Category Archives: Politics

Goyal not always so mild-mannered

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In the daily Whitehouse press briefing a few hours ago, Tony Snow was getting some tough questions about the happenings in Lebabon and whether the U.S. was taken by surprise at some of the developments there:

Q If the reports are correct, and we, in fact, didn’t know about the weapons advances that Hezbollah has made, is there some frustration or embarrassment within the intelligence community at the moment?

MR. SNOW: Well, you’ve asked me one of those “ifs,” and then the answer is, I don’t know what the knowledge was about intelligence; therefore, I can’t answer it. Sorry, Victoria.

Q Well, it seems certainly according to the reports that we didn’t know that they had made significant advances.

MR. SNOW: Again, I don’t know. [Link]

So what do you do next if you are Snow? I am disappointed by ANY SM readers that don’t already know the answer:

Goyal.

Q Tony, two questions. One, last night celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Indian-American Friendship Council, Dr. Krishna Reddy he got over 120 members of Congress from both sides — senators and congressmen on Capitol Hill — and they were all supporting the U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement. And which yesterday you mentioned that G8 also — Prime Minister of India and the President had discussion on the same issue.

So now next month, there will be voting — final voting in the U.S. Congress. So where is the President now? How he is taking this approach —

MR. SNOW: The President supports the agreement. He made it clear to Prime Minister Singh. He’s made it clear to members of Congress. So far the votes have been overwhelmingly in favor in committee, and we’ll just have to see how it proceeds. I mean, that’s a no-brainer. [Link]

Was Snow subtly implying that Goyal’s question was a no-brainer? Snow soon found out that even Goyal, when backed into a corner with his pride on the line, can take a swing by asking a tough question. You won’t like him when he’s angry. Continue reading →

On the Radio Tonight: Class relations in India

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A heads-up: Radio Open Source is doing a special show on class relations in India tonight at 7pm Eastern Time. It’s partly inspired by the recent Pankaj Mishra Op-Ed we discussed a little last week, which challenged the myth of the booming “new India.”

This isn’t more “negative” talk about India’s poverty or backwardness. I talked to the show’s producer (Robin) a bit on the phone last week, and what I got from her is that they don’t really want to do either a “negative” or “positive” spin on India. They also don’t want to throw around a lot of general economic statistics (GDP, economic growth indicators, etc.), since those things don’t tell you very much about how and whether people’s lives have been affected by the changes that have been occurring since the early 1990s. Rather, they simply want to explore the changes socially, culturally, and historically, and understand it as realistically and completely as possible. And to do that, they want illustrative anecdotes and first hand testimony from a range of sources and perspectives.

It’s a very noble and unusual approach for a radio show to take, and I’ll be listening in to see how it goes. ROS is unique in that they often take comments posted on the blog and cite them in the on-air discussion. So if you have something to say on this topic, I suggest you go to their site and leave some comments; they might quote you on the air.

Incidentally, if you miss the show, they generally put up podcasts a few days after the show airs. Continue reading →

Ringtone race wars

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I guess IÂ’m behind the times: It hadnÂ’t occurred to me that cellphone ringtones might be a medium for propagating nasty messages. But of course upon thinking about it, it makes sense. HereÂ’s an unpleasant little situation from South Africa, as reported today by the BBC:

A racist mobile phone ringtone has been condemned by South Africa authorities in the city of Cape Town.

The lyrics are in Afrikaans and advocate violence against black people in derogatory terms. Â…

The lyrics of the song, according to a local newspaper, refer to a black person as a “kaffir” – an outlawed and derogatory term in South Africa.

It describes how such a person should be tied to the back of a pickup truck and dragged around while driving.

The chorus has a blatantly racist tone and ends with a call to set dogs on the black person.

Shades of Jasper, Texas: lovely. Intrigued, I wondered if other racist ringtone incidents were on record, especially in the United States. I found an entirely different kind of story – one that illuminates in several ways the limitations of the political conversation in America today. Back in May, Cingular had to pull an offensive ringtone after protests by Latino organizations:

The ringtone played the sound of a siren and then a voice that said: “Calmate, calmate, this is la migra. Por favor, put the oranges down and step away from the cell phone. I repeat-o, put the oranges down and step away from the telephone-o. I’m deporting you back home-o.” Cingular says it will put more efforts in reviewing ringtones that are submitted to them by a variety of providers.

Up-and-down case, no? Except that the provider of this ringtone wasÂ… a Miami company, Barrio Mobile, staffed by Latinos and aimed at the Latino market. Gearlog picks up the story: Continue reading →

“But I Warn You, They Are Not As Peaceful As Me”

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Community leaders from Tower Hamlets, London have started a campaign against the filming of Monica Ali’s 2003 novel Brick Lane. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a big commercial and critical success. Reactions by many South Asian readers I heard from were mixed, mainly because of Ali’s use of a kind of pidgin English in the letters from the main character’s sister in Bangladesh, Hasina. (Our blog-friend DesiDancer also had a succinct review: “utter crap”, were her delicate, carefully chosen words)

Of course, the quality of the book is mostly irrelevant to the censorship campaign under way. This campaign seems to be an extension of the campaign against the book itself in 2003, and includes some of the same players and the same sad rhetoric of outrage and offense that is routinely trotted out these days in response to something or other:

In an echo of the controversy which surrounded the initial publication of the book, set partly in the east London borough, the novel is accused of reinforcing “pro-racist, anti-social stereotypes” and of containing “a most explicit, politically calculated violation of the human rights of the community”.

Community leaders attacked the book on its publication in 2003, claiming that it portrayed Bangladeshis living in the area as backward, uneducated and unsophisticated, and that this amounted to a “despicable insult”. (link)

The misguided attempt to protect the community’s honor through censorship will be ineffective, and the censorship campaign itself has the ironic effect of making the community look really, really bad. Continue reading →

Mole Revealed in GTA Bomb Plot

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shaikh-mubin060713.jpg June’s terror raids in Toronto that ended with the arrest of 12 men and 5 youth came as a shock to the general Canadian public. In my household it raised more than few questions on how exactly the RCMP came to know minute details of the group’s activities, which resulted in some very specific terror-related charges. What we decided as the best answer is not much of a surprise. Attempting to charge someone with plotting to blow up the CBC and beheading the Prime Minister becomes easier with a pair of ears and eyes on the inside.

Mubin Shaikh is the 30-year-old son of Indian immgrants who spent six years in the Royal Canadian Army Cadets and embraced Islam 10 years ago, after taking in trips to South Asia and the Middle East. He is a fierce supporter of Sharia law in Ontario and runs Canada’s only Sharia law arbitration centre. He is about as orthodox as Ontario Muslims come. Mubin Shaikh is also a mole. Continue reading →

The Terrorists Have Won

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…because now, you can’t read Blogspot or Typepad-hosted blogs in India. That means no Barmaid, no Abhi, no MD, no Brimful, no Badmash, no Maisnon. Erstwhile Mutineer Manish has more (natch) on Ultrabrown:

For all the talk of IndiaÂ’s freedom and democracy, the Indian government has apparently just censored all of Blogspot and Typepad. For shame. Blogspot- and Typepad-hosted blogs are inaccessible from my Bombay ISP and many others and seem to be blocked at the Airtel Internet backbone in Delhi. Geocities is reportedly blocked as well.[link]

Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf pointed out the utter lameness of this action via the ASATA mailing list:

As I was saying all along, unenlightened Internet policies are not a Pakistani monopoly; the Indian establishment can be just as “efficient” in the matter. First it was only Pakistan blocking most blogs, now it seems the Indian establishment is getting into the act…

Apparently, terrorists are using blogs to communicate, but Ultrabrown notes that Dr Gulshan Rai, Director of the Computer Emergency Response Team—India (CERT-IN) feigned cluelessness when asked about this unwelcome development:

“Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?“…

Awesome.

I can’t improve on Manish’s response to that:

As the worldÂ’s back office, for India to blame overzealous techies would hardly be credible. ItÂ’s not yet clear which blogs the government was targeting, but the tactic of banning Blogspot is nothing less than outright repression — mimicking the tactics Pakistan used to shut down discussion of Danish cartoons critical of Islam. India is now in the august company of some of the worldÂ’s least free nations…

…because I’m too busy freaking out over the possibility he raises at the end of his post:

These repeated incidents are also a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on Web apps centralized on a small handful of domains. WhatÂ’ll you do when your government blocks Gmail?

Shivam Vij has a detailed and worrisome post about his telephonic attempts to figure out what the hell is going on, here. He also has a grim sort of workaround, since not all platforms are censored equally:

Is there a moral of the story? Yes, there is. Shift to your own domain and your own hosting and most of all, to WordPress. [link]

…or, click your ruby slippers together thrice and chant, “There’s no speech like free, there’s no speech like free, there’s no speech like… Continue reading →

“Black Men, Asian Women” Article by Rinku Sen

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Since I don’t watch these television shows, it’s a bit dicey to comment on the spate of shows featuring romances between black men and asian women, so I’ll let Rinku Sen do it for me: parminder_er.jpg

The sugary romance between the excessively noble characters played by Parminder Nagra and Shafiq Atkins on ER follows the much hotter one between Ming Na Wen and Mekhi Phifer that ended two seasons ago. GreyÂ’s Anatomy features Sandra Oh in an up-and-down relationship with Isaiah Washington.

What accounts for such interest? ItÂ’s as though these couples have been pouring out of medical schools and producers decided to capture the trend.

The representations tread the line between cultural authenticity, sometimes considered stereotype, and colorblindness. The women exhibit some level of conflict with their cultures and are slightly neurotic: Ming Na dreaded telling her immigrant parents that she was having a baby out of wedlock; Nagra quit her job in a bout of rebellion against family expectation to work as a convenience store clerk. The men are dangerous but tender. Phifer grew up without a father and has a temper; Gallant went off to serve in Iraq. I did laugh at the effort to bridge cultures, though, when NagraÂ’s character got married wearing a white sari. White is the Hindu color of mourning.(link)

If it’s on TV, is it a reflection of a real sociological trend, or simply a convenient image of happy multiculturalism from television fantasy-land? Continue reading →

The tiffinwalla approach to fighting terror

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I’ve been thinking about what sort of systems should be put into place to try to prevent further attacks as in Mumbai. I don’t mean this to be callous. I too have family in Bombay, and while they’re OK, my heart still aches for those whose family is not. But the trains are running once more and need to be protected. [This is also some very abstract thinking, so I might be and Mumbaikar reveals, in the comments, that I am entirely talking out of my kundi.]

One solution, as Manish argues, would be to close the entire system and control access:

What it would take to solve the bombs-on-trains problem: money, lots of money. Indian Railways needs to run more frequent trains so they’re not jammed all the time. The stations need to be fully enclosed so entrance can be precisely controlled. And, like on Eurostar high-speed trains, every passenger needs to be scanned for explosives. [Link]

Something like this is done in the New Delhi Metro system. Although there was no mechanical sniffer, at many stops passengers were patted down or wanded by bored jawans. However, it strikes me that this is the wrong path, similar to trying to create a computerized tiffin system in Bombay. Sure it might work, but you’d need continuous electricity and literate tiffin carriers. Instead, India currently has something better. Using a system of painted symbols on each tiffin carrier:

Five thousand tiffinwallas deliver 175,000 hot lunches from home to work every day, and empty tiffins back home, with only one error every 16 million deliveries. [Link]

India works best when its ample semi-skilled labor applies simple rules repeatedly and rigidly. I’m trying to think about how to best reduce security risk by applying India’s comparative advantage, rather than imposing an alien solution. Continue reading →

Let’s form a posse

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I’m kind of tired of reading comments right now. Instead, I am going to put up some pictures. When lots of big words make my head spin I like retreating to pictures. The first one is the cover of Time Magazine from this week:

The second picture is from this t-shirt titled “Cowboys and Indians” that an SM reader tipped us off to:

“Cowboys and Indians”

In the dimly-lit opium den that is my head, I thought these two pictures kind of went together given the evolving geopolitical situation.

Continue reading →

The Big Payback

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My whole life I have secretly admired the profession of the loan shark. You know the guy I am talking about right? The big knuckled, leather jacket wearing thug in the movies that walks softly, carries a BIG ASS stick, and every so often utters phrases like:

You’d piss your pants if you saw me come calling for my money

“B*tch, you better give me my money”

or

‘Da f*ck you mean you ain’t got my money yet? muthaf*cka you best be comin’ up wit’ my cash or else you know what I’m sayin?… [Link]

Admit it. Even the nice guys/gals among our SM readers have wondered at least once in their lives what it would be like to collect on debts as part of their daily routine, to have people scared out of their minds and start to stutter when you came a calling for yo’ money.

In truth, despite the fact that my wallet does have the words “bad ass motherf*cker” embroidered on it, I am a sweet and non-violent guy. I just don’t have the disposition to be a loan shark, nor do I own a gun with which I can pistol whip anyone…not even some annoying commenters. 🙂

What I can do however is help to change the world one loan at a time. Sitting behind my computer I can provide loans…without being a shark. There is a great new service that has been started by former Paypal employee Premal Shah and others, called Kiva. Kiva allows people like you and I to make loans directly to small business owners in the developing world. By loaning them money you will be helping them to take care of themselves and their family through sustainable means. If the working class entrepreneur that you lend money to succeeds, then it is likely that the economic impact of their business will propagate to some extent throughout their community. At the end of loan period it is likely that you will get your money re-paid in full without having to break anyone’s arm.

Continue reading →