Tag: Global

Western civilization is Indo-Islamic under its skin

Razib Khan · March 1, 2020 · 25 comments


I’ve been in this game for a long time. Back in the middle of the 2000s, I observed that people of Muslim and Indian origin had sensitive and peculiar reactions to criticisms of their religion. Muslim cases are well known. Less well known is the violence and menace associated with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre play which affected Sikh sensitivities.

Then there was this, 5 Die in India During Protests Over Falwell:

Five people were killed in western India today in clashes between Hindus and Muslims that started during protests over remarks by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in which he called the prophet Muhammad a terrorist, the police said.

An American preacher says something offensive about Muslims, and Hindus and Muslims start killing each other in India! Absurd. Ridiculous. Barbaric.

I may not have said it in those words but that’s what I was thinking. In contrast, in the West religious beliefs are not sacred, and we can express content and derision without worry.

Or so I thought. Over the past few years, there has been a tendency in American culture to emphasize sensitivities, hurt feelings, and emotional reactions, over reason, when it comes to offense. Indians, and Muslims, were offended at criticisms of their religions and identities because religion and identity were sacred for them. Well, it turns out that in the West we’re going back to that state of affairs as well.

It seems that human cultural forms have the lowest energy state. And that state is a sort of identitarian honor culture.

I still think your religions are dumb. But when in glass houses…

Pre Buddhist Music and tradition in South Sri Lanka

sbarrkum · February 23, 2020 · 4 comments

Pre Buddhist music and dance of Sri Lanka

Its just the rhythms, so complex and for the uninitiated so out of tune. That said whats with the court jester head gear.

As crainsy1337 says

The yakun natima, or devil dance ritual of Sri Lanka, is nothing if not full of drama. Not just a charade or interval designed to entertain, the yakun natima is a carefully crafted ritual with a history reaching far back into Sri Lanka’s pre-Buddhist past. It combines ancient Ayurvedic concepts of disease causation with deft psychological manipulation. Lasting up to twelve hours, it mixes raucous humour with deep-rooted fears to create a healing catharsis for both patient and community.

I just like the words in the first part. Is it about Seenigama Devol Kumaru.

Nondi Kumaru …….
Demala mau ….. (means Tamil mother)

 

Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away with War Crimes

sbarrkum · February 8, 2020 · 1 comment

From Amazon Intro:
https://www.amazon.com/Keenie-Meenie-British-Mercenaries-Crimes/dp/0745340784

Keenie Meenie Services – the most powerful mercenary company you’ve never heard of – was involved in war crimes around the world from Sri Lanka to Nicaragua for which its shadowy directors have never been held accountable.

Like its mysterious name, Keenie Meenie Services escaped definition and to this day has evaded sanctions. Now explosive new evidence – only recently declassified – exposes the extent of these war crimes, and the British government’s tacit support for the company’s operations. Including testimonies from SAS veterans, spy chiefs and diplomats, we hear from key figures battle-hardened by the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Iranian Embassy siege. Investigative journalist Phil Miller asks, who were these mercenaries: heroes, terrorists, freedom fighters or war criminals?

This book presents the first ever comprehensive case against Keenie Meenie Services, providing long overdue evidence on the crimes of the people who make a killing from killing.

Excerpts from Aditi Khanna’s article in Outlook India
https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/india-used-british-pilots-in-fight-against-ltte-book/1727422

British mercenary pilots helped Indian troops in their battle against the Liberation Tigers for Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, a new book reveals for the first time.

The Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) received air support from these for-hire British pilots despite Indian diplomats publicly condemning the presence of UK mercenaries in Sri Lanka, according to the book, ”Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes”, authored by UK-based investigative journalist Phil Miller.

However, India”s attitudes gradually began to shift and the envoy to Colombo, Jyotindra Nath Dixit, said New Delhi had to publicly deplore the use of UK mercenaries in Sri Lanka but privately he accepted there was “a large pool of ex-military personnel” in Europe and North America who wanted to “market these skills” and if it was not KMS then it would be another “cowboy” outfit involved.

Predictable, enormously surprising

Charles Cameron · February 7, 2020 · No comments

[ cross-posted from Zenpundit — read these in sequence, and tremble ]
.

Here:

  • New Yorker, Citing climate change, BlackRock will start moving away from fossil fuels
  • New Yorker, Will Big Business Finally reckon with the Climate Crisis?
  • World Economic Forum, The Global Risks Report 2020
  • BlackRock, A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance
  • Guardian, European Investment Bank to phase out fossil fuel financing
  • IEEFA, The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for oil and gas
    .
    **

    Climate scientists caught on first, then the US military, and now financial risk analysts. Things are shifting: if BlackRock ‘s C-suite officers (they control a dime out of every dollar in the world) were the jurors, the current US administration might not like their verdict.

    And money doesn’t just talk, it votes.

    • Poems: climate, impeachment, climate

    Charles Cameron · February 7, 2020 · No comments

    Scorched earth

    Scorched earth used to be a military tactic —
    Samson caught three hundred foxes,
    and took firebrands,
    and put a firebrand in the midst between two tails,
    sending them through enemy fields —
    but what if nature out-flames the foxes?
    What if floods engulf
    those waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

    Hosing down used to be a police tactic —
    against dissenting crowds,
    with dissent almost a badge of honor,
    police visor and shield
    almost an admission of guilt —
    ah, earth, water, air, mind — all ablaze!

    **

    For sure

    No sense in wasting a poem on impeachment,
    those things pass
    like leaves in the wind,
    Nixon, Clinton,Trump, and
    by the time you read this
    another fistful, maybe no doubt —
    on second thought, poems too
    are leaves in a high wind, sacred altitude at best.

    Han Shan sent his poems floating downstream,
    scribbled them on the walls of caves
    and hermitages,
    wrote them on beech-bark
    on the off-chance someone would find them —
    Pulitzer-winner Gary Snyder for sure found them!

    **

    Forecast

    Floods and firestorms:
    the planet is not so much burning as oscillating,
    floods, the element of water,
    fire would evaporate them,
    but only after bringing them to boiling point,
    firestorms, wrathful,
    water would quench them,
    but boiling point is hardly the issue.

    We are deep into future problems,
    the courage of our blind denial
    blithely fire-walking
    with water-walking ability
    granted us solely in scriptures —
    prediction succeeds, prophecy fails, what next?

    One or other, both or neither?

    Charles Cameron · February 3, 2020 · 5 comments

    Reposted from Zenpundit — Modi or Trump, special or chosen? — with thanks to The Emissary — and closing in on the shining suchness of the Tathagata
    .

    Modi of India, Trump of USA?

    **

    Trump of USA proclaims himself the Chosen One, while Modi of India’s supporters claim Modi is the Special One.

    Who knew?

    **

    Sources:

  • The Emissary, The Special One
  • Giphy, I am the Chosen One

    • .
    **

    Buddhist logic from the beginning differs from its Aristotelian cousin, featuring the chatushkoti or tetralemma:

    India in the fifth century BCE, the age of the historical Buddha, and a rather peculiar principle of reasoning appears to be in general use. This principle is called the catuskoti, meaning ‘four corners’. It insists that there are four possibilities regarding any statement: it might be true (and true only), false (and false only), both true and false, or neither true nor false.

    Hence my title, One or other, both or neither?

    Oh ah:

    speaking of the Buddha, Nagarjuna states that the Buddha’s teaching is “emptiness is suchness, not suchness, both suchness and not suchness, and neither suchness nor not suchness.”

    Furthermore:

    The suchness of the Tathagata is the suchness of all phenomena.

    Rumor therefore has it that there’s a fifth possibility, a refuge from all dualities: the shining suchness of the Tathagata.

    **

    No, really — please comment!

    Brown Pundits