Worse than Nicolas Cage

The first thing you need to know about Viktor Bout is that everyone knows that he's one of the most heinous gun-runners on the planet. He's openly supplied Charles Taylor of Liberia, rebels and terrorists in Colombia (FARC), Lebanon (Hizbullah) and Afghanistan (Taliban). He essentially has a fetish for giving guns to the most evil people he can find. And everybody knows it. President Clinton approved several operations to capture him, as did several European governments. The UN placed a travel ban on him, and Nicolas Cage's Lord of War was based on him. Everybody knew.

Which is why Bout's arrest in Bangkok as a result of a joint Thai-US operation is so disappointing. The Thai court ruled that since it did not consider FARC a terrorist organisation, it could not extradite Bout to the USA to stand trial. US lawyers and officials cried foul, but everyone's fingers are steeped deep in this pie.

The US themselves used Bout's services during their invasion of Iraq, to transport both military and civilian cargos, hundreds of times. Russia has actually officially stated that they're glad he's not being tried, and that he is "returning to the Motherland", and Thailand is standing firm in ruling that the only possible charge to bring against Bout is a connection to FARC.

Despite the fact that everyone knows. There's even a goddamn tape recording of him speaking to US agents (impersonating FARC), saying that he hopes the weapons he's selling them "will be used to kill Americans, who are my enemies too."

The man is estimated to be worth about $6 billion, providing yet another massive asterisk and energetic footnote to the old canard "crime doesn't pay".

Tragedy!

One of the best traditions in politics has been destroyed by the nefarious Singaporeans and their hatred of laughter and smiles. The ASEAN summit, rescheduled in Phukhet after the protests earlier in the year ended it prematurely, will no longer be keeping with its tradition of having foreign ministers and various other political magnates perform what can only be called fabulous skits, under fairly close guard from media attention. Some highlights that have emerged over the years:

1997: The Australian delegation dresses up like "Men At Work", and sings their only hit, "Down Under", to a horrified audience.

1998: Russian and US delegations dress up as Jets and Sharks in a re-enactment of West Side Story, in what is meant to be a light-hearted parody of the Cold War, but is in effect an admission of defeat to the capitalist US Broadway hegemony.

2000: European delegation revisits ABBA favourite, singing "Knowing Me, Knowing EU"

2001: US Secretary of State Colin Powell kisses Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka whilst performing "El Paso", clearly misunderstanding the preferred sexual orientation of past ASEAN performances.

2004: Powell (pictured above) gets it right by performing "YMCA" in a builders outfit and not kissing a woman.

2005: Perhaps the best of the lot, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (pictured left) inexplicably dresses up as Darth Vader, and swings a plastic lightsabre while singing "Jesus Christ, Superstar" in front of a map showing the US as "East Asia". If anyone can find a video of this, please let me know.

2006:Also one of the best, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso (Now Prime Minister of Japan) impersonates Humphrey Bogart while behind him members of the Japanese delegation dressed up in sumo wrestler fatsuits, Ultraman costumes, Ultraman villain costumes, and koi carp meander about. Video below.

2006: Also awesome, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon (Now Secretary General of the UN) dresses up in a green-sequin jacket and sings ABBA again. Again, if anyone can find this on video, please let me know. It's important.

2007: Taro Aso again gets his delegation to dress up in samurai costumes and sumo fatsuits, and leads them in a choreographed dance thing.

And now it's all over.

Oh Wait, Nevermind

Goldman and Sachs (pictured above), the prominent Wall Street bank, has posted that it is likely to have made $2 billion profits in the March-June period. That's $2 billion profits, above and beyond the rest of the money they spent to run their unholy operation. They're posting estimates for their profits from March through June, which means they literally have more money than they can count. I don't know how much money I have either, but that's just due to the subliminal terror I have of checking my current account that impels me again and again to press "No." when offered a receipt at cashpoints. And Goldman and Sachs made $2 billion in profits since March.

Happy Monday, everyone.

In other depressing news, the Honduran coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya and instated serial coup-monger Roberto Micheletti is not at all likely to be overturned. The OAS has not yet accepted Micheletti, but it will probably only hold out for another week or two before "starting talks", implicitly recognising that Micheletti is now the de facto, and soon de jure leader of the country (Official Politic Blunder prediction).

Let's not even get into Iran, which major news outlets have pretty much completely stopped reporting on. This was only to be expected, as the thrill of having absolutely no news to report because of the total media blackout imposed by the government gives way to the realisation that there is absolutely no news to report. But like I said, I'm not going to get into Iran.

Television holds no solace either. Pakistani MTV was showing a really bad band fronted by an ugly woman ripping off Evanescence's "Everybody's a Fool", a really bad song, down to the last note, really badly.

Clearly Evanescence must have known about this, and sold them the rights to their song (and soul). Which is almost worse than coups in Honduras and brutal government repression in Iran. Almost.

Returning to the issue of Goldman and Sachs, Rolling Stone columnist Matthew Taibbi described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." The hilarious thing about this is that Goldman didn't dismiss this as a malicious characterisation or metaphor, but as a conspiracy theory. Which means they're seriously worried that people might start thinking that's actually how they make $2 billion in profits in 3 months.

Which would make more sense than all this "derivatives" and "risk management" hocus-pocus they keep foisting down our throats.

Where Have You Heard This Before?

Today the exultation of Sri Lankan authorities, drunk and glib on their success in gunning down the last sliver of resistance from the LTTE, better known as the Tamil Tigers, reached fever pitch with the presumed deaths of most of the group's leaders (notably the LTTE's infamous chief, Vellupillai Prabakharan, pictured left).

Leading the pack in the race to make the most bombastic and infuriatingly misguided statements is General Sarath Fonseka, head of the Sri Lankan Army, who said:

"All military operations have come to a stop. Now the entire country is declared rid of terrorism."

It would be naive to think that Mr. Fonseka is actually so heady with Bushist "Mission Accomplished" vigour that he actually thinks that the problem of Tamil nationalism has been resolved by "over 250 bodies scattered over the last ditch" (another of his boasts). The Sri Lankan Army is intimately familiar with terrorism and its complications, and they must know that it's only a matter of time until the problem kills more civilians. 

Of course by then, the Sri Lankan authorities will hope to have milked all the political brownie points possible out of their increasingly Pyrrhic victory.

Summit Season Gets Ugly

The ASEAN summit scheduled to happen today didn't, due to a relatively large protest and an extremely lethargic security response. The protesters belong to the "red-shirts", who oppose incumbent Thai PM Abhisit Vejjajiva (who has now become officially "embattled"), who they claim took power undemocratically at the tail-end of Thailand's political crisis earlier this year. 

The ASEAN summit would have brought together the leaders of the 10 ASEAN nations, as well as leaders from Japan, China, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia and India. The summit was aimed at discussing how the current financial shitstorm will affect the region, as well as formulating a coherent policy response to North Korea's brazen missile-launching. 

ASEAN as an organisation was formed as a weak economic community with only six members, two of which were city-states (Brunei and Singapore), but has since taken on most of South-East Asia and has begun to talk the talk of European Union-style integration, producing a charter in 2008 promising closer co-operation, as well as an erosion of principles of non-interference which have historically held back advances in human rights.

A lot of people are claiming that this was a humiliation for the recently inaugurated PM, and it will no doubt embarrass Mr. Vejjajiva. It's incredibly important that summits including foreign dignitaries go smoothly, and although protests definitely have their place, especially at the front gates of summits, it's a major security breach when protesters break through the glass, enter the compound, and start helping themselves to the buffet lunch. The security forces are well within their rights to require protests to take place outside the summit's venues, and they should have ensured that this was the case. Protesting is healthy for a democracy; rioting is not.

The summit will have to be rescheduled, with optimistic estimates placing it at two months from now.

Meeting Them Halfway

More news from Bangladesh this week, although seemingly much less significant than the mutiny that happened last month that left dozens killed (quite contrary to my early estimates of "23 max"). The Bangladeshi government has decided to temporarily ban YouTube after a video was posted with the audio of a meeting between PM Sheikh Hasina and her advisors. The meeting concerned whether or not Hasina should have negotiated with the mutineers, a decision made much more controversial recently by the discovery of a mass grave containing over 50 police officers' corpses. 

Concerning the banning of YouTube, the Bangladeshi Telecommunications Commission chairman, Zia Ahmed, stated:

"The government can take any decision to stop any activity that threatens national unity and integrity"

This statement, and its attendant attitude, is really not very befitting of an ostensibly democratic country. The mutiny was clearly a tragedy but the process of dealing with the criminals involved should have been open from the start. Conducting the meeting between Hasina and her military advisors in the open would not have compromised state security in any way, and thus the decision to ban YouTube following the leakage of an audio clip was not warranted.

Banning the circulation of information is one of the most serious things a government can do, and it should only be engaged in when not doing so would result in a serious threat to people's lives. Protecting the popularity or dignity of a mistaken Prime Minister is not such an occasion.

For those of you who are reading this, live in a country that respects the free media, and who also understand and desire to listen to angry arguments in Bengali (an admittedly small intersection), the links for the audio clips that brought YouTube to its knees (in Bangladesh) are here and here. 

For those of us who live 

Bangladeshi Mutineers Demand that UN Adopt Them

The Bangladeshi mutiny that has curiously overtaken news outlets ended yesterday evening as the mutinous Bangladeshi Rifles (BDR) surrendered after being surrounded by the army. The death toll is anywhere between 8 and 23.

One of the grievances of the BDR besides low pay and the command structure, whereby officers came directly from the army rather than from the BDR's own ranks, was their inability to participate in lucrative UN peacekeeping missions. Bangladeshi soldiers are often desperate to be called up for UN service, since it means much higher pay, decent working conditions, and the chance to wear a uniform that isn't stitched up from a porn film's wardrobe rejects (pictured above).

The UN should not be accepting, let alone encouraging soldiers from destitutely poor and completely inadequate states like Bangladesh to participate in their peacekeeping missions. The soldiers are poorly trained and clearly more needed at home. Whatever semblance of multi-lateralism gained from having 5 Bangladeshi soldiers, 2 Ugandan medics and 3 Moroccan monkeys watching street corners in the Congo is obviated when it becomes an incentive to leave your own country to decompose.

Bangladesh is a country of 140 million people, about 60 million of whom are living on under $1 a day. Every monsoon season easily manageable floods kill thousands.  It is tragic and pathetic that Bangladeshi soldiers are literally fighting over who gets to leave the country and scrape a better salary in a UN mission. The UN is clearly not in need of Bangladeshi expertise or manpower in its peacekeeping missions. Their continued use of troops from countries as debilitated as Bangladesh is both disingenuous and counterproductive.

The Miscibility of Stupidity, Racism and Incompetence

The Sri Lankan government's latest offensive into the rebel-controlled North and East of the island is nearly at an end, which could mean the extinction of the Tamil Tigers as a coherent political unit. 

The civil war between the Tamil LTTE, who want a separate state, and the government troops, who want to keep the Tamils within the Singhalese controlled state as second-class citizens, has been raging since 1983. It has spawned one of the most well-armed and well-organised rebel groups in the world (the LTTE had seven airstrips and a comprehensive air force), as well as spurring the invention of suicide bombing, which was eventually exported to the Middle East. This is the closest it has come to actually concluding. Or so the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapakse, would have you believe.

The civilian crisis is already becoming obvious, as the Sri Lankan government has made no promises about the safety of the 250,000 civilians trapped in the Northern regions of the island as the Sri Lankan army presses in for the kill. 

What is less obvious is the very real possibility that a Sri Lankan victory against the Tamils will severely injure prospects for actual peace. The desire for an independent Tamil Nadu obviously won't die with the last Tamil Tiger. By destroying the coherent and well-articulated movement of the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan government is obviating any possibility of reaching a settled peace. Instead of having to deal with a political group with representatives, aims, and methodologies, Rajapakse is going to have to deal with a bunch of suicide bombers, guerrilla attacks, and a sullen Tamil minority that doesn't want to be integrated.

The Sri Lankan government is swapping a military conflict for a humanitarian catastrophe.

Strike Me Down...

Earlier this week Lasantha Wickramatunga, editor of the Sri Lankan newspaper The Sunday Leader and an outspoken critic of the Sinhalese government, was assassinated, being shot twice by men in a motorcycle. He leaves behind a wife and three children, and a posthumous editorial which, in true Obi-Wan Kenobi style, will be far more powerful than he could ever imagine due to his death.

Mr. Wickramatunga feared for his life for weeks prior to his murder, and prepared an editorial to be printed on the occasion of his death. You can read this very good piece here. It's long and a bit shrill, but it's well written and quite moving. This killing underscores, as Mr. Wickramatunga intended, the dangers of being a critical journalist in Sri Lanka today. Sri Lanka's continuing war against the Tamil Tigers' independence movement is an oft-forgotten conflict that has nonetheless killed thousands and spawned one of the more repressive and racist regimes in recent memory. Nowhere else would you find a Buddhist monk with a seat in parliament calling for the extermination of all Tamils. 

Mr. Wickramatunga will probably not be remembered for long, in Sri Lanka or internationally. There's no denying that journalists are players in the way we see politics and world affairs, but there's a conflict in our perception of them. They are often afforded a certain amount of scorn, scum who would do anything for cheap titillation and are utterly unconcerned with issues that really matter. It's good, then, that Mr. Wickramatunga can remind us that journalists are the people from whom "you learn the state of your nation, and especially its management by the people you elected to give your children a better future." There should be more like him.

Settling Dust

There is as of yet very little information on the details of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, so I won't really comment on the implications or the causes of them yet. The first funerals of the 195 dead have started.

This doesn't look to be the seismic event that 9/11 was, despite the fact that a fair number of people from the First World died, too. What is especially tragic is how this many people would never have died were it a hotel in Belgium or London that was besieged, just as an earthquake that is a minor inconvenience in Tokyo or Beijing will kill thousands in Pakistan or rural China. Ten youths with a few hundred rounds and some grenades should never have been able to kill hundreds and stall the military might of one sixth of the world's population.

My Unending Wrath and Bile

A man tried to defraud me by stealing my debit card information and with- drawing 100 pounds from my account in Malaysia. 

EDIT: It turns out that the person who defrauded me was not called Mr. A. Ryngit, as I previously assumed from looking over the shoulder of the fraud assistant at the HSBC. Ryngit, as everyone cleverer than me will know, is the Malaysian currency, not the name of the person who defrauded me. My apologies to an actual Mr. Ryngit, if he exists. My frustration and impotent rage now need new directions. Suggestions are welcome.

Retarded Begets Retarded

I've decided to go ahead and give you a Double-Dip of Political Palsy today. Two events, related only by the sheer amount of stupidity required in both cases, hit the news today: 

An ambiguous shootout on the Thai-Cambodian border which resulted in the deaths of two Cambodian soldiers is being hailed as the prelude to an all-out war between the two countries. Although neither side claims belligerence, and both governments have made appeals for calm, Reuters is 

doing the media equivalent of jeering 'Fight! Fight! Fight!' by going to the most impoverished, disgruntled and ill-educated members of each of the respective societies and asking them how they feel about the prospect of war. Unsurprisingly, a 65 year-old Thai farmer thinks 'the Khmers are laughing at us', and a 48 year-old Cambodian motorbike taxi driver says the Thais are 'trying to steal our house'. This is blatantly military bluster on both sides, serving Thailand's Somchai by diverting attention from the recent democratic crisis, and serving Cambodia's Hun Sen by diverting attention from how shit his regime is in general. Nonetheless: 'Fight! Fight, you pussies!' 

Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, today announced his plan to end genocide in Darfur in perhaps the most

 disastrously retarded language he possibly could have thought of: 'Despite the difficulties and obstacles... we declare our determination to reach a final solution this time.' In the most toothless illusion of an announcement to have come out of Africa in the past 10 years (and that's saying a whole lot. Like, several books' worth.), he announced his plan to bring peace to Darfur mainly involved ending the violence. The intransigent and unhelpful rebels have been all skeptical about his desire for peace, too. The international community isn't holding it's breath, either. Official Sudanese estimates put the death toll at 10,000,  about one twentieth the figure the International Criminal Court is disseminating. Bashir claims the Western neo-colonial imperialistic media has grossly inflated the figure, ostensibly because ignoring the deaths of 200,000 people makes us feel more self-satisfied than ignoring 10,000 deaths.

The ICC has an outstanding warrant for the arrest of Bashir, shown above in his favourite peace-building outfit.

Tomorrow: FORBIDDEN LOVE! Exclusive pics of John McCain and Joseph Stiglitz's illicit affair in the sun-drenched Carribbean!

What Hubris Does to Foreign Policy

Last Wednesday a secret incursion on the part of a squadron of US Navy Seals (pictured left) resulted in the deaths of approximately 25 'suspected' Al-Qaeda insurgents in Pakistan. The Navy Seals were immediately extracted by helicopter following the raid. Just today an anonymous source confirmed that President George Bush secretly approved orders to conduct incursions into Pakistani territory without the consent of Pakistani authorities. Now that the news is out, the US must be hoping that such a daring raid on the part of the most mythically awesome military organisation in the world will conjure up enough images of crazy Navy Seal ninja shit to deflect major criticism.

This marks one of the most hypocritical breaches of the sovereignty of foreign nations in recent memory. You will recall the heavy criticism the US leveled at Russia for breaching Georgian sovereignty by sending in troops to 'stabilise' the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The US defends this double standard by claiming that Pakistan has been insufficiently effective at fighting terrorist cells within its own borders. Yet, if the US wishes to be able to enter foreign countries and kill their citizens in order to serve its own interests, it must not get so worked up when Russia does the same. 

Unilateral military incursion into a foreign country's borders was not justified when Russia did it, and it is not justified now, especially when the orders are being given 'secretly'. There is no need for secrecy on this issue. The terrorists already know the US is trying to kill them. The only people the US administration was trying to keep in the dark by giving these orders quietly was the international community.

P-P-P-Party Time!

The headlines have made the situation clear: 'Benazir Bhutto's Widower takes power in Pakistan'. Though this is demonstrative of the extent to which Asif Ali Zardari lives in his deceased wife's shadow, it also goes a long way towards explaining why he holds the reins of power now. 

We were expected to mourn Benazir Bhutto, the putative counterpoint to the dictatorial Musharraf, the beacon stubbornly advocating democracy and free cosmetics for a nation beleaguered by military rule and inappropriate use of foundation. And similarly, we are expected to celebrate the ascent to power of her husband, to whom she presumably passed the torch of mending Pakistan's spirit and restoring its devotion to democracy. Unfortunately, that's all bullshit. 

Doing some cursory research on Bhutto, her husband, and the party they run, reveals more fingers in pies than some sick, freakish Dusseldorf-produced finger-pie fetish porn. The Pakistan People's Party, founded in 2002, has been an unabashed vehicle for the promotion of one family: the Bhuttos. Indeed, the leadership of the party has always belonged to the Bhuttos, even after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, when the party briefly passed to her adolescent son. This is not a party which is founded on the principles of meritocratic democracy. It is a clear successor to the politics of patronage dominated by a few prominent elite families.

Though the New York Times now strenously denies it, both Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari were tried and found guilty of corruption involving gross abuses of power regarding kickbacks received from Polish tractor producers and French military manufacturers. The Bhuttos were sentenced in both Pakistan and Switzerland, with evidence from Polish, Swiss and French authorities. Their assets include a £6.35 million neo-Tudor(sometimes referred to as 'tudorbethan' by art historians, gangsters and pimps) house in Surrey, and undisclosed millions of dollars in Swiss and Dubai banks. Zardari has no governing experience to speak of. This is not democracy as we should know it.

The fact is, though, that Zardari was elected, easily defeating his closest rival, the fantastically named Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui. This is the man the Pakistani people see fit to govern them. And this is the problem. Endemic to most developing states, including many in Africa and Southeast Asia, is the chieftain culture that tolerates and expects elected officials to almost immediately become some of the wealthiest people in the country. Whereas in the West, theoretically at least, elected representatives are expected to adhere to the ethic of service and responsibility, the political culture in countries new to democracy is still redolent of autocracy, and rulership. 

It was an election. It did replace a military dictator. But the election of a man who escaped two corruption convictions on the back of his wife's reputation, who leads an openly dynastic 'political party', who still possesses fantastic ill-gotten wealth in Swiss bank accounts (an amnesty was declared for the corruption charges) but claims to be a socialist, is not the kind of election anyone in the international community should promote, and not one anyone in Pakistan should be happy with. 

The Autocratic Dark Side of the Bourgeoisie

The situation in Thailand is worsening for Samak Sundaravej, its Prime Minister. After taking power last year at the head of the People's Power Party (PPP), Samak has found his rule to be increasingly under fire. The latest is that Samak has agreed to hold a referendum, although what exactly the referendum will be on is still a matter of debate. Given such strident concessions on the part of the Thai PM, it is hard to see what the opposition, a grassroots organised movement against the government called the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), is complaining about.

We are used to seeing grassroots protest movements as the voice of the disenfranchised poor rising up to strike back at the elites that have exploited them for so long. At least this is the explanation the average member of Respect will give you before ordering his post-protest McSandwich with Coke. But Thailand, the self-proclaimed ''Land of Smiles'', and the only country that considers its eerily realistic transexuals a source of constant national pride, has once again turned things inside out. As it were.

The PAD, the opposition movement to Samak's regime, is actually a conglomerate of middle-class interests. Thaksin Shinawatra, Samak's predecessor, was a self-proclaimed champion of the working class and the rural poor. Samak shares Thaksin's political base, and this support for farmers and other low-class Thais has irritated the Bangkok-based bourgeoisie. The result is the PAD, which is led by one of Thailand's biggest media magnates, and which has made demands that 70% of the parliament be appointed, rather than democratically elected. 

These kinds of autocratic demands are symptomatic of a society where the bourgeoisie considers itself of an entirely different (and superior) breed to the working class, and is dissatisfied with a democratic system that essentially gives power to the majority, which is in all cases the poorest section of society. Their efforts can be seen to be an effort to use their political clout outside of the electoral system, where they feel their inferior numbers give them little chance of promoting their own interests. 

In any case, Samak is having a worse time in Thailand than Gary Glitter did, and you can see the strain showing as he quotes Shakespeare at a BBC reporter. He'll have to find a way to reconcile rural populism with urban middle-class interests if he wants to stay in power.