Between Victims and Heroes: Searching for Those Things that Unite Us

by Nomad

In the aftermath of two terrorist attacks, one in Beirut and another in Paris a day later, we must take a moment for reflection, not about our differences, but about the things that unite us. 

For the last few days, the world's attention has been fixated on the coordinated attacks in Paris on Friday which left 129 dead and 352 injured. What should have been the pleasant start of a weekend, a warm autumn evening turned out to be a stage for nothing short of a blood bath and a city under siege.

A Vain Search for Answers
In every respect, it was a senseless act and yet the human mind tries in vain to make sense of it. How could it happen and why?

What kind of evil could transform a convivial scene at an outdoor cafe, with crowds of people enjoying the company of friends into a war zone massacre with bodies strewn on the streets and sidewalks?

How could this happen? To what purpose? Who actually benefited by the murder of 23-year-old Hugo Sarrade, who was enjoying a night out at a Bataclan concert? 

How did the vicious slaughter of Mathieu Hoche, Quentin Boulanger, 29, or Marie Lausch, 23, and her boyfriend, Mathias Dymarski, 22, truly further any political cause? 

These were not martyred for a great cause. These were not crusaders for their religion. And they certainly were not soldiers defending their nation. 

They were, in fact, not representatives of anything more than themselves. They were targeted simply because, like the victims on the beach attack in Tunisia in June, they were easy to kill en masse.

A Winter without Hope: Why Time Has Just Run Out for Syrian Refugees

 by Nomad

As you read this, the refugees of the Syrian civil war are facing yet another challenge in the wake of an intense snowstorm that hit the region this week. Resources of aid agencies are dwindling fast and time is running out for families who have been left without food and heat.

Back in early October, we reported in a blog post how things were going to get worse for Syrians who fled their country and who now live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq.

At that time, an official at the UN warned that As things stand at the moment. The World Food Programme (WFP) would no longer be able to distribute food and water to Syrian refugees.  Without new funding, officials warned, the program could remain operational for only the next two months. After that, the refugees would be on their own.

That was three months ago.

The Storm 

This week the situation has gone from miserable to catastrophic. Having faced the loss of everything they own, faced with life in a tent and having endured a brutally hot summer, Syrian families might have thought that things could not get much worse.
They were absolutely wrong.

An unusually intense winter storm has swept across the region, with temperatures well below freezing, winds up to 55 miles an hour. For people reduced to living in the most primitive of shelters, a heavy blanket of snow threatened to destroy what little they have now.

Lebanon Suddenly Became More Gay-Friendly than 14 US states

by Nomad

Despite its myriad problems, (such as marketplace suicide bombings, factional divisions and refugees), the Middle-Eastern nation of Lebanon appears to be more progressive when it comes to equality rights for its gay minority than, say, Texas or Oklahoma.

According to Victoria Kim writing for PolicyMic:

LGBT rights activists in Lebanon are celebrating a historic ruling that reversed the criminalization of gay sex in Lebanon.

The recent case was highlighted a quarterly magazine called Legal Agenda, published by an NGO of the same name.

Judge Naji El Dahdah, of Jdeide Court, Beirut, threw out the case, in which the Lebanese state accused a transgender woman of having a same-sex relationship with a man, on January 28. The verdict relied on a December 2009 ruling by Judge Mounir Suleiman that consensual homosexual relations were not "against nature" and could therefore not be prosecuted under article 534 of Lebanon's penal code, which prohibits sexual relations that are "contradicting the laws of nature," and makes them punishable by up to a year in prison. "Man is part of nature and is one of its elements, so it cannot be said that any one of his practices or any one of his behaviors goes against nature, even if it is criminal behavior, because it is nature's ruling," Suleiman said.

This latest development comes after what some saw as last years' crackdown of a very discreet underground gay scene.

Compare that to the states in the US that  still have anti-sodomy laws on their books. Despite a 2003 Supreme Court decision  to invalidate an earlier ruling in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, fourteen states have yet to abolish the laws. The Supreme Court ruled that this private sexual conduct is protected by the liberty rights implicit in the due process clause of the United States Constitution. 

And yet, Alabama,  Florida, Idaho,  Kansas,  Louisiana,  Michigan,  Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia all have retained the unconstitutional laws. While these states have no way to enforce the laws, they have also not been repealed at a state level. Although obsolete, the laws have been used have been used to stop gay Americans from adopting and fostering children and gaining custody of their own kids.