Outsourced

Usually I would not waste my readers' time writing about a TV "comedy" show, but since this we were told that this one has a "real Sikh" in it, I thought perhaps it might be worth at least checking out.  OK, there is a "real Sikh."  At least he looks like a Sikh.   Here is a little quiz.  I took a few screenshots of this "comedy."  In each of the pictures below, is The Sikh.  Find him, if you can!  Some are very easy; some are more difficult.  Answers below.  (Yes, I know the pictures extend into the sidebar, but there was no other way to get the pictures big enough to actually see him.  I promise, he's still visible in each picture.)

 


I rarely watch TV comedies because I find them a bit depressing.  My expectations of this show were very low; the show itself was worse.  Just to focus on the Sikh character.  He made a few minor appearances, spoke no lines and each time was glowering, glaring, angry, a bit scary, even to me.  Even the "Kiss me, I'm Irish"t-shirt didn't help.  Of course, he had some cause;  the lead character joshing about his turban isn't a very good start.  I recommend that all Khaliblog readers watch this show once just to see how drearily dismal this thing is..  I have read an on line review of this show, which I am in complete agreement with, although the author might have used less profane language.  The Eight Most Racist Jokes from the Outsourced  Pilot.  Pity me.  To get these screenshots I had to watch the whole dreary thing very closely.  Finding Mr. Singh wasn't always easy.


I would call this show a real dog, except I see no reason to insult our canine friends and companions.  It bears no resemblance to any animal.  It is simply gross, insulting and stupid.
If you'd like to waste a half hour while being insulted, the episode can be seen at   http://www.nbc.com/outsourced/video/pilot/1251026 at least in the USA.  On second thought, you'd be better off doing some naam-jap, though.

Here's the answer sheet.

Kiss me I'm Irish?

What on earth was SALDEF - a great organisation - thinking when they gave the OK to this drivel?

CBC And Air India Flight 182 - the Documentary

From: The Link

Air India Documentary Is Same Old, Same Old!

Air India 182 offers no new insight into the tragedy, which continue to divide critical opinion as what and who really was behind it. However, writer-director Sturla Gunnarson deserves credit for his disciplined and reasoned approach to steers clear of the one-sided agenda of Vancouver Sun’s Kim Bolan, who is listed as a consultant for the film.

By R. Paul Dhillon

SURREY – The upcoming CBC documentary “Air India 182” offers no new insight into Canada’s worst ever aviation tragedy despite a valiant effort by renowned Canadian filmmaker Sturla Gunnarsson to faithfully recount the story up until the conclusion of the court case that acquitted accused Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri.

The LINK got an exclusive preview of the 90-minute feature length documentary that uses archival footage and dramatized sequences featuring passengers but more controversially having actors play the actual Air India players like Talwinder Singh Parmar (played by Baljinder Singh), Hardyal Singh Johal (played by Sarabjeet Singh) and Inderjit Singh Reyat (played by Gurpreet Singh Chana).

Gunnarson, who says he grew up in Vancouver being aware of the horrendous effects the killings of 329 people had on the families, does an effective job in telling the story from the families perspective, giving a real sense of massive loss of life from the senseless downing of flight 182.

However, he basically rehashes information from the Air India court case and other questionable “CSIS intelligence” that presents the case that has now been taken as a bible by Canadian mainstream media’s propaganda that it was a conspiracy by Sikh militants who carried out the bombing despite the fact that other than the so-called “bomb-maker” Reyat, there has not been a single conviction in the case.

The documentary gives a distorted view that the conspiracy was hatched by these so-called Sikh militants to get back at the Indian government’s attack on the Golden Temple without delving into the Indian agents’ (RAW) role in the conspiracy or even their attempts to fuel tensions in the Sikh community during the turbulent period of 1984.

Asked to explain this and many omissions of numerous plots and conspiracies that led to the tragedy and Gunnarson is forced to time and fall back on the same defence - that the film is basically taken from the Malik-Bagri case and other intelligence sources.

“These conspiracy theories – it’s just nonsense,” Gunnarson told the LINK.

“I have grown up in the Sikh community and they are a very vibrant people but that does not mean that there aren’t bad Sikhs. It is quite possible to have Sikh villains,” says Gunnarson, who is married to a BC Sikh woman and says he handled the story with the utter sensitivity towards the Sikh community.

But after repeated questioning from this reporter - that why were specifically things that point to the Indian government’s role as well as other doubts as to whether this was a larger conspiracy rather than the work of these “buffoonish” group of Sikh militants who weren’t even sure whether the bags would even get on the plane and it was a sad, criminally insane series of events, not of the so-called bombers’ doing, that led the bombs to get on to those planes – Gunnarson is forced to admit that fact there is nothing new in the story and either you take the police and court’s view of things or you don’t!

“There is nothing new in the film as it is not intended as a investigative film but more as a record of an important part of our modern history in Canada,” he says. “I would be happy if the film brings about a discussion among Sikhs and Canadians and a healing between the two communities to move forward.”

Parmar, who was a central figure in the Air India case and was tried a number of times unsuccessfully in Canadian courts on various charges, has now been permanently labeled as the “mastermind” behind the conspiracy thanks in much part to the propaganda in the mainstream press, especially the lengthy one-sided writings of the Vancouver Sun’s agenda-based reporter Kim Bolan, who is listed a consultant on the documentary.

It should be pointed out that Gunnarson, who deserves credit for his disciplined and reasoned approach, steers clear of much of Bolan’s well known bias in the case and sticks largely to the facts.

Parmar, who gave his life to his militant cause for a Sikh homeland, was a complicated figure who didn’t intimidate easily. Court records, police interviews and media scrums show him to be very committed revolutionary but who time and again denied that he had anything to do with the Air India bombing. He has also been pointed as a double agent who certainly had an Indian agent (Mr. X who has never been identified) with him when he traveled to Duncan to meet Reyat during that whole “blast” in the woods incident that Canadian police never went to check on until the plane went down.

Parmar was tortured by the Indian government and killed in their usual in-custody killings of political prisoners. Why didn’t the Indian government charge and try him for the Air India bombing as it was their plane and many of their citizens and countrymen who died in it.

And now he has been declared a mastermind of the conspiracy in Canada without the opportunity to defend himself as Canadian authorities don’t even know who delivered the homemade bombs. Other than Reyat purchasing some parts that could be used to make a detonating device (Reyat in his plea bargain with the Crown maintained as such that he gathered the parts but neither made the bombs or knows anyone else who made the bombs) there is absolutely no physical evidence to connect the various players to the crime.

The documentary, aside from making an apology for the police’s incompetence by saying they didn’t have the resources and didn’t know what they were doing, also omits things like what was the role of Surjan Gill, a self-appointed President of Khalistan but more importantly an alleged CSIS mole who would be the best person to help convict the so-called people involved in the conspiracy because he knew everything that was going on from the inside. Why was he shipped off shore to England before the Air India trial began? The documentary features turncoat MP Ujjal Dosanjh but fails to point out that he was also Surjan Gill’s lawyer. While it goes into death threats to Rajiv Gandhi during his visit to North America and his mother’s assassination but conveniently leaves out the thousands of Sikhs slaughtered by Gandhi’s Congress hooligans with the help of the police.

These omissions alone make it somewhat of a one-sided view of things that the film takes and therefore it opens itself up to criticism.

There are a lot of recordings by police where the subjects saying stuff in Punjabi that can be construed as they are carrying out a conspiracy but you would need to suspend disbelief and also would have to believe that they were trained by the CIA’s foreign insurgency unit. There were also erasure of many recordings and due to many such facts of police incompetence or interference – the resoluteness with which the documentary tries to tell the story of the bombings as absolute remains questionable at best!

Air India 182, which airs on the anniversary of the flight's departure, 23 years ago, and on the eve of Canada’s National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism, will be telecast commercial-free on CBC Television, Sunday, June 22, at 8 p.m.


16 Jun 2008 by editor



All Rights Reserved by The South Asian Link.

A Dream In Doubt to air

FYI

Press Release From SALDEF



Sikh American Documentary to be Screened Across Country

A Dream in Doubt to make national TV premiere on PBS in May



Washington D.C. – March 27, 2008: The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF), the nation’s oldest Sikh American civil rights and advocacy organization, in partnership with ITVS, The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and The Interfaith Alliance is proud to be a co-sponsor of the cross-country and national television screening of the critically acclaimed documentary, A Dream in Doubt.

The film, directed by Tami Yeager and produced by former SALDEF National Director Preetmohan Singh, will be screened across the country over April and May.

Find a local screening in your area

A Dream in Doubt is an immigrant story in a world in which patriotism has morphed into murder. When Rana Singh Sodhi’s brother, Balbir Singh Sodhi, is killed in America’s first post-9/11 revenge murder, he begins a journey to reclaim his American dream and fight the hate that continues to threaten his community. This intimate, hour-long documentary of one man’s odyssey from persecution in India to embracing America as his homeland proves that courage and hope have the power to overcome hate.

Additionally, the film will be screened nationally on May 20, 2008 on PBS. Click here to learn more about the May 20, 2008 screening

A Dream in Doubt not only examines the daily horrors that Rana and the Sikh community experienced as misunderstood Americans after the attacks of 9/11, but shows his personal experience with tragedy and his perseverance to obtain the American dream. Among the incidents that the Sodhi family went through after the death of Balibir Singh Sodhi were:

In August 2002, Sukhpal Singh Sodhi, Rana’s next-oldest brother, was murdered in mysterious circumstances while driving a cab in San Francisco.
Nine months later in May 2003, Rana’s friend, Avtar Chiera, was shot twice by three men who yelled, “Go back to where you came from!”

Three weeks after Avtar’s shooting, another friend, Inderjit Singh was physically assaulted and threatened with death while working at a convenience store.
Finally on September 23, 2003, Sukhvir Singh, was found dead behind the counter of a convenience store in Tempe, Arizona, of a stab wound to the head.

In the face of such tragedy, Rana exclaims: “This is America! This can’t be. We will not tolerate it.” The film follows Rana and his family as they seek vindication for his brothers’ murders by working to educate fellow Phoenix-area residents about hate crimes; acting as the spokesman for his family and the Sikh community; running his gas station to support his family; and, most importantly, attempting to guard his own school-aged children—Rose, Satpreet and Navdeep—from bullying and harassment.

Rana endures these injustices through a steadfast belief in the Sikh and American values of freedom, self-reliance, and equality. But, with each new incident, Rana’s wounds are reopened and he is forced to question how much should he suffer. For Rana, America is on trial.

SALDEF encourages all Americans to attend a screening in their area with their families, to share the story of this true struggle of one Sikh American family’s journey towards finding their own version of the idealized American dream.



Please distribute this widely to family, friends and at the local Gurdwara


CONTACT:
Navdeep Singh
media@saldef.org
202-393-2700 ext. 27



Contact SALDEF
Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF)
1413 K St, NW, 5th floor Washington, DC 20005
phone: 202-393-2700 fax: 202-318-3344
www.saldef.org info@saldef.org


About SALDEF
Founded in 1996, SALDEF is the largest and oldest Sikh American civil rights and educational organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the civil rights of Sikh Americans through legal aid, advocacy and educational outreach. SALDEF's mission is to create a fostering environment in the United States for future generations of Sikh Americans.