Miscellaneous Topics thread

[Tanaji]

With kind permission from the admins, starting this thread… anything not quite fitting in the other threads should go here. Trying to bring back the Nukkad thread of past, but please do be mindful of the restriction on discussing politics.

[Tanaji]

Ajeet Bharatis latest commentary on Supreme courts hearing Teesta Setalvads bail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFX4iP6S5L4

Must watch if you understand Hindi. The guy has eviscerated the institution and won’t be surprised if hizzoners jail him for contempt.

The guy has an amazing command over language and facts. Agree completely with everything he says. Again, don’t miss.

[Tanaji]

AoA we are back online

[ricky_v]

now that there is some momentum on the arctic connectivity, i would like to discuss about the indigenous peoples inhabiting those areas



https://aeon.co/videos/a-riveting-colla ... ant-future

A riveting collage portrays a century of Inuit history, and envisions a vibrant future
In her celebrated short film Three Thousand (2017), the Montreal-based Inuk artist Asinnajaq presents a bold vision of Inuit life. Her experimental work weaves together nearly a century of footage from the vast archive of the National Film Board of Canada, as well as newly commissioned animations. Early black-and-white ethnographic films give way to coloured images, including scenes of Inuit children in Canada’s infamous residential school system and, eventually, visuals with aurora-inspired colours that hint at a vibrant Inuit future. The flurry of scenes is set to a score of lullabies, stirring strings, Inuit throat singing and sounds of the Canadian north. And, despite its many eclectic parts, Asinnajaq’s collage forms a unified, stirring whole – one that glimmers with contradictions, vitality and hope.

there is a 14 minute video in the link, good stuff

also have watched 2 shows set in that arctic setting and highly recommend both, the terror (s1) is based on an exploratory service to discover the passage to na through the arctic regions

and the north water is based on the life of whalers and seal hunters operating in the north seas

[ricky_v]

I usually avoid going to Twitter, but recently have explored a rabbit hole of sorts re:interfaith rutting. As this is nukkad reborn, they are a bit like the k&j stories, only grimmer, darker and usually with tears and blood at the end. Without disrespecting any class, this phenomenon is most observant in lower middle class in small cities or rurban areas of big cities. Now this is not a recent occurrence, when I was younger and still read toi every morning, these stories would crop up but infrequently, I believe insta to he the facilitator of "the great game" as it were.

Why is the need to mention in this enlightened era where genital freedom is the most cherished ideal? 2 reasons:

1) revolutions always occur along the fault lines where dissimilar societies interact, rurban areas are prime suspect for any such movements

2) perpetual agitators are usually of such mixed societies/races that are not accepted by either side of the society, abo, native,maori leaders are mostly of mixed races, sufficient percentage of such population might pose issues in the urban landscape.

I do not know what the morality levels are in the country, or whether everyone is focused on a crotch-first decision making as in the west, but there is a serious lacking in males of the lower middle class in rurban areas, maybe other classes as well, only they are not stupid enough to display their lust to the world, and well with rigid mores, such fixed relationships might not be acceptable to either parties with "soiled" background, causing demographic issues down the line

There is a term, Honda sherni, to describe such females who are fierce anti patriarchic, anti- brahm... ityadi, Hindu in name only, you know the usual, but quite enamored of peaceful folk, interesting sociological data

[Cyrano]

the 2 shows you mention Ricky saar, they're avl on which channel/OTT ? Thanks!

[ricky_v]

Cyrano saar, the terror s1 is on Amazon prime, I would recommend watching this first, the north water is a bbc production, slightly more edgier than the terror.

As an aside, streaming wars have brought us back to the era of the cable but with added premium, most people are too lazy to actually cancel their subscriptions, the others work around by rotating subscriptions through different services, the rest sail under the pirate flag, though recent media does not even induce one to piracy.

[Cyrano]

Thank you saar!

[sudarshan]

Inspector Trudeau's residence (didn't want to clutter up the India-Canada thread).

[Vayutuvan]

[NRao]

...

^^^^

I have to defend myself here.

Rao actually originates from the Kargil area. It is a (original) Konkani construct (NOT the current Goan Konkani, which has Creol, via Portugal, in it). The original Konkani is pure Sanskrit based, perhaps Prakrit.

So, how did Rao originate?

Konkanis were originally from the Kargil area. When Muslims invaded they migrated south (there is a story of Parashurama and Konkan too). When they settled in Kanara (in Karnataka) the locals heard these people refer to each other with the suffix ravvuu. Ravvuu = "ji" in Hindi. Ravvuu became Rao/Rau. And, it became the last name.

The actual construct of our names is "name of village" "First name" Rao. I dropped the name of the village. Thus NRao.

Some of my ancestors - 500+ years ago converted to Islam. Thus Pakistan Muslims have the last name Rao or Rau.

This scoundrel, in the real-life comedy in Canada, is not related to me.

[Anant]

Hello fellow Konkani. And yes we are all Indians.

^^^^

I have to defend myself here.

Rao actually originates from the Kargil area. It is a (original) Konkani construct (NOT the current Goan Konkani, which has Creol, via Portugal, in it). The original Konkani is pure Sanskrit based, perhaps Prakrit.

So, how did Rao originate?

Konkanis were originally from the Kargil area. When Muslims invaded they migrated south (there is a story of Parashurama and Konkan too). When they settled in Kanara (in Karnataka) the locals heard these people refer to each other with the suffix ravvuu. Ravvuu = "ji" in Hindi. Ravvuu became Rao/Rau. And, it became the last name.

The actual construct of our names is "name of village" "First name" Rao. I dropped the name of the village. Thus NRao.

Some of my ancestors - 500+ years ago converted to Islam. Thus Pakistan Muslims have the last name Rao or Rau.

This scoundrel, in the real-life comedy in Canada, is not related to me.

[Cyrano]

NRao ji,
There are lakhs of Telugus who carry the "Rao" title (?) as part of their name. Its written in Telugu often as "Raavu".

Ex: PVN Rao, NT Rama Rao, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, Gurajada Appa Rao (poet), AS Rao (ECIL chairman) and many many prominent figures and common people. The "Rao"s are from various communities, could be brahmins, Kapus, Kammas or any other. My family has many Raos including my father, but I chose to drop it because it was making my name too long. Its becoming a bit out of fashion these days, with many people preferring shorter given name + family name, in that west imposed order.

I don't know where the "Rao" originated from, may be Kashmiri or something else. It usually has the connotation of a wise man, a leader etc. I thought it derived from "Ra" root, as in Raja, Raya, Roy etc.

I thought some Maharashtrians also used Rao, perhaps they were from Konkan.

If anyone knows more, please do share.

[morem]

Maharashtrians suffix the first name with rao as a honorific, but that seems to have reduced a lot the last 15-20 years.

[A_Gupta]

In a Ekta Kapoor world, it will turn out that Hardeep Singh Nijjar was an Indian asset.

Warning: pure fiction below.

Like Ripudaman Singh Malik, Nijjar too had been persuaded by PM Modi to come back to the mainstream. But Nijjar agreed to remain undercover while the 70-year old Ripudaman came out in public in favor of Modi. After Ripudaman was murdered, Nijjar was worried that his cover might be blown. And it was, and Pakistan's ISI orchestrated his murder. Naturally there was a huge amount of chatter in Indian diplomatic and intelligence circles. Some tiny part was picked up by Canada and misinterpreted.

Meanwhile, the Indian strategy was to not let Nijjar's death go in vain. Rest of the events you all know.

[A_Gupta]

This Nijjar episode with Canada where India is targeted with vague allegations brings up a painful memory: the 2000 Chittisinghpura massacre. At that time, first the Indian Army and then "Hindu militants" were accused of the murder of 35 villagers in order to be able to point fingers at Pakistan.

The Wiki page is still corrupted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Chit ... a_massacre

I greatly loathe allegations casually thrown around with no evidence - essentially smears - that are next-to-impossible to defend against, except to make counter-assertions.

[Tanaji]

Any one watched the movie The Vaccine War? Reports seem to be good…

[ramana]

Watched VaccineWar last night. Fantastic movie! Really drives home the following points:
1. The pandemic was nothing short of a war. It was a bio-economic war imposed on countries including India.
2. Frontline health workers going above and beyond, in the face of a hostile environment around them, in a war-like scenario equalizing them to defense force soldiers/army personnel.
3. Some of the best scientists work in Bharat, and yet they are so underfunded for basic needs, such as not being able to pay the excess baggage fee at the airport for helping out stranded desh vaasis in Quom.
4. Last but not least, the role of extremely hostile media undermining India's effort in vaccinating the population by downgrading the quality of Covaxin, creating vaccine hesitancy, and above all - being stooges to Western pharma.

[bala]

Those who took Pfizer's vaccine are reporting all kinds of side effects, some have faced even death. The pfizer vaccine was not adequately tested for side effects. The conventional vaccine was made by Johnson&Johnson similar to covaxin of India. The current iteration of the vaccine is #3 for covid and everyone are being subjected to yet another vaccine round. No wonder Western Pharma are making oodles of bucks at the cost of hapless aam aadhmi.

[ricky_v]

from atish taseer, though is a travelogue of sorts:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... pe=Article

I was on a pilgrimage of sorts myself. From my home in New York, Bolivia would be my first stop in what I had envisaged as three journeys across three great faiths, spread out over a year: fiesta high in the Andes, where pre-Hispanic ritual and belief underlay Catholicism; a spring of pilgrimage through Buddhist and shamanic Mongolia; and lastly, a time of mourning in Shiite Iraq.

Over peanut soup and steak with fries, I asked Father Chitarroni about the Roman Catholic Church’s appropriation of Andean sanctity. “The problem we have all over the Americas,” he said, “is when you give people the Good News and it is contrary to their local beliefs. We can introduce new things,” he added, “but we have to let people keep their roots — the thoughts of their parents.”

I was intrigued by Father Chitarroni’s open embrace of syncretism. The Spain that conquered the New World, full of the religious zeal of La Reconquista (and the Inquisition), had been uniquely incapable of understanding how among the earth religions, like that of the Incas, it was possible to adopt new deities without forgoing the old gods. In “Conquistadores” (2021), the Mexican historian Fernando Cervantes writes that the arrival of every new bishop in the New World instigated a campaign aimed at the “extirpation” of “idolatry” in the Americas.

In his 1653 book, “Inca Religion and Customs,” the Jesuit priest Bernabé Cobo writes that the reddish-green rock that we were now in front of, its vertical face some 18 feet high, had been a gathering place for large groups of pilgrims who had come from far away. “Thus this place became so famous that its memory will live on among the Indians as long as they last,” he writes.

No pilgrim now came to the spot where the sun had first risen, even though we all felt its strange Ozymandian power. What looked like a sacrificial table of white sandstone, surrounded by andesite blocks, prompted Quisbert to speak of capacocha, an Inca ritual in which children of both sexes were selected for sacrifice. The table was the object of tourist lore, scarcely a few decades old. Just as Catholicism had appropriated Andean sanctity, so now did tourism titillate visitors in a place where pilgrims had come with holy dread in their hearts.

Across the bay, a ghostly white basilica was preparing for its biannual fiesta, which would take place over two days and include several nights of revelry. Copacabana had been home to a pre-Christian shrine featuring what a Spanish chronicler had called a blue-stone idol, which was possibly female and fish-bodied. It had been part of this ancient nexus of pilgrimage that had included the Islands of the Sun and the Moon but, in the 16th century with the arrival of the Spanish, its old sanctity had been reconsecrated in the figure of the Virgin. Standing between these two poles of pilgrimage, one defunct, one active, I couldn’t help but wonder who the ultimate victors are in a land where conquest has brought about a rupture with the past, yet where the old culture has so thoroughly assimilated the new as to leave it unrecognizable.

Nor did it help that evangelism was on the rise all over South America. “They tell them they cannot adore images,” Friar Yeguaori said, his brows beetling. “First they tell them God will punish them, then they take their money, saying, ‘If you give us money, God will give you more.’ ”


The most beautiful of the acts was Uma Marka, a troupe whose name means “land of water.” At the center was a man who played an Andean trumpet of war called a pututu. “I came from afar to fulfill my promise / because I love you with my soul,” the man sang. “I will always cherish you, my beautiful little morenita. / I will always adore you, Copacabeñita.” Then, almost in the same breath, he began to sing in praise of Pachamama (Mother Earth), “shin[ing] in the cosmos.” He was a schoolteacher from Warisata, one of the lake towns. When I asked him how it was so easy for him to sing to both the Virgin and Pachamama, he said, “Both of them are the same for us. The Virgin is the mother of God. Pachamama is the mother of the earth.”

Pilgrimage is bigger than the nation and, though it derives its authority from religion, it’s often bigger than religion, too. Like the journey to Mecca, which started as a pre-Islamic pilgrimage common to many tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, this fiesta is at bottom an emanation of Andean culture. The religious component acts almost as a framing device for the expression of distinctive cultural elements, rituals, customs, song and dance, such as the Waka Waka, or the ancient pre-Christian use of llama parts in sacrifice.

As Mass got going, Ensamble Sincrético filled the gold-and-blue vault of the church with haunting music. “A Vuestros Pies Madre” (“At Your Feet, Mother”), they played. It evoked the spirit of an older Europe, even as it sounded unmistakably Indigenous — so much so that the Europeans who came after the original missionaries didn’t recognize it as their own until they were shown the sheets on which it had been carefully scored. It was Christian missionaries — that endless flow of Jesuit, Augustinian, Dominican and Franciscan friars — who primarily brought baroque music to Bolivia. It formed a deep synthesis here with a culture for which music was already a form of worship. As Quintela explained to me, referring to the Guarayos, an Indigenous group in northeastern Bolivia: “When they die, they must pass several tests [in order to reach the afterlife. One of them] is to cross a river on the back of an alligator who only advances to music. If he [the deceased] is not a good musician, the alligator devours the soul of the Guarayo.”

I had wanted to find more examples of how the old pre-Columbian religion of the Altiplano merged with Catholicism. The man performing it was an amauta, a shamanic figure. The young couple desperately wanted a car of their own. “Whatever we desire, the Virgin will give us the power and the will,” said Axel. Pilgrimage, though couched in spiritual aims, often bordered on sheer cupidity. Some wanted peace, love and health, others an automobile, but everyone wanted something. When I asked Axel why his wife had been crying earlier, he said, “We need to have faith, and there’s a lot of emotion [involved].” But was there no conflict between these two systems of belief, the Virgin and the amauta? “It’s just a belief,” the man in the red bolero said, casually expressing a great truth about the unthinking quality of its hold over us. “We believe in the priest, and we believe in the amauta.”

The wizened-faced amauta sang. He rang his bell. He used incense, a holdover from the classical world everywhere, to entreat the Virgin to give the couple what they wanted. When he was finished, I asked him what his religion was. “Católico,” the amauta said. But what about this rite? That was surely not Catholic. “It’s from our ancestors,” he said. “This was from before we were Catholic.”

The influence of Buddhism grew sporadically for almost seven centuries in Mongolia, merging in profound ways with its ancient worship of nature — of mountains, water, the eternal blue sky. But then, in the early decades of the 20th century, Buddhism encountered a mortal enemy: Soviet-backed Communism. Even by the standards of a tumultuous century, the Stalin-directed purges of the late 1930s stood out for their systematic eradication of Mongolia’s religious culture. The great majority of the country’s monastic institutions were leveled to the ground; some 18,000 monks were killed; and, in a society where about one-third of the adult male population were lamas (though not all living in monasteries), Buddhism was ripped out root and branch.

In 1990, with the fall of Communism, religious freedom was established in Mongolia and Buddhism was allowed to be practiced again. My first destination was the Khamar monastery, 300 miles south in the Gobi Desert, which had been all but destroyed in 1938. It was said to be situated at one of the portals to Shambhala — a mythical kingdom of peace and tranquillity in the Buddhist imagining — and had been founded in the century before by an artist, saint and sybarite called Danzanravjaa, known as the lama of the Gobi.

Amid what seemed like trackless wastes there periodically appeared the giant ragged form of an ovoo, or cairn. Its beanpole of a body was bandaged in blue khadags (prayer scarves), its stony mound of a base littered with vodka bottles and the occasional skull of a dead animal. The ovoo is a monument to the spirits of the natural world, known here as nagas and savdags. Orgil, following the custom of honoring these easily offended beings, lest they punish you for your neglect, honked three times as we went by. “This is the Gen Z way,” he said, grinning, “but I prefer the old way,” which involves circling the ovoo on foot three times in a clockwise motion.

Orgil, in between telling me of his days in a metal band, when “I drank beers left and right,” would occasionally grow serious. “During Communism,” he said, “we lost our national identity.” The purges of the 1930s plundered the country’s monasteries and temples — there had been some 700 in the 19th century — which Orgil described as repositories of folklore, history, traditional medicine and learning. Mongolia, after winning independence from Qing China in 1911, began those early decades of the 20th century as a feudal theocracy with a godlike figure, akin to the Dalai Lama, called the Bogd Khan at its helm, overseeing around 80,000 monks. (The Dalai Lama recently introduced a Mongolian child as the 10th reincarnation of the Bogd.) “They shot all the head lamas,” Orgil said. “They murdered all the teachers.” The fires from the monasteries were rumored to have burned for weeks. Christopher Kaplonski, a social anthropologist who has conducted research in Mongolia, has written that, though the total number of Mongolians killed between 1937 and 1939 is unknown, “credible estimates range from 35,000 to 45,000.”

They had arrived by train from the capital. “I came here to recharge my energy and cleanse my spirit,” said Egi, the economist. (Mongolians use patronymics rather than Western-style surnames; in conversation, people often go by just one name.) “This place is a world energy center.” When I asked if the ritual had been handed down to him by his parents, he said, “They knew about it, but they were not authorized to come. We are the lucky generation.” He added: “This Shambhala reminds us that we are not just ordinary nomads. We had an enlightened one [Danzanravjaa] live among us.” Since the transition to the democratic era, Egi said, “Mongolian people have come to know that we have a great religious and cultural heritage.”

Our guide, Haidav, was from the Gobi region. In his early 30s now, he had been selected as a boy by Gandantegchinlen (often referred to simply as Gandan), the country’s main monastery in Ulaanbaatar, to spend four years in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, where, at a center of Tibetan Buddhism — the Namdroling monastery, popularly known as the Golden Temple — he had been educated in the religion of his forefathers with the express aim of reintroducing it to Mongolia. As he led us into the Shambhala, he seemed less like a guide than like a monk re-educating his countrymen about a faith whose core precepts, such as the belief in karma and reincarnation, had survived the ravages of Communism, but whose rituals had to be relearned from scratch. Our group was composed almost entirely of Mongolians, but no one knew what to do at the various stations any more than I did.

Our last station was the Golden Skull Hill, where a central ovoo overlooked the desert beyond. There we chanted, “Um sain amgalan boltugai” — “may there be peace with you” — and sang “Ulemjiin Chanar” (“Perfect Qualities”), a Mongolian folk song that Danzanravjaa had composed himself. Haidav was almost scolding in the care with which he instructed us to sing as a chorus. “Whatever your failures,” he said at the end of our morning at the Shambhala, “it’s because of your mind.”

Kublai Khan may have laid the foundation for the rise of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia, but it was a man called Zanabazar — a monk, scholar and artist — who solidified its position. In everything from scripture to ritual, temple design and even religious fashion, including monastic robes with blue cuffs evoking the blue sky that Genghis Khan claimed to worship, the hand of Zanabazar is visible.

At the Erdene Zuu monastery, founded by Zanabazar’s great-grandfather in the 16th century after the declaration of Tibetan Buddhism as the state religion of Mongolia, I witnessed an amazing scene, proof of the cocktail of motives that puts us on the road to pilgrimage. Erdene Zuu, with its green-tiled roofs in the Chinese style, is Mongolia’s oldest monastery, built in 1586. It is also located near the ruins of the Mongol capital at Karakorum, about 530 miles from Khamar monastery. On entering Erdene Zuu’s vast, grassy complex, with its perimeter wall crenelated with white stupas and nothing but big sky on all sides, I felt the spirit of a Mongolian camp. Nomadism harbors a disdain for materiality, yet it was hard not to feel myself on consecrated ground, even if only in historical terms. It was mainly from here that the descendants of Genghis Khan in the 13th century brought the world to its knees, from present-day Ukraine to Korea. The site had more recent memories, too. Of its 62 temples and some 500 facilities, the vast majority had been destroyed during the ravages of the 1930s. All around me, amid a handful of stupas and temples, were the flattened foundations of buildings in the religious complex. There had been 1,500 lamas here in the 19th century; there were fewer than 50 today. At the entrance, I spoke briefly to Mandakhtsog Monkhbaatar, who was in his early 20s, dressed in orange-and-red robes with those huge turquoise cuffs and high boots with blue piping. Like Haidav, he had spent years studying at the Golden Temple monastery in India, relearning the traditions that Communism had left Mongolian Buddhism too depleted to teach. Monkhbaatar’s great-grandfather had been a prominent lama in the southwestern province of Bayankhongor. When I asked the young monk about him, he said casually, “He was murdered,” then rushed into the great complex, where the morning chants were set to begin.

To be Shiite was to live with the pain, never more acute than at Ashura, of not having been there for Hussein when it mattered most. In 680, Hussein had hearkened to the call of Muslims in the garrison town of Kufa, a few miles east of Najaf. His grandfather the Prophet had been dead for less than 50 years. In that time, the small community of believers had grown into the vast Arab Muslim empire. Hussein’s father, Ali — the Prophet’s beloved son-in-law and cousin — was the last of the four Rashidun (“rightly guided”) caliphs until he died in 661 at the hands of an assassin who struck him with a poisoned sword as he prayed. The Shiat Ali (Partisans of Ali) were at first merely his followers, people who believed that the mantle of the Prophet could only be assumed by one of his bloodline. So when, in 680, Muawiya, the first caliph since Ali, died and the caliphate passed to his dissolute son, Yazid, the Shiat Ali implored Hussein to take his rightful place at the head of Islam.

He would have believed he was defending the true faith of his father and grandfather when he rode out from Medina, in present-day Saudi Arabia, with 72 of his companions, to the Plain of Karbala, 50 miles north of Najaf. On the way, many tried to dissuade him, telling him that “though the heart of the city [of Kufa] is with thee, its sword is against thee,” but he rode on, like a man running to meet his destiny — a Christlike figure who sought to redeem the religion of his grandfather by forfeiting his life. At Karbala, Hussein found himself quite alone. Yazid, having subjected the living descendants of the Prophet Muhammad to days of heat and thirst, slaughtered them in a massacre that traumatized Sunni and Shiite alike. The main difference was that the Sunnis, who today are a vast majority of 1.9 billion Muslims, were able to move on, whereas the Shiites dedicated themselves to bearing witness to Hussein’s sacrifice — the word for martyr in Arabic, shahid, like the Greek martur, means “witness.”

AJAF ON THAT first night was like a town preparing for a medieval battle. We entered on foot through narrow side streets with knife sharpeners at every corner, whetstones crackling and sparking. Broad-bellied iron vats on low blue gas fires held vast quantities of rice and qeema, a spiced stew of meat and chickpeas made especially at Ashura. We dropped our bags at the hotel and walked into the floodlit precincts of the shrine of Imam Ali. A siren sounded, as if summoning soldiers to their stations. The dandyish men I had seen earlier stood in a line on a red carpet, brandishing swords in long, sweeping movements. Farther along, in an arena of sorts, the neighborhoods of Najaf were marching in procession, bearing banners, coats of arms and liquid-eyed images of Hussein wearing a dark, youthful beard and a green turban. At the center of each procession, a strongman carried a mashael (an iron chandelier) on his muscular shoulders, its 27 flaming lamps doused in crude oil. He plowed it into the crowd like a battering ram, wielding it around and around to the sound of drums, cheers and an excited cleric speaking into a microphone like a sportscaster. The crowd eddied, some with batons dancing concentrically around the wheel of fire, others collecting around two young men in white. They had cut their heads in a ritual called tatbir, and their faces were streaming with blood. As the tempo rose, a perimeter of cellphone screens formed around them. The modern technology, with its direct link to social media, amplified certain elements of bravado and exhibitionism that were already part of the performance. One of the men, bearded and handsome, who looked like he might be in his early 20s, fell to his knees and sliced at his bleeding head with the two daggers he carried in his hands, as if he’d meant to scalp himself. “We have come to return the sacrifice of Imam Hussein,” said the 18-year-old friend of the man on his knees, by way of explanation of his actions to me. “Imam Ali was killed by the sword. Now we remember their sacrifices.”

He said that each night from now until Ashura was dedicated to a different episode in the re-enactment of the tragedy of Hussein, which was a procession of deaths — those of Hussein’s son (Ali Akbar), his nephew (Qasim), his half brother (Abbas), his 6-month-old baby (Ali Asghar) and others — culminating in that of Hussein himself. Looking down at the rectangle of men at our feet, many of whom had removed their black shirts and were thumping their bare chests in a slow, hypnotic movement, Yaseen, perhaps afraid I would misunderstand, said, “We’re not hurting ourselves for nothing. Fourteen hundred years ago, Imam Hussein went for something, and we were not with him, so one of the things we say during this period is ‘Ya letna kona ma’km,’ ‘We wish we were with you.’ ”


On that first morning, watching Khuder kiss the door of the shrine of Imam Ali, it occurred to me that another way to think of the Sunni-Shiite split was in terms of what had been a recurring theme on this pilgrimage of mine — namely, the ancient division between materiality and pure abstraction that had riven Byzantine Christianity no less than Islam. On the one hand were shrines, images, sacred objects; on the other, a fierce love of formlessness born out of a loathing of consecrated ground, idols and clergy. The Wahhabis, who dominate the religious landscape of Saudi Arabia, practice an extreme form of Sunni Islam. To them, even the Prophet’s house in Medina could be destroyed without a thought (as it was in 1925) lest it become a shrine. Shiite Islam, by contrast, is a religion of touch and physicality, of clergy and sacra. People here made turbahs (clay tablets) from the earth of the two shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. In this culture of the physical imbued with the sacred, Najaf and Karbala, with their grand ayatollahs and seminaries, along with the mosque in Kufa, where Ali died, form the points of a sacred triangle.

The role of Zaynab, Hussein’s sister and the Prophet’s granddaughter, was especially important. It was she who would live to tell the tale — she who would protect Hussein’s sole surviving son, Ali Zayn al-Abidin, who was too sick to fight, and thereby the bloodline of the Prophet. With each loss of life, Hussein addressed the audience, who stood agog in the heat with cardboard boxes over their heads to shield them from the fierce morning sun, asking if anyone was with him or whether he was alone. “Labaik ya Hussein,” came the solemn chorus of surrounding voices. It was a theater of the people in that most affecting sense, where even the poverty of the staging — the sun-bleached flags, the crackling loudspeaker, the melodrama and the audience in thrall — served only to deepen the pathos. On our return through the now-deserted town, we saw the field hospital had been cleared away.

[Hriday]

I had shared a post by @Starboy2079 in X about Deep State on the Hamas attack thread. He is saying that the Deep State is essentially a secret society called Illuminati and they are into satanic practices and rituals which include torture and indecent acts with children.

In the past few years, I had seen several reports and videos in X of LGBTQ people promoting indecency among children. In one video an elderly man in underwear is doing suggestive dance in front of a small boy. The boy is attempting to imitate him. His parents are nearby. In another video a very young girl is doing a dance and several elders around her are throwing money at her. A group of small children are the audience. One repeated slogan by them is, 'We will come for your children '.

Marina Abramovic, who is said to be a satanic practitioner was recently in the news on getting the invitation by the Ukranian president to be the ambassador of Ukraine and to teach Ukranian students. There is an easy-to-read short thread by @Starboy2079 about Marina Abramovic in X. Link given below.

In Christian literature, it is said that when the end time nears Antichrist will appear or rule the world. Is the Illuminati/Deep State the Antichrist? Christianity is essentially Hindu teachings. Early Christians believed in reincarnation. But that is another subject, will write about it more later.

https://twitter.com/Starboy2079/status/ ... Q1vIg&s=19

[Hriday]

Recently there was a push in USA parliament to reveal govt's secret UFO files, but it was defeated. Many are asking what is there to keep it secret.

Tucker Carlson, political commentator with over 10 million followers said ‘Aliens’ are one of the few topics he is scared to cover, says the things he has learned are so dark that he can’t even tell his wife. "The implications are too profound.”

The below are a short summary from various X posts, quoted from investigative journalists, people involved in govt UFO programs.

Aliens are part of a higher hierarchy that looks after the affairs of humans. Battle between good and bad aliens over control of humans. Mass inbreeding of Alien-Human is ongoing. Evil aliens want to grab human soul through inbreeding. The book, Apocryphon of John mentioned these kind of alien interactions. Evil aliens feed on human emotional sufferings/negative energy and they will create situations which causes sufferings in the society. They had the ability to influence the mind of humans. There is demonic rituals related to evil aliens. ( Is the Deep State in USA and their satanic rituals are related to this ? )

A large number of people related to govt UFO programs are coming forward and revealing more information on Alien topics.


1. USA army man claims 57 alien species similar to humans walking amongst us. Link below.
https://twitter.com/Unexplained2020/sta ... DYInw&s=19

2. Former Canadian Minister of Defense Paul Hellyer says aliens are closely watching us.
https://twitter.com/covertress/status/1 ... tu-og&s=19

[VKumar]

Why are the aliens apparent only to Americans and Canadians?

[ramana]

Why are the aliens apparent only to Americans and Canadians?

Aliens contact only advanced humans as US and Canadians are!

[Shwetank]

US just gets more publicity. There are extensive incidents in Soviet records available after their collapse and declassification, including big ticket items from secure nuclear facilities, air bases, mining towns and so on, they had even less incentive to fake these. Iran and China also have multiple incidents, China is just very tight lipped. Lots of incidents from UK too, a few from France I think, not sure about rest of NATO. Brazil has a few famous cases as well. No idea about India either, I'm guessing default government responses are

[Hriday]

Why are the aliens apparent only to Americans and Canadians?

I don't know. One reason could be that one will get a lot of ridicule in his social circle if they talked about it. In 1991 there was a Roper survey on USA citizens about the interaction with UFO/Aliens. Surprisingly a very large number of people confirmed many humiliating/bizarre interactions with aliens. They also said that they hadn't even told their friends about it because they will lose respect as these incidents are too unbelievable. In UFO literature many of the aliens appear as shape shifters or therianthropes.

In India too we had several such stories. The therianthropic shaped avatars of Vishnu. Krishna, Devi etc killing therianthropic demons who harass people.

The question is do they exist? I covered exactly these topics by giving a summary of three books in the thread Books Folder - 2008 onwards, page 35. I would say that for an Indian, it is a must read.

[ricky_v]

hi forum members, please advise on the following: my parents recently moved to somewhere near mira road, mumbai, the (hindu) housemaid has a daughter, 13, who has been missing since 24 december and is apparently in company of a muslim man, 40; the girl's parents have filed a fir, but till date no luck, my parents have directed the grieving family to a local social worker of the area, the family is of immigrants, in the area for about 10-12 years, would you guys know if there is any helpdesk / agency for such matters?

[sanjayc]

Write to journalist Swati Goel Sharma who helps in these issues of love jihad and writes stories about these.

goel.swati07 at gmail dot com

Let me know if she doesn't respond. Will give her number.

[ricky_v]

Alright, thanks, sanjayc ji, have mailed her, will wait for a couple of days for a response before requesting her number

[Manish_P]

Not sure if there is a thread on Law so putting this here

HC: Unmarried daughter to get maintenance; faith, age no bar

The Allahabad high court has held that unmarried daughters, regardless of their religious affiliations or age, have the right to obtain maintenance under the domestic violence act, from their parents.

Dismissing a petition filed by Naimullah Sheikh and another, Justice Jyotsna Sharma observed, “There remains no doubt that an unmarried daughter, whether Hindu or Muslim, has a right to obtain maintenance, irrespective of her age. This is made clear again that the courts have to look for other laws applicable when the question pertains to the right to be maintained. However, where the issue does not pertain to mere maintenance, the independent rights are available to an aggrieved under section 20 of the domestic violence Act itself.”

[hgupta]

You gotta be shitting me. How stupid can this justice get? Can not she foresee the unfolding disaster this will create? It basically make fathers forcibly marry off their daughters at the earliest possible age and encourage more female foeticide aka female abortions regardless of the law banning ultrasound scans of the fetus for sex. This decision needs to be immediately overruled.

[Manish_P]

You gotta be shitting me. How stupid can this justice get? Can not she foresee the unfolding disaster this will create? It basically make fathers forcibly marry off their daughters at the earliest possible age and encourage more female foeticide aka female abortions regardless of the law banning ultrasound scans of the fetus for sex. This decision needs to be immediately overruled.

Sir, there are a few Twitter handles which you should check out. One is 'Gems of Courts'.

You will be amazed to see many more such gems

Note - I believe commenting adversely on the judiciary is not encouraged here. It exposes the forum and members to risks. So need to be careful in choice of words.

BTW A question - can a 60 year old daughter demand maintenance from her 85 year old father? If yes and he has no income then what - sell his property or go to jail?

[ricky_v]

update on the girl, she returned to her family about 10 days back, there was no response from swati goel to my mail, probably the police and or the social worker helped, the girl's family have not volunteered any information on the matter, my parents have not pried

one way to counter such eventualities is to form tighter communities, imo, form youth / social hangout groups focusing on sports, social activities, young ones with raging hormones react more positively to groups of peers, and it also takes away time from lusting / being lusted over your socials, specially instagram

[ricky_v]

i have recently started watching classics from hbo, man, the quality over there is something else; recently watched generation kill released in 2008, a 7 episode miniseries, each about an hour long; its based on a group of recon marines who move into baghdad from kuwait during the first wave of invasion in 2003



it does not glorify the invasion, nor is it preachy, only focusses on the group and the horrors of war + mil organisational screwups. For those who have watched band of brothers or saving private ryan, its nothing like them, there is very little dignified behaviour, the young soldiers can sometimes be very crass, mostly its dry observation, when the convoy moves into an iraqi city, the main character tells the waving public to "vote republican"

the only niggle is that the city scenes are shot in mozambique, and thus there are a lot of africans in the iraqi cities and not enough arabs, but the series makes it work

highly recommended, as i have not seen media featuring humvee convoys in the iraqi occupation before