Recently, the Assad forces have managed to gain an upper hand in their fight to gain control of Aleppo which has now almost been encircled. This assault has been supported by russian air strikes that have often indicriminately targeted civilians and while purportedly targetted ISIS, they have notably stuck everyone but ISIS.

Encirclement will allow the Assad regime to carry out their time tested practice of starving the place into submission or death. A detailed map of the city and who controls what is available at this link

 There is an interesting story over at the BBC - Muslim women 'stopped from becoming Labour councillors'

In the article it states that Muslim Women's Network UK has written to Jeremy Corbyn demanding an enquiry.

The article also mentions some smear campaigns that have been used to discredit candidates.

As someone who is not involved in any political party so I can't really verify or comment on the types of claims mentioned and if it is normal business (with perhaps men also being trargetted with different types of smear campaigns?) but it is an interesting read.

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I would. But probably not up an escalator that is going down.

Do we need Political Parties?

All Parties very rarely give their MP's a free vote. The Cabinet makes and sets policy. Hence the need for a whips office to force through votes. Most sadly of all, 75%+ of all MP seats are that safe, always Tory or always Labour etc. Then they ask why electorate have stopped voting.

No, this isn't Sparta.

I think that people should sit down and ponder over this story for a bit.

There are a few remarkable statistics in there.

The first one is that the top 1% are now richer than the rest of the world combined.

Normally in a functioning economy, you would expect it to be closer to the top 20% owning 80% of the wealth, but the world economy has been turned on its head.

Christians hope to unify the date for easter within the next 5-10 years. The western churches have it often a week earlier than the orthodox church.

(Christmas is a less remembered one, where AFAIK the orthodox church ceebrate it on 6 January).

However, having different dates should not be an issue for disunity - there are accounts from the times of the sahabah of differing locations starting ramadan/eid on different days and this was allowed and not condemned.

Imagine a scene from any police show. Police officer is outside home of a suspect of some random crime. Suspect sees officer, starts running. Officer give chase, pulls gun. Due to no clear line of sight or presence of others that can be injured, officer heroically decides not to shoot. Story moves along.

How many times have people seen the above without any quesiton of what is actually being displayed?

Granted, this is fictional and not the real police, but it has become normal to expect such behaviour is American copy shows. No one will think that there is something wrong with the actions of the police in the above scenario.

Well, we are currently about 2.5 months into the new year, but its more traditional to make resolutions based on the gregorian calendar.

I the new year, I plan to live a little more.

Inshallah I will have paid off my current debts by end of Ramadan (which may require not living until then...).

I will probably have new debt by getting a car.

I think I'd enjoy jumping out of a plane.

I can start smoking and then give that up...

I think thats a plan.

Feel to add to this list (either suggestions or your own plans/resolutions)

I am just putting down a few thoughts on future web development for this website.

Over the past year, there have been a number of changes and improvements:

1. Improved theme
2. Configurable theming options for a user's own blogs.
3. Improved front page - changed from a simple blog style to something more detailed in anticipation of changes bringing in more users and more regular content.
4. "Revival Digest" monthly email giving updates of new content on this site (on hold since 2/3 months because I want to automate the process, but new emails can be sent out when wanted.)
5. I have just revamped the "Tribune" chat interface to be more convenient on mobile platforms.

For the next year I plan for the improvements to continue.

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