Category Archives: Polygamy

Retaining Balance: The Eternal Way. M R Venkatesh. KW Publishers Pvt Ltd. 2021. Page 484. Price Rs 780.

At its most sublime, Dharma is not religion. It is a pursuit of higher and better truths. At its widest base in society, Dharma is about maintaining a balance in perspective, words, actions and ideals. Without balance and a degree of self-restraint, civilisation would not exist.

This preamble sets the stage of what I consider one of the handful of books published this year that everyone should read, regardless of whether you belong to the Dharmic tradition or the Abrahamic one. The book is M R Venkateshs Retaining Balance: The Eternal Way, which holds a mirror to all the follies of Western civilisation which we are now mindlessly trying to ape.

A lawyer and chartered accountant by profession, the core idea contained in Venkateshs book is simple: civilisation is held up by human institutions, and the most fundamental institution holding up the superstructure is the family, which can be loosely defined as one household unit under which not just two spouses and children reside, but also their progeny, and sometimes the progeny of the progeny (the now rapidly disintegrating joint family, so to speak). And the core of the core is the partnership between two genders: woman and man. Civilisation is built on the shoulders and balance between these two genders, though one can today take the position that families can be considered families even if the two partners are from the same gender.

Much of this is commonsense, for the family is the oldest of human institutions, the one which made humans colonise and dominate the living world. So, one would presume that in any policy-making effort, whether it is in economics or in other fields, the family would be the primary unit of study and focus. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Macroeconomics is failing today not for want of mathematical models or long-term funding the opposite is the case but because it has failed to incorporate the family household in its calculations. According to Venkatesh, the West is eviscerating the family partly because of the dogmas inherent in Christianity, even though the church sees itself as a defender of family values.

Families are falling apart not because the church is de-emphasising family, but because the basic ideological postulates of Christianity logically lead to wokeism, communism, extremism and feminism of the kind that destroys families by pitting spouse against spouse. A corollary of pitting the individual against the family and other social institutions is that state and markets become the default institutions needed to safeguard the rights of individuals. The individual, in this view, is seen to be driven by purely materialistic and biological impulses, which need protection by the state and fulfilment of desires by consumer markets.

Islam, even while formally emphasising family values, puts religious duty above all else and destabilises society in two ways: one is by sanctioning polygamy, which is a threat to the balance between genders in a family, and, secondly, by making its dogmas applicable not only to believers, but kafirs through intimidation and violence, if necessary. Any religion which believes that its job is to fix other people cannot end up being a factor for peace and stability.

As for Christianity, its dogma starts with the idea of man as fallen and broken, born in original sin. Hence salvation is through the only 'son of god'. Man cannot lift himself by his own efforts. In religion, you need a specific god to help you uplift yourself, and if you dont have religion, there are creeds like Marxism and liberalism which will develop theories like dictatorship of the proletariat, critical race theory and intersectionality to deny you your power of agency. All these ideologies are inimical to the idea of families and balance in perspective, seeing them as the biggest threats to liberalism and utopian emancipation.

Venkateshs book is divided into 10 chapters, in which I would pick chapter one, which deals substantially with the issue of monogamy and polygamy, chapter 4 (Culture Emerging Frontiers of Economics), chapter 8 (Needed: Economic Reforms or Reforms in Economics?). The last two chapters The Power of Restraint and Ram Rajya Is Less of Lord Rama, More of Rajya summarise the authors views on the importance of family and balance, and how the state cannot be the ultimate answer to a societys needs.

Venkatesh is particularly harsh on polygamy, which is not only sanctioned in Islam, but now finds intellectual support in the West, where some intellectuals now claim that the next frontier of liberalism is challenging the one-man-one-woman norm. The author is clear that even if polygamy is not as widespread as feared, by leaving many men without mates, society will face violence from this cohort. Over and above that, it damages the idea of family, as women feel devalued and disowned whenever a man takes another wife.

While there are obviously more liberal Muslim societies and less liberal ones, I did a small check on Saudi Arabia (where polygamy is practised more than in other Muslim countries) and found Venkateshs proposition to be valid. According to a study published last year, some 66 per cent of young Saudis in the age group of 15-34 were unmarried, and no surprise here the percentage of unmarried men was much higher than the percentage of unmarried women in this group (75.6 per cent versus 56 per cent). Another study, done a bit earlier, found that there were half a million Saudis with more than one wife, with one particular man having married 58 times. He does not remember most of their names, and has lost count of the number of children he had with them.

The chapter on economics is particularly riveting, for it questions the basic assumptions of both Keynesian and Hayekian economics, one favouring a larger role for the state, and the latter markets. Venkatesh believes that economists have sold their souls to the financial services industry and have been producing research that effectively backs the increasing financialisation of most economies. One negative fallout of this domination of finance over economics is the 2008 crisis, with the Covid-19 crisis only reinforcing the same vulnerabilities.

Venkatesh quotes many studies in the West to show how economics has been corrupted by high finance. When economics becomes the hand-maiden of financial services and not the other way round the world will indeed lurch from crisis to crisis. The efficient market theory, often used to justify over-liberal monetary policies and cheap money, has not only proved to be a hoax, but is now widely accepted as unrelated to reality.

In this chapter, Venkatesh also shows how even reputed economists from Raghuram Rajan to Manmohan Singh lost their way. The former is widely credited with having forecast the 2008 crisis years in advance, but when he was part of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) think-tank and governor of the Reserve Bank of India, he did little to prevent banks from lending to even more to bankrupt sectors like infrastructure. Manmohan Singh, as Secretary General of the South Commission, told us in a 1990 report that massive financialisation was destabilising the world economy, but as the architect of the 1991 liberalisation and as prime minister from 2004-14, his views changed 180 degrees. Finance ultimately manages to pull wool over the eyes of economists by its powerful presence.

The responses to financial and/or economic collapse often boil down to only one thing printing more money and making interest rates very low. Venkatesh is clear that the remedies will prove worse than the disease as such policies destroy the credit culture and decimate the value of peoples savings. The world is now unable to distinguish between a financial crisis and an economic crisis.

Now, why does it need a non-economist to tell economists that they dont know their backsides from their elbows? And what does Venkatesh see that economists have missed?

Two simple answers: sometimes, it takes an innocent child to exclaim that the emperor has no clothes. And two, the missing element in all economic analysis may be an inability to understand the impact of culture on economic behaviours and outcomes. Economists simply assume away, or wish away, what they cannot understand or find difficult to measure.

Summing up, Venkatesh says that family is a key balancer in civilisation. It acts as a balance between men and women, individuals and society, savings and consumption, progress and security, liberty and equality, and rights and duties, among other things. The world has forgotten that balance is the key to civilisational survival, and extreme ideologies, whether emanating from religious dogmas or academic papers and intellectuals, spell doom. Dharmic balance is the key to human survival. Thank you Venkatesh for reminding us about commonsense.

Read more:

Its The Family, Stupid: Book Explains Why Liberals And Economists Get It So Wrong - Swarajya

PAY ATTENTION: Click See First under the Following tab to see Briefly News on your News Feed!

Kevin Wesley is a man who proudly practices polygamy as he married two wives and they live together as a family.

Kevin however didn't marry the two ladies at the same time.

In a video shared by Love Don't Judge on Facebook, Kevin stated that he first married Jamie with their 14-year-old union producing kids.

Enjoy reading our stories? Download the BRIEFLY NEWS app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major South African news!

The couple however separated. Kevin said while they were separated, he met Lacee online.

His relationship with Lacee blossomed and led to marriage. However, Jamie, his first wife returned.

Kevin remarked that contrary to opinions that his wives are brainwashed, they both love each other.

According to him, the ladies are best of friends.

On how he manages the relationship with them, Kevin said he spends time with Jamie on Mondays and Tuesdays, while Lacee takes Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The rest of the day is for everyone.

Nancy Mac An said:

Collins Nosakhare Igbinoba wrote:

Melanie Palmer opined:

Lisa Marie remarked:

Meanwhile, Briefly News previously reported that a farmer who married two wives on the same day has given reasons for his action.

The young man, who hails from Igbide in the Isoko South local government area of Delta state, told The Punch that he met his first wife in 2008 and the second one in 2010.

The young man Ekpe said he decided to marry the two ladies on the same day because he loves them both.

Ekpe said his wives don't get into physical fights when they have disagreements. According to him, he settles their differences himself or calls his friends to talk to them.

Source: Briefly.co.za

Continued here:

Polygamist Says 2 Wives Are Best Friends, Splits the Week Up Between Them South Africa news - Briefly

On Thursday evenings episode of Mzansis most loved polygamy reality TV show, uThando Nesthembu, Musa Mseleku thanked his wives for the beautiful birthday celebration they threw for him by sending them on a getaway.

The trip also served as an opportunity to get the wives to spend more time together and create closer bonds, especially since their husband has said numerous times in the past that there is no unity in their polygamous marriage, mostly among the four wives.

When the wives arrived at their destination, they each had to choose a set of keys to their separate bedrooms. Jokingly, the first wife, MaCele, snatched the second wife MaYenis key out of her hand, which angered her and left her in a sour mood.

ALSO READ: Viewers react to MaNgwabes attitude towards Musa on uThando Nesthembu

On their trip, the four sister wives decided to play a game to make their mini vacation a little interesting, but the attempt to lighten the mood quickly died and created tension between the wives.

The game was each wife picks a note from a box filled with different notes, which all pose a question to whoever picked the note about an act of service they recently received from one of the other wives.

After they have read out the question on the note, the person reading the note then places a flower in front of the wife who has recently given the act of service, which has been specified on the note.

Viewers were not shocked to see that MaYeni did not receive a single flower from any of the other wives, because they know that she has the habit of being cold and rude towards her sister wives.

What angered the viewers was when MaYeni received a note which asked her who was the last sister wife to transport her kids to and from school, or anywhere else, and she failed to acknowledge and thank MaKhumalo with a flower as she transports her child from school to her home every Monday and Friday.

View post:

Viewers react to MaYenis bitterness on uThando Nesthembu - The Citizen

By Daniel OgettaBy ANITA CHEPKOECH

About a month ago, the House of Grace Bishop David Muriithi was disgraced for breaking the seventh commandment in the bible: Do not commit adultery.

The man of the cloth broke the laws of Moses and had to face the laws of the land when his ex-lover or baby mama moved to court to compel him to pay child support for a baby he sired out of wedlock.

The bishop did not deny having a relationship but claimed he didnt know there was a baby as a result.

He committed to paying KSh10,000 monthly, but first called for a paternity test to ascertain if the baby is indeed his.

As much as I am a Bishop in the church that I head, it is not true that I live a high-end life. That is the figment of the applicants imagination, pleaded the father of five, noting that the lover may have conceived in order to get a slice of the high-end life.

The Bishop is the latest to be caught up in the endless list of men facing baby mama issues that have now become the second face of the coin that is marriage.

Baby mama was mostly a Western concept associated with African-Americans.

The term derived from baby mother, is a slang for a woman who is not married to her childs father. It originated from Jamaican Creole in the 1960s.

Its equivalent for the opposite gender is baby daddy (or baby father), although its not as popular as the former because it was mostly men who used to describe their estranged partners or mothers of their illegitimate children as baby mamas.

They definitely imply there is not a marriagenot even a common-law marriage, but rather that the child is an outside child, Prof Peter L. Patrick, a linguistics professor, who studied Jamaican Creole, said of the terms baby mama and baby daddy.

Today, its a full-blown sub-culture that has been coopted the world over.

In Africa, it has changed further the structure of the African family which had already been altered by the coming of the missionaries with Judeo-Christianity that diluted polygamy and entrenched monogamy.

As it would turn out, a number of African men did not entirely quit polygamy. They kept secret wives or baby mamas on the side.

Once frowned upon, it now appears to be glorified and perpetuated as an enviable lifestyle of our times, fueled by high flying celebrities, politicians and also ordinary people whose stories never get to be told because of their status.

Celebrity trend

From the Grammy award winning United States singer- Usher (Raymond Usher) of My Boo fame, Coming to America icon Eddy Murphy, to the popular Bongo Flava star Diamond Platnumz, the portrayal of the baby mama issues by personalities around the world seems to have changed this very concept from being an embarrassing vice to a trendy lifestyle.

Welcome to the world of daring baby mamas who sometimes show up full-throttle when their baby daddies die.

Other times they drag their men to the corridors of justice as was the case with Kiambu Senator Kimani Wamatangi.

His former domestic worker Winfred Wangui sued him three years ago for abandoning a 10-year-old daughter she claimed she bore for him.

According to the woman, the senator had only seen their child twice when she was two months old.

The same fate recently greeted Senate Speaker Kenneth Lusaka, although the childrens court barred the media from covering the child upkeep case.

Single mothers, also known as baby mamas, are more comfortable and tend to opt to raise their children on their own as a result of many factors such as disappointments and heartbreaks. PHOTO |FILE

Singer, Diamond Platnumzs three known baby-mamas are only paralleled to those of the raunchy Kevin Costner of The Dances with Wolves fame and Eddy Murphy who had about 10 children with five baby mamas by 2020.

Then there are those who leave children at their lovers workplaces like it happened to one Musa Mbuvi, an accountant in one of the high-end hotels in Nairobi.

In the court documents, Mbuvi accused his lover of taking her child to his workplace to cause him inconvenience and embarrassment, despite not being sure he was the father.

Sociologists say the trend is an indication of waning cultural norms.

Dr. Scholastic Adeli, a senior lecturer of counselling psychology at Moi University, attributes the rise of baby mamas to loosening of cultural norms, influx of civilisation that liberalises individual lifestyle choices and peer pressure.

The typical African society didnt have baby mamas because culture didnt allow it. With polygamy where wives allowed their husbands to marry other wives, the baby mamas werent applicable, Dr Adeli explains.

Before civilisation, women were culturally expected to stick to their marriage, however oppressive it turned out, unlike today when women can choose to be single mothers when the union turns sour, the senior lecturer says.

The trend is that you can have a child, source of income and live a happy life free of commitment and marital feuds.

Another issue is that women are getting married late, going by the standard marital age. Somebody reaches the age of 40, has no prospective suitors and has suffered disappointments here and there, and they think, I just need to get a baby and move on, says Dr Adeli.

Its now common for women to size up a man based on their brains, looks and celebrity or financial status, and target them to be what they call sperm donor.

Unlike in the olden days when pregnancies out of wedlock were mostly accidental owing to little knowledge or access to contraceptives, some of the modern-day ones are purely by choice.

Irresponsibility among the men is also a major contributor to why millions of children are no longer being raised in nuclear families; whether its infidelity, dead-beat fatherhood or casual attitudes with which the younger generation would treat marriage and relationships.

The rising number of teenagers being taken advantage of and put in the family way basically forms an even larger percentage of baby mamas raising their children in non-nuclear setups today.

Family therapists say a man may have as many women but fail to be close enough to any of them, because they may meet the financial aspects but fail to give emotional support or physical presence.

Women exist as an integrated circuit. The mind, body, and soul are closely linked so, hurt feelings affect the entire system. A wife whose spirit is crushed may suffer from fatigue and confusion, says writer and therapist Deborah Reno.

She says men are compartmentalised and are able to fully function when one area of their lives is not working properly, hence leaving emotional burden to the women, who on the contrary, the writer likens to a strand of Christmas lights, where when one light goes out, they all go dark.

Sylva Nze, a Nigerian author, in his thoughts on the baby mama syndrome, says the secrecy has ebbed away with time. He blames celebrities for normalising and popularising a vice.

With more of our celebrities who have huge social influencer credentials getting caught up in this syndrome and advertising it proudly, it is no surprise that suddenly being a baby mama or baby daddy as the case may be, has become a cool thing for many of our impressionable youngsters and teenagers, Mr Nze wrote.

Its a generation that dreads long-term emotional and spiritual commitment of matrimony more than they do jail.

They go by the mantra marriage is overrated.

With their love for social media, they unapologetically post their thoughts and beliefs about their unconventional relationships.

The baby mama syndrome is often characterised by child support court cases, dramatic funerals in the event of death of the man and cat fights with their lovers wives.

Sadly, children are often caught up in the crossfire.

According to Mr Robert Doyel, a retired judge in a family court in Florida, United States of America, the cases he handled portrayed a shocking entrenchment of the culture in his book, The Baby Mama Syndrome.

It reveals a world you didnt know existed, a world of unconventional relationships, unrestrained sexual activity, unwed pregnancies, and violence described graphically by the people involved, he surmised.

Over the years, he handled part or all of 15,000 to 20,000 restraining order (injunction for protection) cases as well as thousands of dependency, divorce, custody, and paternity cases.

He termed them as shocking, amusing but most of all concerning

Cases on child maintenance on the rise

At Milimani law courts alone, there were 3,317 maintenance and child support cases recorded in 2018 and 2019. And in 2021, there were 1022 cases by the close of July, an indicator of about 15 percent increase from the same period in 2019.

What the law says

In June last year, the High Court in Milimani made a landmark ruling on divorce directing that both parents should equally share the burden of bringing up their children.

Justice Abida Ali Aroni based her ruling on section 24 of the Children Act that: Where a childs father and mother were married to each other at the time of his birth, they shall have parental responsibility for the child and neither the father nor the mother of the child shall have a superior right or claim against the other in the exercise of such parental responsibility.

In the Act, parental responsibility means all the duties, rights, powers, responsibilities and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and the childs property in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child including adequate diet, shelter, clothing, medical care, education and guidance.

The judge was ruling on an appeal by a man challenging a Magistrate Courts decision which had overburdened him with a financial task that required him to take care of his three-year-old son sired with his former wife.

Read more here:

Baby mama culture a threat to marriage institution? - The Citizen

International rights watchdogs have long charged that the judiciary system in Tajikistan is often used to punish perceived enemies of the government.

There are, indeed, many cases in recent years to support those claims. And even when moved to gestures of mercy, the Tajik courts and state officials seem callous in their actions.

The following are some of the most egregious recent cases.

The Lawyer

Buzurgmehr Yorov is a Tajik attorney who was detained in late September 2015 and shortly thereafter sentenced to 28 years in prison.

In honor of Tajikistan marking 30 years of independence this year, an amnesty has been granted to some prisoners. Yorov had four years removed from his long sentence.

The 50-year-old attorney had a reputation for defending people who had little, if any, chance of proving their innocence in Tajik courts.

He defended members of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), a group that had been in a power-sharing agreement with President Emomali Rahmons government and was later seen by Rahmon as an impediment to his exerting greater control over the country.

Yorov also defended fellow lawyer Fakhriddin Zokirov, who was the attorney of businessman Zayd Saidov.

Saidov founded a new political party -- Tajikistan Now -- in April 2013 and was convicted in December that same year on charges of fraud, polygamy, and statutory rape, charges seen as politically motivated.

Zokirov was arrested in March 2014 on forgery charges and was held for eight months before he received an amnesty.

Saidovs second lawyer, Shuhrat Kudratov, was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of fraud and bribery. His term was shortened after two rounds of amnesties.

In early September 2015, there was an outbreak of violence near the capital, Dushanbe.

The government said it was an attempted coup led by the deputy defense minister, who many years earlier had tenuous ties with the IRPT.

The IRPT was quickly blamed, declared an extremist group, and banned.

All its top members who were still in Tajikistan were arrested and sentenced to long prison terms.

Yorov intended to defend some of the top IRPT officials and said in an interview on September 28, 2015, that one of his clients was being tortured.

On September 29, Yorov was detained on fraud charges that allegedly dated back to 2010.

Originally sentenced to 23 years, Yorov had five more years tacked on at two later trials.

At one of those trials, Yorov was given two extra years for contempt of court for quoting 11th-century poet and polymath Ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna.

International rights groups condemned the entire process from the lawyer's detention to the court decision.

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued an assessment in June 2019 that said taking into account all the circumstances of the case, the appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Yorov immediately, and to accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations.

Yorovs sentence was reduced by another 6 1/2 years under an amnesty in 2019, so with the subtraction of another four years, and time already served, he still faces 11 1/2 more years in prison.

That would mean he would be released when he is 61 years old.

The Opposition Figure

Mahmurod Odinaev is the deputy head of the opposition Social Democratic Party (SDP).

The Social Democrats are now the only genuine opposition party still registered in Tajikistan.

Odinaev is in prison, serving a 14-year term, though the recent amnesty shaved three years off that sentence.

In November 2020, Odinaev posted a message on his Facebook page appealing to Dushanbe Mayor Rustam Emomali, the son of the Tajik president, to allow the SDP to hold a demonstration against increasing food prices.

Odinaev disappeared on November 20, 2020. On December 5, the prosecutors office confirmed that he was under arrest.

In late January 2021, Odinaev was convicted of hooliganism and calling for extremism based on his request to hold a protest rally.

His son, Habibullo Rizoev, was a co-defendant. He was fined 58,000 somonis (about $5,000).

In March 2021, another of Odinaevs sons, Shaikhmuslihiddin Rizoev, was convicted of hooliganism and attempted rape and sentenced to six years in prison.

The 59-year-old Odinaev refused to sign the amnesty, saying he never did anything illegal and is wrongly imprisoned. Ordinaev added that he will only accept his immediate release and full exoneration.

The Cast-Iron Teapot

In mid-September 2021, four members of the IRPT who were imprisoned after the alleged coup attempt in September 2015 managed to get a letter out of prison in which they again professed their innocence and asked that their cases be reviewed in the presence of international experts.

The four are Zubaydullohi Rozik, who is serving a 25-year sentence; Hikmatullo Sayfullozoda, who has a 16-year sentence; Rahmatulloi Rajab, serving a 28-year sentence; and Muhammadali Fayzmuhammad, who was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

The letter was made public on September 16, the day the Tajik opposition in exile marks as the Day of Political Prisoners.

Tajik officials were unmoved by the appeal. There was no official reaction from Dushanbe.

At the end of September there were reports that the 70-year-old Sayfullozoda had been attacked early one morning while in a prison hospital.

He had undergone heart surgery in June and has been housed in the prison hospital since shortly after the operation.

There were concerns Sayfullozoda was being tortured in prison.

The Justice Ministry released a statement on October 8 denying the reports of torture.

The ministry did confirm that Sayfullozoda was attacked, but they claimed that the assault was by another inmate. And not just by any prison inmate, but a prisoner who was from the United Tajik Opposition, the IRPT-led civil war opponents of the Tajik government.

According to relatives, the inmate came into Sayfullozodas room and hit him on the head with a cast-iron teapot.

There were reports that another author of the letter, Rahmatullo Rajab, had been physically attacked.

Relatives of Rajab said at the start of October that they heard someone attacked him with a knife.

Some of his relatives went to Vahdat Prison to try to get more information. They could not see Rajab but were able to speak with him by telephone.

They said Rajab denied he had been attacked but they added that he was very careful about what he said, and the relatives left with the impression that someone else was listening to Rajab when he spoke.

Prison officials denied Rajab was being tortured while incarcerated.

Tajikistans ombudsman, Umed Bobozoda, later visited Sayfullozoda, Rajab, and another imprisoned IRPT member, Abdykahhor Davlatov.

Bobozoda said Rajab and Davlatov denied they were being tortured and Sayfullozoda confirmed he had been attacked but not by a prison guard.

But no independent confirmation of any of these charges or reports has been possible, with all the information available coming from prison officials or the ombudsman.

The Rights Defender

Izzat Amon had lived in Russia since 1996 and nearly always dedicated himself to helping Tajik migrant laborers in Russia.

In 2000, Amon helped establish the Center for Tajiks of Moscow and helped Tajik migrants in the Russian capital register with Russian authorities, find places to live and work, and offered advice and services for Tajik citizens facing legal problems.

On the eve of the 2020 parliamentary vote in Tajikistan, Amon announced his intention to create a political party and take part in the elections. But he soon abandoned this idea due to the requirement that candidates must have resided in Tajikistan for 10 years prior to an election.

Amon was at times critical of what he believed was the failure of Tajik authorities to stand up to the Russian government and defend the rights of Tajik migrant workers, whose remittances are essential to thousands of families in Tajikistan and whose work is needed in Russia where there is a labor shortage.

Russian authorities detained Amon on March 25, 2021, and forcibly returned him to Tajikistan, where he faced charges of fraud connected to his work in Russia.

On October 19, Amon was convicted of major fraud and sentenced to nine years in prison.

One thing that these cases have in common is that nearly all independent observers, international rights organizations, lawyers organizations, and other witnesses of the trial processes and sentencing of these men agree that their rights were violated.

Visit link:

The Tajik Government's Style Of Justice And Mercy - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

A man is standing on the parapet of a bridge. He is about to jump. What should you do? Most people would agree that the moral act would be to talk to him to try to persuade him not to. Most people would also agree that giving him a push because thats what he wanted would be committing murder.

Your grandmother is dying. She is in great pain, has only a few days to live and wants you to end her life now. Its unlikely that most people could bring themselves to do that. But most would probably understand if you did accede to her wishes, however tormented you felt. And even more were a doctor to give her sufficient painkillers to allow her to die in peace.

The debate about assisted dying is one in which there are no simple answers; a debate in which we need to acknowledge that truth and moral decency lie on both sides and in which context is particularly important in judging what is right and wrong. On Friday, the House of Lords debated Baroness Meachers assisted dying bill, which would allow terminally ill adults assistance to end their life. Its unlikely to become law, but the debate will undoubtedly continue.

The Lords debate was respectful, often moving. Much of the wider discussion on the issue, however, is mired in bad faith assumptions: on the one side, the idea that opposition to assisted dying is driven primarily by religious obscurantism and on the other that supporters are tantamount to murderers and not to be trusted. Those are not good places from which to start a hugely significant yet highly sensitive public debate.

I am broadly in favour of decriminalising, in a limited fashion, acts of assisted dying but I also understand the force of the arguments from opponents and partly agree with them. This is a terrain to be carefully negotiated.

The first, critical argument is about the sanctity of life. This is more than a religious argument. Most of us, religious or irreligious, place special meaning on human life, recognising that we are not merely machines or slabs of meat, but persons, moral agents to whom we accord dignity and respect by virtue of being human.

Few, however, view the sanctity of life in absolute terms. Many who oppose assisted dying support the death penalty. Most would defend the taking of a life in self-defence or accept killing other humans in a war they think is just or necessary. Again, context matters.

The philosopher Ronald Dworkin observed that we value life through three lenses: subjectively (treasuring the inner life of the individual); intrinsically (insisting that a human life is valuable in and of itself); and instrumentally (gauging people through their usefulness for society and other individuals). Opponents of assisted dying rightly stress the intrinsic value of life and worry that in expanding the legal capacity to end life we may be drawn to viewing human worth in more instrumental ways. One of the ironies, though, is that in stressing the intrinsic, we may implicitly downgrade the subjective aspect of being human. We can end up giving priority to the state of being alive of breathing or being conscious over an individuals moral sense of what life means to them. Yet it is that capacity for subjective evaluation that truly makes us human.

A second key argument is that of the slippery slope the belief that one step towards any form of assisted dying would irrevocably lead to a world in which we accepted the culling of the old and the infirm.

There are few spheres of life in which slippery slope arguments have not been deployed. In the late 1960s, a Times leader warned that the new technique of IVF could lead to a race between nations, each breeding a race of intellectual giants. Any attempt to decriminalise marijuana becomes a downward path to smack being sold in the corner shop. And, for many, gay marriage is a slippery slope to polygamy and bestiality.

Its a metaphor whose power derives from imagining social developments as though they were natural and inevitable, just as a ball rolls down a slope under gravity. What shapes human laws and conduct, however, are not invisible natural forces but political debate. There is nothing inevitable about social change and taking one step does not mean a slide all the way to the bottom.

Many critics point to developments in the Netherlands as an example of a slippery slope. In 2002, assisted dying was legalised for people with incurable illnesses facing unbearable suffering. Over the past decade, there has been a debate over extending the law to all those over 75 who feel they have completed their life. This, indeed, would be a calamitous move. The problem, though, is not the mythical slippery slope, but that critics have not yet convinced proponents that their proposals are dangerous and wrong. This, as much as any other contentious issues, from Brexit to immigration, should be worked out through public debate, not fear-mongering about slippery slopes.

Linked to slippery slope arguments are fears that assisted dying laws will devalue the lives of old or disabled people. Many might feel they are a burden on their families or on society and so feel a pressure to die. These are important issues and a primary reason the proposed expansion of the law in the Netherlands is so troubling. Society should view the elderly and the vulnerable as people to whom we have obligations, not as inconveniences weighing us down.

The real issue, though, is less the law than wider social attitudes towards elderly and disabled people. During the Covid pandemic, there have been abuses of do not resuscitate orders, apparently given to care home residents and those with learning difficulties without regard for their wishes or welfare. The stories are shocking, but few would argue that the solution lies in getting rid of DNR notices. The same logic should shape the assisted dying debate, too.

There are many other questions from the need for improved palliative care to the relationship between individual choice and the common good with which to wrestle in this debate. Too often, though, these get entangled in a common refusal to see the significance of the argument from the other side. Compassion and moral righteousness dont belong in bunkers.

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

View original post here:

Claiming a monopoly on truth and decency is no way to win the assisted dying debate - The Guardian

Albertas film and television scenes are thriving right now which has been pretty incredible not only for small talk and tourism but for anyone in the area with big dreams of being on the small screen. With crews, cameras and elaborate sets scattered from one corner of the province to the other, production companies are in need of extras, ready and willing to appear in shows like HBOs The Last Of Usand now, Under The Banner Of Heaven,a series based on the Jon Krakauer novel of the same name.

Produced by an impressive team of people including Dustin Lance Black, Jason Bateman as well as Ron Howard (among others), starring Andrew Garfield (The Amazing Spiderman) and Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People), Under the Banner of Heaven is a story of polygamy, delusional and violence.

Recent PostsCheck out these recently leaked concept renderings of next years iPhone 14Ontario lifts capacity indoors & announces timeline to end vaccine & mask mandates

Casting Call

TV Series Under the Banner of Heaven is looking for BG extras in the Calgary Area for October December

All Ages (2-100)

Please send a picture of yourself plus your name and age to [emailprotected]#yyc #yycarts #calgary pic.twitter.com/ozHkjVHC1o

Keep Alberta Rolling (@KeepABRolling) October 8, 2021

A depiction of a well documented true crime case, the show will follow Pyre, an elder of The Church of Latter-day Saints (LDS) who begins to question his faith after a strange encounter with Ron and Dan Lafferty, two men charged with the murder of their Sister-In-Law Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter.

According to the non-for-profit organization Alberta Keep Rolling, the casting process has already started and will continue on into open to everyone and anyone from 2 years old to 100.

If youre interested you can check out the posting above. Theyve asked that anyone sending in submission do so with a headshot or 3rd-person photograph (nota selfie) and their name and age.

Good luck and have fun, Calgary.

With a curated slate of what matters in your city, Curiocity presents you with the most relevant local food, experiences, news, deals, and adventures. We help you get the most out of your city and focus on the easy-to-miss details so that youre always in the know.

Read more here:

You can be an extra in the Calgary-shot series Under the Banner Of Heaven starring Andrew Gar... - Curiocity

It's a full house! Kody Brown deals with a lot as he caters to four marriages and 18 natural and adopted children. His family came into the limelight in September 2010.

Most women would rather stay single than share their partner with another woman - or three. However, the family featured in "Sister Wives" doesn't seem to care.

Despite the divorce and much drama, they have figured out how to make their household work for almost 30 years. Their family mostly talks about the beautiful spiritual side of polygamy when they aren't arguing or crying.

Kody is a former advertiserand TV star most known for his role on the TLC's reality show which focuses on his family.

With the popularity of the show, there were more quarrels. The Browns filed a lawsuit against Utah in 2011to repeal the state's polygamy laws.

They won at first but had the law took on a different course. Kodybelievesthatevery polygamous household is quite distinct. He is convinced his residence is one-of-a-kind.

Throughout the show, fans have been able to join the Browns in the challenge of advancing their family and the ups and downs of their relationships.

For years, the family had lived out their polygamous style almost in secret. It is unknown how this complicated family will turn out.

Merigrew up in a polygamous family and was young when she and Kody met through her sister. She was only 19, and he was 22.

After dating for two months, the couple believed they were soulmates and got legally married in April 1990. The couple had no children together until 1995, when their only daughter together, Mariah, was born.

Before then, Kody had already married his second wife with whom he had a son Logan Taylor, born in 1994, and his third wife, whom he married in 1994.

By the time his first child with Meri was born, his third wife had also given birth to the second child of the family, Aspyn Kristine, born in 1995, a few months before Mariah.

Meri and Kody divorced in September 2014, more than 20 years into their union, to marry his fourth wife and legally adopt her children.

While things between them aren't always perfect, Kody said he couldn't bring himself to give up on one of his women completely. They continue to be in a spiritual marriage even though not legally married.

Even though they claimed that it was just a change in the family structure and nothing more, thingshavenotgonewell in recent years.

Since the divorce, she drifted away from him and the rest of her family. She started an online relationship which later turned out to be a catfish situation.

After that, she has decided to investher energy into her B&B business, which she runs without help from the rest of the family.

Janelle and Kody have an unusual relationship. After she lost her dad, her mother entered into a polygamous relationship with Kody's father. This made her Kody's stepsister before she became his wife.

Before they married spiritually, on January 20, 1993, Janelle was married to someone else in 1988, but they got divorced in 1990 and never disclosed the reason for their divorce.

Janelle and Kody have six children together; Logan Taylor, Madison 'Maddie' Rose, Hunter Elias, Robert Garrison, Gabriel, and Savanah. Besides the show, Janelle has also become an author and runs her show on TLC Network.

After her fifth child, she decided to move away from polygamy to find some peace. After two years, she agreed to go back when Kody bought a house with three separate apartments.

Christine, a real estate agent, met Kody, Janelle, and Meri through their common faith, a sect of fundamentalist Mormonism known as the Apostolic United Brethren, or AUB.

She had a crush on him right away, even though his affections for her seemed to develop more slowly. She openly flirtedwith Kody and hoped she would be his third wife.

The two were friends for years before she expressed interest in wanting to marry him. When they started courting each other, Christine's family was thrilled.

Her familygave their approval to the union right away. Kody and Christine became engaged shortly after they began dating.

Christine wanted things done quickly, whileKody wanted to exercise patience and take things slowly. Six weeks later, they exchanged vows.

They have six children; five girls and a boy. The oldest, Aspyn, is twenty-six, and the youngest, Truely Grace, is eleven.

Robyn grew up in a polygamous family. She revealed that her mother was her father's second wife. This caused her father not to acknowledge that she was his daughter publicly.

Having gotten pregnant out of wedlock, Robyn got married to David Preston Jessop in June 1999. She had a son named David Dayton and two daughters named Aurora Alice and Breanna Rose.

In 2007, the couple divorced when Robyn said she was abused in her marriage. When she met Kody in the summer of 2009, she was divorced and worried about being heartbroken again, but he fell in love right away.

They started courting with Kody taking long drives to visit her. On May 22, 2010, they were spiritually married. However, Robyn needed Kody to adopt her children so they could bear his name legally.

He had to divorce Meri legally and married Robyn in December 2014. Together, they have two children; Solomon Kody and Ariella Mae.

However, her family members were not happy about the exposure she was getting from the show. In 2014, all the wives became cofounders of an online jewelry store called My Sisterwife's Closet.

She has also appeared as a cheerleader in "Country Music Television 2000 Countdown" and in an episode of "Just Shoot Me."

The family has moved to their Coyote Pass property in Flagstaff, Arizona, and a new season of "Sister Wives" will air on November 21. There are rumors of a fifth wife and more children, but the family has confirmed none.

Read the original:

Kody Brown Is Married to 4 Women at Once - Look Inside His Huge Family With 18 Children - AmoMama

Activist and politician Boniface "Bonnie" Mwangi has started a charity drive geared towards helping 33-year-old Evelyn from Kisumu who lives in abject squalor.

In a video on his Instagram page, the award-winning photographer explained that he was in the lakeside county doing stories when he came across the suffering firstborn in a family of five.

Evelyn's problems stem from the fact that her polygamous father was married to seven wives, and both her parents died 20 years ago.

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690.

Given that her late dad did not foster a healthy bond between them and her stepmothers and their children, she has been left to live like an enemy on her father's compound.

He added that the person who paid Evelyne's high school fees took advantage of her and left her with two children, essentially rendering her a teenage mum.

Given that she does not earn much yet has to take care of her children as well as her small siblings, the family barely scrapes by in their dilapidated house.

Polygamy is a phenomenon that has remained rampant in Africa since time immemorial.

Interestingly, it is loved and frowned upon in equal measure by individuals who were born and raised in such households.

Proponents believe that polygamy is good as it creates a large happy family where children have several siblings and different parents to learn and enjoy company from.

Critics, on the other hand, argue that a family with several wives is recipe for disaster as it creates a robust environment for jealousy and unhealthy competition.

It even gets worse, like in Evelyne's case, where the patriarch either loses his means of income and throws the household into financial struggle or passes on leaving the many wives and children brawling over meagre resources.

Do you have a groundbreaking story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690.

Source: Tuko

See the original post:

Boniface Mwangi Starts Funds Drive To Support 33-Year-Old Kisumu Woman Living in Poverty Kenya News - Tuko.co.ke

Issued on: 11/10/2021 - 06:16

Ouagadougou (AFP)

The trial of 14 men, including a former president, was set to begin in Burkina Faso on Monday over the assassination of the country's revered revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara 34 years ago.

The slaying of Sankara, an icon of pan-Africanism, has for years cast a dark shadow over the poor Sahel state, fuelling its reputation for turbulence and bloodshed.

Sankara and 12 others were riddled with bullets by a hit squad in October 1987 during a putsch that brought his friend and comrade-in-arms Blaise Compaore to power.

Compaore ruled the country for the next 27 years before being deposed by a popular uprising and fleeing to neighbouring Ivory Coast, which granted him citizenship.

He and his former right-hand man, General Gilbert Diendere, who once headed the elite Presidential Security Regiment, face charges of complicity in murder, harming state security and complicity in the concealment of corpses.

Compaore, who has always rejected suspicions that he orchestrated the killing, will be tried in absentia by the military court in the capital Ouagadougou.

His lawyers last week announced he would not be attending a "political trial" flawed by irregularities, and insisted he enjoyed immunity as a former head of state.

Diendere, 61, is already serving a 20-year sentence for masterminding a plot in 2015 against the transitional government that followed Compaore's ouster.

Another prominent figure among the accused is Hyacinthe Kafando, a former chief warrant officer in Compaore's presidential guard, who is accused of leading the hit squad. He is on the run.

A young army captain and Marxist-Leninist, Sankara came to power in a coup in 1983 aged just 33.

He tossed out the country's name of Upper Volta, a legacy of the French colonial era, and renamed it Burkina Faso, which means "the land of honest men".

He pushed ahead with a socialist agenda of nationalisations and banned female genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages.

Like Ghana's former leader Jerry Rawlings, he became an idol in left-wing circles in Africa, lauded for his radical policies and defiance of the big powers.

Burkina Faso has long been burdened by silence over the assassination -- during Compaore's long time in office, the subject was taboo -- and many are angry that the killers have gone unpunished.

"The trial will mark the end to all the lying -- we will get a form of truth. But the trial will not be able to restore our dream," Halouna Traore, a comrade of Sankara and survivor of the putsch, said in a TV interview.

2021 AFP

Originally posted here:

Burkina to open trial of alleged killers of left-wing idol Sankara - FRANCE 24