I found the following maps quite fascinating.

“Imperial History of the Middle East
“Who has conquered the Middle East over the course of world events? See 5,000 years of history in 90 seconds”:

“History of Religion: The geography of faith and its wars across history. See 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds”:

The above two are from the Maps of War site. They have some more maps here.

“Animation of the spread of religions across Afro-Eurasia over centuries.”
This one covers the last 2,000 years:

You can also see a more detailed map of the current geographical spread of the world’s religions (not just the 5 above) on Spiegel Online.

It looks like I am going to have to hurry right up if I am going to get a chance to experience that magnificently scenic new railway China has built to Tibet. Before the whole thing crumbles, that is.

WHEN the first cracks appeared in the concrete base and bridges of the Qinghai Tibet railway, just weeks after the carefully staged, triumphal opening on July 1 (the 85th birthday of the Chinese Communist Party), they were not the only sign that all is not well with China’s policies in Tibet.

The cracks seem to be the result of the unstable geology of the Tibetan plateau. Equally worrying to Beijing, shifts in Tibetan political geology have caused cracks in the official Chinese narrative of unity and harmony between Tibet and China.

There had been sporadic unrest for several months. In November last year, the monks of Drepung monastery, in central Tibet, staged a sit-down demonstration against “patriotic education” — the Government’s enforced propaganda campaign. The demonstration was echoed in other important monasteries in the region.

Then, in January, in a religious address delivered in India, the exiled Dalai Lama called on Tibetans to stop wearing wildlife skins, to save animals from extinction.

The results were dramatic: from Lhasa to Gansu, Tibetans gathered for public fur burnings.

Confronted with this evidence of his continuing influence, the Government accused the Dalai Lama of promoting “social disorder” and responded, bizarrely, with a pro-fur campaign in which TV presenters were ordered to wear fur on air.
[..]

Thats not bizarre. Thats insane.

Technorati Tags: Tibet, Dalai Lama

Spiegel Online are hosting some fantastic photos of a new railroad connecting Tibet and China. I am adding this one to my list of things to do before I die, the landscape is breathtaking.

The train link is a mixed blessing for the Tibetans. Since it opened last month 70000 Chinese and foreign tourists have already taken the train, so the local economy is going to benefit greatly. Further the Chinese understand that preserving at least some Tibetan culture is in their interest, because that is what draws the foreign tourists. Although to them it is just another cash cow to milk, much like they are doing with the Shaolin Temple, which was first razed and forgotten and then repackaged and sold out, the increased tourist thoroughfare will moderate Chinese aggression against the Tibetan population. The Chinese Communist Party realises the importance of appearances, knowing that the rest of the world will continue to turn a blind eye on Tibet if at least a thin veneer of tolerance and harmony is maintained. They also realise all those “Free Tibet” stickers are nothing more than a fashion accessory for the morally vain imbecilia of the West and no serious threat to Chinese interests in Tibet exists.

On the other hand there are rumours in Tibet that China is planning on sending 400,000 people to resettle in the region. Demographics is after all the most powerful geopolitical force in existance and it has served the Chinese well.

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Tonight is census night, and the hottest question on the paper for Australia as always is going to be the one about religion.

Will Jedi finally be recognised as an official faith (70,000 registered Jedi in 2001)? And who will win the race for the fastest growing religion (last time it was Buddhism with a growth from 200,000 to 360,000 in 5 years)? Danna Vale will no doubt be anxiously awaiting confirmation that “Australia is going to be a Muslim nation in 50 years’ time”. As will the Muslims.

Meanwhile, it appears that our younger generation is turning away from organised religion, according to a three-year national study, jointly done by Monash University, the Australian Catholic University and the Christian Research Association:

Researchers conducted the random survey with 1619 people. Of those, 1272 were aged 13 to 24 and the rest were aged 25 to 59.

University of NSW Emeritus Professor of sociology and anthropology Clive Kessler said the results reflected the secular and sceptical nature of Australian society.

A QUESTION OF SPIRIT

• 48 per cent of Generation Y believe in a god.
• 20 per cent do not believe in a god.
• 32 per cent are unsure.
• 19 per cent of Generation Y are actively involved in a church.
• 17 per cent have an eclectic spirituality, believing in two or more “New Age”, esoteric or eastern beliefs, including reincarnation, psychics and astrology.
• 31 per cent can be classified as humanists, rejecting the idea of a god, although a few believe in a “higher being”.

(EDIT: html error was cutting out a paragraph or two here…)

The process is not going fast enough for some people:

Greens call for secular alternative to religion classes

The New South Wales Greens are calling on the State Government to offer students a non-religious alternative to school scripture classes.

Greens education spokesman John Kaye says the deal between the Government and churches to have one hour of religious instruction in public schools needs to be re-examined.

Mr Kaye says it is time that school students were offered a secular alternative to the one-hour scripture class.

“The deal dates back 126 years to 1880 and for all that time the churches have had a monopoly on religious instruction in public schools,” he said.

“This is not appropriate, it doesn’t match the needs of our community.

“It doesn’t match the diversity of world views held by the people in Australia.”

At the other end of the spectrum the Family First party is gaining in popularity and a coalition of Christian MPs is fighting back against the ultra-secularists:

CHRISTIANITY has been under “consistent attack” and should be re-established as the dominant belief system in Australia.

This argument was mounted yesterday by more than a dozen politicians of all hues at a Christian conference in Canberra.

Former Nationals leader John Anderson, president of the Parliamentary Christian Fellowship, opened the 300-strong Christian forum at Parliament House last night, saying secularism had gone too far.

“I think we confuse in the public mind very much what we really are, and certainly our government is secular,” he said. “It’s actually a Christian concept that you should separate church and state — it’s one of the great differences between us and Muslim societies.

‘What is a secular value system? I could argue the extreme case, that a secular value system gave us World WarII via Nazism.”

One reason for the decline of Christianity in Australia may be all the bad press its been getting for… well, for as long as anyone can remember really. And one approach for getting bums back onto pews that is currently being tried in the UK is apparently to “take ‘religion’ out of church”:

For those who are curious about Christianity but disillusioned by the institutional Church, there is a novel solution – drop the religion.

The Rev Ian Gregory, a cleric well known to readers of The Daily Telegraph for launching the Campaign for Courtesy in an attempt to improve manners, has embarked on a new project which he calls “Christianity without religion”.

Out goes the “archaic mumbo-jumbo” of church services and the “silly arguments about things that don’t and shouldn’t matter”; in come chats about anything that makes you feel good and the world’s first dedicated “laughter room” because “laughter is as important as prayer”.

..

“People are fed up with religion. The bar-room talk is that it causes too much trouble in the world. But people are intrigued by spirituality and by figures such as Jesus and Buddha.”, [thats the Rev speaking]

..

Not laughing is man of the moment and dedicated Catholic, Mel Gibson, an expert in “anything that makes you feel good”:

In a compelling interview on US television two years ago, Gibson admitted that he has many times thought of ending his suffering. Asked if he had thought of jumping out of a window, he replied: “I really did, yeah. I was looking down thinking, man, this is just easier this way. You have to be mad, you have to be insane to despair in that way. But that is the height of spiritual bankruptcy. There’s nothing left.” For someone punching the time clock for a few shekels a week, it seems rather ridiculous that a man with an estimated wealth of more than $1 billion would feel this way.

“Let’s face it, I’ve been to the pinnacle of what secular utopia has to offer,” Gibson told ABC TV in the US. “It’s just this kind of everything. I’ve got money, fame, this, that and the other, you know, and it’s all been like, whoosh here, here you go, like that. And it’s like, OK. And when I was younger, I got my proboscis out and I dipped it into the font and sucked it up, all right. It didn’t matter, there wasn’t enough, it wasn’t good enough. It’s not good enough. It leaves you empty. The more you eat the emptier you get.

“I think everybody in their life gets to a point where that happens. Where they get to the moment of truth and they go, ‘Well, what is this all about? Am I going to jump? Am I going to go on? I don’t want to do either. I don’t want to live. I don’t want to die.’ You ask yourself all those Hamlet questions.”

Another interesting tidbit I dug up about Australia is that in a recent study some social scientists looking at actual governmental practices in regards to various religious groups gave Australia a government favouritism index of 0 out 10 towards the “official or preferred religion”. Ie, no favouritism at all. Taiwan was the only other country that scored 0. In comparison Afghanistan, Iceland, Belgium, Greece and Spain all somehow scored 7.8, Denmark got 6.7 and Finland 6. The average score for Western nation was in fact higher than the score for Syria.

I shall seek to maintain our glorious null favouritism index and wish all of the above interest groups the best of luck in tonights race. May the force be with you!

UPDATE: Saint at Dogfight In Bankstown alerted me to one lot I missed. The Assemblies of God are also in the running with a campaign to get their own checkbox on the form, instead of just being lumped into the “Other – please specify” basket. Good luck with that one also. Its between you and the Jedi, I reckon.

It was definitely a quantity not quality day when I wrote this post.

For some reason this article on the resurgence of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia had me from the first sentence.

KHARKHORIN, Mongolia (Reuters) – When Gendenjav Choijamts thinks of praying, he thinks of vodka.

The 62-year-old monk at Mongolia’s oldest Buddhist monastery remembers when his father and his friends had to pretend they were gathering for a drinking session to hide the fact they were gathering in prayer.

“My father was a monk but because people were persecuted for that; it wasn’t widely known,” he said in the lush green grounds of Erdene Zuu, which dates from the 16th century.

“He was a herder. He hid his shrine and would chant in secret in the evening,” he said.

Monastic life, which took hold in Mongolia in the 1500s, was nearly wiped out within 15 years of communist rule, mostly during Stalinist purges in the 1930s when an estimated 17,000 lamas were executed.

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Last year UK’s BBC THREE network aired an excellent 12 part series on various Eastern martial arts, called “Mind, Body and Kick Ass Moves”. Hosted by Chris Crudelli, himself an experienced martial artist, the show followed Chris around the Far East as he visited various Masters and Grandmasters, talking to them about their, at times seemingly superhuman and even supernatural, abilities, coercing them into giving demonstrations and stepping in as a bit of a crash test dummy to cop a hit or 11. Some of the featured Masters will be well known to martial artists – like Ip Shui (Southern Praying Mantis), Leung Ting (Wing Chun) and the head of the Bujinkan Sr Masaaki Hatsumi. Others are hitherto completely unknown publicly, at least in the West.

The show was aimed not only at martial artists but at a wide audience, including viewers completely ignorant of the subject. The down to earth Crudelli went around doing impromtu street performances, demystifying various martial arts feats by explaining the science behind them and offering, perhaps somewhat irresponsibly, self-defence advise to strangers. The show could have probably done without Chris’ party tricks, but the team can be excused for trying to reach to a wider audience. There’s enough of the real deal in there to keep the most snobbish martial artist interested, while still keeping the average BBC punter entertained and perhaps a little amazed.

All 12 episodes of the show have now been released as a 2 DVD set. So far there is only a UK release, which is a PAL format region 2 2-disc set. I purchased mine from Amazon.co.uk and I’ve seen a couple of other sites selling it also. No word as to whether the show will be broadcast in Australia or anywhere else or when an international DVD release may be coming out. Another British channel, UKTV People, just aired the series and it has been very well received, so I am sure we’ll get it out here sooner or later.

You can read a couple of reviews of the series here. Scroll to the end of the post for a full list of the martial arts masters that appear on the show.

Earlier this year BBC THREE screened a follow up 6-part series, called “Kick Ass Miracles”. Here’s the official edisode guide on the BBC THREE site. This time the focus is not on martial arts but various other indigenous esoteric traditions from around Asia that seem to challenge the Western notion of what is possible within the laws known to science. The show features various monks, Qi Gong Masters,
more martial arts Grand Masters,

warriors possessed by spirits, healers and yogis. No DVD has been released as yet.

Here are links for episodes 1, 3 and 4 from the first series in full and a few clips from both Kick Ass Moves and Kick Ass Miracles. There are too many to embed in the post, so follow the links. And there’s plenty more on the show than whats in these clips, the first series alone totalling nearly 6 hours.

Mind, Body and Kick Ass Moves, Episode 1 (Google Video)

Mind, Body and Kick Ass Moves, Episode 3 (Google Video)

Mind, Body and Kick Ass Moves, Episode 4 (Google Video)

(Click more for a few clips from both first and second series and a list of the martial artists in the first series.)

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