The wandering mind of... @kaamilahmed - Tumblr Blog

Doing little and sweating little With mansions spring up like mushrooms

Money Swine! - S.K Okleme

Cambridge Heath Road. Stratford to Liverpool Street.

Stratford to Liverpool Street

To kill three million

One of the most infamous statements that preceded the Bangladesh genocide on 1971 was General Yahya Khan's statement that the resistance in what was then East Pakistan could be dealt with by killing three million.

Interestingly, i've just come across a quote from another murderous military man; Smaïl Lamari, the head of Algeria's secret services during the civil war of 1990s. He also said that he was ready to kill three million Algerians to maintain stability.

I wonder if it's just a natural number they come to or perhaps there's some sort of military theory behind the statement. I wonder if anything else has been said by others in a similar position.

Yahya Khan

"Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands."

Smaïl Lamari

I am ready and resolved to eliminate three million Algerians if it's necessary to maintain the order which the Islamists are threatening

Indirect rule and slums in Africa

The Africa at LSE blog posted this up today: The political economic of slums in Africa.

It's an interested article, based on the authors own academic publication, which challenges the notion that the creation of slums is merely as a 'temporary by-product of economic modernisation'.

Sian Fox finds simple correlations between slum incidence and urbanisation, income/economic diversification and institutional development but also seeks to shed light on potential causes, as we all the correlating factors. The one that really stuck out to me, probably with my historian's reading glasses (pretending I have a pair), was the relationship between the degree of British indirect rule and slum incidence. The graph below shows a very strong relationship with high levels of indirect rule and slums. The trend is only slightly bucked by Sudan and Sierra Leone. Perhaps Sierra Leone's could be explained by the complete breakdown of the state in the '70s and '80s which limited urbanisation and also saw a parallel state created which was strongly focused on working diamond fields. Though Fox goes into more depth about lasting factors, this shows in part the legacy of indirect rule and the effect it had in restricting the development of institutions.

Nothing delights British former lefties more than an opportunity to defend power while pretending it is a brave stance in defence of a left liberal principle.

Glen Greenwald's column on The Guardian today was a fantastically well argued exposure of the Islamophobia of certain New Atheists who have hidden it behind 'rational Atheism.' He provides a lot of analysis of the extreme language used by the likes of Sam Harris but it was towards the end that he produced one of the most insightful quotations. A piece of advice from a friend was what he shared with us and it was an explanation of the way in which 'former lefties' had abandoned their cause.

As soon as I finish these essays I'm looking forward to reading this.

You're right, White people weren't forced out of London at all.

The movement of the white British is often characterised as white flight - the indigenous population forced out of their neighbourhoods by foreign migrants. That may be part of the story

The darkies came in and pushed all the white people out of London. Okay, so maybe they pushed some of the white people out of London. Mark Easton's article on the BBC was supposed to explain that the white population of London had actually decreased because sections of the working class had achieved some level of economic success. But what stands out is the fact that he even entertains this tired idea of ethnic minorities forcing out populations.

Please, explain how white people were forced out? They weren't dragged from their homes or run out of neighbourhoods, nor were they made to live some sort of inferior life to their neighbours that forced them elsewhere.

"obtained or imposed by coercion or physical power."

That was not what happened to white people, if it had then it wouldn't be 'part of the story' it would've been the bulk of it. Easton should be careful with his terminology because the blame cannot be placed upon those who moved to London; if someone can't bear his/her neighbours because of where they were born then that it is their own problem. They forced themselves out of London.

"One must bear in mind that those who have the true modern spirit need not modernise. Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans...True modernism is freedom of mind not slavery of taste."

Don't cross

Assad is losing his government...

Assad's e-mails and security documents are now public knowledge.The Guardian and Al Jazeera have both published them and we know that at least the documents from the latter were provided by an defector from the Syrian government.

So far, there hasn't been much to stop the Syrian military crackdown. The Free Syrian Army is no match. Now, journalists are doing a job in shaming Assad and making it a lot harder for his allies to allow him carry on. In the same way that the US cut their losses with Mubarak and Ben Ali, China, Russia and Iran will at least have to start putting pressure on Assad to stop or even step down for someone else in his government because of the personal element that the e-mails have brought out.

#assad #homs #protest #revolution #syria #politics

Who kills 16 people?

Very soon after we heard about a US soldier murdering 16 Afghans in Kandahar last week, a question emerged that was apparently extremely important to answer. That question was who is Robert Bales? Not his name, that will just be the part we need for the history books. But what part of the person made him singlehandedly massacre a group of Afghans? The immediate answer was the he was (probably/possibly/maybe) insane.

Once that became 'clear' it apparently stop being necessary to ask the other questions - like why did he do it (if it was a breakdown, why kill Afghans instead of Americans?), and how did he walk out of his base on his own, kill 16 people, group them together and burn them?

As usual, the journos had got into bed with the military to create a madman rather than a murderous soldier. Poor chap. Off his head. Didn't know what he was doing. No wonder he was whisked out of Afghanistan at such speed.

I think Robert Fisk got it pretty right there. As he mentions, it has always been easy to defend Western troops by saying they traumatised (or something of that nature) rather than admit that what they had committed was plainly atrocious. Fisk, refers to the Haditha and Cave of the Patriarchs massacres.

Fisk also mentions something that the media had generally ignored. Only weeks ago General John Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan, called on his troops to show discipline by not reacting to the killing of two US soldiers by an Afghan soldier. There clearly was a fear amongst the US hierarchy of some kind of reprisal.

But what's clear to me, and it became even clearer when I spoke to a couple of Afghan students a few days ago, is that the Americans have well and truly lost the 'Battle for Hearts and Minds'. There is no trust left between the Afghans and the Americans. The Afghans feel insulted and insecure, while the US troops are obviously worried about trusting the Afghan soldiers they are training.

It's the Americans i'm worried about though. I'm worried that the blurring of lines between the Afghan army and the Taliban - and the fact that the Talian hide amongst the civilian population - is creating a sense amongst US soldiers that all Afghans are the enemy. Or at least that they can't trust anyone. That reminds me of Vietnam.

"There's no beter way to fight than goin' out to shoot YCs. An' there's nothing I love better than killin' 'Congo No, sir."

'Saw Sayedee in hiding after 1971 war' - Bangladesh News 24 hours

Via Scoop.it - Bangladesh Liberation War Bangladesh News 24 hours'Saw Sayedee in hiding after 1971 war'Bangladesh News 24 hoursJulfikar, a local Awami League leader, said he had been jailed in 1975 after the murder of Bangladesh's founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in 1987 for participating... Via bdnews24.com

East Bengal Eye: Hindu genocides in ’71 war getting more apparent

Via Scoop.it - Bangladesh Liberation War RT @HinduSamhati: Hindu genocide in '71 bangladesh war getting more apparent #kolkata http://t.co/vCBlnZgb... Via eastbengaleye.blogspot.com

Been stuck on the train just before Manor Park for hour+ - sick of what people said. Why assume fatality= suicide? Couldve been an accident

Check out the documentary I did about the aftermath of the revolution in Egypt here: http://t.co/AE3AD6DC

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

The wandering mind of...