I’m not shocked but honestly I’m so disappointed. I’m a girl who grew up in Kolkata, someone who grew up hearing about Mother Teresa and to be honest I hate the fact that the liberal, white, Western media has held this woman as some sort of paragon of virtue. And she really wasn’t. Here are some things she did:
- She was so anti-abortion that she actually used her Nobel Peace Prize speech to rail against population control, family planning and abortion.
- She supported Indira Gandhi’s declaration on the state of emergency in 1975, saying “People are happier. There are more jobs. There are no strikes.”
- She idolised poverty and suffering, stating that she thought it was beautiful that the poor had accepted their lot in life. But when it came to her, she would check herself into expensive clinics, in the West, in order to treat her own illnesses.
- She was also associated with and supported corrupt businessmen such as Charles Keating and Robert Maxwell, as well as the dictatorial Duvalier family and Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha.
- She encouraged members of her order to secretly baptise dying patients with no regard for their own faiths.
- Her public image was super misleading because
only a few hundred people are served by even the largest of the homes. In 1998, among the 200 charitable assistance organisations reported to operate in Calcutta, hers wasn’t even ranked among the largest organisations- there were others doing a much better job.
- In 1991, a journalist visited the home and described the medical care the patients received as “haphazard” and he observed that sisters, who had no medical knowledge, had to make decisions about patient care, because of the lack of doctors there.
- Her order did not distinguish between curable or incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment. She herself described her houses as the Houses of the Dying.
- She reinforced the popular colonialist image of the white woman giving up her life to save the souls of the “wretched” brown people.
There are more shady things about her but I’m over this beatification of Mother Teresa. I’m over her, and I’m over this constant fawning. Kolkata isn’t the “city where Mother Teresa lived”. It has it’s own identity and Mother Teresa doesn’t, at least in my opinion, deserve this honour that the Catholic Church is bestowing on her.
Tag: important
Simone Manuel of the United States and Penny Oleksiak of Canada tie for gold with an Olympic Record in the 100m freestyle with a time of 52.70. Manuel is the first African-American woman to win an individual Olympic swimming medal, and Oleksiak is the youngest gold medalist in Olympics history.
Pictures from liberated Manbij today, as SDF forces force the last pocket of Islamic State fighters in the city into retreat
Men cutting their beards, women smoking cigarettes and burning their ISIS manditory dress
You have to eat.
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
After 87 courageous years on this earth, Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928–July 2, 2016) has left us — and left us his timeless, increasingly timely wisdom on our shared responsibility in ending injustice.
(via explore-blog)
(via explore-blog)
Some of my favourite signs from the ‘March For Europe’ Brexit protest in London, July 2nd, 2016.
BREXIT: A quick note on the first three tragedies. Firstly, it was the working classes who voted for us to leave because they were economically disregarded and it is they who will suffer the most in the short term from the dearth of jobs and investment. They have merely swapped one distant and unreachable elite for another one.
Secondly, the younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors.
Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, we now live in a post-factual democracy. When the facts met the myths they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel. When Michael Gove said ‘the British people are sick of experts’ he was right. But can anybody tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism has lead to anything other than bigotry?
Nicholas, in The Financial Times. (via hellotailor)
May 20, 1996 – August 9, 2014
Today would have been Mike Brown’s 19th birthday.
Happy 20th birthday to Mike Brown
PSA
You feel like shit is a website set up to help you get out of that funk/improve things just enough to not feel horrible and miserable all the time. It’s amazing.
Whether you struggle with mental health problems all the time or whether this is a new/temporary state for you, this guide is an easy and judgement-free self-care tool.
PLEASE TRY IT OUT! Really! You just click through the questions to answer and follow simple instructions that in the end, ideally, will help you to feel more comfortable and stable on a daily basis.
Good luck! Have fun!
wow this is so fucking important to me i could literally cry right now thank you for creating this
The deeply worrying thing about catcalling is that the catcaller must know that their target isn’t going to turn around and fall in to their arms pleading ‘oh dear my please have sex with me here and now’. A lot of the time they know that. Often they don’t do it for that, someone who shouts ‘nice tits’ from a van isn’t trying to date you. They’re trying to humiliate you, reinforce their dominance over you; it’s an exercise of male power. It’s a way of communicating ‘I can say and do whatever I want to you, no matter how inappropriate or how uncomfortable it makes you feel, and you can’t do anything about it.’ Catcalling is not a compliment, it’s a threat.
darknesstohislight 