Islam is the real positive change that you need to change for being a better person or a perfect human being, you can change yourself if you read QURAN, IF YOU DO THAT !! you will change this UMMAH, say I am not A Sunni or Shia, BUT I am just a MUSLIM. Be a walking QURAN among human-being AND GUIDE THEM TO THE RIGHT PATH.
A white man accused of fatally shooting nine black
parishioners at a Charleston church last year was allowed to act as his
own attorney in his federal death penalty trial Monday.
Dylann Roof's request came against his lawyers'
advice, and U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel said he would reluctantly
accept the 22-year-old's "unwise" decision.
Death penalty attorney David Bruck then slid over and
let Roof take the lead chair. The lawyers can stand by and help Roof if
he asks.
The development came the same day jury selection
resumed in the case. The selection process was halted Nov. 7 after
lawyers for Roof questioned his ability to understand the case against
him. Judge Gergel's ruling last week cleared the way for Monday's
process to begin anew.
Roof, 22, is charged with counts including hate
crimes and obstruction of religion in connection with the June 17, 2015,
attack at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. He
faces a possible death sentence if convicted.
Beginning Monday, 516 potential jurors were to report
to the courthouse to be individually questioned by the judge. When 70
qualified jurors are picked, attorneys can use strikes to dismiss those
they don't want, until 12 jurors and six alternates are seated.
The judge delayed the process of narrowing the jury
pool when Roof's lawyers suggested that their client either didn't
understand the charges against him or couldn't properly help with his
defense. The lawyers didn't say what led them to question Roof's fitness
for trial.
The decision came after Gergel wrapped up a hastily
called two-day hearing to determine if Roof is mentally fit to stand
trial, hearing testimony from psychologist James Ballenger and four
other unnamed witnesses and reviewed sworn statements from three others.
The judge said he took the rare step of closing the
hearing to the public and media because Roof made statements to a
psychologist that might not be legal to use at his trial and could taint
potential jurors.
On Friday, the judge said he refrained from releasing
a transcript of the hearing for the same reason, reversing an earlier
pledge to release a redacted transcript. Victims' relatives complained
about the secrecy surrounding the proceedings, but Gergel maintains the
steps he has taken are to ensure Roof receives a fair trial and that
pre-trial exposure doesn't provide grounds for an appeal.
Roof also has already been found competent in state
court, where prosecutors plan a second death penalty trial on nine
counts of murder.
According to police, Roof sat through nearly an hour
of prayer and Bible study at the church with its pastor and 11 others
before pulling a gun from his fanny pack and firing dozens of shots.
Roof shouted racial insults at the six women and
three men he is charged with killing and the three people left alive,
authorities said. Roof said he left the three unharmed so they could
tell the world the shootings were because he hated black people.
A poet squeezes the presidential election into a clown car
Poet Joseph Hutchison says he wrote “The Greatest Show on Earth” four
years ago when he was watching yet another chaotic Presidential
election process unfold.
“It was a response to the circus that we make of elections and how
political figures treat the whole thing as a show and the audience tends
to accept it as that and respond to it as such.”
“The role of poet is to deepen the
understanding of what we’re faced with, the images we’re faced with and
reveal the deeper layers and the deeper currents so that people have a
context instead of accepting images at face value.”
He said that while this is a trend that has been happening for
decades, he certainly never imagined that it would devolve into the
circus of 2016.
“If journalists had covered Trump as a serious candidate, he probably
wouldn’t have won. But they treated him for too long as a sideshow and
Americans like sideshows.”
Hutchison said Daniel Boorstin’s 1962 classic book “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”
was probably in the back of his mind as he composed the poem. Boorstin
argues that press conferences and presidential debates are “pseudo
events” which are manufactured solely in order to be reported and that
the contemporary definition of celebrity is “a person who is known for
his well-knownness.” Hutchison says as a poet he likes to look beyond
those superficial images.
“Poetry has traditionally offered a critique of society, of politics,
of oppressive systems. The role of poet is to deepen the understanding
of what we’re faced with, the images we’re faced with and reveal the
deeper layers and the deeper currents so that people have a context
instead of accepting images at face value.” Read next: This poet worries about not being able to protect his son from violence
Two years ago Hutchison was named poet laureate of Colorado. He says
one of his goals is to expand the way poetry is taught in the schools.
“We tend to use poetry to teach technical language like metaphor,
meter and rhyme. But poetry is a way of knowledge, just as novels or
essays are. Poets address everything from history to science to
mathematics to art. And I want to encourage teachers to use poetry
across all disciplines.”
The Greatest Show on Earth
The clown car careens into the bright-lit
center ring, buzzing like a baby chainsaw.
Smoke corkscrews from the tiny tailpipe,
the horn bleats and squalls. Now it brakes,
fishtails, skids sideways and heaves to a halt,
rocking on lackadaisical springs. The motor
pops and sputters, the tinted glass doors
stay shut. The audience leans forward.
Nothing happens—only spotlight beams
sweeping over, away and back. And soon,
frustration crackles in the bleachers. Gripes,
scattered curses, threats. Nothing happens!
Inside the car’s a motley gaggle of eager
Armageddonites, ex-CIA think tankers,
talk radio megastars, flaks for Big Oil—
all playing rock, paper, scissors. The victor
gets to clamber out and take first crack
at deceiving the crowd. Oh, how abashed
they’d be to find the Big Top almost empty!
Just a few gloomy diehards left, their eyes
and nostrils stung raw by exhaust, lungs
too choked for cheers. Imagine the rest
headed home: toddlers riding their parents’
shoulders, the older kids kicking leaves,
all gazing up past bare birch branches
into the red-shifting heart of inexhaustible
openness, the profusion of its forms, feeling
small and glad in the star-spangled night. From “The World As Is: New & Selected Poems, 1972-2015.” Reprinted by permission of the author. Joseph Hutchison is the Colorado
Poet Laureate. He has published 17 books, including his latest “The
World As Is: New & Selected Poems 1972-2015.” He has also co-edited
two anthologies. He lives in the mountains southwest of Denver,
Colorado, the city where he was born. He teaches at the University of
Denver’s University College, where he currently directs two programs:
Arts & Culture and Global Affairs.
The US Army Corps of Engineers will not forcibly remove Standing
Rock activists from a disputed protest camp in North Dakota, according
to a statement. It previously said the Oceti Sakowin camp would be
closed on December 5.
“The Army Corps of
Engineers is seeking a peaceful and orderly transition to a safer
location, and has no plans for forcible removal,” it said in a statement on Sunday, adding that “those
who choose to stay do so at their own risk as emergency, fire, medical,
and law enforcement response cannot be adequately provided in these
areas.”
It did warn, however, that “those who remain will be considered unauthorized and may be subject to citation under federal, state, or local laws.”
The statement comes after authorities announced on Friday that they were “closing
the portion of the Corps-managed federal property north of the
Cannonball River to all public use and access effective December 5,
2016.”
A “free speech zone” was set up south of the river intended for peaceful protest according to authorities.
The Corps of Engineers has described the move as “necessary
to protect the general public from the dangerous confrontations between
demonstrators and law enforcement officials which have occurred near
this area.”
Supporters of indigenous tribes opposed to the
1,172 mile (1,186km) pipeline said they would not leave the camp, which
is on federal land alongside North Dakota’s Highway 1806 and the
Missouri River. The announcement the land would be closed to them was
described as a “disgusting continuation of 500 years of colonization and systemic oppression,” a spokesperson for the Indigenous Environmental Network said. READ MORE: ‘We stand strong’: Standing Rock water protectors defy Army Corps’ threat of camp eviction (VIDEO)
Activists
believe the pipeline, which will connect North Dakota to Illinois,
could lead to water contamination at the Standing Rock Indian
Reservation due to its proximity to the area.
Protests began in
January when the project was approved. In April a camp was set up near
the construction site which has since swelled to an estimated presence of 7,000 activists.
Last
week officers used water canons on members of the camp blocking a
bridge. Rubber bullets and tear gas were also reported to have been
fired during the incident. Senator Bernie Sanders called on President
Barack Obama to protect those who were peacefully protesting the
construction. READ MORE: Hundreds of protesters march through DC against DAPL (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)
Three mosques in California were sent anonymous hate-mail
warning them that Donald Trump would “cleanse” Muslims from the US the
same way “Hitler did to the Jews.”
The abusive letters have sparked new fears among Muslims, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said.
The Muslim advocacy group called for “stepped-up”
police protection of mosques after identical letters were sent to three
mosques, calling for the genocide of Muslims earlier this week. “This
hate campaign targeting California houses of worship must be
investigated as an act of religious intimidation, and our state’s
leaders should speak out against the growing anti-Muslim bigotry that
leads to such incidents,” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said.
The Islamic centers of Long Beach and Claremont, along with the Evergreen Islamic Center in San Jose, were sent the letters. “There’s a new sherriff [sic] in town – President Donald Trump,” part of the letter read. “He’s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And, he’s going to start with you Muslims.”
The letter ended with: “Long live President Trump and God bless the USA!”
CAIR
said there have been over 100 anti-Muslim incidents across America
since the US election on November 8, and hundreds of reports of hate
crimes against various minority groups were recorded by the Southern
Poverty Law Center in recent weeks.
The body said it is considering alerting the FBI.
#CAIR considers asking FBI to investigate letters saying "You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out" http://fb.me/34pamBDPl
In a statement, the San Jose Police Department said that a unit dealing with hate crime will investigate the incident, Reuters reports.
Trump’s name has repeatedly been mentioned in racist incidents since winning the presidential election. READ MORE: Black church in Mississippi torched, defaced with ‘Vote Trump’ graffiti
In
a recent report, the FBI said hate crimes against Muslims rose by 67
percent in 2015, the highest they’ve been since the aftermath of the
9/11 attacks.
Pediatricians serving undocumented immigrants report a spike in
anxiety and panic attacks after the US election, as children live with
threat of deportationIn the shadow of Trump: a doctor reports one boy has had crippling
stomach aches in class because he’s afraid he might return home to find
his parents gone.
Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters
At doctors’ offices across the United States, a new diagnosis has
been popping up in the medical files of immigrant children, their
friends and their families: fear of Trump.
Since the 8 November election, pediatricians and clinics serving
undocumented immigrants and other low-income patients have reported a
spike in anxiety and panic attacks, particularly among children who
worry that they or their parents might now face deportation.
One little boy in North Carolina has been suffering crippling stomach
aches in class because he’s afraid he might return home to find his
parents gone. In California, many families are reporting that their
children are leaving school in tears because their classmates have told
them they are going to be thrown out of the country.
Children are showing up in emergency rooms alone because their
parents are afraid of being picked up by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement if they show their faces. Even American-born children are
suffering – one boy in the south-east asked a doctor for Prozac because
he was worried about his undocumented friend.
“It’s as though a volcano erupted. It’s been awful,” said Mimi Lind,
director of behavioral health at the Venice Family Clinic, one of the
largest providers of healthcare to low-income families in southern
California. “People who don’t have a history of anxiety and depression
are coming forward with symptoms they’ve never had before. And people
who had those symptoms already are getting much worse.”
It’s too soon to put precise figures on the wave of Trump-related
anxiety, but health professionals and immigrant rights groups say it is
unmistakable. “People worry their families will be broken up, that
parents will be deported and children will end up in foster care, on a
scale that we’ve never seen before. The feeling out there is one of
great fear,” said Marielena Hincapié of the National Immigration Law
Center.
Some of the Trump-related anxiety was evident even before the
election, especially in states where Republican-dominated legislatures
have pushed through measures to make it harder for immigrants to access
education, healthcare and other basic services. Trump’s election,
however, turned the abiding worry into a full-blown crisis – not least
because his victory was unexpected.
Julie Linton, a pediatrician from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who
also serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics’ immigrant child
health special interest group, started receiving panicked calls from
patients at 6.30am on the morning of 9 November, and she has been
deluged since.
Many undocumented parents with sick children born in the United
States are now making contingency plans in case they are deported, she
says, and in so doing have to face an agonizing choice: whether to leave
their children behind, or to risk losing access to the care they need
in their home countries. She sees Syrian refugees as well as patients
from Mexico and Central America, where it may be difficult or
impossible, for example, to find devices to enable children with
neuromuscular disorders to walk.
“Parents are asking me: ‘What do I do? How do I set up a power of
attorney in case I’m deported?’” Linton said. “It’s hard enough to care
for a child with special healthcare needs without having to worry about
the threat of deportation.”
A group of immigrants and attorneys gather outside Trump Tower on 22
November to draw attention to Donald Trump’s proposed immigration
policies. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
It is not just families and children that have felt the impact. Many
patients who are vulnerable anyway – alcoholics, drug addicts, those
with degenerative diseases or mental health struggles – have been
knocked backwards. “To them, it feels that another part of their power
has been taken away when they’ve just started to build themselves up
again,” said Eileen Garcia, a therapist who looks after HIV and Aids
patients at the Venice Family Clinic.
One of her patients, a middle-aged undocumented immigrant who wanted
to be called Maria (not her real name), said that while she had been
shocked when she received her initial HIV diagnosis she took it in
stride because she knew help was available. “But this,” she said, “feels
like a death sentence.”
As Maria sees it, she may lose access to treatment if the Trump
administration scraps President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and she may
lose it, too, if she is deported and cannot find similar services back
in her home country (which she did not want to name). “It’s a double
worry,” she said.
The fear felt by many patients is reflected in the protective
instincts of their caregivers. For this story, doctors and therapists
were extremely careful not to give away patients’ names, or more than
the most basic details of their medical profiles, or even in some cases
the state where they live for fear of providing clues to authorities
pursing an anti-immigrant crackdown.
They also struggle to know what to say to address their patients’ concerns, especially at this early stage.
“Many of us feel pretty helpless right now,” Linton, the North
Carolina pediatrician, agreed. “We try to remain nonpartisan but we’re
unabashedly pro-child and that’s a hard place to sit right now. For me,
as a pediatrician and as a mom, it’s heart-breaking to think that a
child is worth less based on conversations happening at the local,
regional or national level.”
“This waiting time is the most anxiety-provoking,” Lind, the
behavioral health specialist said. “No one can say anything. We have no
way of allaying people’s anxiety with concrete facts.”
The internment of U.S. citizens during World War II was a massive
crime against innocents who had not been proven to have done anything
wrong.
Trump adviser Carl Higbie told Megyn Kelly
on Fox “News” that the new administration wanted to create a
registration list of US Muslims, and he compared this step to the
interment of the Japanese-Americans during WW II:
It is legal. They say it’ll hold constitutional muster. I
know the ACLU is going to challenge it, but I think it’ll pass,” Higbie
said. “… We did it during World War II with Japanese, which, you know,
call it what you will, maybe —
What is truly weird is that Higbie volunteered to compare such a
registration list to the internment of Japanese Americans. It raises
questions of just how far zealots such as he are willing to take this
hatred of Americans of Muslim faith.
The internment of Japanese-Americans was not a policy precedent but a
massive crime against innocents who had not been proven to have done
anything wrong. Many Japanese-Americans fought bravely in the US
military even while their families had lost their homes.
This is sort of like saying, of course the Federal government can commit genocide. Why, we did it to the Native Americans.
Just on moral grounds, Higbie’s proposal is creepy, and it
immediately harmed the morale of Muslim-Americans and harmed the image
of the US in the Middle East.
Here are the reasons Higbie is wrong and likely such a registry would be struck down by the courts:
1. Islam is a religion. No one reasonable person denies this simple fact. The First Amendment of the Constitution
forbids the Federal government to prohibit the free exercise of
religion or to favor one religion (Establishment) over another. So you
can’t register one religious community without the others. That would be
a de facto Establishment of e.g. Christianity. Moreover, making members
of only one religion register would interfere with their free exercise
of their religion. The only way the government got away with the
internment of Japanese Americans was by a specious argument from
national origins, suggesting that Japanese-Americans could not remain
loyal when their two countries were at war. If the Roosevelt
administration had tried to round up all Buddhists in the country, that
measure would have been struck down.
2. The right-wing talking point that non-citizens in the US are not protected by constitutional rights is a falsehood, as demonstrated by a series of Supreme court rulings.
3. The Supreme Court case Ex parte Endo
found that the US government had acted improperly and that individuals
could not be removed from their homes unless there was proof that they
as individuals had acted disloyally. In other words you can’t punish a
whole community out of mere suspicion.
4. A raft of lawsuits by Japanese-American victims in the 1970s and
1980s, although they narrowly failed in the courts, put pressure on
Congress, which awarded the equivalent of $40,000 per person in reparations in 1988. This law was an admission of guilt and can now by cited in court by Muslim-Americans.
Actually, if the Trump administration does anything about a registry, it will likely just reinstate the Bush administration program
of requiring registration of certain categories of non-citizen
immigrants from select countries. Of Bush’s 25 countries, 24 were
Muslim-majority. Since everyone from the designated countries had to
register, it was not discriminatory and affected some Christians. Only
about 80,000 people were registered in this way. The program probably
harmed US security since the government sometimes used the registration
to deport people who, e.g., slightly over-stayed their visas. The
knowledge of these practices appears to have made Muslim-Americans
afraid to talk to the authorities for fear they would make themselves a
target. So the community as a source for crucial intel was taken off the
table.
This latter step could be taken, but registering Muslims in general,
and especially citizens, almost certainly would not be allowed by the
courts. Even the registration of immigrant non-citizens from select
countries will have adverse effects on our security. The policy could
also harm Americans traveling abroad for e.g. business, since often such
policies are reciprocal and there could be a tit for tat.
But actually, Higbie’s suggestion is just completely morally wrong.
Very few long-term Muslim residents or citizens of the US have been
involved in terrorism, and their numbers are dwarfed by the violence of
far right-wing white people, whom Higbie is not proposing to register.
Chomsky calls the Republican Party “the most dangerous organization in world history.” (Flickr / CC 2.0)
Leftist scholar Noam Chomsky has a message for voters who refused to
cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton to prevent Donald Trump from
winning the White House: You made a “bad mistake.”
On both moral and practical levels, Chomsky told Al Jazeera‘s Medhi Hasan, the choice was clear.
“Do you vote against the greater evil if you don’t happen to like the other candidate?” asked Chomsky, who spoke out during the election against Trump’s candidacy—and in fact predicted his rise six years ago. “The answer to that is yes.”
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With an argument
similar to the one made by political scientist Adolph Reed prior to the
election, Chomsky insists that voters did not have to ignore Clinton’s
serious shortcomings in order to recognize Trump as the much more
serious threat.
“I didn’t like Clinton at all, but her positions are much better than
Trump’s on every issue I can think of,” the professor emeritus of
linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told Hasan.
Chomsky supported Bernie Sanders during the Democratic presidential
primary.
Watch:
Chomsky also objected to philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s post-election argument
that Trump’s victory would “shake up” status quo. “Terrible point,”
Chomsky said of Zizek’s take. “It was the same point that people like
him said about Hitler in the early 30s.”
“He’ll ‘shake up the system’ in bad ways,” Chomsky said of the
president-elect. “What it means is now the left—if Clinton had won, she
had some progressive programs. The left could have been organized, to
keeping her feet to the fire. What it will be doing now is trying to
protect rights…gains that have been achieved, from being destroyed.
That’s completely regressive.”
Indeed, Chomsky further warned
in the aftermath of the election: “The outcome placed total control of
the government—executive, Congress, the Supreme Court—in the hands of
the Republican Party, which has become the most dangerous organization
in world history.”
The GOP “is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction
of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a
stand.”
Democratic
U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders met with the Rev. Al
Sharpton at Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem. Photo by Brendan
McDermid/Reuters
Editor’s Note: This Thanksgiving week, what better
way to celebrate than with a chronicle of American food? That’s just
what we did here at Making Sen$e with historian Paul Freedmans’s new
book, “Ten Restaurants That Changed America.”
Economics correspondent Paul Solman recently sat down with Freedman
to discuss the 10 restaurants that shaped American food as we know it.
Today we have a short excerpt from his conversation with Freeman on one
of those restaurants: Sylvia’s, which serves “authentic, soul-food
cuisine” and has become a go-to spot for politicians, pop-stars, tourists and locals alike.
For more, watch Thursday’s Making Sen$e report here. You can also read Freedman’s column on how fast-food killed off Howard Johnson, the restaurant chain that made highway food popular.
And from all of us at Making Sen$e, hope you had a happy Thanksgiving!
— Kristen Doerer, Making Sen$e Editor PAUL SOLMAN: So finally, why Sylvia’s here on Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem? PAUL FREEDMAN: You can’t write a book about American
food without giving a big place to African-American cuisine, which is
arguably what American cuisine is at heart. Sylvia’s, founded in 1962,
is a representative not only of Harlem, or soul food as the sign
indicates, it is a representative of southern food, of the migration of
black people from the South. Sylvia Woods grew up in South Carolina and
came to New York during the second World War.
“You can’t write a book about American
food without giving a big place to African American cuisine, which is
arguably what American cuisine is at heart.”
It’s really an example of the migration of black people, the links
between the South and the North, and the formation of so many dishes in
American food. Their specialty is fried chicken, barbecued ribs, collard
greens that are classics of both black and white southern and northern
cuisine. It is among the most important restaurants on my list. PAUL SOLMAN: And does any of what we think of as
soul food come from places other than the American South? Are there any
African connections? PAUL FREEDMAN: Certainly a lot of products were
brought from Africa – okra, yams – but also ways of preparing things,
the kinds of stews, greens and the emphasis on greens. So it’s not that
the African slaves who were brought against their will here simply
reproduced the cooking that they were familiar with – they didn’t have
the ingredients, they didn’t have the autonomy in many cases to do so –
they used ingredients that Native Americans, that Europeans and that
their own African heritage brought to create something that’s both new
and a combination of known predecessors. PAUL SOLMAN: So how does this fit into the big
picture of how American cuisine and American restaurants reflect the
development of the American economy? PAUL FREEDMAN: The black influence on American food
is more broad and diverse than just through restaurants. In this case,
Sylvia’s is one of a number of restaurants, but also a number of things,
facts that affect the development of American food. So black people
working in restaurants that were not identified as African-American.
Black people who owned businesses. Black people who catered events in
the 19th century. The leading caterers of Philadelphia were all
African-American. Black people who worked in white people’s kitchens in
the South. All of this forms not just what’s been called soul food or
African-American food, but the basic kinds of staples of what people eat
in the United States. PAUL SOLMAN: So fried chicken, barbecued ribs, we think of that as generic American food but that’s initially African-American? PAUL FREEDMAN: Yes, and ways of preparing food like
barbecue itself. If not invented solely by African-Americans would be
inconceivable without the presence of African-Americans. The way of
slowly marinating and cooking meat over a slow fire is derived at least
in large part from African and African-Americans in this country.
It
has been a tough few weeks on immigrants and Muslims, both locally and
across the country. There have been threats, assaults and graffiti
demanding certain groups get out of the country.
In
Minnesota, one Muslim group even called on schools to watch out for
violence against students after a child in Lakeland was reportedly
threatened. In another incident, someone assaulted a Somali man for
speaking his native language on the bus.
The
day before the election, Donald Trump even made a quick stop at the
Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport, where he broadly criticized
our Somali immigrants in a speech: “Everybody’s reading about this
disaster taking place in Minnesota,” Trump said. “You don’t even have
the right to talk about it. You don’t even know who is coming in. You’ll
find out.”
It
might be a good time to introduce you to Ahmed M. Ahmed, a graduate of
Rochester John Marshall High School, currently a senior at Cornell
University, who was last week chosen as one of 32 U.S. Rhodes scholars.
Ahmed will receive a scholarship, worth up to $250,000, to attend
graduate school at Oxford University in England next year.
Ahmed was eager to tell his story, which is a very American story and a very Minnesota story.
“With
all the messages we are getting about immigrants and Somalis, it’s
important to show the good stories coming out of my community,” Ahmed
said during a phone call from Cornell.
Ahmed
was born in a refugee camp in Kenya and came to the U.S. with his
parents and seven siblings when he was a year old. He lived in a ghetto
in Riverdale, Md., filled with drug dealers and crime.
“It
was a very poor neighborhood,” he said. “It was the norm to drop out of
school. You never saw people become doctors or teachers or
professionals.”
His
parents both worked two jobs to make ends meet, and they kept Ahmed and
his seven siblings off the streets and in their apartment.
His
parents divorced, and Ahmed’s mother moved the family to Rochester.
“Living in Minnesota was more challenging for me, it was far different
having a single mom.”
Ahmed
said his mother worked a day job, picked up her kids from school, then
worked the night shift for Manpower, a temporary agency.
Ahmed
said he was a decent student, but didn’t take his education seriously.
Then when Ahmed was in the seventh grade, his father died of disease
during a trip to Kenya.
“That’s where my life really turned around,” Ahmed said. “I realized that life could come and go like that.”
With
pressure and encouragement from his older sisters, Ahmed focused on his
studies. He would often arrive at 5:30 a.m. for school to study for his
calculus exams with teacher Jacob Johnson.
“It
was very obvious to anyone that Ahmed was a special young scholar,”
said Johnson. “He would arrive early for study sessions and leave late.
His perseverance in the face of difficult situations always drove him to
improve. He always wanted to grow and learn, not for a grade, but for
what the learning meant to him. He was an absolute joy to teach.”
Ahmed
also kept busy with extracurricular activities. He was on the student
council, ran track and was a member of the National Honor Society.
At
Cornell, Ahmed is majoring in biology but also works in research in
organic and polymer chemistry. He eventually wants to get a medical
degree and split his time between research and working with patients,
applying what he’s learned in the laboratory to the real world. His
father’s death from disease in Kenya has inspired him to work against
wide disparities in the quality of care both here and abroad.
Ahmed
said he keeps a rigorous schedule. Besides his studies and work, he
mentors African-American students and has helped build houses for
Habitat for Humanity.
Ahmed
said he could never have become a Rhodes scholar without the support of
Rochester teachers and Cornell professors who “filled that father role
that I didn’t have for a long time.”
Ahmed
is also grateful that the city of Rochester always accepted him. “There
was never this kind of [immigrant] hatred in Rochester,” said Ahmed. “I
think there was a kind of glass ceiling put over minorities though. You
weren’t expected to accomplish much beyond high school.”
Ahmed,
however, has proved to everyone how much a refugee with a single mom
can do, much to the delight of his friends and family.
“It’s finally hitting them how cool this is,” Ahmed said.
Published:
11:05 GMT, 25 November 2016
| Updated:
15:53 GMT, 25 November 2016
A
stepmother who helped her husband violently rape his young children
has described that period as 'the best time in her life', a court has
heard.
The
woman, who cannot be named, took part as her husband sexually abused
his two children, locked them in cages, tied them to trees and slammed
their fingers in doors at their remote property north of Port Augusta,
in South Australia.
In
sentencing submissions in the SA District Court on Friday the woman's
lawyer made reference to the woman's comments that the offending period
'was the best time in her life'.
+2
A stepmother who helped her husband violently rape his young children has described that period as 'the best time in her life'
But the lawyer says the comment was made sarcastically to a psychologist as a way of dealing with the difficult subject.
'That was said or meant in a sarcastic manner,' said.
'It's
obviously not the most appropriate way to address such questions but
(she) seems to deal with stress and difficulties in perhaps an unusual
way by making a joke or trying to laugh things off.'
She was
found guilty of false imprisonment while her husband was found guilty of
multiple rape and assault offences over the horrific abuse.
However, Judge Sophie David said the comments showed a lack of remorse.
'There has been no acceptance of her conduct, and in my view there is very little scope for leniency,' Judge David said.
+2
In sentencing submissions in the SA District Court on Friday the woman's lawyer made reference to the woman's comments
'I
can't have any confidence in any prospects of rehabilitation or
suggestion of remorse, particularly in light of what she has said.
Sarcastic or not.'
The
court previously heard the children, a boy and a girl, had suffered
devastating and lasting consequences as a result of their treatment.
Prosecutor Amelia Cairney said the stepmother needed to be jailed for the safety of the community.
The pair, who cannot be named, will be sentenced on December 6.
Bernie Sanders
✔
@SenSanders
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