BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Incredibly sad...
I find it interesting that they are keeping so tight lipped about the shooter. Apparently they are holding a news conference today and will reveal his name.
I promise we're not all gun-toting lunatics here.
That being said, however, fucking hell, when is this going to stop? What in the world has to happen in order for our country to go, "Hey, you know the whole thing about how not everyone should have a gun? Maybe we should try that once."
I find it interesting that they are keeping so tight lipped about the shooter. Apparently they are holding a news conference today and will reveal his name.
deep said:tight lipped?
why not wait a until they get the correct information
often times wrong information gets out. perhaps they are trying to determine if he had any help, where is the urgency? the guy is dead.
JOPLIN, Mo. — A mosque in southwest Missouri burned to the ground early Monday in the second fire to hit the Islamic center in little more than a month, officials said.
I know that, of course. Most Americans I've met have been awesome people, and that goes out to people on this forum, too. It's just the gun culture around the whole country, the power of the NRA, and people being too afraid to do anything even after these mass shootings that terrifies me. It's the fact that they're allowed to happen so much as that they do happen.
Wow, really? Overreaction much, school?
ISLAMABAD -- The arrest and imprisonment of a Christian girl accused of violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws stoked a public furor on Monday, renewing international scrutiny of growing intolerance toward minorities in the country. The police jailed the girl, Rimsha Masih, and her mother on Friday after hundreds of Muslim protesters surrounded the police station here where they were being held, demanding that Ms. Masih face charges under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. A local cleric had said Ms. Masih had burned pages of the Noorani Qaida, a religious textbook used to teach the Koran to children. By Monday night, as Pakistani Muslims celebrated the feast of Id al-Fitr, Ms. Masih and her mother were being held in Adiala jail, a grim facility in nearby Rawalpindi, awaiting their fate. Meanwhile, a number of the girl’s Christian neighbors had fled their homes, fearing for their lives, human rights workers said.
Senior government and police officials agreed with Christian leaders that the accusations against Ms. Masih were baseless and predicted that the case would ultimately be dropped. Still, the case has already grabbed global headlines and inspired a hail of Twitter posts, even though several details are in dispute.
Christian, and some Muslim, neighbors said Ms. Masih was 11 years old and had Down syndrome. Senior police officers dismissed those claims; one described her as 16 and “100% mentally fit.” Whatever the truth, experts said Ms. Masih’s plight highlighted a wider problem. “This case exemplifies the absurdity and tragedy of the blasphemy law, which is an instrument of abuse against the most vulnerable in society,” said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch.
One could argue that frankly this is the least of Pakistan's problems, and that besides numerous other countries do an even worse job of upholding whatever individual rights their constitutions nominally protect. But I think part of the reason why I find this particular human rights violation so disturbing is how reminiscent the workings of Pakistan's blasphemy laws are of the way rape laws worked in the US South under Jim Crow: ostensibly, those laws existed to protect women, "morals," and "values," but in practice they functioned to reinforce white supremacy and destroy all pretense of equality before the law by providing a no-questions-asked pretext for the imprisonment and/or lynching of black men. If you've ever read a human rights report about "blasphemy" prosecutions in Pakistan, or follow these stories in the South Asian press (they happen, on average, about twice a month), it's blatantly obvious that most of the charges are total fabrications, that local police and courts are either in cahoots with the complainants or have been (quite literally) terrorized into compliance with them, and that the true flashpoint underlying the "blasphemy" charge is almost invariably some conflict over property, money, resource access and/or someone from the designated lower orders of society getting uppity. The present case clearly leans towards the latter category--the Masih ("Messiah," a surname signaling the bearer's Christianity) are broadly synonymous both by descent and continuing occupation with the caste formerly known as chura: sewer and latrine cleaners, street sweepers and scavengers, who remain widely perceived as "filthy" and unfit to share social space with their neighboring "betters," in this case Muslim fellow-slumdwellers who work by day as domestic servants in the homes of the wealthy (quite possibly with an admixture of Taliban from former refugee camps, given the locally notorious neighborhood where this occurred).Ever since the governor of Punjab Province, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down by his own bodyguard in January 2011 for his support of blasphemy reforms, the space for public debate has narrowed in Pakistan. Violent mobs led by clerics have framed the argument, as appears to have happened in Ms. Masih’s case...The Pakistani police often are forced to register blasphemy cases against their wishes, human rights campaigners say, either to save the accused blasphemer or their own officers from attack.
...Even if Ms. Masih avoids blasphemy charges, her family is unlikely to ever return home. Although nobody has been executed under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, even suspected blasphemers are in danger for the rest of their lives. Several have been killed by vigilantes; others have been forced to flee Pakistan.
The number of prominent Pakistani public figures who've gone on record criticizing this incident does suggest that this girl stands a better-than-average chance of getting charges dropped early, and it seems the international attention her story's received helped significantly with that.
Wedding photographers are being invited to an unusual kind of afterparty.
Brides and grooms — who already often obsessively document their first kiss, first cake slice and first dance — are adding yet another first to their wedding photographer’s list: the morning after.
Sexy shoots featuring rumpled beds and steamy showers are a hot new trend within the wedding business. As the seating charts and floral arrangements fade into memory, these intimate photo shoots take place in newlyweds’ bedrooms or even the hotels where they’ve spent their first night as husband and wife.
“As the day progressed, we established this fantastic chemistry with her," said Shamis, who later posted the racy photos on Facebook and intends to someday share them with her kids.
“I wouldn’t show this to them at the age of 10,” Shamis said. “But when they’re older and can understand it. It’s their parents looking artistic … not at all pornography.”
Also, I feel there is something narcissistic about this.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused the Taliban on Monday of beheading 17 villagers, including two women, in volatile Helmand province, in a gruesome attack recalling the dark days of the hardline group's rule before their 2001 overthrow.
The killings, in a district where U.S. Marines have long battled with a resilient Taliban, could be a sign the Islamist group is reasserting itself before the planned pull-out of most NATO combat troops in 2014.
Karzai ordered a full investigation into the "mass killing", which a local official said was punishment meted out to revellers attending a party with music and mixed-sex dancing.
"Such actions show that there are desperate members among the Taliban," Karzai said in a statement.
The Taliban denied involvement in the attack, which Karzai's office said took place in the province's Kajaki district.
So the concept of "morning after" shoots is nothing new -- it's the sexy part that is. But Jonné seems to be the only photographer offering this service. So does one person equal a trend? We don't think so.