Author Archives: cicatrix

Anarchy in the US?

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Sri Lanka is a tiny place. Maybe that’s given us a Napoleonic Complex, maybe we’re tired of being compared to snot. Throw in the war, the tsunami, the suicide rates…we know we can’t play with the big boys. Ain’t no way we can show them up.

sepiaNOhurricane.jpg Until now:

President Chandrika Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, in China on a state visit, sent messages of sympathy to Washington while her government contributed $25,000 through the American Red Cross.

So sure, it might not seem like much to our corporate-dough-raking readers. (coughmyannualsalarycough.) But that would be missing the point:

In a turnabout, the United States is now on the receiving end of help from around the world as some two dozen countries offer post-hurricane assistance. Venezuela, a target of frequent criticism by the Bush administration, offered humanitarian aid and fuel. [link]

But Condi, FEMA and the Prez seem to have differing views on accepting the aid:

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With offers from the four corners of the globe pouring in, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided “no offer that can help alleviate the suffering of the people in the afflicted area will be refused,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday.

However, in Moscow, a Russian official said the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency had rejected a Russian offer to dispatch rescue teams and other aid.

Still, Bush told ABC-TV: “I’m not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn’t asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country’s going to rise up and take care of it.”

“You know,” he said, “we would love help, but we’re going to take care of our own business as well, and there’s no doubt in my mind we’ll succeed. And there’s no doubt in my mind, as I sit here talking to you, that New Orleans is going to rise up again as a great city.”

As the news reports and first-person accounts roll in, it looks increasingly, incredibly clear that we have not been taking care of our own business well. Not well at all.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who crossed party lines to support Bobby Jindal for Governor) exploded with frustration in a local radio interview last Thursday:

I told him [the President] we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice.[link]

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Hacker’s Delight

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Busybee brings us an update on the case against Jasmine Singh, a NJ based, 17 year-old Sikh hacker:

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An Indian-American teenager, described by prosecutors as an online gangster, was sentenced to five years in prison by a New Jersey Superior Court judge last month for hacking into online businesses, costing them over $1.5 million in revenue losses.

In addition to serving the sentence, Jasmine Singh, 17, of Edison in Middlesex County, New Jersey, was also ordered by Judge Frederick DeVesa to pay restitution to the tune of $35,000.

“Online gangster?” Hyperbole, thought I, until further search lead me right back, natch, to the SepiaMutiny archives, where Manish brilliantly explains how this kid controlled over 2,000 PCs using a Trojan horse named “Jennifer Lopez.” He promised naked pics, gullible horndogs lost their computers.

So beta did a bad, bad, thing.

A very bad thing. Techworld has a write-up that sounds glamorously close to the plot of Hackers, only sadly, no Angelina Jolie: Continue reading →

Kid Made, Adult Approved

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New tipster FOBish informs us of yet another way India eats its young: Child Sari Weavers.

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It is estimated that there are around 10,000 children in the districts of Kanchipuram and Thiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu work in the silk industry.

There are over 100,000 looms set up in individual homes on which these famous silk saris are woven. Many of these saris cost several thousand rupees…

These children work every day of the week for up to 10 hours a day.

Savarnam, an owner of two looms rejected all accusations of exploitation. Instead he said that they were helping these poor people by giving them employment.

“We make hardly any profit. The cost of raw material is high. Added to that we face competition from cheap copies of Kanchipuram saris,” he argued.

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Riiight. Many, if not all these children are essentially bonded laborers working to repay a loan their parents were forced to take. Human Rights Watch reports:

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A 14 year-old boy who worked as a weaver’s assistant in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, told Human Rights Watch that he could not leave his loom owner because he was paying off a loan, which in two years he had only reduced from Rs. 2,500 (U.S. $52) to Rs. 475 (U.S. $9.90). “The owner pays [a small salary] but deducts for the advance [loan],” he said. “He deducts but won’t write off the whole advance. . . . We only make enough to eat.”
Karnataka, in the south, is India’s primary producer of silk thread. There, production still depends on bonded children. Most are under age 14 and are Dalit or Muslim. In 2001, the state government promulgated an ambitious plan to eliminate all child labor, but it was not in operation at the time of Human Rights Watch’s investigation one year later. [link]

A detailed examination of how bonded child labor works can be found here. Continue reading →

Remarkabubble Rushdie

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The blazing hot publicity machine for Shalimar the Clown rolls out another feature on Salman Rushdie, this time in GQ. The cheapskate mag offers only 2 (out of 20!) sections from the print version online, so despite protestations from the Sepia Legal Dept., I transcribe the juicy bits below. Without further ado, hereÂ’s the ever-quotable Salman on:

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  1. Comics
He liked Batman the most – “because he was the weirdest,” Rushdie says. “Strange thing to do, you know, hang upside down dressed like a bat and go out at night.” He was always happiest when Batman came unaccompanied. “I didn’t like Robin the Boy Wonder at all,” he explains, his voice still leaking some youthful annoyance. “I thought he was completely redundant and had a silly uniform.”

[Yes, but does he know about this?]

  1. Perceptions of his character after the fatwa, and Indira Gandhi bashing
”The thing that happened to me had certain characteristics – it was theological, it was humorless, it was difficult to understand – and all those characteristics got transposed onto me. So because it was humorless, I must be.”… Some were stung by the account of the previous few decades of Indian history in MidnightÂ’s Children. Indira Gandhi, IndiaÂ’s prime minister at the time actually sued him for suggesting that her son Sanjay blamed her for the death of her husband, his father. Rushdie eventually yielded to pressure from his publishers to remove the passage, as long as she agreed that there was nothing else in the book – a book fairly critical of her – that she considers objectionable, and he says that the Indian press concurred with his view that this settlement was more a humiliation for the prime minister than for the author.

[The Iron Lady picked that over the transistors-for-sterilization bit? Color me surprised.] Continue reading →

Blue Steel, baby, that’s my look

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Fresh bagels, Starbucks™ coffee, foot massages…??? Turbanhead must’ve had the all-access pass to the North Dakota headquarters. All I see are grey socks and an ant farm. And all I got were a gaddawful hangover and some suspicious bruising.

I am truly honored by the invite to blog. ItÂ’s my first time, so please be gentle.

Since fashion-lovers responded so warmly to my sartorially-obsessed MIA review, I thought IÂ’d start things off with the news that Ashish Soni is presenting a collection at New York Fashion Week next month. The first Indian to be invited to do so.

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Soni, like all designers, needs money to buy fabric, stitch up samples and hire those lissome young things to stalk a runway. Our man in Delhi, however, seems a bit more enterprising than most when it comes to getting his show on the road:

At an informal press briefing today, Soni announced that his show in New York would be jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Textiles, the Ministry of Tourism and Air-India. And what’s more, all this, as part of the Incredible India campaign. The total sponsorship package would amount to ‘‘around $200,000’’, informed the designer.

We haven’t tapped the huge potential that we hold in the field of textiles,’’ explained Tourism Minister Renuka Chowdhury at the press briefing. ‘‘So when Ashish approached us with his blueprint which would help showcase Indian textiles abroad, we decided to make him an ambassador for the Incredible India campaign,’’ she said.

Exactly how would this help tourism? ‘‘Well, the huge international media presence will ensure that the world gets to see a younger, contemporary and more vibrant side to India,’’ she reasoned. [link]

Continue reading →