Gruppe: http://groups.google.com/group/76j4725235b235b891248jv1/topics
- takbir - Social Mention: Question Why does Allah require us to praise Him? What benefit does he get? Answer 1. Allahu Akbar doesn't make Allah Great: Allah (SWT) does not require our praises for His benefit. When we say 'Allahu Akbar' meaning Allah is the Greatest, He does not become greater. He is already the Greatest whether we say a million times Allahu Akbar or we don't say. It will make no difference in his greatness. He will yet remain the Greatest. 2. We Praise Allah for our benefit: It is mentioned in the Qur'an in Surah Fatir chapter 35 verse 15 "O ye men! It is ye that have need of Allah: but Allah is the One Free of all wants, worthy of all praise." [Al-Qur'an 35:15] Allah (SWT) is free of all wants. He does not require us to praise Him. It is we human beings who require Allah (SWT) and we praise Him for our own benefits. 3. We praise Allah to convince ourselves that He is worthy to be obeyed and served. We normally follow the advice of a person who is great, famous and important. A person who is intelligent and wise. We will not follow the advice of a stranger who is unknown or a person who is not intelligent nor wise. That is the reason that we praise Allah (SWT) that He is the Greatest, The Most Wise, The All Knowing, etc., to first convince ourselves that He is worthy to be followed then we ask Him to guide us and help us. 4. In Surah Fatihah we first recite praises of Allah then we seek His help: That is the reason why Surah Fatiha or the opening Chapter of the Holy Qur'an is always recited in every rakaat of the Salaah. In the first 4 or 5 verses of Surah Fatihah we initially praise Allah (SWT). "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds: Most Gracious, Most Merciful; Master of the Day of Judgement. Thee do we worship, And Thine aid we seek." [Al-Qur'an 1:1-5] Then later we ask Him for help for our own benefit. "Show us the straight way, the way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray." [Al-Qur'an 1:6-7] Thus we first praise Allah (SWT) in Surah Fatihah and agree that He is Most Gracious, Most Merciful, The Chrisher, The Sustainer, The Master, etc, and then we ask Him for guidance and help. 5. Prefer treatment and advice from the best doctor: If you are sick and have a heart problem and the best available heart specialist gives you advice, you will follow His advice. But if a stranger who has no knowledge of medicine or a quack gives you advice, you will not follow it. 6. If all the oceans were ink, it would not suffice to praise Allah: Thus we praise Allah (SWT) for our own benefit. However much we may praise Him it is insufficient because the Holy Qur'an says in Surah Kahf chapter 18 verse 109: "Say: 'If the ocean were ink (wherewith to write out) the words of my Lord, sooner would the ocean be exhausted than would the words of my Lord, even if We added another ocean like it, for its aid.'" [Al-Qur'an 18:109] 7. If trees were pens and oceans were ink they would not suffice to write words of Allah. A similar message is repeated in Surah Luqman chapter 31 verse 27 "And if all the trees on earth were pens and the Ocean (were ink), with seven oceans behind it to add to its (supply), yet would not the words of Allah be exhausted (in the writing): for Allah is Exalted in power, full of Wisdom." [Al-Qur'an 31:27] 8. We praise Allah to follow His commandments: Allah (SWT) does not require us to praise Him for His benefit but He requires us to praise Him for our benefit. In Salaah while reciting verses of the Qur'an, we agree that He is Supreme and Ultimate and commit that we will follow His advice and commandments so that we stay on the siratal mustaqeem (straight path). [1 Aktualisierung]
- media crash news - Social Mention: Should art be preserved even when it offends? A painting from 1936 that hangs in a Edinburgh primary school depicting scenes from Alice in Wonderland and includes a golliwog has been described as as racist and offensive, but the school is refusing to remove it. Should it stay or should it go? [1 Aktualisierung]
- IHED - Social Mention: Ndeke aayị,o nworu izuku aanị bịanị Onyenwoayị kuru "yaa izukum".Ọ sị na madụ ẹbọọ je anọ na ibe aanị na e kuru onyem hasịa ọmụanịm.Na onyeaha a naa agba awụlawụla.O je ọ bụ izuku nna alaam, ọ bụ mụa onye yị?Ọ maarị asụ sụa na ikwe, gị amagị asụ,sụburu apata sụkọdụa na alị.Okwu aanị ezuworu nwa amarị ihe.Ị hụ nke ọ dị na Baịbụlụ Ẹhugbo Oziọma Luk 17:20-37 Ọbịbịa Ọchịchị Nke Chineke (Mt 24:23-28,37-41) 20Ya o rue izuku aanị, nde Farisii jụ Jisọs kaa ndaa mgbe yaa ọchịchị Chinekie je a bịa. Jisọs sị wo, 22Ya ọ sị nde na eso ụzọ a, [1 Aktualisierung]
- islamist - Social Mention: LIVE: Lebanon embassy bombings - There have been two suspected suicide bomb attacks near the Iranian embassy in Lebanon's capital, Beirut. - The leader of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a Lebanese jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda, says they were responsible. - At least 22 people have been killed, including Iran's cultural attache, officials say. (All times in GMT.) LIVE TEXT By David Gritten and Becky Branford Lebanon-based journalist Josh Wood tweets: "Today's Iranian embassy bombing is the 4th big bombing in #Lebanon this year. 3 in August - 2 in Tripoli, one in South Beirut" This file image - dating from just a few weeks ago - has been released of Sheikh Ebrahim Ansari, the cultural attache to the Iranian embassy, who was killed in Tuesday's attack. The mid-ranking Shia cleric had been in Lebanon only a month, embassy officials said. Ahmed Yassine, who works on the same street as the Iranian embassy in Beirut, describes what he saw on Tuesday morning: "I was about 50m [160 feet] away from the explosions. It was two bombs, I think they said two suicide bombers. It was just awful... Many dead bodies, massive destruction, burnt cars. Around six buildings were damaged, some partially, others totally. What I've seen was just awful." Meanwhile in Syria, government forces have taken full control of Qara, a town used by rebels to cross from Lebanon, state media report. Qara is 80km (50 miles) north of Damascus and straddles a motorway linking the capital to government strongholds along the Mediterranean coast. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague says he strongly condemns the "shocking terrorist attack" on the Iranian embassy in Beirut. "I send my condolences to the families of those killed and injured. The UK is strongly committed to supporting stability in Lebanon and seeing those responsible for this attack brought to justice." Jonathan Marcus - BBC diplomatic correspondent While the Abdullah Azzam Brigades have said they were behind the attack, others have pointed the finger elsewhere - the Iranians at Israel, for example. However, with Iran and Hezbollah being very strong allies of the Syrian government, extremist Sunni groups - who are pretty much allied to rebels fighting in Syria - clearly might well have been perpetrators. The Lebanese army has confirmed the Beirut embassy blasts were both suicide bombings, the AFP news agency reports. LBCI News English tweets: The #Lebanon vs #Iran #football match will take place as scheduled in #Beirut this afternoon without any spectators. More from the claim by Sheikh Siraj al-Din Zureiqat, a cleric close to the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Using the Twitter hashtag "Battle of the Iranian embassy in Beirut", he quotes them as saying: "This is a double martyrdom operation carried out by two heroes from the heroic Sunnis of Lebanon." He adds: "Operations will continue in Lebanon until two demands are met: first, withdrawing Hezbollah members from Syria; second, releasing our prisoners from jails of injustice in Lebanon." "People aren't scared anymore. We aren't safe," a mechanic whose store windows were shattered by the blasts tells the Associated Press. "People fight outside [Lebanon], but send their messages through Lebanon. With bombs. It's their SMS service," he adds. It is tense and chaotic at the site of the blasts: Iran has denied sending combat troops to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad, but acknowledged sending military personnel to advise and train Syrian government forces. This recent footage from Syria cast doubt on that claim. The claim of responsibility for the bombing was made by a cleric close to the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Sheikh Siraj al-Din Zureiqat, in the name of the "Saraya al-Hussein bin Ali". He warned that attacks would continue in Lebanon until Iranian forces left Syria and prisoners were released in Lebanon. Fernande van Tets Beirut based correspondent for Dutch news agency, tweets a photo: House opposite Iranian embassy. Police were picking bits of flesh of supposed suicide bomber off the balcony Breaking News The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a Lebanese Sunni jihadist group affiliated to al-Qaeda, has said it carried out the twin suicide bomb attack in Beirut. Carine Torbey - BBC Arabic, Beirut This is a highly secure area but this attack demonstrates that there is nothing, apparently, that can stop suicide bombers getting around and doing what they want. Hezbollah people are on the ground searching everyone in the area. It shows how dangerous the situation in Lebanon has become. Emotions are running really high However, there are also reports a Lebanese jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, will issue a statement shortly about the Iranian embassy attack. IHS Jane's analyst Charles Lister tweets: "Are the Abdullah Azzam Brigades involved in the #Beirut attack? [Leader] Sheikh Sirajuddin Zureiqat is set to comment shortly. #Iran #Lebanon #Syria" Iran's foreign ministry has accused Israel of being behind the attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut. The bombings were "an inhuman crime and spiteful act done by Zionists and their mercenaries," spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham was quoted as saying by the official Irna news agency. Dahieh, a predominantly Shia southern suburb of Beirut that is a stronghold of Hezbollah, has been targeted twice already this year. On 9 July, a massive car bomb exploded in a busy shopping street, wounding more than 50 people. Just over a month later, on 15 August, another car bomb in the same district killed 24 people. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah blamed both attacks on takfiris, who consider all but the most radical Sunnis to be infidels whose blood can be spilt. IHS Jane's analyst Charles Lister tweets: "Reports emerging that the first of two explosions at #Iran embassy was the result of a suicide bomber on a motorbike... Second device was car bomb (a Renault Rapid), containing 50-100kg of explosives. Both detonated within 120 seconds of each other... Details suggest tactics are qualitatively different to previous bombings in Dahiyeh. Similarly, the target is certainly an escalation." Hezbollah official Ali Ammar said the militant Shia Islamist group would not be deterred by the attack. "Whoever did this is a monstrous terrorist," he said, according to Reuters. "The resistance message is that it will continue. It will continue in all its efforts to defeat Israel and defeat the terrorists." The damaged gate at the entrance to the embassy Tom Fletcher, British ambassador to Lebanon, tweets: "UK condemns appalling terrorist attack on Iranian embassy. Deep condolences to families. We remain at high state of vigilance & ready to help." Damascus was quick to condemn the bombings. "The Syrian government firmly condemns the terrorist attack carried out near the Iranian embassy in Beirut," state television said. On Thursday, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, pledged that its forces would remain in Syria as long as necessary. "As long as the reasons remain, our presence there will remain," told thousands of his followers at a rally in Beirut. He said these included supporting the Lebanese and Palestinian causes, "to confront all the dangers of the international, regional and takfiri attack on this country and on this region", referring to extremist Sunni rebels in Syria. Meir Javedanfar, in Tel Aviv author of the Iran-Israel Observer, tweets: #iran embassy explosion in Beirut could increase calls inside #Hezbollah to reduce #syria presence A domestic worker was injured in the blasts, which affected well-to-do residential buildings as well as the Iranian embassy. Rowena in Beirut As I was checking my emails in my office two blocks away from the blast, I heard the bomb. I looked at my colleague and I calmly affirmed that it was a blast and we would hear the sirens shortly and then I continued replying to some random email. How have we Lebanese become so used to this? People have just lost their lives! Carine Torbey - BBC Arabic, Beirut Several Syrian armed groups have threatened to target Shia areas in Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah's and Iran's role in supporting President Assad. More details are beginning to emerge about the attack in the upmarket Janah district in southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. Lebanese officials now say they have security camera footage showing the twin blasts were the result of a suicide bombing and a car bomb. Earlier, a guard at the embassy told the Associated Press that a suicide attacker had ridden a motorbike up to the main gate before blowing himself up. The second blast, which caused more damage, had been a car bomb, he added. The suspicion is that a suicide bomber and car bomb caused the blasts Reuters Jerusalem correspondent Dan Williams tweets: "Tzachi Hanegbi, senior member of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defence panel, says Israel had no role in the Beirut bombings... 'The bloodshed in Beirut stems from Hezbollah's involvement in the Syria crisis. Israel was not involved in the past, nor here.' - Hanegbi" ABC News Middle East correspondent Alexander Marquardt tweets: "#Syria information minister accuses #Saudi intelligence and #Israel of being behind #Beirut blasts at #Iran embassy." The extent of the blast damage is visible in this image: The Iranian ambassador tells Hezbollah's al-Manar TV that it is not clear whether the cultural attache was in the embassy itself or one of the residential buildings nearby at the time of the explosions. Iran's cultural attache has died of his wounds, Ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi has now told the Associated Press. Lebanon's Health Minister Ali Khali is now saying that at least 22 people have been killed and 146 wounded. There are conflicting reports about the fate of the Iranian cultural attache, Sheikh Ebrahim Ansari. Lebanese security sources say he was killed, but the Iranian ambassador told the Associated Press that he was critically wounded. The National News Agency says the dead include two Iranian nationals. A BBC correspondent in Beirut says those responsible wanted to send a clear message to Iran and Hezbollah, key backers of the Syrian government, which is currently trying to cut off one of the Syrian rebels' last remaining supply routes across the Lebanese border. It is not yet clear what caused the blasts in a predominantly Shia area of the Lebanese capital. Video footage showed widespread destruction, burning vehicles, charred bodies and a huge column of smoke. Welcome to our live page covering the aftermath of the two large explosions outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut, which Lebanon's National News Agency says have killed at least 20 people and wounded many more. [1 Aktualisierung]
- IHED - Social Mention: Nde Ehugbo unu nnaa o! Unu apavuorue? Chineke gozie unu. N'ubochi taa mutari ayi ihe-oma o! Iseeee!!! [1 Aktualisierung]
- allahu akbar - Social Mention: Alhamdulillah. Allahu Akbar [1 Aktualisierung]
- Stop the War Coalitions Facebook-Pinnwand: http://stopwar.org.uk/news/two-faces-of-america-what-guantanamo-inmate-shaker-aa... [1 Aktualisierung]
- tauhid - Social Mention: Etika Syar'i Bari Perempuan dalam Menuntut Ilmu Tidaklah diragukan bahwa perempuan sederajat dengan lelaki dalam hal kewajiban menjalankan perintah agama. Dimana kewajiban menjalankan perintah itu mencakup seluruh perintah agama seperti memurnikan tauhid, sholat, zakat, haji, puasa…dan lain sebagainya. Dan telah dimaklumi oleh setiap muslim dan muslimah bahwa perintah-perintah agama itu memiliki syarat-syarat, rukun-rukun dan ketentuan-ketentuan yang harus terpenuhi sebagai keabsahan sebuah ibadah atau memenuhi kesempurnaannya. Dan tiada jalan untuk memahami dan menjalankan ibadah tersebut sesuai dengan tuntunannya yang benar kecuali dengan cara menuntut ilmu agama. Rasulullah shollallâhu 'alaihi wa 'alâ âlihi wa sallam bersabda, طَلَبُ الْعِلْمِ فَرِيْضَةٌ عَلَى كُلِّ مُسْلِمٍ "Menuntut ilmu adalah wajib atas setiap muslim."[1] Berkata Ibnul Jauzy rahimahullâh, "Perempuan adalah seorang yang mukallaf seperti laki-laki. Maka wajib terhadapnya untuk menuntut ilmu tentang perkara-perkara yang diwajibkan terhadapnya, agar ia menunaikan ibadah tersebut di atas keyakinan."[2] [1 Aktualisierung]
- sharia - Social Mention: Dar Al Sharia named 'Best Sharia Advisory Firm' at Islamic Finance News awards for fifth consecutive year. http://icd.gov.ae/pages/news_article.php?article_id=1515 [1 Aktualisierung]
- Abu Bilal - Social Mention: لايك للغلاف تبعي تم خوذ 300 #متابعه .................................. في تم ؟؟؟؟؟ [1 Aktualisierung]
- khalifa - Social Mention: Concorde marks UAE National Flag Day [1 Aktualisierung]
- dawah - Social Mention: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Furqaan-Project-Motorized-Dawah-Team/362117797227287?ref=hl [1 Aktualisierung]
- dawah - Social Mention: Nyidam pentol endok :D [1 Aktualisierung]
- khalifa - Social Mention: Clique no seu Cantor/Banda Favorita! # MC DALESTE # MC GUIME # funk, # Anitta ,# Jorge e Matheus, # Charlie Brown Jr. # Legião Urbana, # Luan Santana, # The Beatles, # Sorriso Maroto, # Pollo, # Aline Barros, # Paula Fernandes, # Bruna Karla, # Nando Reis, # Roberto Carlos, # Clarice Falção, # Gustavo Lima, # Thalles Roberto, # Thiagunho, # Taylor Swif, # Projota, # Carrosel (2012), # Racionais Mc's, # Lucas Lucco, # Fernando e Sorocaba, # Fernandinho, # Zezé Di Camargo e Luciano, # Revelação, # Thaeme e Thiago, # Exaltasamba, # Bruno Mars, # Rihanna, # Bonde Da Stronda, # Capital Inicial, # Cazuza, # One Direction, # Jota Quest, # Coldplay, # Turma Do Pagode, # Cristiano Araujo, # justin Bieber, # Beyoncé, # Pink, # Avião Do Forro, # Garota Safada, # O Rappa, # Patati e Patata, # Ivete Sangalo, # Guns N' Roses, # Linkin Park, # Roupa Nova, # Rosa De Saron, # Victor e Leo, # Adele, # Naldo, # Skank, # Bonde Das Maravilhas, # Nx Zero, # Titãs, # System Of a Down, # João Neto e Frederico, # Mc Gui, # Mc Koringa, # Léo Magalhães, # Michel Telo, # Os Paralamas Do Sucesso, # Pitty, # Eduardo Costa, # Dance, # Wiz khalifa, # Jeito Muleque, # Michel Jacksoon, # Metalica, # Eminem, # Calcinha Preta, # RBD, # Bob Marley, # Cone Crew Diretoria, # Glee, # Apocalipe 16, # Galinha Pintadinha, # Black Eyed Peas, # 50 Cent's, # JenniferLopez, # Raça Negra, # Oficcina G3, # Pregador Luo, # Amado Batista, # Claudia Leite, # Mc Pocahontas, # Katy Perry, # Alexandre Piris, # Catedral, # Gabriel O Pensador, # David Guetta, # Israel Novaes, # Pitbull, # (..) SE TEM ALGUM CANTOR OU BANDA QUE VOC ? GOSTA CURTI AQUI. Mc Gui Da Oeste. [1 Aktualisierung]
- media crash news - Social Mention: . LGBT-themed books you want to read Two Gay Trilogies Conclude: Captain Harding and Band Fags! HardingFollowing his fine Captain Harding's Six-Day War [Kindle] (which the Lambda Review says is "already a gay literary classic") and Captain Harding and His Men [Kindle], Lammy-winner Elliott Mackle brings his strong hero back to the States in Welcome Home, Captain Harding [Kindle]. Lethe Press writes: "Returning to California after eighteen terrifying months in Vietnam, Captain Joe Harding is assigned a trio of duties: assisting his fatherly former commander at base operations, spying on misbehaving bomber pilots and organizing an air show designed to counter the anti-war fever sweeping the state. Meanwhile, his much younger tennis partner has enrolled at Cal Berkeley, enmeshed himself in pacifist politics and resumed his role as Joe's lover. When a playmate from Wheelus, a one-time fighter pilot now flying for TWA, shows up at Joe's house in Merced, the three men must navigate the joys and difficulties inherent in creating their own sort of ''welcome home.'' Continuing the adventures and misadventures begun in Elliott Mackle's acclaimed Captain Harding series Joe and his fellow officers and men are up against a hot-dogging, risk-taking aircraft commander, a pair of drug-abusing co-pilots and a married administrator with a taste for sexual blackmail. When a Broadway show causes a death in the family, a test flight goes terribly wrong and Joe's honor and patriotism are questioned, he must fight to clear his name and rebuild his imperiled career." Mackle's previous novels are It Takes Two and its sequel Only Make Believe, as well as the stand alone Hot Off the Presses. PolitoReaders who followed Bradley Dayton through his early teens in Band Fags! [Kindle] and his late teens in the Lammy-winning Drama Queers! [Kindle] can now see him in college in The Spirit of Detroit [Kindle], which Frank Anthony Polito says was "inspired by The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon." "September 1992. Madonna's SEX is poised to hit bookstore shelves, The Crying Gamemakes its cinematic debut in limited release, and George H.W. Bush will soon square off against William Jefferson Clinton in the battle to be elected leader of the Free World. After abandoning his dreams of becoming a famous actor, Bradley Dayton returns to his roots and enrolls as a Theatre major at Wayne State University in Detroit. But a new cast of characters begins to interfere with his educational pursuits as these friends (and lovers) induct Bradley into their dark world of backstage drama. By semester's end, he will have spent many a wild and sleepless Motor City night in search of his true self, while finding his fair share of trouble along the way." Posted at 07:52 AM in Books Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) September 01, 2013 Born September 1: Lily Tomlin, Roger Casement, Emma Stebbins, Dave King Aalily Detroit's funniest daughter, Mary Jean Tomlin was featured on Merv Griffin when she was twenty-six and landed a spot on Laugh-In when she was thirty, creating the telephone operator Ernestine. Wanting to expand another character, Edith Ann, the bratty child in the big chair, Tomlin found the Peabody-winning after school special writer Jane Wagner. They clicked. They've been life partners and collaborators for forty-two years and now they're getting married. Wagner wrote and directed Tomlin projects ranging from Grammy-winning comedy albums and Emmy-winning tv specials to hit movies (The Incredible Shrinking Woman) to super flops (Moment by Moment, co-starring John Travolta) to Tony-winning Broadway megahits (The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe). Beyond her endeavors with Wagner, Tomlin most frequently worked with Robert Altman (Nashville, Short Cuts, A Prairie Home Companion), and gave star performances in 9 to 5, All of Me, Big Business, and Flirting with Disaster. She's had recurring roles on many top tv shows Murphy Brown, The West Wing, Will & Grace, Desperate Housewives, and Damages. Most recently, she was Tina Fey's mom in the skippable Admission. In March 1977, when Time was still a news magazine, Tomlin was its cover story; Wagner is identified first as "a friend" but later the article says the ladies share a house off Sunset. Eighteen years ago, Tomlin co-produced and narrated the gay Hollywood documentary The Celluloid Closet, an act some took as her coming out. She's a hysterical actress, obvs, but is she also a little hysterical? Her meltdowns on the set of I Heart Huckabees are more than a little salty, yet minor compared to the tantrum thrown by the director. Remember, nothing is harder than comedy. Today she's 74. Also born today: Roger Casement, the gay Irish rebel hanged by the Brits in 1916 and subject of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's novel The Dream of the Celt [Kindle]; Emma Stebbins, sculptor of the Central Park landmark Angel of the Waters, which you know as Bethesda Fountain, and girlfriend of actress Charlotte Cushman; and Dave King, author of the 2005 indie hit novel The Ha-Ha [Kindle] and husband of Franklin Tartaglione. Born August 31: David McConnell SilverheartedOne of my favorite gay novels of recent years is also one of the most mysterious: In David McConnell's The Silver Hearted, an unnamed narrator in an unnamed port town in an unnamed country teams up with a young local sailor to transport chests of treasure as a frenzied mob sparks a revolution. Told in high literary style, a pulpy story becomes mesmerizing, erotic, and haunting. Edmund White said it better than I can: "The Silver Hearted is our Heart of Darkness. It is just as ominous, as violent, as exotic, as darkly colonial. But it is a lot better written than Conrad's book. Whereas Conrad is always resorting to 'the unspeakable,' McConnell tells us everything in glowing detail and in fresh, eloquent language. Sexy, demonic, elusive, The Silver Hearted is a perfect work of art." Patrick McGrath said he can't recommend the novel too highly and "David McConnell is the most intriguing, original and exotic writer I've come across in years. The atmosphere he creates in The Silver Hearted is imbued with dread, mystery, lust, sleaze, greed and beauty. A constant potent undertow of violence is at work in the sustained suspense of his narrative." David's first book was the introspective novel The Firebrat, about which Matthew Statdler said, "I love this book. Abjection has never been so gorgeous." His third book [Kindle], out this year, is a significant departure, nonfiction reportage on the murders of gay men. PW said it is a "journalistic tour de force," Library Journal said it's "a masterpiece of reportage," and Sebastian Junger said it's "a stunning exploration of Manhood in America." David reads from the book and discusses homophobia at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Decatur Book Festival tomorrow afternoon. Posted at 08:43 AM in Birthdays, Books, Crime Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 30, 2013 Colm Tóibín on Wilde's Dualities in New Edition of De Profundis ProfundisAccording to his sons, Oscar Wilde especially liked Robert Louis Stevenson's work and Colm Tóibín discusses the Jekyll and Hyde dualities in so much of Wilde's life: gay and married, an Irishman in London, rich and chased by creditors, an aristocrat and Irish patriot, "a wit who was also serious, but a limp and timid lyricist who wrote brave and modern plays." In the spring of 1895, he was also the accuser and accused in two infamous trials that took him from the most celebrated man in London to a jailed, unspeakable scoundrel. For the first and most horrible part of his sentence he was prohibited from having pen and paper. Toward the end of his two year confinement, he wrote his famous long, long love letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, now collected in De Profundis and Other Prison Writings [Kindle], introduced by Tóibín in a new edition from Penguin. StevensonIf you've made it to adulthood without revisiting Stevenson, stop everything and read Kidnapped [Kindle]. Rupert Smith says, "First and foremost, it's one of the most exciting adventure novels I can think of, a model of brilliant plotting, compelling narrative and sharp, magnetic characterisation. The story of David Balfour, the young ingenu sold into slavery and cheated of his inheritance by wicked Uncle Ebenezer, is probably the best coming-of-age narrative I can think of – it never labours its points, but it shows David learning from each experience and acquaintance until he's man enough to claim what's rightfully his. But there's another level to Kidnapped, one which only struck me when I re-read it in my 40s – it's a profoundly homosexual novel. I can see readers rolling their eyes at this point, but bear with me. Whether Stevenson realised it or not, the kidnapping of the young man and his experiences at the hands of older, more powerful men is fraught with erotic energy, and his friendship with the charismatic Alan Breck is highly romantic. Some critics point to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as 'proof' of Stevenson's homosexual leanings, and I can see their point – but for me, Kidnapped is the dead giveaway (and the better novel). In fact, this was the book that inspired me to write the first of my James Lear novels, The Low Road [Kindle], which is a sexed-up version of the same basic story." Posted at 10:27 PM in Books, Ireland, Scotland, U.K. Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 29, 2013 Two Boys Kissing LevithanTwo weeks from now will mark the tenth anniversary of David Levithan's semi-classic debut, the "dippy, happy" teen novel Boy Meets Boy, and this week he releases his eighteenth book, Two Boys Kissing [Kindle]. Based on a real event, the novel follows two seventeen year-olds, Craig and Harry, as they attempt to break the record for world's longest kiss. If you're not a teen and guess the book has nothing for you, think again: It's narrated by a Greek chorus of "gay uncles" from the generation lost to aids. A starred PW review called it "a landmark achievement," and Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-. Some of David's best works are collaborations, most notably with John Green for Will Grayson, Will Grayson about two boys one gay, one straight, who have the same name; and with Rachel Cohn for Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, which became an okayish Michael Cera movie that was not entirely degayed. Ever inventive, his most recent novel was Every Day, a NYT bestseller about a boy who each morning wakes up as a different person but always in love with the same girl. So far his only adult book is the gay novella The Lover's Dictionarythat both charmed and suffered from being written as dictionary entries. Posted at 10:36 AM in Books, YA Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0) Born August 29: Edward Carpenter Carp Ardent socialist (author of the anthem England Arise, founding member of the Independent Labour Party), feminist (saying, "there is no solution except the freedom of woman," he considered traditional marriage to be a form of prostitution), gay activist (his ground-breaking books like My Days and Dreams and The Intermediate Sex go far beyond earlier essays by his friend John Addington Symonds), pacifist, nudist, mystic, poet, and the first person to introduce sandals to modern Britain, Edward Carpenter's greatest legacy may be how he lived his life. Utterly changed after reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1863, he began to dream of a brotherhood of manly love that would erase class lines and give rise to a true democracy. After graduating from Cambridge and leaving a position vacated by Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf's father, Carpenter gave public lectures in Leeds intended for the working class (but attended only by the middle class, who didn't warm to his ideas) and sought to befriend laborers, unsuccessfully. Finally in 1891, after meeting by chance on a train, he and uneducated George Merrill became lovers. In 1898, when Carpenter was fifty-four and Merrill was thirty-two, they established a house together, absolutely unheard of in an England still widely antigay in the aftermath of the Oscar Wilde trials. They lived together openly as a couple for thirty years until Merrill's death, and their cross-class love was the direct inspiration for their friend E.M. Forster's novel Maurice, as well as D.H. Lawrence's heterosexualized version, Lady Chatterley's Lover. Not all authors were so enamored. In the decade after Carpenter's death, George Orwell ridiculed "every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal wearer [and] sex maniac" among the Socialists. Yet an American Communist, Harry Hay, credited Carpenter's writings for galvanizing him to start the first gay rights group, The Mattachine Society, in Los Angeles in 1950. The must-read, Lammy-winning biography Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love by Sheila Rowbotham was Peter Tatchell's and Jeanette Winterson's favorite book of 2008 and Sarah Schulman's favorite lgbt book of 2009. Posted at 09:56 AM in Activism, Birthdays, Books, U.K. Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 28, 2013 Born August 28: Nancy Kulp, Karl Ulrichs KulpWhich gay genius saw the potential in a short-haired young lesbian, a former Florida newspaper reporter who had interviewed Clark Gable and the Duke & Duchess of Windsor but now was stuck working a desk job in the studio's publicity department, and asked her to be in his new picture? George Cukor cast skinny Nancy Kulp as, what else, the comic spinster -- at 30! -- and variations on that theme were the mainstay of her career for the next thirty-eight years. Although she wrung every drop of humor from the wet cliche of the sexless, manless old maid, midcentury critics could be cruel in their critiques of Kulp, describing her as TV's most homely girl with the "face of a shriveled balloon, the figure of a string of spaghetti, and the voice of a bullfrog in mating season." Undaunted, she played her thin parts with brio, building from bit roles in Shane, Sabrina, and A Star Is Born, to her biggest success on television. After three seasons on his Bob Cummings Show, writer-producer Paul Henning cast Kulp in his next project, The Beverly Hillbillies. Surely her Miss Jane Hathaway is one of the immortal early queer characters, and while audiences were invited to laugh at her highly unlikely pining for hot Jethro (when he wasn't in drag as his sister Jethrine), Kulp gave her character all the dignity befitting the scholarly, single secretary who was happiest with her women-only birdwatching society. Finally, critics appreciated her and she was rewarded with an Emmy nomination in 1967 and, following the series' end in 1971, roles on The Brian Keith Show, Sanford & Son, and The Love Boat. In her early sixties, she returned to her native Pennsylvania and ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1984. Her former Hillbillies costar Buddy Ebsen did ads attacking her as "too liberal" and her Republican opponent won in the Reagan re-election landslide. Closeted her whole career, Kulp finally came out in a carefully controlled way to interviewer in 1989, reprinted in Boze Hadleigh's book Hollywood Lesbians. She died of cancer in February 1991 at sixty-nine. YouTube's Mister Esoteric has compiled these clips honoring her as a forerunner to Lily Tomlin, Sandra Bernhard, and Ellen. Aakarl Karl Heinrich Ulrichs had an affair with his riding instructor when he was fourteen, was forced to quit his civil servant job for being gay when he was thirty-four, and began publishing pamphlets explaining and defending same-sex love when he was thirty-seven. Five years later, the day after his forty-second birthday, he addressed the German congress, coming out publicly and demanding they repeal their anti-gay laws. It was 1867, one hundred two years before Stonewall, and he was shouted down before he could finish his speech. Though his books were banned in Saxony and Berlin he continued writing on the subject for the rest of his life. In 1870, he published Araxes, which lays out all of the modern arguments for the rights of gay citizens. In 1879, he published the twelfth volume of his ongoing project, The Riddle of "Man-Manly" Love, and moved to Italy, which was more hospitable. Indeed, Ulrichs was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Naples shortly before he died, one month prior to his seventieth birthday. Today, streets are named for him in Bremen, Hanover, and Munich, where this afternoon they will celebrate with their annual street party and poetry reading in Karl-Heinrich-Ulrichs-Platz. In his final years, he wrote "Until my dying day I will look back with pride that I found the courage to come face to face in battle against the spectre which for time immemorial has been injecting poison into me and into men of my nature. Many have been driven to suicide because all their happiness in life was tainted. Indeed, I am proud that I found the courage to deal the initial blow to the hydra of public contempt." Posted at 12:15 PM in Activism, Birthdays, Germany, History, Politics, Television Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0) Dallas Buyers Club and Mud Focus has moved the release date of the true-story, straight-gay, uplifting aids movie Dallas Buyers Club five weeks earlier, from December 6 to November 1. Yesterday they unveiled the trailer. In twenty years of acting since Dazed & Confused, guess which nude bongo banger has never been nominated for an Oscar or even a lousy Golden Globe? Last year ought to have been Matthew McConaughey's moment for a supporting nod, but I suspect he fell asunder of dreaded vote splitting -- the gay independent Bernie was his better performance while the homoerotic but degayed studio stripper flick Magic Mike grabbed all the attention (and earned him four big wins from the Spirit Awards, National Society of Film Critics, NY Film Critics, and the Village Voice film poll). Will it happen again in 2013? Because he's very good in Mud but all the hype will be for Dallas Buyers Club. [You know how Hollywood equates physical transformations with Real Acting. In Mud, he bravely went with scraggly hair, but for Dallas Buyers he lost all that weight! My god, not since Charlize played ugly (Best Actress), or Nicole wore that fake nose (Best Actress), or Jamie wore sunglasses (Best Actor), or Daniel got a wart (Best Actor)...] Anyway, although it's not as powerful as the foreign Oscar winner In A Better World, Mud springs from the same roots of nice young teens making a series of increasingly bad decisions. Also, there's the friction of a classic, innocent boy crush on a charismatic, shirtless criminal. Anyone seeking a flicker of subtext might notice that this story arc climaxes late at night when McConaughy crawls through the boy's window and climbs into bed with him. Reese Witherspoon detractors / fans should note she is barely in the movie. It is the third impressive feature from 34 year-old director Jeff Nichols who wrote each of his films. Mud was released on dvd earlier this month or watch it right now. Mud Posted at 09:39 AM in Aids, Film, Texas Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 27, 2013 Terry Castle on Being Gay Married Here's what you're going to do. You are going to read Terry Castle's LRB essay on the real joy and underlying ambivalance about marriage equality, which is really an examination of how comfortably or uncomfortably the new acceptance rests on all the rejection that came before. With sentences like, "In those days (and yes, even now) one's mother could always be counted on, likewise, to underscore one's alienation from the rest of humankind," it's mandatory reading: "Some of the diffidence I felt no doubt had to do with the fact that Blakey and I had already been living together – delightfully, with nary a closet in sight – for six years. Apart from the political statement – rah, rah, cheers, queers – the ritual, I grumbled, was beside the point. Yet troubling too were a host of larger metaphysical questions. Marriage had always been defined (and naturalised) as a relationship between a man and a woman; could it now, merely by way of a few wishful speech acts and contrived theatrical gestures, be completely reconceived? Was it possible – just like that – to revamp one of the key kinship structures around which human society had been organised for millennia? What would Wittgenstein have said? Was 'gay marriage' part of 'everything that is the case'? Would he have got married? To himself or another person? One could noodle away the hours pondering such things. "My own seemingly innate, sometimes Arctic, aloofness had to be part of the equation too. Anyone who knows me knows it: my perverse tendency to stand sadly apart from sociability and look rejected, even when surrounded by affable people doing everything possible to show their affection for me. In some skittish, not so deeply buried part of me, it's always San Diego in 1967 and the treacherous lunch court at Marston Junior High School. I'm 13 again; shy, pudgy and unpopular, eating my peanut butter and jelly sandwich in miserable, Cain-like isolation, while the more confident girls – those who shriek and rat their hair and travel in ardent, gossipy packs – point at me and guffaw. What a weirdo. Shall we just say that my childish heart turned then to adamant? That self-protection meant fixing one's eyes on blankness and acting dead? When I began thinking of myself as a lesbian – not so long afterwards, really – the age-old stereotype of the female homosexual as doomed misfit, lost in a dark and sterile world of shadows, seemed purpose built for me." If you somehow still don't know Castle -- whom Sontag named "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today" and James Wolcott calls "a Jedi knight of literary exploration" -- for goodness' sake, get the essay collection The Professor: A Sentimental Education [Kindle only $3.79]. Posted at 01:36 PM in Books, Civil Unions - Marriage, Essays, Greece, SF Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0) Born August 27: Jeanette Winterson Jw Given that in 2011 she wrote one of the finest queer books of this decade, her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? [Kindle], winner of a Stonewall UK award and a Lambda Literary Award, is it unkind and unfair to ask where is Jeanette Winterson's next great novel? Her best-known fiction is still her first, her landmark debut from 1985 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which covers many of the events revisited in the memoir. She wrote it in two months because she needed money; it won the Whitbread and became a modern classic. Five years later the television version, adapted by Winterson, won the BAFTA for best drama. To my mind, her finest is The Passion [Kindle], which takes place in France and Venice during the Napoleonic Wars, and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1987. Two years later she released her most ambitious novel, Sexing the Cherry, which touches down in several centuries but is most firmly rooted in the Restoration. And in 1992 she published a novel about an affair, Written on the Body, which virtually everyone took to be inspired by her romantic liaison with her literary agent, Pat Kavanagh, married to Julian Barnes until her death in 2008. At that point Winerson was four years into her twelve-year partnership with Peggy Reynolds, to whom she dedicated "with love" her novel about her affair. But aren't the six adult novels in the twenty-one years since then -- Art & Lies, Gut Symmetries, The PowerBook, Lighthousekeeping, Weight, The Stone Gods -- more about the author's idea than the characters? In the past ten years she has also written two children's picture books (The King of Capri, The Lion, The Unicorn and Me), a middle-grade chapter book (Tanglewreck), two YA historical novels (The Battle of the Sun, The Daylight Gate), and an original hour-long special for CBBC on Christmas 2009 called Ingenious. She's creative, she won't be pinned down, she's prolific, she's a workaholic -- in her spare time she runs the organic cornershop Verde's in the ground floor of her Georgian house in Spitalfields -- but for all her admirable busyness is she somehow wasting her time? Earlier this summer she announced she's reworking A Winter's Tale for the upcoming series The Hogarth Shakespeare. Posted at 01:35 PM in Birthdays, Books, Television, U.K. Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0) August 26, 2013 James Tait Black Memorial Prize Winners Warner Dating from 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize has honored everyone from Lawrence, Forster, Waugh, Greene, and Compton-Burnett to Spark, Chatwin, Coetzee, Rushdie, Banville, Bainbridge, Byatt, Hollinghurst, Tremain, Franzen, McEwan, and Zadie Smith, so attention must be paid to this year's two winners, in fiction and biography. Say the judges: Pedal"Alan Warner's The Deadman's Pedal is an exceptionally fine novel, richly evocative in detail, beautifully poised in execution, which in the story of one young man's journey to adulthood through the mysteries of childhood, sexuality, work, the realities of class society and the experience of divided family loyalties, offers a compelling poetic vision of a changing Scotland." "Tanya Harrod's The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew: Modern Pots, Colonialism, and the Counterculture offers an exceptional portrait of a remarkable craftsman and his world. Harrod constructs this biography with the same eye for form and purpose that marked the work of her subject." The three other fiction finalists were The Panopticon [Kindle] by Jenni Fagan, The Big Music [Kindle] by Kirsty Gunn, and Leaving the Atocha Station [Kindle] by Ben Lerner. Among the biography finalists was Michael Gorra's Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece [Kindle]. FYI, the first woman to win this award was Radclyffe Hall, for Adam's Breed in 1926. Alan Warner photo by Jayne Wright in The Scotsman. Posted at 06:37 AM in Books, Scotland, U.K. Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) Born August 26: Christopher Isherwood IsherVastly underappreciated, and remembered largely for the wrong reasons, Christopher Isherwood changed the way fiction is written with his "I am a camera" style of narration. Read his interview in the Paris Review's series The Art of Fiction and make time for one of the best gay books ever, Christopher and His Kind*, which is equally enthralling about literary revelations and sexual mores: Rejecting his uptight, upperclass England, Isherwood spent much of his twenties in Berlin where he dated working class teens. Falling in love with young Heinz at a time when living quarters were especially scarce, he moved into Heinz's family's one bedroom apartment; the parents moved out of their bedroom and slept in the living room so the twenty-five year-old Brit could enjoy a double bed in privacy with their fifteen year-old son. Another person he met was Jean Ross, on whom he based Sally Bowles in his The Berlin Storieswhich of course became Cabaret. After moving to England and on to New York with Auden, and further literary successes, Isherwood settled permanently in Los Angeles, where when he was forty-eight he met teenager Don Bachardy. Immediately, Isherwood wrote The World in the Evening , followed by Down There On A Visit and what many consider his best novel, A Single Man. They remained partners for over thirty years until Isherwood's death in 1986. Their relationship is the subject of the documentary, Chris & Don. A Love Story. After more than 1,100 pages of Diaries: 1939-1960 and another 800 pages of The Sixties, last November saw 928 pages of Liberation: Diaries:1970-1983. *And here's the sex-filled BBC2 film Posted at 06:26 AM in Birthdays, Books, Los Angeles, U.K. Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Win VMA for Pro-Marriage Equality Song Accepting MTV's Video Music Award for Best Song with a Social Message for their pro-gay, pro-marriage equality jam Same Love [below], Macklemore said, "I've been writing songs since I was 15 and out of every single song I have every written to me this is the most important record out of all of them. And to watch this song in the last year spread across the world is a testament to what is happening right here now America on the forefront of equality. Gay rights are human rights there is no separation." Earlier in the evening, he and Ryan Lewis performed the song with lesbian Mary Lambert and Dreamgirl Jennifer Hudson. The twenty-four year-old Lambert has been out since she was seventeen and published her first book of poetry earlier this year, 500 Tips for Fat Girls. Full list of VMA winners here. Posted at 06:25 AM in Music, Television Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0) August 25, 2013 Albanian Virgins: Women Who Spend Their Lives as Men AlbanianIf you're literate, you've probably read and re-read to the point of memorization, Alice Munro's knock-out tale "The Albanian Virgin," so you'll be interested in photographer Jill Peters' recent project to document these mountain women who live as men. The tradition dates back at least to the 1400s, though with modernization encroaching, today far fewer women live this way. See nine in her portfolio. Munro's story is available in her three-decades-spanning Selected Stories, which, so rare in these endeavors, actually does collect her best work, including the first of her two gay stories, The Turkey Season. That piece appeared in The New Yorker in 1980, one year after Ann Beattie's half-gay story The Burning House and seventeen years before Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain. Also if you're literate, you really should read Albania's greatest writer, Ismail Kadare, who won the first International Booker in 2005. Beware, even with his straightforward prose, he will bewitch you like Orhan Pamuk. Realists should start with his short, riveting Broken April [Kindle] which follows two strands: Gjor, a young man reluctantly caught in an ancient blood feud, and an intellectual couple honeymooning in the Accursed Mountains. More fanciful readers should try Chronicle in Stone [Kindle] or The General of the Dead Army or The Fall of the Stone City or The Palace of Dreams. Posted at 06:56 AM in Books, International, Photography Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) Born August 25: Rob Halford Aahal Hiding in plain sight for more than twenty years, the closeted lead singer of Judas Priest modeled his look on the gay leather scene which became a heavy metal mainstay. From 1974 to 1992, Rob Halford fronted the band, wowing fans with his pseudo-operatic style of singing and impressing critics with his four octave vocal range. Offstage, he struggled with alcohol dependency and violent relationships, the worst moment coming after a bad fight: When Halford got a taxi, his boyfriend shot himself and died. After that, Halford improved his life. In 1997, he played gigs with Pansy Division at gay pride parties and the next year he came out on MTV. In 2003, he reunited with Judas Priest. In 2008 the band released their second post-reunion album, Nostradamus, which was their sixteenth studio album, and they played on the Masters of Metal Tour. Since then they've released two live albums. Halford lives in Phoenix, San Diego, Amsterdam, and his native Walsall, England, hometown also to Boy George. Since coming out, Halford says the support of the metal community has been "tremendous." Posted at 06:53 AM in Birthdays, Music, U.K. Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 24, 2013 Rural Gay America 1900-1960 JustqueerNew this summer is Colin Johnson's Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality in Rural America [Kindle] which, the publisher says, "explores the seldom-discussed history of same-sex intimacy and gender nonconformity in rural America during a period when the now familiar concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality were only just beginning to take shape... Johnson argues instead for a queer historicist approach. In so doing, he uncovers a startlingly unruly rural past in which small-town eccentrics, "mannish" farm women, and cross-dressing Civilian Conservation Corps enrolees were often just queer folks so far as their neighbours were concerned. Written with wit and verve, Just Queer Folks upsets a whole host of contemporary commonplaces." PW says he "doggedly decodes" passages of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Stegner's The Big Rock Candy Mountain "that hint at gay sex." For a contemporary take, get Mary L. Gray's excellent, triple-award-winning Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America [Kindle]. Posted at 07:24 AM in Books Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0) Born August 24: M Matisse One of my very favorite people dislikes publicity to the exact degree that I admire her: immensely. A careful, thoughtful editor by temperament and trade, she taught me how to eat, speak, read, write, garden, museum-go, and travel internationally... seven of my all-time greatest pastimes. Though I couldn't hope to match her knowledge, natural skill, and intuitive elegance in those activities, it has been an abiding pleasure to fall short in her shadow. Especially now she deserves your respect and gratitude for years of bravery and persistence in the slow task of helping to educate a straight community on lgbt equality, the best kind of local change that ripples nationally. A voracious, versatile, and adventurous reader, she recommends Hilary Spurling's two-volume biography The Unknown Matisse and Matisse the Master and Andrea Barrett's National Book Award-winning collection, Ship Fever [Kindle], especially the story "Rare Birds." Posted at 07:24 AM in Birthdays, Families Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 23, 2013 Born August 23: Neil Bartlett, Conner Habib BartlettNeil Bartlett received an OBE at forty-two for his special services to the arts. The author, translator, or director of dozens of plays for television, radio, and most especially theater, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National, the ART, and the Lyric Hammersmith where he was Artistic Director for eleven seasons, he has also published a handful of gay books: The literary novel Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall plumbs the erotic relationship between an older man and his younger boyfriend in an unnamed town. In The House on Brooke Street he contrasts a London department store clerk and an aristocrat's obsession with the latter's 19 year-old blond servant Gabriel in a story that flips between the 1920s and 50s. His most recent novel, Skin Lane, about a 46 year-old furrier and his boss's teen nephew, was a finalist for a Costa award after winning wide acclaim from critics and A-list authors Armistead Maupin, Patrick McGrath, and Will Self who said, it's "a fiendishly taut little psycho-shocker that recalls Simenon at his most hardboiled and Highsmith at her creepiest." Six months ago, the British Library announced the acquisition of Bartlett's personal papers and video archives. ConnerYesterday, Conner Habib taught a seminar called "Anthroposophy 101: Rudolf Steiner, Freedom, and the Western Esoteric Tradition" in San Francisco. It was probably pretty good because Conner previously earned the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor at UMASS, during his three years lecturing on literature, composition, and creative writing. He also loves to talk and write about organismic and evolutionary biology which he studied with many of the greats in the field like Lynn Margulis and Fritjof Capra. All of this is important to remember because Conner is a porn star. For his efforts in more than 100 sex films and scenes, he has been named Best Newcomer by the GayVN in 2010 and he won Best Supporting Actor at the Grabbys in 2012 for his work with Allen Silver in Dad Goes To College directed by Joe Gage. He often writes about sex, what it's like on set or describing why he likes rest stops or creating an identity in porn or why Americans fear gay sex. His birth name is Andre Khalil and he chose Conner Habib to reflect his Irish and Syrian ancestry. Today he's 36. Read his blog or join his 25,079 followers on twitter. Posted at 08:37 AM in Birthdays, Books, Broadway, Sex, SF, U.K. Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0) August 22, 2013 Flavorwire Lists "50 Essential Works of LGBT Fiction" Yesterday's list of fifty books Flavorwire considers essential queer fiction is sort of good, sort of awful. Yes, absolutely: Hollinghurst, Baldwin, Winterson, Forster, Mann, Sarah Waters, Isherwood, Renault, Proust. But the list includes far too many recent, first-time authors who are friends of the compiler? talented but have not yet reached the mastery of those omitted: Wilde, Waugh, Cheever, Cather, Capote, Colette, Gide, Firbank, William S Burroughs, Marguerite Yourcenar, Denton Welch, Colm Toibin, Michael Cunningham, Stephen McCauley, Alan Bennett, Philip Hensher, Peter Cameron, J.R. Ackerly, David Leavitt, Dale Peck, Dorothy Allison, Reinaldo Arenas, Paul Russell, Alison Bechdel, Jaime Manrique, E. Lynn Harris, Alan Gurganus, Katherine Forrest, Glenway Westcott, Jonathan Strong, Tove Jansson, and Tennessee Williams, to name a few. In the face of so many omissions, it's impossible to justify giving Larry Kramer two entries, for Faggots and The Normal Heart. How do you feel about straight authors on a list of gay books? Intellectually, the work speaks for itself, period. Emotionally, it's tough to see so many dedicated writers above pushed aside for at least four non-gay authors who made it onto the list: Andre Aciman, Jeffrey Eugenides, Michael Chabon, and Stephen Chbosky. What do they offer that can't be found in a comparable book from a queer writer? By any yardstick, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You is ten times better than The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Despite its shortcomings, the list also surprises, happily, with three lesser-known gems: At Swim, Two Boys [Kindle] by Jamie O'Neill, Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai, and Narrow Rooms by James Purdy. I never see Flavorwire and would have missed this were it not for the intrepid Logan Ragsdale, a New York City area librarian. Posted at 11:41 AM in Books Permalink Comments (2) TrackBack (0) Born August 22: László Almásy Laslzo To the long line of queer lives stolen, degayed, and straightened by writers and filmmakers craving a broader audience, add László Almásy [seated], the Hungarian aristocrat, desert explorer and Nazi smuggler who may have spied for both sides in WWII, and is the protagonist of The English Patient. Almásy was gay and certainly didn't have a soaring romance with anyone's wife; he and a young German soldier named Hans Entholt were lovers and letters unavailable to the public offer proof that he also had sex with Egyptian princes. Born in what is now Austria, educated in England, he joined the Hussars in WWI, was shot down over Italy, continued as a flight instructor, and after the war was a winning speed racer. Earlier, in 1926, after driving along the Nile from Egypt to the Sudan, Almásy became interested in the area and led expeditions in search of the mythic Zerzura. His sponsor died and that man's wife perished in a mysterious plane crash the following year. In 1934 or 35, Almásy and another adventurer became the first whites to establish contact with the Magyarab tribe and earned the title Abu Ramla [Father of the Sand] from his Bedouin friends, developing desert skills that would come in handy during WWII as part of Operation Salaam when he smuggled Nazi spies across enemy lines and drove 4,200 km across the Sahara. Yet when he returned to Budapest, he helped hide and save several Jewish families from being deported to death camps. After the war, he was arrested in Hungary, sent to a Soviet prison, was acquitted thanks to a bribe allegedly paid by MI6, was smuggled to Austria by British officials on a fake passport, and sent to Egypt where King Farouk got him named the technical director at the new Desert Research Institute. Visiting Austria in 1951, he contracted dysentery and died at 55. The English Patient won the Booker Prize and the movie version won nine Oscars, including best picture. A more accurate portrayal is John Bierman's The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy: The Real English Patient. Posted at 09:25 AM in Adventure, Birthdays Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 21, 2013 GLAAD: Only 6 of 101 Studio Movies in 2012 Passed Vito Russo Test Ben Industry lapdog/watchdog GLAAD today released its Studio Responsibility Index reporting that of 101 Hollywood feature films, fourteen included l,g, or b characters (zero trans), but even that is a stretch. Eleven of the fourteen are comedies, some of which play the gay reveal for laughs. The remaining three are a drama in which the gay love interest dies; an actioner with a bi villain; and a concert film with a queer stylist backstage. Only six films passed the Vito Russo Test, described here by the LA Times: To pass the "Russo Test," a film must contain an identifiably LGBT character, who must not be solely identified by their sexual orientation or gender identity, and who must be tied to the film's plot so that his or her removal from the story would have a major effect on it. Can you name all six? Pitch Perfect, Fun Size, Rock of Ages, The Five-Year Engagement, Skyfall, and the drama Cloud Atlas [above], which had the year's only prominent gay storyline and was among 2012's biggest flops. Several of the remaining eight are very weak inclusions: Adam Sandler's That's My Boy, Eddie Murphy's A Thousand Words, Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator, 21 Jump Street, American Reunion, Think Like a Man, Ted, and Katy Perry the Movie: Part of Me. The GLAAD report mentions but wisely doesn't count The Avengers simply for its quick cameo by newsman Thomas Roberts, because he is out in real life. Because the report is aimed at major studios, it doesn't list widely-distributed gay-inclusive films like the sly, animated feature ParaNorman, the really overrated teen drama The Perks of Being a Wallflower, or the nonstop parade of gray-haired cliches in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which once again kills off its wistful, lonely old homo [1 Aktualisierung]
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- dawa - Social Mention: Is dawa ke lene se Inshalallah aap our aap ki family hamesh khush w khurram rahegi AMEEN [1 Aktualisierung]
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- Abu Walaa - Social Mention: Do'a dan Dzikir untuk Ibu Hamil (Bag. 2): Do'a dan Dzikir bagi Wanita Hamil dan Melahirkan Salah satu energi terbesar bagi seorang wanita hamil dalam menghadapi berbagai kesulitan adalah banyak berdzikir dan berdo'a kepada Allah. Perasaan antara gembira, takut, khawatir dan perasaan lainnya sering dialami oleh wanita yang hamil atau akan melahirkan. Maka perbanyaklah mengingat Allah agar hati menjadi tentram. Dzikir yang terbaik dan sangat dianjurkan adalah memperbanyak membaca al-Qur'an. Satu huruf saja mengandung sepuluh kebaikan. Di dalamnya terdapat obat bagi penyakit lahir maupun batin. Bacalah tanpa menentukan surat-surat tertentu, kecuali di saat-saat tertentu yang terdapat dalil bagi keutamaannya. Dzikir berikutnya yang sangat dianjurkan adalah Dzikir Pagi dan Petang. Berikut ini sebagian dzikir dan do'a yang dianjurkan untuk dibaca oleh wanita yang sedang hamil agar mendapatkan ketenangan hati dan dijaga dari berbagai kejahatan. 1. Membaca QS. Al-Faatihah Keterangan: Ibnul Qayyim berkata: "aku pernah tinggal beberapa waktu lamanya di Makkah. Ketika itulah aku menderita beberapa penyakit, sementara aku tidak menjumpai dokter dan tidak pula menemukan obat. Maka aku mengobati diriku sendiri dengan surat al-Faatihah. Aku melihat pengaruhnya yang menakjubkan dengan izin Allah. Aku pun menceritakan pengalamanku ini kepada orang yang mengeluhkan sakitnya. Dan kebanyakan dari mereka sembuh dengan cepat."1 2. Membaca ayat Kursiy Keterangan: Dibaca satu kali di pagi hari dan satu kali di sore hari. Juga ketika akan tidur dan setelah setiap shalat fardhu. Rasulullah shallallaahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda: "Barangsiapa membaca ayat ini ketika pagi hari, maka ia dilindungi dari gangguan jin hingga sore hari. Dan barangsiapa mengucapkannya ketika sore hari, maka ia dilindungi dari (gangguan) jin hingga pagi hari."2 3. Membaca dua ayat terakhir dari surat al-Baqarah (yakni ayat 285 dan 286) Keterangan: Dibaca satu kali di sore hari atau sebelum tidur, atau dibacakan di rumah. Dzikir ini berguna agar dicukupi dan dijaga dari segala sesuatu.3 4. Membaca surat al-Iklhas dan Mu'awwidzatain (QS. Al-Falaq dan an-Naas) Keterangan: Dibaca masing-masing tiga kali di pagi dan sore hari. Juga dibaca sebelum tidur4. Dibaca juga setiap selesai shalat masing-masing satu kali.5 Khasiatnya di antaranya menjadi pencukup dan penjaga dari segala sesuatu dengan izin Allah.6 5. Membaca ayat-ayat lainnya yang berkaitan dengan perlindungan Allah, seperti yang dimuat dalam Ifaadah fii maa Jaa-a min Dzikril Wilaadah, yakni: - QS. Ash-Shaaffaat: 1-10 - QS. Al-Mu'minuun: 97-98 6. Membaca ayat-ayat yang disebutkan dalam fatwa Syaikh al-'Utsaimin rahimahullah (Lihat Bag. I), yakni: - Yang menunjukkan kemudahan (QS. Al-Baqarah: 185) - Yang menunjukkan tentang kehamilan dan kelahiran (QS. Faathir: 11) - Yang menunjukkan kekuasaan Allah untuk mengeluarkan sesuatu beban berat yang keluar, dan ketundukan segala makhluk kepada Allah Ta'ala (QS. Al-Zalzalah: 1-2, boleh juga dibaca lengkap seperti yang dicantumkan dalam kutaib yang berjudul al-Ifaadah fii maa Jaa-a fii Wirdil Wilaadah) 7. Memperbanyak ucapan: laa haula walaa quwwata illa billaah Keterangan: bacaan ini dapat dibaca sebanyak-banyaknya tanpa batasan jumlah dan merupakan suatu perbendaharaan dari banyak perbendaharaan Surga, dan khasiatnya sangat menakjubkan. 7 8. Mengucapkan bimillaah Keterangan: bacalah ketika memulai segala perkara yang penting dan bermanfaat. Faedah bacaan ini adalah agar dijaga dari syaitan, sehingga ia tidak ikut makan dan menginap bersama orang yang membacanya8 9. Memperbanyak istighfar. Yaitu ucapan "Astaghfirullaah…" Dan di antaranya adalah sayyidul Istighfaar, yang dibaca di waktu pagi dan petang. Keterangan: "Barangsiapa membacanya dengan yakin ketika sore hari, lalu ia meninggal dunia pada malam itu, maka ia masuk Surga. Dan demikian juga ketika pagi hari."9 10. Dan diantaranya lagi adalah do'a Nabi Yunus 'alaihissalaam ketika dalam perut ikan (yakni QS. Al-Anbiyaa': 87) Rasulullah shallallaahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda: "Maka tidaklah seorang muslim berdo'a dengannya pada sesuatu, kecuali Allah akan mengabulkannya."10 Disadur dari buku "Do'a dan Dzikir untuk Ibu Hamil" oleh Abu Muhammad Ibnu Shalih bin Hasbullah, penerbit Pustaka Ibnu 'Umar Catatan Kaki: 1. Al-Jawaabul Kaafi karya Ibnul Qayyim, hal. 8. 2 . (HR. Al-Hakim (I/562?, Shahiih at-Targhiib wat Tarhiib (I/418, no. 662), shahih). 3 . (Lihat hadits Al-Bukhari (no. 5019) dalam Fadhaa-ilul Qur-aan, Muslim (no. 808) dalam bab Fadhlu faatihatil Kitaab wa Khawaatiima Suuratil Baqarah) 4. (Lihat Al-Bukhari dalam Fat-hul Baari IX/62) 5. (Lihat Shahiih at-Tirmidzi (II/8)) 6. (Lihat Shahiih at-Tirmidzi (III/182)) 7. (Lihat HR. Al-Bukhari (XI/159), Muslim (no. 2704)) 8. (HR Muslim, no. 2018) 9. (HR. Al-Bukhari (VII/150)) 10. (Dishahihkan oleh Syaikh al-Albani dalam Shahiih wa Dha'iif at-Tirmidzi (no. 3505, al-Maktabah asy-Syaamilah)). [1 Aktualisierung]
- jihad - Social Mention: 26/11 was meant to start India-Pak war: ex-CIA analyst [1 Aktualisierung]
- al-ansar - Social Mention: AL ANSAR [1 Aktualisierung]
- abu adam - Social Mention: Bayanat Airports Teams with Lockheed Martin to Deploy First Windtracer Lidar in Middle East [1 Aktualisierung]
- dawa - Social Mention: MUJHE GUM DNE WALE TU KHUSI KO TARRSE MERE DOSMAN TU MERI DOSTI KO TARRSE MARE DOSMAN JA ME TANHA RAHO MUTEHI AKHARI BAS DAWA HAI MARI [1 Aktualisierung]
- islamist - Social Mention: ARE RELIGIOUS AND RACE-BASED PARTIES PARANOID ABOUT A TRULY DEMOCRATIC MALAYSIAN SOCIETY? The response from PAS Youth Leader vice-chief Dr Raja Ahmad Iskandar Al-Hiss to the recent statements of PR's vice-president Karpal Singh that race or religious based political parties should be deregistered, seems to have struck a raw nerve with PAS Youth leaders. Mr. Singh's opinion on what he believes is the correct way forward in developing a truly democratic Malaysian society has drawn what some may see as, an almost paranoid and insecure reaction from their PAS partners. Why is the PAS Youth leadership so sensitive of Mr. Singh's comments? Could they have concerns that the majority of their membership supports PAS because they are Malay Muslims? Are PAS leaders fearful that failure to structure their policies in a way that does not uphold Islamist ideology will lead to the destruction of the party? Do PAS say their policies are designed with the intention of providing equal rights to all Malaysians, regardless of religious belief or race? Perhaps Mr. Singh's comments are beyond the understanding of those who only see an insular view rather than Mr. Singh's more secular hopes for a more inclusive Malaysian democratic society. Do you think religious or race-based parties should be allowed to continue? [1 Aktualisierung]
- takbir - Social Mention: huuu... bkin naek tekanan sak nie tlifon, nsib baik sya xda duit.. klo ad, sua ku hmpas nie tlifon, gnti kau yg baru.. [1 Aktualisierung]
- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 07:30AM
takbir - Social Mention
Question Why does Allah require us to praise Him? What benefit does he get? Answer 1. Allahu Akbar doesn't make Allah Great: Allah (SWT) does not require our praises for His benefit. When we say 'Allahu Akbar' meaning Allah is the Greatest, He does not become greater. He is already the Greatest whether we say a million times Allahu Akbar or we don't say. It will make no difference in his greatness. He will yet remain the Greatest. 2. We Praise Allah for our benefit: It is mentioned in the Qur'an in Surah Fatir chapter 35 verse 15 "O ye men! It is ye that have need of Allah: but Allah is the One Free of all wants, worthy of all praise." [Al-Qur'an 35:15] Allah (SWT) is free of all wants. He does not require us to praise Him. It is we human beings who require Allah (SWT) and we praise Him for our own benefits. 3. We praise Allah to convince ourselves that He is worthy to be obeyed and served. We normally follow the advice of a person who is great, famous and important. A person who is intelligent and wise. We will not follow the advice of a stranger who is unknown or a person who is not intelligent nor wise. That is the reason that we praise Allah (SWT) that He is the Greatest, The Most Wise, The All Knowing, etc., to first convince ourselves that He is worthy to be followed then we ask Him to guide us and help us. 4. In Surah Fatihah we first recite praises of Allah then we seek His help: That is the reason why Surah Fatiha or the opening Chapter of the Holy Qur'an is always recited in every rakaat of the Salaah. In the first 4 or 5 verses of Surah Fatihah we initially praise Allah (SWT). "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds: Most Gracious, Most Merciful; Master of the Day of Judgement. Thee do we worship, And Thine aid we seek." [Al-Qur'an 1:1-5] Then later we ask Him for help for our own benefit. "Show us the straight way, the way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray." [Al-Qur'an 1:6-7] Thus we first praise Allah (SWT) in Surah Fatihah and agree that He is Most Gracious, Most Merciful, The Chrisher, The Sustainer, The Master, etc, and then we ask Him for guidance and help. 5. Prefer treatment and advice from the best doctor: If you are sick and have a heart problem and the best available heart specialist gives you advice, you will follow His advice. But if a stranger who has no knowledge of medicine or a quack gives you advice, you will not follow it. 6. If all the oceans were ink, it would not suffice to praise Allah: Thus we praise Allah (SWT) for our own benefit. However much we may praise Him it is insufficient because the Holy Qur'an says in Surah Kahf chapter 18 verse 109: "Say: 'If the ocean were ink (wherewith to write out) the words of my Lord, sooner would the ocean be exhausted than would the words of my Lord, even if We added another ocean like it, for its aid.'" [Al-Qur'an 18:109] 7. If trees were pens and oceans were ink they would not suffice to write words of Allah. A similar message is repeated in Surah Luqman chapter 31 verse 27 "And if all the trees on earth were pens and the Ocean (were ink), with seven oceans behind it to add to its (supply), yet would not the words of Allah be exhausted (in the writing): for Allah is Exalted in power, full of Wisdom." [Al-Qur'an 31:27] 8. We praise Allah to follow His commandments: Allah (SWT) does not require us to praise Him for His benefit but He requires us to praise Him for our benefit. In Salaah while reciting verses of the Qur'an, we agree that He is Supreme and Ultimate and commit that we will follow His advice and commandments so that we stay on the siratal mustaqeem (straight path).
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=122082659193&v=wall&story_fbid=10151969188284194
Nov 19th 2013, 06:48
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 07:43AM
media crash news - Social Mention
Should art be preserved even when it offends? A painting from 1936 that hangs in a Edinburgh primary school depicting scenes from Alice in Wonderland and includes a golliwog has been described as as racist and offensive, but the school is refusing to remove it. Should it stay or should it go?
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=127439507270196&v=wall&story_fbid=758995887447885
Nov 19th 2013, 06:44
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 09:40AM
IHED - Social Mention
Ndeke aayị,o nworu izuku aanị bịanị Onyenwoayị kuru "yaa izukum".Ọ sị na madụ ẹbọọ je anọ na ibe aanị na e kuru onyem hasịa ọmụanịm.Na onyeaha a naa agba awụlawụla.O je ọ bụ izuku nna alaam, ọ bụ mụa onye yị?Ọ maarị asụ sụa na ikwe, gị amagị asụ,sụburu apata sụkọdụa na alị.Okwu aanị ezuworu nwa amarị ihe.Ị hụ nke ọ dị na Baịbụlụ Ẹhugbo Oziọma Luk 17:20-37 Ọbịbịa Ọchịchị Nke Chineke (Mt 24:23-28,37-41) 20Ya o rue izuku aanị, nde Farisii jụ Jisọs kaa ndaa mgbe yaa ọchịchị Chinekie je a bịa. Jisọs sị wo, 22Ya ọ sị nde na eso ụzọ a,
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100004690921405&v=wall&story_fbid=237574526408910
Nov 19th 2013, 09:15
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 01:37PM
islamist - Social Mention
LIVE: Lebanon embassy bombings - There have been two suspected suicide bomb attacks near the Iranian embassy in Lebanon's capital, Beirut. - The leader of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a Lebanese jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda, says they were responsible. - At least 22 people have been killed, including Iran's cultural attache, officials say. (All times in GMT.) LIVE TEXT By David Gritten and Becky Branford Lebanon-based journalist Josh Wood tweets: "Today's Iranian embassy bombing is the 4th big bombing in #Lebanon this year. 3 in August - 2 in Tripoli, one in South Beirut" This file image - dating from just a few weeks ago - has been released of Sheikh Ebrahim Ansari, the cultural attache to the Iranian embassy, who was killed in Tuesday's attack. The mid-ranking Shia cleric had been in Lebanon only a month, embassy officials said. Ahmed Yassine, who works on the same street as the Iranian embassy in Beirut, describes what he saw on Tuesday morning: "I was about 50m [160 feet] away from the explosions. It was two bombs, I think they said two suicide bombers. It was just awful... Many dead bodies, massive destruction, burnt cars. Around six buildings were damaged, some partially, others totally. What I've seen was just awful." Meanwhile in Syria, government forces have taken full control of Qara, a town used by rebels to cross from Lebanon, state media report. Qara is 80km (50 miles) north of Damascus and straddles a motorway linking the capital to government strongholds along the Mediterranean coast. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague says he strongly condemns the "shocking terrorist attack" on the Iranian embassy in Beirut. "I send my condolences to the families of those killed and injured. The UK is strongly committed to supporting stability in Lebanon and seeing those responsible for this attack brought to justice." Jonathan Marcus - BBC diplomatic correspondent While the Abdullah Azzam Brigades have said they were behind the attack, others have pointed the finger elsewhere - the Iranians at Israel, for example. However, with Iran and Hezbollah being very strong allies of the Syrian government, extremist Sunni groups - who are pretty much allied to rebels fighting in Syria - clearly might well have been perpetrators. The Lebanese army has confirmed the Beirut embassy blasts were both suicide bombings, the AFP news agency reports. LBCI News English tweets: The #Lebanon vs #Iran #football match will take place as scheduled in #Beirut this afternoon without any spectators. More from the claim by Sheikh Siraj al-Din Zureiqat, a cleric close to the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Using the Twitter hashtag "Battle of the Iranian embassy in Beirut", he quotes them as saying: "This is a double martyrdom operation carried out by two heroes from the heroic Sunnis of Lebanon." He adds: "Operations will continue in Lebanon until two demands are met: first, withdrawing Hezbollah members from Syria; second, releasing our prisoners from jails of injustice in Lebanon." "People aren't scared anymore. We aren't safe," a mechanic whose store windows were shattered by the blasts tells the Associated Press. "People fight outside [Lebanon], but send their messages through Lebanon. With bombs. It's their SMS service," he adds. It is tense and chaotic at the site of the blasts: Iran has denied sending combat troops to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad, but acknowledged sending military personnel to advise and train Syrian government forces. This recent footage from Syria cast doubt on that claim. The claim of responsibility for the bombing was made by a cleric close to the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Sheikh Siraj al-Din Zureiqat, in the name of the "Saraya al-Hussein bin Ali". He warned that attacks would continue in Lebanon until Iranian forces left Syria and prisoners were released in Lebanon. Fernande van Tets Beirut based correspondent for Dutch news agency, tweets a photo: House opposite Iranian embassy. Police were picking bits of flesh of supposed suicide bomber off the balcony Breaking News The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a Lebanese Sunni jihadist group affiliated to al-Qaeda, has said it carried out the twin suicide bomb attack in Beirut. Carine Torbey - BBC Arabic, Beirut This is a highly secure area but this attack demonstrates that there is nothing, apparently, that can stop suicide bombers getting around and doing what they want. Hezbollah people are on the ground searching everyone in the area. It shows how dangerous the situation in Lebanon has become. Emotions are running really high However, there are also reports a Lebanese jihadist group linked to al-Qaeda, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, will issue a statement shortly about the Iranian embassy attack. IHS Jane's analyst Charles Lister tweets: "Are the Abdullah Azzam Brigades involved in the #Beirut attack? [Leader] Sheikh Sirajuddin Zureiqat is set to comment shortly. #Iran #Lebanon #Syria" Iran's foreign ministry has accused Israel of being behind the attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut. The bombings were "an inhuman crime and spiteful act done by Zionists and their mercenaries," spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham was quoted as saying by the official Irna news agency. Dahieh, a predominantly Shia southern suburb of Beirut that is a stronghold of Hezbollah, has been targeted twice already this year. On 9 July, a massive car bomb exploded in a busy shopping street, wounding more than 50 people. Just over a month later, on 15 August, another car bomb in the same district killed 24 people. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah blamed both attacks on takfiris, who consider all but the most radical Sunnis to be infidels whose blood can be spilt. IHS Jane's analyst Charles Lister tweets: "Reports emerging that the first of two explosions at #Iran embassy was the result of a suicide bomber on a motorbike... Second device was car bomb (a Renault Rapid), containing 50-100kg of explosives. Both detonated within 120 seconds of each other... Details suggest tactics are qualitatively different to previous bombings in Dahiyeh. Similarly, the target is certainly an escalation." Hezbollah official Ali Ammar said the militant Shia Islamist group would not be deterred by the attack. "Whoever did this is a monstrous terrorist," he said, according to Reuters. "The resistance message is that it will continue. It will continue in all its efforts to defeat Israel and defeat the terrorists." The damaged gate at the entrance to the embassy Tom Fletcher, British ambassador to Lebanon, tweets: "UK condemns appalling terrorist attack on Iranian embassy. Deep condolences to families. We remain at high state of vigilance & ready to help." Damascus was quick to condemn the bombings. "The Syrian government firmly condemns the terrorist attack carried out near the Iranian embassy in Beirut," state television said. On Thursday, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, pledged that its forces would remain in Syria as long as necessary. "As long as the reasons remain, our presence there will remain," told thousands of his followers at a rally in Beirut. He said these included supporting the Lebanese and Palestinian causes, "to confront all the dangers of the international, regional and takfiri attack on this country and on this region", referring to extremist Sunni rebels in Syria. Meir Javedanfar, in Tel Aviv author of the Iran-Israel Observer, tweets: #iran embassy explosion in Beirut could increase calls inside #Hezbollah to reduce #syria presence A domestic worker was injured in the blasts, which affected well-to-do residential buildings as well as the Iranian embassy. Rowena in Beirut As I was checking my emails in my office two blocks away from the blast, I heard the bomb. I looked at my colleague and I calmly affirmed that it was a blast and we would hear the sirens shortly and then I continued replying to some random email. How have we Lebanese become so used to this? People have just lost their lives! Carine Torbey - BBC Arabic, Beirut Several Syrian armed groups have threatened to target Shia areas in Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah's and Iran's role in supporting President Assad. More details are beginning to emerge about the attack in the upmarket Janah district in southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. Lebanese officials now say they have security camera footage showing the twin blasts were the result of a suicide bombing and a car bomb. Earlier, a guard at the embassy told the Associated Press that a suicide attacker had ridden a motorbike up to the main gate before blowing himself up. The second blast, which caused more damage, had been a car bomb, he added. The suspicion is that a suicide bomber and car bomb caused the blasts Reuters Jerusalem correspondent Dan Williams tweets: "Tzachi Hanegbi, senior member of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defence panel, says Israel had no role in the Beirut bombings... 'The bloodshed in Beirut stems from Hezbollah's involvement in the Syria crisis. Israel was not involved in the past, nor here.' - Hanegbi" ABC News Middle East correspondent Alexander Marquardt tweets: "#Syria information minister accuses #Saudi intelligence and #Israel of being behind #Beirut blasts at #Iran embassy." The extent of the blast damage is visible in this image: The Iranian ambassador tells Hezbollah's al-Manar TV that it is not clear whether the cultural attache was in the embassy itself or one of the residential buildings nearby at the time of the explosions. Iran's cultural attache has died of his wounds, Ambassador Ghazanfar Roknabadi has now told the Associated Press. Lebanon's Health Minister Ali Khali is now saying that at least 22 people have been killed and 146 wounded. There are conflicting reports about the fate of the Iranian cultural attache, Sheikh Ebrahim Ansari. Lebanese security sources say he was killed, but the Iranian ambassador told the Associated Press that he was critically wounded. The National News Agency says the dead include two Iranian nationals. A BBC correspondent in Beirut says those responsible wanted to send a clear message to Iran and Hezbollah, key backers of the Syrian government, which is currently trying to cut off one of the Syrian rebels' last remaining supply routes across the Lebanese border. It is not yet clear what caused the blasts in a predominantly Shia area of the Lebanese capital. Video footage showed widespread destruction, burning vehicles, charred bodies and a huge column of smoke. Welcome to our live page covering the aftermath of the two large explosions outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut, which Lebanon's National News Agency says have killed at least 20 people and wounded many more.
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=187208251453116&v=wall&story_fbid=220802551427019
Nov 19th 2013, 12:36
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 07:41AM
IHED - Social Mention
Nde Ehugbo unu nnaa o! Unu apavuorue? Chineke gozie unu. N'ubochi taa mutari ayi ihe-oma o! Iseeee!!!
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100006833911002&v=wall&story_fbid=1408222166082234
Nov 19th 2013, 06:59
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 09:29AM
allahu akbar - Social Mention
Alhamdulillah. Allahu Akbar
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=605084446&v=wall&story_fbid=10152384615569447
Nov 19th 2013, 09:23
Every single night our soul is taken, and every single night the Angel asks before bringing it back, "Ya Allah what about this one?" "Do You want to send it back?" Do You want to pull the plug or should we keep the Rûh (soul)?" And every night Allah gives permission to the Angel to let us live one more time Posted by: Alhamdulillah I'm a Muslim.
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 01:49PM
Stop the War Coalitions Facebook-Pinnwand
Stop the War Coalitions Facebook-Pinnwand
http://stopwar.org.uk/news/two-faces-of-america-what-guantanamo-inmate-shaker-aa...
http://www.facebook.com/stopthewarcoalition/posts/681204518570127
Nov 19th 2013, 13:43
http://stopwar.org.uk/news/two-faces-of-america-what-guantanamo-inmate-shaker-aamer-learnt-about-americans-in-halloween#.UotqIOLqQsF
Two faces of America: What Guantanamo prisoner Shaker Aamer has learnt about Americans
www.stopwar.org.uk
Shaker Aamer asks the American people which face they wish to choose for their country - the good or the bad. READ MORE...
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 02:00PM
tauhid - Social Mention
Etika Syar'i Bari Perempuan dalam Menuntut Ilmu Tidaklah diragukan bahwa perempuan sederajat dengan lelaki dalam hal kewajiban menjalankan perintah agama. Dimana kewajiban menjalankan perintah itu mencakup seluruh perintah agama seperti memurnikan tauhid, sholat, zakat, haji, puasa…dan lain sebagainya. Dan telah dimaklumi oleh setiap muslim dan muslimah bahwa perintah-perintah agama itu memiliki syarat-syarat, rukun-rukun dan ketentuan-ketentuan yang harus terpenuhi sebagai keabsahan sebuah ibadah atau memenuhi kesempurnaannya. Dan tiada jalan untuk memahami dan menjalankan ibadah tersebut sesuai dengan tuntunannya yang benar kecuali dengan cara menuntut ilmu agama. Rasulullah shollallâhu 'alaihi wa 'alâ âlihi wa sallam bersabda, طَلَبُ الْعِلْمِ فَرِيْضَةٌ عَلَى كُلِّ مُسْلِمٍ "Menuntut ilmu adalah wajib atas setiap muslim."[1] Berkata Ibnul Jauzy rahimahullâh, "Perempuan adalah seorang yang mukallaf seperti laki-laki. Maka wajib terhadapnya untuk menuntut ilmu tentang perkara-perkara yang diwajibkan terhadapnya, agar ia menunaikan ibadah tersebut di atas keyakinan."[2]
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100000150507892&v=wall&story_fbid=746625865352423
Nov 19th 2013, 13:40
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 12:42PM
sharia - Social Mention
Dar Al Sharia named 'Best Sharia Advisory Firm' at Islamic Finance News awards for fifth consecutive year. http://icd.gov.ae/pages/news_article.php?article_id=1515
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=467474513322967&v=wall&story_fbid=575581349178949
Nov 19th 2013, 12:37
Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB)
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 12:43PM
Abu Bilal - Social Mention
لايك للغلاف تبعي تم خوذ 300 #متابعه .................................. في تم ؟؟؟؟؟
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100004759748837&v=wall&story_fbid=228703883964935
Nov 19th 2013, 12:27
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 12:29PM
khalifa - Social Mention
Concorde marks UAE National Flag Day
http://ct.moreover.com/ct?haid=b9f0a6eb0f0c4cfb138486337231413d73d7ee61c464d&co=f000000013912s-1248979074
Nov 19th 2013, 12:16
MENAFN - Found 13 minutes agoVice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to commemorate the accession of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan as...
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 01:32PM
dawah - Social Mention
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Furqaan-Project-Motorized-Dawah-Team/362117797227287?ref=hl
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100001742374585&v=wall&story_fbid=560924997308908
Nov 19th 2013, 13:00
" Our mission is to move all people to strive for God-consciousness and social justice and to convey Islam with utmost clarity"
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 05:34AM
dawah - Social Mention
Nyidam pentol endok :D
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100005608537152&v=wall&story_fbid=182459098617707
Nov 19th 2013, 04:03
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 09:30AM
khalifa - Social Mention
Clique no seu Cantor/Banda Favorita! # MC DALESTE # MC GUIME # funk, # Anitta ,# Jorge e Matheus, # Charlie Brown Jr. # Legião Urbana, # Luan Santana, # The Beatles, # Sorriso Maroto, # Pollo, # Aline Barros, # Paula Fernandes, # Bruna Karla, # Nando Reis, # Roberto Carlos, # Clarice Falção, # Gustavo Lima, # Thalles Roberto, # Thiagunho, # Taylor Swif, # Projota, # Carrosel (2012), # Racionais Mc's, # Lucas Lucco, # Fernando e Sorocaba, # Fernandinho, # Zezé Di Camargo e Luciano, # Revelação, # Thaeme e Thiago, # Exaltasamba, # Bruno Mars, # Rihanna, # Bonde Da Stronda, # Capital Inicial, # Cazuza, # One Direction, # Jota Quest, # Coldplay, # Turma Do Pagode, # Cristiano Araujo, # justin Bieber, # Beyoncé, # Pink, # Avião Do Forro, # Garota Safada, # O Rappa, # Patati e Patata, # Ivete Sangalo, # Guns N' Roses, # Linkin Park, # Roupa Nova, # Rosa De Saron, # Victor e Leo, # Adele, # Naldo, # Skank, # Bonde Das Maravilhas, # Nx Zero, # Titãs, # System Of a Down, # João Neto e Frederico, # Mc Gui, # Mc Koringa, # Léo Magalhães, # Michel Telo, # Os Paralamas Do Sucesso, # Pitty, # Eduardo Costa, # Dance, # Wiz khalifa, # Jeito Muleque, # Michel Jacksoon, # Metalica, # Eminem, # Calcinha Preta, # RBD, # Bob Marley, # Cone Crew Diretoria, # Glee, # Apocalipe 16, # Galinha Pintadinha, # Black Eyed Peas, # 50 Cent's, # JenniferLopez, # Raça Negra, # Oficcina G3, # Pregador Luo, # Amado Batista, # Claudia Leite, # Mc Pocahontas, # Katy Perry, # Alexandre Piris, # Catedral, # Gabriel O Pensador, # David Guetta, # Israel Novaes, # Pitbull, # (..) SE TEM ALGUM CANTOR OU BANDA QUE VOC ? GOSTA CURTI AQUI. Mc Gui Da Oeste.
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=248298811967480&v=wall&story_fbid=398071390323554
Nov 19th 2013, 09:20
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 10:45AM
media crash news - Social Mention
. LGBT-themed books you want to read Two Gay Trilogies Conclude: Captain Harding and Band Fags! HardingFollowing his fine Captain Harding's Six-Day War [Kindle] (which the Lambda Review says is "already a gay literary classic") and Captain Harding and His Men [Kindle], Lammy-winner Elliott Mackle brings his strong hero back to the States in Welcome Home, Captain Harding [Kindle]. Lethe Press writes: "Returning to California after eighteen terrifying months in Vietnam, Captain Joe Harding is assigned a trio of duties: assisting his fatherly former commander at base operations, spying on misbehaving bomber pilots and organizing an air show designed to counter the anti-war fever sweeping the state. Meanwhile, his much younger tennis partner has enrolled at Cal Berkeley, enmeshed himself in pacifist politics and resumed his role as Joe's lover. When a playmate from Wheelus, a one-time fighter pilot now flying for TWA, shows up at Joe's house in Merced, the three men must navigate the joys and difficulties inherent in creating their own sort of ''welcome home.'' Continuing the adventures and misadventures begun in Elliott Mackle's acclaimed Captain Harding series Joe and his fellow officers and men are up against a hot-dogging, risk-taking aircraft commander, a pair of drug-abusing co-pilots and a married administrator with a taste for sexual blackmail. When a Broadway show causes a death in the family, a test flight goes terribly wrong and Joe's honor and patriotism are questioned, he must fight to clear his name and rebuild his imperiled career." Mackle's previous novels are It Takes Two and its sequel Only Make Believe, as well as the stand alone Hot Off the Presses. PolitoReaders who followed Bradley Dayton through his early teens in Band Fags! [Kindle] and his late teens in the Lammy-winning Drama Queers! [Kindle] can now see him in college in The Spirit of Detroit [Kindle], which Frank Anthony Polito says was "inspired by The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon." "September 1992. Madonna's SEX is poised to hit bookstore shelves, The Crying Gamemakes its cinematic debut in limited release, and George H.W. Bush will soon square off against William Jefferson Clinton in the battle to be elected leader of the Free World. After abandoning his dreams of becoming a famous actor, Bradley Dayton returns to his roots and enrolls as a Theatre major at Wayne State University in Detroit. But a new cast of characters begins to interfere with his educational pursuits as these friends (and lovers) induct Bradley into their dark world of backstage drama. By semester's end, he will have spent many a wild and sleepless Motor City night in search of his true self, while finding his fair share of trouble along the way." Posted at 07:52 AM in Books Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) September 01, 2013 Born September 1: Lily Tomlin, Roger Casement, Emma Stebbins, Dave King Aalily Detroit's funniest daughter, Mary Jean Tomlin was featured on Merv Griffin when she was twenty-six and landed a spot on Laugh-In when she was thirty, creating the telephone operator Ernestine. Wanting to expand another character, Edith Ann, the bratty child in the big chair, Tomlin found the Peabody-winning after school special writer Jane Wagner. They clicked. They've been life partners and collaborators for forty-two years and now they're getting married. Wagner wrote and directed Tomlin projects ranging from Grammy-winning comedy albums and Emmy-winning tv specials to hit movies (The Incredible Shrinking Woman) to super flops (Moment by Moment, co-starring John Travolta) to Tony-winning Broadway megahits (The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe). Beyond her endeavors with Wagner, Tomlin most frequently worked with Robert Altman (Nashville, Short Cuts, A Prairie Home Companion), and gave star performances in 9 to 5, All of Me, Big Business, and Flirting with Disaster. She's had recurring roles on many top tv shows Murphy Brown, The West Wing, Will & Grace, Desperate Housewives, and Damages. Most recently, she was Tina Fey's mom in the skippable Admission. In March 1977, when Time was still a news magazine, Tomlin was its cover story; Wagner is identified first as "a friend" but later the article says the ladies share a house off Sunset. Eighteen years ago, Tomlin co-produced and narrated the gay Hollywood documentary The Celluloid Closet, an act some took as her coming out. She's a hysterical actress, obvs, but is she also a little hysterical? Her meltdowns on the set of I Heart Huckabees are more than a little salty, yet minor compared to the tantrum thrown by the director. Remember, nothing is harder than comedy. Today she's 74. Also born today: Roger Casement, the gay Irish rebel hanged by the Brits in 1916 and subject of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's novel The Dream of the Celt [Kindle]; Emma Stebbins, sculptor of the Central Park landmark Angel of the Waters, which you know as Bethesda Fountain, and girlfriend of actress Charlotte Cushman; and Dave King, author of the 2005 indie hit novel The Ha-Ha [Kindle] and husband of Franklin Tartaglione. Born August 31: David McConnell SilverheartedOne of my favorite gay novels of recent years is also one of the most mysterious: In David McConnell's The Silver Hearted, an unnamed narrator in an unnamed port town in an unnamed country teams up with a young local sailor to transport chests of treasure as a frenzied mob sparks a revolution. Told in high literary style, a pulpy story becomes mesmerizing, erotic, and haunting. Edmund White said it better than I can: "The Silver Hearted is our Heart of Darkness. It is just as ominous, as violent, as exotic, as darkly colonial. But it is a lot better written than Conrad's book. Whereas Conrad is always resorting to 'the unspeakable,' McConnell tells us everything in glowing detail and in fresh, eloquent language. Sexy, demonic, elusive, The Silver Hearted is a perfect work of art." Patrick McGrath said he can't recommend the novel too highly and "David McConnell is the most intriguing, original and exotic writer I've come across in years. The atmosphere he creates in The Silver Hearted is imbued with dread, mystery, lust, sleaze, greed and beauty. A constant potent undertow of violence is at work in the sustained suspense of his narrative." David's first book was the introspective novel The Firebrat, about which Matthew Statdler said, "I love this book. Abjection has never been so gorgeous." His third book [Kindle], out this year, is a significant departure, nonfiction reportage on the murders of gay men. PW said it is a "journalistic tour de force," Library Journal said it's "a masterpiece of reportage," and Sebastian Junger said it's "a stunning exploration of Manhood in America." David reads from the book and discusses homophobia at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Decatur Book Festival tomorrow afternoon. Posted at 08:43 AM in Birthdays, Books, Crime Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 30, 2013 Colm Tóibín on Wilde's Dualities in New Edition of De Profundis ProfundisAccording to his sons, Oscar Wilde especially liked Robert Louis Stevenson's work and Colm Tóibín discusses the Jekyll and Hyde dualities in so much of Wilde's life: gay and married, an Irishman in London, rich and chased by creditors, an aristocrat and Irish patriot, "a wit who was also serious, but a limp and timid lyricist who wrote brave and modern plays." In the spring of 1895, he was also the accuser and accused in two infamous trials that took him from the most celebrated man in London to a jailed, unspeakable scoundrel. For the first and most horrible part of his sentence he was prohibited from having pen and paper. Toward the end of his two year confinement, he wrote his famous long, long love letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, now collected in De Profundis and Other Prison Writings [Kindle], introduced by Tóibín in a new edition from Penguin. StevensonIf you've made it to adulthood without revisiting Stevenson, stop everything and read Kidnapped [Kindle]. Rupert Smith says, "First and foremost, it's one of the most exciting adventure novels I can think of, a model of brilliant plotting, compelling narrative and sharp, magnetic characterisation. The story of David Balfour, the young ingenu sold into slavery and cheated of his inheritance by wicked Uncle Ebenezer, is probably the best coming-of-age narrative I can think of – it never labours its points, but it shows David learning from each experience and acquaintance until he's man enough to claim what's rightfully his. But there's another level to Kidnapped, one which only struck me when I re-read it in my 40s – it's a profoundly homosexual novel. I can see readers rolling their eyes at this point, but bear with me. Whether Stevenson realised it or not, the kidnapping of the young man and his experiences at the hands of older, more powerful men is fraught with erotic energy, and his friendship with the charismatic Alan Breck is highly romantic. Some critics point to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as 'proof' of Stevenson's homosexual leanings, and I can see their point – but for me, Kidnapped is the dead giveaway (and the better novel). In fact, this was the book that inspired me to write the first of my James Lear novels, The Low Road [Kindle], which is a sexed-up version of the same basic story." Posted at 10:27 PM in Books, Ireland, Scotland, U.K. Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 29, 2013 Two Boys Kissing LevithanTwo weeks from now will mark the tenth anniversary of David Levithan's semi-classic debut, the "dippy, happy" teen novel Boy Meets Boy, and this week he releases his eighteenth book, Two Boys Kissing [Kindle]. Based on a real event, the novel follows two seventeen year-olds, Craig and Harry, as they attempt to break the record for world's longest kiss. If you're not a teen and guess the book has nothing for you, think again: It's narrated by a Greek chorus of "gay uncles" from the generation lost to aids. A starred PW review called it "a landmark achievement," and Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-. Some of David's best works are collaborations, most notably with John Green for Will Grayson, Will Grayson about two boys one gay, one straight, who have the same name; and with Rachel Cohn for Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, which became an okayish Michael Cera movie that was not entirely degayed. Ever inventive, his most recent novel was Every Day, a NYT bestseller about a boy who each morning wakes up as a different person but always in love with the same girl. So far his only adult book is the gay novella The Lover's Dictionarythat both charmed and suffered from being written as dictionary entries. Posted at 10:36 AM in Books, YA Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0) Born August 29: Edward Carpenter Carp Ardent socialist (author of the anthem England Arise, founding member of the Independent Labour Party), feminist (saying, "there is no solution except the freedom of woman," he considered traditional marriage to be a form of prostitution), gay activist (his ground-breaking books like My Days and Dreams and The Intermediate Sex go far beyond earlier essays by his friend John Addington Symonds), pacifist, nudist, mystic, poet, and the first person to introduce sandals to modern Britain, Edward Carpenter's greatest legacy may be how he lived his life. Utterly changed after reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1863, he began to dream of a brotherhood of manly love that would erase class lines and give rise to a true democracy. After graduating from Cambridge and leaving a position vacated by Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf's father, Carpenter gave public lectures in Leeds intended for the working class (but attended only by the middle class, who didn't warm to his ideas) and sought to befriend laborers, unsuccessfully. Finally in 1891, after meeting by chance on a train, he and uneducated George Merrill became lovers. In 1898, when Carpenter was fifty-four and Merrill was thirty-two, they established a house together, absolutely unheard of in an England still widely antigay in the aftermath of the Oscar Wilde trials. They lived together openly as a couple for thirty years until Merrill's death, and their cross-class love was the direct inspiration for their friend E.M. Forster's novel Maurice, as well as D.H. Lawrence's heterosexualized version, Lady Chatterley's Lover. Not all authors were so enamored. In the decade after Carpenter's death, George Orwell ridiculed "every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal wearer [and] sex maniac" among the Socialists. Yet an American Communist, Harry Hay, credited Carpenter's writings for galvanizing him to start the first gay rights group, The Mattachine Society, in Los Angeles in 1950. The must-read, Lammy-winning biography Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love by Sheila Rowbotham was Peter Tatchell's and Jeanette Winterson's favorite book of 2008 and Sarah Schulman's favorite lgbt book of 2009. Posted at 09:56 AM in Activism, Birthdays, Books, U.K. Permalink Comments (0) TrackBack (0) August 28, 2013 Born August 28: Nancy Kulp, Karl Ulrichs KulpWhich gay genius saw the potential in a short-haired young lesbian, a former Florida newspaper reporter who had interviewed Clark Gable and the Duke & Duchess of Windsor but now was stuck working a desk job in the studio's publicity department, and asked her to be in his new picture? George Cukor cast skinny Nancy Kulp as, what else, the comic spinster -- at 30! -- and variations on that theme were the mainstay of her career for the next thirty-eight years. Although she wrung every drop of humor from the wet cliche of the sexless, manless old maid, midcentury critics could be cruel in their critiques of Kulp, describing her as TV's most homely girl with the "face of a shriveled balloon, the figure of a string of spaghetti, and the voice of a bullfrog in mating season." Undaunted, she played her thin parts with brio, building from bit roles in Shane, Sabrina, and A Star Is Born, to her biggest success on television. After three seasons on his Bob Cummings Show, writer-producer Paul Henning cast Kulp in his next project, The Beverly Hillbillies. Surely her Miss Jane Hathaway is one of the immortal early queer characters, and while audiences were invited to laugh at her highly unlikely pining for hot Jethro (when he wasn't in drag as his sister Jethrine), Kulp gave her character all the dignity befitting the scholarly, single secretary who was happiest with her women-only birdwatching society. Finally, critics appreciated her and she was rewarded with an Emmy nomination in 1967 and, following the series' end in 1971, roles on The Brian Keith Show, Sanford & Son, and The Love Boat. In her early sixties, she returned to her native Pennsylvania and ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1984. Her former Hillbillies costar Buddy Ebsen did ads attacking her as "too liberal" and her Republican opponent won in the Reagan re-election landslide. Closeted her whole career, Kulp finally came out in a carefully controlled way to interviewer in 1989, reprinted in Boze Hadleigh's book Hollywood Lesbians. She died of cancer in February 1991 at sixty-nine. YouTube's Mister Esoteric has compiled these clips honoring her as a forerunner to Lily Tomlin, Sandra Bernhard, and Ellen. Aakarl Karl Heinrich Ulrichs had an affair with his riding instructor when he was fourteen, was forced to quit his civil servant job for being gay when he was thirty-four, and began publishing pamphlets explaining and defending same-sex love when he was thirty-seven. Five years later, the day after his forty-second birthday, he addressed the German congress, coming out publicly and demanding they repeal their anti-gay laws. It was 1867, one hundred two years before Stonewall, and he was shouted down before he could
- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 07:48AM
abu adam - Social Mention
Numeracy homework Mrs Adams' group
http://herringthorpejuniors.com/2013/11/19/numeracy-homework-mrs-adams-group/
Nov 19th 2013, 07:28
Complete line graph questions. To be returned by: Monday 25th November
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 07:40AM
dawa - Social Mention
Is dawa ke lene se Inshalallah aap our aap ki family hamesh khush w khurram rahegi AMEEN
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100005618650809&v=wall&story_fbid=180328608831093
Nov 19th 2013, 07:40
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 12:44PM
Ibrahim Abou Nagie - Social Mention
Beirut suicide blasts: 23 dead in attack near Iran Embassy
http://oregon.icito.com/beirut-suicide-blasts-23-dead-in-attack-near-iran-embassy/
Nov 19th 2013, 12:43
BEIRUT — Twin suicide bombings struck outside the Iranian Embassy in the Lebanese capital today, killing 23 people, including the Iranian cultural attaché, and wounding dozens more in […]
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 07:47AM
Abu Walaa - Social Mention
Do'a dan Dzikir untuk Ibu Hamil (Bag. 2): Do'a dan Dzikir bagi Wanita Hamil dan Melahirkan Salah satu energi terbesar bagi seorang wanita hamil dalam menghadapi berbagai kesulitan adalah banyak berdzikir dan berdo'a kepada Allah. Perasaan antara gembira, takut, khawatir dan perasaan lainnya sering dialami oleh wanita yang hamil atau akan melahirkan. Maka perbanyaklah mengingat Allah agar hati menjadi tentram. Dzikir yang terbaik dan sangat dianjurkan adalah memperbanyak membaca al-Qur'an. Satu huruf saja mengandung sepuluh kebaikan. Di dalamnya terdapat obat bagi penyakit lahir maupun batin. Bacalah tanpa menentukan surat-surat tertentu, kecuali di saat-saat tertentu yang terdapat dalil bagi keutamaannya. Dzikir berikutnya yang sangat dianjurkan adalah Dzikir Pagi dan Petang. Berikut ini sebagian dzikir dan do'a yang dianjurkan untuk dibaca oleh wanita yang sedang hamil agar mendapatkan ketenangan hati dan dijaga dari berbagai kejahatan. 1. Membaca QS. Al-Faatihah Keterangan: Ibnul Qayyim berkata: "aku pernah tinggal beberapa waktu lamanya di Makkah. Ketika itulah aku menderita beberapa penyakit, sementara aku tidak menjumpai dokter dan tidak pula menemukan obat. Maka aku mengobati diriku sendiri dengan surat al-Faatihah. Aku melihat pengaruhnya yang menakjubkan dengan izin Allah. Aku pun menceritakan pengalamanku ini kepada orang yang mengeluhkan sakitnya. Dan kebanyakan dari mereka sembuh dengan cepat."1 2. Membaca ayat Kursiy Keterangan: Dibaca satu kali di pagi hari dan satu kali di sore hari. Juga ketika akan tidur dan setelah setiap shalat fardhu. Rasulullah shallallaahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda: "Barangsiapa membaca ayat ini ketika pagi hari, maka ia dilindungi dari gangguan jin hingga sore hari. Dan barangsiapa mengucapkannya ketika sore hari, maka ia dilindungi dari (gangguan) jin hingga pagi hari."2 3. Membaca dua ayat terakhir dari surat al-Baqarah (yakni ayat 285 dan 286) Keterangan: Dibaca satu kali di sore hari atau sebelum tidur, atau dibacakan di rumah. Dzikir ini berguna agar dicukupi dan dijaga dari segala sesuatu.3 4. Membaca surat al-Iklhas dan Mu'awwidzatain (QS. Al-Falaq dan an-Naas) Keterangan: Dibaca masing-masing tiga kali di pagi dan sore hari. Juga dibaca sebelum tidur4. Dibaca juga setiap selesai shalat masing-masing satu kali.5 Khasiatnya di antaranya menjadi pencukup dan penjaga dari segala sesuatu dengan izin Allah.6 5. Membaca ayat-ayat lainnya yang berkaitan dengan perlindungan Allah, seperti yang dimuat dalam Ifaadah fii maa Jaa-a min Dzikril Wilaadah, yakni: - QS. Ash-Shaaffaat: 1-10 - QS. Al-Mu'minuun: 97-98 6. Membaca ayat-ayat yang disebutkan dalam fatwa Syaikh al-'Utsaimin rahimahullah (Lihat Bag. I), yakni: - Yang menunjukkan kemudahan (QS. Al-Baqarah: 185) - Yang menunjukkan tentang kehamilan dan kelahiran (QS. Faathir: 11) - Yang menunjukkan kekuasaan Allah untuk mengeluarkan sesuatu beban berat yang keluar, dan ketundukan segala makhluk kepada Allah Ta'ala (QS. Al-Zalzalah: 1-2, boleh juga dibaca lengkap seperti yang dicantumkan dalam kutaib yang berjudul al-Ifaadah fii maa Jaa-a fii Wirdil Wilaadah) 7. Memperbanyak ucapan: laa haula walaa quwwata illa billaah Keterangan: bacaan ini dapat dibaca sebanyak-banyaknya tanpa batasan jumlah dan merupakan suatu perbendaharaan dari banyak perbendaharaan Surga, dan khasiatnya sangat menakjubkan. 7 8. Mengucapkan bimillaah Keterangan: bacalah ketika memulai segala perkara yang penting dan bermanfaat. Faedah bacaan ini adalah agar dijaga dari syaitan, sehingga ia tidak ikut makan dan menginap bersama orang yang membacanya8 9. Memperbanyak istighfar. Yaitu ucapan "Astaghfirullaah…" Dan di antaranya adalah sayyidul Istighfaar, yang dibaca di waktu pagi dan petang. Keterangan: "Barangsiapa membacanya dengan yakin ketika sore hari, lalu ia meninggal dunia pada malam itu, maka ia masuk Surga. Dan demikian juga ketika pagi hari."9 10. Dan diantaranya lagi adalah do'a Nabi Yunus 'alaihissalaam ketika dalam perut ikan (yakni QS. Al-Anbiyaa': 87) Rasulullah shallallaahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda: "Maka tidaklah seorang muslim berdo'a dengannya pada sesuatu, kecuali Allah akan mengabulkannya."10 Disadur dari buku "Do'a dan Dzikir untuk Ibu Hamil" oleh Abu Muhammad Ibnu Shalih bin Hasbullah, penerbit Pustaka Ibnu 'Umar Catatan Kaki: 1. Al-Jawaabul Kaafi karya Ibnul Qayyim, hal. 8. 2 . (HR. Al-Hakim (I/562?, Shahiih at-Targhiib wat Tarhiib (I/418, no. 662), shahih). 3 . (Lihat hadits Al-Bukhari (no. 5019) dalam Fadhaa-ilul Qur-aan, Muslim (no. 808) dalam bab Fadhlu faatihatil Kitaab wa Khawaatiima Suuratil Baqarah) 4. (Lihat Al-Bukhari dalam Fat-hul Baari IX/62) 5. (Lihat Shahiih at-Tirmidzi (II/8)) 6. (Lihat Shahiih at-Tirmidzi (III/182)) 7. (Lihat HR. Al-Bukhari (XI/159), Muslim (no. 2704)) 8. (HR Muslim, no. 2018) 9. (HR. Al-Bukhari (VII/150)) 10. (Dishahihkan oleh Syaikh al-Albani dalam Shahiih wa Dha'iif at-Tirmidzi (no. 3505, al-Maktabah asy-Syaamilah)).
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100536116756567&v=wall&story_fbid=354579778018865
Nov 19th 2013, 07:16
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 05:44AM
jihad - Social Mention
26/11 was meant to start India-Pak war: ex-CIA analyst
http://timesofmumbai.com/2611-was-meant-to-start-india-pak-war-ex-cia-analyst.html
Nov 19th 2013, 05:37
Washington: The 26/11 Mumbai terror attack was intended to change dramatically the future of South Asia, perhaps even by provoking a war between rising nuclear powers India and […]
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 01:52PM
al-ansar - Social Mention
AL ANSAR
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100003000176143&v=wall&story_fbid=459854907457844
Nov 19th 2013, 13:07
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 07:48AM
abu adam - Social Mention
Bayanat Airports Teams with Lockheed Martin to Deploy First Windtracer Lidar in Middle East
http://yemenbusinesscentral.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/bayanat-airports-teams-with-lockheed-martin-to-deploy-first-windtracer-lidar-in-middle-east/
Nov 19th 2013, 07:46
ME Newswire DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - Sunday, November 17th 2013 Bayanat Airports Engineering & Supplies LLC (BAES), the region's leading airport systems integrator in collaboration with Lockheed Martin [NYSE: […]
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 07:40AM
dawa - Social Mention
MUJHE GUM DNE WALE TU KHUSI KO TARRSE MERE DOSMAN TU MERI DOSTI KO TARRSE MARE DOSMAN JA ME TANHA RAHO MUTEHI AKHARI BAS DAWA HAI MARI
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Nov 19th 2013, 07:35
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 05:31AM
islamist - Social Mention
ARE RELIGIOUS AND RACE-BASED PARTIES PARANOID ABOUT A TRULY DEMOCRATIC MALAYSIAN SOCIETY? The response from PAS Youth Leader vice-chief Dr Raja Ahmad Iskandar Al-Hiss to the recent statements of PR's vice-president Karpal Singh that race or religious based political parties should be deregistered, seems to have struck a raw nerve with PAS Youth leaders. Mr. Singh's opinion on what he believes is the correct way forward in developing a truly democratic Malaysian society has drawn what some may see as, an almost paranoid and insecure reaction from their PAS partners. Why is the PAS Youth leadership so sensitive of Mr. Singh's comments? Could they have concerns that the majority of their membership supports PAS because they are Malay Muslims? Are PAS leaders fearful that failure to structure their policies in a way that does not uphold Islamist ideology will lead to the destruction of the party? Do PAS say their policies are designed with the intention of providing equal rights to all Malaysians, regardless of religious belief or race? Perhaps Mr. Singh's comments are beyond the understanding of those who only see an insular view rather than Mr. Singh's more secular hopes for a more inclusive Malaysian democratic society. Do you think religious or race-based parties should be allowed to continue?
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Nov 19th 2013, 05:02
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- Blogtrottr <busybee@blogtrottr.com> Nov 19 12:28PM
takbir - Social Mention
huuu... bkin naek tekanan sak nie tlifon, nsib baik sya xda duit.. klo ad, sua ku hmpas nie tlifon, gnti kau yg baru..
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=100005509124123&v=wall&story_fbid=178693052324331
Nov 19th 2013, 12:13
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