Stuck on Stupid!
Not one to lose an opportunity, we now have our line of “Don’t get stuck on stupid!” gear from Cafepress -
This is apparently what passes for deep, philosophical thoughts at Rediff these days. It is amazing how an author who is proud of some Americans disappointed in George Bush saying that he is taking the country backwards by 20 years, is completely unfazed by a thought process that doesn’t even belong in the last century, forget this one in the name of religion.
Want to choose America’s president?
The most disturbing question I asked a Muslim cleric in Washington was whether it was right for Indian Muslim girls to marry Hindu boys.[Emphasis mine]The answer, from Dr Abdullah Muhammad Khouj, was No.
I then asked if it was okay if the girl retained her religion while the boy retained his. The answer was “Al Haram, Al Haram (It’s a sin).” Dr Khouj added that Islam did not permit Muslim girls to marry non-Muslims. The marriage was possible only if the boys converted to Islam. He did say, however, that Muslim boys could marry ‘people of the book’ like Christians or Jews, and that the girls could retain their own religion. Marrying Hindu girls was impossible unless they first converted to Islam.
My question was based on the fact that, as Muslim girls get educated and become economically independent, it is difficult for Muslim families to tell them not to marry non-Muslims. There are many cases in India — including one in my family — but the cleric said they were un-Islamic. He added that one ought to explain to one’s sisters and daughters that there was life after death.
It is a question Indian Muslims will have to ask themselves and find solutions to. What will they do when such a situation crops up in their families? Will they be loyal to their religion or give in to demands of female family members?
Seriously, this author actually expects us to take him seriously when he is such a frigging wimp that he won’t even come out and say what he really means is that it will be hard to force your ancient will on educated and accomplished women in the name of religion! It is sheer cowardice or tacit approval of the “status quo” (take your pick) that he leaves that issue off with a stupid question couched in irritating terms like “demands of female family members”. Is this what passes for progressive thought these days?
Here is an interesting perspective on Gandhi and his penchant for extreme pacifism. I agree with a lot of what the blogger says about Gandhi. I haev often wondered how can it be that a man who so completely believed in the Gita (which of course, says that to protect Dharma you are allowed to kill even your own leave alone those who are oppressing your kin) could have gone to such extremes in pacifism. I completely agree with the claims in the post linked above that he was an extremist in his beliefs and cause and had the luxury to be blind to everything else since he kept himself so far removed from the mainstream - not physically mind you, but mentally - he obviously thought he was so pure and beyond the regular human instincts that he kept preaching people that it was better for them to die than fight back even while they were being massacred.
It brings to my mind the story of the Budhhist monk and the snake - the monk asks the snake to be peaceful and to stop biting others. The next time he meets the snake, he sees it covered in bruises and near death. When he asks the snake what had happened, the snake replies that since he stopped biting people, they were no longer afraid of him and started throwing stones at him for fun. The monk then asked the snake that he needn’t have bitten the people but could have hissed at them as if to threaten a bite to protect himself - that way the snake would have remained peaceful and still could keep the people away from him.
I believe that a threat of violence, if not actual violence is extremely inportant to keep peace. Think about it - why do we punish criminals? Why is there a [metaphorical] “stick” that we use when the carrot doesn’t work? Not for the fun of violence, but so that the threat of violence further discourages crime and keeps peace among the citizenry. By openly and completely eschewing any violence and by ordering his people to do so, Gandhi took away any semblance of the stick from the opressed during the partition to the point violence flared out openly in the belief that some people could get away with whatever they wanted since the leader of those who opposed partition (Gandhi) would never allow his followers to fight back for what they believed in.
I think threats of “Satyagraha” work only as long as those you are trying to bend to your will are actually inerested in keeping up a good public face and care for good PR. The minute the mob psyche takes over, they call your bluff by taking up arms against you. What are you to do then, if all your life you have been moving more and more to the extremes of pacifism? What do you do when you are militantly against violence? I think Gandhi had no way to save face and his people paid the price.
It is at Dynamic Ram’s blog this week - check it out and find out what happens next in the saga of Pappu, Munni and Postman Chacha.
What happens if you are a fading star who tries to gain a bit of relevance by advising kids about premarital sex and precautions? The same people who built you temples a few years ago, now come after you with brooms(?) and slippers. Here is my take on this - would the reaction have been the same if it was a male actor talking about girls having pre-marital sex? Would there be any reaction from people at all if it was a male actor talking about men having pre-marital sex? From the idiots raining fatwas on tennis players to those who see themselves as moral arbiters of the dresses college girls wear (thanks for the link, Chinaman!), what is this fundamental obsession of the so-called culture purists with women and their bodies?
Why is it that almost every aspect of culture the purists want to “protect” deals with controlling the womenfolk? Why is it that in a country where a majority worship sensual female goddesses, any sign that women may possess an innate sexuality met with oppression?
As for Khushboo’s ill-fated remarks, what she is really doing here is putting in words the reality of the days we live in. 10 years ago when I was in India, I knew of kids indulging in casual pre-marital sex. Once I left home to do my Masters’, I lived with my husband-to-be for two years before we got married. While neither supporting nor denigrating the arrangement, my point is that premarital sex is as common now as it was at any time and the one way you can prevent unwanted pregnancies and abortions is by educating the kids about preventive procedures. Abstinence till marriage is a great thing in theory but tough to practice in an age when most men and women wait until their late twenties or thirties to marry - preferring to get settled in their careers, etc. before getting hitched. It is highly impractical and unreasonable to expect these men and women to not have sex while on the other hand they are being bombarded by graphically sexual images from every kind of media.
This is what we do to sportspeople with real talent and then wonder why it is that a country with over a billion people sucks so bad at winning anything in the Olympics and other world arenas.
Penury makes player sell medals! : HTTabloid.comPenury has driven a woman powerlifter from Orissa to sell all the medals she has won in national and international meets.How sad is it that at a time when worthless, corrupt politicians hoard crores of rupees in their vaults, a talented woman has to sell her awards and medals to try to finance her trip to an international sports competetion? I cannot believe there wasn’t a single organization or sponsor to help the poor woman bring pride to the country. I am just flabbergasted.The 29-year-old Mandakini Mahanta, a resident of Goladihi village in Mayurbhanj district, won a gold medal in the Asian senior powerlifting championship in Kerala in May.
“I have no option but to sell my valuable medals,” Mandakini, who is single, said.
She was selected for an international meet in London that started on Monday. But due to lack of finances, she could not participate.
update: Of course, we cannot be completely satisfied with just stopping aspiring athletes. We now have to issue a fatwa against rising tennis star Sania Mirza for the dastardly act of - get this - wearing short skirts while playing the game. Some parodies just write themselves I think - you just cannot makeup crap anymore when reality is so out there! They are even proposing an alternative to her dress…
The fatwa - in effect, a demand that she cover up - was issued by a senior cleric of the Sunni Ulema Board, a little-known group. Similar fatwas have been issued against Mirza, who comes from a devout Muslim family, but none has ever gained popular support among India’s 130 million Muslims.[emphasis mine]“The dress she wears on the tennis courts…leaves nothing to the imagination,” Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui told The Hindustan Times. “She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence.”
He said she should follow the example of Iranian women who wore long tunics and headscarves to play in the Asian Badminton Championships.
If you take the study and the book mentioned in this article at its face-value, it appears as though I am doing my son a great disservice by staying married to his daddy. The best thing that I could do for his future apparently, is to leave my husband and go find myself another woman to leave with - sounds like a dead-beat-dad’s utopia doesn’t it? (Sumanth, you might have something to say about the book).
It is just amazing how if you read the parts quoted in the book, the author thinks there is something inherently toxic about masculinity and thinks boys are better off when they are painting their finger-nails and learning ballet. I wonder what she thinks about butch girls who are ultra-competetive and eschew the traditional idea of feminine to be tom-boys - would they be as toxic as the men they seem to be emulating?
The “study’s” author also seems to think that somehow only boys raised by lesbians have any empathy or consideration for other human beings - I think my husband who was definitely raised by a heterosexual couple would like disagree, citing all those times he has cooked and cleaned for me. I guess it is OK to paint with the broadest brushes available if you are on the politically correct side. It is also quite interesting how she misses (how obtuse must one be) the extremely obvious clues of the boys asking for a “daddy” - in her world, asking for a dad apparently doesn’t mean they want to have a dad (D’oh! Why didn’t I think of that?).
Incidentally, she is not too averse to male role models - she wants the boys to have male role models - she just prefers that these men just not be dads of the boys.Drexler warns us about male influence, writing “fathers can be destructive and a boy may be better off without his father. Sometimes a father can be an aggressor who berates the mother, is hypercritical of his children or—in less dire circumstances—is simply not a good role model.”It is just irritating just how far an obtuse and closed-mind can go to prove a point to its liking while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Well, atleast there is one little boy who she can probably relate to well enough and think he is one well-adjusted dude since he has always worshipped his mom so…I think his name is Norman Bates!
(link via Dean)http://feminist4fathers.blogspot.com/2005/10/review-raising-boys-without-men.html
update: Here is another blog’s review of the book - he feels pretty much the same way as me and he has even read the book.
Here is an excellent column detailing the response from the Indian government to the media vs. the Pakistani government’s approach to media during the time right after India announced to the world that she had successfully conducted nuclear tests. You would think it was a rpoud moment for the country and people would be tripping over each other to relay the message to the world, but then you would be wrong as the column points out. It is amazing how clueless the Indian government still is when it comes to media management and public relations in an age where you are what the media makes you out to be!
Not one to lose an opportunity, we now have our line of “Don’t get stuck on stupid!” gear from Cafepress -
The last person on Earth was alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…
-Fredrick Brown
(got this from the comments on Michele’s site)
Yep, that stupid was me - I had lost my purse about a month-and-a-half ago, so I got all my credit cards changed. I went and updated almost all my accounts with the updated numbers…I say almost, since I forgot updating my hosting matters account. They suspended it when they couldn’t get my older credit card number authorized and I find out about this though, via the blogmela.com site where they said my site was gone (I know I never once visited my site once over the last three days - I am very non-vain like that :)). Everything is fixed now, so I guess all is swell that ends well :p
I should kick myself and just go for a walk now - just google “Katrina vs Mumbai Flood” and see the responses of most South Asian blogs - typical responses deal with “racism” (yeah, it is’nt like we don’t have a caste system), “looting” (we are so much more crime-free - especially since our people don’t wait till a hurricane to loot around or rape people) - almost every single mention I have seen of the hurricane is a smug response deriding the US while claiming to feel “oh-so-sorry” about the victims. I have been to thousands of American blogs that raised tons of money on their own initiative for the tsunami - not in one place did I hear this kind of barely-concealed-glee at being able to lecture a country in need. What is it? some kind of an inferiority complex?
What is it about South Asians and Indians in general that makes us think we can kick someone when they are down while we are feeling all smug and morally superior about it? These are the same people mind you, who get their panties in a wad when another blog makes a stupid joke at their cost and shriek, “racism”! Excuse me, while I don’t get too offended about our delicate sensibilities when we ourselves don’t waste a minute trying to take advantage of another’s bad luck.
Epilogue: I am exhausted by this hate - I am going out to the Oktoberfest to get sozzled out on some good Hefeweizen - you all have a good weekend too!
Could it really be a happy reunion for Pappu and Munni after the tragedy that struck their happy, carefree lives? We will just have to wait and find out once Ram puts up the Mela - go send him your nominations now!
“inches of rain in new orleans due to hurricane katrina… 18 inches of rain in mumbai (July 27th)…. 37.1Ponder on that for a bit, will ya?population of new orleans… 484,674
population of mumbai…. 12,622,500deaths in new orleans within 48 hours of katrina…100
deaths in mumbai within 48hours of rain.. 37.
WRONG! Death toll in Mumbai was 1000 and rising still…
Correction: The email lists only deaths in the first 48 hours, which is I guess an ingenuous way to avoid the total death toll numbers - still, the first 48 hours’ death toll in Mumbai seems to be about 421 per Snopes Forums where I got the MSNBC link from.number of people to be evacuated in new orleans… entire city..woh ho
number of people evacuated in mumbai…10,000Cases of shooting and violence in new orleans…Countless
Cases of shooting and violence in mumbai.. NONETime taken for US army to reach new orleans… 48hours
Time taken for Indian army and navy to reach mumbai…12hoursstatus 48hours later…new orleans is still waiting for relief, army and electricty
status 48hours later..mumbai is back on its feet and is business is as usualUSA…world’s most developed nation
India…third world country..oops…did i get the last fact wrong???
Well Done Mumbaikars (Indians) “
Let us think about this a minute and get a few more facts in -
# of feet of water NO was under - 20 (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/29/hurricane.katrina/)
# of feet of water Mumbai was under - how about “over” 5 feet?
Winds that hit NO and Mississippi - upto 155 MPH as a CAT 4
Winds in Mumbai - upto 73 MPH as a cyclone
NO is below sea-level.
The total SQ.footage destroyed by Katrina - more than size of Great Britain, i.e., greater than 216,777 SQ. KM - this is of course, almost 2/3rds of the entire state of Maharashtra (307,690 SQ. KM)
Do you now see how incredibly stupid this argument is?
Wanna talk about facts? How about a few more inconvenient facts that these nincompoops try to forget with their selective amnesia…
Death toll in tsunami in India - atleast 14000
This is of course, not taking into account the deaths that happen every time some religion decides to beat up on another religion or when a “giant tree falls” and innocent people are massacred just because they belong to the wrong religion.
Now do you see how pointless this argument is? People who take the opportunity of a disaster to advance their agendas - regardless of their nationality, color, creed and bias are worse than the vultures that feed on the dead. You want to score points? Do it on an even plane. A graveyard is a place for sympathy - not a place to argue or debate or jump up and down about how great you are and what a cool country you belong to. You people disgust me and make me sick!
One last thing to remember is that when you guys had the tsunami, this country’s private citizens and companies poured in millions of dollars in charity…talk to me when you can match them if not top them in generosity.
p.s. If this had been an American friend circulating a similar email during the tsunami or some such, I would have been equally disgusted and my reaction would be equally strong!
p.p.s. I guess I am not the only one -One of our readers, Dilip has this to say about this email - “I think the whole comparison to begin with smacks of an idiot with some convoluted notion of superiority over how a country manages disaster of unequal magnitude…self-evidently stupid if i can put it that way”
Remember that post I wrote recently about the “myth of Al-dura” ? Here is a site that provides the background material for the article I quoted from. There is actual footage that was discussed in the article for us to see and evaluate for ourselves. I think this is great that we get see and decide who we choose to believe or not.
(much appreciated link via Solomon)
Ever love someone so much that you want to strangle and kiss the person at the same time? So much that even though they are exasperating you to the point of putting criminal thoughts in your mind but your heart keeps chanting - “I love __”, “I love __”…? Ever love someone so much that you go to bed angry but wake up with sweet dreams and thoughts? ;-)
Random thoughts: Isn’t Devulapalli the best lyric writer/poet ever to grace the telugu world? I am listening right now to “Meghasandesham” (message sent through clouds”, a movie with music composed by Ramesh Naidu. A couple of the songs are Jayadeva’s ashtapadis - “Priye Charusheele”, “Radhika Krishna” - while others are penned by Devulapalli, Veturi and Palagummi. “Akulo Akunai” (like a leaf within leaves) is the Devulapalli song that won a Nandi award for best lyrics. The song just flows so well and the lyrics are such simple yet beautiful words that just listening to them melts your heart.
A lot of the songs are sung by Yesudas, another virtuoso singer without par - “Priye Charusheele” (O lover, O jewel”) , “Akasa Deshana” (In the city in the sky), “Radhika Krishna”, “Navarasa Sumamalika” (a garland of flowers of the nine emotions), “Sigalo avi virulo” (those flowers in your hair) - Balamurali sings another version of “Navarasa Sumamalika” and there is Susheela with her deep voice (Chitra’s voice somehow always put me off as did Janaki’s for lacking a certain depth and gravitas).
Almost all songs are classical in composition except for some like “Mundu telisena Prabhu” (a beautiful song about a courtesan who wishes her lover had let her known a little beforehand so that she could get everything ready and make sure she loves him enough to keep him with her forever) and “Akulo akunai” (a wife’s song of blending with her husband’s passion for music and experiencing a oneness with nature). There are some songs that just touch the depths of your heart not just with music but with the meaning of the words.
I have got to say - I hate the recent A.R.Rahman music in Telugu. I love the tunes and the rhythms - there is something about the lyrics that is so made up to fit the tune that is just disgusting. The song “Kabhi neem neem, kabhi shehad, shehad” (bitter sometimes, sweet sometimes) from the movie “Yuva” was “Sankurathri Kodi, Katthilanti Kodi” (A pongal rooster, real powerful one) in Telugu. Can you see the difference where the first lyrics express a wife’s description of the duality in her husband’s personality while the second set talk about her husband a little weird? If the lyrics are not good, I lose interest in the music regardless of how great the tune is - it happened with a lot of Rahman tunes - Jeans, Yuva, Sakhi, etc.
I think music moves you not just when the tune is melodious, but when the lyrics make you want to listen closely and follow the song instead of letting it just hum int he background. The best music is that, that resonatels with you and makes you want to listen to it with your heart if not dance to it with your feet. It is also music that you can sing along to - regardless of what mood you are in. It is music that shares your heart’s sadness as much as it lifts your spirit with the melody.
There is a lot of talk currently about poor people being disproportionately hit by hurricane Katrina. It makes me think - hasn’t this been the story forever and ever? “<insert disaster here> plows through <insert region here> - poor people hardest hit!” It happened with the tsunami, every single earthquake I can think of and must be an yearly occurrence in Bangladesh every time the monsoon hits.
It reminds me of something that happened back home in India. We lived very close to the beach in the Vishakhapatnam and we were a port/fishing city. All the fishermen lived on the beach, where the huts were not only eyesores for those trying to get tourism dollars, but a general indefensible line of housing should a hurrican hit. The city went ahead built an entire colony of low-incom housing with solid walls and indoor-toilets and tried to mmove all the fishermen into those homes. Two months later, all the huts were back again on the beach and their homes had been rented out to other poor people. The fishermen simply didn’t want to lose their close access to the beach and their livelihood (their homes were about 15 minutes away by walk) and their convenience. Suppose a major hurrican hit Vizag and these people got affected - the city would have been blamed for not taking good care of its poor.
This is not an attempt to say that poor people are to be blamed for their misfortune - this is just to say there is also a sizable contingent of the poor people who won’t let you help them. What do we do about people like that? How do we solve the issue without infringing on their right to make a living in a decent and convenient manner?
And what does the filmed news report show? The answer is staring us in the face, cinched by the collapse of France-2’s four-year concealment of its lack of evidence. As even Charles Enderlin has tacitly admitted, the al-Dura report was not some brief excerpt from a longer stretch of filmed reality but a scene with no depth, no duration, no origin, and no continuation. The 45 minutes? Gone. Abu Rahmeh’s 27 minutes? Gone, too. We are left with approximately a single minute of Jamal and Muhammad al-Dura filmed in continuous time.As they say, read it all and then come back and tell me what you agree with in the report and what you find hard to believe.
In that minute, the two crouch behind an upended culvert and contort their faces in fear. Guttural screams are heard, but they do not come from the man or the boy; they come from men standing within range of the France-2 cameraman’s microphone. Jamal bobs his head. Muhammad stretches out at his father’s feet. Then, in the brief portion that was carefully edited out but that can be seen in the outtakes, the boy changes position several times, using voluntary muscles that only living people can activate.
Steven Spielberg is making a movie about the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes and guess who is feeling left out - the terrorist subhuman who planned the massacre, of course!
In Reuters’ own words -GAZA - The Palestinian mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics raid, in which 11 Israeli athletes died, said director Steven Spielberg should have consulted him about a new film on the episode to be sure to get the story right.UN-FRICKING-BELIEVABLE! So if someone makes a movie about the Mumbai blasts, we will have to consult Dawood Ibrahim? If we want to make a movie about the sub-sub-humans that mercilessly killed the children in Besslan we need to consult those that did it so we can the atmosphere and the details right? If we make a movie about Ted Bundy and Charles Manson, we need to make sure we get to hear his side of it so we can “understand” the poor souls? How pathetic is this! Of course, the icing on the cake is Spielberg’s response to the idiot’s rant -In an irony worthy of a John le Carre novel, Mohammad Daoud echoed veterans of Israel’s Mossad spy service in questioning the sources used for “Munich,” a thriller chronicling the massacre and the Israeli revenge assassinations that followed.
“I know nothing about this film. If someone really wanted to tell the truth about what happened he should talk to the people involved, people who know the truth,” Daoud told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location in the Middle East.
He has vowed that “Munich” will be sensitive to all sides.I had great respect for Spielberg - he has squandered it to the point I don’t feel like watching his movies anymore. There is nothing wrong with taking a stand. There is evil in the world and there is a time to look for gray areas and there is a time to expose evil in it’s horrible glory. Equivocating as a rule is nothing but cowardice. It will not change my mind about not bothering to watch the movie that…
An Israeli actress cast in the film confirmed press reports that it is based, at least partly, on “Vengeance”, a book on the reprisals campaign that has been widely discredited.
Why even bother spending money and making a movie about history if you choose to ignore the facts of the matter?