President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.
Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan – NYTimes.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDsNzguCzSU
The video summarizes the issue. Long story short, an American company, Signal International colludes with an Indian contracting company to lure 100s of workers from India with false promises of greencards. The workers proceed to go deep into debt with the contracting company to make this happen. Once in the States, it turns out they’re given H2B guest worker visas (yes, I treat all my guests by making them pay 1000s of bucks a month for sharing a trailer with 25 other people) that are specifically not eligible for green cards except under family quotas. This is bonded labor, American style. No arguments can be made that these workers have it better than in India and they should be grateful.
I am incredibly proud of these workers for finding the courage to strike and take their protests to DC. The Washington Post seems to have dedicated one measly article worth of coverage.
There are many reasons for this exploitation. The dehumanization of third world (including Mexican) workers is a contributing factor, so is the broken immigration system that allows excessively restrictive employment contracts. Most importantly, the U.S department of labor exists solely to make the lives of the companies it regulates easier. It has nothing to do with labor any more.
I am glad they’re protesting for their dignity and broken promises. Wonder what’s stopping the company from firing them for striking, they’re not allowed to strike! That way, they can then notify the aptly named ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) to have them deported.
Seems like us South Asians die earlier from heart attacks.
ScienceDaily: South Asians Have Higher Levels Of Heart Attack Risk Factors At Younger Ages
Deaths related to cardiovascular disease occur 5 to 10 years earlier in South Asian countries than in Western countries, according to background information in the article. This has raised the possibility that South Asians exhibit a special susceptibility for acute myocardial infarction (AMI; heart attack) that is not explained by traditional risk factors.
But why?
The prevalence of protective risk factors (leisure time physical activity, regular alcohol intake, and daily intake of fruits and vegetables) were markedly lower in South Asian study participants compared with those from other countries.
Um, it is mainly behavioral, not genetic according to the authors, and hence can be mitigated by lifestyle changes.
Well, I guess it is time to take a personal stock as of 1-18-2007:
On the whole, I seem to be in decent shape. It’s good to take stock once in a while.
Legal wrangle puts India’s generic drugs at risk – health – 29 January 2007 – New Scientist
Tens of thousands of people being treated for AIDS will suffer if Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis succeeds in changing India’s patent law, the humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Monday. Novartis is challenging a specific provision of India’s patent law that, if overturned, would see patents being granted far more widely, heavily restricting the availability of affordable generic medicines, MSF says.
In 2000, antiretroviral (ARV) treatment cost was estimated at $10,000 per patient annually. But the availability of generic drugs produced mainly in India, allowed costs to plummet to about $70 per patient per year, Mwangi adds.
You’ve got to love the friendly multinational arguing to make extra billions while people die. But I don’t think any Indian judge will overthrow Indian patent law. And there is a national interest exemption built into most patent statutes, per the TRIPs agreements.
Would have been my headline. Apparently, the New York Times byline writer was more concerned about a multi billion dollar company losing a small amount of money than the fact that a different ruling in this case would have made life saving drugs unaffordable for millions of people. When did American newspapers become shills for the elite?
Setback for Novartis in India Over Drug Patent – New York Times
Indian companies will be free to continue making less expensive generic drugs, much of which flow to the developing world, after a court rejected a challenge to the patent law on Monday.
Aid organizations declared the ruling a victory for the ārights of patients over patents,ā but the Swiss drug company Novartis, which filed the case, warned that the ruling would discourage investments in innovation and would undermine drug companiesā efforts to improve their products.
At issue is the degree of innovation required for a drug to be regarded as truly “new”, where there is a significant enough chance for failure that the company would never develop it unless afforded monopoly rights for 10 years. A very well known tactic by drug companies is to make a slightly different formulation of an existing drug, say an extended release form of a drug which takes a little longer to dissolve, and hence is available to the body at a different time. Under US patent law, this qualifies for full patent protection on the extended release form. By now, the science of making an extended release tablet is well known, it’s just a question of formulating the drug with a different set of inactive ingredients that take longer to dissolve, or sometimes, through a differently engineered tablet. The chemistry of this change is predictable, published and not really innovative. Why should these small changes have patent protection?
Bonus Note: Madras is my home city, so I’m glad it was decided there!
ULFA attack has WB, Bihar on alert : ULFA, Assam, violence, Bengal : IBNLive.com : CNN-IBN
In a brutal backtracking, after gunning down 17 non-Assamese workers on Friday in the Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts, the ULFA went on a rampage on Saturday gunning down migrant workers from Bihar and Bengal.
Assam is a state in North East India bordering West Bengal, and Bangladesh, and there has always been a lot of tension between the ethnic Assamese and Banglas from both sides of the border. The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) purports to speak for the Assamese and has been waging a violent armed struggle. Unfortunately, they are not really powerful enough to take on the Indian army and usually take their frustrations out on innocent day laborers. The Assamese feel that Banglas and Biharis are coming into their state and taking their jobs and disrupting their culture. Like any other ethnic situation in India, it is complex, messy, and with no “right” or “easy” solutions. Clearly, increased development in neighboring states would keep the Banglas and Biharis from moving. But, thanks to its oil reserves, the jobs are in Assam. The Indian army has been active in this area as a counter insurgency force since the ’80s. Complicating the matter are the mountainous terrain and the remoteness of most of these attacks.
From Canada’s paper of record…
Speaking fluent English, he described the gruelling 42-day high-seas journey and talked of the deteriorating living conditions in his homeland. He also described his dismay at arriving in Canada only to be branded a potential terrorist and jailed for nearly three months.
Ah, the old “compliment”, “you speak such good English”, code for “I am so culturally and racially ignorant that the act of any non-white non Anglo-Saxon speaking English surprises and amazes me, and I am clueless enough to think of this statement as a compliment”. If the statement is made by a lay-person, I view it as an opportunity to educate. This represents the culmination of a long journey growing up in privileged middle class India and slowly accepting myself as a person of colour (different and yet to be written blog post). But, for a reporter specifically assigned to write about immigration and refugee claims, this is inexcusable, especially because the language of his testimony has no relevance to his story. It’s almost as if the reporter thinks that this person would be more deserving of Canadian sympathy if she lets us know that he speaks “fluent English” just like us!
The rest of the story is not too bad, it uses neutral language to chronicle the story of a heroic person’s struggle to first help the people around him, then finally make a risky journey across the world in search of a better life.
But wait, there’s more! The headline writer seems to have his or her own agenda as well (not captured in the website article, but see the Page One headline (captured on cellphone camera!):
Not bad, ” Tamil Migrant Sought Relief from Homeland Threats” – neutral, descriptive and to the point.
Now see the headline for the continuation:
Wow, “Militant Claims No Ties to Tamil Tigers”. Hello, what happened? When did migrant become militant, when did his statement become a “claim”, and what relevance do the Tamil Tigers have to this man’s refugee status? Is every Tamil a Tiger? (true story, playing pickup at the gym the other day, this guy asked me what my ethnicity was, then called me a Tiger, then got very defensive when I yelled at him!).
A writer’s bias becomes very evident in the choice of words used to frame statements. I always look for “said”, “asserted”, “claimed” as short forms for “we are reporting this statement, but here’s what we really think”.
This is not the first time headlines have made me scratch my head. This happens especially often in the world of science, as this blog post very ably documents. I once got into a brief email discussion with a reporter at the Raleigh News and Observer who was writing articles about undocumented workers. She would use “undocumented immigrant” (Good), “illegal immigrant” (Bad) and occasionally, “illegal alien” (Alien??) interchangeably. However, the headline would always contain the very pejorative one word “Illegals”. I asked her about it and her one line dismissal was that “she did not write the headlines”, which is a nice and casual shirking of responsibility! Since most people only see headlines anyway, the words stick. So, Tamil = Tiger, immigrant = illegal, etc.
It made me a little sad to see the story of good things (he survived and will have his refugee claim heard) happening to a good man reduced to a disgusting innuendo filled headline. For more on the Tamil refugee story, see this article. The Canadian government is using secret evidence to decide who gets to go free and who is detained. While some of the people on board this ship could possibly be linked to violence, secret trials and innuendo do not help anyone involved. The Canadian government should know this, given that its dealings with immigrants using the security certificate program have been criticized before. I understand and fully sympathize with the Canadian government’s position that this is a complex situation and each person needs to be dealt with carefully on a case by case basis, but secrecy is not necessary here.
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I am not surprısıng to anything. But thanks..