Persepolis

First of all, congrats to my Albanian friend Tata for creating her very blog. You can visit it cupofsaka.blogspot.com

She happened to tell me about a movie called Persepolis. From what I gathered on wikipedia, the story portrays a young girl and her life during the Iranian Revolution and how Islamic fundamentalists changed the hopes of her family. Check out the trailer and let me know if there is somewhere I can find this online!

PERSEPOLIS trailer

Who is Cat Stevens?

Over the past couple days, I searched for ways to increase my site traffic so that I can get more ppl to click on my ads. One advice that I run into over and over is the simple fact of writing quality blogs that have something worth interesting. Fair enough, and so I turn to an interesting man to share some of his life's story, Cat Stevens.

Cat Steven's is a musician of my pop's era. He told me about how Cat Stevens was the equivalent p.diddy of my day. Lots of older folks didn't like his music as it was considered noise pollution or something.....I remember ppl telling me the same thing as I listened to hiphop.

Cat Stevens was very famous during his time and even has some platinum albums to prove it. I just turned on my lastfm.com and listened to his famous "peace train" song. You'll probably recognize it, it was one of those songs u had to grow up listening to in the car coming home from baseball games, whether you liked it or not. Even though successful, he put his music career aside and decided to devote himself toward the Islamic religion and humanitarian work. He eventually changed his name to Yusuf Islam.

Now here's where things start becoming interesting:

Cat Stevens or Yusuf Islam is not allowed into America!

Around the Sept 11th attacks, TSA (Transportaiton Security Administration) was using a computerized flagging system that had certain names on a no-fly list. Oddly enough...yea right.... the name "Yusuf Islam" was flagged. On his way from London to Washington to meet Dolly Parton of all ppl in 2004, Yusuf Islam's airplane is redirected to Maine and he is detained by the FBI. Custom officials denied entry approval and he was forced to leave.

Besides his awards for all the music he's invented, here's a couple "other" awards:

1. Man of Peace Award - 2004
2. Mediterranean Prize for Peace - 2007

I'm not going to put to much personal insight into this, but should such a man be banned from a country trying to persuade peace? Of course this could have been a mistake, but when officials are interrogating him and realize that he is Yusuf Islam - the man who has been honored for his huge effort in humanitarian work and peace making - shouldn't they say "oops, sorry to disturb you. you may pass?"

Apparently some don't think so. Ok, my two peas for the day

Maybe I'm lame, but a lot of this info came from wiki and BBC.


Ronan Keating ft. Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)-Father And Son

Let help into Myanmar

What's that Family Guy saying? "Grind my gears?" The fact that the government of Myanmar is denying foreign aid and humanitarian teams from several countries is really grinding my gears. Day by day, more people are dying in the area due to last week's horrendous cyclone. The country needs help. Countries are standing at the door ready to enter Myanmar and start helping, but Myanmar's government is not letting them in.

Obviously there is a dilemma of trust between the government of Myanmar and certain other countries. Even UN officials are being denied visas to enter the country. Luckily the government is accepting foreign aid from certain countries like India, China and Bangladesh. It's a start. It's great to know that finally some foreign assistance is entering the country. But let's think about this:

China is offering $500,000 in cash; materials including tents, blankets and biscuits worth a further $500,000.

India is pledging Two naval ships loaded with food, tents, blankets, clothing and medicines sent to Yangon.

Will this aid significantly help? Of course. And wouldn't the country benefit more if they had even more resources from other countries? No doubt. Here's a list of aid commitment by other countries:

European Commission: $3m for fast-track humanitarian aid.
US: $3m, up from initial $250,000 immediate emergency aid.
Japan: $267,570 worth of emergency aid in tents, power generators and other supplies.
Australia: Initial $2.8m in emergency aid, with $1m going to aid agencies to help provide shelter, water purification and food.

Freaking take the aid....now!

I know that this may be a question of politics or maybe pride, but come on. If someone is offering $3million in aid and waiting at the door to enter....if the disaster is creating more food shortages and health hazards each day.......if the estimates of people that are possibly dead are as high as 23,000 (Myanmar) and 100,000 (US diplomat in former Yangon), why wouldn't the government accept all the help it can get?

The people are in desperate need of help. Complete article here

School Entrance

Here's a little video that I quickly made. This is right outside the entrance of my school. A high-court is right next to my school and so the police make barricades when there is a very important/emotional case taking place. On this day according to one of my profs, there was a case dealing with a Kurdish person, but to what extent is unknown to me.