TAMPA, Fla. Jessica Sierra, a former "American Idol" contestant, was belligerent with Tampa police when she was arrested on battery charges Sunday. Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis said when Sierra was arrested she was uncooperative. Officers had to threaten to shackle her legs because she was trying to kick out the window of the police cruiser, Davis said.
Way to endear yourself to the police, Jess
Sierra is accused of throwing a cocktail glass at a man during a heated exchange at the Hyde Park Cafe on West Platt Street shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday.
I guess that answers the "alcohol involvement" question
The man, Wisan Hadad of Tampa, suffered a laceration over his eye. "Upon booking, a small amount of cocaine was found in her possession," Davis said.
Sierra was a top-10 contestant on "American Idol" in 2005. In the jail record, Sierra, 21, identified herself as a self-employed singer.
Hopefully it's merely a psychopath or "suicide by cop", not another instance of Sudden Jihad Syndrome.
The discovery of a woman's body in a house led to a wild shooting spree at a Missouri mall Sunday that left at least three people dead -- including a gunman. At least two other people were wounded in the Kansas City, Missouri, rampage, KCTV reported.
The TV station said a police officer pulled over a car reported missing from a residence where an elderly woman had been found dead. The driver shot the officer in the arm and then headed to the Ward Parkway Mall -- about nine miles south of downtown Kansas City -- where he was confronted by police in a commons area inside the mall and was shot to death. Two more people were found shot to death on either side of the stolen vehicle. Police, who said other victims may have driven themselves to the hospital, locked down the mall.
Investigators had not determined a motive for the rampage.
Janet Coleman told CNN she saw "a young man with a sawed-off shotgun" in the parking lot being chased by police. Another witness said she saw the gunman firing just two vehicles away from her, as she sat in her truck with her 18-year-old daughter.
"Then after he stopped, he reloaded and started shooting again," she said.
#1
Interesting. One report now states that the dead elderly woman was a neighbor of the gunman. The gunman, still not identified in reports, had told others that he was interested in shooting a lot of people.
AP's latest report cannot confirm that the dead gunman was killed by police.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/30/2007 19:11 ||
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#1
"He broke 11 ribs, lost half of the blood in his body and also broke his left femur, a clavicle, his sternum and a vertebra in his lower back."
Yeah, I'd say he was going fast.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/30/2007 20:29 Comments ||
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#2
That was the accident when he was going 91. On the way home he was doping 70 in 55 zone. The people in NJ are even dumber than the Caliphornicators.
How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth, Maine, could be looking at a cost of about US$2,004.28, which doesn't include the costs of frayed nerves and risks to health.
Sound crazy? Perhaps no more than the stampede to ban the incandescent light bulb in favour of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).
According to an April 12 article in The Ellsworth American, Bridges had the misfortune of breaking a CFL during installation in her daughter's bedroom: It dropped and shattered on the carpeted floor.
Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
Aware that CFLs contain potentially hazardous substances, Bridges called her local Home Depot for advice. The store told her that the CFL contained mercury and that she should call the Poison Control hotline, which in turn directed her to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.
he DEP sent a specialist to Bridges' house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state's "safe" level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter. The DEP specialist recommended that Bridges call an environmental cleanup firm, which reportedly gave her a "low-ball" estimate of US$2,000 to clean up the room. The room then was sealed off with plastic and Bridges began "gathering finances" to pay for the US$2,000 cleaning. Reportedly, her insurance company wouldn't cover the cleanup costs because mercury is a pollutant.
PARIS (Reuters) -- Sitting in a cafe near the Champs Elysees, the 26-year-old French-born woman of Algerian descent looks like any other Parisian. But two months ago, she did something none of her friends have done.
She had her hymen re-sewn, technically making her a virgin again.
"I'm glad I had it done," said the woman, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. "I wanted to reconstruct part of my life, to reconstruct myself so that I could feel better about myself."
This 30-minute outpatient procedure, called "hymenoplasty" and costing between 1,500 and 3,000 euros ($2,000-$4,000), is increasingly popular among young women of North African descent in France.
No exact figures exist to say how many such operations are done, but the woman's surgeon says he gets three to five queries and performs one to three hymenoplasties each week. Demand has been rising for the past three or four years.
Doctor Marc Abecassis, whose office is near the chic Champs Elysees, sees the rise in religion among France's five million Muslims fuelling this trend. His patients are between 18 and 45 years old, Muslim, born both in France and in North Africa.
"Many of my patients are caught between two worlds," said Abecassis. They have had sex already but are expected to be virgins at marriage according to a custom that he called "cultural and traditional, with enormous family pressure."
For this woman, the decision to have the surgery came after she broke up with a boyfriend who had pressured her into having sex. Unable to cope with breaking family tradition, she felt a hymenoplasty would help put her life back together again.
Another of Abecassis' patients, a 22-year-old Algerian immigrant who asked to be called Karima, said most young women had the operation to respect their culture or family tradition, not for religious reasons.
In fact, neither woman is a practicing Muslim. They dress, speak and act like other young Parisians, but are also part of a growing silent group of women who juggle traditional Muslim and modern French values.
All the women who spoke to Reuters did so condition that their identities not be revealed.
DON'T DISAPPOINT THE FIANCE
Karima also lost her virginity to an ex-boyfriend. She plans to marry soon and her fianc� expects her to be a virgin. So last month, she commuted in from an eastern suburb of Paris, where she lives with her parents, and had the surgery.
The next day she was back at work. "I don't want to disappoint my fianc�," she said, adjusting her glasses and brushing her highlighted brown hair from her face. "I wouldn't have had the surgery if I hadn't met him."
A leading Muslim spokesman said Islam says bride and groom should be virgins before marriage, but did not take a clear stand for or against hymenoplasties.
"If someone committed a sin, the essential thing is to repent," said Lhaj Thami Breze, head of the Union of French Islamic Organizations.
For many doctors, resewing the hymen goes against their ideals of sexual freedom and personal liberty.
"The surgery is an attack on women's dignity," said Professor Jacques Lansac, president of The National College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians of France. "We will not take part in a market that places value on the quality of a woman -- if she's good or not. It is an attack on women's liberty."
He also argued that any doctor who performed these operations at state hospitals violated France's legal separation of church and state.
The church-state issue flared up in 2004 when France passed a law banning religious garb, notably headscarves, from state primary and secondary schools.
Since then, Abecassis said, some Muslims in France have been putting much more emphasis on certain customs as a way of expressing their identity. "Today it's the two 'V's' -- veil and virginity," he said. "It's a social phenomenon."
Surprisingly, French social security reimburses some of the cost of the operation in cases of rape or trauma. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, the claim is a fraud," he added.
Still, Abecassis defended the operations and said he helped patients who could not pay his 2,500 euro fee. "This surgery gives them another chance," he said. "It's a rehabilitation. For many, it's the only solution."
ANOTHER PATIENT AWAITS
Sitting in the same cafe, a 19-year-old Moroccan studying in Paris who asked to be called Amel spoke just before her first consultation with Abecassis.
"I dated a boy when I was 15 and I didn't even realize what had happened," she said, referring to her first and only sexual experience. "I didn't understand what I did."
Her parents introduced her to a young man earlier this year, and they plan to wed when she returns to Morocco in June. But he would not accept a non-virgin, so she needs the operation soon.
Amel is scraping together the monthly allowance sent by her parents and emptying her savings account to pay for it. Two friends back home will lend her the remaining 1,000 euros.
"If my mother ever found out about this, she would have a mental breakdown," Amel said. "I don't want to have this surgery, but I don't have any choice."
#3
Next will be a "twoferthepriceofone" including a clitoplasty.
Posted by: Albert Slenter1652 ||
04/30/2007 21:00 Comments ||
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#4
Be a pious muslima and go for the full infibulation, nerve root and all.
Posted by: ed ||
04/30/2007 21:02 Comments ||
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#5
This isn't a new surgery. Back in the late 1970's, when Mr. Wife was tutoring English to Japanese summer students (the State University of New York at Buffalo then had the second biggest English As A Second Language program in the nation -- one of the U. of California schools was #1), the Japanese girls would come over, have an American fling, then get re-virginized before going home at the end of the summer, thoroughly educated. *shrug* A harmless and minor plastic surgery to keep pleasurable past and traditional future separate.
/Rant on
If space wasn't challenging enough. I noticed that the elected astronauts are men. It would have been interesting to know if females were part of the selection and didn't qualify. And how would females deal with trying to be a good Muslim and a astronaut if they did make the cut?
/Rant off
Kuala Lumpur - Muslim-majority Malaysia's first astronaut will get guidelines allowing flexibility in praying in zero gravity and eating space meals under Islamic rules, the country space chief said on Monday.
The government-prepared advice is for a Malaysian joining a Russian scientific mission on the International Space Station in October, Malaysia's National Space Agency chief Mazlan Othman told The Associated Press.
Officials have previously said an Islamic code of conduct in space is necessary because few Muslims have embarked on such expeditions, and there have been no standardized guidelines for them.
Malaysia's two finalists for the voyage, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor and Faiz Khaleed, are now training in Moscow. They were selected from more than 10 000 candidates.
Malaysia held a forum for Islamic scholars in April 2006 to discuss problems Muslim space travellers might face, such as pinpointing the Saudi holy city of Mecca, which Muslims are expected face when they pray five times a day.
The guideline booklet, published this month, says the direction should be determined "according to the capability" of the astronaut.
Those in space during the holy fasting month of Ramadan - when Muslims are required to go without food or water from sunrise to sunset - can choose to fast then or to make up for it when they return, the booklet says.
The first Malaysian astronaut's stint will likely overlap with Ramadan, which starts in mid-September this year.
If Muslim astronauts doubt whether a meal is halaal, or prepared according to Islamic rules, they "should consume it only to the extent of restraining hunger," the guidelines say.
The astronaut must be dressed decently whenever in public view, which involves covering at least the portion of the body between the navel and the knees for men. Both of the finalists for Malaysia's first astronaut are males.
Maintaining Islamic beliefs "is mandatory for Muslims in every situation, time and place," Mustafa Abdul Rahman, who heads Malaysia's state-run department of islamic development, said in the guidelines.
"Circumstances on the ISS which are different from circumstances on Earth are not an obstacle for an astronaut to fulfill a Muslim's obligations," he said.
Other Muslims who have gone to space include Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan bin Salman, who went aboard the US shuttle Discovery in 1985, and Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur who went to the ISS in September 2006. - Sapa-AP
A 25-year-old man who has lived his entire life in the United States has been dumped in Sweden by American authorities.
Charlie Edgmon was born in Sweden and is a Swedish citizen, but moved to Seattle with his mother as a baby. He speaks only English, and leaves three children behind him in Seattle, Aftonbladet reports.
He was deported from the country on Tuesday, accompanied by two US immigration officials who left him at Stockholm Arlanda Airport.
Edgmon has been convicted of drug and gun crimes and has spent three years of his life in jail. He told Aftonbladet that he did not know how he was going to manage in Sweden, where he is staying with acquaintances of his mother in Järna, 50km south of Stockholm.
"The social welfare office told me to get a job. How am I going to do that? I can't even read the job ads," he said.
Edgmon's story is similar to that of another Swede, Stefan Nystrom, who was deported to Sweden in January after a life of crime in Australia. His deportation caused a storm in Australia, where he had lived for all but 27 days of his 32 years, but Edgmon's story has not been widely reported in the US.
#3
Edgmon has been convicted of drug and gun crimes and has spent three years of his life in jail. He told Aftonbladet that he did not know how he was going to manage in Sweden
Deal drugs? Do stickups?
Seemed to work for you here...
The Edwardian era, from the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 to the expiration of her obese but happy son Edward VII (who announced her passing to friends at Osborne House with the words "Gentlemen, you may smoke") from a not entirely surprising double heart attack in 1910, was the Golden Age not just of cricket, motoring, amateurism and one-piece swimsuits for chaps, but of eating.
Unlike his famously stay-at-home mum, Edward VII loved French food and loved eating out. Where he went, the more well-to-do of his admiring subjects followed, generating the first great restaurant boom, an explosion of new and exciting dishes, the arrival of the celebrity chef, and the birth, in the shape of the Pall Mall Gazettes Lieutenant-Colonel Newnham-Davis, of the restaurant critic.
There can have been no better time for a chap like me to be alive. So what an enormous stroke of luck that the BBC were looking for someone to send back to that very era to live, dress, exercise, eat and drink like an Edwardian man of means to find out what it did to his girth, his arteries, his inner organs, his digestion, his mood, his very soul. Some guinea pigs might have been daunted by the prospect of four whopping meals a day, rivers of grog and hardly any fruit, vegetables or water for an entire week. But not I.
I just couldnt wait for them to Edwardian Supersize Me.
In advance of this week of quite possibly hazardous consumption, I was sent to Dr Richard Petty in Harley Street for a check-up, partly to get some "before" levels for the sake of comparison later, and partly to check, just check, that I would be able to handle it.
I was in bullish mood, assuming myself to be just about the healthiest example of a 37-year-old man you could possibly hope to encounter, proffering my arm to the nurses needle and saying to the director, "Ive never had any sort of check-up before. Wouldnt it be funny if I am in such bad shape that I cant actually do the diet at all?"
Hilarious. It turned out that my cholesterol was through the roof, my liver produces too much bile, and I have gout. Or if not gout exactly, then the very high level of uric acid in my blood that will lead me eventually to get gout. And all I can do to prevent it is to avoid offal, shellfish and alcohol the very core elements of the Edwardian diet. As were the red meat, dairy products and fried food that Dr Petty says I must eschew for the sake of my heart.
Suddenly, I wasnt so keen to go Edwardian. All my good mood, all my thrill at the prospect of the coming week, evaporated. At news like this a chap may not necessarily change his diet for ever, but it is a fair bet that he will consume nothing but fish and greens for at least the first week, before lapsing into his old ways.
But to go straight from the doctors to a gigantic breakfast and on into a week of 12-course dinners, riotous alcoholism and pork chops the size of tennis rackets was so counter-intuitive as to seem suicidal. For the first time in my life, and just when it all seemed to be coming together, I actually didnt want to eat.
To get a sense of perspective, I asked the doctor if this experiment could actually kill me (I was feeling a bit dramatic). "Well," he said, not pooh-poohing the notion with nearly enough vigour for my liking, "I wouldnt do it for more than a week."
The meal is served at the Edwardian house in Barnes in which I am residing with my co-presenter Sue Perkins, and is cooked, as all our meals here will be, by the great Sophie Grigson from a weekly menu taken from an Edwardian housekeeping book.
I go at it full tilt, using the age-old technique of "surprising my stomach" by getting as much as possible down before it realises I am full. I do myself proud and end by wiping my fifth cutlet in the remaining curry sauce from my eggs. Sue, a demi-semi-vegetarian, has not fared so well, going green halfway through her first sardine. We discuss briefly how income tax at the preposterously low rate of 5 per cent freed up plenty of cash for eating, but are interrupted by Sophie ringing the bell to announce lunch.
Lunch: Sauté of kidneys on toast, mashed potatoes, macaroni au gratin, rolled ox tongue.
Good stuff, this. Toast all mulched with kidney fat and blood, macaroni good and rich, tongue gigantic and purple. It is exactly what Dr Petty wants me to avoid.
Afternoon tea: Fruit cake, Madeira cake, hot potato cakes, coconut rocks, bread, toast, butter.
High tea was invented by the Edwardians to stave off hunger during the endless minutes between lunch and dinner. Everything is very brown.
Oysters, the gouty mans nemesis. I swallow eight in my patties. I carve the goose, as the man of the house always did, and find that it is not easy in the stiff-fronted shirt I am wearing with my white tie, nor can I properly incline my neck to observe my work, what with the 3in-high stiff separate collar I am wearing, and thus very nearly lose a thumb. Sue says that I can shut up until I have worn a corset. Apparently her spleen and kidneys have already been forced up into her ribcage (a recognised problem of the Edwardian lady) and her stomach, contained in a waist now narrowed to the width of a toddlers thigh, is no longer allowing ingress of food.
And so to bed. But up again an hour later for a midnight snack of roast chicken and Madeira. King Edward always took a roast chicken to bed with him, so it seems only right. Alas, after my chicken, I do not get back to sleep. I have consumed 5,000 calories in a single day, well over Dr Pettys recommendation of 1,800, and toss and turn and rumble until dawn.
DAY 2
Breakfast at Simpsons-in-the-Strand: Smoked haddock, scrambled eggs, kippers, cold cuts, one roast pheasant, fruit, bacon, sausages, devilled kidneys, scones and kedgeree.
I feel good walking in to Simpsons in my impeccable morning dress and top hat, but after scoffing a fair portion of everything I spend the rest of the day wishing I was dead. This was the sort of breakfast available in country houses all over England and died out only with the decline in domestic staff and the introduction of cereal from America. In short, we gave it all up for Frosties.
Lunch at Rules, Covent Garden: Oysters, foie gras terrine, roast cod with asparagus, mutton hotpot, pink Yorkshire rhubarb and clotted cream.
A stonking meal in a stonking restaurant. But alas, Sue and I are being taught the chew-chew diet, or Fletcherism, the dieting system devised by Horace Fletcher which compelled diners to bow their heads and chew each mouthful for one minute, until it had liquefied and could be simply absorbed by the mouth. After each minutes chew is up, a bell is rung and one is allowed to swallow. We look ridiculous, and it makes the food taste revolting, but it does result in my eating less. Or perhaps that was because I have had 2,500 calories at breakfast and havent pood in two days.
Dinner party at home with several guests, including Roy Hattersley: Melon glacé, mock turtle soup, sole au gratin, crab and asparagus mousse in aspic, boiled mutton with caper sauce, quail pudding, punch romaine.
Awesome. Mock turtle soup was made with a calfs head to imitate the gorgeous gelatinous quality of turtle meat and now all I want is the real thing. Quail pudding was a cheeky little dish, too each bird wrapped in thinly sliced fillet steak before getting its suet crust.
We drink lots of champagne, as they did back then, and also a lot of hock (liebfraumilch, really) and youngish claret. Then, when Roy has gone, we have a food fight.
A society hostess would have thrown at least two parties a week like this for up to 20 guests. Ours was for eight and would have cost £24, or £2,000 in todays money.
DAY 3
Breakfast: The usual, plus a nice fat Cuban cigar. King Edward, in his final illness, took his doctors advice and promised to limit himself to two cigars before breakfast.
Lunch: Simpsons Chophouse on Cornhill. Beloved of Thackeray, Dickens and Newnham-Davis himself (who reviewed it on one occasion when he had been caught out in the evening in morning dress and dared not be seen in his club improperly attired for the hour). Its been here since 1757 and I eat with some very old fellows. Have steak and kidney pudding with a giant sausage, then a huge pork chop and then stewed cheese served fizzling in a little tin tray with toasted bread triangles on the side. Also lots of claret.
Simpsons opened its doors to women only in 1916, and since Im living in 1907, Ive left Sue behind. The chaps and I discuss the good old days, when men were men and the sort of women who made trouble about it were generally chained to railings somewhere out of earshot.
Dinner:More of the same, to be honest. And when I get a little queasy I am invited to prepare a famous Edwardian remedy for indigestion called "beef tea", which I make by putting two teaspoons of mashed beef into a jam jar with three teaspoons of cold water, and leaving in a warm place to macerate. Then I strain and drink. And after that it all comes, as it were, rushing back.
Days 4, 5, and 6 roll on much the same. I gradually recover the ability to sleep and poo, so crucial to the enjoyment of life, and generally adjust to the Edwardian life. We have gigantic picnics of lobster and foie gras on Hampstead Heath; Sue takes me to a vegetarian restaurant. They were very popular at the time, being the only places that women could eat unaccompanied, and were thus a hotbed of suffragette sedition.
Finally, we come to the last supper, a dinner cooked for us by the head chef at The Savoy, recreating, to the molecule, an original nine-course banquet served there on the evening of January 14, 1905.
In full evening formal wear, starched to the eyeballs and with my corseted consort, Sue, at my side, along with six other guests including the great Anton Mosimann, I eat:
1 Beluga Caviar and native and rock oysters £1,000 worth.
2 Pot au feu Henry IV the shoulder, shank, rib and tail of beef braised all day and served in their broth with a blob of béarnaise.
3 Sole cardinale and whitebait, which was meant to be an either/or.
4 Chicken dAlbufera, in which the roasted bird is served in a sauce of boiled cream, triply-reduced, with mushrooms and black truffles and quenelles of veal tongue and chicken.
5 Saddle of lamb with spring vegetables and parsley potatoes.
6 Pressed Rouen ducklings, in which four birds killed specially for us in France are roasted and their bones and organs crushed in a solid silver duck press before our eyes, the resultant juice then reduced at the boil in a silver dish to produce a sauce for the meat which Sue called "slightly bummy ducks blood".
7 Asparagus hollandaise, which the Edwardians loved as a predessert but is apparently murderous for the gouty.
8 Peach Melba served in a hand-carved ice-swan as big as a ten-year-old child.
9 Canapés à la Diane, which, I confess, I cannot remember.
I imagine Vita Sackville-West must have recently eaten a meal a bit like that when she wrote in The Edwardians : "Those meals! Those endless, extravagant meals, in which they all indulged all year round! Sebastian wondered how their constitutions and their figures could stand it; then he remembered that in the summer they went as a matter of course to Homburg or Marienbad, to get rid of the accumulated excess, and then returned to start on another years course of rich living. Really there was very little difference, especially, between Marienbad and the vomitorium of the Romans."
As for Dr Petty, he was not amused. He found that although I had put on only a pound in weight, my body fat had increased by an extraordinary 10 per cent over the week, with corresponding declines in muscle mass and water content. My haematology showed excess blood urea due to an excess of protein and dangerous signs of dehydration from the excess booze and lack of water. And my cholesterol, from an already worrying 5.8 (modern quacks like to see a result below 4) had in seven days skyrocketed to 6.6! On a diet like that, he reckoned, a chap with my heredity would do well to live till he was 42.
With a prognosis of that nature, and after a week like that, you might have thought Id be desperate to get my mouth round a bit of salad and a bottle of water. And, in a way, I was. But the thing is, I had got rather used to my Edwardian way of life: the great clothes, the staggering food, the not having anything much to do, and I was reluctant to let it go.
If it really were 1910, I think I would very probably have carried on with it, and hang the death sentence. After all, in four years time Id be on the Western Front, running at the German guns.
Some guinea pigs might have been daunted by the prospect of four whopping meals a day, rivers of grog and hardly any fruit, vegetables or water for an entire week. But not I.
Muhammadiyah is holding its annual conference in Yogyakarta and the organisation, the second largest Muslim social group in the country, has come in for some criticism. At the opening of the conference (Tanwir Muhammadiyah) on April 26th president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono complained that Muhammadiyah was not doing enough in the economic sphere:
The leaders of Muhammadiyah were all bureaucrats and academics, he went on, there were never any men from the business world. Even in their speciality area, education, Muhammadiyah had work to do, the president intoned. Parents increasingly preferred to send their children to international and national plus schools, SBY said.
Later in the conference two former leaders of the organisation, Amien Rais and Syafii Maarif, both gave their own advice and criticisms for Muhammadiyah. Old yeller firebrand Amien Rais, in perhaps one of his classic speeches, said Muhammadiyah, and Indonesia as a whole, did not understand that globalization was just a form of economic imperialism. The only person who understood this was Mahathir Mohamad, former prime minister of Malaysia.
What was worse, Amien went on, there were only two developing countries that were able to manage globalization successfully - China, a country of atheists, and India, a country of cow-worshippers. Indonesia, a country armed with the Pancasila doctrine, couldnt even compete with Godless people and cow-worshippers, he said.
The problem was that Muslims lacked self-confidence, he said, and that was why they were hopeless in the globalised world economy. Amien also hoped that Muhammadiyah could improve its educational efforts, so that Muslims were no longer being beaten by atheists and pagans presumably. Science and technology were the key, he said.
Meanwhile Syafii Maarif said that Muslims today were too concerned with side, fringe issues, they had forgotten why Islam had been sent to the earth. The centres of higher learning in the Muslim world did not produce work of any real value to the Islamic community, he said
But they sure do know the Quran. In a language they can't speak.
On the politics front Syafii Maarif said Muslims were still too susceptible to falling for the Left-Right dichotomy. Foreign imperialistic forces used the internal dissension this created to exploit the Muslim world, he said. The neo-imperialists of America prevented other cultures and peoples from rising to any great heights, especially the Islamic civilisation, which was regarded as dangerous by America.
However Islam continued its triumphant march across the world, he went on. There were now 1.3 billion Muslims and by immigration and high birth rates Muslims were becoming a major community in Europe and America. Many Muslims were killed in wars or internal conflicts but their number kept getting bigger, he said.
#3
"Science and technology were the key, he said."
Umm, try basic education and a decent work ethic first. And maybe stop looking down on your more-successful neighbors as "godless athiests" and "cow-worshipers".
#4
What was worse, Amien went on, there were only two developing countries that were able to manage globalization successfully - China, a country of atheists, and India, a country of cow-worshippers. Indonesia, a country armed with the Pancasila doctrine, couldnt even compete with Godless people and cow-worshippers, he said.
This essentially echoes Qaradawi's speech:
We are a nation that doesn't work. How can we develop if we don't work? When we do work, we don't do it professionally. We keep saying "Don't worry, later, later " Islam teaches us to do things professionally. Doing things professionally is a religious duty. The Prophet said that Allah ordered to excel in everything. He imposed excellence and professionalism. Professionalism must be followed in everything. "If you kill, do it properly, and if you slaughter, do it properly." Even when killing, you must do well.
Unfortunately, we do not excel in either military or civil industries. We import everything from needles to missiles. This is our nation. We still haven't manufactured an engine in our Arab countries. We assemble parts, but have no manufacturing industries. India has manufactured a car, and even a plane, while we still go around in circles like a bull in who turns a grinding mill or a water weal until it reaches exactly where it started.
How come the Zionist gang has managed to be superior to us, despite being so few? It has become superior through knowledge, through technology, and through strength. It ahs become superior to us through work. We had the desert before our eyes but we didn't do anything with it. When they took over, they turned it into a green oasis. How can a nation that does not work progress? How can it grow?
A little too much emphasis on killing and not enough on engineering. Typical Muslim priorities. Their obsession with holiness and martyrdom will be the death of them.
#5
Well, it's a start. A bad start, but a start nonetheless. We can only hope they follow their logic leads them in the right direction, but you'll notice I'm not holding my breath.
As far as the "Godless" thing, I have a suspicion these ignoramuses call any culture "Godless" if they don't call their god Allan.
#6
The problem was that Muslims lacked self-confidence, he said, and that was why they were hopeless in the globalised world economy.
What a nutjob. The Indians and the Chinese have never lacked self-confidence. Actually, I think they suffer from an excess of ethno-racial hubris. What got them going was the realization that freer economies are wealthier economies.
#7
I was brought up/taught to only have children if i can afford them.Muslims dont think this way.They are taught to breed so they can take over!!!!
Posted by: Paul ||
04/30/2007 6:47 Comments ||
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#8
It seems that the only "science" they are interested in is atomic science. But I forgot, they only want nuclear warheads for "peaceful power generation".
CLEVELAND An audio recording made when National Guard troops killed four Kent State University students during an anti-war demonstration could resolve the mystery of whether a command to fire was issued and may offer a chance for healing for victims and shooters, a survivor said Monday. ...And a chance to try and hang someone for trying to defend themselves against a mob attack. But I digress - please continue...
"We're not seeking revenge; we're not seeking punishment for the Guardsmen at this late date," said Alan Canfora, wounded in the wrist during the confrontation 37 years ago. Yeah, right.
"All we want is the truth as we think it SHOULD have been written because we seek healing atto run the bloody shirt up again at Kent State for the student victims, as well as the triggermen ... ...Note his choice of words....
... who were ordered to fire. And healing can only result from the truth, and that's all we want." He wants the government to reopen the case.
Four Kent State students were killed and nine were wounded in the clash, which followed several days of Vietnam War protests. In 1974, eight Guardsmen were acquitted of federal civil rights charges. And believe me - the Feds tried HARD to convict those guys.
Canfora said he recently requested a copy of the nearly 30-minute tape from Yale University, where a government copy has been stored in an archive. He says that just before the 13-second volley of gunfire, a voice on the tape is heard yelling, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!" ...A command, I might note, that doesn't sound like anything I ever heard.
Canfora said he was convinced from his research _ including other tapes and photos _ that the command was issued by one of three Guard officers at the shooting site. "The time has now come to where it's impossible to deny the verbal command to fire," Canfora said. "Deny it and we'll really jam it down your throats come May 4."
The government should analyze the recording using new technology, he said.
After the shooting, the FBI investigated whether an order had been given to fire, and said it could only speculate. One theory was that a Guardsman panicked or fired intentionally at a student and that others fired when they heard the shot.
The FBI would look into any new inquiry about the shootings, spokesman Scott Wilson said.
The Ohio National Guard had no comment on the tape, spokesman James Sims said.
Canfora said the reel-to-reel audio recording was made by Terry Strubbe, a student who just happened to have placed a microphone at a window sill of his dormitory that overlooked the anti-war rally. Strubbe turned the tape over to the FBI, which kept a copy. Canfora planned to release CD copies of the recording Tuesday at a news conference at Kent State, about 30 miles southeast of Cleveland.
Strubbe, who still lives near Kent, keeps the original tape in a safe deposit box, ... And, by the by, refuses to let any independent analysts look at it...because there's a good chance that they will hear the sounds of shots before the Guardsmen fired.
... said Canfora, who heads a nonprofit organization at Kent State that leads a candlelight vigil every May 4 to mark the anniversary of the shootings. Strubbe didn't return a message seeking comment Monday. Reality check: I had to put up with Mr. Canfora's shenanigans while I was stationed near KSU some years ago. Every May he starts this. He overlooks the fact that whether he wants to admit it or not, a mob was on the verge of overruning the Guardsmen, and they were primed to tear them to pieces. Whether or not opening fire was the right thing to do I shall leave to others, but I know no one who, when faced with the same situation, wouldn't have tried to defend themselves. His attitude is that the bloody shirt needs to be flown 24/7 on a lit flagpole, and he also believes that 'reparations' need to be made to all KSU students and the professional agitators who were there - not to mention the arrest and trial of the Guardsmmen.
Guess what kind of verdict he'd like.
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/30/2007 17:20 ||
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#1
Congress should investigate what the Bush administration knew about this and when they knew it.
Posted by: Dennis Kookcinich ||
04/30/2007 20:26 Comments ||
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#2
One of my favorite old jokes from the 1988 Election:
"Dan Quayle wanted to kill communists but his National Guard unit never got sent to Kent State!"
#3
Campus administrators couldn't control it. Campus security counld not control it. The local police department could not control it. The Army was brought in and they put a stop to the bullshit. Lesson learned, never throw rocks or intimidate a soldier carrying an M1 Garand. Someone is bound to get hurt or get dead.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Muhammadiyah is holding its annual conference in Yogyakarta and the organisation, the second largest Muslim social group in the country, has come in for some criticism. At the opening of the conference (Tanwir Muhammadiyah) on April 26th president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono complained that Muhammadiyah was not doing enough in the economic sphere:
