I was walking around today in central London and noticed something amazing, thankfully, I had my camera and took the following pictures.
Pigeons eating chocolate! Can you see the sweet wrapper on the right of the picture? and a small chocolate piece on the left of the pigeon?
then his girlfriend arrived! so he lost interest in the chocolate!
But can you imagine? a bloody pigeon eating chocolate? never heard of such a thing before! Only in London!
This confused the hair out of me. I am sure it means something to somebody but it doesn't mean anything to me. lol. forget about the whole paper, just the abstract is confusing as hell!
This article introduces a new way to evaluate the political and theoretical significance of the Carnegie Commission Poor White Study conducted from 1927 to 1932 in South Africa. Building on the recent literature on whiteness and the older literature on scientific racism, I argue that the scientific language about biology and physiognomy that is usually linked to scientific racism must be brought back into conversation with the literary, historical, legal, and cultural analysis of critical whiteness studies to be a more effective scholarly rejoinder to white supremacy. Critical whiteness studies must track the institutional and professional investments in the creation of white supremacy and white nationalism through various colonial relations across geographical and territorial space. In a productive turn toward the specificity of South African history, this essay also makes claims about the nature of whiteness vis-à-vis Afrikaner and British identity that provide powerful antidotes to the historiographical obsession with autochthonous ethnic identities among white supremacists. Finally, through close attention to the actual experiences of “poor whites” a set of moral directives and knowledge claims emerge about the urgency of anti-racist research that makes this racial formation more than simply an add-on in the litany of radical projects.
JO - New Political Science
PB - Routledge
AU - Willoughby-Herard, Tiffany
TI - South Africa's Poor Whites and Whiteness Studies: Afrikaner Ethnicity, Scientific Racism, and White Misery
SN - 0739-3148
PY - 2007
VL - 29
IS - 4
SP - 479
EP - 500
Sounds like a bloody globalisation joke to me! Read and wonder!
MEXICO CITY - Iran’s ambassador angrily demanded that a Moroccan artist withdraw from an art exhibit in Mexico a photograph he deems offensive to Islam, before it provokes a diplomatic crisis, exhibition organisers and media reports said.
The photograph of a vagina covered by a Mosque-like dome "is considered an offence to Islam" by Iran’s Ambassador to Mexico, Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri Abyaneh, and "he has addressed his protest to (the artist) Fouad Bellamine...asking him to withdraw it," an organiser of the Puebla Festival told AFP.
"The two had an argument and the ambassador left in a huff," said the source, who asked not to be identified.
The Proceso weekly said the ambassador has accused Bellamine of insulting Islam and has warned that "if the picture continues to be exhibited it could provoke a diplomatic crisis between the two countries."
The exhibition organiser said the matter was out of his hands, saying: "It’s up to Fouad Bellamine and Mexican authorities to decide what to do."
The 57-year-old artist, in a statement given to AFP in Rabat, said there was no profanity in his work. "Its very serious and unacceptable to turn my work into an act of provocation that demands to be censured under the threat of a culture war."
He added that he never intended any harm to Islam. "My work is open to all interpretations. The viewer is free to see in it whatever he wants."
Puebla state culture authorities told AFP that so far there has been no official demand from the Iranian Embassy to take down the photograph.
They organised the Mirages exhibition of contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa to run from November 16 to February 3 at the San Pedro de Puebla museum.
You couldn't make it up! Perhaps Sarko can ask for Can Can dancers next time he is back in Tripoli to welcome his guests in French style.
PARIS - Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, due to visit France for the first time in 34 years, has asked his hosts to put up a tent near his hotel so he can receive guests in Bedouin style, a source close to the French presidency said.
Kadhafi has made "this request so that he can receive his guests in his Bedouin tent as he normally does and not to sleep in it" during the December visit, the source said.
"Nothing has been fixed as yet, it is being considered by the French and Libyan protocol services," the source said.
The official guest house is the Hotel Marigny, a stone’s throw from the Elysee Palace, the official residence of the French president.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has confirmed that he will receive the Libyan strongman before the end of the year.
Sarkozy earlier said Libya had abandoned three "appalling" approaches by ending its quest for nuclear weapons, renouncing its support of terrorism and freeing the Bulgarian medics whom it had accused of infecting children with the HIV/Aids virus.
Now this is a very interesting take on how cities develop and grow based upon the interplay between trade costs, commuting costs and communication costs. I quote:
Our starting point is that firms’ performances are affected by the level of housing and commuting costs, which we call “urban costs”. This occurs through the land rent they pay to occupy central urban locations, and through the higher wages they have to pay to their workers to compensate them for their longer commutes and/or higher land rents. Hence, high urban costs render firms less competitive on local and foreign markets alike. As a result, despite scale economies arising from urban agglomeration (Duranton and Puga [5]), increasing urban costs could shift employment from large monocentric cities either to their suburbs or to distant and smaller cities, where these costs are lower, at least once trade costs have sufficiently declined to permit largescale exports to distant markets. In other words, economic integration could well challenge the supremacy of large cities in favor of small cities. The main point we wish to stress in this paper is that the emergence of subcenters within cities is a powerful strategy for large cities to maintain their attractiveness.
They develop load of mathematical models, which I am seriously not going to review, if you wish, I can send the paper to you for you to mathematically masticate over, but the results are very interesting. And the final para:
Finally, our analysis also has an important policy implication. It is well known that quite a few American and European cities have lost employment and population for a few decades. This state of affair has led city managers to seek local policies that would prevent the decentralization of industrial activities toward small and/or remote places. However, most of them did fail. This paper suggests that urban decision-makers would have been better inspired to foster the development of SBDs, endowed with high-quality business-to-business services and consumption amenities that attract both firms and workers.
An interesting argument in this paper. Nothing to add so will let the abstract speak for itself.
JO - Studies in Conflict & Terrorism PB - Taylor & Francis AU - Hutchinson, Steven AU - O’malley, Pat TI - A Crime–Terror Nexus? Thinking on Some of the Links between Terrorism and Criminality
SN - 1057-610X PY - 2007 VL - 30 IS - 12 SP - 1095 EP - 1107
AB - Decreasing state sponsorship for terrorism in the post-9/11 environment has pressed terrorist groups to find alternative sources of financial support. Some groups have created their own “in-house” criminal capabilities, for example FARC, the LTTE, and Al Qaeda. Several analysts have argued that this “mutation” in organizational form may lead terrorist groups to ally with organized crime, whereas others have suggested that distinct organizational and ideological differences between the two will preclude cooperation. Drawing on both accounts, it is argued in this article that the degree of a terrorist group's organizational capacity and need are key predictors of the types of crime they will engage in, while ideological (political) distinctiveness will preclude fully symbiotic cooperation between terrorists and organized crime groups.
This was really outside my realm of usual internet sniffing around, but after reading it all, I found the paper rather interesting. So we have a Christian backed news source which is broadcasting over the internet to Central Asian republics, aiming to proselytise and influence the elite of these CAR's.
I never thought of proselytisation from this angle, that too from Norway. But why not? The same kind of pap is being spread by the Jihadi websites as well. On the other hand, this kind of foreign influence is killing the repression of the various assorted tinpot dictators in these CAR's.
Mind you, this will also provide grist to the mill that religious fundamentalism is on the rise, whether Christian or Islamic! Now it is quite possible that the CAR's try to become more Islamic than others, that's how other tinpot dictators operate in the Muslim World as well. Not good.
Some interesting quotes:
Whether religion and religious rights issues in Central Asia receive press coverage beyond Central Asia and how the media communicate that news carries important public policy implications. As Ovsiovitch (1993) explains in his study of press coverage of human rights, such reporting can informally document violations and educate the public which, in turn, may lobby and motivate legislators and policymakers; coverage can also help correct shortcomings of international NGOs. Even more broadly, the public depends heavily on the mass media for information about international affairs, and exposure to international news may significantly shape public attitudes toward other countries (Brewer et al., 2003).
Forum 18 stories have limited direct readership in the five Central Asian countries, partly because its stories are posted only in English but also because of limited internet access there. The web remains inaccessible - physically, technologically and economically - to a large proportion of Central Asians (Blua, 2005). However, those in the region who do read Forum 18 stories are apt to be better educated, more influential and, perhaps, leaders or potential leaders in government, business, academia, mass media or NGOs. Bukharbaeva and Samari (2003) note that 'with the arrival of the Internet, information has become accessible to more people - certainly the elite - and officials are more likely to be forced to react to controversial reporting that digs up facts they would prefer to bury'.
Another component of Forum 18's mission statement - promoting implementation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - is more ambiguous and more difficult to measure. Journalists in every news organisation hope that some of their work will influence public policy and public opinion and either promote social, political or economic change or reinforce the social, political or economic status quo. As a Christianity-rooted news organisation, Forum 18 coverage may be interpreted as promoting not only religious freedom generically but Christianity in particular. That interpretation may undermine its intended image as an objective news organisation. As for assessing how effectively it serves as an instrument to implement Article 18, the news stories it produces may be used in the formulation of governmental or multinational policies, but Forum 18 stories will be only one of many sources of information in the policymaking process.
Table 1. Self-identifying religious breakdown of the population of the five Central Asian republics (percentages)
| Muslim | Orthodox | Other |
| Kazakhsta | 47 | 44 | 9 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 75 | 20 | 5 |
| Tajikistan | 90 | 0 | 10 |
| Turkmenis | 89 | 9 | 2 |
| Uzbekistan | 88 | 9 | 3 |
JO - Religion, State and Society
PB - Routledge
AU - Freedman, Eric
AU - Chang, Kuang-Kuo
TI - Religious news and controversies in Central Asia: a case study of a Western ‘Christian Initiative’ news service
SN - 0963-7494
PY - 2007
VL - 35
IS - 4
SP - 355
EP - 371
AB - Religion, politics and public policy are tightly interwoven in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, where regimes tightly control religion and domestic and foreign media. This case study examines how one Christian-oriented western news organisation, Forum 18, covers religion-related news. It finds that religious-affiliated news sources are cited more frequently and more prominently than official sources, that Forum 18 stories cover Christian more often than non-Christian religious groups, and that discrete events are covered more often than broad policy or issues.
Looks like according to this paper, the current regulatory system is pretty good in managing systemic risk. I would tend to agree, but one needs to be careful, I am not very happy with the incidence of international banks and the cleavages between regulators, central banks and governments (as seen with Northern Rock in the UK, Saschen LB in Germany and and and).
Sohnke M. Bartram, Gregory W. Brown and John E. Hund, Estimating systemic risk in the international financial system, Journal of Financial Economics Volume 86, Issue 3, , December 2007, Pages 835-869.()Abstract: This paper develops three distinct methods to quantify the risk of a systemic failure in the global banking system. We examine a sample of 334 banks (representing 80% of global bank equity) in 28 countries around five global financial crises. Our results suggest statistically significant, but economically small, increases in systemic risk. Although policy responses are endogenous, the low estimated probabilities suggest that the distress of central bankers, regulators and politicians about the events we study could be overstated and that current policy responses to financial crises could be adequate to handle major macroeconomic events.
In the past 15 odd years, I have seen perhaps about 25 odd corporate video conferencing systems. This is excluding the professional media video conferencing systems. They have ranged from the dinky desktop ones to ones which have a whole big unit sitting under a big TV, a gigantic Boeing 747 cockpit sizes remote control, etc. etc.
I have spent literally millions on these systems and frankly, if you asked me how much benefit I got out of it? I would have said that I got about 2 out of 10 and reduced perhaps 1 trip out of 1000. There were many complaints on these systems. That you had to be seated just right, too fiddly to setup, many times they would not work, it felt too formal, couldn't do it for more than 1-2 hours at a stretch, impossible to read fine emotions, etc.
But since the few months ago, I have been exposed to what I would call as the HP HALO system which we are currently implementing across the firm. I have been meaning to write a review since the beginning of the year ever since Aaman mentioned product reviews, but there you have it. It is a video conferencing system, but the difference is like that between the old rotary fixed line Bakelite phones and a modern mobile phone.
It needs a special room in every location, usually about 12 feet by 20 feet, tastefully done up in a neutral beige colour. All rooms have exactly the same decor, lighting, colour, layout, etc. You walk in and you are faced with a slightly curved table, sort of like a half of an oval table, capable of seating 6 people, in blocks of two each.
Facing you are 3 flat screens in a row, a tilted screen on top of the middle one. There is a camera on top of each of the 3 screens in a row and one on top of the desk (recessed inside the ceiling). The table has recessed microphones, connections for laptops (which can be used to display on the tilted screen). The camera on the ceiling can be used to show stuff that you draw on the table.
So you can effectively have a video conference with multiple locations (four maximum), with multiple channels, different time zones, for hours on end and not feel tired. I have done 2 days at a trot and it was ok. Don't get me wrong, it is not cheap, but frankly, if it doesn't pay off in a matter of months, then you do not have control over your travel budget. It saves a heck of a lot on CO2 emissions, tension, operational risk, etc. etc. See what the clients are saying.
And you feel just with them. You see life sized images. You joke, kid, move around, be very natural. Instead of having to move very slowly otherwise the image will blur, etc. etc. I think it has made an huge impact on senior management. On an average, I would waste 50 hours per week on avoidable commuting time (taxi to and fro airport, airport time, etc., excluding normal London commuting time).
Even if I can replace 20% of that wastage, then I have gained 1 full working day in the office (roughly!). The chaps have great business cases, so they can work out the savings for you. Just a word of warning, you need loads of training, communications and senior management pushes to make sure that people use it, if not, then it is a nuclear powered paper clip. Best is to start with top management meetings and then get them to action to push them down. That's what we did, got the top management hooked and then slowly moved down the chain.
But then, its very futuristic. See here for what I compared this with very favourably. If you can get away with it, do get a demo at least.
Here's an interesting article on how much would Islamic Scholars earn?
Garry Envis, a consultant with Dar Al Istithmar Institute, a London-based agency which rents out four scholars as required, assures us the profession is “very lucrative”.
Last year the Financial Times ran an article claiming Islamic scholars were earning six-figure sums for their pronouncements on whether Islamic finance products adhere to Shariah law.
Given the FT says the market for Shariah-compliant financial products has risen 30% since then, and that the global supply of top Islamic scholars has apparently stagnated at 50, we deduce that the fees they collect for their services must have increased exponentially.
As a measure of their scarcity, Envis says there are no Islamic scholars at all based in the UK – most reside in the Middle East and fly in (allegedly on private jets) as required. This is despite the proliferation of Shariah-compliant products at the likes of HSBC, BNP Paribas and Merrill Lynch, and the launch of new organizations such as the Islamic Bank of Britain.
Unfortunately, becoming an Islamic scholar is no easy matter. Mohammad Khan, Director of Takaful, ReTakaful and Islamic Financial services at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP says it’s all down to reputation: “You need someone who combines an understanding of Islam with modern finance and economics and, where relevant, complex financial products.”
Most people aspiring to work in Islamic finance will need to go for something a little less high powered. Bill Allen, a consultant at search firm Napier Scott, says there’s plenty of demand for people who can structure Shariah-compliant products or work as CFOs, CEOs, treasurers or traders at Islamic banks.
Allen says a Shariah structurer in London can command £100k as a salary, plus multiples of this as a bonus.
Check out a beautiful short story that my friend has written. Very true and very moving.
You recall the note which I wrote earlier about the difficulties of some Muslim men in determining what to do when faced with a non family lady? Well, I jokingly said that they get conflicting signals.
Well, I now change my stance, stay away from ALL strange women, you guys. If you do, then you can get lashed and that's according to the heart of Islam, Saudi Arabia. One would expect that their judges would know about Islamic Law, no? :). How medieval and how sad.
First, UK gets publicly humiliated that it's fight against corruption is pathetic, no convictions, prosecutions or investigations. Heck, forget about investigations, they give up open and shut cases of corruption such as that of BAE. Solution? Why doesn't the OECD demand documents and have a public inquiry?
Second, the World Bank defers approval of a $232million loan because of alleged corruption in infrastructure spending. This country is one of the poorest and steadily getting poorer in corruption scales. Then this kind of stuff happens. What shame! Solution? Give the money to a private company to build operate and transfer. Have open, public tendering. Publish invoices and payment slips on the web!
A kickbacks scandal last month forced Mrs Macapagal to cancel a $330m government supply contract with a Chinese telecommunications group and order a review of all Chinese government-funded projects.
Third, small signs of hope in Kenya where the Kenyan Tax Agency, a hotbed of small scale corruption, has been cleaned up a bit and its revenues have nearly doubled since 2003.
Anti-corruption activists and diplomats say hundreds of millions of shillings collected by the KRA are still being “leaked” in other parts of the administration due to high-level corruption which, they say, remains rife under the Kibaki government, even though new measures have made it more difficult.
Fourth, ex President Chirac was under formal investigation as a suspect for embezzlement of public funds when he was the Paris Mayor. VERY GOOD!, you cannot escape! throw the guilty into jail!
Four of Mr Chirac's chiefs of staff from this period are formal suspects in the investigation, which began nine years ago. In 2004 Alain Juppé, former prime minister and ex-deputy mayor of Paris, was given a suspended prison sentence for his role in the affair. The punishment was reduced on appeal.
Core basic tenets of Islamic finance that Sharia' scholars draw upon:
At a dinner at Claridges recently, the room was heaving with the great and good of European Consulting, Telecoms, Government, regulators, TV, manufacturers, media, and a few industry bodies. The topic of the Business Week Roundtable Discussion 2007 was, Next Generation Networks for Next Generation Business. So I was quite excited about going there and listening to the pearls of wisdom about the future of business and what kind of networks will be required to support them. Unfortunately, I did not walk away with the feeling that there was a vision thing going on.
I went there to learn about Next Gen but all these guys were talking about copper, fibre and ADSL and Wi-Max. Gosh, guys, where is the vision thing? What about web 2.0? Where is the monetisation of online transactions? The impact on tax takings of internet based transactions? Economic activity moving into the virtual world? changes in value chains in various industry models because of Web 2.0 and technology changes? Utility pricing? Social valuation based pricing? Usage of traffic data to drive analysis? Bundling up of services?
They were patting themselves on the back about having good stuff about the steadily growing broadband penetration in UK. While one guy talked about people seeing TV soaps on their mobiles in the Korean underground while the minister for FDI for Macedonia explained how they jumped from a single fixed line provider to 99% digitally connected / fully wireless and in 18 months will be the first country in the world to be fully Wi-Maxed!!
I told them that you need to drive investments in the public sector in networks. Think sewers and waterworks, guaranteed return, and push for investments much faster via the government. The problem we have, I further pointed out, was that the deployment cycle is now longer than the new product / technology cycle. In other words, before you have managed to get the tech out from the labs, deployed and start generating money (forget payback) new tech has come around and nobody is willing to pay for the old tech any more. Copper took 27 years to payback in the UK, fibre is less but they are starting to roll it out while countries like Macedonia are two generations ahead!!!!
How about the fact that USA has just agreed to exempt all internet transactions from sales tax. So if you are going to fund essential national infrastructure from general taxation, where on earth are you going to get the money from if more and more economic activity is moving into internet transactions which are footloose and tax free? How about the fact that there are now different value systems such as the Linden Dollars, values for World of Warcraft user id's, etc.? These have a real life value, capable of being traded on an exchange or on e-Bay, and its value has been determined completely independently of any government or regulator. So what is the future of national currencies?
I gave the example of my son's comment to me when I moaned about paying £8.00 per month on his World of Warcraft game. Flash came the reply, Dad, I can sell my userid on eBay for £300. So at this moment, I am in profit if you want your money back. I was so dumbstruck at the very conceptual beauty of the idea that I completely forgot to take advantage of the idea. But do you see what has happened? He has created value electronically, it is not a physical product, not a CD, not a software product. It is but a user-id with a certain efficiency level, for which people are willing to pay real life pounds sterling. So if this is the future of one part of business, then what is the future of financial institutions, network providers, advertising agencies, regulators, central banks, credit rating agencies...
So to create the business case, you need government sponsorship and pushes to create a different way of working, funding, operating and regulating these kinds of networks. Business cases cannot just be created on the basis of fibre or WiMax networks, it has to be created on the basis of eco-systems as the old ways of measuring value are going to fast disappear. I would say that in my estimation, we will start seeing the bundling of financial services with telecommunications with mobile devices with social networks, and that sort of made people look at me as if feathers were growing out of my tongue.
An interesting comment was from the regulator; "we want people to think of networks as utilities, do not worry about broadband speed and contention ratio's, like you don't worry about size of water pipe or distance from pumping station!" Very smart thinking that, and something that should be covered much more. I also heard about how the Americans are desperate to get more European style of telecommunications regulations into USA. As you know, European regulators are very much independent of the politicians unlike the FCC which is totally entangled inside the Government. Bad mistake, but there you go.
But to conclude, I am very disappointed, forget about thought leadership, they were simply talking about last generation technology deployment and challenges. I mean, I walked out and I still not clear as to what exactly is a next generation network. I think I have a pretty good picture of what a next generation business will be and a bit of a hazy idea of what the networks and telecommunications support we will require, but I didn't get any idea that it was widespread or that far seeing.
I then goggled the dratted thing, and found this link. When you read it, you will see the mistake that they are doing. This isn't next generation at all. This is 1.5 generation. A very very silo driven, technically lead, vague framework to wrap some technical infrastructure bits. Sorry, this is not next generation at all, this is just a newer, better and fatter pipe. You could call it next version, but to call it next generation? No Sir. The business and the young generation have already consigned this technology to the same level as we did to the plumbing and sewer works.
If you do want to call it new generation, then you have to extend the value chain to include the customer (both retail and business) at one end and on the other end, you need to include the content generators, the mashers, the financiers and the social network framework providers.
But more about that later! I will be developing these arguments further as we go on.
Well, it was perhaps far too much to expect that they will be economically literate and voluntarily stop sucking on the public purse subsidy tit. Irrespective of whether they are cooperatives or owned by single owners, I see no reason for subsidies to be given in a rich country. What on earth do you want subsidies for? And now they are claiming environmental benefits (just shut down the farm!).
Look at why UK and Germany hates it? While the UK fears losing the comparatively little money it gets from the CAP, Germany worries that thousands of workers on farms in the former communist east could lose their jobs, adding to high unemployment.
Do you see anything that has to do with actual farming? Nope.
Mariann Fischer Boel, the European Union farm commissioner, had attempted to slay one of the CAP's many demons - that the rich get most - by proposing less money for the biggest farms from next year. "We are raising this issue partly because the public raises it again and again," she saidof the €45bn ($67bn, £32bn) a year policy.
About 80 per cent of the money goes to a fifth of the EU's 7m farmers.
See here, now the Hong Kong guys are climbing on the Islamic Finance Bandwagon. It will face fierce competition from Malaysia, one of the originators of this type of instrument
But again, Malaysia should not be complacent. For 2 reasons. the Malaysian Financial System needs to be brought up to par much more before it can compete with HK. In terms of doing business, HK is streets ahead of KL, so if you were a newcomer wanting to setup a business and raise Islamic Finance, you may indeed find it much easier to go to HK.
Second reason, the Chinese and HK government's own public financing needs are so great that they can literally create an Islamic Finance market on their own.
So London, Malaysia, Bahrain, Qatar and Dubai, be warned!
I follow this blog very closely, Umar Lee provides a fascinating perspective of American Muslims. Yesterday, he posted a fascinating note and then there was a very good and interesting debate about what exactly is the right way to greet and treat Muslim women. From what I understood, there is not one way. Greet her and she (and as it happens, many of their husbands) might get upset because you greeted her. Do not greet her, and she gets upset because you are not respecting her. If you do not look at her by being modest, well, some think it is being disrespectful. So there doesn't really seem to be any Islamic ruling per se, only tradition, and that too based upon which country, culture, time, circumstances the situation is based upon. Incidentally, check this link out for a rather interesting article on Yvonne Ridley not liking handshakes and then somebody else telling her off for having unislamic thoughts. Very beautifully argued, and typically, Yvonne Ridley's bizarre unislamic thought processes come through.
So if a first or second generation immigrant is poor, it is the host government's fault. And they have to go about doing silly things like affirmative action and equal opportunity. Oh!, and have minimum wage which is supposed to be decent. Who defines decent? As for minimum wages, there is a very hot debate going on about whether minimum wages depress employment or not. Even if it did not, the idea that a government agency will tell me how much to pay my workers is anathema to me as a libertarian!
But to go back to the article. They seem to be saying that it is to do with race. What utter rot, to put it politely. And this made me laugh, apparently there are people now called as visible minorities. I presume it refers to skin colour, social habits or such like. I would be curious to see what or who are visible majorities? or invisible majorities? But besides this frankly spectacularly stupid terminology, here is something to think about.
The mother country to Canada, United Kingdom which has a somewhat similar ethnic, immigration and minority background gives these figures for education:
Can you see the 2 lines which are beyond 70%? those belong to visible minorities - the Indians and Chinese, who significantly over take the visible majority (the whites, I guess). I wonder where Jews fit in? or how about Polish? But I presume they are too white to be minorities, yes?
Now look at economic activity here.
Can you see the second set of bar's? that's whites. Where are Indians? just a tiny bit below them. And so are Blacks.
How about employment (full time, part time, employment rate and unemployment rate?) see page 15 of this report. More Indian extraction women are in employment than white women. The % of full time employment is the same for Indian men and White men. Here's another interesting study on relative earnings by minority status.
For those who refer to the test of sending cv applications with different names, has anybody tried the reverse experiment? (I haven't seen it, so would love to hear about it). Send Christian and Hindu name cv's to say Hindu employers and see the results. I dare say that you will find group behaviour, that people prefer to work with people of their own kinds.
A very good overview of this entire issue of ethnicity and poverty in the UK is in this paper. See Table 4.1 and try to tell me that it is clear that just being visibly different causes differences. How is that that % differences are more than 100% across minorities? Or take a look at Table 4.4 where you will see that the hourly pay for Indians is greater than that of the white British population? Or that more Indians and Pakistani's get their income from self employment than whites as given in Table 4.6? Or in table 4.7, Indians and other ethnic groups take less benefits than whites?
Public policy should not be driven by blunt instruments such as skin colour. And why aren't people trying to push these people to setup their own businesses rather than look to the government to support them? I am totally not convinced that it is skin colour or religion that is the cause of poverty or be a significant explaining factor in government public policy. If say the government starts off doling out cash, then why on earth would they dole it out to say Indians who are earning more than Whites anyway? But then you have to start defining what a minority is, etc. etc. Wouldnt it simply be better to give cash and benefits to poor people? irrespective?
The reason why I think 1984 and 2002 are horrible situations in India is because that clearly showed that the state turned on its own citizens. I am sadly cognizant of the fact that Hindu's and Muslims will riot and local leaders do these things.
But as long as the state is clearly not involved and punishes the perpetrators, that's the pragmatic best you can get to!. Unfortunately, we keep on seeing this absolutely disgusting behaviour that the state actively encourages and participates in violence against its own citizens for narrow ideological reasons.
Whether it is religion (BJP and its assorted morons doing this stuff in 2002), secular pure party politics (Congress and its assorted corrupt goons in 1984), or the left (CPI-M and its red goons in 2007), they are all the same, they are doing the same thing, same old murder and rape.
Now in 2007, we see the same in West Bengal, the home of the people, the place where land reform was furthest advanced, where the Chief Minister is feted for bringing in foreign investment and popularising the IT sector. (see the similarities with Gujarat and how the Gujarat CM was feted as well? remember how Modi said about action versus reaction and Buddha saying payback in same coin?).
And now in Nandigram, you have disciplined foot soldiers (only in this time, they are wearing communist red instead of wearing the Hindu red), raping and pillaging. Men, women and children not safe. Police fully involved in shooting innocents. And then the political leadership has the gall to point to dispossessed people as being the cause of their own deaths.
The party which is supposed to be the supporter of the people, dalits, minorities and the like has merrily went about shooting them. 10,000 people are homeless. The area has been described as a war zone. While the number of deaths has not been confirmed (estimates range from 600 to 20 odd deaths) What is this? Why are these communists running riot? And what on earth is the central government not doing anything despite the fact that the Governor of the West Bengal State condemning the state driven violence.
There is a very good reason why the communists rule over one of the two states with near about 100% literacy in India. Their land reform, education and pro-poor policies are perhaps one of the primary reasons why even in this day and age, Communists rule the roost in West Bengal.
Mind you, the current Chief Minister is doing all he can to be capitalist, he is removing labour regulations which remove the right to strike from West Bengal based IT industrial units, he is busy using eminent domain laws to take land away from farmers and reclassify them as Special Export Zones, and so on and so forth which is driving the un-reconstructed left absolutely batty.
But do not forget that underlying all this is a totalitarian ideology. Just like China is capitalist in all but name, and all for the sake of "THE party", same in West Bengal. For the sake of the party, they will not take any prisoners and the very people they profess to represent are ruthlessly squelched. The various CPI-M leaders are spectacularly arrogant and bolshie (pun intended - bolshevism - Communism - geddit???!).
Curiously enough and I think this is bit symptomatic of the elitist media (and I am not making this generalisation lightly as I belong in that category as well!) in India as well as abroad, that the coverage of this incident in West Bengal is still being treated differently from that of 2002 or 1984, all state sponsored pogroms.
What people do not realise is that when you are not fair and unbiased, with malice towards one and all, then you give space for your words to be ignored, to be accused of hypocrisy and finally give rise to extreme ideologies. We have to be against any form of violence, do not really care about who does it. Still, a large number of commentators have rightly castigated both CM's such as in here, here, here etc.
But what further gives rise to hope is the fact that the Indian Judiciary is on the case. Ruling on a previous incident, it said:
In a major setback for the West Bengal government, the Calcutta High Court on Friday ruled that the police firing in Nandigram on March 14 was wholly unconstitutional and could not be justified under any provision of the law.
The police and CPI(M) cadres had fired indiscriminately at villagers protesting against the state government’s attempt to acquire their lands to set up a special economic zone in Nandigram. At least 14 people were shot down, 162 persons injured and 33 women filed complaints of rape.
The irony is that two Chief Ministers, who are pushing forward with economic reform, improving infrastructure, and so on and so forth, are the ones who are also having murderers and goons operating under totalitarian ideologies, one far left and one far right. The communists blamed the Maoists. But that still does not justify the violence perpetrated by the party members. May they rot in hell. No, actually, may all their progeny become capitalist call centre members and they be condemned to read Ayn Rand in jail. I wonder if we can do this to these two sets of murderers and goons?
But joking aside, I hope the court throws these murderers into jail and let them rot!
