It was a cognitive dissonance existing in my mind, that led me out of Yahweh's death trap.
First, of course, I had to suffer the ritual, 'stoning to death,' that dissidents must undergo in order to escape. How painful (emotionally) that was!
But when my wounds healed, and I became fully awake for the first time in 4 decades, how sweet was my freedom.
another child raped, left for dead ( gory so not repeating details ).
what on earth is going on.
sick, sick people living on this planet.
Last post on this topic (I must finish an essay today)
I posted a link above to an article by an Indian writer ( http://kindlemag.in/viewEditorsChoiseDetails.php?id=NTk0&&displayid= )
He makes some interesting comparisons, read it and interpret his message how you want.
Quote:
Their Rape:
In a rape culture, rape should appear as the least shocking of realities. Sure, India has a 26% conviction rate, but in the United States, there are an estimated 400,000 "rape kits" currently backlogged. And by the time the kits are tested, the statute of limitations expires and the rapists no longer get charged. Only 24 percent of rapists are arrested in America. The statistic is not any more encouraging in the United Kingdom either. The British government acknowledges that as many as 95% of rapes are never reported to the police, and the country has roughly 6.5% conviction rate. Los Angeles with 923 cases, Philadelphia with 945 cases and New York City with 1092 incidents of reported rape cases, the differences between first world and third world countries soon begin to fade when it comes to treatment of women. According to FBI, a violent crime occurs every 25.3 seconds with a murder every 35.6 minutes while forcible rape takes place every 6.2 minutes. Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Centre reports that 78 women are forcibly raped each minute in the U.S. (which is 1,871 per day or 683,000 per year). Over 23% of lesbian and bisexual women had been raped compared to 6% of their heterosexual peers. Likewise, 83% of women and 32% of men with developmental disabilities have been sexually assaulted.
America has no national rape law and among the victims of hate crimes, the number of raped women is double the number of those murdered. Not to mention, of the average 90,000 rapes reported, only 20,000 rapists are identified each year. Moreover, statutory rape is excluded from the definition of rape, just as forcible oral or anal penetrations are. Also excluded from the definition of rape are penetration of vagina or anus with an object or other body part, the rape of a man, the rape of a woman by another woman, any non-consensual rape that does not involve physical force such as rape during the drugged or drunk conditions.
Dwelling upon the uncanny resemblance between India and the United States, the "culture" in Rape Culture emerges as merely a condition, not the root. The political economy - the various stages of evolving feudalism and capitalism - offers the systemic grounds for rape normative. Towards that extent, rape culture is a global, and not a national, phenomenon and it sanctions violence against women by men across all cultures of the world.
End of quote.
another child raped, left for dead ( gory so not repeating details ).
what on earth is going on.
sick, sick people living on this planet.
So lets take a look at the problem on the ground in India:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feiJc5VH4r4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUenfHiE3W8
And, the problem from another perspective:
another child raped, left for dead ( gory so not repeating details ).
what on earth is going on.
sick, sick people living on this planet.
Try this video for an understanding of 'caste' in India. The first 3 minutes, while present with humour, will show you how illogical the sytem is, and from 4.20 a upper caste brahmin (priest) explains the caste system from his perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM85zVt6xCU
There's a second episode if you want to watch it.
another child raped, left for dead ( gory so not repeating details ).
what on earth is going on.
sick, sick people living on this planet.
and, *lost*, while I appreciate your viewpoint, do you really think that 'terrible' things do not happen in western societies?
A horrible case in Sydney last year, was the rape of a two year old girl by a relative who offered to babysit while the parents had a night out.
another child raped, left for dead ( gory so not repeating details ).
what on earth is going on.
sick, sick people living on this planet.
Here's an interesting (if tangled) discussion on the problem of rape in India written by an Indian.
http://kindlemag.in/viewEditorsChoiseDetails.php?id=NTk0&&displayid=
another child raped, left for dead ( gory so not repeating details ).
what on earth is going on.
sick, sick people living on this planet.
Not sure i should comment (grin). Last time I attempted to share some of my hard-earned understanding of Indian society, I was accused of all kinds of stupidity. Mostly by people who were dependent on out-of-date notions on sex, rape and poverty.
Anyway, here goes.
Part of the problem, is the traditional role of women in Hindu society. Hindu society is patriachal - when a woman is young she is under the headship of her father until she marries, and then she will come under the headship of her husband. Within that framework, a woman can enjoy a lot of influence. (for example a husband may accord his mother more respect than his wife). The problem commences when neither father nor husband is part of the picture. A woman without either may be seen as fair game. An evil attitude to us, but not neccessaarily to people in that culture.
I cannot explain the rape of a pre-pubescent child, except as part of the violence that can exist in Indian life, but it may not be unrelated to the western problem of child abuse.
The other main factor is the traditional 'caste' system. I'm sure most readers here know that Indians are born into a caste, the result hinduism teaches, of actions in a past life. If you do something bad, you will be reborn into a worse situation. The caste system is complicated, but Wikipedia has a reasonable explanation:
Quote:
The Indian caste system is the traditional organization of South Asian, particularly Hindu, society into a hierarchy of hereditary groups called castes or jatis. In broad outline, marriage occurs only within caste (endogamy), caste is fixed by birth, and each caste is associated with a traditional occupation, such as weaving or barbering. Hindu religious principles underlay the caste hierarchy and limit the ways that castes can interact.
The caste system is connected to the Hindu concept of the four varnas, which order and rank humanity by innate spiritual purity. The highest varna is the Brahmins, or priests. Next comes the Kshatriyas, the warriors, and then the Vaishyas, the merchants. The lowest varna is the Shudras, consisting of labourers, artisans and servants who do work that is ritually unclean. Contact between varnas, and particularly the sharing of food and water, must be limited to avoid pollution of higher, purer individuals by lower, more unclean ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India
The vast majority or rapes in India are perpetrated by upper class (religiously) males who see the lowest class (also known as dalits) as having no rights. If you read the Wiki explanation you will immediately see a logical contradiction. By hindu definition an upper class person is defiled by a dalit. Yet these upper class males can see an attractive (physically) young lower class woman and seek an opportunity to rape them, without concern for their (spiritual) 'purity.' I have sought an explanation when I studied Indian society, but did not find a satisfying explanation. My own thoughts are that within the framework of Indian life, the opportunities to 'pair-off' are so limited, that rape is seen as an alternative.
If your set out to search the internet you will find horrific descriptions, made worse by the inaction of the police, particularly when influential "upper-caste" males are concerned.
i'm sure that most have heard the story of deng xiaoping, who became chairman of china after the death of mao zedong.
during the cultural revolution deng had been imprisoned, accused of being a 'capitalist-roader' (i.e.
someone who favoured capitalism), during the long struggle to work out what sort of economic system would suit the new china.
I'm sure that most have heard the story of Deng Xiaoping, who became Chairman of China after the death of Mao Zedong. During the Cultural Revolution Deng had been imprisoned, accused of being a 'capitalist-roader' (i.e. someone who favoured capitalism), during the long struggle to work out what sort of economic system would suit the new China. Mao's idea was doctrinnaire communism, with the state owning all means of production on behalf of all the people. Problem was something got lost somewhere between the theory and practise. It worked to a point, but not beyond that point. As we can note, the only more or less 'communist' state in the world today is North Korea, hardly an example of progress and wealth.
But how to make the transition from a socialist state (As China was under Mao) with pulbic ownership to a mixed system (more akin to Scandanavia, or say Singapore). Shortly after becoming leader, Deng made a trip to south China, and famously said, "To get rich is glorious," thus suggesting that individual wealth was OK. He also dismissed the role of correct political theory in his saying, 'It does not matter whether a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice."
But the journey from that point, a time when it could be said, that everyone in China was equal - that is, equally poor, to the present time when millionaires seem to be bursting out of the seams, has been a long one. This China Central TV presentation tells part of the story of how private ownership of a business came to be part of law again in China.
this video seems to have been made for purposes other than protesting the murder of children, but it makes the reason for the growing anger in the non-terrorist muslim populations much clearer.
what do you think?.
http://www.infowars.com/obama-orders-children-murdered/ .
I posted the above for a reason. For some months past, I've noted at least 3 news discussions in Asia Times warning that tensions were building in Muslim countries over the increasing deaths of children in American drone attacks on alleged terrorists. I wanted to try to graphically illustrate what has been happening, and selected the above Article/Video.
I'm sorry now I used it (because of its confused motivations) not because I think its inaccurate, but because there are better descriptions of the problem. The western world was (rightly) shocked at the Boston murders, maybe most of all, over the death of an 8 y.o. boy waiting for his father to finish the race.
But, can we understand the equivalent anguish at the deaths of so many children in Muslims areas? The parents and relatives of the slaughtered kids have feelings too! The hatred toward the murderers of kids in the Muslim world may be building up like the pressure inside a pressure cooker (intended analogy). Can people in the west understand that?
The motivation of the two young perpetrators of the Boston tragedy is as yet unknown. Suggestions have been made that these boys were influenced by the nationalist or Islamic movements in Chechnya, although US 'experts' are saying they were not.
( See The Economist, April 27, 2013: http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21576728-boston-bombs-have-put-new-focus-russias-islamist-republics-islamists-russia )
I suggest that the emotional input neccessary to motivate these two people to the point of a willingness to kill, is likely a result of the build up of hatred over the dead kids who have been victims of attacks by American drones.
For a better graphic summary of the slaughtered kids see this Economist article: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/03/charting-drone-strikes
For an enlargement of the interactive graph see: http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/
according to 1 samuel 13:1, in the oldest hebrew manuscripts, saul ruled for two years (assuming saul actually existed at all, for which there is no hard evidence).
however, various [christian] translators assume this 'must' be an error because acts 13:21 says saul reigned for forty years.
saul's age at 1 samuel 13:1 is conveniently missing from the oldest manuscripts.
Thnx, Jeffro for posting this analysis. It certainly raises some interesting questions about the historical accuracy of the 'history' texts.
