May 26, 2013
How do perfect people like Katherine and Robert exist? (at Bragg Mitchell Mansion)
May 24, 2013
Flora-Bama. I’m too loyal to the Shore to admit defeat, but it’s way too gorg here. (at Flora-Bama)
May 23, 2013
May 22, 2013
Conversations with one of my 6-year-old kids in Harlem after-school Robotics
- J'amare: Miss Ali, do you love your family?
- me: Yes, of course I do!
- J'amare: Can I be your brother? We can play legos.
- -later on, with Bruno Mars' "Marry You" playing-
- J'amare: I think I wanna marry YOU!
- me: did you just ask me to marry you?
- J'amare: NOooooo (giggles) ...yea, I did. Will you marry me? (dances in seat)
- me: I'm sorry honey, but I can't.
- J'amare: Are you ALREADY married? Do you have a boyfriend?
- me: I have a boyfriend. His name is Ben.
- J'amare: BEN?! What kind of name is Ben? Does your momma know about this?
- my heart. I'm really going to miss them.
The anguish is clear on the face of Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, who takes long pauses in an attempt to steady his tearful voice, as he recounts to the interviewer about how American interrogators repeatedly raped and tortured, or pretended to rape and torture, a woman in the cell next to him in an attempt to force him to falsely confess.
Begg’s eyes cloud over and he stares off into the distance as he relates how they manipulated his biggest fear, that his wife and children who were with him at the time of his arrest, were also imprisoned and in danger:
“I heard the cries of a woman (in the cell next to me) and an American voice shouting, ‘Spread your legs!’ and the woman is screaming and crying (as if she is being raped). Before I used to (always) ask the Americans about what happened to my wife and children since my arrest. They said ‘We don’t know,’ but at this time I didn’t ask because I was afraid of the answer. I thought my wife was in the cell.”
Begg was tortured and assaulted physically, mentally, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually as the American interrogators tried “breaking him down” in order to make him sign false confessions. Begg was released after three years spent in US custody without any charges held against him.
It is still not clear to this day whether the woman in the cell next to him was a fellow inmate also unjustly prisoned or an interrogator posing as a woman in distress.
It is known but hardly ever reported that the United States detains (Muslim) women who they “suspect” of being terrorists for no apparent reason, an example being Dr. Aafia Siddiqui (shown below in a picture of her taken while in US custody) who was abducted with her children by US intelligence.
After severe mistreatment in custody, during which she sustained a gunshot wound, Siddiqui was sentenced to 84 years in prison. Her young children who were with her when she was kidnapped and subsequently detained and interrogated have only recently been relocated. Siddiqui’s youngest son, who hadn’t even started walking yet, has disappeared since her kidnapping with no hint whatsoever of his whereabouts. Her older son has claimed that “the bloody body of his baby brother” was tossed to the side of the road by US soldiers when Siddiqui and her children were arrested. During her trial, Siddiqui was repeatedly removed from the court room for interrupting proceedings to scream out that her children had been tortured in front of her.
Four men who were imprisoned with Dr. Siddiqui in Bagram and who managed to escape reported in an interview:
“When they torture you, they threaten to sodomise you, they threaten to bring your wife and rape her in front of you and do other things to her. My words can never fully explain to you what happened during those interrogations.”
“Those American criminals think that they are the lords of human rights and that they are the callers for the freedom of the woman and her rescuers from oppression. There is a woman from Pakistan. She was put in solitary confinement for two full years in Bagram prison among more than 500 male prisoners and guards. She was treated the same way as the men were. This woman stayed there until she lost her mind, until she became insane, hitting the door and screaming day and night.”
#actors who are actually their character
the greatest casting ever.
Even better when you think about how Dan got a place for himself in NY to continue his career, Emma went to a school in USA, and Rupert bought a fucking ice cream truck.
Follow your dreams Rupert
I didn’t know this. So I looked it up and - HE ACTUALLY DID.
‘I keep my van well stocked. It’s got a proper machine that dispenses Mr Whippy ice cream and I buy my lollies wholesale – 50 for a tenner – so I never run short.
I’m not allowed to sell my merchandise. I’d need a licence for that. ‘I tend to avoid July and August, but the rest of the year I’ll drive around the local villages and if I see some kids looking like they’re in need of ice creams, I’ll pull over and dish them out for free. They’ll say, “Ain’t you Ron Weasley?” And I’ll say, “It’s strange, I get asked that a lot.”It makes it even better that he just GIVES the icecream away. [Source]
(Source: mygeekself)
May 20, 2013
Stephen Colbert salutes UVA’s Class of 2013 Followed by this.
FUCKING THANK YOU.
I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edge
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
on your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.
And I will not be afraid
of your scars.
I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.
There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one’s cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head — because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West’s fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West’s prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems.
Uzodinma Iweala, “Stop Trying to ‘Save’ Africa”
(via cammyyy)
(Source: ryanmichael-s)
