The Largest Pyramid Ever?

A grand idea, considered improbable by most. Gaining publicity last month, was the proposed plan of German entrepreneurs to build the world’s largest structure - a pyramid shaped tomb to contain the remains of millions of people of all faiths from all over the world.

The Friends of the Great Pyramid say:

The Great Pyramid can potentially be any human being’s grave or memorial site. As monumental as it is affordable, it serves those of all nationalities and religions. Individuals who are either unwilling or unable to have their ashes buried there can also opt to have a memorial stone placed instead. Stones can be custom designed with any number of colors, images, or relief decorations. The Great Pyramid will continue to grow with every stone placed, eventually forming the largest structure in the history of man.

And regarding it becoming the largest building in the world:

The Great Pyramid grows brick by brick; its structure of rock-solid concrete receptacles and memorial stones is set to outlast the coming millennia. Each tomb container will contain an urn with the ashes of a deceased, while memorial stones hold capsules containing other remembrances.

All stones are identical in size and are positioned at random in the Great Pyramid. After only few thousand stones have been laid, the Great Pyramid will have reached massive proportions. Even if only a small percentage of all current and future living decide on a Great Pyramid stone, the monument will outsize the Giza Pyramids very soon. In only a few decades it will be the largest structure our civilization has ever built.

They have secured $122,600 (£60,000) in state funding, estimate it would take about 30 years to be completed, with each burial costing about $960 (€700). Pritzker-winning Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas is heading the jury for choosing a final design for the project. Not everyone is optimistic about the proposal though.

The Washington Times says:

The improbable plan is based on the idea that people will pay to have their ashes encased in the concrete blocks used to construct the monument. Millions of people would have to sign up to make it viable, though if the team behind it is successful, they will be rich beyond the wildest dreams of even the most ambitious pharaoh.

You can see the number of people who’ve signed up for this here. Also, as expected, local residents’ ire is reported by The Independent:

However, the pyramid idea has not been universally welcomed by residents in the next door village of Streetz. “We don’t want to live next to the world’s biggest graveyard,” one inhabitant was quoted as saying last week.

Gizmodo also contemplates that in 30 years, who would want to fly their remains to Germany when one could fly them in space?

I actually liked the idea in some ways, though it is true that it does seem improbable. If mankind were to extinguish itself by nuclear holocaust or climatic destruction, there would hardly be any signs left of its existence on planet earth. The larger the structures we build, the larger the probability that alien probes would sense man-made structures on earth after our demise. Ah! But that’s romanticizing, just like Friends of the Great Pyramid!

(Image Credits: Friends of the Great Pyramid)

Law of Social Censorship

The Iconoclast has proposed McCullagh’s Law:

As the certainty that legislation violates the U.S. Constitution increases, so does the probability of predictions that severe harm or death will come to Americans if the proposal is not swiftly enacted.

I propose the corollary in the Indian context as the Law of Social Censorship:

The extent to which {something} exemplifies individual freedom, determines the extent to which it will be opposed on ‘moral’ grounds.

The only prerequisite to oppose something on such grounds is that someone’s sentiments must be affected. Examples:

• India was the first country to ban Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. The ban is still in force, even after many other countries have repealed their bans.
• Majority of state governments have banned sex education in schools.
• Forget gay marriage. Being a homosexual is a criminal offense in India.
• There have been widespread attempts to ban Google’s Orkut - the most popular social networking site.
• M. F. Hussain’s paintings - India’s highest paid painter - have often caused controversies leading to his house being destroyed by a mob.
• There are many, many examples. This Hindu op-ed discusses the social censorship scene in India with many more examples.

10 Thoughts on T20 World Cup Win

I have never written about cricket before. Why? I’m not sure - sometimes I think enough is being written all around, and I can’t add any value. At other times, I don’t think it has any real “post-substance”, so I let it pass by. Well, such an opportunity doesn’t come very often, so let me take this 20-20 World Cup win to break this abstinence!

Here are random thoughts about the win in no particular order:

1. I think Dhoni is the future of Indian cricket captaincy. Don’t you just love his repartees? He gave it back to the press when they had earlier asked if Yuvraj was taken as a bowler in the team. He gave it back to Ravi Shastri over an article on Cricinfo after defeating the Aussies. He gave it back in front of the mammoth Mumbai crowd when he answered back in Hindi, after being questioned in Marathi and English.
2. I wonder if being a wicket-keeper captain has inherent advantages? To start with, he is able to be as close to the action on the pitch as possible. He can observe the bowling performances, the batsmen’s mood/discomforts/etc. and take decisions regarding bowling changes or advise bowlers accordingly. Being centrally located, he is in better visible and audible contact with as many fielders as possible. Observe how many captains, from Gavaskar to Ponting, have taken slip fielding positions whenever possible…
3. If you ask me what is the single most important difference (physical not psychological) in this team - it is the fielding. I saw a completely different vigor and enthusiasm in the fielding. Never before have I seen two direct-hit run-outs by India within a tournament at critical stages.
4. I think the people who destroyed Dhoni’s upcoming house brick-by-brick after the WC debacle should now apologize to him and rebuild it brick-by-brick themselves.
5. It is amazing how cricket unites our country. We may not be a truly secular country, but cricket is the most secular aspect of our culture. It unites us (whether in despair or in triumph) across religions, castes, economic status, education levels, geographic region, language, etc.
6. On another note, I know that there are political compulsions in player selections for tournaments. But these are up to the level of states. Given that, does Indian cricket exemplify “equal opportunity” in terms of there being no discrimination based on education/caste/status/economic level? Seeing today’s heroes hailing from impoverished backgrounds, illiterate parents - does this “dream come true” hold any meaning for the common Indian?
7. A lot of hue and cry is being made about the comment by the losing Pakistani captain apologizing to all muslims of the world for losing. Many Indian muslims have come out and expressed that their patriotism was offended by that remark. Others are cautioning not to bring religion into cricket in the Asian sub-continent, where cricket is a religion. I believe this hue and cry was given birth to and fueled by CNN-IBN who started flashing it as a ’stir’ based on a couple of comments on their site. Folks, let’s learn to be gracious winners. The poor guy had just frustratingly lost the world cup final when it was almost in their grasp. Called on the world stage, he tried his best to apologize. If you notice how the Pakistani players never fail to mention Inshallah in every other sentence, you might be convinced that it is best to overlook his shortsightedness at such a humiliating moment.
8. When the city-that-never-sleeps came to a standstill when welcoming the heroes, it was simply acting on behalf of the entire nation. It was disgusting to watch the spectacle marred by specimens of the politicus patheticus species, whose dinosaur sized posters lined up the roads and whose best representatives tried to hog (pun intended) the limelight. The NCP government of Maharashtra, not to be outdone by myopic Shiv Sena gave a trophy to the team that had a map of Maharashtra and not India!
9. The Asia-Cup winning hockey players are understandably upset and contemplating a hunger strike. This leads to several interesting questions. Hockey is our national game because for many decades we were undisputed champions in field hockey. What should be the criteria to decide a national game? Dominance, popularity? Can a national game be changed? On the other hand, why is cricket more popular than hockey ever was?
10. We must remember that the 20-20 game format is such that luck and chance play a greater role than in other formats. This is certainly not to undermine or undercut the team’s terrific achievement. It is simply to note that we should not have unrealistic expectations of the Indian team from the coming series against Australia and in future.

Poverty is not the root cause of terrorism

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has gone on record in an interview with CNN to say:

“”You can never win a war against terror as long as there are conditions in the world that make people desperate — poverty, disease, ignorance, et cetera.

He said the disparity between the rich and poor in parts of the world causes instability and insecurity, but added that he was hopeful the relationship between the two was becoming clear.

In which world is Desmond Tutu living? There is poverty is many regions of the world from where terrorism doesn’t originate. There are many ways in which impoverished people have tackled their poverty - by immigrating to foreign shores or raising the overall economic development of their countries.

Terrorism in our age has been fueled by Osama, who is wealthy, and perpetrated by Islamists who are educated and well-to-do.

Africa is one of the poorest continents in the world - strife with poverty, disease, and ignorance. How many terrorists has it produced?

Forget the fact that terrorism needs an inordinate amount of wealth - those weapons and the educated sophistication cannot come without it - terrorism cannot thrive without an ideology behind it.

It is the fundamentalist, extremist, Islamist ideology that is fueling terrorism, not poverty. And Mr. Tutu, until leaders like you fail to recognize this, we will continue to suffer from it.

Parenting the next generation

I continue to be amazed by our precocious children. And I’m sure every generation before us has gone through the same amazement. What’s unique about our children? Nothing unique, in my opinion, just that as the rate of technological advance increases exponentially, the degree of difficulty in parenting increases exponentially as well.

I was chatting with a colleague over lunch about her kids - a 6-year old son, and a 3 year old daughter. Her son had an account on Orkut. She discussed it with him and convinced him that he was not old enough to have an Orkut account. He finally consented and they deleted his account. Her daughter wanted an account too, as her brother had one. Sure, there are Parent’s Guides to Social Networking, but in India, in many cases, the parents are not knowledgeable about how to use the Internet, whereas the kids are!

Her 6-year old son can take you anywhere in Chicago - in Midtown Madness. You name the place, he’ll drive you there. Her 3-year old daughter can drive you to Crooked Street in San Francisco in Midtown Madness 2, and shriek in joy by tumbling the car over Crooked Street.

Her son creates Powerpoint slides with ease, and is now dabbling in Excel by helping his Dad create his “weekly schedule” of play time and homework.

In the traditional heart of Pune’s Laxmi Road, a woman wearing a halter top with her bra straps visible happened to pass by. After she was gone, a 3-year old boy smiled and remarked “Sagla distay ki ticha!” (”She’s showing everything”). I remember being at least 12-13 years old before noticing such things - that’s a 10 year difference!

It is not just that children are smarter and more intelligent. That has been true throughout history. It is the access to technology that makes all the difference - it is the combination of enhanced intelligence and powerful tools like never before that is fueling the extraordinary achievements of the next generation.

It is difficult being a parent today, more difficult than it was before, because of this reason. And it is not just your own child’s security that you need to worry about. Your own child’s behavior can also affect another child’s security. Prerna writes about this delicate balance with sensitivity - where exactly do you draw the line between protectiveness to safeguard your child’s safety and freedom, so as not to stifle the child’s growth?

One of the core difficulties regarding parenting is of course, sex education. With sex education being banned in more and more states in India, this is becoming more of a parenting issue rather than an academic one. Nita points out: “it is a known fact that Indian parents neglect to do their duty when it comes to teaching their children about sex…and the consequence is that kids turn to pornography.” Paul has a thought-provoking post (NSFW) opining that it is better to allow children access to tasteful nudes that can deter them from tasteless porn.

I sought the opinion of a professional psychological counselor on this topic. She said that the right age to educate your child about sex is completely flexible and dependent on the child and the social circumstances. The education itself should, of course, be incremental and in appropriate stages. It begins with education about gender identity. Boys want to know how girls are different and vice versa. That’s where sex education begins.

From her experience as a counselor, she shared the fact that the most common question children ask is “where did I come from”. Looking at the fact that this question has made human beings build telescopes, launch satellites and planetary explorers, and write philosophical treatises, it seems this is the most fundamental, quintessential questions man has ever asked!

Related Reading: A nice, wide angle view of the Age of Consent, by Nita.

Photos: Copyrighted to me, of my daughter.

Technorati Tags: india, pune, parenting, sex education

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Challenges in Journalism

The Kentucky Herald Leader reported an unusual story. An emotionally upset woman called up, and said that she had found the scalp of a dead friend’s remains, in the woods where he had accidentally died. His body had already been taken to the coroner’s office couple of days ago. She stored the 8×4 inch piece in a trash bag in her freezer, but didn’t summon the courage to tell the authorities or anyone. Finally, she called the Herald Leader. After some urging by the reporter, the remains were finally delivered to the coroner and the story ends.

Objectivity vs. Transparency

The real story that intrigues me begins here, in the Editor’s Behind The Headlines blog, since the reporter who actually took the remains from the woman and delivered them to the coroner, was the same one who wrote the news report. No one else was involved. The news article simply referred to himself as ‘the reporter’ anonymously, thus wrongly pretending the story to be objective. The Editor writes:

And thus a new chapter was added to the lore of the Herald-Leader newsroom — and a rather interesting ethical discussion was borne. The ethical conundrum was two-fold: Should a reporter accept proffered body parts? And, if a reporter does accept said body parts, has he become so tied up in the story that he can no longer objectively write it? Opinions in the newsroom differed on these points, as is often the case in journalism.

The question of whether the reporter should have helped the woman is a non-question for me. A reporter is first a human being, and then a reporter. About the second, I agree with Josh from CNET, who opines that objectivity becomes impossible in certain situations, the only sensible approach is transparency and full-disclosure. Patrick, from the Jakarta Post has a strong, well-argued opinion that the traditional ideal of objectivity is not only pretentious, it is false. He says:

The truth is that objectivity is not only an impossible ideal to aspire to; it might not even really be worth the effort. What would make far more sense would be for the press to aspire to accuracy, to fairness, to even-handedness, and to transparency. These at least, are attainable aspirations.

Anguish vs. Numbness

This further led me to think about journalists from their perspective - I mean really putting on journalistic shoes and cap. We bloggers are used to bashing the media. How many times have we deplored the way they scavenge the relatives of the dead or missing like vultures intent on squeezing every bloody drop of emotion to keep the audience glued? A British reporter covering the Congo Crisis once walked into a crowd of Belgian evacuees and shouted, “Anyone here been raped and speaks English?”.

Now, step outside your frame of reference for a moment, and read this article by war correspondent Jack Shafer on Slate, “In Praise of Insensitive Reporters“: There may be no tougher assignment in journalism than knocking on the door of a mother who has lost her young daughter to a killer and asking, “How do you feel?”. He argues that if the US media had stopped covering the Virginia Tech massacre after the real news was over, the public would have rioted. Read about Karina Bland, who covered a 4-month investigation into into young children burned, beaten, and sexually defiled, and became an exception in the industry when she took recourse in crisis counseling.

Soldiers, police, fire-fighters, and emergency medical personnel - all receive special training for dealing with traumatic events. Journalists, who are routinely involved in the same situations, receive none. Further, their industry shuns any signs of weakness, so reporters are used to bottling up their stress. They refuse to accept their grief, their horror, even to themselves.

The Apotheosis

The climax of the poisonous mix of harsh criticism and adulatory praise that journalists can encounter, came a few months after the publication of this photograph in the NYT:

This photograph showing a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture won Kevin Carter the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Along with the award, he also received criticism worldwide, aptly stated by St. Petersburg Florida Times: “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.”

His photograph made the world weep, but another tragedy was to follow. Two months after receiving the Pulitzer, Carter committed suicide. Superficial observers relate his suicide either to an inability to handle fame, or guilt for not intervening and helping the child in this photo. The truth was much more complex as revealed by a Time magazine special feature.

Susan Moeller tells Carter’s story in Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death: He had gone into the bush seeking relief from the terrible starvation and suffering he was documenting, when he encountered the emaciated girl. When he saw the vulture land, Carter waited quietly, hoping the bird would spread its wings and give him an even more dramatic image. It didn’t, and he eventually chased the bird away. The girl gathered her strength and resumed her journey toward a feeding center. Afterward, writes Moeller, Carter “sat by a tree, talked to God, cried, and thought about his own daughter, Megan.”

Charles Freund puts the picture in perspective, in his article in Reason Magazine: Western newspaper readers saw a little girl. Carter, in the Sudanese village where he landed, was watching 20 people starve to death each hour. Perhaps he might have laid aside his camera to give the victims what succor he could (and thus never have encountered the girl in the bush); perhaps his photographs could have led to greater help than he could personally give. Should he have carried one girl to safety? Carter was surrounded by hundreds of starving children. When he sat by the tree and wept, it was beneath a burden of futility. But his was not a photo of futility, nor of mass starvation, nor of religious factionalism, nor of civil war. Readers saw a little girl. In part, at least, Carter died for that.

Further Reading: Wikipedia on Journalism Ethics and Standards, and a nice collection of articles on journalists covering war.

Technorati Tags: news, journalism, newspapers, press, culture, media, society

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A 9/11 Tribute from Voyager & Carl Sagan

                                                 

This image was taken, at Sagan’s suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood to the edges of our solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, when it captured this portrait of our world.

“We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds…

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish this pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

- Carl Sagan, commencement address delivered May 11, 1996.

This tribute is to hope and pray on behalf of the 2996 people who were killed on that fateful day. Many more have been killed before and after, all over this pale blue dot. Just like Voyager, we also need to turn and look back at man’s history on this fragile planet. Will we learn to cherish what we’ve got, or wipe ourselves out of existence?

Technorati Tags: terrorism, politics, iraq, 911, september 11, world trade center, news, war on terror, tribute, space, carl sagan

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Indian Women: Avoid Orkut, Switch to Facebook

One of the most frequently googled post on this blog is Indian Women: Beware of Orkut. They use many different keywords to land on that post: photo misuse on Orkut, indian women abuse orkut, and so on. Sometimes, Orkutians post a link to my article while ’scrapping’ their friends in Orkut, and I get several hits from within Orkut itself.

Well, we all know how Orkut is being misused, so why do Indians, especially women and girls, stick with it when there are better alternatives available? Facebook for example, offers some of the best privacy features among all the social networking sites. You can choose who can see your profile and what information can or cannot be searched. You can pick and choose select parts of your profile for a select group of friends. You can control what information is shared when you message or send a friend request.

If one is familiar with Facebook’s privacy features, one will feel naked in Orkut. So why do Indian girls and women still stick to Orkut? Bollywood stars have already started migrating in droves from Orkut to Facebook. Will their fans and the Indian public follow?

Here are some points to ponder:

1. ‘Critical mass’ is a significant factor in such communities. Most people will join what most others have already joined, propelling the #1 even higher in numbers. There are over 7 million Indian Orkut visitors in July 2007, compared to 0.78 million for Facebook. Orkut is MTV’s Youth Icon 2007. Another factor of course, is general knowledge and awareness of the Internet and other alternatives.

2. As per Agencyfaqs citing ComScore: “Facebook grew phenomenally in India between April and June 2007, attracting an additional 323,000 unique visitors. The privacy issue, especially for women users, is reflected in the better representation they have on Facebook. While 40.7 per cent of unique visitors from India on Facebook are women, they constitute 28 per cent in Orkut.” So, at least some Indian women are already getting wiser!

3. However strong privacy features you introduce in a social networking platform, it cannot protect you always. Like they say, if you make something idiot-proof, someone will invent a better idiot!

4. More intriguingly, I wonder if the lack of privacy features in Orkut are uniquely tempting for the Indian youth. Is our repressive social culture driving our youth to sneak and peek into each other’s Orkut profiles instead? Our present social context bans dating. Does Orkut provide a safe way to get to know some more information about that heartthrob in your college? Does it help screen that boy or girl your parents introduced to you on your own terms and on your own platform, away from your parents scrutiny?

If that is indeed the case, then networks like Facebook will never gain critical volume in India. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: orkut, facebook, india, social networks, social networking, privacy

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Yearning for Sense Beyond the Earth

At the start of the day, I was almost sure I was going to write about how the world doesn’t seem like a place that I’m proud to be in.

Depressing Scene

The Indian Left wanted India to be Left behind. The Indian Right didn’t know what was Right anymore.

China, a communist nation, seeks to achieve a nuclear deal with Pakistan, a military dictatorship, which has a proven record of having proliferated nuclear weapons technology.

A group of eight Indian men were attacked violently in what appears to be a racist crime against Indians, not a common occurrence in recent times. But the media headlines in India and the Indian blogosphere continue to be obsessed with whether one Indian, once accused of a crime and now acquitted, gets a visa or not. Controversial racist slurs against Indian celebrities paid to act in shows abroad get wider attention in India than actual racist violence against innocent Indians in a foreign country.

It is at such times, that I feel the world is hopeless. It is not a place where I would be proud to be living. These are the times when I yearn for meaning; I’m yearning for sense, to make it all meaningful, somehow.

My mind becomes very unquiet. That’s when, like rays of sunlight in a darkened room, comes news like this.

NASA Audio Video History on the Web

I used to watch Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series on Doordarshan during the 1980s. I read Cosmos and many other books that increased my fascination of astronomy. I constructed my own homemade telescope in my school days, getting Rs. 75 from my father, and using paper calendar rolls for the tubes. I used it to watch the craters on the Moon and the satellites of Saturn.

With select friends, I used to marvel at the NASA Apollo and Russian Sputnik launches. It was not until 1997 however, that I was able to watch the real action. I used to monitor the Mars Pathfinder’s movement across the Martian landscape with bated breath and indescribable excitement. Every movement of the Pathfinder against a rock, crater, or soil sample was relayed by NASA over the web, and we were enthralled by it all.

For all such aficionados, there is great news. Decades of NASA photos and videos are coming to the web!

The space agency and the Internet Archive said Tuesday that they plan to scan and archive more than 12 million NASA photographs and 100,000 hours of film and video footage for free access online, under an exclusive five-year agreement. As part of the deal, the Internet Archive will host the media album on a new Web site, Nasaimages.org.

Free Home Planetarium: Google Earth is now Google Universe!

This is absolutely wild. I used to have a DOS 3.1 based program in the late 1908s, that depicted the stars in the sky above your actual location, depending on your latitude and longitude. Now, it’s for free. Google Earth has now launched Google Sky! I think it puts the Earth in perspective!

How fascinating and unbelievably true?! Imagine, you can now traverse 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies from your desktop! I’ve spent numerous hours teaching friends, colleagues, and relatives, about the constellations and galaxies, and nebulae during cloudy skies. Imagine being able to do it using your net-connected-PC! Teach your children using Google Sky about astronomy. They might one day become Sunita Williams!

It’s often said that Google Earth and Google Maps took Cartography to the masses. TechCrunch says “Google Sky could well do the same for Astronomy.”

I do not know if this is going to bring Astronomy to the masses. There was once a time, when it was also often said, that looking at the heavens brings mankind closer, as he realizes he’s just a speck of dust on an insignificant planet, on an ordinary sized star in one corner of not just his galaxy, but completely irrelevant as far as the universe is concerned. There was a time when this thought did bring men together, either in the spirit of fear, or in the spirit of science. I don’t know if this is going to mean anything at all in today’s world.

In fact, I’m inclined to think quite the opposite. Rather than studying the stars, mankind will be more interested in how the stars positions affect his or her chances of making it with that other person, how his or her chances with this particular career lie, and so on. Will astrologers use Google Earth to pinpoint horoscopes? Is this going to be the modern panchang or Vedic calendar?

Making Sense

I’m sorry this is a long post. My point is, when such news about such great initiatives by human beings come along, I feel hopeful about this world again. That there are some people who understand what it all means. And then I’m proud to be living in this world again! I’m not sure if anyone will understand what I mean, so I guess I may be writing just for myself.

Images Credit Myself (of objects seen by naked eye myself)

Technorati Tags: india, nasa, politics, astronomy, google, carl sagan, cosmos, science

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Human Rights and Amnesty

Amnesty International (AI) is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights. It is one of the foremost institutions, recognized worldwide, towards the fight for individual human rights.

Why is it called “Amnesty”? The definition of “Amnesty” is: “A general pardon granted by a government, especially for political offenses”, or as a verb, “To grant a general pardon to.”

Think about it. Why should human rights originate from a pardon? Isn’t a right, a right? Does it have to be pardoned and then granted?

No. Human individual rights are inviolable, they cannot be ‘granted’ or ‘pardoned’. Then why is the world’s foremost human rights activist organization called “Amnesty”?

The answer, as often is the case, is economical, my friends. Amnesty International is funded by the Vatican. Remember Original Sin? According to the Christian doctrine, human rights can originate only if God ‘pardons’ man, hence the word “Amnesty”.

Isn’t this a logical paradox? Yes, it is. So what does Amnesty International think about abortion?

So far, it has been “neutral” on the topic. Now, someone inside Amnesty has had a rational light bulb moment, and they’ve decided that Amnesty will support abortion in cases of rape or incest. The Vatican is up in arms, as expected.

Human Rights and Catholicism? You must be joking! But, we aren’t. This is the truth. Sigh.

Technorati Tags: amnesty, human rights, individual rights, religion

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