India's Defense Budget and Counterterrorism: A Thought
The recent article in the New York Times on India’s defense has some eye-popping numbers. The main news event is, India is looking to buy new fighter planes, and may spend as much as $10 billion on them. American arms manufacturers are chomping at the bit, especially as there are probably other big arms purchases in the pipeline. (For reference, last year’s entire defense budget is between $20-25 billion, according to this source; it may be an underestimate, however.)
I was thinking about this with last week’s terrorist attack in Hyderabad in mind, as well as with the ongoing problems with the Naxalites in the east and south. While I’m not by any means suggesting that India cut back on its defense spending, I do wonder whether the investment on hardware such as advanced fighter jets is really addressing India’s current (and likely future) military needs. Especially with a serious terrorism problem as well as ongoing internal uprisings, isn’t it possible that other kinds of military expenditures might be warranted? How do fighter jets help with terrorism or guerilla warfare?
India is developing and moving forward in many ways, but in controlling terrorism in its cities I think it has been relatively unsuccessful. Previous bombings in Mumbai and elsewhere in the past two years have usually followed a similar pattern: 1) intense police activity for a few weeks coinciding with nonstop media coverage, 2) possibly some suspects are detained who may or may not be the right people, and 3) everyone forgets, coinciding with a new media obsession. Security measures to prevent repeat attacks are generally not instituted.
There is a similar failure in suppressing the activities of Maoist rebels, who continue to inflict serious casualties on police as well as civilians; meanwhile police in some districts struggle to get adequate funding.
I’m not saying I have a pat answer to these problems. Rather, I’m wondering if a change in thinking about military spending and technology might be advisable. Admittedly, it could be argued that counterterrorism and Maoist rebels are really police, rather than military, issues, but given the number of deaths involved and the tactics used by rebels and terrorists alike, isn’t it possible the thinking should change? Aren’t there creative ways to use military resources to improve domestic programs to handle Naxalite insurgents in the countryside and terrorists in the cities?
I also wanted to state that I’m not saying India doesn’t need modernized jets. They serve a strong deterrent purpose, and I’m actually not opposed to the current proposed purchase. It’s more the overall budget picture and emphasis on hardware and technology for “the last big war” that concerns me. I do not see any future military conflicts in the nuclear-armed Indian subcontinent playing out along in conventional form. I think there will either be more Kargil-like small wars, proxy fighting via guerilla fighters armed by one or another state, or — and I hope to God it never happens — full-on nuclear annihilation.
Noureen DeWulf (of “Americanizing Shelley”) is featured in a new spoof of sports movies (a la ‘Not Another Teen Movie’) called “The Comebacks” - while she plays a football player (who wears part of her sari over her uniform in one shot??) her character’s name (why do people think confusing American Indians and South Asian Indians is funny?) and the other bizarre scenes in the preview do not make one optimistic. Time will tell if it’s another Harold & Kumar-like breakthrough - or just offensive.
There are so many things wrong with that character’s name, my head is paining. But it gets better— they don’t just mash up Native Americans with desis; one scene depicts faux athletes training…while Jizminder gyrates like a belly dancer, up on a platform.
Maybe I am getting anxious about further filmy humiliation for no reason. Over at WorstPreviews, they don’t even mention Noureen/Jizminder, despite her memorably madcap adventures on the field, during which she tackles someone while wearing her helmet AND a chunni!
Eh, what am I so upset about…East is all East, right? Aladdin, turbans, Ayatollahs, Jasmine, Ali Baba, Taj Mahal. I wonder, since we’re conflating everything, could we claim Esther as one of our own? I have always loved her. Persian, Indian…close enough. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must wrap up this post. I’m running late— I was supposed to bhangra outside my teepee, for no discernible reason, a full hour ago.
Gregory Clark is quickly becoming the economist du jour due to his recently published (and quite controversial) A Farewell to Alms. Late last year, Sepia Mutiny had a preview of some of the book’s content and, as schedule permits, we will likely cover more of it moving forward. As we said back then, for Mutineers Clark is definitely an economist to watch relative to others due to his outsized focus on Indian economic history.
So, until we get a chance to dive into more of the detail here, GNXP (Razib’s home when he’s not a 1-man comments machine on SM) has a great interview with Clark up right now and question #1 hits squarely into desi territory -
1) In some early work, you wondered why workers in British cotton mills were so much more productive than workers in Indian cotton mills. You discuss this in the last chapter of A Farewell to Alms. You looked at a lot of the usual explanations-incentives, management, quality of the machines-and none of them really seemed to explain the big gap in productivity. Finally, you seemed to turn to the idea that it’s differences between the British and Indian workers themselves-maybe their culture, maybe their genes-that explained the difference. How did you come to that conclusion?
…When I set out in my PhD thesis to try and explain differences in income internationally in 1910 I found that asking simple questions like “Why could Indian textile mills not make much profit even though they were in a free trade association with England which had wages five times as high?” led to completely unexpected conclusions. You could show that the standard institutional explanation made no sense when you assembled detailed evidence from trade journals, factory reports, and the accounts of observers. Instead it was the puzzling behavior of the workers inside the factories that was the key.
What was this “puzzling behavior”? Well, unfortunately, it appears a good chunk of it was IST.
Read the rest, let it whet your appetite for more, and expect to see Clark here on SM in the near future
As someone who tries earnestly to be a better citizen of the planet (car-sharing, cloth grocery bags, no printing stuff unless it’s required, turning off faucet when brushing teeth/sudsing hands, obsessive recycling, impressive amounts of reusing, not so good on the “reducing”…sorry), I tend to fume at SUV-drivers and not bat an eyelash at my carnivorous and omnivorous peers, even though I am well aware of all the statistics which Esprit, Sting and other organizations drilled in to me in the 90s regarding how many acres or gallons of water beef requires blah blah blah.
Well, apparently I can’t give H3s dirty looks any more.
EVER since “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore has been the darling of environmentalists, but that movie hardly endeared him to the animal rights folks. According to them, the most inconvenient truth of all is that raising animals for meat contributes more to global warming than all the sport utility vehicles combined.
The biggest animal rights groups do not always overlap in their missions, but now they have coalesced around a message that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving. They and smaller groups have started advertising campaigns that try to equate vegetarianism with curbing greenhouse gases.
Oy, I don’t see this going over well with the public at all. Amurricans love their flesh. They like to eat meat, too.
Some backlash against this position is inevitable, the groups acknowledge, but they do have scientific ammunition. In late November, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.
That sound you heard was my mind being blown. I knew raising animals was less than ideal, I never realized that it was worse than driving, let alone all types of transportation combined! SWEET. I can go back to having naughty dreams about the Veyron, sans shame or guilt. Anyone know how to type that sound Homer makes when he’s contemplating donuts or other yummy things? Because I’m totally doing that right now.
It looks like Pervez Musharraf is planning to step down as army chief before the upcoming elections in Pakistan. He’s also going to allow former leaders who have corruption charges hanging over their heads — namely Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — to return and context in those elections.
Today, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan’s minister for railways, said at a news conference: “There is no more uniform issue. It has been settled and the president will make an announcement.” The news conference was reported by the state-run news agency reported.
Sheikh Mansoor Ahmed, the deputy secretary general of Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party, said he believed that the agreement had been made. ”My personal information is that President Musharraf has agreed to take off his military uniform before the presidential elections,” he said. “An announcement in this regard will be made very soon. Within the next 72 hours, everything will be clear.”
In an apparent confirmation, Ms Bhutto told the independent Aaj television channel: “Eighty to ninety percent of the issues have been settled. Ten to 20 percent have yet to be decided,”
“Some matters relating to a balance of power between the parliament and presidency are still pending,” Ms Bhutto said in the television interview. (link)
Obviously, this story could change dramatically in the next few days as the details are announced. There will then probably be another gap to see if Musharraf really does what he promises, and then again as we watch and see how the elections go. In the meanwhile, it’s never too early to start gossiping and speculating wildly. Here are my early, completely wild speculations:
1) This agreement could easily fall apart. The language in these early reports is very sketchy. Wait until it comes out of the horse’s mouth directly.
2) Or perhaps, the agreement is for real. Musharraf realizes that neither Sharif nor Bhutto are likely to beat him in an open election, especially if he pits one against the other and the opposition parties are divided. By seeming to give away power, he stands to gain the stamp of democratic respectability on the world stage. That would mean at least five more years in power, and no more whining from Benazir Bhutto about this and that.
3) The agreement is for real, but it might not be as good as it sounds; small matters such as the balance of power between the parliament and the presidency might not be so small. If he throws in a “nuclear” option, the idea of “power sharing” might turn out to be merely a tease.
4) Musharraf has a very friendly cousin who can step in to run the army. The name will be announced the day after elections are held.
5) He’s giving up the uniform, but his business suit is khaki-colored and comes with a gun holster. It’s also made of 100% kevlar, and in large block print on the back it says, “IFTIKAR CHAUDHURY CAN BITE ME.”
Feel free to add your own reasoned analysis and/or wild speculations as to what it means.
An Important Message, Which Has Nothing to do with Spelling.
Neale left an important tip on our news tab, about a video which erstwhile-funny-mang Jim Carrey made, in support of human rights. I have quoted the short, AP article, which I ganked from the NYT, below.
NEW YORK (AP) — Jim Carrey has made a straight-to-YouTube video. And it’s not funny at all.
The 45-year-old actor-comedian — in rare serious mode — appears in a new public service announcement on behalf of the Human Rights Action Center and the U.S. Campaign for Burma. The goal: To free Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been confined by the Burmese government for 11 of the last 17 years.
”Even though she’s compared to a modern-day Ghandi or Nelson Mandela, most people in America still don’t know about Aung San,” Carrey says in the filmed message, posted Tuesday on YouTube.
”And let’s face it: the name’s a little difficult to remember. Here’s how I did it: Aung San sounds a lot like `unsung,’ as in unsung hero. Aung San Suu Kyi is truly an unsung hero.”
Suu Kyi, who is under long-term house arrest in the city of Yangon, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent efforts to bring down the oppressive military regime that rules over the Southeast Asian country.
The regime, led by General Than Shwe, has destroyed more than 3,000 villages in eastern Burma — forcing more than a 1.5 million people to leave their homes — and recruited more child soldiers than any other country in the world, Carrey says in his spot.
”People around the world need to come to her aid, just as they supported Mandela when he was locked up,” said Jeremy Woodrum, co-founder of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, in a statement Tuesday.
”This announcement contributes to an upsurge in activism around Aung San Suu Kyi in the United States and throughout the world.”
Now I am tempted to annoy our veddy good, veddy smart Sree-chettan (oh, would that I were three and could get away with calling him SAJA-chetta) and ask him a question which has nothing to do with spelling, at all. If I did ask him a question, which had nothing to do with spelling, I would be inquiring for my own edification about whether an august newspaper like The New York Times is allowed to tweak things which they get from the Associated Press.
I am tempted to bug him (and on what better day than Raksha Bhandan!), but then I remember, the only person who is smarter than a veddy smart Journalism professor is the wife of a veddy smart Journalism professor! And our Roopa-chechi, well, she has twin toddlers. She doesn’t have time for my nonsense. ;)
In any case, I will excuse myself and get out of your way, so you can debate and discuss this most significant news story; I’m being sincere when I say that Aung San Suu Kyi deserves your attention.
A slightly Anonymous Tipster operating via the chimney which is our News tab gifted me with a robust cup of breakfast-reading which perked me right up.
How’s that for two utterly unrelated metaphors? Huh? Yeeeah, boyee.
Today’s edition of Cary-wisdom is inspired by a letter writer (LW) who can be neatly summed up by the title of the column:
I don’t want to be a doctor!
Fair enough, LW. A good number of us did or didn’t, but I want to know more about you, even as part of me groans, knowing I will regret it and get all uber-bitch on your ass by the end of this.
Aug. 28, 2007 | Dear Cary,
I am 20 years old, go to a state university, and am severely confused on what I want to do in life.
When I was little, I wanted to be an “artist.” With the beret, paintbrushes and canvas. Then, I moved on. Sure, I loved art, and enjoyed it, and was good at it, but I realized I wasn’t exceptionally creative in that sense. So I wanted to be a journalist. That idea left as soon as it entered my mind in high school. Then, toward the lag end of high school, I got interested in becoming a doctor. It wasn’t out of some desire I had to cure the world or make lots of money. It was because of my parents.
My parents and my family are from the Indian subcontinent and are Muslim. In their minds, the best thing to be is a professional. Especially a doctor. My father always tells me that I should be a doctor to help people and to be independent. My dad works away from home and flies back to my family every three to four weeks. It’s a hard life for him, because he misses out on our lives. It’s important to him that I become independent and have the ability to work wherever I want to. So, in high school, I took some medical classes. I enjoyed them; they weren’t my favorite classes, but they were, I suppose, “all right.”
When I started applying for university, for my possible majors, I would alternate between political science and English. My mother would ask me to write “pre-medicine” next to the others. Therefore, when I got accepted, I was put into the pre-professional advising. I never truly desired to become a doctor. The only reason I wanted to become one was to help people. To fix them. So I kept going. I took biology, chemistry, bioethics.
Then, my sophomore year, last year, I fell apart. I took physics and organic chemistry. I was doing terribly in both. I made a 48 on my first exam in physics and a 63 in organic. I had to decide whether or not to drop physics. I eventually did, and I was so disappointed in myself. You see, I did well in high school. I took many Advanced Placement classes, made A’s, and was an excellent student. And I got burnt out. I just couldn’t force myself to work. I tried, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t care enough. So I eventually made a C in organic.
It was during this semester that I would get these sort of panic attacks. I would just cry and cry when thinking about how badly I was doing in life, in organic, in everything. This is what really scared me the most. I always prided myself on not stressing out, not freaking out, and doing well in what I was studying for. But here was a class that just broke me down into tears. I couldn’t study when I was like that.
Then, the spring semester began. I took the second part of organic. Struggled through it and was averaging a C in the class. Then I fell apart again. I made a 48 on my last test, which dropped me to a D. I had to make an amazing grade on the final. I didn’t start studying for the final until the night before because I had basically given up. I failed the class with an F. In all my other classes that semester, I made A’s and B’s.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has a new CD out. While that may seem unlikely, given that he passed away ten years ago, it’s true. Italian/British producer Gaudi took old master tapes from the early 1970s in the possession of Nusrat’s original Pakistani record label (Rehmat Gramohpone), and reinterpreted them with Dub/Reggae beats. The sound is fresh, if not technically new — a successful way to bring back the ghost of Nusrat in a recording studio. Dub Qawwali has recently been released on Six Degrees Records; Gaudi was interviewed by NPR here.
Dub Qawwali is a collection of Nusrat songs that, for the most part, I hadn’t heard before, though admittedly my Nusrat collection is hardly definitive. The production quality, for those who pay attention to such things, is flawless, and the sound is “warm” — mainly because Gaudi used live musicians and vintage analog equipment to create a rich soundscape. It’s most definitely not the cheesy Bally Sagoo remix approach, where you get the feeling that the whole thing was put together on a computer by a stoned teenager. Here is how the record label describes the approach:
The use of vintage analogue studio equipment and dub production techniques such as tape echoes, valve amps, Fender Rhodes, spring reverbs, Hammond organ and Moog, characterizes Gaudi’s production style, however it is not without its share of 21st century intervention and wizardry… Individual tracks from the original 70’s multi-track recordings often contained multiple parts together on them. These had to then be carefully cleaned up in order to make them usable in a way that would enable the composition of these new works. (This included much of the vocal parts which were mixed in the same track as the Harmonium and other instruments!) (link)
While not as large as the NYC meetup, ~25 folks swung by Greco’s over the course of the evening. The majority of the attendees were deep lurkers (although, apparently, fanatical comments readers). A handful of folks were visiting SF on vacation or en route to other locales with the Sunday afternoon meetup lining up perfectly with their scheds. Some folks brought the party (thank you DJ Dp). Still, other folks were conspicuous by their absence (best wishes to A N N A ; SFGirl, Camille + a few others)
Two new records were set for IST -
Early: Mutineer Dharti figured a “lazy Sunday” might mean that folks would show up as soon as 1:00
Very Early: Mutineer Harbeer (wallet chain and all) thought the meetup was supposed to be on Saturday
Post meetup, the hearty select ventured to Kennedy’s Irish Pub & Curry House…
Take an extra long bath, put on your prettiest mundum neriyathum, look forward to some Kaikottakali and smile brightly— Mahabali is coming home, and we don’t want him to know we are forlorn without him.
What’s that you say? You have no idea what I’m talking about? Fret not, almost no one ever does. The tale of Onam and Kerala’s most beloved King is available for your edification, below.
The story goes that the beautiful state of Kerala was once ruled by an Asura (demon) king, Mahabali. The King was greatly respected in his kingdom and was considered to be wise, judicious and extremely generous. It is said that Kerala witnessed its golden era in the reign of King Mahabali. Everybody was happy in the kingdom, there was no discrimination on the basis of caste or class. Rich and poor were equally treated. There was neither crime, nor corruption. People did not even lock their doors, as there were no thieves in that kingdom. There was no poverty, sorrow or disease in the reign of King Mahabali and everybody was happy and content.
It may be noted Mahabali was the son of Veerochana and grandson of Prahlad, the devout son of demon King Hiranyakashyap. Mahabali had a son called Bana, who became a legendary king in his own right and became popular as Banraj in central Assam. Mahabali belonged to the Asura (demon) dynasty but was an ardent worshiper of Lord Vishnu. His bravery and strength of character earned him the title of “Mahabali Chakravathy” or Mahabali - the King of Kings.
Looking at the growing popularity and fame of King Mahabali, Gods became extremely concerned and jealous. They felt threatened about their own supremacy and began to think of a strategy to get rid of the dilemma.
There’s a very interesting short story in this week’s New Yorker, by a new Pakistani writer named Daniyal Mueenuddin. It’s about an electrician working on a large farm in rural Pakistan, more or less taking care of his business until something dramatic happens. I won’t say much about the dramatic thing that happens to Nawabdin (read the story), but here’s a teaser to give you a sense of the writing style:
The motorcycle increased his status, gave him weight, so that people began calling him Uncle and asking his opinion on world affairs, about which he knew absolutely nothing. He could now range farther, doing much wider business. Best of all, now he could spend every night with his wife, who early in the marriage had begged to live not in Nawab’s quarters in the village but with her family in Firoza, near the only girls’ school in the area. A long straight road ran from the canal headworks near Firoza all the way to the Indus, through the heart of the K. K. Harouni lands. The road ran on the bed of an old highway built when these lands lay within a princely state. Some hundred and fifty years ago, one of the princes had ridden that way, going to a wedding or a funeral in this remote district, felt hot, and ordered that rosewood trees be planted to shade the passersby. Within a few hours, he forgot that he had given the order, and in a few dozen years he in turn was forgotten, but these trees still stood, enormous now, some of them dead and looming without bark, white and leafless. (link)
Anyone want to discuss the story as a whole? Did you like Mueenuddin’s writing style? Do you think he does a good job capturing a poor electrician’s point of view? Do you think Nawabdin is a sympathetic character in the end? And finally, what is the story all about?
Incidentally, Mueenuddin also has another story online, at the literary magazine Zoetrope. It’s quite different from “Nawabdin Electrician”; I think it will be interesting to anyone who has been in a serious cross-cultural or interracial relationship. (I’m happy to discuss that story too.)
Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love—and now become as the most hated one—the one—You have thrown away as unwanted—unloved. I call, I cling, I want—and there is no One to answer—no One on Whom I can cling—no, No One.—Alone … Where is my Faith—even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith—I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart—& make me suffer untold agony.
So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them—because of the blasphemy—If there be God —please forgive me—When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven—there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul.—I am told God loves me—and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
—[By Mother Teresa] ADDRESSED TO JESUS, AT THE SUGGESTION OF A CONFESSOR, UNDATED [Link]
Upon her death in 1997 it was revealed that Mother Teresa had asked that her private letters and confessions to her confessors (apparently she went from one to the next like a person in search of the right therapist) be burned so that they would never see the light of day. The Church, probably recognizing Teresa’s importance as the holiest woman in the world, overruled her request. They were also aware that any surviving notes or correspondence might be a useful part of the background investigation needed for her potential Sainthood (which there now is). Those letters have finally been revealed to the public in a new book titled Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. They are so startling in their rawness that many are now wondering if anyone really knew Mother Teresa. Time Magazine has a great dissection of the revelations in the book and indicates how Teresa might now become a saint to both the faithful and those who don’t believe in God.
On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the “Saint of the Gutters,” went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. “It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,’” she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one—the naked one—the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate…
Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. “Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see,—Listen and do not hear—the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me—that I let Him have [a] free hand…” [Link]
On their classic album London Calling, the old punk band The Clash had a song with some lyrics that always puzzled me:
What are we gonna do now?
Taking off his turban, they said, is this man a Jew?
‘Cause they’re working for the clampdown (link)
I get the gist of the song — it’s a critique of the trend of rising fascism amongst British youth in the 1970s — but “turban”? Quoi?
Anyway, this past week I learned that Sikh travelers with turbans can expect not the clampdown, but the pat-down, as the TSA has changed its security policies yet again. The BBC has the details (thanks DJ Drrrty Punjabi):
US Sikh organisations have expressed anger over changes allowing airport security staff to “pat down” turbans.
Until now turbans have been searched or removed only to resolve an unexplained alarm from an airport metal detector.
But now security will have greater discretion to inspect turbans so that they can be manually checked for objects such as non-metallic weapons.
However Sikh groups have responded to the new measures by describing them as outrageous and discriminatory. (link)
Personally, I’m not so much outraged as annoyed and worried. I’m annoyed because I’m not sure how this is a rational or necessary change: metal detectors work pretty well. You couldn’t hide a gun, a knife, or explosives inside a turban without it being pretty obvious. But the TSA has a long history of arbitrary and sometimes irrational policies — like the nutty restrictions on baby formula, which have caused problems for me several times this past year. (Haven’t they heard? NEVER get between a hungry baby and his formula!)
Mutineer Umair alerts us to a case of lottery fraud in Sacramento, via our news tab. Apparently, a cashier at a Roseville-area 7-11 tried to keep a winning “Mega Million” ticket for herself. Here’s the backstory:
…the customer whose ticket was stolen was unaware he’d won more than half a million dollars when he went to the store Aug. 16.
The man, who officials said has a language barrier, purchased five sets of numbers at the 7-Eleven market at 1900 Douglas Blvd. two days earlier and had used his own numbers to play.
He handed his winning ticket to the clerk to run through a validation machine to determine the amount won, Currier said.
However, after running the ticket, Kaur told the man, “You’ve won four dollars,” and paid him that amount, Currier said. The attorney said Kaur kept the winning ticket, apparently with designs to cash it later.
Currier said that in the ensuing days, the victim saw news reports about the prize money being unclaimed and that the winning ticket had been purchased at the 7-Eleven in Roseville.
On Tuesday, the man called the lottery office, which referred his complaint to its security and law enforcement division.
Working with Roseville police, the lottery agents, who are sworn peace officers, went to the store to investigate, Currier said. [SacBee]
Yeah, I bolded that last bit because I had no idea that lottery agents are sworn peace officers!
Getting back to the news and the tip which introduced me to it: the link Umair left was for a local television station, whose story had “comments” enabled, much like a blog. I read the entire thread, which at this point includes 40 comments. My, my…what a stunning display of hate. Some of the best remarks follow, for your enragement and edification.
BlueBlood, in Charlotte, NC pithily said:
one way ticket to the border
BOOMER of Tampa, FL charmingly declared:
DEPORT THAT 3RD WORLD TRASH. SHE SHOULD BE GLAD IT WASN’T ME SHE TRIED TO DE-FRAUD, SHE’D BE IN INTENSIVE CARE TONIGHT.
Booboo of Sikeston, MO has some interesting views:
Sorry, but the name sounds Hindi, and I am not surprised. Every time a hotel Patel or shop clerk has tried to rip me off to my face it was an Asian Indian. Muslims might kill you but won’t rip you off….
My apologies to all for a long absence. As the Governator once said, I will be back. Just needed a little time off to rest my bloodshot eyes, straighten my keyboard-cramped fingers, and un-kink my turtling neck. Also, Mr. Cicatrix promises to make an honest woman of me soon.
Anyway, I’ve been so out of commission, I let my inbox clog like open pores on a teenager. In a mad zit-popping burst of clearing up (go extended metaphors!), I finally read blog posts that at least four Sri Lankans had forwarded to me about Sri Lanka’s new budget airline, Mihin Air.
An airline that aims to “provide affordable services to less affluent travellers, people leaving for overseas employment, particularly in the Gulf and Asian countries, and to promote regional tourism,” (link) has to be a good thing, right? Although it would be great if the goverment could provide alternatives - local jobs - for the women who work as maids in the Middle East.
But this is also a government-owned airline, supposedly the baby of Sri Lanka’s Donald Trump-like President, Mahinda Rajapakse. As
the blog Broken News put it:
Reports indicate that the name ‘Mihin Air’ was selected after the alternative name - ‘All Hail Mahinda, May He Rule For A Thousand Years’ - was deemed too long for inclusion in company stationery.
One of the most unnerving aspects of this new airline was highlighted (as a positive) by the carrier’s CEO Sajin Vaas Goonewardene: “it took only three months to become a reality from a mere concept.” link to full interview. Three months? Really? Seriously?!
Maybe that’s why so many Sri Lankans themselves are casting a rather sardonic eye on the whole affair. A Sri Lankan business site had this to say:
A cursory examination of the profit-and-loss reports of the world’s airlines will show that the airline business is quite volatile, with the low-cost segment being more volatile and risky.
For example, India’s biggest low-cost airline, Air Deccan reported a net loss of INR 3.40 billion for the 15 months ending June 2006, on turnover that increased 322 per cent to INR 13.52 billion. Air Deccan claimed that it will be profitable by 2008-2009. link
Ah, yes. Nothing like plunging a country exhausted by 25 plus years of a terrorist conflict into volatile business ventures. Why play safe now? I welcome commentors who might know more about the nuances of Sri Lanka’s latest aviation adventure, but until then, here’s my favorite satire of the affair, full of the best in Lakan gallow’s humor:
WELCOME TO MIHIN AIR!!!
Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen. This is your captain Wijepala,
welcoming both seated and standing passengers on board Mihin Air.
We apologize for the four-day delay in taking off, it was due to bad
weather and some overtime I had to put in at the bakery.
423 Columbus Ave San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 397-6261
Parking’s a pain in North Beach but, Brimful (bless her soul) pointed out a nearby parking garage for the folks driving in. Other places to find a spot include the many garages in Union Square and / or street parking in SOMA / Fin District. From there, it’s easy to walk / taxi / cable car it over. It ain’t that far.
Incorporating some cues / feedback from NYC, we’re going to experiment a bit with the format of the SF meetup…
My baby cousin at UCLA still hasn’t forgiven me for joining Facebook. His objection is not that I’m too old for it or that I lessen its “cool factor” with my elderly presence—he just hates the program and apparently I was the last person he knew and cared about, who was not on it. That had more to do with pragmatic causes than most anything else; I was happy on Friendster and consummately preferred it to MyAss or the more “global”/Brazilian Orkut. I didn’t have time to maintain profiles on a plethora of time-sucks. And most relevant of all, I couldn’t be bothered to get an “alumni” email addy from either of the schools I managed to graduate from…and once upon a time, you needed such official stuff to participate in the Facebook-orgy.
Not anymore. And so a few of you began inviting me to join it and I pointedly ignored such requests…until one of you was Facebook-stalking a guy you thought was sooo cute.
“What’s his friendster link?”, I asked.
“He’s not ON friendster…he’s only on Facebook!”
“Well, then I can’t see him.”
“But you just HAVE to see this one picture…I have a feeling you know his friend.”
“You know how I’ve never been a bridesmaid?”
“Yeah what does that have to do with anything??”
“I’m signing up for this bullshit right now, so A) you best marry his ass and B) I best be in some sort of poufy outfit, twitching out of boredom on an altar in a year or three.”
Strong enough for a wheatish woman but made for a man…
Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood’s biggest star and corporate India’s most ubiquitous brand ambassador, is coming under pressure to abandon his controversial endorsement of a men’s skin-lightening cream.
Television commercials for Fair and Handsome, airing in August, show Mr Khan (or “SRK”) lauding a product that many see as entrenching discrimination based on skin colour by encouraging people to bleach themselves a lighter hue.
…Mr Khan urges a dark-complexioned and depressed-looking young man, struggling to attract female attention, to stop using skin-lightening products designed for women.
“Why are you secretly using a cream for girls?” Mr Khan asks. “Their skin is soft. Yours is rough and tough.” Several shades whiter and visibly more self-confident by the end of the 40-second commercial, the young man duly snares the girl of his dreams.
The commercial, of course, is up for all to see on YouTube -
So I’m reading Jezebel, where they wittily illustrate their take on a certain news story with a photograph of a turtleneck…
…and I realize that obviously, what is being discussed there MUST be blogged here, because if there’s anything which is widely relevant to the brown Diaspora, it is the wearing of, ahem, turtlenecks. On your pee-pees. And for those of you who are sporting one such fleshy outfit, take heed— today’s Grey Lady has some filthy words for ya.
A study in Uganda has come up with a surprising finding about sex and H.I.V. Washing the penis minutes after sex increased the risk of acquiring H.I.V. in uncircumcised men.
The sooner the washing, the greater the risk of becoming infected, the study found. Delaying washing for at least 10 minutes after sex significantly lowered the risk of H.I.V. infection, Dr. Fredrick E. Makumbi reported on July 25 at an International AIDS Society Conference in Sydney, Australia.
The researchers do not have a precise explanation for the findings, which challenge common wisdom and the teaching of many infectious disease experts who urge penile cleansing as part of good genital hygiene. Health experts have suggested that washing the penis after sex could prevent potentially infectious vaginal secretions from entering the body through the uncircumcised penis.
A lubricious error (and what inspired the picture I chose to go with this post)!
Because of a slip-up, the researchers did not ask details of how the cleansing was done or directly about using soap, said Dr. Ronald H. Gray, a co-author from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Some soaps used in Africa are more irritating than those used elsewhere.
See? That’s why you should take happy little soap’s advice and rub…never mind.
The trailer’s been out for a few weeks but I figured that perhaps a few Mutineer’s haven’t had a chance to check it out quite yet. So, true to my culture beat of late, I now present the trailer for Harold & Kumar part deux -
A quick thanks to all the folks who showed up last Saturday evening for the SM / UB joint meetup. A N N A’s ankle precluded her attendance (get well!) but long time mega-commentor Razib was one of several surprise guests for the evening.
Festivities were scheduled to start @ 5pm but more than just moi + Manish suffered from IST - Verlaine only opened its doors @ 6pm so a few of us socialized outside for a bit. While Verlaine had initially planned to allocate a small corner up front, our numbers swelled and by peak hour our >>50 folks occupied the entire front half of the venue (“we don’t die, we multiply”). Including in&out flow of peeps, I’d guesstimate we had close to 70 people over the course of the evening. About 15 folks survived till about 10pm when a few of us broke off to grab dinner @ the Mexican place next door.
I did my best to circulate and say hello, make a few intro’s and the like but alas, there were quite a few folks I didn’t get a chance to connect with. Still, I was a bit surprised by the number of lurkers + not-quite-regular readers I met. I sorta expected some of the regulars but was duly impressed with the folks who drove up from Philly, NJ, LI and other places to partake in some desi camraderie despite hitting the blog perhaps once or 2x a month. Wild stuff.
Pictures? Well, fotog extraordinaire, Preston Merchant has a few snaps up on his site and Ultrabrown host Manish Vij has a few more picts + commentary over here. Neither of them quite have the one pict that conveyed the scale of the event but it’s a fun browse nevertheless. Any attendees - would love to hear your take in the comments.
Abhi posted a link on our news tab to a story about…well, stupidity. Way to focus on the fine print, while actual, credible threats go unchecked.
For seven-year-old Javaid Iqbal, the holiday to Florida was a dream trip to reward him for doing well at school.
But he was left in tears after he was stopped repeatedly at airports on suspicion of being a terrorist.
The security alerts were triggered because Javaid shares his name with a Pakistani man deported from the US, prompting staff at three airports to question his family about his identity.
The family even missed their flight home from the U.S. after officials cancelled their tickets in the confusion. And Javaid’s passport now contains a sticker saying he has undergone highlevel security checks.
Little Javaid is a British citizen of Pakistani origin, which makes his “dream” of going to Florida-land as a reward for his good grades even more poignant, to me. The other Javaid is a 39-year old Pakistani who was arrested in connection with 9/11; while they convicted that Javaid of fraud and deported him, he was never charged with anything related to terrorism. His name, obviously, is a red flag for the exquisitely useful database/process which Homeland Security created…you know, the one which apparently doesn’t bother cross-checking birthdays in order to discern the difference between two or more people who share a name.
Because of this cluster, Javaid’s parents are debating a name-change for their unfortunately-nomenclated* offspring, and I don’t blame them, though I can only imagine how frustrated and resentful they might be. September 12, 2001…the day common sense commenced its slow and horrific death.
I found the reactions from people who had read the article interesting. Illuminating, even.
Said Craig from London:
Poor kid, my passport was mistakenly stamped with the incorrect stamp when transiting though Australia a few years back, the immigration bloke realised it and crossed out the initial stamp and re-stamped it correctly but I still often get asked “why were you refused entry to Australia” when going through immigration. Still if simply changing your name is enough to bypass the system it shows how utterly pointless the US no-fly list is.
Imus was fired in April after referring to a mostly black university women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos,” a racial slur that generated a storm of controversy and led CBS Radio to cancel his “Imus in the Morning” show.
CBS and MSNBC first suspended Imus’ show for two weeks, but as calls to fire him grew, notably from New York civil rights leader Al Sharpton, MSNBC dropped the show and CBS followed suit the next day.
“Don Imus and CBS Radio have mutually agreed to settle claims that each had against the other regarding the Imus radio program on CBS. The terms of the settlement are confidential and will not be disclosed,” CBS and Imus’ lawyer said in a joint statement. [Link]
Leaks indicate that Imus will probably get 20 million in the settlement. What might be of most interest in all of this however, especially to our readers, is who has been tapped by CBS to replace Imus. It is obvious that CBS is looking to make up for its former host’s racial biases. NOT:
He was verbal about the Indian-American community whenever he got the chance, critics say, and now Craig Carton has a national platform.
That makes many Asian Indians unhappy.
Members of the Asian community are saying that CBS is making a mistake by hiring the New Jersey 101.5 FM radio shock jock who has maligned the Asian-Indian community repeatedly in recent years on his “Jersey Guys” radio show.
It was announced by WFAN-AM, New York, Tuesday that Carton will co-host the morning radio show that used to be the turf of Don Imus, fired in April for making racial and sexist slurs about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. Carton takes over the morning show with Boomer Esiason beginning Sept. 4.
Carton has hosted 101.5’s “The Jersey Guys” broadcast during the afternoon drive-time slot for five years. [Link]
You know what our community needs?? An Al Sharpton-type figure. I remind me of a young Al Sharpton sometimes. I’m just sayin’, if the community wants me to step up then I might [crickets chirp loudly in the background]. For those of you who have forgotten as to why we think the Jersey Guys are morons and why Carton’s mouth doesn’t deserve a wider audience, may I direct you here, here, here, and here. So in summary, racism is good for radio as it brings in listeners who then buy the products advertised during the show. Don’t complain to the radio show when Carton inevitably starts spewing garbage. Complain to the advertisers. Or better yet, listen to NPR instead.
Louisiana’s local news station KSLA had a rather intriguing headline last week. In a television news report they made the claim that the Department of Homeland Security is currently training members of local clergies to help out is some capacity should the Executive Branch ever declare Martial Law within the United States:
Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us…
If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie “The Siege”, easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that’s exactly what the ‘Clergy Response Team’ helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.
Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff’s Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team’s mission, “the primary thing that we say to anybody is, ‘let’s cooperate and get this thing over with and then we’ll settle the differences once the crisis is over.’”
Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. “In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they’re helping to diffuse that situation,” assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, “because the government’s established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the scripture…” [Link]
It should be noted that KSLA was just the latest to reveal information/rumors about this program. A few other websites on the internet (of varying authority and reliability) mention other details:
A whistleblower who was secretly enrolled into the program told us that the feds were clandestinely recruiting religious leaders to help implement Homeland Security directives in anticipation of a potential bio-terrorist attack, any natural disaster or a nationally declared emergency… It was stressed that the Pastors needed to preach subservience to the authorities ahead of time in preparation for the round-ups and to make it clear to the congregation that “this is for their own good.”
Pastors were told that they would be backed up by law enforcement in controlling uncooperative individuals and that they would even lead SWAT teams in attempting to quell resistance. [Link]
From Fuerza Dulce comes this video clip of a contestant trying to get on VH1’s Flavor of Love:
I sputtered. I laughed. I frowned. Honestly - I’m confused. It’s a pretty bizarre mish-mash of orientalist cliches, done in a ham handed way. It’s neither hilarious nor completely unfunny, although she does act like she’s in on the joke.
Here’s the question - is Orientalism OK when we do it? Or does one desi’s 15 minutes of fame in brownface make the rest of our lives harder by not just reinforcing these tired tropes, but making them seem OK?
Congressman Bill Sali (R-Idaho) recently criticized the attempted opening of a session of the U.S. Senate with a Hindu prayer (which did not go well for reasons having nothing to do with him: see Anna’s post). He also openly lamented the presence of a Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison. As Sali puts it, “Those are changes, and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers.” Now he’s made another statement clarifying the earlier remarks to the Nampa Press Tribune:
Friday, Sali said multiculturalism is in conflict with the national motto “E Pluribus Unum,” or “out of many, one.” He said multiculturalism would mean “out of the many, the many.”
“The question is, is multiculturalism good or not?” Sali said. “I don’t think the Founding Fathers were multicultural. Multiculturalism is the antithesis of (the motto).” Sali said the United States was founded on principles derived primarily from the Scriptures. And he said drifting away from those principles could put the country in danger.
“If we’re going to move away from those principles … we better consider the blessings of God that have been bestowed on this country and the protective hand of God that’s been over this country,” Sali said. (link)
Wow, he just gets wronger and wronger. Sali is confusing, in a fundamental and embarrassing way, the idea of religious freedom, which is unambiguously written into the Constitution, and the fuzzy contemporary concept of multiculturalism. For Sali, a Muslim Congressman or a Hindu prayer in the Senate can be sneered at as “multiculturalism,” when in fact it is simply Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.
Relatedly, Sali is dead wrong when he says that the Founding Fathers were operating on “principles derived from the Scriptures.” (He’s trying to pull a fast one with that sneaky word, “derived.”) Like other conservatives who want to impose their idea of “God’s law” on us, Sali is flagrantly ignoring who Thomas Jefferson was and what he believed.
(For even more painful wrongness try this: last year Sali argued that the rate of breast cancer in the U.S. is linked to abortion — in a speech he gave on the House floor.)
Fortunately, not all Republicans are like Sali. Yesterday I stopped by the India Day celebration at Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia. It was a perfect August day, and the bright saris and salwar kameezes were flapping in the breeze — while massive rusty barges moved down the Delaware, headed for China. On stage, the endless array of high school girls doing Bollywood dance numbers was briefly interrupted by Al Taubenberger, Republican nominee for Mayor. In front of a crowd of 300-400, including a number of non-desis, Taubenberger patted Indian Americans on the back for “working hard and playing by the rules.” Amidst the sipping of mango lassis and the many voices whispering “who’s this guy again?” in at least a dozen Indian languages, there was a smattering of applause.
Whose God is it anyways? posted a tip so arresting, I had to read it for myself…and then inflict it upon you. :D Blame him, he started it! Via The Telegraph:
Packs of stray dogs which roam the streets of New Delhi should be rounded up and sent to Korea for making soup, one of the city’s exasperated councillors has suggested.
Wow, that’s some level of exasperation. Any Delhi-area mutineers want to chime in about this?
India’s capital is suffering from a 300,000-strong plague of feral dogs who scavenge the city’s open rubbish dumps, hunting in packs and terrorising cyclists and pedestrians who venture into the city at night.
At a meeting to canvass measures to curb stray dog numbers ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games one local councillor, Mohan Prashad Bharadwaj, ventured the “Korean option” after saying he’d read that nation was fond of dog-meat.
Um, I guess that’s…innovative.
A dog-meat soup called boshintang is popular in Korea, especially on the three “dog days” of summer on the lunar calendar. Koreans believe the meat helps boost stamina and virility.
I swear, every unique food is meant to be the culinary equivalent to wiagra. This next idea is so funny, it’s cute:
Another councillor wondered if the dogs could be drugged during daylight hours “so that they keep sleeping all day long” while a third suggested rounding up the animals and trucking them into the countryside.
The extreme nature of the suggestions reflects a growing impatience with the city’s inability to combat the stray dog menace after it emerged that a three-year sterilisation drive advocated by animal rights activists had failed.
When I first read this article, I wondered about the “Bob Barker“-option, i.e. spaying and neutering…until I got to that part.
Mindful of Mahatma Gandhi’s adage that “a country is known by the way it treats its animals” the city is hoping to avoid the kind of brutal cull that Athens resorted to ahead of the 2004 Olympic Games.
So shipping dogs to Korea for soup is a better way for India to be known? Not judging, just surprised, that’s all.
However the dogs are a serious health hazard, with more than 200 Delhi residents dying every year from rabies contracted through dog bites.
Yeah, I don’t think drugging them during the daylight hours or shipping them off to the “country” (wtf, like people in rural areas are immune to rabies?) is going to work. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets resolved.
This is the best tip I have ever received (a million thanks, Zuni). From Vinay, himself:
Good news everyone. I found a match. It is not a perfect match but it is a 9/10 match. The donor is extremely committed. His commitment is so strong that he was willing to pre-pone his stem cell donation to fit my doctor’s recommendations. I can’t express how much this means to me. In the past I wrote about how one of the potential donors became “unavailable” due to a lack of family support. This is not the case here. You, as volunteers and activists, deserve the credit in the change in our community’s mentality and their conviction to be a COMMITTED DONOR.
Tomorrow morning I will begin my journey into the transplant process. I will be admitted and have several procedures done, including placement of 2 Hickman catheters. The transplant will be a long and arduous process but your support and well wishes will get me through these difficult times. I love reading all the “show of support” comments and it really brightens my spirits.
Team Vinay should be proud of all it has accomplished. In the short few months that you all have been active, we have registered over 23,000 South Asians. This is clearly over a 20% increase to the existing number of S. Asians on the registry. And as you may know a few of the marrow registrants through Team Vinay drives have already been contacted as being potential donors for others in our community. Through your tireless efforts we have also achieved a few more significant goals. Team Vinay, working along with NMDP, is responsible for implementing a protocol for culturally competent callbacks for potential S. Asian donors. Another wonderful outcome is the creation of a S. Asian specific website that will serve as a sustainable informational and educational tool for our community for the years to come. The content of the website is growing and will include input from key Team Vinay members - it should be up and running next month!
This past week has been amazing. I have enjoyed my short yet fulfilling week at home, spending time with Rashmi and other family and friends. We watched Rush Hour 3, had a BBQ and played dominoes. Thank you all again for your unwavering support and well wishes. Much love to you all; Vinay. [HelpVinay.org]
What an exquisitely emotional moment.
Put aside, for a mere second, the pain of division among the diverse strains of our community, the separateness of our faiths, the suspicion and cynicism with which we behold and other each other.
We did it.
Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Punjabi, Tamil, Gujurati, Kashmiri, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali…I saw it with my own eyes. At event after event, you stepped forward, to give the tiniest bit of yourself, with the intention of saving a stranger’s life. The power of this community is breathtaking, when we are willing to come together, for a cause. Thank you, mutineers. For every tiny thing which you do, which affects the world in ways you may never or cannot possibly know, thank you.
Stop stepping on books, Payless, BOGO be damned [UPDATED]
[Update: Uberdesi kindly sent us the link for the ad which inspired it all. Now you can freak out, too!]
The commercial barely disturbed my reverie; I’m thinking about how much I hate moving, and that is exactly what I’ll be doing at work tomorrow, as we prepare for some renovating which couldn’t come at a worse time. At first, I can’t figure out what this spot is advertising, it looks like college kids, seems to focus on shoes and just as I decide that it must be something to do with the latter, I see it.
A girl, in somewhat cute, patent, MaryJane-esque shoes, in a library like setting…using a stack of exactly and approximately half-a-dozen books four books to step on, to reach a higher shelf. Or something. My brain shorts, because I’m so shocked and my inner pragmatist is all, “That’s so unstable! You’re asking for a sprained ankle.” The thought which immediately chases that maternal scolding is, “Eeeek, that’s not very respectful.” And that is why the shoes are “somewhat” cute; I can’t disassociate their shiny happiness from the taboo, the disrespect.
It wasn’t always like this.
Believe it or not, despite all the other random Hindu-lite rituals I grew up with, I never was scolded for touching a book with my feet. I think this had to do with two things:
1) I loved books so much to begin with and was very careful with them, since I’m vaguely OCD about things getting dirty or ruined
2) My room wasn’t so cramped that books were ever on the floor. They were on shelves. Or my desk. Or my bedside table. The floor was for my clothes, much to my parents’ disgust.
I’m surprised that this is also something I didn’t learn from my sundry collection of Hindu ex-boyfriends, though I vaguely remember hearing about it once in a while. For whatever reason, it wasn’t expanded upon or elucidated.
It was you who informed me of this prohibition against disrespect, and it is you whom I think of, in my tiny studio apartment, when I’m trying to re-organize my bookshelves. I take everything out and stack it on the floor, because there’s no other place to put anything and then I dust, rearrange, etc…but once in a while, especially now when I’m hobbling so awkwardly, if my feet even graze the tiniest part of a book or magazine, I freeze, feel guilty and then think of these cultural mores.
Thanks, mutineers. You’ve given me one more thing to get neurotic about…aww, you shouldn’t have. ;)
My high-level point is, this website has changed how I consider or interpret things, in a significant way. I will never think of the Sepoy Mutiny, the word “mutineer”, paneer dosas, Lemurians, ketchup, Scythians or a thousand other things without being reminded of this space.
That’s why when one of you emailed us a tip, which said:
A quiz on Indian independence and the first question is quite, ahem, mutinous.
…which pointed us to a brief, enlightening quiz in the Economist, I smiled and had to see it for myself. Indeed, the first question was special and it’s why I wrote all of this, because I love words and I find them powerful.
When a word’s definition is altered so dramatically, it’s not trivial, not to me. The last word of the first question of that quiz now means something very precious, and it always will. I thought you should know that, because I’m grateful to you for amending the dictionary in my brain, to accommodate such a delightful mutation.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I got a “seven”. ;)
This print advertisement by Intel has been causing quite a stir of late [via Huffington Post]. It seems to convey the idea that owning an Intel chip will help you tackle the same amount of work as you could with a ship of slaves (while making you feel powerful):
I almost fell out of my seat when I saw Intel’s new advertising campaign. It shows six bowing African American athletes before a chino-clad, oxford-shirted white manager with the slug: “Maximize the power of your employees.” This ad reminds me of a slave-ship, and it’s hard to imagine the same imagery did not come to mind for the savvy ad exec that created it…
Intel is not just promoting insensitive images, it’s also leading a signature drive for a California ballot measure that would eliminate class action lawsuits over civil rights issues. Intel’s board of directors have been sent 25,000 faxes calling upon the company to withdraw that pending ballot measure. [Link]
India and Pakistan are now 60 years old, as is the bloody partition that created them. My father’s family was caught up in what became arguably the largest mass migration in history: 14.5 million people were moved, roughly the same number in each direction, and somewhere between 500,000 and one million of them died in the process.
Because independence was declared prior to the actual Partition, it was up to the new governments of India and Pakistan to keep public order. No large population movements were contemplated; the plan called for safeguards for minorities on both sides of the new state line. It was an impossible task, at which both states failed. There was a complete breakdown of law and order [Link]
The management of partition was badly botched; if you think Brownie did a heck of a job, Mounty makes him look like a paragon of engagement and sensitivity. Mountbatten insisted that the partition line be drawn in only six weeks! Think of how slowly the US government moves today, and that will give you a sense of how ridiculous and uncaring that deadline was. The line was drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe; this is what his private secretary, Christopher Beaumont, had to say about the process:
“The viceroy, Mountbatten, must take the blame - though not the sole blame - for the massacres in the Punjab in which between 500,000 to a million men, women and children perished,” he writes. “The handover of power was done too quickly…”
… it was “irresponsible” of Lord Mountbatten to insist that Beaumont complete the boundary within a six-week deadline - despite his protests. [Link]
Mountbatten was a pretty boy from a royal family whose track record during WWII led him to be “known in the British Admiralty as the Master of Disaster.” [Link] His track record in India seems similar - he was charming and glib, but unconcerned about the feasibility of plans or the lives which would be lost.
As Viceroy of India, he advanced the date of independence by nine months (no reason was ever given), making the problems associated with partition worse. Critics argue that he foresaw bloodshed and didn’t want it to happen on British watch; he was willing to make things worse as a form of CYA rather than take responsibility for the situation.
This version is a more musically sophisticated, “professional” performance, but it somehow feels a little colder, less sweet. There’s also the vocal version of the song, which was originally part of an opera, in Swedish here.
Those who are persistent eventually defeat even the steeliest resolve to procrastinate. I keed. DC’s last meetup was massive and most definitely fun. We descended upon Amma like a Mongol horde, pillaging every bit of delicious Southie food we spied. Oh, wait…the Mongols ate North Indian foo-…never mind.
Amma made like old skool Vanessa and went and saved the best for last— even though he wasn’t there, YoDad arranged dessert for everyone at the meetup. We gobbled gulab jamuns, much to our collective surprise and delight, thanks to his thoughtful planning. New York may have the cool factor, SF may be hipster heaven, but DC has Abhi’s father, a.k.a. the Grandfather of the Mutiny. Take THAT, other cities!
And now, the moment one of you named No Desh has been waiting for: tabla roll, please…the Flickr photoset for D.C.’s seventh meetup has been hurriedly finished (i.e. the pics were split between two cameras, and for the last 20 mins, I was frantically DLing two dozen files, only to immediately upload them to the “official album”).
All evidence which could destroy potential Senate campaigns is available for your amusement via this “public” link. Aw, come on, people…it’s only six weeks late. Unless you’re a girl and in college, that’s never a huge problem. ;)
Oh, we zimbly HAVE to play the caption game with the picture below. It was thoughtfully submitted via a tip to our news tab from Msichana (thanks!)
Granny, get your gun: Ladies of the Village Defense Committee squeeze off a few AK-47 bursts during training by the Indian army in Sariya, India. [SFgate]
I don’t mean to make light of serious issues like empowering women or self defense and I wish I didn’t have to explicitly declare that in my post, but there you go, in case you needed me to do so. Having reluctantly typed all that, I will return to the gleeful state I was in when I first gazed at this— what a capture! Now you all caption away. :)
Newton’s Infinite Series: We heard it in Malayalam first
NEW DELHI: A group of Malayali scholars had predated a ground-breaking Newton ‘discovery’ by over 250 years, according a research paper published on Monday.
The team of researchers from the Universities of Manchester and Exeter reveal that the ‘Kerala School’ identified the ‘infinite series’- one of the basic components of calculus - in about 1350.
And thus, by discovering one of the building blocks of calculus first, Mallu’s used the knowledge to, uh, well, uh, I’m not quite sure…. The researchers were quick to note that this discovery shouldn’t be used to reduce Newton’s stature but instead, add some brown names to the pantheon of genius -
[Dr George Gheverghese Joseph, one of the researcher and Honorary Reader, School of Education at The University of Manchester said,] “The brilliance of Newton’s work at the end of the seventeenth century stands undiminished - especially when it came to the algorithms of calculus.
“But other names from the Kerala School, notably Madhava, Valloppillil, and Nilakantha, should stand shoulder to shoulder with him as they discovered the other great component of calculus- infinite series.
However, Dr. Joseph does note that perhaps, just perhaps, Newton wasn’t inspired by the proverbial apple at all -
…there is strong circumstantial evidence that the Indians passed on their discoveries to mathematically knowledgeable Jesuit missionaries who visited India during the fifteenth century.
That knowledge, they argue, may have eventually been passed on to Newton himself.
Let the attribution games begin! (Hat tip - Venkat & Sindhya)
A gentle reminder that the Eastside leg of the Mutineer Road Tour is this Saturday, Aug 18 in NYC. Come one, come all - lurkers, commentors, straight, gay, white, brown, yellow, purple, macaca, married, single, polygamous, polyamorous, uptown, downtown, lovers, haters, and all in between.
Festivities start a tad on the early side (5pm) so you have time to visit the meetup and duck out for dinner if you don’t want your RealLife friends to know about your Real friends.
William Dalrymple has a nice “state of the union” type essay in the Guardian, on the occasion of Pakistan’s Independence Day. (Incidentally, happy Independence Day! Here are two photos from Flickr relating to ‘Azaadi2007’ that mark the celebration: Karachi, yummy mithai at the Quaid e Mazar Mazar e Quaid; and a building in Islamabad, all lit up.)
Considering where Pakistan is and where it’s going, Dalrymple starts with the good news and then surveys the bad. First, the good:
On the ground, of course, the reality is different and first-time visitors to Pakistan are almost always surprised by the country’s visible prosperity. There is far less poverty on show in Pakistan than in India, fewer beggars, and much less desperation. In many ways the infrastructure of Pakistan is much more advanced: there are better roads and airports, and more reliable electricity. Middle-class Pakistani houses are often bigger and better appointed than their equivalents in India.
Moreover, the Pakistani economy is undergoing a construction and consumer boom similar to India’s, with growth rates of 7%, and what is currently the fastest-rising stock market in Asia. You can see the effects everywhere: in new shopping centres and restaurant complexes, in the hoardings for the latest laptops and iPods, in the cranes and building sites, in the endless stores selling mobile phones: in 2003 the country had fewer than three million cellphone users; today there are almost 50 million. (link)
This confirms what I’ve often heard from friends about Lahore and Karachi in particular — there’s a lot of growth, which many people aren’t really aware of.
On to the long list of challenges and serious problems facing Pakistan, which Dalrymple divides into three categories. For Dalrymple, the first two categories are topics we have all heard a lot about in recent years: one is the lack of a culture of democracy, and the second is the threat of radical Islam. But it’s the third problem Dalrymple talks about, education, that I found interesting:
Over at Marginal RevolutionTyler is putting his money where his mouth is. He has just published a book where he makes an argument for how to best help people. Now he wants to follow through and give money to people in India. They don’t have to be engaged in charitable work at all, they just have to do something with it that helps India, and they get the money no strings attached:
2. Send your email to DiscoverYourInnerEconomist@gmail.com. Only emails to this address will be considered. The email must contain the legal name (as documented on ID papers) of a person who will receive the money, his or her state in India, and the city of his or her local Western Union branch. You can be the person yourself, or you can send the information on behalf of someone you know.
3. With your email, send a one sentence proposal of how the money will help India… Proposals of all kinds are eligible, including using the funds to help expand your steel factory, and yes using the money to open a new call center. But you must not give the money to beggars.
4. Only one email per person is allowed.
5. By the end of the week I will send $1000 to India, via Western Union. One person will receive $500, the other recipients will get $100 a piece; I will email the wire numbers to each approved person… If/when Discover Your Inner Economist is published in India, further names will receive transfers. I will send at least the net, post-tax value of my Indian advance. [Link]
Barkha Dutt is a rising star in the Indian media — one of the journalists that makes the Indian news channel NDTV worth watching. Though she gets stuck doing silly stuff sometimes (I saw her interview Brad Pitt a few months ago; oy), Dutt is one of the few journalists that I’ve seen on Indian news channels who isn’t just a glorified “news reader.”
She’s also a very sharp columnist. This week Dutt notes a double-standard in the way Indian secularists have responded to the recent physical attack against Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, in which a number of elected officials actively participated. Nasreen, for those who don’t know, is a controversial author — she’s from a Muslim background, but has essentially renounced Islam. She’s in exile from Bangladesh after getting hit with a Fatwa; for the past several years, she’s lived in India, though the government has refused to issue her a permanent residency visa.
In a recent column in the Hindustan Times, Dutt compares the assault on Nasreen to an event that took place in Vadodara, Gujarat, just a few months ago, where politicians from the Hindu right sacked an art exhibit at the University of Baroda:
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is facing the threat of a mutiny from the left parties in his coalition government over the recently-finalized — but still not finally approved — U.S.-India nuclear deal, also known as the “123 Agreement.”
As he addressed Parliament today, some members of Left parties staged a walk-out, while others made so much noise that MPs who actually wanted to hear what was said had to use their translation headphones. On the right, the BJP has also been critical of the deal, though I tend to think it’s more because of political opportunism than anything else: one gets the feeling they wish they’d pulled this off.
Thus far, the Congress Party hasn’t seemed seriously concerned about a collapse of the government; no one is yet talking about votes of no-confidence, mid-term polls, or rejiggering the deal to make critics happy.
Are the Communists and others on the left bluffing when they say they’ll walk away from the Coalition government over this? I tend to think so, though I could be wrong. Indian politics — with the combination of regional and caste parties in addition to the left/right axis — is often so complicated, it makes the U.S. system seem laughably simple. Still the Times has a certain wry tone in its summary of where the opposition is coming from:
At one point in Mr, Singh’s speech, the Left parties, which provide crucial support to his Congress-led coalition government, walked out of the house. The Left has opposed the nuclear accord with the United States since it was announced, less over the specific provisions of the accord than over the general principle of closer ties to America.
“We do not share the optimism that India can become a great power with the help of the United States,” Prakash Karat, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said on Saturday. (link)
(This is where I sniff in Prakash Karat’s general direction.)
For those who have kind of let the whole U.S.-India nuclear deal slip past them in recent months, Siddharth Varadarajan has a good point-by-point summary of the agreement here. And the full text of the agreement, released by the U.S. State Department, is here.
An anonymous tipster (thanks!) updated our news tab with the following story, which I found quite interesting:
After the Chinese-made kirpans (daggers) nearly wiped out local manufacturers of one of the five ‘K’s of Sikhism, it is the turn of Guru Nanak Dev’s idols with ‘Chinese characteristics’ to flood shops across Punjab. [link]
Yes, apparently the figurines make the Guru look like a “Lama”, i.e. Tibetan. But more on that (and the Kirpans!) later.
The figurines, which have been in the market for some time, are available for Rs 100-150. They are popular gift items, with the smaller ones finding a perch on car dashboards “since it reassures the driver of divine protection”, as one user put it.
The larger versions are seen in restaurants, stacked along with statuettes of deities of other faiths. Not everybody, though, is pleased. In fact, the Sikh clergy have issued directions to the community to refrain from buying these idols.
The order ostensibly stems from the fact that idol worship is banned in Sikhism. Idol worship, including performing of ‘aarti’, was prohibited by Guru Nanak himself, while Guru Gobind Singh even declared that those indulging in such practices would be ostracized from the faith. [link]
The fantastically-named Sikhi Wiki has this to say regarding idolatry:
Idol worship was heavily discouraged by all sikh Guru’s. This was believed to have been a manipulation by the preistly (sic…no pun intended) caste to keep the power in their hands. The concept of ‘worship’ does not exsist (sic) in Sikhism, sikhs may only bow down to Guru Granth Sahib for respect, and may mediate on God’s name (nam simran). [link]
What I’m wondering is, who is buying these figures? Maybe they aren’t Sikh? Or is that irrelevant?
Is this the real source of conflict and potential teeth-gnashing:
Moreover, the Chinese-made idols sport a Chinese look, like slanted eyes and Mongoloid features. [link]
It’s been an adjustment, to experience this website’s growth and witness our readership change. People leave, others join, many lurk. While I miss some of our now-absent personalities who were prolific with their pondering (Punjabi Boy, Jai Singh, DesiDancer and Espressa come to mind), I’m thrilled about our new commenters, who are expanding our discussion and bringing their unique points of view to our cacophonous, rowdy, online adda. I’m especially looking at our first-gen contributors, like Runa and Malathi, because for stories like the one I’m trying to blog, I think their perspective is invaluable, for helping us find nuance and context. What I’m trying to say is, HELP.
Al Mujahid for Debauchery left this on our news tab:
Unbelievable. Pakistani actor Moin Akhtar (a muhajir/Indian origin himself) plays Hyderabadis from India in blackface in this ‘comedy’ show.
Wait, WHAT? And here is where the DBDs come in, because I don’t understand the clip below or know who these actors are, and as I’ve stated before, I like to get as much information as possible before I get my outrage on— and believe me, I could rage about actors in blackface.
What on earth is going on? And would someone who watches desi tv please tell me that this an uncommon practice? I fast forwarded through the clip, but I don’t get the greasy, huge-black-glasses-equipped, buck-toothed character, and by “don’t get”, I mean my spider sense is tingling. What, if anything, do all of you know?
U.S. military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced as the nation’s leader, CNN has learned…
Three U.S. sources have independently confirmed details of the intelligence review to CNN but would not allow their names to be used because of the sensitivity of the matter…
The current review is a result of recent developments in that country, including the prospect that Musharraf could still declare a national emergency that would give him sweeping powers…
The United States has full knowledge about the location of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, according to the U.S. assessment.
But the key questions, officials say, are what would happen and who would control the weapons in the hours after any change in government in case Musharraf were killed or overthrown. [Link]
Although this sounds like an escalation or something truly new and fantastic, it’s not. In the month following Sept. 11th, 2001, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker wrote a provocative article titled “Watching the Warheads.” In THAT article there were many more revealing details (if his sources were reliable) than are revealed in this newest blurb by CNN.
… an élite Pentagon undercover unit—trained to slip into foreign countries and find suspected nuclear weapons, and disarm them if necessary—has explored plans for an operation inside Pakistan….
…operating under Pentagon control with C.I.A. assistance, whose mission it is to destroy nuclear facilities, past and present government officials told me. “They’re good,” one American said. “If they screw up, they die. They’ve had good success in proving the negative”—that is, in determining that suspected facilities were not nuclear-related…
The American team is apparently getting help from Israel’s most successful special-operations unit, the storied Sayeret Matkal, also known as Unit 262, a deep-penetration unit that has been involved in assassinations, the theft of foreign signals-intelligence materials, and the theft and destruction of foreign nuclear weaponry
A senior military officer, after confirming that intense planning for the possible “exfiltration” of Pakistani warheads was under way, said that he had been concerned not about a military coup but about a localized insurrection by a clique of I.S.I. officers in the field who had access to a nuclear storage facility. “The Pakistanis have just as much of a vested interest as we do in making sure that that stuff is looked after, because if they”—I.S.I. dissidents—“throw one at India, they’re all cooked meat…”
Intelligence officials told me they believe that, in case of an imminent threat, the Indian military’s special commando unit is preparing to make its own move on the Pakistani arsenal. [Link]
This Friday, after reading a few of your comments on my last post about Sir Ben, I was struck by how many of you fervently appreciated his work in The House of Sand and Fog. In fact, I was so affected by your opinions, I was inspired to put up (finally) a new edition of the 55Friday.
I love creating an open space for all mutineers to get creative and if you care to grace our thread with a perfect little gem of nanofiction, which spans just 55 words, I eagerly await reading what you’ve imagined.
If, however, you feel like doing something different, perhaps we can do a little “writing exercise” to clear away the cobwebs, since it’s been a wee while since we 55ed. Sometimes, when my English teacher wanted to stir things up, she’d write a sentence on the board and then one-by-one, we’d have a few minutes to add to whatever came before us. At the end of this process (there were only 12 students), she’d read our ad hoc story.
So, I found a sentence from The House of Sand and Fog, and if you’d like to, you may write one to come after. And then someone can follow you, and so on. Normally, I’d say “leave an ‘I got next’ comment” if you want the subsequent turn, so we don’t have two writers scribbling simultaneously, but I get the feeling that won’t be necessary. ;) If by some miracle you all like this, then you might want to start doing that, with the caveat that if it’s been more than 10 minutes, you lose your turn.
Alternatively, if reading all that exhausted you, you can use our THoSaF sentence as fodder for your 55-word flash fiction. Just let your mind meander so you can exercise your atrophied creativity, and write something. That’s the entire point. :)
Here’s your prompt:
My daughter, Soraya, was married on Saturday and I feel already there is a hole in my chest with her gone.
Time magazine asked mostly-desi* actor KrishnaBhanji ten reader-submitted questions in their August 13th issue; on their website, there were several more “online extras”. I picked the eleven most mutinous inquiries for you to procrastinate with— the entire interview is on their website, where incidentally (for all my fellow Lego-lovers) this Picture of the Week should inspire smiles. Now let’s get back on topic and learn about the actor who, for better or worse, is part of every ABD’s childhood.
1. What do you look for in a role? —Catherine Raymond, BELLINGHAM, WASH.
I look for the echo inside me. Maybe we’re all born with our future coiled up inside us like a spring, and we just unravel this coiled spring and work it out. I’m sorry if this sounds a bit bizarre. I’m trying so hard not to be pretentious because I’m always called pompous and pretentious.
First Gandhi-related inquiry:
2. How would Gandhi play the role of Ben Kingsley? —Mills Chapman, VILLANOVA, PA.
He was an astonishingly quick and witty judge of character, so I bet he could have done a very good impersonation of me.
3. Would you change anything about your acting career? —Grant Curtiss, ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.
No. It’s a bit like The Butterfly Effect, that amazing science-fiction novel, where if you go back and alter one molecule of your past, the present that you’re enjoying will disintegrate.
4. Have you ever felt compelled to pursue any political issues? —Ross Davenport, PERTH, AUSTRALIA
I’m only strong as a storyteller. I’m not strong as a politician. Hopefully, with my journeys around the world, having visited the Pakistan earthquake zone, a girls’ school in Afghanistan and some refugee camps in the Palestinian areas, then I’ll be stronger as an actor at choosing the right kind of material.
What’s in a name?
5. Why did you change your name (from Krishna Bhanji)? —Andrew Lawrence, FAIRFIELD, CONN.
It was a way of getting to my first audition. My dad [who is Indian] was completely behind it. My first name, Ben, is my dad’s nickname. My second name, Kingsley, comes from my grandfather’s nickname, which was King Clove. He was a spice trader. It’s a bit late to change it back now.
I generally cover the “economics beat” here on SM and one of my favorite nuggets is the complex interplay between econ and culture. There’s a certain non-PC’ness there that I love to indulge although it admittedly leaves many feeling a tad uneasy. Why non-PC? Well, if culture and economics are intertwined…. and since econ outcomes are (generally) measurable…. and it (generally) ain’t too hard to say that richer is better than poorer…. you end up treading dang close to quantifying how one culture might (generally) be better than another.
A purveyor of oppressively unrealistic bourgeois imagery or the fountain of liberation? The numbers are starting to come in…
A mighty sticky ball o’ wax indeed but a subject we’ve nevertheless hit on SM a couple of times (here, here and here, for ex.).
There are a couple of important “pressure escape valves”to keep in mind though. First, cultures are as non-uniform as they are notoriously difficult to define (“model minority” discussions - for ex here - usually wade deep into this territory). Second, and in our case perhaps more importantly, the economic + technology machine’s dynamism necessarily turns around and affects the host culture. This impact is both for better and for worse with a range of attitudes on where it all nets out (shouldn’t be hard to figure out where I land )
While we’re quick to note the emergence of social networking or blog culture on the Internet, the real, important change happens at a comparatively more pedestrian level, and often with far less cutting edge tech. This latter effect is profoundly visible in India (and, of course, China) and is now yielding some fascinating new research looking at the effects of a liberalized television market on rural Indian women…
An anonymous tipster left a link to an “awww”-inducing story from Beijing, China, on our news tab.
After Bollywood films, classical Indian dance has caught the imagination of the Chinese, with a young woman actively promoting Bharatnatyam among her compatriots, especially the tiny-tots.
For 33-year-old Jin Shan Shan, a Jawaharlal Nehru University alumnus, it has always been a passion to become an exponent of Bharatnatyam. She has established a school for Bharatnatyam here. [The Hindu]
Like Amreekans, the Chinese are dabbling in many things desi, like Bollywood, yummy food and of course teh yoga. Can’t forget that yoga.
Aside: Is there a better cultural ambassador? We have millions of confused, middle-aged, New Year’s Resolution-keepers all across this land, taking Yoga at Bally fitness and the like, trying not to fall over when they’re attempting an Ardha Chandrasana. ;) Now people can add incense and twisty poses to the pottu, when they assemble a stereotype. :D Don’t get your chuddies all twisted, yaar. I’m just high off the cuteness in that picture (that’s Jin Shan Shan and her adorable daughter Jessie, in Beijing).
While Bollywood films, Indian cuisine and yoga have become popular in China, learning classical Indian dance is also gaining ground here, Ms. Jin said. Around 50 Chinese children were attending classes every week to learn the intricacies of the classical dance. [The Hindu]
Wouldn’t it be amazing if the arts accomplished what the Panch Shila couldn’t? Yes, yes it would be. Then again, will hundreds of stomping little kids have any effect on China’s “take” on Arunachal Pradesh?
In November 2006, China and India had a verbal spat over claim of the north-east Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. India claimed that China was occupying 38,000 square kilometres of its territory in Kashmir, while China claimed the whole of Arunachal Pradesh as its own.
Recently, China denied the application for visa from an IAS officer in Arunachal Pradesh, saying that since Arunachal Pradesh is a territory of China, he/she won’t need a visa to visit his/her own country. [viki]
An irresponsibly naive idealist can hope, right? Be the change you wish to see?
The big news of this morning is that Musharraf has backed down from declaring a state of emergency after flirting publicly with the idea:
Pakistani president Gen. Pervez Musharraf, under intense pressure from his own advisers and the U.S. government not to curtail civil liberties, has rejected the option of imposing a state of emergency to deal with a deepening political crisis, top government officials said Thursday. [Link]
Of the reasons offered for why he might declare a state of emergency, my favorite was “It’s Obama’s fault!”
Tariq Azim, the Pakistani information minister, … said some sentiment coming from the United States, including from Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama, over the possibility of US military action against al-Qaida in Pakistan “has started alarm bells ringing and has upset the Pakistani public”. [Link]
That’s right - Barack Obama, a presidential candidate who isn’t even the front-runner for his party’s nomination has so scared the Pakistani public that the little General might have to declare a state of emergency to calm things down! I didn’t wanna do it, Ms. Rice, but Obama was gonna make me!
Of course, this excuse is completely bogus. Musharraf’s likely motives for considering a state of emergency were purely domestic: a state of emergency would postpone upcoming elections, and sideline that pesky supreme court before it decides that he cannot be both President and head of the army at the same time. He also could have used rising domestic insecurity, including a wave of suicide bombings, as a pretext, but that would have made him look weak.
Mr. President, there are better scapegoats than Obama. Why not blame the September 11 commission or the Washington Post, both of whom have advocated the same policy ? Or better yet, how about Tom Tancredo who has gone far further than any of the above. If any US Presidential candidate is scaring the Pakistani public, it should be Tancredo:
Tom Tancredo continued to defend his comments that threatening to bomb Muslim holy sites would be the right way to “deter any kind of aggression” from terrorists and said that anyone who wouldn’t do the same “isn’t fit to be president” on Sunday morning. [Link]
If that doesn’t start “alarm bells ringing” I don’t know what will!
Via Ruchira Paul and 3QD, an article in the Boston Globe about the work of Robert Putnam, a Harvard University political scientist. The Globe summarizes the gist of the article as follows:
It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.
The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation’s social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam’s research predicts. (link)
What makes this all more interesting is the fact that Robert Putnam is not himself a conservative, but a progressive-minded scholar who supports diversity. He didn’t expect these findings when he started this project, and has worked hard to make sure they are understood correctly — though anti-immigrant conservatives have definitely been eating this up.
Our berry own Bharath Obama fired back at his rivals regarding his intentions for Pakistan and the WoT, at yesterday’s AFL-CIO Presidential Forum, which went down on his turf (thanks, Amrita):
Mutinous backstory for his rejoinder here and here.
I was half-listening to NPR’s Day to Day today, when I heard the words, “because of his skin color” repeated a few times; predictably, that got my attention. It turned out that the man being discussed, Pedro Guzman, was developmentally disabled and had been mistakenly deported to Mexico. Because of his skin color.
A wrongly deported U.S. citizen who was missing for nearly three months in Mexico ate out of garbage cans, bathed in rivers and was repeatedly turned away by U.S. border agents when he tried to return to California, his family said Tuesday.
Pedro Guzman, 29, was picked up at the Calexico border crossing over the weekend. He was released to his family on Tuesday.[WaPo]
…yes, but according to Frank Stoltze at NPR, he was set free only after a court ordered it.
Guzman was shaking and stuttering and appeared traumatized, his family said at a news conference. Family members said they plan to seek medical attention for Guzman, who was not at the news conference.
“They took him whole but only returned half of him to me,” his mother, Maria Carbajal, said in Spanish while crying. “The government is responsible for this.” [WaPo]
To hear his Mother weep on the radio was painful. On NPR, she said that “he may be back home, but he is not the same.” His brother mentioned that Guzman is now afraid of people.
“What a nightmare,” I thought, and I was reminded immediately of some of us, and how black humor has permeated our banter with each other, with friends who aren’t citizens. “Be careful, you’ll get deported!” and the like are now uttered frequently and followed with uneasy laughter.
Guzman’s ordeal commenced in May, after he completed jail time for trespassing.
Mr. Guzman had served about 20 days of a jail sentence for misdemeanor trespassing and vandalism until May 11, when, in a screening of inmates’ status, he apparently indicated he was from Mexico and was turned over to the immigration agency, which deported him to Tijuana. [NYT]
The Los Angeles county jail authorities summarily deported him without bothering to check his birth records, which would’ve proven that he was born in Los Angeles. Of course, these same authorities are insisting that he showed “no signs of illness”.
Guzman has issues even remembering his family’s phone number, which left him lost to forage through trash in Tijuana, while his relatives desperately searched for him, for almost three months.
Said Guzman’s attorney from the ACLU:
This government deported Pedro Guzman because of his skin color. Did not believe him when he said he was a U.S. citizen, born in California, because of his skin color. [NPR]
On July 25th, Pratibha Patil became India’s first female President. Because the Presidency is largely a ceremonial position, this is less significant than Indira’s ascension to the PM’s throne over 40 years ago.
Patil may be far from an exemplary figure, dogged by a long list of controversies including her advocacy of eugenic sterilization, allegations that she protected her brother from a murder charge, and her habit of speaking to dead people without being Haley Joel Osment, but at least she can do little harm as President.
What interests me more is the general question of whether the gender of a politician matters. Certainly, it’s hard to argue that there was anything about Indira’s reign that would reveal her gender.
Female pradhans spent more on public goods preferred by women. [Link]
Female pradhans are objectively better - they provide more public goods, the quality of these goods is at least as good as elsewhere, and villagers are less likely to pay bribes. [Link]
Despite that, “voters are less satisfied with the performance of female pradhans than with that of male pradhans in providing all services, including drinking water, for which quantity and quality is objectively better … Surprisingly, those unhappy with women leaders include both men and women, and they blame women even for the service levels of those goods that the GP doesn’t provide.” [Link]
That’s right - women’s performance on the job is objectively better, they are less corrupt, but even so male and female voters are less happy with their performance and blame them for things entirely outside their control. While President Patil may have come to disfavor based on her own actions, in general it’s the story of Fred and Ginger for women politicians - they have to do everything that men do, but backwards and in heels.
Key Suspect in Satender Singh Murder Fled U.S. [3 UPDATES]
Breaking news: mutineer Mark, who has done an outstanding job of keeping the SM community apprised of the aftermath (or lack of) of Satender Singh’s vicious, senseless murder, points us to The Sacramento Bee, for news we have all been waiting for, about this hate crime:
A month after the death of a Fijian man on a river beach, Sacramento County Sheriff’s detectives have identified the man who allegedly threw the lethal punch and then fled the country, officials confirmed Tuesday.
Sheriff’s spokesman Tim Curran said that 29-year-old Andrey Vusik of West Sacramento is the key suspect in the July 1 assault on Satender Singh at Lake Natoma — an act of violence many of Singh’s friends and supporters say was fueled by homophobia and hate.
Singh was salaciously enjoying himself, by hanging out with his friends, hugging them, dancing around…you know, very gay activities. He should have known better than to hug people. Or dance.
Vusik was identified as a suspect from witness statements, according to Curran. Sheriff’s officials would not specify what country he fled to and said they do not know his precise whereabouts.
“We believe he’s out of the country and we’re working with the FBI to locate him,” Curran said.
Well, at least there’s this:
Vusik’s relatives here are cooperating with homicide detectives, Curran said.
A warrant for Vusik’s arrest on suspicion of manslaughter was issued July 27. It remained unclear Tuesday when or whether Vusik would return to California to face charges.
For those of us who wondered about whether it would be considered a hate crime:
Curran also said investigators have uncovered information — including statements made before Singh was punched — that could support a hate crime enhancement should the District Attorney’s Office decide to file that count.
Wait, there’s more:
Detectives have also questioned a second suspect connected to the assault: Aleksander Shevchenko, 21, also of West Sacramento. According to authorities, Shevchenko was also involved in the altercation. He was arrested late Monday on suspicion of intimidation, also a hate crime.
Satender died almost exactly a month ago, after being punched and then striking his head on the base of a picnic table so hard, he damaged his brain stem. The group which attacked Satender had been harassing him and his friends all day, for their ethnicity and their perceived sexual orientation. For shame.
Every time Obama goes down to Devon Avenue he seems to raise a ruckus (see previous post). This afternoon in Chicago:
A small group of protesters assembled this afternoon across the street from an Indian restaurant in Chicago where Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama was holding a fundraiser.
The mostly Pakistani group chanted anti-Obama slogans in response to a threat the Illinois Democrat made last week about his willingness, if elected president, to launch unilateral American military strikes against Al Qaeda havens in a remote border region of Pakistan.
“Obama, hypocrite,” the group repeatedly chanted, as some of the 25 or so assembled held signs that read “Sen. Obama, Good speaker. But no clue what to speak” and “Obama equal Osama,” a reference to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. [Link]
To recap, the main reason this small group of Pakistani Americans were protesting Osama Obama was covered here recently by Amardeep.
“Barack Obama is advocating bombing an entire nation. This man is not our friend,” said Andy Thayer, a spokesman for the Chicago Coalition Against War. “Hillary Clinton is also not our friend. She called for not taking the nuclear option off the table…” [Link]
Hold up there Andy. He might have advocated a little bombing but at least he swore it would not be nuclear! Stop painting things with such a wide brush. Presidential candidate Joe Biden recently pointed out the obvious by the way. We already routinely violate Pakistani sovereignty (probably with SEAL Teams). We just got to be hush hush about it so that the Pakistani population doesn’t give Mushie a hard time because of it.
“… in order to look tough, he’s undermined his ability to be tough, were he president. Because if you’re going to go into Pakistan — which is already our policy by the way, if there’s actionable intelligence — you need actionable intelligence from moderates within Pakistan working with you. Now if you’re already going to say I’m going to disregard whatever the country thinks and going to invade, the likelihood you’re getting the cooperation you need evaporates. It’s a well intended notion he has, but it’s a very naïve way of figuring out how you’re going to conduct foreign policy…” [Link]
Put another way, these monsoon floods have already produced nineteen times as many refugees as Katrina did. Katrina scattered up to one million Americans, and that was the largest American population displacement in 150 years.
The biggest danger from the rain isn’t drowning, it’s the disease that it brings once water supplies get contaminated:
“Entire villages are days away from a health crisis if people are not reached in the coming days,” … UNICEF’s health chief in India, said in a statement.
The threat of waterborne disease is high because wells have been contaminated by floodwaters … In Bangladesh, there were 1,400 reported cases of diarrhea in the past 24 hours… [Link]
The danger is worse because floodwaters have closed the roads to many villages, so aid workers can’t easily distribute food and clean water. The Indian air force has air dropped food for 2 million people in Bihar. This is going to be a serious task, one that will require both government and civil society working together, something they are lousy at doing.
Also out in the U.S. this week: Anupama Chopra’s King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. As the title suggests, King of Bollywood is a full-length book meant for a general readership, looking back at the life and career of Shah Rukh Khan — aka, the “Badshah”. Chopra traces the various changes in the Bombay film industry in the 1990s, and argues that Shah Rukh is in many ways the face of the new, Yuppified, transnational Bollywood. From earlier conversations on SM, I know that some readers are a bit sick of Shah Rukh, though I would argue that Amitabh Bachchan has been far more over-exposed in the past few years (Shah Rukh has been only doing about one movie a year). The question Chopra is interested in isn’t “is Shah Rukh Khan a great actor,” it’s “how and why has Shah Rukh been such a success in the Bombay film industry given his outsider status?”
Derived nearly entirely from face-to-face interviews, there’s a lot of factual material about Shah Rukh Khan in Chopra’s book that I didn’t know — and I suspect that all but the most diehard fans won’t know most of it either.
People interested in Asian Underground music have probably already heard of Falu, a singer who first appeared on Karsh Kale’sRealize back in 2001. Since then she’s been featured on a number of other people’s CDs, but today she releases her own, self-titled CD. Rather than going for more in the way electronic beats, here Falu works with a live rock/desi fusion band, doing a mix of English and Hindi/Urdu songs.
It’s a strong first effort. Falu has trained in Hindustani classical music with Ustad Sultan Khan, and there are several nice Hindi/Urdu tracks on the CD. The strongest is certainly her version of “O Lal Meri” (aka, “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar”); here the music is traditional, and Falu gets to really show off her Qawwali chops. I found Falu’s version of Asha Bhosle’s “Dum Maro Dum” less exciting, perhaps because I’m too attached to the original — and to Asha Bhosle’s voice (still, Falu’s rock/fusion band seems to be having a good time rocking out a bit here). Also good are “Rabba” and “Poojan.” Ustad Sultan Khan himself shows up playing Sarangi on two tracks, and he joins in the vocals to “Copper Can.”
Thus far, I’ve been somewhat less excited by the English language songs on the CD, though there are some notable exceptions. The lyrics to “Without You” are a mix of English and Urdu, and it’s intriguing to hear Falu do Qawwali-esque vocal trills on the English as well as the Urdu parts of the song. “Hey Baby” is entirely in English (albeit with a desi musical touch), though from listening to the lyrics it occurred to me that Falu is replicating in a secular, English, rock idiom the themes that are also prevalent Qawwali music: longing, desire, and the inaccessibility of the beloved. The difference, of course, is that in Urdu the longing is for God, while in English the longing is for a lover. (Note: you can listen to “Hey Baby” on Falu’s Myspace page)
You can get this CD at Falu’s website; it’s also available on Itunes and at Amazon. Readers in the New York area might want to hit the CD release party at Canal Room tomorrow (more details here). I won’t be able to go; perhaps Falu and her band will come to Philly sometime…
[Disclosure: the folks at Press Here music sent me a review copy of this CD.]
Sam posted a story on our news tab which shocked me right out of my ankle-stupor; at first, it seemed slightly ho-hum, since it was about India sending radar to help Sri Lanka prevent LTTE attacks. Then…
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place, to start (when you read you begin with…). Via The Hindu, which is the original news source:
India had resumed non-lethal military aid to Sri Lanka with the supply of two indigenous radars in 2005. This year in January it sent another military radar to Sri Lanka which was followed by the despatch of a similar radar in June. The radars were sent on behalf of the Indian Air Force, the sources said.
Yes, fine, fine. That’s not what made me jolt awake. This is:
Ironically, both radars were sent from the Hindon military base on the outskirts of Delhi. This was the place from where helicopters were despatched via Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu to rescue the LTTE leader V. Prabakaran at Vadamarachchi on the northern tip of Jaffna after the Sri Lankan Army had cornered him in the late 80s. [The Hindu]
Here’s what I had read on our news tab:
Tucked away in one line in The Hindu today (August 06, 2007) is one of the untold secrets of Indian intervention in Sri Lankan affairs: Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the Tamil Tiger terrorists, was helicoptered out of Sri Lanka by the Indians when he was cornered by the Sri Lankan Army at Vadamarachchi in the 80s. [sm]
So I HAD found the “obscure” part of The Hindu article which Sam’s tip mentioned, which is what fascinated me in the first place! I know nothing about this conflict (that’s what you are here for, dear readers…to edumacate me in your inimitable way)— but even I could sense that this seemed like a rather big deal.
Back to radar, for those who can still focus on that aspect of this news:
Diplomatic sources here said India’s supply of radars, said to be in the non-lethal category, in no way compromised its desire for a political solution to the Tamil issue.
India claims it was forced to supply the radars to prevent Pakistan and China from fulfilling Sri Lanka’s need. New Delhi was uncomfortable with the idea of Islamabad or Beijing-built surveillance equipment being installed close to its shore. [The Hindu]
As a sequel to my “Love in the Time of Terrorism” post I wanted to offer up this new one based upon a Wall Street Journal article published today titled, “‘Til Tech Do Us Part.” Although it does not specifically cite any South Asian peeps in the article, I am sure you can all agree that it is quite relevant to a great many of us (and probably tech-savvy SM readers more so than most). Here is the oh-so-juicy synopsis of the article:
Joint bank account? Check. Merging the MP3 collection? Hold on a minute. Couples are struggling with just how much to combine the digital aspects of their lives. Why spouses are bickering over shared email accounts and his-and-hers blogs. [Link]
It’s true, it’s sooo true. This is why our parents generation just cannot understand why we sometimes (well some of us) wait so long to get married. It is no longer a question of simply making sure that your prospective wife comes from a good family and that at least one of her siblings is a doctor if she failed to become one herself. No. There is the MP3 collection-compatibility-issue that is a constant cloud which hangs over many of our serial dating lives. God forbid she leaves behind an Ipod in my car and I accidentally play Akon or Fergie when there are people around who might judge me. “I listen to Kings of Leon. I swear.” What if she bookmarks the NYPost whereas I bookmark the NYTimes? Does she pay attention to RottenTomatoes.com like I do or does she just go to the movies and blindly hope for the best like some crazy free spirit? Getting to know someone and fall in love just takes a lot more research these days.
To stay on pace during his five-mile jogging workouts, Olav Junttila keeps his iPod stocked with fast, thumping electronic music. But an unwelcome sound has been intruding on his daily runs: Britney Spears singing her bubble-gum hit “Oops, I Did It Again.”
The culprit is Mr. Junttila’s wife, Katie. Her musical taste differs, but instead of setting up a separate music library in iTunes, she mixes her Beyoncé and Justin Timberlake purchases in with his picks. “I’m going, ‘Where’d this song come from? I don’t even like this song,’ ” says Mr. Junttila, a 34-year-old New York investment banker. [Link]
Then, of course, the article moves on to an issue even more troubling than music and one that I lie awake at nights stressing about. Yep. Blogs.
I keed. Despite my erstwhile devotion to all things Italian and denim, I do not think that there is ANYTHING which could persuade me to wear this unfortunate schmata— and that’s not because I’m conservative or unwilling to experiment for the sake of fashion.
Kanjeevaram, my beloved, politically incorrect, guilt-inducing Kanjeevaram, is heavy and inflexible enough; so how on earth does this thing WORK? Even if it is one of those new-fangled, “lazy saris” (as my Mother calls them), which is essentially a wrap-around, pre-pleated bottom with pallu attached, it’s still not easy enough.
I’d feel mummified.
Swaddled.
Slow.
Uncomfortable, and reminded of what it feels like to get x-rays, with that heavy protective blanket on top of me. Except at least when I’m getting x-rayed, I’m perfectly still. GAH. Yes, this is freaking me out, man. Must increase the drugs…
After color changing saree, pocket saree, it’s now turn for a Denim Silk Saree.
Sri Kumaran Stores, once a leading name in the garments business now seems desperate for market share. So out comes thinking caps (or is it cowboy hats) and innovation for the sake of it. In contrast to the appealing RMKV’s 50,000 color/ reversible saree, the concept as well as communication is a mild put off!
Incidentally, she has a pic of a very public version of this ad; a billboard which has some serendipitous placement, with regards to local greenery. Wait a second, what the— there’s a reversible sari?
My Mother is a disgrace I tell you. A disgrace. I’m always the last to know about such sartorial innovation. How someone who wears no makeup and has never thought to read a fashion magazine bore me, I have no idea. I’m terrified that whatever it is she has will skip a generation though, and that MY daughter will be a fearsome, dreaded rapscallion of a tomboy. Obviously, my Mother is praying for exactly this, as divine revenge for having to put up with me for 32 girly, glittery, glossy years. But I digress (and I must, for truly, it isn’t a post of mine, if I don’t!).
One final note: how the hell is this suitable for elders? Because they don’t move much? Give me a set sari over this isht, any day.
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Via Maisnon, Lizzie and Yindia Uncut…thanks all. Or, um, in this case, y’all.
The Hero Bicycle of Indian cars, the Hindustan Motors Limited Ambassador turns 50 this month. Although it was a clone of a British car, the Morris Oxford Series II, the car has a quintessentially Indian feel to it and neatly encapsulates much of post-Independence India in a single morsel.
Some of my fondest memories of India have to do with the back bench of an Ambassador, and I don’t mean like that. No, I mean 10 of us piled into my uncle’s car, driving around New Dehli, running errands on the eve of his wedding. A Maruti is too cold, too clinical, too generic a car to generate the warm fuzzy memories that an Ambassador can, and you simply cannot fit as many people into one.
… In a country where roadside mechanics abound, its simplicity is one reason why 20,000 Ambassadors are still sold each year. And it does possess an undeniable sense of dignity. Yes, the acceleration is so woeful that the speedometer may as well be replaced by a calendar before you reach the top speed of 90mph, and … the brakes prefer to be given notice in writing, but at least new Ambassadors now boast power-assisted steering, as the unassisted steering gives a turning circle of approximately 64ft.
In place of air conditioning there are triangular quarter lights on the front doors; the windows are still opened via rack and pinion handles; the gear change requires brute force rather than any finesse and the occupants (all five to 10 of them) are forced to sit very upright, for the Ambassador is certainly not a car to encourage a slovenly posture. [Link]
Today’s New York Times carries an article about DBDs who live in Iselin, NJ (which is near Edison), who are being affected by the same anti-boarding house ordinances which Virginia is using against Hispanic day-laborers. Complaints from neighbors, usually about things like litter, imperfect lawns and the like are being investigated vigorously— but are they being pursued a little too vigorously? How much of this is icky bias and how much is ignorance regarding brown proclivities to live in extended family arrangements? And really, what is it that four DBDs living in a four-bedroom home could be doing, which is so suspect?
With the workweek behind him, Deepu Dass focused on a pesky bald spot in his front lawn here. As he sprayed the patch with water, urging the grass toward the perfection achieved by several neighbors, he said confidently: “I planted seeds.”
Two of his three roommates chatted behind Mr. Dass on the porch…The men — all Indian immigrants here on worker visas without their families — rent rooms month to month in this white, four-bedroom Cape Cod, where the kitchen shelves are stocked with food in bulk and the walls are decorated with reminders of home. “That’s Kerala,” said Mr. Dass, pointing to a silkscreen of a village fishing scene from his home state. “They call it God’s own country because it’s so beautiful.”
Absolutely. But that snide pride in the state from whence my parents came is for another post. Or five.
There have been up to six men sharing the house, whose owners include Suresh Kumar, president of NexAge Technologies USA, a nearby software company where the tenants work. But the unusual arrangement — and the unsightly lawn — caught the attention of local housing inspectors, and in May Woodbridge Township cited Mr. Kumar for several violations, including an unauthorized boarding house and an illegal multifamily dwelling. He has until Aug. 16 to resolve the situation, which may mean kicking his workers out.
I don’t get it. Everyone I know owns a rental property. Many of us rent such properties. A good number of us do so with roommates…where is this arbitrary line which divides the bad from the good? On the flawed lawn, which is apparently what got poor Deepu et al in trouble?
Mr. Kumar’s were among more than 300 notices of violation that the authorities handed out from January through May to homeowners in the 10 communities that make up Woodbridge Township, part of a stepped-up inspection effort the mayor announced last year…But in a twist to the familiar tales of suburban authorities breaking up illegally subdivided homes crowded with Hispanic day laborers, the mayor’s crackdown here has hit another group of immigrants: middle-class Indians who rent rooms or parts of rooms to Indian students, technology workers and others seeking a first foothold in this country.
Desi homeowners have been gifted with almost a quarter of the notices.
Tipster Sparky left a link to an interview with MIA on the News Tab. The part that seemed most interesting had to do with the role producer Diplo has played in her music. According to M.I.A., the influence of Diplo has been seriously overplayed by the media, for reasons that might have to do with gender and race:
M.I.A.: Yesterday I read like five magazines in the airplane— it was a nine hour flight— and three out of five magazines said “Diplo: the mastermind behind M.I.A.’s politics!” And I was wondering, does that stem from [Pitchfork]? Because I find it really bonkers.
Pitchfork: Well, it’s hard to say where it originated. We certainly have made reference to Diplo playing a part on your records, but it seems like everyone plays that up.
M.I.A.: If you read the credits, he sent me a loop for “Bucky Done Gun”, and I made a song in London, and it became “Bucky Done Gun”. But that was the only song he was actually involved in on Arular. So the whole time I’ve had immigration problems and not been able to get in the country, what I am or what I do has got a life of its own, and is becoming less and less to do with me. And I just find it a bit upsetting and kind of insulting that I can’t have any ideas on my own because I’m a female or that people from undeveloped countries can’t have ideas of their own unless it’s backed up by someone who’s blond-haired and blue-eyed. After the first time it’s cool, the second time it’s cool, but after like the third, fourth, fifth time, maybe it’s an issue that we need to talk about, maybe that’s something important, you know. (link)
Go, Maya. As she goes forward, she puts more emphasis on the gender question, and less on the whether “people from underdeveloped countries” can have “ideas of their own”:
I wanted to write a quick follow-up post to this one I wrote last year about the micro-credit organization Kiva.org. In May of this year I lent $100 to Farzhana Mosah Khan, a tailor in Afghanistan:
Farzhana lives in district 17 of Kabul, Afghanistan. She is a tailor. She is married and lives with members of her family and she wants to help her husband support her family. She wants to take a group loan to expand her business and buy new machines because she wants to send her children to good schools to be educated. She hopes that if she works hard to be a good business dealer in the future she will make a good monthly income for her family. [Link]
The total loan amount requested by Farzhana was actually $175, which means that another lender provided the difference. Farzhana needs about a year to pay back my loan (interest free). This isn’t a charity. You get your money back but simply have to forgo the interest. What that means is that if you already have a “charity portfolio” that you give to every year this isn’t really another charity to spread you thin.
I decided to check out who the other lender was and his page documents the tremendous success he has seen during his involvement with Kiva. He gets paid.
Farzhana posted the first installment of her loan ($22) in June. I think I am going to make some more loans. Need a demo? Check it:
A national initiative led by five of America’s leading research universities with the support of two major foundations will advance the U.S. news business by helping revitalize schools of journalism.
The universities will take advantage of the riches of their institutions by integrating the schools of journalism more closely with the entire campus in an effort to better teach, challenge and prepare the next generation of news industry leaders for an increasingly complex world. The initiative will experiment with curriculum and hands-on experience with the hope of creating a national conversation with other schools across the country. [Link]
One of their first “hand-on” efforts is an interactive GoogleMaps project titled “Minorities Representing Majorities,” that is introduced as follows:
Many American politicians tout their Judeo-Christian heritage. Many tell stories of the immigrant experience of their parents. But a precious few are immigrants themselves. And even a smaller number belong to minority faiths, such as Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism.
News21 has identified more than 40 such politicians who are, in effect, minorities representing majorities. Below, you will find an interactive map with detailed snapshots of each. Plus, for a closer look at seven of them, click to view the video profiles at right. [Link]
Not only do the students provide an interactive map of where these politicians serve (regrettably no minorities represent majorities near our world blogging headquarters in North Dakota), but they also include video clips interviewing them to hear about their perspectives and experiences. The best part is that we can expect much more from these students in the future:
We plan to go about this exploration by undertaking a series of reports and interactive, multimedia projects on new American immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Our prism, however, will not be geography but faith. We will look at Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Buddhists, as well as Christians and Jews. We will begin with our home base of New York and then expand to American and foreign cities that best tell the stories of the new immigrants. We will look at how they are being changed and how, in the process, they are changing America. [Link]
Yesterday’s NYTimes featured a profile of Harvinder Anand, the new mayor of Laurel Hollow (a village on Long Island). Anand is the latest member of what the Times describes as “a small but recently growing number of Indian-American officeholders [that] has been getting elected in communities across the nation where they are the tiniest of minorities.”
Harvinder Anand, the new mayor of this Long Island village of multimillion-dollar homes, private beaches and yachtsmen, is, like many other residents, a successful business executive, a boater and a connoisseur of world travel. His Sikh turban and beard drew double takes when he moved to the community about 10 years ago, but it does not get many anymore. At least not among the locals…
Nonetheless, Mr. Anand’s way of standing out in the crowd of Bermuda-shorts-and-loafer-wearing people who elected him in June — he ran unopposed — attracted television crews from American and Indian networks to his inauguration on July 2… Link]
Other examples of Indian-American officeholders mentioned in the article include a host of people we have covered in past posts on SM: Upendra J. Chivukula, Jay Goyal, Nikki Randhawa Haley, and Kumar P. Barve. All of them (comprised of both Reps and Dems) actually called to congratulate Anand. How is that for identity politics?
Some are Democrats and some Republicans, but they all share a high level of education and a crossover election appeal. It is a testament, perhaps, to the fact that, compared with other immigrant groups, Indians tend to speak English when they arrive and are ready to assume a place in the middle class. [Link]
And of course there is also the Governor Elect (for all practical purposes) of Louisiana (he didn’t call Anand):
United States Representative Bobby Jindal, Republican of Louisiana, a second-generation Indian-American who was elected from a district whose population is 1.5 percent Asian, narrowly lost his bid for governor in 2003 and recently began a campaign for this year’s election for governor — in a state where Indian-Americans account for about 1 percent of the population. [Link]
I hear all of you on the drink-buying morass but I want a thread about whether I’d be considered the biggest ho alive for putting out on the first date. How about the second? More respectable?
I’m going through a dry spell and I’m in the mood to cut to the chase. I’m usually reasonably virtuous. Would I be seen as sensual or skanky? Would my amorous inclinations kill any chances of having a real relationship? [sm]
Of course they would, and remember, choose your orifice adventure wisely, so you can still be extra you-know-what, like olive oil…and I don’t mean light.
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When I was in college I was classified as a “ho” not just for being a Dirty Girl (Nothing goes down faster than an anchor!™) but…wait for it…wait for it…
A friend once asked me why so many Sikhs were named Singh and Kaur. I told him these names were mandatory for Amritdhari Sikhs and common for others, that they served to replace surnames that were caste markers with just two names that had royal associations, and that while there were many Sikhs who were Singhs, there were many Singhs who were not Sikhs.
He listened carefully and replied “Doesn’t that get confusing? I mean all those Singhs running around?”
I burst out laughing. You see my friend’s surname was Smith. And he wasn’t just any Smith, he was a John Smith, and actually a John Smith Jr. at that.
It was funny as a question from a good friend. It was offensive as long running Canadian Policy:
CBC News has obtained a copy of a letter sent from the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi to Singh’s family stating that “the names Kaur and Singh do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada.”
Karen Shadd-Evelyn, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said the policy preventing people from immigrating to Canada with those last names has been in place for the last 10 years.
“I believe the thinking behind it in this case is because it is so common. [With] the sheer numbers of applicants that have those as their surnames, it’s just a matter for numbers and for processing in that visa office.” [Link]
This made absolutely no sense. If you’re processing files, you need to know the name the person had for most of their lives to distinguish them from others, and you can’t go back in time and change it retroactively. If they’re complaining that it’s hard to distinguish the files of one “Ennis Singh” from another once they’ve applied, that’s absurd. You use file numbers not actual names. Lastly, this was a policy solely directed against Singhs and Kaurs, not any other name:
Citizenship and Immigration Canada says there is no such policy against other common last names. [Link]
I wrote a post this weekend which questioned certain commenters’ assertions regarding how “hot Desi girls seem to end up with White guys”. We discussed that misconception as well as…well, a few dozen other subjects, but that’s natural over the course of 1,349 comments. One sub-thread which I followed avidly involved I-bankers and their (for some) elusive prey: the skinny, hyper-maintained, hot brown girl with stick-straight hair.
Some of you compassionately responded to your banking brethren, when they plaintively admitted that they weren’t sure where to locate their loins’ fondest desire; instructions, right down to locations, days of the week and yes, auspicious times of day (yo, are we brown or are we BROWN) were offered and happily accepted. Much like the original exchange which inspired my post on interracial dating, which is where this comedy of heir-ers was going down, what I noticed was that these weren’t one-off sentiments. To me, that made them difficult to dismiss.
The one word which kept surfacing, repeatedly, insistently, was skinny.
Predictably, evolved mutineers were outraged and immediately broadcasted it; even more predictable than that, the obligatory, “I can’t help it, it’s just what ruins my boxers”- volley occurred, so that there was essentially a stalemate. Around skinny. While all of them pondered if it was okay to come out and say that “skinny” was a requirement, and whether such a requiring was nothing to be ashamed of, I was transfixed by something else which was related, but not discussed.
What did skinny mean in this context?
To some, Kate Moss defines skinny. To others, the woman who is pictured on our left qualifies.
I like to know exactly what I’m offended by, before I gift someone with a new orifice, so I couldn’t get my outrage-on— not until this question was answered. Yes, yes…we should all eschew superficial everything and it’s terrible that we’re judging female books by their covers, but it’s also a gross reality. And I wanted to know how realistic these I(yer) bankers were.
There was another snag—we were discussing Manhattan.
It’s a rarified world and understandably, the benchmarks are different. Everything is relative (and apparently, if you are an Iyengar reading SM, YOU are all relatives…oy, how I wish that I could actually link to relevant comments from MY OWN POST, which would make my attempts at wit successful vs. inscrutable).
In most cities, D.C. included, my 450 sq ft studio is tiny. In Manhattan, my friend is thrilled to have that much space for her ONE-BEDROOM. In most cities, making six figures is awesome. In Manhattan, it barely affords the afore-mentioned shoe-box, rent-wise and that’s if you limit your methods for self-intoxicating to PBR (note: life is too short for PBR, my darlinks). Anyway, if everything is tougher, better, more competitive, more expensive and more EVERYTHING in Manhattan, then…do brown guys expect brown girls to be skinnier, too? And does skinny mean fit? Or just skinny?
My guy friends (the unManhattanites, if you will…I’m not counting the Murray Hill dwellers et al for the purposes of this fluffy post) would line up giddily for a shot at the gorgeous girl above. Would our I(yengar) bankers? I think we have a bit of a vested interest in all this; the majority of the Desi vomen whom I am privileged to know are curvaceous, if they’re out of their teens. For most men, that’s a good thing. My male buddies don’t like straight lines—on the roads they’re about to break laws on or…uh…you know.
Curves are good. Right? Left? Those are definitely curves, on the left.
So, as I said memorably (and almost 1,700 comments ago!), out with it then. Let’s have the truth. What do you want? Is the woman I’ve wrapped this post around zaftig or is she just right? Err, left? You know what I mean. And this ain’t no heteronormative joint. I’ll be the first to tell you that she could inspire me to discover a love that dare not speak its naam. ;) What about you?
Today Senator Barack Obama gave a speech outlining his strategy on terrorism if he were to be elected President. The speech has three solid paragraphs relating to Pakistan:
As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.
I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.
And Pakistan needs more than F-16s to combat extremism. As the Pakistani government increases investment in secular education to counter radical madrasas, my Administration will increase America’s commitment. We must help Pakistan invest in the provinces along the Afghan border, so that the extremists’ program of hate is met with one of hope. And we must not turn a blind eye to elections that are neither free nor fair – our goal is not simply an ally in Pakistan, it is a democratic ally. (link)
The AP article on the speech interprets this as a threat: if Musharraf doesn’t do the job, we’ll invade.
Actually I think the lines in question could be interpreted differently — I think Obama is merely suggesting that U.S. troops could be deployed to take out selected targets in the border provinces, and then removed. “Targeted strikes” isn’t quite the same as “invasion,” though it’s close: it does sound like Obama is saying such operations could be conducted even without Musharraf’s express permission.
On a separate note, it’s good to see Obama emphasizing the value of inculcating secular education and a culture of democracy in Pakistan. It’s now become increasingly clear that there are millions of Pakistanis who want another try at democracy; the demand that Musharraf relinquish some of his power can no longer be shrugged off.
I am saddened to report the sudden and unexpected demise of our beloved friend, Whoa— is dating White not right? (July 28, 2007 -August 1, 2007).
Right was born in an indie coffee shop, in the heart of Washington, D.C., via the twin modern miracles of a stickered, 12” iBook and wifi. In his short life, he profoundly affected many mutineers; Right challenged long-held assumptions, enlightened us about dozens of subjects and was a welcoming, tolerant figure in our community. He will be missed.
In lieu of flowers, Right’s grieving family humbly requests that when SM does its annual plea for donations to keep the site going, a la PBS/NPR, you contribute a rupee or two in his memory, especially since his Mother HATES ADS AND WILL NEVER AGREE TO HAVING THEM ON THIS SITE.
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I had to close the uber-thread. :(
Many of you are writing to me, letting me know that you can no longer access it. Not sure what’s going on, but I can’t see new comments, either, which means I can’t moderate…so unfortunately, the party is over…not that I needed to do a lot of moderating in the first place. :)
I am delighted; considering the provocative subject material, there was far less ickiness, trolling or flaming than one might expect. All credit for that goes to you.
Thanks for one of the most lively, fascinating and relevant discussions we’ve ever had— and don’t fret, my pets…plenty of you left comments which could be spun off in to so many different threads, about queer dating, seduction via bharatnatyam, evaluating what’s worse— emasculation or exoticization, outting Iyengars, South Asian inter-religious/regional relationships, where to find B-Boy/punker Punjabis, how to procure puliyodarai, internalized self-hatred as evidenced by externalized comment-stupidity, whether I-Bankers are evil, where to find the mythical straight-haired, hyper-maintained desi goddesses whose knickers disintegrate for private equity types, San Francisco’s alternately sucky/fantastic dating scene and of course, HAIR.
More of all that, soon. In the meanwhile, pour a little sum’n out for “Right”, the next time libations are flowing. Sigh. Time to cue Tupac:
Rest in peace young homie, there’s a heaven for a G…
Late last year, Sepia Mutiny 
Mutineer Umair alerts us to a case of lottery fraud in Sacramento, via our news tab. Apparently, a cashier at a Roseville-area 7-11 tried to keep a winning “Mega Million” ticket for herself. Here’s the backstory:
My apologies to all for a long absence. As the Governator once said, I will be back. Just needed a little time off to rest my bloodshot eyes, straighten my keyboard-cramped fingers, and un-kink my turtling neck. Also, Mr. Cicatrix promises to make an honest woman of me soon.
Breaking news: mutineer 
The speech has three solid paragraphs relating to Pakistan:
