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When talking about homophobia and horrible countries that pass anti-gay laws we often think about Putin's Russia, Uganda, Mugabe, and such. These places are more or less far and their society are perceived as traditional, old fashion, nothing like our Western society that is so amazing. Yet we needn't look so far from home... We forget homophobia is on the rise everywhere, even in Europe. I feel awful whenever I tell my girlfriend I can't hold her hand when we're walking in the centre of Brussels, the capital of Europe. She doesn't hold it against me but I get angry at our society where I can't feel safe because of who I love. A week after Kansas almost did the same but gave up at the last minute, Arizona passed a bill that would allow businesses to refuse to serve or give medical treatment to gays on religious grounds . First off if you want to get biblical, according to the scriptures, you should hate the sin, not the sinner (Matthew 5:43-44, 6:14-15, ...

For a little while now I have been struggling to find a subject to write about but tonight I have found something that really affects me. You might have seen KONY 2012 posters, people wearing tshirts with the same slogan or even heard about a man named Joseph Kony and wondered what it was or who he is. I urge my readers to support the KONY 2012 campaign and to raise awareness to stop the criminal that Joseph Kony is. For almost three decades Kony has been abducting children from their homes to turn them into soldiers or sex slaves. Kony is the founder and leader of the Lord's Resistance Army which fights for a theocratic governments based on the bible laws and while it started in Uganda, the LRA has now spread to other African countries. An estimated 66,000 children are forced to fight for them. These children are forced to mutilate others, to kill their own parents and other terrible things. Last year, Obama sent 100 advisers to help the Ugandan Army catch this man but t...

Je suis peine. Combien de personnes auront partagé ce texte de Florian Henin sur les réseaux sociaux ? Combien de personnes se sont dit « bien dit ! » ? Florian Henin qui fait des amalgames et qui n’a sûrement pas entendu parler de cet Anversois (blanc) qui a tué une jeune nounou (noire) et ce bébé de deux ans à peine dans la rue. Il n’est sûrement jamais allé à Jérusalem dans le quartier Orthodoxe o ù les enfants jettent des pierres sur les passant seraient-ils un tant soit peu découverts et s’en donnent à cœur joie et à Hébron ce ne sont pas les touristes qui sont visés mais les Palestiniens (Arabes et sans doute Musulmans). Tu te souviens l’été passé, il y a eu des émeutes en Grande-Bretagne. Sur les vidéos, on pouvait voir des blancs (athées ?)voler un noir, blessé, gisant au sol, en prétendant l’aider. Dans mon quartier de Preston, il y a des Pakistanais (Musulmans) et des blancs (athées). Quand les blancs arrivent, je te promets, tu...

Last night Steve Jobs died but I couldn't care less so instead I'll write about something else. Last week King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced women will have a right to vote in the 2015 local elections (not the elections that were running this week as this would be too big a shock and way too sudden, you gotta give it time so people can get used to the idea). I read the news on the BBC on Tuesday last week and the article was just very dull and reporting facts and that's probably how the news should be reported but I read this and my mind went "wait, this is really funny in a way, they fail to mention such and such". Then I went home in Belgium and bought the weekly " Le Canard Enchaîné " which expressed my point of view in a way I couldn't have formulated better myself. Saudi Arabia is supposedly run according to the Sharia Laws but I find it a bit hypocritical to say that since it is the only country in the World where women don't hav...

Although I am far from home and on holidays, I still read the news (if I didn't I would have to reconsider my choice of studies) Yesterday in the english version of Haaretz, they were talking about the rights on Enyd Blyton's "The Famous Five" and "The Secret Seven" that are being translated in Hebrew at the moment and to be published soon in Israel although another publisher has been publishing a translated version for many years without the rights. Fine, nothing interesting much until the end of the article when I read the books written for children, are considered sexist, racist and so on and that they were banned from the radio in England on grounds of lack of artistic talent or something, basically hey were unworthy of being read on the BBC. The books are being rerwritten for publication in the United Kingdom to reach today's political correctness standards. And there we reach the whole debate we had with "TinTin in Congo" in Belgium a...

I am sorry, this will probably take the form of a rant but people keep getting on my nerves complaining about how their life totally sucks because of this or that. When I was eight years old, my grandma took me to India and Nepal. I was a bit worried when she packed a hundred pens I didn't understand why she wanted to take these as presents. Pens, presents? Then we got there. We travelled on the dirtiest roads to the smallest villages and all the children kept asking for pens. When I was 14 I went to Bulgaria. Travelling to and from the hotel by car I saw desolation, girls as young as me begging or selling their bodies. When I was 15 I went to Romania with my parents, in the only county that isn't mentionned in tourist guides. The children there played in mud and wore ragged clothes, they were the happiest children on earth when I gave them all I had on me, Kinder Eggs. When I was 16 I went in Zambia to teach in a small school. I packed so many pens, clothes,...