Dr Rajiv Desai
An Educational Blog
THE WAR
THE WAR: _ _ Prologue: If I intentionally kill another person, I will be subject to a long term of imprisonment or even, in some jurisdictions, the death penalty. But if I kill 1000 people, I might receive a medal; or if a million, I might be promoted to field marshal or even president, provided only that those killed come from another side of a border in a state known as “war”. Today, violence and war are a routine way of life. Dulled by repetition and numbers, we hardly notice mass death. That hundreds of thousands died in a civil war in Africa may be mentioned briefly on page four of our newspapers. If you look at human history, you will notice war is all the rage. Wars have been fought on every continent and in every century—and we have the written records of events to prove it. In 1976, […]
TORTURE
TORTURE: _ _ Mohammed C., a Chadian born in Saudi Arabia, was just 14 when arrested in Pakistan in October 2001. After three weeks he was handed to US officials. He says he was hooded, shackled, beaten and threatened with death. In January 2002 he was transferred to Guantánamo Bay, where he says he was beaten, deprived of sleep, racially abused and burned with a cigarette. In September 2005 Mohammed, by now an adult, was still being held without charge in Guantánamo Bay. Torture is one of the most extreme forms of human violence, resulting in both physical and psychological consequences. Torture has been used for thousands of years, and is still widespread, occurring throughout much of the world (Amnesty International, 2009). Research has shown that torture can have enduring negative effects on both survivors and perpetrators, and is ineffective for obtaining reliable information in interrogation. Survivors of torture […]
SUPERSTITIONS
SUPERSTITIONS: _ _ Prologue: I was traveling from Yanbu to Jeddah by plane and it was my first experience with Saudi Airline. Just before takeoff, as plane was standstill, I heard “Allāhu Akbar (الل أكبر)” [god is greatest] thrice and then plane took off. I never heard similar thing in Indian airlines planes praying Hindu Gods. Is Indian Airlines plane less safe than Saudi Airlines plane simply because a prayer is not recited before takeoff? Has superstition become pervasive in contemporary culture? Did you know that insects could be tried for criminal acts in pre-industrial Europe, that the dead could be executed, that statues could be subjected to public humiliation, or that it was widely accepted that corpses could return to life? What made reasonable educated men and women behave in ways that seem utterly nonsensical to us today? Strange histories present a serious account of some of the most […]
ENTERTAINMENT
ENTERTAINMENT: _ _ Prologue: Most of us have, at some point, become so immersed in a book or game or movie that the activity temporarily assumes a profound significance and the importance of the outside world begins to fade. Although we are likely to enjoy these experiences in the realm of entertainment, we rarely stop and think about what effect they might be having on us. But maybe we should. For all that has been written about individual pop icons, movie stars, sport stars and sitcoms, and the liberating or oppressive power of popular culture, basic questions remain unanswered. What do we know about the overall effect of living in a society in which entertainment is so central? What do we know about how entertainment affects society and the people who participate in it? Why entertainment activities are so important to us, yet frequently dismissed as being unworthy of […]
SEX TRAFFICKING
SEX TRAFFICKING: _ _ Prologue: Anna was a pretty blond, 25 year old Russian woman who had trained to be an exhibition ballroom dancer in her native town. . . She was recruited to be a dancer in Germany by answering an ad in a Russian newspaper. She was transported to Germany through Poland by a bus where she was taken to an apartment, locked in a room and told that she would be working as a prostitute. There was another Russian girl in the apartment who had been horribly beaten for having resisted forced prostitution. Anna was terrified and she initially agreed to work for the German pimps—but after being repeatedly raped by over 20 male “clients” during her first day, she refused to cooperate any further. She was beaten with a metal pipe for resisting. Both of her arms were broken before she was systematically raped by the […]
