What may have been unacceptable just 5 years ago now seems in vogue. But the question is: Is this a localized abboration or a national change in what is acceptable under the culture of the new China?

This is a story of two bridges on opposite sides of the world, one in China, one in California It is also a story of the difference between Chinese culture and American culture. These two bridges are [...]]]> WARNING: THIS ARTICLE IS A CROSS-CULTURAL LESSON,
NOT AN ATTACK ON CHINESE CULTURE. READ CAREFULLY
TWO BRIDGES – TWO CULTURES

This is a story of two bridges on opposite sides of the world, one in China, one in California It is also a story of the difference between Chinese culture and American culture.
These two bridges are dissimilar in not only size, (one rather large, and the other one very small) and aesthetics; they also share no similarity in design or capacity. Even the distance from the bridge to the water below is radically different.

Although dissimilar in size, design, construction and capacity, they share more than the commonality of being bridges; they are both preferred by people who have decided to take their own lives through suicide. Mentally disturbed people, who have come to believe that the pain of living far outweighs the fear of dying, decide to climb the structures and jump to their deaths. With eight attempted suicides per month the Haizhu Bridge has earned the nickname “Suicide Bridge.”

HAIZHU  BRIDGE

(PICTURE CHANGED DUE TO STUDENTS’ COMMENTS)

Every time someone climbs the bridge to jump, it disrupts traffic because the lookie-loos, rubber-neckers and gawkers slow to observe the spectacle of death. Government officials have tried posting guards on the bridge and posting signs, both to no avail. As a last resort the bridge has been greased to inhibit climbing the superstructure. The language of the signs is very telling about the different cultural approaches to the identical problem found on opposite sides of the globe. The sign on Haizhu Bridge translates to DO NOT DISRUPT TRAFFIC. FIND SOMEPLACE ELSE TO KILL YOURSELF.

In 2009 a would be jumper received a helping hand from a senior citizen. The senior stated that he pushed the jumper over the edge because he was frustrated with the selfishness and attention seeking of the jumper. Two bridges, two cultures, one problem, similar solution with one major cultural difference – in San Francisco the primary cultural concern is on saving lives. In Gunagzhou, the primary cultural concern is on maintaining proper traffic flow. (If you have ever experienced rush hour in Guangzhou you may be able to appreciate this better.) A Guangzhou Government official was asked why the City did not provide psychological counseling to would be jumpers and to take other measures to prevent suicides. The answer was clear and simplistic. A person who has decided to commit suicide has already determined that their life is worthless so why should the Government invest any money in saving a worthless life? In San Francisco bridge workers risk their lives to save the life of a mentally ill person intent on ending their life. In Guangzhou it is preferred that you kill yourself in a less public location, at least one that will not disrupt traffic.

GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE

The Golden Gate Bridge is not only the most popular place to commit suicide in the United States but the most popular in the entire world. The deck is approximately 245 feet (75 m) above the water. After a fall of approximately four seconds, jumpers hit the water at some 76 miles per hour (122 km/h). At such a speed, water has proven to take on properties similar to concrete. Because of this, most jumpers die on their immediate contact with the water. The few who survive the initial impact generally drown or die of hypothermia in the cold water.

An official suicide count was kept, sorted according to which of the bridge’s 128 lamp posts the jumper was nearest when he or she jumped. By 2005, this count exceeded 1,200 and new suicides were averaging one every two weeks. For comparison, the reported second-most-popular place to commit suicide in the world, Aokigahara Forest in Japan, has a record of 78 bodies, found within the forest in 2002, with an average of 30 a year.There were 34 bridge-jump suicides in 2006 whose bodies were recovered, in addition to four jumps that were witnessed but whose bodies were never recovered, and several bodies recovered suspected to be from bridge jumps. The California Highway Patrol removed 70 apparently suicidal people from the bridge that year.

There is no accurate figure on the number of suicides or successful jumps since 1937, because many were not witnessed. People have been known to travel to San Francisco specifically to jump off the bridge, and may take a bus or cab to the site; police sometimes find abandoned rental cars in the parking lot. Currents beneath the bridge are very strong, and some jumpers have undoubtedly been washed out to sea without ever being seen. The water may be as cold as 47 °F (8 °C).

The fatality rate of jumping is roughly 98%. As of 2006, only 26 people are known to have survived the jump. Those who do survive strike the water feet-first and at a slight angle, although individuals may still sustain broken bones or internal injuries. One young man survived a jump in 1979, swam to shore, and drove himself to a hospital. The impact cracked several of his vertebrae.
Engineering professor Natalie Jeremijenko, as part of her Bureau of Inverse Technology art collective, created a “Despondency Index” by correlating the Dow Jones Industrial Average with the number of jumpers detected by “Suicide Boxes” containing motion-detecting cameras, which she claimed to have set up under the bridge. The boxes purportedly recorded 17 jumps in three months, far greater than the official count. The Whitney Museum, although questioning whether Jeremijenko’s suicide-detection technology actually existed, nevertheless included her project in its prestigious Whitney Biennial.

Various methods have been proposed and implemented to reduce the number of suicides. The bridge is fitted with suicide hotline telephones, and staff patrol the bridge in carts, looking for people who appear to be planning to jump. Iron workers on the bridge also volunteer their time to prevent suicides by talking or wrestling down suicidal people.The bridge is now closed to pedestrians at night. Cyclists are still permitted across at night, but must be buzzed in and out through the remotely controlled security gates.Attempts to introduce a suicide barrier had been thwarted by engineering difficulties, high costs, and public opposition. One recurring proposal had been to build a barrier to replace or augment the low railing, a component of the bridge’s original architectural design. New barriers have eliminated suicides at other landmarks around the world, but were opposed for the Golden Gate Bridge for reasons of cost, aesthetics, and safety (the load from a poorly designed barrier could significantly affect the bridge’s structural integrity during a strong windstorm).

Strong appeals for a suicide barrier, fence, or other preventive measures were raised once again by a well-organized vocal minority of psychiatry professionals, suicide barrier consultants, and families of jumpers after the release of the controversial 2006 documentary film The Bridge, in which filmmaker Eric Steel and his production crew spent one year (2004) filming the bridge from several vantage points, in order to film actual suicide jumps. The film caught 23 jumps, most notably that of Gene Sprague as well as a handful of thwarted attempts. The film also contained interviews with surviving family members of those who jumped; interviews with witnesses; and, in one segment, an interview with Kevin Hines who, as a 19-year-old in 2000, survived a suicide plunge from the span and is now a vocal advocate for some type of bridge barrier or net to prevent such incidents from occurring.

On October 10, 2008, the Golden Gate Bridge Board of Directors voted 14 to 1 to install a plastic-covered stainless-steel net below the bridge as a suicide deterrent. The net will extend 20 feet (6 m) on either side of the bridge and is expected to cost $40–50 million to complete. However, lack of funding could delay the net’s construction.

The above is quoted from Wikipedia

It’s True, Asians Can’t Think, by Sin-ming Shaw,.May, 31, 1999  Time magazine article

Until it abandons its twisted Confucianism, the region will trail the West.

Quoted:

Can Asians think?  That is not a racist slur.  It’s the title of [...]]]> EDITOR’S NOTE: THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE WAS NOT WRITTEN  BY PROFESSOR MARTIN WOLFF AND THERE IS NO COMMENT BY HIM EITHER.

It’s True, Asians Can’t Think, by Sin-ming Shaw,.May, 31, 1999  Time magazine article

Until it abandons its twisted Confucianism, the region will trail the West.

Quoted:

Can Asians think?  That is not a racist slur.  It’s the title of a book by Singapore diplomat Kishore Mabbubani.  While he offers no answer, the question is excellent and long overdue.

The facts are not to dispute 1,000 years ago China under the Song Dynasty was the world’s most advanced nation.  Even 300 years ago, China under the Qing rulers was first among equals.  Yet in the past 100 years, the West’s superiority over Asia has widened exponentially over any advantage the East ever enjoyed.  No civilization with such a commanding lead, not even classical Greece, has declined more dramatically than China.  The issue is not about economic growth or engineering dexterity.  Asia’s record in those areas is indisputable.  It’s about originality of the mind and its resulting intelligence over how mankind shapes the world.

China may have mastered cutting-edge nuclear technology, by stealth or otherwise, and Japan may have the best engineered semiconductors.  But these developments are ultimately based on Newtonian physics and quantum mechanics, both purely Western paradigms. China justifies its political system by invoking Marx while trying to restructure its economy using the theories of Keynes and Friedman, even employing Goldman Sachs for financial advice.  Taiwan is a democracy more informed by classical Greek philosophers than by Chinese and Japanese leaders wear Western formal dress with tails for signing ceremonies.  And everybody loves an Ivy League degree.

Asia must not merely reflect on why Western thoughts shape the world we know, it must also ask why do many Asian minds flourish only after they have gone to the West.  For evidence, just look at the many Nobel Prizes won by Asians living and working in America.  Time and again, talented émigrés say they had to leave Asia because the intellectual atmosphere was stifling or because the established hierarchy respected seniority over brains.

Blaming Asian schools for focusing on memorization- as opposed to “thinking”- is too pat an excuse, as schools and universities reflect the basic values of a society.  It is ingrained in the Asian psyche that “correct” answers always exist and are to be founding books or from authorities.  Te4achers dispense truth, parents are always right and political leaders know what is best.  In executive led societies, such as China and Hong Kong, leaders act like philosopher Kings, often offering unchallenged banalities.  Senior officials sometimes resemble the powerful palace eunuchs of past dynasties: imperial, unaccountable, incompetent.  Questioning authority, especially in public, is disrespectful, un-Asian, and un-Confucian.

-2-

It is time to deconstruct Confucius.  He said many things.  Some emphasized order above all, on filial piety, never disobeys.  Others were democratic: without the trust of the people, no government can stand.  Past emperors manipulated his work to justify a static order while they themselves rarely abided by the same rules.  Japan became Asia’s most advanced nation largely because it dared to change its own values during the Meiji Restoration in 1868 (although it now needs a similar impetus to regain its creative energy.)

The conventional wisdom that Asians cherish learning is misleading.  IN the past, learning meant passing imperial exams that led to well paid jobs in the civil service.  It’s not altogether different in modern Asia.  Learning for its own sake is considered a luxury, if not a financial waste, unless it also leads to an attractive income stream.

The twisted Confucian philosophy passed on by generations has played a damnable role in denting Asian creative thinking.  U.S. trained physicist Woo Chia-wei, president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology believes the Confucian stress on order is a major obstacle on creative thinking that has sometimes affected even his own instincts.  All important advances to knowledge involve substantial revision or rejection of an existing framework.  Scientists call that a paradigm shift.  Order for the sake of order is the opposite of creative thinking.

Which Asian society, informed by home grown precepts, is most likely to nurture and keep at home a future generation able to write better software than Microsoft find a cure for cancer and to replace quantum mechanics with a theory of everything, now the Holy Grail of physics?  The odds are not good, but the best bet is Taiwan.  Alone among Asian societies it possesses the right combination of intuitions that allow talent to blossom.  Institutionalized disputes and respect for opposing viewpoints, publicly aired are not just about political democracy, they are fundamental to creative thinking.  They set as a filter so that a rare gem may be found among the intellectual garbage.  It takes only a few powerful ideas to change the world.

If Japan, China and the rest of Asia—perhaps even India—even manage to cast aside mind-numbing communist, Confucian and caste values, then the region’s talents could one day dominate the Nobel Prize lists, enriching the world through intellectual property, not property development.  And they will be doing their creative thinking right here in Asia.  Eventually, someone might even ask, “Can Westerners think?”

NOTE:  Sin-ming Shaw is a professional investor and and visiting fellow to Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge.  Google for his blog

CHINA DAILY

Can Asians think? They’ve started to

By Andrew Sheng (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-28 07:49

Editor’s note: Asia has been preparing to take an ideological lead in post-crisis economy instead of following the guide from the West.

My Singaporean friend, Prof Kishore Mahbubani, wrote a provoking essay in 1998, Can Asians think? I found the title rather offensive – of course we can think. But what he really meant was, “Can Asians think out of the Western intellectual box?” Most of us trained in or by the West used to think that the ideals of best practice were the wonderful theories, technologies and institutions that the West has brought to Asia.

But the global economic crisis has shocked us to the core. That the best of the West such as the iconic Wall Street firm of Goldman Sachs has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission of fraud is appalling for those who look up to them for standards of professionalism, innovation, intellectual brilliance and moral integrity. If this is what our teachers are we have to think for ourselves.

There are signs now that Asians are beginning to do so. In a new book, Nowhere to Hide: The Great Financial Crisis and Challenges for Asia, published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, authors Michael Lim Mah-Hui and Lim Chin argue that the global financial crisis should be examined from three different levels: Theory and ideology, financial industry practices, and structural imbalances in the international economy. (Michael Lim used to teach political science in the University of Malaya before becoming a banker and joining the Asian Development Bank. Lim Chin is a professor of economics at Singapore’s NUS Business School.)

Written from a multi-disciplinary point of view, the book examines the crisis from the angle of not only how the “efficient market hypothesis” took hold of Wall Street, but also how it transformed its business practices and flourished on the penchant for consumption and debt arising from the United States balance of payments deficits.

Just as Asians suffered from hubris during the years of the “Asian miracle”, so did the gods of Western economics and finance before the global economic crisis. In his address to the American Economic Association in 2003, Economics Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas proclaimed that “the central problem of depression-prevention has been solved for all practical purposes”.

In 2004, US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke lauded for “rescuing” the financial markets with “whatever it takes”, said in his famous speech on the “Great Moderation” (years of low volatility growth and low inflation) that “improved monetary policy made an important contribution not only to the reduced volatility of inflation but (also) to the reduced volatility of output as well.”

Central bankers, patting themselves on the back, made no mention of the role of inexpensive goods and services provided by Asia in keeping inflation low. On the contrary, in his equally famous speech in 2005, Bernanke argued that the “significant increase in the global supply of saving – a global saving glut – helps to explain both the increase in the US current account deficit and the relatively low level of long-term real interest rates in the world today.”

I am puzzled by the logic of this argument, because this is like a banker blaming his problems on his depositors because they save too much. The question is where did their high savings come from? The answer: The depositors earned their income from the high-spending banker. And why do the bankers spend so much? Because the long-term real interest rates are too low!

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If Western intellectual thought and policy formulation appears to be incomplete or flawed, what are the challenges for Asia? Lim and Lim ask the right questions in their book, but do not answer them fully. You can actually find several answers in the foreword to the book by Venu Reddy, former governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Reddy was vilified by investment bankers for not being willing to open up India’s financial system fast enough when he was RBI governor. But after the crisis, it was clear that his steadfast and prudent approach shielded India from the worst shocks of the financial shenanigans and large capital flows.

Reddy has argued that post-crisis growth in Asia will remain strong. And along with the growing workforce, education and upgrading of skills would be major challenges. Asia can become a global financial hub because of its large pool of capital human skills, he has said, but a major challenge will be the question of leadership in thought and innovation.

Providing the environment for that leadership will require good governance. Reddy foresees growing intra-regional cooperation but warns that major shifts in world economic power take place over long periods and may not be smooth. Wise words indeed.

If Asia is to take its rightful place – equal to the West – in the world there has to be more original Asian thinking, not about parochial Asian values but about values and practices that apply universally. The book by Lim and Lim shed light in that direction.

The author is adjunct professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the University of Malaya, Malaysia.

(China Daily 04/28/2010 page9)

In America everyone knows that Uncle Sam is a euphemism for the Government. It began more than 100 years [...]]]> This thread was commenced on November 29, 2011 when it was discovered that a surprising number of Chinese teachers of English had no prior knowledge of “Uncle Sam” and could not understand the humor of “Uncle Roy”.

In America everyone knows that Uncle Sam is a euphemism for the Government. It began more than 100 years ago when the US military put out a recruiting poster that said UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU TO JOIN THE ARMY.

Over the past 100 years Uncle Sam has been used for many posters when the Government wants the people to do something. The Uncle Sam poster is now iconic.

China is known for adopting western things but with Chinese characteristics.

The Uncle Roy poster simply borrows the Uncle Sam poster and adds Chinese characteristics. Roy is the Chinese Uncle Sam. Roy is the English name of the Dean of the English Department of the School of Foreign Languages at Harbin Institute of Technology.  He is the authority figure (government) of the English Department.  The star on the hat of the original Uncle Sam is white because the stars on the US flag are white. Uncle Roy has yellow stars for the yellow stars on the Chinese flag.

The joke is that nothing is sacred, not even the iconic Uncle Sam poster. The Chinese can borrow anything and add Chinese characteristics and make it their own. The Uncle Roy poster should become a collector’s item in China.

Why is this poster a parody?

Why is this poster ironic humor?

Ironically, The November 30, 2011 China Daily  carried the following cartoon on page 8.

Unfortunately, although the China Daily is familiar with “Uncle Sam,”  to get the real underlying humor of this cartoon you need more knowledge of Disney Children’s Stories (Pinocchio) than Shakespeare or the classics.

IRAQ

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/world/middleeast/21honor.html?ref=world

DOKAN, Iraq — Serving small glasses of sugary tea, Qadir Abdul-Rahman Ahmed explained how things went bad with the neighbors. It was not true, he said, that his brothers had threatened to drown his niece if she tried to marry the young man down the street.

“We are not against humanity,” he explained. “I told my [...]]]> HONOR

IRAQ

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/world/middleeast/21honor.html?ref=world

DOKAN, Iraq — Serving small glasses of sugary tea, Qadir Abdul-Rahman Ahmed explained how things went bad with the neighbors. It was not true, he said, that his brothers had threatened to drown his niece if she tried to marry the young man down the street.

“We are not against humanity,” he explained. “I told my brother, if she wants to marry, you can’t stop her.”

But the couple should never have married without permission.

“The girl and the boy should be killed,” he said. “It’s about honor. Honor is more important for us than religion.”

Honor killing has a long history in Iraq and here in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan. But even here, this couple’s case stood out because the man was killed, not the woman, and because of the political clout of the warring families.

As some Iraqi lawmakers try to crack down on honor killing, the case — in which there have been no arrests — also illustrates how difficult it can be to uproot a deep-seated tribal honor code.

More than 12,000 women were killed in the name of honor in Kurdistan from 1991 to 2007, according to Aso Kamal of the Doaa Network Against Violence. Government figures are much lower, and show a decline in recent years, and Kurdish law has mandated since 2008 that an honor killing be treated like any other murder. But the practice continues, and the crime is often hidden or disguised to look like suicide.

It was in this climate that Mr. Ahmed’s niece, Sirwa Hama Amin, fell in love with her neighbor, Aram Jamal Rasool, in this village in northern Iraq.

On a recent afternoon in the home of Mr. Rasool’s father, Ms. Amin, 22, showed wedding portraits of herself and Mr. Rasool: a smiling young couple in formal dress, the bride showing none of the strain that marked the pale woman displaying the photographs.

Ms. Amin and Mr. Rasool, 27, grew up across the dusty road from each other, where each family had expanded in a string of houses so close together that their roofs nearly touched. Mr. Rasool’s father, Jamal Rasool Salih, 58, a retired general in the Kurdish military, or pesh merga, helped Ms. Amin’s family move to Dokan from Iran in 1993, and the two families became intertwined.

Like General Salih, Ms. Amin’s brothers and uncles joined the pesh merga and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the town’s dominant political party. One of Ms. Amin’s brothers married the general’s daughter and became his bodyguard; the general’s son Aram was a regular visitor in Ms. Amin’s home.

Still, when the couple fell in love a couple of years ago, they kept their passion secret, knowing their families would not approve. General Salih said he considered Ms. Amin’s relatives unruly soldiers and hellcats, always shooting people. Ms. Amin’s relatives mocked Mr. Rasool because he limped.

The problems started when Ms. Amin’s brother caught her sending a text message to Mr. Rasool on her cellphone. In socially regimented Iraq, cellphones and the Internet have enabled lovers to communicate outside the censorious eyes of their families. But this liberation has come at a price, said Behar Rafeq, director of the Shelter for Threatened Women in Erbil. Of the 24 women in the shelter on a recent day, 15 had encountered threats or violence because of their communications on cellphones or Facebook, Ms. Rafeq said.

Ms. Amin said her male relatives threatened to drown her and took away her phone.

Mr. Ahmed, Ms. Amin’s uncle, denied the threats. If the two wished to marry, he said, the appropriate way was for General Salih, accompanied by a delegation of tribal leaders, to ask for her hand. Instead, he sent surrogates.

“If someone doesn’t come and ask respectfully, how can you agree to that?” he asked.

General Salih said he did not want the marriage, either.

Ms. Amin became a captive in her home. One of Mr. Rasool’s brothers, Rizgar Jamal Rasool, 36, said that when he visited, he found Ms. Amin tearful and beaten, her face swollen.

Ms. Amin and Mr. Rasool became desperate, she said, and plotted ways to kill themselves.

On Sept. 2, 2009, she sneaked out of her parents’ house, walking across the roofs of the adjoining homes and down to a Toyota Land Cruiser. Mr. Rasool was waiting inside, with a grenade he had stolen from his father. “I said, ‘Let’s kill ourselves,’ ” Ms. Amin said. “He said, ‘No, let’s only do it if they find us.’ ”

Instead, the couple went to the police, explaining that they had been threatened because they wanted to marry. Mr. Rasool was held for possession of the grenade; Ms. Amin was sent to a shelter for battered women.

“He was arrested because I wanted him arrested for safety,” General Salih said. “The day they ran away, her uncle, a military captain, called me and said, ‘I’ll burn your house and kill you all if you don’t get the couple back today.’ ”

The couple appealed to the court, and two weeks later, after submitting their paperwork, they were married.

Though Ms. Amin’s family objected to the marriage, she said, they agreed to a truce: if the newlyweds promised to leave Dokan and never return, her relatives agreed not to hunt her down.

For three and a half months the couple lived in Sulaimaniya, an hour from Dokan. Then, on Jan. 2 around 9 p.m., Ms. Amin said, she was in the bathroom when she heard gunshots and her husband shouting her name.

She opened the bathroom door and saw her husband covered in blood and one of her brothers aiming a gun at her. “I saw only my brother, but someone else shot Aram,” she said. Before the smoke cleared, gunmen fired 17 bullets into Mr. Rasool’s chest and 4 into Ms. Amin’s leg and hip, General Salih said.

According to Mr. Ahmed, the brother who did the shooting was Hussein Hama Amin, a soldier in the pesh merga. Mr. Amin denied killing his brother-in-law but said he paid $10,000 to another brother, and to one of Mr. Rasool’s brothers, to kill the couple.

“Why should she live after she has been that irresponsible about the honor of her family?” Mr. Amin said.

Ms. Amin was two months pregnant at the time.

The authorities in Kurdistan have made great strides against honor killing, said Kurdo Omer Abdulla, director of the General Directorate to Trace Violence Against Women, a government agency. “Every year we see a decrease in the statistics of violence against women,” she said.

For the two families, the killing did not resolve the conflict.

The police arrested no one. Instead, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, tribal leaders and clerics brought the families together in a formal council session in front of more than 4,000 local residents.

General Salih said he was pressed by the party to forgive his son’s killers and promise not to kill them.

Ms. Amin’s family was required to promise not to kill her. The two families provide conflicting accounts on whether money was also exchanged.

Her relatives said they have disowned her but would not harm her. “May God kill her,” Hussein Hama Amin said. “We will not kill her.”

In General Salih’s living room, Ms. Amin dandled her 4-month-old son, named Aram after her husband. By Kurdish custom she is now disgraced and unsuitable for marriage.

She lives a few hundred feet from the family that cast her out, in a house filled with weapons, afraid that her relatives will try to kill her. When she leaves the house, she is escorted by armed in-laws.

General Salih remains bitter at his neighbors, the party and the tribal leaders, who have refused to make any arrests.

“I’m a powerful person,” he said. “I could kill them. But I don’t.”

“They should get arrested,” he said. “Instead they get salaries. There is no law.”

INDIA

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/world/asia/10honor.html

KODERMA, India — When Nirupama Pathak left this remote mining region for graduate school in New Delhi, she seemed to be leaving the old India for the new. Her parents paid her tuition and did not resist when she wanted to choose her own career. But choosing a husband was another matter.

Honor killings are most common in parts of northern India.

Her family was Brahmin, the highest Hindu caste, and when Ms. Pathak, 22, announced she was secretly engaged to a young man from a caste lower than hers, her family began pressing her to change her mind. They warned of social ostracism and accused her of defiling their religion.

Days after Ms. Pathak returned home in late April, she was found dead in her bedroom. The police have arrested her mother, Sudha Pathak, on suspicion of murder, while the family contends that the death was a suicide.

The postmortem report revealed another unexpected element to the case: Ms. Pathak was pregnant.

“One thing is absolutely clear,” said Prashant Bhushan, a social activist and lawyer now advising Ms. Pathak’s fiancé. “Her family was trying their level best to prevent her from marrying that boy. The pressure was such that either she was driven to suicide or she was killed.”

In India, where the tension between traditional and modern mores reverberates throughout society, Ms. Pathak’s death comes amid an apparent resurgence of so-called honor killings against couples who breach Hindu marriage traditions.

This week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ordered a cabinet-level commission to consider tougher penalties in honor killings.

In June, India’s Supreme Court sent notices to seven Indian states, as well as to the national government, seeking responses about what was being done to address the problem.

The phenomenon of honor killings is most prevalent in some northern states, especially Haryana, where village caste councils, or khap panchayats, often operate as an extralegal morals police force, issuing edicts against couples who marry outside their caste or who marry within the same village — considered a religious violation since villages are often regarded as extended families.

Even as the court system has sought to curb these councils, politicians have hesitated, since the councils often control significant vote blocs in local elections.

New cases of killings or harassment appear in the Indian news media almost every week. Last month, the police arrested three men for the honor killings of a couple in New Delhi who had married outside their castes, as well as the murder of a woman who eloped with a man from another caste.

Two of the suspects are accused of murdering their sisters, and an uncle of the slain couple spoke of their murders as justifiable.

“What is wrong in it?” the uncle, Dharmaveer Nagar, told the Indian news media. “Murder is wrong, but this is socially the best thing that has been done.”

Intercaste marriages are protected under Indian law, yet social attitudes remain largely resistant. In a 2006 survey cited in a United Nations report, 76 percent of respondents deemed the practice unacceptable. An overwhelming majority of Hindu couples continue to marry within their castes, and newspapers are filled with marital advertisements in which parents, seeking to arrange a marriage for a son or daughter, specify caste among lists of desired attributes like profession and educational achievement.

“This is part and parcel of our culture, that you marry into your own caste,” said Dharmendra Pathak, the father of Ms. Pathak, during an interview in his home. “Every society has its own culture. Every society has its own traditions.”

Yet Indian society is also rapidly changing, with a new generation more likely to mix with people from different backgrounds as young people commingle on college campuses or in the workplace.

Ms. Pathak had studied journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communications in New Delhi before taking a job at a financial newspaper. At school, she had met Priyabhanshu Ranjan, a top student whose family was from a middle-upper caste, the Kayastha.

“The day I proposed, she said, ‘My family will not accept this. My family is very conservative,’ ” Mr. Ranjan recalled. “I used to try to convince her that once we got married, they would accept it.”

Ms. Pathak deliberated over the proposal for months before accepting in early 2009. Convinced her family would disapprove, she kept her engagement a secret for more than a year, until she learned that her father was interviewing prospective Brahmin grooms in New Delhi to arrange a marriage for her. Her parents were also renovating the family home for a wedding celebration.

Ms. Pathak called her oldest brother, Samarendra, who spent the next week trying to change her mind.

“What I told her was that the decision you have taken — there is nothing wrong with it,” he said. “But the society we live in will not accept it. You can’t transform society in a day. It takes time.”

Dharmendra Pathak, the father of Nirupama Pathak, at his home in Koderma, India. He argued in a letter to her that while intercaste marriages were allowed under India’s Constitution, Hindu religious beliefs against the practice should be observed.

The room in the family home Koderma, India, where Ms. Pathak died.

Officers escorted her mother, Sudha, on the left, inside a local police station. She was arrested on suspicion of murder. The family says that Nirupama Pathak’s death was a suicide.

When her father learned of the engagement, he wrote his daughter a letter and paid a surprise visit to New Delhi.

In the letter, the father acknowledged that such marriages were allowed under India’s Constitution, but argued that the Constitution had existed for only decades while Hindu religious beliefs dated back thousands of years.

At one point, Ms. Pathak’s mother called, crying, asking if they had wronged her in a past life.

The death of Ms. Pathak remains under investigation. Her body was discovered in her upstairs bedroom on the morning of April 29, while her mother was the only person at home. Initially, neighbors and family members said she had died from electrocution, but then later changed their story to say she had hanged herself. The police arrested the mother after the postmortem report concluded that Ms. Pathak had been suffocated.

But Ms. Pathak’s father and her two brothers have argued that the postmortem was flawed and claimed that her death had been a suicide. The family produced a suicide note and persuaded a local magistrate to order an investigation into Mr. Ranjan, the boyfriend — which his supporters have described as politically motivated.

Ms. Pathak’s pregnancy has also complicated the case. Mr. Ranjan said that he had been unaware of her condition, and her family told the police that they, too, had been unaware. But in an interview, the father and brothers changed their story, saying that Ms. Pathak confessed her pregnancy to her mother on the morning of her death.

For now, the case has polarized opinion. In Koderma, supporters of the Pathak family have rallied for the release of the mother from jail. In New Delhi, former classmates of Ms. Pathak and other supporters have held candlelight vigils, calling for the case to be prosecuted as an honor killing.

“This kind of the thing is increasing everywhere,” said Girija Vyas, a member of Parliament and the president of the National Commission of Women. “There should not be these things in the 21st century. These things must be stopped.”

UPDATE NOVEMBER 2011



GUJRAT, Pakistan — A New Jersey resident whose daughter and son-in-law were gunned down while on a trip to Pakistan was named as the chief suspect in their deaths.

Muzaffar Hussain is suspected of murdering his New York native daughter Uzma Naurin, 30, and her husband, Saif Rehman, 31, in an “honor killing,” the Daily Mail reported.

Naurin and Rehman were shot dead Nov. 1 when their car was ambushed near the northeastern Pakistan city of Gujrat. The car’s driver and several other passengers were uninjured.

The couple — who were living in Scotland but planning to relocate to the US — were in Pakistan to attend a family wedding which Hussain was also attending. Hussain has since returned to his home in Jersey City, N.J.

Pakistani police spokesman Nasir Butt said that the 58-year-old cab driver is being treated as the chief suspect in the case.

Members of Naurin’s family were unhappy about her marriage to Rehman, a friend of the couple told the newspaper. Naurin was married previously, but her first husband committed suicide. Naurin subsequently refused to enter an arranged second marriage with her dead husband’s brother.

Is this a slight to China’s 5,000 years of history or even anti-Chinese?

Why does every country in the world celebrate Christmas?

Christmas is the birthday party celebrated around the world.

Who was born 2011 years ago and why all the fuss and recognition?

Mary, a virgin, [...]]]> The western calendar shows 2011 years of western civilization.

Is this a slight to China’s 5,000 years of history or even anti-Chinese?

Why does every country in the world celebrate Christmas?

Christmas is the birthday party celebrated around the world.

Who was born 2011 years ago and why all the fuss and recognition?

There they found Mary, Joseph and the baby, in the stable. After their visit, they began to spread the word about this amazing child and everything the angel had said about him. They went on their way still praising and glorifying God. But Mary kept quiet, treasuring their words and pondering them in her heart. It must have been beyond her ability to grasp, that sleeping in her arms—the tender child she had just borne—was the Savior of the world.

The Magi Bring Gifts:

After Jesus’ birth, Herod was king of Judea. At this time wise men (Magi) from the east saw a star, they came in search, knowing the star signified the birth of the king of the Jews. The wise men came to the Jewish rulers in Jerusalem and asked where the Christ was to be born. The rulers explained, “In Bethlehem in Judea,” referring to Micah 5:2. Herod secretly met with the Magi and asked them to report back after they had found the child. Herod told the Magi that he too wanted to go and worship the babe. But secretly Herod was plotting to kill the child.

So the wise men continued to follow the star in search of the new born king and found Jesus with his mother in Bethlehem. (Most likely Jesus was already two years of age by this time.) They bowed and worshipped him, offering treasures of gold, incense, and myrrh. When they left, they did not return to Herod. They had been warned in a dream of his plot to destroy the child.

JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON.

Nov 6, 2011 12:00 AM EDT

On Oct. 25, an audience of 1,500 at Nankai high school in Tianjin turned out to hear the popular Chinese Premier [...]]]> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/11/05/chinese-premier-wen-jiabao-criticizes-cultural-revolution.html

China’s Leader Breaks a Taboo

Nov 6, 2011 12:00 AM EDT

This agrarian practice is also a favorite principle of some administrations as a form of crowd control. Keep them ignorant and feed them propaganda.

In some hugh populations, with an overwhelming number of ignorant or even uncivilized citizens, who are highly emotional and react [...]]]> Mushroom farming is simple; keep them in the dark and feed them shit.

This agrarian practice is also a favorite principle of some administrations as a form of crowd control. Keep them ignorant and feed them propaganda.

In some hugh populations, with an overwhelming number of ignorant or even uncivilized citizens, who are highly emotional and react inappropriately to truth; limiting information is a viable tool for crowd pacification.

But as some middle-east regimes are discovering, even ignorant people are tired of being fed propaganda. The regimes have resorted to killing their own people to silence them and retain power.

Others restrict access to the truth by controlling the news and even controlling the social media so that one person with the truth can’t share it with others.

On the other hand, lies and false rumors can also be spread through social media and great social disturbance can occur. A current example is the 2011 London riots..

But, an open and transparent administration, with nothing to hide, should have no fear. The truth will always prevail.

So the question is: Are you a mushroom?

http://www.jeremiahproject.com/culture/halloween.html