Dammed if you do, dammed if you don't

The conduct of the Tamil Nadu lawyers in surprising. They of all people should know that a citizen of India has a right to freedom of speech. So why should they have objection to Subramaniam Swamy’s anti-LTTE statements? The LTTE has been banned by GOI as a terrorist organisation. The lawyers’ behaviour reeks of separatism and utter disregard for the constitution of India.

Normally the police is criticized for not taking action against ‘supposedly peaceful’ mobs. Now when police did take action, maybe more stringent than needed, we have a problem. It is a case of dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t. The police may be at fault in this case, but the lawyers certainly are. I don’t understand the SC’s stand. It seems to be siding with the legal fraternity. While it has asked the State Govt. to immediately remove the police station from court premises it has said nothing about the lawyers’ behaviour so far. We have seen this kind of partiality from the SC before. When it comes to RTI, corruption, etc in other arms of the state the SC is gung-ho about going after the culprits. But when it is a question of judges or even lawyers, the SC goes soft. This is hypocricy.

Astrologers and bullshit

This post was prompted by a DNA article which called astrologer R. Narayanan 'the Nostradamus' of the 21st century. It credits him with some fantastic predictions and quotes him saying Monday, Feb 23, 2009 will be 'deadly'. Like his ilk he proceeds to dish out generic predictions which have no timeline and are vaguely worded. Most times I have a good laugh at these things but sometimes it rankles me that people don't see through their hollow craft. Here is the article

"THIS MONDAY WILL BE DEADLY, WARNS ASTROLOGER

He is undoubtedly the 21st century Nostradamus. Having predicted the fall of MGR and the ascension of Manmohan Singh, 77-year-old, retired central government officer R Narayanan predicts a political upheaval in India, a volatile stock market and crash in real estate prices due to an unusual conjunction of six celestial bodies viz Sun, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Uranus and Moon in Capricorn constellation on February 23.

"Because of this phenomenon, both good and evil will occur in the world. I foresee a major war in the Middle East involving Israel, Jordan and Iran. A war is also imminent between India and Pakistan. Political leaders in India will suffer health hazards and IT staffers working in the US, the UK and Middle East may return home," the numerologist told DNA from his first floor flat of a posh locality in Chennai.

He also predicts terror attacks in India and the West as well as natural calamities such as an earthquake occurring in the Himalayan region, Andaman and Nicobar islands, southern states of India, Afghanistan, Los Angeles, Ivory Coast, Africa, Japan and Jakarta.

"We come from a family of traditional astrologers with my ancestors being much sought after by the kings of Ramnad [Ramanathapuram]. My father was a teacher and he groomed Abdul Kalam by providing him shelter in our home. He didn't believe in astrology and always insisted on education. But by divine grace, I developed an extraordinary extra sensory perception following a head injury at the age of 24 and have since been able to foretell the future based on the science of astronomy," he explains.

The injury left Narayanan in a state of coma for close to 20 days in a Ramanathapuram hospital. His sojourn of premonitions based on extra sensory perceptions began then.

"After I regained consciousness, I foresaw a grave danger for the doctor who was supposed to conduct my surgery. I told the doctor about it. But the doctor dismissed it as hallucinations due to my injury. Unfortunately, the next morning I was informed that the doctor had collapsed due to a massive heart attack," he says.

Narayanan was soon discharged from hospital as he also predicted the fate of a fellow patient, who too succumbed to illness.

Narayanan has a huge corporate following. Many corporate entities seek his advice on names and logos."

I never heard of any of his predictions before. Which terror attacks had he predicted. Why doesn’t DNA give us details of when these predictions of his happened and when the actual events took place?

To me it is nothing but bullshit. If these people who claim to predict the future really have the capability to do so then let them make concrete predictions with specific timelines. Say like India and Pakistan will declare war on each other on XX-XX-XXXX and the war will last for XXX days. Or a X.X magnitude earthquake will strike so and so region on XX-XX-XXXX. Till that happens the media should not give them undue publicity.

I'm better off not believing in any religion

Is it a crime to try and help people understand their religion better? It sure seems so from the following article. And my guess is that the 'High Priests' of all religions would prefer the faithful to remain ignorant of the true teachings of their religion and blindly follow what they tell them

2 Afghans face death over translation of Quran

KABUL: No one knows who brought the book to the mosque, or at least no one dares say The pocket-size translation of the Quran

has already landed six men in prison in Afghanistan and left two of them begging judges to spare their lives. They're accused of modifying the Quran and their fate could be decided Sunday in court.

The trial illustrates what critics call the undue influence of hard-line clerics in Afghanistan, a major hurdle as the country tries to establish a lawful society amid war and militant violence.

The book appeared among gifts left for the cleric at a major Kabul mosque after Friday prayers in September 2007. It was a translation of the Quran into one of Afghanistan's languages, with a note giving permission to reprint the text as long as it was distributed for free.

Some of the men of the mosque said the book would be useful to Afghans who didn't know Arabic, so they took up a collection for printing. The mosque's cleric asked Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai, a longtime friend, to get the books printed.

But as some of the 1,000 copies made their way to conservative Muslim clerics in Kabul, whispers began, then an outcry.

Many clerics rejected the book because it did not include the original Arabic verses alongside the translation. It's a particularly sensitive detail for Muslims, who regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and a mistranslation could warp God's word.

The clerics said Zalmai, a stocky 54-year-old spokesman for the attorney general, was trying to anoint himself as a prophet. They said his book was trying to replace the Quran, not offer a simple translation. Translated editions of the Quran abound in Kabul markets, but they include Arabic verses.

The country's powerful Islamic council issued an edict condemning the book.

``In all the mosques in Afghanistan, all the mullahs said, 'Zalmai is an infidel. He should be killed,''' Zalmai recounted as he sat outside the chief judge's chambers waiting for a recent hearing.

Zalmai lost friends quickly. He was condemned by colleagues and even by others involved in the book's printing. A mob stoned his house one night, said his brother, Mahmood Ghaws.

Police arrested Zalmai as he was fleeing to Pakistan, along with three other men the government says were trying to help him escape. The publisher and the mosque's cleric, who signed a letter endorsing the book, were also jailed.

There is no law in Afghanistan prohibiting the translation of the Quran. But Zalmai is accused of violating Islamic Shariah law by modifying the Quran. The courts in Afghanistan, an Islamic state, are empowered to apply Shariah law when there are no applicable existing statutes.

And Afghanistan's court system appears to be stacked against those accused of religious crimes. Judges don't want to seem soft on potential heretics and lawyers don't want to be seen defending them, said Afzal Shurmach Nooristani, whose Afghan Legal Aid group is defending Zalmai.

The prosecutor wants the death penalty for Zalmai and the cleric, who have now spent more than a year in prison.

Sentences on religious infractions can be harsh. In January 2008, a court sentenced a journalism student to death for blasphemy for asking questions about women's rights under Islam. An appeals court reduced the sentence to 20 years in prison. His lawyers appealed again and the case is pending.

In 2006, an Afghan man was sentenced to death for converting to Christianity. He was later ruled insane and was given asylum in Italy. Islamic leaders and the parliament accused President Hamid Karzai of being a puppet for the West for letting him live.

Nooristani, who is also defending the journalism student, said he and his colleagues have received death threats.

``The mullahs in the mosques have said whoever defends an infidel is an infidel,'' Nooristani said.

The legal aid organization, which usually represents impoverished defendants, is defending Zalmai because no one else would take the case.

``We went to all the lawyers and they said, 'We can't help you because all the mullahs are against you. If we defend you, the mullahs will say that we should be killed.' We went six months without a lawyer,'' Zalmai said outside the judge's chambers.

The publisher was originally sentenced to five years in prison. Zalmai and the cleric were sentenced to 20, and now the prosecutor is demanding the death penalty for the two as a judge hears appeals.

Nearly everyone in court claims ignorance now. The mosque's mullah says he never read the book and that he was duped into signing the letter. The print shop owner says neither he nor any of his employees read the book, noting that it's illegal for them to read materials they publish.

Zalmai pleaded for forgiveness before a January hearing, saying he had assumed a stand-alone translation wasn't a problem.

``You can find these types of translations in Turkey, in Russia, in France, in Italy,'' he said.

When the chief judge later banged his gavel to silence shouting lawyers and nodded at Zalmai to explain himself, the defendant stood and chanted Quranic verses as proof that he was a devout Muslim who should be forgiven.

Shariah law is applied differently in Islamic states. Saudi Arabia claims the Quran as its constitution, while Malaysia has separate religious and secular courts.

But since there is no ultimate arbiter of religious questions in Afghanistan, judges must strike a balance between the country's laws and proclamations by clerics or the Islamic council, called the Ulema council.

Judges are ``so nervous about annoying the Ulema council and being criticized that they tend to push the Islamic cases aside and just defer to what others say,'' said John Dempsey, a legal expert with the U.S. Institute of Peace in Kabul.

Deferring to the council means that edicts issued by the group of clerics can influence rulings more than laws on the books or a judge's own interpretation of Shariah law, he said.

Judges have to be careful about whom they might anger with their rulings. In September, gunmen killed a top judge with Afghanistan's counter-narcotics court. Other judges have been gunned down as well.

Mahmood Ghaws said that even if his brother is found innocent, their family will never be treated the same.

``When I go out in the street, people don't say hello to me in the way they used to,'' he said. ``They don't ask after my family.''