Merry Christmas!
Bonus Rangoli link - How Rangoli helped a woman deal with the pain of 9/11
(image courtesy Kamath's Potpourri)
May your every wish come true and every prayer be answered in 2003!
I found an extremely interesting essay the other day called Secular Righteousness, which goes on to talk example by example about how the English media in India that have more regard for Marxsist principles than Indian culture, are working with everything they have to demonize everything Hindu in India. I am not saying that just because someone has said so, all this must be true. To me, the biggest credibility lies in the writing style of the journalists. While the English media journalists' essays are full of preachy sanctimony, holier-than-thou attitudes, talking down to Hindus and name-calling instead of solid proof and unbiased arguments, the essay I read was measured in tone, full of examples, mentions by name every source, and makes a case intelligently against the so-called "unbiased" English media.
In its editorial ?Political Aftershocks?, commenting upon the earthquake relief work, The Times of India said, ?The RSS has been very active in relief and rehabilitation work?..? However, right in the next sentence it said, ?There are, however, unconfirmed reports from Gujarat that the ideological bias of the RSS towards certain communities and castes is already evident even in the task of providing relief.? (Feb 6, 2001)The above passage was very interesting to me in that, it so clearly illustrates the attitudes of the journalists who have clearly already made up their minds about who the good guys and who the bad giys are. They don't want to report anything to the general public that might soften the RSS brigade's image in the mind of the public. What they seem to be forgetting is that the people benefitting from the good deeds remember. There is a reason why BJP is trouncing other parties in elections.
The spokesperson of RSS, through a letter printed on Feb 9 in the same newspaper sought to know the necessary details of the ?ideological bias?, so that they ?can address these lapses? to be able to take the corrective actions for the future. No response was forthcoming.
In order to nail the lie spread by the editorial, the President of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) for Maharashtra sent a picture to Padgaonkar which showed a Muslim family taking shelter, along with other Hindu families, in a large tent at a camp organised by the VHP. The picture was taken from the website (www.indiatimes.com) of a group publication of The Times of India. The reply from Padgoankar was quite amazing. In his letter to the President of VHP dated March 5, 2001, he said that he could not take cognisance of this photo, because his responsibility was limited to The Times of India.
The apparent lack of concern of the English media about the plight of the Hindus of Bangladesh is due to the fact that it evaluates issues not on the basis of the merit, but whether it will help or hinder Hindu organisations such as the RSS. This is admitted by Professor Ratneswar Bhattacharya who recently has authored a book on the cleansing of minorities in Bangladesh. He said, ?Our intellectuals were apprehensive that hue and cry over the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh would only help the Sangh Parivar.? (Times News Network, May 6, 2002.)There is a lot more really nice arguments in the essay, much of it dealing with the coverage of the riots in Gujarat, every one of them worthy of an honest debate if there is to be a real resolution to the fire of communalism that is raging through India. There has to be discussion between the affected parties, and it has to be between two communities, not a minority and a majority. All such nonsense should be brushed aside for a while and the people should talk as the human beings that they are. It might not solve everything, but may be a step in the right direction.
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The Wadhwa Commission found it necessary to investigate the role of the media in the Staines case. Its recommendation in this respect was: ?Media, both print and electronic, has also to exercise restraint. Screaming headlines should be avoided which have the effect of misleading the public and creating more tension and suspicion among different communities. News headlines in the cases of rape of nun and murder of a Christian boy and girl after rape have been noticed. One cannot imagine the damage that might have been caused to the polity by such headlines and reporting. Reporting of communal strife should not be done without proper verification or an ordinary crime given a communal twist.?
A must read for bloggers - THE YEAR AHEAD – 2003 FORETOLD! - some favorites -
"[Feb] 25th The online world's own Truman Show is disrupted when Gnat Lileks becomes aware of her circumstances and flees Jasperwood. "
"[Nov] 22nd Parent-teacher night doesn't go well for Robert Fisk, whose daughter Osamy is failing art class. Presented with evidence of his child's poor drawing skills, Fisk counters that her doodles are 'symbols of the hatred and fury of this filthy war.' "
"[Dec] 20th Following his second annual pledge week, Andrew Sullivan buys Spain. "
December 6 was Eid day. The whole of Brangdara village, angry and agitated was on road protesting the atrocity committed by an officer of the local army unit.(link via Anand)
Armymen opened fire on the protesters, killing one and injuring three others. Next morning, the villagers blocked the road and a huge contigent of ‘saviours of Kashmiris’ from Shabir Shah to the Hurriyat leadership rushed to the spot to join the protests. Human rights—they cried in unison—had been violated.
However when the entire family of Ghulam Qadir Dar was massacred by militants in Sopore village, the family mourned their tragedy alone. Nobody sympathised with them.
Nobody came out on the roads. Nobody protested. There were no calls of protest from the Hurriyat. No leader visited the family. This cold-blooded massacre was not even mentioned in streetcorner gossip.
3 U.S. missionaries slain in Yemen
SAN‘A, Yemen, Dec. 30 — A suspected Muslim extremist shot and killed three American missionaries and seriously wounded a fourth worker at a Baptist hospital in Yemen on Monday.
Tim Blair: The awful truth? It's a crock [December 30, 2002]
CHILDREN'S television is quite an art. It's not just a matter of throwing together simple tunes, basic storylines and bright colours. Successful children's TV also requires the presence of a large, formless creature, an entity usually combining equal elements of human and bovine. The cow-beast is crucial.And that, dear folks, was just the beginning. Go read the whole thing for a good, hearty laugh at Moore's expense.
So it is with Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore's Cannes-winning documentary on the wrongs of guns, capitalism, and America, now screening in Australia. The simple tunes and basic storylines are in place. Moore himself plays the Dorothy the Dinosaur role, clumsily loping about in pursuit of Bad Guys. It's a kid flick for the adult anti-American market.
41 killed in Chechnya suicide attack
Two trucks laden with explosives rammed into a highly protected government headquarter in Chechen capital Grozny, killing at least 41 people and destroying the building, Russian media reports said on Friday.
Chechnya's administration chief Ahmad Kadyrov and Moscow-appointed Premier Mikhail Babyche were not in the building when the strike took place, according to NTV channel.
A beautiful and heartfelt essay I found via "A Small Victory" -
Goodbye, All That: How Left Idiocies Drove Me to Flee
Goodbye to all that. The phrase occurred to me when I heard the sad news that Christopher Hitchens was leaving The Nation. Sad more for The Nation, a magazine I’ve read on and off since high school, now deprived of an important dissenting voice amidst lockstep Left opinion. Mr. Hitchens was valuable to The Nation, to the Left as a whole, I argued back on Jan. 14 in these pages, because he challenged "the Left to recognize the terrorists not as somewhat misguided spokesmen for the wretched of the earth, but as ‘Islamo-fascists’—theocratic oppressors of the wretched of the earth." He was leaving in part, he said, because he’d grown tired of trying to make this case in a venue that had become what he called "an echo chamber of those who believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden."
Tender caresses,
Frozen desire,
Embers red, catching fire.
Unspoken words,
Buried emotion,
Thawing heart, erupting passion.
Unspent energy,
Silent pain,
Unseen love is frozen again.
All this from the land of honey and milk and tolerance and purity and blah fricking blah.
The Hindu : 3 killed in Pak. church attack
ISLAMABAD Dec. 25. Three persons were killed and at least 10 injured tonight when unidentified assailants hurled explosives in a United Presbyterian church in Pakistan's central Punjab province, police said. The attack took place at 8:30 p.m., when two men wearing "burqas" (veil) threw hand grenades into the church during an evening Christmas service, an Interior Ministry official said here.
....how many Hindus will riot over this - How many people get killed and if the Government of India issues a fatwa against the editors of Indian Express (/sarcasm)
Ishq Ishq Ishq
In fact, ancient Hindus have always been hot. Ranging from the rocky babes of Khajuraho to Kali’s minimalist togs not to mention Vatsyayana’s monuments to contortionist libido, the Sutra of desi Kama is far too rich to be curtailed by the parivar’s post-colonial puritanism. Dalmia’s realised that sex is rampaging through Bharat and that it is time to get in on the act. Too much hindutva might be bad for the hormones.
Terrorists kill teacher, two sons in Kashmir
Terrorists gunned down a schoolteacher and his two sons on Wednesday night in Budgam district of central Kashmir, an official spokesman said.
Mohammed Shafi Wani and his sons, Zahoor Ahmad and Jehangir, were fired upon by the terrorists in their house at Gopalpora, he said.
Dr. Zakaria's prescription for reform in Islam from Arvind's article - A Muslim Scholar's Bombshell
Bonus Rangoli link - How Rangoli helped a woman deal with the pain of 9/11
(image courtesy Kamath's Potpourri)
In his own funny kind of way, Scott Ott skewers the affirmative action agendas that actually emphasize the difference between races instead of bridging the gap and treating all people as being to equal to each other.
ScrappleFace: Sen. Frist Unveils GOP Racial Segregation Plan
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-TN, said today that the Republican Party really believes in racial segregation, and has a plan to implement it.
"First we're going to treat African Americans differently in college admissions," said Sen. Frist. "Then we're going to award government contracts to black-owned companies because of their race, not their abilities."
Is "Asian Week" really relevant to Asians? Does it help them or hurt them? More on this coming sometime over the holiday week.
See what atrocities are being committed by the people claiming to be in the name of your religion. Where are the condemnations from the mainstream organizations? All I see is claims that the Kashmiri terrorists are legitimate "freedom fighters" - where is the outrage over their terror tactics? Why are the people being killed fellow Muslims, like the ladies with no burqas, and the cigaratte shopkeeper? Why are they killing each other if this is a freedom struggle against the Indian Government? I am not trying to put you on a spot here - I am just asking you questions that every Non-Muslim wants to ask other Muslims, so we can have an honest discussion here.
Militants set shopkeeper on fire in Kashmir
In a barbaric act, four persons set ablaze a shopkeeper selling cigarettes by sprinkling petrol on him in Srinagar on Monday.
The shopkeeper Mohammad Shafi Teli suffered serious burn injuries, while his shop located in Chandpora locality of Habbakadal in the city was gutted in the incident, official sources said.
Childhood Ghosts — ‘Harry Potter’ Through Indian Eyes
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is still blazing at the box offices in America. But when I watch it, I realize it’s not just Headless Nick and Moaning Myrtle that haunt the movie. I see the ghosts of my childhood, the ghosts of little white kids who save the day, and little brown ones who only get to watch.This makes me so mad, for a while I am going to stop being lady-like and be a little blunt - Please bear with me. What the fuck is wrong with these assholes who look at everything in the world through their jaundiced racist eyes? So what if Harry Potter is white? So what if Enid Blyton's characters were white? What the fuck is wrong with a writer writing about people of one's own race? Who initiated affirmative actions and reservation quotas for fairy tales and children's books that say that there needs to be token characters of every color with equal importance as the white ones?
Most readers in the United States have never heard of Enid Blyton, but the British author of children’s books was a constant companion of my growing up in India. From The Adventures of Noddy in Toyland to The Five Findouters and The Famous Five, she wrote hundreds of books for every age. Hogwarts is a darker copy of her Mallory Towers and St. Clare’s schoolgirl series, complete with plucky kids, idiosyncratic teachers and the stern yet kind headmistress.
Let me get this straight! A girl with a history of violence - she slashed the arm of another girl with a razor - beats up the teacher and the teacher is scolded for getting in the girl's face? What is next? Blaming murdered people for getting confrontational with killers?
TEACHER BLAMED FOR KID'S ATTACK
The girl, who previously slashed a classmate with a razor, is now likely to be bounced to her third school in three years.
"This young lady had a serious past, but she's done very well," a source at Brooklyn's District 20 told me. "The kid probably did push the teacher," the source said, surmising that the teacher "got in her face."
I haven't been writing like I should or want to for a while now - it is a combination of work, too many tangents, attention-starved doggies and a husband and the basketball games and Survivor Finale, and....you get the point. I am spread a little too thin right now, but I am off starting tomorrow till the 2nd of Jan from work, so there will lots to talk about.
"Vande Mataram" (means "Salute the Mother") is one of my favorite songs and never fails to inspire pride and patriotism in my heart.
Vande Matram 2nd most popular song in world
The national song of India, Vande Matram, which was written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, has been voted as the second most popular song in the world in a poll by the BBC World Service, organisers said.
Terrorists kill 3 children in Poonch
Three children were killed and two injured when terrorists barged into a house in Kunathal village in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir, and opened fire on Saturday night, police said.
..er, atleast part of it. Husband and I got into the 9:30 show, endured the 50 or so commercials, and then settled down to watch the movie - there comes Treebeard, and oops, what was that? The screen went blank, but we could hear the soundtrack. They said they would fix it in 10 minutes, no, 20, no 30 - sorry, folks, the showing has been cancelled, so come tomorrow and watch. Thus ends my story - relentless that I am, we are going to try to watch it today, so wish me good luck.
And somehow, the world says that all India needs to is to hold a plebiscite in the state and then make it independent and all the problems are going to be solved. Think about it again - who is the problem here, Indian Government that is holding internationally supervised elections and is going out of its way to give special treatment to the state, or militant Islam that will not rest till the world's population is either converted to Islam or dead?
J&K: Woman beheaded for not wearing burqa
Close on the heels of the killing of three girls allegedly to enforce a diktat on wearing burqa, militants beheaded another woman in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday night, police said on Saturday.
Militants barged into the house of Jan Begum, 43, in Darhal area and beheaded her, they said. Militants have also warned women against attending schools or colleges and directed them to wear burqa.
Judge bans NRI couple's 'designer baby'
A non-resident Indian couple's attempt to have a 'designer baby' to help cure their ill son was blocked when ethical campaigners won a high court challenge.
Pro-life campaigner Josephine Quintavalle won her battle to stop the "ethically objectionable" screening of test tube embryos to provide donor siblis for sick children.
Well, click here to see pictures of an extremely naked.....Great Dane (Sammy, 10months old, 120lb).
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That is all I will say about this opinion piece by Francois Gautier - I like him in that he is an ardent defender of all things Indian and Hindu - I cringe sometimes at his writing, since he is very anti-American sometimes, and may be anti-West. I still have not made up my mind about him. Personally, I think that being pro-India, pro-Hindu and pro-America and the West are not [she was stupid enough to forget the not the first time around - Ed] mutually exclusive goals.
Francois Gautier on Marxism and the Saffron wave
Yet the Indian voter has always shown that he is smart and that he usually casts his ballot in a certain way because he wants to put across a message. What if Gujarat was the first sign that tolerant, peace-loving Hindus who for centuries have accepted other religions and ethnicities and allowed them to practice and prosper in peace (UNESCO recently released a report saying that out of 128 countries where the Jews lived up to 1948, in only one -- India -- were they not persecuted), are fed-up of being made fun off, sullied, harassed, killed, their temples sprayed with bullets and grenades, their train burnt, their Parliament attacked, their markets blown up, their women raped?
What if it was a warning to the Muslims of India that the majority community of this country will no more allow the burning of innocent children and women, for the only crime that they are Hindus? What, however reprehensible their acts was, if peace-loving Hindus have shown, for the first time, that they can retaliate in kind and that Islam doesn't have a copyright on hatred, bloodshed and mad violence? At a time when India's government is the laughing stock of the world -- as shown by the contempt that much smaller countries such as Malaysia, Portugal or Saudi Arabia have shown to India by refusing to extradite criminals -- the common Hindu is telling his government, his countrymen, whether they are Hindus, Christians or Muslims, and the world, that he has had it…
Cops announce reward for Sultan Mian's arrest
The Bihar police has announced a reward of Rs 25,000 for the arrest of Sultan Mian, who reportedly forced a woman named Kanchan Mishra into marrying him, provoking controversy.
The National Commission for Women is probing the 'forcible' marriage of Mishra, who was married twice before. NCW Chairperson Purnima Advani had asked the state police on Tuesday to track down and produce Mishra before the Commission within 10 days.
I think allowing a country as stable (or not) as Pakistan to have nukes is like handing your toddler the kitchen knife and hoping that he will not either hurt himself or others, since you are keeping a watch on him from another room.
rediff.com: Pakistani scientist offered Saddam nuclear designs
A Pakistani scientist approached Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapon designs and offered help in procuring bomb components soon after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, a document found by United Nations weapons inspectors has revealed.
The revelation comes close on the heels of allegations that Islamabad helped North Korea develop a nuclear bomb and that Pakistani nuclear scientists met Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar in Afghanistan.
Go to the Excedrin website and click on the "Toys for Tots" link. For every click on the link, Excedrin donates a dollar to the charity.
This is not "Odd", Reuters! This is what true oppression looks like, that a man cannot follow the religion/cult/faith that he wants to.
Man Gets Life for Following False Prophet
MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani man has been sentenced to life in prison under the country's blasphemy laws for being a follower of a self-proclaimed prophet, court officials said Thursday.
Ahsan Azamtullah, 45, was convicted of being a disciple of Sardar Ahmed, a self-proclaimed prophet who died in prison last year after a prolonged bout of mental illness, officials said.
Lileks has an excellent screed here about modern day Scrooges in Canada attacking Christmas because....get this, Christmas is religiously exclusive, and is represented by a "heterpsexual, over eating" Santa. Just go read Lileks' piece and feel happy as he demolishes the Scrooge couple point-by-point, idiotic statement-by-statement.
Please go donate to Tim Blair....or else....there will be no mercy for Santa's elves(?!)
'Escape from Taliban depicts reality'
Anxiety is writ large on the face of Sushmita Banerjee as the much-talked-about film, 'Escape from Taliban', which is based on her life, is scheduled to be released in mid-January.
"I am very proud that finally the film has been made and I dream that one day, it will even be released in Afghanistan, so that Afghan women can watch and learn something positive from it," Sushmita told mediapersons.
This is really embarrassing!
US let captured Taliban general go
In an embarassment to the US, special forces soldiers have revealed that the military mistakenly released one of the six most wanted Taliban leaders.
Mullah Akhter Mohammed Osmani, one of Taliban's top generals who lead thouands of troops as coalition forces ousted the hard-line regime, quickly fled to Pakistan, where he remains today, military officials were quoted as saying by the Washington Times on Wednesday.
Ashwini at the Etc Chronicles and I are trying to put together a new place to kinda highlight female bloggers - not neccessarily focusing on female issues, but getting the female point-of-view instead. I have seen a lot of female bloggers that write really good and interesting stuff, but have fallen through the cracks and are just ignored or stop writing due to lack of response. We want to highlight such bloggers along with other more established female bloggers. In short, we are trying to create a Carnival of Vanities for women. We want the posts to be not just submissions, but also nominations, from either of us, from other readers.
We would also like to extend it out to include a female blogger portal. This is not to say we don't like the male bloggers or anything - I personally have been encouraged by many of them - this is just an attempt to present the female perspective on issues. Any suggestions on how we can make it better? Please leave a comment or send me an email.
Well, Alex from Heretical Ideas is hosting it this time, and we also have our own entries - not one, not two, but three of them - in the Carnival, so go check it out here - It has some really good posts.
Funniest bit I have read recently about the (not so) dominant LA Lakers and their locker-room woes.
Jenny jumping into Lake Show
Unable to amicably resolve their lingering dispute with center Shaquille O'Neal, several members of the Los Angeles Lakers responded to their teammate's recent criticisms by taking their bitter feud to the airwaves, taping an episode of "Jenny Jones" entitled, "He Think He All That, But He Ain't."
The team's appearance on the nationally syndicated talk show was orchestrated by head coach Phil Jackson, who had grown weary of his players' petty bickering and hoped the program would give them a healthy forum to exchange ideas with the aid of a professional moderator and an insightful studio audience. What follows is a complete transcript of that show:
Well, one of my blog momies went ahead and got a new home - Letter From Gotham is now Gotham2003 - her blog is still pink, and she still hasn't linked to me :( Update your bookmarks accordingly.
Well, not really, but what if a Java programmer had to come up with a class to automatically generate Islamic preachings every Friday? I think it would be kinda like the one here.
(link courtesy Meryl Yourish)
Pakistan woman councillor beaten, paraded naked - Dec. 15, 2002
LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) -- Pakistan's leading human rights group says it is shocked by news of the public humiliation of a woman councillor who was beaten and paraded naked through a village on the orders of a powerful landlord.
The News on Sunday newspaper said the incident happened on December 7 in a village near Sialkot, an industrial town north of Lahore.
It said in an ordeal that lasted several hours, the woman, the widowed mother of seven, was beaten, stripped and paraded naked through the village by the landlord and his sons after she refused to back his candidate in a local election.
Hmmm, even though this is but a vague rumour that is being talked about in this opinion piece, this could damage the still fragile relationship between India and the US, if true. A very nicely written article, and argues compellingly about why India's interests lie in strengthening ties with Afghanistan, while Pakistan will not like the proceedings. Actually, a complete reading of the article also points out why it is in Afghanistan's best interests, as a country struggling to pull its self out of rubble, to be friends with India.
Why Does US Want India To Stay Out of Kabul?
Musharraf reportedly threatened to 'step up' activities in Afghanistan if India opened up consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar as promised by External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha during his visit to Afghanistan in August.
This apparently prompted American fears of fresh terror attacks on its forces or on the floundering Hamid Karzai regime, whose writ is yet to extend beyond Kabul.
To this, the reported Indian response was that while it had no problems with Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan if it involved development work, if it involved attempts to recreate or revive Islamabad's Frankenstein's monster of the Taliban, why, that was the US' problem.
If the election that has just taken place in Gujarat, where the BJP has been re-elected by a landslide, had happened in Europe or elsewhere in the West, there would be an international outcry, with demands for a boycott of the country and that something be done about it.Thus starts the preaching of this Arab News column, which is published in Saudi Arabia, where as our readers know, there are no elections at all. I would respond to this guy's pontifications, except that I refuse to even dignify with an answer his rants and ravings. I mean, his country does not elect its leaders, is extremely oriented towards only one religion, and he is preaching to a secular, democratic country about how they should hold their elections? Pah!
Jane Galt at Asymmetrical Information has a very good post that argues how arranged marriages are a lot more complex than the Western view of them, and might actually be better for the Arab world as it is structured, at Can the West Seduce the Arab World with Our Dating Culture?.
She makes plenty of good points, but her biggest argument is that arranged marriages are neccessary and work mainly because of economic reasons. I lived for a long time in a country where arranged marriages are the norm, but we are neither Arab nor Muslim. 80% of the marriages I have seen were arranged - my marriage was technically a "love marriage", since my husband and I had dated before our marriage (secretly, of course, but that is the story for another day), and we spoke to our parents once we were of age, and from then on, it was pretty much an arranged marriage. My best friend (I hope she doesn't mind my dragging her life into my blog) had an arranged marriage.
This was to say that we really had no economic reasons to have an arranged marriage - I am a software engineer, and she was a doctor. We did not depend on anybody for our living. Basically, I feel that arranged marriages take the pressure of the dating scene out of a girl's life. I am not against dating or choosong your spouse yourself, mind you. What I find convenient about arranged marriages is that they take most of the guessing work out of the dating game. My parents tried to set me up with a few guys before they knew I was going out with my husband, and some of them I could have married and spent my life with, if I was already not in love.
The difference between your parents finding a boy/girl for you and you finding them yourselves, is that, your parents have already done the background checks - they know about the potential spouse's family, education, job, reputaion, pretty much everything that one needs to work hard at finding out when they are dating. Parents usually have the child's best interests at heart, plus they look at the potentials with an objective eye, instead of the starry-eyed views of some people who cannot see beyond some one's appearance, or some such. Also, objective parents might be better at judging a couple's compatibility than the couple themselves, who might be blindly in love now, but might realize the problem when it is too late.
Another plus point about the arranged marriages is that the parents and families of both sides have invested so much of themselves into the marriage along with the couple that they form an invaluable support group, and try to keep couple together (not good in some cases) and help them be a good family. All this does not neccessarily mean arranged marriages are better than dating and finding a spouse for yourself - It is just to say there is a lot more to it than plain economic reasons.
The divestment campaign did not just happen, and speakers assaulting Israel do not appear of themselves. This antipathy toward Israel grows from a campus culture that is selectively repressive. All the while that students, in the spirit of diversity, are actively discouraged from making pejorative comments about other vulnerable minorities, some Arab and Muslim students have been actively fomenting hatred of Israel as an expression of their "identity." On campuses with a large Arab presence, such as Wayne State in Detroit, this has resulted in a palpable threat to Jewish students, and outbreaks of physical violence have actually occurred at San Francisco State and Concordia University in Montreal.Look at the emphasized (emphasis mine) line a little more closely. That should tell you a bit more about the problem Islamic world in general is facing these days - an identity crisis. You look at the Islamic societies fomenting terrorism all over the world and what do you see? Pakistan - born to be Anti-India, Palestinians - may have had legitimate grievances a long time ago, but now, just Anti-Israel, rest of the fundamentalists - anti-America, anti-Jew, anti-Hindu, anti-Christian, anti-Western values, anti-democracy, anti-gay, anti-women, well pretty much anti-everything that is decent and worth living your life for.
Susanna of "cut on the bias" blog has a very funny post parodying the coverage various bloggers would have given the "Carnival Cruise Sickness" stories. It is especially funny, if you are familiar with the bloggers she is talking about - Instapundit, Meryl Yourish and others.
The Blogosphere covers... the Carnival Cruise sickness
Seriously, this story would fit right in "The Onion".
Demi 'dating' Bill Clinton (December 16, 2002)
JUST when a reconciliation seemed to be on the cards for Bruce Willis and ex-wife Demi Moore, it seems another man has suddenly swept in and stolen the lady's heart.(link courtesy The Corner)
Bruce is seething because Demi has been secretly dating ex-president Bill Clinton.
The actress is said to be captivated by Bill's "mature" sex appeal, witty one liners and charming chat-up lines. "Bruce told Demi she's mad if she goes for Clinton," an aide says. "He told her: 'He uses women – don't trust him'."
"I love you as you are as you seek to find your own special way to relate to the world, or the way you feel that is right for you. It is important that you are the person you want to be and not someone that I or others think you should be. I realize that I cannot know what is best for you although perhaps sometimes I think I do. I've not been where you have been, viewing life from that angle you have, I do not know what you have chosen to learn, how you have chosen to learn it, with whom or in what time period. I have not walked life looking through your eyes so how can I know what you need.
I allow you to be in the world without a thought or word of judgment from me about the deeds you undertake. I see no error in the things you say and do, in this place where I am. I see that there are many ways to perceive and experience the different facets of our world. I allow without reservation the choices you make in each moment.
I make no judgment of this for if I were to deny your right to evolution then I would deny that right to myself and all others. To those who would choose a way I cannot walk, whilst I may not choose to add my power and my energy to this way, I will never deny you the gift of love that God/dess has bestowed within me for all creation, as I love you so I shall be loved, as I sow, so I shall reap.
I allow you the universal right of free will to walk your own path, creating steps or to sit a while if that is what is right for you. I will make no judgment of these steps, whether they are large or small, nor light or heavy or that they lead up or down, for this is just my viewpoint. I see you do nothing and judge it to be unworthy and yet it may be that you bring great healing as you stand blessed by the light of God/dess.
I cannot always see the higher picture of divine order. For it is the inalienable right of all life to choose their own evolution and with great love I acknowledge your right to determine your future.
In humility I bow to the realization that the way I see is best for me does not have to mean that it is also right for you. I know that you are led as I am following the inner excitement to know your own path.
I know that the many races, religions, customs, nationalities and beliefs within our world bring us great richness and allow us the benefit of teachings of such diverseness. I know we each learn in our own unique way in order to bring that love and wisdom back to the whole. I know that if there were only one way to do something, there would need to be only one person. I will not only love you if you behave in a way I think you should, or believe in those things I believe in, I understand you are truly my brother and sister though you may have been born in a different place and believe in another God/dess than I.
The love I feel is for all of God/ess world. I know that every living thing is part of God/dess and I feel a love deep with every person, and all trees, and flowers, every bird, river, ocean and for all the creatures in all the world.
I live my life in loving service being the best me I can becoming wiser in the perfection of divine truth, becoming happier in the joy of unconditional love."
~ Author Unknown ~
Lord of the Rings: "It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden," answered Eowyn. "And those who have not swords can still die upon them."
Aragorn: "Open war is upon you, whether you risk it or not. "
Viggo Mortensen (plays Aragorn in LOTR): "NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL" T-shirt in a dec 3rd interview with Charlie Rose on PBS - "We are not the good guys, unfortunately, in this case", slamming President Bush's policies about the war on Iraq (US Magazine, 12/23/2002)
