Blood in Nairobi

It takes extreme heartlessness to lob grenades, to shoot people in the head, and hold them hostage. People who have nothing to do with any cause, who are just going about their daily lives, enjoying an evening out with their families, or tourists taking a break from the sights.

What happened on Saturday in Nairobi is tragic and despicable. We have a tendency to compare, because we have become numb to killings largely because they appear on TV.

I would have liked to talk about my grandmother's early life in Kenya, the lullabies she sang to me in Swahili, the slaves her father released.

The crouched bodies and fear in the eyes of September 21 are a reminder of another kind of slavishness. We know who is behind the attacks. We even know why, to an extent. This does not mean anything. For, people are slaves to ideologies and politics, and nothing will stop them. The attempt to stop too is no free lunch.

Reports have mentioned the race of the victims, their nationalities, and it all becomes about who is mine, who is the other.

Al Shabaab, a terrorist organisation based in Somalia, has taken responsibility. The New York Times mentions that this attack was "one of the most chilling terrorist attacks in East Africa since Al Qaeda blew up two American embassies in 1998". Somalia and Kenya have been at war over three decades before that, and continue to be. It was territorial, to begin with.

Al-Shabaab’s spokesman, Ali Mohamoud Rage, said following the attack: “Kenya will not get peace unless they pull their military out of Somalia.”

Reports mention how the group was gloating in the social media. This trend has to stop. It is bad enough that we get sensational images on television. Such theatre of violence is close to the real thing, and glorifies the killers.

There is also a tendency to create more fissures:

• "The mall, called Westgate, is a symbol of Kenya’s rising prosperity, an impressive five-story building where Kenyans can buy expensive cups of frozen yogurt and plates of sushi. On Saturdays, it is especially crowded, and American officials have long warned that Nairobi’s malls were ripe targets for terrorists, especially Westgate, because a cafe on the ground floor, right off the street, is owned by Israelis."

Kenya is rich in natural resources, and it has seen levels of prosperity until, like many other nations, it was colonised. The expatriates continue to thrive.

However, is the Israeli establishment not there to do business? Don't they do business in the U.S. which feels under constant threat? Why is it always about 'us'? (Has the Israeli establishment expressed reservations?) The Somali group has been described as 'Islamist". Does that explain their earlier war with Kenya? Does that even explain the Arab entering Kenya in the 16 century to trade and staying on?

Eyewitnesses say the terrorists asked Muslims to leave. Unless they were recognisable by mode of dress, they would not know. And they don't really care, even if some reports suggest they asked people on the run to identify the Prophet's mother. One does not see terrorists do this in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan where they target their co-religionists.

Rudy Atallah, the former director of African counterterrorism for the Pentagon, said: “I think this is just the beginning. An attack like this gives them the capability to recruit, it shows off their abilities, and it demonstrates to Al Qaeda central that they are not dead.”

Now imagine if the reports had not played into just this narrative. The Al Qaeda does not need the media to let it know what its members and allies are doing. The organisation is well-oiled and has its antenna up. What we are witnessing — the 39 dead people and 150 injured will be forgotten — is one more version of monopoly.

Dan Stackhouse, a commenter from New York City, sort of revealed the subtext:"Kenya is an old ally of America, not to mention Britain and other major powers. It would be hypocrisy if we did not aid them in their fight against the shabab in Somalia. For now we can do nothing about al-Assad's terrorism in Syria, but we can and should do something about this."

This is not a quid pro quo. Helplessness over inability to 'do' something in Syria should not seek replacement. The old idea of allies too does not work anymore. Besides, the power equations are different. (Not to forget that Britain ruled over Kenya.)

At this time, we need to spare a thought for those who are killed everyday for some vague idea — of faith, of political expediency, of just muscle power. We need to spare a thought also for Somalia. There are Somalians who live an honest life. They are not terrorists.

One has to only be exposed to lands where terrorists live to understand how desperate the ordinary people are, and how victimised they too can be... if not by bullets, then by branding.

© Farzana Versey

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All quotes from The New York Times

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Update

The issue of highlighting race is again evident in new findings. As reported:

The Foreign Office is investigating suggestions that a female British terror suspect nicknamed the "White Widow" could have been linked to the plot. Witness accounts have suggested a woman was among the attackers, fuelling speculation that Samantha Lewthwaite, who was married to 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay, was involved.

She is wanted by Kenyan police over links to a suspected terrorist cell planning bomb attacks.In March 2012, it was reported that Lewthwaite, 29, originally from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, had fled across the border from Kenya to Somalia.

Firing from Sunil Tripathi’s shoulders

They found his body in a river. He might have been any 22-year-old, but in the past ten days his face and name became the cause of social media speculation. To analyse it as mere online dysfunctional behaviour would be superficial. It reveals deep-seated prejudices.

Sunil Tripathi, a student of Brown University in the US, went missing on March 16, after he quit his studies. He had left behind his wallet and cellphone in his dorm room.  His parents started a search, using every possible avenue, most prominently a Facebook page and YouTube videos. His photograph became familiar.

A month later, on April 16, the bomb blasts happened in Boston at the Marathon. Of the two men in the blurred images, one resembled Sunil, whose face had brought out so much sympathy from strangers. It got linked to the blasts by virtue of the vague similarity, and his disappearance. Devious mischief-makers projected this as a case of 'Hindu terror'.

When it was confirmed that the two attackers were Chechens, and Muslim, there was counter-jubilation. Sunil's unfortunate death at such a young age got transformed into martyrdom. The medical coroner said that there was no evidence of foul play.

There is every reason to believe it, for he had no connection with the Chechen brothers and had made no overt attempts that would reveal where he was. An accident, a mugging gone wrong are possibilities. He was also depressed.

His death and the blasts are far removed and yet in public memory they will be seen together.

Rather surprisingly, it isn't just by outsiders. The Independent reports: 

“The family of Mr Tripathi, who was studying philosophy, said they were trying to seize on last week’s negative publicity and use it in their efforts to trace the young man."

I can understand the situation. But, will anyone say the Tripathis did not care for the victims of the Boston blasts? Or that they are not concerned about terrorism? Of course, they are. They live in the country. Sunil was getting a good education. Their attempt to use the negative publicity could be attributed to desperation.

In fact, except for that one statement, they have shown amazing grace. In a statement where they thanked the public for their support, they also added:

“Take care of one another. Be gentle, be compassionate. Be open to letting someone in when it is you who is faltering. Lend your hand. We need it. The world needs it."

This has not happened among the rabid Hindu rightwing. For them, it became an occasion to bait Islamists, and everyone was seen as such only because of the faith they were born into or pursued. Those who had not even mentioned Sunil were taunted as supporters of terrorism. There is just so much insecurity that no one cares about those who die because of terrorism, wherever they are. To assume that one billion people are terrorists is absurd. To assume that all of these one million support acts of terror is vile. To convey that except for those belonging to the faith of the terrorists, everyone is a natural victim reveals a truly superior delusional mindset.

One might recall the denial about Dhiren Barot, Al Qaida’s “first Hindu operative”. I had written then:

The Barot episode brings the prejudices even more sharply to the fore. The British Indians are distancing themselves from his Hindu origins. The message being that it is only "those Muslims" who indulge in terrorist activities. This is a curious denial of contemporary history, for Indian Muslims have been systematically put to test due to Hindu radicalism. And it has not been done by militant organisations, but by the State establishment in places like Gujarat.

Using a young man's death to gain sympathy for a cause is as bad as those who implicated him. However, the “editors of the Reddit social-news forum apologised for what they said turned into a 'witch-hunt'."

What sort of hunt is on now? It is disturbing because instead of putting matters to rest, as Sunil Tripathi's parents have done — and they should have been granted the privacy to mourn — the web world is not going to let it go. They know little about Chechnya, and the fact that two bomb blasts in Pakistan, one in Peshawar and another in Karachi, were carried out by Chechens. So much for pan-Islamism, Muslim brotherhood and uniformity.

In India, we do know that there is Hindutva terror, either by what people like to call 'fringe elements' or by organised groups, and in rare cases elements within the state machinery.

It most certainly is not to the extent of fundamentalist jihad, and the primary reason is that Hinduism is not practised in as many regions in the world as Islam is. Fanatic Islamists end up as enemies of their own people. Where does the Al Qaida operate from? Where is the Taliban concentrated in? The Hezbollah? What has happened to the Arab nations that strove for democracy? The rebels ended up electing religious leaders.

Where does the anti-kafir stand figure in all of this? We just read about the minaret destroyed in Syria. Mosques are bombed. I don't care much about buildings, although their sanctity lies in what they offer to the devotees, like any other place of worship. But why are people who pray to the same god targeted? This is not collateral damage, for they are planned attacks.

As long as this will be ignored to give forum to an archetype, it will bring out just how inhumane social discourse has become where death become theatre. The baggage of bigotry spares no innocents.

The tragedy of Sunil Tripathi is that he got caught up between other deaths before dying. 

© Farzana Versey

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Also Regurgitating jihad: Boston Marathon

Regurgitating Jihad: Boston Marathon

Is she dead? Injured? Her limbs blown off? I will never know. I knew her only as a pseudonym. She often spoke about training for the marathon. She was, from all accounts, rather fit “for my age”. I did not know how old or young she was. I only discovered the tremendous effort she put in for something that gave her so much joy, such a sense of achievement.

Stray exchanges revealed that she was a nurse of Pakistani origin. However, I felt her constant assertion of her American nationality a bit overarching. There was a touch of insecurity, and I know how it feels.

Take any attack and the first word on everyone’s lips – and that probably constitutes most non-Americans too – is jihadi. Miles away, my first thought was not one of sympathy, but “Hope it is not a Muslim” on hearing about the Boston Marathon bomb blasts. Paranoia is dehumanising us, instead of making us more sensitive. I was shocked that President Barack Obama was berated for not calling it a “terrorist attack”.  The same people who demand the use of the catchphrase refer to the many more trigger-happy young kids and racists as gunmen and almost always there is an attempt to understand their behaviour in terms of “mental instability”.

It is not a very healthy attitude when only due to one’s origins we wait for the insiders to voice our thoughts and heave a sigh of relief. I usually do not hold back, but even when I openly give another perspective, I am always aware that I will be judged not dispassionately for what I say, but for ‘who’ I am.

And so when I read Glenn Greenwald write in The Guardian that a day after the April 15 Boston attack, “42 people were killed and more than 250 injured by a series of car bombs, the enduring result of the US invasion and destruction of that country”, I thought more people would understand. Greenwald by virtue of not being a Muslim is quite above any suspicion or agenda. There will most certainly be people who might castigate him, but he will not be seen as someone who is paid by terrorists.

Here are some salient points from his piece and my reaction to them:

“The widespread compassion for yesterday's victims and the intense anger over the attacks was obviously authentic and thus good to witness. But it was really hard not to find oneself wishing that just a fraction of that compassion and anger be devoted to attacks that the US perpetrates rather than suffers. These are exactly the kinds of horrific, civilian-slaughtering attacks that the US has been bringing to countries in the Muslim world over and over and over again for the last decade, with very little attention paid. Somehow the deep compassion and anger felt in the US when it is attacked never translates to understanding the effects of our own aggression against others.”

I am not too sure if empathy is the solution, as the tweet he reproduces reveals. How can it when the immediate reaction is to hark back to 9/11, without even trying to comprehend the difference in the reasons and manner in which the attacks were carried out? 

It would be expecting too much for the large majority of Americans to be concerned about Yemen or Iraq just as Iraqis and Yemenis would not empathise with America; for most of them, their contact is with US forces sent to protect them.  It is not incumbent upon the citizens to rationalise. This is the job of the government, and political expediency demands creating a fear psychosis. None of the countries the US has intervened in has benefited from its democratic ideals.

“The rush, one might say the eagerness, to conclude that the attackers were Muslim was palpable and unseemly, even without any real evidence. The New York Post quickly claimed that the prime suspect was a Saudi national (while also inaccurately reporting that 12 people had been confirmed dead)…Anti-Muslim bigots like Pam Geller predictably announced that this was ‘Jihad in America’.”

The victims of this so-called jihad are largely Muslims. I do not know what sort of religiosity would make them target their own places of worship, their own people. This is proof that their ideology is to use the name of a faith, much as others use the patriotic card to whip up xenophobic sentiments. It is, indeed, the job of investigators to question people, but getting hold of a Saudi national immediately and then making it public does convey that it wasn’t about investigations; rather, it does seem more like a gotcha moment. Osama bin Laden is dead. The Al Qaeda is not a unified group anymore. I do not need to emphasise again that George Bush was quite friendly with the House of Saud and Osama was himself a tactical weapon of the CIA during the Russian war in Afghanistan.

“Recall that on the day of the 2011 Oslo massacre by a right-wing, Muslim-hating extremist, the New York Times spent virtually the entire day strongly suggesting in its headlines that an Islamic extremist group was responsible, a claim other major news outlets (including the BBC and Washington Post) then repeated as fact. The same thing happened with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.…in US political discourse, "terrorism" has no real meaning other than: violence perpetrated by Muslims against the west. The reason there was such confusion and uncertainty about whether this was "terrorism" is because there is no clear and consistently applied definition of the term. At this point, it's little more than a term of emotionally manipulative propaganda.”

I have often wondered why this does not qualify as a conspiracy against a community when so many conspiracy theories prevail. The Atlantic Wire mentioned the Boston Police Department's final press conference where Dan Bidondi, a radio host for InfoWars, asked:

“Why were the loud speakers telling people in the audience to be calm moments before the bombs went off? Is this another false flag staged attack to take our civil liberties and promote homeland security while sticking their hands down our pants on the streets?”

To further quote from the piece on what a "false flag" attack is:

“The term then expanded to mean any scenario under which a military attack was undertaken by a person or organization pretending to be something else. What the questioner was asking, then, was: Did the United States government orchestrate this attack, pretending to be a terrorist organization of some sort, in order to justify expanded security powers?”

I would understand if the manipulative machinery projected the view about “devices found”, “threat perception”, “intelligence reports”, or even conducted a mock exercise. I very much doubt if the US government would endanger the lives of its people to actually organise an attack. It will most likely want to create fear among the citizens, and that should be enough to grant it the privilege to use its security powers. It has used 9/11 as a propaganda ploy, and this has worked because the United States was not accustomed to being attacked on this scale.

Does a nation go on the offensive against countries where the perpetrators could be without any evidence? The runners are innocent and so are the villagers who live under threat of drones. The point is no one should be stuck on empathy. We cannot feel the pain. And, for all his genuinely balanced opinion, Greenwald too when speaking about ethnic groups feeling alienated added, “even though leading Muslim-American groups such as CAIR harshly condemned the attack (as they always do) and urged support for the victims, including blood donations”.

This is the problem. You have to state it loud and clear. Stand on the soapbox and declare that your heart is clean and you care. It would be so much better, and convey the true spirit of America, if these people were not boxed into a group, and instead seen as US citizens like any other. Here, it sounds as though they are being granted the magnanimity of being ‘like us’, and not ‘like them’.  

© Farzana Versey

Beyond Wisconsin: Page of Terror and Establishment Apathy

Page of Terror and Establishment Apathy
Beyond Wisconsin
by Farzana Versey
Counterpunch, Aug 7

“Nobody's angry here. We're just confused. Was this a random act? Was this directed at us because of the way we look?”

The questions were raised by an onlooker at the site of the Sikh gurudwara at Oak Creek in Wisconsin where six people were killed by a white man on the morning of August 5; he was shot dead by the cops.

Why is nobody angry? Why assume it might be a random act? What does the loaded “way we look” convey and why let it overshadow the terrorist attack? The FBI will conduct the investigations as a “domestic terrorist-type incident”, but for a large section of the media Wade Michael Page, a former sergeant, is a “lone gunman” or a “shooter”.

The motives are as clear as sun in a cloudy sky. It now seems that he was a neo-Nazi. In fact, civil rights groups go a step further and refer to him as a “frustrated neo-Nazi”. Was he frustrated with the ideology or was his frustration a spur to become one? This is a convenient back-up vague term to absolve mainstream terrorism.

To caricature him is easy, for the blueprint is ready and almost cool – balding man with tattoos, strumming the guitar with devilish music in an offbeat band called End Apathy. His motto to “stand proud and raise the white man’s flag” is confusing white supremacy with neo-Nazism. Both have different histories. Tanking up on the latter is a hands-off stance for internalised racism. The Nazi satan image gets props for also psychologically working on public memory as victimisation.

There is tardiness to investigate the possibility of a larger group’s involvement, a routine that is followed when the shoe in on the other foot and forces are deployed to trace leaders, assistants, handlers, trainers, foot soldiers.

The United States is home to 700,000 Sikhs. They are handed out certificates for being “a peace-loving community”, implying their innocence only by default, while the criminal’s antecedents remain enigmatic and diffuse the pattern of devious behaviour.

State Rep. Mark Honadel, whose district includes the temple, said, “Unfortunately, when this type of stuff hits your area, you say to yourself, 'Why?' But in today's society, I don't think there's any place that's free from idiots.”

That we are still battling with terminology to use for terrorists in some parts of the world reveals just how much semantics play a role in brainwashing people.

It includes the victims, who are hostage to the munificence of an all-embracing country. There is diffidence among non-westerners to talk about racism or what is now increasingly obvious as white terrorism.

This has two very dangerous consequences: It results in suspicion and infighting among different ethnic groups, and the claiming of tragedy points makes it possible for the ‘war on terror’ to continue as a sanctimonious bubble for the Western establishments.

The discussion on gun control is just one of the sidelights to obfuscate the issue. A person with a gun does not necessarily go on a killing spree. There are unlicensed weapons available. There are bombs and the use of more basic forms of ‘fundamentalist’ tactics. The latter can spread right from televangelism to a president sneaking into another country to bolster the morale of his forces that have no business to be there in the first place.

How do we deal with a “lone gunman”, a “psycho” and other such assorted creatures that are products of psychiatric superpower wards as opposed to an organisation that can conveniently, and legitimately, be called a terror outfit? Did a group pilot an airplane into the Twin Towers? Were we not told there was just one soldier who walked in the dead of night and shot down villagers in Afghanistan? Anders Breivik was alone when he killed 77 people in Norway. Kiaran Stapleton “kept smiling” as the court pronounced him guilty for the murder of Indian student Anuj Bidve in Manchester.

How individualist are they? Why do we not just say that there is another terrorism that does not need caves or a rugged terrain? Countries carry the baggage of history, of calamities, of attacks. The ruling elite do not have to muddy their hands to clear the rubble, so they muddy the minds of the citizens. The melting pot swirls the ladle and scoops out the good from the bad. It is an act so subtle that no one notices it.

It is left to the conditioned-to-feel displaced and mentally unstable white guy to carry the moral fable forward. He is like any recruit at a terrorist training camp. His ideology is not born in a vacuum. He is doing it for country. The political leadership will quote from the Constitution, but they have whetted the appetite for vengeance with rhetoric. Incidentally, the indictment of soldiers by some senior officers is an even more potent testimony of such lobotomy. Not surprisingly, Page’s six year stint in the US army during the 90s, partly in psychological operations” is mentioned prominently, even if he was demoted and quit the military with a “Less Than Honourable Discharge”.

Despite this, he comes across as a backroom loyalist. His 9/11 tattoo in many ways subliminally exonerates him. America has not allowed the world to live in peace ever since that day. One Sikh leader stated that it “implies to me that there's some level of hate crime there”. Another one wants “to educate Americans about diverse groups and act ‘to lessen this kind of rage’”.

A crime that should be seen in isolation has become communalised. It is, strangely enough, pluralism that has caused it – a pluralism where you may look and dress like Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber but not like ‘natives’ like you. Instead of pushing for quick action and security, there is trepidation over “mistaken identity”, that some white guy might think you are someone from the al Qaeda. The chairman of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education believes: “There’s always an apprehension and a sense of fear that this kind of incident will take place anywhere, anytime.”

Can this not happen to others, too? Sikhs were killed for being Sikhs in their home country, India, where the ruling party conducted an operation inside the Golden Temple. Sikhs have had to fight for their right to wear turbans and to carry their kirpans, symbolic swords. Was there any al Qaeda then?

If 9/11 is being propagated as a definitive revenge-worthy date to flush out enemies, then will insurgency and terrorist attacks on some Indian states be seen as fallout of the Partition of 1947, and subsequent wars with Pakistan and China too?

Mitt Romney is concerned that the Wisconsin attack took place at a house of worship. This gives the crime another colour. Places of worship draw attention to the faith, more than to the community. But in the world outside America, there are sects, castes, sub-castes. However, in an alien land, a temple of any religion has more than emotive value. It represents an uprooted cultural identity.

There is already guilt by association. Pakistan’s liberals who berate those who sympathise with the plight of Muslims in Assam or Rohingyas of Myanmar instead of the Balochis in their own backyard are themselves reaching out to American Sikhs. The Peshawar ones are a forgotten story. 1984’s massacre of Sikhs is a fade-out for India.

The sense of urgency different communities feel to identify with such sorrow at the individual and group level is most certainly part of a larger political expression. Every such tragedy is about lost human lives. The need to emphasise it beyond the obvious is driven by a subconscious need for self-preservation and, as a consequence, actualisation.

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(c) Farzana Versey

Did a woman backstab Osama?

The Osama sage is not likely to end soon. After Pakistan saying that his wives were illegal entrants, the latest news is intriguing, although not implausible. Why retired Pakistani brigadier Shaukat Qadir would want to carry out his own investigations is, of course, a bit strange.

It looks like a neat cover-up job, for there are reports that bin Laden’s body was taken to the US and cremated there. Qadir saab could have written a soap opera:

“In the cramped Abbottabad house... Tensions erupted between Sadah, described as 'the favoured wife' and Khairiah Saber, an older woman who occupied a separate floor.”

A report further states:

Bin Laden's youngest wife also told interrogators that her husband shaved his beard and disguised himself as an ailing Pashtun elder as he leapfrogged between safe houses across northwestern Pakistan, eventually regrowing the beard after finally settling in the Abbottabad house in 2005.

Armed with this news, and despite being the favoured one, she squeals to the US intelligence authorities so that they can capture her husband? How did she contact them when she was probably hidden in there and a prisoner of sorts? Or, was she so favoured that Osama let her go to the market to buy eggs and perhaps those potency pills, and she let out little secrets to the shop-keeper who was perhaps an ISI agent?

Mr Qadir knows this old and new wives’ tales sounds a bit too ‘homey’, so he has another story as a standby:

"As a former soldier, I was struck by how badly the house was defended. No proper security measures, nothing high-tech in fact, nothing like you would expect."

Yet, for six years no one could trace him. Apparently, the former armyman has discovered that there were problems between bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri – no, not over the wives:

"This divide grew with time, and remained a source of tension until the day bin Laden died. His role had been diminished.”

The Obama administration is happy with this theory. Heck, it would be happy with anything. It helps them sell another story. Osama was a nobody, therefore it was not possible to locate him. His position was so inconsequential that now we have to find the new culprits, the new guys who will try to finish us off.

With Macbeth gone, Hamlet is holding a skull to keep the ghost alive.

Of shooting orders, noses, and pictures that brutalise

President Barack Obama can kill anyone. Or, his administration can. Needless to say ‘anyone’ here means persons who pose a “threat”, and for the United States of America it is the al-Qaida. Now that it has done away with Osama, is moving out of Afghanistan, and is a bit strapped for taking any overt action against Iran, the target practice begins at home.

If the threats come from US recruits of the organisation, the President’s office can get rid of its own citizens abroad without consulting a federal court.

US Attorney General Eric Holder said:

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a US citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack. In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the US with lethal force.”

This is dangerous for a few reasons:

• If the US government does not know where the terrorists hide or how they operate, and we have evidence of it by the long-drawn out wars, then how would it assume there are threats?

• If you do not know where they hide and therefore it is not feasible to capture them, then how will it be easy to spot them to kill? 

• If the US knows that there is a possibility of violent attack, its intelligence agencies would know where it comes from. Isn’t it amazing that these agencies can recognise an American citizen as an al Qaida recruit who is a threat, but cannot figure out what to do with him? Has he put up the Stars and Stripes in some hidden location so that people can recognise his nationality?

• How would the American government be so sure that the lethal threat is planned against the US? How many times in the past decade has the country been attacked?

This move is just a carte blanche to do as it pleases, round up the usual suspects and make it difficult for ordinary American citizens whose origins are elsewhere. They may be second generation immigrants who have no links with the country of their parents’ birth.

This is not to deny that young people have become acutely aware of their identity. Part of it is brainwashing, and part of it is most certainly the result of being socially targeted without any cause. These are a few. The US is supposed to know a lot about everything that happens in the world, so why can it not keep a track of its own citizens?

Why did it insist on getting David Headley back for trial? How did this US citizen manage to visit India and Pakistan? The US did not capture him. He was handed over. And the story of what he did and why will continue because the United States of America does not want anyone captured. It wants to kill, and not have to answer inconvenient questions.

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Cosmetic surgery is not halal. An Egyptian member of the Islamic Al-Nour party has discovered. Or, rather, he knew already, that is the reason Anwar al-Balkimy explained away his bandaged nose as the result of being beaten up by gangsters in a robbery attempt.

His fib was exposed and he was expelled from the party and had to issue an apology. However, there will be an official inquiry and if found guilty he might be imprisoned for “creating anxiety among the public” and “worrying public officials”!

Does the public care? If only some of these purist groups took a look behind the hijaabs, they’d find blonde streaks and heavy make-up. Men probably use quite a few things that make them look and feel good.

It is indeed possible that somewhere in the religious texts there is a provision for not tampering with the body. There was no concept of cosmetic surgery until a few decades ago. If a person suffers from severe burns, will there be no skin grafting? This is reconstructive surgery and is meant to repair the appearance, for it does not necessarily hamper the functioning of other organs. So, what is the fuss about? Perhaps, the MP had problems with breathing because of his nose structure. Or, it may as well be that he wanted to alter the shape because he felt like it.

He has not changed as a person, so his nose should concern no one but him and his god, if they insist.

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You are seeing this photograph and are revolted. Everyone is. However, what does come out of this? Today’s Mumbai Mirror had a front page story on this one picture – of a man who survives by begging, has no one and lives on the streets. He was beaten up, and it transpires it was by the cops. The important thing to note is that this photograph first appeared in yesterday’s issue. The writeup expressed remorse and anger, but no one knew who the people beating him up were. In today’s edition, Pritish Nandy says "These brutes must be punished". But, when he states that people just stood there and did nothing, he forgets to ask: did the newspaper’s photographer do anything?

And this is the long caption that went with it:

On a pavement opposite CST, scores of people were momentarily distracted from their vada pavs and chai by the screams of this dishevelled man in the picture. The drama started around 2 pm when a group of six, carrying canes, ordered the man to get into a police vehicle, which already had around 20 others. When he refused, he was thrashed mercilessly; the lashings didn’t stop even when blood started gushing out of his forehead. Shopkeepers by the pavement said the man was homeless, and would often be found looking for food in the garbage bins. There was no confirmation whether the assaulters were policemen; the man was finally bundled into a vehicle, driven away to an unknown destination.

Apparently, somebody wrote this seeing the picture and talking to the photographer. It was a “drama”, and now we have a story.

Is it always about a story, and then the claim of being the first to ‘expose’ how callous we are? Are they not ‘we’? Brutality, anyone?

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Images: Telegraph, The Guardian, Mumbai Mirror

Hindus, Muslims and a Toilet

Next time I want to become part of the ‘mainstream’ I will wear red bracelets. If any of you thought that Hinduism was associated with saffron, then according to the ISI’s Major Iqbal it is not quite so. It is red. The Left parties are still nursing wounds and here some Pakistani even takes away their colour. Oh, but the Hindutvawadis had also taken away the hammer during Babri no? And maybe the sickle during the excavation? Commies are bereft and all because of the ISI.

One more story on the David Headley 'investigation'. He bought 15 red bracelets to be worn by the attackers so that they could disguise themselves as Hindus. This is part of the evidence and I can imagine those American backpacker tourists saying, “Yeah, yeah, that’s wotwesaah at those aahsim taimpills.”

I saw Shakti Kapoor wearing one. At the Ajmer dargah. Every religion has this red thread/bracelet thing, okay? Honestly, can we get serious about this? Would the Indian intelligence authorities look at the wrists of suspects? Next they will say people with varicose veins are chosen to be disguised as green Muslims.

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Smita Thackeray has complimented Muslims for not being swayed by LeT and al Qaida. What to do, Smitaji. We only sway when we are drunk.

“It is a matter of great satisfaction that Muslims have retained faith in India’s unity and communal harmony.”

Gee, thanks. Now your turn.

“The prayers of Hindus and Muslims will shield Balasaheb from any threat. The Ajmal Kasabs, Ranas and David Headleys can’t touch him, Sonia-ji or Manmohan Singh.”

What about atheists?

Ms. Thackeray’s new-found interest is because she is making a film called Babri on Babri. She insists it will be from the common man’s perspective. Of course. I should hope to see a lot of Behrampada, of Madhukar Sarpotdar and the arms, of people being made to pull down their pants in cosmopolitan Mumbai, of honest cops who were transferred. It can all be fictionalised.

Incidentally, Aamir Khan has helped her with the script. This is one common man we can wash our hands of and who will do anything to market anything.

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I do not know of many people who if they need to go the loo will take the name of the toilet. Will someone who happens to be in the Bhuleshwar area and wishes to use the facilities say, “I want to go to Kasturba Gandhi”?

No. But we have to create a noise. One bloke is angry because of one such toilet name:

“This is my fight because the public seems to be afraid to speak up. I think the British (appear in a better light) at this point since they named the road after Kasturba Gandhi, thus honouring her. We, on the other hand, have done the opposite and degraded her.”

Her husband degraded her long ago when he gave her a broom and expected her to clean lavatories. Mahatma Gandhi had great respect for ‘toilet training’. The self-righteousness by citizens is unnecessary. Shit happens, so no need to get pissed off.

Accidental communalism?

Now road rage and drunken driving have been included in the hall of communal fame. It is beyond disgusting. A businessman rammed his car into a scooter, killing the pillion rider and grievously injuring the rider. His blood sample revealed 16 times higher than the normal limit of alcohol. Clear case of drunken driving. He is permitted bail. However, the police do not want him out and made a remand application that states:

“Not only would there be communal riots, the Muslim community shall stop believing in law.”

The reason given is that the driver is Hindu and the victim a Muslim. It is natural for the victim’s family to be angry, just as the culprit will get himself a good defence lawyer. Where do Hindu and Muslim come in here? Or are they being overly protective of the culprit?

A while ago Nooriya Haveliwalla, also drunk and reportedly on drugs, killed two people and injured four cops. She is Muslim. There was no talk about a flare-up. Salman Khan’s infamous accident killed a Muslim, so no communal tension.

The victim’s family is complaining about the culprit’s rashness, which all of us should. Anyone could have been killed, including the driver. The court has dismissed the police statement as frivolous, but it reveals the mindset that I spoke about in the article below. Are we to believe that Muslims will riot for every darn thing when they are often victims of those riots? As for the tepid afterthought about ‘stop believing in the law’ it only indicates that there is a belief that Muslims will take the matter in their own hands.

I think the police officers where this remand application has come from need to be taken to task and a case of defamation filed against them.

Excuse me, Mr. President

Barack Obama’s plans are those of a man in a hurry to divert attention from issues back home. Clinton did it. Bush did it. He is doing it. The American tax payer will be shelling out $30 million in the first year for something s/he has no clue about. Is this revenge for 9/11? Prevention of another 9/11?

No. 30,000 more troops will go into Afghanistan so that Americans forget about their problems and feel good. There is more:

The President vowed to start bringing American forces home from the strife-torn country by mid-2011, saying the US could not afford and should not have to shoulder an ‘‘open-ended commitment’’.

Has anyone asked the United States of America to send troops? Is this a UN initiative? How does America know that by 2011 it will be fine to move out? What are its plans? It is time Mr. Obama stopped talking as though it is a magnanimous gesture and the US will suffer. Cannot afford? Of course, it cannot. It has to take care of its own economy, but since that is a problem area the word ‘afford’ married to ‘strife-torn’ works like magic.

It cannot be a close-ended commitment and has to be open-ended unless there are specific plans. How can he promise to bring “this war to a successful conclusion”? Which war is he talking about? The one that has US drones? Or the one that is a civil war in which the US has no place? Or the one it is fighting in its mind?

Obama set out a strategy seeking to reverse Taliban gains in large parts, increase pressure on Afghanistan to build its own military capacity and an effective government and step up attacks on the Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The Taliban is also in Pakistan, which he does not speak about. The Al Qaeda is all over the place, but Pakistan is good enough. So, what is this talk about helping Afghanistan build its military capacity?

Defence secretary Robert Gates has done the defence job:

“It is neither necessary nor feasible to create a modern, Western-style Afghan nation-state. Nor does it entail counterinsurgency from one end of Afghanistan to the other. We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country only to see it descend into civil war, and then into Taliban hands.”

Just who does Mr Gates think he is? Does he know that Afghanistan has a long history and has survived many marauders? What does modern mean? I have said it before. Iraq was a modern state. Iran was a modern state. Until the interference started and the religious guys decided to take over control. The insurgency is not from Afghanistan but from outside, so the counter-insurgency will come from them.

The US abandoned the country and left it in the hands of the Taliban? Geez. The Afghans were fighting alongside the Russians against the Mujahideen, the holy warriors, who had the help of the United States of America!

Please, Mr. Obama, history is inconvenient truth. We just have to live with it.

Obama's Men and a Pakistani woman

When you read a headline like, ‘Obama pledges to invest in Pak democracy’ you do begin to wonder as to how democracy has become just a banking institution where you put your funds and then watch them grow. It is leader-to-leader and has nothing to do with the citizens.

Washington also began a detoxification process to rid Pakistan of the extremism it has nurtured at home to counter its obsessive fear and hatred for India, telling the country’s leadership again and again that it did not have to dread its eastern neighbour but its own home-grown militancy.

Pakistan knows that India will not initiate overt action; it has always known it. The American government does not. Or, it knows and looks the other way, trying to make smoke visible to consolidate its ‘possibility of fire’ theory. Pakistan has had to deal with home-grown militancy for a very long time, just as India does. This barter system being propagated by Obama is really a smarty tactic. He promised to give military aid to the country “to get the job done” like some feudal lord directing his minions.

In order to achieve the goal to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda and its allies in Pak, “we must deny them the space to threaten Pakistani, Afghan or American people.”

The al-Qaeda is the enemy of the United States and we know how it all started. A civil war is being made into a full-blown battle because of US presence. And to make things worse, Obama says that this is a threat to the US. The monetary aid is probably to keep the fight going, divert funds and tell the patriotic American people that this is for their own good. They must, therefore, not think about the layoffs, the recession, and the pathetic economic conditions. The ‘for your own good’ theory has made the US administration work out disastrous strategies in Afghanistan earlier and, later, Iraq. Both times they did not return with the intended targets…and Saddam Hussein was not the target. He was made one to justify the empty hands returning without the weapons of mass destruction.

“I have long said we cannot meet these challenges in isolation, nor delay the action, nor deny the resources necessary to get the job done. And that’s why we have a comprehensive (Af-Pak) strategy for the region,” said Obama.

Sure. Increase the defence budget, get more soldiers ready. These challenges are indeed isolated because each region has its own specific dynamics. Swat is not Buner, and the reaction of Islamabad to the two will be different. So, how does the US assume it knows better?

The Af-Pak strategy (a term that itself reveals ignorance) is one more sound byte till the troops go marching in.

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Since I love reading more into pictures than appears, here goes:



Obama is on centre-stage, naturally, looking earnest. His left hand is held up to emphasise a point but more to his home audience rather than the leaders flanking him. The wedding band is visible conveying the image of the family as a unit, symbolising the country as a unit

Karzai’s hands are joined together but there seems an opening between to keep options open; he is listening and his head is slightly bent towards Obama, and that could convey that he would probably be easier to tackle.

Zardari too has his hands joined and there is no room to manoeuvre; they are on the table, which means he won’t take risks. He is looking straight ahead, so the possibility of his listening through one ear and letting it out of the other are there. Also, he has a slight sneer, perhaps indicating that he knows more than he is willing to let out, or he knows what’s going on in Obama’s mind.

Based on just this one picture, I’d give Zardari marks for being the sharpest because he is playing his cards close to his chest and may spring a few surprises.

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Tatheer Daryani, a Pakistani final year student of Fine Arts Pakistani at the M S University, Baroda, has used her own hair and blood along with mercury latex and glass in her works which are being displayed as part of annual display of art works to highlight the plight of women in Pakistan.

"I cannot explain my art work in words and one has to see it to understand it. I myself wanted to be a part of my art work and I, therefore, used my own blood and hair while sculpting my idea into a definite form.”

I am all for such ‘subjective’ use in art and literature or any creative endeavour. I wonder, though, whether the avowed purpose truly manages to convey what it sets out to do. Blood and hair are universal, but would red paint and artificial hair not convey the same emotions. Had we not been informed would we even know?

Will the attention now not be on the artist’s blood and hair rather than the message she wishes to put forth? If it were about a personal journey, one can well understand. This is not to rebut such attempts but to question aloud about how much reaches how far. It applies to all of us who endeavour to do so.