Nature is turning against Christians
Why did Katrina and now Rita wreak such destruction on Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Missippi? These are the strongholds of evangelical Churches. Need to bring this to the attention of the AP cyclone victims

From: "balakrishnan hariharan"
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN "POST TSUNAMI" AND "A.P.CYCLONE"
Andhra Cyclone: Conversion Guilt Is Talk Of The Town Rama Rao Vijayawada
The recent cyclone in Andhra Pradesh, India has played havoc causing immense loss of life and property. It has already resulted in the death of more than 60 people, several thousands injured and significant damage to property.

Apart from the immediate deaths and destruction, local people are also worried about the long-term effects of the cyclone. It is estimated that millions of people along the coastal regions could end up in dire poverty because of the damage from the cyclone.
Even as they are trying to figure out the extent of the losses suffered, even people living in the plains, who until recently considered themselves immune to such calamities, are starting to wonder how they became victims of this tragedy. They are looking for reasons beyond those offered by the government and the scientific community.

Many victims say that all these events are due to their losing the blessings of their Gods and inviting their wrath because of the sins they have committed. Some have started to wonder if their conversion to Christianity could have led to their losing the grace of local deities, many of whom are considered to be guardians of the villages from precisely these kinds of calamities. They note that Christian missionaries required them to abuse Hindu Gods and
village deities as a pre-condition to receiving money for converting to Christianity. An old lady lamented in Telugu, *\"Dabbuki kakkurthi padi devullani tittamu; ippudu emayyindo chudayya, tinadaniki ginjalu kooda levu, cheesina papalu oorikene povu\"* (Out of greed we converted and abused our Gods; now look what has happened, we are left without even food. We are taught a lesson for our sins and crimes).
The sentiment appears to be prevalent across all the affected districts of Andhra Pradesh and is particularly strong in temple towns such as Rajamundry and Bhadrachalam. In Eluru, which saw major destruction from the cyclone, converts to Christianity are blaming each other for breaking the gigantic Hanuman statue and inviting the wrath of the \"monkey God.\" The situation is not that much different in Rama\'s temple town, Bhadrachalam. Many converts have
> thrown away chains with crosses and have started wearing chains with pendants of \'Veeranjaneya,\' the form of Hanuman as a protector of good and destroyer of evil.
Local pastors and church leaders are worried about the effect of the cyclone and the resulting soul-searching
engaged in by the villagers. They are worried that people may return to their native faith, Hinduism and nullify the millions of dollars and years of effort they have poured into evangelization activities in these villages. One pastor claimed that the community is so angry that not even one person may return to his church. He is keeping indoors as he is afraid to venturing into the village. Other sources indicate that the local pastors are turning to their church authorities for guidance in handling the situation.
A senior church member said that high level meetings are going on between senior church members and their superiors in the USA regarding the cyclone relief. One strategy emerging from these meetings seems to be to target only so-called \"un-reached\" regions and going for mass conversion using relief material as the bait.
A church consultant based in US suggested that missionaries should totally avoid regions with some church presence. He fears that in these regions the converts would demand extra money as a fallout of cyclone and convert back to Hinduism or Islam if their demands are not met. He also suggested that pastors should leave those regions immediately and flock to the \"un-reached\" regions so as not to raise any suspicion among their communities. It seems that he is a strong proponent of \'No-extra-payments after conversion\' rule.

Similar incidents were visible in the aftermath of the tsunami in Tamil Nadu. People stopped going to churches after it was found that areas dominated by Christian converts were the ones worst affected by the tsunami whereas water just surrounded Hindu temples leaving the premises dry. During the tsunami, the Our Lady of Good Health church, the famous Catholic pilgrim centre in Velankanni turned into a burial ground. Subsequently people have abandoned this church and consider it as a cursed place as it was built over an existing temple.
The church\'s spin doctors are however working overtime to try and use the human tragedy to further the missionary agenda. Employing the same strategy that was used during the recent December tsunami, missionaries have been preaching to locals that the cyclone struck because people did not convert to Christianity. Rev. Kim Hong-do of Seoul\'s Kumnan Methodist Church, the largest Methodist church in Korea, gave a sermon on January 2 in which he said that the victims of December 26 earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that devastated much of South Asia were killed because they didn\'t believe in Jesus.
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Brig VRP Sarathy

Thanks Balaji for such a nice article! The mother Nature seems to be taking upon herself to undo at least part the mischief and fraud perpetrated on the gullible people in the name of religion! There were many such reports in
Chennai too during Tsunami days about how the local Velankanni church was flooded the Ashta lakshmi temple though was surrounded by water the actual Temple premises was dry! - Sarathy
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Fall of New Orleans
Article published in The Hindu
From: Rajaram
American hegemony today rests on its image as a nation built on freedom and equality, which is propagated as also the world's ideal. New Orleans has shattered this illusion.
N.S. Rajaram
Like the Fall of Singapore in 1942, the symbolic significance of the destruction of New Orleans may be greater than the physical damage.
In February 1942, Singapore, called by the British the Gibraltar of the East, the Impregnable Fortress and various other equally resounding names fell to a Japanese army less than one-third the defending force. Though not recognized at the time, it signaled the dissolution of the British Empire, and eventually the end of European imperialism itself.
In September 2005, the hurricane Katrina destroyed the port city of New Orleans and exposed the seamy side of American society. Could this signal end of American hegemony and the true beginning of the new century? Historians now see the year 1914 rather than 1900 as the year when the twentieth century began. It was the year when World War I began and led to the collapse of empires- Germany, Austria-Hungary, Tsarist Russia and Ottoman Turkey.
When the War ended in 1918, only the British and the French empires remained. The Fall of Singapore signaled the end of the British Empire; and in 1954, the French surrender to Ho-Chi-Min's army at Dien Bien Phu put an end to France's imperial pretensions. The imperial illusion dragged on for a few years but soon dissolved.
Superficially, there is no comparison between the military defeats of Singapore and Dien Bien Phu and the natural disaster that leveled New Orleans. But in their symbolic meaning, in the shattering the twin illusions of might and superiority, they bear a striking similarity. To understand this we need to revisit Singapore in February 1942 and see the cataclysmic impact of its fall.
Indian historians have rarely given the Fall of Singapore the importance that it merits or seen its significance. British historians however have been quite forthright. In his book Singapore, the battle that changed the world James Leasor wrote:
"Dazed by the incredible superiority of the Japanese, the defenders' will to win had withered. ... The psychological damage was even greater than the military defeat- and this had been grotesque enough. ...Under the lowering Singapore sky lit by the funeral pyres of the British Empire ... a door closed on centuries of white supremacy..."
The important lesson is the shattering of an illusion-the notion of white superiority over non-whites-that made both the rulers and the ruled believe that Europeans were natural rulers. It made the colonized people largely acquiesce to being treated as inferiors and also accept the few benefits that came their way. Kipling called it the "White Man's Burden."
It was this sense of moral superiority as much as military might and administrative efficiency that sustained these empires. Whether the British or the French brought better governance than what existed before is beside the point. Singapore in 1942 and Dien Bien Phu in 1954 later shattered that illusion.
More than military defeats, it was the behavior of Europeans, especially of the British, in the face of the collapse that exposed them as ordinary mortals rather than superior beings born to rule. This was vividly brought home to me during a recent visit to Southeast Asia where I met some war veterans who had served with my father in Malaya.
I was repeatedly told that when the Japanese attacked, "the British ran away." None of them remembered the British fighting the Japanese, only running away. As they remember it, the British then sent Gurkhas, Sikhs, Marathas and other Indians to fight the Japanese. It is their firm belief that the British left India because the victorious Indian soldiers returned to India and the British didn't want to fight them. The White Man's Burden could no longer protect them.

In New Orleans, what shocked the world, especially Asians, was not so much the destruction, but the breakdown of civil society that followed. The looting, the rapes and the banditry, with areas of New Orleans descending into total anarchy may have shattered the American image as much as Singapore shattered Britain’s. There were frequent comparisons with the Asian tsunami and the Mumbai flood, which saw nature's fury and destruction but no social breakdown.
American hegemony today rests on its image as a nation built on freedom and equality, which is propagated as also the world's ideal. New Orleans has shattered this illusion. New Orleans will be rebuilt, just as Singapore has been rebuilt into a glittering city. Can America rebuild its moral edifice also- something the British couldn't do?
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All Converted Hindus should come back to Hindu Fold

The Hindu people who have converted themselves to Christianity due to whatever reasons should see the type of fraud perpetuated on them by proselytizers especially Christians. They should see the warning of nature to Christians and should come back to Hindu fold.

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