Hi Lindy,

India is the byproduct of ignorance.

If your next door neighbor has twenty kids and an income of $35,000 a year - they are either ignorant, religiously obsessed or both. The kids will suffer. Each will get less food, love and attention than they deserve. I have no reservations about calling that family and its suffering the byproduct of ignorance.

It may be PC not to judge other countries - but that is ridiculous. I just LMAO at an article in UtneReader about creating a "multicultural tribal village" in your community. Clearly the author hasn't been to many tribal villages or seen how they live.

Some nations and people are inundated with ignorance. Ignorance can manifest as religious tenets, government edicts or what have you.

In India they suffer because of poor schooling, age-old prejudices and an inability to comprehend and perceive the flaws in their governmental and societal structures. They suffer because of ignorance - or a lack of intelligence.

Sure intelligence/ignorance is a relative proposition. You also must not mistake ignorance for stupidity.

Stupidity is the result of knowing better alternatives but choosing unintelligently anyway.

A kid who plays with fire near gasoline even though he knows gasoline is flammable is rather stupid.

A kid who plays with fire near gasoline and didn't know gasoline was flammable is manifesting ignorance.

By this definition we will see that some of India's leaders often behave stupidly. Most of the populace, however, are ignorant.

So don't get all bent out of shape because I call a nation the byproduct of ignorance. It's simply a statement of fact from a US perspective.

If I were President in India, how loing do you think it would be before there were posters explaining birth control? How many tons of prophylactics would be imported yearly and distibuted from clinics in every proovince and village? How soon do you think a permanent border would be drawn up with Pakistan around the Kashmir region that can accomodate residents peacably? How soon would new cities be built which could accomodate any displaced Hindus after the border was established?

How soon do you think I would be encouraging massive tourism and trade? Capitalism...would flourish. How soon do you think I would create a friendly atmosphere for the worlds multinational corporations? How soon do you think I would be negotiating with Disney for building a Disney India?

Poverty and ignorance are NOT synonyms. Poverty is not inevitable. Overpopulation is not inevitable.

As for Worldshare, Worldshare was about sharing information, technologies and intelligence. SECO is one of the surviving manifestations of the Worldshare program which is still a work in progress and which will be expanded and made available in several foreign languages in time. Try and find such basic and essential science material online coming out of the UN and UNESCO - you wont be able to. The individual pages are written in HTML instead of Flash so that they can be translated into multiple languages by automatic web page translation tools. Worldshare may have died with the stock crash, but its spirit lives on in SECO.

Untouchables while not recognized legally are still recognized socially where there lot in life hasn't changed significantly at all.

I stand by my characterization of India. I am not backpedalling at all. I soften the rhetoric a bit once I have had a chance to look at it from an outside perspective. Once Tom compared it to his rough stuff - I knew I was appearing very harsh and not my normal sweet diplomatic self.

;-)

SDAI-Tech1

PS
I already have a pair of red white and blue shorts.