From Beirut, This Is Paris: In A World That Doesn’t Care About Arab Lives 

When my people died, they did not send the world in mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.

And you know what, I’m fine with all of it. Over the past year or so, I’ve come to terms with being one of those whose lives don’t matter. I’ve come to accept it and live with it.

Expect the next few days to exhibit yet another rise of Islamophobia around the world. Expect pieces about how extremism has no religion and about how the members of ISIS are not true Muslims, and they sure are not, because no person with any inkling of morality would do such things. ISIS plans for Islamophobic backlashes so it can use the backlash to point its hellish finger and tell any susceptible mind that listens: look, they hate you.

And few are those who are able to rise above.

Expect the next few days to have Europe try and cope with a growing popular backlash against the refugees flowing into its lands, pointing its fingers at them and accusing them of causing the night of November 13th in Paris. If only Europe knew, though, that the night of November 13 in Paris has been every single night of the life of those refugees for the past two years. But sleepless nights only matter when your country can get the whole world to light up in its flag color.

The more horrifying part of the reaction to the Paris terrorist attacks, however, is that some Arabs and Lebanese were more saddened by what was taking place there than what took place yesterday or the day before in their own backyards. Even among my people, there is a sense that we are not as important, that our lives are not as worthy and that, even as little as it may be, we do not deserve to have our dead collectively mourned and prayed for.

It makes sense, perhaps, in the grand sense of a Lebanese population that’s more likely to visit Paris than Dahyeh to care more about the former than about the latter, but many of the people I know who are utterly devastated by the Parisian mayhem couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what took place at a location 15 minutes away from where they lived, to people they probably encountered one day as they walked down familiar streets.

We can ask for the world to think Beirut is as important as Paris, or for Facebook to add a “safety check” button for us to use daily, or for people to care about us. But the truth of the matter is, we are a people that doesn’t care about itself to begin. We call it habituation, but it’s really not. We call it the new normal, but if this normality then let it go to hell.

In the world that doesn’t care about Arab lives, Arabs lead the front lines.

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares


When a friend told me past midnight to check the news about Paris, I had no idea that I would be looking at a map of a city I love, delineating locations undergoing terrorist attacks simultaneously. I zoomed in on that map closer; one of the locations was right to where I had stayed when I was there in 2013, down that same boulevard.

The more I read, the higher the number of fatalities went. It was horrible; it was dehumanizing; it was utterly and irrevocably hopeless: 2015 was ending the way it started – with terrorists attack occuring in Lebanon and France almost at the same time, in the same context of demented creatures spreading hate and fear and death wherever they went.

I woke up this morning to two broken cities. My friends in Paris who only yesterday were asking what was happening in Beirut were now on the opposite side…

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WHY THERE IS NO ONE WAY TO BE BLACK

Dixon nails it!

First you Survive/ Then you Thrive

And if I rebel against anything, it’s the notion that there is one real way to be black. ~ Jonathan CapehartIMG_1559
History: WHY THERE IS NO SINGLE WAY TO BE BLACK AND THERE NEVER HAS BEEN.

the African Diaspora includes for most Black Americans the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. Human Beings were stolen, kidnapped from the Continent of Africa. The Gold coast and the Grain Coast is the location for modern African countries such as Ghana, Togo and Benin. Other countries from which people were taken against their will were Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Angola.sources of tranatlantic slave trade

Would you condemn an Italian who was indifferent to an Irishman?
but you want all Black people to think and act as one.africa slave_trade_1650-1860_

and lets look at the ethnic communities within these countries.
Nigeria is composed of more than 250 ethnic groups. The most populous and politically influential groups are: Hausa and Fulani…

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Tribes Unanimously Reject Feds “Sham” Consultation Webinar on Sacred Grizzly Delisting and Stand with GOAL on Boycott Call

Tribal nations opposed to the delisting and trophy hunting of the Yellowstone grizzly bear today rejected the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) latest attempt to present itself as proactive on consulting with tribes on the issue. The approximately fifty tribal nations that have issued resolutions and declarations against removing federal protections from the grizzly and placing its future in the hands of states that intend to open trophy hunts on the bear, unanimously boycotted FWS’s webinar.

Source: Tribes Unanimously Reject Feds “Sham” Consultation Webinar on Sacred Grizzly Delisting and Stand with GOAL on Boycott Call

Monarch butterfly population likely to quadruple, says Mexico | News | DW.COM | 13.11.2015

“We estimate that the butterfly population that arrives at the reserve is as much as three and could reach four times the surface area it occupied last season,” Mexican Environment Secretary Rafael Pacchiano said at a press conference at the Piedra Herrada monarch reserve.Monarch populations have witnessed a steady plunge of nearly 90 percent since their peak, hitting roughly 35 million between 2013 and 2014, a stark contrast to around one billion in the mid-1990s.US Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, who addressed reporters alongside Pacchiano, said that the North American countries are making concerted efforts to impede illegal logging and plant more milkweeds, which the monarch butterflies use to produce offspring.

Source: Monarch butterfly population likely to quadruple, says Mexico | News | DW.COM | 13.11.2015

Taslima Nasreen: ′Wahhabism has invaded Bangladesh′ | Asia | DW.COM | 13.11.2015

For the past 21 years, Nasreen has been living in exile in various countries, including India, Sweden, Germany and the United States.Due to her criticism of Islam, multiple fatwas have been issued against the author calling for her assassination. Still, 53-year-old Nasreen doesn’t mince her words when she talks about freedom of expression and the rise of religious fundamentalism in Bangladesh.The South Asian nation has been afflicted by rising Islamist violence in recent months. Extremists have been blamed for the killings of at least four atheist bloggers and a publisher since the start of this year.In an exclusive DW interview, Nasreen, who recently returned to India from the US, talks about the shrinking space for free thinkers in Bangladesh and said that Islam cannot be exempt from the critical scrutiny that other religions go through.Nasreen also believes Bangladesh will be headed for a complete disaster if the government fails to bring Islamic terrorists to justice.

Source: Taslima Nasreen: ′Wahhabism has invaded Bangladesh′ | Asia | DW.COM | 13.11.2015

EU report declares glyphosate herbicides safe despite UN results | News | DW.COM | 13.11.2015 {The “fix” is in – follow the money!}

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said glyphosate, a key ingredient in the Monsanto-made herbicide Roundup, is unlikely to cause cancer in humans through a report on Thursday.The agency advises the European Commission and its report could lead the 28-member European Union to renew approval of the herbicide. Back in March, the UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) had classified products containing glyphosate as “probably” carcinogenic.The EFSA is proposing to set a higher safe limit of human exposure to glyphosate, at 0.5 milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight. The previous EU evaluation had set an acceptable daily intake of 0.3 milligrams per kg of body weight.

Source: EU report declares glyphosate herbicides safe despite UN results | News | DW.COM | 13.11.2015

23 Vintage Photos that Show What Summer Fun Looked Like before the Internet

No matter how many apps are available to kids today, summertime fun remains at its core about one thing: cooling off under the blazing sun. As these vintage photos from early 1900s to the 1970s show, nothing compares to the Internet-free experience of jumping into the water and splashing around with your friends. Play on, kids.

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Children in the beach, the great paving stones, Seine-Maritime, France, 1909

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Child playing in a Dinosaur imprint, U.S., 1945

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Four children squat on rocks at edge of stream, mountains in background, U.S., 1905

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Little boys playing with a hand-drawn cart made out of a crate in the shallow waters of the River Thames, June 6, 1925

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Two girls fishing at weekend, Germany, 1927

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One-Third of Papua New Gineans Suffering Drought Crisis

An estimated one-third of the population of Papua New Guinea, the most populous Pacific Island state, is now suffering in from the country’s worst drought this century and experts predict El Nino’s influence will carry on through March 2016. Dickson Guina, Chairman of the National Disaster Committee, told IPS that 2.4 million people across most […]

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