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Re: Sara Gross joins Bahrain 13 [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Dev, you don't know what you are talking about. If you did, you would argue that Bahrain is THE leader in women's rights in the middle east.

Yeah, I looked it up. Well, I didn't study it, but I read this wiki article. Bahrain is still ranked only 102/165 as good countries for women, (Canada, 3, USA 8). Anyway, it is fair to say they are not great, but are improving and are a leader in the region.

Knowing this now, I'm downgrading my ranking of her sell-out from 9 out of 10 to to a 6 of 10.

But if you can't admit any irony in her move, then you must have failed Lit 101 in college (or perhaps it is because you are Canadian?).

I don't begrudge Sara her decision, but after her interview of slowman, she deserves some abuse.

Moving on now, best wishes to her in her new endeavors.

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev
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Re: Sara Gross joins Bahrain 13 [trail] [ In reply to ]
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I am so happy to see that people actually care about this. With so many famous athletes joining this highly offensive team, I had expected there to be broader support. I am pleased that people are seeing it for what it is. Whether or not he was 'directly' involved in torture is something we may never know but we DO know that they named the team after the Bahrain 13 in an attempt to cover up references to the real Bahrain 13. That was a decision we can see and that decision, to me, says a lot about the motivations of the people in control of Bahrain. I'd had a hard time not booing an athlete who ran by me wearing that kit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahrain_Thirteen




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Re: Sara Gross joins Bahrain 13 [H-] [ In reply to ]
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H- wrote:
Dev, you don't know what you are talking about. If you did, you would argue that Bahrain is THE leader in women's rights in the middle east.

Yeah, I looked it up. Well, I didn't study it, but I read this wiki article. Bahrain is still ranked only 102/165 as good countries for women, (Canada, 3, USA 8). Anyway, it is fair to say they are not great, but are improving and are a leader in the region.

Knowing this now, I'm downgrading my ranking of her sell-out from 9 out of 10 to to a 6 of 10.

But if you can't admit any irony in her move, then you must have failed Lit 101 in college (or perhaps it is because you are Canadian?).

I don't begrudge Sara her decision, but after her interview of slowman, she deserves some abuse.

Moving on now, best wishes to her in her new endeavors.

I am not really sure how the current "ranking" of a country has anything to do with the potential to make change happen and not sure how this is coupled with literature (perhaps you are referring to my ability to look things up on the internet....but if you want to insult me, go ahead, but I don't see the need to insult all Canadians if you disagree with one person).

While 102 is not great, there are fairly well respected countries not doing that much better. Look at Japan, just a few points higher in 87th place. They are on par when it comes to both education and health, two areas I believe that Sara will be involved with when it comes to the sport side. Justice and Politics would seem to be out of scope for any individual athlete to affect. It seems like Bahraini women have better economic prospects than Japanese women which I was somewhat surprised, by, but then when I thought about my business interactions in over 15 trips to Japan, perhaps that is not that surprising since I have interacted with probably 97% male decision makers there. Never did biz in Bahrain, so can't comment.

87, Japan
Overall score (out of 100): 68.0
Justice: 73.5
Health: 85.8
Education: 88.3
Economics: 69.7
Politics: 26.9
102, Bahrain
Overall score (out of 100): 62.2
Justice: 48.0
Health: 86.8
Education: 87.5
Economics: 71.2
Politics: 33.9
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Re: Sara Gross joins Bahrain 13 [SBRYYC] [ In reply to ]
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She is not listed as one of their athletes on the bahrainendurance13 website - although there is a news article confirming she joined. Hard to argue with the calibre of athletes on that roster. I guess money talks - as long as you are male anyway.

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Re: Sara Gross joins Bahrain 13 [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Apologies regarding the Canadian reference. I meant that as irony as Canada is a Commonwealth country and it is often said that American's don't get irony. There is the old saw about an American visiting London standing under an umbrella on a dreary rainy day and being confused when a brit says to him, "Lovely weather we are having here." Before anyone calls me racist for saying Americans and British have different comic tastes, there are many good takes on this on youtube, this being my favorite.

Seeing as you may be more American than British in your humor, I will rewrite my post without any irony and sarcasm:

Dev, I have come around more to your argument based on some some research I did. Initially, I lumped Bahrain with other middle-eastern countries with horrendous women's rights records (e.g. Saudi Arabia). Now I see that Bahrain is actually the leader in women's rights in the region, being the first to give women the right to vote, allowing women to work, and having the highest percentage of working women. Thus there is far less irony, and less "sell-out", with Sara's move to Bahrain than I perceived earlier.

________
It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev
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Re: Sara Gross joins Bahrain 13 [devashish_paul] [ In reply to ]
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Wow,
you are really trying hard to sell a spin to this.
Going so far to insult the intelligence of others who have brought up legitimate questions Mrs. Gross wasn't willing or able to address.

Nicely done!

Unless we hear a better spin to the story, simple will suffice:

Actions speak louder than words.

devashish_paul wrote:
chriskal wrote:
The GMAN wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
From what I see, Gomez, Frodo, Ryf, Steffen, Kienle...well none of them are doing anything either for the advancement of women's rights in the middle east either. They are truly on the take with no charter to do other things to directly influence athletes locally (men and women) from what I see.


Pretty much what Sara is doing as well. I think her statements about trying to make a change are a convenient backpedaling of an excuse once there was a backlash. I think she's in it for the money too. If I'm a big Jewish rights advocate I probably wouldn't join the Nazi Party Triathlon Team funded by Adolf Hitler, in some lame brained attempt to change things from within. Hyperbole notwithstanding... that's about as ridiculous sounding.

Right. And while I don't think the athletes involved are much better, at least they haven't, to my knowledge, positioned themselves as women's rights crusaders prior to taking their blood money.


OK, I think if you guys were in Philosophy 101 class most of you guys would fail. There is technically no link between suppressing people (mainly young men) trying to topple your regime while at the same time promoting women's rights and access to sport. I say 'technically' because a Prince in power, be it one that Machiavelli described, or our boy from Bahrain, could want to do everything he wants to do to stay onto power, while also limiting women's rights. Or he could do whatever he has to do to hang onto power, while supporting women's rights. I don't have the answer to that, but doing vile things to hang onto power, and supporting women's rights can "co exist" in the same person. I don't have the answer on whether it does or not in this case. Most of you don't either. Sarah may. Other triathletes on the Bahrain13 may also.

I do agree with you guys in a world where marketing and perception are important and where they can be largely decoupled from intellectual reality, it's a bit of a lift to be women's rights crusader while being on the payroll of someone who did his share to suppress people opposing him during the Arab spring. He would not be the first guy in power to do so though. We're all supporting a variety of dictators who did a variety of atrocities each time we go to the pump to fill up gas, so it's really a question of degrees of how closely we happen to be coupled to the guys who did mean things to stay in power.

Let's see what she gets done in the next year and then make a call. At least she is doing this from a position of being informed having lived in the Middle East and having done sport while based there (well, she was part of the ex pat community, but at least had a big window more than any of us).
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Re: Sara Gross joins Bahrain 13 [BLeP] [ In reply to ]
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Sara just released this video statement:

https://www.youtube.com/...st=RDdQw4w9WgXcQ#t=0
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Re: Sara Gross joins Bahrain 13 [windschatten] [ In reply to ]
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windschatten wrote:
Wow,
you are really trying hard to sell a spin to this.
Going so far to insult the intelligence of others who have brought up legitimate questions Mrs. Gross wasn't willing or able to address.

Nicely done!

Unless we hear a better spin to the story, simple will suffice:

Actions speak louder than words.

devashish_paul wrote:
chriskal wrote:
The GMAN wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
From what I see, Gomez, Frodo, Ryf, Steffen, Kienle...well none of them are doing anything either for the advancement of women's rights in the middle east either. They are truly on the take with no charter to do other things to directly influence athletes locally (men and women) from what I see.


Pretty much what Sara is doing as well. I think her statements about trying to make a change are a convenient backpedaling of an excuse once there was a backlash. I think she's in it for the money too. If I'm a big Jewish rights advocate I probably wouldn't join the Nazi Party Triathlon Team funded by Adolf Hitler, in some lame brained attempt to change things from within. Hyperbole notwithstanding... that's about as ridiculous sounding.

Right. And while I don't think the athletes involved are much better, at least they haven't, to my knowledge, positioned themselves as women's rights crusaders prior to taking their blood money.


OK, I think if you guys were in Philosophy 101 class most of you guys would fail. There is technically no link between suppressing people (mainly young men) trying to topple your regime while at the same time promoting women's rights and access to sport. I say 'technically' because a Prince in power, be it one that Machiavelli described, or our boy from Bahrain, could want to do everything he wants to do to stay onto power, while also limiting women's rights. Or he could do whatever he has to do to hang onto power, while supporting women's rights. I don't have the answer to that, but doing vile things to hang onto power, and supporting women's rights can "co exist" in the same person. I don't have the answer on whether it does or not in this case. Most of you don't either. Sarah may. Other triathletes on the Bahrain13 may also.

I do agree with you guys in a world where marketing and perception are important and where they can be largely decoupled from intellectual reality, it's a bit of a lift to be women's rights crusader while being on the payroll of someone who did his share to suppress people opposing him during the Arab spring. He would not be the first guy in power to do so though. We're all supporting a variety of dictators who did a variety of atrocities each time we go to the pump to fill up gas, so it's really a question of degrees of how closely we happen to be coupled to the guys who did mean things to stay in power.

Let's see what she gets done in the next year and then make a call. At least she is doing this from a position of being informed having lived in the Middle East and having done sport while based there (well, she was part of the ex pat community, but at least had a big window more than any of us).

Sorry, if I insulted anyone's intelligence. I was trying to point out that a person potentially doing vile things to hang onto power, does not automatically make him someone who is against women's rights and opportunity. He may be against women's right, but my point was you can't automatically couple the two things together. I should have left out the ref to philosophy 101. I am not trying to spin anything though, other than pointing out the logical flaw in coupling the two items together. Sara still has to fight an uphill perception battle which is clear from the vocal outrage on this thread directed towards her.

Let's see what Sara achieves in this role and then decide if she is any different than Frodo or Ryf (and others mentioned) who are much more on the take with seemingly no charter to enable the sport with direct hands on work at the local level. And perhaps the top tier athletes need not do anything but 'be fast' because the exposure they bring will inspire locals.
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