Category Archives: Politics

Almost underneath their robes

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Part of Sepia Mutiny’s hidden agenda (we have never published our actual mission or spoken of the Machiavellian designs that drive us) has been to develop an influential and well placed system of CIs that will help our collective Mutiny to spread in both numbers and power (but especially in power). I have taken the liberty of modifying former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno’s formal definition of a “CI” for those of you unfamiliar with this term:

“Confidential Informant” or “CI” — any individual who provides useful and credible information to a JLEA Sepia Mutiny regarding felonious criminal interesting desi-related activities, and from whom the JLEA Sepia Mutiny expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information regarding such activities in the future. [Link]

Basically this means that we want to encourage SM readers to send us the “goods” or the “dirt” on happenings that we don’t yet know about. Want me to give you an example of what kind of CIs that we are seeking out? SM reader Venkat of BTD gives us a heads up about some interesting developments at the Supreme Court. Three of the incoming Supreme Court Clerks are desi:

Scalia: Hashim Mooppan (Harvard ’05/Luttigator ’05-’06)… [Link]

Ginsburg: Arun Subramanian (Columbia ’04/Jacobs ’04-’05/G. Lynch ’05-’06) [Link]

Breyer: Thiru Vignarajah (Harvard ’05/Calabresi) [Link]

These three make ideal CIs. I am reaching out to them. If you know them then forward this on. We can be very discreet. Dead drops could be arranged in random parks by a variety of means. I have had pleasant dealings with clerks from lower federal courts before. Just ask around. We know that in the coming term the Supreme Court will be dealing with many cases involving desis, or with definite importance to the desi community. These three could maybe keep us up to speed on things.

The Drudge Report broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal before major media outlets did. We want SM to break more news also. That is where we need YOU dedicated reader. Are you in a position of power or influence and are just dying to share something you know, or stick it to the man? Do you work for some government agency or powerful corporation that doesn’t appreciate you enough? We appreciate you. Think of me as your very friendly case officer. The agent Vaughn to your agent Bristow. Will some real CIs please stand up?

[Disclaimer: For the record, I am not advocating that you break any laws, at least if they get me in trouble also…or if they get me subpoenaed, because I don’t think I could last in jail very long to protect you as my source. I would really try to though…unless they put me in a cell with some guy named “Tiny” who really isn’t.]

See related posts: The “Devils” Advocates, The Court has Hindu friends, …then you can’t have our money, Orwellian logic

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The profiling myth, part 2

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NYC police chief Ray Kelly agrees that racial profiling is trivially defeated by terrorists and too dangerous to rely on:‘I think profiling is just nuts’

— NYC police chief
Ray Kelly

“If you look at the London bombings, you have three British citizens of Pakistani descent. You have Germaine Lindsay, who is Jamaican. You have the next crew, on July 21st, who are East African. You have a Chechen woman in Moscow in early 2004 who blows herself up in the subway station. So whom do you profile? Look at New York City. Forty percent of New Yorkers are born outside the country… Who am I supposed to profile?… Could a terrorist dress up as a Hasidic Jew and walk into the subway, and not be profiled? Yes. I think profiling is just nuts.” [Link]

The author of this New Yorker piece, Malcolm Gladwell, explains that a racial profile fails against an adaptive foe:

… what the jihadis seemed to have done in London [was that] they switched to East Africans because the scrutiny of young Arab and Pakistani men grew too intense. It doesn’t work to generalize about a relationship between a category and a trait when that relationship isn’t stable–or when the act of generalizing may itself change the basis of the generalization. [Link]

Kelly had previously eliminated ineffective profiling in the U.S. Customs Service:

… he overhauled the criteria that border-control officers use to identify and search suspected smugglers. There had been a list of forty-three suspicious traits. He replaced it with a list of six broad criteria. Is there something suspicious about their physical appearance? Are they nervous? Is there specific intelligence targeting this person? Does the drug-sniffing dog raise an alarm? Is there something amiss in their paperwork or explanations? Has contraband been found that implicates this person?

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The tortoise and the hare

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A business professor at MIT Sloan argues in the Financial Times that India is economically underrated. Yasheng Huang sounds a clarion call for China to relax its financial controls:

Rama vs. dragon? Cake.
But Rama vs. Chuck Norris…

From April to June 2005, India’s GDP grew at 8.1 per cent, compared with 7.6 per cent in the same period the year before. More impressively, India is achieving this result with just half of China’s level of domestic investment in new factories and equipment, and only 10 per cent of China’s foreign direct investment…

… in 2003 and 2004, [China] was investing close to 50 per cent of its GDP in domestic plant and equipment – roughly equivalent to India’s entire GDP. That is higher than any other country… China’s growth stems from massive accumulation of resources, while India’s growth comes from increasing efficiency…

While India’s stock market has soared in recent years, the opposite has happened in China. In 2001, the Shanghai Stock Market index reached 2,200 points; by 2005, half the wealth wiped out. In April 2005, the Shanghai index stood at 1,135 points… [Link]

Huang argues against using foreign direct investment as a key measure of economic growth:

Brazil was a darling of foreign investors in the 1960s but ultimately let them down. Japan, Korea and Taiwan received little FDI in the 1960s and 1970s but became among the world’s most successful economies…

With few exceptions, the world-class manufacturing facilities for which China is famous are products of FDI, not of indigenous Chinese companies… [Link]

· · · · ·

His analysis is that India has a more laissez-faire attitude in both politics and entrepreneurship:

[Infosys] was founded by seven entrepreneurs with few political connections who nevertheless managed, without significant hard assets, to obtain capital from Indian banks and the stock ­market in the early 1990s. It is unimaginable that a Chinese bank would lend to a Chinese equivalent of an Infosys…

China was light years ahead of India in economic liberalisation in the 1980s. Today it lags behind in critical aspects, such as reform that would permit more foreign investment and domestic private entry in the financial sector. [Link]

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Are you a biased voter?

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Last January I posted a link to an online test that you can take, which supposedly reveals if you have even a subconscious racial bias. One of the researchers conducting the study was Harvard’s Mahzarin Banaji. Banaji and her colleagues have just revealed results from their latest set of experiments which, if true, corroborates what many of us have suspected about politics. I love a bit of controversy on a Monday. From the Washington Post:

The field of social psychology has long been focused on how social environments affect the way people behave. But social psychologists are people, too, and as the United States has become increasingly politically polarized, they have grown increasingly interested in examining what drives these sharp divides: red states vs. blue states; pro-Iraq war vs. anti-Iraq war; pro-same-sex marriage vs. anti-same-sex marriage. And they have begun to study political behavior using such specialized tools as sophisticated psychological tests and brain scans…

Emory University psychologist Drew Westen put self-identified Democratic and Republican partisans in brain scanners and asked them to evaluate negative information about various candidates. Both groups were quick to spot inconsistency and hypocrisy — but only in candidates they opposed.

When presented with negative information about the candidates they liked, partisans of all stripes found ways to discount it, Westen said. When the unpalatable information was rejected, furthermore, the brain scans showed that volunteers gave themselves feel-good pats — the scans showed that “reward centers” in volunteers’ brains were activated. The psychologist observed that the way these subjects dealt with unwelcome information had curious parallels with drug addiction as addicts also reward themselves for wrong-headed behavior.

Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes — subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did.

Not so fast, say a few expected critics.

Brian Jones, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, said he disagreed with the study’s conclusions but that it was difficult to offer a detailed critique, as the research had not yet been published and he could not review the methodology. He also questioned whether the researchers themselves had implicit biases — against Republicans — noting that Nosek and Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji had given campaign contributions to Democrats.

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Coopetition

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Desperate to lock up oil supplies and fresh off a smarting Central Asian oil field loss to China, India has signed a deal with Saudi Arabia:

India and Saudi Arabia have signed a deal to develop a strategic energy partnership and have agreed to “fight the menace of terrorism” together… The deal promises to provide India with a “reliable, stable and increased volume” of crude oil supplies…

Saudi Arabia currently supplies nearly 175 million barrels of crude oil a year – a quarter of India’s oil needs. India imports 70% of its supplies and is currently exploring fresh supplies from Central Asia to South America. [Link]

Meanwhile, the Saudi government continues to fund madrassas in Pakistan which churn out militants for Al-Qaeda and Kashmir:

Since the1980s, Pakistan’s education ministry has depended solely on the tuition-free madrassa system of religious education, funded by Saudi Arabia and other orthodox Sunnis, to see a large number of poor Pakistani children get to school. The theocratic education of Pakistan’s orthodox madrassas was tailored to produce the leaders of the Taliban movement. The madrassas also produced the Sunni militants and others who protected the anti-American Taliban and al-Qaeda militants… [Asia Times – author also writes for Indian defense publications]

Zahidullah, 31, a grad student in Islamic law at the Bahrul Uloom madrassa in Pakistan’s northern mountains, boasts of how many recruits he has gained for the outlawed Kashmiri guerrilla force Harkatul Mujahedin: “Many youths here are anxious to join the jihad when I tell them stories of our heroic Islamic resistance against Indian aggression…”

In recent months, thousands of young Afghan men have swarmed to madrassas just inside Pakistan… On the Afghan side, meanwhile, the influx of madrassa students and graduates has helped to produce Taliban battle units as large as 100 fighters, where a year ago the guerrillas were mustering squads of barely a half-dozen men. [Link]

The madrassas are popular because the military-controlled government spends far more on bombs than brains:

… Pakistan desperately needs its madrassas. Without them, an estimated 1.5 million young Pakistanis would get no formal education at all. According to a recent analysis by the U.S. Agency for International Development, Pakistan spends only 2.2 percent of its GDP on public education, the tiniest share for any country in South or Southeast Asia. [Link]
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Throw a dog a bone

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First of all, let me say Kung Hay Fat Choy to all of our readers. Today marks the beginning of the Year of the Dog. The Washington Post has what I thought to be a very illustrative article on what holidays like the Chinese New Year mean to politicians who want the Asian American vote:

Most Maryland voters probably didn’t realize that Asian Americans were celebrating New Year’s yesterday, but Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan marks the date on his calendar every year.

Duncan, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, crisscrossed Montgomery yesterday, attending two Lunar New Year celebrations and a gathering to commemorate the anniversary of India becoming a republic, on Jan. 26, 1950.

For Duncan and other elected officials, showing up at these events is part of a strategy to reach out to immigrants whose political influence remains relatively untested statewide even though their numbers are growing rapidly…

Pollsters and political consultants say it will probably be a few years before foreign-born residents are major factors in statewide elections. But candidates this year aren’t taking any chances. [Link]

So the picture remains the same. If you want the vote of immigrants from Asia (including South Asia), and the support of even some of their American-raised children, you don’t have to answer for any of your general policies, many of which might actually affect them pretty significantly. All you have to do is make a show of the fact that you respect their former nation and some of their traditions. It is a total waste of political power in my opinion, given the increased importance of our votes.

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Vinay Lal is "dirty"

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I am still debating whether or not to attend Dinesh D’Souza’s lecture at UCLA on Wednesday. It is titled Red States, Blue States, and War in Iraq: What Academia Is Missing. Normally I enjoy doing oppo research, but I teach all day on Wednesday and I don’t know if I will have the energy left to fight the hordes at the end of the day. The meeting is being sponsored by the Bruin Republicans. Speaking of Republican Bruins, I am sure by now everybody has heard about this:

Thirty U-C-L-A professors are being targeted by an alumni group that accuses them of expressing left-wing political views.

The year-old Bruin Alumni Association is offering students up to a hundred dollars per class to supply notes, and tapes exposing the professors.

The group says on its Web site (www.bruinalumni.com) it is concerned about professors who use lecture time to press positions against President Bush, the military and corporations. The effort is being led by Andrew Jones, a 2003 graduate and former chair of a student Republican club.

Education professor Peter McLaren, who’s on the so-called “Dirty Thirty” list, calls the tactic a witch-hunt. [Link]

Apparently, even members of the Bruin Alumni Association advisory board thought this was crazy.

The raised fists beneath his picture means that he is dirty

A former congressman is among three people who have quit the advisory board of a conservative alumni group at the University of California, Los Angeles, after students were offered money to police professors accused of pushing liberal views…

“I am uncomfortable to say the least with this tactic,” Rogan wrote. “It places students in jeopardy of violating myriad regulations and laws…” [Link]

Taz tells me that one of the “Dirty Thirty” is UCLA History Professor Vinay Lal:

Much like comic book superheroes, Vinay Lal leads a double life. During the day he is a mild-mannered Southeast Asian history professor, but in his office, safely behind his keyboard, Lal assumes his double identity as a radical ideological warrior of the broadest stripe. His personal webpage provides only the most indirect clue to this schizophrenic existence, mentioning in passing that he has written for the journals Patterns of Prejudice, Radical History Review, and Third Text.

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Guarding the Pope

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Although there is no desi pope, there is one desi member of the Swiss Guard. Dhani Bachmann was sworn in as the first ever non-white Swiss guard four years ago. Private Bachmann was adopted by a Swiss family at 5 and speaks only German, which helps explain how he could join an elite group whose members are comprised solely of Catholic Swiss, mainly recruited from a handful of small villages.

At the time, one news source snarkily reported the story in the following way:

First Black Man Ever To Protect The Pope

For the first time in the more than 500 year history of the Swiss Guards, the group of 200 soldiers who protect the Pope in Rome, a non white man has been allowed to take his place in their ranks. Private Dhani Bachmann was born in India but adopted by a Swiss family and taken to live there when he was 5. He therefore is eligible to join the guards as he is Swiss. He is now apparently trying to learn Italian so that he can explain to people in Rome why he is not white. [Link]

The Swiss Guard are the Pope’s private army, founded 500 years ago on January 22nd, 1506. They had their origins in the “Swiss mercenary detachments that served as bodyguards and ceremonial guards at foreign European courts from the late 15th century on” and once guarded the Royalty of France and Austria as well. Soon after they were founded, in 1527, “147 of the 189 Guards, including their commander, died fighting the forces of Charles V during the Sack of Rome.”

Today, they are half their original size, with only 100 soldiers. After the 1981 attempt to assasinate Pope John Paul, their non-ceremonial duties and training have been beefed up; their training involves unarmed combat and the use of modern weaponry in addition to the traditional Halberd. Still, they’re best known for their colorful uniforms which, according to legend were first designed by Michaelangelo.

This job combines tradition and religious service in the short term with the potential to make a lot of money in the long term – how typically Swiss!

Swiss Guards sign on for a minimum of two years. Many leave the Pope’s military service for lucrative jobs with some of the world’s best-known security services and banks. [Link]

Dhani Bachmann being sworn in or Vinod making a gang sign?

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Tactics

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In the U.S. and Europe, American forces kidnap terrorists so as not to kill bystanders:

Before a CIA paramilitary team was deployed to snatch a radical Islamic cleric off the streets of Milan in February 2003, the CIA station chief in Rome briefed and sought approval from his counterpart in Italy…

In Sweden, an inquiry discovered that Swedish ministers had agreed to apprehend and expel two Egyptian terrorism suspects in 2002 but called the CIA for help in flying them out of the country… [Link]

But in less-developed countries, we just blow up houses:

The provincial government said Tuesday that in addition to 18 civilians, four or five foreign militants were killed by the American airstrikes on the village of Damadola on Friday… The deaths of 18 civilians, among them 6 children, have stirred anger among the population in Pakistan and put pressure on the government to explain what happened in Bajaur. [Link]

I don’t particularly care for national sovereignty when a country won’t take out its trash, as in Afghanistan, the NWFP and the Kashmiri militant training camps. We should’ve put troops on the ground in Pakistan long ago, no matter what the political sensitivities, and bin Laden should have been caught within months of 9/11. That he hasn’t been killed yet is an ongoing embarrassment.

But killing innocent bystanders is not only deeply immoral, it unnecessarily creates enemies and a host population which supports terrorists. One month we distribute quake aid and win public sympathy; the next we kill women and children and say, ‘Oops, but we’ll do it again.’ It’s the very definition of ineffectiveness.

Look at the rank hypocrisy of U.S. lawmakers in defending this missile attack:

U.S. politicians have expressed regret over the weekend killings of 18 civilians along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, but said the airstrike was justified by the erroneous belief that a top al Qaeda leader was among the group, which included women and children. “Now, it’s a regrettable situation, but what else are we supposed to do?” Sen. Evan Bayh [D-IN] asked rhetorically… Senator John McCain, also concurred… “We apologize, but I can’t tell you that we wouldn’t do the same thing again…” [Link]

Gee, Sen. Bayh, would we have launched a missile at a house in London? Would we have killed 18 innocent Brits, shrugged and said, ‘What else are we supposed to do?’

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