Category Archives: Politics

Desis Run to The Hill

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Over the weekend, the AP did a piece on the record number of Indian-Americans running for office in November, a topic I covered well before the primary season here.

Meet Reshma, Surya, Manan, Raj, Ami, Ravi, Nimrata and Kamala — a new wave of Indian-American politicians. At least eight children of Indian immigrants are running for Congress or statewide office, the most ever. [yahoo]

That’s…

  • Reshma Saujani – New York, 14th Congressional District: She’s still up for her primary.
  • Surya Yalamanchili – Ohio, 2nd Congressional District: He won his Democratic primary.
  • Manan Trivedi – Pennsylvania, 6th Congressional District: He won his Democratic primary.
  • Raj Goyle – Kansas, 4th Congressional District
  • Ami Bera – California, 3rd Congressional District
  • Ravi Sangisetty – Louisiana, 3rd Congressional District
  • Nimrata “Nikki” Haley – South Carolina Governor: She (almost) won her Republican primary. Runoff on June 22nd.
  • Kamala Harris – CA Attorney General: She won the Democratic primary.

The article debates that the perceived assimilation of candidates into white American culture in an effort to get elected.

Yet when Haley’s motives are questioned and some suggest Indians must become less “foreign” to get elected, many of these new candidates are quick to ask: Who are we to judge the mashup of American ambition with an ancient culture?

> Manan Trivedi, a doctor and Iraq war veteran who recently won a Democratic primary for Congress in eastern Pennsylvania, said he did not view his ethnicity as a handicap: “The American electorate is smarter than that.”[[yahoo](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100619/ap_on_re_us/us_indian_american_politicians)] He goes on to ask the question we at Sepia Mutiny ask time and time again…. > Christianity is a more critical issue for white Republicans than other groups — could a Hindu who worships multiple gods, or a turbaned Sikh who doesn’t cut his hair, survive a statewide Republican primary in the Bible Belt?[ [yahoo](http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100619/ap_on_re_us/us_indian_american_politicians)] Continue reading →

Elmo-wielding Terrorist Toddler Stars in Security Theater

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I live in Washington, D.C.

10967282_3799e75522_m.jpg I have lived here since I moved to this great city from my native California in 1999, to attend graduate school. Back then, I went home at least twice a year; between Priceline.com’s $125 roundtrip fares and living three miles from Reagan National Airport, flying to NorCal was as easy as taking the “Metroliner” to New York City. I loved traveling. I loved the excitement, the anticipation, the permission I gave myself to buy mind-rotting magazines and over-priced candy from Hudson News, right before sauntering up to my gate.

Then, everything changed.

Traveling was no longer glamorous and thrilling, it was fraught and terrifying. Was it going to happen again? How could we stop it? How do you protect a massive, liberty-loving nation from crazed zealots who are willing to sacrifice their own lives for some twisted ideal?

Security. Lots and lots of security.

Lining up to be screened for hidden box-cutters or submitting to more thorough searches through our baggage made sense. We were trying to protect this country. We kept repeating, “Never again.” But somewhere between justifiable caution and utterly comprehensible fear, common sense was lost. What replaced it was an obtuse over-reliance on the obvious– but not your obvious or mine, no. It was the “obviousness” of the ignorant which suddenly became a battering ram of blunt discrimination used to profile, persecute and pervert. Continue reading →

Aseem Shukla’s Piece on the Gaza Flotilla

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In his piece in The Washington Post’s “On Faith” column last Wednesday, Aseem Shukla, co-founder of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), begins with the following:

Watching events unfold in the Middle East, I lose the hyphen in Hindu-American here and comment only as an American. I do not represent the Hindu American Foundation here, but represent the views of one stunned by the existential challenges in the Middle East (On Faith).

He then questions the motives of the flotilla organizers, characterizing it as a political stunt rather than a genuine humanitarian effort (why are the two mutually exclusive?).

The flotillas insist on direct access to land controlled by the same Hamas thugs that are committed to destroying Israel and have purposefully launched thousands of rockets at Israel. These seaborne do-gooders could easily unload their supplies in Israel and have them transported to Gaza if their concerns were only humanitarian. But theirs were political, and they chose to protest, provoke and, yes, in a few cases, covet the perverse martyrdom of the extremist.

The problem with Mr. Shukla’s article, and the reason I find it disingenuous, is that though he claims to lose his hyphen, his argument fits neatly within the political framework of HAF.

Continue reading →

So THAT’S the Domain of the Sri Lankan Police

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Last September, the Asia Society held a talk by Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, who was then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. It was around the time of the United States General Assembly session – you know, the one during which all talk was about Gaddafi setting up a tent on Donald Trump’s property.

Although he had attended and addressed the General Assembly at its three previous sessions, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse ducked this one – the first after the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009 – and sent his Prime Minister instead.

Anyway, back to the Asia Society. Sitting front and center in the audience were members of the Sri Lankan delegation, including Secretary of Defence Gotabaya Rajapakse, and Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama.

During the question and answer session, the moderator pushed Wickremanayake on the issue of foreign aid organizations’ restricted access to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (specifically the Red Cross). After evading the questions as much as he could, the Prime Minister eventually referred aid organizations to “the Ministry of Defence, which is in charge of maintaining law and order” (40:50 in the video linked above), glancing frequently at and gesturing toward Gotabaya Rajapakse.

Friends, when I heard him say that, my ears nearly jumped off my head. In every democratic state with which I’m familiar, law and order is the domain of law enforcement and civil judiciary, not the military. If the Ministry of Defence is in charge of maintaining law and order in Sri Lanka, I thought, what exactly is the role of the police? Well fear not, for that question has been answered!

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The Manchurian Gobi Candidate

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There is so much to love about Senator Knott’s recent ode to ragheads in America. I mean this seriously.

I adore how he’s open about this feelings for “f#!king ragheads.” This guy is a Southern Conservative straight out central casting, he’s racist, bigoted, xenophobic and stupid although not uninformed. He actually knows who Sikhs are and where India is, that just doesn’t stop him from saying “We’re at war over there,” demonstrating he’s not a bigot because he’s ignorant, he’s ignorant because he’s a bigot. This can’t be cured by education. All ragheads are the same to him, and before the non-Sikh readers get too smug, he probably hates you as well.

But all of this is just the sundae. The cherry on top, my absolute favorite part is this:

Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. [link]

ZOMG! She’s the Manchurian Candidate, the sleeper Sikh!

What I can’t figure out is what he’s so afraid she’s do once she’s activated. After all, the original Manchurian Candidate tried to whack the POTUS, and something tells me you wouldn’t be unhappy about that at all.

What will she do that would make you unhappy? Will her father attend her inauguration in a turban? Will she take down the confederate flag and replace it with the Indian one? Will she start teaching evolution in schools? Will she refuse to be sworn in with her hand over the bible and hold an ardaas instead?

Or maybe … she’ll invite DJ Rekha to the Governor’s mansion to play … Bhangra! Whoops, sorry Senator, the Raghead-in-Chief has already done that in the White House, the nations’ political bhangra-virginity has already been lost:

“I want to thank DJ Rekha who’s been spinning a little East Room Bhangra for everybody mixing a hip-hop beat with the sounds of her heritage; making a uniquely American sound that may not have been heard in the White House before,” Obama said amidst laughter and applause. [link]

Although, maybe you do have a point. That first Bhangra in an executive residence was soo good, that we want to do it again and again, promiscuously, with different executive residences, in all fifty states around the country! Next stop, Louisiana, where Piyush is going to Bhangra the BP blues away!

Sorry Senator, you lost the civil war and you’re going to lose the culture war too. In fact, your raghead comment just caused the former county GOP chair to declare her 2012 challenge to you [link]. But thank you for playing, and thanks for all the laughs! Continue reading →

SM’s paper bag test

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I would think it’s obvious that Nikki can pass much better than Jindal can. In case you need convincing, look at the two images below. They’re grabbed at random to show each candidate side by side with somebody white.

Here’s Bobby, clearly much darker than Kenneth the Page:

Here’s Nikki in a girl scout troop:

Nikki pretty much fits in, while Bobby stands out.

Continue reading →

Nikki’s pagan past and pious present

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[UPDATE: See a fuller copy of Knott’s remarks where she alleges Haley is a secret Sikh who is being elected by a cabal of Indian interests [link]]

One of the interesting differences between Jindal and Haley, two politicians with so much in common down to their Punjabi parents, is that Jindal makes his conversion central to his political identity whereas Haley does not.

1 One reason for this is color. Bobby Jindal is very clearly brown, he is married to a brown woman with a “foreign” name. He couldn’t hide his ancestry if he tried, so instead he emphasizes his conversion from the alien Hindu faith to the more familiar Catholic one.

Haley doesn’t have that burden, she’s a light skinned woman married to a white man, with a familiar sounding name. Heck, I got a number of emails last week from friends (desi and non-desi) all saying “Nicky Haley’s desi?” For her, talking about her conversion is not just unecessary, it would remind people of what’s alien about her and so it would be counter-productive.

I think this is why the attacks on her religion have been fairly tame in the past (in 2004 anonymous fliers claimed she was a Hindu but she still went on to beat the most senior member of the State House [link]) and present [link], they just have a hard time sticking, even though this is a state where anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon attacks have worked in the past [link].

2 The other reason why she doesn’t stress her conversion as much is that it doesn’t seem to have been as abrupt. Her campaign strongly stresses her Christianity today, but this was not true in 2004 and reflects a strong increase in Christian language in her campaign materials [link].

In 2004, seven years after her conversion, she was quoted as saying she attended both Methodist and Sikh services [link] and even now her spokesman will admit that “She attends Sikh services once or twice a year in respect for her family… Like millions of others, she honors her mother and her father” [link].

Continue reading →

That’s the Raghead-in-Chief to you (updated)

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[Update: See below the fold for much more extensive coverage of what Knotts actually said. It’s far more offensive and inflamatory than the first reports revealed]

On a political talk show Thursday night, State Senator Jake Knotts said (about Nikki Haley):

“We already got one rag-head in the White House, we don’t need a rag-head in the governor’s mansion,” [link]

I’d love to show you the video of this clip, but it was either pulled from the archive or “Republican political operative and show co-host Wesley Donehue …forgot to hit record” [link].

After being soundly reamed by Haley for his remarks and more mildly criticized by the SC GOP, Senator Knotts “apologized” saying

my “raghead” comments about Obama and Haley were intended in jest. Bear in mind that this is a freewheeling, anything-goes Internet radio show that is broadcast from a pub. It’s like local political version of Saturday Night Live, which is actually where the joke came from,” Knotts said. “Since my intended humorous context was lost in translation, I apologize. I still believe Ms. Haley is pretending to be someone she is not, much as Obama did, but I apologize to both for an unintended slur [link]

Get that?

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Chuck Schumer’s “Outsourcing Tax”

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Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York, who many say aspires to be the Senate Majority Leader should Nevada’s Harry Reid lose his election or step aside, has proposed a new bit of legislation that may be of interest to SM readers:

In an effort to slow the exodus of U.S. telephone work to overseas services, Sen. Charles Schumer is introducing legislation that would impose an excise tax on companies that transfer calls with American area codes to foreign call centers.

The measure would also require telling U.S. customers that the call is being transferred and to which country.

Companies use call centers to give customers technical product support, answer billing questions or provide other information. They often use several operators.

The fee would be 25 cents for calls transferred to foreign countries. There would be no fee for a domestic call center. Companies would have to report quarterly their total customer service calls received and the number relayed overseas. [BusWeek]

The 25 cent fee isn’t ideal. It is anti-business and too nativist for my taste, but this is a tough economy and the Senator is engaging in a bit of phony “I feel your pain” to protect his right flank. What I really don’t agree with is the second part of the proposed legislation,which requires a company to announce which foreign country the call is being transferred to. Turning that into a law does nothing but encourage the worst in people. What’s next, pass a law that requires the call center worker to use their real names and accents as well?

In a survey of American economists in 2006, Robert Whaples found nearly 90 percent agreed the U.S. should eliminate remaining protectionist tariffs and trade barriers, like the new one Schumer is proposing, that there are lower costs and a net gain from free trade. Most also agreed the U.S. should not restrict American employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries. [BusWeek]

And India of course is the main outsourcing punching bag. It doesn’t matter that Ireland and Israel are the beneficiaries of a great deal of outsourcing as well. Only countries like India and the Philippines get the bad public image.

Please let Schumer know that proposing stupid legislation, just to protect himself from a Republican opponent that is a “terror warrior,” is not the right way to get the South Asian American part of his base to turn out on election day or open their checkbooks for his campaign.

You can contact him here.

Continue reading →

The Copycat Facebook Ban

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BangladeshFlag.jpg Remember how on May 19th, the Pakistan government banned facebook? Phillygrrl wrote about how all the hoopla was over how there was one page on Facebook dedicated to the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!” which was in turn a retaliation to the anti-South Park activists out there. Soon after, people in Pakistan couldn’t access YouTube (that ban was lifted a few days ago, selectively).

Well yesterday, Bangladesh totally copycatted Pakistan.

Bangladesh has blocked access to Facebook after satirical images of the prophet Muhammad and the country’s leaders were uploaded, say reports. Officials said the ban was temporary and access to the site would be restored once the images were removed.

A spokesman for the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) told AFP Facebook had “hurt the religious sentiments of the country’s majority Muslim population” by carrying “offensive images” of Mohammed. [BBC]

I just think it’s kind of silly that that they are “officially” citing the cartoons TEN days after the actual “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!” That site isn’t even up anymore. If that was really the issue, the halal-ness of the interwebs in Bangladesh, wouldn’t they have banned Facebook at the same time Pakistan did – on May 19th the day before the ‘sanctioned’ date of May 20th?

I think the real issue is that the current Bangladesh government was insulted by cartoons made about THEM. And they are using the anti-Muslim sentiment as a scapegoat. Continue reading →