Category Archives: Issues

Thomas Friedman on Desi Muslims

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I‘m pretty lukewarm on Thomas Friedman overall but he’s built quite a franchise on turning a good phrase or 2 and he does occasionally deliver some solid bits. Lately, in a media environment where every other article about Islam involves beheading, suicide bombs or sharia, he’s been doing a great job of recognizing the important & emerging pockets of liberalism in Muslim society writ large. In Iraq, for example, he recently noted an important reversal of the usual storyline for what happens to an intellectual who violates Arab society’s norms –

Combatting Islamophobia His Own Way…

Here’s a story you don’t see very often. Iraq’s highest court told the Iraqi Parliament last Monday that it had no right to strip one of its members of immunity so he could be prosecuted for an alleged crime: visiting Israel for a seminar on counterterrorism. The Iraqi justices said the Sunni lawmaker, Mithal al-Alusi, had committed no crime and told the Parliament to back off.

That’s not all. The Iraqi newspaper Al-Umma al-Iraqiyya carried an open letter signed by 400 Iraqi intellectuals, both Kurdish and Arab, defending Alusi. That takes a lot of courage and a lot of press freedom. I can’t imagine any other Arab country today where independent judges would tell the government it could not prosecute a parliamentarian for visiting Israel — and intellectuals would openly defend him in the press.

More stories like this & I believe Islamophobia worldwide would be taken down a notch or two. Towards the same end, Friedman has a great column this week about the Indian Muslim community’s response to the Mumbai attackers & how it contrasts with too many Arab Muslims –

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Let the “brainy Indians” come in?

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On Wednesday’s NYTimes op-ed page Tom Friedman forwarded on a novel solution to our financial mess and housing crisis:

Leave it to a brainy Indian to come up with the cheapest and surest way to stimulate our economy: immigration.

“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.” [Link]

Once you get past the model minority stereotyping in the first paragraph, he does have a good point. In all the talk of bailouts, stimulus, bad banks, etc., the one thing nobody is talking about (not even the Obama administration) is immigration policy. Now may be the best time to swing the doors open so highly skilled immigrants can enter the U.S. and help stimulate the economy:

… the U.S. Senate unfortunately voted on Feb. 6 to restrict banks and other financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits known as H-1B visas.

Bad signal. In an age when attracting the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world is the most important competitive advantage a knowledge economy can have, why would we add barriers against such brainpower — anywhere? That’s called “Old Europe.” That’s spelled: S-T-U-P-I-D…

If there is one thing we know for absolute certain, it’s this: Protectionism did not cause the Great Depression, but it sure helped to make it “Great.” From 1929 to 1934, world trade plunged by more than 60 percent — and we were all worse off.

We live in a technological age where every study shows that the more knowledge you have as a worker and the more knowledge workers you have as an economy, the faster your incomes will rise. Therefore, the centerpiece of our stimulus, the core driving principle, should be to stimulate everything that makes us smarter and attracts more smart people to our shores. That is the best way to create good jobs. [Link] Continue reading →

No Really, South Asians Against Obama ;-)

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In stark contrast to Anna’s picts of pro-Obama Pakistani kids, Reuters recently published some picts of less than happy Pakistani adults –

Obama! Keep Your Hands off my “Tribs”!

Supporters of the Pakistani Islamist party Jamat-e-Islami protest in Karachi, January 25, 2009. The protest was organised by Jamat-e-Islami party against military operations and drone attacks in tribal areas. U.S. drones fired missiles into Pakistan late on Friday killing 17 people, intelligence officials and residents said, in the first such strike since Barack Obama became U.S. president. REUTERS/Athar Hussain (PAKISTAN)

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India’s Israel Envy

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Former UN USG Shashi Tharoor recently published a provocative piece titled “India’s Israel Envy” exploring the seemingly unlikely sympathy for Israel from India –

Shashi Tharoor

As Israeli planes and tanks exact a heavy toll on Gaza, India’s leaders and strategic thinkers have been watching with an unusual degree of interest – and some empathy.

India’s government has, no surprise, joined the rest of the world in calling for an end to the military action, but its criticism of Israel has been muted…

Both countries face terrorists launching attacks from neighboring, ostensibly sovereign territory and both suspect that authorities lend different shades of support to the behavior. With Israel biting the bullet and invading Gaza to (hopefully) curtail the rocket downpour, India might be tempted to do something similar to Pakistan. However, Tharoor argues, India has far more effective international leverage to bring down upon its misbehaving neighbor than the Israeli’s do and hence could / should make use of that avenue first.

Perhaps due to his UN heritage, I think Tharoor overly focuses on geopolitics as the source of the “empathy” – e.g. both India and Israel are in similar transnational situations. I’ve done some work in Israel over the years and have personally noted a far more broadbased alignment between Israel and India. One response to Tharoor tracks this shift over the last 50 yrs-

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) — Israel hasn’t won much praise for invading the Gaza Strip. This unpopularity abides even though Israel is bombing Gaza to stop Qassam rockets from hitting its own towns. Still, Israel has at least some supporters in what might seem an unlikely place: India. Not official support, mind you.

…Still, a growing mutual admiration between India and Israel is showing up at levels both commonplace and lofty…This Israel-India link is a change. Born at the same time, the two nations at first stood out for their differences…Over the next decades, a shift commenced. India discerned that it had little to gain by keeping Israel at a distance, since Arab nations would surely back Pakistan over India regardless of the latter’s policy on Jerusalem.

My assertion is that beyond the strategic relationship to Islamic states, both countries have also become surprisingly socio-politically aligned internally and thus the “envy” runs far deeper than the current situation.

How so?

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R.I.P. Whitey

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The Atlantic has the absolute must read piece of the day (seriously) about the coming minority majority in America. In the rhetorically titled, “The End of White America?” Hua Hsu of Vassar College examines a basket of issues surrounding the idea that it is no longer even mildly desireable to be “white” in America. According to Hsu, white youth are trying desperately to mimic the cultures they see within minority groups as a means to escape the blandness of their “non-culture”:

Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities–blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians–will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.

Obviously, steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage complicate this picture, pointing toward what Michael Lind has described as the “beiging” of America. And it’s possible that “beige Americans” will self-identify as “white” in sufficient numbers to push the tipping point further into the future than the Census Bureau projects. But even if they do, whiteness will be a label adopted out of convenience and even indifference, rather than aspiration and necessity. For an earlier generation of minorities and immigrants, to be recognized as a “white American,” whether you were an Italian or a Pole or a Hungarian, was to enter the mainstream of American life; to be recognized as something else, as the Thind case suggests, was to be permanently excluded. As Bill Imada, head of the IW Group, a prominent Asian American communications and marketing company, puts it: “I think in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, [for] anyone who immigrated, the aspiration was to blend in and be as American as possible so that white America wouldn’t be intimidated by them. They wanted to imitate white America as much as possible: learn English, go to church, go to the same schools.”

Today, the picture is far more complex. To take the most obvious example, whiteness is no longer a precondition for entry into the highest levels of public office. The son of Indian immigrants doesn’t have to become “white” in order to be elected governor of Louisiana. A half-Kenyan, half-Kansan politician can self-identify as black and be elected president of the United States. [Link]

The case of The United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind mentioned in the article (someone we’ve blogged of before) refers to the 1923 case in which an Indian American veteran argued that he should be considered white (a precondition to becoming a naturalized citizen) because Indians were descended from Aryans:

Associate Justice George Sutherland found that, while Thind, an Asian Indian, may have had “purity of Aryan blood” due to being “born in Village Taragarh Talawa,near Jandiala Guru, Amritsar, Punjab” and having “high caste” status he was not Caucasian in the “common understanding”, so he could not be included in the “statutory category as white persons”.[1] George Sutherland wrote in his summary: [Link]

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She wasn’t even safe at Church (7 Updates/BREAKING NEWS)

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She tried.

She tried to make her marriage to a violent new husband work, and when that failed, she did what she was supposed to do; she summoned the courage to leave. She got not one, but two restraining orders. She switched coasts, to take shelter with the only relatives she had in this vast country, and put 3,ooo miles between herself and her abuser. He drove across that vastness, with a single purpose: to take back what was “his”. evil asshole.jpg

She did everything right, and he still hunted her down, and killed her, in front of the Holy of Holies, in God’s own house, while a hapless congregation was on their knees, reciting prayers for the dead.

A 24-year old Indian immigrant from Kerala trying to escape an abusive marriage, was killed by her husband, who also shot two other persons injuring them critically at a church in New Jersey. [express]
The shootings happened at 11:44 a.m., a witness said.
The gunman ran from the church and drove away in a green convertible Jeep Wrangler with a black soft top and the California license 5JHD200, said the police, who identified him as Joseph Pallipurath, 27, of Sacramento. He remained at large Sunday night as the New Jersey State Police and law enforcement authorities in northern New Jersey widened a manhunt on highways and at transportation terminals. [nyt]

Police kept the parishioners inside the defiled sanctuary for two hours, to gather statements. Then,

Stunned, teary-eyed congregants emerged from their Clifton church this afternoon after a gunman shot three people in the head, killing his estranged wife from an arranged marriage, and leaving the other two victims clinging to life.
Reshma James, 24, died about 4 p.m., police said. The other two victims, identified by fellow parishioners as Dennis John Malloosseril, 23, and Silvy Perincheril, 47, were in what police termed “very critical condition.”
Friends of Malloosseril said he was near death and family members were making arrangements to donate his organs late tonight. [NJ.com]

Malloosseril did die tonight. Besides being on the church’s Board of Directors, he was a computer analyst who took responsibility for the parish website. Had Malloosseril survived, this heroic man would have celebrated his birthday on Tuesday. Instead, he is a victim of what the New York Times called “the climax of a violent domestic quarrel that had reached from California to India to New Jersey over the past year”. Continue reading →

A Virtual Visit to a Detention Center

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I’m playing a new online video game today. It’s called “Homeland Guantanamos” and it has transformed me into an undercover journalist whose task is to unearth clues about the mysterious 2007 death of Boubacar Bah, a Guinean tailor who was held at a detention center in Elizabeth, NJ for overstaying his visa.detain.jpg

“Homeland Guantanamos” is the latest multi-media offering from Breakthrough, the human rights organization which uses media and popular culture to raise awareness here and in India. [Abhi covered their video game “I Can End Deportation” or I.C.E.D. earlier this year. ]

We’ve all heard stories about immigrants (illegal and residents) being detained without explanation or for prolonged periods of time. At the website, I got to see what life might be like on the other side of the fence. I took a tour of a simulated immigration detention center and collected clues to help solve the mystery of Bah’s death (he died of a skull fracture and brain hemorrhages). Along the way, I saw other detainees (eg: a pregnant woman kept in shackles during labor) and witnessed conditions of the facilities, including the solitary confinement room, the bathrooms, and the dining hall. Though this is a simulated experience, the content is based on factual sources such as news articles, court documents, and interviews.

Why call the site “Homeland Guantanamos”? According to Malikka Dutt, executive director of Breakthrough, “the Department of Homeland Security is violating the human rights of legal and undocumented immigrants” and some of the inhumane conditions of detention centers where these immigrants are being held are not all that different from the facility at Guantanamo Bay. Continue reading →

Slur-ricane Ike: Stress Brings out the Worst in People?

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As the comments section of Ennis’ post on the GOP’s efforts to reach out to minorities indicates, many of us saw the video below on ABC News last night. I know I wasn’t the only one who immediately hit rewind, out of a combination of incredulity and astonishment.

Natural disasters are awful and over-worked, frazzled law enforcement officials are under much strain, but that still doesn’t justify ignorant reactions like the one captured above. I wonder if that same cop instructed other drivers who annoyed him or “talked back” to perhaps return to Africa or England? I’m thinking not.

Reader Suede wrote in to the tip line, with this update:

3:40am PST.
World News Now on ABC 7
Vinita Nair and her co-host are covering a story about the devastation in Texas, and they show a clip about how cops are turning people back and not letting them return.
The clip begins with a guy (desi) in a car arguing with the cop who is not letting him go through. The cop finally tells him “go back to India”. After the clip, Vinita didn’t just shove the comment under the rug, but instead, she was shocked and raised her concern about the trooper’s comments.

Go Vinita! As a massive insomniac (who grew up in a home with no cable), I have always loved WNN— I even list it under my favorite TV shows, on my facebook profile ;). Now that the beautiful and brainy Ms. Nair is co-anchoring it, consider me a rabid fan. Yay for calling out stupidity and not glossing over the truth. Continue reading →

Class and Compassion are not in Vogue in India

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fendi bib and a bad attitude.jpg

I saw it myself and then a few of you blew up the tip line (thanks, Taara), my twitter and my skypager; on Sunday, the Grey Lady featured an article about Vogue India’s…interesting choice of models, for one of their recent editorial shoots. The “creative” (and by creative, I mean not at all) direction the magazine (which I still can’t procure in DC) stumbled through raised your threaded-eyebrows as well as some of your hackles, and rightly so.

Giving impoverished people $10,000 bags, Burberry bumbershoots and Fendi bibs for their children reeks of an appalling level of arrogance, an utterly clueless infatuation with “edginess”, and a heartless disregard for those for whom India does not yet shine. But let me tell you how I really feel, as I fisk the NYT article freely:

NEW DELHI — An old woman missing her upper front teeth holds a child in rumpled clothes — who is wearing a Fendi bib (retail price, about $100).
A family of three squeezes onto a motorbike for their daily commute, the mother riding without a helmet and sidesaddle in the traditional Indian way — except that she has a Hermès Birkin bag (usually more than $10,000, if you can find one) prominently displayed on her wrist.
Elsewhere, a toothless barefoot man holds a Burberry umbrella (about $200).
Welcome to the new India — at least as Vogue sees it.

Way to keep it classy, VI. Also, just so you know, the text on that picture says, “Baby’s Day Out: It’s never too early to start living in style.” Continue reading →

Someone Named Dan Cox Chokes on his Foot

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…instead of having the humility and decency to remove it. He must really like the taste of toe jam (or not have anyone around who can administer the Heimlich). To each their ignorant own (thanks, anonymous tipster).

Who is Dan Cox, you are surely muttering? He’s the writer and producer of a documentary on the Governator, but no one here at the bunker cares about that– what’s more mutinous is his eyebrow-raising post over at Mediabistro’s “Fishbowl LA” blog, which one of you was sharp enough to catch and release our way. The title of his post is “Spielberg wants Bollywood“, and its relevant text is below:

Steven Spielberg, ever the iconoclast, is just saying NO to the studios these days. As has been reported over and over, he’s doing a deal with India’s Reliance ADA Group.
The India contingent is putting up a billion bucks to give Spielberg carte blanche (or however that translates to Indian) to make and distribute whatever he wants.

(snip!)

Regardless, Speilberg’s looking and the majors are all considering (but not relying on, ho ho) his Reliance cash, but invariably it’s likely that Spielberg will be back in bed with Universal, where all of his filmic links have been in the past, whether DreamWorks SKG or Amblin.

No, it is not to be made fun of, you asshole

The India Reliance deal is supposed to be completed this week. We’ll see if Spielberg starts wearing a Sari or has a red dot implanted on his forehead. [link to stupidity]

Classy. Now I’m no big-shot, one documentary-creatin’ Hollywood insider, but I do understand “American” words loud and clear; I mean…the American language surely exists, because such a successful person would only conjure a tongue called “Indian” if it were true, no? He wouldn’t be THAT lazy or willfully ignorant? Oh, wait…

I’m not going to back down from anything I posted.There was nothing negative intentionally spoken or implied about Indian or Pakistani of Hindi or Bengalese culture. There was simply an amusing look at why and how Steven Spielberg is more interested in $1 billion from an Indian contingent than he is in finding it on Wall Street or from the studios or from his backyard. [link to stupidity]

THAT is from a comment he posted, in response to outraged readers who called him out for his inexcusable kundi-holery. He says his piece was “simply an amusing look at…”, I say “you know exactly what you were doing and for that, YOU SUCK”. Tomato, thekkalikya.

But wait! THERE ARE MORE CRINGE-INDUCING WORDS WHERE THAT CAME FROM!

Now, maybe it wasn’t all that amusing.Maybe I come off as a club-footed xenophobe. [link to stupidity]

Remove two “maybes” from that quote and lo! It’s suddenly, magically accurate.

But hello India, what I wrote also wasn’t a diatribe about the sub-continent.
I’m fully aware that a sari is a female garment as well as the fact that a red dot on the forehead is not there to be made fun of. It may have cultural or religious relevance. But what should be made fun of is the fact that Spielberg is taking his money from whichever provider that he can find, whether his head is adorned with pink polka dots. [link to stupidity]

Oh, honey…I’m so sorry to break this news, but…India ain’t reading you. India (unlike me) has better things to do with her time, than read you. Also, if you are fully aware of who wears saris and what red dots might signify, then Dan, you have no excuse for what you wrote. Continue reading →