Hasta La Gadget!

CAIRO (AP) — Across the Middle East and elsewhere, some conservative Muslim women only look out at the world around them from behind the niqab.

For most, the niqab is a choice. They do so out of their own interpretation of the Quran and the hadith, a collection of traditions and anecdotes about the Prophet Muhammad, believing that a woman’s body should be covered out of modesty.

As a photographer for The Associated Press, I travel across the Middle East and often see women wearing the niqab. Back home in Lebanon, how a woman dresses remains a personal choice, as some wear bikinis out to the beach, while other Muslims wear head scarves or the niqab.

But with the rise of the extremist Islamic State group in neighboring Syria and Iraq, the militants have forced women in areas under their control to wear the niqab. Penalties for disobeying them can be incredibly harsh — even death.

That means those women now see the world differently than they did before. A niqab is a veil that entirely covers the face or only has a small, slit-like opening for the eyes, changing the way a woman wearing one views life around her. Women also have to lift them up slightly to be able to eat or drink anything.

In my travels, I decided to begin shooting images through a full niqab to offer a glimpse of what it must be like to look through them. In my hometown of Beirut, I shot pictures of its famous corniche that way, the bright colors of the Mediterranean dimmed through it. The same happened at the Giza pyramids in Egypt, where a sunny blue sky grew dark.

Despite that, some women say they welcome the anonymity and protection from harassment the niqab offers.

Here are a series of AP photographs I shot of life viewed through the niqab across the Middle East.

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Is the college sport system set up to provide the kind of independent review necessary to protect the interests of big-time football and basketball players who perform in the multi-billion dollar college sport industry? Given what is happening at the University of Illinois following a former football player raising issues regarding player mistreatment, the answer to that question is no.

On Sunday, May 10, 2015, Simon Cvijanovic, a former offensive lineman for the University of Illinois football team, made one of his first forays onto Twitter, giving voice to his experience as a player there. About playing football at Illinois, Cvijanovic wrote:

I’m not gonna just keep quiet while players suffer. I didn’t want this to get out because I love my school. But they seem not to care.

When interviewed by the Chicago Tribune, he went on to say about playing at a Big Ten institution:

It’s a stressful environment. It’s a dangerous culture. We don’t talk about how we’re mistreated because we’re then ‘not a team player’ and ‘soft’.

Player health and safety issues were among the chief concerns raised by Cvijanovic in his postings. He wrote:

I stopped playing football because of my physical health. I was asked to push myself past pain until I didn’t want to play anymore.

He further alleged that the coaching staff had mistreated players by threatening loss of scholarships if players didn’t toe the line and in one instance, abusing a player physically at practice, while demanding that players compete when injured without licensed staff support.

The University’s initial response to the allegations was a proposed investigation by athletic director, Mike Thomas. However, in a press conference held less than 24 hours after Cvijanovic’s allegations became public, Thomas seemed to be actively working to discredit Cvijanovic while offering unqualified support for the coaching staff and program.

Following an inquiry by the National College Players Association challenging the degree to which an investigation undertaken by Thomas could be done without bias given his public statements in support of the program, the University announced that Chicago-based law firm, Franczek Radelet, had been retained to conduct an independent review of the situation.

Here too, however, the question of who is representing the interests of the players goes unanswered. The firm itself is hired to represent the interests of the University of Illinois and its employees, not the athletes.

The law firm selected by the University to conduct the independent investigation is Franczek Radelet, a firm known for its robust work in the higher education sector. Notably, however, according to a description on the Franczek Radelet website, the firm is also

… a powerful advocate for employers and a formidable adversary to unions. We provide creative and effective solutions to challenging labor relations problems. We aggressively pursue client goals at the bargaining table, in arbitration, and in the courtroom. We work with non-unionized employers to develop and implement effective strategies for preventing and defeating union organizing campaigns. We are a respected adversary — unions know we’ll anticipate both their negotiation tactics and campaign plans.

Was it mere coincidence that a firm with this kind of pedigree was chosen or was there a strategic reason stemming from the fact that Cvijanovic called for players at the University of Illinois to unionize? College sport officials still remain unsettled after football players at another Big Ten school, Northwestern, signed union cards in February of 2014 and were declared by the regional National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to be employees with the right to collectively bargain (a decision currently under review).

In the press conference University of Illinois Athletic Director Thomas held last week, his stance on unionization surfaced. Mirroring the talking points issued to college sport administrators by the NCAA following the action of the Northwestern football players last spring, he said, “A lot of time and resources are invested in them. I don’t see student-athletes as employees, and I certainly don’t think unionizing is the right approach.” So rankled by the prospect of college football players unionizing that legislatures in two Big Ten “states” — Michigan and Ohio — have sought to bar college athletes from being employees, doing so with little public dialogue and without players like Cvijanovic being informed that such legislation was being proposed. Could the University of Illinois through this investigation be engaging in a similar preemptive strike?

While the answer to that question will unfold in the days and weeks ahead, the actions taken by the University of Illinois validate in dramatic fashion what Cvijanovic observed to the Twitter-sphere, and what prompted Northwestern football players to sign union cards. As Cvijanovic pointed out, “There is no one to speak on behalf of the athlete.”

Ellen J. Staurowsky is a professor of sport management at Drexel University and co-founder of College Athletes’ Rights & Empowerment Faculty Coalition (CARE-FC).

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Elian Gonzalez, now 21, says he wants to return to the U.S., at least for a visit.

“To the American people, first I say thank you for the love they give me,” Gonzalez told ABC News in a segment that aired Monday. “I want the time to give my love to American people.”

Gonzalez became a household name after the then-6-year-old boy was rescued off Florida’s shores in late 1999. His mom had died when the boat bringing them from Cuba to the U.S. capsized.

The little boy’s arrival in the U.S. set up a custody battle between Gonzalez’s father in Cuba and the boy’s relatives in Miami. Eventually, U.S. marshals stormed the home where Gonzalez was living and he was sent back to Cuba. The April 2000 raid produced this iconic photo (below) of a federal officer with his gun pointed near the frightened child.

(AP Photo/Alan Diaz)

Now, Gonzalez said, he doesn’t agree with what his mom did, but he thanks her for saving his life in that perilous sea voyage.

“I believe that if today she is not here with me, it is because she fought until the very last minute for me to survive,” he said through a translator. “After giving life to me, I believe she was the one who saved me. She was the one who gave life back to me at a time of danger.”

Gonzalez traveled outside Cuba again in 2013 when he visited Ecuador as part of Cuba’s delegation to the 23rd World Festival of Youth and Students, The Associated Press reported.

Elian Gonzalez at a church in Havana, Cuba, in 2010. (Photo: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images)

The young man’s expressed desire to visit the U.S. comes in the midst of a historic thawing of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. Flight restrictions were eased this year, although travel between the two countries remains limited, according to U.S. Treasury Department rules.

Elian Gonzalez (left) and his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, in December 2006. (Photo: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images)

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Photo: Emily Park

Alex Grecian is the author of the Scotland Yard Murder Squad novels which include the New York Times bestseller, The Yard, The Black Country, The Devil’s Workshop and his latest, The Harvest Man. After leaving a career in advertising, Alex began writing fiction. He wrote comic books and co-created the critically acclaimed graphic novel series Proof. He has been nominated for the Barry Award, Strand Magazine Critics Award and has won others.

The Harvest Man is the fourth in the Murder Squad series. Set in 1890, Walter Day, a Scotland Yard Detective Investigator, has been sidelined with an injury inflicted by Jack the Ripper who is still terrorizing London. But a new monster has surfaced, the Harvest Man–who carves victims’ faces off their skulls — so Day is recalled to investigate. His former associate, Nevil Hammersmith, who has been dropped from the force, launches his own investigation. With two serial killers — or perhaps three — on the loose, the investigation becomes urgent. But the Ripper has been playing a game with Walter Day, and a huge surprise awaits the reader.

After reading The Harvest Man, I was surprised to learn you’re American, not English. What made you decide to write London-based crime thrillers set in the late 19th century?
That’s the kind of stuff I read growing up and was influenced greatly by it. Actually, it was never my intention to write a series of Victorian novels. I was going to write only one to get it out of my system. But, after the first was published, there was interest in a sequel. I realized I could do things with these characters I couldn’t do with contemporary characters. I picked up the gauntlet and haven’t been able to put it down since.

You mentioned reading as a youngster. Which authors were your earliest influences?
I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories which I read over and over again; and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan books, which turned out to influence me greatly. I was most interested in the novels where he left the jungle and went back to England. As an American kid, it felt alien at first, but after reading a number of the books, it began feeling natural and I just absorbed all of it. Victorian society really fascinated me.

I also loved comic books. The Flash was my favorite comic book character.

One of the striking aspects of The Harvest Man was the description of the beginnings of forensic crime-solving techniques. Will you talk about that?
My books are occasionally called mysteries, but there’s not a whole lot of mystery to them. They’re police procedurals. The structure of the first two books was based on Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels. I loved those books and thought it would be interesting to write a police procedural set in Victorian England. I wondered how police procedures worked back then, so, once I had my detectives in place, I began researching and discovered Victorian England had no forensic examiners, and it turned out they had no forensic procedures. I created Dr. Kingsley as a forensic examiner who was far ahead of his time. I wanted to craft a story concerning what it was like to try to find a murderer back then. I don’t see how anyone got caught. (Laughter). The police were limited to strands of hair and footprints; but even that didn’t happen very often. Criminal apprehension was mostly a foot chase, with the police being more dogged than the criminal.

You’ve certainly never visited turn-of-the century London. How did you manage to capture the atmosphere of those times so intricately?
No one alive has actually visited there. (Laughter). I read a lot of fiction from those times, especially Dickens, to pick up the atmospherics of the time and place. I have two whole walls of books about day-to-day life during that era. I also have a gigantic map from that period, so I can pinpoint streets where things happened. Basically, I do a great deal of research.

You’ve written comics and graphic novels. How does that impact your novel writing?
When you write a comic book script, you’re describing for the artist everything that will be drawn in a panel. You’re doing that five or six times for each page, because a comic book’s action is segmented into panels. You learn to think visually, putting yourself into that panel and describing everything the artist needs to render in the scene. When you write a novel, you use a separate set of models, creatively speaking. It’s not as rigid as a comic book, but I carry over some habits, and end up thinking visually. So, when I’m writing a scene, I’m in that room and describe everything about it. I think writing comic books is a good training ground for writing novels.

You left your day job to begin writing full-time and have been very successful. What has surprised you about the writing life?
What surprises me most is the self-discipline you must exercise as a writer. It’s much easier to lie on the couch and eat potato chips or watch Better Call Saul than sit down and write another paragraph. It’s much easier to go to work where you have people waiting for you at the office, and you’ll be in trouble if you don’t show up. I’ve had to relearn self-discipline in writing these books. So, the autonomy is great, but it’s also challenging. It can be tough not having a boss, but I guess my wife fits that description. (Laughter).

What’s your writing day like?
I used to get up at three o’clock in the morning to get my writing done before the rest of the household woke up. Once my son went off to school, I began getting up at six and now work from about ten until three in the afternoon. I then pick up my son from school. My workday revolves around my family life.

What do you love about the writing life?
I think a lot about this. I do love it. If I weren’t being paid to write, I would still be writing. It’s almost a compulsion. There are things I want to say and try, such as new structures and techniques. But what I love most is finishing a book (Laughter).

If you weren’t a writer today, what would you be doing?
I think I would be a professional thief. I think I could pull that off. I’d be an Ocean’s Eleven kind of guy. I love figuring out a caper; how to break into a place. Every time we’re anywhere, I’m looking for a spot to hide until the place closes.

You’re having a diner party and can invite five people from any walk of life, living or dead. Who would they be?
I would invite Graham Greene, my favorite author. I’d also invite Stephen King because I’ve learned so much from him. Then I’d invite JFK. I’d like to have William S. Burroughs, and J.K. Rowling as guests, too.

What’s coming next from Alex Grecian?
I’m wrapping up my comic book series, Rasputin and the Mad Monk. It’s a supernatural, historical take on Rasputin. Next year, the sequel to The Harvest Man is due. It’s called Lost and Gone Forever.

Congratulations on penning The Harvest Man, a suspense-filled, atmospheric historical thriller taking the reader back to 1890 London. I truly felt like I was there during that time.

Mark Rubinstein
Author of The Lovers’ Tango and Return to Sandara

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(This piece comes via the Religion News Service)

(RNS) In Sunday’s finale of the critically acclaimed AMC series “Mad Men,” Don Draper calls Peggy Olson collect from a pay phone in California.

“I broke all my vows. I scandalized my child. I took another man’s name and made nothing of it.”

It’s a breathless moment of confession, one that confounds (and concerns) Peggy and leaves the rest of us waiting for some sign of personal redemption, however fleeting or thin. We’ve been waiting for the better part of eight years.

Whether the farewell episode redeemed Don Draper is, of course, a matter of interpretation. But here’s what we know beyond a doubt. For seven seasons, Matthew Weiner’s magnum opus has delivered some of the finest art the television medium has to offer. And it has done so by respecting the serial TV tradition and paying unrivaled attention to detail.

The result was a slowly unfolding period melodrama that should have been marginally successful but became a mainstream hit because it told a universally compelling narrative — a story about the tension between our consumeristic American existence and our deep-seated search for identity, meaning and fulfillment.

If that sounds generic, it shouldn’t. “Mad Men” transported us to the pivotal decade of the 1960s and dealt deliberately with the advent of Madison Avenue and the heyday of the advertising industry. This was the time in our nation’s history when our materialistic fates were sealed: We became a people defined by things, things produced in mass quantities to feed an insatiable cultural appetite. And that appetite was fueled by advertising.

Don Draper, the quintessential ad man, describes advertising early on in the series as “selling happiness.” In the boardroom, Don repeatedly does exactly that — creating scenarios that attach emotional, if not transcendental, value to otherwise common products and services. He brings his clients to tears or laughter or both, and opens their wallets besides. Deals are closed, Clio Awards are won.

The ad man sells happiness and becomes a millionaire.

But the ad man is a fraud, and Don’s identity theft is constantly tearing at the veneer of personal and professional success. If we try to forget this and root for Don Draper the ad man, we are soon reminded again of Dick Whitman the coward and phony. If we are tempted to admire the style and sophistication of a millionaire executive and his glamorous dalliances, we are soon faced with the destructive results of his pathologically duplicitous personality.

In many ways, Don Draper is the incarnation of advertising itself: the lie that we are defined by things, that we derive meaning from what we consume.

This is what finally came to a head in Sunday’s finale, and people of faith would do well to heed the lesson. Don finally faces the effects of his lie. He experiences an eruption of reality. His ex-wife is dying of lung cancer and would rather their children live with an uncle than with their father. His daughter is disillusioned. His success is utterly unsatisfying and he’s burned professional bridges. He doesn’t know who he is.

After the phone call with Peggy, he falls to the ground. “I can’t move.”

For believers, the message is precisely an invitation beyond these lies about identity and meaning. It’s a call to repentance — turning away from seeking fulfillment in what we consume. It’s a call to faith — leaning into the ultimate reality that we are beloved by God and possess inestimable worth as those redeemed by God. It’s a call to action — living to embrace others in this new reality of belovedness, to find ourselves in serving people, not in consuming things.

Other key characters seem to find themselves in the “Mad Men” farewell. Pete Campbell changes careers and reunites with his ex-wife and child. Joan chooses creative expression — and her son — over excess and ease. Peggy learns “there’s more to life than work,” by listening to the one she loves. Roger marries a woman his own age.

Don’s fate, meanwhile, is a matter of interpretation, but I’ll offer mine. Rather than abiding by his dictum of “moving forward” and not looking back, starting over and taking on yet another identity based on a lie, he is headed in the opposite direction.

Back east. To Madison Avenue. With a brilliant ad idea.

But this time, it’s not about “selling happiness” to enrich himself, fulfill his lusts or make his mark. It’s about being close to his children. It’s about finding his true identity in loving and being loved.

(Zach J. Hoag is an author, preacher, and content creator from New England. He writes at zhoag.com and The Huffington Post. His first book, “Nothing but the Blood: The Gospel According to Dexter,” is available on Amazon.)

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