Brown Pundits

It is instructive to learn from Malaysia. The particular advantage of using Sharia as a sword is that people rising up in protest (against miscarriage of justice) would think twice before giving aid and comfort for supposedly blasphemous/sinful actions.

A Malaysian court convicted opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim
of sodomy and sentenced him to five years in prison on Friday….the ruling bars Anwar from running for a seat in the
state assembly of Selangor this month, a move that would likely have
paved the way for him to become chief minister of Malaysia’s most
populous state — a potent platform from which to attack the government
ahead of the next national election.

If Anwar, 66, loses his
federal court appeal, he would face jail and would be barred from
contesting the next national election that must be held by 2018. “It’s
(happening) all over again after 15 years,” Anwar, who was sacked as
deputy prime minister and finance minister in 1998 and convicted a year
later, told reporters.

regards

Are writers special? Is writing a special talent? Can creative writing be taught?

Ian Jack comments (down below in the article) on HK’s comments on the above (in summary they agree: Yes, Yes, and NO, but Jack warns about the downsides of cutting the branch you are sitting upon). 

Hanif Kureishi thinks creative writing courses are a waste
of time, which is a dangerous thing to say given that he makes his
living (not all of it, but probably more of it than he does from his novels) as
a professor of creative writing at Kingston University. Telling a story well took a rare skill, he
told an audience at the Bath literary festival last weekend.
He estimated that perhaps 0.1% of his students had it. Could it be taught?
Kureishi didn’t think so. Would he pay money to take an MA in creative
writing himself? “No … that would be madness.”

We should feel sorry for all
concerned: for a university that may consequently face a sharp drop in fee
income; for Kureishi’s students, who have paid £5,800 each (£12,700 for non-EU
citizens) for their professor’s useless course; and not least for Kureishi
himself, biting the hand that fed him out of a rage (I speculate)
that he has to make money in this despicable way.

….But how do you explain the apparently unstoppable growth of a
vocational course for a vocation that is being remorselessly de-monetised? When
Kureishi started out, the University of
East Anglia had Britain’s only department of creative writing, which may
also have been the only one outside North America. Today no broad-based
university would dream of living without one, despite the fact that writing
(“literary” and otherwise) earns increasingly little money, if any at
all, and we are returning to the time when it was confined as an occupation to
those who had private incomes or the patronage of philanthropists and
academies.

What tempts students towards such an
unfeasible career? A clue lies on
Kingston University’s website: “A Kingston University creative writing
MA graduate has been snapped up in a six-figure deal by one of the world’s
biggest publishers after her self-published books topped the Kindle download
rankings, selling tens of thousands of copies.” In other words, like winning the national lottery, it could happen
to you.

Workshopping is probably the most
hateful feature of writing courses, easily mistaken for an American idea
because, like Alcoholics Anonymous, it believes in the benefits of group
frankness. In fact, according to a
professor of creative writing I once met in Chicago, the practice originated in
the early years of Soviet Russia, when Leninists wanted bourgeois activities
such as writing to assume the more muscular, proletarian habits of workers’
committees. According to my American professor, Lenin found the results
hard-going when they were shown to him, and announced a preference for an old
favourite, Pushkin. In this, Hanif Kureishi and the Chairman of the Council of
People’s Commissars of the Soviet Union would have been at one.

regards

For all the (imaginary, real) trappings of prosperity China is never going to be able to afford democracy (forget liberal democracy), even to the point of unbanning youtube or facebook. This may be acceptable for most people, others I imagine simply dont care, and the miniscule number of activists do not count (or will be shouted down). But try as they might the manadarins will not be able to inoculate against derision. You dont have to do much, just quote their own statements verbatim. Mockery truly is the best policy.

Example: History and reality have shown that the Communist Party of China is a
loyal representative of the interests of people of all ethnic groups in
Xinjiang. Socialism is a broad road of prosperity for people of all
ethnic groups in Xinjiang. The great homeland is a beautiful home of
happy life for people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

The Xinjiang Room is named after the autonomous region of Xinjiang in
China’s northwest, which occupies one-sixth of the nation’s landmass.
Xinjiang is famous for its melons and flatbread, mosques and natural-gas
reserves. If that doesn’t sound very Chinese it’s because Xinjiang
culturally is much more Central Asian
than East Asian. In fact, Xinjiang’s name means New Frontier, and the
region was only given that appellation in 1884 when China’s Qing dynasty
had conquered its population of ethnic Uighurs and other minorities.
Since then, the region has chafed against rule from Beijing, which is
farther from Xinjiang’s Silk Road oases than Baghdad is. Memories of two
short-lived republics of East Turkestan, as some Uighurs prefer to
think of their homeland, have heightened separatist dreams ever since.

For many of us, this was why we were in the room. On March 1, black-clad assailants had unleashed a terrorism spree
in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, stabbing and slashing
passersby. By the time their rampage had ended, 29 people had been
killed and more than 140 injured. The government has blamed the attack
on “separatists from Xinjiang” who were also terrorists bent on jihad.
We wanted to know more. Who were they and where in Xinjiang were they
from? Should we expect more terrorism to come from disgruntled Uighurs?
Were the Kunming attackers jihadis or were they more motivated by
separatism? Could there be something else too that triggered this
horrific mass murder? What could the government do to win hearts and
minds in a tense, restive region?

But then, a postscript: as Xinjiang’s party secretary Zhang
Chunxian tried to leave the Xinjiang Room, a media scrum descended.
Zhang, a Han Chinese like nearly all of the men who have held the
highest-level post in the Uighur autonomous region, spoke his mind. The
main reason for the terrorism in Xinjiang was, drum roll: the flow of
information via the Internet. Zhang said that nearly all terrorism in
Xinjiang was aided by terrorists jumping the Great Firewall constructed
by China’s state censors. 

regards

Let us hope against hope that some survivors can be found in time. This may or may not be connected to the ethnic disturbance that took some precious lives in Kunming recently (or given China’s rapacious record any number of discontents ranging from Burma to Kenya). Again let us hope for the best.

A search and rescue operation is underway after Malaysia Airlines said that a plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew on board went missing en route to Beijing.


Radar contact with the aircraft,
flight MH370, was lost in airspace controlled by Vietnam in the early
hours of Saturday morning, China’s
Xinhua news agency said. The aircraft did not enter airspace controlled
by China and did not make contact with Chinese controllers, Xinhua
added.


A
statement published on Facebook by the airline said : “Malaysia
Airlines confirms that flight MH370 has lost contact with Subang Air
Traffic Control at 2.40am, today (8 March 2014). “Flight MH370,
operated on the B777-200 aircraft, departed Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on 8
March 2014. MH370 was expected to land in Beijing at 6.30am the same
day. The flight was carrying a total number of 227 passengers (including
2 infants), 12 crew members.

regards

Youtube is already banned in Pakistan (due to the blasphemous movie that Google has been court-ordered to delete) and in China, Iran and Turkmenistan [ref. wiki]. The next stop is likely to be Turkey.


Turkey’s prime minister has threatened drastic steps to censor the Internet, including shutting down Facebook and YouTube,
where audio recordings of his alleged conversations suggesting
corruption have been leaked in the past weeks, dealing him a major blow
ahead of this month’s local elections.

In a late-night interview Thursday, Recep Tayyip Erdogan
told ATV station that his government is determined to stem the leaks he
insists are being instigated by followers of an influential US-based
Muslim cleric. He has accused supporters of Fethullah Gulen of
infiltrating police and the judiciary and of engaging in “espionage,”
saying that the group even listened in on his encrypted telephone lines.
The Gulen movement denies involvement.

“We are determined on
the issue, regardless of what the world may say,” Erdogan said. “We
won’t allow the people to be devoured by YouTube, Facebook or others.
Whatever steps need to be taken we will take them without wavering.”   
regards

Poor kid, if he was just allowed to fall in love with a local girl (probably not too many desis in Amarillo, but how about desi matrimonial sites in the USA?) then he would have probably been alive. Instead we have one tragedy on our hands and a second one if/when the wife gets a life-term from the Texas jury. I would blame the father for setting up this train-wreck but that gives little satisfaction. 

In opening statement, assistant district attorney Jim Young said Bimal Patel, who had been born in India, “grew up basically an American kid” in Amarillo. He went to Texas Tech and moved to Austin, where he became involved in
business, but his father was a traditionalist and had pushed him to seek
a partner through an arranged marriage service in India, the prosecutor
said.

Through this service, he submitted a resume and met
Shriya Patel, Young said. The two married, but it took about a year for
her to get her passport to come to the US, and she had only been in the
country a week when she decided to kill her husband, the prosecutor
said.  Shriya Patel’s trial began on
March 4 in Austin,Texas, with prosecutors accusing her of luring her
husband into the bathtub for a massage, dousing him with gasoline and
then setting him ablaze before shutting him in the bathroom. Bimal Patel, 29, died at the burn centre of the San Antonio Military Medical Center, nearly five months after the April 17, 2012, incident.   regards   

From appearances it looks like California now has a Brahmin (Asian) problem. Historically, the ancestors of Karthick Ramakrishnan have enjoyed their position at the top of the social pyramid in Dravida-Nadu.

Then came democracy (and more importantly the social justice movement) and the Brahmins (aka northern invaders) were driven away to the North, West, and Eastern corners of India, as a consequence of the (in)famous 69% reservation policy [ref. wiki]. The history of quotas and various arguments for/against are debated in this article. There is no doubt that reservations help seed a creamy layer in each category (which may or may not benefit the less well off people in the same categories). All in all about 80% of Tamil Nadu population are said to be protected by reservations.

Main Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Sub Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Reservation Percentage for each Sub Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Reservation Percentage for each Main Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Category as per Government of India
Backward Class (BC)	Backward Class (BC) – General	26.5%	30%	Other Backward Class
	Backward Class (BC) – Muslims	3.5%
Most Backward Class (MBC)			20%
Denotified Community (DCN)
Scheduled Castes	Only Scheduled Castes	15%	18%	Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes
	only for Arunthathiyar)	3%
Scheduled Tribes			1
Total Reservation Percentage			69%

But the great northbound movement proved only to be a temporary respite. The quota battles spread out to the north as well, though settling at a lower level of 49.5% for now (more importantly enforcement was better than before, as Shudras and Dalits came to power on their own steam). The next (logical) step for many of these Brahmins was to move out from Sharat Bose Avenue (Kolkata), Ramakrishna Puram (Delhi) and Matunga (Mumbai) to the green(er) pastures of the West where (apparently) meritocracy still prevailed in California, enshrined via the equally (in)famous Proposition 209. Asians of many stripes (driven to excel by the Tiger Mother syndrome) managed to take advantage of race-neutral admission policies and savoured the model minority badge from the white majority (who used the MM stick to beat up the blacks/latinos).

However democracy has now managed to catch up with the super-castes in California as well. The game changer (as KR reports below) is that whites who resented preferences for blacks in the 1990s are now resentful of asians (mostly Chinese but I would imagine also Koreans and Indians) for the sin of grabbing too many university seats. The dreaded specter of quota being (sort of) tied to population percentages has been raised. Once that genie is out of the bottle it will not be possible to push it back. Even if the Asians manage to win a few battles they will surely lose the war (one problem is that Asians are not all equally doing well- Pacific Islanders and Laotians for example). The 10% will inevitably need to bow before the heft of the 90%. The logic of democracy is relentless (and it is how it should be). For the super-castes there will be now no more place on earth to run (and to hide). For folks like Karthick Ramakrishnan, the writing on the wall (and the desperate anguish reflected in his writing) is clear.

Is the debate on affirmative action versus race-blind policies mainly
about principle, or mostly about preserving narrow group interests? We
are beginning to find out in California. A bill passed by the state
Senate and pending in the Assembly would put a constitutional amendment
on the ballot that would overturn portions of Proposition 209 to exempt
public college and university admissions from the ban on racial, ethnic
and gender preferences.

regards

…may help determine who wins Election 2014. IMO the muslim vote will go for AAP in urban areas and BSP in rural ones. SP the current ruling party will be heavily penalized due to the Muzaffanagar riots. Thus Mayawati and Arvind Kejriwal will benefit from the muslim vote, even though NYT may have found isolated support for Modi. In Gujarat he has got plenty of muslim votes following logic #1 (see below)- If he looks like winning why waste your vote on someone else??

There is an old political saying in India that the way to Delhi goes
through Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh. From an American point of
view, Uttar Pradesh has it all: the electoral heft of a
California-Ohio-Michigan combination, the uncertainty of a Florida
recount, the political tricks of a South Carolina primary and the stark
community divisions of Mississippi.

All the unpleasant stereotypes are confirmed, the grasping family, the (not so gentle) abuse of the golden egg, what is missing is a quote on the (absent) role played by her father. At least we should be thankful that due to the preference for “plump women” the ladies are not deprived of food and may not develop aneroxia etc anxieties. Small mercies in a cruel world.

To understand how popular Shakeela is down South, you have to
read the three-year- old autobiography of Surayya Bhanu. Bhanu, a
Chennai-born Commerce graduate, had developed a passion for cinema since
childhood. She ended up on the margins of the Tamil film industry as a
body double for porn stars unwilling to go completely nude. Like
Shakeela. Bhanu filled those ‘gaps’. She exposed her nude body in
bedroom and bathroom scenes in almost all Shakeela films. 

In the book,
Bhanu talks about the South Indian porn market’s crush on plump women:
Shakeela’s body type. Bhanu was slim when she began her career. Later,
on realising the popular demand for well-endowed curves and heavy
thighs, she put on weight and shaped herself to ‘industry standards’. It
gave her the chance to play Shakeela’s double.

Extracts from her autobiography:...I decided to
write this book on myself because people should know how a Shakeela is
formed and shaped..…During an interview, a journalist once told me that I was the woman
who embodied the sexual desire of Malayalee youth. When somebody is
hungry, we have to give them food. Nothing else will make them happy….

I have no good memories of my mother. I never experienced love and
care from her. It was my mother who spoiled my life. I think my mother
did not like me since my childhood. She often ignored me and cursed me.
But one day, she appreciated my beauty. This was soon after my sixteenth
birthday. Then she informed me that a person would come to pick me up.
She asked me to go with him to a place where I have to ‘please’ a rich
man who would help rid us of our financial constraints. She asked me to
obey him, and do whatever he wanted me to do. I was shocked. I was grown up enough to understand what she was asking for. A stranger
came to pick me up, I had no choice. I accompanied him. We reached a
hotel room. That ‘rich man’, who was in his forties, was waiting there. I
was frozen with fear and sorrow. He undressed me, and raped me. But he
could not penetrate me due to my resistance. It was only a beginning. I
was forced to sleep with many such ‘rich men’ thereafter. I experienced
both pain and pleasure. I am not able to recollect when I lost my
virginity.

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