Category: Uncategorised

Sunni parliamentary boycott in Iraq, to protest a Sunni politician being kidnapped. I don’t much care for boycotts as a tactic, and tend to underestimate their power when used right. This doesn’t seem to be using them right – the kidnappers will no doubt be overjoyed to have indirectly harmed both the Iraqi parliament and Sunni interests in the country. Juan Cole adds:

The announcement is a huge blow to the Maliki government, which had prided itself on presiding over a government of national unity that included the Sunni Arabs. The Iraqi Accord Front has 44 deputies in the 275-member parliament.

A good fortnight after everybody else, I’ve finally read through the khalilzad telegram, which makes me realise what a chaotic Mad Max world it is out there in Iraq. Not that I’ve ever seen Mad Max, but the stereotypes fit.

Nouri al-Maliki’s planned amnesty is apparently running on a principle of ‘only for the incompetent:

“The fighter who did not kill anyone will be included in the amnesty, but the fighter who killed someone will not be,”

Karachi politics:it’s all about town planning. This time, riots over the power supplies. More usually, riots over minibus accidents.

Why is it that I hear so much more about rioting in Karachi than in [other giant cities](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_most_populous_cities_in_the_world)? Could be just me paying uneven attention, but I get the impression that Karachi is creaking more than most under the strain of its growth.

In any case, it holds some kind of gotham-like fascination – and wouldn’t you want to be mayor of a city like Karachi?

You keep on reading about political situations so bad they force large numbers of people to kill themselves. Here’s one about indebted Indian farmers – but there are others about [Russia](http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/7257-3.cfm) and, saddest of all, [two small islands near Australia](http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1803488,00.html).

And I don’t know what conclusions to draw. Has anybody investigated how to stop so many of these people killing themselves? Is the solution to sort out the economy, or could we get away with putting prozac in the water?

The New York Times has an upbeat [story](http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/26/news/schools.php) about education in Iraq, claiming that between 2002 and 2005 primary school enrolment rose 7.4%, and middle/high school enrolment by 27%.

So, a cautious cheer. But the article claims that “direct attacks on schools have been relatively rare”. I don’t see how that can be true when the Ministry of Education [reports](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/06/05/wirq05.xml) 417 attacks on schools since November.

I’m sure I’ve also seen reports that, while school enrolment may be up, attendance is noticeably down, as frightened parents keep their children at home.

In a [Eurasianet commentary](http://eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav062606a.shtml), Stephen Blank asks what impact India’s Central Asian expansion will have on its relations with Pakistan.

On the one hand, India is moving into Ayni air-base in Tajikistan, where they will station 12-14 MiG-29 planes. That’ll let them threaten Pakistan from the rear, which won’t do much to build up confidence.

On the other hand, they’re getting involved in several energy projects which might bind South Asia closer together. Two potential pipelines from Iran and Turkmenistan will both pass through Afghanistan and Pakistan, and India is also keen on [America’s REMAP plan](http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/business/articles/eav050406.shtml), which will build energy links between Central and South Asia, while excluding Russia and China. So in the future a war with Pakistan might require India to throw away its energy security, and hence a chunk of its economy.

Or at least, that’s the argument. No doubt there is somewhere an academic literature on whether pipeline-building really does improve peace prospects; I’d be interested to track it down one day.

That was a reasonably enjoyable and interesting May Week, in many ways. Of course, now I’m getting back to livejournal the sociable fun is over, everyone is leaving Cambridge, and I’m spending an evening moping at home. But that’s just the traditional “only updating livejournal when you’re down” syndrome, and it’ll pass in a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, I have at last ended up with something to worry about, in that I’ve volunteered to do a set of “idealistic metal” at WUS in a fortnight. This could be interesting, given my very limited selection of metal CDs and the Kambar decks’ inability to reliably play anything home-burned. Looks like play.com and fopp will be getting some money off me soon, at least.

On that topic, does anybody know much about Christian metal? last.fm keeps on feeding me stuff that is neither christian nor metal, this chart seems to mostly contain defunct and/or cringeworthily bad groups, and presumably it isn’t an area that appeals much to many of you.

Still, it’s been fun delving into that corner of self-hating Americana, and no doubt I’ll turn out a couple of listenable tracks eventually.