Hasta La Gadget!

You couldn’t make this up, could you? 

Just before President Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, a genuinely despotic land with an extreme ideology and lacking elections, Iran’s moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, was swept back into office.  It was an exuberant election campaign in which he trounced a hardline fundamentalist opponent, winning 57% of the vote.  Voter turnout was reportedly close to 73%, which, by the way, beat turnout in the 2016 American presidential election by about 18%.

In Riyadh, addressing an “Arab-Islamic American summit,” Trump had no words of sympathy or encouragement for any “victims” in Saudi Arabia.  He was, however, little short of effusive on the Iranian “victims” who had just voted in that election.  “The Iranian regime’s longest-suffering victims,” he said, “are its own people. Iran has a rich history and culture, but the people of Iran have endured hardship and despair under their leaders’ reckless pursuit of conflict and terror.”  Undoubtedly with the hardships of the Iranian people in mind, he also came bearing a gift for the Saudis who now live with an increasingly brutal quagmire of a war in neighboring Yemen: $110 billion in shiny, “beautiful” new American weaponry of every sort and the implicit threat to Iran that some of those weapons might, in the future, be used against its military.

In response to the American presidential visit, Rouhani commented sardonically, “Mr. Trump arrived in the region at the time when he saw 45 million Iranians participating in the elections. Then he visited a country that I doubt knows the definition of elections. The poor things have never seen a ballot box.”  In what might be taken as a backhanded reference to Trump’s 2016 campaign claims that the Saudis were behind the 9/11 attacks, he added, “I do not think the American people are ready to trade the lives they lost in September 11th with billions of dollars gained through weapons sales.”

As it happens, from CIA Director Mike Pompeo to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, the Trump administration is filled with figures who seem to believe that, of all the countries in the Greater Middle East, Iran has the least in common with the United States and is the greatest threat to it.  Back in 2010, when he was still head of U.S. Central Command, for instance, then-General Mattis reportedly responded to a query from President Obama about the top three threats in his vast area of responsibility by saying, “Number one: Iran. Number two: Iran. Number three: Iran.” According to the Washington Post, before the White House reined him in, Mattis was also preparing to launch a “dead-of-night” attack on Iran to take out a power plant or an oil refinery (his idea of a measured response to Iranian-armed Iraqi Shiite militias then killing American soldiers). Little has seemingly changed since, except that Iran’s unique evil and the dangers it poses to the U.S. have emerged as something of an idée fixe of the new president, not just his commanders.  

Today, TomDispatch regular Army Major Danny Sjursen, author of Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge, explores the irrationality of Washington’s thinking when it comes to Iran, an obsessive hysteria that could lead to yet another catastrophic American conflict in the Greater Middle East. Tom

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A Cleveland police officer involved in the 2014 fatal shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice has been fired from the department, city officials announced Tuesday. A second officer involved has been suspended. 

The department fired Timothy Loehmann, who was a rookie cop at the time of the shooting, and suspended Frank Garmback, his partner on the scene. Both men received disciplinary letters in January, but as Cleveland.com notes, Loehmann’s was for lying on his police application and not for shooting Rice. 

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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John Legend offered his condolences in a sincere video message to the parents of Olivia Campbell, a 15-year-old who died in the bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester last week.

Campbell was a fan of the singer and had even recorded a cover of Legend’s song “All of Me.” The recording was even played at her memorial service.

The teen’s mother and stepfather, Charlotte Campbell and Paul Hodgson, appeared in an interview on “Good Morning Britain” on Monday when they were presented with the heartfelt message from Legend, who had heard about Olivia’s love for him. 

“I understand that she was a fan of my music and that she sang my song ‘All of Me’ for a talent show, and that you played it at her memorial service,” he says in the video message.

“I wanted to thank you for playing the song and let you know that I was so moved by your daughter’s performance of the song. I want to send you as much love as I can send you from far away,” Legend added.

The singer, who has a daughter, Luna, with wife Chrissy Teigen, emphasized that he “can’t imagine the pain” of having to bury your own daughter.

After Legend’s message ended, Hodgson said on the show that his “little girl, up there” was “looking down and going ‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it.’”

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Last week, the Austin branch of the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater chain announced a women-only screening of “Wonder Woman,” and online, men responded with unprecedented outrage. 

My article about Alamo’s screening activated a wild amount of anger among men ― I was trolled on Facebook, in my inbox, in a series of random and bizarre Instagram mentions. I write about patriarchy and toxic masculinity regularly, and yet it was this seemingly innocuous “Wonder Woman” screening piece that garnered the most trolling I’ve had to endure in over a year. Other women who covered the Alamo situation, or even made comments about it on Twitter, were treated similarly.  

Many angry men on the internet claimed that excluding them from a film screening is gender-based discrimination and is therefore illegal. Many were also quick to ask how angry women would be about a men-only screening had the tables been turned. (This scenario is entirely unfounded, by the way ― the Alamo will offer dozens of other screenings that are open to the public, and the women-only screening is but one screening option of many at that very same theater.)

The overall idea that this is an illegal act of gender discrimination is both a monumental overreaction to a harmless event, and hugely flawed ideology ― because most public spaces already do belong to men, whether the sign on the door says so or not.

Take Congress, for example. As the institution that grants us our basic rights and bodily autonomy, it’s outrageous that women make up only 20 percent of elected officials when we are 50 percent of the population. Of course, women are allowed to hold office ― but the system is set up in a way that gives men more advantage in the pursuit for political power. Systemic sexism and outdated gender roles allow the government to largely remain a boy’s cub, with seriously damaging results. 

Perhaps the most striking reminder of this is a photo from March that shows a room full of men deciding on legislation about women’s health care ― something that has far more serious implications than a just-for-fun screening of a superhero movie where women can gather to celebrate the rarely-portrayed female heroin on the big screen. 

Other public spaces of importance also favor men ― and women who have managed to scramble their way into academia, medicine, law and tech are not treated with the fairness that their positions should grant them. They must continue to prove they belong while men are are given the benefit of the doubt.

Official men-only spaces exist in plenty, too. From fraternities and elite clubs on college campuses to other exclusive clubs across the country like the Adventurers’ Club. And in a most basic sense of existing in public space, 87 percent of young women have reported being sexually harassed ― when we walk down the street or walk into Starbucks, for example, we are reminded by catcalling, groping, leering, and verbal harassment that public space does not truly belong to us.

And while the vitriol was spurred from Alamo’s “Wonder Woman” screening, much of response seems to be less about the actual movie and more about the perceived hypocrisy of women and feminists. As one of our esteemed readers emailed us to say, “females whine, moan, complain, beitch [sic] about Everything under the sun.” Apparently, women can’t both point out systemic sexism that excludes us from the public discourse and celebrate a women-only space ― the idea is that it’s “reverse sexism.” But, much like the concept of “reverse racism,” that’s a completely flawed equation. Women and people of color don’t have the power to discriminate against men and white people in a way that would affect them systemically. So, when we do create our own spaces, men are not perpetually disadvantaged because of them.

Women are confronted with the jarring feeling of exclusion on a regular, day-to-day basis. But what women don’t do in the face of this exclusion is harass, humiliate, violate, stalk, threaten or assault men in response.

What we do, or at least try to do, instead, is find joy and camaraderie in safe and celebratory spaces. Like a girl’s night screening of a movie about a powerful woman superhero.

God forbid. 

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Whether it’s your shirt pocket, the zippered compartment in your backpack or a pencil case, existing spots to stow your stylus just aren’t as convenient as an on-device dock. And few laptops these days have built-in slots for a digital pen, which is…