Apr27 issue of the Economist: SV deportation; PH dictator; victim blaming; entrepreneurs again; and capitalist restoration

On Silicon Valley: Deportation Order and "Brain Circulation"

SILICON VALLEY, as the old joke goes, was built on ICs—Indians and Chinese that is, not integrated circuits. As of the last decennial census, in 2000, more than half of all the engineers in the valley were foreign-born, and about half of those were either Indian or Chinese—and since 2000 the ratio of Indians and Chinese is reckoned to have gone up steeply. Understandably, therefore Silicon Valley has strong views on America's visa regime.

The latest reminder of the power of the “quota raj”, as Indians like to call it, came on April 2nd, the day the Citizenship and Immigration Services began receiving applications from employers for this year's batch of H-1B visas, a special class of visa that allows highly qualified foreigners such as software programmers to work in America for up to six years.....

AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of “The New Argonauts”, a book on the subject, argues that the exact opposite is the case. It might be called brain circulation.

Immigrants, she maintains, tend not to leave a place altogether. They form networks that, in effect, make Silicon Valley the head office and their home countries the branch offices. That's what the Taiwanese and Israelis who came to Silicon Valley in the 1970s and 1980s did, and the Indians and Chinese followed the same pattern.

I'm not sure if "brain circulation" adequately describes highly trained and educated contract workers in the Silicon Valley and other U.S. areas. I suspect that only a very select of these contract workers (with H1-B visas or student visas if they are in graduate school) have sufficient resources to become transnational capitalist entrepreneurs. If they are already from elite and well-off families in India, China/Taiwan/Hong Kong, and other Third World areas, then maybe there educational training and transnational political-economic networks can make it possible for them to shuttle back and forth and circulate their "brain." More likely, U.S. homeland security will ask any H1-B visa workers in the U.S. who are not from elite families to leave once their visa expires, re-negotiate their labor (at a lower cost) back home, and find work again outside of their home country.

Also, the title of this article on "deportation" is misleading and hides from the reader the horrific experiences that many (both authorized and unauthorized) migrants who are not very rich face during detention, deportation, and inadmissibility activities. Further, the title conflates the terms "immigrants" with "contract migrants," ignoring the often miserable working conditions of both low wage and seemingly high paid contract workers in the U.S.

On The Philippines' elections: Celebrity big ballot and "An Elected Dictatorship"

This article makes several interesting observations:

VOTERS taking part in the Philippines' mid-term elections on May 14th will be put through an absurd ordeal. They must memorise the names of up to 18 candidates for various positions in national and local government and enter these by hand on a blank ballot-paper. What this means is that those with the best-known names, not necessarily the best policies, tend to win....

Mrs Arroyo's coalition, Team Unity, wants a strong mandate to unclog the corridors of power by changing the constitution to replace presidential rule with parliamentary government. But it has kept quiet about this issue, knowing that any talk of changing the constitution inevitably stokes public suspicion that it is some sort of plot to establish an elected dictatorship. Last December the threat of mass public protests forced Mrs Arroyo to drop an attempt to ram the charter-change through Congress.

We have to wait to see that extent to which the current dictator will use election fraud and violence to stay in power and the mass public protests will force the dictator out of office. And what does it really mean to say "elected dictatorship"? Dictators are not elected by the People; they sneak, cheat, and use corruption and violence to run the country.

On Another day, another $1.08 and Blaming the Victim Again

Why, for example, do more Ghanaian farmers not cultivate pineapples, which would fetch returns of 250-300% by some estimates? Why do so few farmers in western Kenya dress their fields with fertiliser, even after the benefits have been demonstrated to them?

“One senses a reluctance of poor people to commit themselves psychologically to a project of making more money,” the authors write. When you live on a dollar a day it may be painful to confront your circumstances too squarely, or even to aspire to better things. The “great redeeming feature of poverty,” George Orwell wrote after his excursions in the social gutters of Paris and London, is “the fact that it annihilates the future”.

Again and again, I ask why do academic economists in the Third World blame the Third World poor for creating their own conditions, their lack of psychological "aspiration," and the poor's seeming inability to strive for a better future under capitalism. I wonder why? Duh!

On Joseph Schumpeter and Entrepreneurs Again

Modern economic historians remind the business world of J. Schumpeter's teachings: that capitalism is great; that entrepreneurs as risk takers are the main engine of capitalist innovation; and that inequality and social problems are a small price to pay for material progress. I guest Schumpeter likes migrants with lots of money (such as those in Silicon Valley [see the first summary above]). Where did these entrepreneurs get the money in the first place? Was it theft? Someone forgot to read and learn from the "primitive accumulation" chapter written by another more famous economist and political thinker.

On the Death of Boris Yeltsin and Rebirth and Restoration of Russian Capitalism

Here is an interesting commentary on what jump-started capitalist restoration in Russia:

For millions of Russians, it seemed that Mr Yeltsin's liberalisation of prices in 1992—not the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union—had plunged them into poverty. He refused to back off. Unlike Mr Gorbachev, he did not want to reform the communist system. He wanted to break its neck. His mass privatisation, which destroyed the basis of the regime, created robber barons too, and a communist backlash was never far away. In 1993 armed communists and fascists tried to overthrow Mr Yeltsin's government; he shelled the hostile parliament. In 1996 communists almost won the presidential elections; by twisting the rules, he saved himself and his country.

Yeltsin seems to be just continuing the restoration policies and reform programs set into motion by Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Grobachev.

Fil-Am lawyer wants individual counsels for NY trial of Pinay nurses

Article posted April 06, 2007 - 11:44 AM
http://www.gmanews.tv/print/37242

The Filipino-American lawyer defending the 10 Filipino nurses on trial in New York for conspiracy and child abandonment wants the Philippine government to provide his clients with individual lawyers.

In a press statement sent to GMANews.TV, Salvador Tuy accused the government of abandoning the plight of the distressed Filipino nurses, including medical doctor Elmer Jacinto who left the Philippines to work as a nurse in New York, who walked out of a home care facility for disabled children in April last year.

They were accused of conspiracy and for endangering the lives of their patients when they walked out allegedly without proper notice. The nurse complained that SentosaCare that recruited them to New York failed to comply with the terms of their contract, a matter they supposedly brought to the attention of the concerned authorities.

Salvador Tuy represented the nurses when they were arraigned last month before Judge Robert Doyle of the Riverhead Country Criminal Court. The nurses and their lawyer Felix Vinluan pleaded 'not guilty' to the charges filed against them.

Tuy said the Philippine Consulate General in New York City only promised to secure funding for the defense of the nurses, but not to provide individual counsels at the government's expense.

Tuy accused the Philippine government of taking the side of the nurses' recruiter purportedly because of its close association with a former official of Malacanang.

Tuy also wanted the government to suspend Sentosa's license to recruit while the country and thousands of Filipina nurses are awaiting the outcome of the case in New York where contract violations were allegedly committed against 55 Filipina nurses who were recruited to work in the USA .

"This is to protect more Filipinas from suffering the same fate as those now in the USA and facing trial just because they had the guts and temerity to file administrative charges against Sentosa," Tuy stated.

On April 6, 2006, lawyer Felix Vinluan filed discrimination charges on behalf of 28 Filipino nurses and physical therapist against several New York-based nursing home facilities affiliated with Sentosa Recruitment Agency.

Sentosa Recruitment Agency supposedly recruited the 28 Filipino healthcare workers and had them sponsored as immigrant workers by its NY-based nursing home affiliated facilities.

The nurses signed individual employment contracts with their respective nursing home-petitioners. Upon their arrival in the United States, most of them were not given immediate employment.

Some were initially made to work as clerks with much lesser salaries. Most of them were assigned at facilities different from the nursing home facilities that sponsored them.

Their working hours were reduced from 37.5 hours a week to 35 hours a week. And all of them, without exception, were not made direct-hire employees of their respective petitioning employers. Instead, they were made agency employees of Sentosa Services/Prompt Nursing Employment Agency, a non-entity to their employment contracts.

The nurses received their salaries and employment benefits from Sentosa Services/Prompt Nursing Employment Agency.

The nurses claimed that had they been directly employed, they would have been directly-hired employees of their respective petitioning employers and would have received the salary rates and benefits being received by regular employees of their petitioning employers.

Islamic street preachers

From Boston to Lahore and beyond, the tentacles of taqwacore - aka Islamic punk rock - are spreading. And it's giving disenfranchised young Muslims a voice, says Riazat Butt

Riazat Butt
Saturday April 28, 2007, Guardian (UK)
http://music.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329793613-122428,00.html

There can't be that many female playwrights who are deaf, punk and Muslim, so Sabina England is something of a find. With a lurid Mohawk and leather jacket slathered with slogans, she looks every inch the rebel and has an attitude to match.
Sabina, who says she lives in the "shitty midwest of the United States" or the "HELL-HOLE OF BOREDOM AND YUPPIES", is part of a subculture that, until a few years ago, existed only on paper.

The Taqwacores - a novel about a fictitious Muslim punk scene in the US - has spawned an actual movement that is being driven forward by young Muslims worldwide. Some bands - such as the Kominas - have a cult following. Others, such as Sabina, are virtually unknown. In a brief email exchange, she lays out some harsh truths.

You're a playwright. What do you write about?

"I write plays about fucked up people in fucked up situations, because we're all fucked up human beings that live in a fucked up society. People need to quit whining and shut up and realise that we're all freaks, whether we admit it or not."

Where are your ideas from?

"Being a deaf woman from an Indian Muslim family growing up in both England and the US, I've never felt I fit in or belonged anywhere. So I was always forced to be an outsider, and because of this, I'd just watch people and observe their actions and words. I guess a lot of my ideas come from my alienation and anger."

How well known is the taqwacore phenomenon where you are?

"Muslims around here would rather act like a model minority and don't really want to rattle anybody's chain. I really want to move to New York City, if I can get my plays produced there. Unfortunately it seems many theatre companies are too scared to do my works, or think I only cater to Indians and Pakistanis and won't attract white people. But they're fucking wrong, and they can't see beyond racial boundaries. Fucking worthless piece of shites."

What does taqwacore mean to you?

"It means being true to myself, having my own faith, and interpreting Islam the way I want to, without feeling guilty or being looked down at by other Muslims."

What is the future for taqwacore?

"It's gonna get bigger. A lot of Muslim kids are tired of being told what to do, how to think, what to believe in, and how to act, by their parents. There are 'the angry muslim kids' who wanna grow beards and pray five times a day, and then there are the OTHER 'angry Muslim kids' who wanna get drunk and say a huge big 'fuck you' to the Muslim population. Or maybe they just don't care and wanna sit at home and not think about Osama's video speeches about how America is the Great Satan."

How her words would fare with Michael Muhammad Knight, author of The Taqwacores and an unwitting idol to the young and restless, is anyone's guess. Knight, who is 29 and lives in New York with his dog Sunny - "not as in Sunni Muslim" - downplays his achievement of single-handedly inspiring this subculture that has produced artists such as the Kominas, Secret Trial Five, Vote Hezbollah, Al-Thawra, 8-Bit and Diacritical.

"There was a scene already," says Knight modestly, whose next novel will be titled Osama Van Halen. "I just gave it a name. There were kids out there, doing their thing. I don't think of it as a movement, though, just a group of friends supporting each other."

Knight wrote the book to deal with his own issues. He converted to Islam as a teenager and admits he "burned out" from being so religious. "I was so intense. I felt Islam was so black and white and there were no grey areas. These Muslim kids, who are punks, they are in these grey areas."

The kids he refers to have all devoured Knight's work, some taking it literally.

"One kid," he says, "thought the book was non-fiction and thought that stuff in the book actually happened. He got in touch. He said if it wasn't real, that he would make it real." He sounds worried by the suggestion that his book will be a manifesto for Muslim punks. "If the scene develops, I don't want it to be based on my book."

The words stable, door, horse and bolt spring to mind. Some Muslims are deeming his book to be nothing short of a revelation. "When I read The Taqwacores," says Basim Usmani, frontman of The Kominas, "all my reservations about Islam melted away."

Usmani was born in New York and moved around the US when he was growing up. "I had this identity that stretched way further back than these disenfranchised white kids I was hanging out with, but they were the ones who showed me the most respect. I entered America where I was weird and, when I went back to Pakistan, I was weird there too. I was too Pakistani to be American and too American to be Pakistani."

His aggression was ongoing, although he freely admits his rage didn't come from social dynamics. "In Boston I was middle class. In Pakistan, where I am now, I am definitely upper class. But the poverty here is intense and that makes me angry."

Basim first played with Boston-based outfit Malice In Leatherland, supporting horror punk band the Misfits. It was during this time that he heard about Knight's book.

"I read the book and I'm amazed. I send him an email and he called. I saw a lot of myself in it. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a story." Neither he nor his taqwacore comrades confess to embracing the more debauched antics of the novel - which has one character urinating over the Qur'an and then reading from it and a female Muslim veil-wearing punk, performing oral sex, onstage, in front of 200 people.

Understandably, Usmani was nervous approaching Shahjehan Khan, also in the Kominas, about the book. "I didn't know how he would react, he's not punk, but he was cool about it. He read it in one day. You could say it was a catalyst for the Kominas." Their songs are irreverent and un-PC. His favourite track, he says with a snigger, is "I Want A Handjob" - a jibe at Pakistani rockers Junoon (who launched a Muslims For Bush campaign for the 2004 elections).

Usmani left the US just as the Kominas were breaking through into mainstream culture. But he has a new band - the Dead Bhuttos, a variation on the Dead Kennedys (who released their first single through the independent record label Alternative Tentacles, the very label that picked up Knight's book for distribution).

A future project, hopes Usmani, will be a Punjabi version of the Billy Bragg song There Is Power In A Union. "I'd like it to be a song for the Pakistani workers 'cos they don't really have one," he muses.

The Kominas, currently on a gigging hiatus, will tour later this year in North America. "It seems weird to leave just when we were on the brink. If I'd stayed then I would have been playing to sympathetic white liberals. I didn't want that. In Pakistan, people want to rebel against the police and religious authority and punk is the perfect way to do that."

He's put a downpayment on a bus and decorated it with the shahadah [the Muslim declaration in the oneness of God]. "I have no idea how we're going to get it through customs."

Meanwhile, Khan is in Boston mixing the Kominas debut album: "We've put some EPs out but this is our first official release. There will be remixes of our old stuff like Suicide Bomb The Gap."

Khan says he looks like a typical engineer - with glasses and a goatee - and comes from a comfortable, middle-class background. But he appreciates what taqwacore has done for him. "I was like, where has this book been all my life? None of us know where taqwacore is going or what's going to happen. It is a subculture that could influence culture in general. It's nice to be part of something at the beginning."

One of the newest recruits to the taqwacore scene is Secret Trial Five, from Vancouver. Lead vocalist Sena Hussain, 25, took her inspiration directly from the Kominas. "We saw them play and we were all into punk music anyway. We haven't had a chance to rattle some cages, we only got together last summer, but I expect we will. That's the point of punk."

Proposed title tracks include Hey, Hey, Guantanamo Bay and Emo-hurram, a pun on the first month of the Islamic calendar. And, in a male-dominated culture, she thinks they will face challenges from all sides. "It's another thing that drives us," she says, "Muslim women are seen as helpless and oppressed. We want to prove that wrong. I used to sport a mohawk, I don't now, but we will totally play up the punk thing.

"There's so much animosity towards Muslims and we need a dissenting voice to say 'fuck you' to people who pigeonhole us." Hussain, who is looking for a new guitarist, adds: "It's only fitting that we identify ourselves as taqwacore, that's where we got our inspiration from, and I think that's the way the genre will grow - and I hope it does."

- Riazat Butt presents Islamophonic, www.guardian.co.uk/islamophonic