Category Archives: News

At least She’s safe

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nun.jpg I’m an insomniac tonight, but you benefit from what my bloodshot eyes see on the local peacock affiliate. Read what happened to an asset to the abbey:

A Catholic nun who works to provide care for pregnant women was found with only minor injuries after a mysterious abduction from her convent in Southeast Washington yesterday, authorities said.
The 38-year-old nun, known as Sister Liann, was hanging laundry about 6:30 a.m. behind Our Lady Queen of Peace Convent when she noticed a man and woman on the grounds, police said.

Poor Sister Liann–a member of the Missionaries of Charity order that Mother Teresa created–approached the suspicious pair, only to have a blanket thrown over her head as she was forced into a waiting van. I shudder just typing that; I’ve read that once a victim is in a vehicle, their chances are slim to done.

Sister Liann’s peers were alarmed when she didn’t return from her chores to attend 7 a.m. Mass. Once the authorities were alerted, no resource was spared– I’m watching footage of recruits, bloodhounds and even a helicopter, all employed in the search for her.

It’s not clear what the criminals who abducted this nun wanted; they drove her around and later dropped her off two miles from her convent, which runs a soup kitchen among other programs for residents of this troubled neighborhood. Slightly injured (though I haven’t read in what way) she walked to a nearby Catholic church where she waited for help.

Detectives had not determined a motive. They were questioning the woman last night to learn more details. She is from India and speaks fractured English, police said.

D.C.’s archbishop, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick looked perplexed while on NBC 4 news a few minutes ago, as he reminded the public that these nuns “don’t have two nickles to rub together”.

Neighbors and top police officials expressed outrage over the abduction…
Several residents said the neighborhood is violent and a hotbed for drug dealing. The nuns, they said, seemed to take special care with locking their gate at night and keeping a close eye on suspicious people in the area.
“It’s wild,” said James Kelly, 52, who lives across the street from the convent. “The nuns are here helping people out. They would do anything for you. This is just crazy.”

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All look same and sound like Apu

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The prosecution of various Indian store owners swept up by Operation Meth Merchant has run into some problems. For one thing, they’re having a hard time demonstrating intent on the part of the store owners:

… when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to “finish up a cook,” some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.

In some cases, the language barriers seem obvious – one videotape shows cold medicine stacked next to a sign saying, “Cheek your change before you leave a counter.” Investigators footnoted court papers to explain that the clue the informants dropped most often – that they were doing “a cook” – is a “common term” meth makers use. Lawyers argue that if the courts could not be expected to understand what this meant, neither could immigrants with a limited grasp of English.

“This is not even slang language like ‘gonna,’ ‘wanna,’ ” said Malvika Patel, who spent three days in jail before being cleared this month. ” ‘Cook’ is very clear; it means food.” And in this context, she said, some of the items the government wants stores to monitor would not set off any alarms. “When I do barbecue, I have four families. I never have enough aluminum foil.” [NYT]

Honestly, even having grown up in the US and knowing something about drug culture, I don’t know whether I would have caught the word “Cook” as drug slang in this context. The deeper root of the problem here, however, is that it’s very hard to write an effective law that says that something is legal unless it’s meant to be used to nefarious purposes. Sudafed, matches, camping fuel are either legal or illegal. You shouldn’t foist the burden on a convenience store owner to figure out how such common items will be used.

Another problem was that the prosecutors kept mixing up the different (unrelated) Patels involved:

Prosecutors have had to drop charges against one defendant they misidentified, presuming that the Indian woman inside the store must be the same Indian woman whose name appeared on the registration for a van parked outside, and lawyers have gathered evidence arguing that another defendant is the wrong Patel.  [NYT]
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Politicians are full of …

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It’s a very common observation to remark that politicians are full of fecal matter[NSFW], but usually this is a metaphorical remark about their character and moral worth. Very little attention has been paid by people to literal politician droppings … until now. It turns out there is no topic beneath the attention of the Indian bureaucrat: squat.JPG

Village council candidates in India should be allowed to stand for election only if they have a toilet at home, the rural development minister says. He said too many elected members “do not have toilet facilities in their own houses and defecate in the open”. Mr Singh said this activity was the main cause of the high incidence of diarrhoea in rural areas. [BBC]

Nor (surprisingly) is this a new issue:

Some states have already made amendments in the Panchayati Raj Act, which deals with the election of village councils, to ensure that elected members have toilet facilities in their households. The rural development minister suggested all chief ministers make similar provisions. [BBC]

Actually, concern with morning stool has long been a staple of desi culture. Mahatma Gandhi’s daily greeting to women was:

“Have you had a good bowel movement this morning, sisters?” [cite]

Indeed, one critic pointed out that

… Gandhi seems to have written less about home rule for India than he did about enemas, and excrement, and latrine cleaning [cite]

It seems the minister is merely following a path made by giants … Continue reading →

Surviving a crash

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The first lesson I learned as a pilot is that airplanes are incredibly forgiving beasts.  Seriously, you almost have to try to crash them on purpose.  This runs counter to conventional beliefs because movies and the media always play up the stewardess being sucked out of the cabin angle, or the gremlin on the wing angle.  Learning how to crash-land a plane is one of the most interesting lessons that a begining pilot is taught.  Flying is not nearly as spontaneous as one thinks.  There is a checklist for everything.  My checklists were always on a clipboard that wrapped around my right leg, secured with a velcro strap.  If you think that’s kind of silly you should see the volumes of checklists that astronauts have to follow to do anything. 

Practicing crash landings is like a dress rehearsal for a performance you never wish to be in.  At the last minute you pull up of course, otherwise you have to explain to farmer John why there is a Cessna burning in his field.  The closest I ever came to an accident was in fact a landing.  I took a friend up for her birthday.  While landing, the plane bounced several times, several meters up off the runway.  She didn’t realize how badly I had botched it.  Never during all my instruction had such a thing happened but having memorized my checklist I was able to recover.  That brings me finally to Flight 358.  Science Daily reports:

All 297 passengers and 12 crew survived a catastrophic airliner fire Tuesday at Toronto’s international airport, a Canadian airport official said.

The official stressed he was quoting “unconfirmed reports.” He said there appeared to be only 14 minor injuries, but could not confirm that one of Air France Flight 358’s pilots had been taken to the hospital

He refused to speculate on the cause of the fire. The airliner after a flight from Paris.

Earlier, flame and smoke were pouring out of the passenger airliner at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport shortly after an accident around 4 p.m. EDT Tuesday.

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Desi Lord Mayor of Manchester

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Pretty soon, the press will be full of stories concerning  the alienation of British Asian Muslims. While this is an important perspective, and may be an accurate depiction of a segment of British Muslim society, it is not the whole picture. 

There are also success stories like that of Mohammed Afzal Khan, Manchester’s first Asian Lord Mayor. Khan was a high school dropout who worked  in the textile mills until he had a typically desi epiphany:

One night in the late 1970s, clocking off from work following another long night shift, he began the trudge out of the valley toward his home. At the top of the hill, he turned to survey the scene: the chimney jutting out of the mill, the red-tiled roofs on the terraced housing emblematic of working-class northern England.
“I thought, ‘Do I want to spend the rest of my life in this mill?’ ” Khan recounts. “The answer was no. That was the moment that changed everything. I realized that education is paramount.”   [CSM]

Khan went back to school to learn the basics, working his way through college while his wife (he got married at 19) trained as a dentist. After a series of jobs “from bus driver to youth worker,” he became a police constable. Although he had achieved a measure of security and status, this wasn’t enough for Khan.

He spent 2-1/2 years as a police constable, developing a keen interest in the law. When he was informed he would not be allowed unpaid leave to study, he took a risk and quit.
“My police superintendent said, ‘You’re making a big mistake, your future is here,’ ” he recalls. “I said ‘I’ll live with my mistake.’ And I have.”  [CSM]

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Were the bombers BBCDs?

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Around half the British bombers of 7/7 and 7/21 were of Pakistani origin, the other half of African or Caribbean origin. The NYT now spins the Pakistani group as victims of cultural confusion:

“They don’t know whether they’re Muslim or British or both…” They are alienated from their parents’ rural South Asian culture, which they see as backward… they feel excluded from mainstream British society, which has so far not yielded to hyphenated immigrant identities as America has.

‘Give me mango lassi and aloo gobi in every grocery store, or give me death’ (which they actually have in the UK, bless Sainsbury’s little heart). The sale of desi exotica and Apu on The Simpsons irritate thin, sunlight-deprived snarkidesis into penning high-class rants on blogs, like the class nerd hitting the football star with a rubber band sneak attack and then running like a coward. But did Apu push the 7/7 murderers over the edge?

It’s pretty silly when you put it that way, of course. And the UK has one of the richest desi diasporic subcultures anywhere, so there’s no lack of musicians, movie stars and models for teens to identify with. Naturally, it’s not about cultural chiseling. IMO the Beeston milieu boils down to three factors: the reverse psychology of teen rebellion, the in-your-face racism of working-class Britain and standard-issue criminality. The perversity of rebelling by being more conservative than your parents is by far the strangest one.

The second gen is much more demanding of their rights as Britons than their immigrant parents who just want to keep their heads down and earn a paycheck:

The British Raj officially ended on Aug. 15, 1947, but its relationship to its subjects did not. In the following decades men of the Indian subcontinent came to Britain en masse to supply cheap, unskilled labor for factories, foundries and, especially, textile mills in northern Britain…Mr. Hussain, now 54, worked in factories and mills, drove a taxi, and has run a corner minimart for 15 years… Integration was minimal, thanks to barriers of race and language, culture and religion. The migrants were the colonized who came to live among their former colonizers. “When we came, we were like servants,” Mr. Hussain said…

The children of the immigrants have shed the servility, and passivity, of their parents, Mr. Hussain said. They want their rights, even if they have to fight for them. This inspires both pride and unease in him… Arshad Chaudhry, an accountant and member of the Leeds Muslim Forum, sees it differently. “They were very timid,” he said of the first wave.

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Shazia Deen / Dancing Queen

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Indian-American model Shazia Deen recently starred in a music video for the Marc Anthony song ‘Ahora Quién.’ In cascading ringlets, silk scarf and trenchcoat, she’s dressed as an old-time starlet and looks like a million bucks. Watch the video.

Shazia was born in India, her father being part British and Punjabi and her mother born and raised in Delhi. She moved to California when she was three… she has gone on to make 15 national commercials and Ad campaigns for such major companies as Skechers, Kodak, Nike, Hanes, Payless, Diet Coke… She has been studying acting in Los Angeles for 4 years and has guest-starred on TV shows like the Andy Dick show… She has also just finished a two and a half year course in Ayurvedic medicine… [Link]

Deen may be part Anglo, but that jawline is classically Punjabi. From her demo reel, she also seems to have played Latina and Iraqi. Racial passing is actually more interesting in real life than the pixelated vacuity of the image biz. It’s part hidden talents, part undercover spook: The Bourne Identity, The Long Kiss Goodnight.

The postracial premise is interesting, I’ve lived it, meeting someone attractive who unexpectedly turns out to be desi… it’s the unfolding of hidden wings… Even funnier is when someone you meet seems fairly whitewashed, then, months later in the right context, totally busts out with a tender oldie from, say, Umrao Jaan, with flawless pronunciation and full-bore eyelash flutter. It’s a hell of a bender. [Link]

Passing was also one of the most fascinating things about Bollywood/Hollywood, a parody in two parts: a charming and very meta first half, a leaden and inept second. Casting the half-Polish Lisa Ray as Sue/Sunita, the non-desi desi, was clever on too many levels to parse. The flick proved men do make passes at a girl who passes.

Bolly/Holly also had that thrilling, swing version of ‘Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo’ and its shapeshifting singer. Sanjiv Wadhwani belts the filmi standard in a bad Amrikan accent, but he’s just playin’, dawg. He morphs into fluent Hindi and again into jazz vibrato. So hot. The song plays over the closing credits; über-grandma Dina Pathak and wrestler Killer Khalsa boogie with a drag queen (Ranjit Chowdhry) wrapped in geisha. I forgave the bad acting for this scene alone. Watch the clip.

‘Ahora Quién’ (‘Now Who’) is on Marc Anthony’s Amar Sin Mentiras (To Love Without Lies), released last year. Anthony proves the market for elegiac cheese, like a fondue pit, is bottomless.

Here’s my review of Bollywood/Hollywood. Hear more desi-Latino collaboration here.

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Why he ran

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Why Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian killed by British special forces in the London Underground, ran from the cops: he had overstayed his visa. The British government issued this gingerly-worded statement:

He applied and received a student visa on October 31 of that year, allowing him to stay until June 30, 2003. After that, the Home Office has no record of any further application or correspondence from de Menezes. “We have seen a copy of Mr. de Menezes’ passport containing a stamp apparently giving him indefinite leave to remain in the UK,” the Home Office statement said. “On investigation, this stamp was not one that was in use by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate on the date given…” [Link]

I don’t condone illegal immigration, but the usual response is to deport, not to execute. (Yes, it was a mistake. No, the cops aren’t blameless.)

Previous posts: 1, 2

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What’ll get you interrogated these days

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Nervous Nellies got a LA-to-London flight grounded earlier this week over suspicious-looking furriners. People on the flight had to spend the night in Boston:

A flight from Los Angeles to London was diverted to Boston early Tuesday after three Pakistani passengers were reported acting suspiciously, but nothing amiss was found and the three were released after questioning… the three passengers had been “acting suspiciously and making the passengers nervous.” [Link]

All 226 passengers aboard the flight were taken off the plane while it was searched… [Link]

… the FBI also interviewed the three passengers. [Link]

What’ll get you interrogated by the FBI these days:

  • Walking around the airplane to shoot the shit with your buddies
  • Talking about the news
  • Snapping a tourist photo
  • Taking carry-ons

Federal officials said the men had spent the flight walking back and forth between their seats, one in first class, another in business class, and the third in coach. Some passengers also said they overheard the men discussing the recent London transit bombings. Some said they had another passenger take a photo of them posing together in front of the Los Angeles International Airport boarding gate. Other passengers said the men checked no luggage.  [Link]

Apparently they were ‘doing much more than just walking around.’ Lemme guess: they weren’t speaking in English. Or they had free packets of peanuts stuffed in their pockets — très desi

A spokesman for United Air Lines said the men ”were doing much more than just walking around” and alarmed the crew enough to notify the captain, but declined to provide details ”because that’s considered sensitive information…” [Link]

Snark aside, we don’t really have much info here because nobody’s releasing it. I suppose there’s a chance they were putting together bomb diagrams in Morse code while hoofing it up the aisle: one tap for red wire, two taps for green; one if by land, two if by sea. But in the absence of additional information, it does seem to be the increasingly popular triumph of suspicion over common sense.

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