“I am the best film director in the world,” Lars Von Trier told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival, “all the others are overrated” (Hernandez).  The Danish director, long infamous in international cinema for his bravado and courtship of controversy, provided these remarks in defense against the critical firestorm launched over the premier of his latest film, Antichrist (2009).  Despite its title, the film has drawn unique ire not for blasphemous content (at least in a Christian sense), but for several instances of shocking violence and perceived undertones of misogyny.  The Cannes jury awarded Von Trier a special prize for his work, an “Anti-award” for misogyny, and against such charges the director says simply “I can’t justify myself,” neither confirming nor denying the claims while clarifying his intention to do no such thing (Hernandez).  Many artists have claimed that explaining the meaning of their work detracts from the art, but Von Trier’s film is one of few works to stir an audience so much as to demand in rage an explanation.  Does the violent response to Antichrist indicate a meanness or evilness inherent in the film, or is it simply indicative of the work’s rare cinematic power? While Antichrist contains elements that can be construed as misogynistic, the film does not condone such beliefs and should be respected as an individual’s artistic expression.

Antichrist tells the story of a married couple suffering in the wake of their young son’s death.  While this scenario may resemble the basic outline of many of cinema’s most boring and depressing adult dramas, Von Trier establishes his unique intentions by opening the film with an explicit black and white love scene between the two parents (Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) as their child wanders slowly towards and open window.  The director juxtaposes shots of sexual ecstasy with the child’s slow motion descent through the air to the snow covered ground below.  The first critical accusations of misogyny against the film come in response to this opening sequence, with claims that, “the creepy implication is that somehow she and her child are being punished for her taking pleasure in sex” (Tookey).  This response to the sequence seems not only entirely subjective and personal, but also selective in its use of the text to support the specific reading.  Yes, Von Trier does show the child’s mother enraptured in pleasure as her son dies, but he also shows the father in shots depicting a similar state during the sequence.  “This is the first hint of misogyny,” the critic Tookey writes, but the scene is only misogynistic when analyzed through his selective memory.  Perhaps Tookey is right that the mother (known as She) is receiving punishment for her pleasure, but this can only be read as misogynistic when one ignores the equal punishment inflicted on the father (He), who took part in the same sexual act and who has an equally dead son.  Tookey’s reading itself seems more misogynistic than the sequence it critiques, singling out the female’s enjoyment of sex as somehow more wrong or notable than her husband’s in the exact same scene.  It seems here that Von Trier attempts not to associate female sexuality with evil, but the act of sex in general with images of death, a thematic linking that the film returns to repeatedly.

Following this opening chapter, She, an academic, enters a debilitating depression that He, a therapist by trade, seeks to draw her out of through the technique of recognition and exposure to her deepest fears.  Her greatest fear turns out to be Eden, the provocatively named cabin in the woods where she had previously retreated with her son in attempt to complete her thesis work.  The subject of her research comes to light when She and He return to Eden in attempt to confront her fear of the place, and that very subject becomes the next lightning rod for critical cries of misogyny.  She’s research delves into the history of witchcraft and the accompanying “gynocide” of countless innocent women during the middle-ages up to modernity.  While the expected conclusion of such research (and that which that audience likely draws) is the overwhelming proof of centuries of violent male oppression towards women, She concludes that perhaps all women are agents of Evil, deserving the violent fates they have historically met.  Another critic, Dana Stevens, selectively misreads this subplot, suggesting that “He and She convince themselves and each other that women are at fault for all this,” implying that (were this what actually happens in the film), the characters’ general acceptance of this thesis indicates a validated and shared belief by the director. Firstly, the plot as Stevens describes it does not even happen in the film, as He in fact tries to convince his wife that the self loathing feelings of which she has convinced herself stem from her overwhelming grief and depression, not from any truth to the theories.  Secondly, even if the characters in the film really do come to believe in the idea that all women are inherently evil (which they don’t), this does not make the film or its director misogynistic.

“A line of dialogue is not a manifesto,” writes Jessica Winter in the film’s defense, pointing out an all too common problem in the reading of Antichrist and its creator.  A film about racism is not (necessarily) a racist film, and neither is a film dealing directly and uniquely with misogynistic notions necessarily misogynistic.  And finally, even if one somehow reads this passage of Antichrist as a whole-hearted endorsement of truth in natural feminine evil, one would be foolish and naïve to pin this belief on the director’s lapel.  Von Trier himself says, “one of my techniques is to defend an idea or view that is not mine,” a claim exemplified by his interest in making a film about “the human side of Hitler” (O’Hagan).  As this statement came during Von Trier’s press promotion for Antichrist, one could interpret it as a backtracking from his vow not to defend the merits of the film against its critics.  However, coming from the man who proclaimed himself the world’s best director in the Holy Land of international cinema (Cannes), the filmmaker’s statement rings louder as truth than an attempt to save face.  Even if the discourse on screen is 100 percent thoroughbred misogyny (which it is not), that cannot responsibly be used to conclusively condemn the film or its director.

While the above examples from the film have drawn high levels of criticism, the greatest controversy surrounding Antichrist circles around a graphic and now notorious scene of sexual mutilation in which the enraged She smashes He’s penis and testicles before clipping off her own clitoris with a pair of scissors.  Charges of excess, tastelessness, and sadism towards the audience are impossible to refute, as those lay squarely in the domain of personal preference.  The sequence is undeniably extreme, likely to ignite a firestorm of controversy regardless of which film is was attached to.  As a part of Antichrist, however, it inspires increasingly redundant cries of misogyny.

Certainly, female “circumcision” through removal of the clitoris has long been decried in the global community as an act of chauvinistic barbarism with little purpose but cruelty and sexual oppression of women at the hands of a ruling class of males.  Critics must realize, though, that no matter how real the act appears through special effects, Von Trier did not actually ask Charlotte Gainsbourg (courageous as her performance is) to mutilate her own genitals.  Once again, the presence of the image is not a ringing endorsement from Von Trier for the procedure as an effective treatment for the inherent evil of women, but instead an intentional catalyst for the contemplation and discussion of a challenging issue.  Additionally, the critics either forget the fact that He endures a similar act of debilitating violence or choose to focus on the role of a woman as the perpetrator.  To suggest that the acts shown in the film criticize women suggests that these are the unspeakable actions of an average everyday woman.  She is a mentally unstable and grief stricken individual, goaded on by her husband’s invasive “therapy” and forced through traumatic experiences to associate sex with death.  Von Trier does not suggest that she acts violently because of her sex (despite the complicating element of her thesis research), but instead because of her grief and emotional abuse at the hands of her self-interested husband.

If the labeling of the film’s elements as misogynistic can be so simply discredited or the elements themselves explained as intentionally provocative ambiguity, it might seem strange that the cries have come so loudly and maintained ever since the film first screened in May 2009.  Perhaps, more so than declaring Antichrist a misogynist work, the critics seek to certify the film’s director as a consummate woman hater.  One would think, given the director’s pedigree for serious and quality filmmaking (he took home Cannes’ top prize for 2000’s Dancer in the Dark), that the usually progressive international film critics would seek to give such a prominent figure the benefit of the doubt.  However, when Antichrist stands next to its maker’s other works, it seems to continue a pattern in the director’s treatment of women.  In Dancer in the Dark, a benevolent blind woman is framed for robbery, forced into murder, and ultimately executed by hanging.  Like Antichrist, the film on its own seems to illicit sympathy for the female lead and her apparent martyrdom.  However, its predecessor, Breaking the Waves (1996), features another sympathetic female lead forced into prostitution before being gang raped to death.  The emerging pattern seems obvious.

Von Trier admits that he repeats the same film over and again, a “melodrama in which a passive, vulnerable, often mentally unstable woman is gradually driven crazy, and sometimes killed, by the gaslighting of a sadistic man,” an apt summary of Antichrist (Stevens).   For critical viewers, then, the question must be, “which one of these characters is Von Trier himself?”  Bjork, star of Dancer in the Dark, had an infamous on-set bust up with her director and later denigrated him as an “emotional pornographer” (Winter).  Von Trier’s Dogville (2003) star Nicole Kidman allegedly shared similar sentiments with Bjork, asking the director, “Why are you so evil to women?” and refusing to reprise her roll in the sequel (ibid).  These women, both of whom worked closely with the director over a period of months, seem to have felt on set like the characters they were playing, goaded to extremes by this “sadistic man” behind the camera. In the unlikely case that either Bjork or Kidman watched Antichrist, one might easily guess which camp they would come down in.  Von Trier’s reputation for misogyny, as supported by these two actresses, seems to have precipitated the response to Antichrist, whose critics see the director himself on screen behind the guise of the callous He.

However, Von Trier’s latest leading lady, Charlotte Gainsbourg, paints a very different portrait of the filmmaker.  “I find it unjust when people say he hates women,” she says in an interview, “I really have the impression that I was playing him, that he was the woman, that he was going through that misery” (O’Hagan).  Indeed, Von Trier’s depression when creating the film has been well documented, himself calling the process “a kind of therapy… filmed without much enthusiasm, made as it was using about half my physical and intellectual capacity” (Hernandez).  In those words, the filmmaking experience sounds very much like She’s journey’s to Eden, unable to finish her thesis and diminished to self-loathing under the crushing pressure of her grief.  Perhaps, then, She’s violent outbursts act not as a criticism of the woman or women in general, but as a kind of visceral release for the director on film.  Like Von Trier’s previous heroines, She’s journey concludes in death at the hands of man, but unlike the others she gives the man a dose of his own debilitating medicine on the way.  Why then, if She represents Von Trier, does he write the roll as a woman rather than a man?  “My main characters are built on my own person,” Von Trier says, “I think women are better, more understanding” (Winter).  Despite these words coming from a known woman-hater, they somehow imply a profound respect and identification with femininity and the female gender.  If he does hate women then maybe, like She, it results from his own self-loathing.

All too frequently, the critical community breaks controversy down into oversimplifying binaries.  A piece of art must, more often than not, fit into one category or another.  Good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, the systemized grouping essential to the critic’s job frequently hinders any thoughtful discussion of a work.  In the case of Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, the film must be misogynist or not, bad or good respectively, and pornographic or artistic as respective to the judged quality.  The truth, as it usually prefers, lies in none of these simplified labels.  Perhaps Antichrist contains elements critical of or hateful towards women, but in likelihood Von Trier seeks rather to exorcise his own demons and prod the minds of his viewers than to provide audiences with a didactic treatise on his own views of gender politics.  An assessment of the man’s oeuvre certainly indicates some possible issues with women, but maybe they result more from personal issues of self-identification and corresponding depression than any true prejudice.  “I am an American woman,” the male Danish director once said (Winter).  Clearly we deal here with a complicated man who produces complicated art, deserving of discussion not over what ill fitting critical umbrella it can be stuffed under, hateful or not, but over what unique box its creator has made for it himself and where exactly its bizarre boundaries could have come from.

I didn’t have much choice.

I had to follow him home.

I hadn’t felt The Need for a long time. Not like this. So strong. So urgent. So demanding.

I needed to hurt this kid. I needed to see that look of shock, of fear, of relisation light up his face. I needed him to die.

More than that, I needed him to know he didn’t deserve to live.

I’d just been to the movies to see Paranormal Activity. Despite being a major movie buff, I hadn’t been to the cinema in quite a while. Of late I’ve preferred to cloister myself in front of a DVD. Going out to the movies is a rare treat and I was looking forward to seeing this one. I’d observed the groundswell of excitement, the talk of ‘scariest movie ever’ and the online arguments. I’m a big fan of the ‘horror’ movie. As you may soon come to realise, I’m all for violence, blood letting, stalking and mutilation. Above all, I’m a fan of suspense! Paranormal Activity definitely seemed like something that was decidedly up my alley.

Then this little, teenage fuck had to go and ruin it.

We both caught the same bus to the cinema. Even then I noticed him. Something about him irked me, tapped into my primal douchebag radar. The little fucker stood out amongst the crowd of retards and dickwads on the bus as something extra special. He kept plucking at his collar so the points stood up just right, brushing his cheeks,  and preening himself in the reflection he cast in the mirror. He also had this smug, typically teenage, arrogant look on his face that I instantly had the urge to remove for him.

But I’ve been a good boy for years now, so I pushed it to a darkened corner of my mind, closed my eyes and lost myself in my iPod. Even then I could feel this tiny tug, like a gentle gravity, reminding me he was there.

In her comment to the previous blog entry: http://wp.me/pmBNc-67  my daughter,Kat, observed that the gentleman who was so concerned about my satanic and ‘unsufic’profile pic of Kali may have been raised with very rigid views about cultures other than his own and this could have effected his ability to see the Kali Ma art as anything other than ’satanic’.

Gorgeous Kali Ma

In fact, this concerned gentleman’s viewpoint is rather Fundamentalist, which is certainly far from the “Sufic” perspective of Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan who founded The Sufi Order in which both this gentleman and I are initiated, and whose Universal teaching descends from the Chisti lineage. (Again, see first blog entry: http://murshidava.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/why-fear-the-mother/ ).

In actuality, this gentleman’s observations about what isn’t ‘Sufic’ don’t make much sense, but fear rarely does and this is why I feel focusing on the gender issue, although I agree with Emine that it is salient, might potentially render the deeper issues moot. Fear, seems to me to be the salient issue, here, and those movements arising from fear which entrap our imaginal lives in a strangulating literalism, which are so destructive to vitality, to the human heart and soul– movements such as the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Crucifixion, modern Jewish interpretations of the meaning of the Holy Land as a literal place which we (I am a Jew, after all) have a right to kill fellow human beings in order to protect and never mind the Law, and current Islamic Fundamentalist interpretations of the Jihad, which was meant to be an inner war, and a path toward mastery of the Self, but never an edict for men, women, and children to strap bombs to their bodies and physically annihilate themselves and others.

So, yes, it is true that people conduct all sorts of sacrificial rights in the name of the Mother, Kali Ma. It is true that in India children are still being sacrificed and mutilated in the name of the Mother. However, that is what people do with religion, with the Message coming to us from the Infinite Source of Life- we turn it into things it is not. And, yet, even our foolishness and ignorance reveal the Message, for, how, ultimately is child sacrifice and mutilation different than the sacrifice of children in the Holy Land, in Iraq, in Afganistan, in Darfur, in the AIDS pandemic, and in any other place where we allow our fear and hatred to erupt into violence or neglect rather than active caring and compassionate concern?

Sufis often say that Allah is on All Sides. One can see that here so clearly: even when human interpretations become twisted by the darkness of ignorance and limited understanding, even then, truth will shine through, revealing ourselves to ourselves and conveying lessons and opportunities to grow beyond those limitations- all that is required is that we have, as a humanity, the courage to look in the mirror.

La illaha il Allah hu. If there is nothing but the One Being, what is not the One Being? What is not a reflection of Message? What is not an opportunity for Awakening? And yet, one does need to develop the capacity to see. The persistent disorder of seeing which makes it easier for many, still, to assign evil to the feminine face of God when She is depicted as a whole being rather than as a dismembered series of aspected ‘Shes’ or to see male depiction as somehow more real, valid or wholesome than female depiction…that is a subject for another day… for another blog entry.

Click here for a news article about strange calf mutilations in Colorado.

Post numéro 23, court d’évidence, et peut-être, juste, cette évocation de l’ouverture du film Halloween, avec son petit garçon qui dézingue sa grande sœur à l’arme blanche, avec un visage impassible. Ici en version «haute couture», la grande mode de la chirurgie esthétique appliquée, avec un certain sens de l’extrême, à la vivisection.

Post numéro 22, avec très vite une réminiscence d’un documentaire sur Rimbaud, et cette citation proche de l’original : «…visions qui se poursuivent, des lignes blanches, des lignes noires…», évoquant l’expérience de Rimbaud avec le haschich.

Les couloirs qui bougent, les portes qui changent de sens et de mur : élément sans doute tiré en partie du film Labyrinth, avec David Bowie et la troupe de Jim Hensen (Muppet Show). Où une porte ouverte dans un sens donne accès à un certain couloir, et ouverte dans un autre sens, livre passage à une perspective totalement nouvelle, bizarre, vertigineuse.

«Escamoté dans la moiteur d’une doublure châtain» : Chrome est peut-être déjà dans le rêve de quelqu’un d’autre, dans l’esprit de Messaline, capturé dans son songe… Ce qui expliquerait partiellement l’étrangeté des lieux et, pour tout dire, leur torsion.

Le vertige, à nouveau, de cette «pièce aux proportions gigantesques» mais qui n’abrite qu’une chaise et un écran, dans une lumière insuffisante. De quoi singer le totalitarisme du contrôle initié par cet organisme, et l’étroitesse de l’information livrée aux agents eux-mêmes.

November 23 2009, by Michael Russell

A teenager accused of murdering a young mother found dying in the street with her hand cut off appeared in court today.

Sher Singh, of Wren Avenue, Southall, stood in the dock in Ealing Magistrates’ Court looking bewildered and slightly scared in a navy blue and white checked shirt.

Listening to his Punjabi interpreter, he spoke only once, murmuring that he understood he was to be remanded in custody.

Chairman of the bench Jefferey Bomm, at the court in Green Man Lane, West Ealing, told him he is to appear at the Old Bailey on March 1.

The 18-year-old student, who only arrived in the UK in July, will face a charge of murdering 28-year-old Geeta Aulakh in Braund Avenue, Greenford, on November 16.

She was discovered by a passer-by with her right hand cut off and suffering from serious head wounds.

She died of the head injuries about four hours later, at about 11.20pm, in Charing cross Hospital.

Eleven other men arrested in connection with the killing, including Mrs Aulakh’s husband, have been released on bail.

http://www.ealinggazette.co.uk/ealing-news/local-ealing-news/2009/11/23/teenager-charged-with-severed-hand-murder-of-young-mother-64767-25232468/ 

The Guardian, Friday 20 November 2009

Police rule out stranger attack but reject honour killing theory despite misgivings by Asian women’s groups

Every day, staff at Sunrise Radio were greeted with a smile from Geeta Aulakh, the receptionist who had dreamed as a young girl of working for the first independent 24-hour Asian station.

For four days this week, her chair has been empty and, in a painful series of conversations, her colleagues have been sharing glimpses she gave them of the pain hidden beneath her warmth.

It is in the particularly horrific death of Aulakh that the secrets of her life are emerging. Police believe what spilled out on to the street in Greenford, west London, on Monday evening was the violent culmination of something hidden in Aulakh’s recent past.

Senior sources believe the 28-year-old was held down by more than one assailant and struck repeatedly with either a sabre or a machete as she went to pick up her two sons from their childminder. Aulakh was just 100 metres away from her young children, on a quiet street lined with unremarkable postwar terraced houses, where residents fear burglary or car crime, not the sort of scene they experienced that night.

The Guardian understands that detectives have been given a detailed account of the attack by a handful of key witnesses.

In the frenzied assault, Aulakh was struck repeatedly around the head with the sabre-like weapon. She fought for her life, sustaining a serious wound to her right hand which severed it from her arm, leading to speculation that it was cut off deliberately in some sort of religious ritual. The suggestion is a distraction, sources say. The wound was a classic defence injury against an assault with a long, extremely sharp weapon.

The choice of location was deliberate, police believe. They say it was no random attack, but a planned assault by more than one assailant on a woman whose regular routine was known.

The nearness to her children is, again, no coincidence. “We are not talking about a stranger attacker here who she does not know.

It is complicated but what you are looking at is a fairly closed group of people,” said police.

Around the corner from where Aulakh was trying to fight off her assailants, her childminder, Safeen Arif, heard nothing but was growing worried.

“She was so devoted to her boys, she would do anything for them,” said Arif. “She would always call me if she was going to be late. That’s why I started ringing her on Monday when she didn’t arrive, but no one answered her phone.”

Like colleagues at Sunrise Radio, Arif knew Aulakh as a happy, warm person who had separated from her husband and was seeking a divorce, but was getting on with her life, trying to do the best for her children.

It is only now as people talk about her murder that some friends are sharing conversations in which Aulakh suggested she was frightened and felt harassed but did not specify who was causing her sense of feeling terrorised.

Dr Avtar Lit, her boss at the radio station, said: “She was a very private person. What is emerging now is that Geeta did share with some of her female colleagues that she felt frightened and harassed, but she didn’t reveal a great deal, and little bits of what she said are coming out now.”

Born Geeta Shinh, she grew up in Southall, west London in a middle-class family with two brothers and two sisters. When she was 17, she met husband-to-be Harpreet, known as Sunny, and the couple fell in love.

However, her mother, who worked in a GP’s surgery, and her father, a warehouseman, were unhappy about the match as Harpreet was unemployed and seemed to have no prospects.

It is unclear if there was a rift with her family, but friends say the young couple decided to put some space between them and relatives, leaving the UK to spend some time in Belgium.

Despite her parents’ early misgivings, the marriage produced two boys, now 10 and eight. Three years ago this week, when she was back in London, Aulakh obtained the Sunrise Radio job in Southall. “She was a very important part of the office, always smiling, always helpful,” said Lit. “She once told me that she’d grown up listening to Sunrise and it was her dream to work there when she was an adult.”

But there were some signs of something amiss within her personal life. During one argument at home in September 2002, she had been concerned enough to dial 999 late at night. When officers arrived, she refused to file a complaint and the incident was marked as “no crime”.

The same happened last October; officers arrived at her home but no complaint was filed and “no crime” was recorded.

By last October, Aulakh had separated from her husband and is understood to have been living in a council house in Greenford.

Myrah Mistry, who knew her for 17 years, said: “She wasn’t happy, so she left. He was trying to get back with her but she didn’t want to. I think she was thinking about divorce – she was going down that road. He used to call her quite often, he would sometimes come into the radio station.”

On Monday night, Aulakh left work at 6.15pm with two female friends. She walked to Southall railway station where her friends boarded their trains and she got on to her bus, which made its way north to Greenford, where she was due to pick up her children from her childminder in Braund Avenue. Only two days, before she had celebrated her youngest son’s eighth birthday.

Police are studying CCTV footage from Southall station and the bus to see when she might have been followed by her killers. But, so far, the trail of images stops once she gets off the bus and heads towards the childminders.

At about 7pm, her death and its brutality was marked by nothing more than the kind of sound often heard on a London street and quickly dismissed – a single scream overheard by a schoolgirl as she sat in her bedroom doing her homework.

Three and a half hours later, Aulakh’s mother, Nardesh, arrived at her bedside in Charing Cross hospital. She cried out her daughter’s name twice before Aulakh died.

In their investigation into the murder, detectives are probing every aspect of Aulakh’s past, attempting to unpick the secrets she guarded so closely. They say they have ruled out a so-called honour killing as a motive but admit that the circle they are investigating is one close to Aulakh herself.

For many who work in the field of violence against women and “honour” crime within the Asian community, the revelations emerging about Geeta’s life are all too familiar.

Sudharshan Bhuhi, who runs a 24-hour helpline for Asian women, said: “It is very early for the police to steer away from ‘honour’ crime, they should not shy away from using the words,” she said. “What is coming out about her is typical of the women we talk to.

“As an Indian woman and a Sikh myself who runs an Asian specific organisation, I know it takes much longer for women from my culture to be able to state these feelings of fear and act on them. All this fear is coming out now, after her death and all we feel here is immense sadness that another human life has been lost unnecessarily.”

The ‘no crime’ controversy

Nowhere is the issue of classifying emergency calls to police as “no crime” more controversial than in domestic disputes. While police have not said domestic violence was a factor in Geeta Aulakh’s death, they were called twice to her home and twice marked the incident as “no crime”. By their very nature domestic disputes involve a relationship in which one party is vulnerable, afraid of the other and therefore reluctant to stand up publicly and accuse them of assault.

Often the presence of children in a household can result in a woman calling the police to an incident involving a partner and then being reluctant to pursue a complaint for fear of what will happen to her children, retribution by her partner, and financial implications should she have to move out.

A review by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary revealed recently that more than a third of cases of violence sampled had been wrongly categorised as not warranting further investigation.

“What they are supposed to do is refer them at least to the community safety unit and they are supposed to refer them to other agencies,” said Hannanah Siddiqui, of Southall Black Sisters. “999 calls to potential domestic violence incidents should not be ‘no crimed’ and simply not investigated.”

A review by the Association of Chief Police Officers called for a better bridge between the police and the civil law so that victims can be protected even if they cannot be persuaded to file a complaint against an abusive husband or partner. There also needs to be consideration of a new offence of a “course of conduct” and a determination to pursue perpetrators of domestic violence even when the victim withdraws her complaint, the review said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/20/geeta-aulakh-murder-greenford

The Geeta Aulakh Case

Police are appealing for witnesses to come forward following the death of a woman in Greenford.

Police were called at about 19:00hrs on Monday, 16 November to reports of a woman seriously injured in Braund Ave at the junction of Verulam Road, Greenford.

On arrival police discovered a 28-year-old woman in the street, suffering from a head injury and severed hand.

She was taken by ambulance to Charing Cross Hospital where she was pronounced dead at 23:19hrs.

Officers believe they know the woman’s identity and have informed next of kin however they await formal identification.

A post-mortem examination will take place later today, 17 November.

Officers from the Homicide and Serious Crime Command are investigating.

A/DCI Andy Chalmers said: “When the victim was found we know that a lot of people were in the street and that several people may have tried to administer first aid before the police or ambulance arrived.

“These people left the scene before speaking to police and I would ask that anyone who was there, or anyone else who has information about the incident, call us in the strictest of confidence.”

Anyone with information is asked to call the Incident Room at Barnes on 020 8247 7821 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

On 17 November six men were arrested in connection with the investigation and taken to west London police stations.

One Wednesday, 18 November, all six men were bailed to return in mid-January 2010 pending further inquiries.

On 19 November, officers have made six new arrests at an address in Ealing.

All six remain in custody at a west London police station.

http://cms.met.police.uk/news/appeals/appeal_for_witnesses_after_woman_s_death

Sunday, 22 November 2009

A teenager has been charged with the murder of a woman who was found in a street with one of her hands cut off.

Mother-of-two Geeta Aulakh, a receptionist, was found in Greenford, west London, on 16 November.

Police believe the 28-year-old was attacked after leaving Sunrise Radio studios to pick up her two young sons.

Sher Singh, 18, of, Southall, west London, will appear at Ealing Magistrates’ Court on Monday. Eleven other people are currently on bail.

The 11, who include Mrs Aulakh’s husband, were bailed earlier this week while inquiries into the case continue.

Mrs Aulakh was found a short distance from the home of the childminder of her two boys, who are aged eight and nine.

A post-mortem examination found Mrs Aulakh had died from a head injury.

Police are trying to find out whether she was attacked elsewhere and dumped on the pavement in Braund Avenue, at its junction with Verulam Road.

The seventh book of the bible, Judges, ends with a harrowing account of the gang rape and murder of a man’s girlfriend. The morning after the attack, the girl’s lover found her dead on a doorstep. In his dismay he cut her body into 12 pieces and sent a piece to each of the 12 tribes of Israel. Everyone who heard the news of the incident was horrified and asked “what are we to do?”

The parallels with British culture are obvious, not only because incidents of gang rape are increasingly common, but the account gives a sense of unease about human nature. The mid-twentieth hope of a rose-spectacled social utopia which flourished on the assumption that humans were essentially good has now evaporated. We aren’t really that good and many in British society are asking “what are we to do?”

I suggest we start by learning from biblical history. The event recorded in Judges is a real life cautionary tale. It cautions us about three things, the first of which I’ll blog on today.

The first caution is about our human nature. The final sentence of the book of Judges says “in those days everyone did what is right in his own eyes.” This closing line makes sense of the events in Judges 19. There is moral confusion in Israel because every man is his own moral authority. The events in the chapter sound much like the way British culture operates:

• The man shacked up with his girlfriend, because is was right in his own eyes.
• She had sex with another man, left her boyfriend and went home to stay with her father.  At each step, her actions seemed right in her own eyes.
• After four months, the man decided to go and get his lover back, because this was right in his own eyes.
• Her dad welcomed his daughter’s estranged boyfriend, was really kind to him for five days, because is was right in his own eyes.
• The man eventually left, late on the fifth day, not wanting to overstay his welcome, because is was right in his own eyes.
• The servant, wanted to stop in Jerusalem, because he was tired and it was right in his own eyes.
• His master said, no, the Jebusites are our enemies, lets go to Gibeah, where there are other Jews, because is was right in his own eyes.
• In the village, no one offered the man, his girlfriend and their servant any hospitality.
• Then a villager, who came originally from the same home town as the man, offered him generous, happy and relaxed hospitality, because is was right in his own eyes.
• The sex craved mob of ASBOs who wanted to rape the visiting man, did so because is was right in their own eyes.
• The host pleaded with them and offered them his virgin daughter and the man’s concubine, because, as much as I can’t get my head round this moral code as a father of a young girl, is was right in this man’s eyes.
• The mob refused, still wanting sex with the visiting man. So the man shoved his girlfriend out the door and slammed it shut behind her, because is was right in his own eyes.  No wonder she’d had sex with another man, this guy was a selfish git.
• The gang raped her all night, because is was right in their own eyes.
• When the man found his girlfriend dead, he chopped her into pieces and sent them all over Israel, because is was right in his own eyes.

And so, the first caution is: As human beings we must not trust what seems right in our own eyes, because our human nature is fundamentally flawed. We are not essentially good. Some of the characters do good, like the two men who offer generous hospitality, but even they have mixed motives.  Doing what is right in our own eyes is self serving, it can be good or evil, the main point is that moral confusion ensues and society disintegrates.

I’ll blog tomorrow and Wednesday on the two solutions God gives us in Judges 19-21.

I find it strange that some of Christendom’s favourite memory verses also tend to be misunderstood. My favourite example is John 3:16, because it is perhaps the world’s #1 Bible verse™, and also because the mistake is a benign one. Few translations are willing to break with the tradition of rendering it, ’For God so loved the world…,’ but this archaic construction drives us to read it as ’for God loved the world so much‘. In fact, we would do better to translate it, ‘For so God loved the world…,’ because it is actually talking about the way in which God has loved us, not the extent. Fortunately both points are well established elsewhere, so it’s not important.

Because the greatest Bible passages get so over-quoted, we tend to glaze over when they’re read, and their impact is diluted or lost entirely. Philippians yields its fair share of these, and it’s a shame, because the one in chapter 3:1-11 is a cracker.

In chapter 3 of Philippians, Paul’s tone changes, which prompts scholars to justify their salaries and speculate that the book is actually a composite of two letters, a nice one and a nasty one, or that Paul must have received some bad news about his recipients before writing this chapter. Neither of those reasons seem plausible or necessary, seeing as Paul’s vitriol is aimed at his life-long troublers: those known as ‘The Circumcision’. They tended to follow him around spoiling his gospel and making trouble for him, and were perhaps even the cause of his imprisonment at the time of writing. That would make me a bit snippy. In response, chapter 3 addresses this trouble with one of the more striking presentations of the doctrine of grace in all of scripture.

It’s all about qualifications. What is it that gains God’s acceptance? The Circumcision evidently insisted that God’s people needed to keep God’s law, including the basic qualification of circumcision into Israel. Paul answers them in two astonishing ways.

Firstly, he refuses to call them The Circumcision, he calls them The Mutilation (a literal translation of v2). Perhaps he’s being ironic and a bit mean, but their demand for cutting as a qualification is a vile distortion of the true means of entry to God’s people. In verse 3, he claims that it is those who worship by the Spirit, including the ‘unclean’ Romans to whom he was writing, who are truly the circumcised, and (very paradoxically) they are the true circumcision because they do not put confidence in the flesh.

Secondly, and just in case people thought he was merely being factious, Paul makes an example of himself. He’s not attacking the circumcision because they’re his enemies, but because he was one of them and they’re wrong. If it’s qualifications you want, he says, how about this for privilege! Paul lists an impressive series of qualifications that would serve to demonstrate just how high up the ladder he actually was. He had the right badge, the right tribe, the right parentage and language, the right training, lots of zeal, and no legal demerits against his name. He wasn’t just on their side, he was their leader. (And now the memory verse):

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ… (3:7-8)

We tend to be over-familiar with this verse, I think, and I’m certainly used to reading Paul as saying, ‘I used to be a somebody, but I realised that it was all unimportant, so I gave it up for Jesus’. Maybe we like the verse this way, because it’s the go-to text for the conversion story of anybody who was successful in the eyes of the world, but realised their need for Christ.

But this isn’t what Paul means, and I’m pleased, because it means that this passage is actually an essential reminder for all of us, not just the ex-successes. Firstly, the qualifications that he lists are spiritual qualifications, not business credentials. Secondly, he doesn’t say that he considers them to be useless or vain. He says that they are loss. He’s not listing business credentials, but he is using business language. The things that appeared to be in Paul’s religious ‘profits’ column of the ledger (or trial balance – I forget; I’m horrible at accounting) were actually losses. They got in the way. They didn’t help to commend him to God; they only served to disqualify him!

For the people eager to hold up their spiritual qualifications, whether the Pharisee or the bishop or the miracle healer or the tongues-speaker, Paul has a delightful word for those spiritual trophies. He calls them skubala, by all accounts best translated as something impolite and dungy; let’s go with ‘turds’. If you think you’re on the inside track because you’re circumcised or a preacher or God’s prophet for your church, hold onto those turds with a loose hand. When we begin to presume upon a fitness or a righteousness of our own, we are in danger of not holding onto Christ.

Why the danger? Why are our merits ‘loss’? They are loss because they make us believe that we can achieve the impossible: we think that acceptance before God is something that we can deserve. We can’t. And what’s worse, at great personal expense, God is busy trying to give it to us for free, and we keep saying, ‘Don’t worry; I’ve got this.’ Jesus once urged us to become like infants: statusless, helpless creatures who have to receive or die. It’s only by losing all of our merits that we see clearly to receive by faith what God is offering as a gift.

I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.

By James Mudge – BeyondHollywood.com

More Japanese gore madness arrives from 4Digital Asia in the shapely form of “Samurai Princess”, the cover art not coincidently bearing a striking resemblance to that of its recent sister in slaughter, “Chanbara Beauty”. The film’s pedigree should certainly give fans of the form reason to be excited, with it having been directed by Kengo Kaji, the co-writer of “Tokyo Gore Police”, and featuring effects by Yoshihiro Mishimura, the director of said genre highpoint. Also likely to be of no small enticement is the presence of AV actress Aino Kishi in the lead role, with support from fellow AV star Mihiro (recently in the horror “The Cruel Restaurant”).

Aino Kishi plays an android killing machine stitched together from the parts of eleven young girls who were raped and killed by a particularly nasty gang of miscreants. Brought back to life by a mad scientist, she sets off on the usual revenge spree, slicing and dicing her way through hordes of strangely clad enemies and bizarre villains.

Aino Kishi

Given its director and the involvement of Yoshihiro Mishimura, most viewers should know well in advance whether or not “Samurai Princess” is likely to be a film for them. For those who don’t, or for the curious, the first 5 minutes of the film will make things abundantly clear one way or the other, featuring such delightful scenes as the heroine removing a man’s brain to quite literally read his mind and her detaching her breasts to hurl at her enemies. Certainly, the film is bloody even by the standards of the genre, packing in an impressive amount of dismemberment, evisceration, mutilation and shots of characters being torn apart by freakish villains with weapons for body parts.

Amazon Specials!

- Monsieur ?

- La comtesse, quelle chambre ?

- Quelle comtesse, monsieur ? Nous avons cent dix-sept comtesses, trente-six princesses de sang, trois cent dix-huit duchesses, six cent soixante-et-une marquises, et un nombre incalculables de sangs-mêlés.

- Bathory.

- Mon Dieu. Vous vouliez dire, la comtesse ? Voilà une information que je ne puis malheureusement vous communiquer, monsieur. Ceci dit, si la noblesse d’empire intéresse monsieur, on peut toujours…

- Seule la Comtesse Rouge m’intéresse.

- Du regard de monsieur, je déduis qu’aucune proposition autre que son désir premier ne lui agréera. C’est bien dommage, monsieur, car, comme je vous l’ai dit, tel renseignement ne peut être obtenu. Si monsieur veut bien m’excuser.

Le robot-chair détourne les yeux un instants, cela suffit à North pour trépaner la bête en ranger son aiguillon dans sa manche dans le même mouvement. Le steward demeure figé, le regard vitreux, une larme noire affleure à la narine gauche et commence déjà à coaguler, s’écaille et tombe en microscopique pluie d’anicroche.

- La comtesse. Quelle chambre ?

- Chambre 213, monsieur. Deuxième étage, premier couloir sur votre droite, attention à l’éclairage, il peut être capricieux dans ces ailes de haute sécurité. Bien le bonjour, monsieur.

Author:  Jeff Lindsay

Title:  Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Genre: Psychological Suspense

Publication Date:  2004

Number of Pages:  304

Geographical Setting: Miami, Florida

Time Period: Present Day

Series (If Applicable): Dexter, 1

Plot Summary:  Dexter Morgan is a blood-splatter analyst for the Miami police department.  This is a good job for him because Dexter has a secret life that only he and his late foster father Harry knew about.  Inside Dexter is a monster who needs to kill and it is currently controlled by the “Code of Harry” which states that Dexter is only to kill bad guys – not good guys.  This job keeps him close to those bad guys that need to be taken care of.  A killer is on the loose in Miami cutting up women and Dexter starts to relate to the killer and uses his insight to help his sister, Deborah, who is also a cop move from “streetwalker” patrol to homicide.  Dexter understands what makes this guy tick and he begins to admire the killers work.  He struggles to live his life like other normal humans but inside he feels the Dark Passenger demand that he kill again.

Subject Headings:  Serial murderers, Forensic scientists, Psychopathic criminals, Vigilantes,
Murderer-detectives, Adoptees, Policewomen — Miami, Florida, Police — Miami, Florida,
Brothers and sisters, Father and son, Serial murders, Serial murder investigation, Crime scene searches, Crime laboratories, Mutilation, Secrets, Personal conduct, Men/women relations,
Miami, Florida, Psychological suspense stories

Appeal: Dark, Methodical, Thriller, Horror, Graphic, Mutilation, Ominous, Strange, Twists, Unresolved ending, Series, Chilling, Measured Pacing, First Person Narration, Creepy, Psychological Suspense, Madness, Serial Killers, Disturbing, Page-Turner.

3 Terms that best describe this book: Disturbing, Graphic and Suspenseful

Similar Authors and Works (Why are they similar?):

3 Non-Fiction Works

Inside the Minds of Serial Killers: Why They Kill by Katherine Ramsland – This book details a wide variety of motives for why people become serial killers. It shows that there is not a profile for serial killers.

Serial Killers: The Method and the Madness of Monsters by Peter Vronsky – This book talks about the history of serial killers and documents the psychological, investigative, and cultural aspects of serial murder.

Serial Killers and Mass Murderers: Profiles of the World’s Most Barbaric Criminals by Nigel Cawthorne – This book describes what makes ordinary people turn into killers.  It explores the minds of these people who commit these crimes and why people are so fascinated by them.

3 Fiction Works

Dearly Devoted Dexter: a Novel by Jeff Lindsay – Book 2 in the Dexter series continues the story of the first book.  There is a new serial killer on the loose and Sergeant Drakes is getting more suspicious of Dexter.

Deeper than the Dead by Tami Hoag – Two boys and a girl stumble on a murder victim of the “See No Evil Killer” who just may turn out to be the father of one of the boys.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris – Will Graham has the ability to project himself into the minds of psychopathic serial killers.  He is called on to investigate the murders of two suburban families.

Name: Chris S.

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about the nice girl. She’s always there, smiling quietly until you talk to her. She listens to your problems, tries her best to do anything she can for you, holds your hand, keeps your secrets, does not ask for anything in return and then she fades into the background. She is sweet, funny, kind, insightful… and she must be happy, right? I mean, she’s so nice, how could she be anything but happy? You don’t know much about her, but then again, she usually asks about you, helps you, takes time to do things for you… and you have no idea who she really is. What’s her favorite color? Does she have a pet? What’s with that nice girl, anyway?

.

You have little time to wonder about the nice girl. You already have your friends and your life and, honestly, that girl is probably too nice to hang out with in real life. You’d spend the whole time trying not to look like a horrible person around nice girl! She’s a freaking saint, we wouldn’t be able to do anything around her. Lets just be nice, ask for her email, write her number in our planner and then forget.  What was nice girl’s name? Oh, well.

.

Nice girl, is nice. She thinks that unflappable kindness will win her friends. She goes home, and sits there wondering why no one that took her number will call her.  She listens to stores of parties that you went to, movies, adventures, and she silently wishes she was good enough to have been there with you, because somehow she had failed you and was deemed unfit. She sees the people around her, takes them in and holds them dear just to be forgotten a moment later when a “real” friend shows up. You think nice girl is always smiling, because you turn away and don’t see the hurt look on her face.

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Nice girl seems to get along with everyone, but she has no place in any of their circles. She devotes herself to everyone around her, and has nothing left for herself, and no one to fulfill any part of her. No one thinks she needs it, she’s so happy all the time. She is optimistic, cheerful and no one has anything bad to say about her. What was nice girl’s name again? Started with an “A”?

.

Nice girl is sad and lonely and confused. She doesn’t know why she’s not included, doesn’t understand why she’s so forgettable. She thinks that something is wrong with her. She’s definitely nice enough, she must not be pretty enough, smart enough. There’s something wrong, she deserves to be miserable, she’s cursed, it’s bad karma. She helps throw surprise parties for people she barely knows or doesn’t like very well to sit in the corner at the party, alone. She sits alone on her own birthday,too, since no one could be bothered. Nice girl turns more and more inside herself, and it’s a dark place. She wishes, dreams, hopes, prays, begs for things to be different the next day. She smiles and helps and gives and asks for nothing another day. She digs so deep inside her heart that it hurts. No one notices when she outwardly shows her sadness, no one notices when she’s gone for a day. She comes back, hoping someone will have missed her, she lets herself have just a sliver more of hope, but it’s of no use. Nice girl has become a doormat, and she knows that she’s responsible.

.

Why am I telling you about “nice girl”? Because, that was me. That was me for years.  I spent years in that cycle of rejection and depression. I hated myself, I wasn’t good enough, something was wrong with me, I deserved it. “I was bad, so I got hurt.” I wished and wished that someone would for once, just once, invite me into some part of their world. They didn’t. Why should they? I was just nice girl. I was happy enough without them. I would go through my day and spend all of my energy being nice girl, I was totally wiped out when I got home. I would eat or I would cut myself. I would shut myself up in my dark little room and try to rationalize why I couldn’t be happy, couldn’t have friends.

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So I’m telling you this, because nice girl is in pain. There might be one in your life and she doesn’t know how to reach out. Nice girl or nice boy is trying desperately to be your friend, and have you as a friend in return instead of going home empty every day. They don’t have a million other friends, because everyone thinks of them like you do. You brush them off and they feel it, deeply, and would come back and try to make amends for anything that they did wrong. If you look at nice girl or nice boy when they think that no one notices them (which is most of the time) you’ll see the pain. Nice girl doesn’t really smile all the time if you pay attention. She’s so easy to not see even when she’s right next to you and crying silently. Nice girl and nice boy feel worthless, and try to bury it with more niceness in some crazy plan to atone for whatever they must have done wrong.

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Just because someone looks alright on the outside, doesn’t mean they are. They could be bright and sunny, and make you think that they are fine, life is great. So, why put forth the effort? Because they’re dying for someone to realize that they’re there, and they’re a person, too that needs love and laughter and for someone to care about them. People with problems often hide them and sometimes turn into Nice Girl trying to compensate for those problems.

.

So, please, don’t forget that nice girl or nice boy that you might know. It’s so easy to put them off, you’re a busy person and they seem so well adjusted and optimistic. I was once nice girl, and it was killing me. Signs that someone needs help aren’t always so obvious, and returning niceness is sometimes all it takes to turn someone’s day, hell, week around. Just because someone doesn’t seem like they need positive attention, doesn’t mean that they don’t need it.

.

Nice girl is still very much a part of me. I learned how to stand up for myself, though, and I figured out that a lot of the “friends” that I was chasing weren’t worth my time. I learned that I needed to assert myself more, and ask for help and I’ve made some friends. I accepted parts of myself, and worked to change other parts. Not all nice girls and boys figure this out, they can’t all do it, they don’t all find the support that they need. Then you wonder why that nice girl or boy killed themselves, they were always just… so nice.

.

I am worth anything in this world, you are worth anything else in this world so please, please make someone else feel like they’re worth anything, too.

A festival held on Phuket Island in Thailand, in each of the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar, in order to purify their bodies, shocks the world.
Participants in the festival are eating only plant foods for ten days, pray, and the braver ones mutilate themselves sticking various objects in their bodies.
In addition, they climb a ladder made of swords or stepping on hot coals with their bare feet.
The purpose of these masochistic rituals is to get spiritual purification
The festival is 150 years old and lasts 10 days.

In dire straights the liar waits and sits about his lawn. The trees stand still and though with will the wind is tried and calm. The dripping rain and a damp night shade help to nurture until dawn. Our eyes don’t lie but our liar does cry for whomever will give him time. Now we stare at the sun and claim it is fun until realization is worth something.

Up they did throw their true liar, upon a bed of burning brush. A scream for life, and a contortion of strife, playful painful dull.

Now this one did exit the scene and cast away all the obscene and wanted forgiveness only from flame. He begged and he moaned, self flagellation that shone, a number nine blade (a razor) and a piece of canvas (for later). “Draw in my blood” he picked up a pen and he drew. Painful morning, afternoon.

How long could he wait, without words to demonstrate, that he could ever be one forgiven? Drawing lines in the sand and stabbing the back of his hand, he waited and wandered and paced.

Battered and bruised, scarred and abused, the man sat on the edge of a cliff. He waited for lightning to strike.

Quick lights have been dancing, but our guilty one waits, there is no solace in an answer that you can only expect.

It’s true.

Antichrist is going to be revealed this Friday, October 23, 2009.

No, not that Antichrist.  A different one; but one of the same spirit.  A movie titled “Antichrist.”

Already dubbed “the most horrific movie ever seen” for explicit and pornographic sadomasochism, violence and occult content, the film “Antichrist” is not yet rated, but when it is, the rating it gets could determine whether or not it’s seen in your local theater – and there may be something you can do about it.

The Christian media ministry MovieGuide is inviting people concerned about the film’s gruesome and graphic content to join a petition of the Motion Picture Association of America to rate the movie NC-17, which would not only prevent children from viewing the film, but also dissuade many theaters from showing it.

“Coming to your local theater Oct. 23 is a movie that I can only call the most horrific movie ever seen,” writes Dr. Ted Baehr, founder and publisher of Movieguide and chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission. “It’s called ‘Antichrist,’ and it’s filled with a wicked worldview, vile pornographic scenes, onscreen mutilation of private parts and some other material which I simply cannot describe to you in a family publication.”

“We cannot stop this movie,” he continues, “but we have a strategy which we believe will be the next best thing.”

MovieGuide’s petition explains three reasons why an NC-17 rating, rather than an R rating for the film, would limit the number of people – especially children – exposed to the movie:

• “An R rated movie easily makes its way to the cinema in your local neighborhood. Thankfully, many local cinemas still won’t show the movie if it’s NC-17.
• “An R-rated movie stands a chance to make more money than NC-17, and this will only encourage some producers in Hollywood to make more vile movies like this.
• “And most importantly, children under 17 cannot get into movies with an NC-17 rating, unlike R-rated movies, which admit them.”

The film “Antichrist” stars Willem Defoe, who also played the role of Jesus in “The Last Temptation of Christ,” a film blasted as blasphemous by many Christians.

According to MovieGuide’s review of the film, Defoe’s newest effort includes demonic activity, full nudity and graphic on-screen depictions of sex, sadomasochism, sexual mutilation with both a block of wood and a pair of scissors, child abuse, and violent animal acts.

“‘Antichrist’ is the wicked story of a married couple’s plunge into occult darkness as they try to grieve the loss of their son,” the review states. “This movie wallows in evil and contains extremely graphic pornographic sexual scenes, much occult content and extreme sadomasochistic violence, making it a movie to avoid.”

So come on everyone, let’s do our part!

Please take a moment to sign the petition and then send the link to this post to everyone you know so that we can stand united against this abomination of a film.

New image in the nightmares photoshop contest

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Facial Mutilation photoshop picture