H5N8 found in more wild birds in US, Sweden | CIDRAP

H5N8 found in more wild birds in US, Sweden | CIDRAP.

If wild birds were source of avian influenza – all poultry would be dead by now. Highly industrialized poultry farming and the use of live markets in many nations has provided the incubation laboratory for avian influenza and the incidental infection of wild birds. Humans blaming anything but themselves for creating the problem that now endangers both farming and humans, as well as birds in nature.

On Lebanese Racists: The Guy Who Wouldn’t Shake Hands With A Black Person Because He’s Afraid To Get The Color

Sadly, this attitude continues around the globe – not just Lebanon. When will we humans grow up?

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

It started off like any other Sunday on Twitter. The masses decide to go for an afternoon trend to entertain their boredom and everyone seems to jump on it. This Sunday’s top trending topic worldwide was #Confessions. Naturally, people jumped on it to divulge their deepest heart’s secrets to the millions out there ignoring them.

One of those was a fellow Lebanese citizen who goes by the name Think Sultan, ironic as that handle might be, with a sizeable 4.6K Twitter following. At first, his confessions were simple:

And then, because Sultan felt very at ease probably, he decided to drop his magnum opus:

ThinkSultan racist tweet - 1 He “may” sound racist, you guys.

Of course, the tweet didn’t exactly pass under the radar. Anis Tabet of Let’s Talk About Movies was appalled and expressed his disgust at what he read, to which Sultan replied with the following brilliant notion:

ThinkSultan racist tweet - 2

He can’t be serious, right?

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In One-Woman Show, Arafat Protégée Offers Personal Take on Conflict – NYTimes.com

With that story began the sold-out closing performance last week of the autobiographical one-woman show “Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali,” written and performed by the Palestinian writer Raeda Taha and directed by Lina Abyad at the Babel Theater in Beirut.

Ms. Taha’s show has drawn large crowds and critical acclaim since it opened here last month because of its deeply personal and often ironic take on a life shaped by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ms. Taha’s pedigree gives her a rare tie to the Palestinian struggle: her father was a militant killed by Israeli commandos after hijacking an airplane in 1972. Mr. Arafat then virtually adopted her and her sisters, lavishing them with gifts as the daughters of a “martyr.” As an adult, she worked as Mr. Arafat’s press secretary.

via In One-Woman Show, Arafat Protégée Offers Personal Take on Conflict – NYTimes.com.

RIP – Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91 – NYTimes.com

Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father and first prime minister of Singapore who transformed that tiny island outpost into one of the wealthiest and least corrupt countries in Asia, died on Monday morning. He was 91.

via Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father and First Premier of Singapore, Dies at 91 – NYTimes.com.

Egyptian Aak 2015 – Week 12 ( March 16 – 22)

Nervana

CAiYshgWQAAqrn7.jpg-large

( Solar eclipse as viewed from Cairo, via Mada Masr)

Main Headlines

 Monday 

 Tuesday

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I am not a mechanism

Zen Flash

https://humansofvictoria.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/tales-6am.jpg

Contributed by Pennie

‘I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections. And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill.I am ill because of the wounds to the soul,to the deep emotional self and the wounds to the soul take a long ,long time. Only time can help and patience and a certain difficult repentance, long difficult repentance,realization of life’s mistakes and the freeing oneself of the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind has chosen to sanctify.’

D.H.Lawrence

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Greek Study Provides Evidence of Forced Loans to Nazis – SPIEGEL ONLINE

The central question in the report is that of forced loans the Nazi occupiers extorted from the Greek central bank beginning in 1941. Should requests for repayment of those loans be classified as reparation demands — demands that may have been forfeited with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of 1990? Or is it a genuine loan that must be paid back? The expert commission analyzed contracts and agreements from the time of the occupation as well as receipts, remittance slips and bank statements.

They found that the forced loans do not fit into the category of classical war reparations. The commission calculated the outstanding German “debt” to the Greek central bank and came to a total sum of $12.8 billion as of December 2014, which would amount to about €11 billion.

As such, at issue between Germany and Greece is no longer just the question as to whether the 115 million deutsche marks paid to the Greek government from 1961 onwards for its peoples’ suffering during the occupation sufficed as legal compensation for the massacres like those in the villages of Distomo and Kalavrita. Now the key issue is whether the successor to the German Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, is responsible for paying back loans extorted by the Nazi occupiers. There’s some evidence to indicate that this may be the case.

In terms of the amount of the loan debt, the Greek auditors have come to almost the same findings as those of the Nazis’ bookkeepers shortly before the end of the war. Hitler’s auditors estimated 26 days before the war’s end that the “outstanding debt” the Reich owed to Greece at 476 million Reichsmarks.

Auditors in Athens calculated an “open credit line” for the same period of time of around $213 million. They assumed a dollar exchange rate to the Reichsmark of 2:1 and applied an interest escalation clause accepted by the German occupiers that would result in a value of more than €11 billion today.

via Greek Study Provides Evidence of Forced Loans to Nazis – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Lebanese Mothers Who Make Lebanon Proud Today

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

Like every year, when Mother’s Day turns up, your social media channels get flooded with pictures of your friends with their mothers, Facebook statuses to announce unending love and gratitude (before they go piss off their mother the following day), and endless messaging among siblings to find that perfect gift.

I’ve written many of those posts on this blog before. You can check those here and here in case you feel like it. This year around, however, I figured the best way to increase the relevance of Mother’s Day is to highlight Lebanese mothers who have shaped the country as we know it today.

The list is not extensive nor is it exhaustive.  The following women are from different domains and are on this list for different reasons, but they all share something in common: they’ve proven that motherhood serves to add, not define who women are, especially in a…

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Death Penalty Focus : Pope Francis Condemns the Death Penalty

Capital punishment “is cruel, inhuman and degrading, as is the anxiety that precedes the moment of execution and the terrible wait between the sentence and the application of the punishment, a ‘torture’ which, in the name of a just process, usually lasts many years and, in awaiting death, leads to sickness and insanity.”

via Death Penalty Focus : Pope Francis Condemns the Death Penalty.

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