Best wishes for Malala

Pakistan schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by a Taliban gunman for campaigning for girls' education is an inspiration to other young Muslim girls, a UK human rights group has said.

Inspire, an organisation which seeks to address inequalities facing British Muslim women, has condemned the shooting of the 14-year-old.

"It is disheartening that in a country like Pakistan, which did have a female Muslim prime minister, there are people that feel threatened by the empowerment of women and young girls," said director Sara Khan.

"I hope Malala makes a full recovery and she continues to inspire a new generation to advocate for Muslim women's equality both here in Britain and Pakistan."

Malala, who had a bullet removed from her skull last week, is being treated at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where she has been since Monday.

She was flown from Pakistan via the United Arab Emirates by air ambulance, almost a week after she and two other schoolgirls were attacked as they returned home from school in Mingora in the Swat Valley.

Girls in Pakistan do have a lot of skills they want to project but because of certain people they just really can't”

End Quote Urooj, 17 Student

Qayyum Choudhury, chairman of the Council of British Pakistanis, based in Birmingham, said he was pleased the city had a role to play in her recovery.

He said: "There is a strong connection [between the two places] because of the large number of Pakistanis who live in the city, I am proud that Birmingham has stepped in to help this situation."

Malala became widely known as a campaigner for girls' education in Pakistan as a result of a diary she wrote for BBC Urdu about life under the Taliban, when they banned all girls from attending school.

Mr Choudhury said the assassination attempt by the Taliban had been "almost inevitable".

"Whoever it was advising her, putting her at the front of this campaign, should have thought that she would be in immense danger," he said.

"They should have thought about whether she could defend herself and how vulnerable she was, because if you make a statement of that sort against the Taliban, you will be targeted."
'Right not privilege'
The Taliban said they had attacked her for "promoting secularism".

The gunman, who boarded the van in which she was travelling, asked for her by name before shooting at her three times.

Urooj, 18, who is a student from the Sparkhill area of Birmingham, said that "an education for young Muslim women was a right not a privilege."

She said: "In the Islamic faith they do say that education for everyone is a really important part of our faith and this is what she wanted.

"Girls in Pakistan do have a lot of skills they want to project but because of certain people they just really can't.

"I do possibly feel that this will turn opinions against those who attacked her because the Taliban did admit they did this to her and there's an outrage in Pakistan at the moment about it."

Doctors at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital said they were hopeful Malala could recover from her injuries.

Speaking on Tuesday, Dr David Rosser said she was making good progress, but had a long way to go and was not "out of the woods yet".

 

 

 

What dancing could do for you.

Dancing is great physical exercise, it burns off excessive fat and tones up the body bringing feelings of energy and vibrance. Listening to good music and dancing to it can be exciting. The many different styles of dance provide a cultural insight into many interesting traditions and practises across the globe, and that of most ancient civilisations. Psychologically, it is relaxing, can make you feel good and improve your mood, ideal for those with mild depression or socially isolated.

The benefits of dance are endless, here are just a few;

Old people feel young

Dance reduces stress. You forget your day’s tensions when you dance!

It improves the muscles and coordination

Lowers risk of coronary heart disease

Strengthens the bones and improves posture

It enhances the blood flow to the brain

Maintains flexibility

It increases stamina

Relieves you of toxins through sweat

Reduces blood pressure and lowers cholesterol

Establish strong social ties, which is good for psychological well-being

Improves self-confidence

What you waiting for?

 

The Greatest Classical Music Pieces Ever Composed [HD]

Riding for the Disabled Association

http://www.rda.org.uk/about-rda/

Psychological benefits of contact with animals.

Die Slowly

He who becomes the slave of habit, who follows the same routes every day, who never changes pace, who does not risk and change the color of his clothes, who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly.


He or she who shuns passion, who prefers black on white, dotting ones "it.s" rather than a bundle of emotions, the kind that make your eyes glimmer, that turn a yawn into a smile, that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly.


 He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy, who is unhappy at work, who does not risk certainty for uncertainty, to thus follow a dream, those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly.


He who does not travel, who does not read, who does not listen to music, who does not find grace in himself, she who does not find grace in herself, dies slowly.


He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem, who does not allow himself to be helped, who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops, dies slowly.



He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know, he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly.



Let's try and avoid death in small doses, reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing. Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.



PABLO NERUDA

FOOD FOR THOUGHT ....

Could it be possible that archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress? In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, disease and despotism that curse our existence.

Evidence against this revisionist interpretation might strike us as irrefutable. We're better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. Who would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape? A few of us might feel like it at times!

Most of human existence was spent by hunting and gathering. We brutishly hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. Since no food was grown or stored there was no respite from the struggle that repeated each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it's nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive.

Since crops can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time that hunter-gatherers never had.

Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of primitive people such as the Kalahari Bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It appears that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep lots and work no more than their farming neighbours. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania.

While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a better balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s.
There are a number of reasons to suggest why agriculture was detrimental to human health.
Hunter gatherers enjoyed a varied diet while early fanners obtained most of their food from one or a few starchy crops only. Farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition. In present day three high-carbohydrate plants; wheat, rice, and corn provide the bulk of calories consumed by the human species, however, each one is deficient in certain vitamins or amino acids essential to life.
Dependence on a limited number of crops meant that farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed. Agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies leading to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. Epidemics couldn't take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly shifted camp. Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise of farming, measles and bubonic plague the appearance of large cities.
As a result, besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, might farming have helped bring another curse upon humanity? Deep class division. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they lived off the wild plants and animals from the days hunt.  No kings to grow fat on food seized from others.........................

GiselaGina 2012 ©

Aires Taurinos Interview con Curro Camacho y Gisela Gina

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