Sugar Cubes

AMMAN — The ministries of environment and health on Thursday temporarily shut down Al Himma resort for violation of environmental standards.

The complex was closed because garbage was strewn everywhere emitting an unpleasant odour that posed a threat to the environment and the health of citizens, a source at the Ministry of Environment told The Jordan Times.

“The complaints unit at the ministry received several calls from people living close to the resort, claiming that the garbage had affected their health,” said the source, who did not want to be named.

Al Himma, a therapeutical hot springs located about 10km north of Umm Qais in Irbid Governorate, was highly regarded by the Romans.

The mineral-rich hot waters of the springs pour into an indoor pool at a privately run complex with a restaurant.

The ministry sent an inspection team to the site, where bathing facilities are available for visitors, and found it full of trash that attracted insects and flies, said the source.

“It was completely polluted. It is the fault of citizens who visit the site and leave their garbage behind, “ said the source, adding that the management was also to blame as it had turned a blind eye to the problem.

According to the source, the site will be reopened when it is cleaned up.

[Via Jordan Times]

It does not take much to clean up the place, actually if only people will stop throwing garbage the place will remain clean enough for everyone to enjoy. This is sad.

Who came first, the chicken or the egg? :

Ethical challenges are anterior to problem solving. When we resort to problem solving we are no longer attentive to the ethical challenge facing us. Ethical challenge perturbs our dormant reflection regarding problem construction.

As the Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida has taught us, it is in problem construction, when we are no longer so sure what the problem is, in this un-decidable moment of suspension of the given argumentative oppositions that already define the problem, that we are ethical. Of course, once a new problem is constructed, we will be trapped again in subsequent problem solving discussion and may well miss the point in the process. However, we must never neutralise the problem and keep ongoing the process of facing un-decidability.

It is in facing the challenge of problem construction, a very anxious moment indeed, that we are able to deconstruct the identifications that make our identity stagnant and deaf to the richness of actuality. Only in moments of un-decidability do we critically interpret our own “story” and expose its contingency and arbitrariness. Ethical, and in turn, legal challenges come always as a surplus that is not yet conceptualized, as a residual imperative that demands us to face, and demolish the walls of the given.The ethical challenge does not stop, does not have walls and boundaries. No government and Parliaments are immune from that challenge however democratically elected. Nor should international bodies such as the UN and their pronouncements be immune from such challenge. Dare I say, even what we take as a justified representation of the very ethical standards we rely upon is constantly subjected to interpretative challenges.

If you’ve read all above thats it, you can take five now or continue to test your comprehension read full article:The Ethical and Legal Challenges Facing Palestine, by Oren Ben-Dor*.

*Dr. Oren Ben-Dor grew up in Israel. He teaches Legal and Political Philosophy at the School of Law Southampton University, United Kingdom.

It is a place that is breaking the mould in the field of children’s education. Manzil, in Sharjah, caters to children with special needs even while encouraging normally growing children to study along with them. While Manzil hopes to achieve greater integration, others question this endeavour.

You may have come across many instances where a child with special needs is placed in a mainstream school where he is tutored along with other normally growing children as an experiment in integration. [Read more…]