petition against Lou Dobbs of CNN

R

rcetc

Registered Users (C)
This petition might be of general importance to all Indian-Americans.
If you follow Mr. Lou Dobbs program on CNN you might know that he repeatedly potrays all of Inidan-Americans as "low-paid American-job stealers". This is firstly an insult to us and secondly it would generate hate among the American public towards Indians. Never underestimate the power of American media in influencing the American psyche -case in point "Operation Iraqi Freedom" the threat of Saddam was largely created by the American media.

The peititon which was posted just yesterday and already gathering steam is at http://www.petitiononline.com/amind123/petition.html

The main thread in immigration forum is http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104760

Please sign the petition if you agree and spread the word. Let the media know of your anger at partisan coverage.
 
RCETC

Thanks Rcetc:


I've done my part and added signed a petition. I strongly urge the people of this forum to sign the complaint form.

Cheers!
Currys
 
Originally posted by rcetc
This petition might be of general importance to all Indian-Americans.
If you follow Mr. Lou Dobbs program on CNN you might know that he repeatedly potrays all of Inidan-Americans as "low-paid American-job stealers". This is firstly an insult to us and secondly it would generate hate among the American public towards Indians. Never underestimate the power of American media in influencing the American psyche -case in point "Operation Iraqi Freedom" the threat of Saddam was largely created by the American media.

The peititon which was posted just yesterday and already gathering steam is at http://www.petitiononline.com/amind123/petition.html

The main thread in immigration forum is http://boards.immigrationportal.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104760

Please sign the petition if you agree and spread the word. Let the media know of your anger at partisan coverage.
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Mr. Dobbs is an ignorant, fatuous idiot, but having said that, do you believe the messianic zeal of Fox (or for that matter the other so-called liberal media) during the war could have been neutralized by a few pieces of protest mail? These programs are produced and aired because they are effective in preying on the viewers weaknesses and increasing the outlet's viewership. Witness how Fox has overthrown CNN as the news channel of choice after their flag-waving zealotry.

The program in question is targeted, quite deliberately, to feed on the fears and inadequacies of a big chunk of the populace and shows that CNN has realized that it has to outdo Fox in the jingoism department to retain the few viewers it still has. After all, this is the age of the soundbite, and the average news program increasingly caters to the lowest common denominator.

The only shop that even pretends to seek balance in their coverage is PBS. Some of their shows, like Frontline (and the one that has Bill Moyers), probably do achieve some semblance of truthfulness and objectivity. How many of us here do you think have patronized these shows by financially supporting them and becomng members of PBS? If I had to guess, I would say practically none! The only voice that is heard in this country is the one of the wallet. As long as we keep that zipped up, we have no one to blame but our own parsimonious selves.
 
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point to ponder

i agree wholly with the anti-Dobbs sentiment. but that leaves me to a very sensitive issue, one that i've thought of all my adult life, especially my conscious life here in the US, and which, if i may dare say, has made me a coward, a racist, or maybe an all-ignorant fool for not understanding the essence of the matter. i wouldn't brazenly like to mention it, since it may be misconstrued (after all, Pinker, Dennet, Dawkins, and most notably E. O. Wilson, haven't been able to clear up the slander on sociobiology and evolutionary psychology even after decades of hard research facts).

i'll try however: we consider indians (and not to be parochial, of course citizens of other countries, but mostly from the subcontinent, for the sake of this particular argument) to NOT take up jobs of americans, to integrate into an all-american society, to even dream the american dream. yet, how many of us immigrants feel in a similar way when our own country's jobs are "snatched" by foreigners? the ongoing riff-raff between bangladesh and india, or even between different elitist states in india and the poor, the downtrodden and the outright ignorant states, incessantly portray this dichotomy in our minds. while we think that we don't steal jobs of working class americans, legal (and illegal) immigrants in our country (both inter-country and intra-country immigrants) have to live with persistent racism in every stage of this struggle - and much from people like us, who always preach pro-immigrant views while in america. i admit i'm guilty of the same, but at least i try to make an honest effort to see the pain in the faces of the immigrant and also of the one-whose-job-got-"stolen". let's suppose that since the job prospects are much higher for a metropolitan city X, the populace from nearby state Y and country Z immigrate (both legally and illegally) to work there. do they actually bring up the economy? in skilled professions? in unskilled? do they care? or should they? what do we say to the people of Y and Z who are simply looking for better future for their generations? and what do we say to the people of X?

indeed, how do we balance constructing the dreams of some and shattering the dreams of others? "dream another dream - this dream is over?"
 
Just two days ago, I happened to watch something on an Indian news channel which was very disturbing. It was about a political(?) party in Mumbai going to the railway board and asking the commissioner to postpone or make changes to the board exams. Their point was, the jobs are being taken up mostly by Biharis and they want to stop that from happening. They think these jobs must be limited only to the 'Citizens' of Mumbai and not given to 'Immigrants' from other states. Ofcourse when the commisioner did not agree to do that he was badly beaten and his office destroyed. In a related story it was also reported that Biharis are beating up all the hindi speaking people in their trains.

Another disgusting example of racism, regionalism, casteism or whatever you want to call it in India is the movement for a seperate state within Andhra. These people want the Hyderabad and its neighboring districts to get seperated from the rest of the state. Their argument, people from these other parts are migrating to Hyderabad area and taking up all the local jobs.

Here, they are only talking and arguing.....atleast they are not beating up immigrants for stealing their jobs....atleast not yet!!!

cmr
 
Originally posted by cmr
Just two days ago, I happened to watch something on an Indian news channel which was very disturbing. It was about a political(?) party in Mumbai going to the railway board and asking the commissioner to postpone or make changes to the board exams. Their point was, the jobs are being taken up mostly by Biharis and they want to stop that from happening. They think these jobs must be limited only to the 'Citizens' of Mumbai and not given to 'Immigrants' from other states. Ofcourse when the commisioner did not agree to do that he was badly beaten and his office destroyed. In a related story it was also reported that Biharis are beating up all the hindi speaking people in their trains.

Another disgusting example of racism, regionalism, casteism or whatever you want to call it in India is the movement for a seperate state within Andhra. These people want the Hyderabad and its neighboring districts to get seperated from the rest of the state. Their argument, people from these other parts are migrating to Hyderabad area and taking up all the local jobs.

Here, they are only talking and arguing.....atleast they are not beating up immigrants for stealing their jobs....atleast not yet!!!

cmr
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The demand for a separate state ,Telangana, comes from the people and politicians of Telangana and not from the people of Hydrabad. The issue , I think, is the same as the demand for Vidharbha in Maharashtra and the actual creation of Jharkhand from Bihar and Chattisgarh from MP. These are the biggest states in India and the effects of development werent being uniformly distributed. So you would have Hydrabad/Mumbai/Pune getting most of the attention/development while the backward regions in these states were ignored.Smaller states, on the other hand, like Punjab,Haryana,Goa,Kerala etc have been able to do much better in overall development than the bigger states..

If the experiment with Jharkhand and Chattisgarh actually succeeds and the people in those states do improve their standard of living, I dont see why there can not be a Telangana . It would still be part of the Indian Union.

BTW, I'm from Mumbai , so I really dont have any vested interest in supporting the demand for Telangana. I also do not agree with jobs in Mumbai going only to Mumbai based people. Great cities like Mumbai, New York have grown great because they opened their doors to everyone. They will remain great as long as those doors stay open. Another example of a city opening its doors to people from all over the India is Bangalore which may soon dislodge Chennai as the fourth largest metro in India.

To the people of other nationalities who have stumbled on this non- I485 topic, my sincere apologies
 
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FOX is sadistic channel with infested with illiterate idiots. Ofcourse, ever since 9-11, FOX is crossed all limits of Fairness and decency. All of their anchors repeats the word 'Fair and Balanced' in every 15 Minutes.

Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are big fans of Hitler. Remember Hitler's propagand chief, Goebels. If you repeat a lie 100 times, it becomes a truth. Fox has successfully demonstrated that.

CNN and LouDobbs is far better than FOX. CNN is also in the business of ratings. If the ratings goes down, their ad revenue get affected. So they also try to outdo fox. As far is outsourcing is concerned there are some truth in his statements. As an Indian my primary concern is my prospects here. This Corporate greed is driving jobs out of this country and it is affacting the Indians living here as it affects the natvie folks here.

As far as AP and all these Telengana state issues is concerned, AP CEO Naidu is trying to do revolution from the top. The primary beneficiary of this is the Educated upper middle class living in cities. His revolution is not doing anything good to the people in the villages. Naxallites control a very big part of AP, Naidu's revolution has to begin from the bottom. This is the only way you can defeat the seperatists and extremists.
 
approaching 300 after just 1 day

Guys we are fast approaching 300 mark on signature!!

We were No 15 yesterday in activity among the thousands and thousands of active petition in the site.... Thanks Guys!!!

Would this petition have any effect? Well it would at least show CNN that a large number of people are united and would not tolerate such shows. And CNN surely would not like to lose viewership among one of the fastest growing and one of the richest immigrant community (Indian-Americans) and one of the fastest growing markets (India).
At least they as well as maybe other channels like Fox would sit up and take note
 
Dobb's is a hardcore lefty

Is this scum from England? Sad part is he thinks he is a social reformer. Hard core leftist in American politics. So dont worry, Bush dont give a damn to this idiot. He provoked many in the rep party, makes unemployment numbers as big and economy as sluggish. He always look at half empty, leave him alone, if we make more noise, he will get popularity. Any way we should complain this matter to CNN (another left-wing POM POM). Great to see Sankrit again, Welcome back.
 
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Re: approaching 300 after just 1 day

Originally posted by rcetc

Would this petition have any effect? Well it would at least show CNN that a large number of people are united and would not tolerate such shows. And CNN surely would not like to lose viewership among one of the fastest growing and one of the richest immigrant community (Indian-Americans) and one of the fastest growing markets (India).
At least they as well as maybe other channels like Fox would sit up and take note
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I admire your well-intentioned naivete. I am not sure what you mean by "would not tolerate such shows". Even the most naive would recognize, within the first couple of weeks of coming to this country, that it is a tyranny of the majority.. CNN would love to see such interest (remember, negative publicity is an oxymoron) from its viewers as they can point to this when advertising rates are being negotiated. As for taking some action on the petition, we can forget about it.

Indian Americans may be among the richest ethnic groups in the country, but people dont care much about their station here because they are also the most tight fisted with their cash. You have to understand that the mass media does not care about incomes per se; it is spending that they drool over and in this respect, Indian Americans do not figure on the radar at all for most large consumer marketers.

All the same, good luck with your petition.:(
 
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My 2 cents

wether it be Telangana,Chattisgarh or uttaranchal, if the idea is backed by unselfish leaders who really want to distribute the development across all regions, that is good, and in that case do we really need to divide the states?

But as we know, it is mainly driven by the local political parties who give a damn to development and all they want is power.



Regards,
Sidhdhi
 
Yes. Sanskrit is correct. There are many reasons why Indians dont have the same clout as Jews have in USA, even though we are sound ecnomic bloc( as far as Bank balance is concerned).

As in India, we dont have Indians here, we have Punjabi, Guju, Telegu, Bangali etc...

Most Indians are not politically active.

Most Indians is not comfortable with western life style.

Most Indianns follows a physically conservative spending habits.

We dont have collective interest groups to promote or boycott goods or companies that goes agnaist our interests.

I have worked in the social scene here. It is very difficult to bring all these sub-nationalities togother on a common cause. All they want is the spotlight on the stage, that is the only thing that drives folks here.
 
And ,of course, lets not forget the main drawback : We are excellent in pointing out what's wrong with our community, but very bad in actually doing something about it.

I would like to ask some of the senior members to encourage people when they take the lead in organizing such petitions instead of discouraging them with words of wisdom (?) like "As for taking some action on the petition, we can forget about it." or symbolic words like "I admire your well-intentioned naivete" . These words mean nothing and sound very hollow , if not condescending .

If some of us wish to sit on the fench, by all means do that. Just do not discourage others who wish to do something.
 
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Completely agree with d1203. Who knows, if the petition gets signed by a huge number of us, it may effect some changes.

Three years back ISN (largely run by Indians) was quite successful in getting AC21 / H1B extension rules implemented.

Go for it everybody, SIGN the petition and forward it to as many of your friends as possible.
 
Originally posted by d1203
And ,of course, lets not forget the main drawback : We are excellent in pointing out what's wrong with our community, but very bad in actually doing something about it.

I would like to ask some of the senior members to encourage people when they take the lead in organizing such petitions instead of discouraging them with words of wisdom (?) like "As for taking some action on the petition, we can forget about it." or symbolic words like "I admire your well-intentioned naivete" . These words mean nothing and sound very hollow , if not condescending .

If some of us wish to sit on the fench, by all means do that. Just do not discourage others who wish to do something.
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Yep; hollowness and condescension is my middle name. Please go forth and prosper in these petition drives. I look forward to the day when CNN and Mr. Dobbs will have abandoned their support for middle America in favor of a few computer experts from the sub-continent. I can see Mr. Parsons laughing all the way to the bank!:rolleyes:
 
no matter how much I hate these comments by Lou Dobbs, Sankrit has a point. As far as delay petitions against the NSC and others, it really does not matter. A petition by four or five hundred people against Lou Dobbs will not make any effect. In fact in his own irritating way, he might just bring it up in his program that a few people have this petition against him, make fun of it and end with a statement like "I am speaking for the majority of americans" ......... I am not against people doing something...by all means do something if it gives you satisfaction. I just do not get satisfaction in doing something when I know it has no chance at all to make any impact.
 
Originally posted by jaykarandikar
Completely agree with d1203. Who knows, if the petition gets signed by a huge number of us, it may effect some changes.
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First of all, 'a huge number of us' will not sign the petition. You know how many of the 67K members of these forums signed the I-485 petition, something that is much closer to heart for most of the members here. As you are no doubt aware, 10 times as many lurk around these forums without even signing up for membership. Would you care to speculate on the motivations that lie behind such a strong need for anonymity? It is easy to conclude that many (of-course, not everybody) are afraid to even register on these forums for fear of reprisals from the authorities.

Originally posted by jaykarandikar
Three years back ISN (largely run by Indians) was quite successful in getting AC21 / H1B extension rules implemented.

Go for it everybody, SIGN the petition and forward it to as many of your friends as possible.
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One can argue on who did what till the cows come home, but in my opinion, the biggest thrust for AC-21 came from the Republicans (Senator Orrin Hatch and co.) primarily at the behest of big business (Intel, Novell, Microsoft, Sun, IBM etc.) who lobbied hard and spent big money to obtain increases in H1-B limits, but at the same time made clear that they did not want the I-485 system to be reformed, obviously for fear of eroding the available pool of bonded labor. AC-21 portability and H1-b extension provisions in exchange for large fees that would be spent on training american workforce was the eventual compromise that was worked out by the various stakeholders that were involved in the negotiations.

In any case, you may recall that those were the gung-ho nineties when internet pet supplies shops boasted larger market caps than GM, and when the whole tech bubble was at its height. Everybody bought into the invincibility of the tech sector and unemployment was at a historical low (4.2%?) and job losses were the least of anybody's concerns, including the labor unions'. It was against this backdrop that ISN managed to influence (if we agreed with your previous post) the lawmakers through raising and spending good amounts of money.

To the best of my recollection, petitions seeking to alter the media's behavior in favor of immigrants was, to their credit, never a part of ISN's strategy. In light of all that has changed over the past 4 years, it would not be difficult to see how this idea can backfire completely by calling attention to yourself. Even if we believe that it is the only idea there is, I cannot, as hard as I look, see where the cohesiveness and unity of purpose is going to come from.
 
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Originally posted by Sankrityayan

but in my opinion, the biggest thrust for AC-21 came from the republicans (Senator Orrin Hatch and co.) primarily at the behest of the big business (Intel, Novell, Microsoft, Sun, IBM etc.) who lobbied hard and spent big money to obtain increases in H1-B limits, but at the same time did not want the I-485 system to be reformed for fear of eroding the available pool of bonded labor. AC-21 portability and H1-b extension provisions in exchange for large fees that would be spent on training american workforce was the eventual compromise that resulted from a lot of conflicting interests.
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AC21 , also allows 485 filers to switch employers after 180 days . Doesnt this errode the so called "pool of bonded labor" ? Did AC21 not reform the 485 system (albeit not as much as we would have liked it to, but still a big difference) ? How does big business like IBM,Sun, etc benefit by supporting AC21, if they know that 485 filers would have the liberty to quit and join elsewhere after 180 days ?

Please give credit where it is due. ISN started the AC21 campaign .I'm sure there must have people with defeatist attitudes throwing up "It wont work buddy, but all the best" arguments . At least there were some visionaries who still went ahead and persisted (no thanks to the naysayers) , the benefits of which we are expriencing.

Like I said, sit on the fence. Have a cigar, watch the fun. Just do not discourage people who wish to make a difference or belittle past accomplishments
 
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Thanks very much d1203.....
It would be very helpful if people do not discourage others from signing the petition

Do petitions agains CNN work? As Indians of course we are cynical....
Sanskrit here is a petition hosted by the same site against CNN, intiated by Arab-Americans which has worked (Arab-Americans are I assume just as important to CNN as Indian-Americans)

http://www.petitiononline.com/CNN1214/petition_response.html

Here are petition by Indian-Americans against CNN that has worked
http://www.indiacause.com/IC12_CNN_IndiaMap.htm

Maybe I might be childishly optimistic, but all I say is let us give it a best shot..... Hey recently few Americans too have signed up the petition along with a some Chinese (Probably this petition should have been more generic to include the Chinese too, since they are equally effected by Dobbs)

BTW a goolge search for "Lou Dobbs petition" gives our petition at the top. Not bad, eh, after just 4 days?
 
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