After the Egyptian revolution began in January, Garden Grove resident Samira Hammado, her Egyptian husband and their five children attended weekly demonstrations in Los Angeles and Orange County, often joining more than a hundred people gathered to support the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
But when anti-government protests broke out recently in Hammado's native Syria, she found herself one of just a few dozen Southern Californians who showed up regularly for small Syrian solidarity demonstrations.
At one rally in Anaheim, they faced off against protesters backing the authoritarian regime of President Bashar Assad. Some took photos of the anti-regime demonstrators, threatening to cause trouble for their families still in Syria. A few people hid their faces behind sunglasses or signs. Many others said they had stayed away after hearing rumors that Syrian security agents would monitor the protests.
After Hammado later posted some anti-regime comments on Facebook, she said a friend asked her, "Aren't you afraid?"
"I don't know why the fear is still in our hearts, still even with the distance," said Hammado, 44, who is a stay-at-home mom.
When anti-government protests erupted across the Middle East this spring, it was unclear whether Syria would join. No one attended the first planned protest in Damascus in early February. And Assad quickly announced several reforms — including raising public worker subsidies, lowering food prices and allowing greater access to such previously banned websites as Facebook and YouTube — in what was seen as an attempt to placate Syrians before they rose up.
But a number of Syrian Americans and Syrian expatriates interviewed said the main factor in delaying Syrian participation in the anti-government protests — at home and abroad — has been the fear many hold toward the regime and its secret police. They point to the brutal response by Assad's father to an anti-government uprising in 1982, when security forces killed more than 10,000 people in the city of Hama.
Since March 15, however, protests across Syria have continued to grow. On Friday, thousands turned out in demonstrations in several cities, including the capital, Damascus.
Now, many Syrian Americans say they are waiting to see Assad's response to the protests in their homeland before deciding whether to support them publicly in this country. On Saturday, solidarity protests are planned in many U.S. cities, including in West Los Angeles.
"We were raised on this fear. It was a package we brought with us from Syria," said one man, who immigrated to the U.S. decades ago but asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. When he asked other Syrians if they would be willing to be interviewed, he said they laughed.
Hammado was 12 and living with her family in Idlib, a village on the outskirts of Aleppo, when her two oldest brothers were arrested and accused of membership in the opposition Muslim Brotherhood.
She said her family has never seen the men again and doesn't know if they are alive.
When Assad became president after his father's death in 2000, he promised to release political prisoners. For days, Hammado's mother couldn't sleep, saying she wanted to be awake in case her sons came home.
"She died and her heart was burning," said Hammado, who left Syria in 1989 and has returned just once.
Now, whenever Hammado calls her two sisters and two brothers who still live in Syria, they assure her that everything is fine, although she knows they are afraid to speak openly.
Were she still living there, she said, she doesn't know if she would be willing to join the protests in which at least 200 are said to have been killed since the unrest began. But here, she feels compelled to attend the rallies held in solidarity.
"Our families are over there fighting with their blood and this is the least we can do," she said. "Honestly they are heroes. Death doesn't matter to them anymore."
At her children's weekend Islamic school, she has chided other mothers who have cautioned her against speaking publicly about the protests.
"A few more people wake up out of that fear every day; it's not automatic," said Mohja Kahf, a Syrian American author and professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas. She said it would take time to change people's "enslaved mentality."
"We have an ocean in between and still we're going to be afraid?" asked Samir Hammado, Samira's older brother who lives in Pomona. "That's what brought us to this situation that we are so afraid that we cannot even speak to ourselves."
Samir Hammado, who works in insurance, hasn't been back to Syria since he left in 1985, believing he would be arrested upon his return. At one point during the uprisings in the early 1980s, he said, he and five of his brothers were all in prison, though he was released within days.
From time to time, he said, his family in Syria is still questioned about him and two brothers who now live in Canada.
At night, after her children have gone to bed, Samira Hammado goes online to read the latest news and posts on Facebook. A few days ago, in response to a post by Syrian presidential advisor Bouthaina Shaaban that threatened to "cut off the hand" of those who intervene in Syria, Hammado commented that all who have killed Syrian youth who call for freedom should have their own hands cut off.
Hammado's Facebook account is not under her real name, however. "We didn't want to cause them any problems," she said of her family.
But Hammado decided to allow her name to be published for this account, after weighing the potential for harm against what others like her are risking in Syria.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
| Mahatma Gandhi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 2 October 1869 Porbandar, Kathiawar Agency,British Indian Empire[1] |
| Died | 30 January 1948 (aged 78) New Delhi, India |
Cause of death
| Assassination by shooting |
Resting place
| Cremated at Rajghat, Delhi 28.6415°N 77.2483°E |
| Other names | Mahatma Gandhi, Bapu, Gandhiji |
| Ethnicity | Gujarati |
| Alma mater | Alfred High School, Rajkot, Samaldas College,Bhavnagar, University College, London(UCL) |
| Known for | Leadership of Indian independence movement, philosophy of Satyagraha,Ahimsa or nonviolence, pacifism |
| Movement | Indian National Congress |
| Religion | Hinduism, with Jain influences |
| Spouse(s) | Kasturba Gandhi |
| Children | Harilal Manilal Ramdas Devdas |
| Parents | Putlibai Gandhi (Mother) Karamchand Gandhi (Father) |
| Signature |  |
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (pronounced [ˈmoːɦənd̪aːs ˈkərəmtʃənd̪ ˈɡaːnd̪ʱi] (
); 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the preeminent leader of Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma (Sanskrit: "high-souled", "venerable"[2])—applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa,[3]—is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for "father",[4] "papa"[4][5]) in India.
); 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the preeminent leader of Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma (Sanskrit: "high-souled", "venerable"[2])—applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa,[3]—is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapu (Gujarati: endearment for "father",[4] "papa"[4][5]) in India.
Born and raised in a Hindu merchant caste family in coastal Gujarat, western India, and trained in law at the Inner Temple, London, Gandhi first employed nonviolent civil disobedience as an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, in the resident Indian community's struggle for civil rights. After his return to India in 1915, he set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against excessive land-tax and discrimination. Assuming leadership of the Indian National Congress in 1921, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability, but above all for achieving Swaraj or self-rule.
Gandhi famously led Indians in challenging the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 km (250 mi) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in calling for the British to Quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, upon many occasions, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi attempted to practise nonviolence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn hand spun on a charkha. He ate simple vegetarian food, and also undertook long fasts as the means to both self-purification and social protest.
Gandhi's vision of a free India based on religious pluralism, however, was challenged in the early 1940s by a new Muslim nationalism which was demanding a separate Muslim homeland carved out of India.[6] Eventually, in August 1947, Britain granted independence, but the British Indian Empire[6] was partitioned into two dominions, a Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan.[7] As many displaced Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs made their way to their new lands, religious violence broke out, especially in the Punjab and Bengal. Eschewing the official celebration of independence in Delhi, Gandhi visited the affected areas, attempting to provide solace. In the months following, he undertook several fasts unto death to promote religious harmony. The last of these, undertaken on 12 January 1948 at age 78,[8] also had the indirect goal of pressuring India to pay out some cash assets owed to Pakistan.[8] Some Indians thought Gandhi was too accommodating.[8][9] Among them was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, who assassinated Gandhi on 30 January 1948 by firing three bullets into his chest at point-blank range.[9]
Photo Gallery by QuickGallery.com
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Astronauts Repair Space Station on Christmas Eve Spacewalk
Astronauts Repair Space Station on Christmas Eve Spacewalk
What do you get an ailing space station for Christmas?
How about a new cooling system, courtesy of Santa's helpers, a.k.a. NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio.
After weeks of attempting to fix the malfunctioning system from inside the International Space Station, the duo successfully replaced the 780-pound cooling pump today after two spacewalks, NASA officials said.
When astronaut Doug Wheelock in Mission Control congratulated Hopkins and Mastracchio with the words, “best Christmas gift ever,” Hopkins responded: “It took us a couple of weeks to get it done but we did it.”
This was the 177th spacewalk on the ISS since it started operating 15 years ago, the second for Hopkins and the eighth for Mastracchio. It was also only the second Christmas Eve spacewalk since a space shuttle mission to fix the Hubble space telescope 14 years ago.
The entire crew has Christmas day off to celebrate and recover from two weeks of brainstorming and preps for two dramatic spacewalks. But they will be merry-making sans their Christmas goodies because the Cygnus cargo vessel launch was delayed while the cooling problem was being sorted out.
Before today's spacewalk, Mission Control radioed up a timely bulletin to the astronauts assuring them that their spacewalk wouldn't interfere with Santa's mission on Christmas Eve.
“Checked with our trajectory and ballistics officer here in Mission Control. We are not working any possible conjunctions or avoidance maneuvers for a sleigh being pulled by reindeer and occupied by a jolly man with a beard and a red suit over the next 2 days. The skies are all clear,” Houston told the astronauts.
A Saturday spacewalk brought them halfway to the goal of repairing the pump, and they finished the task today.
Wheelock, who also conducted a spacewalk in 2010, said he understands the vivid interest in what’s going on the space station.
“The movie [Gravity] really kind of ratcheted up public interest in what we're doing up there. I actually enjoyed the movie," Wheelock said. "I think it's brilliantly put together with visual images of what it's like to be out there in space. I think it captured well the human emotion of being isolated and the drama."
Next up for the ISS -- a Russian spacewalk on Friday. Cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy are scheduled to install two Canadian Earth observation cameras. That spacewalk begins at 8 a.m. ET.
And on Jan. 7 the postponed Orbital-1 Cygnus Resupply Mission to the ISS is scheduled to take off at 1:55 p.m. ET
US gunman 'had told patients to flee'
US gunman 'had told patients to flee'
Newly released phone recordings paint a scene of terror inside a US urology clinic where callers hid in bathrooms and exam rooms from a suicidal gunman who killed one doctor and shot another.
Callers including a woman hiding under a desk and another who whispers 'he's going to ... kill us', with gunshots audible in the background, can be heard on the tapes, released on Tuesday.
Alan Oliver Frazier, 51, told patients to leave or he would shoot them after he entered the Urology Nevada office in Reno on December 17 and began firing a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun.
The shooter, from northern California, said he was angry because 'he had a vasectomy here and they ruined his life', a male witness told a 911 dispatcher from a locked bathroom where he and about 10 others hid.
'He says, 'As long as you're a patient, you can leave. Otherwise I'm going to shoot you,'' the man said.
The bathroom was outside the urology office where the shooting occurred.
Frazier used the shotgun to kill Urology Nevada president Dr Charles Gholdoian, 46. He also critically wounded another doctor, then turned the gun on himself.
A woman hiding under a desk was talking so softly on the emergency recording she could barely be heard.
'I hear gunshots outside my office,' the woman said.
'I just heard another one ... He's going to (expletive) kill us.'
'Oh, my God ... He's outside my door,' she said.
Among the 50 calls police said they received was one from a woman in a locked office, gasping for breath between sentences.
'He's in the middle of the office,' she said.
'We think he shot one of our doctors.'
Police arrived at the scene within minutes.
They confirmed Frazier had been a patient at the facility who had complained about a botched surgery in 2010.
The unemployed former power plant worker said in a suicide note he planned the attack and his focus was on the physicians, police said.
Detectives are investigating Frazier's involvement in an internet chat room where he reportedly complained about complications from the surgery, city spokeswoman Sharon Spangler said.
She said a neighbour said Frazier told him the day of the shooting that he was leaving and not coming back.
Health insurance exchange copes with last minute rush
Health insurance exchange copes with last minute rush
As insurance shoppers raced to complete their shopping by midnight Christmas Eve, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Monday was record day for traffic on HealthCare.gov, the federal exchange handling sign ups for 36 states.
The call center received more than 250,000 calls and 2 million people visited the site, spokeswoman Julie Bataille said. The rush created a wait: More than 129,000 individuals left emails Monday as part of the "advanced queuing system." All received emails inviting them back the same day to complete their applications, Bataille said.
Volumes on Tuesday were high but not equal to Monday. No one had to wait, Bataille said. Thousands of people called the site's call centers, which would be open until midnight, and thousands more were completing enrollment online. The agency created "a robust casework process" to address individual inquiries, respond to specific situations, and help consumers transition to new coverage, she said.
The call center is closed on Christmas but will reopen on Dec. 26. The agency reminded that those who start the process of selecting a health plan after today will be covered as of Feb. 1.
Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, wife split
Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, wife split
NEW YORK (AP) — Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and his wife announced late Tuesday that their two-decade-plus marriage is over.
The couple issued a statement announcing the split, saying "We regret that our marital relationship has come to an end and we have agreed not to make any other public statement on this subject."
Spitzer and his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, were married in 1987 and she supported his rise from state's attorney general to governor. They have three grown children.
She stood by his side in 2008 when Spitzer resigned after admitting he paid for sex with prostitutes, but largely stepped out of the public eye after that. A former corporate lawyer, she went to work in the business world.
Spitzer attempted a political comeback this year by running for city comptroller but lost in the Democratic primary.
Wall Spitzer did not campaign publicly for him. They have been living apart for months.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Two Popes meet for Christmas prayers
Pope Francis has paid a Christmas visit to Pope Emeritus Benedict during which they said prayers together before have a private conversation.
Television footage released by the Vatican showed the current Pope’s 86-year-old predecessor looking alert and in better health than on previous occasions.
Benedict is the first pope in 600 years to step down, instead of ruling for life. Since February, he has been living in near isolation in an ex-convent on the Vatican grounds
Jesus and Mary: It's complicated
The story that would develop for Jesus and his mother, as
presented in the gospels, was complicated, and not very unlike what happens in
many families: a tale of enchantment, then disenchantment, of resistance and
reconciliation.
The first scene in the Gospels after the Nativity occurs when
Jesus is 12, on the cusp of adolescence. The boy accompanies his family to Jerusalem
for Passover week. After the celebrations, his family leaves -- failing to
notice that Jesus has been left behind. Searching for three frantic days, at
last they find him in Herod's great Temple, among a group of elders, who are
amazed by his knowledge of the scriptures. When Mary questions him about his
behavior, Jesus replies somewhat testily: "Why did you come looking for
me? Didn't you know I must be about my Father's business?"
Okay. He was smart, perhaps a bit sassy. As the only glimpse we get
of Jesus before the age of 30, it's a telling instance, however.
Flash forward 20 years or so, when Jesus begins his ministry in
Galilee. His family, however, doesn't seem happy. He is, for a start,
attracting large crowds. He goes about healing people, casting out demons. In
Mark 3:21, it's clear the family wishes he would cease and desist. "He is
out of his mind," they cry. Soon after this, Jesus says dismissively:
"Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother
and sister and mother." (Mark 3:34-35) surprise
At the marriage in Cana, where Jesus performs the first of his
many "signs and wonders," Mary accompanies him, complaining to her
son that the hosts have run out of wine. He turns on her: "Woman, what
have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." (John 2:4) This sounds
harsh. But Jesus has a symbolic point, and he makes it, turning six stone pots
of water into wine. It's a sign that he will not be bound by the laws of
nature.
One doesn't see Mary again until she stands in all her sorrow at
the foot of the cross with a few other women who were close to her son. She was
presumably a widow by this point, as Joseph is not mentioned. Jesus, as her
oldest son, is responsible for her well-being. And here he is, dying before her
eyes in this public and humiliating way. Intriguingly, he summons his most
beloved disciple, probably John (though nobody knows for sure), asking him to
look after Mary when he is gone. "Here is your mother," he says. This
was surely an act of love.
Our last view of Mary in the Gospels is in the Upper Room in
Jerusalem, where she meets with the 11 disciples after her son's death. They
are planning to pick a 12th disciple at this point -- to replace Judas. This
moment precedes the Pentecost -- the arrival of the Holy Spirit in tongues of flame.
Obviously Mary has, by this time, begun to play a role in the early Christian
movement, though the scriptures say little about this.
Much that we think about Mary, in fact, is the stuff of legend --
things added to her story by later Christian writers and artists. The Gospels
offer only a few glimpses of her, beginning in Bethlehem, by the manger, with a
helpless child bringing light into a fallen world. In the course of his three
decades, Jesus and Mary had a tender but complex relationship, with misunderstandings
-- again, the stuff of family life writ large. Yet their relations ended on a
note of deep accord, with Mary taking on her role as "mother of God,"
becoming an important figure in the early church.
And we think of her at Christmas, this woman "full of
grace," who, with Christ child in arms, was "blessed among
women."
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)