Archive for Ukraine invasion

and it only gets better [?!]

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 21, 2024 by xi'an

“Those cities are gone, they’re gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man [President Zelensky] who refused to make a deal” – DT, 25 Sept

“What do we do to protect our kids? I unfortunately think that we have to increase security in our schools. We have to make the doors lock better. We have to make the door stronger. We’ve got to make the windows stronger,” – JD Vance, 01 Oct

“One of the things that I’ve noticed some of our Democratic friends talking a lot about is a concern about carbon emissions, this idea that carbon emissions drives all the climate change … let’s just say that’s true, just for the sake of argument.” – JD Vance, 01 Oct

“I’m the father of IVF (…) I got a call from Katie Britt, a young, just a fantastically attractive person from Alabama (…) I said, explain IVF, very IVF, very quickly. And within about two minutes, I understood it” – DT, 17 Oct

And, then, most unexpectedly…

“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government. Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body? A woman’s fundamental right of individual liberty, to her own life, grants her the authority to terminate her pregnancy if she wishes. Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.” – Melanija Knavs, 03 Oct

“I am sympathetic to all who wish to find a better life in this country. As an immigrant myself, I intimately understand the necessary if arduous process of legally becoming an American. As a mother myself, I stressed: ‘The government should not be taking children away from their parents.’” – Melanija Knavs, 03 Oct

anyone can turn into a refugee

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Running, Travel with tags , , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2024 by xi'an

When I visited my mother last month for the Pegasus half-marathon, celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the D Day landing were starting in Normandy. And she talked with us of the days around the event, when as a 5y old she had to flee (under German occupation troops’orders) her family house in Saint-Lô, that had been hit by Allied shells and stay with other refugees in the nearby countryside, for several weeks, eating meat from cows killed during the combats and the few products the local farm was able to provide. When the Allied troops managed to push further inland, they returned to the house, which had been mostly looted, and decided to move to my grandfather’s birthplace, 50km away, by foot and with a wheelbarrow to carry the 5y and 4y old girls. They arrived to find that my great-grand-mother’s house had also been destroyed, by a bomb this time, but that she was alive and leaving with relative in the countryside, which is where they spent the remaining months of 1944, before settling for 35y in another small western Normandy town… During this conversation, she repeatedly mentioned how strongly she was relating with the victims of the current refugee crises, both in Ukraine and Gaza, in that she knew from experience how quickly and irremediably one could become a refugee thrown on the dangerous roads of a war zone, with hardly any remaining belongings…

Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt…

Posted in Books, Kids, Running with tags , , , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2024 by xi'an

international day for the elimination of violence against women

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 25, 2023 by xi'an

[translated from a unified call by dozens of organisations and unions]

On this international day of November 25, in a context of more and more wars, our support goes to all women in the world, the first victims, along with children, of armed conflicts. We particularly show our support for the women of Ukraine, Burma, Palestine, Israel and Nagorno-Karabakh. We loudly proclaim our solidarity with our Afghan sisters kept under the yoke of appalling oppression when the mere fact of going to school becomes a heroic act. We reaffirm our sisterhood with Iranian and Kurdish women revolting for their freedom. We affirm our support to Uyghur women, persecuted and victims of a genocidal policy.

On November 25 we will march to pay tribute to all the victims of sexist violence, women, LGBTQIA+ people, to all those who suffer and struggle. To all those we have lost.ن زندگی آزادی [Women, Life, Freedom]

La “main de Moscou“ ?

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , on March 25, 2023 by xi'an