Category Archives: Uncategorized

Kobani: A Victim Of Our Sins

Nervana

Kobane1_2

(Photo via Mother Jones)

The city of Kobani is falling in front of our eyes. The black flags of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have been slowly spreading above the buildings of this unfortunate Kurdish town in northern Syria. Sooner or later the resistance of the Kurdish fighters that are currently heroically trying to defend Kobani will crumble against an avalanche of medieval barbarism from ISIS, which is doubly fortified with modern weaponry. The tragedy of Kobani may seem irrelevant in the wider context of the turbulent Middle East, however, it highlights clearly the flawed thinking process of many in the Arab world, and alarmingly also in Turkey.

 Selective outrage

 Compare the muted response to the beheading of female Kurdish fighters, or the rape and forced marriages of Yazidi women by ISIS fighters to the loud, angry responses that have ___ rightly___ erupted following the…

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Throwback Thursday: My first 5K in 2007

Need a side by side shot for comparison – grin. Good on you continuously!

Fit and Feminist

moffittTomorrow is my 35th birthday, and as it’s a bit of a milestone – no longer able to make those “35 under 35” lists, definitely no longer a wunderkind – I’ve been doing a lot of the kind of thinking that I guess you could describe as contemplative.  I think it’s always good to periodically take stock of where you’ve been and what that’s meant and how you might proceed going forward, don’t you?

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to write about this photo for a while, and I figured today would be a good day for that.  The photo shows me just before I’m about to cross the finish line of my very first 5K, in Tampa back in May 2007.  Prior to this race, I hadn’t managed to run more than two miles nonstop, and yet somehow on this particular morning – most likely due to Brian’s encouragement – …

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If You Don’t Vote….Republicans Taking Away Health Care From Millions Of Americans – ‘Republicans Eye Obamacare Showdown in Lame Duck’

Going down for the last time to kill America to satisfy their collective self-delusion that it needs killing.

The Last Of The Millenniums

taking away health care

Don’t offer even 1 piece of legislation to help people without health
care coverage – just take it away.

Republican American Exceptionalism.

‘Updated 5:22 p.m. | A group of Senate Republicans have their eye on
another Obamacare showdown in the lame-duck session’.

‘The 14 Republicans, led by Marco Rubio of Florida, wrote a letter
urging Speaker John A. Boehner to ”prohibit the Obama administration”
from spending money on an “Obamacare taxpayer bailout.”

They point to a legal opinion from the Government Accountability
Office that said additional funding authority would be needed to make
payments to insurance companies under the risk-corridor component of
the Obamacare health care exchanges’.

‘The Republicans say taxpayers
could be on the hook for bailing out insurance companies that suffer
losses’.

“Without that appropriation, any money spent to cover insurance
company losses under the risk corridor program would be unlawful,”
the senators wrote to Boehner, later…

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Teaching A Love of the Environment: The LASCO Rootz REAP Program

Petchary's Blog

Last Friday, October 3 I had the great honor of speaking at the launch of the LASCO Rootz R.E.A.P. Program (R.E.A.P. = Releaf Environmental Awareness Program) at the St. Jago Cathedral Preparatory School in Spanish Town. I was also interviewed on Hot 102 FM, which was fun! I thought I would share my speech with you. I also wrote about the event on my Jamaica Gleaner blog page, “Social Impact,” here: http://gleanerblogs.com/socialimpact/?p=2259

Congratulations to all involved! For more information and to learn how schools can participate, please read my Social Impact blog and look them up on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you, Mr. Hall. Councilor Claude Hamilton, representing the Mayor of Spanish Town; Member of Parliament for St. Catherine Eastern Dr. Denise Daley; President of the Jamaica Independent Schools’ Association Pastor Wesley Boynes; Mr. Stephen Newland, Project Director, Releaf Foundation; Representatives of LASCO; Principal of St. Jago Cathedral Preparatory School Ms. Andrea Baugh, and the awesome Ms…

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