Category Archives: Viva!

The Silencing of the Hillary Clinton Supporter | Dame Magazine

Over the past many months, I have spoken with many middle and lower-middle class women, who shared stories with me about why they voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, including a 34-year veteran school teacher who is so news-obsessed, she has her friends text her news alerts while she’s on vacation, and a 24-year-old college student who “kind of liked” Bernie until she realized that the U.S. was one of the few civilized countries that had never had a woman leader. We’ve seen the millions of women who took to the streets the day after the inauguration. We’ve learned that it’s older women who make most of the calls to Congress, and we have heard that nearly 13,000 women want to run for office since Hillary lost the election. All this while the media has mostly ignored the 90 percent of Black women—many of them lower, working, and middle class—who voted for Hillary. And yet, six months later, the media continues to fixate on the white working-class voters who didn’t cast theirs for her in the autopsy of the 2016 election.

Source: The Silencing of the Hillary Clinton Supporter | Dame Magazine

Olivia Newton-John puts tour on hold after breast cancer diagnosis | Music | The Guardian

The singer recovered from breast cancer 25 years ago and has devoted herself to helping others with the disease ever since.Last week, she cancelled planned meet-and-greet events for the upcoming concerts because of “severe back pain”.A statement posted on Facebook said: “Olivia Newton-John is reluctantly postponing her June US and Canadian concert tour dates.“The back pain that initially caused her to postpone the first half of her concert tour has turned out to be breast cancer that has metastasised to the sacrum.“In addition to natural wellness therapies, Olivia will complete a short course of photon radiation therapy and is confident she will be back later in the year, better than ever, to celebrate her shows.”Newton-John said: “I decided on my direction of therapies after consultation with my doctors and natural therapists and the medical team at my Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness and Research Centre in Melbourne.”

Source: Olivia Newton-John puts tour on hold after breast cancer diagnosis | Music | The Guardian

Broken and Brave, Still We Ride the Waves. | Rebelle Society

I feel you, Pain. You are hard. You are brutal. You make my knees buckle and my lungs heave. You slice me open and make me bleed. You are heavy. And cold. And dark. You offer not even a sliver of light. But, know this, Pain: I will survive you because I am filled up with light. The light of love given and received. Love is the golden thread that holds me together and warms me from the inside. It makes me solid. It makes me durable.It makes me believe in God and Goodness and Hope and Healing. You will not destroy me, Pain. You will devastate me. You will leave me ravaged and starving, but you will not destroy me. I will ache and break and simmer and rage and seethe and weep and grieve and then, in time,I will let you go.Because even you, Pain, are not meant to be forever.It all comes and it all goes. All of it.Life exists in waves. It undulates.

Source: Broken and Brave, Still We Ride the Waves. | Rebelle Society

Ramadan in Virtue: Fast and Furious

So sorry you had to fall out with your father or anyone else to stand for your beliefs. My hope is that upon “reflection,” he and others will love you for just being you and not who they might wish you be for them.

نادية حرحش


As every year, Ramadan comes with all the festivities that surrounds us in and out. It comes with all them memories of childhood and family unions. Lights, and long nights and above all, you see Jerusalem dressing in a festive mode.
As every year as well, and maybe as with every such occasion, it is important to take a pause and think, Contemplate, and reflect.
Ramadan is supposed to be the month of contemplation.
However, as every year, and as the situation in every similar occasion, we lose track of the meaning behind things and follow rigid rituals that end up in showing the worse in us.
I am someone who stopped fasting since years, partly in my way of protesting rules, and partly because I just cannot drink water. However, mostly because my relationship with the creator has taken a different shape, and above all, I learned that we…

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Joe Semaan: The Fraud Faking Being Lebanese Police To Abuse Foreign Maids

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

Meet Joe Semaan, another entity for us to add to the growing list of filth associated with Lebanon and whose mere existence is a waste of space, and an abomination to every single inch of advancement we’re trying to make in the many transgressions against human rights in this country.

I was told about Joe yesterday by a couple of activists who are trying to advance migrant worker rights in Lebanon, and highlighting the many transgressions against them as well as the immense repercussions that the abuse our law permits has on their well-being. It’s only yesterday that an Ethiopian maid committed suicide by jumping off the balcony of the 7th floor apartment where she was working. In fact, the rates of suicide and deaths of migrant workers in the country are worse than that and will be talking about them in a future post.

Returning to Joe, it seems that…

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Iran’s election: False hopes of a moderate path

Nervana

Iran elections photo

( Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei –via The Guardian) 

Last Friday, Iranians voted in the country’s presidential election, favoring current President Hassan Rouhani with 56.9% of the votes, defeating his hardliner rival Raisi, who scored only 38.5. Reformist candidates have also swept municipal elections in the Iranian capital, taking all 21 seats in Tehran. Following his victory, Rouhani pledged to open Iran to the world and deliver the freedom its people have yearned for. Rouhani’s re-election, however, will not inch the Islamic Republic towards a future moderate path.

The Islamic Republic has three major advantages over its Arab neighbours: It has no foreign patron; has never faced a humiliating military defeat; and its isolation has lowered the expectations of its citizens.

Iran has no foreign patron that demands or expects a softer stance. In fact, since the Mullahs ousted the late Shah of Iran, they have focused on being patrons…

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Egypt’s Come-to-Jesus Moment

salamamoussa

Copts_FuneralSamuel Tadros, a chronicler of modern Egypt and its Copts, opens his new op-ed for the New York Times with a passionate and moody warning from a friend:  “At this rate Copts will be extinct in 100 years. They will die, leave, convert or get killed”. Many Copts disagreed with this sentiment, both privately and publicly. There seems to be a serene faith that it is God’s plan for Egypt to remain a Christian country, and that no evil human plot can contradict that. In a 2013 review of Tadros’s book “Motherland lost” this blogger noted  “more painful than contemplating how Copts might fare when shorn of Egypt is the thought of how Egypt might fare when shorn of the Copts”. This still holds true. The very act of exterminating Christianity from Egypt will so painful, so wrenching, certainly for Copts, but more so for…

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PA… Betrayal is a state of mind

Sad beyond words – when the leaders of the communities succumb to the poison of racism and occupation.

نادية حرحش

Amad, A Palestinian News Agency, revealed today exchanges of letters between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government, through the channel of the coordination offices from both sides. The letters exposed the request of the PA to cut off the Electricity from Gaza, declaring that they will no longer pay the electricity bills concerning Gaza.
The exchange between the two sides that is clearly explained in the letters. I have to say it feels so shameful, embarrassing, I cannot but add that we had reached that day when betrayal became a state of mind.

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Uruguay, the first country where you can smoke marijuana wherever you like | Society | The Guardian

The registry was opened at the beginning of May. So far about 3,500 people (out of Uruguay’s population of 3.4 million) have signed up to buy marijuana at pharmacies. Additionally, since 2014 about 6,700 have signed up as home growers and 57 cannabis clubs have been set up, according to the government’s Cannabis Regulation and Control Institute.Despite the media attention, sales seem to be likely to get off to a slow start. “Only 30 of the country’s 1,000 pharmacies have signed up to sell marijuana so far,” says Alejandro Antalich, vice-president of the Uruguayan pharmacies association.“Our society can be conservative, resistant to change, so there is still uncertainty and many pharmacists are waiting to see how the system works before signing up to sell. There is also fear of reprisals against pharmacies from corner drug traffickers upset at losing their clients.”Castilla also has mixed feelings about the new law. “I would like to see full freedom to plant in your own home,” she says.Has she registered to plant or buy. “No, I haven’t.” Is she still growing at home? “Yes, I am.” Isn’t she afraid of falling foul of the new law? “I don’t think they’d dare come after me again,” says Castilla with a twinkle in her eye.

Source: Uruguay, the first country where you can smoke marijuana wherever you like | Society | The Guardian