Religious nuts are everywhere

No time for much blogging but quick pointer to a few good posts by Amit Varma at India Uncut.

First up....Hindutva defender BP Singhal, as interviewed by Shivam Vij.

Anybody who wants to denigrate another religion, I call him a Christian. You must find out Ambika Soni’s religion.

Read more at Amit's post on Singhal the Entertainer...

(who needs Cedric when you can have Singhal :))

If there are alternatives, why do they want to demolish the ‘bridge’?
Simply because America is out - have you not been watching the way places of Hindu faith and shraddha have been denigrated!

But what is the motive?
Americans! Americans! Americans and the Christians. I mean, Christians because of Americans and Americans because of Christians, and Christians themselves.

But why?
Do you know what their academy of religion in America gives out? That the trunk of ganesha is like a phallus. For them phallus is visible everywhere. In India it has been called shiv ling. Ling is phallus? What is ling? Ling is the operational part of the particular thing.

Crackpots, I tell you...crackpots. But like Amit Varma writes, sadly a large % of the population in India probably take his comments seriously and share his sentiments. Where have the religious leaders like Harry Fosdick or Vivekananda gone who preached love and equanimity of all people - not just people who thought and believed like they do?


Earlier this week, Amit blogged about another cartoon controversy that irked the religious crackpots in Bangladesh! Commenting about this episode, Blake Hounshell writes:

This story isn’t about hurt feelings; it’s about raw political power. [...] It’s a familiar pattern in Muslim countries ruled by authoritarian governments: Religious conservatives use religion cynically to embarrass the regime and whip up populist sentiment. Over time, they can force the government to make accommodating moves and concede elements of government to the clerics. And the state can’t exactly stand up for the principle of freedom of speech, because it’s usually no great shakes on that score, either.

Well said... though I wouldn't call it a pattern in Muslim countries only or even something that plagues the Indian subcontinent. The US has its own cast of wingnuts, who spew unbelievable religious dogma that seemingly has a lot of followers here too! And Europe has its own share of xenophobia and fascism, not to forget the Aryan supremacyand Ku Klux Klan mentality that was not merely a fringe cult phenomenaon in the not-so-distant past. And then there are the atheist Chinese, who are equally nutty (in different ways) without even believing in a God. Tell you...it is human nature to be such irrational kooks....God is not the problem and religion is only one of the manifestations of this kookiness :))

Related: If u have not read these before, do read Amit's pieces on intolerance in India, Don’t Insult Pasta and God resigns.

Random Links - 18

Still recovering from a cold. Intermittent access to email during this week's travels. No time for several blog posts but here is a compilation of "interesting" news snippets, all found through this weeks Harper's Weekly Review.

Seymour Hersh has been right all along - 1, 2, 3

• Vice President Dick Cheney considered asking Israel to launch missiles at an Iranian nuclear site to kick-start a new war

hahaha.... (bold emphasis mine)

• Raytheon unveiled Silent Guardian, a device that radiates unbearable pain. “You don't have time to think about it,” said an executive. “You just run.” The ray gun, Raytheon promised, will not be sold to countries with questionable human rights records, although it will be used by the United States in Iraq.

disgusting!

• There were reports of a restaurant in Tokyo where patrons could rape an animal before eating it. “When people have got money and done everything else,” said a lawyer who'd had the pork, “they turn toward bestiality.
• A man in St. Paul, Minnesota, faced $5,000 in fines for ripping the head off a tame duck in a hotel lobby
• a British man named Anthony Anderson was arrested for urinating on a 57-year-old woman as she lay dying of pancreatic failure. “This,” yelled Anderson as he was filmed, “is YouTube material.”13
  

amusing!

• Contestants on “American Idol”-style talent shows, said China, must henceforth demonstrate “perseverance, maturity, confidence, and health."
• earlier (17 Aug 07): China bans 'vulgar' talent show
  - The First Heartthrob, a Pop Idol-style competition, was accused of catering to "the low-grade interests of a minority" and cancelled with immediate effect.
  

day-time TV in the US for u!

• A day after declaring she didn't "believe in evolution, period" and was unsure of whether the world was flat, new "View" co-host Sherri Shepherd attempts to defend herself on Wednesday's show.

nighttime TV in the US for u!

• FOX talk-show host Bill O'Reilly ate a meal in Harlem. “There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea,'” said O'Reilly. “You know, I mean, everybody was--it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun.

life in the US for u?*

• U.S. Homeland Security was noting what some people read when they fly

And a whole lot of tasering this week...

• A University of Florida student was tasered after his question for Senator John Kerry went on too long. An Ocala, Florida, man accused police of tasering him after he refused to drop his Koran; police in Tustin, California, tasered a 15-year-old autistic boy; and a taser dart fired at a Vancouver, Washington, man ignited the cigarette lighter in his pocket, setting his pants on fire. Sales at Taser International were expected to reach $90 million this year.

But worry not...all is well with the world.... (Gandhi - in heaven, if there is one - must have been smiling last week.)

• Twenty thousand people marched against the junta in Burma; about 400 monks were pushed away from the house where pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is imprisoned. “Love and kindness must win over everything,” read the monks' yellow banner.

--
* I have nothing to worry. In fact, I should be in the HS records as having really good literary taste :) I read Enduring Love by Ian McEwan on the 6 hour flight over yesterday. McEwan is one of the best writers I have read -- have read Amsterdam & Black Dogs before this. Hope to read Atonement next. Btw, "Enduring Love'....what a great title. What a great pun on the word "Enduring".

God responds

... (s)he exists! :)

'God' strikes back at lawsuit, claims immunity

• Senator who sued God gets response; "God" says Nebraska lacks jurisdiction
  
• St. Michael the Archangel is listed as a witness on court filing
  
• Sen. Chambers sued God for causing "widespread death, destruction"
  
• Response: suit doesn't consider free will; defendant immune from some laws

By the way, this is mainstream news on cnn.com, not a satirical article from the Onion!

Iceland's green dream

Years before most knew about green energy, Iceland was tapping into its geysers and volcanoes. With gas at $8 a gallon, renewables now provide almost all heating and electricity. And advocates can see a country free of fossil fuel use by 2050. .... read more.

You know them better as - 3

Lev Davidovich Bronstein - Leon Trotsky

Buy buy Dubai

Big news today is that Dubai is to buy a large stake in the Nasdaq stock exchange.

The government-controlled stock exchange in Dubai, the fast-growing Middle East business center, announced Thursday in Stockholm that it would take significant ownership in the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York and the London Stock Exchange.

Expectedly, Congress rumbles... expect another Dubai ports management kind of controversy and debates.

Random Links - 17

After a flood of posts at Linkastic as well as blogging very regularly here these past 2-3 weeks, I am in the midst of a mini-break from blogging as well as Linkastic as I have a busy schedule for the past 5-6 days preparing for an important meeting at work and will be traveling next week on work. If the hotel has internet service, it may also mean some surfing and blogging in the evenings next week, as I will be by myself in the evenings. OTOH, it may mean a hiatus, if I internet access is too expensive for whole-day rates and I end up using it only on an hourly rate basis to keep in touch with work.

Anyways, as I catch up on news from around the globe this evening, here are some snippets of news - mainly thru IHT/NYT.

Firstly, is some welcome news! NYT editorials are to be free again! Nice! Aah...to read Janet Dowd and Paul Krugman and Frank Rich again :)

In celebration, here are some other interesting articles I found, mainly on NYT/IHT.

WORLD POLITICS

US tries to ease entry for foreign travelers … yeah right!

The World Bank and the United Nations announced Monday that they were setting up a system to help developing nations recover assets stolen and sent abroad by corrupt leaders that amount to an estimated $40 billion a year. ….What... reverse-419 scams, u mean? Or if they succeed, then no more 419s? ;)

IRAQ

Oped: No exit, no strategy, no truth on Iraq

No comments. The title says it all!

Put politics aside to save Iraq, says Henry Kissinger. Look who's talking - person with the least moral authority about saving a country (see next item re: the consequences of his role in Vietnam. Also, part of the blame for Iraq also falls on him perhaps as he is real close to the Bushies and has consulted the White House on its path in Iraq!) Maybe I knew this but was just reminded that he got the 1973 Peace Nobel....oh man... Peace Prize is a political award but thats like giving Rumsfeld the peace prize for bringing freedom to Iraq. WTF!

ENVIRONMENT

In Vietnam, healing the damage done to nature by the American War (Also this related article about the after-effects of Agent Orange.)

In a growing world, milk is the new oil

Driven by a combination of climate change, trade policies and competition for cattle feed from biofuel producers, global milk prices have doubled over the past two years. In parts of the United States, milk is more expensive than gasoline. There are reports of cows being stolen on Wisconsin dairy farms.

ARTS

Have not seen too many German Westerns, have you? Seems the Germans are obsessed with the American Wild West.

At powwows — there are dozens every year — thousands of Germans with an American Indian fetish drink firewater, wear turquoise jewelry and run around Baden-Württemberg or Schleswig-Holstein dressed as Comanches and Apaches. There are clubs, magazines, trading cards, school curriculums, stupendously popular German-made Wild West films and outdoor theaters, including one high in the sandstone cliffs above the tiny medieval fortress town of Rathen, in Saxony, where cowboys fight Indians on horseback. A fake Wild West village, Eldorado, recently shot up on the outskirts of Templin, the city where Angela Merkel, the chancellor, grew up.

What is the role of reading in a digital world? Read about Socrates' nightmare

As parents invest in the latest academic software and teachers consider how to weave the Internet into lesson plans for the new school year, it is a good moment to reflect upon the changing world in which youths are being educated. In a word, it is digital, with computer notebooks displacing spiraled notebooks, and blogs, articles, and e-mails shaping how we read and communicate. Parents, teachers and scholars are beginning to question how our immersion in this increasingly digital world will shape the next generation's relationship to reading, learning and to knowledge itself.

TRAVEL

Tourists, monks and history: Whose islands are they?: Solovetsky Islands, an archipelago in the White Sea of northwestern Russia, about 100 miles from the Arctic Circle. (Never heard of Solovetsky Isles before!)

Female boxing in Thailand: In a country where femininity is highly prized and girls are often told by their parents to be discreet, obedient and gracious, female boxing is now a surprise hit.

Beautiful picture of the Svartisen Glacier, the Northernmost point in Europe, as seen on a Hurtigruten tour in Norway.