trump reveals who we really are

Blogging serves me in many ways.  It helps me think and learn.  Sometimes, the posts are also bookmarks for me to use the materials in my classes.  And, yes, in the lonely life, the possibility of having substantive conversations in the cyber-salon ...

Above and beyond that, blogging, like any kind of writing, is therapeutic.  If not for the writing, I would have become a wreck from all the internal struggles.

Even when I have plenty of time, I usually post only once a day here.  It is all a part of the regimented life.  But then there are exceptions.  Like today.

I want to let go of an issue that has been bothering me for a couple of weeks.  Ever since trump shrugged away the brutal murder of a Saudi journalist, who was a permanent resident here in the US, by talking about the billions of dollars of arms trade with the Saudis.

Like many people, I too found that equation to be disgusting.  And tweeted in plenty.

But, there is more to it. 

America looking the other way is not anything new.  The US has a long and dirty track record of supporting thugs who abuse, torture, and kill their people.  We even affectionately called it the our-son-of-a-bitch policy, as in, "“He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

trump merely makes that SOB approach public.  As with everything else, he is the most transparent politician we have ever had, except when it comes to his own taxes!

When it comes to important trading partners, or allies in some strategic geopolitical arrangements, the US has more often than not looked the other way when those partners commit horrible abuses.  We have always done that, as a government and as businesses.

We were crass then, and are crass now.  trump has merely revealed who we really are.

I have blogged in plenty here on this issue. My favorite is about how we treat the Dalai Lama.

Because we "value" the trade with China, we have always prostrated before the Chinese and obeyed their commands on how we dealt with the Dalai Lama.  Back in 2009, I even authored an op-ed on this.

Remember who the President was in 2009?  Yep, the "liberal" and "principled" Obama.

I wrote there about "the remarkably under-reported news that President Obama has “quietly postponed an audience with the Dalai Lama until after he visits China in November.”

Why did Obama postpone his meeting?  Because he wanted to keep the Chinese leaders happy.  The very leaders who were making life miserable for the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans, the Uighurs, and, heck, the entire country.  Human rights and freedom were not what the Chinese leaders cared for.  And Obama said ok to them.

I wrote there: "The postponement of the meeting confirms, yet again, the triumph of realpolitik over principles."

That was a mere meeting.  With somebody who does not even have an army.  Whose only "weapons" are words of kindness and humanity.  Yet, Obama wussed out and did not want to stand up to the Chinese leaders.  Tell me again why trump's comment on the Saudi arms sales is different from Obama's behavior?

We have always played fast and loose with moral principles.  We were selective about morality.  trump takes that to a logical conclusion by revealing the stark nakedness of our situation.

Of course, the torture and murder of an individual is atrocious. Of course, we should rise in protest.  But, keep this in mind whenever a Democrat is in the Oval Office too.  Do not give her a pass just because she is from your party!

Like I said, getting all these out is therapeutic.  I can now go on about my day!

Eid Mubarak!

"What did you cook for Eid?" I asked my sister.

Of course, there is no Eid celebration in the traditional Hindu household.  But, she played along.  "I should have cooked mutton."

The month-long Ramadan fast comes to an end.

Here's a thought: Have you asked yourself how people in Yemen or Syria might observe Eid when they are in the middle of terrible wars?  Especially in Yemen, which the United Nations has declared as one hell of a humanitarian crisis?

First, a recap of conditions in Yemen:

Yemen’s civil war has already led to what the United Nations described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis — at least three million displaced by fighting, a cholera epidemic that is now the largest outbreak ever recorded, and eight million people on the brink of starvation.

You think people there were thinking about Eid in such a situation?

Source

And, guess what?  Saudi Arabia, which is where Islam began, and the country leading a coalition in order to fight the proxy war against Iran, decided that such a humanitarian crisis is not enough.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and UAE-backed Yemeni forces launched an assault to retake Hodeidah, a Houthi-held port city through which 70 to 80 percent of commercial and humanitarian supplies enter Yemen.

Why is this a big fucking deal?

“A military attack or siege on Hodeidah will impact hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians,” Lisa Grande, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, warned in a statement  before the offensive began. “In a prolonged worst case, we fear that as many as 250,000 people may lose everything — even their lives.”

The misery is well into three years now:

The Saudis and Emiratis intervened in the war three years ago with hopes of a quick victory over the Houthis, whom they see an Iranian proxy. Instead, the two nations have been stuck in a quagmire.

Perhaps you wonder what the US is up to here.  After all, America rarely stays away from any opportunity to bomb the shit out of brown people, as George Carlin liked to say.  Right?  Especially when we now have a President who hates brown-skinned shitholers and he also hates Iran.  So, this Yemen war is a twofer:

With little public attention or debate, the president has already expanded US military assistance to his Saudi and UAE allies – in ways that are prolonging the Yemen war and increasing civilian suffering. Soon after Trump took office in early 2017, his administration reversed a decision by former president Barack Obama to suspend the sale of over $500m in laser-guided bombs and other munitions to the Saudi military, over concerns about civilian deaths in Yemen.

But, don't ever think that Obama was any angel of peace.  I have blogged a lot about that when was the President.  In this August 2016 post, for instance, I worried that Obama's legacy will include droning the shit out of brown people!

While who is the Oval Office might make a difference in domestic affairs, when it comes to dropping bombs over brown people, it is a free-for-all.

From 2009 to 2016, the Obama administration authorized a record $115bn in military sales to Saudi Arabia, far more than any previous administration. Of that total, US and Saudi officials signed formal deals worth about $58bn, and Washington delivered $14bn worth of weaponry.
Much of that weaponry is being used in Yemen, with US technical support.

trump has merely taken that to a whole new level!

Like much of his chaotic foreign policy, Trump is escalating US military involvement in Yemen without pushing for a political settlement to the Saudi-led war. His total support for Saudi Arabia and its allies is making the world’s worst humanitarian crisis even more severe.

So, at best, it will be a subdued Eid celebration in Yemen :(

The World According to Saudi Arabia

Five weeks ago, I included the following photograph in this post:

,
That NY Times photo ran with the caption: "A woman with cholera was treated at a hospital in Sana, Yemen, on Sunday."

Yes, cholera!

Over the five weeks, the president made a triumphant return to the country after having gained even more confidence from touching the orb.  Saudi Arabia, which is one the main reasons why Yemen is in a completely messed up state, also gained in confidence from the president touching the orb, and decided to let Qatar and Iran know who the big dog is in that part of the world.

Meanwhile, nobody cared about Yemen.

Is it any surprise that things have become worse, as if that is even possible?

Seized by violence and teetering on the edge of famine, Yemen is grappling with another danger that threatens to outpace them both: cholera.
"We are now facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world," international health authorities said in a statement Saturday.

Cholera is one of the easiest to stop, if you think about it.  Right?

The disease should not be so ferocious. Preventing cholera is pretty simple in theory: wash your hands with clean water, drink clean water, and eat food that has been boiled or cooked.

But ...

But clean water in Yemen is a luxury. Municipal workers in Sanaa have not been paid in months. And so we have no electricity, rubbish piling high in the street, and a crippled water system.
The sewer system stopped working on 17 April. Ten days later, cholera hit.

How terrible!

Yemen now suffers three-way tragedy: a population under siege, suffering the violence of war and unable to work or access nutritious food or health care; an economic collapse that has led to a rise in criminality; and now a devastating health crisis.
This all leads to what could be the largest cholera outbreak of our lifetime.

America couldn't care, even though the world knows that we are an accomplice in Yemen's deepening humanitarian crisis:

"There's a U.S. imprint on every civilian death inside Yemen that's caused by the Saudi bombing campaign," Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told NPR's Michele Kelemen last month after the U.S. signed a new arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
"The Saudis simply could not operate this bombing campaign without us," he continued. "Their planes can't fly without U.S. refueling capacity. They are dropping munitions that we've sold them. We are standing side by side with them often when they are reviewing intelligence about targets."

As Fareed Zakaria noted, "Saudi Arabia played Donald Trump":

The United States has now signed up for Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy — a relentless series of battles against Shiites and their allies throughout the Middle East. That will enmesh Washington in a never-ending sectarian struggle, fuel regional instability and complicate its ties with countries such as Iraq that want good relations with both sides. But most important, it will do nothing to address the direct and ongoing threat to Americans — jihadist terrorism. I thought that Trump’s foreign policy was going to put America first, not Saudi Arabia. 

Shame on us, and on the 63 million voters!

The 'never again' bullshit

We humans are a bizarre bunch.  We are aware of acute food shortages and malnutrition, yet we keep going with our own lives.  We live the "let them eat cakes" lives of affluence.

We are even willing to bomb the shit out of people trapped between prick-waving maniacs, which then leads to more than mere food shortages.  We use the "f" word: Famine, which the United Nations defines as:

A famine can be declared only when certain measures of mortality, malnutrition and hunger are met. They are: at least 20 per cent of households in an area face extreme food shortages with a limited ability to cope; acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 per cent; and the death rate exceeds two persons per day per 10,000 persons.

How depressingly clinical, right?

Yemen has reached that famine stage:

More than two years of civil war in the country has triggered a humanitarian crisis, with almost seven million people on the brink of famine.
A resurgence of a cholera outbreak has also resulted in 60,000 suspected cases since April and 500 associated deaths.

Let them eat cakes!

the suffering of Yemenis was not a coincidence, or the "result of forces beyond our control" - but rather the fault of those involved and inaction by world powers.

Let them eat cakes!

As Amartya Sen noted, famines are often the result of human (mis)management.  In the case of Yemen, too:

“If there was no conflict in Yemen, there would be no descent into famine, misery, disease and death — a famine would certainly be avoidable and averted,” Mr. O’Brien told the United Nations Security Council.
He depicted the crisis as man-made, implicitly placing part of the blame on the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition that has been bombing Yemen’s Houthi rebels and their allies for over two years.
He also blamed the Houthis.
“The people of Yemen are being subjected to deprivation, disease and death as the world watches,” he said.
Mr. O’Brien also implored the Saudis to avoid an attack on Hodeidah, the only port in Yemen that can still handle shiploads of food and medicine. Virtually all of the basic needs in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, must be imported.

It is not as if we were caught unaware.  This is not like a 9.0 earthquake that suddenly happens.  We have systematically created this famine, and are making sure the misery will get worse:

Donald Trump ran for president as the world’s greatest dealmaker. His first international destination as president, Saudi Arabia, is where he reportedly registered eight companies during his campaign. Yet by announcing one of the largest arms-sales deals in U.S. history during this visit, Trump is revealing to the world a dark side to his boasts of creating jobs: He may be helping to create a famine as well.

Let them eat cakes!

If our dealmaker in chief ever had leverage in a negotiation, it would be this one. With a hundred billion dollars’ worth of U.S. planes, ships and precision-guided munitions on the line, Trump could simply demand that the Saudis end the blockade, refrain from bombing Yemen’s major port and enter into a U.N.-brokered political settlement in exchange for the U.S.-made weapons. But he doesn’t have to listen to a progressive Democrat like me — these are precisely the policies that Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) has been calling for. Even Trump’s own appointee to the World Food Program, former South Carolina governor David Beasley (R), argued that in light of the president’s visit, “it’s very, very timely that the United States apply all the pressure it can with regard to all parties involved, including Saudi Arabia.”

Let them eat cakes, while we sell more arms to kill them all!

Caption at the source:
A woman with cholera was treated at a hospital in Sana, Yemen, on Sunday.

Off with the head!

As I get older, I find myself to be more and more against violence.  Especially violence that is the state-sponsored kind.  It is gross. It is inhuman. To call state-sponsored violence beastly is an insult to the predators in the wild.

It is even more fucked up when it is the passionately religious who seem to be more supportive of state-sponsored violence in democratic societies.  It is bizarre when, for instance, those who are ready to kill people using the government machinery are also the ones who use the imagery of Jesus to tell us how we should live.  I suppose Jesus never talked about peace and love!

And hence the odd situation that the US, with all its bible-thumpers, continues with the death penalty.

the U.S. has ended up in some rough company, particularly when it comes to the death penalty. In the past generation, the number of countries that have stopping using the death penalty has doubled, from about fifty to about a hundred. Of the fifty-seven member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and of the thirty-five member states of the Organization of American States, only the U.S. carried out executions last year. The countries that executed the most offenders were, in order, China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

Take a look again at the company that we keep: China, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.  Puke-worthy about how we treat life!  The US is a religious country alright, as much as the theocratic Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are.  As the late Christopher Hitchens wrote (I quoted him in this blog-post from more than five years ago)

The point of the penalty was that it was death. It expressed righteous revulsion and symbolized rectitude and retribution. Voila tout! The reason why the United States is alone among comparable countries in its commitment to doing this is that it is the most religious of those countries. (Take away only China, which is run by a very nervous oligarchy, and the remaining death-penalty states in the world will generally be noticeable as theocratic ones.)

Whether or not the US is loved around the world, what the US does--not the rhetoric--is keenly watched by everybody.  Therefore, when the US government machinery kills its own people, then it is a convenient justification for other countries to kill their own people.

In August at a rally in Istanbul, after the failed coup attempt in Turkey, the BBC reported, the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said, “They say there is no death penalty in the E.U. … Well, the U.S. has it; Japan has it; China has it; most of the world has it. So they are allowed to have it. We used to have it until 1984. Sovereignty belongs to the people, so if the people make this decision I am sure the political parties will comply.” He said that the Turkish people might want to restore the death penalty to punish those responsible for killing hundreds of citizens during the attempted coup. That has not happened yet, but, if it does, its purpose, Erdogan suggested, will be a display of cold-blooded power.

Now that we in the US too will have a strongman president, the likes of Erdoğan will be all the happier to kill their own people, and will feel justified to do so.

the voters—the populists—continue to back the death penalty, as does the President-elect. (Donald Trump notoriously called for the execution of the Central Park Five, fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds who were charged with a high-profile rape and beating, in 1989. Even though the five were later exonerated, Trump, during this year’s campaign, reiterated his belief in their guilt.)

Of course, in the US, politicians who want to reach the Oval Office dare not oppose the death penalty, especially because of the racial dimension of the punishment.  Remember what happened to Michael Dukakis?  Or how Bill Clinton had to prove his mettle to the White Christian voters by putting to death a mentally-impaired black man?  Yep, the US lives according to Jesus's words!

The only ray of hope is the trend of remarkable fall in the number of executions and death sentences.  Aziz Ansari joked that for racism to go away, we simply have to wait for the racists to die--the younger generation is a lot more progressive than the middle-aged and older whites are.  Similarly, we simply have to wait for another generation to exit the world for the US to end the horrible practice of state-sponsored killing.  And maybe by then we will also stop electing the likes of the worst human being ever to reach the Oval Office.

We are but pawns in this cosmos

It was after the move to Madras (Chennai now) that we first got a television set at home.  In the Neyveli phase of my life, there was no television.  The Indian government was slowly launching its state-run Doordharshan in one big city after another, and being in India's fourth largest city meant that we had been promoted to the age of the telly.  A small black and white set, from a company that was owned by India's tennis-playing family.

It was a pain to watch movies on that small screen, and even worse it was to read any text like the subtitles.  But, thanks to that small screen and the state-run television broadcasting, I watched quite a few "art" movies--films that were not the regular, commercial, kind, with the heroes and the heroines running around trees and uttering melodramatic dialogues.  My all-time favorite was Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Elipathayam (The rat trap.)  A close second were Aparna Sen's 36 Chowringhee Lane and Satyajit Ray's Shatranj ke Khilari (The chess players).  

Shatranj ke Khilari is set in the days before India's First War of Independence, which was referred to as the Sepoy Mutiny in the grand British interpretation of history that we learnt in school.  With the backdrop of the British ready to gobble up Awadh--which was Oudh in the British history that was told to us--two nawabs are preoccupied with nothing but playing chess, even as the world around them changes rapidly.  

Chess, which my mother taught us to play when we were kids, was born in the Subcontinent, and then spread via Persia to the Middle East and to Europe.  Shatranj itself is a Persian word.  Thus, two Muslim Nawabs playing chess forgetting everything around them, in a land of Muslim rulers, was, well, nothing out of the ordinary.  "Of course", you thought while sitting back in the chair as you watched the movie.

Which is why it is tragically hilarious to read the news item that Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti "has declared the playing of chess “forbidden,” calling it a waste of time and money that creates hatred between players."  Will be laughable if not for the seriousness with which the Mufti's words are taken by some. 

In a fatwa, or religious decree, issued in response to a question from a caller to a Saudi television show, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh said that the game was “the work of Satan,” like alcohol and gambling, despite its long history in the Middle East.

A fatwa against chess?  Doesn't the Mufti have better things to worry about?  He is not the first religious leader to rule against chess; examples include:

An Italian sage of the 11th century, Saint Peter Damian, scolded the bishop of Florence for his weakness for the game. Chess was initially outlawed by Iranian Revolution which prevailed in 1979; however in 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini said it was permissible as long as it is not combined with gambling. However a contemporary Shia leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq, has emphatically forbidden all forms of chess, whether played online or with physical pieces, and regardless of whether betting is involved.

Seriously!  Why?

Then, as now, religious professionals were wary of a game that transcended religious and cultural categories, and stimulated the brain rather than the soul.

But, why?  Because it is "gloriously rebellious," writes this commentator:

[Chess] obsessives, especially the professional players who devote their lives to the game and strive to understand its “truth”, are engaged in a glorious act of rebellion. The “real” world is dull, unjust, unchangeable, so instead they live in an illusory world, like Alice when she goes behind the looking glass and finds “a great huge game of chess that’s being played – all over the world”. Perhaps this is what the mufti really fears: chess players are natural rebels who have rejected the workaday world and all its totems. They want to topple kings – and maybe muftis too.

Of course, one needn't play chess to topple kings--the white supremacists from the northern island played that toppling game really well in the Subcontinent!

If it is Saturday, it must be ... Yemen!

The older I get, the more it seems like growing up when I did and where I did was quite a blessing.  Consider the simple, daily habit of reading the newspaper.  A habit that goes back as far as I can remember.  The news about places that I didn't even know existed, and about politicians who seemed immensely larger than life, fascinated me to no end.

So well developed was this habit that once, as an adult, when I visited with a family in the expansive tree, I was shocked that they did not subscribe to a newspaper.  There I was, up in the morning and no paper to read.  That was a torture from Torquemada's playbook ;)

The Hindu was international in its news coverage.  Its left-of-center sympathies resonated well with my own political preference of those days.  It was through that paper that I even knew that there was a country called Yemen--those were the days of a war between North Yemen and South Yemen, which was yet another war between the commie sympathizers and the others.  Recall all those proxy wars during the Cold War years?

With all the refugee crisis related to Syria, the world seems to be overlooking Yemen.  The violence there is not one between the old Cold War enemies, but is also a proxy war of a different kind.  It is a Shia-Sunni war.  Iran (Shia)-allied Houthi movement versus the rest backed by Saudi Arabia (Sunni, and that too a strict, fundamentalist version) and,, of course, the United States.  Makes you wonder why the US is always pals with the "frenemy" Saudis, right?

A few weeks ago, Amnesty released a report on the "collateral damage" that civilians have become in this unholy war.

Amnesty International has documented hundreds of cases of civilians, many of them children and women, killed or injured while asleep in their homes or going about their daily activities – fetching water, buying food, visiting relatives. Scores were struck in the very places where they had sought refuge after having been displaced from their homes by the conflict. ...
Entire neighbourhoods have virtually emptied as residents fled their homes in fear of attacks or because strikes on civilian infrastructure left the areas without water, electricity and other essential services. In some neighbourhoods, as residents fled the conflict other civilians displaced by the fighting elsewhere moved in for lack of better options. Many have been unable to relocate to safer areas due to lack of resources. With frequently shifting frontlines, residents have struggled to keep out of harm’s way, often finding themselves in the line of fire where they thought they would be safe.
The sick and wounded have faced restrictions in accessing medical care due to the shortages and high prices of fuel and medicines and to difficulties in securing safe passage through checkpoints manned by the different armed groups. The parties to the conflict have hindered the delivery of humanitarian aid to areas controlled by their opponents, causing a sharp deterioration in the humanitarian situation.

I bet that since then the damage has worsened.  Makes me wonder, as always, why humans engage in wars and why we continue to develop more and more ways to kill each other.  This world needs a lot more pacifists to counter the warmongers all over, especially here in the United States--the US sells those killing devices all over the world and seems intent on feeding the global war monster.

The BBC reports that all the chaos in Yemen has provided ISIS--yes, those maniacs--with a golden opportunity!

Human Rights Watch cites reports that on 23 August, IS dressed a number of Houthi prisoners in orange jumpsuits, placed them in a boat which was then towed out into the harbour.
Reportedly watched by local residents of Aden, the boat carrying the prisoners was then blown up, killing those on board, the report says.

As if all that wasn't enough for you to yank your hair out:

For now, it seems that the jihadists of AQAP and IS have largely put aside their differences to fight their common enemy, the Shia Houthi rebels.
Ironically, they are being aided by air strikes from the very countries - Saudi Arabia and the UAE - who normally oppose them.

Wait a second.  The US is allied with the Saudis in the Yemen conflict.  But, the Saudis are working with the Islamic State because they want to defeat the Iran-backed Shia Houthi.  So, in a way, the US is on the same side of the barbaric Islamic State?

When I reach such conclusions based on what I have read, I wonder if the newspaper reading habit from when I was a kid has not helped me.  I could have been oblivious to the happenings all around, gone ahead with a career in engineering, enjoyed a remarkably affluent life, and not worried about a damn thing.

Nah.  as Bob Dylan said, "it ain't me, babe."

(ps: my oldest post on Yemen dates back to January 2010!)

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The Saudi-backed violence in Bahrain

In the bad old days, before Twitter and YouTube and the internet itself, we were a lot insulated from the brutal details of dictatorships.  News reports left them to our imaginations.
But, now, we get a real feel for how dictatorship is enforced. (ht: Sullivan and Kristof)

Warning:
DO NOT click on play in the following videos, unless you know you can handle the reality of graphic violence. 
I could barely watch the first few seconds of the second video, which is a short one to begin with, before I stopped it and stepped away to clear my head and eyes.


I really mean that warning for the following one:


The US now reaches yet another critical test: should we oppose the Saudis and the Bahraini king, stay silent, or support the people who are protesting in order to gain freedom?

Or, let us suppose that the protesters in Bahrain as us the same question that President Bush asked the rest of the world: "are you with us, or against us?" ....

Meanwhile, in Libya, whose people we in the US and in Western Europe let down in an awful manner, well, Gaddafi is now feeling so strengthened that his son brags that it will all be over in 48 hours, and any no-fly zone will be too late:

"Military operations are over. Within 48 hours everything will be finished. Our forces are almost in Benghazi. Whatever the decision, it will be too late."

What a tragic mess that the US and the West made out of the rebellion against a mad dog dictator :(  It was one awful sin of omission.  As the Telegraph put it:

The imperious silence emanating from the White House as the turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East intensifies is exacting a high price. For the better part of a month, President Obama has shown himself to be a master of gnomic inaction.

How did this guy go from those big speeches in Germany and Cairo, to such a wimp?  "A man or a mouse?," as the old question goes!  The Telegraph adds:

If America is not prepared to support its friends, they will increasingly be forced to look after themselves. For example, Bahrain may not have felt compelled to seek military aid from Saudi Arabia if Washington had been more supportive of its clumsy attempts to introduce democracy. Certainly, the Saudi intervention in support of Bahrain's Sunni ruling family can hardly be said to be in the West's interests, as it runs the risk of further antagonising the kingdom's majority Shia population. If Iran, which regards itself as the Shias' main protector, were to respond on their behalf, the crisis could quickly escalate into open hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia, thereby closing the Gulf and cutting off the West's vital oil supplies. At that point, the American president would have no alternative but to intervene

If we intervened only at that late a time, then we will end up delivering convincing proof to the entire world that the only American interest in that part of the world is in the millions of barrels of petroleum that lies beneath the sands.

The emperor has no ... keffiyeh!

I can't wait for Col. Gadawful Gaddafi to flee the country ... like many other dictators, to Saudi Arabia.  And then when the revolution comes to Riyadh, I want these dictators to become nomads in the desert, and left to die without water!

I am simply amazed that the loony maniac was in power this long!  In India, Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution for almost two years as a way not to comply with the court's ruling that invalidated her electoral victory.  But, the pressure from within never really went away, and she was promptly booted out of office when she lifted the emergency rule.  It would have been one hell of a chaos if the anti-democratic government had lasted longer.

Gaddafi was no Fidel Castro to the young me.  At least Castro symbolized something--he consistently out-maneuvered the imperial America.  Of course, growing up resulted in a gradual disillusionment with Castro and now to a complete anti-Castro stance.  But, I could never understand Gaddafi's long tenure, and why the world tolerated him.  Oil is a pretty simplistic explanation.  After all, in the grand scheme of things, Libya's oil reserves and production, as Bogart's Rick said in Casablanca, "don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world" ... Libya is no Saudi Arabia or Iraq or Kuwait.

One hell of a crazy person Gaddafi was/is:

Qaddafi spent much of his career as one of the world's least discriminating sponsors of political unrest in Africa and worldwide. He is believed to have helped underwrite terrorists from the Black September group that conducted the 1972 attacks on the Munich Olympics to the IRA to Colombia's FARC to Carlos the Jackal. While he periodically seemed lucid and was charismatic enough to once inspire Nelson Mandela to name one of his off-spring after him, he has enough blood on his hands to earn him a place in the 20th Century madman hall of fame, admittedly not in the main wing with the really big time murderers like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, but in the wannabe annex. 
Of course, even were Qaddafi to fall tomorrow -- which wouldn't be too soon -- he will already have served longer than any Libyan leader in almost half a millennium and his tenure, which began with a  coup in 1969, will rank among the longest worldwide of the post-World War II era. In other words, his departure, when it comes will be long overdue.

BTW, in case you wonder about the two spellings of the name: Gaddafi and Qaddafi:

"Muammar Gaddafi" is the spelling used by TIME magazine, BBC News, the majority of the British press and by the English service of Al-Jazeera.^[99] The Associated Press, CNN, and Fox News use "Moammar Gadhafi". The Edinburgh Middle East Report uses "Mu'ammar Qaddafi" and the U.S. Department of State uses "Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi". The Xinhua News Agency uses "Muammar Khaddafi" in its English reports.^[100]
In 1986, Gaddafi reportedly responded to a Minnesota school's letter in English using the spelling "Moammar El-Gadhafi".^[101] The title of the homepage of algathafi.org reads "Welcome to the official site of Muammar Al Gathafi"

Hajj and Eid

From a slide show at FP

caption at the source:

Muslim pilgrims perform the evening prayer near the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia on Nov. 12. The annual pilgrimage, or hajj, must be performed at least once in their life of all believers who have the health and the means to make the journey.

Rights of women, minorities, poor ... long way to go yet

Real life is often infinitely more troubling than the fictional ones, as evidenced recently in this case of the Sri Lankan maid in Saudi Arabia:

"A Saudi couple tortured their Sri Lankan maid after she complained of a too heavy workload by hammering 24 nails into her hands, legs and forehead" reports Reuters

BBC adds:
"LP Ariyawathie, 49, told staff at Kamburupitiya Hospital her employer inflicted the injuries as a punishment.
X-rays showed that there were 24 nails and needles in her body. Doctors said those remaining inside her body posed no immediate threat to her life.
The nails were up to 2in (5cm) long, a hospital official said."

Just awful :(

Even if you aren't willing to, force yourself to watch this video news report and remind yourself that it is not a movie clip!

Bahrain: a "canary in the coal mine"

In my late teenage years and later on, it seemed like every other person had plans to get to the "Gulf": to the many countries around the Persian Gulf.  One cousin has now lived practically his entire adult life there, and we joke that he has become a sheikh himself! 

Bahrain was one of those attractors.  It was favored, in particular, over destinations like Saudi Arabia, because of its better climatic conditions thanks to it being a small island, and because of its relatively liberal and relaxed attitudes .  BTW, Bahrain is so liberal that a sex shop opened there, and owned by a woman, and generated a whole lot of controversy!

Thomas Friedman pointed out in articulating his "First Law of Petropolitics" why Bahrain might be on this path that is far away from the rigid social structure in neighboring Saudi Arabia to which it is linked by a fantastic engineering creation that extends over 16 miles--it was dealing with very limited petroleum reserves.  Friedman summarized it succinctly:

Bahrain is the first Arab gulf state to be running out of oil. It also happens to be the first Arab gulf state to hold a free and fair election where women could run and vote. And it also happens to be the first Arab gulf state to sign a free trade agreement with the United States. And it also happens to be the first Arab gulf state to be reforming its labor laws so its people can no longer be dependent on foreign workers.

So, what is the problem that merits the tag of "canary in the coal mine" you ask?  Seventy percent of the Bahraini population is Shia, like the majority in Iran, and very much unlike the overwhelmingly Sunni Saudi Arabia.

Which is why recent reports, like this one, merit our serious attention:

Bahrain's top Shiite politician said a crackdown on Shiite protesters by Sunni rulers has destroyed a decade of stable sectarian relations as the tiny Gulf state heads into parliamentary elections scheduled for October.

The wave of detentions — at least 160, according to one lawyer — has spilled over into near daily clashes between the majority Shiites and Sunni-led security forces and fueled concerns of deeper unrest and heavy-handed tactics in the home of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.

Any serious breakdown in Bahrain has possible wider repercussions. The country's two groups mirror the regional tug-of-war between Shiite giant Iran and the mostly Sunni Gulf nations that fear Tehran's efforts to expand its influence.

Given Bahrain's location--right in the Persian Gulf and near the 30-mile wide Strait of Hormuz, one can easily see why developments in this island country can reveal a lot about the geopolitical tensions there.

Pakistan: even Saudi Arabia is worried!

For the few of you who thought you had nothing to worry about when it came to Pakistan, ahem:

“Well, Pakistan is a friendly country, and therefore, any time we see dangerous things in a friendly country, we are not only sorry but also worried,” Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told Indian journalists here in response to questions.

The prince said it was the duty of all political leaders in Pakistan to unite to “see that extremism does not find its way to achieving gain in that country. It can only happen if political leadership in Pakistan is united. We hope that it will be achieved.”

Meanwhile, Musharraf is on a lecture tour, and his schedule apparently includes Oregon.  I can't but think that the old general is constantly plotting his sweet revenge :(

What's in a name? Ask the Pakistan ambassador :)

Shakespeare wonderfully proclaimed that "That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet."
Maybe it does not smell as sweet all the time.
Pakistan named its ambassador to Saudi Arabia.  One would think that there won't be any hassles there--these are not countries in conflict or anything.  Yet, Saudi Arabia didn't ok that.  Why?

The reason, apparently, has nothing to do with his credentials, and everything to do with his name -- which, in Arabic, translates to "biggest dick":

In Saudi Arabia, size does count.

A high level Pakistani diplomat has been rejected as Ambassador of Saudi Arabia because his name, Akbar Zib, equates to "Biggest Dick" in Arabic. Saudi officials, apparently overwhelmed by the idea of the name, put their foot down and gave the idea of his being posted there, the kibosh.

According to this Arabic-language article in the Arab Times, Pakistan had previously floated Zeb's name as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, only to have him rejected for the same reason.

So, maybe we ought to remind Juliet that there might be exceptions to the rule :)

Russia beats Saudis as largest oil exporter. Trouble for all of us!

Putin and Russia are slowly gaining ground as the largest exporter of the much needed hydrocarbons that we rely upon as source of energy.  While the US and the rest of the world continues to focus on oil in the Middle East, ahem, Russia has had one wonderful decade, and is all set to pounce on Europe and Asia.

The year 2010 will see the global energy map redrawn as Russia, the world’s largest producer of hydrocarbons, reorients its oil and gas flows from Europe to Asia. ... Last year, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer and exporter of oil.

 If that does not impress you, read on:

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia looked forward to winning a much bigger share of the Asian oil market than its current 5-6 per cent compared with nearly 70 per cent for Gulf-originated crude. East Siberian crude, to be marketed under the name of ESPO, is similar or even superior to the Middle East crude and the new pipeline will take it close to Asian customers.

India also stands to benefit from the new pipeline, as it will be linked with oilfields in Western Siberia, including the Tomsk region where India’s Imperial Energy has operations.

So, what might be next on Putin's agenda?

The next big goal in Mr. Putin’s plan is to challenge the U.S. dollar-denominated oil trade by switching trade in Russian oil to roubles. Mr. Putin first declared Moscow’s intention to use rouble in its oil and gas transactions in his 2006 state of the nation address. The following year, Russia began trading Russian oil for roubles at the Russian Fuel and Energy Exchange set up for the purpose in St. Petersburg.

 Which is also why this opinion piece says, "For the West, 'game over' in Central Asia":

The West has only itself to blame for this outcome. Despite sharing regional interests with Russia and China -- ranging from disarmament to the eradication of terrorism and the drug trade -- the United States and the European Union have rarely proven themselves willing to come to terms with Moscow and Beijing on Central Asian affairs. In the field of energy, Western policy objectives have fluctuated indecisively between attempting to fully depoliticize the industry -- through legal instruments such as the Energy Charter -- and providing American and European corporations with dirigiste-style support, based on the misplaced assumption that their technological superiority would offer more attractive conditions to Central Asian leaders. On the other hand, Russia and China have elaborated innovative responses through a network of bilateral deals and the institutional structure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The West has also misunderstood the resilience of Russian leverage and soft power in the region and dramatically overestimated the appeal of its "normative power." By insisting on issues -- such as democracy and human rights -- that not only had no influence, but scared the local power elites, they increased the attractiveness of Beijing and its strict adherence to the principle of non-interference in domestic affairs.

Saudi Arabia's crazy logic

I am not making this up--it is from the NY Times, not from the Onion:

Saudi Arabia is trying to enlist other oil-producing countries to support a provocative idea: if wealthy countries reduce their oil consumption to combat global warming, they should pay compensation to oil producers.

What a twisted logic, eh!  Here is the NRDC person quoted in the NY Times story:

“It is like the tobacco industry asking for compensation for lost revenues as a part of a settlement to address the health risks of smoking,” said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The worst of this racket is that they have held up progress on supporting adaptation funding for the most vulnerable for years because of this demand.”

Why would the Saudis put forward such a crazy proposal?

The chief Saudi negotiator, Mohammad al-Sabban, described the position as a “make or break” provision for the Saudis, as nations stake out their stance before the global climate summit scheduled for the end of the year.
“Assisting us as oil-exporting countries in achieving economic diversification is very crucial for us through foreign direct investments, technology transfer, insurance and funding,” Mr. Sabban said in an e-mail message.

Uh, hello, isn't that what the Saudis should have been doing while they were raking in all the dollars?  WTF!

Geography about understanding relationships between, among areas

Could it be true that only real estate agents and geographers seem to understand the importance of location, location and location?

I asked the students in one of my classes whether they considered Iraq and Iran as important enough for Americans to know more about. There was no hesitation — students unanimously and loudly voiced their affirmatives.

I interrupted their enthusiastic comments by handing out blank outline maps of the Middle East and directed them to identify as many countries as they possibly could. Well, it turns out that the familiarity that the class had about Iraq, Iran and Saddam Hussein did not lead to a spatial understanding of that part of the world.


After pointing out the countries at the end of the exercise, I directed them to look at Sudan and Ethiopia. As they kept staring at the countries on the map, perhaps for the first time in their lives, it became apparent to them that it is a relatively narrow body of water, the Red Sea, that separates these countries from a larger contiguous land area that we refer to as the Middle East.

For all purposes, Sudan and Ethiopia are, hence, only a metaphorical stone's throw away from Saudi Arabia, yet Ethiopia is imagined as somewhere in a remote part of Africa.

Of course, geography is not about memorizing maps or random and trivial facts about places. It is about understanding relationships — such as economic or political relationships — between and among geographic areas. Such a framework, though, begins with knowing the actual location of a place and its relationship with its surroundings. After all, if we didn't know where exactly Ethiopia is, would we really be able to understand why that country seems to have so many problems?

The author and public intellectual Susan Jacoby, notes an interesting aspect of Roosevelt's "fireside chats." He urged Americans to buy maps of the world and then follow along with him details of the World War II battles that he "chatted" about in his radio addresses — with specific references to the geographic areas.

Roosevelt may have had in mind what a student in my class articulated in her journal assignment after the class exercise. She wrote: "One thing that stood out to me this week was ... I find that I get so caught up in these abstract, revolutionary concepts of how the world should be better without ever even taking into account what the world actually looks like."

In the contemporary world, too, America is actively engaged in the international arena. To play a constructive role, we citizens need to be informed enough in order to be able to convey to elected leaders the changes we would like to make.

Fortunately, unlike F.D.R.'s era, we now live in a world in which information is freely and easily accessible. This ease of obtaining information is all the more reason educators like me want our students (and the general populace) to understand the world and appreciate the importance of location.

Perhaps add a world atlas to your summer reading list?

Published in the Statesman Journal, June 12, 2009. Note: I added the map for this blog post.

Coming soon: high oil prices

Cue that disturbing background theme music from Jaws for this news item from the Guardian:

Saudi Arabia warned today that the world could be facing another oil shock, with prices back above the record highs of almost $150 a barrel within two to three years.

The comments from the Saudi oil minister at an energy summit in Rome were echoed by the IMF, both blaming lower prices and the global recession for hampering investment in new capacity.

Prices have fallen back from the peak they reached last year, largely because of the fall in demand in the downturn, and are hovering at about $60 a barrel.

"We are maintaining our long-term focus rather than being swayed by the volatility of short-term conditions," said the Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, ahead of an Opec meeting in Vienna on Thursday. "However, if others do not begin to invest similarly in new capacity expansion projects, we could see within two to three years another price spike similar to or worse than what we witnessed in 2008."

He said low prices and weak demand had discouraged investment in energy projects. Those problems had been compounded by high development costs, tight credit markets and energy policies that are focused on alternative fuel sources.

IMF first deputy managing director John Lipsky said: "With long time-to-build lags, significant setbacks to oil investment today could set the stage for future sharp price increases."

Meanwhile, there is a growing worry that a fast recovery might lead to very rapid increases in the price of oil, which will then push us back into a nasty recession all over again. I think we are screwed!

So, the Middle East is going nuclear?

First, in order to counter Israel's nuclear bomb, the anti-Israel Arab world was keen on developing an "Islamic bomb". As India too got quite "explosive", Bhutto (Benazir's father) famously commented:"There's a Hindu bomb, a Jewish bomb and a Christian bomb," Bhutto once wrote. "There must be an Islamic bomb."

As Iraq got into that, Israel launched a brilliant attack that destroyed Iraq's key facilities. Much later, Pakistan detonated its nuclear devices to tell the world that it has arrived. A few months ago, something happened in Syria that nobody still talks about. But, speculation is that Israel wiped out some kind of a nuclear ambition that Syria had.

Yesterday (I think it was) as I was driving, I head on NPR that France was selling Saudi Arabia civilian nuclear power generating technology. Because, the Saudis want to prepare themselves for a world without petroleum--when they are sitting on the world's largest reserves that they can tap into for practically no cost at all.
I was not happy with all this talk about selling nuclear tech to the crazy guys in the Middle East. Because these are not democratic countries. We have no idea who the next ruler will be, and what kind of crazy things he will want to pursue.
And then I read this:

We are witnessing the beginning of a Middle East nuclear arms race. Iran's rivals do not want Tehran to gain the military, political, and diplomatic advantage that nuclear weapons convey. They are beginning the decades-long process of developing technologies to match Iran's capabilities. All of this is legal, by the way, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In fact, nuclear weapon states are obliged to sell non-weapon states nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. It is one of the two grand bargains in the treaty. And it could spell our doom.

Not all Middle East powers may see civilian nuclear programs as a hedge against Iran. But recent history is instructive. The burgeoning interest in nuclear energy perfectly coincided with a set of events in the summer of 2006. At that time Western efforts to rein in Iran's enrichment program began to fail. The United States was becoming further mired in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and appeared unable to stop an Iran now freed of its main regional rivals. Iran's leaders expanded their military influence through aid to Hezbollah in the Israeli-Lebanese war. Referring to the changing atmosphere in 2006, Jordan's King Abdullah II observed, "The rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region." My translation: "After this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs." Given the context, the connection to Iran's growing strength and spinning centrifuges is clear.

Now, instead of persuading Jordan and others to refrain from setting off a proliferation cascade in the Middle East, the United States is joining the Chinese, French, and Russian salesmen eagerly peddling the tools to do it.

At its core, this is a deeply flawed method for preventing proliferation. It continues the Bush approach of dealing with problems state by state, dividing them into good guys and bad guys, rewarding friends with nuclear treats and trying to deny them to enemies.

It does not work.

Great! after we are done with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, next decade will be all about uncontrolled chain reactions in the Middle East. Thanks. Now I can sleep well! Dr. Strangelove, any pills for me? :-)

The graph "they" didn't want you to see

Several authors of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the projected effects of global warming now say they regret not pushing harder to include an updated diagram of climate risks in the report. The diagram, known as “burning embers,” is an updated version of one that was a central feature of the panel’s preceding climate report in 2001. The main opposition to including the diagram in 2007, they say, came from officials representing the United States, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

That was from the NY Times, which quotes Stephen H. Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University who has been involved in writing the I.P.C.C. reports since 1988,:

4 fossil fuel dependent countries accepted the text but refused the figure. Remember, at the UN, consensus means everybody, so a few countries constitute in effect a small successful filibuster. No matter how much New Zealand, small islands states, Canada, Germany, Belgium and the UK said this was an essential diagram, China, the U.S., Russia and the Saudis said it was too much of a “judgment”