Category Archives: Politics

Movin’ on up?

Posted on by

Today President Bush announced that Republican Congressman Christopher Cox would be replacing outgoing SEC Chairman William Donaldson pending approval by the Senate. Reuters and many others report:

President Bush on Thursday named Rep. Christopher Cox — a champion of curbing investor lawsuits — as the White House’s choice to head the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, prompting academics to predict a major shift in the market-regulating agency’s focus.

Rep. Cox’s current job is as Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. The House Republican leadership has not yet announced who will take over Cox’s empty seat. Bobby Jindal is part of the House Committee on Homeland Security. He is in fact Vice Chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on the Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attacks. Now I am not ready to think that the Republican leadership would consider offering the chairmanship of the full committee to a freshman Congressman, but if John Linder of Georgia gets promoted to fill Cox’s seat then it could well end up that Jindal would take over chairmanship of the Subcommittee. Imagine that: A brown guy in charge of overseeing efforts to prevent nuclear and biological attacks against the U.S.

Continue reading →

Monkey see, Monkey do?

Posted on by

Monkey got props for his actions, too. (Thanks, bl00t!) A simian devotee of Shiva showed up bright and early in Orissa the other day:

Said Aniruddha Behera, a village resident: “The monkey folded his hands, observed silence, put vermilion on his forehead and also took the prasad from the devotees.”
“When we saw the monkey joining us we were surprised. We did not try to drive it out and it continued praying for nearly an hour amid hundreds of devotees,” Behera told IANS.

Villagers from Junia, Balasore district placed a garland on the spiritual simian before he left for a forest. Apparently the monkey was not familiar to those who witnessed the surprising scene, which went down on the day that a symbol for Shiva was being “formally inaugurat(ed)”.

“We have not seen any monkey around for the last two years. This is a miracle for us,” Behera said.

Over forty years ago, my mom’s family in Kerala had a parrot that famously prayed with everyone every day; in fact, if “evening prayers” didn’t commence exactly on time, the much-loved bird would chide my heathen mother and sonorously begin them for her. Yeah, I love stories like this. Continue reading →

Jersey Guys apologize (updated)

Posted on by

Lester Gesteland quotes an Asian Media Watchdog email saying the Jersey Guys will apologize on air:

… 101.5FM agreed in writing to the following.
  • Issue an on air, formal & blanket apology by the “Jersey Guys,”
  • Invite Jun Choi (the KoreanAm candidate who was attacked) to be a guest by “Jersey Guys…”

… Comcast and Verizon agreed to suspend their radio ads…. “Kick The Jersey Guys Off The Air!” collected the largest amount of signatures in the shortest amount of time, even more so than our last major campaign, Hot 97…

Gesteland, who’s got three hapa kids, says:

This evening my wife was listening to the infamous Carton & Rossi show when she heard Jun Choi being interviewed…

Choi is running for mayor of the desi haven of Edison, NJ. Now that’s consumer power. Well done.

Update: Carton apologized, and Choi raked him on air, telling him why his comments were offensive. Listen here: part 1, part 2

Continue reading →

Pounding leather

Posted on by
Beer, thongs, bikinis, toilet seats, sandals and now shoes: it seems the entire inventory of your local Wal-Mart ends up stenciled with Hindu art at some point. Emboldened by his success, the activist who got a brewery to drop its Ganesh beer is now opposing women’s shoes in France displaying an image of Rama:
A pair of women’s shoes allegedly showing Lord Rama made by French shoemaker Minelli has angered a pro-Hindu website, which has urged supporters to begin a letter-writing campaign to the shoemaker protesting against the product…

Expatriate attorney Brij Mohan Dhir has supported the bid, and is himself mobilizing opinion to protest production and marketing of the shoe… The San Francisco-based activist has circulated a copy of the letter widely on the Internet. If Minelli doesn’t back down, he is considering filing a complaint in the European Court of Human Rights…

Dhir’s joined forces with Hindu Human Rights, which complains that Meera Syal disses Hindus:

The BBC has made it to the top of the complaints charts with their new entry straight in at number one: Meera Syal’s much vaunted “Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee” once again shows their inability to provide a positive portrayal of Hindus in Britain. Containing a series of cheap and insulting digs at Hindus, this programme continues the tradition of the Western media’s denigration of Hinduism and Hindu culture.

HHR needs to get in line, because Syal is an equal-opportunity humorist. Her Bhaji on the Beach screenplay, oft-maligned for ‘bashing men,’ is a Girls’ Night Out by definition.

Previous posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Continue reading →

“May is almost over and I forgot to feel special”

Posted on by

The Pacific News service features an essay by Sandip Roy and his feelings about the soon-to-be-over Asian Pacific American Heritage month:

Oops, I did it again. May is almost over and I forgot to feel special. It’s Asian Pacific American Heritage month, and I have nothing to show for it. I didn’t learn to wear a kimono or cook pad thai or read Amy Tan.

Public television and libraries are just bursting with Chinese memoirs and Filipino writers and Japanese origami demonstrations. Growing up in Calcutta, I was just Calcuttan. But with every boarding pass I received on my way to the United States, my identity ballooned — Calcuttan, Indian, South Asian and, finally, Asian. Now I get a whole month, and I’m at a loss as to what to do with it.

Asian Pacific American Heritage (APA) month, Black History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month are well-meaning attempts at promoting diversity and multiculturalism. But in a San Francisco that’s one-third Asian, celebrating APA month seems a bit like carrying rice to China.

True, San Francisco is a city where Asian political power is nowhere close to representative of the city’s Asian population. Only one Asian remains on the Board of Supervisors, while another high-profile Asian city official, the assessor, recently handed in her papers.

Well I feel like after reading that I should find out for myself what Asian Pacific American Heritage month is all about, so I googled it and found this site.

In May 1990, the holiday was expanded further when President George H. W. Bush designated May to be Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants.

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is celebrated with community festivals, government-sponsored activities, and educational activities for students. This year’s theme is “Freedom for All—A Nation We Call Our Own.”

Continue reading →

Putting down the megaphone

Posted on by

Two bloggers psychoanalyze a Sikh religious body which lobbied against Jo Bole So Nihaal. But their analysis also applies to the rise of virtually all lobbying groups. Mass outrage focused through the lens of a group wields power like a typhoon. Eventually the middlemen siphon off funding for themselves, and the groups self-perpetuate with or without legitimate grievances.

Arnab Ray says:

This is not the first time that religious loons have objected to titles and sequences of movies. The song “Mustafa Mustafa” from “Aatish” which had Raveena and Karishma cavorting in revealing attire had to be changed to “Dilruba Dilruba” following protests from Muslims. Mani Ratnam had a bomb thrown at him for having a Bal Thackeray-lookalike in Bombay.

Usually these things are solved by the producer/director going to one of the self-styled defenders of morality and making some discreet payoffs euphemistically called “seeking blessings/clearing misunderstandings”. The morality police get their dues, the producers get the free publicity and everyone is happy…

… money had exchanged hands, sins had been expiated, everything was right with the world. And yet people wind up dead. What the hell happened?

Amardeep says:

… Until yesterday, the invocation of “blasphemy” seemed pretty laughable… The SGPC seems increasingly like an organization desperate for direction, now that their established enemies — the Congress Party, the Nehru family, the Indian Army’s counter-terrorist measures in Punjab — have either dwindled or transformed. In an era when the Prime Minister is himself a practicing, if secular, Sikh, Sikh organizations in India can no longer claim exclusion or discrimination. They have as a result chosen to mimic the world-wide rhetoric of religious outrage, exemplified in India by the RSS and by conservative Muslim groups. The rhetoric of outrage is, it seems, the primary way in which religious leaders — around the world, and in every major religious community — attempt to make themselves relevant to modernity.
Continue reading →

Acid-washed genes

Posted on by

To those bored with M.I.A. hype, pretend I’m drawing a cloak of invisibility around this post. Pretend it was hidden somewhere far, far away where nobody would ever read it. In other words, my personal blog 😉

First up, Maya Arulpragasam’s dad and album namesake got a few lines in a 1995 book called Tigers of Lanka. The book describes his Sri Lankan escapades after training in explosives in Lebanon (via Nittewa):

One of the first three Tamils to go to Lebanon was Arul Pragasam, alias Arular. He reached Kannady, also in Vavuniya, in 1976 with a view to settle down and establish a base to woo the educated class into joining the EROS… Arular, with his Kannady farm barely 20 miles from Pirabaharan’s hideout, met the LTTE leader several times beginning September 1976. With his degree in engineering and newly-acquired knowledge in Lebanon, Arular passed on to Pirabaharan ideas about making explosives. In turn, Pirabaharan agreed to provide incendiary chemicals to Arular.

Once a LTTE courier carrying nitric acid to the Kannady farm was caught by the police after he could not give credible explanation about his presence in the Vavuniya forest. Arular, who came rushing from Jaffna on hearing about the arrest, told the police that he had ordered the acid to pour it into snake pits. Mercifully, the police were convinced by the explanation and released the courier. But Pirabaharan would not leave any evidence; at the first opportunity he had the police station raided and all documents related to the arrest were taken away…

Second, Turbanhead points us to some shaky handheld video clips of M.I.A. performing at Coachella. Live performances, like drinking, rarely look good in daylight, but Punk Ass Bitch reports that M.I.A. got a rare Coachella encore:

Continue reading →

What would Hanuman do?

Posted on by

I have continued to read Slate’s dispatches feature this week which is titled “The Monkey God’s Army.” Despite criticism from a few SM readers on some finer points in the article, it has remained an absorbing read, and there are still two installments left. Rather than quote from the article itself (which I urge you to read) I will instead quote from The Fray. The Fray is Slate’s discussion board that is often full of gems. Slate editors recommended this posting from The Fray:

Hanuman is worshipped by a lot of people who have no affiliation with the Dal. The very phrase – Monkey God – sounds awful! Hanuman, happened to be a monkey. He is worshipped for his devotion to Ram. For his supreme love for the right way, regardless of how much pain he would have to bear. Not because he was a monkey. But because of who he was despite being a monkey. There is a very rich tapestry of philosophy and culture – to demean all of that in this manner is disgusting. It shows a complete lack of understanding and sensitivity towards Indian culture.

I have no qualms with being harsh with either the RSS or the Bajrang Dal. But if the KKK had decided to call themselves Jesus’s army, to belittle Jesus would have been as stupid and pointless as belittling Hanuman in this context.

The title reflects a racist insensitive view of Hindiuism and I, for one, would strongly urge Slate to post an apology and a retraction of the title.

Then we find this one which curiously wasn’t recommended by Slate editors:

Obviously, this newspaper editor is an ignorant fool. He doesn’t even know the Vedic Scriptures which flourished in India starting at least some 5,500 years ago, but are actually infinitely prehistorical.

For the education… let me offer some barebone background information. The last “Golden Age” or SatyaYuga, some 4,000,000 years ago, was the Age when dinosaurs also roamed the earth. The Bible also touched on that when it said, “when Men were giants.” (Some species of man were). What you know call the denizens of the “intermediate world,” i.e., animals, plants birds, and the filth-born, also speak the common language on earth, and understood each other. Meaning, an animal can speak to man, and vice versa and understood each other. The personification of the animals, the sky-ranging creatures like the birds, as well as plants were as intelligent as man.

Continue reading →

Witless in Seattle (updated)

Posted on by

Here’s one blogger’s reaction to desi American star Indra Nooyi criticizing Dubya’s foreign policy:

America’s Parasites: Parasites feed on their hosts while providing no discernible good in most cases. I can’t think of any other name for folks who enjoy freedom and self-acualization in the United States then turn their back on us — befuddingly, after significant but remunerative sacrifice and challenge that they were FREE not to take.

Translation: there’s ‘them’ and then there’s ‘us.’ Immigrants are ‘them,’ no matter how long they’ve been in the U.S. (nearly 30 years), no matter how educated (Yale), no matter whether they’re U.S. citizens (yes). Never mind that we need them to plug our skilled labor shortage: we’re doing them a favor by letting them in.

This East Indian-American woman is at the top of her game professionally in a country that celebrates women achievers much UNLIKE her country of origin. BUT she is not satisfied! She must disparage the United States for not doing enough to coddle the corrupt, morally and financially bankrupt ‘international community’. Priceless!!!

Archaic usage of ‘East Indian,’ check. Ignorance of India’s female achievers, check. Multiple exclamation points, check. Assumption that she’s a parasitic economic refugee, check. (Nooyi graduated from IIM-Calcutta and worked at Johnson & Johnson India before ascending to CFO of Pepsi.)

Ignoring the substance of her argument to unleash a personal attack on her nationality and gender, check. Translation: uppity immigrant bitch needs to go back to where she came from.

Would he make the same points if Nooyi were an Englishman in New York? Would he make the same points of fellow conservative Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Continue reading →

Possessed by yoga

Posted on by

Does yoga cause demonic possession? That would explain the The Exorcist, which, little-known fact, features an obscure asana called the ‘spinning wheel.’ Beware that Hindoo voodoo (thanks, RC):

“… [yoga is] aimed at transforming human consciousness to experience the Hindu god, which is a false god.” … She also… instructed her students in astral projection, or “stepping outside” of the body, which Laurette says poses a serious spiritual danger. “If there’s nothing in your mind, you’re open to all kinds of deception… I wondered who–or what–came into my body when I ‘stepped out.’ “

Next up: PraiseFu, drunken master style:

She’s developed a prominent presence on the Internet, largely due to her new exercise program, PraiseMoves, which she calls “a Christian alternative to yoga.”

My name is Laurette and I’m a recovering New Ager. This is like abstinence videos from the 1950s:

… her family never suspected this seemingly innocent exercise would open the door to a New Age lifestyle that would affect Laurette for the next 22 years… As an adult, Laurette immersed herself in every New Age and metaphysical practice she came across: chanting, crystals, tarot cards, psychics, channeling spirits.

Let The Eagle soar:

There’s “The Eagle” stretch, where the arms are pulled back to resemble a bird in flight. While students hold this stretch, Laurette reads Isaiah 40:31: “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles”…

Continue reading →