Hasta La Gadget!

There are some hardcore rebels out there. Maybe you know of one, or maybe you ARE one.

Either way, it’s time to step up your game, because this guy has taken the rebel lifestyle to a new level.

Via Imgur

One teen boy was so moved by Emma Watson’s recent speech about feminism that he wrote a response to the Sunday Telegraph, commending the actress and highlighting the significance her message could have for those who do not believe gender inequality exists.

Ed Holtom, a 15-year-old from England, wrote to the British newspaper over the weekend to discuss Watson’s Sept. 21 United Nations speech, which she made on behalf of gender equality and the HeForShe campaign. The “Harry Potter” star spoke about misconceptions that peg feminism as a “man-hating” ideology and about how gender stereotypes can harm both men and women.

Holtom’s letter followed up on Watson’s point and called out some of his “ignorant” classmates at the all-boys school he attends.

“By using words such as ‘girly’ or ‘manly’ we inadvertently buy into gender stereotyping,” he wrote. “We play with toys designed for our gender, we go to segregated schools, we play different sports based on gender, and yet it takes some effort for many people to acknowledge the existence of gender inequality and the injustice it entails for both sexes.”

“If we want equality, it will take more effort than paying women the same as men, or giving women equal opportunities,” he continued. “We must all make an active decision to change our language. We must stop pressuring each other to fit stereotypes which more often than not leaves [sic] us feeling repressed and unable to express ourselves. We must not let gender define us.”

The boy’s letter went viral, and he proudly shared it on social media.

Holtom told Buzzfeed that Watson is not the only pro-equality celebrity who inspires him.

“I was inspired by Emma Watson’s speech, but also by Beyoncé’s philosophy of female empowerment,” he said. “I didn’t expect anyone to take an interest in it, but I’m so glad people agree with me!”

Head over to the Telegraph to read Holtom’s full letter.

If Barack Obama is concerned about the legacy of his presidency, he might want to take a look at Sunday’s episode of “Last Week Tonight.”

Early in his sobering segment on the U.S. drone program, John Oliver noted that “Drone strikes will be as much a characteristic of the Obama presidency as Obamacare or receiving racist email forwards from distant relatives.”

With long-form segments on complicated and/or disturbing topics, “Last Week Tonight” has made it clear time and time again that it is far more than just a half-hour comedy show. It proved its investigative weight last week with a segment on the Miss America pageant and its somewhat dubious scholarship claims. But his look at drones, much like his earlier piece on the death penalty, reveals a show that desperately wants to appeal to the better angles of America’s nature.

But to appeal to them, they have to listen. “Drone strikes are one of those things that it’s really convenient not to think about that much,” Oliver lamented. “Like the daily life of a circus elephant or that Beck is a Scientologist.”

Unfortunately, not thinking about drones is a luxury many people don’t have, a point made overwhelmingly clear by a clip of a 13-year-old Pakistani boy whose grandmother had been killed by a drone strike. In the clip, Zubair Rehman testifies that he no longer loves blue skies, he prefers grey skies. “The drones do not fly when the skies are grey.”

That was enough for Oliver. “When children from other countries are telling us that we’ve made them fear the sky,” he insisted, “it might be time to ask some hard questions.”

“Last Week Tonight” airs Sundays at 11:00 p.m. ET on HBO.

Dr. Sidney C. Smith Jr. didn’t have just one a-ha moment that turned him into a crusader against heart disease. He had too many to count.

Frequently, they fit the same pattern: Someone is rushed to the hospital with a heart attack after a buildup of fatty deposits called plaque has blocked a coronary artery. Dr. Smith and his colleagues in the cardiac catheterization lab then do their best to open the artery. While often successful, Dr. Smith is always left with the knowledge that something could’ve been done in the months and years before to prevent that person from being on that table.

“If only they had not been smoking,” he’d think. “If only their blood pressure had been controlled. If only they had chosen a lifestyle with a heart-healthy diet and daily physical activity.”

So Dr. Smith began working to implement strategies to prevent heart disease and to ensure measures were being taken to prevent survivors from having more problems. He also became involved on a much larger scale.

In 1995, Dr. Smith became president of the American Heart Association. In 2011-12, he served as president of the World Health Federation.

Dr. Smith is only the third person to lead both organizations. This makes him the perfect person to take over this spot today — Sept. 29, which is World Heart Day — to discuss this day of awareness and the global efforts to combat cardiovascular diseases.

—

In the late 1990s, Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray and Dr. Alan D. Lopez published a paper about the Global Burden of Disease. This seminal text helped crystalize just how big of a crisis cardiovascular diseases posed everywhere.

We now know this grim fact: Heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death in the world. Annually, these diseases claim 17.3 million lives. That’s like wiping out the combined populations of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, the four largest cities in the U.S., each and every year.

Among the many ways the world is coming together to fight this is by pausing every Sept. 29 to recognize what we’re up against, and what we can do about it.

The primary purpose of World Heart Day is awareness. Hundreds of millions of people from more than 100 countries will be exposed to this subject on this day, and that’s wonderful. The more people know, the more likely they are to spur change.

Since World Heart Day began in 2000, we’ve taken many strides. Perhaps the boldest leap was taken by the United Nations, which in 2012 held a special gathering to coordinate efforts to take on all non-communicable diseases (NCDs), especially the most prevalent one, cardiovascular disease. (Only once before the U.N. held such a gathering, and that was to fight HIV/AIDS.) The result of this assembly was a commitment to reduce premature deaths from NCDs by 25 percent by the year 2025. As someone who’s been practicing cardiology for 40 years, I cannot overemphasize the importance and significance of this target.

In the United States, we have been battling cardiovascular diseases for about as long as anyone in the world. The work by organizations such as the American Heart Association is proving to be an invaluable tool to help jump start programs in other countries. I’m proud to note that many programs that started at AHA are now having an impact internationally.

For instance, Get With The Guidelines is the AHA’s program that helps ensure patients get the care they need based on scientifically formulated guidelines. AHA leaders are working with local societies and ministries of health in foreign countries, blending our knowledge of the programs with their knowledge of what’s best for their country and culture.

Let me give you an example.

In the United States, someone having a heart attack could be rushed by ambulance to a catheterization lab, where they would have a stent put in to open a blocked artery. In many developing countries, someone having a heart attack would not have access to such rapid emergency transport. They also would find themselves in a hospital that probably doesn’t have a catheterization lab, so the best they could get is medication — the so-called “clot buster” to help open the artery. How can we bridge this huge divide? In the short term, we need to make sure those facilities have a ready supply of the best medicines for early and ongoing treatment of patients with heart attacks that they can afford, and we need to make sure those healthcare providers know when and how to distribute the medicine. Then we need to see about upgrading their entire system. Could they work toward eventually having ambulances and a cath lab? If so, how? If not, what’s the best option? An important focus here must be on primary prevention, which can keep many people from having their first heart attack.

Get With The Guidelines programs developed by AHA already are being discussed for China, Brazil and Japan. Further expansion in those countries, and to other nations, is expected in 2015. I’ve been fortunate to help with many of these new programs.

Just last week I was in China for the launch of a pilot program that will bring secondary prevention guidelines (essentially, using known medications for people who’ve had cardiovascular events) to 101 hospitals. Next year, we anticipate launching another guideline-based project in China involving atrial fibrillation; I’ll be there in a few weeks to discuss atrial fibrillation and the increased risk it brings to those with heart failure. I also recently spoke in Brazil about providing guidelines-based care to all cardiovascular patients. And I was in Barcelona shortly before that talking about the cardiovascular risks of air pollution.

Wherever we go, cost is a consideration. Medicine and medical procedures are expensive. So are facilities and training. This is why it’s so crucial to promote lifestyle changes. Imagine the transformational potential of awareness programs encouraging people to make healthier choices.

Advocating for governments to lead the way is another possible game-changer, and the AHA is sharing its advocacy expertise with other international organizations. Similarly, representatives of nations from all over the world regularly come to AHA seeking advice on how to start national foundations. Not implementing programs in prevention also has an associated cost, in the form of heart attacks and strokes.

Every World Heart Day has a theme, and this year’s is creating heart-healthy environments. This means improving the places where we live, work and play.

How can you do it? Take some simple steps.

• Emphasize not smoking. If you smoke, try quitting. If people you love smoke, encourage them to stop. And if you don’t smoke, don’t start.
• Make better food choices. Stock refrigerators and pantries with more fruits and vegetables and less of the things you know are unhealthy.
• Get moving. Find time for physical activity; if there aren’t places to be active where you live, work or play, seek ways to change that.

I encourage you to spread the word about World Heart Day through your social networks. Visit the World Heart Day page on Facebook and follow along on Twitter. Hopefully you will tweet using #worldheartday and #heartchoices today, and perhaps also sign the online petition asking national and international leaders to create more heart-healthy environments wherever people live, work or play.

And, while you’re at it, why not go ahead and mark the next World Heart Day on your calendar — Sept. 29, 2015. By working together we can make a world of difference.

As the United States ramps up its ‘no boots on the ground’ war against jihadists in Iraq and Syria, the stream of threats emanating from the region appear to grow ever wider and deeper. The emerging U.S. policy of containment and degradation in Iraq and Syria looks very much like a repeat of the failed strategies it pursued in Afghanistan, and previously in Iraq.

Such kinetic, defensive approaches may prevent attacks on the homeland in the near-term, and may even prevent fragile states such as Afghanistan, Syria or Iraq from disintegrating into “ungoverned space” such as Libya, Somalia and Yemen, but they will never defeat the appeal of Islamic terrorism to tens of thousands of aspirants from around the world.

Al Qaeda (writ large to include the Islamic State) is the ultimate asymmetric enemy. After more than a decade of war, the West is being seriously out-maneuvered and out-fought. Not a single terrorist group that America has declared war on has been decisively defeated. Even though much has been learned since 9/11, the U.S. government still does not understand the nature of jihad. Jihadists share a common Koranic Armageddon narrative which unites them in hatred of the U.S., while America struggles to define what “terrorism” means in its statutes.

Despite thousands of American lives and countless non-combatants having been lost, trillions of dollars spent, and American prestige having been squandered in the process, the U.S. remains under multiple terrorist threats. These range from air passengers’ clothing soaked in liquid explosives to bombs sewn into people’s bodies to efforts to introduce the Ebola epidemic to America with infected suicide attackers and aerosol sprays.

Saudi Arabia’s money and Pakistan’s support are the primary reasons why Al Qaeda has survived and grown since 2001. The toxic mix of radical Islam, Gulf oil money, sympathetic fighters in the tribal regions, and safe houses in cities is unique to Pakistan. Diplomatic failures, nuclear non-proliferation concerns, over-reliance on drones and the Bin Laden raid have all led to permanent “frenemy” status with Pakistan.

Pakistan’s stolen nuclear technology is a primary reason why America’s “AfPak” efforts failed. It could have done what needed to be done in 2002, but for Pakistan’s refusal to grant the U.S. access to its ungovernable tribal regions. As long as the enemy has sanctuary and freedom of movement, America cannot win there. A putative ally who helps the Taliban and the Haqqani Network kill Americans, most likely in part with American taxpayer money, could be deemed worse than no ally at all.

What has become the prototypical American strategy of invading, changing regimes and occupying and arming allies should instead be focused on defeating the enemy and the eventual disarmament of populations. More weapons floating around and more people under arms are exactly what these troubled countries do not need. If the enemy were decisively defeated, the U.S. would not need to continue to rely on a strategy of training local forces to finish the jobs it started.

Regardless of location, the enemy needs to be routed in an east-to-west fashion — clearing every cave and basement of every fighter — and then leaving. America is great at building bases, but terrible at building trust. It must learn that insurgencies cannot be defeated with airpower.

Going back to Vietnam, the U.S. dropped hundreds of tons of ordnance for very little in tangible gains on the ground. The only time America got ahead of the game in Iraq was when U.S. troops lived among Iraqis during the surge. That fact should influence the Obama Administration’s choices in Iraq and Syria today. The American people would surely rather have a President who reneges on an outdated promise than one who is so casualty-averse that he cannot devise and advance a winning strategy.

Motivation also matters, in the sense that a U.S. soldier fights for his buddies, but a jihadist fights for his cause. American soldiers struggle to defeat an enemy whose only creed is victory or death. American political sensitivity to collateral damage and force protection means that, by definition, its soldiers fight in too constrained a manner.

Jihadists know this and ensconce themselves amongst civilians, so that, either way, they win. They either live to fight another day or they become martyrs to motivate new aspirants. On the deepest level, this means that America’s selective destruction efforts are doing more harm than good. It is stopping near-term threats at the price of allowing the enemy to survive and grow stronger in their sanctuaries.

America misread the Arab Awakening and helped the forces of chaos overwhelm ancien regimes. Now, this chaos is spreading widely, and causing more deaths and human despair than any autocrat ever did. Much of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy emphasis is dependent on the concept that America “doesn’t do stupid stuff”; however, with the notable exception of the Bin Laden raid, it seems that in the counter-terrorism arena, America actually does plenty of stupid stuff — reactively and repetitively.

A more effective strategy would be for the U.S. to understand its enemies better, enable duly elected governments to meet the basic needs of their people, help them craft fighting forces that believe in their cause, and stem the tide of jihadist recruits by exposing the moral bankruptcy and military futility of trying to create a regressive theocracy in the modern world.

Daniel Wagner is the CEO of Country Risk Solutions and author of the book “Managing Country Risk”.

Ian Wilkie, a former international lawyer with DLA Piper and Clifford Chance and a U.S. Army infantry veteran, is the Managing Director of Archer Analytics Ltd., a private intelligence company.