Writer's Strike

The writer’s strike is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it will give me an opportunity to catch-up on shows—on DVD—I may have missed and, on the other hand, it will shorten seasons on shows I really, really like, specifically Scrubs, which is in its final season.

The last time there was a lengthy writer’s strike was in the late-80s, which spawned the mindless reality-television movement. It’s still with us today and if the strike continues for a long-time (which is likely), expect more of it.

Hope the strike ends soon.

Zia's Legacy Haunts Pakistan

Kevin Drum has an interesting post about Pakistan and Islamic parties gaining control of Pakistan after President Musharraf declared martial law.

Over at Informed Comment, Juan Cole suggests that the Islamist movement in Pakistan isn't really very impressive, but adds that events could change that: "What is really significant, however, is that Qazi Hussain [the leader of the fundamentalist Jamaat-i Islami] is the only major party leader openly calling for mass resistance against Musharraf, a stance which will help the popularity of his party even if (as seems likely) he winds up in jail over it."

What we’re seeing are the final results of late President Zia-ul-Haq’s handiwork blowing up in our faces. It was Zia who Islamized, not only Pakistan, but the military as well. Much of the officer corp—from junior to mid-level—are hardcore Islamists. There’s a clear nexus between Islamists and the military that wasn’t there before, but is definitely there now.

Since the military is a bulwark of stability in Pakistan, and the only institution with any real authority, what it says goes. Governments cannot rule without their blessing. The elites rely on them to maintain law and order (and their positions of power) as it is they who have the guns. If the military collapses, so does Pakistan.

And if the military is under the sway of Islamists, vote count—and, yes, even democracy—is meaningless.

DillanTV: Episode 1

I would like to present to you Kid Karamel, a.k.a. Dillan Agarwalla, and my nephew, in his first video.



As you can see, he’s quite mischievous and curious and, not to mention, highly mobile. He’s adorable as well.

Funny Movie Trailer And Zee Commercials

A funny scene from the movie Goa to Bombay:



If the driver looks familiar, he's also in this very funny Zee Cinema commercial:



And if you like this Zee Cinema commercial, here's another:



Enjoy!

Martial Law Declared In Pakistan

President Musharraf, who is still General Musharraf, has committed his second coup by declaring martial law, suspending the constitution, and sequestering the Supreme Court. Did Benazir Bhutto have an inkling of what was going to happen? She abruptly left for Dubai, ostensibly to see her children and ailing mother, but now we know the real reason—she was trying to avoid arrest.

Satire: America's Mideast Diplomatic Offensive

Winning the hearts and minds of the Arab world as told by The Daily Show



This is why The Daily Show is a must see, better than any cable or network news broadcast.

US Navy Battle Pirates: Soft Power At Work

The U.S. Navy battling with pirates off the coast of Somalia is not getting the media attention it deserves. It’s an important new role for the U.S. Navy—the role of maritime policeman—and its implications are far reaching. By protecting trade routes from marauding pirates, the United States is doing a service that will earn it respect in the world community, something that has been quite fleeting of late. It’s an example of “soft power," something the United States should use more of, not less.

Being a “policeman” requires retooling the U.S. Navy from top to bottom. Presently, the U.S. Navy is built to fight major wars, with its aircraft carrier battle groups central to its strategy, which is overkill for battling pirates, who tend to operate in small groups. No, what the Navy needs to be is more nimble, something akin to the U.S. Army, which increasingly uses small, highly mobile groups (company size or less) instead of large, lumbering groups (divisions). What the Navy needs are more patrol boats and attack submarines rather than aircraft carriers, cruiser and destroyers.

Robert D. Kaplan, who writes about defense matters for The Atlantic, has been talking about restructuring the U.S. Navy for quite some time now, echoes what I have written above:

In essence, this new maritime strategy represents a restrained, nuanced yearning for a bigger Navy, albeit one whose mission will be cooperation with other navies. That requires more than just new ships. “A key to fostering such relationships is development of sufficient cultural, historical, and linguistic expertise among our Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen to nurture effective interaction with diverse international partners.” Such training costs money and creates bureaucratic challenges, but it helps lay the groundwork for an exceedingly gradual, elegant decline of the Navy’s capabilities—a future in which it has fewer platforms but gets more out of the ones it does have by working more closely with others.

Another thing Kaplan writes about is the fact that the U.S. can’t go it alone. It will need the cooperation of many countries and, yes, including China, which, given its export-oriented economy, needs to keep trade routes secure.

Book Review: While Europe Slept

Europe as we know it is slowly disappearing as radical Islam steadily spreads across the land, helped by multicultural do-gooders and socialist statists? This seems to be the premise of Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, a polemic about the growing menace of radical Islam and how it is slowly destroying Europe and it’s liberal, freedom-loving ideals.

The way Bawer tells it, it is an apocalypse in the making. That unless radical Islam is stopped in its tracks, Europe will become Islamized and Europe, as we know, will cease to exist. Reality or just plain hysterics? I think it’s a little of both.

Bawer is not some conservative nut job, but a noted writer and critic who lives in Norway and sees first-hand what effect radical Islam is having. Radical Islamists demand Sharia be imposed, that gays be murdered (Bawer is gay, so imagine his reaction), and that democracy be dismantled. All for recreating some mythical caliphate that existed in the seventh century.

It’s not clear whom to blame: Muslims, who fail to assimilate; or Europeans, who coddle them. Bawer tends to blame the latter. Made up mostly of politicians, journalists and other elites, they are Europe’s ruling class; and they have a blind spot to the coming danger.

These elites—mostly socialists, multiculturalists, and other assorted leftists—tend to treat Muslim as some exotic ethnic group to be protected, not as an ideology. With lax immigration policies, Muslims arrive in Europe by the planeloads, where they are not integrated or assimilated in anyway, but are separated, forced to live in ghettos, encouraged to keep their culture, keep to themselves, and are discouraged from learning the language, culture, values of their adopted land. It is the kind of patronizing racism that is practiced throughout Europe.

This explains radical Islam appeal among Muslim immigrants and their offspring. Alienated by the country they live in, they are susceptible to entreaties by radical Islamists, who control many of the mosques (and funded by the government), and fed a steady diet of anti-Western rhetoric, and conditioned to hate the country they live in. It explains why crimes by Muslim youths are on the rise throughout Europe, something Bawer continually harps on. Remember the Paris riots of 2006? It was by Muslim youths. Of course, the European press tends to whitewash these stories, blaming capitalism, globalization, or some other bogeyman of the week.

But is Europe going to hell, or is it so far along that there is no going back? Bruce Bawer doesn’t say much on the subject except that Europe must get its act together less it becomes some Islamic backwater, bereft of liberty, happiness, and democracy.

Personally, I think Europe is made of sturdier stuff and will survive with its ideals intact. Opposition to radical Islam has been slow, but growing steadier by year. A new crop of politicians, which Bawer mentions, are on the rise who plan to do something about the problems at hand; helped by Muslims, who are equally repulsed by the repugnancy of some of their fellow co-religionist’s stridently anti-Western views, who want to share in Europe’s prosperity, and its idels, while practicing their faith. Bawer gives these Muslims little shrift, in my opinion.

Essentially, the central theme of this book is about multiculturalism gone arye. Bawer often compares Europe to the United States, and how the latter has done a great job of assimilating its Muslims, while the former utterly failed in assimilating theirs.

X-Files: The Sequal

There’s a new X-Files movie in the works. Filming begins in December, with a release date for late July 2008. What’s it all about:

Creator Chris Carter says that the movie will focus on a stand-alone mystery rather than exploring the show's dense mythology. Beyond that, he's not spilling details, only saying, "It will be scary."

The reason it took so long to make a sequel was the fact that Chris Carter was fighting with FOX over, what else, money over syndication and DVD rights. But with a writer’s strike on the horizon, it was now or never. So Carter and FOX settled quickly just to get this project off the ground. Hope it’s good.

Pakistan And RAW: The Drama Continues

This is getting tiring:

The three assassin terrorists arrested recently by the law enforcing agencies, have revealed that Indian intelligence service (RAW) hired them for Rs 6.5 million to murder three Chinese nationals on July 8, 2007 at Peshawar. This clearly shows that India wants to disrupt developmental activities by intimidating Chinese engineers in Pakistan. Ever since the Chinese engineers have undertaken the construction of Gwadar deep seaport, a series of attacks targeting Chinese nationals have become a regular feature. The terrorists are not only attempting to damage Pakistan’s economic growth, they want to jeopardize the “strategic partnership’’ between the two countries. Pakistan’s friendship with China is unique and has stood the test of time in the matters concerning national security and economic cooperation.

It’s incredible. Every time there’s terrorist activity on Pakistani soil, it’s automatically attributed to India and its intelligence agency, RAW. Not only that, Pakistani security agencies always manage to capture the terrorists (yet they can't find jihadis or Osama bin Laden), who quickly admit they were in the employ of RAW. No other evidence is offered aside from “confessions” made by the supposed terrorists, who no doubt were coerced—i.e. tortured—into making false statements implicating India. Then we never hear from these terrorists ever again.

This scenario will be repeated in a few months time.