Category Archives: News

Did ‘Indians’ colonize Europe?

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If I tell a white man to go back where the came from, will he have to travel to Africa via India?

A team of geneticists … conclude that there was only one migration of modern humans out of Africa – that it took a southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australasia … because the mitochondrial lineages of everyone outside Africa converge at the same time to the same common ancestors … people from the southern migration, probably in India, must have struck inland to reach the Levant, and later Europe, the geneticists say. [NYT]

So why can’t we all just get along? Continue reading →

SF Scene – May 13 / 14; MIA, TieCon & Roe

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A couple quick notes for SF-based Mutineers –

  • MIA will be playing a sold out show @ The Independent theater in downtown SF this Friday night (May 13) followed by a show at the Fillmore on Sat (tix still available?). If you go, drop us a note @ the tipline with your review and/or cameraphone picts.
  • Geek mutineers take note — Tiecon takes place this weekend down in Santa Clara. Registration is still open. The annual conference afterparty is @ Monte Carlo in Mountain View starting @ 830pm on Friday. There’s a guestlist and this stuff has been packed to the gills in years past. I guess if you couldn’t get tix to M.I.A., partying up (or standing in line) with a few hundred desi engineers / entrepreneurs is some sort of a consolation prize.
  • Finally, a certain mutineer will be celebrating a b-day w/ some friends @ Roe / Prive in downtown SF, this Sat night starting around 10ish. Come by and say hello. MIA – if you’re reading this, you’re more than welcome to drop by after your Fillmore gig.

Continue reading →

Jersey Guy’s lose advertisers

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DNSI links to an article that says that the Jersey Guys’ advertisers are starting to pull out:

The Star-Ledger (NJ) is reporting that Cingular Wireless and Hyundai Motor America have pulled advertising from WKXW-FM. The station has been embroiled in controversy almost immediately after hosts of the station’s “The Jersey Guys” program, Craig Carton and Ray Rossi, offered racist and offensive commentary aimed at Asians and Indians.

Blogger Lester Gesteland is also keeping up with the minute by minute. Continue reading →

Karhod women’s standards are way too high

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We’ve all been there before. Maybe she turned you down because you weren’t wealthy. Perhaps your career wasn’t prestigious enough. Or it could have been something entirely materialistic, like the fact that you drive a red 1980 Datsun 210, which is a fine automobile, dammit. Be grateful, because it could be worse — she could have turned you down because of a lack of water:

An acute water shortage in central India has made it tough for men of one village to find wives, because families are reluctant to condemn their daughters to a life of hardship … “In rural India, it is the duty of women to fetch water. When people come to know that their daughter will have to trudge several miles to fetch a couple of pots of water after marriage, which parent will agree?” the (Economic Times) quoted one sociologist as saying. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Continue reading →

Creep

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A new biography argues that the British commander who ordered the Jallianwala Bagh massacre on Vaisakhi day, 1919, was every bit as sadistic as reputed. Nigel Colletts’ damning take on General Reginald Dyer is rightly called The Butcher of Amritsar (via Amardeep Singh):

… Indians… were also incensed by the General’s notorious “crawling order.” In the street where a female missionary had been left for dead, Dyer decreed that between 6am and 8pm Indians could only proceed on their bellies and elbows and were to be beaten if they raised a buttock… a series of outrages… ensured that the indigenous elite would seek fulfilment in a government of their own race… [the book] helps retire the notion that the end of the Raj was anything but a good thing.

Surprisingly, Dyer’s instruments of butchery were desi soldiers from remote areas, not Brits. (The U.S. has pursued a similar strategy by using Kurdish soldiers in Sunni areas in Iraq). You’ve got to wonder what the hell Dyer’s soldiers were thinking as they methodically murdered their countrymen with manual rifles:

He chose from the troops at his disposal those he thought would harbour the least compunctions in shooting unarmed Punjabi civilians: the Nepalese Gurkhas and the Baluch from the fringes of far-off Sind… His “horrible, bloody duty”, as he called it, consisted of ordering his soldiers to open fire without warning on a peaceful crowd in an enclosed public square. The General directed proceedings from the front, pointing out targets his troops had missed, and they kept shooting until they had only enough ammunition left to defend themselves on their way back to base. While Dyer made his escape, a curfew ensured that the wounded were left to linger until the following morning without treatment… nearly 400 had been killed, including 41 children and a six-week-old baby, and around 1,000 injured.

Continue reading →

MIA and Diplo sittin’ in a tree studio

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Yesterday, Ennis reported that NPR had featured yet another story on hot chocolate MIA. A few of us wondered about the identity of someone mentioned in the “teaser” for today’s story, “the man who helped to spark the MIA Buzz.”

Let me kill your non-existent suspense: it’s Diplo, the 26-year old producer/turntablist out of Philly, whom MIA apparently “fancied”. 😉

Here are my futile attempts at transcribing NPR as fast as I can (clip here):

Maya called last year and asked (Diplo) if he would produce a cut for her debut record…he wound up producing two tracks for the album and they started dating.

From the baile funk-consumed DJ’s mouth, about the mixtape “Piracy funds Terrorism, Vol. 1”, which started it all:

“This is me and Maya, two artists doing it from the street, we didn’t have like her manager with a bright idea, her label with a bright idea…this is purely, like, in the hands of the artist which is where it should be anyway. It’s like the perfect music because it’s everything, you know?”

Yup, I know. 😉 Continue reading →

File under “Senseless”, #4972

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Nusrat Parsa

35-year old Nusrat Parsa died in Canada, a few hours after being involved in a fight which lead to a deadly fall down the stairs.

Parsa was approached by fans outside his hotel after the performance at Vancouver’s Queen Elizabeth Theatre and scuffles broke out, police said.
The singer is reported to have fallen downstairs after being punched.
He sustained head injuries and died in hospital a few hours later. A man has been arrested in connection with the incident late on Sunday.
…Mr Parsa’s brother, Najib, told the BBC the attack followed trouble at the concert, when some in the audience called for faster, livelier songs.

A singer from childhood on, Parsa recorded a total of ten albums; he had studied music in India. Continue reading →

Clueless Cartoonist inadvertently infuriates Millions

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Wow, the folks at WaPo must love sharing my city with a stellar pub like the The Moonie Times…

Parliament in Pakistan is urging the government to seek an apology from The Washington Times newspaper over a cartoon that depicts Pakistan as a dog.
The cartoon shows a US soldier patting a dog holding Libyan al-Qaeda suspect Abu Faraj al-Libbi who was recently arrested in Pakistan.
“Good boy… now go find Bin Laden,” the soldier urges the dog.
Cartoonist Bill Garner says he meant no offence and the misunderstanding was caused by a “cultural gap.”
…”We are disgusted with the insensitivity of the editors of the Washington Times,” Pakistan’s charge de affaires in Washington, Mohammed Sadiq said on May 6, the day the cartoon appeared.

via the Beeb. Continue reading →

Sex and the City of London

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Photos of the Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee three-part TV series are now up (thanks, Sapna). The first part will be broadcast in the UK tonight, lucky sods.

Here’s a roundup of the characters: the author’s voice Sunita, played by… the author. (Nobody said Meera Syal was big on subtlety.) Her husband Akaash, played by… her husband Sanjeev Bhaskar. The bad girl Tania, played by Moroccan-Indian actress Laila Rouass. The naïf Chila, played by Queen of Naboo Ayesha Dharker. And the playa from the Himalaya Deepak, played by Ace Bhatti. That cast reads like the Bombay Dreams unemployment list.

Watch the clip of Tania getting hassled by clucking aunties. It’s pretty choppy — can’t the Beeb afford bandwidth these days?

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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148 years ago, today

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Under Wikipedia’s current “Selected Anniversaries”, a special date with regard to this blog– May 10, 1857, i.e. the Sepoy Mutiny:

…The Pattern 1853 Enfield (P/53) rifle was introduced into India. Its cartridge was covered by a greased membrane which was supposed to be cut by the teeth before the cartridges were loaded into the rifles. There was a rumour that the membrane was greased by cow or pig fat…The British claimed that they had replaced the cartridges with new ones not made from cow and pig fat and tried to get sepoys to make their own grease from beeswax and vegetable oils but the rumour persisted. The Commander in Chief in India, General George Anson reacted to this crisis by saying, “I’ll never give in to their beastly prejudices”, and despite the pleas of his junior officers he did not compromise.
…On 9 May, 85 troopers of the 3rd Light Cavalry at Meerut refused to use their cartridges. They were imprisoned, sentenced to ten years of hard labour, and stripped of their uniforms in public. It has been said that the town prostitutes made fun of the manhood of the sepoys during the night and this is what goaded them.
When the 11th and 20th native cavalry of the Bengal Army assembled in Meerut on 10 May, they broke rank and turned on their commanding officers.

…and a Mutiny was born. Read more here. Continue reading →