Lebanese Protest as Trash Piles Up in Beirut

Protesters returned to downtown Beirut on Sunday to demand that the government resign over its inability to remove enormous heaps of garbage from the city’s streets.

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Breaking the Media Blackout in Western Sahara | Inter Press Service

This year will mark four decades since this territory the size of Britain was annexed by Morocco after Spain pulled out from its last colony of Western Sahara.

Since the ceasefire signed in 1991 between Morocco and the Polisario Front – the authority that the United Nations recognises as a legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people – Rabat has controlled almost the whole territory, including the entire Atlantic coast. The United Nations still labels Western Sahara as a “territory under an unfinished process of decolonisation”.

via Breaking the Media Blackout in Western Sahara | Inter Press Service.

Opinion: Children of the World – We are Standing Watch for You | Inter Press Service

We must also continue to raise our voices in the face of tremendous opposition from groups that continue to oppose the treaty, arguing that it infringes upon national sovereignty. Quite the opposite is true: no sane definition of national sovereignty includes the right to sell arms for the violation of human rights in other countries. A nation willing to carry out such an act is not defending itself, but rather infringing upon the sovereignty of other nations that only want to live in peace.

We must also avoid using the danger and terrorism in the world today as an excuse for lack of regulation. Cicero’s famous phrase “silent enimleges inter armas” – among arms, laws are silent – has often been used to support the mind-set that the law does not apply during times of war.

But it is at times of war that the law must speak most bravely. When weapons are circulating freely into the worst possible hands, the law must speak. When the lives of the innocent are placed in danger by an absence of regulation, the law must speak.

via Opinion: Children of the World – We are Standing Watch for You | Inter Press Service.

“We’re fighting her lung cancer right now. She’s lost so much…

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“We’re fighting her lung cancer right now. She’s lost so much weight. We just moved to the sea so the air would be better. We had a close call the other night. I sleep in a different room because I don’t want to wake her with my snoring. But I woke up in the middle of the night and I could feel that something was wrong. I saw her shadow on the wall. I ran out to meet her in the hall, and she was gasping for her last breath. I had to give her an injection in the chest. If I hadn’t seen her shadow, we’d have lost her. Three years ago, the doctors told us that she only had six months. But God has given us three years. We take walks. We play backgammon. We look at photos of the grandchildren. I’m trying to cherish every moment.”

(Namakabroud, Iran)

via “We’re fighting her lung cancer right now. She’s lost so much….