Category Archives: Viva!

Egypt Arrests Female ‘Dancer’ For ‘Inciting Immorality’ in Music Video

Egyptian performer Salma El-Fouly has been arrested after appearing in the “Seib Eidy” (Let Go of My Hand) music video, that has been viewed more than one million times on YouTube. According to state media Al-Ahram, El-Fouly has been referred to the misdemeanor’s court on charges of “inciting debauchery and immorality” and “harming public morals”.…

http://egyptianstreets.com/2015/05/26/egypt-arrests-female-dancer-for-inciting-immorality-in-music-video/

Mist in the Air

Silvia Writes

carmel

There was heavy mist in the air this morning.

We were making our toward the paseo leading to my son’s school when we felt it. No rain. Only this mist hanging in the air; precipitation with no impact on the ground. 

Strange.  Not so much the weather as the mood floating around like the mist. A three-day holiday leaves a mark of disconnect on the psyche. 

I look forward to those long weekends when I can disconnect, only to find myself separated from a daily grind that’s deeply ingrained. Perhaps too disconnected.

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I read and read and it felt so good to let the mind feast upon the musicality of words, the story, another time and place. The hours simply disappeared as I read.

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We watched Boyhood, a movie about so much life. On the surface, a film about a boy’s (and his family’s) life, from childhood to college, but…

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Buddhist Monk Stabs Buddhist Monk In East Oakland: SFist

Oakland police are on the hunt for a Buddhist monk who stabbed the head monk of a monastery he had recently joined. The bizarre attack happened Tuesday evening at the Branch of International Community of Khmer Buddhist Monks Center at 624 Douglas Avenue in East Oakland, near the Oakland Airport, when the unidentified suspect apparently “snapped” and attacked the 66-year-old head monk with two butcher knives, according to CBS 5. A third monk stepped in to stop the attack, and the suspect then fled the center on foot.

via Buddhist Monk Stabs Buddhist Monk In East Oakland: SFist.

Benefit cuts, sanctions, care cuts are killing us

Andy Worthington posted a photo:

Benefit cuts, sanctions, care cuts are killing us

I took this photo on the huge anti-austerity march in central London on June 20 organised by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, of a disabled campaigner pointing out that welfare cuts for the disabled (driven by targets, not by need) and sanctions for the unemployed (which cut all financial support to some of the country’s most vulnerable people, often for the most insignificant reasons) are leading to preventable deaths, as some of the most vulnerable people in society are driven to destitution, despair and suicide.
Although the weather was indifferent, the turnout wasn’t, and around 250,000 people marched from the Bank of England to Parliament Square to show the many, many reasons ordinary, hard-working British people have for despising the Tory government, who won over 50% of the seats, with just over 36% of the votes, cast, and the support of less than a quarter of those eligible to vote.
The Tories’ austerity programme, which has involved massive cuts to the public sector and to the welfare state, including the NHS, and attacks on the unemployed and the disabled, is driven not by need but by a malignant ideology — the desire to privatise almost everything (but not their own salaries, of course) for the benefit of the private sector, often using taxpayers’ money to achieve their ends, and often benefitting them directly, as they are involved in the companies making a profit.
Although the Tories’ austerity policies have been disastrous economically, so that it has cost more to ruin the lives of millions of people than to have left them alone, the message has still not got through to the majority of the British people. I can only hope that events like this will help to wake up the millions of people who stand to have their lives further impoverished by the Tories, and who need to make a stand if we are not to descend into an increasingly divided country, with an ever-growing gulf between the rich and the poor over the next five years.
For an article about the death of David Clapson, whose benefits had been stopped as a result of missing one meeting at the Jobcentre, see: http://ift.tt/1LmrZ6e…
See a list of welfare reform deaths here: http://ift.tt/1NeUuko…
See the MPs’ report, calling for full independent review of benefit sanctions: http://ift.tt/1LmrXLA…
For my most recent article about austerity, see: http://ift.tt/1NeUvoB…
And for my most recent photos, see: http://ift.tt/1NeUuks
For my archive of articles about the Tories since 2010, see: http://ift.tt/1NeUvET…
And for article since this year’s General Election, see: http://ift.tt/1NeUvET…
For the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, see: http://ift.tt/Z86yZA
For the Facebook page for the event, see: http://ift.tt/1NeUukw
Please also read the economist Paul Krugman’s article, ‘The Austerity Delusion’: http://ift.tt/1NeUvEV…
For my most interesting photos, see: http://ift.tt/1aLSiN2…