Apple has made a number of firm political stands ever since Tim Cook took the helm, and it’s not about to back down any time soon. Politico sources (backed by in-the-know journalist John Paczkowski) say that Apple won’t provide funding or other suppo…
The campaign for Britain to leave the European Union held a two-point lead over the rival “In” camp, according to an opinion poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday and was reported by The Mirror newspaper on Saturday.
With Britain due to vote on its EU membership referendum on June 23, the YouGov poll, which was carried out for ITV television’s Good Morning Britain show, put “Out” ahead of “In” by 44-42 percent, the Mirror reported on its website.
Earlier on Saturday, an opinion poll conducted after a fatal attack on a British lawmaker on Thursday showed the campaign for Britain to stay in the EU had taken a three-point lead over the “Out” camp.
(Writing by William Schomberg; editing by Paul Sandle)
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For a women’s rights activist, this week’s United State of Women Summit hosted by the White House was a reminder that ending violence against women remains the single greatest challenge both here in the U.S. and around the world. From the women who shared their own experiences of violence to Vice President Biden’s impassioned speech, the call to action was clear: “We have to give women and girls a greater voice. But that’s not enough. They have to be assured that their voices will be heard.”
For more than 20 years, Women for Women International has worked to support survivors of such violence in war and conflict. Since our founding in response to the rape camps of Bosnia and Croatia, we have seen noteworthy progress in raising awareness of the use of rape as a weapon of war and the beginnings of concrete action to counter violence against women internationally. We have seen the first conviction of rape as genocide and a crime against humanity in 1997, thanks to the work of a terrific team of lawyers led by Pierre Prosper and the courage of the Rwandan women who agreed to testify. (The recently released documentary on the subject The Uncondemned, produced by Michelle Mitchell, is a must-see.)
In neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, WfWI honoree Dr. Denis Mukwege has risked his life by condemning perpetrators of violent attacks against women while the Panzi Hospital he founded attempts to repair the horrifying physical damage to women and girls caused by brutal attacks. We see similar courage throughout the world from activists and advocates responding to the rape of Yezidi women and girls in northern Iraq and Syrian women refugees, or condemning the violent attacks against women and girls in India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. And the international community is beginning to respond, with greater resources and a more robust (if still insufficient) policy response.
But too many women still suffer silently, without recourse to justice or support to heal. One such place is Kosovo, where I travelled earlier this year to meet with some of the 32,000 women we have served there since the WfWI program started in 1999. An estimated 20,000 women were raped in Kosovo during the conflict in 1998-99. To date, only three cases of wartime sexual violence have been prosecuted. International justice mechanisms have been stymied by the minority of states that have not recognized Kosovo’s independence. Indeed the UN has yet to release the official records of crimes committed during the conflict, despite petitions by the government of Kosovo.
Within the country, the strong cultural stigma associated with rape meant that many women remained silent, afraid that identifying themselves as victims would bring shame. That has begun to change, thanks to the leadership of former President Atifete Jahjaga and the National Council for the Survivors of Wartime Rape. This week marked the one-year anniversary of the “Thinking of You” exhibit, designed by Kosovo-born Alketa Xhafa-Mripa. The exhibit featured 5,000 dresses, donated by survivors and others, installed on 45 clotheslines strung across the football stadium in Pristina in a show of solidarity with the women who were raped during the conflict. The exhibit, the making of which is the subject of another great documentary film released this spring, was the first major public recognition of the abuses endured by the women of Kosovo. For many women, it was the first time they came forward to acknowledge their past.
So as we move forward from the first White House Summit on the United State of Women, let it also galvanize us into further action to end violence against women and bring those responsible to justice. While we must focus on the victims of the conflicts of today in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere, let us not forget those women – including the women of Kosovo – who still bear the emotional and physical scars of past conflicts.
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The majesties of Angkor Wat are just beginning to unfurl.
Scientists have announced the discovery of 1,000-year-old cities buried in the jungle surrounding Cambodia’s famous temple complex in a colossal discovery that could upend the area’s rich history as we know it.
Ground-penetrating lasers scanning more than 735 square miles of the Angkor region returned high-definition images of long-lost medieval sites. At their 12th-century heyday, the ruins would have made up the largest empire on earth, the Guardian reported.
Archaeologists were able to find the remnants of a lost civilization thanks to the advanced light-scanning equipment lidar, said Damian Evans, an archeologist at the École française d’Extrême-Orient. (The term lidar is an acronym for Light Detection And Ranging).
“The lidar quite suddenly revealed an entire cityscape there with astonishing complexity,” Evans told Agence France-Presse. “It turned out we’d been walking and flying right over the top of this stuff for ten years and not even noticing it because of the vegetation.”
Today’s surviving temples from the Khmer Empire were once surrounded by many other structures made of wood and thatch, material that allowed the buildings to easily rot away. But lasers attached to helicopters were able to locate more durable stone structures and elaborately placed earth mounds, which are being called “dome fields,” according to Evans’ report in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Even without breaking ground, scientists are calling it a mammoth of a find.
“This urban and rural landscape, linked by road and canal networks, now seems to have constituted the largest empire on earth in the 12th century,” Peter Sharrock of London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told the Guardian.
But it’s not just the ruins’ size that’s rewriting history. As Evans notes, the findings also appear to shatter previous beliefs that the Angkorian people eventually abandoned the cities for ones in the south.
“There’s an idea that somehow the Thais invaded and everyone fled down south,” Evans told the Guardian. “That didn’t happen; there are no cities [revealed by the aerial survey] that they fled to. It calls into question the whole notion of an Angkorian collapse.”
Today, the region’s stone temple ruins are revered as the most important archaeological sites in Southeast Asia by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The temples, which include the Temple of Angkor Wat and the Bayon Temple at Angkor Thom, make up not only the largest operating archaeological site in the world but one of the most popular tourist destinations.
Unfortunately, that kind of attention isn’t always good.
“Tourism represents an enormous economic potential but it can also generate irreparable destructions of the tangible as well as intangible cultural heritage,” UNESCO states on its website.
The researchers’ report in the Journal of Archaeological Science credited human conflict and underdevelopment in present-day Cambodia with preserving much of the region’s archaeological topography. Archaeological landscapes beyond Cambodia’s borders have otherwise been destroyed through agricultural and urban developments over the last hundred years, the report states.
Fortunately for the latest discoveries, Evans believes it’s highly unlikely that tourists will be flocking to these newly uncovered sites, which he described to The Associated Press as “mounds in the ground.”
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Book Review – Jackie K Cooper
THE CORDOBA CONNECTION by C. Terry Cline, Jr.
THE CORDOBA CONNECTION is a new novel by C. Terry Cline, Jr. Cline was working on this novel at the time of his death in 2013. His wife, Judith Richards, is also a writer and she collaborated with him on this work and saw it through to its publishing this year. The novel is as timely as today’s news reports and offers an inside look into the world of those of the Muslim faith.
In the story Gabriel Cohen is a man who lost his wife in the 9/11 attacks. Since that occurrence he has let his hate of all Muslims fester inside him. Now he has begun a crusade to kill various Imams across the country. As he kills these individuals he hopes to stir up an open war between America and the Muslim communities. However he does not get the publicity he craves and needs, so he determines to raise the ante even higher.
Ben Mansur is a retired police officer and an investigator of hate crimes. He is a Muslim but not a completely devout one. His wife and two children are much more adherent to Muslim rules and traditions than he. When Cohen escalates his activities to a hostage/ransom situation Ben is drawn into the hunt for this crazed killer.
In the story as we learn more about Ben’s wife and children we also learn more about the world of the typical Muslim. We see the problems they face in living in a predominately Jewish/Christian world where they are constantly being misunderstood. Ben knows the rules of his religion but he does not abide by them all. His wife Yasmin is a professor of Islamic studies at Emery University so she holds herself to a much more rigorous practice of her faith.
As Ben searches to locate the place where Gabriel is hiding out with his hostages the clock is counting down. Cohen is a man determined to make his mark on history and he will use whatever savage means necessary to accomplish that goal. This makes for an exciting and eventful story.
Cline’s writing gets into the plot immediately and moves with an accelerated pace to the climactic end of this tale. There are no side trips and no extraneous verbiage. This is a story with a determined plot that unfolds as quickly as the reader can read.
The major fault I found with this overall enjoyable and engrossing sbook is its abrupt ending. The pace of the storytelling is so fast that when it ends it is with a screeching halt. There is no letting the reader down gently but rather there is a whiplash inducing conclusion. I wanted a bit of an aftermath but it was not there. Still I have to say all that precedes that ending is well done.
THE CORDOBA CONNECTION is published by Rivers Edge. It contains 342 pages and sells for $27.95.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
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Just about everybody had a reaction to the photos of Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston kissing, climbing rocks and taking selfies together.
Some recoiled, others jeered and Spencer Pratt even felt like he was dreaming.
The predominant HiddleSwift narrative was mostly a combination of “How could she?” and “Damn that was swift” (zing), labeling the “1989” singer yet again as a boy-obsessed crazy looking to fill the next blank space.
But now, the one person we’ve been waiting to hear from has finally weighed in: Barack Obama Amber Rose.
“I did see that and I think she’s fucking awesome,” Rose told The Daily Beast about the photos of HiddleSwift seaside. “I mean, I don’t know if it’s staged — but that’s how it is! I was on a private beach in Maui — you literally had to drive three hours from the airport to get to this beach — and paparazzi still caught me.”
Per usual, Rose dropped some knowledge about the different expectations of male and female celebrities and how we unfairly malign stars like Swift for having an ~ active ~ love life.
“I feel like guys do that all the time — they break up and the next day they’re with another girl and nobody really says anything,” she said. “But with Taylor it’s, you know what, I’m done with Calvin [Harris] and it didn’t work out, so on to the next.”
But, of course, Rose had to throw in some signature Muva flair, while doling out advice. And tbqh she makes some damn good points.
“It is because it’s unheard of, and she’s acting very ‘slutty’ and for some reason needs time to ‘let her pussy rest,’” Rose said. “That’s how people look at it, and it’s just like, hell no! If I’m done, why do I have to sit in the house and be lonely?”
Class dismissed.
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Equal treatment for any group depends on people outside the disenfranchised group to be advocates. There are white advocates in the civil rights movement, heterosexual advocates in the gay rights movement, and male advocates in the women’s rights movement.
On Father’s Day weekend, let’s reflect on how important fathers have been in the fight for gender equality in sports. Karen Rosenthal’s landmark book Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX: The Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America, describes the critical role played by the fathers of girl athletes in the fight for equal treatment of girls sports.
Congress passed the law that opened doors for girls and women in school and sports, and the government was charged with enforcing it. But the secret weapons in the fight for fairness was dads.
The generation of girls born in the 1970’s and beyond grew up with fathers who firmly believed their girls should have the same experiences as their boys. When teams were dropped, when fields were in disrepair, when the coaching wasn’t very good, dads went to bat for their daughters. They protested to principals and school superintendents and sometimes filed the lawsuits that ultimately got girls spots on teams.
When an issue shifts from an abstract idea to something that impacts someone very close to you; like your daughter, your new perspective changes everything. Instead of the abstract idea of “gender equality in sports” you are fighting for the right for your daughter to participate in sports with the same opportunity your son is given (coaching, equipment, fields, etc.). This is a very different level of interest, involvement, and motivation.
Having an issue hit close to home (like impacting a member of your immediate family) isn’t the only way perspectives change. Geena Davis has a great catch phrase for her Institute on Gender in Media:
“if they can see it, they can be it”
Girls need to see what is possible. Often people hold limiting beliefs, not because they are malicious, but because they have only been exposed to the world through a limited interpretation that doesn’t necessarily reflect how diverse our world really is. Geena Davis says about her institute and the Bentonville Film Festival, “we’re not trying to change the world, we just want entertainment media to reflect the world we live in, which last time I checked is 51% women and very diverse.” Today, storytelling through the film industry is predominately told through the male perspective; with women representing only 7% of Directors, 13% of writers, and 20% of producers.
On September 20, 1973 Billing Jean King beat Bobbie Riggs in a tennis match that was dubbed The Battle of the Sexes. Perspectives changed after that match in fact,
Billie Jean King says that men in their forties and fifties still come up to her today to say that they watched her play Bobbie Riggs and that the match changed their lives, especially their attitudes about their daughters. “They are the first generation to insist that their daughters and sons have equal opportunities,” she said. – Let Me Play by Karen Rosenthal
The gender equity topic in sports is back in the headlines with the United States Women’s National Soccer Team USWNT and their pursuit of pay equity with the men’s national team. Ironically, one of the key reasons the US women are a dominant force in the world of soccer is Title IX. When Title IX passed in 1972, many educational institutions were forced to add girls sports teams in order to equal the opportunities between the genders. Soccer was a popular choice because it’s a sport that doesn’t require a lot of equipment, facilities, or expense. In our fight for gender equality in sports, we created more opportunities for girls to play soccer which created a larger talent pool for our US National Team. Yet, the governing body of US soccer pays the women’s team differently than the US men’s national team. Obviously, we still have more work to do.
We need to continue to increase opportunities for girls in sports and we need to increase the number of women storytellers in film. The Women Sports Film Festival provides a venue for women filmmakers to tell the stories of amazing female athletes. If you don’t see it, your perspective on what’s possible remains limited. Can a woman from Bangladesh climb the seven highest mountains in the world? Wasfia Nazreen did just that and her story is changing the perspective of what’s possible for Bangladeshi girls. Can you be a mother and an aerial ski jumper? Yes, Lydia Lassila the Australian Olympic gold medalist redefines courage in the film that chronicles her story; The Will to Fly. Can women excel in a male-dominated sport like boxing? Yes. If you haven’t heard of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields from Flint, Michigan, the winner of the first Olympic women’s boxing gold medal (2012), she is returning to Rio this summer to defend her title. The film T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold will be the opening night film at the Women Sports Film Festival, July 28, 2016, at The New Parkway Theater, Oakland, CA.
Equal treatment is a process, so we keep chipping away at patterns and behaviors that don’t represent the world we live in. For Father’s Day weekend, if you have a great father – daughter sports photo, please post it to the Women Sports Film Festival Facebook page.
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A Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter weighs about 10,000 pounds. A bit less without the rotors, but it’s still an immense amount of weight to dangle off a string attached to another helicopter. Watch this Boeing CH-47 Chinook make light work of it.
When the Pentagon announced the “Hack the Pentagon” event back in March
, many wondered what kinds of vulnerabilities hackers would find when checking government websites for bugs. Now we know.
Originally published in Latino Rebels.
Alexander Chee’s heartfelt essay “The Courage of Being Queer” (published in New Republic on June 14th) takes a bittersweet look back at his heartache over his first boyfriend’s torments, something many of us who identify as queer or LGBTQ can relate to. Chee’s touching musings on his growth as a biracial gay man during the AIDS era of televised Right Wing hatred toward our community needs to be heard. We can’t forget how long we’ve come, but I regret to add that his memorial is incomplete in the worst way. Ninety-percent of the Orlando victims were Latino, almost half Puerto Rican.
I can already hear my detractors’ questions:
Why does it always have to be about race and the marginalized?
Why can’t we all grieve for the fallen and their families?
Why does everything have to be politicized?
Why can’t we just let things be?
There’s nothing in Chee’s touching piece about the Orlando victims that gives us an idea as to who they were and why they were at Pulse that night. Nothing as to why the gunman chose to stage his gore-fest on Latin Night. Nothing about 23 of the 49 perished having roots in Puerto Rico.
Nothing about the faceless victims other than the author’s passive honoring of their horrific passing. Nothing of why the killer, Omar Mateen, spared African-American clubbers, going in on everyone else because “this is about my country”, as he’s reported to have said — alluding to US military presence in Afghanistan.
Those who know me as an activist are aware that attacking people in any form is not my style. That’s not what I wish to do here, as there’s enough of that in the world to go around for ages to come. New Republic‘s publishing of this piece however — with zero mention of Latinos, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans — is unforgivable. Consider the frightening crossroads we find ourselves at during this contentious time of pre-election neurosis and everything Donald Trump is stirring up in regard to Mexicans and Latinos in general.
This inexcusable omission is on par with erasure, which does nothing to address the underlying issues that drove the gunman to action. Mr. Chee is “sure the 49 patrons who died at Pulse that night didn’t necessarily think of themselves as brave for being there. But they were.” This is where a much-needed discussion on cultural disconnects within the privilege-driven LGBTQ community needs to begin. Twenty-three of the victims, almost half, were Puerto Rican. And from what I’ve calculated (through the efforts of activist Pedro Julio Serrano), most were from the island, part of a desperate wave of recent emigrants abandoning an economic crisis that’s leading to the closure of public schools and even drove a man to kill himself outside the governor’s residence early this morning.
I have many friends in the San Juan, Puerto Rico LGBTQ world and can assure you that the young people we just lost were quite aware of their bravery, given the petrifying history of vicious hate crimes committed against queer people in Puerto Rico. As a New York City-born Puerto Rican who’s experienced the LGBTQ scene in several states, overseas and in Puerto Rico itself, I’m certain of this. Let’s not assume here. I know Mr. Chee meant no harm, but this is what queer Puerto Ricans see on our Facebook feeds daily.
Omar Mateen was familiar with Pulse Orlando and exhibited signs of a disintegrating mind to family and coworkers. He even disturbed a clerk at the store where he bought his weapons enough to be reported to the FBI, who’d investigated, and then forgotten him. Mateen knew who he went to slaughter. We know this now. New Republic‘s egregious oversight gives the impression that a general LGBTQ crowd was targeted. Well, it wasn’t. This is Step One of “the people-of-color erasure” process and a sore reminder as to why I distanced myself form the LGBTQ mainstream years ago.
LGBTQ activists-of-color have fought hard to set the record straight about our vanguard participation in historical events we’re gradually erased from. This has been the case since at least Stonewall, as was told to me by riot veteran Revered Majora Kennedy last year in the Bronx, where she recalled her participation in the uprising alongside much-beloved activist Sylvia Rivera, whom we’ve since lost. This was not the Stonewall I was spoon-fed twenty years later and I won’t even comment on last year’s movie scandal.
Making us invisible in these scenarios — and I don’t believe it was intentional — is dangerous. Mateen’s premeditated bloodbath was fueled by his anger over U.S. policy in the Middle East and internalized homophobia. For him to associate a Latin Night crowd with US military service — and all the economic reasons that push Latinos to serve — is something to think about. It’s touching that Mr. Chee has attempted to honor the fallen, but publishing a digest of one’s personal experience of confronting horror as an out queer person–which I also relate to — isn’t addressing larger, more urgent, issues.
Had I known nothing of the massacre and read Chee’s piece first, coupled with the vigil photograph New Republic decided to use, I would’ve learned nothing of the victims and how they fit into the contemporary political landscape. Nothing as to why Latin Nights even exist in a segregated LGBTQ community that imports all of the racism and classism of the hetero world that populates it. The victims of this horrendous tragedy deserve more than passing mention here and we should all grieve — but let’s be clear.
I look forward to meeting Alexander Chee one day, as I admire everything he’s done for LGBTQ visibility and letters. May this serve as an outcry to stop allowing this erasure of people-of-color in urgent LGBTQ narratives, where we often find ourselves on the frontlines of heated confrontations fueled by economic and racial marginalization. The victims of the Pulse Orlando Massacre deserve better than that, and for that matter, so does the rest of the world. Let us be clear as to who we’re speaking of when honoring martyrs, such as they were.
Their names tell a different story, New Republic…
Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old
Amanda Alvear, 25 years old
Oscar A Aracena-Montero, 26 years old
Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 years old
Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old
Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old
Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 years old
Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 years old
Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old
Cory James Connell, 21 years old
Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old
Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old
Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31 years old
Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old
Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old
Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old
Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old
Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old
Frank Hernandez, 27 years old
Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old
Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 years old
Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old
Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old
Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25 years old
Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old
Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old
Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old
Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old
Kimberly Morris, 37 years old
Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old
Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old
Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25 years old
Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old
Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old
Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old
Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old
Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27 years old
Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old
Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old
Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24 years old
Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old
Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old
Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old
Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24 years old
Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 years old
Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old
Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 years old
Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old
Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
