The Hedonist vs. The Terrorist

The Hedonist vs. The Terrorist

Five hundred years of alleged human history on this planet that preceded the second Millennium, has thrown up in the Third one, a combative state between The Hedonist vs. The Terrorist.

The Hedonist: Usually of European descent, more likely a native speaker of the English language. Like a successful virus, he has colonized Australia and the North American continent; furthermore he uses his cunning to dominate human lives on Asia, Africa and South America. In these lands, thanks to his imperial rule, he has a vast army of local lackeys and flunkeys, who, for the price of hand-me-downs, usually act as compliant local elite.

The Hedonist is insecure. His desires spiral ever wider. His ego seldom dwells either in his body, or in his brain, but obsessively swells or shrinks to the orchestrations of an oppressive self-created system of bafflegab - that is communicated to him by a power structure that believes that responding to given compulsions of the day - the need to find heroes/martyrs, bullies/victims, violators/abiders and so on - are power. The social, family, and community systems of the Hedonist are shot. From a citizen he is reduced to a manipulated consumer of goods and services of which he has seldom any real need of.

The Terrorist: Usually a person of Middle-Eastern origin, he is often an unwitting - and unwilling - accomplice of the Hedonist, cast in the role of defending his honor, his wealth and his dignity, he interprets his faith in a manner that will justify the only thing he CAN do, viz. burn with vengeance and hatred. The Terrorist today is a Frankenstein created by The Hedonist.

It is important to bear in mind that while the two may be important to each other, together they do not constitute - or significantly affect the lives of - no more than ten per cent of human kind. Although they do everything possible to make others believe that what they think and do have civilizational significance. For instance a media source, located in Hedonland that bills itself as a "World Service" can pause to talk about a war between them only to tell the world what the New Castle or the Manchester United teams may have done.

Someone like me usually thinks that of these two protagonists on the world stage today, one is Sänpnäth while the other is Nägnäth - a baleful pair of Tweedledum and Twiddledee.

One speaks of human rights but doesn't even know the roots of those words. He speaks of democracy when what he means is thuggery and hoodwinking. Every twenty four hours he has to change his tune, find right words while seldom having a right thought. Every few months he has to create a new demon to show his valor against.

The other, while saying Allah-O-Akbar acts as if it is Mullah-O-Akbar.

The Hedonist says something terrible happened to him - and therefore to the 'Free and civilized world' - on a certain day in September a couple of years ago. And it was The Terrorist that did it. The Terrorist says, this is the first remittance of a big and overdue retaliatory payment.

As counter-retaliation The Hedonist went to Afghanistan and now he has gone to Iraq.

He did this despite World opinion against it. There is now a mess in the middle east that is obviously worse than the one that existed before.

I have seldom wasted my anger on either The Hedonist and The Terrorist. They fate themselves to suffer. But I am concerned that the people of the world were not strong enough to prevent them from being so dangerous to themselves and to others.

I suggest the U N General Assembly pass a resolution that will ask the governments of the United States and Great Britain to come to the United Nations with (a) unconditional apology for acting unilaterally and (b) Give an undertaking that, in the future, they will back their positions in the Security Council by War-declaring resolutions from their 'democratically' elected internal bodies, viz., the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament.

This will convince the world that the people of those countries are, in fact, represented in the United Nations by these governments who are now giving the impression that they represent oil interests, gun-runners and development-as-business NGOs.

-- Vyom Akhil sent this to the BBC a few years ago. I post this on his behalf, since he (in his words) phase-changed last Sunday 15 July near his home in Sambalapur, Orissa, India.

Persistence of Incorrigible Dumbness in BBC World Service Scheduling

Yesterday, they interviewed me on the phone apropos of a scud missle I'd CC-lobbed into all their messeage-box slits. If you've the time, you are welome to this bile & vitriol margarita: this heavily tamarind-ed, hot Saambar-Vadaa:

10:47 AM 4/9/2007
"Persistence of Incorrigible Dumbness in BBC World Service Scheduling" could be a nice title for a Ph.D dissertation. But I am not writing one here.In fact, I have planned to - for this occasion - do the opposite - and - in view of your generally knee-jerk patronization to listener complaints - especially so!

I shall shed the polite repertoire of a substantial multilingual vocabulary that is usually available to me and and answer the two questions:

Q. WHAT TO YOU IS BBC WS's USP?

A. BUSINESS, FEATURES AND MUSIC.

Q. HOW DO YOU RATE THEIR CURRENT SCHEDULING FOR YOUR AREA?

A. LOUSY.

The rest of this email is on this schedule issue.

1. When you make your schedule changes, why don't you run them by your listeners? Is the scheduling team deliberately 'rendered' in an MI5 cell? Has the Scotland Yard asked you to keep your schedules a secret because Osama Bin Laden's men could bomb the B B C?

My suggestion: Post the changes you wish to make on the Net two weeks in advance. Let listeners see, comment and vote on them. Then incorporate the pre-feed into the schedule.

I shall now bring up three specific aggravations:

1. BBC ANALYSIS

Which smarty had the brain wave to designate a schedule-frequency to BBC Analysis as if you were broadcasting the Sermon of the Mount? Consider: In the less than an hour's time interval 0700-0840 you air Analysis twice! And, furthermore, you proudly announce each time that the particular edition is available online 24/7!

My suggestion: Bundle all five analyses programs and put them in the weekend programing alongside such gabfests as Politics U K and FOOC, and leave the online availability for those who wish to change the world with your Sermons of the Mount.

Advantage: You give much deserved 10 extra minutes to Business Daily.

2. BBC BUSINESS DAILY

It makes no sense to have moved Business Daily back to its old slot with a 10 minute advantage. This is the lunch time slot in India and people - even those who work out of their SOHOs - actually take a break. In the last schedule it was sensibly placed at 0830 GMT.

My suggestion: Move Business Daily back to the 0830 slot for south Asia with the 10 minute extention you get from excising the aforestated "Sermon", aka Analysis.

3. BBC FEATURES BUNDLING:

4. There was no need to monkey with this to get a committee-designed horse that you now have. How do you explain that the three daily features are bundled between 0330 and 0500 GMT (when it is forenoon time here) to run almost continuously, BUT they get unbundled during the stretch between 0905 and 1100 with a "World Briefing" unnecessay spannered in at 1005.

My suggestion: Bring Business Daily back to its old slot of 0830. Moving it to 0905 would be even better so it can run for 25 instead of the current 20 minutes followed by the three features that take us to 1130.