Category Archives: News

Tyler, Dharun and Molly: One Life Lost, Two Lives Ruined

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Ravi Wei.jpg

Police believe they may have found the body of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who jumped to his death after a roommate spied on him having gay sex. Meanwhile, some Rutgers students are saying Clementi’s roommate’s actions were misinterpreted.

Tyler’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, turned on his computer’s webcam and apparently spied on Clementi while he was hooking up with another man. After Clementi found out, he ended up throwing himself off the George Washington bridge. [gawker]

Do you remember what it was like to be 18? Most of us consider ourselves much wiser than we were back then; many of us would cringe at what we thought and the asinine shit we did. The problem with being 18, if I may be so blunt, is that most 18-year olds are stupid. Yes, we are brown; we get near-perfect scores on the SAT and take so many AP classes, we can skip our Freshman year of college. Big deal. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about emotional intelligence. Compassion. Wisdom. That last trait isn’t gifted to a teenager because it’s a consolation prize for approaching middle age, for suddenly possessing an underperforming metabolism, greying temples and baggage “life experiences”. Continue reading →

A gathering storm of crazy

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This sounds like a really insensitive premise for a video game, right?

The year is 2014, and a new breed of neo-Islamic terrorism is rampant in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio … The current White House Administration is pro-Muslim and has ordered a stand-down against Islamic groups. The mission: Destroy the terrorist command post — or die trying. The fighters must go in “sterile” — without name tags or other identifying insignia — as a deniable covert force. ” [Time]

Guess what? We’d be lucky if this was just a video game. This is reality. There are people in this country with guns that are really this crazy and “training.” Time Magazine has the full scoop:

This August weekend of grueling mock combat, which left some of the men prostrate and bloody-booted, capped a yearlong training regimen of the Ohio Defense Force, a private militia that claims 300 active members statewide. The fighters shot blanks, the better to learn to maneuver in squads, but they buy live ammunition in bulk. Their training — no game, they stress — expends thousands of rounds a year from a bring-your-own armory of deer rifles, assault weapons and, when the owner turns up, a belt-fed M-60 machine gun. The militia trains for ambushes, sniper missions, close-quarters battle and other infantry staples.

What distinguishes groups like this one from a shooting club or re-enactment society is the prospect of actual bloodshed, which many Ohio Defense Force members see as real. Their unit seal depicts a man with a musket and tricorn hat, over the motto “Today’s Minutemen.” The symbol invites a question, Who are today’s redcoats? On that point, the group takes no official position, but many of those interviewed over two days of recent training in and around the abandoned Roseville State Prison near Zanesville voiced grim suspicions about President Obama and the federal government in general. (See Obama’s troubled first year.)

“I don’t know who the redcoats are,” says Brian Vandersall, 37, who designed the exercise and tried to tamp down talk of politics among the men. “It could be U.N. troops. It could be federal troops. It could be Blackwater, which was used in Katrina. It could be Mexican troops who are crossing the border…”

As militias go, the Ohio Defense Force is on the moderate side. [Time]

I urge SM readers to read the whole article. You’ve kind of heard rumors of all this before, but this just lays the crazy out across the table for you to examine.

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Commercializing the Dahi Handi festival

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The BBC South Asia had a video short last week about the Dahi Handi festival (each September) in Mumbai. Click on picture for video:

The charming local gentleman they interview in the video vociferously makes the case that they $hould commercialize the heck out of the festival. You know, like La Tomatina in Spain.

Dahi Handi generally takes place on the second day of Janmashtami. An earthen pot containing a mixture of milk, dry fruits, ghee is hung around 20-30 feet high in the air with the help of a rope. Silver coins are hung along with the rope,which are later distributed as prize to the winners. Enthusiastic young men, form a human pyramid by standing one on top of the other, trying to break the pot. Onlookers throw water on the young men in order to prevent them from breaking the pot. Breaking of the pot is followed by prize distribution. Devotees believe that the broken pieces of earthen pot will keep away mice and negative powers from their homes.

Dahi Handi is celebrated with fervor, especially in the twin cities of Mathura – Vrindavan, Dwarka and Mumbai. Young men in Mumbai yell ‘Ala re ala, Govinda ala’ during the ceremony. [link]

What say you? Shall we put together a team of Sepia Mutiny readers?

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Greenspotting: Race and Ethnicity maps of the U.S.

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The blogosphere has been buzzing this week over a…Flickr set with ten year old information. And with good reason. Eric Fisher’s use of ten year old census data helps us visualize the segregation we already know exists in our major cities:

[Eric Fisher’s] taken a look at the way that the residents of major American cities assort themselves. Inspired by Bill Rankin’s map of Chicago’s racial and ethnic divides, he took census data from the year 2000 to see how other cities stacked up in terms of how citizens identify themselves and where they live.

Each dot in the plot above represents 25 people. The red-green colorblind among you may see a nearly monochrome map since those two colors represent self-identified whites and Asians. The cluster of blue dots … represent African-Americans. In and of themselves, the findings are hardly shocking, but since it’s Flickr, the map has already become interactive as users chime in with notes and comments to explain the city’s patterns. Even if you aren’t a sucker for information graphics, there’s something interesting in comparing and contrasting our city with the others in the photoset. [Link]

Here is the map of my area in Los Angeles. I make up the green right where the Red, Blue, and Orange intersect on the westside:

Use the search bar on Eric’s page to look for your city. I thought the picture of DC showed one of the clearest divides. Can’t wait to see how the demographics change when he uses 2010 data.

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Peacemakers: London Desis & Cricket Fans

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peace.symbol.jpgCan online communication help us achieve world peace? The Economist seems to think it’s unlikely in A cyber-house divided. But London desis and cricket fans, it turns out, are two groups who are working toward that goal by building bridges across the divisions.

With its global reach and relative freedom, the internet could be a great opportunity for people separated by war, religion, color, class or other borders to connect and learn about each other’s common interests and concerns. But reality, as described by The Economist, is different: “Research suggests that the internet is not so radical. People are online what they are offline: divided, and slow to build bridges.” Continue reading →

4 of the 400

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Did you all catch the most recent edition of the Forbes 400 Richest People in America? I was shocked that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is richer than Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch?!? How is that even possible? I have never spent a single dollar surfing Facebook (as far as I know). I am looking forward to seeing the new biopic on him though because there have been nothing but rave reviews so far. Anyways, getting finally to the desi hook. There are four desis on the list:

Four Indian-Americans are among Forbes 400 Richest People in America, a list topped by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The Indians who made the cut include Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, outsourcing firm Syntel’s founder Bharat Desai, venture capitalist Kavitark Ram Shriram and software king Romesh Wadhwani.

While Desai ranks 252 with a net worth of $1.6 billion, Khosla occupies the 308th spot in the list with fortunes worth $1.3 billion. Shriram is at 288 with assets worth $1.45 billion and Wadhwani 290 with a total valuation of $1.4 billion. [Link]

Maybe Desai, the highest Indian American on the list (who is the founder of an outsourcing firm), should have been hired as an advisor for NBC’s new show because they clearly did not have a clue.

Now I just have to figure out how I can make money from all of you surfing this site for free and I can be #5.

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Updates from the crime file

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There are two recent crime stories I wanted to give SM readers a quick update on. First, some members of the South Asian Bling Ring operating in the Northern Virginia area finally got what was coming to them:

The husband in a couple that targeted South Asian families in Northern Virginia for break-ins pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to steal at least $500,000 worth of gold and other valuables in 37 burglaries.

Dagoberto Soto-Ramirez, 27, of New York City entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Alexandria less than a week after his wife admitted her guilt and described how the couple and third alleged conspirator — who remains at large — scrolled through names in phonebooks to target what they believed to be Indian homes.

The homes were chosen, the couple has told a federal judge, because the families often kept gold there as part of family customs. [Link]

Also, remember the brutal murder of Divyendu Sinha that we blogged about in July?

The five teens accused of fatally beating Prof. Divyendu Sinha have been charged with murder and will be tried as adults, announced the Middlesex, New Jersey County Prosecutor’s office Sept. 17.

The five suspects were also charged with assaulting Sinha’a two teenage sons, Ravi and Ashish, who attempted to defend their father as he was being attacked on the evening of June 25, near his Old Bridge, New Jersey home…

Jim O’Neill, spokesman for the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, told India-West that no motive had yet been established for the brutal beating.

O’Neill said he could not comment on whether hate crime enhancements would be added to the murder charges. In the three months since the attack, the local Indian American community has put steady pressure on the prosecutor’s office to charge the five juveniles with a hate crime.

The PAN IIT has also taken up Sinha’s case by writing a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. [Link]

Hope this will help bring some measure of closure to the victims in both cases, particularly Sinha’s family.

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WWII Flying ace passes away

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SM tipster Amol notifies us of some sad news today out of the UK:

An Indian pilot who flew Hawker Hurricanes during World War II has died, it has been announced.

Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji, 92, died at Darent Valley Hospital in Kent on Saturday following a stroke.

Sqn Ldr Pujji was believed to be the last surviving fighter pilot from a group of 24 Indians who arrived in Britain in 1940.

He survived several crashes and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for services in Burma. [Google]

The photograph in the article conveys the swagger of a pilot who knows he’s a bad-ass.

He seems to have given an interview earlier this year:

Mohinder Singh remembers the start of the war vividly. Just a year after it had begun, at the height of the Battle of Britain, he decided to join the Royal Air Force (RAF). He was 22 years old and in search of adventure.

‘I saw London being bombed, I saw what people were suffering and I knew what they were going through and how cruel the enemy was because they were throwing bombs on civilians. They were not fighting soldier to soldier and hundreds of people were being made homeless so that changed my perspective, then I was very keen to fight for the country, for this country where I had come to seek adventure really.’

Two or three pilots would be lost everyday and Mohinder almost became a casualty himself several times.‘From day one in every letter to my parents I said don’t expect me back.’ [Link]

Here is a newer picture from an article in The Guardian last year that detailed a permanent exhibit at the RAF museum (that I once visited as a kid) called “Diversity in the Royal Air Force”:

I will likely re-visit this whole topic in greater detail at some point in the future.

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Brown men. Tight shorts.

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Personally I think an epic Bollywood love story centered around kabbadi would have made for a better movie than one about Cricket.

In a recession, are brown men in modest shorts in?

The crowd seemed subdued — at least compared with fans of American sports — and there was little shouting or cheering. Typically, many devotees are Sikhs, and the crowd on Sunday included many men with beards and traditional turbans. Women sat in separate bleachers, many under umbrellas as shields against the sunny heat.

Yet in keeping with the sport’s international appeal, Sunday’s competitors also included a London team of white blond women and an Australian crew with two African-American men from California, one of whom described himself as a mercenary of sorts. [NYTimes]

Mercenaries? A team of blond women? Oh behave you New Yorkers.

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