The End of the Bush Era: Iraq

This is the second in a series of essays, "The End of the Bush Era." It is a list of what I believe are the most prominent successes and failures of this prolific politician who, for better or ill, is going to become an indelible part of history.

The reasons for why the Bush-Blair coalition went into Iraq for Gulf War 2 is going to remain one of the great mysteries of our generation.

A lot of answers are on offer, but they are at best only a piece of the puzzle, and at worst, dismissive of exactly how convinced these gentlemen were (and remain to this day) that we needed to bomb Iraq.

Oil is not a good enough a reason. Iraq was a net importer of oil for years after the invasion in 2003, and it couldn't have been expected to be any different. Oil is a capital-intensive venture, and most of the infrastructure was crumbling in Iraq, after more than 12 years of sanctions. Today, after 5 years, Iraq's contribution to global oil production is still nothing to write home about.

It may be a combination of oil and one-upping his father, who very prudently went in with certain objectives, achieved them, then moved out, but then subsequently lost his re-election in 1991.

It could have been the Cookie Monster, I don't know. The truth is, nobody does. Despite the numerous books that have come out on the Bush presidency, the real inner core of interactions are covered in a fog of war, and subject to conjecture. Everyone's got a guess, and an opinion, but nobody really knows.

If you ask Bush and Blair about it, they go into moral platitudes about how they "believed" it was right, as if you're asking them if they believed in Jesus or Buddha, and then fall back to the ridiculous argument that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein.

Well, it would be a better place without Robert Mugabe, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, and my annoying university roommate in 2006. Invade them too, why don't you, and make the world a "better place"? It's a cop-out.

It is a decision perplexing in its stupidity and awe-inspiring in the scale of disaster it has rained down upon Iraq and the world.

I still remember watching "Operation Shock and Awe" on CNN from Abu Dhabi in March 2003. It indeed was both shocking and awful.

The skyline of Baghdad was glowing orange in the night time as it rained fire. The domes and palm trees, such a familiar site for me, (having lived and grown up in the Middle East myself) silhouetted against the flames. To see it burn like that, it touched me really deeply. People shouldn't be allowed to do things like that without due cause.

Everyone outside of the Western intelligentsia informally knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Iraq was under weapons inspections, stricter sanctions or bombings for the past 12 years at that point, and this combination of UN-administered soft and hard diplomacy was doing a pretty decent job of containing the Iraqi threat. Al Qaeda loathed Iraq and wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, and Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

Hans Blix, the UN Weapons Inspector, a diplomat and academic, made the most logical observation: we don't have enough information to draw a conclusion safely, and more inspections are required. The US and the UK ran an unsuccessful smear campaign to completely destroy the man's reputation in a bid to overturn his opinions so they could start bombing Iraq back to the Stone Age.

I interviewed a certain Dr. Joseph Nye (a Distinguished Service Professor at the Kennedy School of Public Policy in Harvard) while I was in NUS in 2004 for my university publication, after it had become obvious that there were no weapons. In true academic humility, the man admitted in all honesty he was very surprised Saddam Hussein didn't have any weapons, because, and I remember his exact words, "we knew he had them."

This has to be one of the world's biggest "Oops!" Billions of dollars wasted, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead, thousands of coalition casualties, a resurgence of localized Al Qaeda (where previously there was none), and an eruption of brutal, horrific sectarian violence resulted.

They underestimated so completely how difficult it would be to tackle a country so diverse and violently communal, that it genuinely baffles the mind as to what exactly they were expecting. "To be greeted as liberators" is part of the refrain they had stuck to, another indicator of how blinded by ideology and an over-simplistic worldview the Bush administration had to be.

Mr. Blair, in the meantime, had nought say in the failing strategies being implemented by the Bush administration. Iraq is a blemish on Tony Blair's record; he has arguably been one of Britain's most successful Prime Ministers since Winston Churchill, but how can one not give him the unfortunate moniker of "a poodle" after so submissively allowing George Bush to first spear-head a campaign against Iraq on such flimsy evidence, and then completely botch up the ground operations?

The post-invasion failures are summed up by the one very stupid thing they did: they went on and completely disbanded Iraq's security forces.

So they released men trained in handling arms and the arts of war to fend for themselves in their ethnic enclaves in a deeply schismatic region of the world that had suffered many years of painful dictatorship, and liberated only after war and bombings. Were they expecting grace and sensibility?

But the world collectively drank the kool-aid. The press was so sparing in their criticism and scepticism of their campaign against Iraq, one wondered if they were complicit. Honestly, where were the "analysts" and "experts" when the drums of war were being beaten for no apparent reason?

Most of the American senate voted for the war in Iraq, Democrats and Republicans alike. Most of the Americans supported the war, even after it was found to be under false pretence, much to the world's dismay when they re-elected George Bush for a second term in 2004, vindicating him that he was on the right path.

It was only in the last 2 years of Bush's presidency that people started losing complete faith in the man.

So it only took 6 years for them to catch on that this man had no clue what he was doing. It is remarkable how enduringly short-sighted and over-simplistic the American people are when it comes to matters of foreign policy. Instead of looking inward after the attacks of 9/11, they looked outward for something to bomb. And one country wasn't enough, they had to find a second one to empty their ordinances in.

The troop surge in 2007 eventually worked, something Bushites claim is a great victory, because he did it when everyone was against the idea, and it actually worked (much to everyone's surprise).

But even then, this success cannot be credit to him. It's like saying, I'm sorry I axed your fingers clean off your hand, but look, I managed to sew a couple of them back on again. I'm great, aren't I?

The thought that went into the troop surge and its associated policies under David Petraeus should have been the name of the game from the get-go. In fact, what game? There shouldn't have even been a war!

I don't see why he should claim the credit for ameliorating a planetesimal problem that he created. Iraq today has only "tolerable" levels of violence, where "only" 20 or so people die in bombings everyday, where previously it was 10 times as much. He set the bar of expectation so low that a success like this looks like a defining moment in his presidency.

Iraq is an epic, unprecedented failure that George W. Bush and his complicit allies are entirely responsible for. It outsizes all of his other failures, of which there are many, by at least an order of magnitude.

Despite what minor successes he may have had in his time, the scale of human and capital loss the world has incurred under this man's leadership, it would be small justice for Iraq to define his presidency, and for him to be remembered as one of the worst American presidents in recent history.

The End of the Bush Era: Afghanistan

This is the first in a series of essays, "The End of the Bush Era." It is a list of what I believe are the most prominent successes and failures of this prolific politician who, for better or ill, is going to become an indelible part of history.

Afghanistan

It surprises me how much the war in Afghanistan is still supported by Americans.

I understand it was UN-approved, but the US lobbied very hard for it, and nobody wanted to question them at the time. They had many allies in its totally preposterous war in Iraq, so I can see why many naysayers may have bended the American way in 2001, after being shocked by 9/11 and then shivering in fear at what the sleeping giant would do now that it awoke. Other countries, perhaps legitimately, also saw the scale of the attacks and didn't want to fall prey to anything similar.

For my part, though, I still think the invasion of Afghanistan was wrong, both morally and strategically.

What has come of it? Tens of thousands of civilian lives have been lost. What little infrastructure Afghanistan had was pommeled. A country in need of rehabilitation after generations of warfare is seeing yet another war. Drug production has increased many-fold and the black market for opium is flooded with Afghan produce. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri are still blogging from their mountain hills, and the Hamid Karzai government has no implementation capacity to distribute and spend the billions of dollars it is receiving in foreign aid.

The Taleban are now back, and the government is now considering negotiating with them.

Why could they not have negotiated with the Taleban back then? Before the lives were lost, before you emptied billions of dollars of missiles and ammunition onto a poor patch of mountainous dirt that's seen enough violence already? Before the Taleban was radicalized any further, like they weren't already radical enough?

The Taleban offered to try Osama bin Laden in their own courts in 2001. The religious council actually politely asked Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan before the invasion, because as much as Osama bin Laden was their guest, they didn't want to get bombed for him.

Don't tell me there was no room for negotiation with those people. They may not have been the paragon of progressive thinking, but violence was not a foregone conclusion.

There were senior, aged members of the Taleban who would see some inkling of reason back then. Most of them are now dead or sidelined by the new hardline extremists who don't have a moral problem in selling drugs to make money like the pre-invasion Taleban did. They will be much harder to negotiate with, if they want to negotiate at all.

Yes, these are the same people that blew up Buddhas out of spite, and wouldn't let girls go to school, but they are also the same people who offered their own forces in support of the operations to free Air India hostages that landed in a hijacked plane in Kandahar in 1999.

They are the same people that destroyed 95% of Afghanistan's poppy culture, on nothing more than the principle of the thing (a fatwa was issued that said taking drugs was forbidden in Islam.)

Consider, for a moment, that the illegal drug trade in Afghanistan was one of their only sources of income. It brought in billions of dollars in informal revenue to an otherwise impoverished country under chronic and crippling sanctions for many years. The worldwide supply of Afghan-made drugs was destroyed almost literally overnight.

The hatred for the Taleban in progressive circles is very strong, the term "Talebanization" is a cuss, representing prudishness on an astronomical scale and the curtailment of individual freedoms. Rightly so. And I must say this: I'm not defending the Taleban. I'm defending empathy, the sanctity of human life, the willingness to negotiate even with someone you have deep differences with, and the use of force only as a last resort.

When the Taleban removed the Northern Alliance from control over Afghanistan, many Afghans breathed a sigh of relief. They didn't like the Taleban any, but they sure were a whole lot better than the warlords of the Northern Alliance. The men were forced to wear beards, and women were barred from many public engagements, but they were still better than the random injustice of the warlords. There was a semblance of order in the country.

Afghanistan has no precedent for an organized government in its recent history (something Iraq has, and so is cause for very cautious optimism there). It is still living in the Dark Ages socially, with feudal lords roaming the countryside, and unaccompanied women in public at genuine risk of grievous harm. Building any kind of civil institution in a region like Afghanistan is going to be difficult.

I wish it the very best. I still remember CNN's Nic Robertson reporting from Afghanistan in 2001 before the invasion, taking great pains to point out that the Afghans have a rich tradition of chivalry, to a fault, in seeing Osama bin Laden as their guest in remembering the aid he rendered them during the Soviet invasion.

Looking forward, though, from my vantage point, all the data points toward one very likely eventuality: the continuation of hostilities. I do very much want to be proven wrong, though.

America was looking for something to bomb after 9/11, and that's a stupid reason to go to war. But this is emblematic of the Bush presidency: twisted, belligerent, and arrogant ideology, mixed with a complete divorce from reality.

The End of the Bush Era

This is a series of essays, "The End of the Bush Era." It is a list of what I believe are the most prominent successes and failures of this prolific politician who, for better or ill, is going to become an indelible part of history.

I still remember when George W. Bush got elected president in 2000. There was a big hullabaloo around the Florida recount that I didn't pay much attention to (I was only 16!), but we were just waiting for when he would win. This is no big secret: Bush got the Muslim backing in 2000.

Al Gore was drab, uncharismatic, indistinguishable from Bush, and represented the status quo, and his pick of Joe Lieberman for Vice President didn't sit well with Muslims, who, for better or ill, saw in Mr. Lieberman someone who may not bode well for Middle East peace, being a Jew.

"Our candidate" won in 2000, so we got our way. Christian conservatism has a lot in common with Muslim conservatism, so socially, we swing generally the same way. The backing for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 by the Muslims is largely because we've decided gay marriage is a far less significant issue than say, prisoner abuse, or illegal invasion.

Bush very quickly lost Muslim and (for slightly different reasons) other Americans' backing, and I remember in 2004, there was a campaign out called "ABB." Anybody But Bush. Not really a clear endorsement of John Kerry who was on the Democratic ticket, but representative of how quickly and deeply his support evaporated.

I was in university at the time, in Singapore, and I watched the elections very closely. I was working for the school paper at the time, so me and a friend of mine arranged for a non-scientific poll: we approached people at the bus stops in NUS and asked them questions about the election. Most people didn't really care about the elections, thinking they're untouched by them.

How wrong they were. Bush got the popular vote that year, and set the world on a course to further disaster.

The American elections affects everyone. They are the world's largest economy by far, and they are truly a superpower. This is both hard power (military) and soft power (economic and diplomatic). They are also a source of innovation and (despite what may have happened these past 8 years), I still believe, generally a source of good in the world.

Most of the game-changing innovations come from the United States, and they still take the majority of Nobel Prizes in the sciences. As recently as last year, they dominated the Nobel Prizes, bagging the awards for Economics, Chemistry and Physics.

It's American companies like Microsoft, Apple and IBM that fuelled the IT revolution which has created millions of jobs and incomes worldwide, and it's an American company that has made the first fully viable electric car. We use American ingenuity and know-how in every facet of our lives today.

Let's be fair: the world rides on America's innovative coat tails.

If the Nazis won in World War 2, or Soviet Russia during the Cold War, we'd be in a very different world, and, I think, not a better one.

The fact that I even have to consider what the world would be like had the Nazis or the Soviets won is indicative of how badly the past 8 years under George W. Bush has been. The world is left reeling from failure after failure after failure of the Bush administration, and we're soul-searching. What just happened? How did it come to this?

How can one man be so brazenly incompetent, yet so enduringly popular among his people, and manage to remain in power so long, and do so much damage?

Far better politicians have failed for far fewer and graver faults.

What follows is a series of posts on all the things I believe Bush did right, and all the things I believe he did wrong. One of these lists, I get the feeling, is going to be longer than the other.

Other articles in this series:

The End of the Bush Era: Afghanistan

The End of the Bush Era: Iraq
The End of the Bush Era: Conflict
The End of the Bush Era: Free Trade

Israeli Attacks on the Gaza Strip 2008

When I first read reports of bombing breaking out in the Gaza Strip, I audibly groaned. I honestly didn't follow the news for the first few days of the air raids, because it would just be more of the same.

A "free" democracy is generally good at expunging the extreme elements from its society, for good or for ill. Two Muslim-majority countries very recently rejected Islamic extremism wholesale: Pakistan and Bangladesh. Islamist parties saw their support base decrease significantly in what, give or take, can be seen as accurate gauges of public opinion. These, in countries that have deeply entrenched conservative Muslim streaks.

Religious or not, Muslim or Jewish, you can depend on people to look out for their own interests.

None of this serves Israel's long-term interests.

A few very nice articles and essays on the matter:

Johann Hari: The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling 29th Dec. 2008

The Gaza Strip is smaller than the Isle of Wight but it is crammed with 1.5 million people who can never leave. They live out their lives on top of each other, jobless and hungry, in vast, sagging tower blocks. From the top floor, you can often see the borders of their world: the Mediterranean, and Israeli barbed wire. When bombs begin to fall – as they are doing now with more deadly force than at any time since 1967 – there is nowhere to hide.

Robert Fisk: Why bombing Ashkelon is the most tragic irony 30th Dec. 2008

[...] [T]he Palestinians who lived in Ashkelon and the fields around it – Askalaan in Arabic – were dispossessed from their lands in 1948 when Israel was created and ended up on the beaches of Gaza. They – or their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren – are among the one and a half million Palestinian refugees crammed into the cesspool of Gaza, 80 per cent of whose families once lived in what is now Israel. This, historically, is the real story: most of the people of Gaza don't come from Gaza.

But watching the news shows, you'd think that history began yesterday, that a bunch of bearded anti-Semitic Islamist lunatics suddenly popped up in the slums of Gaza – a rubbish dump of destitute people of no origin – and began firing missiles into peace-loving, democratic Israel, only to meet with the righteous vengeance of the Israeli air force. The fact that the five sisters killed in Jabalya camp had grandparents who came from the very land whose more recent owners have now bombed them to death simply does not appear in the story.

Yossi Sarid: If you (or I) were Palestinian 2nd Jan. 2009

There are no good and bad peoples; there are only leaderships that behave responsibly or insanely. And now we are fighting those whom a goodly number of us would be like, had we been in their place for 41 and a half years.

Thanks, JJ, for the links.

The Awami League Win: Flawless Victory

My predictions scored 1/3. At 33%, that's a fail. :P

The Victory

The Awami League won not by a landslide, but by an avalanche. They now control 87% of parliament at 263 seats out of 299.

This is unprecedented. In 2001, where allegations of some voter fraud were substantiated by local and international observers, the Awami League did not lose by this big a margin.

In 1996, the BNP did not lose by this big a margin.

The only other party in Bangladesh's history to undergo such a dramatic reversal of fortunes was the party of H.M. Ershad, the Jatiya Party (People's Party). He was a former dictator and president discredited for rampant corruption, and the Jatiya Party today is a shadow of its former self, relegated to its stronghold in North Bengal.

I genuinely hope a similar fate does not await the BNP; without a functioning opposition, a democratic government cannot be expected to function.

Is This Good or Bad?

The standard answer to a question like that is: a bit of both.

It's bad because we all know power corrupts. And in the world's most corrupt country, power corrupts absolutely. Without a functioning opposition, the Awami League will think it has a carte blanche, and attempt to do whatever it pleases.

You'll notice that in press briefings, Sheikh Hasina (or Khaleda Zia for that matter) is very limited in her praise for the elecotorate, the people who actually voted for her.

There is a disconnect in South Asian politics between the governed and the government. Those who come into power feel as though it was their right all along, and that this has simply been "restored" to them.

A bad side-effect, perhaps, of dynastic politics.

So yes, this is bad. The Awami League won a bit too much.

But it's really not all that bad, within the context of just the election.

This is a "known bug" within democracy. Yes, the common will can't always be depended upon to take the nuanced, correct route. People don't go protesting in the streets shouting "BE REASONABLE!"

But in bad economic times and incompetent governance, this is the rule, not the exception. In the US elections of 1928, Herbert Hoover and the Republicans came into power with 84% of the popular vote, a landslide. 4 years and a Great Depression later, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, won 88% of the vote.

Barack Obama won by a small margin in absolute terms, but he defeated John McCain very handily as US elections go. In bad times, people make large political moves toward "change", whether it be substantiated change or merely rhetorical change.

One should look at this huge shift in Bangladeshi politics less as a slight upon the institution, and more as a massive reprobation against the BNP-Jamaat.

Votes are binary, you either vote for someone or you don't. It doesn't measure the fact that according to a pre-election poll by the Pew Research Center, more than 70% of the electorate in Bangladesh is completely jaded by politics and have resigned themselves to more of the same no matter who comes into power. The high voter turnout is not a credit to the campaigns that were run by the Awami League or the BNP, but a credit to the enduring spirit of democracy among the people of Bangladesh.

Many people voted for the Awami League not because they liked them, but because they hated the BNP more.

Let's not forget, of the 4 years Bangladesh appeared as the most corrupt country in the world, the last year of Awami League rule in 2001 was the first, and set the precedent. The BNP-Jamaat merely ran with the baton for an additional few years until Nigeria and Afghanistan caught up.

Jamaat-e-Islaami

They contested in 32 constituencies and won only 2 of them. Their party leader, Motiur Rahman Nizami lost his own constituency.

Quite frankly, I didn't expect this. I was under the impression that the Jamaat-e-Islaami had an entrenched voter base that would vote for them no matter what, and this now seems untrue. Well, you live and you learn.

It seems what most people really want is food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads. The failed anti-corruption drive of 2007 by the interim government discovered huge amounts of foreign aid stashed away in party leaders' homes, and this must have left a lasting impression in people's minds; it was, after all, stealing from the poor. Accompanied with massive inflation that, admittedly, they weren't responsible for, this must have been a concern.

What I found most amusing was that in Khulna-5, the Jamaat-e-Islaami candidate Miah Golam Parwar was running against the Awami League's Hindu candidate, Narayan Chandra Chanda. He was running a negative fear campaign, telling people to choose to vote between "the Quran and Narayan," no doubt using the rhyme to good end.

He lost by 35 thousand votes in a Muslim-majority area.

Fiery sermons and bigotry are the hallmarks of the Jamaat-e-Islaami in Bangladesh. These people colluded with criminal elements in the Pakistani army during 1971 war, and aided and abetted in atrocities against people they considered subhuman (the Hindus) or invalidly Muslim.

I'm ashamed that their party bears the name of my faith. Intolerant and hateful, they should be spurned and turned away, and I'm left wondering now how they even won 2 seats.

Well, that's democracy for you!

Give Credit Where Credit is Due

The quasi-military caretaker government (CTG) failed miserably at its anti-corruption drive. After separating the judiciary from the executive in 2007 (after the BNP promised it for 5 years without delivering), they pressured the judiciary into releasing all the candidates on bail in 2008, staying their cases so that they can contest in the elections.

They only caught a handful of bigwigs of corruption, and corruption is as much an institution in third-world Bangladesh today as it was in January 2007 when the CTG came into power.

The few that they jailed may serve as a deterrent for future politicians, but in reality, they are so few that it's more attributable toward random bad luck than people getting their just deserts. It's still uncertain which precedent will have a more lasting effect.

That being said, the CTG promised elections in calendar 2008. And they delivered.

This election campaign has been one of the least disruptive campaigns in the history of the country. Walls were not defaced with posters, banners and leaflets were suspended on ropes across the street giving it a festive feel.

The practice of "Mic'ing" (pronounced Mike'ing, where rickshaw-wallahs retrofitted with loudspeakers ride around town with a gruff voice blaring at high volume and high speed for people to vote a certain way) was limited to certain hours of the day so as not to disrupt or distract trade or commerce.

Campaign gatherings were limited to certain gathering points so as not to block traffic, and the street prosessions politely gave way to oncoming traffic.

The photo essay of the BBC shows an election atmosphere much like that of Eid, a festival, with people talking to each other while standing in line and sharing laughs.

Roughly 15% of the population is urban. Of these, most are from the villages, where they probably registered to vote. At 80% turnout, that means many people from the village actually travelled home to vote.

The enthusiasm and well-executed nature of this election is unprecedented. That's an achievement of the CTG, and something to be proud of.

Despite their massive failures in the anti-corruption drive and their "Minus Two" policy, this achievement alone is enough to redeem them.

Lets not forget, the very political parties that got voted into power in these elections couldn't make this happen.

The Future

I'm deeply concerned that the free and fair elections of 2008 will be the last piece of good news that's going to come out of Bangladesh for at least the next 5 years.

I'm not a betting man, but even if I was, all bets would be off. I'm hopeful and optimistic, but I'm going to prepare for the worst. The Awami League did a bad job between 1996 and 2001, and I have seen little to no indication that they'll change for the better.

The onus right now, though, is actually on the BNP. As most foreign media outlets put it, it really doesn't matter who wins, since policy-wise, both these parties are pretty much identical. What matters more is who loses, because it's the sore losers who agitate and paralyse the country.

But a man's got to hope.

Elections: Bangladesh Decides

Hell, it's about time!

This is the culmination of a very long wait. The elections were supposed to have been held in 2006, after a 5-year term by the Bangladesh National Party (BNP)-Jamaat-e-Islaami alliance. They delayed it until the very end of 2006, and by attempting to doctor the Election Commission, sparked nationwide protests and violence which cost lives.

Never a dull day in Bangladeshi politics.

The caretaker government took over in Jan. 2007, and promised free and fair elections by the end of calendar year 2008. And by golly gee, they delivered. Elections on Dec. 29th, 2008. Cutting it a little close, hey?

A lot has been achieved in the past year. A digitized national voter list, which is supposed to, in theory, lessen the impact of vote fraud, and new election campaigning rules which has made life a lot easier for businesses and commerce to continue in the midst of the changeover.

I have a few predictions. These are casual, by-stander predictions, and are at best, guesstimates. I'm not an analyst, but I feel the winds on the ground, and if I see the clouds on the horizon, it's reasonable for me to think there's rain a-comin'.

1. The Awami League will win.

5 years of the BNP-Jamaat's hardline right-wing politics has left people a bit angry, so I imagine a lot of people will sway the Awami League way, just to spite the BNP-Jamaat.

But the Awami League is left-leaning, so I'm not sure what to make of their victory, if they do win. But in today's world, it doesn't matter which way you lean. India and China has shown the developing world which way works best, and when it comes right down to it, the policies of increased trade liberalization, deregulation and decentralization will continue no matter who comes into power.

The Awami League has been in power in the late 90s, and they did a terrible job of it. But people remember with more clarity the mess-ups of the BNP right now, so I think the negative sentiment will buoy the Awami League.

In 2001, the BNP-Jamaat alliance got a very strong mandate from the people. There probably was lots of vote rigging and vote buying at the time (I can't say for sure, I didn't follow it that much at the time), but you can't rig your way to a win of the magnitude that was recorded. So the Awami League is certainly no panacea.

But I still think they'll win. That's the way the wind is blowing now.

2. Lots of people will vote blank votes.

That is actually allowed this time, the no-confidence vote. I think a lot of people will, and that will indicate very powerfully how jaded a lot of people have become about politics in Bangladesh. Neither of these parties have delivered sufficient results, and the steady clip of 6% GDP growth over the past few years has been despite the government, not because of.

3. Jamaat-e-Islaami will possibly lose a bit of their votes, or gain a little bit, but not move much on the electoral map.

For the record, I'm not a fan.

They have a terrible human rights record when it comes to ethnic minorities (the Hindus and the Ahmediyyas in particular), they're holding back the emancipation of women in Bangladesh, a very important facet of social and economic reform, and I feel that they are complicit in some of the terrorism in Bangladesh with vitriolic sermon rhetoric.

But their support base is deeply entrenched, people who believe it is their duty to "save Islam" as Khaleda Zia put it in one of her speeches. As if Islam somehow needs to be saved.

Do I wish I were wrong?

If I had a wish, then I'd wish the Jamaat-e-Islaam voter base decreases in size dramatically. It would prompt them to do some soul-searching, and maybe some young'uns can come forward with a better strategy for a new age. Chances of that happening? Very, very little. Arguably many of the young'uns coming out of the Jamaat are as extreme, if not more extreme than their aged counterparts. And religious sentiments run deep and strong, and you can't reason someone out of an opinion they came to through emotion.

Since I'm wishing, I also hope the no-vote category is very large this time around, and that the Awami League still win. A large no-vote would signal to the political parties a large bank of potential votes that they may try to woo through proper social, political and economic progress.

And I'm not into ponies, so really, I wish for a warp-10 Galaxy-class starship with transporter and holodeck capabilities.

World of Goo

I'm not a gamer, and I don't do game reviews. So this is more evangelism than anything else.

World of Goo was developed by independent game writers 2D Boy ("I love you 2D Boy!"), using lots of open source components brought together to make a delightful little game.

Gameplay

The story is really a backdrop to the gameplay, which consists of taking little goo balls and assembling goo-ey structures like towers and bridges that oscillate and undulate under the cumulative weight of the goo balls you attach onto them. Attach too many, and it will buckle. Attach too few, and you won't be able to make it to your target.

Every level has a start and an end point, and you're given a certain number of goo balls to assemble a structure to get there. You're supposed to have a few goo balls as surplus at the end of it, and the challenge is to have enough goo balls free, i.e. not used as part of the structure, to win the level. They get sucked up into a big vacuum machine and put away.

The story has something to do with the "Goo Corporation" and some corporate conspiracy. The goo balls are self-aware and extremely adorable, but not aware that they were designed by the Goo Corporation, are used in "industry", and that they are incredibly tasty.

The Technology

The core of this game is its physics engine, which was used from an open source software library. The goo-ey structures oscillate and undulate under the weight of the additional goo balls you attach onto them, and obey the laws of physics much how you would expect them to, (with sufficient suspension of disbelief). The engine seems to have integrated variables of mass, center of mass, moment of inertia, friction, and joint strength (something I never studied in high school enough to name), where structures that are too heavy buckle under the weight and become mere attachments instead of rigid support.

A host of other open technologies were used to assemble the game, and the core development team was extremely small. But they have done a superb job of integrating these technologies into a cohesive, wholesome product that is fun to use, play, and share.

Re-playability and Value

The game is tremendously replayable. Once you've finished all the levels you can go back and play them and see how you could solve the levels differently, assembling the goo balls in weird ways to achieve your goal.

Also you can play the game under "OCD" rules. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder sets a higher standard for you to finish the levels, with almost double the number of surplus goo balls you need at the end of the final structure to qualify as having finished it under "OCD" rules. You have to really maximize every goo ball you use, pushing the structure to its very limits and depending on environmental factors to maximize your use of goo balls. Some real "out-of-the-box" thinking goes into this!

You can also upload your scores and structures to the web, and share with others. And all the surplus goo balls you collect at the end of every level is accumulated in a very large, open level where you can build pretty much anything you like. A "carte blanche" for your goo-building needs. The highest point of your structure is represented by a small whiff of cloud with your name and country on it. It bobs up and down, and rises and falls as your structure goes higher and higher, and you can compare with others.

The only very minor downside I found to this game was the menu system, before the actual game starts. It seems a bit neglected and rushed, with the bulk of developer attention going into the gameplay mechanics, no doubt. This product was delayed by almost 6 months (their interview with X-Play had them naming a release date at around Jun. 2008, and it was only released in Dec. 2008). I'm not complaining, though, because the game works where it counts: in the game. This is just a nitpick.

I'd give this game 5 stars out of 5, if I had stars to give. It costs only 20 USD, making it very cheap for the hours of fun you'll have with it.

My Ideological Pitch

I encourage people to support independent game developers, people writing great code in their backyards, people with common sense and will power to use computers to make good, wholesome magic. In a world of re-hashed first-person shooters with gratuitous guts, gore and ample bosom for pimple-faced teenage males, this is a very welcome change. We should support a good product by buying it, especially if it's made by "the little guy." I voted with my dollar on this one, and you should too!

The Awami League Campaign 2008

If wishes were wings...

From The Daily Star:

"If we are voted to power, we shall bring down the price of essentials, increase power generation, make education up to degree level free, give agricultural subsidies and ensure community health care facilities," Hasina said.

"Besides, more schools and colleges will be set up, allowances for freedom fighters, widows and elderly people will be doubled, fertiliser will be sold on open market and loans will be given to shrimp traders and unemployed youths," she said.

"We want to give something to the country. Give us a chance to serve you and the country. We shall build a developed Bangladesh where none will starve or live without clothes, education, housing and healthcare facilities," the former premier said.

Reality calls:

1. Bring Down the Price of Essentials

It's the economy, stupid! The world is already going into a deflationary spiral, although it probably won't last for long. They'll probably claim it as their doing, although they have no control over this. The quasi-military caretaker government also had no control over the inflation of 2007 and 2008, so it's tough for anyone to take blame either.

Whoever comes into power, though, will take credit for the deflation. Welcome to democracy!

2. Increase Power Generation

I've actually read a bit more about the planned policy changes the Awami League is looking for. This includes sanctioning new power projects as well as refurbishing old power plants. Refurbishment is, as far as my limited knowledge goes, a new promise: I've never heard any political party talk about refurbishment or the expansion of existing infrastructure in the past.

Refurbishment is not as profitable as new power plant projects. The tenders from new projects are far larger (more bang per corrupt buck, you may say), and come from outside bidders, some of who are either new to Bangladesh and so can be "educated" as to how things work here, or old players who have established contacts and can facilitate the "speed money" through established channels.

This is an understood fact of Bangladeshi government. Ask anyone in Bangladesh, and they'll give you the "don't be naive" frown.

The rallies Hasina is holding now costs money. This isn't the US where campaign donations from the masses can fund Barack Obama's 600-million-dollar campaign. Apart from key stakeholders in industry who contribute to secure their interests, the politicians invest their own money into their campaigns, and have to make this money back when they get back into power. And this can only be done through corruption.

3. Make Education Up to Degree Level Free

The taxation rate in Bangladesh is still extremely low, despite the BNP's efforts to increase the tax net (and in all fairness, they have arguably done a good job of it), and depending on loans from the ADB (which comes with the accompanying slow hemorrhaging of interest payments) or foreign aid (with its strings attached) won't cut it for long. We're aiming to become a Newly Industrialized Country by 2020, but we've shown that public spending has thus far been very irresponsible. The Annual Development Plan (ADP) has been set at more and more ambitious levels every year with double-digit year-on-year growths in ADP spending, but with consistently failing levels of implementation.

4. Agricultural Subsidies

Agricultural subsidies are the lifeblood of Bangladesh. Even the United States and the European Union are loathe to remove their agricultural subsidies, a very contentious point in the Doha Round of Free Trade Talks (what actually caused its collapse). Agricultural subsidies serve a very crucial function. This is money being invested in food, and it's a policy that's proven to work.

Whether the Awami League or the BNP comes into power, agricultural subsidies are here to stay. This is a mainstay and a staple of Bangladeshi government, and provides a crucial service to the economy.

5. More schools, colleges

The problem here isn't building the brick-and-mortar structures. The problem is in expanding the Education Ministry's capacity. Hiring more quality teachers at competitive pay rates (government wages in Bangladesh are infamously low) to attract proper talent, bringing in consultants from the private sector to train and equip these teachers, and hiring new and effective administrators and bureaucrats in the ministries to oversee these operations, that's where the challenge lies.

As an indication of the challenges ahead, the most corrupt sectors in Bangladesh are the Education and Healthcare sectors.

The education system in Bangladesh is nothing short of crumbling. One of the downsides of the fervent Bengali language movement (the "bhasha andolon") pre- and post-independence has been the overzealous banishment of English from the public sphere. Public schools today have an appalling standard of English education, which sets back most of the students from these schools significantly when competing in the global arena.

This is one of the reasons why maturing (and increasingly expensive) India is exporting its call centers to Pakistan and the Philippines (both countries with excellent standards of English), but not to Bangladesh.

Japan and Europe can afford not to adopt English, because Japan has been the world's second largest economy (until China squeezed it out very recently), and Europe has been a key player in innovation and engineering for centuries and they have a rich colonial history of theft to buoy them. Witnesses and the prime beneficiaries and drivers of the industrial revolution, they are not playing catch-up like we are. This irrational attachment to Bengali has cost us billions of dollars in potential GDP, jobs, industries and opportunities for our youth.

That being said, even in Bengali, the education system is crumbling. We are bad at being bad. Education comes to a virtual standstill after A-Levels (what we call "Intermediate"). The best schools in Bangladesh: Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, and Dhaka University, are frequently beset by political wrangling and fighting among the student chapters of the main political parties. This is affectionately and euphemistically called "session jam." 4-year degrees take 6 years to complete.

Students in university are supposed to be debating the finer points of capitalism versus socialism, or the ethical dilemmas posed by modernity to the pre-modern legal precepts of our culture. But instead, our university students fight with each other in the streets.

A university student from Dhaka University once put it to me very simply: it was either beat, or be beaten, and he wasn't about to take hits from anyone.

Professors are politically aligned and engage in partisan bickering in and out of the class. The Vice Chancellors in university are actually publicized political appointees. How do you expect an education system to function?

So building more schools is really not going to help. Deep institutional and cultural reform is needed in the education ministry.

5. Allowances for freedom fighters, widows and elderly people will be doubled

I was thinking "how would you fund this?" Well, 0 multiplied by 2 is 0, so it might not be that hard.

Freedom fighters, I think, have an allowance. A pittance though it may be, I think it hasn't been adjusted for inflation for decades, and the list of freedom fighters in Bangladesh is extremely flawed with many low-level soldiers totally omitted from the list (there have been reports in the Daily Star on this).

This has been an election promise since the 90s. We had a Bangladeshi painter back in Abu Dhabi, an elderly, hard-working chap with a very colourful personality. He cared enough about politics to actually schedule his annual leave around elections. Sheikh Hasina promised elderly benefits back then as well, and I remember him mentioning it with much skepticism and good-hearted cheer.

This must have been a good 10 to 12 years ago.

Here. Have a pinch of salt.

An Outsider's Perceptions of Malaysia

I was in Malaysia for only 2 days and a night. Most of my knowledge of the country comes from the Singaporean Straits Times, an otherwise anti-Malaysian (and I would argue somewhat anti-Muslim) organization that has an agenda in showing Malaysia in a bad light.

Here's what I know: Malaysia is a former British colony, and has been independent for about 50 years or so now. Blessed with a small but steady supply of oil and gas, a steadily growing population, fertile land, and a background of mature British common law, it has evolved into a robust economy, is a regional player in South-East Asia and has a decisively Muslim identity.

Industrially, Malaysia's doing very well. It manufactures its own cars, the Proton; the engine is Japanese, but they design the chassis, assemble it, and market it under their own brand. Although the butt of many jokes, it's still something to be proud of, and reflects the industrial and entrepreneurial spirit in the country.

Politically, Malaysian democracy is beginning to show signs of maturing. The opposition party has been making in-roads despite government interference with the media and the political process. Mahathir Mohammed set the precedent for this with the Anwar Ibrahim fiasco. Not surprisingly, most of the Malaysians I spoke to about politics had a deep-rooted aversion for it. The political landscape is dominated by dirt.

Socially, their racist, pro-Malay, affirmative action policy, known as the Bhumiputra (literally, "children of the soil") laws are being publicly challenged, their vibrant ethnic minority communities of Buddhist Chinese and Hindu Indians are getting a greater voice in the goings-on of their country (and have actually allied with the hard-line Islamic groups, obviously a marriage of convenience at this point) and the ruling party coalition that has been in power unquestioningly since inception, the Barisan Nasional (BN) is showing signs of cracking. Some parties and politicians are defecting for the opposition that is running on a wave of populist support against the establishment.

But it faces lots of tricky challenges. A wave of political religious conservatism has put in jeopardy some of the freedoms ethnic minorities used to claim. A case came up on a recently deceased individual who was officially non-Muslim, but some individuals claimed he had secretly professed his Muslim faith. Though their evidence was flimsy, the case was handed over to a Shariah court, and the remains were laid to rest according to Muslim rites, much to the dismay of his family.

Recently some quarters have suggested shutting down vernacular schools, i.e., the Chinese and the Tamil schools in Malaysia, and unifying it under the dominant Malay school system. Thankfully, the ruling party disregarded it, as did the Malaysian royal family. The French can afford bigotry in the name of secularism, and the Singaporeans can afford marginalization in the name of unity, but a Muslim country doesn't have such a luxury. And in all honesty, they're all the better for it. It's the right thing to do. Diversity is a blessing.

A controversial ruling was the recent religious ban on yoga for Muslims. Something clearly silly and actually targeted toward Muslim women who were taking it up in the droves (yoga generally appeals to women more than men). The basis was that the Hindu chanting that came along with the yoga was deemed un-Islamic, although the fact of the matter is that only a minority of yoga schools do religious chanting, and these would most probably be reserved for an exclusively, or majority Hindu crowd. Religiosity in general is on the wane in the world today, and most common, everyday activities have been secularized for easy consumption by a wider audience, so I doubt this was ever really a pressing issue.

Speaking of pressing issues, where are the fatwas speaking out against poverty, denying women education, abuse, and human rights? Why is it these issues are ignored for novels and cartoons all the time?

The Malaysian flag has the distinctive red, white and blue of the American flag, with the stripes representing the states in the federation, but with the exception of an astronomically feasible depiction of the crescent and star (as opposed to the Pakistani impossibility of a star inside a moon, something many Indians get a good laugh out of).

Speaking to Malaysians, they are certainly proud of their country's achievements. Malaysians are proud of it as one of the few majority Muslim countries that have built a robust, stable infrastructure of education, healthcare, and democracy, something probably no other medium- to high-profile Muslim country can claim. And this is to the credit of the minorities within Malaysia as much as the Muslim-majority Malays.

Its national identity is a complex beast. The architecture in Malaysia is uniquely South-East Asian, while being modern, and faithful to Islamic roots. Many people have criticized the overly Islamic slant Malaysian architecture has taken, and to a limited extent I concede that. Some buildings in Putrajaya looked like pseudo baked-mud houses of North Africa or the Middle East, complete with wind towers, an innovation made for desert climes, not the tropics.

Barring a few exceptions, on the whole, it's really not so bad.

If American public architecture traces its roots to European influences, honestly I don't see why Malaysia should apologize for its Islamic-influenced architecture. A lot of it is well-integrated into the local vernacular, and they have clearly chosen it as an integral part of their national identity. All they need now is to repeal discriminatory laws against ethnic minorities.

Kuala Lumpur is a vibrant city, and full of life. Although crumbling around the edges, and like most urban centers, it has its fair share of inhospitable, uncooperative denizens. It is, however, a very well-rounded, modern city that's bustling with life, and I could imagine living there (my metric for a city I like or dislike). Anybody looking for something, no matter what it is, will probably find it.

I, for one, found their road signs very amusing, though. The Malay language has been Latinized to fit the times, having been written using the Arabic script previously (what Malays call Jawi). So taxi, for example is called "teksi." An executive cab is "teksi eksekutif." A bus is a "bas," a university is "universiti" and science is "sains." Good fun!

See the good in foreign countries, and the bad in your own. The Sufi practice of dropping a bad habit and replacing it with a good habit applies to matters of public service as well.

Malaysia looks a lot like what Bangladesh might look like, I imagine, when we become a newly industrialized country in a few decades.

And I, for one, like it.

C25K Completed!

Nailed it! (Sort of)

It took me 38 minutes, and it hurt in places it never hurt before. But I got it! Average pace of ~ 7 minutes, 30 seconds per kilometre. That's a speed of about roughly 7.9 kmph. That can certainly improve.

I started at week 3 of the C25K program, and by that standard, I ended at week 7 of the program, 2 weeks ahead of schedule!

Needless to say I didn't follow the plan to the letter, and took many liberties. At the point where I should have been on week 6, lesson 1, which is a run-walk alternation aimed at aerobic capacity building, I ran a straight 22 minutes. The week 6 goal was a 20-minute run without breaks so I was well ahead at that point.

Haven't done a run-walk alternations since. 22 minutes, then 23 minutes, and now 38 minutes.

Although I'm a day early, I'm still a dollar short, though.

The actual goal is to run 5K in 30 minutes.

That's an average velocity of 10 kmph, at about 6 minutes per kilometre. That's unprecedented for me, because my fastest pace yet has been a meagre 6 minutes 59 seconds per kilometer, roughly 8.5kmph, and I managed to keep that pace up for only 24 minutes.

I'm going to need an average pace of 10 kmph, which means every time I recoup at 8 kmph, a comfortable trot, I need to be able to go at 12 kmph for exactly the same time to make sure I can make the cut.

Apportioning Blame in the Mumbai Attacks

The dust has settled. The dead are being put to rest, and collectively, we mourn. As people start to move on, we can name our heroes, our villains, and everything in between.

The Heroes.

1. The victims.

They did no wrong, didn't ask to be heroes, and given the choice, I think they'd choose to continue with their dinners. Yet here we are. These innocent souls now join the many hundreds of thousands of victims throughout India and the world, now, and in history, who were guilty only of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And though the victims may have found peace in their eternal slumber, the emptiness they leave behind with their loved ones must be unimaginable.

I am truly sorry for their enormous loss.

2. The policemen.

They were ill-equipped, and under-trained. The gunmen had night-vision goggles, and they didn't. The gunmen had better guns, and had actually trained with their weapons, but the police didn't. They were late in getting to the scene, and they wasted the critical moments when lives could have been saved. They didn't know what to do, they didn't know the layout of the hotel, and nobody bothered to teach them or tell them.

But they went in anyway. When they were needed the most, they were there. And many of them died.

"When they lay us down to rest,
Tell our moms we done our best."

That they didn't know what to do wasn't their fault. They are, unequivocally, heroes.

3. The commandos.

The famed Indian Black Cats. They were trained, and equipped, but they were all the way in New Delhi and couldn't catch a plane because there wasn't any, and couldn't catch the ones that were available because the bureaucracy didn't account for that. But they eventually got the job done, after 60-something hours. Could it have been done sooner? Perhaps. But Indian commandos cleaned up an Indian mess, and that's something to be proud of. The Israelis, apparently, offered help, but India said they had it covered.

Arguably, they didn't have it covered. But it's good to take responsibility.

4. The people of Mumbai. They have suffered many wrongs, and yet they prod on. Like the people of Islamabad, Baghdad, Kabul, and Grozny. What else can one do. You pick up the pieces, and you move on. Common folk are incredibly resilient.

The Villains

In most cases, the hero-villain dichotomy is a false one. But these crimes were so horrific, that the perpetrators of this crime really are villains.

But what devilry is this? Suicide bombing, though I do not condone, I understand. It is the terrorist equivalent of blind rage. A lack of control in your life can lead to suicidal tendencies; it is one of the things you actually can control.

But what is it that these people have suffered that would push them to this controlled burst of terror? The gut reaction is to dismiss them as evil, and perhaps to a certain extent that's true. But most of the deeply messed up things in the world make sense to a level. This doesn't make much sense yet.

No statement was made as to what they wanted, a no-name organization was put forward, the Deccan Mujahideen, and goodness knows why they targeted Americans, Britons and Israelis if they were indeed homegrown terrorists, which the consensus is starting to suggest. What was their goal?

There's more thinking and soul-searching to be done. Questions. Questions that need answers.
___________________________

These are the only two categories that (approximately) fall into the category of white and black. Right and wrong. Good and evil.

Now come the shades of grey.

India

India is no stranger to terrorism. They've been wrangling with it since independence, arguably before. If the Indian civil service traces its roots to the British civil service, that represents a long line of bureaucrats, administrators, and politicians that have dealt with criminal malcontents, rebels, terrorists, anarchists and freedom fighters (from an administrator's perspective, these all fall into the same basket).

And yet look at the pitiable excuse for a response. Their policemen were carrying obsolete weaponry they had previously never used before. Mumbai, a city of 13 million people, doesn't have its own commandos or national guard on stand-by. This, after a truck filled with almost a tonne of explosives laced with aluminium, blew up in the front yard of their neighbour's capital in Islamabad. You think they would have gotten the hint?

The helicopter dropping the commandos off in Nariman House circled overhead three times before dropping them off. So much for the element of surprise! It was almost a perverse comedy, like a Bollywood movie, where the hero takes down a dozen chicken-legged policemen in shorts.

Such a long history of terrorism and insurgency movements, and India still doesn't have a central terrorism database. They don't have a singular authority that handles these kinds of issues, a country with more than a billion people, and numerous separatist and insurgent movements.

In all fairness, India alone doesn't suffer from this. All the sub-continent countries display this level of incompetence. When will they realize that their laziness costs lives?

But to give India's democracy some credit, there is a tradition of taking responsibility for gross negligence. The Home Minister resigned in the face of these attacks, and I remember a few years back, a terrible railway accident sparked the resignation of the Railway Minister.

Though these resignations, strictly speaking, don't serve an immediate purpose in improving the situation, the culture of taking responsibility, at least, is there. I say at least, because it is, literally, the least, that could be done.

The terrorists hijacked a boat, took a dinghy to the shore, verbally abused fishermen on the way who asked what they were doing, walked into Mumbai, spraying bullets in the train station along the way, entered the hotels, took the time to ask people their nationalities, searched the hotel, and then kept the authorities at bay for over 60 hours. If that isn't a systemic failure at every level of the intelligence and civil defence administration, I don't know what is.

In short: the government botched this one up really bad.

Pakistan

Pakistan is now getting blamed for it. The Indian foreign minister, before any of the dust even settled, pointed his finger to "elements" in Pakistan. Summary: meaningless.

It's like a night guard asleep at his post hears an explosion which wakes him up, and the first thing he does upon waking is accuse the guy next to him.

People died on their watch, and they're looking for scapegoats, so obviously the last thing on their minds is their sworn responsibility as civil servants.

That being said, is Pakistan blameless? Fareed Zakaria (I'm a fan) said it in a piece soon after the bombings: Pakistan needs to stop choosing between "good terrorists" and "bad terrorists." Terrorists that destabilize India and Afghanistan are the good kind, and those that destabilize Pakistan are the bad kind.

That there are sympathetic elements within the Pakistani ISI is without a doubt. The evidence continues to mount that the attacks were staged from Pakistan. If that is the case, then the Pakistani government shoulders a sizeable burden, comparable to that of the Indian government: why weren't the terrorists on their soil stopped? The Pakistani authorities are, at best, incompetent, and at worst, complicit.

An attack of this scale does not serve any Pakistani agenda. Undermining local interests that stay out of the news media are the kind that would serve a hostile Pakistan's agenda. As the saying goes "Do not attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity."

The terrorism problem within South Asia is localized and indigenous, and the South Asian countries need to combine forces on this.

I, however, remain sceptical the Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians can work together on anything.

Islam

No doubt this will push those that hate Islam and Muslims to hate them even more.

I am not a subscriber to the thought that "you cannot judge a religion by the actions of its followers." No, you can, you should, and everyone does.

But Muslims died in these attacks. Muslims have died in almost every major terorrist attack by Muslim extremists, and pretty much all of the minor ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the major perpetrators of terrorism (the Buddhists are a distant second in the religious extremism rankings), Muslims account for most of its victims by number. Mind you, this includes the "collateral damage" suffered by Muslims during coalition air raids.

If you count the casualties in the "War on Terror" (which for all intents and purposes basically means Afghanistan and Iraq), Muslim civilian and combatant casualties outnumber any other casualties in these conflicts, be they civilian, Indian, Israeli, American, or coalition forces. Be they casualties in the numerous suicide bombings in Tel Aviv, New York, Mumbai, or Madrid.

So we suffer as much if not more than anyone else does, it's just that when an Afghan or Iraqi civilian dies, or a Pakistani or an Arab, their government usually lacks the organization, infrastructure, news agencies, public relations apparatus, or diplomatic and political will to make an issue out of it.

In every one of the BBC articles on the Mumbai attacks, they've listed the dead. And at the very end, they take by name the single Briton that died. It's an honourable thing to do, to look out for your own.

Since most Muslim countries are poor and under-developed, our dead don't have a public voice. We bury our numerous, uncounted, innocent dead in Chechnya, the Gaza Strip, and Somalia privately, and the Earth is soaked in our tears. And neither our own governments, nor other governments look to see our pain.

Why don't people realize that our suffering and our grievances is the world's suffering too? It's only when people get pushed to the very brink, when they lose their humanity and like a child, break the vase to get some attention, does the world look at us. With a frown of irritation on its face. Like it would be so much easier if we all just... disappeared.

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

Wait A Minute...

Muslims are not a single, monolithic entity. Muslims in America are different from Muslims in the UK, who are different from Muslims in India. That there may be some elements shared within common extremist ideologies does not mean that Muslims in general are a problem case.

The Muslim faith's enduring egalitarianism allows for a Muslim in the Philippines to feel for his brother in Palestine, but that does not mean we speak with one voice.

With the exception of a few high-profile cases, the United States is largely immune from the scourge of indigenous Muslim extremism. The Muslim diaspora in the United States (and North America) is among the most well-settled, integrated, and successful of all the Muslim diaspora in the world.

Muslims in Europe have their own grievances by way of Europe's collective social backwardness in integrating immigrant populations into the common fold. That has nothing to do with Islam, but the root problems are socio-economic.

Europe for all its progressiveness has never had an indigenous, enduring Muslim population from pre-modern times. All Muslims in Europe today are modern immigrants. In the Middle East, there are still native Jews and Christians, descendants from the time of the Prophets of yore. This is an indicator of Europe's history of integration.

In Palestine, large swathes of Muslims have been living in refugee camps for generations now, internally displaced, without an identity, continuously intimidated by the Israelis, neglected by the Arabs and the Palestinian Authority, and unwanted everywhere.

Everyone has their problems. Yes, religion may be a catalyst in the process of radicalizing people, once you've hammered into their brains that the gardens of paradise are worth whatever political agenda you may be preaching. But I'm a Muslim, and technically, I'm looking forward to the same gardens as many of the suicide bombers. But I'm not rushing to do anything untoward.

These people are hopeless, and uneducated, and many have lost their families, their dignity, and have nothing to live for. Hate the sin, not the sinner. We have to pull these people out of that rut. If for nothing else, than to save our own skins.

Every region which finds terrorism as an intractable problem is riddled with poverty, corruption, instability, lack of education, and general hopelessness. Palestine. Afghanistan. Sudan.

And let me be clear: As a Muslim, I have nothing to apologize for because the perpetrators were Muslim. I condemn their attacks along with the rest of the world. By saying "Muslims need to speak out more" that's indirectly casting some of the blame of these terrorists on me. I share none of the blame of any of these terrorists, and I never will be. I am not of them, and they are not of me.

But to have a clear conscience and to actually try to identify how to solve the problem, I have to note that the root problem of a lot of terrorism lies within political solutions to non-fictional grievances in Kashmir, Palestine, and Africa. I'm not condoning violence by highlighting the shades of grey, but I'm looking at the root cause as well as the symptoms. Shouldn't everyone be doing that?

By using a faith as a scapegoat, we're not addressing the problem. It is dismissive, and a disservice to the issue. The problem lies within people, and within people lies the solution.

To the Muslims: there's an African saying, "A fool at forty, is a fool for ever." Most post-colonial Muslim countries are nearing 40, it's about time they started to show some progress, because very soon, blaming the thieving white people of half a century ago just isn't going to cut it.

Good governance, education, healthcare, a good economy, free speech. And terrorism will become a much more manageable problem.

Ask a bum in New York (someone who is arguably good-for-nothing and reasonably hopeless) to blow himself up. You think he'll do it? No, because he knows he's not just a bum, but he's a bum in New York, man. He shares in that pride. Don't underestimate the poor and the hopeless. They're very aware of their surroundings.

The Mumbai Blasts

The time to soul-search and apportion blame will come. Now, we must stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in India, for they have suffered a deep and grievous wrong.

First, we must wash our dead, and lay them to rest.

Layman's Perspective: Lolitics in Bangladesh

Looking at it at face value, we've had a handful of leaders over the years. H.M. Ershad (who was a president), K. Zia, S. Hasina, (who were prime ministers) and now F. Ahmed (who is a chief adviser; not a politician, but a bureaucrat).

Personally, I will look upon the 2 years of F. Ahmed's premiership with somewhat fond memories. Okay, not exactly fond, but memories accompanied with less dread. He brought some measure of control back to a country on the brink of losing it, he managed a powerful cyclone excellently (just look at how a comparable cyclone that hit Myanmar a few months later caused human suffering an order of magnitude higher than Bangladesh's), coordinated a nation-wide food response which helped the people of Bangladesh cope with hunger where other countries at a similar level of development (like Haiti or Pakistan) suffered much more than we did. And he was erudite, and spoke good English.

K. Zia speaks terrible English, and somewhat faltering Bengali. More seriously, though, she has no personal credentials apart from being the wife of a former dictator (who engaged in wanton political assassinations during his regime and then was eventually assassinated himself). She is only barely educated, and that may be okay for the United States of America, but it shouldn't be for us! (Okay, after suffering 8 years of Dubya, we have a right to poke fun at this. Electing Barack doesn't exonerate you people all of a sudden!)

S. Hasina, though, goes around as an opposition party leader around the world, to the United States, and accuses the incumbents of terrorism. This reflects the psychology of Bangladeshi politics: whatever it takes to win, even if it means blackening the name of your country to others. Even as an opposition party leader, you're still representing Bangladesh when you go abroad. She, however, didn't get the memo.

In all fairness, though, the BNP-Jamaat alliance has engaged in terrorism. And S. Hasina has been a victim of them. The 5-year BNP-Jamaat term has set a dangerous precedent for subsequent elected governments: winning an election gives you the right to attempt to systematically eradicate the opposition.

These two women, though, are two sides of the same coin. In all their time in power, they've enacted many laws for the protection of women's rights, but very little by way of real empowerment has come to women. A woman construction worker, today, in Bangladesh, earns half what a man earns. For the same, back-breaking work.

Acid attacks continue, and very little by way of resolution of these cases ever occur in courts, with few proper public trials to serve as proper deterrents, although these cases cannot be that difficult to solve. The friends of the perpetrators would no doubt be privy to the details of the relationship between the young lady and the criminal in question. We're a country of romantics, after all. It's all poetry, flowers, hugs and kisses until the aqueous hydrogen-sulfate hits the wall.

In the three terms these two women have exchanged the seat of power, the issue of young beggar girls in the streets of Dhaka, sexually, physically, emotionally abused by callous passers-by, by drug-peddlers, by the elements of the variable summer-winter weather, have all largely been ignored.

The last time I went to Bangladesh, I saw with my very own eyes a young girl carrying a baby in a posture in which any other baby would not be able to keep quiet, much less sleep. It was very obviously drugged to sleep, begging in the streets. In the rain. And these two women have done nothing for them.

So we may be able to claim that we elected a woman as a premiere, but it's really not done much at all for people on the ground.

F. Ahmed, on the other hand, is well-spoken and very presentable, but he sounds like an autocrat in all his speeches abroad, by highlighting the pitfalls of an "imperfect union" like his address at the UN General Assembly last year. I think he's a little bit flustered at the negative response of a military-backed caretaker government having to take power in Bangladesh, so when he is abroad, his agenda is dominated by why the military has to settle matters in a country that has been making inroads in consistent civilian rule. All the Western countries collectively went *gasp* when the civilians couldn't settle the issues amicably. But that's not his fault. Politically-speaking, nothing is ever his fault; he's a career bureaucrat, for goodness sake, and he wasn't elected. He deserves some slack, and although he has decidedly underperformed, he has been less bad than the others.

Even a shallow analysis will give the following grade to Bangladeshi politics: fail. This "state of emergency" is the longest running imposition of martial law in a South Asian country since partition. It's unacceptable, but it's not the CTG's (Caretake Government) fault. It's S. Hasina's fault, and K. Zia's fault, because they were too busy inciting riots and fixing elections, that the military had to take over. They were only filling a vacuum created by the incompetent civilians. The CTG has been a force of stability in some ways, like how the Taleban was before they got bombed back to the Stone Age. Not exactly an ideal solution, but at least you can go to and from work to feed the family.

But we really do take things too personally in the sub-continent (and Asia in general). If an employee hands in his resignation, it's all cuss words and "you ingrate" and "how could you stab me in the back." Seriously, boss. It's nothing personal, this is just business. After these politicians cuss each other up in parliament, they should be able to go home, chillax with their families and watch Bohu Brihi. But no, they're in this fight to annihilate each other with ridiculous ideological banter and hyperbole.

Our devotion to our political parties is almost religious, anybody that changes parties is labeled a turncoat, an unacceptable apostasy. Well, I think for a democracy to function, the electorate has to be swingers. It's like Keynes famously noted (roughly paraphrased): "If the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

W's worldview is wrong. (paraphrased) "This is a president that believes on Wednesday, what he believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday," said Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner. We need to foster more rational thought in our country, through education and free speech. And then, perhaps, we will be able to achieve "a more perfect union."

C25K Runner's Program

C25K means Couch Potato '2' 5 Kilometres. It's a program of gradually increasing the endurance of a couch potato (comparable to the endurance of just a potato) to the level of a normal adult Homo sapien: able to run either 5 kilometres or for a half hour, at a stretch, without a break.

I started from week 3 because I'm about 2 weeks fitter than a couch potato. Oh yeah, I'm ripped!

So I Google'ed around for blogs of people who have done the C25K program. None of them go beyond 4 weeks. I think, oh, one of them ended at Week 6. Not a good sign at all, I don't think. Well, here I am telling you. I am now on week 4, week 3 was too easy (I'm ripped!).

Bangladeshi Election Turmoil

The Bangladesh National Party's (BNP) 4-Party Alliance is making a list of 4 demands of the Election Commission (EC). In summary, they are:

1. Lift the State of Emergency

2. Remove some clauses in the amended Representation of the People Order (RPO)

3. Defer Upazila (municipal) elections for a month after the parliamentary polls

4. Reschedule polls to ensure Hajis can cast their votes

Lift the State of Emergency

This makes sense and warrants consideration, and the Caretaker Government is already considering this. The Caretaker Government has reason to be skeptical. The two parties have a penchant for street protests that turn ugly very frequently, and none of these parties have signed off on any common agreement to stop economically disruptive protests (hartal). But an election under what is effectively martial law isn't exactly what I would call ideal.

The State of Emergency has been a Godsend for these 2 years for many people on the ground. The streets haven't been all that much safer, and although the military has come in with its fair share of heavy-handedness, businesses have generally functioned without let or hindrance. Perhaps I'm damning it with faint praise but it could've been a lot worse.

Remove some clauses in the amended RPO

The RPO, first enacted in 1972 is generally a good piece of legislation from what I understand. The legislators from our "founding fathers" were a competent bunch, from the rich tradition of the Pakistan Civil Service and before that, the British Civil Service. 3 parliamentary elections have been held under it so far, as well as a few military dictatorships thrown into the mix (we are a sub-continental country, after all). And some of the amendments made to it this year by the Caretaker Government have also been good, like barring anyone who hasn't paid their utility bills from contesting (you'd think that was obvious).

But as usual, the military's heavy-handedness has to eventually cut through. It's like they get a sense that they're doing well, then suddenly get over-enthusiastic and overshoot. I'm fuzzy on the details here, but it seems like they've added a clause barring teachers from running for public office. I think their intention may be to separate the universities from politics, but this policy sounds heavy-handed (my favorite word for this post).

Let's not forget, the Caretaker Government was the one that tried to put price controls in the telecommunication industry, probably the only sector in Bangladesh that is working perfectly well and serving the population for the collective good, under free-market capitalism.

Defer Municipal Elections for a Month after Parliamentary Polls

I'm not exactly sure as to the reasoning for this, but it's possible they're trying not to over-extend the Election Commission. But with proper management it's possible to vote on more than one thing at a time. Americans in the recent presidential elections very controversially voted for a black president, and voted against gay marriage rights, among other things. This was all on the same ballot.

The big caveat here is that it needs organization and management.

Reschedule Polls to Ensure Hajis Can Cast Their Votes

This is simply preposterous. The BNP and her Jamaat allies have become masters at playing the religion card.

There are no more than 50,000 pilgrims going on the Hajj from Bangladesh according to revised, lower Saudi quotas this year for Bangladeshis. Out of an approximately 80 million-strong voter roll. That's 0.06% of the electorate, and that fraction is probably smaller when you factor in voter turnout.

If their vote is so crucial (which I don't think it is), then the 4-party alliance should have raised this before. After all, we've known elections would be held at the end of 2008 for more than 18 months now. The Election Commission would have evaluated accepting absentee ballots (something I would very much like) for the pilgrims, in that case. If we don't have the capacity to handle absentee ballots, which the Election Commission has already announced, then I don't see a way out.

I don't think this request should be entertained. But then, what do I know about politics in a country I never lived in. The BNP is a monolith in the political landscape, outsized only by its counterpart, the Awami League. If they sneeze, everybody gets wet.

Why I Think Opera is the Best Browser Available

To me, Opera is the OS X of the browser world. Compared to its competitors, it is polished, fast, quick-loading, powerful, feature-rich, well-thought-out and manages to do all that without getting in your face.

Well-thought-out. That's the key.

I'm not going to go into detail. This isn't a technical or academic opinion. It's a very pedestrian opinion. Why do I like Opera? It comes down to a few features that I just fell in love with when I saw them.

Username and password completion

Opera frames username/password forms that it knows the information to in an unobtrusive brown-yellow colour. If you want to put in information that you know, go ahead and do it, it's not in your way. However, if you want Opera to fill it in for you, just press CTRL+ENTER, and Opera fills it in for you, and submits the form.

It's unobtrusive, it gives you the information you need to know via easy-to-understand visual cues that are not distracting, and it's much better than any other implementation I've seen in Safari when it comes to multiple known usernames and passwords.

In Safari, it auto-completes it for you while you type, akin to someone finishing your sentences for you. It's sweet, but not always fun.

Speed Dial

All that empty space when you press CTRL+T for a new tab. The first implementation of tabs, inherited from Firefox and now implemented in all browsers, focuses your text cursor on the URL bar, so you type in things from there. Shortcuts even, can be put in through there through Firefox and Safari add-ons. Well, the guys at Opera are way above their game by putting in this feature called Speed Dial.

It uses the empty space of a new tab to show you 9 boxes with window previews that you can click on to navigate to. Each box will contain a cached thumbnail of a version of the website you visited. If you want to see what's the latest on them, just click refresh, at this window, and Opera will give you the latest thumbnails by reloading the page.

9 large buttons (taking up a lot of screen real-estate that was formerly unused), so your mouse movement need not be very fine (as opposed to navigating to the correct button on your bookmarks bar). You can use your mouse and keyboard in excellent synchronization. Left hand for CTRL+T, with the right hand still on the mouse, move quickly to a button, click, you're there.

These 2 features alone make me like Opera. The fact that it loads webpages fast, has fun visual indicators while loading pages, launches fast, and has, in my opinion, the best user-interface of any application I've used in Ubuntu Linux (running KDE) so far are still secondary concerns.

I'm sure there's more, but nothing worth me writing about. The guys at Opera have their heads in the right place from my analysis of the application so far.

Personal Note

I use Opera at work, where I work on Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. At home I still use Safari, because Safari is still more widely supported than Opera, and Opera's user-interface still isn't up to Mac standards.

I generally stay away from Firefox. A lumbering beast of an application, it takes for ever to launch, it's memory footprint is huge and it's really become persona non grata in my browsing experience.

Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake": My Review

I just finished reading a book last night. My first in a long... very long time. I've been reading sleepy paperbacks in between all this, but never a book as an experience. But in the past weeks, I did it.

The book is Jhumpa Lahiri's, The Namesake. Popularized by a movie of the same name, with some Hollywood and Bollywood bigwigs involved. That's probably why I heard of it and bothered to get my paws on it. Alas. The Metatron from Dogma (1999) was right: it's not worth knowing anymore if they haven't made a movie on it.

The Story

Story goes of the Gangulis, from Calcutta, West Bengal, India. Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli travel to a far away land, America, to make a new life. Ashoke, the husband, has chosen to define himself by a train accident he nearly died in, in India, where he survived by the skin of his teeth, with nothing but a tattered copy of Nikolai Gogol's "The Overcoat", and a lifelong limp to show for it. Sick of his life in India, he travels across the world to make a new beginning.

After their arrival in America, having settled and made a life, Ashima has a child, who is to be named by her grandmother. Unfortunately, the letter her grandmother mails them is lost, and her grandmother becomes gravely ill and loses all her higher faculties. It becomes impossible for them to find out the name she chose for him.

In a spur of the moment, compelled, and against tradition, the Gangulis name their son themselves. Not having put much thought into it, having deferred good judgement to Ashima's grandmother, Ashoke pulls out the first name in his head. Gogol, after Nikolai Gogol, of whom Ashoke is a fan of a deeply spiritual nature, becomes the name of their son. What follows is Gogol Ganguli's uneventful American childhood, adolescence and adulthood, with but one unique characteristic: his name is Gogol.

He is unique among his friends, and as he eventually realizes, among people around the world, since Gogol was a surname turned first name. Not even in Russia, where Nikolai Gogol was from, was anyone named Gogol. And he resents it. Eventually changing his name, and inwardly, part of his own identity, he goes through turmoil in his personal life. Courting women from America-proper, and immigrant Bengalis not unlike himself, towards the end, he comes to realize the dreary and momentary nature of life itself.

Dislikes

My dislike first, of which there is only one. I'd like to leave off this book review on a good note, so bad news first, good news later.

I didn't like how Lahiri describes everybody from Calcutta as so educated! Gosh, Gogol is an accomplished architect, his friends and significant others are PhDs and professors and intellectuals. Is that really how Bengalis are in New York? Are there no philistines in Calcutta? Where are the grocer and restaurant Bengalis?

If Bengalis really are that well off, well, wow! You guys are doing well! If not, this book tastes of nasty Bollywood'ness, where everyone's a romanticized bigshot. And, by the way, why are all the Bangladeshis in the book cab drivers and busboys? Actually... no, I think she hit the nail right on the head there. Can't gripe about it if it's true!

Likes

Now my likes. Thinking about the story, and putting it into words in writing this review, I now truly realize exactly how much I love this book. It touches upon many of my own sensitivities.

First of all, the book is about Bengalis. These guys are from Calcutta, West Bengal in India, but Bengalis will be Bengalis. We are essentially, and truly the same for good or for worse.

I loved the Bengali culture that was describe in romantic detail in this book. How Ashima never addresses her husband by name, but calls him by (roughly translated) "Are you listening to me?". How the intimacy between them is so rigorous and deep, that even they themselves are unaware of its reality. How Bengalis give their children two names, one for home and one for the world. How they have their compatriots over for dinners regularly on the weekends, with loud, boisterous Bengali ringing through the household while the children play or watch television on their own upstairs. Of foster-uncles and foster-aunts that become their family in a far away land. Of unwanted and bothersome visits to an inhospitable Calcutta every few years. Of Gogol's irritation at having a name he shares with nobody, of having to spell it out, or having to hear it mispronounced.

I loved it because I lived it. I am Gogol. I never changed my name, but I fell back to my Arabic name, something slightly more common in the sub-continent than my Bengali name, which I never quite liked.

But I've now found respect in my Bengali name, and in my parents, who lived the life of Ashima and Ashoke described in such intimate detail in this book. I especially realized what my mother went through in raising three children, on her own, in a faraway land. The story of Ashima in this book is a story of my mother.

Truly, mothers hold debts no mortal being can repay.

I'd give this book 5 stars out of 5. If I had stars to give.

The Amman Message

Wikipedia is a dangerous thing. Navigate to it to find out a quick fact, and before you know it, you're completely engrossed in a very large article on something completely unrelated. Like what happened to me yesterday.

Here's a link I found out yesterday, perhaps a year or so too late:

The Amman Message

From the Introduction:

It [The Amman Message] sought to declare what Islam is and what it is not, and what actions represent it and what actions do not. Its goal was to clarify to the modern world the true nature of Islam and the nature of true Islam.

A worthy goal indeed!

One of the things about Islam is that its largely decentralized. We don't have a pope, and we really don't have a central body regulating religious activities of Muslims around the world.

Typically, governments and private or non-profit organizations fill the void, of their own volition, to keep things organized, but it's not mandated. Despite all the hoo-haa about Islam being a polity, and it being the antithesis of secularism, and therefore, automatically incompatible with anything "civilized", at the root of it, it's all very personal... and yet impersonal.

A standing principle of the spiritual gnostics has been: nothing is personal in the universe, except your relationship with God.

And this perhaps has been Islam's bane in the modern world. People could pick up tattered, neglected old books, and where nationalism had previously failed to deliver, they hit where the heart is soft: faith. The despots told the people do this, and God will love you, and the people loved the despots.

And so perhaps things like the Amman Message are slowly arising. Standards bodies, that define terms, good practices, and fundamental concepts. Much like the IEEE standards or the RFC internet standards. These are the protocols, the concepts. Now implement them as you wish.

(I'm very sorry for the geek reference. I had to do it.)

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has an advantage I think that most of the other Muslim countries don't have.

1. It's relatively unimportant, so there's not much Western meddling going on.
2. It's king was educated in the West, but with deep roots in the Middle East.
3. And the pox that is the United States's war on terror in Iraq has meant millenia's worth of handed down knowledge and wisdom, embodied in rare, skilled professionals in trades we no longer know about, like calligraphy and traditional Islamic scholarship, are making their way there to make a new life.

Last I heard, they were undergoing slow democratic reforms in Jordan. Here's to wishing them the best.

Is the Problem Technical or Managerial?

I was invited to a very distant relation's home for Iftari yesterday. Apart from a lovely traditional Iftari with chick peas, butter milk, dates, and fruit, I enjoyed pleasant company, and a family environment.

I met a fellow by the name of Mustafa, who was working in alternative energy in Bangladesh, particularly in biogas. It was heart-warming to hear people on the ground realizing what I read about on the internet so much. It's the common folk such as him who make the realities of solving our social problems a reality.

As usual, in our five-minute conversation, the topic veered toward the state of Bangladesh. Systemic corruption has crippled the country, and Mustafa suggested a sentiment shared by many Bengalis: all we needed was one good leader. Malaysia had Mahathir, Oman had Sultan Qaboos.

It's a common enough sentiment among the common folk, but that, of course, doesn't mean its necessarily true. Pakistan had General Musharraf, who, at the time, was welcomed almost unanimously. Power does corrupt, and politics will be politics.

But there is truth behind it. I wouldn't fully agree with "just one person" being sufficient. One person need not be the be-all and end-all; I think South Asians are too quick through the door into hero-worship, and just as fast to put a bullet in him. But the spirit behind the sentiment is the same as mine: the problem is, and always has been, leadership.

This belief was vindicated by the newspaper headlines just today. In Bangladesh, power load shedding has decreased from a 1,200 megawatt nationwide energy deficit, to a 200 megawatt deficit. The solution? Good management.

27 power plants last year generated 2,800 megawatts of energy, against a demand of (approximately) 4,000 megawatts. Those same 27 plants today, with the exception of one additional 70 megawatt plant that was installed earlier this year, are generating 4,100 megawatts of power, reducing the national shortfall of energy to a mere 100 to 200 megawatts.

The problem wasn't technical. The gas and oil was there to be burned, the transducers were there. It was managerial.

Solutions involved staggering holidays in industrial zones, stricter controls on bill collection, decentralized decision-making. With that, they fixed a problem that had threatened the economic development, the sacrosanct goal of any developing nation, of a 150 million people.

Like the Bengali saying goes: obhab na; shobhab. It's not poverty. It's attitude.

Twenty20 Cricket: My Thoughts

Cricket was never really my forte; Bangladesh never had a team while I was young, and the India-Pakistan animosity/competition never really trickled down to me, and so cricket was never in my mental map of "things to note."

I learnt as much about the technicalities and mechanics of the game in the World Cup earlier this year as I had learned in all my time watching the Sharjah Cup on television on lazy Friday afternoons in Abu Dhabi.

But I'm still a (potential) customer to the ICC. So my opinion ought to count for something, I hope!

In short: I quite like the game. I have a penchant for structure, skill, and sophistication, and cricket has all three in truckloads. I quite especially relish the commentary, especially if someone intelligent is doing the talking, like John Wright (such a nice guy!), Ian Chappell, or Tony Greig (very opinionated!). I love their insight into the game, and really, it's folks like these that stand testament to the elegance of the game.

But I think it's the faux bourgeoisie that irk me. I think they're trying to put up barriers for casually interested folk like me to take an interest in the game.

The current Twenty20 World Cup has provoked a lot of ire from players and commentators alike. Players are saying they don't like the format, because it doesn't give them enough time to think, and devise action strategies. Commentators, though they won't say it, strongly suggest shortening the game cheapens it. Other commentators are suggesting (again, very subtle-like) that Twenty20 is somehow inferior, because it seems to level the playing field between teams of highly differing skill levels.

Perhaps it was the (deserved) surprise win of Zimbabwe over Australia in the South Africa Twenty20 that has turned heads, or the fact that they feel they're being robbed, since what they believed only them and a limited circle of enlightened gnostics enjoyed is being usurped by the fickle adoration of the unwashed masses.

I don't know what it is, but I don't like that attitude!

Let's call a spade a spade. Cricket is a sport, and honestly, I'm not willing to spend five days watching a game before I know its outcome (the bona-fide format of Test cricket). It's not because I have an attention span deficit, but because it's simply not the amount of time I'm willing to devote to it.

I'm a wage slave, not unlike most folk out there. I simply don't have the emotional and mental manna at the end of a 45-hour work week to offer the sport, or almost any other activity, some of which are far more important than sport. And let's face it, for a sport to survive you need spectators.

The players should suck it up, I'm afraid. Soccer players do much more in much shorter time than cricketers do, and despite the deceptive simplicity of soccer, a lot of strategy goes into it, as much on-the-spot, thinking-on-your-feet sort of stuff as preparation. The spontaneity gives it beauty, and sometimes produces strokes of genius.

And if Twenty20 levels the playing field a bit more, so be it! I've yet to hear of a match that a team was about to win, but lost because of the format of the game. Australia lost to Zimbabwe earlier this year, because Zimbabwe played better cricket. Upsets are fun, and honestly, Australia's domination in the sphere of cricket for the past 7 or so years is probably the strongest argument not to care about the game. It's almost become a no-brainer as to who'll win the World Cup, or who the best team is, since Australia hasn't lost a single World Cup game in three World Cups! That's no fun!

The commentators will lament the Cricket of Old. I can see how it must have been fun, I really can. Old men spending five days in the sun, their women and children sipping tea and playing in the grass while other people (the colonials, perhaps?) cooked, cleaned and tilled the earth. I really don't share their nostalgia.

I like cricket. I like the fact that every spot in the cricket ground has a name, every stroke of the bat has a name, every technique of throwing the ball and each speed of throwing it has a name. Typical English bureaucratic thinking, and quite sophisticated at the end of the day. I just don't like the arrogance senior aficionados of the sport in the media seem to have for it.

Let it go, let Twenty20 grow, because the fans are the future of the sport, and we want something we can enjoy, and something we don't have to dedicate significant portions of our time on Earth to experience.