Matcelup's Mixed views

 

98 year old dobri dobrev, a man who lost his hearing in the second world war, walks 10 kilometers from his village in his homemade clothes and leather shoes to the city of sofia, where he spends the day begging for money.

though a well recognized fixture around several of the city’s chruches, known for his prostrations of thanks to all donors, it was only recently discovered that he has donated every penny he has collected — over 40,000 euros — towards the restoration of decaying bulgarian monasteries and churches and the utility bills of orphanages, living entirely off his monthly state pension of 80 euros and the kindness of others.

(via drfaggot-)

Palestinian smugglers are using a network of tunnels dug under the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt to bring a new flavor to the Israel-blockaded enclave: fried chicken from U.S. fast-food chain KFC.

Since Israel tightened a blockade on the coastal territory six years ago, Palestinians have used the tunnels to smuggle everything from fuel to livestock - and even cars - from the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula.

Now, a Gaza-based delivery service company known as Yamama, or pigeon, has taken to delivering Kentucky Fried Chicken all over the Gaza Strip.

Yamama’s motorcycle couriers ride to the Egyptian border, pick up the chicken from one of the tunnels, and deliver it to customers.

The meals are made at KFC stores in various cities throughout the Sinai Peninsula, because there are no KFC restaurants in Gaza. A KFC restaurant opened last year in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israel tightened a blockade of the Gaza Strip in 2007 after the militant group Hamas seized control of the territory from secular Fatah rivals, who govern the West Bank.

“Anyone who wants to eat real Kentucky Fried Chicken can call our office in Gaza, give his name and his telephone number and say exactly how many meals he wants,” said Ibrahim, a Yamama motorbike rider.

Yamama’s owners said the new business began by accident when the company’s motorbike riders offered to order KFC meals.

“It usually takes three hours for the meal to be brought from Egypt to Gaza and less than an hour to bring it from the tunnel and give it to the customer,” Ibrahim said.

The company has a website (http://www.ymama.ps) featuring pictures of Egyptian fast food. It also has a page on Facebook, where customers can place orders for KFC deliveries the next day.

But the lengthy delivery time, sometimes prolonged by Hamas inspections or holdups on the Egyptian side, takes its toll.

“It is really very delicious although it is not very hot,” said Eyad, a 21-year-old Gaza student.

Haaretz

(Source: israelfacts, via thepeacefulterrorist)

Eleven-year-old Zardana, is helped with her sandals by her father Samiullah after an interview in Kandahar, Afghanistan on Monday, April 22, 2013. She recounted the night of March 11, 2012 when a U.S. soldier attacked their family home, shooting her in the head and killing 11 relatives. She suffered nerve damage on her left side and has to walk with a cane. Her hand is too weak to hold anything heavy. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

(via thepeacefulterrorist)

poeticislam:

theneighbourhoodsuperhero:

Jumah Al-Dossary, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, politely refuses to answer the interviewer’s question about the specific torture he had to endure during his detainment in Guantanamo Bay. “I prefer not to answer that question… I’ll keep it to myself,” he mutters shyly. He thereafter averts his gaze from the interviewer, ending the conversation.

While still detained, Al-Dossary had confessed to his lawyer Joshua Colangelo-Bryan that what he witnessed (as punishment) at the hands of US guards in Guantanamo after/for complaining to a military physician about the torture he was suffering would always haunt him. Soldiers who heard that he had complained had decided to “teach him a lesson” by blindfolding him and taking him to another part of the Guantanamo Bay camp.

“I heard an Afghan prisoner scream. He was crying and saying, “Oh Allah! Oh God!” That was all he could understand of the man’s screams. He was led toward the screaming, which grew louder and louder, and then his blindfold was pulled off. “I saw an Afghan brother in his fifties. He had a lot of white hair in his beard, and he was tied to the ground. Soldiers were holding on to his shackles, and he was naked lying on his stomach. One of the soldiers was sexually assaulting (sodomising) him. One of the soldiers was videotaping.” Al-Dossary was told that he would face the same fate if he dared to speak out again. (My Guantanamo diary: The detainees and the stories they told me, Khan, M.R.)

The constant stress and fear of physical and psychological abuse and his feelings of helplessness and guilt for not being able to do anything to better the situation of other detainees, such as the detainee he witnessed being raped, drove Al-Dossary into such a deep depression that he attempted suicide seventeen times and his lawyer Colangelo-Bryan reported that he spent most of his meetings with Al-Dossary trying to convince him that he shouldn’t kill himself instead of working on his case.

While imprisoned, Al-Dossary wrote a poem titled “Death Poem.”

Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.

Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.

And let them bear the guilty burden before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the “protectors of peace.”

This is what our dear brothers are going through. May Allah grant them all patience and jannah-tul-firdaus!

(via thepeacefulterrorist)