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Fluent English – Racism in Mainstream Reporting

Byoliveridley

From Canada’s paper of record…

Speaking fluent English, he described the gruelling 42-day high-seas journey and talked of the deteriorating living conditions in his homeland. He also described his dismay at arriving in Canada only to be branded a potential terrorist and jailed for nearly three months.

Ah, the old “compliment”, “you speak such good English”, code for “I am so culturally and racially ignorant that the act of any non-white non Anglo-Saxon speaking English surprises and amazes me, and I am clueless enough to think of this statement as a compliment”. If the statement is made by a lay-person, I view it as an opportunity to educate. This represents the culmination of a long journey growing up in privileged middle class India and slowly accepting myself as a person of colour (different and yet to be written blog post). But, for a reporter specifically assigned to write about immigration and refugee claims, this is inexcusable, especially because the language of his testimony has no relevance to his story. It’s almost as if the reporter thinks that this person would be more deserving of Canadian sympathy if she lets us know that he speaks “fluent English” just like us!

The rest of the story is not too bad, it uses neutral language to chronicle the story of a heroic person’s struggle to first help the people around him, then finally make a risky journey across the world in search of a better life.

But wait, there’s more! The headline writer seems to have his or her own agenda as well (not captured in the website article, but see the Page One headline (captured on cellphone camera!):

Not bad, ” Tamil Migrant Sought Relief from Homeland Threats” – neutral, descriptive and to the point.

Now see the headline for the continuation:

Wow, “Militant Claims No Ties to Tamil Tigers”. Hello, what happened? When did migrant become militant, when did his statement become a “claim”, and what relevance do the Tamil Tigers have to this man’s refugee status? Is every Tamil a Tiger? (true story, playing pickup at the gym the other day, this guy asked me what my ethnicity was, then called me a Tiger, then got very defensive when I yelled at him!).

A writer’s bias becomes very evident in the choice of words used to frame statements. I always look for “said”, “asserted”, “claimed” as short forms for “we are reporting this statement, but here’s what we really think”.

This is not the first time headlines have made me scratch my head. This happens especially often in the world of science, as this blog post very ably documents. I once got into a brief email discussion with a reporter at the Raleigh News and Observer who was writing articles about undocumented workers. She would use “undocumented immigrant” (Good), “illegal immigrant” (Bad) and occasionally, “illegal alien” (Alien??) interchangeably. However, the headline would always contain the very pejorative one word “Illegals”. I asked her about it and her one line dismissal was that “she did not write the headlines”, which is a nice and casual shirking of responsibility! Since most people only see headlines anyway, the words stick. So, Tamil = Tiger, immigrant = illegal, etc.

It made me a little sad to see the story of good things (he survived and will have his refugee claim heard) happening to a good man reduced to a disgusting innuendo filled headline. For more on the Tamil refugee story, see this article. The Canadian government is using secret evidence to decide who gets to go free and who is detained. While some of the people on board this ship could possibly be linked to violence, secret trials and innuendo do not help anyone involved. The Canadian government should know this, given that its dealings with immigrants using the security certificate program have been criticized before. I understand and fully sympathize with the Canadian government’s position that this is a complex situation and each person needs to be dealt with carefully on a case by case basis, but secrecy is not necessary here.

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    Sri Lankan Government registers all Tamils

    Byoliveridley

    The Americans put all citizens of Japanese origin into camps for the duration of the World War. Did you know that?’She did not say anything.‘What if we place all Tamil citizens in camps for a period of one year,’ I asked. ‘We’d use that year to flush out and kill all the rebels hiding in the Wanni. You can’t blow up our cities when your bombers are not allowed free access to economic and civilian targets, pretending to be innocents.’‘That idea is barbaric. It is only a short step from there to the gas chambers,’ she said furiously and then brightened. ‘But I like the idea. When you start on it, the whole world will condemn you…. It will help our cause in other ways as well. We’ll have plenty of new recruits and funding from our expatriate community will increase immediately.’‘Oh, I understand that the idea is impractical but we don’t have many options.’”So goes the dialogue between Captain Wasantha Ratnayaka, the Sinhalese officer in the Sri Lanka Army, and Kamala Velaithan, a female cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who pretends to be an informer of the diabolical plans of the Tigers, in the much-acclaimed novel of the late Nihal de Silva titled The Road from Elephant Pass.On September 21, the Sri Lankan government almost made real this surreal scenario with its diktat that all citizens from the five districts of the LTTE-dominated North who have been living in and around Colombo (Western Province) for the past five years “re-register” themselves with the police.The professed logic of the government, or to be precise the Defence Ministry, was almost on the lines narrated by Captain Ratnayaka in the novel but with a twist. While the officer-character portrayed in the novel concurs with the illogic of its logic, the collective wisdom of the Sri Lankan establishment did not betray signs of any such reasoning. Even assuming it did, the drumbeats of war have numbed its senses to such an extent that Colombo has stopped bothering about the repercussions of its actions.The latest move by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime is astonishing to say the least as just over a year ago the government was condemned from within and without for a similar action. Besides, it comes at a juncture when the armed forces have driven the LTTE into wilderness in its own heartland and the entire world is lined up behind the government in its war.

    Profiling problem

    More on the Sri Lankan government’s astonishingly appalling treatment of Tamils. Clearly, they do not view Tamils as equal citizens of Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese state bears equal responsibility for Sri Lanka’s problems. I do not know what this sudden increase in pressure from India will do. There is some indication that the Sri Lankan government is paying attention.

    A day after India officially communicated to Colombo the need for a peacefully negotiated political settlement to the Tamil issue in Sri Lanka, President Mahinda Rajapaksa telephoned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday to give an assurance that all necessary measures were being taken to ensure the safety and welfare of Tamils in the island nation.

    Very empty and meaningless words. My question is, who will speak for the Tamils in a negotiated settlement. Are there any credible voices for peace on either side of the conflict?

  • The NYTimes Covers Cricket!

    Byoliveridley

    A Battle of National Pride, Fought on the Cricket Field – New York Times

    On Sunday, an umpire presiding at a high-profile game between England and Pakistan ruled that in his belief, Pakistani players had been tampering with the ball, and he told Pakistani players of his suspicion, awarding England five bonus runs, or points. Cricketers consider ball tampering to be one of the most heinous forms of cheating. By way of protest, the Pakistanis refused to leave their dressing room after a scheduled break for tea. The umpire, Darrell Hair of Australia, a person known for contentious rulings against some Asian teams, then removed the bails — little wooden bits that fit horizontally across the top of the larger wooden stakes called stumps — denoting that Pakistan had forfeited the game. The Pakistani team, nonetheless, walked back onto the field. But by that time the umpires had walked off, having ruled that Pakistan’s no-show constituted a terminal offense. Game to England — the first time in 129 years of so-called Test matches between national teams that a game had been forfeited in this way.

    Oh well, to explain this to someone who does not watch cricket requires a long dissertation on swing and “reverse swing” (check out this video from the Beeb, this page and wikipedia). When the ball is “new” and shiny, the ball moves laterally in the air a certain way, thanks mostly to the bowler’s skillful application of the physics of air flow around a spherical object (and spit). He keeps one side shinier than the other so that the air resistance around the rough side pushes the ball in the direction of the “rough” side. The angle of the “seam”, or the ball’s stitching also helps maintain the difference in flow velocity. Weather conditions also play a big part, it tends to swing more when it is a little cold and humid. When the ball gets older (cricket uses the same ball till it gets too worn out), the “rough” side is now so rough that the airflow around this side now has less resistance, and the ball “reverses” its swing.

    So what does all this have to do with what happened on the field? Well, you’re allowed to keep one side smooth with spit and polish (well, mostly spit, because polish is not allowed!). But, you’re not allowed to artificially roughen the other side to make the ball reverse swing quicker than it normally would. The Pakistan team pretty much perfected reverse swing, and have been caught tampering before. Hair looked at the ball, decided unilaterally that the ball had been tampered with, penalized the team and expected the Pakistan team to just accept his decision and play.

    This particular umpire has a long history of controversy with Asian teams, I remember his first game very well, it was a test match in 1992 between Australia and India where his decisions pretty much pushed the game in Australia’s favor (this was before “neutral” or other country umpires). I was pissed off then, and his decision making has always been suspicious. He has called a Sri Lankan bowler for “throwing” when he wasn’t supposed to. I hope he never officiates another test match involving India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka ever again, his judgment is to be considered suspect!

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    Pakistan's Self Interest

    Byoliveridley

    Excellent article on the dynamics of Pakistan and the Taliban (H/T to 3QD)

    Scapegoating Pakistan (Harpers.org)

    Other countries, as former senior CIA official Michael Scheuer reminded me, do not look at the world from the same point of view as the United States. “The first duty of any intelligence agency,” he said, “is to protect the national interest. Pakistan is not going to destroy the Taliban because at some point they would like to see the Taliban back in power. They cannot tolerate a pro-Indian, pro-American, pro-Russian, pro-Iranian government in Afghanistan. They already have an unstable Western border and have to worry about a country of one million Hindus that has nuclear bombs.”

    That’s 1 billion Hindus, kind sir, not 1 million, there are one million Hindus in South Chennai alone, I would guess, your point is well taken, though. Self-interest ought to be the driving force of any country’s foreign policy. But this article oversimplifies the situation. Not all self-interest needs to be couched in, and carried out in purely adversarial terms. It has been in the self-interest of the military ruling class of Pakistan to carry out this hyper militarized foreign policy. It aids and abets the survival of this ruling class. But is it really in the long term self interest of the rest of Pakistan? Being Indian, I might tend to underestimate and undersell the threat that India is to Pakistan, but I don’t see the threat. Yes, India is a large country with hegemonical ambitions of being the local bully, but its threat to Pakistan is overrated. India has huge problems of its own anyway, and is probably not interested in territorial expansion at this point in time! I am guessing that a Pakistan that is a little more accommodating to its neighbors would find its neighbors a little more cooperative, no?

    How does this play out in the real world? Very simply, Pakistan cooperates with the United States when it serves its interests and doesn’t cooperate when it feels that its interests aren’t served.

    Well, I am completely and utterly on board with that. Pakistan should pay much more attention to its neighbors than to the “leader of the free world” thousands of miles away.

    The Pakistan-Afghan border, aka the Durand line, was drawn by some Brit administrator and in a region with thousands of years of history, artificial borders drawn by foreigners means little to the people who live there. Most identities are tribal, and these stupid colonial lines don’t mean that one person living one mile east of the border will think “Pakistani” and the other, one mile west of the border, “Afghani”.

    We’re unfortunately still suffering the consequences of colonial manipulations and divisions, and will continue to do so until regional borders reflect ethic identity more accurately, and are not a function of some ignorant British moron governor’s cartographic skills.

    Rant over, nothing like an ethnic conflict in my neck of the woods to bring out the stream of consciousness rambling. Back to more science based blogging later!

  • Hyderabad: Police Firing Kills 5

    Byoliveridley

    It turns out that a third of the people killed in Hyderabad were killed by police firing on a “mob” after the event. Lots of blame to go around here. Is there any point in organizing a violent instant mass protest against a terrorist attack? Do you think the police will just let you riot? And the police, why would you use real bullets? The police are claiming that the mob was trying to attack a petrol pump (gas station), as always, I don’t trust anything anyone says in the immediate aftermath.

    Meanwhile, the fingers quickly point to various Islamic terrorist outfits. It is the usual formula to blame a Jihadic islamic terrorist organization for every terrorist blast in India. Unfortunately, police work after events like these is still shoddy and it is never clear what actually happened, what lessons can be learned, or if anyone responsible is actually tried and convicted.

    BTW, just read the comments that accompany this following story to see how nasty communal sentiments still are. The Hindus on the comments accuse the Muslims of planting the bombs, and vice versa. Hyderabad is a city of 6 million people, 40% Muslim and home to a booming tech industry. If you’re a terrorist wanting to start something, it’s a perfect little cauldron.

    NDTV.com: Harkat-ul-Jihad likely behind blast: Police

    On Friday, Hyderabad was struck by a double tragedy. It has now emerged that some of the people who were killed, died in the police firing after the blast. A bandh has been called in Hyderabad and Secunderabad on Wednesday. The strike is in protest against the police firing that followed the blast. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S R Reddy has, in a statement, apologised for the police firing. He said a CBI inquiry will be ordered into the incident if it is required. Hours after the terror attack, it came to light that some of those killed in the Mecca Masjid died in the police firing. A powerful bomb exploded during the busy Friday afternoon prayers that close to 10,000 people were attending. Just after the blast there was utter chaos. Mobs went on a rampage outside the Masjid and the police resorted to lathicharge and firing in the air. As the dead and injured were being accounted for, it was found that some had bullet wounds. Reports suggest at least five of the dead had these wounds. However, the Chief Minister said that only two to three people may have died in police firing.

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    Senate 1, Plutocrats 2

    Byoliveridley

    It was a close game. But in the end, the plutocrats prevailed on energy legislation. Yes, fuel economy will go up some, but the push towards renewable energy will have to wait. Even on fuel economy standards, the requirement to incrementally increase standards every year after  getting to 35 mpg by 2020 was dropped.

    Well, given the notoriously undemocratic nature of the US senate, progress will be slow.
    Senate Adopts an Energy Bill Raising Mileage for Cars – New York Times

    The Senate passed a broad energy bill late Thursday that would, among other things, require the first big increase in fuel mileage requirements for passenger cars in more than two decades. The vote, 65 to 27, was a major defeat for car manufacturers, which had fought for a much smaller increase in fuel economy standards and is expected to keep fighting as the House takes up the issue. But Senate Democrats also fell short of their own goals. In a victory for the oil industry, Republican lawmakers successfully blocked a crucial component of the Democratic plan that would have raised taxes on oil companies by about $32 billion and used the money on tax breaks for wind power, solar power, ethanol and other renewable fuels. Republicans also blocked a provision of the legislation that would have required electric utilities to greatly increase the share of power they get from renewable sources of energy. As a result, Senate Democrats had to settle for a bill that calls for a vast expansion of renewable fuels over the next decade — to 36 billion gallons a year of alternatives to gasoline — but does little to actually promote those fuels through tax breaks or other subsidies. The combination of breakthroughs and setbacks highlighted the blocking power of the entrenched industry groups, from oil companies and electric utilities to car manufacturers, that had blanketed Congress in recent days to defend their interests.

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  • Canadian Federal Government GHG Mitigation – FAIL

    Byoliveridley

    Two central programs that the Conservative government has claimed will result in significant reductions in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are nearly impossible to verify, the federal environment commissioner says.

    A tax credit intended to encourage public transit use, part of the maiden Tory budget in 2006, will “lead to negligible reductions” in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions and the tools to measure its impact don't yet exist, Scott Vaughn's audit of the government's tools for cutting air emissions found.

    And impressive claims that a $1.5-billion climate change trust fund would lead to an 80-megatonne cut in emissions by giving provinces money to go green appears to be based more on a best-case scenario that may be flawed, the audit found.

    Not that the Conservative government is serious about its climate change mitigation strategies. Their programs were easily tagged as worse than useless. A transit tax credit is useless without increasing transit options, discouraging urban sprawl and increasing automobile fuel efficiency. I like the fact that I can get $10 off a monthly bus pass with this program, but in the end, most people will pay 10 bucks a month if it means getting to work in half an hour, instead of an hour and 15 minutes. When you use exclusively tax based solutions, everyone optimizes their short term gains and nothing happens in the long term.

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