Letter Never Sent

1. The Pentagon’s Bungled Psyops Strategy: “Lt-Col Russell’s superior, Colonel James Hickey, told AP that “enemy tactics are ‘miss and run’. They’re almost running when they pull the trigger. I have yet to see any degree of military competence. They are not experienced fighters. They fire a mortar, then pick up and run . . . ” Colonel Hickey has described, obviously without realising it, the classic tactics of the guerrilla. The sequence of identifying a target, siting a weapon, firing it, then getting out quickly is precisely what guerrilla warfare is all about. Of course the enemy are not “experienced fighters”. And they don’t have “any degree of military competence”. Most are amateurs, ordinary citizens, who hate Hickey and Russell and all they stand for because their soldiers show no respect for their families and especially women in their irreligious, ferocious and intimidating door-crashing house raids in the middle of the night. ”
2. US-led occupation brings frontline against al-Qaeda to Iraq: analysts: “The United States struggled before the war to convince the world there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda network, but five months of US-led occupation of Iraq may have created precisely such an unholy alliance.
   
   Stripped of their privileged positions under the ousted dictator’s brutal regime, Saddam’s henchmen may finally have thrown in their lot with their ideological adversaries in Osama bin Laden’s terror network to wage war on their common foe two years after the suicide hijackings in the United States, analysts say.”

3. The Battle of Algiers and Its Lessons: “The name of Jean-Paul Sartre occurs only once in Pontecorvo’s film, but he played a major role in changing French public opinion. In his introduction to Algerian newspaper editor Henri Alleg’s The Question, Alleg’s account of his own torture at the hands of the Paras, Sartre points to the real issue at stake:
   
   “This rebellion is not merely challenging the power of the settlers, but their very being. For most Europeans in Algeria, there are two complementary and inseparable truths: the colonists are backed by divine right, the natives are sub-human. This is a mythical interpretation of reality, since the riches of the one are built on the poverty of the other. In this way exploitation puts the exploiter at the mercy of his victim, and the dependence itself begets racialism. It is a bitter and tragic fact that, for the Europeans in Algeria, being a man means first and foremost superiority to the Moslems. But what if the Moslem finds in his turn that his manhood depends on equality with the settler? It is then that the European begins to feel his very existence diminished and cheapened.”
   
   If one changes the words ‘settlers’ and ‘colonists’ to ‘American occupiers’ and ‘Algeria’ to ‘Iraq,’ this is not a bad assessment of where the U.S. now finds itself — or may soon find itself. Watching current TV news footage coming out of Iraq — say, of American soldiers patting down Iraqi men at check-points (and putting hoods and plastic handcuffs on some of them) or ransacking private homes — one cannot help but wince at the racial and religious hatreds being sown right before our eyes.”

Yesterday, after swimming and sunning like an iguana at Barton Springs pool my roommate and his girlfriend intercepted me on my walk home. They were on their way to Star of India for buffet and invited me along. There I found a copy of this free magazine, Little India (Apparently, “the largest circulated Indian publication in the USA”). Anyway, in it there were a few interesting things, interviews with assorted Indian Americans and Indian expatriots. There was this particular interview with Dr. Jagdish Sheth who’s evidently a marketing guru of sorts. His rags to riches and reknown story was interesting, but what was more interesting were his predictions as to where the world would be in the next 20-30 years. I took the liberty of scanning it in for you:

Which one of your predictions have come true and is there one that you wish you had not made?

I had predicted in the late 80s and early 90s that India will have no choice but
to align with America and that has come true though I had expected the two
countries to have an economic alignment first followed by a military alignment, but it happened the other way round.

I had also projected in the early 90s that China will become the biggest
economic and military super power by 2020 and that is coming true. In the short
term, the Europeans will be distancing themselves from America and they will align with Russia and Russia will become a major force in northern Europe, which will exclude Spain and Britain.

Britain any way does not belong in
Europe, since the French and Germans will
align. Britain may feel unwanted so there
will be interesting economic battles.

The one prediction that did not come
true was that in the 1970s I was very
hopeful that there would be a permanent
solution for Palestine, but then first Anwar
Sadat and then Rabin were assassinated.
Now I am saying there will be a permanent
distance between the Middle East and
America, and the Middle East will align
more and more with Europe.

So where are we headed post war?

I have slightly different views on that
than most people. I think we will win the
battle of Baghdad but we will not win the
war. There will be a next phase of peace in
the Middle East, orchestrated by the
creation of the state of Palestine, something
George Bush Sr. had strived for. The real
tension will be between America and the
European nations and Asia simultaneously.
The French-German coalition with
Russians will create more economic and
political problems for America and I had
predicted that NATO will cease and that
Japan has given up on America and will
align with China.

What role will the Indian American
community play in the mainstream?

After independence, India decided to
invest in medicine and engineering. Now
they feel its more lucrative to invest in
management and information technology.
Many Indian multinational firms will
groom top managers of Indian origin, and
many of these multinational firms will
enter the world market.

Because of the military and economic
alignment, American govt. will allow more
Indians to settle in America and vice versa
and free labor mobility will increase the
Indian population much more than the
Chinese population here. Indians will
definitely go into politics since more and
more Indian Americans are going to law
school which is a natural progression for
them to enter politics later. So we will have
very powerful Indian American lobby,
surpassing even the Jewish lobby.

So what is in the works?

A book on repositioning of India in
the new millennium.

1. Obvious implications of the so-called war on terror being felt: Russian general say “war on terror” used as pretext for global dominance:
   “It is one thing when a country is fighting terrorism on its own territory, and some other countries assist them,” the Interfax-AVN military news agency quoted Kvashnin an officers’ graduation ceremony in Moscow.

   “But it is quite another thing when, under the guise of fighting international terror, some countries are in fact trying to get involved in the internal affairs of the nation they are meant to be helping,” said Kvashnin.

   He urged the graduating officers to keep this in mind as they “carefully analyze what is happening in the world.”

2. India might be dangling the issue of Indian troop deployment in Iraq for an advantage at the expense of rival Pakistan: Indian Deputy PM, Advani, says US unlikely to release F-16s for Pakistan
3. Space junk renders missions dangerous

1. Humor and it’s power to restore perspective, promote cultural understanding, and emotional balance: Did You Hear the One About the Suicide Bomber?
2. Show Highlights ‘Outlaw Comic’ Bill Hicks
3. The banality of the good:
   In the Cafe Orange on the Oranienburgerstrasse, in the now trendy heart of what used to be East Berlin, I talk to a guy dressed in T-shirt, sandals and designer sunglasses. An old ’68er, he is sharply critical of the current policies of the Bush administration. At one point he leans forward and says, teasingly: “Don’t you think we need a new Boston tea party?” Surely, he jokes, the Boston tea party was good for relations between Britain and America – in the long term. When he gets up to leave, I notice that he puts on a black baseball cap advertising “American Eagle”. “Ja,” he says, “das habe ich in Boston gekauft.” (“I bought it in Boston.”)

   Yes, there is some serious power politics, too. It is dangerous for the world to have only one hyperpower. It is dangerous for America itself to be that only hyperpower. As the guy in the Cafe Orange in Berlin argued, one reason European-American relations are so bad is that Europe is weak. The US needs a stronger partner, and Europe badly needs Britain in order to become that stronger partner. Dead right. And that’s what the real Europe can help us do.

   Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention the name of the guy in the Cafe Orange. It was Joschka Fischer. Yes, that Joschka Fischer: the one who’s Germany’s Green foreign minister, and may soon be Europe’s first foreign minister.

1. Reshaping empire: US redeploys its troops to cover ‘arc of instability’
2. Iraqi Shi’ites and Kurds challenge Americans in Iraq: Shiite, Kurdish Leaders Decide to ‘Play Hardball’
3. More Than 13,000 May Face Deportation
4. Constitutional protections rescinded to fight ‘terror’: For enemy combatant, speaking with lawyer is impossible
5. Political Oppression, Not Poverty, Inspires Terrorism: Seeking the Roots of Terrorism
6. Prohibiting vocal opposition to US occupation in Iraq: U.S. To Ban “Incitement” Against Occupation In Iraq

Most of these are from Antiwar.com:

1. Suspect in Morocco Blast Dies
2. Gulf Cooperation Council Considers Missile Defense System
3. Lynches Say They Can’t Discuss POW Rescue:
   PALESTINE, W.Va. – American POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch’s parents said Thursday they are not permitted to discuss details of their daughter’s capture and rescue in Iraq.

   Greg and Deadra Lynch also said they couldn’t comment on media reports that dispute military information released on Lynch’s April 1 rescue from an Iraqi hospital.

4. NYPress: John Ashcroft fears acid on his face, defends forced labor
5. This brings up an interesting issue: how much control does the military have over an enlistee’s body? NYC reservist guilty of refusing to take anthrax vaccine
   

1. U.S. Youths Rebel at Harsh School:
   Students said Mr. Lichfield set up a system typical of Wwasps programs. Children were divided into six levels, the lower ones forbidden to speak freely or raise their eyes, the higher ones free to discipline and punish inferiors. A muscular cadre of minimum-wage staff members enforced the system. Communication between parents and children was barred or closely edited. Parents were told that complaints from children were manipulative lies.
2. Proposal: Webcams to keep homeland safe:
   But if onsite cameras beamed photos to the World Wide Web, Americans could monitor these sites from home. If they spied a potential attacker — a masked man trying to scale a power plant fence, or a van parked next to a reservoir — they could alert security agents with a click of the mouse. Agents would call local authorities and help avert disaster.
3. HP’s Linux Laptops Prove Popular
4. Putin and Hu Find Common Ground on Korea and Iraq:
   As permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the two countries opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq, but have now backed the U.S. plan for post-war development. Both leaders reaffirmed their common view on Iraq, saying the role of the United Nations had to be central to its future reconstruction. On energy, a fast-growing area of joint economic interest, Hu and Putin agreed to strengthen cooperation, including building a pipeline that will allow Russia to boost exports and help China diversify its imports.
5. Texas education funding tied to tuition deregulation:
   Yet, if House Speaker Tom Craddick gets his way, more than $500 million in the total higher education budget could still vanish unless lawmakers agree to immediate and complete deregulation of college tuition.

   When you hear the words deregulation check for your wallet.

6. NY Times: Trust in the Military Heightens Among Baby Boomers’ Children:
   Researchers argue that the trend in part reflects simple experience. Young people coming of age during quick and successful military actions, like the Persian Gulf war in 1991 — “It looked and felt like a video game, and America won it decisively,” Professor King said — or the action in Iraq this year are quite likely to have very different attitudes from those who came of age during the Vietnam War.
7. China bans eating wild animals