Archive for July 30th, 2015
Hot posts this week (July 8/2015)
Posted on: July 30, 2015
Hot posts this week (July 8/2015)
Food cultures? What could we learn beside ingurgitating what we can swallow?
- What Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis told the Euro-group: He just resigned after a great victory to help with a deal
- Syria artefacts under ISIS control: Looted in Syria and sold in London
- Biggest Lie on Greece
- Secure and Anonymous Wi-Fi: 2.5-mile Range
- In what sense you are more Pious? Are you running for a public office?
- €2.5 billion profit out of Greece loans: What IMF made
- Too much doing, not enough knowing? Lefsetz? How to win an argument with a scientist?
- One characteristic all Millionaires have in common?
- Post-war Germany recovery? Any roles to Greece, Spain, and Turkey…?
Rate of killing Native Americans identical to black Americans
By Zak Cheney-Rice, February 05, 2015
The end of 2014 was a bloody time for Native Americans.
Even as protesters rallied against the police killings of unarmed black people like Michael Brown and Eric Garner in December, Rapid City police fired five bullets into Allen Locke, a 30-year-old Lakota man living in South Dakota.
In a tragic bit of irony, it was later revealed that Locke had been at a demonstration against police killings of indigenous people just one day earlier.
Yet while devastating for his family and community, Locke’s death illustrates a much bigger problem:
From 1999 to 2013, Native Americans were killed by law enforcement at nearly identical rates as black Americans, tying them for the most at-risk populations in this respect.
The difference is that almost no one is talking about them.
There are 5.1 million American Indians and Alaska Natives in the U.S. as of 2011, significantly fewer than the country’s 45 million black Americans (as of 2013).
But like black Americans, indigenous people are killed by law enforcement officers at rates that far outstrip their share of the population.
While #BlackLivesMatter evolved into a national rallying cry for racial justice over the summer, a largely overlooked #NativeLivesMatter movement has been quietly galvanizing activists as well.
Few mainstream outlets report on it, but the indigenous blogosphere and Twitterverse abound with horror stories, not the least of which is that six Native men and women were killed by police in November and December alone.
“We protest, we take to social media, we get as many stories and Native American voices as we can into news media,” Simon Moya-Smith, a journalist and editor with Indian Country Today Media Network, told Mic in an email. “[But still] we’re not entirely on [the mainstream media’s] radar – maybe for Indian mascots, but for police brutality? Barely, if at all.”
In some of these cases, including Allen Locke’s, the victims were allegedly armed when killed. But this designation doesn’t always tell the whole story.
In cases like that of John T. Williams in 2010, for example, the knife that the victim held that prompted Seattle police to take his life was a carving instrument, folded shut at the time of his shooting.
Williams’ death set off a string of protests in early 2011.
Although the officer who shot the 50-year-old resigned eventually, he was never charged with a criminal offense. It’s a sad but familiar story for anyone who watched grand juries fail to indict Officers Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo for killing Brown and Garner, respectively.
Some of the factors that affect these altercations result from a long history of American legal meddling into Natives’ affairs, including disproportionate rates of poverty, substance abuse, suicide and lowered access to education, employment and health care prospects.
And officials’ inability to properly address these disparities has resulted in the continued criminalization of indigenous people, exacerbated by the combined forces of systemic substance abuse, mental health issues and unemployment.
Take the following incidents as examples: Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket, 18, was shot 7 times in Custer County, Oklahoma, in 2013.
And 34-year-old Benjamin Whiteshield was shot through the mouth and killed in Clinton, Oklahoma, in 2012.
Both were experiencing episodes of mental illness when police killed them.
Meanwhile, Christina Tahhahwah was arrested during a bipolar episode on Nov. 13 and died after she went into cardiac arrest in a Lawton, Oklahoma, police holding cell.
The details surrounding Tahhahwah’s death are dubious, to say the least. Native News Online reports she’d been handcuffed to her cell door “for unknown reasons,” and that the 37-year-old’s parents weren’t notified of her transfer to the hospital — where she was pronounced dead — until many hours after the fact.
Meanwhile, her fellow inmates claim she’d been “tased repeatedly” for refusing to stop singing Comanche hymns (Lawton Police have since denied the allegations).
“From 1999 to 2013, Native Americans were killed by law enforcement at nearly identical rates as black Americans”
Are you a Picky Eater in Lebanon?
Posted on: July 30, 2015
Are you a Picky Eater in Lebanon?
The thing about being a picky eater, especially in Lebanon, is that everyone around you manages to take personal offense to the fact that you simply don’t like to eat everything put in front of you.
All of a sudden, you have skirmishes with parents, siblings, friends and even extended family, all because you aren’t content with the idea of eating food like you’re an animal forced to eat from a giant trough of glob along with the rest of the cattle.
And for me, it’s not just about being a picky eater, it’s also about not wanting to mix food together. The way I see it, mixing food together prevents you from enjoying the actual taste of what you’re eating. (Like mixing everything from a buffet?)
I’m going to go with the example of tabbouli instead of regular garden salad simply because almost every Lebanese person loves it, except me.
The scenario usually goes a little something like this: after spending about five to ten minutes trying to internally convinced myself that I can eat the tabbouli placed in front of me, I decided to just ignore it and keep quiet.
Maybe no one will notice I’m not eating the physical embodiment of Lebanese national pride.
Of course, this strategy never works. You’re simply not Lebanese if you’re not shoving yourself into other people’s business… and flavor palates.
So, in a pitiful attempt to shut up the haters, you start to pick at the goddamn tabbouli.
Can someone please explain to me why it must consist of massive chunks of banadoura? I mean, really?
No human should ever be forced to eat this much banadoura in one sitting.
Note: I don’t add salt or citrus or anything extra in my dishes so that I may taste the original flavour. Sauces are for those lacking taste buds.
You’re simply not Lebanese if you’re not shoving yourself into other people’s business… and flavor palates.
Adonis Diaries 