Thursday, March 24, 2016

VOICE The Rotten Heart of Europe: The rampant dysfunction in Belgium puts us all in danger.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/23/the-rotten-heart-of-europe-belgium-attacks-abdeslam-molenbeek/
BY LEELA JACINTO

The Rotten Heart of Europe

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

Four days after Belgian police captured suspected Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam in Brussels –triggering a round of congratulatory news conferences in which French President François Hollande deemed the arrest “an important moment” in the fight against Islamist extremism — terror struck the Belgian capital. The Islamic State has claimed another hit on West European soil and here we go again: the gut-wrenching images of panicked people fleeing attack sites, the crushing stories of pain and loss, the displays of solidarity on social media and public buildings across the world, and, once again, the grief, shock, and panic.

But this attack — callous as it may sound to say — was coming. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said as much during a news conference in Brussels just hours after the attacks. “We feared a terror attack,” Michel said, “and it happened.”

“It happened” is just not a valid excuse for governments anymore. After two years of European nationals joining “the jihad” in Syria in droves, with the Islamic State repeatedly calling for attacks in the infidel lands in an ever-increasing array of languages, we need to be better prepared.

Belgium, in particular, needs to do better — for its own security and for the security of the world.

During the past 15 years, tiny little Belgium has made an appearance in far too many terror attacks. Back in 2001, Afghan resistance hero Ahmad Shah Masood’s killers transited through Brussels, picking support and resources, before they arrived in Afghanistan, where they killed Masood two days before the Sept. 11 attacks. Mehdi Nemmouche — whose deadly May 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium became the first case of blowback on European soil from the Syrian jihad — spent time in the now-infamous Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital. When Amedy Coulibaly — the Frenchman who attacked a Paris kosher store days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks — needed weapons, he headed straight for Brussels. And of course, as we all now know, four of the suspected Nov. 13 Paris attackers — including the brutal, unsavory coordinator, Abdelhamid Abaaoud — hailed from Molenbeek.

It’s too early to say if there are direct links between the latest Brussels attacks and Abdeslam’s arrest. Belgian authorities say they don’t have any evidence yet, but then they never do. Or if they do, they won’t tell you in an official, centralized way. That’s for the media to glean, working sources, local officials in decentralized communes, bit by bit, piece by piece, until some semblance of the big picture emerges. On Tuesday afternoon, Michel arrived at his news conference without a death toll, or even a preliminary one, to relay. “Many deaths, many injuries,” is all he could manage. Casualty figures were left to the Belgian local media to glean the slow, Belgian way.

That’s how Belgium works. That, in fact, is how Belgium does not work and that’s how the tiny European nation, the seat of the EU, has gotten to the state it is in today.

But more on that later — back to Abdeslam. The 26-year-old Molenbeek resident of Moroccan origin, who has French citizenship, was arrested Friday, March 18, in his old neighborhood after a three-day police raid.

On Tuesday, March 15, Belgian police arrived at an apartment at 60 rue du Dries in the Forest district of Brussels on what they believed was a routine search. But when the small police team encountered heavy gunfire, they called in enforcements, including specialized teams and French police officials cooperating on the Paris attacks case, and proceeded to kill one man. He was later identified as Mohamed Belkaïd, a 35-year-old Algerian living illegally in Belgium. Two other men are believed to have escaped via the roof. Belgian police officials “confirmed” the raid was not linked to Abdeslam, the only suspected Paris attacker still on the run. But then Abdeslam’s fingerprints were found in the Forest apartment, raising questions about whether one of the two men who had escaped was indeed Europe’s most wanted man.

The morning after the Brussels attacks, Belgian state broadcaster RTBF identified two of the three men captured from CCTV footage at Zaventem Airport shortly before the attack. The two suicide bombers were identified as Khalid and Brahim El-Bakraoui, brothers who were known to the police, said RTBF, quoting police sources. One of the brothers, Khalid, had rented the apartment at 60 rue du Dries under a false name, according to the state broadcaster.

The third man in the CCTV footage, who is the subject of a massive manhunt, was identified as Najim Laachraoui, according to the Belgian newspaper DH. Laachraoui’s DNA has been found in houses used by the Paris attackers last year, and he had traveled to Hungary in September with Abdeslam.

Shortly after Abdeslam was finally captured in Molenbeek last week, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders told reporters the suspected Paris attacker had been planning further attacks. “We found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations, and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels,” said Reynders, sparking speculation that Abdeslam was forming a “new cell”.

In the immediate aftermath of this week’s Brussels attacks, there wasspeculation that the assaults were conducted to avenge Abdeslam’s arrest. That’s rather unlikely given the scope and complexity of the two strikes on the Brussels Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station. These coordinated plots take time to plan and execute. Judging from the footagerevealing the extent of the damage at the Zaventem departures lounge, the suicide bombings required sophisticated explosives in vast quantities. Putting it all together from scratch in four days is not possible, no matter what Islamic State sympathizers believe and say.

Abdeslam’s arrest, however, could well have accelerated a long-planned terror plot. Shortly after his capture, officials confirmed that the suspect at a high-security Belgian jail was talking and cooperating with investigators. It’s possible that the latest attacks were fast-tracked amid fears within the Islamic State that the 26-year-old Frenchman in captivity might spill the beans.

What this reveals is the existence of multiple embedded networks in a European city working simultaneously on plots. This is alarming, of course, and not good news for security services. But in this day and age, we’d better get past the alarm, and fast, so we can concentrate on how to tackle the latest challenge before it’s too late.

For the longest time Belgium seemed such an obvious target for jihadist groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State, I sometimes wondered if these militants were steering clear of targeting the tiny European nations because things were just so good there for a rising jihadist.

Belgium has long been the one-stop shop for weapons, especially automatic rifles favored by the likes of Coulibaly and Abdeslam, in a continent with strict gun control laws. Weapons make their way from the former Yugoslav war zones and Eastern European arms black markets to Belgium, where they can be accessed with a few criminal-jihadist contacts. This is common knowledge in Belgium and France. On Jan. 7, 2015, as I stood outside the Charlie Hebdo offices with the press teams shortly after the attack, I asked my French colleagues where they thought these amounts of arms could have originated, given that we were in gun-controlled France. “Belgium,” came the prompt reply with a deep certainty.

The reason Belgium has a problem dealing with the weapons black market is the same reason the country can’t come to grips with its criminal-jihadist menace: The country is run by a decentralized administration, in a federal nation riven by divisions between French-speakers and Dutch-speakers.

In the field of law enforcement, the extreme decentralization and lack of coordination among various entities can be comical. In the old days, Brussels, which is divided into 19 communes or boroughs, had one police force for each commune — that’s 19 police forces, each policing between 20,000 and 150,000 people. They now have been consolidated into six police forces — still insane for a city with a population of 1.4 million. The failure of information and data sharing among various agencies is so acute, a researcher confessed to a Reutersjournalist days after the Paris attacks, that, “in Belgium, there’s a problem with data management. Nobody knows how many illegal weapons there are in Belgium. … The reality is we have no idea.”

The debate around Molenbeek, Brussels’ most infamous borough, turned deeply political after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, with center-right politicians blaming the Socialists, notably Philippe Moureaux, Molenbeek’s mayor from 1993 to 2012, for the unhappy state of affairs. In a Nov. 17 column in the Belgian daily Le Soir titled “Molenbeek: Merci Philippe!” Alain Destexhe, a senator from the conservative-liberal MR (Mouvement Réformateur) party that is part of the ruling coalition, accused Moureaux of “clientélisme” and cronyism. According to Destexhe, his political rival willfully turned a blind eye to the worsening situation within his constituency while courting community leaders in return for electoral victories. “For 20 years,” Destexhe noted in French, “a kind of omerta reigned,” where anyone who tried to break the silence or call attention to the problem was labeled an “Islamophobe or racist.”

Certainly when journalist Hind Fraihi, a Belgian of Moroccan descent, published her book Undercover in Little Morocco: Behind the Closed Doors of Radical Islam in 2006, she was dubbed a traitor by her community and criticized by the liberal press. Ignoring voices of alarm from within the community and labeling them “self-hating” Arabs or Muslims is a common theme in left-liberal circles. As the discourse on Islam in the United States and Europe gets genuinely racist and Islamophobic with the likes of Donald Trump and all sorts of nasty European right-wing politicians, this tendency to shush people from the community raising alarm bells will become only more acute in leftist circles.

This of course is a pity since the left — or progressives, or whatever you want to call them — will only be ignoring members of the community who actually have a deep understanding of the social dynamics at play. And they are the ones with the ability to raise early alarms when they spot something amiss. The majority of Muslims, we all know, have no patience for the Islamic State-style nihilistic nonsense passing for Islam. But in a democracy, all – and I mean all — opinions must be heard as long as they don’t incite violence.

In Belgium, alas, few mainstream officials genuinely understand their Muslim fellow citizens. Unlike France, which has a long history with the North African and sub-Saharan African Muslim world, Belgium has no colonial history with Muslim-majority regions. Most Belgian Muslims —estimated to be between 320,000 to 450,000, or about 4 percent of the population — are of Moroccan origin, followed by those of Turkish origin. Belgium’s history with Muslim communities dates back only to the postwar economic boom years, when low-skilled workers from the villages of Morocco and Turkey began working in Belgian coal mines and factories, with migration peaking in the 1960s.

But while Europe offered the sort of economic opportunities for which the 1960s generation of migrants was grateful, their children have been not so lucky. The economic downturn since the late 1970s saw the closure of Belgian coal mines and heavy industries, leaving areas of urban blight. Belgium’s national unemployment rate, hovering around 8 percent, climbs to more than 20 percent among the youth population. Among Belgians of Moroccan or Turkish origin, that figure can double to around 40 percent. Add high unemployment to the mix of poor policing, fuddled administration and services, and you have the perfect breeding grounds for marginalization and radicalization. Tiny Belgium today has the dubious distinction of being the country with the highest per capita numbers of nationals or residents who have traveled to the Islamic State-held Syria-Iraq badlands.

To be sure the bulk of Belgium’s Muslims want nothing to do with the Islamic State. But for those unemployed youths with few job opportunities and easy access to drugs and arms-dealing rackets, places like Molenbeek are a home away from home, where old, idealized codes of conduct from the rural heartlands their parents left behind can be transplanted to a cold, dreary Brussels hood.

Here in Europe, those codes of conduct, which place hospitality and kinship above the law, serve as ties that bind. And it was those ties that helped Abdeslam hide for four months under the noses of the Belgian security services. In the end, it was family and friends, not ISIS operatives, who helped Europe’s most wanted man hide from the law. “Abdeslam relied on a large network of friends and relatives that already existed for drug dealing and petty crime to keep him in hiding,” said Belgium’s federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw shortly after the capture. “This was about the solidarity of neighbors, families,” he told Belgian state broadcaster RTBF.

The problem, of course, is that there’s growing evidence of small, compartmentalized jihadist cells operating in places like Molenbeek across the European continent. These cells will be bound together by codes of conduct that put loyalty above all else. But they may not necessarily know what another cell may be plotting and planning. For law enforcement services, there is no alternative but to understand and try to infiltrate these networks. The time for excuses and maintaining that the problem is too big to contain is long over. Understaffed security services? Well, boost training and hiring programs. Not enough Arabic-speakers and people of Arab origins in the services? Well, for crying out loud, it’s time to reach out to the most economically marginalized of marginalized sections of the population. If places like Molenbeek need to be refurbished, revitalized, and reintroduced into the national mainstream, well do it, Belgium. We’re as tired of blaming Belgium as Belgians are of being blamed.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Top American psychiatrists to Indonesia: LGBT as mental disorder not backed up by science

http://jakarta.coconuts.co/2016/03/17/top-american-psychiatrists-indonesia-lgbt-mental-disorder-not-backed-science
By Coconuts Jakarta



The statement by the country’s leading psychiatric organization has helped heighten the recent moral panic around LGBT issues in Indonesia by lending scientific credibility to the idea - which many Indonesians unfortunately believe - that being LGBT is a disease that can be both spread and treated.
But the idea that being LGBT is a mental disorder that can be “cured” is simply not backed up by modern science, as detailed in a new letter from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to PDSKJI.
The letter, co-signed by APA president Dr. Renée Binder and APA medical director Dr. Saul Levin, begins by expressing the APA’s concern over PDSKJI’s recent statements about classifying being LGBT as a mental disorder:
“We respectfully ask that you reconsider your position, because the latest and best scientific research shows that different sexual orientations and gender expressions occur naturally and have not been shown to pose harm to societies in which they are accepted as a normal variant of human sexuality. In fact, research shows that efforts to change an individual’s orientation – so-called “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy” – can be harmful, and are linked to depression, suicidality, anxiety, social isolation and decreased capacity for intimacy.”
The letter goes on to say that members of PDSKJI may have misunderstood “the significance of recent scientific findings, which show that multiple factors, including both biological and environmental contributors, play roles in sexual orientation and gender identity. In short, one’s orientation is not a choice.”
In defending PDSKJI’s assertion that LGBT is a mental disorder, PDSKJI member Suzy Yusna Dewi told the Jakarta Post there was "not enough data to support the idea that the conditions were caused by biological factors, adding that limiting inappropriate social interaction could be effective in curbing such abnormal sexual tendencies.”
However, the letter from the APA cites numerous studies that show there is ahuge body data to support the idea that being LGBT is caused by biological factors, including a landmark review of 10 years worth of biological research that concluded “genetic research using family and twin methodologies... produced consistent evidence that genes influence sexual orientation.”
Based upon extensive data and the scientific consensus of numerous researchers, doctors and psychiatrists, the letters states: “It is the position of the APA that there is no rational basis, scientific or otherwise, upon which to punish or discriminate against LGBT people.”
The letter ends by saying: 
“With all due respect to you and to the Indonesian people, we advise that classifying homosexuality and gender expression as intrinsically disordered will only lead to coercive ‘treatments’ and violence against those who pose no harm to society and cannot change who they are. We hope that providing you with the additional scientific data above will further inform your decision. We urge you to consider the evidence contained herein and to reconsider your decision.”
Unfortunately, we believe it is highly unlikely that PDSKJI will reconsider its position based on this letter. If they respond to it at all, it will be to accuse the APA of pushing “foreign values” onto Indonesia. 
As PDSKJI member Suzy told the Jakarta Post, “We must respect Indonesian traditions, which culturally do not accept same-sex marriage, and we should not bow to the influence of foreign values that may not fit in with our values.”
But this is not about “foreign values”. This is about science. And psychiatrists, like all doctors, are supposed to be scientists.
If PDSKJI wants to continue supporting discrimination against LGBT individuals by saying they have mental disorders, then they can do so on the basis of religion or culture. But if they do so, then they should stop pretending that there is any scientific basis to their statements.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

our future supermarket

Future Supermarket

Is this the supermarket of the future? What do u think?

Posted by GI Gadgets on Tuesday, 8 March 2016

Saturday, March 12, 2016

The most dangerous man in the world?

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-most-dangerous-man-in-the-world-a6803191.html
Bill Law

Saudi Arabia’s defence minister is aggressive and ambitious – and his enemies within and without are in his sights

Salman.jpg
Mohammed bin Salman attends a summit of Arab and Latin American leaders in Riyadh AP

When Mohammed bin Salman was just 12 he began sitting in on meetings led by his father Salman, the then governor of Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Province. Some 17 years later, at 29 and already the world’s youngest defence minister, he plunged his country into a brutal war in Yemen with no end in sight. 
Now the kingdom of Saudi Arabia is jousting dangerously with its regional foe Iran, led by a man seemingly in a big hurry to become the Middle East’s most powerful leader.
Prince Mohammed was still in his early teens when he began trading in shares and property. And when he ran into a scrape or two, his father was able to take care of things. Unlike his older half-brothers, MbS, as he is known, did not go abroad to university, choosing to remain in Riyadh where he attended King Saud University, graduating in law. Associates considered him an earnest young man who neither smoked nor drank and had no interest in partying.
In 2011, his father became deputy Crown Prince and secured the prized Ministry of Defence, with its vast budget and lucrative weapons contracts. MbS, as a private adviser, ran the royal court with a decisive hand after his father was named Crown Prince in 2012. 
Every step of the way, Prince Mohammed has been with his father , who took his favoured son with him as he rose in the hierarchy of the House of Saud. Within the Saudi religious and business elite it was well understood that if you wanted to see the father you had to go through the son.
Critics claim he has amassed a vast fortune, but it is power, not money, that drives the prince. When Salman ascended the Saudi throne in January 2015, he was already ailing and relying heavily on his son. Aged 79, the King is reported to be suffering from dementia and able to concentrate for only a few hours in a day. As his father’s gatekeeper, MbS is the real power in the kingdom.
That power was dramatically increased in the first few months of Salman’s rule. Prince Mohammed was appointed Defence Minister; put in charge of Aramco, the national energy company; made the head of a powerful new body, the Council for Economic and Development Affairs with oversight over every ministry; and put in charge of the kingdom’s public investment fund. He was named deputy Crown Prince but ensured ascendancy over his rival Mohammed bin Nayef, the Crown Prince and Interior Minister, by absorbing the latter’s royal court into that of the King’s.
Impatient with bureaucracy, MbS has been quick to make his mark by demanding that ministries define and deliver key performance indicators on a monthly basis, unheard of in a sclerotic economic system defined by patronage, crony capitalism and corruption. His sudden early morning visits to ministries demanding to see the books is rapidly becoming the stuff of legend, startling sleepy Riyadh into action and capturing the admiration of young Saudis. “He is very popular with the youth. He works hard, he has a plan for economic reform and he is open to them. He understands them,” enthused one businessman.
That counts, because 70 per cent of the Saudi population is under 30 and youth unemployment is running high, with some estimates putting it at between 20 and 25 per cent.
But the same zeal with which he is pursuing economic reforms has also led Saudi Arabia into a messy war in neighbouring Yemen. Last March, he launched an aerial campaign against rebel Houthi forces that had run the Saudi-installed President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi out of the country. Decades of Saudi caution were thrown to the wind as MbS presided over Operation Decisive Storm. 
It must have seemed a very good idea at the time: the young, ambitious son of an aged king leading a war against a rebellion in a troubled southern neighbour. That the rebellion was supported by Iran made the adventure even more attractive. The Saudi military was bristling with new weapons – billions of dollars’ worth. MbS had a powerful older rival in the Interior Minister and wanted to prove his mettle both to his rival and his own supporters. The plan was to win a quick, decisive victory to confirm his stature as a military leader, placing him in the same league as his grandfather Ibn Saud, the great warrior king and founder of modern Saudi Arabia.
MbS ignored the fact that the Houthis were a useful buffer against the real threat to the House of Saud, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). He seemed, too, to have overlooked that the tenacious Houthis had embarrassed the Saudis in a border war just a few years previously. That was in 2009, when they seized the Saudi Red Sea port of Jizan and left only after a substantial payment of some $70m (£48m). 
Thus far Operation Decisive Storm has proved anything but. The war has dragged on for close to a year, causing infinite misery to the people of Yemen. In intense aerial bombardments, much of the country’s infrastructure has been destroyed while the Houthis remain defiantly in control of the capital Sanaa and most of the north. In the south, AQAP has had an open field. Undeterred, MbS has vowed to carry on, determined to bomb the Houthis to the negotiating table.
“He is quite belligerent,” says Jason Tuvey, a Middle East economist at Capital Economics. But Tuvey, like many other analysts, has been impressed by Prince Mohammed’s grasp of the often maddeningly complex problems that bedevil the kingdom’s economy. “On the economic front he has done very well. He has shifted policy and he should be commended for that,” Tuvey says.
Where the good in his impetuous nature may come undone is over the growing struggle with Iran for regional hegemony. When MbS announced the formation of a council of 34 Muslim nations in mid-December to combat terrorism, he clearly had Iran in mind. The Iranians have strongly backed the beleaguered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, both directly and through Hezbollah, a militia trained and armed over the years by Iran. The Saudis are determined to see Assad defeated before any Syrian peace talks commence.
Now, with the Saudis executing the senior Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a tit-for-tat battle is escalating. The Iranians allowed the sacking of the Saudi embassy in Tehran, and the Saudis together with other Gulf Co-operation council (GCC) states withdrew their ambassadors in retaliation. The apparent bombing of the Iranian embassy in Sanaa has further ratcheted up tensions.
In a widely circulated letter last summer, enemies within the ruling family decried the arrogance of the young prince, even going so far as to call for his ousting along with his father and Mohammed bin Nayef. But those calls have led nowhere and MbS continues to ride a crest of popular support in Saudi Arabia. The question remains, though, how far his impetuous nature will take him in the conflict with Iran.

It is not outside the realm of possibility that this brilliant, brash young man casting himself in his grandfather’s mould as a Sunni warrior may be weighing up the options, may be thinking of a military strike against Shia Iran – a frightening thought in a region already riven by sectarian war.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

THE WAHHABI MIND-SET

The Awaited One
http://www.theawaitedone.com/articles/2015/04/17/the-wahhabi-mind-set
By 

The following is an excerpt from His Holiness Younus AlGohar’s speech.
The goal set by the Saudi regime is neither in the favour of Islam nor in the favour of the international community. The Saudi family is under the impression that the amendments made by their so-called reformer, Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab Najdi, is ‘the reformed Islam.’ The Saudi family firmly believes that Islam which had been practised for 1100 years (before the alterations made by Najdi) was wrong. Allegedly speaking, Najdi, whom they consider to be their topmost revivalist, has renewed Islam in its purest form.
They understand that among Muslims, only those who follow their interpretation of the religion and their interpretation of the Quran are true Muslims. Those who do not follow their sectarian doctrine may however be Muslims from different sects, but they do not consider them to be ‘pure Muslims’. Those who believe and understand Muhammad Abdul Wahhab Najdi to be their revivalist call this doctrine to be ‘Madhab Wahhabiya.’
Wahhabis do not think they are promoting their sect; rather, they are promoting the actual, factual and purest form of Islam which was been reformed, revived and cleansed (God forbid) by their revivalist, Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab Najdi. Therefore, anybody who does not conform to their ideology is not a pure Muslim. Since that person – according to them – is not a pure Muslim, that person should be killed, their property should be forfeited and their women may be raped by Wahhabis and then killed – and this is their right given to them by their religion.

A MESSAGE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Today in the western sphere of the world, we have so many friends of Saudi Arabia who are aware of what Saudi Arabia is all about. Still, they have their own vested interests; their friendship is purely based on their political and imperialistic interests.
But I want to tell you: Wahhabis have modified the interpretations of some of the recollections of the Prophet Mohammad according to their own agenda; they have developed a thought-process and mind-set [based upon these misinterpretations]. They think, sooner or later, a total Renaissance of Islam will occur and Islam will be the only religion, like a superpower.
Wake up. They’re dreaming of becoming a superpower. Do you know what they are planning to do? They want the green flag that the Islamic declaration of faith to be hoisted in London and Washington. This is part of their plan, because they think when Renaissance of Islam occurs, this is what they are going to do to occupy these world capitals. They believe their Islam should be spread over the world and whoever doesn’t believe in their version should be killed.
Have the powers that are helping Saudi Arabia today (exchanging ammunition, etc.) ever looked into the future to see what the Wahhabis are planning to do to them? They want to plant their flag in your countries.
But this is not Islam, it is Wahhabism. They understand that one who kills all over the world in the name of Islam and takes control over the most land is Imam Mehdi (the title given to the Messianic personality by the Islamic faith). This is why they have designated Mullah Umar (the leader of the Taliban) to be Imam Mehdi.
They distorted the face of Islam. Najdi ‘reformed’ Islam to such an extent that he made a new Islam – An Islam in which there is no medium to reach God, where there is no love of Prophet Mohammad and an Islam which is void of spiritual esoteric knowledge. Everything is mentioned in the Quran and yet people who claim to be Muslim still believe the Wahhabi teachings – which are against Sharia, against Islamic Laws and against Prophetic Traditions. Is this not a divine wrath? They declare those who follow the teachings of spirituality to be infidels and apostates.
The true teachings of Islam were never spread around the world. The only version that spread around the world was Wahhabism. Do the world leaders not know that 11 people involved in 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia? They know everything.
It just means that today’s world leaders are playing with fire. Do not support Saudi Arabia and do not support terrorism. Saudi Arabia and terrorism are like mother and daughter.

Tuesday, March 08, 2016

8 tips to help you improve your memory


http://www.australiaplus.com/international/2016-03-03/8-tips-to-help-you-improve-your-memory/1554612
ABC Health and Wellbeing

Think you've got a mind like a sieve? Try these simple techniques to improve your memory.

Losing keys, forgetting names and not remembering important information for work or study?
Many of us have first-hand experience with the frustrations of memory lapses, and it's not unusual to be concerned that they are a sign of something sinister. But Australian National University's Professor Kaarin Anstey says most memory lapses are a normal part of the ageing process.
Take the "tip of the tongue" phenomenon, that frustrating feeling where you know a word or name or movie title is in your memory, but you just can't recall it.
"From your 40s onwards, people do start to experience that and that is actually normal, it's not a sign of Alzheimer's," Professor Anstey says.
Most of those tip-of-the-tongue instances resolve themselves within 24 hours; something like 95 per cent of the time you will remember the word.
"People may joke about it being a senior moment but they are very common and everyone experiences them, and that does occur more as you get older."
In the same way that ageing means changes to other parts of your body, your brain physically changes as you age. Some of these brain changes will affect your memory.
"We can see on brain scans that there is gradual brain atrophy over time. We know that there's shrinkage of some cells and the loss of some cells," says Professor Anstey, the director at the Centre for Research on Ageing, Health and Wellbeing at the Australian National University.
When you combine these changes to your brain with other age-related issues, being more prone to getting distracted and having slower reaction times, it's easy to see how our memory can start to fail us as we age.
But that doesn't mean you can't do anything to improve your memory. The following tips may help you boost your capacity for recall.

You might be surprised at the simple strategies that can help boost your memory. (ABC Licensed: Istock photo)
You might be surprised at the simple strategies that can help boost your memory. (ABC Licensed: Istock photo)

1. Pay attention and avoid distractions


One reason we forget things is that we never fully processed them into our memory in the first place. To encode a long-term memory in your brain, you need to actively attend to the information.
"When you are introduced to new people, make an effort to remember their name and associate it with something. Rehearse it in your own mind," Professor Anstey says.
Sometimes, simply reminding yourself to focus on the task at hand — say meeting someone new and learning their name — is all that's needed.
However, stating what you're doing out loud can also help memory, for example, "I'm putting my glasses on the kitchen table".
If you're trying to process more complex information, try minimising distractions like television or phone calls

2. Write or record new information


Another way to help yourself stay focused on learning something new is to take a more active role — such as by writing or recording important points.
Taking study notes for instance is generally more effective than simply reading or listening to a body of information.
Keeping a pen and notebook (or using your smartphone) can be handy to record things, like say, where you parked your car in a large shopping centre car park.

3. Group things together
 

Organising information into groups makes memorising easier.
That's why we often recite phone numbers in clusters of three or four digits.
Grouping can also make what you're learning less "abstract" and give structure to the recall process.
For example, if you have forgotten your shopping list try to recall items by types of products (for example dairy, stationery, toiletries).

4. Develop association techniques
 

Developing associations - say with a relevant image, acronym, sentence (acrostic) or rhyme - is another memory-boosting trick.
These memory clues are called mnemonics. For instance, the sentence "Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit" can be used to remember the notes on the lines of a treble clef in music (E, G, B, D, F).
Likewise, when you meet someone new called Rosemary, creating a mental image of her face smelling the herb rosemary can make it more likely you will remember her name.

5. Use your ABC


Another related technique that can be particularly useful for remembering names involves running through the alphabet.
"If you really can't remember somebody's name, [try] going through each letter and thinking about each letter and then suddenly when you get to the right letter their name will pop up," Professor Anstey suggests.

6. Avoid memory lapse triggers


Fatigue and alcohol are two known triggers for memory lapse, so avoiding these can help in situations where you need to stay sharp.
Aim to get a good night's sleep before an exam and if important information is likely to be exchanged at say, a work lunch, consider sticking to non-alcoholic drinks.

Poor sleep affects memory so make sure you get enough! (Flickr: Flickr CC Becky Lai)
Poor sleep affects memory so make sure you get enough! (Flickr: Flickr CC Becky Lai) 

7. Get enough sleep


Poor sleep definitely affects memory and is probably underrated as a cause of cognitive problems, Professor Anstey says.
"It's also a risk factor for depression and cognitive decline. It's really important to emphasise sleep," she said.
We need sleep to convert short-term memories to long-term ones. So if you're sleep deprived, you're making it really hard for yourself on the memory front.
The Australasian Sleep Association says most adults need 6.5 to 8.5 hours sleep a night to "function and feel they can manage life adequately".

8. Follow routines


You can increase the chance of remembering important information if you develop and follow routines for regular more mundane tasks.
So you might make it a ritual to leave your keys and phone in a particular spot (a drawer near your front door, for example) as soon as you get home.
That way, you don't have to drain your memory thinking about the location when you need to find them to go out.