Author Archives: Abhi

About Abhi

Abhi lives in Los Angeles and works to put things into space.

The Big Payback

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My whole life I have secretly admired the profession of the loan shark. You know the guy I am talking about right? The big knuckled, leather jacket wearing thug in the movies that walks softly, carries a BIG ASS stick, and every so often utters phrases like:

You’d piss your pants if you saw me come calling for my money

“B*tch, you better give me my money”

or

‘Da f*ck you mean you ain’t got my money yet? muthaf*cka you best be comin’ up wit’ my cash or else you know what I’m sayin?… [Link]

Admit it. Even the nice guys/gals among our SM readers have wondered at least once in their lives what it would be like to collect on debts as part of their daily routine, to have people scared out of their minds and start to stutter when you came a calling for yo’ money.

In truth, despite the fact that my wallet does have the words “bad ass motherf*cker” embroidered on it, I am a sweet and non-violent guy. I just don’t have the disposition to be a loan shark, nor do I own a gun with which I can pistol whip anyone…not even some annoying commenters. 🙂

What I can do however is help to change the world one loan at a time. Sitting behind my computer I can provide loans…without being a shark. There is a great new service that has been started by former Paypal employee Premal Shah and others, called Kiva. Kiva allows people like you and I to make loans directly to small business owners in the developing world. By loaning them money you will be helping them to take care of themselves and their family through sustainable means. If the working class entrepreneur that you lend money to succeeds, then it is likely that the economic impact of their business will propagate to some extent throughout their community. At the end of loan period it is likely that you will get your money re-paid in full without having to break anyone’s arm.

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Lingering tension in Gujarat

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Despite the fact that the last remnants of my family (on both sides) emigrated from India twenty years ago, the happenings in Ahmedabad, Gujarat are always of concern to me. All of my relatives (on both sides) have returned to purchase homes in Ahmedabad. It is part of an economic boom over there from what I understand. In Ahmedabad, my family will spend a significant amount of their retirement years. I will also probably make several trips there. The Christian Science Monitor featured an article on Friday that caused me worry:

… religious segregation is expanding not only to places of worship, but also neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. At the entrance of some villages, gaily painted message boards have sprung up since the riots that read: “Welcome to this Hindu village in the Hindu nation of Gujarat.”

Expressing concern over this increasing polarization, a recent report by a high level committee from the Indian Prime Minister’s office, to be tabled in the Indian Parliament in October, states that Gujarat still hasn’t recuperated from the riots in which over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. The committee noted that several Gujarati cities and towns are sharply divided into Hindu and Muslim ghettoes. Muslims, a minority in the state, face social and economic boycott from society at large. The committee also observed that dropout rates of Muslim girls have risen. And there’s a dismal representation of Muslims in public-sector jobs.

“There’s a state of fear and insecurity among Muslims,” says a member of the committee. “The state government has done little to end the state of alienation…” [Link]

I think that it is naturally important to look at the source of any claims pertaining to ethnic relations in Gujarat. In the paragraph above a study was conducted at the behest of the Prime Minister. In this excerpt below you will note that the examination was done by one of India’s mainstream newspapers:

The Indian Express, a national daily, reported last month that Muslims are being sidelined from the Indian government’s ambitious antipoverty project that promises the country’s rural poor 100 days of employment every year.

“Where the communal divide was hardened, where violence led to murder and widespread arson … Muslims are nowhere on the employment rolls,” the newspaper reported after touring six districts within Gujarat where the scheme is being implemented. Not just are there information blackouts, even those Muslims who enquire about jobs are turned away, the report said.

In response, Bharat Barot, Gujarat’s minister of state for rural development, said that in villages “the majority community called the shots.” The state was probing whether the alienation of Muslims was deliberate, and, if so, “it’ll be fixed immediately…” [Link]

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Jingoism in the blogosphere

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For a while now I have been meaning to write about a topic that has been of great concern to me (I am pretty sure most of my co-bloggers are as disturbed by it as I am). I have noticed that the blogosphere, with its ability to confer an anonymous voice to anyone, is often the venue for ignorant and naked jingoism. A blog like ours, which mostly covers items about, and of interest to North Americans of South Asian origin, offers a particularly unique window into what I am referring to. All of the bloggers who write for SM live in North America. Some were born here and some were not. The resulting mix of loyalties, the perception of mixed loyalties, our readers expectation of mixed loyalties, or our readers anger at a lack of loyalty toward the lands of our “origin,” results in a perfect storm. SM and a few other sites like it are being viewed by some as a sort of virtual ideological battlefield where the hearts and minds of several thousand readers hang in the balance.

Jingo: (n) One who vociferously supports one’s country, especially one who supports a belligerent foreign policy; a chauvinistic patriot. [link]

In its traditional use the word “jingo” (a pejorative term) means something far different than the word “patriot.” A patriot loves their country or geographic region and is ready to defend it…but is not above questioning it or beyond introspection. A true patriot is willing to defend against all enemies both external and internal. A jingo is the worst kind of nationalist (even worse when mixed with religion). They lash out at the tiniest hint of criticism directed at “their own.” A few days ago a reader commented on what he saw transpiring on our News Tab:

Off topic, but also in a strange way, slightly related to this topic, is the way in which the news tab here on Sepia Mutiny is used as a repository for anti Muslim chauvinism. This goes beyond the legitimate posting of stories on Muslim extremism and runs to the extent of posting articles from the RSS newspaper, posting about Little Green Football style documentary screeds about ‘The Truth About Islam’. I have noticed how these posts amazingly get large numbers of ‘Interested’ clicks in a short amount of time. Amazing!

Amusingly, someone has now posted a ‘Trouble with Hinduism’ article in response to this bigotry as a means of showing how it works both ways. Good. Chauvinists are using the news tab for their bigoted agenda. You should at least be aware of it. It is so tedious to see these monomaniacs waging their campaign and abusing what is an open and useful facility on SM. [link]

Yes, we are well aware of this phenomenon and will work to stamp it out as best we can. You can accuse us of censorship if you’d like but this isn’t about censorship but about remaining true to belief that communication is more important than simply being heard. A few weeks ago Anna sent her co-bloggers the following email:

Subject: I find the popularity of this news item a bit disturbing

The article linked reads like a SpoorLam rant…except it’s not funny.

That was one of the most popular articles in terms of number of votes we had that day…and it was little more than anti-Muslim propoganda. Continue reading →

This is how we ride

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I’ve been thinking for a while of starting a side blog where I put up an entry every day featuring another sign of the end times. This picture below isn’t quite Cats and Dogs mating but it is kind of cool (via Ashwin our News Tab). My sources in Lucknow tell me that the Rickshaw-wallahs are striking again and so the mouse had no other choice except to hitch a ride on slower moving transportation. Last we heard he was on his way to stay with his cousin in the countryside for a few days.

It could be the most spirited interspecies escape since The Rescuers. But unlike the 1977 Disney movie, this situation is anything but fun.

Photographed Friday in the northern Indian city of Lucknow…, a mouse perches on a frog in waist-deep (for a frog, anyway) floodwaters–a small sign of the early arrival of annual summer monsoon rains.

So far, more than 30 people have died in India as a result of this year’s monsoon-driven landslides and floods. Last year’s deluge killed some 1,000 people in the financial center of Mumbai (Bombay) alone. Today polluted, knee-deep waters are raising fears of a repeat disaster among the city’s roughly 17 million inhabitants.

In drought-stricken areas, too, frogs were playing the role of rescuer. [Link]

Giddy-up!

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Bush’s 60th birthday celebration gets "Foiled"

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President Bush today held one of his extremely rare press conferences. Hey, lay off. If you were going to get asked a bunch of depressing questions about Iraq, Iran, and North Korea you wouldn’t want to be up in front of the press either. Later on in the evening he even went a step further and gave an interview to someone named Larry King. What is the occasion? It’s his 60th birthday of course! Birthday or not, if you were a hard-nosed reporter and had a deadline on your story, you’d go for the jugular…wouldn’t you? To avoid any uncomfortable questions Bush decided to have a photo-op with any of the White House correspondants who “happend” to share his July 6th birthday. Anyone? Yes good readers. You know where this is going already don’t you? Even the President knows that when you want to dodge tough questions it is time to go to Raghubir “The Foil” Goyal. “Coincidentally” July 6th is his birthday as well. Yeah right (tip via my Mom).

Bush celebrated his birthday with friends on Tuesday at a White House party on Independence Day and there weren’t supposed to be any festivities on Thursday. Still, the occasion was noted in a long day of meetings and public appearances, including a press conference with Harper.

The president received birthday greetings from Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin who talked with Bush on the phone Thursday morning about North Korea’s missile tests.

As Bush closed his news conference, a reporter in the audience, Raghubir Goyal, called out that it was his birthday, too. Bush invited him to the podium for a picture. The president asked if anyone else had a birthday and invited them to come up. Two others, reporter Richard Benedetto and State Department employee Todd Mizis joined the birthday celebration. [Link]

I think this is like when you pretend that it is your birthday so that you can get free cake at the restaurant.

See related posts: A wtf? moment at the Whitehouse press briefing, Goyal’s toils, One-Track Uncle, Scott McClellan feels the heat, Who let brown folks aboard Air Force One?

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Joe…Doh!

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Of all of the potential 2008 presidential candidates on the Democratic side, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden has been in my top 5 (Gore, Warner, and Edwards being one through three). Biden always comes across as very articulate, often times blunt, and usually seems more knowledgeable about issues across the board than almost any other senator. The biggest dent in Biden’s armor (until today that is) has been the fact that he had Kavvya’ed someone during a previous presidential run:

Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr., a U.S. senator from Delaware, was driven from the nomination battle after delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. A barrage of subsidiary revelations by the press also contributed to Biden’s withdrawal: a serious plagiarism incident involving Biden during his law school years; the senator’s boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event; and the discovery of other quotations in Biden’s speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians. [Link]

Today he may have topped that blemish, at least for a certain segment of the voters, by shoving his foot all the way up his mouth [via the News Tab]:

C-Span cameras caught him telling an Indian-American activist that Indian-Americans are the fastest-growing immigrant group in Delaware.

In fact, Biden said, “You cannot go into a Dunkin Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent…” [Link]

You will remember that another presidential hopeful, Hillary Clinton, made a similarly stupid remark in 2004.

Update: Please don’t start an email or letter writing campaign :). This may have just been a very poorly executed joke on Biden’s part.

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Oblique Brown

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For the past two weeks, since I picked it up at Artwallah, I have been listening to Chee Malabar’s new solo effort on my .mp3 player. It went on sale on-line today. Malabar is one half of the duo known as the Himalayan Project. He actually debuted the title track “Oblique Brown” at the SAAN conference to an audience that was floored by the raw (and ultimately sad) story. Here is a snippet from the title track about an incident that happened to Malabar in New York City:

It was the, moment I feared, the corner was clear,
or so I thought then a fucking cop appeared,
in my rearview, red-blue berries was flashing,
flagged me to the side of the road, started askin’
for “License, Registration”, stayed silent and patient,
waitin…as the cop ran my plates,
he came back moments later, scanning my face,
disappointed, “Ain’t no warrants in my name,
and this ride’s clean man, I got it in my mama’s name,
“What I do?”, “You ran a red, illegal U, that’s two tickets!”
“Cool, pass em over, i’d love to stay and kick it,
but I’ll catch you in court, you know I’ma fight it!”
“What! Hold up Osama, don’t be so near-sighted!”
Before I snatched the ticket, the cop got excited,
clutched his glock and screamed, “Don’t even budge bitch!”
Thought he’d call Tom Ridge to tell him “flip the color switch”
A white boy rocks a beard, he’s consided rugged,
and If I sport one, I’m a threat to the public!…

[Listen to Oblique Brown on Myspace]

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Is this Indian man Skeletor in disguise?

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Filed under “signs of the Kali Yuga,” this next story comes to us from India where crowds are gathering to see a man who is sporting a skull for a hairstyle (via the News Tab):

I say we expose this villain for who he really is.

Hundreds of people are thronging a hospital in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata to see a patient holding a piece of his own skull that fell off.

Doctors say a large, dead section of 25-year-old electrician Sambhu Roy’s skull came away Sunday after severe burns starved it of blood.

“When he came to us late last year, his scalp was completely burned and within months it came off exposing the skull,” Ratan Lal Bandyopadhyay, the surgeon who treated Roy told Reuters Wednesday.

“Later, we noticed that the part of his skull was loosening due to lack of blood supply to the affected area, which can happen in such extensive burn cases.”

The piece came off Sunday and hundreds of people and dozens of doctors now crowd around his bed, where he lies holding the bone. [Link]

Poor guy. It is bad enough that he got burned but to have people staring and pointing at your skull?? You can’t even put a cast on that thing. At least then you could hope to make friends when people asked to sign it.

Bandyopadhyay said the skull’s inner covering and the membrane which helps produce bone was miraculously unaffected, allowing fresh bone to grow…

“Doctors say a new skull covering has replaced the old one, but I am not letting go of this one,” he told Reuters.

He intends to keep his prized possession for life and not hand it over to the hospital when he leaves: “My skull has made me famous,” he says. [Link]

You may have fooled the others Roy, but I know who you are. That brown skin and somber expression is just a facade for the evil that lurks beneath. When I find my Battlecat I shall come for you. Continue reading →

Clinton’s thoughts on the Chittisinghpura Massacre

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Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright has a new book titled “The Mighty and the Almighty : Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs.” Any book by a former Secretary of State is sure to contain interesting new insights but this one also contains a bombshell in the book’s introduction (via Pickled Politics). As he is often prone to do, former President Bill Clinton steals some of the show with this statement:

During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering thirty-eight Sikhs in cold blood. If I hadn’t made the trip, the victims would probably still be alive. If I hadn’t made the trip because I feared what religious extremists might do, I couldn’t have done my job as president of the United States. The nature of America is such that many people define themselves–or a part of themselves–in relation to it, for or against. This is part of the reality in which our leaders must operate. [Link]

The incident, in which ~40 Sikhs were killed has come to be known as the Chittisinghpura massacre. The Indian government blamed it on the Pakistan-based Lashkar e Taiyba terrorist group:

Suhail Malik of Sialkot, interviewed by a New York Times correspondent in an Indian prison, has said he had no regret that he participated in the massacre, which coincided with US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India.

Malik said he had opened fire because he had been ordered to do so by his commanders and that he knew nothing about the plot to kill the Sikhs until he stood in an orchard where the 35 people were killed.

“I used my weapons when commanded… We are told what to do and not why. Afterwards, we were told not to talk about it,” 18-year-old Malik said. [Link]
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I’m sorry. That name is on the blacklist.

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Last week several newspapers revealed the fact that the U.S. has been monitoring worldwide money transfers as part of its anti-terror measures:

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials…

The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database. [Link]

Well okay. I guess looking at how money gets transferred isn’t as bad as listening to our conversations on the telephone. This seems like a pretty good idea. What could go wrong?

Money transfer agencies like Western Union have delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed, company officials said.

In one example, an Indian driver here [in Dubai] said Western Union prevented him from sending US$120 to a friend at home this month because the recipient’s name was Mohammed.

“Western Union told me that if I send money to Sahir Mohammed, the money will be blocked because of his name,” said 36-year-old Abdul Rahman Maruthayil, who later sent the money through UAE Exchange, a Dubai-based money transfer service.

In a similar case, Pakistani Qadir Khan said Western Union blocked his attempt this month to wire money to his brother, Mohammed, for a cataract operation.

“Every Mohammed is a terrorist now?” Khan asked.

Western Union Financial Services, Inc., an American company based in Colorado, said its clerks simply are following US Treasury Department guidelines that aim to scrutinize cash flows for terrorist links. Most of the flagged transactions are delayed a few hours. Some are blocked entirely. [Link]
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