Pakistan tested the Babur cruise missile for the second time, as reported on in this BBC story. The last paragraph in this story puts the whole concept of nuclear weapons in South Asia into perspective:
Both countries have limited command-and-control structures, and neither has developed the technology to recall a nuclear-tipped missile fired in error.
...and unlike the Soviet Union and the U.S., they've done their fighting directly, rather than through proxies.
As part of an ongoing legal and social struggle in Pakistan related to how women are treated, the country recently revised its rape laws, moving handling of rape cases out of the jurisdiction of Sharia (Islamic law) and into the civil courts. The six-party Islamic alliance MMA is protesting this move.
Why is this significant?
The civil code in Pakistan is influenced by British law, which means that a rape case would be prosecuted much in the manner that a westerner would expect (that is to say, not always effectively, and often allowing damaging attacks on the victim's reputation, but with the basic rules of a criminal court in place).
Under Sharia, the victim of a rape would need to have four male witnesses to the crime, or else she would be punished for adultery.
The MMM is protesting that this legal change will encourage "free sex" as well as "lewdness" and "indecency."
It is hard to express more clearly than in this example how certain aspects of fundamentalist Islam -- as it is practiced -- are incompatible with a sane, civil society. As Wafa Sultan said, the current problem is not a clash of cultures, but a clash of eras. Right now, it is medieval Islam versus the modern world. And much as medieval Christianity gave us such horrors as "Kill them all! God will know his own.", medieval Islam gives us horrors like assuming a woman is adulterous because she wasn't raped in front of enough witnesses.
An al Jazeera article bearing the headline 'US bomb used' in Pakistan raid takes an unfortunately long time to point out that the claims made by local villagers make no sense at all.
The article leads with this:
Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive pictures of the aftermath of an airstrike by Pakistani forces which killed at least 10 people.
The footage shows an unexploded bomb that could not have been fired from the helicopter gunships that the Pakistani military said carried out the raid.
Then includes this:
"This attack was basically carried out with five missiles fired by a Predator. The helicopters came in later and attacked," Jalindar Khan Kikari, a villager, said.
Another villager, called Bashir, said: "The missiles were fired from a distant place, maybe from a spy plane, but I did not see that," before going on to describe how Pakistani helicopters arrived minutes later.
Another villager, Mohammad Ali, told Reuters on the day of the attack that he had seen a drone circling overhead but a Reuters journalist saw helicopter gunships take off from the army base at Miranshah before the attack and return soon after.
But then eventually calms down and admits this:
The type of unexploded bomb shown to journalists would not have been dropped from an unmanned drone aircraft.
Naturally not. The pictures show an old-style 500-pound bomb. Despite tossing around speculation and leading with the dramatic "exclusive footage" claim, the article is also forced to admit that:
On Thursday, journalists, who were escorted to Zamzola by armed men, were shown an unexploded missile which was just under two metres long and marked 'MFP AMF YORK 0873'. Villagers said it was dropped during the airstrike but its casing appeared to be old and weathered.
Untrained individuals on the ground are in a distinctly poor position to say which explosives they're on the receiving end of. I certainly couldn't accurately assess just what was blowing up buildings next to me. It can be unequivocably stated, however, that the weapon in question wasn't dropped from a helicopter or an American drone.
In general, al Jazeera's reporting is quite even. In this case, they went with a sensationalism they usually avoid, and it'll only cause problems for the people who are quick to believe in conspiracies and other bad things.
I just wrote a quick note to al Jazeera about it.
In many ways.
India joined the "able to launch and recover spacecraft" club this week, as a capsule was successfully recovered from the Bay of Bengal following eleven days in space. The Indian space program has an uncrewed lunar mission scheduled for February of next year, and hopes to have an astronaut in space by 2014.
You can read the full details in this al Jazeera article.
Over in this BBC article, BBC South Asia bureau editor Paul Danahar discusses the real take-home lesson from a recent, well-publicized racism incident on the UK version of Big Brother (a reality TV show):
But more interestingly the incident has also shown that India, contrary to the fears of British diplomats, has become comfortable enough with its position in the world to see things like the Big Brother row in perspective.
...
But as India this year prepares to celebrate its 60th anniversary of independent rule one thing seems to be clear.
India has stopped looking over its shoulder. It no longer views itself through the prism of its colonial past.
The "Britishers" are no longer the bogeymen they used to be because India is no longer suffering from the inferiority complex it used to have. India no longer feels the need to dwell on past injustices because it's too busy getting ready for what many predict will be its future greatness.
...
One English commentator noted after the row erupted that "Shilpa Shetty has taken the supposed British virtues of civility, articulacy, reserve and having a stiff upper lip and shown that.. we lack them".
That's not all India does better than the UK these days. In terms of their celebrity status Shilpa and her nemesis Jade Goody are almost on a par.
But taken as a snap shot of like-for-like India's B-grade celebrities are clearly better educated, better mannered and frankly speak better English than their UK counterparts.
Unfortunately for the UK it's not just Indian celebrities. British companies have been outsourcing their customer service centres, software departments, biotechnology labs etc to the subcontinent for years now.
They did so because they recognised a huge pool of well-educated, English-speaking, middle-class people that could do the job not only cheaper than the folks back home, but often better.
Last summer, president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela decided to make a practical investment in his country's future by purchasing 30 Su-30s. That way, when the war he imagines is coming with America actually arrives, we'll be forced to deploy two aircraft carriers instead of one.
Elsewhere, in an environment where it might actually matter, India has decided to buy 40 Su-30s. This is in addition to an upcoming planned purchase of over a hundred fighters for its air force.
The Sukhoi is a very nice plane. As long as India just buys the planes and doesn't pick up any outdated Russian military advising, they'll do fine.
If Iraq does not provide sufficient evidence that ideal democracy does not magically arise when folks are left to their own devices, consider this dissenting opinion from Lieutenant General Moeen U Ahmed, head of the army of Bangladesh:
"We do not want to go back to an elective democracy where corruption becomes all pervasive, governance suffers in terms of insecurity and violation of rights, and where political criminalisation threatens the very survival and integrity of the state," Lt Gen Moeen U Ahmed told a conference in the capital Dhaka.
He did not elaborate on what kind of a system should be introduced as replacement.
He also blamed the corruption generated by continuous political turmoil as the reason behind Bangladesh's stunted economic growth.
"My contention is that had corruption not been a persistent factor, the full economic potential of Bangladesh could have been realised at a much faster rate."
Bangladesh joins countries such as Thailand, Pakistan, and Turkey where the military is ready to hit the reset button when it perceives that things have gone awry with the elected government. This may be due to perceived corruption, ascension of religious zealots, or pretty much anything else that upsets decision makers in the armed forces.
Given that at least two of these nations have been long-standing allies, you'd imagine that we'd have a more realistic view of how democracy takes hold and what support early democracy requires.
The BBC reports that traffic police in Calcutta are going to be given supplementary oxygen to help them keep going in the heavily polluted air of the city. The pollution is tremendous -- the pictures in the article are quite telling -- and leads to Calcutta having the highest lung cancer rate in India, in addition to a host of other medical problems among its residents.
The oxygen, while thoughtful, is unlikely to do much to ameliorate the effects of a whole day spent in the heart of traffic.
The government attempted sweeping pollution reforms, but they didn't last:
In May 2005, the government set a deadline which ordered all vehicles in Calcutta manufactured before 1990 either to be off the roads or convert to greener fuel like LPG.
Nearly 80% of the city's buses and trucks and nearly 50% of its taxis and auto-rickshaws would have gone off the roads if the government enforced its directive.
But the Calcutta High Court quashed the government directive, and though the government challenged it in a higher bench, the case has yet to come up.
Only 10% of Calcutta's vehicles have converted to greener fuels like LPG.
Did you catch that last line? "Only 10%" have converted to green fuels. Although presented as a disappointing low performer here, Calcutta with its 10% gives America's record a huge stomping. Consider the 1.5 million E85 flex-fuel vehicles on the road in America, many of which aren't actually running on E85. With 243 million vehicles on our roads, that's a paltry 0.6%.
There's room to improve everywhere.
The people of Chagos were removed from their home islands in the late 60s and early 70s by the government of the UK when it leased the island of Diego Garcia to the US (we use it as a military base). Since then, the displaced Chagossians have been fighting for the right to return to the islands
They won the right of return in a court case in 2000, but following several years of inactivity, the government of the UK used royal prerogative to overturn the court decision, arguing that "it would not be right for the Chagossians to be allowed home because of security concerns." (That's an al Jazeera quote, not a quote from any British official.)
That use of royal prerogative has now been deemed unlawful.
Lord Justice Sedley, giving the lead ruling, said the government's use of the Order in Council under the Royal Prerogative - powers that allow action without reference to Parliament - was an unlawful way of preventing the islanders from returning.
Lord Justice Waller said the decision had been taken by a government minister "acting without any constraint".
The UK Chagos Support Association welcomed the court's decision and also urged the government not to appeal again.
Chairman Robert Bain said: "The government knows the Chagossians have no independent means to resettle the islands.
"To accept the islanders' right to return but do nothing about it - as it did between 2000 and 2004 - would be meaningless and immoral."
The government has one final avenue of appeal open to it -- the House of Lords. They have a month to decide whether or not to file such an appeal.
This week has seen the release of various CCTV footage clips from the Mumbai attacks of last week. This clip from the attack on the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus is exceptional not for the terrorism it shows, but for the heroism of the two police officers who shared between them a total of one bolt-action rifle and nonetheless held their position against two terrorists armed with automatic weapons.
This incident has unfortunately demonstrated that the difficulty in security in India does not stem from a lack of bravery, but from underequipping and probably also insufficient training (which is just another form of equipping, really) of its security forces. These two gentleman were brave enough to hold the line, but they shouldn't have had to rely on bravery alone.
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