Immigrants To The United States

"All I ever wanted to do was act."

"Acting is my job."

"...Zegna's jacket is perfect and Gucci's pants are perfect. So we got two suits, and I hope I am going to take one home."

"The first time I came here it was 10 days, then 15 days, then three months. Now this time I have to stay to April. I'm slowly getting stuck here and I miss Europe."

"I don't understand the word 'hunk.'"

"Now, over the last few decades, as the various global crises have been accumulating — climate change, the threat of nuclear war as well as the dangers of nuclear energy, the uncontrollability of the global financial system, and so on — we now hear people saying things like: “Look at what humanity has done.” Now suddenly the subject is “humanity,” whereas originally, Euro-Americans had claimed: “Look at the stunning achievements of the West.”"

"...Most of the collective problems that confront citizens (poverty, environmental degradation, war and terrorism, etc.) cannot be addressed locally."

"People are my favourite subject because there are no two alike, so my work never becomes routine."

"The working of great administrations is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought."

"Black and white are the colors of photography. To me, they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. Most of my photographs are of people; they are seen simply, as through the eyes of the man in the street. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough—there has to be vision and the two together can make a good photograph. It is difficult to describe this thin line where matter ends and mind begins."

"Life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference and it is important to see what is invisible to others."

"I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others — perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also, it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph. My photographs are not planned or composed in advance, and I do not anticipate that the onlooker will share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on his mind, something has been accomplished."

"Appointed by the Parliamentary Commissioners in England, Puritan governors twice convened unicameral legislatures in Maryland, first in 1654, and again in 1657. Catholic Lord Baltimore regained control of the colony in 1658 with the aid of several loyal Protestants, including Josias Fendall. To show his appreciation, Baltimore appointed Fendall governor of Maryland. In 1660 though, Fendall turned traitor, conspiring with the Lower House to abolish the Upper House and establish a commonwealth system of government (Archives of Maryland I: 388-391). "Fendall's Rebellion", however, was short-lived, as Proprietary forces quickly regained control of the government. Once restored, the Upper House kept the same composition for the next century. The only major change was the removal of the governor's position from the Upper House in 1675."

"The upper house being dissolved, Governor Fendall gave up the remaining powers of government given to him by Lord Baltimore's commission into the hands of the provincial delegates, and, in order to abolish his lordship's dominion over the province, he accepted from them a commission as governor. … Among other acts which they passed, was one commanding all persons to own no authority save that which came from the king of England or the "grand assembly" of the province of Maryland. These men sheltered their rebellion against Lord Baltimore under the name of the king about to ascend the throne in England, expecting thereby to overthrow all proprietary government in the province. From the time of the beginning of the Puritan revolution in England to the time of the end of Fendall's rebellion in Maryland, ten years went by in which Lord Baltimore was almost entirely deprived of his government. … On the 24th of June, in the same year, Lord Baltimore appointed his brother, Philip Calvert, governor of Maryland. He was sworn in at the provincial court, held at Patuxent, on the 11th of December following; and Fendall's rebellion was at an end. Fendall and certain members of his council surrendered themselves to the new governor, were indicted by a grand jury, tried, and found guilty. They were sentenced to banishment from the province, and confiscation of their estates, real and personal. … It will be seen that the great seal generally called Fendall's seal sealed his own pardon."

"The other case of hanging a woman as a witch occurred on a vessel also bound for Maryland of which John Greene was the master, and Edward Prescott, a merchant, the owner. … Josias Fendall, who was governor of Maryland at this time, at once ordered Prescott arrested."

"The real causes of the disturbances that now arose are scarcely explained by Maryland historians. Governor Fendall is charged with being the chief cause of rebellion. It is true that Fendall tried to keep in favor with the party of resistance, and that he initially connected with Gerrard, whose party was destined to triumph in 1689; but it was really the question of taxation that caused the so-called Fendall's Rebellion. It is sometimes said it was a Puritan movement, and so it was in one sense; but Gerrard, who seemed to be the real leader, was a Catholic who had been and was then a member of the Council. In 1647 an act was passed by the Assembly granting the Proprietor a duty of ten shillings on every hogshead of tobacco exported from the province. This act, by admission of the Proprietor, was the cause of complaints."

"Calvert, however, proved extremely agile and managed to convice Cromwell and Parliament that religious toleration and hence his own rule should be reestablished. Calvert was permitted to appoint a new governor in 1656 and this governor, Josiah Fendall, joined with the Puritans in agreeing to establish religious toleration, including toleration for Catholics.With the death of Cromwell, Fendall tried to seize the opportunity to liberalize the colony further by casting off proprietary rule and submitting himself to appointment by the Maryland Assembly. The restoration of Charles II, however, ended such hopes for the remainder of the century, and Baltimore moved swiftly to crush this move for independence, appointing Philip Calvert as governor."

"However, the struggle against the oppression of the feudal proprietary in Maryland had not been crushed. The veteran rebel Josiah Fendall of Charles County, elected to the Assembly but barred from his seat for his rebellious activities in 1660, now took up the libertarian torch. In particular, Fendall led a movement against high taxes and quitrents imposed by the proprietor. Fendall also championed freedom of speech—a rarity in that era. Philip Calvert denounced Fendall for "telling the people they were fools to pay taxes" and for allegedly saying that "now nothing was treason . . . a man might say anything." Assisting Fendall were Thomas Gerrard, a veteran rebel and a Catholic, and John Coode, an ex-Catholic and ex-clergyman, in a welcome display of religious amity. In 1681 Lord Baltimore had a law passed forbidding the dissemination of "false" news—that is, news aiming to stir up unrest and rebellion—in an attempt to hamper the Fendall movement. Finally, in the same year, a Fendall-Coode plan for rebellion was betrayed and the leaders imprisoned. The jury, drawn necessarily from the populace, favored the defendants, whereas the judges, being appointees of the proprietor, were hostile. Fendall was convicted, fined heavily, and exiled forever from the province. Coode, an Assemblyman, won acquittal. Lord Baltimore denounced Fendall and Coode as "rank Baconists" and wrote afterwards to a friend that had these leaders not "been secured in time, you would have heard of another Bacon.""

"The question of his drunkenness was never finally determined, however, as Gerrard was soon faced with a far more serious charge and that was of being implicated in a rebellion fomented by Josias Fendall. Fendall, it seems, had tried to change the government of Maryland "into the form of a Commonwealth," of which he aspired to be head, to "the great prejudice of his Lordship's right.""

"[A]fter Leonard Calvert died in 1648, Lord Baltimore appointed the Protestant William Stone as governor. He required the governor to take an oath not to violate the free exercise of religion by any Christians, specifically including Roman Catholics. Subsequently, in April 1649, the Maryland Assembly passed the famous Toleration Act, which guaranteed all Christians the free exercise of their religion. However, tolerance and religious liberty went only so far and the death penalty was levied against all non-Christians, including Jews and Unitarians. Neither did toleration extend to freedom of speech, for any use of such religious epithets as "heretic" and "popish priest" was outlawed. Also prohibited on the Sabbath were swearing, drinking, unnecessary work, and disorderly recreation. Actually, the much vaunted Toleration Act was a retreat from the religious liberty that had previously prevailed in Catholic-ruled Maryland, and was a compromise with the growing spirit of Puritan intolerance."

"The Catholic royalist deputy governor, Thomas Greene, foolishly decided to recognize Charles II in the same year as the legitimate ruler of England. This proclamation naturally angered Parliament and precipated severe reaction. The following year Parliament sent to the Chesapeake colonies commissioners, of whom the angry Claiborne was one, to subdue the recalcitrants. After settling matters in Virginia, the commissioners proceeded to Maryland, where they removed the governor and ousted the proprietary. Governor Stone was reinstated, but he, in turn, persisted in trying to reinstate the authority of the proprietor. He compounded his difficulties by insisting on imposing an oath of allegiance on Lord Baltimore. The oath offended Puritans. Stone then denounced the Puritans and the commissioners as fomenters of sedition. The result was the capture of St. Marys by the commissioners in 1654, and their appointment of a Puritan Council and of Capt. William Fuller as governor. Catholics were now excluded from voting and from the Assembly, and the Toleration Act as well as the rule of the proprietor were canceled. A law of 1654 declared that "none who professed and exercised the popish religion could be protected in this province." The law disfranchised not only Catholics, but also Anglicans. The Puritans made it clear that freedom of worship would now be extended only to Protestants free of either "popery or prelacy."Former governor Stone now raised his insurrectionary army loyal to the proprietary, and in 1655 attacked Providence, the principal Puritan settlement in Maryland. The erstwhile governor was crushed by a force of Puritan planters, Stone was imprisoned, and several of his followers executed, even though they had been promised their lives before surrender."

"Hon. William Stone, Governor of Maryland, was the second son of Lord Dunlam of Sussex, England, whose family name was Stone. Owing to unkind feelings between him and his father and a brother, William Stone left England to seek his fortune in the American colonies. ... A letter was written urging his son to return (was supposed to be the contents), but his son, deeply resentful, destroyed the letter unopened. Some years later another letter came which met the same fate. Many years later the respected Governor had been gathered to his fathers. After his death it was discovered the announcement of his succession of the title and estate in England. He had unwittingly destroyed the proof of his inheritance. This was discovered by his descendant, Thomas Stone, the signer of the Declaration of Independence. A British officer, Captain Ponsonby, was found to be a younger member of the family and the succession went to him in default of the real heir."

"Until Stone's appointment, Maryland's Catholic rulers had had to struggle with indigenous Protestants, Protestants from Virginia, and Protestants in England to retain control. Stone further complicated matters when in 1649 he invited a group of some 500 Puritans to settle what is now Annapolis. As the proprietor's representative, he soon found himself on the defensive when the Commonwealth government in England appointed Maryland's old enemy Claiborne, the Puritan leader at Annapolis, and two Protestant sea captains to obtain the submission of the Chesapeake colonies. Claiborne and the Puritan leader went to St. Mary's in 1652, ejected Stone from governorship, and sought to establish a new administration under their control. When Stone, under orders from Lord Baltimore, resisted, they appointed William Fuller as governor, and in 1655 civil strife broke out. The Puritan faction quickly won a decisive victory."

"In my student days, when Leschetizky was dissatisfied with the way we turned a phrase, he would bid us leave the piano and walk about the room with our eyes shut until a new phrasing suggested itself. Then we were allowed to play for him. I still follow this procedure, leaving the piano to think about a phrase which needs better shaping. How do you know if your thinking leads you to the right interpretive result? Well, you don’t! Except in the sense that no sincerely planned and logically motivated interpretation is wholly wrong. What you think about music (that is, your interpretation) depends upon talent, intelligence, and general makeup- I might also add maturity, always taking into account that some people mature at an earlier age than others. The natural vigor of these qualities, together with their development, will ultimately lead to some valid train of musical thought."

"What was Godowsky's method of teaching? As everybody knows, he was reported to be "a wizard of technique" (ein Hexenmeister der Technik, as he was dubbed unanimously by the German and indeed the world press). For this reason numerous young pianists from all over the world flocked to him, mainly in the hope of getting his recipe for attaining "virtuoso technique". Alas for them! Godowsky hardly ever said a word about technique in the sense in which these youngsters understood it; all his comments during a lesson were aimed exclusively at music, at correcting musical defects in a performance, at achieving maximum logic, accurate hearing, clarity, plasticity, through a scrupulous observance and a broad interpretation of the written score. In his class, he valued above all the real musician and approached with obvious irony those pianists whose fingers were fast and agile while their brains were slow and dull (and there were several such in my time). He would immediately lose all interest in a pupil whose hearing was inaccurate, who memorized wrong notes or showed bad taste."

"It didn't make any sense to me, to put out a publication, to tell people about atrocities, and ask them to send money so we can tell you next month about more atrocities. Meanwhile, the atrocities keep increasing, the treasuries of tha antivivisection groups keep increasing, and it doesn't help one solitary animal."

"Certainly, self-righteous anti-vivisection societies had been hollering, "Abolition! All or Nothing!" But that didn't help the laboratory animals, since while the anti-vivisection groups had been hollering, the number of animals used in United States laboratories had zoomed from a few thousand to over 70 million. That was a pitiful track record, and it seemed a good idea to rethink strategies which have a century-long record of failure."

"We identify with the powerless and the vulnerable—the victims, all those dominated, oppressed, and exploited. And it is the nonhuman animals whose suffering is the most intense, widespread, expanding, systematic, and socially sanctioned of all. What can be done? What are the patterns underlying effective social struggles?"

"It was very dispiriting because a lot of things needed to be done. One of the things that happened was, if you had a good rank-and-file activist in a trade union situation, they would make them an offer to become part of the staff—at which point the person was totally lost to the campaign where they were a catalyst and became part of an apparatus that was basically going nowhere. The odd thing is, despite The Permanent Revolution being on the bookshelves, they would explain everything by going back and finding a quote from Trotsky or from Lenin in order to explain things, as opposed to explaining how things were in the real world. . . . They were basically just living in their own universe as opposed to making real life connections."

"There is a rich tradition to help answer this question ["What can be done?"]. It's the fight for human freedom. And the fundamental lesson is that the meek don't make it. But audacity must be fused with attention to detail, with an awareness of social attitudes, power relations and scientific possibilities."

"If you see something that's wrong, you've got to do something about it."

"The Abrahamic faiths no longer need to impose their beliefs using missionaries or the sword to convert. The WEF’s constellation of devatas of Davos can use industrialists and politicians as their puppets. Its commandments are based on Western Universalism with a Marxist toolkit to dismantle existing structures. Harvard University, the vishwa guru, has spent decades working on such scholarship."

"Over a decade ago, Harvard’s Prof. Michael Witzel had informed us that the Leftist crowd was determined to change the Indology department to South Asian Studies. ...As the years went by, Witzel’s warnings came true. Harvard’s new South Asia programs became increasingly distanced from what used to be Indology for the past several decades."

"Contrary to Indians’ self-congratulatory notion that India is vishwa guru (guru to the world), in reality it is Harvard that is the vishwa guru. And India is vishwa shishya (student), with many of its people serving as vishwa coolie (laborer), and vishwa sepoy (soldier) in this ecosystem."

"The dangers of allowing foreign ownership of India’s critical infrastructure and foreign control over information flow on that infrastructure cannot be overstated. Especially when the foreign hand has a history of facilitating civil wars and regime changes."

"Ashoka could have been India’s answer to Western liberal arts. It could have been the go-to place for putting Indian civilization on the global stage. But both the elite businessmen that funded the institution, and the government that sought its advice, didn’t care to do basic due diligence."

"These are the consequences when Indians decide to imitate Harvard rather than re-building our own Nalanda."

"Rajiv Malhotra is the belated Hindu answer to decades of the systematic blackening of Hinduism in academe and the media. This is to be distinguished from the negative attitude to Hinduism among ignorant Westerners settling for the “caste, cows and curry” stereotype, and from the anti-Hindu bias among secularists in India. Against the latter phenomenon, Hindu polemicists have long been up in arms, eventhough they have also been put at a disadvantage by the monopoly of their enemies in the opinion-making sphere. But for challenging the American India-watching establishment, a combination of skills was necessary which Malhotra has only gradually developed and which few others can equal."

"This chapter shows how Harvard professors behave like a cartel promoting a certain narrative about India while shutting out all dissenting voices. In effect, Harvard is stepping into the shoes of Oxford University of the British era, producing the same kind of effect that Oxford had on India. Harvard scholars studying Indian literature and translating it have the agenda of introducing Marxist interpretations to engineer Indians’ perceptions of themselves and promote identity politics."

"Things changed dramatically with the Muslim invasions. The Muslim period is characterized by the decline of towns, trade, and agriculture. The progress of the Indian masses was stifled, and they became helpless, immobile, and poor. This environment of despair was not conducive to either economic enterprise, trade, or industrial growth. At times, agriculture too could barely sustain itself. The best hope for many people was to just survive. The jatis were less enterprising and resorted to ossifying their hereditary occupations and to endogamy."

"One of the activities funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the reduction of vaccine hesitancy in India and promotion of the Gates’ position on vaccines. By calling it ‘fatalism’, the Gates/Ashoka project is justifying changing the cultural attitudes of millions of unsuspecting Indians that believe in karma. This preying on innocent masses is unethical and could also undermine the civilizational ethos. And when people don’t know what to believe, they become vulnerable to influence from Naxals, Marxists, and missionaries. We are not taking any position on the subject but simply drawing attention to the fact that this is the way people like Bill Gates could use Ashoka to change the behavior of the masses."

"Through Ashoka, the Gates Foundation gains access to the World Bank aided Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project, locally known as Jeevika Trust. The goal of this intervention is to increase vaccinations in Bihar by providing behavior changing solutions. Both the CSBC and the Gates Foundation also work closely with the Uttar Pradesh government."

"The reason for her deafening silence is to hide a double standard. When Hindus demand back their sacred sites and the old Islamic colonial structures to be dismantled, they are accused of committing crimes simply for wanting what is legitimately theirs. When Blacks, on the other hand, take over monuments and dismantle the structures of the Whites that symbolize their oppression, it is not considered to be a crime, but rather, an appropriate response. The reason for this asymmetrical approach is that in India, the present-day minorities (Muslims and Christians) have inherited the structural privileges enjoyed by their ancestors who ruled over the Hindu majority. Yet, nobody dare suggest they are the privileged community."

"This is another drawback of hero-worship: it makes you hyperconscious of the challenges faced by Vivekananda, and blind to the rather different challenges Hinduism faces in other situations, including today – and to which Rajiv Malhotra is exploring the answers. The best way to honour the past’s Vivekananda is to support today’s Vivekananda."

"When I first saw the PhD dissertation of Scott Levi being done at University of Wisconsin-Madison, I did not notice any mention about slavery in India before the Muslims. The dissertation was about slavery during Islam in India, and it was based on archives of that period available in the former USSR. But then a warning was issued by academic scholars that his work would play into the hands of “Hindu activists” like me. The published version was adapted with a preamble saying that slavery pre-dates Islam in India because it is mentioned in the Vedic literature. However, that claim is incorrect because it is based on mistranslating the Vedic Sanskrit term “dasu” as “slave”, which is an incorrect translation."

"This support for the Church continued during the British era when the East India Company and the British government gave away large grants of prime land to the Church. This is the reason that innumerable graveyards, Young Men’s Christian Associations, churches, and Christian missionary schools occupy the most prestigious locations in cities across India."

"What many Indians are unaware of is that public trust in the Gates Foundation and its intentions are being questioned in the US."

"“American Hinduism is a minority religion in America (…) that deserves the same treatment that is already being given to other American minority religions – such as Native American, Buddhist or Islamic – by the Academy. The subaltern studies depiction of Hinduism as being the dominant religion of India must, therefore, be questioned in the American context.” (p.213)"

"“For the first time in RISA’s history, to the best of my knowledge, the diaspora voices are not being branded as saffronists, Hindutva fanatics, fascists, chauvinists, dowry extortionists, Muslim killers, nun rapists, Dalit abusers, etc. One has to wait and see whether this is temporary or permanent.” (p.215)"

"The LGBTQ movement also has legitimate gripes in the West. The same framework for activism, however, cannot be blindly applied to India where the tradition has had a far more complex posture on homosexuality that is vastly different from the closedmindedness in the Abrahamic religions. I"