Source….www.ba-bamail.com
Natarajan
human
Terrorism Attacks That Were Successfully Stopped Before Tragedy Occurred……..
Following the attacks in Beirut, Baghdad, and Paris, our newsfeeds were flooded with death tolls and prayers for survivors. We should all take the time to mourn those we’ve lost.
But we can’t let our grief get the best of us. We must also remember how many lives are saved because of the quick thinking of first responders and the government agencies that act predominantly behind the scenes. Because of them, so many people have been spared from harm.
Here are just a few of the many terrorist attacks that were stopped before anyone was hurt:
1. On December 22, 2001, Richard Reid attempted to detonate a shoe bomb.
Nearly 200 people were aboard the international flight. Heroic passengers subdued Reid and the plane made an emergency landing in Boston.
2. In 2003, Iyman Faris, a double agent for Al Qaeda positioned in the FBI, was caught for possible plots to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.
Each day, some 125,000 motor vehicles, 4,000 pedestrians, and 2,600 cyclists cross the bridge.
3. Dhiren Barot was arrested in 2004 for suspected plots against the New York Stock Exchange, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Citigroup Center.
It later surfaced that Barot planned to use limousines filled with “dirty” bombs for the attacks.
4. Shahawar Matin Siraj and James Elshafay were arrested in 2004 for plots to bomb the 34th Street – Herald Square subway station.
The popular station — close to Macy’s and Penn Station — is the third busiest stop in NYC’s entire subway system.
5. Back in 2006, seven men were arrested after allegedly plotting to bomb the Sears (now Willis) Tower and FBI offices.
The tower features 110 floors of office, retail, and recreational space.
6. Abdul Kadir, a former member of Guyana’s parliament, was arrested with three other men in 2007 in connection with plans to bomb the jet fuel line at JFK Airport.
Kadir was sentenced to life in prison.
7. Nineteen-year-old Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested in 2009 for a plot to bomb a Dallas skyscraper.
The 60-story Fountain Palace is the fifth tallest structure in Dallas.
8. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was taken down by fellow passengers before he could detonate a bomb on a flight over Detroit.
He confessed to the Christmas Day incident and admitted to carrying plastic explosives in his underwear.
9. In 2012, Amine El Khalifi was arrested for a plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the United States Capitol.
The Moroccan man believed he was working with Al Qaeda, but he was actually in contact with undercover FBI agents the whole time.
10. Born and raised in Massachusetts, Rezwan Ferdaus was arrested in 2011 for plots to attack the Pentagon, United States Capitol, and U.S. soldiers abroad with IED devices.
Ferdaus was working with and supporting Al Qaeda.
11. In May 2010, Faisal Shahzad was arrested for an attempted car bombing in Times Square.
He was captured 53 hours after the failed plot, boarding a flight with Pakistan as the final destination.
12. In 2007, six men were arrested when plans were discovered targeting New Jersey’s Fort Dix base.
According to The Washington Post, their aim was “‘to kill as many American soldiers as possible’ with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and guns.”
13. Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee were caught after videotaping Washington-area buildings.
Before their arrests, they sent the footage to a London-based jihadist website.
Thanks to quick decision-making paired with countless hours of investigation, thousands — if not millions — of lives have been saved. It’s important to always remember and thank those who don’t get enough recognition. We salute you!
Source…Amanda Black….www.viralnova.com
Natarajan
Most People Have No Idea What This Man Did During A Terrorist Attack Last Week….
Last week, the world was shaken by brutal acts of terrorism in Paris. Over the weekend, many of us gathered in support of those victims, sending prayers and love from across the globe. But sadly, that heartwarming outpouring of kindness has had one significant drawback: we have neglected to notice those who are also suffering in Beirut and Baghdad.
Both areas were targets of suicide bombing attacks just hours before the attacks in Paris occurred, but they’ve received little to no coverage in the press. Facebook isn’t offering to let us temporarily filter our profile pictures with their flags’ colors, even though their citizens have felt as much loss and pain as the people of France.
In Beirut, a marketplace erupted as two bombers made their way through the crowd. The blasts took 43 lives and wounded at least 239 others. But those numbers might have been even higher if it weren’t for the brave, split-second decision of one heroic man.
Adel Termos was at the marketplace with his daughter when he saw the first bomb go off.
Chaos and debris flew everywhere as people panicked to find shelter. That’s when Termos noticed a second bomber preparing to attack.
Instead of running in the other direction, Termos went straight for the man and tackled him. The bomb went off, killing both men. With his brave final act, Termos saved hundreds of lives.
His daughter, shown here at her dad’s funeral, was one of the lucky people who was saved by his heroic actions.
source: Pri)
We mourn each of these tragic acts of violence equally, and we urge you to keep all of those who are still suffering in your thoughts. Karuna Ezara Parikh, a blogger from India, shared this poignant image on Facebook in the aftermath of these attacks, which reminds us to not only mourn for Paris, but for the whole world.
Source….Jessica Catcher ….www.viralnova.com ….pl see my earlier post on the subject….Link given below
Natarajan
Musical Roads That Play Melodies When Cars Drive Over….!!!
A Japanese engineer by the name of Shizuo Shinoda was digging with a bulldozer when he accidentally scraped some markings into a road with its claw. Later when he drove over the markings he realized that the vibration produced in his car can be heard as a tune. In 2007, a team of engineers from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute refined Shinoda’s designs and built a number of “melody roads” in Japan. These roads have groves cut at very specific intervals along the road surface. Depending on how far apart the grooves are and how deep they are, a car moving over them will produce a series of high or low notes, enabling designers to create a distinct tune. The closer the grooves are, the higher the pitch of the sound. The critical ingredient in the mix is the speed of the car.
The Civic Musical Road in Lancaster, California. Photo credit: roadtrippers.com
There are four melody roads in Japan, one each in Hokkaido, Wakayama, Shizuoka and Gunma. They all play different tunes. They stretch between 175 to 250 meters, and are carved with thousands of groves. Aside from street signs, the roads are marked by colored musical notes painted on the surface of the road which alert motorists of the incoming musical interlude. The grooves are laid down on the side of the road near the curb and not in the middle, so drivers have the option to either go over them or avoid them. In order to hear the tunes, they need to keep the car windows closed and drive at 28mph keeping one wheel over the grooves . Drive too fast and it will sound like a tape on fast forward. Drive too slow and it will have the opposite effect.
The first musical road, however, was not Japanese. It was created in Gylling, Denmark, by two Danish artists Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus, in October 1995. Called the Asphaltophone, the street is made from a series of raised pavement markers, spaced out at intermittent intervals so that as a vehicle drives over the markers, the vibrations caused by the wheels can be heard inside the car.
Grooves on a melody road in Japan. Photo credit: Yusuke Japan Blog
The idea of musical roads has caught engineers in several other countries. There is one “Singing Road” in South Korea close to Anyang in Gyeonggi. It plays the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. Unlike other melody roads, it was designed not to draw tourists but to help motorists stay alert and awake. The Singing Road is located on a particularly treacherous section of a highway where lots of accidents occur due to dozing and speeding. 68% of traffic accidents in South Korea are due to inattentive, sleeping or speeding drivers.
America got its first melody road in 2008. It was originally built on Avenue K in Lancaster, California, for a Honda commercial. The Civic Musical Road, named after Honda Civic, stretches for a quarter-mile and plays back a part of the Finale of the ‘William Tell Overture’. But the intervals are so far off that the melody bears only a slight resemblance to the original tune. Later, when residents complained that the grooves produced too much noise from nocturnal drivers, they relocated the strip to Avenue G.
Another musical road is located in the village of Tijeras, in New Mexico. Driving over the grooves at 45mph causes the car to play the famous song “America the Beautiful”. The project was funded by the National Geographic Society, and overseen by the New Mexico Department of Transportation who said that the real motive behind the musical road is to get drivers to slow down.
A sign ahead of the Civic Musical Road in Lancaster, California. Photo credit: roadtrippers.com
The Civic Musical Road in Lancaster, California. Photo credit: roadtrippers.com
Photo credit: Yusuke Japan Blog
The musical road in New Mexico.
Amazing Singing Road of Anyang
Melody Roads….Japan
Source….www.amusingplanet.com
Natarajan
” When I started Loving Myself….”
A poem by Charlie Chaplin written on his 70th birthday on April 16, 1959.
When I started loving myself
I understood that I’m always and at any given opportunity
in the right place at the right time.
And I understood that all that happens is right –
from then on I could be calm.
Today I know: It’s called TRUST.
When I started to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody
When I tried to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time is not right and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I know: It’s called LETTING GO
When I started loving myself
I could recognize that emotional pain and grief
are just warnings for me to not live against my own truth.
Today I know: It’s called AUTHENTICALLY BEING.
When I started loving myself
I stopped longing for another life
and could see that everything around me was a request to grow.
Today I know: It’s called MATURITY.
When I started loving myself
I stopped depriving myself of my free time
and stopped sketching further magnificent projects for the future.
Today I only do what’s fun and joy for me,
what I love and what makes my heart laugh,
in my own way and in my tempo.
Today I know: it’s called HONESTY.
When I started loving myself
I escaped from all what wasn’t healthy for me,
from dishes, people, things, situations
and from everything pulling me down and away from myself.
In the beginning I called it“healthy egoism”,
but today I know: it’s called SELF-LOVE.
When I started loving myself
I stopped wanting to be always right
thus I’ve been less wrong.
Today I’ve recognized: it’s called HUMBLENESS.
When I started loving myself
I refused to live further in the past
and worry about my future.
Now I live only at this moment where EVERYTHING takes place,
like this I live every day and I call it CONSCIOUSNESS.
When I started loving myself
I recognized, that my thinking
can make me miserable and sick.
When I requested for my heart forces,
my mind got an important partner.
Today I call this connection HEART WISDOM.
We do not need to fear further discussions,
conflicts and problems with ourselves and others
since even stars sometimes bang on each other
and create new worlds.
Today I know: THIS IS LIFE!
Source…www.ba-bamail.com
Natarajan
Message for the Day…” Ways to Follow the Path of Devotion …”
Every aspirant who seeks the Eternal through the path of devotion should strive to keep away from the turmoils, cruelties, and falsehoods of this world and practice truth, righteousness, love, and peace. This is indeed the path of devotion. Those who seek union with God and those who seek the welfare of the world should discard as worthless both praise and blame, appreciation and derision, prosperity and adversity. They should courageously keep steady faith in their own innate reality and dedicate themselves to spiritual uplift. No one, not even a great spiritual personality (maha-purusha) or Avatar, can ever escape criticism and blame. Learn from their lives. Great souls hold on to truth and live by them. Those who indulge in criticism or blame will realise their greatness in time. As aspirants, stay away from ignorant people and desist in discussing your beliefs and convictions with them. Become immersed in holy books and be in the company of the Lord’s devotees.
A Boy Who Saved 850 Train Passengers. A Girl Who Saved Her Brother from Electrocution….
33 children from Karnataka were awarded for their acts of bravery by the Governor, Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala, on the occasion of Children’s Day this year. The award ceremony was held at the Jawahar Bal Bhavan in Cubbon Park, Bengaluru. These children showed exemplary courage and did not think twice before putting their lives in danger to save other people.
Two of the 33 award recipients are Siddesh Manjunath and Siya Vamanasa Khode. This is how they displayed immense courage and presence of mind in dangerous situations:
Siddesh Manjunath
This 10-year-old boy was conferred the Hoysala bravery award for stopping a passenger train that was about to cross a nearly two-inch wide crack on the rail track. His action saved about 850 passengers.
Siddesh is a student of class 5 at Avaregere government school in Davanagere city of Karnataka. He has a habit of watching trains pass by his father’s tea stall in their village. On March 14, 2015, he was at the tea stall and felt that something sounded wrong when two trains passed by. While his father told him that it was just the sound of stones on the track, Siddesh wanted to confirm. He went near the tracks to find a very risky gap there. On hearing about it, his father Manjunath rushed to the tracks and tried alerting other people. By that time, the Harihara-Chitradurga train was approaching and Siddesh knew that they had to do something to stop it. It was then that an idea struck the child. He took off his red t-shirt, and started waving it while running towards the train. His father and some villagers also ran behind him, thereby alerting the loco pilot from a distance. The train stopped and many lives were thus saved. Siddesh explained that he got t-shirt the idea from a movie that he had seen earlier.
Siya Vamanasa Khode
This 11-year-old girl from Hubballi saved her younger brother from electrocution. She was felicitated with the Keladi Chennamma award for bravery. She was playing with her 7-year-old brother, Yellappa, when he accidentally came in contact with a live wire.
“While we were playing, I saw my younger brother holding the iron railing, but standing still with his eyes wide open. When I tried to pull him away, I received an electric shock. That’s when I realised Yellappa was electrocuted. I tried to hold his hand, but received yet another electric shock. So I pulled him away from the railing by holding on to his shirt,” she told The Hindu.
Source….Tanaya Singh….www.the betterindia.com
Natarajan
Message for the Day….” Strive to light Your own Lamp from the Universal Light of Love First…”
You can light more than thousand candles from a single lamp. Remember only a burning lamp or candle can be used to light other candles. An unlit candle cannot light the other unlit candles. So too only the one who earned wisdom can enlighten others who are in ignorance. One who is not illumined cannot illumine others who are dwelling in the darkness of maya:So you must strive to light your own lamp from the Universal Light of Love and from there transmit illumination to all who seek and strive. All lamps shine alike, since they are all sparks of that Param-jyothi, the Universal Luminosity, which is God. Lamps are many but light is one. Every patch of water on earth has the reflection of the sun in it but the original sun is one. Just as the one sun is seen in a million pots, lakes or wells the one same Divine (Paramjyothi) shines as wisdom in a million hearts.
Musician Darren Hanlon recounts a Muslim Uber driver’s reaction to the Paris terrorist attacks…
Australian singer and songwriter Darren Hanlon has told of his encounter with a Muslim Uber driver.
FOLK rocker Darren Hanlon has illustrated the heartbreaking impact of the Paris attacks in an account of a Saturday night Uber ride that has gone viral.
Hanlon, a singer and songwriter from Gympie who has toured with Courtney Barnett, is in Sydney ahead of his Wednesday gig at Giant Dwarf Theatre.
Posting on his Facebook page, he told of the emotional outburst by the Muslim driver who picked him up outside a Sydney car dealership after he missed his bus stop.
“I sunk down in the seat and we settled into the usual small talk, his shift hours and workload,” Hanlon wrote.
“I looked over and could see even with him sitting down he was small framed, his chin almost in line with the top of the steering wheel.”
After some lighthearted discussion about the perils and pitfalls of GPS navigation, the conversation shifted to the more grave topic of the terrorist attacks that had rocked the French capital overnight.
“I can’t understand these who go around killing other people … in cold blood”, Hanlon heard the Indian-born driver say.
“Although it’s been on everyone’s mind today it was still an abrupt shift,” he wrote.
“He’d dovetailed it into the conversation as if he’d been waiting to. I recognised the moment that sometimes happens in the driver/passenger relationship where the banal switches to the deeply personal, the freedom allowed strangers who are trapped in a finite time period together.”
Straightening himself in his seat, Hanlon said, he sat quietly and listened as the driver confessed: “I’m a Muslim … And this is not what I was taught as a child”
“The etymology of the word Islam comes from a word that means peace.”Source:Facebook
The driver told Hanlon he had spent most of the day praying at the Zetland mosque after hearing of the deadly attacks the killed at least 129 people and left at least 150 wounded.
Hanlon said he emphasised: “These people say they act under the name of Islam. I’ve studied religion, theology. The etymology of the word Islam comes from a word that means Peace.”
A discussion ensued about the ways religious texts, including the Koran, are misconstrued by those who seek to serve their own needs.
“The finance banker will use certain lines to justify his actions, just as the jihadist will do the same,” Hanlon wrote.
“I looked over to see him wipe tears from his eyes.”
He said he queried whether the Koran had a basic law, like that of the Bible’s Ten Commandments, stating “thou shalt not kill”.
“‘Of course!’ he exclaimed, ‘The second highest law says that if you kill a single soul it’s like killing the soul of all humanity. If you save a single soul, you save all humanity.’”
Hanlon said the pair sat in the car continuing to talk after reaching his destination on King St, mourning both the innocent victims in Paris and the young men “whose minds have been brainwashed”, concluding that love was “the only defence” against the terror threat.
“I didn’t wanna write this as some kind of statement,” Hanlon’s post concluded.
“I just want to tell you about my brief random conversation with a sad Muslim Sydney Uber driver, whose religion is being taken from him.”
The Facebook post drew more than 12,000 likes, but some commenters expressed scepticism about whether the story was true.
Hanlon told news.com.au the encounter happened exactly as described, that he jotted it down soon afterwards and had quoted the driver as precisely as possible when recalling the conversation.
Source…..dana.mccauley@news.com.au
Natarajan
Indian Blogger’s Viral Poem Explains Why We Shouldn’t Pray Just For Paris Only But For the Whole World…
There has been tremendous amount of support coming in from across the world for the shocking attacks in Paris. A Delhi-based blogger Karuna Ezara Parikh wrote down this poem and that seems to have resonated with a lot of people, considering how viral it has gone. –
Source: @karunaparikh on Twitter
Here’s what she had to say on her Facebook post:
I woke this morning deeply disturbed by the news from #Paris, but more amazed by the attention it received on social media. I understand Paris is a beloved and familiar space for a lot of people, but it troubled me that #Beirut, a city my father grew up in, had received so little attention after the horrific bombings two days earlier. It also troubled me that #Baghdad, a place I have absolutely no connection with, received even less attention after the senseless bombing that took place there last week. Worst of all, I found the understanding of the refugee crisis skewed and simplistic. If you’ve been following the journeys of the people leaving their homes around the world right now, perhaps you’ll understand why the words #SyrianRefugeeCrisis are just as devastating as#PrayForParis. It’s time to pray for humanity. It is time to make all places beloved. It’s time to pray for the world.
Source…..www.thebetterindia.com
Natarajan
Take off with Natarajan 