May 2012
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“It’s what life is. It’s a series of rooms and who we get stuck in...”
– Eve (played by Katheryn Winnick) on House, MD - Episode: One Day, One Room
April 2012
4 posts
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“Let’s face it. We’re undone by each other. And if we’re not, we’re missing...”
– Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (2004)
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“Anger and resentment can stop you in your tracks. That’s what I know now....”
– Lavender “Popeye” Wolfmeyer (Evan Rachel Wood) in The Upside of Anger, 2005
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“People don’t know how to love. They bite rather than kiss. They slap...”
– Lavender “Popeye” Wolfmeyer (Evan Rachel Wood) in The Upside of Anger, 2005
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What's the major contradiction facing activists...
On the one hand, we should applaud the courageous efforts of the many activists who are responsible for a new popular consciousness of violence against women, for a range of legal remedies, and for a network of shelters, crisis centers, and other sites where survivors are able to find support. But on the other hand, uncritical reliance on the government has resulted in serious problems. I suggest...
March 2012
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What's the Definition of a Survivor?
[…] A survivor: someone whose very effortless, instinctive act of breathing and functioning is elevated to a status, a badge of abiding sustenance. You are no longer merely living, like all the other breathing, eating, defecating people around you. You have lived through something, and that notion of being a survivor will always remind you that your life is now clustered in some quantum way...
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How Technology Changes Our Relationships
[…] Through text messages, social networks and emails […] we learn to edit ourselves. We do not have to reveal as much as we do in-person or via phone. We don’t have to feel as vulnerable, knowing that there is always a screen to hide behind. Actual real relationships with others are far more complex than that, however.
“Human relationships are rich, and they’re...
February 2012
2 posts
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“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and...”
– Orson Welles
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On the Hypocrisy of US Politics
The US thinks the recent Chinese-Russian veto on a UN resolution on Syria is “disgusting”, “shameful”, “deplorable” and “a travesty”. What does that make its veto on over 50 resolutions against atrocities and violations, which it often supported and/or bankrolled?
January 2012
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How to Measure the Significance of Human Rights
“[…] we do not measure the significance of human rights by how much we need them to survive. We measure them by how strongly those in power oppose them. Judging by how strongly our societies, religions and states oppress sexual rights, there must be something incredibly powerful about them. We must then be even more stubborn in demanding them […]”
- Excerpt from the article “Something Phenomenal...
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Lebanese Men and Women Protest against Rape →
On January 14, 2012, hundreds of people defied the rain and took to the streets of Beirut to protest against rape.
Protesters marched from Sanayeh to Riad El Solh square in Downtown Beirut, where security officers cordoned off the area to prevent them from reaching the Lebanese Parliament.
As the crowds gathered in the square, organizers read statements that called upon the Lebanese...
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Notes on why marital rape isn't accepted in...
“[…] the acceptance of marital rape has little to do with “Lebanese” or “Arab” culture, and it cannot solely be blamed on the supposed backwardness of religious authorities. It cannot be attributed to some inherent darkness within Islam, as it so often is. In fact feminists across the world, from all different religions (in addition to atheists) and “cultures,” have fought the same battle...
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Why does the myth that Lebanese women are the...
“[…] much of the evidence seems to come from the idea that all Lebanese women walk around wearing short skirts, going to the beach in bikinis, and clubbing until the morning. Within this conception of women’s rights, then, it is the fact that Lebanese women’s bodies are exposed that is the greatest factor for whether they are free or not.
This misogynistic conceptualization of women’s...
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“If you think you’re good people, and if you are, how would you know? Is it...”
– Jen Wang, author of Koko Be Good
November 2011
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October 2011
1 post
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“As a Jew, I was taught that it was ethically imperative to speak up and to speak...”
– Judith Butler
September 2011
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What Is Intersectionality?
Intersectionality is a sociological theory suggesting that—and seeking to examine how—various socially and culturally constructed categories of discrimination interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to systematic social inequality.
Intersectionality holds that the classical models of oppression within society, such as those based on race/ethnicity, gender, religion,...
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“The world impoverishes itself much more through blocking international migration...”
– Michael A Clemens, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he leads the migration and development initiative
August 2011
4 posts
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“The struggle against starvation, violence and disease is also the struggle to...”
– Dan Hind, author of The Return of the Public
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“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing...”
– Anais Nin
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July 2011
6 posts
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“Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a...”
– Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990)
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“[…] This is the power of “queering” – the power of questioning norms, of...”
– Rasha Moumneh, Researcher in the Middle East/North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch
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“People aren’t ours to keep. Driven by love, hate and everything in between and...”
– My Musings
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“Power moves in a current through multiple registers and it is expressed by...”
– Maya Mikdashi, co-founder of Jadaliyya Ezine
June 2011
2 posts
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“The social animals that we are, sometimes socializing doesn’t come so...”
– My Musings
May 2011
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March Calling For The Adoption Of A Law... →
On May 29, 2011, hundreds of activists from various civil society organizations, and representatives of political parties marched from the Interior Ministry in Sanayeh to Riad al-Solh Square in downtown Beirut, calling for the speedy adoption of a draft law criminalizing domestic violence that is currently being discussed by the parliamentary committee.
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Top 6 sites that inspire and educate →
Review of the best six sites that intellectually stimulate readers and help them keep up with the latest news and breaking trends on topics ranging from business and technology to art and design - Chosen by Life Scoop
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“Compromises are nothing more than a band-aid on a festering wound. No sooner do...”
– My Musings
April 2011
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What Is Sharia?
“It is, in its most bland definition, the moral cosmology that is meant to saturate and legislate shared life in Muslim communities. In the Lebanese state, the sharia is the muslim personal status laws, in Iran it is the spirit and much of the content of the legal system, in Saudi Arabia it is what the state says it is, and in the minds of many Islamists throughout the world, it is the utopia that...
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“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new,...”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
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“There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing...”
– Andrew Carnegie
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“All I care about is resistance. I’m not doing art for the sake of art. I...”
– Juliano Mer-Khamis, co-founder and artistic director of The Jenin Freedom Theater, who was shot dead by a masked gunman outside the theater on April 4, 2011.
March 2011
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“Cowed by the Pentagon and its partners in the Arab lobby, the Obama...”
– Nick Turse, historian, essayist, investigative journalist, associate editor of TomDispatch.com, and currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute
February 2011
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“The world now is watching a massacre, and history will hold the international...”
– Hisham Matar, a renowned Libyan novelist, on Muammar al-Gaddafi’s violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in Libya
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“Israel: 80 million Egyptians and 6 million Jordanians should not be paying for...”
– Lina Mounzer
January 2011
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Carlos Latuff Draws Revolts →
A selection of political cartoonist Carlos Latuff’s cartoons, reflecting on the ongoing revolts in Tunisia, and the recent uprising in Egypt, as well as Al Jazeera’s release of The Palestine Papers, the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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“Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators’ repression.”
– Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
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Women of the Revolution in Egypt →
A photo album featuring images of women in the revolution in Egypt, which began with mass anti-government protests on January 25, 2011.
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Definition of Israel
Q: What is Israel?
A: Israel is a colonial undertaking, conceived in Europe, midwifed by Great Britain, coddled by Washington, and imposed on an Arab region which it colonizes itself through settlements and industrial zones on Palestinian land it has occupied militarily since 1967.