Category Archives: Politics

Shaitan’s Billis

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Fresh from evangelist Benny Hinn’s miracle healings, the Jakkur airfield outside Bangalore hosted India’s version of the Blue Angels for an aviation expo where India’s surging airlines placed orders for new planes.

The Surya Kiran (Sunrays) precision flying team looks fantastic, but even to these non-military eyes they don’t cluster as tightly as the Blue Angels. They fly Kiran Mark II trainers instead of the more capable F/A-18 Hornets; these stubby trainers handle forgivingly but are slower than front-line fighters. So they use the patented Indian solution of throwing manpower at the problem by using 50% more pilots on the team 🙂

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Do good fences make good neighbors?

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The Atlantic Monthly’s Abigail Cutter lists the ten most notable security barriers of the post-WWII era. Surrounded by less-than-friendly neighbors, there’s no way India is staying of this list:

5. India/Bangladesh: Aiming to curb infiltration from its neighbor, India in 1986 sanctioned what will ultimately be a 2,043-mile barbed-wire barrier. It’s expected to cost $1 billion by the time it is completed, next year.

6. India/Pakistan: In 1989 India began erecting a fence to stem the flow of arms from Pakistan. So far it has installed more than 700 miles of fencing, much of which is electrified and stands in the disputed Kashmir region. The anti-terrorist barriers will eventually run the entire 1,800-mile border with Pakistan.

Of more relevancy was number eight on the list — a fourteen-mile fence separating San Diego from Tijuana — which has made it a real pain for me, er, I mean, my friend Lupa Letap, to score cheap prescription meds.

The Atlantic Monthly: Security fences (subscription required)

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The Passion of Bobby Jindal

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Francis C. Assisi and Elizabeth Pothen of Indolink.com decide to delve into Bobby Jindal’s life-story to see what makes him tick when it comes to his oft maligned religious beliefs:

jindalreligion.jpg

The question that intrigues most Indian Americans is this: How and why did Bobby Jindal abandon the faith of his forebears to embrace Christ and the Catholic faith.

As it turns out, the story of Piyush Bobby Jindal’s transformation from a devout young Hindu to a zealous Catholic offers an intriguing glimpse into the struggle, often traumatic, of a young Indian American caught between his heritage and his parents on the one hand and his intellectual and emotional turmoil in America.

The first part reveals the background and the struggle towards his conversion, while the second part examines his involvement with two young women whom he has acknowledged as being key to his spiritual re-birth.

Beginning with his Junior year (1991) at Brown, and for seven years thereafter – including his two years on Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, and while Secretary, Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals – Jindal revealed details of his conversion and its aftermath, in a series of first person accounts.

Much of those writings reveal an agonizing spiritual quest.

Ooooh, juicy! This sounds like an even more interesting read than the journey of the Buddha.

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M.I.A.: step up to blow up

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Abhi blogged M.I.A.’s LA concert in inimitable style, so let me fill you in on the NYC gig last Saturday as best as I can: consider me the B side. And Anna couldn’t make the sold-out concert, but she graciously gave me her unused tickets. Caring, sharing and turning green with envy: it’s the mutineer way.

The concert utterly rocked with audience energy, and Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam felt like a star in the making. There was heavy promo in NYC: a staid New Yorker story (talk about hipster buzz kill), the cover of the Village Voice entertainment section, Gawker. And her DJ backup, Diplo of Hollertronix, is popular out here. Her first full album, Arular, is out Feb. 22.

The crowd was a weird mix of spiky-haired Asians, Williamsburg hipsters and Upper West Side liberals with the odd square-jawed, Shannyn Sossamon-like Tamil beauty thrown in. There were very few desis in all, but the show was jam-packed. Most of the crowd already knew and sang along to her songs. I can’t tell you how much Lower East Side angst it inspired in me to find out she’s no longer a ‘discovery’ 🙂

Arulpragasam had great flow, and every single song was good. The tracks she chose were much fresher, catchier and more layered than the mixes I’ve heard online. They call it electro-dancehall and electrogroove, but the moves were deliciously familiar: she and her backup dancers reminded me of early Salt ‘n Pepa. I did find the soldier step a bit precious.

I’ve never rocked out to a desi woman before, that was quite novel. The Village Voice called her a ‘Sri Lankan Tamil hottie,’ a phrase you rarely read in America. But her aesthetic was also intimately familiar: her small-faced, tousle-haired cutenesss resembles my female Berkeley classmates; the South Indian hip-hop fans at Berkeley are legion.

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Porno for Goopers

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‘GOP Babe of the Week‘ Govindini Murty also starred in a student film called San Pedro in 2001. Murty may otherwise be quite intelligent, but this potboiler is howlingly bad. Slamming a student film? Fish in a barrel; but the director, Murty’s husband Jason Apuzzo, graduated from USC film school, Stanford and Yale, so the movie shouldn’t be as awful as it so eminently is.
 
Murty, playing a hotel maid, flashes a lingering cleavage closeup at 24:31, a truly atrocious Latina-meets-Borat accent soon after. Then the script hurls this gem, a bumbling, literal translation of an English idiom that no Spanish speaker would ever utter:
‘He might want his statue back so he doesn’t get into agua caliente!’
… followed by:
‘It is a real statue. It has the ancient Chinese key inside.’
Ah, so: ancient Chinese secrets, that deus-ex-I-Ching. Yes, it really is that bad. The plot is pure Republican porn, putting forth a Vince Foster-esque conspiracy theory involving Men’s Wearhouse pitchman Al Gore:
On the final night of the 2000 Democratic Convention, a hard boiled bounty hunter must recover an ancient Chinese statue, and clean up a trail of big money that threatens ‘bad buzz’ for Al Gore. But when a sexy immigrant maid stumbles onto that trail first…

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The things we take for granted…

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Sepia Mutiny’s favorite soldier, Lt Neil Prakash (aka Red Six), gives us a glimpse of the mind / heart / soul of a soldier thousands of miles from home –

2 things that break my heart: 1) SSG Terry promised his little 3 year old angel, Josephine, that he would be home for her birthday. So everyday when she wakes up at home now, she asks her mother, “Is it my birthday, today?” 2) Whenever I call my fiancee, I have to cut her off with “Baby, my 30 minutes are up.” I had no idea that she is on the other end, repeating to herself, Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Someday, I won’t have to, Laura. But not anytime soon. Because you’ll be saying that to me when you come here. So I guess, “Now the rubberband is on the other claw!” to quote Dr. Zoidberg.

Good luck and Godspeed LT & Crew. If ever a group of men so richly deserved a simple hug & pat on the back, it’s you.

[Neil’s Blog, Previous SM Coverage here & his Silver Star] Continue reading →

A Mushie memoir

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Ever mindful of his legacy, the current dictator of Pakistan is ordering a soppy political memoir ghost-written about how he looked deep into the eyes of Dubya and saw a man he could do business with:

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is writing a political memoir, focusing on the war on terrorism and his relationship with the Bush administration as a key ally. The memoir is to be published by Simon & Schuster and will probably appear in bookstores next fall…

No word on whether it’ll bear any resemblance to Shame, Salman Rushdie’s jagged satire of Pakistani politics with a paper-thin fictional veneer to protect the guilty. Here’s what it will cover:

“He’s going to cover the war on terror from Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s up to the hunt for Osama bin Laden…”

Mr. Musharraf, writer’s block doesn’t last three and a half years. How about penning the ending to that story?

Giving ’em the finger

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fingers.jpgIn a brilliant maneuver, Congressman Bobby Jindal of Louisiana sent an email to his colleagues in Congress before yesterday’s State of the Union Address, telling them that they should come see him for a dip before the speech [via a tip from Manish and SM reader Atul Patel].

In a letter to be circulated Wednesday among fellow lawmakers, Jindal, R-Louisiana, said he would have ink available for anyone attending the speech who wanted to make a gesture of support for Iraqis and “people throughout the world who seek freedom.”

Say what you want about him (I know I often do) but clever is clever. Some Dems seemed bitter:

Supporters stuck their forefingers in the air — not unlike college football fans declaring “We’re number one” — as the president spoke.

But most Democrats did not dip into the inkwell. Indeed, some thought it was the president’s prose that was purple.

“His rhetoric seldom reflects reality,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas.

With a flesh-toned rather than purple finger to point out his disagreement with the speech, Doggett said that “the real problem is that Bush’s policies keep sticking our people in a barrel of red ink.”

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Little deuce coup

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The Nepali king, who came to power when his nephew offed his family with an Uzi, has placed the prime minister under house arrest, shut down the phone system and Internet routers and put soldiers in TV stations to censor the news. Flights to Kathmandu were forced to turn back in midair during the coup.

“The king is taking the country back to the Dark Ages,” Shovakar Parajuli, leader of the opposition Congress Party, told the Associated Press news agency. [BBC]

Yawn… your coup is so 19th century, dahling. Why not do it in style? Poison your opponent, pretend it was a gas leak or jab him with a sharp umbrella.

Thou shalt not kill

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Forget Babri Masjid — temple officials are shooting each other in a struggle over wealthy temple trusts in Ayodhya:

The rivalry spilled over after a meeting on January 31, when the two rival chief priests came to blows, prompting their associates to draw out double-barrel guns and fire… Earlier, in 2001, Nrityagopal had survived a bomb attack in the ongoing dispute over the trust… Gripped by a sense of insecurity, officials of temple trusts are rushing for gun licences… At least 350 Ayodhya residents, most of them temple-trust heads, have acquired licensed arms. The town has over 1,500 such trusts… Most key temple trusts have also installed their private army of securitymen…

Murder is but the least of their talents:

The temple town was further sullied when police in Lucknow said they were looking for another mahant [temple official], Shyam Shukla alias Shyam Maharaj, in the abduction of a Kanpur industrialist and two of his associates… “The mahant needed money. He asked us to abduct Ravinder Kedia. We kept him in Bahraich till we obtained ransom…”