(Alternate link to the video) Aasif Mandvi is an Indian-American actor and one-time playwright who has had small parts in many movies and larger parts on a number of major TV shows (like CSI). His Daily Show appearance — as a “Middle Eastern Affairs Correspondent” — is pretty clever; he riffs on Condoleezza Rice’s claim that the current wars in the Middle East are merely the “birth pangs” of emergent democracy in a “new Middle East”. Mandvi gets a couple of big laughs, but also possibly loses the audience at the end with an ironic line about 9/11. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: August 2006
Newsflash: UK govt claims major terrorist plot foiled (update 6)
Right now the UK is on very high alert. Security is at its maximum and Heathrow is closed to all new flights. On those flights that are now leaving the UK, passengers are neither allowed to have any hand luggage nor carry any fluids on board.
According to the BBC:
A plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said. It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft. Police were searching premises with 21 people in custody after arrests in the London area and West Midlands. [Link]
At this point we know very little, and the ” War on Terror” has gone on long enough that I personally will withhold judgement until there is more evidence. I cannot find any news about who the detained suspects are, but sadly the odds are that there might be a very straightforward brown angle to this story.
Update 1:
What little we know about the plot indicates that it is a home grown conspiracy, like 7-7, involving British Asians [thanks AMfD]:
According to BBC sources the “principal characters” suspected of being involved in the plot were British-born. There are also understood to be links to Pakistan. [Link]
The mechanism apparently involved multiple liquids or gels that were inert separately but were explosive in combination. These would not have been detected given current mechanisms.
Update 2:
At this point, we still know very little about who was involved and exactly what they were planning to do. Here are some of the newer reports concerning the alleged plot.
The authorities claim that they had been investigating the conspiracy for a year before they acted:
The secret investigation into the plot has already lasted a year. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the Met’s head of anti-terrorism, said that intensive surveillance had been carried out of the meetings, movements, travel, spending and the aspirations of a large group of people, both in Britain and abroad. [Link]
“Sources” claim that the Pakistani government was working with the British in the investigation:
Pakistani intelligence agencies helped the British authorities foil the terror plot to blow up aircraft travelling between Britain and America, highly placed sources in Pakistan said today. The agencies have been working closely with British anti-terror police in monitoring the activities of the suspected terrorists for some time, many of whom have links with Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups, The Times has learnt. [Link]
We are still awaiting confirmation concerning who was involved. They are believed to be all British citizens, many of whom are of Pakistani origin, but this has not been confirmed by the authorities:
Mr Reid [the home secretary] would not comment on claims that the detainees were British-born Muslims of Pakistani descent… [he also] refused to be drawn on whether the apprehended individuals suspected of terrorist activities were foreign or “home-grown”. [Link]
Initial reports based on one of the raids suggest that North Africans may also have been involved:
[a neighbor]… said he believed two north African men had been living in the flat for about a month. He said: “I saw a couple of north African-looking men about three weeks ago. They were in their mid 30s. They were dressed quite normally in T-shirts and trousers. “I haven’t seen them in the last couple of weeks. There is not often anyone there at that house.” [Link]
Nor do we know for sure how many planed were targeted. Some reports say up to ten, while other reports say up to twelve:
Officials also declined to confirm the number of flights believed to have been targets – sources said up to 10 – and the home secretary would only say the alleged intention was to carry out a “wave” of attacks. [Link]
In sum, we know very little for sure at this point.
Update 3:
The US claims that the plot was days away from being executed and that most of the plotters were of Pakistani decent. However, this is still not official confirmation (I have no trouble believing it, I am simply noting that there is a difference between official and unofficial confirmation, the latter has been given several times already):
According to a U.S. intelligence official, the plotters were “days away” from going through with their plan. Searches last night turned up airline schedule information in their possession, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. All of those arrested were British citizens, and most appeared to be of Pakistani descent, the official said. [Link]
Update 4 [Thanks Jai]:
Five suspects are still being sought, more information concering the possible identity of the conspirators:
Five of the suspected London terrorists are still at large and are being urgently hunted, according to U.S. sources who have been briefed on the airplane bombing plot. Officials tell ABC News 24 people now have been taken into custody. Twenty-two are believed to be of Pakistani descent. One is Bangladeshi, and another is of Iranian descent, according to the officials. [Link]
Pakistan officially confirms its involvement in foiling the plot:
A senior Pakistani security official told the AFP news agency that Pakistani intelligence agencies helped British authorities foil the plot. Foreign Office spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said: “Pakistan played a very important role in uncovering and breaking this international terrorist network. “There were some arrests in Pakistan which were co-ordinated with arrests in the UK…” [Link]
Update 5:
ABC news claims it has the names of three of the suspects, and links them to recent travels to Pakistan:
Three of the alleged ringleaders of the foiled airplane bomb plot have been identified by Western intelligence agencies involved in unraveling the plot. Two of them are believed to have recently traveled to Pakistan and were later in receipt of money wired to them from Pakistan, reportedly to purchase tickets for the suicide bombers.Sources identify the three, who are now in custody, as:
- Rashid Rauf
- Mohammed al-Ghandra
- Ahmed al Khan. [Link]
Update 6 [Thanks Vikram and RC]:
More information on exactly how far along the plot was, and the presence of an inside man:
An undercover British agent infiltrated the group, giving the authorities intelligence on the alleged plan, several U.S. government officials said. The men had not bought plane tickets, the officials said, but they were in the process of perusing the Internet to find flights to various cities that had similar departure times…
Among those arrested were a Muslim charity worker and a Heathrow Airport employee with an all-area access pass, according to Britain’s Channel 4.
The suspects were planning to stage a test run within a couple of days, said a U.S. intelligence official. [Link]
God’s Own Country Hates Soda
I love that my roots are in Kerala. 😀 Via the Beeb:
The Indian state of Kerala has banned the production and sale of Coca Cola and Pepsi following a report that the drinks contain harmful pesticides.
It said it was taking the step because the drinks pose a health risk. Both soft drinks manufacturers have said their products are safe.
Though other states have decided to ban the soft drinks in schools, hospitals and the like, only a state which possesses that legendary literacy rate, enviable amounts of religious harmony and my marathon-runnin’ 80-year old Aunt could do something so hilarious draconian singular.
The move by the communist government in Kerala in southern India is the most severe reaction to a report released last week by an Indian non-government organisation, the Centre for Science and Environment.
It said tests carried on samples of the drinks across 12 Indian states revealed dangerously high levels of pesticides.
The Indian Soft Drinks Manufacturers Association is taking its sweet yindian standard time:
The Indian Soft Drinks Manufacturers Association issued a statement on Wednesday after the Kerala ban was announced.
“Our products manufactured in India are absolutely safe and meet every safety standard set by food health and regulatory bodies in India and all over the world,” it said.
It said it would only comment on the Kerala ban once it had been told about it by the authorities.
Three years ago, the Center for Science and Environment told the Indian parliament that Coke and Pepsi most certainly weren’t it, if by “it” we mean healthy and pesticide-free; they “recommended that India set purity standards for soft drinks”. Of course, the government is on IST for that, too.
In other news, three out of my 219 cousins have cancelled impending trips home, out of concern for a lack of mixers with which to garnish their Johnny Walker Black. Oh, Kerala…look what thou hast wrought! Continue reading
Happy Raksha Bandhan!
Today is Raksha Bandhan (or Rakhi), the Indian holiday where sisters are supposed to tie a bracelet around their brothers as a symbol of sisterly devotion. The basics of the holiday are at Wikipedia:
The festival is marked by the tying of a rakhi, or holy thread by the sister on the wrist of her brother. The brother in return offers a gift to his sister and vows to look after her. The brother and sister traditionally feed each other sweets.
It is not necessary that the rakhi can be given only to a brother by birth; any male can be “adopted” as a brother by tying a rakhi on the person, whether they are cousins or a good friend. Indian history is replete with women asking for protection, through rakhi, from men who were neither their brothers, nor Hindus themselves. Rani Karnavati of Chittor sent a rakhi to the Mughal Emperor Humayun when she was threatened by Bahadur Shah of Mewar. Humayun abandoned an ongoing military campaign to ride to her rescue. (link)
Though the holiday is strongly associated with Hinduism, in my experience it is somewhat of a secularized, “cultural” holiday both in India and the diaspora, where other religious groups participate. (I’m not sure if it’s absolutely universal — do Indian Christians and Muslims celebrate Rakhi? Is there Rakhi in Bangladesh or Pakistan? Based on this article, the answer to the second question is maybe.) Indeed, these days, it isn’t surprising to see Rakhi designs that contain references to Indian and western superheroes (check out this cool Spiderman Rakhi), alongside the more traditional designs.
In Haryana, a group of women tied Rakhis around trees, as an environmental gesture. (“Her other brother is a tree,” one bystander quipped.) Apparently the best-selling brand of Rakhis (“Laloos”) in the state of Bihar are named after the current Railway Minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav. (“But these Rakhis are only available on the black market!” the same bystander wryly noted.) And Indian PM Manmohan Singh recognized the holiday in a typical fashion. Continue reading
Kumars at No. 42 Back on BBC America
The Kumars at No. 42 will be back on BBC America starting this Friday at 9pm ET for its sixth season. Personally, I am looking forward to it because it’s the first time since the show started being broadcast in the U.S. that I actually get the BBC America channel in my cable lineup.
North London’s most famous and eccentric Indian family is back and would like to welcome its U.S. viewers into their home for an all-new season of celebrity chat. Think sitcom meets talk show with a little improv thrown in for good measure!
On the guest list this season are David Hasselhoff, George Hamilton, Elvis Costello, Alice Cooper, Joanna Lumley, Jane Seymour and Zoë Wanamaker. The Kumars have indulged their spoiled son, Sanjeev by installing a state-of-the-art TV studio in their backyard where he attempts to host a talk show. (link)
I’m not sure who some of those people are (brit-celebrities, I presume), but certainly it should be interesting to see what they do with/to David Hasselhoff and Alice Cooper in particular.
Sepia Mutiny (mostly via Manish) has posted on the doings of Sanjeev Bhaskar (OBE), Meera Syal, and company many times, so this is more of a heads-up post than anything new for long-time readers. There are of course innumerable Goodness Gracious Me clips of varying hilarity (GGM was Bhaskar’s earlier gig) available on Youtube. However, despite the ready availability of GGM on the internet, it’s odd that the only sketches from the more recent Kumars at No. 42 one finds online are on the BBC website. (Perhaps the BBC is more vigilant in patrolling its current content than Comedy Central?)
Incidentally, Meera Syal, at age 45, is a new mum, an experience which, she says, leaves her feeling “really knackered.” (She has a 13 year old child from a previous marriage.) Continue reading
Xeni Goes Trekking
No, not Star Trek — across the Himalayas. Xeni Jardin, a freelance journalist who is on the Boing Boing blogroll, recently went to India, China, and Tibet for NPR, as part of a four-part series called “Hacking the Himalayas”. The Boing Boing post introducing the series is here; the main focus is on how technology is transforming the lives of Tibetans, both in Tibet and in exile in India.
The first two parts in the series have links up at NPR, though as of now only part 1 has audio (part 2 is expected to go up later today). The first story is actually not on the Tibetans themselves, but on a partially-nomadic local tribe called the Gaddi, who are based around Dharamsala and various villages in Himachal Pradesh. Most of the story is about their local folk traditions, which are apparently somewhat in decline. I’m not quite sure what technology (or Tibet, for that matter) has to do with it, but at least the story is something other than the usual, “look, they have Cyber Cafes!” type of thing.
Xeni has started a blog dedicated to providing auxiliary material to the stories that air on NPR. Among other things, she has a short post there on the popularity of hip hop amongst Tibetan-in-exile teens in Dharmsala.
(Link via Desipundit) Continue reading
Reminder: NYC Meetup is THIS Sunday, the 13th!
Oy, it is already Tuesday the 8th, which means that the NYCSM meetup is merely days away. There is much to plot and despite what a few of you have commented to me privately, I do NOT think that whatever we have come up with thus far is either “complicated” or, ahem, “a mess”. 😉 Really, since those of you who raised such concerns are NEW YORKERS, if you would like to throw in your randa paise, FEEL FREE. ItÂ’s your time to shine.
To refresh your drinks memories, the meetup is occurring this Sunday because Talvin Singh, Asha Puthli and a few other amazing types are performing for FREE at Summerstage, in Central Park. The show is from 3-7pm but “doors” open at 1:30; that is when a few hyper-dedicated souls have offered to mark our territory stake out a prime spot in the shade, slightly away from all the craziness. I would just like to state here that as a quondam sunbather (UC Davis quadÂ…holla if ya hear me), I am abiding by this arrangement because I want to hang out with as many of you as possible; I am in no way buying in to Ignorant Auntie and Cruel AuntieÂ’s bakwas about how if I let myself get a tenth-of-a-shade-darker, no boy will EVER look my way and I will die alone, my corpse half-devoured by wild dogs (yes, that last bit is from a much-loved filmÂ…but sadly, S + C Auntie are NOT similarly fictional). I reject all of this colorist stupidity. 😉 However, I wholly support a pleasant day spent getting faded in mutinous company.
Here is what we need to know, somewhat urgently:
- WHO is coming on Sunday? This directly affectsÂ…
- WHAT to bring, as well as how much of it.
Once we sort all of that out, memorize this: sadly, we have decided NOT to rendezvous at the bar around two. Instead, please meet us at 1:30pm at the park entrance at 72nd and 5th. The sooner you arrive, the sooner we can meander over to one hell of a picnic. Throwing the keys to Lil Cease is probably not necessary since they won’t allow us to bring alchohol to this event.
Joan, Zimbly, Pooja and I are all going to be there, as far as I know. I have linked to our pictures, so if you get there late, peer at all the Summerstage fans anxiously until you locate us (or our doppelgangers). Alternatively, just listen for the loudest, most obnoxious group possible and follow the sounds of laughter and screaming (not that I am in ANY way endorsing ice fights or similarly immature lunacy).
Do you have any other comments or questions? That is just what the thread below is for—- NYC meetup-related shtuff.
p.s. You DCers and EssEffites will each get your own posts in the next few days, that way we can keep this, um, organized (as if such things are possible with the brown). Now who is in and what are you packing in your “dry” pick-a-nick baskets? Continue reading
The statistics of fear
My mom is always worried about her two sons who live on the opposite side of the nation from her. Before cell phones were common I would return home to find messages like the following on my answering machine (I am paraphrasing):
“Abhi, beta. Please tell me that you aren’t eating beef. You will get Mad Cow disease, you will become a vegetable, then you will die.”
After hearing this message on half a dozen occasions I pretty much gave up beef. Why? Because this is how the messages usually ended:
“Promise me beta, ok, love mom, bye.”
Or what about this more recent one on my cell phone:
“Abhi, I heard there are fires all around Los Angeles, be careful, stay away from the hills.” [note: I am nowhere near the hills]
My favorite to date has been:
“Abhi, do you drink water out of plastic bottles that you re-fill? The plastic leaks chemicals into the water. You will die.”
Since the World Trade Center attacks and the terrorist attacks that have followed in other parts of the world (like the recent Mumbai Train attacks), many people have established a new dichotomy in their minds. There was before 9/11 and there is after 9/11. “Everything is different now.” I find such sentiments bordering on delusional but until now I have had no really substantial counter-argument to point to that was any more cogent than me calling the person an “idiot” . That changed this week when John Mueller of Ohio State University published this paper for the Libertarian Cato Institute. Titled, “A False Sense of Insecurity?“ the paper takes a look at how ignorance of statistics allows entities (or my mother) to use fear inappropriately. This article (only five pages) is a must read and something I wish every American was exposed to.
For all the attention it evokes, terrorism actually causes rather little damage and the likelihood that any individual will become a victim in most places is microscopic. Those adept at hyperbole like to proclaim that we live in “the age of terror.” However, while obviously deeply tragic for those directly involved, the number of people worldwide who die as a result of international terrorism is generally only a few hundred a year, tiny compared to the numbers who die in most civil wars or from automobile accidents. In fact, in almost all years, the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists anywhere in the world is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States.Until 2001, far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning, and almost none of those terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts.
The Indian Dentist and the Holocaust Survivor: Vikram Seth’s “Two Lives”
A biography creates a record of a life, but it must also attempt to assemble many divergent strands and seemingly incoherent fragments of that life into a semblance of a story for a reader. It’s hard to do even half-comprehensively with any one life — it requires, for one thing, intimate access to the person him or herself, as well as a pretty good paper trail. Vikram Seth, in Two Lives, had such access to not one but two people, who were extraordinary individually but even more so as a couple. It’s the story of Shanti Behari Seth, the author’s great uncle, and Hennerle Caro (Henny), a German Jewish refugee from the Nazis. The two of them met during the early 1930s, when Shanti was in Germany to do a doctorate in dentistry, and he rented a room in the Caros’ house. In 1937 and 1939, respectively, they left Germany and settled in London.
When the war broke out, Shanti enlisted (on the British side, of course), and served as a dentist for the troops in the African campaign, and later in Italy (where he lost an arm at Monte Cassino). Henny, for her part, lost her nuclear family at Auschwitz: unlike them, she was able to get out in time. Henny and Shanti became a couple, and eventually married. When Vikram Seth went to England initially in 1969, he didn’t know much about his uncle or his foreign wife. But as he stayed with them and then continued to visit over the course of more than twenty years, he became quite close to them. They even helped him learn German, a skill which turned out to be indispensible for this project. Continue reading
Meet the Mutiny: SM interviews Candidate Raj Bhakta
This morning on Sepia Mutiny we are going to try something new. One of the reasons we started SM was to see if we could get more members of the South Asian American community involved with politics and in shaping the national agenda/discourse. One of the many ways to try and accomplish this is for some of you to run for elected office. As you know, we often feature desis from both sides of the aisle who are seeking elected office at a variety of levels from very local to national. Today we are interviewing the Republican congressional candidate for Pennsylvania’s 13th District (near Philadelphia), Raj Peter Bhakta. Most of you are familiar with Bhakta as a former contestant on NBC’s The Apprentice. He is running against first term Democratic incumbent Allison Schwartz. Bhakta’s website lists the campaign issues most important to him and he also has a blog where he writes down thoughts about the race and his district.
So here is the twist. SM isn’t a newspaper nor do we want to be. I am not going to just ask questions and have Bhakta answer the few that I think are relevant. His campaign is asking for help from all quarters including the South Asian American community. He needs both money (his opponent has way more than him) and volunteers. So why don’t you all interview him. Questions from Philly area mutineers are especially welcome. He has kindly agreed to check this website several times today and answer some of your questions directly. Myself and the other bloggers will moderate. This means please be polite and respectful to our guest. Hopefully we get this kind of direct interaction with others in the future and it would be a shame to set a bad example here.
Last week I sat down with Candidate Bhakta (and when I say “sat down” I mean I emailed him some questions and he emailed me back) just to get us started. Think of this as our own version of Meet the Press. Continue reading