Sunday, June 4, 2017

CNN GETS DEEPER IN STUPIDITY TRYING TO OUTSMART A 12 YEAR OLD SPELLING BEE CHAMPION

 
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    • CNN hosts makes 'racist' comment to 12-year-old Spelling Bee Champion
Mythili Sampathkumar





Ananya Vinay, 12, of Fresno, California wins the 2017 Scripps Spelling Bee: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
A CNN host is accused of making what some are saying is a "racist" remark to 12-year-old Scripps Spelling Bee Champion Ananya Vinay who the host said likely misspelled a word on air because "it's root is not in Sanskrit, which is what you're probably used to using."
Hosts Alisyn Camerota, who made the comment, and Chris Cuomo jokingly asked her to spell 'covfefe,' what Ms Camerota called a "nonsense word."
Ananya, who is of Indian origin, was born and raised in Fresno, California and had just been named the 2017 champion the previous evening. An Indian-American child has won the competition every year since 2008, and Ananya is the 13th overall to do so.
12-year-old Ananya Vinay won the National Spelling Bee so naturally CNN had her on to spell "covfefe" and say some racist stuff to her.pic.twitter.com/Qirb8CpBV9
— Jeremy McLellan (@JeremyMcLellan) June 3, 2017
Donald Trump had used the word in a now-deleted tweet that read "Despite the constant negative press covfefe", which stayed up on his account for nearly five hours overnight as social media mercilessly mocked him for the typo.
The next morning, Mr Trump cryptically tweeted "Who can figure out the true meaning of 'covfefe'??? Enjoy!"
Ms Camerota corrected Ananya's spelling of the word and then said "so, I don't know. Anyway" after her Sanskrit comment.
CNN has not responded to a request for comment on the matter. Ms Camerota has not responded to the several tweets lambasting her for what they feel is a "racist" comment.

The Atlanta-based news network has a pending class action lawsuit that alleges the network gives African-American employees lower performance ratings and pay inequality compared with other employees.
A first time champion among the nearly 11 million children who entered the competition this year, Ananya was called "unflappable" by ESPN commentators for her collected demeanour throughout the rounds of competition.
She won after a long back-and-forth challenge with runner-up Rohan Rajeev by spelling the word "marocain" correctly. She wins $40,000 which she said will go towards her university education.
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4,223 reactions
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Shreekumar

  • Jesus Christ was a Liberal
    Jesus Christ was a Liberal
    8 hours ago
    This country and this whole world needs to cut it out with the "You're a Racist" B.S.

    Nowadays you'll be called a racist if you call a black person black, or if you call an African American an African American. You'll be called a racist if you call a polar bear white, you'll be called a racist if you squint your eyes because the sun is in them. You'll be called a racist if you drive a white car instead of a black car.

    ENOUGH OF THIS STUPID NONSENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • john
    john
    8 hours ago
    So, CNN uses a 12 year old girl as a prop to attack Trump. What does a twelve your old girl and a spelling bee have to do with CNN's nasty take on politics? Why did thy ask here to spell Covfefe? Then they make an ignorant remark about Sanskrit, which they for some reason think is this girls native language, which is very odd, since English is the primary language in India. Of Course the girl was from California, not India. So, the CNN hosts managed to get three layers deep in stupid. 1. Involve an innocent child in their anti-trump vitriol, 2. Totally misunderstand the history of India, and 3. Make racist assumptions. Wow. Three layers of stupid in less than 1 minute.
  • Former Liberal
    Former Liberal
    8 hours ago
    This is just hilarious 😂. Pathetic liberal social justice warriors.

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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

INTERESTING ANALYSIS OF HOW MUSLIMS ARE PERCEIVED, WHO INFLUENCES THIS WORLD VIEW?

Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world
BY MICHAEL LIPKA388 COMMENTS

People at Djemaa el-Fna Square, late afternoon sun
Muslims are the fastest-growing religious group in the world. The growth and regional migration of Muslims, combined with the ongoing impact of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) and other extremist groups that commit acts of violence in the name of Islam, have brought Muslims and the Islamic faith to the forefront of the political debate in many countries. Yet many facts about Muslims are not well known in some of these places, and most Americans – who live in a country with a relatively small Muslim population – say they know little or nothing about Islam.
Here are answers to some key questions about Muslims, compiled from several Pew Research Center reports published in recent years:
How many Muslims are there? Where do they live?

There were 1.8 billion Muslims in the world as of 2015 – roughly 24% of the global population – according to a Pew Research Center estimate. But while Islam is currently the world’s second-largest religion (after Christianity), it is the fastest-growing major religion. Indeed, if current demographic trends continue, the number of Muslims is expected to exceed the number of Christians by the end of this century.
Although many countries in the Middle East-North Africa region, where the religion originated in the seventh century, are heavily Muslim, the region is home to only about 20% of the world’s Muslims. A majority of the Muslims globally (62%) live in the Asia-Pacific region, including large populations in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Turkey.
Indonesia is currently the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, but Pew Research Center projects that India will have that distinction by the year 2050 (while remaining a majority-Hindu country), with more than 300 million Muslims.
The Muslim population in Europe also is growing; we project 10% of all Europeans will be Muslims by 2050. 
How many Muslims are there in the United States?
In 2015, according to our best estimate, there were 3.3 million Muslims of all ages in the U.S., or about 1% of the U.S. population. Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study (conducted in English and Spanish) found that 0.9% of U.S. adults identify as Muslims. A 2011 survey of Muslim Americans, which was conducted in English as well as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, estimated that there were 1.8 million Muslim adults (and 2.75 million Muslims of all ages) in the country. That survey also found that a majority of U.S. Muslims (63%) are immigrants.
Our demographic projections estimate that Muslims will make up 2.1% of the U.S. population by the year 2050, surpassing people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion as the second-largest faith group in the country (not including people who say they have no religion).
A recent Pew Research Center report estimated that the Muslim share of immigrants granted permanent residency status (green cards) increased from about 5% in 1992 to roughly 10% in 2012, representing about 100,000 immigrants in that year.
Why is the global Muslim population growing?

There are two major factors behind the rapid projected growth of Islam, and both involve simple demographics. For one, Muslims have more children than members of other religious groups. Around the world, each Muslim woman has an average of 2.9 children, compared with 2.2 for all other groups combined.
Muslims are also the youngest (median age of 24 years old in 2015) of all major religious groups, seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims. As a result, a larger share of Muslims already are, or will soon be, at the point in their lives when they begin having children. This, combined with high fertility rates, will fuel Muslim population growth.
While it does not change the global population, migration is helping to increase the Muslim population in some regions, including North America and Europe.
How do Americans view Muslims and Islam?
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2017 asked Americans to rate members of nine religious groups on a “feeling thermometer” from 0 to 100, where 0 reflects the coldest, most negative possible rating and 100 the warmest, most positive rating. Overall, Americans gave Muslims an average rating of 48 degrees, similar to atheists (50).
Americans view more warmly the seven other religious groups mentioned in the survey (Jews, Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelical Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Mormons). But views toward Muslims (as well as several of the other groups) are now warmer than they were a few years ago; in 2014, U.S. adults gave Muslims an average rating of 40 degrees in a similar survey.
Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party gave Muslims an average rating of 39, considerably cooler than Democrats’ rating toward Muslims (56).

Republicans also are more likely than Democrats to say they are very concerned about extremism in the name of Islam around the world (67% vs. 40%) and in the U.S. (64% vs. 30%). In addition, a December 2016 survey found that more Republicans than Democrats say Islam is likelier than other religions to encourage violence among its believers (70% vs. 26% of Democrats). While most Americans (57%) believe there is a lot of discrimination against Muslims in the U.S. today, views are again split by party: 69% of Democrats and those who lean Democratic and 40% of Republicans and GOP leaners hold this view.
About half of Americans (49%) think at least “some” U.S. Muslims are anti-American, greater than the share who say “just a few” or “none” are anti-American, according to a January 2016 survey. Views on this question have become much more partisan in the last 14 years (see graphic). But most Americans do not see widespread support for extremism among Muslims living in the U.S., according to a February 2017 survey. Overall, 40% say there is not much support for extremism among U.S. Muslims, while an additional 15% say there is none at all. About a quarter say there is a fair amount of support (24%) for extremism among U.S. Muslims; 11% say there is a great deal of support.
How do Europeans view Muslims?
In spring 2016, we asked residents of 10 European counties for their impression of how many Muslims in their country support extremist groups, such as ISIS. In most cases, the prevailing view is that “just some” or “very few” Muslims support ISIS, but in Italy, 46% say “many” or “most” do.
The same survey asked Europeans whether they viewed Muslims favorably or unfavorably. Perceptions varied across European nations: Majorities in Hungary, Italy, Poland and Greece say they view Muslims unfavorably, while negative attitudes toward Muslims are much less common in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Northern and Western Europe. People who place themselves on the right side of the ideological scale are much more likely than those on the left to see Muslims negatively.


What characteristics do people in the Muslim world and people in the West associate with each other?
A 2011 survey asked about characteristics Westerners and Muslims may associate with one another. Across the seven Muslim-majority countries and territories surveyed, a median of 68% of Muslims said they view Westerners as selfish. Considerable shares also called Westerners other negative adjectives, including violent (median of 66%), greedy (64%) and immoral (61%), while fewer attributed positive characteristics like “respectful of women” (44%), honest (33%) and tolerant (31%) to Westerners.
Westerners’ views of Muslims were more mixed. A median of 50% across four Western European countries, the U.S. and Russia called Muslims violent and a median of 58% called them “fanatical,” but fewer used negative words like greedy, immoral or selfish. A median of just 22% of Westerners said Muslims are respectful of women, but far more said Muslims are honest (median of 51%) and generous (41%).

What do Muslims around the world believe?
Like any religious group, the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims vary depending on many factors, including where in the world they live. But Muslims around the world are almost universally united by a belief in one God and the Prophet Muhammad, and the practice of certain religious rituals, such as fasting during Ramadan, is widespread.
In other areas, however, there is less unity. For instance, a Pew Research Center survey of Muslims in 39 countries asked Muslims whether they want sharia law, a legal code based on the Quran and other Islamic scripture, to be the official law of the land in their country. Responses on this question vary widely. Nearly all Muslims in Afghanistan (99%) and most in Iraq (91%) and Pakistan (84%) support sharia law as official law. But in some other countries, especially in Eastern Europe and Central Asia – including Turkey (12%), Kazakhstan (10%) and Azerbaijan (8%) – relatively few favor the implementation of sharia law.
How do Muslims feel about groups like ISIS?
Recent surveys show that most people in several countries with significant Muslim populations have an unfavorable view of ISIS, including virtually all respondents in Lebanon and 94% in Jordan. Relatively small shares say they see ISIS favorably. In some countries, considerable portions of the population do not offer an opinion about ISIS, including a majority (62%) of Pakistanis.

Favorable views of ISIS are somewhat higher in Nigeria (14%) than most other nations. Among Nigerian Muslims, 20% say they see ISIS favorably (compared with 7% of Nigerian Christians). The Nigerian militant group Boko Haram, which has been conducting a terrorist campaign in the country for years, has sworn allegiance to ISIS.
More generally, Muslims mostly say that suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam are rarely or never justified, including 92% in Indonesia and 91% in Iraq. In the United States, a 2011 survey found that 86% of Muslims say such tactics are rarely or never justified. An additional 7% say suicide bombings are sometimes justified and 1% say they are often justified.
In a few countries, a quarter or more of Muslims say these acts of violence are at least sometimes justified, including 40% in the Palestinian territories, 39% in Afghanistan, 29% in Egypt and 26% in Bangladesh.
In many cases, people in countries with large Muslim populations are as concerned as Western nations about the threat of Islamic extremism, and have become increasingly concerned in recent years. About two-thirds of people in Nigeria (68%) and Lebanon (67%) said in 2016 that they are very concerned about Islamic extremism in their country, both up significantly since 2013.

What do American Muslims believe?
Our 2011 survey of Muslim Americans found that roughly half of U.S. Muslims (48%) say their own religious leaders have not done enough to speak out against Islamic extremists.
Living in a religiously pluralistic society, Muslim Americans are more likely than Muslims in many other nations to have many non-Muslim friends. Only about half (48%) of U.S. Muslims say all or most of their close friends are also Muslims, compared with a global median of 95% in the 39 countries we surveyed.
Roughly seven-in-ten U.S. Muslims (69%) say religion is very important in their lives. Virtually all (96%) say they believe in God, nearly two-thirds (65%) report praying at least daily and nearly half (47%) say they attend religious services at least weekly. By all of these traditional measures, Muslims in the U.S. are roughly as religious as U.S. Christians, although they are less religious than Muslims in many other nations.
When it comes to political and social views, Muslims are far more likely to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party (70%) than the Republican Party (11%) and to say they prefer a bigger government providing more services (68%) over a smaller government providing fewer services (21%). As of 2011, U.S. Muslims were somewhat split between those who said homosexuality should be accepted by society (39%) and those who said it should be discouraged (45%), although the group had grown considerably more accepting of homosexuality since a similar survey was conducted in 2007.
What is the difference between Shiite Muslims and Sunni Muslims?
Sunnis and Shiites are two subgroups of Muslims, just as Catholics and Protestants are two subgroups within Christianity. The Sunni-Shiite divide is nearly 1,400 years old, dating back to a dispute over the succession of leadership in the Muslim community following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632. While the two groups agree on some core tenets of Islam, there are differences in beliefs and practices, and in some cases Sunnis do not consider Shiites to be Muslims.
With the exception of a few countries, including Iran (which is majority Shiite) as well as Iraq and Lebanon (which are split), most nations with a large number of Muslims have more Sunnis than Shiites. In the U.S., 65% identify as Sunnis and 11% as Shiites (with the rest identifying with neither group, including some who say they are “just a Muslim”).
Note: This post was updated on May 26, 2017. It was originally published Dec. 7, 2015.
TOPICS: MUSLIM AMERICANS, MUSLIM-WESTERN RELATIONS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAM, POPULATION GEOGRAPHY, POPULATION TRENDS, RELIGION AND SOCIETY, RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES
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  • Michael Lipka is a senior editor focusing on religion at Pew Research Center.
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IF TRUTH BE KNOWN THE FATHER OF THE NATION HAD CLAY FEET THAT WANTED TO DANCE ON THE GRAVES OF ALL HINDUS KILLED BY MUSLIMS !!!!!!

                                                                                    (cover attached)
                                   Jammu and Kashmir Dilemma of Accession

                                                                  A Historical Analysis and Lesson
           Prime Minister Pandit Ramchandra Kak's First-hand Account of the Tumultuous Events in 1946-47
                                                                                          by
                                                                                  Radha Rajan
------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------ -----------------
FOREWORD
In the pantheon of intellectual kshatriyas, distinguished in contemporary time by stellar luminaries such as the late Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel, one of the brightest stars today is Radha Rajan.  Fearlessly truthful, with a razor-sharp intellect, she minces no words as her weapons in the cause of the bharatiya rashtra.  She soldiers on many fronts, and most valorously on the subcontinental battleground that is the politics of Indian secularism.  Those who define us as heathens or kaffirs do so employing abrahamically self-conscious political action against us with our dhritarashtra-like sanction.  It is Radha ji who makes us aware that there can be no protection of the rashtra, and therefore of the dharma, without Hindu political self-consciousness.  
“Pantheon” has no antonym, but among those who wittingly subordinated the dharmic ethos to the abrahamic one, Mohandas Gandhi, inasmuch as he has been constructed into the “Father of the Nation”, must surely lead the others. Many of us, at home and abroad, have pointed out his sanctimony and duplicity; such was occasionally noted by his own political colleagues too; but none has demythologised him as perceptively, comprehensively and devastatingly as Radha Rajan.  Her Eclipse of the Hindu Nation: Gandhi and His Freedom Struggle razes the mahatma myth so assiduously built up by official and other hagiolaters. 
Through a fortuitous circumstance, Radha ji came into possession of a photocopy of a paper which led her to writing this monograph.  This paper is an insider’s account of the events leading to the accession of Kashmir to India, the insider being the Prime Minister of Jammu & Kashmir from June 30, 1945 to August 11, 1947.   His name - Ramchandra Kak, and he was also my grandfather. 
No copy of this document – described by Radha ji as one of national significance – is known to be available in India.  A copy is in the India Office Library in London, where it reached apparently amongst the papers of Richard Powell, the then Inspector General of Police.  While it is in the public domain, obviously it is not easy to access by those in India.  A scan of the original has been uploaded to the web, thanks to Lila Bhan and Radha ji, and will be readily accessible in print form as part of this monograph, courtesy Voice of India.
If Radha ji’s book on Gandhi buried him, with this monograph she erects his gravestone.
But a gravestone needs an epitaph and, for the epitaph most apt for carving on Gandhi’s gravestone, we need look no farther than to Gandhi’s acknowledged favourite, Jawaharlal Nehru. 
Fittingly Jawaharlal Nehru, because not only did Gandhi profess “a union of hearts” with Nehru but he also selected him as his own heir: “You are my son…..I have therefore named you as my heir”, he wrote to Nehru in 1924.  Gandhi was infatuated with Nehru, deviously positioning him to become our country’s first prime minister.[1]
So, here then, in his own words, is this son and heir’s pithy summation of the character, ideology and politics of the father, and here too in his own words is India’s first Prime Minister’s pithy summation of the Father of the Nation.
Nehru said of Gandhi:
“You know, he really was an awful old hypocrite.”[2]
Radha ji’s monograph centres itself around a contemporaneous account that features this “awful old hypocrite”, whose hypocrisy still costs India so dearly.  Both as a politically self-conscious Hindu and as Ramchandra Kak’s grandson, I must point out that Ramchandra Kak foresaw in 1947 that Sheikh Abdullah wanted his own independent principality, the continued existence of which would be guaranteed by the Indian armed forces and the solvency of which would be guaranteed by the Indian treasury.  Abdullah’s Kashmir would give nothing in return.  Nothing at all.  That is exactly what happened then, thanks to Gandhi-Nehru treachery. And that is how it has remained for the almost 70 years since then. 
It is a tragedy for Kashmiri Pandits that the course of events which Gandhi-Nehru and the Indian National Congress initiated in J&K by deliberately raising up a Sunni seditionist against the kingdom inevitably moved to no Hindu prime minister of Kashmir to no Hindu king in Kashmir to no Hindus in Kashmir and now to no Hindu (or even non-Sunni) chief minister at all for the State since the last one about 70 years ago.  It is a tragedy for Kashmiri Pandits that no Indian government so far has had the political will to even want to restore to Kashmiri Pandits the land of our ancestors.
It is a tragedy for Hindus that Gandhi-Nehru and the Indian National Congress consciously delivered over Kashmir to Hinduism’s self-declared enemy which, there, has gone from strength to strength against us, dispossessing us of our civilisational heritage and roots in Kashmir.  It is a tragedy for Hindus that no Indian government so far has had the political will to even want to restore to Hindus a wellspring of our civilization.
 It is Ramchandra Kak who asked, “If the Jews could get back Israel after 2000 years of exile, why should it be considered extraordinary if India wanted to retain Kashmir which was already in its possession?”
The Sunnis got Kashmir because they are an aggressively politically self-conscious beliefsystem. The Jews got Israel because, all through their persecution and exile, they carefully preserved their politically self-conscious identity. 
Radha ji concludes her monograph drawing a parallel to the Kaurava Court.  We Hindus have forgotten the lessons of the Mahabharata.  The Pandavas foolishly let the Kauravas dispossess them of everything, and when they were reduced to begging for the pittance of just five villages, Duryodhana hit back to Srikrishna (adapting it to Kashmir):
Take my message to your kaffirs, for our Sunni words are plain,
Any portion of the Koran’s empire Bharata’s sons seek in vain,
Nor town nor village, nor mart nor hamlet, help us Allah in heaven,
Not even a spot that a needle’s point can cover unto them will be given!”[3]
It was thereafter that the Pandavas, still unconvinced, were made by Srikrishna to understand another lesson of the Mahabharata:
ahimsa paramo dharma
dharma himsa tathaiva cha[4]
In our democracy, we Hindus too must learn to exercise power as a politically self-conscious electorate.[5] 
Nehru assumed “you know”.   He knew, but he did nothing to let the rest of us know, and the vast majority of us still do not.  It is the intellectual kshatriya Radha Rajan who most and best demonstrates the accuracy of Nehru’s assessment of Gandhi. It is she who, knowing, most and best educates us about why and how we must cease to worship this false god that is Gandhi. 
The statue of Gandhi that has been erected as the so-called Father of the Nation must be demolished.    
                                                                                                     Krishen Kak
------------
1.  Critique of Gandhi, MM Kothari, Jodhpur: Critique Publications, 1996:125-129.
2.  Mike:The Memoirs of the Right Honourable  Lester B. Pearson, University of Toronto Press, 1973; vol.2:119.  Grateful acknowledgement to Subhash Kak for this reference.
3.  Mahabharata, Udyog Parva, Bhagwat Yana Parva Ch 127 (Gita Press).  Here adapted from https://www.quora.com/Which- is-the-Sanskrit-Shlok-of- needle-said-by-Duryodhan-as-a- reply-to-Krishna-when-he-came- as-a-messenger.
4.  http://www.hindupedia.com/en/ Ahimsa_Paramo_Dharma.  Bharat’s historical experience of Islam can be stated aptly with KD Prithipaul’s “Muslims can live only as an oppressive majority or a turbulent minority” (http://www.andrewbostom.org/ 2008/07/ns-rajaram-reviews- the-legacy-of-islamic- antisemitism/). We must learn from Israel and, therefore, to the Golden Rule of Reciprocity I append my Rider of the Pre-emptive Strike (Do to others as you would have them do unto you - but if you have sufficient experience of what they'll do unto you, you do it to them first). 
5.   And that includes re-learning the Chanakyaniti of sama/dana/bheda/danda (Arthashastra 1.13.25).

------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ---------------------------
------------------------------ ------------------------------ ------------------------------ ---------------------------
"The Father of Our Nation"

"If the Muslims want to kill us
all Hindus we must face our deaths
bravely" - "Mahatma" Gandhi

April 6 1947 

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