As news of the attacks spread, dozens of my Syrian friends, most of whom I have met while they are living as refugees in Lebanon, were changing their profile pictures to the French flag, expressing genuine sympathy—and solidarity—with the people of Paris.One friend, a former tour guide in Palmyra—the oasis of ancient ruins in the Syrian desert that was a UNESCO world heritage site and popular tourist destination before it was recently plundered by the Islamic State—changed his profile picture to an image of the French tricolor superimposed over the ancient city that he once called home.“We had to flee ISIS in Tadmur,” he says, using the Arabic name for Palmyra. “Now France has a taste of how we felt.”Just the day before, I had been having coffee near the memorial at Republique with Bashar, a Syrian refugee who sought asylum in Paris around a year and a half ago. We were talking about whether or not the recent attacks would affect refugee policy in Paris when suddenly, a panicked crowd started running for the café, toppling tables and frantically diving down the stairwell, startled by what turned out to be fireworks, set off at the wrong time.“I felt so bad for the people of Paris,” said Bashar, as we waited inside of the restaurant’s basement kitchen to find out what was going on, and whether or not the coast was clear.“I know how it feels because we had to face so much of this in Syria.”
Monthly Archives: November 2015
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Recalled Products Sold by Home Depot After Recalls Were Announced | CPSC.gov
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Home Depot are warning consumers that 28 different recalled products continued to be sold by Home Depot after they were recalled between 2012 and 2015. This involves about 2,310 units of recalled products, including about 1,300 sold by Home Depot to consumers and 1,010 sent by Home Depot to salvagers or recyclers who could have sold them to consumers. Consumers should stop using the recalled products immediately and contact the recalling firms to receive the remedies listed in the recall, which is either a refund, replacement or repair.
Source: Recalled Products Sold by Home Depot After Recalls Were Announced | CPSC.gov
The Un-American Politics of Rejecting Refugees | GOOD
This obstructionism is pointless. The refugees are coming to America—as they should. Seven states to date (Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington) have vowed to cooperate with resettlement plans. And once those refugees are in the United States, they have the ability to freely travel within the nation and to relocate wherever they may so choose. That means that these bans, even if they were legal, would do nothing whatsoever to stop potentially bad-actor refugees (who, given our vetting procedures, are unlikely to get into the nation in the first place).These refugee bans make no sense. They fail to recognize how dissimilar the U.S. situation is from Europe’s ordeal. They fail to recognize American legal realities. But more than any of that, as numerous politicians have pointed out, they betray fundamental American values of inclusivity and refuge. They shirk our moral responsibility to aid those displaced by a conflict that has killed 250,000, destroyed a nation, and for which we are at least partially responsible by merit of our chronically misguided and shortsighted Middle Eastern politics. (Americans often balk at that notion, but the sooner we own our culpability, the better it will be for us and for the world, now and in the view of history.) And, coming as they do alongside calls for tighter monitoring of Islamic communities in the States and implicit calls for religious or ethnic tests on migrants, they reek of a deep Islamophobia. Given that the vast majority of the Paris attackers were Europeans, and given the acknowledged presence of a massive homegrown terrorist front in Europe (consisting of white radicals and Muslim extremists), it’s bizarre that we’ve chosen to restrict entrance to Syrian refugees and not to Belgian or French citizens.
Source: The Un-American Politics of Rejecting Refugees | GOOD
www.german-foreign-policy.com German media pushing WWIII
The current front of Germany’s major national media, orchestrating domestic public opinion and publicistically habituating the population to a “World War” has been broken by a renowned business magazine. Gabor Steingart, Chief Editor of the German Handelsblatt warns, “the West shares the blame for the hostile climate between the cultures.” “Of the 1.3 million lives that the wars from Afghanistan to Syria have cost, the crusade against Iraq, waged under false pretenses – and therefore in violation of international law – alone, accounts so far for 800,000 dead,” explains Steingart. “The majority of these victims were peaceful Muslims – not terrorists.” “The automatism of severity and mercilessness, the premeditated incomprehension of one’s counterpart, the fiery speeches for the respective populations at home, the rapid take-off of bomber squadrons” have “brought us to where we are today.” “This is not how you stop terrorism; this is how you fan its flames. This is not how you obtain peace; this is how you spawn suicide bombers.” In the future, rather than banking on “combat or capitulation,” we should promote “order, respect, and moderation.” “There are alternatives to military escalation.”[13] Among the leading personalities of the German mainstream media, Steingart stands alone with his warning.
Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com
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Protest march of women workers for higher wages, and against male domination in trade union politics in tea plantations at Munnar in southern Indian state of Kerala. Credit: K.S. Harikrishnan/IPS
IPS Inter Press Service posted a photo:
Protest march of women workers for higher wages, and against male domination in trade union politics in tea plantations at Munnar in southern Indian state of Kerala. Credit: K.S. Harikrishnan/IPS
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