Vivan los chicos

Todo el mundo knows that today is Cinco de Mayo. I can practically hear the mariachis from my living room here in Silicon Valley. Although only parte del mundo knows the holiday commemorates the Battle of Puebla in 1862, part of Mexico’s war against the French.

(This war came about when Napoleon III took advantage of Americans being preoccupied killing one another during the War Between the States to embark in a foreign adventure by placing an Austrian archduke on the previously non-existent throne of Mexico. The French—it was a whole thing.)

What you may not know is that the fifth day of the fifth month is also Boys’ Day, a holiday that comes to us from Japan. Okay, apparently these days it’s known as Children’s Day, but I hold with the Old Ways: 3 March is Girls’ Day, and 5 May is Boys’ Day.

On Girls’ Day you set out these elaborate hierarchical displays of exquisitely-dressed dolls, representing the Emperor and Empress, their court and all accoutrements. Somewhere there is a photo of a red-headed hakujin dressed in a yukata playing girlie games in a flat in a house the Greene brothers built to live in. The focus is interior and refined; I did the best I could.

On Boys’ Day, you hang out carp flags and do guy things. The focus is outward and exuberant. I never got invited to Boys’ Day events.

But in honor of the joint holiday from our siblings in Mexico and Japan, I suggest that we all go out, drink a margarita and fly a kite.

Special op in Abbottabad 2

Naturally the Abbottabad raid is a news story with legs, & as expected, bits & pieces of the picture are emerging hourly. The prudent & scholarly thing to do would be to wait for the cordite to settle before commenting judiciously; but I just can’t help myself after reading this story from the BBC.

First, there’s the rather sulky statement by Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani that it’s not his country’s fault that they couldn’t find Osama Bin Laden. “There is intelligence failure of the whole world, not Pakistan alone.” Moreover, Pakistan needs everyone in the world to support them in the struggle against Islamist militants because, “we are fighting & paying a heavy price…fighting not only for Pakistan but for the peace, prosperity & progress of the whole world.”

Well, dang.

That first claim just cracks me up. He’s essentially putting forth the idea that Pakistan didn’t know where Bin Laden was—which is like Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors marveling at the discovery that he was a cannibal because, “Why, we had no idea what he was up to. He’s a nice, quiet man & as for those cooking smells, well, we just thought he was on the Adkins diet.”

But Gilani's mitigating their alleged incompetence by adding that no one in the world knew where to find Bin Laden. So if Bolivia, Senegal & Borneo weren’t pinning the compound on Google Maps, then no harm, no foul for Pakistan.

There’s a logical fallacy somewhere in there; let me see if I can hunt it down…

Oh, yeah—it’s the one that every mother in every country on the planet has shot down since the beginning of time: that you’re not culpable if everyone else is doing the same thing.

Plus, Bolivia, Senegal & Borneo—along with the rest of the world that has any sort of telecommunications & cognitive capability—knew that the best place to be looking for Bin Laden was in Pakistan. So there’s just no way that Pakistan comes out of this without the major “intelligence failure” being theirs. Only question is to what degree the failure was deliberate or just incompetence.

As for the second part—does he intend that the UN hold a bake sale & send the proceeds to Islamabad? Before firing up my oven, I for one would like to see an accounting of the billions Pakistan has already received & find out how much—what miniscule percentage—actually went to what could reasonably called anti-terror actions, as opposed to lining the pockets of government & military officials & subsidizing turf wars & political assassinations.

Oh—but is that me being picky?

I also got a kick out of the Pakistani Foreign Secretary’s response to CIA Director Leon Panetta’s admission, “It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets.” Salman Bashir also got a little pouty & insisted that Panetta’s remark was entirely uncalled for & that Pakistan plays “a pivotal role” in fighting terrorism.

Now, to my mind, the phrase “pivotal role” is like the term “quality” that businesses like to toss about: it can be positive or negative. & if by “pivotal role” you mean “we are the global vortex of terrorist training, arming, funding & refuge” then that’s probably an accurate depiction.

But finally, I just don’t know what to make of the report that “about 70 lawyers staged a rally in Abbottabad on Wednesday, chanting anti-US slogans & shouting that Bin Laden was their ‘hero’.”

I knew there would be retaliation, but lawyers?

Tweeting for history

Further to the Web 2.0 element of Sunday’s special op in Abbottabad, the guy who live-tweeted what he saw in the sky that night has emerged as a real figure of interest to me.

Sohaib Athar is intelligent, he’s got a good sense of humor and he’s funny. (The latter two are not the same thing. You can be funny without a sense of humor, and you can have a sense of humor without being able to lob a quip. He’s both.) When he found out the significance of the events he’d been observing, he tweeted, “Uh, oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.”

He also doesn’t seem to be getting a swelled head at all the world’s media besieging him for interviews. He says he doesn’t own a TV, and tweeted, “Sorry three-lettered-big-tv-news-channels for not replying to your emails.”

He did speak to a couple, including one three-lettered-big-TV-news-channel. And, unlike anyone I’ve seen in the blogosphere, he does not intend to leverage his fame to gain a fortune. When CNN asked what he planned to do now that he has thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook, he said, “I don’t exactly plan to do anything. I am where I am and if they want to follow me and listen about what I have to say, then I can probably use it to create a more positive image for my country, but besides that, I don't really want to monetize it or anything."

He says he’s just a guy who moved with his family to a city he thought would be safer than Lahore, because he didn’t want to have to explain suicide bombers to his small son.

(Reminds me a bit of Wilmer McLean, a farmer in Manassas who moved south when Union and Confederate armies fought the first major battle of the War Between the States in July 1861. He settled in Appomattox Court House, where the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac converged in April 1865. His house was where R.E. Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant.)

But I think my favorite statement by Athar is this: “I am JUST a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash. Not many Twitter users in Abbottabad, these guys are more into Facebook. That's all.”

Last on the wedding. Really. Unless something else occurs to me

Okay, yes—I did watch part of the royal wedding. No, I didn’t get up at oh-dark-thirty, but I caught the highlights on BBC America. Generally the Brits know how to show a story and not yap through it, like American “news” readers.

I was only in it for the hats and the music, anyhow.

I certainly got my nickel’s worth with the former. Honestly, how there’s a bird in the Northern Hemisphere that is still in possession of its feathers, I don’t know. And apparently the trend-du-jour is to wear your chapeau atilt, as though putting it on squarely is just too, well, square.

I think some of them must have been stapled to those heads; can’t think how else they stayed on. Maybe double-sided tape. 


Plus, I think Lady Gaga is going to want some of them back.

As for the music—well, eh. I have to say that if you’ve heard one John Rutter piece, you’ve pretty much heard them all. And the "Ubi Caritas et Amor" didn’t sound big enough for the venue to me.

But the hymns were gorgeous. Cwm Rhondda, the melody for “Guide me, O thou Great Redeemer”, is as stirring as they come. And it’s hard to go wrong with anything by Charles Wesley. I was rather whelmed by the arrangement of “Jerusalem”—that’s one that ought to bring tears out, especially in that setting; I didn’t feel it.

It was interesting that Elton John had to read the words to them, but David Cameron didn’t.

But I always love an occasion to watch everyone (including Prince Philip) singing “God Save the Queen”, with Her Majesty staring off to middle space.

It was quite a spectacle. Especially those hats.

Special op in Abbottabad

When I fired up my email this morning, the first one I opened was from a friend in the UK. Like me, he’s been job-hunting and finding much of the same idiocy and ignorance I’ve encountered. So when I read the subject, “The Big News”, I thought he’d had a job offer.

But it was about Osama Bin Laden’s death.

It’s appropriate that I should get the news from Don—he was the first of my Euro colleagues to reach out to me with condolence and support when the planes flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania. He’s also made a point of touching base with me every year on 11 September.

I was in the UK then, and had been notified only a few days before that my ex-pat contract was being terminated (and returning to the US meant I’d certainly be laid off). I watched the coverage of the planes hitting the towers again and again, on a wall of TVs at work. I held it together until, driving home on the M4, I passed the GlaxoSmithKline headquarters building, which had lowered its flags. Then the tears wouldn’t stop.

Like a lot of people, I’m reliving that time, now that US forces raided Bin Laden’s million-dollar compound in Abbottabad, a mountain town north of Islamabad—a town that has effectively been put on the world map with this action. We’ll be a while piecing together the details of what happened, much less what it means. So only a few initial thoughts; don’t expect profundity.

I wouldn’t characterize a special operation like this as “justice”; but I’m glad that Bin Laden didn’t die in bed of old age. I’m not sure, though, whether at this point he’s not more valuable to Islamist fanatics dead than alive. There’s some thought that he’d become irrelevant; but now, of course, he’s a martyr. It’s certainly not going to have much of an effect on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al Qaeda and the other terrorist organizations are rather like the Hydra—cut off one head and two grow up in its place. Heracles had to cauterize the stump of each head as he lopped it off in order to kill the beast. I think that, at the most, we’ve cut off one of the heads. I don’t know what’s going to cauterize the necks, but until we do know, we’re in for the long haul.

There will be reprisals for Bin Laden’s death; at the very least, actions that have long been planned will be dedicated to him.

Bin Laden had been living in a somewhat ostentatious walled property within spitting distance of a Pakistani military academy. If anyone thinks the Pakistani government wasn’t aware of who was behind those 18ft barbed-wire-topped walls, burning their trash instead of having it collected and eschewing phone and Internet connections, then I’d advise having their medications adjusted. I understand that world politics makes strange allies, but Pakistan’s leaders bring corruption, political murder and duplicity to a high art. They make Turkey look positively above-board and true-blue.

Our government has acknowledged that we didn’t notify the Pakistanis of the raid until all our aircraft and people were out of their air space, because in the past when they have been informed of raids, the targets disappeared in advance. That really ought to make the administration at least revisit our ties to that country. Yes, we have precious few friends in that part of the world; but I think it’s clear that, by any definition of the term, Pakistan isn’t really an ally.

Much to the chagrin of news outlets, there were no correspondents embedded with the special ops team. However, a resident of Abbottabad live-tweeted about what he saw and heard. Sohaib Athar merged the age-old piece-of-the-picture you get from anyone who stumbles onto a Big Event without knowing what it is with Web 2.0 social networking. He is now discovering what it is to be a media darling—I’m betting his mobile phone is about to hit melt-down and his ISP is probably crashing with all the emails from global news purveyors wanting to interview him.

Speaking of broadcast media—I’m wondering how long it’ll take the producers of NCIS to air an episode in which the team provides vital support to the Navy SEALS during the raid.

I don’t know whether taking out Bin Laden will ameliorate any of the pain I feel when I think of 11 September. My friend Don was going to take a walk and then lift a glass in honor of all those who have lost in this war against terror. I think he has the right idea.

Wedding infrastructure

Alright, I’ll add one more bit of trivia to the whole Royal Wedding hooha today, one I imagine you won’t get from Katie or Barbara or Meredith: the Royal Router.

                               

Well—after all, it takes a powerful lot of telecommunications kit to broadcast not only the ceremony but all the moron-in-the-Mall humanoid-interest interviews. And every other commercial venture is trying to cash in on a connection to the doings. Why not Cisco?

Kingly matters

It may have reached your notice that there’s going to be a Rather Big Event in London on Friday. If it has escaped your notice then you won’t be reading this post in your monastery in the Urals.

Prince William, third in line to the throne of Great Britain, is getting married, ya great wally. To a commoner. But a really good looking one.

But the RBE has apparently stirred some discussion amongst Brits about whether Wills should succeed his grandmother directly, with his father, Prince Charles, either left out altogether or abdicating in favor of his son.

After all, Wills is much better looking, and taller (although he’s obviously inherited dear old dad’s thinning hair, and he not yet 30). And so far he hasn’t espoused any fringe causes like promoting organic farming and opposing modern British architecture. (Everyone’s ignoring those incidents of William taking out the RAF helos for joy rides, since that can be marked down to youthful exuberance and the RAF is practically the Windsors’ anyhow.)

Naturally the media are all over this like a bad British haircut, taking polls and getting professional Royals Watchers (I’m not making this up—they exist) to pontificate on why the son is just way more popular than the old man. The idea is that William would be more, you know, kingly, and that would be Better for Britain.

Of course, it would take a constitutional upheaval; but since the Brits don’t have a written constitution, I don’t know how much of an impediment that would be.

But I find this skip-the-king thing fascinating because the whole point of a hereditary monarchy is that you take what comes up in the generational gene pool. The people do not get to say they don’t want Prince X because he doesn’t look as good as Prince Y—or even that Prince Y is more with-it than Prince X. (And the law of primogeniture means that it's most likely going to be the person with the royal Y-chromosome.) Lord knows, there have been weaklings, murderers, adulterers and raving lunatics on the British throne. One as recently as 101 years ago.

And that was in the day when the Monarch of Britain wielded some actual power.

The customary road to royal rule is genetic inheritance. Except for when someone whacks the monarch and seizes the throne. That's perfectly acceptable.

So it’s interesting to me that apparently some Brits want to enjoy the tradition of a dynastic monarchy, but still get to make the sitting king/queen a popularity contest.

Kind of an appearance-over-substance thing. But if they keep that up, they’ll end up with David Beckham and Posh Spice in Buckingham Palace. And, in the end, I’m not sure they would bring in the tourists and their money like the Windsors do. 

Exit the Dragon Lady

A woman who dominated my childhood perception of Asia, woman & politics is dead. Madame Nhu was 86. Or possibly 87. Like much what lay below the image she projected to the world, her date of birth is a bit murky.

Born Tran Le Xuan, to a family of privilege related to the last emperor of Vietnam, she married into a political family. In the 1960s her husband ran the secret police & her brother-in-law ran the country (South Vietnam, as it was then).

She was a Buddhist, but converted to Roman Catholicism when she married Ngo Dinh Nhu. As often happens with converts, she was exceptionally fervent & used her political connections to pass measures outlawing divorce, abortion & contraceptives. She also banned the Twist.

& yet her interference also improved the position of women in Vietnamese society. She closed brothels & outlawed polygamy & concubinage.

Madame Nhu had a mouth on her & she used it as both a club & a skinning knife. They didn’t call her the Dragon Lady for nothing. She enjoyed it, too—“Power is wonderful. Total power is totally wonderful,” was her watchword.

Actually, she was also known as “the Oriental Lucrezia Borgia”, but I don’t think that’s apt. Lucrezia was the pawn of the men in her family; Nhu definitely was no one’s pawn. She was the queen—the most powerful piece on the board.

She was petite & beautiful & had long fingernails. Somehow in my mind I linked her with Clare Boothe Luce, although she was much, much better looking.

She happened to be in LA as part of a US speaking tour in November 1963 when news broke that her husband & brother-in-law had been executed in the US-backed coup that shifted everything in Vietnam. After that she retreated to Paris & then Rome.

The obits don’t give a cause of death. I suppose at 86 you could just wear out. But I somehow don’t see the Dragon Lady wearing out. She decided to go.

Toothpick tour of SF

Okay, I’ve been in a bit of a puckish mood lately & I came across this… Well, what is it? Engineering endeavor? Performance art? Too much time on his hands?

I dunno, but it’s fascinating. Click on the start arrow & crank up the volume, because the artist explains what all the structures are as the balls roll through them. & make sure you watch all the way to the end—there are several paths for the balls.

Remembering the diggers

Today is ANZAC Day, marking 96 years since the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Gallipoli. The military action itself was a miserable failure (unless you’re looking at it from the Turkish perspective), but it marked the coming of age for the antipodean part of the British Empire.

I haven’t been to Gallipoli, but I have visited a lot of the WWI British cemeteries in Northern France. Some are very small, maybe a couple dozen graves; others are appallingly large. Each headstone is marked with the soldier’s name, rank, regimental crest, date of death and age. But there are many that bear only a cross and the legend “a soldier of the Great War…known unto God.”

And here’s what I felt after walking the avenues of the dead: it was a war fought entirely for the furtherance of empires, on both sides of the slaughter. And hundreds of thousands of men from the colonies paid the highest price to maintain imperial structures.

To no avail—by 1918 three of the empires lay in ruins and the foundations of a fourth had been weakened so that it tottered on for only a few decades. Tens of millions were dead from military action, disease and starvation. And hundreds of square miles of Europe was laid waste.

And since then…well, you know the story.

Across Australia and New Zealand today, people commemorated all of their countrymen lost to wars in the past 96 years. Gallipoli to Afghanistan. That’s a lot of loss in less than a century for countries with such small populations.