Tag Archives: OddBox

Ted Cruz’s campaign is handing out bottled water in Flint — but only to anti-abortion groups

Ted Cruz’s campaign is handing out bottled water in Flint — but only to anti-abortion groups:

“While most other Republican presidential candidates are feigning ignorance on the devastating lead contamination of Flint’s water stream or doing their best to deflect criticism from Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder, Ted Cruz’s campaign is out on the ground helping the people impacted by the disaster — well, only some of the people.

Cruz’s Michigan state director Wendy Lynn Day announced this week that the campaign had coordinated with anti-abortion group Flint Right to Life to collect water bottles to be distributed only to crisis pregnancy centers in the area.”

What a sanctimonious prick. Fuck off forever, Ted.

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Bertha M. Furman instructing voters (LOC)

The Library of Congress posted a photo:

Bertha M. Furman instructing voters (LOC)

Bain News Service,, publisher.

Bertha M. Furman instructing voters

[between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920]

1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.

Notes:
Title from data provided by the Bain News Service on the negative.
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).

Format: Glass negatives.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, http://1.usa.gov/1D9d3AE

General information about the Bain Collection is available at http://1.usa.gov/1HWc8Jc

Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): http://1.usa.gov/1KuPXYK

Call Number: LC-B2- 4454-16

“I play the drums on the subway for about three hours per day….

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“I play the drums on the subway for about three hours per day. It’s like the matrix down here. A lot of bad energy. Everyone is rushing and tense and people don’t like to look at each other. So I’m trying to spread some positivity and keep people out of the zombie zone. Yesterday I was singing some Bob Marley and a man screamed at me to stop playing. I think he was bothered by my light. He got too close to the sun.“

Lebanon’s Government Is Destroying A Phoenician Beach In Adloun To Build A Port

  
About 15 minutes south of Saida is a small coastal Lebanese town in the South called Adloun. Most of us hadn’t heard of it before, but it’s actually one of the longest inhabited areas in our country with evidence pointing to human activity there around 70,000BC; it’s a little town filled with prehistoric caves and Phoenician ruins.

And those are not even what make it special.

Being a coastal town, Adloun has one of the few remaining beaches in the area that have not been privatized yet, and is now being actively destroyed by Lebanon’s government.

According to this study, the governmental project will affect the following areas of the beach:

  • The location of the prehistoric caves,
  • The location of an ancient Phoenician port,
  • The location of ancient Phoenician ruins and ornaments.

And, because that is not enough, our government will also do a little of land reclamation, effectively killing off one of the last remaining habitats for sea turtles in Lebanon, as well as affecting the ecology of the entire area with its diverse plants.

What is this governmental project that our government has been hell-bent for years to do, and are currently doing as you can see by the following pictures?

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Adloun Beach Lebanon - 7

They are building a port that is bigger than that of Saida and Sour, in a town that houses far less people, none of whom are fishermen who operate boats in the first place.

So what will the purpose of that port be? It’s going to be turned into a “touristic” yacht docking site for those who can afford yachts in the first place and who want to come to the area for visits. The town’s mayor says that is not the case. What is true, however, is that the port is officially named after “Nabih Berri.” Maybe our speaker of parliament wants a place closer to home to dock his boat?

As it is with Lebanon, the project is also riddled with corruption. The bidding process for the project was canceled once because the initial prices were deemed unacceptable before finally hiring Khoury Contracting at a fee around 1.66 million dollars higher than the one they offered in the initial bidding. I guess the ministry in question felt generous?

On January 15th, 2016, Khoury Contracting sent its bulldozers to the beach and started work without prior notification. They’re currently establishing access to the beach by digging up a road for more bulldozers to come and finish what’s already started.

Who Cares About Sea Turtles And Phoenician Stuff Anyway?

Good job Lebanon’s government. Those sea turtles can always find another country to go and become unwanted pests in. Those plants? Who needs them. It’s not like ecology or the environment matter anyway. Phoenicia? Do we really want some Lebanese to further cling to that unwanted part of our history?

Keeping a free beach for the people of the area to visit? Who’d want that as well, bring in the money!

Let them destroy the beach. Let them destroy everything as they’ve done to the country for years now. They’ve actively destroyed countless similar sites before, why not this one too? It’s not like anything is relevant when you have the prospects of a port named after a politician!

Let them destroy the beach. It’s better for that beach and for that heritage not to see how abysmal the country our ancestors called home has become à la famous saying: عين لا ترى، قلب لا يوجع.

For a government that has shown repeatedly how apt it is at failing, it should come as no wonder that they’d not only do such a thing but also make sure that it passes by unnoticed. 

For a government and people that went up in a fit about the destruction of heritage at the hands of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, how is this any difference? Or does our own history not matter enough because it’s not called Palmyra?

There has been no back to back coverage for Adloun’s heritage. Is it not juicy enough for Lebanon’s media because it cannot be spun into attractive بالصور and بالفيديو headlines?

Among the many travesties taking place in the country today, this is a massacre of heritage and environment. The sad part is? It’s too late to do anything now.

Say bye to the turtles; say bye to that ancient site. They were present in a country that didn’t deserve them anyway. 

 

Filed under: Lebanon Tagged: Adloun, Beach, corruption, Ecology, Environment, Government, heritage, Lebanon, Phoenician Site, South Lebanon

Brief Disorganized Ramblings

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Whenever I feel hurt by someone, I immediately turn to myself and only myself, to make sure I know I’m loved by this one person: me. I typically need to do an action after the inner check-in, such as leave the house, or take a shower plus do oil massage, or clean up a room… Just do something that is for me and only me.

These kinds of antagonistic situations leave me feeling extra isolated from the entire world (not just from the person who hurt me), but also feeling extra strong. I have this unshakeable sense of aloneness. It’s not to be confused with loneliness; I can’t remember the last time I felt lonely, it’s been years.

I feel deeply (and happily) removed from my family at an emotional level. I don’t have a sense of belonging, nor do I have a sense of wanting to belong. I just don’t care. 

I also feel numb when it comes to other human beings. They are like furniture in my everyday life; furniture that sometimes makes you a gift or sometimes talks shit behind your back, whatever, furniture in all cases. Irrelevant beings in my life. I can think of how a co-worker that I like and another one that I absolutely despise both gave me Christmas presents without me expecting it. I felt the exact same thing in both situations: first dread (“Why are you doing this? Now you want something back from me, bitch!”), then numb (“Pppfff whatever, I’m too tired to think or feel or anything”). I couldn’t care. I didn’t give them gifts because it didn’t feel honest to me. We’re not friends, and the moment this job ends we will never talk to each other again. Social interaction is weird to me. It’s like being surrounded by aliens I don’t understand. I can’t communicate, but what’s more: I don’t care. 

I also don’t have a sense of “fusion” with my partner, in that way that I see so many couples have. I don’t ask for his opinion about anything that I consider to be “mine”, such as career choices, creativity, style, clothes, my presentation to the world… things that have to do exclusively with my individual existence in this world. I find that he asks my opinion about almost everything. This is bizarre to me, so alien to how my brain works.

I experience myself as alone. And I feel most alive that way. The moment I feel like people want me to a part of their something, a light gets turned off inside me and the more they push, the dimmer my light gets, because it’s not real to me. What’s real is I am alone, depend only on myself, can count only on myself.

I’m not saying this is the universal truth. This is how I experience life.