nirajastan

My one and only resolution for 2012, that I know I will break, is to blog more…

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I know I’m coming to this late, but, damn, this lady can sing:

A very soulful song with great lyrics. Adele is one in a long line of British singers– late Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Joss Stone– who are bringing much needed soul into an increasingly stale pop scene.

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I’m currently reading Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabiaon my Kindle and have encountered problems and limitations the reading device offers; though not displeasing it’s definitely annoying.

• Often times I have encountered words that are treated as one when they are clearly suppose to be separate. For example, ‘and less’ reads as ‘andless’, which is not correct. This is due to the publisher’s sloppiness.
• Since this is a biography, it is littered with footnotes. Accessing footnotes on the Kindle is a chore, as they are listed at the end of the chapter instead of the bottom of the page in the printed book. Kindle does offer a hyperlink, but it doesn’t link to a specific footnote, just the general one. Again this is due more to the publisher’s laziness then anything else.
• This books contain a plethora of pictures which are just not as clear or vibrant on the Kindle as they are in the book. This is an example of the Kindle’s many limitations. Digital ink is great for words but lousy for pictures.

The technological limitations is an hindrance, but I still love my Kindle, knowing full well the technology will only get better with time.

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I’m slowly acquiring all the books written by late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski. I have three of his brilliant books in my possession:

• Another Day of Life
• Shah of Shahs
• Travels with Herodotus

I’ve only read Shah of Shahs. A brilliant piece of literary journalism about the fall of the Shah of Iran during the 1979 revolution. After I read it, I said to myself: I want to write like him. Even though these books are English translations (Kapuscinski only wrote in Polish), his genius shines through. Like many writers, his power is the economy and elegance of his prose.

I highly recommend him.

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The trailer for the American version The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is finally out. It looks really, really good:

Wired has more details on the movie here. It’s good to note that it is being directed by David Fincher, so it will be dark and twisted– and very good! The movie won’t be released until December 2011. This leaves me plenty of time to read all three of the novels and watch the Swedish versions of the films.

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New documentary about seminal hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest coming this summer. Check out the trailer:

MovieLine has more details. Looks good.

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Brig. Asif Haroon Raja (Ret.) is at it again: distorting history for propaganda purposes:

India under Nehru inflicted deep wounds to Pakistan at the time of partition. Not only the border between India and Pakistan was unjustly demarcated to make rich lands belonging to Pakistan become part of India, India gobbled all the 535 princely states including Muslim majority Junagadh, Hyderabad Deccan, Manavadar and Kashmir wanting to accede to Pakistan. Corridor to Kashmir via Gurdaspur and Pathankot was allotted to India to allow it access to Kashmir. Bengal and Punjab were unfairly halved; no land corridor was provided to Pakistan to link eastern and western parts placed 1000 miles apart with a sea in between. All these injustices were made possible with the help of conniving Mountbatten-Radcliff combine. Having got the major share and leaving crumbs for Pakistan, Hindu and Sikh leaders still didn’t reconcile to the partition plan, they unleashed Hindu RSS thugs and Sikh marauders to carryout massive slaughter of migrating Muslims from East Punjab to West Punjab and from Bihar and Orissa to East Pakistan in 1947.

If Brig. Raja has issue with the way Pakistan came to be, he should make his complaints about Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the entire leadership of the Muslim League, who negotiated all the particulars, central to his ridiculous column . Blame them for selling Pakistan down the river. Of course, Brig. Raja will not utter a word of criticism against Jinnah, as this would disrupt the narrative, but blames Hindus for his country’s misfortunes, which is a time-honored tradition of Pakistani hypernationalists like Brig. Raja.

Brig. Raja is among those sections of the Pakistani right- wing who pine for the days when the Mughals ruled India. They are, often then not, swept up by the romanticism of it all, even though Mughals were in their waning days when the British formally took over. It would’ve been nice if the British returned India to Muslims after they left, but instead connived with Hindus to cheat Muslims out of their birthright.

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Still too early to draw conclusions about the terrorist attack on PNS Mehran, which is near Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, as the story is still evolving, but it’s never too early to start asking questions, if anything, to help drive answers. So here they are:

• Why was this particular base, in a country full of military bases, attacked?
• Why was the Pakistan Navy, the branch of the military least involved in the “global war on terror”, the target?
• What was security like at PNS Mehran and why was it so lax?
• Did the terrorists have help from the inside?
• Did the ISI have any intelligence about this attack? If they did, why didn’t they act on it?
• No heads rolled as result of Osama bin Laden fiasco, will it be the same here?
• Were foreign powers, in any, involved?
• And the big one: where does Pakistan go from here?

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This is a column written by a certain Brig (R) Asif Haroon Raja, a former Pakistani army officer. He calls himself a defense analyst, but he is more of a propagandist. Just read the first paragraph:

INDIA had waged a war in 1947 to annex princely state of Kashmir and prevent it from acceding to Pakistan. But for valiant response action of Pak Army and Azad forces, India would have gobbled up whole of it. Indian forces invaded Pakistan in 1965 without formally declaring war so as to destroy Pak armed forces but could not do so. Within six years Pakistan was once again invaded but after sufficiently weakening it from within through subversion and signing a treaty with former Soviet Union. As a consequence, Pakistan was broken into two. Despite the 1971 disaster and despite India going nuclear in 1974 Pakistan could not be overawed by India owing to ZA Bhutto’s leadership qualities. India tried hard to browbeat Pakistan but each of its intended military assault got thwarted owing to Pakistan’s tenacious resolve to fight back.

India started wars with Pakistan twice? This is what they call a whopper! Even a cursory Google search will clearly state that in 1947 and 1965, it was Pakistan who started wars with India, both over Kashmir. The war in East Pakistan was started by India, but the cause was Pakistan’s brutal repression of its Bengali citizens. Again a cursory Google search will borne this out. Nevertheless, the truth of the matter is, Pakistan has started three out of the four wars fought with India, and lost all of them.

But this has not stopped certain quarters of Pakistan, especially retired military officers, to distort history for propaganda purposes. That this column was published in the Daily Mail is no surprise. It is a questionable paper– the publisher of a fake WikiLeaks story and employs imaginary journalists– that is connected the military and intelligence establishments. I would recommend reading Pakistan Media Watch, a great web site that exposes Pakistan media’s perfidy.

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Steve Chapman offers a libertarian perspective on what the United States should do about Pakistan. Chapman describes relations between the two allies in the war on terror akin to a bad marriage:

Some marriages can’t be saved, and this looks like one of them. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government has treated Pakistan as an indispensable asset while leaning on its rulers to do our bidding. They have taken the money and, often as not, sabotaged our interests. The Obama administration, however, resists all calls to end or curtail our aid.

The crux of the problem is the lack of trust on both sides and lack of respect for the other’s concerns and interests. Marriage without trust is not a marriage at all.

Chapman continues:

The fault lies as much with us as with them. For nearly 10 years, the U.S. has been waging war next door. Lately it has also been waging war inside Pakistan with unmanned drones that are used to kill jihadists but sometimes slaughter innocents. How many Pakistani troops in Mexico, or errant Pakistani bombs exploding in California, would it take before Americans got fed up?

Most people, including me, like to blame Pakistan for everything that is wrong in Afghanistan, but it’s just not fair (or realistic) to place blame solely at Islamabad’s feet. The war in Afghanistan has been misguided from the start. What was suppose to be a brief mission to eradicate Al-Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan has degenerated into a pointless and very-costly nation-building exercise. The war with the Taliban has been nothing less than a stalemate, pre-surge and post-surge.

Pakistan has bared the brunt of these ill-thought out plans and they are sick of it and no longer want any part of it. I think the United States should oblige them

The United States should also oblige the American taxpayer, who is footing much of the bill. The money spent so far has not only been misspent but has not achieved the desired result. Chapman writes:

Not only that, but our money usually gets used for bad purposes. Wright says the army and the intelligence service “created and nurtured the very groups—such as the Taliban—that have turned against the Pakistani state. And the money used to fund these radical organizations came largely from American taxpayers.”

So maybe American taxpayers should do something less harmful with their money, like place it in a box, wrap it up with a big red bow and set it on fire. The United States has an interest in the direction taken by Pakistan. But we have a better chance of good results if we pull back than if we remain actively engaged, locked in endless conflict with a government whose goals are at odds with our own.

These wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Global War on Terror, and now Libya) is one of the main reasons why the United States is in a recession and federal debt is climbing to astronomical levels. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the subsequent cut in aid will force Pakistan to make some tough choices. Critics who say non-military aid should continue are delusional. All aid is fungible. For every dollar in non-military aid given to Pakistan is one dollar Pakistan spends less on social development and one dollar more for its over-bloated military. And, most important, If Pakistan wants the United States to respects its sovereignty, stop taking its aid.

Critics say that aid is necessary to prevent Pakistan’s nukes from falling under the wrong hands– terrorists. But Chapman dismisses such claims. He writes:

It’s often argued that the U.S. has to provide aid to keep the country’s nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of radicals. But Pakistan’s rulers already have ample incentive to secure their stockpile—if only to keep it from being seized by the U.S. or India.

Giving money to Pakistan to keep it nukes safe is simply surrendering to blackmail. But Chapman is essentially correct when he says Pakistan has incentives to secure its nukes.

I don’t agree with everything Chapman says in his article. For one thing, his claim that American presence in Afghanistan is only fueling extremism in Pakistan is only partially right. Many Muslim extremists simply want the United States to go home and leave them alone, but there are certain groups, chiefly Al-Qaeda, who want to incite a “clash of civilizations” with the West. Not for anything the West has done, but for simply existing.

This being said, there needs to be a balance and lucid approach to fighting terrorism, but occupying Afghanistan is not the answer.

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