Some people love to hate anything.  Some people love to hate on Microsoft particularly.  I’m not one of those people.

What the Gates Foundation does for the world is awe inspiring.  I hope to be able to contribute something of substance beyond technology to the world one day.  I know who to follow.

Global Health - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Update: I just realized that my recent post regarding China and this post supporting Gates may come across as being contradictory considering the recent MSN Spaces news of censoring Chinese bloggers. I don’t know the full details of the situation yet, but will comment when I do.

Charles Wheelan gets it.  He understands why outsourcing to a democracy is better than outsourcing to a country that censors blogs and uses slave labor to manufacture goods.

It doesn’t have to be India either that we use.  The Ukraine is just as appropriate.  We need to foster the spread of democracy worldwide through business and free markets not brute force militaristic tactics.  We know that doesn’t work by trying it the hard way.

Why What’s Good for India Is Good for Us: The Naked Economist - Yahoo! Finance

This is a must see video for anyone who’s never been to India and is remotely interested in the results of globalisation.  I’m obsessed with this subject for many reasons — being an Indian is one of the primary reasons.  The uneducated backlash of people who don’t fully get being part of a global economy is one of the other reasons.  In other words, I’m clearly motivated by my Indian heritage. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  Doing business with the world’s greatest democracy is a good thing — for everyone in the long term.

Maybe I was too young to really get an accurate litmus test at the time, but I don’t remember the movement of manufacturing jobs to Mexico creating the same level of furor that it has with technology jobs and India.  Maybe it’s the level of education of the people who’s jobs have left for India, or maybe it’s the fact that so many more people are affected due to the new world order.

Globalisation is not just a matter of Americans getting technical support and credit card questions routed to India.  Indians are quickly becoming more American-ised at a rate quicker than some are willing to accept.  Liken it to Elvin Presley and his questionable hip movements during a time when sex was still taboo.  But I’m not really over concerned with the minutia of Indian youths being obsessed with material goods and pop culture.  My concerns lie squarely with India’s poor.

Indians are changing in parallel to the rest of the world.  Americans benefit from a free market economy.  But on the other side, literally across the pond, India’s poor are being left out of the economic boom.  Things are only getting more expensive for people who already earn very little.

The Other Side of Outsourcing

I read an article in the Nov. 24 edition of the Economist magazine regarding KR Narayanan, former President of India from 1997 to 2002. He passed away recently, but not before serving his country and his people.

He was a dalit or an untouchable as the West has come to recognize and associate the people at the “bottom of the heap” in India’s caste system. He didn’t let his second-class citizenry stop him in a society that has a well structured system of categorizing people.

Naturally, when society teaches people that they are in a higher category (or lower for that matter) of people than others they might begin to act on those thoughts. Lower-caste members of Indian society have long since been shit upon by the higher-caste members. Discriminatory practices still exist in areas that are not-so-cosmopolitan. (sound like something we’ve heard before, huh?)

It’s changing slowly though. Younger generations of Indians recognize the importance of unity amongst a billion people who are otherwise splintered by language, customs, and religion. The government is recognizing this as well. But putting laws into place is only as good as the enforcement of such. India can be a lawless place in consideration of the corrupt nature of politicians and the police. (Before angry mobs of Hindu Nationalists send me nasty-grams, I recognize that the West is corrupt as well and blah, blah, blah. Happy?)

The words class and caste sound a lot alike, but they invoke very different responses in people when heard. We use the much more mild sounding “class” when referring to people and how much they make. That’s what it really comes down to in the States: it’s your profession and how much money you have.

What makes me a little angry in reference to this and most other Western published articles regarding Indian caste is that they fail to compare it to our own caste system here in the States. It might not be called a caste system, but look no further than the neighborhood you live in to recognize that we have just such.

Americans love an underdog. And the Western media loves to incite a little rah-rah spirit in us when portraying the seemingly inhumane conditions of an otherwise backwardly depicted place. The resulting depiction of Indians and Hindus in Western media tends to be at the fringe and weird, even in the more intellectual rags like the Economist.

Yes, there are very poor people in India. Yes, they have to do the work that others who are wealthier and more educated do not want to do. Yes, they live in situations that most would otherwise choose never to step foot into.

But that’s not really that different here in the States, is it? Let’s be honest. You drive through a “bad neighborhood” during an odd hour and get scared. You drive past “bad people” and get a little anxious. We choose to live amongst our peers. Can you imagine living next door to someone who’s substantially less educated and in a completely different tax bracket? Not likely. And neither do Indians.

The lines in the American caste system are harder to identify because it’s really merit and money that count. (Unless of course, you live in the South where many more variables are added to their equation.)

American also love a good trainwreck. As long as it’s not their trainwreck to deal with.

You read that correctly. Next to Saudi Arabia, Canada is now considered to be numero deux. Why? Advances in techniques that enable turning the tar sands of Alberta to oil is becoming more cost effective.

(status as number two in the world comes from the C.I.A.)

Why do I mention this? It’s an interesting topic on its own, but in consideration of the current American gov’t quest to follow the world’s natural resources and their resultant war cry — war might not be too far from home at some point. That would never really happen with Canada of course. It’s an unspoken rule in the modern colonialist movement: you never attempt to colonize another brother.

I wonder if Sudan would get the same attention from the Americans if they simply had something worthy of owning. The problems with Sudan are inherently ones that cannot change. They are in Africa. And they are black. And they have nothing of significant value.

They do have a good Christian versus Muslims in a cage match style fight going on, except it’s much more serious than that. Gov’t sponsored rape, torture and murder of thousands of otherwise innocent people deserves immediate attention from the world at large. But they can’t really get it on the same scale that four Americans being held hostage in Iraq get.

If Sally Struthers isn’t on the tele trying to round up funds based upon the price of a cup of coffee for her dying career, American’s generally don’t care about Africa.

They need something good to get the attention of the American government. Only then will the US determine that it’s time to begin our nation building exercise. 2,000,000 people dying in that country’s civil war that has been raging since independence from Britain apparenlty hasn’t been enough to warrant a cessation in ’round the clock poker tournaments on the tele.

Generally speaking, Africa fails to get the same global attention when it needs it for the same reasons that most Hurricane Katrina victims were black. The net result of this administration’s stand on both topics is nearly identical — “They’re use to it.” That roughly translates into something along the lines of “fuck ‘em.”

From the Rogue Investor:

If oil prices continue to remain high, there is an interesting investing opportunity that warms the heart of every geologist. Alberta, Canada is home to a geologic phenomenon that could prove very valuable. Long considered worthless, vast deposits of tar sands are located in Alberta. These tar sands contains enough oil to rival the Saudis (over 200 billion barrels), but until recently no one could economically extract the oil out of these sands, especially with oil selling for less than $20 per barrel. This is because you must mine tar sands, because the oil is too viscous to pump. When the world oil reserves are tallied, usually these tar sands are not even included in the estimates.

However, one company, Suncor (SU), has never given up on these deposits and it has gradually become the expert on how to profitably get oil out of these tar sands. Suncor can economically mine these tax sands for about $20 per barrel, so with oil at $40 to $50 per barrel, Suncor makes a lot of money. For an oil company, their market cap of about 15 billion dollars is small (Exxon has a market cap of over 300 billion dollars), but their tar sand oil reserves rank in the billions of barrels. Considering the vast nature of the tar sand deposits in Alberta, Suncor also has the option of leasing more tar sand acreage in the future. If oil prices stay where they are at now, this company is 50% to 75% undervalued.

Of the thousands of flights that I have taken in my life, last night was one of the worst flights ever. It was on Delta from Salt Lake City to Sacramento. I was ready to throw some ‘bows after an excruciatingly painful 2 1/2 hours on a flight next to someone who should have been charged for two seats.

Larger humans beings (I’m being polite) should pay for two seats (or more) if they plan on violating my personal sovereignty in an already confined space. I was remanded to sitting in a completely awkard position for more than two hours in order to allow for his protruding parts to meld into the cramped space that eventually overflowed into my area.

As a result of an unnatural, constant seated position for hours on end, I was left with tremendous pain in my lower back that seemed to only get better with mid-section stretches and profane words hurled at the world at large.

When America’s health crisis begins to violate my personal space, I take serious issue.

The concept and discussion of holding and declaring an American citizen (or anyone for that matter) as an enemy combatant is beyond the scope of a quick blog post. But a quick thought gets one started:

Is Padilla guilty? It’s doesn’t really matter in this argument. He has rights like everyone else. Otherwise, we slowly morph into the Taliban.

We should have known something was up when the Taliban destroyed two of the world’s largest, centuries old statues of Buddha in March of 2001 in a show of religious intolerance to the Hazara people.

In other words, when a government begins to reduce the rights of citizens and openly characterizes them as lesser human beings, we should begin to be suspicious.

I choked up a little when I read about Nguyen Tuong Van and his gov’t sponsored execution.

For the love of God: can’t a mother give her soon to be executed son one last hug? She can touch his face, touch his hands, but can’t give a person convicted of a drug offence a simple hug?

Singapore is an extremely interesting place. A psuedo-democacy, but a city-state where the PM has autocratic powers, censorship of the press is nothing new, hanging for drug offences okay, Russian hookers-a-plenty, and the cheap beers are $12 a pop. Oh, and Muslims, Hindus, and Christians co-exist rather harmoniously with every nationality in East Asia that one could imagine.

But my respect for Singapore’s government sunk today. In a place where it’s illegal to chew gum, a crime to smoke en queue, fines for failing to flush a latrine — I don’t think I’ll visit unless there’s some compelling reason to return. I’ve been there 3-4 times and was always fascinated by their history.

Japanese imperialism is a subject that will stir the elderly in Singapore. Dependency on water (of all things) from neighboring countries is a fascinating subject and discussed thoroughly.

Fascinating or not — capital punishment, especially on the grounds of being part of the drug trade, is barbaric. It happens in Texas and China, but not in places that where people profess to be forward-thinkers who realize that the system is imperfect and therefore unjust.

Dumb Americans anger me to no extent. And then I get really saddened to think of the abuse these poor people must be suffering at the hands of some intolerant idiots.

It’s inconceivable that we’re still in an age (and country) where Catholics and Jews still face discrimination by some. I’ve always been perplexed by Catholic and Protestant hatred towards each other. Maybe it’s just something that I don’t quite understand. Yeah, I understand it — but it doesn’t compute properly. The fact that Catholics and Jews are still treated in such a manner is indicative of a bigger problem. It’s an indicator of something greater in my opinion.

I have said it one hundred times and I will say it again: trading labor with the world’s largest democracy is positive in the long-term — it’s better than trade with blog censoring nations with a deplorable human rights record.

Trading labor implores Americans to innovate when their backs are up against a wall. That’s what Americans are good at — not turning knobs and adjusting dials, but finding their way out of foxholes with guns blazing.

Unfortunately, American mouths tend to blaze about at the same time.