Star and Bucwild got suspended?

Original story is here

Rediff claims that ” Star and Bucwild, the hosts of a popular morning radio show in the United States, were suspended by their station for making an abusive and threatening call to a call centre employee in India.

Power 99 FM in Philadelphia told rediff.com that it suspended the duo for a day, January 12, after receiving an unprecedented number of protest emails.” The whole article can be read here. Times of India and Philadelphia Weekly also cover the story.

The Station has also posted an apology. It is hard to find out the apology on their homepage as it is written such that, it doesn’t appear as an important issue. So you might need to scroll down to read it and if it is removed by the time you checkout the site….here is the apology in text
“The Star & Buc Wild Show prides itself on walking on the edge. On December 15th, we crossed it. We know the pain racial slurs cause and apologize that this comedy segment went too far.”
and here is the graphic.

The RJs got 1 day’s suspension……is it enough? I don’t think that they will be fired (but they should be) but they definetly should apologize on live radio as they played the clip on the live radio and not their website. (I dunno if they or anybody else on their behalf apologized on radio yet? – If someone knows about it then plss let me know.)

Philly Racist Radio Station

Was just browsing rediff and came across an article. It is about an RJ @ a Philedelphia based radio station, who threatened to choke an Indian Call Center employee.

He uses words/phrases like bitch, eff, filthy rat eater during his call. The call was aired on the radio and put on their website.

Turbanhead has the audio file . Ed has transcribed the conversation:

NARRATOR INTRO: Wakeup with Star and Buc Wild in the mornings of Power 99 FM.

STAR: I’m going to play this call from earlier before we get out of here. This is the, uh, call that I made to — I thought it was a company here locally. Not that I was surprised.

(laughter)

STAR: I saw this infomercial about, uh, what are these things called again? Oh, the, uh…

FEMALE VOICE: Bead? Oh shoot.

STAR: Anyway, let — let’s just play the call. I was surprised when I got somebody on the line in East India. These little beads that I saw. Little white kids, uh, a little machine that puts them in their hair.

FEMALE VOICE: Mm’hm.

STAR: Play it.

(tape begins)

STEENA: This is Steena. How may I help you?

STAR: Hi, Stain-a, you say?

STEENA: Yes.

STAR: (in fake Indian accent) Yeah, I called and I just got hung up on. I’m calling from America about the quick beads for my daughter’s, uh, hair. Quick beads.

STEEA: Okay. May I have your ZIP code please?

STAR: 10274.

STEENA: 10274?

STAR: Yes. Get it right. Now are you in India? Because I just spoke to someone in India who hung up on me.

STEENA: Thank you. I am from India, ma’am.

STAR: Okay. So my call is being outsourced to India.

STEENA: That’s right.

STAR: In… in regards to my six year old, white American daughter who wants to get the quick beads like Serena and Venus Williams.

STEENA: Now. I’ll definitely place an order for that. See…

STAR: What’s that?

STEENA: …in the ad, she called to place a quick bead of counier. To ensure proper handling…

STAR: Ma’am, I don’t know what the hell you’re saying. Hang on a second. Let me try and get something straight here. The quick beads, like Venus and Serena Williams, that to advertise to — to the white kids on television. This call has been outsourced to India?

STEENA: That’s right.

STAR: Well, ma’am, what the eff would you know about an American white girl’s — uh, uh — hair? And quick beads.

STEENA: Just to inform you, ma’am, we’re a national chain services company. And we’re just taking calls on the opposite…

STAR: Listen, bitch! Don’t get slick with the mouth! Don’t you get slick with me, bitch!

STEENA: Now if you continue to speak this language, I will disconnect the call.

STAR: Listen to me, you dirty rat eater. I’ll come out there and choke the eff out of you.

(laughter)

STAR: You’re a filthy rat eater. I’m calling about my American six year old white girl. How dare you outsource my call? Get off the line, bitch!

(laughter; end of tape)

STAR: Pull it up.

(laughter)

STAR: Heard they listen well out there.

This is not the first case of racism against Indians. I had a friend working for a call center for few days. He told me that a lot of people calling from US abuse them. They would say that you f****** Indian, you took our jobs…

This incident has disturbed me a lot. RJ “STAR” is a black guy. On one hand he wants them to be respected and called “African Americans” and on the other hand he derogates Indians and curses them. Bloody Hypocrite.

I think its high time that Asians or any other minority living in US should fight for their rights. The American society which is believed to be “fair and just” is fair and just in the books and papers only.

If you are Indian living in US, or living in India or an Asian or anybody else and think that whatever happened was wrong and the RJ should be fired, then write a letter/email or call the Radio Station and tell them how you feel about the issue, and what action you expect from the radio station.

So far I just tried to call the Radio Station, but they were closed. I am gonna write an email to Michael Saunders of Clear Channel (Radio Station’s parent company) and would tell him how I feel about the issue.

I don’t believe in illegal or wrong activities such as spamming them or abusing them on fone or writing. I also don’t believe in Gandhian theory acc. to which, you should put your left cheek forward, if someone slapped your right. I can only think of calling and writing to them. Right now am unable to think of any other way of protest. Someone suggested that we should list the names of their advertisers and call them and tell them that we will boycot their products if they don’t pull out their ads from the radio station (kind of Gandhian), but I can’t do this as the radio is aired just in Philly. If someone got any ideas of protest then do let me know.

The contact details are here:

Philadelphia, WUSL

Business line: 215.483.8900
Studio hotline (toll-free): 800.669.99FM
Studio hotline (local): 215.263.6699

Attention: Richard Lewis & Thea Mitchem
Power99 WUSL-FM
440 Domino Lane
Philadelphia, PA 19128

Director of Urban Programming/Program Director: Thea Mitchem
Music Director: Coka Lani
News & Public Affairs Director: Loraine Ballard Morrill

New York, WWPR

Program director: Michael Saunders, msaunders@clearchannel.com

Request line: 800-585-1051
Business line: 212-704-1051

Here is a forward (2 years old) related to the issue.
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Tsunami Relief Fund Raising Match

Weekend is here…..so am I.

I was at work today and it was pouring badly at times, so nothing interesting happened. Southern California’s freeways are not in a good shape due to snow.

Whatever I wrote above was just random stuff. More randomness: The Bay Area’s traffic is a pain. A lot of people who live here would defy. agree with me. Most of the time I use I-80 freeway and its too bad, esp. around Berkley. Here are some pix clicked about 20 days ago. You can certainly appreciate my picture-taking-while-driving skills (the car was crawling at the speed of 0 – 10 mph)

In my last post I mentioned that I wanted to blog about keywords – Indonesia, Tsunami aid, politics. Here is the detail
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Veer-Zaara and Swades DVD Piracy

A lot of Bollywood fans are eagerly waiting for the release of Shahrukh Khan’s Veer-Zaara and Swades on DVD, so that they can get their favorite stars’ movies close to them and can watch them anytime they want. The DVDs are also expected to have an additional DVD containing the making of the movie and some other exclusive material. But a little known fact is that the movies are already in the market and are sold openly on the internet. So here is an exclusive report on the DVD Piracy. Continue reading

Tsunami Videos

Just watched the face of the destruction. As I had expected, there are a lot of Tsunami videos online and I am expecting a lot more to be online soon.

The videos are available here. By the time I checked it out their main mirror has served 764 terabytes of data. Amazing!!!

Wiki also got tons of info.

There is no way for me to serve as one of their mirrors (i dunn have that much of bandwidth) , I want to be 1 though. So I chose one of the smallest files and put it here.

This video shows what I was really talking about in the previous post. The people never thought it was so serious. In most of the vids u see people just watching as the waves approach them.

A general thought about the waves are that they come and go…..sometimes they travel farther than most of the times and it is normal. Mostly the waves touches your feet and then go away. All these thoughts can be seen/heard in the above posted video.

First, the people experiencing the waves get surprised over the height of waves……this surprise doesn’t have fear at all. As the wave approaches them, they don’t even move as they firmly believed that the wave would go back before reaching them. But when the wave doesn’t go back and drench them, you can hear their laughter. They laugh at the innocent waves as the waves make them wet and are playing with all the people on the beach. Soon the laughter transforms into the screams….suddenly the fear, which was missing before, appears and people panic.

That site also had a link to an image. The image is dreadful and has extreme loss of life shown in it. The image can be seen here.

Acc. to Wiki the death toll may rise to 425,488+

Update: Continue reading

May god bless their souls

Finally, I am back. Haven’t updated my blog since a week now. I was busy with problems on my websites. Some problems were accidents, some were foolish mistakes and some others which I couldn’t have avoided.

Anyways, Happy New year to everybody, hope this year brings joy and happiness to all. The last year was ok. Atleast it didn’t have any war (I mean a war started), but dubyaa got re-elected :|

The last few days were very tragic and destructive. I truly can’t feel how the people feel in those areas, but I can understand their feelings and grief. I knew what Tsunamis were, as I had read about them in my Geology class but wasn’t sure of the details of the whole process, untill I read it on Suneel‘s blog. I think a lot of people didn’t even have a clue that a wave can be that big or can cause so much damage. Probably this was the reason that people kept speculating the huge waves, instead of running for their lives.

A lot of questions have been risen about the warning system in the Indian Ocean. I feel that Indian ocean should definetly have a warning system. Suneel wrote about how Pacific lab knew about the danger, but couldn’t contact the authorities as they didn’t have their contact numbers. How lame can that be….He also wrote that Doordarshan couldn’t give updates on Tsunami coz Ind Vs. Ban match was on :|

I heard that it took 1.5 – 2 hrs for the waves to travel from Indonesia to Sri Lanka (not sure though.) I think it was plenty of time to warn the whole coastline of Sri Lanka as well as India. The U.S., which has its satellites roaming around the whole world, taking pictures of Pokhran, Saddam’s bathroom, Korea’s nuclear program, would have had spotted the waves too. I am not saying that all the destruction has occured because of US, but just wondering why nobody alerted the coastline? Perhaps due to the rairty/ignorance of the Tsunamis, no one thought that it could kill 150k+ people.

The United States and the nations of the West are “stingy.”

This statement comes from a UN official amidst this chaos and adds to it. Mr. Bush, who is enjoying his winters in his ranch, is perhaps preparing for the Iraqi election while so many American as well as Iraqi lives are being lost, replies in a firm tone that we are not stingy and increases the relief fund to $350 million. Well, increasing the amount from $35 m to $350 m won’t even matter that much as the dollar touches record lows as compared to other currencies almost everyday.

Is US really stingy? googled and found two interesting articles. One was for while other was against.

Look who’s talking about ‘stingy’ is published @ Washington Times and is written by its Editor in Chief – Wesley Pruden. I pity this guy.

America the stingy fits with The Post’s view of a world where all news is bad, the sun shines only on the rich, the rain falls only on the frail, and everyone is a victim — of homophobia in Peoria, AIDS in Afghanistan, an outbreak of teenage pimples in San Diego, a tsunami in Sri Lanka, the scarcity of vegetarian restaurants in Topeka, a woman who got winked at in Cleveland, a shortage of condoms in St. Paul. Some days there are so many victims there’s hardly any room for the news on Page One.

He compares the AIDS in Afghanistan, Tsunamis in SL with an outbreak of teenage pimples in San Diego, the scarcity of vegetarian restaurants in Topeka, a woman who got winked at in Cleveland, a shortage of condoms in St. Paul. As if lives lost in Afghanistan or SL have no meaning at all.

On the other hand…

Two-bit Bush makes his costliest blunder

…states another story.

the most powerful man on the planet remained apparently oblivious to the suffering. Holed up for Christmas on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, a president who famously refuses to take work home with him was reluctant to let international affairs impinge on the most important holiday of the year.

Bush, who warned Asian leaders almost immediately after 9/11 that they would be judged by their contribution to the war on terror, waited 72 hours before he called to offer his condolences in the wake of this shocking tragedy. From a trailer outside his ranch, he called the leaders of Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and India to pledge his support. That support amounted to $35m, barely £18m, a figure dwarfed by the sums pledged by nations including Spain and Japan.

With due respect to the victims of 9/11 – I still remmember at the the time of 9/11 attacks, Bush-Powel-Rumsfeld at some point of the time or other, made it look like as if it was the first attempt of a terrorist attack and felt strongly about the “World” terrorism. Didn’t they know about Punjab, Kashmir, Nagaland, Assam, LTTE, Israel, Palestine, Russia and almost whole of Africa?

Someone fwded me Tsunami images, they seem to be original, but one of my cousins wrote that they are not. I think they are original as the camera was a most expected object to be carried by tourists on beaches and resorts. Here are the images. I also found sattelite images.

For those who care to help the victims can donate to Aid India, an American based NGO, or can buy stuff from here. 50% of the profits are donated to Aid India.

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Today we saw Sarvar and Aditi win the India’s Best. More details can be read here.

I think both the guys were equally good in acting, but I think Mohit was more good looking. I didn’t watch all the episodes, but today watched that Sarwar did a topless dance (Raat Ka Nasha…) perhaps that helped him :p

Both girls were good acting wise, but Aditi had an upper edge as she was cute on screen as well as off screen. Yuvika, look alike of Diya Mirza, indeed had the best face!

I have been adding forwards to my blog, but I think a blog should be more creative and ones own feelings, so I’ll write more than adding forwards….but for those who had been waiting for a forward….here is one Continue reading

The Love of Money is the root of all Evil

Friday, December the 10th was a partly cloudy day. Being Friday, it was the most enjoyable day at the work. I had my lunch at about 12 – 12:30. As soon as I started work after my lunch, I saw this customer of ours who used to come at the store every once in a while. She was a “white” lady (very fair) and a bit obese in her late 20s or early 30s. The strange thing about her was that she always wore black clothes, which were distinctive due to her skin color. I never saw her wearing anything except black and once in summers, when everybody was wearing T-shirts, she had leather gloves on her hands. She came to the store a few weeks (months?) ago, the day when Reagan died. She said that she was very happy as Reagan died.

I saw that she was making photocopies of something. Soon, she was done making copies and was waiting at the counter to be charged for them. I approached and asked her the usual question.

How many copies?

70

Ok and I rang it up on the cash register.

She took out some change and started counting it. She was short off 50 cents. If something like this happens, then we just tell the person to pay the balance later whenever they are around if the balance is not too much (a dollar or 2). Moreover she used to visit the store, so I told her that she can pay later.
She was feeling bad about it and started thinking about it. She had a black bag, which had 2-3 papers in it. She pulled those out and told me that we can have that bag. I felt strange as none of our coustomer has had done that before. If someone feels really bad about not paying then they either go back and get the money instantaneously or leave the copies with us to pick them up when they bring the money.

I told her that, its ok, its just 50 cents and you can pay later, but she said I won’t come here again and anyways I don’t have any use for this bag now. I kept on insisting that she can take the bag as it was just 50 cents but she quietly kept the bag on the counter and walked outside. I felt bit strange about it but then didn’t do anything as she had left.

About 30 – 45 minutes later, we noticed that some people outside were looking up. I thought it must be a fire, but didn’t care much as just 2-3 people were looking. But after a few minutes more people started looking and even the cars passing by slowed down and looked at the same direction. As an inquisitive soul, I went outside and tried to look up. All the people were looking at a building (Oakland Tribune), which is a few meters away. I too looked…but couldn’t find anything unusual. Meanwhile, I heard some women screaming “no, please no!!”

“Is someone trying to jump?” was the first thought came to my mind. I looked again at all the windows….but again didn’t find anything extraordinary. Suddenly my eye level went little bit up to the roof of the building and I was shocked to see Continue reading

Ala Re Ala…Stanford Ala

Acc. to a news article published @ Economictimes, Stanford University is exploring options of opening an overseas campus.
They already have an intl. center at Peking University in Bejing.

Stanford University President John L Hennessy is looking at Delhi, Mumbai and Pune as viable options for setting up such an overseas campus.

Stanford in Palo Alto, about 2 hours drive from my place, has Indians as the second largest foreign students community at its campus. Apart from this, India-born faculty contribute to about one-fourth of the total 128 Asian-born faculty working at the university. Generally on weekends desis can be spotted in and around Stanford playing cricket.

Changing face of the society

India is under outsourcing boom. Inspite of government change and a rulling coalition, Indian economy is growing at a tremendous rate. There is a lot of hiring going on right now. Fresh grads from colleges are getting good salaries, which are more than enough to support themselves (may be not their families). Due to all this the buying power of youth is increasing and a lot of companies are making money out of it. Evere wondered why most of the Ads and commercials target youngsters? Its because they (not all, but most) buy what they like and aren’t sensible enough to choose what is right and what is wrong for them. We are prospering.
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