said was "we were distracted from focusing on them [Pakistan]." (see quote on MSNBC).

The assertion that Iraq was a distraction from Pakistan is "debatable" only by people like the Washington Post editors, who first foolishly supported the Iraq war and now refuse to see the error of their ways---which is exactly Hillary Clinton's position. So we know whom the Washington Post editorial board will support.

Boston Brahmin will continue to read the Washington Post for their excellent reporting and analysis, but their editorial board needs to get a life. And Barack Obama is absolutely right.

Readers' Guide to Pakistan News

2007-12-28T10:11:00.000-05:00

It's hard to understand reports about Pakistan. Big-time pundits, who should know better, are spewing opinions without access to facts. So, Boston Brahmin decided to write this Readers' Guide. You need to read this guide in order to understand the news and spot those clueless op-eds:

Journalists in Pakistan are muzzled and intimidated. If you are a reporter, bad things can happen to you and your family, and you have no recourse. The news you see from Pakistan is constrained not to report or analyze events in a way that exposes the reporters to action. Many journalists report from abroad, and even there, they and their families are not safe. So the only news you see has effectively been vetted by the people who hold the power in Pakistan.
The people who hold the power in Pakistan are the landed gentry (a few hundred families, in a nation of 160 million), senior military officers, and the very rich. If you have the right connections in Pakistan, you can do anything; if you are an ordinary person, you have no rights. The political system has no checks and balances; the police, the intelligence agencies, and the courts are all subservient to the people who hold the power in Pakistan.
All political activity is monitored by the intelligence services. If you are a politician of any importance, you are assigned minders, your telephone and family are under surveillance, and you are followed. It is inconceivable that you are assassinated and the intelligence services have no idea what happened. Of course, the intelligence services may not share their knowledge with anyone, but they have a pretty good idea.
The current election process is completely rigged: Nawaz Sharif is banned from running; the king's party (PML-Q) gets to use government resources to campaign; the election commission and the supreme court are both staffed by Musharraf's cronies; and of course, the intelligence services are on duty to make doubly sure nothing untoward happens. No one in Pakistan believes in this process. Only the Americans support it. Which means:
Support from the U.S. is the kiss of death for any politician in Pakistan.

So, please keep in mind these facts as a background to any news coming out of Pakistan.

Who killed Benazir?

2007-12-28T08:35:00.000-05:00

Boston Brahmin didn't think he'd be posting again in 2007, but Benazir Bhutto was assassinated yesterday in Rawalpindi. With her died the hopes of millions of ordinary Pakistanis.

The earlier attack on her political rally in October had been a bomb that killed over 150 of her supporters but narrowly missed her. There are no leads in that crime either, although her supporters are sure the ISI and other Islamists in the Musharraf government are behind it, just as she has stated several times.

Obviously, dear reader, you must have seen the headlines of yesterday's assassination already. Here's something you might not have seen, in an unlikely place: Parade Magazine published a November interview with Benazir Bhutto. It is to appear on January 6th.

Here are her last words in the interview. Enjoy:

What would you like to tell President Bush? I ask this riddle of a woman.

She would tell him, she replies, that propping up Musharraf’s government, which is infested with radical Islamists, is only hastening disaster. "I would say, ‘Your policy of supporting dictatorship is breaking up my country.’ I now think al-Qaeda can be marching on Islamabad in two to four years."

Nice going, Bush.

Why I liked Om Shanti Om

2007-12-25T07:53:00.000-05:00

Have you seen yet?

Readers of Boston Brahmin know that I usually feel I've wasted my time after watching most Hindi movies. But I keep watching them because occasionally I like one. I'm glad we went to watch OSO in the theater this time.
I liked OSO for the following reasons:
1. It's great fun! Lots of laughs, catchy songs. Deepika Padukone is gorgeous, and there are also cameo appearances from lots of other beautiful and well known "babes", as the movie calls them.
2. There's lots of information about the Bombay film industry, because the characters are all in the movies. You see "spot boys" and "grips" on the sets. You see the hierarchy of workers and how they are still treated badly by the top bosses like stars and producers ("chup ay, ja coffee leke aa."). I had never seen this material before. Learned something.
3. Many old actors and movies are mentioned and shown, for the sake of nostalgia and poking fun at them. (Like the badminton song where the heroine hits a shot during a beat). To me, just seeing the old men like Jeetendra and Dharmendra for a minute one more time was worth the price of admission.
4. There's a hilarious scene where our hero is a candidate for a Filmfare award. In cameos from new and old actors and actresses, there are funny comments and satire. Recently I've been seeing this kind of thing in Hindi movies, but in OSO it's very well done.
The following things I didn't like about OSO: The plot is kind of ho-hum, SRK's and Deepika's acting ability is fairly limited, Kirron Kher and Bindu are getting irritating in the same role again and again, and the movie is too long. But the good points above more than make up for this. The kids liked it, too, although there is one scene of graphic violence amidst a huge fire that may be too intense for young viewers.

The problem is not Musharraf

2007-12-23T08:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's New York Times had an editorial about Pakistan's current problem (registration required):

Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, insists his outrageous power grabs are aimed at stabilizing and protecting his country. His authoritarian maneuvers only weaken the country’s already feeble political institutions and fuel more political turmoil.
[...]
His friends in Washington need to tell the former general and the Pakistani military — no matter what the polls say about his unpopularity — that trying to rig this vote is unacceptable.

But this would only try bolting the barn door after the horse has already fled. Today, in an op-ed piece by lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan (registration required), he provides a summary of the current problem in Pakistan:

The parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8 have already been rigged [...]. The election commission and the caretaker cabinet are overtly partisan. The judiciary is entirely hand-picked. State resources are being spent on preselected candidates. There is a deafening uproar even though the independent news media in Pakistan are completely gagged. Can there even be an election in this environment?

The vote, in other words, has already been rigged.

The problems with Pakistan go far beyond the current flouting of the rules by Pervez Musharraf. The NYT editorial above does mention "political institutions", which is on the right track. But most "analysis" in the U.S. press is simplistic ("He must do more to fight terrorism", "will the next army chief be pro-Western?", etc.)

Some root cause analysis is necessary. Plenty is at hand, but no one seems to be reading it. Here's one: a book called Military, Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy, by Ayesha Siddiqa.
In it, the author explains how the Pakistan military, primarily the Pakistan Army, gradually came to acquire power within Pakistan as an independent player.

The military in Pakistan has tremendous control over its own budget and has its own independent revenue-generating capabilities, formal and informal. Senior and retired army officers are assured of plum assignments in public-sector undertakings. The army continues to acquire public land and give it away to its own people and allies. It uses the state's resources and intelligence services to intimidate rivals and acquire money and power. Its budgets are largely un-audited, and starting in 2004, it has given an institutional role for itself in the highest level of decision making through the National Security Council. The Pakistan military is now a monster that is independent of the civilians who are supposed to control the military.

And over the years, it has been American tax dollars at work that have been feeding and continue to feed this monster. Bush's contribution stands at ten billion dollars, and counting. Congratulations!

Mitt, you are no John F. Kennedy

2007-12-16T20:33:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney's speech on December 7th (see CBS News story) was all about why Republican Evangelicals should support him despite his Mormon faith:

Almost 50 years ago, another candidate from Massachusetts explained that he was an American running for president, not a Catholic running for president. Like him, I am an American running for president. I do not define my candidacy by my religion.

So, Romney is comparing himself to John F. Kennedy in 1960. But JFK was answering one question only: would the Catholic church have any authority over him if he became president. And this is how he answered it:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president [should he be Catholic] how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference -- and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who elect him.

Whereas Romney said the exact opposite:

...in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America-the religion of secularism. They are wrong.'

In other words, the big problem with America today is the "War on Christmas": all those bad people who want to separate church from state.

So, it's even more important for Romney to answer the question that Kennedy answered: would he be influenced by his church if he became president?

I don't know if Romney can ever answer this question honestly, or whether his right-wing audience can even understand the question. Who knows? I suppose miracles do happen in God's Own Party.

Boston Brahmin is on again

2007-12-16T15:09:00.000-05:00

After a long hiatus, Boston Brahmin is back!

Here are my previous posts.