via zaina-erhaim
How can I not be back with all that has been going on lately in the region? Bad news is, I have a lot to say about it. I am excited.
We can buy Almaza and get to your uncle’s place while he’s having his Argileh with his friends outdoors.
We can buy some of the Armenian nuts you like.
We can sit next to each other on the Sofa.
We can get nervous.
We can allow silence to be so loud.
This is it.
We can turn Valentine into a sacred sin.
Would you break the law with me?
We can wait till we finish our first bottle.
We can forget about your tomorrow and mine.
You can let me start right here and now.
I would do whatever it takes for my right to live and dream
another fascinating video from Never Before Campaign
Katyushas have been through a lot. They used to live in peace before certain kinds of human beings decided they want to invade their lands. Suddenly, a new reality was imposed on them. They chose to fight and not to give in. It’s both, a human and animal instinct, to fight and not to give in-(well till modernism came and told indigenous species that they should fight the foreigner “peacefully”).
But Katyushas came up with primitive yet creative tactics to survive and protect themselves and their families from the occupiers. They sticked together, and fought back. They tried to survive in a system that does not acknowledge their right to be on their lands, that this land is no longer theirs.
Many Katyushas died as they were fighting the enemy and the system. We call them martyrs.
I found one of those Katyushas the other night in the street, he is tiny but strong. I brought him home where our bougie cat, Klio, was trying for the past seven days to stick his penis in Katyusha’s ass. Katyushas as fighters, don’t let no bougie or other, to abuse them. Katyusha knew how to fight back and teach bougie cats the difference between a fighter and a conformist. Klio never stopped trying. Katyusha’s battle with the system isn’t over yet, and he knows it’s a long way for liberation, and it won’t be nice.
Katyushas instinctively learned how to resist because only them experienced the oppressive system. and only them know how to defy it.
Katyusha in my house, and I am totally OK with it. hoping another form of Katyusha finds its way to my home soon.
Meet Katyusha
Thanks to @ysalahi, a fellow blogger for suggesting the name Katyusha
Ghassan Makarem founding member and current Executive Director of Helem replied to Joseph Massad’s interview conducted with him by Reset Doc website. Here’s an extract of the interview:
The real problem with Massad’s interview is the lies, fabrications, and insinuations of being agents of the West against the people in Helem. This is an opinion we have heard many times from Salafists and chauvinists. The contention that homosexuals are agents of the West, that they are “imposing Western values”, and that they belong to the upper classes was also used by Khomeini before rounding up homosexuals and executing them. It is the same justification given to call for the arrest of HIV positive persons in Egypt and elsewhere and to pass a viciously homophobic law in Uganda.
Read the whole article here.
This is simply outrageous and heartbreakening. I cannot imagine what his parents feel right now. He was arrested when he was 29 and now he will be released when he’s 34. and for what? for not giving the Syrian intelligence the names of people who spoke against the Syrian government in the forum he administrates. Yes, that’s Kareem Arbaji, Kareem is being sentenced because he is defending his friends, he is being sentenced as a punishment, because he defied not the “persona” of the government, but the very “system” of intelligentsia in Syria, where people got accustomed, out of fear and due to torture, to turning each other in to the government. Kareem did nothing “wrong” and said nothing “wrong”, but he paid two years for his “non-Syrian” principles, and now he is paying three more. This is unforgivable, they send children to Europe when they get raped, how you like them now grownups? hypocrite.
الثامن من أيلول/سبتمبر 2009
صادر عن:
أحرار الجنس مناهضين للفصل العنصري الإسرائيلي، تورنتو
أحرار الجنس من أجل تقويض الإرهاب الإسرائيلي
الشبكة اليهودية الدولية المناهضة للصهيونية
أحرار الجنس الناشطون في حملة المقاطعة، وسحب الاستثمارات، والعقوبات على إسرائيل
تخطط رابطة شركات السفر الدولية للمثليين والمثليات IGLTA لعقد مؤتمر سياحي في تل أبيب، وذلك في السادس عشر من شهر تشرين الأول/ أكتوبر من العام الجاري، من أجل تعزيز السياحة الترفيهية الخاصة بالمثليين والمثليات والثنائيين والثنائيات والمتحولين والمتحولات جنسياً (م.م.م.م.). من المتوقع أن يتألف جمهور المؤتمر من وكلاء السفر المختصين بالترويج للسياحة المتعلقة بال م.م.م.م. وستقدم منظمة IGLTA من خلال هذا المؤتمر، وبالتعاون مع منظمة إسرائيلية للمثليين Aguda، الدعم المالي والرمزي لدولة تستمر في احتلال وقمع وتجريد ملايين الفلسطينيين من حقوقهم، إضافة إلى قتل وسجن الآلاف منهم.
لذا نتوجه، نحن مجموعات وأحرار جنس ناشطين بنداء إلى كافة الم.م.م.م والأصدقاء حول العالم لمشاركتنا احتجاجنا في مواجهة ترويج IGLTA للسياحة الترفيهية في إسرائيل الفصل العنصري، ونطالبها بإلغاء المؤتمر المزمع عقده في إسرائيل وبوقف أي شكل من أشكال الترويج السياحي لهذا البلد.
On June 2009 Berkman Center’s Internet & Democracy team published a study that analyzes and maps the dynamics of the Arabic blogsphere. The research included 35,000 active Arabic blogs across 18 countries in the Arab-speaking region and the goal for the study was to:
Produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs.
So here’s the map of the study:
As you can see, some of us, Arab-speaking bloggers, are categorized into “Muslim Brotherhood” bloggers, “Secular reformist” bloggers, and “Islam focused” bloggers. The rest of the categorization is country-based.
First, I am not sure why the word “reformist” is associated with the word “secular”, are seculars inherently reformists? and what are they reforming exactly? that fact that our societies are not secular? and for some reason, that what needs to be reformed in our region? I am not sure why “secular” bloggers can be “reformists” while “Muslim Brotherhood” bloggers or “Islam focused” bloggers cannot. Can’t Islam be reformist?
