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the dictator's dead! long live the dictator? Not a day goes by that new examples of horror don't emerge from Iraq. In this latest instance of why things in Iraq just get uglier, the BBC reports (in turn from CBS' 60 Minutes), CBS says the pictures it obtained show a wide range of abuses, including: The article further talks about Sgt. Chip Fredrick, one of the soldiers charged by the Army saying he wasn't aware of Geneva Convention Rules. What kind of a moron is he to need the Geneva Convention to realize how appallingly wrong his conduct was? This guy is a prison officer in Virginia, is this the way he behaves with prisoners here in the US? I hope not. There are some rather graphic pictures here (via Tacitus).
a frightening prospect A very disturbing article in today's New York Times talks about growing support for Osama bin Laden and his heinous ideology in the UK and other countries in Europe. Rising dissent, a perceived sense of betrayal and persecution is gaining the terrorists an ever growing network of hopelessly misguided young men seemingly ready to give up their own lives and take those of innocent civilians under the justification of fighting a rather skewed holy war. Sheik Obar Bakri Mohammed, a cleric from a town near London gives this chilling ultimatum, "All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" [Osama bin Laden's -- ub] in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death ? that is what they are looking for." How do you fight a foe that is not fighting for life or its defense? Islam, as many other religions, trivializes the life we have now as compared to the one after death. The prospect of the afterlife, with it's promised eternity and none of the baggage that comes with living as we know it, mixed with the philosophy of blaming America and the West with all sorts of crimes against Islam and Muslims is steadily worsening a highly charged situation. There is, however, one more aspect to this issue, America, with the war in Iraq, it's image as a supporter of Israel rather than an honest broker in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and a series of bad foreigh policy decisions, is very close to, if it hasn't already, losing the propoganda war to the terrorists. Having grown up in India, America was for me the beacon of success, truly the land of answered dreams and now, having seen this country from up close for almost three years, being afforded an opportunity to more closely scrutinize its flaws, my overall opinion remains unchanged. Perhaps what's needed in the war against extremism is not more sophisticated weapons or the invasion of recalcitrant regimes, perhaps what's needed is the selling of a more positive image to the Islamic world of America. There is no denying the deep rooted resentment for the West amongst sections of society in the Middle East, but I don't see how waging war in their backyard will solve the problem. Even if the Iraq war, in Tacitus' words, was a 'low-hanging fruit', it's selling was ridiculously inept and the handling of the occupation is confoundingly ill-planned. The image of a democracy in Iraq as the be all and end all of all problems related to Islamic extremism that seems to be firmly rooted in the Middle East, is merely a fantasy, a hypothesis that is far from the reality on the ground. What the West sees as the justified response to extremists in Falluja on CNN is seen by the Arab world as an out of proportion response and the targeting of civilians on Al Jazeera, with the truth lying ignored somewhere in between. I don't have a solution to this, but the "war on terrorism" is not it and it most certainly is not working at this point in time.
badmash! If you are from South Asia and Badmash is not part of your weekly comic relief, you've been sorely missing out. And yeah, absolutely do check out the Singhsons.
scalia's america Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia apparently does not like being quoted, abhors TV cameras and goes so far as to ban recordings of his public speeches. A deputy US marshal forcefully erased the recording of Scalia's speech made by two reporters at the Presbyterian Christian High School in Mississippi. The deputy's superior defended her actions saying they were merely enforcing the Justice's wishes,
Scalia, however, chickens out (ducks?) in his apology, In his letter, Justice Scalia said he did not have the power to "direct security personnel not to confiscate recordings."
powered by google Google is the technology company that is doing with its insanely brilliant engineers, smooth cash flow and cult status amongst techies and finanacial markets alike what Microsoft should have been doing for atleast ten years now. Though I've admired Microsoft for its strengths I've also often felt they could have done far more in computer science research and technical innovation than they have, juxtapose IE against Mozilla FireFox and you'll know what I mean. Comparing MS's achievements with the initiatives undertaken by Google puts this in perspective, consider this,
From this post on the Topix.net weblog, via Illruminations. Two people I've known at USC, who, in my judgement and experience with them, are extremely smart and have had GPAs of 4.0 made it only half way through the Google interview process which, by the way, inspires even more awe and dread than that of Microsoft's. Google has a finger in a lot of pies besides just search, including comparison shopping, news, targeted advertising, blogging, the recently announced mail beta and even what's being called social networking, through Orkut, which as of now is merely a project by a Google employee but could end up as a critical arm of the internet search company.
yaaahooooo! The University of Southern California's Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering, where I graduated with my MS last year, ranks 6th, along with Caltech, amongst America's top engineering schools in the US News and World Report's Graduate School Rankings for 2005.
strange fruit I wondered in my post yesterday if the events in Fallujah were something only Iraqis were capable of but concluded with an insinuation that I believe that beast lurks in all of humanity. Billmon, Al Muhajabah and Orcinus have all pondered the same issue, and have cited the lynching of African-Americans, Jews and people of other ethnicities at the hands of frenzied mobs in the early decades of the past century. Al Muhajabah also points to the following poem by a Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol immortalized by jazz legend Billie Holiday,
This bitterly evocative poem took on a life of its own, influencing a generation of artists, standing out as the stellar achievement of a legend and even having a book written about it. |
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