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She got shot in the brain at a planned event today.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110108/ts_yblog_theticket/report-congresswoman-giffords-shot

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot Saturday. While some initial reports said Giffords had died, the local sheriff, Clarence Dupnick and University Medical Center spokeswoman Darci Slaten say she is alive and in surgery. Her husband confirmed that to ABC. She was hosting a public event at a Safeway grocery store on the north side of Tucson.

According to Slaten, nine other people were shot. According to a law enforcement source speaking to CNN, 11 others were shot. Both CNN and TPM are reporting that the victims include a federal judge.

The motives of the attacker, who was detained on the scene and taken into custody, are at this point unknown. Fox is reporting that the gunman "ran up and began shooting indiscriminately as Giffords addressed supporters." According to the New York Times, the Tucson Citizen is reporting that Giffords was shot at close range.

Witnesses say that the gunman was in his "late teens or early twenties." An eyewitness who contacted Gawker says that he was young, mid-to-late 20s, white clean-shaven with short hair and wearing dark clothing." According to their source, he looked like a "fringe character."

Giffords was first elected represent Arizona's 8th district in 2006. She is married to astronaut Mike Kelly.

The Associated Press has video from the scene immediately after the shooting:

Here's an interesting event with an actress from Harry Potter being threatened y her immediate family for dating a practicioner of Sanatana Dharma. I think it's cruel for some of these dudes to try and break up the marriages of converts who have husbands who are not muslim.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-04/harry-potters-afshan-azad-receives-death-threats/?cid=hp:vertical:r

Actress Afshan Azad was allegedly threatened with death for dating a Hindu. Asra Nomani argues that women will suffer until intolerant Muslims absorb some of the values of Harry Potter.

Not long ago, when I watched British-Muslim actress Afshan Azad, 22 years old, glide into the Yule Ball at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as Padma Patil, a witch going to the ball with pasty, red-haired ?Ron Weasley,? I thought to myself: Only in the world of fantasy could a Muslim proudly play a Hindu girl, learning magic and choosing a "non-believing" man from outside the faith so freely?and without censure.

Indeed, according to the BBC, Azad's father, Abdul Azad, 54, and his son Ashraf, 28, allegedly threatened to kill the actress this year, on May 21, in their Manchester, England, home, because she was heard talking on the phone to her Hindu boyfriend. At a hearing last Tuesday, the father and son were charged with the attack. Ashraf was also accused of assaulting his sister and charged with ?assault occasioning actual bodily harm.?

The next hearing is scheduled for July 12, and the British media is reporting that the actress is staying with friends in London. There are also reports that John Wolfson, a defense lawyer for the father and brother, says the actress is trying to retract her statements in an attempt to keep her family from going to jail, but a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service said it will continue to pursue the case.

To me, as a 45-year-old American Muslim woman who has struggled from my teen years until recently with the question of whether I could love outside my faith, the attack reflects a troubling intolerance in our community toward a Muslim woman choosing a partner who isn't Muslim, and it also reveals our very problematic relationship with Hinduism.

The attack on Azad underscores just how important it is that we honor the right of every woman to choose her own partner?and accept her fundamental right to love a man outside her faith. Ironically, Azad's name means "freedom," and, to me, she?like all women?has a divinely ordained freedom to choose whom she loves without fear of violence, persecution, or assault. And, as Muslims, it is critical for us to respect Hindus as people of faith, expressed differently but no less sincerely.

Our choice is simple: Life, love, and tolerance over puritanical religious dogma that can turn violent.

Since the birth of Islam in the seventh century, the "consensus of scholars" has declared that a Muslim woman cannot marry a man who isn't Muslim, and in the 21st century most families and women have accepted this ban as doctrine, causing great suffering of the heart to many. Men who are ?People of the Book,? meaning Christians and Jews, have traditionally been forbidden to Muslim women, even though Muslim men have been allowed to marry Christian and Jewish women, on the flawed premise that children learn religion from their father.

But most anathema for Muslim women and men, according to the orthodox scholars, are people who are perceived to be ?polytheistic,? such as Hindus.

There are many of us who are following a principle that the Prophet Muhammad is said to have declared, ?Seek a fatwa from your heart.? Last year, I jetted to Doha, Qatar, to participate in the Doha Debates and argue for the motion, "This House believes that Muslim women should be free to marry anyone they choose.? The motion won the day 62 percent to 38 percent. To me, it was the young, bright-eyed Muslim women in the audience who carried the motion. After the debate, I published a piece in Marie Claire magazine, writing about my choice to marry a man who isn't Muslim in an article, ?My Big Fat Muslim Wedding."

In response, I got letters of support from many Muslim women struggling with the same issue. Just last week, I received a letter from a Canadian woman who has converted to Islam, wondering if she had to now divorce her husband, a Christian, as some orthodox scholars have argued a convert must do. She worried about censure from inside the Muslim community. She wrote: ?I am not concerned what Allah thinks, because I believe Allah sees into our heart and sees my tears.? I wrote to her: Prevail. There are interpretations by scholars today that allow a Muslim woman to marry anyone?including a Hindu man?if that is her choice.

I got ugly reminders from many other Muslims that I was betraying my religion. On one blog, "Tahseen" called me "a whore." On MuslimMatters.org, I was called ?a witch.? One Muslim writer wrote the audience should be ?lashed? for voting for the motion. And a Muslim man wrote about my debate partner and me: ?May Allah freeze the blood in their vains [sic] and keep them alive to know how it feels like.? Just to explain himself, he added: ?(I could not find any Duaa [prayer] against them that is softer than this.).?

To me, this violent response underscores just how important it is to some people to control women.

The situation of forced marriages is so bad that the British government had to establish a forced-marriages unit to rescue folks from unions they entered against their will. This is a problem throughout the immigrant community in the United Kingdom. But for even one Muslim woman to be forced into a marriage is testimony to the fact that we aren?t successfully unified around a simple idea: Women can?t be forced into a marriage.

Sadly, we practice a double standard when it comes to issues of love, sex, and marriage for Muslim women and men. A renowned 20th-century Syrian poet, Nizzar Kabbani, reflected on this double standard when he wrote, from the perspective of a woman: ?My brother returns from the whorehouse proud and strutting like a cock. Praise be to God who created him out of light and us out of vile cinders and blessed be He who wipes away his sins and does not wipe away ours.?

This is what I say to women, burdened with this double standard: Rather than seeking permission from others, we have to internally reject the idea that we must live with shame. We must seek forgiveness for the mistakes we?ve made in deed or in action, and stride forward, strong and free, in the pursuit of goodness.

In her own way, Azad has challenged orthodoxy on many fronts. In the movie, her character practices sorcery, which is anathema to orthodox interpretations of Islam. Two years ago, in Saudi Arabia, Lebanese TV host Ali Sabat was arrested by religious police while in the country and charged with sorcery for "predicting the future" on his show. Last year, he was sentenced to death.

Part of the appeal of Harry Potter is that anything is possible (not to mention interracial dating) and that is a cue that modern leaders of religion need to understand, I believe: that religion should be a force for liberation, not repression. Science fiction and fantasy are again on the cutting edge of social convention. Padma Patil's cinematic romance follows in the footsteps of Captain Kirk's cross-racial and interspecies romances with women such as Lieutenant Uhuru, the black communications officer on the Starship USS Enterprise.

Interestingly, as Azad means ?freedom? in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Turkish, and other languages, "Uhuru" means "freedom" in Swahili. And the pursuit of freedom for women is timeless and universal from the world of Harry Potter to the streets of Manchester, England.

[A Tribute to My Friend, Michael Jackson]

A Tribute to My Friend, Michael Jackson
June 26, 2009


Michael  Jackson will be remembered, most likely, as a shattered icon, a pop genius who wound up a mutant of fame. That?s not who I will remember, however. His  mixture of mystery, isolation, indulgence, overwhelming global fame, and personal loneliness was intimately known to me.  For twenty years I observed every aspect, and as easy as it was to love Michael ? and to want to protect him ? his sudden death yesterday seemed almost fated.

Two days previously he had called me in an upbeat, excited mood. The voice message said, ?I?ve got some really good news to share with you.?  He was writing a song about the environment, and he wanted me to help informally with the lyrics, as we had done several times before.  When I tried to return his call, however, the number was disconnected. (Terminally spooked by his treatment in the press, he changed his phone number often.)  So I never got to talk to him, and the music demo he sent me lies on my bedside table as a poignant symbol of an unfinished life.

When we first met, around 1988, I was struck by the combination of charisma and woundedness that surrounded Michael.  He would be swarmed by crowds at an airport, perform an exhausting show for three hours, and then sit backstage afterward, as we did one night in Bucharest, drinking bottled water, glancing over some Sufi poetry as I walked into the room, and wanting to meditate.

That person, whom I considered (at the risk of ridicule) very pure, still survived ? he was reading the poems of Rabindranath Tagore when we talked the last time, two weeks ago.  Michael exemplified the paradox of many famous performers, being essentially shy, an introvert who would come to my house and spend most of the evening sitting by himself in a corner with his small children.  I never saw less than a loving father when they were together (and wonder now, as anyone close to him would, what will happen to them in the aftermath).

Michael?s reluctance to grow up was another part of the paradox. My children adored him, and in return he responded in a childlike way. He declared often, as former child stars do, that he was robbed of his childhood. Considering the monstrously exaggerated value our society places on celebrity, which was showered on Michael without stint, the public was callous to his very real personal pain. It became another tawdry piece of the tabloid Jacko, pictured as a weird changeling and as something far more sinister.

It?s not my place to comment on the troubles Michael fell heir to from the past and then amplified by his misguided choices in life.  He was surrounded by enablers, including a shameful plethora of M.D.s in Los Angeles and elsewhere who supplied him with prescription drugs. As many times as he would candidly confess that he had a problem, the conversation always ended with a deflection and denial.  As I write this paragraph, the reports of drug abuse are spreading across the cable news channels.  The instant I heard of his death this afternoon, I had a sinking feeling that prescription drugs would play a key part.

The closest we ever became, perhaps, was when Michael needed a book to sell primarily as a concert souvenir. It would contain pictures for his fans but there would also be a text consisting of short fables. I sat with him for hours while he dreamily wove Aesop-like tales about animals, mixed with words about music and his love of all things musical. This project became ?Dancing the Dream? after I pulled the text together for him, acting strictly as a friend. It was this time together that convinced me of the modus vivendi Michael had devised for himself: to counter the tidal wave of stress that accompanies mega-stardom, he built a private retreat in a fantasy world where pink clouds veiled inner anguish and Peter Pan was a hero, not a pathology.

This compromise with reality gradually became unsustainable.  He went to strange lengths to preserve it. Unbounded privilege became another toxic force in his undoing.  What began as idiosyncracy, shyness, and vulnerability was ravaged by obsessions over health, paranoia over security, and an isolation that grew more and more unhealthy.  When Michael passed me the music for that last song, the one sitting by my bedside waiting for the right words, the procedure for getting the CD to me rivaled a CIA covert operation in its secrecy.

My memory of Michael Jackson will be as complex and confused as anyone?s.  His closest friends will close ranks and try to do everything in their power to insure that the good lives after him. Will we be successful in rescuing him after so many years of media distortion?  No one can say. I only wanted to put some details on the record in his behalf.  My son Gotham traveled with Michael as a roadie on his ?Dangerous? tour when he was thirteen. Will it matter that Michael behaved with discipline and impeccable manners around my son? (It sends a shiver to recall something he told Gotham: ?I don?t want to go out like Marlon Brando. I want to go out like Elvis.? Both icons were obsessions of this icon.)

His children?s nanny and surrogate mother, Grace Rwamba, is like another daughter to me. I introduced her to Michael when she was eighteen, a beautiful, heartwarming  girl from Rwanda who is now grown up. She kept an eye on him for me and would call me whenever he was down or running too close to the edge. How heartbreaking for Grace that no one?s protective instincts and genuine love could avert this tragic day. An hour ago she was sobbing on the telephone from London. As a result, I couldn?t help but write this brief remembrance in sadness. But when the shock subsides and a thousand public voices recount Michael?s brilliant, joyous, embattled, enigmatic, bizarre trajectory, I hope the word ?joyous? is the one that will rise from the ashes and shine as he once did.


http://deepakchopra.com/default/a-tribute-to-my-friend-michael-jackson/

Joe

Entertaining video. I hope the point does not fly over some of your heads. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd2FMKp7ODk

Joe

CAIRO (June 1) -- A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.
After unsuccessfully petitioning his father for two years to marry the girl, the man heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ, said a police official.
 
The young man came from a prominent family in the southern Egyptian province of Qena, one of Egypt's poorest and most conservative areas that is also home to the famed ancient Egyptian ruins of Luxor.
The man was rushed to the hospital but doctors were unable to reattach the severed member, the official added citing the police report filed after the incident.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press, added that the man was still recovering in the hospital.
Traditionally, marriages in these conservative part of southern Egypt are between similar social classes and often within the same extended families ? and are rarely for love.

http://news.aol.com/article/man-cuts-off-penis/505512?icid=main|aimzones|dl1|link6|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fman-cuts-off-penis%2F505512

I don't know if he was mentally ill but he sure did go out of his way to spite his family.

Joe

Peace

I thought this story was interesting becauce people tend to think suicide is horrible. Here you have people actually witnessing it and joking about it, while there is concern with other people about the situation as it happens. Technology today makes things interesting and as it is said, you can get just about anything with the click of a button.

MIAMI ? A college student committed suicide by taking a drug overdose in front of a live webcam as some computer users egged him on, others tried to talk him out of it, and another messaged OMG in horror when it became clear it was no joke. Some watchers contacted the Web site to notify police, but by the time officers entered Abraham Biggs' home ? a scene also captured on the Internet ? it was too late.

Biggs, a 19-year-old Broward College student who suffered from what his family said was bipolar disorder, or manic depression, lay dead on his bed in his father's Pembroke Pines house Wednesday afternoon, the camera still running 12 hours after Biggs announced his intentions online around 3 a.m.

It was unclear how many people watched it unfold.

Biggs was not the first person to commit suicide with a webcam rolling. But the drawn-out drama ? and the reaction of those watching ? was seen as an extreme example of young people's penchant for sharing intimate details about themselves over the Internet.

Biggs' family was infuriated that no one acted sooner to save him, neither the viewers nor the Web site that hosted the live video, Justin.tv. The Web site shows a video image, with a space alongside where computer users can instantly post comments.

Only when police arrived did the Web feed stop, "so that's 12 hours of watching," said the victim's sister, Rosalind Bigg. "They got hits, they got viewers, nothing happened for hours."

She added: "It didn't have to be."

An autopsy concluded Biggs died from a combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, which his family said was prescribed for his bipolar disorder.

Biggs announced his plans to kill himself over a Web site for bodybuilders, authorities said. But some users told investigators they did not take him seriously because he had threatened suicide on the site before.

Some members of his virtual audience encouraged him to do it, others tried to talk him out of it, and some discussed whether he was taking a dose big enough to kill himself, said Wendy Crane, an investigator with the Broward County medical examiner's office.

A computer user who claimed to have watched said that after swallowing some pills, Biggs went to sleep and appeared to be breathing for a few hours while others cracked jokes.

Someone notified the moderator of the bodybuilding site, who traced Biggs' location and called police, Crane said.

As police entered the room, the audience's reaction was filled with Internet shorthand: "OMFG," one wrote, meaning "Oh, my God." Others, either not knowing what they were seeing, or not caring, wrote "lol," which means "laughing out loud," and "hahahah."

An online video purportedly from Biggs' webcam shows a gun-wielding officer entering a bedroom, where a man is lying on a bed, his face turned away from the camera. The officer begins to examine him, as the camera lens is covered. Authorities could not immediately verify the authenticity of the video, though it matched their description of what occurred.

Montana Miller, an assistant professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said Biggs' very public suicide was not shocking, given the way teenagers chronicle every facet of their lives on sites like Facebook and MySpace.

"If it's not recorded or documented then it doesn't even seem worthwhile," she said. "For today's generation it might seem, `What's the point of doing it if everyone isn't going to see it?'"

She likened Biggs' death to other public ways of committing suicide, like jumping off a bridge.

Crane said she knows of a case in which a Florida man shot himself in the head in front of an online audience, though she didn't know how much viewers saw. In Britain last year, a man hanged himself while chatting online.

In a statement, Justin.tv CEO Michael Seibel said: "We regret that this has occurred and want to respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time."

The Web site would not say how many people were watching the broadcast. The site as a whole had 672,000 unique visitors in October, according to Nielsen.

Miami lawyer William Hill said there is probably nothing that could be done legally to those who watched and did not act. As for whether the Web site could be held liable, Hill said there doesn't seem to be much of a case for negligence.

"There could conceivably be some liability if they knew this was happening and they had some ability to intervene and didn't take action," said Hill, who does business litigation and has represented a number of Internet-based clients. But "I think it would be a stretch."

Condolences poured into Biggs' MySpace page, where the mostly unsmiling teen is seen posing in a series of pictures with various young women. On the bodybuilding Web site, Biggs used the screen name CandyJunkie. His Justin.tv alias was "feels_like_ecstacy."

Rosalind Bigg described her brother as an outgoing person who struck up conversations with Starbucks baristas and enjoyed taking his young nieces to Chuck E. Cheese. He was health-conscious and exercised but was not a bodybuilder, she said.

"This is very, very sudden and unexpected for us," the sister said. "It boggles the mind. We don't understand."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081122/ap_on_re_us/webcam_suicide

I been finding some interesting and humorous things on youtube. I'd like to share a funny, yet serious video because this lady could be the most powerful woman in the world one day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efACWYRNRcQ&feature=related

Joe

This topic has been moved to Marriage & Divorce.

http://free-minds.org/forum/index.php?topic=9596981.0

I thought it was interesting that the armour of a fish could help in the development of new and better designs of armour for humans.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080727/sc_livescience/incrediblefisharmorcouldsuitsoldiers

Joe

I was just thinking these guys must be like, what the heck is that demon/creature in the sky! Still, it's a pity people are destroying cultures and the enviroment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080529/sc_nm/brazil_tribe_dc

Joe

Peace

I thought this story was hilarious when I heard about it.

http://www.local6.com/news/14345755/detail.html

Joe

Peace

Apparently humans will be 2 different species in about a 1000 years. Alot of technology and medicine variables will contribute to the changes. Seems like the elite species would be mine own. 

Joe

Peace

I thought it was interesting that a new source of energy may have been happened upon. What are your thoughts?

http://green.yahoo.com/index.php?q=node/1570

Joe

Peace

I found this little article interesting about someone claiming ninjas beat shoalin monks thus pointing out that they are not real martial artists.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070831/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_china_ninja

Joe

Peace

I thought it was interesting that President Jefferson had a quran translation. That's a pretty old one.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070103/ap_on_go_co/ellison_quran

Anyways, this muslim congressman (the 1st in the U.S. apparently) will swear in on it rather than on the Bible.

Joe