Counter Rallies In The Maldives
Women’s protest in the Maldives. Via Facebook.
Haveeru has an interesting an article with cross-quotes from different protests in the Maldives. One side is Nasheed and the MDP, who are calling for elections after a police and politician led coup. The other is the current coalition, calling Anni (Nasheed) names and saying the current unelected government is just fine. I suppose you can tell what side I’m on. The coup was bullshit. Just let people vote.
Anyways, here’s some cross quotes:
On Islam
President Nasheed: Everyone would know that we would not back down in bringing this country back on track. Justice has been corresponded with Islam. We should adhere to Islamic principles. We do not use religion as a weapon for our political gains.
Adhaalath Party President Imran Abdulla: We have achieved this not because we are above anyone else. And not also because we had special plans. Everything we have achieved is reward by Allah for our just efforts.
On The Protests
President Nasheed: I assure you that the people gathered here tonight are not the only ones who are in support of us. Every person who loves democracy are with us here tonight. We know that the people of this nation cannot be persuaded by money. The people want love and affection and their problems addressed. People do not want their leader to cordon off the streets while he rides in a motorcade. No one can rule by force and intimidation. I want to inform everyone. No one should entertain even the idea of not holding early elections. Such a notion would pave the way for tyranny.
(Coup) President Waheed: We will not allow anyone to create unrest and violence. Anyone who loves this nation would not torch property of this country. We will defend this nation with the last drop of our blood. We are not afraid to die for this cause. Today the real traitors are them. There is no place for people who destroy the economy of this nation.
And it goes on. Interesting read, from Haveeru Online. The jist of the coupers seems to be that Anni drank and betrayed Islam and this coup was a good thing and everybody go home, unless you’re traitors. Anni and the main protestors jist seems to be, this was an undemocratic coup, let’s have early election and let the people decide who reads the Maldives. I suppose you can see which side I agree with. I wish the best of luck to the MDP, and peace to everyone in the Maldives.
The TV show the Sopranos taught me a lot about Sri Lankan politics. I was very sad to hear that the lead actor James Gandolfini 
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I just gave a talk at the University Of Sri Jayawardenapura along with Reeza Zarook of Anything.lk and Rohan Jayaweera of Google. These are my notes: Devin Jayasundara asked me for a subject for this talk and I told him Internet property. But I talked to my fiancé Shru and she had a better idea. Startups aren’t about creating property at all, not really. They’re about creating territory, about creating land.
I haven’t been blogging much, I know. It’s partly because we’ve been doing a lot of work on YAMU, especially shipping 1.0.1 of the Android app today. It’s on the 
It’s sad to see the Maldives going down the path of religious extremism and backwardness. Why is it that lately Islam seems to be inspiring extremism in a lot of Muslim communities? It’s happening in Sri Lanka as well without a word of protest from the Muslim community at large. Honestly, were the liberal Maldivians of a century ago “bad Muslims”? Whatever said and done according to the new Maldivian constitution you cannot be Maldivian if you are not Muslim. How weird (and stupid) is that? There is absolutely no way that in a given society every single person within it can have the same beliefs and the same level of conviction regarding that belief. I find this very typical of many Muslim societies – they want all the rights and privileges when they are a minority but in places where they are in the majority there is very little rights and freedoms afforded to the non-Muslim minorities.
Typo there: jist = gist?
I like “coupers”.