India orders ‘panic button’ for mobile phones in bid to protect women
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
If you are in dire need of 9/11 equivalent services there, your done. Period. No one will reach you in time.
If people there really cared about women, they would pass a version of the second amendment and allow women to protect themselves from brutal savage attacks with deadly force.
Acid attacks. Rape. Gang rape. All of the above.
This "panic button" will do absolutely nothing. No one will monitor it, no one will respond, you will die.
Give women the ability to protect themselves!
Unless the general public in proximity to an attack is legally required to respond, seems unlikely to make a difference.
I think people, everywhere, including the US are mostly afraid.
I have seen people in the US do nothing when something bad takes place. Most people I think live in fear. They don't want to get involved.
It's a very sad state of humanity but it's the climate we live in.
I have nothing but the most sincere concern for women in India. I find it so incredibly troubling the attitude that country has of women. The fact that government refuses to recognize a womens right to defend herself with deadly force when gang rapes are a common everyday occurrence is.... soul crushing.
A Panic button? Really? That is the best Modi and crowd can enable women with? This speaks volumes about how women are viewed there.
Why the official announcement if it's all fluff ? Is the police corrupt that much ? too busy to care about this kind of issues ?
Plus because there are no traffic laws over there enforced its utter chaos on the roads. Jammed with cows, people, carts, cars, trucks etc. Everyone going their own way. Ignoring traffic lights, signs. Police or an ambulance could not reach even if they wanted to.
Contrast that to the US, where at least most of the country knows when you see emergency vehicle lights, you pull over to the far right lane or shoulder to clear room for them to get to the person that needs help.
It's night and day. Traffic laws need enforcing there hardcore. Although so do a lot of things. The country just needs the will power to do it.
I and thousands of students can vouch that we did not have to bribe to get our passports.
India is doing really well in terms of law, for the population density it supports. I would bet enforcing those rules in the US or providing 911 help similar to the US for a country with that large a population is incredibly hard. Its not about will power, but the scale at which it has to be enforced at the same time, so that it works.
This is absolutely no true. I don't know about your experience but this is not the case everywhere. I got my passport almost 10 years ago and did not have to cough up a single paisa. Generally, you may have to deal with inept fools behind the counter trying to assert that they're the boss. But don't have to pay them.
Also expect a surge of crimes committed with stolen guns.
I fail to see how that's an improvement.
ps: hmm apparently this is cliche..
I have often thought that phones could benefit from good old clicky buttons on them. There are many situations where it would be great to reach into your pocket/purse and cause an event of some kind without having to lug out the phone, enter PIN to unlock, bring up app, etc. etc.
- medic alert for seniors (notify caregivers)
- skip to next music track (e.g. when casting spotify to some other device)
- dial 911 when walking through a dodgy area
- count passengers embarking
- confirm visual check of some physical asset is OK (e.g. pest trap)
Thanks to the Jobs-ian design of modern devices, which emphasises style and coolness over usability in the real world (right mouse click anyone?), smartphones are not at all suited for these super rapid one click use cases, and adding nice clicky button(s) on the phone or a paired bluetooth device would be useful in many situations.
(Yes, perhaps we could buy an apple watch instead - but that's cracking a nut with a sledgehammer).
I'd much rather see the market address these concerns without being coerced into doing so. If consumers want a big "emergency" button on their phone, by all means offer a product with one, but forcing said "feature" on every single person who purchases a phone should be frowned upon.
If it's expected to work so well, why do banks have guards?
Regardless, what I commented on was the suggestion that men just needed to be educated that raping was wrong, which is much narrower then "anything to do with the education/socialization of men" Obviously, education/socialization sufficiently widely understood has something to do with it.
Maybe you live in a area with higher murder rate than I (its likely, given that my country has one of the lowest rates in the world). Should you be sent to a re-education camp to be thought how to socially behave and not go around and murder people? Can you prove you are not, deep down, thinking about murder someone right now and are barely able to restrain yourself?
[0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1144346...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident
> [Winston]: You really think the problem is that men don't know the raping is wrong?
> [ChongLi]: Yes, actually.
> [OldManJay]: Are you familiar with criminals who take responsibility for their actions? I've never heard of such a thing, so your implied conclusion seems idealistic
Nikhil and ChongLi are doing nothing but regurgitate the faulty feminist narrative that they have fondly taken on to be common sense.
Both American and Indian societies already teach its members that rape, murder, theft and other crimes are "wrong". This is called social conditioning, and is put into effect from childhood onwards. Social conditioning does not of course necessarily stop the criminals like Elliot Rodger (murder) and Mukesh Singh (rape) from conducting their crimes.
The narrative of "Teach men not to rape," that these people ignorantly spit out, is based on the faulty premise that the said men have not been taught not to rape (and kill, maim, and so forth).
> [ChongLi]: In an interview from jail[0], one of the men who participated in the 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh blamed the victim for the attack[1]! [0] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1144346.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident
With a little intelligence and sensitivity, it is not difficult to prober further into the underlying motivation of these criminals, and without understanding the underlying motivations you cannot effect change. Here's a clue: Mukesh Singh (one of the perpetrator of the Delhi gang rape event) had this to say in that interview: "A decent girl won’t roam around at nine o’clock at night … Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing indecent things, wearing indecent clothes.".
In fact, it is currently legal to rape your wife in India.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/asia/marital-rape-india/
Think about that for a moment. What kind of effect do you think that would have on their rape statistics? In the U.S, Marital Rape accounts for half of all reported rapes. In India, those rapes aren't even being reported because they're not illegal.
There is no doubt that marital/ spousal rape needs to be criminalized. Criminalization, of course, is not going to entirely eliminate it - which brings me to the point I'm trying to make: when both social-conditioning and law-and-order have failed, what's the solution?
Feminists, including Nikhil and ChongLi, advocate further explicit conditioning (which ain't gonna have much effect on the criminals who already care less about their own social conditioning). Without understanding the criminals' underlying motives, people wanting to effect change will only go around in circles. Where is the proof that the feminist approach works?
Right now it's telling men in several societies that "it's the right thing to rape your woman" since it's your property, and that "a woman needs to be protected by her owner-man in order not to get raped by other men" so raping her is not the rapist's fault, it's her owner's fault for not protecting her.
This conditioning lets men with rape fantasies to explain everything else away and act them out with no perception of wrongdoing.
I think you won't quite find that in India raping women is "morally allowed", but merely that if certain rules are followed (relating to caste and the marital state and age of the woman and the men involved) it is ok. The culture does not put a blanket ok on the practice. For the other religion the rules are slightly different (and blatantly racist: essentially if a woman behaves like she's a member of that religion, she's safe, otherwise, go ahead), but rape (non-consensual sex) is definitely allowed.
Since this is quite explicit in the holy books of both religions you will at the very least need to change the way these religions are taught if you want to really change the attitude. I think it's pretty clear that won't be considered being tolerant.
There is no doubt that marital/ spousal rape needs to be criminalized. Criminalization, of course, is not going to entirely eliminate it[1] - which brings me to the point I'm trying to make: when both social-conditioning and law-and-order have failed[2], what's the solution?
Moreover this is not a gender issue, as the likes of you ignorantly make it out to be (in an fervent attempt to distract via identity politics), as the reverse is equally applicable -- such as, to use your phraseology, letting women with divorce-rape fantasies to explain everything else away and act them out with no perception of wrongdoing[3] -- where the aforementioned question continues to hold.
--
[1] The West has historically had the idea that by marriage a woman gives irrevocable consent for her husband to have sex with her any time he demands it ... and even though marital/ spousal rape has recently been criminalized (made a crime in all 50 states in the US by 1993, for example), it has not entirely eliminated it.
[2] The very fact that marital/ spousal rape continues to be prevalent even among countries where it has been criminalized suggests that both social-conditioning and law-and-order have failed, in regards to entirely eliminating it. Hence, my question: what's the solution?
[3] Some unscrupulous women in India are wont to extort money and harass their husband's entire extended family. http://www.498a.org
It really is that simple, and I fail to see why people make such a fuss about it.
> On 10 January, one of their lawyers, Manohar Lal Sharma, said in a media interview that the victims were responsible for the assault because they should not have been using public transportation and, as an unmarried couple, they should not have been on the streets at night. He went on to say: "Until today I have not seen a single incident or example of rape with a respected lady. Even an underworld don would not like to touch a girl with respect."[99] He also called the male victim "wholly responsible" for the incident because he "failed in his duty to protect the woman".[99]
That's not the criminal who can't come to grips with reality, that's the LAWYER. What an insane argument.
At a certain point a culture just has to look in the mirror and come to grips with its own failures.
Just Yesterday a Minister's (From souther state called AP) Son who tried to kidnap a woman in broad day light in his car was let go by courts due to lack of evidence After everything was Recorded in CC TV footage and was telecast in every local channel when incident happened.
So Apparently as long as you are politically connected You can rape, Kidnap Women in India. But if you are a legitimate business, you are in trouble.
Nothing is mentioned about that. it’d be really easy to send a geolocation to an endpoint somewhere.
It almost seems like a practical joke without going into the effort required to coordinate the response. Might as well require these on all keyboards.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00887KUPW/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bd...
We'll know when societies are actually serious about protecting women when they direct more of their efforts towards changing the men who rape them.
https://www.gunowners.org/wv26.htm
"... raw data from the 1979-1985 installments of the Justice Department's annual National Crime Victim Survey show that when a woman resists a stranger rape with a gun, the probability of completion was 0.1 percent and of victim injury 0.0 percent, compared to 31 percent and 40 percent, respectively, for all stranger rapes (Kleck, Social Problems, 1990)."
[1] Apparently "I claim I brandished my gun and a robber left me alone" is now a life saved, not a wallet saved.
[2] The actual 'Wild West' in history was a much safer place than the movies would suggest, but I doubt Kleck was trying to evoke the historical image rather than the myth.
But that doesn't change the results of those findings, which are: if you want women to be able to actually prevent stranger rape, allowing themselves to carry guns is by far and away the most effective solution.
Of course that doesn't address other social costs involved in having most of society carrying weapons. As Rand put it:
"Handguns are instruments for killing people — they are not carried for hunting animals — and you have no right to kill people. You do have the right to self-defense, however. I don’t know how the issue is going to be resolved to protect you without giving you the privilege to kill people at whim.".
Just bear in mind that one of the social costs of disarmament is that women are denied an effective tool for self defence. Panic buttons on cellphones really don't cut the mustard here.
This is just sloganistic nonsense. If this were the case, then here in 'disarmed' Australia, rape would be rife. Whereas over in the US where self-defence is a frothy notion, there isn't much difference in rape rates, a four-times higher murder rate, and a six-times higher incarceration rate. Meanwhile, over in South Africa, where there are guns aplenty, rape has a runaway crime rate.
The idea that guns make you safe isn't born out when you do comparisons like this.
But regarding Kleck, he's pretty much the go-to guy for the pro-gun lobby. And the pro-gun lobby in the US is pretty aware that good studies will show the flaws in what they say - which is why they apply pressure on the government to refuse to study the problem. If the numbers really would show a consistent story for the pro-gun lobby, they'd be welcoming studies with open arms. But as it stands, when someone posts a study supporting the pro-gun side, there's a better than even chance that you'll find Kleck's name on it, I find.
You're conflating several issues here though. Kleck was simply looking at one scenario: attempted rape by a stranger, when the victim had a firearm and used it. The stats on that are very, very firmly supportive of the idea that handguns are a good defence.
I'm actually agreeing with you on the other social costs of an armed society, mind you. I don't think you read my post very clearly, and attributed to me a bunch of common positions (for Americans) that I don't actually hold.
You couldn't get more biased than this kind of selection for that sort of study. It's like saying that the chance of spending time in a holding cell is very high, if you only look at subjects who have just been arrested that day. And it's symptomatic of how Kleck is used - he does a study that is heavily specific to the conditions, and then it's quoted free of context from day 1 and generalised to things it shouldn't be generalised to.
Similarly, 'carrying a gun' is very different to 'carrying a gun and using it' - you have to be able to access and use the gun at the right time, and you don't always have the drop on your attacker. I once did a bouncer certificate course, and the instructor said that in a study in Sydney, the most use of a gun in an encounter with an armed security guard was the guard's own gun used against them - people were getting the drop on security guards and turning their guns on them. And one place where women tend to meet their rapists - bars and clubs - is a place where guns are usually restricted even in US states where gun freedom is common. Texas, for example, has a 51% law, meaning if a business makes 51%+ of it's income from alcohol, you can't carry a gun there. Women in these higher-risk places can't legally carry this supposed magical defense item. Specifying "and using it" ignores all the issues around actually getting the gun into play at the right time, which aren't trivial.
Ultimately, "carry guns" is a bad argument to make for personal safety, because it's treating the symptom, not the cure, and short-circuits discussion to actually cut social problems off at the source, I find.
Re: the nationality thing - I never suggested you were American, but that's the place in the modern Western world that is doing the "guns as defence for normal citizens" thing (and it's where Kleck does his stuff). That's why it's a US-centric counter-argument. :)
Ministry of Home Affairs limits right to self-defense to only VIPs http://www.gunowners.in/
Arms license http://mha.nic.in/armslicence
> a panic button configured to the number key 5 or 9 and all smartphones to have a feature that will engage when the on-off button is pressed three times.
I find it interesting that a government department has demanded so specific an implementation. Do they think that prescribing that level of detail makes them look more authoritative? It would be better to leave the details to the phone makers.
I don't think Apple or Google will respond with much enthusiasm to that level of micromanagement.
Most people stop thinking when they panic. I used to manage a group of computer operators. One day one of my employees collapsed. I directed her coworker to call the emergency number while I was checking for breath and a heartbeat.
Since it was a military base with an obsolete phone system, the emergency number wasn't 911, and even though there was a huge red sticker on the phone (which she'd used for years) with the emergency number, the coworker kept punching in 911 over and over, getting more and more panicked when it didn't connect. She froze up so badly even when I told her what to do she couldn't do it - I had to take the phone from her and dial myself.
She would have been fine if 911 actually worked, though, because that's the emergency number that had been drilled into her since childhood.
That job (because of that incident and another when the fire suppression system went off) taught me all those stupid-seeming standardized emergency systems really can save your life. Even if you're the sort of person who can keep your head in an emergency, you may need help from someone who can't.
But then they'd all use different standards, and when it came down to the time you need to actually use it, you're not sure which standards exist?
Now I assume a lot of that is due to unreporting, but is rape really that much more common in India? Anecdotal evidence suggest it is.
It reminds me of crime in Canada vs. the US. The US has almost 10x the population, so if you think about something like school shootings (of which there have been quite a few in Canada), you'd expect 10x of them in the US.
India = 4.2;
China = 4.9;
and Pakistan = 11.6;