Category Archives: Issues

Fighting Words- UPDATED

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Q: What kind of person publicly threatens to hunt down and rape his rivalÂ’s four-year old daughter?

A: One of Clear ChannelÂ’s (former) finest: DJ Star, a.k.a. Troi Torain

Go ahead. Absorb. Let the nausea subside.

Yesterday, I received glad tidings of StarÂ’s termination (Thanks, TAN), but my relief quickly dissolved when I discovered just WHY he had been fired; during one of TorainÂ’s pathetic, IQ-reducing morning shows, he took a dispute he had with a nemesis– DJ Envy–to unprecedented levels of hatred by describing exactly how he wanted to hurt his rival’s innocent little girl. Wow. It is a truly special, powerful man who threatens to defile a child. If anyone needed further proof that Clear Channel was concomitantly useless and evil, look no further than their taste in employees and their amazing ability to reclassify hate as entertainment.

I understand that beef makes for tasty ratings, but apparently TorainÂ’s favorite meal came from a Mad Cow. Only a wasted, sick brain could conceive of and enthusiastically rant the following:

Star continued to digress about Envy’s child, saying, “Yes, I disrespected your seed. If you didn’t hear me, I said, I would like to do an R. Kelly on your seed, on your little baby girl. I would like to tinkle on her.” Even more, the now-removed radio jock stated, “I’m coming for your seed. Did you hear me? I want to do an R. Kelly in the mouth of your seed, fam… I want to put some mayonnaise in between your baby girl’s ass crack and take a bite.”

Quite predictably, Torain was relieved of his duty to shock listeners by spewing filth, but I want to know what took them so long. And I donÂ’t just mean the many hours which Clear Channel enjoyed before canning his ass, I mean these many months. I guess when your transgression involves an innocent Indian call center worker, itÂ’s easier to forgive and forget. No respect please, weÂ’re rat-eaters.

If Clear Channel had any kind of soul, they would have dumped Torain after that example of his intrinsic cruelty, but they donÂ’t, so they continued to remunerate him lavishly, thus ensuring that even more fecal matter would leave his worthless mouth. Much like children who have tortured kittens and puppies are practicing for future, human victims, I think that this descending spiral was predictable and thus, preventable. Shame on you Clear Channel. I rebuke you because your erstwhile star is shameless.
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Witch hunts

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Witch hunts remain a persistent scourge in rural parts of Jharkand state and adjoining areas of Chhatisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal. Periodically there are reports of a woman accused of causing misfortunes through black magic. Once accused, a woman faces hideous treatment, banishment and possibly death:

Recalling the trauma she faced, Ramani narrates: ‘I was tortured and forced to eat human excreta just because I was branded a witch by the ojhas (witch doctors).’ (Â…)

Vaisakhi, in her 50s, had also been brutally beaten up by a villager, who branded her a witch.

There are scores of women who have been branded witch by villagers and tortured. Many were killed, sometimes by beheading or dismembering their limbs.

Many like Ramani Devi are forced to drink urine or consume human excreta. Some are ostracised and thrown out of their villages. [Link]

These occurrences are most common in adivasi (or “tribal”) communities; but they have also been reported in non-adivasi settings. The victim may be a vulnerable woman, such as a widow, or one who has made herself inconvenient to the village power structure by asserting an economic or political right:

In Bijli village in Raipur district of Madhya Pradesh, a Dalit woman, Lata Sahu, contested against a backward-caste woman in the panchayat elections. Lata was prone to epileptic attacks. The Yadavs and Patels, who belong to the land-owning castes, got Lata’s sister-in-law to condemn her as a tonahi (witch). Lata was stripped of her clothes and paraded in the village.

In another case, in Tarra village in Raipur district, a woman was hacked to death after being branded a witch by her brother-in-law after she sought a right over her deceased husband’s land. In yet another case, in Gaandi village in Angara Block in Ranchi, two Dalit widows were tortured, resulting in the death of one of them, who was 75 years old. It began with the death of two children due to malaria and jaundice in September. An exorcist told the father of the children, Mahavir Baitha, that the two widows, Jeetan Devi and Dubhan Devi, were responsible for the deaths. In front of the son, the mother was tonsured, beaten, paraded and burnt. Earthen pitchers were broken on the heads of the two widows. [Link]

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A law changes the face of America

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National Public Radio’s All Things Considered is running a three part series this week that takes a look at the 1965 Immigration Act. As mentioned at various times on SM, this is the law which is responsible for many of our parents being allowed to legally enter the U.S., as well as the reason many of us are born citizens. The series by NPR is particularly relevant because one can draw comparisons between the immigration debate then and now. There are three to four million people standing in line waiting to get into America legally right now.

The FULL story is an audio story (and contains rich detail in the form of short interviews-12 min long). I am excerpting the abridged transcript below, although you are much better off listening to the whole story. First, one must remember the immigration laws before the 1965 Act:

“The law was just unbelievable in its clarity of racism,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. “It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians.”

By the 1960s, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese and Italians were complaining that immigration quotas discriminated against them in favor of Western Europeans. The Democratic Party took up their cause, led by President John F. Kennedy. In a June 1963 speech to the American Committee on Italian Migration, Kennedy called the system of quotas in place back then “nearly intolerable…” [Link]

So Kennedy and the Democrats saw the political advantages to updating the racist laws in order to give an equal shot to everyone in the world, but Kennedy died before the ’65 act was passed. When Lyndon Johnson signed it into law he went out of his way to state that he didn’t think anything would come of it. Neither Johnson, nor most of the government, thought that people would really line up to come to the United States:

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions,” Johnson said at the signing ceremony. “It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

Looking back, Johnson’s statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. [Link]

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Run, Budhia, run (from your coach)

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Four-year-old running prodigy Budhia Singh collapsed due to low blood sugar during a 40-mile run last Tuesday:

The Running Man

Diagnosing Budhia’s collapse during Tuesday’s 65-km run as hypoglycemia, where blood sugar level falls, a doctor feared the boy could suffer serious injuries by the time he reaches 15 if there is periosteal tear on the bones. [Link]

Doctors have examined him and said he should not be allowed to ultramarathon until he’s older:

… the panel headed by the chief medical officer of Capital Hospital… is said to have noted that the boy’s serum urea, potassium and ALKP (alkaline phosphatase) levels were on the higher side. “Signs of under-nourishment, vitamin deficiency and pallor have been noted. The boy should not run, as reflected by the abnormal parameters of health…” [Link]

Heeding the doctors, the Orissa government has banned Budhia from marathoning or being coerced to run marathons:

Orissa government has barred him from running marathons and threatened action against anybody who makes the four-year-old participate in long distance runs… Budhia’s cardiological system was under stress and he was under-nourished with anaemia and angular stomatitis, the [doctor’s] report had said. [Link]

Some activists, disbelieving Budhia’s 40 mile feat, wonder whether he’s living up to his name:

… he may earn another distinction by becoming the youngest in athletic world to go through dope test. “The doctors have suggested dope testing for Budhia who ran such a long distance…” [Link]
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Pistachio Shells at Camp Echo

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Mahvish Khan has spent a lot of time at Guantanamo Bay lately. Born in 1978, Mahvish is the daughter of Pashtun Pakistani parents who met while in medical school in Peshawar. Mahvish is a US citizen, speaks Pashto, practices Islam, and studies law at the University of Miami.

It’s clearly been a heavy few years for the sister, and in response, she took a remarkably deep, courageous course of action. She found out which law firms were representing Guantanamo detainees, and pestered them to take her on as an assistant and interpreter. She found an interested firm and underwent a 6-month security check.

She’s now been to Guantanamo nine times. Her first-person account of visiting the detainees, published in Sunday’s Washington Post, is a beautiful, powerful piece of testimony, made all the more so by the poignancy of her cultural connection to the diminished men she found.

At 80, Haji Nusrat — detainee No. 1009 — is Guantanamo Bay’s oldest prisoner. A stroke 15 years ago left him partly paralyzed. He cannot stand up without assistance and hobbles to the bathroom behind a walker. Despite his paralysis, his swollen legs and feet are tightly cuffed and shackled to the floor. (…)
In the middle of our meeting, he says to me: ” Bachay .” My child. “Look at my white beard. They have brought me here with a white beard. I have done nothing at all. I have not said a single word against the Americans.” (…)
The old man looks at me. “You are a daughter to me,” he says. “Think of me as a father.” I nod, aligning and realigning pistachio shells on the table as I interpret.
As the meeting ends and we collect our things to go, the old man opens his arms to me and I embrace him. For several moments, he prays for me as Peter watches: “Insha’allah, God willing, you will find a home that makes you happy. Insha’allah, you will be a mother one day. . . . “

The sister is no romantic. She states her belief that the fifteen men her firm is representing are guilty of no wrong-doing, but she limits her claim to those men. She paints a subtle picture of life on the base, in which the U.S. soldiers are pleasant and welcoming. It’s a fascinating account of a place out of space and time, deliberately established and kept that way, sad, tragic and in no small measure absurd. Continue reading →

Quota killers

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A NYT report on the recent murders of 35 Hindus in Kashmir draws parallels to an infamous massacre of Sikh men six years ago:

Thirty five Hindus were killed in recent days in two separate incidents in the Indian-administered portion of the disputed Kashmir province… They are particularly worrisome because they are so plainly designed to fuel Hindu-Muslim tensions…

Killings targeting Hindu and Sikh villagers had become a routine form of terror some years ago when relations between India and Pakistan were at their worst. The most infamous of these massacres came in March 2000, on the eve of President Bill Clinton’s state visit to India, when 37 Sikhs were murdered in Chattisinghpora village… killings, blamed on both security forces and militants, have hardly vanished. [Link]

But it doesn’t get into the horrific fact that the perps are sometimes from the Indian army. An Indian government report issued last week says that after the Chattisinghpora massacre, Indian army personnel allegedly killed five innocent people in a fake encounter because they were trying to meet a quota for dead militants:

After three years of probe into the killing of innocent civilians on suspicion of being involved in Chattisinghpora massacre of 36 Sikhs in Jammu and Kashmir, the CBI indicted five army personnel for staging a fake encounter to kill the civilians…

The 18-page CBI chargesheet said that after the gunning down of Sikh community members, the army unit operating in the area was under “tremendous [psychological] pressure” to show results because there was allegation of inefficiency and ineffectiveness on their part.

The CBI alleged the army personnel entered into a criminal conspiracy to pick up the some innocent persons and stage-manage an encounter to create the impression that the militants responsible for the Chittisinghpora killings had been neutralised. The accused army men also showed fake recovery of arms and ammunition from the five deceased after obtaining signatures of two witnesses on blank papers. [Link]

And in a protest after these staged killings, nine more civilians were killed by live fire. There’s an old saying in business: be careful in choosing what to measure. In the former USSR, numerical quotas alone led to shoddy quality. In this case, a poorly-thought-out work quota, combined with other, more significant factors, may have contributed to egregious civilian murders by the state.

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LGBT Asian Americans enter immigration debate

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At first I wondered why the Asian American LGBT community would be speaking out as a group against the House’s immigration bill. Surely individuals in the Asian American LGBT will have a diversity of opinions on this issue since it doesn’t seem to be related to discrimination or a denial of rights based on one’s sexual identity. They have written a letter to President Bush, Dennis Hastert, and Bill Frist however, which explains their opposition to the bill:

(1) We urge you to address the detention and deportation of immigrants. Many Muslim, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans have been improperly racially profiled and have not been afforded constitutional due process protections.

(2) We urge you undo the requirement that local police enforce complicated immigration laws. LGBTs have already encountered many problems with police misconduct and police brutality. There are insufficient assurances and resources to make this workable.

(3) We urge you to support the reunification of immigrant families and binational same-sex couples and ease the highly restrictive process to apply for political asylum.

We hope you will show compassion and will take our views into your consideration. [Link]

I support members of the LGBT community and their right to speak out on any issue. I also agree that the House’s immigration bill is just plain wrong and should be scrapped. I can’t however understand the intent behind this statement or how they think it will increase any kind of political pressure. In fact, it seems kind of opportunistic to me (especially point 3). Are they conflating separate issues just to get noticed? A joint statement by the group also contained the following as a possible explanation to my question:

…the House bill makes being an undocumented immigrant a felony. The same was true for LGBTs. Sexual relations between same-sex couples were criminal until the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws. So they wrote, ‘To love and show compassion should never be criminal.'” [Link]

Still seems like a weak connection to me. I am pointing this out because I often see various organizations (e.g. non-profits, non-partisan PACs, etc.) advocating for idealogies peripheral to their apparent mission, which results in an ultimately less effective/powerful organization. In this case I agree with their stance but I feel that by taking a position as a group they may be pigeonholing themselves into irrelevance for future debates.

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Kaavya is Innocent, Until Proven Otherwise

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Dear Kaavya,

This is your Akka writing. The fact that you have never met me is immaterial; we are brown and we don’t live in the land our parents were born in—that alone means that you probably have relatives you’ve never met, just like I do, so Akka it easily is.

Paavum Kaavya (letÂ’s call you PK for short), there is something I want you to know, but before I disclose that, I have to admit a fault of which I am rather ashamed, a fault which I hope youÂ’ll forgive your imperfect Akka for.

I was jealous of you.

Just a bissel, but it was enough to make me loathe myself for a few minutes. Green looks fabulous on me, but envy surely does not flatter. Wait, don’t frown—I promise that once I was aware that I was being a twat, I earnestly called myself out on it and owned my jealousy. Long before I admitted that my “unlikely-fantasy-if-wishes-came-true” job was acting, I cherished what to me seemed an even more far-fetched aspiration: to write. Getting a book deal seemed like the greatest thing which could possibly happen to someone. To get paid to write? Wow. And that you did, with a stunning advance, which everyone bandies about ad nauseum, since it makes your “fall” all the more violent.

Sigh. How I wished that my parents had been savvy enough to enroll me in an Ivy-League-Prep-Camp-Thing. Where my counselor, who just happened to be a published author, would discover me as if I were some naïve starlet in a ‘40s era soda shop and then pluck me out of the sweaty, freaked-out ranks of cloned overachievers and marvel at my genuine uniqueness. My parents made me turn down Columbia for U.C. Davis. My parents are SO not your parents. Your parents gave you everything, including an inadvertent star-making opp that made me want to howl. You’re nearly half my age. It’s like watching your little sister get married before you do. It’s a little humiliating to endure, in this obsessed with chronological-milestones culture we share.

So, whenever this group blog of mine did a post about you, I’d look down and notice that my skin suddenly looked wayyy more olive than usual. Then I’d take a deep breath and tell myself that you deserved it. That you had hustled for it, working on your writing when in comparison, 17-year old me probably would’ve been brooding over which Smiths or Ultravox LP to spin next. My skin would go back to the shade my mother calls “irrantharam” and I’d exhale with relief. It felt good to be silently proud of you.

Here’s the thing my little PK: I still am. And I’m a little appalled at how many people are crowing elatedly about your alleged toppling. The first thing I thought of when I read the “Crimson” writing on the blog was that tragically accurate, snarktastic story about the pet shop with international crabs. You’re looking at me blankly. I’m sure you haven’t slept. Tut-tut. That won’t do. You know brown girls are predisposed to developing those nasty under eye circles. Take a benadryl, bachi. Your skin and, well, everything will thank you. Hell, take a nap right now. I’ll dispel your probably non-existent curiosity about crabs for you, like a wee bedtime story.

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Ignorance of the Law is no Defense unless…

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…unless you’re a Bangladeshi Muslim Woman in the UK. Then it’s all good –

A BANGLADESHI woman who shook a baby boy so violently that he suffered brain damage walked free from court yesterday because a judge conceded that she did not know how to behave in the West.

Rahella Khanom, 24, caused the five-month-old boy in her care to suffer fractures to his breast bone and ribs as she tried to rid him of evil spirits, Southwark Crown Court was told.

The injuries inflicted on the child over several weeks had caused one side of his brain to shrink. It was believed that the boy would have been screaming in agony for eight weeks because his injuries went untreated.

…The court was told that Khanom, a Muslim, did not understand that shaking a helpless baby would not exorcise an evil spirit.

The judge issued a verdict which is almost its own caricature of a relativist, multiculturalist world gone astray –

the judge said that Khanom’s strong cultural and religious beliefs, and the fact that she had been forced by her husband to live in isolation since coming to Britain from Bangladesh, meant that there were exceptional circumstances in her case.

One can only imagine other, future defenses inspired by the socio-cultural isolation tank argument.

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Americans love their Indian reservations

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A new Indian proposal would reserve half the seats of India’s city on a hill, the exalted halls of IIT, for historically oppressed castes.

Would you riot for Samuel L. Jackson, foo’?

The Mandal II proposal is so self-evidently idiotic, so clearly death to the golden goose, that the blogosphere has been a-sputter with indignation. Various wags have suggested the same quota be applied to seats held by members of Parliament. As with the Rajkumar riots which have shut down the Emerald City of Bangalore (photos), many have simply rolled their eyes: ‘Oh darling, yeh hai India.’

But it’s not just India. The NYT reports that not only is the misuse of quotas politically appealing in America, it’s so appealing that white students are using DNA tests turning up two to three percent black or Native American ancestry to claim minority status in college admissions. It’s a microcosm of the American national character, both high tech and shameless

Prospective employees with white skin are using the tests to apply as minority candidates, while some with black skin are citing their European ancestry in claiming inheritance rights… Americans of every shade are staking a DNA claim to Indian scholarships, health services and casino money… “It’s about access to money and power…”

“If someone appears to be white and then finds out they are not, they haven’t experienced the kinds of things that affirmative action is supposed to remedy…” Ashley Klett’s younger sister marked the “Asian” box on her college applications this year, after the elder Ms. Klett, 20, took a DNA test that said she was 2 percent East Asian and 98 percent European… she did get into the college of her choice. “And they gave her a scholarship…” [Link]

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