James Kim, R.I.P.

 

Being Nontraditional, Being Yourself

CNN just published an interesting article on DJ Rekha [asx movie], a South Asian who was recently nominated for Best DJ by New York Magazine. Her real name is Rekha Malhotra — but in the US she’s pretty much known as the Queen of Bhangra. I went to NYC a year ago and my uncle and I went to SOBs. It’s a jazz/hip hop/R&B club in the heart of NYC that hosts a wide variety of popular artists every night but is known for its Basement Bhangra party every first Thursday of the month. If you ever learn about the popularity of bhangra/fusion in the U.S., Basement Bhangra will always be mentioned — and DJ Rekha founded it. It’s pretty cool to see South Asians (or anyone for that matter) coming from a traditional culture and pushing their cultural boundaries to do new and influential things in a completely different environment.. but still keeping that traditional flavor (in the case of Rekha it’d be bhangra mixed with house/reggae/hip hop). I … probably couldn’t do anything like that as a software engineer, but in anything else.. well, that’s an inspiration.

 

654,965

“Our data, which estimate that 654,965 or 2.5 percent of the Iraqi population has died in this, the largest major international conflict of the 21st century, should be of grave concern to everyone.”

 

George Galloway DESTROYS Sky News Reporter

This clip has been blazing across the internet. It’s amazing because George is able to completely rebut every one of the reporter’s biased questions and statements. Most of us live in a world where the general public’s opinions and thoughts are completely influenced by the media. This clip shows just how scary that can be.

Edit — the last statement “Anna” makes is just completely stupid and shows the total bias that Sky News and other media organizations have toward this conflict. How dare she say Galloway is being offensive against Israeli families. Here are the numbers, Anna:

• 1,187 Lebanese civilians killed, ONE THIRD are children and babies
• 4,000 Lebanese civilians injured
• 1,000,000 Lebanese civilians homeless and displaced
• 75 Israelis killed

We should mourn the deaths of Israeli soldiers, but we should not forget about the thousands of Lebanese civilians killed.

 

The Death of the Internet…

Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted against an amendment that would make Net Neutrality forceable. Many people don't know what Net Neutrality is — yet in the future, it will affect us all. If we didn't have Net Neutrality, there would be lots.. and lots.. of problems. Imagine not being able to access your Yahoo mail account because it's infinitely slow. Or trying to access your Yahoo mail account, only being told that you can't – but you can access AT&T's special mail service. Net Neutrality is what keeps the internet running. It basically means that you can access the largest corporate website as easily as the smallest personal blog.

The nation's largest telecommunications companies — AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner — have banded together to decide which websites will load fast, slow, or not at all. "They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. They want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services, and streaming video — while slowing down or blocking their competitors." [Savetheinternet.com].

Google, Craigslist, eBay, Yahoo — all of these services would grind to a halt. Since they would have to pay these greedy telcos, it would be impossible to keep their sites running. As Craig from Craigslist explains it, this whole thing is ridiculously wrong. Imagine the sidewalk as the pipes and wires of the internet. According to the telecommunication companies, if you're walking down the sidewalk and having a conversation with someone, the sidewalk is going to get a cut of the value of your conversations.

This whole concept isn't fair. It's not right. Net Neutrality should exist to keep the internet running — the internet itself has been driven by innovation. The smallest mom-and-pop stores can put up websites and the biggest companies can roll out amazing new features, all for the public to use. Net neutrality is about the people. Anything else is for the profit of corporations.

In an effort to twist the public's view of what's best, the telcos have set up an incredibly stupid site called "Hands off the Internet" — itself, a fake grassroots site that isn't even set up by the public. The real site to go to, set up by the public, promoted by some of the greatest founders of the internet and the most notable people in science, entertainment, and politics, is Save the Internet.com. If you truly want to be able to use the internet as it is and be able to take advantage of the amazing technology that exists and will exist in the future, write to congress.

 

Freedom of Libel?

I don’t usually post about political topics, but I guess this can be an exception. If you haven’t heard about the blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, you’ve been living under a rock. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve read a fair amount of news stories and blogs regarding the cartoons. Many of them give a simple overview of the situation, and pose a seemingly mocking question: Why all this over a few cartoons?

The two sides of this story are extremely complex. I for one, do not side with violence. I do not agree with the 15 deaths that occurred recently, and I don’t believe that violence solves anything. To react in the manner that many people did is simply wrong. I definitely believe that the protesters are easily playing into the hands of those who side with the cartoons by promoting violence. They should instead demonstrate peacefully, and show the world that free speech includes respect and maturity. On the other hand, I don’t particularly side with Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published the cartoons. Let’s kinda simplify the situation a little.

1. Jyllands-Posten publishes 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. One of them depicts him with a bomb in his turban, obviously attempting to draw a scornful link with terrorism and the Muslim world.

2. Initial reactions are muted, but two weeks later, 3,500 people peacefully demonstrate in Copenhagen.

3. Jyllands-Posten republishes the cartoons, and three other cartoons emerge. One, in mind-numbing disrespect, shows the Prophet Muhammad with a pig’s nose.

4. You can read about what happens next in your newspaper.

The fact that a respected media source publishes something so blasphemous and disrespectful in the name of “free speech” is completely ridiculous. Imagine how you would feel if a respected newspaper publishes cartoons of your God or Gods seducing prostitutes, or fostering terrorism in the name of free speech (by the way, these are what the actual cartoons implied), and then RE-PUBLISHES them. Sure, you can say that these are just cartoons. So take a look at them before you pass judgment…

The Daily Tarheel recently printed their own cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, in pure tasteless fashion.
If you are a respected media source that serves the world, there are certain responsibilities you have to uphold. To tout free speech by insulting another religion is just simply wrong. Free speech is not just “free speech”, the phrase. It is a concept, an ideal extracted from the larger ideal of collaboration and unity — concepts that are quickly becoming increasingly important in the context of globalization. We are not simple machines that take in the phrase “free speech” and output everything and anything we want. We are humans who understand that free speech was created for the good of humanity — not just some tool that we can throw around.