Muslims were pictured drenched in blood as they slashed, whipped and cut themselves with sharp blades to mark an Islamic festival.
The holiday, known as the holy Day of Ashura, is celebrated by Shi’ite Muslims, and mourns the death of Imam Hussein on the battlefield in the seventh century.
The gory ceremony, which sees males of all ages cut themselves across the scalp or whip themselves with blades attached to chains, is meant to commemorate Imam Hussein’s violent end.
In Iraq, pilgrims converged on the holy city of Karbala, which was the site of the battle and is home to a shrine to Hussein, and were pictured wearing white clothes stained by bright red patches of blood from their wounds.
In Baghdad, thousands marched through the streets, including some who slashed their heads with razors and performed other forms of self-flagellation in a show of grief to mark the occasion.
Muslims also gathered in Iran, Lebanon and other parts of the world for the annual commemoration.
Shi’ite men bleed from self-inflicted wounds after cutting their heads with swords during a procession to mark festival of Ashoura, on the tenth day of Muharram, in Basra, Iraq, June 26
How an Open Future Changes the Case Against Immortality.
The Opening Claim
The traditional case against immortality often assumes that life is meaningful largely due to its finitude. The fact that life will end. That our choices matter because time is scarce. I argue the opposite. If the universe and future remain open1 then immortality grants access to infinite novelty, growth, and participation in the ongoing creation of reality. The value of life is not derived from its ending, but from the possibility of more participation ahead.
While researching some of the previousphilosophicalquestions here, I kept returning to the topic of immortality. I’m not talking about life extension itself, but how often I saw that the defense of mortality was being treated as self-evident. We encounter the assumption that finitude is a boon, and that death gives life meaning. I set out to examine that assumption, because I think it is less obvious than it may seem.
…So I propose the following;
P1: A life is meaningful insofar as it contains novel opportunities for genuine participation in reality.
P2: Genuine participation requires the possibility of novelty, discovery, growth, or creation.
P3: An open universe continually generates those possibilities.
P4: If reality remains indefinitely open, those possibilities remain indefinitely available.
P5: Immortality preserves access to those possibilities.
C: Therefore, if reality remains indefinitely open, then immortality is compatible with an indefinitely meaningful life.
In short, immortality need not lead to boredom. Rather than death being the “horizon that gives life meaning,” immortality may give us access to the inexhaustible horizon of becoming.
The Supreme Court on Thursday handed Donald Trump two rare wins in a huge victory for his hardline immigration agenda.
The Court cleared the way for Trump to revoke temporary protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian nationals living in the United States – siding with the President on one of the most closely watched and consequential immigration cases this term.
And the Justices also decided to give Trump more authority to limit asylum seekers in the US coming from Mexico.
In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the high court ruled 6-3 to grant Trump administration’s request to revive a controversial ‘metering’ policy that allows federal immigration officers to turn away asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border.
Justices ruled along ideological lines that migrants seeking refuge do not ‘arrive’ in the country by ‘attempting, and failing, to step foot’ in the United States – clearing the way for the administration to restart its so-called ‘turn back’ policy.
“Based on the clustering of injuries and the targeted body parts, I assess that the Israeli soldiers have been deliberately shooting teenage boys in a game of target practice – a different body part being targeted on different days… There is a very clear pattern that suggest this is a deliberate aiming of different body parts [of children].”
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~Page 13 of — The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel
American Buddhist Net 