Thanks to Sepoy over at Chapati Mystery, who translated A.Q. Khan’s first Urdu language column for the Daily Jang. The column has one of the harshest paragraphs on Pervez Musharraf I’ve ever seen in print:

Our bureaucracy and sycophants play a large role in making these false gods into God. Musharraf is F.A. pass (high-school equivalent), a qualification which we use to employ attendants. By a mistaken promotion, he became our commander-in-chief. It nauseated us to see such a dim-wit lecture the highly educated and the experts on economics, education, foreign policy, commerce and industry. And they would bow in front of him and wag their heads and exclaim at his intelligence. The way of an intelligent ruler (or Dictator) is that he doesn’t choose his companions on the basis of their flattery but on the basis of their expertise and their knowledge; he listens to their advice; and gives them all the help for the completion of important projects. There was this rumor going around about Musharraf that he complains to his Army friends, “I am saddened to see that if uneducated people cannot understand my arguments, it is ok, but even educated people cannot follow me.” The reason is obvious. The ability to pull the trigger of a gun and the ability to make an intelligent statement are clearly different. (link)

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did; I found it strangely therapeutic to read. (For those who read Urdu, you can see the original here. Out of curiosity, since I’ve let my beginners’ Urdu slide since last December, what is the Urdu word being translated here as “dim-wit”?)

In the column you’ll also find Khan’s version of the story of how he got involved with communicating information about nuclear weaponry with countries like North Korea (according to this column, his main agenda was acquiring ballistic missile technology; he doesn’t say what he gave North Korea in return…). And he heaps praise on both Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto.

Just to be clear: A. Q. Khan is not to taken as trustworthy or believable (in case you’ve forgotten who he is, read the primer). But it’s all the same interesting to see him emerge with this stuff now that Musharraf is gone. Continue reading →

Election Day may have only been seven days ago, but here on the West Coast San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris has her eye on 2010.

San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, one of Barack Obama’s earliest California backers, announced today that she is running for California attorney general in 2010…She would replace Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, the former Oakland mayor and California governor, who is expected to run for governor in 2010.[latimes]

Harris’ announcement was tempered with one, arguably big, caveat: Should current Attorney General Jerry Brown not run for governor in 2010, she would not pursue that office.

Should Harris not run for Attorney General it is believed that she would readily accept a political appointment as perhaps a deputy attorney general with the U.S. Justice Department. Harris has been a near tireless supporter of President-elect Barack Obama and is believed to be a short list of people Obama is considering for appointments to the federal department.[politickerca]

Kamala Harris is mixed race, thus her current position gives her three firsts — she is the first female District Attorney to be elected in San Francisco; the first African American elected as District Attorney in California; and the first Indian American elected to the position in the United States. If she wins in 2010, she would be breaking even more glass ceilings.

She would be the state’s first female attorney general and the first, in decades, who started out as a courtroom prosecutor.[latimes]

In December 2003, Harris was elected as the first woman District Attorney in San Francisco’s history, and as the first African American woman in California to hold the office. She was overwhelmingly reelected to a second term in November 2007.[politickerca]

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is a breast cancer researcher. Her sister, Maya Harris, is a vice president at the Ford Foundation. Her brother-in-law, D. Anthony West, an attorney at the San Francisco law firm of Morrison & Foerster, is among the Californians who could receive an appointment in the Obama administration.[latimes]

Kamala sent out a message to her supporters yesterday including the following…

“Now, I want to take that same energy, innovation and change to the state level. I’ve spent my entire professional life in the trenches as a courtroom prosecutor. And I can tell you from the frontlines, we need tough new ideas for strengthening our criminal justice system in California. As Attorney General, I will fight for all Californians – from distressed homeowners to families whose neighborhoods are under siege. In the coming months, I will detail new ideas on how we can fight street gangs, go after subprime lenders and others responsible for the financial crisis, and fundamentally reform our prison system.”[caprog]

Good luck, Kamala. This is definitely a race that we will be keeping our eye on. Continue reading →

Sonal’s brother posted the following statement from Sonal in the comments of Amardeep’s post In Defense of Sonal Shah (boldface mine):

As an Indian-American who has lived in this country since the age of four, serving on the Obama-Biden transition team is a unique privilege for me. A presidential transition is always a time of excitement and, in some cases, of rumors and unfounded gossip. I’d like to set to rest a few baseless and silly reports that have been circulating on the Internet.

First, my personal politics have nothing in common with the views espoused by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or any such organization. I’ve never been involved in Indian politics, and never intend to do so.

Second, I’ve always condemned any politics of division, of ethnic or religious hatred, of violence and intimidation as a political tool. Some factually inaccurate internet rumors have attempted to link me to Hindu Nationalist groups through a variety of tenuous connections: Relief work I’m proud to have helped coordinate following the Gujarati earthquake of 2001, or cultural and religious affiliations of some of my family members, or apolitical humanitarian work I’ve been privileged to do as a founder of the NGO Indicorps and as the Director of Global Development for Google.org.

Finally, I do not subscribe to the views of such Hindu nationalist groups, and never have. Ridiculous tactics of guilt by association have been decisively repudiated by the American people. I am delighted with what the victory on November 4 says about my country, and about our place in the world. I look forward to serving our President-elect in this time of transition.

That’s the sort of unequivocal statement of her political views that I had been hoping for. It’s also what the groups that were concerned about her appointment were asking for.

Sonal is a highly qualified and experienced public figure who has done a lot of good. There’s also no evidence that I’ve seen, from anybody, that Sonal holds sectarian or bigoted sentiments. To the contrary – people I know who know her personally have said only positive things about her and her family. I suspect this statement will put most people’s concerns to rest in terms of her participation on the transition team.

But … I think the statement reveals two areas of questionable judgment that I think might cause problems for her if she’s nominated to a position in the new administration, despite her qualifications and track record.

Continue reading →

It looks like Governor Bobby Jindal was approached by the McCain campaign for serious VP vetting, but he turned down the McCain people. From the WaPo (thanks, Sahba):

Jindal was approached by McCain forces to gauge his interest in the vice presidency and told them he was not interested in being vetted due to his desire to continue on with his current job, to which he was elected just one year ago.

While the official reason that Jindal took his name out of contention was his lack of a desire to leave the Louisiana governorship, there was also real trepidation within his political inner circle that Jindal might wind up as the pick — McCain was attracted to his comprehensive health-care knowledge — and be caught up in what they believed to be a less-than-stellar campaign that could pin a loss on Jindal without much ability to change or control the direction of the contest. (link)

Here is what I said on October 29:

I expect it will come out, in months to come, that McCain specifically asked Jindal to join the ticket this past summer and Jindal turned him down. (link)

It looks like it won’t take months for the truth to ‘out’, after all. (Admittedly, he was not literally invited to join the ticket, but, hey, close enough.) Continue reading →

Last week Abhi did a post on Sonal Shah, who is working for the Obama transition team. Over the weekend, however, a controversy erupted over Shah, who has worked for the Center for American Progress and Google.org (the philanthropic arm of Google), and who has started, with her siblings, a do-good organization called Indicorps.

Vijay Prashad makes some very harsh accusations in an article in Counterpunch, basically suggesting that Sonal Shah is a supporter of a Hindu right organization, the VHP.

The accusations have been widely covered in the Indian media, including The Hindustan Times, TOI, and DNA. Most of those are simply echoing the statements made by Prashad. I have also been getting emails from left-leaning Indian academic friends, who are outraged about Sonal Shah.

I am skeptical about Prashad’s accusations. First, I think it’s important to keep a little perspective: Sonal Shah has been hired because of her experience with Google.Org and Center for American Progress, not because of her former affiliation with the VHP-A. She is also not actually working for the “Obama administration” — she is working on the team that will hire people to work for the Obama administration. If and when she has an official government post, and especially if that post has something to do with policy on India, this kind of scrutiny might be merited. Right now, it is not.

Second, Prashad’s accusations against Sonal Shah smell like a smear — not so different from Sarah Palin saying Barack Obama “pals around with terrorists.” I have no idea whether Sonal Shah is secretly sympathetic to the VHP or not; I do not believe so. [UPDATE: We now have a statement from Sonal Shah, through her brother: here. The statement has been verified through another source.] But given that she has not made a public statement in response to Prashad’s most recent accusations, We should probably respond to Shah based on her actions and verified statements, not on her parents’ beliefs (the worst kind of guilt-by-association), not on her past membership in the VHP-A (which is not disputed), and not on what Vijay Prashad says she said at some Desi conference years ago. In this decade, and in the work she is best known for, Sonal Shah has clearly been on the right side of things.

Vijay Prashad wants to paint a very particular image of Sonal Shah, as a kind of die-hard Hindu chauvinist, who continues to harbor secret communal hatreds, even if she has not made public statements to that effect, is not formally affiliated with any relevant groups, and has been doing valuable social work with Google.Org and Indicorps. But that is just one narrative. One could easily construct a counter-narrative along these lines: Sonal Shah’s parents are in fact supporters of the VHP, and are friends of Narendra Modi. As an ABD growing up in Texas, she had little awareness of the destructive and intolerant nature of Hindu nationalism, and when the opportunity came around to work with VHP-A to raise money for earthquake victims in Gujarat in 2001, she took it. But perhaps, with maturity, and as she took a higher profile role in the organization, she also began to gain an awareness of the costs of affiliation with the VHP, and left to found an organization that does similar work, but with a secular slant. [UPDATE/CORRECTION: According to her statement, even at the time, Shah did not subscribe to the message or ideology of the VHP. She characterizes her work as purely focused on humanitarian aid. She also clearly distances herself from the agenda of the VHP, and suggests she has had no involvement in Indian politics, nor intends to have any.]

That second narrative I have presented is admittedly speculation. But I put it out there because I think there is as much evidence to support it as there is to support the narrative that Prashad has put out in Counterpunch.

I do not have the time to write more at present; I may come back to this later tonight. In the meanwhile, comments are open for discussion. Read the Prashad essay — what do you think? Is he being fair? Also, do readers know more about Indicorps? And, finally, if anyone does know Sonal Shah personally, would you vouch for her (or perhaps, for what Prashad is saying about her)? Continue reading →

Well, whether you voted for him or not, history was made yesterday as Barack Obama was elected President of the United States by 52% of voters, a healthy electoral margin, and victories in Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and probably even North Carolina. How was your election night?

A brief note on the Indian reaction: though some Indian papers are a little nervous about Obama’s anti-outsourcing rhetoric, for the most part India appears to be as enthusiastic as the rest of the world about the prospect of a President Obama. Manmohan Singh, for instance, described the victory as “extraordinary”. Also see this list of pros and cons in the Economic Times, and this story, which has executives from Wipro and TCS expressing satisfaction with Obama’s grasp of the realities of the globalization era.

Meanwhile, Ashwin Madia lost in Minnesota’s 3rd District to Erik Paulson. The numbers were something like 48% to 40%, with a curiously large 8% plus voting for “other” candidates.

It’s somewhat disappointing, but it is worth noting that Madia is just 30 years old, and he was running in a district long held by Republicans:

With a lack of real political experience, Madia, a former lawyer and Iraq war veteran ran on a campaign of ideals. Over and over again he told voters that he didn’t need experience in St. Paul, that he had experience in Baghdad. He often started his speeches with the tale of his parents’ immigration from India. They came here nearly 40 years ago with just $19, and today their son is running for U.S. Congress. The American Dream, Madia would often say, is still very much alive in this county.

His message did not change Tuesday night as he conceded. “Even though we lost this election tonight, we didn’t lose the debate,” said Madia, 30, as he addressed disappointed supporters in Osso. “Our message was right on. I may not have been the right messenger, but our message was right, this idea that our country can do better than what we have been doing.” (link)

We may have more to say about this once there is more data about why voters did what they did. Continue reading →

Barack Obama was elected president tonight and also won the state of Minnesota. Still too close to call however, is the Ashwin Madia vs. Erik Paulsen race in the 3rd Congressional district. As of midnight central time and with 49% of the precincts reporting, Madia trails 47 to ~42%.

While we wait for the final result I want to leave you with this clip I took of a speech Madia gave in Denver during the DNC. During the speech he spoke passionately about being relentless and putting everything you have into your race once you decide to run for office. Win or lose I remember thinking at the time it was great advice for anyone thinking of running.

Continue reading →

Sure today is about presidents, pundits and pandering. We’ve blogged macacas, Obamas and Madias. But today is Election Day, and not only is today the day to vote, but we need to make sure that this vote is counted.

I am getting up at the crack of dawn to partake in protecting the rights of Asian and Pacific Islander voters all across Southern California. There are already other stories coming out of the woodwork – one friend of mine registered to vote but couldn’t be found on the rolls, and another friend stood in a five hour line at the Los Angeles Registrar of Voter to vote early on Friday. On Election Day, the stories are expected to be tenfolds worse and poll monitors will be sent to polls all across the nation to keep the suppression at a minimum. If you haven’t signed up to volunteer with an official organization, you can grab your camera and Video the Vote or document your story.

I stole the following Q&A from a post I did for Sepia Mutiny during the 2006 Election, but it still works, for the most part.

What do I do if I requested an absentee ballot/registered to vote and haven’t received anything yet? You should go to your polling place and vote in person, and if they don’t have your name, you should vote provisionally. They have to give you a provisional ballot – they’ll verify over the next week to see what the problem is and if they count it. If you’re too far from your polling place, call your Secretary of State’s office or the hotline.

What if I have my absentee form, but I forgot to mail it? Take your absentee form to your local polling place and drop it off in person.

What if I go to vote and they don’t have my name? Vote provisionally. If you have your voter registration receipt, that is your proof of registration. And call the hotline.

Do I need to bring ID to vote? It depends on what state you live in, though as organizers we feel that asking for a voter ID is a form of disenfranchisement and are continuously battling this. But here in CA, I’m pretty sure if you are a first time voter that didn’t put down a CA DL number or SS # on your reg form, they will ask for your ID. If they ask for your ID, and you live in a state/situation where you don’t need an ID, call the hotline.

What if I don’t know where I’m supposed to go and vote? Simple go to the Polling Place Finder.

I didn’t get any information from my registrar’s info on who I’m voting for. What should I do? You should still vote, at your nearest polling place. To figure out what you are voting for before you go to your polling place, go to Smart Voter. With a quick submit of your address, they can find you all the candidates and propositions for your district. If they don’t have your name in their list, VOTE PROVISIONALLY.

It’s already 7:30 pm, and there will be this long line at the polls, and by the time I get there, I’ll be turned away… Most employers will give you two hours to go vote today, be sure to ask to see if you can get out early, or do it on your lunch break. Polls are open from 7am to 8pm. All you have to do is go stand in line before 8pm – as long as you are in line, they can’t turn you away. If they try to, or if they closed your poll early, call the hotline. [SepiaMutiny]

There is a national Election Protection hotline that I HIGHLY recommend that you scrawl on the back of your hand before leaving the house today: 1-866-OUR-VOTE. The Election Protection site has gotten tech-savvy since 2006, and there are up to the minute updates on stories of suppression across the country. If you have questions about the voting process and don’t want to call the hotline, please enter them in the comment section or e-mail me at taz[at]saavy.org and I’ll do my best. If you have stories of voting today, whether positive experiences or stories of voter suppression, please enter them in the comments as well – I’d love to hear the desi experience on voting all across the country. It’d also be interesting to see if desis get unfairly targeted for the denial of voting rights.

And in case it wasn’t obvious, GO VOTE! Continue reading →