- The free ride is over, ladies. And by free ride, we mean
being treated like second class citizens, being beaten regularly and denied some of your basic rights.
After coasting along for too long, women are feeling the harsh hand of karma
(or abusive men beating them down) and that was on display late Tuesday as the
most recent in a string of violent attacks in Tahrir Square in Cairo took
place. A women was attacked by a group of men and beaten violently before she
was pulled to safety by men who
ferried her out of the melee in an open Jeep. For some reason, attacks on women
have risen sharply following a mixed verdict against ousted leader Hosni
Mubarak e and his sons in a trial last week. The attacks have become so severe
and disturbing that activists met Wednesday to organize a campaign to prevent
sexual harassment in the square. No official statistics are available for
attacks on women in the square because police do not go near the area. Some
protestors suspect the misogynist efforts are organized by opponents of the
protests to break the spirit of the protesters and drive people away.
Protestors have told many stories about women being isolated and assaulted
around the square and Mona Seif, a well-known activist who has been trying to
promote awareness about the problem, confirmed Wednesday that she was told
about three different incidents in the past five days, including two that were
violent. Those doing the beating either have a short memory or simply don’t
give a damn that many women participated in the 18-day uprising that ended with
Mubarak's Feb. 11, 2011 ouster. Military and security troops have targeted them
as well, keeping alive a practice commonly used by Mubarak security that grew
even more aggressive in the days following his ouster. Should anyone be
surprised by this news? Of course not. A 2008 report by the Egyptian Center for
Women's Rights claimed two-thirds of women in Egypt experienced sexual
harassment on a daily basis. Only eight female legislators have a seat in the
country’s 508-member parliament and even with new leadership in place, the
fight is obviously a long way from over for the ladies………..
- Different people find inspiration in diverse places. For
some, it’s a friend or family member who enlisted in the military or fought a life-threatening
illness. For others, it’s their
favorite athlete or musician who battled their way to prominence. None of those
sources work for Miss Ohio Audrey
Bolte. Bolte, taking part in one epic blowhard Donald Trump’s many beauty
pageants, was asked a question about how women are portrayed in movies. It was
an odd question because movies are completely unrealistic and basing much of
anything in the real world on what shows up on the big screen is rather absurd.
Bolte didn’t exactly channel her inner Miss Teen South Carolina Caitlin Upton,
Bolte did cause a minor stir when she used Julia Roberts' character in “Pretty
Woman” as an example of a positive role model. Roberts played a prostitute
who was plucked from her skanky lifestyle by a wealthy benefactor with whom she
found love and Bolte said she viewed Roberts’ character in the movie as a role
model. When asked several days after the fact if she wanted to change her
response, she wasn’t backing down. "I'm going to stick with my
answer," she said. "I feel very confident in the way I answered it. I
felt I had 30 seconds on live TV and I felt I answered it the best I could
at that moment." She did however want to make it clear that she isn’t
going to allow the media to take her words out of context and suggest that she
holds up hookers as exampled for young women. "For the record, I do not
feel that prostitutes are role models," she said. "That was not the
question. Those words were not ever out of my mouth. I feel the movie
I gave an example of shows inaccurate and accurate roles of women in movies,
because at the end of the movie she turned out to be a wonderful, well-rounded woman.”
Yes, a beautiful, well-rounded woman who made a living making money for having
sex with strangers……….
- WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? The freaking Stanford men’s
basketball program, that’s who. Madsen, who famously unleashed a real gem of dancing and butchered Spanish at the
Los Angeles Lakers’ 2001 championship parade, is returning to the place where
it all started. The man known as “Mad Dog” for his over-the-top sideline and
championship parade celebrations has joined his alma mater as an assistant basketball coach. Coach
Johnny Dawkins announced Tuesday that Madsen will replace the retired Dick
Davey on his staff and work primarily with post players. The safe assumption is
that Madsen will also work with the entire team on their celebrations should
the Cardinal ever win a Pac-12 or national championship during his time on
staff. During his playing days, the Mad Dog n helped lead the Cardinal to four
NCAA tournament appearances and the 1998 Final Four He averaged 10.9 points and
7.9 rebounds per game in his career a and despite never amassing even a small
fraction of those averages during his NBA career, he did win two championships
in Los Angeles and was a fan favorite both in L.A. and during his stint in
Minnesota. He has actually been back on campus at Stanford for the past two
years, completing his MBA and working in a volunteer capacity when he accompanied
the team on a trip to Spain last September. His addition to the staff may or
may not lead to more wins, but free Spanish lessons will be plentiful and dance
wisdom will be dispensed regularly………
- E-nough. To the technology company behind Tupac
Shakur's hologram that “shocked” the world at this year's Coachella Music
Festival, enough is enough and in this case, it’s too much. Bringing back an
iconic rapper gunned down in his prime in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting for a
one-time event is all right, but going around scheming which deceased rocker or
hip-hopper you can bring back to life next is not cool. Some needs to stop Digital
Domain Media and its new corporate partner Core Media Group, which owns the
licensing rights to Elvis Presley, from bringing the possibly dead rock
and roll icon back to life, digitally speaking. Worse still, the plans aren't
just for a one-time appearance for the King. No, he is expected to appear on film,
television and even at concerts because clearly, a small army of Elvis
impersonators around the world in almost every conceivable language is not
enough. “Elvis is the most iconic, most recognized performer on the planet, and
we are thrilled to have been chosen to bring new performances and original shows
where fans can have their own, new experiences of Elvis,” said Digital Domain
Media Group chairman John Textor. Bzzzzzz! Wrong-O, John Boy. There are not
going to be any new or original performances from Elvis because he is
(allegedly) dead, which means no new audio and therefore, no new concerts or
songs. Then again, Elvis is still a better option than a Justin Bieber hologram,
which Digital Domain Media Group was reportedly looking at earlier this
year……….
- Way to be a buzzkill AGAIN, United Nations. Specifically,
the United Nations Environment Program
needs to stop being such a freaking wet blanket. According to the UNEP, the
earth's environmental systems "are being pushed towards their biophysical
limits.” In a disturbing report, program officials said, "Several critical
global, regional and local thresholds are close or have been exceeded. Abrupt
and possibly irreversible changes to the life-support functions of the planet
are likely to occur." All 525 (yikes!) pages of this riveting report are
full of dour news and to soften its impact, the UNEP released it overnight. Contained
within the report are dire prognostications of rising oceans, increased
frequency and severity of floods and droughts and the collapse of fisheries.
The findings are based on three years of work by 300 scientists and they paint
a truly bleak picture. They claim about 20 percent of vertebrate species are
under threat of extinction, that coral reefs have declined by 38 percent since
1980, greenhouse gas emissions could double over the next 50 years and 90
percent of water and fish samples are contaminated by pesticides. But wait, isn’t
the world becoming conscious of its wayward enviro-habits and mending its
broken ways? Nope. Near the end of the report, its authors say little or no
progress has been made over the past five years on nearly a third of the main environmental
goals, including global warming. In fact, significant progress has been made on
just four of the 90 most important goals, the report claims. "This is an
indictment," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said. "We live in
an age of irresponsibility that is also testified and documented in this
report. In 1992 [when the first of the agency's five reports was released] we
talked about the future that was likely to occur. This report 20 years later
speaks to the fact that a number of the things that we talked about in the
future tense in 1992 have arrived.” However, Steiner’s press conference was not
all gloom and doom. "Change is possible. Given what we know, we can move
in another direction," he suggested……….
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