He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

swedish chef

swedish chef

At the Start
Joined
Jun 28, 2010
Messages
4,847
Location
London
Gulnaz an Afghan Woman is to be freed from Jail after agreeing to marry her rapist. Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday pardoned Gulnaz serving a 12-year prison sentence for having sex out of wedlock after she was raped by a relative.

Sharia is enshrined as the highest law of the land in Afghanistan according to the current constitution. Under Islamic law, the stress is not so much on the crime of rape but on the dishonour that the woman has brought upon her family by her sexual immorality, even if it was a rape. Under Islamic law, rape can only be proven if the rapist confesses or if there are four male witnesses. This is the primary reason that rape victims are often punished by the Islamic courts as adulterers.


Women like Gulnaz who make allegations of rape may be expected to produce four witnesses in accordance with the Qur'an's standards for proving a sexual crime (24:13), or they run the risk that all they have done is admitted to having sex.

The term 'zina bil Jabr' is utterly contradictory, accurately translated, it is "consensual extramarital sex by force" this contradiction has serious legal implications and has destroyed the lives of numerous women. Islamic law rejects forensic evidence, such as DNA, in favour of eyewitness testimony. In the absence of four male witnesses, a rape cannot be entertained. The woman's charge then becomes a "confession" of adultery. She can be stoned, even though the male is unpunished, since he never "confessed" to a sexual act!

Gulnaz was raped two years ago by her cousin's husband but did not straight away report the attack, fearing reprisals from elements of Afghanistan's conformist culture. She conceived a child from the rape, and went to police after showing signs of pregnancy.

Prophet of Islam got a revelation from Allah through Gabriel that four witnesses were required (the accusers didn't have them). This helped acquit Aisha, but Muslim women have undergone an in built prejudice within the Islamic jurisprudence law against them to date. The root of the requirement of four witnesses comes from the Qur'an (24:4 and 24:13). It is based on an incident in which Muhammad's favourite wife, Aisha, was accused of infidelity.

Qur'an (2:282) - Establishes that a woman's testimony is worth only half that of a man's in court.

Qur'an (24:4) - "And those who accuse free women then do not bring four witnesses (to adultery), flog them..."

Qur'an (24:13) - "Why did they not bring four witnesses of it? But as they have not brought witnesses they are liars before Allah."

Qur'an (2:223) - "Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will..."

The chief problem with the traditional Islamic law is treating rape as "consensual extramarital sex by force"-zina bil Jabr. Since' extramarital sex' - zina is lawfully forbidden and looked upon as morally one of the most blameworthy acts, the very charge of 'zina bil Jabr' is considered as casting a negative spotlight on the accused. A rape victim, already an injured party, is further shocked when the burden of proof shifts to her.

This tag and burden of proof is a serious obstruction to overcome and a major impediment to treat a raped victim with any impartiality or even handedness, as a victim and victim only. Rather, the very accusation of rape under this conjecture is that the sufferer along with the rapist have been involved in a "consensual extramarital sex by force" (zina bil Jabr)- a guilty act.

The obligation of four Muslim adult male witnesses is a supreme stumbling block, the eye-witnesses should be trustworthy, truthful and devout, all should have seen the of the act of "penetration" clearly. The witnesses can be further grilled as for their individual virtues, they have to be pious to the point that they must be free from major sins as enjoined by Koran and traditions, this is another intolerable stipulation that hardly ever can be met through free examination.

This freedom from sins is an auxiliary barrier in an unforeseen event that four witnesses really see an act of penetration; to disqualify these unique ringside witnesses the accuser can get them disqualified for being non pious and non practicing Muslims. The greatest vices, technically called "the major sins" (Kaba'ir), are: "Avoid the seven noxious things"- and after having said this, the prophet mentioned them: "associating anything with Allah; magic; killing one whom Allah has declared inviolate without a just case, consuming the property of an orphan, devouring usury, turning back when the army advances, and slandering chaste women who are believers but indiscreet." (Bukhari and Muslim)


Eye-witnesses of "penetration" is considered a Sharia hurdle as a reasonable and just requirement, a test to prove rape that makes conviction almost unattainable, this disappointingly soaring barrier of proof in case of rape makes women a prey all across the Islamic world. . How can four persons eye-witness a very private sexual act or forced rape, short of an orgy. The burden of corroboration and complex substantiation has set the legal requirements and obstacles too high for a women even to try to accuse a rapist.

As soon as a woman files a complaint of rape or a woman accused of zina, (the charge of rape) the burden of proof shifts to the accuser. She can't bring female, non-Muslim or minor witnesses. She can't bring witnesses who are not pious i.e. free of major sins or witnesses not seen eye-witnesses of the "penetration." As a result the victim ends up in the court as a culprit and sham accuser. It is implied that this is to maintain sanctity of the community, and is the general purpose at the cost of veracity of a human being if she is a woman.

This is a dilemma that has ensnared women under Shariah laws. The quandary is further complicated by a supplementary issue. The penalty for rape (zina bil jabr) is superior than just zina (adultery), the accused has all the incentive to claim that it was an adulterous relationship.

Gulnaz is now raising the daughter in jail and has agreed to marry her attacker in order to be released and legitimize her daughter. Islam's stress is entirely and totally upon women as having the blame not to lure men. If they do, and the man rapes, it's the woman's fault. So this ruling is of a piece with the wearing of hijabs, burqas, etc. Islam teaches that women are the possessions of men and places a high premium on virginity. This woman after the rape would be considered damaged goods. If the rapist had declined to marry her, her life would have been completely ruined, as no one else would marry her and she would be stigmatized.

This injustice against women is disgusting, most women in jails in Islamic countries of South Asia are there for "moral crimes." The demands from Gulnaz was to produce four eyewitnesses, in failing to do so she was jailed for admitting having sex as a false accuser. The burden of proof for establishing the crime of rape is a major reason why Gulnaz and so many others like her are in jail in the first place. Communities are enforcing Sharia, and Kabul does not disagree with them.
"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
 
Mumbo jumbo, let them get on with it, absolute lunatics.....Our soldiers need to get out and let them slaughter each other again.....that's all they've got to do
 
Sorry, there is nothing in the Koran about wearing a veil, burqa, or whatever other name you may like to give it. It only advises women to 'dress modestly' and the fashion for a veil was instigated by Cyrus the Great of Persia at his court, when he decreed that his harem women should wear veils. Status-conscious non-court women then wished to appear high-born enough to qualify for palatial favours, and began wearing veils, too.

The issue of rape requiring four witnesses is the same as adultery - any accusation of an unlawful sexual congress has to be witnessed by four men in order to prevent false accusations (it being pretty unlikely that you're going to bonk adulterously in front of a gallery of gawpers). It was in fact to protect, or at least try to protect, both parties (a man from boasting that he'd 'had her' or a woman complaining that man had assaulted her).

As for adulterous behaviour, if it is proved, both parties can be put to death by stoning. Although in Afghanistan that has been somewhat perverted by the Taliban, placing the woman deeper into the stoning hole than the man, so that she was likely to be stoned to death, while he might be able to wriggle free and be, uh, 'pardoned'.

Rapists do not, however, under true Shari'ah law, get off - in the case of the sodomising and rape of boys and girls, this counts as adultery (if the attacker is married) or fornication (if single), both activities punishable by death if proven. It is not the rape which begets the death sentence - it's the adulterous or fornicating behaviour.

In the case of the Afghan woman above, she is given the chance to marry the attacking cousin-in-law so that her child can be legitimised. The father of the child will now be required to house and keep them both, which up until now he's not required to do. At some point, the woman can petition for a divorce (as can he) so that a separation could occur with no loss of honour to her. As things stand, yes, she is in a horrible situation of being outside of a supportive society and her child, as a bastard, likewise. Those issues will be resolved by her marrying this man. She could then (legitimately) refuse to have further sex with him, whereupon he has the right to divorce her - as far as she's concerned, that's probably just fine, as he will have to pay her off and continue to maintain the child.

There is, agreed, absolutely a very great deal yet to be done for women's welfare and basic human rights in much of the Islamic world.

As for women being the chattels of men, I wouldn't get too overzealous about slagging off Muslims - the derogatory term 'bag' for a woman comes from the early days of rail travel when women, considered in our Christian, white, British land were chucked into the 'Baggage Car', and not permitted to ride alongside the men. We were not given the vote until the 1920s and then only married women (singletons being far too stupid to understand such grave matters). Single women got the vote by, if I'm recalling right, 1930. We were the chattels, or possessions, of men - father if unwed, husband if married, until Women's Suffrage put paid to some of it, and men's propensity for knocking seven bells out of each other (in other words, two disgusting world wars) showed that women could, indeed, be the equal to men in hard, tough and - gosh! - even intelligent work!! And if you want to quote from holy books, check out your darling ole Bible some time - there's quite enough in there about women being men's possessions and chastising them if they got bolshie.
 
The other thing to say is that without the confession of the man accused of rape (and God knows, they are usually very harshly dealt with by police, who will tell them that as Muslims they will go to Hell if they don't tell the truth - the major difference between 'us' and 'them' being that Muslims really still do believe in the wrath of God and souls burning in Hellfire, etc., unlike today's cynical Church), there is actually no proof that a rape actually took place. An affair could've been conducted or just a bit of rough sex, consensually, with the result being a pregnancy.

That's why the 'witnesses' bit is so important for Muslims to comply with their Islamic law. But it all goes back nearly 2,000 years, when a person's word was their bond - except when it was used against someone else with dreadful effect. Thus, to be sure that something took place, there had to be witnesses. Not that different to our law courts before the wonders of DNA, epithelials, blood typing - even fingerprints. If you think back to before fingerprinting was initiated, it was only a crime if someone had seen it. You could say all you liked about being coshed, robbed, raped, press-ganged or whatever - but unless you could call up witnesses (and, naturally, the richer complainants could always find some for a few bob!), your case was far from likely to be proved. Think about the number of innocent people transported for life to the colonies, or hanged - because they were accused so often by people with connections to authority or power, and there were no witnesses to support their story. You only had to have Lord Tiddlybottom's game keeper accuse you of poaching and you, poor, illiterate and hardly articulate oik, were doled out a terrible punishment - you'd be lucky to stay alive, although you may well have been whipped, branded, and slung into the pokey for years.

This is the problem with holding on to ancient religious laws in a modern, scientific world: countries like Afghanistan have any amount of very clever weaponry, thanks to the West, but not very clever policing amenities like laboratories. No doubt in time, such innovations will find their way into supporting or denying accusations, and assisting policemen with forensics, but that's a way off yet. It's not that such relatively new innovations are banned by Shari'ah (they can't be, because they weren't around at the time of the prophet Muhammad, who wrote the Koran) - it's just that most Middle Eastern countries haven't yet got enough trained staff to operate them. Their hospitals, for example, are staffed hugely by foreigners, so give them a chance!

So, being asked to marry the bloke who you say raped you (but it cannot be proved now that it wasn't just a fling) and impregnated you is about the best outcome: your child and you have - by Shari'ah law - got to be supported by him, equally to his present family. You can deny him sex and he can then divorce you for that, very simply. But in the meantime, your child's name is legitimised so that s/he can inherit and can be included in all societal events, and marry in due course, without stigma. Until Afghanistan is dragged a century or two further forward into the sort of forensics excellence we now expect (and still seem to balls up), that's about as good as it can get.
 
Last edited:
Sorry Krizon - these are not my writings but those of a man whose philosophy I admire and whose knowledge of the muslim world has given me a greater understanding. I am not at all religious and feel that a majority of muslim countries are stuck in the middle ages because of religion. I read this article and think back to when women were accused of being witches.
 
harry said:
Mumbo jumbo, let them get on with it, absolute lunatics.....Our soldiers need to get out and let them slaughter each other again.....that's all they've got to do
Click to expand...

The war in Afghanistan will only end if the Pushtoon populace leaves this medieval mindset of Talibenisation. I wish Stalin had taken this region too and swallowed it like the other “’Stans” for fifty years or Brits would have been successful in intergrating this lawless region within the Empire; we would have seen tremendous human development as a result. It is not Pakistan but history and ideology of Islam that bonded Indians into slavery from invaders from the north for a lot of its last millennium history. Uzbekistan, the home place of Babur, is far more progressed and enlightened than Afghanistan, maybe forced communism or forced colonialism may have helped the education of the tribes. It was not to be, the veneer of political appropriateness and pragmatism missed the whole region. We today are prisoners of that historical drift of minds.

As World Gathers in Bonn today to chart Afghanistan's Roadmap Beyond 2014, I thought it was important to look at the origins of this deep rooted problem. Instant gratification, through instant definitions of history and instant geography has become the pest and nuisance of the mindset of global leadership.

Planning Afghanistan's future beyond 2014 is impossible unless we discover Afghanistan's untold story of the '1000-year-old invaders (and since 1947) a buffer zone' of the subcontinent! Afghan President Hamid Karzai, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will formally open the one-day conference of about 1,000 delegates in Bonn, incapable of persuading key southerly neighbour Pakistan to reconsider its boycott of an international gathering on Afghanistan's future. Afghanistan's western neighbour Iran though joins the conference, represented by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.

Afghanistan is a country that is mankind’s last frontier of medievalism. Lady Butler's famous painting of Dr William Brydon, reportedly the sole survivor, gasping his way to the British outpost in Jalalabad, helped make Afghanistan's reputation as a graveyard for foreign armies and became one of the great epics of the Empire. It is an unshakable bastion of medieval ideology and needs to be looked microscopically through prisms of narration of the olden times. Any short term study is detrimental to the region and strategic thinkers alike. Bonn is an attempt of ‘instant glorification’ of an historical anomaly; a conference that ignores history and focuses only on recent trends, forgetting completely the ingrained hatred and historical burden that our region is laden with. And anyone who likes to make observations based on superficiality will not do any justice to the subcontinent with its present hatred-based mindset.

The United States under U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and 100 countries and international organizations will be represented, with some 60 foreign ministers going ahead with promises of continued aid for Afghanistan; after most foreign forces leave the country, they all want a peaceful Afghanistan that will never again be a safe haven for international terrorism. The challenge is to wean Afghanistan out of the medievalism of 7th century AD -- a country that is stuck in time. Afghanistan provides about 90 percent of the world's opium, the unprocessed ingredient used to formulate heroin. Money from the opium trade is partly used to stimulate the insurgency by the Taliban.

History sets the records straight and cuts through all the drivel. To stabilize Afghanistan, the ‘War in Pakistan’ argument means changing the geography of India. The vandals Ghaznavi, Ghauri and others from the 'North' have been like the Visigoths that destroyed the Roman Empire; those Germanic uncouth tribes went on to produce Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Goethe and Kant and a great nation. Loutish and crudely ideologically insulated Afghanistan produced nothing intellectually; the region remained tied to its old customs. As the world moved on to the ‘Age of Knowledge,’ the dark curtain of ignorance remained firmly in place, only producing more guns, more violence over the last 1,000 years.

India's historical misgivings towards North of South Asia bequeathed to Pakistan in 1947 are rooted in its psyche and can well be understood. The rationale is based on 'these master invaders and looters' from the North who came and bonded the Indian subcontinent for nearly a millenium, areas where today’s Pakistan is located was the crime scene. The crime scene of a 1000 years’ North India's ‘inhumane bondage’ is firmly established in the minds of the subcontinent's masses. They consider the 1,000 year old invasions as originating from the ancestors of these Pakistanis, though many of these originate from the hinterlands of India and only migrated after1947.

North of Pakistan by history, by facts, and today, political Islamic ideology, helps to widen the gulf further. There are those ‘Jihadists’ who want to unfurl the banner of ‘The Message’ further across the Khyber Pass deep into the hinterland of the subcontinent.

The hostile relationship between India and Pakistan is a by-product of South Asian history where for 1,000 years India's North was ruled ruthlessly and mercilessly by the Muslim invaders from the north. The fact that their descendants could be cordoned in Pakistan, the north of the subcontinent, is a wonderful happenstance for India’s development. Partition, with the benefit of hindsight and in my opinion, had a soothing effect on the subcontinent as millions of Muslims were able to form a separate nation state without internally disrupting the development of an Indian nation that progressed immensely without interference of archaic beliefs.

This birth of a new nation was that ‘buffer’ a Hindu-dominated subcontinent definitely needed far earlier in the course of its history. Maybe all the battles would have not been needed in Panipath but the plains of Jhelum would have been the scene of the carnage.

For the last 64 years of its insignificant existence, Pakistan has been bequeathed with this hatred of thousands of years of slavery and bondage – since 1000 AD after the decline of Chandragupta that gave rise to the Muslim Invasions. Gupta dynasty though not as big as the Mauryan Empire, saw huge developments in the field of art and architecture, the highlight being the Ajanta and Ellora caves. Some powerful kingdoms like the Satavahanas, Kalingas and Vakatakas in the southern part of India, and later dynasties like Cholas, Pandyas, Cheras, Chalukyas and Pallavas came into prominence and many regional powers rose but after the Northern Muslim invasions in 1000 AD Indian Hindu Kingdom was overtaken by the events from the north.

One ought to know that what is today modern Pakistan actually provides the buffer against northern invasion that India was saddled with for thousand years that came through the Khyber Pass - a mountain pass of great strategic and commercial value in the Hindu Kush on the border between northern Pakistan and western Afghanistan, a route by which invaders entered India. It was the political instability of India that gave opportunity to the Muslim invaders who raided North India successfully under Mahmud of Ghazni. The next invasion was by Mahmud of Ghauri who established foreign rule in India. Many of the famous dynasties like the Slave Dynasty, Khilji Dynasty, Tughlaq Dynasty, Saiyyid and Lodhi, Bahmani Dynasty, and Others came after that.

In the 16th century, Indian history saw the Mughal dynasty getting established by Babur, which lasted for 200 magnificent years. Some of the important rulers during this period were Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb. This period saw an amalgamation of Indian, Persian and Central Asian influences in the field of art and architecture.

All this happened through the routes that are now located in Pakistan and known as the gateway to India*: the Khyber Pass, a narrow pass over the Safed Koh Range between Afghanistan and Pakistan, over which came the Persian, Greek, Tatar, Mogul, and Afghan invasions of India; scene of bitter fighting between the British and Afghans (1838-42, 1878-80). Length: about 53 km (33 miles). Highest point: 1072 m (3518 ft.)

Afghanistan: To the north of Pakistan is a disintegrated land under pressure from neighbouring nations and historical battlefield where rival nations could wage their proxy wars. Indeed it is doubtful whether even many Western nations would have been able to cope with the strain faced by Pakistan. An Indian army of nearly a million face off Pakistan at the border and in the highlands of the Khyber Pass Pakistan is pitted against the fanatical Islamic terrorist. Instead of helping them, to kick them is foolhardy. Who else is going to do the job if Pakistan as a federation is condemned?

Had there been no partition in a United India, India would have had to contend with a 350-million strong Muslim minority with a keen awareness of their 'ruled' past united from North to South against dominant Hindu rule. Partition diluted the political folklore of a heavenly Muslim nation, rather, the failure of Pakistan to present itself as a functional democratic state has helped cool down the Islamic fervour amongst Indian Muslims. The rise of secularism within Indian society is across the sectarian divide. Though in radically charged Kashmir today it requires 700,000 troops to subdue and pacify the regional population, which has not reconciled itself with an imposed Indian identity. Can one truly imagine the consequences of a 350-million strong disaffected minority? Partition separated the most vocal and radicalised segment of the subcontinent's populace in one area and created a huge buffer between secular India and the Islamic Republic. It also created a bigger distance from the warlords of the North once and for all. It is a blessing in disguise for India that they could phenomenally progress in peace without any intervention from religious warlords from the North or the disgruntled radicalised majority Islamic provinces.

The heavy weight of the violent North West Frontier province of India by that 1947 partition was bequeathed to a state which was young and created on the concept of a “homeland of Islam’. It was and is tainted with blood. What changed in 1977 was that these landlocked warriors whose forays never extended beyond north of India were put in bed with the most radical elements of the Wahabbi Islam.

The combination of young bin Laden’s with Zai’s and Pushtoons by the thousands, in the eagerness to bring USSR down, brought about new dynamics of a global Jihad. Once this huge apparatus of green-turbaned radical Arabs and radical warriors of the Northwest were freed from the Russians, they made plans to free the house of Islam from the usurpers. Those who brought USSR down should not have been left orphaned in a sign of desperate expediency. 911 was not planned in vacuum: Iraq - Afghan war was a result of political expediency and deserting of key allies. Result: a trillion dollars were spent and thousands of American soldiers died because of this short-sightedness. The peace dividend as a result of the fall of USSR should have been shared with these fighters who were only renowned for fighting and nothing else.

The reason Pakistan is not Afghanistan or Iraq is because the historical circumstances differ. Afghanistan was a lawless buffer zone between British India and Imperial Russia for the last two centuries. Afghanistan’s prime contribution to civilisation has been to deposit hordes of invading Turko-Iranian tribes upon the Indian sub-continent. This inherent tendency towards guns, mutual disagreements and Lashkar (Holy War) is integral to the Afghani Pashtun culture.

The tribal loyalties which inhibit nationalism, the paucity of functional institutions and lack of a federal security force has contributed to the dysfunctional character of Afghanistan. "Warlordism" is not a new phenomenon and the invasion by the USSR was the last straw on the camel’s back that shattered any coherency Afghanistan might have had.

The Tajik and Hazaras, who speak Dari, with a significant proportion harbouring sympathy for Shi’ite Iran, are diametrically opposed to the Pusthoons, whose puritan strain of Islam is akin to Wahabiism. Not only does Afghanistan suffer from the ethno-linguistic divide, it suffers from an ideological one as well!

Without national institutions, Afghanistan is bereft of an affluent and intellectual elite, unhindered by parochial loyalties, which would bind these factions into a harmonious modus vivendi. Conversely the Pakistani national establishment is the defender of federalism and foments an artifice like Pakistan into a fledgling state. Although a young state and created ‘artificially’ it has seen similar federations disappearing into thin air like USSR and Yugoslavia.

To compare Pakistan with Afghanistan or Iraq is an absurdity that, under normal circumstance, would merit no retort. However given its popular prevalence it must be comprehensively answered. One distinction from Iraq and Afghanistan that has saved this nation from disintegration and disaster is the one which is loathed the most i.e. Pakistan Army. Take this institution out and this will become a lawless land, a balkanized piece of geography. Saddam’s Iraq was stable with a strong regimented Army; the biggest mistake of the Allies was to dismember that Army soon after the occupation. De-baathification like De-nazification did not work. In the land of Beethoven it did. But in the entire expanse of Islamic world, from Morocco to Dar-us-Salam, the concept of strong man leading the nations is deeply embedded.

One popular misconception is that the eventual disintegration of Pakistan will be followed by the seizure of its nuclear arsenal by Islamic terrorists. This belief is fundamentally flawed because if Pakistan were to have ever collapsed as a nation state, it would have during the 80’s when it took on the Soviet Empire and brought them to a halt. Despite overwhelming American aid and support, the internal ramification rendered to Pakistani society by the Afghani war, was cataclysmic. Nevertheless Pakistan has survived so far. If it could successfully withstand a confrontation with the world’s largest emporium then that is a testament to its tenacity as a nation.

Peace in Afghanistan actually ensures peace in the subcontinent; it is all about India not Pakistan alone. Take Pakistan out of this equation for a minute, what one is left to grapple with is the long history of bloody invasions that literary crippled Indian subcontinent for 1,000 years. Imagine a 'united subcontinent' without the 1947 partition dealing with the nemesis of Talibinsation. An Indian army fighting a war against active northerners without the support of predominant Muslim army of Pakistan would have resulted in a massive revolt amongst the entire so-far quiet Indian Muslim population. Muslims don't mind as far as eradication of Taleban is carried out amongst brothers.

The historical reasons for the disproportional size of Pakistan’s army: The region between the River Jhelum and Peshawar were the recruiting grounds for the British land forces during the British Raj. The British knew the inhabitants as the "martial races" and it was with armies comprised of these peoples that Col Nicholson in 1857 subdued the Sepoy mutiny in India.

The Sepoy rebellion occurred when Hindu-Muslim contingent soldiers of Uhud, Jansi and Lucknow restored the Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zuffar, to the throne in Delhi. This was fundamentally a rebellion by India in response to British rule, which was put down by the ancestors of the modern Pakistanis, the Pathans and the Punjabis.

The manner in which they completed the conquest confirmed the historical discipline towards military ethics that had existed amongst these peoples since time immemorial. At the amazing speed of 27 miles a day this army reached Delhi, subdued it and suppressed the rebellion. Whose side were these proto-Pakistani troops fighting but for the British Empire. There has always been a loyalty amongst the people of this region to the British Empire and especially to its army, a close affiliation that has existed till today with Pakistan remaining loyal to America.

The history of the 13th Lancer division is a poignant reminder of the loyalty of these people to their allies rather than a pan-Islamic Ummah. This Pathan division was commanded by a British commander and fought the Ottoman Empire (which was considered the Islamic Caliphate) in the Holy Land. For the Pathan to defeat the Ottomans in Palestine is emblematic of the origins of the Pakistan army. The Guide cavalry, the Probyn Horse, Hobson horse, the Baluch tribesmen and Punjabi infantry have had the honour and distinction to serve in the First and Second World Wars. Thousands of them lay buried in Sommes, Gallipoli, Suez and these soldiers were cannon fodder for the British Empire and served with distinction.

The reason ‘Militarism’ became so deeply entrenched in Pakistan is that because the British never trusted the Indian south. They realised that Col Nicholson’s men and the martial races were the recruiting grounds for the Indian Union army. This is why the Muslims have had a disproportionately large representation in the British army with the consequences being that the Pakistani army has become a very hierarchical and secular organisation, which takes immense pride in its British past.

It is a strange comedy of errors; the best thing to have happened to the subcontinent was that the North was cut from its mainland and the possibility of the wars in the suburbs of Panipath was replaced to the environs of Khyber Pass. Sans partition today India would be fighting this war. You can change everything but not the history of the subcontinent.

*[Indian subcontinent has a history which dates back to more than 5000 years. Its origins lie on the banks of the river Indus and thus came to be known as the Indus Valley Civilization. Soon after the Indus Valley Civilization laid down the foundation of India and Indian history, the Dravidians came in as the inhabitants of this civilization which was called the Harappan culture and flourished for 1000 years.

''Gradually, Aryan tribes started infiltrating from Afghanistan and Central Asia, around 1500 B.C. They occupied the whole of the northern parts of India up to the Vindhya Hills. Thus the Dravidians were urged to move to the southern parts of India. The Aryans brought new ideas, new technology and new gods with them and this became an important era in the history of India. The Aryan tribe started expanding and was grouped into sixteen kingdoms, of which Kosala and Magadha were the most powerful ones in the 5th century B.C.

The next great invasion was around 500 BC by the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius. They conquered the Indus valley but then India went through times of speculation and indefiniteness. Then in 327 BC India again came into light due to the invasions of Alexander the great, from Macedonia. Although, he was not able to extend his powers into India.


As the Mughal Empire faded out, other foreign invasions started from the 15th century. India was a country rich with spices and minerals and so was made the target for invasions and colonization - starting with the arrival of Vasco da Gama in Goa. Later came the trading post by the East India Company in Gujrat. Gradually East India Company established trading posts in various other cities like Madras, Calcutta and Bombay. This commercial link later turned into administrative control. The French also established themselves in a few parts. There were continuous struggle between British and French emperors for establishing supremacy. Eventually, the victory in the battle of Plassey established the dominance of British in the subcontinent. 18th Century in Indian History, the British had Arrived]
 
Its foul and disgusting...end of

Not worthy of a minutes discussion

Any cultural or religious excuses are bollocks frankly, you may as well excuse paedophilia on the same basis
 
Last edited:
ne popular misconception is that the eventual disintegration of Pakistan will be followed by the seizure of its nuclear arsenal by Islamic terrorists. This belief is fundamentally flawed because if Pakistan were to have ever collapsed as a nation state, it would have during the 80’s when it took on the Soviet Empire and brought them to a halt.
Click to expand...

What a bizarre assertion. Makes no sense whatsoever

With the ISI barely bothering to hide its support for extremists and terrorists (its sponsored Mumbai) there is a very real risk of this happening if the state disintegrated
 
Last edited:
clivex said:
Its foul and disgusting...end of

Not worthy of a minutes discussion
Click to expand...

The efforts to arrest free thought in Islamic societies have always succeeded thanks to the radical clergy and perpetration of every ‘criminal act’ with the warrants and by the ‘Will of Allah.’ The society is stuck in age of medievalism and its inability to keep pace with time has left the Islamic world in limbo. The biggest failure accumulated over centuries is that of decadence and preference of political Islam to abreast ignorance over knowledge and depravity over rationalism. ‘Innovation of thought’ is frowned upon in these societies.

A directionless nation of Islam; lost in the valley of ignorance! The cancer of intolerance now presents itself as a defined target for a cultured world it should be challenged and confronted. The ferocious beast of dogma and orthodoxy is capable of targeting anyone who opposes their brand of medievalism. The challenge for the Islamic world is to leave the 'dark ages' behind and usher into the age of knowledge. Muslims must take a giant step forward and encourage debate and dissent in their societies.
 
Defeatism has become prevalent in the Islamic World and self-inflicted pain has become pleasure. Hostility for the US is a disease inflicting most Muslims. He, who wakes up to a breakfast of Kellogg’s frosted wheat, wears Gap jeans, works on a Cisco-Intel-Microsoft-based technology to surf the Internet whilst sipping Starbucks coffee and gulps down a bIG Mac for lunch, also lashes out at the American way of life. This is primarily envy for America’s accomplishments and its hard-won freedoms. It is nothing more than passive aggression egged on by the sense of abject failure and the underachievement of the leadership of political Islam and its tin pot dictators that has failed the people.

How does an educated mind turn into a killing machine? Modern-day frenzied, manic and agitated rage of young men has a lot to do with living in ignorance without the ability to face truth, because truth is very difficult to swallow. Since the 9/11 tragedy, every dreadful terrorist incident that involves an attempted or successful radical attack, the blazing question within the nation of Islam arises and one that the entire ‘nation’ wants to rush back to is: what turns youthful, elegant well-educated men like Feisal Shazad, Ajmal Amir, Mohammad Siddiq Khan, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab into terminators and hate-mongers who want to kill indiscriminately? Unfortunately, the hesitancy and ambivalence in accepting liability and accountability of actions, as a result of the message of spite, malice and venom by the likes of Anwar al-Aulaqi and Abdullah el-Faisal (born Trevor William Forest) that these young minds are exposed to, are sadly overlooked.

"When divine power plans evil for a man, it first injures his mind."

Sophocles

Whenever, tolerance has been overtaken by bigotry, blinkeredness and singularity; nations and empires have just withered away. At heart of hatred, viciousness and venomous intensity lies intolerance, bigotry and inability to ever find the enemy within. Fanaticism is an evil of a society that corrodes the elegance of any culture. It is most amazing that most of the Muslims like to refer to the 'Golden age of Islam' but refuse to appreciate its underpinnings! Tolerant rulers –who saw knowledge without ownership of any creed and expand knowledge to new frontiers. The lack of intellectual progress within the Muslim world suggests something is terribly wrong, their inability to point out their own weaknesses and look at history objectively instead of subjectively they have not been able to learn any lessons from their past.

Pluralism of Ideas and the prosperity of any land are intertwined. Freedom of minds and skill of intellect to 'think the unthinkable' is how humanity has progressed; when minds are incarcerated nothing endures.
 
Repression and preoccupation with ideological Puritanism has a direct impact on GDP growth. Economic development is the expansion of human choice, i.e. freedom and capability to do what we want. Closed disconnected minds and insular instincts destroy societies. The recent spurt of growth in the economy, evidenced by numerous at-work tower cranes and flurry of construction activity from the slums of Karachi to downtown UAE or Jeddah, was the result of the right direction of political decision- making; a decision to go along with the world and not to create a separate state long on slogans.

Many have absolutely no idea what the death of distance has wrought for new global economies. Mobility and connectivity is considered as a luxury people cannot afford. Most of the politicians have no idea of the new economy that runs on pixels and cyber specs. This age of knowledge has really missed most of the politicians and the old economic guard of these countries. You ask anybody in Pakistan for example and they will tell you how consumerism is destroying the country. They think that import of mobile telephones and 30 million people connected to a network is naked display of consumerism that will eat the strength of the society. In their opinion, people able to buy cars and motor cycles through credits are basically living on borrowed time. This entrapped mentality of politicians and economic gurus is a shocking display of how disconnected they are with the demands of the modern world.

Human capital is the most important capital of the country that needs to be developed on a war footing basis. A society can give freedom to its citizens, but if they are not equipped with the mental and/or physical capabilities to use these freedoms, then the freedoms are meaningless. Therefore, investing in education, providing health care, equal rights and other social programs that improve the capabilities of individuals are often as important to economic progress as building roads, airports and starting up businesses. Why does technological creativity occur? There are two components in the invention-innovation sequence: "technical problems involve a struggle between mind and matter, that is, they involve control of the physical environment." The other component is social: "For a new technique to be implemented, the innovator has to react with a human environment comprised of competitors, customers, suppliers, the authorities, neighbours, possibly the priest."

The role of religion and priest in society has a direct bearing on the rate of GDP development. There can be no economic progress if priests and religion are going to dictate the future of nations. When one is so dependent on the research made by the "infidels" the hypocrisy in this part of the world becomes startling. To cure cancer, even the most hardcore extremist ends up in the finest medical centers in Houston, whereas, standing on a pulpit to "destroy these infidels" becomes a slogan. The very routers, microchips and networks through which these messages of destruction and annihilation are spread has its origins indebted to the same infidels. "Every society . . . gets the religion it deserves" the social rigidity of the Hindu religion strongly discouraged innovation, whereas the Judeo-Christian affirmation of man's dominion over nature provided support for technological intervention. Opposition to technological innovation is culturally pandemic. Often it's income- and market-related. Labour combinations and tariffs, over many centuries, document attempts to protect inefficient productive methods. There's also a syndrome of technology aversion. Islam and China after 1400 A.D. exhibit this syndrome after having passed through a long period of technology development. These cultures became progressively more risk-averse and xenophobic to the point of stigmatizing the imitation of foreign innovations. A description of the closure of these cultures helps understand the values and institutional prescriptions that arrest innovation; but what occasioned this turn-about? The optimum recipe was the circumstance of early modern Europe, where a diversity of competing states and domestic institutions removed the option of risk-aversion taken in China and Islam. The prevailing thought is that technological development is fostered best by an environment open to new ideas and new practices, which is not risk-averse and not intolerant, and which accords dignity to inventors and inventions.

This is no longer a world based on agricultural or industrial economy; it is a world based on knowledge and ability of a nation to connect to the rest of the world. A nation that has trust and confidence of other nations and is truly connected to the global patterns of trade is considered as a successful nation today, whereas, a nation that is disconnected with new realities and has not been able to appreciate the connectivity and death-of-distance concept is a fledgling unable to provide its people the basic necessities of life. What makes India different from other developing countries is its technical personnel. India began training thousands of programmers to handle America's "Y2K" crisis in the 1990s, and soon expanded its educational system to train software engineers, hardware engineers, biochemical engineers, and other technical professionals. The result is that India has one of the largest pool of available scientific and technical personnel in the world.

Never before has prosperity been so widely available for the people of the world to take up. A connected person on the net is connected to the entire world. That unlimited connection can bring the best out of an individual and the best out of a community, and thereby the best out of the nation. So if millions of people are connected, the chances that productivity will increase are immense. The ability to import and export products multiply by that much more. The barriers to trade and commerce drop dead when minds meet. Since technology is widely available and increasingly cheap, this is what economists should expect of every developing country. In a world of diminishing returns, the poorest countries gain the most from new technology, infrastructure, and education. South Korea, for example, acquired technology by encouraging foreign companies to invest or by paying licensing fees. In addition to the fees, the investing companies sent profits back home. But the gains to Korean workers and investors, in the form of economic growth, were 50 times greater than the fees and profits that left the country.

The GDP growth of a nation is directly related to the internet connection and connection to mobile networks. It is considered that an increase of 10 mobiles per 100 people can boost the GDP growth by 0.6%. Ideas can only fly if minds meet. Mobility within a nation is a miracle that is happening. Most of the economists we come across today only know that economic progress is dependent on capital, labour and land. They have no idea that intellectual capital and ideas are the real growth engines in today's economy. It is because of this that in India, when a Hollywood film production is finished, the post-production work is done in Bollywood. The world's largest animation company is not located in America , it is Penta Media Graphics located in Chennai India, where all the animation was done for movies like "Spiderman" and "Gladiator". The Indian animation industry is expected to grow at 30% annually in the next couple of years and reach a level of US$15 billion by year 2010. And this animation industry does not need big industrial units. All it needs are mathematical skills, educated workers, and connectivity to the world. The more IT workers we create, the better we serve the service industry that has already become 52% of the Pakistani economy.

Mobile revolution is one that is totally misunderstood in Pakistan. Old gurus are still entrenched in the ideas of agricultural bumper crops, deadly carbon emission-based industries that belch sulphur and carbon. They have totally missed the new economy that has emerged and is working in disguise as a knowledge economy. In this knowledge-based economy, inputs are more mental; it is freedom of mind that counts more than production of a mill. The productivity of a worker is dependent on his ability to connect to the world. A nation is rich if its workers are connected to the world and are able to export their mental prowess to the entire world, but poor even when gifted with all the natural resources of the world, if disconnected to the rest of the globe. A connected nation in this new form of economy has the best chance of survival. A nation that has a political co-habitative philosophy has the best odds to survive but a nation which has a Jihad-based combative agenda will become a pariah state and will not be able to sustain the progress that is an integral part of the society. How does one explain until recently the gulf in economic progress between authoritarian yet fast-growing China and democratic, economically laggard India? India, with its massive neglect of public education, basic health care and literacy, was poorly prepared for a widely shared economic expansion; China, on the other hand, having made substantial advances in those areas, was able to capitalize on its market reforms. There are other benefits, and potential benefits, that may not be fully captured by GDP statistics. There is the psychological benefit of being able to talk to relatives living far away, for example. And there is enormous potential for mobile telephones to transform the efficiency of healthcare provision in poor countries. In Kenya and Tanzania, the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) is using phones to allow patients in remote areas to be diagnosed by specialist doctors far away in AMREF's headquarters. Another project has built a management structure based on mobile phones to enable doctors in AIDS clinics to monitor patients far away to ensure they are taking their drugs.

People in Pakistan worry about the lack of industrial investments and agricultural production, much as it is that industrial development is totally dependent on availability of sustainable energy which, in case of Pakistan, is hydroelectric power, the economic gurus of Pakistan have totally overlooked the fact that the core of the problems stems from specific issues: the industrial growth cannot happen meaningfully if we are unable to harness the hydroelectric potential of the country. The perennial flow of water which flows 70% in four months of a year and 30% in the other eight months needs to be harnessed. Like in Brazil, the Amazon's power has been harnessed through hydroelectric generation and storage reservoirs; similarly, Pakistan needs to have storage reservoirs to provide cheap energy for cheap input in our industrial processes so that it is able to compete globally on a level playing field. Moreover, if the chronic problem of the seasonal water flow is resolved and storages sensibly applied, there will be a boost in the agricultural potential which the country has to increase.

GDP/person and freedom are related. When people act responsibly because they have capabilities and can a find job, GDP will increase automatically, like Japan, Korea, and the US itself; three countries where industrialization and economic growth came after social reform, the spread of basic education, and equalization of rights between genders. To achieve that goal requires the removal of "unfreedoms" like poverty, lack of ability to be accepted for a job, lack of economic opportunities, health problems, discrimination, repression and arbitrary justice. Freedom is an end in itself, a means to be able to lead a satisfactory life. Individual freedom is also a condition for being able to act responsibly. Increasing freedom as a goal is more complete than increasing the GDP per person.

So, to go forward, the challenges are very clear for Pakistan or for any Muslim country for that matter: that knowledge-based economies will only let those nations live within the ocean of activity which are alive, and living means they have tolerance, respect for gender, trust, respect for proprietary rights and rule of law. If nations promulgate their ideological supremacy as a tool of strategy, then they will be alienated, ostracized and their populace will become outcasts. Outcast nations end up in fragmentation and demise; they cannot sustain to become a part of the civilized world. For the future good of the nation, people have to be trained; their potential has to be brought up to the best level of performance and they have to be educated, provided basic health care, and they should be connected to the world at large. That is the kind of enlightenment that will turn nations around. The material resources will fall in place once there is tolerance and acceptability of knowledge-based ideas.

The reason Pakistan is not able to harness its niche resource of water is because of lack of understanding between the provinces and the lack of trust. An educated and enlightened society will understand that the basic reason of our national poverty is the inability to harness our resources; the biggest resource is our intellectual capital which is being wasted at the altar of bigotry, sectarianism and extremism. And hence, poisonous minds cannot reach a settlement on the basic conventional wisdom that Pakistan's niche capability is water and that to develop, we need to harness our water resources.

Poverty will become a distant dream if the entire Middle Eastern region can help its people to understand the dynamics of the new knowledge-based economy and understand that the old economy will only kick in if basic resources are made available to kick-start the old economy which will provide energy and food to people. Today's economy's first priority is neither capital nor land nor labour, it is tolerance, connectivity with the world and understanding of complex issues.
Nations who will understand this in totality will be the tigers of tomorrow. Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and China are examples of nations that have put their political agendas in cold storage and given due respect to their populace and trained them to become the avant-gardes of knowledge-based economies. Nations like CHARD, Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and now Iran, are deliberately moving towards a path of self-flagellation and disintegration. What matters most is connectivity to the world, and tolerance towards opposing ideas. Nothing can hurt an economy more than a confrontationist and alienist approach towards the multinational actors within the global community.
 
Is this your own writing, Chef, or should it be accredited to someone authoring it on a website or article? It reads in a sterile and quasi-factual manner like someone's thesis for PolSci studies.

I would've thought that nothing could hurt an economy more than mismanaged investment banking and as for countries no longer being agricultural or industrial, that pretty much would see Africa, India, and China - just for starters - starving more than they usually do. As for Somalia 'moving towards... disintegration... ' tell me when (apart from its time under colonisation) it has been anything other than tribally and religiously divided? And you - or the author - left out South Africa, which is rapidly moving towards a violently uncontrollable mess of agricultural vandalism, witchcraft-based ritual murder and corruption on an epic scale, while most of sub-Saharan Africa remains devastated by the inability of millions of its male population to keep their dicks in their trousers and not spread AIDS freely and knowingly, in spite of the West's best medical interventionism.

This idea of an all-embracing, all-tolerant global community is a busted flush, a fantastical myth promoted by socialist dreamers with no direct bearing on, or even respect for, the diversity of the human being and his and her individuality - in other words, the right to choose . There can be no global community as long as there is the separatism of tribal/religious/political self-interest. So long as there are diverse beliefs and values, there is no such thing as a global community, other than - again, as envisaged by the old Common Market's ethos - through trade. Which means we haven't changed in essence since the days of nomadic traders and the Silk Route, which proved that however different the races and cultures of the trading peoples were, they met as one mind over one cohesive activity - the deal.

It is trading freely with each other which keeps people in touch and it was through the earliest traders seeking new business opportunities for their skins, rugs, salt, gold, silk, etc. that brought a wide variety of races and cultures into contact. That, and the adventurism of assorted emperors, kings and caliphs anxious to extend their respective borders through flimsily-reasoned forays.

What matters most to millions and millions of people is just having enough to eat and not to die before the age of five due to the proliferation of disease in their underdeveloped countries. A starving child couldn't give a XXXX about your religion, or lack of it, or how 'connected' you wanted to be to him, if he hadn't eaten anything but grass and bugs for a week.

I think your author needs a fairly good dash of realism, Chef, about how a helluva lot of the 'global community' is faring - I'd recommend working with an AIDS charity in a relatively connected country like South Africa, and see how long they tolerated the rape of babies and small children as an idea (to cure the disease). What seems like a brilliant idea to an infected man there may not seem such a humane one to another from a different cultural norm.
 
krizon said:
Is this your own writing, Chef, or should it be accredited to someone authoring it on a website or article? It reads in a sterile and quasi-factual manner like someone's thesis for PolSci studies.
Click to expand...

No this is my 'World according to Ike' and written by my good friend Iqbal Latif (Newsvine)
 
Whilst the general thrust of the piece is fair enough, he does come out with some stuff which doesnt ring true at all

Small example is the Indian animation market being worth $15 billion a year. Are you sure?!

Secondly the assertion that China is a "knowledge based economy" and India is lagging in this (as well as growth)

Simply not true....

but i like krizons assesment of the writing style.
 
There are endless overblown phrases like that ("knowledge-based economy") which are typically lazy readymades from the shelf of soundbites. I'd like to know what a "knowledge-based economy" means. I don't know if we have anyone on here with a degree in Economics but, if we do, maybe they could extrapolate analytically for us - as the writer might say. Or just tell us what the hell he means!

India, in terms of knowledge - if we're talking educative standards - has an extraordinarily high rate of literacy and numeracy, and the main aim of pretty much every middle-class family is to obtain higher knowledge in order to increase familial status and wealth, allowing young men and women to be more attractive to a higher stratum in the marriage and business market - in fact, the pressure is often to try to combine both.
 
clivex said:
Whilst the general thrust of the piece is fair enough, he does come out with some stuff which doesnt ring true at all

Small example is the Indian animation market being worth $15 billion a year. Are you sure?!

Secondly the assertion that China is a "knowledge based economy" and India is lagging in this (as well as growth)

Simply not true....

but i like krizons assesment of the writing style.
Click to expand...

Indian animation market being worth $1.5 billion a year - I expect he just missed the decimal point whilst typing.

The assertion that China is a "knowledge based economy"
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=CH...LL_en-GB&redir_esc=&ei=zoDeTpa6B8-WhQfGj-n1BA
 
krizon said:
There are endless overblown phrases like that ("knowledge-based economy") which are typically lazy readymades from the shelf of soundbites. I'd like to know what a "knowledge-based economy" means. I don't know if we have anyone on here with a degree in Economics but, if we do, maybe they could extrapolate analytically for us - as the writer might say. Or just tell us what the hell he means!

India, in terms of knowledge - if we're talking educative standards - has an extraordinarily high rate of literacy and numeracy, and the main aim of pretty much every middle-class family is to obtain higher knowledge in order to increase familial status and wealth, allowing young men and women to be more attractive to a higher stratum in the marriage and business market - in fact, the pressure is often to try to combine both.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_economy
 
Thanks for the link, Chef - in that case, I don't think that the definition provided by Wiki demonstrates China as a knowledge economy, since I don't see it exporting ideas and intellectual properties. They seem to be retreading old quasi-colonialist/capitalist roads, especially in the area of copper in Zambia, where they have pretty much taken over mine management (with scant regard for H&S, it has to be said). I don't see them innovating one single thing, since they're still playing catch-up on the past forty-odd years of misdirection under Mao. Certainly the US, Britain and some of Europe continue to lead in this area: you only need look at Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Trevor Bayliss, and the constant evolution of agricultural, political/legal, mechanical, surgical and medical procedures to see that China is not offering the world anything new. When it's through emulating its once so-despised West, it might be in a position to offer a 'knowledge-based economy' rather than currently exploiting post-colonialist Africa for its very basic, unregulated and physically-intense industrial one.
 
China is a manufacturing and agricultural based economy. Its as simple as that. Any assertion otherwise is bizarre
 
clivex said:
China is a manufacturing and agricultural based economy. Its as simple as that. Any assertion otherwise is bizarre
Click to expand...

What we are going to see in the next 10 years is China's entry into the middle and higher end of global manufacturing ... as well as into white-collar services.”

This transformation is being supported by the country's high literacy and strong foundation in math and science, and China will become a major innovator.

Likewise, the scope for huge productivity gains in China is also present, with its productivity levels just 15 percent of the United States.

The productivity catch-up is no longer about bringing in Chinese rural workers and getting them to work in factories, but more about applying knowledge and turning Chinese cities into knowledge-based economies.

Coupled with the growth of emerging markets such as India and Brazil, China's ascent will create a “supply shock” in the global white-collar workforce, leading to a change in the way such jobs are distributed across the world economy.
 
SC - are you on commission? I think we should be told... can you please credit the authors of whoever you're quoting? Or is it still the same bloke, much in love with expressing possible scenarios as if they're firm conclusions?

I'm sorry, but to become a 'major innovator' does not depend on being literate and good at sums. It depends on a high degree of imaginative intelligence and being capable of free thinking - areas crushed from the national psyche for generations by the Dear Leader. It will take the will of the government to allow such intellectual freedom of expression. China may well be growing some millionaire-status entrepreneurs, but they're based on normal capitalist endeavours, not on innovative enterprise.

China will also have to expensively upgrade its energy efficiencies to make this seemingly effortless glide into 'middle and higher end' manufacturing. And what's with the use of 'global' in this context? Where are they going to be manufacturing globally? Surely not in Africa, which can't keep its power stations going 24/7 due to its own inefficiency and shite concept of maintenance and repair. At present, its energy is derived from national coal mines, where miners' lives come cheap and probably none too cheerful, given their abysmal record in Health & Safety. Its energy-producing base is at about the stage of our Industrial Revolution, and you can provide all the knowledge to the city-dwellers that you want, but unless China provides the job opportunities to the rural poor through sweeping social change in health and education, it will simply end up with an elitist urban minority, resented bitterly by a rural majority denied sufficient alternative skills to provide the sort of jobs which would raise their status and living standards.

I think your author's sweepingly euphoric wish list, purveyed as fact, is far from in tune with the realities of China's primitivism in matters of energy resources, which are what support capitalist enterprise, and mass aspirational lifestyles (try telling that to the village pig farmers and rice paddy owners, going to bed by oil lamp). The biggest 'innovations' for the country right now would be to complete a sustainable energy grid, rail and road networks, a wide spread of airports, a proper sewerage system, recycling projects, and improved flood controls. And to secure its national identity by not killing off its girl babies and favouring continuing the gender imbalance of males, with millions of spare men currently unlikely to ever find a mate, unless they can marry out to foreigners.
 
swedish chef said:
Coupled with the growth of emerging markets such as India and Brazil, China's ascent will create a “supply shock” in the global white-collar workforce, leading to a change in the way such jobs are distributed across the world economy.
Click to expand...

Not sure I buy this at all.

We've been shipping white-collar/IT jobs to India for several years now, and it is a false economy - mainly because (huge generalisation coming) the Indians are bloody hopeless when it comes to many such jobs.

In the IT field, the only lukewarm success story is in coding work, but large enterprises are making nowhere near their planned margins, mainly because it takes twice as long to get code tested, and thrice as long to get signed-off. The Call Centre game is largely a washout in terms of anticipated volumes that could be off-shored, mainly through the amount of complaints received by Corporates about the absolutely dreadful service. Other jobs in IT tend not the lend themselves to off-shoring, as large UK-based bluechips are running their Core infrastructure and systems in the UK -and there are technical constraints which mean they can't relocate that.

I think the spectre of mass transfer of white-collar jobs is bogus myself. Indeed, with English the de-facto language of the internet, corporate growth in the developing giant economies could actually lead to job creation in the UK; as growing companies in these nations seek to draw on Western expertise - particularly in the IT sector.

I am the eternal optimist though.
 
Back
Top