Anil Kalhan

Events in Malaysia have been heating up again in recent weeks. On October 16, the government of Malaysia banned the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF), a coalition of nongovernmental organizations that advocates greater protection for the rights of Hindus against what it regards to be a rise in Malay chauvinism within the country. According to Malaysia’s Home Minister, Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar:

We are not banning it (Hindraf) because it was promoting Hindu rights or Indian rights. On legitimate issues, nobody can quarrel with Hindraf. But we are taking action because we consider the way it has gone about doing things — promoting extremism.

Hindraf has said “our enemies are the Malays, the Muslims.” This is in some of their leaders’ speeches. We have allowed them to go on. Yes, there are some issues involving the Indians that have not been totally resolved, but to say that we oppress, commit apartheid or genocide and that the police allowed murder in Kg Medan and Kg Rawa?

Hindraf has organised 17 forums and 338 street demonstrations. We took a long time before taking action because we don’t want them to think that because it is a society that seems to speak for a certain race or religion, that we took action. We took action because we considered that they have taken a very extreme approach to propagate their ideology. [link]

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

After years of filming scenes in New York, Bollywood is now outsourcing. According to a Greater Philadelphia Film Office spokesperson, an Indian film production team is currently using Philadelphia as a “stunt double” for a film set in the Big Apple:

The winner here, she says, is the city’s economy:

“We’re able to provide them with an American big city location that doubles very well for New York at a lower price. They’re using local resources and paying for them and staying in local hotels and spending quite a lot of money here.” [link]

While the Film Office has been mostly hush-hush about the film’s details, to avoid a “paparazzi blitz,” the secret seems not all that carefully guarded. The film is an action flick starring John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, and Neil Nitin Mukesh, and its highly creative working title is “New York.” Although production began in August, the Film Office only this week revealed word of the film’s shooting in an effort to prevent the public from going on red alert over the dramatic scenes being shot over the weekend:

If you’re walking in Center City this weekend, near 16th and Market streets, don’t mind the FBI helicopters overhead or the sounds of gunfire.

“Don’t be concerned, it’s just a movie,” said Sharon Pinkenson, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office….

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Last Tuesday, Sen. John McCain met with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in a bid to once again obtain the paper’s endorsement. (In December, shortly before the Iowa caucuses, the Register endorsed McCain and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the nominees of their respective parties.) As news outlets widely reported, and as you can see for yourself in the video to the right, the interview at times became somewhat contentious.

On Friday, SAJAer Rekha Basu, who is a columnist for the paper and attended the meeting, shared some of her reactions in a column for the Register:

John McCain is angry.

You can feel it in the clenched muscles in his throat, the narrowing of his eyes, the controlled tone with
which he handles a question he doesn’t like, as if struggling to contain something that might spill out. We’ve seen that body language on TV. But around a Des Moines Register table Tuesday, the anger and tension were palpable. And unsettling.

McCain’s volatility has been written and whispered about by staff and Senate colleagues: the mercurial temper, the quixotic outbursts of reproach, then jocularity. But those alleged episodes were behind the scenes. The combative, prickly McCain we saw was seeking the Register’s endorsement. He already got it in the caucuses.

He took frequent offense at questions, characterizing them as personal viewpoints of the questioners rather than legitimate topics. True, he was asked some tough, pointed questions about his running mate and his honesty. But America is having those discussions, and you’d expect he’d be ready, not defensive. It takes a thick skin to be president. [link]

The entire column is available here, and video of the entire interview (which runs just under an hour) is available here. Basu answered three quick questions about the McCain interview:

SAJAforum: Compared to what you describe in your column, what was McCain’s temperament like during his meeting with the Register‘s editorial board last fall, in advance of the caucuses?

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

A couple of weekends ago, Gov. Sarah Palin made headlines for her informal exchange, while ordering cheesesteaks in Philadelphia at Tony Luke’s, with a Temple University graduate student about Pakistan:

"How about the Pakistan situation?," asked [Michael] Rovito, who said he was not a Palin supporter. "What’s your thoughts about that?"

"In Pakistan?," she asked, looking surprised.

"What’s going on over there, like Waziristan?"

"It’s working with [Pakistani president] Zardari to make sure that
we’re all working together to stop the guys from coming in over the
border," she told him. "And we’ll go from there."

Rovito wasn’t finished. "Waziristan is blowing up!," he said.

"Yeah it is," Palin said, "and the economy there is blowing up too."

"So we do cross border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan you think?," Rovito asked.

"If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any
further in, absolutely, we should," Palin responded, before moving on
to greet other voters. [link]

The comment was interpreted by many to be closer to the position of Sen. Barack Obama than to that of Palin’s own running mate, Sen. John McCain, who just the previous evening had criticized Obama’s position on Pakistan during the first presidential debate. The next day, the McCain campaign retracted Palin’s comments, and in a joint interview of McCain and Palin by CBS’s Katie Couric the following Monday, McCain blamed the entire episode on what he referred to as "gotcha journalism."

Today, the Temple graduate student in question, Michael Rovito, has published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer about his exchange with Palin and the subject of "gotcha journalism":

No one was engaging the Alaska governor beyond small talk. Most of
the people in the crowd appeared starstruck, including some Obama
supporters we had spotted earlier.

I felt compelled to ask the governor about the U.S. incursions into
Pakistan that had been in the news recently. My parents urged me not
to, but I thought she might respond in this informal setting….

Continue reading at SAJAforum….