Eid al-Adha “Festival of Sacrifice” is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims (including the Druze) worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God. However, God provided a ram in place once Ibrahim demonstrated his willingness to follow God's commands. At Eid al-Adha, Muslims make […]
SOMALIA: “Highest levels of malnutrition in the world”. "Somalia has the highest levels of malnutrition in the world", with up to 300,000 children acutely malnourished annually, Hilde Frarfjord Johnson, UNICEF's deputy executive director, said. Anaemic mothers and inadequate nutrition were the main causes of high malnutrition levels in the war-torn country, she said, with most […]
Yesterday I brought you a quote from Epictetus, and it had me thinking of his Philosophical teachings. As a philosopher, Epictetus believed all external events are are out of one's control, and decided by fate, but that we are responsible for our own actions. He believed that suffering came from trying to control the uncontrollable, […]
“Only the educated are free.” -Epictetus (a Greek Stoic philosopher, most likely born a slave). An empty classroom is surely a sad sight, and the sight of a child denied an education not only brings tears to one's eyes, but enslaves nations. Children are denied an education due to poverty, war, disability…and those who do […]
Media reports late Friday said five security guards with Blackwater USA were told to surrender to the FBI by Monday to face manslaughter charges stemming from a 2007 shooting incident in Iraq. Security contractors fired in response to alleged hostile fire during the Sept. 16 escort of a State Department official, killing 17 Iraqis. FBI […]
Day three after the tragedy of Agadir. My contact in Laayoune says students are being rounded up and arrested. In Agadir, things can't be much better. As I left the station, four garrisons of police vans were stationed at the far end of the concrete tarmac. Somewhere on that concrete pad once laid the crushed […]
As nation-states gradually give way to quasi-imperial geopolitical spheres of influence, artificial city-states are appearing in Asia and the Middle East to punctuate global crossroads. Beyond Singapore, these uber-habitats are signposts of the future intersections of radically conceived designer realities and a millennial world culture. Famous examples, such as Dubai's man-made archipelagoes‚ “The World” and […]
Blake Hounshell at Passport provides discussions of two critical suspects in the bombings: Dawood Ibrahim and Yusuf Muzzamil. Muzzamil is a leader of Lashkar e-Tayyiba, a Kashmiri terrorist group with operations around the subcontinent and alleged ties to the Pakistani state, particularly Pakistan's radical Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Naturally, the path forward will be fraught with […]
Too often we focus on what we cannot do, and not what we can do. For millions who have been labeled with a disability the stigma of the word is often hard to shake, but it is others who seem to have a harder time shaking the stigma. Some 10% of the world's population, or some […]
December 2nd is the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, the day was established by the United Nations in 1949. The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery was established to commemorate all the efforts to abolish slavery in every form. While the efforts of historical abolitionist, such as; Frederick Douglass, John Brown, William Wilberforce, and Harriet Tubman, […]
An Iraqi court Tuesday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid to death for atrocities committed against Shiites who staged an uprising in 1991 following the U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait. Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his gassing of the Kurdish population in the Anfal campaign, responded to a Shiite uprising in the south of Iraq that brought […]
I just witnessed a Sahrawi student protest in Agadir today. Two Sahrawi students were killed last night when a Supratours bus (bus B-A 6687), deliberately ran them over at the bus station in Agadir, according to 24 year old Ahmed Salem Dohi who was at the scene and was visibly upset when I met him. Four Sahrawi […]
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