Daily Archives: January 7, 2022

Political compulsions or ideologies should not be allowed to limit Thirukural to a book of ethics and morality, for it was rooted in spirituality, Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi said in Coimbatore, at the inauguration of the International Thirukural Conference 2022, at Sri Krishna Arts and Science College on Friday.

The Sri Krishna Institutions and Kural Malai Sangam have organised the event.

Limiting Thirukural to a book of ethics and morality reduces its messages to a list of dos and donts or advice. Thirukural was more than that. Its couplets were pithy and pregnant with deep meanings, which cannot be understood without spirituality. Unfortunately, due to compulsion and ideology, Thirukural is getting reduced to [a] book of ethics and morality, he said.

In the thousand years or so since Thiruvalluvar had authored Thirukural, several ideologies have come and gone. Therefore, political correctness or the present ideology should not limit what the book has to offer. Only then Thirukurals glory would continue, the Governor said.

Though the work started with Agara mudhala... and had couplets extolling bhakti (devotion), the translations he had received of the work had the spiritual quotient missing. Thirukural not only talked about devotion, it also had couplets on renunciation and the cycle of birth and death, Mr. Ravi said, and reiterated, Limiting Thirukural to a work on ethics and morality is a great injustice.

If Thirukural was viewed in totality by including the dharmic perspective, then it would automatically achieve the status of a world classic. No effort was needed to promote it, Mr. Ravi said and appealed for more commentaries with a spiritual perspective on the Thirukural and not just translations, to make it more popular across the world.

The book was also rooted in dharma, but due to perverse politics, the spiritual and dharmic quotients of the book were ignored. The couplets on ethics and morality did not stand independent of their spiritual meaning. The absence of such an understanding or appreciation would not reveal the inner meanings the couplets carried, he said.

Justice (retd.) N. Kirubakaran appealed to Governor Ravi to seek the Central governments help in making Thirukural a world classic. Tamil was the oldest language still in use, he said, the Prime Minister had acknowledged it as well. Therefore Tamils should be proud of the language. But one should be open to all languages. For, knowing more languages brought about scholarship.

Justice (retd.) Kirubakaran also said British civil servant and former Madras collector Francis Whyte Ellis was the first in government to recognise the value of Thirukural by minting gold coins with images of the saint. He had also translated the work into English.

Sir Krishna Instiutions Chairperson S. Malarvizhi welcomed the gathering. Kural Malai Sangams P. Ravikumar proposed the vote of thanks.

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Political compulsions should not limit Thirukural to book of ethics, morality, says TN Governor - The Hindu

Prince Charles has no doubt learned patience in his wait for the top job. Hes certainly a dab hand at playing the long game. His campaign against modern architecture began with a 1984 speech at Londons historic Hampton Court where he rubbished a proposed extension to the National Gallery as a monstrous carbuncle. The scheme was promptly dropped. As heir to the throne, he said, with no apparent self-consciousness, he saw it as a problem that the avant-garde had become the establishment. He went on to build Poundbury, his Classical-style model village outside the Dorset town of Dorchester. Charles also set up his Institute of Architecture among whose six founding principles was to build beautifully.

Alongside the prince were traditionalists such as the tweedy culture warrior Sir Roger Scruton, who blamed the dissolute 1960s for societal decay and believed, against all the evidence, that beauty was not only unchanging and eternal but linked to morality. This was amid the 1980s culture wars that set Thatcherism against the so-called political correctness of local councils.

Three decades later, the culture wars are again in full swing. The apoplexy with which governments have responded to calls to topple monuments since the death of George Floyd in May 2020 is not surprising but needs to be seen in this same contexta struggle for cultural hegemony.

This time around, the traditionalist lunatics have succeeded in taking over the asylum. Reactionary ideas hostile to the cosmopolitan, to Modernism, to modernity itself, are in the ascendant. Tory placemen (and they are generally men) are being appointed to the boards of cultural institutions such as the British Museum and the BBC. The thoroughly middle-class National Trust is under attack as woke for exploring colonialism (a similar report by English Heritage several years earlier provoked nothing like the same outrage). Laws are proposed that would hand out longer sentences for damaging a statue than for rape. A government retain and explain policy for monuments essentially amounts to retain everything and explain nothing.

This is not unique to Britain, of coursejust look at Viktor Orbn in Hungary or the history wars in Poland, or the manufactured outrage by the Macron government over Islamo-gauchisme and mosques or other visual expressions of Islam. Switzerland, Spain and Denmark are among other countries gripped by minaret-phobia. In Germany and Eastern Europe, modern post-war city centres are being rebuilt as ersatz historic quarters full of fake traditional architecture. The same thing was happening under Donald Trump, who issued an executive order demanding that all new federal buildings be in a Classical style. Beauty and tradition have become dog-whistle words to white supremacists drunk on the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that sees a cultural genocide of Christian Europe at the hands of immigrants. Classicism is not inherently right-wing but traditional architecture has become a vehicle of choice for the Right and Far Right.

Traditionalist city-making ideas have been brewing for some time, now pushed by right-wing think-tanks such as the Policy Exchange and Legatum Institute, who are hostile to both public housing and fetters on the market, and whose adherents are now in government. Policy Exchange reports inspired the governments Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, headed by the late Sir Roger that pushed a traditionalist architectural agenda. Among the outcomes are proposed design codes for areas that would make it hard for council planners to resist developers who tick the codes boxes. A key figure is Scruton acolyte Nicholas Boys Smith, a former financier and adviser to former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who succeeded Scruton at the Building Better Commission. He set up Create Streets, which champions traditional city-making, and is now an Historic England commissioner as well as heading up the governments new Office for Place.

Despite explicitly aiming to promote beauty, the opposite is more likely because it all interlocks with a bonfire of planning controls. These make it easy, for example, to turn houses and offices into substandard housing without planning permission and reduce the publics right to object to proposals. A planning White Paper would upend the post-war system creating simplified zones to encourage development. It is as if a Georgian speculative builders pattern book could be applied to the 21st century.

For the moment at least, the worst excesses of the style traditionalists have been frustrated: a proposed fast track through planning for development deemed beautiful seen as unworkable, for instance. The White Paper is being reviewed after the Tories lost last years Chesham and Amersham by-election, partly because of electors fears of the countryside being concreted. The direction of travel, however, remains.

Monuments, where values and historical narratives coalesce, are simply the obvious pointy end of this culture war. In many ways they are a distraction. In Britain at least, the insidious iceberg is traditionalism hand-in-glove with free marketeers intent on handing developers free rein.

Robert Bevan is a member of the Mayor of Londons Diversity in the Public Realm Commission, which is holding a round table on contested heritage this month. He is writing in a personal capacity. His book, Monumental Lies: Culture Wars & the Truth About the Past, will be published later this year by Verso

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The ugly pursuit of beauty: how traditional architecture has become a battleground for right-wing politicians - Art Newspaper

France is in deep, deep trouble. Hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and just a few months before the presidential election, the country or rather, the French language is under threat. Whos the culprit? The terror of political correctness imported from across the Atlantic, also known as wokeism. We know too well that America exports its culture to the whole world: movies, music, Anglicisms and now its obsession with gender-neutral language too.

There seems to be no other explanation why the esteemed French-language dictionary Le Petit Robert has included the gender-neutral pronoun iel (pronounced yell) in its online edition. This combination of the male pronoun il and the female pronoun elle can be used for people who dont identify as male or female, or whose gender is unknown. These three small letters have been causing a ruckus in France for weeks now.

While transgender organisations have welcomed the decision, there was little enthusiasm to be found elsewhere. First Lady Brigitte Macron explained that there are two pronouns: il and elle and on Twitter Franois Jolivet, a member of Frances governing party La Rpublique en Marche (LREM), in his outrage, denied Le Petit Robert its status as a reference.

In a letter to the Acadmie Franaise, supreme guardian of French linguistic integrity, Jolivet called on the body to prevent the imminent destruction of the French language by woke ideology. He was applauded for this by his colleague, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who declared that inclusive spelling is not the future of the French language.

Oh well, theres hardly any better place on Earth to argue about language and its future than France! The venerable Acadmie Franaise keeps a close watch on compliance with grammar rules to in the country, contesting anything that appears to be too English or modern. Conversely, the literary group Oulipo is trying to modernise French through playful writing exercises, for example by writing an entire book without the letter e. A variety of the language spoken by young people known as verlan joyously swaps the syllables of a word to create something new. And there has been a debate going on for years about whether the French language is sexist or too male, and if so, to what extent.

Positive discrimination, quotas, inclusive language... France says non, merci.

This criticism is not unfounded. There is a rule in French that the male form takes precedence over the female. It was invented in 1676 by Jesuit priest Dominique Bouhour, who proclaimed: When the two sexes meet, the more noble must prevail. And the more noble is, of course, the male. There can be 99 women and one man in a group and, grammatically speaking, this group would be classed as male, taking the male plural form ils. Because the male takes precedence over the female.

At the moment, though, American-style political correctness seems be taking precedence, brazen enough to not even stop at the French language and all of its beautiful centuries-old rules. This isnt the first time wokeism has rubbed conservatives up the wrong way, though. For them, woke represents a left-wing ideology, identity politics, and a victim mentality. It means pandering to the interests of individual groups, which they claim is unwarranted and incompatible with the French principle of universalism that states that all people are equal, have the same rights, and should therefore be treated exactly the same. Positive discrimination, quotas, inclusive language... France says non, merci.

The dispute about iel is causing such a stir because this goes beyond language alone. The French language is seen as an expression of French values too, an expression of what constitutes the Rpublique. As early as 2017, Blanquer said, there is only one French language, one grammar, one Republic. Incidentally, the word Rpublique is female in French. So too is Marianne, its personification, seen on the French government's official logo, French euro coins and on French postage stamps. And apparently thats good enough for Blanquer to demonstrate the inherent feminism of the French state and its language. Poor Marianne must get used to being portrayed as a feminist symbol for absolutely everything.

Perhaps those politicians who are so easily triggered by three little letters should take a leaf out of Charles Bimbenets book, the director-general of publishing house Le Robert.

But yes, its about more than language it's about the future of the country! And who can save the country? Only the Acadmie Franaise of course, whose verdict on the iel dispute is eagerly awaited. Its long been clear where the Acadmie stands on trying to make the French language more inclusive and more gender-neutral: in May 2020, it published a statement declaring that inclusive spelling is harmful to the usage and comprehensibility of the French language.

The Acadmie is not entirely wrong: inclusive spelling makes a Romance language with two genders like French more difficult to write, speak, and understand. Gender-neutral language may have its place in social circles where its not only what is said thats important, but also how it is said. But everywhere else, no. Well, not yet... because language is alive, it is constantly changing. And also, language is a matter of habit. The more often you say something, the easier it rolls off your tongue. Feminist organisation Nous Toutes commented that it is not for ministers or dictionary authors to decide the future of a language. Those who can change the language are those who speak it: you, us, everyone.

Perhaps those politicians who are so easily triggered by three little letters should take a leaf out of Charles Bimbenets book, the director-general of publishing house Le Robert. He remained astoundingly calm in the face of the perhaps manufactured outrage that he and his team had instigated.

In a statement, he wrote that although usage of the term iel is still rather rare, it has been sharply increasing for several months, as the in-house documentalists have noted. So, they deemed it useful to clarify the meaning of this term for people to understand and decide whether to use it or not. Bimbenet welcomed the controversy surrounding the French language, its development and its use, as it at least shows how alive French is.

Lets hope so. Perhaps those three small letters dont mean the end of the Republic, and the situation in France isnt as bad as it seems well, linguistically at least.

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France's culture wars are going into the next round - IPS Journal

Investigate Trumps inaction on Jan. 6On Jan. 6, Donald Trump Jr. frantically and repeatedly texted Mark Meadows, the ex-presidents chief of staff, that he had to tell his father to take steps immediately to stop the deadly riot.We need an Oval Office address. He [ex-President Trump] has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. This shit has to stop ASAP, he texted.Im pushing it hard. I agree, Meadows responded, who was also receiving messages from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade no raging liberals urging the president to tell the rioters to go home.To me, those texts reveal Trump knew what was happening, just like the rest of us watching TV that horrible day. Clearly, he turned a deaf ear to pleas that he needed to call off the angry mob he had egged on just hours earlier, or lives could be lost.Even if he were watching reruns of Gunsmoke, he cant escape the fact that he was begged by his own son and his staunchest supporters at Fox to call off the riot.True, the former president finally got around to make a televised appearance over three hours later in which he urged the rioters to leave the Capitol and go home, adding, We love you, youre very special.That time lapse is evidence he committed a crime of omission that the Department of Justice needs to investigate right now, regardless of what the Jan. 6 Commission reports.Fred ComoBurnt Hills

Former Nisky leader wont be missedSupervisor Yasmine Syed ranks last. Over my 32 years of service as Niskayuna Town Comptroller I had the opportunity to become very well acquainted with six supervisors.I worked very closely and on a daily basis with all but Supervisor Syed. I initially had high hopes for her, as with each supervisor, and made every effort to help her succeed. Unfortunately, I never made the connection with her that I experienced with every other supervisor and felt very unappreciated.I am uncertain if it was due to our differences in age, or perhaps that I held her to the same standards as pertains to town policies. I denied two of her reimbursement requests due to unallowable expenditures and required her to reduce her deputys weekly hours to his authorized maximum. Most likely my continual criticism to staff regarding her lack of involvement made its way back to her.Yasmine was a good politician. However, she had great difficulty making decisions. She touted herself as having extensive budgeting experience but was seldom interested in working on the budget.Without the collaborative effort of Councilwoman Denise McGraw, there would not have been an adopted budget in 2020.The 4% challenge in her 2021 budget was a complete farce. Yasmine let down department heads and residents and was criticized by the state Comptrollers Office for putting forth such nonsense.Once again, I have high hopes for our new supervisor-elect and am pleased that Yasmine will soon be a distant memory.Paul SebestaNiskayuna

We must build back a better AmericaI feel the pandemic is escorting us into a new normal, that by coincidence is much more sustainable and healthier to our planet and our communities.Some people see this change as a threat and will be kicking and screaming in denial of anything that they feel threatens their consumer addiction.Currently, the Senate just passed a military spending bill worth $768 billion annually. That is four times the funding requested for the Build Back Better Bill and more military spending than the next 12 countries combined. Shouldnt we be investing in the health and safety of our world with a Build Back Better investment and not continue to go down the road of militarized global resource exploitation?The choice for me is easy. In the meantime, wear a mask.Gary J. LessardSchenectady

The facts are facts, like them or notMr. Kenneth Trumans Dec. 30 letter (Paper needs more balanced coverage) in The Daily Gazette leaves me mystified.Mr. Trumans message appears to perfectly embody the cultural/intellectual situation of our country today, post factual.The letter would have us believe that everyone is entitled to not only his own opinions, but also to his own facts. When a newspaper claims that an event or its claimed consequence has been debunked, it does so only when it has the evidence to factually disprove the events cause or consequence; likewise, a news article only describes a theory as unsupported when it has factual evidence to that effect.Apparently, the claim of the past guys press secretary that there is such a thing as an alternative truth is possible.It is ironic, I feel, that the same people who in 2015 were opposed to political correctness want now to make any event or fact that runs against their personal interest politically correct by claiming it is an opinion. It isnt true that there must be good people on both sides when those on one side are immoral according to the U.S. legal code and the Ten Commandments.One would hope Mr. Trumans letter is sarcasm, but in my opinion, the letter is clueless.Fred ChambersFort Plain

Public has right to see Jan. 6 papersIt was not only with some shock, but absolute horror and outright disgust that I read an Associated Press report (WH, Jan. 6 committee agree to shield some documents) in the Dec. 29 Gazette that indicated President Biden has agreed not to release all of the Trump Administration documents sought by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.The article stated that the Biden White House is working with the committee to shield some documents from being turned over, as such a release could compromise national security and executive privilege.Wait; say what? Is President Biden perhaps complicit somehow in the Jan. 6 events?Either the Trump Administration documents corroborate that the role played by Donald Trump and/or his supporters/associates etc. constitute indictable behavior(s), or they do not. There is no middle ground.And if there is evidence of the Trump Administrations collaboration or collusion with any of the individuals who stormed the nations Capitol that day, both the U.S. Congress and, more importantly, the American people deserve to know it, and those guilty need to be punished in accordance with applicable statutes.After all, no one is above the law.Or should I now remove my rose-colored glasses?Paul DeierleinSchenectady

Mask requirement is not terrorismJoe Mastroianni of the Rotterdam Town Board does not understand the definition of being terrorized or using force unnecessarily and excessively. The simple, kind, generous and gentle act of wearing a mask to protect family, neighbors, friends, coworkers, strangers, the young, the old and even enemies from a dangerous disease is not terrorism.What happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is terrorism.Ellen FruehSchenectady

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Letters to the Editor Wednesday, Jan. 5 The Daily Gazette - The Daily Gazette

Looking at the present, I see a more probable future:a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution.Bertram Gross,Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

Despotism has become our new normal.

Digital tyranny, surveillance. Intolerance, cancel culture, censorship. Lockdowns, mandates, government overreach. Supply chain shortages, inflation. Police brutality, home invasions, martial law. The loss of bodily integrity, privacy, autonomy.

These acts of tyranny by an authoritarian government have long since ceased to alarm or unnerve us. We have become desensitized to government brutality, accustomed to government corruption, and unfazed by the governments assaults on our freedoms.

This present trajectory is unsustainable. The center cannot hold.

The following danger points pose some of the greatest threats to our collective and individual freedoms now and in the year to come.

Censorship.The most controversial issues of our daygay rights, abortion, race, religion, sexuality, political correctness, police brutality, et al.have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom of speech but only when it favors the views and positions they support. Thus, while on paper, we are technically free to speak, in reality, we are only as free to speak as the government and tech giants such as Facebook, Google or YouTube may allow. Yet its a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth. What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideaslegitimate or notand the people who espouse them. Unfortunately, censorship is just the beginning. Once you allow the government and its corporate partners to determine who is worthy enough to participate in society,anything goes.

The Emergency State. Now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., we the people may well find ourselves burdened with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers to protect us from ourselves. Therein lies the danger of the governments Machiavellian version of crisis management that justifies all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security. This is the power grab hiding in plain sight.

Pre-crime.The government is about to rapidly expand its policing efforts to focus on pre-crime and thought crimes. Precrime, straight out of the realm of dystopian science fiction movies such asMinority Report, aims to prevent crimes before they happen by combining widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, precognitive technology, and neighborhood and family snitch programs to enable police to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage. The intent, of course, is for the government to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful in its preemptive efforts to combat domestic extremism, a broad label that can be applied to anything or anyone the government perceives to be a threat to its power.

The Surveillance State.This all-seeing fourth branch of government, comprised of a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors, watcheseverythingwe do, reads everything we write, listens to everything we say, and monitors everywhere we go. Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the governments choosing. Even agencies not traditionally associated with the intelligence community are part of the governments growing network of snitches and spies.

Genetic privacy.Guilt by association has taken on new connotations in the technological age. Yet the debate over genetic privacyand when ones DNA becomes apublic commodityoutside the protection of the Fourth Amendments prohibition on warrantless searches and seizuresis really only beginning. Get ready, folks, because the governmenthelped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), the courts (which haveruledthat police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)hasembarked on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.

Bodily integrity.It doesnt matter what your trigger issue iswhether its vaccines, abortion, crime, religion, immigration, terrorism or some other overtly politicized touchstone used by politicians as a rallying cry for voteswe should all be concerned when governments and businesses (i.e., the Corporate State) join forces to compel individuals to sacrifice their right to bodily integrity on the altar of so-called safety and national security. This debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from abortion and forced vaccines to biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, and forced inclusion in biometric databases are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

Gun control.After declaring more than a decade ago thatcitizens have a Second Amendment right to own a gun in ones homefor self-defense, the Supreme Court has now been tasked with deciding whether the Constitution also protectsthe right to carry a gun outside the home. Unfortunately, when it comes to gun rights in particular, and the rights of the citizenry overall, the U.S. government has adopted a do what I say, not what I do mindset. Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the governments attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while viewing as suspect anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one in self-defense. Indeed, while it still technically remains legal toowna firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at, and killed.

Show Your Papers Society.With every passing day, more and more private businesses and government agencies on both the state and federal level are requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccination in order for individuals to work, travel, shop, attend school, and generally participate in the life of the country. By allowing government agents to establish a litmus test for individuals to be able to engage in commerce, movement and any other right that corresponds to life in a supposedly free society, it lays the groundwork for a show me your papers society in which you arerequired to identify yourselfatanytime toanygovernment worker who demands it foranyreason. Such tactics can quickly escalate into a power-grab that empowers government agents to force anyone and everyone to prove they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books.

Singularity.Welcome to the Matrix (i.e.the metaverse), wherereality is virtual, freedom is only as free as ones technological overlords allow, and artificial intelligence is slowly rendering humanity unnecessary, inferior and obsolete. Indeed, its no coincidence that Elon Musk has announced his intentions ofimplanting brain chips in humans sometime in 2022. The digital universethe metaverseis expected to be thenext step in our evolutionary transformationfrom a human-driven society to a technological one. Remaining singularly human and retaining your individuality and dominion over yourselfmind, body and soulin the face of corporate and government technologies that aim to invade, intrude, monitor, manipulate and control us may be one of the greatest challenges before us.

Despotism. Even in the face of militarism, fascism, technotyranny, surveillance, etc., the gravest threat facing us as a nation may well be despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money. The Americankakistocracy(a government run by unprincipled career politicians and corporate thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of the people) continues to suck the American people into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.

It is a grim outlook for a new year, but it is not completely hopeless.

If hope is to be found, it will be found with those of us who do their part, at their local levels, to right the wrongs and fix what is broken. I am referring to the builders, the thinkers, the helpers, the healers, the educators, the creators, the artists, the activists, the technicians, the food gatherers and distributors, and every other person who does their part to build up rather than destroy.

We the people are the hope for a better year.

Until we can own that truth, until we can forge our own path back to a world in which freedom means something again, as I make clear in my bookBattlefield America: The War on the American Peopleand in its fictional counterpartThe Erik Blair Diaries, were going to be stuck in this wormhole of populist anger, petty politics and destruction that is pitting us one against the other.

In such a scenario, no one wins.

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John Whitehead's Commentary: Despotism Is the New Normal: Looming Threats to Freedom in 2022 - Gilmer Mirror

Rochester, N.Y. (WROC) When describing the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Congress members Joe Morelle and Tom Reed both used the same word: surreal.

Though Morelle, a Democrat, and Reed, a Republican, operate on different sides of the aisle, they both condemned the attack calling it a threat to democracy.

Adam Chodak talked with both lawmakers live on air when the rioters were ransacking the building.

Adam circled back with them this week to ask them questions about that day.

Adam Chodak: Congressman Reed, thank you for joining us. Last time we talked about this you were actually hunkered down in an office if my memory serves me well here. You were very upset on January 6t of last year, what are your thoughts now?

Tom Reed: I reflect on January 6t like many of my fellow Americans. That was a dark day in Americas history. I never thought my tenure in Congress or as an American citizen I would experience something like that occurring right there on the Capitol grounds. I remember the details of that day, I just left the floor of the House and was walking outside like I normally do to my office and it was just surreal and I sat there with tears and I think I recall talking to you. It was emotional, it was trying and it is something we should never repeat, we should learn from.

AC: Do you think theres a risk of this repeating? A lot of people see this and say our democracy is at risk, do you see it that way?

TR: We are such a polarized nation right now. We are so divided and the silent majority is awakening, but isnt awake yet and what I mean by that is that the vocal minority represented by the extremes of both the Republican Party as well as the Democratic Party because the extremes are on both sides, I think it runs the risk that if we dont wake up as a silent majority to say we can be proud Republicans, we can be proud Democrats, we can disagree, but we cannot devolve to violence and I think that is the risk we run if we dont learn the lesson of January 6th it sure as heck to could happen again.

AC: There is no question there are extremists on both sides of the political spectrum. January 6 according to law enforcement had mainly to do with Trump supporters. Right now, I saw CBS poll that said roughly 50 percent of Republicans think what those who entered the U.S. Capitol, what they were doing was demonstrating patriotism or defending freedom. Whats your response to that?

TR: I understand that viewpoint that theyre trying to articulate. To go and storm the Capitol, the way that happened on January 6 that I lived, I was there, is something that cannot happen in America, in a democracy such as ours. So I disagree with those who say, Ive heard them say this was tourists in the Capitol, that is not what happened on January 6. That was a group of individuals that that thought that violence and thought that going to the Capitol grounds was the right way to resolve their differences and that is not the way we do it in America and I will will be part of efforts continuing past Congress to try to bring people together and engage in the debate and say we cannot devolve into violence in any way whatsoever.

AC: A lot of people have criticized one of your fellow Congress member, Liz Cheney, saying she just cant let go of the election and her stance on it and as you know the election was a big part of what happened on January 6. Im wondering what you think of the possibility she might respond to that saying Im not letting go because President Trump and his allies arent letting go and I cant let silence go up against that for fear that narrative might win the day.

TR: And I respect that. I know Liz, I know Adam personally. I serve with them. I respect that they are committed to their point of view in terms of not forgetting January 6. I will disagree in regard to the January 6 commission. I was one of the 34 Republicans who voted for the bipartisan commission, but once it went down the partisan path thats when I lost hope that there would be a true 9-11 inquisition to get to the bottom of it and the bottom line now is that I think were seeing partisan politics when it comes to not only the commission, but each side using January 6 to promote their extreme view on both the left and the right.

AC: Do you think its wrong, though, that Congresswoman Cheney continues to address this?

TR: No, I respect that. I respect her position. Shes clearly passionate on how she views January 6 and we all should want to get to the bottom of it in the sense of what caused people to think you could take to the floor of the House and the floor of the Senate your dispute with the election results of that Presidential election, that is a legitimate inquiry that needs to occur, but it needs to be done in an open and honest, bipartisan transparent manner and thats not what is occurring. So I respect that Liz has committed herself to this process, but I would just encourage her to also be careful because you might be part of partisan politics and youre not aware of it because youre so close to it.

AC: Has this been difficult for you to take the stand you have on the election, on January 6, when there are a significant number of people in your party, people who voted for you who dont agree with you on this?

TR: Its not difficult because one of the things Im comfortable in is I know who I am. I know what I believe in and Im willing to stand in front of anyone, supporters and those who disagree with me and just tell them this is why I feel this way and I will tell you long-term, that has served me well and those who reject my point of view and do it in a way thats not respectful, thats not civil, I say, hey, we can do that, thats your choice, but Im going to do what I can control, Im going to try to disagree respectfully, Im going to try to listen to the frustration and Im going to try to be part of the leadership thats necessary for us to get past January 6 in a way that we can unite as a country, as one America, as people that are passionate about their differences, but respect that fact that we live in a great country that allows us to have those differences in a peaceful way.

AC: Anything else that youd like to add Congressman that I might have missed?

TR: What I look at in particular with January 6 is the dangers of extremism. Extremism is clearly here in America and I will tell you we have adversaries outside of America, China and others, and the more we recognize that the enemy is not your fellow American. The adversary and enemy are those outside of American who want to take down our way of life and I will just tell you that is something that we need to awaken to because if we dont unite to tackle that obstacle before it occurs Im afraid that crisis is going to have occur before the nation wakes up again.

AC: How does that happen when you have some companies and people working to divide the country?

TR: Leadership. It all boils down to leadership. Being willing to challenge the extremes on the left and the right, not accepting the political correctness that often causes people to shy away from speaking or stepping forward, so I would just say leadership is how you avoid having us have to deal with a crisis moment and overcome it prior to the crisis moment.

Adam Chodak: Congressman, a year ago you and I were talking over the phone and you were basically hiding in the U.S. Capitol. What are your thoughts a year later?

Joe Morelle: Well, I still reflect back, Adam, on that day in the sense of surrealism about what was happening around me and to my colleagues and we felt on the one hand like we were watching a movie where people were attacking the U.S. Capitol and you have to remind yourself that what is happening around you is actually happening, unthinkable things. Things that I took as article of faith, Im sure you did growing up that whoever won the election fair and square would be named the President or all the other offices that we elect. And just the notion that there was a group, heavily intent on hurting people, there to overturn an election was just unfathomable. Looking back over the last year two things are clear to me. One, we need to continue to remember and learn from the lesson of January 6t and we need to continue to remind ourselves that we are at a fragile point in American democracy and people are, as we speak today, are trying to undermine the system that we have lived with for centuries and have relied upon and that is a chilling thought and what January 6t should do, among other things, is remind us to remain vigilant, care about and protect our democratic institutions and our Constitution.

AC: In your view, what needs to happen to do that?

JM: We need to go back to respecting election results. There was no fraud, there was no evidence of any fraud in the Presidential election and yet a substantial number of people continue to posit the argument that the election was stolen. No evidence of that whatsoever And yet a significant number of Americans believe it or at least say they believe it and I dont know if they really do so we have to reestablish that we, on all sides, whether youre a Democrat or a Republican, and Independent, it shouldnt matter, election results have to matter. If they dont, then were no better than the dictatorships we see around the world.

AC: You speak with both Democrats and Republicans, those who are in leadership roles, what are they telling you when they talk about January 6t?

JM: There are a small number of Republicans and Republican representative who really believe the lies that President Trump and people within his administration continue to this day to sell to the American public, they believe it. And then theres the majority, I believe, of members of the House who are Republicans who dont believe it, who think its beyond ridiculous and potentially dangerous, but havent had the courage to really speak up and are afraid of the backlash from within their own party. I have enormous respect for Liz Cheney, I think shes a patriot, theres a lot of things we dont agree on policy wise, but Ill tell you, she has demonstrated enormous courage and is dedicated to the Constitution and dedicated to the Republic, but shes too few in number and Im really concerned about it. When people stand silently by and allow atrocities to happen theyre essentially abetting those things that if were not careful will really lead to the end of the American Republic.

AC: There are those who argue it was bad, but it was in their eyes spur of the moment, the folks who went in there for the most part did not have guns or anything like that and were paying too much attention to this and over blowing it. Whats your response to that?

JM: Well, they attacked members of the United States Capitol Police, they did use weapons in many cases. This was, and were seeing more and more details come out that this was a concerted effort organized potentially by people in the White House maybe members of Congress and the evidence of that in my view which will be clear over the next several months is the number of people fighting subpoenas by Congress to find out what role they played. Honestly people should be forthcoming. Theres no executive privilege here. A former President cant argue that a potential cover-up of a crime is protected by executive privilege. So when we see this, we will learn how much more this was really coordinated and how there was a lot of forethought about what was happening on January 6th. Is it true that some people came because they supported the President and didnt want Congress to certify the electoral process, but had no bad intent perhaps, but theres no question that a lot of people in positions of responsibility were actively trying to overturn the election results and were involved in treason and insurrection against the United States.

AC: My last question for you, do you suspect this will happen again?

JM: Well, I hope not from a physical point of view, but I think the thing we all need to be on guard against is the erosion of the values that we all have. In my view, one of the miracles of American democracy, John Adams turned over the keys to the White House to Thomas Jefferson, the first peaceful transfer of power in American history. We havent had for two centuries plus any challenge to that notion until 2020 so I hope there are no attacks in a physical way on the U.S. Capitol, but more insidious in my view, the darker alternative is that we change the rules so the voice of voters and American public is no longer the prevailing voice in American politics. Then I think were in a place where the American democracy simply isnt functioning anymore and Im fearful of that.

AC: Congressman, anything else that I might have missed?

JM: I just hope people take this very seriously. We are at a fragile point in American politics and we need patriots of all types to stand up say were not going to allow the foundations of our democracy to be eroded any further.

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Local lawmakers who lived through the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack reflect on that day - RochesterFirst

E. O. Wilson was an extraordinary scholar in every sense of the word. Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department at the University of Delaware, told me that a scientist who makes a single seminal contribution to his or her field has been a success. By the time I metEdward O. Wilsonin 1982, he had already made at least five such contributions to science.

This story also appeared in The Conversation

Wilson, who died Dec. 26, 2021 at the age of 92, discovered the chemical means by which ants communicate. He worked out the importance of habitat size and position within the landscape in sustaining animal populations. And he was the first to understand the evolutionary basis of both animal and human societies.

Each of his seminal contributions fundamentally changed the way scientists approached these disciplines, and explained why E.O. as he was fondly known was an academic god for many young scientists like me. This astonishing record of achievement may have been due to his phenomenal ability to piece together new ideas using information garnered from disparate fields of study.

In 1982 I cautiously sat down next to the great man during a break at a small conference on social insects. He turned, extended his hand and said, Hi, Im Ed Wilson. I dont believe weve met. Then we talked until it was time to get back to business.

Three hours later I approached him again, this time without trepidation because surely now we were the best of friends. He turned, extended his hand, and said Hi, Im Ed Wilson. I dont believe weve met.

Wilson forgetting me, but remaining kind and interested anyway, showed that beneath his many layers of brilliance was a real person and a compassionate one. I was fresh out of graduate school, and doubt that another person at that conference knew less than I something Im sure Wilson discovered as soon as I opened my mouth. Yet he didnt hesitate to extend himself to me, not once but twice.

Thirty-two years later, in 2014, we met again. I had been invited to speak in a ceremony honoring his receipt of the Franklin Institutes Benjamin Franklin Medal for Earth and Environmental Science. The award honored Wilsons lifetime achievements in science, but particularly his many efforts to save life on Earth.

My work studying native plants and insects, and how crucial they are to food webs, was inspired by Wilsons eloquent descriptions of biodiversity and how the myriad interactions among species create the conditions that enable the very existence of such species.

I spent the first decades of my career studying the evolution of insect parental care, and Wilsons early writings provided a number of testable hypotheses that guided that research. But his 1992 book, The Diversity of Life, resonated deeply with me and became the basis for an eventual turn in my career path.

Though I am an entomologist, I did not realize that insects were the little things that run the world until Wilson explained why this is so in 1987. Like nearly all scientists and nonscientists alike, my understanding of how biodiversity sustains humans was embarrassingly cursory. Fortunately, Wilson opened our eyes.

Throughout his career Wilson flatly rejected the notion held by many scholars that natural history the study of the natural world through observation rather than experimentation was unimportant. He proudly labeled himself a naturalist, and communicated the urgent need to study and preserve the natural world. Decades before it was in vogue, he recognized that our refusal to acknowledge the Earths limits, coupled with the unsustainability of perpetual economic growth, had set humans well on their way to ecological oblivion.

Wilson understood that humans reckless treatment of the ecosystems that support us was not only a recipe for our own demise. It was forcing the biodiversity he so cherished into the sixth mass extinction in Earths history, and the first one caused by an animal: us.

And so, to his lifelong fascination with ants, E. O. Wilson added a second passion: guiding humanity toward a more sustainable existence. To do that, he knew he had to reach beyond the towers of academia and write for the public, and that one book would not suffice. Learning requires repeated exposure, and that is what Wilson delivered in The Diversity of Life, Biophilia, The Future of Life, The Creation and his final plea in 2016, Half-Earth: Our Planets Fight for Life.

As Wilson aged, desperation and urgency replaced political correctness in his writings. He boldly exposed ecological destruction caused by fundamentalist religions and unrestricted population growth, and challenged the central dogma of conservation biology, demonstrating that conservation could not succeed if restricted to tiny, isolated habitat patches.

In Half Earth, he distilled a lifetime of ecological knowledge into one simple tenet: Life as we know it can be sustained only if we preserve functioning ecosystems on at least half of planet Earth.

But is this possible? Nearly half of the planet is used for some form of agriculture, and 7.9 billion people and their vast network of infrastructure occupy the other half.

As I see it, the only way to realize E.O.s lifelong wish is learn to coexist with nature, in the same place, at the same time. It is essential to bury forever the notion that humans are here and nature is someplace else. Providing a blueprint for this radical cultural transformation has been my goal for the last 20 years, and I am honored that it melds with E.O. Wilsons dream.

There is no time to waste in this effort. Wilson himself once said, Conservation is a discipline with a deadline. Whether humans have the wisdom to meet that deadline remains to be seen.

Doug Tallamy, Professor of Entomology, University of Delaware

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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E.O. Wilson had a lifelong passion for ants - The Current GA

Photo by Timothy Norris/Getty Images

Jeff Garlin, star of the hit ABC show The Goldbergs, was recently fired for unspecified misconduct allegations on the shows set.

Garlins behavior put the show in a difficult place. Its not canceled, so how do they handle Garlins departure? Now, were getting a clearer picture of how ABC plans to move forward.

The actor, who also stars in the long-running hit HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm, will reportedly still appear in the latest episodes, but not in the usual way.

Variety reports that Garlins voice, pulled from unused takes and previous episodes, will be used in his absence. This also means the actor will still get his probably very big paycheck as well, even though he wont have to actually work for it.

New episodes are already using a stand-in shot from the back, and the stand-in has reportedly previously been used with Garlins head on the stand-ins body. Garlin hasnt been a central character to the show for a while and was reportedly only working a day a week.

In an interview with Variety writer Elizabeth Wagmeister, he downplayed his apparent bad behavior on the set. According to Wagmeister, Garlin allegedly engaged in a pattern of verbal and physical conduct on set that made people uncomfortable.

Sources said Garlin got away with it because he would call himself out for itsaying he was a big teddy bear, saying things like, Oh you know me, just a big bowl of mush, Im a hugger. I just love you.'

He admitted there was an HR investigation into his behavior and that he made a joke with a stand-in that completely missed.

When asked for specifics, he dodged artfully.

Im not going to go over it because I dont want to, but basically a lot of things that I disagree withthat are silly. If I said something silly and offensive, and Im working at an insurance company, I think its a different situation. If I, as the star of the show, demanded a gun range and on set, and I was firing guns every day and I was a little bit looseto me, thats an unsafe work atmosphere. If I threatened people, thats an unsafe work atmosphere. None of that goes on ever with me. Thats not who I am. I am sorry to tell you that there really is no big story. Unless you want to do a story about political correctness.

The Goldbergs airs on the ABC network.

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Jeff Garlin Will Still Appear in 'The Goldbergs' After Firing - We Got This Covered

The world has spun on its axis since the last series of The Apprentice in October 2019, yet still I am watching a group of blank idiots in an airless, windowless boardroom giggling politely as Lord Sugar chucks out tired quips like: You dont get furloughed, you get fired. Reassuring? Or woefully out of date?

The Apprentice is formulaic, protracted, often dull and usually only really worth watching for the first half, in which the hapless candidates go full Young Enterprise to hustle on Londons most camera-friendly streets and vulnerable pedestrians. The second half as they sacrifice each other in the boardroom is never as interesting as the pantomime set-up would have us believe.

Obviously, Im going to watch the whole thing, because self-importance, pomposity, delusion, and fatal error are sadly very entertaining, and I love how big I feel as someone who has zero entrepreneurial nous, no evidence of business acumen nor any understanding of markets or indeed money knowing that I absolutely would do a better job than these bozos. In this case, though, I have to wonder whether I would also have done a better job than Lord Sugar himself.

If I had a long-running reality process centred around business, that was returning after more than two years to a society and market ravaged by a pandemic which has forced companies to close, employees to work from home, offices to be abandoned permanently and cost billions of pounds in government bailouts, I would not have chosen to herald businesss bounce-back with a task involving the launch of a luxury cruise ship.

It was a British cruise ship, lest we forget, the Diamond Princess, that in February 2020 was forced to dock and quarantine at Yokohama for a month, when an early coronavirus outbreak infected nearly a quarter of its 3,700 passengers, and killed nine of them.

Several cruise lines have been shut down in the years since, governments have advised against cruise travel because its conditions can facilitate the rapid spread of disease, and all travel now requires complicated, ever-changing and expensive testing requirements. Certainly, the travel industry needs a boost. If only this lot could have given it one.

As always, as the 16th series began, it was girls vs boys (and they do refer to them infantalisingly as girls or ladies and boys)

This immediately felt off. Not political correctness gone mad, before you protest, but because this device seems deliberately set up to prevent us regarding men and women as equals and simultaneously to encourage the candidates to play into the worst and laziest gender stereotypes: women with big blonde hair and bright bodycon dresses shouting over each other and bitching; gormless men suited up like theyre on the way home from a rugby club dinner and with about as much good sense.

Both endeavours were appalling. The women named their company Bouji Cruises quite cleverly with the idea of rebranding cruises for groups of young female friends. Unfortunately their seedy ad campaign boasted that the holidays would allow passengers to live the lavish lifestyle, and little concern was paid to the fact that nobody, including half the team, understands what Bouji means (different for everyone, but involves brunch!) nor that it brings to mind that grand tradition of the booze cruise which frankly would have been much more fun.

The men meanwhile also opted to cash in on the middle-age wellness market, but sadly Seaquility sounded far less like the title of a nautical yoga retreat and more like the name of a painful infection whose recovery requires the use of a pressure relief cushion.

This was only exacerbated by their logo, a brown turd with legs and a cresting wave for a head. There are reportedly dangerous quantities of raw sewage off the British coastline so I suppose it at least looked like an accurate representation of how a passenger might emerge from the Channel while swimming back to shore after throwing themselves overboard within 30 minutes of setting sail.

I was still rooting for Bouji Cruises to sink, though, but somehow, led by the entirely uncollaborative pyjama mogul Katherine, they won. Observing them throughout was Tim Campbell winner of the first series and Claude Littners replacement who spent much of this episode in dismay and seemed similarly shocked at the result.

The Apprentice is a comedy. Can we all just agree that now, so that the production team can inject a bit of life into the edit and really go to town with the asides, the eye-rolls, the cutaways and the mockumentary-style looks to camera, which more in this series than ever they threaten to do?

For too long weve let the BBC pretend this is a real business competition, but while I like my Tropic pillow mist (Susie Ma, third place, 2011) this is no longer about hapless candidates or innovation or even moneymaking at all. Its about watching the real-world horror of 16 LinkedIn profiles coming to life.

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The Apprentice, BBC1, episode 1, review: A return to the horror of watching LinkedIn come to life - iNews

By Rohana R. Wasala

The web portal reported Tuesday December 21, 2021: Riyadh holds 4-day EDM carnival. Commenting on the electronic dance music extravaganza, unprecedented in Saudi Arabia, the news anchor said, The de facto leader of the Islamic World, the Guardian of the two holiest sites in Islam, Saudi Arabia, did the unexpected this weekend. Its through a giant rave party, a four-day electronic music festival complete with psychedelic lights and international DJs .. With video footage of densely packed dancing men and women taken from the exhilarating event held two or three days previously flashing across the background screen, the newscaster continued: the images that you see are from Saudi Arabia (where) a giant party was held in the deserts of Riyadh with the blessings and money of the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud. They fully endorsed and sponsored this carnival. It was attended by artistes from all over the world. Tiesto, Martin Garrix, David Guetta, Afrojack you name them, the worlds leading DJs, performed at the rave. Their excitement was evident in their statements. One of the DJs was heard saying: It was the first time that there was going to be women and men being able to dance together, and there was also a very historical moment, and I am happy to be part of this . Of course, theres more things to be done to improve the country, but I think they are opening, are really going to the right direction, giving more rights to women, like four years ago women couldnt drive . they can come and dance. Its a huge evolution.

That was what one of the DJs taking part in the massive musical show said about its underlying significance for a socio-culturally changed future for the kingdom, the birth place of Islam, with a previous reputation as the exporter of Islamic fundamentalism. The news presenter then dwelt on the fact that the exuberant Western type of music festival in the traditionally conservative Saudi Arabia did indeed symbolise a huge evolution. She went on:

(QUOTE) Saudi men and women dancing with abandon, swaying to the beats of Western music, no gender segregation, no full-length robes, no face veils, no any religious restrictions for that matter. All this was unthinkable in Saudi Arabia just a few years back. Now it is happening By the way, this rave party comes close on the heels of the Red Sea International Film Festival, the first of its kind to be held in Saudi Arabia. It was a star-studded affair with women walking the red carpet in sleeveless gowns, a woman film-maker winning the Best Director award, and an openly queer man winning the Best Actor award What do you make of these changes? The sands are shifting in Saudi Arabia, its evident. The socially conservative kingdom is trying to shake off its regressive image. Its limiting the rule of religion in public life and fitting itself as a modern liberal and tourism-friendly kingdom. And this, we say, is a welcome change. Although critics of Saudi Arabia say its a facade (and) insist (that) the Saudi society is not making any fundamental meaningful change., ever since Mohamed bin Salman was made the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia, hes embarked on a liberalisation drive, with loosened gender segregation norms, hes reopened cinemas, allowed women to drive, to go to stadiums, take the haj without a male guardian.In a way MBS has defanged the countrys religious police that not too long ago would dictate every facet of daily life. And those are all remarkable reforms, they deserve applause. But, I have also to say they are only half-measures, and very late at that. Some very problematic issues persist in the Saudi society. Saudi Arabia continues to arrest dissidents, to extend prison terms of activists. It continues to detain the rich on allegations of corruption, a tinkering with power structures, arbitrary reshuffling whom the Crown Prince thinks are potential challengers. Political reform remains taboo (END OF QUOTE)

The foregoing is based on a news item from an independent online news source that represents the international free media. The comments on the piece of news are those of the newscaster, about which we listeners and viewers may or may not agree with her, or regarding which we may just remain neutral. But the piece of news is true, and so is what she says about the Saudi Crown Princes commitment to a liberalisation drive and his determination to rid his country of its regressive image. What it indicates is that the tide is turning against violent Islamic extremism. It is the same in other countries, too. Isnt this good news for people all over the world who are faced with forms of violent Islamism? For, against this global anti-extremist background, we need not entertain exaggerated fears about the menace or resort to measures that are likely to breathe new life into it, instead of letting it die a natural death.

The Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salmans brave initiative is an extremely praiseworthy example in a world where, in spite of the steadily rising awareness, particularly among the educated youth, of the dangerous insanity of excessive religiosity and the increasing rejection of its political backers and sympathisers by the civilised world, the backward ruling classes seem to believe that they are required to tolerate or even appease the few extremists in order to win the hearts and minds of the ordinary faithful. The Saudi leaders reformist gestures make good news for non-Muslim majority countries, including Sri Lanka, where a few opportunistic Muslim politicians maintain secret dealngs with extremists while pretending that they had nothing to do with them.

It was justly suspected by many around the time of the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings (i. e., both before and after the unspeakable horror) that a handful of opportunistic Sri Lankan Muslim politicians with a communal mindset were maintaining treacherous links with suicide-bombing extremists for personal political advantage. It is now well known that these sham champions of Muslims try to create the illusion of a non-existent Buddhist-Muslim conflict or disharmony in the country through false propaganda, which is a part of their scheming to position themselves between foreign donors inspired to genuinely help their Sri Lankan co-religionists that, they have been persuaded to wrongly believe, are being persecuted by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority. All our political, civil and religious leaders need to unite to convince the leaders of friendly Islamic nations not to be misled by these duplicitous, self-seeking Muslim politicos who ultimately betray not only the interests of Sri Lankan Muslims whom they claim to represent, but those of the whole nation.

I dealt with this subject in MWL should separate the wheat from the chaff/The Island/ May 4, 2021), where I wrote: What should be of greater concern for the government is the fact that, by contriving to get themselves identified as constituting the whole Muslim community of the country, the handful of Islamist extremists who are widely believed to have provided tacit or explicit support for the suicide bombers are also foisting themselves on its (the MWLs) powerful patronage. By the wheat in the title I meant the traditional Sri Lankan Muslim minority who have co-existed peacefully with the majority Sinhalese Buddhists and other minority communities over the centuries; by the chaff I meant opportunistic Muslim politicos who secretly associate with extremists, while masquerading as champions of the generality of peaceful Muslims. These duplicitous Muslim politicos manage to enjoy the best of both worlds by making shrewd changes of their loyalty at the right time to join the incoming administration, under whichever major partys leadership it gets formed. Leaders of both major parties dont hesitate to cut deals with these communalist Muslim politicians at critical moments.

This reminded me of certain statements that businessman-turned-politician Shiraz Yunus made recently which were critical of the government, of which he is a partner. He attacked the government while claiming to be Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksas national coordinator for Muslim affairs. The PMs media division has since denied that Yunus holds any position in the government and that he was expressing his individual personal opinions.

This is according to a statement in Sinhala from the Prime Ministers Media Division published in the online news portal lankacnews on December 4, 2021 (a day after the Sialkot incident); it was signed by Rohan Weliwita, the PMs Media Secretary. The statement was carried under a headline that translates into English as Mr Shiraz Yunus has not been appointed to any post in the Prime Ministers Office:

QUOTE

I wish to announce that Mr Shiraz Yunus does not work as a coordinating secretary to the Prime Minister; such a position has not not been granted by the Prime Ministers Office.

This is to declare that the PMs Office has no connection with the statements that Mr Shiraz Yunus makes claiming that he serves as the PMs coordinating secretary.

Meanwhile, he has not been given a post of any description in the PMs Office.

I wish to further state that his statements are completely personal and that neither the Prime inister nor the Prime Ministers Office endorses those ideas.

END OF QUOTE

Why shouldnt we ask the PMs media unit to tell it to the marines? This is hardly more than mere wordplay. In the following YouTube interview published more than five weeks ago, Shiraz Yunus didnt ever once refer to himself as a coordinating secretary; he claimed to be the Prime Ministers National Coordinator for Muslim Affairs. This interview took place more than a month before Priyantha Kumara was lynched by an Islamist mob. By denying after more than one month what Yunus never claimed (he never said he is/was acting as PMs coordinating secretary for Muslim affairs), the PMs media unit seems to be trying to eat the cake and have it, too. Did it have to take a heinous crime, like beating to death an helpless man and desecrating his dead body by burning it on a main road in Pakistan on December 3, 2021, by a lynch mob for alleged blasphemy for the PM (who is also the Minister of Buddha Sasana) to dissociate himself at long last from Yunuss baseless attacks on the Gotabaya loyalist faction in the government? Yunuss criticisms include the false charge of anti-Muslim discrimination as allegedly exemplified in the mandatory burning of Covid-19 dead ignoring the religious sensitivities of the Muslims. Government and Opposition leaders have an unavoidable responsibility to ensure the protection of the non-Muslim majority of the population and the moderate Muslims from the excesses of Islamist extremists. Politicians, please dont sacrifice these innocents on the altar of political correctness to please the opportunistic ruling elite of the Muslim community.

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Towards a future free from fears of Islamism II - nation.lk - The Nation Newspaper