Mental Health – the system
We should be asking how a severely depressed young man could walk into a Roanoke, Va., gun store and buy a Glock 9-mm handgun.And in Santa Clara County, Calif., we should be asking why our county supervisors are considering cutting $34 million from the mental-health budget next year and closing four community clinics.
Fresno County is preparing to cut services for inmates, the homeless and others suffering from severe mental illnesses just as it is about to spend $8.6 million in state money on new programs for the mentally ill.
Some counties have it worse than others. Santa Clara, for example, is proposing nearly $40 million in cuts. State mental health officials say that Los Angeles, Merced, Modoc, Imperial and Shasta counties also may reduce services next year.
In Fresno County, officials expect they will need to cut about $10 million in mental health programs in the 2007-08 budget. Most of the reductions will be in services that assist adults suffering from illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and severe anxiety.
Facing a deficit of $2.7 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has targeted the program’s $55 million budget for elimination. But supporters say they will fight the reduction because the program has proved effective in keeping clients out of hospitals and jails, while also keeping many gainfully employed.
“We’ve seen a tremendous improvement in people — in their ability to work and to live on their own,” said Dr. Bob Cabaj, director of San Francisco’s community behavioral health services. “This would be a great loss if this money was to be taken out.”
Minister Louis Farrakhan
“The condition of the Muslim world is getting worse by the minute, pitting shia against sunni and sunni against shia, and the slaughter that goes on daily, amongst Muslims, is so disturbing, that if I could speak today for Prophet Muhammad, I could say to the entire Muslim world: Prophet Muhammad is grieving because he came to destroy tribalism, the pitting of one tribe against one another, he came to destroy the pitting of one ethnic and racial group against one another…” (Minister Louis Farrakhan in Detroit, MI).
click here to view Minister Farrakhan’s keynote address in Detroit, on February 25, 2007.
Al-Mukhtar
Al-Mukhtar ibn Abi Ubayd al Thaqafi led a major revolution against the Umayyid Yazid (la) seeking to avenge the killing of Imam Hussein (AS). This movement, and the role of Al Mukhtar has often been misunderstood even by Shias, primarily because of misinformation, and some unfavorable ahadith.
There are two lectures available on-line – both are worth listening to get a better understanding of this uprising against oppression and the ruling tyrants.
Mukthar Nama by Maulana Sadiq Hasan (Urdu)
Mukthar’s revenge on the tyrants of Karbala by Barrister Murtaza Lakha (English)
World Chechnya Day
World Chechnya Day is intended to commemorate the dignity and resiliance of a people who, against all odds, refused to be erased from existence.
On 23 February 1944, Stalin ordered the deportation of the entire Chechen and Ingush population to Central Asia. More than half of the 500,000 people who were to be forcibly transported died in transit or in massacres committed by Soviet troops. Those who survived the journey were left facing starvation and disease in the harsh winters of Siberia and Central Asia.
Within days an entire people had been erased from the land of their ancestors. Overnight Chechnya and Ingushetia were emptied of their native inhabitants, and every reference to Chechnya was removed from official maps, records and encyclopaedias.
In 2004, sixty years after the event, the European Parliament passed a motion that recognised this catastrophe as Genocide.
23rd February is World Chechnya Day. It is a day that few are aware of and yet none should forget.
Ahmadinejad at the univeristy
A few months ago, a handful of university students heckeled a speech by Pres. Ahmadinejad – this was reported by just about the entire American media, from the so-called “left” to the rabidly right wing. The appearance that the media gave was that this was a major protest against the government of Iran – most of the videos that were distributed around the net only focused on the hecklers, and did not show the huge numbers of students in the room who obviously felt otherwise.
But that all is really secondary – what is far far more important is what Ahmadinejad was saying when he was interrupted. What he was saying should’ve been the focus of atleast the so-called and supposed “leftists” – but their own elitism and ideological gatekeeping gets in the way…(in their Islamophobia the difference between “left” and right is often blurred).
View all three videos below, they are english subtitled.
hope
Let me not lose heart in expecting from You, lest I be overcome by despair of Your mercy! (Imam Sajjad (AS) sahifa al-Kamilah)
