Slicker Than Your Average~

MDP in a one horse race

2013-06-16T19:50:00.000+05:00

I am trying to explain to some people the difference between the Maldivian Democratic Party - led by President Nasheed, and the hodge podge coalition of radical Islamists and tin pot parties backed by wealthy corporate interests that go by the name 'Gaumaigen Kuriyah'.

Ideally, in a multiparty election there should be a bouquet of manifestoes and political platforms to choose from.

However, we're less than 2 months away from the scheduled elections, and here is what reality looks like:

~Peace!

Monk

2013-03-26T01:32:00.002+05:00

If you turn back on all worldly pleasures
- on women and wine and wickedry -
to seek out what all wisdom was;
and ponder what the truth could be

In your final moments might it dawn on you
with heartfelt profound misery,
that it was all the pleasure that ever was,
and all the joy that could have been.

MDP abandons democracy

2012-12-29T23:13:00.000+05:00

WARNING: I am about to do something that has never been attempted before on this blog.

I am about to jump to the defense of the vile, corrupt, medieval, misogynist, dangerous and dark forces of Islamism in our country, represented by the obnoxious Adhaalath Party.

Brace yourself.

Yesterday, the Maldivian parliament passed a bill that would de-recognize all political parties that have a membership less than 10,000.

There are only three political parties (MDP, DRP and PPM) that have more than 10,000 members at present. Jumhooree Party is expected to reach the 10,000 members milestone soon.

Smaller parties, including the Adhaalath Party, have been given 3 months to shore up their numbers, failing which they will no longer be eligible for state funds that are allocated to registered political parties. I won't rule out that the Adhaalath Party can nearly double their party membership in 3 months, but it will be hard work especially after their recent months of coup-related douchefaggotry.

One can't deny the hilarity of the Adhaalath party's plight. They had allied closely with the coup regime, prostituting God and religion for a chance at political power. Now Sheikh Imran is left with nothing but sore knees and the bitter aftertaste of Abdulla Yameen's dong.

You don't want to know where that finger has been

It is also ironic that the mullahs are threatened with what religious minorities in the Maldives have faced all along - ignominy, and being excluded from the process.

It is incredibly funny, yes.

But then, what is funny cannot be an excuse to strip citizens of their most fundamental political rights.

I strongly condemn the MDP, PPM and DRP - parties that are normally divided on every matter - for coming together to get this cowardly act passed.

The bill is discriminatory and is designed to consolidate political power into a few major poles, and while this is excellent news for these three parties, it is an absolute tragedy for the nation. With the passage of this bill, citizens have been effectively excluded from the political process, as long as they do not belong to these major political parties.

How?

Until now, political parties have required a minimum of 3000 verified members to register officially. With this, they were eligible to a share of state funds allocated to support political parties. From my understanding, 40% of the allocated funds are divided equally among all the registered parties, while the remaining 60% is distributed proportionate to the parties membership.

What this does is, it gives a real fighting chance for citizens with new ideas and platforms.

Say, dear reader, that you felt that all your leaders have failed you, and wished to start your own party.

Earlier, you would have required just 3000 members to begin with - and you could avail of state funds to organize, campaign and spread your ideas to all parts of the country. With this financial support, the public would have the opportunity to hear out your ideas and possibly vote for your party's platform.

In other words, the existing system ensured pluralism and diversity of opinion for people to choose from. All parties had an equal baseline. Everyone had an equal opportunity.

What has has effectively happened now is that the parties in parliament have formed a cartel and stripped you of the same opportunities that they enjoyed to reach their current heights.

You will now have to cough up and invest your own money and resources to recruit 10,000 members, whereas MDP, DRP and PPM will enjoy hundreds of thousands in public funds to find their next 10,000 members.

Simply put, there is no longer an equal opportunity in the political arena. The existing powers have robbed the citizens of their one real chance of opposing these parties.

This is especially a huge blight on the MDP, which had until recently boasted of its role in ushering in a 'gina partytha ekulevey nizam', i.e. a multi-party system. It is something that makes me not want to vote for MDP in the next elections.

Some defendants of this appalling power grab claim that they are trying to protect public funds from being 'wasted' on small parties that don't seem to be active much. I disagree completely.

First, equal opportunity is not a guarantee of equal results. Like former MP Ibra added on twitter, unequal opportunity guarantees unequal outcomes. Our political playing field is now permanently skewed in the MDP/PPM/DRP's favour.

If it was indeed a waste of money, by all means remove funding for ALL parties. Going by development statistics, it's not like the major political parties are doing a fantastic job either.

For another thing, parties like Adhaalath are anything but inactive. In fact, I'd say that for their small size, they have had a disproportionate amount of say in national politics.

Adhaalath (and other small parties) are as much fellow citizens as anyone in the MDP or PPM. They have every right to organize themselves as a party, and promote their party's views. To exclude them from the political process is to drive them underground and towards militancy.

Pluralism and diversity are crucial for democracy to flourish. Without protecting minorities and minority voices - whether political, ethnic or religious - we are deviating from democracy and towards tyranny of majority. A kind of democracy that is synonymous to gang rape.

A two party system is one small step away from a one party system, and I shall leave it to your imagination why that is an incredibly bad idea.

We've been there before

~Peace!

_

Rape.

2012-12-29T03:43:00.000+05:00

Somewhere in Singapore a girl is fighting for survival. I am not sure if she will last till the time I finish typing this post.

The girl and her boyfriend were attacked on a public bus in New Delhi; she was brutally gang raped, stripped and dumped onto the street.

A large number of protesters have gathered on the streets demanding "justice", calling to hang the rapists, calling to stone, butcher or castrate them. Some are demanding the Chief Minister to resign, others are demanding better police patrolling. Clearly, there is mass outrage. I saw on twitter that somebody equated the rape incident to the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, which set off the string of Arab spring uprisings.

I hereby dismiss them all as wishful thinkers.

There is no revolution. Nothing that anybody is going to do as a result of this media storm is going to result in any tangible improvement in the state of affairs. In fact, nobody is going to remember this a few months from now.

Why? Two reasons.

1) It doesn't affect the people that matter.
2) No law or regulation or resignation can fix it.

First, the horror of rape and violence is lost on most people, until it looks like it might affect them.

For instance, a lot murders take place in India. It is not uncommon to see murder stories tucked away in tiny 5 line articles at the bottom of the third page of the newspaper.

But when Arushi Talwar, a 14 year old girl was found murdered in her house in Noida (near New Delhi) in 2008, all hell broke loose.

Why? Because the usual, uninteresting murders happened to other people. Probably criminals and gang members. Or shady people who got on the wrong side of extortionists. Or poor people who got involved with unruly characters.

But in this case, it was a pretty young girl from a rich family, killed dead in her own bed in a posh neighbourhood. The girl had a face that the media could sell. The family had the background that made well-to-do middle class, and wealthy citizens think 'this could have been us!'. It instantly generated a media storm - and the unfortunate trial by media - and shook the nation. For a while, at least.

Similarly with the Delhi gang rape. A lot of rapes happen in India. Nobody cares about most of them.

Sample this: in December 2010, a 13 year old girl was gang raped by four men and dumped on the road side. Brutalized and beaten, she managed to crawl to a nearby brick kiln for help - and got raped by two men there. Later that evening, she was picked up by a rickshaw driver who offered her a lift - and was raped by him and dumped on that same road. She was then picked up by a truck driver and his aide who then raped her for nine days.

And I don't remember anyone caring about that girl from a nameless village in the middle of god-knows-where.

Far too often, it is taken for granted in our part of the world that if a girl is raped, she must have somehow been immoral and thereby asked for it. It was because she wore slutty clothes. It was because she was drunk. It was because she was out late. It was because she was a whore.

But in the recent New Delhi rape case, most of those excuses couldn't be applied. Here was a girl who was travelling in a (sort of) public bus, in the capital city, at a respectable hour, wasn't dressed in slutty clothes as far as anyone could tell, and wasn't drunk or stoned.

'Holy shit! That could have been any one of us!', exclaimed the educated, well-to-do, middle class and the wealthy in unison!

But all the candle-light vigils and demonstrations and banners and signboards to overhaul policing and rape laws don't have any real world effect.

Why? Because it doesn't affect the political class. They know that the "outrage" will die down eventually. The lawmakers and their family are safe and well-guarded behind their tall walls and security cordons.

As the revolutionary Bhagat Singh said 'To make the deaf hear, it takes a loud noise'.

If the "outraged public" were to, for instance, drag out a Cabinet minister and mete out vigilante justice to him on the streets, there would be no time wasted in making the rest of them perk up and listen. I simply do not foresee that happening.

And if it did, there's still the second barrier.

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

Rape doesn't just happen. It is a cultivated habit. The rapists thinking is formulated and conditioned by society. The rapist gets away because his ideals are synonymous with society's.

When a rapist molests a woman, society jumps to his defence by pointing out the girl deserved it for one of many reasons, often because she was dressed in "immodest" attire. (Fuck that word, 'immodest') Sometimes it was because the girl shouldn't have been out alone after dark, the hours society has seemingly allocated for rapists and murderers.

When a girl was raped at the Artifical Beach in Male' during the Ramazan a couple years ago, society jumped to the rapists defence by claiming the girl was immoral; she was at the abandoned beach with her boyfriend, and smoking on a fasting day. The fact that the rapists raped a girl on a ramazan morning was not of particular importance.

We have a multi-billion dollar movie industry that has, right from the beginning, glamourized the idea of forcing a girl into submission. A girl's no means a yes, because the hero in the movie is rejected in the first half, and is soon seen dancing on a hill top with her in the second half so long as he doesn't take no for an answer.

The vamp in the movie - the whore who seeks the hero's attention - is always dressed in tight mini skirts and wears make up and smokes. The hero has his way with her, but ultimately settles down with the "nice", sacrificing, modestly dressed, good girl. So when a rapist assumes someone in a mini-skirt is hungry for his penis, there is more than one person to share the blame for his misconception.

We have Muhamma kalo, who is a walking billboard for sexual harassment. Come to think of it, practically every Maldivian music video revolves around harassing a girl on the streets until she submits and starts dancing with her tormentor.

When less than 5% of all rapists are ever convicted in a court of law, there is a problem deeper than merely law enforcement. Most rape cases aren't even reported. The stigma attached to the woman, who society collectively declares 'impure' and non-virgin by glorious power of the male organ, is 100% of the reason for that. The rapist knows this.

Of course, better policing and better investigation and better judges can improve things. But the point remains that the much, much larger problem will take a few generations of cleansing to fix.

An entire society's mindset needs to change, and a couple of generations need to die out before rape becomes an actual crime. Until then, the 'outraged public' are just hypocrites and accomplices.

_

Update: She didn't survive till the end of this post. :( The moment I hit publish, the story showed up in my twitter breaking news that the girl succumbed to her injuries.

_

Death of a community

2012-12-25T01:57:00.002+05:00

A random comment had landed in my inbox: 'Strange. I have never seen you on mvblogs'.

It was early 2008 and I was still in India, and my young blog had a total readership of exactly 4. Until I saw that comment in my inbox, it had never occurred to me that there might be other Maldivians who blogged, and I had never heard of this 'mvblogs' thing.

Curiosity got the better of me and I googled it - and just like that, I was suddenly thrown into a pulsating, vibrant community: the Maldivian blogosphere.

We continue to pretend Maldivians are a homogeneous, uniformly thinking school of fish - but the blogosophere circa 2008 utterly destroyed this notion. From art enthusiasts and photo-blogs, and politics and satire, and literature and teenage rants and anecdotes and archives, to recipes and poetry and tech blogs and erotica and gay porn - it was a melting pot of a mind-boggling array of interests.

Image via tenatuntitled

I eagerly tracked down interesting blogs, and soon became part of this community. I use the word "community", because there truly did used to exist a sense of kinship and camaraderie.

I remember there used to be blogs with little chat boxes in the sidebar where ones friends would give shout outs. Often, there would be long, passionate discussions that followed in the comment threads under each post. Bloggers would link to each other's articles, and add their opinions to them.

There was a genuine intellectual exchange going on here. The community often spilled out into real life, and there were not infrequent blogger get-togethers.

In my mind, the whole Maldivian web became one large, living organism that was more colourful, more energetic, more vibrant and somehow more real than the real world Maldivian society. The dullness and shackles of real life was overwhelmed by the freedom and diversity and vibrancy of the online Maldivian community.

And then, it all came crashing down.

It started, I believe, with the death of original content. With the arrival of the salafi blogs, mvblogs began to be inundated with unoriginal, recycled, copy-pasted trash that was in equal parts nauseating and disappointing for the sheer lack of creativity.

I noticed the trend emerging in other categories of blogs too - with some people scraping and regurgitating content from mainstream news sources, and pushing it automatically to their feeds. This was a huge disservice to the core idea at the heart of blogging, which I strongly feel is to share an original, personal take on the world around you.

And, of course, there was the intimidation from the Maldivian government. First, they blocked Simon's blog and a few 'Christian' websites, signifying the infiltration of the real world Thought Police into the free world of the Internet.

The Islamic Ministry led by the extremist Adhaalath party prepared a set of regulations that would seek to enforce their rigid control over the media, including websites and blogs. Before long the government also banned Hilath's blog - easily the most prominent blog in the country at the time - which also served as an aggregation of quality content from across the Maldivian web.

And just like that, the same shackles that have been imposed on Maldivian minds in real life for decades soon began to weigh heavily on online bloggers. Anonymous threats have always existed. But then, politicians entered the fray and blogger Hilath had his throat slashed. A severe price to pay for exercising one's basic freedom of expression.

Of course, blogging as a medium has come under tremendous pressure from the rise of instant social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Increasingly, I find people simply do not have the patience to read through even a 300 word paragraph - accustomed as they are to easily digestible byte sized information.

Perhaps I am being old-fashioned, but I can't help but feel that blogging still has relevance. There is so much potential in here that has yet to be exploited.

Imagine politicians laying out their ideas and policies directly to their readers and constituents, without the painful filter of half-assed mainstream media reporting. Imagine intellectuals and leaders in society organizing and engaging with the community directly, in a personal way. Imagine thoughtful analyses and discussions that simply cannot be replaced with gifs, lolcats and 140 character limits.

But most of all, it is young students who I wish would blog more frequently with fresh ideas and opinions. If nothing else, it will help create a generation that is able to put their thoughts into actual sentences.

My own experiment with blogging started without any foresight. It started off as (now incredibly embarrassing-) teenage rants. Eventually, I started putting down my thoughts about such mundane things as college, friends, depressions and daily anecdotes.

Later, by no intention or design (I promise!) my interests seemed to focus more narrowly on subjects of individual freedoms, religion, politics and society. This was the time when the readership of this blog peaked, reaching a couple of thousands a day.

As the intimidation grew, and the community collapsed - I felt the need to disengage from blogging myself. But I couldn't stay away too long, because I feel freedoms exist only when people keep pushing at its boundaries. And I'm not done writing yet!

On a more personal note regarding the concept of community: when I first moved to the Maldives in late 2009, it was an incredibly difficult transition as I wasn't fluent in the language, wasn't familiar with the place, and didn't know anybody.

It was at that difficult junction that a group of bloggers unexpectedly came together to welcome me to Male'. And to this day, it is that warm community of former bloggers that I continue to call my friends.

The community still exists. There are still writers and photographers and artists and poets and satirists and programmers and chefs and homosexuals and homophobes and the pious and the heretics among us. They just need to shake off the gloom and start expressing themselves again.

~Peace!

Bank of Maldives: A Love Story

2012-12-20T18:08:00.001+05:00

My Visa card got blocked again.

It is the second time in two weeks that this has happened. Last week, I found out that my card was blocked while attempting to pay for a meal late at night. I didn't carry enough cash on me, but luckily I happened to be with friends who offered to cover my tab.

Having never, ever had a pleasant experience with the bank, I feel emotionally drained at the mere thought of having to deal with them. My previous attempts at communicating with the bank were futile. They either never picked up, or kept me waiting on the IVR system forever without ever letting me through to a human.

When I took to ranting on twitter about it, some helpful beings pointed out that I could SMS the bank with my details and with any luck they would call me back.

Thankfully, they did. It turned out that they had blocked my card due to a suspicious transaction.

"Is the $10 dollar amount deducted by Google.com a valid transaction?"

It is worrying that my bank conceives of Google as a giant scam, making its billions through fraudulently charging people in 5 and 10 dollar increments. But no, this really is a valid transaction, I promised.

With that, I was able to have my card unblocked.

That is, until last night. I had just had a pleasant dinner with the missus and tried to pay for my meal - and boom! Declined again!

Coincidentally, I was going to visit the bank today anyway to collect my Internet banking password.

After an hour or so of waiting, I reached my turn and went up to the counter. The good news is, she has my Internet Banking password ready as promised.

The bad news is, to actually use the website I also require an additional security code and I should have requested for it specifically. Without that, the password is useless.

So now that I am here, couldn't you just give me the security code, lady?

No. You need to put in a separate request for that by email.

Well, fuck. All right. But could you at least tell me why my card is blocked again?

Suspicious transaction, of course. This time, it is your shipping agent.

Oh that one's also legitimate. Please unblock it. And kindly please call me before you block my card again.

Sir, we did try to call you on this completely random number that wasn't what you filled in your application form at all. But since it didn't exist, we weren't able to reach you.

How can that be? I gave you my updated address and phone number just last week!

Yes, you did. And I can see that the phone number in your account details is updated. But you see, you need to make a separate request to correct the wrongly entered phone number in your Internet banking service, although it is tied to the same account.

BUT WHY?! That makes no sense! It is the same account! How do I go about making this separate request?

You need to log in to the Internet Banking portal to request that change. But of course, you'll need a security code for that, which will require another email request and at least a couple of days to process.

So you'll just keep blocking my card until I make a request to change my phone number - although you already have my phone number?

Yes. Have a nice day, and thank you for using BML.

_

Of course, there was more ridiculousness involved.

The lady behind the counter needed my signature on a receipt. So I signed on it.

But she wasn't happy at all. It apparently looked nothing like the sample signature on her system. She turned her monitor around for an instant and showed me what seemed to me to be pretty much the same signature.

What did I do wrong?

Oh. You didn't get the curve over here right, and there's supposed to be a slight space between these two characters over here.

Really? Can you show me that sample signature again?

Sorry, I'm only allowed to show it to you once. Because two times would be a total security breach.

OK. But why are we even doing this? I am right here in the flesh! I have my national ID card with me that has my photograph on it. Two minutes ago, it was good enough for you to hand over my password and unblock my card!

But my pleading was useless. By bank logic, it would seem that I was somehow capable of creating a perfect biological clone of myself and convincingly forge a national ID card - but dang if anyone could get past their hand drawn signature test! CURSES!

She finally gave in after my fifth failed attempt. And I was able to leave utterly disappointed, and clutching my useless password.

So after spending two days at the bank, what do I have?

My card is still vulnerable to being blocked with no notice. I still can't do internet banking. I have two more email requests to make. And they haven't responded to my last one asking about password security.

Bank of Maldives, one hopes, is the only banking institution that curiously forbids you from having a secure password. Apparently, it needs to be under 10 characters, and should on no account have special characters in them.

Why? Because fuck you, that's why. Or if BML has a better explanation, they still haven't responded to my very specific email query about it.

I can't understand why banking, such an essential basic necessity of modern life, continues to remain such a painful experience.

_

~Peace!

"God" comments on Minivan News

2012-12-08T06:32:00.002+05:00

Early last week, the radical Islamist Adhaalath party posted a notice on their website, expressing outrage at some commentator on the Internet who had posted a comment as 'Maaiy Allah' (Holy Allah)

According to the party statement, "Allah refers to the name of the Creator Allah, whom Muslims pray to and seek strength from... Therefore, no human can say I am ‘Maaiy Allah’. They should instead say ‘Abdullah’ (slave of Allah)".

I completely agree. And I would happily grant myself the slave title, except I feel the world is already burdened with one Abdulla Yameen too many.

Anyway, I read in the news yesterday that the newly created Cyber Police approached Minivan News with a court order to obtain the IP address of the aforementioned commentator, after a local Salafist NGO filed a criminal case.

I won't even begin to speculate on the kind of sad lives led by these pathetic little boohoos who scour the Internet for things to be "outraged" about.

How I imagine Seyku Imran functions in the XKCD universe

But let me right away confront the bearded heretics who have the audacity to presume that the almighty God, who engineered the heavens and the Earth, is somehow incapable of leaving a comment on Minivan News.

Would the Adhaalath heretics really have preferred it if the Minivan News Editor had summarily rejected what could possibly (why not?) have been a divine opinion? Isn't this exactly what the early Meccans did? I am happy Minivan News chose to err on the side of caution. People have been turned into pillars of salt for less.

Of course, I am aware that there is at least a 15% chance that the commentator who commented as 'Maaiy Allah' could turn out to be just a human.

Although, if anyone can get past some of these captchas, it is probably God.

This makes me think. Why would the Mullah NGO and Party jump to the conclusion that the comment was man-made? Should the mere fact that there is an eminently plausible and, in fact, rather plain explanation for this mysterious online comment lead one to the hasty, arrogant conclusion denying the role of the Creator?

Oh ye of little faith! What next? Will you now look at the holy scriptures and approach Ablow Qazi for a warrant to track down its 'author'? Wouldn't that be literally blasphemy?

In all sincerity, however, it shocks me that in a constitutionally 100% Muslim society like ours, we let these pompous mullahs prostitute Islam every day for their petty political ends.

For instance, take the scoundrels who don't hesitate to proclaim every natural disaster an act of God's vengeance if it affects people they don't like, or "a divine test", if it strikes some place like Pakistan that has people the beardies can identify with.

Isn't that the most arrogant thing you've heard? To think that a puny human who, on account of a few years spent in an oil-money funded madrassa in the Middle East, suddenly finds himself qualified to delve into the mind of the Almighty Creator and unravel his divine plans?

In many ways, I consider their arrogance far worse than the allegedly human commentator behind the divine username. After all, if indeed the commentator were human, then at worst it was a misguided soul who wrote a comment on the Internet that nobody cared about, except for some easily outraged fanatics who constantly live on the verge of losing their religion.

And have yet to discover /b/

But what truly bothers me are those who constantly abuse the faith every single day; those who speak in God's name to kill, maim and murder; those heretics who, while acting in God's name, take away the explicitly granted rights of minorities and women. Those who presume the arrogance to not only claim to be privy to God's innermost intentions, but also assign themselves as intercessors and middle-men between man and God.

These, to my mind, are much larger transgressions. And yet these transgressors, charlatans and god-men go around unpunished while our money and resources are wasted on Cyber Police wankers to chase after anonymous comments on the Internet.

~Peace!

Young Maldivians: "Big dreams, bigger frustrations"

2012-11-08T05:39:00.001+05:00

Read my piece for Global, in which I try to identify some of the challenges faced by young Maldivians.

Drugs first appeared in the Maldives with the arrival of tourists in the country in the mid-1970s. As the tourism industry grew, an increasing number of Maldivian youth were attracted to what was perceived as the tourists’ glamorous lifestyle choices.

Today, the culture of drugs, casual sex and Western music among the youth is increasingly seen by some as a loss of cultural identity to outside influences, and these sentiments are often exploited by conservative religious elements to their advantage.. [Read more on Global]

Also, don't miss JJ Robinson's excellent piece about the Maldives coup d'etat, or as he calls it, 'a controversial change of government'.

~Peace!

[P.S. My blog titles are slowly, but surely, starting to look like Khaulath's. In my defence, I haven't had much sleep these past few days...]

The Sage and the Cat

2012-11-04T03:33:00.000+05:00

It is 2:30 in the morning and I want to share my favourite story.

There was once a sage who lived in a forest. The holy man had a number of disciples who joined him in meditation every evening.

The meditation rite was simple: they would gather under a banyan tree every evening, and sit in prayer with their legs crossed, and eyes closed in deep concentration for a few hours.

The holy man also had a cat who would run around disturbing the utensils, so every day he would tie the cat to the tree with a leash until they were done meditating. This routine never changed.

One day, the old sage fell ill and died soon thereafter.

The grieving disciples appointed one among themselves to lead the rituals, and they continued the routine of tying the cat to the tree and went about their daily meditation as always.

Then one fine day, the cat died.

The disciples solemnly gathered that evening under the tree, but there was some amount of confusion. How could they proceed with their ritual without first tying a cat to the tree? It has been done for years, as they all knew. They consulted each other and all agreed that it was unacceptable to alter their sacred routine.

And so it was decided: Every evening, just before meditation, the disciples would venture out into the woods and search for a cat to tie to the tree. Only then could the pious disciples meditate in peace.

_

Over the years, the not-so-subtle subtext of that story has offered me much clarity when I think about rites and rituals in general.

How often I see people lose themselves in the text and tradition, engrossed in the minutiae of it all to the extent they seem to lose all track of the underlying principle of it. And often, in my experience, the easiest way to uncover those underlying principles is by applying good old reason and common sense.

Yesterday, the story of a 11 year old who had a miscarriage made the news.

Most ordinary Maldivians rightly expressed their outrage on various networks. But then, there appeared on the scene some "good Muslims" with the notion that it might not have been rape, but "fornication", in which case the 11 year old should be punished for this crime.

Some kind of sickening "debate" has sprung up around the issue, with self proclaimed Salafist "true Muslims" on Twitter and other social media declaring that any one capable of getting pregnant was technically no longer a child.

Sick as it sounds, it reminds me again of the story of the sage and the cat.

While these "true Muslims" eagerly dig up the relevant clauses and hadiths to back up their appalling lack of humanity, all I can see is an 11 year old girl who has, at a tender age, undergone a severely traumatic experience - one that reveals a history of abuse.

How exactly does one accuse an 11 year old of 'fornication'? She's ELEVEN, for heaven's sake. She can't legally drive a motorbike, own any property and is not considered mature enough to contribute to the discussion of who will run her country for the next 5 years.

Given that, I wonder what kind of mental gymnastics these 'true Muslims' perform to arrive at the ridiculous conclusion that a child can give consent to sexual intercourse! She was raped. Plain and simple.

Child rape is not uncommon in the Maldives, nor are the denialists and apologists for child rape.

To these rape apologists, all I have to say is: It is not difficult to not be an asshole. Really, it isn't. All it takes is the understanding that sometimes the answer is not in some dense Arabic text prescribed by the Mullah, but in about 2 minutes of thinking with your own brain.

Sadly, our country and religion is overrun by fools who cannot see what is self-evident, and are scrambling in the woods searching for their metaphorical cats.

~Peace!

P.S. Ever noticed how child rape is nowhere near as deserving of global Muslim outrage as a cartoon somebody drew in a faraway country? Yeah, me too.

Pavlov's dogs

2012-09-20T13:53:00.000+05:00

I swear there are fingerprints on my face after last week's extended facepalm-a-thon.

Here's what happened:

Someone in the US, using the freedoms guaranteed by the American constitution, made a video (movie? movie trailer? The reviews were so lame that I never bothered watching) and uploaded it to YouTube. This is hardly remarkable, of course. Those of us familiar with the Internet realize that this is precisely what makes YouTube what it is.

But tragically, on September 11, militants attacked US Embassies in Libya and Egypt. Many people were killed, including the US Ambassador and several Libyans. The 'reason' given for this mindless violence was that they didn't quite like the video - and, one presumes, had some trouble locating the 'dislike' button on YouTube.

Just to piss off bigots, I'm going to quote Salman Rushdie next.

Appearing on the Daily Show last night, Rushdie said that in parts of the Islamic world, there exists an 'outrage industry'. I couldn't agree more. There is a large market for manufactured outrage in the Muslim world today and mullahs and politicians around the Islamic heartland regularly partake in this virtual bukkake of stupidity.

Protests erupted in distant countries, as more people were inexplicably "outraged" overnight at a movie that they hadn't seen and couldn't describe. Churches were attacked in Africa. Protests were held in Malaysia. Crowds gathered in Bangladesh. YouTube was reportedly banned yet again in Pakistan, where two people were also killed in violent protests - one from allegedly inhaling smoke from a burning flag.

I'd give you a moment to facepalm to all that... but wait, there is more.

"Outraged" Saudi Arabians, unable to locate an American Embassy, gathered in front of the local McDonalds instead!

Would you like some fries with that bigotry?

Seeing this global outpouring of stupidity, the Maldivian mullahs perhaps began to feel rather left out.

Finding neither an Embassy nor a McDonalds to protest outside, they settled on the next best thing which, um, turned out to be the UN building.

So, leaflets were distributed one afternoon and hundreds of "outraged" fundies turned up outside the UN building - inside which, I imagine, were dozens of puzzled staffers wondering 'the fuck did we do? Apart from funding half of your country's development programs, that is?'

They were holding signs that read "Maldives: Future graveyard of Americans and Jews" and flags were burnt; one guy whose favourite subject couldn't have been biology held up a sign insisting President Obama was 'a son of a dog'. [No, dear protester. Don't be silly. If he were, it'd be a bigger miracle than Jesus]

One asshole who had the audacity to call for "peaceful conduct" while the good Muslims were busy 'outrage'-ing the hell out of everything, had to be given police protection and taken away.

One disgusting person, not content with mere bigotry and pointless hatred, decided some child abuse might liven up things. So he brought along what I believe are, very unfortunately, his own tiny children - carrying toy guns - to the protest.

Parenting. You fail hard.

Now, to be clear, everybody has a right to protest - even dumbasses. For all I care, they could have been gathered outside a lingerie store, holding traffic signs, and angrily protesting DineMore's tiny chips portions. But that doesn't change the fact that they're still dumbasses, and that is central to this entire blog post.

The effort involved in explaining the irony of hordes of angry, violent dipshits protesting against being depicted as angry, violent dipshits is simply more than an average, over-the-hill blogger like me can muster.

But I can say this: not even the most ingenious Islamophobic gay Jew spy in the Mossad corner of the underground CIA bunker in Sodom could have done a better job of reaffirming Islam's ugly image in the minds of those who already view it with suspicion.

Now the most obvious question is.. why? Why was any of this necessary?

There is always the odd ball commentator who tries to point out that US and the West has killed hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, and propped up brutal regimes around the middle east and struck arms deals with tyrants for oil - and paint this mindless violence as being a justified 'response'.

No.

For one thing, the 'jihadis' kill 8 times more Muslims than any 'enemy' of theirs. Furthermore, these protests, where Muslims kill each other and destroy their own property, were not led by any stated political aim - but by invoking 'religious outrage'.

And yet these same fools will recoil in horror at the suggestion that their skewed ideology is rooted in violence and hatred.

Ambassadors of the Religion of peace, clearly.

The increasing despise for Islam among ordinary Westerners is not fueled by any sinister Western engineered plot. It is something Muslims have brought upon themselves with the endless displays of global ass-hattery as was showcased this last week.

Maybe the idea that individuals in the West are free to express their thoughts without government approval is a foreign concept to those who have outsourced all their thinking.

Of course, Freedom of speech must ideally be exercised - as with any other freedom - with grace, responsibility and respect for others. But at least the fools who made that video had the basic decency to express their stupidity in a harmless video without resorting to killing, butchering, burning and slashing. That makes the whole world of difference; the difference between civilization and barbarism.

The coup regime's Minister of Islamic (and other) Affairs has called to exercise 'restraint' and to avoid violence, all the while justifying "anger".

I refuse to do the same. I am not a big fan of restraint, but it would be pretty neat if someone in the Muslim world would start to exercise some common sense, starting with the coup regime.

The Maldivian censor board has, for instance, 'banned' the watching of the said video. Meanwhile, the Communications Authority of the Maldives has been trying to 'block' the YouTube video in the country, revealing their remarkable grasp of how the Internet works.

Great job, assholes. That'll keep 'em out.

An exasperated French Imam, reacting after another wave of provocative cartoons from a French newspaper, urged his followers to stay calm saying "we're not Pavlov's animals to react to every insult!".

But we are! I haven't seen the slightest evidence of any logical thought process behind this orgy of violence with which Muslims react every time somebody draws a cartoon or uploads a video; over 30 people in 7 countries have been killed just this week over the latest video - a lame one at that! - uploaded by somebody in a distant far away country.

It is a response driven by some kind of cultivated instinct. Just like Pavlov's dogs.

It makes one wonder: Is Islam really the religion that kept the sciences alive and the flame of knowledge burning bright throughout Europe's dark ages? Are we really the bearers of the legacy of great philosophers and polymaths who explored the seas and charted the heavens and ruled over great Empires?

How did we end up mired in this violent, medieval ignorance?

How come a people with such a rich, storied, cultured legacy act like mere trained dogs that bark and bite at the slightest flick of the Mullah's hand?

Some people accuse me of sounding condescending when writing about the Mullah menace. But of course I am! It is well-deserved and hard won condescension. I refuse to treat with respect those who have given up all rights to be respected. Indeed, I am being mild on them by merely calling them dumbasses and morons.

A more apt word, for instance, would be murderers; unthinking thugs.

It is unhelpful to blame only the helpless Pavlov's dogs for this. One must blame their leaders - the ignorant, medieval Mullahs who claim unto them unfounded religious authority. They bring no good news, and leave nothing but destruction in their wake.

Their influx into this country has to be stopped if the country is to ever make progress.

I do not hesitate to label them worse human beings, and deserving of contempt. And mind you, this is not because I do not tolerate a dissenting opinion or the Wahhabi ideology. Everybody is entitled to an opinion just like I am.

The difference is, I do not go around blowing up the Saudi and Afghan embassies.

~Peace!
_

Writing after the coup

2012-09-18T04:04:00.003+05:00

What is a man to do when his very sustenance becomes a poison?

The Maldives continues to implode spectacularly into a failed state overrun by Islamo-lunatics. As a writer, this should ideally translate into endless material for me to write about and lampoon. This was evident in the first few days after the February 7 coup d'etat, as I engaged in a rage-fest of furious writing. (Seeing people beaten up and bloodied by the coup militia was sufficient fuel, I guess)

But ever since then, I feel I no longer can.

Since then, I have had to turn down writing assignments because I could not inflict upon myself the torture of reading the depressing reports. I have avoided the news, and tried to turn a blind eye to the headlines that pop up on Twitter. The very few attempts I have made at writing about the coup have left me completely emotionally drained.

I imagine this is a mild version of how rape victims, denied justice, feel about having to write about their horrors. In a way, 7th Feb was a rape. A rape of democracy, where rogue forces easily overpowered and overwhelmed the weak populace with ruthless violence and brute force.

I feel like travelling into the past and tracking down the exact point in time when I settled on this idea that freedom and justice are somehow natural principles. I don't know why the burden of feelings of oppression weighs so heavily on my shoulders, when so many others seem to live just fine without giving it a second thought.

The same suffocating feelings lingered in the back of my mind during a recent visit to Malaysia, after I observed first hand the rampant racial discrimination that is Malaysian law - even though I wasn't even the slightest bit affected by it.

I've had to re-evaluate some of my long held principles. It has led me to believe that the system IS the enemy. The state is the enemy. The Maldives is an utterly failed state - not a single institution in the country functions as per their defined role. None. But the state was designed to serve the interest of a few, who profit from the conflict. It was designed to fail for the rest of us, the way the farm is designed to benefit the owner, whereas the cattle are destined for the abattoir. It's just how it works.

In all sincerity, I have lost any hope of reforming society. Reform is a long, painful and slow process that involves educating and rebuilding a new generation of Maldivians. And I feel this is a near-impossible goal, because the state - the system - is designed to destroy the next generation as well, and the one after that.
How is one to educate a generation that is brought up in a climate of such fear, instability, conflict and hatred? What hope is there to educate young minds against the odds, when serious money and power is being invested to subdue them into becoming the next generation of unthinking sheep? No. Our next generation will be as uninspired as this one, and the previous one.

No, I no longer seek to reform society. I wish to uproot it.

Rape victims don't wish to 'reform' their tormentors. No. They wish to sever their members and condemn them to hell.

So long, and thanks for all the democracy!

2012-09-16T13:13:00.003+05:00

The Maldives’ unprecedented democratic revolution that began in the early 2000′s has ended prematurely, and many of the gains made since then have now effectively been reversed.

After three years, the Police have once again become an entity to be feared and loathed. The familiar intimidation of the media, and bullying tactics that were so widely prevalent during the Gayoom dictatorship is also back.

Waheed’s regime has been outright hostile to the free media, repeatedly barring the only opposition-aligned TV station from covering President’s office press conferences, and permanently withdrawing police protection for the channel’s reporters – despite explicit constitutional safeguards upholding media freedom.

There is plenty of visual evidence of Raajje TV’s reporters being harassed and pepper sprayed at close range by the police; targeted attacks on the station by pro-government goons in August forced the station to interrupt services.

Citizens now face arrest for merely calling Waheed and his police forces ‘traitors’, whereas his regime regularly and unapologetically refers to citizens demanding early elections as ‘terrorists’... [Read More on Minivan News]

My piece, Published on Minivan News [1 September 2012]

~Peace!

Train to Pakistan

2012-08-08T03:10:00.002+05:00

Today marked 6 months from day constitutional rule in the Maldives ended.

I have a lot to say, and all of it is depressing. That makes it difficult to write, sadly.

Every fiber in my body revolts against the idea of living under an illegitimate regime. Today, the coup regime marked the 6 months anniversary in style.

1) Full frontal assault on the media.

Raajje TV, an MDP aligned network, has been under attack from the coup regime for being the only TV station in the country that dares to telecast videos of police brutality against civilians. (All the other stations in the country are owned by the same businessmen politicians who were involved in the coup)

First, the coup militia led by former Gayoom henchman Riyaz Abdulla, has publicly stated that his uniformed forces won't even pretend to carry out its constitutionally mandated role of protecting the media. RaajjeTV journalists have been pepper sprayed, arrested and otherwise assaulted BY THE POLICE at various protests.

Really. Fuck this guy.

And today, on the occasion of 6 months, some regime vandals broke into RaajjeTV and badly damaged some of their equipment, taking the channel off air for a long time.

The Maldives Police Service will do nothing about it.

2) Purging the Police / Military

Two senior Police officers - Former Intelligence Chief "MC" Hameed and Superintendent Ibrahim Adnan - received marching orders today. Hameed had been suspended by the coup operatives, for allegedly 'leaking' information. Hameed had been outspoken on his twitter account about police violence against civilians.

Several senior Police officers were badly assaulted inside the Police HQ on the day of the coup d'etat.

A female MNDF officer was suspended after she complained on Facebook after military men attacked her father at a protest, injuring him on the head. The reason given was that she was being 'political'. Unlike, I presume, the hundreds of Police and Military men who joined hands with opposition politicians and went on a rampage, seeking out and beating up MDP activists and destroying their party campus.

Those, they got promotions.

3) Creation of Pakistan

Finally, also today, news reports say that the MNDF and the government have worked out plans that will allow the military to operate businesses in the country's lucrative tourism industry.

I have nothing to say on this, except point a sad finger at Egypt and Pakistan.

~Peace

Traitors and the Taliban

2012-07-12T01:25:00.000+05:00

The protests continue as I write.

Somewhere in Male', yet another citizen is being pepper sprayed, beaten and dragged away to spend a night in a crowded cell, so that the illegitimate regime of Waheed Hassan Manik can survive another day.

155 days is a long time to go without a legitimate government. And yet, it is long enough for the traitorous regime to sail out the worst of the opposition, assert an ill-deserved legitimacy - and start acting on its worst impulses.

Let's step back and see what we have here.

The coup regime - an uneasy marriage of mutually hostile parties united only in their fear of democratic reform - are in bed with the Islamo-fascist Adhaalath party.

There are at least two Adhaalath party members in the coup regime's "cabinet". One of them is our old friend "bonaqua" Shaheem, the man responsible for drafting the draconian Religious Unity Regulations that promised to transform the Maldives into a dysfunctional theocracy with no freedom of expression.

The regulations, you might remember, would have put in place an all powerful clergy who could be neither criticized nor questioned. The regulations would have empowered his party of mullahs to raid media outlets and censor websites and blogs. It would have made it a criminal offence to mock 'religious scholars'. It explicitly forbade anyone apart from the Adhaalath approved and licensed mullahs from so much as expressing a 'personal opinion' on Islam.

The regulations were thankfully killed by the Nasheed administration.

When Nasheed was overthrown by that disgusting coup on the morning of February 7, one of the first thoughts that entered my head was 'the damn thing is coming back'.

Sure enough, I saw this on twitter today from MP Eva.

Apparently, MP Muttalib - the Islamo-fuckwit somebody elected to the Parliament - has proposed in a bill that all decisions made by the 'fiqh academy' would be enforced on all state institutions.

Clearly, now that the coup regime has had 155 days to somewhat stabilize itself and assert its non-existent legitimacy to the international community, it is time for the Islamic radicals to come out of hiding.

Now, let's step back once again and look at the timeline of events.

1) Throughout the 3 years of Nasheed's administration, the opposition imbeciles came up with one non-issue after the other - music, dance, bodu beru, 'alcohol', Israeli doctors, Israeli airlines, Zionists, optional dhivehi/Islam subjects for senior secondary students, co-education, SAARC monuments, Navi Pillay.. do I need to go on?

2) Dec 10: a violent attack, at the behest of a Gayoom-affiliated political party, on a group of demonstrators
calling for religious tolerance on the International Human Rights Day. The police refused to book the culprits, despite them being easily identified in photographs. They arrested the victim of the violence instead.

3) February 7: The coup d'etat: A police 'mutiny' conveniently erupts amid rumours that President Nasheed was planning drastic actions to reform the unconstitutionally appointed judiciary filled with Gayoom appointed quacks, many of whom are practically unqualified to breathe without assistance.

Amid chants of religious slogans, the 'mutinying' cops and military men run amok, senselessly beating MDP members and vandalizing their party campus. In the meantime, the Islamic radicals happily storm the museum and reduce priceless Buddhist artifacts to dust, in the tradition of their Taliban brethren who destroyed the timeless Bamiyan buddhas.

Nasheed is forced to resign, and the pathetic Waheed assumes his place. (How pathetic? Well, for one thing, nobody even considers him competent enough to have planned the very coup that put him in power)

The same week, hate monger and full time anti-Semite Mohamed Jameel Ahmed is appointed Waheed's Home Minister.

4) June 4: Writer, journalist and freedom advocate Hilath Rasheed is almost killed by thugs outside his house. Before they slit his throat, his would-be-murderers told him it was 'with compliments of' 3 mullah politicians, whose names he has since revealed to me - and I have confirmed from two other sources. Hilath recovered miraculously, proving once and for all whose side God happens to be on.

Once again, the police have little interest in arresting the attackers who, even as I write, happen to walk around freely, confident in the political protection afforded to them.

It is plainly visible to anyone that the coup regime has kicked wide open the doors to radical Islamism. And how! In perhaps the single most disgustingly foul, dishonest statement to come from the regime, Waheed's spokesperson told International media that the attack on Hilath - the third attempt on him since December by Islamo-thugs - "had nothing to do with religious extremism".

The international community - India in particular - has spectacularly failed to side with democracy in the Maldives. At the same time, they have propped up a toothless regime ill-equipped and incapable of dealing with religious radicalism.

I can already predict what Muttalib and Bonaqua and their boyfriends are cooking up - an outright attack on democracy and free speech cloaked in religion as always.

Except this time, there'll be no elected government, and nobody with balls like President Nasheed to step in and deal with them.

~Peace!

P.S. Later tomorrow, the anti-Semite hate monger Jameel and the ageing dictator's offspring Dunya Maumoon will be defending the country's pathetic Human Rights record in front of the UNHRC in Geneva. The coup regime has already issued an entertaining 'response' in advance. For one thing, the Maldives unfortunately cannot guarantee human rights enshrined in the UDHR, because our constitution also violates the said human rights.

This should be fun to watch.

A tool for the atolls

2012-06-20T17:50:00.003+05:00

Islamic radicalism, which played a key role in the ouster of the government of Mohammed Nasheed, continues to grow in the Maldives several months after his ‘resignation’. While Nasheed has repeatedly warned of the danger of growing religious intolerance, political polarisation around the issue has also meant that for the first time space has opened up that allows protests and criticism of religious extremists.

Religion has historically been extensively used for political control in the Maldives. While the active targeting of political opponents as apostates might be relatively modern, the Maldives has had a xenophobic view of ‘foreign religions’ for much longer. This state of fear has been carefully preserved and cultivated instead of being eradicated by modern dictators like former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who found it a useful political tool.

Gayoom came to power on an Islamic platform, as a religious alternative to the (by then unpopular) former President Ibrahim Nasir, once considered the hero of Maldivian independence as he presided over the end of the British colonial presence. With Gayoom's tacit approval, Nasir was subsequently vilified by the government radio channels which broadcast songs insulting Nasir, calling him a ‘Latin-importing, Islam-hating, pig'.

Gayoom consolidated his power by making Sunni Islam virtually synonymous with the national identity. Any dissidents, including the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) in later years, were painted as anti-Islamic agents of the West trying to import Christianity or ‘other religions’. In 1994, Gayoom introduced the Protection of Religious Unity Act, restricting the freedom to practise any religion other than Islam. Unfortunately, even the 'democratic' Maldivian constitution of 2008 explicitly denies non-Muslims Maldivian citizenship. It has now become common for local politicians to refer to the country as being ‘100% Sunni Muslim’ – a statistic that Gayoom popularised but which has no basis in any actual research or documentation. [Continue reading]

(My piece for Himal Southasia, published 20th June 2012)

~Peace!

He is not my President

2012-05-21T00:29:00.000+05:00

[From my article, Published on Minivan News, 20 May 2012 ]

PPM Vice President Umar Naseer – a man renowned for speaking exactly more words than necessary – has publicly revealed the existence of a ‘command centre’ and openly boasted at a party gathering that the President’s life was on the line had he not resigned.

Indeed, Australian television SBS Dateline has aired devastating audio clipsof an agitated President Nasheed pleading for the safety of his family in return for his resignation. In yet another leaked audio clip, Waheed’s own advisor, DQP leader Dr Hassan Saeed – has termed it a “unique coup”.

The brazen violence against MDP leaders by the regime forces, the arrest warrants issued against Nasheed less than a day of his ouster, and the subsequently leaked audio and video clips leaves no room for doubt that the first democratically elected President of the Maldives was made to resign under duress – in other words, an unambiguous, clear-cut case of a coup d’état.

There is simply no intellectually honest argument that can be made against this.

What remains to be seen is whether the perpetrators of the coup will face justice for their treason, and whether Maldivians will ever get to learn the finer details of the plot that overthrew their first democratically elected government – of how it was conceived, financed and executed. [Read More..]

Sheikh Imran spreading Christianity

2012-04-03T03:32:00.001+05:00

It appears that "Sheikh" Imran of the Adhaalath party has proclaimed on a television program that Raajje TV's logo depicts a crucifix.

For those of you who don't get the significance, I have previously pointed out that Maldivians are the world's truest Christians.

Due to an unfortunate medieval accident involving Jesus, a treadmill and a flux capacitor, Maldivians have been left extraordinarily sensitive to Christian symbols. It is believed that the mere act of looking at a cross could potentially leave most of us irrevocably Christianized.

Shit. You're now a Christian.

The average human might not be able to easily discern the Holy Cross so cleverly disguised as the seemingly harmless Thaana letter 'raa' that forms the RaajjeTV logo seen above, but hey, isn't that what we have the Adhaalath scholars for?

The Adhaalath mullah's implication, of course, is that the MDP-leaning TV channel - and by association the MDP itself - is somehow 'Christian', and thus aiming to destroy Islam, but don't worry citizens! DE ADHAALATHZ WILL PROTECT DE ISLAMZ!

But this raises new fears. Where else might the hidden cross be similarly lurking, just waiting for a chance to pounce upon unsuspecting good Muslims like us?

You know where I am going.

As seen above, for the first time, clear evidence has now emerged that Sheikh Imran is deviously plotting to undermine the Maldives's Islamic identity and trying to import Christianity under the guise of being an Islamic scholar.

I dread to imagine the sheer number of young Maldivians he has turned over to the dark side by subliminally using the cross so cleverly hidden within his own name.

By association, I now have reason to suspect the entire Adhaalath party, which has appointed this rather obvious hidden-in-plain-sight Christian as their President and leader. Truly, this band of bearded Christian missionaries are out to demolish our 100% Muslim society.

Pastor Imran: Sneakily pointing at the heavenly father

[image source: Haveeru]

I'm now absolutely certain that if the cops were to raid the windowless headquarters of the Adhaalath Party, they would recover bibles, used condoms and gallons of wine. Lord alone knows what unmentionable contraband they might have stashed inside the Islamic Ministry, or as they now call it, "Male' City Church".

I have already said before that if Islam is to survive in the Maldives, the Adhaalath party and its band of fake clerics need to be chased out.

And now, my case has become even stronger.

~Peace!

Colourless. Feckless.

2012-03-03T09:15:00.001+05:00

There is a malaise in the country that I've been meaning to vent out about.

I must begin by saying there are plenty of people I strongly and vehemently disagree with, but nevertheless admire.

To take an extreme example, I've often said that Osama bin Laden could have easily lived the rest of his life in filthy luxury. But he was passionate about a cause - as distasteful as it was - and went out of his way to stand up for his principles. I believe it was his principles - no matter how deeply flawed - that led him to go fight his war in barren mountains, and in a weird, twisted way, I find that admirable.

Despite all my criticism of Islamist politicians and salafists, I do believe that there are many among them who are genuinely led by a desire to do the right thing, even if I disagree wholeheartedly with their narrow, literalist definition of 'the right thing'. I might be a left-leaning liberal, but I understand the motivations and passion that drives my counterparts on the right, and I fully respect them.

In other words, I sincerely respect people who make a stand for something.

This post is about the other kind of people. The people who stand for nothing. The people who are content with the status quo. The ones that refuse to hold an opinion on anything. The ones who don't care. The irresponsible. The indifferent. The idiots.

The so called 'Colourless' that has emerged after the recent coup d'etat in the Maldives is a prime example. To avoid commenting on the tragic and violent loss of the country's infant democracy, this group has chosen to hide behind terms like 'peace' and 'non-violence'.

They won't protest against any obvious injustice or brutality, because doing so would taint them with a colour. They won't come out and say they are happy with the current state of affairs or the proxy dictatorship, because that, again, would attribute to them a colour.

By doing so, they might think they have broken new ground in achieving 'neutrality' and 'peace'. To dissent, in their minds, is to cause strife. To protest, in their fancy world, is to disturb the peace. To make a stand, by their definition, is to provoke. To express an observation on plainly visible facts, to them, is to become a mindless slave of a party ideology - in other words, to reduce yourself to 'a colour'.

There is no right or wrong in their world. Just colours. And these folk are above it all, and choose to be Colourless.

Well. Thankfully, I'm not, right? So I'm going to take the liberty to call them out on this moral cowardice.

Peace and non-violence are noble concepts. Indifference is not. Objectivity is a wonderful thing. But fairness does not equal to being blind to facts. You do not become "non-judgmental" by refusing to judge. You become non-judgmental by being fair in your judgment, and not being afraid to judge based on observable evidence.

When they talk about 'non-violence', the ultimate paragon of non-violence to me has always been Mahatma Gandhi. 'Ahimsa', or non violence, was a creed he lived by.

But unlike our friends in 'colourless', his belief in peace didn't translate into inaction, indifference or cowardly silence. He expressed dissent in the strongest terms.

The man led millions in non-violent resistance, and fought injustice and tyranny. He called for civil disobedience, and non-cooperation, and protests, and rallies and marches. His anger, his dissent ultimately overthrew a deeply rooted Empire.

Our noble 'colourless' friends might dismiss him as a mere rabble rouser who 'disturbed the peace', but today one-fifths of humanity live in an independent society because of Gandhi's refusal to sit in silence and be 'neutral' about the whole darn oppression thing.

Today, I'm afraid, the Mahatma and his movement would have been reduced to yet another colour by these "colourless" folks.

I consider "I am colourless. I chose not to take sides" a criminal statement to make given the crisis the country has fallen into. To watch in silence as tyranny takes place is neither noble, nor admirable.

Furthermore, it is plain ridiculous to assign a colour to every opinion. To say Anni did something wrong doesn't make you blue or pink. To say the country's democratically elected government was toppled amid violence doesn't make you a yellow. It makes you fair. It proves you have a head on your shoulders that can think for itself.

So, please, dear colourless, do not wander in the delusion that your indifference is 'peaceful'. At best, it is cowardly. At worst, future generations may look back and blame you for watching in smug silence, while the country's first real chance at democracy got raped in broad daylight.

~Peace!

Wearing Yellow

2012-02-18T19:10:00.002+05:00

I do not usually care enough about politicians to go to their protests and listen to them throw around slogans.

But I was present yesterday at the Tsunami monument in Male', as a mere yellow dot among a sea of outraged citizens who were gathered there in protest against the coup d'état that dislodged the country's first elected government.

Impressive time-lapse of yesterday's protest by Senses0

Something about the 7th Feb coup d'état has rubbed me the wrong way. It has made me angry in a way I cannot easily explain.

Maybe it was the brutal police violence inflicted on my people. Maybe it was seeing eight cowards in riot gear senselessly beating and kicking an unconscious man. Maybe it was watching helplessly as videos emerged of the renegade Police taking away my dad and other citizens, and hitting them with batons that we entrusted them with.

Perhaps it was the disgusting influence of corrupt, tainted businessmen in the whole sordid deal that pissed me off the most.

How did they even dare to think they could impose their will on us - using the public-funded military and police force no less - and get away with it? What arrogance drove them into thinking they could just beat up, lock up and intimidate the country's citizens into submission? It was a rape of democracy brazenly carried out in full public view.

There is a reason why they call it blind rage. I have refused to condemn the so-called 'arson' and torching of police stations and courts in Addu. I daresay, if I had the chance, I probably would have done it myself.

But last night's massive protest has shown me a new light. The feelings of rage and revenge have given way to a feeling of pity for these fools who think they can control the Maldivian public at gunpoint again.

You have to hand it to the MDP, they know how to do a protest right.

There was music. There was dancing. There were the fiery speeches. There were the occasional videos played on screens, showing the renegade police tear-gassing and raining blows on unarmed citizens and their elected leaders the day after the coup d'état, that still makes one's blood boil no matter how many times one sees it.

But more importantly, I saw young people. Children, young teenagers, old people. Some of my 'non-political' friends also joined in the protest for the first time.

And why shouldn't they? A handful of coup leaders have displayed unbelievable arrogance in snatching the public's vote and - to literally add injury to insult - have brutalized them on the streets.

How did Dr Waheed and his traitorous allies dare to go on air and say with a straight face that they will deny the Maldivian public the right to express their opinion on a ballot? Astoundingly, he also claimed that government was toppled because 'the President had lost support'.

The problem I have with that is that Dr Waheed does not get to judge on behalf of the public. Nor does Jameel or Abdulla Riyaz or Nazim get to decide on our behalf. Nor does the Police.

(It enrages me that while they were engaged in their treachery for their wealthy masters, religious vandals stormed the National museum and destroyed the last remaining treasures of our rich Buddhist legacy)

I have not deputed these people to vote on my behalf. Nor did the the tens of thousands who gathered last night.

I do not recognize the legitimacy of the band of men who have declared themselves the government, after forcing out the people's elected leader at gunpoint.

For this reason, I cannot begin to accept a solution that involves having them seated in their usurped chairs till 2013.

All of us who gathered last night had but one demand: Elections. Now.

If Waheed or the Golhaa's minions can win the public vote, I shall accept and defend the public decision wholeheartedly. But I refuse to have someone rule over me forcibly at gun point.

For all their guns and filthy money, I pity the thieves who thought they could rob us of a democracy. No matter how much they censor the protests on their private propaganda outlets and pretend otherwise, I am satisfied now that elections are inevitable.

I also demand an inquiry into the events of 7th Feb; the police and military who broke the oath they made to the public should be stripped of their uniforms and forced to stand trial. The coup leaders should be identified and punished with the harshest possible punishments for undermining the country's democracy.

There is no other way to ensure that the arrogance of a few rich, power-hungry men do not threaten to collapse the rule of law in our country again.

_

P.S. - I normally dislike associating myself with any political party. It goes contrary to my sincerely held belief that party leaders should work for the public rather than the other way around. However, last night, I wore yellow as a sign of dissent against the current proxy dictatorship imposed on our people. I have not signed as an MDP member, and I probably won't, but I fully intend to rally behind President Nasheed until the people's mandate is restored in a public election.

A great betrayal

2012-02-12T21:28:00.004+05:00

With today's appointment of a cabinet full of the former (current?) dictator Gayoom's henchmen and supporters, the coup d'etat in the Maldives is complete.

I can't help but feel a deep sense of betrayal from countries like India and the United States that have granted legitimacy to the illegal, puppet government that has been installed in an outrageous power grab that took down the country's first democratic government.

Their unfortunate decision to recognize Gayoom's proxy government is bound to have far reaching consequences, and has set back the Maldives by a decade.

In a way, the country is worse off than before we achieved democracy. The country is now an open police state, as seen in the brazen crimes committed in full public view by the Maldives Police Service.

In the below video taken on 8th Feburary in Male', the police thugs have just charged at a crowd of President Nasheed's supporters without warning. They catch hold of a man and, without any provocation, take turns repeatedly kicking and brutally assaulting him until he is unconscious. I was watching the scene when it happened. The man lay face down, unconscious for several minutes before they dragged his broken body and roughly shoved him into an ambulance.

This is just a glimpse of the kind of terror inflicted by Waheed's masters to intimidate the public. Neither Waheed nor the newly appointed Commissioner of Police - another known Gayoom henchman - has condemned this outrage.

I am ashamed to say India and the United States / UK / UN have decided to recognize a government that has been installed by these terrorists.

The below video shows senior MDP leader, and former Parliamentary majority leader, "Reeko" Moosa Manik narrating the details of the horrifying assault on him on the 8th February, the day after the coup d'etat. From his narration, it appears the Police were possibly trying to kill him.

Several others were similarly assaulted on the same day.

The below video shows the brazen political violence committed by the highly politicized police / military. The people waving flags are supporters of the erstwhile dictator and his allies, who are cheering on the mutineers as they march up to the MDP party camp in Male' on the day of the coup d'etat, and proceed to ransack the place, set it on fire, and assault activists of the party.

During the initial assault by the rogue "star force" police, they threw pepper-spray bombs and assaulted senior members of the party who happened to be at the camp. Some were beaten, and others were forcibly held by the police and had pepper spray sprayed directly into their open eyes.

The story is even worse in the outlying atolls of the Maldives. In the southern atoll of Addu, people have apparently been taken on to coast guard vessels, been stripped and beaten. I do not have a clear confirmation of the incidents because all the State media have been taken over by the coup perpetrators and turned into the their propaganda outlets. But given the abundance of available videos of the crimes openly perpetrated by the rogue security forces in Male', there is no reason to doubt the stories reaching me from the atolls.

It is amazing how any government in the world can still remain reluctant to label this outrageous coup d'etat as a crime of the first order against the Maldivian people - and their first democratically elected government.

This isn't about the MDP or President Nasheed. It is about condoning an undemocratic power grab led by enemies of democracy, corrupt businessmen and Islamist forces in the Maldives - one that utterly shatters the country's democratic hopes.

The sacred process of appointing a government through the ballot box has been replaced by the method of terrorizing citizens, and forcibly unseating their elected government by gross abuse of the powers of the security forces.

No amount of sugar-coating or using fancy terms like 'unity government' can hide the ugliness of this episode. The truth is plain and obvious. The people have lost control of the country's media, police, military, Judiciary and Executive, which are now all firmly back under the thumb of undemocratic forces. It won't be long before they usurp the Parliament as well, by simply buying the MPs.

At this point, the country's democracy lies utterly destroyed.

In other words, it is an upsetting betrayal by the international community.

I cannot, in my right mind, accept the legitimacy of this criminal dictatorship that has been imposed on my people - with international support, I'm sad to say.

_
P.S. Ever since the coup d'etat, I've been getting intimidating messages from both self-proclaimed "religious" (anonymous) representatives and members of the armed forces that I personally know.

I'm being reminded that I no longer have a President who will fight to uphold my freedom of speech, and therefore I should be 'careful' of what I write. To directly quote the MNDF guy: "i urge you not to touch with islamic issues'(sic)

It is easy to imagine that my criticism of the current police state will not go down well with the criminals in power. Such a shame that after three years, I have to once again start thinking of potential consequences before I write.

A mutiny against democracy

2012-02-12T01:56:00.003+05:00

Other countries in the region, such as Pakistan, have experimented with letting the armed forces dictate the rulers of the country. And in the bargain, Pakistan has become a failed democracy mired in chaos and conflict.

It is therefore tragic that the Maldives is all set to follow in Pakistan’s footsteps, without even having experienced two election cycles.

Could future political parties in the Maldives come to power simply by winning influence in the police and armed forces? Will the demands of a few hundred uniformed personnel strip 300,000 people of their democratic verdict?

If the currently installed government is granted legitimacy, what would stop the country’s defense forces from pointing a gun at future elected governments? [Read more >>]

Chapter III: Return of the Golhaa

2012-02-10T10:15:00.001+05:00

The coup d'etat was pulled off without a hitch.

The country's first democratically elected President has been removed from office, and in his place has been installed a puppet government of the Gayoom establishment.

The Golhaa has already unleashed his rabid dogs - the mob of violent, uniformed criminals known as "Star force" - upon the people to intimidate them into surrender, just like in the good old days of the dictatorship.

On their very first day after coming to power, the proxy dictatorship has rounded up several hundred people - my dad among them, who has given me first hand information - and detained them in prisons.

The air in the capital has once again acquired the familiar sting of tear gas, people have been beaten unconscious on the streets, and MP's have been clobbered half to death.

Even the toppled President himself has been roughed up by Golhaa's mad dogs.

President Nasheed, after being attacked by Police thugs

[Source: Haveeru]

The traitorous coup leaders have moved quickly. Despite their ridiculous pretext of 'upholding the constitution', the planning involved was evident in the manner in which the MNBC state media was taken over within hours of the coup.

It was then handed over to the management of opposition propaganda outlet VTV, and immediately renamed as 'TVM' as it was known earlier during the Golhaa dictatorship.

While the Golhaa's thugs were on a rampage against civilians in public, the state media and opposition propaganda outlets were playing children's cartoons.

A man beaten unconscious by riot police the day after the coup.

[source: sun.mv]

The heads of the Police and Armed forces have been replaced with Golhaa loyalists. The Executive cabinet is being reconstituted with Golhaa apologists.

To consolidate their power over the state after a 3 year absence, however, the Golhaa knows he needs to get Anni off the streets.

Yesterday, the newly appointed Home Minister Mohamed Jameel of the DQP - an impossibly humourless man, a Gayoom ally and a prominent party involved in this gross treason - has revealed in a press conference that he intends to charge the ex-President with terrorism.

Sounds familiar? It should be. This won't be the first time the Golhaa dictatorship has charged Anni with terrorism and put him behind bars.

It shouldn't matter what the charges are. The mid-level Courts are hand picked by the Golhaa, and their only apparent responsibility is to carry out the Golhaa's bidding. So they could charge him with stealing Christmas, and still get a conviction.

Indeed, the Courts have already issued an arrest warrant.

The only thing that stands between Anni and an eternity in prison is the international goodwill that he has built up - and whatever influence that carries with the proxy dictatorship.

I don't know how we have let this happen. But it is clear to me that we Maldivians need to flip back our calendars a few years and start over again.

We simply cannot afford to go back to being enslaved by the Golhaa, or live in terror of the Golhaa force again.

And this time, we need to do a better job of flushing the piled up, 30 year old shit that's clogging our pipes, and carefully sort out the judiciary, the Gayoom clan, his corrupt cronies, and his "Star Force" thugs. It's the only way the Maldives can ever progress.

These criminals need to be in prison. Not beating up citizens

[Source: Haveeru]

Just as before, there are those who'll oppose every effort at public resistance.

"You'll encourage violence!"
"Don't disturb the peace!"
"Act within the law!"

I am usually an advocate of Gandhi's methods of non-cooperation and peaceful civil disobedience. But having seen people - people I don't even know or recognize - being beaten up unconscious in front of me by a state-sanctioned mob has flipped some kind of switch inside me.

Right at this moment, I can absolutely justify the outrage and the anger of the people in my hometown of Addu. Following the brutal crackdown on President Nasheed's supporters in Male', they burned down all the police stations and courts in Addu - and I can say I fully understand the sentiment.

Gross brutality by a state militia is a strong provocation, Dr Jameel. Do not act surprised and pull the 'terrorism' card when people react with violence.

The Golhaa might have returned. But I think the citizens have wised up just a little since the last revolution. If you don't put your mad dogs on a leash, the people will.

PS: I usually try to refrain from using words like 'thugs' when referring to state authorities. However, after witnessing the brutality and violence inflicted by the Golhaa force, I find that no words can truly express my revulsion and contempt for these criminals.

By calling them 'thugs', I'm actually being needlessly polite.

~Peace!

Reign of terror in the Maldives

2012-02-08T21:48:00.002+05:00

***Updated: See below for updates*** _

There is a brutal, concerted effort by the runaway police department to crush protests by supporters of President Nasheed, following his release today.

I have personally witnessed the heavy handed tactics employed to combat MDP activists, energized by the release of President Nasheed earlier today after yesterday's coup d'etat that forced him to resign.

Tear gas was used indiscriminately on Orchid magu near the Supreme court building. Two people were beaten up and lay motionless on the street for a long time before they were dragged and shoved into an ambulance.

Then I saw a police jeep speeding into a crowd of protesters. A police jeep. Absolutely reprehensible.

Man beaten unconscious by the riot police today

[Pic source: Sun.mv]

I am not an MDP member. I have criticized President Nasheed often. But witnessing the coup d'etat unfold yesterday before my eyes is extremely troubling.

Especially worrisome was the violence and brutality of the "elite" riot police, created and trained under the Gayoom regime, who stormed into MDP quarters and trashed the place, and severely beat up several MDP activists in the events leading up to the coup.

I have seen videos of the MDP quarters set on fire and utterly destroyed. By the Police.

The violence leading up to the coup was simply unprecedented. The pitched battles between the police and the military was simply unheard of.

Traitors propping up the proxy government [Source: Haveeru]

Images of bloodied and beaten MDP supporters and activists are doing the rounds. From what I can see, the Police are showing absolutely no restraint.

The Police and military are traitors to the nation. The country is now a military state, with a runaway judiciary controlled by the old Gayoom establishment, and now a proxy government. In other words, every progress made under the democratic revolution is now completely reversed.

Former MDP parliamentary group leader "Reeko" Moosa, after being attacked today by the "Police"

[via Raajje TV]

The release of President Nasheed - no doubt under tremendous international pressure - is a huge tactical mistake by the coup leaders.

The country is full of 'activists', but none of them of the calibre of President Nasheed. His entry into a MDP meeting today, with a smile on his face, visibly electrified the utterly demoralized MDP of yesterday.

Within no time, massive crowds of his supporters poured out on the streets in Male', Addu, and other population centers of the country. Police stations and courts have been set on fire in the rebellious south - a known MDP stronghold.

The Police has since forcibly taken the President and other senior figures into custody. The ~~mayors~~ elected members of Addu and Male' have been attacked in the street by the uniformed thugs.

President Nasheed's supporters in Male' today

The military state has taken over the state media, which refuses to show any of the protests or the bloody crack down. (So much for 'protecting the constitution')

I am counting on foreign diplomats, media and other agents of influence - anyone who reads my blog to make sure the truth is out there.

I've always considered Dr Waheed a respectable, moderate and learned man. But his government - installed by a coup d'etat staged by the powerful opposition interests - is simply unjustifiable. There is no respectable option for him but to resign and hold immediate elections.

Every democracy of the world should condemn this shocking power grab - and the subsequent reign of terror.

Suddenly, we're back in 2006 again.

This is first degree treason by the criminals in uniform, the very people who are bound by law to protect the citizens. Treason, by the leaders of PPM, DRP, the Islamist parties and others who have been working overtime to revive the old Gayoom establishment.

Treason. Plain and simple.

_
UPDATE 1:

Sun.mv has posted a picture of Reeko Moosa Manik being taken into custody. The battered, bloodied image of Reeko from earlier in this post was obviously taken afterward. - clearly suggesting that the MP was beaten by the Police while in their custody.

Treason. Coup. Change.

2012-02-07T20:48:00.002+05:00

Don't get me wrong. I predicted this just two weeks ago. In fact, here's what I said in a piece for Minivan News, published on 24 January 2012

"It simply does not bode well for the country’s democracy when the powers bestowed to one arm of the State is unilaterally employed to twist the other arm.

The country has already had one failed attempt at democracy before. If the actions of the democratic leaders causes the general public loses faith in democratic institutions and the rule of law, then there’s no reason to believe it won’t fail again."

And that's exactly what happened last night. Our country's second (third?) experiment with democracy failed.

I was watching from a building with a vantage point, seeing the events of the night unfold on the streets below me. When the entire Police force refused to take orders and openly rebelled, I knew it was going to rapidly spiral out of control.

Once that happened, I saw the rioters lose all their fear. Stones and bottles were thrown. Window panes were smashed. Some of the protesters were relentlessly rebuking the armed forces for protecting 'the Jew' - and loudly applauding the Police.

In the meantime, the Vice President issued a statement ordering the armed forces to refrain from following 'unconstitutional' orders, while the rebelling police were calling for the Commissioner to issue an apology for issuing such orders.

Rumors flew that a faction of the army had also decided to join the rebels, but were being forcibly held at their base. In the space of a few hours, of course, the whole thing dangerously blew into a full blown national crisis.

A group of young men - ostensibly MDP activists - were seen rushing towards the republican square with sticks and other weapons. In the ensuing commotion, the police and the MNDF were caught in a vicious pitched battle, and copious amounts of pepper spray and tear gas canisters were being flung by both sides.

The way the situation was getting out of hand, I did momentarily fear there would be bloodshed. But the reality is that the country simply cannot afford to have the military publicly open fire on citizens. Even the dictator Maumoon with all his absolute powers didn't dare do it.

It just wouldn't work.

Given this, the President did the right thing by gracefully resigning in the face of a coup d'etat.

I must take the time out to say what I truly feel about President Nasheed.

I haven't the slightest doubt that he's a democrat in every sense of the word.

However, he is also more of an activist than a statesmen; more adept at giving populist, rousing speeches than building a national consensus. It is not surprising then that the last few months of the country has seen absolute political polarization - with no willingness on either side to compromise or see eye-to-eye on any issue.

President Nasheed's ability to turn conventional wisdom on its head and pull out one surprise after the other never failed to impress.

I severely criticized his decision to gamble with the country's economy by banning spas and massage parlours in the resorts. But one can't deny the sheer brilliance of the manoeuvre; the manner in which he publicly called the opposition's bluff and exposed the hypocrisy of the mullahs and the two-faced nature of people like Gasim Ibrahim.

Faced with an inflamed public charged with high religious rhetoric spewed by the local Taliban (I'm afraid, I have to include the likes of Dr Hassan Saeed in this), Anni could have easily chosen to plunge into feverish religious rhetoric himself.

Instead, he chose to make a public stand in favour of tolerant, moderate, traditional Islam. It is easy to underestimate the kind of courage it takes to do something like that in a society like the Maldives.

Where others like Velezinee and Ibra have repeatedly tried hard and failed, Anni succeeded in making the corrupt, runaway judiciary a subject of intense national debate, if only temporarily.

The Abdulla Ghazee episode proved to be his undoing. His activist bent of mind dictated, perhaps, that given the circumstances, the ends justified the means.

In a way, Anni has proved himself a sort of a soldier than a leader - more interested in building and preserving democracy than actually practicing it. This time, his big gamble failed.

Oftentimes in recent weeks, I have been forced to wonder whether it is worth preserving the 'Rule of Law' and the associated institutions - even when they are clearly dysfunctional and corrupt.Would the Maldivian public be better off with a benevolent, modernist dictator who can forcibly drag them in the direction of progress?

I hate to say that I can't answer it to this day.

One part of me understands how crucial it is to set proper democratic precedents in these early years. The other part of me sees not a ray of hope in the existing, corruption laden failure of a system - infested as it is by criminals and greedy businessmen consumed by avarice, and willing to burn society in the flames of violence and fundamentalism, if it means protecting their political or business interests.

Another thing that's constantly bothered me throughout the last couple of years is the lack of any credible opposition in the country - crooks and thieves with no apparent workable policies other than preventing the government from functioning in anyway.

It is not hard to see why the international community has been reluctant to back the opposition, or condemn President Nasheed's alleged excesses.

I truly dread to imagine bumbling idiots like Umar Naseer or Ahmed Mahfool (I'm sorry, I am unable to spell this guys name any other way) walk the hallways of power. This country simply cannot afford it.

But in a democracy, you have to live with what you get. And what you get is what you deserve. Maybe a stinking political system sustained by mindless personality cults, while masquerading as a 'democracy', is exactly what we deserve.

With the success of this coup, the Judiciary shall now instantly revert to being an instrument of political control and protection of the Gayoom clan and their cronies. I also predict that the local Taliban will again get a free run in spreading their hatred and paranoia, meeting even less resistance than the previous government. This is why I chose to use the word 'treason' in the title of this post. Traitors will now run our media and judiciary and other institutions.

As with every leadership change in Maldivian history, there'll be relentless efforts to demonize Anni in the coming days. From being a Zionist spy to a drunkard, he'll face every accusation.

And yet, despite all the flaws in his government, I sincerely believe that President Nasheed truly had great ambitions of going forward. The average Maldivian, however, insists on regressing. The relationship was bound to fail.

~Peace!

untitled

2012-02-04T06:01:00.000+05:00

to erase the god of ignorance;
to release from his dark clutches
bound prisoners of thought

to wipe away with reason
the blackness in their hearts,
and the darkness of their thoughts

science illuminates and reveals;
the futility of their prayers
and the battles that they fought