Sunday, 21 June 2015

NO, THE FISHES DID NOT FALL FROM THE SKY!


Sometimes Fishes, sometimes frogs, sometimes tadpoles have been reported as falling from the sky - like rain. Starting from Pliny the Elder in the 1st century in Rome many have reported this phenomenon. The French 'scientist' Ampere who did great research on electricity also investigated the phenomenon. In 1861 there was reportedly a huge rain of fish in Singapore!
The modern understanding has been - for the last 80 years or so - that when a fast moving hurricane passes over a water body it forms a water spout which extends as far high as the clouds, and that this water spout sucks up the water and along with that some of the small aquatic animals. And when the twister loses its force the fish are deposited where ever that spot is where it weakened.
Actually no one has so far seen fish fall down - and this fact is crucial. All people who have reported this have seen the fish on the ground or on the surface. This was also the case of Nandigama of Krishna District, by the river Krishna.
Last night huge quantities of fish were found in paddy fields with knee deep water and in some cases on the roads in Nandigama. As they were not there in the evening and they appeared in the morning in their fields, and since fish cannot come out of their water bodies themselves, many thought that it rained fish. While some believe in the tornado/hurricane theory, others believe that strong winds and hurricanes carry the frogs and fish up into the clouds and at some point they drop from there.
Actually, all these explanations and assumptions are most likely to be wrong. It is not difficult to find out why this explanation is wrong.
The easiest is that no cloud is able to carry the weight of 200 gm frog or a 3 kilo fish - clouds are simply water vapour. Secondly hurricanes are not gentle things - they are violent and destroy - it would be rare for a hurricane to gently pick up aquatic creatures and gently deposit them elsewhere - do note that these fish and frogs are alive when found. This is also why the cloud theory can be dismissed right away. The lowest clouds are somewhere around 2 kilometres above our heads. No frog or fish dropped from there is likely to be left in one piece - or without their insides splattered everywhere. Remember that the fish spotted are alive. Finally the columns seen when a 'water spout' is formed is really a rotating column of air with water vapour and mist.
So what could be the most plausible explanation?
Much depends on the species of fish. We know that some fish can jump / fly as much as 50 meters in one go. We also know that some fish do 'travel;' on land. They can for brief periods breathe air, and using their tail and fins can push themselves forward. Some of the fish, like the cat fish, do travel like that. For the non specialist it looks like the fish is struggling because it is out of water, where as in reality it is inelegantly trying to move forward without legs.
Why would fish want to travel? That is not a strange phenomenon to the animal kingdom. As explained in THE BIG QUESTION WITH BABU GOGINENI (DO ANIMALS HAVE CALENDARS? youtube.com/watch?v=W_EHF3qfe4w) (pls add www before youtube) we see crores of red crabs migrating annually on the Christmas Islands near Australia - to lay eggs. In Kenya we have the extraordinary spectacle of the crores of wildebeest rushing on for their migration. Fish travel thousands of kilometers in the sea to mate or to lay eggs. Salmon swim against the water current to go and lay eggs. Turtles and their arrival on India's East Coast is well known and much studied,
This is what must have happened with the fish found in Nandigama and none of these explanations involve the sky as the source of the fish!
-The first rains made fish look for ways to move out of their habitat. They probably were in nearby ponds or in the river. They may have been washed out with the flood waters from these natural water bodies.
- The fish tried to migrate on land and are the ones akin to cat fish.
- Some poor fish farmer's tank may have breached releasing the well fed almost uniformly 3 kilo weighted fish into the paddy fields.
The reason there are also many frogs on the ground after the rains is that frogs are amphibeans, they too swarm, and need water to keep their skins moist. Further, frogs and earth worms and other creatures which have been living in the dry land are forced out of their habitation because they are flooded.
So nothing came from the sky, except the rain water!

Monday, 27 April 2015

HOUNDED BY MULLAHS: A MUSLIM WOMAN WRITER IS FORCED TO FLEE HOME

As a poet, Sharmila Seyyid is used to dealing in imagination but even she couldnt have imagined that an innocuous remark in an innocuous BBC interview would trigger a chain of events that would turn her world upside down--ultimately forcing her to go into hiding in a place far away from her home.A Muslim woman journalist, writer and activist, Seyyid is being hounded by fundamentalist groups not in one but two countries--because of her outspoken criticism of certain Islamic practices such as the purdah system, and her warnings against creeping Talibanisation of the Muslim community.A Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan and a single mother with a small child, she finds herself stuck in a safe house in Chennai after being forced to flee her home in Batticaloa, eastern Sri Lanka. This followed a systematic and vicious campaign of intimidation, including death threats and threats to kidnap her young sister with whom she ran an English language school. The school was attacked, and an attempt made to burn it down.But if Seyyid thought that moving to India would buy her peace, she had not reckoned with the long reach of her tormentors. For, far from dying down, the hate campaign against her has grown in recent weeks with Indian Muslim fanatics taking over where their Sri Lankan comrades left off.Yet, surprisingly, Seyyids nightmare has attracted little media attention outside Tamil-speaking circles. Among the national English language newspapers, only The Hindu took note of it courtesy an op-ed (Chronicle of a Death Online, 7 April) by Kannan Sundaram, editor of Kalachuvadu, a Tamil monthly.Meanwhile, vigilantism has gone online with her critics taking their dirty tricks to social media.A few weeks ago, they warned her to remove all of her photographs without purdah from Facebook within 24 hours. When she refused, an audio of a lewd conversation between a high-ranking Tamil Nadu police officer and a female subordinate was posted with a photo of Seyyid tagged to it suggesting that the woman the officer was talking to was her. It was widely shared on the net, and though she was finally able to get it off the web the damage had been done.Emboldened by their success, the bullies attempted another even more obscenestunt. This time, they posted what sounded like a real news item of a woman being raped and murdered attached to a photoshopped picture of Seyyids body.It went viral, and such was its impact that her family and friends thought it was true and landed up at her home. Her father Seyyid Ahmed has made a formal complaint to the police alleging a concerted attempt to incite hatred against his daughter. He says his family is living a nightmare; and fears for their safety.Now back to the BBC interview which triggered Seyyids nightmare.It happened in 2012 when speaking to the BBCs Tamil Service she backed legalising sex work arguing that it would help protect sex-workers. It was not part of any agenda. She was simply answering a specific question about her debut collection of poems Siragu Mulaitha Penn (The women who grew wings) in which one poem was about sex workers.Fundamentalist groups, who already had her in their sights because of her progressive (allegedly anti-Islamic) views, seized on her remarks to launch an all-out attack accusing her of endorsing prostitution, considered haram in Islam.The threatening calls began soon after. By the next morning, Ms. Seyyid had received hundreds of missed calls on her mobile phone. There were news reports that condemned her for supporting sex work and the social media joined in, according to The Hindu article.Threats and intimidation continued even after she apologised for unwittingly hurting anyones sentiments. But she refused to retract her statement under duress. This provoked the mullahs to step up their attacksfinally forcing her to seek refuge in India, only to discover that you can run away from your country but you cant run away from the growing menace of religious fundamentalism.Sayyid has been praised for standing up to the bullies.Horrid as this entire episode is, I think, Sharmilas courage, strength and tenacity will inspire women everywhere to fight oppression, human rights activist Mari Marcel Thekaekara wrote on her blog.Seyyids case comes on the heels of that of Mumbai-based Shirin Dalvi, then editor of an Urdu daily, Avadhnama. She was targeted in a similar fashion for hurting Muslim sentiments. Her crime was that while writing about the murder of Charlie Hebdo journalists , she reproduced the magazines cover carrying a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad. And though she was quick to publish an unconditional front page apology, it did not satisfy Islams self-appointed custodians who continued their relentless smear campaign.On their complaint, she was arrested, and multiple cases were registered against her for outraging religious feelings with malicious intent. Things reached a point where she felt so insecure that she took to wearing burqa to escape attention and to move out her family home.Unfortunately, few liberal Muslims stood up for her. In fact, a senior Urdu newspaper editor admitted that elements of the Urdu Patrakar Sangh, which represents Urdu journalists and of which she was a member, were party to the cases filed against Dalvi.Understandably, Muslims resent being called upon to condemn every act of Muslim extremism by arguing why the entire community should be held accountable for a few rotten apples. But here was a Muslim woman being harassed by their own lunatic fringe.In Seyyids case, though, some liberal Tamil Muslims have joined an online protest but thats not enough. Contrast this with the strong liberal Hindu response in the Perumal Murugan case. They rushed to support the Tamil writer when he was attacked by Hindutva groups objecting to certain portions in one of his best-known books.What if Dalvi and Sayyid had been victims of Hindu fanatics? Im sure Muslims would have reacted with outrage. And rightly so. But such selective outrage not only weakens the broader fight against religious fanaticism but gives a handle to the Hindu Right to exploit such cases for their own political ends.It is not about defending individuals but about standing up for civilised behaviour when it is under threat irrespective of the source of the threat. For, if allowed to go unchallenged, this lunatic fringe can also turn against us one day.

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

‘Don’t call me Muslim, I am an Atheist

SUVOJIT BAGCHI




Taslima Nasreen. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

Taslima Nasreen. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury
Writer-in-exile Taslima Nasreen calls for reining in religious fundamentalism, saying that criticism of religion is not the domain of non-Muslim intellectuals alone
Writer Taslima Nasreen fled Bangladesh in 1994 when extremists threatened to kill her for criticising Islam, and has been living in exile since. Her country has, in recent times, seen many intellectuals expelled or killed. Ahmed Rajib Haider, an atheist blogger who wrote under the name Thaba Baba, was hacked to death after the Shahbag protests in 2013. In February this year, atheist blogger Avijit Roy was killed in Dhaka by extremist groups for his writings on the Bangla blog Mukto-Mona (Free Thinker) that he founded. Feminist and secular humanist Ms Nasreen now lives in New Delhi. In an interview with Suvojit Bagchi, she spoke about the shrinking space for free thinkers in Bangladesh and says that Islam cannot be exempt from the critical scrutiny that other religions go through.
Tell us a little bit about Avijit Roy.
I knew Avijit for a long time. He started Mukto-Mona to accommodate writings of atheists and humanists, as newspapers do not publish their work. Avijit was a science blogger and a free thinker, an atheist and a rationalist, who wanted to secure a space to dissect and debate issues. Later, he turned his blogs into books. Mukto-Mona became a window through which people could look at each other and raise questions about all religions, including Islam. In Bangladesh, over a period, the space for free thinkers has been disappearing. Avijit brought it back using a new platform… precisely why his contribution is outstanding.
When and how exactly did this space for free thinkers start shrinking?
The change was noticed at the time of General Hussain Ershad in the mid-1980s. A secular Constitution was given away to make Islam the state religion. I have witnessed the mass movement of 1969, the newly independent country of the 70s… the situations then were different. People could voice their opinion and women hardly wore the hijab or the burqa. But society slowly changed. For instance, whatever I wrote in the 1980s, early 90s — criticising Islam and women’s condition in Islamic societies — was published in newspapers with a wide circulation. But that cannot be imagined now. Freedom of expression is an alien term now.
Why has this change taken place?
The progressive community is partly responsible. When I was expelled in 1994, the whole of society went silent. If this community had objected then, Bangladesh would not have had a society in which an Avijit is hacked to death, a Humayun Azad targeted or an Ahmed Rajib Haider killed for criticising Islam. Perhaps the conflict in Bangladesh is whether to have a country on the basis of language or on the basis of religion.
How can this be resolved?
We must stop stoning women to death in the name of religion. Laws should be based on equality, not on religion
Bangladesh was born on the idea of a secular Bengali nation. Since 1952, Bengali Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians have wanted their state language to be Bengali, not Urdu. The people who opposed our independence, along with the Pakistani army, killed three million Bengalis in 1971 and are now involved in the Islamisation of Bangladesh. They are killing free thinkers and intellectuals. Pakistan is a country which is based on religion. But the Bangladesh constitution must remain secular, and separate state from religion. We must have secular education rather than education through madrassas. The government must not let the country become a safe haven for religious extremists.
People say your criticism of religion is rather excessive and provocative.
I said religion oppresses women. Laws should be based on equality, not on religion; women should have equal rights in marriage, divorce, child custody and inheritance. I said we must stop stoning women to death in the name of religion. Is that provocation? Every civilised state has questioned the relationship of the state with religion, eventually disentangling and distancing the two. Islam should not be exempt from the critical scrutiny that other religions have gone through. My opinion is based on my belief in secular humanism. If that is provocative, then it is absolutely necessary to provoke.
But it's often said that your writings strengthen fundamentalism.
Governments are strengthening fundamentalism, not me. When religious fanatics set a price on my head, instead of taking action against them, the government targeted me. The Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party joined hands with these forces and so did the caretaker government. Even in West Bengal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led government expelled me; the Imam Barkati of the Tipu Sultan Mosque, who set a price on my head, was adored by the Marxists. Interestingly, Mamata Banerjee befriended the Imam as soon as she came to power.
Another allegation is that by making statements against Islam, you strengthen the right wing in India.
Absolute nonsense. I criticise all religions, including Hinduism. I opposed Hindu godmen, rituals such as karva chauth and shivaratri, and condemned the oppression of Muslims in Gujarat. I donated Rs.10,000 to poet Shankha Ghosh, who was collecting funds for rehabilitating Gujarat riot victims.I objected to the oppression of Hindus in Bangladesh, Jews in Nazi Germany, Muslims in Bosnia, Palestine and Christians in Pakistan. I also wrote in favour of films such as PK, Water and The Last Temptation of Christ. Please don’t call me a Muslim, I am an atheist.
When Indian rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and CPI leader Govind Pansare were killed, you were silent.
Who told you? You need to check my Twitter account to find out about my reactions and how the Hindu right-wing elements abused me for that. However, it is true that I consider Islamic fundamentalism a bigger threat.
As do many western countries…
Only the western world thinks that Islamic fundamentalism is dangerous? Rather, it’s the opposite — the West is keen to side with Islamists.
As a Muslim writer, your work often reflects the West’s paranoia about Islam. Is the West forcing you to say what it wants?
Are you saying Muslims cannot have a mind of their own to criticise their religion? Is criticism of religion the domain of non-Muslim intellectuals? That is an anti-Muslim remark, seriously.
What could be Bangladesh’s future?
The country will be heading for a complete disaster if Islamic terrorists are not brought to justice. However, given the past record, nothing will happen and such incidents will increase in the coming months, as they are intrinsically connected with politics
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Monday, 2 March 2015

Bangladeshis protest after atheist writer Avijit Roy hacked to death


Hundreds rally against fundamentalism in Dhaka as Islamists claim responsibility for murder of prominent US-Bangladeshi blogger



Bangladeshi secular activists take part in a torch-lit protest against the murder of Avijit Roy, founder of the <em>Mukto-Mona</em> (Free-mind) blog site. He had received death threats from Islamists before arriving in the country.
 Bangladeshi secular activists take part in a torch-lit protest against the murder of Avijit Roy, founder of theMukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog site. He had received death threats from Islamists before arriving in the country. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty

Avijit Roy was hacked to death for his secular views. Let’s share his story

Those who challenge religion challenge power. Exercising free speech puts some people in grave danger, and the least we can do is back them up
Activists light lamps in protest against the killing of Avijit Roy in Dhaka, Bangladesh
 Activists light lamps in protest against the killing of Avijit Roy in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Photograph: Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/Barcroft
“No trips to the old country, yeah?” This was the brief message I got from a dear friend who sent me an email with a link to the news that Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi blogger well-known for his secular views, had been hacked to death in the streets of Dhaka.
“The old country”. How romantic that sounds. I was born in Bangladesh and have wonderful memories of being a child there, roaming the countryside, experiencing a sense of freedom and peace I’ve never felt since. It is a land of lush green fields nourished by a brightly burning sun. This is what is depicted on the nation’s flag, a design that rejects the religious symbolism found in those of India and Pakistan – the latter of which Bangladesh fought a bitter war of independence, partly so it could become a secular state. But that early commitment to secularism has been betrayed and instead Bangladesh has become a nation where those promoting secular values can expect to live their lives in fear, be threatened with death, and even brutally killed.







Avijit Roy was an American citizen of Bangladeshi origin who was an engineer by profession and the author of several books on topics including science, atheism and free expression. He founded the Mukto-Mona (“free mind”) blog which supported and nurtured a community of free-thinkers, secularists, atheists and humanists in Bangladesh. Avijit wanted “to build a society which will not be bound by the dictates of arbitrary authority, comfortable superstition, stifling tradition, or suffocating orthodoxy but would rather be based on reason, compassion, humanity, equality and science.”
He was a hero to many Bangladeshis, but few if any in the west will be declaring that they are Avijit in the way so many of us announced we were Charlie after theCharlie Hebdo attacks. But there are lots of Avijits outside the west, genuinely brave individuals who put their lives on the line to uphold values and freedoms that we take for granted: Ahmed Rajib Haider, another Bangladeshi atheist who was killed because of what he wrote; Raif Badawi, a Saudi Arabian blogger who has been flogged in public and is in prison for “insulting Islam”; Karim Ashraf Mohamed al-Banna, jailed for three years in Egypt, again for “insulting Islam” by simply declaring he is an atheist; Kacem El Ghazzali, who lives in exile after death threats in his home country of Morocco – the list is long and depressing.
The attacks in Paris and Copenhagen shocked the west, but killing people for expressing their views is almost routine elsewhere. According to a report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union, “Non-religious people are being targeted by ‘hate campaigns’ in countries around the world.”
After the Charlie Hebdo killings there was much debate about whether the cartoonists had provoked the killers, about the cartoonists “punching down”, about whether there should be limits to giving offence and so on. The brutal, cowardly murder of Avijit Roy shows how dangerous such arguments can be. Challenging religion is challenging those in power, and many pay a heavy price – we betray people like Avijit when we are half-hearted in our commitment to free speech.
Let’s not be mistaken about why Avijit was killed: he said and wrote things some people didn’t like. There will be more such killings. More people will die because they say, write or draw things that other people don’t like. More people will die until we are all united in stating unequivocally that anyone who commits such atrocities is entirely in the wrong, that it is unjustifiable to kill people who “offend” you, that blasphemy is a ridiculous notion and that no one should ever, ever be killed for “insulting” a religion or drawing a cartoon.
I didn’t know Avijit Roy, but I know people who did, and their grief and rage at his murder is far more keenly felt than mine. For that reason I had reservations about writing this piece, but Avijit’s daughter said that: “To say that I’m furious or heartbroken would be an understatement. But as fucked up as the world is, there’s never a reason to stop fighting to make it better … What would help me the most right now is if everyone (even people I’ve never met) could share his story.” So that’s what I’m doing here.

Thursday, 25 December 2014

AP CID attaches properties of NMart


Andhra Pradesh Crime Investigation Department has attached the movable and immovable properties of Surat-based New Look Traders also known as NMart. The fixed deposits Rs. 2.61 crore parked in various banks throughout the country and immovable properties situated in Surat, Gujarat worth about Rs. 9.27 crore have been attached by the CID.
It may be recalled that following a complaint lodged by Vijayawada-based Corporate Frauds Watch, the then superintendent of police of Prakasam District Dr Kolli Raghuram Reddy registered a criminal case against the NMart for indulging in illegal money circulation scheme offering huge returns in a short span of time.
The police have also frozen the accounts of NMart at that time. The chairman of NMart, Gopal Singh Shekhawat, was arrested and thrown behind bars. The Prakasam police have also identified the immovable properties belonging to Gopal Shekhawat in Surat and other places after freezing the bank accounts in various banks throughout the country.
The NMart has mobilised deposits from people of various districts in the then undivided State of Andhra Pradesh and all over the country too. After enrolling members into the scheme by collecting Rs. 5,500 per member, the NMart also induced them to enrol more members into the scheme with an incentive of Rs. 200 per member.
Subsequently, the case was transferred to the CID for further investigation. 

The CID officials attached the properties which would be subsequently auctioned and deposited with the government. 

Monday, 14 July 2014

Glaze Trading India aka GALWAY takes unemployed youth for a ride

In what could be described as the copycat of Amway, Glaze Trading India aka GALWAY, started its cheating operations throughout the country. At least 10,000 youths from all over the two States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have already been cheated by this fraudulent company according to series of visuals telecast by TV6 Telugu news channel.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSh5dv3tbZI
The news channel exposed the dubious ways of this company which has been inducing youths with job opportunity with a monthly salary of Rs. 50,000. However, they were asked to pay Rs. 8,000. After reaching their office in the state of Jharkhand, they were asked to enroll at least four members each to earn unlimited income. Then they realised that they were deceived.
The youths were asked to stay in a dungeon and they were hardly given any work though they were promised to undertake bar-coding, creating e-mail IDs and other works. Dejected, these youths returned to their places. 
A glance at its website, http://www.globalglaze.in/company/our-management/ shows that it also sells products of Homecare, personal care etc. Not only that they also sell products for farming like G-PSEUDO+ G-DERMA+ G-SEAPOWER, soil conditioner. Anyway one should appreciate the sense of humour of these fellows. They openly claim it is 'pseudo' and selling. Don't ask what 'derma' has to do with biofertiliser. 
Behind all the product sales under direct selling mode, the real cheating is illegal money circulation scheme. This is how Amway has been inspiring many a crook to indulge in illegal money circulation schemes in the name of direct selling.