Journalists From Illinois

"Since its birth as an independent nation in 1971, Bangladesh has implemented a number of measures to expand the constitutional and legal role of Islam, while institutionalizing prejudice and bigotry against its minority Hindu population. Hindus have also faced routine acts of violence, including murders, rapes, forced conversions, temple attacks, abductions, and land encroachments. Religiously motivated violence in Bangladesh has particularly impacted Hindu women and young girls, and has been utilized as a weapon of subjugation. (xvii, Samir Kalra)"

"Hindus comprised approximately 33% of the population in 1947... but were less than 20% by 1971. And in 2001, Hindus represented less than 10% of the population, while today many sources estimate that Hindus are only 8%. (xviii, Samir Kalra)"

"This book contains quite a few references to Nazi Germany, and there is a tendency for many people to discount such comparisons because they are so overused and often in simplistic and inappropriate ways. I am no less tolerant of such facile uses of a horrific set of events; and I find their overuse an insult to the memories of the victims. But I am using it rather extensively in this book precisely because the parallel is appropriate, certainly in the similar end foreseen by Islamists for Bengali Hindus and Nazis for Jews. If that recognition awakens the world to action, then this will be one of the most important uses of the comparison since World War II. (6-7)"

"In 1951, after the dust of Partition-era transfers settled, the ratio of Muslims to Hindus in East Bengal was about three and a half to one. Three years after Bangladesh won its independence, the ratio of Muslims to Hindus was still only a little higher than six to one,. By 2001, Muslims outnumbered Hindus by a ratio of almost eleven and a half to one. Bangladesh's Hindu population is dying. (30)"

"A the time of India's partition in 1947, they made up a little less than a third of East Pakistan's population. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, Hindus were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the Hindu population at less than eight percent today. (30)"

"The trajectory is clear and immutable; ...no matter that the land is dotted with Hindu historical and religious sites, although they are being destroyed or left to rot.(30)"

"What resources have the Bangladeshi Hindus? .... Flushed with passion after meeting with scores of refugees in 2008, I returned to AI's web site and scoured it in search of some outrage - any outrage -over what is so apparent in South Asia; but my search was in vain. ... To date Amnesty International has yet to show any stomach for opposing what could be the worst case of ethnic cleansing in our time. One could advance any number of reasons for their silence. Is it because the victims are Hindu; or the victimizers Muslim? Are they simply moral cowards; or do they just not care? Perhaps it is a case of AI placing ideology above principle... The last time AI, or HRW for that matter, gave the Bangladeshi Hindus even passing mention was in 2006. (Oxfam never has.) In its 2010 report on Bangladesh, AI shockingly did not even mention the oppression of Hindus; a horrid disgrace, that encourages the human rights atrocities those very organizations claim to be fighting! (32-33)"

"It was able to recover and produce numerous documents that included written orders to Pakistani troops and their irregular allies to kill as many Hindus as possible. (35)"

"I have seen the victims and in one remote corner of Northeast India in March 2009, I stared into the eyes of a 14-year old Hindu girl as she told of being raped by Muslims because she is a Hindu. (42)"

"Thousands of Hindu and Sikh girls were gang raped by fanatic Islamists. (48, quoting Narain Kataria, 2010)."

"In "Hindu Genocide in East Pakistan", Shrinandan Vyas synthesizes data from several sources to demonstrate that Hindus were indeed thee atackers' "primary target." (73)"

"One incident that is becoming more and more common was related to me in almost every colony I visited between 2008 and 2010: the random abduction of young Hindu women and girls. With a numbing consistency, their testimonies would tell of a young female walking by the side of the road. In some cases, she was going to draw water; in others she was on her way to school; and in some, she was just walking o her way to see a relative or friend. out of the blue, a gang of Muslims would drive up and snatch the woman and then take her to a vacant building or field and rape her repeatedly. (85)"

"On January 1, 14-year-old Subarna Karmaker was walking home from school in Kalapara in the state of Barisal. Several Muslim males led by a local Muslim identified as Jewel, age 22, grabbed her. They forced the girl onto their motorcycle, and fled. Subarna cried loudly for help, but no one came to her aid. Her father went to the police and complained, but was told that they knew of no crime and would not take any action. Subarna remains missing. (97)"

"A group of Muslims gang raped a 14-year-old Hindu girl and berated her for being hindu. She at first said they "chased" her and on furhter questioning said they "caught her and did bad things to her." (98)"

"I have a dream that we can have one day, once again, a beautiful land. I have a dream that we can have a land of our own kind, in which the enemies of our people will cease to exist within our borders. I have a dream that one day, White people will be proud of themselves once again. When one day the value of race will be universally recognized, as it must be. When one day, it will be taught to keep your race pure, to ennoble and advance your race is the highest good in this world. I have dream that this current order will fall upon itself in misery, and the enemies of our people will be legally tried and convicted for their crimes. Those white people who have betrayed the interests of White people will be tried for treason, legally, through the process but will pay for their crimes. I have a dream in which the White House will one day become White once again, and not beige, and not black, and not putrid-colored green. I have a dream that we can have a land that we are proud of once again and not simply have platitudes to the American flag without having any kind of real basis behind it worthy of pride. I have a dream that one day, once again, we can be safe and secure in our homes, when one day our home will be our castle, once again, and nobody would ever dare even think about entering our home, to deprive us of what is rightfully ours."

""Stay hungry. Stay foolish." Whole Earth Catalog."

"The house and its occupants mold to each other twenty-four hours a day, and the building accumulates the record of that intimacy."

"Against the flow of constant entropy, maintenance people must swim always upstream, progresses against the current like a watchful trout. The only satisfaction they can get from their work is to do it well. The measure of success in their labors is that the result is invisible, unnoticed. Thanks to them, everything is the same as it ever was."

"Redundancy of function is always more reliable than attempts at perfect, which time treats cruelly."

"Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?"

"Every interview with a public figure should include the question "What have you been wrong about, and how did that change your views?" The answer will tell us if the person is intellectually honest or a tale spinner with delusions of infallibility."

"When environmentalists are wrong, it is frequently technology that they are wrong about, and they wind up supporting parochial Green goals at the cost of comprehensive ones. That happened with space technology, nuclear technology, and genetic engineering. If your default position on a new technology is suspicion, you forfeit the ability to deploy it for your own purposes. "The environmental movement has so far concentrated its attention upon the evils that technology has done rather than upon the good that technology has failed to do," says Freeman Dyson. But focusing on Green technological opportunity requires a shift in attitude toward novelty."

"Certain knowledge of what to fight for, and what to fight against, gives meaning to life and provides its own version of discipline: never give up. That kind of meaning is illusory, I now believe, and blinkered. Fealty to a mystical absolute is a formula for disaster, especially in transformative times."

"Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly."

"Information wants to be free. (Excerpted from: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."{{cite web"

"In our researches on the likely economic apocalypse it's become clear what is the prime survival tool for hard times: friends. Good friends. Lots of them."

"A realm of intimate, personal power is developing - power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested."

"We are as gods and might as well get good at it."