The Prestidigitator

Incredibly disturbing but relevant piece by Johann Hari.

And then he smiles, coming up with what he sees as his killer argument. “When I see Western journalists criticise us – don’t you realise you’re shooting yourself in the foot? The Middle East will be far more dangerous if Dubai fails. Our export isn’t oil, it’s hope. Poor Egyptians or Libyans or Iranians grow up saying – I want to go to Dubai. We’re very important to the region. We are showing how to be a modern Muslim country. We don’t have any fundamentalists here. Europeans shouldn’t gloat at our demise. You should be very worried…. Do you know what will happen if this model fails? Dubai will go down the Iranian path, the Islamist path.”

Very often, we tend to ignore the correlation between economics and religion.

I really don’t want to contribute to the hyperbole that this debate has already created but I can safely say that this is the finest one hour of debate, one-sided as it is, I’ve seen in a very long time. Two amazingly articulate intellectuals take on Catholicism and religious hypocrisy. To be fair, I do wish that the two proponents of the Catholic church would have been a little more, I don’t know, Christlike instead of pretending that (institutional) child abuse and homophobia are urban myths.

Stephen Fry makes an especially brilliant case against the so called ‘force for good’. Nod along or throw stuff at your computer but this is what good television is all about.

Go watch. Now.

“The land of Mahatma Gandhi has been bloodied by terrorists whom we shall not spare; Terrorists are waging a war against India. We should be prepared for a long battle against terrorism.”

- Narendra Modi in response to the recent Bangalore and Ahmedabad blasts

If there’s one breed of vermin that deserves zero respect/sympathy/empathy, it’s the one that comments without abandon on sites like YouTube and Redditt. Going through some of the comments on YouTube (as entertaining as some of them are) is pretty much all the proof we need for dysgenics. For the average internet junkie, sitting in the confines of his/her room is all the empowerment he/she needs to air his/her retarded views onto an unsuspecting world. Most of the time they end up being just plain ridiculous and sometimes marginally offensive.

(Click to view)

There is a comment that shows up beneath an article on Wired,

I want to destroy young generation of India Delhi is the best place to do bomb blast in SouthDelhi mainly in Mohammad Pur, Nehru place buildings, Vasant vihar flats, RK Puram Lodhi Road, Sarojani Nagar are the best place to do the bomb blast and do lot of casualties. Lot of Colleges are are also the best place to do bomb blast if anyone will do bomb blast here then there are maximum casuilties done and ISI will become happy. I want to Tell that if anyone want to carry bomb laptop leather bag is very good for this.
Put the bomb in the leather bag.

Include punctuations where necessary to make sense of what you just read. How exactly do you react to something like this?

Additional Links:

• An interesting read by Andrew Chen
• What You Tube comments really mean

Every time an Indian with a Y chromosome delivers a tirade fueled by patriotism, he is bound to tell you that the Indian culture stands tall amongst all else because of it’s unrivaled respect for women, for the female form, for the working woman, the daughter, the sister, the mother. He will tell you how fortunate a woman in India is for she is not subjected to the evils of an amoral western society. He is the epitome of hypocrisy.

• Guwahati men strip, beat up women protesters: Local men strip and molest protesting tribal women in broad daylight while the police watch. What is most bothersome is that journalists managed to click photos whilst the atrocity was in progress. Are we so passive? The government feels that a 1 Lakh compensation will make up for the emotional and physical torture these women were put through.
• An Infosys employee in the US pushes his 23 year old wife out of a moving car for being unable to come up with enough dowry. Apparently, you don’t have to be uneducated to be an imbecile. The news came to light thanks to a Pakistani doctor.
• 26 year old Ashwini Mohite from Pune gets raped and murdered on her way back from work.

Add to that, a 300% increase in violence against women in Kerala, Taslima Nasreen being harassed for her views and reports that suggest violence against women is at an all time high in Asia.

The blame for these lie not with the victims, like most claim but with a judicial system that unabashedly sides the insecure ego maniacs who perpetrate such acts and let them go away with punishments hardly befitting the crimes. Isn’t it sickening when the moral brigade sticks it’s head out to uphold the culture and tradition of the country while doing nothing to check violence against the fairer sex? Isn’t it high time to stop making lame excuses by blaming films and the media? Is not every woman someone else’s daughter, wife or mother?

(Picture sourced from The Hindu: Online Edition)

Honestly, as much as I’d loved all his previous books, I was a bit disappointed by Richard Dawkins‘ The God Delusion; not because the arguments weren’t sound but mostly because the entire book oozed with an air of arrogance. Of course, when you’re one of the smartest people on the planet, arrogance goes with the territory, but still. He came across as a fundamentalist at times, albeit an atheist fundamentalist. Wasn’t that the very thing he spoke against- fundamentalism?

So reluctantly, I sat down to watch the 2 part British TV series, The Root of All Evil, Dawkins’s attempt at provoking a religious self analysis of the average couch potato. As much as I want to limit the use of superlatives, I can’t help but marvel at what he’s tried to accomplish. The TV series is brilliant, thought provoking and thoroughly convincing and it’s sure to enrage some people, hopefully for the better.

He journeys from the Lourde to Jerusalem and meets people ranging from devout believers to fundamentalists. His conversations range from the humorous to thought provoking to the genuinely scary. The second part dwellled on a more pressing problem, indoctrination of religion; bringing up children to believe in superstitions.

What really had me all worked up was a conversation Dawkins has with a psychotic evangelist, Ted Haggard. His ignorance of the concept of evolution and science in general is amazing-it’s amazing that millions of people actually listen to people as retentive as him. Evangelists sicken me, and I like to think I know a thing or two about them. But a little reading into the life and times of Ted Haggard left me…well…satisfied.

In November 2006, former prostitute and masseur Mike Jones alleged that Haggard had paid to engage in sex with him for three years and had also purchased and used crystal methamphetamine. Jones said he had only recently learned of Haggard’s true identity and explained his reasons for coming forward by saying, “It made me angry that here’s someone preaching about gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex.”

But on Haggard acknowledged some, but not all, of the allegations, and was removed from all of his leadership positions in religious organizations, including the church he founded. At first, however, he claimed he had never met his accuser and in a television interview said “I am steady with my wife. I’m faithful to my wife.”November 5, in a statement Haggard said, “I am a deceiver and a liar. The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality…There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life. … Please forgive my accuser … actually thank God for him. He didn’t violate you; I did.”

-From Wikipedia

And he almost had dibs on the best seats in heaven!

I loved the way Dawkins ended the series. Being non religious/atheist/agnostic doesn’t really make life all that bleak, it just leaves endless possibilities at our disposal.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born. The number of people who could be here in my place outnumbers the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here: the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world.

This is perhaps the most appalling news I’ve come across in a while.

http://ibnlive.com/news/schools-electrocute-beat-kids-and-dont-repent/46210-3.html

The shocking fact is that the culprits justify their actions claiming the kids were electrocuted (wtf!) and beaten only to ‘improve’ them. It boggles my mind that even the parents don’t seem to care that much let alone the school authorities. Ironically, the school’s name is Good Shepherd International High School. Some Good Shepherd!

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/11/1183833599460.html

Sith Lord, Emperor Palpatine…er…Pope Benedict XVI has ‘corrected‘ erroneous interpretations of the 1960s reforming Vatican Council. As of now Protestant churches are not really churches and the Orthodox churches are ‘wounded churches’. But he does admit there are elements of truth in the aforementioned churches. The humility!

The new document, issued by the Doctrine of the Faith, which the Pope used to head, reaffirms traditional teaching that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church…

What puzzles me is the temerity with religious leaders voice opinions these days. As if the two tablets from the mountain weren’t restrictive enough, the man went on to bring forth The Ten Commandments for Driving.

To think…people like these get taken seriously!

PS: The resemblance is uncanny though. Also, for those who didn’t quite catch the reference, the title is a quote by Palpatine from the film. (Click here for audio)

Just when you think things can’t get more disturbing, they do.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/haryana-panchayat-murders-couple-over-caste/43916-3.html

“Those who do wrong have to die. Law does not recognize this but society punishes such people.”

Wise words.

A brilliantly directed short film. Of course, I could use without the Catholic overtones, but it’s still a very interesting morality tale.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=QrKnhOJ-R80]

Apparently, this is part of a project created by Lucas Crandles and Hayden James Weston, two Australians who make short films and one day hope to direct a feature film.

http://www.darkheartproductions.com/