Category: human rights
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Future Unknown~ Xinjiang
Future unknown~ heartbreaking news coming from Xinjiang about China holding over a million Uighur muslims in re-education centers for the purpose of removing their #faith which they label as a virus. History keeps repeating itself and we humans never seem to learn. Their most recent tactic is breaking up families whose strength and cohesion they…
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Romanticizing the killing machine~
When faced with a hot issue in the world like guns and the recent school shooting, it is a good idea to look at the simple facts. What are guns? Why do we have them? How did it all begin? The simple truth is that they are human fashioned killing machines. That is their sole…
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Don’t hold back the future~o
As I began to write my blog tonight, I received the breaking news notification of yet another horrible school shooting in America. How tragic to hold back the future by cruelly eliminating its ambassadors. Whatever the cause, whatever the trigger, how can this be prevented? How unnatural for a life to go before it’s reached…
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Them too~
The amazing speech of Oprah Winfrey at the Golden Globe awards is still resonating in me today with its powerful and poignant attention to the issues that women of the world face today and how it’s more than ever time for a radical change. She caused me to think of all the stories I have…
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The Complex Web of Greed~ Lebanon
I left my native Lebanon to New York City back in 1987. The war was still raging and the political and economic situations were highly unstable if not volatile. Today, almost 27 years later, the Lebanese struggle with rationed electricity, unstable economic and political situations, living on the brink of another war, receiving a flood of…
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adapting to a changing world
In today’s world, pollution is discussed in terms like high or low, toxic or just unhealthy, almost accepting it as a part of everyday life and forgetting to ask the basic question: why do we have to live with it?
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a future we never bargained for~ Shanghai
During the last few days, Shanghai was submerged in a large cloud of gray pollution that seemed to call over terms like ‘apocalypse’ and ‘end of days’ from many of its residents. A look of worry shrouded everyone’s face and all conversations centered around the same theme: the toxic smog. It felt so bizarre to…
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Derailed humanity~ Tokyo
The human story has its sad chapters; the ones that star as the unfortunate characters; the ones we look away from when we pass them in the streets. This post is for them; a gentle reminder…
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harsh realities~ Qibao
In Qibao, and old area of Shanghai, is a neighborhood(if you can call it that) of green lanes. Confronting realities wait there behind each door and in front of some where young women prepare to sell themselves for a living. As much as this practice is as old as civilization itself, it remains heartbreaking to…
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Love you~
أحبك “I love you” Reem is 9 years old. She is a Syrian refugee living in a camp in North Lebanon. I learned today that she lost both her parents in the recent conflicts. The only message written on her hand is : I love you