Friday, April 25, 2008

Dan Rather Reports: Wal-Mart & Dalits

As a Verizon FiOS customer, I no longer have MSNBC, but I do have HDNet. I record Dan Rather Reports every day, and this morning, I watched a heart-breaking episode. The first part of the episode is about tapes that have been leaked of the meetings of Wal-Marts managers. According to Wal-Mart lobbyists, every dollar that is donated by a Wal-Mart employee to Wal-Mart's political action committee is matched by the corporation and put into a trust fund for the employees. I don't know what anyone else thinks, but I find that to be clearly unethical.

The second part is about Dalits in India. Dalits are the lowest citizens of the caste system and are oppressed by Indian society. Even though such treatment is illegal, the caste system is still alive and well. I don't even want to explain how these people are treated. It's absolutely disgusting. But you can watch the entire episode for free here. I have to warn you that this portion of the video is highly disturbing, and I bawled throughout the whole thing. Viewer discretion is advised (I've always wanted to say that).

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