Musharraf Blames Everybody Except Himself

Here’s a rather interesting interview with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on 60 Minutes, where he invariably blames the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on, well, Benazir Bhutto. “We warned her” was the common refrain made by Musharraf, and “she chose to ignore it.”

In hindsight, Bhutto should have been more careful, but this does not, in any way, mitigate the crime. A murder was committed and no suspect has yet been apprehended, and no one has claimed responsibility. All we are left with are conspiracy theories and half-serious utterances by the government.

It was nice to see Musharraf squirm when asked about his complicity in Bhutto’s murder, and, under his leadership, Pakistan has become less secure, with Taliban and al-Qaeda ruling the tribal areas. Musharraf blamed the United States for this rotten state of affairs, of course, for not getting the job done in Afghanistan.

No doubt about it: Musharraf is a weasel.

Movie Review: Namastey London

I don’t watch many Bollywood movies for one, very obvious, reason—there mostly bad; worse than Hollywood, in fact. But I did manage to watch Namastey London over the weekend to fulfill my annual quota, and it was a bad choice. The film, in all honesty, is a piece of crap.

Namastey London is the type of jingoistic tripe Bollywood regularly churns out that reminds the world (and many Indians, in fact) that India suffers from some sort of post-colonial inferiority complex. It’s a film replete with scenes and dialogues insulting the West (in this case, India’s colonial masters, the British). A lot of fists in the air, slap on the backs sort of shtick one expects from a mediocre film like this and the cheap patriotism it portrays.

The story is the typical diaspora story. An Indian (Punjabi) family living in England: with a traditional father and a submissive mother and their out-of-control, westernized daughter. They don’t like the fact that she’s Western or that she’s involved with an Englishman (an evil, patronizing gora!), even though she has lived in England all her life. What do her parents expect to be, a traditional Punjabi girl?

Anyway, make a long story short. Parents decide daughter needs a strong Punjabi husband, and trick her into going to India in order to fix her marriage. Parents find the boy, like him, and arrange the marriage. Daughter resists until the end, while secretly planning to marry the Englishman, who, by the way, is wealthier than Queen Elizabeth II. Daughter finds that Punjabi husband is not some rube from the hinterlands of Punjab, but a modern, English-speaking man. Suffice it to say, she leaves her gora fiancé at the altar and goes back to India with Punjabi husband to live happily ever after. This is Bollywood’s ending, and it’s so typical. There are dozen films before Namastey London that do a much better job.

One wonder why Indians immigrate to other countries, which give them opportunities India could not, and then denigrate that country because of incompatible cultural issues—dating, religious, etc. The list is virtually endless.

Anyway, avoid this film. Katrina Kaif cannot act or speak a lick of Hindi. Mercifully, the only positive thing I can say about Namastey London is the fact that it was only two hours long.

Saddam Hussein: One Year Later

It’s been a whole year since Saddam Hussein was hanged yet there’s been only a handful of news items, much of it trivia, few celebratory. Iraqis, too, have moved on for the most part except for the handful of die-hard supporters in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, where his mausoleum is located, and whom few visit.

Saddam has failed to become the martyr his supporters claimed he would become. Yes, Saddam Hussein remains an icon, of sorts. Not someone who is revered, of course, but someone who is despised, and whose ultimate passing to be celebrated. Iraqis don’t seem to care, they have moved on to better and bigger things. Their future may or may not be bleak, at least it won’t include Saddam Hussein.

[via american footprints]

Does Iowa Matter?

I believe the Iowa caucuses are vastly overrated—and undemocratic, to boot. Paul over at Powerline sums it up nicely:

I haven’t yet figured out which candidate I support for president, but I know who I’m pulling for in Iowa: Mike Huckabee and John Edwards. It’s not that I want either to be president. On the contrary, they are among my least preferred candidates in their respective parties. So why root for them in Iowa? Because a victory by either would help discredit that state’s caucuses.

I find it offensive to think that 75,000 Iowans (or whatever the number is), a disproportionate number of whom have nothing to do for several hours on a week night, get to play a major role in the nomination process. Actually, I doubt that they play such a role – in my view the Iowa caucuses are vastly overrated. However, it’s generally thought that the caucuses are important, and that perception alone is enough to distort the process.

In our information-drenched society, who has the time to weigh the value of this pointless political exercise? If the media says it’s important—it must be important. The reality is, what happens in Iowa will have little or no impact on who ultimately gets the nomination. Aside from being the first state in the country to kick off the election cycle, what does Iowa, a small state, and the 75,000 Iowans who participate in the caucuses, have to offer? Very little except for talking points for the media, who have created the perception that Iowa matters.

Benazir Bhutto's Admiration Society

A laudatory letter about Benazir Bhutto by a female admirer in Dawn. An excerpt:

I grew up looking up to Ms Bhutto as a role model for women in Pakistan. I fell in love with her as she was elected Pakistan’s first female prime minster. And in all honesty, I was devastated to learn about her corruption charges. But this letter isn’t to discuss her weaknesses, be they political or personal. Indeed should you agree with her policies or not, there is one fact no one can deny. Benazir Bhutto was perhaps the most influential and positive role model for women in South Asia in particular, and the modern Muslim world as a whole

.If Benazir Bhutto proved anything it’s the fact that women are just as capable of men in ruling a nation. I’m afraid Benazir was not breaking any new ground on this score. Benazir Bhutto had a long list of women leaders to model herself after: Thatcher, Gandhi, Mier, etc. Benazir Bhutto also proved that she could be just as ruthless as her male counterparts, and equally as corrupt.

How Bilwal Is Like A Boy Band

Even though he lacks qualifications for office, Bilawal Bhutto Zaradari has one vocal base of support—female fans on Facebook:

Bilawal Bhutto, thrust into the political spotlight by the assassination of his mother in Pakistan, can count on support from at least one source -- female Facebook fans who describe him as "hot".

"Oh My God he's cute," said one contributor to "Let's not assassinate Bilawal Bhutto because he's hot, ok?," a new group on the social networking site after the 19-year-old was named last week to succeed his mother as leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

"Oh God, I totally agree. He's so sexy," added another member of the group, which so far had 48 members.

Like a boy band, Bilawal has a shelf life: he can be “hot” for only so long before being replaced by another “hottie” chosen by another generation of teeny-boppers. Hopefully, when that time comes, Bilawal will either have the political legs to lead the PPP, or fade into oblivion. If Bilwal does manage to stick around, he can return to the serious tasks of resurrecting the memories of his mother, his uncles and grandfather.

Book Review: Come Hell Or High Water

Michael Eric Dyson’s Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster is an ineloquent survey of the government’s response—or lack of it—to the hurricane that devastated the mostly poor residents of New Orleans. Dyson’s book examines the disaster at the intersection of class and race and how government neglect made a bad situation worse.

Nothing Dyson has written is new. New Orleans, a predominately black city, is one of the poorest, crime-ridden cities in the nation. Years of benign neglect by federal, state and local government have taken its toll. What Katrina did was to bring it to the fore. It was attention grabber when thousands of Orleanites, mostly black and mostly poor, were stranded waiting for anyone to help them.

Dyson places most of the blame on the federal government for not doing much before, during or after the hurricane. I would have to agree with Dyson that the federal government’s response—or lack of it—bordered on the criminal. But it’s unfair to place the whole blame on the federal government, in my opinion, when both the state and local government were equally sluggish in their respnse to Katrina.

And Dyson does not see the response to Katrina as an isolated incident, but as a problem with the system itself. Now this is where Dyson goes off the rails. He cites government cutbacks on welfare, housing and other social programs, starting in the 1980’s, after the election of Reagan, as the culprit. If this were so, then all blacks, regardless of geography would be worse off, right? But all social indicators say that blacks have made substantial advancements in many areas, leading many to enter not only the middle-class, but upper classes as well. Something other than institutionalized racism ails New Orleans.

I don’t think Come Hell or High Water is the best book on Katrina. For one thing, it’s badly written, which I found to be exasperating and tedious. Dyson is an academic and writes like one: though the book is straightforward, Dyson often veers toward the pedantic, and often gets caught in the thicket of acadamese. There is nothing intimate about the book; it’s all facts and figures, like a college textbook or delivering a paper at some symposium. You don’t hear the voices of Katrina victims aside from brief testimonials at the beginning of each chapter.

Cuba Accuses US Of Killing Fleeing Citizens

Cuba accuses the United States for the death of its citizens who try to flee the island. From Granma:

CUBA condemned Thursday the policies of the United States that incite illegal emigration by residents of the island to that country, with resulting human fatalities, as occurred this past December 22.

According to a communication from the Ministry of the Interior, read out yesterday on the Cuban “Roundtable” TV program, two Cubans perished on Saturday, December 22 after the speedboat in which they were attempting to leave the country capsized one kilometer off the northern coast of Havana province.

…At the same time, the communication concludes, investigations are continuing into this unfortunate accident whose root cause is the murderous U.S. Cuban Adjustment Act, which incites illegal emigration and the lucrative activities of the Cuban American mafia in South Florida.

Naturally, a mouthpiece like Granma, is not going to ask the first question that pops in one’s head when these incidents happen: why are people risking life and limb, including arrest, to flee to the United States, a bastion of capitalist exploitation, from a worker’s paradise like Cuba, where education and healthcare is free, and everybody is happy?

If you read the whole article, human trafficking seems to be the main motivating factor. Cuba is rationalizing that the “Cuban mafia” in Miami is somehow forcing people to flee, for the purposes of slave labor. If human trafficking is indeed the goal, it is half-ass way of going about it. In fact, it’s cheaper to bring people over the Mexican border than it is from Cuba.

Keeping It In The Family

In a previous post, I wrote that it was doubtful that any of Benazir Bhutto's children would take their mother's place since they are a tad young, spent their formative years overseas, and are only half-Bhuttos. I was wrong. Bhutto's 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zaradari, has been appointed to lead one of Pakistan's major political parties. He has no political experience other than being his mother's son. Below is a video of a press conference announcing his appointment.



It seems like Bilawal's father, Asif Zaradari, a character in his own right, does most of the talking. Bilawal, when he does talk, speaks in a clipped, anglicized English, betraying his expensive private school education. He belongs on the polo field, not the bloodsport that is Pakistani politics.

The appointment of Bilawal proves that dynastic politics run deep in South Asia, which is a tragedy since it also proves that the PPP is a cult of personality, not a political party.

Capitalizing On Bhutto's Death

Bhutto’s body has barely been put to rest and it's already grist for America’s political mill:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton on Friday accused the camp of rival Sen. Barack Obama of politicizing the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Sen. Hillary Clinton says she regrets that Sen. Barrack Obama's camp "would be politicizing this tragedy."

"I just regret that [Obama and his chief strategist] would be politicizing this tragedy, and especially at a time when we do need to figure out a way forward," Clinton said Friday in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Politics is such a brutish business.

Death Of An Icon

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is tragic but hardly surprising. The Bhuttos are streaked with fatalism. Their history reads like a Greek tragedy. Benazir’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged by President Zia ul-Haq on bogus charges, purportedly to get rid of a potential rival. Both of Benazir’s brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, are dead: the former in a police altercation, and the latter on the French Riviera, under mysterious circumstance, presumably through poisoning. The only Bhutto remaining is a younger sister, Sanam, but there is little information about her except that she’s married and has two children. Will she carry the torch for the PPP, a party founded by her father?

Many critics are saying that this will be a blow for democracy in Pakistan. Really? I don’t think so. The democracy practiced in Pakistan has been a half-hearted affair, at best. Democratic institutions were never allowed to mature beyond what their power hungry leaders—and the military—wanted. Benazir Bhutto was equally guilty of this, and she was Prime Minister not once, but twice. In fact, Bhutto was no more democratic than her rival, Nawaz Sharif. To say that democracy in Pakistan is in danger is utter foolishness when democracy was never there to begin with.

The only thing that an assassin’s bullets and bombs accomplished was to splinter the PPP, which was essentially a cult of personality for the Bhutto clan. Who will lead them now? Party workers are already on the prowl, looking for the next Bhutto to lead them to the promise land. Benazir’s children, perhaps? Doubtful. Since they’re not only young but are half-Bhuttos, and their father, a likely candidate, is not only unremarkable, but a grafting charlatan to boot.

Book Review: We Are All Suspects Now

There is a lot to like about Tram Nguyen’s book, We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11, and there is plenty not to like. Nguyen writes an intimate book about the plight of immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, in post-9/11 America. The maltreatment of illegal immigrants at the hands of the U.S. government is revealed in painful personal testimonies and vivid profiles.

Nguyen covers a lot of ground in her svelte volume: arrest and disappearance of illegal immigrants, harassment of asylum seekers, special registration for young Muslim men, racial profiling, the militarization of the border, and those fleeing the United States for safer pastures.

Naturally, most of the victims are Muslims. They have borne the brunt of the government’s war on terrorism given the fact that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Muslims in the name Islam, even though most Muslims had nothing to do with it. Hysteria ruled the day. And it still does. Nguyen treats this and other issues well with her straightforward writing.

Nevertheless, while reading the book, I sensed an undercurrent of contempt for the sovereignty of the United States. The problem with Nguyen is that she’s a bleeding heart; and what goes unsaid is that she is also a supporter of open borders. She treats those who oppose this as, well, hicks. Take, for example, her treatment of Chris Simcox, whose only concern is to defend America’s borders from illegal immigrants and criminal gangs who smuggle drugs. Not a violent fellow at all, but Nguyen treats Simcox like a racist and a right-wing kook, even though a majority of Americans support his opinion.

Another thing I dislike about Nguyen’s book is that she conflates both illegal immigration and terrorism into one issue, when, in many cases, they are mutually exclusive. In her mind if an illegal immigrant (or, in her parlance, “undocumented’) is cleared of any links to terrorism, they should be simply released. This is wrongheaded and muddled thinking. Just because an illegal immigrant doesn’t have a connection to terrorism he or she does not cease to be illegal!

Illegal immigrants may not be violent criminals like murderers and rapists, but they are lawbreakers; people who skirted the law to get to this country illegally. Nguyen shamelessly treats them as victims. This is a slap to the face of all those legal immigrants who followed the law and patiently waited their turn. Of course, they are nowhere to be found in her book.

This being said, I don’t want to thought of as some cold-hearted idealists. I’m a realist and pragmatic. I do believe that the United States needs a sensible policy on immigration, but opening the borders is not the answer.

India: No One Writes Letters Anymore

Excellent article in The New York Times about the dying industry of professional letter writing in India. The article profiles one G.P. Sawant, who claims he hasn’t written a letter in three years! The culprit? Globalization, internet, and high mobile phone penetration.

I remember when my mother use to write letters to Bangladesh and India on those familiar blue air mail paper slips, and receive them in turn. Those days are long gone, of course: now calling costs pennies a minute, IM and e-mail are equally intimate—as a result, no one writes letters anymore. Hence there is no need for professional letter writers like Mr. Sawant, who, long retired, idyllically passes his time away at his stand, just in case that one person might need a letter written.

[via kottke]

Watching Football Is Not A Human Right

I didn’t know that watching a football game was a human right the way some politicians are bleating about it. So what if many New England Patriots fans will be unable to watch their team make history simply because of geography. The answer is simple: get cable, or a satellite dish, and subscribe to the NFL Network, who is broadcasting the game; or better yet, go to someone’s house who already has the NFL Network, bring some beer and/or food as compensation; or, finally, just visit your neighborhood tavern, who will undoubtedly be broadcasting the game in order to drum up business. There is no paucity of choices, just the will to seek them out.

In the meantime, we have politicians threatening the NFL with fire and brimstone if it doesn’t put the game on “free television”, threatening to eliminate the NFL’s anti-trust exemption. Yeah, like the NFL still needs anti-trust exemption these days. I believe Congress should just butt out and let the NFL (a private business), NFL Network (a cable network owned by the NFL), and the fans (a private group) sort it out.

[via alarming news]

Book Review: Reporting By David Remnick

A writer of immense talent, I’d much prefer David Remnick write for The New Yorker rather than wasting away editing it. In the meantime, I’ll be very content rereading his collection of articles, Reporting: Writings From The New Yorker. Most article and essay collections are tedious bores, assembled as vanity pieces, often as fillers between publications of new books.

Not this book. Each article is a joy. Written in a simple, elegant and personal style that is Remnick’s hallmark: intelligent without being pedantic; sophisticated without being pretentious; serious without being taken too seriously—the comparisons are almost endless.

The volume is divided over five sections—politics, writers, Russia, Israel, and boxing. An eclectic mix of subjects, to be sure, but in the fine hands of David Remnick there is a rare chance he won’t dazzle you with his witty journalism and keen insights. His profiles on Philip Roth and Don Delillo, both iconoclastic American novelists, provide a glimpse of these very private people yet reminds us of their aloofness. Remnick’s articles on boxing are a remarkable commentary on the sports fading glory while describing its moral degeneracy personified by the rather loathsome, though talented, Mike Tyson.

The articles contained in this collection are to be savored and enjoyed, not consumed like fast food. Read them (and reread them) at your leisure, and for your pleasure. They demand it.