Friday, January 29, 2010

Blair lied, people died

Some slogans never get old, they actually get new.

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair testified today before the Chilcot Inquiry about what led to the Iraq invasion. According to him, all facts presented to him at that time pointed him to the conclusion that the 45-second claim (i.e., that Iraq could launch bio/chem weapons in 45 minutes) was true. He offered a morally challenging argument about his dilemmas at that time:
"Your worry is not simply, is the intelligence correct so that I can act, your worry is also if it is correct, what am I going to do about it?"
I understand dilemmas and the urgent decisions that situations force on you, but what a pity that his intelligence agents did not make him aware of the (then potentially) horrible aftermath of his assertive actions (or maybe they did).

For lack of better metrics - the civilian body count stemming from that decision, to this day: around 100,000.

He also talked at length about how the US' and UK's opinions on regime change differed (but, obviously, not enough for them to defer the invasion decision). It shocks me how lightly the word "regime change" gets bandied around.

Never forget (with added emphasis this time), the civilian body count from that casual act of regime change, to this day: around 100,000.

The only thing more tragic than the deaths themselves is the fact that there is no acknowledgment whatsoever except along the fringes of British/American intelligentsia that these military adventures abroad themselves have a part to play in increasing security threats. Thus perpetuates the vicious cycle - aggression abroad leads to more insecurity at home which leads to more aggression abroad. As we speak, the universal blue-eyed boy Obama is ramping up the remorseless "good war" in Afghanistan.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

The fighter brings joy

Normally, reading The Acorn makes me repeatedly tap my foot against my chair leg in irritated restlessness, just like reading Instapundit or The Daily Dish does to me. However, this post titled Brickbats to the editor on The Acorn made me laugh out loud.

Nitin reproduces in its delightful entirety his correspondence with one irritated reader, Dr Ashley Tellis. For those familiar with the political right and left in India, there are many many juicy sociological nuggets in the reason for the protesting email and the tone adopted by the reader. Nitin's civil responses make the correspondence more enjoyable.

Note that Tellis signs off his emails with Estamos en la lucha, Spanish for We are in the fight. Joy.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Sunday morning laughs

This is good.



Wait, this one's better!

Economics of highs

If you have participated in, or are even vaguely familiar with, the market in stimulants/intoxicants like tea, cigarettes, or marijuana (ganja) in India, this piece by Sauvik Chakraverti at Antidote is a must-read. Sauvik is a ganja-loving, government-hating libertarian and a tarty critic of what he thinks are the anti-people policies of the Manmohan Singh government (he sarcastically calls Singh 'Chacha'). I often don't agree with or like the views on Antidote, but today's piece cracked me up.

Sauvik talks about bad air and bad ganja in Delhi, and argues that 20 rupees is better spent on three India Kings and a cup of tea than a pudiya (a few grams) of sub-par ganja.

The piece is titled 'Bum Shankar' and I would like to point out to the uninformed that ganja is understood to be the preferred stimulant of Shiva (Shankar), and his believers consider smoking ganja a form of offering prasad. 'Jai Bum Shankar', 'Bum Bum Bhole' etc are chants adopted by worshippers.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Lost to change

There was this story on NPR the other day about Egypt, with mention of an old-styled blacksmith, and how his business is being threatened by cheap factory-made imports:

Nasser al-Hamoud, a blacksmith, works from inside an old mud-brick building on a twisting, narrow street in Al Qasr, a village at the northern end of the Dakhla Oasis. At his shop, a giant heaving bellows is the centerpiece of what resembles a medieval blacksmith's forge.

Hamoud explains that business is uncertain these days. He says farm tools are his bread and butter, but lately, cheap imports from China have flooded the market. He scornfully holds up a thin, Chinese-made shovel blade, and then hefts the weightier, more costly hand-forged version.

The Luddite in me gently weeps when I read something like this. Reminds me of the single blacksmith in Kotda, my home for a couple years alma mater. The blacksmith's shop, no bigger than the size of a small bedroom, is placed in the square where most of the village's businesses are located. The actual setup is not as romantic as al-Hamoud's - there is no giant heaving bellows, instead a dull electric air compressor does the same job.

To compare the two is not to suggest that the Kotda blacksmith's business is uncertain like the one in Al Qasr. The former's business is not based on manufacturing but on fixing agricultural implements, a fairly dependable line of work. One interesting seasonal pattern to the Kotda blacksmith's work is the ritualistic fixing/sharpening of plows and sickles right before monsoon agriculture starts (farming in the 200+ villages that depend on Kotda for such services is done manually for the most part). Like clockwork, the first rain shower brings in a flood of customers to the blacksmith, wielding all kinds of agricultural implements.

It was remarkable to see that, much like with many other aspects of the business of life, the more diligent farmers would get their blacksmithy done before the monsoon, higher rates, and long waiting times kicked in; the average ones would show up in a critical mass on cue from the first shower; and the subprime farmers would straggle in last at the risk of messing up their timing of the monsoon, which is a roll of dice in the best of circumstances, and having an unsuccessful crop.

* * * * *

Talking about seasonal rituals in Kotda, another one which provided much amusement to outsiders like me was the annual relicensing of guns. A lot of families in the Kotda area own guns (a fact historically corroborated by item no. 3 here, I speculate), the licenses for which have to be renewed every year. On a certain predetermined date, thousands of gun-bearing villagers descend on the tehsildar's office in Kotda to get theirs renewed. Even in normal circumstances, Kotda has the feel of a rather volatile border town; license-renewal day would much accentuate that character.

It deserves to be said the even though violence (of many kinds - land disputes, domestic, robberies etc; like this) is common in Kotda, the use of guns in anger is almost unheard of. I reason that this has something to do with the fact that most of the aforementioned guns are old-fashioned muzzle-loaders, and an axe is probably more useful when a weapon is handily needed. Besides (illegal) hunting, the guns are mostly just a ornament for men during weddings and such.

* * * * *

Back to the subject of blacksmithy, one particularly interesting group of tradespeople in the area are the 'gadia luhars' (literally, blacksmiths in carts), a nomadic community of blacksmiths who live in Rajasthan (and possibly elsewhere too). These blacksmiths travel village to village with their entire families and households on wheels (or loaded on donkeys), setting up shop by the roadside in the proximity of the main square or business area, doing the finer blacksmithy that their lighter mobile equipment offers.

The easily distinguishable hand-forged cooking utensils made by the gadia luhars are fading into obscurity at the same rate as the gadia luhars themselves. While the NPR story above makes "Chinese-made" sound villianish for driving al-Hamoud out of work, the fact is that factory-produced metalwork, foreign or local, has annulled the practicality of hand-forged stuff universally, as with the gadia luhars' handiwork.

An anectode to prove the point: While travelling through the town of Gogunda once, I purchased a hand-crafted ladle from a gadia luhar for ten or fifteen rupees; at 18 inches long and almost half a kilo, it was quite a piece of work. Back home in Kotda, my purchase provided much amusement to my roommates, who would never have bought one themselves. The key fact in the story is that my roommates belonged to remote tribal villages themselves, illustrating the penetration of factory-made goods, Chinese or otherwise.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Dark forebodings

The Sacramento Bee carries an article today on personal finance wherein they posed a same set of questions about the financial forecast for 2010 to five local investment bankers . One of the questions was "What investment sectors look most promising?", and the answers to it gave insights that are unnerving.

Four out of the five bankers had emerging markets at the top of their list of promising sectors...
"For long term, we like...emerging markets in China, India, Russia and Brazil."

"Some of the promising sectors include...emerging markets."

"We still have a big focus on global, emerging markets, such as China, India and Australia."

"We like emerging markets in China, India, Brazil, Russia."
Hmm, did someone say 'asset bubble'?
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