Revolution in the Bronx – the Browning of America

X.T.M · June 28, 2018 · 27 comments

https://www.facebook.com/Remezcla/videos/10156749372239267/

The major news in American politics is the upset victory in the Democratic primary by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. I’m sharing her video here without comments since I think this is a huge advance for “brown” people worldwide. I read somewhere that the classical world had a penchant for a variety of colours (maybe related to paganism – India is very colourful and Roman sculptures were painted, perhaps even garishly) but that the modern Anglo-Western scheme is very black and white.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Millennial beats veteran Democrat

In some ways that reflects our current Anglo-discourse where things are very binary. I remember in the London Olympic Opening Ceremony, there was so much attention dedicated to the Black experience in Britain (Windrush etc) and none given to the Asian one. When we think diversity in Britain we still think Black rather than Asian, especially in the entertainment sector.

It’s a rather striking phenomenon that in the finance industry a huge array of the junior recruits will be diverse and Asian but as they climb towards seniority they start to become stale, pale and male. It’s not to say that Asians are underrepresented, in fact they may very well be overrepresented, but the rate of attrition in the rise to seniority is quite noticeable. This is because the top ranks like to replicate themselves (subconsciously) and you would rather go for a drink with someone who looks and feels like you.

I echo Ms. Ocasio-Cortez that it’s not about identity politics but more about getting a seat in the table. Good job and Good luck.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10156545499846563&set=p.10156545499846563&type=3&theater

One designer’s brave decision to feature darker skinned modelst

X.T.M · June 28, 2018 · 7 comments

https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/1054194608055379/

Representation is so important and Mr Kejirwal should be applauded for his bold & unorthodox decision.

South Asia is probably the most diverse society when it comes to skin tones since every range is pretty much featured. However the systematic colour bias will only come undone when we reflect the society at large.

I’m reminded of my cousin who wanted to buy some cream in South East Asia. Every cream there had skin lightening formulas so it proved impossible in the end.

Clear and tanned complexion is the optimal type for any race; that look emerges in LA a fair bit since there is so much sun and it’s a prosperous society with lots of focus on aesthetics.

Of course Miss India this year is noticeably dustier than the previous ones so the aesthetic is definitely changing.

https://mobile.twitter.com/scribe_it/status/1009297667569012737

 

Why do nonmuslims treat muslims so badly (a)?

AnAn · June 26, 2018 · 44 comments

Two of the world’s greatest and most beloved muslim leaders and scholars discuss the holy Koran, Hadiths, Pakistan. They discuss what being a muslim means.

34 minutes in, they discuss how Imam Ali went to Usman (also written Othman or Uthman) and presented him Ali’s copy of the holy Koran, also called the book of Ali or book of Fatimah. These were Imam Ali’s and Fatimah’s notes on the Koranic versus as they were revealed. As an aside Dr. James White and Jay Smith discusses how the holy Koran was composed:

Quietly Islamic scholars discuss this frequently but are afraid to discuss this in public for fear of retaliation at the hands of Islamist extremists. Please also watch the exceptional Islamic scholars Abdullah Gondal and Abdullah Sameer discuss the formation of the holy Quran:

After discussing the holy Quran, Imam Tawidi and Tarek Fatah discuss how and why Raswa Hind was written right after the holy prophet Mohammed pbuh passed away; which called for the conquest of Arya varsha (Iran, Turan, SAARC and related civilizations in South East Asia) and Asia. Tarek Fatah’s next book–“The Hindu is Not My Enemy”–elaborates on this. Many muslims believed that Pakistan was prophesied  in the holy Koran and by Mohammed pbuh because of Raswa Hind. Pakistani psychosis is discussed.

They mention how the numbering system of the Koran comes from India and how several of the Hadiths were written by muslims long after Mohammed pbuh passed away when muslims came to India–including the Hadith on how male monkeys stoned a female monkey for engaging in physical relations without formalizing her wedding with a male monkey  (at that time monkeys only lived in greater India).

They discuss the nexus of soft Islamists and their nonmuslim collaborators that now greatly influence and control America, Europe and much of the world. They often intimidate, oppress and harm patriotic good muslims. One of the ways they do this by accusing good muslims such as Tarek, Imam Tawhidi and Maajid Nawaz of being Islamaphobes. They are banned from many networks, publications, newspapers; and are on no fly lists. But despite this attempt by nonmuslims and Islamists to stifle them; their popularity and legitimacy among muslims continues to soar.

After watching this video, please see this very interesting discussion between the wise compassionate Jaʿfari jurisprudence extraordinaire Imam Tawhidi and the great atheist Bengali Islamish scholar Mufassil Islam moderated by Lebanese Canadian heart throb Gad Saad:

Continue reading Why do nonmuslims treat muslims so badly (a)?

Is Erdogan the Turkish Modi?

X.T.M · June 26, 2018 · 40 comments

Erdogan has consolidated his power in yesterday’s election. This post was sparked by a Facebook friend’s (Indian Muslim) comment “why do Muslims in India hate Modi but love Erdogan.” Shashi provides some context here:

Comparisons are generally invidious, especially when they involve political leaders from different countries. But, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rose to power 11 years before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, there is much about their personal and professional trajectories that makes comparison irresistible.

Both Erdogan and Modi come from humble, small-town backgrounds: Erdogan sold lemonade and pastries in the streets of Rize; Modi helped his father and brother run a tea stall on a railway platform in Vadnagar. They are self-made men, energetic and physically fit – Erdogan was a professional soccer player before becoming a politician; Modi has bragged about his 56-inch (142-centimeter) chest – not to mention effective orators.

Both Erdogan and Modi were raised with religious convictions that ultimately shaped their political careers. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have both promoted a religiously infused, nationalist creed that they argue is more authentic than the Western-inspired secular ideologies that previously guided their countries’ development.

History has definitely not come to an end; Turkey and India (Israel/Hungary) seem to be on the vanguage of nationalistic revivals. Thankfully none of these countries border each other.

Related: Modi believed Vajpayee’s wooing of Muslims in 2004 was a fruitless exercise

Ps: All comments welcome except abusive or overwrought ones. Tone and tenor of any conversation (on my posts at least) must be calm and measured.

Africa’s only Hindu island

X.T.M · June 26, 2018 · 127 comments

https://www.facebook.com/drewbinsky/videos/1792525924117662/

I’m pretty sure that Mauritius is a secular democracy but it is 52% Hindu.

As an aside it would be interesting to study the evolution of Hindu island diaspora culture around the world (Suriname, Guiana, Fiji, Mauritius etc).

There doesn’t seem to have been much Brahmin migration and it was mainly done by farmers/labourers. The early 20th century into East Africa seems to have had much Gujarati merchant castes but if memory serves me right they also served as labourers for the railways so it’s all a bit complicated and understudied.

Disregarding the Out of India migration theory (but there must have been a pulse with the Mitanni in the Levant); India has periodically pushed out waves of migrants to spread its culture, script and religion. To my mind though the only Hindu society, outside of core South Asia, to have a strong Brahmin presence is Bali.

It’s brings a further observation is that can Vedic and Hindu be separated. The reason I suggest this is that the Hinduicisation of South India seems to have primarily mediated by Brahmin migrants from the north. They seem to have found local hierarchies and adapted it to the caste system (the Reddys seem to be indigenous Dravidians).

I’m still unclear what the original nucleus of Hindu society would have been. After the collapse of the IVC culture it seems that Indian/Hindu civilisation (I’m treating them as equivalent since we are talking about BC) was continually shifting towards Haryana than Western UP and then Bihar. It’s only the Islamic incursions in first millennia AD that shifted it back towards Delhi and plugged India back into the Turkic network.

Of course the Buddhist interruption can’t be ignored but the role of Brahmins in the coherence of Hindu civilisation simply can’t be ignored. What is interest is that all the Hindu islands sans Brahmins seem to become very relaxed creole island cultures that resemble Sri Lanka. All of sudden the pulsating sensuality and tropical sexuality that is so repressed in North India/Pakistan emerges and the hidden matriarchy also peaks through.

Much as the Muslim invaders were very obviously symbols of patriarchy and a stern nomadic culture; its not unreasonable to supposed that the Aryans represented much of the same stream and applied that to a relatively relaxed pagan Dravidian/AASI South Asia. It would make sense that Indra, a masculine thunder god, is Aryan but Lingala worship is an indigenous feature.

The model we would be looking at is Mother Goddess worshipping AASI with naturistic pagan beliefs being coopted by Dravidian farmers. It would be a classic case of farmers and hunter gatherers coexisting in the same spaces; most of the farmer culture and genes winning out over the generations. Then come the Aryans with their migration/invasion but progressively Sanskritise the rest of South Asia with a much more masculine pantheon.

A question comes to mind that if Malaysia/Indonesia had a strong and resilient Brahmin network, would they have become Muslim? Had the spread of Buddhism undermined Brahminism as it seems to have done in the northern Punjab/Bengal peripheries of the Subcontinent.

Ps: Smart comments welcome (as in the Climate Change thread) – I’m simply speculating. I’ll delete anything overwrought; everyone featured in this post (except the Mauritians) are long gone.

Why Climate Change is a cult-

X.T.M · June 24, 2018 · 30 comments

I really enjoy the tweets from the Aerogram since they provide well-curated content. However this third-party article on Monsoon dispersion of pollution is simply rife with generalities and polemicism, high by even BP’s well-worn standards.

The article starts off on a fascinating note:

As South Asia burns fossil fuels, researchers from Germany say the clockwise-spinning storm pulls the emissions high into the troposphere. There, lightning-fueled chemical reactions transform the pollutants into more stable forms, which fall to earth as harmless rain.

A paen to Mother India cleaning up after her messy spawn. However before we could take any consolation in the good news:

By combining these measurements with computer models of air circulation, the researchers tracked the path of the contaminants and how they changed as they reached higher altitudes.

As expected, at lower altitudes, the South Asian monsoon did disperse pollutants over a wide region, including distant areas like Tibet. However, the scientists also found that the monsoon pulled the polluted air from the atmosphere into the much higher troposphere, where with the assistance of the storm’s lightning, it reacted with other gases, and could be washed out by the rain.

Note they use simulated models to track the pollutants so in a way this isn’t verified or empirical based science. It would have been good to actually validate pollution levels in places like Tibet etc. And then for the final piece de resistance:

Unfortunately, Lelieveld told VOA, “the monsoon is weakening, which can reduce the cleaning mechanism. We also believe that the air pollution contributes to a weakening of the monsoon.” He added, “Intuitively, if the monsoon weakens, the pollution will stay more near the ground rather than being transported upward.”

This is a comment that wouldn’t have even passed muster in our own threads. How do we know the Monsoon is weakening and how do know that air pollution is weakening the Monsoon.

I do think it’s fairly straightforward and uncontroversial to state that we should pollute less but it’s increasingly evident that anthropogenic pollution isn’t as clear-cut a topic as we think it is. The Earth does seem to have some feedback mechanisms and it’s also worth reflect if the human scale of pollution can match natural events (like a volcano eruption etc).

We live in a liberal-defined shibboleth and these new orthodoxies are sometimes even more pernicious than the ones of yore since these are draped in the values and ideals of the enlightenment. Please note I’m not necessarily espousing one view over the other but we as learnt in BP; argument from authority (experts) is a logical fallacy and the article above reeks of it.

Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition

Razib Khan · June 23, 2018 · 2 comments

I recently read John Keay’s Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition. Like his earlier books on the history of India and China, this is a work written by a journalist, not an area specialist (though Keay seems to take a particular interest in South Asia judging by his oeuvre).

To be frank I’m not sure if I learned that much…and I don’t know much about South Asian history after 1945. But, it reaffirmed my intuitions that some of the ideologues who bandy extremely high casualty rates are doing a disservice to the real tragedies that have marred the subcontinent over the past century.

In any case, I do recommend this book to the 50% of the readers of this weblog who are not South Asian.

Note: I don’t have the time or interest to read Guha’s India After Gandhi. Also, my friend Reihan Salam has indicated to me it’s a more tendentious work than most are willing to admit.

Post Modernist attack against muslims, darkies, India, America and the world

AnAn · June 22, 2018 · 23 comments

India is ranked 136 (behind many tinpot dictatorships with no freedom of speech or freedom of press) by Reporters without Borders in the  World Press Freedom Index. US is ranked 43 (behind many countries with little freedom of press.) This is a post modernist hatchet job. The real criteria of ranking is how post modernist a country is and whether it conforms to post modernist politically correct thought police.

One reason India ranks so bad is because India protects freedom of speech of muslims to some slight degree . . . which is unheard of in the modern world. By contrast, Nordic countries don’t protect the freedom of speech of muslims (through the guise of Orwellian rubrics such as hate speech), which is a major reason the Reporters without Borders ranks them so highly.

India is the only country in the world that has a TV programs on a national network (hosted by Tarek Fatah) where muslims openly discuss and critique the holy Koran. Including taboo topics such as the Korans burnt by Uthman, the version of the Koran that was created by Ali, and how Uthman and Aisha assembled the modern Koran. They also openly discuss the ordering of the Koran and the context of verses. Many episodes of this show had over 100 million viewers as muslims around the world eagerly watched. While many muslim Imams and muslims scholars are eager to discuss this in private, they say it is too dangerous to talk about in public. This is indescribably sad.  🙁

India is a land of amazing freedom of thought and questioning, including on all the most controversial philosophical, existential, religious and spiritual topics.  The most ancient eastern texts are about inquiry, questions, answers, conversation. The East for thousands of years was a beacon of freedom of art and thought which was exported to Europe during the European Enlightenment. The only other country in the world with similar freedom of thought to India I can think of is the US. Some say Israel is another example. While Israel might be, I don’t know enough about Israel to validate if this is true.

The UK and most of Europe lack freedom of thought (if it is politically incorrect) and as a matter of state policy do not protect the freedom of speech of European muslims. Europe is heavily controlled by post modernist thought police.

Canada has more freedom of press, speech, thought than Europe, but less than India or America:

Canadian Senator Grant Mitchel is clearly a very dangerous sectarian demagogue who supports Islamists against muslims. It is hard to exaggerate how Muslims around the world–especially Indian muslims or minority muslims or liberal/reform/secular/agnostic/atheist muslims–cringe in deep fear and horror at this clip. He tried this against Tarek Fatah–one of the most loved and respected muslims in India, Pakistan and Canada. Tarek Fatah is one of the world’s greatest living Koranic and Islamic scholars.

Before every mosque service, there is a prayer in Arabic for the military victory of the faithful (or “real”) muslims against the nonmuslims and the minority (fake) muslims. Yes, this means twelvers, sixers, fivers, Ahmedis, Kurds, Sufis. The prayer doesn’t come from the Koran. Many muslims are well aware of this problem and want to remove the prayer . . . but they are afraid of getting killed (and their mosque blowing up) if they remove the prayer. This is what Senator Mitchel is talking about.

Freedom of thought and freedom of dialogue are everything for muslims. Reporters without Borders is opposed to muslims having freedom of thought and dialogue. Without freedom of thought, there cannot be dialogue between good muslims and Islamists. Without freedom of thought the fourteen century Islamic civil war that has killed over a 100 million muslims cannot end.

The post modernists are slowly taking over many very powerful global organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (which until recently doubled as an anti muslim hate organization), Reporters without Borders,  Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International to harm muslims and harm the world as a whole. Perhaps the world will finally begin to awaken to the global post modernist threat. They are  no longer only targeting muslims, darkies and India, but are now attacking America too.

In May, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston released a report saying the United States has the highest rates of youth poverty, infant mortality, incarceration, income inequality and obesity among all countries in the developed world, as well as 40 million people living in poverty. Alston accused President Trump and the Republican Congress of deepening poverty and inequality in the country, citing the Republican tax law passed last fall.

“The policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege,” Alston wrote in the report.

Alston is a post modernist with little economics understanding engaged in a clearly inaccurate piece of propaganda, [which might be elaborated on in future articles] much the way the UN has engaged in dangerous propaganda attacks against many darkie countries all over the world for decades. Post modernism was created as an imperialist attempt to oppress European colonies. They colonize the mind in an attempt to divide and conquer, and reduce self confidence to create inferiority complex. They try to discredit, negate and replace all ancient cultures, civilizations, values and religions with post modernism. And they do enormous damage to poor people all over the world. Articles at Brown Pundits related to post modernism and nonmuslims harming muslims include:

Some of the people resisting the global post modernist wave are collectively referred to by some as the intellectual dark web:

Brown Pundits