As a card carrying agnostic, my Hindu pride is not shattered, but these people need to get a life. Read the whole article, there’s more about “false gods” and such.
Christian activists briefly disrupted a Hindu invocation in the US Senate on Thursday, marring a historic first for the chamber and showing that fundamentalism is present and shouting in the US too.
Invited by the Senate to offer Hindu prayers in place of the usual Christian invocation, Rajan Zed, a Hindu priest from Reno, Nevada, had just stepped up to the podium for the landmark occasion when three protesters, said to belong to the Christian Right anti-abortion group Operation Save America, interrupted by loudly asking for God’s forgiveness for allowing the ”false prayer” of a Hindu in the Senate chamber.
“Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight,” the first protester shouted. “This is an abomination. We shall have no other gods before you.”
Why has Musharraf failed so dramatically to stop the insurgency? One reason is that most of the public is hostile to government action against the extremists (and the rest offer tepid support at best). Most Pakistanis see the militants as America’s enemy, not their own. The Taliban is perceived as the only group standing up against the unwelcome American presence in the region. Some forgive the Taliban’s excesses because it is cloaked in the garb of religion. Pakistan, they reason, was created for Islam, and the Taliban is merely asking for Pakistan to be more Islamic. Even normally vocal, urban, educated Pakistanis — those whose values and lifestyles would make them eligible for decapitation if the Taliban were to succeed in taking the cities — are strangely silent. Why? Because they see Musharraf and the Pakistan army as unworthy of support, both for blocking the path to democracy and for secretly supporting the Taliban as a means of countering Indian influence in Afghanistan.
This is an excellent article on how the Pakistanis military’s long hold on power has created a situation where the Talibanization of Pakistan is tolerated even by the people who have a lot to lose from it. He has to step away and let Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto fight it out, but I don’t see it happening unless he loses control of the army.
While on the subject of Pakistan, this blog post by Samia Altaf summarizes the hollowness of Pakistan’s “democracy”. Bhutto and Sharif have, in their past incarnations, been about as corrupt and reliant on the army as Musharraf is. So, are they good alternatives to Musharraf? Not really.
Two Indian doctors are facing an investigation into claims they let their 15-year-old son perform a caesarean section to get into the Guinness Book of Records.
The government of Tamil Nadu state in southern India today said it was launching an inquiry, according to Indian newspaper reports.
It is alleged the doctors screened a video of their son performing the caesarean at a meeting of the regional branch of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) last month in the hope their son, Dhileepan Raj, would get into the record book as the world’s youngest surgeon.
I feel like laughing at the parents, but the patient and her fetus were put at grave risk, what idiots!
This is precisely the kind of story that makes the most emailed list of the bbc news website. It’s got everything, obsession and insecurity about size, snigger potential, the chance to laugh at a whole race of not so well endowed men, etc!
The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms. It has led to a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India. The two-year study was carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research. Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimetre.
The story does everything except tell you what the average length was and what the average condom length is, I guess they wanted to spare the blushes.
But this is the priceless part of the article…
But Indian men need not be concerned about measuring up internationally according to Sunil Mehra, the former editor of the Indian version of the men’s magazine Maxim. “It’s not size, it’s what you do with it that matters,” he said. From our population, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well.
No, really! You don’t say!
All joking aside, an ill fitting condom is buzz kill, and a disincentive for men to use it. But isn’t girth more important than length? A condom that’s too long does not tear or slip off as long as it fits otherwise, it is a condom that is too tight that will tear. This article mentions a failure rate of 20%, but is that really length related? After all, latex is affected by heat and humidity, especially if the seals are broken. I don’t know. But vending machines are the way to go, as well as “fitted” prophylactics. After all, when you buy a pair of jeans, it is waist and length, right!
Organisers of the ‘Potter pandal’ in Salt Lake’s FD Block heaved a sigh of relief on Friday when Delhi High Court dismissed Penguin India’s complaint of copyright violation.
The puja committee is free to go ahead with the pandal, which resembles Hogwarts school, the setting for JK Rowling’s magical Harry Potter series.
Child soldiering is a unique and severe manifestation of trafficking in persons that involves the recruitment of children through force, fraud, or coercion to be exploited for their labor or to be abused as sex slaves in conflict areas. Government forces, paramilitary organizations, and rebel groups all recruit and utilize child soldiers. UNICEF estimates that more than 300,000 children under 18 are currently being exploited in over 30 armed conflicts worldwide. While the majority of child soldiers are between the ages of 15 and 18, some are as young as 7 or 8 years of age
The two (now) men pictured above were both well under the age of 18 when they were “recruited” by coercion and fraud, one by his father’s brainwashing and the other by strangers. They were both eventually found on battlefields. One has admitted to carrying arms, killing people and burning villages at the age of 13. One is accused of possibly throwing a grenade in a battlefield at the age of 15.
One of them is the author of a highly acclaimed memoir of his time as a child soldier which details his capture, long nightmare of drug induced fighting/killing, and slow and painful, if very inspiring story of rehabilitation. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY and hopes to go to graduate school. While his story has been criticized for not being completely true, most of it is shared by the thousands on other children who are made to fight their elders’ battles.
The other languishes in a cell in a prison well known for its utter disregard for all international law and documented incidence of torture. He has now been there for more than 5 years, where he has been subjected to torture threats, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, no family visits, and utter disregard for due process.
One of them was successfully rehabilitated by a system that kept faith in him by refusing to judge him for the acts he carried out as a child soldier and slowly helped him get back to some semblance of normality.
The other was betrayed by his country and can never get out because he is imprisoned by the most powerful nation on earth.
It is very easy to point to videos/pictures of kids assembling bombs or setting up land mines and point out that they were responsible for their actions. The hallmark of a mature and civilized country is to apply guiding principles and laws equitably and without regarding popularity. A child soldier cannot be prosecuted for his/her actions, they must be rehabilitated. They will never get back their lost childhood, but they should not pay for their elders’ sins.
Prime Ministers Chretien and Harper both went out of their way to forget the fact that they lead a civilized and mature country. They fudged facts, hid behind walls, trotted out due process and stoked fears of terrorism to keep a child in prison.
Rooting for a 21 year old Muslim son of a known terrorist is not easy, especially when he was captured wounded and accused of killing Americans (the highest crime possible). But, to belabour a point, the hallmark of a mature and civilized country is to apply guiding principles and law without regarding popularity. This kid is being held for alleged actions at the age of 15. Even if he participated in battle and killed people (which apparently is the point of battle, much as I hate it), he was a child!
Will Canada eventually do the right thing? Who knows. I sure hope so. Today’s release of the interrogation video is revealing of the fact that there is a shred of hope and decency in the system. Please watch this kid being “interrogated” by people in power he thought were going to help him “go home”.
You picked up a kid in the battlefield, imprisoned him for several years. In doing so, you committed a crime far worse than what he’s being accused of, child abuse…
Tiger census estimates from Central India indicate a fall of tiger population by over 50 per cent, worst decline since first government census in 1973.
Tiger number appears to have fallen by 61 per cent in Madhya Pradesh, 57 per cent in Rajasthan and 40 per cent in Rajasthan, according to the estimates released by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) on Wednesday.
Initial estimate of 16 of the 28 tigers reserves show that there are only 464 tigers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra as compared to 1,006 in 2002. Final census is expected by end of 2007.
India has 29 tiger reserves. Apparently, most of the population losses are outside the reserves where there is mush more tiger-human interaction.
Dr YV Jhala, institute’s chief scientist, said, “In general, the situation is not good. I cannot stress more the importance of removal of anthropogenic (people) influence on tiger population. Tigers and people cannot co-exist”.
I like that, “Tigers and people cannot co-exist”, probably true, if simplistic, they’re both super top level predators. Habitat pressure in India is probably the single largest issue with development pressure and a burgeoning population.
One important thing to note.
The institute disbanded the pugmark identification methodology for tiger census and adopted more scientific approach of camera capturing, scent and pugmark analysis and tracking movement of tigers using satellite tracking.
When you change counting methodologies, it is hard to compare population estimates. This note and this Science article (sell kidney to read) indicate that pugmark identification was notorious for over counting tigers, even missing entire population collapses, so who knows whether we are seeing a decline, or finally, a more accurate count? Either way, the numbers are depressing, and do not bode well for the tiger.
Fundamentalism is so boring when it’s not colourful enough. 🙂 Wicked? That’s the best they could do! Poof!