Category Archives: Politics

Mon Frere?

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Before I begin, forgive me for any inadvertent formatting and presentation mistakes. I don’t use MovableType, and quite frankly WordPress is a hell of a lot easier when it comes to aligning images, doing text wraps, that sort of thing. In other words, my posts may look like a hot mess, but I promise you they will taste like seriously good chaat masala.

Frere-Hall.jpg Carrying on…

In my experience (limited though it may be), of all the cities in Pakistan, Karachi probably has the greatest number of intact buildings left over from the days of the British Raj (Lahore has prettier and larger ones, but not perhaps as many). Which is not to equate “intact” with “well-preserved”; in many cases, these building are little more than shells and facades, while others have faded into the background under the manic pressure of urban decay expansion (not unlike many aging aunties struggling with foundation and surma in a desperate effort to hold back the ravages of time). Naturally, the city government finds it a complete waste of time to actually try and maintain these buildings, with a handful of exceptions, preferring instead to focus on cramming as many slum areas into one space-time locus as the laws of physics will allow.

This is important to me, I like the pretty, and I like it a damnÂ’ lot. Continue reading →

Friedman on India

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It should be no surprise to most here that I’m a strident fan of Milton Friedman and that his passing was quite a bit more than a garden variety celeb obit for me. While I’m a geek of rather high proportions, there are quite a few of us for whom the loss left an almost personal hollowness.

“The current danger is that India will stretch into centuries what took other countries only decades” – Milton Friedman, 1963Because he called San Francisco home, I actually had the honor of seeing Uncle Milt speak in person about 2 years ago at a benefit gala for a thinktank I’m a contributor to.

And earlier this spring, I had another opportunity to see Milton & Rose Friedman in person at the unveiling of a PBS documentary on his life and times. At the time, I implored several friends to join me with the argument that “at 94, homey ain’t gonna be around too much longer – see him while you can.” Unfortunately, a bout of flu kept Friedman from joining us that evening (Rose did, however make it) and alas, my words were sadly prophetic.

Interestingly, at that event, Gary Becker was on tap for Milton & Rose’s intro. In nearly any other context, Becker’s own Nobel Prize would have garnered him a headline act. But given Friedman’s ginormous stature, Becker’s intro speech was instead somewhat rudely met with idle chatter from the back of the banquet hall. You’d think scoring a Nobel prize would earn a little more respect – apparently not so when you’re between an audience and the Friedman’s.

‘Tis the curse of the passage of a generation that we take for granted previous, hard fought accomplishments – both material and intellectual. In its extreme, we just assume that he world we see around us had to be rather than recgonize the role of volition, creativity, and intellectual accomplishment which enabled it to be.

In Friedman, India, and recent economic history, we see all this wrapped up in a neat tidy little package. So much that seems obvious now was contrarian then. And so many of the arguments we use to excuse and ignore the outcome of disastrous policy was plainly predicted and evident decades ago.

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The World Is High, Not Flat

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akhil bansal.jpg The Philadelphia Inquirer has the first in a series of articles about an illegal prescription drug network that was busted in 2005, as part of “Operation Cyber Chase.” The ringleaders of the network were the Bansals, a family based in India, though part of the business was run out of a warehouse in Queens.

Here’s how the business worked:

Akhil [Bansal] oversaw the family’s North American operations, shipping roughly 75,000 pills a day via UPS. In a little more than a year, the network had smuggled 11 million prescription tablets to more than 60,000 American addresses, an operation that grossed at least $8 million. These numbers did not include the steroids or the kilo shipments of the tranquilizer ketamine, a club drug called “Special K.”

The family’s Internet business represented a dark slice of the global economy so new, and so widespread, that national governments were still struggling to understand it, let alone police it.

Laws were vague, outdated, inconsistent. Technology – new medicines and ways to deliver them – was outpacing regulation. (link)

Unlike Operation Meth Merchant, where a number of the defendants pleaded guilty because they were going to be deported anyway, these guys clearly knew exactly what they were doing, and what they were doing was definitely illegal. In contrast to Operation Meth Merchant, which disproportionately targeted Indian immigrant store clerks, I’m not at all bothered at the take-down of the Bansals — they deserve to be in jail. Rather, it’s an intriguing case study that shows yet again how India’s entry into the globalized, internet-based economy goes well beyond the rosy picture suggested by talk of outsourcing and call centers.

At the same time, I don’t think the Bansals are especially “evil” for smuggling imitation prescription drugs, though it’s definitely dangerous for these drugs to be floating around. (According to NPR, at least one person died after purchasing drugs from a website based in Mexico.) If anything, the Bansals were evil because their business was based on spam, which wreaks havoc with email and is the bane of many a blogger’s existence. Continue reading →

Pay attention, Satveer

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Pay attention…this is very important, Satveer. Have you noticed Jesus for yourself…at some moment in time, yet???

That is the advice offered to newly re-elected Minnesota state senator Satveer Chaudhary by his defeated opponent, Rae Hart Anderson, in the concession e-mail she sent him in lieu of the customary phone call. (Thanks, tipster “pardesi”!)

Minneapolis-St. Paul TV station WCCO helpfully provides verbatim text of the e-mail. A true light for Christ, Ms. Anderson proffers an odd form of congratulations before giving our heathen brother some news he can use:

I’ve enjoyed much of this race, especially the people I’ve met…even you! I see your deficits–not all of them, and your potential–but not all of it. Only your Creator knows the real potential He’s put in you. Get to know Him and know yourself…you’ll be more interesting even to you!

The race of your life is more important than this one–and it is my sincere wish that you’ll get to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. He died for the sins of the world, yours and mine–and especially for those who accept His forgiveness.

The message continues in this vein, with quotes from Scripture, before ending as follows:

There’s nothing like belonging to Christ…not winning, not money, not degrees…it’s the best.

Good wishes and better wishes…until you wish for the best!

“To get a sermon is definitely a surprise,” Chaudhary told WCCO. (Perhaps he should write back: “Tat tvam asi, Rae!”) Incidentally, Chaudhary’s state senate district overlaps with the US Congress district of Keith Ellison, the nation’s first Muslim congressman, who was asked this gem of a question a couple of days ago on CNN Headline News. It seems that in Minnesota, much of the Lord’s work remains shamefully undone. Continue reading →

Religious Visas

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Thirty-three people including two Massachusetts imams have been arrested for abuse of the Religious Worker visa program:

Federal immigration agents arrested imams from two Boston-area mosques yesterday on charges they were involved in a scheme that provided religious worker visas to immigrants who used them to enter the United States and work instead as gas station attendants, truck drivers, and factory laborers. …

Under the scheme, described by federal authorities yesterday, the immigrants, who were mostly Pakistani, paid a fee to US religious organizations, which then sponsored them for the visas.

The Religious Worker Program was created under the Immigration Act of 1990:

…churches, synagogues, and mosques can ask the government to approve visas for foreigners to fill vacant positions. Several thousand visas are issued each year that permit immigrants to enter the United States exclusively for religious employment. To obtain the visa, immigrants must have religious training and experience in their native country. Once here, they are not allowed to hold secular jobs. The religious worker permits can ultimately lead to green cards, or permanent residency. …

Federal immigration officials believe that abuse of the program is widespread: an August 2005 audit found signs of fraud in more than 30 percent of applications.

That wasn’t the prevailing view in Congress two years earlier, when the program was extended to 2008 in a fine display of bipartisan blather. Here’s Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.): Continue reading →

A Cyber Farewell

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It is with great relief and extreme sadness that I leave the mutiny today ending the sequel to my Mutiny-Wallah gig. I think there may have been a way to bribe the head macacas to hang around the bunker blogging some more, but my lawyer and I have decided against it. I came back on board to Sepia Mutiny months ago with the expectation of blogging on the 2006 elections and am leaving today having spent more time researching cyber law than should be legal (bad pun, I know). You didn’t think I was going to leave without sharing some of the research I dug up, now would you?

1) It is a misdemeanor in the state of California to be sent multiple e-mails after you sent one that said stop contacting me, even if the perpetrator is in another state (check to see what your state’s laws are). My advice: never block or delete e-mails until you’ve accumulated enough evidence, never respond to the e-mails except for a one liner that says ‘stop contacting me’ and file a report with the police immediately.

2) Those IP addresses are a tricky thing — they are often anonymous to protect the bloggers and commenters. But IP addresses can be tracked with a court order, and sites like MySpace, Friendster, or Blogspot have a wealth of IP information that they have to give to the police if given a court order, especially if the perpetrator used those sites to contact you. Also, if you do blog, get a sitemeter, and monitor those IP addresses religiously.

3) If you Flickr, photolog, whatever — copyright your pictures. According to blog laws, sites such as Brown People can post your pictures up legally as long as they link to the source. If you copyright your pictures, they are not allowed to take your image. The laws around image copyright infringement are pretty harsh (known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and the Google law team is standing by to make sure Blogspot users don’t infringe this aspect of the law. You should copyright your blog too.

4) Save everything, take screenshots (go to File, Save page as…) of everything. In a world where the Internet can be so easily manipulated and deleted, it is important that you save things immediately. Not just saving e-mails in your inbox, but take screen shots of profiles, blogs, websites and accumulating your data. Both your lawyers and law enforcement will be pleased to see that you have evidence to back your claim.

The rest of the list continued after the jump…

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The state of the U.S.-India nuclear deal

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After the election last week, in which Democrats took over control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, many people (including much of the Indian press) were running around screaming “the sky is falling.” What would this mean for the precious India-U.S. nuclear deal? Let’s take a look at the reality behind the hype. Outlook India reports today:

The United States Senate is expected to debate and vote this week on a bill that would permit civilian nuclear cooperation with India.

Congressional and diplomatic sources told this correspondent the long-awaited vote could take place on Wednesday or Thursday. The United States Congress commenced its lame-duck session on Monday and the U.S.-India nuclear deal features prominently on the agenda…

On Monday, both Republicans as well as Democrats indicated their intention to take up the India nuclear deal in the lame duck session. But before that they will vote on a bill that makes permanent trade relations with Vietnam.

In his remarks Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Republican, said, “This week, the Senate agenda will focus on completing the remaining appropriations bills. And in the days and weeks ahead, we’ll also need to consider the nomination of Bob Gates as Secretary of Defence, Vietnam trade legislation, and the U.S.– India civilian nuclear technology bill, among others.”

Mr. Frist’s Democratic counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, said, “We have our mind on concluding the appropriations bills and the very important nuclear agreement with the largest democracy in the world, India… [Link]

So the Democrat and Republican leadership are both on record as supporting this bill but both seem like they have a lot of domestic items on their plate they need to first take care of in the lame duck session, especially since Bush is fleeing going on a long trip to Asia in a few days. Not so fast though. Many arms control experts are recommending changes to the bill before it gets approved:

Arms control advocates urged changes in a U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement on Tuesday as the U.S. Senate prepared to resume action on the long-stalled deal…

…Meanwhile, a new report by the Congressional Research Service, which examines issues for Congress, found that while India does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons, New Delhi’s “views of the Iranian threat and appropriate responses (to that threat) differ significantly from U.S. views…” [Link]

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Dalits liberated by English?

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Dalit activist Chandrabhan Prasad just celebrated the 206th birthday of Lord Macaulay, with a party in New Delhi [via Shashwati]. Why celebrate the face of English imperialism? Because for some groups domination by a foreign overlord was better than domestic oppression.

…. Prasad … hails Macaulay as the Father of Indian Modernity, for it was after the introduction of his English system of education in 1854, that Dalits got the right to education, he says. [Link]

Bhan has three reasons for revering Macaulay – his insistence to teach the “natives” English broke the stranglehold of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic teaching, a privilege of only the elite castes and, he argued,for the European kind of modern education, with focus on modern sciences. “Imagine, if we had only followed indigenous study,” said Bhan, “we would be like Afghanistan or Nepal today.”… [Link]

These activists go further than celebrating Macaulay’s role in the past, however, and call for English to be central to Dalit education in the future. They unveilled a portrait of “English, the Dalit Goddess”:

Dalit poet Parak sang a couplet to the portrait – a refashioned Statue of Liberty, wearing a hippie hat, holding a massive pink pen, standing on a computer, with a blazing map of India in the background – Oh, Devi Ma/ Please Let us Learn English/ Even the dogs understand English, to cheers and laughter, …

Bhan … declared … “Hereafter, the first sounds all newborn Dalit and Adivasi babies will hear from their parents is – abcd. Immediately after birth, parents or a nearest relative will walk up to the child and whisper in the ear – abcd,’… [Link]

Is English a tool of liberation? Are indigenous Indian languages oppressive?

The remedy … is to … become English speaking at the earliest. Goddess English is all about emancipation. Goddess English is a mass movement against the Caste Order, against linguistic evils such as Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telgu and Bangla for instance. Indian languages as more about prejudices, discrimination and hatred and less about expressions and communications. [Link]

Or is this just a PR stunt, to stick a finger in the eye of the local intelligencia? Is the best path for Dalit advancement to reject Indian languages in favor of English? Lastly, should they learn International English or Desi Hinglish?

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AALDEF’s exit polling efforts part II

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As I mentioned on Wednesday, AALDEF conducted an exit poll during Tuesday’s elections. They queried Asian American (including South Asian American) voters that they saw leaving the polls in the states of DC, MD, VA, PA, MA, MI, NY and NJ. Here is an example of a set of exit poll questions (this one from New York). Before taking a look at the results I want to stress two things:

  1. These are primarily “blue states”
  2. This is data from all groups of Asian voters. I don’t think they’ve released stats yet which break the data down by sub group (e.g., Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, etc.)

Here are excerpts from AALDEF’s press release (thanks Deepa). I’ve highlighted the data that I found especially interesting and in some instances stripped AALDEF’s commentary/interpretation. Although I think they do great work I find them to sometimes sound “too enthusiastic” in their analysis and I’d rather you guys interpret the numbers (and any perceived biases) for yourselves:

Asian American voters in eight states continued a decade-long shift to support Democratic candidates, with 79% of those polled favoring Democrats in Tuesday’s congressional and state elections. According to preliminary results of a nonpartisan, multilingual exit poll of over 4,600 Asian American voters, released today by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), Democratic candidates in closely-watched races in Virginia, New Jersey and other states were consistently buoyed by Asian American voter turnout.

Most exit poll respondents (87%) said that they had voted in a previous election, while 13% told AALDEF volunteers that they were first-time voters. Over 625 pro bono attorneys, law students, and community activists monitored polling places and surveyed Asian American voters in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C…

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AALDEF’s exit polling efforts

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The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, with the aid of organizations like SAALT, were once again (they did this in 2004 as well) taking exit polling data on how Asian American voters voted in the mostly Blue States of DC, MD, VA, PA, MA, MI, NY and NJ. They haven’t realeased the data yet (although I am working on obtaining a sneak peek) but here are some of the incidents they logged at polling sites yesterday. Some of you told us about your own problems. You weren’t alone. From their press release:

More than 625 volunteers from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) and a coalition of Asian American advocacy groups monitored today’s elections in eight states–New York,New Jersey,Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania,Virginia,and Maryland–and Washington, D.C. Amid high Asian American voter turnout, AALDEF volunteers documented and phoned in reports that polling places were understaffed, poll workers were hostile to Asian American voters and improperly asked for IDs, and translated voter assistance materials were not readily available to Asian-language voters.

Preliminary list of Asian American voting problems in 2006 Midterm Elections:

New York

Under Section 203 of the federal Voting Rights Act, jurisdictions with large Asian-language populations must provide Chinese- and Korean-language voting assistance, including interpreters at polling places and translated ballots, signs and materials. In New York City, three boroughs are required to provide Chinese-language assistance–Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn–and Queens is also required to provide Korean-language assistance.

* At P.S. 20 in Flushing, Queens , the poll site coordinator told an AALDEF monitor that “A lot of Chinese and Koreans don’t speak English. This is America –they should learn English.” Translated materials, including the voters’ bill of rights and voting machine instructions, were not posted at the beginning of the day.

* At P.S. 126 in Chinatown , a poll worker walked down a line of Asian American voters and improperly asked them to show identification in order to make the line would move faster. Another poll worker asked voters to show their voter registration cards, also not a voting prerequisite.

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