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The Aztecs and Palestinians: The paralells Between How Colonists and Conqistadors Treated Them

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  Revisiting history is how we understand the present and keep alive the memories of the mistakes of the past. Those memories are our precious heritage that encourages us to become better people.  Today, I am reading about the Spanish colonists' conquering of the Aztecs. What an eye-opening tale with equal doses of human greed and innocence, but it is not fictional! We, humanity, did it to ourselves. We are the victims and perpetrators.  It does not matter to us which category we belonged to if we lived in that era because, on both sides, there were people like us who wanted to live in peace and people like us who wanted to conquer the world's riches.   It begins to matter when we put the past against the present and introspect. Then we realise that we are the perpetrators, or we are the ones who must feel the survivor’s guilt and act upon it before it is too late. Or we will go down in history as one of the cruellest people to ever inhabit Earth.  How the ...
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The Songs of Persia for the Time of War

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  This war torments and wears out all of us. Hope seems to have disappeared completely. When there is no dawn on the horizon, we must talk about the darkness but also search for light beyond.  In this blinding darkness, the remote glimmer of Iranian poetry gives you a momentary escape. These lines, these words, remind us of the grandeur of us as one civilisation. The divisions disappear. These poems are like muted steps and whispers of rescue coming closer to the corner we have huddled together in fear of losing our souls.    This is the nectar from Persia, kept alive as deep in history as before the Middle Ages. Hakim Sanai, Ferdowsi, Rumi, Omar Khayyam, Hafez Shiraz… A confluence of Persian and Islamic cultures condensed into not only heavenly drops, whispering chimes, and birdsongs but life’s ultimate answers.   Hakim Sanai sang, “The road your self must journey on lies in polishing the heart It is not by rebellion and discord that the heart’s mirro...
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How Far Away Is a Cancer Vaccine?

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(image source: Pixabay) A cancer vaccine has always remained elusive for medicine and science. Is this situation changing? Is hope rising over the horizon? The Ovarian Cancer Vaccine According to the latest news , Oxford University scientists have developed a vaccine for ovarian cancer . This vaccine, OvarianVax, when available for use, will be able to teach the immune cells in our body to detect and attack ovarian cancer cells in the early stages of this disease. Prof. Ahmed Ahmed is the leading scientist behind this research.  The trial for this vaccine has started. The importance of this development is that when it is ready, this vaccine might wipe out ovarian cancer. Yet, this vaccine is still years away.  Why Is a Cancer Vaccine Still a Mirage? What is Happening on the Research Front? Catherine J Wu, a cancer scientist, was awarded the prestigious Sjöberg Prize for her contribution to cancer research  in February 2024 . She is a professor of medicine at Harvard...
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Who Is Naim Qassim, the New Secretary-General of Hezbollah?

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  Naim Qassim has assumed charge as the new Secretary-general of the Lebanese military-political group, Hezbollah. He is another Hezbollah hardliner, referred to as the “Hezbollah intellectual” in the outside circles.  The New Chief of Hezbollah Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut by Israel on September 27, 2024. Naim Qassim, the new Secretary-General, was the founding member of Hezbollah, a cleric, and has been the Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah since 1991. After Nasarallah’s assassination, he has served as the acting Secretary-General.  Naim Qassim has also been the general coordinator of Hezbollah's parliamentary election-related campaigns since 1992 when the organisation debuted in electoral politics. He lacks the charisma of Hasan Nasrallah. Qassim has been Hezbollah's face before international media, giving interviews and functioning as its spokesperson. Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council and the potent...
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What is Hamas Leader Yahya Sinwar's Legacy?

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  Israel killed Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, one of the few leaders who was left in Gaza to lead the war on the Palestine side. For many in the Western world, Yahya Sinwar will be just a terrorist, and for many in the Middle East, he will remain a hero. It is difficult to answer who he really was amidst the chaos of misinformation and troubled history that has turned this region into a hellhole of violence and mistrust.  Obviously, Sinwar was a strong leader, a man capable of making the hardest of hard decisions, as witnessed in the October 7 attack of Hamas against Israel. The last interview that Sinwar gave to foreign media was with VICE News and journalist Hind Hassan in 2021. Al Jazeera Television has interviewed Hassan in the aftermath of Yahya Sinwar’s assassination.  Hassan remembers Sinwar as a man who unceremoniously walked out of a mosque in Gaza, surrounded by his colleagues, amidst an escalation of the conflict in 2021. She and her TV crew could walk up to ...
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