A few matters in English football

Simple Answers to tough arguments:

Q: “If Gareth Barry doesn’t make it to the England squad this weekend, what does the lad have to do to play for his country?”

A: Join Middlesbrough FC!!

Q: “Dion Georgiou makes some extremely good points in his attempt to defend the playing abilities of Mr Crouch. Crouch’s international records is in a class of its own. 11 goals in 14 games and his performances for Pool this season are highly commendable. Give me one reason why he cannot be an England international!

A: Crouch is crap!

Q: Which of these would be most use in the England squad?

Jermaine Jenas
Kieran Richardson
Ronald McDonald
A duck. An actual duck, just swimming around in circles. I know its just the English press being too critical of their team but lmao @ the duck!!

Robert Redeker, a French professor of philosophy

http://faustasblog.com/2006/09/article-that-may-cost-man-his-life-and.html

Kindly refer to the article above in fausta’s blog. It is indeed shocking that things like these happen in these modern times. So a citizen of a democratic country does not have freedom of speech and expression in his own state! Has the world come to that and what hope may future citizens of any democracy have?

The plight of the Professor Robert is indeed terrible and I fervently hope this is not a pre-cursor of what the world is coming to.

Famous Quotations I love

You have not lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.
- John Bunyan

The man who wins may have been counted out several times,
but he didn’t hear the referee.
Never quit or give up….never…..never give up.
-H.E. Janson

Diabetes Type 2 warning India

IHT – Asia Pacific by N.R. Kleinfield published September 12, 2006
CHENNAI, India There are many ways to understand diabetes in this choking city of automakers and software companies, where the disease seems as commonplace as saris.

One way is through the story of P. Ganam, 50, a proper woman reduced to fake gold.

Her husband, K. Palayam, had diabetes do its corrosive job on him: Ulcers bore into both feet and cost him a leg. To pay for his care in a country where health insurance is rare, P. Ganam sold all her cherished jewelry. Gold, as she saw it, swapped for life.

She was asked about the necklaces and bracelets she was now wearing.

They were, as it happened, worthless impostors.

“Diabetes,” she said, “has the gold.”

And now, Ganam, the scaffolding of her hard-won middle-class existence already undone, has diabetes too.

In its hushed but unrelenting manner, Type 2 diabetes is engulfing India, swallowing up the legs and jewels of those comfortable enough to put on weight in a country better known for famine.

Here, juxtaposed alongside the stick- thin poverty, the malaria and the AIDS, the number of diabetics now totals around 35 million, and counting.

The future looks only more ominous as India hurtles into the present, modernizing and urbanizing at blinding speed. Even more of its 1.1 billion people seem destined to become heavier and more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, a disease of high blood sugar brought on by obesity, inactivity and genes, often culminating in blindness, amputations and heart failure.

In 20 years, projections are that there may be a staggering 75 million Indian diabetics.

“Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress,” said Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes in Madras.

For decades, Type 2 diabetes has been the “rich man’s burden,” a problem for industrialized countries to solve. But as the sugar disease, as it is often called, has penetrated the United States and other developed nations, it has also trespassed deep into the far more populous developing world.

In Italy or Germany or Japan, diabetes is on the rise. In Bahrain and Cambodia and Mexico – where industrialization and Western food habits have taken hold – it is rising even faster. For the world has now reached the point, according to the United Nations, where more people are overweight than undernourished.

Diabetes does not convey the ghastly despair of AIDS or other killers. But more people worldwide now die from chronic diseases like diabetes than from communicable diseases. And the World Health Organization expects that of the more than 350 million diabetics projected in 2025, three-fourths will inhabit the third world.

“I’m concerned for virtually every country where there’s modernization going on, because of the diabetes that follows,” said Dr. Paul Zimmet, the director of the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia. “I’m fearful of the resources ever being available to address it.”

India and China are already home to more diabetics than any other country. Prevalence among adults in India is estimated about 6 percent, two-thirds of that in the United States, but the illness is traveling faster, particularly in the country’s large cities.

Throughout the world, Type 2 diabetes, once predominantly a disease of the old, has been striking younger people.

But because Indians have such a pronounced genetic vulnerability to the disease, they tend to contract it 10 years earlier than people in developed countries. It is because India is so youthful – half the population is under 25 – that the future of diabetes here is so chilling.

In this boiling city of 5 million perched on the Bay of Bengal, amid the bleating horns of the auto-rickshaws and the shriveled mendicants peddling combs on the dust-beaten streets, diabetes can be found everywhere.

The conventional way to see India is to inspect the want – the want for food, the want for money, the want for life. The 300 million who struggle below the poverty line. The debt-crippled farmers who kill themselves. The millions of children with too little to eat.

But there is another way to see it: Through its newfound excesses and expanding middle and upper classes. In a changing India, it seems to go this way: Make good money and get cars, get houses, get servants, get meals out, get diabetes.

In perverse fashion, obesity and diabetes stand almost as joint totems of success.

Last year, for instance, the MW fast- food and ice cream restaurant in this city proclaimed a special promotion: “Overweight? Congratulations.”

The limited-time deal afforded diners savings equal to 50 percent of their weight in kilograms. The heaviest arrival lugged in 135 kilograms, or 297 pounds, and ate lustily at 67.5 percent off.

Too much food has pernicious implications for a people with a genetic susceptibility to diabetes, possibly the byproduct of ancestral genes developed to hoard fat during cycles of feast and famine. This vulnerability was first spotted decades ago when immigrant Indians settled in Western countries and in their retrofitted lifestyles got diabetes at levels dwarfing those in India.

Now westernization has come to India and is bringing the disease home.

Though 70 percent of the population remains rural, Indians are steadily forsaking paddy fields for a city lifestyle that entails less movement, more fattening foods and higher stress – a toxic brew for diabetes.

In Madras, about 16 percent of adults are thought to have the disease, one of India’s highest concentrations, more than the soaring levels in New York, and triple the rate two decades ago. Three local hospitals, quaintly known as the sugar hospitals, are devoted to the illness.

The traditional Indian diet can itself be generous with calories.

But urban residents switch from ragi and fresh vegetables to fried fast food and processed goods. The pungent aromas of quick-food emporiums waft everywhere here: Sowbakiya Fast Food, Nic-Nac Fast Food and Pizza Hut. Coke and Pepsi are pervasive, but rarely their diet versions.

The country boasts a ravenous sweet tooth, hence the ubiquitous sweet shops, where customers eagerly lap up laddu and badam pista rolls. Sweets are obligatory at social occasions – birthdays, office parties, mourning observances for the dead – and during any visit to someone’s home, a signal of how welcome the visitors are and that God is present.

“When you come to the office after getting a haircut, people say, ‘So where are the sweets?’” said Dr. N. Murugesan, the project director at the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes.

The sovereignty of sweets can pose ticklish choices for a doctor.

Trying to set an example, Dr. V. Mohan, chairman of the Diabetes Specialities Centre, a local hospital, said he had omitted sweets at a business affair he arranged, and nearly incited a riot.

Last year, his daughter was married. Lesson learned, he laid out a spread of regular sweets on one side of the hall and on the other stationed a table laden with sugar-free treats. Everyone left smiling.

In the United States, an inverse correlation persists between income and diabetes. Since fattening food is cheap, the poor become heavier than the rich, and they exercise less and receive inferior health care. In India, the disease tends to directly track income.

“Jokingly in talks, I say you haven’t made it in society until you get a touch of diabetes,” Mohan said. He points out that people who once balanced water jugs and construction material on their heads now carry nothing heavier than a cellphone. At a four-star restaurant, it is not unusual to see a patron yank out his kit and give himself an insulin injection.

The very wealthy have begun to recoil at ballooning waistlines, and there has been a rise in slimming centers and stomach-shrinking operations. In high- end stores, one can find a CD, “Music for Diabetes,” with raga selections chosen to dampen stress.

The rest of urban India, however, sits and eats.

In Madras, workers in the software industry rank among the envied elite. Doctors worry about their habits – tapping keys for exercise, ingesting junk food at the computer. Dr. C.R. Anand Moses, a local diabetologist, sees a steady parade of eager software professionals, devoured by diabetes.

“They work impossible hours sitting still,” he said.

S. Venkatesh, 28, a thick-around-the- middle programmer, knows the diabetes narrative. Much of his work is for Western companies that operate during the Indian night. So he works in the dark, sleeps in the day.

“The software industry is full of pressure, because you are paid well,” he said. “In India, if you work in software, your hours are the office.”

His sole exercise is to sometimes climb the stairs. A year and a half ago, he found out he had diabetes.

Quarter-life crisis

The last few years have literally breezed by me. So what was I doing in a technological institute, typing abstract java while looking at the pretty girl who sat across me in the lab. There were too many questions on a brain which seemed more keen on admiring the female species in the lab. And finally here I am, a qualified engineer with a second-class degree in hand.

I was wondering why I make the choices I make and whether God has a say in them. Then I wonder why we believe in God. I think people believe in God so they have a faith to follow; a system of rules without which they would be lost easily. These rules keep a person in check from wandering away from the realities of life and the practicalities of the world. In other words, they keep a person sane by making sure he doesnt surpass the limitations of a human mind.Why do people go mad? By ‘mad’ I mean not angry as commonly used nowadays but the real meaning of the word, become mentally unstable. It is when they cease to believe in the rationality of life or one of its enchantments. They either think about too many questions that their brain cannot accomodate or are obessed on something so trivial and irrational that they cannot comprehend the meaning of it.

Thinking too much is never good. There is a limit on how much your brain can handle and this is where faith comes in. It doesnt let you get lost in the complexities of life and provides answers to unanswerable questions, to those that simply choose to believe in them without seeking the rationality behind those answers.

I am still an amateur with regards to understanding life and me, how we are connected; And for what purpose has God given intelligence to only one species? Intelligence that I only fear will eventually lead to the destruction of this world. More on this later…

First Readings on Utopia

The Jewish, Christian and Islamic ideas of the Garden of Eden and Heaven may be interpreted as forms of utopianism, especially in their folk-religious forms. Such religious “utopias” are often described as “gardens of delight”, implying an existence free from worry in a state of bliss or enlightenment. They postulate existences free from sin, pain, poverty and death, and often assume communion with beings such as angels or the houri. In a similar sense the Buddhist concept of Nirvana may be thought of as a kind of utopia.

However these ideas are more frequently the bases for religious utopias, as members attempt to establish/reestablish on Earth a society which reflects the virtues and values they believe have been lost or which await them in the Afterlife.

In the United States and Europe during the Second Great Awakening of the nineteenth century and thereafter, many radical religious groups formed utopian societies. They sought to form communities where all aspects of people’s lives could be governed by their faith. Among the best-known of these utopian societies was the Shaker movement, which originated in England in the 18th century but moved to America shortly after its founding.

There are yet other kind of utopia called scientific and technological utopida that are set in the future, when it is believed that advanced science and technology will allow utopian living standards; for example, the absence of death and suffering; changes in human nature and the human condition. These utopian societies tend to change what “human” is all about. Technology has affected the way humans have lived to such an extent that normal functions, like sleep, eating or even reproduction, has been replaced by an artificial means. Other kinds of this utopia envisioned, include a society where human has struck a balance with technology and it is merely used to enhance the human living condition like the Star Trek. In place of the static perfection of a utopia, libertarian transhumanists envision an “extropia”, an open, evolving society allowing individuals and voluntary groupings to form the institutions and social forms they prefer.

A variation on this theme was found earlier in the theories of Eugenics. Believing that many traits were hereditary in nature, the eugenists believed that not only healthier, more intelligent race could be bred, but many other traits could be selected for, including “talent”, or against, including drunkness and criminality. This called for “positive eugenics” encouraging those with good genes to have children, and “negative eugenics” discouraging those with bad genes, or preventing them altogether by confinement or forcible sterilization.

Opposing this optimism is the prediction that advanced science and technology will, through deliberate misuse or accident, cause environmental damage or even humanity’s extinction. Critics advocate precautions against the premature embrace of new technologies.

State of the Premiership October 1, 2006

Chelsea at the top does look familiar for me but the ones at the bottom is a sad state. I am relatively new to the whole football scene considering I began taking an interest in football when I was 17 but then I am not an European. Consider my views here as those of an amateur observer.

Charlton Athletic for a long time have been my idea of an orthodox small football club. They dont have ambition and the primary objective of their long term plans generally is to retain their 70 year old manager after 10 years. Their highest purchase is generally in the order of 2-3 Million pounds and it can be termed as the least ambitious club in the premiership. Alan Curbishley kept Charlton in good stead the last few years always managing a decent midtable position but now with Iain Dowie in charge, all I can see is the club in the championship next season. They do have but 2 good players in Darren Bent and Luke Young. Hasselbaink and Holland are 2 other good performers but are past it. I got nothing against Dowie, he seems a great guy but he’s not just that good at his job and especially not at a small club like charlton.

Coming to Sam Allardyce, I think the guy is one tough son of a bitch. Bung accusations by his own son and he beats Liverpool 2-0 next day. He has a liking for vintage pieces expecially when they come cheap or free. He turns these vintage machines into working pieces of the highest order like Gary Speed and Ivan Campo, 2 players who would have been playing golf in Qatar if they dint join Bolton. The Bolton physical training set up is said to be the best among the premiership and watching the Bolton players in action, I have few doubts regarding it. Bolton will be always a top-8 team as long as Allardyce is in charge and it is an amazing achievement.

Portsmouth had a very lucky start and when I say lucky, I say it because people’s expectations of the Pompey team have grown rapidly. Harry Redknapp, the transfer specialist brought in Kanu, David James, Manuel Fernandes, Glen Johnson, Sol Campbell to add to the likes of Luis Boa Morte, Pedro Mendes and Pompey sure will finish in the top-10 this season.

My own team seems doomed this year after bringing in just one player when several reinforcements were required. SAF over the years, despite his tactical astuteness on the field has displayed immaturity in transfer matters. The immaturity stems from the club’s tradition of developing youngster’s but then putting faith in Darren Fletcher to play on the right wing is stupid. I mean he cant tackle, he cant dribble, he doesnt have pace, he doesnt have strength, he cant shoot; all he can do is pass a little like any average semi-pro footballer can. And I dont know why Alan Smith was brought to the club in the first place. While it was a selfish motive on our part because we all love Smithy, we should think about Smith too. The poor guy would have been a favourite say in Toonland was he playing there. For us, he is not good enough a striker; nor good enuff as a midfielder and so is at best a squad player. And I think, there are chances Cristiano will indeed reach what he’s destined for: the best player in the world and I think his arrogance is what will carry him there.

Arsenal are looking like patchwork, mostly depending on the brilliance of Henry or sometimes Jr.Bergkamp Persie or that ingenious talent Fabregas who is sometimes criticised unnecessarily. I wish them and Wenger the best as much as I dont really like them.

More later…

On Egalitarianism

Common forms of egalitarianism include economic egalitarianism (also known as material egalitarianism), moral egalitarianism, legal egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism, political egalitarianism, gender egalitarianism, racial egalitarianism and opportunity egalitarianism.

* Material egalitarianism stresses equality with respect to material possessions.

in economic and social opportunity.

The United States Declaration of Independence included a kind of moral and legal egalitarianism. Because “all men are created equal”, each person is to be treated equally under the law. Originally this statement excluded women, slaves and other groups, but, over time, universal egalitarianism has won wide adherence and is a core component of modern civil rights policies.

Different kinds of egalitarianism can sometimes conflict, while in other situations they may be indispensable to each other. For instance, communism is an egalitarian doctrine, according to which everyone is supposed to enjoy material equality. However, because material inequality is pervasive in the current international economy, something must be done to remove it. Since those who enjoy the greatest material wealth are not likely to wish to part with it, some form of coercive mechanism must exist in the transition period before communism. But if the coercive powers of redistribution are vested in some people and not in others, a conflict of interest will take place, and inequalities of political power would emerge. History has shown, in the former Soviet Union for instance, that people who are granted coercive redistributive powers often abuse them. Indeed, those with political power were known to redistribute vastly unequal shares of material resources to themselves, thereby completely confounding the justification for their unequal political status. Therefore, most Marxists now agree that communism can only be achieved if the coercive powers of redistribution needed during the transitional period are vested in a democratic body whose powers are limited by various checks and balances, in order to prevent abuse. In other words, they argue that political egalitarianism is indispensable to material egalitarianism. Meanwhile, other defenders of material egalitarianism have rejected Marxist communism in favor of such views as libertarian socialism, which does not advocate the transitional use of the state as a means of redistribution.

The English word egalitarianism is derived from the French word égal, meaning equal or level.

Pope vs Islam by Kirsten A. Powers

Who Should Apologize?
Another view of the Pope-Islam controversy. By Kirsten A. Powers
Web Exclusive: 09.25.06

Print Friendly | Email Article

The week before last, Pope Benedict cited an ancient text that criticized Islam for being too violent. The Muslim reaction was swift and violent: An Italian nun in Somalia was murdered, four Christian schoolgirls were beheaded in Indonesia, churches were burnt, mosques in Iraq were plastered with posters threatening to kill every Christian in the country, and death threats against the pope were made. Following the pope’s comments, al-Qaeda militants in Iraq vowed war on “worshippers of the cross” and protesters burned a papal effigy. Seems the Pope may have been on to something — but at any rate, he apologized.

Meanwhile, on ABC’s “The View,” Rosie O’Donnell was offering her insight on Islam, arguing that “radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam.” The audience clapped enthusiastically as Rosie aggressively made her ill-informed and irresponsible case. Christian groups complained. Nobody was beheaded. To date, no mass burnings of A League of Her Own have been reported.

The pope’s comment was ironically borne out by the reaction to it; Rosie O’Donnell’s false analogy was also borne out by the (non-)reaction to it. It seems perhaps the wrong person has apologized.

It’s true that the pope’s views of Islam carry more weight than Rosie’s of Christianity, yet many in the Muslim world have shown that no slight is too small for them to retaliate with violence. Danish cartoons deemed offensive to Islam ignite rioting and burning of embassies. When Christians are mocked or their most cherished symbols desecrated, they put out press releases and engage in boycotts.

NBC just announced that they will be running Madonna’s “Confessions” tour where the Material Girl crucifies herself on a mirrored cross. No worry. Tower Records will not be burnt to the ground for carrying Madonna’s CD, and NBC employees can safely go about their business without fear of death threats from The Catholic League. And the chances of A League of Her Own burnings will still remain remote. Madonna’s publicity machine should have figured out by now that if she really wants to cause a stir, she should insult Islam.

Rosie’s — and apparently “The View” audiences’ — fear of “radical Christians” makes clear they understand neither fundamentalist Christianity nor radical Islam. Whatever criticisms one can make of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell — and there are many — fundamentalist Christians are not flying planes into buildings in the name of God, nor are they plotting to blow up ten airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean. Radical Muslims are threatening and slaughtering “infidels” around the world. They murdered Theo Van Gogh and drove a member of the Dutch government into exile for their perceived slights against Islam. In Iraq, they recently kidnapped a Catholic priest and tortured him. They kidnapped and beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. It was reported today that Safia Amajan — a fierce critic of the Taliban’s repression of women — was murdered in the street in Afghanisan. It’s believed she was targeted by Taliban militants because of their opposition to women taking part in politics and education.

In just the last few years, Islamic terrorists have targeted and murdered Westerners in the bombing of the Madrid subway; the bombing of the London underground; and the bombing of an Indonesian night club. They murdered almost 3,000 people on 9-11. They killed 240 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. In 1993, they bombed the World Trade Center, killing 17 and injuring more than a thousand people. In 2000, they bombed the USS Cole, killing 17 Americans.

In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, there has been ongoing persecution and murder of Christians in an attempt to wipe them out and impose Sharia law. Christians who refused to convert to Islam were killed; those who did convert were separated from their families and forcibly circumcised, without anesthetic. Christian pastors have been beheaded for the crime of being Christian.

Rosie’s beef with Christian opponents of gay marriage would presumably pale should she find herself living in many Islamic countries. Perhaps she missed former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami’s speech at Harvard recently saying that, “Homosexuality is a crime in Islam and crimes are punishable. And the fact that a crime could be punished by execution is debatable.” And he’s considered a reformer. Just being a woman in an Islamic country is enough to get you sent to jail or killed. In Pakistan last week, the parliament was debating whether they should continue to jail women for being raped. In Saudi Arabia, the religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress. Seventeen girls burned alive. Under Islamic law, women who seek a divorce — even from abusive husbands — can still be lawfully murdered by their families in so-called “honor killings.” The U.N. Population Fund estimates that the annual worldwide total of honor killing victims may be as high as 5,000.

Adele Stan argued in these pages that “to throw a rhetorical bomb such as that the pope tossed into the teeming cities of the Muslim world is to commit an act tantamount to violence. It appears to be a taunt designed to provoke a response, and provoke one it did.” It’s a curious world where liberals decline to focus condemnation on a violent reaction perpetrated in the name of a religious ideology (Islam) that jails women for being raped or declares it legal for women to be murdered in the streets by angry male relatives. Even stranger to side against a religious ideology (Catholicism) that has vigorously opposed the Iraq war, torture, the mistreatment of detainees, and the death penalty.

Attempts to falsely equate the Catholic Church and Islam usually lead to a discussion of the Crusades — which, of course, happened in the 11th century. Pope John Paul II renounced them, along with the Inquisition, which ended 200 years ago. The Vatican isn’t out celebrating the Crusades while criticizing Islamic violence. It condemns both. Indeed, according to a Vatican spokesman, the pope believes that that there must be a “clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence.” Thank God someone is willing to say it.

Stan also argued that U.S. military operations in the Middle East are partly to blame for Muslim violence. It’s true the United States has engaged in activity in the Middle East that has stoked Muslim rage. But the idea that Islamic culture would be pristine but for the interference of ugly America is an analysis that ignores how repressive Islamic governments can be even with their own people.

Are U.S. military operations responsible for Islamic governments torturing their own citizens, killing gay citizens; stoning women for adultery; amputating thieves’ hands; murdering schoolgirls who violate Islamic dress or jailing people for “insulting” the government? In 2004, a 16-year-old Iranian girl was hanged in the public square for “crimes against chastity.” Is the United States to blame for that?

The only people responsible for acts of violence against innocent victims are the perpetrators. In this, as in far too many other cases, those perpetrators are Muslims acting in the name of God.

Kirsten A. Powers served as deputy assistant U.S. Trade Representative for public affairs in the Clinton administration and is a New York-based Democratic consultant. In addition, she writes the blog PowersPoint.

Directory of Think Tank Institutes

http://www.iwp.edu/ – Institute of World Politics

Dig up the rest with a google search or something.