Temping as a Mutiny-Wallah

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Ancestry from a non-India South Asian country? Check, Bangladesh. Woman? Check. Muslim? Check. Gay? Umm, no… but I could be if you want me to be… Cheeky? Check.

Much like that guy on FX that tries out something new for thirty days, these next thirty are devoted to you. You want me to go undercover and get an interview with Sunny Leone, I’ll do it. You want me to sneak stealthily into Abhi’s office and let a bee loose in it, and video his reaction, done. Figure out how to tap into the secret direct line in the ND office that pages Razib-the-Atheist so easily, I’m on it. And just like that other atheist, figure out a creative eBay auctions, such as, say, hours of Vinod in a dress, to funnel traffic to SM- well, I’m so there. Looking for a suitable boy/girl? I’ll match you up. Are you tired of all the Sheetal Sheth pictures and covers of Indian Maxim? Is the post on the hotness of the Bangladeshi blue eyed workers simply not enough? For you, I will fill my posts with as many John Abraham photos as possible. You got questions, I got answers. And if I don’t, I’ll sneak around under the official auspices of Sepia Mutiny Temporary Super Star and get them for you.

Who am I? I’m simply a coffee-colored geeky nerd. Nerding out to be a full on geek- with Desi-American issues being the core of what I work on. In all seriousness, it’s good to see a site that is creating a real community online, connecting and networking desis everywhere. I’m honored to join the roll to the right for the next 30 days, and hope to give it the justice it deserves. And now, let the real mutiny begin…?

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Guest blogger: Tanzila Ahmed

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I met our next guest blogger, Tanzila Ahmed (founder of South Asian American Voting Youth), under admittedly unfortunate circumstances. Through various back-channels and intelligence assets, I received word that Taz was trying to dig up dirt on…ME (presumably to infiltrate the Mutiny and bring us down). Apparently, some forces out there deemed me to be the weakest link at SM and the one most easily seduced/distracted by the feminine ways (Ha! Feel free to try). Little did Taz know that we had a counter-intelligence operation underway and that she had been under surveillance (e.g. warrantless blog taps) the whole time. We go to great lengths to assure our North Dakota-based hegemony. We’ve been holding Taz in our basement for the past eight months, flashing a series of mutinous images in front of her (our rotating banners). Before you can learn you must first un-learn. We had to be sure that she no longer feared anything. In just the past month a Stockholm-like syndrome set in and she began to come around. She is ready now, and the Mutiny is ready for her…

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Fool me twice, shame on…

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As some of you have now guessed, we were NOT in fact taken over by the junk peddlers of “Happy Hippie.” Our url is still very much our own. We want to take this opportunity to first thank the dozens who sent us emails of sympathy and offers of help to defend against the scurrilous cyber-squatters who chose the day before April 1st to attack us. Former SM guestblogger Cicatrix wrote to us immediately:

Who the f*ck are those squatters? They’re clearly not out to sell anything, but they’ve put in a lot of thought/effort (to mock either desis or hippies, I can’t tell) for random some web-hostage-takers. It’s like they deliberately hated sepiamutiny or something. I wonder if that idiot sepiahokum person is behind this. good luck, sepia crew. tell us if there’s anything we can do.

Former guestblogger PG wrote to us later in the day:

Hey’all,
Sorry to see you’ve gotten squatted. The “products” — they’re all fake and there are no working links to buy them — are insult to injury. A friend pointed out that according to register.com, you still should have the domain name until August 4, 2006. Could you give me more info on how this happened? I’d like to help if I can. Good luck,

PG

Half the Sins of Mankind & De Novo

In addition, parts of the blogosphere were in shock (and some a bit happy) to see what had become of us (see here, here, here, here, and here). Also, a special shot-out to the dark one for being such a good sport:

I was going to post something here about how sepiamutiny got hijacked, but i’ve realized i’ve probably once again been caught by their april fool’s joke.
f*ckers 🙂
p.s.–it is quite amusing when you read the entries for “happy hippie” 🙂
Let’s not forget to mention the signed petition either. But…there were also heroes out there today. A diligent few could not be fooled by so simple and pathetic a hoax. One in particular, Kaps of DesiPundit and Sambhar Mafia, took it upon himself to figure out which bloggers had been fooled and then left a comment on each of their websites informing them of the elaborate deception. Folks, I want to humbly submit his name for special recognition during next year’s world-renowned Indibloggies. That kind of devotion to truth and justice in the blogosphere simply MUST be recognized by his peers. It was, dare I say, delightful. 🙂 Continue reading →

Navi Mumbaikar

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I’m off to Bombay for a few months for a change of scene. (Switches to the deep sepia ink and sharpens the nib.) If I don’t come back in waxed chest, brown highlights and mirrored shades yelling ‘call me, yaar!’ into a trick GSM, I’ll be deeply disappointed.

These juths were made for walkin’

Some of you have asked why I spend far less time slamming Bollycheese than American exoticism. The answer is that I walk past the exoticism every day. Now the lazy susan turns, the juthi is on the other foot, &c., &c. Sunil Shetty, a.k.a. Funky Hunky, you’re goin’ down.

I’ve gotten some great advice from Mumbaikars who are big fans of our ‘South Asian’ blog. They told me the best place to live is east Mumbai, stay out of Colaba because it’s not safe after dark, and if you’re on the Bandstand late at night and a policeman approaches you, pinch his buttocks — it’s a friendly Mumbai greeting. They also told me Parsis are the poorest Mumbaikars, Haji Ali sells authentic electronics, the women’s carriage is the safest way to travel and the best time to avoid traffic is from 3 to 6 pm on Marine Drive.

Please god, let me survive the Sepia readers of Bombay.

Related post: Livin’ la vida Sepia

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The first desi Supreme Court Justice? (updated)

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As Dave mentioned earlier, the lawyer arguing one of the most important cases in front of the Supreme Court right now is a desi – Neal Kumar Katyal.

The future Justice Katyal?

He’s so illustrious that he has even been mentioned as a possible future (Democratic) pick for the Supreme Court:

At a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution on the Senate hearings on Judge Roberts, moderator Stuart Taylor, a columnist for the National Journal, pointedly asked panelist Katyal if a future Democratic president nominated him to the Supreme Court, which could well be, would he also be as evasive as Roberts was at the hearings?… [Link]

To give you a sense of why this is a plausible conjecture, here are just some of the highlights from his resume:

  • He clerked for both Justice Breyer and Judge Guido Calabresi of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He also worked for now Justice Roberts the summer after he graduated from Yale Law. [Link]
  • “In 1998-99, Katyal served as National Security Adviser to the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice” [Link]
  • “He … served as Vice President Al Gore’s co-counsel in the Supreme Court election dispute of 2000” [Link]
  • He “represented the Deans of most major private law schools in the University of Michigan affirmative-action case” that was settled in 2003. [Link]
  • In 2004, he was responsible for the case that “struck down the Guantanamo trial system as unconstitutional and a violation of the Geneva Conventions.” [Link]
  • In 2005, at age 34, Katyal was named one of the the leading “40 lawyers under 40” by the National Law Journal
  • He is listed as a speaker by ICM, one of the largest literary and talent agencies around. They also represent Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster.
  • Even with all the time he spends in court, he’s a Professor at Georgetown Law.
  • And yes, ladies, he’s married. That means even his Punjabi parents are happy!

Katyal is the lead lawyer in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Amrit Singh is one of the lawyers involved in Ali et. al. v. Rumsfeld, and Vanita Gupta argued the Tulia case. Looks like we’re doing alright in terms of representing in the field of civil liberties, no?

Related posts: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, The art of the book review, The “Devils” Advocates

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Posted in Law

Insourcing

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This NYT story on the reimportation of cheap college textbooks from India misses the entire, delicious point: Americans line up as huge fans of globalization when the money saved goes to them rather than their employers (thanks, WGIIA).

Over the last few years, many American students… have been buying American textbooks printed in India, as word has spread of the larger savings available… The textbooks are printed legally in India under copyright arrangements worked out over the last decade by American and British publishers. Americans are huge fans of globalization — when they’re making the moneyUsing tax breaks and cheap labor, Indian companies publish the books in black-and-white, low-quality paperback editions, and sell them for as little as 10 percent of the cost of the same book in the United States. But under the licensing agreement, the books may be sold only on the Indian subcontinent and in surrounding countries…

There are no penalties for students who import books for their own use, under a 1998 Supreme Court decision that ruled that manufacturers who sell goods more cheaply overseas than in the United States have no protection against having their products sold back to the American market. [Link]

The other interesting point here is the same problem intellectual property publishers have been facing for decades: differential pricing is not sustainable in an efficient market. You can’t sell Microsoft Windows for 10% the cost in India because Americans will import the lower-price version. And you can’t sell it at full cost and expect decent sales in a developing country, only the rich will buy. All you can do is segment the market with a lower-featured edition.

And that’s exactly what these textbook publishers have done. The problem is, students are satisfied with the lower-quality editions because hardly anyone buys textbooks for pleasure, especially not at $150 a pop.

Related post: Stuck with the 50cc Bajaj

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Cyberpunk Bollywood

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Sci-fi novelist Bruce Sterling, a pioneer in the cyberpunk genre, is also a huge Bollyfan who designed this bumper sticker (via Boing Boing):

That’s Parineeta on the right, not sure about the one on the left. The guy’s got taste.

He’s also been blogging the ins and outs of various sex-lies-and-mirrordiscs scandals (Sanjay Joshi, Amar Singh) working their way through political parties and the Indian Parliament:

Sanjay Joshi was set up. Somebody videoed him inflagrante diplimatico with a schoolteacher — bad news if your job in a conservative religious party depends on a vow of celibacy. Days later, flamboyant socialist playboy Amar Singh, of the liberal Samajwadi Party, announced his phone had been tapped. A salacious CD of purported chats with Tolly- and Bolly-wood starlets soon began making the rounds (hey, he’s a flamboyant socialist playboy).

In quick succession, more than half a dozen prominent ministers and pols stepped forward with claims that they too had been filmed, shadowed and bugged. More than a few signs point to a dirty tricks arm of the ruling Congress Party, with rumblings of deep-pocketed corporate backing. A crew of snoops for hire, black-hat script kiddies and renegade telco underlings has been rounded up and are under the screws. Meanwhile, the Sanjay sex tape is the hottest DVD bootleg on the market, and rumors of many more discs compromising many more pols abound… [Link]

His blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21

Related post: One ticket for the clue train, please

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Pilgrimages ain’t what they used to be

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Forbes magazine reports on an article first published in the German magazine Cicero which asserts that the Pakistanis are helping the Saudis develop a nuclear capability under the cover of the Haj:

…during the Haj pilgrimages to Mecca in 2003 through 2005, Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims to come to Saudi Arabia.

Between October 2004 and January 2005, some of them slipped off from pilgrimages, sometimes for up to three weeks, the report quoted German security expert Udo Ulfkotte as saying.

According to Western security services, the magazine added, Saudi scientists have been working since the mid-1990s in Pakistan, a nuclear power since 1998.

Cicero, which will appear on newstands tomorrow, also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons ‘because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear program…’ [Link]

If this is true then it is a total slap in the face of the U.S., and the assurances that we supposedly have (right?) about Khan’s network being shut down is all bulls*it. Allowing a nation like Saudi Arabia any sort of nuclear capability is crazy, especially if you think that the monarchy there is doomed to failure and that a militant uprising is just a matter of time. Also, it’s not like they have an un-met energy demand.

The magazine also said satellite images indicate that Saudi Arabia has set up a program in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles. [Link]

We’ll have to keep an eye on this to see if any other news organizations follow-up on the German assertions.

Update: Pakistan rejects accusations. See below the fold. Continue reading →

When asylum might not be a good thing

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shaluja.jpg Sri Lankans Saluja Thangaraja, who is now 26, and Ahilan Nadarajah have been sitting in a U.S. Federal pen for 4 years now. Why? They are victims in a sense of the politics that resulted from 9/11. The SJ Mercury news picks this off the AP wire:

A Sri Lankan woman fleeing persecution in her native country has been released after spending more than four years in federal detention on allegations that she entered the country illegally.

Saluja Thangaraja, 26, was freed from the Otay Mesa detention center late Monday after the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the release of a Sri Lankan man who also spent more than four years in the same facility.

The court ordered the release of Ahilan Nadarajah on March 17, saying the government was violating federal law by holding him even though he wasn’t criminally charged and couldn’t be deported in the foreseeable future.

Nadarajah and Thangaraja both fled Sri Lanka and stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border in October 2001 and were charged with being in the U.S. without a valid visa. Both were granted political asylum but the government refused to release them.

In case you are keeping score at home, this is yet another example of the Executive Branch selectively ignoring the power of the Judicial Branch in the name of “protecting” Americans. The fact that these two were stopped at the Mexican border may have incentivized the government to over-prosecute this case so as to justify their specious arguments connecting illegal immigration on the Mexican border to terrorism. Thangaraja and Nadarajah were kept in jail while the original ruling was appealed by the government. As you have probably already guessed, the U.S. government insisted these two were LTTE terrorists despite evidence to the contrary. Continue reading →

Posted in Law