Viswanathan Anand is the world chess champion again. The Indian maestro won the 12-game world chess championship match against Vladimir Kramnik of Russia 6.5-4.5 with one game to spare on Wednesday. Playing with white, Anand drew the 11th game at the Art and Exhibition Hall here to retain his title.
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.
There is nothing like stopping at a gas station somewhere in the Catskills, glancing up at Fox News on TV and finding out that they killed Benazir Bhutto. Of all the Bhutto related articles, this one captured my attention.
South Asians like their martyrs. My great-grandfather allegedly brought home a vial of some of the ashes of a teenage revolutionary hanged by the British. Khudiram had thrown a bomb at a British magistrate and gone to the gallows with a smile. Ironically, my great-grandfather worked for the British, in their police service. But he was so awed by young Khudiram’s sacrifice, he used his official connections to get that vial, which he kept in his bedroom.
Benazir was no 15-year-old tilting at windmills in some foolhardy act of defiance. She was South Asian royalty. “Benazir is killed. I’m stunned,” a friend texted me from a cafe in Calcutta. “I really am.” As my friend says, in our feudal societies, much as we might pretend otherwise, we have a royalist streak. And when a royal goes down in a hail of bullets, it sends a collective shiver down our spines.
Benazir Bhutto, martyr | Salon.com
He’s right, having grown up through two major assassinations on Indian “royal family” scions (Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi), the post-martyr deification that occurs needs to be lived through to be understood.
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Tags: SouthAsia, Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto survives, others weren’t quite so lucky.
Over 125 participants of a procession led by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto upon her return to the country lost their lives on Thursday night after two powerful blasts rocked the slow-moving motorcade edging its way past the Karsaz bridge, on Sharea Faisal.
At least 100 people were injured in the explosions.
Former FIA chief Rahman Malik told a private television channel that the explosions clearly targated Ms Benazir’s specially-built vehicle. He added that many top PPP leaders were injured.
Well, it’s probably too early to say who’s responsible. Terrorists, the ISI, who knows… but blaming “Al Quaeda” at this point in time is clearly premature. There are many terrorist groups based in Pakistan, most of them with no AQ links… Benazir Bhutto pointed fingers at the supporters of long dead former president Zia ul Haq, which seems puzzling. I did not know he still had supporters, having been dead since 1988.
Of course, in the short term, this will only increase Ms. Bhutto’s popularity.
Meant to blog about this on Wednesday, but it’s been that kind of week!
Debate in India: Is Rule on Yoga Constitutional? – New York Times
At issue is a measure by the Hindu nationalist-led government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, that required public school students to practice the sun salutation and recite certain chants in Sanskrit during a statewide function on Thursday. The state government, controlled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., said that it complied with a central government policy to encourage yoga in schools and that it was inspired by a recent visit from a popular Hindu spiritual leader. Muslim and Christian groups in the state took issue not so much with the yoga exercise, but with the chants, which they said were essentially Hindu and in worship of the sun. They argued in court on Wednesday that it violated the Indian constitutional provision to separate religion and state.
The courts did the right thing. Yoga in India is definitely associated with being Hindu, and Sanskrit as well. There has been a growing tendency among right wing Hindu organizations to conflate Hindu and Indian (they do mean the same thing, after all). I would recommend any number of essays from Amartya Sen, especially those from the Argumentative Indian for a definitive takedown of this pernicious movement. The one-line answer is that India over the last 2000+ years has been influenced by so many religions and regions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, China, Arabia, Persia, Europe) that it is a foolish to ascribe any one identity to this country.
Whether yoga is religious practice is, like everything in this country, a matter of debate. Some people note that its recitations sometimes invoke Hindu gods, but others argue that its physical exercises have nothing to do with Hindu ritual. It is hardly uncommon for non-Hindus to practice yoga
And a lot of Hindus celebrate Christmas by going to the temple, funny how that works, and funny how nobody’s making them do it. The issue here was always imposition by the state and choice.
Yoga is wonderful and very good for you, and with a little care, can easily be delinked from its religious affiliations. Maybe this program can be done right, if the government is actually interested in getting it right.
Declaring that India is not a “threat” to his country, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has described the militants operating in Jammu and Kashmir as “terrorists,” the first such admission by any top Pakistani leader.
“India has never been a threat to Pakistan. I, for one, and our democratic government is not scared of Indian influence abroad,” Mr. Zardari told Wall Street Journal in an interview.
He spoke of the militant groups operating in Kashmir as “terrorists,” the paper said, noting that former President Pervez Musharraf would more likely have called them “freedom fighters.”
Indicating a major shift in Pakistan’s well-known position, Mr. Zardari had, as chief of the Pakistan People’s Party, said in March that the ties between the two countries should not be held “hostage” to the Kashmir issue, which should be left for future generations to decide, raising hackles at home
via The Hindu : Front Page : Zardari calls J&K militants terrorists.
Apparently, “our terrorists” ≠ “your freedom fighters” any more. I am not sure it changes the equation much in Kashmir, which, last I checked, was still burning.
Predictably, Mr. Zardari is getting a lot of guff about his statements and his foreign minister has already walked them back. He is more used to being a monarch maker who works in the background, put a microphone on him and his gaffes are McCainesque.
Turns out that the Delhi High Court does not share Penguin’s expansive view of copyrights.
Organisers of the ‘Potter pandal’ in Salt Lake’s FD Block heaved a sigh of relief on Friday when Delhi High Court dismissed Penguin India’s complaint of copyright violation.
The puja committee is free to go ahead with the pandal, which resembles Hogwarts school, the setting for JK Rowling’s magical Harry Potter series.