Slavery, poverty and international relations

[Vayutuvan]

...
(4) Indian women overwhelmingly prefer the US life - that is my personal impression. I could be wrong. For the same reasons perhaps that even in advanced western Europe, women prefer to live in cities compared to their native villages. I also saw a significant inclination to get hitched to non-Indian men, and the girls I knew frankly stated that they thought of Indian men as being more under their family - and distaff control, especially their mothers, and more inhibited in the bed. In many cases, the "western" men they hitched with were not free from such influences either, but I guess it is the perception in many such women - many again churned out through the "missionary/convent" factories, that the "west" was superior, and its men somehow therefore being part of that "superiority" will lack the qualities they hate in their birth culture, and have those they have been fed upon on through the movies/books they were exposed to as part of the wider missionary/convent culture [not necessarily taught at school].
...

Excellent insight and very well put. my 6th cousin's 6th cousin twice removed had experienced this first hand. His ex-SHQ was convent educated confused Indian elite (granddad was a principal of a very famed college of British era in one of the Raj states) where as my cus has grown up most his life in towns less than 2 lakhs. My cousin did not take dowry as he believed that it is a social evil that should be weeded out of the society. This was even after the inevitable question of "some thing wrong with you?" was raised by the woman's mother. Their world views were diametrically opposite. A divorce was initiated by the woman and no-contest assent from my cousin through whom she got a PR she got hitched to a gora who left her after they had a kid together. Last my cousin heard, she seems to be a bitter middle aged lady fighting her ex-gora hubby for child's custody etc.

Another case I heard is one of my cousin's employees here in US whose Indian friend came to US for a PhD and she said the only reason she came here is that her family was forcing her to marry somebody in India and she felt that there are no big-hearted fellows in India - not one in the 600 or so million men. This same employee was also asking about caste system in India and are there any markers. My cousin's answer was it is not easy to find at least in cities. Then she says "what if I claim I am a Brahmin caste?". My cousin asked her to his guest and use his gotra as the prevailing situation in India is that more people want to go the other way to get into those reserved quotas, especially if their last names do not mark them (non-agrahara place names or non-profession last names) as forward castes.

Once the same person was surprised, when my cousin said there are hundreds of castes, that there are so many fine distinctions. A went off in my cousin's mind - the distinctions are based on ones family and profession rather than race for which the color of the skin (or facial features in case of native Americans and Latinos) which is a clear cut marker in the western world - especially in the US. This leads to generalizations which is absent in the sanatana varna vyavastha. In that system, the deeds are more important than the exterior appearances.

[Shreeman]

This describes a recent experiment, and some inferences brought forth by it. First the inferences (to bias your mind, obviously). There needs to be a real hiatus, and this should provide some context:

Lemma : A black person's dollar is forfeited (and they don't even know about it), a brown person's dollar is worth 50 cents (if they make no fuss, and also blame another brown person for stealing the other 50 cents), a yellow person gets 75 cents on their dollar and a frown (and doesn't mind), and a white person gets a dollar and 50 cents back and a smile.

Corollary 1: It is impossible for a brown person to have done something right.
Corollary 2: It is impossible for a brown person to have done anything without a dollar being involved. See corollary 1.
Corollary 3: The first person to question a brown person will be another brown person. See Lemma.
Corollary 4: All credit goes to a white person, even if they were not even remotely near it. All blame goes to brown or black people.

Is it all about race then, what about other inequities? As it happens, all other inequities are miniscule compared to race, and that's where the experiment comes in. Here is a set of three posts made (anonymized):

poster A:
I miss folks like enqyoob. That guy used to have some deep deep insights.
No! Don't tell me there is a substitute. There is no substitution possible.

poster B:
He is not coming back, ever. You have to be happy with what you get.

poster A:
I know. What to do onlee. I bet none of you guys were around when ashishN, narayanan (light and heavy), etc used to rule this universe and harry(RIP), and even
nitin and jagan were active posters. rangudu used to gloat over every little thing that made it to print. i will even take the time when mahendra used to get kicked
off every three months over the present. only lalmohan has had some staying power, and he is a bit depressed too. I wonder if ashishN and the like even read here
anymore. sigh.
oh well,circle of life, evolution. on with the regular programming. i go back to my cave.

Seems like a normal conversation. "Poster A" seems to be confused. Perhaps is, it happens. Now, this was preceded by:

poster C:
Wow, Shreeman's onto something....thanks, UlanBatori, for that 2004 article! Good work. Screw the (brfee) keyboard indeed, and do something
worthwhile out there. Good advice Shreeman!

poster A:
May I be the first to congratulate you and the sages on the forum regaining its relevance, even getting new trainees!
It won't help, but its better than nothing (and a second match might actually be more interesting that the first!).

poster C:
FYI H. HankPnsky, Vijay, Daniela, Rod and Greg have many stories to tell...dial back to 1996

(editor's note: These individuals are: Vijay Kumar, Daniela Rus, Rodney Brooks and Greg Hager, as clarified below)

poster C:
I need to learn to write like you first;
Yeah, just a story. Right, that's better. Greg may have had the weak perspective 'borrowed' for visual servo post kismet and a Hanover affair.
Ieee, again, pretty sure in 1996, could've happened in 95. May be I can write a story in the robotics story too, please don't egg me on. Gimme a week or a month.../ot for now.

Poster C's article referenced is: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/50025/1/

Say, what? So, something went on here. Valuables were exchanged. Inferences drawn, big names quoted. Are any of these folks here? I personally doubt it or we have surpassed our policy influence peak. I don't know poster C (too few posts), poster A is a nut case. poster B was merely incidental, they were trying to impart good humor.

It is the big names that endow the weight to the inferences. Rarely, in a conversation of so few words are so many "big" names thrown about. And then "a week or a month" asked for. There is NO robotics story. Some posts was specifically requested by our friend TSJones.

There is a big story though, but it is more than one mouse click away. And the fat lady doesn't yet know what song she will sing. And that proves the corollaries 3 and 4. There are hundred ways to ask these questions and the sequence quoted above proves, again, the corollaries 1 and 2.

This brings us to the Lemma. It doesn't need a proof (well neither did the corollaries, really). Intellectually, physically, morally, we are but a shadow of what we once were. I couldn't imagine presence being made obvious in such humble portals at one time. I could also not imagine the urge to post without understanding the origin or the end (of mahabharat), and while still wondering who's wife sita was.

Two wrongs will never make a right. And committing a third will not set the first two right. And finding a fourth will not make the first two irrelevant.

And people will see through the chewbacca defenses, sooner or later. Today the written prose is still not cross-referenced. But we still remember when there was no digital written prose, and paper ruled the day. Fifteen years hence, it will all have been cross-referenced. What, then? The swiss banks, or the walled gardens of prose, will only protect for so long. The truth could be self-evident without this context.

Moral : Courage is a myth.
Looking away is human.
Look away once and the it becomes a habit.
You can not read mahabharat in a minute and understand sita's conundrum.

All right, on with the "there was no sita in mahabharat comments"(corollary 3). There is a small chance the written word will provide better evidence one day, but it might not, its not easy to etch things in stone. One day, the database will reset again, perhaps in an upgrade, and our joining dates will go back to 1969, post counts to 0, and we will pick even fanciers anonyms again. But until then, the story remains, as written.

[shiv]

The death of 478 Indian workers in Qatar is "Normal". And I am the queen of Sheba'
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeas ... 88990.html

Qatar official says worker death rate normal
A Qatar human rights body has said the reported deaths of 478 Indian workers in Qatar during the last two years was "normal", a figure that another human rights group has called "horrendous".

AFP news agency reported the deaths on Monday following an information request to the Indian embassy in Doha. The embassy said 237 had died in 2012 and 241 in 2013, but did not provide their causes of death.

In response to the figures, Ali bin Sumaikh al-Marri, the head of Qatari government-affiliated National Human Rights Committee, told AFP on Tuesday: "Indians make up the largest community in Qatar... twice the number of Qatari nationals."

About 500,000 Indians live in Qatar, which is experiencing a construction boom staffed primarily by young men from South Asian countries.

He said: "If we look at the numbers of Qataris who died ... of natural causes ... over the past two years, we see that numbers of deaths among the Indian community are normal."

The country's ministry of labour and social affairs told the Guardian newspaper that they were aware of some of the figures from local media reports and were working to understand the causes of these deaths.

"Clearly any one death in Qatar or anywhere else is one death too many – for the workers, for their families, but also for Qataris who welcome guest workers to our country to perform valuable jobs," it said.

"We are working to understand the causes of these deaths – as these statistics could include a range of circumstances including natural causes, and road safety incidents, as well as a smaller number of workplace incidents."

Campaign against Qatar

Al-Maari said he wanted clarifications on the circumstances of the deaths, insisting that there was a "campaign against Qatar," AFP reported.

Qatar has faced mounting criticism from human rights groups over the safety and working conditions of migrants working in the construction industry, which has been highlighted in media reports since last year mostly focusing on Nepalese workers.

Nicholas McGeehan, the Qatar and UAE researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera that it was not helpful to dismiss the death figures as "normal" and claim it as a campaign against the country when it already had a bad safety record.

He said: "We need to hear how the workers died, and we need to find out the extent of how it was related to their living and working conditions," he said.

"The Indian embassy should be as concerned about these figures as the Qataris [...] because they give an indication of an unfolding tragedy in Qatar." He described the figures as "horrendous".

High death rate

On average about 20 migrants died per month, peaking at 27 in August last year. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) describe that rate as "exceptionally high".

AFP asked the Indian embassy for correspondence between staff and the Indian government regarding the treatment of its nationals, but this request was declined.

The Indian foreign ministry was not immediately available for comment.

In a report published in 2012, Human Rights Watch warned that Qatar would be synonymous to worker exploitation unless there was reform, but McGeehan said that measures taken fell short of what was needed.

Most of the labourers working on the new stadiums and vast infrastructure projects ahead of football's biggest tournament in the tiny but wealthy Gulf state are from South Asia.

Qatar has a "kafala" system which means migrants are sponsored by an individual, who then exerts enormous control over their lives and leaves some workers trapped.

Earlier, this month, Qatar revealed a set of guidelines aimed at protecting the rights of thousands of expatriate workers employed on its construction projects.

FIFA executive committee member Theo Zwanziger said last week that the World Cup could help improve the country's "appalling" human rights record by inviting closer scrutiny.

[member_28352]

More slavery news from India and the need to save them from bleddy upper caste slave drivers, if possible, by cavity searching Indian diplomats and if not, then by sending in marines.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 719746.cms

[member_28352]

Latest "innovation" in the slavery, poverty meme is "acid attacks" on women in India. Case in point is O'bomber's wife giving away some award to an acid attack victim in India.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/worl ... 459557.cms

Today the Bhestern press is full of news and anal-y-sis of acid attacks on women in India.

[Mukesh.Kumar]

Well, had heard a lot but this took the cake. Now I have an answer to crappy articles like 50% of the world's slaves are in India.

Deep Racism: The Forgotten History Of Human Zoos

[member_28352]

AoA, Todin naya khabar in the wretched casteist Hindu slave driving republic of India

Teachers force Muslim, lower caste students to clean toilets in India, all obtained by Hyooman Rights Watch.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 076363.cms