Posts from — January 2003

I’m extremely proud and excited to announce that my friend, a classmate, from my schooldays is going to represent India at the British Formula Ford 1800 Zetec series. He and his two team-mates have been selected from India by the reputed Peter Chambers Racing Team from Britain. British Formula Ford is the racing series, that is considered to be a very promising stepping stone to the super exclusive Formula One circuit. What makes this even more exciting and prestigious is that, the only other Indian to have been previosuly selected to represent India at this racing series has been Narain Karthikeyan.

Amit Kowli (my friend), Rohan Kowli (his younger bro) and Kunal Shah form the trinity that comprises of the REVS MOTORSPORT TEAM. These three have great racing credentials, having mastered the Karting circuits in India. Now they set their sights on the Formula Ford championships, considered by many experts as the first step towards the Formula One dream. Of course, there are lots more milestones to achieve and many steps to take before that happens. There are still circuits like Formula Renault, Formula Three, etc. to go before the big league. But they have taken the first step and that is the most important thing, especially in a country like India where the racing infrastructure is next to being absent.

Currently, REVS MOTORSPORT TEAM is being sponsored by Inter-Gold (the world no. 2 in the diamond market) with tie-ups with firms like GEM and Percept-Dmark. But the team is looking out for more sponsors as racing in Britain is a very expensive affair. If any of you belong to or know of any companies that sponsor motorsport or any sporting events, then the team would appreciate if you could put them through to your company’s contacts. Here is the contact address of the team.

Right now, Amit and his team-mates are busy participating in 12-hour endurance races, on the advice of Narain Karthikeyan. Amit and Rohan (both qualified architects) like to practice at the Landmarc Citi karting course at Worli in Mumbai. They build up stamina and strength by jogging twice a day and do cardio workouts to build strength in arms, legs and necks. Their diet too is strict. But they don’t mind it. Amit says, “So what if we don’t get to eat burgers, not many guys our age can get to race internationally, representing their country, do they?“.

Now you see… why I was proud and excited. After all, how many guys my age can boast of friends who race internationally, representing their country?? ;-)

In the book Achieving Rapid Dominance, the authors Harlan Ullman and James Wade discuss a military strategy that they have termed as Rapid Dominance. This term, as defined in the book, aims at “producing a capability that can more effectively and efficiently achieve the political or military objectives underwriting the use of force by rendering the adversary completely impotent.”

The book further does some detailed analysis of the term Rapid Dominance. It says,

In Rapid Dominance, “rapid” means the ability to move quickly before an adversary can react. This notion of rapidity applies throughout the spectrum of combat from pre-conflict deployment to all stages of battle and conflict resolution.

“Dominance” means the ability to affect and dominate an adversary’s will both physically and psychologically. Physical dominance includes the ability to destroy, disarm, disrupt, neutralize, and to render impotent. Psychological dominance means the ability to destroy, defeat, and neuter the will of an adversary to resist; or convince the adversary to accept our terms and aims short of using force. The target is the adversary’s will, perception, and understanding. The principal mechanism for achieving this dominance is through imposing sufficient conditions of “Shock and Awe” on the adversary to convince or compel it to accept our strategic aims and military objectives. Clearly, deception, confusion, misinformation, and disinformation, perhaps in massive amounts, must be employed. The key objective of Rapid Dominance is to impose this overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on. In crude terms, Rapid Dominance would seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary’s perceptions and understanding of events that the enemy would be incapable of resistance at tactical and strategic levels. An adversary would be rendered totally impotent and vulnerable to our actions. Theoretically, the magnitude of Shock and Awe Rapid Dominance seeks to impose (in extreme cases) is the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese. The Japanese were prepared for suicidal resistance until both nuclear bombs were used. The impact of those weapons was sufficient to transform both the mindset of the average Japanese citizen and the outlook of the leadership through this condition of Shock and Awe. The Japanese simply could not comprehend the destructive power carried by a single airplane. This incomprehension produced a state of awe.

I haven’t gone through the exercise of reproducing parts of a certain obscure military strategy book, for nothing.

George Bush is preparing to translate the theory of Shock and Awe into practice. It will be called the A-Day. A for airstrikes so lethal and devastating that they would leave Saddam’s soldiers, not just incapable of retaliation but also unwilling to do so.

Just to gauge the intensity of this strategy, consider this. In the first two days of air-strikes, Pentagon plans to launch as many as 800 Cruise missiles (yeah! you heard that right!!) attargets in Iraq. That means a mind-boggling 400 missiles a day. A number that is double the number of such missiles launched in the entire 40-day campaign of the Gulf War in 1991. I’ve heard that Texans always think big. But this is ridiculous!!

“There will not be a safe place in Baghdad,” a Pentagon official told America’s CBS News after a briefing on the plan. “The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before.”

Analysts say that the main objective is not just to disable Iraq’s fighting capacity but to leave the civilian population dispirited and unwilling to support Saddam’s regime. But hasn’t it been tom-tommed countless number of times how the Iraqi civilian population is dis-illusioned with Saddam’s rule and are not supportive of him. Then why, pray why is this necessary. On top of this Harlan Ullman, the author of the book mentioned above says, “You’re sitting in Baghdad and, all of a sudden, you’re the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power and water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted.” Great!! Bush listens to such people!

Now, how much does it take for Saddam to escape all this murder and mayhem sought ot be wrought by the Americans led by a sabre-rattling Bush?? Not much. His bunkers and tactics of using look-alikes worked very well last time around and there is no reason why they may not work this time as well. Moreover The Gulf nations aren’t as readily agreeable to Bush’s war plans as they were last time (even though, it begs to be pointed out that even last time, it took coercion to get them to agree for strikes against Iraq). So, it will not be too difficult for Saddam, his sons adn his military top-brass to sneak out of Iraq before the bombing starts. And we have seen in Afghanistan how Osama and his band of terrorists managed to sneak through American dragnets time and time again (in fact, the frustration of these failures in Afghanistan is what has led Bush to aim at a soft target like Saddam. And I mean soft target because it is very easy to get the world to hate Saddam on any given day). So, who then is left to suffer?? The Iraqi people… as usual!!

Reposrts say that Bush is prepared to give UN inspectors another month to complete their tasks. Now, doesn’t this sound magnanimous on the part of George W?? But it is interesting to note that in a Gallup poll published yesterday, only 17% of the respondents were actually in favour of going to war with Iraq. With a huge chunk of the population, as large as 83%, opposed to war, George W Bush dare not jump into the war just yet. Over the course of next month, he will give speeches like the State of Union Address that he delivered yesterday while announcing a new medicare policy. He will use each and every forum to deliver speeches that will whip up sentiments of the American public in favour of war. He’ll work on the philsophy mentioned by Hermann Goering before he was sentenced to death. Goering said, “Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

History repeats itself, they say. Not like this, please!

With war clouds looming large on his country’s horizon, Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son has already warned, “If they come, September 11, which they are crying over and see as a big thing, will be a real picnic for them, God willing. They will be hurt and pay a price they will never imagine. They can get much more from Iraq without resorting to the logic of force and war.”

Good begets good… Bad will definitely beget more bad!

In the end, I’m totally shocked and certainly not in awe!

Those two ladies are at it again!!

Ashwini and Shanti have come up with yet another gem of an idea. Its called Blog Mela (or so it is called at the moment, at least). It will be a collection of the week’s best posts from the Indian blog world. And it’ll be hosted by RealWomenOnline.com which is another of their brilliant ideas.

The ladies explain the concept of Blog Mela, thus. “You send in your best posts for the week or You send in a link to a post that you have read on someone else’s blog(it has to be an Indian blog though). Your entries have to reach us by tuesday evening IST. The posts will be published on Wednesday morning EST.“.

The restriction on submissions for Blog Mela is that the submitted blogs should not be personal posts. All other topics are allowed.

Ashwini adds a threat (oops! … a warning) “If you don’t send in those posts, we are still going ahead with the Mela and we are going to pick the posts ourselves at random. Let it not be said that you were not forewarned. :-)

Well, I’ll be looking forward to reading an assortment of best Indian blog-posts on Blog Mela. Who knows, perhaps one day this good-for-nothing scribbler might be published there! ;-) :-p

Bungler left a comment on my tagboard (zonkboard) which mentioned the name of Ken Nichols O’Keefe. To be frank, I hadn’t heard of O’Keefe previously. Bungler mentioned that he was interviewed by Tim Sebastien on BBC’s Hard Talk and came across as “totally commited, with integrity and belief in what he does”. So, I read up on this guy who is called the Human Shield.

Ken Nichols O’Keefe is a Gulf War veteran who joined the US Marines Corps in 1989 as a nineteen year-old eager to serve his country. In 1991, he was sent to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. He came to know that US ammunition in the war included the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) against civilian population. This meant that even the US troops using this deadly ammo were at risk. It was George Bush Sr. using the Gulf War as a testing ground for DU-based ammo, in the process, using the ‘heroes’ as mere guinea pigs.

In 1999, O’Keefe renounced his US citizenship citing the reason that it was done “in shame and disgust having arrived at the logical, albeit belated, conclusion that my government was not worthy of my funding - through taxes - and certainly not my allegiance. Paying for roads and schools is one thing, paying for “Weapons of Mass Destruction” to the point of insanity and nurturing global oppression is another thing all together. No moral being can be compelled to fund war, death and murder.“.

You might say, what is it that makes this Ken Nichols O’Keefe so important. Well, he is an anti-war crusader who will go to Iraq (alongwith other like-minded peaceniks) and volunteer to act as human shield against the US-led attacks. He agrees that he and his fellow human shield volunteers might be maimed or killed. But that, he says, is not worse than the fate that innocent Iraqis will have to face. He points out that it is not about supporting Saddam Hussein (which, he points out, is what US did in the past). Instead it is about expressing solidarity for the Iraqi people and letting them know that not everybody in the Western world wants war with them. O’Keefe hits the nail right on the head when he argues that “…we will bring home to western public, the human cost of war because, unfortunately, the death and destruction faced daily by countless millions of our fellow human beings seems somehow an unfathomable abstraction unless western lives are at stake as well.“. Well said, Mr. O’Keefe!

He also quotes Gandhi, “…peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.“.

Sounds quite idealistic and full of rhetoric, doesn’t it? Well, maybe! But this is better than the idealism touted by Bush and Blair in their claims to be the sole defenders of peace and democracy and their so-called rights to assert their will on the weaker nations of the world.

Well, what do you people think?

Complete works of Shakespeare, all rolled into one play! Well, that’s what the Reduced Shakespeare Company has been doing for the last six years or so, in London.

The London Theatre Guide Review says about the play…

The Reduced Shakespeare Company, perform a collection of sketches that is sure to have the Bard turning in his grave. Shakespeare has never been lampooned with such disrespect before and no doubt never will be again. All his sonnets are reduced to eight lines, his comedies are condensed into one short sketch, and the tragedies are ridiculed unmercifully. Hamlet is abridged into a two-minute sketch that can even be performed backwards.

These days the RSC is in Mumbai and will be performing the Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at the Sophia Bhabha Hall at 7:30 PM every day from 29^th Jan 2003 to 2^nd Feb 2003.

I would love to go and check it out!! :-)