Shasterkovich

I must have punched someone undeserving in the face in my previous life, because now I have really bad hay fever. I've been mopping up my nose all day, and my eyes are redder than a sadhu's in Manali. Seriously though, I begin to wonder about karma (whether the idea is true or not). Looking at the picture of the starving kid about to be eaten by a well-fed vulture makes me wonder. How can the kid have "merited" that level of suffering?

There's no need to buy the book. I'm not interested enough to research the man's life. Besides, I don't read or trust biographies. I have my own life to obsess over.

What's with the religious indoctrination and missionary schemes? I would never support any sectarian charity. It's insipid and cruel to take advantage of people's circumstances and to force them to take cognisance of the fact that you are of a different religion than they when you go to help them. Pingalwara seems to be a Sikh initiative, and we ALL know that there are Sikhs and then there are Sikhs. This charity seems to be trying to mythologise its founder as some sort of holy man. WorldVision appears to be a Christian charity. I will not support any confused doctrine or mindless fanaticism, whether Sikh or Christian. From the websites, I believe that there are good reasons to believe that there is a real risk that both charities are simply recruiting organisations for their religions. I have no reason to trust them. What's needed is a properly administered and reliably, trustworthy charity that's run entirely by unpaid volunteers. So that the money can go on the provision of basic essentials to the needy. I don't find that unreasonable at all.

I would like to help you, but I'm in a rush. Sorry.

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We're capable, but have little trust in the charities. There are about 10 commissioned hustlers at the corner of every shopping centre or high street. Don't know which one to trust with the cash. They seem to swallow up the cash and come up with no results at all, with no meaningful impact upon 3rd World poverty.

Guv, you're absolutely right. For some people the camera lens acts as a sort of shield. They are weak and pathetic. They know who they are. There is no art in photography - only voyeurism, and for a real man a camera is not an instrument of empowerment. It's in the same spirit as computer hacking. It's absolutely disgusting that he waited for 20 minutes and watched that situation unfold before his very eyes. How could he be an impassive witness in the presence of that level of suffering?

People have staged such pictures in the past. Barnardo's have done so in their ads, with photos and television. Please be clear, I'm not doubting that the situation described by the photo you posted could be genuine. Just that the photographer seemed to hit upon rather an opportune moment, and that it does'nt make sense that he would walk away from this scene without helping the child, and then afterwards kill himself because of depression. Without knowing more details about the circumstances, I am reasonable to question the photo's authenticity. Personally, I find that it's irrelevant whether it's genuine. It makes a telling point even if it is not (because it reflects the reality of famine). Good intentions hey?

This world is a hell for many people. There's not much I can do about it. I would like to give some time over to volunteer in Africa, but volunteering is a scam these days. Everyone is getting mugged (the sufferers most of all). You could blame it all on the Kal Yug, but the blame lies squarely at the door of colonialism. It's true you know. All of our problems pale in comparison to the problems these utterly destitute people have to face. They are experiencing marginalisation on a global scale. It's disgraceful. Surely Rome will be punished for allowing this situation to continue, and feeding from it. While this is going on, Europe is burning its cereal mountains and flushing away its lakes of milk in the exercise of protectionist economic policies for the benefit of the world's fattest farmers.

If it was'nt staged and the picture's genuine, that's absolutely terrible. Worst thing I've ever seen.

You mean you actually trust them?

I don't see how. You're not allowed to put in enough stuff to get high, right? Just 5 leaves, and no buds? Do you put afeem in there too?

I'm extremely surprised these guys were ever caught. They must have got drunk and boasted about their exploits at a party with police officers, immigration officers, CPS officials and a BNP supporter all present.

I wish to add my own little point to this thread. I had a long and detailed correspondence with Fiona Mactaggart (MP for Slough) about the rights of Sikh employees at Heathrow airport following 9/11. Basically, she could'nt give a stuff, and she stated that she supports ALL measures taken against minorities following some bureaucrat's subjective risk assessment against terrorism criteria. Because of the extremist reactionary measures that were imposed by a government trying to prove that it had cajones, the airport employees were refused admittance when they tried to go to work, and as a result over 30 of them quietly resigned. These were old guys and gals who had come over in the 60s, etc. My impression of Mactaggart is that she does not have the best interests of the Sikh community at heart. In fact, she tends towards a sort of overbearing, autocratic nature towards Sikhs betraying some sort of borderline-fascist instinct. This is borne out by her written statement addressed to me that she believed that only regular gurdwara-attendees who are well-known to the regular local congregation could argue with any force at all that they had the right to carry a kirpan in public places (not including ANYWHERE around an airport), and that the "kirpan" could only be symbolic (i.e. a thing that's supposed to look like a kirpan but is'nt). This is the sort of edict she would dearly love to impose on us (she wrote it before she became a Cabinet Minister). She actually wrote to me that the reason for her belief that only (presumably signing-on) gurdwara regulars should be allowed to carry a kirpan was that it was POSSIBLE for sleeper cells of al-Qaeda or other Muslim terrorists to hide themselves inside the Sikh community!!!! She is supposed to be the MP for Slough, a place where there is a large Sikh community. This fact does not seem to motivate her to reduce her ignorance about Sikhs. By her statements such as these, I am satisfied that she is in fact an idiot and a minion who has been set up as expendable political cannon-fodder by the ultra-slick Whitehall machinery. Don't take her comments about the "Sikh nation" seriously. In the light of my experience, I would bet that she did not know the significance of this phrase and the likely effect it would have on Sikhs. There are very few knowledgable people in positions of power in the US and the UK right now. Prominent politicians seem to be mostly brainless buffoons who follow orders. She was just reading a script. She probably thinks she was talking about oil-rich desert-dwelling Arab Muslims who live in a Middle Eastern country called "Khalistan".