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Nonfiction for Francophiles
Interested in France and all things French? Enjoy a bit of cultural immersion with one of these titles. All of these books are located in the Adult Nonfiction section of the Library.
Baxter, John. The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris. 2011. (914.43604 B).
Brown, Frederick. For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus. 2010. (944.081 B).
Chelminski, Rudolph. I'll Drink to That: Beaujolais and the French Peasant Who Made It the World's Most Popular Wine. 2007. (641.2223 C).
Child, Julia with Alex Prud'homme. My Life in France. 2006.
(B C5359.my).
Also available: Large Type, CD, eAudiobook
Davis, Deborah. Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X. 2003.
(759.13 S245da).
Diliberto, Gioia. Paris without End: The True Story of Hemingway's First Wife.
(B M9366di).
Espinasse, Kristin. Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France. 2007. (B E775.wo).
Fumaroli, Marc. When the World Spoke French. 2011. (440.9 F).
Glass, Charles. Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation.
Gopnick, Adam. Paris to the Moon. 2000. (944.3600413 G).
Also available: CD
Greenspan, Dorie. Around My French Table. 2010. (641.5944 G).
Groom, Gloria. The Age of French Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago. 2010. (759.409034 G).
Jackson, Jeffrey H. Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910. 2010. (944.360813 J).
Levy, Harriet Lane. Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and Their Circle. 2011. (700.922 L).
Loomis, Susan Herrmann. On Rue Tatin : Living and Cooking in a French Town. 2001. (641.59442 L).
Malcolm, Janet. Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice. 2007. (928.1 M).
Mayle, Peter. A Year in Provence. 1990. (944.9 M).
Also available: Large Type
McCullough, David. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. 2011. (920.009213044 M).
Also available: Large Type, CD
Moore, Tim. French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France. 2001.
Pitt, Leonard. Paris: A Journey through Time. 2010. (914. 4361 P).
Ramsey, Rebecca S. French by Heart: An American Family's Adventures in La Belle France. 2007. (914.404 R).
Rossant, Colette. Return to Paris: A Memoir. 2003. (B R8273.re).
Rowlands, Penelope, ed. Paris was Ours: Thirty-two Writers Reflect on the City of Light.
Sciolino, Elaine. La Seduction: How the French Play the Game of Life. 2011.
Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day. 2000. (817.54 S4474.me).
Also available: Large Type, CD, eAudiobook
Spawforth, Antony. Versailles: A Biography of a Palace. 2008. (944.3663 S).
Thompson, Christopher S. Tour de France: A Cultural History. 2006. (796.6209 T).
Timoney, Charles. Pardon My French: Unleash Your Inner Gaul. 2008.
Weber, Ronald. News of Paris: American Journalists in the City of Light Between the Wars. 2006. (070.92313 W).


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I have a Rival Hot Pot (plastic water pitcher looking thing) that's electric and has a thermostat knob on it. I've found that the lid can be removed and my Pyrex vintage glass bowls can fit right in the top of it.
Was thinking I could put some water in the hot pot and a Pyrex bowl of food on the top and have an electric food warmer. But, I'm worried that it might melt the plastic. It seems sturdy and all, but I'm just not sure. Also, I've found that when it boils it is rather noisy, which might be destracting. Would it be ok to turn it down a bit, to where it's just simmering? Or would that keep it hot enough? Will it be dangerous when exchanging bowls? Just wondering. Looking forward to your responses! |
Follow-Up Postings:
You mean to use on a buffet table? Wouldn't that be pretty ugly? Why not put the food directly into the pot? Why not use your stove to warm it? Or the microwave? Why not buy a crock pot? Linda C |
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subset: commoncrawl


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The latest version of Adobe Flash Player is required to watch this video. Please click on the link below to download the latest version. Thanks!
Multiple bomb blasts killed 12 people in a Christian area of Kano City, Nigeria over the weekend. The radical Islamic group Boko Haram is believed to have carried out the attacks.
Kano City is located in northern Nigeria, where Christians are a minority. In recent years, Boko Haram has targeted Christian churches in the north, killing hundreds.
The group is also waging war with the government and seeks to establish Sharia law in the north.
Nigerian Kids Burned Alive, Boko Haram Blamed
Militants Turn Nigeria into Christian Killing Field
Boko Haram's 'Holy War' on Nigeria
US Christians Urge Terror Label for Boko Haram
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Contains the keyword Cold War
Paulo Freire & the Cold War politics of literacy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; 2010.
Education and the Cold War : the battle for the American school. Vol 1st. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2008.
"In contemporary American culture, 'the conservative 1950s' have become something of a cliche. Hartman's smart book gives new historical substance to the term, showing us how--and why--our schools turned Right during the Cold War. Even better, he makes us question whether the schools ever really turned back. The 'conservative 1950s' might still be with us, in more ways than we are willing to admit." -- Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor of Education and History, New York University


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Originally published Monday, April 9, 2012 at 9:00 PM
Ozzie Guillen returns to Miami to face questions on Castro
Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen will return to Miami to apologize again for a remark he made about Fidel Castro that has angered Cuban Americans, and has local officials saying he should lose his job.
PHILADELPHIA — An off day from baseball may prove to be the most difficult — and most important — day of Ozzie Guillen's career.
The brash-talking Marlins manager will tell how he really feels about Fidel Castro in a news conference Tuesday morning at Marlins Park.
A story in Time magazine quoted him as saying, "I love Castro." Aware of the firestorm of outrage growing in South Florida's Cuban community, Guillen flew back to Miami after Monday's 6-2 victory over the Phillies to face the consequences.
"I feel very guilty about it and very bad and sad and very embarrassed," he said. "I have to wear it, I have to face it. I have to grab the bull by the horns, and I will do it (Tuesday)."
Although Guillen apologized Saturday and amended his endorsement of Castro, the Cuban-American group Vigilia Mambisa planned to boycott and demonstrate against the Marlins until Guillen steps down. Chairmen of the city and county commissions in Miami-Dade and other public officials called for Guillen's removal.
Rickie Ricardo, the Phillies' Spanish broadcaster and a resident of Pembroke Pines — a suburb northwest of Miami — understands the powder keg of feelings about Castro in South Florida. He was born in New York after his parents fled Cuba in 1961 while his mother was pregnant with him.
"My own father is a Marlins fan, lives in South Florida. The first person he called when he heard this was me. He said, 'What the hell is going on here? I'm not buying any tickets until this is cleared up.'
"It's a hot subject. They're trying to develop a new fan base in a new park. This is the last thing they need. They could go 0-50, it wouldn't be as bad as that. That's the last thing this franchise needs."
Particularly after public money from the city and county provided the majority of the funding for the $515 million retractable-roof ballpark in Little Havana. The Marlins have been mum except for a brief statement condemning Castro and his impact on Cubans in South Florida.
"Our community has been overly generous to the Marlins, and we cannot allow them as an organization to continue to treat us, the residents of Miami, with disdain or be dismissive of our concerns," said Francis Suarez, chairman of the City of Miami Commission. "Now, on behalf of many angry residents, I'm calling for real action to be taken and for the removal of Mr. Guillen."
Ricardo said he has dealt professionally for several years with Guillen, who has a history of inflammatory remarks, and believes this is an extreme case of the Venezuelan-born manager speaking without gauging the impact of his words.
Guillen has made contradictory comments about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that have angered some of his countrymen. Last week he revealed that he likes to get drunk after every game, win or lose.
• Drew Storen still has discomfort in his pitching elbow and the Washington Nationals closer will be examined by Dr. James Andrews.
Nationals manager Davey Johnson said Storen's elbow felt tender after the right-hander threw a simulated game Sunday at the team's spring training complex in Viera, Fla.
• New York Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte allowed one run and two hits over three inning for Class A Tampa in his second game action since ending a one-year retirement. Pettitte struck out two in the Florida State League game against Clearwater. He threw 26 of 32 pitches for strikes.
"I felt good with everything," Pettitte said. "Just another good step."
• Atlanta third baseman Chipper Jones expects to come off the disabled list when he's eligible Tuesday.
• A person familiar with the decision says the Cleveland Indians have an agreement with catcher Carlos Santana, 26, on a multiyear contract.


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Hi, I recently got my roommate a DIY terrarium kit about a month ago and put it together for her. I liked it so much that I've started building my own moss terrariums. The trouble is that yesterday we checked hers out and most of the moss has turned a sickly brown. I know the moss that came with the kit was a simple sheet moss. Is there any way to revive it for her? What could have caused it to start dying?
I'm afraid now that the terrariums I built on my own will take the same turn. :( Can anyone help me? |
Follow-Up Postings:
- Posted by terrestrial_man 9 (firstname.lastname@example.com) on Wed, Feb 15, 12 at 22:30
The main problem with having a moss terrarium is the external temperature of the room. Moss like it cold. That means the highest temps should be no more than 65F though some can handle it warmer for short periods of time. Also water must be distilled not tap ever. And moss does not like intense light. Just what kind of substrate did you put your moss on? You may want to get some felt and try it only on a couple of layers of felt, available at a yardage store. |
- Posted by Dante1709 none (firstname.lastname@example.com) on Tue, Aug 28, 12 at 22:17
The moss is most likely dormant..Try keeping it away from the sun, and misting it often. |
I would have to disagree with a carte blanche statement about mosses like Tm made. There are many mosses that require quite a bit of light including a number that can take full sun. Furthermore, many do not require cool temps ... temps in the 70's and even the 80's is fine depending on the type of moss and the locality to which it is native. What kind of air circulation did you (via the kit instructions) provide? Also what kind of lighting? Stagnant moist air, like that in a typical sealed terraruim, often provides perfect conditions for molds/fungi -- some types of which can lead to the demise of mosses or other plants. Furthermore, if the terr was in a location wherein the sun shined upon it, then it is possible that temperatures in the terr soared to lethal levels. This would be even more problematic if the terr was sealed. (Think about a closed up car sitting in the sun for even a short length of time.) Additionally, you must consider the stress the moss likely under went. Was the moss you used alive in a plastic bag? Sheet moss like that is often grown in conditions of extremely high humidity (frequently levels of 90-100% RH). The resulting vegetation is not adapted to tolerate suddenly existing in markedly lower humidity levels. When confronted by such conditions, massive die off is generally inevitable. Hopefully the kit included media very similar to that which the moss was raised on. If not, that too may have been a part of the problem. If there are still living sections of moss, yes it is possible that those living areas will grow to eventually fill out again. If the browned out areas of the moss are dry/crunchy, then desication was most likely at least part of the issue. If the brown outs are slimey, then fungi -- perhaps in conjunction with the other possible issues mentioned above -- may be the culprit. Slimy areas should be removed. Happy planting! |
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Current Opportunities
The following opportunities are available. Our employment listing is updated regularly and positions may become filled at any time. Office hours for Human Resources are Monday–Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
To express your interest, please complete a CCRI employment application.
To maintain quality care (it's hard on our clients to have many people come in and out of their life) we prefer applicants who can give at least a year or more of employment. Please put our clients' needs first.
Current Openings—Click title to see position openings.
DSP= Direct Support Professional
All sites are located in Moorhead unless noted otherwise.
DSP—MEDICAL/PERSONAL CARE Sites
Supported Living Services (24-hour services)
Job Description: In addition to helping individuals with regular daily living skills, role modeling, and community integration, Caregivers may assist or perform more hands-on assistance with personal cares such as bathing, changing briefs, range of motion or physical therapy exercises and medical cares. Extensive training provided. Lifting/repositioning up to 100lbs. May use hoyer lift to transfer.
Salary: $11.75/hour + bonus.
DSP—BEHAVIORAL Sites
Supported Living Services (24-hour services)
Job Description: Caregivers assist individuals with regular daily living skills, role modeling, and community integration. Individuals are learning appropriate behaviors and can have verbal or physical aggression.
Salary: $11.75/hour + bonus!
DSP—SOCIAL/LIFE SKILLS Sites
Supported Living Services (24-hour services)
Job Description: Individuals require 24-hour care but are mostly working on independent living skills.
Salary: $11.75/hour + bonus.
DSP—Options Department (less than 24-hour services)
Job Description: Provide in-home support to children and adults for a short period of time. Individuals may need 5–50 hours of support a week depending on their needs. Assist in reaching personal goals, learning new skills and community integration. Assist in developing and/or teaching daily living skills as written in an Individual Program Plan (IPP). Provide personal or medical cares as needed, teach and role model appropriate behaviors and provide behavior management assistance..
Salary: $11.75/hour + bonus.
DSP—Independent by Design (technology-supported apartment services)
Job Description: Independent by Design is an alternative to traditional adult foster care that allows flexibility to provide services tailored to the individual. These services are designed to adapt to the increasing or decreasing needs of individuals who live in their own apartments. Services available include 24-hour emergency staff response with technology and supplemental support in areas including budgeting, menu planning, grocery shopping, assistance with medical appointments, and additional areas as identified..
Salary: $11.75/hour + bonus.
RESIDENTIAL COORDINATOR INTERN (non-paid)
Supported Living Services (24-hour services)
Job Description: Residential Coordinators provide staff supervision (training, support, scheduling, etc.), leadership, employee relationship building, caseload coordination and program development. Position oversees and provides client-centered services and acts as a liaison with clients, guardians, county personnel and other affiliates.
Full Job Descriptions
Job Description and Position Qualifications for a Direct Support Professional
Questions—Email Employment Rep or Call 218-331-2029
CCRI is an equal opportunity employer.


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Community News (V12-I19)
May 6, 2010 by TMO · Leave a Comment
Advertisement–Enroll at university of phoenix california and broaden your horizons.
Two Muslim students named winners of Spirit of Princeton Awards
PRINCETON, NJ–Two Muslims are in the list of eight winners of the 2010 Spirit of Princeton Award, which honors undergraduates at Princeton University for their positive contributions to campus life. The award recognizes eight seniors who have demonstrated a strong commitment to the undergraduate experience through dedicated efforts with student organizations, athletics, community service, religious life, residential life and the arts.
This year's winners were selected from a group of more than 90 nominations and will be honored with a book prize at a dinner on May 5.
The profiles of the two students are as follows:
Muhammad Jehangir Amjad, from Rawalpindi, Pakistan, has worked to create awareness of Pakistani arts and culture. He is the founder of the student group Pehchaan and is a member of the Muslim Students Association. Amjad also has been involved with the International Relations Council, both as a delegate and as a conference leader. In Rockefeller College, he has served as a residential college adviser for two years and a residential computing consultant for three years. An avid cricketer, Amjad worked with other students to create an informal team that competed with Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is majoring in electrical engineering and pursuing a certificate in engineering and management systems. He was elected to Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Honor Society, and has worked as a teaching assistant for computer science and electrical engineering courses. Next year Amjad will be working for Microsoft Corp. as a program manager.
Mariam Rahmani, from Kent, Ohio, is majoring in comparative literature and pursuing certificates in Persian language and culture, and European cultural studies. Rahmani has been the president of the Muslim Students Association and a co-convener of the Religious Life Council. She has worked to create a healthy environment for Muslim students through interfaith iftars, Eid banquets, the annual Fast-a-Thon and the creation of an alumni community group. With the University's Religious Life Council, she participated in a trip to India to study religious pluralism, spoke at the World Parliament of Religions in Melbourne, traveled to Tanzania in summer 2008 and participated in a Muslim-Jewish dialogue trip to Spain. Additionally, Rahmani served on the selection committee for the first Muslim chaplain at Princeton and for the new vice president of campus life. In her senior year, she spoke to the freshman class at "Reflections on Diversity" and is a residential college adviser in Butler College.
Vandals deface Ottawa mosque
OTTAWA, CANADA–Ottawa's Muslim community has condemned the defacing of a sign in Barrhaven marking the future location of a mosque and community centre.
The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) said local residents discovered on Friday that offensive words, phrases and symbols were spray painted in red and black on the sign.
"Such acts are offensive, hurtful and intimidating to local citizens," the council said in a statement.
"While the recurrence of such incidents is deeply disturbing, CAIR-CAN does not believe that such acts represent the sentiments of the vast majority of Canadians," the group said. "Which is why we ask our fellow citizens to join us in condemning this and all such incidents."
The group said mosques in Calgary, and in the Ontario cities of Hamilton, Waterloo and Pickering have also been vandalized in the last four months.
Dr. Zarzour delivers keynote speech at Lexington Islamic school
LEXINGTON, KY–Lexington Universal Academy (LUA) a full-time accredited K-8 Islamic school in the heart of Central Kentucky held its annual fundraising dinner at the local Marriot in Lexington, KY, on April 25. The dinner attracted close to 330 community members from diverse backgrounds. Addressing the guests, LUA President shared the school's accomplishments for the academic school year.
The keynote speaker, Br. Safaa Zarzour, Secretary General of the Islamic Society of North America delivered a passionate speech on the importance of Islamic Education.
He shared his personal and professional experience with regards to the important role Islamic schools are playing in building future Muslim leadership.
"In Chicago alone, only 0.5% of Muslim high school graduates come from Islamic schools, yet 60 % of the Muslim student leadership at Chicago universities are graduates of Islamic schools", said Br. Safaa. He invited the community members to support this noble and critical initiative and exceeded the organizers' fundraising goal of $100,000.
Community News (V12-I11)
March 11, 2010 by TMO · Leave a Comment
Concerns raised about mosque location
SHEBOYGAN,WI–Nearly 60 people showed up at the Wilson Town Hall Monday night for a 15-minute procedural exercise by the town Plan Commission, which voted unanimously to grant an extension of time for a Manitowoc doctor to obtain a conditional use permit to convert a former retail store into a mosque, an action that most of the people there opposed, the Sheboygan Press reported.
The vote to give Mansoor Mirza until May 10 to inspect and bring up to code the septic system at 9110 Sauk Trail Road was "not out of the ordinary," Plan Commission Chairman Doug Fuller told commission members, who voted 7-0 to grant the extension without discussion.
Mirza is proposing converting the 5,000-square-foot former Tom's of Wisconsin building into the county's first mosque. Mirza bought the property as an investment and proposes renting it to the newly formed Islamic Society of Sheboygan County, of which he is one of the organizers.A public hearing last month attracted a similar-sized group of people, almost all of who were opposed to allowing the mosque because they feared "it would attract potential terrorists."
MSA lounge vandalized at Brandeis
The Muslim Student Association suite at Brandeis University was vandalized on March 5, according to an e-mail to members of the association from Neda Eid '11, a member of the MSA executive board.
According to the e-mail, an individual or individuals attempted to open a painted-over door in Imam Talal Eid's office, and many of the imam's "desk materials were touched and unplugged. The lamps in the suite (most of them in the prayer room) were all turned upside down and unplugged." Neda Eid added in a later e-mail to the Justice that "most of the permanent damage was to the wall in Imam Eid's office." Imam Eid told the Justice that his phone and computer were disconnected and that a valuable Quran was missing from his desk. He also said it was evident that the vandals had not removed their shoes, a rule members of the MSA had instituted after the recent renovations, before walking "where we pray and all over the place."
Imam Eid said that he "could not believe it" when he discovered the vandalism. The MSA suite had recently undergone renovation, and Imam Eid said that he first called the contractor to see whether they were doing work in the suite. When the contractor said that no work was being done, Imam Eid contacted the Brandeis Police Department.
Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan said that an investigation into the details and the motives behind the vandalism is currently ongoing.
Spirit of Islam program at NJ Library
NEW JERSEY–Understanding the Spirit of Islam, hosted by the Community Diversity Council, was held at the Hunterdon County Library Headquarters in Raritan Township on March 6.
The event featured guest speaker Dr. Ali Chaudry, president and co-founder of the Center for Understanding Islam, who spoke about the spirit of the Islamic faith, the example of its founder the Prophet Muhammad, the essence of the Qur'an and the work of the American Muslim community in cultivating mutual respect and appreciation for the goals it holds in common with other faith tradition.
The talk also included an exhibit of various Qur'ans, beautiful Islamic calligraphy and selected books on Islam. Nearly 50 people came to hear Chaudry speak and enjoy the artwork.
Pakistani-American writer wins prize
Pakistani-American author Daniyal Mueenuddin has been awarded the $20,000 Story Prize for his collection of connected short stories, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, published by W. W. Norton. The Story Prize is an annual award honoring the author of an outstanding collection of short stories.
The prize was presented to Mueenuddin at a reading and ceremony held in New York City. In addition, short story collections by Victoria Patterson (Drift, Mariner) and Wells Tower (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, FSG) were also honored and each author received a $5,000 prize.
Judges for the were novelist and short story writer A M. Homes, critic and book blogger Carolyn Kellogg, and Ohio-based public librarian Bill Kelly.
NU's Najeeba Syed named to dean's list
EVANSTON, IL–EVANSTON – Najeeba Syed of Crystal Lake was named to the dean's list for the fall semester at Northwestern University.
She is the daughter of Dr. Mukaram and Sartaj Syed.
Thoughts on Aafia Siddiqui's Conviction
February 28, 2010 by TMO · Leave a Comment
Barrister Jafree's Open Letter
By Barrister Jafree
I have been dismayed to read the article by Ms. Rafia Zakaria from Ohio (otherwise, one of the very few Indic-diaspora lawyer-columnists I have admired and praised) in the Dawn [February 17]. Since July 2008 I had kept her informed about the suffering, dilemmas and predicaments of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui who was actually brutally kidnapped and ruthlessly-illegally Renditioned (along with her three perfectly innocent infant children) from Karachi (she was proceeding by taxi to the Saddar Railway Station on way to Islamabad due to horrendous harassment/ untold persecution from her former husband as well as the CIA functionaries and indigenous Khufia, and in the capitol-city of Pakistan she intended to take up employment at The Al-Shifa Hospital, and raise her three children) in 2003; and not arrested from Ghazni in 2008 as has been scurrilously and systemically claimed by CIA/FBI functionaries and aficionados/bounty-hunters.
Aafia's helpless family consists of an elder sister, a brother, and an old, God-fearing mother. For six calendar years the unfortunate, law-abiding Family could not even have a First Information Report (F.I.R.) registered because of the Outreach and overreaction of the Powers That Be (read Unjustified Enrichment wonderboys) in Pakistan. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Finally, only late in 2009 a wishy-washy FIR was registered (without mentioning who had kidnapped Aafia and under whose patronage/sponsorship). That FIR is being investigated ahista-ahista by SSP Investigator Alhajj Niaz Khosa of Karachi while water has virtually crossed over the heads. This is no cause for applause except for the Made-in-America Military Industrial Complex!
Mid-July 2008 while visiting Islamabad (in connection with my Habeas Writs regarding outrageously wrongful confinement of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan by General Pervez Musharraf) I was shocked to learn from a mysterious,trembling phonecall that Aafia was being detained/abused in a dungeon jail in Kabul ("and was likely to be shot dead"). Immediately I made the best inquiries I could muster, and I filed a hand-written Writ Habeas Corpus in the Islamabad High Court . I did, for example, ask U.S. Ambassador , Miss Ann Patterson if she denied that the Embassy remained curiously (and coyly/smugly) silent so did our then Interior Secretary, Alhaj Syed Kamal Shah (who was Inspector General of Sindh in 2003). and our Minitry of Law, Justice and Human Rights. Such silence (indifference+apathy) is deafening, disgraceful and dreadful nonsense of arrogance.
Concerning my Habeas Writs, the Interior/ Foreign Affairs Ministries and Attorneys-General for Pakistan, (Qayyum and Khosa) wasted time of the Court and showed no concern for a fellow-citizen and human being. I made desperate efforts that the Attorney-General for Pakistan write a letter to United States District Judge Richard Berman (copying it to the United States Attorney in New York, 20005) that Aafia was illicitly kidnapped from Karachi in 2003. This was not done, sinisterly so, in spite of helpful directions from the Lahore High Court which have been openly flouted.
The reprehensible maltreatment of Aafia is a felony of designer Bait 'N Switch. The most pressing question here is simply not concerning what is happening (regretably so!) in Pakistan to other oppressed women and repressed men. More immediately relevant is the fact that Rafia Zakaria who is on the Board of the American Civil Liberties Union never protested the gravely ill-treatment that has been accorded to Aafia who was transferred without any cause or judicial/extradition proceeding to the Death-penalty jurisdiction of New York.
The Afghan Government as well as the United States Officialdom violated, inter alia, the Geneva/Vienna Conventions and Treaty of Friendship and Commerce between Pakistan and USA [1959] by not immediately informing Pakistan Embassy in Kabul (his would have been the case had she been arrested actually in Ghazni); rather the Pakistani Embassy in Washington was intimated MUCH AFTER my Writ and only after Aafia had been cruelly lodged in a New York's Brooklyn Detention Center where she has been violated, physically harmed and variously humiliated and is being grossly inhumanly maltreated. Her son, Ahmed has told our illustrious Interior Minister (Government of Pakistan) that he never saw nor encountered his mother after being grabbed and separated from his nuclear family in 2003. in Karachi. This should make some lice to crawl over the ears of our Establishment!
I do ask why is Miss Rafia Zakaria silent about the violence and inhumanity accorded by the U.S. officialdom to Aafia within United States of America itself. The truth of the matter is that CIA needed some highly-educated person to 'credibly' blame for the consequences of 9-11; they catapulted (and are victimizing) America-educated Aafia to fit that Negative Sum Mentality Purpose. Then, to add/ 'justify' insidious insult to injury (to Aafia as well as the Occidental image of Islam) finding no evidence for six long years artfully arranged A-to-Z,
Aafia's predetermined trial in God-forsaken New York where no civilized country even allows proper Extradition. This is a crying shame! Aafia was regretably denied threshold access to even choose her own lawyers or defend herself of her own. This mischievous misconduct offends all notions of process that was due and is now Overdue!!
By the way, Dr Aafia Siddiqui never re-married anyone as was wrongfully touted and spinned globally by FBI. Aafia is victim of that fascist syndromme: "Call a person a dog and then shoot her" . The Neo-Improvisation and Restatement of that Syndrome is that before-predetermined-shooting-an-innocent-lady – – just have three or four heavy-weight American soldiers falsely claim that the chosen victim-to-be-blamed shot at them first by grabbing their gun which was lying on the floor of their overseas dungeon. As a former Assistant Attorney-General in the USA, I know that laying-down the heavy-gun on the floor is never dared and never done in suchlike circumstances. Additionally, no DNA or other physical evidence was discovered to that alleged-effect. The Jury returned the verdict of "Guilty" based on verbal evidence of Aafia versus four bought (and brought) witnesses. Law will accept the impossible but not the improbable and unreasonable. Let us not be somnobulant about that. I spent quater of a century in the USA learning and not-earning dollars.
In a nutshell, I must respectfully and conscientiously ask American bureaucrats that they should stop maltreating minorities and try to understand Islam in the proper light so that past wrongs and blunders can be rectified and only thus the Day Shall Dawn.
It is a long shot! But where there is will there is a way.
Yours sincerely,
MA Illinois LLM Harvard PhD Read FRSA London SASC PC, ATTORNEY AT LAW, ADMITTED IN PAKISTAN AND USA
Community News (V12-I4)
January 21, 2010 by TMO · Leave a Comment
Shama Qureshi: Volunteerism and Faith
TUCSON, AZ–For many people retirement means relaxation. Not so for Tucson's Shama Qureshi. The 73 year old retired school teacher has been working tirelessly as an advocate and tutor children and refugees in the area.
She told the the Arizona Daily Star that she does the volunteer work but she loves it and not because she feels obligated to do it. Besides as a Muslim she feels that it is her duty to help those in need in whatever way one can.
Her husband of fifty years the Pakistani born Mohsin Qureshi passed away last October. Shama Qureshi, known to some as Sandy, had converted to Islam after meeting her husband at the University of Michigan half a century ago.
Qureshi had helped start Tucson's Noor Women's Association more than a decade ahgo. The interfaith organization helps refugees. Qureshi visits several refugee families each week to provide tutoring and support.During the last year the group has helped more than 250 people with rent, food, tutoring and medical expenses.
Muslim physicians offer free medical care
COLUMBUS, OH–A free medical clinic for economically challenged families opens Jan. 20, 2010, at The Ohio State University. The clinic, operated by Muslim physicians and health care professionals, is open to all faiths from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. each Wednesday evening on the university campus in the Rardin Family Practice Center, 2231 N. High St.
The clinic is staffed by physicians, health care professionals, and medical students from The Ohio State University College of Medicine and is affiliated with the Muslim Clinic of Ohio, which also has free clinics in Cincinnati and Dayton.
The university also provides space and other resources at the Rardin location for three additional free clinics: the Ohio Latino Health Clinic, the Asian Health Initiative, and the Columbus Free Clinic meet on alternating days.
Appointments to the Muslim clinic can be made by calling 614-516-3075.
Anti-Muslim flyer denounced
BROOKLYN, NY (News Agencies)–The story repeats itself almost every week. As soon as proposals for a mosque are announced, a malicious campaign is started to malign the Muslim community. This week it is in Sheepshead Bay where an anonymous flyer is being circulated claiming that a Muslim organization behind a proposed mosque supports terrorist acts.
Responding to such vilification the owner of the property, the Muslim American Society, and the Community Board Chair Theresa Scavo, called the people behind the flyer as ignorant who do not understand the spirit and letter of American law guaranteeing freedom of religion.
The latest bout of controversy is the proposed construction of a four-story mosque and community center. The property was bought by a Allowey Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, who has been living in Brooklyn for over 40 years. He is in the process of gaining affiliation with the Muslim American Society.
As soon as the word got out the flyer was circulated within several blocks of the property asking residents, "Say no to mosque at 2812 Voorhies Avenue."
Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS, characterized the perpetrators of the flyers as bigots.
"The world doesn't disintegrate because Muslims come into the neighborhood. It's not earth shattering to accommodate the First Amendment of the Constitution calling for freedom of religion and the building of mosques reflect the growing demographics of Brooklyn," he told the Yournabe.com news portal.
Bray said the MAS renounces violence and that Islam, like all other major faiths in the world, is a religion of moderation.
"The whole claim by some that there's a fifth column trying to destroy the country from within is a rallying call for the bigots and Islamaphobes who like to frighten other Americans about Muslims," he added.
AFMI's Educational Mission: A Success
January 18, 2010 by TMO · Leave a Comment
(A Press Note with photographs and a few comments of AFMI delegates)
By Nilofar Suhrawardy, MMNS India Correspondent
NEW DELHI: Delegates of American Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin (AFMI) wrapped up their India-visit last week (January 10) on a satisfactory note. AFMI has been engaged for more than two decades in promoting literacy among Indian Muslims by establishing and/or aiding the existing educational institutions. As a part of its aim to achieve 100 percent literacy rate, the AFMI delegates hold an international convention every year in a different city of the country. This is followed by zonal conventions in several areas. Since the early 1990s, the AFMI has awarded medals (gold, silver & bronze), certificates and cash prizes to students having scored high percentage in Class 10th and 12th board examinations. While recipients of the awards are selected from across the country for the international convention, the zonal convention includes students of that particular zone.
Expressing satisfaction with increase in literacy rate of Indian Muslims, its key founder member, Dr. A.S. Nakadar said: "AFMI has made a difference." Literacy among Muslims has increased by 60%, with 2008 being witness to greater upward trend than earlier, he said. He drew attention to increasing number of Muslim students scoring above 90%. Besides, Nakadar pointed to Muslim applicants to "higher educational institutions being higher than before." He supported this point by referring to 50% quota in Muslim-minority educational institutions being now filled by Muslim students, which "earlier was not the case." Nakadar, a retired cardiologist in Detroit, Michigan, visits India regularly to pursue AFMI's literacy mission.
A key recipient of AFMI's aid is Mijwan Welfare Society run by actor Shabana Azmi in the town called Mijwan (Uttar Pradesh), from where her father- renowned poet late Kaifi Azmi hailed. Azmi showed AFMI delegates the areas in which the students of this institution are engaged in. She expressed the need to further expand this organization with possible aid from AFMI, which is under consideration. The AFMI delegates were here last Thursday (January 8). AFMI delegates addressed the Zonal Educational Conference at Shibli National Inter-College, Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh the same afternoon.
The two-day international convention was held (January 2-3) at Indore in Madhya Pradesh. Among Indian dignitaries who addressed AFMI's 18th annual convention were Union Minister of State for Corporate and Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) Salman Khursheed, Justice MSA Siddiqui, Chairman National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions, Mayor of Indore Krishna Murari Moghe and others. It was the first international conference to be held in Indore this century. It was also the first one, where people from diverse political backgrounds, spoke only on importance of enhancing the literary rate of India's largest minority community- the Muslims.
The Indore convention was followed by a tour of several towns and villages of Uttar Pradesh, with Amroha being the first to be visited by AFMI delegates (January 5). They addressed the Zonal Educational Conference at the institution run by Hakeem Sirajuddin Hashmi. AFMI delegates addressed a similar conference at Hira Public School at Hanswar (January 6).
Summing up his opinion, AFMI President Dr. Iqbal Ahmed expressed that though "Indian Muslims have developed the awareness about importance of education," "poverty remains a major hindrance in achieving education." He cited instances of people who had approached him in Indore about their children having secured admission to B. Tech but were dropped as their loan application was rejected by banks. "Rich segments of Muslims, Wakf boards and other Muslim groups must come forward and share the responsibility," he said. Ahmed is a medical doctor (gastro-enetrology) in Cleveland, Ohio.
Dr. Shakir Mukhi, also a medical doctor (New York) said that AFMI delegates were "impressed" by increase in involvement of Muslims in pursuing higher education. Describing AFMI awards for bright students as providing the needed "incentive" to students to move forward, he said that AFMI plans to come forward with more incentives to help students and educational institutions pursue higher goals.
Reflecting on AFMI's achievements in UP alone, Ali Quraishi said: "We strengthened about 25 schools and built two new ones. It is not easy to complete this job." Nevertheless, expressing confidence, he said: "AFMI's aim is to promote education among Muslims so that no child is left behind. Our aim is to specially educate female students to help educate a whole family." Quraishi, runs a business in Albuquerque, New Mexico and has built a number of educational institutions in Pune, Mumbai and elsewhere.
Psychiatrist Dr. Razia Ahmed (Cleveland, Ohio) said: "I am proud of AFMI which has definitely contributed to increasing awareness of importance of education among the Muslim community." Laying emphasis on the need of involvement of other organizations to help in progress of Indian Muslims, she said: "I wish everyone joins us (AFMI) for this cause."
During their India-visit, the AFMI delegates also met several leaders, including Ahmed Patel (Congress). They voiced their concern about "plight" of Muslim community in Gujarat. In a letter addressed to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, AFMI stated: "The Muslim community in Gujarat feels that opportunities that ideally should be available to all communities are denied to it because of its religious identity. Obstacles are created in its way to establish new educational institutions. State grant is not available to deserving institutions and meritorious students are discriminated in scholarship. In fact, the state government has failed to disburse the full Federal scholarship and grant money to deserving students which they were promised." The letter also states: "The delegates of AFMI strongly feel that implementation of Mishra Commission as well as Sachar Commission" reports "would pave the way for ensuring rights of minorities in Gujarat in all walks of life."
The signatories to the letter addressed to Congress chief include the AFMI delegates visiting India. These include Dr A.S. Nakadar (AFMI-Trustee), Dr. Aslam Abdullah (Trustee), Dr. Iqbal Ahmed (AFMI President), Dr. Shakir Mukhi (former AFMI President), Sheikh Muhammed Quraishi (former President) and AFMI members from various parts of USA and Canada. These are: Rizwana Quraishi (New Mexico), Dr. Razia Ahmed (Ohio), Dr. Khalid Khan (Nevada), Dr. Abdul Aziz (Florida), Dr. S. Ashraf (Washington DC), Dr. W. Baig (Ohio), Dr. Shahida Akhtar (Florida0, Dr Abdur Razzak (Massachusetts) and Mr & Mrs Gahffar Shaikh from Canada.
AFMI's next international convention is scheduled to be held this December in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
Mass Killers and Media
By Dr. Aslam Abdullah, TMO Editor-in-chief
Who is in right mind will commit an act attributed to Major Nidal Malik Hasan? Why did he commit such an act when the alleged shooter had sought discharge from the army? Who in his right mind will condone such a criminal act? Regardless of what the motives were, the insane killing of soldiers at Fort Hood is rightly condemned by all Muslim organizations unanimously. Not every act of violence committed by KKK is condemned by people of white skin. Not every act of killing by blacks is condemned by organizations such as NAACP. Not every murder committed in a free society like us is condemned by organizations promoting democracy and freedom. If we as a country with billions of dollars resources spent on law enforcement agencies have failed to prevent groups such as KKK or gun violence or mass murderers, why does any body except 1.6 billion Muslims to be responsible of the behavior of their insane, and crazy people.
But somehow the impression that is being created by the media and propagated by the right wing Christian extremists is that 1.6 billion Muslims are responsible for what was done by Nidal Malik Hasan, as their holy book is the main reason for his behavoior. Well, why donot they also attribute to Islam and the Quran the act of kindness, mercy and forgiveness offered by Muslims to the people regardless of their ethnic or religious background? Look at how Islam and Muslims were demonized by the media.
* Suspected mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan: Identified as a Muslim American of Jordanian or Palestinian Descend, a sympathizer of suicide bombing, a convert to Islam, a Jihadist, a true believer in the Quran, a practicing Muslim, a promoter of Al-Qaida ideology, a member of a terrorist sleeper cell and so on so forth.
Look at the pattern of news reporting about mass killers in our national and local media listed below and then tell me who is distorting facts? Tell me who is misleading the public? Tell me who is sowing the seeds of hatred. Some of them will say, Aslam Abdullah, because he is a Muslim American, a Middle Eastern by ethnicity and a covert terrorist. Can any sensible American accept their claim? Yes, only those who see Muslims and Islam as their new enemy. These are people who are trapped in the history of the past and refuse to look at Islam and Muslims from an objective, balanced and fair perspective.
Let's start with another shooting incident that follows on the heels of the Fort Hood incident:
* November 06, 2009, Florida police have arrested a suspect believed to have opened fire Friday in the offices of an engineering firm where he was let go more than two years ago. Authorities have identified the alleged gunman as Jason Rodriguez, 40, a former employee at the office building. Did any news media identify him as an American of Hispanic decent?
* On March 10, 2009, Michael McLendon set fire to the rural south Alabama home he shared with his mother with her body inside. He then set off on a 24-mile shooting spree during which he fired more than 200 rounds and killed 10 more people, including himself. Was he ever described by the media or officials as an American Protestant?
* On April 3, 2009, a Vietnam immigrant killed 13 people and then himself in a shooting spree at the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York. Did anyone call him a Vietcong terrorist?
* In the year of 1989, in two separate incidents, Westley Allen Dodd sexually assaulted and killed three boys ages 11, 10 and four. His methods were so heinous, forensic psychologists dubbed him one of the most evil killers in history. Did anyone call him Christian killer?
* Jeffrey Dahmer was responsible for a series of gruesome murders of seventeen young men in Ohio and Milwaukee. Who called him a Christian murderer? No one!
* Why Ray and Faye Copeland, both in their 70s, went from being loving grandparents to serial killers who used the clothing of their victims to make a warm winter quilt to snuggle under is a story both morbid and perplexing. Did anyone describe them American terrorists?
* Dean Corll was a 33-year-old electrician living in Houston, Texas, who, with two teen accomplices, was responsible for kidnapping, torturing, raping and murdering at least 27 young boys in Houston in the early 1970s. – No one called him an evangelical terrorist?
* Accompanied by his girlfriend Debra Brown, Alton Coleman went on a six-state raping and killing spree in 1984. – He was not described as a Christian rapist?
* Angelo Buono, Jr. was, along with his cousin Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers who went on a two month rape, torture and murder spree in 1977, in California. – Was he identified with his religion and ethnicity?
* Jerry Brudos was a shoe fetishist, serial killer, rapist, torturer and necrophiliac who stalked women around Portland, Oregon in 1968 and 1969. – Should we blame the people of Oregon and call him an Oregonian rapist?
* In 1984, at age 21, Debra Brown became involved in a master/slave relationship with habitual killer and rapist Alton Coleman and the two went on a massive killing, raping and torture spree across the Midwest. – No one ever mentioned his race or religion.
* William Bonin was a habitual sex offender turned serial killer, suspected of sexually assaulting, torturing and killing at least 21 boys and young men in California. He was convicted and executed for 14 of the 21 murders. – No one talked about his affiliation to his local Church.
* Herbert Richard "Herb" Baumeister (April 7, 1947 – July 3, 1996) was the founder of the thrift store chain Sav-a-Lot and an alleged serial killer from suburban Westfield, Indiana. – His conservative background never came into discussion.
* Ronald Dominique of Houma, Louisiana confessed to murdering 23 men over the past nine years and dumping their bodies in sugarcane fields, ditches and small bayous in six southeast Louisiana parishes. – Yet, his Christian religious identity never came into discussion.
* Kristen Gilbert was a bright, attractive, well-trained nurse who, in 2001 was found guilty of killing her patients at a Veterans Administration medical center. – Did the media release footage of his visit to his place of worship? No
* Eagle Scout turned serial killer, Richard Angelo, killed patients in order to make himself out to be a hero.- Did anyone raise doubts about Scouting? No one!
* Helmuth Schmidt killed innocent women he lured through personal ads. – Did anyone blame the media for being an accomplice of the crime.
* The Lewington brothers were one of Ohio's most deadly brutal serial killers of all time. – Did anyone bring about their Church affiliation? No one!
* Albert Fish is known for being one of the most vile pedophiles and killers of all time. After his capture he admitted to molesting over 400 children and tortured and killed several others. – Did the media talk about his religious pastor discussing his personal life?
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* Tedd Bundy was attractive, smart, and had a future in politics. He was also one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history. Bundy screamed his innocence until his death in the electric chair was imminent. Then he told just enough to show the true evil inside him.- Yet no one in the media talked about his race or religion.
* Richard Ramirez, was named The Night Stalker, after terrorizing Los Angeles during a year long killing and rape spree that resulted in his conviction of 43 counts, including 13 murders and other charges including burglary, sodomy, and rape. – Yet no one talked about Satanism he was preaching and practicing.
* John Wayne Gacy was convicted of the torture, rape and murder of 33 men between 1972 until his arrest in 1978. He was dubbed the "Killer Clown" because he entertained kids at parties as "Pogo The Clown." – Did anyone blame all the clowns for his behavior.
* Gaskins confessed to several murders during the last days of his life. How much truth was in his confessions was never confirmed. Many believed he did not want to be known in history as a tiny man, but rather as a prolific killer. – He was a devout Christian but we never heard of his religious convictions.
* David Berkowitz, better known as Son of Sam, is an infamous 1970s New York City serial killer who killed six people and wounded several others because a demon dog told him to do it. – Should we assume from his last name that he was of Jewish origin?
* The Plainfield, Wisconsin police department had no idea of the grotesque world they were about to enter when they went to Ed Gein's farm home to investigate the disappearance of a local woman. Gein's crimes went down in history as some of the most disgusting ever uncovered that encompassed murder, grave robbing and cannibalism. – Yet, no one ever mentioned that he was a Church goer.
* Juan Corona was a labor contractor who hired migrant workers for produce fields in California. In a murder spree lasting six weeks, he raped and murdered 25 men and buried their machete-hacked bodies in the orchards owned by local farmers. – No one blamed hedonism or homosexuality for his crimes.
* In late October 1979, California authorities were busy hunting down and capturing The Hillside Strangler, Angelo Buono. In the meantime, two more equally barbaric killers had teamed up to fulfill a prison time fantasy – to kidnap, rape, torture and kill a girl for each teenage year. – Yet, we did not hear of their worshipping habits.
* On October 26, 2005, Jeremy Bryan Jones was convicted of the rape, burglary, sexual abuse, kidnapping and capital murder of Lisa Nichols. He now faces prosecution for the murder of Katherine Collins of Georgia and Amanda Greenwell of Douglas County, Ga. Police suspect Jones is a serial killer who may be linked to at least 10 other murders across the country. – No one discussed his faith and ethnicity.
* For month authorities from Utah, Washington, and Colorado worked together to find the serial killer named "Ted" who was brutally killing women everywhere he went, using their kindness to lead them into his trap. – Yet no one blamed Christianity for impacting the mind of the killer.
* Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins was the most prolific serial killer in South Carolina history. Once his brutality was unleashed, he knew no boundaries, torturing, killing, cannibalizing victims, both male and female. – No one talked about those verses in the Old Testament that degrades women, even though several versions of the Bible were found in his custody.
* Pedro Alonzo Lopez, known as the 'The Monster of the Andes,' was one of history's most horrific serial killers. He responsible for the brutal murders of over 350 children. He bragged of his crimes and promised to do it again if ever released from prison. – Yet in the middle of the night he was taken from prison to a van then driven to the Columbia border and set free. We never heard of his Catholic affiliation.
* Turner is the most prolific serial killer in the history of Los Angeles but was finally identified through DNA technology. – But no one identified his religion.
* No one could believe that the child-like face of John Eric Armstrong, nicknamed 'Opie' by his navy friends, was really the face of a cold and calculating serial killer. – But no one talked about his religious practices.
* Jack the Ripper, a serial killer murdered and mutilated at least five prostitutes in the East End of London in 1888 and because no one was ever, arrested or tried for the murders, crime buffs are still fascinated with the case more than 115 years later. – His religious background is unknown.
* It is estimated Shipman was responsible for 236 murders over 24 years, finally ending in 1998.- Yet, we never heard of his affiliation to Judaism or any other faith.
"Most of the time I killed them the first time I met them, and I do not have a good memory of their faces." This is just one of many cold statements made by Gary Ridgway, when he pled guilty to 48 counts of aggravated first-degree murder in the Green River killing cases. – Yet little is known about his faith and Church.
Woman Serves as Mosque President
August 13, 2009 by TMO · Leave a Comment
By Jeff Swicord , VOA
Salmenna Sedique prays, at far left. |
Toleda, Ohio–05 August 2009–Some in the West have long held negative stereotypes toward the Islamic faith, particularly when it comes to the role of women. But if one woman in Toledo, Ohio has her way, that is about to change. She was recently elected president of a local Islamic center. She oversees the operations of a community center, school, and mosque, including the activities of the Imam. Her goal is to show the non-Muslim world that women of Islam can do and achieve anything they want.
Like many Afghan women, Salmenna Sedique enjoys spending quiet time with her family in their Toledo Ohio home.
But unlike some of her counterparts, Salmenna also plays a prominent role outside the home, in Toledo's Muslim community.
She is the first woman president of the Masjid Saad Islamic Center, which includes an Islamic school and mosque.
"It is a hard position for anyone to run, Salmenna said. "It is a responsibility. And every single second I am thinking, am I going to fulfill it in the right manner, in the right way?"
Toledo Ohio is an old industrial city in the middle United States. The Masjid Saad center started as a small prayer area at a local University more than twenty years ago.
It has grown to a community of over one thousand people. Women play prominent roles in all aspects of the center's life.
Salmenna wants to change the negative stereotypes held by some toward Islam — particularly, the role of women. She says rules that say women cannot be educated, or leave the home without the company of a male family member, or must be covered, are rooted in culture, not Islamic tradition. She says, in Islam, those issues are a matter of choice and points to the role women played in the household of the Prophet Mohammed (s).
"They were not hiding," Salmenna says, "They were not behind the curtains; they were not behind the walls. They were going to battles, they were in business."
Salmenna also plays a prominent role in the family business.
She keeps the books and maintains the computer system at her husband Ahmad's auto dealership. It was her husband who pushed her to become president of the Islamic center. "We needed somebody in our community right now to work and organize it. And she is qualified for that," Ahmad Sedique says, "And I am fully supporting her for that."
Salmenna says leading by example is the best way to change perceptions. She encourages young people to get more involved at the center. Today, these young women are planning youth group activities, but were shy about talking with us on camera.
Salmenna wants to see more action from Muslims outside the center. "We don't have people in politics, we don't have people to fill out the social working areas. They don't look at it as a priority, but to me," she adds, "it is a priority."
Her appointment as president is for one year. She encourages women to educate themselves, get involved, and stand up for their Islamic rights.
Who is Behind the Iranian Protests?
June 27, 2009 by TMO · Leave a Comment
By Dr. Aslam Abdullah, TMO Editor-in-chief
There is no doubt that there are thousands of Iranian who yearn for real democracy. They are the ones's who are concerned about the detereorating law and order situation in their country. But what is interesting to note that those who are fomenting violence in Iran are those who have at their back several western intellligence agencies.
It is now a known fact that for the last 12 months these intelligence agencies have been supplying high quality communication devices in the thousands to Iranian youth to provide information in situation like these. Much of these electronic gagdets were sent to Iran from Los Angeles, by Iranian businessmen who recived the hidden grant from sources closer to intelligence agencies.
In 1953, western intelligence agencies played a similar game in toppling the Iranian democratic regime. Now many fear that the same game is being repeated.
The West has laid economic siege to Iran for 30 years. Recently, US Congress voted $120 million for anti-regime media broadcasts into Iran and $60-75 million in funding for opposition, violent underground Marxists and restive ethnic groups such as Azeris, Kurds and Arabs under the "Iran Democracy Program." Pakistani intelligence sources put the CIA's recent spending on "black operations" to subvert Iran's government at $400 million.It is true that majority of protests we see in Tehran are genuine and spontaneous, western intelligence agencies are playing a key role in sustaining them and providing communications, including the newest method, via Twitter.
The Tehran government turned things worse by limiting foreign news reports and trying to cover up protests.
Several western experts have accused Iran of improper electoral procedures while utterly ignoring their autocratic Mideast allies such as Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which hold only fake elections and savage any real opposition.They have also ignore the voting irregularities that were witnessed in Florida and Ohio in 2000 and 20008, by officials close to republican Party candidate President Bush.
U.S. senators, led by John McCain, blasted Iran for not respecting human rights without making any reference to President Bush torture policy in Guantanamo Bay.
In fact the current feud is between the establishment and former establishment member Ali Akbar Rafsanjani who is waiting to pounce. He heads the Assembly of Experts, which theoretically has the power to unseat Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.his power revolves round him and his family. He is considered the msot shrewed politician of Iran. It is possible that he may manipulate situation to the best of his interests.
But we must not live under any illusion that Rafsanjani would be a pro-western leader. He is as dangerous as the previsiou leader when it comes to Iran's nuclear ambition.
All that we need to do is to wait and see before making a final pronouncement on the current situation.
The Truth Is Out There
June 26, 2008 by TMO · Leave a Comment
By Peter Barber
When Cynthia McKinney speaks the words of Martin Luther King Jr, they resound through the church with some of King's cadence. "A time comes," declares the former US congresswoman from Georgia, "when silence is betrayal." The congregation answers with whoops and calls of "That's right!" King was talking about America's war in Vietnam. More than 40 years later, before the packed pews of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, McKinney is speaking of the American government's war on its own people. The shock and awe phase of this conflict, we had been told earlier, began on September 11 2001, when the Bush administration launched attacks on New York and Washington, or at least waved them through.
According to a show of hands that February afternoon, several hundred people in the immaculate church believe this to be true. Some came in T-shirts bearing the words "9/11 was an inside job". One wore a badge demanding that you "Examine your assumptions". Quite a few bought the DVDs on sale in the foyer, most of which bore photographs of the Twin Towers spewing smoke. They had all come to hear the message of Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, one of the dozens of groups across the US which campaign to persuade us that everything we think we know about 9/11 is wrong.
Last winter, "Investigate 9/11" banners seemed to be popping up all over the place. Bill Clinton was heckled by "truthers" in Denver while campaigning for his wife. Truthers picketed the Academy Awards in LA – despite this year's winner of the best actress Oscar, Marion Cotillard, reportedly being one of them. But then, she's French. Literature lovers in that country pushed Thierry Meyssan's L'Effroyable imposture (The Appalling Fraud) – which asserts that 9/11 was a government plot to justify invading Iraq and Afghanistan and increase military spending – to the top of the bestseller list in 2002.
Country music star Willie Nelson is assuredly not French, but a week or so before the Oscars he described as naive the notion that the "implosion" of the Twin Towers was caused by crashing jets. Meanwhile the European Parliament screened the Italian documentary Zero, in which Gore Vidal, Italian playwright Dario Fo, and Italian MEP Giulietto Chiesa blame the US government, not al-Qaeda, for 9/11. The following month, Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita raised his own doubts about the official story at a seminar in Sydney. A busy season for the "9/11 Truth" movement.
The events of 9/11 were recorded in many thousands of images, from crisp agency photographs to amateur camcorder footage. Every recorded trail of smoke, every spray of sparks is pored over by an army of sceptics, collectively described as the 9/11 Truth movement. They believe that the key to the mystery is hidden somewhere within the pictures, just as some people think that clues are contained in the Zapruder film which captured the moment of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Allied against them is a smaller group of rival bloggers who have taken it upon themselves to debunk what they claim are dangerous conspiracy theories.
Gore Vidal, writer
"If there ever was great cause for impeachment, it would be over 9/11"
There is some evidence that the truthers are swaying the rest of us. A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 revealed that only 16 per cent of Americans polled believed the Bush administration was telling the truth about 9/11. More than half thought it was "hiding something". This is not the same as believing the government actually launched the attacks, but a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll the same year found that more than a third of those questioned suspected that federal officials assisted in the attacks or took no action to stop them so that the US could go to war.
The truthers certainly believe that they are on a roll. The crowd in the Immanuel Presbyterian Church seemed electrified. As the donated sound system pumped out angry rap, a giant video screen showed images of protesters demanding a new investigation into 9/11. The symbols and the language were borrowed from the civil rights struggle, but the truthers are an eclectic group, including anti-Bush, anti-war liberals and anti-government libertarians. A young man in a "Vote Ron Paul" T-shirt scuttled through the hall, filming us as we took our seats on wooden pews.
First up was Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect who founded Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, which now claims to have 379 professional members. Gage told us that the collapse of the Twin Towers could not have been due merely to gravity, the impact of the airliners and the resulting jet fuel fires – which would not have been hot enough to weaken the steel sufficiently. Behind him on the video screen was the south tower of the World Trade Center. Smoke poured from its upper floors. A respectful silence fell over the audience, followed by gasps as the building appeared to dissolve before our eyes.
What happened to building 7?
To the truthers, the third building in the World Trade Center complex to collapse on September 11 is evidence that the mainstream media is in on the plot
While I have seen this footage countless times, it seems that I had clearly never understood what I was seeing. The destruction of the Twin Towers, along with the collapse of the nearby 47-storey World Trade Center 7 building, had all the hallmarks of controlled demolition, according to Gage. They all came straight down, almost at the speed of a free-falling object, right into their own footprints. Steel-framed buildings had never collapsed because of fires before. On this day three did, one of which, "Building 7", was not even hit by an aircraft.
Gage, who had worked himself into a fever, exhorted the audience to stand up and be counted: "A country is at stake." Then he welcomed on to the stage the star of the evening, Steven Jones. A softly spoken physicist, Jones is the movement's designated martyr and seems to promise what the truthers so desperately need: scientific credibility.
Jones entered into truther lore in 2006 when he was put into early retirement by BYU in Utah after giving public lectures on his paper "Why indeed did the WTC buildings collapse?", which he published on the website of the university's physics department. Jones contended that the towers were demolished by cutter charges which had been placed throughout the buildings, probably involving an incendiary called thermite. BYU's College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and the structural engineering faculty, followed by the university administration, disowned him.
Still, Jones is no fool. He has published more than 50 scholarly papers, including pieces on cold nuclear fusion in journals such as Scientific American and Nature. He invented a cooker which uses solar power and has donated models to poor families in the developing world. Jones tells us he believes laboratory testing of dust from Ground Zero will reveal residue from a thermite reaction.
As soon as the seminar is over, Jones is mobbed by people asking him to pose for photos and offering their own views on the 9/11 plot, as well as others, some extremely outlandish. This is the world Jones now inhabits–it seems a long way from a Utah physics department. I ask him later by phone if he has any regrets about publishing that fateful paper: "No regrets. I've thought of Galileo a few times. He got a little worse than I did, I suppose."
Jones is typical of many 9/11 researchers in that the subject has taken over his professional life. Down the coast in Santa Barbara is another of the movement's luminaries. On the beach at Isla Vista, one of the most expensive real-estate spots in the US, lives David Ray Griffin, a former theology professor. As his dogs scratch excitedly on the sliding door, Griffin explains that America's primary faith is not Christianity, but nationalism. "Other countries do really terrible things. Our leaders never would. And that [belief] has been the biggest impediment to getting people to look at the evidence, because they just know a priori that that is ridiculous."
Michael Meacher, UK politician
"It is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11"
Griffin now thinks the evidence to the contrary is incontrovertible. Until 2002, he had busied himself far from the rancour of public controversy writing rather obscure philosophical books and teaching philosophy of religion at the Claremont School of Theology. But the course of his research changed abruptly when he heard a visiting British theologian question the official account of 9/11. Two years later, Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor, with a foreword by British MP Michael Meacher, became a touchstone in the 9/11 Truth movement. He has since written others, including one detailing the "omissions and distortions" of the 9/11 Commission, the report of which fits the definition of "conspiracy theory" neatly, he says. "They started with the conclusion that al-Qaeda did it and didn't even consider the alternative that it was an inside job."
Griffin was a script consultant on Loose Change Final Cut, part of the internet phenomenon that set off the current explosion of low-budget 9/11 DVDs. The previous version was viewed more than 10 million times on Google Video, according to Vanity Fair. In 2002, armed only with a laptop and off-the-shelf video production software, Dylan Avery, an 18-year-old resident of Oneonta, New York, set about making a fictional film about discovering, with his friends, that 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government. At some point in his research, Avery had a "Dude, this shit is real!" moment and Loose Change entered the realm of agit-prop documentary. Final Cut makes a bold new allegation: the Twin Towers were packed with deadly asbestos, which would have cost billions to clean up. "If you bring down the buildings," says Griffin, "not only do you not have to pay … to clean them up, somebody is going to make billions of dollars on the insurance."
September 11 as insurance job? This seems to expand the circle of conspirators somewhat. Griffin ventures another possible explanation: the psychological impact. "You had these massive explosions, which rather looked like a nuclear blast," he says. "That's always been the deep fear of America. In the run-up to the Iraq war, that's what they were talking about – we cannot wait until we have a nuclear cloud."
Griffin offers one further speculation, this time on a question which is controversial even among 9/11 sceptics: what hit the Pentagon? Thierry Meyssan was the first to claim that it was not Flight 77 – an American Airlines 757 carrying 64 passengers – but a cruise missile that hit the west wall of the Pentagon at 9.37am on September 11. Websites have followed suit, pointing to the apparent lack of plane debris on the Pentagon lawn and the fact that the hole left in the outer ring of the building looks too small to accommodate the wingspan of a 757. Retired US Air Force captain Russ Wittenberg from Pilots for 9/11 Truth asserted that no inexperienced pilot could have performed the manoeuvre the 9/11 Commission concluded that al-Qaeda conspirator Hani Hanjour pulled off that morning: a 330° turn, 2,200ft descent, a full-throttle dive and then a 530 miles per hour plunge at ground level into the Pentagon. Call it "the magic plane theory": doubters believe that, just as the bullet that killed Kennedy appeared to defy the laws of physics, so the plane that struck the Pentagon was like no other in existence.
And just as Nasa was forced to counter claims the moon landings were faked, these and other claims have forced the US State Department into the debunking business. Its Identifying Misinformation website states that debris from Flight 77 was indeed recovered, as were the remains of passengers and crew. Many witnesses saw the plane come in, and a number of passengers made phone calls to their loved ones telling them their flight had been hijacked.
There is also another obvious problem: if a missile hit the Pentagon, what happened to Flight 77? "There was a rumour that an airliner had gone down on the Ohio/Kentucky border and that was taken very seriously early on by the Federal Aviation Authority," says Griffin. It later rejected the story. But Griffin claims the only evidence that Flight 77 was aloft after that was an alleged phone call from Barbara Olsen to Ted Olsen, the solicitor-general of the United States.
So how does he explain that phone call? Ted Olsen is a Bush administration insider, he says. Another possible answer, though, is "voice-morphing technology".
This would also explain the flurry of phone calls from United Airlines Flight 93, which, as the official story has it, crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers revolted against their hijackers.
Glossary of doubt:
People who claim that it wasn't an aircraft, but a missile, that hit the Pentagon on September 11 2001. Some have taken it a step further and argued that no aircraft hit the twin towers, either. What the world saw that day, these sceptics argue, was either video trickery or cruise missiles disguised through image technology as aircraft.
Truthers who believe the US government "Made it happen on purpose", "it" being the destruction of September 11.
A more moderate strain of truther who believe the government "Let it happen on purpose".
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
Started by James Fetzer, the group advocates looking at all possible explanations of what happened on September 11, no matter how improbable.
Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice
The more moderate splinter group of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, led by Steven Jones. Endorses an "evidence-based approach" to questioning the 9/11 story.
It's not just supporters of the official story who roll their eyes at these claims. They put Griffin in the camp of the "no-planers", at least as far as the attack on the Pentagon is concerned. The no-planers enrage the rest of the truthers, who accuse them of sabotaging the credibility of the movement. The claim that no plane hit the Pentagon is a Trojan horse, they say – disinformation that serves the conspirators. Some – such as former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler – have even asserted that no planes, but missiles disguised by "cloaking technology", hit the Twin Towers. Shayler, incidentally, proclaimed himself the Messiah last year.
If the 9/11 truth movement is fighting a kind of asymmetric war against official sources of knowledge, it is also battling itself. As the movement morphs into an international activist group, it recognises that if it is to convince middle Americans, it must distance itself from its exotic fringe. Once, it was the Mihops versus the Lihops. These factions, who sound like warring species from an H.G. Wells story, are those who believe the government Made It Happen On Purpose and those who think it Let It Happen On Purpose. The Mihops are in the ascendancy.
The genesis of all this can be traced back to a schism that followed the first real attempt to bring scholarly credibility to the 9/11 sceptics. In 2005, Steven Jones was invited to form a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth by James Fetzer, a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Minnesota and the author of some 20 books on the philosophy of science and artificial intelligence. Fetzer teaches critical thinking, and is nothing if not critical. He has been campaigning for more than a decade to prove that the Zapruder film is a hoax perpetuated by the same government intelligence agencies that orchestrated JFK's assassination.
But within a year, Jones had written to all members of Scholars announcing that he and others no longer wanted to be associated with Fetzer, who was, in the rebels' opinion, holding them up to ridicule. Fetzer had backed a theory by Judy Wood, a former assistant professor in mechanical engineering at Clemson University, proposing that the Twin Towers were brought down by a "directed energy" weapon developed as part of the US government's Star Wars programme. It prompted a stampede to a new group, Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, headed by Jones. Confusing the two groups would be like mistaking Monty Python's Judean People's Front for the People's Front of Judea: this was a major doctrinal split.
Fetzer's view is that any serious inquiry into what happened on 9/11 should look at all possibilities. Supporters of the directed energy hypothesis keep popping up at 9/11 Truth lectures to heckle what Python fans might call the "splittist" thermite theorists. Among the advocates of the Star Wars theory is Morgan Reynolds, perhaps the first prominent US government official to claim that 9/11 was an inside job. At the time of the attacks, Reynolds was chief economist at the US Department of Labor.
Some Star Wars supporters, in turn, accuse proponents of the thermite hypothesis of being government shills. One, on CheckTheEvidence.com, alleges that Jones's public denunciation of Star Wars theories is actually a Trojan horse; he notes that Jones once worked at Los Alamos, where directed energy weapons are researched. This line of conjecture also entangles Norman Mineta, US transportation secretary on September 11 2001. Mineta was the man who grounded all civilian aircraft on that morning. But he was also once vice-president of Lockheed Martin, a founding member of the Directed Energy Professional Society … In this outer reach of the blogosphere, no one is ever more than six degrees of separation from the heart of the conspiracy.
Jones did, in fact, do post-doctoral research at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility for the University of Wyoming, but he says it was peaceful and non-weapons-related. He says the more out-there theories, including those of the no-planers, are harming the movement. "First, they discourage others who are trying to do serious work, and they tend to be quite vocal about their heckling," he says. "More serious is that when we're really trying to look at an evidence-based approach, we get lumped in with these people and then dismissed as a whole."
Two days before Jones's lecture in LA, his erstwhile colleague was taking his own campaign on the road on the other side of the country. After addressing Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth in New Hampshire, Fetzer was off to that seat of academic respectability, Yale University. To prepare for our meeting, I watched a DVD of a 9/11 symposium he held in his new hometown of Madison, Wisconsin last year. The star of this show was Alfred Lambremont Webre, a judge on former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad's alternative international War Crimes Tribunal in Kuala Lumpur and co-author of the Space Preservation Treaty. He delivers what might be the most momentous opening line in the history of town hall seminars. "Fellow Citizens… 9/11 was a false flag operation by an international war crimes racketeering organisation to provide a pretext to engage in a genocidal and ecocidal depleted uranium bombing of central Asia, Afghanistan and Iraq in order to secure vast oil and uranium reserves; to roll out a terror-based national security state system worldwide and … to implement the final stages of a world depopulation policy." There are two more "false flag" operations in the pipeline, he says. The first is the war against asteroids, the second the "war against the evil aliens".
Hearing this, you either experience the thrill of revelation or the sinking feeling that the person you are listening to is having some kind of breakdown. Within 30 minutes, Webre has folded into the 9/11 plot the Skull & Bones society at Yale University – or the "Brotherhood of Death", as he calls it – neocon think-thank the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rothschilds, the Queen and the City of London. I wondered how all these conspiracies could be maintained without the whole conceit unravelling.
The answer, of course, is that there is only one conspiracy. Pearl Harbour, the moon landing, JFK, 9/11, the Illuminati, the Black Helicopters, Skull & Bones, chemtrails: all faces of the same demon. The plot goes all the way to the top, and all the way back in time. You could come to believe that it involves everyone except yourself – at which point it's all over for you. And as I listened, I just waited for him to say the Word. And, inevitably, Webre brought it all back to the "international neo-Zionist organisation".
I asked Fetzer about this as we sat in a cafe across from Yale, home of the Brotherhood of Death: how did he keep his scholars on message? "It's obvious to me that you have to consider all the possible alternatives," he says. "You can't exclude any, lest, as you proceed in your investigation and eliminate hypotheses, you eliminate the true hypothesis because you've never allowed it to be considered."
Fetzer's talk later that night does not go well. A Yale student had promoted the lecture on Facebook Events, but fellow students had apparently been unwilling to add their names, which anyone can see, perhaps for fear of ridicule. Only six show up. When it becomes clear that Fetzer is implicating some kind of Star Wars weapon, the two next to me begin scrolling distractedly through their mobile phone messages. Within 10 minutes, they have left.
Lewis Lapham, journalist
"Americans are very good at dreaming up these scenarios"
The conclusion of the 9/11 Commission – the official story – is that the 2001 attacks got through because those charged with protecting America had not truly conceived of the threat: in its author's evocative phrase, they had suffered a "failure of imagination". After trawling the internet in search of 9/11 Truth, it seems to me the American imagination is strong. "Americans are very good at dreaming up these scenarios," says Lewis Lapham, the former Harper's magazine editor and a prominent critic of the Bush administration post-September 11. "We are open to all kinds of magical theories," he says, citing the continuing fascination with the assassination of JFK. "We are also good at creating religions." Lapham thinks the theory that 9/11 was an inside job follows in this long tradition, but also reflects cynicism among Americans towards their government. He does not accept that the Bush administration planned 9/11 or even allowed it to happen. Nonetheless, he thinks a new investigation is warranted. In 2004, Harper's ran a trenchant piece describing the 9/11 Commission as a "whitewash" and a "cheat and a fraud" for downplaying evidence that warnings of the al-Qaeda threat were ignored. Such flaws allowed space for alternative theories to develop, Lapham says.
In this, there are shades of the Warren Commission into the assassination of President Kennedy, which served merely to deepen popular distrust. But if we have seen the likes of the 9/11 Truth movement before, it also represents something new. "With the Kennedy assassination, pretty soon after the events themselves there were fairly significant questions being raised by people of all types and stripes about what actually happened," says Mark Fenster, a University of Florida law professor and author of Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. "But whereas then it was a generalised, amorphous kind of response, the amount of organisation – politically and through alternative media – is far more striking now than it was back then."
Fenster thinks that the 9/11 Truth movement is in some ways a typical American response to a surprising and traumatic event. But it also represents a step change in its use of telecommunications technology. "One of the interesting things, particularly in the beginning of this movement, was the extent to which there were a lot of local groups in different cities organising protests … and they could co-ordinate and create a national and international movement," he says. "Whether that translates into more people actually believing in the conspiracy theory is a completely different question."
Fenster believes the few published polls on the subject, rather than showing any real depth of suspicion about 9/11, demonstrate declining trust in the Bush administration generally. The author of one of the most rigorous of the websites that aim to debunk the conspiracy theories, Debunking911.com, notes that the most recent Zogby poll on attitudes towards 9/11 found only 4.6 per cent of Americans believe the Bush administration blew up the Twin Towers. "If you follow the website hits, you'll find that since Debunking911 came into existence, conspiracy sites have been losing readership," he says via e-mail. "I think all they needed was someone to fill in the parts conspiracy theorists left out of the conspiracy story and their numbers begin to shrink."
Perhaps the 9/11 Truth movement is what one would expect in the dying days of an unpopular administration, and with no end in sight to a costly war. Whether it can maintain momentum when that government leaves office next year is anyone's guess. In the meantime, some on the left accuse it of letting the leaders they so vehemently distrust off the hook. "They make a mockery of [civil rights] causes by associating their nonsense with genuinely important issues, and by diverting a large number of people who should know better into a unicorn hunt," says British writer and activist George Monbiot. Monbiot is regularly heckled by 9/11 truthers at public events after accusing them in The Guardian of undermining genuine political opposition. His first column on the truthers prompted a near-record number of postings on the paper's Comment Is Free website – 777 – many accusing him of being part of the conspiracy.
"It's very interesting to see," he says, "particularly in the United States, how the anti-war movement has been largely co-opted in many places by the 9/11 Truth movement. And we desperately need an active anti-war movement, because there is a lot of reckoning to be done."
Peter Barber is the FT's deputy comment editor


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Greater Yellowstone AreaBlog PostsJoin this group
blog BY John Ross ON June 20 - 0 COMMENTS
100 Best: Yellowstone River, Lower Posted in 100 Best Trout Streams, Yellowstone Fly Fishing, Upper Yellowstone River, Middle Yellowstone River, East Yellowstone - 540, Greater Yellowstone Area, Montana - 9MT
Location: Southcentral Montana
Type of stream: Freestone
Angling methods: Fly, Spin
Species: Cutthroat, Browns, Rainbows
Access: Moderate
Season: Year-round
Supporting Services: Gardiner, Livingston
Short take: Everybody's paradise, literally
Handicapped Access: Best from drift boats
Closest TU [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY rscholfield ON May 29 - 0 COMMENTS
Chasing Grayling Posted in Conservation, Greater Yellowstone Area
By Randy Scholfield
I was recently in Ennis, Montana, attending a TU staff retreat, and after a day of meetings, everyone was ready to get on the Madison River. I was eagerly anticipating joining the river rush, chucking streamers at the Madison's famous wild browns and rainbows.
Then my colleague [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY rscholfield ON May 23 - 0 COMMENTS
Trout Need Champions Posted in Conservation, Greater Yellowstone Area
By Scott Yates
The banks of the legendary Madison River – that's where I got to spend last week with a bevy of Trout Unlimited staff and guests. And the Madison was in all its spring glory. It was a long winter, so the mix of green grass (finally), leafing trees, and the snowcapped Madison and [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY mtdave ON May 15 - 2 COMMENTS
Madison-Gallatin Chapter of Trout Unlimited Posted in Origin Stories | TU Chapters, Yellowstone Fly Fishing, Upper Yellowstone River, Madison-Gallatin - 024, Greater Yellowstone Area
One could make the case that the Madison-Gallatin Chapter of Trout Unlimited is the "Keeper of the Crown Jewels" of North American trout rivers and streams. Based in Bozeman and including the towns of West Yellowstone and Ennis, the Madison Gallatin Chapter of Trout Unlimited (MGTU) works to [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY chris_hunt ON May 6 - 1 COMMENTS
Yellowstone Lake: Answers to Your Questions Posted in Conservation, Greater Yellowstone Area
Yellowstone cutts vs. lake trout:
Get the Facts
Trout Unlimited strongly supports the ef- forts of National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey and others to recover the native Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout (YCT) popula- tion associated with Yellowstone Lake and the Upper Yellowstone River [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY chris_hunt ON May 2 - 0 COMMENTS
Bridges Posted in Greater Yellowstone Area, Trout Magazine
Photo Courtesy of Henry's Fork Angler
By Chris Hunt
The Osborne Bridge over the Henry's Fork in Island Park is unremarkable. There are no mighty cables suspending it over a vast expanse of ocean. No intimidating trestles that span a vertical chasm. No massive pilings driven hundreds of feet into [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY rscholfield ON April 17 - 3 COMMENTS
Yellowstone: The Natives Are Winning Posted in Conservation, Wyoming - 9WY, Greater Yellowstone Area
Yellowstone cutthroat trout: a native species worth saving
by Randy Scholfield
You gotta love Ted Williams—he tells it like it is. In a recent column in Fly Rod and Reel, the fearless, take-no-prisoners conservation writer champions the "most ambitious native fish recovery project ever attempted"-- [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY chris_hunt ON March 17 - 1 COMMENTS
Buy Simms Gear, Protect Yellowstone Cutthroats Posted in Conservation, Greater Yellowstone Area
Our good friends at Simms have on hand some unique t-shirts that aren't available through the company's catalog--but you can get your hands on them through a special promotion aimed at helping TU's efforts to control lake trout populations in Yellowstone Lake in order to protect native Yellowstone [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY rscholfield ON January 30 - 0 COMMENTS
A little creek named Watkins It's easy to overlook small tributary creeks, but they play a big role in ensuring river health—and fishing opportunities. In this video, Lyndy Caine, owner of fly-fishing paradise Firehole Ranch in Montana, speaks about her collaboration with TU to preserve healthy flows and habitat in Watkins [ READ MORE... ]
blog BY patrick_byorth ON January 27 - 3 COMMENTS
Forty Years of Montana's Wild Trout Policy Posted in Conservation, Greater Yellowstone Area
The unheralded 40th anniversary of Montana adopting a wild trout management policy may surprise some Montanans. Perhaps it's even more surprising to Montanans that there is an anniversary of wild trout management, at all. But the anniversary is noteworthy for several reasons. Historically, the [ READ MORE... ]


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Snowmass Village, CO, USA
July 2-5, 2015
In 2010, Wanderlust launched the Speakeasy - a casual lecture series on subjects pertaining to the mindful life. The Speakeasy was meant to be just that --- an experience where people could "speak easily." Not meant to be a stuffy lecture, the Speakeasy is about lounging on pillows sipping tea and kombucha and letting ideas flow through.
In our latest Speakeasy release, Elena Brower of Virayoga NYC leads a discussion on the practice of softening, her experience with Anusara Yoga, and the freedom of discipleship. Watch it below.


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Download We! 1.1.0
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We! is a free-of-charge program designed to expand borders of dialogue through computer networks. It is often difficult to find pleasant words to tell to friend or especially to boss about its lacks or advantages. A friend who speaks what thinks is very good friend. We! helps you to be sensitive. Open yourself to others!