It seems a little anti-climactic to say it, but given how long we’ve been arguing talking about M.I.A. here, it probably needs to be addressed: M.I.A’s “Paper Planes” has been nominated for “Best Record of the Year.”
She’s up against Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, on a groundbreaking country music collaboration, and Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida.” So she has no chance of winning (the Grammy’s usually favor established artists and veteran rock stars over rappers, even innovative rappers). Still, chica has come a very long way since she started out a few years ago.
I also wanted to take this opportunity to wish her and her fiancé the best for the child they’re expecting. There’s something profoundly humanizing and clarifying about becoming a parent, though it also changes how most people approach their work and career. (Whatever happens, I do hope that M.I.A. will show up on Noggin and do a song for Yo Gabba Gabba! like The Ting Tings recently did. Perhaps a child-friendly version of “Galang Galang”?)
Speaking of raising children, and on a somewhat more serious note, it seems worth saying that the story that moved me most this (terrible) past week was the story of the Indian ayah, Sandra Samuel, who risked getting shot by cocaine-snorting, steroids-injecting, Islamofascist psychos, to rescue little Moshe Holtzberg at Chabad House in Mumbai:
I was pleased to see that the Israeli government has given her a high honor for what she did. She deserves it.
181 · gm said
sorry mate: fascism != fundamentalism. i think the label ‘right wing fundamentalist’ is probably applicable to hindu extremists because they do tend to be politically and economically right-wing: pro-market and GDP growth-inclined. so that is actually a very good descriptor. fundamentalism is just how closely you subscribe to your scripture or your ‘god’s words’ or your founder’s words (deep and totalistic commitment” to a belief in, and strict adherence to a set of basic principles (often religious in nature). the taliban, some sects of orthodox judaism, some types of evangelicals. fundamentals could be peace-loving or at least isolationist or gentle proselytizers. but they could also be taliban style crazies or wahabbi religious police or nutso hindutvavadis or religiously-inclined suicide bombers. islamist or hindu extremists is probably a good descriptor (if we’re going for accuracy rather than colbert-style truthiness). because both kinds of groups interpret religious teachings in the way that supports their particular brand of assholery.
1 · Rahul said
I think she kinda sold out when she was in the Marc Jacobs ads…
197 · Manju said
what kind of neocons think usury is a crime? that one is just an oxymoron 🙂
manju just has an unshakeable faith in his wide stance.
RahulS, you should know that at least one person completely refutes this. Stop making PC-ness to some kind of character flaw. PC-ness is by definition correctness of a particular kind (unless it is not done in an insincere way). What is wrong in being correct? Camille, during her long course of commenting on Sepia, has demonstrated an admirable courage of conviction in what she says; I think it is not out of uptightness but out of a real sense of being on the right side, which of course, is the left. You can argue with her, but your name-calling or attributing negative qualities to her by way of arguing is not only intellectually unsatisfying but also ungentlemanly.
Yikes, what the hell is wrong with MIA’s face. Learn to use makeup.
203 · label whore said
So, the attackers were radical hindus? If you can’t identify the enemy, how the hell you’re going to win? This is the mentality that India is in, & now, they’ve woken up. This is the psychotic Deepak Chopra mentality. You can’t say “War on Terror.” You f****** kidding me. Your nuts.
🙂 i second the eyeroll. but given the organizational and historical complications of indian politics which are glossed over in the indian and international media, i am not really surprised either. a lot of people just don’t want to to get embroiled in introspection and reading, given the amount of effort it requires to educate oneself and replace inherited opinions. i know that i know less than i ought to know.
louiecypher, i know we have not seen eye-to-eye several times in the past, especially on the virtues of a liberal arts education. but these days, especially on the volatile sonal shah thread i find your commentary to be very forthright, balanced, and well-written. i was glad to have read it. thank you!
that is my bipartisan reaching out * for today and boy, did it feel good 🙂
Well, that is blue on her face. put 2 and 2 togeher.
207 · Manju said
Based on a MIA song, she makes a shout out to the PLO & the Tamil Tigers. So, I guess you have a point here. You got to watch out for those radical hindus & the jihadists/islamic fundamentalists (in the spirit of being politically correct).
204 · TJ2008 said
I’ve worn heavy makeup before for theatre and dance. it’s highly uncomfortable, caused me to fear for my vision (eyeliner applicator = geneva convention violation) and then the creeping certainty that my grandchildren would look at old photos and wonder why appappa looks like a man-panty-wearing streetwalker. Cosmetics are nothing to take lightly and the wearers of such are brave and perhaps a bit foolhardy.
206 · portmanteau said
did you mean the part where his primary lens on the pakistan-bangladesh war was that it was anti-hindu warfare by pakistan or the part where he tarred another commenter mainly because he’s Muslim (and actually said that Pakistan was his country)?
you should pick who you reach out to more carefully…
@portmanteau
never mind…wrong thread – he did that on this one.
Sonal Shah’s initials are SS.
wow, i asked you to not make ad hominem attacks, and you make me an apologist for radical islam. i guess you’re not a beneficiary of the ‘no child left behind’ reading tests 🙂 as for your argumentation strategy, you remind me of our current administration. the perpetrators of 9/11 are in afghanistan and al qaeda operatives are now comfortable in pakistan, so attacking iraq should be where all our energies must be diverted. i call you out on personally attacking a commentator rather than her claims, so i become a supporter of islamic terrorism?? are you f-ing kidding me? even deepak chopra’s psychobabble is more logical than your post above. btw, unwarranted PC-ness can be corrected. congenital stupidity, your particular affliction, is much harder to cure.
RahulS, i hope you now realize the difference b/w personal criticism and reasoned arguments. sorry, SM intern for my tone on this post.
Thanks Portmanteau, the Sonal Shah situation elicits all kinds of emotions from me. I am sympathetic to the grievances of the Hindu right while rejecting their prescriptions, I guess that’s the best way to put it. Paraphrasing Shylock “Hath not a Hindu a kudumi? If you tug it will we not say Aiyo?”. But I think you misunderstood me, I love the humanities. I believe I mentioned that I would embark on a colonial enterprise, e.g. usurping Malaysia , to accumulate the guilt that V. Prashad expects me to feel as a Hindu. And with my ill gotten wealth I will endow the Dr. Amnonsense Chair of Tamil Imperialism & Oppression Studies at Trinity College (CT) where my hypothetical ingrate children will burn me in effigy and date the children of my rubber tapping serfs to enrage me.
210 · dr amonymous said
I think you are reinforcing patriarchy by telling Portmanteau who she can & can’t reach out to. 100 demerits comrade Amnonsense !
dr. amnonymous, with all due respect, you are misrepreseting louiecypher on this thread in that sentence. i scrolled back to his comments and he says that hindu bangladeshis were targted in 1971. i don’t think that implies that pakistani army atrocities were aimed only or primarily at hindu bangladeshis. he is not trying to minimize or sideline the significance of what happened to muslim bangladeshis. the whole problem was the existence of the bengali identity, whose insubordination of the paksitani muslim identity was a thorn in the side of the those who believed that pakistan was the only entity that should matter to all subcontinetal muslims. a strong ethnic bengali identity negates that belief.
here are what i think to be the statements which allow me to give louiecypher the benefit of doubt on this one:
[emphasis mine]
i grant you that louiecypher could have been more cordial in arguiung with you or kabir. he was wrong to have said pakistan was ‘your’ [kabir’s] country. but he’s been on sepia for a while and his style is sarcastic and ever-so-abrasive, and he has been around long enough to know that he is basically sincere in his views (afaic). i am not convinced louiecypher chose to ‘tar’ kabir because he was muslim. anyway, i don’t think kabir was tarred. f
for what it’s worth, i enjoyed kabir’s perspective (i do think a plebiscite in 1964 when the valley was peaceful would have been a good solution. now all kinds of people have been displaced from the valley. so i don’t honestly know what a good solution would be. i cannot disregard the feelings of those — hindu or muslim — that were driven out from the valley. my family has both kinds of acquaintances). i think kabir undertands best the precarious position of being a moderate/secular person of muslim origin. he’s done the courageous thing by posting here. he gives me no reason whatsoever to doubt his sincerity or his reasonableness:
also: Dr. Amnonymous, your posts are always thought-provoking, whether or not I agree with them. you have real patience to post here, in spite of the opposition of you routinely face. i realize that the last sentence is also true of my good ol’ HMF, but i mean it is a real compliment, not back-handed in the least. also liked your recent Arendt quote.
i know that..but i know you have no patience for some types of humanists and a fear of shelling out $$$ for your descendants’ education at pomona.
Like I said, I am not going to go further into this debate because I don’t think people are actually discussing anything new at this point — just bringing up the same talking points. I wanted to clarify two specific items that were “read into” my comment (i.e., not arguments I made but that others have interpreted into my comment or attributed to me):
rob, please read my comment in the context of Joolz’s call to hold “mainstream Muslims” accountable for cowards who pervert the language of Islam by destroying innocents. The “minority” I’m talking about is the same “mainstream Muslim” community Joolz alludes to, which, based on the context of previous comments, seems to center on Muslims in non-Muslim majority countries. I’m not talking about the LeT.
I didn’t say that religion, or Islam for that matter, are irrelevant to the issue of terror or of the current security context in which we operate. I said that “Jihadist” and “Islamist” have no meaning. They really don’t. Maybe I’m over-academic about this, but to use a term to encapsulate a theory or philosophy, it should have broadly accepted conditions/elements. Unlike “democracy,” which has relatively defined contours, there is not (yet) a unified and accepted theory of the current framework of terror networks or what distinguishes them from other terror networks (of course they are distinguished in specific ways — I’m just speaking to the lack of consensus on how to describe or frame the model/theory) when people use either of these words. I also think the use of the term “jihad,” which for many Muslims refers to a spiritual struggle (although it certainly has been leveraged in a “just war” context), is an attempt to be cute or pretend to understand the actual mainstream religious philosophy without bothering to study it.
Divya, I would argue that by definition there is no such thing as a “terrorist state,” but rather that this is a rhetorical recasting of “enemy state” (and is certainly not the same as a rogue state). It’s not even as descriptive as the terms used during the Cold War.
My argument is not that religion is irrelevant to the world today, or even to the way identity and difference are leveraged for political/military action. When discussing issues as serious and complicated as these, I think we owe it to ourselves and to others to be VERY specific and careful with our rhetoric. Our language controls how we interact with others, including how we interact with people who are completely alienated from, and do not identify with, these LeT people. At what point does Islamist become Islam? Most people don’t distinguish. I think we should at least make an effort to differentiate.
217 · portmanteau said
Damn you Claremont Trustees, keep your arugula picking paws off my Malaysian robber baron spoils !
216 · portmanteau said
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blockquote>
Fair enough – in rereading what I wrote and what he wrote, I can see why you’d say that, though I could mount an argument in the opposite direction as well. More relevantly, I’d simply note that he was far more than abrasive – he was racist, like much of this thread. So the end result of all on this is that yet another nice South Asian kid (who uncoincidentally is not Indian-American and not Hindu and…) was subjected to the idiocy of the Internet and made to feel unwelcome for no reason at all. Super.
Anyway, thanks for the kind words, and best wishes.
218 · Camille said
yes, to produce evidence on the veracity of the label “red states,” the state department and the cia sent diana vreeland on a fact-finding mission to the east bloc countries. after extensive research, ms. vreeland presented an unequivocally worded report, “i despise that red! red is the navy-blue of the soviet bloc.” this refreshing report remains unsurapssed in its brevity, and quite unlike ponderous reports that escape the scrutiny of common citizens, most of whom read at eighth-grade level.
it is imperative that ms. vreeland be requested to serve her nation once again. she should travel to al-qaeda hideouts and decide which color best represents islamic radical terrorism. it’s the war on terror and we all need a color to despise. let the wahabbis know that we have our own fashion police — and she means business, right from her coifed mane to the steel tip of her italian stilletos. the libelous jehadists should pay the price for maliciously claiming that the devil wears prada. ms. vreeland not the devil; in fact, she’s divine!
Sonal Shah’s initials are SS.
So are Sarah Shahi, the hottest women on any NBC Tv show.
I’m just enjoying the image of someone reading that without knowing which part of the anatomy a kudumi is and getting the wrong idea about tugging it.
Dr. A,
if you’re going to call Louiecypher a racist (which coming from what seems like a Marxist is hardly the most serious of insults), i’d like to see some properly quoted examples (and not getting his sarcasm doesn’t count). Everyone here initially ‘feels discomfort.’ I was accused of being a troll. You don’t see me crying racist or even “meanies!” at the drop of a hat.
I’m a post-marxist, thanks, and also I’m not new here so need to extend me any undue courtesies 😉 It was an overstated claim in the heat of the moment- perhaps – soft Hindutvaite or simply “dipshit” would have been more accurate. But I am sorry, Louiecypher, that I didn’t read your posts carefully enough before passing a judgement like “racist” which is in fact a serious claim (coming from an American). In any case here are some examples of anti-Pakistani and Hindu persecution complex statements:
What is most shocking is that this kind of commentary actually raises the bar when you start with “Islamofascist.” (that’s as close as you’re going to get to a compliment from me :).
the whole problem was the existence of the bengali identity, whose insubordination of the paksitani muslim identity was a thorn in the side of the those who believed that pakistan was the only entity that should matter to all subcontinetal muslims. a strong ethnic bengali identity negates that belief.
It’s ironic that in these times they are in the process of subsuming their identity (Punjabi/Balochi muslim) to the Wahhabi one.
225 · dr amonymous said
the post- lingo is getting tiresome. can we please move into the post-post era already?
I understand where you’re coming from Camille. The ideal you outline above is very hard to maintain in a space like this. More so when the issues being discussed are emotionally charged. Neverthelss, its good to bear in mind specially since forceful rhetoric takes away rather than adds to a discussion.
What on earth is a kudumi?
228 · Divya said
what you have when you don’t get a full brazilian.
Holy crap, Dr. Amnonsense loves Portmanteau ! I was flying below the radar until his beloved reached out to me and then for the first time our favorite post-marxist knew rage. This means I won my off red friend….love is this consumerist world’s most effective snare. First there will be chocolates, then there will be all inclusive holidays. At this point he will claim to be a pamphleteer just moonlighting as a high school guidance counselor. Then there will be babies & baby carriages and exurban living. At this point he will be head of poli-sci at Rancho Cucamonga Community College. He’ll raise his fist in solidarity with the landscapers but won’t have time to ask them about their working conditions or difficulties with la migra. I am not saying that Port wants any of these things, but something has been released here. Already we see him, despite years of brechtian slap therapy, following his biological imperative. He must control Port’s associations, he must squash louiecypher and evict him from that part of her heart in which he has a sublet. And when he is done he’s going to test drive a hummer and go to Hooters for some wings and come home reeking of cheap perfume and ranch dressing. The tyrant will play his jazz records and berate his children hiding upstairs “This is real music damnit”. His children will resent his bohemian affectations and they will join the Young Repubs and HSC at Pomona where they will engage in running street battles with Louiecypher’s overindulged anarchist spawn over the issue of Malaysian divestment. Circle of life Dr. A…..
louiecypher as Shylock, said: “Hath not a Hindu a kudumi? If you tug it will we not say Aiyo?” brilliant!
pingpong said:
ok. Give us a hint. Does it go side to side?
213 · label whore said
Chopra was blaming the U.S. for radicalizing muslims. That’s a crazy statement. The soviets were the one who instigated all of this in the 1980’s. Then Clinton was weak on national security (especially with Eric Holder’s human right concerns). He had 8 opportunities to go after Bin Laden. What did he do? Nothing. He was worried about offending his cronies in Dubai. Instead, Clinton’s intervention in Kosovo pissed off the Russians. Bush did the same thing this year. And plus, Chopra wants a Marshall Plan for the Muslim world. Do you know how crazy that is? Look at Mush Mash did to strengthen the ISI (from US aid), instead of go after the bums in Pakistan.
230 · louiecypher said
i’m a sucker for a clever word, though my tastes wander in different directions in the real world, sadly for all concerned 🙂 so are you going to apologize now for treating that poor boy so badly? or just continue to be a soft-hindtuvaite dipshit? and how did i get drawn into this web of sophistry? anyway, it’s better than what things used to be like…
227 · kellogg said
yeah so is the “i get to demand you have a label and then critique you for the one you choose even though none of them really fit very well because you’re a person” era. what say we move past both and call it a day?
I wouldn’t call louiecypher’s remarks replying to my posts “racist” per se, but he did display a pretty clear anti-Pakistan and perhaps anti-Islam bias. Mostly, I just felt that he was resorting to personal attacks and making assumptions about my motivations/the kind of person I am that I didn’t think could really be logically made from anything I actually said. But that’s not going to scare me off the blog:). I will continue commenting respectfully and engaging with anyone who responds in a respectful fashion. One of the drawbacks of online communication is that one often can’t pick on sarcasm as well as in face-to-face contact, so perhaps we are all a little bit more sensitive to condescension or personal remarks. Anyway, there’ll always be people like that on the net. Fortunately, most of the discussion on this thread has been done respectfully.
Leave Brecht out of this. The man you want is Artaud.
The devil’s in the details.
He just meant cereal. I prefer post raisin bran myself.
Why is it wrong to have an anti-Pakistan bias ?.
Did you read the resignation letter of Mr. Mandal, the first Dalit Bengali Hindu law minister of Pakistan?
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Resignation_letter_of_Jogendra_Nath_Mandal
A very interesting story of somebody named Viswanath who describes himself as a jew, and tried to negotiate with the terrorists at nariman house. This is the second person I am aware of, who has a very traditional Indian name, but is an orthodox jew.
Do people know more about this phenomenon (as opposed to jews who have lived in bombay for generations)?
I see…I would have voted against Prop 8 had I lived in California. My views are not entirely reactionary
If I started now I would never stop
It’s the only life I know
Well if it isn’t love it must be hate/anger
It’s love. Curiousity, innocence, defilement and self-loathing (namecalling). Dr. A as Adam, Port as Eve and you the in the role of the Byronic hero/your namesake Satan. Paradise Lost indeed.
So you really do love the humanities, louiecypher.
Divya, kudumi = pony-tail, with or without knot.
Bess, back in the days when I used to have a kudumi, it used to fly around in the wind unless restrained tightly.
Bess,
think of the kudumi as a yarmulke…but hair.
Camille, with all due respect, I don’t think it’s up to the world at large to come up with a description that satisfies every nuance in philosophy and carefully distinguishes between each. I’m sure from an academic perspective, the model used to generate the terms of certain types of terrorist attacks are faulty. From what I hear in cubicleland, that is to be expected–from an academic perspective, just about everything is faulty, except the positive decision to finance one’s own research/pet project. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t handle that environment and I applaud those who have the skills to flourish in it.
What everyday non-brilliant non-academics need is an identifier that is useful to provide enough classification to distinguish the phenomenon in question from other similar phenomena without going into an excessive level of granularity. That identifier will vary with context. In the context of broad scale scope of categorizing world events, the Oklahoma City and the Madrid bombings are terrorist attacks as opposed to civil war battles or natural disasters and the perpetrators are terrorists. In that context, the identifier “Al Qaeda” or “Islamist” is useless. In the context of identifying the actual perpetrators claiming/or convicted of responsibility, we have McVeigh and Al Qaeda as opposed to the IRA or Tamil Tigers or ETA. However, in the context of distinguishing the underlying justification used and to compare and contrast with other terrorist events we need labels to show the differences between McVeigh and Al Qaeda because, as I’m sure you agree, they are not identical. Since there is no official English Academy, it’s not academics who get to decide if a label is acceptable enough. The test will be functionality without ambiguity and adoption by the masses.
I think the attempts to use the labels Islamofascists and Islamists and jihadis ARE in fact an attempt to distinguish the perpetrators of certain acts driven by expressly stated ideological positions (and sometimes even expressly used terms i.e. “jihadis”) from Muslims as a whole. Now to some extent there will be bleeding over: I’m sure the word association test sees a lot of “Mafia–Italian” responses. Be that as it may, the terms are distinct. I would submit that they are more distinct than say “Muslim terrorist”–I suspect that term would get shortened very quickly by the masses, and NOT to “terrorist”.
If there is a better label that describes “organized crime system based on familial and hereditary connections originating in Siciliy but active throughout Italy and also active in North America with certain common execution styles and cultural characteristics” than Mafia, I’m sure the public will adopt it. Similarly, if there is a better label that provides the required level of precision for the context in question (“an entity that engages in violence to either achieve objectives or revenge tied to a stated ideology or platform based at least in part of the entity’s understanding of Islam”) , I’m pretty confident that the public will adopt it. If they do not, then I think there is definitely grounds for pressing the case that the “new, improved” term should be used. I do not think the term “terrorist” meets that threshold test. While I hear and applaud your concerns regarding spillover prejudice, I do not think that the fear of spillover prejeudice for a larger group is sufficient grounds for quashing attempts at classification. That risk can and should be handled by other methods.
Sorry, the phrase should have been “an entity that engages in violence against civilians to either achieve….”
Thank you, pingpong and Nayagan! I love the way the word sounds. “Are you pulling my kudumi?”
Thanks, pingpong. I totally believed hairy krishana @ 229 and spent all this time wondering howcome there’s no such word in english or hindi!
240 · bess said
i’m an eve that despises the fig life and find bliss in ignorance. i’ve made the faustian bargain and sold my soul to satan. in fact, i’m kicking out rahul and manju out of prime my real estate and lou’s sublet just got upgraded to a long-term lease.
223 · pingpong said
well, ping i’m sure you’re enjoying it to the hilt. just launder your socks afterward.
ok so now you’re a bridge salesman too. i ain’t buying. read up on how osama was on the good side in the 1980s and how the US funded the jihad in afghanistan. remember, the cold war was two-sided. i’m not exactly on the deepak chopra side of the situation, but i’m also not in denial like you. you obviously have a tenuous grasp on history and probably a willful blindness wrt sadam hussein’s and bin laden’s historical relationship with the US. so our debate is likely pointless. i suggest we quit while i’m winning.
249 · label whore said
You’re an idiot.