Tuesday, April 11, 2006

commie Biju Mathew kicked out of Stanford

apr 10th

good for stanford for telling FOSA to go take a hike. stanford has a conservative streak, unlike harvard. in fact too much of a right-wing streak, given the hulkng presence of the hoover institution right in the middle of campus. but this commie angle is good to play up. i believe that the FBI and homeland security are also investigating some of these commies, who might find their green cards nullified because no communist party member is eligible to immigrate.

this fellow has had an interesting career. he started off doing hindu-bashing on the net.nlang.indian newsgroup in the old days. then he graduated to collaborating with 'asian law', an islamist front organization. then he was emboldened to display his true marxist colors. he lay low for a while after 9/11 because the authorities would be after his ass, he feared. but he is truly a traitor as far as india is concerned, one of a large number of commie hypocrites who want to live comfortably in america yet trash the capitalist system. why aren't they in china?

interestingly, kerala christists of biju mathews' ilk have started infiltrating the marxist party in large numbers despite the fact that the church condemns them as godless communists. i guess the christists want to be on the winning side whether their party, the congress, wins, or if the marxists win, as is likely in kerala.

now stanford kicked biju mathews' ass out of campus.

see cartoon as well: http://www.india-forum.com/blogs/7/Stanford-non-event

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Apr 9, 2006 9:02 AM
Subject: Biju Mathew kicked out of Stanford
To: Rajeev Srinivasan < rajeev.srinivasan@gmail.com>

2 comments:

Brownian Motion said...

It seems that the article in the standford daily has been removed. The link leads to an empty page. Does anybody have a cached version that can be posted?

PR

arunagiri said...

It seems Rajeev celebrated too soon. Stanford Daily has since retracted this article regretting that the article quoted anonymous sources and contained allegations which were unsubstantiated. It would be better to provide full details of Biju's commie and Islamist links to the editors of the Daily, with a quotable source.

Retractions & Corrections
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Tuesday, April 11, 2006
last updated April 11, 2006 2:51 AM

The Daily would like to retract the article “Leftist speaker sparks debate” (April 7). The allegations that speaker Biju Mathew or the Friends of South Asia are linked in any way to communism, terrorism or the Unabomber should not have been based on information provided by an anonymous source. The Daily regrets this error and the uncorroborated statements contained in the article.
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The complete article is reproduced below:
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Leftist speaker sparks debate

By Patrick Leahy
Friday, April 7, 2006

On Saturday, April 8, the non-Stanford affiliated organization Friends of South Asia (FOSA) will be hosting a panel discussion with Indian social activist Biju Mathew on campus. The talk, however, has spurred debate over the appropriateness of inviting a leftist speaker with ties to Communism to an academic campus.
FOSA was established in the Bay Area five years ago to promote peace, tolerance and economic development in South Asia. During periods of heightened tension between Pakistan and India they hold monthly peace vigils in downtown Palo Alto, in conjunction with dozens of similar vigils around the globe.

The organization has attracted some controversy, however, with its leftist political views and its alleged ties to Communist groups in India.

One source, a man who has protested against previous FOSA events, but wished to remain anonymous, expressed concern over what he perceives as Islamist and Communist sympathies within the organization.

He referred specifically to a peace march organized by FOSA "in which one of the banners claimed that 'Allah would destroy the terrorist state of India.'"

"America should not give space to Islamic terrorists," the man said.

Mathew himself has also drawn criticism for his radical political beliefs. At one time his Web page featured a link to the Unabomber's Manifesto, although the link is no longer active.

The same protester said that he is troubled by Mathew's "support for the Unabomber and his association with the Communist Party of India (Marxist)."

He also expressed unhappiness with what he felt to be hypocrisy of Communists who, like Mathew, "made a conscious choice to come to the U.S.A. and reap the benefits of a market-oriented economy while demanding that others not benefit from a similar system.

"Stanford University is free to host anyone," he said, "but it should not provide a platform for the propaganda of those who help terrorist groups like the Communist Party of India (Marxist)."

The party, one of India's largest national political parties, received over twenty two million votes in the country's most recent general election.

Ashish Chadha, a Stanford graduate student and one of FOSA's founders, arranged for the event to be held on campus. Members of the public are not allowed to use University facilities for an event without sponsorship from a registered student group or academic department within the University.

Chadha dismissed allegations about the organization's ties to Communism or terrorism, stressing that it is simply a coalition of local South Asians, many of whom have lived in the country for years. He said he sees nothing controversial about the group's aims<\p>--<\p>which it pursues, according to its mission, through "people-to-people contacts, dialogue and other non-violent, non-exclusionary means."

"We just have progressive ideas," he said.

Nor does Chadha see anything controversial about Biju Mathew. A business professor at Rider University, Mathew is a founding member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and author of "Taxi! Cabs and Capitalism in New York City."

Chadha commended Mathew for his work in making gains for New York City's taxi drivers<\p>--<\p>members of a profession legendary for its long hours, low pay and high risks. Mathew also helped lead New York cabbies in a citywide boycott in 1998 to protest the stringent regulations for taxi drivers supported by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.

According to the FOSA Web site, the talk will mainly focus on Mathew's book, while also covering subjects like immigrant labor organizing, globalization, the anti-war movement and sectarian politics in the South Asian community. Two local organizers of taxi driver unions will join Mathew on the panel.

The discussion will take place in Room 104 of the Gates Computer Science Building at 3 p.m.

Article URL: http://www.stanforddaily.com/tempo?page=content&repository=0001_article&id=19978
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