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Plight of Hindu Widows

It is very encouraging to learn that some of the top Bollywood actresses are taking active part in the emancipation of Hindu women who are still victims of centuries-old anti-woman Hindutva culture. Shabana Azmi is very active in spreading the breast cancer awareness among the Indian women and Preity Zinta blasted Hindu religious teachings and Hindu elites for “the dire plight of India’s oppressed and neglected widows” during a press conference in New Delhi on January 13, 2010.

“I am a Hindu and I would like to say I think religion is always interpreted by various different people and the greatest reason for misinterpreting religion is greed. “

Egypt's Siege of Gaza

There has been much public clamour over the way Israel has besieged Gaza in an attempt to subdue its long-oppressed population by squeezing its very life-blood. The barest amounts of supplies are allowed in, far from enough to sustain a people at even the minimum levels of humanity.

Gazans are living in the ruins of their homes following the bloody Israeli war against them one year ago, unable to rebuild because of the blockade against them.

However, there is a fact far more shocking than Israel's characteristic terror against innocent civilians. It is the fact that the blockade is only possible because of Egypt's participation, sharing as it does one length of Gaza's borders.

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

TYGER, tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

- William Blake 1794

I was put in mind of this poem when over the weekend the sports world was left ‘reeling’ with the news that Tiger Woods will be quitting the game of golf indefinitely. This coupled with the ‘earth-shattering’ news that the most obsequious fan club imaginable ‘Tigerwoodsisgod.com’ is disbanding – distraught with the news of their idol’s fall from grace.

Jesus Hated War -- Why Do Christians Love It So Much?

There are no "blessed wars". Yet virtually all evangelical, conservative and many mainstream church leaders were active supporters of the Bush wars. When Gulf War I ended (during George Bush the Elder’s presidency), General Norman Schwartzkopf, the field commander, triumphantly proclaimed, “God must have been on our side!”

Such statements aren’t unusual for glory-seeking dictators, kings, princes, presidents and generals, regardless of what religion justified their particular war, but I cringed when I heard this self-professed Christian warrior claim God’s blessings on the war that made him famous. In his memoir, It Doesn’t Take A Hero, Schwartzkopf claimed that he kept a Bible at his bedside throughout the war.

I cringed knowing that, according to the biblical Jesus, God is never on the side of the victors. The God of love that Jesus revealed was on the side of the victims, the oppressed, the starving, the sick, the naked, the meek who were victimized by unjust power.

One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists

December 28, 2009 "Truthdig" -- Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.

Terrorists Create Terrorists

If you are paying attention to this Christmas Day wannabee bomber on the Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, make sure you really pay close attention. There is a lesson to be learned in this unraveling story.

The alleged ringleaders behind this person were formerly prisoners at GITMO! Damn, why am I not surprised? Now, how does a PEACEFUL, CHRISTIAN NATION like the US make so many enemies?

By lying, by illegally detaining people for no just cause or reason, robbing them of years of their lives, torturing them, demeaning and defiling them, and then arrogantly pretend 'no harm, no foul' because of the wanton arrogance of the United States of America under current management. That is how.

Welcome to Orwell’s world

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate, Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that "passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'."

Barack Obama is the leader of a contemporary Oceania. In two speeches at the close of the decade, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner affirmed that peace was no longer peace, but rather a permanent war that "extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan" to "disorderly regions, failed states, diffuse enemies". He called this "global security" and invited our gratitude. To the people of Afghanistan, which the US has invaded and occupied, he said wittily: "We have no interest in occupying your country."