I’d been waiting for this Evite from SAFO-DC for over a month now because I’d been tipped off that it was coming:
Host: South Asians for Obama (SAFO)
Location: Karma, 1919 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC
When: Friday, May 18, 8:30pm
Phone: 202.331.5800
South Asians for Obama (SAFO) would like to invite you to our first official OBHANGRA!! As you may have guessed, Obhangra is a clever combination of Obama and Bhangra! Bhangra fever has taken over the country and we want to give you an opportunity to learn and dance at Obhangra! So whether you support Senator Obama or are still undecided, we hope you will join us and many others to learn some Bhangra moves and dance the night away!
I must say that I am REALLY worried about the appropriation of bhangra for use in overtly partisan politics. In the same manner that K-street lobbyists are corrupting our political process by lavishing money on politicians, I believe that soon our desi customs and food will be used as a cheap tool to battle for the attention (and money) of the pivotal South Asian vote. Let me just give you all a glimpse of the future. It is scary:
Jalebis for Giuliani: A fundraiser organized by “Law-and-Order” browns.
Henna for Hillary: A fundraiser organized by feminist browns.
Raas for Romney: A fundraiser organized by Gujarati Mormons.
Bindis for Biden: A fundraiser organized by 7-11 and Dunkin Donut employees.
Katha for Kucinich: A fundraiser organized by religious browns who want a “Department of Peace.”
Masala for McCain: A fundraiser organized by Independent (maverick) browns who love good curry.
PLEASE, let’s not participate in any attempts to use our culture, traditions, or food to raise money for politicians.
Hmmmm. I wonder if there will be any cute, politically active, single women at the Obhangra. Balle Balle.
Personally, I agree with you. I did see the documentary and do think that regime is pretty awful.
But if you ask the same question in Venezuela, USA might be on the evil list. (Before anyone jumps all over me, I disagree with placing US on the list.) I think you and I agree that these kind of questions are really silly.Do you remember the journalist who asked George W.Bush to name the leaders of some 5 countries ? How silly was that ?
If I had my say I would scrap all debates and make the candidates debate (in long form) in some of the national newspapers. Each newspaper would be given one critical area (healthcare, foreign policy etc.) and the two sides would lay put their positions . No editing should be allowed by the newspaper’s staff.
Hari:
Thanks for the response and the good wishes — much appreciated.
My understanding is that all of DC’s cute brown girls will be jamming out to LIVE Bollywood tunes at the below event on 5/18 (note: shameless promotion of a friend’s band to follow):
The-yet-to-be-named Bollywood band @ Sabang, 2504 Ennalls Avenue, Wheaton, MD 20902 , 9 pm, no cover
I have no idea, nor do we keep track. But my sense is that as with all similar “South Asian” organizations (like SABA, of which I’m on the board in DC, or NETSAP), the majority of people involved with SAFO are Indian Americans, but people who trace their origins to other South Asian countries are well represented too.
I agree. slowly is the operative word there.
My point is it is extremely difficult to seperate foreign policy from let us say trade policy. i am sure you have heard how China is giving out foreign aid to Africa because they want to dig for oil in Nigeria, trade with Ghana. India has recently started doing major business with Iran while trying to get a nuclear deal with the US. Increasingly, this is going to be true with all countries.
Great Britain, one of oour good allies, thinks that Kyoto protocol is the way to go but I don’t think that even a democratic congress is going to agree. India might be closer to US than the UK in this matter.
MoorNam,
You are missing an important point – It is not about Kyoto treaty.
Nation states becoming obsolete or not is a coffee house discussion. Well, back to the point.
There are very few countries US has counted on – economically, militarily than Britain, Japan, and Israel.
Regarding Britain, it goes 100s of years, with majority of Americans being Protestants, and WASPS being the core of power structure, and the WWs, post 9/ 11 et al. There is a common culture, and heritage that binds them. To some degree, Canada is in the same category.
If you look at the map, Japan and USSR (now Russia) very close geographically, with the cold war, and Japan’s past history with Russia, US made a very strong effort (with General MacArthur leading the charge) to create long lasting bonds with Japan even culturally, drafting their current constitution and what not. They are three outside US major military-wise staging areas (from where they launch operations) in the world: Okinawa (Japan), Germany, and Qatar. To some degree Subic Bay (Philippines) during Vietnam War.
Israel. What can I say? From late sixties (1967 onwards), they receive the largest economic and military aid from US. They are the rock of Gibraltar for American interests in middle east (where most of oil and gas is even though Israel is bone dry), even against USSR during height of cold war. A significant % of American Jews hold dual citizenship. Once Gold Meir (Israel’s PM, and once a Wisconsin native) said that only friend Israel had was America. Even pre-1967, US and Israel always has been very close, especially after the Suez Canal crisis.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
Unfortunately, because of the distraction of Iraq, we have not finished the job in terms of making certain that we are driving back the Taliban, stabilizing the Karzai government, capturing bin Laden and making sure that we’ve rooted out terrorism in that region.
I’m fascinated by the “we” of this sentence from Obama, which is also unconsciously being repeated through the discussion. Who needs Kipling when a Black man gives us the “white man’s burden”?
It presupposes that Iraq was a “distraction” for some noble “we” who was interrupted while making the world better. The fact is that Bush and the government were so focused on Iraq after 9/11 because of a decade of sanctions and bombings under Clinton, during which, among other things, the official policy of the US government became the overthrow of Saddam Hussein (Iraq Liberation Act of 1998). This is “stability” for them.
There is no “balance” of realism and idealism here. It’s just different strategies for “us” to continue dominating the Middle East despite Iraq. Bush has run the imperial project into the ground and the Democrats and Republicans are vying to see who can best distance themselves from the president, appease the antiwar crowd, and “get the job done.” This was also the Democrats’ role in Viet Nam until the rebellions of 1968 exposed the “antiwar” LBJ for being nothing but.
This is a question for libertarian Moor Nam (you are a libertarian, correct?). Who protects the individual when there are no longer nation states. Some supranational organization, like a world government? How are human rights preserved or enshrined in this nationless system? Are you talking about organizations like the EU? Serious question. I prefer “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to be protected by something that has accountability to it, like, say a republic? Not perfect, of course, but perfection is impossible.
Once again, the JLF has proven it only represents red (communist) Jalebis. We Yellow Jalebis would like to distance ourselfs from the JLF and their attack on Mayor Guilliani.
MD asks:
No longer? You have incorrectly assumed that the nation-state has existed since time immemorial. You only have to look at the history of India to see that the nation-state is a recent Eurocentric construct that has existed since only 3-4 centuries.
When ChandraGupta or Ashoka or Krishnadevaraya etc ruled India, they did not preside over nations. There were no immigration laws, borders, complex tax codes, volumes of laws etc etc. The king loosely adminstered the region under him by collecting a flat-tax from the people, and doing bare-minimum: Keep foreign invaders at bay, protect the common man from robber-gangs, build roads etc. The rest was left to the individual: protecting oneself from thieves and the odd robber, protecting oneself in a violent dispute, earning and saving money, health, water, waste disposal, education, preserving culture etc etc.
The reason the nation-state has become a giant is that it has started doing too much for the individual: 911 facilities, schooling, social security, medicare, waste disposal, pollution control, nanny-care, medicaid, welfare, vocational training, “culture protection”, group rights (minority/orientation/gender), etc etc etc.
Indeed, there is a false impression that the nation-state is protecting the individual. That is simply not true. How many cops did you encounter on the way to work today? What if someone had attacked you? What if twenty similiar attacks happened at the same time in the same town, would the state be able do anything?
The individual needs very little protection. When left alone, society largely governs itself. What has happened is that the nation-state has subverted civic-society in order to expand itself.
You’ll have to do some reading to get details
M. Nam
Moor Nam: Slavery existed quite widely before the rise of the nation-state. The caste-system existed. What was the treatment of women in these ancient times you admire?
Actually, I think I addressed the wrong person. I guess I am more worried about the transnationalism of the left: what they see in terms of alternatives to the nation state.
How are human rights preserved or enshrined in this nationless system? Are you talking about organizations like the EU? Serious question. I prefer “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to be protected by something that has accountability to it, like, say a republic? Not perfect, of course, but perfection is impossible.
Exactly. World governments presume that we have one universal set of values or epistemologies, eg. the supremacy of individual rights. But there are of course many ways of looking at things — Muslim countries have their own ways, China yet another, America yet another. Imposing any one particular “truth” usually leads to disaster, eg. marxism.
MD: don’t you mean the caste non-system?
DJDP with the assist!
Britain, Australia and Israel are Client states, not allies. Post 9/11, These countries lack independent foreign policy. oh, you might add Pakistan and some Eastern European countries to that list.
Germany and Japan could be categorised as allies.
Hmm…then the caste culture or caste non-system, then. Caste-culture probably is a better term. Still. That article made my eyes bleed, although I appreciate the point they are trying to make, that using the term caste-system paints the cultural issues through Western eyes.
Actually MD, the transatlantic slave trade came about after the nation-state, and was carried out by nation-states. In fact, colonialism is a project of the nation-state. Institutions that we call slavery did exist in prior times in various places, but they were more flexible and adaptive than the slavery that came about as a result of the trans-atlantic trade.
As for alternatives to the nation-state, I can’t speak for the “Left,” whatever that is, but I would caution you that simply observing the increasing obsolescence of the nation-state in no way constitutes an endorsement of same, let alone a prescription as to what should come in its place. Speaking for myself, I observe that the nation-state is doing a terrible job adapting to the reality of human lives in the world today. I have no idea whether it will adapt, or whether something else will arise in its place, let alone what that something else would be. In fact, I suspect that we are in for a long period of flux and uncertainty that will last longer than our lifetimes.
Siddhartha: What about the non-transatlantic slaves, like, say the Helots of Sparta? Are city states considered nation states?
They weren’t slaves in the traditional sense, they were more like indentured servants. Tied to the land.
Okay, last comment since I have taken this thread on a weird direction, but were the Helots any less enslaved than African slaves in the southern US? It seems like the slaves in antiquity could get it pretty bad too. What I mean is, in answer to Moor Nam, is that the civil structure didn’t make their lives any better. Really, their lives were awful. The males of Sparta used to sort of, ritually, hunt and kill random Helots to terrorize them and keep them from revolting. And, not, I have not seen 300. I just like Classics. It’s my new thing.
Not last comment after all: They did ritually hunt and kill helots, not ‘sort of’.
Actually, yes. The helots had legal sanction to unions amongst themselves, marriages, debt and so forth. The transatlantic/African slave trade as practiced in the US, and the subsequent ghettoization of the population is more or less unique in human history.
2nd not last comment: that is a good point, HMF. Still, my point against Moor Nam’s point stands, I think. Civil society didn’t protect them, really, it afforded them less rights than full citizens, so his radical libertarian take is incorrect, isn’t it? They could have marriages, but they were also randomly hunted and killed. Sounds pretty awful to me. Sounds like enslavement to me. What kind of slaves did they have in Africa and the middle east before the transnational slave trade? Indentured servants, too, or were people owned out-right?
I want to know this: if the nation-state is so horrible, what is the alternative? What does evolution mean, for those that advocate non-liberation futures. Nnations states subject to transnational organizations? Aren’t there inherent dangers in this approach, as well?
I’m not entirely sure, however since those populations weren’t ghettoized, and were more or less assimilated into the general population, one would think their attitude towards slavery wasn’t based on a belief in inherent inferiority, based on features as salient as race. The US takes the cake on that one.
Hmmm, I don’t know (I should never put in disclaimers that I won’t comment on something, when I’m in the mood to comment).
HMF: I would look up Mauritania on the United Nations web site; if the allegations there are true (and I have no idea), then what you’re saying isn’t quite accurate.
I never agree with Abhi and on the whole think he writes like a douche, but I actually agree with him here. Where do we go from here?
Sorry to post it here, but BBC’s Talking Point had an interesting discussion sometime back on transnational slave trade. You can find it on bottom right of that page.
The arab slave trade didn’t leave the ghetto legacy as the american version, and didn’t discriminate exclusively on race. Black Arabs participated.
RE: Israel being a close friend
USS Liberty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
UPS:
Motive?
You should feel silly for having written the above now that someone has posted Obama’s actual response to the question:
“Obama: Well, I think the European Union as a whole has been a long-standing ally of ours, and through NATO we’ve been able to make some significant progress. Afghanistan, in particular, is an area where we should be focusing. NATO has made real contributions there.
Unfortunately, because of the distraction of Iraq, we have not finished the job in terms of making certain that we are driving back the Taliban, stabilizing the Karzai government, capturing bin Laden and making sure that we’ve rooted out terrorism in that region.
We also have to look east, because increasingly, the center of gravity in this world is shifting to Asia. Japan has been an outstanding ally of ours for many years.”
Where did you get the “vacillated and wavered and hesitatingly answered” from? Rush Limbaugh? And how did you manage to deduce from “the European Union as a whole has been a long-standing ally of ours, and through NATO we’ve been able to make some significant progress”, that Obama is dumb enough to think that the EU is a country? Whats really dumb here is you thinking he could be so incredibly ignorant and still be considered a serious candidate for president.
As for Britain and Australia they are America’s partners in the Anglosphere. This relationship goes beyond simple allying of nation-states or regional groupings. The Anglosphere can itself be seen as a grouping. Israel’s relationship with the Anglosphere is more complex. Perhaps it was diplomatic of Obama to not mention it.
Libertarian hogwash. The notion that “when left alone, society largely governs itself”, or that the “invisible hand” of the free market is the best governor of economic activity, is as asinine as the notion that you dont need umpires or referees in cricket, football and other games.
Every civilized human society needs Laws and a governing entity that enforces these laws.
Whats interesting about this election is how very diverse the front runners from both parties are: a woman, a half-white son of a muslim student from Africa, a Mormon, an Italian catholic who supports abortion and gay marriage etc. Looks like America is finally getting tired of the borderline-ret@rded bible-thumping southern evangelicals, and their religio-cultural crusades.
HMF: You are missing my point. My point is that before the nation state, there was slavery. That’s my point. Slavery, usually of women for domestic labor/concubines, existed for millenia according to some documented (usually by outsiders) in the mideast and parts of Africa. The documentation of the numbers is almost impossible, because we don’t have a census of that time and place. As for a ghetto forming, yes, they have it in Mauritania today. There are differences in the way groups are treated based on this history, although slavery was officially outlawed. Anyway, I don’t like apologia implicit in the right pointing out slavery in Africa (look they do it too) or the apologia on the left (oh, it was worse in America; it takes the cake. What about the British slave trade? Abolished earlier, but established earlier. And it was chattel-slavery, too). What is the point you are trying to make? That only the West was uniquely evil?
Do you really think that the Spanish, Portuguese and British Empires, who initiated the transatlantic slave trade were nation-states?
Fact is, slavery, serfdom, casteism, dhimmitude etc all existed before the nation-state. I dont know of any modern nation-state that has laws sanctioning any of these abominations. That casteism (and child slave labor etc) continues to be an issue in India is because India is a failed nation-state that is too weak to enforce its laws.
MD:
“The key message…is that the nation-state system, deep economic integration, and democracy are mutually incompatible. We can have at most two out of these three.” [link]
“Under global federalism national governments would not necessarily disappear but their powers would be severely circumscribed by supranational legislative, executive and judicial authorities.” [link]
Badonkadonk.
Motive?
Frame some other country.
I never agree with Abhi and on the whole think he writes like a douche, but I actually agree with him here.
Captain Umrica, You better quit hatin on my babys daddy
Just curious. What are those commonalities on domestic issues and how those issues differ with other groups such as “Asians”/”Hispanics” etc..?.
I think a better way to answer the “South Asian vs Indian” debate for “1.5 – 2nd gen folks” is to say that “We all look brown skinned (with varying shades), hence treated the same by the ‘rest’ (non-brown skinned) in America. We wanted to come together and used “South Asian” as a common identity. “
Interesting viewpoint. Moral of the story: laugh all you can. Desis are a political force to recon with.
As it concerns slavery based on race, as a pure economic system (and thats the point here, slavery as an economic system really only makes sense if a nation-state exists to benefit from those practices), resulting in ghettoized populations in large #’s (blacks make up 12% of the population, but concentrated in say 10 major cities) – The US simply knocks everyone else out the box.
It’s okay Coach. With your body and brains and my ability to write in a “so fresh and so clean” manner, our baby will grow up to kick his ass.
Wont your baby inherit your “light touch”? If so, he’d be a lover, like his father, not a fighter, like his momma 😉
MD, Prema, HMF, MoorNam, No von Mises: There are several debates here, and they are getting tangled up with each other in unproductive ways.
One is a normative debate about what constitutes the best system of government and social organization. Inside this is a series of value-laden disputes about such matters as which form of human subjugation was worse, etc. Thus we get back to the question of whose slavery was worse than whose, and looking forward, we get categorical statements about the evil of the modern state and the need for a libertarian order, or transnational federalism, or whatever, and ripostes about the merits of the modern state. These are the debates that fall into Kush Tandon’s category of coffeehouse discussions. They are riven with ideology, sloppy with definitions, and the tone falls quickly into people baiting each other, like when MD baited HMF to say that the “West is uniquely evil” and HMF pretty much took the bait.
The other is a more detached discussion about whether or not the modern state is succeeding in accomplishing its basic goals under the present condition of globalization. Of course there is still a normative element here to the extent that different people have different views of what the basic goals of the state should be. But still, I think most people would agree that we expect of the state that it protect its citizens from threats; that it guarantee the orderly functioning of the (market) economy; that it provide a minimum package of public services (no need to debate the exact list); and that it run itself and its institutions in a sustainable manner.
How’s it doing? Poorly. It’s doing poorly at protecting its population from threats ranging from international terrorism to domestic terrorism to global warming. Its regulatory oversight of the economy is slipping in the face of illicit trade in goods, services, and intellectual property. Its provision of public services is shaky and increasingly delegated to private actors such as private security companies, insurance companies, etc., sometimes with oversight and intent, but often not. And its own institutional sustainability is at risk from corruption, ethical decay, and infiltration by non-state interests.
Is the condition terminal? Who knows! The world is in flux and there are many possibilities. Is there an alternative? I think that’s a premature question and one that can only be answered through ideology. Some people here will do that but I won’t. Is there a point to reformism, to working to improve and fortify the nation-state and adapt it to new reality? Absolutely! If you check your ideology at the door and just look at the world, live in the world, you’ll see that these are interesting times in which there are far more questions than answers. We can live with that, can’t we?
I’ll acquiesce I entered the discusion much after, and really wasn’t making a statement on validity or usefulness of nationstates, rather responding to an often made claim that “Africa had slavery too!” when in fact, they are two different beasts, with different goals. One was to subjugate with absolutely no intention of freedom ever, it was acknowledgement of sub-human status, with the implication that human status would and could never be reached. This is the backdrop. I’m not sure if the Arabic slave trade falls meticulously in the same category.
True, HMF, and I think I largely agree with you on that particular point. I’m just pointing out more broadly how easily discussions get twisted by ideology and diverted into sideshows. Sometimes it’s OK to admit that we are facing the unknown.
The goals were the same…free labor…but yes there were philosophical, ideologic differences too and possibly that led to differences in day to day experience (I don’t know).
And, if not for those pesky term limits, we would have had:
Chokris for Clinton Jhaadoos for George (you know to sweep all the brush he’s cleared)
And, for the first non-candidate who shall be elected as president, we present:
Phillums for Fred
Didn’t anna call him “Bharat O’Bama” in another post? All those B’s make him dangerously pun-adelic.