Two Videos, Saddam and YOU

Here are two videos of Saddam Hussein's execution. The first one is the official video released by the Iraqi government, the tame one beamed across the mid-east and US after the hanging through late Dec 29 and Dec 30.

Saddam Execution Video1 :



The Second one came out on an Arab website and Google videos on Dec 30th. It looks like an amateur mobile-phone video. I came across this video after CNN aired a clipping of it late yesterday night, Dec 30th. The video is shocking, relatively speaking.

Saddam Execution Video2 :



If one watches the second video closely, it is not "mute" like the first one. It shows the nasty and loud name-calling and taunting that happened seconds before the erstwhile dictator was finally killed. It is a loud scene , its disturbing and moreover this will be the "actual" Saddam Hanging video for years to come.

The scene :

Saddam carried a Quran and was invoking Allah throughout his last few minutes, so was his executioners. I'm not an expert in the art of execution, but we expect executioners to be neutral, professional and to be of comfort to the person being killed. Mind you, this was not a political execution but a legal one. Maybe, its a Green Mile or Shadowkill hangover, but this execution was nasty and will surely have long term implications.

You can hear the executioners shouting "Muqtada, Muqtada" and Saddam sarcastically replying "Muqtaaadaaa". What does this mean ? If this video reaches Iraqi and Arab television networks, which it surely will, the fall-out will be devastating. This video implies that Saddam was not killed by a secular legal system but by a Shia dominion. Saddam asks his executioners "Is this how you show you are brave?" and "Is this how Arabs behave". The impact this video will have in Saudi, Pakistani and other Sunni countries will be seen in coming years, because Saddam, however despicable and cruel he was, was a hero of the Arab world. And this video shows the forces that killed him in his last few moments.
Sudarshan Raghavan writes in Washington Post - Hussein's last minutes and the Camera Phone witness in NYTimes. Both mainstream media articles and the highest read ones as of now, both inspired by a Google Video shot by an unknown amateur.

Tommorrow Begins Today

Despite the hoopla over an unelected US President lying in state at Washington, covered minute by minute by the US television networks, this video has set "Web 2.0" on fire. By yesterday night it was the most viewed post in the Wordpress world. If CNN, FOX and CBS has pushed the execution to down below in "News value", the Bloggers, "Youtubes" and "MySpaces" have made a different editorial call. It surely seems the latter is winning, like they did throughout this pathbreaking year.

This video for instance raises the question of professionalism and quality, the same questions we ask about Wicki, blogs and flickrs. But history when it gets recorded from now on will not be able to ignore this new amateur revolution. Saddam's execution was in the lines of Bhutto's and Nagy's but the difference here is the sheer quantity of footage and information that has come out, which will be available for history and you, when he is judged.

The yearly TIME magazine ritual of choosing a "Person of the Year" never made much sense to me. But this time, they surely made a great choice. Rather, the choice was inevitable after the huge impact blogs and Youtubes had on the Iraq debate, Racial issues, Police and Armed forces brutality, Environmental issues and more than anything the decisive House Elections in November '06. As TIME editors put it,

"Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Lost tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you. "

As John Edwards, joins the fray of Presidential hopefuls for 2008, his campaign quote is metaphorical of the days to come "Tommorrow Begins Today".

2006 was not just another year, it was a beginning of great things to come. And YOU will make that happen.

Good Night and Good Luck !

Our India is a Sufi

The Journalist and the Prostitute

"What is you name ?"
The Indian journalist covering the Bangladesh war asked the prostitute
"Selma"
"Tell me the truth, what is your real name"
"Gauri"
"Then why did you lie"
"Aren't you a Hindu , I assumed a Muslim name to give you the turn on of invasion"

- O V Vijayan's Gurusagaram

The Poison of Inheritance

It is the printing technology of the West that made us so fond of maps. In schools they made us work overtime to clearly draw the boundaries of India, they punished us for every little curve we missed and while lying to us about Kashmir. But they never told us the difference between the human beings on either side of the line, they just told us the others are our enemies as if it was obvious . Maybe thats what their parents taught them, which becomes our inheritance.

The poison of inheritance runs through each one of us and we, after our day long struggle with our tiny big insecurities, go home to the comfort of those inheritances - of being an upper caste or lower caste Hindu, a Muslim ,a Sikh, a Christian, a Bengali, a Tamilian and a thousand other things. We have deep running prejudices against each other, the Hindus think the Muslims are invaders and terror mongers and the Christians are out there to convert them, the Muslim thinks the Hindus are out there to kill them, the North Indian thinks South India is some other country, Andhraites who can't stand the tamilians and the tamilians who think everyone else want to steal their water and their classical language, Biharis are called illegal aliens in the mountains and in Assam; Nagaland and Manipur does not believe in India and the rest of India does not believe these places exist.

We are prejudiced to the core with our deep rooted inheritances and one fine day they pull one billion of us together and say we are a republic. The deep divisions and conflicts within us that defeats us every single day go by the pet name of "Unity in diversity" ; our teachers force us to write essays on that till our hands pain and our brain fatigues.

We build walls around certain colonial demarcations and live smug faced within those walls entrenched in one thousand riots stretching from Kashmir to Vadodara, from Kaveri to Singur and from Narmada to Garo-Khasi. If we do all this in the name of security and in the name of development, why dont we build walls around Assam,Kashmir,Gujarat,Manipur,Punjab and then around each state,district and finally around each human being who lives here. We call ourselves a republic, one billion people suspicious of each other within artificial boundaries with tickets to a tryst with destiny. Is there a more horrible sight in the world than a republic with borders ? Yes there is, a republic with borders with people in it with no clue why they are there.

Holy left-overs of a colonial past

What makes us build walls with Pakistan and Bangladesh? That same thing makes us suspicious of one another, the same thing makes us build nuclear bombs and the same thing makes the Indian state a miserable failure. At the root of the problem lies the acceptance of the "majority's culture" as the mainstream and the treatment of the minority's culture as an aberration. The hidden grudge against the aberration will wait for a chance and once sparks start flying, the powder house of pent up emotions explode - like Gujarat , like the Anti-Sikh riots of Delhi '84 and more than anything the Partition of India.

We followed the post 1857 colonial idea of division by defining the Indian culture as Hindu culture - which was not true. Then in our textbooks and history books we defined the Manusmrithi and Arthashastra which belonged to a microscopic minority as our mainstream culture - which was not true. Then we placed vegetarianism and cow worship as core ideas of Hindu worship which was not true. Well we did make the British leave,but we inherited their colonial droppings.

The republic's boundary is nothing but a tool of exploitation. The map-bound spirit of extreme nationalism helps nobody but the capitalist bourgeois who actually controls every sphere of this nation. Nationalism is a right-wing rallying point in India, issue after issue, atleast after Nehru. The border-defined-republic is the worst case of usurping land and nature, the height of state sponsored hypocrisy. The "developmental" future of the republic and its dependency on the bourgeois and foreign funds has been so ingrained in our psyche by the border-defined-republic that we are ready to sacrifice lives and livelihood for the republic's "future".Each of us feel the "turn on" of invasion when troops are rallied in our northern borders, and some of us at the height of our xenophobic orgasm cry "nuke the bastards,just nuke them !"The national boundary and the wars over it makes us more intolerant, and at times it makes us ask the Indian Muslim to go back to Pakistan,where he didn't come from.

Its in vogue to criticize Gandhi, but the fact remains that he was one of the few people who understood the importance of a multi-cultural secularist India, who understood what India really stood for in the world and the importance of worshipping Ishwar and Allah together. There was this other person who claimed to have discovered India but ended up discovering a throne for his daughter and grandson.

Our India is a Sufi

Every nation has a destiny, the republic is just another oppressive roadblock in the nations path. If the undying urge for individual freedom is the corner stone of western civilization, for India it is our spirituality. Our spirituality which time and again has refused to inherit lies,inherit hypocrisy and inherit tyranny. It is the denial of inheritance that Krishna talked about in Gita, that is exactly what Buddha did , Kabir and Nanak practiced and Gandhi died for. The partitioned India is our inheritance and it is upon us to deny it or build walls to protect our patriarchal fortune. If India is a mother we should find her.

There is no India without Pakistan and Bangladesh and Nepal and Sri Lanka. Our destinies and our myths are so entwined. We would, I hope one day define what India really means and discover her in all her glory and her all encompassing Sanathana dharma. We can deny Gandhi and Mohammed, Nanak and Kabir, Krishna and Buddha, but we shouldn't overlook the underlying love in their messages which runs through this nation. Our philosophy doesn't differentiate between plants and animals, then where do we find boundaries in it.

Our Indus is a river which carries the holiness of the Hindu's penance from the Himalaya's along with the sacred chants of the Buddhist Lamas, courses its way through the fertile land of the holy Gurdwaras to enter Islam's promised land of Pakistan and finally flows into the sea of the Arabs. Our India is a Sufi.

Good Night and Good Luck !

Note : Its always a very confusing experience to understand India and I can see my view of it changing every minute I wrote this post. I might be contradicting myself at times but that I believe is the fun of the whole exercise.

I found this touching piece by Alakananda, another collateral damage of building borders.

The Great Indian Wall

Hush baby..hush ! We are about to finish the wall, did anybody know ?..hell no ! The British miserably failed to accomplish this in 1905-11 and they called themselves the most powerful empire on earth. The Americans fretting over that 700 mile fence with Mexico could learn a lesson or two from the great Indian empire of the 21st century. India is just about to complete a 4,100 km (2500 mile) iron fence across the fifth longest land border on earth, across its border with one of its poorest neighbours, Bangladesh. And nobody knew.

International Border	Post or Pillar Number	Area (km)
West Bengal (India)-Bangladesh	0001 to 1001	2217.70
Assam (India)-Bangladesh	1001 to 1067	0262.00
Meghalaya (India)-Bangladesh	1067 to 1338	0443.00
Tripura (India)-Bangladesh	1338 to 1397(North) & 1397 to 2250 (South)	0856.00
Mizoram (India)-Bangladesh	2301 to 2358	0318.00
Total		4096.70

Estimated cost of the fence and border roads is $1 billion (estimate) and the benefits ?



The reasons could be,

1. The very large number of Bangladeshi immigrants are changing the demographics of Indian border states like West Bengal and Assam. In Assam, Bangladeshi immigration is a very contentious issue that often determines many political futures, like the Mexican illegal immigration in the US. The illegal immigrants put added pressure on the already scarce resources of the Indian border states thereby coming in direct conflict with the local population.

2. Terrorism - The insurgent groups in India's north-east, often use Bangladesh as a safe haven and launch pad though Bangladesh does not support them in any way.

3. The secular state of Bangladesh is in turmoil with powerful fundamentalist groups working towards the creation of an Islamic state. This could put at risk the Hindu population of Bangladesh (16% of the total population) and could trigger an exodus of 1970-71 proportions.
This will hurt India bad and India would want to avoid this at any cost.

4. Some 160 odd Boundary disputes with Bangladesh relating to the implementation of the Land Boundary Agreement of 1974.



Why the wall will fall,

1. Elementary - The population pressure and severe poverty in Bangladesh will cause this fence to fail. The 2.6 meter iron fence will not prevent the Bangladeshi - the poorest of poor in the world - from crossing over into India in search of work and a living. The Bangladeshi has only two choices, starvation or migration and in between there is a 2.6 meter fence.

2. Culture and language - families are split across the border like the wall of Berlin. Bangladesh is 98% bengali and the culture is very much Indian. When Yunus got the Nobel, almost every Indian felt like it was another Nobel for India. That explains it.

3. India and Bangladesh are friendly countries except for a few occasional, random incidents of
conflict between the border troops which both governments maintain they have not authorized. There is no military need for a wall.

4. Walls and fences can be easily broken and cut through - this is an inherent property of walls.

5. Floods - there are numerous incidents every year when flood victims are rescued to the other side of the border. There are reported incidents where around 2000 Indians were rescued and kept in Bangladeshi shelters. The wall has a very high chance to fail when the flood comes again.

Despite this, why did we build a wall and shun our neighbour ?


The answer could be India's desire to "define" its fuzzy borders. This could be the real intention behind this wall. The Indian establishment has been on a overdrive in recent years to settle the territorial disputes. With China recognizing Sikkim, understanding with Pakistan on Siachen and Kashmir kept aside for the 22nd century, India very well knows that the North-East is where borderlines will now be redrawn in the sub-continent. The wall could serve this purpose, if you read between the lines.

The mammoth fence is no long-term solution to the problem of Bangladesh. It just adds to prevailing confusion and the wall is sure to fail. An 'innovative' idea is to adorn this wall with mural paintings on both sides and attract some serious tourism like China does, which could help Bangladeshi and Indian economy, at least the world would open its eyes to the beauty of India's North-east.

Its time we learn from the mistakes of others and history, its time we recognize the futility of building walls.

Good Night and Good Luck !

sources : Economist , CIA factbook

Martin Luther King Jr - "I have a dream"

I haven't seen anything more powerful before, full video - Youtube, 17 minutes

Martin Luther King Jr - "I have a dream"

Full text of the speech

Excerpts :

"And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream."

"This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

Isn't it time the Dalits of India have a Martin Luther king of their own, atleast a dream of their own ?