All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Adele’s ’25’ Set to Break One-Week U.S. Album Sales Record; Sold Over 900K at iTunes First Day

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Adele’s ’25’ appears set to break *NSYNC’s long-standing one-week Nielsen-era U.S. album sales record of 2.42 million sold.

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Humans of New York

“I came from Malaysia as part of a work-study program where I worked as an au pair. The company assigns you to an American family, and you take care of the children and do ‘light housework’ in exchange for a place to live and $195 per week. My first year was with a family in Connecticut. They were very nice to me. But when they moved away I was assigned to a family outside of Boston. It was a very difficult year for me. I had no car, no friends, and no activities. I was supposed to have free time while the kids were at school, but the mother would always cut it short so I could do laundry or start cooking meals. She criticized everything I did. One time she asked me to wash winter coats during my free time, and then got mad when I didn’t do it right away—even though it was during the summer. She treated me like an employee, but then gave me extra chores because I was ‘part of the family.’ I even had to take care of the pets. I felt trapped because the company made it extremely difficult to get reassigned. My only other choice was to go back home. But I was lucky, I guess. A lot of my friends in the program had it worse.”

Source: Humans of New York

The Refugees of Roanoke – The New York Times

More than a decade later, none of that has come to pass. Today, Roanoke’s biggest festival is a celebration of diversity called Local Colors. Pearl Fu, the Chinese immigrant who spearheaded its creation, is known for greeting every foreign-born stranger she sees at the grocery store with, “Hi, where you from?” Roanoke is now a place where you can hear a dozen languages spoken at the bus stop at the end of my street.You can also hear a lot of sad stories. Most of the Somalis spent years in camps awaiting U.S.R.P. approval. A Somali Bantu eighth grader I met in 2005 spent the first 12 years of his life in one of those camps, in Kenya. His mother was a widow; his father had been killed when the civil war came to his village in 1992. “Some day a soldier came and said, ‘Give me your money,’ and he did not have no money. So they killed him,” he told me. Here in the United States, he got in a fight at school after an African-American teen chided him for being “too black.” Because he spoke English, he did all his family’s grocery shopping and was responsible for writing their rent and utility checks.

Source: The Refugees of Roanoke – The New York Times

“Death to Arabs” sprayed on Palestinian houses by israeli settlers. | PNN

Overnight this last Thursday, Israeli settlers raided the Palestinian village of al-Mazraa al-Qabalia northwest of Ramallah area and vandalized two Palestinian houses.The israeli settlers sprayed racist graffiti saying “Death to Arabs”in Hebrew on the houses walls and broke several windows, according to the israeli news website The Times of Israel. Israeli police have said that they are investigating the attack.According to the israeli media, “the vandalism may have been part of a series of so-called price tag hate-crime attacks, usually arson and graffiti, which are used by Jewish extremists to target non-Jews — including homes, churches and mosques — as revenge for actions by Israeli officials and for Palestinian terror attacks”.

Source: “Death to Arabs” sprayed on Palestinian houses by israeli settlers. | PNN

‘There is a massive paranoia’: UK Muslims on life after Paris | World news | The Guardian

Omar Raza was walking near his home in Glasgow’s south side when he was confronted by three men hurling racist abuse, calling him a “fucking Paki” and accusing him of funding Islamic State.“It was three against one, so I tried to defuse the situation and walk past them. But I was suddenly attacked from behind and put in a head lock.” Raza was kicked to the ground and the bag he was carrying upturned and its contents strewn across the pavement, before his attackers ran off.“It all happened so quickly,” he told the Guardian on Thursday ahead of Friday prayers at Glasgow Central mosque. “Of course I’ve been the victim of hate speech before, but never a physical assault. You hear a lot of stories from down south but the south side of Glasgow is supposed to be a diverse community. It’s obvious that what’s going on [in Paris] is seeping into society and a lot of people are acting on half-truths.”

Source: ‘There is a massive paranoia’: UK Muslims on life after Paris | World news | The Guardian

Everyday slights are just as harmful to women as more blatant sexism | Jessica Valenti | Comment is free | The Guardian

Just because some kinds of sexism aren’t obvious, though, doesn’t mean that they aren’t horrible. Julia Cheiffetz, then a books editor at Amazon (she edited my last book), was diagnosed with cancer in 2013, just six weeks after giving birth to her daughter. After getting surgery for the disease, Cheiffetz got a form letter informing her that her health insurance was terminated. She was told it was a “glitch”. When she returned to work after maternity leave, Cheiffetz recounts, she was slowly sidelined.Being “mommy-tracked” – passive aggressively forced to leave your job once you have children – is not new or uncommon. But like other forms of more silent sexism, it’s hard to prove. Of course, even when women do have hard evidence of work discrimination, they’re dismissed: when Evans brought up pay disparity to a male superior at Gawker she wrote that she was told not to “dick-measure over salary”.

Source: Everyday slights are just as harmful to women as more blatant sexism | Jessica Valenti | Comment is free | The Guardian

‘Americans saved my life’: former refugees from Iraq perplexed by US fears | World news | The Guardian

As one of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds displaced by the Persian Gulf war, Sindi knows firsthand the plight of refugees fleeing conflict and recalls as though it were yesterday the sense of desperation looming over temporary resettlement camps.Sindi remembers the daily uncertainty confronted by his family when placed at a refugee camp lacking the most basic of resources. The image of food and supplies airdropped by American planes under Operation Provide Comfort stays with him to this day – it was what motivated Sindi to accept two deployments training and advising US troops after the country’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.“Americans saved my life,” Sindi told the Guardian. “And so I worked with them and returned the favor.”After gaining US citizenship in 2006, he went on to spend four years in Iraq, from 2009 to 2012. There, Sindi served as an interpreter for the US military and in the security detail for vice-president Joe Biden and senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham during their trips to Erbil.To Sindi, his story is about more than goodwill toward the country he has now called home for two decades. It’s about the trust placed in him, a native of Zakho, Iraq, by the US government.“I was a refugee, I came from nowhere, and I reached the point where I could be in a convoy with the vice-president of America in Iraq,” Sindi said.

Source: ‘Americans saved my life’: former refugees from Iraq perplexed by US fears | World news | The Guardian