Andaman and Nicobar is a cluster of 572 islands which is dotted in Bay of Bengal 1000km far from India – 800km from near Myanmar towards Indonesia. Non-Indian nationals need permits to visit Andaman Islands while the Nicobar Islands are inaccessible to tourists.

Port Blair, with most number of hotels, is the capital and focal point of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The most famous attraction in Port Blair is the cellular jail built at the time of British colonial rule. Today the Port Blair jail is a national monument and the major tourist attraction. The second highest peak in Andaman- Mount Harriet is a very well known tourist destination. People come there for adventure filled activities like trekking. It is also a perfect spot for bird watching. The other tourist attractions include Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park at Wandoor, which is a group of 15 islands blessed with a rich array of aquatic life. Activities like glass bottomed boat ride and snorkeling are the main specialty.

Port Blair has connectivity with two Indian cities, Chennai and Kolkata, by air. There are also regular ship cruises that take tourists from Chennai, Kolkata and Vishakhapatanam. There are resorts and tourists homes to take care of the accommodation.

The Huffington Post
Posted: June 22, 2009
By Sanjeev Bery

CNN.com columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. is the latest to join the chorus of voices calling on President Obama to get tougher with the Iranian government. While tempting, the CNN commentator’s words fail to consider the legacy of 25 years of U.S. intervention against Iranian democracy.

In a column published on Friday, June 19th, Navarrette argues:

The president needs to say to the world that we’re choosing sides in this conflict and that we’re rooting for the protesters against the people who are trying to beat them into submission and suppress the tides of progress.

Navarrette gives in to a temptation that many of us must feel. There is an instinctive sense of solidarity that comes when one watches footage of the brave Iranian voters who dare to challenge a repressive regime. If we as individual Americans feel this way, then why shouldn’t our government offer an official statement condemning the Iranian government? Iran’s leaders, after all, are hurting their own people.

This temptation becomes a bit more complicated once one considers the long years from 1953 to 1979. Many American commentators begin their reflections on Iran with the 1979 revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini into power. But it was the 25 years of U.S. foreign policy prior to 1979 that must be considered in adopting the right response.

As veteran New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer once documented, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the CIA to overthrow Iran’s first Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, recounts Mossadegh’s rise to power on a wave of Iranian democratic activism opposed to Britain’s control of Iranian oil.

It was a period of intense decolonization around the world, as independence movements asserted themselves against British colonial rule. Indeed, the world’s largest democracy was born just a few years earlier, when Mahatma Gandhi and his peers pushed the British off the Indian subcontinent.

In Iran, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was yet another example of Britain’s many colonial tentacles. This specific tentacle was cut by Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh when he nationalized Britain’s oil holdings shortly after being elected. Because of this, and because his governing coalition included a few communists, the CIA launched Operation Ajax and replaced Iran’s fragile democracy with a dictatorship.

For the next 25 years, the U.S. backed the Shah of Iran, a sometimes brutal dictator. The Shah’s Savak secret police arrested, tortured, and killed democratic opponents of the regime. Indeed, one could draw a nauseous parallel between some of the Shah’s actions and current events in Tehran. It seems that dictators, secular or Islamic, use the same brutal toolkit for maintaining power.

Given this history, Navarrette’s unqualified sense of mission in his CNN.com column seems out of place:

[Obama] needs to abandon his neutrality and express clearly the principles that our country represents, the secret ingredient in our sauce, if you will — what it is that makes us tick and why we are moved by what we see happening in Iran.

After all, a cornerstone of the current Islamic Republic of Iran’s ideology is its resistance to perceived U.S. dominance. If the White House were to explicitly condemn the current Iranian regime, it would be easy for that regime to reference our history of controlling Iranian politics. Forceful rhetoric from the U.S. could be used to delegitimize the very democracy activists we support.

But this subtle nuance is lost for some American commentators, primarily because the topic of U.S. intervention in Iran is still somewhat taboo in some corners of U.S. political discourse. This is finally starting to change, as U.S. Senator John Kerry’s recent opinion piece in the New York Times demonstrates:

The last thing we should do is give Mr. Ahmadinejad an opportunity to evoke the 1953 American-sponsored coup, which ousted Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and returned Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power. Doing so would only allow him to cast himself as a modern-day Mossadegh, standing up for principle against a Western puppet.

But there is still an aversion among many American commentators to discussing the hard facts, and Navarrette’s CNN column reflects this. This is especially surprising, given that Navarrette is no journalism novice. He is a member of the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board and a nationally syndicated columnist.

Thankfully, Obama is adopting a more calibrated line. His statement Saturday morning included the following:

We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people … If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion … right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

With the phrase “bearing witness,” Obama undermines any Iranian claims that the U.S. is overtly intervening. By saying that the Iranian government it must “govern through consent,” Obama is undermining any claims that the U.S. seeks to overthrow the Iranian regime. As a result, the White House is making it harder for Iran’s current leadership to refocus attention on our own troubled history in the region.

Aristocrat Thomas Cholmondeley

Via BBC News / The Metro

A court has sentenced a descendant of Kenya’s most famous white settlers to eight months in prison for the manslaughter of a black man on his vast estate.

Thomas Cholmondeley was convicted of manslaughter last week over the 2006 shooting of a 37-year-old black poacher Robert Njoya. Manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in Kenya.

Correspondents say the case has touched on deep sensibilities in Kenya, where white people took vast swathes of the best agricultural land during British colonial rule until 1963, before the new Kenyan elite did exactly the same.

The case has inflamed old tensions over land, race and privilege in the east African nation. Continue Reading/View Video Footage…..

Cholmondeley was simply following the long standing tradition of punishing the “savages” severely when they dared to step out of line.

I wonder how many black folks his descendants chased down, wounded and killed during the good old days of British Colonial rule.

Ahhh fun times…..

Rest In Peace Robert Njoya.

Well, if I write a post about my mom’s birthday, I can’t leave out dear old dad. So, here’s to you, Dad! Happy Birthday and I love you. Here is a recap of other reasons July 1st is so special:

Other important and/or famous people such as Estée Lauder, Sydney Pollack, Twyla Tharp, Terrance Mann, Dan Aykroyd, Princess Diana, Pamela Anderson, Missy Elliott, and Liv Tyler were also born on this day.

Not only is this my dad’s birthday, but it is also Canada Day, Ghana Republic Day, and many Saints days around the world.

July 1st is the 183rd day of this year and the half way marker of this leap year.

Some past famous days in history include the following:

• 1858 – The joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace’s papers on evolution to the Linnean Society.
• 1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Gettysburg begins.
• 1870 – The United States Department of Justice formally comes into existence.
• 1881 – The world’s first international telephone call takes place between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States.
• 1921 – The Communist Party of China is founded.
• 1931 – United Airlines began service (as Boeing Air Transport).
• 1962 – Independence of Rwanda.
• 1972 – The first Gay Pride march in England takes place.
• 1979 – Sony introduces the Walkman.
• 1980 – O Canada officially becomes the national anthem of Canada.
• 1984 – The PG-13 rating is introduced by the MPAA.
• 1991 – The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.
• 1997 – The People’s Republic of China resumes sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule.
• 2000 – The Oresund Bridge, connecting Sweden and Denmark, opens for traffic.
• 2007 – Smoking in England is banned in all public indoor spaces. With the ban already in force in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, this means it is illegal to smoke in indoor public places anywhere in the UK. The ban is also put into effect in Australia.

The events unfolding during and after the elections of Kenya, have left many around the world full of remorse and shock whilst looking on helplessly as the tribal and political killings escalated.

Perhaps the current problems in Kenya can partially be placed at the feet of the fundamentalist Islamic movement on the coastline and the Northeast.   There is no doubt that Islamic fundamentalism has been creeping in at a steady pace through the eastern territories over the two decades. 

The international online defence magazine reports that “Kenya’s sudden spiral into chaos after years being regarded as a regional stability in the turbulent Black African continent, will no doubt strike a heavy blow on the economies of a wide swathe of neighbouring nations. But while the present scale of internecine violence came as quite a surprise, it was not the first time that this African nation became engulfed in chaos.

From October 1952 to December 1957 Kenya was under a state of emergency arising from the so-called “Mau Mau” rebellion against British colonial rule, over the deprivation of the Kikuyu majority. The official number of Kenyans killed was estimated at 11,503. Much fighting among the various tribes followed, until independence from Great Britain in December 1963, when Jomo Kenyatta, also a Kikuyu became first prime minister of the autonomous Kenyan government. Over the last decade or so, Kenya was regarded an African success story. Beginning to enjoy the fruits of its stability and openness, its economy has grown by more than 6 per cent annually in recent years. But now, in just a few bloody days, since a disputed election on December 27, Kenya has quickly slipped from democratic hopeful, escalating into uncontrollable chaos and brutal murder. From years of prosperity, it threatened to become the scene of just another regional, highly dangerous trouble spot, torn by ethnic bloodletting and prone to outside terrorist intervention”.  To read the full article, click here.