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Asghar Ali Engineer - His life was Gentle; and the Elements…

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:22:30 -0500

Well I will never forgive myself, if I don’t pen an obit on revered Islamic scholar Asghar Ali Engineer who passed away recently in Mumbai. I first met him at AMU Aligarh in early eighties where I was an undergraduate student of History there.

He was lecturing at the Kennedy Hall and some friends told me about this event. My knowledge about Islamic history was zero and I just curiously went to hear him. He was quoting from the Islamic literature and his speech was so learned that it bounced over my head. Nonetheless I am indebted to him as he opened the horizons of my knowledge.

I remember vividly how he described about his Bohra community’s politics. The diktat of the spiritual head of the Bohra community Mr. Syedna, how he was attacked inside the mosque when he resisted his fatwas. I owe all this knowledge to late Asghar Ali Engineer. That conversation continued much after the lecture. This event happened more than 30 years ago, but the memories are still fresh.

After that I started reading him mainly his write-ups in Mainstream then edited by Nikhil Chakravartty, also in Seminar edited by Romesh Thapar. Those were the days I was preparing for Civil Services exam in JNU. I was as well researching on the theme The Demand for Partition of India. My thesis is now in a book. - http://www.amazon.com/demand-partition-India-British-policy/dp/8170998689

It was also those turbulent years of the late eighties and early 90’s. Ayodhya - Babri Masjid controversy was boiling, all around riots were happening in the country. A sequel of communal politics was happening in India, with first the demolition of Babari Masjid, the Mumbai riots, and then the s writings Mumbai bomb blasts. All this had put the secularist in a corner while the communalist held sway.

It was at this moment of time Asghar Ali Engineer was not only chronicling those events but also through his writing resisting the politics of hate and revenge that ruled the roost. He upheld the secular values at time when communalism was making an onslaught. This is his greatest contribution to Indian society.

I remained deeply engrossed reading his ideas on communalism and secularism as they were so profound. He is the first person in this country to highlight the menace of communal riots. He use to visit those places where the communal riots took place and his fact finding reports published in the media exposed the saffron biases against the Muslims.

It’s only when his fact finding mission reports gained publicity the so called national media which early use to parrot the police version of the riots or cooked up its own stories, to blame the Muslims, were forced to take a balanced view of such events.

Asghar Ali Engineer was not simply an armed chaired theoretician but also a grassroots worker who actually saw the developments on the ground and made his observations and comments. This makes his position much above the ranks and files of the scholars who have made their own distinct contributions.

My next encounter with him was in Chennai in 98-99, when I went to interview him as a reporter of a local daily. He was talking at the Anna University, after which I had an opportunity to interview him on the subject of communalism in this country.

My interview centered on the perils of communalism and his prognosis how to uphold the secular values in multi religious country like India. I found him to be convinced about the idea that secularism alone can be guiding principal of nation building.

He said communalists are like frogs that may come during rainy season and vanish. Secularists are those who can brave all weathers and stand like a rock to combat the divisive forces in the society. I must pay him my deep respect and sincere gratitude for imparting me a few piece of wisdom.

Even though he is no more among us, but his writings would continue to inspire millions of people in the country. He was bacon of light serving the humanity with utmost conviction. All those who have read and heard Asghar Ali Engineer will never forget him and he will live in their hearts as long they are alive.

There can be no one like Asghar Ali Engineer but I am sure his words and action will be a source of aspiration to many in the country who may like to tread the path that was laid by him. I have no doubt in saying that he was of the finest human beings with whom I had the privilege to meet, interact and shake am hands. I really feel proud for having such an opportunity.

I like to quote William Shakespeare and his famous lines in Julius Caesar as my concluding remarks in praise of late Asghar Ali Engineer – His life was gentle; and the elements so mixed in him, that Nature might stand up and say to the entire world, THIS WAS A MAN!

Syed Ali Mujtaba is journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba@yahoo.com

"Oblivion," Tetrahedrons, and Other Dark Symbols

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:47:00 -0500

“Oblivion,” Tetrahedrons, and Other Dark Symbols

By Sabin Geyman

Years ago, “Swiss Family Robinson” was an action movie, and it was quite delightful and relatively clean. Nowadays, action often drifts into the sci-fi camp and audiences are treated to any number of unsettling and bleak futuristic scenarios.

In “Oblivion,” much of America has been decimated through a series of natural disasters and nuclear war, and a drone technician named Jack (Tom Cruise) keeps a fleet of drones flying on their missions to kill surviving people who are trivialized as mere “scavengers.” Actually there are many clones of the memory-wiped Jack, clones that are incubating inside a huge tetrahedral spaceship; like Jack, the clones also service the killer drones. Natural disasters, nuclear war, a campaign to kill all humans on earth―and there’s more! The tetrahedron, or “Tet,” which oversees the slaughter campaign has ghoulish symbolic overtones.

Tetrahedrons Used for Evil

In Hebrew, tet is the initial letter of tov (the good), according to JaysAnalysis.com. Therefore, an upside-down Tet would suggest goodness stood on its head, or goodness toppled, or evil. The Tet spaceship that hangs in space throughout the movie is anti-human and reminds one of the Biblical instruction: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight … and take away the rights of the ones who are in the right!... For they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel” (Is. 5:20-21, 23b, 24b NASB).

The Enemy (Satan) masquerades as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11 NASB), all prettied up but actually seething with destructive energy and laying potentially dooming schemes against the untaught and unwary; similarly, the upside-down Tetrahedron incubates clones that are programmed to destroy men. This Tet-based, anti-human army smells a lot like Satan and his battery of other fallen angels who prowl around seeking to devour souls (1 Pet. 5:8 NASB).

A triangle pointing down also represents female sexuality [female groin and pubic hair pattern], goddess worship, and homosexuality, according to RadioLiberty.com. The implication of a dominatrix figure, symbolized by the menacing Tet spacecraft, calls to mind the hideous Baal-peor worship of old.

Peor basically meaning cleft, and coming to represent a woman’s opening, Baal-peor was essentially the worship of a woman’s opening or cleft. We know from Romans 1 that we are to worship the Creator and not the creation, hence God was angered by the unclean lord of the cleft, or Baal-peor: “While Israel remained at Shittim, the people began to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab. For they invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the LORD was angry against Israel. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.’ So Moses said to the judges of Israel, ‘Each of you slay his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor’” (Num. 25:1-5 NASB). The LORD is serious about the tenet that man must not exchange the truth of God for a lie, and must not worship the creature instead of the Creator (Romans 1), and add to that the stern lesson of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (centers of rampant unclean sex), and one can well appreciate the LORD’s anger against the foreign god Baal-peor. In light of all this, the huge vagina symbol floating in space in “Oblivion” would seem to connote Baal-peor worship, goddess worship, uncleanness, rebellion against what is good and pure, and a violent lust to destroy people (the opposite of sweet and godly procreation).

We know that the Enemy worked through the Egyptian pharaoh to kill off the first-born so as to try to prevent the birth of the Messiah; we also know that the Enemy uses ungodly sexual lust to destroy people: The fallen angels, or “sons of God,” went in to the “daughters of men,” producing wicked giants called Nephilim (Genesis 6); moreover, the devil and his angels were thrown down to earth, and the devil (ie, serpent/dragon) tried to destroy the woman (ie, Israel/church) but could not due to the LORD’s protective hand, so the devil warred against the remainder of the woman’s children, who keep God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus (Revelation 12). Indeed, the Baal-peor–styled Tet, understood as an antichrist element, would connote rebellion against the LORD God of Israel; unclean sex; idol worship; and a satanic plot to destroy the remnant of mankind.

There is of course the Louvre Pyramid at Paris’s Louvre Museum, and interestingly, the shopping mall in front of the museum features the “Inverted Pyramid” skylight; the juxtaposition of those two structures certainly echoes the compass-and-square geometry so favored by Freemasons worldwide. In his guidebook on “Masonic Paris,” Raphaël Aurillac notes that the Louvre Museum used to be a Masonic temple, according to Wikipedia—this gives credence to the Masonic interpretation of the pyramid and the inverted-pyramid skylight at the Louvre. Aurillac has noted a Rosicrucian motto (Rosicrucians being the occult predecessors of the Jesuit Freemasons, as are the Gnostics and Knights Templar) which could capture the symbolism of a downward-pointing pyramid: “VITRIOL, or Visita Interiorem Terrae Rectificandoque/Invenies Occultum Lapidem, or Visit the interior of the earth and … you will find the secret stone.”

Vitriol is something caustic, such as sulfuric acid, and sulfur is associated with both the divine judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah (fire and brimstone rained down from heaven, leaving a sulfur-encased landscape in the present-day location of those wicked cities) on the one hand, and sulfur fumeroles or sulfur hot baths that well up from the fiery nether regions of the earth (think Yellowstone or the hot baths of Taipei’s Beitou District, in Taiwan). Certainly, the devil’s mission of stealing, killing, and destroying is caustic in the extreme, and the devil and his minions would be only too happy to lure unsuspecting souls into the subterranean nether regions that contain hell. Instead of following Gnostics high on their own pseudo-knowledge and occultic trickery, and instead of following Masons into the depths of the earth in search of a secret stone, it is infinitely better to repent of one’s sins, and receive the Lord Jesus Christ as one’s Lord and as one’s Rock of Salvation! Instead of following the devil into hell in search of some phantom stone, it is better to follow Yeshua the Messiah into the heavenly realm!

If the Tet spaceship in the movie “Oblivion” symbolizes a woman’s sexuality, Baal-peor (lord of the cleft) worship, goddess worship, uncleanness, rebellion against what is good and pure, a violent lust to destroy people, and the flames and smoke of hell, then Jack’s boss, the mission control element in the movie, should be regarded as an antichrist figure. As such, the Tet should be an affront and a blasphemy to any knowledgeable student of the Bible. Whether it is the rampant use of the LORD’s Name in vain and satanic symbols in movies like “Pulp Fiction” or “Cape Fear,” respectively, at least one Hollywood director conceded that “Hollywood is an extension of Gnosticism,” according to JaysAnalysis.com.

Gnosticism is linked to the Freemasons, the Jesuits, the Roman Catholic church, and Rome, so it is not inconsequential that Jack, the drone repairman, finds a book in the ruins of the New York Public Library, one entitled The Lays of Ancient Rome, by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Jack zeroes in on this passage: “To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods.” The reference recalls the defense of the Sublician Bridge, and by extension, of Rome, by Horatius Cocles against the invading Etruscan king Lars Porsena. Thus, while the symbols of Gnosticism/Masonry/Rome are very apparent in “Oblivion,” the movie would seem to actually endorse a defense of Rome explicitly through the high profile given to Macaulay’s The Lays of Ancient Rome and the specific passage enshrining Horatius Cocles’ historical defense of Rome! The cause of the Jesuits, the Freemasons, and the Roman Catholic church are defended implicitly through symbols and explicitly through the most remarkable popping up of The Lays of Ancient Rome in “Oblivion.” There could be no coincidence—after all, there are a lot of books in the New York Public Library to choose from; they could have chosen a Bible verse, but they did not. All the dark, pagan symbols, that pro–pagan Rome book, that passage in that book—the chances of their being there together by random chance are mathematically nil.

The anti-Christian warlocks of Holly Wood stir their witches’ brew and strafe the atmosphere with satanic designs, but at the end of the day Satan loses and the LORD God of Israel wins.

The Great Whore of Babylon, in Revelation 17, sits astride a beast (Antichrist) that has seven heads and ten horns (Rome famously sits on seven hills and the world system would seem to be dividing into ten divisions); she is arrayed in purple and scarlet (the colors of the Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals); she is adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls (loot from the Crusades, the Inquisition, et cetera); she holds a chalice full of abominations (embracing of pagan gods, the unbiblical eucharist ceremony, Marian worship, et cetera); she exudes a wine of immorality (false doctrine); she commits acts of immorality with the kings of the earth (the Vatican has diplomatic relations with many kings of the earth); and she is drunk on the blood of the saints. Many Christians believe the Great Whore of Babylon sits in Rome.

Few would come right out and defend the Great Whore of Babylon as she really is, because she is indefensible—but certain pseudo-scholars would defend her through dark symbols.

We had better throw down the Rosicrucian tetrahedron that beckons one, in hellish Latin phrases, to follow the devil into hell in search of a phantom stone; cast away the perverse Masonic imagery of a pyramid-tetrahedron coupling; avoid blind attachment to relics, or ashes, of one’s fathers or to the temples of pagan gods; and discard the lays, devisings, or arrangements of ancient, pagan Rome. And we had better be careful to reject the terrible witches’ brews stirred up by certain warlocks with their coveted pieces of holly wood.

Babylon the Great will get its comeuppance: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird…. Woe, woe, the great city, she who was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls…. So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown with violence, and will not be found any longer” (Revelation 18:2b, 16, 21b NASB).

Twisting That Which Is Sacred

The Enemy, Satan, has a bent for twisting that which is sacred. Therefore, he endeavored to change the seventh-day Sabbath to the first day, the day of the sun, and he has endeavored to mock the cross of Christ, as popes of the Roman Catholic church have been known to carry an upside-down crucifix (led, I believe, by the antichrist spirit). Then could it be that the Tet in “Oblivion”—an upside-down pyramid dedicated to a mission of killing people and luring other men to their doom, to the demonic embrace of a false god (Titan) that is in the thrall, or orbit, of Satan (Saturn)—is a mockery of the true city of God which is now in Heaven and will someday come down out of Heaven as the New Jerusalem, alighting on the New Earth?

After all, with dimensions of 1,500 miles by 1,500 miles by 1,500 miles (some say 1,400 miles), the New Jerusalem is laid out as a square, and has the same length, width, and height. Its shape is variously understood to be a cube or a pyramidal structure, both of which could be described by the dimensions given in Revelation 21. The New Jerusalem will be wonderful: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away’” (Revelation 21: 1-4 NASB).

Patrick Heron, in his book The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocalypse, argues that the New Jerusalem will be in the shape of a pyramid: “I believe that [the New Jerusalem] is in the form of a pyramid and I believe that the reason the Pyramid of Giza and the other ancient pyramids were built was to copy the heavenly city of Yahweh, the Holy City which is right now in the heavens. This is what I mean by the term ‘Pyramid of the Apocalypse’…. Lucifer … was banished from the presence of Yahweh, and those who rebelled with him fell to Earth. Because it is the nature of Lucifer to [mimic] Yahweh, he decided to construct a magnificent edifice for himself on this Earth. This building was to be a monument to his own pride and ego. So by way of his minions, the Nephilim, and the awesome spiritual power at his disposal, he designed and constructed this massive pyramid at Giza, using all his celestial prowess and astronomical knowledge to align it with the various star signs and constellations” (pp. 191-2). To borrow the jargon of intelligence-speak, the “probable pyramid” of Revelation 21—that is, the New Jerusalem—is the goal of every Christian everywhere. Therefore contorting, twisting, and defaming such a beautiful City of God would be a profane thing to do.

The same secret, skulking societies that hate Biblical Christianity while pretending to lift it up, try to change the seventh-day Sabbath to the day of the sun, and solemnly carry around an upside-down cross—they often perpetuate and promote the very pagan Egyptian gods and goddesses and would very likely twist a light-and-good pyramid into a dark-and-satanic upside-down pyramid. Tellingly, the ruined landscape that is featured in “Oblivion” reveals little of the original cities, but the producers made sure to include up-close shots of a leaning “Washington Monument” (which is part of ungodly Baal-Ashteroth worship in couplet with the Capitol Building) and the torch from the “Statue of Liberty” (which was originally intended as an Isis statue and was “gifted” to the US by French Freemasons).

Saturn, Titan, and the Nephilim

Proverbs 5 teaches this: “For the lips of an adulteress drip honey and smoother than oil is her speech; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood…. Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold of Sheol.” If the adulteress of Proverbs 5 leads a man to his doom , then it is telling that the “mission control woman” in the huge Tet spaceship (symbol of a vagina and goddess worship) promises to “rescue” Jack (as it were, with honey-dripping lips) by taking him and his coworker to Titan, a moon of Saturn. Well now, that is interesting! Saturn is a symbol of Satan, and the Titans were for the Greeks the Nephilim, according to Stephen Quayle, the offspring of fallen angels and earth women. Therefore, metaphorically speaking, the Tet mission control woman invited Jack to leave his battle-worn landscape for the embrace of the Nephilim who are in the thrall of Satan! The Beast, or Antichrist, will also invite people to follow him into a mirage of “peace and safety” before unleashing “sudden destruction” on them (1 Thessalonians 5), and he will be a covenant-breaker, spreading abominations and making desolate (Daniel 9) until the Lord Jesus eliminates him (Daniel 9, Revelation 19).

According to Quayle, the Greeks used the word gegenes to translate Nephilim (a Hebrew word) when writing the Greek Septuagint (the Greek rendering of the Old Testament), and used gegenes again when referring to those commonly known as the Titans in Greek mythology. Therefore, the Greek Titans of legend were the Nephilim.

The debauchery, rape, murder, and sun worship that was Saturnalia in the Middle Ages has unfortunate corollaries in the modern-day rush into Sodom- and Gomorrah-like uncleanness; another corollary is the recent saturation of demonic (and Nephilim-like) movie themes, corporate logos, and music icons in the mass media. As it was in the days of Noah (escaping rampant Nephilim-led wickedness, Genesis 6) and in the days of Lot (escaping rampant uncleanness, Genesis 19), so it will be in the days of the Son of Man (Luke 17). While the secular world hee-haws and guffaws over what they don’t understand, the demonic infiltration of our world goes on unabated.

Knowing the Enemy is fundamental in military science. The prophet Ezekiel had a word from the LORD God of Israel that was to be delivered to the King of Tyre, but which clearly recalls the vast evil and arrogance of Lucifer/Satan as well: “Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee…. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering … the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast on the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee” (Ezekiel 28:3, 13a & c, 14-17 KJV).

From Genesis 6 we are aware that there have been Nephilim, the wicked offspring of fallen angels (sons of God) and women (daughters of men), in the days of Noah and afterwards also! The fact that there have been Nephilim after the days of Noah is often overlooked. The LORD destroyed the original group of Nephilim with the Great Flood, but later his servants were led to exterminate later waves of those evil beings: “So the LORD our God delivered Og also, king of Bashan, with all his people into our hand, and we smote them until no survivor was left…. But all the animals and the spoil of the cities we took as our booty” (Deuteronomy 3:3, 7 NASB). Og, whose bed was nine cubits by four cubits (roughly 12-and-a-half to 15-and-a-half feet in length), was the last of the Rephaim, whose line was of the Nephilim.

Avoiding Oblivion, Being Fruitful

If oblivion is the condition of being forgotten, that would be something to avoid. Those who revile the things which they do not understand; those who are destroyed by the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals; those who have gone the way of Cain; and those who have rushed into the error of Balaam for pay—those men are autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead and uprooted, and they are wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever (Jude 10, 11a, 12b, 13b NASB). Given Jesus’ exhortation that his believers, sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves, should be as shrewd as serpents yet as innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16 NASB), it would seem to be good to have a passing knowledge of what the enemy looks like. That said, I would also recommend that one should pull away from the weird, occult geometries and symbols as soon as necessary, making sure that one’s own feet have been warned sufficiently against certain insidious anti-Christian traps. Believers in Jesus Christ can rejoice in Galations 5 and the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Embracing the Lord Jesus Christ

We, the people, are in a struggle—a fight that requires gearing up, so to speak. “Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places…. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints…” (Ephesians 6:11-12, 18 NASB). Moreover, believers must remember this lovely passage that was so foundational for the Protestant Reformation: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10 NASB).

The Lord Jesus Christ will come back on a white horse and defeat His enemies, including the beast (or Antichrist) and false prophet: “And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone” (Rev. 19:20 NASB).

As the Lord Jesus said, “[F]alse Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But take heed; behold, I have told you everything in advance” (Mark 13:22 NASB). Many signs and wonders on the silver screen of Holly Wood are definitely intended to lead astray as many as possible, including, if possible, the elect.

King Jesus wins, and He is the Rock of Salvation.

Sabin Geyman is the author of an exciting new work of apologetics, Testing the Spirits: Exposing Dark Sayings & Embracing the Light of Jesus. A former reporter, editor, Department of Defense analyst, and Chinese instructor, Geyman now studies the nexus between Christian teachings and societal trends.

The Trifecta Outrage

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:29:30 -0500

First there was Benghazi coverup, now the IRS abuse of power and the violation of the AP. The Obama administration just continues to perpetrate the lies and project the blame on any target available that it thinks the American public will believe.

This is beyond outrageous and at long last the teflon ruler and his associates who have gotten a pass at every turn will now be held accountable. His bluster of protest when confronted ("thou doth protest too much...") won't work anymore. Vehement exclamations of intolerance are without substance; they are hollow echoes of placation with no intention of anything but an egotistical attempt of self vindication by denial.

The terrorist murders of our four Americans in Benghazi has never been answered. Whether the cause was with intent or from neglect and oversight matters not; either way it is inexcusable. The cover up is criminal; no responsibility taken on the part of the State department, the President or anyone else. Witnesses threatened and suppressed, excuses made and then to blame the Republicans stating that the whole "Benghazi thing is a sideshow," That is the supreme insult to families of those who lost their lives in that attack. Just disgusting; exhibiting such a flagrant disregard for them.

Well, the truth will come out because we as Americans will not relent. We will not settle for less; we are entitled to the real facts, not the created ones reflected by the altered talking points.

Now the IRS has overreached its authority by targeting Conservative groups and any other group that was Pro-Israel, had the words "Patriot" or "We The People" "Constitution" and so forth in their name. How convenient that the President just learned of this activity so recently since it has been going on for a couple of years now. Conveniently before his re-election perhaps this was an adversarial strategy? But he didn't know about it

. Are we presumed to be that stupid? Who is in charge of this country? The IRS, one of the most feared arms of the government until now answers to no one? I don't think so. It may seem that way but the President does have a degree of influence. Just not sure how it has been applied but we will learn in the days and weeks to come as this issue grows wider in scope and breadth.

Well, the mainstream press has finally felt the wrath of the political machine they have so devoutly protected by ignoring issues that would make their candidate look less than honorable. The justice department has stung the Associated Press with accusations of leaking sensitive information that hindered counter terrorism efforts that could have placed our citizens in danger.

They without warning or notice seized the telephone records & personal cell phone records of the AP employees. The real question now is who created the information? Did someone in the justice department leak it to the Press?

This should prove to be a very interesting and intense process of discovery. Either way this is a serious breach and violation of our First Amendment. Bad enough this administration attempted to go after the Second Amendment and learned that we as Americans will not accept anyone toying with our right to bear arms. But to actively restrain the freedom of speech and press, one of the founding precepts of our Constitution, will not fly. This is America; we will not tolerate any degree of Fascism

This President claims not to have known too many things; that the Benghazi attack was of the hand of an Islamist Extremist group, that the IRS has overstepped its authority with serious abuses and that the Justice Department invaded the AP and absconded with their privileged source information

.Three strikes and your out! And by the way, the administration lies and Jay Carney swears to it. You guys work for us; we do not work for you. No matter what level, you are public servants.

Maybe these three abhorrent events collectively were necessary to arouse the ire of the American public once and for all. Finally now maybe the Press will be galvanized to do what they are supposed to do; report the stories as they are, truths without omission or alteration of facts. Fox has been doing it all along. We can only hope.

Mamta Kulkarni’s Life, Another Dirty Picture in Making

Wed, 15 May 2013 06:34:57 -0500

Bollywood’s siren of the 1990’s Mamta Kulkarni who was lost in this lonely planet for some time has finally been discovered to be living in Nairobi, Kenya. The heartthrob of millions of youth of her generation has converted to Islam and is living with her husband Yousuf alias Vicky Goswami, a drug lord, who after serving prison sentence in Dubai has moved to Nairobi.

It is said that Mamta had a big role in Vicky’s release as she married him while he was serving jail sentence in Dubai. The marriage took place according to the Islamic rituals and both groom and the bride, recited passages of Holy Scripture before being declared husband and wife.

Mamta’s journey in life seems to be a fairy tale that has all the juice and spice for a Bollywood pot-boiler. It just needs a screen play writer to produce another Dirty Picture.

Mamta charmed her way to stardom in Bollywood in the 90’s and then cashing on her physical assets moved into the inner circles of the underworld, finally to settle with Vikram alias Vicky Goswami, a drug lord.

Vicky Goswami (now 51), was a drug baron in South Africa. He first landed there in 1994 after being deported from Zambia for suspected drug trafficking. He left South Africa in 1995 in a huff, after suspected murder of drug dealer Robert "Rocks" Dlamini.

Vicky moved to Mumbai from where he continued his business. He supplied drugs to filmy personalities and it is then JAB WE MET story of Mamta Kulkarni started.

Mamta showed great interest in Vicky’s business and it seems both were made for each other. It was around 2002, when Mumbai police was looking for Bollywood connection with the underworld that Vicky Goswami moved to Dubai along with Mamta.

In Dubai, Vicky linked up with senior government officials and set up two methaqualone (mandrax) manufacturing plants. His business flourished but a joint sting operation in Mozambique and South Africa led to the unearthing of his drug manufacturing factories in Dubai. Vicky was arrested and got life imprisonment.

It is reported that when Vicky was in Jail, Mamta stepped into his shoes to control his business. Sources imprisoned with Vicky say that he was treated well in jail. He had access to cell phone and he controlled his business with that.

Mamta use to visit Vicky in jail regularly. She is believed to be instrumental in setting her lover free. Mamta was able to convince the authorities that Vicky has converted to Islam and like to marry her, who has also converted to Islamic faith.

A life sentence in Dubai is in effect 25 years, but prisoners can apply for early release on various grounds. Apart from good conduct, these include converting to Islam and learning to recite passages from the Holy Qu'ran.

Vicky in order to strengthen his clemency appeal, converted to Islam took the name Yusuf and prayed five times a day, recited passage from the Holy Scriptures daily, in order to prove that he has became a devout Muslim. While being incarcerated, he got married to Aysha alias Mamta Kulkarni according to Islamic rites. These things speeded his early release and his life sentence was cut short by ten years.

Vicky was released from the Dubai central jail in November, 2012. He was deported to India but since he had no cases pending against him, he left for Kenya. Mamta Kulkarni moved along with him and both are believed to be living happily in Nairobi.

Mamta Kulkarni was at a point in time, one of the biggest actors in Bollywood. In the ‘90s, she had worked with some of the top stars, including the three Khans, as well as the likes of Govinda and Akshay Kumar who were at the peak of their careers.

Born in 1972 in an ordinary Maharashtrian family, Mamta joined Bollywood at the age of 20. She worked in Tiranga in 1992 with Raj Kumar and Nana Patekar, and carved a niche for herself in the industry.

She got the lead role the very next year in Aashiq Awara with Saif Ali Khan. Both Mamta and Saif won the Best debut film awards that year. In 1993 Mamta paired with film star Govinda in the film Ashant.

Mamta worked in nearly a dozen films in a brief span on two years, and signed up films at random for the next three years.

Her film with Akshay Kumar in Sabse Bada Khiladi was a super hit. In 1994, she had another hit Krantiveer with Nana Patekar.

Rakesh Roshan's Karan Arjun was a super hit in 1995, in which Mamta appeared with Shah Rukh Khan.

At one point of time, Mamta was working with all three great Khans in Bollywood, Shah Rukh, Salman and Aamir. She did Baazi with Aamir Khan in 1995, which was a big hit.

It was the year 1997; Mamta become the love interest of director Raj Kumar Santoshi, who gave her an item number in the film Ghatak. Their relationship prospered and Santoshi signed her up for his next film China Gate. A quarrel between Santoshi and Mamta, led to her ouster from the film.

It is reported that Mamta complained this matter to underworld don Chhota Rajan, who intervened and Santoshi was forced to take her back. He however pruned her role badly, and gave the dazzling item number ‘Chamma Chamma’ to Urmila Matondkar. This led Mamta to level serious charges against Santoshi including those of sexual exploitation.

By the year 2000, Mamta was nearing a steep decline in her film career. Her film Qila with Umesh Mehra flopped, and Chhupa Rustam with director Madan Mohla too fared badly at the box office.

In 2002, Mamta did the role of a Devdasi in the film Khajuraho, a small B-grade flick, exposing her physical attributes, but that too got bombed.

In a desperate attempt to revive her career, she appeared shirtless on the cover page of the magazine Stardust, but that failed to create any ripples. The steep decline in her film career was evident.

Some say, Mamta’s mother was the reason behind her downfall, as she was greedy, and forced her daughter to sign films recklessly. Whatever may be the case, it was after that, Mamata changed tracks. She started doing shows for selected clients. This included parties thrown by the people from the underworld.

As Mamta allegedly started keeping wrong company her personal life got in the way of her professional life. Her co-stars and producers began to avoid her, as she was found hobnobbing with the dreaded figures of underworld.

In those turbulent years, when Mumbai police was anxious to unravel the Bollywood-underworld connection, Vicky Goswami got struck by Mamta's charm. Mumbai police record shows that Mamta was in relationship with drug smuggler Vicky alias Vikram Goswami, a supplier of drugs to people associated with the Hindi film industry.

Their relationship flourished and the lovers moved to Dubai to avoid controversies and crime. It was from 2002 onwards that Mamata Kulkarni totally disappeared from the Bollywood scene.

It is reported that Mamta owns three flats in her name at Sky Anchorage apartment in Andheri West, Mumbai. All three flats remains locked but Mamta regularly sends maintenance charges for them.

The latest buzz is that the 90’s beauty has got a plastic surgery done on her face in 2010 and has acquired a totally different look. She has obtained a passport from Dubai with a different looking photograph. Speculations are rife that Mamta is trying to erase her identity from her acquaintances in India and wants to live a life of complete anonymity in Nairobi.

The saga of Mamta Kulkarni is not yet over. The South African investigation agencies are still looking for Vicky Goswami for his illicit crimes committed in that country. It’s likely that there will be more news coming about Mamta Kulkarni in times to come.

-----------------

Syed Ali Mujtaba is journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at syedalimujtaba@yahoo.com

China:Obama's Commencement Speech Foder for Debate

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:46:19 -0500

This article by Rachel Wang originally appeared on Tea Leaf Nation on May 13, 2013 and is republished as part of a content sharing agreement [Format adapted to facilitate translation].

Last week, a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama on the value of engaged citizenship made waves in Chinese social media.

Influential Sina Weibo user @假装在纽约, or “pretending to be in New York,” a widely followed provocateur who frequently tweets about the U.S. and whose account has more than 470,000 followers recommended [zh] the speech to Chinese youths:

奥巴马昨天在俄亥俄州立大学的毕业典礼上演讲，演讲的核心是“公民意识”。我把他的演讲稿匆匆翻译了下来，就是觉得，中国的年轻人，也许更应该接受这样在中国的课堂里接受不到的教育。

The core of Obama’s speech yesterday at the Ohio State University Commencement is ‘a sense of citizenship, I roughly translated his speech, because I feel that Chinese youth may perhaps be even more in need of this kind of education, which they do not receive in Chinese classrooms.

In his commencement speech on May 5, President Obama said, ”We are not a collection of strangers…we are bound to one another by a set of ideals and laws and commitments.” ”Pretending to be in New York’s” post, together with his translation of the speech, attracted over 30,000 retweets and nearly 6,000 comments in about two days.

Though this is not the first time that Chinese netizens have compared the circumstances of China and the U.S., the concept of “citizenship” has stirred yet another round of discussion about the rights and responsibilities of the Chinese people, as well as criticism of the government. Yin Hong (@尹鸿), executive dean of the Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication, commented [zh]:

虽然不算是一篇最好的讲演，但公民意识表述很清楚：每一个人都拥有天赋人权，所以每一个人也都具有天赋义务。这就是公民。没有人权，就就不能有义务。权力和义务是相对对等的。

Though this is not the best speech, ‘citizenship awareness’ has been described very clearly: everyone has natural rights, so everyone also has natural responsibilities. This is citizenship. Without human rights, there should be no responsibilities. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand.

Another Weibo user, “Once very fat” (@曾经的胖胖胖胖), wrote:

为什么中国人缺少公民意识，因为他们不觉得这个政府跟他们有关系，而且事实上这个政府也的确不是来自选票……

Why do the Chinese lack a sense of citizenship? Because they don’t feel that this government has anything to do with them, and truthfully, the government is not an elected body.

“Dragon Ash” (@龙团一灰) commented [original Chinese post deleted],

[Being in] a socialist country, we cannot think about such things; the more you think about them, the worse you will feel. As for rights, whatever the civil servants say goes.

The sentiments apparent in the comments on Pres Obama’s speech went beyond envy, jealous and pity. They also included discussions about the struggles, difficulties, and bitterness that Chinese youth face today. Weibo user “Big Guy Moving Like Dragon and Tiger” (@大背头龙行虎步 wrote [original Chinese post deleted]:

The youth all start out hoping for a sense of citizenship, but after hitting the wall over and over again in society, they turn towards nepotism. This is ‘soy-sauce vat’ China, where everything ends up black [corrupt] regardless of how it started out. One generation after another, this is our traditional culture: dictatorship, authoritarianism, and intolerance of opposition. The burdens of tradition are way too heavy; democracy might be another century away.

User “Hula Baopei” (@呼啦啦啦宝宝_佩) mused:

当国内大学生一毕业便面临高房价、物价而不得不屈服于现实失去梦想时，美国青年却可以以祖国未来为己任，被赋予强大的公民意识，坚定不移的实现自己的梦想、承担国家发展之重任，我在想中国的未来在哪里？下一代的未来在哪里？

While Chinese college graduates succumb to reality and lose their dreams in the face of high prices and unaffordable housing right after college, American youth can make the future of their country their personal mission; they’ve been endowed with a strong sense of citizenship, they hold fast to their dreams, and they take the responsibility for the nation’s development. I am wondering, where is China’s future? Where is the future of the next generation?

Such concerns might just be timely, with graduation right around the corner for many in China. Perhaps for most recent college graduates, the most pressing issue facing them is not how to change the nation, but how to survive in a gloomy economy. In fact, 2013 is believed to be the most difficult job hunting season modern China has ever faced. While almost seven million college graduates are entering the job market, only nine million new jobs have been created, and college graduates must compete with returning students from abroad, as well as high school graduates and trade school graduates. The ratio of college graduates to jobs is believed to be the lowest in Chinese history [zh].

A sense of citizenship may mean more than thinking independently and forming opinions that differ from the propaganda of the Chinese government. More importantly, it represents an ability to be balanced and independent when facing authority, an ability that flows from the feeling of being an influential part of the country, however small the individual may be. As Ren Zhiqiang (@任志强), a real estate tycoon with more than 14 million followers on Weibo, opined [zh],

总统的讲话从来不是必须学习的圣旨。而是一种常识。

The president’s speeches have never been edicts that all are required to study, but simply common sense.

Written by Tea Leaf Nation

Source: Global Voices

Link:http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/05/14/obama-graduation-speech-sparks-debate-in-china-what-is-citizenship/

Amanda Knox, Raffaele Sollecito, Wikipedia and Gaming the System

Sun, 12 May 2013 14:37:06 -0500

A simple, tragic murder is made complicated

When British student Meredith Kercher was murdered in Perugia, Italy in 2007, the local police and prosecutor swiftly arrested three people and declared, ‘case closed’. Two weeks later, local small time crook Rudy Guede was also arrested. Evidence of his presence littered the room where Meredith died; his DNA was even found in her vagina. One of the suspects – bar owner Patrick Lumumba, was freed when a customer returned from Switzerland and confirmed his alibi. Guede opted for a fast track trial and was convicted in 2008 and is currently serving a 16 year sentence.

The two remaining suspects, students Amanda Knox, from Seattle and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, from Bari, Italy, were detained by the authorities for four years in what swiftly became the most bizarrely handled and badly reported murder investigation and trial of the twenty first century. The case has become an exemplar of the failings of the dysfunctional Italian justice system. From early on, it was clear that Knox and Sollecito were being railroaded by a stubborn cabal of Perugian lawyers who had substituted pride and chauvinism for forensic investigational technique.

Media coverage for the students was overwhelmingly hostile, especially for the first two years leading up to the guilty verdict at their first trial in December 2009.

British tabloids in particular led the pack and the internet compounded the problems of the innocent students. Ignorant and malicious comments, often with no basis on fact became common currency. A web site, the provocatively named, ‘True Justice for Meredith Kercher’ (TJMK) was set up and dedicated itself to vilifying the innocent students, while pretending to do this out of respect for the murder victim. It was augmented by a forum ‘Perugia Murder File’ (PMF), a tasteless and vulgar online chat room that later fractured into two similar sites (pmf.org and pmf.net) when some of its members attempted a coup.

“The news coverage by Italian and British tabloid newspapers, in particular, was criticised as constituting character assassination and demonisation, especially of Knox.” - From the Wikipedia article of today.

In 2011 a retrial produced an emphatic ‘not guilty’ verdict but in March 2013 the Italian Supreme Court ruled again and ordered another retrial, though its grounds for questioning the second trial’s verdict are as yet unknown.

What has this to do with Wikipedia?

The Wikipedia page about the case, ‘The Murder of Meredith Kercher’ became a battlefield. From the time it was set up it was dominated by mainly British editors who believed that the students were guilty. They correctly recognised that Wikipedia would be the first port of call for many journalists, so control of this page would shape the narrative elsewhere, which could, ultimately influence the trial verdict itself. Every edit was hard fought and many contributors were banned on flimsy pretexts. For example, even the decision to define the case as ‘controversial’ was debated for several pages as filibustering attained art form status. At the time of writing, the ‘talk’ section runs to 37 pages.

Some of these editors were undoubtedly also contributors to the hate sites. One in particular, identifying himself as ‘Gwaendar’ outed himself in an article on TJMK. Eventually one of the banned contributors, Joseph Bishop, known as PhanuelB, organised a petition to Jimmy Wales. Once alerted, Wales took a personal interest in the case and arranged for new contributors to assist in editing the page. He commented, “I just read the entire article from top to bottom, and I have concerns that most serious criticism of the trial from reliable sources has been excluded or presented in a negative fashion.” A few days later he followed up, “I am concerned that since I raised the issue, even I have been attacked as being something like a ‘conspiracy theorist.”

Gwaendar commented on Wales’ intervention thus, “Wales entered the Murder of Meredith Kercher article rather like an elephant in a china shop, essentially accusing established editors who had laboured for years to try and maintain the article of having conspired to suppress and censor other points of view. His point is aided, obviously, by the scores (sic) of media coverage generated by the Knox PR campaign.”

Gwaendar also made the following comment, “For a source to be considered reliable, it must be either peer-reviewed or reported by a media outlet with a solid track record for fact checking and accuracy.” This was interesting in the context of the Kercher page because established editors continuously argued that highly partisan stories in British tabloid newspapers containing information that had been subsequently disproved, were more reliable than articles written by Pulitzer prize winning journalists that were published in the New York Times.

There has been constant reference to a Knox ‘PR campaign’ for five years. It is a myth. There has been an accretion of support from independent lawyers, investigative journalists, university professors, retired FBI agents, forensic engineers, individuals who work for innocence projects and others, who have been outraged by the way the case has been prosecuted, but these people have given their time freely as humanitarians. It might be more interesting to ask why an orchestrated campaign to argue for guilt has been waged by a group of largely anonymous internet trolls who constantly repeat long disproved prosecution theories and smears that have no basis in fact. Are they simply deranged obsessives or is there a more sinister hand manipulating them?

The Wikipedia page slowly began to improve but a wholesale revision was delayed until after the second verdict. Even now a rearguard action persists. Three weeks after the 2011 verdict, incoming editor, ‘SlimVirgin’ admonished one of the hard-line haters, “I think you have a conflict of interest editing here, because it's clear from your many off-wiki posts that you're an anti-Knox activist, and some of the posts have amounted to personal attacks on her, rather than simply discussing the case. You should not be editing a Wikipedia article about a living person when you've crossed the line into activism against that person. . . . I therefore think you should consider not editing this article again or any of the others about Knox.”

Today the Wikipedia entry belatedly acknowledges the bias that was central to European media coverage for over four years. On March 20^th 2012, Jimmy Wales wrote, “The article was at one point highly biased due to the blockings taking out one side of the debate.”

The hate industry continues

Meanwhile, the internet hate campaign thrives and respected journalists, academics, investigators and lawyers who have helped to challenge an injustice have been vilified in their turn. In recent weeks two highly respected authors have published articles about the hate phenomena. Nina Burleigh’s piece in Time Magazine online is titled, “The Amanda Knox Haters Society: How They Learned to Hate Me Too”. Douglas Preston has written a Kindle Single: “Trial By Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amanda Knox Case”. This is accompanied by an edited introduction in Slate, “Burn Her at the Stake”. The comment sections of both Burleigh and Preston’s articles have been overwhelmed by hundreds of hateful comments that only serve to reinforce the points they are making.

It is unfortunate that Wikipedia’s supposedly factual coverage of the case became a battleground but it did, as any neutral observer who reads sections of the ‘talk’ page can see. Prejudice should not be allowed to prevail in an encyclopedia; it is bad enough in the wider internet. The activities of the biased and mainly British chauvinists who controlled the Meredith Kercher page did immense damage to the reputation of Wikipedia. The encyclopedia needs a rigorous and fair dispute settlement process. Whatever its apologists say, it does not have one now.

This is an edited version of an article that was submitted to ‘Wikipedia Signpost’ weekly. The editor declined to publish it.

A (semi) literary review of “Waiting to Be Heard” by Amanda Knox.

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:55:22 -0500

A (semi) literary review of “Waiting to Be Heard” by Amanda Knox.
“That’s what arrest is: it’s a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality.”
Aleksandr Solzenicyn – The Gulag Arcipelago

Why “semi”, why not just literary?
Because unfortunately this is a book narrating a sad reality and not a fictional tale, and because the reality exacted its toll, even on literature and not just on people’s lives.
The reality we are talking about is, of course, the murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, on November 1st 2007.

For that murder Amanda Knox and her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito (who co-authored with Andrew Gumbel his own memoir “Honor Bound”) have been first convicted, then acquitted then again controversially sent back to trial by the Italian Supreme Court.

Another defendant, Rudy Guede has been definitively convicted and sentenced to 16 years through a distinct, fast track trial.

If on one hand the murder is the necessary root cause of Knox’s book, which certainly would not have been written without it, the book indeed goes beyond the murder - above and beyond.

It is a personal and existential tale, the story of a traumatic individual maturation experience, prompted by the murder, fostered by the imprisonment caused by the investigations into that murder, which deals with the murder, but which is not just about the murder.

Indeed it is about life, about how life can be disrupted by a wrongful accusation, by a wrongful conviction, by a media frenzy gone wrong much more than any alleged sex game ever could have gone.

It is about a twenty years old naive girl with a part-hippy, part-Disney-like vision of the people and of the world, who wants to grow up through an experience abroad, far from home, in another country, in a town apparently full of allures and promises.

She also thinks that to become a fully free-spirited woman she has to freely experience her sexuality, so much so that casual sex seems to be the main theme of the first part of the book, the one before the murder.

But while some hasty newspaper article depicted a Knox “proud” of her sexual “adventures”, if one reads the book with just a modicum of sensitivity (which indeed seems to be rationed goods, especially in some media outlets), it is apparent that in her tale there is no careless, triumphant “pride” of sorts.

There is, yes, a sort of claim entitlement, there is indeed no “repentance”, because no repentance is necessary, but at the same time the admission that after about a month of such a “campaign for casual sex”, she felt the need of a “tether”, a more reassuring, continuous affection in her life, as represented by Raffaele Sollecito.

But there is more, because this is a book, unavoidably, with a before and an after, before the murder, after the murder, before the night interrogation, after the night interrogation, before the arrest, after the arrest, before being blamed for her sexual (and hence private, intimate) habits and after that, before and after the conviction.

The author is really good at expressing the lightheartedness of her younger self’s flirts, without censorship, without any false,retrospective prudery, but with the full consciousness of the impending doom, of how much everything which today is carefree and innocent will tomorrow be read, through malevolent and prejudicial lenses, as not just morally but even judicially guilty.

A street in Perugia.

How much of “Paradise Lost” is in Knox’s recollections of those pre-murder days?
Surprisingly, not so much, not at least in what concerns party life in Perugia, even campus life is just superficially touched and one could even feel some sort of gloominess even about the life together at 7 Via della Pergola, the cottage (“villa” in the book) Knox shared with Meredith Kercher and two Italian roommates (besides four male students in the apartment downstairs).

Gloominess, however feeble, comes from the consciousness in hindsight of what is about to come and in this twilight when the late summer flows into autumn and more or less consciously the text prepares the reader for the sudden tearing of the canvas, for the unexpected evil that will shatter more than one life, in all this, like an autumn leaf, in its beautiful colors but close to its fall, stands Meredith Kercher.

The portrait of Meredith Kercher painted by Amanda Knox is alive and sensible. Whatever the reader may think about Knox’s role in this story, her picture of the English student is real, as real and deep as a friendship of forty days could allow: there are small, simple recollections, a certain fondness of those afternoons together on the terrace, moments, images, without pretensions, without attempts at lyrical commemorations.

The only other “character” of the pre-murder narrative to earn (relatives aside) a devout, heartfelt description is Raffaele Sollecito.

There is heartfelt fondness in Knox’s recollections of their relationship in those short days, maybe with more sober hindsight and a tad less romantic exuberance than in Sollecito’s words in Honor Bound, but nevertheless the description of their first meeting, of their first walk together is the recollection of a really experienced feeling, not an ex-post fabrication.

But there is not just romance: Knox says, later in the book, that she “felt grateful that he [Raffaele], out of all the people in Perugia, was the person I was going through this with. Getting his first letter had renewed my faith in him, and we now wrote each other regularly. I knew I could trust Raffaele with my life. And I was.”, which is more than most twenty-somethings (and not just them) can say about their love stories.

The calends of November.

And then comes the murder, as unreal and unworldly as the meteorite who somebody else in this story referenced as an embodiment of the unlikely.

But it comes and it strikes.

The author’s life is going to be disrupted, her future totally different from her past, herself another person, but everything begins business as usual, with a shower, on the morning of November 2nd.

Now we have to leave for a while our literary review of sorts and highlight a few points concerning how the book deals with the critical events and recollections of the first days of November 2007.

One can safely bet that there will be those, according to a press article even an anonymous Italian prosecutor suggested just that, who will parse every sentence in the book concerning those events and scrutinize them in parallel with Sollecito’s memories from Honor Bound or with other court documents, in search of discrepancies, inconsistencies and whatever else may hint to circumstantial evidence of guilt.

The game is not new and it is usually played by the same people.

It is indeed not such a smart game.

Personal memoirs are not police reports and these have been written five years after the events and moreover after the two “suspects” had, if they so wished, ample opportunity to crosscheck their tales, so that differences are less suspicious than perfect matches.

But since in this story logic was killed the day after Meredith Kercher died, one cannot hope for much.

Now back to the book as if it were a book and not a court transcript.

The author’s words concerning the days after the murder and before the arrest are, with a fitting term taken from music, a crescendo.

They give the sense of the darkening sky above her Perugian life, of the exhausting hours of questioning, of the short, almost sleepless, nights, also of what in hindsight Knox admits to have been her unusual and potentially suspicion-raising behaviour, but above all it is the sense of the oncoming betrayal.

Betrayal by the Italian authorities, the police in particular.

Yes, because whatever can be thought of her words, this is the feeling they give.

There is a feeling of a latent hostility towards her growing day by day (and here it is difficult to say how much of it is hindsight, even beyond the intentions of the author) as if the night interrogation of November 5-6 is the unavoidable climax, the preplanned destination which cannot be avoided, the Bitter Cup.

During these last days of freedom the character personifying the impending menace in Knox’s narrative seems to be Homicide Chief Monica Napoleoni, much more than Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, who, in the book, makes his entry only in the early hours of November 6th.

As a reader I have honestly to say that while the author states that Guede is the only one she really could hate, nevertheless there is something in the scratching words she dedicates here and there to Napoleoni that points to some sort of “women’s quarrel”, of verbal catfight.

Not that Mignini doesn’t get his fair share, as well as, appropriately downscaled, others do, nevertheless there is a gut feeling that if Knox should ever use her talons in not just a figurative sense, well Napoleoni would be the first in line.

The Night.

The night interrogation of November 5-6 is, in a sense, the book.

Nothing pervades directly and indirectly the book as that night, not even the murder itself: somehow it is as if the Amanda telling in Seattle to her parents she wants to go to Perugia is bound to arrive at that night at the Questura and as if the Amanda who comes back to Seattle more than four years later is the product of that night.

Nothing in the book is as detailed as that night, nothing is so painful.

Even more than the conviction because the conviction comes from that night, even more than the hurting smears in the media, because they come from that night, even more than four years in prison, because they too come from that night.

That night is in the mind of the author more important than the murder and one realizes it throughout the whole book.

And there is a reason: the author is saying (directly and indirectly) that she has nothing to feel guilty of about the murder but she feels guilty for having collapsed during the interrogation and having named Patrick Lumumba.

It is even evident, if the text is read just a little beyond the printed word.

That interrogation is her personal failure, after having pretended to be adult, independent, grown up, she fails the crucial exam.

Indeed it is an extreme exam, especially at that age, so that Knox rationalizes, and with reason, that it was too much for her, that she was wrong to consider herself so adult to begin with.

And she is right, that is true, nobody can know how he/she would react to such situations until one experiences them, no matter what any sort of “commentators” and journalists can say and write from their armchairs in a TV studio or in front of a keyboard.

But my impression is that this wound in her soul is the deepest one.

Trials and Prison.

If I longed for a phrase meant for effect, I could really define Knox’s entry into the Capanne prison as her personal descent into her own “concentrationary universe”, because, echoing Solzenitsyn words, the present instantly shifts into the past and the impossible becomes everyday reality.

But even without quoting Solzenitsyn or Ka.Tzenik, and Knox clearly pointed out she is no Mandela and no Holocaust survivor, it is undeniable that her most internalized, faceted, at one time repressed and expressed emotions (the night interrogation being more a wound than an emotion) come from her life in prison and from the rollercoaster of her trials and preliminary hearings.

Obviously the part concerning the trials deals with forensic evidence and witnesses: Knox does her best to counter (sometimes even going close to imply something more than errors) the prosecution case and claims but splitting hairs about Low Copy Number DNA or TetraMethylBenzidine is not really the task of this book and so the author keeps herself reasonably concise on these matters.

Even in the part devoted to the trials (particularly the first) the night interrogation is a key element: Knox deals extensively with the testimonies of those involved in it, with her own testimony about it and with whatever may be connected to it, even in Mignini’s closing arguments.

But what really counts from the beginning, from the first hearing in front of judge Matteini, is the feeling of seeing freedom and Seattle drifting away in the mist, the increasing certainty that years will be spent in prison.

The hopes, soon to be disappointed, of a quick and sudden end to the ordeal, which surface here and there almost up to the end of the first trial, are substituted, after the conviction, by a sort of resigned background thinking that indeed most or at least a big part of her life could be spent inside those dull walls.

Press previews made much of suicidal thoughts in the book, but in the end they are just a worst case scenario Knox prepared herself for. On the other hand, while not being so important in themselves, such thoughts go a great length to show the enormous difference between the two Amandas: the one who leaves Seattle and the one who comes back.

A journalist, showing an investigative talent which could be better employed at analyzing the case itself than at dissecting what ultimately is an intimate recount of feelings and perceptions, has argued that Knox’s memoirs about her prison treatment differ somehow from what she wrote during the first months of her imprisonment in a confiscated makeshift diary.

Maybe journalists, not all of them at least, should not be expected to have a knack for more literary subtleties, however one could reasonably expect them to understand the difference between what a prisoner and a free person can, indeed is allowed to, write.

Moreover, Knox at twenty had illusions, hopes, a candour in her view of people and the world which did not survive those four years and these memoirs were written by a somewhat different, more mature but also more disenchanted person.

In conclusion Waiting to Be Heard is the story of a person, fighting to be recognized as a person and not as the character she was reduced to, who left her home for a voyage she hoped could help her to grow up and who lived an experience that ultimately grew her up beyond her expectations but at a bitter price, and not just for herself.

Dubrovnik: Like You Want Europe to Be

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:53:57 -0500

If the Europe of your daydreams has walled cities, castles, medieval churches and ancient palaces filled with art treasures,, instead of Starbucks, tourist traps, and traffic jams, then you’ll want to see Dubrovnik, Croatia’s Old World masterpiece.

The majestic ramparts encircling the city came into view as my wife, Liza, and I sailed the Adriatic Sea on the four-masted sailing ship, The Royal Clipper. It struck me that this was a view that the Venetians, the Ottomans, or any number of visitors, peaceful or otherwise, had marveled at for over a thousand years.

After taking a tender to the small pier, we entered the city’s gates and again came upon a scene that hasn’t changed much, except for the dress and accessories of the tourists, in a millennium. As you step onto the city’s main thoroughfare, the Placa Stradun, from the Old Port entrance, you are immediately surrounded by cathedrals, palaces, fountains and bell towers, yes the rich history of Europe at its grandest. You will even see the requisite statue of the Charlemagne-era hero, Roland. When you see Roland in a European city, you know it’s a city of certified antiquity. Other highlights were the Fransiscan Church and Monastery, containing one of the world’s oldest pharmacies, and the Serbian Orthodox Church, with its Museum of Icons. Many visitors take the opportunity to climb the steep steps to walk along the ramparts of the Old City Wall. A bad foot prevented me this time, but I have hopes of a return visit.

As a life-long history buff, I couldn’t just pass by monuments like the Sponza Palace, The Church of St. Blaise , (the city’s patron) the City Hall and the Rector’s Palace. Leaving this main square and entering into the maze of the city’s small side streets provided a different delight, as it gave the opportunity, to bargain with a jewelry merchant whose family has done business the same way for generations. If shopping for bling is not your thing, you could stop at a grocery to pick up a bottle of Zlatan Plavac, an excellent Croatian red wine.

Dining al fresco is part of the European experience, and Dubrovnik raises outdoor dining to an art form. With the City Walls, medieval churches, rich palaces and cobbled lanes surrounding you, it’ll make you wish the dining experience would last forever. An excellent seafood restaurant my wife and I enjoyed was the Proto Restaurant. Maybe everyone doesn’t favor octopus, but their Octopus Primorje-Style, offered as an appetizer, was the start of a memorable meal of Adriatic seafood delights.

Dubrovnik’s airport, thankfully not in the Old City, is served by major international airlines, including Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, and Aer Lingus. The Royal Clipper, a five-masted brigantine “tall ship,” includes Dubrovnik as a stop on its Mediterranean cruise route, starting at Rome’s port of Civitavecchia, and ending in Venice. Entering Venice beneath the Star Clipper’s stately sails is indeed a thrilling end to a fantastic voyage (www.starclippers.com).

For information on Croatian tourism, go to www.croatia.hr. For information on Dubrovnik,
the website is: www.tzdubrovnik.hr, and be sure to click on the Union Jack for the English-language page. Enjoy!

Rising Youth Violence Spurs Peace Rally in Northern Brazil

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:21:57 -0500

Written by João Miguel D. de A. Lima · Translated by João Miguel D. de A. Lima

More than 1,000 people rallied for peace in the streets of the Canindezinho neighborhood in the northern coastal city of Fortaleza to denounce youth violence and the poor conditions young people have to endure living in the area known as Greater Bom Jardim.

Canindezinho's main square was taken over by youth, students, community leaders, artists, and supporters in the afternoon of 18 April, 2013. ”How many youth will need to die before the society and the government take action?” one banner carried during the procession read.

Greater Bom Jardim, which is made up of five neighborhoods, has 491 deaths linked to violence between 2007 and 2010, according to the organizers of the march ^[1] [pt]. The area counts a population of 204,281 throughout the five neighborhoods, of which 120,957 are between 0 and 29 years old, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE ^[2]) 2010 census.

Earlier in March 2013, local newspaper O Povo wrote about the rise of violence in Fortaleza ^[3] [pt]: in February, 142 people were killed, 15 of which were in the neighborhoods of Greater Bom Jardim. Over the first 59 days of 2013, the Bom Jardim neighborhood leaded statistics ^[4] [pt] with 22 guns seized by the police – in 2012, the neighborhood stood in third place, with 88 gunds seized.

Some people arrived early to prepare their posters on the benches, while others arrived with their designed banners: they wanted to talk about youth, peace and life. Some of them wore t-shirts with pictures of neighbors and relatives as a way to pay them honors.

The rally was organized by the Youth Agents of Peace group (Jovens Agentes de Paz ^[6] [pt] – JAP), a project run by the Centro de Defesa da Vida Herbert de Souza ^[7] [pt], in partnership with schools, community associations, non-governmental organizations, and artistic and religious groups.

In the group's open letter for the protest, entitled “Against state violence and announced execution: we shout out for life!”, which may be read online ^[1] [pt] on the website of Centro de Defesa da Vida Herbert de Souza, listed several struggles in the fight against violence, including illiteracy (the letter states more than 9,611 children, adolescents and youth, between 5 and 24 years old, are illiterate); diseases related to sanitary conditions and inadequate infrastructure; and the involvement of local boys and girls into routes of sexual exploitation.

The letter, which was handed in during the rally, was also critical to the current national debate on the age of criminal responsibility, which in Brazil is set at 18 years old:

Não bastasse esse cenário de horror, os jovens ainda têm que carregar a responsabilização da violência crescente no Brasil, em um processo de criminalização da juventude, que se articula com o consequente aumento do encarceramento de jovens e a batalha de setores reacionários pela redução da maioridade penal. Ou mesmo, têm que sofrer com a truculência de abordagens policiais diuturnamente, um tratamento igualmente prestado pelas emissoras que têm na sua programação os programas policiais, criminalizando pobres e estigmatizando bairros.

If this scenario of horror wasn't enough, youngsters now have to carry the burden of responsibility in regards to the growth of violence in Brazil, which is a process of criminalizing youth, interconnected to the rise of youth imprisonment and the battle of conservative sectors towards the reduction of the age of majority. Or they even have to suffer the daily truculence of police approach, which is equally provided by TV networks with their police programs, criminalizing the poor and stigmatizing neighborhoods.

One of the young participants, Icaro Martins, followed the rally closely with a photo camera. He created a photo album on Facebook ^[10] to spread the word about the event.

Isabel Forte expressed her support ^[12] [pt] to the rally on Facebook:

Esse é o Bom Jardim que vale a pena!!! E estas pessoas que se importam com o bem estar coletivo são mais que valiosas!!! Força, pessoas do bem!!!

This is the Bom Jardim I find worthwhile!!! People who care about the well being of others are very valuable!!! May you have the force, people of good!!!

Processions for peace

On 16 March, 2013, children and adolescents of the project Luthieria Cultural also took part in a procession for peace ^[13] [pt] in Parque São Vicente, an area of the Canindezinho neighborhood. Luthieria is an “artistic, playful and educational initiative” with the intent to “reduce the situations of violence in the neighborhood” through percussive music and formation processes.

Seeking to address the situation of violence among youth, several projects are currently taking place in the Greater Bom Jardim area. Jair Soares, coordinator of project Luthieria ^[13] [pt], believes cultural actions feature as an important path:

Nosso foco maior foi dizer que as ações culturais do bairro constituem-se como potencialidades frente as situações de desigualdade e violência enfrentadas nas periferias de Fortaleza.

Our greatest focus was to state that cultural actions in the neighborhood constitute potentialities in the face of situations of inequality and violence, which occur in the periphery of Fortaleza.

Article printed from Global Voices: http://globalvoicesonline.org

URL to article: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/05/09/peace-rally-in-northern-brazil-draws-hundreds/

Source: Global Voices

Link:globalvoicesonline.org/2013/05/09/peace-rally-in-northern-brazil-draws-hundreds/print/

Arrests During Gay Club Raid in Lebanon

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:41:32 -0500

Written by Joey Ayoub

‘Ghost', a gay-friendly club in Dekwaneh, Matn, Lebanon, was raided by 12 policemen under the order of Antoine Chakhtoura, the municipality's head. Customers were reportedly bullied out of the club and four individuals were arrested in the incident which took place last month.

Later on, those four individuals were forced to undress and have their pictures taken. Among those was a transgender woman who was kept unnamed and was quoted ^[1] by NOW Lebanon's Nadine Elali as saying:

They hit me and pushed me around and insulted me by using derogatory terms like ‘faggot’ and ‘half-a-man,’ then they asked demeaning questions such as how much do I make per hour and whether I enjoy ‘sucking on it,’ then asked me to strip naked and then took photographs of me.

Another one of the victims, a Syrian gay man, was interviewed by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) in the following footage released by Raynbow Lebanon ^[2] on YouTube.

They were still insulting and cursing them. And they said, ‘so what if you do that stuff in Syria'. Look at what Syria brings us'. Then they started filming us and hitting my friend and me. They were about 5 hitting us.

youtu.be/UXfb40nRazA

Lebanese and Arab netizens were quick to respond and condemn Chakhtoura's unlawful behavior.

Blogger ‘Aristophanes Jr’ wrote ^[3]a satiric piece entitled “The Fortress” and published it on his blog:

The Mayor Knight had no shame in justifying his crime on national television. A clear violation of the constitution itself as many professionals in the field of law indicated. Will this crime pass unpunished ? Will the Knight be spared from the dungeons ?

Blogger and Women's Health advocate Dr. Hasan Abdessamad jokingly begged ^[4]France to ‘re-colonize’ Lebanon, citing the contrast between the French mandate-era law condemning sexual relations that are “contradicting the laws of nature” (Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal Code) and France's recent legalization of Gay marriage:

The country that gave Lebanon’s Penal Code article 534 now gave all its citizens the right to marry.

He also released ^[5]a video condemning the mayor's actions, calling them “a crime” and demanding legal repercussions. Furthermore, the Lebanese Medical Association for Sexual Health (LebMASH), of which he is a member, released ^[6] a statement condemning Mr Skakhtoura's raid.

The Lebanese Medical Association for Sexual Health (LebMASH) strongly condemns the acts undertaken, based on orders from Mr. Shakhtoura, the Mayor of Dekwaneh on April 21st 2013.

Beirut blogger Elie Wafi warns ^[7] against similar incidents in the near future:

Shakhtoura and his minions aren't happy with what they saw. Gays all around. Kissing and holding hands. OMG! But above all what angered them is the sight of cross dressers, transsexuals and Syrians that walk on their two legs after 7 p.m. After 7 p.m., how could they?? Abomination!
Mr Shakhtoura almost fainted, he ordered his minions to arrest these creatures. But this isn't over, the sex of these transsexuals needs to be determined. Enno chou hawde? Rjel aw chou? [Translation: What is this? A man or what?] The case cannot wait, Lebanon's reputation is at risk, especially of its fortress: Dikwene.

This is not the first time something like that happens and I fear it won't be the last.

But why? Well the answer is simple, we are a marginalized minority. Though we might not consider our sexual orientation as an identity but when you are persecuted because of that, it suddenly becomes one.

Twitter users expressed their outrage as well:

@Egayptian: ^[8] What “morality” and what “religion” gives you the right to forcibly strip people and take pictures without their consent?

@fafpink: ^[9]As if closing a gay club wld make the gay community disappear #DekAbuse ^[10] http://shouldiexist.blogspot.com/2013/04/lets-just-talk-human-rights.html?spref=tw … ^[11] #lebLGBT ^[12] #LGBT ^[13] #lebanon ^[14]”

@eli_beik ^[15]: #DekAbuse ^[10] & #LebLGBT ^[16] Am gay and Proud! soon protesting against aabuse against LGBT

@DannySeesIt ^[17]: LGBT persons living in Lebanon face legal and social challenges. They deserve equal rights now! #LebLGBT ^[16] #DekAbuse ^[10] http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Gay_rights_in_Lebanon/?wWvCEeb … ^[18]

@JoSamuelAoun ^[19]: I admire when homophobes start their homophobic phrase with “With all my respect to those people and to human rights” #LebLGBT ^[16]

Lebanese Human Rights NGO ‘Alef’ released a statement that was re-tweeted by Daemion El Hajj:

^[20]

جمعيّة ألف تدعو القوى المختصّة للتحقيق بما فعله شختورة والشرطة البلديّة في الدكوانة #LebLGBT ^[16] #DekAbuse ^[10] pic.twitter.com/W1wv6wFUbs ^[21]

@DaemionElHajj ^[22]: Alef (NGO) calls on the appropriate authorities to investigate what Shakhtoura and the municipality police did in Dekwaneh

Finally, on Facebook, activists have been posting ^[23] on the page of the City Council of Parramatta, a sister city of Dekwaneh:

Dear Sir, Madam,

We would like to bring to your attention the violation of Basic Human Rights done by your sister city, Dekwane, Lebanon. The city mayor, Mr. Antoine Chakhtoura, has ordered, illegally, the closure of an LGBT-friendly club called Ghost. The closure came with the arrest of four individuals, among them a transgender person, who were taken to the police station in the police cars’ trucks, and subject to insulting and humiliating acts such as stripping them nude, taking pictures of them without their consent, and violate them verbally, physically, and even sexually.
Knowing that your city is one of the proud cities of Australia, a country known for its tolerance and respect for Human Rights; we call upon you to act publicly and show support to the LGBTQ community in Lebanon.
This is not the first time, and maybe won’t be the last time, such discriminating act might take place in Lebanon, where the road towards equal rights for the LGBT community is still ahead of us. Yet, we as a community would love to hear your support to our cause, and would appreciate any and all help you can give us.
Join us in our righteous fight, be there for us, now that no one else might help us.

Best wishes,

A sit-in ^[24]was organized by Helem, the Lebanese Gay Rights NGO for April 30.

Article printed from Global Voices: http://globalvoicesonline.org

URL to article: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/05/08/lebanon-scandal-breaks-out-over-homophobic-raid-in-dekwaneh/