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December 2007 - Posts

Pakistan: Next Chance for Democracy 6+ years

posted Monday, December 31, 2007 11:26 AM by hussain
I had thought that with Benazir Bhutto sorrowfully following in the family footsteps of martyrdom, there'd be a vacuum of "democratic" leadership in Pakistan not just because the rest of the parties have no-names or refusniks, but that her children - the logical choice for the nepotistic, er, dynastic political heirs - were teenagers.  I was wrong.

This article from Reuters, Bhutto supporters pin homes on son and heir, have quotes from party faithful already abandoning any struggle for democracy in Pakistan and looking towards the recently renamed 19 year old Bilawal Bhutto Zardari  (nee Bilawal Zardari), living and educated in Dubai, now to go to Oxford, as their new hope.  He's not eligible to run for anything in Pakistan for another 6 years.  Never mind that his father, Asif Ali Zardari, still chairman of the PPP (People's Party of Pakistan, the party Bhutto's father founded), and should be picking up the mantle, but won't, due to blackmail and corruption scandals and, honestly, isn't that well liked by Pakistanis.

I guess with 6 years to go, that should give Musharraf a bit of breathing room.  Granted, he's like a weeble wobble reaching his flopping point - I don't know how much more vaccilation between Western appeasement and hometown bluster in the face of unwillingness and inability to crack down on the FATA provinces he can manage - 6 years will be too long for him.  One might thing that'd give him enough time to clean house, but he hasn't started yet, what makes anyone (especially the USUK) think that he'll start now?  In fact, if he were an American President, the campaign season against the Bhutto dauphin has just officially started - there won't be any time to legislate, not even mentioning execution of military missions, while he's trying to think up negative campaign ads.

On the other side of the tracks, what sort of trophies can the highly motivated "Talibs" achieve in 6 years?  If we've looked back on Musharraf's record and seen a dearth of progress and are extrapolating to the future, looking back on the last few years of the Taliban's ascendency in Pakistan post "Operation Infinite Justice" (oops!) recovery, well, it's probably ungentlemanly of me to mock and juxtapose at the same time.

Lastly, what does it mean for us, the US (and ever so slightly for the UK, where, btw Zardari lives)?  This, for me, puts Musharraf into even greater relief - he's not on our side and apparently not very much on Pakistan's side either.  And, as everyone seems to remind me, he's got nukes.  We, as far as our foreign policy towards Pakistan goes, have been wimps or naieve or both - it's not that they can't be trusted, they're just not fully willing to be seen as collaborating in the War on Islam, oh snap there I go again, I mean the War on Terror.  Since we're unable to put on the perspecticles of the region and not at all of Pakistan's, we still don't have a clue as to how to engage Pakistan.  I hesitate to suggest Afghanistan as a model, since blowing the crap out of Pakistan (remember: nukes!) isn't really going to help, right?  Oh right, yes it will.  We (used to) do it all the time with Afghanistan's and Pakistan's tacit approval and made a certain amount of headway in the 2002 - 2005 period.  Unfortunately, we've gone soft, allowed Musharraf to vaccilate a lot more, and we've lost the advantage.  Now, we're on the defensive in that region, politically - for at least another six years.

Oh, yeah - what's this kid supposed to do again?
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Baitullah Masood

posted Friday, December 28, 2007 3:13 PM by hussain

The Pakistani government is saying that 35 y/o Baitullah Masood (also Mehsud), a South Waziristan Taliban commander aligned with al Qaeda, is responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. [sify, jamestown 2006]

Baitullah calls himself a Talib and swears by Mullah Omar, despite signing a deal with the Pakistani army in February 2005, in which Baitullah and three other tribal leaders promised the government they would not support or shelter Al Qaeda terrorists.

Baitullah Masood was responsible for the first bombing at Bhutto's return to Pakistan, October 19, 2007 where 128 people were killed [Guardian, CSM].  This, one day after Bhutto was quoted in a BBC interview that Pakistan was "one of the most dangerous countries in the world."

A Taliban commander, Baitullah Masood, has threatened to deploy suicide bombers against her, but Bhutto told the newspaper that the real threat came from within the powerful military establishment.

"I'm not worried about Baitullah Masood, I'm worried about the threat within the government," she said. "People like Baitullah Masood are just pawns. It is those forces behind him that have presided over the rise of extremism and militancy in my country."

Ms Bhutto singled out as her most potent enemy retired military officers "who have fought the jihad".

"They have a lot of supporters and sympathisers within the echelons of administration and intelligence," she said.

From the Musharraf's address to FATA Jirga in Peshawar (26 Apr, 2006):

I say if you succeed we will withdraw our troops from here but I am telling you what you have to do. The foreign elements have to be expelled to curb extremism. This extremism has to be stopped, he added. He stated that previous Corps Commander Gen Safdar had signed a peace agreement with Baitullah Masood and Nek Muhammad and army halted its operations and then what did they do. They did not honour the agreement and they stabbed in the back. This was not in accordance with the Pukhtoon traditions. You also know they broke the agreement and again resorted to same activities, as a result Nek Muhammad was killed. You know what Baitullah Masood is doing now. He is telling lies. He is indulging in harmful activities, he will be dealt with. If you take action according to traditions then I will support you and the army would make a ceasefire. You should dissociate yourself from these elements.

Note my previous post mentioning Nek Mohammed, US incursions into Pakistan: Going where they won't (12/2005), where it was mentioned that the Pakistani army was continually embarrassed by the 27 y/o Taliban commander.  Baitullah Masood came into prominance after Nek Mohammed was killed by a US Predator drone.  As mentioned, Musharraf and the Pakistani army wasted no time in claiming that they killed him, contrary to the evidence.

Bhutto had said that if she died, Musharraf would be partially responsible. The responsibility she speaks of, to me, is Musharraf's consistent behavior of talking but not doing. His inability to enforce any sort of rule on the FATA area has been shown over and over again begging the question of complicity - is his attempt to navigate between internal independence and the yoke of US-UK foreign influence contributing to the instability of his country? My opinion is yes, and Pakistan is suffering for it.

Whether Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), a party formed by her father, can survive the death of its only charismatic leader and continue to pursue a transition to democracy is an almost irrelevant question.  They're already blaming Musharraf [Forbes]. Will the elections, scheduled for 01/08/2008 occur as planned? One thing is for sure, they've earned the title of most dangerous country.

Other Taliban commanders have been gunning for both Musharraf and Bhutto, which is why the the government's snap accusation of al Qaeda-linked Taliban militants as the source of Bhutto's death is not far off.  Note that with the Pakistani government, identifying the threat does not mean they're any closer to neutralizing the threat.  In some cases with Pakistani's ISI, they themselves are the source of the threat, having propped up and encouraged Taliban elements.

The Taliban had threatened to kill Ms Bhutto after she suggested that she would help American troops hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida fugitives inside Pakistan. "She has an agreement with America. We will carry out attacks on Benazir Bhutto as we did on General Pervez Musharraf," Taliban commander Haji Omar said yesterday.

Intelligence reports suggested at least three groups with al-Qaida or Taliban links were plotting suicide attacks, according to a provincial official quoted by Reuters. [Guardian, 10/19/2007]

About 57 y/o Haji Omar:

Nevertheless, despite Haji Omar's influence, he has been overshadowed by Baitullah Mehsud, another prominent leader in South Waziristan (Terrorism Focus, July 5). This development occurred because of the ethnic fault line that affects South Waziristan. The two main tribes that populate the agency are the Wazir and the Mehsud. While the late Nek Mohammed and Haji Omar are Wazir, Baitullah is Mehsud. After the death of Nek Mohammed, the Wazirs were unable to maintain leadership and Baitullah took control of the Talibanization movement there. Currently, militants like Abdullah Mehsud are working under Baitullah's command. Therefore, under the present circumstances, Haji Omar has to work under the guidance of Baitullah. According to his close associates, in order to avoid this subordinate role, Omar has maintained a low profile and for the time being is not playing an active role in the insurgency. [Jamestown, 08/08/2006]

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The Kindle Post

posted Monday, December 24, 2007 10:11 PM by hussain

Yes, I bought an Amazon Kindle.  It arrived Friday, just as Heather was going in for a tonsilectomy.

Amazon's Kindle is an ebook reader device, not unlike the Sony Reader.  I decided on getting one after being intrigued with ebook readers ever since staying up all night reading Harry Potter 2 on my Handspring, but not feeling like there was any momentum behind the technology until Amazon's play.  The e-Ink technology does give a crisp view of text along the large screen size (it's the same screen size as the Sony Reader) and the EVDO "WhisperNet" that Amazon throws in boosts the device into a different class than the other ebook readers out there.  The Kindle's powered by a 400Mhz XScale-PXA255 [69052d06] revision 6 (ARMv5TE) and its backend and UI appear to be running Java ("booklets" anyone?).

I read the reviews on-line and took note of the extreme fanbois on the Amazon page as well as the haters - the device definitely attracts a lot of commentary. Despite all the controversy ("It's just another ebook reader") I figured I might as well try it out.

It's rather easy to navigate, with next page and previous page buttons along the side of the device and a scroll wheel for menu options, but with all the rage over the iPod Touch (and iPhone), not having a touch screen does seem less intuitive and a bit of a downer.  I read that it had a SD card interface, and I immediately stuck my 2 GB SanDisk into it, giving it more room for whatever I'd want to put on there.  The Kindle comes with 256mb in it (180mb avail). Then it struck me - I don't know what I'd put on it.

The device came with the Users Guide on it (as well as a letter from Jeff Bezos), but that was initially the only thing I could find to read on it until I found the "experimental" menu item.  The Experimental menu has three items in it: a web browser (user agent Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+4.0)+NetFront/3.3), "Ask Kindle NowNow" - ask a question and get three replies usually w/i 10 minutes (in theory, I asked a question and have yet to receive an answer - see Amazon's Mechanical Turk), and Play Music.  I've played with the web browser and it's not bad, though the keyboard leaves something to be desired.

Neat things in the reader - as I was reading the User Guide:

* Bookmarks - you can bookmark a page
* Notes - you can make a note on a line of page
* Look up - the built in dictionary can look up words on a line

The "space" bar is on the left hand side of the split keyboard and in the opposite place, on the right, is the search bar.  For me, at least, I had to consciously look and make sure I didn't accidentally hit "search" while I was making a note.

The screensavers are clever and remind me of old book etchings or Wall Street Journal pictures.  I'm not sure where they come from, but I'm hoping they're downloaded from Amazon's servers over their WhisperNet, which'd be really cool. The full page black and white images recall some great "ex libris" art and are a pleasure to look at.

The lack of content was pretty evident, although Amazon's twist on the ebook reader is to offer free cellular connectivity to their store, a discounted price on ebook versions of best sellers and subscriptions to newspapers and blogs.  Amazon's own Kindle content:  Books, haven't bought any, but you can get a free preview of 10 pages or so for each offering; Newspapers/Magazines, haven't tried any; and Blogs, not gonna do it - seems silly, at best. The last bit, blogs, got me, since those are almost always free and the Kindle has a web browser in it.

As other people have found out, the Kindle's experimental browser's javascript is lacking, so Google's Reader is out.  Bloglines works ok, sometimes. Ultimately, though, reading the web in text-only mode is a bit boring.  For a while, when cellphones didn't have Opera or some similar browser internally, WML and the "text web" was making somewhat of a push, but I haven't seen a lot of that lately.  Maybe the Kindle'll fire up people writing "text-only" sites, like the iPhone has launched "iPhone compatible" sites.

The next content was mine own - two categories: documents I have in digital form (technical documentation) and content I've written or friends have written.  Jack is writing book.  I make book go on Kindle. 

I also used Amazon's @free.kindle.com e-mail to mail Word docs (Microsoft CRM docs) and received them via e-mail converted to Amazon's AZW DRM protected ebook format for free.  (If I used the @kindle.com, Amazon would send the converted document directly to the Kindle for $0.10)  I can then USB up Kindle to computer and move over file.  Using Mobipocket's free content creator, I can convert pdf's, docs, and html to prc files and move those over (my preferred method) to the SD card.

Of course, the torrentsphere is rife with free ebooks and I've yet to look into converting those.  Vast quantity, questionable quality.

As a writer, there seems to be a whole series of support that Amazon's attempting to provide, from their Digital Text Platform, to the promotion of ebook reading.

Format wise, it's about the right size.  There're some quirks with the interaface (the major complaint - and I could see why within 5 minutes of using the device - is that the paging buttons are too easily accidentally pressed) but ultimately, it looks like it'll be pretty useful.  All I need to do is get more content onto it.  The allure of carrying all my technical books in one small form factor is very appealing.

It's just one more thing I'll have to carry around.  And I'm still working on integrating my iPod Touch into my digital life.

Negatives:

* Laggy UI
* Keyboard has a sticky phone keypad feel to it
* Some parts of the UI are non-intuitive (web browsing selecting, looking up a definition of a word (you have to look up the whole line))
* The paging buttons make it impossible to grab the device w/o turning a page, unless in sleep mode
* Come on guys, I know it's not an iPod, but at least a stylus or touch screen


Some great Kindle links
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What Hath Microsoft Wrought?

posted Sunday, December 23, 2007 2:01 PM by hussain

For the last few months, I've put aside my Java ways and have dove headfirst into the ever expanding vastness of the Microsoft pool. At first, it was dark and unfathomable, overly verbose documentation and what appeared to be poorly connected components, but now, I'm starting to understand the Way. In doing so, I'm sort of still amazed Microsoft can't get it together, what with all the things they have going for them.

I've been a long time fan of Google Docs and still use Google services on a regular basis, but Microsoft now has Office Live (hello web based SharePoint Services) and a whole slew of "live" offerings (not even mentioning CRM live):
  • Windows Live Messenger - a major upgraded version (8.5) of msn messenger that has aspects of Skype or GTalk (audio, video), plus shared synchronizable folders between contacts
    • It's configurable, via a third party tool called A-Patch, a great way to remove ads, etc.
    • A beta of 9.0 has been leaked, too, which has multi-location sign in, per contact sounds, SPIM filters and more
  • SkyDrive Live - a beta of a storage service (Amazon S3?)
  • SharedView - another beta that does person-to-person shared desktops or apps, like LiveMeeting or WebEx, but personal

What's strange to me is that I hadn't heard of these things before and that to me means a few things: they either aren't pushing the integration of all these things enough (and they all seem to have hooks into each other) and there's no vision for it or the net they've cast is woven so wide, they're not catching anything.

It's exciting that not only are web-based products getting mature, but the approach to using and developing for them is maturing as well.

I'm expecting great things from both Microsoft and Google over the next year.


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