Lipstick Values Lead Anne of Carversville's International Audience

India’s Mumbai attack, Nov 2008With today’s WaPo story that indeed the FBI was informed about David Coleman Headley’s probable status as an agent gone rogue, and subsequently a leader of the Mumbai attacks, we affirm again our belief that only lipstick, roses and critical thinking will move the world forward, at a time when men are determined to destroy it.

This core ideas of Anne of Carversville were articulated in Anne’s 2008 Thanksgiving Day essay, which coincided with the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Read: Cultural Creative Principles Are Rooted, Not in Guns, but in Lipstick & Roses.

Anne’s reflections about our own audience have come true in the explosive growth and reputation of Anne of Carversville.  Of course, we remain a toddler, compared to the New York Times, but we are turning in an amazing performance in building an international group of positive, thinking people who desperately want to change the course of human history away from violence.

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Protests Grow in Pakistan for US Convicted Dr Aafia Siddiqui

Thousands of protestors march on behalf of Aafia Siddiqui in Pakistan. Photo via AFPPakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari directed his government to immediately establish contact with the family of Doctor Aafia Siddiqui, a MIT-trained scientist found guilty by a US jury, of grabbing a rifle, with the purpose of trying to gun down US servicemen, while under interrogation in Afghanistan in 2008.

Siddiqui was convicted in Manhattan’s federal court and  is facing life in prison when sentenced on May 6. The Pakistani mother of three vanished In Pakistan in 2003 for a period of five years, when she was found in Ghazni, Afghanistan.

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New Perspective: Religious Life in the Tenth Parallel

Soldiers stand guard after December 2008 post-election riots in central Nigeria leave hundreds dead.Updated: Sept. 21, 2010

At least 10,000 Nigerians have died during Christian-Muslim violence during the past decade. The most populous country in Africa, Nigeria is evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.

Eliza Griswold, who has spent the last five years traveling to Nigeria to examine the causes of religious violence, explores the fact the Muslims and Christians in Africa are involved in a numbers game, in her book “The Tenth Parallel”.

The tenth parallel north, the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator, is the defining metaphor of our time, according to Griswold.

An ideological front line stretching across two continents and nineteen countries, this is where Christianity and Islam collide—a profound encounter that shapes the lives of more than a billion people. It’s not just geographic; it’s demographic.

Hear Griswold explain the fundamentals of her views in this Blogging Heads interview withNell Freudenberger.

The Tenth Parallel

Griswold offers thinking people a new context for understanding what’s going on in our world, at a time when big words like poverty, religious conflict or global development are ambiguous, overwhelming concepts.

While CNN focuses on Nigeria — the most visible paradigm of a self-destructive country breeding terrorists like Uman Farouk AbdulMutallab — Griswold directs our attention to the tenth parallel north. She also puts religion front and center as the major influence in this zone.

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Fundamentalism, Free Speech & The Jihadist

Colleen LaRose, aka Jihad Janehttp://bit.ly/9p1RGr

Trapped at MuslimConverts.com

Ironically, I’m held hostage — metaphorically-speaking — at the MuslimConverts.com website, Google’s top choice for the search ‘Muslim converts+veil’.  Perhaps Google should serve up a better option than this one.

My arrival seeks to confirm my belief that disproportionate numbers of women who convert to Islam choose to wear full coverage clothing. This possibility came up in July 2009 when Anne of Carversville first began its dialogue about burqas.

We heard from many Muslim women who wore niqab or burqa — often against the wishes of their Muslim husbands or his family. That dialogue was rich, fruitful, loving and I’ve remained friends with some of the women.

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Update | Terrorist Attacks via Paragliders

A small AC Daily News post India & England Fear Paragliding has become a top read I checked the update just now and find little to report to interested readers.

Restating the background, global intelligence officials suspect that the terrorist group behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks is planning another strike in India, this time from the air, using suicide bombers flying paragliders.

Confirmed purchase of 50 paragliding kits from Europe indicates that this new form of terrorism has moved beyond imagination and into execution mode.

Personally, I take the facts of the problem very seriously and see this type of terrorism as a major possibility on American soil, not just England or India. Frankly, the possibilities are chilling, as we try to understand what is and isn’t possible in terms of paragliding.

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Cultural Creative Principles Are Rooted, Not In Guns, But In Lipstick & Roses

Good morning, my friends. To most of you, living in America, I say “Happy Thanksgiving”.

My impressions of this day are not focused on the Macy’s parade or good bargains for Black Friday shopping. I’m watching the glorious Taj Mahal Mumbai Hotel burning before our eyes.

New York Times coverage of MumbaiCNN focuses on hostages inside, two nuclear powers with long-held tensions, and Muslim terrorism. In New York we are on alert, too, but our own mayor Bloomberg is riding the subways.

Listening and searching for information and understanding, I scoured cyberspace on my laptop, landing on Styling by Coty Facquhar, an Australian blog.

Styling by Coty Facqujar websiteAbsolutely gorgeous photos captivated my senses. But what really caught my eye was the Live Traffic Feed on her website:

New York (me), followed by:

Sydney, New South Wales; Sydney New South Wales;  Launceton, Tasmania; Launceton, Tasmania; Brooklyn, New York; Launceton, New South Wales; Atlanta, Georgia; Sydney, New South Wales; Oak Park, Illinois.   

Four of the 10 people on Styling by Coty Facquhar were Americans. Halfway around the world, we were joined together, sharing her beautiful vision, connected in cyberspace.

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