Posts Tagged ‘Gandhi’
Quick questions and answers of Gandhi
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 1, 2018
Quick questions and answers of Gandhi
“Disobedience is man’s original virtue…” and Non-cooperative movements of Gandhi…
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 25, 2013
“Disobedience is man’s original virtue…”
In “The soul of man under socialism”, Oscar Wild wrote:
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, and through rebellion…”
In “On the concept of history”, Walter Benjamin wrote:
“There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism…”
James Fenton in “Blood and Lead”
“Listen to what they did.
Don’t listen to what they said.
What was written in blood
Has been set up in lead”
In “The recollection of Alexis de Tocqueville 1896”
“In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the End”
W.H Auden in “Epitaph on a Tyrant”
“Perfection, of a kind, is what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets.
When he laughed, respected senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried, the little children died in the streets.”
In “Sonnets from China II”, Auden wrote: “They wept and quarreled: Freedom was so wild”
Mustafa Abdel Jalil (Libya interim president) said in September 2011:
“I hope the revolution will not stumble by retribution, taking matters into your hands and oppression…”
Late Vaclav Havel (President of Austria) said:
“Decent people cannot sit back and watch systematic, state-directed massacres. Decent people cannot fail to come to the rescue when within their power…”
Joseph Joubert wrote: “Love and Fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other”
Joseph Stalin (Absolute dictator of the Soviet Union) said:
“Death is the solution to all problems. No man, no problem”
Omar Mukhtar (Libya resistance fighter leader to Italian occupation during Mussolini) said:
“We win or we die.” Finally, he surrendered and was taken to Rome in chains
Muammar Qadhafi wrote in his “Green Book”:
“There are inevitable cycles of social history:
1. The Yellow Race’s dominion of the world in Asia
2. The White Race’s attempt at colonizing extensive areas in all continents
3. Now it is the turn of the Black race to prevail in the world…”
One of the first steps to disobedience is to wean yourself out of rituals and ceremonies. Start to question the rationale and historical meaning and purposes of the rituals you are submitting to.
Civil disobedience is not an easy resolution to get engaged in: Law and Order institutions have to be revisited and reflected upon their validity in the pursuit of happiness, freedom of expression, human rights, and availability of opportunities to all regardless of race, genders, religious belief, and financial status.
Gandhi has developed the guidelines for non-cooperative movements against governments that broke their oaths and pledges to serving the people and are exercising cruelty, exploitation and oppression.
The program of non-cooperation is of 4 steps, each step is meant to reach a higher level of disobedience to the authority.
The first responsibility is to exposing, precisely, the project to the population at large through meetings and focused communication.
The next step is to convince the public servants to voluntarily abandon their titled positions and charges with the government and encouraging the lawyers and judges to stop serving the government. No pressures should be exercised on the functionaries, especially if the movement is unable to provide for the bread winners. The private employees are excluded from the requirements of abandoning their services.
The third step would ask the army and security officers and soldiers to retreat from their duties.
The last step would amount to refusing paying taxes to the government.
In order to shorten the period of resistance with a successful outcome, the organization of the non-cooperative movement should cater to the weakest members in social status or economic needs. The members of the movement should:
1. stop taking loans from government funds;
2. conflicts among the members must be resolved through private arbitrage because lawyers should suspend the exercise of their official profession toward the government.
3. The members should start boycotting public schools; (in this request, I would include boycotting private schools so that no discrimination in economic status should be established).
4. The members should not attend any government reunions and meetings and ceremonies; they should refuse accepting any civil or military post.
5. In case of being under occupation, the members should rely solely on local and national products and manufactures “swadeshi” and thus,boycotting imported consumer’s products from the colonial powers.
For more details on non-violent-resistance-guidelines: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/gandhis-non-violent-resistance-guidelines/
Note 1: Quotes taken from “Sandstorm (El Ghibli): Libya in the time of revolution” by Lindsey Hitsum
Note 2: Listen to Matt Damon on “Civil obedience is the problem” Howard Zinn
Any predictions on “Arab Awakening”? Saudi Arabia is next? And Robert Fisk
Posted by: adonis49 on: January 9, 2013
Any predictions on “Arab Awakening”? Saudi Arabia be next? And Robert Fisk
Can anybody predict which way the ‘Arab Awakening’ (the title of George Antonius’ seminal work of 1938) will turn this yea?.
Apparently, everyone is predicting, and going strong in their convictions.
Is it better never make predictions in the Middle East? Then where’s the fun otherwise?
Andrew Bossone wrote: yeah, yeah, you don’t like Fisk… I was in Syria in March 2011 (before the upheaval started) and I was talking with some friends and I insisted that Saudi Arabia would be the last country in the region to fall.
The Syrian guys said no way, Syria would be the last country to go.
Well the next week the uprising started. I still hold to my position about Saudi, in contrast with Fisk.
But Robert Fisk has ventured a very tentative punt or two…
Robert Fisk published in The Independence on Dec. 31, 2012 under: “Could Saudi Arabia be next?”
“My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree.
“An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883 (not 1983), “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.”
A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge… that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca…”
So let’s say this for 2013:
1. The “Arab Awakening” will continue, the demand for dignity and freedom – let us not get tramelled up here with “democracy” – will go on ravaging the pseudo-stability of the Middle East, causing as much fear in Washington as it does in the palaces of the Arab Gulf.
2. On the epic scale of history, that much is certain.
3. At the incendiary core of this discontent will be the claims of a Palestinian State that does not exist and may never exist and the actions of an Israeli state which – through its constant building of colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land – ensures that “Palestine” will remain only an Arab dream.
If 2012 is anything to go by, the Palestinians themselves face the coming year with the knowledge that:
1) neither the Americans nor the Europeans have the guts to help them, because
2) Israel will continue to act with impunity, and
3) neither the Obamas nor the Camerons nor the Hollandes have the slightest interest in taking on the Likudist lobby, which will scream “anti-semitism” the moment the minutest criticism is made against Israel.
4) Add to this the fact that Mahmoud Abbas and his utterly discredited regime in Ramallah will go on making concessions to the Israelis. If you do not believe me, read Clayton Swisher’s The Palestine Papers – even when there are no more concessions to make.
Hamas and Khaled Meshaal will go on denying Israel’s right to exist, allowing Israel to falsely claim that it has “no one to talk to”. And preparing for the next Gaza war and the subsequent cowardly request from the West which will “urge restraint on both sides”, as if the Palestinians possess Merkava tanks, F-18s and drones.
A third Intifada (mass disobedience movement)? Maybe.
An approach to the International Court to condemn Israel for war crimes in building Jewish colonies on other people’s land? Perhaps. But so what?
The Palestinians won an international court case which condemned the building of Israel’s apartheid/security wall – and absolutely nothing happened.
That’s the fate of the Palestinians.
They’re told by the likes of Tom Friedman to abandon violence and adopt the tactics of Gandhi. And when they do, they still lose, and Friedman remains silent.
It was, after all, Gandhi who said that Western civilisation “would be a good idea”.
So bad news for Palestine in 2013.
How about Iran?
The Iranians understand the West much better than we understand the Iranians – a lot of them, remember, were educated in the United States.
And they’ve an intriguing way of coming out on top whatever they do. George Bush (and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara) invaded Afghanistan and rid the Shia Iranians of their Sunni enemy, whom they always called the “Black Taliban”.
And Bush-Blair invaded Iraq and got rid of the Islamic Republic’s most loathsome enemy, Saddam Hussein. Thus did Iran win both the Afghan and the Iraqi war – without firing a shot.
There’s no doubt that Iran would fire a shot or two if Israel/America – the two are interchangeable in Iran as in many other Middle East countries – were to attack its nuclear facilities.
However, Israel has no stomach for an all-out war against Iran – it would lose – and the US, having lost two Middle East wars, has no enthusiasm for losing a third.
Sanctions – and here is Iran’s real potential nemesis – are causing far more misery than Israel’s F-18s. And why is America threatening Iran in the first place? It didn’t threaten India when it went nuclear.
And when that most unstable and extremist state called Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons, no US threat was made to bomb its facilities.
True, we’ve heard that more recently – in case the nukes “fell into the wrong hands”, as in gas which might “fall into the wrong hands” in Syria; or in Gaza, for that matter, where democracy “fell into the wrong hands” the moment Hamas won elections there in 2006.
Now that Obama has entered his drone-happy second presidency, we’re going to hear more about those wonderful unpiloted bombers which have been ripping up bad guys and civilians for more than four years.
One day, one of these machines – though they fly in packs of seven or eight – will hit too many civilians or, even worse, will contrive to kill westerners or NGOs.
Then Obama will be apologising – though without the tears he expended over Newtown, Connecticut. (As Israel apologized to the UN for killing Lebanese refugees in a UN compound in Qana)
And here’s a thought for this year.
The gun lobby in the States tells us that “it’s not guns that kill – it’s people”.
But apply that to drone attacks on Pakistan or Israeli bombardments of Gaza and the rubric changes.
It’s the guns/bombs/rockets that kill because the Americans don’t mean to kill civilians and the Israelis don’t wish to kill civilians.
It’s just “collateral damage” again, though that’s not an excuse you can provide for Hamas rockets.
So what’s left for 2013?
Bashar Assad, of course. He’s already trying to win back some rebel forces to his own ruthless side – an intelligent though dangerous tactic – and the West is getting up to its knees in rebel cruelty. Yes, Assad will go. One day. He says as much.
But don’t expect it to happen in the immediate future. Or Gaddafi-style. The old mantra still applies.
Egypt was not Tunisia and Yemen was not Egypt and Libya was not Yemen and Syria is not Libya.
And Iraq?
Its own latent civil war will go on grinding up the bones of civil societ,y while we largely ignore its agony. There are days now when more Iraqis are killed than Syrians, though you wouldn’t know it from the nightly news.
And the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, where the first Arab awakening began?
Where, indeed, the first Arab revolution – the advent of Islam – burst forth upon the world.
There are those who say that the Gulf kingdoms and Emirates will remain secure for years to come. Don’t count on it.
Watch Saudi Arabia. Remember what that British diplomat wrote 130 years ago. “Even in Mecca…”
In summary:
Syria
‘Yes, Assad will go. One day. He says as much. But don’t expect it to happen in the immediate future. Or Gaddafi-style.’Israel and the Palestinian territories
Israel and the Palestinian territories
‘Hamas and Khaled Meshaal will go on denying Israel’s right to exist – thus allowing Israel to falsely claim that it has “no one to talk to” – until the next Gaza war.’
Iran
‘Israel has no stomach for an all-out war against Iran – it would lose – and the United States, having lost two Middle East wars, has no enthusiasm for losing a third.’
Saudi Arabia
‘There are those who say that the Gulf kingdoms will remain secure for years to come. Don’t count on it. Watch Saudi Arabia.’
Iraq
‘Its own civil war will go on grinding up the bones of civil society while we largely ignore its agony.’
US
‘Now that Obama has entered his drone-happy second presidency, we’re going to hear more about those wonderful unpiloted bombers
Andrew Bossone disagrees that Saudi Arabia absolute monarchy will be next to be swept by the Arab Awakening…Why?
The Saudi governments (absolute monarchy) have suppressed previous uprisings (with American support) starting in the 1930’s. It also suppressed the revolts in Yemen and Bahrain most recently, and had a hand elsewhere.
So I just don’t see Saudi going anywhere for a long time.
My position is Saudi Arabia has built-in a tight-proof military uprising system: The “saudi citizens” don’t have to join the army or encouraged to get military trained for the “defense” of the Kingsdom. The western nations are supposed to do this job, and paid handsomely for cracking down on any serious militaty activities.
Remenber how the French were asked to directly chase out the uprisers in Mecca a decade ago, a liberate the” haramein”.
Saudi Arabia refrain from directly engaging its own “army”, even for defending its borders, such as in Yemen…
The officers are from this extended Saudi clan family, about 5,000 cousins, and most of the soldiers are foreigners.
Iraq is a goner: Iran, the USA, and Saudi Arabia are not interested for the central government to reconstitute a viable army. De facto autonomous partition to four provinces.
Discussion out of context: Non-violence movements, Gandhi, Nazi Germany, Colonial England, power of the media…
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 9, 2012
Discussion out of context: Non-violence movements, Gandhi, Nazi Germany, Colonial England, power of the media…
Someone in the TEDx audience said: “If Gandhi non-violent movement was carried out under Nazi Germany domination, Hitler would have harvested million of Indians without blinking an eyelid…If Gandhi was successful, it is because India was ruled by the “most civilized colonial power”…
How wrong! This argument is a fallacy and totally out of context.
One whispered: “most civilized colonial power my ass“. Why?
First, one of the Generals of the British forces in India harvested more than a thousand peaceful Indians in 1914 for gathering in the courtyard of a Temple. The General closed the exits of the premises of the temple in Amritsar and machine-gunned the upset worshipers, simply for ” setting an example”.
The General received a slap on the hand and was shipped back to England.
Second, while Gandhi was carrying on his movement, England was in deep trouble in Palestine. The about one million Palestinians conducted a civil disobedience movement for over 4 years, starting in 1935, and England had to dispatch 100,000 soldiers to squash the movement.
During this period, England exercised and put in practice in Palestine the most horrific torture methods and military laws ever conceived in history. Why?
The Palestinians wanted municipal and parliamentary elections, and England refused any “democratic procedures” such as those applied by France in Syria and Lebanon since 1920. Why?
The Zionist movement refused any election until the Jews in Palestine become majority! (The Jew represented less than 20% in the 1930’s)
The irony is that Nazi Germany was observing and documenting all the British and French violent tactics in their colonies and didn’t have to even fine-tune these torture and mass execution operations.
Actually, if England and France let Nazi Germany consolidate its power, it was because they were scared of Germany making public their tactics in the colonies: Nazi Germany had a potent propaganda machine that could destabilize the colonies, if it wished.
If England let Gandhi proceed with his movement it was because simple math proscribed sending over 30 million British soldiers to India…while Germany was increasing steadily its economic and military power…
Nazi Germany didn’t even had to meddle in rounding up the Jews in France: Colonial France was more than expert in these operations, and better than Germany that had no colonies to practice upon.
France even sent all the files of every single French citizen to Berlin!
Note 1: In which context this post was inspired from? https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/one-party-is-confronting-advancing-bulldozers-without-weapons-is-that-a-non-violent-activity-what-happened-in-the-town-of-budrus/
Note 2: First Palestinian Intifada https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/first-palestinian-intifada-shaking-off-movement-1987-the-second-2000-the-third-2011/
Any “secret ingredient to inspiring a team”?
Notesby.me did it again with an inspiring article posted on Sept 27 “How TEDxBeirut revealed the secret ingredient to inspire a team“:
“It’s Friday. The day before TEDxBeirut (a day-long conference in three sessions, involving 19 speakers). I’m driving to the venue. I’ve been barely sleeping an hour every night, for the past week. I’m exhausted, and have little energy left.
Today is the final rehearsal with all the speakers, performers, and production crew. It’s going to be a long and intense day. There’s so much that needs to be done. Too much for just one day.
As I’m driving, I think to myself: “I have no idea how I’m going to make it through the day. I’ll probably go in, and when anyone asks how I am, I’ll reply “Exhausted”! That way, I’ll show them that I’ve been working my ass off. That’ll give me enough attention and energy to keep me going just a little bit more.”I pause, get my thoughts together, and continue (my line of thinking):
“Bad idea! We’re all exhausted. Why would I expect myself to be more exhausted than anyyone else? Why would I demand attention from everyone else? Bad idea!”
That’s when a smile forms on my face. “I’m OK” I think to myself. “Actually, I feel great! This is what we’ve all been working very hard for. It’s almost here. I’m excited!” And all of a sudden, everything changes.
I arrive at the venue. I’m all hyper and ecstatic. I go inside and start hugging and loving everyone. I can’t get the smile off my face. Everyone smiles back. I can see the light in their eyes. Little do I realize on that day, the effects of my attitude-change on everyone around me.
It’s Saturday. It’s the day of TEDxBeirut. It’s 7:00am. I’m driving to the venue. I’ve only slept for 1hr. I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m beyond exhaustion. It’s as if there are no thoughts in my head. I’m blank. I’m irritated. I don’t have nor the energy, nor the patience to deal with anything that comes my way. And suddenly, I remember the day before.
I remember the attitude change. And for the first time, I realize that by smiling and by being ecstatic yesterday, I was affecting the attitude of everyone around me. I think to myself: “I gotta do this. Everyone is exhausted. If I’m exhausted too, how will we make it through the day? How will we deal with all the problems that’ll arise? How will the audience feel? I gotta be ecstatic and exploding with energy!”
Suddenly, I feel a bust of energy! A smile forms on my face. This energy, along with the smile, both stay with me the whole day. All the way throughout the event. And this has a huge effect on everything. Of course, I wasn’t aware of that during the day.
At the end of the day, while driving back home, I remember Patrick telling me: “I don’t know why, I can’t help it but smile every time I see you.” I reply automatically without thinking: “Maybe it’s because I’ve been smiling all the time?” That’s when it hit me.
I get a zillion flashbacks from that same day. I remember all the instances when Patrick tells me how I’m inspiring. The instance that Maya tells me how she can feel my energy, and how different that is from others. The instance that Chawki tells me how inspiring I am. All the instances that I’ve spoken to team members, and all of a sudden their eyes spark. All the instances that I’ve briefed a team member who has slept less that I did, and see them jump into action with excitement beyond this world.
That instance, after all those flashbacks, I finally understand what inspiring a team is all about. I’ve been trying to inspire different teams, within and outside of TEDxBeirut for years now. I’ve failed every single time. And now, on the last day of TEDxBeirut, I finally get it.
Inspiring a team isn’t just about being ecstatic, energetic, and passionate. Yes, all these are vital. Yet, a secret ingredient is missing.
To inspire, you have to be under the same, or worst conditions yourself. Please, read this line again.
During the day of TEDxBeirut, I finally managed to inspire, not just because I was full of energy. It’s because I was as tired and as un-slept as everyone else. Yet, I managed to show everyone that even though we’re all exhausted, we can still be full of energy. We can still have a constant and contagious smile. We can still be ecstatic. And when we’re all like this, the crowd can’t help but get infected with this blissful energy.
I’ve come to learn that inspiring a team might just be this simple and reproducible. To inspire a team to act in a certain way, act yourself in that certain way. And as long as you’re under the same, or worst circumstances than the rest of your team, they’ll get inspired.
Martin Luther King was as black and as mistreated as his community. Gandhi was under worst conditions than his community. And they both inspired big time.
On Friday, that day before TEDxBeirut, I had never imagined that my change of attitude will have such a deep impact. I thank everyone single one of you. You inspired me to inspire.” End of quote.
You are likely to miss the essential idea in that post and think: “Keep smiling to inspire the team” is the secret ingredient. Smiling is the catalyst, the best catalyst to inspiring, but “How can you keep a genuine smile if the entire team does not believe that you worked harder than anyone else?”
One of the speaker on TEDxBeirut (Hala Fayad) said: “To be a successful entrepreneur you have got to slave harder than anyone in team. Ego is not useful in any endeavor you undertake…” (I assume that Hala got down on her knees and rubbed the floor and participated in the daily chores, as any slave is asked to do. Otherwise, success was pure luck, regardless of all the energy invested in the business and opportunities that were taken advantage of…)
In general, Gandhi is an excellent example in that line of thinking. But Martin Luther King ? Simply because he was black and obviously mistreated and put in prison several times? Malcom X and many other Black leaders in the US worked far harder than Martin Luther King and they were mistreated harsher, not just by the white community, but amid their own black communities.
Note: TEDxBeirut was a huge success in many ways, particularly in this awfully limited society and State of Lebanon. The slogan of TEDxBeirut was “From limitation to inspiration”. That motto applied perfectly to the organizers of TEDxBeirut, though not to most of the speakers. I am preparing an article titled “Mostly a hoax: “From limitation to inspiration” slogan of TEDxBeirut”
What is “Untouchable”?
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 1, 2010
This article is not about Elliot Ness TV series of cracking down on bootleggers in Chicago of the 30’s. It is about millions living in India and ranked the lowest in the caste system; they are called the “Untouchables”. India wants to be fair to its thousand of minorities in religion, caste, community, and tribe in the government’s administrative positions and public services; it is currently trying to carry out a general census; among the thorny questions are selecting the most pertinent castes and communities an individual believes he is part of.
There are problems in this census: First, if an individual feels proud of his caste and agrees to be classified then he is a t a loss how to define his caste; for example, should he classify his social status according to his religious sect, his community, his historical class system, or his working class jobs assigned to every caste? Second, if an individual disagrees with including caste information then the censor will choose for him and thus rob him from any fair opportunity to education, health facilities, public openings, and private enterprises biases. Private enterprises don’t need an applicant to mention his caste since they have their idiosyncracies and rely totally on their pre-dispositions toward religious, or districts, or community, or color, or gender preferences to discriminate unabashedly: India do not enjoy anti-discrimination laws in the private sector. Even the USA and the Western European States cannot apply effectively anti-discrimination laws on peoples behaviors.
Fact is, designated “educated” censors, going house to house collecting data, feel very uncomfortable broaching the questions on castes. My intuition is that censors will answer the question relying on their “common sense” of the most probable caste of the individual. Consequently, even if the Indian government has the political will to be fair with all its citizens (Equality is said Samaata in Hindu) the odds are that the census will be hugely biased since illiteracy is pre-dominant in India among the lowest castes based on the political and social caste structure.
India believes that it has over 3,000 castes and distinct communities classified under “Other backward classes” (OBC) and representing over 50% of the entire population. It is believed that only 27% of these OBC are represented in the public services.
There are many Indians quick to put the entire blame on the British colonial power for this caste structure or subdivision in order to efficiently selecting the most appropriate Indians in the army and administrative jobs. I beg to differ. Caste system is as old as antiquity in India and has been refined and structured by the Buddhist religion and Brahmans. Fact is, the Ottoman Empire borrowed the Indian caste system and applied it in the 16th century to all his extended conquered lands.
The Ottoman Empire was expanding militarily into Europe and economic and cultural embargo and boycott between the Ottoman Empire and the Western European nations settled in for over two centuries. Thus, the Ottoman Empire turned toward Persia and India for whatever it lacked in administration knowhow, economy, and culture. The caste system in Lebanon is consequent to the Ottoman administration for over four centuries. The British made used of the existing de-facto structure to legislate it and fine tune it according to its interests.
Most religious sects in India do not discriminate among castes within their religion but many try to convert to other more favored religions in order to get out of their caste. This strategy does not work: It is how you are perceived through many centuries of traditions and customs that effectively discriminate among people.
The Indian Constitution guaranties equality among its citizens but the effective application is far too slow and lacking political will. Gandhi worked relentlessly to eliminate the Untouchable notion in India and he was relatively successful in his life time to making the Indian culture getting more aware of this horrendous injustice.
Testosterone versus Chastity: Who is Mahatma Gandhi?
Mahatma (Great Soul) Gandhi wrote: “The one to conserve his vital fluid acquires inexhaustible power.”
Maybe Gandhi experimented on his person but we have no visible records. It is said that the Indian government, after independence and the assassination of Gandhi in 1948, destroyed or classified as top-secret Gandhi’s letters and documents.
Apparently, the controversial sex aspects of Gandhi could have destabilized India? The other advantage of this censure was to safeguard the myth of the Mahatma (Great Soul) that was worth a nation.
The Mahatma was bisexual.
At one period in his youth, he separated from his wife to cohabit with his student, a German body builder named Herman Kalinbach. They lived together for 4 years, but Herman could not join Gandhi to India in 1918 because the British did not allow Herman to leave South Africa. The two lovers maintained correspondence. Gandhi wrote about his love to Herman: “How I desired my body completely…This is slavery with revenge”
If you are a male with abundance of testosterone then what other alternative you got but to ejaculate, one way or the other?
Can plenty of testosterone be transformed into other kinds of hormones or protein or ATP that extend inexhaustible power?
If testosterone is not relieved out of the system could it be disintegrated into poisonous substances?
Would testosterone butts it heads with the thousands of other hormones and get in the way of normal functioning of the body and mind?
We certainly need badly serious experiments, very methodically designed and executed to uncover stubborn myths that would set mankind free of hundreds of by-product behaviors based on sexual falsehood.
(I am ready to volunteer to be a subject in these experiment.) These will be complex set of experiments, involving hundreds of variables to control, that do not enjoy widespread consensus with the scientific and religious communities.
For example, at a specific age, who can be considered to be healthy and fit for the experiments?
What are the criteria that define someone eligible to be manipulated in the experiments?
What symptoms that would disqualify or discard a wretched male from further testing, sessions, or repeated mating or ejaculations?
For example, how “power” in “inexhaustible power” is defined?
What kind of tasks (physical, mental, and emotional) are to be done, before and after sex activities, in order to measure, evaluate, and quantify performances?
For how long these tasks should be monitored and carried on before we can claim that the tasks represented normal human behavior on a daily or weekly basis?
What items in the safety documents for permitting experiments on mankind should be considered in case things go out of hand such as sudden heart attacks and …
Gandhi changed the meaning of Brahmacharya (ascetic vows for chastity) and the term evolved in practice as Gandhi resumed his personal experimentation.
For example, Gandhi invited his grand nieces Manu and Abha to share his bed as part of individual improvement to his sex concept. The latest definition of Brahmacharya boiled down “Brahmacharya is who has no lascivious intentions even when he sleeps with fantastic nude girls; this man is within brahmacharya as long as he is progressing toward higher states of focusing in God”
“Lascivious intentions” is another term that needs to be defined by operational variables. We need to conduct further experiments to quantifying the levels of lascivious intentions and evaluate the trend toward the qualitative focused state on God.
Intention, lascivious or not, is another bogus term that we use as scapegoat to our weaknesses and laziness to act in order to improve our behaviors.
Quick, I demand that India releases all documents related to what Gandhi meant by “inexhaustible power” and “lascivious intentions.”
I am interested in acquiring power and want to know how I can tame these turbulent testosterone into states of sleep.
Yes, the older the more chaste we become, with exceptions: sleazy old males addicted to Viagra kinds have atrophied brains and are stuck senile on a single amusing game.
In general, the more chaste the less trouble you get into, with exceptions: Your wife or girl friend might become hateful and take chastity very personal.
The remedy is never to mention “chastity” within a 100-yard radius of your wife’s ear shot. And yes, get to business; that is excellent politics.
I can hear loud voices saying: “This post is blatant sex discrimination.”
I like to remind readers that the article is mainly about testosterone. It is not about chastity: I am no preacher and I don’t know Sanskrit.
Recurring news are demonstrating that prolonged chastity (vowed, forced, or forced vowed) results in child molesting tendencies.
You may read Gandhi’s biography in my previous post: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/gandhis-non-violent-resistance-guidelines-february-21-2008/
Note: Gandhi had 4 kids from his wife Kasturba; he was 13 and she 14 when they got married in 1883. After Kasturba death, Gandhi grew wings; they grew proportionally to his zest for experimenting with sex and chastity.
My opinions on Gandhi’s sex life (or my opinions, period) cannot touch the greatness of Gandhi’s achievements (non-violence practices, India Independence, and his constant strife to eliminate the caste of the “untouchable“) and his battles for self-improvement and taming behaviors he considered unworthy of the greatness of mankind.
Einstein speaks on “How I see the world”
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 4, 2009
Einstein speaks on “How I see the world”; (Nov. 30, 2009)
Note: The translated book in French does not provide context to what Einstein’s wrote, published or delivered. Thus, I have no sources for the dates or events or purpose for these documents except what I may conjecture.
Einstein wrote “pure religion or cosmic religiosity consists at feeling astonished and ecstatic before the harmony of nature’s laws and beauty that uncovers a superior intelligence that defies our comprehension. I know that my existence is limited and I ignore why I am on earth.
“I do know that I have this premonition that I am alive to the others: their smiles and happy nature condition my life. What I know is that who is questioning the meaning of life is going through a miserable period: he is not finding reason to live. More importantly is “Is there any sense for asking such a question on the meaning of life?”
“I feel a thousand times a day that I am dependent to the work of the living and the dead. My home, my food, and my cloth are contributed by man of the community. What I know and what I feel I owe it to the other man.
“I cannot imagine of a man isolated from a community since his birth: I can only conceive that he would emulate the surrounding animals and environment. Only languages to communicate among people distinguish us from the animal kingdom.
“I am not that free and I appreciate Schopenhauer maxim “Man can do what he wants but he cannot want what he wishes”.
“I learned to look at the world with a sense of humor: I cannot be preoccupied with the sense or purpose of my existence because it is objectively absurd. I have ideals such as the good, the beautiful, and the truth and I get obstinate pursuing ideals not even accessible to art or sciences. I loath human passions for wealth, glory, luxury, and power. Only justice is worth social engagement.”
“Creating and inventing require a unity in concept, direction, and sense of responsibility. I devoted my entire life with un-interrupted efforts to what I achieved and here you have people thinking that they can comprehend all my work by just listening to my expositions. My only criterion for judging a man is “To what degree and to what purpose has man liberated from his I?””
“Gandhi incarnates the highest political genius of our civilization. I hate the military institution. Any person feeling this pleasure of marching in rank is utterly content with his limbic brain. There are no excuses for obeying orders that are contrary to our moral values, especially killing fellow man.
“I cannot imagine a God punishing and rewarding the object of his creation or regulating his will on my own experience.
“I do not want to conceive that we may survive after death: that is the ultimate in egoism.
“The mechanical organization of institutions, even in the scientific world, has substituted the individual innovators; thus, men of genius are becoming rare: citizens are neglecting the intellectual intelligence and the necessity of moral rights.
“I often have mixed feeling about individuals who have improved human life: I keep wondering of their moral objectives and if they really intended to do the goo
“The discovery of the atomic bomb does not constitute a higher danger to humanity than match boxes: we have to suppress its usage. The fabrication of the H Bomb is a feasible objective: each progress generates consequences from prior progresses.
“Generalized annihilation of human kind is the most likely outcome.
“We are creating the means for our premature death. In the actual state of technology only a supra-national institution, an organization equipped with a world legal tribunal to decide on States’ differences and with executive power can eliminate fear and the need to arm for reciprocal defense.”
After the rise of Hitler to power Einstein reverted to pragmatism:
1. first, he resigned his professorship at the University of Prussia,
2. he incited France and Belgium to arm against Nazi programs, and
3. he warned Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might acquire the atomic bomb if the US does not get on fabricating the atomic bomb as a deterrence tool.
Einstein was also a staunch Zionist before the formal recognition of the State of Israel by the UN in 1948. https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/einstein-speaks-on-zionism/
C’est quoi “human dignity”?
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 27, 2009
C’est quoi “human dignity”? (October 25, 2009)
Two blasts in Baghdad in front of the Justice Palace: 160 dead and over 50 injured. Three weks ago, two blasts in front of the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad: 100 dead and over 200 injured. Every day, two dozens are killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Iran, and Guinee in Africa. More military pre-emptive interventions around the world to “stem the scourge” of terrorism: only the western dead soldiers have faces and receive formal funerals with flags. Every day hundreds die of famine, curable diseases, and family violence but they are common news that are relegated, maybe, to statistics. Everyday, thousands of girls less than 10 years of age are sold as prostitutes in India; statistics estimate there are 1.5 million of these kinds of children in the market place. What about the many articles in the UN Charter concerning human dignity?
Someone give you birth, you live a miserable life and then you die. You live obeying orders, following opinions, reacting to impressions, fearing the future, shrieking when you see a large old black spider, hating mosquitoes, relatives, and family, and then you die. Excellent, that would be a fitting ending to life. No, they won’t let you die in peace. First, you have to experience purgatory and then wait, and wait until someone decides for you to go to hell or transcend to a boring heaven.
The concepts of dignity and liberty come in one package deal; the relative implant of these concepts in the organizational culture guides the trend in any one culture. Human dignity and liberty of choices are the main ingredients in a “civilized” individual’s belief system; that’s what the UN wants you to comprehend but never applied equitably as the UN stated in its declaration with no discrimination to race, color, religion, or gender. How long mankind has to wait for the UN to become a credible institution to all?
The mainly unconscious belief system is mostly hard wired in the nervous network that tips the balance on the thousands of daily decisions and only our actions reveal our real values. If you tend to accept the above paragraph as making a lot of sense then most probably you have been strongly influenced by the Western colonial culture and tend not to dwell on any definition that discriminate how dignity and liberty are assimilated and interpreted by other cultures.
In fact, colonialism is fundamentally the imposition of a specific supra-mythical culture on other communities. Outside the natural sciences, the colonial powers have no interest or need to fine tune the general concepts related to human sciences and much less of dignity and liberty. The ancient colonial powers are still exercising their influence on other communities and have generally substituted military force by technocracy in banking, monetary reforms, and globalization of trade and finance, and technology standardization.
The pragmatic western culture is resuming its well known strategy that says “the best route to transforming other cultures is to install the basic material standards and then, gradually and inevitably, the other cultures will adopt the philosophies of legal capitalism, democracy, modernism, progress and open borders for one world material exchange culture”
Liberty is not just the freedom for a community of selecting and adopting a religion, which is necessary but never sufficient. A community that values liberty should be ready to genuinely accepts the contributions and values of other religions, traditions and customs. Liberty has for pre-requisite constant dialogue and inter-communication among the various communities and religions. Thus, any belief system is fundamentally wrong: it basically means to exclude the other beliefs; any reshuffling or modification to a belief system remains wrong no matter what and liberty means accepting variations on sets of values.
A human is a whole microcosm in such a way that the destiny of humanity unfold through one individual and this concept is the foundation for human dignity, otherwise we are to accept that we are merely a tiny part in the chain of the other billions of individuals and we are ready to follow monolithic and totalitarian systems that want a unique universal conceptual system of values.
If very few distributions of genes biologically differentiate an individual from his neighbor then we might conjecture that what differentiate the value system and moral behavior of an individual from his neighbor are a tiny number of qualitative attributes. It is not the numerous common elements that we share but the values we attach on rare qualitative values that set us apart. There are special individuals like Gandhi and Martin Luther King who are the ultimate political men striving for sainthood through fair non-violent and active struggles for the dignity of the disinherited, the humble, and the common folks.
What dignity is there watching swarms of skeletal humans roaming arid and desert lands among calcified carcasses, not a patch of green or a tiny tree on the horizon to taking shelter under, heading toward a camping ground hundreds of miles away for international relief succor? What dignity is there to experiencing haggard humans fleeing civil war-torn villages to cramp up tent compounds? What dignity when these occurrences are frequent and happening all over the under-developed States?
Respecting human dignity means that we are ready to offer the individual with the tools and opportunities to resume fighting against imminent death, against famine, sickness, and oppressions: Life is a struggle against the chaos in death. Respecting human dignity means alleviating the material struggle and thus shortening the necessary resting pauses when people feel the need to believe that destiny is traced at inception: they do at times feel exhausted; they have to surmounting artificial obstacles that are not in the nature of things; they do lose confidence in the organizations that constantly defy the processes of living organisms.
Respecting human dignity is providing the resources to overcome the unnecessary frequent pauses when people are forced to believe in pre-destiny because they are not allowed to experience the little daily pleasures of loneliness, privacy, quality leisure time, and self paced working habits.
There is dignity in erecting a school for children so that they might grow with dreams of better opportunities than their present lot. There is dignity in building a dispensary so that children and the sick grow hope of having their pains alleviated. There is dignity sharing in the digging of a well and the construction of an irrigation canal, a few necessary infrastructures so that a sense of control over destiny is palpable. It does not take much investment to increase the level of dignity for changing the mind set to an alternative course for the future.
As long as the disparity between the rich and the poor in a society is increasing then the culture of the society tends to obliterate the notion of dignity to all; it sends the strong message that the notion of liberty for seeking a happy and satisfying life is essentially selective among classes.
Man is yet to be formed; it is a sickly creature but is nonetheless constantly inspired by dreams of what he can do and desire to transcend his inadequacies. Man has proven to stand tall against injustices and fight a non-violent struggle at the expense of his own suffering, pains and even death for the dignity of his fellow man.
Women: Urban and rural. Part 2
Posted by: adonis49 on: June 23, 2009
Women: Urban and rural (Cairo, Egypt). Part 2. June 23, 2009
Egyptian Urban Women
In the previous article I focused on women in rural Said of Egypt. This post is on Urban Cairo, the Capital of Egypt, as reported by Laurence Deonna in ” Women: Struggle of the land and of sand” in 1968 for a project “Searching for the woman“.
Cairo keeps assimilating increasing numbers of rural citizens. Cairo is a metropolis of over 20 millions and increasing at a high rate.
About one third of every new born will end up in Cairo. Birth control policies, education, and facilities are not making any appreciable dent in Egypt.
President Nasser called the large birth rate as “politics of rabbits“. A young woman says “as long as I am pregnant then my husband will take care of me”.
When Deonna tell her that her baby might die if not taken to the hospital, the girl replies “I will have another one, Inch Allah”
Rural women have added superstitions to their heavy rural baggage; many ceremonies, traditions, and practices are pre-Islamic and of African origins.
Reading current novels and social accounts you realize that society in Cairo has not changed appreciably in customs and traditions since 1968 as of the accounts of Laurence Deonna.
The heavy international investments are not directly concerned with social improvement. State institutions are not able to sustain the flow of immigration from rural Egypt and the high rate of birth that no laws or pressures could slow down.
The customs and traditions of rural Egypt are basically setting the tone for any kinds of reforms from the center to the periphery. Unless reforms are focused on the peripheries then the major urban centers in Egypt will continue to drain any surplus of economic development.
Women demonstrated along side men in 1919 for self-autonomy of Egypt from colonial Britain. Women snatched the right to walk unveiled on streets in 1923.
Panels carried by demonstrating women in 1924 read “Educate your girls, respect your wife; a civilization is judged by the wife“.
Ceza Nabarawi was the right hand assistant of the first leader of women movement Hoda Chaarawi. Ceza lived in Europe in her youth and refused to wear the veil when she had to be back to Egypt. Thus, she locked herself up for a month.
One windy day, Ceza had her veil and hat blown away; a kid returned them to Ceza saying “I bring your head back“. Ceza said young girls were locked up in harem at the age of 12 (in rich urban families since peasants had to work). Women drove out in closed carriages with heavy drapes drawn. In theaters, wood netting separated women from the public.
Hoda Chaarawi was the daughter of a pasha and was married at age 13 to her mentor. She separated of her husband for 7 years.
Hoda founded the magazine “L’Egyptienne” of her own money (father’s money) and Ceza was the editor-in-chief for 15 years; this magazine did not contain kitchen recipes or questionnaires such as “Are you sexually jealous of your girl” or “Do not forget your feet, the main seductive part of your body”.
“The Egyptian women” magazine exposed their rights, political analysis, art critics, and reports on women congress that the women association attended around the world. The “Women association” attended international forums and conventions on women rights and the Palestinian problems in the thirties and forties.
The magazine told stories of women conditions in Northern Africa, Iraq, Sudan, and even China. Ceza met Gandhi in 1931 in Alexandria because the British authorities refused Gandhi to disembarque. Gandhi handed Ceza a letter that she published praising the Egyptian women movement as the first messengers for peace and progress; the irreducible disciples for non-violence.
Ceza and Hoda struggled for closing down the privileges of the foreigners in Egypt. The foreigners houses could not be violated by Egyptian police forces and there were two courts of laws; one for the Egyptians and another for foreigners.
In 1938, the movement held a gathering of the Middle East women in Cairo and discussed the Palestinian problem because Jews were dispatched to inhabit Palestine and form a majority. The Palestinian problem was also discussed at length during the Copenhagen congress in 1939.
The “Arab Women League” was established in 1944. The Palestinian problem was also exposed at the “International Women Alliance” in 1946.
Hoda Chaarawi died in 1947, a few days after Palestine was partitioned. Ceza founded in 1951 “Women Popular Resistance Committee” and worked for the Egyptian population to vacate the Suez Canal.
Deonna is visiting the Zoo of Cairo; there are hippopotamus, Indian Elephants, and monkeys among other animals. There is a seat sculpted in stone that fitted the behind of King Farouk who had a “pleasure grotto” in the park when he was King of Egypt.
A woman decked in a long white robe is praying in the zoo. Women are more superstitious than men here; is it because women have learned to be in intimate contact with invisible forces?
Women invoke the Imam or the Sheikh most of the time. Imam Shafeyi, dead 13 centuries ago is their favorite Imam: women line up in front of shrines asking favors; stamped letters are also sent to shrines in the present tense with the name of the sender and the name of her mother, as is the case in Pharaonic custom. The complaints in the written messages concern mostly the treatments of mother-in-laws; retributions demanded go as far as gouging eyes of the nemesis. Many statutes of famous people are wrongly considered as representing saint “sheikhs”.
Among the superstitions is for families to keep secret engagement transactions for fear of the “spirits” meddling in the affair. A young girl is readying to get wed; she dips her feet in water containing all kinds of green vegetables, a loaf of bread under her armpit, in her mouth a piece of sugar and a piece of money, and the Koran on her head with a lighted candle on top of the Koran; these things symbolize successively expectancy, food, a soft tongue, prosperity, protection and light that the wife will bring to her new home.
Exorcism and bewitching ceremonies are common. The “sheikh tariks“, including women, are specialized in mystic and magic ceremonies; they distribute hundred of magical recipes for any kinds of condition and situation. The “sheikh tariks” have huge influence among the superstitious citizens.
The “zaar” is an African ceremony practiced by women as therapeutic outlets and for exorcism purposes. In a corner incense is burned to attract “djinns”. A dervish turns, dances, and orchestrates the ceremony. Women pick up the dancing tempo until they lose conscious. There are the flutist, the tambourine, and the singing specialists. Sitting on straw mats, other women are waiting for their turn.
It was the fashion among the high classes, but now is practiced by the lower classes. By the mosque Al Hussein blind women assemble. Frightful women mumble unintelligent words accompanied by gesticulations; they are the “megazibs” or fools who pretend to be possessed by the spirit of Allah but do not respect religious holidays. They are usually simple minded who have been patients in asylums. Many women avoid prosecution by joining this “sanctified” crowd. The “zikr” is a ceremony practiced by men, close to mosques, and has mystic and religious meaning.
Note: Read part 1 on Egyptian rural women https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/06/21/women-urban-and-rural/
Adonis Diaries 