Suman Palit

Salman Rushdie places the blame for Godhra squarely in the lap of God.

The political discourse matters, and explains a good deal. But there's something beneath it, something we don't want to look in the face: namely, that in India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of "respect." What is there to respect in any of this, or in any of the crimes now being committed almost daily around the world in religion's dreaded name? How well, with what fatal results, religion erects totems, and how willing we are to kill for them! And when we've done it often enough, the deadening of affect that results makes it easier to do it again.



So India's problem turns out to be the world's problem. What happened in India has happened in God's name. The problem's name is God.

Religion is an expression of tribalism, which is endemic to human nature.. which is in turn derived from the algorithms that describe our cultural and biological evolution. India's problem is not even a uniquely human problem. What happened in India has happened because humans (and every other intelligent predator) have within themselves the capacity for bloodletting with unimaginable ferocity. The problem's name is not God. The problem is quite simply, *us*. The problem is that our future is still driven by the same rules that have governed our violent predatory past. Our past that tells us we will do this again, and again, and again..



Have a good weekend, one and all. Sleep tight, don't let the bed-bugs bite..!



Found via the Blorg Blogger - Dan Rector

Richard Bennett describes the history of Math teaching from the 1950's on. A must read!

Douglas TurnBull over at Beauty of Gray found via Kathy Kinsley, has a superb description of the thermobarics in use over Afghanistan.. but his most important point is in this sidebar.

As a side note, this weapon also shows the way in which war accelerates the development and acquisition process. The BLU-118B would probably still be in the middle of several years of operational testing if it weren’t for the war in Afghanistan. But under the pressure of events, they buckled down, checked it out, and shipped some out to the Air Force to use in theater.

In other words, war spurs technological advance like no other human activity. Technology is one of the causes as well as one of the main drivers of the world economy. I would therefore expect to see the US outstrip the rest of the world in technological advances over the next decade or so of fighting the War on Terror. The US has a great need to push the frontiers of weapons development. The pressure of war will provide the obvious incentives, while the nature and scope of it will dictate decentralization and privatization of effort. Laser cannons on aircraft and thermobaric bombs are just the beginning...



At any rate, don't expect our European allies to lay off on the whining rhetoric about American unlateralism since their state-funded and Brussel-sprout infested research agencies are unlikely to be able to keep up with both the flexibility of the on-going threat as well as the American response. Populism is cheap, and hiding envy and frustration in a world of flabby multilateralism is something the EU polity has an excellent track record in.

Stephen Green gets moved to Blog Royalty with his spirited and grim-witted spanking of Nicholas Kristof. If you haven't read it yet.. Stephen's post drills more holes into Kristof's thesis than a rat on Swiss cheese!

Frankly, the more legally armed people there are, the safer I feel about the illegally armed barbarians. Maybe if we start letting decent people carry pistols on planes, the next Flight 93 can land on the fucking tarmac.

or this one..

In the years since the UK abolished handguns and the US has started liberalizing concealed-weapons permits, London has out-stripped New York City’s handgun murder rate. But let’s not mention that, because it would ruin Nicky’s “argument.”

My wife is one of those "chicks with guns" that Mr. Kristof so loftily snubs! She handles a Kimber 1911 .45 cal with aplomb.. outshoots most men at the local range, and can fieldstrip her gun in under 20 seconds (honest, I timed it once). She has yet to validate Kristof's dire prediction:

Our desire to defend ourselves from terrorism by buying firearms will mean, almost certainly, that thousands more Americans will die in the years ahead from gunfire. It's not terrorism, but it should be terrifying.

Most of these "Americans" will be men and women shot by people they tried to bring grievous hurt or harm to. Of course it's terrifying to Mr. Kristof, who draws a moral equivalency between a criminal and his victim. As for myself, I will sleep a sound sleep knowing that natural selection is doing a great job of weeding out manics, murderers and rapists from our streets and bedrooms.

Jak King (a lefty blogger I admire nonetheless) points me to this
Guardian article: "Hawk spreads its wings".

The fourth largest electorate in the world - bigger than Brazil, Indonesia or Russia - is going to the polls and looks as if it might stem the tide of Hindu nationalism in India..

Um, stemming this tide is a futile endeavor.. Like the sound of one hand clapping, Hindu Nationalism is not all about the desire for conservative Hindus to exercise political power with a religous bent. Within the rank and file of India's middle and lower classes is the growing frustration that there has been no effective secular answer to the rising influence of Islamic fundamentalism in Indian states like Gujarat, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Hindu Nationalism has provided the only answers, however violent or rooted in tribal ideologies they may be. In fact, the secular political opposition to the BJP is so frayed, their ideology so weak, that the upcoming elections are theirs to lose.

The two countries have also been moving in similar political and economic directions. The rising populist tide has lifted rightwing parties and in economic terms, India and Israel have seen technology become their most celebrated exports.



But it is Likud's doctrine of military might that resonates with the hawks in Delhi. The BJP's political narrative is that India is under constant threat and that national security concerns must come first. If it sounds familiar, it is because the BJP have merely borrowed the formulation from Ariel Sharon.

Technology is the most powerful driver of economies all over the world. There is no reason why India and Israel should be any different. Arms races are a part of the human condition.. not something to be ashamed of. Throughout history, races and cultures have always allied themselves militarily first, culturally later. The burgeoning Indo-Israeli relationship is no exception. There is also a large kernel of truth to the BJP's political narrative. India *is* under constant threat. Pakistan's foreign policy obsesses about India.. Muslims across the subcontinent, even the so-called moderates, obsess about Hindus and view them as the ultimate kefirs. These are real threats that the current secular elite has almost completely failed to address.

There is also the Indian diaspora to consider. There about 2m Indians working in Saudi Arabia alone, remitting more than $4bn a year, and Delhi cannot afford to antagonize economic partners in the Middle East with anti-Muslim rhetoric.

India's economic partners in the Middle East have bigger problems and larger threats to their political survival in their own backyards post 9/11. It is unlikely they will worry about resurgent Hindu nationalism in a country far from their borders that poses little strategic threat to their existence. Besides, this baseless fear of the Middle East must rank as the biggest irritant in the average politically aware Indians throat. What the world is watching today may be likened to a polite coughing up of this phlegm...

But the BJP may find its biggest political threat comes from across the snowy uplands of Kashmir's border in Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military dictator, is racing to build a democracy in a couple of years that could claim a moral equivalence with India. National polls will take place in October and the general has won admiration from the west for moving the country far from the mosque and a little distance from the military.

I didn't realize that democracy was a product of the textile industry - a coat that one rushes to build and when worn, magically accords the wearer an impenetrable and unassailable halo of moral equivalency. You cannot "race" to build a democracy much like you cannot "race" to Mars.. democracy is the result of little steps taken by the people of a country, not sweeping generalizations made by political elites. Indian democracy has stumbled along for a half-century, and still has a long, hard road to travel. The tenets of the Anglosphere took centuries to take root in England and the US. For Musharraf and his apologists to think they can build a democracy in a "couple of years" is an insult to the long and arduous road that every other nation has traveled. It demonstrates a complete ignorance of the meaning of the word and it's powerful import. If history is any guide, Pakistan will flirt with polls, and then its internal tribal conflicts will lead it to repeat the lessons of its history - Polls->Parliament->Broken Promises->Power Struggles->Rampant Corruption->Coup->Polls->....

The former army chief will remain president but will hand over some power to elected representatives. What should worry India is what the world thinks when its gaze next rests upon Kashmir, probably later this year when elections take place on the Indian side. What will we then see but a general talking peace and elected politicians speaking of war?

Musharraf (or his military successors) will never be able to hand over the real power of the state.. but happier things have happened, so there is certainly room for hope. The admiration of the West (particularly the US) has been lately tempered with uneasiness and growing lack of faith in his ability to deliver the goods over the long run. By his own admission, Pakistan is ungovernable, and he does not yet have to tools to bring the rag-tag tribes under firm control. As for the world setting their gaze on Kashmir, that is highly unlikely... in the strategic vision of the US and the West, India (and Kashmir) is not important aside from it's regional destabilization potential. Afghanistan and the Central Asian energy corridor is going to remain their key focus. I'm afraid India and Pakistan will have to muddle through this one on their own. If India's elected politicians continue to speak of war after this next round of elections, they will do it because it will have the backing of most Indians. Perhaps it is true that the BJP played the war card cynically, but Indian voters have a lot of smarts.. and they vote with their feet. The BJP, or whichever coalition is in power, will have no choice but to respond to that will.

From Rum & Monkey, found via the edge of England's sword, comes the cyber-transformer Kolkata Libertarian action figure.. MEGAZORD..!

Some subtle (inscrutable?) hints that both China and Taiwan may be on the road to accepting the political reality of the two-China identity... which lends clarity to the recently observed open cooperation between India and Taiwan on sensitive issues like defense, possible nuclear-arms deals, etc.. After all, if the two countries can dissociate from their traditional one-china-and-that's-me syndrome, it sets Taiwan free to pursue new non-zero-sum alliances without worrying too much about Big Brother across the straits. Yet another example of countries who share economic and social goals of the Anglosphere finding ways to come together.

The biggest reason why a Indo-Pak war is unlikely.. um, er, the Indian's aren't really that prepared.
But then, neither is Pakistan, with a weakened economy that cannot keep up a sustained armed conflict beyond a month. On the fraility of human nature, and on the morass of bureaucratic incompetence, does the safety of the subcontinents people depend on. Bizzaro welcomes you to his world!



UPDATE:

More proof that the the Indian armed forces need to update their operational procedures (and their maps) before they contemplate another Indo-Pak war.

Government downsizing in India is back.. this time for real!

..the reduction in government staff in 2001 over 2000 is 4.1 per cent.

Impressive numbers, considering that the immense pressure from large left-leaning unions and opposition parties in the parliament was expected to stall if not reverse the disinvestment policies of the BJP.

Indian troops exchange fire along the India-Bangladesh border.. and shelling resumes along the Indo-Pak LOC.

Trouble began when Bangladesh Rifles' (BDR) troops hoisted their flag on Wednesday in a tea plantation that came up along the (Indian side of the) border,..


Intermittent small arms firing between the two sides along the international border was reported at from 35 places in Arnia, RS Pura, Samba, Ramgarh and Hiranagar sectors of Jammu and Kathua districts during last 24 hours..

Fighting along the Indo-Bangladesh border is rare.. for that reason alone, any flareup in that region is dangerous. In addition, the Hinduvta movement has enough bogeymen to keep their faithful paranoid through the next millenium. No one wants to see a second front open up in eastern India that involve regular armed forces.

More evidence (and a growing realization) that the Englishsphere elites of India are hopelessly out of touch with the common man on the street.

Our (usual) band of intellectuals take the easy route by occupying, as usual, the ‘Letters to the Editor’ columns to condemn and issue appeals. This only makes them look good in the eyes of the converted. It has no effect on inflamed mobs — only the police and the army can have that. There is a whole mass of feelings out there that all these people are missing, and will continue to miss if they remain comfortably secluded in their make-believe worlds.

Moral cowardice and intellectual dishonesty masquerading as enlightened political correctness is not the exclusive domain of Western intellectuals..

After the angst of watching burning cities, and otherwise mild-mannered Indians devolve into killing mobs, it is worth examining the state of Gujarat from a fresher perspective. This is also the region of India famed for its astounding resilience.

WHETHER it has been the communal riots of 1992 or the earthquake in January 2001, Gujarat has always shown a remarkable resilience and an ability to recover from adversity within a short of time. This gives rise to the hope that the state will recover quickly from its current crisis as well.



.. all this in spite of the earthquake in 2001. Today, Gujarat is the most industrialised state in the country — it contributes 11 per cent of national income and is first in terms of the industrial investment made. It accounts for 13 per cent of India’s industrial output, 10 per cent of its total factories, 70 per cent of its chemical industries, 25 per cent of its manufactured cloth and 31 per cent of its total production of cotton..

Remember, this is also a state with less than 7.5% of the Indian population. Quite a feat!

Brian MickleThwait on Libertarian Samizdata is bullish on Japan:

Japan, it seems to me, does things unanimously. It moves unanimously, from one unanimous policy to another. It takes an age to change its mind, but once it does, the impact is, for good or for bad, electrifying

Someone once said: "Japanese diplomacy is like duck diplomacy, serene on the outside, bloody furious paddling underside". This sort of thing is vintage Japan! Having studied kendo (briefly) under some brilliant expat Japanese masters in Chicago, I got a quick, first hand glimpse of what Brian talks about.. that extreme thoroughness and the quiet conversations which hide the underlying churning activity. It took one instructor of mine years of untranslatable conversations with his peers punctuated by uncountable saki bottles, before he almost imperceptibly changed the way he began and ended one waza. I never quite understood intellectually what that was about. I could, however, feel the elegance of this new style without being able to put a quantitative finger on it - it was an odd thing, it was..!

The Centre for Defense of Free Enterprise thinks PETA should lose their tax-exempt status. It's about time.. I predict a sharp drop-off in PETA revenues from celebrities seeking tax shelters and publicity as they scurry off to fund more palatable causes.

...PETA is one of the nation’s most notorious animal rights groups. PETA’s philosophy is extreme: “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment,” according to its Web site. Since its founding in 1980, PETA’s name has been linked to numerous unlawful acts, ranging from highly publicized anti-fur protest demonstrations to undercover theft of business documents to secrecy-shrouded break-ins and university laboratory arsons. PETA has received recent media notice for its funding of the North American Earth Liberation Front -- a group classified by the FBI as domestic terrorists -- and its funding in support of Animal Liberation Front (ALF) arsonist Rodney Coronado -- ALF is also listed by the FBI as domestic terrorists.

Found via FoxNews.com

Megan McArdale responds to her legions of Open Source critics.. you should read all the comments too. Egads! Nothing riles people up on the Netverse like an good old-fashioned open source war.


As for myself, I should warn readers that I left the open source Unix world in the '90s, haven't looked back since. I'm now a dyed-in-the-bytes Microsoft developer.. not quite the evangelist like some of my cohorts, but sufficiently convinced that all the open source in the world is not going to make more than a few dents in the Microsoft juggernaut. Open source needs to demonstrate it can win convincingly in the marketplace. That has not happened yet, with the possible exception of Apache.

Stephen Green demonstrates that too much Vodka can actually be good for your perspective..

When the Israeli army screws up, innocent civilians die -- and they try to avoid doing that again. When Palestinian terrorists succeed, innocent civilians die -- and they try to up the body count for next time.

Soul-searching is not a strong suit of Islamic terrorists, eh ?

Signs that India as a political entity may slowly become more ungovernable under its current system of democracy.

...the underlying cause was a growing feeling of helplessness, indeed of impotence, born of an awareness that India had become ungovernable. All that he, or any future prime minister, could do was to pretend not to see where the country was headed, and make grandiose claims of progress at home to fool the voters, and abroad to make the world believe that India was still a country of some consequence. Vajpayee had, in all probability, grown tired of the game...

This isn't such a bad thing after all.. India is currently a gigantic patchwork of wildly different ethnic identities. Their interpretation and implementation of democratic principles are just as local. The only way to govern India and defuse the sense of helplessness might be to loosen each states political ties to the federal government. Allow the states greater flexibility in negotiating economic deals not just with foreign investors and corporations, but between each other as well. Allow states to succeed or fail on their own terms since market pressure would become the tool to weed out inefficient models of governance.



The pillars of democracy left behind by the British in the subcontinent have done their job, and have now lost their efficacy, as the "non-elites" cannot relate to any of it in a meaningful way. It is time for Indians to begin the task of transforming their economic enclaves the way **they** want, to adapt the universal message of free-markets and liberty to their own environment. No one else can do the job. The current crop of Englishsphere plutocrats are hopelessly incapable of such a task - so beholden are they to the mindless task of copying and grafting the uniquely European or American way of life on an unwilling populace.



The holy grail for the subcontinent would then be a South Asian federation.. freed from its post-colonial hangover, released from the zero-sum games of tribal conflicts, pseudo-religous battles, and flexing its trade muscles within the framework of new non-zero-sum alliances. What a world that would be!!

My wife just set me up with a wireless LAN card, and did some magical mumbo-jumbo with her laptop and Internet sharing.. now we don't have to fight for the phone line since we can share one dialout session. Marital bliss just got another ribbon around the neck! This means more posts post-work.. ack!

Sometimes, I hate it when I'm right. More evidence that the violence in Gujarat is primarily an economic jihad, and not some kind of mystical war for the Indian soul..!

..Ever since the communal riots broke out in Gujarat, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) cadres are allegedly circulating a letter among “fellow Hindu brothers” that asks them to “impose economic and financial sanctions on Muslims and anti-nationals”...

You have a billion people packed into a country with a fifth of the land mass of North America looking ahead into an uncertain future with dwindling resources and few solutions.. In response, Indians are simply lining up along familiar and comfortable social fault lines.. State policy will never be able to contain this steady and implacable trend without a way for frustrated Indians to realize their economic potential and dreams. The political challenge is to help breach the trust barrier between these seemingly dissimilar cultural tribes, and propel them into a new non-zero-sum alliance away from the spiral of their zero-sum death dance.

John Braue is not impressed with the wranglings over on Libertarian Samizdata. I agree. The LS is much too good of a publication (and I use the word for exactly what it means) for this sort of public wrangling. Amusing, but ultimately self-defeating, like watching a mini train wreck. The war cannot be refought, the maps of erstwhile Yugoslavia cannot be redrawn. Some "letting go" might be in order.



On my way home from work, I actually heard commentator David Skeel on NPR's Marketplace remark that Enron was the product of over-regulation, and not de-regulation of the energy market, and since government regulatory agencies would never be able to close every single loophole, the answer to the Enron debacle is to create simple and broad regulations, and force greater public accountability of corporations, thereby letting the power of the marketplace punish offending companies...

..it's foolish to expect Congress to make laws that will stamp out temptation. Regulation, not its absence, created the problems of off-the-balance-sheet partnerships. What's needed are a few regulatory changes -- and market pressure will do
the rest...

The mad scramble to regulate always provokes a madder scramble to find ways around it. Remarkably sane commentary coming from NPR. Maybe someone over there is actually reading some history.

According to this tongue-firmly-in-cheek test, I most closely resemble a
Alliant Tech Systems Objective Individual Combat Weapon.. I was gunning for the Desert Eagle magnum.. oh well.



These are all really cool weapons systems.. I'd seriously like to have one to match my socks each day.



This is a also a great game to play with your spouse..

"..so what kind of lethal killing device are you going to be like, dear..?"

".. ohh, I feel a little Ruger today, honey.., how about you?"

"..does the Colt clash with these dockers..? "

".. damn! that Dragunov keeps sticking out of the cummerbund.. ack!"

"..take your paws off my H&K Caws, you damn dirty ape.."

Myself	Courtney (my wife)
Alliant Techsystems OICW FN P90 H&K G11 M4A1 w/M203 Grenade Launcher GE XM214 Minigun H&K PDW H&K PSG-1 Steyr AMR H&K MP-5 Dragunov Sniper Rifle H&K HK69A1 H&K CAWS MAC-10 IMI UZI Taurus Raging Bull Desert Eagle Franchi SPAS-12 Kalashnikov AK-47 Beretta M92 FA-MAS Glock 17 Ruger Super Redhawk H&K SOCOM Colt M1911A1 Vektor CP1	Alliant Techsystems OICW FN P90 Steyr AMR Desert Eagle H&K G11 H&K MP-5 H&K SOCOM H&K PDW H&K PSG-1 Franchi SPAS-12 H&K CAWS Glock 17 M4A1 w/M203 Grenade Launcher Taurus Raging Bull H&K HK69A1 Beretta M92 GE XM214 Minigun Ruger Super Redhawk IMI UZI Vektor CP1 Colt M1911A1 MAC-10 Dragunov Sniper Rifle Kalashnikov AK-47 FA-MAS

Richard Bennett raps Jim Bennett (no relation) for confusing historical convergence with phylogeny. The Anglosphere is defined by civil society, individual liberty, democracy and free-markets. The Englishsphere, on the other hand, is defined by English-mangling, chai-sipping, squash-playing, society fatcats whose only claim to fame is a dubious experiment with socialistic capitalism. This Indian Englishsphere has time and time again, completely missed the boat on the real nature of the Anglosphere.



There are 1 billion Indians, a tiny fraction of who form the tenuous shard of India's Englishsphere. The fact that this marginalized elite in India are such chums with the Brits do nothing for the millions of Indians who do not speak English, many of who have little or no interest in the comings and goings of this toasty little country club. As Richard Bennett rightly points out, the if there is ever a true Anglosphere in Asia it will indeed comprise of Russia, India and the projected power of the US. However, the Anglosphere of this India will come from those Indians who take, translate and re-work the timeless lessons of democracy to their unique social circumstance. It will not come from the current crop of India's intellectual elite. It will come from the newly invigorated class of Indian entrepreneurs, small business owners and the growing ranks of India's middle class.



Of course, none of this will happen quite the way we would like it to if the globalization of India stalls or even reverses course. As Glenn Reynolds and Perry, Natalie and the Samizdata gang have pointed out ad nauseam, globalization leads to free trade, free trade leads to richer people. These rich people then have a powerful incentive to stabilize and protect their economies by forging alliances - in this case, a mutually beneficial Anglosphere.




UPDATE:

^***Instapundit was kind enough to question my fact checking, there are, er, only 1 billion Indians, not 2 as I had ranted about earlier. I've been fact-checked and found wanting :-). Still, it was only dressing on the argument, which still holds. Fluency in English amongst the elites is not the driving force that pushes India into the Anglosphere. It will be the millions who until now, were trapped beneath the glass wall of the caste hierarchy and held back by a socialist command economy. They are the only ones with the energy and the burning desire to make it happen. Globalization is transforming an unseen populace into a growing labor and consumer market. That is where India's future lies. With it go the hopes of the entire subcontinent.

In earlier posts, I may have completely misjudged the determination and the organizational strength of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad - the most visible of all Hindu fundamentalist groups! No wonder the ruling BJP asks "how high" when told to jump.


I have mixed feelings about this - sneaking admiration for an organization justly credited with creating a powerful sense of "Hindu" identity sorely lacking amongst traditionally fragmented Hindus, and a roiling uneasiness in my gut - my grandfather's voice warning me what happens to careless boys who play with fire.

Like an earthquake, communal violence ripples outward from Ahmedabad to the sleepier villages and hamlets of Gujrat...


..while the world coughs politely and with some embarrassment at the primal acts of humans.


... even as the VHP negotiates a face-saving surrender that may allow Hindu-Muslim tensions in India to settle back down just below boiling point !!

Over this weekend, Bravenet - the hit counter supplier for the Blogverse, was hacked! Hackers are no better than horse thieves... I can't seem to remember what used to happen to horse thieves in the old West, hmmm