Using Facebook to spy on your 'friends' can cause depression

This news or study is not telling something new. It's old news that social media is causing depression in people, all over the world.
 
But what is astounding here is that most people still take what other people post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media site as the proof that those friends of theirs have a much better life than their own; a great house, travelling to exotic locations, having great food; essentially, living the luxurious life.
 
Then, if they are single, they go into depression & stress. If they are in a relationship, then they not only go into depression themselves, but also start to create a rift in their relationship by constantly fighting with their partner that why aren't they are living the luxurious life.
 
What those people forget that what their friends are posting on social media is without context & only half-truth. They are not posting anything negative about their life. Nobody does. Frankly, if everyone is living such a luxurious & beautiful life, then world should be a lot more enjoyable place; we wouldn't be constantly hearing about divorces, runaway kids, people being laid off from jobs, people not protesting against austerity, minimum wages, & debts, etc.
 
We may think that people should use common sense when they see things (pictures, status, comments) on social media by their friends & realize that it's only tiny side of the whole picture. But then, like a colleague of mine once said to me in 2008, "common sense is not as common as you might think."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Using Facebook to spy on friends in order to compare their achievements with yours can lead to depression & may have a detrimental effect on mental health, a new study from the University of Missouri has found.
 
But when Facebook is used to see how well an acquaintance is doing in terms of their finances or to see how happy one of your friends is in their relationship, then this behavior can cause envy among users.

“Facebook can be a very positive resource for many people, but if it used as a way to size up one’s own accomplishments against others, it can have a negative effect,” said Duffy.
 
Facebook users should be aware that it’s important to have social media literacy, said Edson Tandoc, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, who coauthored the study.

“Users should be self-aware that positive self-presentation is an important motivation in using social media, so it is to be expected that many users would only post positive things about themselves. This self-awareness, hopefully, can lessen feelings of envy,” said Tandoc.

http://rt.com/news/229643-facebook-monitor-friends-depression/

Dieudonne M'bala M'bala charged with inciting terrorism

Dieudonne M'bala M'bala, 48, was in the dock at the Palais de Justice in central Paris charged with inciting terrorism, as prosecutors called for a fine equivalent to £22,000.
 
But the controversial entertainer denied any wrongdoing & said the case exposed the hypocrisy of a country which 'pretends' to be a bastion of free speech.
 
'Je suis Charlie' (I am Charlie) has since become the French government-backed rallying cry for those who support the magazine, but Dieudonne says this displays double-standards.

 

Dieudonne, who has convictions for anti-Semitism, said his humour was no different to Charlie Hebdo's.

 

He wrote: 'Tonight, as far as I'm concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly.'

 

The comedian told the court yesterday that he 'condemned the attacks without reservation & without any ambiguity'.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2940446/French-comedian-joked-Charlie-Hebdo-massacres-faces-22-000-fine-despite-claiming-condemned-attacks-without-reservation.html

How your brain can heal itself

The brain is actually a supple, malleable organ, as ready to unlearn as it is to learn, capable of transforming vicious circles into virtuous circles, of resetting & repairing its internal communications. Far more than once dreamed possible, the brain can—if not always cure—heal itself.
 
Doidge wrote about the brain’s remarkable ability to recalibrate itself—what doctors call neuroplasticity—in his 2007 bestseller The Brain That Changes Itself. His new book recounts an astounding array of radical improvements in brain problems long thought irreversible. There are newly effective therapies, leading to improvement in, & sometimes even complete cures, for conditions ranging from stroke to traumatic brain injuries, learning disorders & missing brain parts. Even Parkinson’s & MS symptoms can be improved in new ways. “Like Marshall McLuhan said, the future is already here,” says Doidge in an interview. “The early neuroplasticians had to battle to get their findings accepted but now the field is not remotely controversial. I’m no longer talking about ‘promising’ developments down the road, but therapies that are here now. Patients & their caregivers just have to know who is doing things they thought impossible.”

Consider Dr. Michael Moskowitz, who knows pain both professionally & intimately. The co-operator of Bay Area Medical Associates in Sausalito, Calif., Moskowitz is a star in the treatment of pain, the man who sets the exams in pain medicine for aspiring American doctors. ... “We are where people come to die with their pain,” he told Doidge. By 2007, 13 years after a waterskiing accident, it looked like Moskowitz would be one of them. The acute pain from his neck injury had morphed into permanent, & growing, chronic pain.
 
It did so via the same mechanisms that create that transformation in anyone. “Chronic pain is plasticity gone wild,” Doidge says. The injury to Moskowitz’s neck had also affected his body’s pain system, specifically the neurons in the brain associated with the neck area, causing them to fire repeated false alarms long after the neck had healed. What happened next illustrates core laws of neuroplasticity. Neurons that fire together, wire together: the more Moskowitz’s pain signals flared, the better & quicker they became at it. Use it or lose it: the fight for brain territory is competitive. The more Moskowitz favoured his neck because of the pain, the less the neurons involved with it had to do, & the more vulnerable they become to hijacking by nearby areas, including the pain sensors now working overtime. Moskowitz was caught in a vicious circle. His pain, 3/10 on the standard scale at the best of times, & spiking frequently to 8/10, was only getting worse. “Plasticity is a blessing when you’re listening to classical music & developing an appreciation for it,” Doidge wryly notes, “but it’s a curse when you are reinforcing pain.”

As his quality of life inexorably eroded, Moskowitz sat down to read 15,000 pages of cutting-edge neurological research, seeking a way to make plasticity work for him. Moskowitz concentrated on 2 areas of the brain among the dozen that do at least some pain processing, the posterior cingulate & the posterior parietal lobe, areas whose primary purpose is to deal with visual information.
 
He knew already that when a brain area is processing pain it uses about 5% of the neurons in the area, but the reinforcement involved in chronic pain means about 15% - 20% of the neurons become involved. By concentrating on an image of his brain—an image in which it changed from being lit up by pain activity to being calm & pain-free—Moskowitz thought he could quiet the original pain receptors & force the hijacked neurons back to their day jobs as visual processors.
 
It required relentless dedication at first, a conscious response to every twinge. In 3 weeks, Moskowitz thought he detected slight improvement, enough to spur him on; by 6 weeks the pain that had spread to his back was gone; within a year he was almost always pain-free everywhere. He had turned the vicious circle virtuous. “Relentlessness was the most important factor, absolutely,” Doidge agrees. “As a psychiatrist, I know that if you reframe a symptom attack as an opportunity, if instead of becoming crestfallen & pulling back, you treat every pain, anxiety or inhibition—reframe it as your moment—that’s the route to altering that circuitry. That’s what Moskowitz did. He didn’t let a single twinge of pain go by.”

Intense dedication is a hallmark of those who, all on their own, accomplish large-scale change in their brains. John Pepper, a South African now in his late seventies, was diagnosed in his thirties with the incurable, chronic, progressive neurodegenerative disease known as Parkinson’s. By all odds he should be immobile, if not dead, by now, but Pepper has fought his symptoms to a standstill by vigorous exercise carried out with ferocious determination & conscientious attention to detail. “Even as his unconscious ability to walk unravelled,” Doidge explains, “Pepper realized that if he analyzed how he walked & used his conscious mind to guide him, he could still do it. So he used a different part of his brain, the frontal lobes, &—like a child learning to walk—thought himself into efficient walking.”

People with Parkinson’s have 6 times the dementia rate of those who do not, & Pepper is reaching what are the danger years for anyone, yet his mind is sharp. That, together with his mode of exercise & the first-the-right-heel-then-the-left-knee precision with which he pursues it, raise a question about Alzheimer’s, a disease where both exercise & conscientiousness are proven factors in delaying onset. Is Alzheimer’s a disease of plasticity, or rather of its absence? Doidge is cautious in response. “There are so many ways of looking at Alzheimer’s. Most researchers analyze it chemically, because of the proteins involved, in hopes of finding alleviating drugs, but to look at Alzheimer’s that way is to put it under the microscope at very high power—it is more holistic to think of an Alzheimer’s brain as one that is losing plasticity.”

Whether walking battles the onset of dementia through its link to plasticity or by its more general health benefits, it’s one of the most potent anti-dementia forces known. “Now we have the Cardiff study looking at the British men over 30 years & it shows that if you did 5 things, including walking at least 3 kilometres a day,” Doidge says, “the risk of dementia falls a staggering 60%. If any medication did that, it would be the most talked-about drug in history.”

Not that drugs have any role in the story Doidge tells. Moskowitz, who has switched the goal of his clinic from pain management to pain eradication, recognizes that he himself (& the likes of Pepper) is an outlier set apart by his iron determination. Not all his patients can follow him down his own relentless road. Even so, Moskowitz does not always seek to aid them with drug therapy—instead devoting considerable effort to weaning them from painkillers—but with touch, sound & vibration. It’s a pattern Doidge sees everywhere. “Almost all the success stories involve a combination of mind & energy.”

Much of The Brain’s Way of Healing is devoted to non-invasive energy therapies. The author is particularly enamoured with light therapy, once far more prominent in Western medicine than it is now. Doidge likes to quote Florence Nightingale, who said “Light is not only a painter but a sculptor,” after she took note that wounded soldiers in outdoor field hospitals in Crimea recovered better than those stuck indoors. “We are far more transparent than we think & more sensitive to light than we think. So I have an entire chapter on the use of light, including cold lasers, to heal the brain.”

Light and other energy therapies have fallen from favour, Doidge believes, because for 50 years scientists have focused on the brain’s material & chemical side. Chemicals do work in small regions for signalling, he says, but the true universal language of the brain lies in its pattern of electrical signals. “All our senses take energy from outside & translate it into another form of energy inside the brain. Clinicians can now use these natural forms of energy to ‘talk’ to the brain.” And nothing speaks more loudly and clearly than the electrical pulses of the PoNS.
 
Originally thought of by its inventors as an aid for brain-injured people with balance troubles, the Portable Neuromodulation Stimulator has astonished even them with its effectiveness over a range of conditions &, especially, the speed with which it helps. A small, pocket-sized device, part of which went into the mouth & rested on the tongue & part of which stayed outside—144 electrodes that fired off electric pulses to activate the tongue’s sensory neurons. After 2 weeks of sessions with it, a voiceless MS patient could sing; a woman immobilized by Parkinson’s could walk; a stroke victim who couldn’t understand a newspaper article could read whatever she wanted.
 
All this because the tongue, Doidge says, “is the royal road to the brain”—with no dead skin & a moist surface making it an excellent conductor, & rich in sensory preceptors for touch, taste & pain that lead directly to the brain stem. “The PoNS turned out to be a very good stimulator for the whole brain.” Doidge thinks it clears up “noise” in the brain caused by disease or injury. “People tend to think neurons are either dead or alive afterwards, but actually many are firing at an irregular or wrong rate. Incoming information is thus chaotic & noise-filled, with even the healthy cells unable to communicate.” The PoNs, via the tongue’s access to the brain stem & hence the entire brain, can reset the circuitry, allow effective electrical communication & return the brain to a state of equilibrium. That’s why the application is so wide-ranging: with the noise gone, the brain starts working with what it has, in whatever condition it finds itself.
 
For decades, Doidge remarks, scientists wouldn’t use “healing” & “brain” in the same sentence, because they thought the brain was so sophisticated that it lacked self-healing powers. That turned out to be wrong—the brain is even more sophisticated than anyone realized.

http://www.macleans.ca/society/health/how-your-brain-heals-itself/

The Lone Ranger (Quote 3)

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France identifies its terrorism breeding grounds

As I have blogged in some of my previous blog posts that assimilation is a 2-way street. Most, if not all, countries of Northern & Western Europe, & North America, are being chosen by immigrants, from South Asia, Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, & even Middle East, as their new adopted home.
 
These immigrants come with so much hope & so many dreams to these countries. They all range from different backgrounds; religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic etc. But, once they land in these countries, they are relegated to the back of the society by the indigenous or born-nationals of that country. These immigrants are subjected to discrimination in education & jobs.
 
When these immigrants or their kids are sidelined by their new adopted country, regardless of how much they want to assimilate or love their new country, they grew hatred towards their new adopted country. And that time, they are easy to be radicalized & molded by people & organizations who can get them to do whatever these kids can do.
 
Blaming those kids or their families for not assimilating or hating their adopted country is not the solution to resolving the issue of uprooting criminality & terrorism out of the country. That blame unjustifiably will only radicalize those youths even more.
 
The solution is to provide education & jobs to these immigrants & kids; not doing them any favours, but based on objective merits. Then, immigrants can't complain if they don't get a certain job or degree, because they can see that they themselves don't posses the skills for those jobs. But, in reality, we see hurdles / demands which are clearly been put up to sideline these immigrants & their kids; networking, relevant work experience, education obtained from that country's institution (math is same everywhere, Newton's & Einstein's theories are same everywhere, Debits & Credits are same everywhere, in the world).
 
For example, in Canada, we can see in any major city that taxi / cab drivers are, overwhelmingly, South Asians. Once you start talking to them, you come to realize that most of them are quite educated; doctors, engineers, PhDs, CAs, MBAs etc, but they are told to bring Canadian education & experience to get any job in their field.
 
Their kids usually suffer almost similar fate. Since, they have Canadian education &, in most cases, work experience, too, they get better jobs than what their parents are able to do, but, not better than, the similarly educated & experienced Canadian counterpart. Compared to that born-Canadian (esp. a Caucasian), that immigrant's kid is actually underemployed. That's why, we see immigrants, esp. South Asians, Africans, & even Eastern Europeans, gather several designations & degrees to move up the corporate ladder, but only a few are able to do so.
 
Some people of these European & North American countries counter that why don't these immigrants leave their country, if their conditions are so bad. Where they are going to go? Back to their own country? They may not have any financial means to go back; spent all their money to get in their new adopted country in the hope of a better future. We all have heard stories of people scrounging money to pay to human smugglers to get into a country.
 
Those people, perhaps, can't go back to their own homeland. Most people love their homelands, but due to civil wars & terrorism, they are forced out of their homes in their homelands. We can't say to those people that it's their country's fault, because in most cases, those civil wars & terrorism & their governments' heavy-handedness is supported by these Western countries.
 
For example, take the example of Yemen & Egypt right now. Egypt arrested many of its citizens during Arab Spring demonstrations, & imprisoned them on false charges. Their ruler has the full blessing of Western countries & the government receives millions in aid from these Western countries. Yemenis are being killed by Saudi Arabian army. Saudi Arabia doesn't have any arms-manufacturing facilities in its own country. It buys all of its arms & weapons from US, Canada, & several European countries, including France, Germany, UK, Sweden etc. Those arms are also used by the country's rulers on their own citizens to subdue any dissidents & opponents. We all know this. So where will or can these immigrants go? They certainly can't go back their own countries.
 
So, the solutions are that either these Western countries stop arms selling to these corrupt countries in Asia, Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central & South America OR accept these immigrants in your countries with open arms & get them education & jobs, which they worked hard for & they rightly deserve.
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French counter-terrorism experts have identified 64 suburbs in dozens of cities that act as breeding grounds for Islamic extremism.
 
So-called 'ghettos' with high rates of youth unemployment, immigration and single-parent families, such as L'Ariane near Nice, have been linked to the radicalisation of young & vulnerable people.
 
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls last month admitted that the country had collapsed into social & ethnic 'apartheid' - the first time a senior politician has conceded that economic marginalisation & religious tensions have led to serious divides.
 
In total 64 French suburbs have been identified as breeding grounds for extremism, each of them sharing startling similar characteristics, according to Sky News.
 
Unemployment, for example, is on average 23% in the suburbs, rising to a staggering 45% among the young. Up to half of all families in the 64 suburbs also have just one parent.
 
For those lucky enough to have work, the average income is just €11,000 (£8,300) a year, leaving many with barely enough money to survive.
 
As many as 50% of those living in the suburbs are also first generation immigrants or their children, many of them having travelled to France from war-torn nations.
 
Such patterns of have now proved to the French leadership that vast swathes of the population are falling behind economically, resulting in ghettoised suburbs where mental & social attachment to France as a nation holds little sway, & where criminal & religious leaders often wield power.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2937879/France-identifies-terrorism-breeding-grounds-Ghettos-high-unemployment-large-numbers-single-parent-families-mainly-immigrants.html

Edward Snowden urges caution over Bill C-51

Edward Snowden, the fugitive American who leaked state secrets, wants Canadians to know that anti-terrorism laws are easy to pass but very hard to undo.

He told the high school students that they should “always be extraordinarily cautious” & press for answers, whenever governments rely on “fear & panic” to set up powers that can be exercised in secret.

On Friday, the Conservative government introduced legislation that would empower Canadian authorities to “disrupt” suspected terrorist threats & remove extremist posts from the Internet. At the same time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been resisting calls to step up scrutiny of Canada’s spy agencies.

Mr. Snowden was speaking to a crowd of more than 1,000 students at Toronto’s Upper Canada College via a Google Hangouts link from his exile in Russia. More people watched on the Internet, & it was the first time he directly addressed a Canadian audience.

Students pressed Mr. Snowden to do more to reveal the inner workings of Canada’s NSA counterpart, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE).

Last week, a leaked CSE document revealed that Canadian analysts have been scouring “free file upload” Internet sites in hopes of unearthing manuals related to jihadi activity.

The agency, which collects foreign intelligence signals for Canada, is technically banned from spying on domestic communications.

Previously, leaks have shown that CSE traced smartphones it had spotted moving through Toronto’s Pearson airport.

Many of Mr. Snowden’s leaks to date have highlighted secret spying collaborations among the NSA, CSE & counterpart agencies in Britain, Australia & New Zealand. The collective is known as the “Five Eyes.”

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/edward-snowden-urges-caution-over-ottawas-proposed-security-law/article22755515/

The Lone Ranger (Quote 2)

When blood is spilled unjustly, either by governments, radicalized groups, or both; rivers do run red, then !!!

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Analysis of the piece, "Banning the Niqab harms an open society...."

Although, this opinion piece starts out great but after the first paragraph, it's all downhill from there due to it being full with erroneous information & confusing the simpleton living on the main street.

Let's break down some of the problems with this piece:
 
1. Confusing the reader was evident from the piece & as such commented on it by a reader (Matt Hughes) that if we come across a veiled woman on the street, then what do we think or who do we blame; is it the woman's own choice of that niqab or her male relatives who forced her to wear it?
 
Most people don't like grey areas & as such, Mr. Joe & Jane Sixpacks on the main street will either ignore that veiled woman outright or start harassing her or her male relatives. If the Muslim woman says that she is wearing it on her own accord then the response will be that "you are brainwashed by your misogynistic male relatives (brother / husband / father). They won't understand that thin line between what's wrong with niqab in a liberal democracy & being forced to wear it.
 
2. Niqab is "anti-liberal" & "anti-democratic". Let me ask this then, why are there laws against indecent exposure in a liberal democracy? Per the author's logic that in a liberal democracy, the government cannot force an individual to dress a certain way. As he eloquently rephrased Pierre Trudeau's line that the state has no business in the dressing rooms of the nation, why are there laws against nudists roaming the streets in downtown areas of Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, & Montreal?
 
A liberal democracy certainly has no rights in the dressing rooms of the nation, but it also certainly doesn't have any rights to single out a tiny minority & make a pariah out of it without ever understanding the reasons behind a certain practice.
 
3. Author never made any distinction between a niqab & a hijab. Several people, & as such evident from the comments to the piece, that both hijab & niqab, are considered one & the same. (Comment by "NewsReader" that "the niqab is clearly misogynist. So is the hijab.").
 
There's a huge difference between a hijab & niqab, but the Mr. Joe & Jane Sixpacks on the street don't have a clue of that, since they have not understood Islam to its full extent & they have also not often interacted with Muslims, with different Islamic cultural practices.
 
4. To begin with the obvious, niqab & hijab have everything to do with Islam. Perhaps, the author likes to open the Quran & go to Chapter 33, Verse 33 where it says, "and stay in your houses & do not display your finery like the displaying of the ignorance of yore ...." Although, this is directed towards Muslim women of "7th-century Arabia" & specifically, the wives of Prophet Muhammad & mothers of all Muslims worldwide, this is applicable to all Muslim women today.
 
Just because a majority is not following a certain practice, it doesn't mean that the practice is outdated now. Using the same logic, Christians should stop the "outdated" practice of fasting & prayers during Lent, since the majority don't observe Lent nowadays. Or Jews should stop the "outdated" practice of observing Shabbat since the majority of Jews don't observe Shabbat nowadays. We can keep going discussing "outdated" practices in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, since majority of the people around the world are not following their religions as dictated in their religious books & scriptures but I think the reader got the point.
 
Now, as I stated above that although, this was a practice of "7th century Arabia," Muslim women of today must dress how the Arab Muslim wives of Prophet did in his time. Question arises then that it was a cultural practice & Quran never actually dictates how a Muslim woman should dress.
 
True, but then Quran never provide specifics for a lot of things in Islam. Hadiths (sayings, practices, lifestyle of Prophet Muhammad) provide the specifics, but then, obviously, the Prophet did whatever he did in "7th-century Arabia" was according to that Arabian culture & times. Let's take a few examples:

a. Prayers: Quran only orders Muslims to pray. It never provide any specifics into it. So, why don't Muslims pray like singing in a choir (Christianity) or as an interpretive dance (Hinduism)? Why do they recite Quranic verses in Arabic when most Muslims of the world don't even have Arabic as their mother tongue? Why do Muslims do all those poses of standing, sitting, or prostration?

b. Fasting: Quran only orders Muslims to fast. So why don't Muslims fast from dawn till noon only? Why don't they fast like some people do in other religions e.g. drink water & don't take solids? Why Muslims abstain from sexual relations while fasting?

c. Alms: Quran only orders Muslims to give alms. So why don't Muslims give 10% of their gross income, similar to Christians? Why don't Muslims calculate alms like we all fill out our complicated taxes?

d. Pilgrimage: I think the readers got the idea that Quran only says perform pilgrimage. How, when, what, of pilgrimage are all provided to us in Hadiths.

So, it seems like that all pillars of Islam are based on the teachings of Prophet Muhammad & were passed down to today's Muslims through these Hadiths. Since, he was living in "7th-century Arabia", we can easily say that all these pillars of Islam are relics of "7th-century Arabia" & should not be followed now. Can we get even one fatwa from any Islamic scholar in the world to denounce all these Islamic pillars?

5. Author cites Al-Azhar University & Turkey as the proof that niqabs have nothing to do with Islam & hence, they are banned. That creates 2 problems. One that readers then ask the question, & rightly so, that why can't Canada then bans the niqabs when they have nothing to do with Islam & Islamic countries & Islamic organizations have spoken out against niqabs (reader: jjfoxy in the comments). That plays right into the hands of Harper & its supporters & anyone else who is against niqabs.

Secondly, citing some examples who support author's view amounts to misrepresenting the facts or confirming his own biases. The author certainly didn't check out the Quran's interpretation & explanations from prominent scholars, like South Asian scholar, Mawdudi, or even Egyptian scholar, Sayyid Qutb. If the author prefers to consult a living scholar of this modern age, then there is Canadian scholar, Dr. Farhat Hashmi, who by the way, does have a PhD in "Hadith Sciences" from University of Glasgow, Scotland, & wears a niqab. Anyway, so what the author did, is called "fatwa shopping," which is when we don't like a certain fatwa or decision from one scholar, we shop around until we find the one we wanted in the first place.

Citing Al-Azhar University & Turkey as an example against niqab is also taking those examples out of context. Al-Azhar University is not the great center of Sunni learning anymore. It was at one time in the past, but, we cannot forget that their rulings / fatwas are heavily influenced by Egyptian dictators. Why aren't any scholars from Al-Azhar University issuing any fatwas against Sunni & Shiite Muslims fighting each other & killing each other all over Middle East? (That I think is far more important matter than niqabs, since that involves human lives).
 
We all know that Hosni Mubarak was a dictator who was ruling Egypt with an iron fist back in 2009, & hence, he forced Al-Azhar University to issue a statement, which he wanted in the first place. We also know that Turkish army, which tightly controls the government, don't allow Erdogan to bring in any legislation which breaks their almost 100-year-old strict traditions to not bring in Islamic practices like hijabs.
 
Taking things out of context, by same measure, the author can say tomorrow that Islam supports dictatorships, because of Imams of Islam's 2 holiest sites, Mecca & Medinah. Both of these Imams give Friday sermons to thousands of Muslims, which have to be pre-approved by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of religious affairs. Those Imams can't say 1 thing against Saudi Arabian regime, which tramples human rights at its will.
 
Taking anything out of context is a very dangerous practice. It is practiced by right-wing & ignorant people in North America, who don't understand Quran & Hadiths & take verses like "kill infidels wherever you find them" out of Quran, completely out of context, as their support for the argument that Islam is not a peaceful religion. Hardliners & extremists in Islam do the exact same thing to encourage Muslims, & especially new converts & misguided Muslims who have never studied Quran & Hadiths themselves, to kill non-Muslims.
 
6. The argument that women are forced to wear niqab or hijab (the author never distinguishes it in the piece) is flawed, since a majority of Muslim women, young & old, are wearing hijab & niqabs, in the West, on their own accord.
 
We can agree that Islamic countries, like Iran & Saudi Arabia, may have forced their women citizens to cover themselves, but what about Muslim women who are converting (e.g. widow of Boston bomber) & Muslim women who were born & raised in a Muslim family. Why are these women taking on niqabs & hijabs? These Muslim women are born & raised in countries where they know their rights & they know that the government will support them fully in whatever decision they take. We can watch multiple videos & documentaries by prominent news agencies, like BBC, on Youtube where new women converts are more strict on taking on niqabs & hijabs than born Muslim women, because those women converts actually learn Arabic & try to understand Quran & Hadiths in their pure forms, whereas, the language of most born Muslims isn't even Arabic, & being complacent in their own religion, they think why do I even need to understand my own religion, when I already know what I need to know about my religion.
 
7. Author goes on to state that "what separates liberal societies from dictatorships is that the former are open, allow for face-to-face consultation, encourage dissent, & recognize individuals as equals."
 
a. I have a problem when people say liberal societies are open. Define "open"? Aren't there laws & regulations to inhibit or stop us citizens & residents from doing certain things in these societies? A robber wants to rob people in an open society or, as I gave example above, a nudist wants to walk down Yonge street nude, or a teen driver without a driver's license wants to race down the highway way above the posted limits? Similar to a market is not exactly "free", no society is exactly "open".
 
b. Liberal societies allow for "face-to-face consultations" but PM Harper of Canada or any of its cabinet members have not had any consultations with any of the Muslim women in Canada on this sensitive topic of niqab. Heck, not even Zunera Ishaq, on whom this whole topic is based, has had any "face-to-face consultation" with the Prime Minister. Does that make Canada a dictatorship then?
 
c. Liberal societies "encourage dissent" but PM Harper does not allow dissent by allowing no journalist on the Parliament Hill to ask questions to the Prime Minister. Canadian scientists keep complaining that they are muzzled on climate change issues by this government. Peaceful protests & marches, be the G20 protests years ago or the most recent protests by unions, students, & Natives, were forcibly ended through amendments to legislation. Does all this make Canada a dictatorship then?
 
d. Since, Canada is a "liberal democracy" & per author, individuals are recognized as equals in a liberal democracy, then the question arises that why it took almost 30 years for Canadian government officials to recognize that 1,200 Natives women being sexually assaulted & murdered is a problem? If 1 woman of European descent gets assaulted & murdered in a Canadian city, then the whole police force is out in force to look for the perpetrator, but it took almost 30 years & 1,200 indigenous women to be assaulted & die, for the Canadian government to realize that we may have a problem on our hands. Are these Natives women being considered "equal" as their counterparts of other races & socio-economic demographic? Does this mean that Canada is a dictatorship, then?
 
All these trump the author's logic, on which his whole argument is based, that Canada is a liberal democracy & an open society.
 
8. Liberal societies must allow one citizen to see another citizen’s face when in conversation or contact. Question should be asked why does Islam asks women to wear hijab or niqab? It seems clear that Islam & "liberal societies" are in conflict in its values.
 
Let's look at this from a different perspective & forget about religion for a minute here.
 
When we want to see the beauty of a woman, do we look at her feet, or her legs, or her arms or her tummy? When males, young & old, are attracted towards a woman, what part of her body do they look at to judge her beauty?
 
The answer is obviously, her face. It's similar to women judging men; by their faces. When we go on any one of the multiple dating & relationship websites on the internet, men & women, both judge a person's attractiveness through their faces. After all, all those beauty products & all those billion-$$$ beauty companies are selling products for women to make their faces pretty & attractive. Women spend a fortune on those beauty products. Many even go as far as to have painful & expensive botox & facial treatments because they need to look good on the dating scene.
 
Now, the argument will come that Muslim men are very lustful & can't keep it in their pants. If that's the case, then why is there a Project97 in Canada, started by Rogers Media, right now? The name of Project 97 came from the fact that 97% of the sexual assaults & harassment in Canada is never reported to law enforcement agencies. Why are there so many sexual assault allegations against the legendary comedian, Bill Cosby? What about rape allegations in university campuses & frat houses all over North America? How about CBC's Jian Ghomeshi & his sexual assault cases against him? Are all the men implicated in these cases Muslims? Of course not.
 
It's basic human biology. Usually, women are not attracted to men on looks. They need a little more than that, which we all call, "foreplay." Ask any sex expert about foreplay, & the answer will be that it doesn't start 2 minutes before sexual intercourse. It starts way before it; perhaps, those flowers, chocolates, & that expensive dinner. But men are ready to go on a moment's notice; as soon as they see an attractive woman in a "cute" dress. Of course, we all know that I am not talking about the nun's dress here.
 
So, Islam protected women from men reducing a woman to "just a piece of meat" & forcing them to talk to her on an intellectual level by telling Muslim women to wear hijab or a niqab. When a Muslim woman is wearing a hijab or a niqab, her colleague, be it a Muslim or a non-Muslim, anywhere in this world, is forced to interact with her mind, not with her body.

There is a reason when we Muslims firmly believe that Islam gave rights & protected Muslim women back in "7th-century Arabia." Now, if somebody or a government forces its female citizens to do something against their will, we can't blame Islam.

Islam also never forces anyone to follow its orders. If a person doesn't like what Islam says, he/she is most welcome to get out of Islam; similar to, when an employee doesn't like his/her employer's rules, be it the dress code or internet usage rights, he/she is most welcome to leave the company, or if a citizen doesn't like a law made by a government, he/she is most welcome to leave that country & renounce his/her citizenship.

Most, if not all, of Islamic rituals / practices practiced by Muslims around the world are written in Hadiths, & not in Quran, which, as explained / proven above, is all based on Prophet Muhammad's actions & sayings in "7th-century Arabia". 

Since, the world keeps changing, Islamic scholars who are highly knowledgable, in religious & secular affairs, are required to issue fatwas like no niqabs for Muslim women, after taking on several factors into consideration, similar to the Justices of the Supreme Court do before issuing a ruling on a sensitive topic. These religious & social matters should not be ruled upon or issued opinions by Muslims, or anyone else for that matter, who doesn't have complete knowledge of Islam. Heck, friends, family, & followers of the Prophet Muhammad, in "7th-century Arabia" never questioned the Prophet or Quran & accepted those rules without any opposition. That, at least, is mentioned in Quran in several places, is the indication of a true believer, that "he hears it & acts upon it." 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/banning-the-niqab-harms-an-open-society-so-does-wearing-it/article23469409/

Killings in Europe in 2015

The Lone Ranger (Quote 1)

Although, "The Lone Ranger" was an action / adventure movie, there were still a few interesting lines in it.
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Looking at the condition of our world today, nature is indeed out of balance today ... all done by "modern" humans !!!

IMDB          RottenTomatoes          Wikipedia

The Palace of Shame that makes China angry

Good article. The West developed itself, in the past 500 or so years, primarily through the looting of treasures of inanimate objects & enslaving millions in the process. In many cases, they also occupied whole countries.

The West forced their way into several countries / kingdoms of yesteryear (South Asia, Latin America, North America, Africa, Australasia, Middle East) in the guise of "increasing trade & economy", then took over those lands through brutal means, kept it occupied for decades, & then after emptying the lands for whatever they were worth (all their treasures, financial & human capital), left the indigenous population fighting for scraps among themselves for decades to come. All this was going on, while, "civilized" society was ruling over "barbarians".

The Western countries still do the same thing by letting their companies force their way into their former occupied lands (developing countries) in the name of trade & taking advantage of weaker / corrupt governments of those countries (which are propped up by the West), then start plundering the mineral wealth of that country without ever properly compensating those countries, e.g. Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda, Libya, Congo, Peru, Venezuela, Iraq etc.

When a good leader does come along in those former occupied lands, he/she asks for compensation, debt forgiveness, & reassesses all those contracts for mineral wealth being looted out of his/her country. Those leaders are scorned & the West tries to rile up a small minority of that country to create trouble for the that leader, e.g. Venezuela's late leader Chavez. Some other countries, like Greece, when asks for compensation for past wrongs, they are essentially told to go screw off, & "look to the future instead of past." When African countries, e.g. Congo asks for debt forgiveness, they are told that "a loan is a loan & has to be repaid", even though, that loan was essentially paid to a corrupt dictator, who was widely known that he was a corrupt dictator, but he kept getting the loans from international banks & monetary agencies.

How can the public & the honest governments of the developing countries ever trust the Western countries & their leaders, when the recent history of the world is replete with the West's dishonesty, lies, & exploitation of the developing countries with any means necessary?
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There is a deep, unhealed historical wound in the UK's relations with China - a wound that most British people know nothing about, but which causes China great pain. It stems from the destruction in 1860 of the country's most beautiful palace.

It's been described as China's ground zero - a place that tells a story of cultural destruction that everyone in China knows about, but hardly anyone outside.

The palace's fate is bitterly resented in Chinese minds & constantly resurfaces in Chinese popular films, angry social media debates, & furious rows about international art sales.

And it has left a controversial legacy in British art collections - royal, military, private - full of looted objects.

These days the site is just ruins - piles of scorched masonry, lakes with overgrown plants, lawns with a few stones scattered where many buildings once stood. The site swarms with Chinese visitors, taken there as part of a government-sponsored "patriotic education" programme.

As everyone in China is taught, it was once the most beautiful collection of architecture & art in the country. Its Chinese name was Yuanmingyuan - Garden of Perfect Brightness - where Chinese emperors had built a huge complex of palaces & other fine buildings, & filled them with cultural treasures.

A new digital reconstruction by a team at Tsinghua University gives a vivid idea of what this extraordinary place looked like when, 155 years ago, a joint British-French army approached Beijing.

The army was sent towards the end of the Opium Wars to force Chinese imperial rulers to open up their country further to Western trade & influence. In command on the British side was the 8th Earl of Elgin, from one of the most famous families in British imperial history.

French troops reached Beijing & the Summer Palace, where they began helping themselves to porcelain, silks & ancient books - or simply destroying what they found.

British troops joined in when they arrived shortly afterwards. "Officers and men seemed to have been seized with temporary insanity," said one witness. "In body & soul they were absorbed in one pursuit which was plunder, plunder."

Lord Elgin ordered the British troops to burn down the entire Summer Palace complex. The destruction, he wrote later, was intended "to mark, by a solemn act of retribution, the horror & indignation... with which we were inspired by the perpetration of a great crime".

I visited the current Lord Elgin, at his ancestral home in Scotland, to ask how he explained what had happened in 1860.

"There are things that perhaps you might have done differently," he says of his ancestor. "At the same time you've got to judge what was the feeling - intense feeling - at that particular moment."

China rejects such explanations.

"This is what they say to justify their actions," says Wang Daocheng, a leading Chinese scholar of these events. "That's the way they try to maintain the so-called moral high ground."

Soon after the Summer Palace's destruction in 1860, the 8th Earl of Elgin made a triumphant entry to the centre of Beijing, his procession symbolising British & Western domination - & Chinese humiliation.

China is also focusing increasingly on all the art that was looted by French & British forces - & taken to Europe. It was widely traded & still sits in all kinds of private & public collections.

"We're making a plan to start a series of actions to recover these antiques & get them back to China," says Niu Xianfeng, general director of the National Treasures Fund, affiliated to the Chinese Ministry of Culture.

"China will never give up the right to bring these looted or stolen treasures back."

Liu Yang, a researcher who has spent 15 years tracking down the artworks, says "British museums never reply" when he writes to ask what they have. But he has collected hundreds of images of looted items on his computer.

The Royal collection has several other items thought to be connected with the Beijing Summer Palace, including Chinese imperial sceptres, brass plaques & a mahogany screen.

The Wallace Collection in London has magnificent imperial vases from the palace.

British military museums have many items too. At the Royal Engineers' museum in Kent deputy curator James Scott showed me a beautiful jade ornament brought back from the 1860 campaign. There are also parts of a Chinese imperial throne acquired by the officer Charles Gordon - used for many decades as part of the furniture in the officers' mess.

Labelling these items is a sensitive matter. "We don't actually mention the word loot at all. We try to keep the interpretation as neutral as possible," says Scott.

Similar sensitivities are needed by auctioneers, who can make huge profits when items originally taken from the Summer Palace are re-sold today. Proof of their origin as part of the Chinese imperial collection - such as inscriptions by made by the soldiers who looted them - hugely increases their potential value.

Some newly wealthy Chinese have bid for such items. But having to pay for art that was stolen - as many Chinese see it - causes increasing resentment.

And what of the Elgin family? Does today's Lord Elgin think art should be returned to China?

"It's a very good arguing point" he concedes. But "the beauty of something is inherent in it wherever it happens to be".

"These things happen," he says of the 1860 events. "It's important to go ahead, rather than look back all the time."

The French, who joined in the looting of the palace, have been more open about their regret. "We call ourselves civilised & them barbarians," wrote the outraged author, Victor Hugo, about the destruction of the Summer Palace. "Here is what Civilisation has done to Barbarity."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30810596

Cloud Atlas (Quote # 10)

Islam, like other major religions, preach the same that death is only a door & when that closes, another one opens. Think of it like that death is simply a portal to another life, which just happens to be eternal.

 

Avg. American household is WORSE off than in 1983

Everywhere Rich getting richer & Poor keeps getting poorer. Inequality keeps increasing. A tiny portion of the population (in a country & in the world) keeps increasing its wealth w/o regard to any thoughts of how the majority will survive. This sense of entitlement of money will further increase the wealth gap between rich & poor, up to a point, when the majority poor will violently take over the reins of the financial, political, & judicial systems, which in turn, can mean bad times for the rich.
 
This economic injustice & social inequality is already causing lots of rift & chaos in European societies (austerity measures & unemployment giving rise to far-right political parties, which in turn, giving rise of hatred & discrimination in the society for minorities; religious, ethnic, racial etc.). Greece is threatening to exit EU, & we all have seen the protests in Athens, Madrid, Rome, & of course, who can forget the worldwide occupy movements.
 
Governments already angling to quell that chaos & before a large section of the society take up arms against the elites, by bringing in "anti-terror" legislation, in which, the definition of word "terrorist" has been deliberately kept vague, so anybody rises up against the elites of the society will be swiftly put down.
 
Be it international or domestic terrorism, one of the primary reasons is not any religion or power grab. The primary reason is this social inequality. ISIS keeps increasing in numbers because youth unemployment is so high all over Europe & North America. Youths are not seeing a bright future in front of them. They are burdened with education debts & no future with good, secure, permanent employment. On an international scale, whole continents like Africa are still largely undeveloped & have bleak futures.
 
This hoarding of wealth by a small minority of the world also causing some worldwide problems, like water, food & energy. There is enough wealth in this world that if that wealth had been used appropriately, instead of being hoarded & hidden away in tax havens, our society would have found innovative solutions to water conservation, growing food for the growing population, & new & sustainable ways to power our homes & factories. But much more severe problems like pollution, food shortages, & water shortages will not only becomes much more severe in our future (they already are with whole continents like Australia & US state, California, suffering severe droughts) but much more violence & chaos is awaiting us when a huge majority will finally grows tired of their respective governments & take arms against rich themselves. It will be the French revolution on a worldwide scale.
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The wealth of the average American household declined between 1983 & 2013, according to a leading economist.
 
Writing in a paper entitled Household Wealth Trends in the US, 1962-2013: What Happened over the Great Recession?, Professor Wolff claimed that America's worth rose partly because technology has improved & productivity has increases.
 
This means that society as a whole has become better & generating wealth.
 
The issue, for many, is that this extra wealth has been funnelled into the top 20% of the population, with the top 1% finding themselves 82% better off. However, the bottom 60% has become poorer, Vox.com reported.
 
Wolff found that the median wealth figure for middle-income families - that means it's been adjusted for inflation - for 1983 was $78,000 & the median wealth figure for 2013 was $63,800.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2931509/Average-American-household-WORSE-1983-study-claims-bottom-60-population-suffering-super-rich-82-CENT-better-off.html

Criminal Minds, S1E4 (Quote)

Translation: Although, we all can see our physical selves in a mirror, none of us can see our real being. Our real selves can only be seen by others.
So, always be open to constructive criticism of yourself to improve yourself.

South African cops raping women

Although, rapes anywhere in any shape or form is horrible; in South Africa, cops apparently are far more actively involved in perpetrating these crimes themselves. This didn't make the worldwide media, unlike the India ones.
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The 'Broken Blue Line' conducted by the Johannesburg-based Institute of Race Relations, investigated the extent in which police officers in the country plan & execute serious & violent crimes such as murder, rape, & armed robbery.

And it drew a disturbing conclusion: that police involvement in serious & violent crimes, including rape & murder, were a 'pattern of behaviour' & not isolated incidents.

The report, funded by Afriforum, analysed 100 randomly chosen media reports from April 2011 to January 2015 on alleged police involvement in serious crimes.

Of those, 32 were murders & attempted murders, 22 were armed robberies, & 26 were rapes, as well as other serious offences.

In one incident, a woman was raped several times while in custody & in another, a woman was raped in court.

A 2011 version of the report had similar results, including a serious problem with sexual violence by police officers in a country which has one of the highest recorded rates of rape in the world.

It warned that 'violent crime levels in South Africa won’t turn around while the "wolf guards the sheep".' 

A report in Pretoria News in July 2013 said that almost 1,500 serving police officers had criminal records - which is more than one in every 100 officers in the country.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2932717/Shocking-report-reveals-large-numbers-South-Africas-policemen-arresting-young-women-just-rape-them.html

Canada's race problem is worse than America's

Another great op-ed on racism in Canada. I posted my opinions & thoughts on another article on racism in Canada. I did include immigrants in that blog, & this op-ed does too, but nothing will change in Canada, until we all firmly believe & accept that there is racial discrimination in Canada, & it is only going to get worse as the economy worsens further.
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In the recently released Social Progress Index, Canada is ranked 2nd amongst all nations for its tolerance & inclusion.

Unfortunately, the truth is we have a far worse race problem than the US. We just can’t see it very easily.

Terry Glavin, recently writing in the Ottawa Citizen, mocked the idea that the US could learn from Canada’s example when it comes to racial harmony. To illustrate his point, he compared the conditions of the African-American community to Canada’s First Nations. If you judge a society by how it treats its most disadvantaged, Glavin found us wanting. ... By almost every measurable indicator, the Aboriginal population in Canada is treated worse & lives with more hardship than the African-American population. All these facts tell us one thing: Canada has a race problem, too.

How are we not choking on these numbers? For a country so self-satisfied with its image of progressive tolerance, how is this not a national crisis? Why are governments not falling on this issue?

Possibly it is because our Fergusons are hidden deep in the bush, accessible only by chartered float plane: 49% of First Nations members live on remote reserves. ... Fewer than 40,000 live in Toronto, not even 1% of the total population of the Greater Toronto Area. Our racial problems are literally over the horizon, out of sight & out of mind.

If we don’t have a race problem then what do we blame? ... Us? For not paying attention. For believing our own hype about inclusion. ... For not acknowledging Canada has a race problem.

We do & it is bad. And it is not just with the Aboriginal peoples. For new immigrants & the black community the numbers are not as stark, but they tell a depressingly similar story.

If we want to fix this, the first step is to admit something is wrong. Start by saying it to yourself, but say it out loud: “Canada has a race problem.”

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/out-of-sight-out-of-mind-2/

Cloud Atlas (Quote # 9)

It's pretty much 2 quotes in one:
 
1. If you want to know your true yourself, you need to see yourself from others' eyes / perception. It is similar to what French poet, Jacques Rigaut, said (which I will be posting btw here soon) that your true self can only be seen by others. So, we should be open to learning & improving ourselves through constructive criticism of ourselves from others. None of us is all-knowing & perfect.
 
2. Since, the beginning of time (or civilization), regardless of whether you believe in a religion or not, we humans have worked tirelessly to increase our life span; so much so to achieve immortality. Be the alchemists of ancient civilizations or modern A.I. (artificial intelligence) & robotics engineers, we are still trying to achieve immortality. But immortality is supposed to be in our "words & deeds", & not in our physical immortality. Our words & deeds affect people around us &, perhaps society, to the point that they may have rippling effects throughout the future of this world.

 
During our finite lives, we may never realize how we may have affected the world, but you can look at any of the prominent people in our histories around the world, good or bad, have gone on to achieve immortality through their words & actions.

 

Cloud Atlas (Quote # 7)

In our non-fiction, real world, this quote can be translated as such that we are all equal regardless of where in the world we are born & to which mother we are born. We all have red blood. A quote against racism & discrimination.

 

Cloud Atlas (Quote # 8)

This mentality is required for our world at this very moment. We all are supposed to be actively working, in whatever capacity we can, towards ending injustice & inequality, which in turn, will help bring peace.
 
Inequality & injustice breed in a society where people prefer to shut their eyes (or cover their ears or shut their mouths) over speaking out against the lies being spread by our globalized corporate media against any entity or activity taking place in the world. People now have become indifferent & chalk everything up to "who am I to intervene in that person's life". But a society is made up of people, & if good people don't intervene in the beginning, then that little budding evil becomes a whole tree of evil in time, which then becomes very hard to cut down.

 
Just wishing for peace, like those Miss World & Miss America pageants won't bring peace or any positive, meaningful change in this world.