#hindu new year 2022

[truelymarry]

Christmas, also known as the “Feast of Nativity” is celebrated all around the world on December 25. This festival marks the birth anniversary of  Jesus Christ who is the Messiah of God in Christian mythology. Christmas is one of the most joyous celebrations among Christians. Christmas symbolizes merriment, affection, and love, Christmas is celebrated with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm by everyone no matter what religion they are.

Christmas is a festival full of culture and tradition. It starts with lots of preparations. Preparations for Christmas start with buying decorations for Christmas trees, buying gifts for family members an friends, and preparation of cakes, cookies pies, and so on . Christmas tree decorations, with shining stars in all places and lovely Christmas cakes. People usually wear white or red colored outfits on Christmas.

SANTA CLAUS AT CHRISTMAS

Christmas as we celebrate now is a modern interpretation of ancient pagan celebrations. It is heavily centered around the mythical figure “Santa, as they receive gifts, also known as Kris Kringle”.Santa Claus is the traditional patron of Christmas all around the world. Santa Claus is associated with the traditional pattern of Saint Nicholas, Santa is rumored to live on the North pole. Along with his helper elves. Each year it is believed that Santa Claus would wait for children over the world, to give them gifts. He rides on his sleigh from the North Pole, giving gifts to all children around the world on Christmas Eve.

Young children are especially happy about Christmas as they receive gifts and get great Christmas treats. The treat includes Christmas cakes, cookies, and pies.People on this day visit churches with their family members and light candles in front of Jesus Christ's idols.Churches are decorated with fairy lights, stars, and candles., The main attraction is Christmas cribs adorn with gifts, lights, etc. Christmas carols are also performed with songs, and dances about Jesus Christ.One of the famous Christmas songs sung is “Jingle Bells. Jingle Bells, Jingles all the way”

On Christmas, It is believed that Jesus Christ, son of God came to earth on this day to end people's sufferings and miseries. Jesus Christ's visit is symbolic of happiness and goodwill and is depicted through the visit of the three wise men and shepherds. This festival also marks the close of the year and symbolizes all things heart warming and jolly as  it is a special time when people all over the world spend time with each other in merriment and celebrations. Christmas is indeed a magical festival that is all about sharing love and happiness.

Cute merry Christmas Wishes- 

“ May the lights of Christmas bring light  and happiness into your life with us at Truelymarry”

“May the spirit of Christmas infuse your life with hope, positivity

 and joy”

[newsguruworld]

ब्रह्म संवत का साल🔥💯🔥#shorts #viral #new

[gemsartsjewellery]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The tax sharks are back and they’re coming for your home

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TODAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

One of my weirder and more rewarding hobbies is collecting definitions of "conservativism," and one of the jewels of that collection comes from Corey Robin's must-read book The Reactionary Mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reactionary_Mind

Robin's definition of conservativism has enormous explanatory power and I'm always finding fresh ways in which it clarifies my understand of events in the world: a conservative is someone who believes that a minority of people were born to rule, and that everyone else was born to follow their rules, and that the world is in harmony when the born rulers are in charge.

This definition unifies the otherwise very odd grab-bag of ideologies that we identify with conservativism: a Christian Dominionist believes in the rule of Christians over others; a "men's rights advocate" thinks men should rule over women; a US imperialist thinks America should rule over the world; a white nationalist thinks white people should rule over racialized people; a libertarian believes in bosses dominating workers and a Hindu nationalist believes in Hindu domination over Muslims.

These people all disagree about who should be in charge, but they all agree that some people are ordained to rule, and that any "artificial" attempt to overturn the "natural" order throws society into chaos. This is the entire basis of the panic over DEI, and the brainless reflex to blame the Francis Scott Key bridge disaster on the possibility that someone had been unjustly promoted to ship's captain due to their membership in a disfavored racial group or gender.

This definition is also useful because it cleanly cleaves progressives from conservatives. If conservatives think there's a natural order in which the few dominate the many, progressivism is a belief in pluralism and inclusion, the idea that disparate perspectives and experiences all have something to contribute to society. Progressives see a world in which only a small number of people rise to public life, rarified professions, and cultural prominence and assume that this is terrible waste of the talents and contributions of people whose accidents of birth keep them from participating in the same way.

This is why progressives are committed to class mobility, broad access to education, and active programs to bring traditionally underrepresented groups into arenas that once excluded them. The "some are born to rule, and most to be ruled over" conservative credo rejects this as not just wrong, but dangerous, the kind of thing that leads to bridges being demolished by cargo ships.

The progressive reforms from the New Deal until the Reagan revolution were a series of efforts to broaden participation in every part of society by successively broader groups of people. A movement that started with inclusive housing and education for white men and votes for white women grew to encompass universal suffrage, racial struggles for equality, workplace protections for a widening group of people, rights for people with disabilities, truth and reconciliation with indigenous people and so on.

The conservative project of the past 40 years has been to reverse this: to return the great majority of us to the status of desperate, forelock-tugging plebs who know our places. Hence the return of child labor, the tradwife movement, and of course the attacks on labor unions and voting rights:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

Arguably the most potent symbol of this struggle is the fight over homes. The New Deal offered (some) working people a twofold path to prosperity: subsidized home-ownership and strong labor protections. This insulated (mostly white) workers from the two most potent threats to working peoples' lives and wellbeing: the cruel boss and the greedy landlord.

But the neoliberal era dispensed with labor rights, leaving the descendants of those lucky workers with just one tool for securing their American dream: home-ownership. As wages stagnated, your home – so essential to your ability to simply live – became your most important asset first, and a home second. So long as property values rose – and property taxes didn't – your home could be the backstop for debt-fueled consumption that filled the gap left by stagnating wages. Liquidating your family home might someday provide for your retirement, your kids' college loans and your emergency medical bills.

For conservatives who want to restore Gilded Age class rule, this was a very canny move. It pitted lucky workers with homes against their unlucky brethren – the more housing supply there was, the less your house was worth. The more protections tenants had, the less your house was worth. The more equitably municipal services (like schools) were distributed, the less your house was worth:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

And now that the long game is over, they're coming for your house. It started with the foreclosure epidemic after the 2008 financial crisis, first under GW Bush, but then in earnest under Obama, who accepted the advice of his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who insisted that homeowners should be liquidated to "foam the runways" for the crashing banks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

Then there are scams like "We Buy Ugly Houses," a nationwide mass-fraud outfit that steals houses out from under elderly, vulnerable and desperate people:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

The more we lose our houses, the more single-family homes Wall Street gets to snap up and convert into slum properties, aslosh with a toxic stew of black mold, junk fees and eviction threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Now there's a new way for finance barons the steal our houses out from under us – or rather, a very old way that had lain dormant since the last time child labor was legal – "tax lien investing."

Across the country, counties and cities have programs that allow investment funds to buy up overdue tax-bills from homeowners in financial hardship. These "investors" are entitled to be paid the missing property taxes, and if the homeowner can't afford to make that payment, the "investor" gets to kick them out of their homes and take possession of them, for a tiny fraction of their value.

As Andrew Kahrl writes for The American Prospect, tax lien investing was common in the 19th century, until the fundamental ugliness of the business made it unattractive even to the robber barons of the day:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-04-26-investing-in-distress-tax-liens/

The "tax sharks" of Chicago and New York were deemed "too merciless" by their peers. One exec who got out of the business compared it to "picking pennies off a dead man’s eyes." The very idea of outsourcing municipal tax collection to merciless debt-hounds fell aroused public ire.

Today – as the conservative project to restore the "natural" order of the ruled and the ruled-over builds momentum – tax lien investing is attracting some of America's most rapacious investors – and they're making a killing. In Chicago, Alden Capital just spent a measly $1.75m to acquire the tax liens on 600 family homes in Cook County. They now get to charge escalating fees and penalties and usurious interest to those unlucky homeowners. Any homeowner that can't pay loses their home.

The first targets for tax-lien investing are the people who were the last people to benefit from the New Deal and its successors: Black and Latino families, elderly and disabled people and others who got the smallest share of America's experiment in shared prosperity are the first to lose the small slice of the American dream that they were grudgingly given.

This is the very definition of "structural racism." Redlining meant that families of color were shut out of the federal loan guarantees that benefited white workers. Rather than building intergenerational wealth, these families were forced to rent (building some other family's intergenerational wealth), and had a harder time saving for downpayments. That meant that they went into homeownership with "nontraditional" or "nonconforming" mortgages with higher interest rates and penalties, which made them more vulnerable to economic volatility, and thus more likely to fall behind on their taxes. Now that they're delinquent on their property taxes, they're in hock to a private equity fund that's charging them even more to live in their family home, and the second they fail to pay, they'll be evicted, rendered homeless and dispossessed of all the equity they built in their (former) home.

It's very on-brand for Alden Capital to be destroying the lives of Chicagoans. Alden is most notorious for buying up and destroying America's most beloved newspapers. It was Alden who bought up the Chicago Tribune, gutted its workforce, sold off its iconic downtown tower, and moved its few remaining reporters to an outer suburban, windowless brick building "the size of a Chipotle":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Before the ghastly hotel baroness Leona Helmsley went to prison for tax evasion, she famously said, "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes." Helmsley wasn't wrong – she was just a little ahead of schedule. As Propublica's IRS Files taught us, America's 400 richest people pay less tax than you do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/13/for-the-little-people/#leona-helmsley-2022

When billionaires don't pay their taxes, they get to buy sports franchises. When poor people don't pay their taxes, billionaires get to steal their houses after paying the local government an insultingly small amount of money.

It's all going according to plan. We weren't meant to have houses, or job security, or retirement funds. We weren't meant to go to university, or even high school, and our kids were always supposed to be in harness at a local meat-packer or fast food kitchen, not wasting time with their high school chess club or sports team. They don't need high school: that's for the people who were born to rule. They – we – were meant to be ruled over.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/26/taxes-are-for-the-little-people/#alden-capital

[zvaigzdelasas]

With a history of short-term governments in Nepal’s 15 years of democratic progression, the current reconfiguration is no surprise, and it will be no surprise if the Maoists get back again with the Nepali Congress in months and years to come.

Power sharing, political discontent, ideological differences, underperformance, and pressure to restore Nepal to a Hindu state – a long list of reasons reportedly forced the Maoists to sever ties with the Nepali Congress. While the Nepali Congress expected the Maoist leader and current prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal (also known by his nom de guerre, Prachanda) to leave the alliance, it did not expect an overnight turnaround. [...]

Dahal reportedly conveyed to the Nepali Congress chair, former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, that external pressure forced him to join hands with CPN-UML and form a new government.

If this assertion is true, China emerges as a plausible factor, given its historical inclination toward forging alliances with leftist parties in Nepal. This notion gains credence in light of China’s past efforts, such as its unsuccessful attempt in 2020 to mediate the conflict between Oli and Dahal.

On the other hand, India has enjoyed a comfortable working relationship with the Nepali Congress and the Maoists. Although Maoists were a challenging party for New Delhi to get along with when Dahal first gained the prime minister’s seat in 2008, the two have come a long way in working together. However, the CPN-UML has advocated closer ties with the northern neighbor China; Beijing suits both their ideological requirements and their ultra-nationalistic outlook – which is primarily anti-India. [...]

India faces challenges in aligning with the Left Alliance for two key reasons. First, the energy trade between Nepal and India has grown crucial over the past couple of years. However, India strictly purchases power generated through its own investments in Nepal, refusing any power produced with Chinese involvement. With the CPN-UML now in government, Nepal may seek alterations in this arrangement despite the benefits of power trade in reducing its trade deficit with India.

Second, India stands to lose the smooth cooperation it enjoyed with the recently dissolved Maoist-Congress coalition. During the dissolved government, the Nepali Congress held the Foreign Ministry, fostering a favorable equation for India. Just last month, Foreign Minister N.P. Saud visited India for the 9th Raisina Dialogue, engaging with top Indian officials, including his counterpart, S. Jaishankar.

As concerns arise for India regarding the Left Alliance, there is also potential for shifts in the partnership between Nepal and the United States, a significant development ally. Particularly, there may be a slowdown in the implementation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) projects. Despite facing domestic and Chinese opposition, the Nepali Parliament finally approved a $500 million MCC grant from the United States in 2022, following a five-year delay.

China perceives the MCC as a component of the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific strategy, countering its BRI. Hence Beijing aims to increase Chinese loans and subsidies to Nepal to enhance its influence.

To conclude, the re-emergence of Nepal’s Left Alliance signals a shift in power dynamics, impacting domestic politics and regional geopolitics. With China’s influence growing, Nepal’s foreign policy may tilt further toward Beijing, challenging India’s interests. This shift poses challenges for India, particularly in trade and diplomatic relations, while also affecting Nepal’s partnerships with other key players like the United States.

[[The Author,] Dr. Rishi Gupta is the assistant director of the Asia Society Policy Institute, Delhi]

6 Mar 24

[sayruq]

Though the Indian government has treaded cautiously, the country’s Right Wing ecosystem, which has a robust social media presence, has wasted little time in deciding its stand on the present conflict. Sharing borders with Muslim countries that they perceive as hostile, and having a Muslim minority population at home, India and Israel mirror each others’ demographic anxieties. In the last 10 years of the Hindu-nationalist BJP’s rule in India, this anxiety has transformed into rampant Islamophobia and communal hatred visible in almost every sphere of life. In 41% of all the fact checks that Alt News did in 2022, the target of misinformation/disinformation was Muslims. The ongoing conflict has provided the Right Wing with an opportunity to amplify that Islamophobia. Consequently, the massacre of Palestinians — an overwhelming majority of whom are Muslims (see here and here) — by Israel in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack has found strong support among the Hindu Right. A large share of tweets with the hashtag #IStandWithIsrael came from Indian users and thousands of Indian accounts added the flag of Israel next to their X handles.

[tanadrin]

In Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany, Esra Özyürek describes the way that German politicians, officials and journalists, now that the far right is in the ascendant, have been cranking up the old mechanism of sanitising Germany by demonising Muslims. In December 2022, German police foiled a coup attempt by Reichsbürger, an extremist group with more than twenty thousand members, which was planning an assault on the Bundestag. Alternative für Deutschland, which has neo-Nazi affiliations, has become the country’s second most popular party, partly in response to economic mismanagement by the coalition led by Olaf Scholz. Yet despite the undisguised antisemitism of even mainstream politicians such as Hubert Aiwanger, the deputy minister-president of Bavaria, ‘white Christian-background Germans’ see themselves ‘as having reached their destination of redemption and re-democratisation’, according to Özyürek. The ‘general German social problem of antisemitism’ is projected onto a minority of Arab immigrants, who are then further stigmatised as ‘the most unrepentant antisemites’ in need of ‘additional education and disciplining’. ...

Netanyahu, too, has learned from Germany’s postwar efforts at whitewashing. In 2015 he claimed that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had persuaded Hitler to murder rather than simply expel the Jews. Three years later, after initially criticising a move by the Law and Justice Party in Poland to criminalise references to Polish collaboration, he endorsed the law making such references punishable by a fine. He has since legitimised Shoah revisionism in Lithuania and Hungary, commending both countries for their valiant struggle against antisemitism. (Efraim Zuroff, a historian who has helped bring many former Nazis to trial, compared this to ‘praising the Ku Klux Klan for improving racial relations in the South’.) More recently, Netanyahu accompanied Elon Musk to one of the kibbutzim targeted by Hamas, just days after Musk tweeted in support of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Since 7 October, he has seemed to be reading from the Eichmann trial script. He regularly announces that he is fighting the ‘new Nazis’ in Gaza in order to save ‘Western civilisation’, while others in his cohort of Jewish supremacists keep up a supporting chorus. The people of Gaza are ‘subhuman’, ‘animals’, ‘Nazis’. ...

In a more unnerving illustration of the postwar German-Israeli symbiosis, the German health minister, Karl Lauterbach, approvingly retweeted a video in which Douglas Murray, a mouthpiece of the English far right, claims that the Nazis were more decent than Hamas. ‘Watch and listen,’ retweeted Karin Prien, deputy chair of the Christian Democratic Union and education minister for Schleswig-Holstein. ‘This is great,’ Jan Fleischhauer, a former contributing editor at Der Spiegel, wrote. ‘Really great,’ echoed Veronika Grimm, a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, which in 2021 ‘outed’ five Lebanese and Palestinian journalists at Deutsche Welle as antisemites, with equally flimsy evidence exposed the Indian poet and art historian Ranjit Hoskote as a calumniator of Jews for comparing Zionism with Hindu nationalism. Die Zeit alerted German readers to another moral outrage: ‘Greta Thunberg openly sympathises with the Palestinians.’ An open letter from Adam Tooze, Samuel Moyn and other academics criticising Jürgen Habermas’s statement in support of Israel’s actions provoked an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to claim that Jews have an ‘enemy’ at universities in the form of postcolonial studies. Der Spiegel ran a cover picture of Scholz alongside his claim that ‘we need to deport on a grand scale again.’ ... Susan Neiman, who wrote admiringly of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Learning from the Germans (2020), now says she has changed her mind. ‘German historical reckoning has gone haywire,’ she wrote in October. ‘This philosemitic fury ... has been used to attack Jews in Germany.’ In Never Again: Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust, which examines the German response to mass killings in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans, Andrew Port suggests that their ‘otherwise admirable reckoning with the Holocaust may have unwittingly desensitised Germans. The conviction that they had left the rabid racism of their forebears far behind them may have paradoxically allowed for the unabashed expression of different forms of racism.’

(source)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Feb 13, 2024

In his novel Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie traces the deterioration of Kashmir from a place where Muslims and Hindus could live together in peace and co-operation to a country ravaged by conflict. This descent is signalled early in the novel with the arrival of a character called the Iron Mullah, a blood-and-thunder preacher with “skin the colour of rusting metal”. We think his name is metaphorical, but the Iron Mullah had risen from the scrapheaps of the Indian army, the junkyards of weaponry and tanks that have been left to decay. When he arrives, he removes his turban and raps his knuckles against his own head so that the locals can hear the metallic clang. It’s Rushdie’s way of portraying the idea that it was the actions of the Indian army that gave rise to the appeal of Islamic extremism in Kashmir.

Soon after the appearance of the Iron Mullah, a local Muslim man challenges him.

“Be off with you. We don’t want any trouble, and you, standing here in the middle of our little town and yelling your head off about the punishments of hell – you look like trouble to me.” “There are big infidels,” replied the stranger calmly, “who deny God and his Prophet; and then there are little infidels like you, in whose belly the heat of faith has long since cooled, who mistake tolerance for virtue and harmony for peace.”

For the likes of the Iron Mullah, moderate peaceful Islam is just another form of heresy. He soon has a mosque built in which he preaches from a pulpit made of scrap metal, old bits of radiator and “bent fenders spearing upwards like horns”. He is a frightening and ridiculous figure, but everyone is too intimidated to laugh.

Religious intolerance is something that Rushdie has had to live with for most of his life. Whereas extremists cannot reason and therefore resort to violence, Rushdie’s power has always been in his words. He is one of the handful of living authors whose work I genuinely adore, and Shalimar the Clown is undoubtedly my favourite. His depiction of Kashmir’s degeneration from an ecumenical paradise to a sectarian warzone is heartrending. It was published in 2006, seventeen years after the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran following the publication of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses, and surely the Iron Mullah was inspired by these experiences.

That evil spectre of the Iron Mullah was resurrected in August 2022, when an Islamist fanatic attempted to murder Rushdie at an event in New York, leaving him struggling for his life in hospital with multiple stab wounds. And although there was widespread condemnation, the silence from the Royal Society of Literature was curious to say the least. This week, fellows of the RSL have come forward to criticise the charity’s leadership for not being forthcoming on condemning this atrocity. The RSL’s former president, Dame Marina Warner, has said its leadership refused to issue a statement in support of Rushdie’s right to free expression because to do so “might give offence”. Do knife-wielding maniacs really deserve all that much consideration?

The RSL’s current thinking on the subject was outlined in a piece for the Guardian by its president, Bernardine Evaristo:

“Finally, to the matter of “freedom of speech”. There’s no question that the current leadership believe in this. However, the society has a remit to be a voice for literature, not to present itself as “the voice” of its 700 fellows, surely a dangerous and untenable concept. It cannot take sides in writers’ controversies and issues, but must remain impartial.”

The best response came from Rushdie himself. “Just wondering if the Royal Society of Literature is ‘impartial’ about attempted murder? (Asking for a friend.)”

Apparently, remaining “impartial” means not issuing statements of support for authors when there are attempts to cancel them both figuratively and literally. When activists hounded the poet Kate Clanchy with spurious allegations of racism and ableism in her award-winning book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me, the RSL were mute. “They would not make a stand about the attacks on Clanchy,” said Warner, or any kind of defence “for all writers facing these social media attacks”.

In recent years, we have seen attempts by activists of many stripes to conflate language and violence, to claim that offensive words can cause the equivalent of physical harm. By this kind of twisted logic, bloody repercussions against authors and artists can be deemed a form of self-defence. A survey of American students in 2017 found that 30 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “If someone is using hate speech or making racially charged comments, physical violence can be justified to prevent this person from espousing their hateful views”. In this regard, today’s identity-obsessed self-proclaimed “social justice activists” have something in common with the mullahs of Tiran.

[ Protesters gather outside of the Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire ]

Consider what happened to the schoolteacher at the Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire who, in March 2021, was suspended for displaying a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson on free speech. The protesters that gathered outside of the school couched their objections in terms of “safety and well-being”. One read aloud a statement in which the school authorities were accused of failing in their “duty of safeguarding”, and the teacher himself was charged with “threatening and provocative” behaviour. Here we saw a sinister alliance of religious fundamentalism and “safetyism” (a term coined by journalist Pamela Paresky to denote the elevation of emotional “safety” to a sacred value). The teacher from Batley Grammar is still in hiding to this day; I would suggest that his safety ought to take priority.

When activists say “this person makes me feel unsafe”, they are effectively saying “I don’t agree with this person and I want them to be censored”. Depressingly, this tactic generally works. Event organisers, school authorities, and employers feel obliged to act because they are gulled into believing that this is an issue relating to their legal duty of care. But disagreement and causing offence are not a threat to anyone’s safety, and we need to stop pandering to anyone who claims otherwise.

Of course, the RSL is not responsible for violence against authors, but they could at least offer their vocal support to the principle of artistic freedom. Let’s not forget that there have been many commentators over the years who have tacitly blamed Rushdie for writing his book in the first place. I recall one of teachers at school making the case that Rushdie “should have known better”. How exactly? The Satanic Verses is a brilliant and thoughtful work of fiction, and I daresay my teacher hadn’t even read it. 

At the time of the fatwa, there seemed to be endless debates in the media over whether or not Rushdie deserved our sympathy and police protection. A case in point is the singer Yusuf Islam, otherwise known as Cat Stevens, who appeared on the Australian television show Hypotheticals soon after the fatwa was declared. When asked what he would do were he to encounter Rushdie in public, Stevens said that he would inform the Iranian authorities of the author’s whereabouts. As a grim final flourish, he went on to imply that he would rather enjoy the prospect of watching him being burned alive.

In a civilised and free society, it shouldn’t be all that difficult to reach a consensus that violence is not an appropriate form of literary criticism. Or that one of the most important novelists of our time should be entitled to write and say whatever he pleases, just as all of us should be entitled to write and say whatever we please.

I can’t help but think that we, as a society, failed the test of upholding artistic freedom at the time of the fatwa in 1989. We failed again after the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices in January 2015. At first, there were widespread declarations of “je suis Charlie”, until the inevitable victim-blaming began. PEN America initially showed much-needed support with a freedom of expression award for the satirical magazine. But then thirty-five writers signed a letter protesting against the decision on the grounds that Charlie Hebdo had mocked a “section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled and victimized”. This is to misidentify the target. The cartoonists weren’t “punching down” at the Muslim minority. The target was God, and you can’t punch much higher than that.

And if you haven’t read The Satanic Verses, I suggest that you do – not because of the controversy, but because it’s one of Rushdie’s best. It was only a subplot of the book that caused the offence, those sequences based on the founding stories of Islam. The novel is really about the immigrant experience of living in London, but with the author’s characteristic touch of magical realism. It has one of the most audacious openings of a novel I’ve ever read, with the two principal characters – Gibreel and Saladin – falling from the sky from an exploded jumbo jet, dancing and singing deliriously as they tumble towards London. The novel is exhilarating, moving, and frequently funny; I can’t help but notice how many of Rushdie’s critics seem to lack that all-important sense of humour.

Of course, this wasn’t really about people reading a book and being offended by its contents. This was about philistines who hadn’t read the book and who were offended anyway because some Iron Mullah had told them to be. And when it comes to freedom of expression, we all need to be a little braver. We need to remind those who complain about works of fiction that their offence is their own business. They don’t get to decide what other people should or should not read, which cartoons should or should not be drawn, which ideas should or should not be ridiculed or critiqued.

In his memoir Joseph Anton (the pseudonym that Rushdie adopted during his time under police protection), Rushdie includes this letter to a reader:

“Thank you for your kind words about my work. May I make the elementary point that the freedom to write is closely related to the freedom to read, and not have your reading selected, vetted and censored for you by any priesthood or Outraged Community? Since when was a work of art defined by the people who didn’t like it? The value of art lies in the love it engenders, not the hatred. It’s love that makes books last. Please keep reading.”

And that’s exactly what we should do. We need to keep reading, in spite of those Iron Mullahs of the world who would compel us to stop.

[artist-issues]

Okay, hey, I have something to say about Avatar.  Because the haters love to talk about how nobody’s talking about it. But do you know why nobody’s talking about it? It’s not because it’s a flop. It’s not because it’s predictable, or lazy, or nobody cared, or anything like that.

Nobody’s talking about it because Avatar 2: The Way of Water is (beyond all the hype and the Disney and the animation pioneering and the meme of it all) a good, old-fashioned story about classic family roles. And we’ve lost the ability to let that impact us.

We’re more interested in movies about family that glorify our Teen Angst when we’re pushing 30 years old. Give us Encanto, where the parents aren’t doing enough and the Grandma is the villain and the children are martyrs of the older generation. Give us Stranger Things, where the adults are either evil or straight-up useless, but the kids have more insight into reality. That’s what we crave. A story that strokes our egos and reminds us that our parents were wrong about us. Doesn’t matter about what, exactly, but yeah, the parents are the dummies and the kids are the saviors.

We have no taste buds cultivated for a movie like Avatar 2, where the Dad and Mom just spend the entire movie learning what protection really means. We have no taste buds cultivated for a film where, yes, the kids are innovators and save parts of the day, but they also get into incredible danger thanks to disobedience, and one of them even dies because that is what happens when you’re a kid and you try to be an adult in a war zone.  I mean, gosh, please name me another film in 2022 that was as big and bold about A Father’s Job as Avatar 2: The Way of Water. Our culture doesn’t even want to say “father” anymore, because that would imply that male leaders of a family are actually something that should exist. But Avatar 2: The Way of Water really just said “A father’s role is to protect. That doesn’t mean saving my family by running from trouble.”

Jake goes from making decisions out of fear for his family to trusting in a higher power and leading his family in protecting their home. Proactively, not reactively.  Now, let me be clear, I hate that the higher power is a mashed-up ripoff of various religions, most prominently slapping the rearranged letters of God’s holy name on an amalgamation of Hindu and New Age ideology. And I’m very not cool with the messianic birth trope. But truly, that’s a subject for another time.

Right now, the point I’m making is, you can hate on Avatar 2: The Way of Water for not making a social media splash all you want. But the truth is, the film was made by real, solid filmmakers who have been writing screenplays for things like Armageddon and Titanic. They’re not some hyper-woke scrubs. They know what they’re doing. 

We’ve just lost the ability to talk about stories that are built on traditional values. Avatar 2: The Way of Water isn’t making a splash on social media, not because it wasn’t good, but because the only things that make a splash on social media these days are woke, controversial, political, or pandering. Timeless tales about a family learning to come of age in adversity with the father leading just don’t hit the spot anymore.

[harrisonstories]

Eric Idle, George Harrison, and Stuart Lerner at Ray Cooper's New Year's Eve party in Chiswick. (looks to be early 80s)

Photo by: Carinthia West

Even so, [Eric Idle] says, he wasn’t scared [about being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer]. Why not? "George Harrison. He always said to me: 'Well, you can have as much money as you want, you can be the most famous person in the world, but you’re still going to have to die.'" He does a cracking dour scouse impersonation of the former Beatle. "This was always his theme. And he prepared for it his entire life. I was around his deathbed. He wasn’t worried because he was in the Hindu faith." Idle’s only faith is in science, but Harrison’s acceptance of death profoundly affected him. "It was just fabulous to see someone pass away calmly without panic, regret or bitterness. It was a great example."

Despite what he says about his British stiff upper lip, Idle is an emotional man, and probably now more so than usual. He becomes tearful talking about Harrison. "George was such a force for good, and so supportive of me at a time in my life when I was confused and sad. My first marriage [to Australian actor Lyn Ashley, mother of his son, Carey] was breaking up, and he just looked after me. I’d never had such a close friendship before with anybody." Nor since. "I think George was the most influential person I’ve met in life. And certainly in death."

[...] Lennon and McCartney were the main Beatles composers, while Harrison wrote on his own. Similarly in Python, Graham Chapman and John Cleese, and Michael Palin and Terry Jones, wrote as teams, while Idle wrote alone. "I was like a free-floating radical, and that’s where George and I bonded." He grins. "And we liked a reefer and to play guitar together."

-- Simon Hattenstone, ‘I didn’t cry until I knew I was going to live’: Monty Python’s Eric Idle on surviving pancreatic cancer, The Guardian (3 Oct. 2022)

[aeolianblues]

A new article I really liked about the emerging metal scene in Chennai!

For context, Chennai in South India has finally begun to gain some momentum, having opened a few metal bars, cover nights and shows showcasing local metal acts. Despite metal being really big in nearby Bangalore, it hasn’t historically taken as much root in Chennai, Chennai’s always had a larger folk, classical or acoustic singer-songwriter scene.

This is a new article in The Hindu talking about emerging metal acts in the city.

Chennai’s metal scene evolves with steady head banging and roars

In popular pubs across Chennai, an underground metal scene swaddled in black, makes a comeback.

Most of the 100 people gathered around The Spotted Deer pub in The Palomar hotel in ECR early in April were in black T-shirts, while others wore distinctive white shirts and lungis.

Shreyaa Lakshmi Narayanan, one among the few managing the crowd, had never heard a metal song before this sold-out gig. But she has been bobbing her head to heavy music ever since.

The genre is making noise again in Chennai. And there is no better proof than Metal Munnetra Kazhagam, a cover gig by musicians across the city in tribute to globally legendary bands Slipknot and Rage Against the Machine.

“It wasn’t just a concert…it felt like a turning point, a hope for even greater collaboration and creativity in the community,” said Aditya Rao, frontman of Mangas and the Mango Men, a metal band born in 2022. 

Formed with a sly spin on Tamil Nadu’s distinctive political party suffix, the gig featured members of Chennai’s loudest homegrown bands, like Mangas, Moral Putrefaction, Frankendriver and Godia, teaming up with each other to roar and get roared at. 

“We wanted to change attitudes towards metal, and mix bands to give people new to Chennai a chance,” smiled Manu Krishnan, one of the organisers. 

This year has been more than a revival for metal in Chennai. It has also been a reinvention: in embracing Tamil culture as a brand, who gets to play on stage, accessibility, and in the very heart of what it means to love the heaviest sounds of Chennai. 

Armaan, Manu and Srikanth Natarajan founded Metal Chennai in 2018 to change the idea of “metal being an expensive hobby,” in Manu’s words. Saturday night’s screaming marked the first big Metal Chennai gig since September last year, which was hosted in Gears n Garage in Nungambakkam. When the pub indefinitely shut shop, it signalled a shrunken number of venues willing to host metal.

Nevertheless, metalheads in Chennai have for generations been fighting tooth and nail to keep the volatile pulse of the scene alive: finding scream-friendly venues and trying to build a community that is safe and enticing for everyone, while still tough and edgy enough for the brand.

Venues that both sonically work for metal and are willing to host it in the city are rare, unlike ones like Bangalore. “Metal is not like other genres. We can’t just amplify the sound. It needs an advanced setup,” says Shivamoorthy of Moral Putrefaction. 

Artistes performing at Metal Munnetra Kazhagam at The Spotted Dear pub in hotel The Palomar by Crossway, ECR in Chennai. Photo: R. Ravindran | Photo Credit: Ravindran_R

The Palomar hotel began operations just last month, and talks are ongoing for future events.

The craze for metal in fact dates back to at least the Sixties, according to Eddie Prithviraj, who joined in the early Nineties. He’s been organising live music gigs across genres like jazz and pop in Chennai for 30 years, but back then, he had just founded a metal band called Bone Saw, and another called Blood Covenant in 2004. Issues with venues date back to even his time, when he had to close one himself.

“Come the Nineties, a couple of rebels really wanted to explode themselves,” Eddie explains. “It’s never been in the mainstream. But it was there. Guys recorded extreme death metal on cassettes in 1996. It was something to be cherished. It isn’t anymore.”

Between 2015 and 2018, Chennai’s metal scene had once again “died,” as recalled by Armaan, Mickey and Isaiah Anderson, vocalist of progressive metalcore band Godia. 

Mickey has convinced some of his bands to change their names and album art styles to make them fiercer because “branding matters in a commercial music space.” In Chennai and India at large, he argues, bands usually start in universities and they don’t think about branding then. 

Chennai has seen a rise in more explicitly defined subjects in metal lyrics, with subjects spanning from genocide, the “rot” in society and rights for the queer community for Moral Putrefaction to mental health and depression for Godia. This, Shivamoorthy of Moral Putrefaction says, also goes against the tide of “aggression”, sometimes tinged with right-wing politics, in metal.  

Artistes performing at Metal Munnetra Kazhagam at The Spotted Dear pub in hotel The Palomar by Crossway, ECR in Chennai. Photo: R. Ravindran | Photo Credit: Ravindran_R

As a culmination of all the trends in this genre in Chennai, the attendance at Metal Munnetra Kazhagam is what Beeto Jerrin from Moral Putrefaction describes as a “decent” crowd by the standards of 2023. Ironically, during the struggle to regain these numbers in Chennai, bands like his and Godia reached international acclaim with performances and signed records.

Despite metal now being forced to think in terms of business, the desire to increase listeners comes from a very personal place for many. 

Armaan, points out that so far in India, there have been barriers of privilege in language, caste, gender and capital that restrict possibilities for both bands and audiences. One way this plays out in Chennai is women being sidelined in the metal scene This is something that Armaan, as an organiser, admits to still navigating. 

The gig also comes at the heels of a brand new college student-run platform MoshLit Events, the youngest group to organise metal and hard rock events, securing venues like 10 Downing Street and Steams n Whistles bar in GRT Grand. The technicality of sound is an issue here, according to Sivaramakrishnan, bassist for Frankendriver, but his bandmate Teeto Jerrin feels the energy at their gigs is sky high.

MoshLit kicked off just this year. They lay it all out on Instagram: commissioning graphic designers for posters, posting videos from the shows,  and almost daring people to come. Their aim is to bring metal to the “forefront,” with uniquely appealing initiatives like relatively accessible ticket prices and an after-party DJ. You could spot MoshLit at a Metal Chennai gig, and vice versa.

In today’s Tamil Nadu, metalheads keep grooving. Inside the toughness, Manu says, “we’re all teddy bears.” As Aditya puts it, “supporting each other will carry us forward.”

[mariacallous]

The March 22 terrorist attack targeting concertgoers in Moscow, which was later claimed by the Islamic State, was an eerily familiar shock for Russians. In 2002, approximately a year after 9/11, Islamist terrorists claiming allegiance to a separatist movement in Chechnya besieged the crowded Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. More than 130 people were killed in the operation to clear the theater.

Last month’s attack, which killed at least 144 people, opened multiple geopolitical fissures. The Kremlin, having caught—and tortured—at least a few of the suspected perpetrators, claimed that the terrorists were looking to head toward Ukraine, where Russia is embroiled in its own endless war. Online, the story took a life of its own as conspiracy theories overwhelmed facts.

As attention shifted eastward toward the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISK), the group’s branch based in Afghanistan, contrarian views, mostly in Russian media but amplified on social media platforms, of this being a false-flag operation designed by the West simultaneously took off.

In between such distractions, the victor was the Islamic State. The group’s spokesperson, known by his nom de guerre Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari, released a 41-minute audio message a few days after the Moscow attack. Curiously, the message, titled “By God, this religion [Islam] will prevail,” mentioned Russia only in passing. It however congratulated Islamic State ecosystems and wilayas (Arabic for provinces), or offshoots, on a successful 10 years of the caliphate.

The message takes the listener on a world tour of sorts, highlighting the group’s presence across regions from Africa to Southeast Asia, challenging the notion that it is a spent force. Ansari also congratulated the group’s fighters for their campaigns against the Chinese, Russians, Sikhs, and Hindus. It also chastised the very idea of democracy—a long-standing ideological position for most jihadi groups.

Only a few hours prior to this, ISK had released a separate 18-minute propaganda video in Pashto targeting the Afghan Taliban’s outreach with India. This is particularly noteworthy after India facilitated the evacuation of Sikhs and Hindus from the country, specifically after ISK claimed an attack against a Sikh temple in Kabul in 2022. Islamic State propaganda has also long stoked communal divisions in India to instigate Muslims against the state.

The video took the format of a first-person narrative, discussing how the Taliban regime was working with the Indian state, which ISK views as an anti-Muslim institution. This was not the first time either the Islamic State or ISK had targeted India in its propaganda, but interestingly, the latter’s primary aim here was the Taliban’s behavior and not necessarily India, its democracy, or its perceived Hindu-nationalist political bent by itself.

The chaotic U.S. exit from Afghanistan and subsequent return to power of the Taliban in 2021 was a watershed moment. But the negotiated exit was not a difficult decision for the U.S. government, which was clear in its vision on what it wanted out of leaving, as Washington looked to pivot toward new areas of strategic competition in Asia.

The challenge fell to powers within the region, which were left to deal with an extremist movement in control of a critical neighboring state. For more than 20 years, Afghanistan’s neighbors, including China and Russia, benefited from the expansive U.S. and NATO military umbrella. This allowed them to pursue their own strategic interests such as developing influence within Afghanistan’s ethnic divisions and the power brokers representing these groups without any significant military commitment. On Aug. 30, 2021, then-Maj. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue was the last U.S. soldier to leave the country. Afghanistan was now an Asian problem.

But Russia, China, and Iran—the three primary adversaries of the United States, and by association Western geopolitical constructs—were in fact happy. After two decades, there were no massive U.S. military deployments on Iran’s eastern border at a time when its relations with Washington were at their worst. Tehran’s own history with Afghanistan, and specifically the Taliban, is confrontational.

Throughout the 1990s, the Iranians supported anti-Taliban groups, particularly rebel leaders such as Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Northern Alliance. Tehran was not alone, as others, including India, Russia, and Tajikistan among others, supported these groups against the Taliban and its sponsors in Pakistan.

Fast forward to 2021, and Iran decided to go the opposite way. It opened diplomatic and economic channels with the new regime in Kabul and looked to build support in exchange for a healthy level of anti-Western patronage and relative calm on the borders.

Iran’s two other closest allies in Moscow and Beijing followed suit. Iran, Russia, and China have all, in a way, recognized the Taliban as the quasi-official rulers of Afghanistan. Beijing has gone a step beyond, with Chinese President Xi Jinping officially accepting the accreditation of the new Taliban-appointed ambassador to his country.

Russia, still a little wary due to its history of fighting against and losing to the U.S.-backed mujahideen between 1979 and 1989 and more vocal in its criticism, accepted Taliban diplomats in Moscow in 2022 and is now even considering removing the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organizations.

The stance these three states have adopted is a calculated risk; they see Taliban rule as a more palatable crisis to deal with than an expansive U.S. military presence at a time when great-power competition is once again taking hold of contemporary international relations.

Other countries, such as many of those in Central Asia, have also grudgingly taken the path of engagement with Kabul so as to try to avoid a return of regional conflict and proliferation of extremist ideologies by using the Taliban itself as a buffer as they try to keep one foot in and the other out the proverbial door.

Pakistan, long the Taliban’s patron, is already caught in a lover’s feud with its own protégés in Afghanistan as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan continues a militant campaign against Islamabad. Meanwhile, India has begun to balance between naked strategic interest and the long-term costs of the political normalization of such entities.

A trend of political victories for militant groups such as the Taliban is expanding. In the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, the latter has in many respects come out on top by gaining more legitimacy than it ever expected despite the bloodiness of its attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas has managed to move its own narrative away from being a proscribed terrorist group to being viewed as a revolutionary movement for the liberation of Palestine. Its political leadership, based out of Qatar, even condemned the terrorist attack in Russia.

The spectacle of an Islamist terrorist group publicly condemning another Islamist terrorist group underscores the absurdity of this situation. Hamas leaders, such as Ismail Haniyeh, have visited Iran and Russia to drum up support. Beijing, while asking for a secession of hostilities, has yet to denounce Hamas by name for its actions. At some level, all these states are happy to engage with such militant groups if it aids in the weakening of U.S. power and hegemony.

A significant level of global cooperation against terrorism, which was achieved in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the so-called global war on terrorism, is fast eroding. For example, up until 2015, Moscow had allowed NATO military supply flights meant for Afghanistan to use its airspace. Multilateral forums such as the United Nations are now repeatedly questioned over their purpose and worth.

For groups such as the Islamic State, this is a boon. Even though most of these competing powers see the group as a security threat that requires military solutions, a lack of uniformity creates a tremendous vacuum in which such entities can thrive. And while most of Afghanistan’s neighbors today are forced to view the Taliban as the “good Taliban,” considering its fundamental aversion to the Islamic State and its ideology (due to tension between Deobandis and Salafi jihadis), these new realities will make cohesive and effective global cooperation against terrorism far less likely.

This raises a critical question: Who is going to lead the global counterterrorism push? Militarily, the kind of capacity the United States deploys against terrorist groups remains unchallenged. From the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019 to the new Islamic State caliphs being degraded to faceless, often nameless personas, the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve in Syria has been effective—and it continues to this day. But the expansion of Islamic State wilayas and their own individual clout, as highlighted by Ansari, challenges these successes.

In Africa, Russia is empowering local warlords and dilettantes to take on the Islamic State while it simultaneously cements its own presence, particularly as Western powers such as the United States and France struggle to hold on to their military footing. Propping up regimes in places such as Mali and Burkina Faso by offering political stability and pushing them to fight groups such as the Islamic State is a model both Russia and China seem to gravitate toward.

As the Moscow attack revealed, an era of increased rivalry between major powers that tolerate terrorist groups that target their adversaries could ultimately spawn a resurgence of Islamist terrorism. This new geopolitical landscape, by default, will give terrorist groups more chances of political compromise through negotiations than ever before.

The popular yet often frowned-on adage of “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter” seems to be a winning formula for those who were widely seen as critical threats yesterday but now are aspiring to be the stakeholders of tomorrow.

[everydayesterday]

I think I’ve posted this before, but there was just an article published in Scientific American that’s behind a paywall and basically just repeats what’s below.  What fascinates me is how the math is done using the numerals.  

Anchorage Daily News, 2022-11-06:

Almost 30 years ago, a group of Kaktovik students invented a numbering system that reflected the way they counted in Iñupiaq and made math more intuitive for them. Soon, anyone in the world will be able to type Kaktovik numerals on a computer. [...]  

Most countries use the Hindu-Arabic base-10 numbering system where numbers range from 0 to 9. But in Iñupiaq — as well as other Inuit and Yup’ik languages — the numbers go from 0 to 19, which makes it a base-20 system. [...]  

"The Iñupiaq word for the number 20 is iñuiññaq, which represents a whole person," Judkins said. "You have all 20 appendages — your 10 fingers and your 10 toes. A lot of the classroom activities that we use now with this numbering system is in relation to those body parts and those appendages." [...]

Kaktovik students came up with digits from zero through 19, composed of straight strokes joined at sharp angles that you can write without lifting a pen. [...]

“We didn’t want them to look like any other numbers,” Solomon said. “It was our whole math class that did it together.” [...]

[onetwistedmiracle]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/05/13/study-girls-raised-jewish-outperform-christian-girls-academically/

Religion

Study: Girls raised Jewish outperform Christian girls academically

By Yonat Shimron

May 13, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

If a Supreme Court justice, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the treasury secretary were not enough, Jewish girls can find plenty of other role models of professional success.

A new study suggests the examples of these Jewish women — Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and many others like them — have made a deep impression.

The study, published in the latest edition of the American Sociological Review, finds that girls with a Jewish upbringing are 23 percent more likely to graduate college, and to graduate from much more selective colleges, than girls with a Christian upbringing. (The study included comparisons with Protestants, mostly evangelicals.)

These girls, the study found, have ambitious career goals and prioritize their professional success over marriage and motherhood. The girls in the study were all reared in liberal Jewish movements that make up the vast majority of American Jewish life; none was Orthodox.

“Whereas Jewish upbringing promoted self-concepts centered on meaningful careers and public impact, non-Jewish upbringing promoted self-concepts centered on marriage and motherhood,” wrote the study’s four authors, led by Tulane University sociologist Ilana Horwitz.

The study is based on an analysis of data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, a 10-year longitudinal study of the religious lives of 3,290 American youth from adolescence into young adulthood. The NSYR included an oversample of 80 Jewish households, from which researchers based their study. (The NSYR did not include sufficient Muslim or Hindu participants for comparison.)

The researchers then matched the data with the National Student Clearinghouse, which provides educational reporting and verification.

The results were startling. The study estimates that boys and girls raised by at least one Jewish parent have a 73 percent probability of graduating from college, as opposed to 32 percent of young people raised by non-Jewish parents. In other words, they are at least 2.28 times more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than children raised by non-Jewish parents.

When researchers looked at the elite schools attended by the Jewish NSYR participants, they found the school’s average SAT scores were higher, too.

Students raised by at least one Jewish parent attended colleges with a mean SAT score of 1201, whereas participants raised by non-Jewish parents attended colleges with a mean SAT score of 1102 (99 points lower).

And girls raised by Jewish parents were even more likely to graduate from college than boys raised with Jewish parents.

“I’d like to make a mark,” said a Jewish girl named Debbie who was interviewed by NSYR researchers. “I’m not the type of person who’s okay not being in the limelight.”

“I’m thinking about Ivy Leagues,” a Jewish girl named Jessica told researchers. “My parents both went to Cornell. I’ve been there a few times, I like it there a lot and it’s the kind of place where I would want to go.”

By contrast, some of the Christian girls in the study had other priorities.

“I think the biggest thing that a mother can do is to be with her kids,” said a girl named Mandy. “That’s the greatest thing over her career.”

The study suggests it was not any innate genetic factors that made the Jewish girls stand out. Rather it was a set of cultural, historical, political and religious factors that contributed to an environment in which parents and other Jewish elders imbued the girls with educational and professional expectations of success.

One key attribute shared by the Jewish girls: They grew up in Jewish communities that were egalitarian, believing men and women are equal in roles and responsibilities, in the home and in society at large.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a founding editor of Ms. Magazine and the author of “Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America,” a 1991 book that addressed Jewish feminism, said she was not surprised by the findings.

“I think there has been a gradual accumulation of knowledge that explains women feeling that, ‘Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.’ As long as we can have a postgraduate degree we can mark our lives and we don’t have to marry achievement,” she said. “We can achieve our own.”

Stephen Vaisey, a professor of sociology at Duke University who was an interviewer for the NSYR when he was in graduate school, said he thought the study of Jewish girls was well designed and comprehensive. But it contrasted two very different groups: liberal Jews and often conservative Protestants. Had it included nonreligious as a comparison group, he said, the results may have looked different.

“If you took people with the same level of education and the same level of occupational prestige and compare Jewish and secular I wonder if you’d see a difference,” Vaisey said. “How much of this is about Judaism and how much about Christianity and traditional gender roles?”

All the girls in the NSYR study had what researchers described as a “moderate” level of Jewish engagement. They attended Hebrew school or perhaps a Jewish day school. They went to synagogue occasionally. Some belonged to a Jewish youth group.

But it was not Jewish teachings or any particular set of beliefs that necessarily contributed to their success so much as the stories they may have absorbed from their parents and grandparents at Shabbat dinners or bat mitzvah parties or at the Passover Seder about the accomplishments of their Jewish women ancestors, Horwitz said.

“Part of the narrative that Jewish adults convey to their children is that education helped Jews survive in Europe and eventually thrive in the United States,” according to the study.

Women are now much more likely to enroll in college than men. In 2020, just 41 percent of students enrolled in a postsecondary institution were men, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.

But Horwitz argues there is something about liberal Judaism that socializes girls to succeed academically and professionally.

“There’s an egalitarianism in Judaism where families teach their girls they can be anything they want to be,” Horwitz said. “They don’t want to do it by altruism, they want to do it by being prominent within. They want to be in the spotlight and make a difference in a loud way.”

— Religion News Service

[shut-up-rabert]

I posted 263 times in 2022

That's 263 more posts than 2021!

139 posts created (53%)

124 posts reblogged (47%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@pulihora

@suvarnarekha

@navaratna

@ramayantika

@shanti-ashant-hai

I tagged 256 of my posts in 2022

Only 3% of my posts had no tags

#desiblr - 173 posts

#hindublr - 21 posts

#hinduphobia - 10 posts

#hinduism - 8 posts

#kashmir - 7 posts

#jammu and kashmir - 6 posts

#kashmiri hindus - 5 posts

#kashmir genocide - 5 posts

#kanhaiya lal - 5 posts

#pakistan - 5 posts

Longest Tag: 123 characters

#won’t even be surprised if kashmir genocide is represented as “a dark time when young kashmiri girls couldn’t go to school”

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Movie concept: students from pan India living together in a hostel but instead we get less represented states like 7 sisters(+sikkim), Odisha, Karnataka, MP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Goa in lead along with correct representation of states like Haryana, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerela, Andhra, Bihar, J&K&Ladakh in the background

46 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

#4

Just read a comic where UK and Canada were referred to as North Punjab and West Punjab and I haven’t been okay since

49 notes - Posted September 21, 2022

#3

Why isn’t mass media more neutral?

Disclaimer: I’m not taking any sides here, nor am I provoking any of you to say it, but this has been on my mind quite a bit and I feel like saying it now: Honestly saying, I’ve always felt like the media favours Palestine over Israel way to much even tho media is supposed to be neutral.

Essays in exams, front pages of newspaper, stars on social media always talk about Palestine but seem to be painting a rather black and white “Palestine good Israel bad” picture but never seem to be willing to dwell deeper into the topic, and when they they go somewhat below the surface it’s always from Palestine’s perispective only, nothing explaining Israel’s side of story as passionately even if at all. Even in India vs Pakistan wars, you’ll find motives and aggressions from both sides easily enough if you looked.

“Stars” like Bela Hadid raise slogans demanding Israel’s dissolve under the ruse of Palestine’s independence and no one bats an eye. The founder of Human rights watch left the organisation saying that it was being biased towards Palestine and has forgotten its original purpose. A lot of funding of these pro palestine news channels comes from Pro Islamic nations organisations, most of the said countries being Palestine supporters.

Palestine is suffering, yes, but it’s not just Israel that’s making it suffer. Hamas has a major role to play too. It kills its own civilians more than Israel does. Palestine has seen some serious bloodshed since Hamas came into power but no one seems to focus on that. There’s little to no discussion about how Palestine is bleeding internally due to hamas, but only the stuff that can be used against Israel.

You’ll hear about how Israel “attacked” Gaza and most of the times it turns out to be some retaliation. We always hear about civilian deaths whose names are never revealed but no one ever wonders what civilians were doing around militant bases. We talk about how palestinians are being thrown out of Israel to show them as big aggressors and it turns out that the land was originally Israel’s territory to begin with.

I’m not being pro-Israel here, And I very well admit that it can have its fair share of violations, such as killing of the one Al-Jazeera reporter , accident or not (look, I fucking hate that platform but that doesn’t mean I condone killing of someone who didn’t do anything) but this is something that has always made me curious. It can’t be as simple as “Israel evil”, can it?

53 notes - Posted August 29, 2022

#2

Hassi to ye sochkar aati h ki mera hone waala abhi kisi aur ke saath jeeney-marne ki kasme kha rha hoga

62 notes - Posted August 5, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

What you see:

What Desi kids see:

156 notes - Posted November 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[brookston]

Holidays 10.24

Holidays

Azad Kashmir Day (Pakistan)

Black Thursday Commemoration

40-Hour Work Week Day

Gormanudr (Old Icelandic)

Hawke’s Bay Day (New Zealand)

Lego Day

National Crazy Day

National One United Race Day

National Senior UTI Awareness Day

National Temperature Day

Programmer’s Day (China)

Scorpio zodiac sign begins

Suez Day (Egypt)

Take Back Your Time Day

Telegram Day

Tony Bennett Day (NYC)

United Nations Day

Vote Early Day

World Development Information Day (UN)

World Origami Days begin (until 11.11)

World Polio Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

Feast of Good and Plenty (a.k.a. Good and Plenty Day)

Food Day [ website ]

Hershey’s Chocolate Day

National Bologna Day

National Jamaican Jerk Day

Share a Pop-Tart with Someone You Love Day

World Tripe Day

4th Monday in October

Green Monday [Monday of Last Full Week]

International School Library Day [4th Monday]

Labour Day (New Zealand) [4th Monday]

Independence Days

Zambia (from UK, 1964)

Feast Days

Anthony Mary Claret (Christian; Saint)

Betty Lou (Muppetism)

Bijaya Dashami [10th Day of Dashain]

Cider Appreciation Day (Pastafarian)

Diwali Begins (Hindu, Jain, Sikh), a.k.a. ... 

Deepavali (Guyana, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka)

Deepawali (Sikkam, India)

Divali (Fiji, India, Kenya, Mauritius, Suriname)

Diwali Amavasya (India, Trinidad and Tobago)

Festival of Lights (Celebrating the Indian god Laxmi)

Gai Tihar (Nepal)

Kag Puja (Day of the Crows)

Kag Tihar (Day of the Crows)

Kali Puja (Assam, Odisha, West Bengal; India)

Laxmi Pooja (Nepal)

Laxmi Puja (Sikkim, India)

Naraka Chaturdashi (Assam, Odisha, West Bengal; India)

Tihar Festival (Nepal)

Yam Panchak (Nepal)

Eberigisil (Evergitus; Christian; Saint)

Five Martyrs of Carthage (Felix and Companions; Christian; Saint)

Janis Joplin Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Lilith’s Day (Ancient Mesopotamian)

Luigi Guanella (Christian; Saint)

Magloire of Dol (Christian; Saint)

Maladay (Discordian)

Martin of Vertou (Christian; Saint)

New Year’s Day (Jainism)

Proclus of Constantinople (Christian; Saint)

Raphael the Archangel (Catholic Church 1921-1969, local calendars)

Rafael Guízar y Valencia (Christian; Saint)

Senoch (Christian; Saint)

Vico (Positivist; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Lucky Day (Philippines) [57 of 71]

Sensho (先勝 Japan) [Good luck in the morning, bad luck in the afternoon.]

Unlucky Day (Grafton’s Manual of 1565) [49 of 60]

Premieres

American Pie, by Don McLean (Album; 1971)

Battle of Britain (Film; 1969)

Equus, by Peter Shaffer (Play; 1973)

John Wick (Film; 2014)

Live at the Apollo, recorded by James Brown (Album; 1962)

The Manchurian Candidate (Film; 1962)

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, by Smashing Pumpkins (Album; 1995)

Mellow Yellow, by Donovan (Song; 1966)

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, by Simon & Garfunkel (Album; 1966)

Shaved Fish, by John Lennon (Album; 1975)

Smooth Criminal, by Michael Jackson (Song; 1988)

St. Vincent (Film; 2014)

Taylor Swift, by Taylor Swift (Album; 2006)

The Wiz (Film; 1978)

Today’s Name Days

Anton (Austria)

Antun, Proklo (Croatia)

Nina (Czech Republic)

Proclus (Denmark)

Asmo, Asmus, Ermo, Rasmus (Estonia)

Asmo, Rasmus (Finland)

Florentin (France)

Alois, Aloisia, Anton, Armella, Victoria (Germany)

Sevastiani (Greece)

Salamon (Hungary)

Ponzia (Italy)

Ara, Modrite, Mudrīte, Renāte (Latvia)

Daugailas, Gilbertas, Rapolas, Švitrigailė (Lithuania)

Eilif, Eivor (Norway)

Antoni, Boleczest, Filip, Hortensja, Marcin, Rafaela, Rafał, Salomon (Poland)

Kvetoslava (Slovakia)

Antonio (Spain)

Eilert, Evert (Sweden)

Valentine (Ukraine)

Denver, Rafael, Rafaela, Raphael, Raphaela (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 297 of 2022; 68 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 43 of 2022

Celtic Tree Calendar: Gort (Ivy) [Day 24 of 28]

Chinese: Month 9 (Júyuè), Day 29 (Geng-Xu)

Chinese Year of the: Tiger (until January 22, 2023)

Hebrew: 29 Tishri 5783

Islamic: 28 Rabi I 1444

J Cal: 27 Shù; Fiveday [27 of 30]

Julian: 11 October 2022

Moon: 1%: Waning Crescent

Positivist: 17 Descartes (11th Month) [Vico]

Runic Half Month: Wyn (Joy) [Day 14 of 15]

Season: Autumn (Day 32 of 90)

Zodiac: Scorpio (Day 2 of 31)