Dear Abhinav Bindra

Greetings, and congratulations.

I’m not dissing you, Abinav. I know you worked your ass off to earn an Olympic Gold Medal in the air rifle 10 metre event. And I respect the work you put in, and wish you all the best.

I also appreciate the fact that, unlike virtually all your fellow-athletes, for instance the unbearably overhyped Sania Mirza, your success hasn’t,  yet, turned you into an instant know-it-all and chest thumper. Thank you for that.

All right, let me get to the point now.

You’ve said a lot of things, and you’ve said a lot of things unsaid. Let’s talk about some of those things.

Now, of course, you allow it to be said that your gold medal is a victory “for India.” You know it isn’t so. It isn’t so for many, many reasons, but let me list just a few:

First, you won a gold medal in shooting. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that except for the military and the super-rich, no one shoots in India, let alone on a competition level. No one even has access to firearms, let alone competition grade firearms. OK, I know you won a medal in air rifle shooting, but a competition air rifle isn’t a BB gun. And you know that.

If you’d won a gold medal in – let’s say – track and field, or weightlifting, or table tennis, or swimming, or something similar, which the common person might also be able to play, you might have been able to make that comment. As far as your medal goes, though, from where I’m standing it’s on a level with equestrian sports – which is to say, as far as the citizens of this country are concerned, not really a sport at all.

Then, I really don’t have to remind you, do I, that you aren’t exactly someone who has to worry where his next meal is coming from? You’re rich, Abinav, so rich that you don’t have to work at all, and you can spend your time devoting yourself entirely to your chosen sport. But for the average sportsperson in India, it’s literally a life or death question. Many, many are those who are talented, probably more talented than you, but had to abandon all sports activities because they couldn’t afford it. Do I have to really remind you of that?

The Indian state played no role at all in your medal win, Abhinav. It was because you were rich enough that you could shop around for the best equipment, and rich enough that you could spend your time training on it, that you won this medal. The Indian state had nothing to do with it. It’s your medal. It is not India’s.

Am I being churlish if I point out, therefore, that when you speak about India winning ten gold medals in the next Olympics you are talking through your hat? I think not. Not unless there are sports scholarships issued for the talented that will let them practice each day, every day, and leave them financially secure, win, lose, or draw, and I see no sign of that happening.

One of the reasons I see no chance of that happening is another problem I have with your behaviour, Abhinav. You’re super rich, and yet you make no demur when politicians fall over themselves announcing cash prizes for you. Instead of asking that the prizes be used to finance poor sportspersons (like the national level archery participant from Assam who now sells fish for a living, and hasn’t touched a bow in a year or more) you say nothing. Your silence speaks much, much louder than words.

You can still do some people some good. If the money you’ve been promised actually makes its way to you, which it might (seeing that you’re too rich to need it), then use it to set up the sports scholarship fund I mentioned. Do it quietly and do it at once.

Or else stop pretending that just because you’re Indian, your gold medal is an Indian gold medal, and stop prophesising about ten gold medals next time round.

Thanks, and regards

                                                                          Bill the Butcher    

Dear American fellow humans,

I try.

Dog nose, I try.

I keep trying to think of a way of getting my mind round a concept of electing someone to the highest office in the land on the basis of whether he, or she, wears or does not wear a flag lapel pin, or whether he, or she, believes or doesn’t believe in a particular version of “god” invented in West Asia between 2500 and 1500 years ago.

I keep thinking what would make a nation select leaders on the basis of whether they support the right of people to bear dangerous firearms, or on the basis of whether they look good on TV, or whether they were married to their spouses by someone who’s described as a “radical” preacher.

I try to comprehend what would make anyone vote for someone just because she is a woman, and that without a moment’s hesitation or a careful examination of this person’s actual standpoint on any substantial issue, including a war that is contributing not a little to the continuing beggaring of your country.

I keep, in a word, trying to keep my head above water as I’m deluged by your media coverage of your Democratic primaries, and it’s not an easy task.

It’s not an easy task, friends and fellow humans, because as someone who considers himself of normal intelligence, I find it impossible to believe that anyone could possibly be so stupid as to believe that sort of media dumbing down – anyone of more than subnormal IQ, that is. Not that I believe that any of you is, individually, that stupid – but, as I have said before, the IQ of any given group of individuals is lower than that of the least intelligent member of that group. It never fails.

Even so, it would seem odd that with two wars ongoing, a third threatened (in defence of a “nation” with whom your country has no formal alliance), global prices soaring, food stocks plummeting, the climate going to hell, etc, etc, your media can’t think of anything more to talk about than whether Barack Obama wears a lapel pin.  

I am not, believe me, a supporter of Obama or any other of your candidates, because, in the first place, it’s none of my business, not being a citizen of your nation; and besides, as I have repeatedly said, it matters not a whisk of a cow's tail who ultimately wins your election. The military industrial complex it is which is the ultimate victor.

But still, since the media insist on soaking me in this information, and because your nation presumes to be the policeman of the world, I am affected by your nation’s policies and I – like most non Americans – feel a need to express my views.

Therefore, my fellow humans, let me congratulate you on the fact that – ignoring the media aggression on Obama – you managed to back him in the latest primaries in much greater numbers than most people had envisaged. It proves that the mass, as opposed to individuals, of you do (and this is not the time to mention the build up to the Iraq invasion) sometimes think for yourselves.

There is hope for us after all.

Respected Prime Minister

In view of your extremely perspicacious declaration of the Maoists as "the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country", I have been thinking of how to go about countering them.

I shall call them “Maoists” in this letter to you, and, unlike most commentators, not Naxalites, – and I shall explain in a moment why I do this. 

Now, Mr Prime Minister, I’m sure you understand that we should make full use of this Maoist rebellion to further our long term goals – both as a party and as a nation.

So, let me advance my considered opinions as to the best way to go about doing this.

The struggle against the Maoist rebellion has the potential for both direct and indirect benefits.

First, Mr Prime Minister, we must understand that the Maoists are not the problem – though for public consumption we should, of course, keep reiterating this. The most pressing problem is the mainstream Left, which is bent upon confounding your desire to push the country to the right and forge an alliance, unofficially and then officially, with the United States of America.

Therefore, Mr Prime Minster, we must begin with a media offensive intended to deliberately confuse the Left with the Maoists. Since the term Naxalite is popularly understood to be restricted to armed communist rebels, we must forthwith junk this and switch to Maoist, which is a more general term. Maoist itself is a halfway house; it has its uses, which I shall talk of soon, but in itself it’s only a stepping stone to calling the rebels Communists. Once they are all popularly referred to as Communists it will be extremely easy to deliberately confuse them with the mainstream left and ban or otherwise debar the latter from politics. You can well imagine how the forced exit of the Left from electoral politics will free your party’s hands to carry out a right wing economic policy, which, as we all know is of course the best solution for the nation. (Can you imagine the enormous benefits we could receive as an American vassal state, I mean ally – including a permanent majority for your party so long as it proved itself the most allied of all the political parties allowed to function? The Americans would allow no other party to win or rule! Just look at the Philippines if you wish confirmation.)

Of course, Mr Prime Minister, during the period when these people are referred to as Maoists, we should not forget to drive home the fact that Maoism derives its name from Mao Zedong, who was, of course, Chinese. Since our American friends are positioning themselves for a future conflict with China, we should accordingly keep trumpeting the Chinese war of 1962 as a “betrayal” (and keep the actual facts suppressed, if necessary by quietly banning such books as Neville Maxwell’s India’s China War), and keep mentioning Maoist links to China (even if no such link is ever found). This will help to mould Indian public opinion against China and pave the way for a formal alliance, starting with the Unclear, I mean Nuclear, Deal so devoutly wished for by you, sir.  

Also, reiterating links between the Chinese and India’s mainstream Communist political parties – already a staple of the right wing media – will make it easier to ban the latter.

Secondly, Mr Prime Minister, we can then see the absolute necessity of propaganda designed to make the Maoist rebellion look like the greatest threat ever faced by the nation. Just repeating your line will not help, we must keep driving it home, exaggerating incidents, bribing the media if necessary to keep the public eye fixed firmly on it in between the necessary distraction of cricket matches, so that the public, most especially the Middle Class (and it would be a grave error to underestimate the stupidity of the Middle Class, Mr Prime Minister) comes to believe that the Maoists are about to surround and capture the cities where the Middle Class lives. Then they will be ready to approve any and all means to eliminate this (imaginary, needless to say – as you well know, the Maoist rebels are restricted to a few pockets in some states only) threat. 

And as to how eliminating the Maoist threat will help indirectly, Mr Prime Minister, to know that we must see how to eliminate the threat first.

The Maoist movement, as you well know, is based primarily in the forests. Therefore, in order to destroy the rebels, it would be a good idea to destroy the forests. No forests, no problem! It would not be difficult – and the rewards, as I shall explain, would be out of all proportion to the effort involved.

You know, Mr Prime Minister, that up to a fifth of the country’s land is occupied by these useless tracts of jungle, and when they are cleared and opened up, all that land can be sold to the private sector for exploitation. Indeed, the very act of clearing would yield immense amounts of wood and would provide, albeit temporary, employment to many workers. Then the private sector could use this land for minerals, contract farming, or industry. One can in fact see where this helps in politics as well – the private sector can be given land without forcing peasants off theirs. Useless as the peasants are, they can create political embarrassment by committing suicide or making a lot of noise when thrown off their land at gunpoint.

Of course, all forests will need to be wiped out – if we were to restrict ourselves only to the tracts occupied by the Maoists, we would only be able to clear a small portion of the forest, not nearly enough to make it economically viable.

As an ancillary, we must of course paint the ecology lobby as anti-development Luddites – the media will co-operate in the effort without prompting – and make the point that a developing country cannot afford ecology. Most of the Middle Class is already primed to accept this view. Incidentally, wiping out the forests will deny poachers and bandits space to operate, so adverse publicity from their activities would be reduced.

Also, along with destroying the forests, we must destroy the forest communities. These people are the backbone of Maoism. It might make a lot of adverse publicity if we kill them directly, so we should allow them to die of neglect. This is not difficult, we just have to follow our current policies through to their logical conclusion. Don’t worry, Mr Prime Minister, these people do not have enough votes to make any difference. Besides, since they have nothing and are given nothing, these people are an important factor in degrading our position on the national development index. Kill them off, and our ranking will inevitably improve dramatically, something you can take credit for.

Then, of course, all one has to do is paint all of one’s domestic opponents as Maoists and lock them up. Just possessing any literature citing or quoting Mao should be made a crime. Even a passing reference to Mao, or possessing an encyclopaedia mentioning him, should be made illegal. This has the great advantage that virtually anyone can be locked up anytime at the government’s discretion.

Of course, Mr Prime Minister, as an essential part of the anti-Maoist struggle, our police and paramilitary forces should be allowed to kill whom they want. It will keep them happy and – by putting the fear of the state in every heart – further strengthen your party’s rule.

And, last but not the least, Mr Prime Minister – Maoism stands for egalitarianism. Your party, on the other hand, stands for monarchy. The destruction of Maoism and its vilification will allow you to project monarchy, its polar opposite, in the best possible light.

Therefore, Mr Prime Minister, I hope you can appreciate that this is literally the opportunity of a lifetime. It almost certainly, if missed, will not come again.

Most helpfully and cordially, I remain

                                                                       Rabi D  Rai Twinger  

                                                                       (Security Consultant)

Now you know that as far as personal relations go I’m far from anti-American; Americans compete with Filipinos as the nationality most represented on my contact list, and both far outstrip my Indian compatriots. Right?

So, I am kind of surprised at the number of Americans who take offence when I comment about their country. Even otherwise sensible people sometimes blow their tops when I say something that should have been innocuous. And I don’t mean just on this website.

For instance, some time ago I had a contact (someone I thought balanced and intelligent, and whose world-view I broadly shared) turn abusive and delete himself from my contact list only because I had the temerity to comment on the Cho Seung Hui episode. Not being an American, how dare I talk about it? What right did I have?

You’ll notice a couple of things: first, that I never spare anyone – least of all Indians – when I go posting stuff.

Then, you’ll also notice that people like this gentleman I just talked about (no, I won’t say who he was, but he’s on the contact list of many of you) don’t have any problems when I say positive things about the US. It’s when I go criticising that they lose their cool.

Also, this same gentleman and those like him have no problem criticising all other nations in the world as well.

Again, and again, I hear of how everyone “gangs up” on the US. Fine. Let’s see why nobody “gangs up” on Burkina Faso or Tonga. Maybe because the President of Burkina Faso or the King of Tonga don’t act as if they are the rulers of the world?

Without meaning to offend any person here, I want to say something to anyone who may be reading this and who happens to be an American:

We, the non-American populace of the world, will continue to criticise your country.

We will continue to criticise it for the obvious reasons (Iraq, climate change, loud American tourists, whatever) but for another and much more insidious reason.

This is, that the US sees itself as being the leader of the world – and says so in loud tones to anyone who will listen.

As subjects, then, of the US Empire, and without any say in what it does, we have only one realistic weapon.

We can criticise.

We can criticise, and we will keep doing it, because you have taken from us all the other weapons we may have used. Your nation has taken over our economies, you spend more on your military than the rest of the world combined, you have paid traitors and turncoats to come to power in our respective countries.

Your Hollywood films, with their flagrant rewriting of history, play in our theatres; your mindless TV programmes (along with a tiny and rare smidgen of gold in a mountain of dross) invade our living rooms; your consumption levels destroy our environment; your nation attacks countries which have never posed a threat to anyone; you try and topple any government which does not kowtow to you, and you still say we should not criticise? You're pleased enough to accept our adulation when it comes. Take the rough with the smooth.  

To quote the Indian author Arundhati Roy, we are subjects who question their king.

You may ignore the questions, but you can’t tell us to shut up, because we won’t. Deal with it.

I should begin by saying that I write “guys” advisedly – all of you will be males except, just perhaps, a few women so unthinking that you might as well not exist at all.

So, guys.

You aren’t strangers to me, even if I haven’t met the particular “you” before. I’ve met enough of you online (most especially, but not exclusively, on Orkut) to know what I’m talking about when I say all of you might have been stencilled from the same template. So I know the message I want to send to you:

It doesn’t work, guys.

It doesn’t work when you send me death threats you have neither the means nor the intention of ever carrying out. It doesn’t work when you describe the coming of the Caliphate on earth. It doesn’t work when you talk of how the spirit of the faith will carry away all the kaffirs like me along with the unfaithful and the backsliders and hypocrites among the Muslims to hell.

It doesn’t work because you’re so full of hot air you put a hot air balloon to shame.

Listen up, therefore, guys.

When you talk of waging jihad against the infidel, I wonder about how come you’re sitting in front of a computer monitor punching a keyboard rather than actually taking part in the jihad. When you sit in Karachi or Riyadh and fulminate against the iniquities visited on Muslims by Hindus or Christians or Communists or Jews or other Muslims, I wonder what on earth, you know, is stopping you from taking up arms against these iniquities you make so free about.

The least Taliban soldier, whom you admire and love so much, is better than you. Semi-literate and primitive he might be, but he has the courage to put his life where his mouth is. Do you, guys? Do you?  

When you talk of establishing the Caliphate on earth, I wonder how on earth you are planning to go about this grand scheme of combining everyone from Senegal to Indonesia in one grand single state when Muslims haven’t been able to live together in peace even in such relatively small countries like Iraq or Somalia. I wonder how you are planning to impose unitary government on Shias and Sunnis as well as the Ahmadiyas, and any other fringe sects that might surface. I wonder how you are planning to govern South East Asians and West Africans by the same set of laws, and make it work. I wonder what makes you think all these people will accept a single government. I wonder who will keep this state together and by what means. Genocide?

When you talk about the necessity of opposing America, of being anti-American, I pause a moment to try and understand your semantics. As a long time “anti-American” myself, I think I should ask you what being anti-American entails. Should I hate the forests? The rivers? The mountains? The deserts? Should I hate the buildings of the cities of that country? Should I then also hate such Americans as Muhammad Ali, surely someone anyone sensible would be proud to acknowledge as a co-religionist? Do you hate him? Well?

Or do you equate America – the people, the streets, the continent – with the government of the United States, more particularly with the persona of George W Bush and his gang of war criminals? Is America, the country of Thoreau and Lincoln, for you guys, equal to Bush? If it is, you’re going even further than what Bush himself would try and pretend.

When you talk of your admiration for Hitler, which is almost a given for you, I want to ask: do you - any of you – actually know a thing about Hitler? Of course not, because being brown skinned South Asians or Semitic Arabs, you would be racial anathema to him and those like him. Remember this.

But of course your Hitler worship is rooted in the opposition to “Israel”. If it were only opposition to “Israel” I’d heartily agree. I hold that that so-called country is illegal and its self-styled citizens should either be forced to share equally with the Arabs they oppress or be deported back to their countries of origin. But what I think is beside the point. The point is that your anti-“Israelism” is equal to anti-Jewism and you admire Hitler simply because he mass-murdered Jews.

It hasn’t availed me much pointing to all the Jews – both as individuals and on the organisational level – who oppose, and have always opposed, the so-called state of “Israel”. I could cite Noam Chomsky and Neturei Karta all I want, but you’ve put an anti-Jew block on your brain. It’s impenetrable. So I pointed out something else. The Zionist movement, although it had begun in the wake of the First World War, never really got anywhere but for the Hiterite concentration camps in World War II. And if it had not been for the Hitler you so admire, the waves of Jewish immigration from Europe would never have inundated Palestine and the world would not have been willing to sit back and allow the Zionist vermin to conduct their ethnic cleansing and genocide on the plea of past Jewish suffering. But will you listen? No.

And, of course, guys, your insistence that Western culture, whatever that is, will ruin yours has me boggling. Along with your Hindu fascist brethren and other religious fanatics of all stripes, here you sit using a contraption created by modern Western science called a computer, writing in a language that certainly is not your own and not non-Western in origin, using something known to cognoscenti as the internet, and you, across the board, condemn all things Western?

Ah, yes. I should mention how so many of you have applauded mass murder on the lines of Beslan. I don’t know how many of you appreciate that most people are uncomfortable with the idea of children being taken hostage and murdered, or how counterproductive this is to your own cause. If you can be said to have a cause.

Because, tell me, what is your cause? Is it nationalism? If not, what do you call wars between Muslim nations? Why have there never been successful mergers between Muslim nations without the strife and war that generally follow forcible annexations between any states? Isn’t nationalism something that should not exist in your vision of pan-Islamism? Can you explain this, or even make an attempt to?

What is it with your abuse directed towards those who are doing their best to resist American hegemony, your opposition to Communism for instance, and at the same time your insistence that we left wingers make common cause with you? I've said enough times that one's enemy's enemy is not necessarily one's friend, and that if we of the left have to depend on friends like you, we may as well give up where we are without any further ado.

And, guys – what’s with all this worship of the most retrograde elements you can think of? Why do so many of you support, worship, and say you want to emulate the Taliban? If you truly want to emulate the Taliban, who or what’s stopping you? I recall the Indian Muslim actress Shabana Azmi challenging the chief Maulvi of the Jama Masjid, Delhi, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, to go and fight in Afghanistan if he really felt such kinship with the Taliban. So, I ask you too – go and fight with them. What’s stopping you?

All you can do, in fact, is sit on your fat behinds and type in random abuse. How pathetic.

I’d even take the likes of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi over you any day.

                                                                 Yours not in faith

                                                                  Bill the Butcher