How to spoil a perfectly good summer

Do a PhD.

What I should be enjoying

"No Real Than You Are"?

(via the BBC)

A 2.5 mtr high Lego man washed up on a beach in Holland yesterday. What is his shirt trying to tell us? Legomen presumably have Danish as their mother tongue, so we can forgive him his mistakes in his English sloganeering, and just enjoy its crypticness.

Book review: "God's Terrorists" by Charles Allen

It was the subtitle of this book that made me buy it - "The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of the Modern Jihad". I've been trying to understand more about modern Saudi political history, and how the official Wahhabi form of Islam in Saudi Arabia has produced both a very politically conservative form that is absolutely supportive of the Saudi monarchy and the Salafi-Jihadis who want the violent overthrow of the same royal family, and thought the book might have something to say on the background of this. I was to be disappointed.

"God's Terrorists" isn't a bad book, it's just 90% a different book to the one suggested by the cover. See the camels in the picture? And the head scarves? Doesn't that sort of suggest Arabia? But oddly this is a book about Imperial India. Allen is a respected historian of the Raj, and perhaps that should have been a clue, but I would say both the front cover and back cover blurb deliberately set out to suggest this is book about the roots of modern jihadi terrorism and not about Empire-era India. What the meat of the book is about is Muslim radicalism within British-India, generally known at the time as the "Hindustani Fanatics". This is a fascinating story in itself: the origins of this group were Indian Muslims who in the early 19th century had gone to Saudi Arabia and had been inspired by Wahhabi puritanicalism and brought their zeal back with them. They were somewhat involved in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, but this was not a Muslim thing in particular with Hindu regiments mutinying as well. They fled India to hide out in the mountains of the North West frontier, bringing British and Indian-native forces into various skirmishes and minor wars with Pashtun tribes of the India/Afghanistan border regions. The Pashtuns didn't think much of the British invading their lands, but they didn't think much of the Wahhabis either, with the Imperial forces sometimes doing deals with them to drive the fanatics out - much like the current Pakistani government at times tries to do, co-opting the tribes against various foreign al-Qaeda groups.

This is all very interesting but really didn't have much to do with what was happening in Saudi Arabia at the time. In fact Allen notes that the Deobandi school of Islam, the specifically South Asian school that began in India in 1866, was set up in opposition to the Wahhabi inspired Hindustani fanatics (p.206-7). The Deobandi school has an important role to play in the development of Pakistani Islamism, and more globally because of the influence of Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, who along with Sayyid Qutb, was central to the development of modern Islamism. The Taliban are also described as Deobandi, although some say the claim is problematic.

There are some chapters that deal with Saudi Arabia, both the beginnings of the Wahhabi sect in 18th century and its more modern history, but they aren't anything I haven't read elsewhere and feel like a basic review of the known history, rather than an a fresh delve into primary sources - diaries, reports, statistical data - that Allen clearly has mastery of in the case of Raj-era India. Perfunctory would be the word. His descriptions of minor battles and skirmishes between the British and Indian Armies and the Pashtun tribesmen at the fag-end of the 19th century are well written military history. This is obviously Allen's 'thing', not Saudi Arabia. I'm pretty certain Allen had a book pretty much written just on Muslim radicalism during the Raj, but then his publishers suggested that if he gets the words al-Qaeda and Taliban in there a few times, and they put the word "terrorist" in the title, it would sell 20 times the amount that a military history of British Army skirmishes in the Hindu Kush a century ago. I bought it, so they were probably right. More fool me.

You will learn lots of things if you read this book. Just not what you expected.

Facebook vs. MySpace

Just a couple of months ago I entered with some trepidation the world of social networking sites by signing up to MySpace. After getting invites to be the friends of a few strange music acts I had never heard off (since I've also had some very thinly veiled invites to be someone's friend who is clearly trying to get people to click through to their porn site - "see the pictures MySpace won't let me share with you!"), seeing some truly terrible web design and generally not getting it - I blogged here: "What's the point of MySpace?"

I've found the answer now: there isn't any. I'm too posh for MySpace. Oddly, just days after blogging against MySpace, I got my first invite from a friend to join Facebook. Of course on signing up, it started spitting out numerous friends, past and present, mainly from universities I have studied at or old school friends. People I am actually interested in being in contact with.

So it was very interesting to hear on the ever excellent On the Media, an item on the class distinctions between MySpace and Facebook. It's not just high-school vs. university educated; in the military the enlisted men use MySpace and the officers use Facebook. The interesting essay that OTM has based their report on, notes that the US Army has now barred soldiers from accessing MySpace, but - unsuprisingly - not Facebook.

Life in Finland

Helsingin Sanomat International translates a rundown of the summer's news originally in their Finnish language monthly supplement, that had taken July off. It shouldn't be funny but is:

A lot has happened in Finland this summer, much of it while we were away. Firstly, at the beginning of June a 20-year-old man in Suomussalmi shot his sixteen-year-old former girlfriend and then himself. Then a 19-year-old man used a crossbow to kill two women of 22 years and 26 years of age while they slept in his apartment in Pori. And a 26-year-old man assaulted and killed a 50-year-old man at his home in Rauma. Another 26-year-old man killed a 45-year-old man on the victim's doorstep in Espoo, such that the victim's aged mother was a witness to the event.

And that's just the first paragraph. It goes on. And on.

Price transparency weirdness

One of the things that the introduction of the Euro means is that it is now much easier to compare prices across much of the EU when you are shopping - particularly internet shopping. Finland is clearly an expensive country, particularly as salaries are lower than the old EU member state average, whilst taxes are a bit higher than average. But sometimes you feel that some shops must just think we are just stupid. I've been looking at getting a digital SLR camera, the Canon EOS 400D is one that many recommend. Now obviously if you shop around you should be able to find the best price - but why would one company sell it at different prices in different countries? I've found the camera for sale on the site of a big trans-European electronics firm based in France, Pixmania, but I first saw it on their UK section. On Pixmania.co.uk the Canon is GBP 469, which is EUR 697.05. So then I looked at the Finnish bit of the site, where the camera is EUR 779. Strength of the pound allowing Japanese cameras to be bought with sterling for less or something like that, perhaps? Err... no, because if you buy it from the German bit of Pixmania site its only EUR 699.

What's up with that then? I could imagine that it might cost a bit more in postage to get it to Finland, but why should the base price for the same product be EUR 80 higher just so you can read the website page in a different language? Or maybe its because that product is selling locally in Finland for EUR 775 and they think Finns are too dumb to check outside of their home market? I haven't checked if the German bit of the site would ship to a Finnish address, the UK section only seemed to be for delivery within the UK - although I'm sure that must contravene some EU common market competition regulation...

Moan moan, and the government are making booze more expensive again, moan moan, and it'll be winter again soon.

Terrorism and failed states

I just love it when I'm right.

A couple of years ago it struck me that terrorists groups don't want to operate from failed states despite what we have heard from dozens of western politicians, military leaders and various 'experts' in the media. It's a point I've been trying to argue since. It is obvious really: failed states are awful places to live - ask a Somali refugee - and things don't work there and that includes for terrorists. Secondly when the government of a state fails, other governments stop respecting its sovereignty and feel free to intervene directly: in the early 1990s the Ethiopians repeatedly entered Somalia to kick the crap out of al-Ittihad al-Islami, a radical group they saw as threatening. After the genocide in Rwanda, the new Rwandan government repeatedly sent troops into the Congo to hunt down Interahamwe militias. Pre-9/11, al-Qaeda wasn't in Afghanistan because it had no government, it did - the Taliban was the de facto government. Bin Laden picked it because it had a government he could co-opt.

So I was chuffed to read in the executive summary of the newest report from West Point's excellent Combatting Terrorism Center the following:

Conventional wisdom suggests that Somalia, a failed state, would be an ideal safe haven for al-Qa’ida. Our analysis, however, indicates that weakly governed regions such as coastal Kenya, not failed states like Somalia, provide an environment more conducive to al-Qa’ida’s activities. In Somalia, al-Qa’ida’s members fell victim to many of the same challenges that plague Western interventions in the Horn. They were prone to extortion and betrayal, found themselves trapped in the middle of incomprehensible (to them) clan conflicts, faced suspicion from the indigenous population, had to overcome significant logistical constraints and were subject to the constant risk of Western military interdiction.

It's always great when the big boys agree with you. The whole report can be downloaded here, or look here at some of the other academically original and important work being done at the CTC.

An administration weaving all over the road

Most people know that President Bush got arrested for drink driving in his younger, more louche, pre-politics days. Indeed many journalists are arguing that Attorney General Gonzales only remains the attorney general, because he has always been Bush's personal lawyer and hence knows where the bodies are buried (not literally of course). So despite Alberto's first performance before the Congress back in the spring being compared by even a Republican to "clubbing a baby seal" (although let us note: the baby seals are innocent), he remains both the senior law enforcer in the United States and a national embarrassment. But whilst Bush's crimes are well known, I hadn't heard before that Dick Cheney had also been arrested for drink driving. Twice.

From Lexington in the week's Economist:

He found himself, in his early 20s, alone in a cell after his second arrest for drunk driving, wondering what to do with his life. (p.48)

There are many around the world who might wish he had sobered up before coming to his decision.