Category Archives: Politics

Soldier bites off roommate’s nose

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Indian soldiers are apparently grossly underfed, and angry enough to eat just about anything:

The two soldiers from India’s Eastern Frontier Rifles were alone in their barracks Wednesday night when Lance Corporal Bhupesh Rava lost his cool because his roommate wanted the lights on for a little while longer. An enraged Rava, who had returned from daytime duty, attacked Sepoy Durga Lama, pinned him down and gnawed off his nose, police said. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Reuters/Yahoo!: When Rava asks you to turn out the light…

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Flimflam man sells Indian PM’s home

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A businessman forks over a small fortune for a house and ends up with nothing. It’s almost like the real estate market in California:

India’s intelligence department is investigating reports that a fraudster sold an American businessman the prime minister’s residence in the heart of New Delhi recently…and arrived in the Indian capital late in March to take possession of the house for an office he planned to set up only to discover he had been cheated. [Reuters/Yahoo!]

Reuters/Yahoo!: Fraudster sells Indian PM’s residence on web site

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Brimful of Amrit

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Amrit Singh, the daughter of the Indian prime minister who’s a staff attorney for the ACLU, was interviewed today on a Chicago public radio station about the torture of U.S. detainees in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay (thanks, KXB).

Listen to the program. Here’s the program’s home page.

Update: Singh summarized the status of the ACLU’s torture lawsuits on the first anniversary of the Abu Ghraib photos. She said the ACLU is suing Donald Rumsfeld as an individual, so the lawsuit continues even after he’s no longer Secretary of Defense. That’s quite an aggressive tactic.

Singh was well-spoken with nary a stumble. Her accent was light, although she stressed the first syllable of ‘rapport.’

Previous posts: 1, 2

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Non-Christians harassed at Air Force Academy

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Since the military successfully rid itself of open homosexuals, where do the righteous direct their indignant bigotry? Thankfully, the Air Force Academy has a small number of non-Christians just asking for it:

The Air Force Academy, still recovering from rape and sexual harassment scandals, is facing charges that some Christian cadets have bullied and berated Jews and students of other religious backgrounds. School officials said Tuesday they had received 55 complaints over the last few months and were requiring students — and eventually all employees — to attend a course on religious tolerance…The academy is about 60% Protestant and 30% Catholic. Included in the number of Christian cadets are 120 Mormons. There are 44 Jews and a handful of Hindus and Buddhists at the academy, officials said. [Los Angeles Times]

As soon as they rid themselves of the pagans and other undesirables, we can finally have ourselves a good-old-fashioned crusade. That’s what I’m talkin’ about, says Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy at Focus on the Family. He says the bullies are the true victims:

“If 90% of cadets identify themselves as Christian, it is common sense that Christianity will be in evidence on the campus,” he said. “Christianity is deeply felt and very important to people … and to suggest that it should be bottled up is nonsense. I think a witch hunt is underway to root out Christian beliefs. To root out what is pervasive in 90% of the group is ridiculous.” [Los Angeles Times]

Los Angeles Times: Non-Christian Air Force cadets cite harassment (free registration required)

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Going Nuclear

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Okay everyone. Get ready. With all this Pope business firmly behind us, the press will be looking for the next big story to dissect to death from every angle. The pundits will be out in full force (including me). The next big story (which will begin Sunday) will be that of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, invoking the Nuclear Option. From Wikipedia:

The “nuclear option,” as used in American politics circa 2005, is a catchprase referring to a political manuever that would allow the Senate majority (currently Republicans) to prevent the minority party (currently Democrats) from filibustering judicial nominees. By U.S. Law, certain judicial appointees, particularly Supreme or other federal court Justices, must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate before taking the bench. Under current Senate rules, a minority of senators are able to prevent the confirmation of judges via filibuster unless a supermajority can be reached to ‘break’ the filibuster. The ‘nuclear option’ refers to the technicality that only a simple majority is necessary to change this rule. That is, although a supermajority is currently necessary to break the filibuster, a simple majority could alter the Senate rules so that only a simple majority would be required to break the filibuster. The term is often used derogatorily by Democrats because of the term’s bad connection with nuclear war.

The primary argument forwarded by Republicans in defense of invoking the nuclear option and ending filibusters was a legal argument written by Martin B. Gold and a moonlighting 26 year old Justice Department attorney, Dimple Gupta.

To make it as succinct as possible (and there really is no fair way to do so), Gold and Gupta point out that according to the law the majority HAS THE CONSTITUTIONAL OPTION to change the rules.

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‘Sita Sings the Blues’

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Ever seen Hanuman pluck a double bass? Animator Nina Paley has created a witty, ’20s jazz musical version of the Ramayana, Sita Sings the Blues (via Turbanhead). Her lovely, highly stylized characters evoke Betty Boop, Amul Butter ads and Ghee Happy, and Sita is voiced by ’20s blues singer Annette Hanshaw.

Watch the clips or, if the site is slow, see the end of the post to download.

This animation’s original title seems to have been The Sitayana. Like Anna’s feminist neologism, ‘Herstory,’ Paley had replaced Rama with Sita in the title. And she goes even further: Sita has the only speaking part in the entire animation. Rama is strong but silent, a Ken doll and essentially decorative, the inverse of most action flicks. But Paley stays reasonably faithful to the original text. Her Sita is still a maiden in distress rather than a Shrek-like princess-ninja.

Paley also inverts the Moulin Rouge formula. Instead of desi music in an American tale, she uses ’20s American music (one song even includes the banjo) in a quintessentially desi story. Her soundtrack choice is a classy touch; imagine someone doing a version like hip-hop Shakespeare, using Justin Timberlake as the soundtrack.

Shudder.

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K-street Kid

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Think Pennsylvania Avenue is the seat of power in D.C.? Wrong. It’s K-street. Desi-Talk introduces us to Raj Mukherjee, a twenty year old lobbyist from Jersey who may end up there soon:

Most people would think for a 20-year-old being a lobbyist is an unusual career choice. Traditional choices for Indians have been engineering or medicine. But Raj Mukherjee doesn’t think it is so atypical. It is understandable considering since the age of 10 Mukherjee claims he has been making web sites to attract politicians. Today, he is a partner in the New Jersey-based lobby firm, Impact NJ, which is a full-service government affairs firm with an emphasis on lobbying in the Garden State.

Mukherjee told News India-Times that politics is a disease, “when it bites you can’t shake it away.” Initially his parents didn’t want him to do business or enter politics. “They wanted me to do school work. They believed in the power of academia,” he said.

Mukherjee is currently working with U.S. Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ) on his campaign for governor. “I feel he can restore public trust. He is a good friend of India on the India caucus. In the Senate, he will work with Frank Pallone and Congressman Bob Menendez to represent the interests of Indian Americans in New Jersey, which has the largest Indian population in the U.S.” said Mukherjee.

Pretty impressive, right? Not everyone is going to be “elect-able,” especially at such a young age, but there are other ways to influence policy while he bides his time. Mukherjee already has an impressive resume.

He gained critical acclaim in N.J. political circles when at the age of 16, he became the vice chairman of the Publius Group (where he was previously director of technology & security), which owns and operates the state’s heavily trafficked political news source (PoliticsNJ.com), receiving approximately 4 million gross hits per month.

Mukherjee, who speaks four languages, joined the Marines at 17 two weeks after September 11. It is difficult to establish how long he spent time in the Marines considering he is an undergraduate student at Rutgers, majoring in counterintelligence. It is an inter-disciplinary major that combines political science, Middle Eastern studies and military studies.

Damn. Now I feel like I haven’t done enough today. Continue reading →

Benedict maledict

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Punjabi Boy has quite a find about the new Pope’s views on Hindus and Buddhists:

Hinduism, he said, offers ‘false hope’; it guarantees ‘purification’ based on a ‘morally cruel’ concept of reincarnation resembling ‘a continuous circle of hell’…

In 1997 Ratzinger annoyed Buddhists by calling their religion an ‘autoerotic spirituality’ that offers ‘transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations’… The Cardinal predicted Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic Church’s main enemy this century.

Ratzinger had even more choice words for those who are not Catholic:

… Dominus Jesus, the major Vatican document released… by Cardinal Ratzinger… called other world religions “gravely deficient,” denied that other religions can offer salvation independent of Christianity, and said non-Catholic Christian churches have “defects” and are not “churches” at all in the proper sense.

‘Enforcer,’ in the hockey sense, sounds about right.

Update: Ratzinger was apparently more sparing with Judaism (thanks, MD):

… Ratzinger played an instrumental role in the Vatican’s revolutionary reconciliation with the Jews under John Paul II. He personally prepared… [the] document outlining the church’s historical “errors” in its treatment of Jews…

Previous posts: 1, 2

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride

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When Dias turns into nights… Ratz! Cardinal Ivan Dias, the Mumbai mandarin, is outpolled by the Frankish Pope:

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope today, taking the name Benedict XVI, then telling a wildly cheering crowd from a balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica, “I entrust myself to your prayers.”

Rediff isn’t ready to bury the hatchet just yet:

He is known as ‘the Pope’s enforcer’ due to his uncompromising conservatism… Ratzinger was head of… the church’s chief think-tank that has dominated discussions on sexual morality and birth control and prevented liberals from gaining ground.

Got that? An Indian publication’s chiding the Vatican for being too conservative.

On balance, it’s a good thing that Dias didn’t prevail. The cardinals’ traditional cry of ‘habemus papam,’ or ‘we have a Pope,’ might have been changed to ‘habemus papad,’ or ‘we have a crispy pre-meal appetizer.’

Here’s Ennis’ post on the blasphemous betting.