Lebanon's Civil War, 40 years on
In a book on life in Syrian prisons, where he spent 16 years, the Syrian intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh wrote that it was not rare to feel nostalgia for one’s years of incarceration.
Without minimizing the brutalities and humiliations of prison life, Haj Saleh explained that the reason for this nostalgia was that “he who endures this sacrificial rite accedes to something extremely precious, which rarely appears twice in one’s existence: a new departure, a resurrection, a second birth, a mandate to reinitiate life.” To him, the prison experience gave structure to his existence at a time of confusion and despair.
Source: Michael Young for the Daily Star
Stories from Iran's "Kidney Street"
A short distance south of Tehran’s busy Valiasr Square, a young woman hastily attaches an advertisement to a wall. I ask the young woman posting the ad to tell her story. “My brother is suffering from thalassemia and because of his weak immune system, he has heart and kidney problems,” she says. “Thalassemia makes a kidney transplant impossible. He has dialysis every other day. The costs of the dialysis and medication are too much for my family.”
Although the street’s official name is Farhang Hosseini, it is more commonly known as “Kidney Street,” where ads for buying and selling kidneys are everywhere, displaying telephone numbers and blood group information about patients and donors.
Source: Iran Wire
Propaganda and pictures: ISIS and the Syrian war through a different lens
While the international community continues with Operation Inherent Resolve to destroy ISIS, it is also waging a psychological war against the terrorist group’s ideology. What we must also not forget is the millions of refugees in the region whose lives have been destroyed by the violence that does not seem to have a foreseeable end. Thousands of images have been published and retweeted. However, in recent months, the use of extreme imagery has become more prevalent in anti-ISIS propaganda and NGO campaigns—oftentimes, unfortunately, with the same undesired outcomes.
Source: US-Middle East Youth Network
