Jun 30, 2013

Why I would rather live in Gaza than Egypt, my birthplace

Like
Dislike

Ahmed Aldabba 1 hour agoPolitics Egypt Israel

The hell of Gaza is better that the paradise of Egypt: This could be hard to believe since Gaza has a reputation of being unsafe, but this is the conclusion I have reached after searching for a safer place to live with my wife and baby boy.

How could this be? Just two years ago, Egypt appeared to some to be on the cusp of an exciting democratic revolution, which would bring more power to the people and give them the freedom Arabs across the Middle East have been yearning for after half a century of Western-backed dictators.

Instead, on my nine visits since then, I have found the country so changed for the worse that I would rather live in a tiny coastal territory with no sovereignty, unemployment rates of more than 30 percent, and a government punished by Israel and the West, both of which consider the ruling Hamas movement to be a terrorist organization.

To be sure, I have faced frequent violence between Israel and Gaza militants, as well as hazards in my career as a journalist – especially during military conflicts with Israel, such as the 2008-09 war and the 2012 Pillar of Defense operation.

And I thought I had found a way out.

In 2012, I got Egyptian citizenship, since I was born to an Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father. This, together with my desire for safety and stability, was a strong motive for me to move back to Egypt, where I was born and spent 14 years of my childhood, and where three sisters and my mother's family live.

I received more than half a dozen job offers from media outlets, and also had promising plans to start an education center to teach students English, math, science, and other subjects.

The salaries were not as high as what I receive in Gaza, but since I was looking for safety and stability, I did not care much about money. Things were rosy in my eyes, although many of my relatives and friends in Gaza criticized my decision because the economic and security situation in Egypt was not that good.

I did not believe them until last month.

I traveled to Egypt together with a coworker to receive a media course for TV journalists, which also drew journalists from Yemen, Libya, Iran, and China.

On the second of day of the course, we had a field training, in which we were to film a feature story about how the roadblocks placed by the police around government buildings negatively impacted the lives of both pedestrians and residents downtown.

While filming, we were in front of Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the Egyptian revolution. A Yemeni colleague was taking photos with his mobile phone of the place that means a lot for a Yemeni who demonstrated in Sanaa’s Change Square to topple a dictatorship.

As he was taking pictures, a teenager snatched the iPhone 4 from my colleague’s hand and walked away confidently. The Yemeni followed him and tried to stop him. To his surprise, the boy turned back with a knife in his hand and threatened that he will stab my colleague if he continues to ask for the phone.

We were nine guys and three women. We thought that we could help him if we all go out of the minibus and frighten the boy, but the boy went wild and started to scream.

A few seconds later, more than 20 of his peers came with knives and sticks and were about to attack us. An older guy riding a motorbike came and the boy jumped behind the biker and they sped off. No one even tried to stop and watch what was going on. At this very moment, our fear made us get into the minibus and drive away.

This was a turning point for me. After watching this, only one thing was on my mind, how could I live here? It's not the incident itself that made me change my mind to move to Egypt, but rather the passersby who were watching us being attacked and blackmailed by thugs at daytime. While Egyptians are known for being helpful, the spike in criminal activity has made many reluctant to intervene as they would have before the revolution.

Tahrir Square is one of the most crowded squares, if not the most, in Egypt. To have your cellphone stolen at daytime and in front of hundreds of watchers, one needs to think 100 times before deciding to settle in Egypt, but thank God, I only thought once and decided not endanger the lives of family in country that almost has no safety.

It's not that I've given up on Egypt forever. My love of Egypt is endless and priceless. It's my birthplace and the country that embraced me for 14 years, the country that granted me citizenship.

But I feel so sad that Egypt is no longer safe. Once this country was the safest place in the world with millions of foreign tourists spending their most beautiful times under its warm loving sun or enjoying its golden beaches.

The problem is that after the revolution the prisons were emptied. There now seem to be more criminals than policemen on the streets. I have heard true stories of rape, kidnapping, murder, and many crimes.

One more thing that has frightened me about the new Egypt: extremism. Islamic extremism is growing rapidly in Egypt, this has been notable after the revolution, and more clear after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi took office a year ago today.

Gaza is ruled by an Islamic party, but there is no extremism. Gaza is blockaded and frequently attacked by Israel, but the crime level is very low and internal security is near to excellent.

From my heart, I hope that Egypt will be safe like Gaza soon.

Ahmed Aldabba is a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor in Gaza City, Gaza.

Call Me John Edwards But I Think There Might Be 2 Americas.......

Patrik Jonsson June 29, 2013Society Shooting of Trayvon Martin

Nineteen-year-old Rachel Jeantel holds some of the most critical information about the Trayvon Martin murder case. Yet her delivery on the stand in Seminole County this week drew widespread criticism.

She was hard to understand, mumbled, acted impertinent, annoyed, rude, and came across, as one cable TV news host said, as a “train wreck.”

But the torrent of negative reaction across bar stools and Twitter became more telling than Ms. Jeantel’s simple testimony relating what she heard on the phone as she talked to Mr. Martin before the sound of a “thud” on wet grass and a disconnected line. Moments later, Martin, an unarmed black youth, was dead from a single bullet from a 9mm Kel-Tec pistol registered to George Zimmerman.

While some have rushed to defend Jeantel’s multi-lingual background, others leaned hard into her personally, letting fly on social media a swirl of epithets that roughly amounted to dismissal of her as “ghetto trash,” as one commenter said. That reaction has steered the trial into a new phase, reflecting, some commentators argue, more on America’s privileged classes, including blacks, than Jeantel’s trustworthiness as a star witness.

Reaction to Rachel Jeantel on the stand “has been in terms of aesthetics, of disregarding a witness on the basis of how she talks, how good she is at reading and writing,” says George Ciccariello-Maher, a history and politics professor at Drexel University, in Philadelphia. “These are subtle things that echo literacy testing at the polls, echo the question of whether black Americans can testify against white people, of being always suspect in their testimony. It’s the same old dynamics emerging in a very different guise.”

To be sure, in the scathing commentary about what some called her puzzling demeanor and alleged lack of education was lost her singular background and her youth: A black and Creole girl growing up in a segregated Miami community, she represented part of the problem of the case – an America so divided, that many can’t “code-switch,” or move between the gauzy racial, cultural, and socioeconomic divides that have become hardened with the nation’s first black president, and which have helped fuel political polarization.

Want your top political issues explained? Get customized DC Decoder updates.

“What so much of this really revealed was the gulf between middle-age, middle-class, mainstream codes of behavior and life among youth from poorer, nonwhite neighborhoods … they couldn’t have been further apart if Jeantel were born on the moon,” writes Eric Deggans in the Tampa Bay Times.

But that divide epitomizes the trial itself, Mr. Deggans argues: “As each side on this murder trial tries to prove the other person had tendencies toward prejudice and violence that may have sparked the fight, how will jurors [five white women and one Hispanic woman] judge the difference between edgy culture and outright dysfunction?”

Jeantel spent nearly seven hours on the stand over two days, relating some of the most riveting bits of information about the night Martin died, crucial to the case. While others have said they saw Martin beat Zimmerman, that came only after Jeantel said she heard a heavy-breathing man, allegedly Zimmerman, say to Martin, “What are you doing around here?” and after Martin told her that a “creepy-ass cracker” was following him.

The state alleges that Zimmerman profiled Trayvon, who was returning to his father’s home with a bag of Skittles candy, a can of iced tea, and $40 in his pocket.

The state says Zimmerman chased and confronted Martin, and then fired at Martin only after he realized he was losing the ensuing fight. Zimmerman says he fired in self-defense after Martin doubled back and attacked him, breaking his nose and bashing his head on the sidewalk.

The killing became a national story after Sanford police refused to charge Zimmerman with any crime, saying they had no evidence to counter his self-defense claim. Forty-four days later a Seminole County grand jury indicted Zimmerman on second degree murder charges. If convicted, Zimmerman, an aspiring police officer who served as a neighborhood watch captain, could spend the rest of his life in Florida state prison.

The big question hanging over the trial is whether it was an unarmed Martin who claimed his self-defense rights against an armed adult stranger following him in the dark, and whether Zimmerman waived his self-defense rights when he made the decision to pursue Trayvon after noting to a 911 dispatcher that “these [guys] always get away.”

Yet the potential for Jeantel’s testimony to illuminate that central question appeared to sink beneath a wave of commentary about aesthetics, as Christina Coleman summarizes in a Global Grind article called “Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel.”

“I … understand why white people wouldn’t like Rachel … But maybe the reason white people don’t understand Rachel Jeantel has something more to do with white privilege than what they could call Jeantel’s capricious nature,” she wrote.

But Ms. Coleman’s contention that jurors should accept that blacks and whites often live in different worlds rather than as equal members of a polyglot American society is a problematic explanation, writes J. Christian Adams on the Pajamas Media website.

“Coleman sounds like John C. Calhoun, the South’s leading defender of slavery and segregation,” he writes. “Calhoun believed that blacks and whites could never live together, and that after any emancipation they’d forever be ‘worlds apart.’”

copied from Yahoo News.............

“I have spent my life fighting for the kind of people I grew up with. For two decades, I stood with kids and families against big HMOs and big insurance companies. When I got to the Senate, I fought those same fights against the Washington lobbyists and for causes like the Patients' Bill of Rights. I stand here tonight ready to work with you and John [Kerry] to make America stronger. And we have much work to do, because the truth is, we still live in a country where there are two different Americas... [applause] one, for all of those people who have lived the American dream and don't have to worry, and another for most Americans, everybody else who struggle to make ends meet every single day. It doesn't have to be that way...

copied from Wiki......

here is the link to the page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Americas

Jun 29, 2013

Angry--Bake a Cake

A Case for Regulating Sugar Like Alcohol

Robert Lustig on reigning in what's toxic, addictive, and everywhere

MEGAN GARBERJUN 29 2013, 9:02 AM ET

Shutterstock/librakv

Substances like alcohol are regulated according to four criteria. For a government to take that big step on behalf of its citizens, a substance must:
1. Be ubiquitous
2. Be toxic
3. Be addictive
4. Have a negative impact on society
There is, according to Robert Lustig, a substance that fits the bill times four -- save for the fact that it is not currently regulated. And that is sugar. Specifically,fructose. In a conversation with The Atlantic's Corby Kummer at the Aspen Ideas Festival today, Lustig -- a pediatric endocrinologist who doubles as a sugar detractor -- made the case.
Sugar, Lustig noted, is obviously ubiquitous. It has an obvious negative impact on society, given the obesity and diabetes epidemics that have caused so much anxiety in the United States. Sugar is also, Lustig argued, toxic: the mitochondria in our bodies' cells, he said, are unable to convert the excess fructose we eat into energy, so they convert it instead into liver fat. That in turn starts a cascade, causing the insulin resistance that can lead to chronic metabolic disease -- which can lead in turn to diabetes, heart disease, and possibly cancer. A study that Lustig and his colleagues conducted, which was published in the journal PLoS this February, suggested that diabetes is caused not by obesity, as is sometimes thought, but by sugar itself. Even the scientist who won the 1923 Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin warned that high sugar consumption could be linked to diabetes. As Lustig put it during the talk, "25 percent of all the [Type 2] diabetes in the world is explained by sugar and sugar alone."
Bolstering the case for regulation, Lustig says, is the fact that sugar is addictive. Fructose, Lustig claims, can dampen the suppression of the hormones that signal both hunger and satisfaction to the brain -- which means that the more we eat, the less likely we are to feel satiated. So the more likely we are to want more. (And more, and more, and ...)
Regulation, of course, is always fraught. Regulating something like sugar would be especially tricky. Of the four regulation criteria Lustig listed, the only one that isn't really open to argument is the first: sugar's utter ubiquity. There's also the sugar lobby. There's also the fact that sugar, for consumers, tends to be cheap. There's also the fact that sugar, in many of its forms, tends to be delicious.
Still, "everyone's looking for a nutritional villain," The Atlantic's Cummer noted; we're all looking for what he called "a kind unified field theory" about what causes childhood obesity and so many of the other health problems the U.S. is facing right now. The more we learn, the more it seems that sugar is at least a component of that unified theory. And if Lustig gets his way -- if people do come to see sugar as a substance that can be abused -- public awareness might offer its own kind of regulation. Sugar, Lustig put it, is "great for your wallet, but crappy for your health." The companies that profit from its sales might not, at the moment, have an incentive to change their ways; the more the public learns about sugar's effects, though, the more we might limit our intakes of the stuff. Voluntarily.

copied from the Atlantic...........

Hey CNN: Where is the New George Strombo and Larry King

Gosh right when you get to like something and look forward to it they change everything!

I was really looking forward to seeing Larry King on the new George Strombo show on CNN. I love Larry, I've watched him FOREVER and I was waiting to see him all week.

I like to hear what Larry has to say--he's always positive and he is one of the best television interviewers in the business. He says he's always curious and I am too and that's why I like him.

Friday night is not full of TV choices, as it is, for this news and PBS type person.

And now it's gone.......

And replaced with what.....more Anderson Cooper?

Now, I like Anderson, I like him very much, but seriously, enough is enough.

Actually, last evening Anderson Cooper's interview with the ex-wife of the father of Trayvon Martin was stunning. I will remember it forever. It seems like the father used her, of course she raised his kids and, by the way, loved them and took care of them, until he found someone new and then excluded her from information as if she did not have feelings. It was tearful and hurtful for me.....It felt like she was totally used and I went away with a dislike for men.

Anderson is talented.....but it is not the Anderson Cooper network....or is it?

If CNN would listen to me about what shows to put on I'd be a little happier....

Well, since you asked:

Right now I'll be watching, Fred and the legal boys....now if they change that there's going to be a high price to pay on my blog.

I'm still waiting for Style With Elsa Klench....Fashion Backstage Pass with Alina and her cute hairdoo will suffice nicely...on a weekly basis.

I'n not a fan of Mr Bourdain but the show on Libya was really enlightening. I know everyone else really loves him--less of himself in that group and it would be a more tolerable situation.

Wait...what is happening right now....Fred and the boys are on early....are my clocks wrong...is it the heatwave, the cats......I've got to go.......

CNN---YOU'VE GOT TO ANNOUNCE THESE THINGS IN ADVANCE.................

--
chloelouise

Jun 28, 2013

Dinner with Gabby and Mark and Talking About Guns

this is an e-mail from the Daily Kos talking about the dinner with Gabby and Mark.......

Chloe, Americans for Responsible Solutions has been a staunch ally of ours on passing legislation for commonsense protections from gun violence. So don’t miss out on this wonderful opportunity. Please click below and donate $5 today to earn a chance to have dinner with Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly.

Keep fighting,
Rachel Colyer, Daily Kos

Chloe -

Between trips to Capitol Hill, state legislatures, and Gabby's work recovering from her injury, we don't get many chances to just sit down and enjoy a relaxing meal with friends.

And that's a shame, because we have so much thank you for -- you've taken our effort to pass gun violence legislation and turned it into a grassroots movement.

We'd love to share our appreciation in person.

Contribute $5 or more today and you'll be automatically entered to join us and six supporters for a lobster dinner in Portland, Maine on Saturday, July 6th. Choose a friend or family member to bring along, and we'll take care of your airfare and lodging.

http://action.americansforresponsiblesolutions.org/gabby-and-mark

The dinner is part of a Rights and Responsibilities Tour we're kicking off that will take us from Alaska to North Carolina with a few stops between during the first week of July.

As a bonus, you can be sure that your contribution will go towards our campaign to change our gun laws, or change Congress if they refuse to act.

We'd love to see you while we're in Maine.

All the best,
Gabby and Mark

To unsubscribe from ALL Daily Kos emails, visit this link. To opt-out ONLY from action emails, visit this link.

...............

gosh, that dinner sounds great...I hope I win.....cl

too many kids are dying...let's help President Obama with this gun thing.....

too many kids are dying...let's help President Obama with this gun thing.....

maybe we can have a vote or something...we can write about it and talk about it....could we be moms against guns...the more we talk about it, write about it and do anything about it the more new and good ideas will come to the forefront to solve the situation.

I know there are many groups against guns, now, but I am thinking MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving has has many positive outcomes--it is easy to hear and remember.

what is your good idea.

Jeremy Irons made a doc about trash...he is a big name with a real good voice.....

sometimes that is what it takes......a famous person that everyone easily sees and hears.....to tell the thing in a simple way........something we all can easily do to solve the problem.

We do not have to do much but we can each do our own little bit.

Would that work with guns?

Maybe Jeremy could make a doc about guns in the UK. There are not guns in the big, beautiful city of London.....

How do they survive without guns?

I would like to know that answer......could we use some of their ideas here in the US.

How many kids died from guns there last year?

How many kids died in Chicago last year from guns.

Could Piers Morgan make a doc about guns? Life in the UK versus life in the US, with and without guns. I would love to hear from law enforcement in the UK--how to they feel--what is their opinion of the situation.

What are your good ideas?

--
chloelouise

Jun 27, 2013

Calling All Jaggernauts: Some Of My Favorite Pictures

some of my favorite pictures:

Rolling Stones Gimme Shelter Live 1972 Mick Taylor Lead Guitar from Leon Slugocki on Vimeo.

Calling All Jaggernauts...WP Reviews Stone's Tour

Calling All Jaggernauts.......The Washington Post Reviews The Last US Stop on Stone's Tour

copied from the Washington Post.........

Rolling Stones concert review: 50 years on, Mick and the boys still have our number

View Photo Gallery — The Rolling Stones at the Verizon Center: The Rolling Stones work their familiar brand of rock magic on the final stop of their U.S. tour.

By Chris Richards, Published: June 24 E-mail the writers

Celebrating a half-century in circulation, the Rolling Stones made the final U.S. stop of their “50 and Counting” tour Monday night at Verizon Center. Was the tour’s title a subconscious nod to the arithmetic we’ve crunched in our heads every time the Stones have hit the road since 1989?

How old they are now?

And tickets cost how much? Carry the seven. . .

Another question: Would this be the band’s last American gig?

If we’re really counting, it’s been 17,917 days since the Rolling Stones played their first stateside concert — in San Bernardino, Calif., on June 5, 1964. In the decade that followed, the group set the trajectory of rock-and-roll with maniac brio. Its songs were made from crude gestures, but they consistently, mysteriously added up to something triumphant.

At Monday’s gig, the 21 tunes performed — during a two-hour-plus show — felt like a blend of ritual, compulsion and instinct that only a 50-year-old band is capable of summoning. There were some rough edges, but the Rolling Stones’ magic has always emanated from rough edges.

And nobody up there was punching a clock. Keith Richards, his nest of hair cinched in a red headband, seemed overjoyed to be trading chords with fellow guitarist Ron Wood during “Street Fighting Man.” As he coaxed some twinkling nastiness from a margarine-colored Telecaster during “Paint It Black,” he flashed a toothy white smile.

Throughout the night, frontman Mick Jagger remained a freakish miracle, indefatigable of limb and larynx, pumping his fists at the air in front of him as if sentenced to bang on some phantom door for the rest of his earthly existence. (In addition to his unrelenting energy, he also let loose a blistering zinger during a banter break with the Washington crowd: “I don’t think President Obama is here tonight. . . . But I’m sure he’s listening in.”)

But the biggest miracle up there was drummer Charlie Watts, who celebrated his 72nd birthday earlier in the tour. He did serious work with a light touch, burrowing into the beat of “Gimme Shelter” as if digging a ditch with a teaspoon.

Right up through a three-song encore, this was a give-them-what-they-paid-for kind of show, but that didn’t stop Jagger, Richards, Wood and Watts from finding fresh creases and contours in their songbook. With the help of bassist Darryl Jones, keyboardist Chuck Leavell, and sax men Bobby Keys and Tim Ries, the hits kept adding up.

Number of songs where Richards sang lead: two (“You Got the Silver,” “Before They Make Me Run”).

Number of songs where self-exiled Stone Mick Taylor materialized to play guitar: two (”Midnight Rambler,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”)

Number of ladies undergarments pelted at Jagger: at least two.

Number of days before we get to do this all again: unknown.

Twitter: @chris_richards

my car, my money, etc., etc., etc.,......I really wanted to see the Rolling Stones on this tour but there was just no way I could afford it or arrange it, it was just out of my reach......Yes, I am disappointed......

Seriously, thank God for you-tube.........cl

Jun 30, 2013

Why I would rather live in Gaza than Egypt, my birthplace

appearing in Yahoo News today...........

Why I would rather live in Gaza than Egypt, my birthplace

Call Me John Edwards But I Think There Might Be 2 Americas.......

call me John Edwrds but I think there really might be 2 Americas..............

Trayvon Martin case: How Rachel Jeantel went from star witness to 'train wreck'

Jun 29, 2013

Angry--Bake a Cake

A Case for Regulating Sugar Like Alcohol

Hey CNN: Where is the New George Strombo and Larry King

Jun 28, 2013

Dinner with Gabby and Mark and Talking About Guns

too many kids are dying...let's help President Obama with this gun thing.....

Jun 27, 2013

Calling All Jaggernauts: Some Of My Favorite Pictures

Calling All Jaggernauts...WP Reviews Stone's Tour

Rolling Stones concert review: 50 years on, Mick and the boys still have our number

By Chris Richards, Published: June 24 E-mail the writers

Pages