(warning: graphic images) The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, myst…
Who are the terrorists again?
.......a place to share all things beautiful and not so beautiful
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Iraqi Birth Defects Worse than Hiroshima➜
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I’m bored. Ask me questions. Someone speak to me. Blah.
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Woman Photographs Herself Receiving Strange Looks in Public
“I now reverse the gaze and record their reactions to me while I perform mundane tasks in public spaces. I seek out spaces that are visually interesting and geographically diverse. I try to place myself in compositions that contain feminine icons or advertisements. Otherwise, I position myself and the camera in a pool of people…and wait.
The images capture the gazer in a microsecond moment where they, for unknowable reasons, have a look on their face that questions my presence. Whether they are questioning my position in front of the lens or questioning my body size, the gazer appears to be visually troubled that I am in front of them.”
Photographer: Haley Morris-Cafiero
Project: Wait Watchers
Thought this was actually really cool and I’d share it with you guys! Takes a lot to get up there and do something like this. Love it!
I find this so powerful. Makes you think twice about the looks you might give someone without even realizing.
(via phantomofthechakras)
via el-dispute➜ -
Each time I’m asked to tell about myself, I find myself starting the same way: “My name is Kelsey and I’m nineteen..”
but what I’d really like to say is:
“My name means island of the ships but once
I found a translation that said I’m a burning shipwreck-
not a burning ship but a ship that has caught fire
after the wreckage and well, I’d say that’s more fitting.”I’ve learned that people don’t have time for about me’s.
They need two things: a name and an indication you’re someone special.The doctors, they want facts not details.
“I broke my leg when I was three, it’s a funny story actually-“
The right or the left?
Conversation over.The teachers, they want interests, hobbies.
You’re sad, yes, but what do you like to do?The adults are a spew of questions.
What school do you go to? What classes are you taking?
What do you plan on becoming? Got a boyfriend?
No, stop.People my own age are the worst.
“I’m planning on an English degree with a concentration in creative writing.”
Yeah, aren’t we all. So how many times have you, you know,
done it?I’m pulled apart, my interests travelling highway 2
my goals at a stop light at traffic hour,
my medical history on a billboard for the world to see.
But what about me?Where’s the chance to say,
“I hang on to fistfuls of poetry like loose change in my pockets,
and I keep waiting for the day that the world turns upside down
so I can swim with the stars.
I’m not afraid of darkness, it’s a loneliness I can empathize with it.
It’s the blackholes like cigarette burns inside of me that get troublesome.
I walk through graveyards and read the dashes between years,
each a story I’ll never know. Sometimes I create my own.”No wonder none of us know who we are anymore.
Kelsey Danielle, “I Was Told to Write an About Me and This is What Happened” (via commovente)(via littlebluej)
via pigmenting➜ -
Jose was a top math scholar and dreamt of being a mechanical engineer.
He was awarded a full scholarship to Arizona State University. When Jose graduated in 2011, there was a shortage of mechanical engineers in his state, but he could not apply for the jobs his other classmates were seeking because he is undocumented.
man :(
(via beyondcloudnine)
via spideybutt➜ -
: I write about Indiawhen her skin wasmagenta, perfumed with freshly...
I write about India
when her skin was
magenta, perfumed with
freshly picked jasmine
and finely crushed
cardamom.I write about India
when her dirt roads were paved
with children walking to school,
and when her heart
pumped with blue water
from the ganges.I write about India
when I listened…via maza-dohta➜ -
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![futurejournalismproject:
The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Via Slate:
Mohamedou Ould Slahi began to tell his story in 2005. Over the course of several months, the Guantánamo prisoner handwrote his memoir, recounting what he calls his “endless world tour” of detention and interrogation. He wrote in English, a language he mastered in prison. His handwriting is relaxed but neat, his narrative, even riddled with redactions, vivid and captivating. In telling his story he tried, as he wrote, “to be as fair as possible to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself.” He finished his 466-page draft in early 2006. For the next six years, the U.S. government held the manuscript as a classified secret.
When his pro bono attorneys were allowed to hand me a disk labeled “Unclassified Version” last year, Slahi had been a Guantánamo detainee for more than a decade. I sat down to start reading his manuscript nearly 10 years to the day from the book’s opening scene:
“[Redacted] July 2002, 22:00. The American team takes over. The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied.”
We’re in the middle of the action. Slahi’s life in captivity had begun eight months earlier, on Nov. 20, 2001, when Slahi, then 30, was summoned by Mauritanian police for questioning. He had just returned home from work; he was in the shower when police arrived. He dressed, grabbed his car keys—he went voluntarily, driving himself to the police station—and told his mother not to worry, he would be home soon.
Overview: How the United States kept him silent for 12 years.
Part 01: Endless Interrogations.
Part 02: Disappeared.
Part 03: Family.
Timeline of Slahi’s detention.
Image: Handwritten page from Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir (PDF), via Slate.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/b435fb0805f71f1c8093c0bba4df0210/tumblr_mm2p9g7CcA1qedj2ho1_400.png)
The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Via Slate:
Mohamedou Ould Slahi began to tell his story in 2005. Over the course of several months, the Guantánamo prisoner handwrote his memoir, recounting what he calls his “endless world tour” of detention and interrogation. He wrote in English, a language he mastered in prison. His handwriting is relaxed but neat, his narrative, even riddled with redactions, vivid and captivating. In telling his story he tried, as he wrote, “to be as fair as possible to the U.S. government, to my brothers, and to myself.” He finished his 466-page draft in early 2006. For the next six years, the U.S. government held the manuscript as a classified secret.
When his pro bono attorneys were allowed to hand me a disk labeled “Unclassified Version” last year, Slahi had been a Guantánamo detainee for more than a decade. I sat down to start reading his manuscript nearly 10 years to the day from the book’s opening scene:
“[Redacted] July 2002, 22:00. The American team takes over. The music was off. The conversations of the guards faded away. The truck emptied.”
We’re in the middle of the action. Slahi’s life in captivity had begun eight months earlier, on Nov. 20, 2001, when Slahi, then 30, was summoned by Mauritanian police for questioning. He had just returned home from work; he was in the shower when police arrived. He dressed, grabbed his car keys—he went voluntarily, driving himself to the police station—and told his mother not to worry, he would be home soon.
Overview: How the United States kept him silent for 12 years.
Part 01: Endless Interrogations.
Part 02: Disappeared.
Part 03: Family.
Timeline of Slahi’s detention.
Image: Handwritten page from Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s memoir (PDF), via Slate.
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Guess what you call a woman who enjoys sex?
Her name.writingsforwinter, from “poem for the boy who called me a slut” (via merede)(via panicandctrl-z)
via merede➜ -
I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
of your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.And I will not be afraid
of your scars.I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.via waydowntown➜ -
Guantanamo Bay hunger strikers at 100, U.S. says | CBS News
As of Saturday, the U.S. military counts 100 hunger strikers at its war-on-terror detention camp at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Of these men refusing food, 20 of them have lost enough weight to be force fed - strapped to a chair with a tube down their nose and throat sending liquid nutrients (Ensure) into their stomachs. Five of the hunger strikers have been moved to the base hospital.
(via littlebluej)
via theamericanbear➜
